This [is] Gift-love, but one that needs to give; therefore needs to be needed.  But the proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift.  We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching.  Thus a heavy task is laid upon this Gift-love.  It must work towards its own abdication.  We must aim at making ourselves superfluous.  The hour when we can say “They need me no longer” shall be our reward.  But the instinct, simply in its own nature, has no power to fulfil this law.  The instinct desires the good of its object, but not simply;  only the good it can itself give.  A much higher love- a love which desires the good of the object as such, from whatever source that good comes- must step in and help or tame the instinct before it can make the abdication.  And of course it often does.  But where it does not, the ravenous need to be needed will gratify itself either by keeping its objects needy or by inventing for them imaginary needs.  It will do this all the more ruthlessly because it thinks (in one sense truly) that it is a Gift-love and therefore regards itself as “unselfish.”  (pgs 50-51)

Some discussion.

In the conversations I found myself in objecting to health care, I heard repeatedly how selfish I was being.  In the comments on blog entries I saw the same thing.  “If you really loved people you would support this bill.  You’re just selfish.  You just don’t want to pay taxes.”

I oppose universal health care, especially when put forward on secular grounds, precisely because I do love people.  I do not believe it is in the best interest of most people in either the short term or long term.  The Lewis quote above alludes to some reasons why.

For example, Lewis points out that if we really loved people, we’d try to work to the point where we were no longer needed.  In this perspective, one could at least make the argument that a truly loving society, and not merely one with an inflamed sense of ‘Gift-love’, would put forward programs for those in temporary need with the purpose always in mind of lifting them out of that need and into self-sufficiency.  Universal Health Care is the opposite of that, shooing everyone under the skirts of Mother Hen- from birth to death.

Lewis said, “the ravenous need to be needed will gratify itself either by keeping its objects needy or by inventing for them imaginary needs. ”

This seems to describe the mentality of the ‘Gift-lovers’ very well.  Not content to administer help and then step away with the job done, institutionalized ‘Gift-love’, without counter-point, cannot but help but keeping people needy forever, or, if they have no needs, make some up.

Compare this with Obama’s recent comment regarding the VAT tax:

He said his first priority “is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that, you know, we have a baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide. And then we decide how do we pay for that.”

What an interesting way to phrase it!  A baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide.  Implicit in this statement is a belief that government should provide for needs and these needs should be considered ‘core services.’  On the face of it, such a statement isn’t all that troubling.  Setting it in context, however, we see that by ‘core services’ Obama and the liberal mindset to government really means, “Everything that pertains to every aspect of humanity.”

Health care, by definition, can pertain to every aspect of a human, and will be made to apply.  But add to that the bailouts, nationalization of ‘core’ industries, and the ‘cap and trade’ legislation waiting in the wings which will give the government intrusive access into how Americans manage energy, and it is clear that Obama’s ‘Mother knows best’ attitude knows no limits.

We shall set aside for now the humorous and sad notion that Obama wants to think about how we pay for things in second place behind what the question of what Government should do, as if how we collect that money is irrelevant after that point- a bit like if I decided as a family that we needed food on the table so now its ok if I rob a grocery story because, well, I needed food on the table.  You can’t take the two things in isolation.

Lewis is talking in this quote about keeping things in perspective and proportion.  He is talking about ‘Gift-love’ that is inflamed out of proportion and allowed to roam free.  Allow me to explain this concept in order to clarify the point.

It is often said that Christians are against sex.  This is obviously untrue.  See all the derision on the Catholics and other Christians who have lots of children. But as Chesterton said, any stick will do to beat Christianity with.  But it isn’t that Christians are against sex.  Every Christian I know is a big fan of it.   However, the belief is that sex has a proper place and context.  Sex is not immoral.  Sex out of proportion is immoral.

In the same way, I like fire.  I like fire the best when it is enclosed in a nice ring of rocks and is giving me a gentle warmth.  I am not a big fan of fire when it burns down my house.  If someone learned that I was cold and came in and burned down my house (in the name of love and being unselfish) I should think that person did something immoral.  In the same way, sex willy nilly and outside of bounds is considered by biblical Christians as immoral.  It is sex blown out of proportion.

Using the Government to carry out ‘charitable’ and ‘loving’ services, risks the same sort of inflamation.  What starts out as good and proper can suddenly become all encompassing and all consuming.  Indeed, I would say that it has.  Things are well out of balance, to the point where it is, I would say, immoral.  Moreover, I would say that we are on the verge of ‘burning the house down’ in the name of love.  The sad thing is that everything has been reduced to ashes, liberals and many Christians who supported this Mother-Smothering-Gift-Love will walk around scratching their heads, wondering how their good intentions could have gone so awry- but it will not cross their mind that they’d actually done something wrong.

They will say, of course, that they had logic on their side.  After all, you support having the government pay for roads, don’t you?  Surely it logically follows that its ‘ok’ for you to use the government to determine what kind of treatment you get (if you get any at all), if you can drink pop, if you must go on an exercise regime or be denied priority treatment, etc, etc, etc.

But I will point you to another CS Lewis analogy from The Abolition of Man:

This is one of the many instances where to carry a principle to what seems its logical conclusion produces absolute absurdity. It is like the famous Irishman who found that a certain kind of stove reduced his fuel bill by half and thence concluded that two stoves of the same kind would enable him to warm his house with no fuel at all.  (pg 83) … I implore you to remember the Irishman and his two stoves.  There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis- incommensurable with the others- and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey.  (pg 91)

I tell you the truth, some have already made this final leap in the ‘logical’ progression and some are poised to make it.  Jacob Appel, ‘bioethicist’, John Holdren (Obama’s ‘Science Czar’) and Cass Sunstein (Obama’s ‘Regulatory Czar’) are three examples who come to mind.  They advocate things like forced sterilizations, population control through the water supply, mining organs without consent, and even killing people- out of love- to spare them the suffering of existence.

They all think they are perfectly loving individuals, and two of the ones I mentioned hold the reins of power.  They have made the final leap-  ‘logic’ blown out of proportion, blowing ‘Gift-love’ out of proportion, and as such advocate a use of the government that is as immoral as burning down a house- regardless of how good and noble the intentions were at the time, or after.

I know my child.  This child is mine.  Mine to protect and mine to cherish.

You are quite convinced that Immunization X will not harm my child.

But then you send my child home.  We live with the consequences.  You don’t.

You say that only this few out of this many will have a reaction.  This few is acceptable to you.  You don’t take them home and live with them.

I may decide this few is too many because I know that if my child is part of the ‘few’ I am the one responsible.

It is my call.   Back off.  Show some respect.

I am my child’s advocate.

If I don’t advocate, who will?

If I won’t represent his and her best interests, who will?

My child is not a statistic.  Behind ‘public health data’ are real people.

You take care of the numbers.  I’ll take care of my people.

I am my child’s advocate.

He cannot speak for himself.  She cannot understand the issues.  Yet the choices we make today will impact them forever.  I know my children.  I know the issues.  You are not my child’s advocate.  I am.

You are quite certain my child should be socialized according to your dictates.

For thousands of years civilization got along just great without your professional opinion.

If I choose to make use of your services, it is as my instrument exerting my authority as my child’s advocate.  My family is not the arbitrary tool of the state to achieve the state’s ends.  My family uses the state- or doesn’t- as its tool.  I dispense with it as I determine.

Turn your own family into a machination of the state.  Leave mine alone.

I am my child’s advocate.

I am the parent.  The child is not just a child but my child.

I am also the father.  I am the spiritual head of this household.

Not the pastor.  Not the Sunday School teacher.  Not the youth director.  Not the DCE.  It is my duty to raise my child in the Lord, not yours.

I avail myself of the congregation’s services in instructing my children as an extension of my authority.  I delegate to the congregation.  The congregation does not delegate to me, for these duties are properly mine.

Raising our children in the Lord is the task set before my wife and I.  Raising our children is not a task set before you.  Help us;  don’t usurp us.

I am my child’s advocate.

You are quite sure that it is damaging to children to indoctrinate them so.

You would have us believe that we could steep them in the secular humanistic worldview for 18 years and only then be able to make an ‘informed decision’ about religion.

Riiiiiiiiiiight.

I am my child’s advocate.  Not you.  I know my history.  Do you?  If you did, you would butt out.

One man’s indoctrination is another man’s education.  I am my child’s advocate, so it is my task to decide for our family which is which.

I am my child’s advocate and whatever you think about the education I give him I think the same of the education you would give.

Where does it end?  Who decides?  You wish that I would keep my religious beliefs out of the ‘state.’  I wasn’t the one who vested in the state such power.  That was your idea.

You may come this far but no further:  my family is mine to protect, and I deem it necessary to protect them from you.  Frankly, I don’t think ya’ll have that great of a track record.

Attempt to insert your worldview into the ‘education’ of my family and yea, I’m going to insert my ‘religious beliefs’ into the discussion about what that ‘education’ should consist of.  Deal with it.

I am my child’s advocate.

I know there are children without advocates.  I know there are advocates who do not defend their children’s interests with the same informed conviction.  The solution is not to marginalize the advocates who do advocate, but raise up the ones who don’t.

I know you are the professional.  But my family is not a social petri dish.  It is not the place for you to test out your social re-engineering schemes.  I know too that you care for many families, and even mine.

But you don’t go home with them.  You don’t take them home with you.  If you screw up, odds are you never know it.

If I screw up, I live with the consequences.

The buck stops here.

I am my child’s advocate.

This job is filled.  We are not taking applications.  I too am a professional- I am an expert on my children.  There are only two professionals who are experts in this particular specialty:  my wife and I.   We aren’t hiring a third or three hundred.  There are only two professionals:  and you aren’t either of them.

Do your work- much if not most if not all of it commendable- but remember your place.

And remember mine:  my child’s advocate.

Someone slid this article across my desk that inquires as to why evangelical Christians are against universal health care.   Now, strictly speaking, I’m not an evangelical.  Also, I don’t think that all Christians oppose universal health care, and I will not presume that Christians who do will share all my reasons.  I hope this caveat spares me the litany of comments accusing me of ‘generalizing.’

I will take the article as my foil as it is one of the finest expressions of liberal hubris and arrogance that I’ve seen in a while.  The author begins by indicating he seriously wanted to know why Christians who are supposed to be all about love would oppose health care.  The end includes a long screed:

(p.s. this opinion is reserved for those Christians who have not actually thought about the consequences, and decided that more people are harmed than helped by the new law. They are being consistent with their beliefs. That being said, if you think you are in that camp of people excluded, you probably aren’t. You probably are just being geedy [sic], selfish and jerkish, but convincing yourself that this is why you oppose it, while the truth remains you just dont want taxed, or adhere to some abstract notion of how this bill is UnGodly).

Now, I haven’t been accused of being geedy in a long time, but I suppose it was overdue.  What you see embodied in this paragraph is the supreme conviction that, in fact, the author already knows what our real reasons even better than we know our real reasons and the reasons we state are not likely to be the real reasons.  Now, I find communication to be difficult in general.  Truly sincere communication requires earnest listening.  The paragraph above reveals that he isn’t sincere or earnest in his request for clarification.  We shall keep this in mind.

I should note that this will be long, so if you cannot endure a sustained argument let me direct you to another medium such as Twitter, or if that is too much as well, TheDailyKos.  Granted, this article is long even by my standards… maybe I’ll make it available as a pdf for downloading and printing.

Let us begin by exploring the premise of the man’s argument:

“Isn’t the greatest of virtues love? Isnt that right in the Bible? What is getting lost in the translation from what Christianity should be and is, and what it has become?”

Here we see the hubris on display in vivid colors.  Now, we’ve already agreed at this point that ‘born-again, evangelical Christians’ are the most opposed to universal health care.  Does it strike anyone else as a little odd that this fellah, who is not a Christian, thinks he’s in a better position than Christians themselves to understand what Christianity should be and contrast it with what it has become?

Let me submit to Mr. Heflick that it is an unwarranted assumption to believe that he will have the same understanding of the word ‘love’ as how it is portrayed in the Bible.  I find this to be a common difficulty regarding ‘love.’  No one bothers to define it and systematically understand it because everyone thinks they know everything about it instinctively.  I include fellow Christians in that.

The net result of this approach when we turn to the Bible is that we insert our ‘instinctive’ meaning of the word ‘love’ wherever we see it, never considering that perhaps the Bible embodies a different meaning.

This comes to play when we consider another statement by the gent:

The more clear Christian response, from my understanding, should be to whole heartedly endorse anything that helps their fellow man lead a life of less suffering

So, apparently ‘love’ is about doing anything to help their fellow man suffer less.    Based on this premise, Mr. Heflick makes the interesting and logically fallacious inference that if we reject universal health care we must simultaneously not want to help our fellow man.  In short, in order to meet Mr. Heflick’s standard of ‘love’ we’ve got to ‘love’ in the particular manner that Mr. Heflick prescribes, and this apparently is only by implementing universal health care.

The idea that there may be other ways to ease suffering does not appear to cross his mind.  I will not here counter the unfounded reduction of ‘love’ to simply easing people’s suffering.  I think it can be said that it is at least that but it is certainly more.  For a simple example, at its heart we can say that orthodox Christianity certainly does aim to spare people from suffering- especially the eternal and everlasting sort.

But this leads to a very important point that helps us to finally segue into the myriad of reasons for why I reject universal health care and health insurance.  Mr. Heflick says, “There are about a zillion verses in the Bible saying we should help the poor, show compassion, be loving…”

But there are other verses, too.  For example, Jesus said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  (Matt 10:39).  Suffering- even to the point of death- seems to be anticipated in this passage.  He also said, “It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”  (Matt 5:29).

These passages and others like them do not justify ambivalence to the human condition but they help illustrate that easing temporal sufferings is not the whole sum of what Christian love will be all about.

Mr. Heflick is not to be faulted for highlighting the passages that he likes from the Bible and ignoring (or remaining ignorant) of all the other ones.  Liberal Christianity already does that, visible in particular in pursuit of ‘social justice.’  These folks have dispensed with the notion of ‘hell’ that Jesus spoke of before so it naturally follows that once you’ve cut out that and other aspects of the Bible that seem ‘out of date’ that you’re basically left with ‘easing the suffering’ of people as the only lasting value.

The problem is that these same passages they accept come in the context of passages that they don’t.  In order to understand them all we must take them all together.

So, I, as a conservative, am not against ‘social justice,’ per se, just as I am not against easing the sufferings of people.  How I do this is not unimportant, though.  For example, in easing the suffering of some am I morally justified to increase the suffering of others?

The Liberal dismisses the objection that paying for health care out of taxation is improper by saying it ought to be endured for the sake of humanity and to say otherwise is simple greed.  It must be acknowledged at the minimum that taking money from someone will indeed cause them suffering at some level.  Just because we have in hand a noble cause is it right to inflict this suffering?  The Liberal says, “I’m going to extract 40% of your income in order to help the poor!  Why the long face?  Don’t you WANT to help the poor?!?!?!?”

The earnest Christian cannot go along with this reasoning.  The Bible certainly does describe Christian love as being concerned with the poor and showing compassion, and calls for Christians to provide monetarily for the material needs of other Christians abound.  But there are two important things that must be noted:  1., At no time are Christians called upon to be generous with other people’s money.  Their own money, yes.  But not the rich neighbor’s down the street.  2., Their generosity is meant to be as un-coerced as possible.

Both of these points are important.  Universal Health Care can only happen by ‘coerced compassion’ that makes primary use of ‘other people’s money.’  You see, there are other passages in the Bible, too.  Remember “Do not steal?”

It might be said that it isn’t stealing if ‘the people’ (otherwise known as the proletariat)  take it by force of the Government.  If that is your argument, I don’t see where you can non-arbitrarily suspend it.  You may as well go whole hog and call yourself a full blooded communist.  If you concede at any point that it is possible for the Government to go too far in extracting resources, that at some point, somewhere, the forced extraction of funds and resources is in fact stealing, then you allow Christians the right to decide for themselves where that threshold is.

I for one believe that it is stealing, even if the ‘forced extraction’ is for putatively ‘compassionate’ purposes.  In saying this, I set myself out of the category of  Mr. Heflick’s where I ‘just don’t want to be taxed.’  In fact, most of the evangelical Christians he refers to cannot belong in this class, because in fact it is I and we who will largely benefit from this forced extraction.  As it currently stands, my family is among those that has the most to gain from the health care bill that was recently passed.  My family will be ‘passed over’ and all the benefits we receive will be derived, somehow, from some rich family in some other place who was forced to be ‘compassionate.’

And I think that’s wrong.  If some rich Christian family wanted to reach into our lives and help tend to our health care needs and that sort of thing I would probably be deeply appreciative.  If rich Christian families did all they could to help the poor out of their own initiative, I don’t have an objection.  But to force them at Government-Gun-Point… that I object to.

In another article on the same Psychologytoday.com website a woman, in a very hilarious argument ‘proving’ that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives based on the novel (and faulty) evolutionary logic that ‘whatever is evolutionarily newer is evolutionarily superior’ she defines liberalism in this way:

liberalism (as opposed to conservatism) in the contemporary United States as the genuine concern for the welfare of genetically unrelated others and the willingness to contribute larger proportions of private resources for the welfare of such others.

From the foregoing, however, we understand that this is not entirely accurate.  We must add a modifier if we are to honestly define ‘liberalism’:  “the willingness to contribute larger proportions of OTHER PEOPLE’s private resources for the welfare of such others.”

Conservatives that I know are all about helping others, just not on someone else’s dime.  This is true on principle, and pragmatics:  “The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” (Margaret Thatcher).

You see, the Bible presents love as the highest virtue but not as the only virtue.  Not all that is done in the name of love is justifiable.  Not all that is done in the name of ‘social justice’ is just.  The Christian must seek to balance all of the virtues together.   Because the orthodox Christian understand that temporal matters matter but they pale in comparison to ultimate matters where injustice perpetrated in the name of love will be called to account, they cannot dispense with these other elements, no matter how nobly they are presented.

If one really cares about what the Bible says, you will see that there is little to no justification found within it for the forced extraction of resources to give to others.   Generosity is encouraged, true, but it is only generous if it is your own money and it is only credited as generous if it comes freely.  If anyone cares about what the Bible says, they may wish to take a look at 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

Or, they might want to consider a reading of that famous passage about Christian charity/communism in Acts 2:44-45:

All the believers were together and had everything in common.  Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

I note that they sold their own possessions and goods.  They didn’t go across the street with a bludgeon and say, “Give me some money so we can help the poor or we’re really going to clock you!  Oh, don’t whine!  Aren’t you loving?  Don’t you care about the poor?  You should be happy to give us your money.  Give it up, now!”

We can also make the observation from this passage that the generosity on display in this Acts passage and described in 2 Cor 8 do not come with any justification or imperative to extend Christian notions of ‘charity’ to non-Christians.  In other words, there is no warrant in the Bible for taking the principles of compassion and imposing them on others.

We now arrive at a discussion of the wisdom embodied in the opening quote of this article.  The ‘right’ tends to legislate morality.  The ‘left’ wants to legislate compassion.  The left, filled to the brim with secular humanists and liberal Christians, are often up in arms about the efforts of the ‘right’ to impose their moral view of the world on everyone else.  We must see the deep irony, here:  the left intends to do the exact same thing!  Only it is far worse!

The left reasons that everyone will share their notion of care and compassion for the poor and suffering and insists that we all should go along with them if we are compassionate people (like they are).  They are, in fact, violating ‘the separation of church and state’ that they hold dear in order to enshrine their values on everyone else.  They believe this is a ‘secular’ value.  The fact that Christians don’t go along with them is understood as being selfish and greedy.  In fact, Christians do not share those values in that sense as already described in brief above.

But another difficulty arises when we view it in these terms and we see it in display in the health care bill that has just been passed.  Namely, the left believes that ‘easing suffering’ ‘compassion’ and ‘caring for the poor’ means allowing women to get abortions.  Now, don’t misunderstand me.  It is not my point here to argue the case against abortion.  My point is that if we all sat down to decide precisely what ‘health care’ consists of, there will be many, many differences of opinion.   They cannot be resolved simply by declaring, “Ah, but the majority has spoken!” because they would not cease for that reason to be a matter of conscience and personal conviction.

If ever there was a time for a ‘separation of church and state’ as the Liberals understand that phrase it is in questions of ‘charity’ and the ‘public good’!

If you believe that all of these things are of importance however you define them, then fund them from your own money.   Don’t make us financially support your pet causes and we won’t make you do the same.  In fact, historically, we haven’t.   Christians are the ones that founded all institutions of higher learning.  They are the ones that founded schools, and when these were co-opted by Liberals, they started their own schools out of their own funds while still paying for the public schools, set up their own health clinics and hospitals and any number of charities.   If you ‘compassionate liberals’ did the same with your own funds, I doubt we’d be having this discussion.

But of course you don’t want to do that, do you?   Is it because you are selfish and greedy and prefer to subsidize these programs using the resources of others and merely cite the ‘public good’ as your excuse?

I should here clarify that I refer to myself as a ‘Libertarian-Constitutionalist.’  In other words, I am not the sort who is interested in ‘legislating morality,’ but if we are going to legislate such things (any thing) then we should at least do so in a uniform manner according to a firm respect for the rule of law.   Don’t try to foist the knee-jerk response, “Oh yea, well you’re legislating YOUR morality…” because if you say that, you don’t know what you’re talking about.  If you read my blog even a little you will see that that is not my position at all.  Research before you speak.

We are 2,500 words into this and you are probably thinking we are done.  Sorry.  We aren’t.  Here we go.

In the original article, Mr. Heflick says,

It seems I live in a parellel universe where somehow this equates to “but people who are poor are lazy and shouldn’t get our help.” Do you really think Jesus would oppose universal healthcare because his taxes would get raised? Really?

Given my previous discussion, I think Jesus would oppose universal health care because it embodies the silly and naive notion that Man can really spare himself from all of the hardships that come from being alive.   I think if Jesus were asked this question he wouldn’t even bother to state a position.  He’d say something like, “My kingdom is not of this world.  This world will be consumed in fire.  Unless you believe in me, you too will perish.”

This isn’t to say that this ought to be the full sum of the Christian attitude.  I’m only saying that if one actually bothers to read the Bible in full, it is evident in numerous places that Jesus came to carry out a rescue mission and not to issue moral platitudes or lay out the blueprints for a utopia.

Simply appealing to wussy notions about a ‘compassionate’ Jesus without remembering times when he was hard, insulting, and abrasive won’t cut it.  Nor can we limit our discourse to only what Jesus said and did because, well, like I said, he had a specific mission in mind and that mission pertains to the mission of the Church but is NOT the mission of the Church.  I cannot die for the sins of the world.

So, has Mr. Heflick ever read this passage?

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you have received from us.  For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example.  We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it…. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule:  ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’ 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10

What about this passage from 1 Thess. 4:11-12

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

Now, we should be clear here that these passages- like nearly all passages about ‘social justice’ type issues- are speaking only to the Christian within the Christian community.  So, it would not be right to mindlessly extend these prohibitions to the non-Christian community.  We might chastise a lazy fellow believer, but we are not called upon to chastise our lazy neighbor, because we do not have the same basis to make our appeal, which is Jesus Christ (Philippians 4:2).

That said, we can from these and other passages draw some important principles.  Let us begin with one big one:  in the name of love it is never right to enslave anyone.

In New Testament terms, slavery is anything that masters us or controls us other than God.  See Galatians 3:26-29, Gal. 5:1, 1 Corinthians. 6:12 and 1 Cor. 10:23-24.  The last passage reads:

“Everything is permissible” but not everything is beneficial.  “Everything is permissible- but not everything is constructive.  Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.”

And the Galatians 5:1 passage reads:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

In the first place, it should be understood that when we talk about seeking the good of others, we cannot pick our concept of ‘goodness’ out of the air or allow our own natural inclinations to be the sole determinant of what is ‘good,’ especially if we are Christians.  What is ‘good for others’ can be a matter for discussion and it doesn’t follow that just because a liberal secular humanist says, “Let’s do good” that he has in mind the same sort of things that a Christian would.

The liberal secular humanist ought to realize that.

I say this because for the Christian, enslaving people for their own good is not a morally sustainable path.  Christianity is about freedom and being free.  Wherever Christianity has gone, freedom followed in its wake.  Certainly I believe it has followed in the way that really matters- spiritually and eternally (which is surely what the Galatians passage is primarily referencing) but it has demonstrably brought temporal freedom, too.

Orthodox Christians, and conservatives in general, understand that the pursuit of love must come hand in hand with freedom.  (I must here give credit to Ayn Rand and the Objectivists for getting this basically right… these are the rare atheists who tend to be conservatives.)

Some examples will do.  For example, the Christian Church has historically maintained that marriages should be pursued in such a way that both the man and the woman consent to the marriage.  A more striking example can be made by contrast:  unlike the Muslims who spread their faith by the sword, the Christians understood that saving faith cannot and could not come from coercion.

There will be instant reaction to this citing a number of notable exceptions which I do not deny.  However, exceptions are exceptions.  They do not obliterate the general truth.

I do not suggest that this path of freedom- temporal and spiritual- has been straight and without incident but it is a historical fact that the freest nation on this planet was founded by men and women fleeing religious persecution in their native lands who, when finally given the opportunity to enshrine their values, created a Constitution that would prevent such things from happening again.  It wasn’t religion they were against, but religion as a tool for abuse by the Government- and it wasn’t the only tool they were afraid of.

For whatever its faults, it cannot be denied that America has been the freest most tolerant nation on this planet and this has come in large part because the nation’s founders enshrined the biblical value of freedom into its founding documents.

From this you may infer that I see universal health care as an enslavement.  You infer correctly.

I do not see how socialized health care is not in effect even if not in name, essentially making us all wards of the state.  I do not believe that it is good to be a ward of the state.  I do not believe it is good to make anyone wards of the state.  It therefore follows that I oppose universal health care which makes people wards of the state.  I am seeking the good of others when I say:  let us not enslave them.  And yes, I don’t want to be enslaved myself.

The liberal will say that this is a ‘good enslavement’ but I vehemently disagree.  I am not here speaking of the forceful extraction of funds from people, but rather the effect that such ‘social justice’ programs actually have on the people they say they want to ‘help.’  I already mentioned how liberals see abortion as ‘helping people.’  I can’t go along with that.  However, creating a universal health care system is the same as creating a universal welfare state.

I do not see why if the ‘let us love in the name of the public good’ argument is extended it should not be extended all the way.  Why not have a ‘universal food distribution,’ too?  How can it be fair and right and socially just for one man to have a $40 steak but another man can only afford $3/lb hamburger?  And what about the people who are going hungry?

Mr.  Heflick said,

“By not backing healthcare reform, it is as if every Christian who opposes it is indirectly inflicting harm and suffering onto others.”

If not going in for universal health care is actually backing the harm and suffering of others then it should follow that not having a ‘universal food distribution’ is doing the same thing.

Surely it follows that if there are 5 people out of 100 who do not have access to quality health care then we should take the whole lot of them and redistribute the wealth equally among them!  Or, what about just helping the 5 people and allowing the other 95 to retain their freedom?

If there are 5 people out of 100 who are going hungry we do not put forward the solution that we must put everyone under a universalized food program.  At least, not here in America.  Rationing cards and the like are the things of communist countries.  So, some people have obviously followed Mr. Heflick’s reasoning to its logical conclusion.  Why doesn’t Mr. Heflick?

We can be thankful that he is inconsistent but inconsistency isn’t the kind of thing we really commend people for.

Everywhere that ‘universal health care’ has gone lower quality and rationing has come with it.  And why not?  Where public dollars are at stake, surely it follows that no one should get special treatment.  And who can possibly deny the reality that someone- the government, of course- will have to decide who gets what treatments based on the finite available dollars?

The freedom to make one’s own health care choices is preserved by allowing them to pay for it out of their own pocket.  I leave aside dealing with the painfully naive notion that these government agents will always have our interests in mind.  This is out of touch with reality.  History gives no reason to hope in such nonsense.

Moreover, the fact that a finite pool of ‘public’ resources has to be carefully administered ‘equally’ to the public has given rise to a series of big problems.  First of all, whenever something is ‘socialized’ the quality tends to go down.  It has to.  The laws of reality require it.  Let me explain.

Remember the guy with the $40 steak and the guy with $3 a pound hamburger?  Let us suppose that the government has to balance this out ‘fairly’ and ‘equally’ since it is administering public dollars.  Well, life is life.  No matter how you cut it, there just ain’t no way you’re going to be able to distribute quality steaks to everyone in America whenever they want it.  Oh sure, you might be able to petition for one and on occasion get your wish, but you would never be able to go out and get one if you so chose because its all has to be withheld for fair administration.  So what can the government afford to give out to everyone?  At best, the $3 a pound hamburger.  In reality, it will be even worse than that because without the profit motive to spur people on to raise, slaughter, and distribute quality beef, the quality would decline.

This is exactly what happens in any place where this philosophy is fully implemented.  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

You can expect that the quality of health care, and access to health care in general, will both decrease if ever a universal health plan is imposed fully.  Not only will we become wards of the state, but the freedom to seek and pursue quality health care will be seriously curtailed.

You may disagree with me and say that somehow we’ll be able to pull it off this time, but regardless, you see that my objection is not about simply being ‘greedy’ and ‘selfish.’  I earnestly believe that more suffering would result from universal health care and so, in the name of love and decreasing temporal suffering, I feel compelled to resist it.

But of course it doesn’t matter what I say.  Liberals know what I really mean.

The above presumes at that our government agents really are working out of noble reasons according to good common sense moral dictates.  Unfortunately, as the abortion thing serves to illustrate, this presumption cannot be made.

There is a threat to freedom and liberty that accompanies the equal distribution of finite resources for the public good, and it is embodied in the very common and utterly logical conclusion that one of the most effective ways to raise or sustain the quality of living on this basis for all people is to… reduce the number of people.

Population control reasoning almost always comes right along with this way of thinking.  It makes perfect sense, right?  If there are only 100 $40 steaks available but 1,000 people to share them between, and you hate having to pick cow hooves out of your hamburger, surely the simplest thing to do is just get rid of 900 of those people!

Abortion is horrible in my estimation but just as repulsive is the reason why so many people support it- not because it is ostensibly about a woman’s choice but because it decreases the number of people the state will have to tend to.

The (in)famous Bart Stupak reported that this very reasoning was in play in discussions about abortion and the Senate health bill that was passed:

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue–come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

The article I use to document this is interesting in its own right and I submit it for your consideration.

The aptly named Jacob Appel, a ‘bioethicist’ has made a similar argument  in regards to eugenics:

The most obvious advantage of mandatory screening [of embryos] is that it will reduce the long-term suffering of the children who are spared disease. At the same time, preventing future cancers will certainly save tax dollars. These savings could be redirected toward researching new therapies and providing quality care for current patients.

Here you see a clear case of finding a way to give out the quality $40 steaks.  You do it simply by eliminating all those people who might otherwise have been competing for those dollars.

This latter quote also calls attention to one of the other despicable aspects of this reasoning- and which I want no part of as a Christian- is the notion that you will ‘reduce the long-term suffering’ of these children, sparing them from having the disease by…. watch this… preventing them from coming into existence in the first place.

Oh ho, Mr. Appel!  What a stellar solution!  We shall eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferers!  Is this what you wanted, Mr. Heflick?  This is exactly the sort of reasoning that statists quickly turn to when trying to figure out how to extend equal services in the public good.  I find it evil and repulsive and morally repugnant.

Keep in mind that Mr. Appel uses as his example for screening a disease that while 4 out of 5 women with the gene may get is one that is treatable in 9 out of 10 cases.

This is what some people mean by ‘compassion’ and ‘reducing suffering’ and how they mean to go about ‘cutting costs’ in order to ‘improve quality.’

In the face of these examples, which I wish to be clear are meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive, for I could produce many more *cough* John Holdren *cough*, I must flatly condemn any such program that inspires such thinking.  If we must wonder why ‘born again evangelicals’ so often are most opposed to universal health care we may begin to wonder why liberal secular humanists (whether atheists or ‘Christians’) so easily embrace tyrannical and totalitarian malthusian and Nazi style thinking.  But that is another post.

So you see that there are a great many reasons why I reject universal health care.  These things I have listed which are urged in the name of ‘love’ do mischief with other virtues expressed in the Bible:   It deprives people of their work ethic, lowers the quality of care, reduces the access to care period, reduces humanity to temporal beings (I mean, if you really wanted to reduce suffering why not hook everyone up to morphine for their entire lives a la the Matrix?  What?  Don’t you care for people?), takes money away from people who worked hard for it whether they consent or not and uses the money and resources to do things that they may not find morally acceptable.

On top of all these things, already bad, I find that the people who are really committed to bringing about ‘universal health care’ in the name of ‘love’ and ‘compassion’ and using the government to ‘help people’ are very often (I do not say they all are this way!) pursing a program that I consider to be vile, disgusting, abhorrent, and… evil.  Pure, out and out evil.

I have no confidence that we could ever implement any socialistic program in this country without having these despicable people pushing for it and carrying it out.  The people most likely to implement it with moral sanity are the very people that the left wishes would just stay out government altogether.  People don’t want Christians to ‘impose’ their morality on others, but it is precisely this ‘morality’ which gives rise to Jesus’ statement that the whole moral law can be summed up in “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind; and the second is like it- Love your neighbor as yourself.”

You can’t have one without the other, friend.  Not from a Christian viewpoint, at least.

And I should say, in conclusion, lest I be misunderstood, the notion that if we care and love people so much that we’ll just deny them existence and enjoy the consequence of having them not around to dilute the available ‘public funds’ is so despotic that there is no way, ever, that I can be reconciled to it or any program that exhibits even a hint of it.  I should rather die.  And I shall stand against this tyranny to my dying breath.  Those who espouse this point of view I count as my enemy.  I shall not even dine with them.

Because I do love people- enough so that I should like them to exist, and I have every hope that we can ease their suffering, but not at the same time by enslaving them and making them the chattel of the state.

If this means that I reject this bill because it is ‘ungodly’ and that makes me unloving, well, you can eat my shorts.

I have a solid dozen other posts on this blog that talk about these topics.  The search tool in the right column is your friend.

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‘Individualism’ has a bad rap, even among Christians.  To be fair, there are things in ‘individualism’ that I think are unhealthy or even immoral, too, but the key thing to remember is that any opposite of ‘individualism’ is not necessarily preferable.  If we’re going to raise up ‘inter-connectedness’ (a neutral term, I hope) it must be done thoughtfully, and it cannot obliterate that which is moral or good in ‘individualism.’

The only folks that I’ve ever heard defend ‘individualism’ are the Objectivists- the offspring of Ayn Rand, that spunky atheist who escaped the clutches of communism.  Rand’s views on the individual seem to be expressed most succinctly, and passionately, in her little book Anthem, which is a favorite of mine.   There is a flaw in her book however:  the intrinsic value of the individual is assumed;  no basis for it is provided.

And no wonder.  In atheism, no basis for the value of the individual human can be provided.  At best, the individual human values himself, and then out of concern for his own interests forges a social compact with other individual humans not hurt him.  That is secular humanism at its core.  But this can only go so far.  Once ‘social compacts’ are on the table, the ‘good of society’ becomes an obvious next step.  “The most good for the most people.”

I won’t explore the inevitable progression from there (“Someone must decide what that good is”) and discuss the history of abuse that consistently emerged within these systems.  These are not the point of this post, but you can find comments on it on this blog and the issue is discussed in my fictional book series, Birth Pangs.

The point, here, is that within secular humanism and atheistic systems, the only thing that lasts from one generation to the next is the State.  Society and the State become the ‘highest’ level organism, and the individual a mere cell within it.   From the point of view of the State, the individual has as much value as a skin cell which can be scraped off and safely discarded.  Naturally, more valuable cells you want to keep around- while they have utility- but the ‘brain cells’ never lose sight of the fact that the cell’s value is strictly in what it can contribute to the ‘body.’

You don’t keep old, dying, disfigured, disabled, and dead cells around just for sentimental value.  If a ‘cell’ is to stick around and be embraced by the State, it must explain how it adds somehow to the health of the ‘body.’   For an illustration,  I have heard secular humanists recoil in horror at the prospect of eliminating expensive-to-society disabled children… but not because the disabled have some sort of intrinsic value.  Instead, you might hear something more aesthetic, something about how diversity within society (read:  within the State) is something valuable in itself.

This is lucky.  If instead the only thing the disabled could put on the table is the fact that they require massive investments of capital that could otherwise go to those with more ‘Quality-Adjusted Life Years‘ or that their genes are potentially a menace to the species, they’d probably be toast.

The value of the individual, when the State is the highest level ‘organism’ is judged exclusively against the interests of the State itself.

In Christianity, by contrast, concepts such as ‘individual’ and ‘community’ are evaluated differently.  There are occasionally overlaps, such as with Rand’s view of the individual and the genuine interest of many secular humanists for the down trodden within our society.  However, it is critical to understand how the different perspectives work when things get dicey.  For the secular humanist, there may come a point where one has to dispense with some individuals for the sake of the State.

True, the unborn are the best place to start, because they can in no way resist or speak out on behalf for their own existence, but as my link to Sanger’s document above illustrates, we should not deceive ourselves into thinking it is limited to them.

For the Christian, such an approach is impossible and unacceptable.  Each individual has intrinsic value and no other individual can deny it, or by declaration obliterate it.

When individuals must be sacrificed (say, in what is hopefully a just war), it is a tragedy of infinite proportions for any single person to die or to take a life.  A Christian ‘general’ who sends his men into certain death grieves for each one of them for what is lost was of momentous value, not because of what it contributed to society, but for its own sake.

Unlike the atheist who perceives that there is nothing apart from the world, the Christian understands that this is emphatically not the case.  Indeed, while the secular humanist behaves as though the only lasting institution is the transgenerational State, the raw fact is that even on their own view, the State is doomed.  This will be either by an asteroid strike, the death of the Sun, or universal heat death.

But the Christian knows that that the Individual will outlast it all.  Only the individual will survive the ultimate fate of the universe.

In the afterlife, there will be no Venezuela, Cuba, or Soviet Union.  There will not even be a United States of America.   These will all fail and fade,  as indeed many already have.  But not the individual.

Besides the fact that the Individual survives it all, unlike the Objectivists, the Christian can offer a robust basis for why the individual has the value it does.  First (in chronology) of all, humans are not the result of mindless processes bound up with the universe but rather are created by the Eternal Artisan.  Secondly, this Artisan has doubled down on the human race by redeeming it at great and painful cost and bestowing everlasting life on a New Earth.

We interact every day with immortals, not fodder for the machinations of the State.

Ironically, secular humanists try to portray themselves as the ones who are genuinely interested in mankind.   They believe with contempt that it is the Christian who cares little for the weak, the poor, the sick, the aging, and so on.  It is not so.  Given the high view of humanity that the Christian possesses which I have described, the real distinction is this:  The Christian understands that you cannot in good conscience work on the behalf of one individual at the expense of another individual.  Christians cannot engage in Malthusian trade offs.

In pursuit of the good for one individual or class of individuals you are not permitted to oppress another individual or class of individuals.  Not for the State.  Not even for ‘The Most Good for the Most People.’

The Christian must honor every human life, even the unborn human life, and in no ways can the Christian blissfully accept the proposition that it is ok to dispense with some in order to rescue others, and it is no use soothing your conscience by declaring that the ‘some’ simply aren’t persons.  When such decisions must be made, as is sometimes necessary, it is heart wrenching and tragic;  the people who most grapple with the problem of pain and suffering are not the atheists, but Christians.

If it is within the Christian’s power, he must advocate for the rights and value of all humans, even those it is easy to target (ie, in America, ‘the rich.’)  And he must oppose those other humans who would reduce them to utilitarian cogs in the machine.  Not those who believe that, per se, but those who actively attempt to implement that world view.

It should be clear from this that it does not follow that any given individual has the right to impose himself at the expense of other individuals, and certainly Christians cannot take that view.  One supposes, for example, that Rand, as an atheist who adopted the evolutionary framework, would have endorsed such a tactic if it was believed the individual could get away with it.  Survival of the fittest, and all.  The Christian Individualist is always conscience of the impact of his actions on others, and hopes very much that he can achieve his desires, but not at the expense of others.  The Way of the Survival of the Fittest is not open to him.

Moreover, the same source for our information about the Eternal Artisan’s creative and redemptive efforts tells us some important things about the nature and kinds of community that individuals should value.  The first and and most important institution is telling on many levels:  the family.

For the secular humanist (and even Plato) the family is really just an arbitrary social construct.  But for the Christian, it is recognized that the family is divinely constructed (Gen. 2:21-25, Malachi 2:13-16).

See how individualism is manifested within the family:  in this small society, there are different roles to be played and questions of sustainability are certainly considered.  And yet, a father- a good father, that is- would not dream of subjecting one child to a life of hard labor in order that another (or himself) could have a life of leisure.  True, especially in agrarian societies, a family has many children in order to survive on the land, but even here there is no avoiding the fact that the ‘investment’ in years while the child is helpless and a ‘liability’ is filled with its own pleasures; for indeed, the child himself is the result of a loving and pleasurable embrace.

In the Christian view, new life is begotten within a network of loving individuals that cherishes it for its own sake and not merely for what it can add to the family’s bottom line.  On the Christian view, the new life is added as much for the joy it adds to the community as anything else.  In the secularist view, it may as well be hatched.

Today, here in America, we live in a society where all roads currently lead to Society.  It is a society that has families in it;  it ought to be a society of families.

The family is constructed in just such a way, from beginning to end, that individualism is respected within proper boundaries.  It is no surprise that the attack on the family as an institution is so fierce and that the secularists so heartily embrace Family Planning and defend abortion so adamantly.   In the secularist mindset, to the extent that individuals are valued and welcomed, it is done so in consideration relative to the highest level organism as they perceive it, the Society.   Individuals should be spared the burden of unexpected pregnancies, and the expense that these may put on ‘society’ is to be avoided.

But in the family, the individual is not the sole measure of things.  The Christian, in fact, recognizes that most of us know- intuitively (after all, this is how we were made) that we simply are not complete and at peace in the world without little kids biting at our heels.  An ‘unexpected pregnancy’ is just one more unexpected event in a life that we know is already filled with unexpected events.  The people in our family enhance the satisfaction within the family, bringing new joys even as they bring new difficulties.

In this defense of the individual it should be evident, then, that the individualism is not an absolute.  More than that, it is recognized that the individual himself is not complete apart the community.  The community of family is threatened in many levels in our society, and it should not be believed that I think they are all intentional or deliberate.  The rise of the Automobile and the Interstate, for example, has delivered harsh blows against the institution of the Family, with parents and grand parents and aunts and uncles and cousins etc spread around to kingdom come.

The point, though, is that within the community of the family, the individual’s welfare is never pursued at the expense of some other individual’s welfare.  Indeed, when sacrifices are made (eg, by a parent working 2 shifts in order that all may eat), it is done willfully and deliberately by the parent, out of his or her own love for his family.  It is not done because the State has said, “Pay these taxes in order that these may eat.”  (and under its breath, “And so that we can fund this other program you know nothing about…”)

One further thing needs to be mentioned, and applies most specifically to other Christians:  the individual will outlive even the institution of family.  We already have clues:  in the afterlife, we will be like the angels, who do not marry.  But this is not without community:  only, the critical thing is that our communion is with Christ, in whom we are literally joined (Romans 6).  There isn’t even the promise in Scriptures that we will commune with others- this is sentimental myth.  We have no promise of seeing our loved ones in ‘heaven.’  We are assured only that we will be with Christ.

I say that not because I believe that we will be separated from our loved ones in the afterlife though joined with Christ, but because it is clear that when we relate to these, it will be in and through our relation in Christ.

So besides the Individual, there is in fact one other institution that will last forever:  the community of the Church.

It is a shame and a devastating tragedy that our churches are among the most fragmented and impersonal institutions that we interact with as Christians.  It could be so much more.  Attempts to focus on the importance of the community, in some quarters, is dismissed, and then with hostility.  The idea that you can present the Gospel and be indifferent to the need for genuine community is simply wrong.

Of course, it is critical to hasten to add that this is not saying you can have ‘community’ apart from the Gospel, as though the Gospel’s purpose is merely to bring about community, and you can bend the Gospel as necessary to facilitate that community.  It is the community in Christ that will last.  Obviously, then, it would be stupid to have community for the simple sake of having community, indifferent to the Gospel of Christ.    Let the secularists pursue that;  it is not for us.

In short, dear Christian, I contend that we already have in front of us all the ‘higher level organisms’ we need:  the community of the family and the community of the faithful.  Here and only here are individuals respected, welcomed, and free.  Here only are individuals understood to be forever, and here only do we see the context in which they will be forever- in community through Christ.

It is therefore with great caution that we must approach the efforts of the Statists.  True, very often they propose programs that we can in good conscience get behind.  However, even then they do not share our views about the individual, and so, they can, quite unexpectedly, change things.  They would only be acting on their own values, and so we should not be shocked.  Thus it should be evident that the more power we give them to help us the more power we give to them to hurt us.

As such, it is worth positing that we should give them no power at all, and the power that we do give them come with very robust checks and balances.  Our trust in their sincere intentions seems, increasingly, to be poised to do us all great harm- or at least, the weakest among us, and those who are the heaviest burden on society.  In the name of the “Most good for the most people” great evil is being inflicted, and history tells us a great deal more is possible.

Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity, and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. See their love-feasts, and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them, and causes a contempt for our gods.

In response, Julian The Apostate launched government philanthropic programs in an attempt to render the Christian message impotent.

The astute Christian reader will already see where this is going.   We must ask the question:  “Do the numerous government programs aimed at ‘helping’ people actually serve to undermine the Christian faith?”  Some might argue that that is too conspiratorial.  Let us set aside the question of intent then and deal strictly with the question of effect.

In doing this, we might approach a question like government funded welfare not by saying, “This was meant to undermine the Church” but instead by saying, “Whatever its intent, does it undermine the Church?”   I would answer the latter resoundingly as a ‘YES!’

For the great many Christians that vote Democratic and have over the decades such a determination probably comes across as a slap in the face.  Christians who vote Democratic tend to have genuine concern for the oppressed, the poor, and the desperate.   Do we suppose that the Christians during Julian the Apostate’s reign cared any less?  So what would be the difference?

The difference is clear:  the Christians then used their own money, their own resources, and their own time to help the poor.  They did not relegate the duties clearly given to them by God to the government.  And lucky thing, too, for Julian would have been happy to take on the task.  No happier, I suppose, then the Democrat party is today.

I note again that these duties were given to the Church by God.  I trust that I do not need to document this but for example, when the early church was getting ‘bogged down’ with ministering to the poor they didn’t ring up the leaders of Jerusalem to take over the task.  They appointed seven godly men from within to take over.  (Acts 6)

A sincere Christian might protest that it should make no difference who is helping the poor so long as they are being helped.  Wrong.   It makes a huge difference.

Consider this one very big difference:  the good deeds done by the Church are accomplished by men and women freely giving up their own time, talents, and money;  the ‘good’ deeds done by the Government which accomplishes the deed by coercing, by threat of fines, confiscation, and imprisonment, resources from the community.

More succinctly:  The Christian Church gives away was was freely given to begin with.  The Government gives away what was forcibly taken.

This is all the difference in the world.

From the outset, then, we see that there is no way that ‘helping the poor’ is the same no matter who does it.  The Government achieves it by robbing the rich(er).  The Church achieves it by the rich(er) joyfully responding to God’s work on their behalf.

There are many other differences, too.  For example, the Christian who cares about the poor and believes that the Democrats  can help might disagree with the liberals that subsidizing abortion on demand helps the poor.

Too bad!  Live by the Government, Die by the Government.  You opted to use the Government to do ‘good’ and that’s exactly what it did- ‘good’ as it perceives it.  Guess what.  Your hard earned dollars are now subsidizing the murder of thousands and millions of the unborn.  Oops.

Well, what did you expect to happen?  Did you think that the Government was going to be filled forever with stout Christians?  Hey, don’t let it bother you too much.  Besides subsidizing abortion, you’re also paying your ‘fair share’ for embryonic stem cell research, eugenics, euthanasia, condoms, etc, etc.  This is your bed you made.  Lie in it.

I would like to briefly deal with one likely objection:  “But the Government must help people because clearly the need is there and the Church is not stepping up.  It is better for these people to receive flawed help then no help at all.”

Setting aside the problem that in America, the kind of help the government often envisions  is EVIL, we find ourselves returning to the issues raised by my citation of Julian the Apostate.  If the Church today was doing its duty, there would be no room for the argument that the secular, humanistic, godless, liberal Government needs to be doing it.  What Julian had hoped to achieve has been accomplished in our age, with Christians complicit in the affair.

But here is the rub:  has the involvement and support of the Democrat party by so many Christians over the decades improved the reputation of the Gospel and Christians?  Nope.  Ostensibly, supporting these social causes were a manifestation of the Gospel but in fact the effect was to undermine the power and witness of the Gospel.

No other consequence should have been expected.  Who needs the Gospel when you have the Government?  And why should you believe the Gospel when all the Christians you know seem to be stingy and just as worldly as anyone else?  It isn’t like Christians are paying more taxes then anyone else, right?  Christian Bob and Secular Joe, living on the same street, are paying the same ‘fair share’ of taxes to support the same government programs.  How can we distinguish between their respective ideologies?

You can’t.

It seems like the very opposite of compassion, but Christians need to extract themselves from this vicious cycle of using the Government as the tool to ostensibly carry out the duties that belong to them.  This is not a call for being dismissive regarding social issues.  It is a call to meet them on our own terms.

I’m just saying.

I will at some point obtain a simple mp3 of the presentation but in the meantime if you want to listen and observe the chat conversation you may listen via the archive link.

This morning I woke up to a follow up question.  I thought I would answer it on my blog.  Here was the question:

I often see two groups of people.

One is are involved in a tradition rich church with head knowledge of rules and dogma. In reality for them, God is not often real in their lives and their rules without empathy or transparency drives people away.

The second could be explained as people involved in a newly created, often emotion driven church, with little foundation or knowledge of how firm the foundation of the bible and the church is. When real questions come up, they topple.

Both are in danger of propagating a fragile view of Christianity to people they know and more importantly, their children.

How can the churches out there tackle these problems effectively.

I think both of these perceptions are valid.  I have met Christian-turned-unbelievers from both categories in abundance.

How can the Church counteract these two extremes?  Lord if I know!  The problem for each is that they are utterly convinced in their own minds that their perspective is correct.   Worse, proponents have another harmful attitude where they would prefer utter isolation to change and adaptation.  I have met proponents in both camps- in this case, especially the traditionalist camp- who would go so far as to say that if their congregation shrinks, even to nothing, that is better then ‘compromise.’  In fact, it is not uncommon to hear them say that if their congregation atrophies, this is a sign that they are doing something right.  And the surest sign that a church is compromising with the truth:  if it is growing.  This is not hypothetical.  I can think of numerous instances.

(The meteoric rise of the Christian church in the book of Acts is apparently exempted from this reasoning)

So, I see your question touching on my first recommendation which was “Recognize there is a problem.”  Proponents in both camps recognize there is a problem, all right:  It’s with everyone else.

It should be evident what I think of these attitudes. This is one reason why I included as a recommendation that “Recognize we have no right to the status quo.”  There is nothing in the NT giving us any assurance that we are entitled to having church buildings the size of three football fields or facilities decked out with stain glass window and an expensive organ.   If all this was stripped away, we would still be obligated to evangelize to this generation.  Unfortunately, we are often creating the very people that need to be evangelized to, raising up weak Christians who promptly fall away in the face of a blistering secularist onslaught.  (See this article documenting my view that the Church is creating atheists).

If the megachurch facility or the historic liturgy has any eternal value at all, it is in their capacity to promote the Gospel of Christ, strengthen current believers, and bear clear witness to nonbelievers.   None of these elements should be done at the expense of the others.  Proponents of the perspective you mention believe they fulfill all of these categories.  I think the statistics prove otherwise, but beyond that, the witness to nonbelievers is anything but clear in most instances.

Consider the liturgy pre-Vatican 2 which was done in Latin no matter where the services were held.  No clearer example exists of holding on to something that was useless in evangelizing the nonChristian.  Its use in edifying the Christian was limited mainly to a small few.  In a word, the whole approach required nonChristians to learn about God in Christ on the traditionalist’s terms.   This is the problem in the two perspectives you mentioned writ large.  They each offer to minister to the world on their own terms whereas the NT never indicates that we would ever even have that option, let alone come to feel like we are entitlted to it.

This isn’t to say that the nonChristian gets to have it all their own way, setting the terms of the engagement all on their own, to which we must unquestioningly submit to.  That would be another extreme.

The upshot of it is that I personally have little hope that churches in these two groups are going to change their outlook.   If you find yourself in such a congregation or talking to a proponent of such a view the best you can do is try to tackle their arguments head on.   Depending on the congregation, they’re as likely as not to simply excommunicate you, but at least you’ve done your part.

In my view, things are going to have to get much worse before the evidence is so utterly self-evident that even these folks are persuaded.  One almost finds themselves pining for the days when Christians roamed the countryside, fleeing from house to house- and managing to convert thousands in the process.

One tempers that against the constant tortures and mutilations that accompanied it… so I guess in the final analysis it would be better if the Church at large today recognized the current situation and their Biblical obligation to own up to its responsibility in creating it and its responsibility to address it head on, making the necessary adjustments.

In conclusion, apart from making a stink wherever you can in hopes of forming a critical mass of individuals keen on taking the bull by the horns, there isn’t much you can do.  Even if we succeed in creating such a critical mass, the proponents of the views you mentioned won’t be joining us.  It is a simple thing in America to move down the street and build a new church building.  Regardless, we need that critical mass if we want to transform the Church.

In the meantime, you may want to try to fend off the damages within your own sphere of influence.  If the statistics are accurate, there are people in your midst in their late teens and early twenties who are on their way out of the church.  They’ll never say a word.  They won’t tell you.  They won’t give you their reasons.  If you heard their reasons, they might not even be very good reasons.  Nonetheless, off they go.  Find them, befriend them, and in time, by prayer, persuasion, and relationship, you might bring them back.

Remember the story of the starfish.

Thanks for your question!  Sorry for the cynical answer!

If you don’t know Toy Story, it is simply a story about toys- toys who come alive when you aren’t looking.  In otherwords, a stock ‘toy story.’  In both movies there is a curious perspective presented that I really appreciated.  In the first movie, Buzz Lightyear has to come to terms with not being a ‘real’ Buzz Lightyear.  The realization that he is a mere child’s plaything drives him to drinking.  Woody the Sheriff helps him through this difficult time.  In the second movie, Woody the Sheriff finds out he is a valued collectible after he is separated from Andy, the child who owns him.  Ultimately, it is Buzz who brings Woody the Sheriff back to his senses, using the same arguments that had been deployed by him.  After all, both have Andy’s name written on the bottom of their feet.

Both movies address in their own way the difference between assigning value to yourself and having it assigned to you by someone else, someone more superior, something more real.  Here then is the first valid insight into theology- in both movies, the ‘toys’ come to the understanding that their self-assigning was less valid and less meaningful than the meaning they would have relative to Andy, the child that loves them.  If Toy Story were written to reflect modern secular humanistic relativistic atheistic worldviews, Buzz would have decided that he was a real Buzz Lightyear if he said he was.  And Woody the Sheriff would have decided that being a collectible, ie, prestigious in his own eyes, if the important thing is that we value our individual selves (ala Objectivism).

That the movies end with the toys coming to terms with the fact that they are toys and finding immense satisfaction in their created purpose is one of those wholesome lessons that proves that however much Hollywood and secular humanists try, theological messages resonate.  (See also Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty)

So, are we toys?

We don’t like to think so.  We would like to think that if we merely declared that we were completely independent and autonomous from any creator it would be so.  We would like to think that assigning ourselves whatever value we like means that we really have that value.  There is the theory and then there is the reality.  Buzz tried to fly to prove he really was the ‘real’ Buzz Lightyear and lost an arm.  You can only mock reality so long before you get hurt.  And like Woody the Sheriff discovers, coming to terms with your created purpose means that your value is found relative to a Lover but this is more ‘real’ and satisfying than the vaporous self-adulation apart from anyone else’s considerations.

So, are we toys?

The thing about meaning and value is that these concepts are inherently relative- relative in the sense that are relative to some entity.  A dollar bill has value- relative to the billions of humans who would like to have one.  It is humans which impart the value to the dollar bill.  The dollar bill is otherwise just a piece of paper, and if inflation does its worst, even humans may disregard it.  If the dollar bill were sentient, it would still just be a piece of paper.  Under the atheistic framework, we have no more value than a wadded up piece of paper, or a scrap of iron.  Nonetheless, something gnaws on us constantly, alerting us to the fact that we are something more than the mere matter that litters our existence.

In the ‘First Mover’ argument, cause and effect is tracked back to a final regress.  The argument is that if cause and effect could go on forever, it never would have started at all.  In short, there had to be a point where there is an unmovable mover who is able to cause without that cause itself being the result of an effect.  This argument is similar.  If who assigns value can regress infinitely, then value and meaning are fundamentally meaningless terms.  Eventually you must come to a point where a thing has value without it being assigned by someone else or some other entity.

As far as objections to the Prime Mover argument goes, the response as far back as Hume is that if one must posit such a thing for cause and effect, why not simply stop with the universe?  Why go on to ‘God.’  Can the same objection be made to the ‘Prime Value Instiller’ argument?  If so, the final regress would stop in just two possible places:  the individual human himself or the collective society of humans.

This is in fact what philosophical naturalists think.  But does it work?  Can you have such a view without, like Buzz testing his ‘realness,’ having broken ‘arms’?   And then the important question:  is it true?

For you see, Buzz and Woody the Sheriff may not have liked the fact that they were toys at various times in their existence, but they did not cease, for this reason, to be toys.

In fact, they found great pleasure in returning to their created purpose, and recognizing that their greatest value and highest satisfaction was found relative to the Child, Andy.  And being repulsed by the notion that they were a child’s plaything does not by any means serve as an argument that Andy doesn’t exist.  You see, this isn’t an intellectual objection to Andy’s existence at all.  It is an understandable objection- but it is not intellectual.  It is something else entirely.

I am a toy, and I have been sealed with God’s name, and frankly I love it.   I invite you, not to become a toy, because you have no power to change what you are, but to recognize that you are a ‘toy,’ and come to terms with it, and so enter into the “joy that was set before him.”

Fix your Eyes on Jesus, the Author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Hebrews 12:2.

And we are that joy.

But I think he got it pretty wrong since  that author looked at being stamped with Andy’s name as being stamped by God’s name and I’d say Andy’s eventual farewell leaving behind the toys invalidates that.

Although in my defense, Toy Story 3 has only just now come out and I could not have known this when writing this post. Even so, even if I find a ‘Christian element’ in the movie, it doesn’t follow that the whole of the movie should continue in that pattern, especially when the movie itself isn’t set up as being a Christian movie. Besides, I had other arguments besides the stamping of the name.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist… I can’t let the claim that I was ‘pretty wrong’ pass without comment.

Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake!

Any rational person will immediately ask himself just how one knows what ‘good’ is, anyway.  Atheists, true to form, are unaware the question even needs to be asked.  Everyone has an intuitive sense that there is a ‘good’ and the only thing that atheists get their undies in a bundle about is the idea that this sense may be related to God.  That the ‘intuitive sense’ requires explanation barely crosses their mind.

This ‘misunderstanding’ forms the basis for challenges by ‘elite’ ‘thinkers’ like Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer, who snipe that if people need ‘God’ to be ‘good’ then that admits that people are pretty wicked.  They point out that you don’t need God to be good… the slogan above basically references the same idea… but utterly and completely fails to grasp the point.  The slogan from the atheist’s London campaign captures the same disconnect from the real issue:  “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The idea in their head is that God is ‘needed’ in the sense that if you don’t toe the line, he’s going to smoke you, and it is only this fear that drives people to be good.   This is not what defenders of theism are saying when they say that God is ‘needed.’  What apologists mean when they say God is ‘needed’ is that his existence is the necessary explanation for the observation that we can talk about ‘good’ in the first place.

For example, let’s pretend that I am going to take these two slogans to heart.  First, I decide there is no God.  Free from worry about being held accountable for my actions, I decide to start enjoying my life.  Well, I enjoy a lot of things.  One of the things I enjoy is sex. It seems that I am not the only one, judging by society, so surely no one will object if I go on a serial raping spree?  I’m just spreading my genes, see.  Survival of the fittest.  Who are atheists to object?  I’m just ‘enjoying myself.’  All I’m doing is pulling a Nietzsche and rising above notions of ‘good and evil.’  I am being ‘good for goodness sake’ and my idea of ‘good’ is raping the wives of atheists.  If they had the courage of their convictions, atheists would join me…

Yuck.  What nasty words.  Raping spree?  Isn’t that over the line?  It is intentionally disgusting language in order to get these secular humanists who are slapping their slogans all over the place to admit, “Hey, that’s not what we meant by good!  No, ‘good’ is…. Enjoying yourself can’t come at the expense of others… it must be consensual…. etc”

Why?  Why can’t it come at the expense of others?  Why should it be consensual?  Why do we recognize these principles as virtually self-evident?

The minute you ask these questions you know that asking people to be ‘good for goodness sake’ is asking them to wonder about how we decide what is good and why any of us care about being good in the first place.  That will be the first rational thought rational people have.   This is the sure sign that hard core atheists are simply out of touch with reality and pose no intellectual threat to theism or religion in general:  just how ‘good’ is defined will be anyone’s first thought, but it never even occurs to them.

I know I’m being redundant but this post is going to be read by dozens of atheists and even here at the end they’re going to still think I’m saying we need to fear God in order to be goo, so let me point out that I have not explained why it is that God is the best explanation for the existence of goodness, but that wasn’t my point.  My point is that we need an explanation at all.

So, kudos to the atheists in DC for promoting theism!

I’m not denying that we are made in God’s image and that this then necessitates ‘goodness.’  The rest of the story, though, is that that image has become corrupted.  No Christian who knows his Bible and has studied human history and observed human nature would fail to note this critical distinction or reject the evidence of it all around them.

On the other hand, secular humanists thought they had people all figured out.  They thought they could throw off the shackles of religion.  Once everyone was a ‘free thinker’ like they were, things would be swell.  They put pen to paper and created the Humanist Manifesto.   In the 1933 version, we read:

Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his knowledge of their naturalness and probability. Reasonable and manly attitudes will be fostered by education and supported by custom. We assume that humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking.

Did you see the date on that?  The word you’re looking for here is “Oops!”  After the Jewish holocaust, multiple purges under Lenin and Stalin, Mao’s cultural revolution, World War 2, the Korean War, ie, after the death of some three hundred million people or so, the humanists went back to the drawing board.

From the 1973 version:

It is forty years since Humanist Manifesto I (1933) appeared. Events since then make that earlier statement seem far too optimistic.

Incidentally, the American Humanist Association won the Understatement of the Year award the following year.  You’d think with the worlds smartest and brightest people crafting manifestos, unshackled by religion and superstitious thought, they’d have gotten it right the first time.  Not only did they not, but they found their 1973 edition inadequate, too!

From the 2003 version:

The lifestance of Humanism—guided by reason, inspired by compassion, and informed by experience—encourages us to live life well and fully. It evolved through the ages and continues to develop through the efforts of thoughtful people who recognize that values and ideals, however carefully wrought, are subject to change as our knowledge and understandings advance.

The 2003 version dumps a lot of the material from the 1973 version that might have done some good, and like a dog that returns to its vomit, exudes the same principles- if not the same overt optimism- of the 1933 version.

What is the point of all this?  The point is that Heroes got it backwards.  It is the thoughtful Christian, relying on their own eyes and the insight of a set of documents that didn’t have to be revised every thirty years as ‘understandings advance’ that ‘got’ it right the ‘first time.’

…there is no one who does good, not even one… (Romans 3)

Some people heap contempt on the Bible because it is old and they find it ridiculous to believe in something that hasn’t been ‘updated’ in light of modern ‘progress.’  Our little journey through a century of the humanist mind raises an interesting possibility worth considering:  maybe the Bible doesn’t need to be udpated because it got it right the first time…

What aspect of reality does secular humanism continue to miss while ‘guided by reason’?  Original sin.  People are naughty.  It ain’t gonna change.  Therefore checks and balances is the way to go… which a really informed religious Nathan Petrelli would have known.

My column on Worldnetdaily: “Apologetics the Cure for Social Ills?”

The evidence of societal decay is all around us. The California Supreme Court decision is not an isolated event. Despite eight years with a Republican president, much of that with a Republican-controlled legislature, abortion is still legal and rampant, and Roe v. Wade the “law” of the land. The cure, it would seem, is better legislative efforts and more efficient grass-roots campaigning for wholesome politicians. I don’t think so.

I should hasten to add that I think there is a proper place for attempts to advance decent legislation. I even doubt that we’ve done it enough. Yet, I should note that even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion will become a states’ rights issue, and even if all 50 states abolished abortion, there will still be people getting abortions. We can successfully resist the gay agenda and preserve the traditional understanding of marriage, and yet there will still be gays. Moreover, even the straight community is filled with sexual immorality.

Read the rest of the column.

Discuss in the comment section below, if you like.

Isolation versus insulation for Christians

by Donald Hank

Imagine a mother and father who kept their children indoors in the coldest winter months and never allowed them to leave the house until they were 18, but then when they came of age, sent them out on their own, barefoot and in short sleeves in January.

What would you think of such parents who first isolate, then fail to insulate their children?

You’d probably say they were dysfunctional at best.

Yet this is tantamount to what many well-meaning Christian parents do when they insulate their children from the world, sending them, for example, to a Christian school, and then, with no further preparation, send them to a secular college without the intellectual means to ward off attacks on their faith.

Barna polls have shown that the vast majority of young people who have received a biblical education in isolation as kids lose their faith at some point during their college years, and ironically, the more biblical the upbringing, the more readily they lose their faith.  I believe this is because the more orthodox, traditional Christian families isolate their children more than others.

After all, American colleges are specialized in using the latest psychological secular rising techniques, originating in European psychological laboratories.  They have been so wildly successful that losing one’s faith has become a regular rite of passage on campus.

But you don’t even have to go to college to lose your faith.  Though raised in a good Christian home, I lost mine before college, because I avidly read National Geographic, which regularly refers in its articles to the evolution of man from lower life forms.

After all, I reasoned, the writers of these articles were more highly educated than my parents and pastor.  Surely they would know.  Thus, the Bible began to look like mythology to me.

I spent 40 years in the cold Narnian winter until I saw with my own eyes how the general breakdown of morality in America, with the drug culture, abortion, rampant immoral hedonism, the breakdown of education and virulent political correctness, was destroying our culture.  I vaguely realize that the loss of faith in God had something to do with this.

God allowed me to suffer personally, including the death of a child under surrealistic circumstances, graphically illustrating how law and order had been totally lost and how violence to the innocent is protected in a secularist society.  Though no longer professing the faith of my fathers, I could not stomach the consequences of its loss.

It gradually dawned on me that America is being secretly overthrown — violently — with only limited public awareness of the overthrow.

And whereas in the Christian America prior to the 60s, I had found it hard to believe in Christ, I now found it impossible to live without Him.  My faith grew in proportion to the decay of society.

It was the best and worst of times.

What had gone wrong?  Why couldn’t I foresee all of this?

The answer is that ours has become a culture of unintended consequences — on purpose.  We are taught, subliminally, that history leads inexorably leftward, according to Marx’s theory of the historical imperative.  Though otherwise seemingly rational, campus intellectuals tell us we must not fight this leftward trend.  Those who do so are branded reactionaries and made to feel inferior, stupid and even immoral.  The revolution is our new god.  To defy it is a mortal sin.

Make sense? Of course not.  There is absolutely no moral authority for this hypothetical historical imperative. But our ability to think and to perceive objective truth has long been hampered by the media, Hollywood, public education, academe, politicians and the ACLU, to name but the main influences.  Jesus had said “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Nowhere has this been so beautifully illustrated than by the loss of freedom in America and the attendant simultaneous loss of truth. Lo and behold, they go hand in hand, as Jesus had said.

Reading the Bible and praying with one’s family and attending church are helpful in preparing the heart.  But most pastors and families lack the preparation to provide the vital protection for our children’s vulnerable minds.

Writing to the Ephesians, Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God, and mentions the shield of faith.

But how do we acquire and maintain this faith?

Actually, Paul doesn’t tell us.  Instead, he shows us by example.  While reminding in Corinthians that not many wise men after the flesh (innately intelligent man) have been called, he modestly omits mention that he himself was a conspicuous exception to this rule.  Since it was Jesus himself who called Paul, Jesus Himself obviously knew that at least one intelligent man was needed to lead the leaders.

Significantly, Paul was the first, and certainly the most brilliant, apologist for Christ in those times.  By example, Paul told us how important the role of the apologist is, using non-religious arguments (Romans 1: 19 ff) and references to Old Testament prophecies to convince seekers of the truth.

Thus Paul was in fact the founder of the discipline of apologetics.

Yet few Christians today even know what that is, much less learn these vital techniques of wrestling with unbelief.

So let us pause here to define apologetics.  In the simplest of terms, apologetics is a means of teaching people how to believe by appealing to their intellect, as opposed to ordinary preaching that appeals only or mostly to the heart.

If Christianity could not be founded without a Paul, how can it survive without one today?

Paul did not isolate himself from the challenges of the world, but his knowledge of the facts underlying his faith insulated him from their effects.

The fact is, every pastor needs to be highly skilled in Christian apologetics today.  Yet very few are, because so few understand the importance of this discipline, in particular in transmitting the faith to the next generation.  In a pitched battle against tanks, bombers and machine guns, church leaders are returning fire with peashooters.  Or worse, with white flags.

Aware of this situation, I was particularly struck, over a year ago now, by a press release regarding A. R. Horvath’s apologetics ministry and his website reaching out to all seekers, even the “lostest” of the lost — atheists, such as I had been.

Having himself graduated from a private Christian school and studying to be a pastor in college, Anthony, like myself, had seen his faith collapses under the assault of secularist ideas.

It was he who introduced me to the idea that Christians need insulation, namely a strong background in apologetics, i.e., the skill of defending the faith by appealing to the intellect, rather than mere isolation, that is, keeping young people away from harmful ideas.

Like Laigle’s Forum, his ministry is not just to the unsaved in general but also to those who have succumbed to secularist ideas, mistakenly believing, as I once did, that a belief in Jesus Christ betrays a lack of study and understanding of the universe, while atheism is the mark of intellectual superiority.

In my case, it took years of anguish to learn the truth, and I can think of nothing more satisfying than to see others learning these same lessons without experiencing the excruciating anguish of separation from God.

That is why I am anxious to see Anthony’s ministry, Athanatos Christian Ministries succeed.   Their new online academy aims to equip Christians young and old with the information about their faith that will help them stand up to challenges to their faith.

Any pastor who finds it difficult to deal with the questions of particularly recalcitrant unbelievers can benefit from the lessons and courses it offers and certainly it would be a good place to direct inquisitive young students in the congregation.

In this pitched battle raging around us, consequences in society can be readily detected.  However, it is not merely society we wish to save, but the souls of the lost.  The Church can help, not by isolating itself, but by insulating those who must soon fight on the front.

What would ‘near defeat’ look like? God will always preserve a remnant, but a look at Europe gives a good idea. There is quite a bit of Christian heritage in Europe, but at present it is completely de-fanged. Or, we can look at China and Japan, both areas where there was a time in history when the Church was growing but then was faced with violent oppression and nearly wiped out. I think the ‘Europe’ route is more likely then the ‘Asian’ route, but the results are near the same. I say this so that it is understood that in the course of time, what I’m claiming can actually take place, even here in the United States.

What is to be done about it? This is the critical question.

1. Establish a group of concerned individuals in your local congregation. Evaluate weaknesses and strengths and brainstorm ways to deal with the weaknesses and ways to play to your strengths where apologetics is concerned.

2. Build a library of apologetics materials. Don’t just include Christian material, but also anti-Christian material. The point is to prepare oneself and one’s youth for the threats that are really out there. Take the time to have people master this material.

3. Bring in outside speakers on apologetic topics. Don’t focus so much on whether they are ‘entertaining.’ You don’t want motivational speakers, here. You want people who know their stuff.

4. Re-prioritize the use of money. I’m sorry, but many of the things churches spend their money don’t even begin to reflect the nature of the situation we’re really in. Pay for member’s classes at local colleges. Buy books of substance for young people and give them away freely. That’s right, don’t even make them pay for it or perform a million fund raisers for it. Spend time thinking about how priorities are reflected in the spending of money. A church may say that they are interested in apologetics as a high priority, but if they only spend $100 on it when they pay $10,000 for a new organ, one really knows where the priorities are.

5. Add staff positions. Again, you put money where your heart is. Apologetics is such a large area that it is not plausible for any one person to master it all, and even though I encourage pastors to bone up on their apologetics, too, aren’t pastors already doing too much as it is? The staff would work in a complementary fashion to existing youth directors and education directors.
Secular humanism has practically declared war on the Christian church. It’s about time we realized that and acted accordingly.