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Feb 04
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Colin Kaepernick and Cultural Realities

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It can be argued that race relations in the United States are at their lowest ebb in decades.  Police shootings, riots, and now football players refusing to stand for the National Anthem, they all polarize to a degree not seen since the acquittal of Rodney King’s attackers.  Whatever you make of Colin Kaepernick’s actions, he speaks for many when he says that “black people and people of color” are subjected to “oppression.”  He continues: “there are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”(sic)  Many commentators have lauded his actions, saying that at the very least, they will engender conversation and discussion about the current state of race relations in this country.  So in the spirit of such conversation and discussion, let’s see if Mr. Kaepernick is justified in his allegations about systematic oppression in the U.S. legal system.

Most complaints about our legal system start by pointing out that blacks are incarcerated at a rate several times higher than that of whites.  This is true.  In 2010, whites constituted 63.7% of the population, while blacks constituted 12.2%.  Prison populations in 2016 were 58.7% white, and 37.8% black.  This shows that blacks are overrepresented in prison population by a factor of 336%.  Taken by itself, this would suggest that the legal system is biased against blacks.  The only problem with this conclusion, however, is that the prison population must be understood not in terms of racial percentages in the overall population, but rather in terms of the number of crimes being committed.  To fail to control for the number of encounters members of different races have with the police, you violate a fundamental principles of statistical analysis.  It is estimated that black males have police encounters at a rate 5 to 10 times higher than white males.  If this is true, then conviction and incarceration rates for black males are actually lower than for whites based on how many confrontations they have with police.

Do police practice racial profiling that results in an increased likelihood of arrest for blacks?  When statistics for serious crimes are examined, where police are responding to calls and not initiating contact, it appears that profiling is not an issue. In urban settings, understood as America’s 75 largest counties, blacks constitute 62% of all robbery defendants, 57% of all murder defendants, and 45% of all assault defendants, while constituting just 15% of the population.  Between 1980 and 2008, 52% of homicides in the US were blacks killing blacks.  In 2013, blacks committed 38% of all murders, while whites committed 31%; a startling imbalance in view of the respective population percentages by race overall.  Black males are 6.6% of the population, yet in 2012 they committed 5,531 murders.  There appears to be a disproportionate level of violence among blacks that cannot be accounted for by police bias.

Now, what about police/black shootings per se?  As of July 9 of 2016, of the 440 people police shot, 54% were white and blacks were 28%.  For 2015, of the 987 police shootings, whites constituted 50% and blacks 26%.  When one controls for the higher incidence of black/police encounters, it is clear that police are less likely to shoot a black man than a white man.  In a Houston study, blacks were 24% less likely to be shot by a police officer than whites.  Controlled threat scenarios provide further evidence of police restraint when dealing with black suspects.  This is in spite of the fact that encounters between police and black males constitute a greater threat to the officer than encounters with white suspects.  When a police officer is killed by a person of known race, 44% of the time the killer is black, while 51% of the time it’s a white person.  Again, totally out of line with overall population.  A policeman is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than a black male is to be killed by a police officer.  12% of whites and Hispanics who die by homicide are killed by police, while only 4% of black homicide victims are killed by police.

What about police shooting unarmed victims?  In 2015 police fatally shot 36 unarmed black males and 31 unarmed white males.  When you study the individual cases, you find that in many of them, extenuating circumstances render “unarmed” a rather dubious distinction.  At least five of the black victims had fought the officer for his gun or were beating him with his own equipment.  Some were shot from accidental discharges of the police weapon, one officer was beaten unconscious, and another victim was a bystander who was struck by a police bullet in an exchange of gunfire with an armed offender.  Mr. Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, was classified as an unarmed black male shot by a white police officer.  Prior to his death, Mr. Brown had struggled for the officer’s gun, turned away, then turned once again and advanced toward the officer who fired non-lethal shots in vain attempts to get Mr. Brown to stop.  The police officer was eventually cleared of wrongdoing.  There are instances of police shooting black suspects without genuine provocation, but the number of cases is infinitesimal when compared to the number of arrests in cases of violent felonies, almost 500,000 last year alone.  The real tragedy in all the publicity about police shootings is that police are starting to patrol less and cut back on interaction with black citizens, leaving the playing field more open to criminals and citizens unprotected

So, what we see is that when we practice legitimate statistical analysis, we can come to only one conclusion: there is no evidence for a pervasive bias against blacks in the U.S. legal system, starting with the reporting of crimes to the police, and extending to police response and arrest, court conviction, sentencing, and finally, to incarceration and probation practices.  The appearance of such a bias is simply the result of there being a higher incidence of criminal behavior among black citizens, notably black males.  So why is this?  Is it lack of educational and economic opportunities that compel blacks to resort to crime?

Studies show that while blacks typically do less well in school, they nevertheless have the opportunity to go to college and acquire skills that will allow them to compete in society.  Black children start out elementary education with lower verbal and numerical skills than white children, as do Hispanics.  As they progress through elementary education, however, the gap between whites and blacks grows, while the gap between whites and Hispanics, for many of whom English is a second language, narrows.  By the time they get to high school, only 56% of black students graduate, while 78% of white students do.  Overall dropout rates by race are 7.3% for whites, and 20.9% for blacks.  When it comes to standardized tests for college entrance, black students score a full standard deviation lower than whites, meaning lower on the scale by 1/3 of the overall population.  In spite of this, black students do have access to higher education.  Historically, 70% of white kids continue on to college, while 65% of black students do.  In 2014, those figures were reversed, 71% for blacks, 67.3 for whites.  The rumor that there are as many black men in prison as college is not true.  Of the 3.26 million black males of college age in the United States, 1.4 million are in college against a total black prison population of 821,511.  The argument that black students do not have access to educational opportunities is not true, at least at the collegiate level.

Education is important, because it has been shown to co-vary with subsequent earning power.  While we’ve seen that blacks do have access to college education, it is nevertheless true that income levels in the U.S. are disparate when examined by race.  Whites earn an average of $57K annually, while blacks earn $33.3K.  The question then is, why?  Is there discrimination in terms of jobs offered and wages paid because of race?  To answer these questions it’s necessary to look at the structure of black families that are experiencing economic pressures.  For one thing, many black households have only one parent, and thus one wage earner.  The marriage rate among black families is lower than that of whites, and is declining.  Only 32% of blacks are married, blacks have a higher divorce rate, and stay married less long than whites.  Further, early pregnancy forces many black females to abandon their education and start working, often at lower paying jobs that require less formal training.  Studies have shown that illegitimacy and single parent upbringing both correlate with poor academic performance, and subsequent lack of earning power.  It appears that although there is a correlation between black race and lower earning power, this is not a causal factor.  To say blacks earn less because they are black is to commit what in statistical analysis is called an ecological fallacy.  This means that although two factors co-vary, they do so not because one causes the other, but because both are caused by something else, a third factor.  In the case of employment opportunities and earnings, it appears as though the causal factor is lack of education and training.

This brings us to the real point of our inquiry, and that is, what leads to a situation where by the age of 23, black males stand a 41% chance of being arrested?  In 1965, Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat, published a study in which he predicted that the “destruction” of the black family would inhibit further progress for blacks to achieve economic and political equality.  The relevance of his prediction is that the black nuclear family, with two parents present, was the norm from 1880 until 1960.  The most credible hypothesis as to why there was a sudden change in the 1960’s is that the Great Society programs of social welfare relief were targeted at single parent families, a fact that rendered husbands and fathers an economic liability.  These programs were championed by Lyndon Johnson, a Democratic President.  Here is the sociological legacy of these programs: by 2011, 72% of black births in America were illegitimate, by 1992, only 25% of black families were nuclear, with biological parents and biological children present.  By 2005 39% of black children did not live with their biological father, versus of 15% for whites.  31% of black fathers rarely or never visit their biological children.  62% of black women are single parents, versus 33% of white women.  The absence of fathers in homes of any race has been proven to correlate positively with poor academic performance and teen pregnancy.

Taken as a whole the sociological evidence suggests that the problems blacks have with the legal system are not the result of a bias or conspiracy on the part of a predominantly white establishment, but of behavioral problems within the black community itself.  And if true, why among blacks more than other races?  If white America were truly discriminatory, we would expect other racial minorities, especially those of recent arrival, to have similar problems.  This is not the case.  Asian immigrants consistently outperform white counterparts in education and earning power, and are incarcerated at rates a fraction of their population percentage.  They constitute 4.75% of the population, but only 1.5% of the national prison population.  Other races and cultures are prospering under the same political and legal umbrella afforded blacks.  Could it be that black Americans have developed a culture that condones, if not encourages, a nihilistic attitude towards the prevailing morality of white America?  Allan Bloom, in his seminal work, The Closing of the American Mind, argues that black students at American universities are unique among races in their cultural consciousness.  He writes, “…it is peculiar in that blacks seem to be the only group that has picked up ‘ethnicity’ … in an instinctive way.  At the same time, there has been a progressive abandonment on their part of belief or interest in a distinctive black ‘culture.’  Blacks are not sharing a special positive intellectual or moral experience…”  I understand him to be saying that it’s not as if blacks have a separate and distinct culture, as much as they lack a culture at all.  If true, this is devastating, as culture is the conveyor of moral values that form and reinforce personal character and decisions.  Issues of dropping out of school, using drugs, engaging in premarital sex, gang membership, and engaging in crime are only wrong if somebody or something, a prevailing culture, says they are wrong.  In the absence of moral boundaries, anything goes, to the detriment of all people of all races.

This brings us back to our conversation.  Although there is plenty of sociology to provide answers in the racial debate, we’ve been slow as a country to consult actual science.  This is because if somebody talks about facts and behavior in the context of race, they are labeled racist and debate is curtailed.  In order to have genuine dialogue, a dispassionate exchange of facts is required.  There must be a distinction between race, which is ordained by Nature and not volitional, and culture, which is generated and sustained by people and is fully volitional.  This was the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, who said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  He was not condemning judgment per se, rather he invited it, but along justifiable lines, not arbitrary ones.  His vision was that skin color would no longer be the basis of either discrimination or exculpation.  Defined this way, Dr. King would himself be classified not as a racist, but as a culturalist.  Can we not revive his example and introduce a new concept that will defuse the emotion of what is essentially a debate about behavior in America?  Until there’s an accurate diagnosis of the problem, there can be no effective and lasting cure.

So Mr. Kaepernick is to be commended for his call to conversation and discussion of the root causes of racial tension in America.  There are many, both black and white, who like him are disgusted at the present state of race relations and want them to improve.  The best strategy is to drop the whole issue of race; it’s a chimera.  Let’s talk instead about culture and resultant behavior.  Talk about things we can change, not things we can’t.

Feb 04
0

“Believe In Yourself”

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As Christmas approaches, we are inundated with smarmy, maudlin exhortations to believe in ourselves, to do the right thing, to make extra efforts to transform the world through extraordinary effort.  This is all fine and good, except that it’s doomed to failure.  All this comes from bad theology.  When we don’t understand God or his word, we can’t understand ourselves.  What his word says is that we are noble, lovable, worth the life of his Son, but ultimately frail, afflicted, and incapable of doing any good thing in and of ourselves.  To exert ourselves apart from extrinsic, divine help, we set off on a course that is, sooner or later, going to founder.  If you think people are good and capable of success apart from spiritual help, it will affect everything you do.  You will ask young children questions and seek to fulfill their every whim.  In doing so, you do not create a loving  adult, you create a self-centered monster.  You will believe the criminal when they say they will reform, and grow lax in the administration of justice that protects the innocent and induces the guilty to repent.  You will believe the politician who tells you the fault lies with others and not you, and you will give other peoples’ money away in order to make yourself feel you are progressive and loving.  There is no realm of human existence that will not become misguided and ineffectual if you believe the lie that humans are fine as long as they have the right information and are not hindered by retrograde prejudices.  The only thing that will save us is better theology that leads to better anthropology: within us lies no good thing, and the only explanation for human history is a Biblical view of Man.  So don’t believe the beauty queen or singing contest contestant who tells you, “You can do anything if you believe in yourself.”  You may be able to do anything, but it’s not anything good for yourself or others.  The key to a right treatment of a problem is a right diagnosis, and that can come only from the One who made us and knows us best.  And, remarkably, still loves us.

 

Feb 04
0

Identity and Culture

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When challenged to write about culture, I immediately dashed off a screed about how a culture with bad theology inevitably ends up with bad anthropology; if we don’t see ourselves correctly in a cosmic sense, we’ll never see ourselves correctly in any other domain.  This was not exactly uplifting holiday stuff, so I took my wife’s cool response as a suggestion I chose another topic.  So here goes: I’m going to write about my peronsal culture.  Tim Keller says that white people are the only people who think they have no culture; the way we do things is just the way things are supposed to be, and everybody else has a culture that sets them apart.  He contends we do indeed have our own culture, and we just don’t know it.  So I’d like to take a minute to explore what my culture might be, using my illustrious forebear, Roger Sherman, as an example.

I am Roger’s five times great grandson, through his second wife Rebecca.  Roger was the only man to sign all five of the founding documents establishing the United States of America.  Nobody else even signed four.  He is less well known than the other founding fathers, although his role at the Constitutional Convention was rivaled only by James Madison. He served as a legislator, judge and mayor in Connecticut and in the new House of Representatives and Senate.  His age, lack of elocution, and his role as legislator as opposed to executive have kept him hidden from political glory, but a case can be made that he was the most influential of all the founding fathers.  He is known as the author of the Connecticut Compromise, and he was also the defining force behind the Bill of Rights.

This brings us to his influence on the culture of our nation today.  Who was he, and what did he stand for?  First and foremost, he was a Christian.  He was a Calvinist and Puritan, in whichever order you would prefer those terms.  Although I’m not a fan of Calvin in the most detailed aspects of his soteriology, Calvin nevertheless had a salubrious influence upon Mr. Sherman.  Specifically, Roger shared Calvin’s dim view of human nature, and felt that human institutions, like the humans who made them, were subject to study, evaluation, and when found wanting, subject to rejection and change.  Thus, a Christian could at one and the same time be a supporter of law and government, while at the same time being a revolutionary.  Further, Roger saw that those who serve in government should do so in keeping with an interior morality based upon the absolutes conferred by Christian faith.  He opposed the appointment of Gouverneur Morris to a post as legate to France because he was “irreligious and profane.”  Roger thought that a man with a weak moral foundation could not be trusted in the affairs of state.  He would be appalled at the attempts of modern scholarship to say that there is to be no cooperation between Church and state in the government of human affairs.  In his day, there was an established church in Connecticut, and Roger handed down a sentence as judge against a man convicted of not attending church.  The Federal government was not to establish a church, but states were both allowed and expected to.  Scholars have preferred to interpret the Bill of Rights in keeping with the ruminations of Jefferson, who was in France while it was being written by Roger Sherman back in America!  Roger was also far-sighted, knowing that short term political accommodation could bring long term humanitarian benefits that outweighed the immediate costs.  Do what you can now, to bring about the ultimate goal you seek.  He understood the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation, and urged the adoption of an entirely new Constitution, though he was always a champion of states’ rights and an opponent of an overly powerful Federal government.  Many of the excesses of modern government could be avoided if we would only listen to what Roger was saying during this period.  

In all these areas we see Roger Sherman being an integrated individual.  He was not a man rent asunder between body, mind and spirit, but rather one whose spirit informed his mind, and whose mind controlled his body.  As such, he was a prime example of the kind of person who immigrated from Europe to the New World with the express intention of making a new life in a new land that was profoundly rational and correct.  There was no distinction between secular and sacred; all was understood and appreciated in its proper time and place.  I would like to think that I’m not only a heritor of his genome, but of his spiritual, intellectual and social views; in other words, his culture.

 

Feb 04
0

Election Reflection

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If you’re like me, you spent considerable time begging God to have mercy on us in this election, and to give us leaders who shared our Biblical values for behavior.  Needless to say, this did not happen, and in my prayer time afterwards the answer was given to me as to why not.

God has so constructed the universe that it reflects his character.  There is cause and effect, so that all will be channeled to an ethic that involves right perception and right response.  If you put your hand in a flame, it will be burned, so you don’t do it; it’s harmful.  Pain and preservation.  If you jump off a cliff you break a leg or worse so you don’t do it; it’s harmful.  Pain and preservation.  Fire is not bad and gravity is not bad, without them we could not live, but they must be respected or they can become harmful.

Our nation is deeply divided, half and half, over the proper role of government.  Half of us dwell in the past, believing in such quaint values as right and wrong, self control, initiative, sexual purity and independence.  The other half are what I call government clients.  They have government patrons who buy their allegiance and vote through patronage.  The system of Chicago patronage has been brought to the national level by the Alderman we elected President.  The Republicans will never win again at this level until they can recognize and counter this mercenary appeal.

So God, in his love for his children, especially the lost 50% who have become government clients, has refused to suspend the laws of cause and effect in our elections.  He will give us what we ask for until we realize the error of our ways, and stop asking for government rescue.  Half of all households now receive some form of entitlement assistance, and this is what drives voting, not philosophy.  Things will get worse and worse until people stop buying U.S. Treasury bonds.  When they have a sale and nobody comes, the end will be here.  The financial markets will lock up, credit and lending will stop, essential services will fail for lack of funding, cities will become nightmares and the collapse will make everything we’ve seen pale in comparison.  God’s treatment of us is determined by the least common denominator, the least functional of our compatriots.  We will be cooked in the same soup, because of His love for them.  When they have suffered enough, they will realize the error of their ways, and will call for help.  It will be uncomfortable for all of us, but if we’re ready, we can survive.  You heard it here first.

Feb 04
0

Elizabeth Taylor and Her Campaign Against AIDS

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Elizabeth Taylor, the actress, died this week at age 79.  Every eulogy I’ve heard has mentioned her campaign to fight AIDS as her most memorable and lasting legacy.  Not only did she raise money to fight the disease, she spoke openly about how we should understand the affliction, and welcome those overcome by it.  No less a moral authority than an editor of People Magazine said that Ms. Taylor wanted to dismantle the notion that AIDS was God’s wrath against homosexuals.  Although oft repeated, I don’t know any Christians who feel that AIDS is a sign of God’s wrath against anybody.  Perhaps God’s love, but certainly not his wrath.  Let me explain.

First of all, it is important to realize what AIDS is.  It is not a disease.  Rather, it is the absence of an active immune system.  The immune system is a gift from God allowing us to live in a hostile, septic environment.  A person with AIDS doesn’t get sick and die from AIDS, they get sick and die from other afflictions that were not dealt with by an active immune system.  So in its own way, AIDS is the absence of something, not the presence.  The AIDS carrier experiences what life is like without protection that the rest of us take for granted.

Secondly, it is important to realize that AIDS is in the vast majority of cases a condition acquired through voluntary behavior.  True, there are children who get AIDS through their parents, blood transfusions, organ donations and the like.  This is a true tragedy, but does not account for the overwhelming majority of transmissions.  These latter events are usually associated with sexual activity, illicit drug use, and other “risky” behaviors.  AIDS would die out, be eradicated, in one generation, if those not yet infected would desist from those “risky” activities.  Thus, AIDS is perpetuated by willful decisions on the part of the uninfected.

Thirdly, all those “risky” behaviors are proscribed by the Bible.  Whether it’s premarital sex, adultery, homosexuality or drug use, which is translated as “sorcery” in the Greek, in each and every case the Bible argues that God frowns on those activities.  This is no doubt where the notion comes that AIDS represents God’s wrath against homosexuals.  On the one hand he prohibits the behavior, then he sends the disease.  Were it only that simple.

I would argue that AIDS is not so much sent by God as allowed by God.  The Bible says that Satan came to kill, steal and destroy.  AIDS does all that.  I take the position that although God came to heal, restore and deliver, he nevertheless allows scourges like AIDS in the hope that a good greater than the suffering will ensue.  How can that be?

The Bible goes on to say that although all stand justified by the shed blood of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, all stand in need of a further infusion of grace.  We are already forgiven for moral guilt because of Good Friday.  We tend to persist in sin, however, and in order to be delivered from that disposition, we need to be dominated by the Holy Spirit.  Not only do we need forgiveness, we need power.  If we continue in sin, we squander the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice and become subject to what the Bible calls a “coming Wrath of God.”  This is a wrath reserved for those who do not acknowledge their need of forgiveness or divine power.  People who ignore their need of these two things are banking that their own moral virtue will sustain them in the life to come.  They are fine on your own in moral terms, if you will.

Here’s where the idea of AIDS comes in.  If AIDS is a sign of what life in this world is like on our own, without protection, might it not be a metaphor for what life is like in the world to come when we are similarly on our own?  If we need an immune system to prevent attack now, might we not need a spiritual immune system in the life to come, to likewise prevent spiritual attack in that world?  If this is true, then AIDS becomes not a scourge or an expression of wrath on God’s part, but rather a profound effort, a last ditch effort by God, to show people that willfulness in this life can lead to not only temporary and also permanent loss.  Those behaviors that lead to AIDS infections all belie a moral obtuseness that will lead to a coming wrath in the life to come.  If AIDS can serve as some kind of warning, a wake-up call, then I believe God will allow it to continue.

God’s economy is not our economy.  He’s always thinking about the long term, not the short, the many, not the few, and the unsaved, not the saved.  Until we view things from his perspective, we will draw all kinds of wrong conclusions.  We will misunderstand Him, our own role in our welfare, and the world around us.  We will assign motives to God that are diametrically opposed to those he really holds, and we will miss out on some of the most profound gestures of love and concern our heavenly Father can extend to his children.  Just don’t expect to get the real news in places like People magazine, or from people like Elizabeth Taylor.

Does AIDS work for good?  I believe it can.  I have personally evangelized a man dying of AIDS, who repented and became grateful for Christ’s sacrifice and life-giving spirit before he died.  That man died physically, so that he might not die spiritually.  That’s an unfortunate tradeoff, but infinitely better than the one he was headed for before he got sick.

 

Feb 04
0

Why I Don’t Use the Term “Gay.”

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At the risk of being called exclusive and antediluvian, I’ve decided to not use the term “gay.” This is not because I hate those who use this term to refer to themselves, but because I love them. Let me explain.

 

There are two reasons to avoid the term “gay.” The first is that it’s linguistically misleading. A word has been chosen which already has one clear meaning, and it has been co-opted to mean something entirely different. To go from meaning happy or carefree to mean having sex with a person of the same gender is something of a stretch. This linguistic license, however, is not my real concern. My real problem with the term “gay” is that it is harmful. Harmful to any discussion of sexual values, and ultimately harmful to people on both sides of that discussion.

 

The reason it’s harmful is that “gay” implies that people are born with an “orientation,” an immutable predilection for having sex with people of the same gender. The possibility of a person having a psychological orientation toward either homosexual or heterosexual behavior may well have had its start with Freud, who believed that early life experiences could push a person in either direction. Because of this belief, he also saw little in the way of one being better than the other. This understanding represented a significant departure from earlier views, based most notably on the Bible, which described homosexual activity as a volitional act with spiritual causes and moral consequences. Though hardly monolithic in its views on homosexual behavior, the psychoanalytic profession has largely adopted Freud’s assessment that such activity is not aberrant in and of itself and has, through a rather tortuous process, removed homosexuality as a pathological diagnosis. In doing so, however, it has given official sanction to the “orientation” perspective, that sexual identity comes from within and is largely beyond our control. This in turn has made any discussion of the rectitude of homosexual contact moot. This is unfair to everybody, especially those who consider themselves “gay.”

 

The orientation paradigm has four signal dangers, any one of which should make us change our language.

 

First of all, it implies that a person is “made this way,” and cannot and should not change. Indeed, many young people who are coming of age physically are so imbued with the orientation paradigm that they feel they must experiment by having sex with both genders to decide what they “are.” Once they decide which is more fulfilling, they figure this is their lot in life, something over which they have no volitional control. If a person becomes dissatisfied with the “life style,” rethinking their “orientation” is tantamount to treason to the cause of their struggle for freedom of sexual expression.

 

The second danger is that a person who believes in orientation and concludes they are “gay” is left with the inescapable conclusion that they really are abnormal. They are consigned to an existence where their predilections do not match the realities of their bodies; and, of course, they cannot reproduce. Their sexual activity becomes profoundly narcissistic, focused on the immediate sensation and not the long-term relational and biological possibilities intrinsic to opposite gender sex.

 

The third danger is that the person who believes in immutable orientation and concludes that they are “gay” is somehow entitled to pity or special treatment because they are a member of an aggrieved minority. The “straight” world champions opposite gender encounter, and yet here is the beleaguered person who, with no complicity on their part, is overlooked or, even worse, discriminated against. Self-pity is always a harsh taskmaster.

 

The fourth and most profound danger presented by the whole orientation viewpoint, however, is philosophical and spiritual in nature. Rational behavior demands that we learn the facts, think, come to a logical conclusion, and then act. The orientation theory of sexual determinism, however, allows, and even enjoins, the opposite approach. The “gay” person is told, you must start with your sexual proclivities and then make decisions about what you believe about yourself and your world based upon that. The Bible, for example, inveighs against homosexual behavior, so it and those who read it must be rejected. Parents or other loved ones who are less than thrilled with your orientation must be rejected or at least held at arm’s distance. Friends who are “straight” and who have nuclear families are of a different sort and cannot fully understand the “gay” world you inhabit. Sexual attraction thereby becomes the center of one’s very existence, with all other considerations becoming secondary.

 

How we believe ultimately determines what we believe. If there is a defect in how we think, there will be a defect in what we think. The Biblical witness from beginning to end is that man’s most profound challenge is to be rightly related to his creator. As Oswald Chambers says, “Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrongdoing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God.” Thus, anything that we cling to as a right or possession without regard to the primacy of God, has in and of itself the nature of sin. Is it not possible that the Biblical condemnation of homosexual behavior lies not in its biological absurdity, but in the retrograde reasoning it demands? Rather than think, then act, the orientation paradigm demands that we act, then think.

 

The Bible portrays man as he is born as being a two-part person; a soul, consisting of his mind, will and emotions, and a body. The spirit, which man possessed before the Fall, is attenuated or missing altogether. The result is that the body, which speaks loudly, gains control over the soul, and we end up driven by our physical passions into nonsensical situations. The solution offered by that same Bible doesn’t involve improving man so much as replacing him. When a man senses the need for remedy, he can ask, and the Spirit of the living Lord will come into his heart and restore the spiritual presence that was lost in the Fall. The idea is that the Spirit will inform the soul, and the soul will regain control over the body. Thus, rational existence is restored to the individual who, in the words of AA, has found his life to be unmanageable because of his irrational appetites, and asks God to restore him to sanity.

 

The orientation paradigm is not only harmful to those who consider themselves “gay,” but also those who consider themselves “straight.” Christians who accept the philosophy will fall into one of two traps themselves. On the one hand they will say that the “gay” person is a sinner and must reform before they can regain God’s favor. They are not welcome in the fellowship of believers until they repent and reform their behavior. This is wrong in that it suggests that we are saved because we’re good, not good because we’re saved, which is closer to the truth. This sanctimonious attitude cuts any sinner off from the only avenue of grace they will find that can actually make a difference, and was the attitude in religious leaders that Jesus himself condemned. On the other hand, accepting the notion of an immutable orientation can lead “straight” people, particularly Christians, to think that in unquestioned acceptance they are being inclusive and tolerant and as such are exhibiting divine qualities. To be sure, Christians are not to reject any person in moral confusion, but they are not to leave them in that confusion. Jesus came to set right that which is wrong, and we are all challenged to expose the entirety of our lives to his scrutiny, with no reservation whatsoever.

 

If we reject the whole orientation paradigm, new options for ministry are opened up to those with sexual challenges. The only sure solution is to examine what we consider authoritative in our lives, as revealed in our life of worship. Paul is very clear in Romans 1 that homosexual behavior is a consequence of wrong worship. The message of the Gospel must be reproduced in all faithfulness. We are not judged for our sins; our sins were atoned for on the Cross almost 2,000 years ago. We will all face another judgment, however, and that is for whether or not we bear fruit for the Kingdom of God. Forget what you’ve done wrong; have you done anything right? Have you striven to see a sinful humanity turned back to peace with its God, or did you squander your status as a forgiven child of God and pursue your own pleasures? The only way to bear fruit is to let the Spirit of Jesus live within you. He bears fruit, our job is to bear him, and he will not tolerate other gods in our lives. If we do not put him first, which is the definition of correct worship, he cannot operate; and we’ll remain fruitless. Everything must take second place to Him–even, and especially, our physical wants and desires.

 

None of these last insights is possible if one accepts the whole orientation understanding of sexual motivation and behavior. And you cannot use the terms “gay” or even “straight” without the orientation paradigm. To call somebody “gay,” is to consign them to the four perils mentioned above, and to call yourself “straight” is to abandon any accurate and creative role you might play in their relief. That, to me, is the definition of hate language, and I’m not going to use it.

Feb 04
0

Helping the Homeless

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If we’re honest about the homeless situation in our cities, we have to conclude that whatever it is we’re doing, it’s not working.  The numbers and creativity of such people are increasing, and if this is okay with you, then change nothing.  There is an enormous cost, on both financial and human terms, associated with the current policies.  One city estimates it costs $40,000 per person to accommodate the homeless.  If you’re grieved by this, then consider the following points.

1)  The poor of the Bible, whom we are enjoined to help, are not like the homeless of today.  Even the poor of William Booth’s day in England were nothing like the homeless of today.  The poor of yesteryear were usually one of three groups:

  1. a)  Widows or orphans in a patriarchal society where men were the sole means of legal and financial support,
  2. b) the handicapped in an agrarian, working economy, or
  3. c) those separated from their ancestral lands through error or mismanagement, the land being the only source of income in an agrarian economy.

The poor of earlier times continued to be participants in society, though they were at an economic disadvantage.

2)  According to a recent Pope, we are born members of three groups:

  1. a) a family,
  2. b) the state, and
  3. c) the Church.

The homeless of today have renounced membership in all three groups.  They are estranged from family, are at enmity with the state, and do not participate in the Church.  As such, they are failures in each domain, completely failed lives.

3)  The local police Chief in Monument says that 50% of the homeless in Colorado are here to take advantage of potent and legal marijuana.  Their abuse of alcohol is legendary.  The are plying their trade as panhandlers in order to enjoy their next drug/alcohol episode.

4)  The homeless of today are such by choice; they are on permanent vacation.  As one man I interviewed in Monument stated, he has no restrictions, no limits, no responsibilities.  He portrayed his life as one of complete and absolute freedom.  The reason the homeless resist incorporation into family, state and Church is because they don’t want to be members.  All attempts to reincorporate them are viewed as impositions and restrictions.

5)  When we give the homeless food or shelter, we are simply helping them to perpetuate their vagabond existence.  They will pay lip service to our admonitions about God and family, but their hearts are far from any meaningful change.  We are interfering with God’s methods of bringing people into their “right minds” ( Luke 15:17).  God has designed this world of scarcity (Genesis 3:17,18) to force us to reform our worship, then our thinking, and finally our behavior (Romans 1.)  When we short-circuit the process of pain/repentance, we frustrate God and are actually fighting against his will.  Let me quote from my book:

Bill Gillham has said:

Biblical counseling seeks to lead the believer to the end of his strength— regardless of how productive (or nonproductive [sic]) such ‘strength’ may have proven to be—and into the certainty of Christ’s strength through him! The Holy Spirit, often through the school of adversity, always works against the believer’s dependency upon the flesh. Ultimately his flesh becomes nonproductive [sic] by Supernatural design at which time many seek counseling. The counselor who uses techniques generated by lost men to help such a believer cut his losses is interrupting God’s process of bringing that Christian to the end of his personal resources. The more ‘skilled’ and ‘effective’ the counselor, the more he sets God back to square one, having to begin the breaking process all over again.206

206 Acknowledged remarks. This quotation was reprinted by Teen Challenge, France. Bill works with Lifetime Guarantee Ministries, Ft. Worth, Texas.

6)  Any lasting solution to the homeless problem will involve the State and Christian groups like the Salvation Army.  Homeless people need to be arrested and deprived of their power of choice for a period of time, say six months.  Charges can be vagrancy, public intoxication, panhandling, theft, misuse of private facilities, whatever.  They need to be sentenced to a period of incarceration involving thorough evaluation: physical, mental and spiritual.  After detox, they must be forced to do simple things that give order to their day and benefit others.  Those who resist should receive treatment as criminals with minimum comforts.  Many violate behavioral standards in shelters to continue their lives on the streets.  Those who cooperate should be given increasing freedom and responsibility.  The camp or jail they occupy should be self supporting in terms of labor and even foodstuffs.  Teach gardening, agriculture, animal husbandry, preparing and cooking food.  There is a profound beauty and therapy that comes from working with nature.  As Paul says, he who does not work does not eat.

7)  Upon the completion of their term, customers can elect to stay on in a supervisory capacity if they wish.  Graduates should become staff.  Some people are not suited to membership in family, state or Church.  These people need a home, and it’s not on the streets.  They need the structure, rules and pressure such a facility would provide.

8)  Mental health is often proffered as a reason the homeless deserve support.  The Bible mentions mental health only in terms of what it calls deluded thinking.  The process, as laid out in Romans chapter 1, is this: wrong worship leads to wrong, deluded thinking, and wrong thinking leads to wrong behavior.  Thus, to the extent that we read about deluded thinking in the Bible, we’re really talking about people who worship amiss.  What the Bible does talk about a great deal, is demon possession.  The word in Greek translated as “magic arts” in the NIV or “sorceries” in the KJV is pharmakon, the root from which we get pharmaceutical, in other words, drugs.  The pattern we see is that wrong worship, namely disobedience to Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible, leads to delusions.  These delusions are imposed by demonic forces, make of that what you will. This term demon simply means that evil is both intentional and personal.  Just as there are angels who minister to God’s servants, there are demons who do the devil’s bidding in our lives.  This is where Christians can help secular authorities dealing with the homeless.  Only Christians can deal with the deluded and demonized.  As Jesus said to his disciples, “This kind comes out only by prayer.”  Christian groups have a role to play by being sophisticated about mental health and demonic activity.

Oswald Chambers writes:

One of the hardest lessons to learn comes from our stubborn refusal to refrain from interfering in other people’s lives. It takes a long time to realize the danger of being an amateur providence, that is, interfering with God’s plan for others. You see someone suffering and say, “He will not suffer, and I will make sure that he doesn’t.” You put your hand right in front of God’s permissive will to stop it, and then God says, “What is that to you?” Is there stagnation in your spiritual life? Don’t allow it to continue, but get into God’s presence and find out the reason for it. You will possibly find it is because you have been interfering in the life of another— proposing things you had no right to propose, or advising when you had no right to advise. When you do have to give advice to another person, God will advise through you with the direct understanding of His Spirit. Your part is to maintain the right relationship with God so that His discernment can come through you continually for the purpose of blessing someone else.

Feb 04
0

Letter to the Left

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I’m taking deep breaths, and trying to keep this as gracious and straight-forward as possible.  This is an appeal, not an accusation nor a polemic.  Please bear with me, as I make an appeal to the Left in general and those who are silent on the matter of abortion in particular.

The silence I refer to is deafening.  Shoot up a school, and you have memorials at the Super Bowl half time show, and every rock star in creation is speaking against guns.  The local Episcopal Diocese has scheduled special meetings to discuss the church’s response to the issue of gun violence.  Terrible as Sandy Hook is, the numbers just don’t add up.  Here’s this “Doctor” Gosnell in Philadelphia who is the author of horrors befitting a Nazi experiment, and nobody seems to care.  The Diocese is silent, the media are silent, and as far as I know, there are no half time memorials scheduled.  Yet in the last year for which there are statistics, 2008, there were 1,210,000 abortions performed in these United States.  The scale of the two tragedies are simply beyond any comparison, yet here we are.  We love our children, as long as they’re outside the body of their mother and of school age.

I digress.  Here are cogent reasons the liberal Left should adopt a pro-child stance at every age in their lives:

1)  Liberals claim in every instance that they are stewards of the moral high road.  Here is a clear-cut case of the weak being exploited by the strong.  What is more moral than advocacy on behalf of the weak and the silent?

2  Liberals claim they are peaceful people.  A car in Tucson had a raft of bumper stickers on it, one advocating abortion and another saying, “My Religion is Peace.”  I don’t follow.  By outlawing abortion you are making the place that is supposed to be the safest in the universe, the mother’s womb, distinctly safer.  It’s really a question of eradicating violence.  Have you ever seen an abortion?

3)  Liberals claim to be color blind.  Something like 70% of abortions end the lives of black children.  Is this fair?

4)  Liberals claim to love women.  Half the babies killed are female.

5)  Liberals are fond of painting conservatives in general and pro-life types as rigid and hateful.  Here’s a chance to extend an olive branch and heal the political impasse in our nation.  Conservatives view the inconsistency of the liberal, pro-abortion stand as invalidating anything liberals say, and I can’t say I blame them.  Why do you care so much about the “right” to have unrestricted sex without any consequences?  Who put that plank in the liberal platform?  All this talk of “it’s my body” and feminism are specious.  To pit a woman against the fruit of her womb has got to be the greatest perversion imaginable.  The people who want to have abortions are men who want to be able to relieve themselves sexually without commitment and without consequences.  It seems to me that women and their standing in society would be better served by making it a little harder for men to exploit women in this way.  The issue is not going to go away through unrelenting pressure.  The only way it will go away is when liberals realized that they have been fed a philosophical line that just doesn’t hold water.

So please excuse the irritated tone of this letter; I’m really doing the best I can possibly do all things considered.  Try to ignore the expressions of anger and fatigue, and instead give thought to the points I’ve made.  Here’s a chance for the liberal left to rethink something that has been accepted uncritically for decades, but which is exposed in the Gosnell case for what it really is: murder.  Two parting quotes, one  from a bumper sticker, one from a poster at a Right to Life march in the 80’s.  The first, “If it’s not a child, you’re not pregnant,” and “Choice begins with sex, not your child’s life.”  Enough said.

Feb 04
0

My Take On Trump

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My take on Trump, whom I like, is that he’s the only candidate who qualifies as a businessman, and in today’s world, the President should be a businessman.  The Japanese and the Chinese are rightfully persuaded that the job of government is to favor and succor their national industries, to the betterment of their people.  Why this is not true of American politician is that we have the naive notion that statesmen are above these things.  Politicians today are Keynesians, thinking that if they prime the economy with low interest rates and lax laws on housing lending, they will keep the economy going, the populace happy, and themselves in office.  Keynesian economics are predicated on the idea of a closed, national economy.  Spending by the government has a multiplier effect, where a dollar spent by the government goes in somebody else’s pocket, who then spends it, and so on and so forth.  This is particularly true of industries like housing.  Nowadays in a globalized economy, spending quickly goes out of the country, and multiplies in some other place, and Keynes just gets the government more and more in debt.  The politician then lowers interest rates to zero, fucks all savers and elderly in the process, and then wonders why John Maynard doesn’t work anymore.  Of all the candidates, only Trump is talking about the pernicious effects of globalization, the manipulation of currency rates, and the national debt.  Everybody else, including the Republicans, is talking vague platitudes about “getting America going again” and not saying just how they are going to do it.  For too long evangelicals have made the mistake of doing what Democrats used to do, but then figured out to avoid, and that is to insist on the philosophical purity of their candidates on moral issues, ensuring that they will not get elected.  Reagan was prolife, so were the Bushes, but nothing changed because Roe v. Wade states that the Court cannot ascertain when life begins, and lacking that knowledge, the state can intervene in human reproduction.  It will take at least an act of Congress and probably a Constitutional amendment to state that life begins at conception, which everybody knows but nobody wants to say, because it means that we’re being a lot more careless about morality in general and human life in particular than we want to admit.  So I couldn’t care less that he’s perhaps a jerk, as I think all rich people are, and I don’t care if he’s unPresidential, because I care about content, not form.  I care about knowledge and skill, not making me feel better on some emotional level.  Trust?  Trust Hillary, who couldn’t pour the piss out of a boot if you put the instructions on the heel, as Smokey Yunick said of Bill France’s son?  I urge everybody to listen to one of Trump’s press conferences, where he speaks extemporaneously and winsomely about the issues.  I hate his hair, but I can live with it if he delivers content to the office.  Is he a serial polygamist?  Yes, and I don’t care.  A president is supposed to enforce laws and protect American’s interests in a world that’s much more sophisticated than we in economic matters.  Can’t wait ’till he wins.

Feb 04
0

The Redskins Name

By | Cleric Comments | No Comments

I think the argument about the Redskins name, or as Tuesday Morning Quarterback used to prefer, the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Peoples, has a side Ms. Harjo and you haven’t addressed.  She and her fellow plaintiffs do not necessarily represent a monolithic consensus about the offensiveness of the name.  While here in Washington we obsess about the political correctness of racially charged names and stereotypes, some native Americans have embraced them.

If you leave the self-absorbed National Capitol, and travel to Navajoland in northeastern Arizona, you might run across Red Mesa High School, with the team name of Redskins.  This is a sparsely populated area and like many Indian reservations has lots of poverty and not many opportunities.  

If Dan Snyder really wants to solve his problems with the Redskins name, he should resist his initial impulse to try to extort licensing fees out of the school, but should follow his other modus operandi and buy his way out of trouble.  He should donate a million dollars a year to a scholarship program for schools on reservations.  This money could provide additional funding for school physical plant and programs (including athletics), support families of students to keep them in school through high school graduation, and then to attend whatever college they can get in.  If Mr. Snyder really loves the Redskins name, he should have no problem donating the money he makes from licensing it to such a worthy cause.