Why do the heathen rage?

Sweet Cakes By Melissa has officially announced that it is closed for good, just a few days ago on the bakery's Facebook page. See here and here.

Around the same time the New York Times decided to run this story, following up on an elderly Christian couple forced out of the wedding venue and B & B business by the homosexual mafia. Do they really have the slightest genuine sympathy for them? They manage to create a sympathetic-sounding story, but it's the Times, so they'd probably run them out of business again if necessary. Nothing personal. Just a matter of business.

Meanwhile, I can get no further information about Mennonite missionary to Nicaragua Timothy Miller, about whom I wrote here. Is he still held there in limbo? We can only pray.

Psalm 2

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

Psalm 37

Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.

For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.

The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.

The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation.

Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.

[snip]

I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.

Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.

But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he is their strength in the time of trouble.

And the Lord shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.

Signaling importance

It's correct in some cases to say that society can show its disapproval of some evil actions only by reacting to those actions in certain ways.

Take slavery, for example. If someone says, "I'm personally opposed to enslaving people, but I think it should be legal," then we know that he doesn't really think enslaving people is all that bad. The same with abortion. It's not possible to affirm the full humanity and full personhood of the unborn child while holding that abortion should be "a choice left up to the mother and her doctor."

But sometimes people get odd and incorrect ideas in their heads about how society must signal the importance of some evil.

Take, for example, federalizing crime. There is an idea out there that is both constitutionally and morally incorrect that says that, if you really think that some crime is truly bad and truly important, you will hold that it must be punished at the federal level. Often this statement will be made by an earnest pro-lifer with abortion in mind. When someone says that kind of thing, I will point out that pretty much all heinous crimes are still (rightly and constitutionally) punished at the state level rather than at the federal level. It is not signaling a disregard for the evil of rape and torture that a rape and torture that doesn't involving crossing state lines or any of the other "triggers" for federalization (e.g., certain firearms) is a state crime and is tried and punished at the state level. It's not as though the only way to show proper moral outrage for heinous crime is to have a federal police force and to federalize all serious crimes! And in fact it would be highly imprudent to do so.

But most people who say such things about abortion haven't thought of that.

What I think they really mean is something like this: If abortion is really the murder of an unborn child, then states should be required somehow, perhaps by the Constitution, at least to have laws against abortion rather than declaring it "open season" on unborn children, Well, that gets us into all sorts of fascinating issues such as the correct interpretation of the "nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws" clause in the 14th amendment. I have an old post on that here that I still think makes some good points about equal protection and how its jurisprudence went off the rails. Then there's the question which Robert Bork addressed long ago as to whether the framers of the 14th amendment or their audience would have regarded the unborn as "persons" for legal purposes--a point that is going to be relevant to originalists.

But if someone wants to have that discussion about constitutional protections and state laws, it would be much, much better not to say, "If we really think abortion is murder, then it should be prohibited by the national government." That just doesn't follow. The murder of most 50-year-old people is prohibited at the state rather than the federal level. It isn't a necessary form of "evil signaling" to federalize a crime.

Another kind of importance signaling, in an (admittedly) totally different area, is dragging some subject in all over the place, even where it is not obviously relevant. For example, I saw someone on Facebook launch into a long discussion of sexual abuse in Christian churches and try to tie it to the Target boycott somehow, implying that people would do better to direct their energies at opposing church sexual abuse rather than at worrying about the evils of transgender-friendly store policies.

Sexual abuse of children in churches is a very serious matter, and in no way am I downplaying it. But it has precisely zip to do with boycotting Target and with opposition to Target's transgender policy. If this isn't obvious, I can spell it out further in the comments. But for the moment I'm going to take it as obvious and note generally this tacit mistaken idea: If X is a really serious problem, then it's always relevant to bring it up and connect it with any other topic or use it to downplay the importance of some other topic that people are concerned about.

Well, no. It's not as though the seriousness of X means that X can never be a hobby horse, can never be ridden to death, can never be dragged into a discussion where it doesn't make sense, can never give rise to an apples and oranges comparison. And I'm afraid that sexual abuse of children is the kind of X that causes people to get a blind spot about this, presumably because it is such a bad thing.

How much time one spends talking about something is going to be a matter of personal taste and personal motivation. Even, perhaps, personal calling, if that is not too grand of a word. I confess to being subject to the temptation that almost everybody in the social media age is probably subject to: The temptation to tell people who are chattering about Y that they should be worrying or talking about X instead, that they need to be getting a sense of perspective, that they're making a big deal about something that isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. I do that, too. Or I feel like doing it. I suppose that's what the hashtag "firstworldproblems" is all about. "Oh, poor baby, your espresso machine isn't working? Try being a Christian refugee about to be crucified by ISIS. Sheesh."

Not that anyone is likely to think it's his personal calling to complain about his espresso machine.

But I think one should admit that the transgender agenda is a big deal in its own right and that fighting it is an important thing. It's not the cultural equivalent of a broken espresso machine. Hence, people who boycott Target have a legitimate concern. That's not to say that everybody has to boycott Target. Boycotts aren't always effective, sometimes you might legitimately need something at Target that you can't find elsewhere or that is too expensive elsewhere,  etc. Boycotts are almost never morally obligatory. But it is one perfectly legit way to show that Middle America knows when Target is giving it the middle finger and that Middle America is not pleased about that.

This particular type of "importance signaling" (telling people they should be talking about X instead of Y) really results from underlying political and moral differences of opinion. And it can go in both directions. If I as a pro-lifer feel annoyed when progressives, especially progressive Christians, are agonizing over veganism but never talking about abortion, that's because I think that veganism is (frankly) ridiculous and that nobody should be agonizing about it. It's also because I think human beings are more valuable than animals, that vegans really often do have a lack of a sense of the relative importance of these matters, and that the combo of veganism and not talking about abortion is probably symptomatic of a failure to appreciate the relatively greater importance of mankind, made in the image of God, over animals.

What I tend to notice sometimes (not always) when it comes to importance signaling is that, when it is coming from the somewhat more progressive side, there is a sort of tortured attempt not to come out and say this about underlying differences of opinion. Instead of saying, "I think Christians who are somewhat more socially conservative than I am are just plain wrong in their assessment of the evil and importance of the transgender agenda," they have to say something else. Something (for example) about comparing the odds of a child's being molested at Target to his being molested in a church youth group. So it's hard to get to argue about the real underlying difference of opinion--namely, the importance or unimportance of Y. Because the attempt to do this is seen as denying the importance of X. But X and Y may be non-comparable in their importance.

It isn't always the case that a person who has a hobby horse about X really disagrees with other people about the importance of their issues. There is such a thing as a "pure" hobby horse that just gets ridden on any and all occasions. I don't want to overgeneralize. But a hobby horse can be a symptom of an underlying political difference, and it can be useful to get that out into the open.

If X is bad enough, there's a fear of appearing to downplay X by accusing someone of having a hobby horse about X. And of course there's no need to start fights all over the place. Social media is unpleasant enough without recklessly losing all your friends that way! But I do think it's important not to be so intimidated by certain concerns that we let them turn into a kind of collective hysteria. And I fear that the issue of child abuse in the church is in danger of becoming precisely that sort of hysteria-inducing issue, leading even to the loss of concepts like due process and the danger (and possibility) of bearing false witness.

Importance signaling can increase this sort of hysteria if not challenged, so just occasionally, it's not a bad idea to challenge it.

"O Valiant Hearts"

Well, here I am in mid-September putting up a post that fits better with Memorial Day or Veterans' Day. The explanation is quite simple: We sang "Rise Up, O Men of God" in church yesterday. I'm the organist, and as I was sitting at the organ, paging through the hymnal to get to "Rise Up, O Men of God," I stumbled upon "O Valiant Hearts" just a few pages earlier in the 1940 hymnal. I was struck by the beauty of the poetry and wondered what the tunes were. Two tunes are given in the 1940 hymnal.

Well, I still haven't checked out the tunes in the 1940 hymnal (the tunes are "Valiant Hearts" and "Birmingham"). Perhaps I'll like one or both of them as well. But my on-line research yesterday turned up the fact that in England the hymn text is almost always sung (e.g., on the English Remembrance Day) to yet a third tune, which for some reason didn't make it into the 1940 hymnal. That tune is "The Supreme Sacrifice," and was apparently written specifically for the text in the early 20th century by the Rev. Dr. Charles Harris. Both the music and the tune are found here. The tune is in an embedded video. Watch on Youtube here. I like the tune "The Supreme Sacrifice" so much that it's been playing in my head ever since I looked it up yesterday. I think it would be hard to beat.

The text, which honors the WWI British dead, is a poem by Sir John Stanhope Arkwright and was originally published in a collection of poetry on WWI.


O valiant hearts, who to your glory came
Through dust of conflict and through battle-flame,
Tranquil you lie, your knightly virtue proved,
Your memory hallowed in the Land you loved.

Proudly you gathered, rank on rank to war,
As who had heard God's message from afar;
All you had hoped for, all you had, you gave
To save Mankind - yourselves you scorned to save.

Splendid you passed, the great surrender made,
Into the light that nevermore shall fade;
Deep your contentment in that blest abode,
Who wait the last clear trumpet-call of God.

Long years ago, as earth lay dark and still
Rose a loud cry upon a lonely hill,
While in the frailty of our human clay
Christ, our Redeemer, passed the self-same way.

Still stands his cross from that dread hour to this
Like some bright star above the dark abyss;
Still through the veil the victor's pitying eyes
Look down to bless our lesser Calvaries.

These were his servants, in his steps they trod,
Following through death the martyr'd Son of God:
Victor he rose; victorious too shall rise
They who have drunk his cup of sacrifice.

O risen Lord, O shepherd of our dead,
Whose cross has bought them and whose staff has led-
In glorious hope their proud and sorrowing land
Commits her children to thy gracious hand.

The Christian concepts here are interesting. They are distinctly Edwardian (or perhaps even Victorian) in a way that is slightly difficult to explain. One way to put it is that Jesus is treated as an exemplar (even referring to him as "martyred") and that the author sees nothing theologically dangerous in comparing the sacrifice of soldiers to save people from temporal harm to the sacrifice of Jesus to save man from sin and hell. Though I suppose one could argue that that isn't absolutely distinctly Edwardian, since we find it in more modern songs as well. A notable example is Twila Paris's "What Did He Die For?"

The Bible itself says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend." Laying down one's life even in a "secular" cause certainly can be noble, and the poem's unstinting, beautifully worded praise of the fallen as heroes prompts legitimate admiration and love. One also remembers the appalling numbers of British dead in World War I, which gives weight to "their proud and sorrowing land."  I'm not ashamed to say that I would doubtless tear up hearing this played at a military funeral or on Memorial Day. All the more so given the soaring melody.

This will definitely be on my list to play at church next Memorial Day weekend and possibly this upcoming Veterans Day weekend.

John Derbyshire's hatred of the good

I'm long behind the times. In fact, I'm about to write about a book review that was written just over a decade ago. I'm quite sure that there are more examples out there, by this same author, of what I'm going to write about here. But in a sense that's part of my point--namely, that this author was writing material this bad this long ago. Occasionally one will run into anguished "race realists" or Trump supporters or alt-rightists or other characters who seem to be deeply upset about the fact that National Review removed John Derbyshire from its stable of writers in 2012. How terrible that the right thus purges itself! What an example of wimpy political correctness! What a loss! And so on, and so forth.

Now, my own impression at the time that the actual divorce took place was that they could and probably should have chosen a better last straw. There had been (even by my cursory estimate) so many other straws that should have been the last. And, yes, perhaps one could write a little treatise on the psychology of National Review editors and on why it was something Derbyshire wrote about race relations (which wasn't anyway as bad as other, imaginable things he could have written about race) instead of his militant atheism and his hatred for the pro-life movement that pushed them over the edge.

But I'm not going to write that psychological musing. I'm just going to talk about his visceral and creepy hatred for the pro-life movement, which did not strike me with full force (perhaps because I was always somewhat bored by Derb and hence inattentive) until I read this old article.

Why write about such an old article? Well, for one thing, because Derbyshire hasn't dematerialized or anything. He's still out there and still writing and being read. So, unless he's repented (ha ha) in dust and ashes for this interesting piece of vitriol and the ideas it expresses, the article remains, in a sense, ever-timely. Second and perhaps more important, Derbyshire's long stint at National Review after writing this article (six more years) as well as the unfortunate rise of the alt-right in 2016 tell us all too loudly and clearly that there are people who want to be called "conservative," and who sometimes succeed in getting that label affixed to them rather firmly, but who hate human life and hate those who fight for human life. It would be well for those of us who have closely identified American conservatism with the pro-life movement and ourselves with both of these to be aware, and wary, on this account. These anti-lifers mean business, and we and they have no common ground on which to meet. Third, and related to both, is the fact that normal conservatives are now being pressured in comboxes by alt-rightists to denounce loudly National Review's getting rid of Derbyshire in 2012. That's happening today. In light of this 2006 Derbyshire piece, my response is a strengthened version of my original impression. Namely, my only regret is that it didn't happen sooner and on the even more solid ground of his visceral hatred of the pro-life movement, a movement for which (allegedly) the National Review stood as the flagship journal of American conservatism. Derbyshire's absence from National Review and from mainstream conservatism is therefore to be praised, not mourned, and the more informed we become, the more we will realize that. This should lead us to be skeptical about the supposed "martyrs of political correctness" whose purgings from polite company we are told we should mourn with the Internet equivalent of black armbands and righteously angry scowls.

The various strands of conservative fusionism in America are coming apart with a vengeance in the current Presidential election. We have a GOP candidate who cares nothing whatsoever for the defining social issues and his vicious followers  of the alt-right who talk much like Derbyshire (and worse) about pro-life conservatives. At the same time, a European-style Christian Democratic party has appeared on the American horizon, manned by people who appear to be deeply sincere in their commitment to the sanctity of human life but who are (not to put too fine a point on it) dangerously out to lunch on virtually all economic, environmental, and other prudential issues, including the size and power of government.

The Derbyshire article in question, which recently came to my attention via this interesting post by David Mills, is a review of Ramesh Ponnuru's pro-life treatise Party of Death. Derbyshire's review was published in the New English Review in 2006.

A dead giveaway that Derbyshire really, really dislikes pro-lifers is that he starts by (more or less) calling the pro-life movement (which he dubs RTL for "right-to-life") a cult. From that point on, he literally can't bring himself to refer to it as anything normal, not even a cause. He has to have a pause before "cause," as if every reference to it is distasteful.

Can Right to Life (hereinafter RTL) fairly be called a cult? This is a point on which I cannot make up my mind. Some of the common characteristics of culthood are missing—the Führerprinzip, for example. On the other hand, RTL has the following things in common with every cult in the world: To those inside, it appears to be a structure of perfect logical integrity, founded on unassailable philosophical principles, while to those outside—among whom, obviously, I count myself—it seems to some degree (depending on the observer’s temperament and inclinations) nutty; to some other degree (ditto) hysterical; and to some yet other degree (ditto ditto) a threat to liberty.

[snip]

Ramesh Ponnuru is one of the best advocates a cult—cause, movement, whatever—could hope for;

See, for example, this exceedingly back-handed compliment for Ponnuru:

Whether it is a cult or not, RTL is made as presentable as possible in Party of Death, with writing that is engaging and lucid. Will Ponnuru’s book make any converts to the RTL whatever-it-is? That depends on how much exposure it gets outside RTL circles. Just to be on the safe side, the mainstream media are studiously ignoring the book—a sad reflection on the current state of public debate, and of respect for rhetorical virtuosity. RTL-ers are welcoming Party of Death very joyfully, though, and they are right to do so, as it is an exceptionally fine piece of polemical writing in support of their... cause.

"Their...ewww...[picks up spider with forefinger and thumb] cause."

We get it, John, you're disgusted by the pro-life movement. Did it ever occur to you that people who are less (what was that word? ah, yes) hysterical than you are about the DANGEROUS pro-life movement might find you rather creepy for your inability to write a single smooth sentence in which you refer to it as a cause?

But pro-lifers aren't the only ones who disgust Derbyshire. Those they defend also disgust him. Indeed, it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say that Derbyshire is disgusted by pro-lifers precisely because they defend the lives and humanity of people by whom he is disgusted. For example, he cannot bring himself to speak of Terri Schiavo without triggering his own gag reflex. She, and her daring to live when she should have died here sooner, clearly disgust him viscerally:

The second of those ratings [degree of hysteria] would have been lower before the grotesque carnival surrounding the death of Terri Schiavo last year, when a motley menagerie of quack doctors, bogus “Nobel Prize nominees,” emoting relatives, get-a-life monomaniacs, keening mobs of religious fanatics, death-threat-hissing warriors for “life,” dimwitted TV presenters straining to keep their very best my-puppy-just-died faces on while speaking of “Terri” as if they had known her personally from grade school, pandering politicians, and shyster lawyers all joined forces in a massive effort to convince the American public that RTL was a thing no sane citizen ought to touch with a barge pole while wearing triple-ply rubber gloves.

[snip]

The word “polemical” needs emphasizing. Some people would say that a writer who refers to embryos as “the young,” to Mrs. Schiavo as “disabled,” or to the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment as having carefully pondered its implications for abortion, is just plain dishonest.

Heaven forbid anyone should call Terri Schiavo "disabled" or should refer to embryonic, individual members of the human species as "the young."

We likewise feel that an adult woman’s life, even a few months of it, is worth more than that of a hardly-formed fetus; and that the vigorous, usefully-employed, merrily procreating Michael Schiavo has a life, a life, more worthy of the name than had the incurably insensate relict of his spouse.

One has to pause to admire (?), be struck dumb by (?), the Nietzschean-Darwinian logic by which Derbyshire decrees that Michael Schiavo's unfaithfulness to his disabled wife and the production of children with a woman to whom he was not married make him positively admirable. "Merrily procreating" and "vigorous." Yes, that's what we normal, moral people always call a man who behaves like that! As for "usefully employed," why yes, that is obviously an important criterion for a life worthy of life. Arbeit macht frei.

And just in case you thought referring to a living, breathing human being as an "insensate relict" was as low as Derbyshire could go in dehumanizing those he wants to see killed, out of pity for those whose real lives they are interrupting, you were wrong, because there's also this:

Here I meet a man whose loved wife has gone, never to return, yet her personless body still twitches and grunts randomly on its plastic sheet, defying years of care and therapy.

You will notice that "Mrs. Schiavo" has disappeared, in every sense, by this point in Derbyshire's manifesto.

Derbyshire makes it quite clear that his detestation for pro-lifers and those they defend is not based upon argument or principle. Indeed, he seems faintly resentful of the fact that Ponnuru has carefully mustered a coherent, well-argued philosophical position. The resentment shows, for example, in this artful little bit of well-poisoning, in which he does not interact with a single argument of Ponnuru's but rather dismisses Ponnuru's arguments on the grounds that they are "inspired by religious belief."

Yet it remains the case that our Constitution does not permit the framing of laws based on the peculiar tenets of any religion or sect, and Party of Death is obviously inspired by religious belief. The philosophical passages strictly follow the Golden Rule of religious apologetics, which is: The conclusion is known in advance, and the task of the intellectual is to erect supporting arguments. It would be an astounding thing, just from a statistical point of view, if, after conducting a rigorous open-ended inquiry from philosophical first principles, our author came to conclusions precisely congruent with the dogmas of the church in which he himself is a communicant. Yet that is the case, very nearly, with Party of Death. Remarkable! What if, after all that intellectual work, all that propositional algebra, all those elegant syllogisms, the author had come to the conclusion that abortion was not such a bad thing after all? I suppose he would have been plunged into severe psychic distress. Fortunately there was never the slightest chance of this happening.

However well-written the periods of that (snarky) paragraph may be, the attentive reader will notice that they, at any rate, cannot be accused of containing any intellectual work, much less any elegant syllogisms. Why bother with all that when one can accomplish what one wants to accomplish instead by disdaining intellectual work and insinuating that Ponnuru undertakes his own intellectual efforts in bad faith? But this is very nearly the definition of the abuse of rhetoric. Thrasymachus, call your office.

It is ironic that Derbyshire, the atheist, obviously thinks himself much superior to religious believers in terms of rationality. But his complaint in this context against Ponnuru and his fellow pro-lifers is that we insist on using arguments and following inconvenient principles when instead, if only we were not cold, heartless, bastards, we would be relying solely on gut feelings.

Our preferred method for dealing with the unpleasant side of life, including topics like abortion and euthanasia, is to think about them as little as possible. In the fuss over Mrs. Schiavo, it was not hard to detect a general public irritation at having had the whole unsightly business forced on our attention. Perhaps this is not humanity at its most noble, but:

Show me what angels feel.
Till then I cling, a mere weak man, to men.

A corollary, though Ponnuru seems unaware of it, is that people who are obsessively interested in these topics seem, to the rest of us, a bit creepy. We may even find ourselves wondering which side, really, is the Party of Death. Ponnuru says that it is unjust to regard some instances of the human organism as less alive than others based on how we feel about them. (Another RTL-er once derided this approach to me, in conversation, as “Barry Manilow ethics”—the worth of another human life judged by our own feelings, wo wo wo feelings... I offer this designation for Ramesh Ponnuru’s future use, free of charge.) Unfortunately most of us do so judge; and feelings, wo wo wo feelings, are a much more common foundation for our social taboos than are Natural Law principles, or indeed any abstract principles at all. Why, if a woman’s husband dies, should she not use his corpse for garden mulch, or serve it up with mashed potatoes and collard greens for dinner? I cannot think of any reason well rooted in pure philosophy, though there might be a public health issue to be addressed. We do not do such things because of the disgust we feel—we feel—at the mistreatment of human corpses.

We likewise feel that an adult woman’s life, even a few months of it, is worth more than that of a hardly-formed fetus; and that the vigorous, usefully-employed, merrily procreating Michael Schiavo has a life, a life, more worthy of the name than had the incurably insensate relict of his spouse. Those like Ponnuru who think differently are working against the grain of human nature, against our feelings—yes, our feelings—about what life is. The life of a newly-formed embryo, or of a brain-damaged patient who has shown no trace of consciousness for fifteen years, is worth just as much as the life of a healthy adult, Ponnuru insists. Well, most of us instinctively but emphatically disagree, and no amount of argumentative ingenuity is likely to change our minds. Hearts, whatever.

[snip]

If, from the principles of Natural Law, it ineluctably follows that women who discover that they are bearing Down Syndrome fetuses should not be allowed to abort those fetuses, then I can assure Ramesh Ponnuru that Natural Law principles will be tossed out of the window by every juridical authority in the land, so long as we remain a democracy. And that is as it should be.

And thus Derbyshire works himself up to his pro-death, feeling-based, furious peroration:

Here I find a couple who want a lively, healthy child, but who know their genes carry dark possibilities of a lifetime’s misery and an early death. They permit multiple embryos to be created, select the one free from the dread traits, and give over the rest to the use of science, or authorize their destruction.

The RTL-ers would tell me that these people, and the medical professionals who help them, are all moral criminals, who have destroyed human lives. They support their belief with careful definitions, precise chains of reasoning, and—I do not doubt it—sincere intentions. Yet how inhuman they seem! What a frigid and pitiless dogma they preach!—one that would take from the living, without any regard to what the living have to say about it, to give to those whom common intuition regards as nonliving; that would criminalize acts of compassion, and that would strip away such little personal autonomy as is left to us after the attentions of the IRS, Big Medicine, the litigation rackets, and the myriad government bureaucracies that regulate our lives and peer into our private affairs.

For RTL is, really, just another species of Political Correctness, just another manifestation of the intellectual pathology, the hypertrophied and academical egalitarianism, the victimological scab-picking, the gaseous sentimentality. that has afflicted our civilization this past forty years. We have lost our innocence, traded it in for a passel of theorems. The RTL-ers are just another bunch of schoolmarms trying to boss us around and to diminish our liberties. Is it wrong to have concern for fetuses and for the vegetative, incapable, or incurable? Not at all. Do we need to do some hard thinking about the notion of personhood in a society with fast-advancing biological capabilities? We surely do. (And I think Party of Death contributes useful things to that discussion.) Should we let a cult of theologians, monks, scolds, grad-school debaters, logic-choppers, and schoolmarms tell us what to do with our wombs, or when we may give up the ghost, or when we should part with our loved ones? Absolutely not! Give me liberty, and give me death!

(Did someone say something about only pretending to do hard thinking so long as one is careful to come to predetermined conclusions? Why, yes, I believe someone did. But the pretense here is very thin. Derbyshire merely talks, for one sentence, about "doing hard thinking." He doesn't actually do any himself. Indeed, there is something of the fakery Derbyshire affects to despise in his talk about the importance of "having a discussion" and "doing hard thinking" in the very midst of heaping angry scorn upon anyone on the other side of such a "discussion" who comes to conclusions different from those endorsed by his own feelings.)

Well, now that we know that Derbyshire thinks that those who want to protect the unborn (yes, even the unborn with Down Syndrome) and the inconvenient helpless are "another manifestation of the hypertrophied and academical egalitarianism, the victimological scab-picking, the gaseous sentimentality, that has afflicted our civilization this past forty years," we can make our decisions accordingly. My own decision, had I been an editor of National Review in charge of such things in 2006, having read this venomous, murderous, irrational, fascistic screed against the defenders of life and the victims for whom they speak (Lebensunwertes Leben in Derbyshire's anti-egalitarian ideal world), would have been to boot Derbyshire's posterior out the door so fast that any film of the event would have caught nothing but a blur. If the other editors, through misplaced patience and an abstract notion of the free exchange of ideas, kept around someone who so despised the pro-life movement, a central pillar of American conservatism, for six more years and then fired him for a different reason, you will find it difficult to induce me to shed any tears over the final outcome.

This is not conservatism, and anyone who holds with Derbyshire concerning the wicked "egalitarianism" of the pro-life movement is not an ally social conservatives can work with.

I do not know what will happen in the end to American conservatism. I have lived to see both the birth and, in a sad and important sense, the death of the American religious right, with its shameful endorsement of Donald Trump for President. And I'm not even that old. What will rise from its ashes is beyond any mere man's power to predict. But I do know that no good can come of despising the weak, the helpless, and those who cannot speak. No good can come of treating human life as a commodity with a value on a sliding scale, so that those humans who seem to us attractive, vital, and productive have "a life, a life," while those unfortunate human beings who don't arouse such feelings in the rest of us must get out of the way.

So I'll keep looking for candidates and allies, even if I can't find a party, who understand those things. I'll also (sorry, American Solidarity Party) want them not to be incredibly foolish about the use of practical political power and about economics in the United States. And (sorry, Constitution Party) their candidates should not be nuts who coyly refuse to say whether or not they are 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Those of us who represent the last of the fusionists, a dying breed, may be doomed to disappointment in the world of politics. But the one thing we won't do, if we have any principle at all, is give up on the social issues. Because whoever turns out to be right on the pragmatic issues, on the matters of fundamental principle we know that we will have the last word, when it all comes tumbling down, when "The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare."

Reverence, fundamentalism, and modern evangelicalism

Recently I heard on the radio that an adult coloring Bible has been published by Zondervan.

The Babylon Bee has been satirizing the proliferation of "Bibles" for a while (e.g., here, here, and here), but really, satire almost seems to be dead on this subject.

In real life there is the so-called Brick Bible, which is a Bible story book (why does a Bible story book have to be called a Bible, since they aren't the same thing?) done in the style of Lego pictures. They even crucify a Lego Jesus on a Lego cross.

And then there's this one: NIV Wild About Horses Bible. It intersperses photos of horses, inscribed with "short inspirational thoughts and scripture verses on themes of love, peace, friendship, beauty, strength and faith [that] accompany the photos," amongst the pages of Holy Writ.

I was posting about the coloring Bible on Facebook and encountered the argument that "as long as it gets more people to read the Bible, what's the problem?" Well, I beg to question whether, in fact, a coloring book combined with the text of the Bible is actually going to get more people to read the Bible.

In thinking about all the problems with treating the text of the Bible (or even dumbed-down Bible stories labeled as "a Bible") as an opportunity for marketers to make lots of money by selling people irreverent, self-expressionistic kitsch, I got to thinking about this whole notion of reverence.

At first I was tempted to think that the "what does it matter" evangelical tin ear to all matters of tackiness and reverence is a result of an absence of sacramentalism. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that isn't quite right, sociologically.

The old fundamentalists would have had conniptions over a coloring Bible. They carried their Bibles, the actual physical books, with reverence. They even questioned whether you should place your Bible on the floor. And don't get me started imagining what they would have probably said about a fake Lego "Bible" in which Lego Jesus gets crucified on a Lego cross.

Yet they weren't, at least officially, sacramentalists. They may have treated the physical bodies of their Bibles in a quasi-sacramental way, but the only theory involved in general was the theory of being reverent and respectful toward sacred matters, including the Word of God. This meant that there were proprieties that needed to be followed. The Veggie Tales makers showed some of this idea of propriety when they refused to do New Testament stories in which Jesus appeared as a vegetable (!).

Part of the problem with a "coloring Bible," which is in turn a lot less bad than a Lego Bible, is the idea that the things of the Lord exist principally for our benefit. A Bible that you color in encourages the idea that the Bible exists for your entertainment and enjoyment rather than your existing for God's glory. Another obvious problem is history. The Bible is a large, messy, often unpleasant set of books in a variety of historical settings. It's not there to be pretty or soothing.

It would be one thing to have a coloring book, a thin, cheap, paperback thing that made no claim to be a Bible, that had some passages from the Psalms with pictures of flowers to color. Even that would be somewhat kitschy. We pick out the parts that we like, combine them with pretty pictures, and give them to you to soothe your mind and meditate on. But it is much worse to print an entire Bible this way. At least a coloring book using Bible passages is openly, frankly, using biblical passages for some other purpose. The purchaser of a mere coloring book is under no illusion that he's getting the whole Scripture. An entire Bible, printed, is supposed to have an existence in itself, aside from any particular use to which we might want to put it. In this way the whole Bible, or even a printed New Testament, testifies to the fact that man is not the measure of all things. This is an uncompromisingly real set of historical books that exists apart from ourselves and that we cannot make in our own image. We may turn to particular passages in our time of need. That isn't wrong. But if we really want to know the Scriptures, we must be prepared to be judged by the Scriptures. A coloring Bible communicates something quite different.

The old fundamentalists understood that sort of thing instinctively. But perhaps instinct is not enough in the fight against cultural slide. As the culture has coarsened and become aesthetically tone-deaf, as reverence has waned in general, virtually all of the churches that were once quiet, even somewhat bare, testaments to quiet, pious, Protestant prayer have succumbed to the culture of kitsch. Rightly desiring to bring souls to Christ, they have hired more and more number-focused pastors who subscribe to the "what does it matter, so long as..." school of thought. We wouldn't want our churches to be boring, bare, and frumpy, would we? And we wouldn't want to be legalistic and judgemental, would we? And mere aesthetics are just subjective, aren't they?

God doesn't think so. God ordered that even the tabernacle was to be made beautiful. The God who struck a man dead for touching the Ark of the Covenant hardly seems like a God who doesn't care about ceremony. It was our Lord Jesus himself who drove the money-changers from the Temple for showing disrespect for the physical House of God and using it only as a means of profit. Can irreverence send souls to hell? I venture to fear that it can.

Irreverence where there should be reverence takes us away from the awe and majesty of the great God who, miracle of miracles, loves us, and from the glorious, painful seriousness of the Christian faith, rooted in uncompromising historical fact, recorded and revealed in ancient and somewhat alien books. I suggest that we try to teach Christians to confront and meditate on all of that rather than softening and obscuring it with coloring Bible Christianity.

In closing, I leave you with a few words from the inimitable Alistair Begg, on the related subject of worship and feelings:

This is the true face of the alt-right

I enjoy having full comments moderation turned on here at Extra Thoughts. It allows me to filter the nastiness I get in response to posts like this one. I've also decided to start posting more, and shorter, posts here, more like Facebook updates.

I just learned of this bit of despicable trash today. As one Facebook wag put it, I wonder how it reads in the original German.

This is the face of the alt-right. If you are a conservative with any conscience left, have nothing to do with it, period. And, yeah, I really couldn't care less how upset you are with the betrayals of establishment Republicans. You must be really messed up if you think for a moment that "being frustrated with the betrayal of conservatism by establishment Republicans" can somehow be expressed by joining an utterly destructive movement that stands for none of what conservatives have stood for, run by foul-mouthed little boys pretending to be he-men, who think that they can carry out big Accomplishments for The Right Side by being, and encouraging, bullying jerks on Twitter and by attacking Ted Cruz, one of the most intelligent, principled, hard-working conservatives to come along in a long time. So don't be fooled like that.

Oh, and while we're at it, you know that word that starts with a c and ends with "servative" that I keep telling people at What's Wrong With the World is despicable and won't be tolerated? If you think it is a mere synonym for the older English word "cuckold," use Google and get a little more information, huh? Because it isn't just a synonym for that word. And it should have clued you off in the first place that it's a little bizarre and twisted to criticize someone for spinelessness or lack of principle or whatever you thought you meant by the word (the alt-right, of course, means "any conservative we hate") by referring to him merely as a man whose wife has been unfaithful, since that doesn't in itself necessarily mean anything bad about the character of the man.

Yes, I'm being blunt, here. So maybe I will merely a) preach to the choir and b) tick off the alt-righters and their fellow travelers.

But if you are a fellow traveler who can still be reached, read the above-linked article, back off from the alt-right sites you read, and ask yourself, "What am I becoming by making excuses for these people? And what of any enduring value am I gaining by associating with them?"

It's never too late to reject evil. It's never too late to turn back.

A profound comment

This post isn't going to rise to my usual level of deep commentary. But I can't resist.

I have just one deep comment on the last few days for all the Trumpers who ranted (and ranted and ranted) in combox after combox about how we have to vote for Trump because immigration is The One, The Only, The Most Important Issue Ever in the Entire History of the USA:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, SUCKERS!

"And Now the Wants Are Told"

Here is a good hymn text sorely in need of a new tune.

And now the wants are told, that brought
thy children to thy knee;
here lingering still, we ask for nought,
but simply worship thee.

The hope of heaven's eternal days
absorbs not all the heart
that gives thee glory, love, and praise,
for being what thou art.

For thou art God, the One, the Same,
o'er all things high and bright;
and round us, when we speak thy name,
there spreads a heaven of light.

O wondrous peace, in thought to dwell
on excellence divine;
to know that nought in man can tell
how fair thy beauties shine!

O thou, above all blessing blest,
o'er thanks exalted far,
thy very greatness is a rest
to weaklings as we are;

for when we feel the praise of thee
a task beyond our powers,
we say, "A perfect God is he,
and he is fully ours."

Original author William Bright, 1865. Published in 1895 under the authority of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.

This seems meant for a meditation at the end of a church service or prayer service. It draws the mind from our earthly needs to God's eternal glory.

My only quibble is that "heaven's eternal days" include the beatific vision and hence will involve the perfection of the worship that the song is all about. But that really is a quibble. It is a long tradition to contrast any desire for the concrete things we might hope for in heaven with pure worship.  "Look for Me At Jesus' Feet" and "I Want to See Jesus" are examples in Southern gospel music.

The poem captures well the mind's repose in the greatness of God. We don't have to do something about it. We can appreciate it and rest our minds on the contemplation of it. "Thy very greatness is a rest to weaklings as we are."

The tune to which it is set in the 1940 hymnal is "Stracathro," found here. It is less than exciting as a tune, in my opinion. Ideally we would find a tune that would have more intrinsic interest while being singable and fitting with the words. It could be introduced to modern churches as a worship song.

But wait! There's more! Refuting a claim of discrepancy in the gospels

My apologies to my readers for being away from this blog for so long. Here's a meaty apologetics/New Testament post to make up for the hiatus.

A friend asked me the other day to repeat my opinion, which he'd heard me give at one time, about an alleged discrepancy between Mark's and Luke's location of the feeding of the five thousand.

Here's how that concern about a discrepancy arises. Luke 9:10-12 says that the feeding of the five thousand took place near the town of Bethsaida. (It didn't take place in Bethsaida, because it was a deserted place, as verse 12 says. Some text families explicitly say in verse 10 that they went to a deserted area associated with the town of Bethsaida.)  Here's a map of the region around the Sea of Galilee in the time of Christ. As you can see, Bethsaida is roughly on the northeast of the Sea of Galilee. (Yes, I'm aware that there is an archeological controversy about precisely which tell represents the location of Biblical Bethsaida. No, that doesn't affect the present discussion, because the archeological candidates are all pretty darned close together, and none of them is on the west side of the Sea of Galilee.)

Mark 6:45 says that after the feeding of the five thousand Jesus told his disciples to get into a boat and go ahead of him to the other side "to Bethsaida" (as it is usually translated).

From Mark 6:45 taken in isolation, one would naturally conclude that the feeding of the five thousand took place on, in some sense, the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee from Bethsaida--hence, on the west or northwest side. After all, Jesus is telling them to go away from the location of the feeding to the other side, and the narrator is calling this direction away from the feeding "to Bethsaida." Right?

It is from this phrase "to Bethsaida," using the Greek preposition "pros," that the entire idea of a discrepancy between Mark and Luke arises.

So as not to keep the reader in suspense, I will now float two relatively simple possible harmonizations concerning the phrase "pros Bethsaidan." First possibility: "Pros" should be translated here as "over against" rather than "to." This is a possible translation of the preposition. In this case, the narrator in Mark is saying that they were going to the other side which was "over against" (i.e. opposite) Bethsaida--exactly consonant with Luke's statement about the location of the feeding near Bethsaida. Second possibility: "Pros" should be translated with a more common meaning of "toward," but the feeding took place in a deserted area somewhat to the east of Bethsaida itself, so that they would pass Bethsaida as they crossed back over to the other side, going west. Hence, they might have been sent back to the other side (that is, to the region of Capernaum) and in the process traveled "toward Bethsaida."

But wait, there's more!

Much more. The reader, especially a reader impatient with harmonization in the gospels, might well sigh and say that one would consider those readings of "pros Bethsaidan" only if one were committed a priori to inerrancy, or only if one were deeply uncomfortable with contradictions in the gospels, or something to that effect. Why not just say that either Mark or Luke made a mistake?

At this point I want to emphasize the importance of considering the positive case for the reliability of the gospels and placing alleged contradictions against that backdrop. Too much focus on alleged contradictions and on possible resolutions, or even on despair of resolutions, can create a major "can't see the forest for the trees" problem. As it turns out, the location of the feeding of the five thousand, so far from being an embarrassment to the advocate of the reliability of the gospels, is a point that confirms the reliability of the gospels.

There are two undesigned coincidences related to the location of the feeding that confirm Luke's statement that it occurred near Bethsaida. I'll give them briefly, because I have more to say beyond this, but briefly, here they are:

Both Matthew (11:20ff) and Luke (10:13ff) record Jesus, in a completely different passage, calling down woe upon Bethsaida, saying that its inhabitants ignored "mighty works" done there and did not repent. But none of the gospels records anything else, other than the feeding of the five thousand, that could plausibly be regarded as a "mighty work" that the inhabitants of Bethsaida should have known about. Interestingly, the gospels record not only the feeding of the five thousand on that day but also healings among the crowd (see Luke 9:11). Hence, the feeding of the five thousand and the healings connected with it explain the "woes" against Bethsaida. (I note in passing that it is implausible that Luke engineered this deliberately within his own gospel, for the "woe" passage also mentions mighty works done in Chorazin, but Luke records no mighty work done in Chorazin at all.)

The other undesigned coincidence connected with the location of the feeding is the "Why ask Philip?" coincidence that some of my readers may have heard in talks given by my husband or others who present the argument from undesigned coincidences. John 6:5 states that Jesus asked Philip, specifically, where they can buy bread for the crowd. John never says that the feeding took place near Bethsaida. That statement is found only in Luke. But John does say elsewhere (1:44, 12:21) that Philip was from Bethsaida. This rather neatly explains Jesus' question specifically to Philip as to where bread could be purchased for the crowd.

So Luke's location of the feeding near Bethsaida, rather than on the other side of the Sea of Galilee away from Bethsaida, is independently confirmed, as well as the other details connected with those undesigned coincidences (Jesus' calling down woe on Bethsaida, Philip's home town, the fact that Jesus asked Philip where they could buy bread), and the location of the feeding thus supports the reliability of the gospels rather than undermining it.

But wait, there's more!

John's gospel also supports the conclusion that the location of the feeding was somewhere on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. John 6:16-17 says that, after the feeding of the five thousand, the disciples got into a boat and "started across the sea to Capernaum." The word translated "to" there is "eis" which can be translated in a variety of ways, including "toward." Capernaum is on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee, so if they were going from east to west, away from the vicinity of Bethsaida on the northeast, they would indeed be going toward Capernaum.

But wait, there's more!

The very idea that Mark places the feeding of the five thousand in a different location from Luke is, as I mentioned above, based solely on the phrase "pros Bethsaidan," used for the direction the disciples were sent by boat after the feeding. If one gets a larger picture within Mark, one actually finds evidence that fits with the placement of the feeding on the northeast side of the Sea of Galilee rather than on the northwest side. This evidence confirms Luke's location of the feeding and would create a problem within Mark itself if we insisted on interpreting "pros Bethsaidan" to mean that the feeding took place on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee. Hence it is misguided to say that Mark places the feeding in a location different from Luke's.

The first bit of evidence to this effect, not very strong in itself but suggestive, arises in another undesigned coincidence. Mark 6:31 says that Jesus and his disciples were bothered by crowds "coming and going" prior to the feeding of the five thousand and that Jesus suggested that they go away somewhere. The phrase "coming and going" suggests that these were not merely crowds following Jesus, specifically, but that there was some kind of bustle where they were. This fits with the statement in John 6:4 that the Feast of Passover was near at hand, especially if Jesus and the disciples were in or near Capernaum, a major hub. If they left Capernaum in a boat and went away, then they might well have gone along the top of the Sea of Galilee and landed somewhere in the vicinity of Bethsaida, just as Luke says.

But wait, there's more! (I've saved the best for last.)

Mark itself tells us where the disciples ended up when they landed on the other side--that is, the "other side" from where the feeding of the five thousand took place, the "other side" to which Jesus sent them after the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:45), the "other side" about which there was supposedly a discrepancy between Mark and Luke.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. (Mark 6:53)

So when they had crossed over to the other side, they landed at Gennesaret. Look at the map. Where is Gennesaret? (And by the way, the location of Gennesaret is independently known. It doesn't depend on some specific interpretation of this passage.) It's on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee! It's also within a stone's throw of Capernaum. In other words, it's not on the same side as Bethsaida. It's approximately where we would expect the disciples to end up if they went away in the boat from the vicinity of Bethsaida, where Luke says the feeding took place, going (in general terms) toward Capernaum, as John says, across the top of the Sea of Galilee, and landed on the other side--going from the northeast to the northwest shore.

If we were to interpret "pros Bethsaidan" in Mark 6:45 to mean that the feeding took place on the same side of the Sea of Galilee as Capernaum and Genessaret and that they crossed over afterwards in a boat to Bethsaida, we would have an apparent conflict within Mark with verse 6:53, which says that when they crossed over they landed at Gennesaret.

So Mark doesn't "place" the feeding of the five thousand on the west side of the Sea of Galilee after all.

This means that we have reason within Mark itself for reading "pros Bethsaidan" in one of the ways suggested above. This does not solely arise from a desire to harmonize Mark and Luke or Mark and John. Independent evidence from multiple gospels, including Mark, consistently points to approximately the same location for the feeding of the five thousand, with the single phrase "pros Bethsaidan" in Mark being the only outlier. Hence, it is entirely rational to translate or interpret that one phrase in a way that is consistent with multiple, independent lines of other evidence. By doing so, we get a unified picture that makes sense of all of the evidence.

So far from being strained, this procedure is a careful, tough-minded way of making use of evidence and seeing if there is a reasonable picture that can explain all of it. This doesn't always work. Sometimes there may be an intransigent bit of evidence that just doesn't fit in with the rest, and there's nothing wrong with admitting as much when it happens.

But it's unfortunate that sometimes we get a picture of apparent biblical discrepancies that leaves out some evidence and hence that gives a skewed view. Even relatively conservative interpreters may sometimes feel mired in a slough of despond, slogging through discrepancies and trying to pull themselves out. Or, to change the metaphor, may feel bothered to death by claimed discrepancies like an attacking cloud of midges. It could be tempting to think that one is breaking free of that feeling by not attempting harmonization at all, by coming to disdain it. But that is not a correct evidential approach, even when we simply think of the gospels as historical documents. It is entirely common for different witness testimonies to have apparent discrepancies. Sometimes these are real, but surprisingly often they are merely apparent, and the real picture of what occurred fits both accounts when more is known.

In the present case, any casting of the issue as, "There seem to be a lot of discrepancies surrounding the geography of the feeding of the five thousand" or "Mark appears to place the feeding of the five thousand in a different location from Luke" is, frankly, incorrect. Hence it contributes unnecessarily to that feeling of being mired in or pestered by nuisance discrepancies. But in fact, there aren't a lot of apparent discrepancies surrounding the geography of the feeding of the five thousand. There is a unified picture of it as occurring on the northeast of the Sea of Galilee with one outlying phrase in one gospel. Mark and Luke do not appear to place the event in two different locations. Nor do Mark and John. Rather, Mark itself has a geographical indicator that places the feeding on the east side (namely, that afterwards they went over to the other side and landed at Genessaret) and another geographical indicator (the outlying phrase "pros Bethsaidan") that could be interpreted to place it on the west side. So Mark's own gospel contains evidence that is consonant with the united evidence of Luke, John, and with undesigned coincidences between and among them (one involving Matthew as well), placing the feeding on the northeast side.

It is a little ironic that I am saying all of this, since I am open in principle to saying that there may in fact be places where a gospel author got some minor detail wrong. I even have candidates for such places in my own mind. In no way does my livelihood depend upon signing a statement subscribing to inerrancy. But I also think that the gospels are very, very reliable, that real witness testimony turns out to be reconcilable often when at first it appears to be irreconcilable, and that harmonization should be given a good shot before one concludes that there is an actual error. That, I believe, is not piety but merely responsible scholarship. The exciting thing is how often, when one gets a bigger picture, one finds oneself freed from that heavy sense of "so many problems," because one sees alleged discrepancies against a wider background of evidence for reliability. Sometimes, as in the present case, that wider background even helps to explain some particular alleged discrepancy. This is, to my mind, a much healthier approach than either a) becoming highly cavalier about saying that some gospel author was wrong or confused, b) becoming highly negative about harmonization, and/or c) turning to highly dubious claims of "literary device" according to which gospel authors deliberately changed details for the sake of some literary or theological effect.

None of that does justice to the real-life texture of the texts as historical memoirs.

Seriously? A vote has no expressive content?

As the bullying gears up all over the country to whip people in line to vote for D.T., I am struck yet again by something that strikes me every four years: There are people out there who will (metaphorically speaking) look you in the eye and tell you that a vote is a purely pragmatic move and has zero semantic content.

I find it difficult to believe that, but I'm forced to believe it every four years, because I'm confronted by such people. Surely it should be obvious by the sheer meaning of the phrase "to vote for _____ for ____" that doing so is, at least among other things, a semantic act that carries the meaning, "I desire so-and-so to have the position of _____" and "So-and-so is at least minimally qualified for the position of ______." It needn't mean that you can't think of anybody better for that position. It needn't mean that you agree with so-and-so on everything. It needn't mean that he's perfect. But it should not even require discussion to say that at a minimum your vote says that you want him to have that position and that you think he's minimally qualified for it.

People apparently want to deny this self-evident truth because they want to justify voting for someone that they realize they couldn't justify voting for if they admitted it. They want to be able to say that some candidate really is completely dreadful and awful but that we should vote for him anyway for some consequential reason. Now, I'm not saying that consequences have no place in voting. They could lead you, for example, to vote for a candidate whom you weren't exactly thrilled with because you believed that he would do more good than harm in the position. But at the end of the day, if you literally think that someone would be a disgrace to that political office, that he is unqualified for it, and that he is a wicked person, you shouldn't vote for him for that position.

When we pretend (and it really is a pretense) that a vote has no semantic content whatsoever, that it is simply playing a move in a consequential game, we harden our hearts to endorse evil people. We do it by lying to ourselves that a vote is in no sense, however minimal, an endorsement.

Quite frankly, I believe that people psych themselves into this because they work themselves up to believe that the United States Presidency is so important that you are morally obligated always to vote for one of the two "viable" candidates for the office. Hence they are faced with what feels like a moral dilemma: They feel that they're morally obligated to vote for A or B, yet they know that both A and B are unqualified for the job and are wicked. So they convince themselves that there must be a "lesser evil" between A and B (why think that?) that we can tell which is the lesser evil (why think that?) and that one is obligated to vote for that lesser evil as a sheer game-theoretic move without semantic content. In this way they resolve that feeling of a moral dilemma.

But conscience will have her revenge. This is why so often those who do this are so angry, bitter, and bullying toward anyone who doesn't do as they do. J. Budziszewski wrote about this in The Revenge of Conscience. When you do something that you feel morally uncomfortable about, you end up trying to get other people to join you in doing it so you will feel less uncomfortable about it. You get defensive and angry. The conscience doesn't just lie down like a lamb when you suppress it. It rouses up and becomes a kind of raging false conscience, driving you to drive others into a frenzy of support for what you have done. We see this in women who have had abortions and who then write bragging pieces about them or who join pro-abortion organizations to make abortion more widely available. And we see it here. The proposition that a vote has literally zero semantic content endorsing the candidate is so manifestly false that it is a constant irritant to the person who has relied on it as a premise to get himself out of what felt like a moral dilemma. For many, this results in striking out at others who have come to a different decision and who aren't doing what he is doing.

I submit that this is a reductio of the proposition that you are always morally obligated to vote for one of the two viable candidates for the Presidency. Or always obligated to vote at all, if it comes to that. Since there is, obviously, at least minimal semantic content to a vote, a situation could arise in which you would be doing wrong to express that content concerning any candidate, and then you shouldn't vote. It's really just that simple. Don't turn your mind into a pretzel forcing yourself to think otherwise.

The Reticence of the Evangelists at W4

I have a new post up at What's Wrong With the World on an argument for the veracity of the gospels from the reticence of the evangelists. Feel free to comment in either place.

One more bit of incoherence in the "trans" agenda

The claims by "trans" activists are so blatantly postmodern, so riddled with incoherence, that most of the time I don't bother even to try to point out the incoherences. There was a good article in, I believe, National Review that did so a couple of months ago, but unfortunately I didn't save the link. If one of my readers happens to find it, let me know. I think it may have been by Maggie Gallagher.

Here's one bit of the incoherence that came up in a thread at W4 where a commentator was asking about the best arguments (??) of the trans activists. Short version: There aren't any. Anyway, this commentator suggested that, while it seems far-fetched to say that gender identity can be constructed based solely on a person's subjective feelings, maybe it isn't so far-fetched to say that someone "is" a particular "gender" based on "social role," which might differ from biology. At least, so I understood him to suggest as one of the "best" representations of the trans position.

But as I point out in the comment here, that does not make any sense, because society never spontaneously assigns a person a "social role" that is utterly in conflict with his unambiguous biological sex. Setting aside extremely rare cases of true biological disorders in which a mistake is made at birth because the child biologically (externally) appears to be the opposite biological sex from his genetic sex, no one just "gets" a "social role" of being a man when he is biologically a woman. No biological woman just "gets" a "social role" of being a man. It doesn't happen. Something has to kick off the process in society. The person has to complain of "gender dysphoria," and get "treatment" that includes making other people use new pronouns, or parents or psychologists have to get signals that they take to mean that, in the mysterious trans meaning, the person "really is" the opposite gender from his biological sex, and then that small coterie of people starts trying to impose this new understanding on everybody else. But they aren't society. Prior to being told that Bobby is now a girl, society was just going on its merry way treating Bobby as a boy. Bobby doesn't have a "social role" of being a girl until society is forced to start calling him "she" under threat of punishment and so forth or until society is fooled by extreme (and immoral) medical procedures and drugs foisted upon Bobby so that society (or those members of it who didn't know Bobby before) falsely believe that Bobby (who now goes by "Sarah") is biologically female. If Bobby/Sarah succeeds in passing himself off as a woman, at that point "society" may assign him a female role, but that's only because of a successful deception concerning biology, not because he originally "was" a woman in the sense of having "woman" as a societal role. He didn't. That's why he had to "transition."

So there is no hope for the trans agenda in logic from a mantra like, "Gender identity is socially constructed," because that provides no rationale for society's giving a person a social role that he didn't originally have in the first place and because society, left to itself, will spontaneously assign a biologically unambiguous person a social role (whatever it may be in that society) that agrees with his biology to begin with. One could just as well tell the trans activist who mouths this "argument," "Fine, then, I guess Bobby isn't really a girl, because look at all the people who have been calling him 'he' all this time. He has the socially constructed role of a boy, so that means he's a boy. Case closed."

The trans activist has to insist upon a process of redefining a person as "really" being something other than what he biologically is without the support, initially, of either biology or social role.

None of this, of course, will stop activists (and their dupes) from talking sagely as if a phrase like, "Gender identity is socially constructed" supports their agenda. But logically, it doesn't.

Tony, my blog colleague at W4, comments here pointing some of this out as well.

Evangelism, individualism, conversion, and cradle Christianity

Over at W4 I reported on the insane, repressive new laws just passed against "missionary activity" in Russia. Here's another article on them. I'm appalled but not surprised at the number of people who defend such laws.

This arises in part because some (most?) of the "paleoconservative" persuasion are in general Russophiles and are under some strange delusion that Russia represents "conservatism" in a recognizable sense. One thing that feeds this delusion is the fact that Russian law does not celebrate sodomy as does American law (driven by lawless American Supreme Court decisions), yet another counterexample to the dubious maxim, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." The paleos prefer to keep the maxim and bite the bullet on the counterevidence. Their syllogism is "What Russian law does is conservative. Russian law represses missionary activity from non-Orthodox people. Therefore, repressing missionary activity from non-Orthodox people is conservative." The first premise, of course, is the bad apple.

But there's something else going on here as well, which came out the last time such issues were discussed at W4, many years ago. Lurking in the minds of some of those from what one might call mainline denominations is, frankly, a distaste for energetic evangelistic work and conversion. In that old thread, it was openly stated that evangelism should be aimed only at "heads of households." I guess that means if you aren't a head of a household, you're outta luck.

In the strongest possible terms, let me say this: Nothing could be further from the Great Commission and the teaching and action of both our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles.

When Jesus called his disciples, he called them as individuals, not heads of households. He called James and John, the sons of Zebedee, not Zebedee. St. John, who lived to write in the late 1st century, was likely a "man" under Jewish law, but that isn't saying much. He must have been very young during Jesus' ministry and was certainly not the head of any household. Jesus' teaching is, if possible, even more emphatic and striking on such points than his action. He said that if you love your father and mother more than him you are unworthy of him. (Matthew 10:37) He taught that he came not to bring peace in families but a sword. (Matthew 10:35-36) He even used the hyperbolic language of "hating" father and mother. (Luke 14:26) He answered sharply when a man suggested coming and being his disciple only after first carrying out some burial duties toward his father. (Matthew 8:21)

However, precisely, one interprets each of these passages, they cumulatively pull strongly in the direction of individual discipleship, in the absence of familial unity and even in opposition to it. That includes individual discipleship even by those who are not patriarchal heads, as witness the repeated, explicit references by Jesus to being willing to pull away from and offend one's father and mother in order to follow him.

An example of this sort of thing in our own time would be Rifqa Bary, who became a Christian from a Muslim background at age sixteen and subsequently ran away from her parents at the age of 17 when she believed her life was in danger because of her conversion.

We have one example in the Philippian jailer where Paul apparently did evangelize the head of a household, and his entire household subsequently professed faith in Jesus. But in general, Paul just preached. So did Peter on the day of Pentecost. We have no evidence whatsoever that individuals were turned away if they weren't "heads of households." On the contrary, we have quite a few examples where women, specifically, became Christians without any mention of their husbands' conversion, and Paul even addresses specifically in the epistles the problem of believers who have unbelieving spouses. Peter makes it clear (I Peter 3:1) that this could include wives with unbelieving husbands. In that culture, individual conversion of wives against the preferences of their husbands is, again, strongly in contrast to any idea of converting people only in family groups through their heads-of-household.

Ad hoc and untenable principles such as "only evangelize heads of households" are, I will say bluntly, developed by partisans of sclerotic, mainline denominations who are afraid of or annoyed by competition from more vital, energetic groups with a strong emphasis upon individual belief and conversion. Unable to keep as much hold of their own nominal members-from-the-cradle as they would like because of poor catechesis, boredom, and population drift, they support draconian laws giving their own denominations a monopoly in particular countries. Then they support these laws by faux, anti-individualistic, anti-evangelistic principles.

Some American conservatives unfamiliar with this dynamic or psychologically uncomfortable with evangelism and witnessing (because they seem bourgeois or silly) may be tempted to go along with this for the additional reason that we are all (justifiably) freaked out by the aggressive proselytizing of the left against our children. But note: That proselytizing is most frightening in the setting of a public school where the force of truancy laws, combined with difficulties or fear of home schooling and the expense of Christian schooling, creates a captive audience. (Related, on how this works in Ontario, see here.) But the answer to state brainwashing of children isn't for the state to make it illegal for non-state actors to "direct" their messages toward minors or for the state to make this illegal except in the case of some state-favored religion. Indeed, one could argue that the problem with secularist brainwashing of children in public schools is precisely the establishment of a state "church"--namely, aggressive secular leftism. I don't want the state to outlaw Camp Quest, the secularist summer camp. I just don't send my kids there. And if some Christian parent is foolhardy enough to do so, that's on his head.

I'm all in favor of raising one's children to be Christians from the cradle. And I'm all in favor of being a protective parent, sheltering children, and even thinking very hard about what college to pay for them to go to when they are adults. But there is a great gulf fixed between a love of raising one's children in one's own worldview and a demand that the government outlaw the propagation of other worldviews, even other Christian denominations, simply as such. Some Christians demand that we buy into a kind of ecumenism that says that everybody who is a nominal member of some Christian denomination or other is going to heaven and that the only kind of evangelism that is right is one that doesn't "compete" with other Christian denominations. Well, Jesus says that there will be many who will say, "Lord, Lord" who will not enter the kingdom of heaven. That presumably includes Catholics, Orthodox, Baptist, Adventist, and all kinds of denominations. If you want to be ecumenical, try considering this possibility: Maybe some person who has been a cradle X, where X is your own denomination, has no relationship with Jesus Christ, isn't really a believer, is purely a cultural "Christian," and is going to hell. And maybe if that person is evangelized (aka "stolen") by that scruffy denomination Y that Russia wants to outlaw, he'll actually go to heaven instead. And yes, if I happen to prefer Y to X, it would be smart for me to consider that it could go the other way. But frankly, I know no Seventh-Day Adventists or Baptists who are looking to have their denomination established as a state religion and to outlaw "proselytizing" by Catholics, Orthodox, or other "stuffier" and more liturgical churches. This despite the fact that the less ecumenical among them actually do think people are likely to go to hell if they belong to those denominations! But even given that, they are willing just to witness and let the Holy Spirit do the work from there, as they see it. It's an example their more high-brow brethren would do well to follow, despite the presence of theological narrow-mindedness.

Moreover, we Christians want to start thinking very soberly about what is wrong with us when we start uttering the word "proselytizing" in tones of contempt. Or when we're standing up and cheering that the Russians are doing the same. That's a bad, bad move. Here are a couple of posts I wrote years ago about the concern that Americans are starting to demonize "proselytizing." The Great Commission is all about "proselytizing." Demonizing witnessing is the road to cutting off our own missionary efforts from soul-saving, turning them into mere humanitarian aid, at most. The Bible, and Christianity, are all about converts. They always have been. There is nothing infra dig about trying to make converts who weren't just comfortable "Christians from the cradle." Jesus told us to do it, in fact. So if you feel funny about Christian denominations that witness, maybe you should get over it and ask yourself why your denomination isn't doing more of it.

I realize that it's a problem for some conservatives, but Christianity has always been pretty individualistic. Sure, the leftists have twisted this emphasis, but they didn't invent it. No, that doesn't mean Christians should "go it alone," but a convert will become a member of the community of believers as an individual, and he may have to leave father and mother behind to do so. Moreover, those who have been Christians from their childhood actually face special dangers, of complacency, lukewarmness, and lack of zeal for spreading the gospel. It's therefore particularly ironic to see members of mainline denominations that suffer greatly from such problems trying to suppress other denominations. It's a little bit like public school lobbyists trying to outlaw home schooling. We shouldn't make a special virtue out of non-evangelism. There is no virtue in it. If the Russian Orthodox are concerned about the Baptists and Adventists (or for that matter the real heretics like Jehovah's Witnesses), I suggest they engage in vigorous debate against their tenets and present programs that will keep their own "sheep" within their fold while at the same time showing ardent concern for the individual catechesis of their own "sheep." Hey, for that matter they might try some straightforward counterevangelism directed at members of the other religious organizations. That rather than trying to use the state to enforce a monopoly. Somehow, I'm afraid that is unlikely to happen. But if you are open to reason on these things, I suggest to you that it should.

Inflammatory language, perversions, and the church

This new push to downplay pedophilia was shared with appropriate outrage on Facebook lately.

What I want to point out here is the danger that this sort of talk poses specifically to those, including Christians, who have leaned in the wrong way on the act-orientation distinction concerning homosexuality. It is entirely possible that we will be asked, to be consistent, to apply the act-orientation distinction in the same way to pedophilia, and I'm afraid that some won't know how to reply and will be sitting ducks for what is, in effect, a partial normalization and, at a minimum, a desensitization.

Many Christians have been so concerned about the charge of homophobia and so eager to show love toward homosexual individuals that they have applied the act-orientation distinction in a confused way. I'm not saying that there is no such distinction nor that it is never relevant to bring up. But I think the contexts in which it makes a big difference to our actions are fewer and narrower than some may think. If you are a pastor or priest advising someone in private on whether he's sinning, then it is relevant and appropriate to tell him that having temptations and inclinations toward homosexuality is not in and of itself a sin, as though he sins just by breathing in and out. At the same time, there is a delicate matter even there concerning fantasies, entertaining thoughts, self-identity, and so forth, so it's still not cut and dried. The homosexual, even the Christian, who goes around loudly proclaiming his problem and demanding that everybody must accept him and complaining about how he's not sufficiently accepted is, most likely, sinning in thought with some frequency. So a non-naive pastor counseling such a person shouldn't just keep telling him over and over again that his orientation isn't a sin. But, okay, the act-orientation distinction is relevant there.

It's not nearly so obviously relevant to issues of discrimination, and especially not if the person is "out." There are all sorts of issues of discretion, morale, normalization, and so forth that are created by an "out" homosexual, especially one with a chip on his shoulder, especially in a business or non-profit that aims for a high moral tone. And there are direct practical issues in a residential context, such as a college, camp, retreat, and traveling. Who even can be the appropriate roommate, with all the loss of privacy that entails, of a person with same-sex attraction disorder? So already when Christians (and, I'm sorry to say, the catechism of the Catholic Church) go on about how baaad discrimination is on the basis of sexual orientation, they are doing a disservice to clarity of thought.

But there's even more. Here are two false implications of an overuse and misguided use of the act-orientation distinction that will come back to haunt us as the push for "understanding" pedophilia starts to ramp up:

1) The false implication that all sins are equal. No, they are not. Scripture never teaches that all sins are equally bad, it teaches the contrary, and common sense teaches us that all sins are not equally destructive in a social context. Hence, the temptation to all sins is not an equal problem. The fact that a man is tempted to a sexual perversion ought to create more complexities in which jobs he can hold, how to arrange for his accommodations when he travels, and in many other areas, than the fact that a man is tempted to gluttony. That's just how it is. But saying that "the orientation isn't sinful, and we're all sinners and tempted to sin in many different ways" glosses over these practical and moral facts.

2) The false implication that disgust is an inappropriate feeling for normal people to have in response to finding out about a "mere" orientation. The idea seems to be that if the "mere" orientation isn't a sin, we shouldn't feel disgusted when we learn about it, because that is "phobic" and unloving. Baloney. Pedophilia is an obvious counterexample, and we're going to have big problems if we continue on this path that says we're not supposed to feel, act, or convey disgust about anything as long as it's "just" an orientation.

It's a tragedy that there are people who have same-sex attraction disorder and who are upset and don't want it. For that matter, it's a worse tragedy, in a different way, that there are homosexuals who are proud of their orientation and their acts. But what even those who resist and don't act are tempted toward, what they are oriented toward, is a perversion. It was a mistake for Christians to stop saying that. I think we said to ourselves, "What possible value could there be in using inflammatory language such as 'pervert'? That just looks unloving. We don't want to look like those Westboro Baptist types" (always a useful comparison for getting as much compliance and apology as possible from Christians). "It's just a pointless insult." Well, no. To say that someone is a sexual pervert by orientation, even if he does not act on it, is to retain the knowledge of the unnaturalness of what he is inclined toward. It is to remind ourselves and those to whom we speak that his temptation is not merely contrary to God's law but also contrary to nature, and that this matters. But errors #1 and #2 tell us that we aren't supposed to know this, that we are supposed to elide it. So much of our language becomes conciliatory and deliberately erases all references to disordered affections and perversion: "The LGBT community," "God loves gay people very much," and the like.

These two errors are going to turn on us when it comes to pedophilia. Because frankly, if #1 and #2 are true, then why not try to eradicate disgust from our thought and language concerning people who "merely" have a pedophile orientation? If it is a settled doctrine that all sins are equal, then "all" presumably means "all" without exception, so this one should be included. If disgust is generally a wrong feeling to have concerning any "mere" orientation, then that's it. The principle is set.

If we should try as hard as we can not to "discriminate" on the basis of a "mere" orientation, then presumably we should try as hard as we can to accommodate even an "out" pedophile in as many activities as possible, even if we have to restrict him, for safety reasons, from some activities involving children. Anything like broader avoidance on the part of, say, people with children would be cruel, right? Notice that in the interview linked above the woman "researcher" is very uncomfortable when the interviewer suggests that he should in general try to keep his children away from pedophiles. She never agrees with him on this principle. Instead she turns the question to "child pedophiles," with the obvious implication that keeping such children away from other children would be wrong, so "we" have to find some other way to deal with them. In the Salon article last year garnering sympathy for non-offending pedophiles, the author explicitly states that there are pedophiles he would "trust with" his own children, if he had any.

Moreover, if there is no shame in being "out" about one's inclinations to sexual perversions, because then one can "get help" and because then we as Christians have a chance to show our love and kindness, then why should "coming out" as a pedophile be TMI when coming out as "gay" isn't TMI? The whole idea about discretion and not telling the whole world about your sexual perversions has been abandoned wholesale in the Christian community, even among conservative Christians, with the support groups for homosexuals and the praise for coming out. How are we ever going to reclaim the notion of discretion and the condemnation of TMI, how are we ever going to affirm again that there could be something good about being "in the closet," at least as far as the general community is concerned? We've pretty much tossed those ideas out, and we'll just have to say that "it's different this time" when it comes to some new perversion for which our compassion and support are being urged. To be consistent, I think we will need to back up and say that, after all, it isn't such a great thing for homosexuals to be coming out either, that we don't all need to know about that, and that if you really recognize that what you are experiencing is a desire contrary both to the law of God and to the law of nature, you will understand (except in unusual situations) that you need to exercise discretion and discuss this only with specific people who need to know. And voluntarily exclude yourself from activities inappropriate to you given your problem. Once these principles are established again in our minds, and once we as social conservatives and Christians don't feel ashamed of ourselves for having such principles, we can think more clearly about how to apply them in various situations and to other perversions.

We will also be in a position to recognize the extremely fine line between encouraging people to be "out" about something and abandoning opposition to it. This has come up again and again and again in "support groups" for homosexuals in churches and Christian colleges. Repeatedly the deliberate eradication of shame in being out, the hugging and kissing and support, the frantic urge to assure everyone that we are not phobic, and the formation of open groups explicitly oriented (pun intended) to something so vague as the "support" of people with certain perversions, have resulted in the erosion of opposition to the acts, just as these practices have involved a deliberate erasure of disgust at the outset. After all, how bad can it really be if everybody is telling you all the time that they have this problem? How bad can it be if we are all urged not to discriminate on the basis of someone's having this problem (as long as he doesn't "act on it")? How bad can it really be if the main message we are hearing is that we as Christians need to be kinder, more accepting, less ostracizing, more supportive, and so forth?

Once we admit that it was a mistake to have "support groups" connected with Christian organizations and churches, a mistake to encourage general coming out, a mistake to abandon the "inflammatory" language of disorder and perversion, and a mistake to try so hard to be upbeat and sentimental as part of being loving, we will be able to apply those lessons learned to worse things.

Sometimes you can't go forward without going back. The church's treatment of perversion is one such area.

The dousing of the natural light

In case there are any readers who follow Extra Thoughts but not What's Wrong With the World, my relatively recent post at W4 about a lot of the bad stuff happening these days and a common thread running through it seems to have resonated with some people, so check it out.

Webinar on Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts

I will be speaking this Saturday at a free webinar on undesigned coincidences in the gospels and Acts, hosted by Online Apologetics Academy run by Jonathan McLatchie. I'm told the webinar can handle up to 100 participants at a time, plus it will be recorded for future listening. It starts at 3 p.m. eastern time on Zoom, which is very easy to use. (Speaking as a technophobe who just used it yesterday, I can say that it's easy.) Your computer will download a little software for Zoom, and you will choose a user name, and you can then enter the webinar. Here is the information with a link to Zoom. Don't be confused if you're in the U.S. by the 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. time given at the top of the entry for me. That's actually UK time!

I'll be speaking for between 40 minutes and an hour and then taking questions for an hour or two from participants.