Before you get a chance to say it…

I am a white, heterosexual, Christian male. I am keenly aware of the fact that this is an amalgamation of demographics which, in terms of bullying, hatred, abuse, and societal disenfranchisement we generally perceive as the aggressors, or at least the dominant party. However, that is not an excuse for anyone, including me, to dismiss my perspective on bullying, racism, sexism, homophobia, or any category of hatred or abuse by people of a powerful plurality on a less powerful minority. Lately, these topics have been on my mind for discussion and writing, but I am hesitant because my views seem to lack a certain empathy or even sensitivity for the victims of hate and abuse. It seems inevitable that someone, disagreeing with my opinion on racism or sexuality, will attempt to invalidate my opinion on the basis of my race or sexuality, so it seems appropriate to place this declaration right at the outset of this blogging adventure.

So yes, I am white. This limits my perspective only as much as the perspective of a member of a racial minority is limited. I am thoroughly incapable of experientially understanding what it is like as a law-abiding black man to walk through a predominantly white neighborhood and have a woman on the other side of the street briefly glance at him with concern. But that black man doesn’t really know what it is like to be that white woman on the other side of the street either. But no one attempts to disqualify his opinion or feelings about that experience.

The fact that my perspective is to some extent limited by my experiences should go without saying. And my experiences are largely influenced by my race, gender, religion, and sexuality. But the same is true of those of minorities in these categories.

While my opinions may at times seem insensitive to their perspective, I almost always feel that discussions of these topics exhibit flagrant disregard for any potential defense of the majority. And when someone from the dominant plurality tries to point this out, they tend to come off like an elephant complaining that the mouse stepped on his toe. I am convinced that this is largely a consequence of the vaguely whiny/angry tone in which I usually hear them convey their point and because they are speaking to a minority audience that is predisposed to disregard any opposing perspective as being racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.

Can’t we all just get along?

All that said, I don’t intend to defend racism, sexism, or any form of hatred or abuse on my blog. But I will periodically take views on these topics that will seem insensitive to the victims or minorities in these situations, and I resolutely reject any notion that these views lack value or veracity simply because they come from a dominant party who perhaps has less experience as the victim of hate or abuse than many other people.

I am unapologetically a white, heterosexual, Christian male, but that is not all that I am. I am a whole person, and will not have my opinions or feelings (or anyone else’s for that matter) reduced to a consequence of my demographic and dismissed as irrelevant or inaccurate. This sort of premature dismissal is an enormous obstacle to civilized progress-driven discussion.

ALL opinions are welcome to comment. However, please feel free to place all your insults, sarcasm, and incivility ELSEWHERE in cyberspace. I implore you to contribute respectfully and intelligently to a discussion that may benefit all involved by mutual education and edification.

RE: A Faith of Our Own

Another book I read and reviewed last Summer was Jonathan Merritt’s A Faith of Our Own. In A Faith of Our Own Merritt paints an inspiring and enlightening picture of where he sees my generation of Christians going with regards to political activism. Reading this book aloud to my father and stopping frequently to discuss points in which he disagrees with Merritt served to accentuate the sharp contrast between how I and many of my generation desire to work out our faith and engage in politics and how he and his generation have done so in the past. I actually read it aloud to him in the hopes that perhaps it would broaden his perspective on the different methods of political/religious interaction. No such luck.

The fact of the matter is that Jonathan Merritt is spot on when he identifies the growing schism between the older generation of veteran Christian culture warriors and the younger generation of Christians who hope to peaceably work out our faith without selling our souls to the political power machine. If I had read this book alone as opposed to reading it to my dad, I would likely have thought that some of Merritt’s statements regarding the lack of adaptability of the old guard of Christian conservatives to this renewed method of Christ-likeness were over-stated. I know many older Christians who occasionally make disappointingly vitriolic statements about political ideas and people, but I generally consider most or all of them to be reasonable people.

I figured that as reasonable people, when presented with the facts in just the right order, perhaps they might be willing to accept that, while their efforts have been well-intended and admirable, they may have been wrong-ended and misguided from the get-go. I know this to be a difficult thing to digest for even the best of people, so perhaps I underestimated the carnal desire to save face or over-estimated the ability to rationally interact with an idea in that generation, because if my dad is any indication, the old guard of Christian conservatives will continue to wear their fingers to nubs trying to scratch out the eyes of the evil, venomous liberals, and liberal Christians will likely continue to do the same to conservatives.

But that is merely my own unique experience reading this book with my father this afternoon. There is so much more to this book than a criticism of the past generation, in fact, that theme only shows itself in this book as a logical stepping stone to show what many in my generation of Christians are hoping to leave behind, in order to contrast it with what we hope to accomplish as we embrace for ourselves the heritage of faith which he have received from a generation of courageous and valiant, though misguided, culture warriors.

This book really surprised me with the detail of the vision that Merritt paints for his readers of a future paradigm of Christians working out our faith. While I have long thought that my father’s way of interacting with politics was irrelevant, unproductive, and detrimental, I had never really considered the alternatives in quite so much detail as Merritt paints it. He writes clearly and passionately of a Christianity in which he is already participating which values people regardless of race, class, sexual orientation, political party or any other demographic distinction which keeps the Church divided and unproductive in demonstrating Kingdom living to the world.

Jonathan Merritt’s book is both saddening as it forced me to look with sympathy on the past generation as they realize or fail to realize the damage done by their best efforts, and inspiring as it paints a picture which I greatly hope to participate in bringing to fruition. Though the final chapter aptly warns against an overly ambitious blind pursuit of any vision, lest we end up just like the generation I look upon with sympathy. A Faith of Our Own is a book I highly recommend to anyone of any generation in the hopes that they may raise their personal awareness of this fairly new way of thinking about politics and faith and so that they will be equipped to join the movement or set us all straight if necessary.

ALL opinions are welcome to comment. However, please feel free to place all your insults, sarcasm, and incivility ELSEWHERE in cyberspace. I implore you to contribute respectfully and intelligently to a discussion that may benefit all involved by mutual education and edification.

RE: The Story of Liberty

Last Summer I read through several books and wrote a few reviews of some of them. Charles Coffin’s The Story of Liberty was among them. Charles Carleton Coffin’s The Story of Liberty is an interesting and enlightening read. Anyone who enjoys gaining a greater understanding how historical events of varying degrees of individual significance relate to one another in the broader picture of historical progression will likely enjoy what this book has to offer.

The Story of Liberty may be thought of as similar to a biography. Obviously, this is not precisely a typical biography which documents the experiences, events and interactions which lead a famously powerful or influential person down his or her path to fame, fortune, glory, or discovery. Instead, Coffin documents an idea. He follows the idea of Liberty from what he seems to consider it’s birthplace – England – complete with it’s birth certificate – the Magna Carta – and documents many important people, events, and interactions which pushed the idea of liberty along through history, until it finally arrives in America – it’s new home – with the Puritans at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Many events and people involved in the progress and evolution of liberty are readily familiar to anyone with even a moderate knowledge of history – people and events such as John Lackland and the Magna Carta, Luther and the Reformation, Columbus’ voyage, etc. Other people and events were greatly interesting to me because I had never heard of them before. Coffin provides details of many martyrs of the Inquisition in Spain and throughout Europe which make the horror of those centuries much more real and give even the Renaissance a darker tone that seems to belong more in the Dark Ages.

For all that I found this book to be historically interesting and meaningful, there was a considerable over-emphasis on the theme of liberty. Obviously, a book which is about the history of liberty is going to have a particular opinion about that theme and it is going to come through, but the reverence for liberty in this book almost borders on idolatry. Coffin views everything that happened in the centuries he covers in The Story of Liberty almost exclusively through the lens of liberty.

Coffin briefly covers the stories of dozens upon dozens of individual martyrs throughout the centuries. And always in his description of their deaths, it is clear that they died for the cause of liberty. He occasionally lists “truth” alongside “liberty,” but it is always for liberty. The martyrs of the Reformation and the Inquisition and the intervening centuries did not only die for their own integrity or for the sake of Truth; they died for liberty. And since the Puritans coming to America is the climax of the story of liberty as Coffin tells it, it is not an excessive over-reach to say that Coffin wants to view these martyrs as pre-American American soldiers, who sacrifice their lives for our liberty.

In addition to the gross over-emphasis on the involvement of liberty in many historical events, there is another problem which exacerbates the previous problem and mitigates the reliability of those documented events with which I am less familiar. That is, there is neither sourcing nor citation anywhere in this book. Apparently, this is because modern sourcing is barely a century old, and this book is close to 150 years old. It is annoying nonetheless.

Many of those events and people which I found interesting in this book seemed oddly presented and almost seemed like they belonged in a book of fiction rather than historical non-fiction. This is likely also because this book was written in a different time than most non-fiction which I am accustomed to reading, but I would have been comforted somewhat if I had been able to see a footnote or something which gave me a starting place for further research. I honestly rarely pay attention to sourcing when it is there, but you never know what you have until it’s gone.

But the lack of appreciation for what we have, specifically our liberty, is precisely Coffin’s expressed purpose in writing this book. He closes his introduction entreating his readers to “remember what liberty has cost – and what it is worth.” While I think he overemphasizes the moral importance of liberty, I agree that it is as undervalued and taken for granted by many today as it is over-emphasized by Coffin – and many others today.

But there has to be some sort of happy medium between these extremes. Can’t we say that liberty is a great and wonderful thing for which we are truly grateful as a nation, and that to the extent that it is in our power as citizens of a democratic nation, we will seek to maintain our liberties which were gained through such great expense? And couldn’t we at the same time realize and understand that not everything which advances the cause of liberty here and around the world is done in the name of liberty, and much that is done in the name of liberty is less than honorable and far from good and perhaps even ought to be condemned rather than celebrated? Is such a balance impossible to strike?

ALL opinions are welcome to comment. However, please feel free to place all your insults, sarcasm, and incivility ELSEWHERE in cyberspace. I implore you to contribute respectfully and intelligently to a discussion that may benefit all involved by mutual education and edification.

Pride, Politics, and Prejudice… But No Respect

I attended and graduated from Grace Bible College. It is this tiny little nothing-sized college in the back corner of a neighborhood just north of 28th Street in Wyoming, MI. And for all the things people complain about around here, (food, people, debates, etc.) with the exception of one occasion, I cannot say as I can recall ever having reason to feel ashamed of my college or of any the people who went there with me. I do not tend to socialize with people overmuch, and this admittedly leads to a tendency to cast judgment on those around me based on what sometimes amounts to a personal preference, but with that in mind, take what follows for what it is.I have no great love for politics, but with the 2012 election season imminent, I was as much attention as can be spared to the progress of the primaries and any speeches and incidents which arise from any relevant source. In addition, I am fairly certain I have always endeavored to watch the State of the Union address if possible. So Tuesday, at 9:30 when I realized that the SotU was that night and probably in progress at that moment, I secured the television in the lounge for the purpose of watching the State of the Union and hearing our President speak about his perspective on our nation’s present situation and his plans to continue repairing it (yeah, I took some liberties there).As I was preparing to turn on the tv and explaining to other three people in the room what I was about to do, one of them said something to the effect of “Oh, I am not going to let Obama waste any more of my time with his lies and BS ideas,” and promptly left… along with everyone else in the room. As I sat and watched the television, several other people trickled through. Some stopped to watch for a moment, and a couple sat down. But no less than a half dozen people stopped and made similar comments to what the rage-leaver made. These comments, from the first one to the last one, made me angry. Exceedingly so.

I had learned in my years at Grace, both through classes and conversation that Christians often have things that–right or wrong–they feel are important fruits and characteristics of Christianity that ought to be displayed by every Christian. I suppose respect is mine. I could not believe, and still have trouble believing that people who I know reasonably well, and respect to some degree as educational peers could be so derisive of another person’s ideas.

I have witnessed and participated in several respectful exchanges of ideas between people who genuinely disagree with one another (what might be called a debate), and I have even heard conversations based on dissecting and dissolving a position held by a person not present. But in ALL of these cases, there has been a measure of respect for the person whose idea was being discussed. I would even say there has been a measure of respect for the idea itself, if only for its inherent connection to the person. Often these debates and discussions have been about fairly important issues (occasionally even central points of theology or practical Christianity). But always (I cannot emphasize this enough) ALWAYS, respect has been implicit in the tone of the conversation at all times.

But all of that goes out the window when we talk about politics. We, being at an evangelical Christian college, cannot possibly be in the presence of someone who disagrees with us significantly in politics. So naturally it is perfectly acceptable to speak derisively about a political, economic, or social view which is held by our President and many other people. Ann Coulter and many conservatives may be willing to say that all of these people are either ignorant or evil, but if there is one idea I can almost find it in my heart to deem worthy of the term “stupid,” this idea is it. Unfortunately, if I did deem it worthy of that term, then I would be obligated to turn that word around and apply it to myself as well, but I digress.

Not only is it acceptable to deride the idea, it is equally appropriate, perhaps more so, to deride any person associated with it including, but by no means limited to, the President of the United States. The President of the United States–by virtue of his title, responsibilities, accomplishments, popular election, and above all his divine right (not quite the traditional use of that phrase I know) and appointment to govern for a time–is fully worthy of any and all respect we can give him. Similarly, a decent respect for the intelligence, opinions, and belief of the masses who initially placed him in his office–even if they have come to regret that decision–demands that we, at a bare minimum, elevate any idea which he promotes at least to a high enough level such that we can no longer in good conscience speak with such derision of them or of him (or her, should the feminine pronoun ever apply to this topic).

For me, these guidelines, to some degree or another, extend beyond politics to pretty much any position of authority in any field. And God knows that I have often failed to apply them appropriately (my school bus driver comes to mind), but this is something I value very deeply to the core of my being. And while I cannot say as I know precisely what my purpose in writing this is, I do want anyone reading this to know, that while I fully respect anyone’s right to disagree with anyone else (including people in any sort of seat of authority) if you make a derisive or disrespectful comment about an authority figure within my hearing or on facebook (especially regarding politics, as that is where this seems to happen most flagrantly) you will inspire an almost overwhelmingly powerful urge (just or unjust) within me to hunt you down and slap you and say all manner of disrespectful and horrible things about YOUR intelligence and tell you just what I think (or more likely what some less respectful alternative reality variation of me thinks) about your thoughts and ideas.

ALL opinions are welcome to comment. However, please feel free to place all your insults, sarcasm, and incivility ELSEWHERE in cyberspace. I implore you to contribute respectfully and intelligently to a discussion that may benefit all involved by mutual education and edification.

The Problem with the Abortion Conversation

I would have liked to have made my first blog entry deal with something theological rather than something political, but the inspiration that comes while sitting on the porcelain throne is apparently not subject to my wishes or desires.

Growing up in a conservative Christian family with a strongly politically conservative father, I have read, watched, and participated in more conversations centering around the morality and legality of abortion than I care to recall. I have not read any actual legal studies on the subject, but I have noticed some patterns of communication and miscommunication that consistently hinder appropriately civil conversation on this subject. In almost every conversation I have witnessed – and “conversation” really only barely serves to describe what invariably devolves into a heated exchange of name-calling – the problem is not that either side is actually making deeply flawed arguments. It is that both sides are so consumed with trying to communicate their idea that neither side is actually responding to the arguments – more importantly, the concerns – of the other side. This is actually a common cause of the removal of civility from many conversations about a whole host of topics, so it may be helpful to give some examples of miscommunication which are more unique to the abortion discussion.

The primary common argument conservatives tend to make is that abortion is murder. We already have laws against murder, so there is really no point in discussing it past this point from the perspective of many conservatives. For this reason, the debate focuses more around whether or not an unborn baby is actually a living human, and if it is a human, then when did it become a living human being. So the battle cry of pro-lifers has become that life begins at conception. Memes and pithy arguments abound throughout cyberspace attempting to point out dangerous ethical conclusions which originate with the dispute of life at conception and seeking to elucidate the inconsistency of laws and practices with the idea that life does not begin at conception.

However, pro-choice advocates make the surprisingly libertarian argument that the government has no business telling a woman what to do with her body, putting her under legal obligation to go through with a dramatic, painful experience she may or may not have chosen to initiate, to have a child she does not want. This way of framing the argument, combined with the growing influence of feminism, is really what gives the pro-choice movement its sustainability. And I am not aware of any strong argument against this unless one takes the position that life begins at conception, in which case this argument is laughably irrelevant.

In fact, to someone who sees abortion as murder, this argument is horrifically selfish. So much so that this argument is the window through which conservative Christian pro-lifers tend to view pro-choice supporters in general. “How can you support murder simply as a way to avoid the inconvenience of a pregnancy?” is a question that I often read when the conversation is fortunate enough to make it that far before devolving into insults. It almost never makes it much further than this question.

Not being pro-choice, I can only guess at the reasons for the aggressive responses that this question incites. The people who ask this question seem to assume that the aggressive responses indicate that they struck a chord with that argument – that their opponent really has no good response to the argument, but cannot admit to themselves that they are willing to murder someone out of convenience. The content of the responses themselves, however, usually involves offense taken at the claim that an abortion is an easy route at all.

But most common of all, the response to any pro-life argument that life begins at conception is the response that ignites a similar anger from the pro-life side of the debate. “Quit forcing your beliefs on me!” This argument is really solid from the constitutionally quasi-libertarian mindset that it comes from. Just because I believe abortion or homosexuality or watching tv on Sunday afternoon is wrong, doesn’t meant that it should be illegal for everyone else to watch cartoons on Sunday.

But once again, if one takes the belief that an abortion is in reality a murder of an innocent human being, and that these murders are being perpetrated by the thousands every day in America, then it is unreasonable to expect such a person to sit by and say “Oh well. Everyone else doesn’t believe like I do. I will just have respect their opinion and sit back and endure this generally uncomfortable situation.” No. This sort of injustice demands action. It demands change. But if in fact, life does not begin at conception, particularly if life does not begin until viability or delivery, then that crusade for justice for fetuses doesn’t really matter at all.

This is why it is so frustrating to view or participate in these discussions. There is so much false demonization of opposing opinions that it is impossible to really discover and address the genuine concerns that each side feels. I believe most pro-choice supporters are truly concerned about women’s rights and their privacy. And I know that the vast majority of pro-lifers aren’t men trying to protect their right to tell women what to do. We are people who value life, and who are deeply concerned that millions of lives are being terminated unjustly. If both sides could keep this view of one another in focus during their conversations, perhaps we can work towards a generally acceptable solution to each of our concerns with the assumption from the beginning that such a solution will in all probability not be totally satisfying to either side.

ALL opinions are welcome to comment. However, please feel free to place all your insults, sarcasm, and incivility ELSEWHERE in cyberspace. I implore you to contribute respectfully and intelligently to a discussion that may benefit all involved by mutual education and edification.