Morality, Religion & Philosophy: April 2004 Archives

As the recent situation with Catholics and pro-choice politicians illustrates, theology impacts politics in many ways. How should this interplay be handled by the leaders of the political and religious realms?

As best as I can understand it, Francis W. Porretto says that religious leaders should refrain from imposing theology that might influence politics (emphasis his).

A lawmaker faced with such a moral challenge has nowhere to hide. He must be explicit about his reasons for his positions, both moral and legislative. He must be willing to weather the storm from both the opponents and the proponents of the dubious practice. Sometimes, that one issue will be enough to sink him; the electorate hasn't got much taste for the sort of analysis that leads to a bifurcated position such as that.

But it is a lawmaker's sworn duty to argue and vote as he deems best for his nation. That's the burden of office. That's the price of its prestige and perquisites. For anyone to make that burden worse in an attempt to coerce the lawmaker into changing his position against the dictates of his conscience is deplorable. It is morally unacceptable.

I agree that a religious leader shouldn't use his power to attempt to directly affect politics, but I disagree that any action that makes a lawmaker's job more difficult is morally unacceptable.

A theologian should interpret theology without any concern for the effect his interpretation has on politics. He should focus simply on what is true and what is false. Continuing this example, if the Catholic Church thinks it's wrong to serve Communion to pro-choice people (or even just to pro-choice politicians, or to people with red hair, or whatever) then they should prohibit it and do what they see to be right, regardless of its popularity or political impact.

Most religions, including Catholicism (although I'm not a Catholic), are revealed -- that is, God tells us about himself and how to relate to him, we don't make it up ourselves as we go along. How we want to relate to God is unimportant, as are the effects we want religion to have. (This is all predicated on a belief in the revealed truth. If one believes that man creates God in his own image rather than vice versa, one most likely feels free to change God's preferences according to his own whim.)

If God were to command everyone to become a vegetarian on pain of eternal damnation we might not like it, but our complaints would have no bearing on the truth God had revealed. Cattle ranchers might object to the sudden loss of business, and the economy might struggle with the change, but none of those would invalidate God's command. A religious leader's responsibility is to tell people what God expects from them. Listeners can believe the revelation or not, accept it or reject it, but no human action has any effect on the truth. A revelation that is particularly hard to accept may result in people leaving the religion, and Jesus faced a similar situation. (As it so happens, this passage is directly related to the revelation of communion. Read earlier in the chapter for more details.)

John 6:60-69

On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"

Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

When Jesus taught something that was difficult to accept, many of his followers decided to leave. He then asked his twelve disciples if they intended to leave also, and Peter's response is the only rational reaction to revelation. If you believe God has revealed something, it doesn't matter if you like it or not. Where else can you go?

Religious leaders need to pass on God's revelations, regardless of the consequences. Each individual, and each politician, can then decide for himself how to respond, and when it comes to politicians each voter can decide whether to elect him or not.

I'm not a Catholic, and although I have some knowledge of the Catholic Church I'm certainly no expert on their liturgy. However, I'd assume that Catholic bishops and cardinals are experts, moreso than politicians.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., like John Kerry (news - web sites) a Catholic who supports abortion rights, said Thursday she will continue to ask for Holy Communion in spite of Vatican (news - web sites) opposition to pro-choice Catholics doing so.

"I fully intend to receive Communion, one way or another. That's very important to me," Pelosi told reporters during her weekly press conference.

A top Vatican cardinal said last week that priests must deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.

There appears to be some disagreement among Church leaders still, because the archbishop of Washington DC says he's not going to deny pro-choice people communion.

Meanwhile, it looks like Pelosi should become a Protestant.

Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat who was raised in a devout Italian Catholic home, told reporters, "I believe that my position on choice is one that is consistent with my Catholic upbringing, which said that every person has a free will and has the responsibility to live their lives in a way that they would have to account for in the end."

If you don't like the Catholic Church telling you want to believe, then you're in the wrong religion.

Some people object to allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns because they think it makes the world a more dangerous place. There's a lot of evidence that the opposite is true, and that concealed carry laws make the world both safer (for law-abiding citizens) and more dangerous (for criminals), but let's just say the naysayers are right. If more adults carry guns, there's a greater chance your child will be hit by a stray bullet during the course of her daily activities. Fine.

Rather than go into a bunch of statistics to try and demonstrate that easy concealed-carry laws increase overall safety, let me just say it doesn't matter. A person's right to carry a weapon for self-defense doesn't depend on whether or not it makes you or your kids safer.

Similarly, I have a right to drive past your house in my car, subject to certain restrictions on speed and other traffic laws. If your kids play in the front yard, driving past them poses a risk to their safety because their ball could roll into the street at any time. No matter how carefully I drive there's a possibility that they'll get run over.

Some say, "yes, but cars fulfill a useful purpose", but what could be more useful than protecting yourself or your family from a predator?

Blake Wylie at NashvilleFiles tackles the question but only answer it with an example.

So, what is justice? Justice is a government that stays out of people's lives. Justice is a church that understands that helping the poor is advancing the teachings of Jesus. Justice is truth...and as Pilate asked in The Passion, "Quid est Veritas?" ("What is truth?") As a Christian, I challenge other Christians to ask the same of themselves.

Well, not really, although I generally agree with those positions.

People like to throw the word "justice" around, but most don't seem to really understand what it means. Mr. Wylie wrote his post in response to a Letter to the Editor of the Tennessean which said:

It is the duty of government to provide jobs for its citizens who want to work. During the depression years, President Roosevelt provided work for all who wanted a job and the pay was sufficient for survival.

Churches in Nashville are overburdened with request for help also. Yes, charity has its place, but where is justice?

The writer confuses her preferences with "justice", and her reasoning probably went something like this:

1. Everyone thinks "justice" is good.
2. I think it would be good for everyone to have a guaranteed job.
3. Therefore, justice demands that the government provide everyone a job.

The problems are that (1) is based on a mistaken definition of the word, (2) is nothing more than a personal preference, and (3) doesn't even follow from (1) and (2). As I've written before, there is a difference between justice and mercy, although people commonly confuse the two. She mentions charity, and charity is an act of mercy, not justice. Mercy is giving people something good that they haven't earned. It is sometimes better to be merciful than just, but not always, and both mercy and justice have their place.

Justice is only concerned with enforcing fairness and following the rules, regardless of anyone's evaluation of the consequences. Following the rules is justice, and justice is good. Sometimes following the rules has bad results, and the one in authority would do well to suspend his just claim to fairness in favor of bringing about a better result. But, under justice, the decision to show mercy belongs to the one in authority.

So then, who is the authority over the wealth that the writer wants to distribute mercifully to the poor? She believes the wealth belongs to the government, but that's impossible. Only people can own property, and the government is an agent of people (as is a corporation, for instance). The owners, thus, have the right to decide how their wealth is used, and the only role of justice in the matter is to prevent others from seizing it by force.

Mr. Wylie goes on to argue that there is a higher authority than people, and that this higher authority is actually the owner of everything we possess. I happen to agree, and God does in fact command us to use the wealth he puts under our control to help the poor. Even this, however, is not justice, but an exercise of God's mercy. (Although you might say that justice requires us, as mere stewards and not owners ourselves, to follow God's commands.)

So, finally, we get to it. If the government were to implement God's plan for mercy in the manner he commands it, it would be easy to support. However, the government does no such thing, and there is no possibility that it ever will or could. Thus, any forced governmental redistribution of wealth must be classified as charity and mercy, not justice. It is not justice based on God's authority because it does not follow God's precepts, and it is not justice based on man's authority because it is forced.

In actuality, the vast majority of forced governmental wealth redistribution isn't even mercy, it's theft and bribery. Money is taken from one person and spent on several others to buy their political support. The victim has only a single vote to stack up against the several votes of those who benefit from the theft, and thus the crime perpetuates without end in our democratic system. A desire for real justice would result in an elimination of forced charity.

(HT: Bill Hobbs.)

I'm going to have to start a directory of great essays on what it means to be a man, but for the moment go read "Wimps and Barbarians" by Terrence O. Moore. (I had read it previously, but was reminded of it again by achilles.)

For more than a decade I have been in a position to see young men in the making. As a Marine, college professor, and now principal of a K-12 charter school, I have deliberately tried to figure out whether the nation through its most important institutions of moral instruction—its families and schools—is turning boys into responsible young men. Young women, always the natural judges of the male character, say emphatically "No." In my experience, many young women are upset, but not about an elusive Prince Charming or even the shortage of "cute guys" around. Rather, they have very specific complaints against how they have been treated in shopping malls or on college campuses by immature and uncouth males, and even more pointed complaints against their boyfriends or other male acquaintances who fail to protect them. At times, they appear desperately hopeless. They say matter-of-factly that the males around them do not know how to act like either men or gentlemen. It appears to them that, except for a few lucky members of their sex, most women today must choose between males who are whiny, incapable of making decisions, and in general of "acting like men," or those who treat women roughly and are unreliable, unmannerly, and usually stupid.

It's long, but you'll enjoy the whole thing. Mr. Moore concisely expresses many of the conclusions I've come to myself as I've grown up and he sets a high bar to strive for.

I'm not sure there was ever a golden age of manliness... I suspect there have always been both wimps and barbarians. If it appears to us today that males of the past were superior to males of the present it's probably because history is written by the winners.

Am I the only one who sees a connection between the so-called feminist movement and increasince violence among women? The feminist movement isn't really about femininity, it's about making women into men (and vice versa). It shouldn't be a surprise that the old dynamic of primarily social fighting among girls is becoming more masculine and physical.

BFL sister Baldilocks has a great post on measuring up to Pat Tillman, and also points to a post by Aaron the Liberal Slayer about "get laid politics" and why men appease feminists (hint, it's in the title). They both point out that "feminism" isn't really about women, it's about women trying to be masculine.

Baldi (we're on a first-two-syllables-of-the-name basis) also points to an article by a minister in Florida named Doug Giles who wonders:

Have you ever asked yourself, “Self … why do churches today look more like the lingerie department at Wal-Mart, than a battalion of men poised to plunder the powers of darkness?” Why do men avoid going to church, and what can be done about it?

He's got a lot of great suggestions, including:

- Enough with the Precious Moments prints and figurines -- okay? How about decking out the sanctuary with serious transcendent art work that stops us in our tracks, rather than ubiquitous prints of fat baby angels who look like they’ve got a good buzz going from too much Mountain Dew and children’s aspirin?

- Lose the Church’s “I’m in therapy for ever” feel. Yes, yes, we’re all a work in progress but the co-dependant, extended womb the Church has wrongfully created has allowed congregants to not get a life because of some difficult doo-doo in their lives. Sure life’s hard, little Sally, and the sooner, we celebrate the struggle the quicker we will draw men back to our houses of worship.

Good stuff.

(HT: Dean Esmay.)

Teresa Heinz Kerry has a revealing position on abortion.

Teresa Heinz Kerry says she's pro-choice but believes abortion is "stopping the process of life," it was reported yesterday.

"I don't view abortion as just a nothing," said Heinz Kerry in an interview with Newsweek, in which she took a side in the long-festering debate over when life begins.

So people should have the power to stop another's life at will?

Heinz Kerry once said that she was "not 100% pro-choice," but told the magazine that now the issue is black and white for her.

"I ask myself if I had a 13-year-old daughter who got drunk one night and got pregnant, what would I do. Christ, I'd go nuts," Heinz Kerry said.

Well first of all, if your 13-year-old daughter is getting drunk and having sex, you are severely neglecting your parental responsibilities. Secondly, this is a perfect example of an abortion of convenience. With modern medical technology it's generally safe for a girl even as young as 13 to deliver a baby. Absent complications (which would be more common for such a young mother), there's no concrete reason that the child couldn't be carried to term and born.

So basically Mrs. Kerry thinks it's ok to kill babies if they're likely to be too disruptive to your lifestyle.

Further down, John Kerry has a strange quote himself.

Kerry appeared at an abortion rights rally in Washington Friday, saying, "Abortion should be rare but it should be safe and legal. And the government should stay out of the bedrooms of Americans."

I'm not aware of many abortions being performed in peoples' bedrooms. And anyway, what's the idea? Wasn't the same general logic used to defend wife-beating and child abuse not too long ago?

For what it's worth, I've looked up bios on all the pro-abortion women mentioned in this article about today's march for abortion rights in Washington, DC.

- Frances (or Francis?) Kissling -- President of Catholics for A Free Choice; directed family planning clinics in the 1970s; certainly over 50 years old.

- Carole Mehlman -- mentioned in the article; "68, came from Tampa, Fla., to support a cause that has motivated her to march for 30 years, as long as abortion has been legal. 'I just had to be here to fight for the next generation and the generation after that,' she said. 'We cannot let them take over our bodies, our health care, our lives.'"

- Nancy Pelosi -- California Representative, House Minority Leader; born 03/26/1940, 64 years old.

- Gloria Steinem -- feminist journalist; born March 25, 1934, 70 years old.

- Hillary Clinton -- Senator from New York; born October 26, 1947, 56 years old.

- Whoopi Goldberg -- actress; born November 13, 1955, 48 years old.

- Kathleen Turner -- actress; born 19 June 1954, 49 years old.

- Cybill Shepherd -- actress; born 18 February 1950, 54 years old.

- Kate Michelman -- President of NARAL, had an abortion in 1970 and has grandchildren; certainly over 50 years old.

The article also mentions one pro-life woman:

- Tabitha Warnica -- mentioned in the article; "36, of Phoenix, said she had two abortions when she was young. 'We don't have a choice. God is the only one who can decide,' she said."

Where are the young women pushing for the right to kill their babies? The abortion lobby/industry is a movement made up of old women who don't represent the future of America. Surveys indicate that abortion is losing acceptance among women as the bitter boomers die off and are replaced by younger, saner generations of women.

Future generations will look back on the 40 million babies killed over the past 30 years -- in America alone -- with disgust and revulsion. A quarter of my generation: dismembered and discarded. And people have the nerve to worry about spotted owls?

Update:
King of Fools points to a poll released by Zogby last friday:

In the Zogby poll, 60 percent of 18-29 year-olds took one of the pro-life positions on abortion while only 39 percent agreed with the three pro-abortion stances. Some twenty-six percent of young Americans said abortions should never be legal.

On the question of whether abortion should not be permitted after the fetal heartbeat begins, 65.5% of 18-29 year-olds agreed, 46.9% strongly so.

I think it's pretty noble of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to publically notify the world that he's extracting himself from a promise he made not to kill Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Most promises and agreements (which should be considered the same thing) aren't intended to be kept forever. If I agree to work at a job, it's understood that I'm not necessarily going to be there forever. Some agreements are explicitly designed to be irrevocable (like marriage should be), but unless that is stated directly at the time the promise is made the only expectation should be that either party will warn the other before nullifying the agreement. Honor demands that such warning be given sufficiently in advance that the other party's interests aren't seriously damaged, and that promises shouldn't be used for deception or subterfuge -- that's the difference between good faith and bad faith.

So now Arafat knows that he can't depend on the protection Sharon's promise once offered, and he has some limited amount of time to adjust to the new situation. Assassinating Arafat without warning would have been dishonorable, considering the former promise, but now that Sharon has put President Bush (to whom the promise was made) and Arafat on notice, he's fulfilled his duty and is behaving like an honorable enemy.

Contrast Sharon's behavior with that of the Palestinian terrorists, who routinely agree to "cease fires" and then reinitiate hostilities with no warning; they use agreements made in bad faith as a ruse to trick their enemies.

It's sad to see amoral people attempt to use regulation as a substitute for morality.

After almost a year of urging the adult-film industry to require actors to wear condoms during sex scenes, state and county officials say the recent HIV (news - web sites) infection of two porn stars has given them the leverage they need to force change. ...

Although a few California adult-film producers have voluntarily switched to condom-only productions, the majority of producers and distributors have balked at doing so. It is conventional wisdom within the multibillion-dollar industry — which employs more than 6,000 people in California, including about 1,200 performers — that using a condom doesn't pay.

Well, duh.

Look, we're supposed to be a free country, and that should mean that people have the right to do stupid, crazy, dangerous things without government intervention. The problem is that people want the benefits of morality without actually having to behave morally -- thus, ridiculous over-regulation.

People who behave in even a moderately chaste manner are incredibly unlikely to contract HIV, AIDS, or any other type of sexually transmitted disease. People who behave in a promiscuous manner, on the other hand, are at high risk. Regulation and bureaucracy can't change the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, all they can do is burden everyone's freedom and push dangerous activities underground (or out of the state).

David Joseph, president of Red Light District, a Chatsworth-based production company that specializes in hard-core, "gonzo" films that do not use condoms, was one of several representatives of production companies who said that if the state required condom use by sex actors, they would leave California. Other industry insiders predicted that filming would move underground.

Again, duh. People who don't want to be moral can't be regulated into even a semblance of morality. They know the risks, and they want to take them.

Many of the problems with our government arise from well-meaning people who reject the quaint notion of morality. They just can't encourage people to behave morally, so they chip, chip, chip away at the tiny freedoms that make immorality dangerous. They want to prove that the benefits of goodness can be separated from actual goodness. But they're wrong, and the result of their belief is the ridiculous, contradictory mess we've got now.

You tell me which is which:

Frattini told reporters that Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of four Italian security guards abducted outside Baghdad, was hooded when his kidnappers put a gun to his head.

"When the murderers were pointing a pistol at him, this man tried to take off his hood and shouted: 'Now I'm going to show you how an Italian dies'. And they killed him," Frattini said.

"He died a hero."

Who's brave and worthy of honor and respect? The mere "mercenary" who fought to look his killers in the eyes before he shuffled off this mortal coil, or the men who kidnapped him and shot him from behind a hood?

It's hard to see these murderers as anything but sub-human scum. It's hard, but I'm trying.

(HT: AlphaPatriot and Donald Sensing.)

Many people think churches are a scam to get money, and in fact Jesus talked more about money than about Heaven or Hell. So what does the Bible say about money? Here's a brief survey.

God created everything.

Psalm 50:9-12

9 I have no need of a bull from your stall
or of goats from your pens,
10 for every animal of the forest is mine,
and the cattle on a thousand hills.
11 I know every bird in the mountains,
and the creatures of the field are mine.
12 If I were hungry I would not tell you,
for the world is mine, and all that is in it.

God doesn't need our money or our resources in order to accomplish his plans. In fact, rather than demand that we give to him, he gives generously to us.

James 1:17

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Why, then, are we encouraged to give? There are several reasons. God has given everything we have to us, and when we give we demonstrate (and participate in) God's generousity.

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written:

"He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever."

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

What's more, giving is good for us because it helps prevent us from getting too attached to worldly things.

Ecclesiastes 5:10

Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.

Matthew 6:24

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

1 Timothy 6:10

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Wealth provides us with a sense of security, but it's a false sense. Ask Job, who lost his vast wealth -- including his children -- in a single day.

Job 1:13-19

One day when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, "The fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, "The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"

While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, "Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"

Nevertheless, Job recognized that everything he had really belonged to God, not to him.

Job 1:20-22

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said:

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."

In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.

This is a wise saying. Wealth and power can disappear in an instant, and provide only an illusion of security. Ultimately, worldly wealth is of little value.

Psalm 49:10-12

10 For all can see that wise men die;
the foolish and the senseless alike perish
and leave their wealth to others.
11 Their tombs will remain their houses forever,
their dwellings for endless generations,
though they had named lands after themselves.
12 But man, despite his riches, does not endure;
he is like the beasts that perish.

We must learn that wealth cannot sustain us. Only God, our creator, can protect us and provide for us.

Matthew 4:4

Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Hebrews 13:5

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."

So how much should we give? First, we have to realize that God doesn't count money in the same way we do.

Mark 12:41-44

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on."

Jesus didn't condemn the rich for giving a lot, but he commended the widow for giving all she had. The point is that God wants us to give sacrificially. The rich gave out of their wealth, and their gifts cost them very little; the widow gave a tiny amount, but her gift was a true sacrifice.

This principle can be seen in the account of King David buying the land that eventually became the site of the temple in Jerusalem.

2 Samuel 24:18-24

On that day Gad went to David and said to him, "Go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite." So David went up, as the LORD had commanded through Gad. When Araunah looked and saw the king and his men coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.

Araunah said, "Why has my lord the king come to his servant?"

"To buy your threshing floor," David answered, "so I can build an altar to the LORD , that the plague on the people may be stopped."

Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take whatever pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. O king, Araunah gives all this to the king." Araunah also said to him, "May the LORD your God accept you."

But the king replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing."

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them.

King David refused to give God something that had cost him nothing.

How often do we give God our leftovers? Not just our extra money that we can afford to give without threatening our lifestyle, but our extra time and extra energy as well? When we're done doing everything we want to do, we may consider giving God some of whatever's left. This is the exact opposite of David's approach.

God deserves the best of what we have, not the scraps and remnants. God has given us everything, including his Son, and he is worthy of the first portion of our income and the highest priority in our schedule.

If you want to know how much you love God, there are two places to look: your checkbook and your appointment book. We spend time and money on what we love, and if God gets relatively little of both then it isn't a huge leap of logic to conclude that we love him relatively little.

I've been pretty busy today, so although I'm sure other bloggers have piled on Andy Rooney's latest drivel, I haven't had a chance to read their posts yet. Be that as it may, let's take a quick glance at his pathetic misunderstanding of our armed forces.

Most of the reporting from Iraq is about death and destruction. We don't learn much about what our soldiers in Iraq are thinking or doing. There's no Ernie Pyle to tell us, and, if there were, the military would make it difficult or impossible for him to let us know.

Perhaps Mr. Rooney isn't familiar with any military bloggers, such as Citizen Smash who links to first-hand reports from our soldiers around the world in his frequent sandbox roundups. Mr. Rooney says that he wants a reporter to ask our soldiers some questions, but why bother with a biased intermediary when the soldiers themselves are talking? Why bother with stupid, loaded questions like these?

2. Are you doing what America set out to do to make Iraq a democracy, or have we failed so badly that we should pack up and get out before more of you are killed?

As if there's any chance we'll be leaving Iraq for several decades. C'mon.

4. If you could have a medal or a trip home, which would you take?

Or are you perhaps fighting for a reason that has nothing to do with medals?

5. Are you encouraged by all the talk back home about how brave you are and how everyone supports you?

No, I'm sure it's quite disheartening.

We pin medals on their chests to keep them going. We speak of them as if they volunteered to risk their lives to save ours, but there isn't much voluntary about what most of them have done. A relatively small number are professional soldiers. During the last few years, when millions of jobs disappeared, many young people, desperate for some income, enlisted in the Army. About 40 percent of our soldiers in Iraq enlisted in the National Guard or the Army Reserve to pick up some extra money and never thought they'd be called on to fight. They want to come home.

I highly doubt it's the medals that "keep them going", Mr. Rooney, and it's disgusting that you'd suggest it. Furthermore, it's despicable that you'd cheapen their sacrifice by claiming that it isn't voluntary, that it was somehow coerced by economics. (Not that the details of his position are even worth refuting, but jobs are returning to the civilian sector now and the armed forces are still turning people away.)

If people enlisted in the Reserve or the Guard just to "pick up some extra money" then that's their own miscalculation. Neither organization is a charity, and I imagine the vast majority of their members signed up because they wanted to serve our country, not because they wanted hand-outs.

Some soldiers may want to come home, but that's an option they voluntarily surrendered when they decided to enlist.

One indication that not all soldiers in Iraq are happy warriors is the report recently released by the Army showing that 23 of them committed suicide there last year. This is a dismaying figure. If 22 young men and one woman killed themselves because they couldn't take it, think how many more are desperately unhappy but unwilling to die.

Mr. Rooney, you're an idiot. How many soldiers have rotated through Iraq by now? A million? As this National Institute of Mental Health statistics page shows, suicide is the third leading cause of death among males aged 15 to 24. Furthermore,

Among young people 20 to 24 years of age, the suicide rate was 12/100,000 or 2,360 deaths among 19,711,423 people in this age group. The gender ratio for this age group was 7:1 (males: females).

The soldiers in Iraq are mostly young men, so a suicide rate of 20 per 100,000 wouldn't be surprising; instead we get about 2 per 100,000. By Mr. Rooney's argument, this is evidence that our soldiers like what they're doing.

This is the type of nonsensical opinion that will be gradually weeded out of the marketplace as bloggers take over journalism. Mr. Rooney wouldn't get a hundred hits a day if he had to start now, from scratch.

Update:
Someone's numbers are wrong. According to StrategyPage on March 28th, 2004, the suicide rate for Army troops in Iraq was 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers.

The suicide rate for army troops in Iraq over the last year has been 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers, compared to the overall Army rate of 11.9 per 100,000 between 1995 and 2002. This is higher than the overall rate for all branches of the military during the Vietnam war, which was 15.6, and a 3.6 rate for all branches during the 1991 Gulf War.

That means that Mr. Rooney's numbers may be too low, since I'm sure more than 150,000 troops have rotated through Iraq by now (although many may have spent less than a year in theater).

Not my words -- Julie Leung's. She's got a fascinating perspective on motherhood you may be interested in.

Kiril at Sneakeasy's Joint has an irreverent collection of Easter blog-postings. I've never read the site before, so I don't know if he was trying to be mean or funny. It doesn't matter to me; I'm not very easily offended.

What prompted me to write this post is what he wrote in the comments section of his own post. I'll intersperse my response with his, in the traditional blogger fashion (but with, obviously, a superlative quantity of style).

While I do NOT believe in the LITERAL TRUTH of the Christian Bible, in any of its versions, I most definitely do NOT scoff at the many valuable lessons it teaches, and the many good, and wonderful blessings, believers in it have brought to Western Civilization.

The "LITERAL TRUTH" of the Bible that's important to believe is pretty simple: Jesus died to pay for our sins and then rose from the dead. Everything else is just context, and it's worthless without this central truth. None of the lessons Jesus taught are valuable apart from his Godhood, and none of the blessings Christianity has brought to Western Civilization are worth a hill of beans in the scope of eternity.

Jesus claimed to be God -- the Jews of his time knew his claim, and they threatened to stone him for it on more than one occasion. Eventually he was crucified for blasphemy. If Jesus wasn't God, then he certainly wasn't a wise and good teacher, because no one wise and good would falsely claim to be God. If Jesus wasn't God, he was either a liar or a lunatic.

There are many Religions in the world, with far more followers than Christianity, and who are we, whether believers in the literalness of the story, or just folks who try to live a Christian life according to our personal understandings of what that is, to tell these people that THEIR belief is wrong, and if they don't believe otherwise they will go to hell?

Truth is true no matter who believes it. When everyone thought the earth was flat that didn't make it so. The number of people who believe something is entirely incidental to whether that something is true or false.

It doesn't matter if truth offends your sensibilities or condemns your most treasured opinions. It doesn't matter if you like the truth or not. All that matters is what is true, and what is not.

That way has led to all manner of wars, and injustices, whether instigated by Christians, Muslims, or who ever else, because they couldn't get along with a culture, or individual of a different faith, or no faith at all.

Jesus himself addressed this issue:

Matthew 10:34-39

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -- a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

Truth and falsehood will always be in conflict. It isn't always violent -- and generally it shouldn't be -- but if there were no conflict at all then truth would be inconsequential.

Tyranny and liberty are in conflict as well, but few condemn those who fight for freedom solely on the basis of the violence they engender. Some things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth dying for.

I'm occasionally accused of being overly simplistic, but I think the vast majority of moral issues are completely black and white. Once all the facts are known, one set of solutions is almost always clearly right, and the other proffered solutions are almost always clearly wrong. In my experience, anyone who says otherwise -- and emphasizes nuance and complexity -- is generally trying to rationalize some behavior he knows to be wrong. A few issues really are difficult to resolve, but most are not if we are willing to tackle them with honesty and humility.

What say you?

I'm always eager for insight into the female mind, and Eve Tushnet has an intriguing post about women and leadership.

So though I think it's true that more women have a hard time with leadership than men, it's not for the reasons you suggest. I think, rather, that women are less hierarchical than men and for that reason are INTENSELY distrustful of women who rise to positions of power. "Who does she think she is?" is often their reaction to a woman who gives them orders. It's not necessarily envy (though it can be that too). It's sheer animal knowledge of each other. And this attitude hardens with age, I believe.

Women who acquire positions of leadership seldom find it easy to keep the respect of their female peers, although they may manage to command that of much younger women. And when one half of the human race distrusts you, it's difficult to lead effectively.

Women accept the leadership of men, on the other hand, because (I suspect), it's far less challenging to their self-image and sense of their own power and autonomy to do so. Besides, men have the excuse, in women's eyes, of being "mere males"; their pomposity is lovable rather than annoying or presumptuous. And their right to give orders can be assumed to rest upon their larger size and ability to defend us.

There's more. As a mere male, I'm normally limited to third-hand knowledge of how women view each other, but now I've got some second-hand information to mull over.

Pornography is a pernicious danger to society for many reasons, but I don't think the government is well-suited to solve the problem. The government should be limited to preventing one person from forcing or coercing another into doing something he doesn't want to do, and eliminating pornography doesn't fall into that category.

The root of the problem isn't that people are making pornography, it's that people have a desire to consume it -- and the government has no power (or authority) to change what people desire. The solution to pornography is individual and personal. God commands us to control our own thoughts:

Colossians 3:2

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

The government won't be able to eliminate pornography; there will always be "earthly things" to distract us from the holy thoughts and purposes God created us for. As a Christian, I must depend on God daily to give me the strength to focus my mind on the course he has laid out for me, ignoring the tempting scenery that could so easily lure me off the path.

As with some other issues many on the right want the government to "solve", pornography isn't a physical problem with a physical solution: it's a spiritual problem with a spiritual solution. It isn't easy to turn our attention away from things that offer us obvious, immediate pleasure, but such pleasure is ephemeral and passes away moment by moment. The rewards of God last forever.

1 John 2:15-17

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does -- comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

Without spiritual understanding, why would anyone refrain from immediate gratification? Life is short, and there's no guarantee you'll breathe another breath; absent faith, only a fool would put all his eggs into the basket of the future. Many faith-less philosophies build up a morality on a circular foundation, but in the end they all come down to using the force of government to control what people think and do, "for their own good".

Update:
More on the political side from Justin Katz, who says:

So here's a thought: if the public really is as enamored of smut as Ashcroft's critics believe, why not campaign to change the law? If porn is such an obviously good, or at least neutral, thing, why sidestep the actual issue — involving those six guys and some unknown millions of dollars — by substituting rhetoric about the war? Come out from behind the computer desk and lance the issue head on.

I've written a couple of facetious posts about how dating has brought about the end of civilization, and my friend Megan has pointed me to an article that classifies women into three categories -- Party-Girls, Girlfriends, and Romantics -- and explains how they fit into the modern sexual paradigm. The gist of it: men are pigs and women are stupid. How so? Men have no motivation to control their sexual impulses when women are too stupid to realize they're being manipulated.

There have always been Party-Girls and Romantics, but what's new is the rise of the Girlfriend class.

Most young women are incapable of brazen sexual abandonment. They long for stability and permanence and love in their lives. But they begin receiving the attentions of young males at an early age, long before they intend to marry. So they enter into a half-way covenant between marriage, the longed-for ultimate source of stability and love, and the worrisome condition of the unattached female. To be unattached and female in our society is a difficult undertaking, psychologically, socially, and, at times, physically. Psychologically, the unattached woman often wonders whether she can get a man. Her self-confidence is not helped by her friends reassuring her that she will get a man "some day" or that she will "have lots of men." Unattached males, on the other hand, are always assumed to be playing the field. Women by their very nature have more difficulty being alone or unnoticed. They want to be loved, or at least complimented. The best male compliment to a female that we currently have in this society is the invitation to a date or to a kind of ongoing date.

Socially, women and men both have a hard time being unattached because the world is set up for couples. High school formals, for example, come with great regularity. These events practically mandate teenage pairing-off. Who wants to show up at a formal occasion alone, have his own picture taken, and have no one with whom to dance? To the unattached adolescent, a high school formal appears like the coming of The Deluge. To board the Ark two-by-two one must find another unattached person. The collective attempt to find that other person constitutes the great emotional drama of the high school years. Nowadays it is also becoming physically necessary to "be with someone." Because the barbarians leer and jeer at women walking alone, women often attach themselves to men just to feel safe when going out. To keep the gorillas off, as young author Wendy Shalit has observed, you have to find your own gorilla. These various pressures practically force young women to attach themselves to someone. To whom is less important than the fact of being attached.

This attachment is called a relationship. The woman who enters into a relationship takes on the status of girlfriend.

The article goes on to explain how the Girlfriend relationship is really a huge fraud perpetrated by men on vulnerable women, and I completely agree with the assessment.

To be sure, relationships end up imitating marriages. Boyfriends and girlfriends talk of "anniversaries" and of belonging to each other, and they engage in sex and often live together. When not involved in a relationship, they call themselves "single." Yet every girlfriend secretly knows that a "break-up" could occur at any moment. Indeed, couples even talk about "taking time off" for an indefinite period when things do not seem to be going well. Married people don't have the luxury of taking time off. There's no sabbatical for the seven-year itch. Marriage, at least according to its vows, settles for nothing less than always and forever.

The prevailing culture of relationships, however, tends to undermine marriage. Most perennial girlfriends will have had several serious relationships before getting married and therefore several serious break-ups. These break-ups take an enormous toll on the happiness of young women. Especially when sex is involved, young women can feel these failed attempts at love as "losing pieces of yourself." They no longer feel whole. Erotic encounters, like any repeated activity, are habit-forming. If you have broken up several times before, what will stop you from doing the same thing once you are married? Relationship gurus assert that dating helps you find the right mate and that living with someone teaches you how to live with someone. It is more statistically accurate to say that the cycle of dating and breaking-up is good practice for divorce. In our society, with all the emphasis placed upon youth and individuality and fun, marriages more often imitate relationships than relationships prefigure marriage.

The end of the article summarizes what I've tried to do to make myself attractive to the Romantic girls that are left (in theory?).

In previous ages, the system of courtship and marriage required on the part of young people both sexual restraint and a strong sense of the future. Young men had to "clean up their act" before they could become truly eligible bachelors. In order to gain a young lady's approval and ultimately her hand, a man had to do several things. He had to master his sex drive. He had to prove his devotion to her, usually over a long period of time. He had to pass inspection before her discerning parents. He had to become financially stable so that he could support his wife and the children they would have. In short, he had to become a man of means, a man of parts, and a man of character. The exacting demands of courtship discouraged males from becoming wimps or barbarians.

As has been exhaustively pointed out elsewhere, the real effect of the Sexual Revolution has, ironically, been to subject women to the very worst behavior of men and tell them they should like it and act the same way.

Once while teaching the topic of chivalry in a Western Civilization class in college, I put the question to a "barbarian" student: If women refused to be around you if you cursed in front of them, stared at their chests, and in general acted in a lewd and drunken manner at parties, would you clean up your act? His answer was straightforward. "Yeah, of course. Who wouldn't?" Should romantic women across the nation make their preferences known by their great power of refusal, and should increasing numbers of perennial girlfriends come over into the camp of the romantics, young women would regain their natural capacity of commanding men. As surely as day follows night, young men would have to reform their character in short order.

For more of my thoughts, read "Finding the One" and general essays on love and marriage.

Donald Sensing wants to know if we're still free. He gives some interesting points to consider, and from a legal perspective I can understand why he'd suggest that we aren't.

What's fascinating to me, however, is that even though our government is tightening its grip on our liberty, people respect and obey the law less every year. Ideally we'd have a system with minimal laws and the population would completely agree with and adhere to those laws -- what we've got now is nearly the opposite, but is it functionally worse? An obfuscated legal system with many vague and loosely-enforced laws is certainly less just and fair on an individual basis, but will the aggregate effect on society be any different than an ideal system?

Probably so, because people will be frightened of being singled out for random enforcement. Still, until we're noticed and prosecuted for some trivial infraction, are we less free? I don't think so. If anything, we're more free than Americans 200 years ago, not because of the law but because of technology. We can go places and do things that would have been impossible (or prohibitively expensive) for our ancestors, and in a real way that balances against the strangle-hold of the government.

In fact, one could argue that the government has adapted to these new freedoms/abilities by imposing additional restrictions, thereby reducing our liberty to pre-existing levels. Is it possible that the government adapts to technological and societal advances to maintain some sort of "optimal" level of liberty? ("Optimal" from whatever perspective you want to discuss: the government's, the people's, both, economics, whatever.) As technology provides us with new freedoms, government may organically act to keep them in check... to protect us from ourselves? Is this balance an emergent function of government? Is it necessary or inescapable? It's obvious to me why a democracy may act in this manner; is there another form of government that might not (benevolent dictatorship)?

If this spurs anyone else's thoughts on the matter, please let me know.

The ends always justify the means -- the only question is which ends you're going to consider relevant.

The classic example is the implausible question: is it acceptable to murder an infant to save 100 other lives? To vastly oversimplify, a utilitarian may say yes, because the 100 lives are cumulatively more valuable than the life of the infant; a Christian may say no, because murder is wrong no matter how many lives it saves. The disagreement isn't really over whether or not "the ends justify the means" -- the real disconnect is over how each person weighs the various ends and which ends they recognize as legitimate.

When the Christian contemplates the murder, he may consider that one of the consequences will be that he will be violating an absolute rule established by God; to the Christian, that violation -- as an end itself -- may be more weighty than saving the lives of 100 people. The Christian decides that, after examining the consequences of both action and inaction, he must choose inaction because the ends that would result from action are a net loss.

The utilitarian in the same scenario may not recognize God's commands as relevant. Perhaps he doesn't believe God exists, or perhaps he believes that God would prefer that he save 100 lives rather than obey the rules. Either way, the utilitarian could weigh the consequences of action and inaction and decide that the ends of action will result in a net gain.

I've used the term "utilitarian" here improperly (although it's commonly used this way, even by utilitarian philosophers), because as you can see both he and the "Christian" reason and make decisions in the same manner. The reason they come to different conclusions is that they aren't using the same input. If the utilitarian believed keeping God's law was more important than saving lives, he would have done so; likewise, if the Christian believed that God would prefer to save lives rather than have his laws obeyed, he would have acted.

If someone tells you that "the ends don't justify the means" they're fooling themselves by failing to identify all the ends they consider important. Most people, utilitarian and not, fail to recognize or acknowledge that a desire to adhere to some system of morality may be an important end by itself, given certain input such as a belief in God.