Response to “Secular Theocracy”

David J. Theroux, of The Independent Institute asked me to read and offer comment on his essay, “Secular Theocracy, Part 1.” In it, he raises some excellent points from a historical perspective and based on thoughts by C. S. Lewis and William Cavanaugh, and I encourage you to read it. My thoughts here expand on those of Theroux’s.

Theroux begins by explaining how religion is being marginalized and expunged from every area of public discourse because it is accused of being factious and leads to violence. He writes, “A secularized public square policed by government is viewed as providing a neutral, rational, free, and safe domain that keeps the “irrational” forces of religion from creating conflict and darkness. And we are told that real progress requires expanding this domain by pushing religion ever backward into remote corners of society where it has little or no influence. In short, modern America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God.”

This idea that secularism is ‘worldview neutral’ is so deeply ingrained into most secularists that they are fish that don’t know they are wet. In the very expressing of such a view, they promote secularism as being inherently better than any spiritually based worldview. In fact, they explicitly see themselves as more sophisticated, having matured past the need for such ‘primitive’ beliefs. Thus, they demonstrate the lack of neutrality, and are no better than the ‘narrow-minded exclusivism’ of theistic worldviews which they deride.

Ten Years

It is right and appropriate to jump on the bandwagon of everyone remembering 9/11. It has fundamentally shaped how we have interacted with the rest of the world, almost as much as WWII. Yes, I still maintain that WWII has so far had a greater impact that 9/11, but it had a 60 year head start. Given time, 9/11 may well surpass it, though both world wars set the stage for 9/11 in how the Middle East was carved up by the fading colonial powers. We did very little to alleviate those problems and thus have inherited them.

It has shaped my life directly as well. While I don’t know anyone personally that was lost that day, one very close friend lost a friend in the towers. Another acquaintance lost a brother I think in the Pentagon. Friends from grad school were on the observation deck the Saturday 3 days before. Mike remarked to me in an email shortly afterwards, “I remember standing on the roof and thinking how solid it was.”

"Year in Review"

It is strange how one day makes a difference just because of how it falls in some arbitrary numbering scheme. Until something less than 2000 years ago, December 25 was just a cold day in the Northern Hemisphere. Until 2001, September 11 was just another fall day early in the school year. And just because of the way the Julian calendar was set up and corrected over time, today is the last day of the year.

Even so, people feel a need to sit back and look over the events over the last 365 days and draw significance from them. It often gets reduced to lists, such as the “10 Best and Worst…,” who was born and died, how long one’s resolutions lasted and so on. The born and died is actually probably the most significant of these, and I like looking at those lists because it reminds us of our mortality and the influence that those had that are no longer with us. Some I’d heard about, and some I hadn’t. More and more of the actors I grew up watching, enjoying and even admiring, are gone.

Some have said that the only constant is change, and this time provides the opportunity to examine those changes and meditate on their impact on our lives. Which changes did we induce and which came to us externally? How then do we respond to them and be more proactive today? The opportunities for both reflection and navel-gazing are endless.

What does God think of this? Is this some arcane form of idolatry, or some distraction from looking to Him? Not necessarily. Throughout Scripture, He commanded the Hebrews to remember their past and key events in it. Their feasts, festivals and other celebrations had the purpose of reminding them who they are and Whose they are. They also pointed forward to the consummation of history in the incarnation, so that those with eyes to see would recognize the Messiah when He came. Even in the Gospels, Christ required us to remember. We are to remember Him, His sacrifice, and His resurrection through Communion. What a word—communion—to come together in a profound unity, joining as the singular Body and Bride of Christ to remember the day of our Redemption and to prepare us for the day of our Marriage to Him. Looking back and also pointing forward. Either without the other is incomplete and will lead us astray.

We look back to see how we got through the tough times and how we lost the good times so that we can recognize the signposts ahead. We look ahead to see the coming together of all of the threads and pieces into a single story, a complete resolution revealed, the darkly-seeing mirror cleared, giving meaning to the lessons of the past. Well and good is January named. Janus, the doubly-faced Roman god that looked both backwards and forward, symbolizes the continuity of time and our need to live in the present, yet fully aware of both the past and the future.

Someone once said that for most people, history began the day they were born, which is why older people tend to be wiser than younger. The truly wise refuse to be bound by this axiom and seek to stretch their understanding of history beyond their own experience.

Even in time, context is important. The past, present and future have a dynamic relationship to the person riding the temporal wave through the universe, and wisdom is found in rightly reading its currents.

SDG

American Mythology

Continuing with my train of thought from yesterday, I have often struggled with certain aspects of our history. There are many truly glorious moments when we as a nation have demonstrated the very best of what it means to be human beings. There are also times where we have shown the very worst side of humanity.

Were the American and Texas Revolutions consistent with the theory of “just war?” When I honestly look over it, I’m seriously inclined to say no. But am I glad they happened? Absolutely. Did we break our treaties with the American Indians (Native Americans)? Yes. Am I glad those happened? Not a bit. Am I the standard by which our national actions/policies to be judged? Not hardly. But I believe myself to be a reasonable person (as most of us usually do assess ourselves). I do believe in American exceptionalism in the sense that we have overall raised the standard of living of most of the world, we give the most charity and are the first to respond to international disasters and many other truly great and noble things. Yet we are far from sinless, and our exceptionalism would be greater if we were better at acknowledging our mistakes and doing what we can to make it right.

However, right now, it is fashionable in the media and the academy to highlight our sins and the skeletons in our closet. There are times and manners where honest self reflection are important and sins to be confessed and atoned for. What concerns me is the titillating way this is being done. We need to realize where we’ve gone wrong and hold our government accountable for those actions. That is when critical navel gazing is beneficial. What is being done now is not beneficial, nor is it being done in a beneficial manner.

We also, as a nation, must have pride in our country and recognize what we’ve brought to the world to improve it. We also need to realize that our good deeds are not necessarily negated by our bad ones. Scripture says that where there is no vision, a people perish. Some translations specify that as the visions of a prophet, others leave it vague. Either way, nations that do not have a common goal or purpose are weaker and less effective and do not shine with the best light of God’s image in which we are created. We need to hear the stories of our true heroes, our true accomplishments, our true visions for what the nation and world can be—not necessarily at the expense of other nations, but rather in bringing the world as a whole to a higher level.

Someone once said, “Whether you say, ‘I can,’ or ‘I can’t,’ you are right.” The same is true for the psyche of a nation. Whether we say, “We are evil,” or “We are a noble, but human, nation,” we are right. Of which nation do you want to be a citizen?

SDG

Give Thanks!

Happy Thanksgiving!

May the time with your friends and family be a time of renewal and peace.

Passover, like most things God institutes, fulfills multiple purposes, but the stated one is so that Israel may remember their history and God’s faithfulness in creating their nation. In some ways, Thanksgiving is the American Passover. Let us share the story of His faithfulness to us. Share with your family history—the history of your family, the history of your country, the history of your faith.

Share with them the story of our freedom and why it is precious.

SDG

"It's a Miracle!"

A variant of an email I once received:

“A dear old saint sat at the back of a sermon on the parting of the Red Sea where a typical liberal minister begins…
Almost immediately she stands up and cries out “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who drowned Pharaoh and the armies of Synod in the Red Sea!”.
Rather taken aback, the minister continues to outline how there was only 5cm of water at the time, etc etc. and Israel crossed across what was, technically, a shallow ford.
Not to be outdone, the saint rises again and exclaims, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who drowned Pharaoh and the armies of Synod in just 5cm of water in the Red Sea!”  (http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/26627, accessed 10/13/2010)

While current archaeological/scientific evidence tends to support the Biblical account of the event, the anecdote offers an important clue about the nature of miracles, that of the agent behind the miracle, not the mechanism of its occurrence.

Continuing the theme discussed over the last several days, (and reinforcing a recent comment to Tuesday’s post) the existence or proposal of a natural mechanism does not negate the possibility of Divine action. When in my teens, I read a Reader’s Digest article about how the explosive destruction of the volcanic Mediterranean island of Thera (aka Santorini) could easily have provided the mechanism by which the various Mosaic plagues upon Egypt, including the Red Sea crossing, could have occurred.

Thus, the naturalist says that it isn’t a miracle. Well, how then do they explain that Moses predicted the beginning and ending of each plague? I somehow doubt he had sufficient understanding of geological processes and environmental impacts at the time to recognize the volcano’s eruption and know all of those details so precisely. It seems to me that many of the miracles in the Bible are predicted to occur ahead of time as a verification of their authenticity, so that even if they do occur via a natural mechanism, the foreknowledge would still be a supernatural event, and therefore still a miracle.

It is consistent with God’s MO in the Bible to use an efficient natural/historical process to bring about complex events at precisely the right time to accomplish His purposes. What is more amazing—doing a simple series of plagues, giving Moses the power to start/stop them or using one single event to cause a cascade of discrete and varied occurrences resulting in the liberation of a nation of slaves in an orderly fashion?

I find myself kind of hoping the Reader’s Digest version is right.

SDG