Chivalry is Not Dead

As someone who has fought for years against recreational dating (As a side, notice how many of my friends have got engaged and married lately? The answer is a heck of a lot), let me say with all the gentle tenderness that I can muster that the author of this article knows nothing. The Greek word for men in his category is something like “dim wit” or “moron.” The Hebrew word might be translated like “fool.”

First, chivalry is not dead. Granted, it is in exile from the cultural mainstream, but it’s not dead.

Second, the author asks “What happened to paying for dinners and drinks? What happened to pulling out chairs and holding doors? What happened to walking on the outside, closest to the street and all that sh*t? Where did we lose the chivalrous touch? When did it become acceptable to just text a girl, inviting her to come bang? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about those instances, I’m just saying, why have we strayed away from what has been established as the norm?”

Any man with a brain functioning at about 10% of average capacity realizes the answer is in the question. What happened to all of those things is PRECISELY that it became “acceptable” in our culture’s eyes to “just text a girl, inviting her to come bang”. What happened is that little boys like John Picciuto stopped complaining about such evils. A culture centers around what it worships, and a materialistic and hedonistic culture is incapable of sustaining any true form of chivalry for any length of time. That, my friends, obviously takes a Christian culture, and the type that we have not had for at least the last 100 years or so.

Finally, “The real problem here is that women, for one reason or another, have become complacent and allowed men to get away with adhering to the bare minimum.”

No sir, the REAL problem here is that you’re a cotton headed ninny muggins. Men lead, and you don’t get men to lead the culture back into chivalry and courtship by denying one of the fundamental truths necessary for chivalry and courtship. You don’t get men to take responsibility by denying that men are actually responsible. You can’t clamor for chivalry and sacrificial responsibility by pinning males failures off on females (which is really irresponsible).

Analyzing the Brouhaha

Not surprisingly, Douglas Wilson has found himself at the center of yet another Evangelical intramural controversy.  You can find Wilson’s first response, and links to most of the relevant articles here.

Let me say I’m a complementarian, and on the whole I’m on Wilson’s side in this melee.  But this blog is not so much about the controversy as about what we can observe from the controversy.  We can learn a few things:

1.  Theological discussion is in shambles.  Regardless of which side you take, we should all recognize that the way this controversy has developed reveals that the level of our theological debate on the blogosphere is sophomoric (and I probably owe sophomores an apology here).  This debate centers not around solid exegesis, not around who holds the theological high ground, not the normative position of the church throughout history, but around people’s feelings getting hurt by what they perceive to be insensitive comments.

Let’s be perfectly clear about something:  Doug Wilson has probably done more to uphold the honor and dignity of women than all of his detractors combined.  Yet based on one comment, that is being entirely ripped out of its context, Wilson is being portrayed as some chauvinistic oppressor.  The Dufflepuds are in essence mad about being protected and cared for.  Our discussion reflects the theological depth of a circus.
2.  We have forsaken respectful disagreement.  This, obviously, plays into the first point.  Egalitarians and complementarians don’t treat each other as different tents in the same camp, but as utterly opposing camps altogether.  Perhaps when N.T. Wright, Cornelius Plantinga and Gordon Fee are lined up against Wayne Grudem, D.A. Carson and J.I. Packer we should humbly acknowledge that both sides probably have decent arguments and we shouldn’t demonize the other side merely for disagreeing with us (playful satire, such as calling the other side “Dufflepuds” is clearly acceptable).

Of course, some of the critiques lodged at Doug Wilson reflect this.  He could say “the sky is blue” and he would be corrected for his patriarchal and oppressive view in which men can make judgments about color.  Likewise, egalitarians could say “men should love women” and they would be accused of caving in to radical feminism.  The basis for such accusations are not the statements themselves, but a total lack of respect for the other person and the position they represent.  Many of our blogs are no better than modern political advertisements.
3.  We don’t entertain the possibility we could be wrong.  Maybe, just maybe, egalitarians are right about Scriptural teaching on gender roles.  I don’t think they are, but it is at least a logical possibility.  Our highest commitment must be to Scripture, properly interpreted and applied, regardless of our favoring of one position over another.

Egalitarianism, if true, will make us much more acceptable to our culture at large.  I get it, I understand the appeal.  There are respects in which I wish the egalitarian position were correct.  Likewise complementarianism, with its clearly defined roles, helps clarify a great deal of the familial confusion that pervades our society.  It has great appeal in a society that has had to create whole court systems just to handle divorce and custody issues.

Neither of those things, however, make either position Scriptural and true.  What makes the position true is its appropriate grounding in the Bible, our sole infallible guide for faith and practice.  We must acknowledge that our positions, to the degree they are Scripturally debatable (and ONLY to that degree), must be held with open hands.  Our exegesis could be wrong, and we must remain open to biblical correction.

I long for the day when we can correct these flaws, and shine as a brighter light in our world.  Until our house is in order, guests are going to be reluctant to visit it.

The Notion of “Rights” in Secular America

Human rights are foundational to a free society.  In America our government derives authority from the consent of the governed.  Such consent presupposes that the governed themselves have rights upon which they can act as autonomous people.

The way this plays out in many modern day political issues is really interesting.  To say humans have “rights” is to affirm we are a certain type of thing.  As a theist, this is not problematic at all.  I believe all people are God’s image bearers, and that as a consequence they have certain inherent worth.  But for a secularist, who tries to live without reference to God, humans are not any type of person in particular.  That is, we’re just physical beings.  The conjunction of random mutation and natural selection is not a good foundation for “rights.”

But the “rights” many people talk about today are not “rights” at all, but preferences and wants.  Some women WANT to be able to get abortion on demand.  But the abortion debate gets framed as a women’s “right” to choose.  Of course, this want comes from the sexual revolution and the view that we should be able to have as much sex as we want without any consequence.  Unfortunately the sexual revolution is a war against biology, and one we can’t win.

In any case, it should be clear this isn’t about “rights.”  In a secular society, there are no rights.  Just wants and desires.  Women WANT to have unfettered sex, and that requires a biological war to deal with the consequences of sex.  Personal whim is the only basis for “rights” in a secular world, so what can our society do other than capitulate?

What we can, and must, do is start addressing the demonstrably false presuppositions in play.  Regardless of personal whim, there are moral duties we have to follow.  And quite frankly, those moral duties don’t change when you throw off personal responsibility for your sexual decisions.  The neglect of moral duty does not a right create.

As we said before, to have a right is to affirm humans are a certain type of thing.  But when we obfuscate rights with personal whims, we say the type of things humans are is exactly the type of thing that does NOT have rights.  We’re affirming contradictory positions and conflicting premises.

Of course, this doesn’t merely apply to abortion, we could talk about “gay rights” as well.  This is a whole new class of personal whims now being labeled as “rights.”  A person chooses to enter a relationship that can’t possibly produce children naturally (again, we’re quite fond of our war with biology), but demands to have the “right” to raise a child.

Actually, homosexuals do have the right to raise children.  But they have to enter a heterosexual relationship to do so, just like everybody else (even with artificial insemination the sperm has to come from SOMEWHERE, or with adoption the child did not come from a same-sex union).  What is going on is a demand for society to accommodate what biology has flatly refused to accommodate, and these insane demands are labeled as “rights.”

But we’re here calling the secularist’s bluff.  And they don’t like it (see the Doug Wilson video below).  So we end up with temper-tantrums, emotionally-driven appeals, and an idiotic cultural conversation that can’t move past sound bites and talking points from our ridiculous media.

And that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Joey

The Collapse of Education, the Family, and Morality

It is a sure sign of moral decay in society when teachers, those entrusted by large segments of society with indoctrinating instilling moral values in our children, fail to walk by even basic standards of morality.  I’m speaking of James Hooker (that’s really his name, though it applies to him in other senses) and Jordon Powers.  The Hooker, a 41 year old teacher, left his wife, children and job to be in a relationship with Powers.  Powers, as you probably know, is an 18 year old student.

Fundamentally, this is a sign that our morality is collapsing.  This is only what can be expected in a relativistic or subjectivist society.  When we deny the existence of objective moral truth, everything is permissible.  On relativism, moral standards are arbitrary lines in the sand.  Eventually, people cross those lines, and it gets continually pushed back.  Of course, we all know how this ends:  Walking over a cliff.  People in our society want to be able to do anything with no consequences.  They fail to keep in mind that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Guess what the equal and opposite reaction to walking over a cliff is?  Anyone?

Of course, this fundamental collapse of morality manifests itself in our educational system.  My senior year of high school, I recall my speech teacher talking about how in her homeroom she had more “Straight F” averages than “Straight A” averages.  It used to be that grades of C were bad, but for many now that’s the norm and completely acceptable.  This is indicative of something we conservative Christians have known for a long time:  An educational system hijacked by secular values simply doesn’t work.  It doesn’t work because it’s not true.  Education must be infused with biblical truth.

Finally, our families are collapsing.  The Hooker is acting wickedly and immorally toward his family.  He has an obligation as a husband and father to provide for and lead in his family.  His negligence here is despicable.  But it is in fact simply the consistent outworking of our secular relativistic worldview.  Society cannot function without strong families, and the Hooker provides an excellent example of a weak man who is weakening families.

Something must be noted about our concept of “love.”  In this case, it seems to be something of a vacuous feeling.  It’s just so exciting for a teacher and student, right!  But love is more than a feeling, and more than a spur-of-the-moment flaking.  I suspect that for Hooker this isn’t love, but lust.  For the girl, she’s probably not mature enough to understand her own feelings.

We can all agree, this situation is a travesty.  It highlights the decay of moral decency in our society.  But Hooker is acting no worse than many members of Congress, and at least one of our current presidential candidates.

The Peculiar Case of Dakota Cochrane

Ultimate Fighter contestant Dakota Cochrane represents a good case study in the major point of contention between Evangelical Christians and gay rights activists.  This is so primarily because of his past in gay porn.  Cochrane has said he is not gay, he just did it for the money.  He now regrets this decision, he says.

This is odd, to say the least.  It shows the misunderstandings about sexuality in our society.  People want to define their sexuality by orientation or predisposition, not by actions.

It is this type of thinking that we Evangelicals reject.  Sexuality is defined primarily in terms of actions and behaviors.  What we view as homosexual sin is the act of having sex with a member of the same biological gender.  Someone with a predisposition to act homosexually, or someone attracted to members of the same sex, is not gay in virtue of that predisposition or attraction.  Homosexual sin is a matter of acting homosexually, whether a predisposition or attraction is there or not.

This is not how modern gay activists view the matter.  They define homosexuality in virtue of the predisposition or attraction.  The actions, in their view, are simply the necessary consequent.  They are the out-working of the predisposition that is already present.  What makes someone gay is not acting homosexually, but having a homosexual desire.

Enter Dakota Cochrane.  Here is a man who has acted homosexually, but did so only with the intention of earning money.  He says he did not enjoy acting in gay porn, and that he is not “gay.”  A man that has sex with men is, well, straight?  That’s what Cochrane argues.  And to do so he must assume that heterosexuality and homosexuality are a matter of predisposition and attraction.  Cochrane says he has no attraction to men, I believe him.  But he still acted homosexually, and those acts constitute one as homosexual.

Biblically, homosexuality is “coitus with a man.”  By this standard, Cochrane committed homosexual sin.

People will of course see this view as bigoted and intolerant.  But it’s completely rational to say that predispositions are not determinative.  What is truly immoral is telling people that they must be defined by and act according to predispositions about which they have very little, if any, control.  To tell someone they must act according to a predisposition, even if they don’t want to be predisposed to same-sex attraction, is to ignore a human’s right to make a choice.

As Evangelicals, we don’t claim gays can choose their predisposition to be attracted to certain people.  We claim they can choose to act on or resist those predispositions.  And that choice is one that all people make in relation to all sorts of other types of predispositions every day.  I’m predisposed to tell lies, but I love my Savior and by His grace I choose not to lie.

There is not a single sincere Christian who would deny their own predisposition to act in certain ways that are not morally beneficial.  Alcoholics have one type of predisposition that must be overcome, liars another.  Those prone to anger have a certain predisposition that, as Christians, must be resisted.  This is true of all sinful behavior, including homosexual behavior.

We Evangelicals don’t hate homosexuals.  We hate the deterministic lie they are being fed.  We mourn the fact that broken and hurting people are being told to freely follow certain predispositions when doing so will only lead to further pain for them.  We offer hope not by appeal to deterministic falsehoods, but by offering people a true choice through a Savior who was tempted in every way that we are but did not sin.

Potential Persons and Being “Mere” Matter

As you may have gathered from my blog yesterday, I have fairly strong opinions regarding the issue of abortion.  Today I want to lay down the TKO toward the pro-choice position.  I’m going to do this by first considering a world in which God exists (the actual world), and then a world in which God does not exist (a hypothetical world).

If God exists, Herb Silverman has noted that He must be omnirational.  That is, a God who knows everything (is omniscient) will also be all-reasonable.  This is a matter of God’s nature.  This fact works in favor of Divine Command Theory both ontologically and epistemically.

From an epistemic perspective, whatever else we want our moral choices to be, we want them to be rational.  An omnirational God would certainly know how to make such rational choices far better than we humans who are prone to fallacy.  In such a situation, we might not know what the grounding of morality is, but we would know whatever that grounding God ultimately knows the most moral choice to make.  Thus, His commands would be based on the best possible reasons for acting a certain way, and we would be justified in following such commands.

As a matter of ontology, I believe this solves the Euthyphro Dilemma that has long plagued Divine Command Theory.  God is, by His nature, omnirational.  To be omnirational prohibits being arbitrary.  That is, God could not command one set of rules for one region of the country, and another set of rules for another region.  He cannot contradict Himself, because to do so would be to cease being omnirational and therefore to cease being God.  God commands what is good, and it is good precisely in virtue of according perfectly with His all-rational nature.  Thus, God’s nature is the ontological grounding of morality, and God’s commands the perfect expression of that morality.

In this world, if God prohibits something like abortion, we can rest assured that abortion is immoral.  Anyone who believes in a theistic God who has so revealed His will is morally justified in also holding that abortion is wrong.

But many people deny precisely this point, namely, that the theistic God exists.  What should we do about such people?  What argument may be offered?

Well if God does not exist, our world is essentially physical.  Everything reduces to matter.  Humans are material beings, without a spiritual component.  This is true of humans in any place, and of any age group.

As it turns out, the baby in the fetus is a material being.  It is matter just like other humans, and it does not take a significant period of time for the fetus to develop material characteristics of a human, such as brain matter and organs.

In virtue of this, a strong argument can be made that an unborn fetus, being a material thing just like other humans, also has the same rights as other humans.  Among these rights is the right to life.  Therefore, abortion would be wrong on materialist grounds.

This does not solve every hypothetical scenario, such as “what if the mother’s life is in danger?” or something like that.  But it is a starting point for talking about abortion.  There are good reasons to believe abortion is immoral, the squeals of radical feminists notwithstanding.

Sex-Driven Absurdity

As the “culture wars” continue to play out in our society, it is important to note how the liberals are inconsistent on the issue of homosexuality.  Regardless of where you stand, you must agree that conjunction of the following propositions, affirmed by most liberals, is a glaring anomaly:

1. You can choose your gender (male, female, other?).
2. You cannot choose your sexual orientation.

Or think about these two:

1. Government should not be allowed to force medical procedures (such as getting an ultrasound prior to abortion).
2. Government should be allowed to force employers to offer insurance to cover unnecessary medical expenses (such as the morning after pill).

We could also try this:

1. Free speech is a constitutionally guaranteed freedom.
2. When someone uses free speech in support of policies we disagree with, it is hateful and bigoted and should not be permitted.

Of course, there’s this one too:

1. We must tolerate diverse opinions.
2. The intolerant morons who disagree with us cannot be tolerated.

In essence, we see why so many political liberals want to affirm the value of “paradox.”  Their entire system is rooted in it.  But it’s not true paradox, it’s really contradiction.  They want to mask their own hypocrisy in terms of “paradox” and “mystery.”

The only mystery here is how thinking people can affirm such outright inconsistencies.  When it comes to gender, everyone wants to appeal to freewill and a person’s right to choose.  When it comes to sexual orientation, everyone wants to become a determinist very quickly.

This, of course, is just sex-driven absurdity.  More accurately, it’s sin-driven absurdity.  And our society is captivated by it.