Avoiding Huffiness, as per Mark's sage advice, and as we've already discussed the (not quite ivory tower) "you can't change the world, brighten the corner you're in" thesis, perhaps we could talk about what it means to be a teacher at a Christian School rather than a School, and, at the other end of the spectrum, what it means t be a Christian politician rather than a non-christian (atheist or pagan or whatever) politician. Its been said on this message board that there is nothing decidedly Christian about morality, something which maybe this will bleed into.
In some important ways, it does matter whether or not one's elected officials are Christians or atheists, and in some ways it matter if they are Christian or Muslim, for example. Not always, but sometimes.
An example: it makes no political sense that gay marriage should be an issue. From a civil rights stand point, there really is no reason to disallow two fellows to shack up with the same benefits as a guy and a gal; however, Christianity has a distinctive teaching on homosexuality (shared, as far as I know, by Islam and possibly borrowed from Christianity) which prohibits it. Now, from a civil standpoint, as a man operating and voting according to the constitution and legal traditions of our country, there's no reason for me to vote against gay marriage on a state constitutional ballot proposal. In fact, I might vote against it, say, because I disagree with ballot proposals as a means by which to change state constitutions.
However (yes, starting with a post-positive!), as a Christian, this should bother me. Not so much because I think anyone will become "less gay" or "more gay" by my vote, or even because I think the Bible has outlines on the civil laws of the country in that regard (we must be prudent in governing I suppose). Married couples are more eligible to adopt children from adoption agencies and to receive government adoption assistance, and adopting a chid means raising a child and instilling that child with values and morals. "Raise up a child in a certain way and he will not depart from it." From the standpoint of human rights, it makes sense to allow to men to marry. When looking at it from the tradition of Judeo-Christian morality, (without claiming to be any holier than those two fellows mind you), one has the imperative to take legal steps, like voting for that proposal perhaps, against handing children over to them when such steps are within one's vocation to do so.
Refute? Support? Buy me lunch?
I'll buy you lunch. When are you free? Cascarelli's?
ReplyDeleteFor the purposes of this blog and specifically the first two paragraphs, I highly recommend T.S. Eliot's "The Idea of a Christian Society" (which can be found paired with another essay or two by Eliot in 'Christianity and Culture'). I do not agree with it as much as I used to–or to be more accurate and echo something I wrote in a comment earlier, I don't really know what I think about such things anymore. Nevertheless, a handful of quotes from said essay:
ReplyDelete"It must be clear that I do not mean by a Christian State one in which the rulers are chosen because of their qualifications, still less their eminence, as Christians. A regiment of Saints is apt to be too uncomfortable to last."
"…even if, in the present conditions, all persons in positions of highest authority were devout and orthodox Christians, we should not expect to see very much difference in the conduct of affairs. The Christian and the unbeliever do not, and cannot, behave very differently in the exercise of office; for it is the general ethos of the people they have to govern, not their own piety, that determines the behavior of politicians."
"It is not primarily the Christianity of the statesman that matters, but their being confined, by the temper and traditions of the people which they rule, to a Christian framework within which to realise their ambitions and advance the prosperity and prestige of their country. They may frequently perform un-Christian acts; they must never attempt to defend their actions on un-Christian principles."
Also, the issue of gay marriage is something I've flip-flopped on a dozen times. I started out, like any good evangelical, with a hefty dose of condemnation. Then I had a brief (not brief enough) excursion into libertarianism, during which I decided the government had no business in marriage and should only give out civil unions, and those should only to deal with inheritance and power-of-attorney issues (not taxes, since, you know, taxes wouldn't exist). Then I became reacquainted with some semblance of reality, dropped the libertarian schtick, and became again some sort of conservative.
ReplyDeleteAnd now, as some sort of conservative, I'm quite uncertain about the issue. It is true that the Christian must be concerned about adoption by gay couples, but perhaps no more concerned than we should be about adoption by Muslim or Jewish or atheist couples: we can worry about it, but I'm not sure there is much wisdom in legally prohibiting it. The issue with gay marriage, for me, is not about morality or Christendom but more about historical reality.
With your off-topical indulgence:
I can't say I care all that much about tax benefits, and I am allergic to culture wars. But then I don't care much for objective empirical rationality as a basis for law. Every community in time and space is unique, and there can be no set of laws or ideas that can be universally applied. There are far worse arguments in favor of something than "it's the way it's always been done," though of course that is anything but conclusive. Changing things to bring them into line with an abstraction is infinitely dangerous, and so it should always be done cautiously and with damn good reason. But it is indeed sometimes worth it (which is why I don't give a damn that Thurgood Marshall ignored his constitutional role).
I used to think the talking heads shouting about how "Marriage has always been defined as between a man and woman" were idiots. I still think they're mostly idiots, but they have something resembling a point. You can't have gay marriage–not because somebody or someone is keeping it from you, but for the same reason that you can't be younger than your sons and daughters or older than your parents. Of course, how that reality is legally expressed may be something different.
I don't give two shits if you want to adopt some dude ten years older than you and call him "son." It would be highly silly. You aren't that guy's father, and he isn't your son. And that's not because some fascist regime is denying you your rights, but simply because you never had a right to unreality in the first place. A father is older than his child, and the only way to change that is to alter the meaning of the word into meaninglessness. But I'm not entirely convinced we should have laws prohibiting people from adopting old men and women as their children, because such laws make it seem like they–the laws and the law-makers–are the barrier between me and my "right" to adopt grampy. It makes it seem like a civil rights issue rather than a reality issue.
The barrier in this extended example, of course, is not the law but the simple condition that language and words are the foundational reality of human life. Language is the source of meaning in human life.
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ReplyDeleteWho is this Pseudographia guy? I can't find his posts anywhere, but he sounds like a real jerk.
ReplyDeleteBirnoff, who's saying that Christianity doesn't change the way we ought to live and think? Also, do us the courtesy of defining 'we' in this instance.
Christians are the only ones to come to the morality outlined in the Bible? The Bible outlines morality? How does one come to morality? Are there altar-calls? Did the Jews know the Law before God carved it on stones and gave it to them? What of the law written on our hearts? This is seems to be a tertium quid, neither special revelation nor the product of reason. Your tack betrays you as a Lutheran, am I right? Last I checked, the Law was revelatio generalis. "[F]or when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them." (Romans 2.14-15).
You write: "There's [sic] is some space between Geneva and the position being advocated by Pseudographia [sic] on the majority of these posts, one, I think that even the Lutheran church lived in for the majority of its history." Substantiate this, please. A good rendering of Pseudographia's position can be found on the main board, entitled "Comment on 'Vocation'. Last I checked there were some concrete specifics with which you could take issue, rather than leaving your cautionary assertions vague. If I'm not mistaken, he even attempts to put forth at least a skeletal view of Christian civil disobedience. Maybe you'd care to comment? It would be helpful. I mean, as long as we're going to hijack a strand of this conversation and take it to Lutheran-land, we might as well do so in earnest.
Mark, I like what you had to say. Eliot is better on this than I remember, although I'm not sure if I'm on the same page as he is. Not sure that I'm not. Just not sure. Should probably read his book at some point.
Glad you won't be giving two shits to anything. My mother reads this blog, so, please, keep your potty-mouth to yer bad self in the future.
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ReplyDeleteAnd I like the name. Pseudoepigrapha.
ReplyDeleteThere, it wasn't even like in that Seinfeld episode: "DELORES!!!!!!"
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ReplyDeleteSuedeπgraph: apologies to your dear mother, and I will attempt a bit more caution in my language. Unfortunately there is a great deal of pleasure in being "that guy" on a Christian blog. I am, moreover, not above employing the occasional epithet on my own blog read by my own poor mother. If I do not refrain from "expressive language" for the sake of my own poor mother, should I (will I?) for yours? Perhaps, perhaps.
ReplyDeleteBritnoth: I certainly agree that the two kingdoms are not nearly as disparate and divisible as most Protestants would like to believe. I'm also of the opinion that the attempt to make church life an experience completely separable from secular life has done terrible damage to the nature and quality of Christian inroads into the secular world. There are dangers to the idea of parish life, but are they more or less dangerous than Christian bookstores?
You write, "I agree that two guys shacking up is not going to be changed by what we call it. . ."
No, what they do won't be changed, but it is indeed true what the culture warriors say: the meaning of marriage will be changed. The libertarian-esque dorks who say that what two people do in the privacy of their own home doesn't effect the community are operating from a bankrupt and outdated concept of individualism. And they're dorks. It does matter what you call it, not because writing "Just Married" on your Prius makes it so, but because it effects what the word marriage means. Again, if you broaden the meaning of "son" to include some guy twenty years your elder, you have effectively eliminated the entire force of meaning behind the word... and since words, again, are the source of meaning in human life, that matters.
It is up for discussion whether the word "marriage" deserves or merits a defense "these days." I hope it does–or perhaps I wish it did. The culture warriors are often so grossed out by gays that they tend to forget how "til death do us part" is as important an element of marriage as the whole "husband and wife, one flesh, procreation" aspects. In a culture where divorce is rampant, what does Def'o'Marriage Act really defend? Another question to ask is whether a monogamous gay couple does more harm to the word than the chronically adulterous bastards (sorry mothers) on Capitol Hill.
But then, as someone said, hypocrisy is the vice of a healthy society. The existence of hypocrites is evidence that moral standards still exist. While we might have more admiration for the courageously open sinner ("sin boldly") than the sleazy folks like Wegmann's former boss, the acceptance of the bold sinner suggests a much deeper societal illness than the misdirections of the hidden creep. The real horror of Gene Robinson's episcopate is not that he's gay, but that he doesn't even have the decorum to pretend he's not.
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ReplyDeleteActually no. One class, first semester, freshman year.
ReplyDeleteMark, do you have an invite to write actual posts? Matthew, does he have one? Bueller??
ReplyDeleteI'd appreciate it if you could take some time to dilate on these comments:
"I certainly agree that the two kingdoms are not nearly as disparate and divisible as most Protestants would like to believe. I'm also of the opinion that the attempt to make church life an experience completely separable from secular life has done terrible damage to the nature and quality of Christian inroads into the secular world. There are dangers to the idea of parish life, but are they more or less dangerous than Christian bookstores?"
I think we might disagree, but I'm not sure. I think my position has been clear thus far: the “Two Kingdoms,” the right and the left hands of God, so to speak, the sacred and secular are distinct from one another, yet there is a border region wherein they intermingle and share a common life. This is the mundane realm, wherein we find "things to be used," rather than “things to be had for their own sake.” St. Augustine makes this distinction in his De Doctrina Christiana, and I think it is a good one: unlike the Greek, the Christian knows that only Christ is to be desired for His own sake: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him” (Philippians 3.7-9a). No other thing is to be desired for its own sake -- this is where even a “liberal arts ideal” can quite easily err, in my opinion -- but rather we “[cast] down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10.4-5).
So if there are two kingdoms...then there are two. That’s what the tautologist’s report is. Not one. But two. And the first is not the second, nor the second the first. (I’m starting to sound like the Athanasian Creed, but not in a good way.) The realm of the church is not the realm of the world -- for the Church is Christ’s Kingdom (Christendom, one might venture to say), and it is not of this world. One of these things is not like the other. I could go on -- in fact, I already did go on, and realized that it was a tangent, so I cut and pasted it somewhere else, perhaps never to see the dim light of the blogosphere. But I digress...
You say: “I certainly agree that the two kingdoms are not nearly as disparate and divisible as most Protestants would like to believe.”
This sounds like casuistry. If they’re not “nearly as disparate and divisible as most Protestants would like to believe,” then how disparate and divisible are they, Mark? I think they’re pretty disparate and divisible (from each other) myself, so I guess I’m part of most Protestants. On that note, which Protestants believe this? Ones not named Mark Perkins? I myself think that the problem is the opposite, so let me generalize just as terribly as you did for a moment: I think MOST Protestants err towards a version of Christian monism that tends toward neo-Manicheanism and millenialism. I can expand on what those isms mean later, but for now -- especially you, Byrthnoth -- please pardon my naughty use of abstract concepts, if you will...
Then: “I'm also of the opinion that the attempt to make church life an experience completely separable from secular life has done terrible damage to the nature and quality of Christian inroads into the secular world.”
ReplyDeleteWithout caricaturing your position here, I would like to suggest that the Church does not need, nor has it ever, increased “relevance” to the world. Read the words of St. Paul to this end:
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’ Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the LORD’ (I Corinthians 1.18-31).
Now I certainly would not say that the sacred realm, the Church, must be hostile to the world. But the world is not returning the favor: it is quite hostile to the Church. This is so bothersome to some Christians that they would rather see the pastors of Christ’s Church preach an inoffensive Gospel, one which assuages the hostile world’s ire. But you do not strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. We, who are strong in Christ, must preach Christ crucified -- the stumbling block, the scandal of the Cross. It’s an offensive image (note how many Protestant churches eschew the use of the crucifix -- all but the Lutheran and Anglican rites), utterly foreign to the denizens of the world. Also, we’re all Western Christians here, so let’s be honest: the sinner is not simply a sick man, he’s also rebellious, a “hater of God.” Or maybe our rebellion is part of our sickness. Point is, there are a lot of Underground Men and Ivan Karamazovs out there who don’t really want to be saved. And it’s not for lack of “inroads.” But that’s a different conversation. Maybe.
In sum, I guess I’m wondering what you mean when you speak of “inroads into secular life.” Also, Byrthnoth and I are wondering what “nature” and “quality” mean. These terms are too abstract. You’re being a Platonist.
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ReplyDeleteMatthew has invited me. Since I was lacking the inspiration and inclination to do more than ask questions and make unfounded criticisms based on dubious principles, I did not take him up on it. When I started to answer your questions, I realized I was doing something like presenting a basic position on the kingdom of heaven which might have some bearing "ON CHRISTENDOM," you know, so I suppose I will finally contact Matthew about that and write an original post. I regret being sucked into this, and I blame you Trent.
ReplyDeleteI will say now, at least, that "inroads" was the wrong term and implies precisely the opposite of what I mean, as my eventual post will make clear.