We Americans

When my I and my twin Peter were seven, and our brother Erik was eight or nine, we bickered among ourselves as much as kids do. My mother wouldn’t have it. She gave us a little lecture. She said, "Remember, a single stick can be broken, but if you put sticks in a bundle, you can’t break them."

This message from my mother is a parable for America. We cherish individualism, but we survive and thrive collectively.

1. Individuals versus community.

Teddy Roosevelt was famously an officer in the Spanish American War. He wrote a memoir of his exploits there called The Rough Riders. It so emphasized Roosevelt’s own role that humorist Peter Finley Dunne’s much-loved character Mr. Dooley said that the memoir should have been called Alone in Cuba.

Obviously Roosevelt wasn’t alone. No war is won alone.

And Apple and Microsoft weren’t built alone. And no single person put the rover Curiosity on Mars. Many people share credit for its success. If it had failed, failure would have been collective failure.

But, sure, individual initiative is essential. Whoever knows of Apple credits the inspiration and leadership of Steve Jobs. And every war has its stand-out heros, its indispensable people, like its great generals and its medal-of-honor winners.

A fair trial verdict usually depends upon a fair judge, good witnesses, a decent trial lawyer, and wise jurors. But though they join together to find justice, each contributes to the discovery of justice as an individual.

2. America lists.

But maybe America has listed too far toward a go-it-alone mentality. Barack Obama’s you-didn’t-build-that statement was Exacto-knifed out of his speech about the cooperation between the individual, government, and society to create success. Many people have denied that anybody else has contributed to their successes, and I think this in part is from an eagerness to be contrary to anything Obama. So people claim to be self-created. And that just ain’t true.

The paradigm-case of the self-creation myth happened years ago with actor Craig T. Nelson. When he was interviewed by Glenn Beck, Nelson famously asserted: "I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No."

Somehow, Nelson overlooked that he survived by help from the government. But Nelson doesn’t stand out; it’s what many of us want to believe about ourselves. Yet I have heard that over ninety percent of Americans have at some time received government help.

3. The weight on the other side: religion.

In opposition to this attitude stands our religion. In religion, in Christianity for example, believers assemble together to worship.

Paul’s letters often call for unity among believers and decry division among them. For example:
In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. [1 Corinthian 11:17-18 (NIV).] Or listen to Jesus, through John:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. [John 13:35 (NIV).] Or hear the unknown writer of Hebrews:
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. [Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV).]
Certainly, we are popularly supposed to have a "personal" relationship with God. And that’s true. God relates to us as individuals. He knows each of us by name, and he knows our hearts better than we know ourselves.

But God also relates to us as groups and churches. So, in the Book of Revelation, chapter 1, God spoke to seven churches as churches – the churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea .

And in Philippians 2:12, Paul writes to the church in Philippi to "continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling . . .." Maybe Paul was addressing individuals, but I believe he was also addressing the church as a church. Personally, if I am saved, I believe that the choices of others in my church will influence that.

3. The weight on the other side: politics.

And politics, and American politics, are inherently collectivists. Democracy is individuals voting to determine the common future of the body politic.

People are known to wonder what the point of voting is, because an individual vote makes no difference. That misses the point. Voting is a collective act. And it is a powerful collective act.

Who becomes president makes a giant difference to the fate and fortune of the nation. And that selection is made by determining which candidate can gather the most voters to support his candidacy.

Of course an individual vote makes virtually no difference. But a voter (usually) prevails by joining the larger group.

4. Conflict.

The Citizens United case is widely disliked. That's the case by which the Supreme Court gave the same free-speech rights to corporations that individuals have. That's the case by which the Supreme Court said money is speech. The Supreme Court overturned limits on corporate and union spending on elections.

Citizens United gives the already-very-powerful a very loud voice. That very loud voice drowns out the average citizen who’s political authority is humbly asserted as part of a nationwide group. Citizens United offends most people's notions of democratic equality.

In Citizens United the Supreme Court struck down limits on political spending by organizations (corporations and unions), which tends to drown the collective efforts of individuals. But the dislike of that case does not come from a simplistic sense that individualism is good or bad, or that collectivism is good or bad. The dislike of Citizens United comes from it's particular application of the principles of individualism and collectivism. It comes from a sense that Citizens United wrongfully withdraws political power from the average American by shifting it to the wealthy and to corporations.

People have strong opinions about the right or wrong calibration of power between the individual and the collective. Some people oppose even the nation as a whole from a love of a particular group. Some Americans so identify with a political party or with those who share their ideals that they hate the nation as a whole, because it hosts people whom they oppose or hate.

5. Individualism, as practiced, shows that groups are important.

Even passionate individualism proves the importance of groups. People who little-value the nation’s shared good often exalt the idea of the individual with near Ayn Rand-ian fervor. In their fervor, they try to attract others to their ideas. They might suggest that someone read Atlas Shrugged. They might donate to the political party that is sympathetic to their ideals. They might post on Facebook to encourage the like-minded. So even extreme individualists make effort to multiply their power by making common cause with others.

There is no escaping collectivism unless that escape is to a remote part of a forest.

6. The shifting calibration.

I cannot claim that there is one right calibration between we’re-all-in-this-together and the hail-to-the-solitary-man-or-woman. No one calibration fits every person in every place at all times.

But we are individuals; and small communities; and cities and counties and states and a nation; and Lions Club members; reunion-committee members; or Hell’s Angels members (or all of these). And we must constantly work this calibration out. And the right-seeming calibration never stays the same.

7. Three proposed rules.

Even though the calibration between freedom and community is elusive and shifting, here are three thoughts about how to get it right.

(1) It’s better to have loyalties to groups that mesh rather than to groups than conflict. It just makes things easier.

(2) But conflict is inevitable. It’s a fallen world. The most basic conflict is between the unconstrained freedom on the individual and any need to conform to fit within any group. I would suppose that even anarchists have rules that must be followed for the sake of group cohesion.

And loyalties might be split between one group and another. Your soccer team might have an important game on Sunday when church meets. Your boss might want you to cut legal corners, which defies your duty to the larger society to obey the law.

(3) So we have to decide how to mediate such conflicts. This is like an ethics exercise. All virtues are good; that’s why they’re called virtues. But sometimes they conflict.

The classic dilemma is this: it’s good to tell the truth; but you have a choice to make if it’s World War II, and you are hiding Jews in your attic, and Nazis come to your door and ask you if any Jews live with you. It’s good to be truthful, but it’s more important to love God and love your neighbor than to tell the truth. In Christianity, the duty to love is a meta-rule that mediates among lesser duties. So you lie and deny that you are hiding Jews.

That is, you follow the meta-rule. In other words, you have a rule that breaks ties among virtues.

Every person needs to know which loyalty breaks the tie among other loyalties. Your loyalty to God? Your loyalty to Country? To Family? To Work? To yourself?

This is an issue in which it is easy to be superficial. That’s because it’s easy to be virtuous when virtue is hypothetical.

But it’s better to be honest. That might make you re-calibrate for the better.

House Burning

Civil War historian James M. McPherson write about similarities in North and South in language, religion, law, and political systems:

The same similarities prevailed between England and her North American colonies in 1776, but they did not prevent the development of a separate nationalism in the latter. It is not language or law alone that is important, but the uses to which either is put. In the United States of the 1850s, Northerners and Southerners spoke the same language, to be sure, but they were increasingly using this language to revile each other. Language became an instrument of division, not unity. [Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1996).]

To me, these sentences indict America in 2012. Like North and South in the 1850s, American conservatives and liberals in the early 21^st century speak and write to strip skin from each other. Common ground is elusive, if it is sought, which often it is not. Conversation too often is quest to dominate and destroy.

I don’t think each side is equally to blame in this; but I won’t dwell on that. Your might appoint blame in an opposite way from me. I will say that blame is shared.

And rather than dwell on an endless cycle of accusation and counter-accusation, I propose that we stop and ask: is this what we want?

1. The direction of America.

When did America become so Darwinian? When did we cease to yield to each other for the common good? When did we cease to be a people who disagreed, and come to be enemies? When did each victory and defeat become a booyah moment for one side and, for the other, an occasion for fresh accusations of cheating and fraud?

I wonder if some people will not recognize America in this description. I wonder if some people will say, "But of course we flail [the other side]! They’re political stenches!"

And so North and South felt about each other before the shooting started that ended with 600,000 deaths.

I’m not predicting a new Civil War. Geographically, conservatives and liberals are too enmeshed to plausibly divide. But American conservatives and liberals might be united in one thing and one thing only: together, we might dive into the pit of mutually-assured destruction.

It might not be the sudden self-destruction of a nuclear blast. But it might be. One side or the other might commit some act such as willful refusal to honor national debt already incurred. (By, for example, refusing to raise the debt ceiling.) And, if the timing is right, that could create an economic crisis that could greatly degrade America's economic power.

But if the mutually-assured destruction does not come suddenly like a nuclear blast, it could come slowly, like the nuclear-winter aftermath of such an blast. Just like plants will cease to receive light and make oxygen in a nuclear winter, political stalemate could starve politics of the cooperation that it needs to move forward in any direction.

2. The danger of paralysis.

When I was a young prosecutor, I learned to make decisions quickly. I realized that things happen in trial that you couldn’t predict or prepare for. And as a trial lawyer, I couldn’t walk out the back door of the courtroom and take the elevator to the cafeteria to sip coffee and think of the next step. I had to make an instant decision. I have often been in that position.

And sometimes I made the right decision. Sometimes I made the wrong decision. Sometimes my instant solution was good, sometimes it was bad. But in 50 out of 50 cases, the decision that I made was better than standing in the courtroom and doing nothing.

Look at Europe. When the recent economic crisis hit, Europe united in a solution. That solution was austerity. Now, a few years later, all of the richest countries of Europe except Germany have realized that austerity has made things worse. They are calling for a united pro-growth program, maybe similar to America’s stimulus, which has saved America from the steep downturn that Europe has suffered. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/world/world-leaders-at-us-meeting-urge-growth-not-austerity.html?hp

But the point isn’t to gloat that America’s response was better than Europe’s. The point is that Europe made a choice; now that it has realized that it was the wrong choice, Europe is seriously considering reversing course.

America has to keep that option. We have a political system where one side prevails or the other one does. The prevailing party moves forward with its solutions. If those sulutions turn out to be wrong, then the other side gets its chance at the next go-round. If we can’t follow this time-tested, time-honored democratic model, then we become like homeowners who let their house burn rather that quench the fire by the other homeowners’ plan.

But increasingly, we see political immobility. Increasingly we see a system of politics where one party sabotages the other rather than allow the other party to have success or move forward. And, given our interdependence, that’s like one faction in a submerged submarine sabotaging the engines. Sabotage is suicide.

If politics keeps going where it has been going, we will become a nation of political suicide bombers. In every way.

3. Solutions.

We tend to think our positions are right. But before we speak out, we might ask: is this helpful? Does this build up America? Not every thought needs to be expressed.

We tend to feel dismayed or angry or frustrated with the other side. When we do, we might ask: do I hate [name of other political party] more than I love America? We can’t love America and hate a huge part of it. If we love only part of it, let’s be honest with ourselves. Let’s say, "God bless [name of our own political party]", because "God bless America" is ashes in our mouth.

Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill were famous adversaries, but they were also good and honorable friends. Their mutual opposition and mutual respect are a model for Republicans and Democrats today. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/17/AR2011011703299.html

Nor is the nastiness of politics today good or useful. When I was a new prosecutor, I was told: hit hard blows, but fair ones. Politics should be like that.

Common ground exists among us. Sometimes it’s common religion – in the broad sense. Christians share faith in Jesus Christ. Christians and Jews share faith in the God of Abraham and in much common scripture. Muslims share a faith in the God of Abraham.

Sometimes it’s as simple as a willed goodwill. Sometimes it’s just that we’re all Americans. Common ground should be cultivated.

The beneficiaries of hatred and stalemate in American politics won’t be one party or the other. Certainly, it won’t be the American people. It will be China. It will be Russia. It will be radical Islam. It won’t be us.

Onward.

Ireland, Norway, America, and Hope

Something green is happening in Ireland. I hope it grows deep roots, but it’s too soon to tell.

1. Radical independence in Ireland.

Ireland’s prime minister gave a dramatic speech condemning the Vatican’s interference in the investigation of priests who molested children their under their pastoral care and protection. The prime minister said, basically, that the Catholic Church had wolves all the way up.

This is radical. Ireland is a country that has gone to war over religion. The Irish have spilled Irish blood because of their beliefs. Irish Catholics have fought, died, and killed out of loyalty to Catholicism.

Now this.

It’s a time of upheaval for the faithful in Ireland. Like an abusive spouse who’s wickedness is exposed, the Catholic Church may threaten and intimidate Ireland to return to it’s former deference. It recalled its Irish ambassador after Ireland issued a report highly critical of the Vatican. If the Vatican coerces Ireland to turn its eyes from the corruption of the Church, it will be a failure of justice in Ireland.

God be with the Irish. May they not waiver. If the Vatican tries to turn them back from their defiance, may Ireland say, "Go with God, but go." I’m betting that they will.

Then perhaps the Irish can bond more closely with some of their local prelates, who responded with greater clarity to the harming of children than the Vatican did.

What Ireland is doing is hard. That’s not obvious to someone outside the Catholic Church, as I am. But old ties have hard knots; they resist being loosened.

It’s comforting to think of the ancient Church as a wall that you can put your back to in hard times, who’s protection is constant and reliable. It’s so attractive to think that way that it takes courage to see clearly, to know that the wall of protection deserves a "danger" sign. The Irish might yet prove to be like the Israelites, who, long after fleeing from Egypt, trusted Egypt of old alliance, rather than trusting the unseen God.

Courage to Ireland.

2. Norway’s tragedy may instruct America.

And courage to America. Particularly, courage to those American conservatives who until now have taken the easy road of hatred of Muslims in response to the death of 3,000 of our own on our own soil.

We need courage as we look at Norway. Norway is reckoning with the unimaginable. One of their own has assassinated scores of their young people.  The assassin did this out of a fear of both Islam, a hated enemy, and liberalism, a hated (supposed) friend of Islam.

It’s tempting to dig a cognitive moat between the psyche of the Norwegian killer and our own intolerant minds. So a friend of mine quickly called the Norwegian assassin "crazy". I respect my friend’s opinion, and I don't accuse her personally of intolerance, but I think her explanation is too easy in every sense.

Another cognitive moat: Fox News’s website quotes an anonymous police official, who might or might not exist, to say how puzzled the police are to find no connection between the killer and Norwegian Nazis. By crediting this puzzlement, Fox News insinuates a connection between Naziism and the killer. This is a connection that nobody who will attach their name to their words has drawn.

There's no proof to connect the Norwegian killer to insanity or to Naziism. But he clearly hates both Muslims, and, because they do not share his hatred, liberals. I’m not saying that all intolerant persons are would-be killers. But intolerance does kill. The proof of that is the Norwegian killer.

Because the Norwegian killer admits that his deadly actions came from his beliefs about Muslims; in a word, intolerance. Norwegians aren’t to blame; it was fringe thinking that led to the massacre. But intolerance was a strong component of that fringe thinking. So the massacre calls us to examine our own intolerance, and to decide whether we will permit intolerance to repose in our own minds

And for the intolerant, it takes courage to look upon intolerance and to see it for what it is: hatred, pure and simple. It’s what Christ of the Christians urged his followers to shun. ("[D]o not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also." (Matthew 5:39.) "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you . . .." (Luke 6:27.))

The question is whether we will absorb Norway's trauma and purge our own intolerance.

3. History has cleansed us before.

We’ve turned from intolerance before. Anti-Semitism and racism were widespread in America before World War II. World War II changed us. In the Nazi death camps, we saw the effect of bigotry, and we were filled with revulsion. So we in large measure separated ourselves from intolerance.

I believe that this revulsion caused by the Nazi death camps was a tectonic plate that shifted in our psyches, that contributed to the rise of the great civil-rights movement of the last century.

4. Not an end to debate; a transformation of debate.

Tolerance doesn’t mean we must love the radical, fundamentalist Muslims who plot to harm us. (That would be a truly radical Christianity.) But it’s always wise, and it’s never naive, to see complexity in others.

So, rather than see Muslims as always the same, one to another, we can choose to learn about them. We can learn that Muslims vary from one to another as much as Christians vary from one to another. This isn’t easy. It takes effort. But revulsion to the massacre in Norway spurs us to that effort. Because Norway is the logical end-point of hatred, and it’s only a matter of time before it happens here.

And if we shun intolerance, that doesn’t end debate about national security or immigration policy. It just means that those debates continue without easy, harmful stereotypes.

5. Hope.

Ireland has gone through trauma. The revulsion of what they now know causes them to cast off an old, unquestioning deference. Good for them.

And good for us if we look upon Norway’s tragedy and make their revulsion our own, and use it to turn ourselves to our better natures.

Why an Act of Kindness is an Act of Patriotism

Chaos was the rule in China. I lived there for two years. Getting on a bus wasn’t simple. When the bus’s door opened, a near-riot followed. Everybody tried to board at once, pushing and shoving and struggling to get in ahead of each other.

Church was the same. Sometimes I went to the Chinese Protestant church. When the service ended, everybody left the church like they were getting on a bus. I saw a frail woman roughly treated in the rush to leave.

America is different, and there are probably many reasons for that. But one reason is a simple regard for strangers.

We are a nation of people who (mostly) show courtesy to one another. We let another car merge in front of us in traffic. We tell somebody if they have dropped something. We stop to render aid when someone is in trouble. At least, we dial 9-1-1.

My experience in the world tells me it isn’t so everywhere. In some countries, the rule is that you watch out for yourself and your clan; to blazes with everybody else.

Even though people like Christopher Hitchens argue that religion is a malignant force in the world, I see America as a place where people look out for each other exactly in the degree that Judeo-Christianity has a solid influence. Maybe it sometimes gets downed out in the competing narratives of contemporary fiction and current cinema, but the Bible still informs our conduct. The tale of the good Samaritan is one we admire, even if we don’t always follow it. Almost every child knows the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". And somewhere in our consciousness we find the amazing and sometimes-impossible-seeming demand to "Love your enemies".

We must never forget to cherish those sentiments.

This is true because we live in a complex society. 300 million people more-or-less thrive together. When I try to comprehend this number and reflect on all of these strangers taking care of their daily business and somehow successfully contributing to a country that works, I am amazed. And I know it wouldn’t be possible without a fundamental decency, a core cooperation.

In a country like China, control exists by brute force. Executions are common. One Chinese university I taught at was near a prison and a medical school. The prison fed the medical school a steady stream of cadavers. The medical students learned on these cadavers, but the value to the medical students of each cadaver was reduced by the severe brain trauma from a bullet that had entered the rear of the skull.

I think of China and I think of America, and I fret when I see evidence of everyday indifference to the well-being of others. I worry when I see a loss of courtesy and respect. I dread divisions among us. At stake, ultimately, is a society that works together.

These words are on the United States Seal: "E pluribus unum." It means, "Out of many, one." These words must not become, "E pluribus pluribus." If they do, America is diminished.

Even the Chinese know the desirability of Christian values. I was alone in a sleeper car on a train in China. A beautiful young Chinese woman walked in. She had a ticket to share the sleeper car with me. When she saw me, a young foreigner, her face showed disgust, and she jetted up to her upper bunk across from my lower bunk and proceeded to ignore me. This reaction wasn’t universal, but it wasn’t uncommon. I chose not to be bothered by it, and I calmly opened my Bible and read, sitting on the edge of my bunk.

At some point she must have peered over the edge of her bunk and recognized that I was reading a Bible by the distinctive two-column printing of the pages. I infer this because suddenly she was eager to know me. She broadly hinted that she would welcome a later meet-up. (It never happened; I soon left China.) The point is that she, a non-Christian, added value to me because I was a Christian.

The world wants what we have. The world knows that it’s good. We must not let it slip away.

So if we love our country, we must love our neighbor. We must love not just the ones that are easy to love, but the ones that are different from us – different in race, different in religion, and different in ideology. We must sacrifice our readiness to condemn for the sake of cohesion.

Each of us can influence our neighbor by example. That’s why an act of kindness is an act of patriotism.

Tribes

If we practiced more charity toward each other, we as a nation would be stronger. I mean "charity" in the sense of forbearance from judging others.


1. Trouble in town.Because we don’t forbear from judging others; we aren’t charitable toward each other. Instead, we've become tribal. There’s a "conservative" tribe. There’s a "liberal" tribe. And among tribes, it’s us-versus-them. We live in mutual hostility.

We’re like an unhappy couple that can’t divorce. And everything the other does is interpreted in the most dismal light.

So, we don’t have policy disagreements. Instead, our president is a "socialist". Or a "communist". Or a "Muslim". We learn from Glenn Beck that he "has a deep-seated hatred of White people." The left’s bogeymen of the right, like the Koch brothers, are seen as evil incarnate, persons bent on tearing down government so that there is no rival to the power of the rich. It’s not policy, it’s personal.

When policy is discussed, it’s discussed un-charitably. Leaders who know better speak of "death panels" in the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare" to its detractors). There were no "death panels". They were invented to make Democrats who sought to save lives look like villains who sought to end lives.

Then the world turned. Recently, Republicans proposed Medicare reform. Good or bad, their proposal should have been debated. But, stung, Democrats gladly sawed the branch off behind the Republicans. Republicans fell to earth, to the glee of the Democrats.

Now nobody dares make risky proposals in response to an in-rushing crises. Politically, we're more paralyzed for that.

Hatred percolates and boils over. I’ve read internet discussion-threads between liberals and conservatives that are vicious slanders of each other’s motives, honor, and intelligence. If these conversations had taken place in person, the parties would have to be physically separated.

We aren’t "Americans" any more. We’re tribes of a fractured polis.

Media companies manipulate our weakness in charity. There must be a tribal element to our brains that glories in this us-versus-them mentality, that make these tribal appeals so successful. These media companies bind their followers by engaging the worse, tribal angels of our natures.

There is little reaching across. Action heroes aren’t like Atticus Finch. They don’t persuade. They vanquish. Politically, we don’t want to be Atticus Finches; we want to be action heroes. Political rights are at risk; what is wanted is not a fair election, but elections in which our side wins, by any means necessary. Even by voter intimidation. Even by dis-enfranchisement. Un-charity body-checks democracy.

We aren’t "Americans" any more. We cooperate less; we play political king-of-the-hill more.

Un-charity colors debate. We don’t see the long-term unemployed as victims of hard economic times. They’re freeloaders who would rather do nothing than work. So tax breaks for the wealthy who don’t need more money are preferred to the extension of unemployment benefits to people who do. On the other side of things, people are labeled "war-mongers" for supporting military action.


2. Charity is not naive.For all this, we don’t see ourselves as un-charitable. We see ourselves as pragmatic, realistic. We say to ourselves that it is naive to see somebody or some group as good, if they are evil. And we are convinced of their evil.

But charity doesn’t call us to see our adversaries as good. It calls us to see them as complex. They are not action-adventure movie villains who are evil and only evil. They are flesh-and-blood human beings, like us, good and bad, who, like us, maybe never did anything in their lives with a pure motive; and that would include doing nothing with a purely bad motive.

If we see our fellow human beings as complex, we don’t have to worry about being naive. Seeing complexity in others is the opposite of naivete.


3. What keeps us from charity.Mind-forged manacles bind us away from charity.

One manacle is pride. Charity requires humility. Pride scorns and judges. Charity compels us to think that we don’t have all the answers; that we aren’t always right; that we might be wrong; that somebody we disagree with might have a point. Pride places us, in our minds, above our adversaries. It draws us away from charity.

Another manacle is love of certainty. While we practice un-charity, the world is simple and clear. We and our tribe are good; they and their tribe are bad. We sleep with a peaceful conscience, even if it is peaceful because it’s un-examined. To practice charity is to leave behind comforting certainties. That takes courage.

Another manacle is habit. We have a habit of judging. Charity comes when we have a new habit of humility; a new habit of suspending judgment; a new habit of seeing complexity.

                   4. Speaking of myself.

I judge a lot. I spent some of yesterday practicing not judging, practicing thinking better of people than is my habit, practicing seeing people as three-dimensional instead of as cartoons. I was happier for it. I was better for it.

When I practice charity, I don’t ignore that there is error in the world, and evil. Not all answers are equal, nor all solutions to the problems we face. But charity requires me not to choose condemnation of my adversaries as my first response to controversy.


5. Conclusion.We can become a nation again. We can become less tribal and more American.

Christians, Nut Up.

We Christians are wont to hiss like punctured air hoses when we are criticized by outsiders. We cast a baleful eye at celebrated mockers like Bill Mahar, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. We resent films like Religulous and books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great. Books and films like these make us ache for the quick return of the Lord, so that these Christian-mocking miscreants speedily will be separated from their smug sense of superiority. "Amen", we say.

1. Placing the blame.

But these architects of anti-faith have powerful allies. Their allies are us. Jesus said,

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. [Matthew 5:13 (ASV)]

The simple, sorry truth is that when enemies of faith tread on people of faith, it is because we have lost our saltiness. The would-be debunkers aren’t to blame; we are. When our adversaries tread us under foot, they only prove that Jesus was right.

2. Knowing our natures.

I think this places blame where it belongs. We are soiled. Increasingly, I nod grimly when I think of the biblical prophet Isaiah saying, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips . . .." (Isaiah 6:5 (ASV).) Lies are commonplace in our culture, from bottom to top.

And we love our money and our comfort. We live without qualm to the limit of our means, or beyond it. We buy cars big enough to host hockey games in; now that America is retreating from vehicular behemoths, it is not religious restraint that drums retreat, but the high price of gasoline. We squeeze into the pews of churches that assure us that God wants us to be rich.

Our love of money and comfort crowds out our love of God because we are rich.  In America, the rich don’t repose only in Bel Air; compared to people in biblical times, virtually any resident of Colton, California is rich.  And among nations, America is a rich nation. 

Therefore it is dangerous for us to ignore how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. But we don't worry; we clamber upon our camels and amble toward the eye of the needle that stands between us and the kingdom. (Mark 10:25.)

We don't know the Bible as we once did. Instead, we draw our principles from what we put in front of ourselves. We learn ethics from eight seasons of the television series "24", rather than from an equal number of seasons with the Bible.

The Bible instructs that:

[W]hoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me: But whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea. [Matthew 18:5-6 (ASV).]

But the Catholic Church had to take costly instruction from secular courts about protecting children in their care. This is only the most dramatic religious scandal in a society that grows accustomed to religious scandals, or accustomed to scandals of the pious.

3. Changing our thinking.

Reckless before chasm-sized topics, I suggest, as a start, three modifications of modern American theology.

First, we need to reevaluate our understanding of God’s grace. We seem to believe that salvation is like buying software online, putting a checkmark in the box next to "I agree". So easy.

Here’s a bleaker simile: we are like diners satiating ourselves at the table of sin, and when the grim reaper presents the tariff, we jerk our thumbs over our shoulders and say, "Give that to that guy over there, dying on the cross."

Theologian Dietrich Bohnhoeffer surveyed the doctrine of grace in his native Germany before the outbreak of World War II. He saw a country like ours, awash in belief in cheap grace. We all know how that turned out then: Christianity in Germany did not resist the war, and it did not resist the mass murder of the Jews.

Bohnhoeffer wrote a study of grace called The Cost of Discipleship. It’s no light read; it requires much time and close attention. But it rewards the reading of it.

Second, we must learn to fear God. This is so biblical that it cries out from the pages of scripture. For example, "[Jehovah] will fulfil the desire of them that fear him; He also will hear their cry and will save them." (Psalms 145:19 (ASV).) And "Jehovah taketh pleasure in them that fear him, In those that hope in his lovingkindness." (Psalms 147:11 (ASV).) And "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge . . .." (Proverbs 1:7 (ASV).)  And  "[B]e not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28 (ASV).)

Some mornings as I go into the courthouse, I hear lay preachers preaching hellfire and brimstone to the people lined up to go through the metal detectors. I confess, I groan inwardly. This is partly my reaction to the indecency of forcing a biblical harangue upon a captive audience. But it’s also partly that I don’t think that these lay preachers really fear God; they reveal more condescension than love and trembling. Fear of God must be more than lip service; it must be a holy dread.

Third, we would do well to have less confidence in our own salvation. This walks against the wind of popular "assurance of salvation." And yet I find nothing in scripture that establishes assurance of salvation. Instead, I read of a mere remnant of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob returning to their homeland from Babylonian captivity. I read of many disciples abandoning Jesus when he teaches hard things. (John 6:26-66.) I read Matthew 7:21-23:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. [ASV]

Acts 2:21 superficially seems to contradict Matthew 7:21-23:

And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

In light of Acts 2:21, what of those of Matthew 7:22 who prophesied, cast out demons, did mighty works "by thy name", and were not saved? On the day of judgment, they could only say "Lord, Lord" (Matthew 7:22), not the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21). The reconciliation of these two passages is this: not all who claim Jesus in their lives on Earth will be permitted to call on the name of the Lord on the day of judgment.

4. Practicing the spiritual disciplines.

Those are suggestions about how to think about our God and ourselves. What then do we do? This is another mountain, one that I’ll try to scale in two paragraphs.

When a flight attendant gives instructions about emergencies, she tells the passengers to put the oxygen cup over their own air passages before helping other passengers. That’s probably pretty good advice for spiritual growth.

Therefore study. Learn. Grow. This, like almost everything else I have touched on so far, is a huge subject, not exhaustible in a blog post. So I’ll just say where to get direction. Aside from the Bible, I recommend three books. Richard Foster wrote a modern classic called Celebration of Discipline. One great thing about Foster’s book is that he lists other resources. I also recommend Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. Don Postema’s Space for God is good for group study.

5. Conclusion.

I have said grim things. Maybe I’m a crank. But I urge an antidote to the free, easy, empty Christianity of our time. Who wants to spend a lifetime in church and an eternity apart from God? I fear that too many of us will be mocked in Gehenna for our unfinished towers. (Luke 14:28-30.)

John the Baptist said to the multitudes who came to him to be baptized, "Ye offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Luke 3:7 (ASV).) Forget who warned us; let's be warned.

I started out this post by mentioning our dislike of criticism by professional skeptics and others.  But here is a saying: "Take care of your character, and your reputation will take care of itself."  This should be the Christians' response to our critics.

Note:

I cite books, from the rank to the sublime, in the text. Where I cite a book, I usually provide a link to that book on Amazon.com. I provide the link only for your convenience. If you want the book, great; but it doesn’t matter to me where you get it.