Dear Friends,
For the last ten weeks (boy, that went fast!) I’ve been writing an essay on one particular topic, but today I’d like to serve up thoughts on a number of things that caught my interest over the past week.
Re-mixed Religion
Last week’s post, “The Old Gods Are Woke” was the most-read so far for The Square Inch, so thank you so much for sharing. I outlined how the revolutionaries in Capitol Hill, Seattle are not just agitating for a political platform; they are religious zealots. You might have wondered what kind of religion this could possibly be? After all, these people all seem to belong to the category known as the “Nones”—people who don’t check the “religion” box on the government census.
In providential timing, I just received in the mail an important new book by Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. I won’t hold it against Burton that she holds a D.Phil in theology from an inferior school (Oxford University—I kid), and I’m happy to report she’s an excellent writer and something of a journalist. She gives an “on the ground” look at America’s new paganism, and her term for it is the “Re-mixed.” People are creating and curating their own religious sensibilities—re-mixing from a variety of sources—just like they do their Instagram profiles.
Isaiah 44 records a lengthy piece of satire spoken by the LORD (yes, God is a satirist—long live the Babylon Bee!), mocking the idolater who cuts down a tree and uses it for fire, warmth, and food, and then takes some of the wood and bows down to it, saying, “Save me! You are my god!” The idolatry is the same (self-creating the object of our worship), but the medium is different. Instead of wood, it is now art, performance, music, pixels, and social media profiles.
If you want to understand the times—that is, if you’re a pastor or church planter wanting to know your audience, or just a layperson who wants to figure out what’s going on with your weird “spiritual” neighbor—then I’d recommend reading Burton’s book. I haven’t finished it yet, but she’s promised to explain how CrossFit is a new religion. I’m sticking around for that.
Be Careful What Your Rhetoric Wishes For
The Apostle James tells us that the tongue can be as destructive as a forest fire. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is something very young children say, but anyone with any life experience at all knows it is a lie.
Here’s an example of how destructive words can be: for weeks now people have been agitating to “abolish the police” and “f—the cops.” Now, you and I know that most people don’t really mean to abolish the police. The best advocates want to explore different modes or styles of policing, and all kinds of reforms related to training, policies, procedures, and so forth. What’s wrong with a little hyperbolic rhetoric to make the point? Well…
What if the police take you at your word? What if they get tired of being slandered and kicked around in the media? What if they rebel against you encouraging people to disrespect, spit on, and insult them? They might just quit. There are unconfirmed rumors that in Atlanta, officers are just walking off the job or not responding to calls. Someone in the area told me that the Atlanta mayor asked nearby localities for policing help and was refused. Now, I don’t have any reason to believe these rumors are true. I don’t think they are. My point is: they could be true. It would not be shocking for them to be true.
If we keep whipping up the rhetorical flames and blowing oxygen into our already very tense social tinderbox, we are going to get the fire James talks about.
We are in desperate need of level-headed and wise people speaking out on these issues, and I have to say that this article by Coleman Hughes is one of the best I’ve seen. Please take the time to read it, and pass it on to others. In this noisy commentary environment we need the good stuff to get wide circulation.
How Dare You!?
A couple of weeks ago in a Miscellany section I linked to an essay I wrote for the Journal of Christian Legal Thought called, “Victimhood Is Not a Virtue.” The topic was the minor skirmish caused by Andrew Peterson’s release of his music video for his song “Is He Worthy?” If you didn’t read it, that’s okay. The gist: some people decided (pretended?) to be offended by the racial makeup of his choir and managed to get him to apologize in sackcloth and ashes. In the essay, I try to unpack what is really going on with such outrage mobs. (Spoiler: it isn’t Christian)
This week Pastor Kevin DeYoung wrote an article for The Gospel Coalition entitled, “It’s Time For a New Culture War Strategy.” His argument? Christians should encourage having lots of children and discipling them.
And…cue the outrage:
And:
Yes, that’s exactly what Kevin meant: “You singles don’t have a role to play.” My friend Thaddeus Williams calls this “Being a Newman.” I’ll let him explain:
DON'T BE A NEWMAN
Conversations about social justice in our polarized age tend to generate more heat than light because of a phenomenon we may call “the Newman Effect.” In 2018 Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson joined BBC Channel 4 host Cathy Newman to discuss gender inequality in what became one of the most viral interviews of the 21st century. The lively exchange sparked the famous “So you’re saying” meme, based on Newman’s repeated use of that phrase to interpret Peterson’s statements in the most unflattering and inflammatory light possible.
"You’re saying that women want to dominate…"
"So you’re saying that anyone who believes in equality… should basically give up, because it ain’t gonna happen….
You’re saying that’s fine. The patriarchal system is just fine…""You’re saying that women are not intelligent enough to run these top companies…"
"You’re saying that Transactivists could lead to the deaths of millions of people…"
"You’re saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters…"
Professor Peterson, of course, wasn’t saying any of that. His perspective did not fit neatly into the black-and-white boxes of our day, so anything that seemed out-of-synch with Newman’s perspective was taken in the most extreme, cartoonish, and damning way possible.
The truth is, we are all Cathy Newmans now, and that has become a serious existential threat to the unity of the church. “Racism is still a problem.” “So you’re saying we should abandon the Gospel and embrace neo-Marxism.” “Black lives matter.” “So you’re saying all lives don’t matter.” “The fact that over 70 percent of black children are born without two parents in the home should matter to us.” “So you’re saying you’re a racist, blaming the victim, and saying the black community’s problems are completely their own fault.” “Marriage is a complementary union between a male and a female.” “So you’re saying you hate gay people.” “During the Covid-19 pandemic, we should shelter in place to protect the most vulnerable.” “So you’re saying you are anti-freedom and want us all to bow to tyranny.” “We should re-open the economy to help those whose livelihoods and mental health are being devastated by quarantine.” “So you’re saying you want the virus to spread and more people to die.” The list could go on and on.
This is what conversations about important questions have reduced to in our day and age. The only way someone could possibly disagree with me is if they are a bad person, a sworn enemy of justice. And so we tar-and-feather any dissonant idea with the absolute worst ideologies we can imagine. The result is rampant self-righteousness, a loss of humble self-criticism, widespread confirmation bias, a loss of real listening required to reach nuanced truths, and pervasive partisanship, a loss of real community that requires us to give charity and the benefit of the doubt to others. As Christians, let’s do better.
Can I get an “Amen”?
Finally, this one’s my favorite:
King David, you’re hereby canceled!
“Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth.” —Psalm 127:4
Look: this is an immature, fabricated “controversy,” and is only important to the extent we can understand why this keeps happening. So I recommend checking out my aforementioned article, which starts on page 17 of that link.
Miscellany
We are well into the summer months and still not a single baseball game has been played. What’s a fan to do? Well, there is one sport that is well-positioned to take advantage of the times: it can be played online.
I am talking, of course, about chess. You might laugh, but watching top-level chess is a hobby of mine (weirdly, I don’t play very much). In the wake of COVID-19, quite a few online tournaments have been organized, and all the elite players have been good sports about it. You think watching online chess is boring? It isn’t, if you know a little about this amazing game. At the starting point in the following clip, world ranked #2 Fabiano Caruana plays a Queen move that threatens to crash in on World Champion Magnus Carlsen’s King. It looks disastrous. Carlsen just ignores it. And, well, the three Grandmaster commentators are impressed.
Brilliant winning move from the Champ. If you’re at all interested in what chess can teach us about life, here’s a piece I wrote years ago on the subject.
If you don’t believe chess can be a popular spectator sport, tell that to Hikaru Nakamura, The Grandmaster Who Got Twitch Hooked On Chess.
When it comes to race relations, we still haven’t found what we’re looking for. That reminds me of one of my favorite instances of racial harmony—when four punk kids from Ireland made a trip to Harlem. I’ll let them have the last word this week!