Shifty Teaching

Brian McLaren recently spoke at an event at Willow Creek church called “Shift.” He likes to talk about things shifting in the church, and being open to new ideas, and rethinking things. Rethinking is great in the Hegelian sense – using that which came before to inform the terms of that which comes next, never wasting the thoughts of the past, being aware of history – but of course, that’s not what McLaren means. He means tearing down what’s there and putting something else up – something with more square-footage.

Shift was also the name of a monkey in the final book of the Narnia Chronicles, The Last Battle, who dressed up Puzzle the donkey with a lion skin. He only ever showed Puzzle in low light, which was enough to terrify all the other animals with the mere implication that Aslan had come back. With his fake Aslan, Shift went on to manipulate the animals into doing things the real Aslan would never have asked them to do – they lost their freedom almost immediately, never realizing that the burdens being heaped upon them in Aslan’s name were never intended at all. At one point in the story, Shift is making deals with the Calormen, whose god is Tash, not Aslan, and in order to justify this in the Narnians’ minds, he makes up a new god called Tashlan, saying that they’re all the same anyway.

Lewis’ analogy – a simple story for children – is not even one remove from what McLaren is doing. I don’t think he’s a conniving manipulator like Lewis’ ape, but from what I can hear, he isn’t talking about any God that I’ve ever met. Liberal theology is disguised in the low light of vague orthodoxy. It’s not arrogant to tell the truth – it’s arrogant to deny it on the grounds that your intellect is operating on a plain that turns Christian mysteries into particularist dogma. McLaren’s generosity towards clear theology simply disguises a pitiful dressed-up donkey – the best that human rationality can come up with – that has no jaws for the wicked, no strength to protect the weak, no confidence to direct the lost, and no power to give up for the sake of mankind. Liberal theology of this kind tries to turn what we see into a portrait of God instead of believing in the God we cannot see who has the power to change it. It is no wonder that Lewis names his harmless donkey “Puzzle,” because that’s all human reasoning can give us.

This problem is not new. Pilate’s question to Jesus, “What is truth?” is the same question many now ask the void they perceive. In the early part of the twentieth century, Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer fought boldly against those who put their confidence in human reason to “discover” God and His nature. Barth’s exceptionally clear thinking on the matter in his commentary on the epistle to the Romans chases modernity right down to the all-out skepticism in which it threatens to evaporate now, half a century later. To be very frank, I don’t believe McLaren and the emergent church movement, or most liberals for that matter, really understand what “post-modern” really means any more than their much-belied detractors. If they did, they wouldn’t view it as a quick-fix to homophobia, and they certainly would cease immediately to refer to Christianity as a “grand narrative,” if they value Christianity at all.

Post-modernity, in the terminology of Lyotard in his book The Postmodern Condition, is, by definition, the pronunciation of the end of grand narratives. McLaren’s insistence on this term follows the pattern of the fundamentalist reaction to modernity, which, in the face of scientific rejection of biblical myth, proceeded to claim that the myths were scientific, alienating anyone who claimed them to have some other status – even when that status had support in the writings of the early church. I will never understand why the church insists upon jumping on the latest ship to have a hole blown in its hull instead of remaining in the ironclad that was originally bestowed upon it.

The times are changing, but then again, the times are always changing. I take exception with the emergent church, with liberal Christianity, and with fundamentalist evangelicals because they are all cut from the same cloth: ideologies lacking self-awareness. Christianity accepts the irrational necessity of orthodoxy as easily as it accepts the paradox of human will and the omnipotence of God. I continually refer to G. K. Chesterton’s view of orthodoxy as a “thrilling romance” – the only truly subversive act in a chaotic world. McLaren’s puzzling church appears to have forfeited the power to save – I am so tired of hearing keynote speakers say of Heaven and Hell, “yes, we believe in those things, and they’re important, but…” Are they important enough to be the main point? Is Christ’s sacrifice, whose point was our salvation by the grace of God, important enough to be that in reference to which everything other doctrine, point, and sermon has its meaning? I do not want to be caught hauling wood for a donkey in a tent when the Lion returns. When we say He is Good, we don’t mean He has anything in common with us.

A Stingy Orthodoxy

I recently finished reading The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi. Taibbi is a very gifted writer – I laughed out loud a couple of times – and he has to be given credit for his sheer guts. Taibbi subscribes to the Bill Maher school of anti-religion, interested more in ridiculing that which he finds ridiculous than in engaging the best elements of a given movement. But this is just the means, and not the end, of his book. The idea he puts supports in his book (or perhaps, which formed after having the idea of faking membership in John Hagee’s megachurch) is that popular distrust of politics and the media drives people into highly deranged ways of making sense of the world they live in. 9/11 truthers and Hagee followers, he argues, are like soldiers taking orders from mid-level officers who themselves have no idea what’s going on, but who are bold enough (and perhaps find it necessary) to take a position.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about this book is that while Taibbi, an atheist, is deceitful to an unsettling degree (participating in evangelism, church retreats, small groups, and worship services – even undergoing baptism), I found myself agreeing with his assessments of a large number of the customs of the fundamentalist Christian subculture. Sure, he picks on things that are not central (much less essential) to Christianity, but I kept found myself saying, “but that’s not Christian, that’s just those Christians.” I found myself thinking that perhaps what we need is not broader minds about what’s right to do in the church, but much, much narrower ones.

Isn’t it ironic that the group claiming to return to the “fundamentals” is the one that has ended up with the most unnecessary garbage in this orthodoxy? I guess that’s what happens when your movement is merely reactionary – but the same thing goes for the liberal church, the Pentecostal church, the Baptist church, and just about every other denomination. It’s not that each one is just too narrow-minded – it’s that none are nearly stingy enough with what they admit to be true, much less a doctrine of the Christian religion. Prohibitions on alcohol and dancing (and in some denominations, on musical instruments in worship), backwards ideas of God’s judgment usurping God’s grace, hand waving at choruses and whispering during prayer, and possibly the touchiest of all – speaking on “tongues,” which, frankly, bears as much resemblance to Acts 2 as cutting a fish in 5000 pieces has to the Jesus’ feeding of the 5000. These are not the substance of Christianity. Is there no room for a sober-minded individual to think on the truth of the gospels and orient the contents of his actual life without even being interested in these things? Is the gospel for human beings as human beings, or only for those already deeply entrenched in these outward symbols – like Pharisees praying on the sidewalk?

Brian McLaren has exactly the wrong idea here. What we need is not some liberal inclusion of all parts of the body of Christ, nor some conservative rejection of everything that doesn’t flow from one side of a paradox, nor even “revival” that enflames hearts and numbs minds. We need to be concerned with the Truth and its contents as nothing more than a matter of truth – not politics, not spiritual health, not “relevance,” but just truth as truth. Truth of any sort has an affect on one’s life. Why treat the gospel like some advanced form of lifestyle rhetoric? That’s not what it is.

I welcome comments on this post. I’m interested in other ideas about this because it’s a pretty big about-face for me. Taibbi’s ridicule of many of the things I already found ridiculous hammered home the importance of calling a spade a spade in the church – certainly speaking the truth in love, but not letting people off the hook when they’re acting ridiculous, much less playing along. We who believe something is misguided yet act as if it is not – we are hypocrites in our silence. We who teach ourselves, do we not also teach others? God’s name is blasphemed among unbelievers because of us.

Angry Mobs and Politics

In terms of politics, there is only one thing worse than an absurd, relentless distortion of the truth: a huge number of people who believe it.  There are those who actually believe the ads that McCain is running without checking a single fact (it doesn't count to go to a candidate's personal "fact checking" site).  But people can think whatever they want and say whatever they want, right?  It is, after all, our First Amendment right to be able to tell filthy, rotten lies to people and for them to believe those lies.  People have told and believed lies in the past - and elections have been won and lost that way.  But it's just politics, right?  Who can even sort that stuff out?

Well, there's a new dimension to the "negative campaigning" that I thought was such a ridiculous issue to fuss over a few months back.  When Hillary's campaign was lying to the media that Barack was a Muslim, those with brains did not take it seriously, and those without brains were considered a harmless minority.  Same goes for his experience, which is not as much as others' but hardly within the level of worry that they were trying to create over it - especially after the Biden pick.  We could still focus on issues and positions, and it was the lies that tried to play on unverifiable subjective judgments and evaluations.

Well, John McCain did not see it coming, apparently, that people might be much more credulous than even he anticipated.  You see, the Democratic candidate for President has not committed "treason."  He is not a "traitor" or a "terrorist." (read that twice, those of you who don't get it yet)  But these sorts of terms have been thrown carelessly around by Fox News and other highly reputable news outlets for a long time (ad nauseam), taking the form, usually, of leading rhetorical questions, quoted accusations, and panel discussions with "experts."

You might say, then, that the media's chickens are coming home to roost.  If you were so inclined.  If you use what they say as just a flimsy prop for a staunch political position, as we thought that most gullible people did, then fine.  You can be dishonest, but at least you're not hurting anyone prior to election day.  But what nobody anticipated was that anyone would BELIEVE this garbage, swallowing it whole, and regurgitate it with some weird, juvenile, revolutionary outrage!  Traitor?  Terrorist?  Seriously?  These things are being yelled angrily at McCain rallies around the country!  With candor, no less! What are you idiots - henchmen from a bad monster movie?  Do not go get your pitchforks and torches and storm Obama headquarters - someone actually has to tell you, it appears.  Are you the morons whose position is actually affected by Barack's middle name?  Really?  Are you the ones who think that he goes home and reads the Quran every night?  Seriously?  Have we finally found the people who will actually vote for John McCain because Michelle Obama implied that she was not proud of her country at one point?  You would really base your decision for the chief executive of this country on THOSE criteria?  Are you out of your collective hive mind?

Where do you even begin arguing against those ideas?  Back at the basics of politics?  Of media narratives?  Of basic logic?  No, you have to go all the way back to linear thinking - reasoning skills that lead to conclusions.  You can't start with complicated things like syllogism or analogy.  You have to go back to second grade, where one child proclaims to another that when he goes home, he's going to fly to his secret base in his rocketship, and explain to his admirers that Andy actually doesn't have a rocketship or a secret base, and why you shouldn't believe Andy when he says things like that.  Maybe eventually you will be able to install inductive reasoning in their heads.

I'm no longer disillusioned with the media or politics anymore.  It all seems so futile when you find yourself disillusioned with the electorate.  Idiots.

Palin's Abuse of Power Stories

Check it out:

The New York Times version of the story versus the Fox News version of the story.  The first has a straightforward headline.  The second puts "Abused Her Power" in quotes, which gives it ambiguity.  The first tells the story in a straightforward manner.  The second qualifies every piece of anything like accusatory material with some back-peddling clause at the end of the sentence.  It also records the denials of the McCain campaign that question the inquiry's objectivity, immediately after stating that it was a bipartisan panel.  The first one is journalism.

Just thought I'd note this.  There are lots and lots of people who will still vote for Palin even though the one thing she had (though I don't think even this matters) - her "executive experience" - shows that she abuses the executive powers she is given.  Yet another way she is exactly like a poorly educated Bush.

Well, that pretty much settles it for me.

Good News for People Who Love Bad News

There’s a great Modest Mouse album by this name, a phrase repeated in the song Bury Me With It. After howling about the things he’d rather die than lose, Isaac Brock croons in his quavering signature vocal style, “Good news for people who love bad news / We’ve lost the plot and we just can’t choose.” There is no more apt description of this political season. While I’m not persuaded that anyone but a small segment of the population gives any real credence to the filth being spewed about in the media right now (it’s not mudslinging, it’s filthspewing), it’s really clear to me that if this truly is the timber of American political discourse, we have lost the plot and have no basis upon which to gain enough traction to make a decision.

The long and the short of it is that we ludicrously pampered Americans (and anyone who has ever lived in the third world country will understand just how pampered we are) love to hear bad news. We can’t get enough of it. We are no longer dealing with “narratives,” which is just such a generous word for the things being said on the news. It’s the political equivalent of the trend in American entertainment which Zizek condemns such vehement terms – the endlessly boring attempts at greater and greater transgression of values and laws left so far behind that we’ve come full circle into viewing virtue itself as a transgression (environmentalist terrorism, anyone?). But of course, a virtue enacted in the spirit of transgression burns out as quickly as any of the others (just ask any lefty college student). It has to be done as an adherence to a meaningful norm and not in the spirit of revolution.

Politics has not progressed quite to this level (though you could argue that Ron Paul’s success was the sort of transgressive virtue identified above). We are still in that stage where people both subscribe to and are entertained by nonsense like the Bill Ayers scandal, the Palin trooper scandal, the Michele Obama hates her country scandal, the Obama is a Muslim scandal, the Reverend Wright scandal, and on and on with the idiotic horseshit. They should just preface every night’s coverage with the title “Electiongate.” I hope and pray that this use of last syllable of “Watergate” as a suffix denoting a scandal never makes it into a dictionary etymology. That would be a little death for the English language.

Possibly the hardest part about all this is talking politics. It has become a fruitless endeavor. Why? Because every –gate becomes a sandbag around the entrenched mind of someone whose mind is already made up. It is impossible to talk to anyone about these issues because it is impossible to argue with “Barack Obama is a secret Muslim” or “Sarah Palin can’t put a sentence together.” Someone defending this points is already being irrational, which makes it impossible to bring a rational point to bear on it – and believe me, I’ve tried.

The most disappointing thing that has happened for me as media coverage accelerates towards November actually occurred on the Daily Show – which I normally love. In a blatant rehash of a joke made by Bill Maher (known for his highly biased objectivity) John Stewart and John Oliver did a segment on how undecided voters were stupid. Now that’s interesting. After lambasting the media for inane coverage of irrelevant events, interviewing author after author on their subtle views of the most complex crises to face America since the Cold War and the Great Depression, and ridiculing American voters for being simple and naïve, now the ones who are still deliberating are the stupid ones? What, are we supposed to support the guy who doesn’t moose hunt? The guy who isn’t old? The guy without an atrocious accent? Having been given irrelevant facts, and being made to dig for the real ones in the sewage of attempts to discredit both candidates, all the while under the monstrous shadow of the ignorant electorate’s irrational voting habits that really make the practice seem kind of futile, the ones who haven’t made up their minds are the STUPID ONES? How about the sandbaggers? They forget that for every Sean Hannity, there is a Keith Olbermann. For every moral outrage on one side, there’s an offense to pluralist justice on the other. It’s just one ideology battling another, and neither one is terribly self-aware.

So why was that the most disappointing moment? Well, it’s no fun to be the bad news. Makes you feel like you’re on Nancy Grace. God forbid.

Double Feature: Palin-Biden, Abortion

I have two things to say. So I posted twice. The first one is about the Palin-Biden debate. The second one is why Barack Obama is backwards on abortion.

Palin Biden.

This was a good debate - substantial where it needed to be, low on the stupid narrative garbage, and as the New York Times put it, "polite." I don't have a whole lot to say because it wasn't very surprising. Biden put out a tempered and, aside from a "bridge to nowhere" reference, not terribly Bidenesque performance. I thought he did an outstanding job defending his record, Obama's record, and the general credibility of their ticket. He didn't convince me that it's a good idea to be a socialist, but that's not what this election season is about, apparently. It's about who's not naive.

I'm afraid I'm a little biased against Palin because I find her vernacular to be like a heckuva lotta fingernails on a gosh-darned blackboard, but she performed very well for someone who reminded everyone she was only five weeks into her foray onto the national scene in the middle of a vice presidential debate. Palin is the Bush of this Republican ticket, and McCain is its Cheney, except in a more honest order than our present administration. Palin is there to reel in voters who don't believe anything John McCain says with regard to being conservative, evangelical, and sympathetic to the middle class, and she's doing a swell job. She didn't convince me that we're "winning" in Iraq, or that withdrawing our troops from this unaffordable, ridiculous war is "surrender," which term implies such a thing as "victory," and that someone would have defeated us (the terrorists? Don't they win when I recycle?). Everyone needs to figure out that stating one's thesis is not an argument for its truth. But of course, Palin is not arguing (most people can't follow arguments). She's just being. We have entered the age of ontological debate. It's really, really dumb.

So why do I say this was a good debate? Because the debate itself was quite well-managed and clear. It showed us exactly what the candidates think. Neither one of them gives us any indication that they know anything about the economy beyond the difference between Wall Street and Main Street, and Palin even got those mixed up (a gaff! omg!). That we should secure our money from the greed of irresponsible investment banks by paying $700 billion of our money to irresponsible investment banks just doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. In fact, it sounds like ten rich people own Congress. How about we reverse the executive decision of President Nixon to take us off the gold standard, make our money worth something again, and let the market lose its imaginary earnings and rebuild itself on something substantial? Yeah, people will get hurt, but frankly, that's pretty much water under the bridge already - the irresponsible loans were made, the banks have failed, there's no use in propping up the dead horse we're flogging.

The candidates also demonstrated what we already know, which is that Palin has no foreign policy experience whatsoever, and that Biden, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, does. A lot. So... that's not debatable.

Palin claimed to be an expert on energy, stating that she wants to both oppose those mean old oil companies while also promoting drilling in Alaska. As a free market capitalist, she needs to figure out that disincentivizing something while simultaneously legislating it is a leftist thing to do. It's also kinda weird to criticize Barack Obama's proposing nearly a trillion dollars in government spending while supporting a bailout of... nearly a trillion dollars. She's also got a Miss South Carolina problem with regard to sentence structure, which is kind of a low blow, but I'm not about to vote for another potential President who still can't say the word "nuclear." NEW and CLEAR! Think of it as a window cleaner! This should be the shibboleth for public office - you have to be able to pronounce the word designating the most devastating force America has at its disposal in order to make decisions regarding it.

Betcha ten bucks not a single news outlet passes up the "extra credit" comment.

***

Abortion.

I’ve been putting off this post, but I had an interesting conversation with my pastor that really made me think about this issue. So I went to see what Obama thought about abortion, and I found his speech to Planned Parenthood on YouTube.

So much for raising the political discourse on abortion.

On a recent decision in which Justice Kennedy apparently opined for the court that in a certain kind of abortion, the woman’s health is at risk (against, apparently, the uncited multitudes of experts). Obama evaluated thusly: “As we’ve seen time after time these last few years, when the precedent says otherwise, when the science is inconvenient, when the facts don’t match up with the ideology, they are cast aside.” He said later, “We know that five men don’t know better than women and their doctors what’s best for a woman’s health. We know that it’s about whether or not women have equal rights under the law. We know that a woman’s right to make a decision about how many children to have and when without government interference is one of the most fundamental freedoms we have in this country.” This explains why Barack has missed the point so profoundly on this issue. It is not, for the very large part of American pro-lifers, about a woman’s equal rights under the law at all. It is about that third thing that we apparently “know.” A woman may choose how many children to have – just not to end the life of a child, in which case she infringes upon what is taken by all to be a self-evident and inalienable right: the right to life.

There is nothing scientific, progressive, or civil about holding the position of “choice” on matters of justice. It’s a catch-all argument. When you legislate in favor of justice, you legislate against a person’s choice to perform injustice. The question is solely what is just and what is not. It is obviously unjust to take innocent human life, so the question is whether the life of an unborn child is human. I have never heard a single convincing argument that it could be anything else. Perhaps all those things that make a person human are socialized into them. Perhaps humanity is one’s self-consciousness or freedom. But any way you rationalize the choice to end an unborn life, you simultaneously rationalize barbarism toward other forms of innocent, helpless human life, which is particularly relevant in law.

The whole question of women’s rights is superfluous to this issue. Most pro-lifers are in favor of women’s rights – which is to say, equal rights for women. That sex results in pregnancy is not a legal issue. That women receive paid maternity leave undoubtedly is. It is a transparent caricature of the pro-life position to pretend that it has to do with dominating women and not with a child’s life. It is a diversion.

The strangest thing about this is the position that Obama took with regard to the moral question involved. He calls it a tough issue, “trusting women” to consult with their clergy, their parents, and their doctors to “prayerfully” make the decision. That’s fine logic for a pluralist society, so let’s apply it to any other issue of morality or justice and see where it gets us. Can I prayerfully decide to shoplift? Can I consult with my clergy regarding incest? That our values are so decentralized and unenforced is a tragic truth, to be sure, but to privatize value to the degree that Obama is attempting is not so much misapplied ideology as simple hypocrisy. Nobody thinks that way about unpoliticized good and evil, especially not Barack “failed-policies-of-the-Bush-administration” Obama. How can one get indignant about the fact that people get too indignant? It’s this weird meta-ethics of liberalism that could ultimately succeed in defeating the very notion of justice altogether, were anyone to apply it consistently (which, being for the most part decent human beings, they do not).