01.26.10
Memo to CBS: Don’t kowtow to the pro-death jackboots
Run the Focus on the Family Tebow ad during the Super Bowl.
Glad someone said this
By way of a refutation of Charles Johnson’s (Little Green Footballs) ten reasons for parting with the right, Dennis Prager demonstrates the basic decency and intellectual integrity of mainstream conservatism.
01.05.10
Who meant what?
The Anchoress on Brit Hume on Tiger Woods and by inference Buddhism. She also offers a roundup of other perspectives, ranging from Buddhist to Christian to secular.
What is the relationship between forgiveness and peace of mind?
12.23.09
“The darkness has not overcome it”
What a depressing irony it is that, during Christmas week, the United States of America finds itself in the grip of unprecedented evil, a domestic enemy that has used the excuse of being duly elected to turn the last, best hope of humankind into a totalitarian dictatorship.
There are so many levels to this evil.
Jacob Sullum examines the “radical assault on the traditional understanding of rights” that Americans have had throughout their history. Is there anything more foul than convincing people that a right is a “legally enforceable claim on other people’s resources?” That’s what we’re witnessing.
Michael Gerson unpacks the full moral rot of Harry Reid’s offer of thirty pieces of silver to Ben Nelson. A money line: “Many assumed that [Nelson's] objections to abortion coverage were serious.” Alas, they were anything but. And now, taxpayers in all other 49 states will be subsidizing any new Nebraskans coming on board to Medicaid.
It’s the eleventh hour – in fact, well into the eleventh hour. It’s dark indeed. What kinds of resources are called for in a situation like this? Wits, IT savvy, an understanding of the Constitution, but most of all faith.
This is one of those scenarios, much like being outmanned and outgunned in a battle for a peice of ground, in which one realizes that a spiritual level to one’s existence is a binary choice. You may or may not call yourself a Christian, Jew, Buddhist or Hindu. You may or may not sign on to premillenial dispensationalsim, sola scriptura, or even such modern inventions as Rauschenberg’s social gospel, but at a juncture this grim, you will be forced to reach into your core and ask yourself whether all that is true, lovely, noble and worthwhile will in the end be preserved.
11.30.09
I’d hoped to just have some hot buttered rum and play my Perry Como records
I don’t know what it is about this time of year – the obvious, I guess – but no matter how I think I’ve got the ontological cauldron safely enough under a lid that I can focus on work, food-making, card-writing, the wind-up of the Colts season (they’re now 11 and 0 after another grand come-from-behind victory in Houston this afternoon; more on that soon), getting holiday gigs, and social events, I find myself scratching and clawing again about the nature of Jesus and that whole bag of theological snakes.
This year it was in large part jump-started by my having started to hang out with a young Indian man, an engineer at a local manufacturing firm. He’s been in the US a little over a year. He’s immensely curious about American culture, and to that end I included him in Thanksgiving, which he found fascinating and delightful. But he is also endlessly curious about the intersection of the world’s religions. He was raised a Hindu in Hyderabad and still celebrates those holidays, but wants to know about Christianity. He has begun attending Bible study at a local Lutheran church. He wanted to meet me for lunch last Saturday to share how that’s going.
It turns out, and I guess this is no surprise, that he’s asking the pastor, who leads the class, some really uncomfortable questions. He’s also asking them of his personal fitness trainer, a young woman of the Pentecostal faith. In both cases it boils down to their insistence on ascribing a divinity to Jesus that can’t be ascribed to the yogis and advanced beings he was taught about as a youth in India.
Another sticking point for him is the proliferation of denominations within Christianity, and their attendant doctrinal exclusion. He finds it so unlike the panoply of schools within Hinduism, each devoted to a particular form of the ultimate God, but welcoming of all who enter into their various temples.
And while that’s another subject I’d hoped to give a rest for a while, what do I stumble on this evening during a Net-surfing session but this Parchment and Pen post on the recent annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. Tales of theological libs looking down their noses as dispensationalists who in turn go to great lengths to show how far their school of thought has advanced.
Then there’s the whole question of why one can go days, weeks, a lifetime in this realm and not bump up against any points at which one must face any such questions.
It may be a long Christmas season.
10.19.09
Rather universally regarded with great reverence
The Anchoress reflects on some particular aspects of intimacy and why we ought to keep them sacred.
08.18.09
Timothy Dwight is rolling over in his grave
Dennis Prager on the moral cowardice of Yale University – the University Press and the administration – for not printing the Danish Mohammed cartoons – in a book about the Danish Mohammed cartoons.
07.07.09
File under: Glad I haven’t plunged headlong into Catholicism
Pope Benedict, whose writings when he was a cardinal I found impressive, has imbibed some kind of Kool-Aid, I guess. At any rate, he’s clearly an economic illiterate, if this report is accurate.
UPDATE: Then again, that was the Reuters take on it. The Acton Institute seems to think his new encyclical is actually a call for a morally informed free market.
06.25.09
The Sanford matter
The guy can put on a heart-wrenching presser, can’t he? It was brimming with the requisite deep respect for the initial good intentions of his mistress to repair her own marriage, oozing with remorse for the spouse, sons, staff and state he let down, drenched in on-the-knees humble yearning to find a way back to spiritual health.
My favorite kind of movie is the noir-era morality play. Double Indemnity, A Place in the Sun, High Noon, Casablanca. They hinge on a moment in which a moral choice is set before someone with unmistakable clarity.
A lot of life is boring or exciting or stressful or interesting or funny or gratifying or whatever, but once in a while, it is uncompromisingly demanding. There are points along the vector at which we are called to make choices that tell God everything He needs to know about the quality of our souls. It’s not a matter of the “deep,” “complicated,” “untamed” nature we express as humans. The heart having its reasons and all that. that’s using the poetic stuff as a smokescreen for unvarnished spiritual failure.
What should Sanford do? He ought to resign as governor, completely remove himself from the public arena, and focus on the supremely uncomfortable work of repairing his role in his family.
At this point, a certain kind of BN reader will no doubt be interested in seeing if I have anything to say about Newt Gingrich, for whom I have expressed admiration on many levels. For the record, I think his failings in this regard disqualify him from seeking the presidency or other high public office ever again. I am curious as to how he and his daughter Jackie Cushman, with whom he recently wrote a book on the basic principles for a happy life, have forged a close relationship, given Newt’s tawdry treatment of her mother. Anybody out there know the inside scoop on this one?
I am also willing to believe that Newt’s conversion to Catholicism is his sincere desire to learn how to face his Lord squarely in all his shame and sinfulness and seek real forgiveness.
It’s also important to state that the behavior of a Sanford or a Gingrich in no way has anything to do with the principles they assert and defend in the realm of public-policy and cultural polemics. Free-market economics, a foreign policy that accounts for enemies, and, yes, the championing of Judeo-Christian values, are good and immutable whether espoused by saints or scoundrels.
When it comes to putting those principles into law or executive policy, though, we must insist on that being done by people who hold themselves to a higher standard than adulters with good minds and intentions.
06.11.09
Why don’t you America-haters just come out and say “waterboarding”?
Last night I was really proud of Mrs. BN for something she observed and remarked on.
The Presbyterian Church in which I grew up – and, in fact, in which Mrs. BN and I got married – is just a few blocks from where I live. It’s been years since I darkened the door there. I tried it a few times a few years back, but quickly detected that same odor of leftism that made me leave the Unitarian church a few years earlier.
The congregation’s lurch to the left had begun when I was a kid. The minister at the time got it very involved in the National Coundil of Churches. Shortly after I was confirmed at age fourteen my parents quit going and quit supporting it financially. My dad took the pastor out to lunch, because he thought a respectful explanation of where he was coming from was in order. he told him the final straw was the sending of local money to Angela Davis’s defense fund during the time she was on trial for that courtroom shooting.
I knew that things had gone downhill over the years. We’ve al seen the stats on declining membership in mainline Protestant denominations. I wrote my master’s thesis on the subject. I’ve had ways of keeping up with developments at the local church. The local “Peace Fellowship” meets there once a month. A few months back, I became aware that it had declared itself a “progressive Christian community.”
Recently, the church has taken to prominently hanging a banner on its fence by the sidewalk that says, “Torture is a moral issue.” Every time I pass it, I give it the finger and mutter to myself, “Fine. Tell it to countries that torture.”
Back to Mrs. BN. Last night she asked if I’d seen it. She said she was well aware what it was implying. She said she found the moral preening involved in its display supremely off-putting. She wondered if anybody in the congregation had ever watched any jihadist beheading videos.
Many times a day, I look at her and realize I’ve got a real keeper, but there are exceptional moments when it becomes resoundingly clear.
06.03.09
Our garbage-hearted dictator and his utterly superficial interest in anything spiritual
He says we’re one of the world’s largest Muslim nations.
As BN has pointed out, from a statistical standpoint, we’re a significantly larger Buddhist nation.
And, why doesn’t TCM, The Aquarian Totalitarian, the ultimate danger to humankind’s survival, state forthrightly the truth that we are the second-largest Jewish nation on earth?
More to the point, why doesn’t he have the balls to retract his statement that the United States of America isn’t a Christian nation?
04.11.09
“Here on Calvary’s hill, all is fulfilled”
“Death on a Friday Afternoon” by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things. (HT: The Anchoress)
Longtime BN readers have had the opportunity to see the evolution of my spiritual views. I still put my observations and reflections on such matters in the “Religion and Spirituality” category. You who visit here will be among the first to know when I characterize such writings as a specifically Christian viewpoint.
Did I say “when?”
I’ve been going to church – Catholic Mass – for nearly a year now. It still feels a little funny, like wearing a type of clothing I’d never considered remotely like my style, or taking an occupation that seemngly was utterly outside the scope of my proclivities. My reasons for committing my Sunday mornings thus were many and multileved.
I think the closest to summing them up is to say that somewhere inside me I was starved for something undeniably real. Another thing longtime BN readers know is that I am one fed-up individual. So much of our postmodern world is a blatantly deceptive dog-and-pony show. There are so many charlatans who have assumed the mantle of leader or visionary or spokesperson for supposed virtues, and it’s made for a world that mostly makes me angry and scared. I’ll make no bones about it; I’m terrified about the prospects for our species. The other side of that is that it has cut significantly into my capacity for joy.
I’ve tried to take some time to engage in those little pastimes and indulgences that had always brought me joy. I’ve also tried to cultivate excellence in the endeavors that comprise my professional life – music and writing. Still, it has felt as if I were moving though a world of nearly unmitigated dross.
The temptation at such a juncture is to turn to cynicism. I never really entertained that seriously. I think the degree to which I’ve always found cynicism unattractive in others foreclosed that option.
So I was left with no other choice but to search for what is real. I started to seriously consider the testimony of Christians whose lives, work in various fields, and quality of thought I had long admired. A lot of these people were converts, either to Christianity altogether or to a serious commitment to live and pray as Christians. There was a clear and consistent pattern of these people becoming serious about leading Roman Catholic lives. (Newt Gingrich, who converted a couple of weeks ago, is the latest in this group.)
These people look to Jesus for their instruction in how to love. I made a point of delving as deeply as possible into why they did so and what they were learning as a result.
As I said in last Sunday’s Palm Sunday post, I have come to see how puny and inadequate were the models I had for Jesus and his place in the universe for so many years, these labels I affixed to him such as “wayshower,” “teacher,” “enlightened being.” Am I ready to say, “Now I see that he is the only son of the living God?” That is the biggie here on this Easter weekend 2009. I’d better be candid and say I still respond to that question with the observation that there is broad leeway in the terms “only son” and “living God,” and that I’m still sorting out all the interpretations therein.
Maybe these newly serious figures I admire and who inspired me to take my own search more seriously would upbraid me on this point. Maybe they’d say, “No, there’s not this leeway you speak of. It’s perfectly straightforward.” If so, I have no choice but to say that I have some more maturing to do, do I? Still, I’d like to think they’d give me some points for being thorough and unsparing in my approach to that hilltop, where the confession is made in such a way that there is no undoing it.
I know I’m grateful to Jesus Christ for what he willingly went through that Friday two thousand-plus years ago. What I mean by that is not something I’m in a postion to adequately articulate here. I will just say that to openly express this gratitude awakens some inkling in me that there is hope amidst the tawdry counterfeit I see all around me in this lonely and terrified world.
04.05.09
Different from any other
It’s interesting, on various Christian holidays, to read each of the four Gospel accounts of why that particular day is so venerated. Each telling of it brings details that lend the entire story a certain narrative flavor. A certain set of things is put before us to ponder.
In Luke’s telling of the entry into Jerusalem, there is a scene in which the Pharisees basically tell Jesus, “look, you have to tell your people to cool it.” One can be pretty sure, based on what has come before as an indication that the Pharisees have had it in for Jesus for some time and knew if he actually came to Jerusalem there would be, by their definition, trouble, that Jesus grasped the full implications of their warning. Still in reply, he said, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
How to contemplate the levels of significance in this short sentence! What he’s saying is that someone, something would have to cry out for the significance of this ostensibly simple act of an itinerant preacher on a donkey and his friends entering the capital city of an outlying Roman protectorate.
At church last week, the sermon had to do with this notion of Jesus’s hour. In the Gospel of John in particular, there are several references to it. For instance, in the wedding-feast story, Jesus responds to his mother’s informing him that the wine has run out with a seeming non-sequitor: “My hour has not yet come.” (The pastor said that Jesus did in fact turn the water into wine for the guests, no doubt in response to “the look” with which everyone with a mother is familiar.)
This “hour” actually refers to this entire week that begins with Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem. It is so central, not even just to humankind but to the fate of the stones, to the progression through time of the entire cosmos, that something would have to cry out about it even if human believers were silenced.
I’m starting to see how puny the models were by which I regarded Jesus for so many years. “Teacher.” “Way-shower.” “Holy man.” “Enlightened being.” No. Humankind has had plenty of them throughout its history and they have contributed much, but this was the Creator of it all, come down into the midst of that creation to turn it on its axis, overcome it, transform it, if one would but incline one’s heart and still one’s mind enough to let that in.
03.29.09
Conscience and culture
Acton Institute president Rev. Robert Sirico’s letter to Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins
03.24.09
God-and-life lovers speak up
80,000 of them, to be exact. TCM is the president, so they may not be able to preven his commencement address at Notre Dame, but you have to give them credit for exercising their freedom in this environment in which it’s waning.
03.16.09
He’s going to form a prayer group in lieu of joining a church
Because “it’s hard to pin down his theological leanings.”
TCM is no more Christian than he is patriotic.
03.14.09
Today’s must-read
Larrey Anderson’s essay at The American Thinker, “The Myth of Relativism and the Cult of Tolerance.”
03.01.09
Put notes together; don’t try to change human nature
I was watching Mike Huckabee’s interview with hip-hop pioneer Russell Simmons on Huckabee’s Fox News show and it triggered a stream of thoughts I shall herewith try to tie together into a coherent observation.
Huckabee asked Simmons about current projects and Simmons launched into an exuberant description of his new website, which involves the web-type stuff that is pretty much the base line for such projects: news, entertainment (I guess that means “music”) and networking possibilities. Simmons was particularly excited that the hip-hop vibe permeating his venture connects the kids of Compton with the kids of Beverly Hills. They can dig where each other is coming from, doncha understand? The privileged class can hear directly from the disadvantaged class.
I got to thinking about last week’s lecture in the rock-music history class I teach at our local community college. I talked about the folk boom, how it got started with Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 paper submitted to that year’s American Historical Association convention, and how that was followed by John Lomax’s documenting of cattle-trail and pioneer songs (Lomax was the person who published the words and music to “Home on the Range” and “Git Along Little Dogies”.) Then we got into how John’s son Alan Lomax became the chief archivist for musical forms that would have otherwise died out. What I then made sure my students knew was that he, ensconsed in his Greenwich Village hub, the knowing friend of Communists and fellow travelers such as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.
I think about Seeger’s performances at labor union rallies in the early 1940s. I think about some actually admirable efforts some twenty years later, by Seeger and such younger folkies as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, at the southern voter registration drives.
There’s been this sense of pushing a vision forward, of being confident that, through music and other forms of expression, one can enlist a critical mass of humanity in this notion that history can be ignored, that some instant salve, some magic alternative to the free market and a system of international relations based on wariness and lots of dry powder can be administered, that has come to dominate our culture.
The latest evidence of that for me is one of my students who wants to write her paper on Bob Dylan and his influence on 1960s young people’s views of war.
I’m working on finding a way to encourage her to hold off on any research, let alone committing a word to paper, until she’s heard my lecture on the history of the New Left and the history of the nation of Vietnam.
What happened when Seeger and his gang of Communists made sure they’d left an indelible mark on Western culture was the hard-to-undo association with of a marvelous aspect of human experience such as music with this sense that its function was to energize people to “change the world.”
I think one conclusion we can draw from this whole area of inquiry is the undeniability of Christianity’s assertion that the human soul is sullied and that no social force can redeem human history. You have to throw God overboard, as Communists have done, to even think that some other way of proceeding is possible.
It’s often said – and I’m on board with this – that conservatism is simultaneously optimistic and tragic in its outlook. Conservatism understands the jaw-dropping potential that human beings have for affecting progress; it also understands that the human being will without fail succumb to ungodly thoughts, inclinations and actions.
This whole “keep on pushin’” impetus serves something other than reality. I’d at least like to see music – one of the most precious aspects of reality as far as I’m concerned – restored to its proper place in the way we proceed as a species.
