The Snaglepuss Solution For A Sexually Apocalyptic World

To summarize Rod Dreher (click here for bio), the only hope that American Christianity has in passing down its traditions, especially those about the family, in today's sexually apocalyptic world is for Christians to find ways to exit, stage left, that world in groups that become communities. Why? It is because, in his opinion, certain Christian traditions can no longer survive today's world because Christians have lost the culture war to an aggressive sexual depravity. And in talking about the state of today's culture, Dreher is not mimicking Chicken Little in saying that the sky is falling; rather, he is saying that the sky has fallen and that the fallout will destroy Christianity and the Christian family. Therefore, we Christians have to find ways of living in tight-knit communities in order to preserve our faith and family life for the future.

Dreher's solution is what he has called the Benedict Option and he wrote about it on more than one occasion. One such occasion is in a Christianity Today article (click here for the article). And though it would be good to review the whole article, time does not permit that. Rather, this blog will examine Dreher's analysis of today and take an initial look at his proposed solution.

The idea that the sexual values taught and practiced in American culture today are beyond the pale have become much more widely accepted by religiously conservative Christians especially since the Obergefell decision. The belief that we Christians have lost a fiercely fought culture war to an unrelenting enemy that takes no prisoners is now popular among many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians. Dreher looks at the conflict between the Christian view of sex and our culture's view as two gunfighters saying to each other that 'this town isn't big enough for the both of us.' At least that is his perception. And we have to realize that there is some evidence for this perception. 

For one thing, Christianity use to have a degree of dominance over our culture's sexual values. Earlier in our nation's history, certain sexual practices warranted incarceration or even the death penalty.  Eventually the death penalty was phased out, but I remember when homosexuality, for example, was punished as a crime. In fact, it was not too long ago when certain sexual practices were criminalized even when practiced by heterosexual couples. Starting with the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and culminating in the legal recognition of certain rights for the LGBT community, that dominance was lost. And thus, the following paragraph from Dreher's article is confusing for it seems to lack self-awareness.

Today, Christians who hold to the biblical teaching about sex and marriage have the same status in culture and, increasingly, in law, as racists. The culture war that began with the sexual revolution in the 1960s has now ended in defeat for Christian conservatives. The cultural left—which is to say, the American mainstream—has no intention of living in postwar peace. It is pressing forward with a harsh, relentless occupation, one that is aided by the cluelessness of Christians who don’t understand what’s happening.

The confusion is seen in the parts where Christians are seen as persecuted while the 'cultural left' is portrayed as being overly aggressive. For how is it that history could not paint the LGBT community as victims and Christians as being the uuncompromisingly aggressive ones? And even now, when legal action is taken against or disdain shown for taking a "Christian position" on sexual issues, it is when the rights of the LGBT community are being threatened by Christians.

In fact, to claim that we have had a culture war starting with the Sexual Revolution means that we have viewed ourselves as being in a battle to conquer an enemy. In fact, it wasn't until the Obergefell decision when many of us Christians acknowledged that we had lost the war. And even now, some Christians are battling to pass laws that would take away the rights gained by those in the LGBT community.  So when Dreher complains that the cultural left refuses to live in a postwar peace,  he demonstrates the self-awareness of a bull in a china shop.

We also have to note that in looking at his proposed solution, why does it take the Sexual Revolution to make us want to exit from society? Yes, Dreher acknowledges the problems that the materialism of our culture can cause. And yet for Dreher, culture is irrevocably lost not to materialism or during slavery, Jim Crow, the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land, or through the wars and interventions it has taken to build and maintain our empire. Instead, our culture is without hope because its sexual values have changed.

Now when we look at Dreher's solution, we find that it is not based on any New Testament example. For the worst case New Testament scenario was in Corinth and yet the Corinthians were never encouraged to leave their culture in order to protect themselves. Rather, they were to live out their faith in a community of believers so that they could live righteously as a witness to their culture by being a part of the culture.

But something else could be said. Dreher's Benedict Option demonstrates an immaturity that revolves around self-absorption. For what it is really saying is that we Christians should take our toys and go home because we lost a game. Thus, we will play with our toys by ourselves rather than sharing with others because we can't tolerate not winning.

However, there is one point where we should give Dreher his due. Unbiblical sex is a very strong temptation. And we do need each other to battle that temptation. But there are more issues than just our own self control here. How we will share society with others is one such issue. And we cannot afford to take our own weaknesses out on our culture. We can't afford to because, just like falling to temptation, it brings dishonor to the Gospel.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For August 24, 2016

Aug 17

To Bruce Ashford and his blogpost review of Os Guinness’s new book on how Modernity provides the biggest threat to Christianity and Western Civilization. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

I have respect for Guinness but also feel free to disagree with him. I find that the greatest threat to Christianity is not modernity, in which he includes both modernism and post modernism, itself, it is how we interact with it. For in interacting with modernity, we need to distinguish that from which we can learn from that which we must reject. To deny that we have stuff to learn from Modernity puts us Christians at risk for having the arrogance Martin Luther King Jr. saw in the West during the Vietnam War (see  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm  ):

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

We should remember or learn how Christians treated each other before Modernity. We must know about how Christians persecuted each other, even to the point of death, and how they treated Jews. In addition, Christians weren't all that Christian toward the indigenous people they discovered when enlarging their Western empires. Even with the beginning of our own nation, many Christians persecuted each other and some defended slavery and/or owned slaves as well as participated in the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. Western Christianity was basically racist and gives evidence of still being that way today. And Modernity has tempered that and has thus has induced some amnesia as evidenced by how we look at the sectarian violence between Muslims today.

Yes, we need to be alert to how Modernity can cause us to compromise our faith. At the same time, we must understand how Modernity has contributed to the Church in tempering the traits that we so easily condemn in others.

Now if I was Guinness, I wouldn't label Modernity as being the biggest threat to Christianity. That is because of the largest threats Christianity faced before Modernity which still exist today. Those threats are the love of wealth and tribalism. Both of these threats cause us Christians to compromise the faith regardless of the time period in which we live. Both the love of wealth and tribalism provide the biggest threat to Christianity because both so strongly challenge our priorities. And by challenging our priorities, they can cause us either to self-destruct or give into external pressure such as the pressures brought to us by Modernity. His apparent concern for both Christianity and Western Civilization indicates that what Guinness seems to be most leery of are changes in the status quo which are not always as much a threat to Christianity as they are to Western Civilization.
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Aug 18

To Denny Burk and his blogpost citing another article on how our children could be taken away from us over their personal transgender issues. This appeared in Denny Burk’s blog.

I think that the quoted paragraph is an overreaction. There is nothing that indicates the taking away of children over transgender issues. Yes, the medical community supports it, you find examples of that support on the Mayo Clinic website. But such provides and indicator for the public's reaction to those who feel not at home in their gender.

Let's face it, the pendulum has swung so hard in favor of those who hold to biblical values and views of gender that all we are seeing now is a reversal in the swing of that pendulum. And if we are anticipating drastic outcomes from that change in direction, perhaps that is an indicator that we pushed the pendulum too hard and far in our preferred direction.

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Aug 20

To Pat Buchanan and his blogpost on how America is committing suicide. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

There are a number of points that are wrong with Buchanan's article. To start off with, he gives incomplete tax information. Though the statistics he cites are correct, he neglects to provide data on the income for the groups he is comparing. According to the same table of information he uses to quote the tax burden being paid by the top 1% vs the bottom 50%, the income gap is more telling of the story here. An example can be found here in comparing the adjusted gross income per return for the two groups while noting that the number of returns used do not include dependent filers. The average adjusted gross income for those in the bottom 50% for 2013  was $15,013 while the average adjusted gross income for those in the top 1% is $1,243,406. We should also note that while there were approximately 1.4 million returns from those from the 1% bracket, there were approximately 69.2 million returns for the bottom 50%. Here we should note that 19% of the adjusted gross income went to that approximate 1.4 million people while only around 11% of the adjusted gross income went to the bottom 50%, or approximately 6.92 million, of returns (see http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2015-update for source).

But what isn't mentioned at all by Mr Buchanan was the amount of federal assistance or money spent on polices  that benefited the corporations owned by the top 1%. Yes, Mr. Buchanan has a legitimate concern over the growing Federal debt; we should all share his concern. But what are the main causes for this debt? The statistics cited by Mr. Buchanan does not paint an adequate picture of the problem.

Having discussed that, Mr. Buchanan's expressed concern for the survival of the purity of Western Civilization while seeming to speak negatively of diversity and equality does not paint a flattering picture of his view. His view is one that seems to relish a past that lacked self-awareness. Yes, there is a conflict between a group of Trump supporters who share Mr. Buchanan's concern for the survival of the purity of Western Civilization and the rest of the world. Trump's supporters seem to share at least some of Buchanan's picture that past Civilization, a picture which seems to have been taken from the past and has become a focal point of their identity. But having that as the center of their identity puts them at conflict with changes that come from people trying to escape horrendous situations in their home countries. In other words, Trump's supporters are experiencing a problem that has occurred before. Here, we should speculate on how Buchanan would portray America's past if he was a Native American.

We should also note that like Buchanan's treasured past, his present lacks self-awareness as well. All one needs to do to verify this is to  look at the statistics on nations from which the most illegal immigrants come. With each nation, significant ties to the US can be found. from coups to trade agreements.

Mr. Buchanan's final words are about the eventual death of democracy in every nation. According to what he quotes from john Adams, this death is self-inflicted. Perhaps we could console Mr. Buchanan by telling him that democracy is not alone in terms of dying; all Empires eventually collapse as well.
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Aug 23

To Tim Keller, Russell Moore, and Kevin DeYoung and their blogpost discussion on how to speak to our culture about sex. This appeared in the Gospel Coalition website.

Though Keller's statements on attacking narratives has significant merit and seems to be the best approach, all of it bears a similarity to Mitt Romney's speeches against Donald Trump in trying to reach those rebelling against an established order by supporting Trump. Though what Romney said about Trump was true, he we ineffectual because he didn't acknowledge the failures of his own group as he is a member of the establishment.

Likewise, though much of what was said, in particular what Keller said has merit, there is no acknowledgement  of the attempts by many Christians to do more than just speak about sex; we've tried to control how others have acted sexually and lived with partners. Of course some controls are necessary. But when saying that, many of us have, with animosity, tried to associate those in the LGBT community with those provide real threats to the community.

In speaking to people about sex, I think we Christians must acknowledge our failures in terms of how we have tried to control others and then we can apply what was said in the video.