No Amnesty for Hypocrites!

"Amnesty is defined as a pardon for an offense. In this case, the offense is" driving faster than 35 mph on city streets (or 65 along designated sections of I-35), floating stop signs, crossing Lindsey St. during the do-not-walk signal, dropping cigarette butts on the ground or gum on the underside of a park bench, and failing to wash your hands after using the john before going back to work.

"The pardon is anything not subjecting [offenders] to proper punishment under the law.[...] We need to elect congressional representatives that understand amnesty is a failed solution."

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I doubt many "Law & Order" types on immigration issues would actually agree with the above, as they are all offenders. Somehow that doesn't stop them from demanding blood out of those who don't speak or look "American." It's thoroughly hypocritical to cry your way out of a speeding ticket or tell people to get off your back about the hand washing thing and still say that there must be no compromise toward illegal immigrants.

Does this mean it's OK for illegal immigrants to break the law? No. Does this mean we shouldn't find a solution that recognizes the demands of Justice? No. But if we refuse to show mercy toward strangers and foreigners, we must not dare to talk of mercy for ourselves... ever.

all quotes taken from the Facebook group No Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants!

Dogmatic Disagreement

So in the course of a recent (albeit brief) subject study through the Bible, I find a lack of Scriptural support for something most Christians I have met or heard of ascribe to. Before you get worried, this isn't anything that touches the ecumenical creeds (no venturing into truly heretical territory), nor even a violation of any historic reformed confessions. It truly is a secondary issue.

Because of the relative unimportance of the matter, I am left with a conundrum. On the one hand, I think it is important not to bind the consciences of believers where Christ has left them free. Telling the church that "Scripture says this" when it doesn't should then be a matter worth taking up. On the other hand, is it worth dissenting just to say "this is not necessarily so"? When is it worth it to say that something I've been taught from a young age presumes too much of divine revelation?

I guess I am torn on the issue partly because I'm not exactly strongly convinced of my new position. Aside from the appeal of logical consistency with other beliefs, I don't have a lot to argue my case with. "Scripture doesn't say that" is a good response to someone else's argument, but I may just be missing a nuance of language or further reference, so I could be persuaded back. Is something this weakly held worth bothering with at all?

Buying Faith

In the course of looking into the effect of religiousness on economic growth this semester, I have come across an interesting literature on the subject. It basically considers religious activity as a market - the product produced is a certain set of beliefs, beliefs which are produced using the inputs of individuals' attendance and time. Thus, if the beliefs are beneficial to economic growth, an increase in belief should (ceteris paribus) increase growth, while religious attendance should (again, ceteris paribus) decrease growth since it takes resources (time) from other activities. This is the argument of Harvard University's Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary.

At first this approach to religion, and specifically to Christianity, seemed very offensive. The gospel is not a product to be sold. Although men may constantly be trying to make salvation into a commodity (the money changers in the temple and the Tetzel's indulgences come to mind), I'd like to think that isn't the most significant legacy of Christ's Church.

On the other hand, the prediction makes sense if we think about it. If we believe that Christ's commands are a guide to how to best live in the world, a population that becomes more Christ-like should be better off materially as well as spiritually. For a more covenantal spin, if Christ blesses those who obey his covenant, we should have the same effect. Similarly, if we expect those who hear the Word and ignore it to be worse than those who never hear, more attendance without more belief should be harmful. Again for the covenantal spin, if the community grows by apostasizing, we would expect covenantal cursing. Same idea.

I'm left unsure how I should feel about this view of religion in general and Christianity in particular. It doesn't seem to offer any conclusions that blatantly contradict Scripture, and in fact may confirm some of it. Yet I am left with the feeling that this worldview obscures some important truth by looking with economic glasses at something that is not (primarily) a matter of resource allocation. Galileo brought mathematics to bear on physics, and the physicists argued he was destroying the ability to derive true knowledge from the subject. Perhaps we do the same now, and this just makes it easier to see since religion is an area we particularly don't want mathematical analysis to plunder.

Is human interaction in religion fundamentally just another market, or is there some other irreducible social structure at work?

Confessions and the Tao

While Sam is busy enculturating himself to the locals' ways, I am trying to disenculturate myself from the academicism which has become such an active part of my own mental process. I just got Lewis' The Abolition of Man for my birthday, and read through it in about a day's time. Men without chests... a creepy thought, even for one as pectorally challenged as myself. Yet I am one of these men, at least to some degree. My affections are few and lacking intensity (my wife has encouraged me to develop some preferences; she thinks they will do me good), and my actions are typically dominated by a need for carefully developed definitions and logically valid and completely stated premises. This has been the form of my education for many years now, and I have become exceedingly good at it. Unfortunately, an exceptionally developed and dominant Reason is not costless.

Aside from reading that great bringer of perspective (as distinguished from doctrine), C.S. Lewis, I'm also reading about Confucian and Taoist education in ancient China. I find that reading about the far east is a beneficial way to make the Hellenistic and Roman influences on my own thought more apparent, and thus easier to accept what is good (which is much) and reject what is not (which is also much).

This is probably related to the fact that I have recently been thinking about the shortcomings of logically precise language, specifically in relation to church creeds. We like to think that our precision protects us from error and allows us to communicate more. But if we look at the history of the Church, the early church father's didn't use precise language. Their teaching was heavily pastoral, and shepherding the flock means writing in a way meaningful for the layman. Much of what we consider to be precise wording was used only to explain why the teachings of the heretics should be rejected: the language was reactionary, not definitional.

Calvin used language this way when he asserted the "real presence" of Christ in the Lord's Supper to the Anabaptists, but rejected the "real presence" of the Lutherans and Catholics. Even as we look at the new testament, St. Paul does not use "justification" and "sanctification" in the technical senses reformed people use them today. The ideas we use them for are certainly present in his work, but his writings are letters, not religious dictionary entries or philosophical-doctrinal treatises.

Looking further back, it is clear that God generally speaks to his people, he uses stories and poetry, not formal argument. In Bible study this semester, we have been reading through Ecclesiastes. We have been seeing the Preacher develop a "confession of faith" of sorts, but rather different from what we usually associate with the phrase. As an example, the Preacher says

"I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man.
"I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away." (Ecclesiastes 3:12-15)

If we must express our faith only in sets of 5 points, "golden" chains of salvation, and careful parsings of ancient words like homostasis, we risk depriving ourselves of a vital part of how God seems to want his people to think, feel, and act. Divine truth should not be a cold thing, disconnected the hearts beating beneath from the brains above; and after all, do we really think that our care of language has eradicated Modalism from the Church? If we are just clear enough, can we dispose of faulty thinking?

Let's talk about...

A friend recently wrote a blog about his simultaneous belief in free will and divine predeterminism. I think he is very lucid and I agree. I don't understand why so many people insist that causality does not apply to human choices, especially when humans are quite demonstrably predictable.

Among other things that seem to be contradictory on the surface, but aren't:

I think that homosexual orientation is probably not a choice. And I still think that homosexual activity is sin. I also suspect that there are probably biological contributing factors in murderers. And I still think that murder is sin. The fact that we are predisposed from conception to do evil should not be surprising to Christians; on the contrary, it should be expected! It also means we should recognize that homosexuality is not a sin so horrible we could never commit it... on the contrary, there but for the grace of God go I. Albert Mohler offers some great thoughts on the issue here, and an beneficial addition here. If you follow the links, please read the entries in their entirety.

I think much of the evidence for global warming sounds spurious. But I believe we should take significant measures to protect the environment. From what I've been told about the data gathering techniques, we only have really good data for the last 20 years or so (satellite data), ok data for the last century (a few thousand thermometers around the globe), and highly suspect data before that (ice cores from antarctica are representative of the whole planet? If I based US income figures on a IRS records entirely from New Mexico I'd be laughed out of economics!). It could be that humans are increasing the planet's temperature, but what they have now isn't going to convince people to stop driving SUV's and fund more windmills. Thousands of children developing asthma, or even dying, in the slums outside San Diego because the winds over the city cause smokestack fumes to settle over homes might just get people thinking. If we would stop wasting time, resources, and public attention on global warming debates and spend them on local warming and pollution issues, where we have no debate at all and the sick people to prove it, environmental stewardship might be a bit better served. Oh, yeah: overfishing is bad.

I think wealth redistributive school vouchers are something ethical and responsible governance demands of the government. However, it might be in the best interest of some private Christian schools to not accept them. Ponder that one for a while.

I am against subsidizing American grain (and cotton, I've recently discovered) farms, because I think it doesn't help the "family farm," it doesn't serve national security, it causes waste, and it is unbelievably cruel and heartless toward the poor farmers of the world. But I am in favor of letting multinational businesses hire foreign labor and sub-American wages. We don't need to impose a poorly thought out "fair wage" on firms to protect the welfare of poor countries, we need to stop protecting our riches and essentially hogging all the toys we aren't playing with.

I would prefer a pure monarchy over a pure democracy.

I think people like Walmart because they prefer low prices over "personal service" (I've never been able to figure out what that is, anyway. Local grocers are as likely to be grumpy as anyone else). I wish they would build a medium sized parking garage rather than a 40 acre parking lot, though.

I don't understand why the best schools try to develop children's minds, but assume they don't need well developed bodies to do it. Aristotle, Confucius, Quintillian and all the ancients understood this, so why don't we?

I was going to add something about Federal Vision, but that's a bit too controversial. Probably this would be a sign to stop.

Topia

I haven't come up with a good way to explain my current thoughts on using formal language to define theological beliefs, so I will have to return to this in the near future (perhaps after some good conversation on the issue, anyone?) In the meantime enjoy the following thought experiment.


In the Year 2101 AD (give or take a few years)-
In the pursuit of its war on world terrorism, the United States discovered that, in addition to the Islamic states it had already fought, its onetime allies of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had become central hubs for muslim terrorists. Pouring all of its resources into the conflict, as the country had not done since the Civil War, the United States succeeded in wresting civil government from the hands of Islam throughout the near eastern world. Victory was declared, and the influence of Islam over world events was reduced to a level unseen since the 10th century.

However, this was not the conquest of the West over Islam nor the last Crusade, as the US faced a heavy price. With the death toll of the war so high, great restrictions on freedoms central to the nation's charter, and the productive capacity of the US strained to support military activity, the US lost its once prestigious place as "the world's only superpower." On top of this, the eventual disassociation of most of the mainline Christian denominations from their world communions (for failure of US Churches to uphold the Christian tradition) further weakened the US's world influence.

By removing Pakistan from the world stage, the US opened the way for leaps of economic growth in India, which has now passed the US as one of the world's main economic players, and the most prosperous democracy in the world. Likewise, by staying out of the conflict Japan was able to rise beside India, building itself a reputation as the center for technological innovation in the world.

Perhaps more surprising is China, which after finally negotiating the reincorporation of Taiwan Province, made several surprising moves. As the US became more aggressive against world terrorism and North Korea became more and more ready to enter the conflict, China abruptly invaded their onetime ally, taking the country almost overnight. Even more surprising, they immediately began negotiations to cede control of the entire peninsula to South Korea, claiming that they wished to see the Korean people "reunited even as we are." China had already demonstrated that a market economy could exist without democracy, but they had now shown a depth of international diplomacy which garnered the respect of world leaders and foreign investors in remarkable new ways. Growing at a rate which accomodated higher population growth, the "one child" policy was relinquished, and China has taken its place beside India and Japan as the so-called Tier 1 nations of the world, and placing the center of the world economy decisively on the continent of Asia.

A surprising up-and-comer in the world was Brazil, which utilized its geography and physical isolation to rise in world prominence, becoming the most influential nation to still consider itself Christian (primarily Roman Catholic). So the Tier 2 economic powers are Brazil, the European Union, the US, and Russia (which after all never really leaves world politics, does it?)

But where, you might wonder, are all the Christians? There are certainly Christians among every nation, tribe, and tongue, but amid the poor and humble nations of Africa, Christianity has found peoples who can identify with its message of brokenness and redemption from slavery. Although Roman Catholics still flock to the Vatican, now Anglican, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist missionaries from Ethiopia, Sudan, South Africa, and other nations pour into the wealthier nations crying out that resources and riches will bring neither happiness nor salvation (and that there is a difference between the two).

So this is the world. English is the Lingua Franca, but the most powerful nation status is divided between India, China, and Japan, with the US, EU, Russia, and Brazil tied for second place. World Islam is a relevant (but stagnant) minority in the world and a weak voice even in the middle east, while Christianity has only found a thriving home in the chorus of poorest nations in the world.

How would you feel about a world like this? If you knew your grandchildren were going to raise their children in this world, what would you do? Is this world a Eutopia, a Dystopia, or a Utopia?