Mr.Flutter and Mrs. Dread

Readers of this blog are used to diatribes about the dangers of this or that movement every week. With each blog post, we fulfill our mandate to watch for wolves that Paul said would ravage the flock of God—and we make no apologies. But this week, there is no diatribe. Instead, I want to comment on perhaps my favorite moment in the Gospel of John. It is a particularly apropos section of scripture, as I will argue, because coming to the end of the year, most of us began to have all manner of anxieties. I am a Olympic class worrier. I mean it. I took the silver at Helsinki and would have taken the gold if not for a brief moment of faith. I worry about everything. The future is a big hairy monster with sharp, pointy teeth. And now that I have a two month old, my anxieties just got anxieties. Especially when I realize that in seven days, I will have made all the money for the year that I can and now the tax man cometh to bring judgment preceded by his forerunner and prophet, the W-2 form.

Now I’m sure some of you are really, really into scripture memory and you are already thinking of verses to help us Olympic class worriers. No doubt you will quote Philippians 4:6 to me: “Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Or you might quote Jesus himself, “So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' from Mathew 6:31. And these are good verses all. However, I want to share what I think is the best modeling of both of these sentiments.
The picture of calm and peace in the midst of a situation that couldn’t be more anxiety ridden is found in John 13:1-4:

Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.

There it is. The greatest example of what we should be instead of being worriers. Why is this verse so important? Look at the scene. It is Passover week. While Jesus celebrates his last meal with his disciples, EVERYTHING is working behind the scenes to bring about his betrayal, torture, and death. In shadowy halls but a few miles away, men in big hats and long robes are deciding Jesus has to die. Barabbas is sitting in his cell. Pilate is entertaining guests himself plagued with anxieties about disruptions during Passover. Judas already has an idea and knows someone he can contact. And somewhere . . . somewhere in a pile lies a cross-piece and some nails.

And Jesus knows all of this, he feels the culmination of everything he had come to do, just a few hours away. Not just the culmination of three years of ministry or 33 years of his life, but the culmination of thousands of years of prophecy. What I find so amazing, is that Jesus doesn't have his mind focused on any of this. Instead he is very, very much focused on the present moment. His focus isn’t on the future but rather eternity. “Knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up . . .” John gives us this insight into Jesus’ thinking and what we see is someone who is settled. He knows that all things are given to him. He knows that he came from God and is going back to God. He knows. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t simply hope. He knows. And this makes him calm.

The thought of what is going to happen, and how I will deal with it, consumes me. I’ll give you an example. Recently, I turned in my grades for my graduate students. I decided who got As and who got Cs and who didn’t pass the course. I shouldn’t have been surprised but I had some students question their grades. “Why did I get a B, my goal was to get an A” (as if having a goal entitled them to the grade). Some were angry. And I started worrying about them challenging the grade. Now, you have to remember I’m just a grad student. Student evaluations are a big deal. They partly determine what I get to teach and when. My mind started racing, imagining all the things these students could do. Would they complain to the dean? Would I be called on the carpet? Etc. Suddenly I’m pacing, biting my nails. Etc. I’m anywhere but the present. I’m lost in some imaginary future. And my entire evening and night’s sleep was ruined thinking about several different futures all of which were incompatible and none of which actually materialized.

It reminds me of a great song by Terry Scott Taylor called “Mr. Flutter” where Taylor, with characteristic wit, analogizes the struggle with anxiety:

And here comes Mr. Flutter

He and Mrs. Dread, well, they love each other

Gonna build a haunted house

Be my father and mother

They're tying the knot in the middle of my gut

And they both want kids, so there's one in the oven

They picked out a name

He's called Little Nothing

I think he was born to be my kissing cousin

He's pulling the chain in the middle of my brain



Taylor too looks to the divine to help him out but in a fit of honesty that makes him an unusual Christian poet, he says:



I got a Friend on high, and He feels my pain

But I still got this dust flowing through my veins

And I wanna have faith, and I wanna know grace

But it's hard to break through when the rent's overdue



It is hard to know our place in eternity when the future looms. It is hard to have faith when the rent’s overdue. But not Jesus. He attends the moment, doing his father’s will to the last—loving his own. Man, I wish I could just get that. I wish I could wrap my head around what C.S. Lewis’ devil Screwtape says:

“The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the present is the point at time at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them…either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.”

Eternity or the present. That is refuge for those plagued by Mr. Flutter and Mrs. Dread. Something to think about when they are tying a knot in the middle of your gut in the New Year. If you are like my office mate, who “can’t spell worry” then this meditation may not be much help, but for those of us who struggle with anxiety, Jesus’ virtue of taking refuge in Eternity in order to live in the Present might be the beginning of wisdom—and sure beats prozac.

Something old and something new

Since this blog is noW linked to the bgpoliticalanimals.com website where I am co-host of the premier political talk show in bowling green ohio, I am republishing some old blog posts that were featured on the Crux, a site I regularly blog for. So as you read these keep in mind, some of them are several months old. Stay tuned for a new article before Christmas!

"We're all Warped!" (or what Ann Coulter should have said)

Two stories caught my attention this week as I was contemplating all things theological. Having a newborn will do that to you. My son is ten days old and is already giving his mother fits playing the only power card in his 7 pound existence. He refuses to breastfeed. He cries because he's hungry and in a fit of stubbornness normally reserved for Cold War negotiations, he refuses to latch on. Its difficult to remember that his cute face and adorable smile (or is it gas?) shares with the rest of the human race the same depraved nature. My son is warped. Left on his own, he will be self-centered, foolish, and vicious. No amount of practice, guidance or teaching, will ensure he doesn't become this way. I hear the echoes of the garden and the curse in my son's cries. This is the state of us all: warped and incapable of making ourselves right.

I was thinking about all of this, when I happened upon the story of A.J. Jacobs and his experiment in living biblically. It seems Mr. Jacobs, editor for Esquire and a self-professed agnostic decided to go on a spiritual journey by attempting to follow all the commands of the bible for one year. The Today show had him, on the subway, in his clothing that was carefully not made of mixed fibers playing an honest-to-goodness lyre and singing psalms with what looked like a 6 month growth that actually made me have beard envy. When asked what was the hardest part about living biblically, his answer was obeying the commandments against coveting and bearing false witness. While still professing to be an agnostic, but more open minded after a year of living biblically, Jacobs explained that he was enlightened by the experience but was glad to go back to his normal life.

Now I haven't read the book, so I don't know the details. What I saw in his face was a sort of cynical exasperation at the thought of trying to fulfill all the requirements of biblical holiness and a smile that betrayed the fact that his project might have changed his daily life but didn't change his heart. He left me with a kind of sad hopefulness. Sad at his exasperation and hopeful that he might find some answers. I was reminded of Paul's lament:

Who will set me free from the body of this death? (Romans 7:24)

And how sad it would have sounded if he had left it at that and had not added:

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!.” (Romans 7:25)

Which brings me to the second story of Ann Coulter and her incredibly ham-fisted attempt to explain what Christians believe about other religions--specifically Judaism. When asked by Donnie Deutsch of the "Big Idea" what her idea of a perfect America, she responded:

It would be like the Republican National Convention in 1994: They were all happy, Christian, and tolerant.

Deutsch responded incredulously:

We should all be Christians?

The thought that anyone would want the whole country to share a single worldview, apparently to Deutsche was akin to asking if yellow-cake uranium should be sold at K-Mart. Coulter went on to say that Jews needed to perfected and that Christianity was the short-cut to salvation like "Federal Express." Yeah. That"s what Paul meant when he said:

For it is by grace you are saved, and not of yourselves but it is a gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

But what I found incredibly annoying is how she was branded an anti-Semite for suggesting that Jews should give up their religion and become Christians. Deutsch went so far as to talk about her view in the same breath with that of the president of Iran Ahmadenajuad (I protest his fascism by refusing to learn to spell his name) who wants to wipe Israel off the map. What Coulter should have done after the uncomfortable commercial break, was to distinguish from religion and race. Christians want everyone to become Christians--that's the great commission, but what we don't ever subscribe to is the idea that someone's race makes them "less perfected." What Coulter meant was lost in haze of bad theological explanation of the kind that none-the-less will sell copies of Coulter's new book.

The truth is that the idea that those who believe they are right want everyone else to share that belief only gets apoplectic angst when Christians do it. When Richard Dawkins says that religious people are definitely stupid and possibly wicked and that the world would be so much better without religion, he is in fact engaging in the very same dogmatic, narrow-minded recommendation that Coulter is, only he isn't on the business end of very many prominent newspaper op-ed pieces. If Coulter is guilty of diabolical elitism then so is every vegan, politico, P.E.T.A. and Greenpeace protester, and yes your friendly neighborhood militant atheist. Evangelism isn't about Fed-exing ourselves to God but neither is it about elitism. Everyone is warped. Christ didn't come to make bad people good, he came to deliver each of us from the warped character that beats in our hearts from the moment we are severed from our umbilical cord. And our desire that everyone become Christians isn't born of bigotry or bad theology. It's born of compassion and love.

Coulter's comments aren't diabolical because coercing people to be Christians isn't so much immoral as impossible--about as impossible as trying to live up to all the commands of a holy God even for a year. There is no Fed-Ex fast track to God, there is no track period. There is only acceptance, a giving up of all our efforts. The world is changed one heart at a time giving in to the invitation of Christ and that has nothing to do with a Fed-ex or growing a beard and playing a lyre.

There Ought to Be a Law . . .

It's a simple idea. We say it a lot: "That's horrible. There ought to be a law." I've been thinking lately about our penchant for throwing that phrase about. What started my thinking was a news article, or more accurately and indicative of our times, it was a blog about a news article. It seems that several cities are considering outlawing baggy pants and exposed undergarments under municipal decency laws. For instance, under a proposed ordinance in Atlanta, it would be misdemeanor to wear one's pants in a way that showed underwear as is the fashion.

Anthony Bradley at the Acton Institute's highly recommended Powerblog drew my attention to this very simple idea. Now I had already heard about Atlanta's concerns about baggy pants and had already formed an opinion about the impracticality of this kind of decency law. After all, how would it be enforced? Would it require armies of cops with tape measures playing the part of assistant principals checking skirt length and dress code? I also listened to (and largely rejected) the ACLU worries about racial profiling. But then I read Bradley's comments on why the law is bad:

"Maybe we want to pass a law because changing a mind-set would require getting personally involved in the lives of people who wear saggy pants. We would much rather pass a silly law than to roll up our sleeves and sacrifice our own time to offer those individuals a different vision for their own dignity. This requires time and energy and it comes with no guarantees for change. It's risky¦ If you want a kid to stop wearing his pants below his butt then personally get involved in his life. This is how true virtue is cultivated--from one person to another. Passing fashion laws will not cultivate character, virtue, nor wisdom."

This started me thinking about my motivations. I looked into my heart expecting to find a conservative Christian, instead I"m afraid I found a Pharisee. Often when I say, "There ought to be a law" I ought to first ask if a law is the best way to change behavior. Granted conservatives typically think laws are justified not only to prevent harm but to keep public order, but Bradley's thoughts got me to thinking: Do I want the law to help change people, or do I want the law so I don't have to deal with behavior I believe is bad? And more importantly which would be the goal of Jesus who never proposed a single law but invested himself in the lives of others and had a lot to say about the corruption that comes from well-meaning law?

Now this isn't another installment of WWJL "What Would Jesus Legislate" though that is an important debate. I'm only suggesting that we consider that laws are often the worst answer to a problem of morals and values because forcing others to abide by our values means we don't have to persuade them to change theirs. As Bradley said, virtue is passed on by investing in lives, one at a time.

And I knew I was on the right track when I presented this idea on my radio show. I host a late night political talk show with two agnostics on a college station here in Bowling Green. So it was not for nothing that my co-hosts respected my Christian beliefs enough to let me passionately present this idea on our show. But I got flak from a caller who intimated that "those people“-meaning people who routinely and as a matter of culture wear their pants below their underwear
"those people" are not interested in me or any religious people investing in their lives, so my argument just didn't matter. Now I have no idea if the caller was religious, let alone Christian (in hindsight I should have asked) but what I tried to get across to him was that as Christians, that is exactly the attitude we can't have about "those people" We are not allowed to divide the world into those who are eligible for our love and our Gospel and those who are not. No one, not Osama Bin Laden, Lindsay Lohan, nor the entire population of "those people" are somehow beyond the love and reach of Christ. In fact it seems Jesus singled out "those people" in society that the Pharisees openly and self righteously disdained as "tax-collectors and sinners." Jesus offended the Pharisaical sensibilities and consciously made it a point to reach out to "those people" investing Himself by eating, drinking and teaching them. He did this in such a public way that we read in Luke 7:34:

"The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'

And that led me to the conclusion that for Christians, "there ought to be a law" should not be our battle cry because it might have a tendency to make us Pharisees rather than followers of Christ.

Sex and Steak

Apparently there are a lot of people really, really interested in why people have sex. So much so that there was a survey done titled 237 Reasons We Have Sex . Of about 2500 college students and the question asked was why have sex? Both men and women agreed on the top reasons for having sex: 1) they were attracted to the person, 2) they wanted to experience physical pleasure and 3) "it feels good," according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for both men and women. Sure expressing love and affection were in the top ten for both but were beaten out by the number one reason: "I was attracted to the person."

Now when I heard these statistics, I could have engaged in the venerable evangelical pastime of ranting about how the culture is going to hell in a hand basket, making a list of what's wrong with the world and blaming the Cable TV, music, and probably Lindsey Lohan. However, I was in my car and I had no one to rant to on the Ohio turnpike. Instead, what struck me was that if you take the reasons the college students gave for having sex, you could replace sex with a great meal or music CD and it would sound exactly the same. Why did you go to that restaurant and order that steak? “Well, I was attracted to the atmosphere and I saw several pictures of the steak before I got there."Why do you enjoy steak at all? Well, its fun to eat." Why did you purchase and use that particular CD? "Well, I had seen the band and I was attracted to their music, so I bought the CD. That band's music makes me feel good when I listen to it." You could replace the "sex" with literally hundreds of other pleasures without missing a beat.

All of this wouldn't be so puzzling if we didn't also know that they weren't really having that much fun. I say this because of another survey of women and orgasms, Your Brain on Sex . A survey of women in 1994 implies that there is good reason to correlate monogamy and orgasms in women. Monogamous religious women report more orgasms and Evangelical Christian women report the highest frequency of orgasms. Apparently "puritanical" evangelicals are having all the fun. In fact there may be a link between brain chemistry and monogamy. Monogamy produces oxytocin that leads to bonding. Promiscuity produces a dopamine flood not unlike the experience of being addicted to a drug. In fact in one study where rats could get a dose of dopamine by pressing a button, they just sat there pressing the button and ignored everything around them including food--not unlike college students on spring break. The point is the "fun and attraction" the college students are so excited about is a second rate pleasure. What struck me was the thought that if sex is just "fun" like a good game of scrabble with friends--how boring, trivial and commonplace is that? The good stuff, consistent mind-blowing orgasms and bonding, comes with a lasting commitment.

In the Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, a senior devil, rejoices that through the mechanizations of modernity, human sexuality and affection have been twisted such that, "They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life as something lower than a storm of emotion." It used to be the emotion was aimed at a person. Infatuation was the main cause for extra-marital sex, but Screwtape wasn't ambitious enough. What the new survey tells me is that now the commitment of marriage is lower than a storm of emotion for a pleasurable experience not a person. Sex is just another pleasure. It is an exquisite one to be sure, but so is a really good meal or a great adventure or sporting event. How often do we hear comedians say, "____ was better than sex"?

The difference is that for Christians, sex isn't another pleasure to be ranked with a good meal or a sporting event. It is what fancy philosophers call an incommensurable value. Comparing the sex that occurs as part of a partnership for mutual help, preservation of virtue, and the transmission of life, to a gourmet meal would be like comparing the thrill of graduating college to the thrill of whitewater rafting. They are in completely different categories. Graduating is not like rafting and sex is not like any other pleasure. That is the difference. That particular kind of life is only truly actualized within the committed relationship bound by the ties of covenant. And apparently monogamous sex within that greater activity of committed partnership produces better sex.

This brings me to one last survey. It seems that kind of worldview isn't etched into someone simply because they hang around church or go to a youth group. According to columnist Michael Gerson In his Townhall.com article, Teenaged Morality , a survey of evangelical teenagers showed that making chastity vows aren't all that effective. True love apparently doesn’t wait. Or at least doesn't wait very long for true love. The average age for a Christian teen to lose his or her virginity is not much higher than any other teen and in some demographics actually lower. Bad news. Sure. One blog proclaimed, "Evangelical girls are easy." However, things are not that simple. When the survey is correlated with level of spiritual commitment, the numbers change dramatically. Furthermore one sociologist notes that when you account for teenagers who are “embedded in a social network with shared norms,” chastity becomes much more attainable. Translation: Christian teens that have a network of accountability and support don't succumb to the sex-is-like-a-good-steak or chocolate shake mindset. I could be wrong but that "embedded social network" of "shared norms" starts to sound like a worldview. Wearing promise rings and signing pledges are no substitute for good reasons to think great sex isn't just pleasure like any other, its part of a way of a biblically integrated way of life. My son recently arrived in a world that offers pleasures like a Chinese menu (one from column A two from column B), and I may be harsh or naive, but just loving Jesus won't change that. He needs to have sound reasons as part of a Biblical worldview about sex and its incommensurable value to offer an alternative to the lackluster, boring, second rate, version of sex as just another pleasure.

My very first (and last) Paris Hilton Post

Not many good Christian blogs begin with the phrase: "I was watching Paris Hilton the other day." This one does. I promise though that it will be my only Paris Hilton blog. Ever. Anyway, I was watching Paris a few weeks ago. I couldn't help it. She was plastered all over the three big networks and I don't have cable.

It was the day after her appearance on Larry King Live. As I was asking myself, "Why don't you turn off the TV and do something constructive like writing your dissertation?" I found myself getting really annoyed with the cause celebre of Paris' post-prison meet and greet and it's marring of my watching of serious TV like House and all those shows that start with a dead body. What made me so cynical about this girl talking about her change of heart and her turning over a new leaf? Couldn't I be gracious? Hopeful? I mean I'm part of a faith that has an entire holy scripture full of stories of people who after one significant encounter with God changed their whole life. And that was the question everyone was asking in what passes for commentary in the endless news cycle. They all asked: "Has something in Paris changed?" I caught myself scoffing. Oh Puleeez. Who does this lip-glossed blimbo think she is? (a blimbo is a rich bimbo with jewelry or "bling”hence "blimbo") Yep. I was working up a good self-righteous lather. I know there are some stones to throw around here somewhere . . .

Why was I so cynical about Paris Hilton? Why couldn't I believe her? There was of course what actually came out of her mouth. She just didn't sound like someone who had really, truly had an encounter with God. Sure, there were the obvious nods to the Hollywood-Oscar-speech version of God who "does everything for a reason" and can be conveniently folded into a generic miasma of "spirituality" probably scripted by an image consultant who isn't bright enough to realize that jail-house conversions are so cliche. There were also the vague plans about helping other women in and out of jail that came from her notes from prison.

"I want to help set up a place where these women can get themselves back on their feet. A place with food, shelter and clothing and programs, kind of a transitional home. I know I can make a difference and hopefully stop this vicious circle of these people going in and out of jail."

Then it hit me why we find these promises of instant character development hollow and trite. Character, genuine soul-gripping virtue isn't created overnight. Aristotle called virtue habit according to reason. The Virtues were those traits that came as a result of having our appetites, our emotions and our desires, molded by doing virtuous things. If you wanted to become brave, you did brave acts until they were second nature. Now under Aristotle's conception, a lot of virtue was the result of luck. You couldn't be a slave. You couldn't be really, really poor. You couldn't have had some major tragedy etc. These could prevent you from having the right habits and thus the right virtues. As you can imagine, this philosophy was very popular with those who were part of the lucky sperm club. It was all the rage with the rich, pious, young elite. Not so much for the slaves and the poor who were just trying to eke out a life. The point is that virtue is the result of repeated acts of virtue not an isolated experience.

What's remarkable is that Virtue might have stayed the philosophy of the elite only, if not for Christianity and especially Paul. When you read Paul's descriptions of the Christian life you see something very much like Aristotle's emphasis on virtue. The Christian life is about imitating the virtues of Christ. The fruits of the spirit are virtues (kindness, goodness, self-control). But what was it about this virtue theory that resonated not with the lucky but with the poor and the rich? Not just with the elite but also with the slaves? What was it about this conception of virtue that cuts across every sector of society declaring that, "In Christ, there is neither man nor woman, slave nor free"? What was it about this "philosophy" that gave whole new life to the concepts of charity, science, and liberty while Aristotle is (regrettably) a course in graduate school and relegated to half a shelf at Barnes and Noble? It was the hope that virtue wasn't just a product of the right habits and the right circumstances. It was still that, but it was also a product of God within us. There were disciplines that were necessary to practice holiness but they weren't dependent on our wealth, our health, or our history.

What made Christian virtue transforming was that we aren't just victims of our circumstances. Everyone has the potential to be virtuous because God cares about our virtue and our character. A slave could be virtuous because the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in every single Christian. What transformed every facet of the ancient world was the deep abiding belief that unlike Aristotle's pursuit of virtue as an exercise in personal fulfillment, ours is the fruit of a relationship with a God who actually cares (as opposed to Aristotle's God who neither knew nor cared what it was like to be a human being). Which brings me back to Paris. The reason I don't believe her is because in either Aristotle's sense or the Christian sense, she doesn't seem have what it takes to be a changed person.

From an Aristotelian point of view, she doesn't have what it takes to be generous, brave, or magnanimous (what Aristotle called "great-souled"). She doesn't have the requisite habits. I think Aristotle would laugh at promises of someone who has spent her youth in frivolous, narcissistic, hedonism "turning over a new leaf." Not out of cynicism but simply because virtue is something that comes not from 23 days of deprivation but rather cultivated habit. I think the part of the Larry King interview he would have laughed at, in the laughing-to-keep-from-crying sense, was when King asked her to be self-reflective. He asked her what about herself, what personality trait; she would change if she could. Now if there ever was a moment for a mea culpathis was it. This was a chance for real honesty mined from the depths of 23 days of soul-searching. What did Paris say she wishes she could change? She laments that her voice gets really high when she gets nervous. Aristotle wouldn't be surprised. Confinement isn't the cause of self-reflection--just an occasion for it. We have the habit for that kind of soul-searching self-awareness or you don't. Paris doesn’t have it.

Paul, on the other hand would have a different reason for not believing her when she says she's really changed. Real change, real virtue is a result of God working in us. It comes from repentance and humility to develop a relationship with God. Yet what would have bothered Paul about Paris, I think is her inconsistency. He would balk at her shallowness not in regard to her celebrity but I think in regard to her nod to God while at the same time having this sort of driving compulsion to tell us that she makes her own money, that she is a business woman, that she is not just a party girl. She says, "I'm a good person, I have a good heart." The Gospel isn't about being good. Given Aristotle's virtue theory, most people can be relatively good. The Gospel isn't about being good. It's about being perfect, spotless, holy—and realizing that we are not even close. What makes me not believe Paris is her lack of humility at what her life has become? I could be wrong, but I simply don't hear any contrition. And without contrition, I don't think there is genuine change. So from the Christian perspective she doesn't seem to have what it takes either. Someone may object that when we hear Paul in his humility it is many years after his conversion. We wouldn't expect immediate humility from him three days after his conversion; we shouldn't expect it from Paris. While being struck blind by God is a bit more jarring than 23 days in a 6 by 8 cell, I wouldn't expect the newly converted Paul to have the same character as the mature apostle, but I would remind you that Paul, as far as I know, didn't start doing good immediately after his conversion. Instead he went away to Arabia for at least a couple of years beforehe started his ministry. He was humble enough to pursue God and the habits of virtue. He felt the need to cultivate understanding before he started to help others.

Now there's a thought. What would we think if Paris came on Larry King to announce that as a result of her experience with God in prison, she was renouncing her entire lifestyle and moving to remote parts of Alaska to relearn what was important and what she had gotten wrong about life, and then some five years later we found her down in the thick of human life working at a shelter for single mothers and battered women--not just funding one? Imagine if we heard not from People magazine (or Christianity today) but from some anonymous Christian blog, "Remember Paris Hilton, reclusive heiress, well now she says she found God in prison and spends her days ministering to the poor and her nights leading bible studies for actors in Brentwood." A long-shot? Certainly. Impossible? Maybe, but what keeps me from being completely self-righteous and lets face it, arrogant, is that impossible is what God does best. Paul would be the first to agree.

It occurs to me that as I started out to write a commentary on virtue, and in the process, God has used Paris Hilton of all people to humble me. I can be unbelievably cynical mainly because I think it makes me cool and interesting. Deep down, I’d really like to be not just rich but famous. How many times have I fired off sarcastic commentaries about all that is glittery and superficial in Hollyweird? Channeling my inner Pharisee. Further more, I've done despicable things to others. Hamlet said it so well: "I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth?" Yuck. Something stinks here and it ain't Larry King's cologne. So as soon as I finish writing this, I'm going to swallow that giant ego of mine and pray for Paris Hilton and her family. It may not change Paris but it just might change me.

Free Speech Double Standards in Oakland

Hate speech. It's a term that has become the new political currency of injustice. It was recently the subject of the 9th circuit court of appeals in Good News Association v. Hicks. The court upheld the lower court ruling that Good News Association engaged in what amounted to “hate speech” when it posted a flier that read in its entirety:

Preserve Our Workplace with Integrity

Good News Employee Associations is a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family values. If you would like to be a part of preserving integrity in the Workplace call Regina Rederford @xxx- xxxx or Robin Christy @xxx-xxxx

Joyce Hicks, Director of Communication and Economic Development for the city of Oakland California, ordered Christy and Rederford, who worked for the city, to remove the homophobic flier or face termination for harassment. The trouble is that Oakland didnt require the rest of the employees to keep their partisan political and religious speech to themselves. According to the Pro-Family Law Center :

“The court" completely failed to address the concerns of the appellants with respect to the fact that the City of Oakland's Gay-Straight Employees Alliance was openly allowed to attack the Bible in widespread city e-mails, to deride Christian values as antiquated, and to refer to Bible-believing Christians as hateful. When the plaintiffs attempted to refute this blatant attack on people of faith, they were threatened with immediate termination by the City of Oakland. The Ninth Circuit did not feel that the threat of immediate termination had any effect on free speech."

First, let me say that I am not qualified to dissect the court's legal reasoning. Given that the 9th circuit is the most over turned appellate court in the land, however leads me to think the court's legal reasoning often leaves much to be desired. But there is a bigger question. Why did the City of Oakland allow The Employees Gay-Straight alliance to call Christians hateful and the Bible antiquated but characterized the Christian response as hate speech? Why did the lower court called the free speech interests of the Good News Assoc., "vanishingly small" High courts usually don't sound so nonchalant about the first amendment. In other words, why the blatant double standard without any justification whatsoever?

I want to suggest there is a subtle, unarticulated, understanding of justice that may explain why the City of Oakland didn't see their policy as an egregious double standard. And in a phrase it goes something like this, “Because of the status and history of Christianity, Christians cannot be the target of hate speech ever. You won't read it in the Oakland City employee manual but in popular advocacy of hate speech laws there are three criteria for hate speech:

1) The speech in question must be “face to face” in the sense that it demeans some group or individual not merely to an idea.


2) The speech in question must demean others in regard to race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or national origin.


3) The speech in question must be aimed at an individual or a group that has a history of oppression or discrimination.

While I think the flier in question fails the 1st criteria (it doesn't refute or address any group or individual, let alone homosexuals), it's this last provision, which makes all the difference. According to many advocates of hate speech legislation, historically dominant groups like Christianity may be offended by statements that the Bible needs to be updated or the fiery statements of gay activists, but what Christians cannot be, is targets of hate speech. Christians are not the historically oppressed but rather the oppressors. Also, according to some hate speech opponents, Christians cannot feel the alienation of oppressed groups because of their majority status. Christians, like whites cannot be the victims of hate speech because they form the predominant social group and can retreat to the safe harbor of dominant social culture that minorities do not have.

Though it is not usually put this way, there is implicit conception of justice as balancing the scales. Contra the historic liberal doctrine that government must be neutral about the good life, the new left argues that the demands of justice may require promoting or subsidizing those who have been victims of oppression at the expense of the right to free speech.

Since Christianity is seen as the dominant oppressor, oppressed groups ought to be given leeway to express their discontent even if it violates the oppressor's so called right to free speech. In other words justice may require a double standard to balance the scales. There are several problems with this argument. For starters, it seems to downplay or ignore Liberalism's historic sense that freedom of speech is a cherished right. Remember when the left were among the most ardent defenders of free speech? Now they are its most ardent critics.

Second, I seem to remember a Roman persecution that involved lions and coliseums, so Christianity has been historically oppressed. Furthermore that oppression isn't just in the distant past. Christians in China and in many predominantly Islamic countries are not just oppressed but persecuted physically for talking about their faith. This means that the “historically oppressed” criterion is fluid and must mean something like “oppressed in the recent past” or “traditionally "oppressed groups" within America. This starts to sound like the criterion is "Whoever the left considers oppressed", are oppressed.I have never gotten much sympathy from my leftist friends when I point out that many Christians, notably creationists, endure vitriol the likes of which if published about Muslims, Gays, or even Vegetarians would make Al Sharpton blush.

Third, these criteria would overturn what the new left calls "The Civil Libertarian story" of free speech and that interest is not "vanishingly small." Freedom to express or persuade others has historically been seen as a right that needs compelling interest to be restrained. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was famous for arguing that when the first amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech: 'No law, means no law." This "historically oppressed" criterion is dangerously vague. What indicates historical oppression? At what point is a group no longer oppressed but on equal footing or even dominant? Can oppression by indexed to culture? If so, in Oakland, which group is more maligned gays or Christians? The point is, if we give oppressed groups a pass on their speech as a way of balancing the scales, at what point do the scales balance and how do we know? Since this argument treads on over 200 years of Constitution interpretation, the least advocates could provide is some precision if we are going to fire people, sue them, or put them in jail.

Lastly, there is something shall we say, "less than virtuous" about correcting oppression by becoming oppressors in the name of balancing the scales. It smacks of intolerance and the ends justifying the means. In other words, it looks a lot like revenge. Hardly a liberal virtue.

All the Beautiful Parts of Capitalism

There are six billion people in the world, three billion live on less than $2 dollars a day, 800 million people will not eat today, and 300 million in Africa alone do not have drinking water. So we as Americans are six percent of the population yet we consume 40 to 50 percent of the resources. We are the upper, upper, rich elite. And our way is taking over the world. So we have to first ask the question—how can we take all this wealth and give it away? All the technology and beautiful parts of capitalism and bless the world and the poor—or else we're in deep trouble.

That’s a quote from the creepy man in the horn rim glasses. No I don’t mean the guy from the show “Heroes”, I mean emerging church guru Rob Bell. The quote is from the interview “Rob Bell on Sex, God, and Sex Gods” in the November 14 issue of the Wittenburg Door.

I’ve been thinking about that quote a lot. As far as I know, Bell is right. In one of his short film’s called “Rich,” Bell says something like whatever kind of car you drive, you are rich by the world’s standards. Bell’s right. I am rich. I have two cars (both with over 160,000 miles) and I’ve never missed a meal I didn’t want to. Bell goes on to ask a question: “How can we take all this wealth and give it away? All the technology and beautiful parts of capitalism and bless the world and the poor?” Good question. There are poor people. We (American Christians) have a lot. How do we bless them? Rob says if we don’t ask this question we are in deep trouble because:

the scripture always bends towards the oppressed and the marginalized. Beginning in the Torah—take care of the widow, the orphan, the stranger among you. The story is written by oppressed minorities. And it continues, no room in the inn, they follow Jesus because they are hungry. The story always goes towards the underside of the Empire. I think it is sometimes hard for the American church to understand the Bible because we are the Empire..

Jesus wants us to take care of the poor. And we’d better do it. This seems right as well. How do we channel our wealth to help the poor? Thanks Rob for giving us the question. Let’s think through it. The answer of course is easy. Christians must engage in a war on poverty! Not just poverty but the underlying social conditions that accompany and feed off of poverty like . . . AIDS. AIDS is awful. It’s the plague of the 21st century. Poverty and AIDS, and . . . drugs. Yes drugs often cause AIDS . . . and homelessness, yeah. Homeless people, that shouldn’t happen in any country. Especially Africa. Africa is really bad. You get the trifecta in Africa: Poverty, Homeless, and AIDS. So we really need to help Africa. But how? How do we give away our wealth to help Africa. Well, each of us could send money to World Vision that would help. World Vision gives money to African people for food and . . . clothing. I know we can send our shirts to African people. Yes, let’s put together a clothing drive and send them our clothes. And didn’t I hear something about Bono. Yeah he’s got a Christian worldview . . . sort of. He says we should get everyone to forgive Africa’s debt to the West. That will reduce poverty when these African countries don’t have to repay the rich West. Yeah. That will help. But I can’t make Congress do that. I can’t even make them put prayer in schools. But what I can do is vote and get others to vote. Yeah. Now I see it Lord. I’ll elect officials with the same desires to help the poor as I do. Maybe I’ll invite them to come to my church. Oh I feel a spiritual burden coming on! We’ll have a conference about AIDS in Africa and raise a lot of money and have politicians (let’s call them statesmen) come speak about what they want to do about poverty, and AIDS and drugs and homelessness. Then, and only then will the church be doing what Christ asked us to do, wipe out poverty. Yeah, then we’ll fulfill the mandate to take care of the widow and orphan and stranger among us.

Wait! Time Out! If we can “wipe out poverty” wouldn’t that mean that Jesus is a false prophet? After all He did say that we will always have the poor with us (Matt. 26:11; Mark 14:7; John 12:8)? On the other hand, if He was God incarnate than what He said is true and we will not be able to “wipe out poverty.” Another question I have, is “wipe out poverty” the same as “take care of the widow, orphan, and stranger among you?”

Okay enough tongue and cheek satire and imaginary conversations. What’s my point? If you thought all of the above inner dialogue was motivated by the right intentions you would be right. If you thought all of these options would help the poor especially in Africa, you would be wrong. But you would also be in accord with a new wave sweeping through Christendom. I call it the rise of the Evangelical left. It’s the Social Gospel of the 19th century on steroids with a rock sound track and hair gel.

Briefly here’s my take on the origins of the Evangelical left: Christian Socialism in the 19th century dies out because of its association (partly justified) with Communism. The Evangelical right steps into the void and finds its greatest spokesmen in Jerry Falwell. And partly because any movement has fatigue after at least 30 years and partly because politics makes for strange bedfellows (and Washington has some of the strangest) the Evangelical Right falls on hard times. Jerry Falwell dies, and the Christian American undecided look around and notice that while Evangelicalism is as strong as ever, we still have all of this poverty and homelessness, and AIDS—especially in Africa. Enter a whole new group of spokesmen from Brian McClaren to Jim Wallis. Christians have lost their focus, they say. Government shouldn’t be used to legislate morality! It should be used to legislate justice! And Evangelicals had a whole new set of bedfellows—social activists and sometimes, just Socialists. Like the Areopagites, (Act 17) we just love something new; and after all Jesus said take care of the poor. So what could be wrong with all my above thinking? If one person can give money or help the poor, wouldn’t using the power of government be a better and more efficient use of our time, talent, and treasure? As it turns out, No.

I don’t have the space to outline what’s wrong the entire Evangelical left’s good intentions and bad thinking. This is a blog not a full-fledged article or book even which leaves me feeling a little like a rabbi at his first bris "What to cut, how much to cut, and what to leave in tact?" But I have to start somewhere so let’s just take one example: Africa. Turns out that sending our old clothes to Africans—not such a good idea. Consider that in Kenya textiles is a struggling industry for poor Kenyans. What happens when we flood the Kenyan market with our old clothes? We take away demand for clothes and we take away jobs from Kenyans who are trying to get out of poverty and who have asked us to Stop Sending Us Your Used Clothes . And this plea didn’t come from some greedy Kenyan capitalist but rather a group of Kenyan pastors in response to the questions “What message can we take to Christian pastors back in the U.S. ?”

Want another example of good intentions wed to bad economic thinking? How about forgiving third world debt as Bono wants to do? I came across the article Africans to Bono: 'For God's sake please stop!' that made me rethink that idea.

It seems a lot of Africans would kindly like Bono and every other Hollywood do-gooder to please stop calling for aid to Africa--and for those who are religious, “For the love of God please stop.” The reason is that pouring money into Africa and forgiving third world debt doesn’t help the poor. Listen to Kenyan Economist James Shikwati:

Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. . . Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need.

Throwing money at Africa doesn’t help. Helping Africans develop an economy does. As much was said to Bono: at a conference celebrating African ingenuity and entrepreneurs, where Bono had the arrogance to lecture Africans on the benefits of massive aid for eliminating poverty! Good intentions married to bad economics.

And that’s my point. Rob Bell is right. We do need to ask the question: “How can American Christians fulfill our mandate to take care of the widow, orphan and stranger in the spirit of Jesus?” And we had better consider how that mandate squares with the elimination of poverty as a political issue. I think we would all agree that we are commanded to be good stewards with our resources. Scripture asks us to give to the poor in a way that doesn’t violate our duties to our own family—or we are worse than unbelievers (1 Timothy 5:8)—and so we have limited (though admittedly abundant) funds to help others and like any scarce resource, allocation of those funds in a wise way involves taking into account principles of economics. And that means thinking about economics from a Christian worldview instead of merely jumping to conclusions like my earlier inner dialogue.

Look, economics is like any other discipline subject to worldview. In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul says that “we are taking captive every thought to the obedience of Christ” while many take this verse as a caution about controlling what we think about, not allowing lustful or “stinkin’ thinkin” to get in our heads, the context suggests that Paul is talking about examining every sort of idea and philosophy and dragging it like a Roman captive to the seat of the eternal ruler and letting Him pass judgment. That includes the economics of Evangelical Christian Social Justice. Africa proves that it is possible to have good intentions and lousy economics and in the process undermine the very mandate of helping the poor among us.

You hear a lot about worldview on this blog. You hear a lot about how ideas have consequences and the church must be diligent to examine ideas before we accept them. Well, this is no less is true with economic theories. I’m afraid that the Church must once again do some thinking about the ideas in our culture and one area we have sadly neglected is economics. To be blunt we’ve simply assumed what seems intuitively plausible: the term “Capitalism” goes with the phrase “compassion for the poor” about as well as the term “Brittney Spears” goes with the phrase “moral fortitude.” The problem is that the people telling us “Capitalism is bad” are often Socialists and Socialism is an idea just like Capitalism. And we have failed as a Church to take both of these ideas captive and examine them in the light of Christ. Instead, we’ve just watched Rick Warren conduct AIDS conferences with Barak Obama and let Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis make us feel bad. It turns out that we may swallow a Socialist camel in our war against the gnats of poverty, AIDS, and Homelessness.

And no less than Rob Bell gives us a clue as to how to think about helping the poor correctly:

I was in Rwanda—essentially you take someone in poverty and give them [sic] a couple of bucks so they can start a business. We met a woman who started a business, built a house, fed her family and her business was now self-sustaining and growing—on a $40 dollar loan. A Western church gave this woman forty bucks and look what she's done. Economically speaking, that's one of the hopes of the world right now . . . working with ground churches and trying things that could help save our world. I was hiking through these slums in Nairobi where people are dying of AIDS and it's the Church figuring out how to give them medication, how to prevent and educate, to help give people an honorable death. The Church is on the front line.

Even though Bell is one of the bigger luminaries in the emerging church this is an area where “his truth” has diverged from most of the emerging church in this area and the above quote is what Bell means by the beautiful parts of economic capitalism. Work with churches on the ground instead of trying to change the politics of a nation. Why? Because Africans know more about their situation than you or I (or yes even the good people at World Vision) and definitely more that Brian McLaren, Bono and Rick Warren combined. Help Africans create their own livelihood. Deal with AIDS by finding ways to privately support medication and prevention. Above all, don’t rely on government (or the world bank) to provide justice, because government usually does it poorly, at a higher cost, and without a Christian worldview.

Support Africans with free trade and grants to encourage entrepreneurs like the recent winner of the African Technology Entertainment and Design conference where Bono lectured Africans. While Bono didn’t get applause, a 12 year old who made a windmill out of plastic scraps and bicycle parts providing electricity to his entire house was the showstopper at the conference. What if some churches helped take his design and built windmills for whole villages and while they were there, when some dear African asked “why are you doing this?” We could say, because the Bible tells us so. The beautiful parts of capitalism indeed.