Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

Feb
02
2012

Dalrymple on Capitalism and the Poor

I’ve often lamented the inability of conservatives and Republicans to articulate how capitalism is really the best system to help lift the poor out of poverty. Liberals rightly raise the issue of the poor, but their solutions seem to keep poor entrapped. Conservatives often rightly decry these programs but don’t often articulately explain why capitalism and free markets (combined with robust social institutions) are the best vehicle (in an imperfect, fallen world) to more permanently raise the poor from poverty.

My friend Timothy Dalrymple is a rare exception. A gifted wordsmith, he’s an eloquent defender of capitalism. In an article about Mitt Romney’s recent gaffe, he says:

But Mitt, like Republicans in general, needs to reclaim the language of compassion for the poor.  It’s not compassionate to leave the very poor tangled up in our social safety nets.  It’s not compassionate to promote dependency.  What is compassionate — what actually serves the interest of the very poor, as well as everyone else — is unleashing economic growth that brings greater opportunity, better values and better compensation for everyone.  The very poor are not doing fine.  They’re drowning in the unintended consequences of liberals’ good intentions — their families are falling apart, their spirits and creativity are languishing, and the economic virtues are withering from their communities because of the perverse mis-incentives of government largesse.

The entire article is worth reading: Philosophical Fragments » Mitt’s “Very Poor” Phrasing.

Jan
23
2012

When Partisanship Blinds

You don’t have to be a political junkie to know that GOP voters are in the midst of primary season, choosing whom they’d like to face off against President Obama in the fall. Many conservative Christians are tuning in and making choices. Politics in America is a necessary evil. We need good Christians in levels of government to help shape society. But politics often plays to our basest instincts, drawing even good people into silly partisan games and blinding them to reality.

Such is the case with Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, architect of the Contract with America and a brilliant man of ideas in the Republican Party. I’ve often admired Newt for his willingness to think outside of the same set of conservative talking points (low taxes, strong defense, limited government). But as is well known, Newt has significant weaknesses as a leader, not the least of which is a hubris that grates even on those who agree with him the most. Which is why he was tossed as speaker by his colleagues. Most troubling is Newt’s public moral failings, having admitted to serial infidelity.

By all accounts Newt is now a changed man. As a 68-year old grandfather, he seems to have found discipline and grace in his old age. We have no reason to doubt this. As Christians we believe in the power of redemption and life change.

And yet, what is troubling about Newt’s candidacy, in my view, may not be Newt himself, but his many conservative defenders. All of a sudden, its taboo now for the media to probe into Newts background and ask tough questions of him, questions raised by his 2nd wife’s interview in which she claims Newt wanted an “open marriage.” I’m not sure if Newt asked for that or not and yes, these issues are several years old. However, it is not journalistic malpractice for the media to ask these questions. We are, after all, picking a President. Don’t we have the right to inquire of his moral character?

What distresses me most, what prompted me to write this blog post in the first place, was the searing hypocrisy on the part of some on the Right. I distinctly remember when Bill Clinton was being publically and legally tried for his moral failures while in the White House. I remember his chief defender, James Carville saying something like this, “Character doesn’t matter. Nobody cares about that. It’s the economy stupid.” Conservative Christians rightly denounced this. We do believe moral character matters.

And yet I’m hearing this same convoluted defense of Newt Gingrich’s indescretions. Again, I’m not throwing stones at Newt, nor am I saying he couldn’t serve as President. But it seems politics has blinded us to what we really believe. Suddenly the character about which we were so excercised in Clinton’s day no longer matters. All we seem to care about is getting rid of Obamacare. I’m hearing comparisons to King David, comparisons which we ridiculed when Democrats used him in defense of Bill Clinton. I’m also hearing conservatives justify Newt by saying things like, “the Democrats do it and are worse.” As if the only way to assess someone’s moral failure is through the lens of who is doing it worse. This is the kind of twisted moral logic I thought the Judeo Christian ethic rejects.

So, there are two conclusions to draw. Either politics has so blinded conservatives to the issues about which they once stood and they operate within a framework that defends their guy at all costs and repudiates the other side at all costs. Or, they’ve come a long way from their moralist past and are embracing more of the gospel’s tone of forgiveness and redemption. I’m cynical, but I believe the former.

I say all of this not to throw stones at Newt. He has very publicly repented. No man is perfect, least of all public figures for whom temptation is much greater. None of us is above the possibility of moral failure. For this, we fall on the grace of God. But what we must realize is that God’s grace extends to both Republican and Democrat, that moral failure is wrong no matter who is committing it. And while we should offer forgiveness to those who fall, let’s not bend so far backward that we actually defend the actual deed or minimize its importance in the life of our nation.

Maybe this will keep us from two equally wrong political postures: twisting the political knife when an ideological opponent stumbles and reflexively defending bad behavior among those whose policies we affirm.

Because if character does matter, it matters regardless of party. And if grace and redemption are offered in the gospel, they are available even to Democrats.

 

Jan
13
2012

Friday Five: Matthew Lee Anderson

 

Matthew Lee Anderson is the founder of the popular blog Mere Orthodoxy as well as the author of  Earthen Vessels, Why Our Body Matters to Our Faith   He was featured in Christianity Today’s Who’s Next column in December of 2009.  Matthew sits on the editorial board of The City, and has been quoted on FoxNews.com, in the Wall Street Journal, and by the Associated Press.  He is a frequent contributor to publications such as First Things, Christianity Today, and The Gospel Coalition. He is a Perpetual Member of the Torrey Honors Institute and a graduate from Biola University (2004).

You’re part of a wave of young evangelical intellectuals. Scholars like Mark Noll have lamented the lack of evangelical scholarship in the past, but do you sense a new renaissance in evangelical intellectual pursuits? 

I hope so, but it’s very difficult to tell these sorts of things with anything approaching accuracy.  I know we have made incredible advances in a number of disciplines, particularly philosophy, psychology and sociology.  And I keep running into really intelligent Ph.D. candidates in political philosophy, which gives me hope for the future.  But if we are experiencing a renaissance, it will only be because of the work of Noll and others in the generation previous.  They were the true trailblazers, and my generation is simply lucky to stand on their shoulders.

In your famous paper, “The New Evangelical Scandal“, published in The City, you cautioned young evangelicals who tend to dismiss everything they learned from their parent’s generation. Why is this tendency so dangerous? 

“Famous” is probably overstating it, but it was a fun piece to write!  I think when the default mode of cultural engagement is that our parents were wrong and we’re out to fix it, we risk inoculating ourselves against any form of self-criticism.  Myopia breeds only more myopia:  if we don’t have the vision to see both the good and the bad of what we’ve inherited, we’ll never learn to truly see both the good and the bad of what we’re contributing.  Chesterton once wrote something to the effect that love is blind–it’s bound, and because it’s bound, it sees more clearly than anything else.  I think the same sort of thing is true of our cultural engagement: if we recognize the ways in which our lives our bound up in our parents, for both good and ill, we’ll see ourselves and the world more clearly and act more effectively in it.

Earthen Vessels is a thorough treatment of the intersection of the human body and faith. What inspired you to write this book? 

A moment of insanity!  Seriously, I have been ruminating on issues related to the body for a decade.  I first realized that there were depths when I listened to a lecture on Plato by John Mark Reynolds.  I also happened to be binging on the Apostle Paul and reading Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines  The result was the realization that the Incarnation changes everything, and that the problem that Christianity solved in the ancient world (which is pretty close to the problem it solves today) is the problem of the body.

Why do evangelicals need a more robust theology of the body? 

For lots of reasons, not least of which is that it will help chasten the tacit secularism that many evangelicals have unwittingly adopted.  Secularism isn’t always and everywhere bad, but it’s impossible to sift properly without pre-existing theological categories that will filter things out.  Seeing how the Gospel shapes (and doesn’t shape) bodies is imperative for living in a world that has reduced the body to a question, and evangelicals are currently woefully equipped to do that.  Developing a more robust theology of the body will help us know what shape our practices should take, see how those practices will affect our bodies, and help us resist and affirm the counter-practices of the world with greater wisdom and discernment.  If it’s not my book, it has to be someone else.  And I’ll sell their book as much (if not moreso) than I’ve tried to sell mine.

Lastly, I appreciate the lack of straw men in your writing. You really aim to present both sides of an argument fairly in a way I don’t often see even in people whose arguments I agre with. Has this always been a feature of your writing? 

Well, that’s very kind of you to say.  I don’t know if it’s always been a feature of my writing, but I’ve always tried to make it one.  It’s a practice I take very seriously.  My motivation has two sides to it.  On the one hand, I want to be charitable to people, to represent them at their best because that’s what I want for my own work.  But on the other hand, if we’re going to ultimately disagree on something, I want to really disagree–fairly, honestly, out in the open, and preferably over a good meal that you’re buying.  It’s no fun having arguments when one side has been misrepresented:  it’s a lot more fun when the disagreement’s over the substance of things, and that’s always the level to which I’m trying to reach.

Jan
12
2012

Does God Care Whether Tim Tebow Wins?

Writing in the Atlantic, Owen Strachan writes the column lot of us wanted to write, but couldn’t. A great, great piece answering the question, “Does God want Tebow to win?” A key paragraph:

But what happens when Tebow loses? What happens if my New England Patriots, a team I have loved since Dave Meggett was getting stuffed on every punt return and Drew Bledsoe was completing cannon-like passes to more sideline coaches than receivers, steamroll the Broncos, as they did earlier in the season? Has God capriciously retracted his blessing on this All-American golden-boy, who runs like a lion yet speaks like a Sunday-school teacher?

Do yourself a favor and read the whole piece: Does God Care Whether Tim Tebow Wins on Saturday?

Jan
11
2012

Let My People Go – Human Trafficking Awareness Day

Today, January 11th, is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. To help raise awareness of the scourge of human trafficking around the world, I asked my good friend, Kathi Macias to write a guest post. Kathi is a prolific, award-winning author, but the book she wrote that most touched me was her novel, Deliver Me From Evil that put a face to human trafficking. You can read my review. But first, read Kathi’s informative post about this all important issue: 

The term “human trafficking” or “trafficking in persons” (TIP) often draws raised eyebrows and skeptical expressions—until statistics are laid out to show that approximately 27 million people are enslaved today, whether for the purposes of slave labor, prostitution, or involuntary organ “donations.”

The Salvation Army has made the rescue of those enslaved around the world their number-one goal at this time, holding seminars and conferences to educate people and to garner support from various individuals and organizations.

The United Nations describes TIP in this way:

“The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”

In a nutshell, human trafficking is modern-day slavery, and it is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. It is currently tied with the illegal arms industry for the second largest criminal industry in existence, with the drug industry being the only one to edge it out.

Oh, I know. Most people naively believe that human trafficking happens only in faraway countries—Thailand or Cambodia, perhaps. True, it does occur there at a tragic rate. But it also takes place right here in the United States daily, to such an extent that some states are instituting task forces to try and stop it. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot promises that their new task force “will take an aggressive stand against human traffickers, who have turned Texas into a hub for international and domestic forced labor and prostitution rings.”[1]

Another myth about human trafficking is that it only involves adults. Millions of children around the world are crying out in pain and terror over the heartbreaking error of that statement. According to Wikepedia, trafficking in children may come about as an “exploitation of the parents’ extreme poverty. Parents may sell children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or gain income, or they may be deceived concerning the prospects of training and a better life for their children. They may sell their children for labor, sex trafficking, or illegal adoptions.”

Can there be anything that grieves the Father’s heart more than the forced enslaving of people made in His own image—by others bearing that same divine imprint? I believe each time anyone becomes aware of such evil and cries out against it, that cry is spurred by the Father’s own pain. If ever the Church needed to be involved in helping to right a human wrong, it’s now. Human trafficking must stop! And each of us who names the Name of Christ must ask the Father what He wants us to do to help make that happen.

In my case, that includes writing about it—every chance I get, including blogs, letters, articles, and a new fiction-based-on-real-life series that I’m just now starting. Will you pray for me as I research and write it? And will you also pray and ask God what you can do to answer His heart cry of “Let My people go”? Millions of enslaved human beings around the world are depending on you to respond.

[1] www.humantrafficking.org, “News and Updates,” April 5, 2010.

 

Additional Resources:

Jan
07
2012

Some great advice for election season

Amy E. Black writes a terrific article for Christianity Today, encouraging believers to watch how they engage politics. Too often we check our Christianity at the door. She writes:

If we are to seek peaceful solutions and honor God in politics, we Christians of all people must avoid such hateful talk. James 4:11 commands us to “not slander one another,” an exhortation that should extend beyond how we treat other believers. Whether talking with friends or campaigning for our favorite candidate or cause, we should engage our political opponents and their ideas with respect, welcome the opportunity to learn from other perspectives, and find ways to disagree charitably as a natural part of the political process.

This is something I’ve written about before. We shouldn’t retreat from the public square and we should work to build a better society. But I’m convinced that God cares about the way we argue as much as He cares about  the issues we espouse. This is a worthy article to read. You can get the entire thing here: The Cure for Election Madness | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

Jan
04
2012

Why Your Work Matters

This is a terrific conversation between Collin Hansen of The Gospel Coalition and Matt Perman, proprietor of the blog What’s Best Next and director of strategy for Desiring God Ministries. Collin interviews Matt about his forthcoming book, but more importantly about the often-neglected doctrine of work. I love this new emphasis, helping so-called “lay people” discover the worth and value of the work they do Mon-Friday:

 

Monday Morning Motivation from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Jan
03
2012

Kevin DeYoung on Christian Political Engagement

Today is the Iowa caucus and the first of many primaries for Republicans before a long drawn-out Presidential and Congressional contest. Christians of course have to wrestle with politics in America. Good people find themselves on both sides of important issues.

This is why I especially appreciated the wisdom of Kevin DeYoung, who writes on this blog:

This can be tricky. On the one hand, I’m concerned that some of us think there is a Christian position on every issue—as if the Bible determines the one and only God-honoring decision regarding rates of taxation or how to respond if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz. But on the other hand, I fear other Christians are so loathe to seem partisan, or they consider politics so unclean, that they don’t dare bring Christian principles to bear on their political thinking. This too is a mistake. You don’t have to be a transformationalist or reconstructionist to believe that biblical principles ought to shape the way we look at the world (including politics) and how we understand the way things work.

The Bible is a big book, so there are a lot of things we could say in an effort to piece together a political worldview out of biblical principles. But this is a blog and not a book. So let me take just one doctrinal area and tease out some possible implications.

I believe our most important political considerations grow out a proper understanding of the human person. The more our politicians and political institutions operate according to the way things actually are and the way we actually are the more we will flourish as a nation.

Kevin then goes on to outline some basic biblical principles. Do yourself a favor and read the whole post: