The Value of the Unapplied

My home church, Redemption Tempe, does a very good job of applying faith to all areas of life. Over the past few months, they've gone so far as to interview a different individual every week during the service about their vocation and how they seek to behave in that vocation in light of their faith. We've had people representing occupations from fields such as athletics, medicine, education, and construction, and it's been very interesting and thought-provoking! One thing I have noticed, however, is that most of the people interviewed work directly with or for the good of other people: even the researcher interviewed a few weeks ago was an MD studying pediatric cancer, and there have been no artists of any type interviewed. While I know (from other events and from speaking with the pastors) that Redemption believes any vocation can be used for the glory of God and has intrinsic value, I have seen in other Christian circles a definite desire to justify any vocation or endeavor by directly linking it to some application for the good of humanity or the spread of the gospel.
For example, in this paradigm, the study of literature or history might be perceived as having value only insofar as the lessons derived from that study enabled one to better serve others or impact society. Music and the arts might be considered worthwhile only if centered on explicitly Christian themes, intended for use in church, or used for healing or comforting. In my own vocational sphere, science is often seen as "good" only when it is clearly bound to some clinical application or environmental good. The broader Christian community smiles upon things like diagnostic lab sciences; research into different diseases and their detection, treatment, and prevention; evaluation of food and water pollution; research into cleaner technologies; and projects to make clinically and environmentally relevant discoveries and tools available to underprivileged areas. The so-called "pure sciences," on the other hand - research simply for the sake of knowledge and discovery - are ignored or seen as less valuable, along with what I'll call pure art - art for the sake of beauty, truth, and creation.
It is not incredibly difficult to understand this way of thinking. People in the church believe (correctly) that our primary call in life, regardless of our vocation and talents, is to love God and to love others. It can be hard for them to see how reading a classic novel, painting a portrait, or studying the social habits of bees manages to accomplish either of those things, and so they consider them to be of lesser value. With some impressive mental gymnastics and a good imagination they might be able to find some connection between those occupations and practical relevant service to others or to God, but the link will always seem slightly tenuous and unreliable, casting a shadow of doubt on those activities and the people who pursue them vocationally.
Is this an appropriate way to view different callings and careers? When choosing a vocational path, should we be careful to select something with at least the potential for that sort of practical application in service to others? I have at least one friend who consciously made that a part of his career choice planning, and I went through a lot of soul-searching along these lines myself, trying to force myself to fit into a medical profession simply because of its potential to benefit others and open avenues for sharing Christ. Since then, though, I've come to believe that this is an incomplete way to evaluate vocation, and that what it ultimately amounts to is Christian utilitarianism.
What do I mean by that? Well, in secular philosophical utilitarianism, things or activities gain worth or moral standing in direct proportion to the quantifiable good or happiness they produce. This can be construed in terms of either personal happiness or social good (which is essentially the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people). Christian utilitarianism in its popular and loosely defined manifestations eschews personal happiness and satisfaction as a justifying end, but embraces the social good as a justifying end, adding to the definition of the social good things like freedom of religion, access to the Bible, and faith in God. Sometimes this social good is elevated to the primary end, even eclipsing what the catechism says is the chief end of man: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Maybe this happens because the social good is a much more visible and quantifiable pursuit - I don't know. In any case, it can be very frustrating for someone who works in a more abstract field, whose vocation does not tangibly or directly impact issues of physical/emotional well being, poverty, social justice, education, missions, and so on, to try to justify their vocation and find lasting meaning in it, because of the strength and prevalence of this paradigm within the church.
What utilitarianism excludes is the concept that things are or can be "good-in-themselves" - that is, things do not necessarily require a justifying end to be valuable and worthwhile. Or, to put it another way, the joy of exploring and discovering more of God's creation is a good thing whether or not any clinically or agriculturally relevant application is ever made because of it. A piece of music or work of art is worth creating and delighting in because of its innate beauty or the truth it represents, whether or not it is explicitly Christian, or whether or not a lesson or parable can be drawn from it, and even whether or not it is ever shared. These things are not "less than" because they do not have a justifying end planned as part of their purpose and execution. They are simply good because of what they are: good because in pursuing them we reflect God's joy in creating beauty and order and glorify Him by probing the depths of that beauty and rejoicing in Him in it. That may be all. But it is more than enough.
I want to encourage the church to remember what the chief end of man truly is, to reflect on the woman in the Gospels whose sacrifice of worship was praised by Jesus as a beautiful act even though she could have used those resources to provide for the poor, to dwell on the countless unnecessary but wonderful things God Himself created. It is a good thing to devote our lives to the service of others, and I believe it should be our posture towards others in general even if it is not specifically related to our vocation. But it is not the only worthwhile thing, or even the greatest thing. The greatest thing is to glorify God, and one way we can do that is through immersing ourselves in the beauties of His creation, learning more about it, meditating on its complexities, imaging His creativity in our own art and invention. Our vocations may not be acts of service, but they can still be acts of worship, beautiful, valuable, and worthy of the time and diligence we invest in them.

Marriage in the Church

An acquaintance of mine recently remarried. She's a friend of mine on Facebook because I know her family well, but I'm not particularly close with her. She and her new husband look incredibly happy together, and all of our mutual friends were congratulating her on her wedding. But I didn't. Honestly, I'm confused by the whole situation. I don't know why she divorced her first husband (or even if she initiated the divorce). I do know that she still seems passionate about following and serving God, and probably is a lot better at those things than I am. It just gnaws away inside me that this is her second husband, that the vows she made the first time around have been broken, and that the community around her - the church community, the Christian community - spoke no words of sorrow or rebuke over the brokenness and is now publicly rejoicing in her new marriage. I don't know her story, and knowing her family I doubt that this divorce was entered into lightly, so I don't want to judge her specifically. For all I know, her first husband was abusive and unfaithful. But it makes me think. And in general, I see the church rejoicing at the beginning of marriages (which is all well and good) but sitting back silently when those marriages falter and fail.

Marriage is not strengthened when divorce is accepted.

The institution of marriage is a good thing, a God-ordained thing, meant to bring joy and sanctification to the participants and designed to represent the relationship between Christ and the church. So it is both natural and fitting that the church community should (in general) rejoice and celebrate the coming together of two people in marriage! But the intent and design of marriage necessitate boundaries and limitations to it. We would not rejoice if a father tried to marry his daughter, or if a man tried to marry multiple women, or if a friend tried to marry someone we knew to be abusive; those of us with more strictly Biblical views would also not rejoice if a man tried to marry another man, or if a Christian tried to marry an unbeliever. Some of those marriages act against the first purpose of marriage by destroying the spouses' joy or by making it more difficult for them to walk with God and grow in their faith; others work against the second purpose by twisting that imagery and distorting our understanding of the relationship between God and us as the church. Seeing the immediate and temporal happiness of the individuals entering into one of those skewed marriages might make it natural for us to want to rejoice in their coming together - but it might not be fitting if the relationship is inherently flawed.

One could respond that all relationships are flawed to some degree, and that no marriage adequately represents the relationship of Christ to the church, and I would of course agree. My own sin puts strain on my own marriage every day, eats away at my joy and my husband's joy, and dims our marital reflection of Christ. But incest, polygamy, and homosexuality are insurmountable obstacles to accurately reflecting the relationship between Christ and the church, no matter how happy and committed the individuals may be. On the other hand, a mismatched marriage would have the essence and character needed to reflect that relationship, and thus not be inherently flawed, but it may be unwise for a myriad of reasons. So I think the church should be firm about rejecting the first type of relationship (those which are in essence unable to reflect the full Biblical imagery of marriage) and should counsel against the second type but provide as much support as possible to those already in the midst of one (so that a bad situation might possibly redeemed, and the significant sin or area of discord used as a catalyst for sanctification and increased faith).

Divorce is difficult for me, however, because I'm often unsure of which category it falls into. Clearly, it destroys entirely the Christological imagery of marriage. Christ will not "divorce" or abandon His church, and our lack of faithfulness will not tear apart the relationship either. But I know that after a divorce people can go on to do great things and become great men and women of faith, and that God will even use the divorce to draw them to Himself. And the church should play a role in that redemptive work. Our judgment of the sin should not push the sinner farther away from Christ; rather, we should seek to respond in a way that pulls the sinner deep into the love whose depth and length and width and height are said to be beyond comprehension. The challenge is to do this well without compromising the truth that divorce hurts individuals, families, and society, Christians and unbelievers alike, by twisting our understanding of Christ's commitment and love for us.

So should I rejoice in a remarriage following divorce? I have, once, when the man remarrying had been abandoned by his wife in middle age for no reason other than her own feelings and whims. But even then I wondered if he should have let her go or if he should have continued to pursue her in love as long as possible, like Christ pursues us when we turn to our idols of comfort or power or respect. It's not a black and white issue, and I think culturally we are inclined to prioritize happiness over commitment. We might say that we value redemption more than atonement... we encourage people to simply move on and start over instead of taking the time to wrestle with and repent of the past. When someone vows before God to be committed to another person for a lifetime, and shoulders the mantle of reflecting God in one particular relationship just as he or she has endeavored to reflect Him as an individual, it is a serious matter. It is not to be entered into frivolously. That is why the whole church stands together (or should, at any rate) in witness to and support of the couple making those vows. It is an equally serious matter when those vows are broken, and yet the church does nothing. We rejoice when the oath-breaker stands a second time to make those same promises to a different person than before - but do we provide the counsel and support needed to make sure that this time the promises will be kept through the hard times once the swell of romantic love has ebbed away?

It breaks my heart to see so many marriages foundering on the shoals of life, to see the church dimming its warning lighthouse beacon, to see her members laboring on the shore to pick up the pieces instead of helping steer the ship to safer seas, or throwing together hasty and poorly-built boats instead of taking the time to construct sea-worthy vessels before sending them out from port. Should we be there to help people rebuild after a divorce? Of course. But we should be working even harder to keep that shipwreck from happening in the first place, instead of just counting on the skills of the rescue team. Our marriages are not simply private contracts that only hurt or help the individuals directly involved; they are also public statements of the nature of Christ and His relationship to His people, and we as the church need to fight for them, stand beside them, and give them the supplies and guidance they need to sail safely across the ocean of time.

How to care about things (without being overwhelmed)

In one of the many film retellings of the classic story of Cinderella, Ever After, the formerly apathetic, self-centered, and purposeless prince says, "I used to think, if I cared about anything, I'd have to care about everything, and I'd go stark raving mad!" So he chose instead, for years, to care about nothing.

I wonder if that's how most Americans are today. We are constantly presented with so many causes and needs - with starving refugees in Africa, sex slavery in Southeast Asia, human rights abuses in China, environmentally destructive practices in the US, and countless natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Sandy in New York, not to mention the myriad of social and political issues on both sides of the worldview split. The sheer quantity and magnitude of the problems overwhelms us, and so we bury our heads in the sand and seek our own personal happiness while closing our eyes and ears to the needs all around us. Now, it makes sense that we feel overwhelmed. There really are more problems (and problems of larger scope) than we could ever hope to fully address with our limited time, skills, and resources - and how could we ever hope even to figure out which problem most deserves the time and resources we could give it? If we help to rehabilitate former prisoners in our local communities, do we need to feel guilty that we are not also helping to train and restore former sex slaves in Thailand? If we donate to food programs in refugee camps around the world, do we need to feel guilty that we are not donating to our local food banks? It's not difficult to picture ourselves suddenly snapping from the weight of it all and, in the words of the aforementioned prince, going "stark raving mad!"

But this madness is not by any means a necessary or unavoidable consequence of beginning to care about one problem or another. We just need to give ourselves the permission to accept our limitations and the command to work within them to best of our abilities. Acknowledging that we are fallible and limited simply by nature of being human allows us to truly care about one specific problem - and devote ourselves to its correction - without feeling guilty about all the other problems we don't have the time or skills to adequately handle. And once we truly care about something, it will be a joy, a source of meaning and purpose, to throw ourselves towards its resolution. I think all the half-hearted efforts we make in life stem from the absence of this genuine concern about the problem and the concomitant desire to see it resolved; that they are, in essence, the output of a guilty conscience prodding an apathetic will into temporary action. But if we let ourselves deeply and genuinely care about one or two problems (that we are capable of acting upon in tangible, relevant ways), and allow ourselves to dispense with guilt about all the other hundreds of problems in the world, we can start to act with our whole hearts, with a motivated will, and with real purpose.

And I have a suspicion that we just might find our capacity for caring and acting increased as we go about the process of living with purpose instead of apathy, until we have touched more lives and brought about more good than we ever imagined possible.

Finding love

From Sherry Turkle, the author of the book Alone Together, about the effects of the rise of personal technology on human society and relationships (I found the quote at the Futurisms blog at New Atlantis, but the whole interview with Turkle at IASC is also worth reading):

"People are so vulnerable and so willing to accept substitutes for human companionship in very intimate ways. I hadn't seen that coming, and it really concerns me that we're willing to give up something that I think defines our humanness: our ability to empathize and be with each other and talk to each other and understand each other. And I report to you with great sadness that the more I continued to interview people about this, the more I realized the extent to which people are willing to put machines in this role. People feel that they are not being heard, that no one is listening. They have a fantasy that finally, in a machine, they will have a nonjudgmental companion."

Isn't that truly what people want? We want someone who will love us unconditionally, regardless of what we say or do - someone who will be there when we need a friend, listen when we need to talk, and make us feel as though we have some value and worth. In the hidden depths of our hearts, we're terrified of reaching the end of our lives only to realize that we have accomplished nothing meaningful and are going to die alone and unloved. If we can have some kind of affirmation and companionship as we go through life, it helps to assuage those fears, and if we look to some non-human source for that affirmation and companionship, whether it be animals or robots, we can satisfy our emotional needs (or at least dull their ache) without having to endure the risks, pains, and fears of human relationships and meaningful work.

Ultimately, of course, pursuing intimacy and meaning in that way is bankrupt; it may give us comfort for a time, but it stifles our emotional growth and prevents the deepening and maturing of our hearts, and in the end we are left unfulfilled and despairing. But as my brother wrote (in an unpublished document; you can read more of his writing here):

"We are a world devoid of love, a shadow land, hiding itself from the true light, and so we must cast open the windows - no, tear down the very roof. Love is the great irony, the caustic force that banishes the dark and drives out the meaningless. [...] The answer must be to love and love only. The answer must be to live from love, for all action to emanate from love."

What I see in the desperate terrified longing of so many people in our society, in the deep desire for intimacy coupled with the intense fear of pain and worthlessness, is an open invitation to live out the love of Christ in our world - to be the human being who listens to the sorrows and worries of our neighbors, who stands with them through their joys and their troubles, and who loves them unconditionally and without condemnation. In a world where everyone is withdrawing to the comfort and convenience of computer-mediated relationships and robotic companions, we can change lives and bring the gospel into our communities simply by loving, always loving, in all that we do, with genuine, face-to-face love.

The Pursuit of Happiness

God wants us to be happy. As the psalmist says,

"in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

And again,

"be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!" 

 He provides for us here on earth:

"You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered with grain; they shout for joy, they also sing."

And He has given us incredible spiritual blessings - His grace, His love, forgiveness of sins, knowledge of Himself, the promise of glory, and so on:

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."

But the happiness He has intended for us, and which He desires and delights to give us, is not the same happiness that we want for ourselves or that our culture values - the hedonistic self-centered happiness of pursuing and obtaining one's own wishes in this world, or the proud self-righteous happiness of succeeding or making a difference in this life by one's own merit. To paraphrase Lewis (since I don't have the book at hand, nor would I be able to find the passage quickly if I did), God has intended us for infinite and eternal happiness, centered in Himself - the strong and beautiful spring of all true happiness and joy - and if we so desire we can begin to prepare ourselves for that happiness right now, by learning to trust and know God more. If we have to sacrifice some of our more readily obtained and plainly visible happinesses along the way, if we must suffer and be miserable for times in this life, I believe it is worth it, if those sacrifices and sufferings are God's tools for making us into being capable of truly knowing Him and delighting in the great happinesses and indescribable pleasures He has treasured up for us in Him.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The dilemma before us is not whether an individual has the right to pursue their own happiness, but whether they have the right to pursue that happiness at the expense of the well-being of other people; that is, is every road permissible, or are some barricaded for the good of society and the protection of the innocent?

Here is a practical example of what I mean (based loosely on a real story). A woman (let's call her "H") has been with her current husband, "M," for about 10 years. They've been married for 8 of those years, and have 3 children together. But "H" is starting to become tired of the situation. Life has been a hard grind for her the past few years - they've drifted in and out of unemployment and homelessness - and she doesn't see much hope for the future. Honestly, she hasn't been happy in a long, long time, and she's thinking about leaving. Her husband is a nice guy, sure, but she wants more. If the right man appeared, he would seem like a bright light at the end of the dark tunnel she imagines stretching into the years before her - he would seem like a ticket to happiness.

If divorce would truly make "H" happy, does she have the right to take that option, even though "M" had never actually done anything wrong? Does she have the right to hurt him simply for the sake of her personal happiness? If they were dating I would say yes; after she has vowed to stay with him for life and he has built his life around that commitment, I would say no. She has burnt that bridge; she has blocked that road. She is still free to pursue happiness, but not by those means. And what about their children? Does she have the right, in the pursuit of her own pleasure, to split apart their family and destroy their security, to set them up for poverty and broken relationships in their own futures? As their mother, is there some duty that constrains the avenues she is allowed to travel in the pursuit of happiness?

Society suffers when personal happiness is elevated above moral duties and relational responsibilities, because personal happiness is not a strong enough glue to hold families and communities together. It is widely acknowledged that in order to accomplish something wonderful it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice something incredibly valuable; what is not so widely recognized is that it is sometimes also necessary to make that sacrifice in the simple attempt to be a decent human being and fulfill one's duties. And because the task and the goal can seem so mundane - so trivial and ordinary - the sacrifice can be even harder. There is no glamor or glory attached to it, and the dreams of happiness one must surrender sparkle so beautifully (and deceptively) in one's imagination. But when one thinks of the broken hearts and homes that an unbridled pursuit of personal happiness leaves in its wake, it is clear that these duties are not trivial and these sacrifices are not pointless.

So yes, we have the right to pursue happiness, but we do not have the right to pursue happiness with whatever means we choose. Our past choices narrow our future options; our moral obligations further establish the set of paths on which we may travel. But this limiting is what gives strength to the fabric of civilization - and if we work to create happiness on the paths we walk, whatever they may be, that limiting has also given strength of character to our souls.

A Farewell (or A Eulogy)

Our culture is in the process of banishing two of the great handmaidens of civilization. I'm not thinking of truth and beauty, although the same could be truly said of them (and indeed they are the greatest, second only to the great triad of faith, hope, and love), but rather of another pair: nobility and wonder. In their place, we have chosen cynicism and flippancy - cheap and shriveled substitutes for the living glory we might have known.

When I use the word "nobility," I am not referring to aristocratic hierarchies or rich and landed persons, but to an "elevation of mind and exaltation of character," to high ideals and upright conduct. Nobility is what enables a person (and collectively, a society) to see innate worth rather than mere hedonistic or utilitarian value in every individual human being, to pursue true honor and seek after deeper meaning without forsaking dignity and courtesy, and to labor wholeheartedly for a cause because it is right and true and glorious and beautiful even if it has no earthly hope of success. It is a focus on deeper and higher things - an eternal perspective - that enables production rather than consumption and allows one to be content and at peace in any material circumstance. It is a quietness of the heart that leads to efficacious action rather than to indolence, because it is coupled with a great purpose: to know and will the good. In this quietness, filled and made great by the desire for the good, there is no room for petty complaints, for selfish worries, or for the trivial thoughts and actions that waste a life; there is no capacity for scoffing at or ridiculing anything that aspires to the good.

Wonder has no capacity for scoffing at all. Wonder looks at the world around her and delights in the beauty of it all, dances to its secret songs, falls back in awe at the marvels she beholds. She is like a child in her open curiosity and excitement, but with the maturity and wisdom to endure through great trials and see the glory behind this pain, the light beyond these dreary shadows. You might accuse of her of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses; she would retort that you must be looking at it through blackened ones. She asks why "the way things really are" must always be the way that holds the most hurt, that allows for the most sin, that conceals corruption and falsehood, when God is good and has made a good world. It is not that she ignores all that is bad and decaying and cruel - it is simply that these things fade away in the light of all the wondrous things she sees as well. Her eyes look into the eternal, and her heart is filled with a joy greater than all temporal ills, which no evil can destroy. While she may appear foolishly innocent and hopelessly naive, she has in reality found a solid rock beneath the shifting sands on which those around her have staked their souls, and she has seen the truth to which they have blinded their eyes. She sees the permanent unfading goodness against which the winds of trouble and sin beat in vain, and rejoices in that goodness rather than despairing at the winds.

How sharply nobility contrasts with the flippant and mocking attitude of our culture today! We would rather stand by and laugh (and what a deadened, joyless laughter it is, in the bitterness of our hearts) at the demise of our communities and families than hope and labor for their healing; we laugh too at those who do labor, and take pleasure in their failures, because then we can proudly proclaim how right we were about the fall of civilization. It is damning to say that we saw things fall apart and chose to do nothing, even if the fall were inevitable; but we see only how we might come out on the top of the pile at the end of that fall and then laugh in our self-assured complacency all the way to the bottom. Then, to make our consciences rest easy at the deceit, exploitation, filth, and pain that we rely upon to maintain our material comfort and fill our empty hearts, we make innocence a joke and ridicule those deluded enough to believe in beauty and to cling to truth. There is no quietness except the stillness of the morgue; no peace except the final rest of death.

And how complete is the separation between open-eyed, childlike wonder and our harsh, defensive cynicism! More than anything else, cynicism is the last defense of the terrified heart against despair: by assuming the worst in advance, with an attitude of knowing negativity, one can escape the pain of thwarted dreams and even take pride in one's ability to avoid the delusions of joy. After all, it is undeniable that things will go wrong in this life, and that people will disappoint us. Why should we trust anyone, when we have been hurt and seen other be hurt by betrayal of such trust? Why should we look for beauty in anything, when the startling filthy ugliness of sin has jumped out at us from so many seemingly beautiful people and places? How can we open our hearts again to beauty and light and truth when we have begun to doubt that they exist at all, when we have been crushed in the darkness and cruelty of this life? In our cynicism, we can feel that at least all this pain has made us wise enough to understand the darkness of the world. And we look down upon wonder and joy with cool and sneering disdain, because in the depths of our hearts we hate and despise them as cheats - even as we desperately crave what they pretend to give - but know how foolish it would be to reveal those true feelings. In wonder, every emotion is genuine and life, imbued with the light of truth, overflows with joy; in cynicism, no sincere feeling is revealed, and the heart, being covered with deceit, moulders in the dust of fear and the black rot of hate.

Nobility offers to take the pain and fight the evil, regardless of the consequences; its deepest desire is to do what is right, and not merely to do what is right but to pour itself out in the doing, and not solely to pour itself out in the doing, but to suffer all the pain of the doing in themselves. Nobility seeks to not to draw in, but to give out; not to obtain personal pleasure, but to do what is right that others might thus be uplifted:

"'If I were to be made a knight,' said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, 'I should insist on doing the vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.'
'That would be extremely presumptuous of you,' said Merlyn, 'and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.'
'I shouldn't mind.'
[...]
Merlyn wrung his hands. 'Well, anyway,' he said, 'suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?'
'I could ask,' said the Wart.
'You could ask,' repeated Merlyn.
He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and began to munch it fiercely." - T.H. White, The Once and Future King

Wonder sees the world and rejoices that it is. If we can mourn a loss or complain at the downward path some things are taking, we can with wonder celebrate those things that are not lost, and praise those things that rise upward. While we know that all is not well now, that there is pain and darkness and sin, we do not have to be absorbed by those negative things: we can wonder and delight in the things that are good in opposition to the evil and in the things that are good simply in being themselves:

"This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this. [...] These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. [...] 
The wonder has a positive element of praise. [...] Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale." - G.K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy

We have dismissed King Arthur as a myth, turning him into a comic buffoon or an ignorant medieval warrior, so his nobility will not affront our flippancy. Chesterton we never knew - and what did he know about life, anyways, that deluded Christian author from a wealthy family in a privileged nation? God we have forgotten. And with Him we have forgotten how to conduct ourselves with the honor of a noble spirit and the joy of a wondering heart; we have forgotten how to be truly civilized, and so all things come apart.

Race, intelligence, and the love of God

Many people who have studied race and intelligence come to the conclusion that certain races of the human species are more intelligent than others (Asians are at the top, if you were curious). A century or so ago, that conclusion paired up with the newly-popular theory of materialistic evolution to lead to some rather despicable practices and beliefs - like eugenics (particularly racial eugenics, which is simply sanitized genocide), colonialism, justification of race-based slavery, and social darwinism. Even in the US, in the 1910's and 20's, these type of ideas were taking hold and growing quickly. In the next few decades, however, in the wake of German Nazism, these beliefs faded to a hushed undercurrent in the scientific community.

But the ideas didn't go away. Ideas don't, usually. People stop talking about them out of fear, or to maintain a good image, or to help themselves win approval and career advancement, but they still harbor their true beliefs in their hearts and heads. So in the 1960's we see a resurgence of all the old racial prejudices; in particular, one study questioned the value of remedial education for African American children who had been disadvantaged during segregation of schools, claiming that those children were innately less intelligent and would never succeed academically despite receiving additional support and teaching. Needless to say, this sparked quite a debate, that continued through the 90's with publication of books, articles, and rebuttals from both sides. It is interesting to realize that even as the government was striving to do more to promote racial equality in society, scientists were debating about the mere existence of biological racial equality in the first place. More recently, world-renowned figures like James Watson have postulated that the continued poverty and chaos in Africa is due to lower average intelligence of the people there. Some people (most of whom are white supremacists) go even a step further, and suggest that different races also have different moral norms - that Africans are inherently more violent because of their genetics, for instance.

When I read these kinds of theories, it makes me intensely angry. In the first place, it is extremely hard to separate environment from heredity in many of these studies; looking at Africa again, as an example, how would be one be able to be sure that poverty is caused by lower average intelligence and not that lower average intelligence is caused by malnutrition, disease, and the emotional trauma of living in an insecure and war-torn land? And there can be even less certainty with regards to ethical mores! The people who believe that theory forget that their own culture has been steeped in Christianity for centuries - don't you think that might affect where we are today as Western society? In many developing countries, even where Christianity has technically been present for a long time, it has been assimilated into previous modes of thought and operation, leaving them unchanged, and has not in the majority of places been woven into the tapestry of life. True change takes time and the work of the Spirit, not an outward veneer of religion or modernity. Finally, it angers me because it is used as an excuse to withdraw resources and aid from people in these racial groups or from nations consisting largely of certain racial groups. I have read blogs where people argue that because Africans are less intelligent and more violent, we should let them kill each other off in Africa and do nothing about it, regardless of the human suffering involved, and it sickens me.

I don't think that our behavior toward other people, as Christians, should be affected by the truth or falsehood of these theories. Compared to God, we are all unintelligent and full of sin - and yet what do we see in His behavior toward us? He loves us unconditionally and He suffers for our redemption, restoration, and transformation; when He was walking around the earth He provided healing and food for the poor and not always very bright crowds that followed Him and listened to His teaching, and He knelt down in humility to serve the ones He created. So no matter what science or pseudoscience would have us believe about the nature of other people or groups of people, we need to remember that in Christ we are reconciled together in one body (Eph. 2:14-18) and that we are called to consider others as better and more important than ourselves (Phil. 2:3-4). There is no permission, in our faith, to condemn others or to consider ourselves superior to others. If they do not know Christ, then our heart's desire should be for their spiritual salvation as well as their physical well-being, and if they do know Christ, then our hearts should break at their suffering for they are our brothers and our sisters. Remember what our Lord said to His disciples at the end of His ministry?

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for on another." - John 13:34-35

I think that might be a good principle to strive to live by, don't you? We cannot rank people (whether by wealth, power, intelligence, or morality) and attend only to those at our level or love only those who are superior and can benefit us or interact with lower than us only with scorn or pity or condescension! We are simply commanded to love one another, with no limits or qualifications.

Racism and eugenics and similar beliefs about the nature of humanity ultimately stem from a worldview that is in outright opposition to the one we claim to hold as children of God - a worldview that would have us believe we descended from apes and that some of us are closed to that ancestor than others, a worldview that would make us think that what seems advantageous in this life (intelligence, health, money, or power) is all that matters because this life is all there is. Believing as we do that humanity was created in the image of God, in beauty and meaning and worth, and that we have an eternal home and purpose, we can look at the human species in all of its diversity and in all of its sinfulness and learn to genuinely love and value each member of it (insofar as we are able with the constraints of time and space and resources) by the grace of the God who first loved us. I'm not saying that this is an easy or a simple task - I am currently finding it quite difficult to respond with love to people who speak callously of the atrocities in the DRC and wish the Africans would destroy each other, for instance! - but it is the task we are called to and it is our responsibility to discover what obedience to that commandment ought to look like in all the situations in which we find ourselves.

The forward march of society towards the gates of hell

I have been mulling today over an idea whose original source I cannot recall. Namely, in the battle being fought between the forces of Satan and the kingdom of God in this world, Satan's side has developed an interesting strategy for increasing the burden of sin in our society: he has chosen to make sin appear normative, so that through the constant onslaught of words, images, and ideas young people will grow up thinking that these sins are simply part of life, and will not be righteously angered or saddened by them even if they have grown up in the church and know God's word. The acceptance of those sins in society will be one of the unquestioned elements of their culture, imbibed unthinkingly, like racism was for much of the 20th century, and a culturally normative moral standard (because, being created in the image of God, people desire some sort of standard for living by) will be built around that acceptance. I would guess, for what it's worth, that this new moral standard will value such qualities as "tolerance", "open-mindedness", "respect for others" (indifference for others and thus a lack of concern for their actions), "peace" (silencing of the truth for the sake of superficial harmonious relationships), "love" (bondage to emotions and temporary passions, at the expense of duties and responsibilities), and "authenticity" (the courage to rebel against tradition and order and to pursue what is best for oneself no matter what anyone else says). For this reason it will be difficult to stand on the side of righteousness without coming across as different, radical, intolerant, and offensive.

One area in which this is already very clear is that of divorce. It is almost hard for me to say that divorce is wrong, because there are so many different extenuating circumstances and I don't want to offend anyone - and in that reluctance to admit that it is always outside of God's ideal and almost always blatant sin, I show the effects of growing up in a culture where something that is wrong according to the Bible is common and accepted by society. If I say it is wrong for a wife to leave her husband because she doesn't feel loved and no longer enjoys his company or shares his interests, I am incriminating not a few people I know personally and many more people who are the family and friends of others whom I know personally. That isn't fun, and it isn't comfortable. When that is the case, it is far easier to keep quiet about the issue than to speak up and risk hurting, offending, or alienating the people in life. The admonition in Ephesians, to expose sin with the light of God and make it manifest in all its ugliness, is conveniently ignored. Similarly, it has become difficult to say clearly in conversation that sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong. While not quite as common or acceptable (at least within Christian circles) as divorce, it is all too rampant in society as a whole, and speaking up about it will most likely cause you to be labeled old-fashioned or patriarchal, a prude who is against women's rights (there is a good amount of anger and a fair amount of sympathy directed against a woman who argues for this position, as if she must have been brainwashed in order to be so blind to the good of free and easy sex; it is amusing to be on the receiving end of this sentiment). The social stigma - almost a sense of shame - that accompanies being a virgin past a certain age is proof that the sinfulness of the behavior has been almost completely obscured.

Unfortunately, just as virtue builds upon itself in growing towards a more complete righteousness, so also sin builds upon itself in growing towards a darker state of evil. If divorce is considered normal and happens frequently (which it does), the institution of marriage is weakened to the point of near-meaninglessness to those who see it without Christian lenses (which it is), and there is little or no firm ground on which to stand in defending it against the entrance of homosexual partnerships, which will in turn lead to the social acceptability of the sin of homosexuality. If sex outside of marriage seen as acceptable, and not only acceptable but even desirable and even a right (which it all too often is), it will lead to the acceptance of abortion because the second sin is needed to manage the consequences of the first one. Accepting one sin leads to accepting another, not because all those who divorce have homosexual inclinations (far from it!), or because all those who have illicit sex intend to kill their offspring, but because it changes the moral boundary line recognized by society so that the second sin is no longer so far removed from what is considered normal. The road to hell is traveled by the small and almost imperceptible steps a society takes as it shakes off the obfuscating web of Christian tradition and moral norms, and the challenge for those of us who still adhere to those norms is to keep our eyes from being blinded and our light from being dimmed by acceptance of the standards of the culture around us.