John Mark Reynolds

Michael Vick, Animal Rights, and Killing People

John Mark Reynolds — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:53:29 -0700

Michael Vick tortured dogs and watched them fight for pleasure and money. This is not only against the law, but morally disturbing. Michael Vick has served jail time for his bad behavior and now is coming out.

Some people feel Vick has not been punished enough and perhaps they are correct, but the reasoning behind the anti-Vick arguments is sometimes quite disturbing. In a league where dead beat dads, drunk drivers, drug abusers, and wife beaters still play, it would be odd to deny him the right to practice his profession for his particular crimes.

Saying this does not justify what he did, but does try to put it into perspective.

What Vick did was wrong, but it is not so obviously wrong that his practices have been universally condemned in all places at all times. Fathering many children and failing to support them has been (nearly) universally condemned, because of the vast societal implications, but animal cruelty was harder to see. It would be odd for the NFL to consider the first transgression against being a “role model” forgivable, but the second meriting banishment for life.

Centuries of reflection on animal pain and what inflicting it does to people led many Christians (in particular) and some secular thinkers to begin pressing for animal cruelty laws in the nineteenth century. Traditional “sports” such as bear baiting and cock fighting began to decline earlier and passed out of polite society altogether. This was an appropriate exercise of Victorian Christian reasoning and by the twentieth century very traditional Christians such as C.S. Lewis often joined anti-vivisection leagues. Lewis’ book Problem of Pain contains an eloquent chapter on the problem of animal pain.

I think we have learned that inflicting animal suffering for our pleasure is morally wrong.

If Michael Vick had bad moral formation, it is easily possible that he could have failed to see that what was licit and legal (though still troubling) in Shakespeare’s time could not longer be done today. Christian civilizations learn by experience and we had learned that dog fighting is bad. However, this is not the sort of crime that might appear obviously bad to all people at all places at all times.

His ignorance does not justify his deeds, but it does mitigate the amount of punishment that seems appropriate to me.

Some opponents of Vick have gone very much further and equated animal cruelty to manslaughter (or argued that it is worse). See this odd SI piece:

For some Vick critics, nothing short of a significant ban from Goodell — lifetime or at least another full season — will mollify them. They would prefer the NFL be the No Felons League. They don’t agree with the second or third chances already accorded to drug abusers, drunk drivers, domestic abusers or other peace disturbers. And they see Vick as equally or more despicable, given his criminal activity was ongoing rather than an isolated moment of rage or bad judgment. Getting behind the wheel of a vehicle while intoxicated and taking a human life in a highway accident is a different category of evil from the cruelty and depravity of profiting from and taking pleasure in the serial suffering and killing of another creature.

If the rule became: “no felons need apply,” that would make sense to me, but the further notion that Vick is “more despicable” than a domestic abuser is very, very disturbing. First, it equates harming a spouse with harming a dog. Humans have greater moral worth than animals. Second, it pretends domestic violence is usually (or always?) a one time act of rage when it is not.

Critics often treat harming dogs as worse than harming other animals (say pigs), because of American and Western feelings about dogs as pets. Causing gratuitous animal pain is wrong with any animal, but critics of Vick’s should (generally) leave their sentimentality about pets out of the equation.

The critics are right that it is morally worse to plan evil and carry it out. Our laws reflect this difference in the way we treat planned murder (first degree) and murder that is done out of passion. However, it is difficult to see how manslaughter performed when a driver intentionally decides to drink and drive and the kills people does not have greater societal and moral harm, than fighting dogs. The only victim of the manslaughter is not just the dead person, a soul created in the image of God ripped from life by moral carelessness, but the vast social network of the person. The impact on the drunk who killed is also great as is the effect on his social network.

Michael Vick did a bad thing, but it is not so bad as other things. We need not develop a false moral equivalency to condemn him. I hope the NFL treats him as it does other felons who appear to be contrite. Obviously playing pro football is a privilege and not a right, but punishing Vick in a more severe way than other folk because of the Hallmark-greeting card status of dogs in America is wrong.

On Not Living Up To Your Promise

John Mark Reynolds — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:38:22 -0700

Every once in a while I get an email from a friend facing failure. He or she will tell me of sins they have committed or bad things that happened that have taken them from “promising” to “could have been.” A marriage that began with romance has ended in divorce. A grad school career that started with the excitement of the acceptance letter has petered out in mediocrity. A friendship that started in excitement has died in acrimony.

It is bad news when you are, in the words of William Shatner, “never were” instead of “has been.”

How do you go on living when you haven’t lived up to your promise?

This is a question I have faced myself and there is no easy answer to it. It is hard to accept failure, especially when my own faults and sins have scarred me. I know the truth of the old saying, “a bird with a broken pinion never flies as high again.”

And I want to fly.

Of course, one problem is how we judge success. God wants us to become good. Anybody at anytime can start the long slow process to sainthood. There is always room at the top in Heaven and the purgation can start anywhere.

This is true, but hard to believe.

I always said that the most important thing to me was not outside acclaim, but serving God. My failures have given me a chance to see if that is true. Too often we say we want to be just and good, but are most interested in appearing to be just and good.

My failures at least freed me of that error. If I am still here, then I must go on living and give myself to God. He can transform me. I can love those around me, even if they will not love me back the way I wish.

Is it a success to demonstrate God’s amazing grace?

Of course it is, even if that will never get me on the cover of my college alum magazine.

Perhaps more difficult is when our life turns out to be so average. We were honor students, prizewinners, really great. Right? Why then do we look so much like our parents? We don’t quite realize the arrogance and stupidity of such statements and, God love them, our parents are too humble and good to point it out to us.

Frank Capra taught one generation of Americans to value the average and the steady. He reminded us of the greatness of the man or woman who does their simple duty. Sometimes we don’t achieve our goals simply because our goals were foolish.

God needed one steadier citizen, while we wished to be President. God help us, but we are snobs, but worse, stupid in our snobbery. Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, loves us, but that is not enough. We demand treats and prizes and awards. We want everyone to recognize that He is lucky we love him back.

This is silly. Our good education is not wasted if we spend it being decent and virtuous. Our promise has been fulfilled if we do our duty and love our neighbor as we love ourselves. I know this: Torrey Honors will have been a good place if it educated decent men and women or men and women sensible enough to know that they need to become decent when their “cleverness” finally fails them.

No man or woman is a failure who serves God, even if that service begins, like the Thief, as they are dying on a cross. Surely if there was ever man who failed to live up to his promise, it was that thief. He was condemned and dying. His life was a waste. Nobody knew his name, but one Man.

But what a Man!

One Man still cared. One Man reached out to him as both were dying. There was still time to become a citizen of Paradise and what is better than that?

What God has taught me in a life of “never was” is that He is a God of second and even third chances. While I may never fly again, He can teach me to sing. I am a bird with broken pinions, but He is teaching me to sing in the choirs of Heaven.

Nobody still alive is a failure. Nobody still alive is a “never was” or “has been.” We, all of us, have a chance to begin again and see God.

Really.

We think the way back is too long and it might be if our goals are still worldly acclaim, but if we simply turn around, Father is waiting. He is waiting to put a ring on our finger and a robe on our back. He rejects no repentant soul.

He can save sinners such as we are.

Thanks be to God.

Always Losing, Never Lost: Christianity in America

John Mark Reynolds — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:37:51 -0700

Every few years somebody announces that Christianity in America is doomed. This time the excuse is a survey that does show a small decline in Christian self-identification, but that this decline has pretty much stopped. A one percent decline in just under a decade in Christian self-identification in a survey with a margin of error of half a percent is hailed as the latest piece of evidence.

When extremist secularists are not paranoid of an imminent American theocracy, whether because someone is singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic or saying the Pledge, they veer into triumphalism, because “all” the smart people or young people (take your pick) are going their way. Of course, religious gloom mongers benefit by overplaying the fears of traditional Christians and joining extreme secularists in seeing the end of the religious world as we have known it.

Pardon me, but Christians should feel fine. This is not the end of American Christian dominance, though it may mark the end of the religious left.

America remains a very religious nation. Liberal Christian groups with little purpose in existing beyond heavy endowments from dead faithful are vanishing, but this is to be expected. It is hard to get people to go out on Sunday morning to worship their bishop’s latest new idea. Bronson Alcott’s excuse to skip divine services and spend his day with himself, the “church of one,” turns out to be much more appealing than the Church of Spong.

Signs of revival are everywhere amongst serious Christians.

Last week I spent time at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Between discussing March Madness and Louisville’s chances, intellectually serious students were planning mission trips to the deepest darkest places in Vermont. Al Mohler and Russell Moore represent the future of Church growth. They are eager for honest numbers regarding Southern Baptists who actually live their faith. This looks like bad news at first, but has provided a road map for missionary activity. Don’t bet against them.

The enthronement of Metropolitan Jonah in the Orthodox Church of America is also encouraging to traditional Christians. The OCA has been mired in a leadership crisis, but Metropolitan Jonah has the moral authority to change things. His message attacking the “de-personalization” of our age and appealing for authentic community is exactly the right one. When combined with the elder statesman of an evangelical Orthodoxy Metropolitan Philip there is great hope for an Orthodoxy in America that transcends ethnic barriers and proclaims the Gospel to the lost.

Pope Benedict is the right person at the right time to lead the Roman faithful. He is methodically confronting problems in global Catholicism and his first-rate intellect is ideal for challenging the weary secularism of Western Europe. He rightly sees that the future of humanity and of Christendom is not in the moribund geographic West, but the rest of the world. In fact, the future of Western values may come from nations that learn to embrace them through Christianity. Missionaries and priests will soon be flooding the West from Africa and Asia.

If American history is any guide to the American present, we are on the edge of a great revival of traditional Christianity. Americans will reject the consumerism, whether secular or religious, that has marked so much of the last few decades. Anyone who cannot see that money and power cannot make a man happy now is willfully blind. Groups that have always said that this is so, like Reformed Southern Baptists, will do well because they have always done good theology.

Christianity that is anti-intellectual will die. Christianity that is in the grip of trendy intellectualism will remain irrelevant. The revival of Christian philosophy as seen in the careers of persons such as Eleonore Stump or Alvin Plantinga will continue to strengthen the church. New generations of students will build on their work.

This is not the main thing, however. Christianity will survive and thrive, not because of anything people do but because it is true. God exists and He is not silent. Any system that ignores that reality will fail. The better news is that God loves humankind and sent Jesus to reconcile the way we are with the way He is.

Christianity is not, after all, fundamentally about externals or even about cultivating virtue. Many of my secular friends, not gripped by extremism, show great virtue and compassion. What Christianity offers is deep inner healing of a broken relationship between God and humankind. It is not in the end about me, but about Him. I am lonely and isolated until I find my rest in Him.

Christians fail Christ continuously, but He does not leave humanity without a witness. For every failed televangelist or hypocrite, there are men like my father who faithfully serve Christ for years without much payment and with no fame. Even if I am wrong and Christianity is to die in America, it will not die globally. Christianity is always losing, just to something new.

It never really loses.

Risking a Fearful Judgment

John Mark Reynolds — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:53:04 -0700

President Obama, through presidential fiat, decided experimenting on potential human beings will expand. Without study and by proclamation, the President has created a monstrous policy that has no precedent in American history.

It is more radical than what was allowed under Bill Clinton or George Bush. President Obama has given no reasons why such a new course is reasonable other than his statement that it is reasonable. Because President Obama is a reasonable sounding man it is difficult to realize how radical his idea is.

An embryo is a human being or, at the very least, is a potential human being. We shall now kill that embryo by experimenting on it in the hope that it might help the rest of us. Obama’s medicine first will do harm to a growing human with the dream that such experiments might do some good for a dying one.

This would give a more modest man pause, but President Obama is not a morally modest man. The rest of us struggle to gain insight from the way the world is to the way it ought to be, but President Obama sees ought in it so clearly that he sees no ideology at all in his decision.

Evidently Obama and his favored scientists are prophets to whom nature speaks without any need of an ethical interpreter.

If President Obama really wished to remove ideology from science, he would have to begin with the ideology that proclaims that science can be free from ideology. We cannot trust any group of people, including scientists, to act free from the restraints of ethics and common standards.

There is no science without scientists and scientists are humans and not gods. They are no more immune to hubris than any other social class. Scientists have no more insight into the ethics of a thing than anyone else.

The twentieth century was the most barbaric in the history of humankind partly because of perverted science. Numerous evils were done in the name of “science” including experimentation on human beings. Secularists in the Soviet Union tortured thousands of religious believers in the name of psychology. Disfavored races and ethnic groups were sterilized, experimented on, and butchered by men in white lab jackets who called what they did science.

Just because scientists can do a thing does not mean we must allow it to be done or that it ought to be done. We ought not to experiment on human beings, or even potential human beings, without their consent.

Why?

People have never shown the ability to restrain themselves once certain lines are crossed. The bright line of refusing to experiment on humans or potential humans is easy to maintain. No other moral line will be defensible.

When society allowed doctors to create embryos for infertile couples we were assured that this would be the end of it. Now we are told that “extra” embryos would be destroyed anyway and so should be used in experiments. This too will not be the “end” of demands on our conscience.

Secularists and the left may have idealistic fantasies of human restraint, but conservatives have bitter experience of the emptiness of those promises. Ours is the hard realism that places checks on every human institution. We don’t trust churches, states, business, or the mob with total power and we don’t exempt scientists from our caution.

Nation after nation has committed ever more monstrous crimes once the basic line of involuntary human experimentation has been crossed. This is not a “slippery slope” we might slide down, but a canyon into which we are falling, certain to hit the moral bottom.

When he lifted the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, President Obama said, “As a person of faith . . . I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research . . . and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.”

This is a dangerously Utopian vision and Utopian visions nearly destroyed humanity in the twentieth century.

President Obama has a misplaced faith in humanity that is blind to history and to the crimes of the twentieth century. Capacity is not permission. We might learn many things by any number of risky and barbaric experiments, but the foundational God given rights of life and liberty prevent us from doing them.

A desire to do a thing is not a good reason to do it. Our desires are easily manipulated and the loudest suffering too often draws our attention. It is so easy to do small evils, which accumulate to great wrong doing when we hope to benefit.

Tenderness to human life is in short supply in this age. We abort millions of children in the name of convenience. Socialist nations in Africa pursue policies that destroy their economies and starve their peoples. China engages in the brutal suppression of whole people groups and runs slave labor camps. Sudan practices slavery and terrorists blow up buildings in the name of God. This is not the age to be sanguine about our compassion.

The conscience is a frail guide when tempted by a desire to help others. Compassionate men like President Obama are particularly apt to do wicked things when they intend to do great good. Stem cell research might cure horrible disease and so everyone wishes it was moral. Any good man would wish to help, but only a wise man would restrain from evil to do it.

For a man of faith President Obama seems strangely sanguine about so momentous a decision that breaks with all the ethical traditions of the West. He risks a terrible judgment.

Fortunately, God’s judgments are tempered with mercy. No president has been immune to the temptation to allow short term good to cloud his judgment. President George W. Bush allowed the torture of terrorists and this assault on human dignity was a grievous wrong. This new presidency, however, was particularly marked by promises of hope and change and so the fall from grace is bitter. Sadly, the Obama presidency is now permanently tarnished by a rejection of moderation and a Frankenstein’s confidence in science.,

Obama Amazing: Discovers Morally Neutral Science!

John Mark Reynolds — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:31:29 -0700

I have underestimated President Obama.

Today he announced that we can experiment on human beings and even create new humans for our experimentation.

The good news is that he made this decision based only on science. Politics, vile nasty politics, had nothing to do with his decision.

Evidently President Obama has discovered a way to derive ethics from science! This is amazing and only confirms the main stream media sense that President Obama is a Special Person.

Most thinkers have believed that from “is” or “can” (”It is the case that people want to do x” or “It is the case that we can do x”) it was hard or impossible to get “ought,” but Obama has done it!

We can experiment on humans so we should! We want to experiment on humans so we should!

How simple! How convenient! How non-political! There are NO philosophical assumptions at play here what so ever. Praise be we have entered a non-ideological age.

Praise Moloch we have entered a new age where scientists will no longer have to think about ethics before they do experiments. They will get to do whatever science tells them to do and science (without any politics or ethics!) will magically speak to them about what should be done.

Over the petri dish the experiment will say, “We are good and noble, please continue this experiment!” and the scientist will know vox science, vox dei.

I see no possible problems with this! Do you?

If so then you are divisive, political, and a wing-nut.

Love Your Neighbor and Don’t Tax Him

John Mark Reynolds — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:29:12 -0800

Moral men have a duty to help their neighbors, but nobody has the right to force other people to help.

Jesus told a story of a Good Samaritan who crossed difficult social and cultural barriers to provide relief to an injured man. This is a good model for our own behavior. We should help the hurting neighbor even if he is a pariah in our community. The mortgage broker who has lost his job is also my neighbor and, when he is hurting and repentant, should receive pity, charity, and care—not just sermons about his errors.

Moral behavior is most valuable when it is not easy to do. The temptation is to avoid doing our moral duty by ignoring it or passing off the dirty work to somebody else.

The Scroogish Samaritan ignores his moral duty to help his neighbor. He assumes everybody should care only for self and destroys common culture by his selfishness. The Statist Samaritan forces everybody else to help the injured man and so gains a cheap feeling of virtue, but undermines any real virtue.

The Scrooge believes that it is enough for “a man to mind his own business” and forgets that he is tied to the fate of everyone else in his common culture. History shows prosperity cannot last when it is dependent on the hopeless poverty of others.

It is immoral to allow such an unjust system to survive. Even in a perfectly just society, it would be useless to lecture the hurting about their mistakes before dealing with their pain.

Telling a hungry mother with starving children about the virtues of liberty without first feeding her is cruel and breeds revolutions. The moral man must deal with the blinding pain in the hurting before he tries to show the victim a way to avoid future hurts.

It is true that you should teach a man to fish and not just give him a fish, but before teaching him to fish he has to be fit to learn. You cannot teach a starving man to fish. First, give him a fish. Second, teach him the skills that will give him the ability to become a giver of charity and not just a receiver. The goal of any charity is to allow the man who receives it to also be able to gain the astounding blessings of being a giver.

Sadly, it is so much more blessed to give than to receive that the Statist Samaritan tries to give all the blessings to the state. He loves the state and so wishes to turn everyone’s appreciation for charity to it.

Not surprisingly charity that is coerced does harm to everyone. The injured party may be helped at first, but only at the cost of doing injustice to others. Taxing Peter forces Peter to help Paul, often does little for Paul, and almost certainly will make Peter resent Paul. Peter should help Paul, but making him do it will teach both men bad lessons. The taxed feels resentment as the object of his charity lacks a human face—he gives his coerced taxes to faceless bureaucracy—and the recipient becomes the ward of government.

When we pass our moral duties over to the state, we lose the power to do charity ourselves, turn an act of charity into coercion, and give the state too much power. People are habituated to look to the state to meet their needs and not their communities, churches, and family. This weakens every non-state institution and risks tyranny.

Forced charity is inefficient because it rarely distinguishes between worthy and unworthy attempts at charity. By cutting everyone a check or putting everyone in “one size fits all” programs it is radically inefficient and often harms the giver and the recipient. The government takes a slice of the money in order to maintain the program. Often the program itself will outlive its usefulness, but keep using tax money. The closest thing to immortality ever created by humankind is a government program.

Forced charity is bad for us because in removing our liberty to choose between goods it makes us perpetual dependents. No good person wants to be perpetually dependent on his neighbor, because his neighbor has a face and knows him. It is much easier to become a perpetual dependent on the government, because the government is faceless.

Of course, in some extraordinary circumstances the community itself has been devastated or is so dysfunctional that the state must act. A horrific natural disaster can leave too few neighbors left to help. A deeply embedded racist culture can use local state power and cultural institutions to practice injustice. In such horrific cases, federal power may be necessary to solve gross problems.

Christianity and natural law teach that good men and women should help each other. This charity is best when it is private and not coerced. American popular culture would be wise to celebrate the Samaritan and stop holding up as heroic the conspicuous consumers, Scrooges, or Statists.

Support All Charities or None

John Mark Reynolds — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:29:54 -0800

There is no taxation without discrimination. The power to govern is the power to discriminate between the just and the unjust, the good and the evil.

Ideologues forget this since they confuse their beliefs with obvious truths. Every organization ever created discriminates when it decides on its mission and what it will not do. Not everyone can join or not everyone is paid who joins. Some things are valuable and other things are vices in the organizational culture.

We must do this, but we must be as modest as possible when imposing our beliefs on those who disagree. It is not just that we might be wrong and so do an injustice in the name of our beliefs, but that any use of force is dangerous even when we are right.

This is especially true of a government in a republic. Our government is not based on anointing balm or a sacred text, but on the consent of the governed.

Government decides whose money to take and what to do with it. They take a finite amount of money and make moral decisions about where to spend it. Somebody will make that moral decision and use everybody else’s tax money to subsidize or reward approved behavior.

This is why taxes should be low and in a diverse society governments should do few tasks. Every dime the government spends reduces the choices of the individual and is a threat to the conscience of some segment of citizens.

If government must be in the business of charity, it would be wise to fund diverse approaches with competing moral assumptions. The decision to fund or not to fund is a matter of prudence and will have limits based on the moral consensus of the culture.

Competition amongst competing approaches is good for charitable activities.

Groups like Planned Parenthood currently receive taxpayer funds and use them to practice viewpoint discrimination in hiring and in their message. People with my views would not be welcome as employees unless we stayed deeply in the closet. Skepticism that even more libertine behavior will improve the culture would not be welcome and my tax money pays for this organization to undermine my moral perspective. In a free society, Planned Parenthood cannot keep asking first questions about what it should do and how it should do it.

Any educational or charitable group will make moral assumptions about the problems facing society and their best solution.

I would defund Planned Parenthood and provide no support for any private charitable organizations other than tax exemption. This includes organizations that share my views.

If we are not going to take this safer road, then we must not create a double standard for charities. Religious group must not face an undue burden in advancing their views or practicing charity.

It might have been possible to imagine in the eighteenth century that religious groups were inherently more dangerous than secular groups, but after the gulags and cultural revolutions this is no longer even barely tenable.

Any group, secular or religious, is capable of tyranny.

Sadly some bigoted or confused folk have a double standard. They are eager to give money to groups that will not hire practicing Catholics, but angry if government gives it to groups that will not hire practicing libertines. Justifications of this double standard usually depend on moral beliefs and arguments that are themselves disputed by many reasonable people.

If the government must subsidize a soup kitchen, it should care more about the soup than the beliefs of those handing out the soup. When Catholic hospitals are told they must hand out birth control or perform abortions to receive the same money that other private hospitals receive, then the liberty of the citizens and our cultural choices are limited.

Allowing charities with different moral assumptions to thrive without subjecting them to unfair discrimination allows an active check on our own moral assumptions. For example, do students who live as Planned Parenthood suggests in poor neighborhoods do better or worse than similar children who live as Pope Benedict would urge? Which group flourishes as human beings?

To be consistent, if Saint Jude’s is funded, then a secular hospital must be funded as well or at least the secular hospital cannot be excluded merely because most Americans find secularism repugnant. Political triumph in the United States is short-lived. Today’s party of power is tomorrow’s rump minority.

If the reasonable moral beliefs of a large minority or majority of the population are discarded, then government with the consent of the governed is imperiled.

Any American has great sympathy to the argument that it is hurtful when a charity will not hire someone. Many Americans now view sexual behaviors such as homosexuality as moral. Some Americans believe that the tendency to such behaviors defines (at least in part) who they are as people. Yet simultaneously many Americans think both these views are mistaken and provide reasons, secular and religious, for those opinions.

If government must fund private charities, then it would be imprudent to make either position a test for receiving taxpayer monies. If we must have a large government, then it should be as evenhanded as possible with the views of the minority and the majority.

Americans must be as evenhanded as possible in their tax policy for our own sake, but should be evenhanded if we wish to continue to be a shining “city set on a hill.”

The future of humanity will not be limited to those embracing North American or Western European ideas or secular morality. It would be prudent for the United States not to adopt tax and charitable policies that discriminate against the beliefs of most people in the growing portions of the world. If the Orthodox of Russia, the Evangelicals of Kenya, the Catholics of China, the traditional Hindus of India, and billions of other people who might dissent from currently favored moral positions for secular or religious reasons come to feel we are hostile to their views, then it will be more difficult to persuade them of other issues.

If we openly discriminate against their views with our taxes, we may not be perceived as leading the world in increasing justice, but as a moral backwater.

On Pitying the Fool: Holocaust Deniers

John Mark Reynolds — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:16:14 -0800

President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI’s respective jobs require them to deal with fools on a regular basis. There is no safe way to handle fools, as their folly tends to redound on the person who tries to help them.

Who is a fool? The fool is not simply wrong, but believes a falsehood with obstinate fury that is destructive to himself and to his neighbor. It is not that he thinks he is right, but that he never considers that he might be wrong and has no hesitations in imposing his folly on others. The fool is wrong, arrogant, and malevolent.

Jesus is right that we should not label any man a fool quickly or in anger. It is a serious charge that does verbal violence to another human being and so puts us in danger. It is easy to dismiss alternative points of view by hastily labeling it as foolishness. Calling unpleasant ideas foolish hastily is itself the act of a fool!

No wise man wishes to call another man a fool, just as no wise man wishes to judge another, but eventually it becomes necessary. Some people glory in their wickedness and are intent on announcing their folly and must be confronted.

Those men that deny the Holocaust proclaim themselves wicked fools and we have no choice but to accept their self-assessment. They make themselves not merely loathsome, but dangerous.

The difficulty in deciding whether to even talk with such a fool is that the fool is so unpredictable. The Bible illustrates this beautifully in Proverbs 26 when it says:

Answer not a fool according to his folly, / lest you be like him yourself. / Answer a fool according to his folly, / lest he be wise in his own eyes.

There is no “right” way to decide whether or not to talk to a fool. If you talk to him, you run the risk of becoming like him. If you do not talk to him, he will assume it is because you are afraid of his intellectual power. Some things are always right or wrong, but this is not one of them. Talking to a fool must be a matter of prudent judgment.

Before talking to a fool one must ask (at least!) three questions: Is it necessary? Will it do more harm than good? Will it ennoble their folly or expose it?

Is it necessary?

The safest course in dealing with fools is avoiding them, but if you are the President or Pope that is impossible. The Pope in charity and the President in prudence will have to confront fools on a daily basis. The Pope by the very nature of his job must deal with any fool who appears to repent of his folly, but the President has more latitude. He should avoid dealing with fools whenever he can.

The wisdom of a modest foreign policy for the United States is apparent. We should avoid dealing with the leadership of Iran if we can. Sadly, we have friends in the area who cannot even dream of that option. The leaders of our ally Israel are in a neighborhood where a man who persists in proclaiming himself a malevolent fool has the power to do them grave harm.

President Obama cannot let one of our best friends be annihilated and so he will be forced to deal with the leadership of Iran.

Will it do more harm than good?

An aging bishop with foolish ideas is one thing, but the leader of a powerful nation seeking nuclear weapons is another. If President Obama talks too much to the leadership of Iran, he risks giving them time to produce nuclear weapons. A fool with a podium is annoying, but a fool
with the Bomb is deadly.

You cannot talk about the weather to a person who longs to see your best friend dead. President Obama cannot negotiate with the leader of Iran until he concedes that Israel has a right to exist.

Will it ennoble their folly or expose it?

Pope Benedict is trying to restore Christian fellowship with certain bishops, an effort commendable to all believers. Sadly, it was discovered that one of the bishops also held wicked and foolish views about the Holocaust. The Pope was badly served by the vetting process and did not realize that he was talking to a fool. Even though the proposed reconciliation was on another topic, the stench of the folly tainted the entire discussion.

By talking to the fool and offering to restore communion to him, the Pope appeared to make light of the wickedness and folly. The Vatican had to quickly acknowledge this danger and clarify that no bishop could be in full communion who wickedly denied the reality and horror of the Holocaust.

President Obama should learn from this incident. Talking to the present leadership of Iran, widely known to be foolish, without preconditions will not expose the folly to the people of Iran or the world. President Obama has enormous public goodwill and must use it to expose the folly and not dignify the fools.

Eventually, the Bible points out, the persistent fool will need the rod applied to his back in order to protect the rest of us. Unless the leadership of Iran wishes to discuss an abandonment of their folly, President Obama would do well to find a rod that can be used prudently, whether that is economic sanctions or military action. Only a strong man can safely “pity the fool.” The rest of should pity presidents and popes who face the burden of dealing with fools. We pray daily that God would give all leaders the wisdom to do so prudently.

One Nation Under God: the American Consensus and President Obama

John Mark Reynolds — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:17:39 -0800

The election of President Obama is a joyful break from bigotry in American politics and an affirmation of the best of the American tradition. Every decent citizen will be happy to see evidence of redemption from the original American sin of slavery. For one day it is appropriate to set aside partisan differences and enjoy our common American victory.

Abraham Lincoln was right that slavery was the original sin of the American experiment. The majority of the population had views about a minority that were deeply wicked and inconsistent with their best ideals. Almost all Americans were Christians and a majority of American Christians denied the image of God in other Christians. America was a product of the best of the Enlightenment, but many of the best Enlightenment thinkers were slave owners whose private behavior was worse than any medieval lord.

There is a naïve notion that slavery was a "long time ago" and no longer matters, but in terms of the life of a people slavery was not a "long time ago." I sat and listened to stories from a great-aunt who ate bread at her father's table paid for by his Civil War pension. Grandchildren of slaves are living links to memories of how human bondage scarred our nation.

People partly are the product of their upbringing and for all living Americans the trauma of the Civil War and the hundreds of years of slavery that came before it still shape our national discourse.

When I was a little boy an interracial kiss was still considered too controversial to air on network television in some parts of the nation. Having an African-American appear in a role not defined by servitude, slapstick, or crime was still considered courageous. It was very difficult for minority citizens to vote.

Racism is like a computer virus. It is almost impossibly difficult to get rid of it utterly. However, it is plainly in decline. Few Americans would be willing to admit to racist views and that too is an improvement since my childhood. The election of President Obama does not end racism, but it is an important symbol of deeper changes.

Many Americans who voted against Obama on policy grounds are delighted by these positive symbolic implications of his victory. We honored candidate Obama by taking him seriously as a candidate and arguing against his ideas. He did not run as a "token," and he welcomed criticism and open debate. Candidate Obama was remarkably restrained in playing the "race card." He persuaded a majority of voters to agree with his ideas and the seriousness of his campaign made his victory even more important.

Today also marks the start of a new consensus on religion in politics and hopefully an end to radical secularism that would force any mention of God or Christ from public spaces. Healthy nations have a functional and electable right and left to check each other. A left controlled by radical secularists was not electable and so unable to serve its balancing function.

President Obama won, in part, by rejecting the radical secularism that recently had seized the elite of the progressive movement. President Obama is an open Christian and comfortable with the civil religious practices of the nation. Like Reverend Martin Luther King, he is comfortable using Biblical language in political discourse.

President Obama's acknowledgment of the role of religion in the nation's governance is a blow against the contemporary secular apartheid that would ban religious ideas from the public square. He is the most progressive president of my lifetime, but he did not win as a secular progressive. There is hope for the peace of the nation in that victory.

This does not mean that paradise is about to come. Christians can hope, but never put their full faith in princes. One can only pray that our new President will surprise both his friends and the loyal opposition and act to defend the unborn. His own marriage appears to be an outstanding model of success and hopefully he will not weaken that institution that is so necessary to our nation's help. Those of us in the loyal opposition will eventually have to press him on the consistency of his faith and his ideals with some of his political actions, but not today.

Today is a day to be a cheerful and joyful American.

When Obama takes the Oath of Office on Lincoln's Bible both racists and secular ideologues will rage, but people of good will in all parties will rejoice. President Obama is our president and today we honor his historic achievement with hesitation or hedging.

God save the President of the United States Barack Obama.
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In God We Trust

John Mark Reynolds — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:39:09 -0800

President Obama will take the oath of office on a Bible as is customary. There will be prayers at the swearing in as has always been done and he will ask for God’s help in doing so. He is right to do so.

His actions are only controversial amongst the sad souls who are so sheltered and delicate that the actual costumes and beliefs of the nation shock them out of their bubble. Of course, one tries to be polite, but they are very easily offended. The mere sight of a Christmas crèche on public land can ruin their day. Since we are not willing to flush traditional American patriotic songs from our ceremonies, it really will be impossible to do.

Should we stop singing God Bless America? Should America stop asking God to shed His grace on us? Will the Battle Hymn get rid of the “hallelujah?”

It would require totalitarian force to separate traditional American patriotism from any mention of the Divine!

The just pleas for accommodation by secularists, who should not be forced to sing or to pray, can turn into tyrannical demands that silence the religious majority from living out their beliefs in the public square as they always have done.

A healthy family tries to meet the needs of all its members. Even the desires of one family member should not be ignored. Imagine the family member, however, who decided he or she does not like the way things have been done in the household. The other family members politely listen to what he has to say, but decide that the old ways are good and important to them.

A good family cannot find itself dominated by the eccentric demands and imagined offenses of one of its members.

The harm done by traditional religious ceremonies to secularists is non-existent. If secularism is true, then it does nothing but affirm a tradition of the Republic. It is difficult to imagine the harm in praying to a non-existent God and old forms are comforting. An atheist is not being excluded from a ceremony when he does not agree with every aspect of it anymore than Republicans are excluded from the festivities when they disagree with some aspect of the speech made by the new president.

We are mostly a religious people in a religious nation and when we celebrate religion will be a natural part of the party. Unless someone is forced to pray with the President, it is difficult to see the damage when our religious president-elect decides to pray.

Secularists need to be better members of the American household. They have chosen to adopt a minority position that is at odds with the overwhelming theism of the American experience. That position should be tolerated and when well argued respected, but there is no reason that our ceremonies have to be neutered when we politely disagree.

It is extremism in government that is dangerous and Americans have rightly decided to reject theocracy and total secularism. We have chosen the more difficult middle way between the two dangers and it is has served us well for over two hundred years.

President Obama embraces that position, as do most Republican and Democratic leaders.

As most Americans know from personal experience and best reason secularism is false, therefore, the good done by traditional religious ceremonies is great. God exists and it is good for human beings to acknowledge the facts in their ceremonies. Denying reality is, in the end, not a good move for any culture. The humbling fact that even the most powerful man in the world will acknowledge the limits of human power is refreshing.

Our rights, as the Declaration says, come from God and not government. Our fundamental personhood came from the Creator and not from the state or impersonal nature. A few Americans disagree with those basic American ideas and nobody should persecute them as a result. If they win elections, they should be allowed to hold ceremonies that reflect their beliefs.

It is only polite, however, to acknowledge the Jewish and Christian roots of American ideas. The very words engraved on the Lincoln Memorial make no sense if they are read without Biblical and religious knowledge.

Even though I will not agree with all his policies, like all patriots I am going to rejoice in the ceremonies of the day. I am going to celebrate the peaceful transition of power, the working Constitution, and the wonderful symbolism of an African-American president. I will not agree with some of the things he says or does, but that will not take away from my happiness as an American.

Mr. Obama soon will be my president. As head of government, I will pray for him daily and honor him. When he acts as head of his party, I will act as the loyal opposition. Like all Americans, I am delighted that Mr. Obama is acknowledging the religious traditions and roots of our nation.

Here is hoping my secular friends will not be too offended if on this happy day they listen to the choirs sing the National Anthem and sum up most of our feelings:

Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation! / Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, / And this be our motto: “In God is our trust” / And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave / O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!