On California and Marriage

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

The problem with ideologues in politics is their attempt to make a science of something that is an art. Unlike Aristotle and Burke, ideologues forget that politics is inexact and that wisdom has been hard won over centuries of experience and thought. There is, really, no science of politics. Of course, the same difficulties apply to ethics.

Ideologues wish that politics and ethics could be made “scientific” or that bright and perfect lines could be drawn between the moral order and politics, but in doing so they are in error. They mistake an art that is very human (politics) for a science. People are not so simple or tractable as matter or energy . . . and then even these are complex enough! Religious extremists simplify too much by merging church and state. Secular radicals pretend there is a self-evident morality that can be drawn from “reason” alone.

Such secular ideologues have recently attacked the traditional minimal interplay between the moral order and politics called concerning marriage. The considered wisdom of our ancestors is that marriage is vital to producing a civilized life and happy future generations. Like racists who invented new “scientific” categories (such as “race”) in order to justify their desires, so contemporary people also have their blind spots and temptations to deviate from this hard won cultural wisdom.

The chief problem with gay “marriage” is providing state sanction for vice. It is not so much libertarian as libertine. While most Americans see wisdom in allowing some vice to simply be legal, the law need not actively support it either.

Procreation may take place in private, but when it leads to children it is a public act, since the culture depends on it for its very future. Raising children is hard and so the state has wisely given special privileges and benefits to a social structure that will produce and raise the vast majority of the future population.

What is the norm is not always comfortable for individuals. The world is imperfect and many of us cannot live up to what is ideal. But when what is the moral norm is not comfortable for an individual, this becomes a pastoral problem and not a matter for law. People who wish the government out of bedrooms should keep it out by not demanding state sanction for relationships in which the state will usually have no interest.

“Is” does not, of course, equal “ought.” Most of us find it difficult to do what we wish or what society needs of us. It is the case that a desire for vice exists. That does not justify acting on it for any of us.

While ecclesiastical organizations must be separated from the state, morality cannot be. Somebody’s moral vision will prevail in the public square. As a result, public benefits should be handed out with great care. Forcing millions of Americans to provide government approval for actions most of the human race believes to be wrong is imprudent. Hi-jacking a social institution created by one group of people to benefit another is unwise.

Citizens should and must use their religious wisdom to make decisions about what is good and what the state should approve. Of course, this particular religious reasoning should be communicated and defended to others who do not share their opinions with common language and reasoning where possible. It is naïve or irrational ideology to hope that perfect agreement will be found or that all one’s opponents are bigots or fools. Traditionalists know they may be mistaken, so the wise amongst them have retreated from any state sanction for this vice, but the gay “marriage” ideologues cannot be satisfied with tolerance.

They demand full state approval.

Make no mistake. If gay “marriage” receives state sanction, the experience of Western Europe and Canada suggests that intolerance of any dissenting opinions as to its morality will follow.

Proponents of gay “marriage” cannot pretend they are not imposing their morality on the rest of us. Somebody’s morality will prevail. Advocates of this radical change, like all ideologues, claim with prophetic certainty that good will come of it. Such experimentation in economics and government did not work out well in the twentieth century even when it came wrapped in “youth,” the “future,” and promises of happiness.

Facile comparisons of race to sexuality do not advance the argument. Race was unknown to ancients and is not universal in the way sexuality is. As all ideologues do, racists invented weird categories and justified their desires with twisted religion and science. Race based slavery was not part of the received wisdom of the Eastern or Western worlds. America was morally wicked for embracing it for so long.

Most of the world fears that experiments with human life and procreation in the Western world are just such ideological experimentation. Our ancestors gave us great cultural treasures and this has made us the envy of much of the world, but such power does not justify doing whatever we can do.

Some cultural changes are good, but that does not mean all such changes are good. Sometimes cultural change is decay and decadence. The state has an obligation to support marriage, because future generations are vital to survival. It does not have the obligation to give everyone what they want.

A few decadent states in the world are busy pretending redefining words can redefine moral realities. They have yet to show that they can sustain themselves in the future, let alone defend their short term social experimentation. Pope Benedict has spoken with moral clarity on this issue from his global vantage point.

Most Americans hate to disappoint anyone. They may not approve of some behavior, but pity makes them loath to judge it publicly. All of us have our own failings and want to deal with those before throwing any stones. To vote against gay “marriage” in California, they need not throw stones. They must merely decide that there is no good reason to approve this private behavior publicly.

Love Never Fails

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Love does not change and in humans love is, as it always has been, birthed in need . . . a deep poverty in humanity that draws us toward a fount of deeper desire. This deeper desire springs from perfect fulfillment and a desire to see that perfection made universal.

Humans desire God, because we need His goodness. God desires us, not out of any need, but because He longs to see us whole.

We must acknowledge our poverty, but not cling to it.

Some foolishly view the deep longing as the highest possible pleasure. There is pleasure in it, as there is in hunger before a good meal, but it is foolish to reject the food in order to prolong the need. Some moderns want Lent but no Easter.

Do not make a fetish of your particular desires . . . since often our felt needs are not our real needs.

We must also not be satisfied with any initial encounter with the Infinite Love of God. Humans want to build altars where God was . . . and so often miss where God would take us. When our initial encounter with God grows stale, we act as if the problem is with religion or with God, but the problem is with our lack of true passion for the Divine.

Any given “religious experience” is not the answer . . . because the answer is a Person who refuses to be placed in a box or tamed. Like Aslan, He bounds into our lives and upsets our assumptions at every turn.

...

God is a person and not merely an experience. He is not merely an object for our manipulation, religious or otherwise. The good news of God’s total sovereignty is that He sets boundaries and acts for our good. He will not be manipulated, used, or ignored.

...

God is the End of our heart’s true longings. We are persons and no ideology that does not account for the whole person can be good for us.

Christianity is the great revelation of God to humankind of Himself.

Against this great truth, this noble myth, is arrayed all the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Materialism says that we are things and that things can meet our needs. This failure of love ends in ugliness.

Secularism says there is nothing in heaven and earth that is not dreamed of in Richard Dawkins’ philosophy. This failure of imagination cannot sustain a culture.

Hedonism denies the need for pain in this life and destroys the possibility of immortal pleasures. It ends with all joys spoilt and all pleasures stale.

Intellectualism argues that the head can make demands without accounting for the heart. It dies like all Gradgrind ideas in cruelty.

Anti-intellectualism pretends that we can follow our heart without accounting for the demands of reason. Our irrational passion too often destroys the very things we love.

These ideologies come between us and God and so are idols. God hates idols not because of some bizarre insecurity on His part, but because we are corrupting some good thing He made by misusing them, missing our real needs, and failing to give appropriate honor to Him.

Instead of these ideologies, we must confront God as seen in the person of Jesus Christ, most perfectly revealed in the pages of inerrant Sacred Scripture. The sign post of Scriptures, miracles, and the witness of Church history can point to Christ, but they too are not Christ.

We must find Him in these good things . . . or these good, holy, and great things will also become idols. We love the physical world, because God made it. We even see it as holy, because God became flesh.

The sacred things are sacred, however, because He exists. We must honor family, country, and church, but we can worship God alone. Love is always urging excess. This is wise, because there is a person for whom extravagance is appropriate.

God alone is where love can never become excessive, but only defective.

We love others out of the superabundance of our love for God. His image in them calls forth love . . . even in our enemies.

When we are children, we cannot understand any of this, though we often feel the truth of it better than we can express. Appropriately, we are in a position of receiving love and rarely of giving it. We need so much and we have so little.

This never changes relative to God. We are children to Him.

But as we mature in Faith, our love for Him should grow to the point where it overflows around us. We serve as slaves to those around us voluntarily . . . because there is so much love within us that we must discharge it or perish.

Childish love wants to own or possess the thing it sees. It makes the mistake of the American tourist who sees the David and wishes to take it home. The absurdity of this Florentine masterpiece bursting through the roof of his thirteen hundred foot tract home never occurs to the childish. Unlike the true lover he can even be satisfied with a cheap copy . . . “better” because he can own it.

The childish think that all beauty exists so they can buy it.

Having found Love- when we keep in relationship with Him- we can only act with virtue in imitation of what we love. (more)

Doubt Your Perception of Suffering

By Jon Bloom
desiringGod Blog

There he sat, the scum of society, a sorry piece of work begging the condescending mercy of pious passersby going in and out of the temple. Enough mercy and he could eat.

The blind man in John 9 didn’t have many vocational options. He had been born blind. And it was his own fault. As a fetus this man sinned in the womb against the Almighty. Either that or his parents had sinned and cursed him. Whichever, he was suffering his just punishment. Those who had been righteous fetuses walked by and sometimes dropped a coin in his hand.

You see, in the law and prophets God had not explained exactly why one person suffers more than another. So theologians surmised that a person’s suffering must result from a specific offense against God. Oddly, this was what Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, had surmised about Job’s suffering. God’s word to them was, “you have not spoken of me what is right” (Job 42:8). Jesus was about to deliver a similar rebuke.

As Jesus and his disciples passed by this man, the disciples naturally wanted to know who was to blame, the man or his parents. That’s when Jesus threw another wrench into their theological system. He said, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (v. 3).

Can you hear the disciples catch their breath? Have you caught yours? Jesus said that God was to blame. The man was blind because God had a purpose in it that hadn’t entered anyone’s mind.

All those years the man and his parents labored under a perception of God’s judgment for an unknown reason. And they had born others’ disdain. Imagine what the man’s childhood must have been like. Imagine the insults, the indignities, the injuries, the poverty, the loneliness, and isolation from other children. No hope for marriage. No hope for education.

Why? Because God had something glorious to say through it. It’s just that up until this day no one saw it coming, least of all the blind man.

Jesus then spat on the ground, made mud with his saliva, put the mud on the man’s eyes, and said, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” So he went and washed and came back seeing!

In that moment everything changed. The man went from life-long blindness to seeing. But even more revolutionary in its repercussions, he went from being perceived as the object of God’s wrath to being the object of God’s mercy!

This is mind-blowing. God’s purposes in his blindness turned out to be exactly opposite of everyone’s perceptions. All along people believed the man was “born in utter sin” (v. 36). But in fact he was born blind in order that God might show mercy to him and pronounce judgment on the self-righteous religious people. “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (v. 39).

Caution: we must be very careful in assessing God’s purposes in suffering—our own or someone else’s. Often we cannot see any redeeming reason for it. The same would have been true of the blind man until the day Jesus passed by. Even here we might be tempted to say, “Well, yes, but how often does that happen?” I know. I have a sister who is severely developmentally disabled. I know very little of God’s purposes in it. He often does not make his purposes public knowledge.

This story reminds us that our perceptions and God’s purposes can be very different, even opposite. If we are going to be skeptical, it’s best to be skeptical of our perceptions.

Conservatism Stands for...

A prejudice for tradition, the protection of private property, skepticism of schemes and ideologies, respect for the rule of law and contempt for the rule of caprice, deference to the authority of God.

No Obama, None of the Time

By Phillip Ellis Jackson
Intellectual Conservative

In a world where you can believe what you want to believe because you want to believe it — and your beliefs can be shared by others who want to believe what you want to believe too — there’s no room for genuine dialogue and debate.

...

Now, we all know that differences exist in every election, and the political rhetoric that gives expression to these differences can at times be extreme. Pacifists routinely get tarred as Unpatriotic Pinkos, just as law and order proponents get unfairly labeled as the New American Gestapo. Exaggerations and excesses are as much a part of this country’s political dynamics as motherhood and apple pie. To rail against these as injurious to the very system that gives them voice in the first place is to understand nothing about how politics is actually conducted in the real world, with real people.

But, it’s also true that at some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. Exactly when that threshold is crossed isn’t always clear, but like the Supreme Court which can’t define pornography but knows it when it sees it, that threshold exists. Bill Clinton helped cross one line by making “penis” a word of common, every-day usage, where previously an endless series of euphemisms were employed when publicly speaking about it. Now, thanks to Bill and Monica and a box of cigars, even fifth-graders can talk openly about the exit point of the male reproductive system, oral sex, and a myriad of other once-forbidden topics without the slightest hint of social inhibition.

And so it is with politics in general. Questioning one’s patriotism once merited a full-blown investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Now, thanks to the excesses of McCarthyism, it’s just the first arrow in the political quiver of both the Right and Left which simultaneously condemns Code Pink and General Petraeus as disloyal subversives.
...

To illustrate what I mean, we first need to recognize a tendency that misinforms a lot of political analysis. When thinking about the world in which they live, people tend to mark the beginning of history with the moment of their own birth. Those for whom the Great Depression was the defining experience of their lives never quite saw the country the same way as those born in the post-WWII era. Baby Boomers like myself, whose perspective was shaped by the fifties and sixties, carry a different image of the country from those born into a post-Carter world of high technology and seemingly endless economic growth.

Each of these generations, and sub-generations in between, measures the flow of history from their own starting point. Forget about the fact that politics in the 19th century was in many ways infinitely more brutal than it is today. I wasn’t around when Grover Cleveland ran for president, so it’s not a touch point for me. My point of reference is Kennedy-Nixon. For others it’s Carter-Reagan, or Bush-Gore. In doing so we arbitrarily pick an election and use it to evaluate the propriety of all future presidential campaigns. It’s the same reasoning science uses in demonstrating or refuting man-made global warming. Start with the 1880s (an exceptionally cold period), and everything that follows is warmer. Start with the 1990s (where temperatures reached a peak), and the last 10-15 years have been “cooling.”

...

The Internet has forever transformed American politics in some good, but many bad ways. It’s beneficial in that it’s a source of alternative information that keeps the Dan Rathers of the world from perpetrating election year hoaxes on the American public. And, it’s an excellent way for like-minded people to come together in like-minded ways to pursue like-minded goals. But the yin to this yang is that instead of isolating the real kooks as non-Internet modes of communication tended to do (it’s not quite as gratifying to wait days or weeks for a letter to be returned, or a magazine to arrive — assuming one kook could easily find another kook to communicate with in the first place), the Internet has made it possible for kooks everywhere on the planet to get together in real time and operate in a virtual world of their own making.

Almost anything can be said on the Internet without fear of retribution or condemnation. The person saying it doesn’t need to reveal their identity, and can lie about their age, gender, even nationality. In this medium facts are no longer immutable anchors of information, but wholly fungible delusions that assume concrete status if and when enough people choose to believe them. Not only was Bush personally behind 9-11, no plane flew into the Pentagon that day. So, where did all the passengers on that plane go? Modern-day “facts” don’t require coherency or consistency, so the answer is “Bush was behind 9-11.” That’s all the response required to end the discussion, and move on to another delusional topic.

...

Things will change only when reality slaps us in the face again, and we no longer have the luxury of playing in the fantasy worlds of our own creation. The same people who supported “torture warrants” in the aftermath of 9-11 now decry the lack of due process afforded to non-uniformed military combatants captured in the Middle East. Slam another plane into a skyscraper, set off a bomb or two in a major American city, and the people today who condemn warrantless wiretaps will clamor for the political heads of those in power who “didn’t do enough to protect us from our enemies.”

Watching this spectacle unfold will be the American public who, except for the hardest of the hard-core kooks, will at least temporarily return to the real world and look for real solutions to very real problems. Their only hope is that in the intervening time we haven’t elected a bunch of kook-supported clowns to office who wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to confront a real problem other than to pander to the world community, or talk it to death with meaningless rhetoric. (more)

How To Engage in Politics Without Losing Your Soul

Smartchristian.com

1 - Christians must never allow ourselves to equate the biblical Kingdom of God with any human political party or nation (John 18:36; Isaiah 9:7; Matthew 6:33, Philippians 3:20, Revelation 11:15). As Christians we must be diligent in maintaining and perserving the distinctiveness between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. We must never fuse the two. The great “utopian illusion” that easily enters our politics is that peace, harmony, and prosperity for all can be brought about in the world through human political means.

2 - Christians must never allow ourselves to elevate a specific politician to a messianic or savior status (1 Peter 3:15). In our entertainment and celebrity culture, it is becoming more common for people to infuse politicians with almost a messianic or savior status. In other words, people begin to believe a politician’s extrordinary promises and that they actually can single-handlely produce almost supernatural social results. As Christians, we have one Lord, and we must resist all attempts to exalt any human politician to unrealisitic heights.

3 - Christians must not just vote, but more importantly, we must pray for our government and the leaders of all political parties (Matthew 5:44, 1 Timothy 2:1-2). In our polarized political society, many Christians are tempted to bless the politician or political party they support, and curse the other one they don’t. How unbiblical! The Bible is clear, we are to pray for all political and government leaders, even our political enemies.

4 - Christians must always remember that our ultimate security is in Christ and in the unshakeable kingdom of God, no matter what presidential candidate or party wins (Hebrews 12:26-29). One of the dangers that many Christians seem to often fall into is that we begin to elevate the outcome of presidential elections to an apocalyptic status. In other words, if our presidential candidate or party does not win, we begin to see it as the end of the world. This is what I call the “Y2K complex.” When we allow ourselves to understand politics in apocalyptic terms, we at the same time express an unbelief in the sovereignty and Lordship of God over his creation and human history. Yes, elections have real consequences for people, but in the larger scheme of history, don’t worry, no matter who becomes our president, God is in contril and will take care of things.

5 - Christians must never allow ourselves to bring the divisiveness and polarization of political parties into the church, the family of God (Romans 16:17, 1 Corinthians 1:11-12). We cannot allow partisan politics to divide the body of Christ. Invidual Christians have freedom of conscience before God and the Bible, and as a result, we must accept the fact that there will be diversity of political opinions in the church. We must never allow diverse political perspectives cause conflict and divisions in the church.

6 - Christians must never allow ourselves to demonize or dehumaize another person - no matter what politician it is - because every single human has been created in the image of God (Colossians 3:8, Matthew 7:1, James 4:12). Christians must not engage in demeaning and judging other people, no matter whether we agree with them politically or not.

7 - Christians must never engage in angry confrontational arguments, instead of being open to learn through civil debate and dialogue (James 1:20, Philippians 2:14-16, 2 Timothy 2:14). When we interact with other people with hard-core dogmatic positions, we demonstrate an ugly pride that demeans the character of Christ. As Christians we must humble ourselves, understand that as humans we are limited in our understanding, and that we all can learn more about the very complex issues that face our nation. Christians must always engage in politics through a path of reason and civility.

8 - Christians must never allow ourselves to become so intertwined so closely with one political party that we forfeit our independent identity as followers of Christ. When we do, we lose the prophetic voice to speak and clarify biblical truth to all politicians and political parties (1 Timothy 3:15, Ephesians 4:15, Romans 3:4).

9 - Christians must never allow ourselves to engage in partisan politics by supporting divisiveness between races, between male and female, between rich and poor, and between the young and old (Matthew 5:9, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19). Electorial politics is all about dividing society into specific voting blocks. And as a result, politics usually divides our society, instead of uniting it. Christians must always function as peacemakers and reconcilers in the public square, and resist every temptation to join the political tactics of dividing people for political gain.

10 - Christians must not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of simply cursing the darkness through negativity, instead of constructively engaging our world as perserving salt and illuminating light (Matthew 5:13-16). The cultural and missional mandate of kingdom Christians requires us to stop cursing the darkness and start lighting more candles that reflects God’s truth, compassion, and love.

Getting Poverty Wrong

By Steven Malanga
City Journal

Obama suggested that some black poverty today can be attributed to the “legalized discrimination” that existed in America prior to the civil rights laws of the 1960s, which, in his telling, prevented black families from accumulating “wealth to bequeath to future generations.” Obama seemed to suggest that families in America escape poverty by patiently accumulating wealth and passing it on to future generations—when in fact millions of Americans of all races leap out of poverty within a single lifetime through their own initiative, not their inheritances. We are long past the time when the legacy of Jim Crow laws and other forms of official discrimination can explain black poverty rates.
...
Yet both candidates are largely missing the point. While they insist that strengthening labor unions or protecting homeowners from foreclosures will alleviate the hardships of the poor, the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census remind us that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, married family is a far greater contributor to poverty in America than many of the supposed shortcomings of our economy. It’s hard to imagine that America will make much more headway on reducing persistent poverty until it halts this long-term trend.
...

The economic impact of this breakdown has been profound. Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. The latest Census data illustrate the problem. Only one out of ten American kids living in two-married-parent families is in poverty—and about one-third of these families are recent immigrants whose poverty is temporary. By contrast, 37 percent of children living with single mothers are impoverished.

Marriage seems to be the defining characteristic of economically successful families. With out-of-wedlock birth rates in America soaring, so that many traditional families aren’t so much breaking up as never getting started, the percentage of children living with cohabiting parents is growing. Yet these kids are three times more likely to be in poverty than the children of married parents. The data actually demonstrate that poverty rates for families headed by two unmarried parents more closely resemble the poverty rates of single-parent families than those of two-married-parent ones.

Part of this shocking difference owes to what City Journal contributing editor Kay S. Hymowitz has called the “marriage gap” in America (“Marriage and Caste,” Winter 2006). Hymowitz describes how better-educated, higher-income men and women are now more likely to delay having children until they’re married, while lower-income, less-educated men and women are more likely to cohabit and have children out of wedlock.

But even these demographic facts don’t completely explain the widely varying poverty rate between married and cohabiting parents. Studies that adjust for parents’ educational levels still find that a family headed by two unmarried parents is twice as likely to wind up in poverty as one that married parents head. Something about the marriage certificate—a sense of long-term commitment, family stability, perhaps—makes an economic difference. Research shows that married workers exhibit more job stability and make greater wage gains than cohabiting parents, a sort of “marriage wage premium,” as some economists dub it.

Such factors also help to illuminate economic disparities along racial lines in America. As the latest Census statistics illustrate, family formation differs widely by race. Nearly nine in ten Asian children, for instance, live with two parents, as do 78 percent of white kids. By contrast, 68 percent of Hispanic children and only 38 percent of black children in America reside in two-parent families. A black child living with a single mother is nearly three times more likely to live in poverty than a black child living with two parents, the Census data show, yet 50 percent more black children are living with single mothers than in two-parent married families.

Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent—usually a father. (more)