The Doctor Is In

In light of the snowballing interest in Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s minister and mentor, I am re-posting this essay from May 2007, when Hillary was the presumed nominee, and Obama just a charismatic wannabe.

Many are wondering whether the media is just cherry-picking a few outrageous sermons. My take? Nope, what you see is what you get — and what Obama’s been hearing — and following — for 20 years.

 
Courtesy of the Drudge Report, I was drawn to read a New York Times article (login required) on Barack Obama,, his faith and conversion, and his pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

The article presented some interesting background on Mr. Obama and his church — a topic with which I had been previously unfamiliar. But what I found of greater interest was the broader perspective highlighted by the Times article regarding the role of religious beliefs in public figures, particularly politicians, and how secular political movements in the postmodern age use religion.

Not surprisingly, the New York Times — along with virtually all major media outlets — come across as pleasantly confused about the nature of religious conversion, particularly as it applies to Christianity. The focus of this article is on the theology and controversial teachings of his spiritual mentor Reverend Wright, who pastors Trinity United Church of Christ, and addresses its potential impact on Mr. Obama’s presidential candidacy.

My eye was drawn to the description of Reverend Wright, who is identified as:

… a dynamic pastor who preached Afrocentric theology, dabbled the radical politics and delivered music and profanity-spiked sermons.

Antennas pop up when someone alludes to Christian pastors with “Afrocentric” (or any other “-centric”) theology. Additional research quickly disclosed that Reverend Wright is indeed, shall we say, “controversial.” It appears that the good Reverend espouses a form of Christianity, so-called, which depicts America as deeply — and intractably — racist; which believes America to be a far greater threat to the world than murderous tyrants who slaughter millions; who believes there are two types of white Christians — those “who lynch people in the name of Jesus” and those “who ain’t got time to lynch people”; who, rather famously, after a fiery sermon about all the injustices which white America has promulgated on blacks, the poor, third world countries, women and children, and the usual litany of complaints about lack of healthcare, the homeless, etc. is quoted as saying, “God is tired of this shit!”

One wonders if God is also tired of ministers with potty mouths. Or tired of pastors who view their white Christian “brothers” as lynchers-in-waiting.

In short, Reverend Wright and his theology fall squarely on the radical left, racial-hating-and-baiting side of the political and religious spectrum.

As Seinfeld might say, “… not that there’s anything wrong with that!”

Oh, wait — maybe there is something wrong with that.

Continue reading: What’s Wrong is Wright  →

In yesterday’s post, I took to task a comment made by Jon Henke, from the always-excellent QandO blog, regarding his support for legalization of prostitution, which came up because of the Eliot Spitzer imbroglio. His comment was in essence a springboard for what I believe to be a flawed position held by many libertarians.

Jon was gracious enough to leave a comment on the post — which of course, has elicited a few more thoughts on my part. Jon stated:

I think you’ve completely misapprehended me. At no point did I suggest there should be no social rejection or approbation for his conduct. In fact, I think that’s precisely what should occur. The libertarian position is not that private behavior is beyond reproach, but that private behavior that does not hurt others (as in, “violate the rights of others”, not “make them feel bad”) should not be illegal.

I’m quite sure his adultery hurt his family emotionally, but we don’t imprison people for adultery. The fact that he paid for it, however, was not harmful. But that is what we have criminalized.

This idea that, because we don’t want something criminalized, we must not think it is bad is a frustrating misperception of libertarians. It’s doubly frustrating, because it’s not a difficult distinction to make.

Well, it is certainly easy to misunderstand a writer’s beliefs based on a brief reference to one of its tenets. And libertarianism itself would appear to be rather a loose and nebulous confederation of beliefs and policies, embodied in individuals ranging from solid centrists like Glenn Reynolds, to bright conservatives such as Jon, to fringe elements waiting for black UN helicopters gazing skyward in their camo fatigues. I have the utmost respect for Jon, and his blog is a daily visit for me because of its depth and breadth. Nevertheless, I do not believe I have misapprehended the libertarian position, as he stated it, on the subject of legalization versus mere social rejection or approbation. I’m well aware that many libertarians believe that certain behaviors which are in fact socially objectionable, perhaps even dangerous, but nevertheless should be legal, based on the principle of individual rights and minimalization of government intrusion.

Having said that, I believe Jon is also misapprehended my point — which is not that prostitution should be illegal because individuals were hurt rather than rights violated, but that the nature of prostitution is such that society is entirely justified in outlawing its practice as a defensive measure to protect the well-being of its citizens and its core foundational institutions such as marriage.

Society has many means, and many degrees of granularity, in determining what behavior is acceptable or dangerous to its collective well-being. Obviously, the force of law is a major component of this, carrying the weight of enforcement and even violence if required. But much regulation of social behavior starts at a far finer granularity: at the level of individuals, families, communities, and consequently is powerfully embodied when such conviction is widespread in a wider social consensus.

To encourage and enforce moral behavior — by which I mean both that dictated by transcendent moral absolutes, as well as that collectively determined to be undesirable for the good of society — restraint starts at the level of the individual, whose inner conscience and moral standards serve to constrain behavior which is judged to be wrong or harmful. This moral compass — as is understood by Judaism and Christianity — is an innate component of the nature of man. Those more secular might instead infer that, if such a code exists, it would be genetic or inherited, or inculcated from the experience and social mores of the parents during childhood for the benefit of the species. Morality at this individual level is a powerful determinant of human behavior — and no amount of civil law can substitute for such inner conscience or direction.

At a somewhat broader level, family and local community may collectively determine which behavior is desirable or to be censured, another powerful constraint working primarily through ostracization and exclusion from the community of those who fail to meet its standards. Once again, this may well occur outside of the framework of law, although it is often reflected in local community standards and regulation. The next level, encoded in community, state, and federal law, expands this restraint with the addition of ever more onerous penalties for aberrant behavior, throwing the full force of government behind its restraining intent.

My point in this somewhat extended musing is that constraint of behavior destructive to individuals and society is not purely limited to law, but occurs at many levels, and begins, and is rooted in, the individual moral conscience and the family and local community. And this, I infer, is what Jon and other libertarians hope to rely on when removing the admittedly heavy-handed arm to illegality.

When there is a widespread consensus in the larger community that certain behavior is unacceptable, and when a substantial majority of citizens concur with that consensus, then onerous or restrictive laws become far less important, as individual and community restraint function to inhibit socially and morally destructive behavior. In a perfect moral world, law would be unnecessary: it is required due to the inevitable human failure to meet even their own high standards, not to mention for those who will violate them regardless of, or due to lack of any such standards.
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The problem arises when a culture, such as ours, begins to erode and corrode the foundational moral and ethical principles of the individual, the family, and local community, increasingly relying on larger institutions such as government to mitigate the inevitable adverse consequences of such abrogation. Hence a culture which no longer has a moral consensus that extramarital sexual activity is harmful, for example, but instead views it as benign, tolerable, or even desirable behavior, will inevitably reap certain consequences (not the least of which is more of the undesirable behavior) — which will in turn bring about efforts to seek to control the resulting consequences through law and punishment. As we cease respecting rules at the individual level, we invariably multiply rules at the civic and governmental levels: the Law of Rules. As William Penn once said, “Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.”

In the case of prostitution, there is a growing segment of our society which, consistent with their general outlook on sexual activity, no longer views such activity outside of marriage as inherently wrong, and in fact considers it quite normal, perhaps even highly desirable. Such a viewpoint often rationalizes or minimizes any adverse consequences such behavior might incur, while simultaneously looking to society or government to mitigate the inevitable side effects thereof. Hence we tolerate and glorify sexual permissiveness while agitating ever more loudly for greater federal spending on AIDS research and STD prevention.

Jon’s conflation of prostitution and adultery tends to confuse two quite different entities. While certainly all sex with prostitutes for a married man constitutes adultery, most certainly not all cases of adultery involve prostitution. It is almost certainly true (without being able to cite specifics) that adultery, in fact, has been, or may still be outlawed in parts of the country. Nevertheless, few would maintain that such a law is a good idea — although they likely are instituted because of the perceived threat of adultery to the socially-important institution of marriage. Such a law, while well-intentioned, is clearly unenforceable — and unenforceable laws breed contempt for authority, as they are honored only in the breach. Much adultery is, by nature, between two consenting adults. This is not to minimize its potentially devastating impact on marriage — but simply to point out that both the man and the woman presumably enter into it volitionally and freely — there is no business contract involved. Such a relationship may well be devastating to the immediate relationships of each partner, and destructive to one or more marriages, but its effects, relatively speaking, are finite.

Prostitution, on the other hand is industrialized adultery. It is, pure and simple, a business transaction, whose sole purpose is the sexual gratification of the male. The relationship of the john and his whore — if you can call it a relationship — is inherently and essentially demeaning to the woman: she is nothing more than an attractive repository for the man’s (often aberrant) sexual desires. She is dehumanized, victimized, often brutalized, or murdered, as the nature of the act is not mutually respectful but inherently about dominance/submission: you pay your money, she does what you want — or else.

It is interesting to note that those in favor of legalized prostitution are invariably men – in what must surely be a vast and inherent conflict of interest. Women do not enter prostitution because they love sleeping with thousands of men; they do so out of extreme duress, due to severe financial hardship or drug addiction. Through legalization we are exploiting, at the societal level, those most vulnerable, saying their welfare matters nothing, their lives are expendable, their humanity is irrelevant to our “rights” and “freedom” to fulfill our basest desires. Where are the legions of women demonstrating and demanding the legalization of prostitution? Their absence — in our rights-obsessed culture — speaks volumes.

Say what you will about disdaining the action while embracing its legality in the name of “freedom” — legalizing prostitution effectively endorses slavery not freedom, and makes a powerful statement as a society, sacrificing the value, dignity, and well-being of the women entrapped in this hell of hedonism on the altar of our individual rights — of the individual rights of men and men alone. Prostitution serves as well an enormous pool of public health risk, transmitting countless instances of diseases which in many cases are incurable, which may have devastating effects on innocent third parties, such as AIDS, or HPV-related cervical cancer. There are abundant reasons to make prostitution illegal — but only one for its legalization: glorifying men’s right to exploit, abuse and often destroy women for their own selfish and destructive amusement.

Legalization of prostitution would do nothing to change the fundamentally abusive nature of its core transaction. By legalization, we are not simply saying that it is permitted because “no one’s rights are violated” — a highly disputable stance — but we are instead encoding in law the normalization of an exploitive, and socially harmful business transaction. This is not at all about outlawing something which “makes people feel bad” — but rather about throwing the weight of law and its enforcement behind protecting and enabling a profession which is highly destructive both to the women involved, the families of their patrons, public health, and perception of women on a cultural and social scale.

The stance of using the “violate the rights of others” justification for legalization of prostitution (or any like behavior) seems to me to rely on quite a fungible standard. Are the rights of a wife violated when her husband visits a prostitute? Even if the civil level, the marriage contract implies, if not explicitly states, that the marriage is intended for mutual love, manifested tangibly through the restriction and commitment of man’s natural libidinous tendency toward promiscuity into a monogamous sexual relationship for the welfare of his wife, their children, and implicitly society as a whole. This core value is reflected in the law, making adultery is a slam-dunk legal basis for divorce — an aspect encoded into its statutes long before our current insane permissiveness which allows any and all justifications for divorce.

Furthermore –as is abundantly evident in our contemporary society — the idea of “rights” is eminently malleable — as we see in the ever-expanding victimhood mindset, where the homeless have a “right” to a home; the jobless have the “right” to a job; a student has a “right” to admission to a school or a potential employee a right to being hired based purely on his ethnicity rather than any skill, talent, or preparation for a particular position. Furthermore, many human rights are not clearly spelled out in civil law: the right of a wife to expect her husband to be faithful; the right of children to have parents who care and nurture for them; right of employers to have their employees work honestly and productively for their pay; the right of all men and women to be treated with dignity. These rights arise not from civil law, but from moral law, from the inherent value placed on humans by their very nature and being. This is, it should be noted, predominantly a Western cultural notion, derived and its core from Judeo-Christian understandings of the nature of man and his value and worth as a creation of God. One need only look at cultures which do not cherish this understanding to see its invariable consequences: suicide bombers are glorified; gays are beheaded; entire classes are relegated to extraordinary poverty and deprivation because of their inferior birth status; people slaughtered simply because of the tribe of their birth or some thousand-year-old offense. Such cultures arise in large part because of their core view of human nature and their core understanding of God, which results in degrading the value of human life and the individual.

I guess this is a rather long winded way of saying that it is entirely within the society’s rights, in my opinion, to restrict private behavior on the basis greater than personal freedom and personal rights alone. I remain to be convinced that libertarianism’s passion for removing such legal restraints would not, in fact, be far more destructive to individuals and society than could be offset by any small advantage in individual liberty. We should be careful what we wish for, lest our pursuit of freedom devoid of respect for the exalted nature of the individual lead us to a place where there is no freedom to be found.

Today’s big viral buzz whipping around the web is, of course, the white-hot story about Elliott Spitzer. This story’s got it all: power, politics, arrogance, big money, sex. Now, Spitzer is not one of those fellows much on my radar screen — just another power-hungry prosecutor who hacked his way through people’s lives in his climb to the top: think Mike Nifong, only luckier — at least up until now. Can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, now, can you? Perhaps there is truly Karma in this life…

But this post is not about Elliott Spitzer and his political boner at all; it is rather about a comment made regarding his transgression by Jon Henke over at QandO blog, to wit:

Perhaps this would be a good time for people in both parties to reevaluate the counter-productive, anti-freedom laws surrounding prostitution. I’m not sure what Gov. Spitzer was doing, but I would bet he wasn’t hurting anybody else. The question of legality should be distinct from the question of propriety.

Now, this little editorial by Jon put a bee under my bonnet.

The folks over at QandO — an excellent blog, written by bright, well-informed folks — are strongly libertarian. I find the libertarian position appealing in many regards, as I have seen first-hand how destructive the meddling hand of government has been in health care, and how increasingly intrusive it has become in so many other areas of our lives. Nor am I here to pontificate about the evils of prostitution or the wages of sin. I know full well that we all make horrible mistakes in life — myself included — and thus hiring a hooker, while less than noble, strikes me as a common enough failing of men, whether great or small. And visiting a prostitute is certainly not without risks — but that is a story for another time.

No, here’s what really bugs me about the above statement: “I would bet he wasn’t hurting anybody else.”

Really?

The notion — so common in libertarian circles — that our private behavior should be beyond the reach of social and legal constraint, because “it doesn’t hurt anyone” — betrays an extraordinarily narrow and parochial view of the impact of individual human behavior on other people and society as a whole.

So Elliott Spitzer visits a hooker — what’s the big deal? Aside from himself, has anyone been hurt? If it were legalized, none of this would be happening, you know. Because no one got hurt.

Well, let’s see:

I wonder if his wife, who presumably trusted her husband, and believed his vows of faithfulness to her, has been hurt by this “private behavior”? I wonder if her reputation has been damaged in any way? She will, no doubt, be forced to grovel and speak platitudes about her love and commitment to her husband, just to save his political hide and sullied reputation. Her integrity and dignity, of course, will not be besmirched in any way by whoring herself for his political career.

I wonder if his wife, who could easily have contracted an incurable venereal disease — such as HPV, which can cause cervical cancer, or AIDS, because of her husband’s indiscretion, might be hurt in any way by his “private behavior”? The herpes she might pass on to her next child, were she still of child-bearing age, might leave their baby blind — but, hey, no big deal. Nobody gets hurt, remember?

I wonder if his children, now exposed to a highly public and humiliating disgrace of their father, will understand that “nobody gets hurt by his private behavior.” Doubtless they will sail through life completely unfazed when their parents’ marriage shatters on the rocks because of this little dalliance. I’m sure they will not have learned anything about having a trustworthy and honest father, nor about a marriage committed to sexual faithfulness and lifelong commitment, and one can be quite confident that none of this will have any impact whatsoever on their success and happiness in life. `cause it wasn’t about them, remember? Private matter.

The prostitute, of course, got paid handsomely for a few hours of work. The money she made no doubt will help feed her drug habit which she likely supports through her prostitution. Of course, for the libertarian, drugs are another harmless personal pursuit, so the personal destruction they inevitably bring about in her life is of course none of society’s business. Prostitution is far and away the most dangerous profession a women may engage in, with an extraordinarily high rate of violence, murder, drug overdose, and HIV. Odd — since “no one gets hurt” in this “victimless” crime. Consenting adults and all that, don’t ya know.

She funneled a good chunk of that money to her pimps in the prostitution ring, who will no doubt use it for social good, by entrapping more desperate women in the white slave trade, paying bribes to police and public officials to keep their business thriving, and perhaps reinvesting their substantial profits into other criminal activities, drug running, tax evasion, and many of those other harmless private activities they no doubt pursue. I’m sure if prostitution were legalized they would donate the cash to a local charity, and hang out at the Rotary club.

This sort of tunnel vision permeates much of libertarian thought. What harm is done by smoking a little weed in the privacy of your home, or snorting a little coke at home before work? The fact that many drugs remain in your system for prolonged periods — even weeks in the case of THC — with the potential of impairing reflex times, attention span, and the decision-making process, makes your private recreational activity completely harmless when you climb into the driver’s seat of a school bus the next morning, doesn’t it?

It is well within society’s purview and government’s responsibility to place restraints, legal and otherwise, on private behavior which adversely affects others. The notion that removal of all such restraints will increase freedom and reduce vice is illusory. It would surely increase license, as those currently inhibited by the adverse legal and societal consequences of such behavior would be far more prone to indulge in it. The libertarian’s assumption is that the bulk of adverse consequences arises from the enforcement and prosecution of such crimes — far more than by the actual crime itself. This is a highly arguable proposition, and vastly underestimates the subtle but highly destructive nature such behavior permeates through a culture.

There can be little doubt, for example, that an intact, heterosexual marriage provides the best environment for raising emotionally healthy, responsible, and productive children in society. Kids from such environments do better in school; have far lower incidence of criminal and disciplinary problems; are more likely to avoid early-onset sexual activity, teen pregnancy, promiscuity, and unwed motherhood; are more likely to do well economically; and more likely to enter stable, enduring marriages themselves. All such advantages are highly beneficial to society as a whole. Would legalized prostitution, with resulting increased utilization, risk endangering the marriages which provide such substantial societal benefits? Perhaps not for many, but most certainly for some — and the ripple effect over several generations is incalculably large, evident daily in the extant cultural erosion of marriage already long underway in Western society, through liberalized divorce laws, normalization of unwed motherhood, and tolerance and promotion of sexual license and promiscuity. The sins of the fathers truly are carried down to the third and fourth generation — and beyond.

Likewise with legalizing drugs: there is no doubt that the illegality of street drugs creates and sustains a vast, violent, multi-billion dollar international crime network, and our current war on drugs, though enormously expensive, has little to show for these billions spent in restraining the abuse or the crime network which feeds it. It is tempting to put an end to this waste through legalization of street drugs — but again the perceived benefits — financially starving the drug cartels and dealers — seems illusory at best. Will a black market in drugs simply disappear when they are legalized? What will the societal impact of increased use of newly-legalized street drugs have on the behavior of individuals, employment history, domestic violence, marriage stability, child neglect and abuse? The downward spiral so characteristic of addiction will not simply go away because the substances they abuse are now legal — nor will the social and behavioral destruction their use so often engenders.

What we are witnessing here — that which the libertarian finds (somewhat justifiably) so onerous — is an excellent example of the Law of Rules: as inner moral restraint deteriorates (through erosion of religious influences; fewer stable marriages and families to teach children moral standards; the perpetual onslaught against social and moral restraint by an aggressively secular, materialistic and hedonistic society; etc. etc.), there must be a multiplication of rules, laws and enforcement to mitigate the destructive consequences of increasingly narcissistic individualism. The outcome must ultimately be either anarchy or tyranny, for without inner self-control, the only alternatives for continued societal stability and function are the forces of external control — the nanny state, slouching ever forward toward totalitarianism and the police state. The alternative is bleaker still: chaos and societal collapse.

When we do away with laws — even those increasingly encroaching on our freedom — without reestablishing, sustaining, and nurturing our inner moral compasses, the results will invariably be not more freedom, but far less.

40 years — a biblical number.

For 40 years, Moses was in exile, before returning to Egypt to free his people. For 40 years, the Israelites wandered in the desert before entering the promised land.

Our own advent has lasted 40 years as well.

Our preparation for this moment began 40 years ago, in 1968. Vietnam, the Democratic convention, political assassinations, riots in the streets.

“Off the pigs!” “Do your own thing!” “Don’t trust anyone over 30!” “Power to the people!” “Tune in, turn on, drop out!”

It was a time of enormous change. And it was just the beginning of enormous change.

The social tumult of the late 60s was indeed a revolution. Yes, the slogans now appear silly and self-important, but the changes they represented burrowed deeply into the soul of a country. Looking back at its superficial manifestations — tie-dyed T-shirts, bell-bottoms, long hair, communes, free love, getting stoned, rock ‘n roll — these things now seem profoundly foolish, the insanity of youth taken greatly to excess. But the changes of the late 60s and 70s were infectious and intoxicating, and were imbibed deeply by an entire nation.

In these 40 years, we have learned many things. We have learned that slogans about change are the same as change. We have learned that “do your own thing” is a principal worth inculcating into the very fabric of our lives. We have learned that how we feel is more important than what we do. We have learned that ideas do not have consequences — but are themselves consequences.

We have learned that our government is not to be trusted, that our country is not to be loved. We have learned that what our country can do for us is more important than what we can do for our country. We have learned that the government always lies; that the media is always truthful; that corporations are evil; that unrestricted license is good.

We have learned to be green, and to relish the obscene. We have learned that religion is patriarchal and oppressive; that social mores and morality are to be challenged and rejected; that “freedom of speech” means burning the flag, smearing Madonna with feces; immersing the crucifix in urine; being obnoxious, abusive, and vicious while never entertaining criticism or rebuttal.

We have learned not to think, but to feel; not to reason but to react; not to dialogue but to detest; not to take responsibility but to accuse. We have learned to bolster our self-esteem, and worship our self-gratification. We have learned that someone else should always pay; that we are entitled to whatever we want; that wealth and happiness are our birthright. We have learned that god is within; that our existence is a cosmic coincidence; that our purpose is self-aggrandizement and acquisition of money and power. We have learned that only the material is true; that spiritual principles and practice are but opinions; that there is no truth anyway, only narrative.

There is much we have not learned during our long advent.

We have not learned history — at least not any history worth learning. We have not learned reason, or logic, or deduction. We have learned nothing of human nature, of its inherent draw toward evil rather than good, of the necessity of moral restraint and regeneration before such mortal and moral gravity can be overcome. We have not learned the limitation of government nor the risks of its encroaching strangulation of our freedom. We have not learned patience, nor endurance, nor self-control, nor deferred gratification. We have not learned that there are things worth dying for, and therefore there might be something worth living for.

Our 40-year advent now draws to a close. The prime-time prophets proclaim the Messiah, who will save us from our spiraling descent with stirring words and mighty miracles. We stand poised to nominate, and perhaps elect, a charismatic individual who is the embodiment of all our heartfelt desires. He alone can end all wars; he alone can destroy tyranny with mere words; he alone can smite the haters, the greedy, the culturally insensitive, the religious zealots. He preaches hope, to those who know not why they are hopeless; he preaches change, to those who have no compass by which to judge its direction.

Imagine such a candidate, such a public figure, running for the presidency a mere 40 years ago. Imagine a presidential candidate with no experience, no portfolio, no principles beyond rhetorical flourish and false hope. Imagine a country which finds such a man not only eligible but epitomizing its very ideals.

You cannot imagine any such thing in any culture which cherishes the responsibility and robustness of its own leaders. Our postmodern evolution is complete; we have grown from a country of adults to a nation of infants. The fruit of our regression is upon us; we are no longer a nation, but a nursery.

“Power to the people,” indeed.

May God help us.

• Saving sinking ships: I’ve heard of flipping houses, but flipping ships? A massive, 55,000 ton super-freighter packed with cars from Japan nearly capsizes off Alaska. Who ya’ gonna call? These guys: High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas. This is an amazing story, superb narrative, photos and illustrations. Don’t miss it.
• Cain-ing the neo-atheists: R.R. Reno proves himself more than, err, Able to the task: The Offense of Piety
• The most important man you never heard of: Henry Okah
• Honor thy father and thy mother — or not:
   

  One pill makes you larger
  And one pill makes you small
  And the ones that mother gives you
  Don’t do anything at all

  — Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit”

  Francis Schaeffer was one of the great intellectual minds in Christianity in the 20th century. His son Frank, however, has left the fold, and written a tell-all expose (Crazy for God) dissing his parents as crazy fanatics, while playing to the secular audience so receptive and fawning to fallen-away Christians. Frank has clearly taken the first pill, and made himself much, much smaller in the process: Crazy for God

• David Warren nails another fine essay on postmodern culture: Science v. wisdom

That’s all for now. Take care, God bless.

One of life’s great pleasures for me is discovering new music. Now, mind you, this is rarely new in the sense of being a new group which has just broken onto the scene; in most cases, I’m discovering music, artists, or groups which have been around for some time, unbeknownst to me.

One such artist I have recently run across is Jonny Lang. One of his songs, Lie to Me, caught my ear on XM radio, and I jotted it down and subsequently made a beeline for iTunes. Turns out, this guy is nothing short of extraordinary. He starts playing the guitar at age 12, releases his first album at 13, and his second album — his first solo and signature blues work, Lie to Me — is released at age 15, and goes triple platinum. He blows away critics with a voice which, at age 15, sounds like a hardened blues player three times his age. It’s gutter-grating gritty, his phrasing and expression incredibly innovative, and the guitar playing is evocative of such blues greats as Stevie Ray Vaughn, with exquisitely blended influences of soul, R&B, Motown, and gospel music. Before he turns 20, he’s touring as the warm-up band for Aerosmith, Sting, Jeff Beck, Clapton, the Rolling Stones, and B. B. King.

Not bad for a kid with a guitar.

However, life in the fast lane is rarely kind. Many older and more mature troubadours than he have fallen to its brutal revenge — think Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Brian Jones, and a host of others — to whom the Roman candle of fame proved both furious and lethal. Drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll often prove a highway to hell, and Jonny Lang was driving that freeway with pedal to the metal.

Then something changed — drastically, almost cataclysmically. In what can only be termed an extraordinary conversion experience, his entire life is transformed, bringing with it his music, immediately terminating his addiction to alcohol and drugs, and changing his very face and disposition.

I was not thinking about God, not at all. In the middle of our conversation, from that same spot that I felt something had hit me earlier, I just felt something start welling up, just burning in me, and it came up out of my throat. It was like I was throwing up, and the name “Jesus” just came out of my mouth. I just said “Jesus …”

Interviewer: Mid conversation?

Lang: Yeah. And when I said “Jesus,” my whole body started shaking. Haylie was looking right at me … (laughing).

This is the part of my story where I’ve just said, “Lord, if I’m ever doing interviews, what should I say?” People are going to think I’m insane, you know? Nevertheless, it’s what happened. I knew it was Jesus immediately from the moment I started shaking. It was like he just came up and introduced himself to me. I remember him saying, “You don’t have to have this if you don’t want it.” And I said, “No, I want it.”

I kept shaking, and I knew when it was done that I had been completely set free of all my addictions, and I knew that I didn’t have to smoke or drink or do drugs anymore. All I could do was fall on the ground, and I gave my life to him right there. I was just in shock. I thought, “I totally despised you, and you just did this to me.”

Check out his music video for “Lie to Me”:

Now, take a look at his face, and watch him perform after his experience. It is almost like he has been replaced by another human being.

Which, in a very real sense, he has.

You can read about his rather extraordinary conversion and the changes it made in his life here. Check it out.

Here’s some good links for your consideration:

• Cloaking technology: Their Deepest, Darkest Discovery
• He writes real good: Another short but elegant essay at Sippican Cootage: Infinite Calculus. Read it just for the shear pleasure of beautiful writing.
• Your health insurance company has your best interest at heart — no, really!:

  California Insurers Canceling Policies

  The City Attorney … is also opening a criminal investigation into Health Net’s practice of ‘paying employee bonuses based in part on canceling policies of people who have submitted substantial medical claims.’

  Of course, they’re now scrambling to address the PR disaster: Health Insurers Address Issue Of Nixed Policies

• Here we go again: Screening for cancer is an appealing idea, but fraught with difficulties, as I explained here.

  Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have developed a blood test with enough sensitivity and specificity to detect early stage ovarian cancer with 99 percent accuracy.

  There’s a lot unsaid here: how many people without cancer had a positive test? How much does the test cost? Is every cancer so diagnosed significant? What’s the cost of diagnostic procedures and surgeries done for a false positive test (i.e., positive test but no cancer present). Etc. Etc.

• Negotiations, diplomacy, and economics will surely end all wars: Richard John Neuhaus:
  

  Carnegie was a great believer in what he viewed as the sacred bonds of commerce, joined to the force of religion, in advancing human progress. The purpose of the Church Peace Union was the abolition of war.

  On February 11, 1914, Carnegie gave the organization $2 million, a great deal of money at the time, and addressed a letter to the trustees, a copy of which I kept posted in my office. In that letter, Carnegie said: “After the arbitration of international disputes is established and war abolished, as it certainly will be some day, and that sooner than expected, probably by the Teutonic nations, Germany, Britain, and the United States first deciding to act in unison, other powers joining later, the Trustees will divert the revenues of this fund to relieve the deserving poor and afflicted in their distress.”

  Needless to say, the deserving poor and afflicted are still waiting for their share of the endowment. The first big international project of the Church Peace Union was a conference aimed at the abolition of war to be held on the shores of Lake Constance in southern Germany on August 1, 1914. That week, Mr. Fukuyama’s “more durable and productive” basis of rational interests gave way to the war to end wars. The conference was cancelled. Or, as the organizers said, postponed to a more propitious time. For that, too, the world is still waiting.

• David Warren: His essays on the conflict between postmodern, secular society and religion are always excellent. This one’s no exception: Science v. wisdom

That’s all for now, God bless, back soon.

Fifth in an ongoing series on grace in Christianity:

1. On Purpose
2. Justification, Sanctification, & Grace
3. The Sword of Grace
4. Getting to Grace
5. The Road to Grace: Transparency

 
Honesty.

Perhaps the rarest of all human virtues, treasured mostly in its absence, brought into focus most sharply in its antithesis.

If you ponder the subject for a moment, you may well find it surprising that we are anything but honest — that we do less than express exactly what we think, that we are anything but open and honest about our actions and motives. There are, after all, no dishonest dogs, no lying cats (though some might differ), no roguish raccoons or shady shellfish or mendacious mammals — save man.

So why, then, do we twist and torture the truth, crafting clever stories or deft deceits to cover our shortcomings and faults, smiling warmly while telling the most audacious prevarications concerning things both weighty and trivial? Why is this so often our default behavior?

What, exactly, are we trying to hide?

The answer lies in that dark angel of shame, that inner incubus engendered from a life spent divesting endless energy in the pursuit of the empty self. For dishonesty arises from evil, from the desire to hide that which must not be seen, from the need to present ourselves to others as something other than we are. Our ruptured relationship with God produces a perverse and unnatural self-sufficiency, driven by the desperate desire to fill the vast inner chasm thus resulting with a host of destructive desires, behaviors, and obsessions.

These fevered yet futile attempts to kill the existential emptiness and primal agony of life lived unnaturally, isolated from the life-source of God, prove highly toxic, causing yet greater distraction by their inevitable consequences. Designed to give, we strive endlessly to acquire; created to love, we engender hatred, exploiting others to fill our unquenchable needs, and detesting them when they prove unable to meet them. Our relationships become, not fertile beds of true intimacy, but vast webs of manipulation, abuse, resentment, and fear, as we suck the life out of others, seeking to satiate the insatiable void in our still-empty soul.

When we use the finite and futile to fill our edacity for the infinite, the invariable outcome of this manic miasma is a deepening conviction of our own guilt and growing awareness of our intrinsic unworthiness. Yet there remains a gossamer thread still tying us to the divine, an ancient truth near forgotten, a genesis of the God-life deep within, which says this can not, this must not, be true. And thus we craft another narrative of necessity, convincing ourselves and all around us that we are something which in fact we are not.

This pervasive dishonesty is the antithesis of transparency, and if we are to approach the ideal of being truly integrated — our inner self and outer appearances drawing toward unity — then we must come face to face with our own deceitfulness. This pilgrimage toward honesty must begin with the one with whom we are most deceitful: ourselves.

In our sophistry and sophistication this self-delusion is called by many names: rationalization; minimalization; justification; denial; projection. Though we often place such concepts solidly in the realm of science and psychology, they are in fact the attributes of a soul unwilling to face its inner abyss. They are, distilled down to their sordid essence, our unwillingness, our inability, to be rigorously, ruthlessly honest with ourselves.

Such a journey to the center of the soul cannot, indeed should not, be undertaken alone. The very strongholds we wish to conquer are such that they unite in their own defense: you will reason that you do not rationalize; you will deny your denial; project your fury at yourself onto others; minimalize your own responsibility for much which ails you. The mind is a dangerous neighborhood, best visited with another.

There is much to be learned from those who have undertaken this road to rigorous honesty through the crushing collapse of all of life’s props, brought about by the slavery of addiction and alcoholism. Driven to utter depredation and despondency by the scourge of a compulsion unbeatable and hopeless, they stagger into smoke-filled halls and church basements to seek what help they may from others of their kind. There they find kindred spirits — coarse in speech and common in appearance — yet victorious over the selfsame demons which shriek within their own dissipated minds.

They hear, for the first time, a startling truth:

Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.

There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.

Honesty: how peculiar, how unexpected, how self-evidently foolish as the solution to a deadly losing battle against booze. Yet those who triumph are those who become most willing to expose their darkest secrets, to face their shame, to lay it open before God, and share these hidden horrors which have enslaved them with another trusted friend.

Of course, you protest, you are not at all like those people, drunks and druggies, whose lack of moral character, hedonism, and enfeebled will must depend on such extreme and ridiculous measures to overcome their moral turpitude. You, on the other hand, a faithful Christian, have seen the light, and are walking the straight and narrow, secure in your own righteousness — err, the righteousness of Christ. The truth has set you free, after all — you know Christ.

Uh-huh.

And Christ knows you, and spoke about you often: something about “whitewashed tombs” comes to mind.

The path to honesty starts — startlingly — by getting honest, first and foremost, about ourselves. The dark heart of man knows no bounds — and the Christian is no exception, no matter how righteously we present ourselves to the outside world. Our hearts are filled with greed, lust, hatred, fear, pride, and extreme selfishness. Our one great advantage is this: when we are honest about our true nature, and act on that honesty, there is grace unlimited to overcome these inner demons.

So how then should we proceed?

We should, first of all, be systematic. Recovery programs use an approach which lists resentments, fears, and harms done to others — thereby covering a vast expanse of problems in human relationships which poison the soul — relationships so often devastated by the extraordinary self-centeredness so central to addiction. Other structured formats exist, based on lists of character defects, the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, the seven deadly sins, or other moral or spiritual principles. In a subsequent post I hope to expand on the recovery model, as well as provide a list of questions as a starting point to discovering core moral failings. The key here is not to achieve some legalistic righteousness, nor to engender guilt and self-pity, but rather to bring about conviction — that painful but healing knowledge of where we have failed, which is the commencement of a journey toward breaking the control of self-centered evil over our lives.

The second point is this: we do this to share with another. We should not strive to paint a rosy picture to impress, nor fill our story with a host of justifications, or endless whining about how life and its inhabitants have done us dirty. Surely they have in many instances — but we are responsible for our own attitudes and actions, regardless of the culpability of others. If we are rigorous and honest with ourselves, we will generally find we have brought much of life’s pain upon ourselves.

And lastly, we must pray. Unaided, our souls will drift and dodge, and find a million excuses for putting off this necessary work or justifying our ill motives and evil actions. Prayer empowers us to know, and in knowing, enables us to change. “I am the Truth and the Light” — both the ideal and the means to grasp and achieve it.

Everything inside you will rebel at this task, complete with procrastination, timidity, and our insane busyness whereby we avoid facing life’s painful truths and necessary reflections.

And of course, this self-examination isn’t really necessary, after all.

Unless, of course, you want to experience grace.