Tactical Faith

Equipping Christians in Alabama

Wm. Travis Coblentz

Moral Arguments I: The Euthyphro Dilemma

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Filed Under: Apologetics, Defending the Faith, Philosophy Tagged With: , , , ,

Morality, God, and the Euthyphro Dilemma

Christians often appeal to the moral argument when speaking of the secular movement of our culture, and its (probably related) moral decay: “Without God,” one might say, “there is no ground for morality. We’ve rejected belief in God and now we’re reaping what we’ve sown.”

If you’ve ever made this claim, any atheist who has reflected on this issue at all will respond quickly, “I don’t need a God who tells me what is moral, and I don’t need threats of punishment or promise of rewards to goad me into acting morally.”

I believe there is something important in the Christian claim. And we’ll get to that in time. But I think there is also a tremendously important seed of truth in the atheist criticism of the Christian claim. Isn’t it more virtuous to do the good simply because it is good, rather than because someone tells you to do it? Doesn’t it show a richer and deeper intellect to know what is good without having to be told? To reflect on this, let’s reflect on a writing that’s a few hundred years older than the New Testament.

The Euthyphro Dilemma: Or the Problem with Appealing to God for Morality

In the dialogue Euthyphro,[1] we find Socrates, about to go to trial for alleged impiety and corruption of the youth, talking with the religiously knowledgeable eponymous interlocuter. Euthyphro is not ashamed to declare his own superiority in all things religious to most Greeks, and so Socrates engages him in his famous style of asking what some virtue is. In this case, Socrates is seeking some way to respond to the accusation of impiety, for he claims (in his usual way) not to know what piety is. He asks Euthyphro (in his usual “What is X?” way) what piety is. Euthyphro is quick to offer various answers, all of which fail.[2] And that is how the dialogue seems to end—with no good answer to the question.

But the dialogue contains a discussion that has become a perennial response to any morality that appeals to a divine being. Euthyphro, after already failing in a few responses, comes to the following claim: “[T]he pious is what all the gods love.”[3] How Socrates responds to this claim, leading Euthyphro to the dilemma named after him, is almost universally known among philosophers, and has morphed into a modernized version of the Euthyphro Dilemma. The Dilemma is quite simple, though not so simply answered: Is something pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious?

The Dilemma is troubling because of the implications of each choice. If we choose the latter choice—that God (for Euthyphro, all the gods unanimously, but we’ll just switch to “God” here) loves it because it is pious, then we recognize a moral standard that is external (and probably above) God. If that is the case, then we do not need God for morality.

What of the other option—the one a Christian might more likely choose—that something is pious because God loves it? This option creates two related problems. The first is that it seems to mean that God could love (or command) something that is terrible, and that would make it good. So, say, God decides that torturing children is a good thing. Would we have no means of judging God’s command to be evil?[4] If we can only appeal to God’s love or command, then we cannot take into account the cries and pleas of the children. And that seems absurd.

The second problem is related: If God’s love/will/command makes something pious (or, more broadly, good), then we have no capacity for discerning what is good in any particular situation unless we have been given a clear command from God. So, in most instances, it seems we would be left unsure about whether something is good or bad. Morality would be, from our perspective, arbitrary.

There are other issues that can arise from choosing this option in the Dilemma, but these are, I think, sufficient to make the point.

And what is the point? It seems, in this way of presenting the Euthyphro Dilemma, that appeal to God’s will, love, command, whatever, to determine what is good is meaningless. For if God loves something because it is good, then God is a needless addition to morality. And if something is good because God loves it, then morality is so arbitrary from our perspective that it is not helpful in determining most of our choices.[5]

The Euthyphro Dilemma, as applied to contemporary ethics therefore seems to side with the atheist: It’s best to keep God and morality separate—but now, not merely because one seems more thoughtful and more virtuous when acting morally without reference to God, but because appeal to God leads to unacceptable conclusions.

What Would…er…Socrates Do?

My guess is that, if you’re reading this, you very likely have an answer for this problem, or could probably point to a resource that responds to this problem. I was always somewhat perplexed by the Euthyphro Problem because it seemed that a Christian solution to the problem was, though not exactly simple, readily available.

But, in good apologetic fashion, I’ll not appeal to Scripture or Christian theology to respond to this problem. Rather, I plan to dive a bit more into the Euthyphro, to see if the pre-Christian philosopher Plato offers any possible response to this problem, and whether his answer is compatible, or even sheds some light on the Christian view. (Hint: He does. And, I’ll argue, it does.)

We’ll get to that in the following piece.

 

[1] If you’d like to read it, you can find it online and in various books. For a great source in which you can read it in English and in the Greek (and it also includes lexicon and parsing working on site), check out http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/  For a direct link to the English translation of the Euthyphro, go here: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0170%3atext%3dEuthyph.

[2] An answer that fails in a dialogue with Socrates is an answer that leads to some inconsistency with another belief that the answerer holds or to some contradictory set of claims. Such failure is not a matter of the person giving an answer that does not match what Socrates knows is the right answer—because Socrates never gives the right answer, and claims not to have known any of the right answers.

[3] Plato, Euthyphro, 9e.

[4] In addition, we have no means of determining that “God is good,” because there is no standard by which we can measure Him. “God is good” would simply translate into “God does what God does,” which amounts to saying nothing at all. Or, perhaps, what is implied in a statement such as “God is good” would be something a bit more sinister: Might makes right.

[5] Of course, we have what Scripture offers us, but I think most of us believe that we have some awareness of, and ability to reason about, ethics apart from Scripture. We believe that we should be able to discuss rights, obligations, good and evil with people of varying backgrounds, not simply with those who hold to Scripture. And therefore it seems that we have to have some sort of knowledge of ethics apart from reference to the one, true God. Therefore saying that we know of morality only because of God’s commands in Scripture seems like something to which few of us would really agree.

A Primer on Justice II: Getting Confused with Plato

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Filed Under: Christianity and Politics, Church and Law, Philosophy, Worldview Tagged With: , , , ,

Getting Properly Confused

I’ve stated in another blog that being unsure, even confused, can be a result even of the experience of the grace of Jesus. I may be wrong, for perhaps I just find too much confidence in one’s beliefs unpleasant. It surely undermines dialogue and therefore also can reduce the chance of befriending those with whom one disagrees. It can also often be a kind of hidden laziness, in which one is unwilling to go through the difficulty of entertaining other positions.

But I’m not talking about dropping confidence for some cheap (false) humility that declares everything to be unknowable. That is merely the same old arrogance, but this time the laziness (in this case, of not assenting to anything) is on full display.

Nor am I talking about being filled with doubt to the point of agnosticism. In this case, I am not talking about belief in God at all, but rather about our understanding of the basic ethical concept of justice.

I’ve already suggested that our approach to justice is fraught with a bad kind of selfishness and emphasis on the retributive elements of justice. Rare is the one who speaks with the awe that, say, justice-as-shalom should inspire. If indeed justice is a state of wholeness and peace, then we should be in awe of it—not simply because it stands far above our approaches to life, but because justice-as-shalom seems to outstrip our understanding.

The Questions of the Republic

Probably the most famous piece ever written about justice is Plato’s Republic. It is an expansive dialogue (in ten books), talking about everything from personal virtue to the decay of good societies into tyrannies to reward and punishment in an afterlife. It remains a brilliant work, almost prophetic in places, from which we can glean much today. But perhaps most important are not really the conclusions to which the interlocutors come, but the way in which the various questions about justice arise. Before turning to Scripture, let’s explore this dialogue, and see how it might help us ask better questions about justice.

In Book I of the Republic, we are introduced to a number of interlocutors, the most important in that book are Socrates, Cephalus (an old, well-to-do man), Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus. Excepting Socrates, the other speakers essentially disappear for the rest of the dialogue (Books II-X), being replaced by Plato’s brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus.

The dialogue begins with Socrates and Glaucon ascending from Athens’ port city, Piraeus, back up to Athens. They are stopped by the various other interlocutors and forced playfully (but still forced) to stay down in Piraeus. They enter the house of Cephalus, who is busy preparing for a religious sacrifice. Socrates engages him in conversation, and from this the conversation about justice arises. Cephalus, upon being asked by Socrates to talk about justice, immediately leaves the conversation to attend to his sacrifice. Polemarchus picks up the argument, using Cephalus’ claim about justice—namely, that justice is truth-telling and paying back to each what is owed to each.

This is not a bad description of justice. Socrates ultimately undermines the second part, for it is clear that there are times when giving back to someone what one owes is improper. Say you borrowed a gun from Bob, and Bob, overcome with rage over a backstabbing friend, asks for his gun. It is his, you borrowed it, and it is owed him, but it does not seem to be just to give it to him at that time.

Polemarchus modifies his answer to mean that “what is owed” is deeper than merely giving people back their stuff: It means that I owe to my friends good things and to my enemies bad things (compare Matthew 5:43). Socrates undermines this claim by leading Polemarchus to agree that a virtue (justice) cannot cause true harm—for true harm is falling into vice. Therefore, justice cannot mean to cause harm to one’s enemies.

At this point, Thrasymachus angrily interrupts the discussion, criticizing Socrates for always asking questions, but never answering them. It is not too long before Thrasymachus offers his own definition of justice: It is that which benefits the stronger. That is, justice is merely a term for whatever is best for the most powerful person. Thrasymachus voices the cynical view that “justice” is merely a means of maintaining the status quo to keep the powerful in control. Consider that a rebellion that fails (e.g. the Civil War) is determined to be unjust, but a rebellion that succeeds (e.g. the Revolutionary War) is considered just.

Socrates undermines this claim too, though in a rather complex way, leaving Thrasymachus embarrassed and angry (for Socrates was apparently the more powerful between the two!).

While when we are at our best, we may reject the claims of Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus, I think we struggle to rise out of these conceptions of justice. In many ways, we have not, in the 2400 or so  years since the Republic was written, moved past Book I. And, yes, I include us Christians among those who have mostly failed to move past Book I.

Understanding Justice and Justification: Owing and the Powerful

Consider the way we talk about salvation. The account, in a nutshell, goes something like this: There is a law set in place by God. The first humans (Adam and Eve) broke that law, and we, in concert with Adam and Eve, continue to break that law. God the Son took on human flesh to be the perfect sacrifice so as to appease God’s wrath against humanity for breaking His law, and so giving us the opportunity to be forgiven, if only we believe and are identified with Jesus.

I do not believe this account is false or erroneous. But the way many look at it is false or erroneous because justice is understood in Republic, Book I terms. Consider that if we understand justice as the benefit of the most powerful, then we see that God made up a law that benefits Him, and that He tyrannizes over us to serve Him, without concern whether it hurts or helps us, and then judges us as evil for failing to live as proper servants. While many Christians would nod their hands to this account, it is based on the very bad idea that “might makes right.” It suggests that God isn’t really fundamentally good, but must be considered good simply because no one is powerful enough to overthrow Him. This means, in turn, that power is the fundamental characteristic and the only one that makes one worthy of worship.

Of course, then we can add the Cephalus/Polemarchus view of justice to this: Justice is getting what is owed. Clearly, we are owed punishment. But Jesus gives to God what is owed Him in the sacrifice, so that God lets us off the hook.

This approach isn’t bad, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go very far. Is salvation merely getting out of hell? Or is it more than that—being included in Christ, in the overcoming of death, being made like Christ, so that we might “glorify God and enjoy Him forever”? Surely, this is more than God getting what is owed and our not getting what we’re owed.[1]

Of course, perhaps I’ve made a mistake here. Perhaps, justice explains why we’re in trouble, while mercy explains why we’re not in trouble anymore, and, say, grace explains why we’re getting so much more.

But that means that justice is something we don’t really want…except against our enemies. It also means that God’s mercy is fundamentally at odds with His justice. Of course, we usually accept this idea, claiming that His mercy led to Jesus on the cross so as to appease His justice. Again, I think this is not really wrong, but simply does not go deep enough to understand justice.

A Focus on Recompense: Justice vs Mercy

Let me see if I can explain the problem a little more clearly. It might be easier if we look at a society, rather than God for a moment. Consider a man who has been found guilty of a capital crime—say he was a mass shooter, killing numerous people in a crowded mall. There is really no question that the man did it—it has been confirmed by eyewitnesses, recordings, and DNA evidence. The man writes a letter admitting that he had done wrong and feels bad about it. Upon hearing of the letter, the President decides to pardon him.

Has the President acted justly or mercifully? It seems clear that he has acted mercifully toward the man, but this mercy has reduced the level of justice in our society. For justice seems to relate to how the entire society functions, while mercy is for that single individual. Too much mercy and society will be overrun with crime. Too much justice, and we are all in prison.[2] And so in a society, one must balance mercy and justice. They are opposites and a well-functioning society will have to learn to balance them reasonably well.

God, if granting too much mercy, allows the unrepentant a place in the kingdom. If enacting too much justice, puts everyone in hell. Mercy seems directed toward universal eternal reward, while justice seems directed toward universal eternal punishment. Put another way, justice seems aimed toward appropriate recompense, while mercy is aimed toward cancelling negative recompense and/or increasing positive recompense. That is, His mercy and justice are pressing in opposite directions and must be balanced.[3]

That strikes me as a bad view of God’s justice and mercy. It is a helpful analogy, but seems to make God at odds with Himself—such internal division being a problem, I think, of sinful humans.

Recognizing internal division—having our motives battle one another—as a problem for limited, sinful creatures gives us some direction for understanding what kind of thing justice might be, or at least what it is not. For surely God is not divided in His thoughts or motives. If He were, He would not be unchanging and ever-faithful—for the result of a divided mind and warring motives is faithlessness, constant changing, and so forth.[4]

It seems to me that if justice and mercy are about recompense, then they must be opposed. And since I do not believe that God’s desires are so divided, I think it reasonable to believe that recompense is not really what true justice and mercy are about.

This does not mean that concerns over recompense have nothing to do with justice and mercy, but simply that the best we can establish regarding recompense will never achieve the heights of that true justice that is a description of God’s character.

Of course, we should not fall into despair and forgo the pursuit of justice and mercy as we presently understand these terms. But we absolutely should seek to understand as best we can the nature of God’s view of justice and, it would seem, try to bring our society’s view of justice better in line with His perfect justice.

But we cannot really determine what is involved in bringing our society’s justice closer to God’s justice, or whether it is possible or desirable to do so, until we begin to gain an understanding of what God’s justice looks like. That will be our aim in the following post.

[1] Some are probably thinking that I’m mixing up justification with sanctification. Yes, I am. After all, the Bible does it. It is merely our systematic attempts to divide things up into conceptual parts that leads to the division. We can talk about inhaling and exhaling as distinct acts, but in everyday life, they depend on one another and cannot be separated (without killing the person). Perhaps our obsession with justification (inhaling), our persistent analyzing, debating, evangelizing, analogizing, making relevant of salvation-as-justification has undermined our grasp and concern for sanctification (exhaling). We’re full of grace and yet still sucking in air as one suffocating, not realizing that it is the outward flow of “good works” (sanctification, a life directed by God glorifying purpose) that fills the body with new life.

[2] If we paid for every crime we committed—many of which we may not even know we’re committing—we’d all be in trouble—many of us simply for speeding.

[3] Obviously, they would have to be balanced by some other consideration. That is, God’s motivations would have to be driven fundamentally not by justice or mercy, but by some other thing(s). As noted in the footnote below, perhaps God’s glory is this other consideration that decides how to bring balance.

[4] Of course, this undivided mind of God regarding justice and mercy can, perhaps, be solved by appealing to a simple claim that God chooses a set group to receive mercy and the rest to experience the full weight of justice, and that this decision was from eternity (that is, God experiences no clash within Himself because He has never not decided how many will receive mercy, for—it would seem—this precise amount would result in the greatest glory for Himself). While this approach makes so that God is unchanging, faithful, etc., I am not entirely sure that it really deals with the warring nature of this understanding of justice and mercy. In any case, I will not follow this line of reasoning because I believe it is too easily accepting of a human idea of justice-as-appropriate-recompense and opposed to mercy-as-inappropriate-recompense (that is, even though God is not experiencing division within Himself, justice and mercy are still opposed within Him).

Knowledge, Understanding, and Love III: Ignorance through Grace

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Filed Under: Apologetics, Humility, Philosophy, Worldview Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ignorance and the Good

The last entry in this series noted that recognizing our own ignorance—the simple recognition that we do not possess the Truth, but that the Truth possesses us—may be essential to be good, even for Christians. But how can Christians both claim to know the Truth and be ignorant? Let’s begin with Socrates again, and then show how similar ideas are evident in Christianity.

The recognition of one’s own ignorance relates closely to what Socrates obsessed about: ethics. Ethics isn’t simply what tells you what to do. In fact, that is a rather simplistic view of ethics. In reality, ethics gives the why of everything, explains how it all fits, and because it puts it all together, it shows us how to navigate through this life without stubbing our toes or falling into a pit.

According to Socrates, all things exist by virtue of their “participation” in the Good (or, which is the same thing, the Beautiful). While that sounds too metaphysical to be meaningful, it includes something a little more down-to-earth: To understand something, you must understand what good it is, and what is good for it, and where it fits into a life directed toward good things.

Think of any piece of information in the world: From information about a friend’s struggles with self-esteem to information about the incredible power released when splitting an atom. We can learn this information, but what is the point of this information? If I have no aims at all, then the information is meaningless. It could just as well be a jumble of nonsense words, easily ignored or forgotten or misused. If my aims are destructive, then I could use my friend’s struggle to destroy her, and my knowledge of atom-splitting to kill multitudes.[1] If my aims are good, then I may build my friend up and help develop safe nuclear power plants and work to make sure use of nuclear weapons remains unnecessary, a thing of fiction alone.

The ethics one possesses tells where the information belongs, how it all fits. Plato believed, in fact, that all things derive their being from the Good itself, and thus truly to know something meant in fact to have familiarity with the Good. And this familiarity with the Good was not the possession of mere facts about the Good, but required living a life of virtue—a life, so to speak, in the Good. Socrates’ interlocutors, insofar as they suffered from vice, are shown to be utterly lacking in knowledge of things, most glaringly they suffer from that most destructive of vices: Unawareness of their own ignorance.

Why did they suffer so badly from this unawareness? Not because they were ignorant in the sense that we use the word today. Many of the characters in Plato’s dialogues stood at the tops of their fields of study—many of the rich paying enormous sums (equivalent to what we pay for college) to learn from them. What they suffered from was not lack of information or knowledge, but wisdom. And their wisdom failed them because they did not live virtuously, pursuing the Good.

A life of vice leads one to be unable to see how things fit together. Plato shows us this vicious failure of understanding through Socrates’ elenchus, that rather unpleasant process through which he showed glaring inconsistencies in his interlocutors’ claims. Plato’s purpose was not to suggest that these people needed to study more or learn more facts. Quite the opposite: They had become so enamored of their knowledge and skill that they found the whole of virtue unnecessary.[2]

Transforming Self-Justifying Pigs into Forgiven Humans

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 8:1 that “‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up” (ESV). He is writing about those who understand that an idol is nothing, and so eating the food sacrificed to an idol is acceptable. But to grab hold of this knowledge and to act in accordance with the freedom one feels in possessing it can lead to the destruction of a fellow believer: “And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died” (1 Cor 8:11 ESV).

It is clear in this context that knowledge of the facts is insufficient. Knowledge must be directed by love, otherwise it can be used for evil. Just as knowledge of nuclear physics or another’s weakness can be wielded for good or evil. I believe that this can be true even of the knowledge that God exists: Even the demons believe.

What the demons, the bad physicist, the manipulative friend, and the knowledgeable, but uncaring idol-carnivore are all missing is the proper framework into which to place the facts they possess. This framework is really less a simple framework, and more a stance, an aim, a direction in which one is moving. In Plato’s language, a pursuit of the Good. In biblical language, love (of God and neighbor).

This perhaps is why Jesus warns us: “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you” (Matt 7:6 ESV). A pig can see a pearl, can experience that pearl’s hardness, shape, luster, but the pig does not have the framework to recognize the value. The pig’s values are unswervingly directed toward other things. The same goes for the dog and the sacred.

The pig represents the one whose aims are vulgar, worldly, or simply full of malice. When you hand them anything of value, whether that is a fact or one’s time, the “pig” will recognize the fact, but not interpret it correctly. Have you ever shown someone a kindness, and that person immediately became angry or bitter? I myself spent a good portion of my life as that very kind of pig—genuine kindnesses shown to me would cause me both intense prideful anger and a festering self-loathing.

Before something of value could be given to pig-Travis, I had to be transformed into a human. How did this happen? Through a crisis. This crisis was a kind of ethical-epistemological crisis—I experienced the collapse of the system that included my way of living and my beliefs: the framework (my life) fell apart, and the beliefs scattered into a confusing mess. I found myself confused, lost, ignorant—but not “ignorant” in the normal sense that we usually use that term. I mean “ignorant” in a broader sense: I knew facts about life, I was relatively “well-educated,” had experienced a decent amount of life, I had worked and even taught. But this ignorance was that feeling that nothing I knew seemed to fit anywhere anymore—as if all that I was, did, and knew had been tossed into space, floating scattered about.

But that was a starting point. I was able to recognize how un-directed and confused, how ignorant, I was, and so I was able to look back and see myself more clearly than I did before. For our ethics are most often attempts to protect ourselves and blame others. After all, what did Adam and Eve do immediately upon receiving the knowledge of good and evil (arguably, the very definition of ethical knowledge)? They blamed others for their actions—Adam blaming Eve (and God), and Eve blaming the serpent (and, implicitly, God)—and they did this to protect themselves. Our lives form around our attempts to justify ourselves—if you are poor, you will surely see your position as more holy than that of the rich, and if you get a high-paying job, you will surely believe that God is calling you to that job and learn to live quite comfortably with your much higher wages. So, too, if you are having sex before marriage, you will likely convince yourself that your love is so rich that you are an exception to traditional sexual morality (or that traditional sexuality morality is simply wrong). If you despise someone, you surely come to believe that they are so bad as to deserve being hated, or, more likely, you will be quite convinced that you do not “hate” them, but “love” them, and so like a kind of monstrous transubstantiation, all the accidental properties are that of hatred, but the essential nature is love. Our ethics are largely wielded to justify our lives and to condemn those we don’t like. No wonder original sin consisted of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil!

But when we have that moment of confusion, of being at a loss about our own lives, in that dangerous moment in which you lose the grasp on your own life, you are free to see yourself without the haze of your self-justifying ethics standing in the way. In that moment—a moment dangerous, as if balancing on the edge of a precipice—I saw myself as the pig I was. I saw that I was trampling on pearls and the sacred.

I hope you do not miss that this is, in some ways, precisely what recognizing the grace of God does to you. If your view of ethics and way of life are largely built around self-justification, then Jesus’ forgiveness is not some pleasant experience. It is surely full of mercy and grace, but it can destroy your life, throwing all your previous ways—not just sinning in the obvious ways, but sinning in that most sinister and sneaky manner, self-justification—away. And if this gave your life order, a confrontation with Jesus’ mercy will throw you directly into chaos. Like being baptized into death, or picking up a cross, or drinking the cup that Jesus drank. Through that, comes life.

And so it did for me: those pearls and the sacred suddenly began to re-form a framework into which the bits of floating facts surrounding me started finding their places. I saw moments in which people loved me that I had never recognized before. I saw the hand of God in my life, working even as I tried to shove Him away. My eyes were opened again, a little more to the beauty of God.

The point? The difference between a pig-Travis and human-Travis is that the human had come to recognize his ignorance. A pig does not know that it is ignorant. For a pig to become a human, that pig must lose its ethical-epistemological system of self-justification. In the language of the New Testament, the pig must die, must lose its life, and so be raised with Christ as the new man.

And we must not come to believe, even as Christians, that we have outgrown that ignorance. We have been gathered up by Christ. We do not own Him anymore than a fingernail owns the head. Or, put differently, we must not think that we have come to understand God any more than a man should ever come to think that he has understood his wife. For though I may understand my wife to some extent, if I ever have her completely figured out, completely nailed down, I would lose all desire to listen to her, to pursue her, and, well, to try to understand her. More fundamentally, it would show that I am ignorant of my own ignorance, for only a corpse can be completely understood. How much more does God stand above our understanding—yes, even if your theological knowledge is so grand that sermons are dull and the “average Christian” is not worthy to untie the thongs of your intellectual sandals.

God stands above us. Way above us. Recognition of our ignorance is a necessary condition for trusting in Him. That’s true for every human, even an impassioned, educated, Bible-memorizing, praying, fasting, activist, evangelizing-daily, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked Christian. And definitely for me.

But here’s the beauty of all this: Recognizing one’s own ignorance is not, as it may first appear, a kind of dead end, a stalling of learning and pursuit. It is just the opposite: It opens the door for greater understanding, a passionate pursuit of that which you don’t understand. And this passionate pursuit is contingent upon a trust, a faith, that the One whom you pursue is worth the pursuit.

[1] Note here that if you in fact hate John, you may quite easily remember and “understand the fit” of information about John’s weaknesses. Of course, you can do this because you see injuring John as “good” (you might not say that it is good, but you nevertheless, in a sense deeper than your words, believe it to be a good thing). Of course, this “good” and this “fit” are weak and shallow—easily acquired and cheaply held. Socrates’ elenchus, which I mention just below, works to undermine such cheap understandings of “good” throughout Plato’s corpus. For these vicious forms of “good” can very quickly be shown to lead to fatal inconsistencies. Love of John, even if he is your enemy (and may even need to be made incapable of acting), gives to one the true good and true fit, which is difficult to acquire and held at a cost to oneself. The valuable, of which the Good is the source, always requires sacrifice to acquire. Of course, while a believer may not hold to Plato’s metaphysic of the Good, it is not difficult to recognize that love of neighbor and love of God are not merely two unrelated commandments, but that they are organically united. You can’t have one without the other. So, too, we might say: The valuable, of which God is the source, always requires sacrifice to acquire. For to love John is to better know him than to hate him, for to love John is to better love God, who is the source of all truth, understanding, and good. And to fail to know and love God, no matter how much information you possess, is to walk in darkness, (arrogantly) stumbling about blindly.

[2] Plato seems to have believed that virtue was largely an all-or-nothing thing. To have one virtue properly is to have all of them. And so while his interlocutors may have exhibited a virtue, it was really a sort of reflection or adulterated image of the virtue. It was this holistic virtue that Socrates’ interlocutors seemed incapable of embracing, not the specific (semi-)virtues that they practiced.

Discouraging Heroes: On Motive and the Abortion Debate

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Filed Under: Christianity and Politics, Worldview Tagged With: , , ,

Concern over Motive

A few years ago, someone who claimed to be a feminist woman wrote an article—which turned out to be a fake—in which she declared that she had aborted her baby upon learning that the child was a boy. The rationale was terrible and simple: She “knew” that the boy would grow up to be a monster—like all men are—and so decided to end his life before he had a chance to become that monster.

Let me repeat: This article was a fake. And those who were pro-choice were intent to show any and all who cared that it was fake.

But why would they protest such an article, as if it is some horrible thing that only those who really hated abortion would believe?

I do not believe that we need to go into some sort of pro-choice bashing here, and so this “why?” does not arise out of any broad, sweeping claim that all who are pro-choice are misandrists and so forth. The question is far more basic than that: If you believe that a woman has the right to kill an unborn child within her, what do you care the reasons?

The most obvious answer seems to be something like this: It reflects poorly on the abortion debate if someone has an abortion from reasons other than those that arise directly from the difficulty of having a child. Lacking finances, being raped, etc., are all embraced as good reasons for aborting a child. Anticipation of (stereotyped) malevolence based on the sex of the child seems a tad too presumptuous and malicious to be a good reason.

But why consider the reasons when “abortion on demand” is the standard position of most abortion advocates?

The simple answer exposes something about the worldview of abortion advocates that we may find both compelling and disturbing.

But, first, let’s consider an analogous situation. Say you are a 2nd Amendment advocate. Imagine  a story arises about someone who possesses a gun because he believes that all people of a certain race are monstrous beasts who simply want to destroy the world. Just to be clear: He only possesses the gun, he shows no evidence that he will use it, except in self-defense.[1] Would you consider this a story that threatens support for the 2nd Amendment?

Perhaps. For it suggests that the guy is a tad confused and a racist, and it seems dangerous to put guns into the hands of racists and the confused. Nevertheless, unless there is evidence of criminal intent or a background of criminal activity, most 2nd Amendment supporters would likely say something like, “Yeah, that guy is an idiot, but, as long as there is no evidence of serious danger, he should be allowed to exercise his rights just like everyone else.”

Why, then, would it matter that this (imaginary) woman had such bad motives, when it wouldn’t matter in similar cases regarding other lawful issues? I think the obvious reason, mentioned above, is really only the surface of a deeper reason: That legal rights arise out of the experience of oppression. Or, more to the point, the purpose of the law is to remove victims from situations of victimhood.

As Christians (and just decent human beings) we should find this compelling because protection of and care for those who are oppressed is a central element of Scripture. In turn, there is no question that pregnancy and child-rearing costs women far more than it does men—particularly when such large numbers of men have tossed aside the duties that come with getting a woman pregnant.

And this is perhaps where those of us who oppose abortion turn a blind eye: We say something like, “Well, she shouldn’t have had sex in the first place!” or something akin to this. But that fight is a different, and difficult, issue.[2] More importantly, it doesn’t help the woman who is already pregnant.

But there is another side to this that seems a little less positive. That victims should be treated with compassion and helped is unquestionably a demand of the Bible. But, really, two questions remain: How do you identify a victim? And what kind of help should one give a victim?

Helping and Hurting

Let’s look at these in reverse. First, what kind of help should be given to a victim? I am not, in fact, going to answer this question in the positive. Rather, I’m going to suggest that the answer we usually think of (remove whatever is causing the suffering) is not necessarily right.

The most natural response to the question of how to help a victim is simple: Remove that which is causing their suffering. And often this is precisely the right answer. If someone is trapped under a fallen tree, remove the tree if you are able. If someone is dying from cancer, destroy the cancer if you are able. And so on.

But there are times when removing that which is causing the suffering is not the right answer. Examples abound: If a nagging wife is causing suffering, you don’t remove the wife. You learn to communicate, work out the problems. If you have a broken arm, you don’t remove the arm. You suffer through it being re-set and wait out the healing process.

That is, it is good to remove that which causes suffering and also has no significant value.[3] It is not necessarily the case that you remove that which causes suffering and has value.

Of course, one might simply respond that the second set of things causing suffering were in fact an obfuscation of the issue. For the arm is not causing the suffering, the brokenness of the arm is causing the suffering, and we do want to remove the brokenness (by making it whole again). I’m quite happy to agree to this.

So, if we consider the woman the victim of the pregnancy, there is at least some reason to believe that the unborn baby has value. And, indeed, it is not the baby that is technically causing the suffering. It is the state of the world that makes so that having a baby causes suffering.

What this suggests is that we should try to remove those things that cause having a baby to bring suffering.

What are those things? Depends on whom you ask. They might be the outward effects, such as career interruption, stress, lack of sleep, painful lower back, and so forth. They might also include other elements, such as the woman’s (and man’s) attitude toward the child—that is, if she considered the value of having a child greater than that of career advancement, stress-free living, sleep, a pain-free back, and so forth, then she would not consider unbearable the suffering that comes with having a child.

It is reasonable that either of these would mitigate the experience of suffering, or at least transform it into something meaningful, rather than it amounting to empty suffering. Thus, it seems reasonable that, barring any reasons to the contrary, we should work to remove both forms of difficulty. The former would be done by helping to make things easier for women who have children, the latter would be done by a cultural transformation of the view of children—or, more simply and directly, by befriending and helping to en-courage a woman struggling with her pregnancy.

Are these things happening? To some extent, yes, and yet for many, many women, the support (whether financial or moral) is lacking. Imagine, though, that society had become supportive of pregnant women and their children to the extent that pro-choice advocates could not claim financial and career issues as justification for abortion: Free healthcare, extensive paid leave, lasting until the child entered kindergarten, free child care while working and one or two evenings a week so that the mother can have a social life, and subsidies that covered any extra costs that come with having a child (including food, healthcare, clothing, living space, etc.).

Would this bring an end to the desire for abortion to be legal? This is speculative, but I think it would not. Because, to put it quite simply, a child is a burden, even if you take away almost every aspect of financial, career, and health difficulties, a child is a responsibility that calls you away from your own pursuits. Of course, I think the number of abortions would significantly decrease, but not the demand for open access.

While most pro-choice advocates present the financial, career, and health costs as the primary motivations for their position, the focus of their efforts is the perpetuation of easy access to abortion. And yet with other things of value, we do whatever we can to save them and make things better, or do what we can to become the kind of person that can live with the pain. Most of us would prefer an arm that hurts (as long as the pain wasn’t too intense) over losing that arm. Most of us would prefer a car that has recurrent trouble over having to walk.

That is why pro-choice advocates insist that the unborn is not in fact a child, but the mother’s body (which is irrefutably false), or a bit of tissue (a reductionism, which can be applied equally erroneously to all of us). Now, it is possible to debate whether, say, a zygote is a person, but it is active (self-)deception to suggest that the fetus, in whatever state, is valueless or simply a part of the mother.

And this matters a great deal. For virtue arises in people in learning to respond properly to what has value. Consider why and what happens when we try to get people to ignore the value of something. For example, you say to someone who has shown up late to some event, “It’s no big deal” (i.e. your being on time held little to no value). We say this to remove responsibility, to lessen the load on that person, which implies that we see them as too weak to handle the failure. And if they take this to heart, they will hear the message and be discouraged.

What happens when you do this to someone who has a huge responsibility (e.g. a baby) hanging over her? You say to her, “This fetus is no big deal.” And then you emphasize this point by showing how much trouble being a mother will be (as all pro-choice arguments do). In doing so, you remove the value of the child, and so show that this is all a bunch of trouble for nothing. Which magnifies the trouble—for things of great value make concomitant trouble seem less important, while things of little value make concomitant trouble seem greater. To devalue things of value in order to reduce the person’s sense of responsibility serves to dis-courage the person into weakness and vice. And with that comes an empty life.

But it’s time to talk about how to understand what a victim is, for these ideas of suffering and value play directly into our conception of victimization.

The Victim and the Hero

What does it mean to be a victim? It seems we can approach this question in ways that are more and more precise. And each of these have different practical effects when we add the moral demand to help those who are victims. We can approach the definition broadly (rather imprecisely), such that whenever you suffer anything that you did not directly cause, you are a victim. So, I can be a victim of a drought, a splinter, or even the effects of my own addiction (I may have directly put that drug into my body, but the overdose, ruined marriage and career, or vehicular manslaughter was an indirect effect of my action). But, though we all suffer pain in life, it would be weird to emphasize this so much as to call everyone a victim. If we add the moral demand to help, then we find that we simply help anyone and everyone arbitrarily. And it would be strange to focus our resources on the upper-middle class father who has been victimized by a stubbed toe just as much as we do a victim of human trafficking.

We could modify this, developing a little more precision, by adding a spectrum of suffering: Bob may have suffered a splinter, but never really suffered otherwise. That makes Bob barely a victim. Barbara suffered abuse, neglect, oppression, and so forth, and thus is a real victim, maybe a super-victim. We must focus our efforts primarily on those who are, or who are closest to being, super-victims. This doesn’t mean that we cannot help others, but we should never take away from super-victims to help lesser victims. This, by the way, is essentially the nature of the intersectionality movement in social justice.[4]

While this is somewhat the mainstream approach and has some obviously good elements about it, it does not seem to bring everything that we naturally understand to be included in victimhood. For example, while each of us may be victims of a variety of things, I think most of us would be reluctant to consider ourselves victims if we are able to stand up and overcome the difficulty facing us. A child abused by a parent is a victim, while a man abused by another man seems less a victim, at least as long as they are relatively similar in power. So, too, one might be a victim of an earthquake, but we might be less sympathetic when one is “victimized” by a hurricane from which one had plenty of warning and resources to flee, and yet stayed, only to suffer badly.

Therefore, it seems that we should add a second modification: Victimization must include an element of helplessness. The more helpless one is before that which causes the suffering, the more one is a victim.

While each is, in the first definition, a victim of suffering in this world, and, as noted by the first modification, these kinds of suffering can vary widely, so too, as the second modification, even with great suffering, one’s status as a victim depends on one’s lack of capacity to avoid or overcome the situation.

And these, well, intersect: If Jake suffers greatly from lung cancer, but has smoked two packs a day for 60 years, you might say, “Well, Jake knew what he was doing. He’s not a victim, except of his own choices.” If, on the other hand, Jake suffers greatly from lung cancer, but has been conscientious about his health, then you might consider him more a victim.

So, too, consider Belinda who has been diagnosed with a heart condition and is told that eating well and exercising regularly will significantly increase her health and life prospects, but she changes nothing and ends up in the hospital dying. Is Belinda a victim? Yes, insofar as she had this heart condition and is now dying. But, no, insofar as she could have done something to improve her situation.

How then do we identify victims? Well, that is not easy to determine. For it seems to revolve around the level of suffering and how much one can do about that suffering. But how can that ever be determined? We hear stories of people who suffered great loss and great difficulty, from Helen Keller (who overcame being blind, deaf, and mute) to Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, Socrates, Martin Luther King, Jr., and (of course) Jesus, none of which, I think, would consider themselves victims.[5] We also hear stories of people who had no recourse, the Jews in Germany, the countless Russians purposely starved by Stalin, those trapped (physically and mentally) by the oppressive North Korean regime, those enslaved and abused in the antebellum South and under Jim Crow laws, and the innumerable, unnamed, voiceless day-to-day folks who have been crushed by oppressors everywhere throughout all of human history. And then there are those who have names and voices that cry about the various forms of oppression they have suffered.

Attempting to define and categorize victimization will get needlessly complex and difficult. But it seems to me that there are at least two things to be learned just from the above paragraph: First, people who suffer greatly under someone else’s evil sometimes become heroes. Second, those who do so rarely claim to be victims, or at the very least, act to overcome their situation.

And this is not necessarily because they got away from the suffering caused by others. It is because they were filled with a purpose, a recognition of something of value that overshadowed the suffering they were experiencing or would experience.

Don’t miss the deeper point in this: If one’s purpose is to avoid suffering (and acquire pleasure) only, then one cannot have a purpose that overshadows great suffering (and great pleasure lost) in one’s life. This is paramount! For it implies that those who have a purpose that goes beyond the fulfillment of their own desires tend to deny victim status. In short, if you have real purpose, you are not likely to consider yourself a victim.

So, too, I would suggest that those who are most likely to focus on victimhood are those whose focus is to have others act on behalf of victims, rather than have victims overcome. Now, this is perfectly appropriate in many cases where the victims are truly incapable of overcoming their circumstances (think of abused children, those who are made addicts so as to keep them from fleeing their enslavement by human traffickers, etc.)—that is, their agency is significantly reduced.

But how does this relate to abortion? No, I’m not taking this to the question of rape and incest. Rather, let us consider what it means to attempt to reduce the value of the child so as to isolate and emphasize the suffering, and thus the victim status of the mother: This serves as a means of discouraging her agency (removing the valued thing that would give her purpose) and reducing her to a pursuer of pleasure, avoider of pain (i.e. an animal). In such a state, she is not encouraged to grab hold of her crisis, recognizing the value of the child within her, and rising heroically over her circumstances toward a purpose that overshadows the suffering. Instead, she is discouraged through the denial of the value[6] of the pregnancy/child, and so pursue the path of least resistance.

I cannot help but find this attempt to discourage women through the devaluing of the human life growing within them to be vicious and degrading—not merely to the child, but to women! Women are capable of great things, of great heroism. But heroism can only arise through the courage of recognizing value and purpose beyond one’s own benefit.[7]

One might respond again: That is a horrible thing to say (particularly since I’m a man), for women suffer far more from child-rearing and bearing than men. And my response is simply: Heroism takes place in conditions of suffering, for that is where we see whether someone really values some good.[8]

Back to the Rationale

So, let us return to that fake article over which so many got stirred, in which the writer claimed to be a feminist who aborted her son because he was a boy. What is wrong about such a motive? For whether a woman chooses to abort her son because he’s a boy and she despises men, or whether she chooses to abort her son because she is shooting for tenure at a university, she is aborting her son.

I think the reason why pro-choice advocates were so energized to show it false (and so happy it was) was because such a choice exhibited moral agency in the woman, rather than showing her as a helpless victim. And this suggests that she is able to grasp greater purposes and act on them, rather than being forced by circumstances to pursue what seems to be the only way out of her situation. That is, it made it seem like she was the perpetrator, and the baby the victim, rather than vice versa (which is the narrative pro-choice advocates must maintain).

Even setting aside concerns over the unborn, I am disturbed by this approach to the woman, which seeks to press her into the corner of the victim. Whether she is attempting to rid herself of a pimple or a baby, such an approach undermines her agency and her possibility for flourishing and meaning. And that it requires a concerted effort to devalue the unborn strikes me as monstrous.

But we cannot end here. For many who are against abortion believe that the overturning of Roe v Wade is the only goal. And while I agree that overturning that horrible decision is important, I believe that we have a culture that has an unhealthy attraction toward victimization, matched by its correlate, an unhealthy distrust of the virtuous hero.[9] We Christians have often fostered this attitude, particularly in how we approach the idea of compassion and in our attempts to magnify our experiences of persecution. Our purpose should be to foster within Christians that heroic virtue that boldly picks up even a terrible instrument of torture and death—you know, like a cross—and willingly suffers under it because we recognize the value in others, attempting to help them toward wholeness, shalom, which ultimately comes only through experiencing the hope that Christ offers. So we must strengthen the weak, guide the blind, encourage the fearful, pick up those who have fallen.

What about the women who find themselves pregnant and feel that this child will ruin their lives, even perhaps as they fear they’ll ruin the child’s life? We must come alongside them, fill them with a sense of their own value and greatness, as well as that of their child. Of course, that comes not with condemnation, nor with words alone. It comes primarily in that way in which Christ, who was once an unexpected and terribly inconvenient fetus in the womb of an unmarried woman, shows us His love for us and our own possibility of greatness: By giving of Himself for us. We love because He first loved us. We can do great things because He has done great things. Not because He put on a bumper sticker and called out from afar, condemning us for failing, and demanding that someone do something. No, we can do great things in giving ourselves for others because He gave Himself for us.

Let us remember that no matter what happens with the government’s approach to abortion, we are called to live, suffer, and die as Christ lived, suffered, and died: For the sake of those who don’t seem to deserve it. Then we, too, might stop declaring ourselves victims and join with Him who overcame that before which we were once helpless victims: death.

[1] This is important to keep in mind, for he is only doing what the law allows. To murder someone is against the law, and 2nd Amendment supporters are not actively supporting murder. So, too, the lady in the fake opinion piece only did what was legal—after all, there are no laws against having bad thoughts against the child you are aborting.

[2] I’ll be writing about sexual morality shortly because I think that we Christians have failed to affect culture positively because our approach to morality is a confusing mess of good and bad. Our culture has recognized the bad, but rejected the good with it. How then do we speak to our culture in a meaningful way about an issue when the Church and culture have such widely divergent views?

[3] This wording is perhaps a little sloppy, for a tree has value (and perhaps significant value). Obviously, another situation in which that which is causing suffering may be removed is when it has significant value, but that thing is not injured or destroyed through the process of removing it. A downed tree would obviously fit into this class.

[4] Intersectionality states that one’s state of oppressor/oppressed results from the multiple kinds of identity we possess. For example, a white cis-gender male possesses traits that possess power in our culture, while a black transgender woman possesses traits that are considered oppressed by others. A white cis-gender female is partly powerful (white, cis-gender) and partly oppressed (female). One’s level of victimization is a result of the intersection of these various traits.

[5] Jesus and Socrates both almost explicitly reject the idea that they were victims. Jesus states that nothing can be done except by the will of the Father, whose will He too acts upon. Socrates simply stated outright that evil people cannot hurt good people.

[6] Courage, after all, cannot exist apart from the recognition of a value that is greater than the suffering one is facing.

[7] It would be quite reasonable to respond here that some women may see great purpose in some other end they are trying to achieve (say, the acquisition of a position that would allow her to bring about great positive ends for numerous people), which the bearing of a child would keep from happening. This response would require its own separate post. At this point, I will only say the following: 1) This surely applies to only a tiny fraction of those seeking abortion (for is the goal really that good and truly for others, rather than oneself, and could not that end be achieved by someone else, etc. etc.), and 2) if indeed there are cases like this, perhaps we might grant that having the child serves to bring about a less measurable good (who can measure the value of a person?), but every other option should be entertained before abortion is considered. (You might be thinking I’m giving ground here to abortion advocates, but I’d simply ask you to consider whether if you really only had a choice—which, given modern medicine, almost never happens—between the choice of yourself/your wife—or your unborn child, which would you choose? What about between a child already born and your unborn? And so on. Granted, these are, in our society, exceedingly rare cases, but they are possible, particularly in less developed and affluent societies. These edge cases should not be used to justify all abortion, for they simply represent horrifying choices in terrible conditions—at best, the lesser of two evils—they are clearly not happy choices!)

[8] And, no, I’m not suggesting that we should make things harder for people so as to create the conditions for heroism.

[9] These are not “natural” attitudes—which is obvious due to the popularity of the victim-become-hero theme that is so prevalent in our favored stories—but they have been fostered and have begun to dominate the political, social, and religious discussions.

A Primer on Justice

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Filed Under: Christianity and Politics, Worldview Tagged With: , , , ,

“What we need is a national conversation…”

The call for the correction of injustice resounds throughout every corner of contemporary society—from the legal system, to prices of goods, to taxes, to healthcare, to race and culture, to sex, pronouns, and the appropriate range of rights. We keep feeling and hearing the need for a “national conversation” on these issues, and yet the moment one speaks on these issues, condemnations flood in from one or both sides. Real conversation is not possible in a sea of attempted-mic-dropping.

So, too, it is not clear to me what constitutes a “national conversation,” but it is clear to me that even interpersonal conversations on these topics quickly reduce to a cornucopia of fallacies that serve only to increase righteous indignation.

I will not claim to be an expert on these issues, nor do I have the (public) audacity to claim that a read through a few blogs from me will solve all the questions of justice and injustice. Nevertheless, I do believe I can offer, primarily by borrowing from those wiser, better, and more intelligent than me, and offering that to you. That is, after all, what Tactical Faith is all about, and we hope that in the coming months and years, we might help clarify some of these ideas so as to encourage real conversation.

Why You Don’t Care about Justice

The world is filled with injustice. This, I think, most of us can agree upon. We are generally unmoved by injustice until it touches us, and then, if we are honest with ourselves, we often overreact and exaggerate its level. But at times injustice becomes a huge issue, and, like any other bit of suffering, our focus seems to be solely on making it stop.

That is, we seem very adept at recognizing injustice, and, if it comes close enough to home, perhaps even quite moved to destroy injustice.

But, like a disease, we seem only to recognize injustice when it begins to hurt. And, too, only if it hurts, or threatens to hurt, me and/or those I care about. This might not seem troubling, until you recognize that we generally don’t care about justice, we only care about avoiding any suffering that comes from injustice.

One might be quick to condemn this as a moral defect, and it no doubt is. But, like all moral defects, it is not only a moral defect. Moral defects can rarely (I believe never) be divorced from defects in epistemology (how we know) and metaphysics (what all that exists really is). While a host of defects may be discovered around our strange lack of concern about justice, perhaps the most glaring one is the mix of certainty and ignorance regarding the nature of justice. Put simply: Everyone knows that they know what justice is, and no one really knows what it is.

We get fired up when we suffer injustice because we feel the pain (physical, emotional, financial, etc.) of it. We fail to feel any fire about justice because we feel nothing for it—except in those rare, delicious moments when we see someone we hate get “justice.”

Is justice just this “comeuppance”? If so, getting excited about it seems silly, at least if I reflect on the innumerable wicked things I have done. Other than watching those I hate get hurt, and feeling terrified of suffering the same fate, justice is atrociously boring. It is, we’d say, things being “fair.” Any good story begins not with fairness, but with unfairness. Justice is served at the end—just like a love story that ends with marriage, so a heroic movie ends with justice. And, just like romantic movies would be terribly dull if they included the day-to-day drabness and struggles of a marriage, so heroic movies would be terribly dull if they included a situation at the end where fairness carried the day for some time. At the end of Taken, say, we watch the family not have any trouble or anyone get lost as they get groceries, go on vacations, and go to work day in and day out.

These wouldn’t make good stories. Justice does not make a good story, but only the overcoming of injustice. And so, too, we either don’t care about injustice (that has nothing to do with us) or we get fired up about it (because it affects us somehow), but in neither case are we interested in justice itself, except as a means of hurting those we hate.

I’ll not argue this point, but simply ask you to consider yourself and those around you (mostly yourself): Do you want problems resolved and peace and kindness to reign? If you answered, “Yes,” I think you might be lying to yourself. We love having reasons to complain. Nothing gives us identity or creates friendships faster (among adults) than suffering the same (real or imagined) injustice. A community that complains together, stays together.

Which is why it seems almost no one offers solutions and a clear presentation of what justice really looks like. Yes, some people claim to offer solutions, but they almost invariably suggest that 1) their enemies be punished, and 2) their favored group (usually themselves) be given power (or, what amounts to the same thing, money). But that’s not a solution. It is the end of a heroic movie—where the beloved underdog ends up on top. But it fails to show how that erstwhile underdog is prone to corruption, abusing power to hurt those who troubled him/her, eventually becoming the very thing s/he fought to overthrow.

If you are thinking, “Yes, those ‘social justice warriors’ are doing this very thing!” I’d ask you, again, to consider yourself. For Christians, too, seem obsessed with seeing themselves as persecuted and, thus, having a right to complaints about being marginalized and society dying, and so forth. And what is our solution? Get more (real) Christians in power—you know, the incorruptible kind of Christian![1]

Perhaps, we should take a deep breath and reflect for a moment on what exactly justice is? Why does the punishing-our-enemies part of it get us so excited and the living-in-harmony part seems so dull? Is justice simply fairness or something better?

If it is dull, perhaps this might give us pause: The New Testament word for “justice” is the same word for “righteousness.” Is righteousness dull? It seems so, for we are far more fascinated by sin—we are obsessed with doing sin (injustice), in complaining about being sinned against (treated unjustly), and in punishing those who sin against us (exacting justice). But surely that punishment that so excites us does not exhaust the meaning of justice/righteousness. If it does, then woe be unto us!

The Questions

So, again, what is justice? Why is it something we should fight to maintain? How does it exceed mere punishment for wrongdoing? How does it relate to the various questions that humans have asked for millennia? What about those questions that plague us today? How does justice translate into questions of wages, issues of abortion and homosexual marriage, hate speech, forms of government, the relationship between business and government, the Church’s involvement in government, the power of government over one’s personal life (and what is considered personal), charity, immigration, taxes, war, and so on?

These questions rage among us, dividing citizen from citizen, and even Christian from Christian. In all these questions, we are debating justice. But we never talk about justice itself. We assume we already know. And so the battle rages on, dividing and creating hate, but never teaching us anything, let alone inspiring us toward something great.

So, though I myself am quite ignorant, I will attempt to offer a short series that will introduce some ideas about justice as presented in the Bible and in great thinkers. My goal: To inspire readers toward greatness, and away from that selfish abuse of the idea of justice to which most of us are addicted. It is hoped that we at Tactical Faith will be able to further discussion of the nature of justice, and then its relation to these other topics, through some live events as well.

[1] We could fight to put incorruptible Christians in power, but I’m afraid the dead won’t get much done.

The (Dis)comfort of Christmas

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Filed Under: Apologetics, Worldview Tagged With:

In a moving piece, Kevin D. Williamson laid out the thoughts of Mary and Joseph against the backdrop of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Mimicking the thoughts of unbelievers when facing these stories that make up the canon of Christianity, Williamson returns to a refrain: “All that stuff must be very comforting. I wish I could believe it.”

But the picture Scripture paints is not comforting—not in the sense that most might believe. The title of the article, “He himself carried the fire”—a reference to Abraham carrying that which would burn his son as a sacrifice—directs us to consider the faith of Abraham. Not a faith that served as a crutch to ameliorate discomfort, but a faith that drove the aged father into what was surely the greatest trial of his life.

But the story of Abraham and Isaac, of Noah and the ark, of the Exodus, of David and Goliath, and most dramatically the story of Jesus’ birth have all been made comfortable. I remember when my oldest, who is remarkably intelligent, at around four years old was being read the story of Noah from a children’s book. It was drawn and presented for the very young, but she noticed what was happening, and asked my wife: “Are all those other people under the water?” The pictures of cute, smiling animals were not enough to hide the horror that lies beneath the surface.

These stories, domesticated and made palatable for the wider public, and made believable by temporal and cultural distance from those events, take on the appearance of easy comfort. But the comfort offered by them is not the easy consolation that simply declares that every pain you experience will be “paid off,” or the pleasant sense that, no matter what happens, I get to win in the end. Cheap comfort is like a participation trophy—you needn’t worry about walking away empty-handed, but what you hold in your hand is quite empty.

“All that stuff must be very comforting. I wish I could believe it.” Indeed, it is difficult to believe a Disney-ified form of the Bible, when the world around us is full of complex sufferings that the simple morals of these polite stories are to teach us.

The gospel was a scandal and foolishness to the world of the first century. It still is. And if it what is said does not sound foolish or scandalous, then we should consider carefully that which we say.

The Infinite took on the finite. The Creator became the created. The Eternal became the temporal. The Son of God became the Son of Man. This is all surely worthy of ridicule.

And it is no simple comfort. Jesus’ entry into the world was followed swiftly by great and horrible violence, the slaughter of innocents at the hand of a king maddened by his desire to maintain his throne. The many murders arose only because a group of wise men, seeking the King of the Jews, haplessly alerted Herod to the identity of the young Jesus.
Jesus’ entry into the public eye in His ministry brought comfort to many, but not a simple “everything will be alright” comfort. Nor, indeed, did He simply embrace all no matter what. No, Jesus called for people to drop that which they held dear to follow Him.

We who claim to hold firmly to the teaching of Scripture may find this claim appealing, for it is useful against those who try to suggest that Jesus never judged and simply welcomed all with open arms. Such simplistic reasoning is used to undermine thousands of years of unanimous interpretation regarding things such as homosexual behavior. But Jesus did not command only the adulterous woman to sin no more. He also condemned the religious leaders who had found a rational balance between the demands of the Torah and the demands of their political, economic, and social circumstances. Most notably, the Sadducees rejected the notion of a resurrection. Why? For a few reasons, not least of which involved their comfortable situation in relation to the Romans and the recognition that the resurrection was an idea inextricably tied to revolution and the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel.

Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God. His entry into the world naturally leads the powers of this world to attack in fear. Not because Jesus and His followers will rise up, swords in hand to overthrow the political powers of this world.

No, it is because the birth of Jesus is the entry of the infinite and eternal into the finite and temporal. In human form we behold God. No finite, temporal kingdom can stand against the kingdom of the eternal and infinite Three-in-One. Not because God is raising up an army wielding swords or clever placards, but because God’s kingdom simply makes all these other authorities irrelevant to the way we live.

Irrelevant because laws against murder mean nothing to those motivated by love. Irrelevant because threats of death from the authorities (and, ultimately, all human governments rule through the threat of death) do not matter to those who live in hope of the resurrection. We do not seek to overthrow a nation to establish a theocracy. If that were so, shouldn’t Jesus have been born in a palace? Would He not have called His followers to fight? Would He not have overthrown the Romans and established a throne in Jerusalem?

But He didn’t. He was born to bring into the world the kingdom of God. And He died so as to overthrow death (the very stuff of worldly power). Herod was acting with surprising political cunning in wielding death as he did against the young innocents in order to eradicate Jesus’ kingship. But it was useless. Just as the crucifixion could not stomp out the kingdom of God.

The comfort that arises from the story of Christmas is not a comfort about all things going swimmingly in our lives, nor about confidence that we will be healthy, have enough money, or that the United States will flourish. It is not that, with Jesus on our side, we can “take back our country for God” or that we will be successful in our business or church outreach program. God already owns all nations, and can do without your success.

What God wants are those who will exhibit in their finite, temporal lives the eternal. What does that look like? Carrying upon oneself the worldly instruments of torture and death, and following Jesus into suffering and death. And through it all, to forgive those who would mock you because your way of life does not bring the results they think are the measure of power. And to forgive those who see you as some kind of threat and so exclude, hurt, or even kill you.

For something new has come with the birth of Christ. And that new thing seems worthy of ridicule—a little, helpless baby in a feeding trough, born in lowly circumstances, having to fly from threats of death by the government, coming to adulthood in a disrespected part of society, and dying humiliated like a wicked criminal.

But throughout, power and authority flowed from Him. Not the kind of power the political and religious masterminds were practiced at. He didn’t exhibit the shrewdness that we’re used to. He didn’t speak or act the way someone seeking a kingdom of this world would speak or act. Jesus did not come to fight for a kingdom, raising an army or prudent counselors. He came to announce a kingdom, one that is on a different level. He didn’t make Israel great again. He didn’t take it back for Yahweh. He didn’t confront injustices in the courts, nor did he organize protests. He didn’t need to overturn anything. He brought the kingdom—a kingdom against which no power of this world can fight, for all the weapons of this world, whether the sword or rhetoric or mockery, have no power against the kingdom of God.

That the kingdom of God is simply beyond the powers of this world is indeed comforting, but not the comfort that the world—and our world-influenced view of Christianity—offers. Our usual sense of comfort means getting the things that fulfill the desires that are attached to the powers of this world: being proven correct, finding time to relax, winning an election, an argument, a battle or war, gaining fame for our virtues. In short, to have the cross of suffering taken from our shoulders.

But the kingdom of God does not come that way. It comes lowly, unnoticed, bearing the pain and diseases of those around. It comes without whining or complaining, without bitter anger, without propping oneself up by showing “them” to be evil or ignorant or the cause of one’s own failures. The kingdom of God offers neither the comfort of the victor nor the comfort of the victim, neither the pleasure of glory and spoils, nor the pleasure of resentment and blame. These are the means that the world takes to gain power.

The kingdom of God need gain no power. The citizen of that kingdom carries a cross from an abundance of power. The citizen of the kingdom of God humbles herself because she needs no glory. The citizen of the kingdom of God does not blame because his value is secure in the kingdom.

The worldly way of power, glory, value—they are insecure, and we must always be at war with our neighbor to maintain them. The power of the kingdom of God need not war against neighbor—the citizen of the kingdom of God loves the neighbor, even the enemy. For all things are ours.

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s (1 Corinthians 3:18-23 ESV).

With the birth of Jesus comes something new, something unknown. An unknown that brings fear such that the messengers of the news must constantly reassure their auditors: Fear not. Fear not. For though your world is about to be undone. Though One will soon tread on this ground who surpasses all the systems by which you organize and make sense of the world, by which you define where people belong and what counts as success. You’ll recognize Him because He won’t belong in this worldly system. He’ll have no place to lay His head. And if you’d find peace and hope, you too must take the life of homelessness in the ways of this world. Surely, suffering and death will find you. But you will be part of the kingdom of God, the kingdom breaking into this world through this humble baby, a kingdom that surpasses all the weaknesses of worldly power. Fear not.

Christmas is no simple, childish comfort. It is the beginning of the crumbling of the world we inhabit. One cannot domesticate the story, make it palatable, without betraying it. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1) indeed. But not the comfort you think.