To R. Scott Clark and his 2nd blogpost that criticized Gillette’s commercial on what it means for men to be the best they can be. This appeared in the Heidelblog.
There are many good things that Clark said in the article above that describe how men should be. They are taken both from Jesus's examples and from Paul's teaching. Except for exclusive Psalter singing to remind each other of God's redemption, such singing is important. We should note that OT contained only a shadow of what was to occur in the NT and thus to restrict singing about God's redemption to the Psalters only can become counterproductive and comes from legalism.
But the problem with this article is found in the over-generalizations about unbelievers. One of those over-generalizations claimed:
The pagans construe everything in terms of power politics, domination, and control. Christians do not look at other human beings as opportunities to exercise power.
First, what information did Clark use to come to this conclusion. Has Clark talked to all unbelievers and read every unbeliever's political beliefs? Or did he use other research resources? Or did he use deductive reasoning to come to that conclusion?
Second, if the latter is used to support Clark's claim about unbelievers, does his claim stand the scrutiny of inductive investigation? Let's take the Gillette commercial for example. How would Clark prove that Gillette's commercial had objectified all groups involved? Did Gillette objectify every group in that commercial? Did Gillette even objectify one group in that commercial? Should we be concerned about bearing false witness here against Gillette? On the other hand, have Christians never voted for unworthy candidates in order to gain at least some control over government?
Third, if Clark's claim is true, then how is it that we could afford to let any unbelievers participate in government seeing that all unbelievers can only objectify people is in the laws they passed?
Fourth, if Clark's claim is true, how can we Christians even partially adopt any ideology that was written or contained contributions by any unbelievers? For to do so, we could only follow their example of objectifying others. For example, Marx clearly showed how Capitalism objectifies workers. So we can't accept Capitalism. But applying Clark's conclusion, we can't accept anything from Marx either without objectifying people because he is an unbeliever.
Finally, how does Clark's contrasting claims about how Christians and how pagans relate to people sound any different from the Pharisee in the parable of the two men praying? How can we honestly claim that we are sinners like unbelievers are if Clark's contrasting claims are true? In addition, is Clark in danger of bearing false witness against any unbelievers with his claims?
Whenever we see sweeping generalizations, like the ones Clark made about unbelievers, most of our red flags should be immediately raised and fly high in the wind. For one implication of Clark's claim is that we can neither borrow ideas from nor work side by side with unbelievers in any public works lest we too become influenced by them and start to objectify others as they automatically do. This makes the Christian community insular which tells the world that we have everything to teach unbelievers but nothing to learn from them. Is that our good news? Is our good news about us or Christ?
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Jan 28
To John Horvat and his blogpost that claims that a nation alone cannot save us from globalism. Rather, Horvat claims that it is a return to a former status quo where the Church was a leader in society that can save us from globalism. This appeared in the Imaginative conservative blog.
The trouble with the above article is that we are asked to restore what was working for some but was horribly broken for others. The absolutes that the Church brought didn't remedy white supremacy and Jim Crow. And if I remember correctly, the Church did little to correct labor abuses, labor unions had to do that. And yes, we had the sexual revolution. But before that was sexual repression that contributed in causing some to practice sexual abuse.
And then there was the Vietnam War. It was an immoral war just as the coups that we supported around the world both before and after the Vietnam War.
The article forgets that we had orders that benefited some groups at the expense of others. Whether one remembers the good old days sometimes depends on which group one belonged to. And the Church was not addressing those problems.
So what can save us from globalism? Here we should note that we are specifically speaking of the kind of globalism that benefit financial elites at the expense of those who are considered to be disposable. Should we return to a yesteryear that saw different groups of elites and marginalized people all under control of any church that history has taught us is vulnerable to all kinds of corruption. And perhaps one of the reasons that churches are open to corruption is because they ask their subjects to trust and obey rather than to participate in leading. Such also describes our politicians. For it seems that many of us want to vote for officials whom we can ignore until the next election.
Yes, we need a change in the morals of our nation. But changing sexual mores alone will do nothing to save us. Changing morals must revolve around recognizing that people are more important than things like profits, property rights, and gadgets--at least that was the change Martin Luther King Jr. called for. And, unfortunately, just calling for a return to former sexual morals and the leadership of the Church have never facilitated the revolution that King saw was necessary.
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