Thought For The Day

I've been mulling over some of the issues swirling around the Barrack Obama/ Reverend Wright kerfuffle. I've been reading an awful lot about it, a fair bit of it from black pastors and pundits who all have their own take on racism in America and Liberation Theology. It's been very interesting reading. I'm not going to get into the political side of this, but one spiritual thing has struck me rather forcefully. Much of what I have read has claimed that the black church in America breaks down into pretty much two camps, the Liberation Theology camp--blacks are an oppressed people on whom the wrongs of the past are still being wrought today--and the Prosperity Gospel camp--God wants you to be financially prosperous, healthy, and untroubled in life. I'm not sure how accurate this assessment is. I personally went to a church for over a decade whose black pastors and black members of the congregation completely rejected both these teachings. However that may be, many now are saying these two belief systems are the predominant lines of thought. What I am convinced is the case is that these two ways of thinking may seem like different ideologies to the people who embrace them, but they are two sides of the same coin.

Think about it. If you believe that God wants you to have every material comfort, if you, in fact, believe this to be a spiritual law, when (as is inevitable in life) you face trials and adversities, you are going to have to find some reason to explain why God is not blessing you as He has promised. You have to blame Him, yourself, or someone/something else. If you see yourself as following His rules and complying with the things He requires to guarantee these blessings, then something, or someone else must be at fault when they are not forthcoming. It is a natural progression. It also follows that you would do the same when you see others who you believe to be worthy facing an inevitably imperfect existence, especially if you see your condition and theirs as intrinsically linked. I don't care what race, color, gender, etc. you are. Most of us try to find ways to reconcile when our worldview and our reality come into conflict. Often that reconciliation takes the form of blame and resentment.

Now, the problems I see in this type of thinking are myriad, but I will limit my response to just a couple. First off, we are flawed and sinful beings, and the first person whose goodness and virtue we ought to look to question is our own. After all, we know ourselves quite intimately, and see the things inside our heads which no one else gets to see. Casting blame should always come back to "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." That, however, is really just the surface of the issue. The Prosperity Gospel's intrinsic flaw, in my opinion, is that it perverts the nature of our motivation for coming to Christ. What the Bible clarifies over and over is that humans are separated from God by our own sin, and that He has made a way, through Jesus, for us to be reconciled to Him and to be changed. The Gospel is all about spiritual restoration and transformation--often a very uncomfortable process as we let go of our selfishness and submit to God's better understanding of what would be best for us. (To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, God's goal is not to make us happy, but to make us good.) We come to God because we love Him and are grateful that He loved us first and wants a relationship with us--that He made a way for that to happen.

What happens when people make it about God making us comfortable instead? They lose the very essence of the love relationship. I ask you, on a strictly human level, do you want people in your life who are your friends because they love you come what may and are grateful for your love in return, or because you give them stuff and make things easy for them? On a less self-focused note, if you want what is best for those you love, where is the benefit to them from merely having things given to them? If your goal for those you love is to see them become better and stronger people, more able to help themselves and others, how will those traits be developed if you never allow them to face trials to develop and prove that growth? Weight lifters only get stronger by adding more weight. Runners gain endurance by pushing their limits. How many of us grow personally during the good and easy times? How much strength and perseverance and wisdom and virtue are gained on a beach in Maui? Now, how many of those do we develop as we work hard to support our families, or endure physical pain, or serve a suffering loved one? It's the hard times that teach us best. All of us naturally want to avoid pain and suffering, but we should not look to avoid them completely, nor desire a life with no trials for the ones we love. Would you want your children so coddled in life that they never develop any character, but remain weak, selfish, dependant whiners their whole lives? Now, take that limited human understanding of wanting what is best for those you love, and combine it with God's infinite love, knowledge and foresight. It goes against His very character to suggest that His goal for any person or group of people is perfect health, wealth and happiness. He loves us too much for that, and He does not want us to come to Him because He can give us stuff, but rather because He can change who we are.

I don't know how really prevalent the teachings of "prosperity" and "liberation" are in the black church, or any other church in America for that matter, but I do believe that those who cling to such teachings deny the true power of the Gospel. That true power is the power to change lives, through forgiveness for our sins and an ongoing changing of individual character which makes us able to say with Paul:

...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11-13

My husband always says, "Circumstance is nothing. Character is everything." It's who God is shaping us to be that matters. All the rest is just circumstance.

Now I've Heard Everything

I've been out most of the day, so I haven't had any time to write anything of substance, but I had to pass on a link I got from IMAO, to an article in The Seattle Times. Religion can be confusing at times for most people, and usually if someone hasn't come up against hard questions that challenge their faith, they are either very sheltered or not thinking very deeply. Generally , however, people either resolve their issues to some degree, or move on to something that they can believe with more clarity. It's difficult to imagine someone doing both, but there is an Episcopalian priest--a woman who has been an Episcopalian priest for twenty years--who has recently converted to Islam, while still retaining her position as a Christian priest. Personally, I don't think it's possible to really be either if you claim to be both, at least not from a Christian perspective, but this woman claims to be okay with the conflicts inherent to the situation, although I'm surprised her denomination isn't less okay with it. Actually, now that I think about it, I'd be more surprised if the denomination involved wasn't on the front lines of redefining Christianity and Christian standards in America today. A Muslim Episcopalian. Now I've heard everything... maybe. (No, I take that back--when I've heard of a Hindu Baptist I will have heard everything.)

Reason and Religion

Okay, I know I use the word "interesting" a lot, but I really can't help that the word so often applies. It's reasonable to use it, where it fits, and I must be reasonable, whenever possible. Speaking of reasonable and interesting, there is an interesting examination of reason and religion, at The Weekly Standard. Lee Harris looks at Joseph Ratzinger's (the Pope's) speech from September 12th, which addressed the question of critical self-examination in the West regarding faith and reason. Harris digs deeply into the question of whether reason has any business consorting with God. Because it at one point questioned the reasonableness of Islam's tendency toward conversion by the sword, the Pope's speech has created a firestorm of debate, and anger in the Muslim world, which much of the West, supposed adherents of modern reason, have supported. Harris examines this support, and concludes at length that reason does not justify it. This is a wide ranging discussion, from Greek philosophy to modern reason, from atheism to Christianity to Islam, from Ratzinger to Socrates.

Harris' basic argument, drawn from Ratzinger's speech, as well as noted philosophical thinkers, boils down to the notion that atheistic, modern, scientific reason must make an ethical and religious judgement, between a religion that would demand belief through violence, and a religion that would decry that coerced belief is no belief at all. Harris points out that the very foundation that allowed modern reason to develop came from a unique convergence of influences: Biblical faith, Greek philosophical inquiry, and Roman heritage:

Modern reason is a cultural phenomenon like any other: It did not drop down one fine day out of the clouds. It involved no special creation. Rather, it evolved uniquely out of the fusion of cultural traditions known as Christendom.

Harris goes on from this point to clarify this debt of reason to Christendom, and I think what he has to say here is worth quoting at length:

A critique of modern reason from within must recognize its cultural and historical roots in this Christian heritage. In particular, it must recognize its debt to the distinctive concept of God that was the product of the convergence of the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman traditions. To recognize this debt, of course, does not require any of us to believe that this God actually exists.

For example, the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was an atheist; yet in his own critique of modern reason, he makes a remarkably shrewd point, which Ratzinger might well have made himself. Modern scientific reason says that the universe is governed by rules through and through; indeed, it is the aim of modern reason to disclose and reveal these laws through scientific inquiry. Yet, as Schopenhauer asks, where did this notion of a law-governed universe come from? No scientist can possibly argue that science has proven the universe to be rule-governed throughout all of space and all of time. As Kant argued in his Critique of Judgment, scientists must begin by assuming that nature is rational through and through: It is a necessary hypothesis for doing science at all. But where did this hypothesis, so vital to science, come from?

The answer, according to Schopenhauer, was that modern scientific reason derived its model of the universe from the Christian concept of God as a rational Creator who has intelligently designed every last detail of the universe ex nihilo. It was this Christian idea of God that permitted Europeans to believe that the universe was a rational cosmos. Because Europeans had been brought up to imagine the universe as the creation of a rational intelligence, they naturally came to expect to find evidence of this intelligence wherever they looked--and, strangely enough, they did.

Harris' article continues with an examination of whether reason should not judge between a God of free will and a God of slavery, and gets further into the points that Ratzinger made in his address, regarding critical self-examination in the West. The piece is far too long and complex of topic for me to do justice to it in a brief blog post, but I encourage you to read it for yourself. You may agree in part, and disagree in part, as is often the case with people of reasonable mind, but Harris' main point is that reason should have a place in religious discussion, and, because science cannot answer every question put to it, religion, ultimately cannot help but enter the discussion in matters of modern reason. The point seems reasonable to me.

The Rise And Fall And Rise Of Socialism

In a lengthy essay in today's edition of TCS Daily, Lee Harris asks the question, "Why Isn't Socialism Dead?" Harris quotes Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, as saying capitalism is the only rational alternative, the only way people in poverty truly gain the opportunity to improve their lot in life. Yet, we have seen some resurgence of socialist thought in Latin America, with the coming to power of Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez, under the tutelage of Fidel Castro. This begs the question; from where is this rise in populist thought coming, and where is it heading?

Harris explains the difference between socialism in its revolutionary form, the overthrowing of power and seizing of private assets, and the scientific socialism of Marx. Scientific socialism held that socialism would evolve as a natural progression, a "next step" after the necessary stage of capitalism. In fact, according to Harris, Marx saw the United States as the most progressive country on earth, and a place where socialism would come into being with no revolution or struggle at all, but simply as a transformation.

For Marx, it made no sense for revolutionaries to overthrow capitalism before it had fulfilled its historical destiny; on the contrary, to overthrow capitalism before it collapsed internally would be counter-productive: the precondition of viable socialism was, after all, a fully matured capitalist system that had already revolutionized the world through its amazing ability to organize labor, to make the best use of natural resources, to internationalize commerce and industry, and to create enormous wealth. Therefore, for Marx, there was no point in revolution for the sake of revolution. Instead, the would-be revolutionary had to learn to be patient; he had to wait until the capitalist system had failed on its own account, and only then would he be able to play out his historical role.

Marx believed socialism could only come out of the natural death of capitalism, but the main examples of socialism in the twentieth century came out of the violent revolutionary mold, the seizing of power and assets by such visionaries as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler, with his "revolutionary" national socialism. We have seen these powers rise, and watched most of them fall, and been grateful at their demise. These powers have not liberated their people, nor provided the Utopian existence they so fervently believed would follow the revolution. So, where is the remaining lure? Why would any country elect to follow that path, given the example of history?

Harris believes that socialism continues to call its devoted followers because it is actually much more religious in nature than scientific. Like religion, it does not die with disappointment.

It may well be that socialism isn't dead because socialism cannot die. As Sorel argued, the revolutionary myth may, like religion, continue to thrive in "the profounder regions of our mental life," in those realms unreachable by mere reason and argument, where even a hundred proofs of failure are insufficient to wean us from those primordial illusions that we so badly wish to be true. Who doesn't want to see the wicked and the arrogant put in their place? Who among the downtrodden and the dispossessed can fail to be stirred by the promise of a world in which all men are equal, and each has what he needs?

Indeed, the true advocates for any governmental system generally believe that it will bring about right and justice, and benefit the deserving. Capitalists and socialists alike see their preferred system as the one that will cause the most benefit to the most people. However, Harris issues a warning for the advocates of capitalism. He fears that socialism may "spring back into life with a force and vigor shocking to those who have, with good reason, declared socialism to be no longer viable." His reason is man's need for what he calls myth, and the religious nature of its appeal.

Those who, like Chavez, Morales, and Castro, are preaching the old time religion of socialism may well be able to tap into something deeper and more primordial than mere reason and argument, while those who advocate the more rational path of capitalism may find that they have few listeners among those they most need to reach -- namely, the People. Worse, in a populist democracy, the People have historically demonstrated a knack of picking as their leaders those (who) know the best and most efficient way to by-pass their reason -- demagogues who can reach deep down to their primordial and, alas, often utterly irrational instincts.

Unlike Harris, I don't see all religion as a need for myth, nor all religion as myth-like in nature. I believe there is great scientific and historical evidence for the existence of God, and the sacrifice of his Son. However, I do agree with Harris that people need something in which to believe, something which transforms them. What we truly believe ultimately defines who we are, what choices we make, and what we become. Harris believes that capitalism needs to come up with a better myth than socialism, or possibly face the continued rise of socialism in the twenty-first century. He considers the challenge of capitalism to come up with its own transformative myth "perhaps the most urgent question of our time." With our ongoing battle with "Islamic Manifest Destiny" I think there are other issues of at least equal importance that face us today, and any number of yet unseen challenges will confront us before this century passes into history. I can't agree with Harris' conclusion the we need to come up with another, more appealing, myth to counter the old one of Utopian socialism. I believe, as it says in Scripture, that the truth will set you free. We need to seek what's true, not what packages the best. If capitalism truly is the best of all possible systems, it is likely to endure. However, what I came away from Harris' essay with was a better understanding of the continued survival of socialist thought. I can agree that the hold socialism has on its most devoted followers is basically religious in nature. It is a belief system as much as a governmental one. I learned some things in Harris' essay about the history of the socialist movement, and the root of its continued appeal, and for that reason I recommend it.