The Seduction of Pond Scum Theology

“So what this is basically saying is, ‘God made humans perfect, but somehow every one of ‘em is screwed up.’ The evidence is not in God’s favor here.”

—     Kyle Simpson, on Ecclesiastes 7:29

 Getting home has seldom been harder. I was finally able to convince my dad to let me come and spend Christmas—and New Years’, and, well, maybe a few weeks thereafter—with him in League City. But the day after I bought my plane ticket (on Monday) I belatedly remembered that I don’t have any identification. Both my Texas state ID and my passport were stolen in midsummer. So I tried buying a train ticket instead. Turns out, you can’t ride an AmTrak train without a state-approved ID. So it was either take the bus, or catch a ride with Nicholas, who has no rational justification for visiting Texas except that he really loves driving, but he insisted on taking me, so I’m considering my options. If we left, we would leave on Saturday.

When I found out that Booth wasn’t flying in until January 10th, I extended my stay by about eight days. I’ll probably spend the entire last leg of it with him and the Pauleys—this is assuming that some final mad act of God doesn’t put Nicholas in the hospital just before we’re getting ready to leave. I feel like I’ve grown enough in the last year that it shouldn’t be horribly awkward, and might actually be really uplifting. Now I have a bad case of nostalgia for the things that always made Christmas special in Texas—movie nights and game nights and gumbo and arguments about politics and trips to the bookstore and hanging out listening to music and relentless but good-natured teasing. I’ve gotten to the end of this year and I’ve realized, people aren’t all that bad. I don’t know where I’d be without them. Even the people I’m not allowed to talk to. It hurts, but I enjoy them. I like them.

I guess a huge part of growing up has been letting go of that fundamentalist mindset. I was always a fundamentalist at heart, and that’s one of the things that made trying to reason with me such an arduous task. Yesterday’s “Left Behind” post on Slacktivist made an excellent point about the blasphemy of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ anti-human worldview:

Steve Jobs, the Stalinist

Gary Sernovitz ponders the mysteries of the late inventor:

Jobs seems to have attended the Joseph Stalin Charm School: his world was one of clear good and evil; he was a constant liar, in what came to be known among his underlings as his “reality distortion field”; he was “anti-loyal,” abandoning people he was close to; he used silences and unblinking stares to shame people; he held show trials, bringing employees of a failed project into an auditorium, telling them they should hate each other, and firing the leader on the spot. Thus, when I read about Jobs’s praising China to President Obama, I suspected that Jobs liked outsourcing, not just as a profitable business decision but also on a deeper level. Contemporary China has found a way to combine, for outcomes positive and devastating, some of the most abysmal features of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism and 20th century totalitarian dictatorships. This is a combination that would seem to have felt very comfortable for Steve Jobs, as long as he was in charge.

It’s a long essay, much of which consists of hand wringing over the fact that the Chinese factory workers who make our iPods work in terrible conditions. Sernivotz paraphrases Faulkner to the effect that one of John Keats’ odes is worth a few old ladies. But how many people is an iPod worth?

I raise this question only because it seems to me to betray a skewed paradigm. There are systems of oppression in the world, and there always have been. I’ve been reading the Gospel of Luke, and I’m amazed by the writer’s emphasis – and the emphasis of Jesus – on the evils of being wealthy in this present age. Yet the writer looks forward to a day when the valleys are filled and the hills are made low – a quotation from Isaiah which is curiously missing from Matthew’s citation of the same passage (Isa. 40:1-3). In the Gospel of Luke, the wealthy are consistently tyrants, on their way to an eternal comeuppance.

Which is not to say that we should remain passive in this age in the face of oppression. Far from it. But I’m thinking of a conversation I had with my sister and dad on Christmas Eve, where they warned me of my mother’s latest crusade – not to buy things from Evul Korporations like Wal-Mart or Target. And it seems to me that a crusader can be lobbying for the right cause, and yet still be a truly venomous person. In the paragraph I quoted at the top of this post, the author seems to suggest that Steve Jobs had the substance of totalitarianism inside of him – that if he had been transplanted, say, to mid-1940s Russia, he might have ended up in charge of the Politburo. I know more than one person who, given enough money and power, could become a latter-day Hugh Hefner. Their wounds are that deep. So it seems to me that reforming these oppressive systems is not a personal reality; it is, and will eventually become, a reality corporate and eschatological. In the meantime, however, on a day-to-day basis, it isn’t our most personal concern. Our most personal concern is to develop right substance in our own hearts; to avoid becoming the kind of people who, given unlimited opportunity, would become the next Hugh Hefner or Josef Stalin. Or Steve Jobs.

We Love Our Pets

My friend and former teacher Donna Pauley writes movingly of the death of her Beloved Fat Dog, Chaucer:

I have been the unofficial pet namer at our house over the years.  Being an English teacher, literary names have abounded:  Shakespeare, Desdemona, Odysseus, Biddy.  Chaucer, of course, was named after my favorite English poet, author of The Canterbury Tales.  He grew into his name and became the alpha male in our menagerie.  He liked a quiet, peaceful home and growled at the cats any time they got into a spat.  He did the same with us if we ever raised our voices.  He raised all of our kittens over the years, putting each one in his bed, holding it between his big paws, and licking it until it was soaking wet with dog slobber.

He was catered to and spoiled over the ensuing years.  Christmas stockings, birthday parties, fancy collars, lots of attention.  Chaucer paid us back a hundredfold with unconditional love and devotion.  Anytime I was feeling blue, I put him in my lap and whispered my woes to him.  He looked at me with his soulful brown eyes, and I knew, without a doubt in this world, that he was feeling my pain.  (I should have named that dog Bill Clinton.)  Then he laid his head on my chest and pushed against my chin with his nose.  When somebody loves you that much, you can’t stay sad.

Read the whole thing. I’m finding this is one of the things that gives humans greatness, that makes them image-bearers: our ability to love and invest and pour ourselves into those beneath us – even those of other species. C. S. Lewis once wrote that our love for our pets was a first step in the reclamation of creation, and that creatures actually become more human, in a sense, the more we love them.

Someone should tell that to these people. [Warning: cute puppies, sad story].

 

Unexpected, but Gratifying

This pretty much says it all:

Christian Libertarians?

The Washington Post discovers a trend:

Christians from the left and the right are increasingly turning to libertarianism not because it is a “middle ground,” but because it is an entirely different way of thinking about government and power.

The core of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle: that the initiation of force against person and property is immoral, and it is in many respects a kind of political corollary to the Golden Rule. Thus, Christian libertarians think that government power should be limited, sound money and truly free markets should return, aggressive war must cease and civil liberties must be preserved. Despite objections raised by other Christians, many Christian libertarians have found a friend in Texas congressional representative, presidential candidate, and lifelong Christian Dr. Ron Paul, because he also believes in these important principles.

Libertarianism treats man’s sinful nature realistically. James Madison famously quipped that if men were angels no government would be necessary. Christian libertarians take this a step further, saying that it is precisely because men are not angels that government must have extraordinarily limited powers. God does not show favoritism nor does he give special privileges of position. Everyone is accountable to the moral law in the same way. When governments and politicians extend their power so that they can abridge people’s natural rights with impunity, they have crossed the line into immorality. Rep. Paul’s message is that the United States government has been far across this line for decades and the remedy is to follow the Constitution. The Founders created the boldest attempt in history to limit state power, yet presidents and congresses, both Republican and Democratic, have repeatedly refused to adhere to their own rules. True, lasting change can only be found in reducing the power of the federal government.

There’s another reason increasing numbers of young people are turning to libertarianism: they’re tired of feeling manipulated. We grew up in a country that was arbitrarily divided between artificially-constructed distinctions between “right” and “left.” For example, if you opposed abortion, you were almost certainly in favor of the death penalty. If you opposed the death penalty, it was almost guaranteed you supported abortion. And everyone on the right has been telling us for thirty years that Real Christians Only Vote Republican, which turns out in practice to mean that you can only be Christian by supporting the Republican platform of torture, war, and limitless surveillance. Politicians who have threescore wives and seven hundred concubines repeatedly win elections by running against the Evul Gay who is going to take over our country and abolish Christmas (this was Karl Rove’s strategy for winning eleven different swing states in the 2004 election). Young people are tired of sloganeering and selective morality, and they’re tired of the government being all up in their biznass. This is why the recent media barrage involving Ron Paul’s racist, homophobic newsletters hasn’t diminished his support among Iowans, or among liberal gays.

 

Ron Paul: Too Clever for Us Naughty People

The New York Times vainly searches for new ways to tarnish the congressman from Texas:

In his newsletters, Paul expressed support for far-right militia movements, which at the time saw validation for their extreme, anti-government beliefs in events like the F.B.I. assault on the Branch Davidians and at Ruby Ridge. Paul was eager to fan their paranoia and portray himself as the one man capable of doing anything about it politically. Three months before the Oklahoma City bombing, in an item for the Ron Paul Survival Report titled, “10 Militia Commandments,” he offered advice to militia members, including that they, “Keep the group size down,” “Keep quiet and you’re harder to find,” “Leave no clues,” “Avoid the phone as much as possible,” and “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

Sounds to me like Dr. Paul found a very clever way of keeping militias under control.

Hobbit Trailer!

HOBBIT TRAILER!!!

Update: Stephen Greydanus has an analysis up at the National Catholic Register:

[A]lthough we see some action here, the trailer seems intended to reassure fans that The Hobbit honors the intimacy and smaller scale of Tolkien’s book, that it hasn’t been amped up to bone-crushing Return of the King levels. The bucolic Shire scenes early in The Fellowship of the Ring remain among the most successful elements in the film trilogy, and the later chapters sometimes seem to me to stumble over the very ambition of the overwrought action.

Some people have suggested that Jackson and company were just working too hard toward the end of The Lord of the Rings, and made mistakes in judgment due to exhaustion. If so, I hope the rest and the smaller scale of this project pay off in a surer hand to the end. (Please, please, no skullvalanche-level tonal atrocities, no drinking-game bathos or video-game culture allusions, no staff-shattering sacrileges.)

Too right. While The Return of the King was certainly a greater movie than the two before it, its awesomeness was marred, for me, by all the Hollywood fist-pumping and crass sloganeering during the Battle of Pelennor Fields. Gimli and Legolas tossing out one-liners; that STUPID pink orc!; the Scrubbing Bubbles of the Dead – only partially redeemed by Eowyn’s Crowning Moment of Awesome and, in the Extended Version, Gandalf’s much-awaited confrontation with the Witch-King of Angmar. That battle is the one setpiece that prevented the trilogy from being totally flawless (only God is perfect), and the ambivalence which many of us felt about it was perfectly reflected in its appearing – twice! – on CNN’s list of the Best and Worst Movie Battles.

Knuts for Newt!

Continuing with our “polar bear” theme from last week, Mark Steyn passes along this gem about the erstwhile frontrunner, Newt Gingrich:

Gingrich is a pushover for progressivism who’s succeeded in passing himself off as a hard-line right-wing bastard. Which is why Democrats who make the mistake of believing their own talking points on Newt invariably have to improvise hastily. In 2007 John Kerry found himself booked for a debate with Gingrich on climate change and had his speechwriters prepare some boilerplate about Newt’s “marching in lockstep with the climate-change deniers.” Unfortunately for him, the former Speaker spoke first and announced that man-made global warming was a real threat that we needed to address “very actively.” He praised as “a very interesting read” Kerry’s unreadable book on the subject, and for good measure added that he was “very worried about polar bears” because “my name ‘Newt’ actually comes from the Danish ‘Knut,’ and there’s been a major crisis in Germany over a polar bear named ‘Knut.’” Kerry abandoned his prescripted attack on Gingrich, hailed his candor, and put his arm around him. Lest the paying customers feel cheated by the bipartisan love-in, the senator attempted to put a bit of clear blue water between him and the ruthless right-wing bastard by raising the possibility that perhaps Gingrich did not share his enthusiasm for cap-and-trade. Newt said he was willing to be persuaded. “I am going to sell a few more books for you, John,” he declared.

Newt, I used to tink you ver crazy, but now I can see…!

If Ron Paul wins the presidency, will that no longer count?

Via Slate, we discover that Fox News is continuing its – increasingly difficult – job of marginalizing Ron Paul by declaring that the Iowa primary “no longer counts.” I’m not kidding.

On the other side of the Web, Andrew Sullivan concludes his patriotic heartfelt, and long-winded endorsement of Paul for the GOP nomination by adding, “Oh, and f*** you, Roger Ailes.” Andrew Sullivan apparently not being a fan of visceral, well-produced war propaganda. Noobs!

Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan releases the “Dark Knight Rises” trailer.

Update: Look at the preemptive lengths to which GOP elites are going in Iowa to discredit Ron Paul:

“People are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third,” said Gov. Terry Branstad. “If [Mitt] Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps him going into New Hampshire and the other states.”

So if Ron Paul wins by 25 percent and Newt Gingrich wins by 10, Gingrich wins. Of course. And there is no establishment conspiracy.

 

Gingrich vs. Paul?

David Weigel notes the surrealism of the fact that Ron Paul is polling in the low twenties in Iowa. Joel Achenbach at the Washington Post unsuccessfully attempts to make him unappealing:

Paul is the Alternative Candidate, someone who subscribes to an alternative history of the world. Paul believes that powerful and secretive forces (the Fed being the best example) have manipulated human events and bankrolled wars. He fears that the nation is turning into an Orwellian police state. (“Sometimes it seems as if we are living in a dystopian novel like ‘1984’ or ‘Brave New World,’ ” he writes in his most recent book.)

Maybe he knows who really killed JFK.

Ross Douthat paints a Dickensian contrast between Paul and another Iowa frontrunner:

Should Iowa really come down to Paul versus Gingrich, the clash will make for a fascinating contrast. Physically, neither man resembles a classic presidential candidate (especially compared to Romney and Perry) but for completely different reasons. Paul is all bone and sinew and nervous energy – an Ichabod Crane or a Jack Sprat, hunched and herky-jerky in too-large suits. Gingrich is broad and self-assured and faintly decadent, with a Cheshire Cat’s face and a body that looks like it’s ready for its toga.

Neither man talks like a typical presidential candidate, either: They’re more verbose, less sound bite-ridden, more digressive and less embarrassed about displaying erudition. But again, their specific rhetorical styles are worlds apart. It’s useful to imagine both of them as the kind of eccentric uncle who talks your ear off at a Christmas party. Uncle Newt has an easygoing and expansive mien, the latest gadget on his belt, and a remarkably persuasive five-point case for why you should invest in his new business venture. Uncle Ron just wants to hector you about the evils of the Trilateral Commission.

Honestly, it’s been hard to get excited about Ron Paul in this election cycle because he seemed so unlikely to win. There’s been so little coverage of his campaign that I occasionally forgot he was running. But now he’s been the frontrunner in every single poll but one that’s come out of Iowa in the last week. Almost seems too good to be true: a candidate of principles who’s radically devoted to fiscal sanity, peace, freedom from creeping totalitarianism, and the protection of life.

If he wins, they’ll have to kill him!