Jolly Mr. Nelson Celebrates Christmas

(Scriptoriumdaily.com) by John Mark Reynolds

Mr. Ben Nelson is a jolly old United States Senator for Nebraska. He was fighting for principle in opposing abortion funding in the health care reform moving through Congress.

Now he is backing health care reform without the language he originally demanded.

It would be easy to caricature Senator Nelson’s move unfairly. Some will say he is a Judas for betraying his ideals for money, but this is wrong. Judas personally benefited from his betrayal, while Senator Nelson merely got graft for his entire state.

Mr. Nelson will not get thirty pieces of silver . . . every Nebraskan will. Each one of them can share in the betrayal of their ideals, because Mr. Nelson has graciously made sure benefits will go to each one of them.

Judas compromised only his integrity, but Nelson has given the voters of Nebraska a chance to compromise the integrity of an entire state. Will they take the benefit at the cost of their values?

Is this comparison fair to a man like good old Ben Nelson? After all Ben Nelson is a modest man, a retiring man, a man eager to represent the values of Nebraska. Is there a more charitable read on his actions?

After all Mr. Nelson meant to do good. Comparing Nelson to Judas must surely be as overblown and overly partisan as comparing him to Benedict Arnold. Arnold betrayed the United States for money, but Mr. Nelson will only vote for a mess of a bill for money.

After all, the bill is not so bad that it will not do some good. The good-old Senator was trying to do a noble deed by extending health care to millions, not cause the death of the Messiah or betraying his oath of office! It is by his intentions we should judge him, not by the results. He meant well and that is all we should expect of our elected officials.

Heaven knows Judas and Benedict Arnold did not mean to do good by their evil actions. Call Mr. Nelson incompetent and venal, but never call him a traitor.

Let us not be inflexible in our evaluation of Mr. Nelson. Of course to get the good things, he had to allow Nebraskan tax dollars to go to abortion, give money and favors to wealthy donors to his campaigns, and expand the scope of government.

Mr. Nelson simply has done what so many parents have to do every Christmas. He has compromised what he wishes he could do so to do some good. He is giving some Nebraska children a gift of health care and to do so had to fund the death of other Nebraskan children.

Many would have dodged this hard decision, but not Senator Nelson. Having paraded his convictions that no children should die using tax money, he was forced to bend a bit and kill a few by indirect means in order to help some.

This is a profile in flexibility.

Senator Ben Nelson, if all turns out as he wishes, will be able to celebrate Christmas this year knowing that he gained graft for his state, passed a bill his constituents did not want, all the while standing at the center of the media spot light. This is the job a Democratic senator is elected to do and he did it.

Some will mock him, others misunderstand him, but Mr. Nelson is merely celebrating Christmas in his own way: the season when a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed and an order went out from Herod for the government slaughter of innocents.

2012

(Scriptoriumdaily.com) by John Mark Reynolds

When I was a kid, I used to root for people to pick the next year as the date of Christ’s return. Since I really wanted to get married, I did not want the Day of Doom to come too soon. Using my childish reasoning, I figured that since the Savior had said no man knew the day or hour of His coming this meant that any date picked must surely be wrong. If you picked it, He would not come.

That makes as much sense as basing a belief in the end of the world on a misreading of the Mayan calendar and much more sense than the movie 2012.

The world will not end in 2012, but creativity in Hollywood died around the time of the filming of Klute . . . 1971.

As a result jillions of us rushed to the theater to watch a long movie full of sound and noise signifying destruction. Evidently all the hope and change of the last election have some people hoping that God or nature will hit the reset button and allow them to start again.

Of course, the fact that most of us will be dead does not deter anyone since the characters that survive in this movie are so brain-dead that any of us can reason we can do as well. Religion, of course especially the Christian religion, is useless at the end of the world . . . at least in this kind of film, but since reason, republican values, and storytelling are also useless my faith was in good company.

Perhaps President Obama will nationalize Hollywood soon and fix the creativity gulf that threatens to swallow California. If I were to make a disaster movie for this new government agency, I would promise to include the ten essential elements for any disaster movie.

First, a misunderstood husband with skills useless in our present world, but valuable for a doomed planet.

Second, an ex-wife or girlfriend with a boyfriend or new husband totally cool in this age, but doomed in the age to come.

Third, a cute kid who is plucky and full of quips will be saved by his dad who will have no effective way to shave. There will be a second cute teen daughter in the movie who says little but will find water in which to fall.

Fourth, shots of the end of monuments including some in New York, Rome, and Washington.

Fifth, an African-American or other “minority” president since in the weird racism of Hollywood only a minority President can preside over the end of the nation.

Sixth, if it is a Christian movie a swing will blow back and forth in the wind following the disappearance of a child. If it is not a Christian movie, some person will die while praying ineffectively. Bonus for a rosary in the shot.

Seventh, waves will crash over some city proving Plato still controls our icons. Some stupid media types will die trying to get the shot to audience cheers.

Eighth, some scene of doom will be shown to us on a television screen, usually in a store window.

Ninth, the government and all qualified people will have no clue, but loners will know exactly what to do.

Tenth, the movie will end with some “subtle” sign of hope such as a flower blooming or a shot of a pregnant woman.

I am ready for my disaster movie stimulus check.

Why I Believe In God

(Scriptoriumdaily.com) by John Mark Reynolds

In one comment thread on this blog, someone asked why I believe. Here is a short answer.

It is an odd thing to be called on to defend something you think you know. It is disturbing at first, because it makes you simultaneously wonder about your own mental clarity and that of your questioner. Why would he ask such a question? Isn’t the truth of the matter obvious?

Unfortunately, there are few things we believe that some other person, seemingly rational, cannot doubt. After a bit of reflection, the doubts of others about my beliefs are less disturbing, because it is a chance to exercise wonder. Not surprisingly it is wonderful to wonder and a chance to wonder why I think God exists has proven an excellent opportunity for healthy Socratic doubt leading to a sense of His presence.

I am thankful for the process.

God exists, but what God? I mean the God that is all-powerful, all knowing, the God who is the Creator of the cosmos. By definition if such a God exists, there is only one God, because only one being could logically be omnipotent.

Some of my atheist friends assert that since I don’t believe in many gods, I am just an atheist who has refused to go all the way. After all, having given up on the worship of Zeus why do I cling to the worship of the God of the Bible?

My friends are mistaken, however. I don’t reject Zeus, because he does not exist, but because he is evil. The Zeus revealed to me in Homer is not worthy of worship, because he uses his power for evil. Now my friends who are atheists might immediately reply that the God of the Old Testament also commands or does things that appear evil to us, but this is different. The God of the Old Testament is presented as good and some of His reported actions are difficult to square with that goodness. At the worst a believer need only doubt the report, but the gods of the Greeks are presented as intentionally acting for our harm.

There is no giving Zeus the benefit of the doubt, because he and his worshipers do not ask for it!

Of course, in any case Christians do not deny that Zeus might exist as a spirit, though he clearly does not (at present) physically dwell on the top of Mount Olympus! We do not claim to know every supernatural being that exists and for all I know the supernatural world is very complex place indeed. I have it on good authority that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in Richard Dawkins and my philosophy.

So why do I know God exists?

Given the limits of a short essay, I will only be able to point in the direction of my favorite reasons, but there are many books that provide deeper justification and further explication of these reasons. On a popular level favorite books that were helpful to me include J.P. Moreland’s Scaling the Secular City and A.E. Taylor’s Does God Exist? Readers looking for something more difficult would do well to check out the work of Richard Swinburne of Oxford University.

Of course, I don’t believe in God at first because I sat and thought about Him. I believe in God, because I encountered Him. I prayed and had an experience of Him from a very early age. He has answered my prayers and forced me to change my behavior. This every day direct mental experience of His existence is fundamentally why I know God is real.

If I did not have it, I would have little motivation to wonder about Him, but I sought Him and I found Him . . . or better He found me! Of course, despite my apparent sanity (from my own biased point of view!), I might be mad or deceived. God might be an illusion in my head, despite the sense that there is a different mental texture to what His voice is saying.

Once challenged in his beliefs by reasonable questions, only a fool or a saint would be sure that he was not deluding himself. I know I am no saint and I hope not to be a fool, so I had to ask if my experiences were real and if I had correctly interpreted them.

It is important, therefore, that I have every day indirect experience of His existence. The community of believers around me matters. I am not alone in thinking God is real or speaks to people. This does not prove that God exist, but the billions of people over long periods of time who have believed in God does suggest that at the very least I am not the victim of some private delusion!

So I speak to God and He speaks to me and millions of living and otherwise rational human beings share this experience. It is what I would anticipate if God is out there. Why do some people fail to share that experience?

I don’t know, but absence of evidence in a few does not suggest the problem is in those who believe.

Third, there are philosophical arguments that suggest the existence of God is either necessary or reasonable. For example, the existence and nature of the cosmos suggests the existence of a rational God. The universe appears to have order and design and I am not persuaded that merely naturalistic processes can account for this order and design. Whatever the process God used to create, and only the arrogant believe they have this all worked out, the fundamental nature of that creation suggests a plan.

Fourth, morality persuades me that God exists. The long trajectory of human history demonstrates a common morality behind the blind spots of any particular culture. There is a common way that most people in most places and most times have followed. This law suggests a lawgiver.

Fifth, the existence of gratuitous beauty convinces me God exists. When I traveled above the clouds for the first time with my oldest son, he told me that it was beautiful and neither of us was surprised. Wherever we looked, we saw beauty and this was not a beauty that could have been hardwired into us by any natural process. Wherever we look as human even to the furthest reaches of the cosmos beauty is there waiting for us.

Sixth, the world of Ideas points in the direction of the existence of the Mind of God. As a Platonist, I am convinced that numbers and ideas are real. There is a metaphysical world that cannot be reduced to the material. This does not prove God exists, but makes His existence more plausible to me.

Finally, love suggests to me that God is real. As Plato points out in his masterful dialogue Symposium love is surely of something. Humanity possesses a love for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful that demands a proper object. Only God is great enough to be a sufficient end for all the longing in the human heart. It might be that the universe is perverse and has given us this great longing without any means of fulfilling it, but there is no good reason to take this withering view. The sensible, indeed the hopeful response, is to assume that like hunger or thirst this longing too can be find satisfaction in reality.

My friends who don’t believe in God might claim that I believe in God, partly, because I want to do so. This is true. The existence of a good God is such an awesome, exciting, and hopeful idea that I am rooting for it. There is nothing irrational with giving good news the benefit of the doubt, if you don’t sacrifice your mind to do so.

You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.

Doing Unto My Political Other: 7 Suggestions for Christians in the Public Square

(Scriptoriumdaily.com) written by John Mark Reynolds

Rhetoric detached from morality harms people and societies.

Political talk has had an ugly side, but things are getting worse. Hateful talk is no longer underground, but practiced openly and shamelessly. Mainstream politicians are more willing to tolerate association with fringe rhetoric.

Why is this so?


Is There a Breakdown in Shared Ethics?

It is hard to talk to someone when you have nothing in common.

Some research suggests that Americans share many common values, but this research obscures differences in how we prioritize values when goods come into conflict. For example, most American value personal liberty, but when it comes to health care many Americans place a lower priority on this than on a strong social safety net. Those that make the opposite choice, valuing liberty over services, seem cruel to the other camp.

They agree on the values, but have fundamental differences on how to apply them.

Persistent and pervasive ethical differences can begin to strain the republic’s politics by discouraging compromise. When the gap between our assumptions and our opponents grows too large, our opponents become not just wrong, but perverse or wicked. Nobody hastens to compromise with the immoral!

The results are bad when pressed to an extreme. Some Americans will not even listen to a fair exposition of moral views with which they disagree, even if the majority of the nation believes them.

American Christians should not behave this way. Jesus called us to love our enemies in a nation ruled by cruel Caesars. Any religion that can love Tiberius can surely find room to love Obama or Gingrich.


Seven Suggestions for Political Discourse

Living in a republic means making political decisions. From Socrates to Reagan, wise political heads have given good advice on how to conduct oneself in public life. I don’t always live up to their wisdom, but these ideas are worthy goals.

Be slow to speak.

The new media environment lends itself to haste. We size up a candidate or a policy in the blink of an eye and few encourage us to reevaluate the situation. “Blinking” may sometimes be necessary in a crisis, but it is a horrific way to form our general principles and opinions.

Strong opinions encourage authentic dialogue.

One bad reaction to a toxic political environment is to develop mushy and “inoffensive” public opinions, but it is hard to talk to people who will not say what they really think. We should argue hard for our ideas in the public square and see how things turn out.

Arguing forcefully helps minority opinions get a hearing. If we relegate ourselves to safe discourse, the tendency is to repeat what the present cultural power brokers accept with small variations.

Attacking ideas is different than attacking people.

Ideas have no feelings, but people do. Hurtful talk about actual people, and the President and Glenn Beck are real people, ought to be merited by their actual behavior. We must weigh harm done to their persons against harm they are doing. While it ought to be legal to call the President the “Antichrist,” nobody should do it without overwhelming proof.

An actual Hitler or Stalin (in the modern context one thinks North Korea’s Dear Leader) is a worthy target for pointed personal barbs, but the local zoning board member rarely is. American politicians are often wrong, but it is hard to think of any that merit comparison to the Taliban or to the present Chinese oligarchs.

Those are real bad guys.

Authenticity is useful, but posturing is not.

Few things are more irritating than reading a piece that seems written to get the writer “good-guy” points with the establishment in his or her own group. This happens on both the left and right and is a temptation for all of us. Instead of saying what we think, we write to curry favor with our betters in hopes of praise or reward.

Anti-intellectualism prevents discussion.

The United States is not a pure democracy for the very good reason that a majority of the people can be and often are wrong. Democracy killed Socrates and mob rule in France killed liberty during the French Revolution.

Experts are not always right, but they usually are. Christians have always understood that a calling to leadership most often requires intense training and hard work. We are people of the Book and thus long for literate leaders as well. An excellent model was an Englishman whose work helped shape American culture: John Wesley.

The great evangelist and shaper of English culture John Wesley was at home in the pulpits of Oxford and on the streets. He was well educated and could argue well, but also knew how to move men’s hearts. There is no anti-intellectualism to be found in Wesley and he was no blind admirer of popular trends.

The recent trend to worship the whims of the mob, even the Christian mob, smacks more of Robespierre than Wesley.

Intellectualism prevents authentic discussion.

Just as bad is the posture that feigns intellectual interest, but never really listens to opponents.

President Obama has done a good job talking about finding common ground, but he has sometimes communicated a sneering attitude towards those who persist in disagreeing with him. He is not alone in this attitude as many in the cultural elite confuse their own jargon with knowledge and professional skills with wisdom.

It is easy to confuse the trappings of intellectuals with being an intellectual. Mainstream media often is more interested in someone sounding “smart” than in his or her actual accomplishments. Especially if accent or ethnicity does not fit stereotypes of intellectual achievement the candidate will face a higher barrier to acceptance. Having the “right opinions” also allows for a greater pass from the media in this area. A medical doctor like Tom Coburn is not given the same presumption of intellectual acumen as people with “better” opinions.

Sometimes commentators confuse intellectual achievements with wisdom. University or college education is valuable, but it is not the only way to learn important truths. In particular there is no evidence that most American college education by itself is making us wiser. Wisdom can exist in many different types of people and can be gained from many different kinds of experience.

Resentment of this intellectualism breeds more anti-intellectualism that in turn breeds more intellectualism. Real dialogue vanishes.

Be charitable in your assumptions about your opponent.

This last really sums up all the rest. It can be summed up in the wisdom of Jesus Christ that we should do to others what we wish they would do to us. Never was this advice more important for American Christians who are involved in politics.

President Obama's Notre Dame Speech: Not So Brave

(Scriptoriumdaily.com) John Mark Reynolds

When a few protesters interrupted President Obama’s speech at the Notre Dame graduation by shouting: “Stop killing our children!” the student body replied by chanting, “Yes, we can.”

This inadvertent message juxtaposition was, perhaps, not the best way to placate traditional Catholics.

President Obama gave a good speech at the Notre Dame University graduation if rhetorical skill is the measure of speaking excellence. Graduation speeches are notoriously tricky. Most people will little remember, but only resent the length of anything said there. Obama navigated those waters, but he did so by missing the point of the entire controversy surrounding the visit.

Notre Dame aided that misunderstanding, but watching the ceremony made it obvious why their better judgment was clouded. It was moving to see civil rights leaders in Notre Dame’s history honored and live to applaud the nations first African-American president. Given University leadership in the cause of civil rights, it is understandable that Notre Dame would wish to honor this President.

It was still a mistake to give him a high honor, though not to let him speak. Anybody thinking there would be wide spread disruption at the ceremony or a lack of courtesy knows nothing about Christian higher education. If he had to come and be honored, Notre Dame students were right to give honor to the office of President by politely hearing him out even if they do not respect the abortion views of the man.

Besides, anyone who thinks traditional Catholic views represent some vast majority of the Notre Dame student body also does not understand the state of Catholic higher education!

President Obama’s speech was a very bad speech for pretending to be one thing when it was something else. I predict it will be hailed for boldly confronting the “controversy surrounding his appearance,” but he was not bold and he did not confront the controversy.

The President spoke as if the controversy centered on his appearance at Notre Dame and speech when in reality it was his being honored despite his views.

Traditional Christians in the academy were not concerned that the President was invited to speak at a Christian university. Who wouldn’t welcome the chance to hear the perspectives of the single most powerful political figure in the world? President Obama’s views on abortion are wrong, and morally wicked, but listening to an argument on them is not.

President Obama “bravely” defended civil dialogue in his speech when civil dialogue was not the question. No reasonable academic, and no patriotic American, questions the right of our President to speak his mind. All of us are in favor of civil discourse and few see any reason to question the motives of our opponents.

Those who do not want to listen to their opponents are wrong. We should all charitably read opposing views on the great issues of the age and treat our opponents with tough-minded respect. If we still disagree, we should charitably believe for as long as we can that they are misled and not wicked.

The sad truth, as our own lives demonstrate to us, is that we often have noble motives for wicked acts. We did not mean to hurt anybody, but we do. Our positions are not sanctified by our sincerity. This is as true of the proponents of segregation, many well-intentioned men, as advocates of abortion.

Notre Dame did not just listen to the most powerful abortion advocate in the world, but loudly and publicly honored him. He is a man, perhaps with noble motives, who is sending their tax money to pay for abortion. If the University attacks those who opposed this honoring of an abortion advocate, as opposing free speech or hearing other points of view, then the University will be guilty of grossly distorting the basis for opposition.

Perhaps, the President’s speech will persuade Notre Dame to avoid this tactic. As a warning to college administrators not to slander their critics, the President’s speech may have some good effect.

What of abortion?

About abortion, the President “bravely” said nothing at all to defend his view that it should be legal to take the life of a child in the third trimester or that experimentation on humans (or potential humans) is licit. He said nothing at all to show why the Catholic papacy and bishops are wrong to say that support for abortion is a sin so grave that it overshadows other goods deeds in politics.

In short, Notre Dame and the President talked about what they agreed on and ignored their differences. Any pretense that the President was brought to the campus to give all points of view is laughable. Perhaps well-intentioned academics are so skilled at dialogue that they are apt to ignore actions. While President Obama invites Notre Dame to talk, he governs outside of the culture of life.