Straight To The Hart

Dr. Hart,

The folks who lament the decadence of the contemporary West most (who also happen to be some of the biggest whiners about 2k) seem to think that a return to God’s law in the United States would fix our social and political woes. Aside from the problem of finding unregenerate citizens who will follow God’s law, these law lovers do not grasp a fundamental point of U.S. legal and political life (and this may explain why the so-called Religious Right is so easily ridiculed).

Bret

1.) Does this mean that Darryl does not bemoan the decadence of the contemporary West or that he does not believe that the contemporary West has become decadent? Does this mean that R2K folks think the contemporary decadent West is just fine? I mean, after all, Darryl’s first few words in that block-quote above indicates that the only bemoaners of the decadent West are “whiners about R2K,” leaving us whiners to wonder why R2K’ers don’t bemoan wickedness.

2.) I know of absolutely zero Kuyperians or other standard vanilla Reformed folks who believe that a return to God’s law, absent a turning to the Priestly work of our great High King, Lord Christ, will fix our social and political woes.

3.) However, vanilla Reformed folks don’t advocate a return to God’s law because it will, absent of Reformation in the citizenry, fix our social and political woes but rather they advocate a return to God’s law because that is how God has revealed that our social and political order should be ordered.

I Timothy 1:9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 immoral persons, sodomites, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

Calvin speaks on this text writing,

“(Paul) … maintains that the law of God was given in order to restrain the licentiousness of wicked men; because they who are good of their own accord do not need the authoritative injunction of the law.”

4.) So, Darryl seems to be disagreeing with both St. Paul and John Calvin who understood that the law must be advocated in order to control the lawless. Is Darryl advocating getting rid of laws against Murder (as one example) all because laws against Murder do not by themselves fix our social order in relation to our Murder problem? Is the answer to our pedophilia problems getting rid of laws that prohibit pedophilia? I mean, since unregenerate pedophiliac citizens won’t follow God’s law then obviously it is stupid for Christians to continue to advocate laws against pedophilia right?

(Is insanity accounted for by nurture or nature or belief in R2K?)

5.) Darryl refers to his opponents as “law lovers.” Does this mean that Darryl is a law hater?

6.) If we are not to return to God’s law for our social and political order problems then whose law would Darryl have us return to? To Allah’s law (Sharia)? To postivistic law (Humanist)? To Talmudic law (Jewish)? If we will not return to God’s law then whose law shall we be governed by? Or has Darryl gone all Randian on us?

Darryl continues,

For Americans, as well as the Brits before them, law is not simply the embodiment of God’s moral standards. Laws against stealing and perjury do, of course, reflect God’s righteousness. But legal documents like the venerated Constitution are not primarily about morality. They are primarily procedural. Such laws place limits on government. The Constitution, for instance, prescribes and limits the powers of each branch of the federal government. Such restraints are at the heart of the Anglo-American notion of liberty, namely, the idea that people need to be protected from arbitrary and despotic power. To enjoy a life free from a potentially coercive government, we as a people drew up a body of laws that were designed not to constrain the actions of individuals but to prescribe the power of the magistrate. Placing limits on the government for the sake of civil and religious liberties is at the heart of libertarianism and is a major theme in J. Gresham Machen’s thought and political activities. (Whether or not he was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, he was sympathetic to the ACLU, a sympathy that would drive the likes of Doug Wilson and Greg Bahnsen batty).

Bret

1.) Darryl will be pleased to know that R. J. Rushdoony agrees with him. Rushdoony, agreeing with Darryl, wrote that the Constitution provides us with “procedural morality, not substantive morality”. I’m sure Darryl will want to re-think his position now that he has learned that the great Theonomist Rushdoony agreed with him.

2.) If Machen was sympathetic to the ACLU he was completely uninformed about the origins of the ACLU, their original purpose and intent, and their ideological commitments. This being uninformed should drive any Biblical Christian batty.

3.) Is Darryl suggesting that any law from a government that coerces is therefore evil?

4.) Is Darryl suggesting that Kuyperians or other vanilla Reformed Christians who advocate for God’s law are against civil and religious liberty?

5.) Let’s remember the restriction of Congress to make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, was a restriction at the Federal level. States could still, and many did at the time, have established religions.

6.) Darryl says he stands for religious liberties but does he support the religious Liberty of the Hindu to preform Sati? Does he support the religious liberty of an American Indian to smoke Peyote as part of a religious ceremony? Does he support the religious liberty of a Muslim to enter into honor killings against wayward Muslim women?

I didn’t think so.

As such Darryl’s complaint about religious liberties is not consistent. Darryl wants to draw lines regarding religious liberty the same way I do. Darryl just wants to draw different lines. By what standard will we determine what religious liberty will be allowed and what won’t be allowed?

In short Pluralism is neither faithful to Scripture nor even logically coherent. (“Yes … Yes, I can here the R2K’ers saying now, “We have to live with hyphenated lives that may not seem coherent.”) Contrary to the demand that all the kings and judges of the earth, “serve Jehovah” specifically (Psalm 2:10-11), pluralism instead calls upon the rulers of the state to honor and protect all religious positions, regardless of their avowed hatred for the God of the Bible. Further, pluralism guarantees that the god of all the competing gods in the public square is the State as the State has to be the god who insures that none of the gods are allowed to get the upper hand in the public square. In the pluralist social order the God of the Bible has to be limited in His ability to be embraced by the citizenry as God over all the State. Christian Pluralists like our good Dr. Hart is advocating that God be restricted in His authority in the public square.

Darryl continues,

Those who want more of God’s law in public life do not appear to understand this basic aspect of civil society in the U.S. They seem to think that if God’s moral standards are on their side, they have the power, duty, and right to make sure that the rest of Americans know that they are deserving God’s wrath. They also apparently believe they have responsibility to condemn the state if it fails to enforce God’s law, hence the double-down point about the magistrate’s duty to require observance of both tables of the law.

1.) It is the responsibility of all those who would see men evangelized to tell those outside of Christ that they are under God’s wrath and that they must turn to the Lord Christ for salvation.

2.) The nature of the State is to enforce the law of some god. Law itself, is a reflection of the will of some religious order that is headed by a god. Whenever a State enforces any law it is at that moment enforcing the law of some God. Darryl is frightened to death of the State enforcing the God of the Bible’s law but he seems perfectly content for the State to enforce the law of some other god. Is Darryl good with the State’s recent enforcement of the law against those who refuse to use their respective businesses to help the sodomite agenda? Is Darryl good with the Canadian State’s recent prosecution of citizens for hate crimes because they were advocating Biblical truths?

3.) What does Darryl do with John the Baptist’s condemnation of the Magistrate? Let me guess … that is dispensationalized away since John was still in the old Covenant?

Ok … what about Paul’s refusal to obey the Magistrate in Acts 16?

Darryl continues,

That argument about both tables of the law is almost entirely at odds with the American notion that law restrains government from exercising power unspecified in the Constitution. It also runs up against the legal tradition of assuming an accused citizen’s innocence until proven guilty. Just because we “know” someone broke the law doesn’t mean that district attorneys and police are free from following the laws that keep us from being a police state. In fact, the appeal to God’s law by some culture warriors has the flavor of vigilantism, that is, taking the law into their own hands. The problem for theonomists and other moral breast beaters is not simply that they don’t have power to execute God’s law. They also don’t seem to understand that the “rule of law” as we understand it in the United States actually prevents government from enforcing a whole host of laws, including God’s.

1.) The powers of the Federal Government in the Constitution are enumerated and delegated. The Federal Government ought to be limited those powers. I hold no tuck with the FEDS becoming more of a National Behemoth. However, the States themselves have the responsibility to enforce Biblical moral order. Darryl will be pleased to know that many of the original State constitutions were explicitly Christian.

2.) And whoever denied the principle of “innocent until proven guilty?” Certainly no Theonomist who insists that two or three witnesses must be brought to give testimony. Darryl is giving us a red herring on this one.

3.) Every Theonomist and moral breast beater (as opposed to every anti-nomian and immoral breast beater apparently) understands the whole idea of due process. Really, Darryl is being so silly here. The implementation and following of God’s law by the States is done in conjunction with due process.

4.) Still, when the State does enforce law, it ought to be God’s law that it enforces. Not Sharia law. Not Talmudic law. Not Humanist legal positivism law. But God’s law. This is no law from nowhere. No law that doesn’t belong to some God, god, or god concept. This reality is what Darryl can’t get through his academic head.

5.) Darryl’s appeal to pluralistic law has the flavor of cowardice and treason.

Darryl then goes on to talk about the dangers of arbitrary power. What Christian in their right mind would advocate arbitrary power? And yet arbitrary power is exactly what we get when we don’t follow God’s law Word. By what standard will our laws be based if not God’s law-word? Natural law? Our country is being balkanized along ethnic and religious lines. Does anybody really believe that Hindus, Muslims, Talmudists, Humanists and Christians are all going to agree on Natural law? If they do believe that they’ve been smoking too much Peyote. If we do not follow God’s law word as our standard than all that is left is the arbitrariness that Darryl is so frightened of.

Darryl writes,

Maybe the Anglo-American tradition of law and constitutional liberties is wrong (though it finds expression in Presbyterian government). Maybe the West if fundamentally flawed and should follow political patterns and traditions established by the Persians and Turks. Or maybe theonoomy and the original Reformed confessions’ teachings about the magistrate lost when the Reformed and Presbyterian churches embraced the politics associated with a certain eighteenth-century republic founded in North America.

1.) At least we are getting an admission here that R2K is a innovative reading of the original Reformed confessions. Darryl’s views and R2K are historically innovative.

2.) Darryl isn’t advocating the tradition of law and constitutional liberties. Darryl is advocating some kind of Randian objectivism or a kind of anarchism.

3.) Theonomy wants nothing to do with the Persians and the Turks. It is the Theonomists of all people who are screaming the loudest about the FEDS overstepping their constitutional boundaries as established by enumerated and delegated powers. It is the Theonomists who are trying to remind people that there is such a thing as a 9th and 10th amendment. Darryl is just being silly when he tries to combines Totalitarianism and Theonomy. After all, it is Theonomy that talks about Jurisdictionalism and Sphere sovereignty, which is hardly a recipe for Totalitarianism.

3.) What Darryl wants is not a return to a certain 18th century republic founded in North America. What Darryl wants, it appears, is a return to the Enlightenment. There is more of French Revolution and “The Rights of Man,” in Darryl’s reasoning then there is historical traditional Reformed understanding of the relation of Church and State.

Wherein Dr. Hart Once Again Reveals He Is Out Of His Element

Darryl writes,

Over at Matt Tuininga’s blog, the inveterate critic of 2k, Mark Van Der Molen, makes an interesting point. In response to the charge of theocracy that came from his assertion that the state needs to be subject to God’s law, he wrote: “theocracy is the merging of church and state into one power.” In other words, anti-2kers are never guilty of theonomy or theocracy as long as they affirm a separation of church and state.

BLM responds

This is accurate. No Theonomist, nor any Kuyperians believe that Church and State should be rolled into one. Darryl shows he is out of his element and his naiveté by not understanding the distinction between an ecclesiocracy and a Theocracy. No Christian desires an Ecclesiocracy while all Christians understand that Theocracy is an inescapable category.

Classic Reformed theology has always stated that God is Sovereign over both Church and State and yet Church and State remain distinct institutions with distinct roles and authority for distinct, though interdependent spheres of authority. Even in the Old Testament there is no Ecclesiocracy as Church and State were distinct in the Old Covenant. Kings were not Priests and Priests were not Kings. (Remember the story of Uzziah.)

Darryl writes,

This is an important admission since many critics of secularism, as anti-2kers are, deride Jefferson’s language of a wall of separation between church and state. Whether it’s a wall dividing church and state, or simply a constitution, the separation of church and state puts anti-2kers in the awkward position of affirming a fundamental point of 2k, namely, the separation of ecclesiastical and civil powers. It is a good thing for them that they do since in Western Christianity only Roman Catholics have taught the unity of church and state.

BLM responds,

Yes … it puts us in the same awkward position of the Old Testament where there existed an affirmation of the Separation of roles and functions of Church and State. The same Old Testament that R2K insist was naught but a “intrusion ethic.” So, we anti-R2K’ers agree with the Old Covenant that there must exist a distinction between ecclesiastical and civil powers. The civil power holds the sword and the ecclesiastical power holds the Keys but both are obliged to handle their instruments of power consistent with God’s revealed word.

Darryl continues,

At the same time, in the United States we have the language of the separation of powers within the federal government. The judicial is separate from the legislative, which is separate from the executive, and so on. But this separation is not really a separation in the way we think about separation of church and state. The reason is that Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court are all part of one government.

BLM responds

Actually it is much the same. All three branches of the Government are distinct and yet all are under the same Constitution. Each of the three branches have their own roles but neither of the three Branches may violate the authority of the Constitution. Just so, with Church and State. Each are under the Same God. Each have their own roles but neither Church or State may violate the authority of God.

More of Darryl,

And this appears to be the case for critics of 2k who pine for Calvin’s Geneva where the Company of Pastors were an agency of the city’s government. The pastors handled spiritual matters and reserved the right of excommunication, a spiritual capital penalty. But Calvin was an officer of Geneva’s city government since the city council appointed him, paid his salary, and gave him his legal status.

In which case, an affirmation of the separation of church and state doesn’t really get us very far if the church is merely going to be a branch of government.

BLM responds

1.) Darryl is saying Calvin was wrong and that Geneva was a unbiblical model. Sinful Calvin. Sinful Geneva. I’m sure glad we have a clearly superior model working for us now in these uSA that we can look to for an example.

2.) In an ideal social order the Pastors serve God by obeying God’s revelation for the Church and civil magistrates serve God by obeying God’s revelation for the Civil realm. The Pastors don’t work for the Government and the Magistrates don’t work for the Church. Both, however are subject to God in His revelation. This isn’t that difficult.

Sigh … that we live in an age where even putative College professors can’t understand the simplest of matters.

Ecclesiastes 4 — Forrest, not Trees

We have seen that the Teacher in Ecclesiastes is dealing with man’s attempt to find meaning or to create meaning apart from God. He does so by the usage of two voices in the book. The preponderance of time he speaks from the view of the covenant breaker and when he does so he repeatedly concludes that all is meaningless of meaningless … a chasing of the wind. Also, though we see from time to time he reverts to the voice of one who is the child of the covenant to point to the fact that only meaning can be found in the context of covenant community.

In the last few weeks we have been looking at how this search for meaning has civilizational impact. The Teacher considers not only finding meaning on an individual level, but he also seeks to look for meaning in the context of whole social orders built apart from God.

In the last few weeks we have seen that the Teacher finds that in community life apart from God when one seeks to find justice all one finds instead is oppression. We sought to emphasize how important this observation is because if a social order can not provide justice for a people group then that social order will not last long because one of the very purposes of a social order is to provide justice. We saw that the Teacher so lamented this lack of justice that he concluded, in his covenant breaking voice that it would have been better to have never existed then to live in a social order that only knows oppressors and oppressed.

We then, with the Teacher, considered the social order of men in terms of looking to one’s work as an escape from the meaninglessness that social orders apart from God yield. And there we saw, with the Teacher, in his voice of covenant breaker that no meaning can be found in terms of labor because labor, in a social order bereft of God yields the destructive power of envy against those who do skillful work. We took some time considering the destructive power of envy and how envy is inescapable in social orders that are built apart from God. But it is not only envy that destroys social orders built apart from God but it is also laziness and discontentment the preacher mentions. And of course envy, laziness, and discontentment go together like Larry, Moe, and Curly.

Then we considered, with the Preacher those who operate in social orders apart from God with the purpose of only greedy gain as their god and we saw the loneliness and futility that they are faced with. We mentioned that wealth is not the problem, but rather wealth pursued as an end in itself. Wealth creation is a good gift of God but like any other good gift when it is isolated from the giver it only ends in bitterness and isolation.

Last week we considered the importance of covenant companionship. Here the Teacher speaks in the voice of the Covenant Herald. He contrasts the loneliness of the covetous man without God who is as alone without friends as Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve with the person who has companionship. We tried to emphasize that true friendship can only be found in the covenant because only in the covenant do you have people who are not each trying to be God. As men together submit themselves to God they can discover true friendship and the harmony of interests. Apart from the God of the covenant it is the war of all against all and friendships are more temporary alliances, cast aside at the first opportunity for personal gain and advancement, then they are true friendships which look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others.

Illustration — Advice given to Robertson McQuilken regarding his wife.

In our few minutes this week we continue to look at this matter of how men attempt to use social orders to insulate themselves from God and to find meaning and how they fail in such.

In 4:13-16 the emphasis is on discontented people who do not appreciate good leadership. These verses do not provide advice so much as they reflect their mercurial and capricious nature. What the Teacher is noting here is how in godless social orders men will turn to new leadership in the mistaken belief that different leaders will provide them with the stability and order that only God can provide.

Well did Shakespeare write, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” meaning a person with great responsibilities, such as a king, is constantly worried, and more so in a godless social order then any other because people’s perceptions change so quickly has to what ruler might provide for them all the bounty and meaning they are looking to extract from the social order context of their lives.

Michael Kelly in his commentary on Ecclesiastes offers here 4:13-16

“Is the Preachers way of saying that political power necessarily turns to be an unstable good when the people’s Utopian demand requires more than it could possibly deliver. Each generation longs for a political messiah to usher in paradise, History is not short on demagogues who have repeatedly arisen w/ attractive new proposals w/ which to replace the status quo that has come to be perceived as regressive and unresponsive. The masses will support revolution because they can not believe the fault lies with them.”

This is why the Teacher can sarcastically write in Ch. 4 vs. 16.

One political Messiah arises and the people are with him but another generation comes along and despite the fact that this game of False Messiahs and disappointed expectations has been play for generations, still they will insist that they are wiser then all that came before and this time, this revolution, supporting this Political Messiah will the the one that ushers is the New World Order Utopia that has been expected since the tower of Babel.

In our own time.

“… I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal;”

“To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil,”

Earlier in this Century …. “A war to end all wars.”

Social Order that will not bow to the one and only Messiah will create their own Messiahs and will become the slaves of that Messiah. If men will build social Orders apart from God, then they will look for Salvation in and from those social orders.

Consider even a political social order as Atheistic as Marxism will even take on this kind of Redemptive salvation cast for man.

Bertrand Russell has not exaggerated in summing up the present significance of Marxism somewhat as follows: dialectical materialism is God; Marx the Messiah; Lenin and Stalin the apostles; the proletariat the elect; the Communist party the Church; Moscow the seat of Church; the Revolution the second coming; the punishment of capitalism hell; Trotsky the devil; and the communist commonwealth kingdom come.”

― Robert A. Nisbet
The Quest For Community: A Study In The Ethics Of Order And Freedom

Men without God will always be dissatisfied and out of that dissatisfaction they will look to revolution in their political / social order to find the the satisfaction that only God can give. Yet those who come after the latest super hero political Messiah will not rejoice in him and will start the process anew.

In 5:1-7 the Covenant teacher gives the answer in the voice of the Covenant Son.

Considering Issues Of Drama

“Entirely different objections were entertained against Theater-going. In itself there is nothing sinful in fiction—the power of the imagination is a precious gift of God Himself. Neither is there any special evil in dramatic imagination. How highly did Milton appreciate Shakespeare’s Drama, and did not he himself write in dramatic form? Nor did the evil lie in public theatrical representations, as such. Public performances were given for all the people at Geneva, in the Market Place, in Calvin’s time, and with his approval. No, that which offended our ancestors was not the comedy or tragedy, nor should have been the opera, in itself, but the moral sacrifice which as a rule was demanded of actors and actresses for the amusement of the public. A theatrical troop, in those days especially, stood, morally, rather low. This low moral standard resulted partly from the fact that the constant and ever-changing presentation of the character of another person finally hampers the molding of your personal character; and partly because our modern Theaters, unlike the Greek, have introduced the presence of women on the stage, the prosperity of the Theater being too often gauged by the measure in which a woman jeopardizes the most sacred treasures God entrusts to her, her stainless name, and irreproachable conduct. Certainly, a strictly normal Theater is very well conceivable; but with the exception of a few large cities, such Theaters would neither be sufficiently patronized nor could exist financially ; and the actual fact remains that, taking all the world over, the prosperity of a Theater often increases in proportion to the moral degradation of the actors. Too often therefore … the prosperity of Theaters is purchased at the cost of manly character, and of female purity. And the purchase of delight for the ear and the eye at the price of such a moral hecatomb, the Calvinist, who honored whatever was human in man for the sake of God, could not but condemn.”

Abraham Kuyper,
Lectures on Calvinism

Clearly many involved in Drama are genuine Christians. All because someone involves themselves or their children in one play doesn’t mean that they are not Christian. Theoretically, the play could be an opportunity for the children to engage in Worldview thinking. I mean, for the rest of their lives those children are going to have to reinterpret the world around them. Why not start in a environment that is relatively safe and is controlled to a certain degree? The key is for the parents to help their children reinterpret all that is being communicated in the play worldview wise. But of course, if the parents have not been taught to see with and not just through the eyes the Parents cannot help their children reinterpret very much.

Second, in my previous post I was not intending to give a blanket condemnation to all that HPA is. I’m only pleading that Parents be wise about all the dynamics of Theater, youth culture and priorities chosen. Theater can be God glorifying but if handled apart from wisdom it can be destructive to the souls of children.

All I’m pleading for is discretion.

And while I’m at it, I’m going to list here my concerns with the youth culture that HPA provides. When children are placed together in the way they are in the context of HPA there is created a youth subculture. The avoidance of youth culture is supposed to be one reason why Christians don’t want their children in government schools and yet when we major on these kinds of adult sparse organizations we create the very thing we were seeking to avoid by homeschooling.

In a culture that doesn’t create a youth culture, young people typically aspire to be like the adults in their lives. They emulate the adults. They strive to be adults. They want to be adults. When you create a youth subculture children now emulate their peers. Children, because they no longer emulate adults, have a passion to fit into their peer group (and what Adult fits into youth culture?). As such children are prone to remain children longer. When we create a youth sub culture, children are retarded in developing adult tastes, and in the desire to think like adults. (Of course since too many adults think like children today, we’ve largely lost out there even when we manage to get them to want to be like adults.) Youth culture breeds immaturity and disrespect for adults because youth culture by its very definition is anti-adult. This burgeoning youth culture explains, at least in part, the phenomenon social scientist are seeing as they see increasing numbers of men in their 20’s refusing to take on the responsibility of men. Our whole culture, from elderly on down emulate youth culture.

So, HPA helps our children to remain children when it is indulged in as a way of life. (And for some of those children HPA is a way of life). There is not enough adult supervision at HPA to disperse the presence of youth culture. (And 19 and 20 year old supervision doesn’t count as “Adult.”) I understand that as an organization HPA can’t be held responsible for what Parents allow their children to be involved in, but I can at least wish that Parents and HPA adult leaders would think through these kinds of things and not be hostile when I broach the subject.

(And as a codicil, I wish I could say that all this analysis is original to me. It is not. I learned it from a host of people I’ve read and studied. Some pastors still spend their lives trying to understand these kinds of things.)

As is hinted at by the Kuyper quote above, drama can mess with a child’s sense of identity. Children need stability to form a stable sense of who they are. When drama is engaged in as a way of life for children the stability is brought into question because the child has no singular identity but rather their identity is connected to whatever role they are currently playing. They are subtly being taught that they can slip in and out of whatever character or personality might suit them at any given time. Who are they? Whoever they need to be.

Finally, I do have this against drama; ( — not only the performance of it but also the partaking of it –) it rewires the mind from an ability to be engaged with a text such as one finds in reading, to a passive “my mind is a canvas, write on it approach.” When we replace the word and the text for the image we at the same time replace,

a.) The active interaction demanded of a text for the passivity which comes with the image

b.) The ability to think critically with being mindlessly caught up with the story presented with the image

c.) The ability to think sequentially (which comes from the linearity of the text) for a thinking abstractly that is encouraged by the image.

d.) The loss of detail in our thinking which is acquired by reading books that reason closely, for an ability to think in grand sweeping narratives such are most often represented in Drama. (Just think how plot and character development have diminished in films over the decades as we’ve shifted increasingly from a Linear-textual culture to a abstract-image culture).

I am not anti-drama, but I am “if we are going to do drama lets do it in a epistemologically self conscious Christian way.” Maybe that will mean plays just for boys and men and separate plays just for girls and women. Maybe it means doing family plays where family life is nourished to some degree. Maybe it means doing a worldview study concurrent with the play so that children are taught not only to act but to think.

My plea is only that we think about what we are doing.

HPA HONK … A Worldview Critique

Last Saturday afternoon I had the opportunity to attend a local home-school production of “Honk.” The children did a wonderful job with their parts. They were spot on with their lines and the choreography and staging were well thought out and executed. The Director obviously did a first class job. The support staff and the pit orchestra were spot on and marvelous. I especially liked the work of the men on the spotlights and the chap who played the French Horn.

However, admitting from a technical perspective that the play was well done, does not mean that from a worldview perspective that HONK was a success. In point of fact, from a Worldview perspective HONK suffers immensely. Now, its my hope that someone explained the Worldview faults to the Christian cast and staff of HONK but just in case that didn’t happen I wanted to offer a Worldview critique of HONK in hopes that some of the children who were in the play, or their parents, might stumble upon this critique and so think twice about the message of HONK.

HONK is a knockoff on the Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Ugly Duckling.” HONK was first produced in the mid 1990’s and even a progressive source like Wikipedia could say that the message of HONK was, “a message of tolerance.” Now certainly the Christian applauds tolerance when it is applied to physical features and it can be argued that it is a Biblical concept to say that it is not proper to judge a book by its cover alone. So, we can applaud HONK when it is teaching that a certain tolerance is to be expected from Christians.

However, “Tolerance” can also be translated to mean, and in our culture is often translated to mean, that we should be accepting of God dishonoring worldviews and behaviors. Very few people would deny that “Tolerance” has been used as a cudgel to beat the particularity that a Christian Worldview demands over the head. And this theme of “Tolerance” was everywhere to be found in HONK. There was dialogue on differences. There were songs on differences. The whole play had as sub-theme, Tolerance of differences.”

G. K. Chesterton once said, in a fairly well-known quote, that “tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” I understand what Chesterton was getting at but as I don’t think it is possible for a man to not have convictions I think it is more accurate to say that “tolerance is the virtue of the man who is seeking to change everyone’s convictions.” Tolerance is the virtue enjoined by men who are seeking to alter the categories of virtue. Tolerance becomes a crowbar that pries back the current idea of virtue among a people, in order to allow new categories of virtue to come to the fore.

Now, once again, I immediately concede that HONK did not explore worldview tolerance as an overt theme. On the surface all that was explored was what we might call “feature tolerance.” However, it is a small step, in terms of application, from saying that we must be tolerant of people who have funny or odd physical features and saying we must be tolerant of people who have odd and strange worldviews and moral behavior. When you combine that just stated observation with my conversations with several of those who have been involved in this Theater program, in past years, where I have personally witnessed a level of worldview tolerance that might well be characterized as some form of relativism, one can easily understand my concern about how HONK could be used as a tool to advance unhelpful and non-Christian views of tolerance. Parents who might care about such ideas should be made aware of such observations so that they can sit down with their children and explain to them the difference between feature tolerance and Worldview / Behavior tolerance. I understand that children and young adults don’t typically have a well developed worldview and so I don’t overly fault children for being childlike in their worldview. Still, I believe we as adults, should do what we can to help children think like epistemically self conscious Christians.

Other Worldview concerns of HONK.

1.) The male Father figure (Drake) is depicted as an irresponsible doofus. The female figure (Ida) is portrayed nobly and yet she has low views of the male figure. Drake constantly seeks to escape responsibilities. Ida is the one who goes searching for her ugly duckling son. A role that traditionally falls to the male figure. This all is out of the feminist worldview play-book.

2.) Motherhood is spoken of in a mixed voice. Early in the play Ida sings of how children make the task of Motherhood seem worthwhile. Yet at the end, In Drake’s song about Motherhood, he sings,

Where’s the joy in motherhood,
an endless round of chores that have to be done
And when you think you’ve seen the back of them,
you’ll find in actual fact you’re back at square one

There’s no joy in motherhood or if there is its something I just can’t see
Yet Ida seems to cope with all of this,
and then on top of that she puts up with me

Of course there is a role reversal going on here for as Drake laments Motherhood, Ida is out searching high and low for the Ugly Duckling child. Still, these mournful lyrics regarding Motherhood, might have been easily written by Betty Friedan or Emma Goldman, well known 20th century Feminists.

3.) What is interesting is that even though “tolerance” is advocated at the end of the play Ida makes the comment to her, now revealed Swan son, that he should go with the swans since “birds of a feather should stick together.” So, there is recognition in the play that tolerance only goes so far and that differences belong collected together.

4.) More subtly we see guns being villainized as the heroic geese are shot out of the sky by the mean hunters.

5.) People in general are cast as dolts. Whether it is the Farmer who casts his net over the ugly duckling or the hunters who shoot the geese, people in the play are treacherous.

6.) On a slightly different note, I would also elicit a protest of putting 15-17 year olds in positions where they have to show affection to the opposite sex during the play. There is a awkwardness at that age that serves a salutary purpose and breaking down that solicitous awkwardness in young adults is not a healthy idea.

There are other scenes that are even more subtle, but because they are so subtle, and because I don’t want to be accused of reading things into the play that allegedly were not there I won’t bother detailing those scenes.

I don’t necessarily oppose plays like HONK, though I would suggest out of all the plays in existence certainly better plays could be chosen to preform that might better reflect a Christian worldview. I don’t buy the idea that theater has to be done by children in order to explore themes that might be difficult.

Please realize that in all my views I am just an ugly duckling who doesn’t fit in and who is just different. I trust people will be tolerant of my views. After all, I’m just different and different is good. And as we learned from one of the songs in the play,

I’m just different
y’all like peas from the same pod
no wonder y’all make fun of me
life’s harder when you’re odd
but different isn’t scary
different is no threat
and though I’m still your Christian brother you forget