The ‘Environmental Crisis’ and the Christian Faith

A recent article in Christianity Today contains a theme that is becoming a bit over-worked in establishment evangelical circles.  The article is about the broader implications of the Christian doctrine of creation.  It is not bad, but the author seemingly cannot resist the urge to load Christianity onto the bandwagon of “environmentalism” when at one point he says:

All of this adds a further dimension to our thinking about the present environmental crisis. If being made in God's image involves stewarding the natural world, we need to steward in a Christlike way, as servants rather than as dictators. As Christians, we can share with all humanity a concern for preserving the environment for future generations. And we can share with other faith communities a sense of preserving the Earth as a divine gift. But we should want to go further, and proclaim environmental responsibility as a consequence of living under the lordship of Christ.

It is striking that Genesis 1 ends not in the creation of Adam and Eve, but in the Sabbath day on which, as Scottish theologian David Fergusson says, "the whole creation glorifies its maker." That is, resting in, rejoicing in, and living out the Sabbath praise of God is regarded in Scripture as the very summit of earthly existence—the purpose for which it was breathed into being. Viewed this way, we humans are called not just to "use" material reality for our own ends, but to hallow it, to reverence it as God's gift, to work for its flourishing, and, in this manner, to be viceroys of the world over which he graciously superintends.

First of all, what, exactly is “the present environmental crisis”?  People have been using this terminology for decades now, and yet, when I take a walk “the environment” is still there.  The ever-present “crisis” language is clearly not just wrong, but deceptive.  Here is a Christ-like quality for Christianity Today to consider:  truthfulness.

Also along the lines of deception is language about “servants rather than as dictators” of the creation and that we should “not just ‘use’ material reality for our own ends.”  God told human kind to “subdue” the earth, which necessarily involves using it and thereby changing it.  All the theological mumbo-gumbo talk incorporating environmentalists lingo you can muster does not change that.

God made the earth for our use, and He made it in an amazing way such that, even when we make mistakes with the earth, it is very difficult for us to destroy it.  (Isn’t God tricky that way?)

This never-ending attempt by evangelicals to kowtow to environmentalism is yet another manifestation of the triumph of culture over Christianity.  It is not helpful, it is not “prophetic” and it amounts to a betrayal of the Christian faith.

All the News That’s Fit to Print (or Speak, or Digitalize)

The other day I listened and considered the Fox (at least on the radio) News slogan:  “We report, you decide.”  Since the “yellow journalism” days of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, news outlets have professed, and inconsistently worked toward, the ideal of being factual and unbiased.

It is, of course, impossible to be completely unbiased.  But making those biases open and recognized, and trying to get the facts straight, is an admirable set of goals.  The problem is that even these noble ideals in some ways hide what goes on in today’s “news reporting.”  What I am about to mention is especially the case with radio news, TV news, and any format that tries to condense the news into the smallest space possible.  It is also the case that this happens with all networks, wire services, and news outlets.

We can understand this problem by thinking about the slogan, “We report, you decide.”  Even if everything reported is completely accurate and unbiased, there is something important hidden here.  You can see this if you think about the unstated corollary of the slogan.  Consider what would the slogan would have to say IF the intention was to be completely open:

“We report, you decide, BUT we decide what to report.”

Fox News is supposed to be somehow different from other major networks.  But at least when comparing the daily radio reports, Fox News tends to report on almost exactly the same things reported on by all the other news services.

It’s not that there is nothing else that could be reported.  There are a few little outlets you find here and there that do decided to report different things from the mainline news services.  When you listen to these and are accustomed to the usual mainline reports, it is striking the wildly different perspective one gets when listening to “the news.”

One final note:  mainline news, including Fox News, tends to report political news in terms of what some politician says about the matter at hand, and very little else.  This is just another example of “we decided what to report.”

This whole system seems to be ingrained beyond reform.  But it’s not fair, and it’s not balanced.  It’s not even close.

Should the Government Tell You Who You Can Marry?

I am not one to want the government to tell us (especially if that really means “force us”) to do very much.  Just exactly how much is morally appropriate, and where that boundary lies, and most importantly how it is correctly defined, is something I am still pondering.

The question of the government dictating things is bound to come up in the current debate raging across society regarding what some call “homosexual marriage.”  Our whole social context seems designed to urge the question, “Who are you to tell me who I can marry?”

Like so many other questions asked in our social context, this one is the wrong question, and is almost designed to lead us away from the more important issue.  A better and more to-the-point question is: “Why Can’t I Define Marriage Any Way I Wish?”

This question is much more insightful because it points to an assumption behind this whole debate: the assumption that marriage is correctly defined only by those who participate in it.  This assumption deserves to be examined.

Our culture is driven by the idea that almost everything can be reconstructed however we want to make us happy.  Is this the case with marriage?

We can’t limit this question to the matter of “homosexual marriage.”  In recent history, marriage in our culture was defined as something between one man and one woman for life, apart from a few extreme circumstances.  (Mormons in the 19th century attempted a redefinition which did not catch on.)  This definition came from the descriptions of marriage found in the New Testament.  Such constraints were cast off fairly recently.  But having cast them off, we are left with some logic many do not wish to follow to its conclusion.

If marriage can be redefined in any way we wish, then, of course, it could be between one man and one woman, one man and one man, or one woman and one woman.  That has become acceptable to many in our culture because homosexual advocates have portrayed homosexuals as victims of societal prejudice.  The definition of marriage was portrayed as a majority persecuting a homosexual minority.  But that is not the real issue, just a diversion.

For exactly the same reasons that marriage could be redefined as just mentioned, it could just as easily be redefined as between one man and one child, one woman and one child, one man and a group of women, one woman and a group of men, or even one man or woman and one animal.

Many advocates of redefining marriage balk some or all of these, but there is no good reason for that, once we concede that marriage can be redefined at will.  I predict that, given the popularity of pets today, that the advocates of human-animal marriages will soon demand their redefinition of marriage.

So the answer to the question, “Should the government tell you who you can marry?” is a definite “no.”  Marriage is ‘definitionally’ possible only between one man and one woman.  So the government should not tell you who you can marry.  Ladies, pick your man.  Gentlemen, pick your lady.  But, by definition, a man can’t marry a man any more than a man can “marry” his large-screen TV.  Men can engage in all sorts of relationships with other men, and women with other women. In few if any of these does the government currently even attempt to interfere.  But, by definition, this is not marriage, because we don’t define marriage.  It comes to us as what it is, and is not created by us.

Marriage is what it is, whether we like it or not.  Calling something “marriage” no more makes it so than calling a triangle a circle makes them the same thing.  So taking notice of the fact that it is simple impossible for a man to marry a man is not oppression or a sign of hate any more than noticing that trees are not persons.

We Really Are Slaves

An Oregon baker is under investigation by the state for notifying a lesbian woman that he did not make cakes for same-sex ceremonies, the Christian News Network reports. Last month, Aaron Klein, owner of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, a bakery he operates with his wife, was approached by a mother and her daughter interested in a cake for the daughter's upcoming wedding to her lesbian partner. After Klein informed the women that the bakery did not make cakes for same-sex marriages, they filed a complaint with the state. "[I] didn't mean to make anybody upset," Klein said. "[It's] just something I believe in very strongly. ... I believe that marriage is a religious institution ordained by God." At this time, the office of the Attorney General of Oregon is investigating the matter, and Klein has two weeks to respond to the complaint filed by the women. In Oregon, nondiscrimination laws prevent public accommodations from being denied to any individual on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex [or] sexual orientation." Klein, who says he regularly serves homosexuals but cannot in good conscience accommodate their request for a wedding cake, stated: "If I have to be penalized for my beliefs ... that'll be what it is." He affirmed that he would rather close than compromise his faith. "My First Amendment rights allow me to practice my religion as I see it," he said. (story link)

As a follow-up to the last entry here, we find yet another example of how ‘anti-discrimination’ makes slaves of everyone.  Whatever you might think of homosexuals, marriage, religion, or anything along those lines, what moral right does anyone have to compel this Oregon baker to work for someone else against his will?  Is that not the essence of slavery?

The invention of some abstraction called “public accommodations” does not change this at all.  If business owners who want to sell things can be forced to sell things to people to whom they do not wish to sell them, those business owners are slaves.

We accept this whole idiotic culture of ‘non-discrimination’ far too complacently.  No matter how nasty some people have made this, the attempt to make nasty people nice by ‘non-discrimination’ laws comes with the price tag of making slaves of us all.  And as has been observed many times before, most people are slaves only because they are willing to be.

Nice culture we live in, isn’t it?

You Have Been Assimilated!

Here is a nice bit of insight into the Boy Scouts recent decision regarding homosexuals in their organization:  Whither the Boy Scouts?  The author points out that homosexual advocacy groups and atheist groups are already dissatisfied with this decision because is allows local BSA groups to decide their policy on the admission of atheists and homosexuals.

According to these advocates, that simply will not do.  The BSA must not permit any “discrimination” in their groups at all, or the attacks will continue.  In other words, this ‘retreat’ did not end the war over this.  Apart from the details of this case, it illustrates the fact that behind most of the “anti-discrimination” advocacy groups, there is a collectivist mindset.

We live in a collectivist world, as anyone who pays attention knows.  You are not ultimately allowed to control anything as an individual – not even with the classic proviso that subjects such control to the equal enjoyment by others of the same right.  Once on this road, it was inevitable that no small groups of people would be allowed control of the affairs of their groups.

So private clubs, organizations, churches, businesses (fill in your favorite category here) are all subject to the will of the collective, at least as the will is expressed in the political system, including the courts.  The President’s recent “you didn’t make that” speech was nothing new.  We have lived in a collectivist society long, long before he came on the scene.

When you think carefully about this, you discover that it was one of the negative eventual consequences of slavery in this country.  Some of the Founders worried about what would come of slavery, and they were justified in doing so.  It led to a horrible war within our country, to the radical reconstruction punishment of the loosing area in that war, to the anti-negro (that’s what they would have said then, at least) discrimination society of the south (which was just as intense in most of the ‘north’ for that matter) to the “civil rights movement” of the mid-20th century.

That movement, which rightly insisted that government-owned entities be open to everyone, pushed that same idea into every part of society, even the private parts like clubs, businesses, and other private organizations.  In the end, the effect was to say that nothing is private.  As reprehensible as I find the idea, if the Elk’s Club can’t exclude anyone it wants from its group, the group has been collectivized – taken control of by the collective.  If the owner of the corner pub can’t decide who will and will not be served in his establishment, it has been collectivized – taken control of by the collective.  And, please note, so have the club members and the pub owner.

Now, extend this idea from blacks to any conceivable category of discriminated-against’ people and you have . . . our world.

Consider the irony of all this.  Slavery was the forced control of one person by another.  The effort to do away with that practice, and even that idea, led to our current situation in which no one is permitted to control himself.  In other words, the efforts to rid our society of slavery led to our current society in which everyone is ultimately controlled by the collective and is thus a slave.

I know that has been pointed out before, but I think that, now and then, it is worth remembering again.

First Off in 2013

This is from, of all things, a newspaper is Asheville, NC.  The fellow who wrote it, Mike Scruggs, must be my brain twin!  I will comment no more and simply link to it:

http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2013/01/03/the-principles-of-evanjellyfish-christianity/

Happy New Year to all,

Kent B. True

Science, Faith, and Trumping

There is a little thought-provoker of an article over at Christianity Today today.  (No, I’m not shuddering.)  A mom is talking about helping her older children think through questions about the Christian faith and science.  It is generally good, though things you have probably heard before.  The article concludes with:

We need kids who are unafraid to ask the sorts of tough and exciting theological, philosophical, and scientific questions you can only ask when you know that, however this world came to be, God did it.

Even this is a good point except that it doesn’t come to terms with this:  is the Christian faith truly compatible with any and every idea that comes out of the domain of science?

Here is a related question, one that I often ask:  when science and Christianity come into apparent conflict, are we for some reason compelled to amend our view of Christianity rather than our view of this particular conclusion from science?

I’m not thinking of any question in particular here.  I am not convinced that the Christian faith requires a very young earth, for example.  But I think we “need kids” who are not immediately ready to amend their theological views just because (another example) of something neo-Darwinists happen to think.  I am willing to consider anything that might have a bearing on my theological views.  But I can see no reason to adjust the Christian faith just because of the latest thought from the field of science.

I think there is an idea behind this tendency that reads something like this:  science is just reason looking at data, but Christianity is filled with prejudices and presuppositions.  Therefore, in case of conflict, science always trumps the Christian faith.

Of course, the ‘just because we want to believe it’ element is often over-played in Christianity.  And beyond that, the ‘science has no prejudices or presuppositions’ idea is beyond ridiculous.  I don’t want to end the science/faith dialogue, of course.  But it is only helpful when we conduct it on reasonable, and carefully examined, terms.