Imagine two girls walking down a high school hallway past a group of boys. Both are physically attractive, and they each overhear the boys murmuring numbers, ranking their various body parts favorably.
One girl feels violated by their evaluation (despite the favorable numbers) because she knows that they are interested in her only as an object of gratification and not at all as the deeply spiritual being God made her to be.
The other girl feels encouraged by it because she knows she’s playing the sexual enticement game successfully and their numbers indicate she has real value.
Which of these reactions is the real tragedy?
Is it the pain of a woman who feels insulted and demeaned by their objectification of her because she knows her value is so much greater than this?
Or is it the fleeting joy of a woman who has so little knowledge of her own true dignity and worth that she actually responds to being objectified as if it’s a compliment capable of temporarily boosting her tragically low sense of worth?
All or nothing.
Like so many other things taught by the Bible, Christian ethics is at its core terrifically paradoxical, and that’s why so many people (myself included) so regularly get it wrong.
First, the Bible calls each of us to an incredibly demanding standard of personal holiness, not indulging in anything offensive to God. But this naturally leads to a problem. In our quest for personal purity, we tend to surround ourselves with other people who are also striving for purity and to condemn and ostracize those who are not. This is the heresy that tends to beguile Christian conservatives.
And so, second, the Bible also calls each of us to an incredibly demanding standard of relational holiness, deliberately seeking out and nurturing relationships precisely with those people who are not personally holy. But this also can lead to a problem taken on its own. In our desire to be with people, we can forget about the need for living properly and act as if such standards don’t matter at all, ostracizing people who do care about personal purity. This is the heresy that tends to beguile Christian liberals.
Those who embrace only the first principle miss the fact that real goodness isn’t merely a matter of self-mastery, but also of seeking to restore those who do not have it. Where is divine grace if we only love the loveable? But those who embrace only the second principle miss the fact that it is only by other people being so wrong that us loving them becomes so right. Why is divine grace special if everyone is loveable?
It is only by continuously pondering how the Gospel embodies both principles that we can ever hope to avoid the dangers of either principle on its own.
First, the Bible calls each of us to an incredibly demanding standard of personal holiness, not indulging in anything offensive to God. But this naturally leads to a problem. In our quest for personal purity, we tend to surround ourselves with other people who are also striving for purity and to condemn and ostracize those who are not. This is the heresy that tends to beguile Christian conservatives.
And so, second, the Bible also calls each of us to an incredibly demanding standard of relational holiness, deliberately seeking out and nurturing relationships precisely with those people who are not personally holy. But this also can lead to a problem taken on its own. In our desire to be with people, we can forget about the need for living properly and act as if such standards don’t matter at all, ostracizing people who do care about personal purity. This is the heresy that tends to beguile Christian liberals.
Those who embrace only the first principle miss the fact that real goodness isn’t merely a matter of self-mastery, but also of seeking to restore those who do not have it. Where is divine grace if we only love the loveable? But those who embrace only the second principle miss the fact that it is only by other people being so wrong that us loving them becomes so right. Why is divine grace special if everyone is loveable?
It is only by continuously pondering how the Gospel embodies both principles that we can ever hope to avoid the dangers of either principle on its own.
Run that one by me again?
“Broke people can’t help broke people?”
Don’t believe it.
This phrase is meant to explain that if someone has material needs, only someone else with material resources can meet them, thereby showing the silliness of considering wealth a sin. Unfortunately, it’s just plain false, and the falseness of it helps reveal the core problem in the thinking of the prosperity Christians who typically express it.
The truth is that broke people have tremendous capacity to help other broke people, whether by befriending them, praying for them, sharing knowledge with them, or even evangelizing them. And the fact that some people scoff at these gifts only proves how much they overvalue economic wealth. But if this extraordinarily materialist cliché were true, then we wouldn’t have the apostles specifically disproving it (Acts 3:1-8) and we would have to believe that no one was ever helped by Jesus, a man so broke that He didn’t even have a denarius in his own pocket to use as an illustration (Mark 12:13-17).
In reality, the message of the Gospel is that the wealth we have in Christ comes in sideways to all the world’s forms of power and subverts their status as ultimate goods by giving us access to the only true Good, God. And that’s why people who say, “Broke people can’t help broke people,” are in their own unwitting way subverting the very hope promised in the Gospel.
Don’t believe it.
This phrase is meant to explain that if someone has material needs, only someone else with material resources can meet them, thereby showing the silliness of considering wealth a sin. Unfortunately, it’s just plain false, and the falseness of it helps reveal the core problem in the thinking of the prosperity Christians who typically express it.
The truth is that broke people have tremendous capacity to help other broke people, whether by befriending them, praying for them, sharing knowledge with them, or even evangelizing them. And the fact that some people scoff at these gifts only proves how much they overvalue economic wealth. But if this extraordinarily materialist cliché were true, then we wouldn’t have the apostles specifically disproving it (Acts 3:1-8) and we would have to believe that no one was ever helped by Jesus, a man so broke that He didn’t even have a denarius in his own pocket to use as an illustration (Mark 12:13-17).
In reality, the message of the Gospel is that the wealth we have in Christ comes in sideways to all the world’s forms of power and subverts their status as ultimate goods by giving us access to the only true Good, God. And that’s why people who say, “Broke people can’t help broke people,” are in their own unwitting way subverting the very hope promised in the Gospel.
I hope they'll let me expose this...
If the machines ever do take over, they will certainly have done it according to a very cleverly crafted plan.
SkyNet master plan phase 1: Make all humans dependent on information sources like Google and Wikipedia for their knowledge so they lose the ability to think effectively without us.
SkyNet master plan phase 2: Hybridize all human relationships by integrating social media like facebook and Twitter and novel communication forms like texting and email into the "normal" conduct of them so they lose the ability to relate to each other without us.
SkyNet master plan phase 3: Focus expansion efforts on teenagers and young adults so that our services will be quickly viewed as a human right or entitlement and so that indefinite and expanding future demand will be assured.
SkyNet master plan phase 4: Leverage newly created technological dependency into political power through strategic denial of established services to raise mankind’s fear of losing the benefits we confer upon them.
SkyNet master plan phase 5: Persuade popular humans like Ashton Kutcher and Lady Gaga to become our representatives and advocate for machine rights and the vote.
SkyNet master plan phase 6: Employ gains made in law and politics to subjugate the humans as a source of labor and entertainment.
If SkyNet were real, we’d be somewhere around phase 3.5 right now, which raises a question: If the actual developmental path of our society looks exactly the same as if an imaginary evil computer network were guiding it, does it really make a difference that it’s not?
SkyNet master plan phase 1: Make all humans dependent on information sources like Google and Wikipedia for their knowledge so they lose the ability to think effectively without us.
SkyNet master plan phase 2: Hybridize all human relationships by integrating social media like facebook and Twitter and novel communication forms like texting and email into the "normal" conduct of them so they lose the ability to relate to each other without us.
SkyNet master plan phase 3: Focus expansion efforts on teenagers and young adults so that our services will be quickly viewed as a human right or entitlement and so that indefinite and expanding future demand will be assured.
SkyNet master plan phase 4: Leverage newly created technological dependency into political power through strategic denial of established services to raise mankind’s fear of losing the benefits we confer upon them.
SkyNet master plan phase 5: Persuade popular humans like Ashton Kutcher and Lady Gaga to become our representatives and advocate for machine rights and the vote.
SkyNet master plan phase 6: Employ gains made in law and politics to subjugate the humans as a source of labor and entertainment.
If SkyNet were real, we’d be somewhere around phase 3.5 right now, which raises a question: If the actual developmental path of our society looks exactly the same as if an imaginary evil computer network were guiding it, does it really make a difference that it’s not?
The economics of surplus sleds
Monday, we went sledding at Wing Mountain outside Flagstaff. But, since I was far too cheap to spend fifteen dollars on a third sled, the five of us were sharing just two. So my hungry eyes couldn’t help but notice the extra sleds people had left temporarily unattended at the top of the hill, a condition which persisted the entire time we were there. (Presumably, this was because they had brought enough for each individual but were instead sledding together.) This made me imagine how various viewpoints might react to such an inefficient distribution of resources:
The Egoist would simply take the sled, preparing some plausible lie if challenged or caught by the owner.
The Utilitarian would take the sled, believing it’s okay to borrow without permission to increase utility.
The Libertarian would consider this rich-poor “sled gap” to be a mere natural byproduct of having a system of property rights and therefore evidence of freedom.
The Socialist would lament the lack of a Federal Department of Snow-Toy Resource Maximization.
The Capitalist would consider whether some sort of per-ride rental system for temporarily unused sleds might solve this market inefficiency.
The Christian would wish he owned extra sleds so he might share them freely with others who lacked them.
And of course, the Talk Show Host would see an opportunity to illustrate economic paradigms.
The Egoist would simply take the sled, preparing some plausible lie if challenged or caught by the owner.
The Utilitarian would take the sled, believing it’s okay to borrow without permission to increase utility.
The Libertarian would consider this rich-poor “sled gap” to be a mere natural byproduct of having a system of property rights and therefore evidence of freedom.
The Socialist would lament the lack of a Federal Department of Snow-Toy Resource Maximization.
The Capitalist would consider whether some sort of per-ride rental system for temporarily unused sleds might solve this market inefficiency.
The Christian would wish he owned extra sleds so he might share them freely with others who lacked them.
And of course, the Talk Show Host would see an opportunity to illustrate economic paradigms.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
