Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For March 6, 2024

Feb 10

To Heidelblog and Carl Trueman for the part of Trueman's article from First Things quoted in this Heidelblog post. This article is about whether Christians can attend same-sex weddings.

Trueman's full article can be found at the link below:

    https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/01/can-christians-attend-gay-weddings

The question I want to ask everyone who shares Carl's opinion on Christians attending same-sex weddings is this: Can a Christian attend the worship service of another religion simply as an observer? After all, there are bound to be things said in that worship service that a believer should not just object to, but speak out against. And so to rephrase the question, can a believer quietly attend the worship service of another religion as an observer?

The real issue in us attending a same-sex wedding is whether or not we are condoning the union that is being created by the wedding ceremony. If we are not condoning it and, because of adequate communication, our objections to such a wedding are made known, why can't we attend such a wedding either as an observer or for personal reasons?

This idea of an unbiblical wedding as mocking Christ is a manipulative statement. It is there to stir the anger in any red-blooded American Christian into action. After all, how many sins do not mock God which we are not told to react to? And how are our angry responses going to compare with how God responds? In fact, they might interfere with God's response because He often gives people who sin time to repent. Do we realize how much God treats us that way and will treat us that way for as long as we live on earth? And so when Trueman says that a same-sex marriage mocks Christ, is he saying that so that we either will pray for their repentance or come to God's defense by lashing out at the mockers? And, btw, does God really need us to defend Him?

Isn't it enough for us to respond to the LGBT community by preaching the Gospel in ways that bear the fruit of the Spirit? Or does God need us to try to do more than what the Gospel can do?

Here is the real issue for us religiously conservative Christians. Too many of us have been waging war against the LGBT community because they are starting to gain an equal status with us in society. And not only do we object to that, we are seriously offended because we consider them to be moral lepers. We are offended because our place in society is now going to those whom we consider to be our moral inferiors. And all they want is to be equal to us in society.

It isn't that homosexuality and transgenderism are not sins; they certainly are sins. The question is, how does the New Testament want us to share society with unbelievers. Should we seek to share society with unbelievers, including the LGBT community, as equals, or should we seek a privileged place of supremacy over unbelievers, including the LGBT community, in society because we believe that we are morally superior to them? Please realize that I am not making the claim that we are morally superior to unbelievers. And because we are all sinners and because of what the New Testament says, I believe that we religiously conservative Christians must and should share society with unbelievers, including the LGBT community, as equals.

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Feb 15

To R. Scott Clark and his article that reviews gambling from the perspective of the Reformed Traditions. This article was posted in Heidelblog.

The weakness of the Reformed confessions is that they tend to do what in football use to call a late hit: piling on. In essence, these confessions attribute to the prohibition implied by a commandment actions and practices that does not always relate to the commandment. Gambling is not necessarily stealing. And not all gambling is done for selfish reasons. There is a certain social gambling that occurs in some card games such as when the winnings and losses are insignificant and the playing of the game is mostly for social reasons. The same can be said of playing a state lottery with coworkers. In addition, others are benefiting when one plays a state lottery.

We should also note that there is a form of gambling that is older than the gaming we see today, but it is not only legal, itis deemed to be irresponsible by some not to gamble in this way. That is investing in the Stock Market. But when investments are made purely for the sake of its ROI, how is that different than sports betting? This is especially true when one is not buying originally issued stocks. In that case, those investing in the Stock Market purely for its  ROI are like the people whom Martin Luther King Jr described below:

'A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."'

What King stated shows the real problem with most gambling. That is where there is the investment of funds solely for selfish gain without regard for others who might be affected. And here, the idea of vocation stands in stark contrast many forms of gambling including playing the Stock Market. That is because with vocation, one is contributing to others through one's work.

We should note that what drives the wrongful forms of gambling is what also drives the Consumer economy in which we live: making decisions solely for selfish reasons. The idea that one's personal significance is determined mostly by what one consumes and how one consumes it. That idea is not just like a virus that infects an individual, it is more like a virus that becomes a pandemic. It contributes to what King called a 'thing-oriented society.' And King warned us that unless we switch from being a thing-oriented society to being a 'person-oriented society,' we will never rid ourselves of the inseparable triplets of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.

Thus we can see from King's view that investments made purely for the sake of its ROI, that such investments are a failure to love one's neighbor. And because investments are also a form of gambling, the same can be said of many, if not most, forms of gambling. Such gambling is a failure to love one's neighbor as themselves. And that is true not necessarily because gambling steals from one's neighbor, but it is because practicing such gambling in lieu of a job, doing works of mercy, or giving to those in need is a failure to be concerned about another person's welfare.

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March 3

To Dermont Quinn and his article that states that religion should not longer be privatized by the government. Instead, religion, the right religion of the Roman Church, should have a favorite place in directing society. This article was originally posted in 2013 and has been reposted in the Imaginative Conservative.

Christendom, the time period when religion was imposed on others rather than privatized, had its reign and it was not short enough. Religious wars with their atrocities, inquisitions, imperialism, colonialism, and ethnic cleansings are forever part of its legacy. Another part of its legacy was its strong tendency for the predominant branch of the Church in a given nation to side with wealth and power which resulted in the Church supporting economic exploitation and social injustices in those nations. The pre-revolutionary times of France and Spain where that branch was the Roman Church and of Russia where that branch was the Orthodox Church provide such examples. Here in America, that legacy lives on in the Evangelical side of the Protestant branch that sides with wealth.

In a world where we overuse bipolar thinking, there is an alternative to either imposing or privatizing religion. That alternative can be seen in the work and writings of Martin Luther King Jr and the SCLC. They worked for equal rights for all who were oppressed because of their race and economic class rather than for a privileged position for the Church in society. And because of that, King showed how religion could enter the public square without it being imposed on others.

For most of world history, we have lived in an authoritarian world. That authoritarianism came in two flavors: secular and religious. For perhaps just over a century the world has been flirting with democracy with equality world without ever having fully embraced it. But lately, because democracy with equality has been allowing too many different people into the equality mix, there has been an emergence of authoritarian ethnocratic movements both here and in Europe. Those movements serve as a major counter-revolutionary challenge to democracy with equality. 

The above article supports its own specific version of a Christian authoritarian ethnocratic movement. In fact, in America and some Eastern European countries, the authoritarian ethnocratic movement revolves around religion. In Western Europe, it revolves around race and national origin. 

The call of these authoritarian ethnocratic movements is a call to return to a time when nations were more ethnically homogeneous than they are today. The belief is that an adequate level of similarity in the nations, especially the appropriate religious one, would allow each nation to function better because there would be more unity and less internal strife. 

Unfortunately, the current call by these authoritarian ethnocratic movements is a call to return the world to the past, to its pre-WW I times. And there is every reason in history to believe that if we did return to that past, we would see history repeating itself

 

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For April 26, 2023

 April 19

To Heidelblog and Bruce Pardy for the part of Pardy's article which mentions how Agatha Christie's works are being revised to remove the mentioning of race, ethnicity, and other characteristics and what is suggested by that.

Bruce Pardy's full article can be found at:

    https://nationalpost.com/opinion/agatha-christie-revisions-are-the-writing-on-the-wall

The above reminds me of one school publisher removing the mentioning of the race of Rosa Parks in telling her story. That removal coincides with the color-blind approach to racism taken by the Reagan Administration. 

The partial silencing of authors like Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and who knows who else is similar to the censoring of CRT and LGBT writers in public schools and libraries. One can debate whether the revisions of Christie's works is censorship, but to censor information based on or to promote one's ideology is part of indoctrination. And, sadly, indoctrination knows no ideological boundaries. The forced cancelation of conservative speakers at some campuses is also an attempt at indoctrination.

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To David Gordon and his article on gambling. Basically, he is against it in all forms and he bases his claims on Christian sources from the 17th to the 19th centuries. This was posted in Heidelblog.

When I saw the title of the article, I was excited and anticipated something really positive. That anticipation was fed by my frustration with students, especially male students, I've enountered who sought to gain wealth through gambling rather than through labor where they can contribute something of value to others. In addition, while this article understandably focused on gaming, there are other forms of gambling that our nation has passionately embraced prior to the widespread legalization of gaming and sports betting.

Something else should be said here. Using the WLC without any critical review of it only places the Westminster Standards on a pedestal that it does not deserve. Those who have read about the effects that alcoholism can have on the children of alcoholics should be able to see some of the same affects they suffer from in the writings of the Westminster Standards, especially when it comes to their commentaries on the Ten Commandments. The Devines, perhaps a future name for an NFL team, tended to do the religious equivalent of what is called 'piling on' in football.

Also, what will escape the notice of all-or-nothing thinkers here is that we must make a distinction between gambling that revolves around social relationships vs gambling that revolves around obtaining riches. My one grandfather was a graduate of Cornell who had a friend who was a graduate of Penn. They use to bet a dollar on the Penn-Cornell football game each year. Should we put that in the same category as playing poker for money or betting on sporting events? Gambling can be a way of relating socially that should not be objectionable if the property (money) stakes are inconsequential. Thus, what the person financially loses can be offset by the social interactions involved.

Though the portion quoted from the WLC can be helpful here, perhaps we need to update our sources that serve as the basis for the argument against gambling. Here I would suggest either replacing or supplementing the above sources with the following quote from Martin Luther King Jr. as he spoke against the Vietnam War (see  https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm   ):

'A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just."'

The advantage that the above quote has over the WLC is that it explicitly addresses the kind of gambling that often goes unmentioned in Christian discussions on gambling: the Stock Market. It isn't that everything about the Stock Market is wrong. But the farther away that stock transactions are from the original buying of shares, the more that the buying of shares is only done for the financial benefit of the shareholders without regard for a business's other stakeholders. And such use of the purchase and selling of stocks is as much gambling as gaming and sports betting are.

The trouble with addressing gambling in a Capitalist economy is that gambling is such a intragal part of the economy. That many of the owners of property are looking so hard to maximize their profits that all other concerns are sacrificed. That is because the ethic of maximizing profits cannibalizes all other ethical concerns. And the more we centralize the nation's wealth into the hands of private sector elites, the more that gambling becomes a part of our nation's psyche.  

What is the difference between betting on a publicly owned business or corporation by buying stocks in order to maximize personal profits from gaming or sports betting for the same reason? Even buying state lottery tickets can be both a way of socially interacting with others while the funds not claimed by the winner often goes to supporting public initiatives or people who are retired or are in need.

Certainly, most forms of gambling are wrong. But to make that point, we Christians need to rely on more than just our safe and familiar traditional Christian sources of information. That is because the spirit of gambling is such a vital part of the American economy. And that is because much of the American economy is based on a hyper individualism that teaches us to care about ourselves to the extent that it causes us to lose sight of how that affects the welfare of our neighbor. 

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April 25

To Heidelblog and Stella Morabito for the part of Morabito's article quoted in a Heidelblog post that claims that Woke is 'Anti-thought.'

Stella Morabito's full article can be found at:

https://humanevents.com/2023/04/02/stella-morabito-the-true-definition-of-woke-is-anti-thought

After reading Morabito's full article, one has to give her credit for having an active imagination. But there are some downsides to her analysis. For example, she writes as if being woke will usher in a George Orwell 1984 oligarchic socialism. She starts by describing woke as being monolithic. She then proceeds to make it a scapegoat for much that has gone wrong. And that progression from describing a personally unwanted entity as being monolithic to making it a scapegoat has many historical precedents. However,  she shows signs of projecting onto woke what she is doing herself: writing a polemic piece that would totally discredit and isolate those with whom she disagrees.

According to Morabito, the hub on which wokeness operates is in 'the intolerance of free speech' with the goal of socially isolating people. That causes people to accept what woke says without thinking.  

One would think that with that initial description, Morabito would include the likes of Ron DeSantis who is using his political powers to take revenge on Disney and who is trying to ban all materials, and even mentioning of, CRT and the LGBT community in Florida schools. Isn't what DeSantis is doing meeting the definition of intolerance. But she doesn't include him. 

She could have included Trump who had employed a similar ban but to a lesser degree for those businesses that have federal contracts and publicly tried to discredit almost everyone of his critics with harsh impromptu accusations. But she didn't include him either. 

Or she could have included those who group together to not just ban books on racism from a CRT perspective and about those from the LGBT community, they have worked to ban classic works by highly regarded authors, including George Orwell from public or school libraries. But she didn't include them either.

In her description of the evolution of woke, she can now only see those who promote CRT or those in the LGBT community as being woke along with those who are part of the cancel culture.  She later includes everyone who is pushing what she perceives, wrongly in terms of her border and gun confiscation claims, is Biden's agenda into this woke group. And, according to Morabito, what woke has become is a monolithic community that, with the help of corporate sponsors, plans to bring an Orwell 1984 type totalitarianism to America. 

She then proceeds to tells us the right way to think about race. That we should become colorblind like Martin Luther King Jr. The problem there is that King was not the only one who promoted colorblindness, the Reagan Administration did too. However, King's colorblindness is lightyears away from the Reagan Adminstration's version. One only needs to compare the two to see the differences. One can listen to Xander Vanocur's interview with Martin Luther King Jr. and then compare that with Kimberlé Crenshaw's views on measuring equality based on outcomes. Then one should be able to see the continuity between what King advocated for and what CRT teaches. Don't trust me on this point, listen to the interview (see  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xsbt3a7K-8  ) and read Crenshaw for yourself (see  https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Crenshaw-Race-Reform-and-Retrenchment-pdf.pdf   ).

So it is no surprise that she accuses woke of demonizing dissenters when she herself, by describing woke as an evil monolith, is doing the same thing. And in doing so, she is following in the footsteps of DeSantis with his war against Disney and his cancel culture politics on CRT and LGBT literature in the Florida schools and Trump and his war against all dissenters and who called the MSM the 'enemy of the people.' Do such people think that making accusation after accusation will divert people's attention away from their own actions? I guess those who supported the Jan 6 Insurrection hope so.

Anotherpoint can be made by quoting Morabito's own article:

'As I've written before at the Federalist, we've exhausted all political labels today, including conservative/liberal, leftist/right-wing, Democrat/Republican, and so on and so forth. There are now only two political camps: pro-thought and anti-thought. And "woke" is literally anti-thought.'

For if we take Morabito's word as truth, we never will have to listen to or read anything that those who are woke say. And certainly refusing to even listen or read is a core part of employing a no-thought approach to considering what a group says.

Finally, it isn't that Morabito has no legitimate gripe. After all what she is really complaining about isn't a given ideology or movement; she is complaining about authoritarianism. But authoritarianism has crept its way into every ideological side. And that should be evident when Morabito and those she aligns herself with those practice what she preaches against in some who are woke. It is just that not everyone who can significantly agree with CRT, or supports full equality for the LGBT community, or who is conscious about the environment, or who wants stronger gun regulations are authoritarians just as not everyone who is conservative is either. But here we should note that authoritarianism isn't the only factor that causes some of practices and attitudes that she complains about. And so the world is more complicated than Morabito gives it credit for.