Thank God that the early church required orthopraxy as well as orthodoxy of its members. Now orthopraxy is not sinless perfection, but it does require us not to make provision for the flesh to satisfy its gross desires. Thus, the mockery professing Christians commonly make of marriage by living together before they make their vows in the presence of the covenant community of the church is not acceptable.
It's not enough for a Christian to vote "yes" on Proposition 8 that opposes the mockery of honoring same-sex relations. We must honor marriage by not engaging in the parody of "shacking up" before we marry. Moreover, we should use the older language that called a couple's living together without benefit of marriage "living in sin." For that is an exact description of what it is according to the Bible.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Why Do Christians Believe in the Trinity?
A Reasonable Answer to Unitarian Criticism of Trinitarian Doctrine
Trinity Defined
Muslims and Unitarians criticize the idea of the Trinity as illogical; they say it violates the logical Law of Non-contradiction: "A" cannot be "non-A" at the same time and in the same respect (or aspect). They claim that Christians say that three gods, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one God. And if that were what the doctrine said, they would be correct in rejecting it as illogical.
Muslims misunderstand the doctrine, perhaps, because many Christians misunderstand it and are unable to correctly state it. Following Dr. Walter Martin, the doctrine can be stated thus: The one God eternally exists as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Thus, God is one as to his being, essence or nature, but three as to Persons.
Oneness in Diversity
Now in the Old Testament, God’s oneness is expressed in the word echod, which is a unity that contains diversity. For example, this word occurs in the Jewish affirmation of faith of Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, is one LORD.” Echod also occurs in Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
We often say that marriage is an image of the relationship of God and man, which is based on the biblical metaphor of Christ as the Bridegroom and the collective Body of Christ, the Church, as his Bride. (The individual believer, male or female, is not a “bride” of Christ, and “bridal mysticism” along this line has led to false doctrine and demonization.) But the profoundest symbolism of marriage is in its imaging of the loving unity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.
Threeness
The threeness of God makes the Apostle John's statement in 1 John 4:8 and again in verse 16 that “God is love” possible. The three persons have been bound together in the unity of perfect love forever. God's love is the structural glue that unites the Trinity and forms the basis for God's fatherly love and of Christ’s husbandly love for the church. Love as I—Thou relationship is only possible among two or more persons. Thus for God to be love, the One God must have more than one Person within his unitary Being.
Consequences of Unitarianism
Muslims deny that God is Trinity and affirm that He is unitary. Logically enough, then, they deny that God deigns to call himself the Father of any human being. Their God is a monad, our Judge, exalted, utterly transcendent. And that explains why he is not seen as a loving father. Love as I—Thou relationship is not possible within a monistic God and therefore a fatherly relationship with his creatures is not to be expected. This is the logical result of any form of unitarianism and should be pointed out to Unitarian-Universalists and to Jews, who lack the logical rigor of Muslims in this respect.
Trinity Defined
Muslims and Unitarians criticize the idea of the Trinity as illogical; they say it violates the logical Law of Non-contradiction: "A" cannot be "non-A" at the same time and in the same respect (or aspect). They claim that Christians say that three gods, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one God. And if that were what the doctrine said, they would be correct in rejecting it as illogical.
Muslims misunderstand the doctrine, perhaps, because many Christians misunderstand it and are unable to correctly state it. Following Dr. Walter Martin, the doctrine can be stated thus: The one God eternally exists as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Thus, God is one as to his being, essence or nature, but three as to Persons.
Oneness in Diversity
Now in the Old Testament, God’s oneness is expressed in the word echod, which is a unity that contains diversity. For example, this word occurs in the Jewish affirmation of faith of Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, is one LORD.” Echod also occurs in Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
We often say that marriage is an image of the relationship of God and man, which is based on the biblical metaphor of Christ as the Bridegroom and the collective Body of Christ, the Church, as his Bride. (The individual believer, male or female, is not a “bride” of Christ, and “bridal mysticism” along this line has led to false doctrine and demonization.) But the profoundest symbolism of marriage is in its imaging of the loving unity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.
Threeness
The threeness of God makes the Apostle John's statement in 1 John 4:8 and again in verse 16 that “God is love” possible. The three persons have been bound together in the unity of perfect love forever. God's love is the structural glue that unites the Trinity and forms the basis for God's fatherly love and of Christ’s husbandly love for the church. Love as I—Thou relationship is only possible among two or more persons. Thus for God to be love, the One God must have more than one Person within his unitary Being.
Consequences of Unitarianism
Muslims deny that God is Trinity and affirm that He is unitary. Logically enough, then, they deny that God deigns to call himself the Father of any human being. Their God is a monad, our Judge, exalted, utterly transcendent. And that explains why he is not seen as a loving father. Love as I—Thou relationship is not possible within a monistic God and therefore a fatherly relationship with his creatures is not to be expected. This is the logical result of any form of unitarianism and should be pointed out to Unitarian-Universalists and to Jews, who lack the logical rigor of Muslims in this respect.
Monday, September 8, 2008
C. S. Lewis on Relational Groups?
Fern-seed and Elephants and Other Essays on Christianity
By C. S. Lewis, Ed Walter Hooper, © 1975 Fontana/Collins
I made some notes a while back on this little known book of Lewis's essays. They seem to relate to what we are trying to be in our focus groups at Trinity Alliance--David
Christianity is not solitary and individualistic, but neither is it collective in the world’s sense. The enemy tries to convince us that religion is a private matter and if, to defend it, we import the world’s collectivism into Christianity, we fall into his other stratagem.
The true hierarchy is 1) membership in the Body of Christ, 2) personal and private life, and 3) collective life of the secular community. (12-13). “The secular community, since it exists for our natural good and not for our supernatural, has no higher end than to facilitate and safeguard the family, and friendship, and solitude” (13).
“The Christian is called, not to individualism but to membership in the mystical body” (15). The differences between the secular collective and the mystical body show how Christianity can oppose collectivism without individualism. But the term “member” must be clarified to show how like a family the unity of membership is a unity of unlikes, not likes (16). The church “is not a collective but a Body” (17). “We are summoned from the outset to combine as creatures with our Creator, as mortals with immortal, as redeemed sinners with sinless Redeemer. His presence, the interaction between him and us, must always be the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the life we are to lead within the Body; and any conception of Christian fellowship which does not mean primarily fellowship with him is out of court.” (17)
“Unity is the road to personality” (18).
By C. S. Lewis, Ed Walter Hooper, © 1975 Fontana/Collins
I made some notes a while back on this little known book of Lewis's essays. They seem to relate to what we are trying to be in our focus groups at Trinity Alliance--David
Christianity is not solitary and individualistic, but neither is it collective in the world’s sense. The enemy tries to convince us that religion is a private matter and if, to defend it, we import the world’s collectivism into Christianity, we fall into his other stratagem.
The true hierarchy is 1) membership in the Body of Christ, 2) personal and private life, and 3) collective life of the secular community. (12-13). “The secular community, since it exists for our natural good and not for our supernatural, has no higher end than to facilitate and safeguard the family, and friendship, and solitude” (13).
“The Christian is called, not to individualism but to membership in the mystical body” (15). The differences between the secular collective and the mystical body show how Christianity can oppose collectivism without individualism. But the term “member” must be clarified to show how like a family the unity of membership is a unity of unlikes, not likes (16). The church “is not a collective but a Body” (17). “We are summoned from the outset to combine as creatures with our Creator, as mortals with immortal, as redeemed sinners with sinless Redeemer. His presence, the interaction between him and us, must always be the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the life we are to lead within the Body; and any conception of Christian fellowship which does not mean primarily fellowship with him is out of court.” (17)
“Unity is the road to personality” (18).
Friday, August 29, 2008
Now McCain Just Needs a Consistent Prolifer at the Top of the Ticket
McCain is nothing if not shrewd. After floating trial balloons for running mates such as Mitt Romney and Joe Liberman (!), candidates sure to alienate at least part of the party base, he comes up with a religious conservative with truly impeccable prolife credentials in the form of son Trig Palin.
In addition, he let the prolifers have their way on their plank in the platform, which is the strongest in the history of the party. The question now is, how do prolifers keep McCain's feet to the fire so that he will change his position from support of federal funding of unethical stem-cell research to opposition to it. Indeed, the need is for a ban on all human cloning
In addition, he let the prolifers have their way on their plank in the platform, which is the strongest in the history of the party. The question now is, how do prolifers keep McCain's feet to the fire so that he will change his position from support of federal funding of unethical stem-cell research to opposition to it. Indeed, the need is for a ban on all human cloning
Sunday, August 24, 2008
J. K. Rowling’s Books of Virtues: Sunny Stories Brighten Baby’s Bedtime Bigtime
Somebody said that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine." And unlike some of our prescription medicines, a laugh is very unlikely to kill you. So I think it's about time to repeat this humorous take on the very serious subject of childrens' fantasy literature. This original satire of J. K. Rowling's Harrry Potter books first appeared on my blog of December 12, 2007. This satire had been read-tested by one high school senior who loves Harry and has read all the books, some more than once. She liked the satire and didn't realize that I take a dim view of Harry until I told her after she read the satire. This piece is copyrighted so if you download it for your personal use, you may not use it for profit and you may not modify the text in any way. (c) 2007 David Haddon
Hermione Protects Her Muggle Parents
Do any of you uptight, anti-magical parents dare to deprive your young children of their Natural Right to a vicarious enrollment in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by not buying them the Harry Potter books? If so, just consider Hermione Granger’s touching solicitude for the welfare of her parents described in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Deathly Hallows).
At 17 an adult in the wizard world, she wants to join her pals Ron Weasley and Harry in the hazardous quest to destroy the magical objects or horcruxes that are Dark Lord Voldemort’s means to immortality. Deeply concerned that joining Harry and Ron in the battle against Voldemort might endanger her muggle (non-wizard and hence defenseless against magic) parents, Hermione thoughtfully induces in Mom and Pop Granger the magical equivalent of Alzheimers, then puts entirely new identities into their empty minds, and finally sends them off good as new to England’s old penal colony of Australia. With a daughter like that, you’d surely never need to worry about winding up in a nursing home prematurely!
Euthanasia Anyone?
Or about staying in one indefinitely! For incredible as it may seem, Mistress of Ceremonies Rowling obliges her world-weary senior readers by inserting the classic arguments for euthanasia into the closing pages of Deathly Hallows (pp 682-83). There Albus Dumbledore (the greatest of the good wizards) convinces Snape (the bravest of the good wizards according to Harry) to kill him by asking him “to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation. . . . because death is coming for me” with great certainty. Here and elsewhere Rowling marshals about half a dozen other arguments to justify this murder-suicide pact, but its execution certainly secures Rowling’s claim to having boldly gone where no man has gone before in a popular children’s fantasy, certainly not the likes of J. R. R. Tolkein or C. S. Lewis (her fantasy’s purported resemblance to theirs having been just a teeny bit exaggerated).
Rowling Lights Up Youngsters’ Lives
But the really great thing about Rowling’s Harry Potter books is their down-home cheeriness. As Hilda Ravensfoot described the series, “These books of virtues combine the atmosphere of the spellbook with the effulgence of a sunrise. They are a veritable festival of lights, growing in brilliance with each new volume” (Literate Witch Online, September 31, 2005). Since the ever growing cheerfulness of Rowling’s books is the only point on which all the reviewers and critics agree, it is surely the real reason why her series is so popular.
Kids just love to see Harry bubbling over with high spirits all the time—whenever he’s not being ostracized by the other students, desperately lying to Professor Severus Snape to keep from being kicked out of school for his rule breaking, or badly bummed out about his dark fate. And Hermione’s always so sweet—except when Rita Skeeter writes a new column about her and Harry, Ron puts his foot in it (which is pretty often) or Harry tries to patch things up between them.
Then there’s all those beautiful silver and white unicorns in the Enchanted Forest—dead —because one of the dark wizards liked to slurp up their blood every night as a health drink smoothie. But no one ever messes with those sweet, cuddly thestrals, the fanged and carnivorous, carrion eating, black skeletal horses with blank white eyes and batwings that only someone who has witnessed a death can even see.
Given the sky high rates of depression and suicide among American teenagers, a little inspiration and uplift like this surely can’t hurt. And isn’t that just what Rowling said she was going to do, show young people real goodness, how to live, love, laugh and be happy, all that joie de vivre. I mean who wants to read a dark fantasy about the same kind of thing you see every night on the evening news, especially since 9/11?
Speaking of joie de vivre, surely that’s what those black-hooded, light extinguishing dementors who clamp their jaws on your mouth— and suck out your soul—are all about. Just thinking about them’ll put the joy way down in your soul so deep you can hardly stand it. Just the ticket for the ’tweens!
And how about those happy campers called the Inferi: Corpses “that have been bewitched to do a dark wizard’s bidding.” Harry first gets to meet one when a slimy white hand comes out of the dark, icy water to grasp his wrist. Then he sees “an army of the dead rising from the black water.” A small group of them grab him from behind with their “thin, fleshless arms cold as death” to carry him into the water to share their fate . . .
To top things off, there’s good old Nagini, Voldemort’s big, black pet snake and alter ego. In the last book, she finally kills Severus Snape but first gets to eat poor Professor of Muggles Studies Charity Burbage for “dinner.” Charity’s magically suspended and still living body revolving over the Death-Eaters’ conference table is the image that dominates the first chapter of this book and sets just the right atmosphere for Rowling’s last wild romp with our kids.
Rowling Reels to a Rollicking, Shakespeherean Rhythm of Rigor Mortis
Medieval painter-moralist Hans Holbein’s Danse Macabre has absolutely nothing on Rowling’s, oh, so appropriately named Deathly Hallows! Wikipedia’s death count for the book includes 19 identified characters (excluding Harry’s owl Hedwig) plus about 50 unnamed witches and wizards, mostly Voldemort followers and loyal Hogwarts students killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. Thus, in Rowling’s last fantastic, fatal fantasia with Harry, she forges fatalities fit for a favorable face-off with Shakespeare’s fiercest feuds. “O O O O that Shakespeherean rag!”
Rowling also reveals that stunning Snape-Dumbledore murder-suicide pact previously concealed but already executed in the previous book. Only the “good” wizards make such death pacts in Harry Potter so don’t blame poor old Voldemort who, all on his own, had to suffer seven deaths not even counted as such by Wikipedia, one for each of his soul fragments. With a little help from Harry, Voldemort did finally kill himself, but—unlike the good wizards—he didn’t really mean to do it.
Well, you get the idea: “Lullaby and good night, And may baby sleep tight . . .
Hermione Protects Her Muggle Parents
Do any of you uptight, anti-magical parents dare to deprive your young children of their Natural Right to a vicarious enrollment in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by not buying them the Harry Potter books? If so, just consider Hermione Granger’s touching solicitude for the welfare of her parents described in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Deathly Hallows).
At 17 an adult in the wizard world, she wants to join her pals Ron Weasley and Harry in the hazardous quest to destroy the magical objects or horcruxes that are Dark Lord Voldemort’s means to immortality. Deeply concerned that joining Harry and Ron in the battle against Voldemort might endanger her muggle (non-wizard and hence defenseless against magic) parents, Hermione thoughtfully induces in Mom and Pop Granger the magical equivalent of Alzheimers, then puts entirely new identities into their empty minds, and finally sends them off good as new to England’s old penal colony of Australia. With a daughter like that, you’d surely never need to worry about winding up in a nursing home prematurely!
Euthanasia Anyone?
Or about staying in one indefinitely! For incredible as it may seem, Mistress of Ceremonies Rowling obliges her world-weary senior readers by inserting the classic arguments for euthanasia into the closing pages of Deathly Hallows (pp 682-83). There Albus Dumbledore (the greatest of the good wizards) convinces Snape (the bravest of the good wizards according to Harry) to kill him by asking him “to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation. . . . because death is coming for me” with great certainty. Here and elsewhere Rowling marshals about half a dozen other arguments to justify this murder-suicide pact, but its execution certainly secures Rowling’s claim to having boldly gone where no man has gone before in a popular children’s fantasy, certainly not the likes of J. R. R. Tolkein or C. S. Lewis (her fantasy’s purported resemblance to theirs having been just a teeny bit exaggerated).
Rowling Lights Up Youngsters’ Lives
But the really great thing about Rowling’s Harry Potter books is their down-home cheeriness. As Hilda Ravensfoot described the series, “These books of virtues combine the atmosphere of the spellbook with the effulgence of a sunrise. They are a veritable festival of lights, growing in brilliance with each new volume” (Literate Witch Online, September 31, 2005). Since the ever growing cheerfulness of Rowling’s books is the only point on which all the reviewers and critics agree, it is surely the real reason why her series is so popular.
Kids just love to see Harry bubbling over with high spirits all the time—whenever he’s not being ostracized by the other students, desperately lying to Professor Severus Snape to keep from being kicked out of school for his rule breaking, or badly bummed out about his dark fate. And Hermione’s always so sweet—except when Rita Skeeter writes a new column about her and Harry, Ron puts his foot in it (which is pretty often) or Harry tries to patch things up between them.
Then there’s all those beautiful silver and white unicorns in the Enchanted Forest—dead —because one of the dark wizards liked to slurp up their blood every night as a health drink smoothie. But no one ever messes with those sweet, cuddly thestrals, the fanged and carnivorous, carrion eating, black skeletal horses with blank white eyes and batwings that only someone who has witnessed a death can even see.
Given the sky high rates of depression and suicide among American teenagers, a little inspiration and uplift like this surely can’t hurt. And isn’t that just what Rowling said she was going to do, show young people real goodness, how to live, love, laugh and be happy, all that joie de vivre. I mean who wants to read a dark fantasy about the same kind of thing you see every night on the evening news, especially since 9/11?
Speaking of joie de vivre, surely that’s what those black-hooded, light extinguishing dementors who clamp their jaws on your mouth— and suck out your soul—are all about. Just thinking about them’ll put the joy way down in your soul so deep you can hardly stand it. Just the ticket for the ’tweens!
And how about those happy campers called the Inferi: Corpses “that have been bewitched to do a dark wizard’s bidding.” Harry first gets to meet one when a slimy white hand comes out of the dark, icy water to grasp his wrist. Then he sees “an army of the dead rising from the black water.” A small group of them grab him from behind with their “thin, fleshless arms cold as death” to carry him into the water to share their fate . . .
To top things off, there’s good old Nagini, Voldemort’s big, black pet snake and alter ego. In the last book, she finally kills Severus Snape but first gets to eat poor Professor of Muggles Studies Charity Burbage for “dinner.” Charity’s magically suspended and still living body revolving over the Death-Eaters’ conference table is the image that dominates the first chapter of this book and sets just the right atmosphere for Rowling’s last wild romp with our kids.
Rowling Reels to a Rollicking, Shakespeherean Rhythm of Rigor Mortis
Medieval painter-moralist Hans Holbein’s Danse Macabre has absolutely nothing on Rowling’s, oh, so appropriately named Deathly Hallows! Wikipedia’s death count for the book includes 19 identified characters (excluding Harry’s owl Hedwig) plus about 50 unnamed witches and wizards, mostly Voldemort followers and loyal Hogwarts students killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. Thus, in Rowling’s last fantastic, fatal fantasia with Harry, she forges fatalities fit for a favorable face-off with Shakespeare’s fiercest feuds. “O O O O that Shakespeherean rag!”
Rowling also reveals that stunning Snape-Dumbledore murder-suicide pact previously concealed but already executed in the previous book. Only the “good” wizards make such death pacts in Harry Potter so don’t blame poor old Voldemort who, all on his own, had to suffer seven deaths not even counted as such by Wikipedia, one for each of his soul fragments. With a little help from Harry, Voldemort did finally kill himself, but—unlike the good wizards—he didn’t really mean to do it.
Well, you get the idea: “Lullaby and good night, And may baby sleep tight . . .
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Solzhenitsyn RIP
I learned of Alexander Sozhenitsyn's death only Tuesday. I use several news sources including NPR, but I'm not a news junkie. And Sozhenitsyn fell out of favor with the American elites when he clarified his motivation for exposing the lie that was Soviet Communism in The Gulag Archipelago and other works such as A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. This Nobel laureate was roundly booed by the graduating class at Harvard during his commencement address there when he warned the West that her forgetfulness of God was leading her in the direction of the tyranny that the Russian people had suffered under for 70 years.
For Solzhenitsyn was by the time of his exile to America a theist, a Christian theist, who had come to accept his grandparents' primitive belief that Russia was suffering under Communist oppression because they, the Russian people, had forgotten God. Like Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn experienced conversion while in prison, and he blessed his chains, as it were, for bringing him the wisdom to grasp the truth about God.
If you are familiar with Dostoevski's The Brother's Karamazov, you will appreciate Sozhenitsyn's use (in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) of the names "Ivan" and "Alyosha." In both books, Ivan is the character lacking faith, Alyosha, the one having it.But Sozhenitsyn's Ivan is not a doctrinaire atheist, he is a much more humane and likeable character than Dostoevski's. This Ivan is almost American in his mild insistence that prayer may work for you, Alyosha, but not for me. So if you haven't read The Gulag Archipelago (And I've only read the first of its two large volumes.), don't try it first or second. Go instead for the short but powerful evocation of the gulag in his short novel, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Then there is Cancer Ward and other novels and works that may today be more important than the brutal history of the Gulag.
For Solzhenitsyn was by the time of his exile to America a theist, a Christian theist, who had come to accept his grandparents' primitive belief that Russia was suffering under Communist oppression because they, the Russian people, had forgotten God. Like Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn experienced conversion while in prison, and he blessed his chains, as it were, for bringing him the wisdom to grasp the truth about God.
If you are familiar with Dostoevski's The Brother's Karamazov, you will appreciate Sozhenitsyn's use (in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) of the names "Ivan" and "Alyosha." In both books, Ivan is the character lacking faith, Alyosha, the one having it.But Sozhenitsyn's Ivan is not a doctrinaire atheist, he is a much more humane and likeable character than Dostoevski's. This Ivan is almost American in his mild insistence that prayer may work for you, Alyosha, but not for me. So if you haven't read The Gulag Archipelago (And I've only read the first of its two large volumes.), don't try it first or second. Go instead for the short but powerful evocation of the gulag in his short novel, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Then there is Cancer Ward and other novels and works that may today be more important than the brutal history of the Gulag.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
"J. K. Rowling: Sovereign Fantasy-World Creator," to be in "Touchstone," Nov. 2008
Free at last! Thank God! I'm free at last! Yesterday I got my editor's acknowledgement of receipt of my revised 2226-word ms for Touchstone's forum on Harry Potter to be published in November, the month the next Harry Potter movie comes out. As I understand the forum, my con article will be submitted to a couple of critics for their responses to it.
Over the past 8 years that I have been studying and writing about my bete noire, Harry, I have compiled a massive basis of observations for my criticism, including my notebook with detailed notes on my reading of each of the seven volumes of the series. And I have written thousands of words of detailed commentary. For all of that, I have published only four articles on Rowling's work, three in The American Spectator Online (July ?, 2005; Aug. 15, 17, 2007) and Celebrate Life (Nov/Dec 2007). The mainstream Christian journals have taken the Christianity Today line that these books are a "book of virtues." And even First Things and Touchstone have published favorable reviews on the little wizard.
I have distilled my 5000-word 2007 ms to meet an editorial requirement of about 2000 words. So, instead of my natural approach of building detail on detail, I have cut the details to fit and made my strongest argument on the basis of the contrast between Rowling's Post-Christian imagination and relativist morality and the profoundly Christian vision and transcendent (absolute) morality of Tolkein and Lewis. I think that the necessity of brevity will prove a virtue in this essay.
The lynchpin of my essay, then, is the following words of Aragorn to Eomer in the fields of Rohan when Eomer disputed his passage with Legolas and Gimli on their mission to rescue Pippin and Merry:
"Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house" (The Two Towers, Ballentine pb, 1965, 50, cited by Gene Edward Veith, “Still Ringing True,” World Magazine, 2001).
Do pray for Joanne Rowling and her many readers, that God may grant them his grace.
Over the past 8 years that I have been studying and writing about my bete noire, Harry, I have compiled a massive basis of observations for my criticism, including my notebook with detailed notes on my reading of each of the seven volumes of the series. And I have written thousands of words of detailed commentary. For all of that, I have published only four articles on Rowling's work, three in The American Spectator Online (July ?, 2005; Aug. 15, 17, 2007) and Celebrate Life (Nov/Dec 2007). The mainstream Christian journals have taken the Christianity Today line that these books are a "book of virtues." And even First Things and Touchstone have published favorable reviews on the little wizard.
I have distilled my 5000-word 2007 ms to meet an editorial requirement of about 2000 words. So, instead of my natural approach of building detail on detail, I have cut the details to fit and made my strongest argument on the basis of the contrast between Rowling's Post-Christian imagination and relativist morality and the profoundly Christian vision and transcendent (absolute) morality of Tolkein and Lewis. I think that the necessity of brevity will prove a virtue in this essay.
The lynchpin of my essay, then, is the following words of Aragorn to Eomer in the fields of Rohan when Eomer disputed his passage with Legolas and Gimli on their mission to rescue Pippin and Merry:
"Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house" (The Two Towers, Ballentine pb, 1965, 50, cited by Gene Edward Veith, “Still Ringing True,” World Magazine, 2001).
Do pray for Joanne Rowling and her many readers, that God may grant them his grace.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Prince Caspian Lite
Before the Pevensie children are jerked out of the London train station by Prince Caspian’s blowing Susan's magic horn, Susan has already been deftly characterized as a loner liar and Peter, rather crudely, as a short-tempered brawler. These flaws seem to be the direct result of their tenures as Queen and as High King in Narnia. An inauspicious beginning for Director Andrew Adamson’s essay at translating C. S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian into a commercially successful movie, but these character defects help explain why Susan and Peter fail to see Aslan when innocent little Lucy does.
"Prince Caspian" the movie actually begins in media res with a scene not seen but implied in the book: the wife of King Miraz giving birth to a son. But Miraz is usurper of the Telmarine throne of Narnia and murderer of the former King Caspian, who was his own brother and Prince Caspian’s father. Thus, the birth of Miraz’s son as heir to the throne is a death sentence for the youthful Prince Caspian, Miraz’s nephew and rightful heir to the throne. Prince Caspian’s consequent flight results in his meeting the Old Narnians who adopt him as their champion against Miraz.
The quick transition from baby delivery to chase scene as Miraz’s horsemen pursue Caspian works well, cinematically, for a movie full of such chases, two big battle scenes (one newly conceived for the movie), and the single combat of High King Peter and King Miraz. Not for nothing is this children’s story rated PG 13. NPR’s movie reviewer noted a bit sourly that the battle scenes take up the better part of the 2-1/2 hour film. All this fast-paced combat action along with their special effects certainly enhanced the movie’s $56-million first-weekend box office, but the time lavished on them didn’t do much to advance the moral vision of C. S. Lewis’s original.
Nevertheless, the theme of belief vs unbelief is retained as the children and their dwarf companion make the ill-advised decision not to follow Aslan when Lucy sees him and understands his invitation to follow him on their quest to bring aid to Prince Caspian at Aslan’s How (“a low hill”). Later on Aslan tells Lucy that she should have followed him even if the others would not. And the question of why they had not seen Aslan troubles Peter and Susan as revealed in their dialogue with Lucy.
Arrived at Aslan's How, High King Peter prematurely concludes that Aslan has left the execution of the rescue of Narnia up to the kings and queens and their Old Narnian supporters. When his rash plan to make a sortie into the relatively lightly guarded castle of King Miraz ends in a costly rout, he and Caspian blame each other and even get into sword play.
So why are Lewis’s largely exemplary heroes characterized as and behave like such jerks? Simple: The decadence of popular culture in the West is such that had these two teenagers acted as responsibly as their originals, they would have been “like totally unbelievable" to the target audience of movie goers, teenagers and up. Good little girls like Lucy may be tolerated, but virtuous teenagers are oxymoronic.
Even worse, in a misguided effort to dazzle us with special effects and toy with vengeance, the film sensationalizes the Black Dwarf Nikabrik’s introduction of the Hag and the Werewolf and their proposal to revive the White Witch—by reviving her. Thus, she actually appears with a demonstration of her ice-producing power in Aslan’s How, a fortress shrine to Aslan complete with the remains of the broken stone table on which Aslan had been sacrificed for Edmund. This desecration of the fane of Aslan is offensive enough, but her witchcraft is so powerful that she easily mesmerizes both Peter and Prince Caspian who feebly protests, “This is not what I wanted.” Edmund, a teenager but apparently still young enough to retain some virtue, bursts in just in time to save the day.
The revised message of this scene seems to be that the power of witchcraft is so great that it can neutralize if not control the will of the two main heroes. But this flatly contradicts what Lewis was demonstrating. Instead, in the book we see that even at this, the lowest point of his military fortunes, Caspian had quite enough chest to reject with indignation the madness of using witchcraft to substitute the evil Witch for the evil Miraz: “So that’s your plan Nikabrik! Black sorcery and the calling up of an accursed ghost.” His imagination fed by the chivalrous tales of Old Narnia, the real Prince Caspian of Lewis’s book was impervious to such a proposal. But in this scene, the movie Prince Caspian comes across as a slightly doltish Telmarine (complete with a non-descript East European accent) who lacks the virtue to resist the power of the White Witch’s mere ghost.
Thus, Disney subverts one of the central themes of Lewis’s book: An adult mentor's loving nurture of the moral imagination of children through teaching them to love the right stories creates men and women of moral conviction who will act in accord with the virtues they have imbibed from those stories. This subversion is a profound betrayal of Lewis’s vision because the conversion of Telmarine Prince Caspian first to solidarity with his hereditary foes, the Old Narnians, and finally to faith in Aslan parallels Lewis’s own conversion first of his imagination by George MacDonald’s classic fairy story, Phantastes, before his later conversion to faith in Christ. Indeed, I am not alone in believing that Lewis put something of himself in Prince Caspian.
Furthermore, The Chronicles in general and Prince Caspian in particular are Lewis’s artistic response to the poverty of imagination, the inhumanity of the dominant naturalism of the Europe of his as of our day. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis discursively skewered this philosophy (quintessentially Ayers’s Logical Positivism) and its academic camp followers such as the authors of the infamous “Green Book.” But through his fantasy, Lewis gives us a story to capture the imagination of children and so help parents to actually give us men like Caspian, men with chests.
If ever the culture of the West comes to its senses and recovers its Christian roots, this seriously flawed if entertaining attempt to translate Prince Caspian into film must be redone, retaining and emphasizing both of Lewis’s two great themes: 1) The vital role of the right kind of children’s stories in the moral formation of men with chests and 2) The long walk of faith that demands hard steps of obedience to the King.
"Prince Caspian" the movie actually begins in media res with a scene not seen but implied in the book: the wife of King Miraz giving birth to a son. But Miraz is usurper of the Telmarine throne of Narnia and murderer of the former King Caspian, who was his own brother and Prince Caspian’s father. Thus, the birth of Miraz’s son as heir to the throne is a death sentence for the youthful Prince Caspian, Miraz’s nephew and rightful heir to the throne. Prince Caspian’s consequent flight results in his meeting the Old Narnians who adopt him as their champion against Miraz.
The quick transition from baby delivery to chase scene as Miraz’s horsemen pursue Caspian works well, cinematically, for a movie full of such chases, two big battle scenes (one newly conceived for the movie), and the single combat of High King Peter and King Miraz. Not for nothing is this children’s story rated PG 13. NPR’s movie reviewer noted a bit sourly that the battle scenes take up the better part of the 2-1/2 hour film. All this fast-paced combat action along with their special effects certainly enhanced the movie’s $56-million first-weekend box office, but the time lavished on them didn’t do much to advance the moral vision of C. S. Lewis’s original.
Nevertheless, the theme of belief vs unbelief is retained as the children and their dwarf companion make the ill-advised decision not to follow Aslan when Lucy sees him and understands his invitation to follow him on their quest to bring aid to Prince Caspian at Aslan’s How (“a low hill”). Later on Aslan tells Lucy that she should have followed him even if the others would not. And the question of why they had not seen Aslan troubles Peter and Susan as revealed in their dialogue with Lucy.
Arrived at Aslan's How, High King Peter prematurely concludes that Aslan has left the execution of the rescue of Narnia up to the kings and queens and their Old Narnian supporters. When his rash plan to make a sortie into the relatively lightly guarded castle of King Miraz ends in a costly rout, he and Caspian blame each other and even get into sword play.
So why are Lewis’s largely exemplary heroes characterized as and behave like such jerks? Simple: The decadence of popular culture in the West is such that had these two teenagers acted as responsibly as their originals, they would have been “like totally unbelievable" to the target audience of movie goers, teenagers and up. Good little girls like Lucy may be tolerated, but virtuous teenagers are oxymoronic.
Even worse, in a misguided effort to dazzle us with special effects and toy with vengeance, the film sensationalizes the Black Dwarf Nikabrik’s introduction of the Hag and the Werewolf and their proposal to revive the White Witch—by reviving her. Thus, she actually appears with a demonstration of her ice-producing power in Aslan’s How, a fortress shrine to Aslan complete with the remains of the broken stone table on which Aslan had been sacrificed for Edmund. This desecration of the fane of Aslan is offensive enough, but her witchcraft is so powerful that she easily mesmerizes both Peter and Prince Caspian who feebly protests, “This is not what I wanted.” Edmund, a teenager but apparently still young enough to retain some virtue, bursts in just in time to save the day.
The revised message of this scene seems to be that the power of witchcraft is so great that it can neutralize if not control the will of the two main heroes. But this flatly contradicts what Lewis was demonstrating. Instead, in the book we see that even at this, the lowest point of his military fortunes, Caspian had quite enough chest to reject with indignation the madness of using witchcraft to substitute the evil Witch for the evil Miraz: “So that’s your plan Nikabrik! Black sorcery and the calling up of an accursed ghost.” His imagination fed by the chivalrous tales of Old Narnia, the real Prince Caspian of Lewis’s book was impervious to such a proposal. But in this scene, the movie Prince Caspian comes across as a slightly doltish Telmarine (complete with a non-descript East European accent) who lacks the virtue to resist the power of the White Witch’s mere ghost.
Thus, Disney subverts one of the central themes of Lewis’s book: An adult mentor's loving nurture of the moral imagination of children through teaching them to love the right stories creates men and women of moral conviction who will act in accord with the virtues they have imbibed from those stories. This subversion is a profound betrayal of Lewis’s vision because the conversion of Telmarine Prince Caspian first to solidarity with his hereditary foes, the Old Narnians, and finally to faith in Aslan parallels Lewis’s own conversion first of his imagination by George MacDonald’s classic fairy story, Phantastes, before his later conversion to faith in Christ. Indeed, I am not alone in believing that Lewis put something of himself in Prince Caspian.
Furthermore, The Chronicles in general and Prince Caspian in particular are Lewis’s artistic response to the poverty of imagination, the inhumanity of the dominant naturalism of the Europe of his as of our day. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis discursively skewered this philosophy (quintessentially Ayers’s Logical Positivism) and its academic camp followers such as the authors of the infamous “Green Book.” But through his fantasy, Lewis gives us a story to capture the imagination of children and so help parents to actually give us men like Caspian, men with chests.
If ever the culture of the West comes to its senses and recovers its Christian roots, this seriously flawed if entertaining attempt to translate Prince Caspian into film must be redone, retaining and emphasizing both of Lewis’s two great themes: 1) The vital role of the right kind of children’s stories in the moral formation of men with chests and 2) The long walk of faith that demands hard steps of obedience to the King.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
Evangelical Manifesto, Part 1 / Memento Mori: Three Extractions
First the memento mori: I'll complete the Biblical three score and ten next month, and today my dentist pulled three molars from the right side of my mouth. Two had gold crowns and the third a large mercury amalgam filling that had cracked and broken. Perhaps because I also have "moderate periodontal disease," they came out relatively easily and I only had to pay $115 each instead of the $185 listed for "surgical extraction." Because many of my gold crowns have been undermined by decay, my mid-term prospect is to extract all of them and get an upper plate. (The bottom plates tend to work poorly because the lower jaw is too flexible.)
My long-term prospect is, of course, the same as yours, death. But "since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and I "rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. . . . Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" (Romans 5:1, 2b, 9). I simply take Jesus at his word when he said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24)
Second, Evangelical Manifesto: The steering committe includes the likes of Timothy George, Os Guinness, Rich Mouw (President, Fuller Theological Seminary), David Neff (Editor in Chief, Christianity Today Media Group), and Dallas Willard (Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California). Charter signers include Leighton Ford, Irwin Lutzer, Jack Hayford on the one hand and Ron Sider and Jim Wallis on the other. Notable by their absence are leaders heavily involved in the culture war such as Jim Dobson and Tony Perkins of Family Research Council.
The Manifesto bills itself as "A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment." The infelicitous statement of the rationale for this declaration of "who we are and where we stand" seems to be saying that living together in societies riven by deep differences about religion and ideology is "one of the greatest challenges of the global era." Lack of clarity in the writing here gets the Manifesto off to a rocky start, but pluralism is certainly a problem, perhaps in ways more serious for Christian faith than they seem to think.
The Manifesto does maintain most of the theological distinctives of Evangelical faith--except for God's judgment and wrath and the Last Things, Heaven and Hell. Since these severely challenged biblical doctrines are so important for effective evangelism, this is a serious defect. Nevertheless, these worthies do maintain first of all that "Jesus Christ is fully God become fully human. . . beside whom there is no other god, and beside whom there is no other name by which we must be saved" (p. 6). This exclusive claim of Christian faith is perhaps where the spiritual battle rages most fiercely today so that point is well taken. More later.
You can find it at http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com/
My long-term prospect is, of course, the same as yours, death. But "since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and I "rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. . . . Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" (Romans 5:1, 2b, 9). I simply take Jesus at his word when he said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24)
Second, Evangelical Manifesto: The steering committe includes the likes of Timothy George, Os Guinness, Rich Mouw (President, Fuller Theological Seminary), David Neff (Editor in Chief, Christianity Today Media Group), and Dallas Willard (Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California). Charter signers include Leighton Ford, Irwin Lutzer, Jack Hayford on the one hand and Ron Sider and Jim Wallis on the other. Notable by their absence are leaders heavily involved in the culture war such as Jim Dobson and Tony Perkins of Family Research Council.
The Manifesto bills itself as "A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment." The infelicitous statement of the rationale for this declaration of "who we are and where we stand" seems to be saying that living together in societies riven by deep differences about religion and ideology is "one of the greatest challenges of the global era." Lack of clarity in the writing here gets the Manifesto off to a rocky start, but pluralism is certainly a problem, perhaps in ways more serious for Christian faith than they seem to think.
The Manifesto does maintain most of the theological distinctives of Evangelical faith--except for God's judgment and wrath and the Last Things, Heaven and Hell. Since these severely challenged biblical doctrines are so important for effective evangelism, this is a serious defect. Nevertheless, these worthies do maintain first of all that "Jesus Christ is fully God become fully human. . . beside whom there is no other god, and beside whom there is no other name by which we must be saved" (p. 6). This exclusive claim of Christian faith is perhaps where the spiritual battle rages most fiercely today so that point is well taken. More later.
You can find it at http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com/
Saturday, April 19, 2008
California's Marriage Protection Act is Good Public Policy
Fifteen-year-old Joshua Roberts "pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon" causing great bodily injury during an unprovoked assault on Levi Snyder outside a local movie theater according to Redding's Record Searchlight for April 17. Snyder was rendered comatose as a result of the attack.
And this story is yet another reason for all California citizens of good will to support the California Marriage Protection Act. This California initiative constitutional amendment would put into the California Constitution California's current marriage statute: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This step has become necessary because these 14 words have been challenged in the California courts by homosexual activists and the California Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of man-woman marriage during the current session.
We males being barbarians by nature, civilizing each new generation of boys and young men is the basic task of society and fathers are crucial to this task. So when I saw Joshua Roberts's photo in the newspaper I thought, "Dollars to doughnuts he doesn't live with his father." And a local resident who claimed to know the boy confirmed my assumption. Whether this is true of Roberts or not, I believe it is true that the best single predictor for a boy's dropping out of school, getting into drugs or getting into trouble with the law is his not living in a household with his natural father.
And marriage is the social institution that helps men to remain with their children. But in countries such as Sweden and Denmark where same-sex marriages are legal, marriage is said to have tanked. That is, neither gays nor straights are bothering to get married. Thus, same-sex marriage seems to subvert traditional marriage by dishonoring it in the eyes of many people. In the United States where the majority of the population still believes that homosexual acts are sinful, the negative effect on marriage rates could be even more pronounced than in Scandanavia.
So your personal safety as you lock up your bike at the local Movies 10 depends on marriage and the support it affords teenagers and young men by helping keep dad in their homes. This argument has helped hesitant petition signers get up the nerve to do what they ought to do and sign the Marriage Protection Act petition. It works kind of like Garrison Keillor's Powder Milk Biscuits.
And this story is yet another reason for all California citizens of good will to support the California Marriage Protection Act. This California initiative constitutional amendment would put into the California Constitution California's current marriage statute: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This step has become necessary because these 14 words have been challenged in the California courts by homosexual activists and the California Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of man-woman marriage during the current session.
We males being barbarians by nature, civilizing each new generation of boys and young men is the basic task of society and fathers are crucial to this task. So when I saw Joshua Roberts's photo in the newspaper I thought, "Dollars to doughnuts he doesn't live with his father." And a local resident who claimed to know the boy confirmed my assumption. Whether this is true of Roberts or not, I believe it is true that the best single predictor for a boy's dropping out of school, getting into drugs or getting into trouble with the law is his not living in a household with his natural father.
And marriage is the social institution that helps men to remain with their children. But in countries such as Sweden and Denmark where same-sex marriages are legal, marriage is said to have tanked. That is, neither gays nor straights are bothering to get married. Thus, same-sex marriage seems to subvert traditional marriage by dishonoring it in the eyes of many people. In the United States where the majority of the population still believes that homosexual acts are sinful, the negative effect on marriage rates could be even more pronounced than in Scandanavia.
So your personal safety as you lock up your bike at the local Movies 10 depends on marriage and the support it affords teenagers and young men by helping keep dad in their homes. This argument has helped hesitant petition signers get up the nerve to do what they ought to do and sign the Marriage Protection Act petition. It works kind of like Garrison Keillor's Powder Milk Biscuits.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
McCain Affirms Prolife as the Republican Position
Family Research Council published today the following interview segment:
At a student forum moderated by MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the Republican nominee reiterated the importance of the party's pro-life platform:
Matthews: ...Would you put a person on the ticket with you, like the former governor of this state who is very popular, Tom Ridge, even though he may disagree on the issue of Roe v. Wade and abortion rights?... McCain: I don't know if it would stop him, but it would be difficult... Matthews: Why that one issue? Why is that one litmus test issue? McCain: I'm not saying that it would be necessarily, but I am saying... the respect and cherishing of the right of the unborn is one of the fundamental principles of my party. And it's a... deeply held belief of mine.
'Nuff said, David
At a student forum moderated by MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the Republican nominee reiterated the importance of the party's pro-life platform:
Matthews: ...Would you put a person on the ticket with you, like the former governor of this state who is very popular, Tom Ridge, even though he may disagree on the issue of Roe v. Wade and abortion rights?... McCain: I don't know if it would stop him, but it would be difficult... Matthews: Why that one issue? Why is that one litmus test issue? McCain: I'm not saying that it would be necessarily, but I am saying... the respect and cherishing of the right of the unborn is one of the fundamental principles of my party. And it's a... deeply held belief of mine.
'Nuff said, David
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Long Time No See
I've been working day and night (an exaggeration, of course) what with my circulation of California Initiative Petitions and gathering the firewood from the California Department of Forestry's thinning of the brush and trees of the undeveloped chaparral just east of my house in the approach zone for the nearby light aircraft field on the west side of Redding.
First, I'd like to mention a couple of positives for John McCain's candidacy for President. He was not on my long or short list of candidates, but then there were problems for me with the entire pack. But McCain is a candidate who has taken a bold and clear stand against torture as an instrument in the war against the Islamofascists. He stated the obvious reality that controlled drowning, euphemistically called "water boarding," is torture, something that the U. S. Attorney General has not been able to bring himself to do, probably because of legal implications of the CIA's having used it.
In addition, I expect that McCain will try to find some reasonable and humane solution to the problem of America's eagerly using and sometimes exploiting Mexican immigrant labor in agriculture, industry and domestic service while not giving them any legal status. From a Biblical perspective, we must treat with care these aliens that we have invited by our willingness to pay them for their labor lest we violate the principle set forth in Yahweh's command to Israel about the aliens among them. He said, "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt" (Ex. 22:21, cf. Ex. 23:9; Lev. 24:22; Deut. 24:17). And Deuteronomy 27:19 pronounces a curse on anyone who withholds justice from the alien.
On the other hand, McCain, at a minimum, must accommodate us prolifers by maintaining the Bush Administration's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. This move is essential to the success of his candidacy and can hardly hurt him given the recent scientific breakthroughs that have made pluripotent stem cells available by ethical means.
To ensure that I have offended someone, I'll conclude with a comment I posted elsewhere:
Reverend Wright was right when he said that the United States got what it was asking for on 9/11, that is, if he meant a small taste of God's judgment for our national sins such as our putting money before God and legally aborting 50,000,000 of our offspring, black, white, brown and red.
First, I'd like to mention a couple of positives for John McCain's candidacy for President. He was not on my long or short list of candidates, but then there were problems for me with the entire pack. But McCain is a candidate who has taken a bold and clear stand against torture as an instrument in the war against the Islamofascists. He stated the obvious reality that controlled drowning, euphemistically called "water boarding," is torture, something that the U. S. Attorney General has not been able to bring himself to do, probably because of legal implications of the CIA's having used it.
In addition, I expect that McCain will try to find some reasonable and humane solution to the problem of America's eagerly using and sometimes exploiting Mexican immigrant labor in agriculture, industry and domestic service while not giving them any legal status. From a Biblical perspective, we must treat with care these aliens that we have invited by our willingness to pay them for their labor lest we violate the principle set forth in Yahweh's command to Israel about the aliens among them. He said, "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt" (Ex. 22:21, cf. Ex. 23:9; Lev. 24:22; Deut. 24:17). And Deuteronomy 27:19 pronounces a curse on anyone who withholds justice from the alien.
On the other hand, McCain, at a minimum, must accommodate us prolifers by maintaining the Bush Administration's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. This move is essential to the success of his candidacy and can hardly hurt him given the recent scientific breakthroughs that have made pluripotent stem cells available by ethical means.
To ensure that I have offended someone, I'll conclude with a comment I posted elsewhere:
Reverend Wright was right when he said that the United States got what it was asking for on 9/11, that is, if he meant a small taste of God's judgment for our national sins such as our putting money before God and legally aborting 50,000,000 of our offspring, black, white, brown and red.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Playing the Ghoul for Fun and Profit
Redding's Turtle Bay Exploration Park has chosen to exploit the natural human fascination with dead human bodies by hosting Premier Exhibitions' "Bodies Revealed" show. This consists of actual human bodies preserved by a plastination that prevents their decay and permits them to be sectioned so as to reveal human anatomy in great detail.
That the impulse to gaze upon dead human bodies is a from the baser part of human nature was recognized long ago by Plato (in the Euthyphro as I recall). One of the characters in the dialogue confesses that he had succumbed to the temptation to gaze at a body lying beside the road he was traveling and then, smitten with guilt for his shameful behavior, he went on to tell how he rebuked the defective part within himself for its base desire.
But whence this intuitive realization that it is wrong to satisfy that powerful desire to look upon a dead body merely to satisfy that desire. Isn't this just some premodern taboo springing from a superstitious dread of death? That, after all, is the logical conclusion of a naturalistic materialism. If the body is just a sophisticated protein machine, it can be used like a junked automobile for whatever purpose we choose.
But no healthy human culture, let alone any of the great civilizations, has failed to care for and to bury with the respect of ceremony and ritual the bodies of its dead. And for the Christian, the reasons for this are several. First of all, by the mystery of sexual generation, the joining together of two physical entities, the sperm and the egg, calls forth a new person with a human body and a soul complete with mind, will and emotions. And when the human being has been regenerated through faith in Jesus Christ, that being's body becomes a temple of the Spirit of God. Finally, although that body remains mortal, it is destined to be resurrected in an incorruptible state to live forever in the presence of God.
Thus, the taboo against gazing upon a dead body is a reflection of the sacredness of the body as an integral part of the crown of God's creation, humanity, and of its potential as a habitation of God even during its mortal life. To disregard this taboo by making a public exhibit of dead bodies for the entertainment of the public is a step back in the direction of gladiatorial combats to the death. It was Christianity that ended those combats and it is the Post-Christianity of Secularism that welcomes this exploitation of our inner ghouls for fun and profit.
That the impulse to gaze upon dead human bodies is a from the baser part of human nature was recognized long ago by Plato (in the Euthyphro as I recall). One of the characters in the dialogue confesses that he had succumbed to the temptation to gaze at a body lying beside the road he was traveling and then, smitten with guilt for his shameful behavior, he went on to tell how he rebuked the defective part within himself for its base desire.
But whence this intuitive realization that it is wrong to satisfy that powerful desire to look upon a dead body merely to satisfy that desire. Isn't this just some premodern taboo springing from a superstitious dread of death? That, after all, is the logical conclusion of a naturalistic materialism. If the body is just a sophisticated protein machine, it can be used like a junked automobile for whatever purpose we choose.
But no healthy human culture, let alone any of the great civilizations, has failed to care for and to bury with the respect of ceremony and ritual the bodies of its dead. And for the Christian, the reasons for this are several. First of all, by the mystery of sexual generation, the joining together of two physical entities, the sperm and the egg, calls forth a new person with a human body and a soul complete with mind, will and emotions. And when the human being has been regenerated through faith in Jesus Christ, that being's body becomes a temple of the Spirit of God. Finally, although that body remains mortal, it is destined to be resurrected in an incorruptible state to live forever in the presence of God.
Thus, the taboo against gazing upon a dead body is a reflection of the sacredness of the body as an integral part of the crown of God's creation, humanity, and of its potential as a habitation of God even during its mortal life. To disregard this taboo by making a public exhibit of dead bodies for the entertainment of the public is a step back in the direction of gladiatorial combats to the death. It was Christianity that ended those combats and it is the Post-Christianity of Secularism that welcomes this exploitation of our inner ghouls for fun and profit.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Moral Vision & J. R. R. Tolkein’s
Monday morning when I heard Martin Luther King Jr.'s magnificent articulation of his moral vision voiced by a young African-American man on NPR's Morning Edition, I was moved. For, indeed, “some things are right and wrong, eternally so, absolutely so.” And this reminded me of a similar moral vision articulated by J. R. R. in The Two Towers: “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”
[This is essentially the text of the letter I sent to Morning Edition in response to their Kansas Celebrates MLK piece.]
[This is essentially the text of the letter I sent to Morning Edition in response to their Kansas Celebrates MLK piece.]
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Reflections on Roe v Wade at 35 Years and 50,000,000 Dead
This year's juxtaposition of Martin Luther King Jr., Day on January 21 and the anniversary of Roe v Wade on January 22 merits some reflection. As we saw yesterday, in a 1954 speech entitled, “Recovering Lost Values,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said:
As these powerful words would imply, his speech included frontal assaults on moral relativism and pragmatism and on the practical atheism that he saw in churches and church people who failed to stand up for what is right.
So if we believe as Dr. King said that it is always and everywhere absolutely wrong to hate another human being, what does that imply for abortion? My dictionary defines “hate” as “extreme aversion.” And abortion, in fact, involves an aversion to an unborn human being so strong that it requires the destruction of that innocent human being. By Dr. King’s principle, then, abortion must be wrong.
After 35 years and 50,000,000 American lives lost, the American Holocaust continues. O Lord, how long? For encouragement in the endurance always required to defeat evil, I suggest that you turn to Psalm 94 and Psalm 130 .
Some things are right and wrong, eternally so, absolutely so. It’s wrong to hate; it always has been wrong and it always will be wrong.
As these powerful words would imply, his speech included frontal assaults on moral relativism and pragmatism and on the practical atheism that he saw in churches and church people who failed to stand up for what is right.
So if we believe as Dr. King said that it is always and everywhere absolutely wrong to hate another human being, what does that imply for abortion? My dictionary defines “hate” as “extreme aversion.” And abortion, in fact, involves an aversion to an unborn human being so strong that it requires the destruction of that innocent human being. By Dr. King’s principle, then, abortion must be wrong.
After 35 years and 50,000,000 American lives lost, the American Holocaust continues. O Lord, how long? For encouragement in the endurance always required to defeat evil, I suggest that you turn to Psalm 94 and Psalm 130 .
Monday, January 21, 2008
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Moral Vision
In 1954, Martin Luther King, Jr., said:
Allan Bloom traced the intellectual history of this relativism in post-WWII America to its German roots in his The Closing of the American Mind. But moral absolutes were alive and well in King's mind and in the black churches that formed the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. They well understood that in America, the surest basis for our knowledge of these absolutes was the Law of God handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.
But in The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis outlined the "Way" or the "Tao," the universal moral insights of all the great civilizations in opposition to the Greenbook, which instructed British educators in how they should indoctrinate school children in relativism. And the Apostle Paul reveals to us that even in those nations that did not have the Law of Moses, "they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts" (Romans 2:15a).
The first thing I thought of this morning when I heard King's words was the passage from J. R. R. Tolkein's The Two Towers that I cited back in December:
A transcript of "Recovering Lost Values" is available at: http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrRediscoveringLostValues.htm
Some things are right and wrong, eternally so, absolutely so. It’s wrong to hate; it always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It is wrong in America, and it is wrong in Germany, it is wrong Russia, and it’s wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 BC and it is wrong in 1954 AD.This morning when I heard this passage from King's "Recovering Lost Values" speech on NPR's Morning Edition, I was struck by his emphasis on moral absolutes. Indeed, in that speech he boldly attacked the moral relativism that he saw as a threat to the moral vision that underlay his dream of justice and peace for America.
Allan Bloom traced the intellectual history of this relativism in post-WWII America to its German roots in his The Closing of the American Mind. But moral absolutes were alive and well in King's mind and in the black churches that formed the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. They well understood that in America, the surest basis for our knowledge of these absolutes was the Law of God handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.
But in The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis outlined the "Way" or the "Tao," the universal moral insights of all the great civilizations in opposition to the Greenbook, which instructed British educators in how they should indoctrinate school children in relativism. And the Apostle Paul reveals to us that even in those nations that did not have the Law of Moses, "they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts" (Romans 2:15a).
The first thing I thought of this morning when I heard King's words was the passage from J. R. R. Tolkein's The Two Towers that I cited back in December:
King's speech deserves study as an example of the power of moral absolutes to motivate the nonviolent battle for justice. And Tolkein's words are an example of the power of literature to cast a moral vision. Thus, J. R. R. Tolkein inculcates moral absolutes imaginatively as surely as does Martin Luther King discursively. And J. K. Rowling just as surely inculcates the moral relativism King abhorred. Literature resembles politics in that, for better or worse, it is always ultimately moralGood and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them,
as much in the GoldenWood as in his own house.
A transcript of "Recovering Lost Values" is available at: http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrRediscoveringLostValues.htm
Monday, January 7, 2008
Runner and Blogger Extraordinaire
Extreme distance runner (and pastor) Mark Swanson blogs at http://ultrapastor.blogspot.com/. Check it out, but don't take everything he says, expecially about the benefits of running, too seriously. On the other hand, he claims marriage is beneficial, too.
And I'm not sure about how many times he's read The Lord of the Rings, either.
And I'm not sure about how many times he's read The Lord of the Rings, either.
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