The Victorians worried that increasing wealth and education, with all its good effects, would also make them soft. Upper class men, in particular, worked hard to avoid this by engaging in “manly” practices such as boxing. Parents of upper class children knew the disease of idleness and spent a good bit of time trying to make sure children did not find that comfort made their children unable to handle the rough and tumble of life. They understood that there were virtues that were easier for the poor to gain. They believed that a hard life, if not so difficult as to sap energy, gave a certain robustness to life. In short, many believed a moderate life that steered clear of the debilitation of grinding poverty and the softness of wealth was best. Teddy Roosevelt, heir to fortune and self-created cowboy, is a good example of the practice of avoiding “softness.” He went to Harvard and did punishing labor. He feared the debilitation of a soft life.

It is easy enough to ridicule such fears, but perhaps the Victorians were right. Wealth has spread so quickly that combined with miracles of technology many folk now can live like the wealthy of that earlier era. The difference is that the wealth came fast enough that the social lessons of the wealthy did not have time to spread with it. Social norms spread less quickly than the X-box. Parents do not realize that they are raising their children in a child-centered way that would have horrified the Victorians. Surely the notion that idle hands are the “devil’s playground” does not seem so foolish when we look at the hours youngsters have to waste on self-indulgent “my space” work. Even many home school parents help their children avoid the manual labor that may, in fact, teach some good lessons. At times, I think my children the only Anglos in a five mile radius who cut their own grass and weed their own lawn. Do we see signs of this softness in our fear of any but the slightest discomfort or failure? In our desire to have government or anybody act as our nanny and make the problems go away? In our impatience with an task that takes longer than days to solve?

I don’t know, but it seems worth thinking about to me.

Suppose students in school were very interested in whether Anastasia the daughter of the last Tsar of Russia escaped. The topic is not central to the curriculum. . . but no good teacher would pass up the chance to use student interest to motivate a class. Suppose students came to science class with a keen interest in astrology. . . a good teacher would gear into their interest, even if it ended up attacking astrology, to build on a solid love of astronomy. How could she ignore it? Student questions would lead to teacher discussion. . . and if the teacher knows such questions are coming, in fact come every year, she would be a fool not to build it into the curriculum.

Whatever the merits of creationism OR intelligent design as science, and I find merits in both, the rulings by Courts that teachers cannot motivate a class, prepare for questions she knows she will get, or make this student interest part of the curriculum to spur discussion and, gasp, actual interest by “non-science” types in what is, after all, a general education requirement for all high schools students is bizarre. It is related to an irrational fear of religion (Asimov’s Armies of the Night) and a prejudice against religious ideas that is so pervasive in the upper echelons of science.

If we treated creationism or intelligent design the way any good teacher would want to teach it, then it would be part of the curriculum. Hostile teachers would roast it and I assume sympathetic teachers would (subtly) praise it. I trust teachers. Why don’t Darwinists?

Commentators in the United States have been waiting for some time for Iraq to break out into civil war. This has always been the “sophisticated” view of Iraq. However, it seems to me that one key element needed for a civil war, and not just civil unrest, is an opposing leader or ideology. Who is leader of the Reds or Whites in this so-called Iraq civil war? Who is the Lenin or the Wrangel? Where is the Richmond and who will be Jefferson Davis?

Iraq has communities that hate each other. This can lead to terrorism and horrible civil disturbance as we are seeing. There are yet no leaders, widely respected amongst millions or at least hundreds of thousands, who would lead a civil war. There is no ideology to fuel their rage or any clearly marked geographical boundaries for the fight. To have a civil war one must have a Cause for which one is willing to die. . . abstract hatred of somebody else is not enough.

Times are tough in Iraq, and even Bill Buckley has turned sour on the War, but I still think there are good reasons to hope. It is Iran that worries me.

Here is a special sub-category of bad arguments: ones found in that Code book.

My favorite: if the Christians had adopted Gnosticism they would have avoided their obvious hatred of women.

Hah! Google the Gnostic texts and read for yourself that Gnosticism was very, very misogynistic. It viewed women in a much lower way than any reading of the orthodox texts can produce. The Dan Brown argument is not just wrong, but magically wrong in getting Gnosticism, history, and the Bible wrong.

Let’s have a Middlebrow contest! All three of us speak on Christian topics. . . and get whacked around for it on occasion. What is the worst argument you have heard guys?

In the list of bad arguments I have heard, this one seems the best:

Christians should add Sophia, a woman concept, to the Trinity or admit they believe in gay marriage.

I have heard this, or versions of it, more than once. Since we have a world-class Trinity scholar here, I will leave the theological response to Fred, but put simply this error seems a part of a culture that cannot imagine love without thinking of sex. Doesn’t anyone have friends anymore? Cannot anyone imagine the love between a Father and His Son?

Yesterday a brave and bold man died: Henry Morris.

Who was Henry Morris? He was one of the founders of the modern day “young earth creationist” movements. With a small group of devoted Christians, he built on the work done by some earlier pioneers and increased the sophistication of “creationism” by many orders of magnitude. He continued to do this as the head of a new think tank, the Institute for Creation Research. He was willing to give up a good post in a major school to take an assignment in Christian education.

He was a creative thinker, if not always as rigorous as a philosopher would wish, and once in talking to a leading skeptic (now himself gone) I was delighted to hear him say, “Henry Morris was one the smartest men I have met.” There was no doubt of that and no doubt that he had great personal integrity and courage.

He helped many folk of my generation look at the world in a new way and if the detailed aspects of his work have been surpassed it is only because he enabled the revolution in thought that made it possible. He had the courage to defy what was deemed “responsible” in his era, a time of intellectual grey suited conformity, and allowed hope for genuine change. Himself a conservative man with the virtues of a better and earlier time, he was an odd revolutionary, but so it goes in the history of ideas.

I am the only one on this blog who would agree with Morris in his view of reading Genesis and in the general approach of reconciling it with the data of science. However, I am sure we all agree that we need a new generation of Christians who place the Bible and religious knowledge at the center of their view of education and philosophy. Of course, we believe that based on best reason and best experience and based on the witness of lives well lived such as that of Dr. Henry Morris.

May his soul and that of all the faithful departed rest in peace.

Thoughts at the 2/25/2006 Prehn-Ellis Wedding

A sign you are getting old is when you can say that you have known the bride and groom since they were children. That is not quite true of our relationship to the bride since we first talked with her when she was a senior in high school, but is essentially true of our relationship with Jimmy. . .first met as a very young and very eager apologetics student. Hope and I have watched Jimmy and Sarah mature and grow . . . first in Torrey Honors at Biola University and later as adults. Jimmy in particular has been a good friend in these latter years . . . helping us around our home and in ministry. They stand before us no longer as students or learners, but as peers.

I am proud of both of you and grateful for the honor of speaking to you on this day when you enter the “halls of highest human happiness.”
The wisdom of Sacred Scripture is always unexpected. As I prayed about what to share with you, Scriptures related to the creation of families came to my mind.

First we hear from Genesis 2 about the reaction of the first man on seeing the first woman.

23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman, [k] ‘
for she was taken out of man.”

Moses comments on this reaction.

24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

How far does this leaving go? Since later in Genesis we see the importance of the extended family the modern notion that the husband and wife start a totally new, rootless, family cannot be correct. Instead, this message seems addressed to a culture where the opposite problem could be true. It warns that the husband and wife are starting their own offshoot of the husband’s family and that the husband cannot allow his relationship with his mother and father to smother this new planting. He must leave the tent of his father and have his own tent even though it is in the paternal camp.

Jimmy: must not forget your roots even as you grow. You are still a Prehn, but at the same time you are starting a new Prehn off-shoot full of hope and opportunity. You begin anew. . . to paraphrase Anne of Green Gables the page is fresh with no mistakes. Don’t be afraid of the past!

Carry the best of it with you and leave the rest behind in the privacy of your fellowship with Sarah.
Do not let Sarah be overwhelmed by the Prehn-ishness of her new state and never let any prior commitment to father or mother come between you. When choices are to be made, Sarah is now your first and greatest love. You will honor your ancestors, but you will love your wife as Christ loved the Church laying down your life for her.

This image of a new family that remains connected to the paternal line in honor, if not in obedience carries beautiful implications for the bride as we can see in the book of Ruth.

15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Sometimes it shocks folk to discover that this set of verses frequently used in weddings is addressed from a daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. This is not the sort of relationship that we usually imagine with our mothers-in-law! But having lost her husband, Ruth modeled the deeper truth of her new social status and not what was easy and most comfortable. Naomi freed her from her need to stay, but Ruth loved her new family so dearly that she refused to break covenant. As a result she become one of the mothers of our Lord.
Ruth had become part of Naomi’s family when she married her son and this was an honor she did not intend to lose! Today Sarah will become a Prehn . . . a change that our culture wisely symbolizes with the change of her name.
The implications for both of you are profound.

Sarah, you must realize that God will use Jimmy to speak to you. In this present age, the American temptation is always to make our relationship with God wholly private and combined with our pride this is a dangerous thing.
You have entered into a new community and your deep roots, though they come with you, are being transplanted. As the father of two daughters, I know that someday, if God wills it, they will cease to be called by the name of my family and be called by a new name. That is not sad to me, because that is the job of the father of girls. I have raised them to be the Sarah for some future Abraham.
Daughters leave father and mother and join their husband’s family. So one family gives its best treasure to another family in the greater Family of God to enrich its line.

That is why it is so necessary that children marry within the Faith. Ruth adopted the “gods” of her new family and fortunately for her the god of her new family was the true God. By staying within the family of God, the bride makes this great change in a smooth and natural way. She moves to a new off shoot of the family of God and does not really leave the deeper communion with her parents. They are transplanted, as you are being today, not ripped up and place in foreign soil.
And in a sense Sarah, you are to be the mother of a new people with your husband . . . a symbol of Abraham to you.
Jimmy you cannot earn the love a woman as magnificent as Sarah. You can only glory in it and love her. Why are men chosen for this role? You can be sure it is not for merit, but despite it. You have become the spiritual head of a new home not because of your qualifications, but because of grace.

The very arbitrary nature of the Divine choice of men as heads of homes (as it seems to us) prevents any pride or domination. “Why me?” you will often wonder when you are pressed to leave and cleave to Sarah. Sometime that will be the “Why me?” of a leader in despair and very often (I promise!) the wonder of a man who feels infinitely lucky! At those times remind yourself that the “Why me?” is a reminder to look to the One who chose you.

Of course no human family is perfect. All of us carry baggage from the mistakes of our parents which we then (too often!) perpetuate as parents ourselves. I am thankful for my own parents and beg the indulgence of my own children. . . Our culture focuses so much on dysfunction that we often forget to thank our parents for the good that they have done. Sarah was brought to this lovely place by her parents. Jimmy was nourished by his family more than any other set of individuals on the planet. The good that they have, the truth that they know, and the beauty that they share is in great measure the cumulative gift of generations of Ellis and Prehn family members stretching back into history.

You join together two lines, but more than that you join together as a son of Adam and a daughter of Eve. You are fully human and yet there is the hope and potential for something more.

The marriage service says that “death will part” and that is a wise warning. This new family, this new unit, will not last forever. It has a purpose and that purpose knows an end. The day will come when the shadows will vanish and the types will find their fulfillment. All families will find their end and fulfillment in a greater wedding and in a greater union when every family will give itself, its best treasure, as a Bride to God. We shall all finally leave the cursed stock of Adam fully and be joined to Jesus Christ at last. In that shining moment, the wedding that has taken place here and that unfolds in the years to come will find its fulfillment.

In this wedding, Jimmy and Sarah, you have reminded us that some glad day we will stand with you as members of Christ’s church in a spiritual union so mysterious, so beautiful, and so profound that only the joy of your wedding day can imitate it. And there in that moment we will know perfect peace, perfect acceptance into an undying and fully functional family, locked forever in magnificent love with God.

Words are powerful. With a Dante class, I have been meditating on the nature of words. God used Words to create the cosmos. His Words are so powerful that they can level mountains and so beautiful that angels sing of them.

Dante wrote about Hell in magnificent poetry. At first that seems odd, until you remember that Hell is God’s Hell and not Satan’s. It is the cosmic reply to God’s justice. It reminds us of the old meanings of terrible and awful. This is an unpoetical age, perhaps the first in the Christian era when men did not express their deepest feelings in their best language instead of their worst. We are more apt to use the f-word than to chant. Now Michael Horton and other Christian theologians have defended the ability of Christians to swear at some times and in some places and I have no desire to argue with such distinguished company, but it seems sad to me like another sign of senility and decline. We may have to swear now, but I miss the music.

I long for the day when even the hardest thing in our cosmos brings beauty from our lips and not ugliness. Even so come quickly Lord Jesus!

I love the LA Times. Just when the world appears to be growing more sensible, just when my eighteen year old students have me convinced that an Age of Reason is about to dawn, the LA Times writes about religion. Here is their article on ID with my comments (as usual) in italics.

Article follows:

The divine irony of ‘intelligent design’
By Garret Keizer
GARRET KEIZER is the author of “Help: The Original Human Dilemma.”

February 24, 2006

ADVOCATES OF teaching “intelligent design” aren’t giving up, no matter the recent setbacks in California and Pennsylvania. In Utah, Texas, New York and elsewhere, they persist in trying to make science education subservient to a religious worldview. And yet the longer the controversy continues, the more it illustrates their own subservience to science.

It is just amazing how folk support their own world view. After all, a world view is the way folk rationally explain the world and their own experience of it. How could they have the boldness to support it? How could they dare to make science education subservient to it? Don’t they know that science education should be subservient to a secular world view?

Now the writer does an amazing back flip: ID folk want to control science education because they are subservient to science itself. One does not have to be a genius to guess what is coming next: the LA Times writer is the product of a defective liberal arts education and is about to split “scientific” ways of thinking from the “humanities.”

As its name suggests, the major premise of intelligent design is that the existence of a supreme designer can be inferred by evidence of his, her or its “intelligence.” And that premise rests in turn on an even more basic assumption: that intelligence is the most important, perceivable and telling attribute of God and of the creature supposedly created in God’s image.

The major premise of ID is not as stated. Are you shocked? ID is open to the possibility of evidence for design in biology and attempts to formalize how to find it. Think of ID as being the stage where the forensic scientist decides whether it was murder most foul or an accident when she examines the corpse. So to start ID proposes an “open philosophy of science.” Science should not decide before looking at the evidence that there was no “intelligent agent” behind the creation of biological structures. If ID wins the right to look at the evidence openly, it can then make the case that biological structures appear designed by a personal agent.

Who is this designer? ID science could not address that question by itself, though it might eliminate some possibilities (for example, space aliens) and point to some answers as more plausible than others (this Creator over that Creator).

For some reason, the Times writer then confuses believing that one attribute of God is most important or relevant in one area of life is the same as believing it the most important attribute of all. This is obviously fallacious. When selecting dinner for my wife last night at her birthday meal, I referred to her taste in food. That was the attribute of her character that was important at that time. However, safe to say it is not the attribute of her nature I view as most important over all.

In the same way, one attribute of God (if we want to move into philosophy of religion for a minute and away from ID per se) that might leave finger prints in creation visible to science is His reasonable design of natural structures. It would not, obviously, be the only one, but does seem one that would be worth exploring. Evidently, the LA Times writer wishes ID to do all the work of a full blown philosophy creation, but this it simply cannot do. It is a useful tool none-the-less to the religious and non-religious scientist open to personal agents acting in biology in detectable ways.

Minus the references to deity, this comes amazingly close to the same hierarchy of value on which the scientific worldview makes its case. Sense perception and logic — not sensuousness and emotion — are the keys to authentic understanding. Rationality will point us to God, if there is one. I think, therefore I am. He thinks like you can’t even begin to think, therefore he is God.

This paragraph confuses so many philosophical slogans that I suspect the writer just got out his quote book and ran down a few for his article.

Since Christian theism helped create modern science it should not shock the LA Times that it has a similar hierarchy of values. Christians believe sense perception and logic are keys to authentic understanding. Rationality will point us to God. Of course, unlike most of modern culture we have not suffered the split in our thinking that makes these the only keys to authentic understanding. As even a short read of this blog or a skim of my work related to ID would show beauty also accounts. Our pathway to God also accounts for art, love, and passion.

The writer however seems to think that being for logical thinking will destroy passion. His passionate dislike of Christian theism has destroyed his ability to write logically on this topic, but he should not generalize from his own experience. C.S. Lewis, to give but one example, could write logically and also create works of literary beauty like the Narnia books. If the writer would just relax a minute, look at actual Christianity, and not let his fears direct him then he would see that we have much in common with the world he acts as if he desires!

According to this mind-set, if we can discover a big wooden boat on Mt. Ararat and carbon date it to the sixth millennium BC, then the story of the flood in Genesis might be “true.” The authoritative shift is self-evident. It’s not a matter of “what the Bible says,” as authenticated by generations of shared cultural experience. It’s a matter of what science says — or can be forced to say — about the Bible, as verified by a body of data. If you’re a bit lost here as to whose mind-set I’m describing, that’s my point.

As far as I can tell, he is describing no actual persons mind set, which might be the problem.

If we found a big wooden boat on Mt. Ararat, then that would be evidence that the Genesis story is true. (Truth being a correspondence with reality.) However, there (obviously) could be other reasons for thinking the account true. No such ark has been found (to date), but I accept the story as true based on other lines of argument. Science is important, but not all important.

I should point out that the Ark has nothing to do with ID as an idea . . . but that the writer likes to confuse his discussion of philosophy with his discussion of Genesis. Since he assumes most LA Times readers would scoff at the “Ark story” being “true” (scientifically), he can encourage them to conflate this story with ID.

However, let us briefly address the writer’s confusions.

The Bible is an important source for truths. Some few of these truths touch on the external world (the empty tomb) and can (in theory) be verified by science. Other truths make philosophical or psychological claims that can be examined by those fields. It also makes claims about the nature of beauty and romance. All of these claims can also be examined.

If some truth of science supports the Bible’s claim, then that is evidence that our confidence in the Bible (in this area) is well placed. As reasonable and warm hearted people this is encouraging! Of course, this is not the only area in which the Bible has earned our confidence. The Bible could be true only in its philosophy and would thus become a book like Plato’s Republic, of limited use historically, but rich in philosophical wisdom.

However, the interest in supporting one view of the Bible (it makes proper claims about one aspect of Creation) should not be confused with our entire view of the Bible.

For the advocates of intelligent design, the loveliness of nature is a second-class road to truth. I

This is false. As the founder of the program that secular groups recognize as the “educational wedge” for ID (Torrey Honors Institute), we work hard to make beauty an equal player with the “good” and the “true.” Our curriculum reflects it. Every graduate receives a ring that boldly states it . . . each being engraved with the Latin for the good, the truth, and the beautiful.

Someone has not done any research.

t is “merely” aesthetic. In that regard, one notices that there is no campaign afoot to teach “divine inspiration” as the basis for the sacred works of Fra Angelico and Bach. “That’s next,” you say, and maybe it is next. The point here is that it wasn’t first, and it wasn’t first for a very good reason.

What? Is he denying that Bach was not inspired by God? Bach says he was. He notes it on all his work. When did the state decide saying what Bach said about his work was illegal to mention in class? Maybe when the state does that (as it has with some views of science), religious folk will get upset about it.

Once you have made intelligence supreme, you have elevated science to the highest form of knowing.

Well, intelligence is supreme, but science is not the only form of the practice of “intelligence.”

And with that move, the self-appointed champions of religious tradition paint themselves into the same corner that they would like to lead us out of. Using intelligent design as a buttress against scientific hegemony is, to borrow from a Yiddish proverb, as outrageously selfdefeating as murdering your parents and then pleading for leniency on the grounds that you’re an orphan.

The irony extends from means to ends. The motivating force for many advocates of intelligent design, as for the advocates of school prayer who preceded them, is the perceived need for kids to have “some exposure” to religious ideas. If they don’t get a taste of that stuff in school, they may never seek it elsewhere.

Or perhaps we wish our ideas and experience not to be banned in schools we pay for and which our children attend? ID is an idea. Banning ideas is dangerous and bad. Banning it from the school that the government forces me to pay for starts to feel like tyranny. People resent that sort of thing. Evidently that straight forward reasoning is not good enough for the LA Times. . .

Again ID is not a “buttress against scientific hegemony.” It is an attempt to look at science a new way. The writer should go read J.P. Moreland, a leading design theorist, to discover that there is no confusion on our part.

This is where the dismissal of intelligent design as “bad science” doesn’t go far enough. It can also be dismissed as bad evangelism. The supporters of intelligent design betray a sadly compromised understanding of their own underlying mission. “The knowledge of the living God” is apparently not to be taught by lives of exemplary service but by fossil evidence. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven,” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. Is it now to be understood that by “light” he meant the kind that shines in a specimen case?

Well, no. And it be sad if any ID theorist thought He did. But since none do, this is a foolish charge. To the extent that ID as a philosophical idea has any bearing (at all) on evangelism (and it does not have much), it has a bearing on those who think (wrongly) that science has shown that they cannot believe in an active Creator who leaves finger prints in His creation. For some, that is a deterrent to faith.

Of course, that is not the only reason people have faith in God or are Christians. One can become a Christian, as millions do, without having that “problem” worked out. The best witness will never be an argument of any kind, but the work of the Holy Spirit and good living. However, that does not mean that inventing modern science, which mostly Christians did, or having a good way of integrating modern science with traditional faith is not helpful on one level.

Finally, the supporters of intelligent design betray their own secularist assumptions through their insistence that Darwinian evolution be taught with the disclaimer that it is “only a theory.” One would assume that, from the perspective of faith, a great deal is only a theory. To apply that label exclusively to evolution suggests otherwise.

We do not suggest it be applied only to Darwinism. However, Darwinians seem to resist it strongly and insist that it be taught in a fundamentalist way that is beyond criticism. We think that too bad.

It suggests that we inhabit a world of ubiquitous certainty. No one could walk on water in such a world because the molecular density of water is (unlike evolution, apparently) beyond the theoretical. Of course, that is the view of science, and the only proper view of science. One is amazed, however, to find it promulgated in the cause of religion.

It would be amazing if we promulgated it, but we do not. I would invite the speaker to any Torrey class to see, but that would require reporting and not making up things.

This is not to make light of a serious threat posed by the advocates of teaching intelligent design. I happen to share the fears of those who see a theocratic agenda at work in their campaign. At the same time, I can’t help but be amused by the notion of the entire edifice of the Enlightenment crumbling beneath the assault of a “religious” crusade. The barbarians may be battering at the gates, but the gates are mostly their own.

How are we a serious threat? Exactly who in the ID movement is suggesting a theocracy? What do you mean by theocracy? What religion would they practice since ID is pretty diverse?

If we just include the Christians, then does that mean that eighty percent of the American population (the number of Christians) might have their views reflected in the Constitution that an overwhelmingly Christian nation wrote, adopted, and has lived under for 200 odd years.

The LA Times writer should read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and then see how the “religious right” is ever any more religious in its phrasing. Quick: when the Bull Moose Party of Teddy Roosevelt marched about to “Onward Christian Soldiers” was a theocracy in the offing?

It appears that the LA Times writer thinks that JP Moreland, Al Plantinga, or Nancy Pearcey want to impose a religious dictatorship on you. Go read their work. Go visit a Church and see if the AWANA leader or the Teen SOYO group looks ready for jihad.

It is this kind irrational fear of the religious that gives the LA Times a bad name.

The question of selling US ports has raised an interesting question. Will Americans be willing to treat a (fairly) democratic Iraq as an equal when the time comes? An oil rich Iraq will eventually become prosperous, assuming it avoids civil war, and start investing in its best friend: the United States of America. What are we willing to let them buy?

I am not a fan of the port sales, because the buyer is not a free society. Ports are too important to trust to dictators. . . of any sort. We should not sell our ports to China or to the UAE.

However, we should be careful not to appear as if the difficulty is that the UAE is Islamic or Arab. If Bush (following the Founding Fathers of this nation) is right, then all men and women will eventually recognize their God created rights and yearn for liberty under law. The UAE cannot provide that and so is unstable and weak in the long term as is communist China. Our ports cannot be in the hands of unstable or weak cultures. However, a democratic Iraq, once it has a track record of settling problems with elections, will be another story. To such a state we should be prepared to recognize full equality!

This weekend or sometime next week it is possible that Narnia will pass Harry Potter in total box office. Who cares? At my house we are fans of both series, but I think there are two cultural points to be made. First, this movie was “controversial” when it came out. It turns out the controversy existed mostly in the heads of studio executives and move reviewers. Stock holders might want to ask why it took so long to make this film. Is there a bias against religion in Hollywood? Perhaps, but the ice is breaking fast. The market of religious movie goers cannot be ignored much longer.

Second, heaven did not break out in the multiplex. The same nation that viewed Narnia is making the Brokebackbackers very rich. I know they are not the same theater-goers (for the most part), but the cumulative drip-drip of hedonism has worked on at least some of the nation. Standards are not what they once were. So religious film makers and movie goers need to support scores of A and B list films (not to mention art films!) in order to have the same impact. There is no “single bullet” in pop culture. We need many artists doing work at once. Only in this way can the mind of a nation be prepared for the social change that true Christian values would bring.

The joy of marriage, where fifty years is hardly enough time to experience it, is finding your completion in opposition. Men are not women and women are gloriously not men. The differences are slight, so slight they are hard to describe, but they are there and the longer you live with your spouse the more obvious they are.

One sort of feminism of the last century attempted to make men and women the same. Of course, men and women are equally human. A visitor from Mars might not be able to tell our sexes apart the differences are so slight, but we are not from Mars or Venus. Humans know the differences, which feel greater because they are so slight that we are always teased into thinking they are nothing, especially in our youth and under the power erotic, but end up looming larger as a result. Just as home conflicts can be slight but mighty, so the not-just-as-I-am differences between men and women loom huge. It can be irritating as women have always known. Some men think they want a man in a woman’s body . . . others that men would be better off without women at all and many women wonder why God created men at all. We are so irritating to each other. But there can be no marriage, no union of key with lock to open the door to two souls, without a man and a woman.

We need no mirror. One technological advance that has been, on the whole, a disaster is the availability of cheap and effective mirrors. They are everywhere and allow us to see ourselves in our own eyes. This is not, for all but the saints who know who they are, a great temptation. It is a temptation to love self or to loath self, but always to see self. The last thing a man needs is another man to reflect his maleness back to him.

I see myself now, best, in the eyes of my wife and I am changed in that place. She sees me, thank God, not as I am or even as I was when we married twenty years ago, but as I should be. There is nothing like that. It leads me forward. She civilizes me and she says, though I find it hard to imagine, that I have helped her become more herself as well. The difference is like a spice in a good meal, small but vital. This vision requires sticking it out through horrid times. It comes only

I have been writing about the danger of a “Brown Shirt” Russia for some time. Russia is rapidly slipping under the control of the Mafia. The economy has problems providing for the aging population and the best way to distract from these problems is (as always) to make the American Eagle scream or engage in a splendid little war somewhere on the ages of the Empire. What edge? China is too big and powerful to control and the West will prevent any reassertion of Russian demands in her direction. The Russian state has a long interest in controlling Persia (Iran) as part of its drive for a warm water port. Only Constantinople is a bigger target for traditional Russian power diplomacy. The kleptocracy in Moscow wants Iran and needs some way to look powerful to its own military and citizens.

The time has come to worry about Putin and the Russian Mafia getting in bed with the theocrats in Iran. Russia has nukes. Iran has a young population it needs to placate with war, anti-Semite ranting (also a problem in traditional Russia), and hatred of the US. Of course Russia is also busy killing Islamic rebels in parts of its decaying Empire, but Iran will be willing to “use” Russia, much as Putin will be willing to “manipulate” Iran. Both will hate the other but work together on the principle that (for a time) the enemy of our bigger enemy can be our friend. Think Iran as Isengard and Moscow as Mordor in terms of the mutual using to the peril of the West.

We need to encourage liberty in Iran and Russia now before the marriage is consummated with nuclear weapons.

Activism irritates me in actors. Of course, I am a philosopher writing about movies so my complaint cannot be that they are stepping outside their area of expertise. What is irritating is that that many seem to assume that playing a role (doctor, lawyer, missionary) makes them an expert on what they are discussing. Let me be as clear as I can be: I am not a Russian historian, I don’t read Russian, and I am not an expert. . . however, before I will opine on Russia I try to read a few dozen books (in English) on that area. That way I can be at least a fairly well informed layman. There is a role for such folks. Most activist actors seem unwilling to do more work than read lines they are given. There are of course notable exceptions. I don’t agree with Rob Reiner but he seems bright and looks as if he has done enough reading to opine in his areas of interest.

I received a very good email arguing that the problem with the “Tip of the Spear” actor (sadly now a title that itself provokes smirks) is that his activism now has dimmed the ability of the viewer to forget him and get into the character. That seems fair enough. Ed Asner is no longer able to be much of anything other that a liberal activist, because when we see him that is who he is. Reagan would not have been able to leave the Presidency and make movies playing anything other than himself.

If that is the complaint with this actor, that like Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds, he has messed up his movie by having a big mouth then that is fair enough. However, that has nothing to do with his being gay per se.

As to “how serious” homosexuality is many Christians seem to confuse its seriousness ontologically (where my lack of charity may be more serious) with the time in which such sins become manifest (near the end of a culture in decay). Widespread homosexuality does seem to indicate that secularism is winding down. . . but a symptom may actually be less serious than the root disease (a failure of love best seen in divorce and other societal ills). The disease that finally kills a man or a culture may not be as bad as the disease that caused that final illness.

There is a movie that looks good hitting theaters today. “End of the Spear” is based on a powerful missionary story that inspired millions in my parent’s generation to serve the cause of Christ. It expands that story by examining martyrdom from the perspective of the killers and not just of the martyr.

This is a good idea. Allegedly, some Christians object to the “fact” (I am assuming it is true) that a major actor in the film is openly gay. If this is true, then it is bizarre on the part of the Christians. My secular readers can also rest assured that this sort of “reasoning” is rare in the Christian community. I don’t know a single student, for example, in Torrey Honors who would not know that such an argument is not just wrong headed (it is), culturally counter-productive (it is), but un-Biblical. Whoever is advancing such claims has achieving that rarity: being wrong in every possible way! Against this they can only place sincerity, but sincere ignorance that leads to folly is no excuse.

Shall we stop doing business with everyone that does not agree with us? But wait doesn’t Saint Paul say:

9I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people– 10not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler–not even to eat with such a one. (ESV)

With all traditional Christians, I believe homosexuality is a disorder. Best reason argues that it is not natural, but then no sin is. How shall I treat my gay co-worker or neighbor? I trust the same way I wish (as a sinner perhaps greater than he) to be treated: as a fallen human in whom the image of God demands that he be given love and dignified treatment.

Since we are all sinners, the idea of sitting about waiting for a Christian film to be made with actors who are not disordered will require a long wait. It will also require living outside of the actual world. Treating homosexuality in this way lends credence to the notion that Christians think it the worst of sins when lack of charity (ahem) is far worse.