The Shortcomings of Today’s Christianity

Recently, N. T. Wright visited Samford University.  One of the recorded events was a conversation with Wright – a Q&A with questions from student and faculty from the university.  I offer some thoughts on the first part of the conversation, as this part reflects the failures of the Christian church in playing a proper role in holding government and society accountable regarding war and violence.

This session was held on September 11.  I mention the date, because the first question reflects this anniversary:

How should Christians approach the societal evil and suffering that seems to plague our world at a systemic level?

Wright’s answer, summarized:

One of the things I reflected on in the two or three years subsequent to the attacks was this sudden interest of evil on the parts of the western leaders.  This told me something about the post-Enlightenment mindset which seemed to assume that because we had modern science and technology and modern democracy, the world was becoming a better, safer, and nicer place.

He points to Steven Pinker as one who presses such a view: with the Enlightenment and the large-scale abandonment of religion, everything is getting better – with fewer wars, etc.  This is a silly case to make, according to Wright – and with this I agree. 

However, I am not sure that this is the most convincing part of Wright’s response.  Proponents of such an idea will point out that it was (per the mainstream narrative) unenlightened Muslim religious fanatics who carried out the attack. 

But he quickly moves on, to the Churchill’s idea that “jaw, jaw is better than war, war.”  Advice Churchill never took, unfortunately.  In any case, instead of talk, the western response was to go to the weapon of last resort: the weapon.

The danger of this, using Shakespeare’s phrase, is that you unleash the dogs of war.  And there is the sense of invoking the god Mars, the war god, the god of naked power. 

There is this deep ambiguity in western culture where there is so much of the Christian and Judeo-Christian tradition…but at the same time we look back to the great wars of the past and commemorate them not always with the greatest of humility and sorrow, but sometimes with the idea “when we needed to do the job, we did the job.”  That seems to me to be dangerous.

It does not help the case when we see that it is often in churches on Sunday morning when such sentiments are at the highest – making a total mockery of “what would Jesus do.”

He suggests that this idea opens the door to the kind of worship of violence which then eats away at the vitals of society.  He points to the mass gun violence in American society and sees this as part of the continuum of the violence perpetrated in the world by America.

While I think the issue of internal violence is more complicated than this, there certainly is something to the idea that if it is acceptable for the government to act in a certain way, it must be acceptable for the rest of us.  To state it most succinctly: government is seen by many to be corrupt, and this then corrupts the society that is being so governed.

Wright offers that the reaction to September 11 was very immature, recalling that he offered – during a visit to Westminster Abbey – that for every bomb dropped, another Al-Qaeda recruit would come forward.  He offers that, in hindsight, he understated this relationship. 

We have overplayed our hand, allowing them to cast this as “the Christians beating up on the Muslims.”  It seems to me that this is not the best way to indicate what following Jesus is all about.

For sure it is not.

There follows a question about the role of Christians in politics, and the idea of shedding partisan ties.  It is this last bit that Wright addresses first: Wright recognizes that the political mood is different in America than elsewhere in the West, and even different in the different parts of America.

I think this can be plainly seen via the idea of flyover country, the deplorables, the red counties vs. blue counties, the urban vs. the rural.  Along with countless minor divisions in America, there is this major one: to greatly summarize, one side values western tradition and the other wants to destroy it.

The church has the power and vocation to hold the world to account.  That’s difficult.  The church has to learn the lesson about supporting without collusion and critiquing without dualism. 

He suggests that many Christians get caught up in supporting the individual politician regardless of policies or action, believing that this individual is the one sent by God or some such.  One can think of the Christian right and the view that they will back Trump, no matter what.  But it seems true on the left as well – while they might not use the same words, Obama was certainly seen as the perfect savior by many – one who could do no wrong.

Further, we must critique – not get trapped in the idea that “this world is not my home, I’m just passing through.”  This is a cop-out.  It seems to me a discredit to this world of God’s creation.

Conclusion

We in the west are just not well taught and we don’t think about these things, but we need to.  Are we content to just vote every few years and move on?  Jefferson said that democracy only works when you have an educated electorate.  We now have a smart-phone electorate.  What are we going to do about that?  I don’t have an answer, but the church ought to be at the forefront of prayerfully working toward a better answer than we currently have.

I have some thoughts about what to do about it: stop glorifying war, stop glorifying Zionism as the fulfillment of Scofield’s eschatology, condemn the idea of punishing people for non-violent trespasses.  Instead, deliver a message of meaning in life, fulfilling the purpose of God’s creation – being made in God’s image.

Such steps will not only revive Christianity, they will also move a society toward liberty.

Not Quite Speaking Truth to Power

God in Public: How the Bible Speaks Truth to Power Today, by N. T. Wright

From the time I began reading this book, I had been looking forward to this chapter, chapter 8 entitled “Christian virtue in peace and war.”  Several factors contributed to my anticipation:  first, combine this title with the title of the book – regarding war, in what manner would Wright recommend that we speak “truth to power” in this world; second, Wright had made several less-than-flattering comments regarding the post-911 militarism of the US and the UK; third, as the example for us, he emphasizes Jesus speaking to the high priest and Pilate in John 18 & 19; fourth, he offers that Christians must hold their government leaders to account.

I was anticipating a call to Christian leaders to come together and denounce the militarism (and other similar evils) of their government leaders.  Imagine my disappointment when what I read was not a lesson on how to speak truth to power using Jesus as a model, but why it makes sense to base our virtue on the military model.  Even as I write these words, I cannot fathom that Wright would make this connection – not that I have read much of him beyond this book.

Wright begins by examining the etymology of the words character and virtue.  He considers how one can develop the strength of character into a virtuous pattern of thought such that one will almost automatically act virtuous in any circumstance (a ‘second nature’).  He offers, as one such example, the actions of Chesley Sullenberger (Sully) in landing his plane full of passengers in the Hudson River – having studied and practiced every possible scenario over a career of flying, Sully did not have to “think” before he acted; he knew how to act in order to save the passengers of the plane.

“Some people at the time called it a ‘miracle’.”  Wright prefers not to label such events in this way:

…I think sometimes our culture reaches for the category of ‘miracle’ because we haven’t wanted to face the challenge of character, of virtue.

Wright offers four mainstream theories about how practical ethics actually works, with our culture stuck somewhere amongst the first three: the first way is the way of rules, a list of dos and don’ts; the second is just to do what comes naturally; the third option lies somewhere in-between, determined via utilitarian or consequentialist methods – the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, or some such (not at all subject to calculation, of course).

The fourth is the approach that Wright would commend: that of virtue via a development of strength of character.  Having done the hard work of thinking through what ‘justice’, for example, means, one develops the means to always act justly.

Of course, nothing about this fourth approach works without considering ‘ends’, and living within a society that values the same ends or goals or telos.

Vice can be, just as much as virtue, a fixed habit of the heart.

Like I said, one man’s vice is another man’s virtue.  Aristotle considered the goal to be ‘happiness.’  The meaning of this, of course, has shifted over time.  Herein is our challenge today:

…the challenge for us today, in peace as well as in war, has to do with a fresh glimpse of the goals we should be setting ourselves right across Western society, and then the character strengths we need to develop in order to come at these goals.

Aristotle offered the four cardinal virtues: courage, justice, temperance, and prudence.  For any of these to exist, one needs all four.  For this we need moral teaching, as moral teaching will produce human beings who do the right thing by second nature:

…a full, genuine human life is found not by blindly following rules but by becoming the sort of person who acts in the right way because that’s the sort of person they have become through the sheer slog of character building. (Emphasis in original.)

Our present culture, instead, values spontaneity, or authenticity.  Of course, these might be a vice, or might be a virtue – this really only can be addressed in terms of ends.

Wright offers an interesting aside: it is the left – the left of spontaneity and authenticity – that has been the side, while in government, to introduce the most cumbersome and detailed ‘rules’.  This isn’t surprising: as the left devalues culture and tradition (and religion) to the point of irrelevancy, rules for living must come from somewhere.  There will be governance – either from culture and tradition or from man-made rules; governance cannot be avoided if there is to be any meaningful society.

It is the right that is after strict moral rules, desiring to put the genie of liberalism back in the bottle.  This, of course, cannot be done.  So, what is the way forward?

Once more, we need education. 

Given the ends necessary for liberty – let alone for a theologian of Wright’s standing – you might think that it would be education through the church that Wright suggests.  Well, not exactly:

If the schools can’t or won’t provide the development of character and virtue, then, as before, it’s up to the professions, not least the armed forces, to provide it instead.

Yes, you read that right.  Wright offers examples of virtuous behavior to be found in the armed forces – throwing one’s self on a grenade to save his comrades, things like that. 

There are too many problems with Wright’s statement to unpack simply: when was this “as before” time; what “professions”; why not the church; the “armed forces” are the most rule-based institution in the world – there is no virtuous behavior, there is only following orders…or else.

There is nothing to be learned about virtuous behavior from any government institution, least of all the armed forces. 

Wright has the most perfect example of speaking truth to power in his own backyard – and example of one being made a martyr.  This courageous and virtuous individual has been held as if a prisoner in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than six years.

Julian Assange has spoken truth to power.  If the Christian church would do a fraction of what he has done, the world would be a much different – and safer, and more peaceful, and more free – place.

Conclusion

Did Jesus mimic the “virtue” of the Roman soldiers when speaking truth to Pilate?  Give me a break.

Deconstructing Postmodernity

We are in the middle of enormous cultural changes within western society which have many observers bewildered and many participants bemused.

God in Public: How the Bible Speaks Truth to Power Today, by N. T. Wright

Wright offers his definitions of modernity and postmodernity.  The modern world, broadly speaking, is the Western world from the eighteenth century to the present:

The European Enlightenment at the intellectual level, and the Industrial Revolution at the social level…

This period gave us what Wright calls “the modernist trinity”: the confident individual (‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul’); there is certainty of the world, knowledge is objective; a mythology of progress.

…we were no longer bound to traditional religions or ethics…religion and ethics were a matter of private opinion. …We have learned to think for ourselves…to free ourselves from the tyranny of tradition.

This is what is meant – implicitly and explicitly – when we consider the meaning of living in the modern world.

In such a framework, negative consequences are not difficult to predict.  For example, the broad sweep of ideas that fall under the framework of Social Darwinism: eugenics, selective breeding, racial purity.  Then again, who am I to say that these are “negative” consequences?  Without some broadly accepted ethical framework, such a statement is impossible.

Wright uses language with which I am not comfortable, for example, “industrial wage slavery.”  I will describe this phrase in a manner with which I can live.

Inflation (via central banking and fiat money) and taxes have ensured that the modern man can live at some level above subsistence, but well short of any independence.  Since this was not enough for today’s noble elite, a lifetime yoke was created with student loans – ensuring that a large portion of young people will be paying interest for life.  Yes, I understand that this last one is a personal choice; yet it is society and our current ethic that says such a choice is normal – even expected.

And therefore we look around us and find that this modernity is having a hard go of it – we see this in the backlash made manifest in Trump’s election and in what are referred to as alt-right parties in Europe; in reality, all are some version of rejection of “modernity” and demonstrate a desire to return to some version (who knows what version) of “traditional.”

It is something that such as these have in common with the postmodernists: both camps reject the modern due to the failures of the modernists.  But instead of returning to some version of traditional, the postmodernists deconstruct everything; instead of looking to some version of the past for foundation, the postmodernist suggests that the only objective foundation is to have no foundation.

If reality is thus being merrily deconstructed, the same is even more true for stories.  One of the best known aspects of postmodernity is the so-called ‘death of the metanarrative’, the critique applied to the great stories by which our lives have been ruled.

Wright offers that these stories (metanarratives) that drive man, and not abstract ideological doctrines.  It is a point libertarians might take to heart; in fact, one very prominent libertarian has: The Libertarian Quest for a Grand Historical Narrative, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

…the general public is not used to or incapable of abstract reasoning, high theory and intellectual consistency, but forms its political views and convictions on the basis of historical narratives, i.e. of prevailing interpretations of past events, and hence it is upon those who want to change things for a better, liberal-libertarian future to challenge and correct such interpretations and propose and promote alternative, revisionist historical narratives.

Libertarians lament the relative lack of attraction for what seems to us a slam-dunk win: the non-aggression principle.  Hoppe recognizes that something else is needed.  As readers here know, I have also been searching for this “something else.”  Regardless of the superficial success of postmodernist philosophy (if you can call it that), human nature will not easily let go of the draw of the metanarrative.

Returning to Wright, he offers how the Bible challenges this postmodern deconstruction.  I will not address each point, as some venture into territory that I try to stay away from at this blog (someday I might give up on maintaining this boundary, but not today).

…the biblical metanarrative challenges and subverts the worldview of philosophical Idealism, in which historical events are mere contingent trivia, and reality is to be found in a set of abstractions…

Unknowingly, I guess, it is in this space where I have been spending so much time.  We cannot speak of the idea of “libertarianism” outside of recognition of the history – the history of facts and the history of values – that gave birth to this liberty.

We cannot build a foundation for liberty on an abstract idea (the non-aggression principle) without placing that idea in an objective framework – a framework of facts and a framework of values – that gave birth to this liberty.

…the biblical metanarrative challenged all pagan political power structures.

We saw this made manifest in the European Middle Ages – at least to the extent that imperfect man could achieve.  There was no “political power structure” outside of the old and good law; there was no sovereign, unless one wanted to consider this old and good law as sovereign.

Conclusion

…the biblical narrative…challenges all rival visions of the future (‘eschatologies’) and how we get there.

Certainly it challenges the visions as offered during the last five-hundred years.  As Wright offers: people didn’t sit around in the Middle Ages thinking “it sure is dark in here…I can’t wait to be Enlightened.”

And after all, the grandiose claims of the ‘Renaissance’ and the ‘Enlightenment’ are themselves full of holes… We live in a world where, increasingly, people are clutching at straws, unable to glimpse a story which would lead the way into true peace, freedom and justice.

Hoppe, in the aforementioned lecture, offered a portion of the Decalogue as part of his “Libertarian Quest for a Grand Historical Narrative.”  It is the portion covering law.  These may be enough of a foundation to build on for liberty.

Maybe, maybe not.  Perhaps we might also consider the other commandments – the ones that compel us to piety and humility.  After all, there is a reason that the Bible (or 100,000 years of evolution) has emphasized the Golden Rule and not the Silver Rule.