Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Archives for November 2017

Remembering: Part 1

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Every year, around the anniversary of his death, I sit and think about a friend. I’ve done this for several July’s in a row. This year I did not. My daughter had been born and I was utterly distracted from my normal habits. 

In high school he was an atheist. We often argued about God’s existence (despite being in debate class I found political debates boring). In college, he had a break from reality connected to several bad habits he’d developed in high school.

Before he graduated, classmates gave him a dose of real-talk about the probable results of his excessive drinking. He had been one of the brightest guys I’d ever met, and I tried to surround myself only with people I thought were very bright, he rose to the top. He excelled, especially, at music theory and debate. He was two years older than me. At this point we were not friends.

Anyway, out of the blue, he contacted me when I was in college. He claimed to have become a Christian as a result of his apparent breakdown. He wrote a bunch of music. He even offered to help my brother’s band produce an album, presumably as a kindness to me. His conversion experience seemed sincere, though some of our mutual friends told me that they weren’t sure he wasn’t pulling an elaborate prank.

We spent the weekend with my roommates and I. We attended some concerts, debated Scripture, and talked about stupid high school antics. From this point on, he would regularly call me. He eventually asked me to baptize him, so I did. This took place over about 2 years, with the baptism somewhere in the middle. I slept so little from 2003-2010 that anything within that time frame seems almost simultaneous. 

From 2008-2010, we stayed in touch, grabbed food a few times when he was in town. Sometimes, I ignored his phone calls. It was never personal and he knew he usually contacted me in what could only be described as hypermanic states.

In 2010, he died. Causes were never made public. I have my suspicions, but they don’t matter. Since then, I go to his MySpace music page and listen to the good songs once a year. I used to go to the funeral home webpage to reread his obituary, but two or three years ago, it went down. Eventually, the MySpace page will be gone. I checked it last week and none of his old songs would play. That’s a shame because my brother and I both lost his album. 

I don’t like being sad. I don’t reminisce to make myself sad. I accept the ancient belief that it’s important to remember the dead so that they remain active in history. I don’t mean animism, but that specifically remembering people brings their words and actions into history anew. That feels especially true to me if they never had children. There are men and women whose deaths go unremembered every day. Christ remembers them. But, it just seems intuitively right to try to hold those who were close to you in your heart if you can. And it’s not that I don’t believe in heaven or the resurrection from the dead. I do. I just believe that history matters and people are supposed to remain in it longer than 28 years or so.

I similarly call to memory two other friends. One died when I was in high school. My last words to him were when I was tutoring him in geometry and he was refusing to grasp the concept (we played soccer together so the harshness is playful): Don’t be such a f*cking idiot. Remembering him reminds me to be circumspect with my words. Going to a funeral for a Christian brother and soccer teammate while remembering that as your last conversation is sobering. 

The other isn’t known to have died, but he has disappeared. 

Now, I wrote this short reflection for personal reasons. I never meant to post it. But the months-off timing of my recollections was bizarre this year.

 

 

National Men’s Day: A Stream of Consciousness about Masculinity

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To be a man is first to be human:

  1. To be a man is to seek virtue.
  2. To seek virtue, a man must seek adventure. Courage requires risk.
  3. To be a man is to build.
  4. To build is to restore the past or to create the future. 
  5. To be a man is to destroy and incorporate that which opposes building. The fur of the predator becomes the pelt of the hunter. The cave of monsters becomes a home. The fire becomes a tool.
  6. To build is to reason. To be a man is, therefore to seek truth.  

To be a man is inherently sexual:

  1. To be a man is to love women.
  2. To be a man is to find a woman.
  3. To be a man is to be desirable to women.
  4. To be a man is to be desirable, in particular, to the woman. 
  5. To be a man is to not be a woman.
  6. To be a man is to be strong, durable, and steady.
  7. To be a man is to fight. Man builds and destroys, woman builds and sustains.
  8. To be a man is to need the company of men apart from women.

To be a man is tribal:

  1. If a man needs the company of other men, then their families become a tribe.
  2. To have a tribe is to have honor.
  3. To have honor is to know shame. Men shame other men when their behavior is unbecoming of their status, family, the group norms, or the truth. 
  4. To have a tribe is to be wary of danger.
  5. To be a man, then, is to preserve the old ways. For just as to be human is to build the future, to be a man is to ensure that the progress of the past is not lost. 

Thomas Sowell and Our Ridiculous Culture

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Thomas Sowell observes:

The real war — which is being waged in our schools, in the media, and among the intelligentsia — is the war on achievement. When President Obama told business owners, “You didn’t build that!” this was just one passing skirmish in the war on achievement.

The very word “achievement” has been replaced by the word “privilege” in many writings of our times. Individuals or groups that have achieved more than others are called “privileged” individuals or groups, who are to be resented rather than emulated.

The length to which this kind of thinking — or lack of thinking — can be carried was shown in a report on various ethnic groups in Toronto. It said that people of Japanese ancestry in that city were the most “privileged” group there, because they had the highest average income.

What made this claim of “privilege” grotesque was a history of anti-Japanese discrimination in Canada, climaxed by people of Japanese ancestry being interned during World War II longer than Japanese Americans.

If the concept of achievement threatens the prevailing ideology, then real achievement in the face of obstacles is a deadly threat. That is why the achievements of Asians in general — and of people like the young black man with no arms — make those on the left uneasy. And why the achievements of people who created their own businesses have to be undermined by the President of the United States.

 

Are you really better?

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Stephanie, at Girl with the Dragonfly Tattoo, criticizes a blogger for her reasoning that outrage over actions like pedophilia is improper due to our own moral failures. Here is her main thought: 

She “laughs” at the incongruity of normal people daring to judge a child molester when calling for justice to be done. 

Why would a Christian laugh at a situation dealing with something so clearly evil, and something we are supposed to view with soberness and yes, we are called to judge and expose evil (Eph 5).

 

In the comments, when responding to a victim of child molestation 😦 , who obviously was very offended by her suggestions in this post, she defends herself and takes this analogy even further to include other evil acts some humans engage in: killing a police officer – which earns people the death penalty in some states.  Don’t judge them, she says.  You’re no better as a person, than a cop killer.

 

Ok, so where does this “you’re no better than a truly evil person” stop with this line of reasoning?

With all the mass murdering happening in the news lately, first the church that was my Uncle and Aunt’s old church being shot up with MANY children and even pregnant women murdered last week, to just this morning hearing of an elementary school being another target of an evil mass murderer.  Are we really called to “not judge” evil doers who commit acts like these?  Is it really better “to laugh” at the people who DO get angry and voice their sentiments of desiring justice?

Her philosophical exercise is revealing. The fact of human beings being all equally under condemnation for sin by no means implies that all are under equal sentences or are guilty of equally evil sins. But it got me to thinking about the Biblical justification for the claim that universal human sinfulness does not entail universal moral equality. Here are some Biblical justifications:

  1. The Old Testament teaches that Enoch and Noah were morally superior to their contemporaries and the Abel was morally superior to Cain.
  2. Old Testament laws have different penalties. Jesus teaches different levels of punishment for different levels of sin in Luke 12:35-48.
  3. He also teaches different levels of sin in John 9:40-41.
  4. Again, he teaches different levels of sin in Mark 3:28-29.
  5. Paul, in Romans 2:6-9, assumes that people have different responses to God’s revelation in conscience.
  6. Paul teaches some who are spiritual have the right and responsibility to correct their brothers and sisters in Galatians 6:1-4. These verses line up exactly with what Jesus says in Matthew 7:1-5, human judgment (instantiated as criticism and correction) is for those who first correct themselves.
  7. Peter teaches that you can get morally worse (2 Peter 2:20).
  8. James, who says not to judge your brothers lest you become a judge of the law of God, also says to turn sinners back to the truth (James 5:19-20). Through his epistle, he also criticizes the rich exploiters of the poor, those who distort faith into mere assent, and those who blame God for their personal sins. So whatever James means by ‘judge,’ he doesn’t mean, ‘don’t publicly criticize sin or sinners.’
  9. Finally, for the New Testament to teach that Christ can redeem us is to teach that at least one person is morally superior to all other people.

So, moral superiority is real and actual (not merely potential). But what does that mean? Well for one, it means that you ought not pray as though you haven’t sinned at all (Luke 18:10-14), but as one unworthy of heaven’s favor. It means that you are now responsible for correcting your brothers and sisters in such a fashion that they do not just turn around and automatically judge you because you’ve corrected your flaws so thoroughly and are willing to accept similar correction even from the person who is sinful in ways you are not. 

In the post Stephanie is criticizing, the author runs into a common problem for those who think Jesus teaches to never judge. In any act of correcting Christians who judge (read: correct or claim somebody did evil), you necessarily are judging. It is perhaps best to see Jesus’ teaching about judgment as normative: Judge with righteous judgment (John 7:24). So don’t just judge by how things appear, but judge based on careful reasoning.

My suspicion is that the original post is meant to be taken as more of a puritan exercise in self-examination. They recommended that you see in yourself the depths of depravity that are truly there through the lens of the deeds you abhor in others, then be grateful for God’s grace (see Jonathan Edwards’ Resolution 8). Exercises of this sort keep you from doing such horrible sins. 

All of this is to say that it’s important judge and it’s important to judge in such a way that allows you to remain humble.

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil

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Thou shalt not take up a false report: put not thy hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to turn aside after a multitude to wrest justice: neither shalt thou favor a poor man in his cause. (Exodus 23:1-3 ASV)

In ancient cultures, conformity to the majority was near the top of the hierarchy of values. In fact, the Old Testament takes great pains to enforce conformity to social norms through various and elaborate status rituals and harsh legal penalties. But, the Old Testament vision of social conformity is not conformity to society as such. Instead, the vision is of society conforming to the good, rather than the individual becoming a microcosm of society. The expectation of breaking rank when the rank and file turn to evil is an implicit demand to contemplate social norms and reason whether they be good or evil. This passage also calls for a rejection of social naivete which implies gaining some degree of contemplative virtue. And as a strange conclusion, the passage also proscribes allowing pity to substitute for truth. A conservative error is to equate poverty with vice. The liberal error is to equate poverty with virtue. The Biblical middle-ground is to pursue the good generally and legal justice particularly. The following passages from Proverbs illustrate the same principles in aphoristic format:

A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breathes out lies. (Proverbs 14:5)

The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the folly of fools is deceiving. (Proverbs 14:8)

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14:12)

The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps. (Proverbs 14:15)

One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless. (Proverbs 14:16)