“Be All You Can Be” is not just the Army’s recruiting slogan. It is the appeal of self-help books, magazines, videos, seminars, and podcasts. It is the allure of prosperity gospel and the appeal of bucket lists. It is also the speculative assurance of transhumanism, the technological heir of evolutionary progressivism. There are plenty of gurus, gimmicks, and gizmos ready to give you Your Best Life Now.
We can live at full potential by taking seven steps. We can name-it-and-claim-it wealth, health, and total victory over circumstances. We can choose to have incredible experiences and to do incredible things before we die. And we can, one day, live with boosted cognition and become a radically enhanced superhuman. Why, we can conquer the whole universe by human will and consciousness and with a little help from my “Be All You Can Be” friends.
Certainly, such offerings have purchase. People want to be healthy, financially secure and control outcomes. And people want to “feel” alive.
Just as certain, “Be All You Can Be” taps into a fear of missing out on Your Best Life Now before you kick the bucket. “You Only Live Once” is the high-octane fuel in the motivator engine – get busy and live full throttle. The FOMO messaging comes from all corners, including from the expected self-help speakers both secular and Christian and from celebrities.
“Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.”
Wayne Dyer, self-help author and a motivational speaker.
“A life of adventure is ours for the taking, whether we’re seven or seventy. Life for the most part is what me make it. We have been given a responsibility to live it fully, joyfully, completely, and richly, in whatever span of time God grants us on this earth.
Luci Swindoll, author and speaker with Women of Faith
Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.
James Dean
The possibility of “A New You” born out of the intensity of experiences and the dramatic are oft portrayed as producing “real” life, while the prosaic life of simple acts of truth, goodness, and beauty are deemed ho-hum and therefore not worth exploring and exploiting. (The dramatic life vs. the prosaic life is found in a close reading of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.)
The self-improvement racket has spawned cottage industries such as “biblical manhood” and “biblical womanhood”. Such topics, that get at our core identities and callings, are prone to scams, as Karen Swallow Prior writes in her Opinion: The ‘Biblical Manhood’ Industry Is A Scam:
In my recent book, “The Evangelical Imagination,” I devote an entire chapter to the notion of “improvement,” showing how this early modern concept contributed to the rise of the self-help movement in the 19th century and has spilled over into Christian thinking and practice today.
Many of the publications centered on “biblical manhood” and “biblical womanhood” are just a continuation of this Victorian (and secular) movement.
As you reflect on how to be within the time you have, do you envision having a multiplicity and intensity of experiences – 101 Incredible Things to Do Before You Die? Do you hear yourself speaking the “it” you want and believing you will receive “it” and “it” will come to pass? Do you see yourself embracing a you-can-have-it-all “Be All You Can Be” life? Is the bucket list of your now filled to the brim with FOMO activity?
Does submission to digital technology effect how to be within the time you have?
An interesting concept, noted in the context of the digital revolution suddenly increasing “the rate and scale of change in almost everyone’s lives,” is presented by the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities Edward Mendelson in his essay “In the Depths of the Digital Age”:
In Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), an engineer named Kurt Mondaugen enunciates a law of human existence: “Personal density … is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth.” The narrator explains:
“Temporal bandwidth” is the width of your present, your now…. The more you dwell in the past and future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your [bandwidth] sense of Now, the more tenuous you are.
The genius of Mondaugen’s Law is its understanding that the unmeasurable moral aspects of life are as subject to necessity as are the measurable physical ones; that unmeasurable necessity, in Wittgenstein’s phrase about ethics, is “a condition of the world, like logic.” You cannot reduce your engagement with the past and future without diminishing yourself, without becoming “more tenuous.”
As I read this: if you’re just constantly in the moment rushing from one thing to the next without the context of the past and future, your personal density becomes diffuse and unsupportable.
. . . benefit of reflecting on the past is awareness of the ways that actions in one moment reverberate into the future. You see that some decisions that seemed trivial when they were made proved immensely important, while others which seemed world-transforming quickly sank into insignificance. The “tenuous” self, sensitive only to the needs of This Instant, always believes – often incorrectly – that the present is infinitely consequential.
It seems to me, and your own experience will bear this out, that This Instant is the impetus of Your Best Life Now and that self-help schemes produce the thinness and self-deception of a tenuous now.
(The wicked thrive in the tenuous now. The wicked want nothing to do with the past or the future. The narcissistic now is all the wicked care about.)
Is there a better way to address our frailty, finitude, imperfection, and self-esteem and produce a thicker bandwidth?
As a follower of Jesus, I look to him for affirmation and not from the world’s gurus, gimmicks, and gizmos.
As a follower of Jesus, I’ve seen that for the world, the drive to succeed is paramount and can be all-consuming. But I’ve come to understand that I can’t have it all and be it all in my mortal life. I am content with that. I have no fear of missing out. The Lord knows the desires of my heart and what I need. (See Psalm 37 & Matt. 6:32)
As a follower of Jesus, I’ve come to understand that the density of my “Temporal bandwidth” does not consist in an abundance of possessions (Luke 12:15) nor in the abundance of experiences (Luke 10: 20).
As a follower of Jesus, I’ve learned from Job to not be deceived into thinking of life in terms of “what’s in it for me”. Nor will I be incentivized by a Retribution Principle that has God prospering the “righteous” with material gain and health while inflicting suffering on the wicked.
As a follower of Jesus, I understand, contrary to the world’s notion of acquiring power, that I am a sheep cared for by the Good Shepherd. (See Psalm 23 & John 10: 1-30) My Temporal bandwidth is within his care. My personal density is being thickened; my persona becoming more solid. Seven decades into life and I know this to be true.
And, there’s the realization that unmeasurable moral aspects of lifeare as subject to necessity as are the measurable physical ones. They’re a condition of the world, like logic.
Ash Wednesday: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” With these words and the ash-cross marked on our foreheads we are engaged with our past and our future.
Ash Wednesday and Lent, the 40-day season of prayer, fasting and of giving up things, addresses our frailty, finitude, imperfection, and self-esteem. This Lent Be All You Can’t Be before the Lord and He will lift you up.
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The Blessing of Imperfect Days with Kate Bowler – February 21, 2023
In this conversation, Kate shares about her work detailing the Prosperity Gospel movement from an academic standpoint, and how her own setbacks and health catastrophe in a cancer diagnosis both deepened her sense of being loved by God and softened her toward those desperate for a miracle.
Kate and Cherie’s conversation goes through deep waters, but does so with much humor and heart. We hope you’ll listen and share it with your friends and loved ones.
Kate Bowler, in her dissertation and later book Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospelargues that these diverse of Christian faith-fueled abundance can be understood as a movement, for they stem from a cohesive set of shared understandings. First, the movement centered on Faith. It conceived of faith as an “activator,” a power given to believers that bound and loosed spiritual forces and turned the spoken word into reality. Second and third respectively, the movement depicted faith as palpably demonstrated in wealth and health. It could be measured in both in the wallet–one’s personal wealth–and in the body–one’s personal health–making material reality the measure of the success of immaterial faith. Last, the movement expected faith to be marked by victory. Believers trusted that culture held no political, social, or economic impediment to faith, and no circumstance could stop believers from living in total victory here on earth.
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Escaping the Prosperity Gospel
In this episode Mikel Del Rosario and Costi Hinn discuss the prosperity gospel, focusing on Hinn’s spiritual journey out of the religious movement. This interview was recorded before March 2020.
For those committed to human flourishing, absorbing that transhumanism is a scientific nonstarter would be a major boon. But a singular focus on information is not limited to this arena. It increasingly pervades our day-to-day existences, in terms of how we proceed in our professional and social lives, as well as when others decide what counts about us (or even who we “are”), often without our awareness. Prospects for societal improvement depend, in part, on our becoming more conscious of this informational frame, especially where it is a mismatch with the nonlinear and richly contextual nature of what matters most to us as human beings.
The life of Rose E. Livingston is something to behold. The rescued becomes the rescuer. The restored becomes the restorer. And the wronged becomes redeemer. Do not doubt the resolve of the battered and broken-jawed Rose. And do not dismiss the value she placed on the lives of young women even as a price was put on her head. Please read on.
Anyone calling this diminutive woman (about five feet tall and weighing about 90 pounds) “a force to be reckoned with” would sound daft. But this phrase matches the description of Rose in the numerous newspaper clippings of her time. The “Angel of Chinatown” intervened in the coercion of White females into prostitution rings in New York City’s Chinatown during the Progressive Era (1890–1920).
“I don’t go in to visit these girls and give them a tract and say ‘God bless you,’ and invite them around to take tea with me. That’s not my kind of work. There are some girls that it’s mighty hard to help, but there are some little, fresh young things that have just been brought to Chinatown, and that you can sometimes reach in time to save them. Sometimes you can get there before the harm is done. There are 350 white girls in Chinatown now, by friends. I got thirty-seven of them out last year. I once rescued a little bit of a girl who was only 10 years old. That’s the sort of work it is. I don’t get much help. It seems as though as soon as a cop in Chinatown shows himself to be honest they move him to some other part of town. They don’t want honest cops down there. I don’t know whose fault it is — Gaynor‘s or Waldo‘s or whose — but it makes it mighty hard sometimes. Sometimes they tell me these are bad girls and there’s nothing I can do for them. They try to tell me that these girls could escape if they wanted to, but that they don’t want to. I tell you it isn’t true. I saw a girl running away from a cadet, and she ran almost into a policeman’s arms. I was over there in a jiffy. ‘Officer,’ I said, ‘won’t you protect this poor girl from this fellow?’ and, would you believe it. that policeman just knocked her back into the cadet’s arms and watched while he beat her up.”
The following are various accounts of Rose’s life primarily sourced from early 1900s newspaper articles:
“It’s believed Rose was only ten years of age when she was taken from her home and transported to New York City’s notorious Chinatown, an area known for prostitution and opium dens. There, she would become forcibly hooked on opium. The man who held her captive sexually abused her, and by the time Rose was sixteen, she’d given birth to two children.” [ii]
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“Rose Livingston was an American suffrage activist and social reformer. She was abducted as a young girl and forced to work as a prostitute in New York’s Chinatown. Livingston developed a drug problem, but managed to escape. She then devoted her life to helping prostitutes and victims of human trafficking, teaching them about Christianity, gaining the nickname the “Angel of Chinatown.” In 1910, she helped pass the Mann Act, which made interstate sex trafficking a federal crime. Livingston was attacked in 1912, while trying to rescue a prostitute, suffering permanent damage to her jaw. In 1914, her life was threatened after a gang offered a $500 reward for her death. Livingston supported woman suffrage, believing that if women could vote they might not be driven to prostitution. She was well-known for her work for suffrage and against human trafficking; in 1929 she received a gold medal from the National Institute of Social Science, and in 1937 she received a silver cup from Edith Claire Bryce of the Peace House. Livingston lived in poverty most of her life, but in 1934 the public raised a retirement fund for her. By this point, she had worked for three decades and rescued over 5,000 young women and children. She retired in 1936.”[iii]
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“In 1909, Rose Livingston, a reform worker, was working to intervene in the coercion of White females into prostitution rings in New York City’s Chinatown (“Save Young Girls from Chinatown,” 1909, p. 7). In 1912, she was brutally beaten when she attempted to save a girl from her procurer (“How Rose Livingston Works in Chinatown,” 1912, p. 5). Livingston, who was supported by several suffrage organizations, toured the country lecturing on white slavery in Chinatown. Moreover, women’s organizations were active in the anti-prostitution movement’s efforts; for example, the Woman Suffrage Party of New York listed the “abolition not regulation of the White Slave traffic” (p. 46) as a chief component of its social reform agenda (Laidlaw, 1914). Livingston routinely criticized the police for turning a blind eye to prostitution. Her efforts brought public pressure on Mayor Gaynor to seriously address the issue of the prostitution rings (“How Rose Livingston Works in Chinatown,” 1912, p. 5). Livingston was all too familiar with white slavery in Chinatown. She herself had been held captive and abused from the age of 10 to 17. At the ages of 12 and 15 she gave birth to her captor’s children. Eventually she was rescued by a missionary worker and underwent a religious conversion (Lui, 2009).”[iv]
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The following is sourced from multiple newspaper clippings referenced below [v]:
Rose Livingston (1876 – December 26, 1975), known as the Angel of Chinatown, was a suffragist who worked to free prostitutes and victims of sexual slavery. With financial and social support from Harriet Burton Laidlaw and other noted suffragettes, as well as the Rose Livingston Prudential Committee, she worked in New York City‘s Chinatown and in other cities to rescue girls from forced prostitution, and helped pass the Mann Act to make interstate sex trafficking a federal crime.
Livingston initially thought that she wanted to work overseas as a missionary. She realized, though, that there was much good that she could do in New York. She referred to herself as a missionary and worked nights looking for pre-teen and teenage girls who were forced into sexual slavery. A small and thin woman, she was beaten and shot, sometimes spending months in the hospital recovering from her injuries. Once she rescued girls, she helped them transition into a life of freedom. She lectured about the dangers of children and young women being forced into sex work. She also advocated for women’s right to vote.
Early life
Rose Livingston was born in New York in 1876. Her parents were born in New York. Livingston was reportedly raised in Ohio and Texas in the Methodist faith. Livingston came to New York City at age 12.
Livingston was initially interested in becoming a foreign missionary, but decided she could be an independent missionary in New York City after she saw a drug-crazed girl being rescued.
Life’s work
Initially, about 1903, Livingstone worked at Sunshine Settlement, a settlement house on Baxter and at 106 Bayard Street in New York City. Established in 1900, Sunshine Settlement helped mothers and poor children by providing health services, education, and “healthful” visits to the seaside beaches. Gospel services and lectures were performed there. It offered a kindergarten, sewing school, and a library. Clients could request medical and legal advice. It operated through ca. 1911.
Unidentified striker, Fola La Follette and Rose Livingston in New York City in 1913
Background
Girls and women became sexual slaves by being physically kidnapped, drugged, or unknowingly lured into the industry with a promise of a job or an adventure. In 1934, the New York City police department statistics showed that 4,000 females disappeared from that city each year, and many more disappeared without being reported missing. Their captors often got the girls addicted to drugs to better contain and control them. Ultimately, some girls were rescued and did well, some were rescued but were so broken they had to be institutionalized, some died early, and others remained as captive sex workers.
Many girls that Livingston rescued said something like, “I met him and he was nice to me. Then he invited me to go for a ride.” Then the girls were handed off to another person who would drug, poison, beat, or otherwise mistreat them. Girls were often transported across state lines. Livingston found that there was an auction on the Lower East Side of New York where girls and women were sold.
Rescues
Focusing on girls that were nine to seventeen years of age, Livingston made it her life’s work to free thousands of girls and women from sexual slavery beginning on March 4, 1903 or about 1904. Her modus operandi was to follow men that were sexual slavers, figure out what females were held captive, make friends with them, and encourage them to escape. She looked for enslaved girls in opium dens, dance halls, and bars, particularly in New York City’s Chinatown and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Sometimes she ventured out of the city to Boston, Newark, Bridgeport, New Haven, and Chicago. In 1907, there were 300 girls younger than 18 in Chinatown that were sex workers, out of a total of 800 white slaves. Six years later, she could not find any girls under age 18 there.
She had a masculine looking face and she wore short hair and men’s clothing, which allowed her to blend in at dance halls and other night spots when she went in search of girls to rescue.
Once freed, she offered the girls and young women rehabilitation and ministered to them in accordance with her Christian faith. Called the “Angel of Chinatown”, she considered herself a missionary and an independent social worker. She saved an eight-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and taken to Philadelphia, after being asked by her father to find his daughter. There were times when bravery and quick thinking helped her rescue girls, like the time that she saved a girl who was being kidnapped by three men. She motioned that she had a gun in her pocket and waited for the police, who arrested the men. She went on high-speed chases in taxis to save girls. When she rescued girls, she took them to her apartment, rather than the police or the children’s society, and contacted the girls’ families. She was aware of the fact that it was a difficult process to transition back into a family, so she did not believe in rushing girls back to their parents’ homes. Livingston described her brand of missionary work:
“I don’t go in to visit these girls and give them a tract and say ‘God bless you’, and invite them around to take tea with me. That’s not my kind of work. There are some girls that it might hard to help, but there are some little, fresh young things that have just been brought to Chinatown, and that you can sometimes reach in time to save them. Sometimes you can get there before the harm is done.”
— Rose Livingston, speaking at the Metropolitan Temple, 1912
By 1934, with over 30 years of experience, the number of young women Livingston had reportedly rescued varied: 800, 4,000, or 5,000 girls or young women. Of the girls that she rescued, only two returned to life as a sex worker. If the girl had a baby, in her experience, not one of the girls’ families took the baby into the family. Many of the girls she rescued looked on her as a mother, and brought potential husbands to her for approval. The League of Nations identified her as a noted figure in the fight against sexual slavery around the world. She found that there was a world-wide network of trafficking sexual slaves. In a report by the League,
“Miss Livingston sets forth the diabolical tactics of white slave rings in this country as she has seen them. She suggests a remedy and sounds a warning to mothers and fathers.”
She offered solutions to the sexual slavery problem, particularly regarding girls and young women. She asked all women to be more understanding of children, so that they did not want to run away from home. She suggested that cities hire plain-clothed police women to patrol vice-ridden districts to prevent girls from being led into slavery. She asked parents to talk to their daughters about the danger of being taken, without terrorizing them. Livingston stated that she believed that this would dramatically reduce the likelihood of girls being kidnapped by avoiding the first false, reckless step—like getting into the car of a stranger.
Financial support
Before the Rose Livingston Committee was established, she received support from Miss Elizabeth Voss, whose father had been the city’s District Attorney. The Committee of Fourteen women from Brooklyn supported her. At some point a church in Brooklyn, New York provided for her maintenance. About 1911, she became affiliated with suffragettes who offered her support. A few women met her when she was trying to save a girl from killing herself. They introduced Livingston to Harriet Burton Laidlaw whose husband, James Laidlaw, created the Committee of Three with Rev. M. Sanderson and Lawrence Chamberlain.
In the late 1920s or early 1930, her work was sponsored by the Rose Livingston Committee, also called the Rose Livingston Prudential Committee, who paid her $600 (~$10,511 in 2022) a year. She used part of her salary to pay for clothes and food for the girls she rescued. The members of the committee included women, several ministers, and a former assistant district attorney. Livingston was supported, financially and socially, by Harriet Burton Laidlaw, as well as other noted suffragettes across the country, and James Lees Laidlaw. She lectured across the country about the prevalence of white slavery. The Rose Livingston Committee issued an annual report of the freed girls and convicted people who were the slaveholders.
Danger
As she rescued women, she put herself in danger. About five feet tall and weighing about 90 pounds, she faced male procurers, or cadets, as she tried to rescue girls and women. She was severely beaten, shot, wounded, and thrown out windows. In 1912, she was severely beaten, resulting in permanent damage. She had severe neuritis and persistent neuralgic pain due to a fracture of the alveolar process of the upper jaw bone. On one side of her face, she lost all of the teeth of the upper jaw.
In 1914, a contract was taken out on her life for $500 (equivalent to $14,610 in 2022). Once, a few years before 1934, she was hurt so badly trying to save a girl from Boston that she was in the hospital for five months and on crutches for two years. She was pushed from a roof of the red-light district in Brooklyn. By 1933, she had 22 beatings, one of which caused severe injury of her eyes. After a number of operations, her eyesight continued to fail her in the 1930s. She carried a gun with her, but was never known to have shot at anyone.
Mann Act
Before 1910, it was not illegal to engage in sex trafficking across state lines. Livingston helped pass the Mann Act, that made interstate sex trafficking a federal crime in 1910.
Awards
A week of testimonial dinners were conducted in 1927 to celebrate the 24 years that she helped girls attain freedom. In 1929, she was awarded a gold medal by the National Institute of Social Sciences, for her “unique work and indefatigable faithfulness for almost 30 years.” In 1937 she was awarded a silver cup by Mrs. J. Sergeant Cram (Edith Claire Bryce) of the Peace House for her “deeds of courage without violence”.
Personal life
In 1914, she participated in one of the Suffrage Hikes from Manhattan to Albany, New York and over the years, she lectured about women’s suffrage. In 1914, she conducted lectures throughout 40 counties of Ohio for the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association to explain to girls the dangers of being led into a life as a sexual worker.
In order to search for girls at night, Livingston slept during the day for about three hours. To protect her safety, only her best friends knew her address. She lived in cold water flats and had a very frugal lifestyle. For instance, she lived in a three-room flat on E. 49th Street in New York City for 46 years, beginning about 1929. It was near the East River. By 1928, she wore masculine clothing. In 1934, she was found living in poverty, and a retirement fund was established for her.
Although she read the Bible and a book on Christian Science, she did not attend church services, unless she had agreed to speak at the church. She did not consider herself a Christian Scientist.
Although she was quoted as saying that she was still involved helping girls in 1950, she retired after 1937 and received a pension of $100 per month. She was cared for by neighbors who helped her obtain a supplemental Social Security pension and did chores for her. She particularly needed help once she started to lose her sight. She died on December 26, 1975, at 99 years of age. A rabbi conducted a Jewish service for her, and her friend, Mike Supple, a Catholic, arranged for a Mass in her memory.
References
Fields, Sydney (January 19, 1976). “Only Human”. New York Daily News. p. 43. Retrieved March 12, 2020 – via newspapers.com (clipping).
“Rose Livingston, lived at E. 49th Street, NYC. 50 years of age, born in New York”, Manhattan, New York, New York, Enumeration District: 0628, United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930., Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration
Rose writes to Jane Addams about her article on white slavery, because she herself is working in the Chinatown area of New York City working to help women get out of prostitution.
Dear Miss Addams
Pardon me for writing to you but have been reading Nov Magazine about the white slavery you wrote. I feel my heart go out to every woman that is fighting against this great evil. I have been shut up for 10 long years in China Town NY, and this coming March 4 will be 9 years since I have been out serving God, and doing [page 2] missionary work for God. last year with God help have got 29 young girls out from China Town girls from 10 years old to 17. hope if God willing someday I may see you, and tell you of the work I am doing and all about how God has keep me true for 9 years.
God bless you in your fight for the young girls. [page 3]
Yours in God work.
Miss R E Livingston.
49 Greenwich Ave
NY City.
“In the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries, “white slavery” was the term used for sexual slavery. It was not a phrase indicative of race, but simply referred to the practice of organized coercion of unwilling persons into prostitution. Any race could be forced into white slavery, although of main concern were White women. Any race could also be a “white slaver” (i.e., slave holder or master); however, Eastern European Jews and Chinese immigrants were often singled out to be the most likely suspects.”[vii]
If one is “severely beaten, shot, wounded, and thrown out windows” as happened to Rose during her rescues, the natural inclination would be to return evil with evil. Isn’t that the premise of all revenge movies and of most so-called “social justice”? But Rose took on the challenge to not allow herself to be overcome by evil and become evil. She responded to evil as a force of good, as the “Angel of Chinatown”.
Take care not to despise one of these little ones. I tell you this: in heaven, their angels are always gazing on the face of my father who lives there.
Jesus, Matthew 18: 10
I considered writing a condensed version of Rose’s life. But would readers skim through and move on to the next thing? Her life and times deserve our full attention, especially in light of Biden’s open-border invasion of our country and the human-trafficking it enables via the cartels, coyotes, and on-the- government-dole NGOs. Democrats and globalists have a demand for trafficked humans.
Please consider reading the newspaper clippings referenced in the links above. With them you’ll get a sense of the times and of Rose – her dealings with the denizens of darkness, her valiant rescues, and her self-sacrifice to save young women from hell on earth. Hers is not a Hallmark made-for-TV life.
Likewise, what was depicted in the Sound of Freedom was not about providing a short-term emotional ride and then release. It was about joining the fight to stop child trafficking and children being sold into sex slavery.
For disciples of Jesus, Rose’s Christ-like nature deserves the greatest attention. Hers is a life not only to behold but as an example to follow. For, it is the way of life in Christ Jesus as the Apostle Paul states:
We are under all kinds of pressure, but we are not crushed completely; we are at a loss, but not at our wit’s end; we are persecuted, but not abandoned; we are cast down, but not destroyed. We always carry the deadness of Jesus about in the body, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. Although we are still alive, you see, we are always being given over to death because of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our mortal humanity. So this is how it is: death is at work in us – but life in you!
The apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:8-12
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Do not be deceived. There is no climate crisis. There IS a child trafficking crisis. The open border is a human trafficking situation.
Unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. border each year present among the most worrying challenges in America’s response to [illegal] migration, with reports showing a recent rise in apprehensions of children, and criticism that the White House has violated providing legal protections for them.
Who are the sponsors? Are they background checked?
As record numbers of migrants continue to enter the United States from Mexico, border authorities are also seeing higher numbers of minors traveling without a legal guardian. In response to the surge in unaccompanied youth, the Biden administration is releasing children to sponsors in an average of 28 days. Prospective hosts can fill out their paperwork remotely and case workers rarely visit their home. Officials are required to follow up with the child via a phone call one month later.
Between 2021 and 2022, 85,000 unaccompanied children—one third of children released to sponsors in the United States—didn’t pick up the phone. The government is unable to account for their whereabouts or welfare. Following a congressional hearing last April, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., demanded the FBI locate the “missing children.”
The Supreme Court’s recent unconstitutional response to states protecting themselves shows the direction this country is headed – towards lawlessness, anarchy, and civil war.
Behind The Rescue in The Sound of Freedom, Paul’s Mission to Eradicate Child Trafficking.
In this special episode of Liberating Humanity, host Paul Hutchinson takes us behind the scenes of the movie “The Sound of Freedom.” Join him as he shares the real-life story behind the film, recounting his firsthand experiences on a daring undercover mission to rescue children from human traffickers in Colombia. As an expert in investigative journalism and true crime, Paul sheds light on the shocking reality of child trafficking, emphasizing the importance of combatting this global crisis through organizations like the Child Liberation Foundation and the Sentinel Foundation. Discover the inspiring journey of hope, bravery, and the relentless pursuit of justice in the fight against child exploitation. Let’s unite to make a difference and protect the most vulnerable among us.
[iv] Smolak A. White slavery, whorehouse riots, venereal disease, and saving women: historical context of prostitution interventions and harm reduction in New York City during the Progressive Era. Soc Work Public Health. 2013;28(5):496-508. doi: 10.1080/19371918.2011.592083. PMID: 23805804; PMCID: PMC3703872.; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703872/
That’s what I said to my parents as a teenager back in the 60s. I don’t remember what occasioned me to say this, but I can still hear myself saying it.
No doubt adolescent idealism played a part in the negative perception of my inherited church. And no doubt the countercultural 60s played a part in me speaking up about it. For the 60s were a time of social unrest and revolt against norms, materialism, and war. People organized and worked for change in the social order and in government. Raised in the church and on plenty of scripture, I saw the church operating as just another establishment enterprise and as one that was evocative of the nearby country club.
Wasn’t the church a social venue, a private club where members came together for banquets and weddings and as something to belong to? Wasn’t the member-run church I attended flush with country-club type politics? Weren’t there were bitter disputes over issues during church business meetings? Wasn’t there a membership cost for upkeep and to have a say on what was what?
With that familiar system in place, one could play a round on Sundays on a familiar course and be reminded of green pastures, still waters, and hazards. A bit cynical? Perhaps. But that is how teenage me saw things. And I wasn’t alone in my opinion that the church I inherited resembled something other than what is described in the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles.
The Jesus People Movement, begun on the west coast in the late 60s, was a spiritual awakening that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, took place outside the established church and on the street. The JPM sought a reset and a return to the life of the early church, a life that included the gifts of the spirit, miracles, signs and wonders, healing, prayer, and simple living.
What first alerted me and several in our church youth group about the Jesus People Movement, I don’t recall. There was no internet back then. Some of what was going on in Haight-Ashbury San Francisco was covered in the secular media. But Chicago media had no local Jesus People reports.
May 5, 1973: Hundreds of Calvary Chapel members line Corona del Mar beach for baptism ceremony.
I do remember Jesus People music showing up at a local Chrisitan book store and seeing event flyers posted there. That’s how I came to hear long-haired Larry Norman sing I Wish We’d All Been Ready at the DuPage County fairgrounds one night. And that’s how I learned of street preachers and their meetings at local high schools. And some preached in farmer’s fields and baptized in a pond.
While parents and church leaders tuned into the evening news and read the newspapers trying to see where things were headed and, perhaps, wondering if their established ways were under attack, us ‘radical’ youth met in homes and read scripture, specifically the Acts of the Apostles, from our “One Way” New Testaments. And that was when we saw what the church was to be and what it wasn’t. And that was when our church, in typical establishment practice, decided to hire a youth leader to “oversee” and manage the youth.
I write these things not as the judge of the church. Read the book of Revelation and the letter to the seven churches in Asia for the One who does judge the church. Rather, I write as am a member of the body of Christ. My concern: has the body transitioned into something akin to the bride of the world?
My 60s assessment signaled this. The Jesus People Movement signaled this. What about the Church of 2024 – is it the Bride of Christ? Why are people leaving the church? Does ensuring that everything is done “decently and in order” mean the Holy Spirit is restricted to only work within a corporate power structure and hierarchy? Wasn’t the body of Christ given one spirit to drink? (1 Cor. 12:13)
~~~~~
Why is church after church succumbing to corruption and false doctrine? Yes, it’s the result of greed, immorality, and a lust for power. But we’ve had those vices forever. So, why is there an epidemic of corruption in the church now?
Author, pastor, and church planter, Lance Ford, who’s worked inside pastor training networks for decades, answers that question with a line reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign motto: “It’s the system, stupid.” Lance explains more in this enlightening edition of The Roys Report, featuring his session from our recent Restore Conference.
What do we talk about when we talk about apocalypse?
Are we talkin’ Steppenwolf and his legions of Parademons attempting to take over the Earth using the combined energies of the three Mother Boxes?
Are we talkin’ nuclear war? World War Z?
Are we talkin’ The Late Great Planet Earth?
Are we talkin’ a supposed climate change catastrophe prophesied as either a meltdown or an ice age?
In popular use, “apocalypse” tags something with the worst possible outcome usually in terms of an end-of-the-world scenario and mankind’s role in events much bigger than himself. But the Greek word apokálypsis, from which “apocalypse” is derived, means an uncovering or revelation.
In terms of scripture, “apocalypse” is a genre in which God reveals His point of view. Such are the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, Daniel and Revelation. The “apocalypse” as an author’s vision of the end times or the end of the age became a distinct literary genre during the Second Temple period and into the Common Era.
Apocalyptic “non-canonical” literature helped pave the way for the Jesus movement in the first century CE. Many in Israel, based on these writings and OT texts (Psalm 146:7-8, Isaiah 61: 1-2), held a belief in a Messianic Apocalypse – the anointed one, a divine messianic agent, revealed at the end time who executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, and lifts up those who are bowed down.
Within this millenarist writing context and using explicit connections to the Old Testament via quotes, and with accounts of eyewitness testimony, the four gospels record God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as the Messianic Apocalypse. And, they record the apocalyptic pronouncements of Jesus, including Matthew 24 (The Destruction of the Temple and Signs of the End Times) and in Matthew 25 (The Sheep and the Goats; Judgement). Jesus’ words and works throughout the four gospels disclose God’s POV.
Near the end of the John’s gospel account we are given the reason why John wrote to reveal Jesus:
“Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that the Messiah, the son of God, is none other than Jesus; and that, with this faith, you may have life in his name.” (Jn. 20:31)
The gospel according to Mark, written from a Petrine perspective, recorded what Jesus did and said in the presence of his disciples so that with the centurion standing watch at the cross, we might say “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Mark 15:39)
Throughout the first six chapters of the gospel according to Mark, chapters I am memorizing, I find Jesus over and over again revealing who he is to the Twelve and the group of disciples around him. Yet, they are not making the connection. They consider him a great prophet and a maybe-Messiah Apocalypse but nothing more.
When Jesus is in the synagogue teaching, the gathered are astonished by his teaching. He speaks with authority. Then a man with an unclean spirit reveals Jesus’s identity:
“What business have you got with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” he yelled. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: you’re God’s Holy One!”
Jesus commands the unclean spirit to be quiet and then casts out the unclean spirit. The buzz begins.
“What’s this?” they started to say to each other. “New teaching – with real authority! He even tells the unclean spirits what to do and they do it!”
Before chapter one ends, Jesus has healed many people suffering from all kinds of diseases and cast out many demons – exactly what Psalm 146 and Isaiah 61 talk about.
I learn from Mark that Jesus won’t let the demons speak. They would reveal his identity. I understand this as Jesus wanting each person to come to grips with who he is on their own.
In chapter two, Jesus heals a paralyzed man. But first he recognizes the faith of those who bring the man to him. He tells the cripple that his sins are forgiven. Upon hearing this the legal experts in the room start grumbling “Its’ blasphemy! Who can forgive sins except God?” They are so ready to pounce that they don’t understand who is standing before them. And why would they?
Who would expect the invisible God to be incarnate, to be physically present? And who would expect a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24) to be in their midst?
Chapter Four: After teaching a huge crowd about the kingdom of God, Jesus and the disciples set sail across the sea. A big wind storm comes up. Waves beat against the boat and it quickly begins to fill up. Jesus, however, is asleep on a cushion in the stern. Very anxious disciples wake him up and say “We’re going down. Don’t you care?”
Now, I don’t believe that any of the disciples were thinking that Jesus would get up and end the storm. They were likely thinking that they needed another hand to bail water out of the boat (kind of like my prayers at times).
Jesus gets up. He scolds the wind and says to the sea, “Silence! Shut up!”. Nature calms down but not the sailors. They had been ‘apocalypsed’. Someone in their boat just took control of the cosmic order. Someone in their boat just revealed God-like properties.
Great fear stole over the crew (survivors in the mini-Noah’s arc). “Who is this?” they said to each other. “Even the wind and sea do what he says!”
Jesus had looked at them and said “Why are you scared?” Don’t you believe yet?” That was his response to the disciple’s “Don’t You care?”
Jesus’ response to the disciples was not to shame them. It was to reveal their unbelief in what has been revealed to them: God was walking among them; God was in the boat with them; God’s love as demonstrated would see them through.
“Don’t you care?” is the corporate expression of anxious Israel waiting for Messianic Apocalypse.
“Don’t you care?” is the corporate expression of an anxious world that, with chronic uncertainty, is focused on a coming the-ship-is-going-down apocalypse and not on the certainty of the revelation of Jesus.
What do I talk about when I talk about apocalypse? This: what’s been revealed of Jesus is greater than what could ever possibly be revealed – whether in nature or alien or made-made or imagination-made.
2024: “We’re going down. Don’t you care?”
“Don’t you believe yet?”
~~~~~
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang and Curt Thompson
We are in an anxious age. By some estimates, a third of all Americans will struggle with anxiety in their lives, and nearly 20% currently suffer from an anxiety disorder. For those suffering the mental distortions of anxiety, life can be difficult, and hope elusive. And for many Christians who have tried and failed to stop their slide into fear and worry by simply “laying down their burdens,” they may feel an added sense of spiritual failure as well.
We’re joined on our podcast by psychiatrist Curt Thopmson and theologian Curtis Chang who help us explore a counterintuitive approach to understanding our anxiety:
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang and Curt Thompson – the Trinity Forum
How do we seek, find and share hope and healing in hard times?
Psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson and Trinity Forum President Cherie Harder discuss healing, grace, and reintegration — both for our individual and spiritual lives, and our shared life together. Together they consider how being known and believing what is true about our stories can transform our perspective and bring hope and healing:
“Shame is the antithesis and is that force that evil wants to use to undermine not only our ability to be known by one another deeply, which we were made for, we were made to be known, but we were also made to be known on the way to creating artifacts of beauty, whether those artifacts are relationships, whether they’re new pieces of music, art, businesses, and so forth.” – Curt Thompson
The room is dark now except for the lights on the Christmas tree. Tired of all the pharmaceutical commercials promising smiles on users, she’s shut off the TV. There is no real hope to be found anywhere in media. She’s had it with the fake, the clichéd and the unmitigated gall of nihilism that says “life has no meaning so keep watching for the meaning we give to it”.
She’s a flesh-and-blood human. She wants real, not CGI. She wants no part in manipulated drama, no part of AI. And she wants nothing of a New World Order and its utopian nightmare. Right now, she wants signal and not noise. Past, present, and future, like specters, enter her thoughts.
She recalls losses. She recalls past sorrows. She recalls her soul’s constant groaning and lamenting and crying out for rescue arising from its well of wordlessness. Drawn from that well are her tears, tears that now blur the glowing angel atop the tree.
The present is a world that is hurting and she feels helpless. When she prays she feels like a Secret Santa and not like a hands-on saint like Mother Teresa.
Tonight, many will end the year with loss. Some have lost a loved one and some a job and some the means to continue.
Tonight, some will end the year struggling with addictions.
Tonight, some will end the year alone and alienated.
Tonight, some will end the year struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide.
Tonight, some will end the year struggling with respiratory illness or the effects of the COVID vaccination.
Tonight, some will end the year in the hospital with a debilitating illness, some with cancer.
Tonight, some will end the year estranged from their families with memory loss, Alzheimer’s, and dementia.
Tonight, some will end the year with war injuries and memories of loved ones killed in battle.
Tonight, the entire creation is groaning. The future looks as bleak.
Is the cosmic and historical drama moving toward the ultimate reconciliation of things?
Will the evil of the human condition, our sufferings and our failures, reveal their redemptive meaning when seen from the vantage point of ultimate salvation?
She has chosen the vantage point of an Aslan Christmas and not of a Charlie Brown Christmas. She has chosen to embrace a hope that will not put her to shame – a bold noble hope, a hope that has faced lions and suffering first hand, a poured-out-love hope and not a mopey introverted “Oh, Bother” cartoonish perspective.
Will the Holy Spirit work all things together for good with those who love him and are called according to his purpose?
She has chosen to live in the realm of the Spirit. For the Searcher of Hearts knows what the Spirit is thinking. The Spirit comes alongside her – she doesn’t know how to pray as she ought – and pleads on her behalf. And that pleading is the wordlessness welling up in her tonight.
~~~~~
Scripture can become a weapon in the hands of the ultra-certain. As if every pain or suffering is part of “God’s divine plan.” So how should we understand and apply the Bible to our real lives with our real-life problems?
NT Wright, a New Testament scholar, is a trusted expert to help us understand what truths resound across time and circumstance and which don’t. In this conversation, Kate [Bowler] and Tom [NT Wright] dig in especially on Romans 8:28 which is the Pauline version of EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. Is that what Paul intended to say? Is there maybe another, more life-giving way to interpret it instead?
Kate and NT Wright also discuss:
The importance of lament as a response to the human condition
Why we have such a low tolerance for uncertainty
Which scripture to turn to when life comes apart (and which to avoid)
What our response should be to others who are in pain or experiencing tragedy
The italicized words are from Leszek Kolakowski’s essay Can the Devil Be Saved as published in Modernity on Endless Trial, Leszek Kolakowski, The University of Chicago Press, 1990, 75
Romans 5 & 8 are referenced.
~~~~~
Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice O let thine ears consider well: the voice of my complaint If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss: O Lord, who may abide it? For there is mercy with thee: therefore shalt thou be feared I look for the Lord; my soul doth wait for him: In his word is my trust My soil fleeth unto the Lord: Before the morning watch I say, before the morning watch O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy: And with him is plentеous redemption And he shall rеdeem Israel: from all his sins
~~~~~
The 1951 b&w A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim is the best movie version of Dicken’s classic.
We have entered a time to reflect on incarnational reality – the presence of God both with us and within us.
The Nativity by Gari Melchers
With awe we marvel at the birth of Jesus and the reversal of power. God humbly took on the appearance of man and became man’s servant.
We remember our own birth from above which opened our eyes to the reality of the kingdom of God on earth. Two realms – heaven-and-earth – together in our temple being.
We now acknowledge that new creation poured into well-worn no longer flexible ways of religion that have stretched to the limit and become brittle will be lost in the process. New wine needs new wine skins, for new wineskins are able to expand by grace as needed.
And we admit that the inappropriateness of trying to redeem things with a new unshrunk patch of legalism will cause more damage than what it attempts to fix.
We accept that new creation means the renewal of the present world rather than its abandonment and replacement by some other kind of world altogether.
We retell the course of events before Advent and the promises fulfilled.
We contemplate ultimate purposes and ultimate or final things.
We acknowledge the darkness that surrounds us and remains with us. We turn once again to the True Light that defies the darkness. We light candles and say “The Light of Christ”.
We sing “Joy to the World” with the longing and expectation of the world being put right with the return of the King as he establishes his reign of justice, mercy and peace.
But hold on. I wonder what sort of advent we’ve fallen into.
Recall this advent advert?
“The Great “Reset”, nee “Build Back Better”, is the scheduled advent of a man-made new world order and, we are told, a “better future”. Should we hope that with this advent things will be put right? Will the “The Great “Reset” bring joy to the world? Will it bring justice, mercy and peace? Will it bring relief from the burdens of life? So far, the Build Back Better Plan/Inflation Reduction Act has created more burdens.
Will the arrival of “The Great “Reset” bring peace on earth, goodwill toward men? Or will it, like critical theory and The Accuser, constantly find fault and offer no hope of forgiveness and redemption? Will it promote more ill will, division, and hate?
Will the arrival of “The Great “Reset” advance beauty and truth and goodness? Or will we recoil in horror at its manifestation? Will it be antihuman? Will it be Beastly?
With the arrival of “The Great “Reset” will the darkness that surrounds us now increase? Human forces and agencies were not able to contain the Gerasene demoniac.
What is the telos of “The Great “Reset”? Will it be like the kingdom of God on earth which turns everything upside down – power, privilege and wealth. Or, will it promote a world where the loudest, strongest, wealthiest, and most privileged people prey on the less fortunate. Will it be the Californication of America?
Will the arrival of “The Great “Reset” be good news that will cause great joy for all the people? Or, will this advent be the start of a countdown to the collapse and the end of the world? Will human trafficking end? Will drug trafficking end? Will justice be blind? Will depression and suicides decrease? Will it be a time of depopulation?
Herod the king, in his raging, Chargèd he hath this day His men of might in his own sight All young children to slay. -Coventry Carol
Will the arrival of “The Great “Reset” mean that the meek, the mournful, and the merciful are held in contempt so the rest of the world can have the “right” to ease and comfort?
Should we hope that with the advent of the New World Order that things will be put right? Should we expect justice, mercy and peace? Or should we expect pseudo-justice, pseudo-mercy and pseudo-peace in the form of pseudo-religion? Socialist activist and communist party leader in Italy Antonio Gramsci is one of many who promoted the latter:
“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”
Do you want the infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media and the transformation of the consciousness of society in the New World Order? Have you already joined this religion? What sort of advent have you fallen into?
Maybe you should take a look at the advent of the man-made New World Order:
Here’s the best summary video I’ve seen of the advent of the NWO and what is coming for you, me, and our children and grandchildren. It begs the questions “Why was I born at this time?” and “Which advent do I choose?”
To put things right, per a globalist worldview, the UN has an 2030 goal agenda. The virtuous-sounding goals touch on andseek to monitor and control, through digital technology, every aspect of human life for a “better world”. But, DO NOT Be Fooled!
To exist in the UN’s 2030 NWO society, people will have to submit their biometrics to the digital industrial complex. Each will be assigned a digital carbon footprint identity to monitor and control their behavior. Freedom, human agency and human dignity will be a thing of the past. Religions will be replaced with materialism.
Digital socialism and communism with centralized assets and resources will ration out resources to each person deemed socially responsible. The world court, world police, and the world health organization will control everyone via digital currency and digital IDs.
UN’s 2030 agenda goals:
The oldest liturgical prayer that we know: “Come, Lord Jesus!”
This advent, you can either pray the incarnational prayer “Come, Lord Jesus!” or the Globalist prayer “Come, Klaus Schwab!”
~~~~~
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF TWO MYTHS THAT DRIVE CULTURE: THE AXIAL AGE AND DARK GREEN RELIGION
“Most people, I believe, do not comprehend the way in which each of us is inevitably caught up in what theologian Ched Myers has called the “war of myths” – a battle of overarching stories that claim to explain life (what it’s about, where it’s going, and what its purpose is).” – Iain Proven, retied E. Marshall Shepherd Professor of Biblical Studies (Old Testament) at Regent College.
The contemporary world has been shaped in part by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers’ ‘axial age’ myth as narrated by Karen Armstrong and others and the myth of the ‘dark green golden age’ as narrated by David Suzuki and others. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In this lecture, Iain Provan engages critically with both myths, explaining why we should not embrace them and why it matters if we do. This was recorded at the University of British Columbia Graduate and Faculty Christian Forum.
“We have a ruling class in the United States defined by its hatreds. Not its loves, not its hopes, but by its hatreds. They hate all kinds of people, large groups of people: the deplorables, the bitter clingers, America’s entire blue-collar population, the unfashionable people. They’re hated by the people who run our country.
But no one is hated more by them than a man called Alex Jones.”
Ep. 46 The Alex Jones Interview
TIMESTAMPS:
2:46 Alex Jones predictions 15:07 Deplatforming 21:59 Dividing us on race 25:37 The border 28:09 Austin 32:12 New World Order 42:09 Brian Stelter demon video 50:57 Depopulation 1:07:51 Food 1:13:51 Whiskey 1:16:22 Presidential… pic.twitter.com/IsJAQDUzDc
“I thought about safety, security, good jobs, good education — all that stuff is very important to my family and my community,” she recalled. “And when I broke down those values between Democrats and Republicans, to me it was obvious who stood up for my values.”
“We calculate the toxicity of the vaccine for all ages,” explained Dr. Rancourt, “given the number of doses given worldwide to conclude that 17 million people would have been killed by this vaccine.”
The paper is based on 17 countries in the Southern Hemisphere and equatorial region. A definite causal link is shown between many peaks in all-cause mortality and rapid vaccine rollouts. The authors quantify the fatal toxicity risk per injection, which is exceedingly large in the most elderly.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Epidemiology and Infection on Nov. 13, analyzed mask use among 3,209 individuals from Norway. Researchers followed them for 17 days, and then asked the participants about their use of masks. The team found that there was a higher incidence of testing positive for COVID-19 among people who used masks more frequently.
Between 2021 and 2022 when most of the now-fully vaccinated world got jabbed, cancer deaths skyrocketed, particularly among young people, according to data from the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Know this: the issue, whether abortion, gender, sexuality, racism, capitalism, equality, colonialism, Jews or some other oppressor/oppressed power struggle– the issue is never the issue. The revolution is the issue. The key question of any revolution is who holds power, as Lenin wrote.
Many of the revolution’s WOKE reactionaries are blinded by the mythic romance of revolution. Pursuit of revolution itself is seen as something valuable, as taking part in something stylishly ‘Che Guevarean’ and adventurous and something to be passionate about. It may be a religion for some.
The revolution’s WOKE reactionaries are OK with creating suffering and totalitarianism as long as the rhetoric is about total transformation, whatever that entails.
The revolution of the hour: for the destruction of the Western world; we are to be the causalities and they, the martyrs in their romantic myth.
I’ve learned how true revolution takes place. It’s not through mad passions but through everyday empathy and love and the tiny alterations of the heart and mind that move us in that direction . . .
~~~
Literary critic Joseph Epstein, with the title of his book-length essay, asks The Novel, Who Needs It? Turns out, I do, as it offers “truth of an important kind unavailable elsewhere in literature or anywhere else.”
So, I’ve made it a point to read the realist fiction of Russian writers – Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and others along with Chekhov’s short stories.
With a sense of moral urgency, fiction-writing has always been serious business for Russians. The great writers were the truth-tellers, the prophets, the voice of the voiceless, and the conscience of a nation— “a second government,” as Alexander Solzhenitsyn once put it.
Why read great novels and Russian literature today? Gary Saul Morson provides his reasoning:
Like realism in painting, the realism in Russian fiction captures life with an accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of life. It rejects flowery idealization, fantasy, and supernatural elements, and presents close observation of the human experience which can lead to personal discovery.
Life’s most important questions are explored in Russian fiction. The open-endedness of the writing leaves one to ponder the choices one is making. Literary realism can be grounding.
Ultimately about ideas, superior fiction shows how ideas -ideology and love for two examples – are played out in the lives of the characters. Over time, with tiny alterations, they change their minds –- and you see their conversion. Character development in literary realism is important.
“A single novel can touch on the wildest adventure but also dwell on the most private personal psychology,” writes Epstein. He gives the example of Moby Dick. I went with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina for the latter.
Anna Karenina (1878), a novel about love and the family, explores the lives of its characters. Some pursue romantic love and others develop mature love. There are heroes and villains in Tolstoy’s most pro-family story.
The consequences of infidelity and the compromises made for forbidden love begin to add up for both Anna and Stiva. In contrast are those well-married and living a rather prosaic life – Kitty and Levin. Over time and with many intimate conversations to understand each other, they have matured from romance to love and found contentment.
Tolstoy at 68 years of age, had just finished Anna Karenina. It has been said by some that as he wrote Anna, Tolstoy was going through a spiritual crisis. He perhaps goes through a very similar spiritual conversion as does Levin.
Tolstoy had been as baptized and raised according to the principles of the Orthodox Christian Church. But later, at eighteen, he said “I no longer believed in anything I had been taught.” I see that as a typical eighteen-year-old response to what feels confining and irrational.
But Tolstoy moves from staunch atheist to a firmly spiritual person. He believed that God was the answer to the type of carnal excess and groundless passions found in the Anna and Vronsky relationship.
Were Levin’s thought processes and his spiritual journey, his tiny alterations of consciousness, also Tolstoy’s spiritual journey? We get a sense of spiritual crisis, of spiritual revolution, and of spiritual maturation in the following four excerpts.
Tolstoy narrates the birth of Levin’s son almost entirely from the new father’s point of view. The birth of his son sparks a spiritual breakthrough in Levin.
Anna Karenina, Part 7, Chapter 13
One night, Kitty awakens Levin with news that her labor has begun. Levin is beside himself, aware only of her suffering and the need to alleviate it. Kitty sends Levin to fetch the midwife and the doctor and to get a prescription from the pharmacist. As he heads for the door, Levin hears a pitiful moan.
“Yes, that’s her,” he told himself, and clutching his head, he ran downstairs.
“Lord have mercy! Forgive us, help us! He repeated the words that suddenly came to his lips out of nowhere, and he, a nonbeliever repeated these words not only with his lips. Now, at this moment, he knew that neither all his doubts nor the impossibility of believing with his reason, which he had known in himself, in any way prevented him from turning to God. Now all that flew from his soul like dust. Who else was he to turn to if not to the One in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, his love?”
“His reason suspended out of intense empathy, Levin, an unbeliever on rational grounds, finds himself praying, and not “only with his lips” (738). Why he, an atheist, prays sincerely at this moment becomes for him a riddle touching on life’s essential meaning. Desperate to do something but with nothing to do, Levin simply has to endure, a state that (as we shall see with Karenin) provokes the soul torn from its habitual responses to experience the sublime.”
Anna Karenina, Part 7, Chapter 14
Levin is floored, angry that the pharmacist preparing the opium and the doctor drinking his coffee are so laid back – taking their time – about the approach of the birth. He’s in such a state he can’t think straight. For them, the birth was an ordinary event. But for landowner Levin, who had been primarily concerned with farming and agricultural and was writing a theory book about it, there was no place to catalog the event.
Levin has no way to analyze what is happening. “All the usual conditions of life without which it is impossible to form a conception of anything ceased to exist for Levin. He had lost the sense of time.”
When Levin hears Kitty’s first scream, Levin is nonplussed. He has so bonded to Kitty over time that, in empathy, he suffers intense agony. He had experienced the same intense feelings and helplessness as his brother was dying.
“He knew and felt only that what was transpiring was similar to that which had transpired a year before in the provincial town hotel at his brother Nikolai’s deathbed. But that had been grief – and this was joy. Still, both that grief and this joy were identically outside all of life’s ordinary conditions; they were like an opening in that ordinary life through which something sublime appeared. What was transpiring had come about with identical difficulty and agony; and with identical incomprehensibility, the soul, when it did contemplate this sublime something, rose to a height as it had never risen before, where reason could not keep up.
“Lord, forgive and help us,” he repeated to himself incessantly, feeling, in spite of such a long and seemingly total estrangement, that he was addressing God just as trustingly and simply as during his childhood and first youth.”
Anna Karenina, Part 7, Chapter 15
Watching his brother die, Levin thinks that death is a cruel joke – you live, suffer, struggle and suddenly cease to exist. Now seeing his wife in such a painful state and thinking she is dying, he is beside himself: he “had long since given up wanting the child. He now hated the child. He didn’t even wish for her life now, he only wanted a cessation to these horrible sufferings.” New life brings new suffering.
But with the birth of his son and being anchored to life by his new family, Levin then understands that death is merely part of life. He maturely concludes that if one lives “for one’s soul” rather than for illusory self-gratification, the end of life is no longer a cruel trick, but a further revelation of life’s truths.
“If Levin had been told before that Kitty was dead, and that he had died with her, and that their children were angels, and that God was standing before him, he would have been surprised at nothing. But now, coming back to the world of reality, he had to make great mental efforts to take in that she was alive and well, and that the being howling so desperately was his son. Kitty was alive, her suffering was over. And he was inexpressively happy. This he understood and it made him completely happy. But the child? Where had he come from, and why, and who was he? He simply could not understand, could not get used to the idea. It seemed to him something superfluous, something extra, which he could not get used to for a long time.
Anna Karenina, Part 7, Chapter 16
A changed man.
“At ten o’clock the old prince, Sergey Ivanovitch, and Stepan Arkadyevitch were sitting at Levin’s. Having inquired after Kitty, they had dropped into conversation upon other subjects. Levin listened to them and during these conversations could not keep from recalling what had come to pass, what had happened prior to this morning, recalled himself as he had been yesterday, before all this. It was as if a hundred years had passed since then. He felt as if he were on some in accessible height from which he was making an effort to descend in order not to insult the people he was speaking to. He spoke and thought incessantly about his wife, the details of her present condition, and his son, to the idea of whose existence he was trying to accustom himself. The entire feminine world, which had taken on for him a new, previously unknown significance since he had been married, now in his mind had risen so high that his mind could not grasp it. He listened to the conversation about dinner yesterday at the club and thought, “What is happening with her now? Has she fallen asleep? How is she feeling? What is she thinking? Is my son Dimitri crying? And in the middle of the conversation, in the middle of a sentence, he jumped up and left the room.”
. . .
“Her gaze, bright in any case, shone even more brightly the closer he came. On her face was that same alteration from earthly to unearthly that one sees on the face of the dead; but there it is farewell, here a welcome. Again agitation similar to what he had experienced at the moment of the birth overwhelmed his heart. She took his hand and asked him whether he had slept. He couldn’t answer and turned away, convinced of his own weakness.
~~~
These four excerpts offer an opening into the ordinary life of Levin and Kitty. Other characters, the novel’s headliners Anna and Vronsky, go through significant turmoil over their decisions. Dolly, whose husband Stiva was unfaithful, stands out. But not for bad decisions or for the number of mentions, but for her care and love. She simply does what is needed and shows Christian love.
“In this novel, Christian love produces monstrosity, and real saintliness, if the term can be so used, is inconspicuous. It does not sound a trumpet.
Any doctrine that defies human nature and everyday practices will, if backed by sufficient force, create much greater suffering than it sets out to alleviate. A movement that is truly “revolutionary” – that, like Bolshevism, sets out to change human nature entirely – will create evil on a scale not seen before the twentieth century. Tolstoy saw Christian love, revolutionism, and all other utopian ways of thinking as related errors. If so, they are errors of our time, and perhaps prosaic goodness offers the best hope of correction.”
I would correct the above with “Tolstoy saw insincere Christian love . . .”
~~~~~
The Abiding Truths of Russian Literature – A Conversation with Gary Saul Morson
The Abiding Truths of Russian Literature – A Conversation with Gary Saul Morson
2017 marks the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, an event that tragically reshaped Russian and Western history. How such an extraordinary event, and the ghastly regime it produced, could ever have happened depended not only on a great war, and the theoretical arcana of Karl Marx but, perhaps even more, on the outlook of the Russian intelligentsia and its assumptions about its social role. These same psychological and ideological predispositions continue to be found among intellectuals today. Hence, understanding the cultural setting of the Russian Revolution also helps us understand some of the more dangerous currents in contemporary intellectual life.
I sat down with a close friend the other day. I asked him about his early church experience, as I am interested in church dynamics.
Here’s what Dan (not his real name) said during the interview:
“My parents attended a Baptist church in Chicago before moving to the suburbs. I was a kid and just remember old buildings with a fusty smell and pictures to color. After the move, we started attending a Bible church. I was eight years old.
“I don’t remember a single sermon. But I do remember the church sanctuary. I sat there Sunday mornings and evenings for maybe twenty years.
“There was a plaque on the back wall above the choir loft. It said “God is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent. Hab. 2:20.
“Front and center was a large wing pulpit. Three large minister chairs were behind it along the choir loft. A piano on the left and an organ on the right flanked the platform.
“On the main floor in front of the pulpit was the oak communion table. “This Do In Remembrance of Me” was carved on the front. The table held the offering plates and a flower arrangement.
“To the right of the platform and behind a large rectangular hole in the wall was the baptistry. A landscape was painted on the walls surrounding the water tank.
“Opposite the platform, sixteen rows back, was the entrance to the sanctuary. A clock was centered above the double doors to let the minister know when to end the service.
“Rows of blond wood pews filled the space between the front and back with an aisle down the center and along each end.
“The side walls were painted-beige cinder block. Each wall had three windows of tinted-amber bubble glass. Forest green curtains bordered two sides of each window.
“The walls around the windows were bare except for a wooden rack near the organ. It held the numbers in attendance at the service and at Sunday school the week before. An usher counted attendance every Sunday.
“That’s a twenty-five-year snapshot. I don’t recall that room ever changing.”
I asked him about the service.
“Prelude. Hymns. Lots of choruses about leaving earth and flying away. Sermon. Calls for salvation and rededication of your life. Postlude. Every Sunday.”
I asked him about memories that stick out.
“Let’s see. There was the leader of the boy’s club. He let us run around and be crazy one night each week. One time he took us to a construction site to show us what he was working on. He was a carpenter.
“There was an adult Sunday School teacher who visited a nursing home once a month. He had me come with him on those Saturdays. I’d play a hymn with my trumpet. Afterward he would give a short devotional.
“And there was this interim minister – there were lots of them – who got me my first job as a clerk in a Camera/Photo store. One time – I was twelve or thirteen – he had me come with him downtown to Pacific Garden Mission. I played my trumpet and he spoke to those who had come off the streets of Chicago.”
I told Dan that he only mentioned certain men as memories that stick out. Then I asked if anyone had mentored him.
“No one from church. Only my trumpet teachers did.”
I asked him to explain.
“I started playing the trumpet in third grade. My uncle gave me a beat-up Conn trumpet that he longer wanted to play. In the Junior High School, the band director wasn’t crazy about the look or the sound of my horn. So, he switched me to French horn for two years. But my heart was with the trumpet. I asked my parents for private lessons.
“Before I started lessons – this was during eighth grade – my father and I went to an instrument store. He bought me a brand-new Bach Stradivarius b-flat trumpet. The horn was a beautiful and expensive gift. I felt affirmed.
“My first trumpet teacher was a high school principal who also played trumpet in big bands. The first question he asked me: What trumpet players did I listen to? I told him Herb Albert. He just shook his head.
“He told me who I should listen to and to what pieces of music. He began giving me exercises to practice. Major and minor scales. Tonguing exercises. I’d have to play them for him the following week.
“The summer before high school I took what he taught me and practiced like crazy. The high school concert band director had sent out the requirements for entering the band. Those included playing major and minor scales and site reading.
“A month before my freshman year began, I was called in to audition for the band director. I played all the scales and sight read what he put in front of me. He was pleased. I was in the concert band – first trumpet section right behind the first chair trumpet, a sophomore.
“My junior year of high school the band director Mr. Gies became my second trumpet teacher. He also played the trumpet semi-professionally.
“What happened was this: the guy who sat first chair was a stellar trumpeter but he needed to be replaced. During the summer the first chair French horn player became pregnant. Both would soon be leaving the school. So, the band director began one-on-one time with me.
“Over several months Mr. Gies and I met in the school auditorium during an open period for both of us. Playing the trumpet in that auditorium, that sanctuary, was like no other experience. With those unstifled acoustics I could open up and project a nice broad sound.
“Mr. Gies asked me how I practiced. I shared with him the Carmine Caruso method for building chops. I learned the method from my first trumpet teacher, Mr. Lichti.
“I told him that the method involves interval training, articulation, range and produces endurance. With it, I had developed an extensive range -double high C to over an octave below the treble staff. The method had formed my sound to that point.
“Sitting together offstage, Mr. Gies and I worked through the Caruso method along with the Clarks – Clark Technical Studies – which are exercises used for the development of fingering technique.
“I cherished that time alone with the band director. In between playing an exercise we talked about anything and everything. And sometimes we were silent and it felt comfortable.
“We practiced together the rest of my junior year. I was ready for the first chair trumpet position when the other guy left.
“My third trumpet teacher was at a Bible school. After high school I entered a Christian Ed/Music program. The Christian Ed program was a bust but the music program was a blessing.
“I took private lessons from the concert band director, Mr. Edmonds. Unlike the other teachers, he was an established pianist with perfect pitch. He had a different take, a different sound in mind, for my horn – a precise centered pitch. He was also a composer. He adapted classical music for our concert band to play.
“In between playing my practiced exercises and being critiqued, the director and I would talk about anything. I shared with him the challenges I was facing. My practice time was limited because of my studies and the time spent listening to classical music for music appreciation class. And I had a part time job. He prayed for me at the end of each lesson.
“Like back in high school, I sat first trumpet second seat behind a sophomore in the concert band. But at an outdoor band concert, Mr. Edmonds had me solo the opening trumpet lines of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Procession of the Nobles”. And when The Gaither Trio – Bill, Gloria, and Danny – came to town for a couple of concerts and needed some horns for the finales, Mr. Edmonds offered his two first chair trumpet players. The private lessons and my practice gave me opportunities to play.
“Looking back . . . sitting next to a trumpet teacher week after week, I learned from those who knew what to listen for and who to listen to. Mr. Lichti, for example, helped me realize that I had “deaf spots” in my listening. To develop my “ear”, I began to listen to Adolph “Bud” Herseth, principal trumpet in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I wanted to emulate his bel canto sound and his musical acumen.
“To accomplish this, I had to take a risk. You see, with one-on-one instruction you cannot hide, you can’t fake or pretend. You play your horn and the truth comes out. Sloppy practicing is immediately revealed and so is the need for discipline. You need another’s knowledgeable perspective to grow as a musician. Words or notes alone are not enough.
“The three trumpet teachers I mentioned invited me into their musical realm, which was both affirming and daunting, as I was made me accountable to them. In the role of apprentice, they imparted to me trumpet knowledge, technical ability, and a love for the craft.
“And now that I think about it, I take it back. The man who took me and others to his construction site and the man who took me with him to the rest home and the man who took me with to the Chicago mission and got me my first job were mentors. They influenced me just like the trumpet teachers advanced the formation of my horn playing.
“You asked about my early church experience. I’d say that there was lots of scaffolding but no formation. For me, there was really nothing life changing about going to church and sitting in silence listening to someone standing behind a pulpit. But there was with people I spent time with.”
End of interview.
~~~~~
Church culture: “Tragically, in recent years, Christians have gotten used to revelations of abuses of many kinds in our most respected churches–from Willow Creek to Harvest, from Southern Baptist pastors to Sovereign Grace churches. Respected author and theologian Scot McKnight and former Willow Creek member Laura Barringer wrote this book to paint a pathway forward for the church.”
In this podcast, theologian Scot McKnight and his daughter, Laura Barringer, join Julie Roys to discuss their latest book, A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing.
While their first book explained the characteristics of a “tov,” or good, culture, their latest book tackles the next challenge—transforming ingrained toxic cultures into tov ones.
Pivoting Your Church from Toxic to Healthy | The Roys Report
Two options guided my early incorrigible years: “Either you do what I say or your father will deal with you when he comes home” “Either you clean you room or lose your allowance” “Either you are home by 9 or you will be grounded.” The church, too, presented two stark choices: “Either you get saved and go to heaven or you go to hell”; “Either walk the straight and narrow or walk the wide way of the world.”
The either/or binaries of my early childhood were meant to prepare me for life. I learned that if I wandered off into “or” territory there was sure to be consequences. My parents guided my behavior from their own experience of walking within binary guard rails.
They had learned that from the simplest safety issues to the most important issues in life, honest straightforward either/or choices are required. My late mother shared one such either/or choice.
My father, having grown up in the Dutch Reformed church where smoking was the norm for men, was given a choice by my mother when she was dating my father: “Either you stop smoking or that’s it.” Thankfully, my father didn’t “or” the situation. I wouldn’t be here if he did.
With knowledge of their own either/or choices and exposing me to the either/or choices of the book of Proverbs, my parents either/or’d my youth. Binary guard rails were set in place for my time in Jr. High and High school.
When I attended Moody Bible Institute after high school (early 70s), the binary thinking infused in me by the church came into question.
A first-year class called “Personal Evangelism” was taught by Mr. Winslett. During that semester Mr. W described different religions. As he did so he labeled the churches of the Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness and others as cults. When he came to the Catholic church, he said it was a cult because Catholics worshipped Mary, had a pope, and put tradition ahead of scripture. I remember hearing this and thinking that we’re better than all of them. But something felt off.
The highly partisan Mr. W, a representative of MBI, had sallied Catholicism: MBI represented real Christianity and Catholicism, a “cult”, did not; either you are with us in Bible first thinking or you are not one of us. (Mr. W was the only teacher I met a MBI like this. But there are many who preach and teach the same binary “us and them” thing.)
I was raised Protestant. Differences of Protestantism and Catholicism were minimally noted in my church. But I had read about Luther, the Ninety-five Theses, and the Reformation. I knew about the abuses and corruption of the Catholic church. Those include Johann Tetzel selling indulgences.
But faith in God and his salvation coupled to Mary, the pope and tradition were not Christianity deal breakers for me. For without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.
Instead of imposing exclusionary theology, abide by the words of the old hymn: “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform . . . God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.”
Years later I came across the same “us and them” attack. I brought my daughter to an Awana program going on at a Baptist church. On the night that she and I were to race the Pinewood Derby Car we had crafted together, the speaker bad-mouthed the Catholic church during a promotion for the Baptist church we were standing in.
He said something to the effect that their Baptist church wasn’t like the unsound Catholic church. I was shocked. There were members of that Baptist church and other churches in attendance. What did they walk away with that night?
I’ve seen this attitude surface so many times by haughty either/or Protestants. I’ve also seen it in either/or Catholics. Both groups interpret Church teaching in a narrow way, then argue that whoever disagrees with their tightly wound interpretation must—by the fact of that disagreement—be in opposition to Church teaching. The Either-Or fallacy used by both Protestants and Catholics: “I can’t be in error therefore YOU must be!”
Another anecdote of the “us and them” attitude: One night I was sitting in a donors meeting listening to a presentation. The Episcopal church I attended wanted to annex and refurbish the house next store and make it ministry usable. At front and center of the room that night was a picture board showing the proposed design. The crossway from the existing church building to the house showed a cross in relief in the arc above the passageway. One woman remarked that we should get rid of the cross because “we’re not Baptists.”
Look. Our family and church backgrounds teach us to think in opposites – basically in terms of good and bad. We are presented with two options and they appear as your only options and mutually exclusive. We then bring unmediated polar extremes into adulthood.
Either/or thinking integrated into our lives and then reinforced by our respective cultures can produce a worldview in stringent binary terms: as a one or zero. Black-and-white thinking is used to reduce the world to something we can handle which then provides a sense of certainty and security. But “a one or zero” thinking can be adversarial, dividing people into “us vs. them.” A few examples:
“I am right and you are wrong.” (How does that work out in marriage? With our neighbors?)
“If you’re not with me, you’re against me. I have friends and enemies but not acquaintances.”
“Either I win or I lose in this situation.”
It can also produce all-or-nothing false dilemma fallacies which are really manipulative setups:
“If you care about your neighbor, you will get vaccinated” and “Putting others first will get us through he pandemic” “Getting vaccinated is loving your neighbor as yourself.”
“Social solidarity is the most precious tenet of our democracy.”
“You’re either pro-choice or anti-woman. There’s no other moral stance.”
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
“Either you let your child change their gender or they will commit suicide.”
“You are either racist (by not agreeing with me) or you are anti-racist (by agreeing with me).”
“If you are against LGBTQ books in the library you are a book banner.”
“If you question what is being taught in public schools, you are a domestic terrorist.”
“If you question the 2020 election you are a MAGA extremist.”
“If you don’t accept the climate science consensus (or COVID science consensus), then you are a science denier.”
Either/or “us and them” thinking tends toward exclusion and not embrace. It tends toward absolutism, authoritarianism, fundamentalism and judgement. We see it in Hamas’ attack on Israel. We see it in climate activism. We see it in cancel culture. We see it in the murderous history of totalitarian regimes. We see it in church teaching and we sing it: “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.”
We see it in the teachings and practice of Christians, Muslims, and the Progressive Left which would have us believe that they are the opposite of conservative either/or thinking while mandating their own anything-goes version of it. Theology, ideology and government policies are marketed with the dichotomy of good and bad.
It seems that many have retained their childhood’s unyielding binary worldview. It is used as a defense mechanism, as a means of protection from the “hazards and vicissitudes of life”. (From the statement made by FDR when he signed the Social Security Act.)
I’ve seen the binary thinking defense mechanism employed by Christians. Though it comes across as holding fast to the faith and Sola Scriptura, faith vs. science messaging reduces the supposed conflict to “us vs. them” binary thinking which allows no quarter for God’s revelation in nature as revealed by science. Yet, God has revealed himself in both scripture and nature. Science is a tool for understanding God’s revelation of Himself in the physical world.
When I told my eighty-nine-year-old Godly mother that, based on research, I believed the universe to be billions of years old and that God used evolution, she didn’t reply “That’s interesting. Tell me more.” She said “That’s heresy!” Her defense mechanism alarm bell went off. She was reacting from what she had been taught and how she had been taught to think about what she was taught.
Becoming emotionally invested in extremes may lead to the exclusion of people, as “Heresy!” suggests. Such binary thinking can produce unrealistic portrayals of others and it can become used, as mentioned above, as a weaponized defense against others.
Certainly, there are people who watch news commentators because they relish the mocking and “owning” of the opposition. Certainly, there are people who go to church for the same reasons. But there is nothing mature about participation in bad mouthing others. I see nothing of this in Jesus.
I come across Jesus-whipping-the-money-changers-in-the-temple memes on social media. These are extrapolated as Jesus is “destroying” his enemies, so we can do the same. Horrible nonsense.
Relying solely on binary thinking is intellectual and spiritual laziness. An open both/and questioning mind is not a slippery slope and it’s not anything-goes Progressivism. Seek truth and not the comfort of tribal consensus.
Consider that no one has all the information – not your pastor nor MBI nor Anthony Fauci nor climate scientists. It’s OK. Consider that not everything is black and white. Knowing the difference and knowing when to introduce AND with “perhaps” is wisdom.
The Creator of the universe is not a small-minded Person. He holds a universe of disparate thought, theories, and faith in his hands. He is not threatened by any of it. A follower of the Creator of the universe lets God hold the messiness and uncertainty of life in His hands and does not feel threatened.
Finally, a reductionist’s worldview makes it incredibly difficult to hold space for the uncertainty and messiness of others. But there is a better way, a much better way: love and maturity.
Love is great-hearted; love is kind,
Knows no jealousy, makes no fuss,
Is not puffed up, no shameless way,
Doesn’t force its rightful claim,
Doesn’t rage or bear a grudge,
Doesn’t cheer at other’s harm,
Rejoices, rather, in truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things;
Love hopes all things, endures all things.
As a child I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child; When I grew up, I threw off childish ways.
I Cor. 13:4-7, 11
~~~~~
(Note: I’ve summed up a lot so as to make this post accessible. I was involved in the Jesus People movement during high school. Along with those in the movement I questioned a lot of the binary thinking of the church. I’ll share that story in another post.)
~~~~~
Science and Faith
In this episode, we focus on the apparent tension between science and faith.
“Many people believe that science and religious faith are bitter enemies with conflicting views of the universe. One the one hand there is the scientific account of the origins of life and then there is the story of universal origins told by the bible. But is this tension real, or is it based on a deep misunderstanding of what the Bible is and how it communicates?
. . .
“Consider this a crash course in reading the Bible as an ancient cross-cultural experience.”
Kate Boyd has been learning to live out her faith in the messy middle in a culture that rewards picking a side. While her journey didn’t begin with a conflict between science and religion, her story explores the complexities of understanding the Bible in today’s context and anyone who has struggled with issues of science and faith will resonate with this conversation.
Wearing camel hair clothes with a leather belt, eating locust and wild honey – that’s not the way, truth and life of today’s celebrity preachers. No. The wilderness figure of the unentangled Forerunner was light-years away from metropolitan Evangelical-industrial-complex pastors.
John the Baptist had none of the trappings of celebrity mega-church preachers, not even the dressed-down attire that some celebrity preachers wear so as to not put too much emphasis on appearance while placing emphasis on their appearance and calling attention to themselves.
John the Baptist didn’t dress like swanky celebrity preachers, who call attention to their prosperity gospel. He didn’t dress like royalty.
The Forerunner didn’t promote himself. He said “Someone a lot stronger than me is coming close behind” and “Look! There’s God’s lamb! He’s the one who takes away the world’s sin! He’s the one I was speaking about when I said, ‘There’s a man coming after me who ranks ahead of me, because he was before me. I came to baptize with water – so that he could be revealed to Israel.”
The Forerunner was a doormat. He laid down his life to make way for the One who would lay down his life for the world, of whom, John told the crowd, he was not worthy to undo his sandals.
John the Baptist didn’t preach impediments. He didn’t preach a prosperity health and wealth gospel or a power of love and positive attitude gospel. He wasn’t a reed bobbling in the winds of culture. The Baptist announced a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins – not a “you can do it” message.
The Baptist wasn’t a culture warrior. He didn’t preach mushy church talk. He didn’t entertain. He didn’t cajole. He didn’t try to impress with his knowledge. He didn’t preach social justice. Dressed in penitential garb, John called for repentance and criticized a King for his wicked ways.
His wasn’t a ‘you gotta get saved so you can go to heaven’ message. There was no ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ retribution principle sermon. No. He declared a person, a lamb, a Holy Spirit baptizer, a realized hope. John’s message was for those who had ears to hear: repent and be baptized and I’m not the center of attention.
John the Baptist didn’t have a large auditorium with a worship band and multi-media productions. His message drew huge crowds out to a wilderness riverside. The whole of Judea and everyone who lived in Jerusalem went out to the desert to see the spectacle of a hairy wild-eyed Elijah standing in a river calling for confession of sins, repentance and a plunge in the river.
John the Baptist didn’t have degrees, references, prestige or the charisma of a “winning personality”. The bona fides of the crude and unorthodox John were the words that came out of his mouth and all the prophets and law that had made their prophecies before he came on the scene.
John the Baptist had none of the revenue streams of the modern-day mega pastors. He had no salary. He didn’t receive perks and special treatment. He wore and ate and lived off the land.
The Baptist had no social media accounts or TV presence. He had no royalties from book sales, no online webinars, no DVD sales. He didn’t sell “merch”. He didn’t offer boat cruises and trips to the Holy Land (well, he was already there) and receive a free trip in return. He had no brand or image to protect. There was no John the Baptist newsletter promoting his ministry, detailing the number baptized, and asking for donations.
John the Baptist didn’t have a $6 million church-owned lakefront mansion. Like the son of man, John the Baptist had nowhere to lay his head except when it was time to give up his life. John’s head, laid on a platter, was a gift from King Herod, “that fox” who regularly enjoyed listening to John’s disturbing words.
The Forerunner heralded the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, not his own. Sent from God, John came as evidence about the life that was the light of the human race so that everyone might believe through him. He prepared the way, not for himself but for the One who was to come. John eschewed self-promotion, celebrity, and the creation of a following. He wasn’t Forerunner “forward”.
Is that the way, truth and life of today’s celebrity preachers?
The following text were referenced: Matthew 11: 7-15; Mark 1: 4-11; Luke 1: 57-80, 13: 32; John 6:6-36
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
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“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
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“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
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“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
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“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
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“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
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“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
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“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
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“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
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“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
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“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
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“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
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Cindy Wity 
Binary Beckons for More from You
October 15, 2023 Leave a comment
Two options guided my early incorrigible years: “Either you do what I say or your father will deal with you when he comes home” “Either you clean you room or lose your allowance” “Either you are home by 9 or you will be grounded.” The church, too, presented two stark choices: “Either you get saved and go to heaven or you go to hell”; “Either walk the straight and narrow or walk the wide way of the world.”
The either/or binaries of my early childhood were meant to prepare me for life. I learned that if I wandered off into “or” territory there was sure to be consequences. My parents guided my behavior from their own experience of walking within binary guard rails.
They had learned that from the simplest safety issues to the most important issues in life, honest straightforward either/or choices are required. My late mother shared one such either/or choice.
My father, having grown up in the Dutch Reformed church where smoking was the norm for men, was given a choice by my mother when she was dating my father: “Either you stop smoking or that’s it.” Thankfully, my father didn’t “or” the situation. I wouldn’t be here if he did.
With knowledge of their own either/or choices and exposing me to the either/or choices of the book of Proverbs, my parents either/or’d my youth. Binary guard rails were set in place for my time in Jr. High and High school.
When I attended Moody Bible Institute after high school (early 70s), the binary thinking infused in me by the church came into question.
A first-year class called “Personal Evangelism” was taught by Mr. Winslett. During that semester Mr. W described different religions. As he did so he labeled the churches of the Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness and others as cults. When he came to the Catholic church, he said it was a cult because Catholics worshipped Mary, had a pope, and put tradition ahead of scripture. I remember hearing this and thinking that we’re better than all of them. But something felt off.
(Per Article I of The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy found on the Moody Bible Institute website, the Bible, not tradition, is the authoritative Word of God.)
The highly partisan Mr. W, a representative of MBI, had sallied Catholicism: MBI represented real Christianity and Catholicism, a “cult”, did not; either you are with us in Bible first thinking or you are not one of us. (Mr. W was the only teacher I met a MBI like this. But there are many who preach and teach the same binary “us and them” thing.)
I was raised Protestant. Differences of Protestantism and Catholicism were minimally noted in my church. But I had read about Luther, the Ninety-five Theses, and the Reformation. I knew about the abuses and corruption of the Catholic church. Those include Johann Tetzel selling indulgences.
But faith in God and his salvation coupled to Mary, the pope and tradition were not Christianity deal breakers for me. For without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.
Instead of imposing exclusionary theology, abide by the words of the old hymn: “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform . . . God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.”
Years later I came across the same “us and them” attack. I brought my daughter to an Awana program going on at a Baptist church. On the night that she and I were to race the Pinewood Derby Car we had crafted together, the speaker bad-mouthed the Catholic church during a promotion for the Baptist church we were standing in.
He said something to the effect that their Baptist church wasn’t like the unsound Catholic church. I was shocked. There were members of that Baptist church and other churches in attendance. What did they walk away with that night?
I’ve seen this attitude surface so many times by haughty either/or Protestants. I’ve also seen it in either/or Catholics. Both groups interpret Church teaching in a narrow way, then argue that whoever disagrees with their tightly wound interpretation must—by the fact of that disagreement—be in opposition to Church teaching. The Either-Or fallacy used by both Protestants and Catholics: “I can’t be in error therefore YOU must be!”
Another anecdote of the “us and them” attitude: One night I was sitting in a donors meeting listening to a presentation. The Episcopal church I attended wanted to annex and refurbish the house next store and make it ministry usable. At front and center of the room that night was a picture board showing the proposed design. The crossway from the existing church building to the house showed a cross in relief in the arc above the passageway. One woman remarked that we should get rid of the cross because “we’re not Baptists.”
Look. Our family and church backgrounds teach us to think in opposites – basically in terms of good and bad. We are presented with two options and they appear as your only options and mutually exclusive. We then bring unmediated polar extremes into adulthood.
Either/or thinking integrated into our lives and then reinforced by our respective cultures can produce a worldview in stringent binary terms: as a one or zero. Black-and-white thinking is used to reduce the world to something we can handle which then provides a sense of certainty and security. But “a one or zero” thinking can be adversarial, dividing people into “us vs. them.” A few examples:
“I am right and you are wrong.” (How does that work out in marriage? With our neighbors?)
“If you’re not with me, you’re against me. I have friends and enemies but not acquaintances.”
“Either I win or I lose in this situation.”
It can also produce all-or-nothing false dilemma fallacies which are really manipulative setups:
“If you care about your neighbor, you will get vaccinated” and “Putting others first will get us through he pandemic” “Getting vaccinated is loving your neighbor as yourself.”
“Social solidarity is the most precious tenet of our democracy.”
“You’re either pro-choice or anti-woman. There’s no other moral stance.”
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
“Either you let your child change their gender or they will commit suicide.”
“You are either racist (by not agreeing with me) or you are anti-racist (by agreeing with me).”
“If you are against LGBTQ books in the library you are a book banner.”
“If you question what is being taught in public schools, you are a domestic terrorist.”
“If you question the 2020 election you are a MAGA extremist.”
“If you don’t accept the climate science consensus (or COVID science consensus), then you are a science denier.”
Either/or “us and them” thinking tends toward exclusion and not embrace. It tends toward absolutism, authoritarianism, fundamentalism and judgement. We see it in Hamas’ attack on Israel. We see it in climate activism. We see it in cancel culture. We see it in the murderous history of totalitarian regimes. We see it in church teaching and we sing it: “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.”
We see it in the teachings and practice of Christians, Muslims, and the Progressive Left which would have us believe that they are the opposite of conservative either/or thinking while mandating their own anything-goes version of it. Theology, ideology and government policies are marketed with the dichotomy of good and bad.
It seems that many have retained their childhood’s unyielding binary worldview. It is used as a defense mechanism, as a means of protection from the “hazards and vicissitudes of life”. (From the statement made by FDR when he signed the Social Security Act.)
I’ve seen the binary thinking defense mechanism employed by Christians. Though it comes across as holding fast to the faith and Sola Scriptura, faith vs. science messaging reduces the supposed conflict to “us vs. them” binary thinking which allows no quarter for God’s revelation in nature as revealed by science. Yet, God has revealed himself in both scripture and nature. Science is a tool for understanding God’s revelation of Himself in the physical world.
When I told my eighty-nine-year-old Godly mother that, based on research, I believed the universe to be billions of years old and that God used evolution, she didn’t reply “That’s interesting. Tell me more.” She said “That’s heresy!” Her defense mechanism alarm bell went off. She was reacting from what she had been taught and how she had been taught to think about what she was taught.
Becoming emotionally invested in extremes may lead to the exclusion of people, as “Heresy!” suggests. Such binary thinking can produce unrealistic portrayals of others and it can become used, as mentioned above, as a weaponized defense against others.
Certainly, there are people who watch news commentators because they relish the mocking and “owning” of the opposition. Certainly, there are people who go to church for the same reasons. But there is nothing mature about participation in bad mouthing others. I see nothing of this in Jesus.
I come across Jesus-whipping-the-money-changers-in-the-temple memes on social media. These are extrapolated as Jesus is “destroying” his enemies, so we can do the same. Horrible nonsense.
Relying solely on binary thinking is intellectual and spiritual laziness. An open both/and questioning mind is not a slippery slope and it’s not anything-goes Progressivism. Seek truth and not the comfort of tribal consensus.
Consider that no one has all the information – not your pastor nor MBI nor Anthony Fauci nor climate scientists. It’s OK. Consider that not everything is black and white. Knowing the difference and knowing when to introduce AND with “perhaps” is wisdom.
The Creator of the universe is not a small-minded Person. He holds a universe of disparate thought, theories, and faith in his hands. He is not threatened by any of it. A follower of the Creator of the universe lets God hold the messiness and uncertainty of life in His hands and does not feel threatened.
Finally, a reductionist’s worldview makes it incredibly difficult to hold space for the uncertainty and messiness of others. But there is a better way, a much better way: love and maturity.
Love is great-hearted; love is kind,
Knows no jealousy, makes no fuss,
Is not puffed up, no shameless way,
Doesn’t force its rightful claim,
Doesn’t rage or bear a grudge,
Doesn’t cheer at other’s harm,
Rejoices, rather, in truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things;
Love hopes all things, endures all things.
As a child I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child; When I grew up, I threw off childish ways.
I Cor. 13:4-7, 11
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(Note: I’ve summed up a lot so as to make this post accessible. I was involved in the Jesus People movement during high school. Along with those in the movement I questioned a lot of the binary thinking of the church. I’ll share that story in another post.)
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Science and Faith
In this episode, we focus on the apparent tension between science and faith.
“Many people believe that science and religious faith are bitter enemies with conflicting views of the universe. One the one hand there is the scientific account of the origins of life and then there is the story of universal origins told by the bible. But is this tension real, or is it based on a deep misunderstanding of what the Bible is and how it communicates?
. . .
“Consider this a crash course in reading the Bible as an ancient cross-cultural experience.”
Science & Faith (bibleproject.com)
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Kate Boyd | Science and the Messy Middle
Kate Boyd has been learning to live out her faith in the messy middle in a culture that rewards picking a side. While her journey didn’t begin with a conflict between science and religion, her story explores the complexities of understanding the Bible in today’s context and anyone who has struggled with issues of science and faith will resonate with this conversation.
149. Kate Boyd | Science and the Messy Middle | Language of God (biologos.org)
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I’ve been told that I’m either naive or stupid.
I’m not sure which side I’m moron.
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Filed under Christianity, Psychology, Science, social commentary, totalitarianism Tagged with absolutism, Authoritarianism, binary thinking, Catholicism, Christianity, either/or, fundamentalism, Protestantism, psychology, Science, totalitarianism