Billy Graham has my vote for "Man of the Century." When we think of the many iconic figures of the past century, it is astounding how many of them are negative: Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao come to mind immediately. Others are mixed in their impact: FDR and John Kennedy for example. In science one cannot help but think of Albert Einstein. In business many great entrepreneurs and inventors come to mind including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. An unlikely trio of allies conspired to overthrow the "Evil Empire" and deserve honorable mention: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. History may judge the latter to have saved the Roman Catholic Church from becoming just another declining liberal denomination.
But my vote goes to Billy Graham. He preached the Gospel to more people face to face than anyone else in history. He preached faithfully for an entire (long) lifetime without so much as a whiff of financial or sexual scandal. His biggest failing was allowing himself to be used by US presidents who loved his coattails but did not always take his message seriously. But that is surely a minor flaw.
He integrated his crusades early on and he proved that he, at least, could work with a diverse group of Christian sponsors in his crusades without compromising the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was the closest thing Evangelicals have had to a pope and many Evangelicals would agree that if you could guarantee that all future popes would be like him they would gladly become papists!
Billy Graham, like the Apostle Paul, used every possible medium for getting his message out: city-wide crusades, radio, TV, books, magazines, the internet etc. But now, at age 92, Graham has written yet another book and once again he preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ in every way possible.
Nearing Home: Life, Faith and Finishing Well is a book sure to appeal to a wide audience, but especially senior citizens and those contemplating retirement. In it, Graham reflects on his own experience and consults Scripture on how to develop godly attitudes toward the challenges of growing old. He begins by writing: "I never expected to live this long." But of course none of us control how old we get; that is in the hands of our Creator.
In ten chapters, Graham discusses such topics as not retiring from life just because you retire from a job and how to cope with a decline in physical vitality and strength. He finds aging humiliating, but at the same time character-building for learning to accept our weakness and rely on God's strength is near the heart of the Christian life.
Graham also discusses death, something most people prefer not to think about too much. But his living and vital faith shines through as he is able to look death in the eye and know it will not have the last word. In many ways, more so that his other books, this book is Billy Graham's personal testimony to the grace of God in his life. As he ages he still finds that he believes what he has preached all his life and that, after all, is the real test of authenticity is it not?
Billy Graham is a great man whose greatness lies in the fact that he views himself as an ordinary man who serves an extraordinary God. His genuine humility, faith and love for Jesus Christ come through in this unusual book. What a great Christmas present it would make for anyone who expects to grow older.
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Friday, December 16, 2011
Friday, July 16, 2010
Stanley Hauerwas - Hannah's Child: A Review
Stanley Hauerwas' Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir is an insightful, carefully crafted, self-analysis by a leading theologian. I have read Hauerwas' work over the past 15 years and I have watched his career with deepening concern. His relationship to Yoder has always raised many questions for me and this book only serves to intensify my concerns about Hauerwas' influence.
First, the major theme of the book is a surprising one. I never expected Hauerwas to reveal his own inner preoccupation with class in such a blatant way. It is no exaggeration to say that this book is a Horatio Alger story of "poor boy works hard and rises to conquer the world." Throughout the book Hauerwas stresses his hard work and how it enabled him to overcome a difficult personal life and the handicaps of being brought up in working class Texas. His living of the American Dream fittingly climaxed on Sept. 10, 2001 when Time named him "America's Best Theologian." He tells us over an over again how hard he works; there is no catching himself like Paul did when he said "I worked harder than them all - no, Christ worked in me. Grace seems strangely distant from this set of reflections - other than the admirable acknowledgment of the importance of friends and friendship for getting through hard times.
For all his radical talk, Hauerwas is, in the end, the quintessential American. What he has in common with Jerry Falwell causes his differences with Falwell to pale into insignificance. Both are self-made, successful men who rose from obscurity and near-poverty to fame and influence. Both are confrontational and loud. Both have sought to institutionalize their influence, one as an outsider to the Protestant establishment and the other within its bosom yet both have made a living out of criticizing liberal Protestantism.
Secondly, it is hard not to come sadly to the conclusion that Hauerwas' pacifism, which he talks about non-stop, actually is an expression of his deep-seated conformism. No, he does not conform to the flag-waving, military-admiring, freedom-loving Americanism of the working and middle classes. Of course not, but the reason is not because it is too American, but because it is gauche. His Americanism is upper class, liberal, main-line and informed by vaguely socialist (or at least anti-capitalist) sensibilities. But make no mistake, Hauerwas is not really alienated from mainline, liberal Protestantism in the US. When he attacks "liberalism" read "capitalism" and think of how little "daring" that move requires in the Ivy League circles in which he moves.
Near the end of the book, he claims that he believes that his whole life has prepared him for speaking to America in the post-9/11 context. He refuses to be silent and takes on "America" (read conservative America) for its sins and presumption about telling the everyone how to run the world. And yet, Hauerwas tells us that he accepted an invitation to join a group devoted to abolishing war from the world, despite the fact (and this is crucial) that doing so could be construed as being inconsistent with the kind of nonviolence he had learned from Yoder.
I had thought that liberal Protestant Pelagian, utopianism that sought to instruct nation states in a fallen world on how to conduct their affairs was dead and buried so far as Hauerwas is concerned. Why is its pale, limp ghost haunting his theological memoirs?
Third, one wonders how on earth someone who is supposedly so opposed to liberalism (both theological and economic) could possibly survive in a string of theologically liberal churches and in a liberal Catholic and a liberal Protestant university. Clues are found throughout the book as to how he managed to win the praise of the liberal media, the liberal denominations, liberal theologians, liberal university administrators and liberal, northeastern Catholics like the Kennedy clan, all the while slamming liberalism.
For one thing, he routinely in an off-the-cuff manner makes slighting remarks about Evangelicals, as for example when he confesses that he does not like Southern Baptists. This says something about how easily he can label those who uphold orthodox theology without taking them seriously. On the other hand, he has a great falling out - not with liberal bishops in the post-Christian Episcopal Church (his latest denominational home), as one might expect - but with the neoconservatives at First Things over the Iraq War. He also tells us that he left one Methodist Church because the new pastor was interested in promoting outreach and evangelism through methods Hauerwas disliked. (He never mentions dissatisfaction with any of the churches he attended for their declining attendance, lack of missionary zeal or ineffective evangelism.) Also, I noted no criticisms of Katherine Jefforts Schori, Gene Robinson or John Spong, though Hauerwas found time to slam various Evangelicals, including Bill Hybels and Willow Creek.
Fourthly, this brings us to another major problem for anyone who wants to regard Hauerwas as an orthodox theologian in addition to his self-made Americanism and his conformism to the liberal Protestant establishment and that is his ambiguous attitude toward homosexuality. He tells us that one of the "best things" about the church he attended for a while in Durham was that it spent a whole year discussing whether to accept homosexuality in its leadership.
Later, he lets us know that he is free of "homophobia" by informing us that he is so oblivious to a person's sexual orientation that his wife had to tell him that a mutual friend was a homosexual. This particular passage in the book is painful to read; how disingenuous can one be? Hauerwas goes out of his way to establish his liberal tolerance "street cred" in an almost slapstick manner in the process turning himself into a parody of the anti-establishment, dissenting from modernity, "the church is not the world," anti-compromising Niebuhrian ethicist that he is reputed to be. Here is is prostrating himself before the idols of liberal modernity mumbling the mantras of inclusion all the while living off the royalties earned from people who take his radical stance "against the nations" seriously.
The maddening thing is that he never really comes out and says whether he agrees that homosexuality is morally good or not. He writes:
In conclusion, I found this book honest and open and, for that reason a worthwhile piece of writing. It is a well-written representative of the genre. I only wish that I had not had to learn what I learned about a theologian I respect through that honesty and openness.
I cannot say that I find Hauerwas to be a true Yoderian in his view of pacifism and I do believe that there is a reason he has chosen to self-identify with dying liberal Protestantism in such a way that his criticisms of it become an in-house debate. If his life's work was to open up a path of radical discipleship for the next generation, then that work has been a failure. It is too bad, because the potential was there for far more than liberal tolerance, anti-Evangelical class snobbery and liberal pacifism.
First, the major theme of the book is a surprising one. I never expected Hauerwas to reveal his own inner preoccupation with class in such a blatant way. It is no exaggeration to say that this book is a Horatio Alger story of "poor boy works hard and rises to conquer the world." Throughout the book Hauerwas stresses his hard work and how it enabled him to overcome a difficult personal life and the handicaps of being brought up in working class Texas. His living of the American Dream fittingly climaxed on Sept. 10, 2001 when Time named him "America's Best Theologian." He tells us over an over again how hard he works; there is no catching himself like Paul did when he said "I worked harder than them all - no, Christ worked in me. Grace seems strangely distant from this set of reflections - other than the admirable acknowledgment of the importance of friends and friendship for getting through hard times.
For all his radical talk, Hauerwas is, in the end, the quintessential American. What he has in common with Jerry Falwell causes his differences with Falwell to pale into insignificance. Both are self-made, successful men who rose from obscurity and near-poverty to fame and influence. Both are confrontational and loud. Both have sought to institutionalize their influence, one as an outsider to the Protestant establishment and the other within its bosom yet both have made a living out of criticizing liberal Protestantism.
Secondly, it is hard not to come sadly to the conclusion that Hauerwas' pacifism, which he talks about non-stop, actually is an expression of his deep-seated conformism. No, he does not conform to the flag-waving, military-admiring, freedom-loving Americanism of the working and middle classes. Of course not, but the reason is not because it is too American, but because it is gauche. His Americanism is upper class, liberal, main-line and informed by vaguely socialist (or at least anti-capitalist) sensibilities. But make no mistake, Hauerwas is not really alienated from mainline, liberal Protestantism in the US. When he attacks "liberalism" read "capitalism" and think of how little "daring" that move requires in the Ivy League circles in which he moves.
Near the end of the book, he claims that he believes that his whole life has prepared him for speaking to America in the post-9/11 context. He refuses to be silent and takes on "America" (read conservative America) for its sins and presumption about telling the everyone how to run the world. And yet, Hauerwas tells us that he accepted an invitation to join a group devoted to abolishing war from the world, despite the fact (and this is crucial) that doing so could be construed as being inconsistent with the kind of nonviolence he had learned from Yoder.
Yoder desired a world free of war. But he also saw quite clearly that Christians are committed to nonviolence not because nonviolence is a strategy to free the world of war. Rather, in a world of war, followers of Christ cannot be anything other than nonviolent. An appeal to abolish war might suggest that nonviolence can be translated into public policy based on grounds that do not require the cross and resurrection of Jesus. (pp. 272-3)Well, yes, exactly. But why the hedging "might"? If Hauerwas actually does agree with Yoder on pacifism, why is this not presented in the book as the reason for refusing the invitation to help free the world of war? How is Hauerwas' position here all that different, really, from that of the US Catholic bishops' or the United Methodists' statements on war, which represent the liberal tradition of pacifism in the US? How is his position different from the pacifism of the social gospel movement in the inter-war period that was so effectively skewered by Reinhold Niebuhr as accomplishing nothing but making war more certain insofar as it delayed rearmament by the Western allies at a time when rearming might have deterred the German leaders on whose support Hitler depended?
I had thought that liberal Protestant Pelagian, utopianism that sought to instruct nation states in a fallen world on how to conduct their affairs was dead and buried so far as Hauerwas is concerned. Why is its pale, limp ghost haunting his theological memoirs?
Third, one wonders how on earth someone who is supposedly so opposed to liberalism (both theological and economic) could possibly survive in a string of theologically liberal churches and in a liberal Catholic and a liberal Protestant university. Clues are found throughout the book as to how he managed to win the praise of the liberal media, the liberal denominations, liberal theologians, liberal university administrators and liberal, northeastern Catholics like the Kennedy clan, all the while slamming liberalism.
For one thing, he routinely in an off-the-cuff manner makes slighting remarks about Evangelicals, as for example when he confesses that he does not like Southern Baptists. This says something about how easily he can label those who uphold orthodox theology without taking them seriously. On the other hand, he has a great falling out - not with liberal bishops in the post-Christian Episcopal Church (his latest denominational home), as one might expect - but with the neoconservatives at First Things over the Iraq War. He also tells us that he left one Methodist Church because the new pastor was interested in promoting outreach and evangelism through methods Hauerwas disliked. (He never mentions dissatisfaction with any of the churches he attended for their declining attendance, lack of missionary zeal or ineffective evangelism.) Also, I noted no criticisms of Katherine Jefforts Schori, Gene Robinson or John Spong, though Hauerwas found time to slam various Evangelicals, including Bill Hybels and Willow Creek.
Fourthly, this brings us to another major problem for anyone who wants to regard Hauerwas as an orthodox theologian in addition to his self-made Americanism and his conformism to the liberal Protestant establishment and that is his ambiguous attitude toward homosexuality. He tells us that one of the "best things" about the church he attended for a while in Durham was that it spent a whole year discussing whether to accept homosexuality in its leadership.
Later, he lets us know that he is free of "homophobia" by informing us that he is so oblivious to a person's sexual orientation that his wife had to tell him that a mutual friend was a homosexual. This particular passage in the book is painful to read; how disingenuous can one be? Hauerwas goes out of his way to establish his liberal tolerance "street cred" in an almost slapstick manner in the process turning himself into a parody of the anti-establishment, dissenting from modernity, "the church is not the world," anti-compromising Niebuhrian ethicist that he is reputed to be. Here is is prostrating himself before the idols of liberal modernity mumbling the mantras of inclusion all the while living off the royalties earned from people who take his radical stance "against the nations" seriously.
The maddening thing is that he never really comes out and says whether he agrees that homosexuality is morally good or not. He writes:
"I remain unsure if we can call the relationship between gay people 'marriage,' but I know that David's friendship enriches Paula's and my marriage. I hope and pray for the day when Christians can be so confident in their understanding of marriage that we can welcome gay relationships for their promise of building up the body of Christ. That I have such a hope and that I pray such a prayer have everything to do with my and Paula's friendship with David. I think, moreover, that this is the way it should work." (p. 223)Oh, please. This waffling, sentimental, "thinking with your emotions" approach is pretty hard to take coming from someone who thinks that anyone who takes a strict just war position is simply being unfaithful - end of story. Hauerwas has shown himself capable of careful thought and of taking hard stands; this kind of liberal sentimentalism is beneath his dignity.
In conclusion, I found this book honest and open and, for that reason a worthwhile piece of writing. It is a well-written representative of the genre. I only wish that I had not had to learn what I learned about a theologian I respect through that honesty and openness.
I cannot say that I find Hauerwas to be a true Yoderian in his view of pacifism and I do believe that there is a reason he has chosen to self-identify with dying liberal Protestantism in such a way that his criticisms of it become an in-house debate. If his life's work was to open up a path of radical discipleship for the next generation, then that work has been a failure. It is too bad, because the potential was there for far more than liberal tolerance, anti-Evangelical class snobbery and liberal pacifism.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Atlas Shrugged: A Brief Review
Ayn Rand's famous novel Atlas Shrugged, written over 50 years ago, is currently sitting at 977th place on Amazon.com. That is a pretty amazing fact, when you think about it. The ideas of Ann Rand are incredibly influential today within the conservative movement in America and show no sign of evaporating despite the studied indifference projected by the academic, journalistic and political elites.
This was my first direct exposure to the secular libertarianism of Ann Rand and, while she represents a strand of the conservative coalition that is very different from my traditional, religious and social conservative beliefs strand, it is important to see in what sense she could be considered a co-belligerent in the war against collectivism.
First, let me say something about the merits of the novel from the point of view of art. I found the novel poorly written and the characters shallowly portrayed. The portrayal of the developing crisis is out of focus with too much time spent on a few characters making philosophical speeches and not enough time examining the actual process of social breakdown and disintegration. It seems that there is only enough of a plot to serve as a backdrop for the philosophical exchanges between the characters. But in fairness, that could be said of Plato's dialogues as well - although they are incomparably better written.
Second, let me say what I appreciated about the book. I found the portrayal of the philosophy of the "looters" (i.e. the socialist government and its admirers) to be bitterly accurate and telling. She has those guys nailed and this, I suspect, is the real motive power of the book. This is what makes her positive philosophy credible: that she understands her opponents more profoundly than they understand themselves. She describes the slogans, the rhetoric, the tricks, the manipulation, the jargon and the self-deception of those who use high sounding ideals to cover over their selfish pursuit of power and are so convincing that they even fool themselves.
Third, I turn to what I disagreed with in the book. Rand is a throwback to the Enlightenment Philosophes and it seems that, for her, the 18th century has never ended. (I don't begrudge anyone their favorite century; mine is the 13th. And I share her revulsion toward the ugly, violent, squalid 20th century.) But Rand does not seem to know that the Enlightenment is over.
The Medieval Synthesis of Aristotelianism and Augustinianism and the Enlightenment attempt to exalt Autonomous Reason without God both have in common a love and respect for the power and reality of human reason. Both believe in truth and logic. Both reject pragmatism, relativism and ideology. Augustinian Thomism and the Enlightenment are united in the rejection of superstition and the right of brute force to rule the mind and both have a deep respect for the individual human being and profound antipathy toward the rule of power that is not grounded in law.
Nevertheless, Thomism and the Enlightenment represent two great mutually exclusive alternatives philosophies of life. One grounds reason in the Logos of Creation and the other rests it on thin air (Chance). Rand does not acknowledge that the swirling universe of atoms in random motion coming together by chance could never produce consciousness, morality or natural law. The Personal cannot arise out of the Impersonal and to assert that it does is to invite skepticism as to whether one really believes in Personality at all. She shares the eager faith of the 18th century that Reason can be its own foundation, that science can rest safely and securely on nothing but itself. She refuses to recognize that the contemporary irrationality and socialist ideology, which dominates Western elite culture, is a degenerate child of the Enlightenment rejection of God and proud assertion of individual autonomy.
The faith in Reason of the Enlightenment gave way to the faith in Feeling in the 19th century Romantic reaction to the Age of Reason and then degenerated into the worship of the will prophesied by Nietzsche and acted out in the brutal 20th century - the century of genocide and mass murder. She has no sense of the internal contradictions of freedom that rests not on natural law written on creation by the Designer of that creation, but only on what individual men choose to recognize as law. She does not see that a world without design imposed on it from the outside is a world that can have meaning only as strong-willed individuals impose a meaning on it by their own strength of will.
Perhaps, in the end, this is what secular libertarianism amounts to: a philosophy of life appropriate only for the Overman. This problematic relationship between will and reason is the elephant in the room throughout the book. She sees how the "looters" degenerate into subhumans as they follow nothing but their animal urges and inclinations of the moment. Yet, her heroes and heroines engage in sex whenever they feel like it and glorify the satisfaction of bodily urges outside any moral framework as the rejection of gnostism and the affirmation of the life impulse. Yet, she does not seem to see that gnosticism has a libertine form as well as an ascetic form. Her heroes are superior to the socialist looters only as the Nietzschean Overman is superior to the last men.
This defect in understanding apparently is rooted in the rejection of revelation and God's sovereignty. Like the 18th century Philosophes, she views religion as nothing but mysticism: the antithesis of reason. She claims that all other philosophies have divided man into a ghostly soul and an animal body and that only her philosophy holds him together in a unity. But she falls into the trap of the reason-revelation dualism and is like the man out of whom a demon was cast only to have seven demons worse than the first come to fill the void.
The void is that lack of a God in her philosophy. Man cannot be his own God and Reason cannot do the job either. This is what Rand cannot seem to admit. And so her worship of Reason ends in the rule by the will to power instead of by law. For Reason can only be a servant - it can serve either the will or the instincts - but it needs to serve something just as man was created to serve something - or Someone.
This was my first direct exposure to the secular libertarianism of Ann Rand and, while she represents a strand of the conservative coalition that is very different from my traditional, religious and social conservative beliefs strand, it is important to see in what sense she could be considered a co-belligerent in the war against collectivism.
First, let me say something about the merits of the novel from the point of view of art. I found the novel poorly written and the characters shallowly portrayed. The portrayal of the developing crisis is out of focus with too much time spent on a few characters making philosophical speeches and not enough time examining the actual process of social breakdown and disintegration. It seems that there is only enough of a plot to serve as a backdrop for the philosophical exchanges between the characters. But in fairness, that could be said of Plato's dialogues as well - although they are incomparably better written.
Second, let me say what I appreciated about the book. I found the portrayal of the philosophy of the "looters" (i.e. the socialist government and its admirers) to be bitterly accurate and telling. She has those guys nailed and this, I suspect, is the real motive power of the book. This is what makes her positive philosophy credible: that she understands her opponents more profoundly than they understand themselves. She describes the slogans, the rhetoric, the tricks, the manipulation, the jargon and the self-deception of those who use high sounding ideals to cover over their selfish pursuit of power and are so convincing that they even fool themselves.
Third, I turn to what I disagreed with in the book. Rand is a throwback to the Enlightenment Philosophes and it seems that, for her, the 18th century has never ended. (I don't begrudge anyone their favorite century; mine is the 13th. And I share her revulsion toward the ugly, violent, squalid 20th century.) But Rand does not seem to know that the Enlightenment is over.
The Medieval Synthesis of Aristotelianism and Augustinianism and the Enlightenment attempt to exalt Autonomous Reason without God both have in common a love and respect for the power and reality of human reason. Both believe in truth and logic. Both reject pragmatism, relativism and ideology. Augustinian Thomism and the Enlightenment are united in the rejection of superstition and the right of brute force to rule the mind and both have a deep respect for the individual human being and profound antipathy toward the rule of power that is not grounded in law.
Nevertheless, Thomism and the Enlightenment represent two great mutually exclusive alternatives philosophies of life. One grounds reason in the Logos of Creation and the other rests it on thin air (Chance). Rand does not acknowledge that the swirling universe of atoms in random motion coming together by chance could never produce consciousness, morality or natural law. The Personal cannot arise out of the Impersonal and to assert that it does is to invite skepticism as to whether one really believes in Personality at all. She shares the eager faith of the 18th century that Reason can be its own foundation, that science can rest safely and securely on nothing but itself. She refuses to recognize that the contemporary irrationality and socialist ideology, which dominates Western elite culture, is a degenerate child of the Enlightenment rejection of God and proud assertion of individual autonomy.
The faith in Reason of the Enlightenment gave way to the faith in Feeling in the 19th century Romantic reaction to the Age of Reason and then degenerated into the worship of the will prophesied by Nietzsche and acted out in the brutal 20th century - the century of genocide and mass murder. She has no sense of the internal contradictions of freedom that rests not on natural law written on creation by the Designer of that creation, but only on what individual men choose to recognize as law. She does not see that a world without design imposed on it from the outside is a world that can have meaning only as strong-willed individuals impose a meaning on it by their own strength of will.
Perhaps, in the end, this is what secular libertarianism amounts to: a philosophy of life appropriate only for the Overman. This problematic relationship between will and reason is the elephant in the room throughout the book. She sees how the "looters" degenerate into subhumans as they follow nothing but their animal urges and inclinations of the moment. Yet, her heroes and heroines engage in sex whenever they feel like it and glorify the satisfaction of bodily urges outside any moral framework as the rejection of gnostism and the affirmation of the life impulse. Yet, she does not seem to see that gnosticism has a libertine form as well as an ascetic form. Her heroes are superior to the socialist looters only as the Nietzschean Overman is superior to the last men.
This defect in understanding apparently is rooted in the rejection of revelation and God's sovereignty. Like the 18th century Philosophes, she views religion as nothing but mysticism: the antithesis of reason. She claims that all other philosophies have divided man into a ghostly soul and an animal body and that only her philosophy holds him together in a unity. But she falls into the trap of the reason-revelation dualism and is like the man out of whom a demon was cast only to have seven demons worse than the first come to fill the void.
The void is that lack of a God in her philosophy. Man cannot be his own God and Reason cannot do the job either. This is what Rand cannot seem to admit. And so her worship of Reason ends in the rule by the will to power instead of by law. For Reason can only be a servant - it can serve either the will or the instincts - but it needs to serve something just as man was created to serve something - or Someone.
Friday, June 4, 2010
"The Christian Case against Contraception" by Bryan C. Hodge: A Review
The Christian Case against Contraception: Making the Case from Historical, Biblical, Systematic, and Practical Theology and Ethics (Wipf and Stock, 2010) is a defense of the anti-contraception position of the historic Church against the overturning of that position during the past 100 years.
Most people have no idea what a recent innovation is the view that contraception is morally acceptable. The whole contraceptive mentality, in which procreation is divided from sex, is as old as the Fall, but Christians accepting this mentality is a recent thing. The idea that sex can be used for pleasure with no expectation of children coming from it is the basis for promiscuity, pre-marital sex, open marriage, homosexuality and many other perversions. The whole assumption that we can and should control fertility as human beings leads to infanticide and abortion, which become necessary when contraception fails (as all contraceptive methods often do). That this mentality exists among the pagans is nothing new, but for Christians to accept it is scandalous and novel.
Bryan C. Hodge has written a straight-forward book which will introduce the modern Christian to the way that traditional Christians from the Fathers to the early 20th century reasoned about contraception. They were pretty much unanimously opposed to it as a form of murder and a form of idolatry. For Hodge, God gives children and every conception is God's will. Since God decides how many children a couple will have, our responsibility is simply to obey the command to be fruitful and multiply.
The interesting thing about Hodge is that he is not a Roman Catholic. As a conservative Presbyterian, he is sympathetic to the Quiverfull Movement, which views children as a blessing from the Lord and rejects all forms of birth control. Hodge even rejects the position of the modern Roman Catholic Church that natural family planning is morally acceptable as long as it is not used to avoid having children altogether. NFP basically involves a woman observing signs of her own fertility and the couple avoiding intercourse during fertile parts of the month. To do this, says Hodge, is as bad as using contraception.
Hodge accuses those who advocate for contraception of having a naturalistic concept of procreation. He argues that, since a new human being with a soul is created each time an egg is fertilized, God is involved in that process and it cannot be reduced to a physical process alone. He argues for a supernatural view of the whole conception event and he contends that the Bible clearly teaches that God can and does both open and close the womb according to His sovereign will. He views the human attempt to utilize contraception as rooted in a naturalistic view of conception in which it is within the power and authority of humans to cause or prevent.
In a short review it is impossible to do justice to the complexity of the arguments of a nearly 300 page book. However, I want to consider one of his most significant points. He argues that we, as humans, do not have the right to allow or prohibit a person from coming into existence and that to do so is to commit something much to like murder for comfort: not by killing an existing person, but by preventing that person from coming into existence. His argument is that it is God's prerogative to give life and to take it away. We want to argue this at the other end of life against euthanasia, so why is it different at the beginning? Is giving and taking life not God's prerogative?
The modern idea that we have total control over our own bodies and can do whatever we want with them is in conflict with the idea that we belong to God and He is sovereign. Reproductive rights don't stop with contraception; they logically extend to abortion as well and it is only a matter of time before they extend further to infanticide. On what grounds can we, as Christians, challenge the idea of our having control over our own bodies when we approve of contraception? Is the number of children we have not up to God? Is God not in control? Can we not trust Him as people have for millennia?
In modern medical ethics, the idea of patient autonomy is practically the only moral principle left in operation and it is a slender reed. Without a belief in God and Divine commandments that we must obey, such as "Do not commit murder," our medical ethics slides into anti-human, ultilitarianism that permits horrors like cloning individuals for body parts and creating children with three biological parents and so on.
Clearly, Christians have to invoke the sovereignty of God at some point. Bryan Hodge says it begins with marriage and the sexual embrace, which must always be open to children. On this point, he and John Paul II are in agreement. Openness to God's creative act through us is fundamental to Christian morality and to any kind of humanism that respects the dignity of the person created in God's image.
Most people have no idea what a recent innovation is the view that contraception is morally acceptable. The whole contraceptive mentality, in which procreation is divided from sex, is as old as the Fall, but Christians accepting this mentality is a recent thing. The idea that sex can be used for pleasure with no expectation of children coming from it is the basis for promiscuity, pre-marital sex, open marriage, homosexuality and many other perversions. The whole assumption that we can and should control fertility as human beings leads to infanticide and abortion, which become necessary when contraception fails (as all contraceptive methods often do). That this mentality exists among the pagans is nothing new, but for Christians to accept it is scandalous and novel.
Bryan C. Hodge has written a straight-forward book which will introduce the modern Christian to the way that traditional Christians from the Fathers to the early 20th century reasoned about contraception. They were pretty much unanimously opposed to it as a form of murder and a form of idolatry. For Hodge, God gives children and every conception is God's will. Since God decides how many children a couple will have, our responsibility is simply to obey the command to be fruitful and multiply.
The interesting thing about Hodge is that he is not a Roman Catholic. As a conservative Presbyterian, he is sympathetic to the Quiverfull Movement, which views children as a blessing from the Lord and rejects all forms of birth control. Hodge even rejects the position of the modern Roman Catholic Church that natural family planning is morally acceptable as long as it is not used to avoid having children altogether. NFP basically involves a woman observing signs of her own fertility and the couple avoiding intercourse during fertile parts of the month. To do this, says Hodge, is as bad as using contraception.
Hodge accuses those who advocate for contraception of having a naturalistic concept of procreation. He argues that, since a new human being with a soul is created each time an egg is fertilized, God is involved in that process and it cannot be reduced to a physical process alone. He argues for a supernatural view of the whole conception event and he contends that the Bible clearly teaches that God can and does both open and close the womb according to His sovereign will. He views the human attempt to utilize contraception as rooted in a naturalistic view of conception in which it is within the power and authority of humans to cause or prevent.
In a short review it is impossible to do justice to the complexity of the arguments of a nearly 300 page book. However, I want to consider one of his most significant points. He argues that we, as humans, do not have the right to allow or prohibit a person from coming into existence and that to do so is to commit something much to like murder for comfort: not by killing an existing person, but by preventing that person from coming into existence. His argument is that it is God's prerogative to give life and to take it away. We want to argue this at the other end of life against euthanasia, so why is it different at the beginning? Is giving and taking life not God's prerogative?
The modern idea that we have total control over our own bodies and can do whatever we want with them is in conflict with the idea that we belong to God and He is sovereign. Reproductive rights don't stop with contraception; they logically extend to abortion as well and it is only a matter of time before they extend further to infanticide. On what grounds can we, as Christians, challenge the idea of our having control over our own bodies when we approve of contraception? Is the number of children we have not up to God? Is God not in control? Can we not trust Him as people have for millennia?
In modern medical ethics, the idea of patient autonomy is practically the only moral principle left in operation and it is a slender reed. Without a belief in God and Divine commandments that we must obey, such as "Do not commit murder," our medical ethics slides into anti-human, ultilitarianism that permits horrors like cloning individuals for body parts and creating children with three biological parents and so on.
Clearly, Christians have to invoke the sovereignty of God at some point. Bryan Hodge says it begins with marriage and the sexual embrace, which must always be open to children. On this point, he and John Paul II are in agreement. Openness to God's creative act through us is fundamental to Christian morality and to any kind of humanism that respects the dignity of the person created in God's image.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
"The World Turned Upside Down" by Melanie Phillips: A Review
I came to The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power by Melanie Phillips (NY: Encounter Books, 2010) after having read a number of the author's columns in London's Daily Mail that I respected for independent thinking and clear analysis of current events. Educated at Oxford, Phillips is a journalist who won the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996 and this book is one that continues in the iconoclastic tradition of George Orwell in its search for truth amid the posturing, insincerity and manipulative machinations of those who wish to destroy freedom but cannot come right out and say so lest they be made pariahs immediately.Phillips is no conspiracy theorist, but she is attempting to reach a rational explanation for otherwise difficult to comprehend trends in contemporary thought among the Western political class and she offers an original thesis. Her contribution is to seek out what connections there may be between four seemingly disparate trends among left-leaning intellectuals, politicians, bureaucrats and members of the media (the political class). She discusses the "myth of environmental Armageddon," (i.e. global warming), "the misrepresentation of the Iraq war," "the misrepresentation of Israel," and the "scientific triumphalism" of Dawkins and company. How are these four disparate movements connected?
Phillips' answer is that they all embody a serious and worrisome irrationality and abuse of science and reason. Each of these movements turn truth upside down and degrade science and reason into a caricature of themselves in order to promote an irrational, leftist agenda. How can the alliance of Western leftists with Islamic jihadists be explained rationally? One is libertarian and the other is theocratic. What could anti-Jewish hatred, weak-kneed appeasement of Islamic terrorism, Marxism and anti-Christian hatred possibly have in common?
Phillips' answer is that they have almost nothing in common in terms of their positive vision of what they hope to accomplish once they gain power. But all have a common enemy: Western civilization, which is built on the foundations of Jewish law, Greek philosophy and the Christian revelation centered on Jesus Christ. Marxists, Islamofascists, and their left-leaning sympathizers, apologists and fellow-travelers share a pathological hatred of Western civilization and are therefore united in their desire to destroy Israel, America and the historical religious and philosophical foundations of the West. Science is a fruit of the Jewish-Christian worldview and grows out of Western civilization and this explains the anti-rational attitude and the willingness to descend into irrationality.
An implication of Phillips' thesis, which is by no means unique to her, is that anti-Westernism (as defined above) is essentially irrational. So it is irrationality that binds together movements that have nothing in common except a hatred of God and the West. The discredited Marxist Utopia is irrational, suicide bombing and endless war against the entire non-Muslim world by the Jihadists is irrational and the eagerness to tear down institutions like the family, democracy, a natural law-based legal system and so on is simply irrational.
Reason, when it is separated from a Trinitarian metaphysics in which God is integrally related to the world, which is His creation and has the Logos as its animating principle and is therefore rational, simply withers and dies. This is the story of Modernity starting with the unraveling of the participatory metaphysics of the Fathers and Scholastics in the dark 14th century. The story of Modernity is the reverse of what the propaganda in the leftist textbooks tell you; it is not the story of the rise of Reason and Science triumphing over Medieval darkness and superstition, but rather the decline of Reason and Science and a new descent into irrationality and darkness. What begins in Nominalism and the Cartesian revolution that places man in the place of God ends in Nazism and Stalinism. The rise of the autonomous self in Modernity is fully revealed in Nietzsche's Overman.
Phillips' book could not be written as a book to get tenure in most Western universities today because it challenges too many of the lazy assumptions of the cultural Marxism that dominates the academy. That there is more academic freedom today outside the academy is a sad commentary on the health of our culture. But whatever it source, we should be thankful that creative, tough-minded thinking can be published and this book deserves a wide readership.
Monday, April 5, 2010
A Review of : "An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming"
An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming by Nigel Lawson (NY: Duckworth, 2008, pb with new afterword, 2009) is an outstanding work that everyone who is tempted to believe in the hype surrounding global warming should read. It is concise and pithy 117 pages of text plus 26 pages of scholarly endnotes, a 10 page bibliography and a handy index. It is calm, well-written and utterly devoid of fanaticism of any kind. If this is an example of a "denier," then please God let us all be "deniers."
Only chapter 1 deals with the science. Lawson is an journalist with an honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford and served for a decade in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet finishing up as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He frankly admits that he was only free to write this book because his political career was behind him. As a non-scientist, he is inclined to take scientific consensus on any given point very seriously. But he has little difficulty in demonstrating that the science on which global warming predictions are made is very far from settled, via the testimony of the scientists themselves. Yet, in the rest of the book he proposes to take the IPCC predictions of global warming as true, for the sake of argument. His basic thrust is that even if these predictions are accurate, the proposed solution to them is wrong.
Chapter 2 fleshes out the predictions of the IPCC 2007 report itself to answer the question of how warm the next 100 years are predicted to be and how much of a difference would it make to humans on this planet if all the predictions come true. He shows how the Al Gore hype about killer storms, coastal cities flooded and polar ice caps melting are all exaggerations and not based in the science on which global warming alarmists themselves cite. He points out that warming actually will mean gains as well as losses, especially in food production and lower energy costs in temperate and northern climates. The gains and losses must be balanced against each other in order to arrive at a true estimate of the danger.
Chapter 3 focuses on the importance of adaptation, which the human race has been doing since the last ice age and which we will need to do in future. He shows that the strategy of trying to limit carbon emissions instead of spending money on adaptation is economically and politically doomed to failure and less efficient anyway.
Chapter 4 discusses the apocalyptic predictions that have been used to frighten the public into compliance with the global warming agenda. He focuses on three examples: hurricanes, the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets and the shut down of the Gulf Stream.
Chapter 5 discusses the political realities which stand in the way of the obtaining of a global agreement on going back to a non-carbon economy. He also discusses the merits of the arguments of China and India that their first priority is the lifting of their people out of poverty and advocates that we weigh the claims of today's poor over against the benefits to people who will live centuries from now. The compassion argument is not all on one side of the debate.
Chapter 6 deals with an analysis of the costs of mitigation compared to the costs of prevention. Is it realistic or ethical to ask the present generation to make tremendous sacrifices in order that people a century from now can be 9.5 times as well off as we are instead of 8.5 times? The idea that we ought to reduce carbon emissions "just to be on the safe side" assumes that reducing carbon emissions by the amount we would need to do so in order to make a difference (up to 70% on a global scale), would actually be "safe."
Chapter 7 continues the discussion of cost, benefits and risk and quotes many leading economists who disagree with the premise that preventing global warming would be cheaper for better for the majority of the population than adapting to it and mitigating its effects.
Chapter 8 draws together the argument and comes to conclusions. He reminds us that climate scientists have admitted that global warming has stopped during the fist 8 years of the 21st century and that they computer models on which all the IPCC predictions have been made did not predict this fact. This shows the fallibility of the predictions. The costs of reducing carbon emissions spectacularly will be astronomical and once the money is spent there is no going back.
Does this mean we should do nothing then, he asks? No, but "doing nothing is better than doing something stupid." (95) Lawson suggests a number of actions beginning with continued monitoring of the global temperature and including research into ways to reduce emissions without ceasing to utilize cheap fossil fuels. He even suggests a carbon tax as long as it is accompanied by a reduction in income tax so that the net effect is neutral as far as the taxpayer is concerned.
Lawson asks the inevitable question of why global warming alarmism is so prevalent given the flimsy empirical base on which it rests and gives the only sensible answer:
Although Lawson does not go further in analyzing the religious roots of green eco-fascism, I believe that here we have the deepest roots of the culture of death that now grips Europe and is spreading to the rest of the Western world. Europe has not just lost her Christian faith, but her faith in humanity as well. Europe has lost faith.
This book is informative, engaging and substantial. Don't talk much about global warming or form firm opinions until you have read it. It is that important.
Only chapter 1 deals with the science. Lawson is an journalist with an honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford and served for a decade in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet finishing up as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He frankly admits that he was only free to write this book because his political career was behind him. As a non-scientist, he is inclined to take scientific consensus on any given point very seriously. But he has little difficulty in demonstrating that the science on which global warming predictions are made is very far from settled, via the testimony of the scientists themselves. Yet, in the rest of the book he proposes to take the IPCC predictions of global warming as true, for the sake of argument. His basic thrust is that even if these predictions are accurate, the proposed solution to them is wrong.
Chapter 2 fleshes out the predictions of the IPCC 2007 report itself to answer the question of how warm the next 100 years are predicted to be and how much of a difference would it make to humans on this planet if all the predictions come true. He shows how the Al Gore hype about killer storms, coastal cities flooded and polar ice caps melting are all exaggerations and not based in the science on which global warming alarmists themselves cite. He points out that warming actually will mean gains as well as losses, especially in food production and lower energy costs in temperate and northern climates. The gains and losses must be balanced against each other in order to arrive at a true estimate of the danger.
Chapter 3 focuses on the importance of adaptation, which the human race has been doing since the last ice age and which we will need to do in future. He shows that the strategy of trying to limit carbon emissions instead of spending money on adaptation is economically and politically doomed to failure and less efficient anyway.
Chapter 4 discusses the apocalyptic predictions that have been used to frighten the public into compliance with the global warming agenda. He focuses on three examples: hurricanes, the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets and the shut down of the Gulf Stream.
Chapter 5 discusses the political realities which stand in the way of the obtaining of a global agreement on going back to a non-carbon economy. He also discusses the merits of the arguments of China and India that their first priority is the lifting of their people out of poverty and advocates that we weigh the claims of today's poor over against the benefits to people who will live centuries from now. The compassion argument is not all on one side of the debate.
Chapter 6 deals with an analysis of the costs of mitigation compared to the costs of prevention. Is it realistic or ethical to ask the present generation to make tremendous sacrifices in order that people a century from now can be 9.5 times as well off as we are instead of 8.5 times? The idea that we ought to reduce carbon emissions "just to be on the safe side" assumes that reducing carbon emissions by the amount we would need to do so in order to make a difference (up to 70% on a global scale), would actually be "safe."
Chapter 7 continues the discussion of cost, benefits and risk and quotes many leading economists who disagree with the premise that preventing global warming would be cheaper for better for the majority of the population than adapting to it and mitigating its effects.
Chapter 8 draws together the argument and comes to conclusions. He reminds us that climate scientists have admitted that global warming has stopped during the fist 8 years of the 21st century and that they computer models on which all the IPCC predictions have been made did not predict this fact. This shows the fallibility of the predictions. The costs of reducing carbon emissions spectacularly will be astronomical and once the money is spent there is no going back.
Does this mean we should do nothing then, he asks? No, but "doing nothing is better than doing something stupid." (95) Lawson suggests a number of actions beginning with continued monitoring of the global temperature and including research into ways to reduce emissions without ceasing to utilize cheap fossil fuels. He even suggests a carbon tax as long as it is accompanied by a reduction in income tax so that the net effect is neutral as far as the taxpayer is concerned.
Lawson asks the inevitable question of why global warming alarmism is so prevalent given the flimsy empirical base on which it rests and gives the only sensible answer:
"With the collapse of Marxism, and to all intents and purposes of other forms of socalism too, those who dislike capitalism, not least on the global scale, and its foremost exemplar, the United States, with equal passion, have been obliged to find a new creed.Lawson goes on to note that the major difference between Marxism and the new green religion is that Marxism was pessimistic in the short run but optimistic in the long run, whereas the green religion is strictly pessimistic all the way down. Rather than believing in the future, it is attracted to a mythical, pre-materialistic and pre-capitalist past.
For many of them, green is the new red.
And those who wish to take power to order us how to run our lives, faced with the uncomfortable evidence that economic prosperity is more likely achieved by less government intervention rather than more, naturally welcome the emergence of a new licence to intrude, to interfere and to regulate: the great cause of saving the planet fro the alleged horrors of global warming."
Although Lawson does not go further in analyzing the religious roots of green eco-fascism, I believe that here we have the deepest roots of the culture of death that now grips Europe and is spreading to the rest of the Western world. Europe has not just lost her Christian faith, but her faith in humanity as well. Europe has lost faith.
This book is informative, engaging and substantial. Don't talk much about global warming or form firm opinions until you have read it. It is that important.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Sex and the iWorld: A Brief Review
A new book by Dale S. Kuehne called Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationships beyond an Age of Individualism (Baker, 2009) is worth reading for several reasons. The author is a professor of politics at a Catholic liberal arts college and a pastor of Emmanuel Covenant Church in Nashua, NH. So he writes from unique position on a highly controversial topic.
1. Modern Individualism Warps Our Sexuality: One notable feature of this book is his critique of modern individualism. He is perceptive in his analysis of the morality of the world of modernity. He identifies what he calls "three taboos," which seem to me to function analogously to the way the Ten Commandments functioned in the pre-modern world and continue to function in the Church. The three taboos are:
1. One may not criticize someone else's life choices or behavior.
2. One may not behave in a manner that coerces or causes harm to others.
3. On may not engage in a sexual relationship with someone without his or her consent. (p. 71)
When you lay it out this way it is amazing how thin and weak the sexual morality of modernity actually is (and how it corresponds to the thinness of the modern concept of the self). And it is amazing how many sexual perversions can be seen as morally acceptable under this scheme. For example, there is no real reason to ban incest, homosexuality, polygamy, polyamory, bestiality or swinging. And when it comes to pedophilia, there is a lot of wiggle room with regard to the age of consent and re-definition of "harm," "coercion," and "consent." But this is the morality of modernity. Keuhne is right to trace all this back to the individualism of modernity and to thus show that the problem is much bigger than just sexual morality itself.
2. Sex is Only One Way to Express Love: Another interesting feature of this book that I found very encouraging is the more modest estimate of sexuality that Kuehne exhibits. He does not think that having sexual relations is necessary to human fulfillment. Full stop. Period. Now, that is a radical thought in the modern world and very politically incorrect. He thinks one can have a full and meaningful life with close friendship, emotional intimacy and deep satisfaction without sexual intercourse. He writes:
Viewing sex as not essential for intimacy means that we do not need to leave marriages in which our needs for intimacy are not being met. For millennia people have found intimacy in friendship, the extended family and in the church. Marriage can be permanent because it does not bear the full responsibility for meeting all our needs. And yet nothing in this book could be taken to imply that marriage is not a wonderful thing that is rooted in creation and affected by redemption as part of God's plan.
3. The Theology of the Body: This is the first (or maybe the second) book written by a Protestant that actually quotes approvingly from John Paul II's wonderful writings on the theology of the body. I taught this material to my marriage class this Fall and it was very well received by Evangelical students who found it biblical, deep and convincing - unlike the shallow and tentative teaching they had received so far in the Evangelical church context. I predict that more and more conservative Protestants will discover this deeply spiritual and authentically biblical teaching in the coming years. Kuehne's emphasis on relationships as the alternative to modern individualism likely derives at least in part from the theology of the body.
All in all, I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in coming to a deeper understanding of human sexuality in a Christian perspective and to anyone interested in understanding the modern world better. It is a fairly accessible work for students, laity and pastors.
1. Modern Individualism Warps Our Sexuality: One notable feature of this book is his critique of modern individualism. He is perceptive in his analysis of the morality of the world of modernity. He identifies what he calls "three taboos," which seem to me to function analogously to the way the Ten Commandments functioned in the pre-modern world and continue to function in the Church. The three taboos are:
1. One may not criticize someone else's life choices or behavior.
2. One may not behave in a manner that coerces or causes harm to others.
3. On may not engage in a sexual relationship with someone without his or her consent. (p. 71)
When you lay it out this way it is amazing how thin and weak the sexual morality of modernity actually is (and how it corresponds to the thinness of the modern concept of the self). And it is amazing how many sexual perversions can be seen as morally acceptable under this scheme. For example, there is no real reason to ban incest, homosexuality, polygamy, polyamory, bestiality or swinging. And when it comes to pedophilia, there is a lot of wiggle room with regard to the age of consent and re-definition of "harm," "coercion," and "consent." But this is the morality of modernity. Keuhne is right to trace all this back to the individualism of modernity and to thus show that the problem is much bigger than just sexual morality itself.
2. Sex is Only One Way to Express Love: Another interesting feature of this book that I found very encouraging is the more modest estimate of sexuality that Kuehne exhibits. He does not think that having sexual relations is necessary to human fulfillment. Full stop. Period. Now, that is a radical thought in the modern world and very politically incorrect. He thinks one can have a full and meaningful life with close friendship, emotional intimacy and deep satisfaction without sexual intercourse. He writes:
"The more intimacy we have with God, the more we are able to receive his love and then share that love with others. We receive love spiritually when we are intimately connected with God, and as we grow in the ability to be intimate with him and enjoy his love, we also can grow in our ability to be intimate with and love others. The greater our capacity for intimacy, the greater our capacity to receive love and share love.I find this approach to be very compassionate toward those with disordered drives (i.e. what is called a homosexual orientation) because it is saying to such people that the world lies when it says that you are doomed to loneliness and a non-fulfilling life because you cannot marry. Celibacy is not worse than death because sex is not the meaning of life.
Sexuality is not an important part of this equation, not because sex is a bad thing but simply because sex is not an essential aspect of the deepest and most fulfilling relational life that is found in a spiritual connection with God and others. Since we are physical beings, it is not surprising that love and intimacy have a reflection in our physical experience. Neither is it surprising that love and intimacy trigger many drives within us, including our sexual drive. Yet it is important to realize that the thing for which we ultimately yearn is not sexual and sex is not the means to find it . . . Engaging in sexual intercourse but never developing our capacity to love and be truly spiritually intimate with anyone, including our sexual partner, is a danger for all sexual relationships, including marriage." (169-70)
Viewing sex as not essential for intimacy means that we do not need to leave marriages in which our needs for intimacy are not being met. For millennia people have found intimacy in friendship, the extended family and in the church. Marriage can be permanent because it does not bear the full responsibility for meeting all our needs. And yet nothing in this book could be taken to imply that marriage is not a wonderful thing that is rooted in creation and affected by redemption as part of God's plan.
3. The Theology of the Body: This is the first (or maybe the second) book written by a Protestant that actually quotes approvingly from John Paul II's wonderful writings on the theology of the body. I taught this material to my marriage class this Fall and it was very well received by Evangelical students who found it biblical, deep and convincing - unlike the shallow and tentative teaching they had received so far in the Evangelical church context. I predict that more and more conservative Protestants will discover this deeply spiritual and authentically biblical teaching in the coming years. Kuehne's emphasis on relationships as the alternative to modern individualism likely derives at least in part from the theology of the body.
All in all, I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in coming to a deeper understanding of human sexuality in a Christian perspective and to anyone interested in understanding the modern world better. It is a fairly accessible work for students, laity and pastors.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thoughts on Miriam Grossman's "Unprotected"
Dr. Miram Grossman, M.D. has written a brave book. It is a cool, factual and damning indictment of the university student counselling profession including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other counsellors. It is passionate cri de coeur with footnotes to the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Grossman, a psychiatrist, worked for over a decade at a counselling center of a university and in this book she tells the stories of the students she met there. Some of her stories will break your heart.
She documents how political correctness is hurting the mental and physical health of university students. Instead of treating patients according to what is best for their health, they are treated according to a certain political ideology that views women as "just like men," STD's as something "everyone" gets at some point, and casual sex as detachable from emotions and therefore not dangerous to one's health. But Grossman points out several facts that are not being taking into account:
1. Delaying marriage and children until the late 30's is drastically reducing the chances of many of these women ever being able to have a family.
2. Women are not biologically designed for casual sex with no emotional committment and often suffer from depression, self-harm (eg. cutting) and low self-esteem as a result.
3. Sexual transmitted diseases are rampant on university campuses because of the hook-up culture and many of them will have long-lasting effects such as infertility and cervical cancer.
4. AIDS is the only infectious disease that is not treated seriously and aggressively by the State in terms of protecting those at risk and this is because of lobbying by homosexual activist groups, not because it is how doctors think it should be treated from a public health perspective.
5. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providing organizations provide almost no emotional/psychological after-care for clients because the politically correct line is that abortion does not cause grief or depression, just a sense of relief. Yet Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome is responsible for grief, depression and drug and alcohol abuse for those "invisible" women who suffer from it. As she points out, if this malady afflicts only 1% of women suffered from this malady, it would still mean that there are 400,000 women out there suffering and society officially pretending they do not exist!
Dr. Grossman is accusing the medical and counselling profession of putting the liberal ideology of the sexual revolution ahead of patient care and disease prevention. She is calling out institutions like Columbia University's "GoAskAlice.com" website on which students can get advice on matters of sexual health. It endorses risky behaviours such as sadism and masochism and swinging. And this is what in loco parentis has degnerated to at major universities today!
In this book, Dr. Grossman is professional and logical, never hysterical or even particularly judgmental. She is not asking universities to accept Jesus as Saviour and start preaching chastity (especially since she is Jewish herself!). All she is asking is the that public health, medical and counselling professions take their own standards and aspirations more seriously and stop letting a liberal, free-love ideology get in the way of providing factual information and psychological care to vulnerable people at a point in their lives when they are susceptible to being lured into self-destructive and dangerous behaviours. Is that really too much to ask of the helping professions?
Dr. Miriam Grossman, M.D. Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals how Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student (Sentinal Books, 2007).
She documents how political correctness is hurting the mental and physical health of university students. Instead of treating patients according to what is best for their health, they are treated according to a certain political ideology that views women as "just like men," STD's as something "everyone" gets at some point, and casual sex as detachable from emotions and therefore not dangerous to one's health. But Grossman points out several facts that are not being taking into account:
1. Delaying marriage and children until the late 30's is drastically reducing the chances of many of these women ever being able to have a family.
2. Women are not biologically designed for casual sex with no emotional committment and often suffer from depression, self-harm (eg. cutting) and low self-esteem as a result.
3. Sexual transmitted diseases are rampant on university campuses because of the hook-up culture and many of them will have long-lasting effects such as infertility and cervical cancer.
4. AIDS is the only infectious disease that is not treated seriously and aggressively by the State in terms of protecting those at risk and this is because of lobbying by homosexual activist groups, not because it is how doctors think it should be treated from a public health perspective.
5. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providing organizations provide almost no emotional/psychological after-care for clients because the politically correct line is that abortion does not cause grief or depression, just a sense of relief. Yet Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome is responsible for grief, depression and drug and alcohol abuse for those "invisible" women who suffer from it. As she points out, if this malady afflicts only 1% of women suffered from this malady, it would still mean that there are 400,000 women out there suffering and society officially pretending they do not exist!
Dr. Grossman is accusing the medical and counselling profession of putting the liberal ideology of the sexual revolution ahead of patient care and disease prevention. She is calling out institutions like Columbia University's "GoAskAlice.com" website on which students can get advice on matters of sexual health. It endorses risky behaviours such as sadism and masochism and swinging. And this is what in loco parentis has degnerated to at major universities today!
In this book, Dr. Grossman is professional and logical, never hysterical or even particularly judgmental. She is not asking universities to accept Jesus as Saviour and start preaching chastity (especially since she is Jewish herself!). All she is asking is the that public health, medical and counselling professions take their own standards and aspirations more seriously and stop letting a liberal, free-love ideology get in the way of providing factual information and psychological care to vulnerable people at a point in their lives when they are susceptible to being lured into self-destructive and dangerous behaviours. Is that really too much to ask of the helping professions?
Dr. Miriam Grossman, M.D. Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals how Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student (Sentinal Books, 2007).
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