Feb 4
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost and its rejection of this age's reliance on feelings to define oneself. This appeared in Heidelblog
see also https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/02/49239/
That the world has overemphasized the role of feelings in how we define ourselves cannot be argued against. But many overreactions are legitimate responses to abusive situations and that is the issue that the Church must also deal with. It isn't enough to point out the log in someone else's eye; one must also acknowledge and deal with one's own logs. Otherwise, we will, however tragically ironic, be acting as the Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying.
For centuries, the authoritarianism promoted and practiced by the Church, especially the conservative Church, is partly responsible for the overemphasis that today's culture placed on therapy and on one's own feelings. And by authoritarianism, I am not talking about society's responses to God, I am talking about how resistance to overreach by human authority figures in the Church is responded to with hostility and aggression by those in the Church. Unfortunately, the result of the Church's authoritarian response to Psychology resembles more of a turf war for the hearts and minds of those who need healing rather than attempts to correct points of error.
BTW, regarding Trueman's article, it reinforces the above interpretation the Church's authoritarian approach and its unfortunate reaction to today's Psychology. For his model of thought is similar to the model of thought used in the pre modernism/modernism/post modernism division of history but with a few exceptions. One key exception neglects to mention that post modernism rejection of the metanarratives from both pre modernism and modernism comes from the authoritarian use of those metanarratives by many to enslave or even slaughter others. To condemn post modernism, which is analogous to the combination of Trueman's Second and Third World descriptions, is to act as that Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-14, see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+18%3A9-14&version=NIV ). How ironic a position to taken by those whose faith is solely in God's mercy and grace rather than in their own merit.
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Feb 5
To Rev Ben Johnson and his blogpost that condemns Socialism as being based on envy, ignorance, and faith. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The first problem with the above article is its factual accuracy. When asked what should replace what Amazon's project, the response was not a "guillotine.' It was one of several responses, not the response. Another response was 'public housing.' In addition, how literally we should take the guillotine response is unknown. Further inquiries and examination of the context of the statement are needed to know what was meant.
The next problem is how much we should generalize the answer of a few to a diverse group like young socialists is problematic. Why? Socialists, even if they are in the same age range, do not make up a monolith. Yes, there are nasty socialists who, as Johnson claims, dehumanize their opponents. There are others who don't. But how does the dehumanization of opponents make socialists, young or old, unique in today highly tribal political culture? Noting that one doesn't have to call for another person's execution to dehumanize them, conservative pop media centers have been dehumanizing their opponents for decades by describing them as having nothing but sabotage to bring to our society and political landscape. Here we should note that marginalization is significantly dehumanizing just as other actions can be.
And the resistance to Bezos isn't solely because he is offering people jobs. The resistance to Bezos involves how many of his employees are treated as well as the negative impacts that Amazon has brought to the American marketplace. Of course, one needs to expand the participants of that marketplace beyond the conservative model of buyer-seller to see the harm Amazon does. But that doesn't include all of the reasons to resist Amazon's proposed location in NYC. One was the tax breaks being offered to Amazon to locate there. While consuming all sorts of taxpayer funded infrastructure, one must examine whether Amazon shareholders were getting a free lunch out of what they were called on to pay in taxes vs what the company would consume. When companies get significant tax breaks to locate in any area, the tax burden to support that infrastructure is shifted more and more to workers who don't have as much wealth to support the local tax base as wealthy executives and shareholders have.
What is the alternative to the young socialists or the free market recommend by Johnson? First, we should realize that if the Scandinavian model is what the young socialists are calling for, we know Bernie is calling for it, it isn't socialism, at least not from the Marxist tradition (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2018/07/08/sorry-bernie-bros-but-nordic-countries-are-not-socialist/#628d9eaf74ad ). Marx's first concern was not the redistribution of wealth, it was about the redistribution of power in what Marx called the 'proletariat dictatorship.' Thus we should note that a command economy does not socialism make. If power is not redistributed to the proletariat, then there is no socialism regardless of any command economy. The nation whose economic system approximates what Marx wanted the most is Germany. That is because though it has no proletariat dictatorship, its codetermination laws redistribute power in businesses with 500+ employees to the workers by seating democratically elected workers to executive boards.
Finally, Johnson understates the problems with the Free Market. Besides not making any distinction between the different forms of Capitalism, he fails to mention the ever growing wealth disparity that today's form of Capitalism, which is Neoliberalism, is producing both within nations and between nations. Apparently, self-enforce virtue is not rule of the day. And why should we expect it to be when the basic ethic of Capitalism itself is to maximize personal profits? We should note that since political power follows wealth in Capitalist economic systems, as wealth disparity grows, so grows the disparity in political power between the highest economic class and the rest. This has already been observed in America (see https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ).
What is sad about the Acton blog articles is this: in the name conservative Christianity, there is an well-intended and focused venture to tightly binding conservative Christianity solely with an economic system that far benefits the wealthy at the expense of all other economic classes. The contradictions involved with conservative Christians engaged in this kind of undertaking are exposed in the Scriptures such as in James 5:1-6, see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+5%3A1-6&version=NIV ) and in (Jeremiah 22:13-17, see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jeremiah+22%3A13-17&version=NIV ). At the same time, only Socialism is said to be based on envy, ignorance, and faith. The first part of that statement seems to condemn the desire for more weath by those who live in poverty while remaining silent on those who already have more than enough who then look to accumulate even more even thought it is at the expense of those who have much less. Doesn't such a view rely on ignorance and faith?
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