Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family 8

In this write-up on my latest reading of Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, I’ll highlight where Santorum tries to add a tone of moderation to his controversial positions.  Here are three areas in which he seeks to do so:

1.  Earlier in the book, Santorum appeared to argue that it’s preferable for a mother to stay at home rather than pursue a career.  On page 211, however, he states:

“The 1950s were not without moral blemishes.  Many conservatives recognize that there was something unsustainable about the role of women made normative in that period, for example.  Allen Carlson has argued that whereas the household had once been a center of productive activity, the advance of industrial technology and suburbanization often left women with few roles beyond those of infant caregiver and consumption specialist, i.e., shopper.”

This sounds a lot like Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, which argues that consigning women solely to the domestic sphere leaves them bored and unfulfilled, resulting in damage to the women and also their families.

2.  Santorum argues that Griswold vs. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that struck down a state law against the use of contraceptives and affirmed the right to privacy, was a bad decision, a reason being that it established a right to privacy that went beyond what the framers of the Constitution intended and set the stage for Roe vs. Wade.  But Santorum makes clear that he does not agree with the Connecticut law against contraception, and that he believes that the judges who decided Griswold vs. Connecticut were acting according to a tradition of common law, which held that the government should not intervene in the lives of married couples.

3.  Santorum criticizes Lawrence vs. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that invalidated laws against sodomy.  Santorum tried to clarify remarks he made that this could set the stage for a right to bigamy, polygamy, incest, and adultery.  Santorum says that he was not equating homosexuality with those things.  But Santorum does argue that the Lawrence decision has set the stage for state-sanctioned same-sex marriage, and he notes that polygamists have challenged statutes against polygamy on the basis of the Lawrence decision.

So does Santorum support criminalizing homosexual sex?  To be honest, it’s tough to tell.  On page 215, he says that he’s not in favor of the government “snooping through people’s private lives”.  At the same time, he does appear to argue that liberty must coincide with virtue, and that a lack of virtue leads to more government restrictions.  Does that mean that he’s open to the government restricting people from doing what he considers to be contrary to virtue?  Of course, most people are for the government prohibiting certain wrong behaviors (i.e., theft, fraud, murder), but does Santorum think that homosexuality should be banned as something that is not virtuous?

Rick Santorum’s It Takes a Family 2

In my latest reading of It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, Rick Santorum criticizes same-sex marriage and laments the erosion of community.

Essentially, Santorum longs for communitarianism, which entails people thinking about the well-being of others.  For Santorum, traditional marriage is consistent with that because it entails a man and a woman committing to each other and to their children.  And community associations such as bowling-leagues foster selflessness and community because members have to show up because their team is counting on them.  When there is a greater sense of community, Santorum argues, there is social capital, and this is the sort of thing that can help the poor.

Santorum associates same-sex marriage with individualism, for it makes marriage a matter of romantic attachment rather than commitment to children.  But I ask: Could same-sex marriage be consistent with values such as commitment and selflessness?  I agree with Santorum that it’s tragic that marriage these days has become a lot like dating or going steady, but I don’t think that same-sex marriage is responsible for that, or that same-sex marriage has to be like that.

At the same time, I wonder: If we as a country are to disregard what our Judeo-Christian heritage says about homosexuality, does that relegate that heritage to a state of non-importance?  What narrative, then, would we have that could help us to strengthen families and communities?  Like it or not, our Judeo-Christian heritage has been a significant factor in encouraging Americans to be selfless.  What could we replace it with?  Or would we even need to replace it, since there are gay-friendly versions of Christianity, plus even American Christianity disregards parts of the Bible (knowingly or unknowingly)?

Regarding same-sex marriage, Santorum believes that marriage being primarily a matter of romantic attachment has contributed to the declining birth rates in Europe.  The result, Santorum argues, is that in Europe there will not be a sufficient younger generation to support the older generation.

Newt Gingrich’s Lessons Learned the Hard Way 1

I started Newt Gingrich’s 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way, which is about Newt’s tenure as Speaker of the House.  I have two items.

1.  On pages 9-10, Newt discusses the National Endowment for the Arts.  He states:

“Nor had we conservatives taken the measure of how reluctant certain important senators were going to be about going along with certain key aspects of our agenda.  For instance, one big disappointment for the conservatives was our failure immediately to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.  Certainly any listing of the most bizarre and extreme misuses of taxpayer money would have to include such examples of NEA artistic grants as that to a certain HIV-infected homosexual ‘performance artist’ whose art consisted of cutting his uninfected fellow performer onstage and dangling the blood over the audience so they could experience the risk of contracting AIDS, or to two professors standing at the Mexican border and handing out $10 bills to illegal immigrants as they cross over into the United States, and so on and on.  Everyone has his own favorite cases.  There is no question that if the majority of ordinary Americans were to see many of the examples of where NEA money goes, they would favor abolishing the system.  Yet in the Senate there has always been strong support for the agency, for the NEA also supports such things as opera, ballet, and art museums, and the major private donors to such honored art institutions are also major supporters for senators.  In any case, the social pressure of the elites—-and what is better loved by the elites than the arts?—-has always been more strongly felt in the Senate than in the House.”

The context of this passage is Newt’s discussion of how the Senate obstructed some of the passionate ideas of House conservatives.  On the one hand, Newt acknowledges that George Washington wanted for the Senate to be a place of moderation, for Washington described “the Senate as the cooling saucer into which the hot coffee from the cup of the House should be poured” (Newt’s words on page 6).  On the other hand, Newt wonders if Washington intended for that moderating influence to go as far as it does, and to be as obstructive as it is!

Newt’s discussion of the NEA stood out to me because Newt chose to highlight that the performance artist was a homosexual.  I’m not sure that this would float nowadays.  Granted, Newt expresses conservative views on marriage being between a man and a woman, and he criticizes what he considers to be governmental attacks on the religious freedom of Catholic charities to discriminate against gay couples who want to adopt.  But he doesn’t publicly treat people’s homosexuality in a pejorative sense.  My impression (and I am open to correction) is that few public figures do criticize people for being homosexual these days, at least not in public.  In the 1990′s, however, it was different, for homosexuals were criticized by many right-wingers for being homosexuals.  (Here’s what wikipedia says about the case that Newt is discussing.)

Regarding his comments on the NEA, I thought that Newt made somewhat of an effort to understand the motivations of Senators and also to see why many would consider the NEA to be valuable, for the NEA does good things, such as supporting the opera, ballet, and art museums.  But I thought that his balance ended when he treated art as something for the elite—-as if others cannot be edified by a little culture.

2.  On pages 16-17, Newt states:

“The key to those years was to keep focused on what I dreamed of bringing about for the country in general rather than on the liberal city in which I was spending most of my working life.  For remember: To work in Washington is to wake up each morning surrounded by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the national television networks, National Public Radio, lobbyists who even if they are personally conservative are focused only on who’s got the power today, the Washington bureaucracies, and the Washington social scene.  From the time you wake up until the time you go to bed, unless you take steps to defend against it, you are bombarded with opinions, signals, and agendas that are antithetical to a conservative’s own.”

The context of this passage is Newt’s discussion of how transformative leaders should hold fast to their vision for the country, even though they will be criticized.  Newt refers to Ronald Reagan, who did not care what the elites thought about him (going back to his days as a B-movie actor), and also to Margaret Thatcher, who chose not to read negative press stories about her.

One reason that I liked this passage was that it highlights that not all criticism is constructive criticism.  We have to sift through what is constructive and what is not.  Another reason is that Newt says that even a conservative can become wrapped up in a Washington culture that is antithetical to his or her values.  Conservatives believe in less government, and they tend to champion advancement through hard work, merit, and productivity rather than through political machinations and ingratiating (think of Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and contrast them with James Taggart).  But Washington, D.C. is all about using political machinations and ingratiating yourself with the “right people” to get what you want, and conservatives can fall victim to this!  I’ll add that such is the case even with progressives, who may go to Washington intending to serve the people and to bring about reform, yet they find themselves part of a system that likes the way things currently are, and there is pressure on them to abandon their commitment to change.

On Lugar and Amendment 1

I have some links to share, in light of the recent election results.

1.  Republican Senator from Indiana Richard Lugar lost the Republican nomination for Senate to Richard Mourdock, who was backed by a number of Tea-Partiers.

I remember working at a Food Pantry one summer, and I was talking about politics with some of the ladies there, one of whom was the head of a Republican women’s organization.  We were discussing which Republican would be the best one to run against Bill Clinton in 1996, and one of the ladies there said that she never heard anything bad about Lugar.

Years later, I was reading a web site, The Skeleton Closet at realchange.org, which goes into the scandals and alleged improprieties of people running for President, both Republican and Democrat.  But it couldn’t really find anything bad on Lugar (though it named one thing, and then questioned whether it was really a scandal).  The article said:

“Richard Lugar is by almost all accounts, one of the candidates [for President in 1996] with the best character and fewest skeletons of anyone running for President. He’s a former Eagle Scout and Rhodes scholar who is still married to a strong women he met in college, and he even served in the military (Navy).  Politically, he’s more conservative than the moderate image he is projecting, but he is an open minded man of apparent principle, who opposes his party’s positions on banning assault rifles, cutting back school lunches and affirmative action. There are far too few politicians who have the guts to oppose their own party mates on one or two issues just because they feel it’s the right thing to do, and Lugar seems to be one. In fact, we are hard pressed to report anything negative on him. If you have any tips, click here to send us the information or a lead.  Perversely, the press — which gets so incensed at the minor scandals they dig up — seems to be ignoring Lugar in part because he is so squeaky clean.”

As a former Hoosier, I am honored that a decent person like Richard Lugar represented the state of Indiana for so long.  I wish him the best.

2.  In North Carolina, Amendment 1 passed.  Amendment 1 declares marriage to be between one man and one woman, but people have argued that it could impact, not only homosexual couples, but also heterosexual couples and health benefits (see here).

I read some posts this morning: Michael Varrati challenges Billy Graham’s support for Amendment 1 on the basis of the Bible, arguing that the First Amendment is about not legislating religious beliefs; Justin Lee of the Gay Christian Network talked about the importance of not marginalizing people from the other side but rather seeking to correct misconceptions people have about homosexuality (i.e., that it’s a choice); and Rachel Held Evans argues that conservative evangelicalism’s emphasis on the cultural wars may alienate younger evangelicals and the younger generation, period.

I can’t say that I agree entirely with these three pieces, though I agree somewhat.  On Varrati’s piece, I am not convinced that many of America’s founders intended to insulate religion completely from public policy, though I can understand Varrati’s point that “the Bible says” is not a sufficient public policy argument.  Regarding Justin’s post, I think that opposition to the state recognizing gay marriage does not necessarily flow from ignorance about homosexuality, for there are concerns that recognizing gay marriage could lead to a slippery slope, beliefs that a man and a woman each contribute something special and important to the raising of children, etc.  On Rachel’s post, I do not know if “most” younger evangelicals are as alienated from evangelicalism’s preoccupation with the cultural wars as she suggests, for I do know a number of younger evangelicals who are socially, culturally, and politically conservative.  (Rachel does refer to a study, though.)

I do think, however, that Rachel made an important point when she said: “And when it comes to homosexuality, we no longer think in the black-at-white categories of the generations before ours. We know too many wonderful people from the LGBT community to consider homosexuality a mere ‘issue.’ These are people, and they are our friends. When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen. And Amendment One hurts like hell.”

And Alise Wright said under Justin’s post: “I’m incredibly grateful to friends who walked me through understanding, rather than simply writing me off as a bigot.”

In my opinion, what is important is that we learn about people’s stories, so that we remember that there are people involved in these debates, not just issues.

It’s Not Censorship (Technically-Speaking), But It Still Stinks

This will be a rambling post.

In a sense, I can identify with the companies that have pulled their sponsorship from Rush Limbaugh’s radio program.  These companies support such values as civility and respect for people, and they do not feel that Rush practices those values.  Consequently, they choose not to support Rush.  I understand and I respect that.

But I myself have no intention of trying to get Rush kicked off the air.  In fact, I’m getting sick of conservatives getting kicked off of programs, period.  I think of Pat Buchanan being fired from MSNBC due to pressure from a left-wing group.  In my opinion, we lose out when voices are silenced.  And, while we may think that society would be better off if certain voices were simply not heard, I believe that those voices should be addressed and countered through debate, not silencing them.  (I’m refraining from using the word “censorship” here because the government did not remove Pat Buchanan from MSNBC, and I define censorship as the government repressing freedom of speech.)

“But you’re a right-winger, James.”  Well, I’m more middle-of-the-road nowadays, maybe even center-left.  But let me say this: I’m not going to join right-wingers to get things kicked off the air, either!  The conservative American Family Association has long liked to target sponsors to get certain programs kicked off.  I have not joined them, for I happen to like the shows that the religious right dislikes (i.e., Desperate Housewives, Picket Fences, Brothers and Sisters, etc.).  L. Brent Bozell (nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr.) has for years sought to remove Family Guy from television.  I happen to like Family Guy.  I think it’s funny.  It goes too far at times, but I’m not going to support getting it kicked off the air.

Another pet-peeve I have: When someone expresses an opinion, people act surprised and outraged that he has expressed that opinion.  I have in mind Kirk Cameron’s recent comments on homosexuality, which GLAAD has criticized.  Look, criticize away, for this country is all about debate!  But should we really be surprised that Kirk Cameron made those comments?  He’s a conservative Christian!  Of course he feels that way!  There are many people in the United States who still believe that way!  I hope Kirk Cameron is not pressured to contrive some phony apology.  People are still entitled to their opinion, even if that opinion is wrong and (in the eyes of some, such as GLAAD) outdated.

I tend to admire people—-on both the Left and also the Right—-who acknowledge and respect that there are people with different points-of-view, whether or not they agree with those viewpoints.  Let’s go a step further.  I admire those who also try to understand why other points-of-view exist.

Andrew Marin on “When Your Child ‘Comes Out’ to You”

In her Sunday Superlatives today, one post that Rachel Held Evans highlights is by Andrew Marin, the author of Love Is an Orientation.  Andrew’s post is about what parents should do when their child “comes out” to them.  This is something that many (not all, but many) Christian conservative parents seriously botch up, for I have heard and read horror stories about parents’ reactions when their gay children come out to them.  Sometimes, the parents kick their child out of the house, or they treat the child in a manner that influences the child to commit suicide.  Even if the parents believe that homosexuality is a sin, they can still respond to their child coming out to them with love.  Andrew Marin offers tips on how parents can do this.

The GOP Debate, Contraception, and Anti-Christian Bigotry

This will be a rambling post about two issues that came up in the GOP Presidential debate last night.

1.  Mitt Romney was befuddled about the contraception issue (see here).  It’s odd that Mitt Romney—-a graduate of Harvard Law School—–was unaware of the Supreme Court decision Greenwald vs. Connecticut, which struck down state laws against contraception as a unconstitutional violation of the right to privacy.  But I don’t think that this will hurt him, the way that Sarah Palin’s inability to mention Supreme Court decisions to Katie Couric hurt her.  Mitt Romney is able to demonstrate that, overall, he is intelligent and has a grasp on key issues, even if constitutional law is not one of them.

Was Mitt Romney correct to say that the question about allowing states to ban contraception was silly, since states do not want to ban contraception?  I don’t think that there’s a movement to ban condoms or diaphragms, so, from a certain perspective, the question was silly.  The morning-after pill has been challenged by attempts to define life as beginning from conception, however.  I once got into a debate with a relative on the morning-after pill and whether it is an abortifacent or a birth-control pill that prevents fertilization.  From my reading last night, what I found was that it’s a little of both: it aims to prevent fertilization, but, if it fails to do that, then it prevents the union of the fertilized egg with the uterus.

I support birth control that prevents fertilization, for, if that is consistently used, then abortion will not be as much of an issue.  But I do believe that life begins at conception.  And I do not think that abortion is relevant to the right to privacy, for I see it as a human life issue, not as a privacy issue.  Will I vote for the Republicans over this?  No, because I believe that chipping away at the social safety net and America’s manufacturing base—-as Republican policies have done (in my opinion)—-encourages more abortions, in that it makes having more children more difficult for families.

2.  Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry decried anti-Christian bigotry, and here are some remarks they made about what they had in mind:

Newt Gingrich: “Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done? Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry? Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration?”

Rick Perry: “When we see an administration that will not defend the Defense of Marriage Act, that gives their Justice Department clear instructions to go take the ministerial exception away from our churches where that’s never happened before, when we see this administration not giving money to Catholic charities for sexually trafficked individuals because they don’t agree with the Catholic church on abortion, that is a war against religion. And it’s going to stop under a Perry administration.”

I’ve talked some about these issues here and here.  My position is not exactly crisp, but I want to maintain two principles.  First, I’d like for homosexuals to be free to marry and to receive the legal benefits of marriage, and also to be free from discrimination in housing and employment.  Second, I’d like to respect the religious freedom of people to disapprove of homosexuality and not to sanction that way of life.  It would be great if these two things could co-exist.  In many areas, they can: gays can marry, but conservative churches do not have to be forced to conduct the ceremony or to ordain practicing homosexuals.  But there are areas in which the two can come into conflict.  What if a church owns a hospital and does not want for it to hire homosexuals?  What if a conservative Christian owns an apartment complex and does not want for homosexuals to live there?  I think that such a judgmental attitude is inconsistent with the evangelical mantra of hating the sin but loving the sinners.  But do conservative Christians have a religious right to discriminate?

I wonder, also, if there is a way to make everyone happy, in certain areas.  Why should the Catholic Church’s adoption services be required to send kids to gay couples who want to adopt?  Why should Catholic charities be denied federal funding because they do not provide access to abortion or birth control (see here)?  I mean, that helps no one, and it ends up denying help to a number of people.  Maybe a solution is for there to emerge adoption services that are more open to gay adoption.  Let the Catholic church’s adoption services hold to its beliefs, but let there also be alternatives out there to its adoption services.

Chaplain Mike on II Corinthians 3:5

Chaplain Mike, the new Internet Monk, has an excellent post on II Corinthians 13:5, in which Paul tells the Corinthians to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith.  This verse has been a huge turn-off to me because I’ve thought it meant that I should look at my own life to see if I have spiritual fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, etc.—in order to determine if I’m a true Christian, one who has a relationship with God in this life and will escape hell and enter the good afterlife after death. 

Of course, after self-examination, I always fall short, for I have difficulty loving others.  I don’t always have joy and peace.  (But I will say this: I have more joy and peace now that I focus on God being a God of love, rather than thinking about such topics as whether or not I am truly saved, my spiritual fruit or lack thereof, or whether or not non-Christians are going to hell.)  I lack patience, especially when my Internet connection is acting up.  So should I assume that I’m going to hell because of my imperfections?

But Chaplain Mike offers a different interpretation of II Corinthians 13:5.  He says that the issue in this verse is not the quality of the Corinthians’ moral or spiritual lives, but rather the competing claims about Jesus that they were hearing.  Paul was saying one thing about Jesus, and the super-apostles were saying something else.  According to Chaplain Mike, Paul is asking the Corinthians to look at themselves to determine who is right.  Whose message produced an effect in their lives?  Paul believes that his did, not that of the super-apostles.

Chaplain Mike did not cite Galatians 3:5, but I thought of that passage as I read his post: Paul asks the Galatians if they received the Spirit and experienced God’s miracles through the works of the law or the hearing of faith.  Because the Galatians had the Spirit before they started to observe Jewish rituals, Paul concludes that they received the Spirit solely through the hearing of faith.  That means that they did not have to observe Jewish rituals to experience God. 

But then questions enter my mind.  You will notice that Paul appeals to the experience of the Galatians and the Corinthians.  Is experience a legitimate criterion of faith?  There are homosexuals who testify that they’ve experienced God, without giving up their homosexual lifestyle.  I’ve read and heard stories of non-Christian Jews who experience what they consider to be divine providence or answers to prayer.  People in recovery communities make similar claims, even those who don’t consider themselves Christians.  What do these experiences say about the prerequisites for experiencing God?  Does one have to be a conservative evangelical Christian to do so?  And, if an evangelical responds that God can be involved in the lives of non-believers, but that God is leading non-believers to faith in Christ, tell me something: why couldn’t the Galatian legalists respond to Paul’s statement in Galatians 3:5 along similar lines—by saying that faith may be the door to experiencing God, but God wants to lead Christians to obey the law?   

What if I look at my life and I don’t see any miracles?  That’s often been something that I’ve resented, both as an evangelical and also as a non-evangelical: why do so many people experience tangible signs of the divine, and yet I do not?  Is God passing me by?  I remember Joyce Meyer saying that it takes more faith to believe without tangible experiences of the divine!

Chaplain Mike says that we should look to Jesus and not at ourselves.  I hope that this is true, for I despair when I look at myself.  But, unfortunately, there are biblical passages that can push Christians towards introspection.  I John says repeatedly that we know we’re in the light when we love other Christians.  But I have problems liking Christians, let alone loving them!  Co-existing with them without rancor is enough of a struggle for me.  To demand that I be in a relationship with Christians and actually like them in order to know that I am saved is too hard of a task for me, to tell you the truth.  People have said that I need to be assured of God’s love for me before I can love others.  Good advice.  But that advice is somewhat cancelled out by Christianity’s message that I receive assurance of my salvation by looking at how I am doing spiritually.

I like Chaplain Mike’s interpretation of II Corinthians 3:5, and it’s refreshing to encounter fresh interpretations of Scripture that actually place God in a good light—something that legalistic interpretations that focus on my spiritual performance do not do.  I see fresh interpretations of Scripture among certain Christians.  That brings to my mind another point, and I hope that I express it clearly, since I’m unsure how to articulate it to myself, let alone others: when I have problems with the Bible, Christians tell me to “just have faith.”  They’ll also tell me that I have to accept the Bible as a whole package—both what appeals to me, and also what repulses my moral sensibilities.  But what if there are repulsive parts of Scripture that don’t mean what they appear to mean, which can be interpreted in a manner that’s consistent with God’s benevolence?  What if I don’t know of such an interpretation?  Do I have to accept the apparently repulsive passage as repulsive?  Or should I have faith that the passage can be reconciled with God’s benevolence, even if I’m not sure how?  And, if I go with the latter approach, aren’t I picking and choosing, in that I’m saying that the Bible agrees with what I already believe, only I’m not sure how it does so?

Musings on the Afterlife

Today, I went downtown, and so I didn’t visit the traditional Latin mass that I normally attend.  Rather, I went to the downtown Catholic churches, three of them, to be exact. 

I was a little taken aback when I visited the 11 a.m. mass.  A few months ago, when I visited that church, not many people were there.  They were in the front rows, while the back half of the church was empty.  There were cords on the sides of the back rows, indicating to us that we shouldn’t sit there, but in the front.  And, in case we didn’t get that hint, a sign told us to sit in the rows further up.  But I usually crawled under the cord and sat in the back.  I like to leave right after the homily, and so I sit as close to the exit-door as I can.

Today, however, there were no cords, and the church was packed, in both the front and also in the back.  Why?  Is this a special Sunday?

The theme in all three church services was the resurrection from the dead.  One of our texts was the story of the martyrs in II Maccabees 7, in which brothers and their mother choose to be martyred rather than eat a piece of pork.  In so doing, they were protesting the demand of Antiochus Epiphanes that they abandon the Jewish religion.  And they assured themselves that God would restore their lives in the resurrection.

The priest asked us what we would be willing to die for.  He said that many people consider this present life to be all that there is, and so they probably wouldn’t give their lives for anything.  That may be a blanket generalization, for there may very well be examples of people who don’t believe in an afterlife, yet give their lives for somebody else’s good.  I think of an elderly Jewish man, who taught at a college where there was a shooting.  He gave his life so that his students might live.  As far as I know, he wasn’t doing this in order to get a good afterlife.  Rather, he figured that he had already lived a full life, and so he should give others a shot, especially those who had their whole lives ahead of them. 

But, speaking for myself, I’d have an incredibly hard time laying down my life, if this life were all that there is.  If this life is it, then I’d try to preserve every moment of it that I possibly can.

But I’ve had problems with the Christian view of the afterlife.  There are Christians who say that we shouldn’t live for reward in this life, but rather for reward in the afterlife.  If you’re in a bad marriage and you’re unhappy, and you can’t tolerate the prospect of spending the rest of your natural life with your spouse, some Christians would tell you to stay married, for you’ll get a reward in the afterlife for so doing.  After all, according to Jesus, God considers divorce a “no-no,” and those who marry a divorcee are guilty of adultery. 

If you have same-sex attractions and desire a relationship, some Christians would tell you that you need to forego that desire and remain celibate for the rest of your natural life (right before they go home to their picture-perfect families).  Sure, you may be unhappy for the rest of your natural life, but you’ll be rewarded in the afterlife!  God opposes homosexuality as an abomination, and Paul says that homosexuals won’t enter the kingdom of God.  For conservative Christians, homosexuals should forego their happiness in this life to avoid hell and to receive a reward in heaven, or the resurrection.

But that’s an extremely heavy burden to put on people, and all for something we’re not even absolutely sure is true.  How do we know that the Christian view of the afterlife is the way things really are?  And should we pressure people to be unhappy for the rest of their lives for something that may or may not be true?

At the same time, I hope that this life is not all that there is.  This life by itself cannot make me happy.  Things often don’t go the way that I want.  I hope that there’s something more.

The Other; Triumph of the Trophies

1.  In my reading today of In the Beginning, Henri Blocher talks about God making male and female.  Blocher believes that men and women are equal, yet he thinks that women shouldn’t be preachers.  I guess that would make him a complementarian, right?

I found his discussion of homosexuality to be interesting, and odd.  It’s on pages 102-103:

We have seen that the being-with of the man and his neighbour reflects (and should serve) the being-with man and God.  If the fundamental being-with is face-to-face partnership with the other sex in diversity, then our proposition is confirmed and sharpened.  The face-to-face relationship with the LORD signifies for mankind respect for otherness in supreme and transcendent form and for the primary distinction—that between Creator and creature.  Immediately we can understand why the apostle Paul makes a close association between idolatry and homosexuality (Rom. 1:22-27).  This sexual perversion as a rejection of the other corresponds to idolatry in its relationship to God, the rejection of the Other; it is the divinization of the same, the creature.

Blocher’s argument is that our relationship with each other mirrors our relationship with God.  When we’re dealing with God, we’re relating to someone who is other, that is, different from us.  God wants our romantic relationships to be the same way: relating to the other, the sex that is different from our own.  But, in homosexuality, a person relates to someone who is like him or her, from the same sex.  That’s like worshipping the creature rather than the creator.

Okay…

This actually isn’t the first time today that I encountered the concept of God as other.  A blogger quoted R.C. Sproul’s Holiness of God:

To be undone means to come apart at the seams, to be unraveled…. [It is] personal disintegration…. [Isaiah] was considered by his contemporaries as the most righteous man in the nation. He was respected as a paragon of virtue. Then he caught one sudden glimpse of the holy God. In that single moment, all of his self-esteem was shattered. In a brief second he was exposed, made naked beneath a gaze of the absolute standard of holiness. As long as Isaiah could compare himself to other mortals, he was able to maintain a lofty opinion of his own character. The instant he measured himself by the ultimate standard, he was destroyed—morally and spiritually annihilated. He was undone. He came apart. His sense of integrity collapsed.

There is a special kind of phobia from which we all suffer. It is called xenophobia.  Xenophobia is a fear (and sometimes hatred) of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign. God is the ultimate object of our xenophobia.He is the ultimate stranger. He is the ultimate foreigner. He is holy, and we are not.

I’m not sure how to relate to God as other.  I mean, there has to be some bridge between us, right, for me to interact with God.  Me being in God’s image could be that bridge.  For a lot of Christians, the bridge is the fact that God became a man in Jesus Christ.

As far as relationships are concerned, I think it’s good to know different kinds of people and to get out of my own little universe.  My problem is that I have a hard time interacting with people who are completely different from me.  But maybe that’s where I need to ask that person about her interests, and why they mean so much to her. 

I’m not sure how homosexual relationships work.  I think that Blocher is assuming that men are a certain way, and women are a certain way.  But that may not always be the case.  That’s why there are men who feel they are in the wrong gender, and vice versa.

Also, if it’s so important for us to be romantically involved with someone who’s different from us, why do Christians oppose Christians dating non-Christians—being unequally yoked?

2.  In Bringing the Hidden to Light, I read Kathryn Kravitz’s essay, “Biblical Remedial Narratives: The Triumph of the Trophies”.  Her argument was that there are stories in the Bible in which the people of God are humiliated trophies of a conquering power, and yet God has the last laugh.  Or the stories speak to a setting in which the Jews are subjugated to a foreign oppressor, and they offer them hope. 

For example, Kravitz speculates that the story of Samson being blinded by the Philistines and killing them all in the end speaks to the Babylonian exile, in which the Babylonians blinded the sons of King Zedekiah.

The story of Naaman taking Israelite soil to Syria, for Kravitz, may reflect the time of Assyrian dominance, when Assyrians set their mark in the land of Israel.  In the Naaman story, a Syrian is setting an Israelite mark in the land of a power that is oppressing Israel: Syria!

That reminds me of something Marc Brettler says in The Creation of History in Ancient Israel: a story in the book of Judges was designed to offer Israel comic relief when she was suffering at the hands of a foreign oppressor!

Stories can create a world that encourages, comforts, or amuses us.  I’m reminded of something Merlin Oleson said about Michael Landon’s TV series: they were like the old Frank Kapra movies, in which you watched them and felt better at the end, energized to face life.

I’d like to think, though, that the biblical stories were based on some historical reality, that the Israelites were being offered a concrete basis for hope: that God had subverted Israel’s oppressors before, and will do so again.