Category: Culture

At the risk of sounding like a cold hearted bastard, I have to ask the question; What gives with the whole Tim Russert dying thing?

Given the media exposure that this is getting you would have thought Princess Diana had died again.

Now, whenever death visits any family I am saddened, and I am saddened for the Russert’s loss but I’m still not sure why this death has to be reported on in the way it is. The problem is not that I am put off by a death being reported. The problem is that great numbers of people die yearly that are more influential public persons then Russert was and yet, comparatively speaking, very little is said about their deaths because they are not part of the Hollywood-Media elite family.

I conclude a few things,

First, the media assumes that America loves the same people they love. If I had access to television and print media I suppose that with the death of each of the lambs in the flock I serve I would broadcast it everywhere. This is what the media is doing. They loved Tim Russert and having the control of the levers of the media they are making America share their grief.

Second, one must understand that you can tell a great deal about a people when you look at who they grieve. America’s Hollywood and Media personality culture is evidenced in the way that we are all being held captive to the elites grief, and inasmuch as average Americans are truly grieving it reveals how America is a culture which has taken the Hollywood and Media elite as their representatives. Since I don’t particularly esteem the Hollywood and Media personality culture I am not particularly prone to grieving one of their own as if he was one of my own.

Third, the Hollywood and Media elite are overwhelmingly comprised of people who have no use for Christian notions of God and religion. As such, when a sudden death like this hits them they have no way to handle it. They are a people without God and without hope. When a death of a comparatively young colleague comes suddenly, like Russert’s has, they are brought face to face with their own mortality and like children scared of the night they have to yell out. Given the fact they have all the microphones, when the Hollywood and Media elite ‘yell out’ everyone is forced to listen.

I am honestly saddened for the Russert’s in their time of loss. It is sad whenever somebody this young and productive is summoned. I sorrow more for a culture whose grief is wrapped up in a Hollywood and Media elite culture.

This response to my recent post analyzing the problems of alternate schooling comes from a young man who is alternately insightful and muddled in his thinking. I thought I would turn it into a post in order to continue to tease out different understandings that contend for the privilege of being called ‘Reformed.’

Bret,

Having strong (W2K, viral, I know!) views on education myself, I can’t help but wonder if at the base of your frustrations are a couple of things: 1) the over-realization of the purpose and function of education, and 2) the necessarily low view or under-realization of the institution of the family.

Steve, allow me to deal with these in reverse order. My conviction is that schooling should not be shipped out and should be done in the family setting. I believe that when we ship our children out to strangers we have a necessarily low view of the institution of the family. I believe therefore this would include you as, as I recall, you farm out your children to be educated by strangers. My conviction on the family is that it should be the primary building block for the Church, the realm that should make modern schools obsolete, and the first Republic. I don’t know how anybody could have a higher view of the family than myself.

As to your suggestion that I have an over-realization of the purpose and function of education I would only reply by saying that I’m sure that would seem to be the case to somebody who suffers from an under-realization of the purpose and function of education. This disagreement stems from our different eschatologies. You are forever going to be accusing me of a over-realized eschatology and I am going to forever be rightly discerning your problem of a under-realized eschatology. This push-me, pull-you on eschatology between us is going to affect every issue and every discipline.

While there is most assuredly an intellectual aspect to it (that is unashamedly undermined in both cult and culture as both take their cues from a modernism that has rendered an epistemological choice between reason and experience), the end result to these presuppositions seems to be an equally aberrant intellectualization of Christian belief. Is the answer to the de-intellectualization of the Christian religion even as it becomes exchanged for the experientialism of revivalism really to indulge the notion that Christian belief is to be farmed out to the classroom instead of the home and church?

Well, I should emphasize for readers that we have a couple points of agreement here.

1.) We agree that our educational models are suffering intellectually.

2.) We agree that there is a danger to the Christian faith both from an unbliblical experientialism and a unbiblical rationalism.

Moving on, I hope in my first paragraph above I have squelched any idea that ‘Christian belief should be farmed out to the classroom instead of the home and church.’ My conviction is that the classroom, and home, and church while decidedly distinct are interdependent and all share the responsibility to be shapers of faith. Education, being a distinctly religious undertaking, Christian parents should be slow to farm out their children to classrooms governed by people who are not epistemologically self conscious regarding their Christianity.

You seemingly fault me for heading in a direction that you fear will result in a aberrant intellectualization of the Christian faith. We should say that Christianity is eminently, though not exclusively, rational and as such the intellectual aspect of Christianity should be pursued with vigor. Indeed, I would contend, that this is supported by the teaching of Jesus when he said that eternal life is to know the only true God and the Christ that He sent. The only way to know God is through the intellect. This is a truism that is accepted by all save the mystics. Now, to qualify, I understand that there exists such a thing as arid rationalism that is to be hated but the pursuit of rationality need not end in arid rationalism.

In my experience with the Dutch Reformed community (the CRC) that places such a high premium on Xian education there seems to be this notion that what the home should be doing—nurturing faith—can be co-opted by the school. I find that completely, well, sub-Christian. The project of education is primarily intellectual, not affective. It is the role of the home to be primarily affective. My wife and I nurture Christian belief in our kids, not Mr. or Mrs. VanVanderVandeMeer.

Speaking from what I have seen after 13 years of affiliation with the CRC, I would agree that there existed a idea that the school and the catechism at Church should do what should have been going on in the home. I agree that such a notion is sub-Christian. But allow me to suggest that one reason this failed is that the schools and the Churches became co-opted by the larger culture. Consequently, the nurturing of Christian faith, was not be accomplished anywhere, though the nurturing of the faith of modernism was happening in the church and in the school.

I would take issue with you in your third sentence above. You seem to desire to separate the intellectual from the affective. This is not possible. If the education is successful in its project of the intellect it will also have been successful in the work of the affective. Similarly, if the home is successful in its affective work it will only be due to the fact that it has been successful, in doing intellectual work. Steve, you can not separate these two the way that you seem to be doing. Certainly the two are distinct but they are not un-related. Where ever you send your children to be educated you can be sure that they are learning the affective, and are being nurtured in some faith system.

This disagreement between us stems from our disagreement on the Lordship of Jesus and how that is exercised. You, of course, are wrong.

In the same way that theonomic thoughts ends up politicizing true religion, I strongly detect on your part this same assumption that results in an intellectualizing of Christian belief. Instead of seeing that Christianity in the business of making believers you seem to see it as a project of making students.

Look, Steve, you’ll have to take this problem up with Jesus. It was Jesus who called us to be disciples. Hard to be a disciple without being a student Steve. Further, it was Jesus who said that we were to teach them to observe all things that I have commanded you.’ If I am teaching people to observe all things and they are learning to observe all things doesn’t that make them ….students?

Steve, this culture, is designed to keep people ignorant and stupid. Dumb people are easier to control. Legion are the names of the books that have made this point. In light of this reality the accusation that you level against me of wanting to seeking to make students is, shall we say, ‘odd.’

Finally, nobody need to worry about any lack of affections or emotions on my part. They work just fine.

Your hunch that Xian schools are just glorified government schools is correct, at least around here. (I also see it as very much a carried over effort in the effort to maintain a particularly ethnic project, to keep the Dutch migratory culture sufficiently cohered; this against the fact that cultural assimilation has been finalized and renders the effort quite irrelevant. The only thing left to lean on to justify Xian education is that mistake which leads people to believe that Xians doing education is the same thing as Xian education.) But, unlike you, I only see that as a problem because I see no value in paying for a glorified public school education. And I am not compelled to to go on the wild goose-chase to find real Xian education since it doesn’t exist.

Well, we agree completely in this paragraph until your last sentence. I wouldn’t pay a thin dime for my children to attend Dutch ‘Christian’ schools. Indeed, I would pay good money in order for my children not to go to them. I even agree that you shouldn’t go on a wild goose chase, because I seriously doubt there is any real Christian education in your area. Where we disagree is when you utter complete tripe by saying that there is not such a thing as genuine Christian education. That is just a stupid statement.

But I understand your ‘theology’ forces you to that conclusion.

Thanks for the letter. I honestly believe you to be, in many regards, a sharp fellow. But like so many in your school you sharpness in one statement is immediately negated by your dullness in a succeeding statement.

Take care. I continue to pray for your Church that it might find a godly pastor.

Over at the Ligonier website an article was recently posted by Dr. R. C. Sproul. It is a very good article but it has the deficiency of not saying enough, or of not looking at the issue that is being pursued in a well rounded fashion. It is not the case, that in this instance, I disagree with Dr. Sproul, rather it is the case that I think what is said could be said in a richer way. In order to see the issues that Dr. Sproul takes on in a way consistent with what he has to say yet hopefully offering an added layer I have decided to engage this article. I don’t know if I will say anything here that I haven’t said before but the hope is that by laying my interaction next to Sproul’s article people will have the ability to see more of the whole picture as it touches the culture with which we currently live.

Sproul’s comments are blocked. My response follows the blocked quotes. Sproul’s first paragraph to this article was introductory and has been deleted because there wasn’t anything with which to interact.

In our day, where pluralism reigns in the culture, there is as much satirical hostility to the idea of one God as there was in Nietzsche’s satire. But today, that repugnance to monotheism is not a laughing matter. In the culture of pluralism, the chief virtue is toleration, which is the notion that all religious views are to be tolerated, all political views are to be tolerated. The only thing that cannot be tolerated is a claim to exclusivity.

There is truth here but there is also another way to argue this. First, I would add that pluralism is a myth concocted by our culture in order to shield itself from the reality that it remains homogeneous and in order to force dissenting people into this homogeneous culture. The non-pluralistic nature of our culture is seen in the cultural homogeneity found in the fact that the overwhelming majority of our culture believes in pluralism. Further, it must be clearly articulated today that pluralism advances its own claim of exclusivity. The adherents of pluralism come forth and decry people of monotheistic faiths and who have the one conviction that there is only one way, but what many people fail to see is that the adherents of pluralism are in effect saying this because their one conviction is that there are many ways.

Look at what I have put into bold relief. Both those who are non-pluralists and those who are putatively pluralist both have a single one conviction that is guiding them. Where their difference lies is in what that one conviction is. On this basis they are no more pluralistic then the Jew, the Muslim, or the Biblical Christian. This homogeneous approach reveals itself as the adherents of what we call ‘pluralism’ practice the exclusivity of social ostracizing against those who don’t share their one conviction that there are many ways. What is richly ironic here is that the exclusivism of the putative pluralist gets called “inclusivism” while the the exclusivism of anybody who disagree with their version of exclusivism (Christians or Muslims or Jews) gets labeled as ‘exclusive.’

What I have said here is of monumental importance. It is monumentally important because to many Christians are being buffaloed into thinking that pluralism really is pluralistic. It’s most definitely not! Until the West awakens to the smoke and mirrors that pluralism is using in order to hide itself from it’s homogeneous and mono-cultural and mono-theistic character the West will continue to slip into Statist totalitarianism because what putatively pluralistic culture needs in order to continue is a God who can police all the gods it has tolerated in the culture. That one god is the State.

Said simply, pluralism creates a homogeneous culture (mono-culture) based on the mono-theism of humanism. Pluralism is a myth created by those who desire to advance their own pursuit of the mono-culture they desire to build.

There is a built-in, inherent antipathy towards all claims of exclusivity. To say that there is one God is repulsive to the pluralists. To say that one God has not revealed Himself by a plurality of avatars in history is also repugnant. A single God with an only begotten Son is a deity who adds insult to injury by claiming an exclusive Son. There cannot be only one Mediator between man and God. There must be many according to pluralists today. It is equally a truism among pluralists that if there is one way to God, there must be many ways to God, and certainly it cannot be accepted that there is only one way. The exclusive claims of Christianity in terms of God, in terms of Christ, in terms of salvation, cannot live in peaceful coexistence with pluralists.

But the question here that must be asked is … WHY? Why is there a built in antipathy towards all claims of exclusivity? The answer is found in the fact that by redefining exclusivity so that it doesn’t include the exclusivity found in putative pluralism what can be accomplished is the strangling of the God or gods that compete(s) with the god of putative pluralism. Also the reason that the exclusive claims of Christianity in terms of God, in terms of Christ, in terms of salvation, cannot live in peaceful coexistence with pluralists is because they are not pluralistic. They desire to advance their one conviction that there are many ways to God and so they desire to put to death those who have the one conviction that there is only one way.

Pluralism is a myth!

Beyond the question of the existence of God and of His Son, and of a singular way of salvation, there is also a rejection of any claim to having or possessing an exclusive source of divine revelation.

This just isn’t true.

What is true is that the putative pluralist will insist that they reject any claim to having or possessing an exclusive source of divine revelation and the reason they insist on rejecting that is because that ‘rejection’ hides from people the location of their exclusive source of divine revelation. What is being hid is that the putative pluralist has a exclusive source of divine revelation and that exclusive source is their own autonomous reason. Remember when we talk about putative pluralists (really homogeneous mono-culturalists) what we are talking about is humanism. In humanism man is the god who is not dead (and who kills god because he desires his place) and the revelation he receives in his religion is his own autonomous reason.

So, while we would agree with Dr. Sproul that the putative pluralist says ‘he rejects any claim to having or possessing an exclusive source of divine revelation’ we would insist that he makes this claim in order to make his belief system and his evangelism efforts look broad and reasonable.

At the time of the Reformation, the so-called solas of the Reformation were asserted. It was said that justification is by faith alone (sola fide), that it is through Christ alone (solus Christus), that it is through grace alone (sola gratia), and that it is for God’s glory alone (soli Deo gloria). But perhaps most repugnant to the modern pluralist is the exclusive claim of sola Scriptura. The idea of sola Scriptura is that there is only one written source of divine revelation, which can never be placed on a parallel status with confessional statements, creeds, or the traditions of the church. Scripture alone has the authority to bind the conscience precisely because only Scripture is the written revelation of almighty God. The implications of sola Scriptura for pluralism are many. Not the least of them is this: It carries a fundamental denial of the revelatory character of all other religious books. An advocate of sola Scriptura does not believe that God’s revealed Word is found in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon, the Bible and in the Koran, the Bible and in the Upanishads, the Bible and in the Bhagavad Gita; rather, the Christian faith stands on the singular and exclusive claim that the Bible and the Bible alone is God’s written word.

The most important implication of sola Scriptura for pluralism is that it denies not only the legitimacy of all the Holy books that Sproul mentions but it also denies the legitimacy of autonomous reason which is the Holy book of the putative pluralist, who is in reality every bit the homogeneous mono-theistic, mono-cultural creature as the most rabid Muslim, Jew, or Christian.

The motto of the United States is e pluribus unum. However, since the rise of the ideology of pluralism, the real Unum of that motto has been ripped from its foundation. What drives pluralism is the philosophical antecedent of relativism. All truth is relative; therefore, no one idea or source can be seen as having any kind of supremacy. Built into our law system is the idea of the equal toleration under the law of all religions. It is a short step in people’s thinking from equal toleration under the law to equal validity. The principle that all religions should be treated equally under the law and have equal rights does not carry with it the necessary inference that therefore all religions are valid. Even a cursory, comparative examination of the world’s religions reveals points of radical contradiction among them, and unless one is prepared to affirm the equal truth of contradictories, one must not be able to embrace this fallacious assumption.

Dr. Sproul’s first sentence above is true in a sense. But it is also not true in a sense. It is true in the sense that the Unum that has been ripped from the foundation is the Unum that we started with when this country was founded. It is not true in the sense that no Unum exists. This country is still devoted to taking the many and making them one, but the ‘one’ they desire to make them all into is the one of humanism. That all truth is relative is the absolute one idea or one source that must have supremacy.

Next Dr. Sproul tries to create a distinction that I am not sure works. He say’s that “the principle that all religions should be treated equally under the law and have equal rights does not carry with it the necessary inference that therefore all religions are valid.” What I am struggling with here is trying to understand how if each law system descend from a particular religion those particular law systems could ever find valid a religion, that by its very existence, creates a law system to contend against the law system that is finding it valid.

Second, it is difficult to understand how a law system would tolerate a religion that isn’t valid. It seems to me that the very toleration of religions in the body politic by the law system does indeed suggest that the religions in question are valid. I would say that it is a fallacious assumption on one hand to say that a law system could tolerate a religion without at the same time giving it validity.

Sadly, with a philosophy of relativism and a philosophy of pluralism, the science of logic doesn’t matter. Logic is escorted to the door and is firmly booted out of the house onto the street. There is no room for logic in any system of pluralism and relativism. Indeed, it’s a misnomer to call either a system, because it is the idea of a consistent, coherent view of truth that is unacceptable to the pluralist. The fact that people reject exclusive claims to truth does not invalidate those claims. It is the Christian’s duty to hold firm to the uniqueness of God and of His Christ and not compromise with the advocates of pluralism.

I would disagree with Dr. Sproul here. While it certainly is the case that true logic (is there any other kind?) is shown the door, the putative pluralist still appeals to (illogical) logic. I would disagree that putative pluralism is not a system. Certainly it is a contradictory and inconsistent system, just as all other false beliefs, but it is still system. And for our purposes it is a system if only because we are actually trying to build a culture on this ‘system.’

Finally, I hope Dr. Sproul realizes the implications in his last sentence. The implications of that statement are vast and pronoun.

In the end it is not so much that I disagree with Dr. Sproul’s analysis but rather I think we need to see all of this from more then one dimension.

The link below, from a local Florida newspaper describes an arrest, prosecution, and judgment against a young man involved in bestiality.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-529bestiality,0,6273499.story

Now I link this for one reason and that reason is the intuitive revulsion and disgust that this story works in most people who read it. People read this kind of thing and they think, “That is clearly beyond the pale. That person is sick. How utterly gross.”

And that is the response they should have!

Now keep in mind that same intuitive revulsion and disgust used to be the response of the average American 50 short years ago when reading a similar story about some guy involved in homosexuality. Now however, as we know, homosexuality is ‘just another lifestyle that is as normal as anything else.’ As it stands currently it is the person who responds to homosexuality the way that we respond to the bestiality as recorded in the link above who are seen as the abnormal ones.

What changed?

And what makes us think that in another 50 years or less (I think less) people who are coitally attached to their pet of choice will be seen a being perfectly normal while those who are repulsed by such behavior will be seen as the ones with a problem?

Homosexuality remains every bit as disgusting as some guy doing his doggie, and I don’t care how many courts in America say it is a perfectly acceptable form for familial organization or how much the media (see Anna Quindlend’s recent piece that ran in Newsweek) and educational establishments continue to brainwash us on its legitimacy.

Certainly we must be concerned for the soul of homosexuals, just as we must be concerned for the souls of those who like farm animals, but the way for showing concern for their souls is by continuing to reveal the pig behind the lipstick (that lifestyle can be dressed up all one likes but it remains highly destructive and more importantly violates God’s Law) and by holding out to them both the wrath and love of God — wrath against those who refuse to repent and love for those who will repent and flee to Jesus.

Well, my mind is exploding with observations about our recent trip to the West Coast. The first one I will offer is about Airports.

I have said before on this blog that Americans are like stupid dairy cattle being milked by farmer Joe Government. The Federal Reserve is a system designed to milk average Americans of their wealth.

With the advent of TSA procedures in America airports we now even look like cattle waiting to be milked. When I was a boy working on my Grandfather’s dairy farm the dairy cows waited in a pen outside the dairy parlor where they lined up to travel up a slight concrete incline in order to be the next cow to slip through the sliding door that was periodically opened to allow the next cow in to be milked. Once the cow got through the parlor door it dutifully went to the appropriate stall, enticed by some sweet hay, where it would be hooked up to the milking machine so it could drop its creamy load. Upon finishing it would have its teats dipped and its rump thumped so as to move out of the stall so the next cow could take its place.

I recalled all of this while I waited my turn in the TSA queue at the airports so I could take my shoes off and be felt up by people who looked a little to eager to get to the part where they frisked people down. The imagery was so stark that I was waiting for my Grandfathers voice to yell out ‘Cowboy’ to let one of his younger grandchildren know that it was time for them to open the parlor door so the next cow could be milked.

These TSA types (drawn from the cream of American civilization by the way) are nothing if not thorough. First they would look at every license with a black light. I had written a love note on my license that could only be read by a black light but they didn’t say anything. Finally you get to the point where you have the privilege of passing all your carry on luggage through the super duper X-ray machine. If there is a bag in doubt (and it seemed ours were always in doubt) they would pull it, open it and rub its contents like they expected some kind of genie to appear to grant them three wishes, all the while asking gruff questions like; “This belong to you?” “What Is This For?” “Do you really where a size 36?”

Upon arriving at California I learned that my bag was one of those randomly chosen bags that were pawed through by the TSA Stormtroopers. I satisfied myself that they went through my personal belongings with the comfort of knowing that they were decent enough to put a little note in my bag that they had violated my privacy. It’s always nice to have your belongings rifled through by decent chaps. I had unsanctified thoughts that next time I might leave them something to find like a hypodermic needle or an exposed razor.

Another thing I observed as I traveled was the deep reading that Americans do. Magazines such as ‘US,’ ‘People,’ ‘Ladies Home Journal,’ and other tomes must make their profit margin by people deciding to get caught up in their reading while they travel. And what good is reading if you can’t do it with every one of your tattoos and piercings exposed? If you can’t catch somebodies attention by your reading fodder they will certainly be interested in you when they see that stud sticking out of your cheek or the chains connecting your cheek to your earlobe. (It must be a pain to get all that hardware through TSA security.) Let us not even begin to talk about travel attire.

When I wasn’t mooing I found myself humming Larry Norman’s “I’m only visiting this Planet.”