Things Fall Apart. Part One.

As Europe moved into the 20^th century, intellectuals on the continent felt an increasing nervousness.  While the continent was slowly de-Christianizing itself, eschatology was everywhere, and the intellectual class became focused on the likelihood that something – and no one knew quite what it was – was bound to happen.  Of course tensions finally came to a head in the horrors of World War I, but I want to focus on that anticipation that so overwhelmed Europe as the 20^th century dawned.  (Those fears were well founded, were they not?)  Many in Europe became consumed by fatalism, what was termed amor fati, but encapsulated most particularly in the French term fin de siècle.  The book to read, I am told, is Fin de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture.  For my own part, the best remembrance of this sentiment is found in William Butler Yeats’ magnificent poem “The Second Coming:”  

            Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

It is the first stanza that I find most significant for the believer.  “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”  Is it possible that the center is the Gospel?  Yeats himself was something of a pagan and an occultist, though a fine, fine poet, and it is unlikely that, for him, the “center” is Christ. Yet Christians who believe in the Incarnation and the Resurrection know that the Christian faith is in fact the center of all things.

So therefore, if Christ is the center, what we believe and know about Him ultimately will be the determining factor in how our world is shaped.  I want to be careful not to create an if/then scenario, where we suggest that if we believe X, then God will do Y.  I tend to reject such thinking in favor of an outlook that suggests then even when we get something wrong, the Cross still gets it right.  Therefore the center is still holding, in spite of us.  Thanks be to God for his unfailing consistency and permanence! In making such a statement, I have given away the punchline.  Because when we talk about getting Christ right and getting Christ wrong, we are dealing with a series of contradictions.  Of course I should desire by God’s grace to get Jesus right, but I should be under no illusions that my approach to Christ is doing God any favors.  On the contrary, it is my awe and thanks for the Gospel and the majesty of God that should drive me towards any attempt at getting Jesus right and making Him the center of all I do.

In my next post, I shall pick up this theme again and try to develop what it means to get Christ wrong.  The next theme will be getting Christ right, and finally what are the implications of both things for the Church.

My Problem with Tim Keller

I usually like to read a couple of books at one time, and I have found it to be a healthy practice.  It is, however, problematic when you find that reading multiple books allows you to procrastinate from reading one book in particular.  In my case, that particular book is always some Dostoyevsky novel.  Right now, it is The Devils.    At any rate, I do admit that such heavy stuff is hard reading for the dinner hour.  So last night I pulled Tim Keller’s The Reason for God off the shelf.  I got the book a year ago and already possessing a deep apprecation for Keller’s work, I thought it time to peruse the bestseller.

I only have one problem, and it is a simple one.  In fact, it may not even be a significant one.  Keller is focused on social justice, a worthy cause with an unfortunate name.  (Never mind that social justice was a term co-opted by the radical left in the late 1960s and 1970s).  Early in the book, Keller notes that Democrats have not been concerned enough about the social effects of loose morals and sexual autonomy.  True enough, as even some liberals have noted, Caitlin Flanagan among them.  He then says that Republicans have not been concerned enough with the plight of the poor.  It is at this point that I put my took on the table and bang my head against the wall.

This statement is simply not true.  Republicans, a great many of them are evangelicals, tend to give more to charity than Democrats.  To the extent that there is a secular Republican wing, I do not what kind of giving takes place, but for the coalescence of Republicans and evangelicals, giving tends to be quite high.  Keller is simply wrong to assert that Republicans have not shown enough concern.  What Republicans have done, though with increasingly fervor, unfortunately, is assert that state-based solutions (particularly those at the federal level) are bad for the economy, and would do very little to help the poor.  That is a far different thing from being indifferent to the suffering of the poor in America and around the world.

Keller goes on say that he looks for something of a “Christian third-way.”  The problem is that the third way always end up going towards one of the original ways.  That is because either you believe in a market run by the state or by the individual.  There is very little middle ground.  While we have all seen the excesses of the free market, the truth is that a market dictated by virtue (found chiefly in the Christian faith and tradition) is a market that works.  A market dictated solely by greed will implode of course, and Keller would do well the avoid thinking that somehow the government can do more to help the poor than can individual initiative.

Arthur Brooks, one of the leading researchers in charitable giving, notes that as people begin to see the government as a source for charity (which is a standard position of the American left), they tend to be less charitable themselves.  In a sense, it is hard to blame them, for if one’s taxes go up twelve percent, it is easy to reduce charitable giving by a comparable measure.  On the other hand, Christians are not let off the hook so easily, for we have a Biblical command to give as a response to Christ’s grace.  But here’s the rub: if Christians take that command and vote for a left-leaning, big-government style charity in the vein of Europe and Canada, what then of the non-believing public?  They are already far less likely to engage in charitable giving, and many would argue that the most innovative thinking about charity and aid comes from the grassroots, private sector.  If Christians lead the way for a welfare state, Christians might continue to give.  But it seems highly likely that there secular neighbors would not.

I respect Tim Keller like no other; his work for the Gospel is a marvel.  But he should know better from history and economics that what he argues here is a straw man of huge porportions.   He may be ministering in a city and to a country that is increasingly urbane and liberal, but he should not be so quick to buy into progressive preconceptions.  As he does, he may find a political situation more untenable than the one we already have.

For more on Arthur Brooks, see this piece.

Randy Alcorn on Television

Yesterday I ran across this post by Randy Alcorn about television consumption.  Most of this is fine advice, though I take issue with a couple of points.

 First, point number twelve.

 ”Spend an hour reading Scripture, a Christian book or magazine, or doing a ministry for each hour you watch TV.”

Seriously?  Now I will be the first to admit that I am terrible about reading Scripture consistently, but this is just nonsense.  Suppose you spend Saturday watching college football or you enjoy watching Law and Order a few times a week, and this guy is suggesting you have to go work in a soup kitchen to make up for it.  I appreciate that Alcorn is thinking through the implications of media influence – someone has to – but let’s not get carried away.  I thought the Reformation was to do away with this legalistic silliness.

Point number thirteen is also troubling, albeit a little less so.

“Consider dropping cable, Showtime, HBO, or any other service that you determine is importing ungodliness or temptation into your home.”

True enough, there is plenty of programming on these networks that is explicit and in all likelihood unsuitable for believers or any decent human being.   But the truth is that despite its vulgar nature, there are many programs and movies that have been cultural watermarks, and Christians have to be a part of that conversation.  Now I am not suggesting that believers must watch The Sopranos or Deadwood or Six Feet Under.  However I am suggesting that in spite of violence, nudity and some very salty language, these networks, and HBO in particular, have produced some programs that say deep and profound things about human nature.   Christians – some of us but not all of us – must be a part of that conversation. 

Of course one might say that you could use Netflix to catch up on these shows or watch the edited syndicated version on A&E or check the DVDs out from the local public library.  But Randy Alcorn might suggest you read back issues of Christianity Today to make up for it.

The Gospel and Sex

Our Sunday Bible study series deals with the Gospel and real life, as our friend Gil teaches with the goal of exploring what the Gospel actually looks like in action.  This past week we discussed sex and singlehood, next week it is marriage and so on for a few weeks into the summer.  But it was our time yesterday with sex and single people that gave my wife and me a great deal to talk about on the ride home.

Without beating around the bush, our conclusion is simply that in most cases people don’t have sex out of wedlock just for kicks.  It’s too complicated an action, unlike swearing in traffic.  (Even swearing in traffic is a sinful symptom of an underlying problem like anger or impatience).   And it seems like sex outside of marriage takes place, on some level, due to an innate desire for companionship and intimacy.  I would argue that is in fact the primary reason that people engage in this behavior.  People are not animals; our primary motivations are not physical.  If physical pleasure is our primary motivation (pornography, some rap music, etc.) then it is only because our emotional concerns about companionship and intimacy have been so mangled that all we can act upon is a base desire for physical fun.  I might also add that the prevalence of pornography and other forms of media in our culture are capable of distorting our emotions can attack at an early age, which may explain why a fourteen year old looks at sense in a purely physical context. 

Nevertheless my wife and I thought that if we approached sex from an emotional standpoint, it might lead to a more compassionate, Gospel-driven sense of ministry.  We both heard plenty of youth group talk about abstinence, and it was always framed in terms of pregnancy, STDs and then SIN.  But it never, ever got to the point of noting that sex was good but it was designed by God for purposes of marriage, because the act itself was so significant, so mighty and awesome that it could only be contained within the confines of a holy union between man and woman.  It was never explained that sex was almost always engaged in by people looking for companionship and intimacy and love, as opposed to a bunch of perverts and sluts looking to get their kicks in the parking lot out behind Food World. 

And the most offensive thing about youth ministry and sex is that it often fails to appreciate this disconnect.  It takes an almost Platonic, pagan view of sex when we assume that young people can avoid sex just as they can avoid buying a Dr. Pepper at the convenience store.  Not so!  We have a natural, God-given desire for sex and all of the vulnerability that comes with it.  And until we learn to speak clearly and bluntly about sex as sin but also as an example of our endless desire for companionship and love and openness – desires only cured by the Gospel – then we fail ourselves and a confused generation of young people.

All of this really could lead to a more thorough discussion of our capitulation to a culture that says marriage must come after education and work and financial stability, but without even approaching that very important conversation we can take the Gospel to sex in a way that is Christ-honoring.  One of my favorite quotes about the Cross comes from the late Richard John Neuhaus, who stated that “it is not all our fault, but it is our fault, too.”  And in that contradiction we start to understand sexuality in the sense that we can manage to not have sex, but on some level we cannot not have sex.  And here comes the Gospel to say that we are not animals or automatons, despite what pornographers and rappers tell us.  But it is only the Gospel that saves us from ourselves and our culture!  And the Gospel tells us that our problems are deep and pathological; they are not surface level.   Again, sin is not just a matter of stopping for too many cheeseburgers.  It is more than that, as we come to know that our real issue is lust and greed and gluttony.  The seven deadly sins are vague for a reason, after all. 

So when we tell teens and college students and single adults that sex is a sinful act and we must avoid and repent when it happens and true love waits and just date God and so on and so forth, we are missing the point, just as sure Bill Bucker missed that grounder to first.  The real issue is our inherent need that is present whether we are chaste or not, and that need is for a Savior who knows better than we know ourselves.  And while we remain sinners despite our justification, a grace-initiated knowledge of this condition makes us far likelier to avoid destructive acts like sex outside of marriage and we do so not out of fear or insecurity, but because we have hearts that have been changed by the grace of a bloody Cross.

Why I Love Luther

We must not…reject [or] condemn anything because it is abused. This would result in utter confusion. God has commanded us in Deut. 4 not to lift up our eyes to the sun (and the moon and the stars), etc., that we may not worship them, for they are created to serve all nations. But there are many people who worship the sun and the stars. Therefore we propose to rush in and pull the sun and stars from the skies. No, we had better let it be. Again, wine and women bring many a man to misery and make a fool of him (Ecclus. 19:2; 31:30); so we kill all the women and pour out all the wine. Again, gold and silver cause much evil, so we condemn them. Indeed, if we want to drive away our worst enemy, the one who does us the most harm, we shall have to kill ourselves, for we have no greater enemy than our own heart, as the prophet, Jer. 17, says, “The heart of man is crooked,” or, as I take the meaning, “always twisting to one side.” And so on – what would we not do?

-From his fourth Invocavit sermon from 1522, found in Works [American edition] 51:85.

Money, God and Gree

This book looks really interesting. I highly recommend watching the video, though I have some issue with Richards’ argument that aesthetic choices have no economic consequences.

Finding Our Way: Christ, Art and Modernity

For the next couple of weeks I’m filling in teaching Sunday school for a friend of mine.  He allowed me to choose my topic, and I’m going to take a look at a topic I’ve pegged as Christ, Art and Modernity.  I am working on the idea that here in the twenty-first century we are having a particular problem related to social and personal confusion, and I am referring to movies and novels as proof of this problem.

So I think I will make a few posts on movies and novels, noting how they reveal the depth of our confusion and disorientation in a modern world.  But first, let me explain how I think this happens.

First of all, we are lost of family connections.  The great majority of Americans no longer live in the same community as their families.  And so we have lost a sense of connection to something meaningful beyond ourselves.  Now let me be clear and state that I think this is, in many ways, a good thing.  Otherwise, doctors could only come from that pool of people born in cities wherein one could find a decent medical school.  While I would love to live near my parents and my wife’s parents, to do so would greatly limit my family’s world in such a way as to be unrealistic.  Nevertheless the change in location has created a problem for our society and while it is not the Gospel (not by a long shot), it remains a phenomenon worthy of our consideration.

Secondly, we no longer work with our hands.  It may be easy to brush that off, but farming and woodwork and even plumbing and mechanical work give us a sense of gratification and reward that help build up our human confidence.  Now Christians can look at this and say that it is good that we not pride ourselves in our ability to rebuild an engine or rewire our homes.  And we would be right to do so, but let us not ignore how helpless so many modern people feel as we are no longer capable of caring for ourselves, but are instead dependent fully on corporate farming and hourly workers who gladly milk us for a plumbing job that our grandfathers and country cousins could do blindfolded. 

Finally, however, I think that for some reasons the part the particular sins of the twentieth-century (and they are legion, make no mistake) have left us feeling completely overwhelmed.  To quote the late Richard John Neuhaus, “it is not all our fault, but it is our fault, too…”  There are things done and left undone, both by us and by our forebears, and the weight of these deeds hangs heavy upon us.  And now here we sit in 2009 completely befuddled and disoreinted about who we are and where we are going.  We need to come to our senses and find our way in a dark time, and we can only do so by coming to the Cross

In the following posts, I will look at movies and novels that demonstrate this sense of confusion and malaise, then close by examining what we out to do about it.

Birmingham’s Problem

Just a quick post before I get back to work being a teacher.

There’s been a lot of talk in recent months about how to improve Birmingham.  Chief among the concerns is the development of a dome stadium and a convention center that can host athletic events and trade shows.  Talk about such a facility hit fever-pitch several weeks back when the Alabama High School Athletic Association announced that it was pulling the finals of the state football playoffs from Birmingham’s Legion Field and placing them in a rotating schedule with Auburn and Tuscaloosa.  Birmingham mayor Larry Langford seized the occasion to remind area residents about the need for a domed stadium.

Let me be fair and say that in some sense Birmingham – the state’s largest city – should have the facilities to host good events, be they concerts, convention or athletic events like the SEC basketball tournament or a Davis Cup qualifying round.  I think Birmingham should probably look at ways to develop such a facility, though I’m reluctant to support taxpayer funding of the endeavor.  Instead, I would rather see private donors and investors take on the responsibility.  There is just no need to put taxpayers on the hook for this sort of thing.  (I also find it interesting that the people calling for a facility – i.e., local sports talk radio hosts – often live well outside the city limits of Birmingham, therefore absolving their own municipalities for any missteps along the way)

On the other hand, Birmingham has far bigger issues than wooing the NCAA basketball tournament or booking Coldplay into a new indoor facility that just hosted a regional interior design tradeshow.  Here’s the bigger problem; most of Birmingham is garbage.  That statement will likely come as a surprise to anyone who knows of my love for the Magic City, but living within the city limits of Birmingham is no good at all.  Now the Birmingham area is great; living in Mountain Brook or Homewood or Hoover or up in Gardendale and Hayden is really nice.  But unless you live in a loft downtown (miles from greenspace or a grocery store), a bungalow in Crestwood, or in a half-million dollar home in Forest Park or Redmont, Birmingham is, in all likelihood, a nauseating place to live.  The taxes are high.  Public transportation is a cruel joke.  The city leadership is so transparently awful that only a fourth-grader would place hope in these scoundrels.  Wild dogs roam streets like a scene from Mad Max.  The only decent neighborhoods within city limits are inhabited by people without children or enough money to send their kids to great schools like the Altamont School, Advent Day or St. Francis Xavier.  Forget about public schools, too, as they are far from adequate.

The point here is that while there are many great things in the Birmingham area – and even Birmingham itself has many great shops and restaurants – existing as an actual resident in Birmingham is not much fun.  So maybe instead of building a domed stadium to house UAB’s woeful football program and host bad country concerts, it seems that Birmingham should spend more money policing its streets and cleaning up bad neighborhoods.  Instead of rallying poor neighborhoods to fund this monstrosity, Birmingham’s leadership would be better served to demand more accountability from its schools and demand that parents live up to their obligations, so that delinquent children would be brought in from the streets, and once lovely neighborhoods could again thrive.  But that would be too difficult, and so our leaders find that demanding new projects and toys is a quicker path to civic rejuvenation.  But it is a false hope, and the only way to restore Birmingham is to make safe for its citizens to live and work and play, and until that happens, no domed stadium will save us.

Thoughts on Red Envelope Day

The first time I made an excursion into the blogosphere things ended up being very churchy.  I said a lot of worship styles, culture war, etc.  I really don’t want to do that this time around, though we’ll see if it can be avoided.  I did, however, want to offer a comment or two about yesterday’s Red Envelop Day.

The (in)famous Internet Monk provoked a few thoughts of mine when he posted on this topic yesterday. His objections were as follows:

1)It does nothing
2)It makes millions feel they’ve done something
3)The combined expenses and energy could help hundreds, even thousands of people. (Dig a well. Send a Dr. somewhere. Build a clinic.)
4)Evangelicals no longer believe that it is valuable to do something that only GOD and a few affected people see. No…it has to have media coverage to be worthwhile.
5)Jesus wouldn’t do it. He’d save a child.
6) John the Baptist wouldn’t do it. He’d preach in the street.
7) Mary wouldn’t do it. She’d say I’ll raise a child.
It’s typical of evangelicals now: shallow and silly in every department.
9) It’s a rerun of that O’Hare/FCC bit that cost millions of dollars.
10) It insults the President, who is fully aware of his position.

While I am tempted to argue these points, I can’t say that I disagree with him all that much.  I said the following the comments thread:

“I agree with iMonk’s point. But let us not forget that the force of law matters. When things are illegal, people are, as a matter of course, less likely to do them. So if abortion is not available, it would not be used as often as a matter of convenience. So while we clamor for financial support of doctors, adoption, clinics and all these other worthwhile endeavors, there is no shame at all in petitioning to make abortion illegal and in voting on that issue alone.

Having said that, Red Envelope Day is silly and ultimately useless.”

A couple of points.  First, I stand by my original response.  No matter how much we support women’s shelters or similar efforts to aid single mothers in need, there is no reason to give up on the intellectual fight against Roe v. Wade.  The force of law matters, because when something is illegal, people are less likely to do it.  One commenter in the thread mentioned prohibition, but that is simply an apples to oranges situation.  In the case of prohibition, alcohol was part of a lifestyle.  Abortion is a part of almost no one’s lifestyle, and banning it would be a source of deterrence for many, many women.  If the law didn’t deter, there would certainly be more nineteen year-olds drinking and more fifteen year-olds smoking.  Pro-lifers should not, under any circumstances, give up on the fight against Roe.  Oftentimes I read pieces like this, with their accompanying comment threads, and I hear a lot of talk about how we should all put our time and money where our collective mouth is and go volunteer at the shelter or adopt a child.  And all of those things are right and proper, but the law still matters.  I would hope writers like Michael Spencer would remember that the pro-life movement is much, much more than James Dobson.  It is also Robert P. George, Hadley Arkes and the late Richard John Neahuas.  That’s a Catholic list, so I’ll include Russell Moore and Charles Colson as evangelicals in that category.

I also think there is a place for a public demonstration like Red Envelope Day.  It is important that citizens, whatever their concern, make a public show of their approval or disapproval of certain policies.  The problem with Red Envelope Day is that this sort of thing is getting old.  It is much effort, so much ballyhoo over a public display of pro-life sentiment towards a very pro-choice President, but it will produce very little in the end.  I suppose we can pray over the envelopes and quote 2 Chronicles and hope that President Obama all of a sudden changes his mind, but that seems unlikely.  I hate to say it, but I do feel that this is typical of evangelical activity.  Make a lot of fuss over a matter and feel as though great deeds have been done.  It all has a very Don Quixote-like quality.  Let’s have Red Envelope Day if we like and let’s wear our red Life bracelets and protest silently and march and wave signs, but let us never, as once great football coach said, confuse activity with accomplishment.

Moore on Love, Sex and Mammon.

In the new issue of Touchstone, Russell Moore offers some timely advice to Christians.

A few things stand out to me.

One, Moore, a Southern Baptist, is referring to St. John and St. Paul.  Interesting.  I like it, but interesting.

Second, I would say that while Moore is right that we should be talking about these issues, I think the talk has to be in the Church first.  I think the Republican Party would be right to sideline the culture war and go after the economy.  I really mean that.  If a GOP Senator wanted to ignore cultural issues and just tackle the economy and domestic policy, that would be a boon for the GOP.  And it would still leave the culture stuff to the church, which is were it ultimately rests, anyway.

I think that’s been part of our problem, confusing what belongs in the church and what belongs in politics.  We would have all been better served if James Dobson had not become a leader of the Republican Party.

A few more thoughts from Moore’s piece:

“Why do Christian parents, contra St. Paul’s clear admonition in 1 Corinthians 7, encourage their young adult children to delay marriage, sometimes for years past the time it would take to discern whether this union would be of the Lord? Why do we smilingly tell them to wait until they can “afford” it? It is because, to our shame, we deem fornication a less awful reality than financial hardship.

Why do our pastors and church leaders speak bluntly about homosexuality but not about divorce? Because, in many cases, they know the faces of the divorced people in the pews before them—and they fear losing the membership statistics or the revenue those faces represent.”

This is important stuff.  And there’s no good answer to it, because these issues have never come up in so many churches.  And I’m really torn here, because as I move towards a Reformed approach to theology (more Luther than Calvin, fwiw) I’m concerned that churches and pastors focus on the Gospel more than they focus on issues.  The problem, though, is that the issues to often go ignored.  And at some point, pastors must be willing to address these issues in light of Scripture.  But the next problem is that too often pastors carry on about issues that don’t face their congregations.

How many pastors go on and on about gay marriage but, as Moore points out, say nothing about divorce?  How many youth groups prattle on about abstinence but then suggest that marriage must wait until after college and then after financial stability?  I’m sympathetic to the idea that marriage waits a while, but anyone who suggests that young people should, as a rule, wait until their mid-twenties for marriage and remain abstinent is in sad denial.

All in all, this is really important stuff, but like most things that Moore says, I imagine that most pastors and lay people will let it go in one ear and out the other.