Author Archives: Rob Harrison

Called to be pro-love

Posted on by | 4 Comments

The most interesting thing I’ve ever seen written on abortion by a liberal was a column by Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times of about five years ago. The original is no longer up on the Sun-Times website (which seems to be a real problem with that paper), and the copy that had been up on findarticles.com is no longer there either, so I can’t send you back to read the whole piece; but here’s what I saved at the time:

During one of the policy discussions that occupy my day, a flash struck me that seemed like, if not quite insight, then perhaps something other than just another tired lob from the same familiar ramparts.

Here goes: Is it possible that in their relentless drive to make abortion once again illegal, the religious right actually encourages more abortions to take place?

It makes sense, in a law-of-unintended consequences fashion. Pro-choice women’s groups correctly see themselves as locked in a life-or-death battle to preserve the legality of abortion, and so tend to close ranks and take an absolutist, it’s-our-right-and-no-one-can-take-it-away approach to the practice. Any questioning of abortion’s morality or desirability is seen as giving ammunition to those who would ban it. Thus, the idea that abortion is an ethically dubious procedure that nobody wants to go through is a luxury they can’t afford.

However, imagine for a moment that the religious right were not intent on its futile quest to reverse the law. Imagine that, rather than trying to work through the government, they instead focused on the undesirability of the procedure—as something women should choose not to do. Then the two groups might find common ground, since both agree that no woman is happy to feel the need to go through an abortion.

Steinberg went on to note, “I’m not expecting either side to embrace this idea,” and I think he was right not to be sanguine on the point, for a variety of reasons; but I also think he’d put his finger squarely on one of the things that makes the abortion debate so nasty: the number of people who can’t see the trees for the forest—and yes, you heard me correctly. There are a lot of folks on the Left who are so focused on the issue of abortion as a whole that they miss,dismiss or ignore all the details, including the actual people involved. It’s usually conservatives who get hit with this criticism, but anymore—due as much to battle fatigue and cynicism as anything—such voices on the Right are not representative. That attitude isn’t gone from the Right by any means, as the recent murder of George Tiller showed, but it’s much rarer than it once was. There are still a great many the Left, though, for whom any issue, any question of fact, any circumstance which bears in any way on abortion rights is to be viewed only with regard to whether it tends to advance or restrict abortion as a whole, and supported or opposed, proclaimed or rejected on that basis and that basis only.

The problem is, while that can be a good way to win an argument, it’s really not a healthy one, and it’s definitely not a good way to govern a country; those of us who are pro-life will always be tempted to respond in kind, but we need to look for more productive ways to argue our position. We need to take a step back from the political argument du jour, reorient ourselves, and go back to our most basic theological principles to make our case. In so doing, while we’re not likely to change the minds of any of our hard-core opponents, we’ll have a chance to find or create common ground with more moderate folks on the pro-abortion side, and thus perhaps to help them understand the real reasons why we believe as we do; out of that, we may be able to win some of them over, and find ways to at least moderate the abortion regime in this country.

With that in mind, it seems to me there are a few theological principles that need to be considered with regard to the issue of abortion. First and foremost, there is the truth that God is the one true King over all creation. This tells us two things of particular importance. One is that he is specifically Lord over us, and we’re under his rule; this makes us responsible to seek his will as honestly as we can, and to obey it with all faithfulness. In the last analysis, his will must come before our own desires, however strong those desires may be. The other is that he is Lord in everything that happens; there is nothing which surprises him, nothing which happens outside his control, and nothing which he does not intend to use for his greater glory and for the greater good of all who worship and follow him.

Second, the view that puts individualism and individual freedom of choice as the highest political good is alien to Scripture. We are called by God as part of his people, as part of the community of faith, and we are all dependent on each other; we as individuals aren’t the center of God’s plan, the community is. In the midst of our selfish, fallen world, he’s at work building a people, creating a community, to carry his message of redemption and reconciliation to all who need to hear it, and we’ve been given the gift of being a part of that plan. The key to this is recognizing that we need each other, and that we have responsibilities to each other, and as such that we are called to live lives of service to each other and to the world, not simply to pursue our own wills.

Third, we need to remember the importance of justice as a theme and emphasis of Scripture; one of the two great complaints the prophets raised against Israel and Judah was the injustice of their societies, that those who had wealth and power oppressed and abused those who didn’t. Those who cannot defend themselves, those who have no options, those who cannot support themselves, those who have no hope—these are the people whom God calls us to serve, first and foremost, and if we don’t, we will have to answer for our failure.

Fourth, we must always be humble in our politics. That goes first of all to our expectations, that we need to remember that we are limited, and play within ourselves, so to speak; if we overreach, we can end up doing more harm than good. It also goes to our view of ourselves, that we need always bear in mind that we are sinful, and therefore fallible. Even at our best, our motives and actions are still tainted by our sinful nature; even at our brightest, we are still prone to error. We need to bear that in mind and not get too impressed with either the brilliance of our ideas or the goodness of our hearts; we need to remember that we too are sinners, and that our salvation is only by God’s grace, not by any of our own effort.

Given these four points, what are we to make of the abortion issue? In considering that question, I think we need to begin not at the usual point, but with the sovereignty of God. In Psalm 139, we see that the psalmist understands his life as a gift from God, who made him in the womb and gave him all the days of his life; but the broader emphasis of that section of this psalm is that God didn’t make him and then wander off to do other things. This is critically important for us to affirm, that not only did the Lord create us, he continues to be with us and to watch over us. The Lord is far away, yes, ruling over all creation from his throne in heaven, but he is also very near, surrounding us and keeping his hand on us. There is no way, imagine what impossibilities you will, that we can go where God wouldn’t be with us, or hide where God wouldn’t see us; there is no part of our lives, no matter how seemingly insignificant, about which he doesn’t care.

This is a great truth about God, but it’s one which I’ve never heard mentioned one way or the other as the church discusses abortion. That’s a loss, because it seems to me it’s quite relevant to this issue, for two reasons. One is that, if we affirm that God is the giver of all life and that his concern extends even to those not born, as the psalmist does here—a point supported by God’s words to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5—that God is Lord at every point and in every circumstance, and that he watches closely over us to care for us, that leads to the affirmation that God is at work in every pregnancy, even in those where the circumstances are difficult, painful, or disastrous; which, it seems to me, means that God values that new life whether or not anyone else does.

Equally, however, it means that God values the life and well-being of the woman who is pregnant; which leads to the second point, that the message of the sovereignty of God is a reason for hope for those who are pregnant under troubled or traumatic circumstances, because it means that the God who allowed those circumstances is a God who has the will and the power to redeem them, to give victory even in their midst, and to turn them to blessing. That needs to be the message of the church to all who are struggling, to all who are suffering, to all who can’t see hope in any direction, including women who are contemplating abortion: no matter how hard things look, God loves you, he is with you, and there is a way forward.

Of course, to say such a thing, the church needs to remember that we are always called to be a part of that way forward. This is part of what it means that we are called as the community of faith, that we have been commanded to bear each other’s burdens, to help each other carry what is too heavy for us to carry alone. This is also, I think, part of doing justice. Standing up for the unborn is one aspect of doing justice for the powerless; but so is standing up with and for those who are pregnant. Even in the best of circumstances, pregnancy is a burden, and in more than just the physical sense; and as Sarah Palin admitted in her Evansville speech, in bad circumstances, it can be enough to make even those most staunchly pro-life quail a little.

As such, for women who are in that situation, it is the church’s responsibility to step up and help in whatever way we can. Whether it be emotional support for those who are overwhelmed, financial support to keep young women from being trapped below the poverty line, academic support for those still in school, the gift of time, whatever, the church needs to offer whatever assistance it can to women who choose not to have abortions.

The fundamental reality here is that the church is called, if you will, to be pro-love. This doesn’t mean being uncritically accepting of every behavior we run across, but it does mean making it very, very clear that “come as you are” doesn’t just mean clothing, and it means putting our time and money where our mouth is. Jesus was uncompromising toward sin, but he welcomed and loved everyone who came to him honestly, even as he called them, just as he calls us, to leave their sin behind and follow him. He loved beyond reason, even asking forgiveness for his torturers as they were busy killing him, accepting his death willingly in order to redeem his chosen ones.

This is the love with which we have been loved; this is the love we are to show others. It’s a love which values others not for what they’ve done, or what they can do, or for how much they’re like us, or for what we can get out of them, but simply because they are; and consequently, it’s a love which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” and which never hesitates to give of itself. Yes, I believe the church is called to show this love to unborn children; beyond doubt, we’re also called to show this love to the women carrying them. It’s the great tragedy of the abortion debate that too many people seem to love only one or the other.

To be truly pro-life is not simply to try to stop women from having abortions and to imagine the job done, nor is it to countenance manipulation in any way, shape, or form to achieve that purpose; rather, it is to provide the necessary support to make abortion the less-attractive option. Though abortion has become a political football, it shouldn’t be approached primarily as a political issue, as that sort of approach tends to run over the people involved; though changes in the legal structure and climate are important, the day-to-day work of the pro-life movement is at the grassroots level, converting minds and hearts and blessing lives by offering grace. Though there are certainly times when it’s necessary to call people to repentance, we must do so in love; there is no room for stigmatizing women who have had abortions, for that way lies nothing but unnecessary and pointless hurt. This is one of those places where humility is particularly important, remembering that none of us are really in any position to presume on our own holiness and righteousness, either.

To anyone pro-choice who might happen to read this, I would say: I know that right now, there are some loud voices trying to make Scott Roeder the face of the pro-life movement—please, don’t let them. Don’t judge those of us who disagree with you by our wingnuts. I’ve seen too many people on the pro-choice side of the aisle declare that pro-lifers hate women, but as a rule, it isn’t so. I realize that the rhetoric has too often been overheated and unbalanced; I realize that too often that has reflected an unbalanced concern on the part of many people. But I would ask you to accept our sincerity, and to work with us to offer better choices, truly better, to women for whom abortion might otherwise seem the only way out. Rather than allowing our disagreement over abortion to continue to drive us to attack each other, let’s turn it into a spur for improving the lives of women in this country, and especially for the poor, the abused, and the dispossessed; let’s learn to work on this together, as a way of showing the love and the grace of God to each other and to those in need. Rather than focusing on trying to win battles, let’s put our energy into bearing each other’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

On this blog in history: February 22-28, 2008

Posted on by | No Comments

Becoming like children
Jesus told us to, but it doesn’t mean what you probably think.

Missing the point on McCain?
A thought on honor vs. reputation.

In defense of the church, part I: Preaching
On the necessity of the church and the importance of gospel preaching.

The adolescent atheism of the self-impressed
On why Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens don’t measure up to Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx or Jean-Paul Sartre—or for that matter, C. S. Lewis or Tim Keller.

Let the little children come
It’s a gospel imperative.

Links to think about

Posted on by | No Comments

When I heard the news about the murder of George Tiller, one of the first writers to whom I looked for reaction was the Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, but at that point, she hadn’t gotten around to writing about it. On Thursday, though, she posted a superb piece as the daily article on the First Things website entitled “Tiller, Long, Bonhoeffer, and Assassination”; it’s an excellent piece of theological and moral reflection, and well worth your time to read. I particularly appreciate this piece of wisdom:

Why should we care about some dumb hick named William Long, who was only a soldier and not a hero abortionist? And why should his assassin’s name or religion matter? Because William Long was as entitled to the life he had, as was George Tiller. And Long’s death, at the hands of a man who used his religion to justify his actions, is the ultimate reminder of why Christians cannot emulate Bonhoeffer, for all his brilliance, or Tiller’s murderer: When we start thinking that we know the heart and mind of God so well that we may decide who lives and who dies, we slip into a mode of Antichrist.

The Pauline paradox “when I am weak, then I am strong” carries a flipside: “When I am strong, then I am weak.” Relativism is dangerous because we can too easily slip into the belief that we so well comprehend God’s will that we can confuse our own will for God’s, and thereby do terrible damage to one another. God’s rain falls on “the just and the unjust,” and it is one of the challenges of the life of faith that we must leave to God the rendering of his Justice.

The duty of a Christian—and it is a difficult duty—is to remain in the present moment that we might be alert to the promptings of the Holy Spirit (“continuing instant” in gratitude and prayer) while also taking the long view of things. This requires trust that however things look of a moment or a day, God is present and working: Nothing is static, everything is in a constant state of flux, all of it churning forward so that “in the fullness of time” Christ may restore all things to himself. What is left? Well, prayer, which is the most subversive of powers; it is a self-renewing weapon that cannot be wrested from us, and it cannot be over-employed.

Also of importance on this subject is Michelle Malkin’s reflection on the differing reactions to those two attacks from the media and the White House, “Climate of hate, world of double standards”:

Why the silence? Politically and religiously-motivated violence, it seems, is only worth lamenting when it demonizes opponents. Which also helps explain why the phrase “lone shooter” is ubiquitous in media coverage of jihadi shooters gone wild—think convicted Jeep Jihadi Mohammed Taheri-Azar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill or Israel-bashing gunman Naveed Haq who targeted a Seattle Jewish charity or Los Angeles International Airport shooter Hesham Hedayet who opened fire at the El Al Israeli airline ticket counter—but not in cases involving rare acts of anti-abortion violence. . . .

The truth is that the “climate of hate” doesn’t have just one hemisphere. But you won’t hear the Council on American Islamic Relations acknowledging the national security risks of jihadi infiltrators who despise our military and have plotted against our troops from within the ranks—including convicted fragging killerHasan Akbar and terror plotters Ali Mohamed, Jeffrey Battle, and Semi Osman. . . .

Is it too much to ask the media cartographers in charge of mapping the “climate of hate” to do their jobs with both eyes open?

On Thursday, I posted a link to Robert Spencer’s demolition of the president’s Cairo speech, but he’s not the only one doing serious analysis and coming away worried; Toby Harnden of the Telegraph is another. Harnden highlights “Barack Obama’s 10 mistakes in Cairo” and concludes,

There’s been lots of breathless commentary today about the “historic” moment and the power of Obama’s oratory. In time, however, the speech will probably be remembered, at best, for its high-flown aspirations rather than the achievements it laid the foundations for. Or, at worst, for the naive and flawed approach it foretold.

Also well worth reading is the online symposium on the Cairo speech that National Reviewpulled together; the contributors raise a number of serious issues, but also offer some strong positive comments. I was particularly struck by the contribution from Mansoor Ijaz, identified as “a New York financier of Pakistani ancestry [who] jointly authored a ceasefire plan between Muslim militants and Indian security forces in Kashmir in 2000”; Ijaz begins by praising aspects of the speech as “brilliant” and “just right,” but then says this:

Where he failed in Cairo was to delineate the overarching fact that Islam’s troubles lie within. It is not that America is not at war with Islam. It is that Islam is at war within itself—to identify what this religion and system of beliefs is in the modern age. Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian sidekick Ayman Al Zawahiri want to take us all back to the Stone Age because they have nothing better to offer their followers than hate-filled preaching. Why didn’t Obama say that?

Islam’s worst enemies are within it. . . .

In fact, the most glaring truth is that Islam’s mobsters fear the West has it right: that we have perfected a system of life that Islam’s holy scriptures urged Muslims to learn and practice, but over the centuries increasingly did not. And having failed in their mission to lead their masses, they seek any excuse to demonize the West and to try and bring us down. They know they are losing the ideological struggle for hearts and minds, for life in all its different dimensions, and so they prepare themselves, and us, for Armageddon by starting fires everywhere in a display of Islamic unity intended to galvanize the masses they cannot feed, clothe, educate, or house.

And finally, for a different perspective on the state of the nation and on the international situation than we’re getting from DC, check out what Sarah Palin had to say on Saturday in her speech in Auburn, NY.

I especially appreciate this line, given our current president’s apparent belief that the best way to conduct foreign policy is to apologize for America to all the people who’ve hurt us for being the kind of people they want to hurt:

We never need to fear that though we’re not a perfect nation, that we must apologize for being proud of ourselves.

Thanks, Governor. We needed that.

The Glory of Truth

Posted on by | 1 Comment

(Exodus 20:1-21; 1 Timothy 1:1-11)

While we were living in British Columbia, the governing party—a socialist labor party called the New Democratic Party, or NDP—held a leadership race; the provincial premier, a deeply unpopular little mountebank called Glen Clark, got himself indicted for corruption, so they had to replace him. It was a circus, as BC politics tended to be, and produced some truly funny moments. One of my favorites came from the Agricultural Minister, Corky Evans, who had something of a country-bumpkin image which he liked to play up for comic effect. In announcing his candidacy for party leadership, he told the story of the time he had decided to build a house for his family; being impatient, he didn’t want to take the time to put in a foundation, so he just built the house right on the ground. It seems to have come as a surprise to him when the house began to sink. As he told the crowd, this left him with two choices; he could either tear down the house, or lift it up and put a foundation under it. Either way, it was going to be a very messy business.

Now, Corky Evans used this to describe the state of his party, but it applies just as well to the church. There is and always has been the tendency to try to build the church with, and on, and out of, human efforts. Some churches are built with music; some are built on one person’s charisma; some are built out of programs. Some are built by spending lots of money on advertising and entertaining Sunday services. Then there’s our denomination, the PC(USA), which has concluded that its polity—its structure of governance—is the only thing keeping it together, and is now trying to keep dissident congregations from leaving by threatening to take their property if they do.

The problem is, to build a church in such a way is to do what Corky Evans did: it’s to build a house without a foundation. If you try to build a church on the most popular music, or the most entertaining preaching, or the most exciting service, or the best structure, or what have you, you may appear to succeed for a time; you may produce a large organization, with lots of members and money and a high profile in the community. What you will not have, in any meaningful sense, is a church, and so it will not endure. Sooner or later, it will begin to sink, leaving you with only two options: either tear the whole thing down, or try to lift it up and put a foundation under it, because without the proper foundation the building cannot stand. And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, there is only one foundation on which the church can be built, and that is Jesus Christ; which means it must be built with the truth of who Christ is and what he taught if it is to last.

That’s the value of 1 Timothy for us, and why we’ll be spending the next few weeks in this book. It’s often treated as a handbook for church operations, because of its practical instructions on such matters as the qualifications for elders and deacons; but that misses what’s really going on here. You see, Paul didn’t write this letter to give Timothy a refresher course in church government, he wrote it because heresy had broken out in Ephesus. Since Paul’s departure for Jerusalem, false teachers had popped up who were pushing some really strange things, and Timothy needed some help in dealing with them. One reason Paul wrote this letter—which he intended for the whole church, not just for Timothy—was to throw his own considerable authority behind Timothy, to buttress his position; but as well, he wrote to remind both Timothy and his church of some very important truths which were in danger of being lost in Ephesus.

This includes the concern for truth itself—the understanding, as I said a moment ago, that the church must be built with the truth of who Christ is and what he taught, and thus that false teaching is a very serious problem. There are a lot of folks who don’t see that, because they assume that what you believe matters less than why and how you believe it; but Paul understands that it doesn’t work that way. The teaching of the truth produces “love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith”; to wander off from the truth, even out of the best of motives, interferes with that and detracts from it. If we leave the truth of God for our own inventions, our heart isn’t pure even if we think it is, and our conscience isn’t good even if we’ve filed it down enough to keep it quiet, and so even if our faith is completely sincere, our love cannot be true.

This means that we must be rooted in Scripture, and must accept its authority; we must let it define us, rather than claiming the right to define it, because it is, in Luther’s phrase, “the cradle that contains the Christ.” It’s through this book that God has spoken to tell us who he is—and to show us who he is, in Jesus. If we deviate from its teachings, as Timothy’s opponents in Ephesus were doing, then we distort our understanding of Jesus and wind up worshiping a false Christ—which distorts everything else about our faith and life. When the leaders of the church turn away from Scripture, this effect is multiplied, distorting the whole church; this is why Paul is so concerned in this letter for how the church is to be led, because false teachers can do damage far beyond themselves.

Only the true gospel builds us up in the love of God; only the true teaching of Scripture, inspired by the Spirit, shows us Jesus in all his true glory. Only submitting ourselves to be transformed by the truth of God, rather than seeking to conform his truth to our own ideas, will fit us to be built up together as the people of God. God calls us to be the body on earth that contains his body, just as the Scriptures are the word that holds his Word; to answer his call, we must be faithful not to teach any different doctrine, not to pursue our own idea of truth, but to submit to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he has entrusted once for all to the saints.

What does this look like? Well, consider Paul’s greeting. He describes himself as “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.” In this, we see present, past and future all together. Paul’s present, his daily life, is defined by his relationship with Jesus, and it’s that and that alone that gives him his identity. He is in Christ, and Christ has called him to a particular task, and it’s that call that defines his life and who he is. Everything else is secondary. In the past, he looks back to God’s saving work, accomplished through Jesus, which is for him—not just God the Savior, but God our Savior, including him—which is the root from which his whole life, every part of it, grows. And his future is sure in “Christ Jesus our hope,” as he looks forward to the day when Jesus will return in power and glory to judge and redeem the world. He sees his life, at every point, as existing on a line which stretches right from the beginning of God’s saving work in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ through history to its conclusion at the glorious return of Christ; that and that alone is the context for everything he experiences and everything he does. May it be so for us as well.

In remembrance

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Today is the 65th anniversary of D-Day; yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the death of Ronald Reagan. Joseph Russo put up a wonderful post on President Reagan, which I encourage you to read; as for remembering D-Day, I don’t think anyone’s ever done a better job of that than the Gipper himself.

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”Strengthened by their courage and heartened by their valor and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

May it ever be so.

Why GM is doomed

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Not to put too fine a point on it, GM is doomed (probably, anyway) because the Obama-Pelosi administration has put them in a position in which the kind of bold leadership that could produce a turnaround is impossible. Though Barack Obama might declare that he is “not running GM,”

The President is so busy not running GM that he had time the night before to call and reassure Detroit Mayor Dave Bing about the new GM’s future location. GM is being courted to move its headquarters to nearby Warren, Michigan. And Mr. Bing told the Detroit News that he had received a call Sunday evening from the President “informing me of his support for GM to stay in the city of Detroit with its headquarters at the Renaissance [Center].” . . .

We don’t know whether GM should stay in Detroit. But we do know that the location of a company’s headquarters is one of those decisions typically not made by people who are busy not running the company.

This is exacerbated by the fact that, whether President Obama is interested in running GM or not, there are 535 members of Congress who are most certainly interested in micro-managing GM—since, after all, GM plants, dealerships, distribution centers, etc. now qualify as some of the pork they can bring home to, or at least keep in, their districts.

The latest self-appointed car czar is Massachusetts’s own Barney Frank, who intervened this week to save a GM distribution center in Norton, Mass. The warehouse, which employs some 90 people, was slated for closure by the end of the year under GM’s restructuring plan. But Mr. Frank put in a call to GM CEO Fritz Henderson and secured a new lease on life for the facility.

Mr. Frank’s spokesman, Harry Gural, says the Congressman discussed, among other things, “the facility’s value to GM.” We’d have thought that would be something that GM might have considered when it decided to close the Norton center, but then a call from one of the most powerful Members of Congress can certainly cause a ward of the state to reconsider what qualifies as “value.” A CEO who refuses the offer can soon find himself testifying under oath before Congress, or answering questions from the Government Accountability Office about his expense account. To that point, Mr. Henderson spent Wednesday with Chrysler President Jim Press being castigated by the Senate Commerce Committee for their plans to close 3,400 car dealerships. Every Senator wants dealerships closed in someone else’s state.

As Mr. Gural put it, Mr. Frank was “just doing what any other Congressman would do” in looking out for the interests of his constituents. And that’s the problem with industrial policy and government control of American business. In Washington, every Member of Congress now thinks he’s a czar who can call ol’ Fritz and tell him how to make cars.

Given Congress’ track record, and given the way leadership by committee normally works out, I don’t think it’s too much to predict that GM isn’t going to survive this.

Update: People are noticing, Mr. President . . . (HT: The Anchoress)

Pocket lint reaches a new low

Posted on by | 2 Comments

In recent weeks I’ve suggested that the shorthand MSM, for “mainstream media,” is inaccurate, and that our old-line media organizations would better be called the Obama-stream media, or OSM, and accused them of being so deep in Barack Obama’s pocket as to be little more than pocket lint.  Even so, I was surprised by a couple things I saw this past week.  One was Newsweek editor Evan Thomas telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that “in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above—above the world, he’s sort of God.”

I can only say that in a way, that’s not even as ridiculous as Thomas’ follow-up statement that “He’s going to bring all different sides together”; I suppose that might make sense if you don’t consider conservative Republicans to qualify as a “side,” but otherwise, you have to wonder if Thomas has simply missed the hyperpartisan way in which the Obama administration has so far conducted business, and the severe disaffection of a significant chunk of the electorate.  (As of now, a full third of the electorate strongly disapproves of the president’s performance, just about as many as strongly approve, according to Rasmussen.)  In any case, if this is what the much-vaunted new Newsweek is going to amount to, then I have to think National Review got it right:

That’s not the only way in which our self-described “independent media” made complete lapdogs of themselves this week, either.  I thought far too much was made of NBC’s Brian Williams’ respectful inclination of the head to the president on taking his leave of the White House (especially since President Obama respectfully returned it), and far too little of the way in which Williams acted like a star-struck teenybopper mooning around ecstatically after the President over the course of the interview.  Amazingly, though, Jon Stewart caught it, and pretty much handed Williams his head on a platter.

Many liberals who believed in the importance of dissent and challenging the government when they were the ones doing the dissenting and challenging suddenly have a very different view:

These people are seeing that attacking “The Man” is not so funny when it is their man in the crosshairs. Suddenly such folks have a new-found respect for the office and a more circumspect behavior toward the president is now du jour.

The upshot of all this is a climate that is truly toxic to free speech, demanding conformity to the Cult of O—to the point that even some liberals are beginning to feel stifled:

If you want to stop a conversation in its tracks, just question something President Barack Obama has said or done. It’s not open to debate—and I don’t think that’s healthy, for the country or the president.

It’s especially unsettling for a free speech girl like me. The First Amendment is important—but lately, it feels like my right of self-expression is being squashed.

One example: Obama’s comment to Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” comparing his bowling abilities to someone in the Special Olympics.

Can you imagine the uproar had Bush said that? He’d be banished from bowling alleys for eternity. His bowling average and IQ would have immediately been compared in Twitter messages demanding his resignation.

But instead, media and water cooler conversations the next day were about bowling scores and how tough the game can be. Anyone bringing up the insensitivity of the president’s remark heard, “Come on, give the guy a chance. So he said one thing wrong. Anyone could have said something like that.” End of discussion. . . .

Don’t get me wrong, there is a whole lot to like about Obama. I want his smart ideas and policies to work. I love his youth, his inclusiveness and the way he cuts through the minutiae of public policy. But when auto execs get the boot, foreign meanies mock us and Special Olympians are insulted, I’m sorry, he rates some disapproving chatter.

I appreciate that Laura Varon Brown has a real commitment to real freedom of speech:

We need to hear both sides. We must hear both sides. But we ought to be listening to each other, not waiting to pounce and then closing down the conversation.

The point is, whatever side you come from, you have the right to talk—which comes with an obligation to listen.

What I think she’s discovering is that many of her fellow leftists don’t really share that commitment; rather, they’re no different than many of the conservatives they despise, commited to free speech for themselves and those who agree with them, and willing to embrace whatever argument they can to shut down those who disagree.  Unfortunately, conservative impulses in that direction are reined in by the fact that conservatives don’t control the big media corporate conglomerates in this country, and thus can’t shut anybody up (except callers into radio talk shows, anyway).  The same is not true of liberals, who really can go a long way to shutting up, shutting out and shouting down competing points of view.  (Websites like Conservatives4Palin are an experiment in how far the Internet can be used to counter this.)

Which makes the floor-scraping boot-licking tail-wagging groveling of media figures like Evan Thomas and Brian Williams not merely shameful, but actively harmful to this country.  I think Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is over the top to declare that “The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias,” but I do think he’s correct to identify it as a threat—and I don’t say that because it’s liberal and I disagree with it.  Rather, I say that because at the moment, we have a liberal hegemony in the elective branches of our federal government, and we have a national media structure which, because of its bias, is disinclined to challenge anything those branches do—which means that one of the major checks on our government isn’t currently functioning.

Any time government can get away with more, it will; any time government can get away without having its mistakes hammered in the media, it’s going to make more and worse ones; and the whole thing will only breed arrogance on the part of our government, and whenever that happens, a crash is coming. And arrogance is exactly what we’re seeing from this government; it is the whole style and approach of the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, which is why the British media have gone into revolt.  The US media are unwilling or afraid or too star-struck to do so, however, which means they’re firmly under Gibbs’ thumb—and for most of them (all but Jake Tapper, really), apparently perfectly content to stay there.  As Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff put it,

They have been handed a most remarkable historical moment—in which they get to remake the media in their own image. They have the power and they are the subject. These people in this White House are in greater control of the media than any administration before them.

And we, the people are the poorer for it.

The campaign continues, and so do the hatchets

Posted on by | No Comments

The latest attempt on Sarah Palin’s political career is a campaign to get people to believe that she’s not a fiscal conservative.  I have a post shredding that argument up on Conservatives4Palin.  If you want to oppose Gov. Palin, fine, go ahead—if your opposition is based on what she’s actually done and what she actually believes.  All these lies and inventions that people are coming up with to try to bring her down are getting very old; the one encouraging thing about them is that they suggest that the Left is too scared of her to let people find out what she actually believes, because they’re afraid of what would happen if the American people took the true measure of this woman.

On the impossibility of a domesticated Jesus

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Five years or so ago, I posted a brief comment on a piece of Fr. Andrew Greeley’s in the Chicago Sun-Times titled “There’s no solving mystery of Christ”; the original is no longer available on the Sun-Times website, but fortunately, it can still be found here.  I say “fortunately” because, while there is much on which I do not agree with Fr. Greeley, in this piece he did an excellent job of capturing something profoundly important:

Much of the history of Christianity has been devoted to domesticating Jesus—to reducing that elusive, enigmatic, paradoxical person to dimensions we can comprehend, understand and convert to our own purposes. So far it hasn’t worked. . . .

None of it works because once you domesticate Jesus he isn’t there any more. The domestic Jesus may be an interesting fellow, a good friend, a loyal companion, a helpful business associate, a guarantor of the justice of your wars. But one thing he is certainly not: the Jesus of the New Testament. Once Jesus comforts your agenda, he’s not Jesus anymore. Consider Bush’s “political philosopher.” His principal statement on that subject is, “Render to Caesar things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s”—a phrase that preachers for a couple of millennia have delivered with tones of triumph in their voice. Jesus had neatly dispatched his adversaries.

The preachers don’t explain what that ingenious phrase means in politics. . . . Where does one find the boundary between Caesar and God? Jesus didn’t say, and he still doesn’t. He won the argument, indeed deftly, but he leaves to his followers the challenge of how his dictum should be applied in practice. No easy task.

Or his challenge, “Let the one without sin throw the first stone.” Does that mean we don’t denounce any sins? Or that we should take a good long look at our conscience before we take up the stones? Or that if we are confident of our own sinlessness, we can start throwing the stones?

Jesus did not issue any detailed instructions, save perhaps “by this all shall know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another.” And that really isn’t detailed at all. Nor is the instruction that you should love your neighbor as yourself. All of these sayings seem vague, slippery, disturbing, dangerous. Jesus is as obscure now as he was in his own time: as troublesome, as much a threat to the public order. . . .

One is tempted to demand of Jesus: “Who do you think you are to challenge us with your paradoxes, to trouble us with your weird stories, to warn us that you are not a reassuring traveling companion, but a messenger from a God who is even more paradoxical, even more difficult to figure out, even more challenging.”

If Jesus makes you feel comfortable with your agenda, then he’s not Jesus.

Or as I’ve been told St. Augustine wrote, “If you think you understand the nature of God, that which you think you know is not God.”  What we can truly know about God is limited to what God has revealed to us about himself; unfortunately, we’re always trying to go beyond that, sometimes out of an honest desire to understand, and sometimes out of a desire to make God be what we want him to be—which is the essence of idolatry.  Jesus doesn’t accept that; he will not be tamed, or made to conform to our desires.

This is not to say that everything we know about Jesus is wrong, or that it’s impossible for us to know or speak truth about God, because those statements are clearly not true.  It is, however, to say that if we think we hear Jesus saying what we want him to hear, we need to stop and consider the possibility that we’re really only hearing our own wishful thinking, and then go back and take a long second look.  If we believe in a Jesus who only challenges those who disagree with us, who only makes our opponents uncomfortable, then we’ve gotten him wrong.  In the Gospels, many people received comfort from Jesus, but no one was ever trulycomfortable with him; the closer his friends got to him, it seems, the more he confounded them.

The basic principle here is that we’re all sinners, we all have sin in our hearts, and therefore Jesus confronts all of us with our sinfulness and calls us to change.  He calls all of us to give up things that we deeply do not want to give up, to set aside our own desires and goals and plans so that he can give us his own, to make changes that we’d rather not make; he loves all of us just the way we are, but he doesn’t affirm any of us just the way we are—he loves us too much for that.  As such, whenever we hear the challenge of God, we need to look first to our own hearts, without exception, to see how his challenge is for us before we ever think to apply it to anyone else.

Jesus didn’t come to confirm us in our agendas and tell us we’re doing just fine as we are; he came to upskittle our agendas entirely and call us to a radical new way of living.  As Fr. Greeley says, “If Jesus makes you feel comfortable with your agenda”—whether that agenda be political, personal, professional, or what have you—”then he’s not Jesus.”  After all, if you’re the one setting the agenda, then you’re setting the course and expecting others to follow you, and Jesus never offered to follow us; instead, consistently, he said, “Follow me.”

As a final note, I would be remiss to post on this without noting that my friend Jared Wilson (of The Thinklings and The Gospel-Driven Church) has a book coming out next month addressing this same concern, titled Your Jesus Is Too Safe:  Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior.  I’m looking forward to reading it.

 

Barack Obama’s priorities

Posted on by | 2 Comments

The Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces finally saw fit yesterday, two days after the murder of Pvt. William Long and the attempted murder of Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, to issue a statement on this attack on two young men who had pledged him their service (HT:  Michelle Malkin):

I am deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence against two brave young soldiers who were doing their part to strengthen our armed forces and keep our country safe. I would like to wish Quinton Ezeagwula a speedy recovery, and to offer my condolences and prayers to William Long’s family as they mourn the loss of their son.

Compare this to Sarah Palin’s statement, issued Tuesday (yes, a sitting governor took this seriously enough to respond more promptly than the President of the United States):

The stories of two very different lives with similar fates crossed through the media’s hands yesterday—both equally important but one lacked the proper attention. The death of 67-year old George Tiller was unacceptable, but equally disgusting was another death that police believe was politically and religiously motivated as well.

William Long died yesterday. The 23-year old Army Recruiter was gunned down by a fanatic; another fellow soldier was wounded in the ambush. The soldiers had just completed their basic training and were talking to potential recruits, just as my son, Track, once did.

Whatever titles we give these murderers, both deserve our attention. Violence like that is no way to solve a political dispute nor a religious one. And the fanatics on all sides do great disservice when they confuse dissention with rage and death.

And then, further, compare this to the statement of our Commander-in-Chief on the murder of George Tiller:

I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

What conclusions can be drawn from these comparisons?  I can think of four.

  1. Barack Obama cares more about the murder of abortionists than about the murder of American soldiers.  The former “outrages” him, the latter merely “saddens” him.
  2. Barack Obama is more willing to condemn those who act in the name of Christianity than those who act in the name of Islam.  Murder by the former is “heinous,” while murder by the latter is merely “senseless” (never mind that it made perfect sense to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly Carlos Leon Bledsoe).  This makes sense, given that he appears to be committed to a policy of naïve appeasement of global Islam, while his attitude toward evangelicals who don’t like his actions is, “I won.”
  3. Governor Palin takes the murder of American soldiers more seriously than President Obama.
  4. The likes of al’Qaeda are going to be a lot more worried if Sarah Palin is elected president down the road than they will ever be about Barack Obama.