Economics to the Glory of God Pt. 2

Proverbs 28:8

Whoever multiples his wealth by

interest and profit

gathers it for him who is 

generous to the poor.

According to God's economy tithes, offerings, and giving to the poor is simply the best investment. Savings is second and Wall Street is much further down the list. This shows just how screwed up we've become.

Proverbs 28: 19-22, 26-27

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread,

but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.

A faithful man will abound with blessings,

but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.

To show partiality is not good, 

but for a piece of bread a man will do wrong.

A stingy man hastens after wealth

and does not know that poverty will come upon him....

Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool,

but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.

Whoever gives to the poor will not want, 

but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.

Are we working our land and giving to the poor? That is a perennial question in Scripture. Whether we are diversified is also important, but doesn't receive the same emphasis.

Nominal Nominations

After seeing "The King's Speech" last night I would like to go ahead with my Oscar nominations:


Movie of the Year:

• "The Kings Speech" (compelling)
• "Nanny McPhee Returns" (Inspirational)
• "True Grit" (Grisled Realism, except the rattle snakes)
• "Despicable Me" (Redemptive)
• "Inception" (Dreamy)

Best Actor:

• The young girl in "True Grit" 
• Colin Firth "The Kings Speech" 

Best Supporting Actor:

• Geoffrey Rush "The Kings Speech" 
• Jeff Bridges "True Grit"

Special Effects:

• "Inception"
• "Voyage of the Dawn Treader"
• "Tron Legacy"

Screen Play:

• "Inception"
• "The Kings Speech"

Worst Hack Job:

• "Gulliver's Travels"
• "The Actual Nominations of the Academy"

Economics to the Glory of God

Proverbs 22:16

Whoever oppresses the poor to 

increase his own wealth,

or gives to the rich, will only

come to poverty.

We have had our share of economic woes lately in America. Could they be related to the truth of that verse? The rich have been getting richer and the poor poorer for a long time. In the 1970's a CEO was paid twenty times more than the lowest paid worker. Today he's paid over 300 times more (Goodzward, Hope in Troubled Times)!

The Mondragon Corporation in Spain is based on Distributist principles so that the highest paid is remunerated at only six times more than the lowest paid worker. It is a billion dollar company (William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed).

When will we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves?

Republic of Thought

Plato: Republic by Robin Waterfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my second dip, and this time I swam from one end to the other and read almost all of Waterfield's notes. There are things to be said about Plato and about Waterfield as a translator and commentator. Plato first.

The republic is an empire of thought. Plato knows that it is a mere thought experiment and that it will never take. That said "Ideas have consequences" and Plato certainly tries to make his mark on political, philosophical, and theological policy. What is refreshing about this ancient air that blows off every page is that Plato's goal is to convince that in order to have an orderly civil order laws and behavior must be grounded in the absolute or what he calls "the Form of the Good." In the argument between the Christian and the secularist Plato is firmly in the camp of the Christian. He knows that a robust morality cannot be brewed from the grounds of "enlightened self-interest."  Enlightened self-interest is like the shifting shadows on the "cave" wall - just "shadows of morality" (517.d). There must be an absolute standard to even distinguish good and evil, much less be able to legislate it for a community. Today we expect morality to spontaneously generate apart from moral authority. Plato argued that the Form of the Good not only casts light for the mind's eye to see all of reality but it was the source of all reality and thus everything good. It is even the source of 2 + 2 = 4, so that it would actually be immoral to teach that 2 + 2 = 5. We can't have morality on any other terms but a knowledge of God, whom he called the One, and his true Ideas. Plato wrote:

"It isn't only the known-ness of the things we know which is conferred upon them by goodness, but also their reaity and their being .... It's my opinion that the last thing to be seen -- and it isn't easy to see either--in the realm of knowledge is goodness; and the sight of the character of goodness leads one to deduce that it is responsible for everything that is right and fine, whatever the circumstances, and that in the visible realm it is the progenitor of light and of the source of light, and in the intelligible realm it is the source and provider of truth and knowledge. And I also think that the sight of it is a prerequisite for intelligent conduct either of one's own private affairs or of public business" (509b, 517c).

It's true that Plato was an elitist, dividing society into the castes of guardians, who are philosopher kings, auxiliaries, who oversee the military, and workers who farm, build, buy, and sell. He believed that the guardians must be given an education in what T. S. Eliot called the "permanent things:

"Imagine someone who really lacks the ability to recognize any and every real thing and has no paradigm to shed light for the mind's eye. He has nothing absolutely authentic to contemplate ... and use as a reference-point whenever he needs to, and gain a completely accurate picture of, before establishing human norms of right, morality, and goodness (if establishing is what is required), and before guarding and protecting the norms that have already been established."

This means that those who govern need an absolute standard or transcendent basis for law. Laws must transcend individuals if they are to bind all individuals and thus whole communities. Are we the first civilization, where most of the elites think we can dispence with the transcendent and still have a moral order? Every time someone declares someone else in the wrong he assumes something binds them both. Where does he get this moral authority over other people?

Plato has his problems as well. He would like for the government of the philosopher kings to take over the role of the family and all children to call older men father so that the family fades into the larger community. The Philosophers are to arrange marriages of the best and brightest of both classes in order to improve the race and men are to share the women and have multiple marriages. The Philosophers are to tell everyone the noble lie that some are made of gold and meant to govern, while others are silver, and the rest are copper and iron and meant for manual labor. But all are rational enough to accept this as corresponding to their nature and thus good for them. Plato would abolish private property and personal possessions among the guardians in order to get rid of envy and ambition. The workers are allowed to own and possess and thus they might not be jealous of the guardians unless they were rational and wanted to rule for the right reasons. These could be recognized and moved up to the philosopher class and others could be demoted if they weren't interested in philosophy.

From a Christian point of view Plato is still playing with the "shadows of morality" since he doesn't know God's special revelation, but he does better than most with general revelation. It's not until we read the best of the ancient world that we realize what an effect Christianity has had on the West and just how much of our morality that we take for granted as rational, such as marital fidelity and equality of women and children, was actually revealed by the God of the Bible.

Now on to our translator Robin Waterfield. Waterfield doesn't go with the traditional translation of "eidos" as "form" but uses "type" instead. For some reason modern translators can't leave well enough alone and go for worse. The type of the good doesn't have the same force as the "form" of the good. On top of this Waterfield is a materialist who can't understand Plato at points.

Plato apparantly stands out in Greece for believing in the minds immortality. He argues that a things disease always destroys it like when rust reduces metal to dust. The mind must be immortal however because its disease, which is immorality, doesn't destroy it. In fact most, like an early character named Thrasymachus, become clever and vivacious in their promotion of immorality. Waterfield calls Plato's argument circular and here's why:

"There is no reason to suppose that physical death and psychic death are not identical, or that what destroys bodies does not also destroy minds, unless one already believes that the mind is different in substance from the body."

If the mind is reducible to the brain, which is grey matter and chemicals, then explain self-consciousness. Computers aren't self-conscious. If all we have is nerves and synapsis then how are we able to tell ourselves how and what to think? Explain the longing for transcendent meaning in this bag of chemicals that we call man. There's no reason to suppose that our minds die when our brain function stops unless one already "believes" that the mind is reducible to the brain.

In another place Plato says, "It's goodness which gives the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge." Waterfield says, "what is the meaning of the assertion that goodness is responsible for truth and knowledge? (Truth means little ore than just knowability here) .... It cannot be merely that to know a thing is to know in what way it is good, because Plato envisages knowable types of immorality and evil." Why can't Plato be saying that knowledge of the good is the source of our knowledge of all things and even our knowledge of bad things because the bad things are a perversion of the formerly good thing. Knowledge of the good means we know 2 + 2 = 4, and we know that it would actually be immoral to teach that 2 + 2 = 5.

That said Waterman's translation is a good read and his notes are certainly more than worthwhile.




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Luxury Folly

I just re-listened to a Mars Hill Audio interview with Robert Frank about his 1999 book Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era Excess. It has been republished in 2010 by Princeton Univ. Press, because it is probably more relevant than ever.

Frank argues that we buy possessions that don't make us happy, because the incentives are wrong. Our consumer culture sends us the message that to be successful we must look the part. This means conspicuous consumption like the Lexus, the sprawling estate, and the flashy wardrobe with all the accessories. Inconspicuous consumption like vacation, family time, and relaxation, which we know are more fulfilling, are not incentivized by our consumer economy.

Thus Frank proposes a economic model that sounds more like what my grandparents knew. I've always wondered why during WWII the war effort at home was always about sacrifice and doing without. Today we're told that if we want to help, we need to get out and spend. We chart consumer confidence as a mark of a healthy economy. It's spending not savings, stupid!

Frank says not so fast. If we know what's good for us we need to change the game. Why not incentivize savings. Do away with income tax and set up a progressive consumption tax. Say a family pulls in $1,000,000, and they save $300,000. This means that they spent $700,000 on consumables, and this is their taxable income. The tax is graduated so that low and middle income families aren't made any poorer, and also have an incentive to save. This sounds like a distributism of savings.

Despite the poor economy, we've seen another decade of little to no savings among the majority of Americans. When you think about it, we must be out of our minds.

Many reviewers complain that Frank's vision doesn't take cultural realities into account. Just because we know that intangibles are better for us doesn't mean that we can quite worshipping the invisible hand of Adam Smith. Smith told us that the sum of individuals seeking their own interest adds up to the common good for all. This is the invisible hand of the self-regulating market, but it has infected us with luxury fever. Didn't Jesus say, "Do not store up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but store up treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also." More intangibles please!

A former student of mine described our consumer economy as a once flowing river that has all but dried up. In order to keep it flowing the government has gone into debt buying two parts hydrogen for every one part oxygen and flooding the basin of consumerism. This is an artificial stimulant that gets us spending again. But it leaves us with the hangover of buyer's regret, and a government that's going to take us down the drain with it.  I pray that this doesn't have to happen in order for us learn wisdom and change our incentives. "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people" (Proverbs 14:34).

Blue Empires

I've been grading a lot of papers recently about the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and it seems to me that the empire was not on the brink of social, moral, or spiritual collapse. Edward Gibbon had argued that Christianity had contributed to an otherworldliness that made the Romans militarily and economically absentminded.

The Christian Emperor Constantine however had been a life long soldier and was anything but lax militarily. He brought in a pax Romana of prosperity that rivaled that of Caesar Augustus. Peter Heather points out that the Eastern side was even more permeated with Christianity, and Constantinople thrived until the Ottoman conquest in 1453. If anything, Christianity prolonged the existence of the Western empire and then resurrected it in 800 under Charlemagne. Blood-sports did continue despite Constantine's ban. But at least such spectacle was disapproved of by the leader and the growing Christian population, who made up only about 10% of the empire at the beginning of Constantine's reign in 406.

Rome and the Western Empire fell for a myriad of reasons, which all led to a weakening of the military in the face of ever more powerful barbarian tribes who had Attila the Hun breathing down their necks. While Christianity counter-acted social factors the damage had been done and the Barbarians would not be stopped.

Romans had become self-absorbed and were no longer replacing themselves with children. Rodney Stark, in The Rise of Christianity and The Victory of Reason, documents how large families came to be seen as too costly to people's careers of political advancement and self-indulgent lifestyles (See also Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine). This despite Caesar Augustus giving tax breaks to those who made the sacrifice of bringing more than two natural born Roman citizens into the world.

Depopulation, while again counter-acted by large Christian families, left a void that the Barbarians began to fill in the fourth century, when they were hired to fight in the Roman military. This created a conflict of interest however, because barbarians sometimes found themselves fighting against their own tribes who were trying to migrate into Roman territory. Heather says that the Romans created their own conquerors by enriching them through trade and equipping them with military knowledge. It doesn't take long for the enemy to notice the hand your playing and learn to play at the same game. The weakened Romans didn't know how to counter their own military strategies and weapons when used against them.

Rome had expanded through a plunder economy which eventually ran out once the empire was so bloated it was about to pop. When they needed more money they started minting more coins. When the gold and silver started running out, they coated cheaper metals which led to hyper-inflation. The now near-sighted Romans, instead of investing in finding more mines, started hyper-taxing the provinces. When the provincials couldn't pay, the empire forced the wealthy provincials to make up the short-fall.

All this led to disgruntled population defended by an under-funded military trying to protect an over-expanded empire. Once the contractions started, the barbarians gained momentum and the rest is history: Alaric in 410, Vandals in 455, and the Foederati in 476. By the end, there was no more Western empire to occupy, and so the new barbarian ruler was given a title under the Eastern Emperor in Constantinople.    

Makes one wonder what will happen to the American Empire? At least the blue sections.

Mosaic

I've been grading a lot of position papers recently on the authorship of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament). It seems that the argument for Mosaic authorship runs thus:

The "giving" of the contents of the Pentateuch is associated with Moses, who is also described as writing specific sections. It seems likely that he would have written all of it given his education in Egypt, previous access to ancient sources, his being an eye-witness of most of the events, and a prophet who received special revelation from God. This is supported by testimony from the rest of the Old Testament and New Testament that attributes "the law," the traditional way of referring to the Pentateuch, to Moses.

Perilous Navigation

David McCullough:

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

All I Want For Xmas Is These Books

Just in case you were racking your brain about what to get your favorite blogger of Christmas, here's my wish list:

Why Mutants Will Never Change by Gene Poole (co-written by the Swirling Eddies)

How to Grow a Brain by Sarah Bellum (Preface by Garrison Keillor)

Don't Eat Yellow Snow by I. P. Freely (now in its 50th printing)

Under the Bleachers by Seymour Butts (now in 100 the anniversary edition)

Writing a Bestseller without Selling Out by Page Turner (Epilogue by Garrison Keillor)

Who Goosed the Moose by Antler's in the Treetops (a true classic)

Hollywood Meets Holy Wood

There's a great article by Steven Boyer called "Narnia Invaded" over at Touchstone on the problem with the first two Narnia movies. Find it here.

Here are a few comments of my own. In Hollywood and the culture at large there can be no such thing as what Anthony Esolen calls "blessed hierarchies." When Hollywood tries to translate C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia it significantly warps the message and changes the characters. Instead a young man ready to lead, Peter is little better than Edmund at the beginning of the cinematic version of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

If you didn't know the book, I think the movie might lead you to believe that Edmund was first a victim of Peter and then the witch, instead of a kid who needed a new heart. The Peter of the movies is more conflicted than noble, and is a far cry from the chivalric knight of Lewis' imagination. 

Boyer points out that the movies have so far perverted Lewis' message to modernity into the message of modernity. Instead of the ennobling effects of duty to God-given authority, we have Edmund learning to not "do as he was told" and saving the day at the end of The Lion. Instead of his reign in Narnia teaching him to be a better leader in this world, Peter picks fights at the beginning of Prince Caspian and even with Prince Caspian, once he gets back to Narnia. The High King is anything but noble through most of the movies, because, as we post moderns know, kings by definition are self-centered tyrants. So Peter must learn to not be so kingly in the movies.

Aslan also becomes more like the god of Deism than the untame Lion who ruled at the top of the "blessed hierarchy." Mr. Beaver says, "Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." When will we learn that we need royal priests and servant kings who know how to take orders from the King of Kings in the government, church, and families?

I'm still hoping against all odds for better from Friday's release of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. When Hollywood meets Holy Wood the result usually leaves a lot to be desired. We shall see....

States' Wrongs

The 150th anniversary of secession is coming up (Dec. 20), and there's a good New York Times article here about the festivities being planned. The following excerpt sums up my view of the cause of war and why, I think, the anniversary should not be celebrated:

Most historians say it is impossible to carve out slavery from the context of the war. As James W. Loewen, a liberal sociologist and author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” put it: “The North did not go to war to end slavery, it went to war to hold the country together and only gradually did it become anti-slavery — but slavery is why the South seceded.”

Playing Marco Polo in the Shallow End

A recent article in Christianity Today called "The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church" by Drew Dyck stirred up some reflection on the state of American teenagers and another group called "emerging adults." Dyck cited the work of Christian Smith who wrote Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Smith documents the shallowness of the Christianity we have passed on to teens.

He characterizes the worldview of American teens as "Moralistic, therapeutic, Deism." Most teens believe that the purpose of life is to be "nice." Nice people go to heaven and "not nice" people don't. So it's moral. God created us, but he doesn't get in the way. He's there if you need him, like a therapist. Other than that, he doesn't interfere. So it's deistic.

Smith found that even kids from conservative Bible-believing churches were practically deists. I would add that if we don't show our kids the difference between Christianity and other worldviews, and why it matters, we leave them in the shallows. When deep problems begin to sink their faith, it's no wonder that they climb into someone else's boat. Dyck's article cites statistics that this is happening right now in an unprecedented way.

Smith's other work Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults documents a prolonged adolescence, where young people continue to experiment morally and vocationally into their late twenties.  God may be there at the end of life, but if not, at least one has made a lot of money and been successful.

For most emerging adults, life is about having a good time and settling down "someday" with a beautiful spouse, having a couple of kids, and parties surrounded by lots of toys and friends. There's anxiety about navigating all the transitions and not messing up the future. They don't put down roots in traditional communities because they are constantly adjusting to changes.

Smith's research found that most emerging adults who attend church have no idea what their church teaches or that there's supposed to be some sort of commitment to Christ. Many go to mega-churches where nobody knows them. According to this group, dubbed "selective adherents" by Smith, church is a good thing to do on a Sunday morning as long as you don't have other plans.

Smith shows that emerging adults have little conviction about anything, even politics, because they confess to being trapped in their own subjectivity. Post modernism has made them aware that the outside world is socially constructed by the individual in his own time and place. People believe what they believe because that is how they were raised. Belief makes it true for the person, and there is no objective, shared reality to test truth claims. Live and let live for pleasure.

As a church, we've got to be more deliberate about worldview teaching and living. Christian redemption of the individual and the world for God's glory is the driving force of the Bible and redemptive history. We can know this because God has revealed it objectively and created us to know it subjectively. Our senses and our souls can reliably know the world because God made them for that purpose. Either we get into that epistemological stream or we're still playing "Marco Polo" in the shallow end.

Dyck appears to be critical of "seeker sensitive" services and "low commitment Bible Studies," of evangelical mega-churches. But in the end he says that there's nothing wrong with them as long as we also teach the faithful with more depth. I would suggest that Dyck has fallen prey to the post modern here, because everything he cited in his article militates against the low commitment approach with non-believers. This doesn't seem to jive with Jesus, who made his listeners count the cost up front. David Wells has pointed out, "What you win them with is what you win them to."

Now enter "When Scripture Becomes An A-La-Carte Menu" by James Tonkowich in By Faith. Tonkowich summarizes Smith's six categories of emerging adults:

1. Committed Traditionalists represent approximately 15 percent of emerging adults. They “embrace a strong religious faith, whose beliefs they can reasonably well articulate and which they actively practice.”
2. Selective Adherents (30%) believe and perform certain aspects of their religious tradition, but neglect or ignore others.” The attitude of so-called “cafeteria Catholics” is now widespread across evangelical and Reformed churches.
3. The Spiritually Open (15%) while not committed to any specific religious faith “are nevertheless receptive to or at least mildly interested in some spiritual or religious matters.”
4. The Religiously Indifferent (25%) don’t oppose religion, but don’t have any interest either.
5. The Religiously Disconnected (5%) admitted to no opinions about religion because they know nothing about, and are not connected in any way, with religious bodies or friends.
6. The Irreligious (10%) are openly hostile to all religion.

Tonkowich proceeds to a discussion of how to reach "emerging adults" who have been catechized by the culture into moral relativism. The moral relativism can be seen in the following examples cited by Tonkowich:

A man who attends a mega-church with his live-in fiancé explained to Smith why he felt comfortable ignoring his church’s teaching about pre-marital sex: “I think in my head it’s all personal opinion, whether you’re going to believe it or choose to like it and listen to it.”

“There is [a] self indulgent attitude,” ... “that says, ‘My life is difficult. I have lots of brokenness. I know it’s not right, but … .’”

Ruling Elder Bob Baldwin at GraceDC commented that when it comes to biblical sexuality, “If the rules don’t fit their cultural expectations, they mentally find a way around them, ignoring what they know to be true scripturally. What surprises me most is how carefully they have thought through their work-arounds.”

Smith documents the same pattern with the story of a young woman he interviewed: “In the middle of explaining that for religious reasons she does not believe in cohabitation before marriage, a young evangelical woman, who is devoted to gospel missionary work overseas, interrupted herself with this observation, ‘I don’t know. I think everyone is different so I don’t think [cohabitation before marriage] would work for me, but it could work for someone else.’”

Tonkowich's argues that we must reach emerging adults, especially those afflicted with moral relativism, through relationships. Tonkowich writes:

One pastor has noticed, “There are feelings of guilt, insecurity, and shame—especially shame. The problem for them is that they don’t know why these feelings exist.” In fact, these feelings hint at an authority beyond the self.

Romans 1:18-32 teaches that there are truths about life and God that we cannot not know (to use author J. Budziszewski’s phrase). We may pretend we don’t know them. We may suppress them. We may bury them under layers of carefully constructed philosophical skepticism, but all to no avail. From time to time these truths bubble uncomfortably to the surface.

Ministry to emerging adults should create opportunities founded on strong, honest relationships to explore the truths that will not be ignored, truths that explain the guilt and shame that will not go away. Apologetics begins not with correcting bad thinking, but with listening and helping to dig up the uncomfortable facts of life that, by the grace of God, will not go away.

Tonkowich collects much anecdotal evidence that opening up about struggles invites people to share honestly. Emerging adults have been programmed to "never let them see you sweat" and always exude competence. But when they see us modeling repentance then perhaps the deep end won't seem so scary.

I would add that when it comes to raising and educating children and young adults it begins with  correcting sinful ways and thinking with Bible, Bible, Bible, coupled with love deeds and modeling repentance. Constant excursions to the deep end with plenty of swimming, diving, splash fights, dunking, and laughter will build a strong Christian culture in the home that will serve them well into the future. As one pastor has noted, they will be able to "do more harm to the world than the world will be able to do to them."

Fore Golfers

A Little More Nonsense Now and Again

A Little Nonsense Now and Then

"The Gods of the Copy Book Headings"

A friend recently shared a great piece of verse with me. Rudyard Kipling, the author of Jungle Book and "Riki Tiki Tavi," wrote the marvelous poem below.

All you need to know is that copybooks were handwriting manuals for elementary school children to hone their penmanship (a lost art). At the top were short morals and Bible verses for them to copy in their own handwriting. To understand the rest all you need is ears to hear and eyes to see.


The Gods of the Copy Book Headings:


As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.


We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.


We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.


With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.


When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."


On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."


In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."


Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;


And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Laughter is Warfare

One time G.K. Chesterton, the rolypologist, was patted on the stomach by his adversary, George Bernard Shaw, a beanpole of an infidel, and was asked what they were going to name the baby. Chesterton replied immediately that if it was a boy, John, if a girl, then Mary. But if it turned out to only be gas, they were going to name it George Bernard Shaw. 

I got this gem from Blog and Mablog.

Survival of the Flimsiest

I recently re-watched Collision with a fellow teacher and his class. Collision is a documentary of a series of debates between Atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian Apologist Douglas Wilson. Hitchens repeatedly challenges Wilson to name a good action that a Christian could do that an atheist couldn't. This receives a good but only a partial answer from Wilson.

Wilson is right when he points out that the question is not whether there are some good actions which only a Christian can do, but whether an atheist has any basis for distinguishing between good and evil in the first place.

Whenever Hitchens criticizes anyone, which he loves to do, he assumes a norm that binds us all. But if Darwinism is true, then morality is subjective and evolving too. Hitchens claims that morality comes to us through the trial and error of evolution. This manifests in our innate sense of right and wrong and our consensus with fellow humans as to what constitutes an orderly civilization. But our innate subjective feelings are not very binding nor is an appeal to consensus. That we, as a species, agree to make laws in order to survive doesn't really mean anything to a Hitler. Hitchens says that referring morality upward doesn't help. But without God, how could you challenge the authority of a totalitarian state like Hitler's?

Wilson's answer is incomplete in that he fails to concede to Hitchens that morality is innate, but not because of evolution. It is innate in everyone because we are all created in the imago Dei (image of God). Not only is it doubtful that evolution would produce common morality, but, without a transcendent standard based in God, there would be no way to back it up or keep it in place. If Darwinism were true morality would not only be subjective, but it would also be like a passing fad. You could evolve beyond good and evil like the aliens that are abducting us in all those movies. Now back to the point. It is true that atheists can do any good deed that a Christian can, but this is because, as created beings, we all share the moral law written on the heart.

Hitchens points out that some Christians are just as guilty of moral evils as some atheists. This is true, but there is the difference: When a Christian does evil, he is being inconsistent with Christianity. But when an atheist does evil, he's not being inconsistent with atheism.

Wilson gets Hitchens to admit this at one point, and I don't think Hitchens realizes that this is a major weakness. People can be good without God, but they can also use atheism as a premise for changing the game in frightening ways. Exhibit A: Hitler. Exhibit B: Stalin. Exhibit C: Mao. Exhibit D: well, you get the picture. In fact, if survival of the fittest is the mechanism of evolutionary progress, it's hard to justify things like caring for the sick or giving blood. In such an act of charity, we are helping the weak survive and undermining the fitness of the species. It amounts to survival of the flimsiest!

A Superb Discussion on C. S. Lewis

Alan Jacobs, ND Wilson, and Doug Wilson in conversation | Full Edition from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

Economics as the Possession Not the Pursuit of Happiness

Being Consumed by William T. Cavanaugh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cavanaugh argues that globalism is a counterfeit of the church. Consumerism is the worldview that drives the structures of globalism and it is a direct challenge to the Christian faith. Cavanaugh writes:

Consumer culture is one of the most powerful systems of formation in the contemporary world, arguably more powerful than Christianity. While a Christian may spend an hour per week in church, she may spend twenty-five hours per week watching television, to say nothing of the hours spent on the Internet, listening to the radio, shopping, looking at junk mail and other advertisements. Nearly everywhere we lay our eyes -- gas-pump handles, T-shirts, public restroom walls, bank receipts, church bulletins, sports uniforms, and so on -- we are confronted by advertising.

Such a powerful formative system is not morally neutral; it trains us to see the world in certain ways. As all the great faiths of the world have attested, how we relate to the material world is a spiritual discipline. As one corporate manager frankly put it, 'Corporate branding is really about worldwide beliefs management' (47-48).

Consumerism seeks to exploit our restlessness, while Christianity seeks to cure our restlessness. St. Augustine, Cavanaugh's primary discussion partner and guide, once "confessed," "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."


Thus the worldview of consumerism and its quasi church of globalism with its sacraments of technology are  idols meant to replace Christ, his universal church, and the sacraments of bread and wine. Cavanaugh shows that as we consume we become more "detached" from the things we consume. Because consumerism is based on desire for desire instead of the object that is desired, we constantly throw away what we consume as we move on to our next purchase.


But in the Eucharist (the Lord's Supper/communion) we become consumed by what we consume. Instead of detachment, we experience greater attachment to Christ and thus satisfaction in Him. Cavanaugh points out that in consumerism possession kills desire, but in the Eucharist possession transforms and satisfies desire. This is because God made us for himself. We were created to know God and enjoy him forever (Westminster Confession of Fatih), but we worship and serve the creation instead of the Creator (Romans 1).


Cavanaugh expertly diagnoses the problem but he also gives solutions, at least on the individual and local level. Cavanaugh is not as ascetic who is trying us feel guilty about consuming materials. He wants to reform our view of what we consume. Every created object contains traces of the Creator. When we use created things we should be enjoying the Creator. Created objects don't satisfy us when they are treated as an end in themselves. The satisfy us when we use them to point us to their source in God. Thus, the things of earth don't go strangely dim, as the misguided hymn says, but they grow, as one of my friends likes to say, "strangely alive."


Cavanaugh brings in Hans Urs von Balthasar for a philosophical discussion of how we see the universal and the particular united in Christ. In globalization we see only particulars unrelated to anything universal or as mere interchangeable stand-ins for the universal (as in the liberal idea that all religions lead to God so it doesn't matter which one). Thus particulars are dispensable. But in the incarnation of Christ, we see the universal Son united with the finite Jesus. By becoming man, God makes room for every particular. Every material object, just like Christ's humanity, can be set apart for God's purpose.


God created us to create under him. Thus we should consume what we produce and produce what we consume. Cavanaugh realizes that we can't produce everything we consume, so he says we should consume locally and get to know our producers in order to make God-glorifying choices.


We don't realize that our clothes, coffee and other consumables are produced by poor people in third world countries who are being exploited by businesses feeding our consumption. Do we know how our God-given cows are being treated? Cavanaugh does. He buys his beef from a local farmer who feeds his herds healthy, naturally produced food instead of drugs meant only to bulk them up. The cows are clean and not penned up in their own muck. Does the meat cost more? Definitely, but a little less beef goes much farther in terms of satisfaction. Adam Smith could not have been more wrong when he said that the market provides all the knowledge necessary for the consumer to make rational choices for the common good.


Cavanaugh argues that Adam Smith's and Milton Friedman's definition of freedom as the absence of coercion, actually leads to a coercive capitalism. He argues for a return to Augustine's definition of freedom as the ability not just to choose but to choose the Good. We must choose the Good as defined by God who created human nature. Without the Christian understanding of the chief end of man, nothing remains but lust for power through profits.


Cavanaugh compares the Mandarin Co. who outsources jobs to El Salvador with the Mondragon Cooperative Corp. in Spain who hires locally. The Mandarin Co. widens the gap between employer and employee by forcing workers to put up with substandard pay and working conditions. If the workers protest, as they have, the company simply threatens to leave El Salvador for cheaper labor elsewhere. The workers aren't coerced. They have a choice, but few options, and they can't afford the consumables they are producing.


A priest founded the Mondragon Co. on Distributist principles, which means that the employees are owners and the highest paid in the co. only makes six times more than the lowest paid. Compare that to the average CEO who makes 300 times more than the lowest paid worker in a modern corporation. Mondragon is a multi-billion dollar company who has created a healthy, educated local community with low crime rates. "Which has promoted human freedom?" asks Cavanaugh. Neither group is coercing its employees to work there, but one of them as enabled human flourishing and the other is oppressive.


What Cavanaugh doesn't address, and this is probably the major weakness of the book, is how to restructure the state, national, and global economy along the lines of Augustine's definition of human freedom and the principles of Distributism. Distributism seeks not to redistribute wealth through taxation but to distribute ownership to as many people as possible. G K. Chesterton did address how to implement this at the national level, and he needs to be heard along with Cavanaugh.


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