Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Geoff

The Angel of Death

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When I was in college, I went to a mewithoutYou concert and the band played this song for, if I remember what they said properly, the first time. That version used to be posted online. Seems to be gone. But it’s a great song

If I had written it back in the days when I wrote a lot of poetry, I’d have probably included some lines about Amnon, Absalom, Joab, Jonathan, and Saul. But it’s not my song. Nevertheless, it is a marvelous work of art. There’s a weird thing with the timeline of David’s life in the song, but that’s okay. It’s worth a listen and then ten more. I hope you enjoy it.

The Church in Africa is Unimpressed

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In response to efforts of the American leaders in the United Methodist Church to influence Africa’s Methodists to reject the Biblical teaching on homosexual marraige, they did not budge:

I thank God for His precious Word to us, and I thank him for you, my dear sisters and brothers in Christ.
As the General Coordinator of UMC Africa Initiative I greet you on behalf of all its members and leaders. We want to thank the  Renewal and Reform Coalition within the United Methodist Church for the invitation to address you at this important breakfast meeting.
As I understand it, the plans before us seek to find a lasting solution to the long debate over our church’s sexual ethics, its teachings on marriage, and it[s] ordination standards.
This debate and the numerous acts of defiance have brought the United Methodist Church to a crossroads (Jeremiah 6:16).
One plan invites the people called United Methodists to take a road in opposition to the Bible and two thousand years of Christian teachings. Going down that road would divide the church. Those advocating for the One Church Plan would have us take that road.
Another road invites us to reaffirm Christian teachings rooted in Scripture and the church’s rich traditions…

While “we commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons,” we do not celebrate same-sex marriages or ordain for ministry people who self-avow as practicing homosexuals. These practices do not conform to the authentic teaching of the Holy Scriptures, our primary authority for faith and Christian living.

However, we extend grace to all people because we all know we are sinners in need of God’s redeeming. We know how critical and life changing God’s grace has been in our own lives.

We warmly welcome all people to our churches; we long to be in fellowship with them, to pray with them, to weep with them, and to experience the joy of transformation with them.

Friends, please hear me, we Africans are not afraid of our sisters and brothers who identify as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered, questioning, or queer. We love them and we hope the best for them. But we know of no compelling arguments for forsaking our church’s understanding of Scripture and the teachings of the church universal.

And then please hear me when I say as graciously as I can: we Africans are not children in need of western enlightenment when it comes to the church’s sexual ethics. We do not need to hear a progressive U.S. bishop lecture us about our need to “grow up.”

Let me assure you, we Africans, whether we have liked it or not, have had to engage in this debate for many years now. We stand with the global church, not a culturally liberal, church elite, in the U.S.

The rhetoric used by Dr. Kulah is excellent. Why? He lulls white American Christians into a moment of agreement by starting the speech with a beautiful call for unity. A cherished idea in modern academia is that while American academics are superior to all the knuckle-draggers in America, ultimately, they are exactly similar to everybody else on the planet. But once he gains that support, he makes a hardline distinction between two roads the church can travel, “One plan invites the people called United Methodists to take a road in opposition to the Bible and two thousand years of Christian teachings. Going down that road would divide the church. Those advocating for the One Church Plan would have us take that road.”

He then reminds them that elite Americans and their western enlightenment values are of no use to the kingdom of God. This is encouraging.

JUST SAY IT

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Beauty, according to the Thomists, is rightproportion, brilliance, and integrity. Evolutionary theorists have tried, and in some cases managed, to find biological grounding for our concepts of beauty. For instance, they at least seem to grasp the relationship between human beauty and reproductive viability, but even these relationships are associational rather than necessary.

But it is more ineffable than that. David Bentley Hart is more expansive:

“Beauty is something other than the visible or audible or conceptual agreement of parts, and the experience of beauty can never be wholly reduced to any set of material constituents. It is something mysterious, prodigal, often unanticipated, even capricious. We can find ourselves suddenly amazed by some strange and indefinable glory in a barren field, an urban ruin, the splendid disarray of a storm-wracked forest, and so on.

Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss 279-280

But in this evil age, the concept of beauty is being subject to the standard word games. The concept behind the word, however difficult to define, is essentially being deconstructed on two fronts. Some claim that beauty is an invention of the mind, especially the minds of men, and therefore needs to be rejected. Others seek to force the word beautiful to refer to that which is not beautiful, neither in the eye of the beholder nor by objective assessment. One remembers that there are four lights:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_eSwq1ewsU
If you do not care to watch, a man is told that if he would simply say what he is told rather than speak the truth of which he is convinced, good things will happen. The truth under question is inconsequential. But this character bases his whole life on the principle that his first duty is to the truth. It concludes with him speaking the truth rather than giving in.

What modern art and other forces are attempting to do is get you to look at that which is ugly and call it beautiful. Seriously, watch this documentary some time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc
At one point in the film, a sculptor tells Scruton that the artists and philosophers who want us to reject beauty are ultimately tempting us to reject knowledge itself.

If we call ugly beautiful, we become more comfortable calling false tue and evil good. Once we become so comfortable with self-deception, we find ourselves unable to discern the difference between any of those categories any more.

Isaiah 5:20 (NET): Those who call evil good and good evil are as good as dead, who turn darkness into light and light into darkness, who turn bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter.

Gloria Steinem is an Idiot

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Steinem argued in the 1980s that opposing abortion is actually a secret form of Nazism, and she repeats the argument in an interview below:

Well, the new generation of reader is instructing me by saying that these essays are still relevant …. on a more serious note, to put it mildly, is why Hitler was actually elected, and he was elected and he campaigned against abortion. I mean, that was — he padlocked the family planning clinics. Okay, so that is still relevant in the terms of the right wing. So there were very few things, actually, that I had to take out.

Forget the historical improprieties. The main thing is this: Some people feel that you can argue against literally any idea by citing the Holocaust.

Here’s another example:

In a discussion of the symbols and/or actuality of transcendent being, Rebecca Goldstein says that Jordan Peterson’s use of Christian symbols and William Craig’s belief in a transcendent God make her very nervous because…the Nazis felt transcendent. As she begins to say it, she obviously feels it is nonsense but says it anyway. But the idea is basically that, “You guys are basically Nazis.”

So what’s my point: Godwin’s law is actually an iron clad counterpoint for anything. You’re against abortion: Hitler. You believe in God or symbolism: Hitler. You’re a Zionist: Hitler. You think Islam is wrong: Hitler.

This sourthpark skit is our reality now:

The Digital Tribe

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No man is an island, even conceptually.

We see ourselves enmeshed in multple layers reality:

  1. Family
  2. City
  3. Nation
  4. Sport teams
  5. Religious groups
  6. The physical world
  7. Etc

There are certainly more elements to this and many of our social selves instantiate precisely to fit into these groups. So we behave differently at work than at home, in a forrest than at church, at a restaurant than at a friend’s house, etc.

Our bodies have an entire reflect system to help us navigate all of these communities. For instance, you may value your job and your family, but you feel more guilty about leaving your family for a slightly bigger paycheck then you feel about doing w/out the money.

Our emotions, far from being mere spontaneous reactions are deeply social and party rational, insofar as they respond to things we deeply value, either innately or through choice. You might call your family, friends, and religious group a tribe.

Your emotions respond to your perception of your tribe’s approval. This helps you survive. The word being valuing your tribe and the opinions of your tribal members is loyalty or even faith. They are the people you trust and entrust yourself to.

Now, in more ancient times, people were necessarily localist, and so outlier tribe members had two options: leave the tribe or find a niche therein. If they could not, too bad. Leaving meant facing hostile groups or the environment without support.

In the age of the Internet, it is far easier to find a tribe if your family is boring, hostile, or uninvolved. This can be good. So much of our culture is complete bullshit these days, that finding a real, local tribe to fit into is almost impossible in some regions. For instance, I live in a city w/no gym and probably a 90% obesity rate. Almost everybody who goes outside wears sweatpants and sports-team shirts. I do not hate these people, I just cannot fit in with them. Thankfully, I live near a large city with more like-minded people. But if I didn’t, the Internet could provide me with access to experts in weight-lifting, forums of weight lifters offering guidance, support, and encouragement, and all of this would be to my choosing. And this happens for people in many domains: gaming, religion, humor, dating, etc.

What’s my point? That the Internet offers replacement tribes and therefore creates a set of emotional commitments. So while people might feel lonely because they have very little close fellowship with like-minded friends, they also find themselves highly influenced by distant individuals with no skin-in-the-game for their well-being. For instance, an individual with gender dysphoria whose behavior might have been taboo 30 years ago, might have been pressured into therapeutic intervention or into having a private life of cross-dressing and public life that looked much different. Now, such an individual can go to Twitter and find what appears to be millions and millions of supportive cheerleaders, feel really good about a permanently life-altering series of surgeries, and have not one conservation with a dissenting voice that is genuinely concerned. This happens with divorces, religious conversions, abortions, and so-on.

Why? Our tribes are digital.

Just Once

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More and more articles on the standard Christian websites and highly read blogs have articles that follow this pattern:

  1. I used to believe idea ‘X.’
  2. After agonizing, recognizing how bigoted the church was, and really following the Holy Spirit [God told me!], I realized I was wrong about ‘X.’
  3. Now that I believe ‘Not X,’ many evangelicals seem to disagree with me and it hurts.

Belief ‘X’ is almost always something like traditional Christian sexual ethics, the Biblical restriction on divorce, being pro-life, believing that God is real (not even kidding), or believing the Bible is inspired or even accurate at all.

Just once it would be interesting to see a story pumped that said, “I used to believe the progressive narrative and careful study changed my mind.”

What I’ve noticed in these personal narratives, by the way, is how little actual thought goes into the claims being made. For instance, a famous Christian band was also a worship band. When they started questioning the core beliefs of the church they were paid to lead (within the confines of their statement of faith), they were surprised and hurt that their efforts to change all of that were not accepted. What’s the point? These individuals didn’t even consider that their “new insights” into the Bible being false would disqualify them from their job leading people in worshiping the God of the Biblical narrative.

My charitable read on these people is that they’ve confused thinking with feeling guilty about changing their mind. It’s a sort of sunk-cost fallacy on their part. “I cannot abandon this belief because it would feel like too big of a change in my life.”

On the other hand, perhaps the more accurate reading is that as the culture (defined as mass media culture) becomes more and more a progressive monoculture, these people cannot bear to be left behind by it. In other words, the social pressure of the internet, sitcoms, and political leaders of the day is too much. So their emotions lead them to their new insights, but they need a way to try to keep fellowship with their old social group: “Led by the Holy Spirit” or “after studying the Bible.”