Out of the Silent Planet: A Few Thoughts
I recently finished re-reading C.S. Lewis' first book in his Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet.
It's one of those books that even most people who love and have read Lewis before are utterly unfamiliar with. But it's good. REAL good. Like, "get home to find someone has made you freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies" good.
You can read about the plot and overview here, so I won't waste time with too many details about the story. There are big themes in this book. It's a short, easy read, so don't fret my fellow short attention-spanned Millennials!
But, on the other had, don't be fooled: there are some serious, heady, fascinating topics and existential questions broached in this tale.
The main character is Dr. Ransom who specializes in languages and dialects. Through a series of events, he ends up on the planet Mars - called Malachandria by the natives. Again, don't worry if you aren't a science fiction fan: this book remains palatable for men and women of all ages above about 13 years old. The protagonist (Ransom) is pitted against two different types of antagonists who are working together.
The first, Mr. Devine, is a morally-depraved, money-grubbing, soul-less, seemingly irredeemable hedonist. He is driven by prestige and riches and whatever might benefit him and raise his stature in society.
The second, Professor Weston, is for all intents and purposes Ransom's doppelganger. Both have the common thread of being educators and intellectuals, but they part ways on nearly every other core value/idea/ideal. Even in a physical sense they part company: Ransom is tall and slender, Weston shorter and chubby.
One specific encounter in the book was, in my mind, important enough to briefly share with you in order to make a bigger point that applies directly to our lives today.
Eventually the three humans who have traveled to Mars/Malachandria end up in the presence of the "king" of the planet. He is something akin to an angel and the creatures on the planet refer to him as Oyarsa. For the Christian reader - and you by no means must be one to enjoy this compelling narrative - you will quickly pick up on the deeper, spiritual elements of this book!
So the three humans have an audience with the Oyarsa and while Ransom has become "friends" the local population, Devine and Weston - driven by nefarious motivations that are contrary and foreign to the sinless world of Malachandria - aren't the most popular blokes on the block. Using a strategy often employed by agents of the Creator (as well as the members of the Trinity themselves) in the Bible, Oyarsa asks Weston a series of questions regarding his intentions in coming to Mars. It's sort of one of those, "I want you to say out-loud the insanity that is in your heart in hopes that you might be convicted by your own words" strategies.
To the point here: Weston claims that he has mastered space travel and come to Malachandria because of his noble passion for the advancement and progress of mankind. He is a "man of science" who is filled with plenty of confidence regarding his abilities and capacity to learn and advance his species. He is defiant, even in the face of overwhelming and, quite candidly, terrifying spiritual forces that clearly disprove much of his materialistic, naturalistic worldview.
Oyarsa can already see that Devine is a morally-decadent and spiritually-decayed, and even says that if Devine was under his authority he would simply "un-make" him because of what little service he provides to the universe. But with Weston, and sensing the genuineness to his misguided aims, Oyarsa has more compassion. You can tell that this angelic creature would do what he could to aid in any potential internal rehabilitation that may be possible for Weston. Oyarsa tries to get Weston to see how shallow and empty his worldview truly is. (What follows is a rough paraphrasing of a much longer, much more interesting conversation that you'll really enjoy when you read, or re-read, this book):
Oyarsa: "Why do you want to bring the human race to Malachandria? What is your motivation? Is it the bodies of the people of earth that you love?"
Weston: "No, I feel a duty to mankind though"
Oyarsa: "Is it the mind, the heart and soul, of mankind that you love?"
Weston: "Not so much."
Oyarsa: "It seems odd that someone who cares not for the body of humans, nor for their internal make-up, would be so passionate and persistent regarding the advancement of that species..."
What Oyarsa is getting at is this: how can those who espouse secular materialism and the "religion of science" claim to be acting nobly or for the altruistic good of mankind? They have no right to such language. Their worldview is empty and has no culmination other than decomposition in the grave. You couldn't call someone "brave" who was willing to die for other already-dead and accidental cells.
Weston constantly betrays his true callousness throughout the story: for example, before kidnapping Ransom for the journey to Mars, he is ready to kidnap a mentally-handicapped boy as a "sacrifice" to the creatures of Malachandria. (Note: having a scientist be so reckless with the life of a handicapped/disabled child character in this instance was very intentional...)
Even during this scene in front of Oyarsa's royal court, Weston - who is under the impression that the natives mean them harm - is trying to give away his two human companions as bartering chips. He says on more than one occasion that anyone who thinks that human "progress" is not worth the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals - well, then such a person is an idiot and contemptible.
Why do I bring any of this up? The worship of science, and the acceptance of the secular academic world's insistence that faith/religion have no legs to stand on in their arena of expertise, is dangerous and devoid of any true meaning.
It offers no morality or comfort or explanation of the "why?" question that matters more than any other.
C.S. Lewis wasn't anti-science. In fact, his views on various things like evolution would more than likely be in conflict with many of my fellow Evangelicals. There's a time and place for that debate, but the point here is simply that the modern world is full of people who want to reject God and because of the advancements in science and technology those people feel like they have the intellectual/rhetorical cover to remove the undeniable accountability even a vague understanding of "Creator" saddles mankind with.
Abortion. Euthanasia. Genetic engineering. Cloning. We know what is already here, and we can reasonably guess what the very near future holds. If your understanding of life does not begin with "In the beginning, God created..." everything is up for grabs. And, if we're being intellectually honest, requires an admission on the part of anyone holding such a view that life has no real meaning other than hedonism (to one degree or another).
How can you look someone in the eye and say both "You're a randomly gathered collection of protoplasm, there's nothing special/unique about your existence and nothing happens when you die" and at the same time "I am fueled to do research because I believe in the advancement of the meaningless progeny of strangers I'll never meet, nor care about"?
Loving your neighbor only matters if you know, acknowledge and love Him. Weston's desire to help the human race "progress" was genuine - as Oyarsa concluded - but it was genuinely wrong.
Please get yourself a copy of this book, or if you've already read it and have any other thoughts leave us a Comment below!
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(Note: Me and my friend Whitney just started reading the second book in the Space Trilogy: Perelandra. We'll be sporadically Tweeting and posting things on Facebook about the story and its themes as we go through it. If, like me, you've already read it...grab your copy and go through it again. It's always more fun with others who you can bounce ideas off of!)
Paul Ryan and the Catholic Vote
I wrote a piece of the website "Religion & Politics" this week about the impact that I think the selection of Paul Ryan will have on the Romney campaign's ability to win the "Catholic Vote."
An excerpt:
Mitt Romney’s selection of “The Man with the Budget Plan” from Janesville, Wisconsin has energized his campaign and brought discussions of things like “worldview” and “vision-casting” unmistakably to the forefront of this presidential race. In all the ways Governor Romney is perceived as being, shall we say, “fluid,” in his various political positions, Paul Ryan is not. If you want to know what the man thinks—to borrow a tired Apple advertising line—“there’s a YouTube for that.”
Congressman Ryan is a man of conviction. He is a man of ideas, and specific ones at that. He is a man who proudly wears his “God, Family, Country” ethos on his well-groomed sleeves. But what does his VP nod actually mean to the all-important Catholic vote? Will his Catholic bona fides translate to votes at the ballot box come November 6th?
How's that for a cliff-hanger of my own! Read the entire thing right here, and let me know what you think.
(And PLEASE give it a Tweet and/or "Like" on Facebook!)
Baseball, Dennis & the French
A man has made a compelling documentary about the impact Dennis Prager has had on his own intellectual and spiritual journey. It's called Baseball, Dennis & the French and you can check out the trailer below:
One interesting thing about this entire project to me personally is the fact that the producer/director was led to his Christian faith by the radio show and writings of a Jewish intellectual (Dennis). Just a neat tidbit, in my opinion.
Morality and the Economy
The favorite line of an increasing number of Center-Right politicians and pundits goes something like this: "This election is all about the economy, and so social issues - issues of morality - are going to have to take a back-seat." To put it in terms everyone can understand: Mitt, not Rick (Santorum or Perry).
Seems reasonable, right? I mean, the economy is, shall we say, lackluster, and it seems as if the #1 topic on peoples' minds is - to quote the previous Madame Speaker of the House - "jobs, jobs, jobs!"
But are we setting up a false dichotomy, one in which "morality" and "economics" are needlessly (and some might say "foolishly") separated? Are we recklessly forgetting that neither Party ever wins national elections without an animated and motivated base, and that the bases of each are animated and motivated by "social issues" more than anything else?
I am fine with Mitt Romney being our nominee in 2012, and my concern is not simply that Republicans will fail to meet the seemingly mandatory quota of "Pro-Life" and "Traditional Marriage" references in stump speeches. What troubles me is the thought that many on the Center-Right don't see the inseparable connection between morality and economics. We're in a "long war" against the irreconcilable wing of Islam externally, but here at home we're in an intellectual - nearly spiritual - battle for the hearts and minds of millions of people who typically vote liberal/Democrat and who have become convinced that the federal government is their caretaker and friend.
Writing in his Break Point commentary today, Chuck Colson drives home this very point in a clear and articulate way:
Doesn’t anybody get the connection between the social issues and economics issues?
One candidate who does, Rick Santorum had the courage to link the two in a recent Iowa town hall meeting. (And before I go on, please, folks, I’m not endorsing him or anyone. I never do.)
Here’s what Senator Santorum said:
“Yes, [the election is] about growth and the economy, [but] it’s also about what is at the core of our country . . . faith and family. You can’t have a strong economy, you can’t have limited government if the family is breaking down and we don’t live good, moral, and decent lives.”
Precisely right. And what does he get for his remarks? Backhanded compliments for his showing in Iowa and a stern warning from, among others, the conservative National Review:
Here’s what the National Review wrote online: “In a general election…where the focus is almost certainly going to be on economic issues, it is questionable whether Santorum’s relentless focus on social issues will play well with independent voters, especially in the crucial suburbs.”
Hogwash. If the nation’s current economic crisis has taught us anything, it’s that a healthy economy cannot thrive in the midst of moral breakdown. Ethical failures on Wall Street, Main Street, and Capitol Hill put us into this mess we’re in today, as I’ve said many times before.
Again, I don't care if Rick Santorum isn't the GOP's primary victor. As an evangelical conservative I honestly don't. Politicians matter, but ideas, ideals, and values matter more. We should be diligent in selecting the candidate we will end up voting for in the primary and general election, but we should be ever-vigilant for opportunities to make the moral case for free enterprise and, as the good folks at The Acton Institute put it, the "Free and Virtuous Society."
Colson continues:
But how about some facts? I’ll have the citations for you at BreakPoint.org: Take incarceration rates: something Santorum has alluded to and I’ve seen with my own eyes: “Young men who grow up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families.” And “70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes.”
How about education? 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. And children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes.
I could go on and on.
Do you think that crime rates, incarceration, low educational achievement, out of wedlock births, affect the economy and government spending? Of course they do and the statistics prove this!
If you want a healthy, thriving economy you’ve got to have a strong moral societal foundation. And any so-called “conservatives” who think otherwise are simply deluding themselves; the two issues simply can’t be separated.
I couldn't agree more.
What say you? Is Colson over-stating his case?
Merry Christmas From Ronald (Not McDonald)
President Reagan sums up how I feel about the Christmas season in this brief national address he delivered in 1981:
For more on the TRUE meaning of Christmas, here's Pastor John Piper:
God bless you, your family, and the United States of America!
Hitch Is Dead
By: R.J. Moeller
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As most of you already have heard, Christopher Hitchens, the renowned British journalist/atheist/author, died of pneumonia Thursday night at a hospital in Houston, TX. Mr. Hitchens had been battling cancer of the esophagus for more than a year now. He went from looking like this:
...to this (and in a relatively short amount of time):
When I heard the news late Thursday night, I was listening to a local radio station while driving home from seeing a very stupid movie (the new Mission Impossible) and instantly my mood went from silly anger about Tom Cruise's sub-par film to true, genuine sadness for the family of Mr. Hitchens. Chris' brother, Peter, is actually an outspoken Evangelical Christian and talented writer in his own right. I thought of the numbing pain a Believer must feel when a sibling or parent who does not share their faith passes away. I thought about the the fact that if the Bible is indeed true, and Christopher did not change his mind about Jesus Christ before succumbing to his illness, then he is in Hell right now. There is no way around it: this is a tough pill for anyone to swallow.
Christianity is often attacked for supposedly being "callous" with its "fire-and-brimstone" teachings on eternal punishment for those who reject God in this life. Perhaps some of those charges are true. Perhaps many are not. What I do know is this: It is important for all of us to come face-to-face with the implications of the things we say we believe in, and for me, last night, hearing about the death of Christopher Hitchens, was yet another one of those moments.
I honestly never hated "Hitch" (as he was known to his friends). In fact, I adored his writing style and prose. He was a complex man and a supremely talented communicator. His columns were a delight to read and I re-posted some of them on this very site over the past 4 years. I don't wish to run down his entire biography here and now, so for more on that I would recommend this review of his autobiography Hitch-22 at National Review Online ("His Own Drum") from last year. The guy had an incredible life and for all intents and purposes, practiced what he preached. In a strange way, despite his militant atheism and predominantly liberal political views, I respected that fact.
I respect consistency, probably because of how inconsistent I know I am in my daily life.
Hitchens hated religion, hated the idea of a Higher Power, and was unrelenting in his critique of all religious faith. He wrote a famous book a few years back entitled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
Those are, in my opinion, unnecessarily strong words to describe something more than 95% of all humans who have ever lived have practiced. Belief in some sort of Higher Power is as natural as breathing. Even the suffering we see screams of an "evil" that can't adequately be described in humanistic, secular terms.
Religion is not the problem. Bad values and a distorted worldview are. Everyone believes in something. Even atheists like Hitchens do not want anarchy, and if you are to avoid anarchy, people must have something to believe in. We need a right and wrong. Atheists look at that and say, "See, it's just an evolutionary defense mechanism that people form religions...it's all about controlling the masses." Notice that they do not say, "So let's abolish all institutions and live like feral pigs." They instead say, "I know a better way for people to live and will now work to see it implemented." Christopher Hitchens had a "moral code" and set of values he lived by, he simply thought it superior to the Judeo-Christian traditions and teachings that have largely defined the Western culture he was a benefactor of. But he still believed in something.
As Bob Dylan sang, "You gotta' serve somebody."
I'm not saying that Chrisopher Hitchens did not understand this. I truly think he did. My real problem with Hitchens' writings on religion (and the writings of those like him through the ages) is not that he hated Christianity, but is the trickle-down secularism it produces in the hearts and minds of others (most notably, young people). Because so much of the mainstream media and so many members of modern academia agree with his worldview, Hitchens was able to reach millions of impressionable young minds with a biased message that passed itself off as an un-biased - scientific even! - appraisal of the natural world. Meanwhile, stuffy old Christians are perpetually framed as those "world is flat", out-of-touch, close-minded bigots whose time has passed. Of course many brilliant defenders of theism (i.e. William Lane Craig, Jay Richards, etc.) have challenged and debated men like Hitchens, but never are those men of faith given the same prominence and respect in the culture at-large as Hitchens, Dawkins, and Sam Harris are.
But I'm not here today to feed you nothing but sour grapes. As I've already stated, Christopher Hitchens was a phenomenal talent and man of conviction (however wrong those convictions might have been). He was willing to anger liberals with his support for unpopular positions like the War on Terror and invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He was unafraid of what either side had to say about him. Hitchens was even willing to take on the sacred cow of late-night fake-news programming hosted by the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
He was witty, engaging, and mesmerizing when you got the chance to see him interviewed on TV or YouTube clips.
I recommend this one to you:
In closing: I'm sorry he's gone. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. My deepest hope is that he called out to his Maker before the end.
You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Charlie Brown’s Christmas Miracle
I came across this interesting piece at National Review Online and thought it more than worth sharing. Basically, it is a recounting of what it took to get A Charlie Brown Christmas on the air. There was plenty of controversy in 1965 surrounding the decision to broadcast something so blatantly Christian (with a passage from Luke read aloud by one of the characters, no less).
An excerpt:
Few headlines about network television make me giddy. Fewer still make me hopeful that all is good in the world. But back in August of 2010, I read the following headline from the media pages with great excitement: “Charlie Brown Is Here to Stay: ABC Picks Up ‘Peanuts’ Specials Through 2015.” The first of these to be made, the famous Christmas special, was an instant classic when it was created by Charles Schulz on a shoestring budget back in 1965, and thanks to some smart television executives, it will be around for at least another five years for all of us to see and enjoy.
What people don’t know is that the Christmas special almost didn’t happen, because some not-so-smart television executives almost didn’t let it air. You see, Charles Schulz had some ideas that challenged the way of thinking of those executives 46 years ago, and one of them had to do with the inclusion in his Christmas cartoon of a reading from the King James Bible’s version of the Gospel of Luke.
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
As far back as 1965 — just a few years before Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” — CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special, no less! Ah, the perils of living on an island in the northeast called Manhattan.
And here is the portion of the Charlie Brown special that was so controversial:
When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. We can not only vote in elections at the ballot box, but we can vote with our dollars, our TV-viewing decisions, and with an email or two to networks and their sponsors. There are some battles worth fighting, and defending the Christ in Christmas is perhaps one of them.
My Latest AEI Post: “Israel Asks For a King”
Just up today over AEI's Two Cents blog is my most recent column in the on-going "Why I'm a Christian and fan of the free market" series I started earlier this spring. This week I delve into the I Samuel 8 account of the Israelites demanding that they be given a king to rule over them. Mankind seems to have a deep-rooted desire to be lorded over, and as often as they can, they give their freedoms away for a song (or the promise of security).
Call me biased, but it's a really interesting piece, and you can read the entire thing right here.
Enjoy!
Easter Reminder: Humanity “No Accident”
After a rousing Easter service and traditional meal with my family (albeit at Chilis because my mom was under the weather and couldn't cook and my tweenage sisters love queso dip), I was perusing Easter Sunday news headlines and came across this Yahoo News story out of Vatican City.
Pope Benedict XVI marked the holiest night of the year for Christians by stressing that humanity isn't a random product of evolution.
Benedict emphasized the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily Saturday, saying it was wrong to think at some point "in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it."
"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature," he said. "But no, reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine reason."
While I am not Catholic, I would wholeheartedly agree and endorse these comments should they have come from any faith tradition. Pope Benedict is a wise, godly man, and clearly articulated my general worldview (which you can read more about in my Mere Conservatism: Theology essay). I believe that his message to the world on Easter is one that resonates with millions of Americans. If we could put aside all our pre-conceived notions of what it means to be a Christian - notions that often spring from negative experiences we may have had with those who, rightly or wrongly, call themselves "Christian" - I believe that most of us would acknowledge a faith in a loving, personal, Creator God.
Today and Christmas are two of the only times each year that many attend a religious service. Even non-believers like to gather together for Easter. All the secularization of the holiday aside (pictured right), people know that today is a special day. A day to be with family. A day to go to church.
If God is worth paying attention to on "high holy days," perhaps He has something to offer the other 363.
Happy Easter and God bless!
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Dan Savage: Pansy or Prophetic Pansy?
By: R.J. Moeller
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When Perez Hilton is the voice of reason - be worried, America.
In the flamboyant wake of the profanity-laced tirade delivered by sex columnist and gay rights advocate Dan Savage to a group of high school students at a conference on journalism - the perfect place for a sex advice columnist, no? - the gay celebrity blogger Hilton offered this Rodney King-like appeal to all the haters out there:
The "walk-out" (who was chewed-out) that Perez is referring to was a young girl who apparently, upon hearing her Christian faith maligned by some angry "journalist," decided she would probably be able to still make a go at a career in journalism without enduring more verbal abuse from a man who convinced President Barack Obama to cut an "anti verbal abuse" commercial for his "It Gets Better" campaign. That young girl was the first of many 15 and 16 year old students who at their very young ages were practicing the very same non-violent, non-abusive protest Dan Savage claims to love so much (and claims is absent among young people today).
No one fought Savage. No one stuffed him in a locker. No swirlies were administered. But not even peaceful, non-violent advocacy floats in the ocean of rage swelling inside a man like Dan Savage should said peaceful, non-violent advocacy happen to contradict his rigorously dogmatic worldview.
Here's the clip in question:
Before I respond to some of Mr. Savage's impassioned claims, let me give you one other sampling of the kind of rhetoric old Danny Boy (an Irish "Catholic" from Chicago) employs in his public appearances:
(Warning! Not meant for children...or really for any humans of any age, for that matter)
Classy, no? Sure am glad that we searched high-and-low to find the most qualified adult in the country to head-up an anti-bullying campaign! Or was this one of those jobs that straight Americans simply will not do, President Obama?
Either way, I'd bet the free-range farm that the Dan Savage I know will have junior high bullies hammering their victims into plowshares before you can say, "I wish all Republicans were F-ing dead!"
As a quick aside, the obvious absurdity of the entire "anti-bullying" agenda is that no one is "pro-bullying."
Well...except that one guy named - let's just call him D.S. - who recently found a group of malleable, self-conscious high schoolers and unleashed all the pent-up aggression he has harbored toward his religious, conservative parents on them. That's one guy who seems to love bullying. The rest of us are still normal people who would love to have open and honest debate about our values (and our votes on things like state-wide propositions meant to decide the legal definition of marriage being upheld).
But I digress.
Hmmm. You know, I think Mr. Savage is on to something here. I don't know what your public school experience was like, but if I had a nickel for every time one of my utterly non-religious teenage classmates cited Mosaic Law directly after calling another classmate "fag" or "queer", I'd be able to afford a copy of this other, presumably limited-release, version of the Bible that Dan Savage has read in which it tells God's people to "go forth and humiliate all the nations of homos you will encounter."
If I paused here and used the stuff (common sense) I don't have any longer because the media, Hollywood, and my public school teachers taught me this other totally hip stuff (nonsense), I might be inclined to think that the whole "anti-bullying" campaign is really just cultural cover for a more insidious indoctrination (which in turn is masking the massive payback middle-aged gay men want against their own tormentors back in junior high and high school).
Naahhh, that can't be it. Someone with a heart of gold (and the purified tongue of Isaiah) like Dan Savage is definitely just looking out for the kids!
You would need a team of writers, working round-the-clock for a year, to fully explain all the
ways in which what Dan Savage said here is poppycock. So let me just point out a few things our generation's Ghandi didn't quite put in their proper context. (Note: "context" is a word we religious, free market conservatives use as code when we want to be racist or homophobic and talk about intolerant things such as facts.)
First off, there are plenty of people who still adhere to OT law regarding things like shellfish consumption. You can direct further questions about why they do, what they do, to the Jews who do. But Savage was raised Catholic and saves his most vile public hatred for Christians. That is who he is really talking to here.
So what's a practicing evangelical or Catholic to do when faced with such seemingly insurmountable verbal assaults? How can we ever hope to climb out from the mountain of Leftist, secular logic we're apparently buried under?
I suppose reading the Bible - the entire Bible - would be my first suggestion.
Christians don't adhere to the strict OT laws because they were handed down for a specific group of people, living at a specific time, and living on a specific piece of land. The new covenant in Christ frees all Believers from being "slaves to the law." This, like many of the best and most interesting things in life, has a counter-balance: Christ's reminder that he didn't come to remove the law, but to fulfill it. God still has something to say about morality and human interactions on this earth. But now we worship our Creator and Savior in spirit and in truth, not through top-down cultural and societal guidelines or the sacrifices of animals for a sin atonement.
I'm not ignoring Scripture's command to avoid shrimp, but I will continue to ignore biblically illiterate "journalists" who use such infantile arguments only because they know enough to know that millions of self-described Christian sadly do not know what I just explained. (That one's on us, fellow Believers!)
Other people who "waved Bibles over their heads" (leading up to) and during the Civil War: Christians in the North - you know, that more than half of the country that didn't allow slavery - who pioneered the abolitionist movement and even did nefarious things like start their own political party when the Whigs wouldn't take a strong enough stand against slavery.
Christianity has a standard to point people to, to hold itself to. We can call each other to account, even when some are using the name of Christ to do wicked and terrible things.
Secular-progressive ideology has Vanity Fair columns, New York Times editorials, the agenda of teachers unions, lawyers who believe South Africa has a better Bill of Rights, and Al Gore power-point presentations to guide them through the murky waters of human existence.
In Dan Savage's world, how do we know when something is wrong? Or evil? How do we know bullying is wrong? What can we use for a moral standard? Whatever Barack Obama reads from his teleprompter? Whatever Congress - the collection of people who currently have a lower approval rating than Hugo Chavez among American voters - enacts into law?
Should we rest our hops on whichever Public Service Announcement on YouTube gets the most amount of views? Or whichever hate speech campaign advertisement gets the most amount of popular actors or NBA players to read off a cue card in it?
Or how about this: If we're all here by accident, if a book like the Bible and a Creator like the God described in its pages are nothing more than the ramblings of Michelle Bachmann's close-mined ideological ancestors, then where do we turn for a source of moral standards?
Natural selection? Christians are always mocked for disagreeing that "Nothing x No One = Everything" when it comes to the universe's existence, but let's take the Darwinist at his word and assume natural selection and survival of the fittest. How does the promotion of homosexual activity square itself with creatures who are in desperate need to procreate and advance the species if it hopes to avoid extinction? How does one explain patently obvious facts like that evolution saw fit to make sure that male and female body parts "match up"?
These are fair questions to ask, in my opinion. If I'm a sucker, bigot, and moron for believing what I believe about God, Scripture, and the proper relations between the sexes, Dan Savage has a few things I'd like cleared up about his "moral (but don't ask me where I got it) high-ground" position on the subjects he raised in his diatribe.
To paraphrase the great G.K. Chesterton: The problem was never, will never, be Scripture - we are the problem. I am the problem. Sin is the problem. Divorce wasn't "God getting it wrong" as Jesus pointed out in Matthew 19. Such things are finite "solutions" (or realities) to a deeper, eternal problem inherent in all of us.
God is sinless, His Word is flawless, and we are fallen. It is precisely because people like Dan Savage (and myself before coming to faith in Christ) refuse to acknowledge and confess such immutable, undeniable facts that they are so desperate to defend their way of life and attack ours.
And it's not all about homosexuality with us conservative Christians. Honest, it's not! Sin is sin is sin. Sure, the "gay issue" gets a lot of play in the press, but so much of that (if you'll care to notice) is coming from the angry pro-gay side who seems to have a chip on their collective shoulder because - in my opinion - they resent someone, anyone, out there not signing-off on their lifestyle. They are hoppin' mad that we aren't applauding them for their advocacy efforts to indoctrinate future generations with what we consider to be radical views on human sexuality and relationships.
(Cue the snickering laughter that will never come from the SNL crowd after Seth Myers never tells a joke like that on "Weekend Update.")
Alright, so I could go on for hours critiquing what Dan Savage spewed on stage at this "journalism" convention, but here feels like a good place to call it quits (for now). Let me say that I don't hate this man. I don't care who he decides to smooch behind the doors of his eco-friendly abode. But he and his loud-mouthed ilk have brought the discussion to our doorsteps and involved things like tax dollars, public policy, and the education of our young people. He's the one who compared evangelicals' stance on gay marriage to Sharia Law. He's the one who misrepresented and maligned the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
You can't spit in my soup and tell me I have to eat it too. Especially not when your openly stated goal is to teach my kids to spit in my soup as well.
If Dan is serious about engaging in a meaningful and productive dialogue on these theological and historical issues he raised, I would encourage him to set up a series of public conversations with thoughtful men on "my side" like Pastor John Piper or Pastor Mark Driscoll. If he genuinely wants a spirited debate, go talk to adults who have studied the text and religion in question for a lifetime.
But calling little kids who had the guts to quietly stand up (and walk out) for their beliefs "pansies" - a term inferring that they were acting in an effeminate manner - is beyond cowardly.
However, and I close with this, I fear that Mr. Savage's views, and the unwavering way in which he presented them in this video clip above, are representative of a moral and cultural tide that has already swept over American society and even infiltrated the Church. If Christians can't defend what we claim to believe, if we lack the conviction and courage to do and proclaim what is right regardless of what is popular, then Dan Savage will be seen decades from now as a prophet.
Jeremiah. Isaiah. Nehemiah. Boys, on behalf of my generation, I apologize in advance.