Intellectual Imperialism: Eugenie Scott and the National Center for Science Education

Dr. Eugenie ("Genie") Scott

Background:
Anthropologist Eugenie (“Genie”) Scott received her BS and MS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her PhD in Physical Anthropology from the University of Missouri. As a young college professor in the 1970s, she attended a debate between her mentor-professor James Gavan and creation scientist Duane Gish. She left appalled. “After seeing the enthusiasm with which the audience received Gish and his message, the cold water of the social and political reality of this movement hit me for the first time … I realized that there was a heck of a lot more in this … than just the academic issues.”

Addressing that “heck of a lot more” became her life’s mission. In 1980, when the “Citizens for Balanced Teaching of Origins” approached a local school board, Scott spearheaded the opposition effort, and in 1987, she joined the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) as its first executive director, a position she still holds today.

Wanted For:
Several years ago, I engaged in a lengthy dialogue with some Jehovah’s Witnesses. As pleasant as they were, their communication tactics were those common to religious cults: exclusive claims as sole possessor and arbiter of knowledge; prescripted answers for anticipated objections; carefully crafted talking points that dismiss, rather than address, challenges; all subservient to the cardinal rule: Never entertain questions that challenge fundamental dogma. After reading Scott’s writings and hearing her speak, it hit me. Her communication tactics were just like theirs!

A skilled communicator, Dr. Scott travels, speaks, and writes extensively in pursuit of her stated goal to “keep evolution in public school science education.” But what she actually does is impose her particular metaphysical worldview – metaphysical naturalism – onto science education.

This became overtly obvious in a 46-page talking point document the NCSE prepared for activists testifying before the Texas State Board of Education in 2009. “Science posits that there are no forces outside of nature. Science cannot be neutral on this issue.” Dissent from this prior philosophical commitment, whether it comes from an African witch doctor or an intelligent design biologist with two PhDs (they’re all the same to her), amounts to ignorance and constitutes grounds for exclusion from the table. “All educated people understand there are no forces outside of nature,” declares Dr. Scott.

Most Recent Offense:
Scott, a Notable Signer of Humanist Manifesto III and a self-identified “non-theist,” waxes philosophical and theological. “The reason why people reject evolution – trust me on this one – is … for emotional and religious reasons,” she told Atheist Talk radio. “So you have to deal with this from … a more holistic perspective.” “People … are reluctant or unwilling to relinquish their belief unless those needs or concerns are otherwise assuaged.”

To assuage those concerns, she coaches science teachers in ways to reorient students’ theology. In a communiqué titled “Defuse the Religion Issue,” Scott suggested, “A teacher in Minnesota told me that he had good luck sending his students out at the beginning of the semester to interview their pastors and priests about evolution. They came back somewhat astonished, ‘Hey! Evolution is OK!’ … it was educational for the students to find out for themselves that there was no single Christian perspective on evolution.”

Scott speaks in soothing tones, like a kindly grandmother gently guiding young ones in proper ways to think and behave. It would be nice if other contenders in this debate would adopt her demeanor. But the intellectual imperialism behind all her niceness is staggering. Donning the mantle of science, it proclaims, I am the way of knowledge. Do not question me.

This article first appeared in Salvo 17, Summer 2011.

Blessed Are the Communists?

Matthew Modine is turning to Jesus. His new short film “Jesus Was a Commie” offers “a discussion of the New Testament’s messages in the context of poverty, pollution and political unrest.” The film will “also address the Occupy Wall Street movement happening throughout the world and how it relates to the Bible.”

How timely. It’s the new meme.

Socialism = Christianity.

C’mon Christians, obey your Lord Jesus like good little boys and girls.

Or so say the atheist and agnostic secularizers.

Consider:

• Jeremy is a college student friend of mine. Today his Ethics professor told the class that Jesus was really about socialism and Marxism because under those arrangements everyone selflessly spreads the materials around to help the poor. (This same professor also suggested giving thanks to the Earth, land, and water, rather than any Creator – yes, giving thanks to your food, rather than for your food ...)

• Bart Ehrman, a non-churchgoing, agnostic professor of religious studies who has elsewhere charged that some of the New Testament writers were liars, commented, “Jesus believed the whole system was corrupt. The people who ran things were empowered by the evil forces of the world and his followers had to work against these powers by feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and caring for the sick.”

• And the emminent theologian and maker of “Religulous,” apatheist Bill Maher, opined on the domestic policies of Jesus. Guess what? They’re just like socialism! (Who knew?)

And what theological perversion revision wouldn’t be complete without artwork?

This would be comical were it not so life and death serious. Matthew Modine, the occupiers, and their sympathiers may be turning to Jesus, but it’s a different Jesus from the one who said “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

There are two ways of interpreting the teachings of the historical Jesus. One is authentic. The other is an inversion, which makes it a perversion.

Christianity: What’s mine is yours.
Socialism: What’s yours is mine.

Christianity: I am my brother’s keeper.
Socialism: My brother is my keeper.

These are antithetical, mutually exclusive approaches to life, both personal and societal. One is the way of grace and liberty. The other is the way of totalitarianism and oppression. One is the way of Jesus. The other is the way of hell.

The best thing about the “Jesus Was a Commie” film is it acknowledges that the Occupy Wall Street movements are just the sort of Marxist uprisings of which Communist  advances are made. The worst thing is that too many people may nonetheless fall for it.

Which one prevails will literally be a matter of life and death.

180

George Santayana said that those who fail to learn from history will be doomed to repeat it. How much do we pay attention to history?

Here’s a penetrating question: Why didn’t more of the German people do something to stop Adolph Hitler and the Nazis?

Watch this video before answering:

George Soros: The Stateless Statesman

George Soros

Background:
George Soros was born György Schwartz in 1930 Hungary to a non-practicing Jewish family. Soon thereafter, his father changed the family name to Soros to obscure their heritage. When the Nazis arrived in Hungary in 1944 he bribed an official, who had been charged with confiscating property from the Jews, to take George in as his Christian godson. George became his assistant.

Three years later, as the Iron Curtain descended, George left for England where he studied and worked in the financial industry until 1956, when he came to New York to trade in international arbitrage – buying securities in one country and selling them in another.

He was very good at it. He made his first mark on the world in 1992 when he perceived the vulnerability of the British pound, acted on his hunch, and made $1 billion overnight (at the expense of British taxpayers) to become known as “the man who broke the Bank of England.”

Wanted For:
Sometime in the 1970s, by then a multi-millionaire, Soros began to lay plans for making his real mark on the world. “I came to the conclusion that what really mattered to me was the concept of an open society.” Having seen the horrors of a totalitarian state, Soros knew the dangers of political absolutism. “Ideologies like Fascism or Communism give rise to a closed society in which the individual is subjugated to the collective, society is dominated by the state … in such a society, there is no freedom.” He was right about that.

It is therefore utterly astounding that, having recognized and fled that tyranny, Soros would still espouse the very principles on which it was based. “Karl Marx’s proposition, ‘from everybody according to their ability’ and ‘to everybody according to their needs’ was a very attractive idea,” he said in 2009. “But the Communist rulers put their own interests ahead of the interests of the people.” He was correct about that too. Apparently he believes he’ll overcome this basic human tendency and succeed where they failed.

In 1993, Soros, who refers to himself as “a stateless statesman,” founded the Open Society Institute to carry out his admittedly “messianic fantasies” about making “the world a better place.” “My goal is to become the conscience of the world,” he told biographer Michael Kaufman.

Most Recent Offense:
To achieve his Utopian goal, he must dismantle American independence. “The main obstacle to a stable and just world is the United States,” he stated, bluntly identifying the enemy. His weapon of choice is money. In The Shadow Party, authors David Horowitz and Richard Poe compare Soros to Vladimir Lenin, who wages war “through manipulation of economic and political forces at the highest levels.” The December 2010 Whistleblower magazine lists more than one hundred and fifty Soros organizations aimed at influencing public policy and public perception of reality. For example, the Institute for New Economic Thinking funds symposia on the need for central government control of the economy. Soros also funds a web of media organizations, one of which, under the Orwellian name Free Press, urges the founding of a massive government-run media system.

Most troubling: this man who would be the conscience of the world still confesses no problems of conscience over his Nazi collaboration under the guise of a Christian youth. “1944 was the happiest year of my life,” he wrote in 1995. “It was the most exciting adventure that anyone could ask for.”

Soros’s Open Society is an adventure we can do without.

This article first appeared in Salvo 16, Spring 2011.

Related articles:

• George Soros, American Marxist Billionnaire … “Nazi Obsessive” by Dennis Prager. “When Jews are being ‘deported’ to death camps, Soros says, I am ‘above them.’”
• George Soros is Implementing a ‘One World’ Socialist Government from CommieBlaster.com.
• And for your viewing entertainment, George Soros — Obama’s Boss — America’s Communist Leader — CommieTunes 13

Renaissance 2.0

A Review of Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning by Nancy Pearcey

Nancy Pearcey knows the captivating power of secular ideas because she used to hold them herself. As a teenager, she rejected the religion of her childhood and embraced a host of “ism’s” from moral relativism to scientific determinism to New Age spiritualism. But she persisted in her quest for truth only to find that the biblical worldview offers far better and more complete answers to the real world questions those philosophies attempted to address. For those of us who lack such intellectual stamina, her books serve like a museum tour of the long and winding journey by which she arrived at that conclusion.

The Soul of Science, coauthored with Charles Thaxton in 1994, defied the deeply embedded cultural myth which said that faith and science occupy mutually exclusive intellectual camps and showed how, quite to the contrary, scientific progress grew specifically out of Christian culture.  How Now Shall We Live?, a joint effort with Charles Colson in 2004, fully developed the concept of worldview as an explanatory system that must fit all of reality. It must satisfactorily answer three foundational life questions: (1) Who am I and where did I come from? or the question of origins, (2) What’s wrong with the world? and (3) How can it be fixed? Pearcey and Colson argued persuasively that the biblical metanarrative of Creation/Fall/Redemption provides the most excellent answers to all three. Total Truth, Pearcey’s first solo, built upon the core insight of Francis Schaeffer, under whom she studied as a young adult. Shaeffer had observed that modernity has erected a “two-story” view of reality wherein objective “facts” occupy the lower story and subjective “values” occupy the upper. Total Truth showed how secularists use this fact/value split to banish biblical principles from public discourse, not by disproving them but by dismissing them out of hand.

In Saving Leonardo, Pearcey turns her attention to the arts and analyzes how this fact/value split has fragmented modern thought and therefore compromised modern art. Most people view art as simply personal expression, but Pearcey says this is not so. Art is much more than that. “Artists always select, arrange, and order their materials to offer an interpretation or perspective.” Art conveys ideas.

Saving Leonardo sets out to train us as consumers to thoughtfully “read” the art we take in, analyze it, and interpret it. Not to make us art critics, but to make us wise and effective change agents, equipped “to engage in discussion with real people seeking livable answers in a world that is falling apart.”

Secular Devolution

Part One examines the emerging global secularism and the toll is has exacted in human lives and dignity. Secularism is generally defined as the view that religious considerations and any beliefs based on the supernatural should be excluded from civil and public affairs. Today, secular ideologies control what our schools teach, how states govern, how economies are managed, and how (and what) news is reported. Secularism is sold on the premise that it provides a more enlightened ordering principle for social arrangements, but in reality it works to degrade, rather than advance, a society. It leads to:

Dehumanization. The idea that human rights are universal and inherent to individuals is a uniquely biblical concept. It rests on the understanding that human beings were created by God and bear his image. Without this foundation, grounded in transcendent reality, human rights and human dignity are demoted to just another competing interest. To illustrate how far out this precipice we already stand, Pearcey paraphrases pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, “Because of Darwin, we no longer accept creation. And therefore, we no longer need to maintain that everyone who is biologically human has equal value. We are free to revert to the pre-Christian attitude that only certain groups qualify for human rights.” What this translates into is a social order in which the strong can oppress, enslave, or exterminate the weak at will. This is how we got such twentieth century horrors as the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet gulag.

Tyranny. Secularism preaches tolerance but practices tyranny. The biblical worldview unabashedly states that there is such a thing as an objective standard of right and wrong. The secular tenet of moral relativism is the direct converse of that principle. Simple logic says that both principles cannot be true, but secularizers try to have it both ways anyway. “If moral knowledge is impossible,” Pearcey points out, “then we are left with only political and legal measures to coerce people into compliance.” This explains why gay activists call opponents bigots and homophobes (usually in highly moralistic tones), rather than sit down to a good faith discussion over the risks of ditching “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

In fact, secularism advances, not by good faith reason and persuasion, but by brute hubris. The relativistic approach to religion dictates a certain set of beliefs that are just as exclusive as the claims of any religion; it just isn’t “honest” about it. This setup enables secularizers to dismiss opposing views, not by marshalling sound arguments against them, but by baldly excluding them or recategorizing them as private values which are then declared irrelevant.

Double-mindedness. Secularism not only imposes a certain ideology, it effectively changes the definition of truth by dictating what kinds of information even qualify as truth. The fact/value split, Pearcey says, is “the key to unlocking the history of the Western mind.” It has fostered a kind of double-mindedness, both for individuals and among societies. It’s reflected in the comments of a 2008 Newsweek editor, “Reason defines one kind of reality (what we know); faith defines another (what we don’t know),” and in the words of Albert Einstein, “Science yields facts but not ‘value judgments’; religion expresses values but cannot ‘speak facts.’” It’s alive and well in the church too. Tim Sweetman, a teen blogger, noted that many of his peers seem like “double agents.” They “are Christians in church … but have a completely secular mind view. It’s as if they have a split personality.”

Logos: Truth In Toto
In the face of this pervasive, fragmented view of truth, Pearcey puts forward a game-changing alternative view. The nature of truth is holistic, comprehensive, and coherent. “Because all things were created by a single divine mind, all truth forms a single, coherent, mutually consistent system. Truth is unified and universal.” This is not new. It was the predominant view in Western culture for nearly two millennia. The ancient Greeks had a term for the underlying principle that unifies the world into an orderly cosmos, as opposed to randomness and chaos. They called it the Logos. And well into the 1900s, American universities were committed to the unity of truth. Even the word ‘university’ suggests the pursuit of whole, integrating truth. But the crack up has so fractured modern thought that ‘unity of truth’ presents a radically reoriented perspective.

This ‘whole truth’ perspective is what Pearcey urges us to bring to the arts.

Secularism: Truth Fragmented
Part Two begins with a crash course on how to discern worldview themes in a work of art. Using over one hundred reproductions and pictures to illustrate, Pearcey traces the intellectual currents that guided modern thought and shows how the two-story recasting of truth has manifested itself in the arts, from visual arts to music to literature to architecture. In the wake of the scientific revolution, philosophy – and therefore art – split into two opposing streams of thought. Occupying one camp was philosophical naturalism or the materialist stream, which accepted scientism’s exclusive claim to the realm of knowledge. In the other camp coalesced Romanticism, which rebelled against science and sought to protect everything else – theology, literature, ethics, philosophy, and the arts and humanities.

The materialistic view is reflected in such styles as Picasso’s intersecting lines, arcs, and geometric shapes and Jack London’s tooth and claw narratives of Darwinian survival of the fittest. Meanwhile, the Romantics produced such styles as Expressionism, the goal of which was pure expression of the artist’s “inner self,” indifferent to any outer reality. Consider Van Gogh’s dreamlike paintings. Or composer John Cage’s piano piece titled 4’33”, which is “performed” by playing absolutely nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Both streams deny the existence of any transcendent reality or truth beyond the artist or the work itself. If art is whatever you deem it to be, “nothing” qualifies.

But the definition of art as personal expression was a historical novelty. The traditional purpose of art, Pearcey stresses, was to convey “some deeper vision of the human condition.” Modern art has become disconnected from this purpose, and we must fill in the missing elements that can restore the vision of transcendent reality.

Can These Bones Live?

Booth and "Bones"

Doing that can take many forms. Here’s an example taken from Fox TV’s crime drama, “Bones.” Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist, is the quintessential scientific rationalist. She’s called ‘Bones’ because she solves murders by examining human remains. Her colleague, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, possess all the social finesse she lacks, believes in God, and mistrusts science. As a father he values relationships, and as a former army sniper, he’s haunted by guilt – two emotions utterly foreign to a materialist.

The relationship between Bones and Booth dances along a perpetual impasse because the two characters operate from completely different – in fact mutually exclusive – philosophical and intellectual universes. They are an excellent example of the dichotomized understanding of human existence. Their ongoing worldview clashes make for good TV drama, but real humans do not fall into one category or the other. More important, we don’t have to choose one or the other. We are both. “The biblical worldview fulfills both the requirements of human reason and the yearnings of the human spirit,” Pearcey writes, supplying the truth that’s missing from the “Bones” depiction of humanity.

Vitruvian Man

In the modern era, ideological idols have led to death camps and dictatorships. Beliefs shape history,  and worldview questions are a matter of life and death. Saving Leonardo challenges us to be prepared with worldview answers that preserve life and human dignity for all and restore art as a means of conveying truth.

Integrated truth that can make dry bones live.

This article first appeared in Salvo 16, Spring 2011.

Asking a Different Question

My local township is in the throes of a pending vote on a referendum. At issue is a seven year property tax increase, the proceeds of which will be entrusted to the township school system. A vote of “Yes” says, “I’m in favor of the tax increase.” A “No” vote says “No.”

The “Vote Yes” signs began appearing in yards several weeks ago. The “Vote No” signs started cropping up here and there a few weeks later. Judging by yard signs today, the outcome looks to be a tossup.

As can be expected, there are polemicists on both sides with a tendency to blow things out of proportion, blow their tops, or just blow off steam over it. We’ll always have ill-tempered people, but I’m not one of them, and I’m not going to address them.

But I would like to draw out a consistent undercurrent I have detected coming from reasonable, well-meaning people. It’s the idea that the Yes-voters are noble and generous while the No-crowd is greedy and selfish. To be specific: (all of these statements were cut and pasted out of public forums)

• “For the future of our children and our community, I will be voting YES on May 3rd”

• “I want the best for the schools because I want the best for my kids.”

• “No voters: Are you anti-education or just really greedy? None of us want to be taxed more.”

• “These “Vote No” people don’t care about kids in this township. They care about … themselves!”

• “There is obviously a segment of the … population … who sees it as their obligation to focus solely on themselves and take away the educational opportunities currently available to the kids.  What great role models you are!  I hope our kids grow up to be productive citizens in spite of your lousy example.”

• “If the taxpayers choose not to help, the kids will suffer greatly. Or, the taxpayers can speak for the kids, vote YES, and do the right thing.”

For  the Yes-contingent to specifically ask the township residents to fund this cause is an acceptable request, consistent with our participative system of government. What I’d like to challenge is this assumption that the “Yes” people are the noble altruistic ones but the “No” people “set a lousy example.”

As a thought experiment, let’s shift to an alternative funding paradigm. I mean this in the friendliest, neighborliest way. Yes-people, are you not free at all times to donate the equivalent of your tax increase voluntarily to the school system? Have you ever considered doing so? If you have not before, will you consider it now?

Yes? No?

Why? or Why not?

Tetelestai

New Year’s Eve, 1993. I was sitting up late.  Alone. In pain. Not physical pain, but the emotional pain that erupts when your life changes without your consent.

I held my cross necklace in front of me. It had been a Christmas gift, and I couldn’t have picked a prettier piece of jewelry if I’d chosen it myself. As I languished over the prospect of the next chapter of my life,  I admired the craftsmanship of it. Gold chain. Gold pendant with small stones that looked like diamonds. It was beautiful.

“But it wasn’t pretty to you, was it?” I finally said out loud.

No, it wasn’t, Jesus answered.

The image of gold and gemstones faded, and my mind’s eye saw wood, splinters, and blood.

“It was really ugly, wasn’t it? Hideously ugly.”

Yes, it was.

I pondered that a while in silence. Then I went back to looking down the road before me that I did not want to walk. It was not my plan. I was pretty sure it was not God’s plan, either. Yet there it was, and I really had no better alternative but to walk it.

Then I made a decision.

“Jesus, if you did that for me, then I guess I can trust you no matter what lies down that road. I’ll walk it, and trust you.”

That was the end of the conversation.

But it wasn’t the end of my pondering. One question I couldn’t get past was, Why did it have to be a crucifixion? If Jesus had to die, why did it have to come by the most cruel, inhuman, torturous form of execution known to man?

I couldn’t venture a guess at that for a long time.

Today, on the verge of Easter, I have a theory. It grew out of my own imagination, so it’s nobody’s doctrine. It’s just my speculation, so take it for what it’s worth.

Being eternal, Jesus existed, with the Father, before the world began. Being omniscient, he knew that we would rebel and fall into sin. Being the essence of pure love, he chose to act: I will go to them. As many as will receive me, I will save.

But that introduced a problem into our world, what with our superficial human hierarchies and petty grievances. Jesus is pure righteousness. Man is fallen and given to sin. Sin cannot endure righteousness, therefore, it was inevitable that sinful men (and women) would not merely dismiss or dislike Jesus. They would hate him. Loathe him. So much that they would seethe with a bristling, fulminating, contempt that would not be satisfied until it had done away with its object.

Maybe, I’m beginning to think, it didn’t have to be so bad, but it just was. Because that’s how bad sin really is.

And he knew it all along. He knew exactly how it would end. But he would nevertheless allow the epic saga to play out, himself at the center of it, knowing and silent. He would go to the cross, the hideous splintered, bloody one, hang on it, and die for the ones who would stop and think long enough to ponder exactly what was going on, even after it was over.

And so … it played out all the way until the end. Tetelestai, he said finally. “It is finished.”

What is finished? The work he set out to do. He came to deal with the sin problem once and for all, and the cross became the focal point for all the horror and hideousness of sin. To look upon the bloody, wooden cross of crucifixion is to see what sinful man does to pure righteousness. It’s ugly because that’s how bad sin is.

What is finished? The debt he came to pay. He took the sin, like a lightening rod, onto himself. For you and for me.

Will you look upon it with me today? Look at it, and keep looking at it until you know the answer to the question, What happened here? and can walk away free from sin because you put yours off onto the lightning rod-man on the cross. You can trust him more than you can trust yourself.

A Course in Smoke and Mirrors

Okay, it isn’t called A Course in Smoke in Mirrors. It’s A Course in Miracles. First published in 1976, A Course in Miracles was catapulted to new popularity in 2008 when Oprah Winfrey began promoting it. It’s a mix of education (the materials include workbooks and manuals for students and teachers), psychotherapy (“mind training” with the Course as our “Holy Spirit”), and Eastern religions (escaping the pain of this world by awakening to a higher state of consciousness), all communicated in Christian terminology.

It speaks in lofty language. The course considers itself a miracle. The course materials capitalize “Course” and speak of the course as something mysteriously divine:

“The Course was authored not by a person, but by an ‘inner voice’ that dictated the material … in the midst of a remarkable, unfolding story. … A Course in Miracles is seemingly itself a miracle – a breakthrough of God into the world.”

The course says that there is one problem that is the central problem of human existence:

“From the external tragedies of war, famine, disease and death; to the deeper, inner crises of loneliness, emptiness and despair, to the cosmic spiritual dilemma of separation from God, they are all the same. One problem, one solution. Salvation is accomplished.”

What is this problem?

“It is an inner malady that lies deep within us. It is not an unfair conflict between ourselves and outside forces. It is a conflict in our own mind.” “We are almost all unconsciously ruled by a mind-set of extreme separateness and attack, a condition of mental isolation in which we look upon the world through condemning eyes of judgment and anger.”

The course promises that if we will apply its remedy to this problem, we will undergo an inner transformation that will bring healing and inner peace. And the remedy is simple. We must realize that the problem we think exists … doesn’t.

“To heal this mind-set we must realize that it is this [the mind-set of separateness, isolation, condemnation, and judgment], and not the world, that causes our pain. … this mentality is not a true picture of reality. It is an illusion. Therefore we can let go [and] become innocent, peaceful and joyously happy.”

Did you get that? The conflict we sense in our mind is really an illusion. In reality, there is no conflict between ourselves and outside forces (i.e. God). There is no separateness, no isolation, no condemnation, no judgment, no anger. All of those things are an illusion. If we will let go of them, we will have heavenly awareness. “One problem, one solution.”

One Problem. One Problem
There’s only one problem with this. It flatly contradicts the core of the Christian faith which it presumes upon and from which it borrows its terminology. If you want to have your Course in Miracles, then have at it. But don’t call it Christian. The two are irreconcilable and incompatible.

The course does get one thing right. According to biblical Christianity, there is one problem that is the root source of all the problems in the world – like war, famine, disease, death, loneliness, despair, and separation from God. But it is a real problem, not an imagined one.

The root problem is sin. We really are separated from God because of it.

“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you,” (Isaiah 59:2)

We have a sense of separation because we are separated. We have a sense of condemnation because we’ve done wrong. We have a conscience that tells us (if we will listen to it) when we’ve done wrong. This is one of the ways God calls to us. A Course in Miracles would have us deny what our consciences are telling us – that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It ignores and dismisses what was blatantly explicit in the Bible:

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

And it would have us ignore God’s call to come to him for forgiveness.

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)

Which would leave us still in our sinful state – lost, desolate, spiritually dead.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

An ancient Hebrew proverb says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 14:12) A Course in Miracles is alluring because it tells us what we like to hear – that we don’t have a sin problem. In the end, A Course in Miracles denies, rather than addresses, the sin problem. In the end, it leads to death.

As odd as it may sound, God is pro-choice. We can ignore our consciences and tell ourselves we don’t have a sin problem. But we still will.

Or we can face the sin problem and acknowledge it before God. When we do that, we find that Jesus has already dealt with it.

Then we really don’t have a sin problem. Anymore. How cool is that?

Bas Relief: The Big Picture amid Gay Demands

Dear Mick,

They say fools rush in where angels fear to tread. This territory is contentious, but I’m neither rushing in nor fearful to tread. You have pushed me to the wall, all but demanding a response from me, so here goes. Yes, I have seen the news reports about gay teens who have taken their own lives, including the most highly publicized one, Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his sexual encounter was filmed and broadcast on the web. Yes, I agree with you that teen death is always tragic, and when it comes by suicide, it’s especially heart wrenching. Yes, I have seen the videos posted online by celebrities, calling for an end to harassment of gays, and yes, I have heard your cries for action.

I certainly won’t argue with, “Stop the bullying.” Aggression and abuse are never acceptable.

So why do you overlook the actual aggressors? Instead of calling them to account, you have leveled your sights on something else. At bottom, your demand really isn’t, “End the bullying.” It’s, “End the religion-based teachings about homosexuality.”

About Defamation
It’s a chorus that’s been building for over a decade. In 1998, after Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, was abducted, beaten, and left for dead by two local thugs, NBC Today show host Katie Couric also ignored the perpetrators and questioned whether Christian organizations such as Focus on the Family might be responsible, having created “a climate of hate.” As I read Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America, I heard the same theme. The primary impediment to gays’ mental health and wholeness, according to Mitchell Gold who collected and edited the stories, is religion-based bigotry and religious intolerance. Not bigotry, but religion-based bigotry. Not intolerance, but religious intolerance.

Now the meme has gone global. That became apparent in the NPR article you showed me recently.  “Christians?” you asked, one eyebrow raised. A lawmaker in Uganda introduced a bill imposing the death penalty for some homosexual acts and life in prison for others. I read the article, wondering exactly how Christianity played into this development. It didn’t. The reporter had drawn that conclusion for readers, adding in the final sentence, “The legislation was drawn up following a visit by leaders of U.S. conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy they say allows gays to become heterosexual.”

That conclusion dovetails with your grievance. I and people like me have the blood of gay teens and many others on our hands. I’ll grant you this, Mick. Where others stop at dropping hints, you do have the chutzpah to come right out with it.

About Intolerance
So I will be equally straightforward. As I write this, I am wearing a purple t-shirt. Today was designated by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD) as “Wear Purple Day,” to raise awareness and “bring an end to intolerance” in honor of the deceased teens. As a mother of three, I am moved by the plight of troubled teens too, but there’s more to my personal “Wear Purple Day” than yours. I will explain.

My purple shirt also has a cross on it, and on the back you can read, “I’m souled out, are you?” Yes, Mick, it’s a play on words that refers to my religious convictions. I bring that into the discussion because you seem to have a bigger problem with my personal convictions concerning sex and morality than you do with the actual crimes that have been committed.

Fortunately, the legal system hasn’t taken your approach. The boys who killed Matthew Shepard are sitting behind bars, and probably will be for the rest of their earthly lives. Likewise, the students accused of webcasting the escapades of Tyler Clementi are under investigation by local authorities, as are the perpetrators of other crimes you’ve brought to my attention. (You call them hate crimes. I just call them crimes.) But this doesn’t seem to matter to you. What matters to you is that people like me be called upon to either change our beliefs or … or what, Mick? The cries are increasingly sounding like a threat, “Endorse homosexuality or else!”

About Harassment
I have not asked you to live by my code. But you are demanding that I adopt yours. To be honest, Mick, I’m starting to feel bullied. In recent months, you have called me, directly or indirectly, a bigot, a homophobe, a hater, an extremist, and now a virtual murderer. To the best of my memory, I haven’t called you anything but Mick. Honestly, who’s harassing whom?

I could make the dissension between us go away overnight by mouthing a blessing on your homosexuality. It would make my life easier, but I can’t do that. My conscience won’t let me. In fact, to be gut-level honest, Mick, love won’t let me. Love for you and for those teens struggling to figure out love in a hyper-sexualized culture. You see, I believe homosexuality is less than what God made you for. You may be content with it (though I would venture your escalating demands for affirmation suggest otherwise), but there are many who aren’t.

About Questioning Sexuality
College professor J. Budziszewski records a poignant conversation with a graduate student in his book, Ask Me Anything, that illustrates the soul-searching going on among today’s youth.

Adam had been living the gay life for five years, but he was growing disillusioned with it. He had no problem finding sex, but even in steady relationships the lack of intimacy and faithfulness was getting him down. “I’m starting to want … I don’t know. Something more,” he said.

“I follow you,” the professor said.

“Another thing,” Adam went on. “I want to be a Dad.” His gay friends couldn’t relate to that. Get a turkey baster and make an arrangement with a lesbian, they said. But he didn’t find the joke funny.

And there was one more thing. He’d started thinking about God. He’d been to a gay church, but something about it didn’t sit right. Adam was confused, and he’d come to Dr. Budziszewski to get the Big Picture about sex.

I don’t know what you might have said to Adam, but I know what one prominent gay author counsels. In Growing Up Gay in America: Informative and Practical Advice for Teen Guys Questioning Their Sexuality and Growing Up Gay, Jason Rich recommends making contact, anonymously online if necessary, with other gays. “You can also access the tremendous amount of gay pornography on the Internet and see, for example, if hot naked guys and/or sexual images of guys having sex with other guys actually turns you on,” he adds.

About Discrimination
Adam had already tried all those things and found them wanting. Now he was thinking about leaving homosexuality. Which leads to a subject that is even more contentious for you. Ex-gays. Mick, you have a lot to say about gays being mistreated, but it appears to me the most abused and reviled group of people in America today is not gays, but ex-gays. The Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), a non-profit advocacy group, has documented a lot of incidents of hostility and blatant discrimination against men and women who have left homosexuality. Ex-gay Perri Roberts, in the preface to his autobiography, Dying for Love, pleaded with homosexuals to simply grant him the space to change his life if he chooses, and to allow him to help others who want to leave homosexuality do so freely.

Would you grant Perri that freedom? Would you even grant Dr. Budziszewski the freedom to explain the Big Picture? Or would you have them censored and silenced, effectively consigning young people like Adam to homosexuality with no way out?

About Acceptance
Mick, I respect your freedom to live out the sexuality you prefer, but I will not jettison the Big Picture. Adam is onto something. Sex has its place, but the human soul longs for more than sex. Things like intimacy and permanence. Becoming a parent and raising a family. There is a Big Picture about sex, Mick, and all those things are part of it. I will not withhold that from Adam or others like him.

I do not accept responsibility for the teen suicides, nor do I accept the charges of bigotry, intolerance, or hate. I realize my Judeo-Christian construct for sex causes you distress, but I can’t surrender it for you or anyone else. That would be giving you a cheap substitute for love. Still, I value your friendship, so I leave it to you to decide whether you will accept me as I am or jettison me from your life.

I leave you with one final thought. You may succeed in silencing me and others like me who hold to the Big Picture, but that won’t make the Big Picture go away. It’s part of the created order.

Even your protestations attest to that.

This article first appeared in Salvo 15, Winter 2010.

Related articles:

• Who’s Bashing Whom? “Gay-marriage is a legitimate moral and political topic for debate — for civil debate, that is. And name-calling, demonization, and intimidation are nothing but attempts to shut off the debate and to shout down the opposition.”
• Beliefs or Bigotry? “According to Judge Walker, if you believe marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman, you are a homophobe and a bigot. Such legal reasoning not only charts the course for destroying religious liberty, it paves the way for societal chaos.”
• Dig Deeper: What’s Behind the Scenes at the White House Anti-Bullying Summit?

The Jonas Profit

How Two Goats and One Big Family Found Their Calling

PJ (Patricia) Jonas was bathing her children one day when her eyes fell on the list of ingredients in the commercial baby wash she was using. Surely all those petroleum based chemicals can’t be good for young skin, she thought, and she decided on the spot, “I can do better than this.” The family owned two goats which provided their milk and cheese, and within a few weeks, PJ was making soap for her family using goat milk.

It was quite satisfactory. Not only did she eliminate the unwanted chemicals, her homemade soap turned out to be especially beneficial for her husband Jim, whose hands chronically cracked and bled from exposure during his work day. But more would come from that homemaking innovation. In a few years, it would grow into a soap-making business producing nearly fifty thousand bars per year and employing and supporting her entire family. I visited the Jonases recently to learn more about this rather counter-cultural family and tour their “factory.”

When I pulled up the long gravel driveway on a sunny fall morning, PJ and the kids were out front, all of them neatly dressed, having posed for pictures while awaiting their morning visitor. “I thought I’d snap some pictures while they’re all cleaned up,” PJ laughed as she introduced herself. Meanwhile two little girls, their matching blue dresses wafting in the breeze, ran circles around us, as if to indicate that a newcomer is as welcome as the next-door neighbor around here.

Goat Milk Soaps

This is the atmosphere of the Jonas homestead, a modest three acre farm resting among gently rolling hills near Louisville, KY, and home to two adults, eight children, seven milking goats, one buck, and the business they all operate together. Once we were situated in the living room, Jim joined us, and I began to get to know this delightful group of people.

“Front and center!” PJ called, and eight children instantly sprang from their seats, lined up in order, and one by one introduced themselves to me. Daughter Brett (13), sons Colter (12), Emery (10), Fletcher (9), Greydon (7), Hewitt (6), and the two little girls, Indigo (4) and Jade (3) standing at attention called to mind the Von Trapp family singers, but this was no rigid roll call. These children were obviously enthusiastic about their station in life and eager to share it with me. Most of them chimed in from time to time as the family story came out.

Jim and PJ married after they graduated from the University of Virginia where PJ earned a degree in engineering and Jim, a BA in economics and a masters in teaching. When Brett reached school age, they moved the growing family from New Jersey to Indiana for a more homeschool-friendly environment. PJ didn’t set out to become a business operator; when she started making soap, it was simply with a mind toward wholesome living.

Then a bum engine in the family van presented a budget crisis. Rather than sue somebody to recover damages, PJ made a few extra batches of soap and offered it for sale in the community. People liked it, demand continually called for more supply, and in 2008 Goat Milk Stuff (GMS) was officially born. Each of the eight children is responsible for certain tasks and receives a salary. “GMS has become more than just our family business,” PJ explains on the website. “It’s come to represent who we are and what we stand for. From raising and milking our Alpine goats, to producing all of our soaps, everything about our products was created solely by the ten members of our family.”

Lest anyone mistake this family for an odd anachronism, GMS makes full use of 21st century technology. Most orders come through the website and are shipped out by priority mail same or next day. PJ blogs regularly and maintains a Facebook fan page and Twitter following to communicate with customers, and the oldest three children have their own laptop computers for schoolwork, which they purchased using their soap salaries. The family does, however, recapture something from an earlier era that is worth revisiting.

Vocation
The Christian doctrine of vocation came out of the European Reformation, but found its fullest expression in America. Today, vocation usually refers to one’s occupation or job, but that’s not the original meaning of the word. Vocation came from the Latin word for “calling,” and was strictly an ecclesiastical term. In the medieval church, only those who worked full time in the church – for example a priest, nun, or monk – had a vocation. They were viewed as having been called by God to carry out his work in the world, while the other occupations of life – farming, shop keeping, or craftsmanship, though valued as necessary to life, were considered “worldly.” They weren’t vocations.

The Reformation changed all that. In God at Work, culture expert Gene Edward Veith, Jr. explains how Reformation theologians, led by Martin Luther and John Calvin, asserted a revolutionary new take on work. Yes, they said, church workers have a calling, but laypeople too have callings from God that entail holy responsibilities. Individuals living out their vocations, they said, is one way God carries out his ongoing, purposeful work in the world. “The entire world [is] full of service to God,” Luther wrote, “not only the churches but also the home, the kitchen, the cellar, the workshop, and the field of the townsfolk and farmers.” He even went so far as to criticize monks for evading their duty to serve their neighbors.

This idea invested work with a whole new meaning and purpose and unleashed a flood of ingenuity and initiative. At the time, society was essentially hierarchical, with more-or-less fixed classes of people – peasant, bourgeoisie, noble, king, emperor – where one’s station in life did not change from generation to generation. But with the elevation of work to vocation – a means of serving God in the world, peasants became budding entrepreneurs. This eventually gave rise to a burgeoning middle class, as a large segment of the population came to embody what would later become known as the Protestant Work Ethic.

A New Economic Order
The phrase ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ wasn’t coined until the early 1900s when German economist Max Weber penned The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Far from being a philosophy of greed, Weber argued, this new economic order, built by free and industrious individuals engaged in creative ventures, emerged from a religious and moral understanding of work. Citing the writings of Benjamin Franklin which emphasized hard work and frugality, Weber wrote, “We shall nevertheless provisionally use the expression ‘spirit of capitalism’ for that attitude which, in the pursuit of a calling, strives systematically for profit for its own sake in the manner exemplified by Benjamin Franklin.” Weber took care to note that, in keeping with Protestant understandings about the proper use of money, profits were regularly reinvested in the enterprises which produced them, spurring further growth and multiplying prosperity.

The Curse of Meaninglessness
The Protestant Work Ethic transformed Western civilization and spread to other points around the world, but today the concept is running aground. Retired social worker and author Carol MacAllister, while admitting she was taught the importance of hard work and was driven by it all her life, began to question it in her retirement.

“For me, the PWE means you have no worth (in society, your family and to yourself) unless you are productive each and every day and you get all your work done before you take time to play. The trouble is there never is any time to play because there is always more work to do. Right here, right now I am declaring a war on the PWE and the idea that a To Do List completely checked off at the end of the day is a valid reason to feel virtuous and satisfied with myself.”

Harvard Business Review author Dan Pallotta agreed, calling it a dysfunctional form of self-punishment, while Oliver Burkeman, of The Guardian said it’s “self-flagellatingly harsh,” counterproductive, and only makes life more difficult.

Well … yes. Divorced from ultimate meaning, work is ultimately meaningless. It’s just so much effort expended for … what?  That’s the question that can’t be answered apart from a transcendent purpose, and it’s the reason why work apart from the understanding of vocation reverts to toil.

Interestingly, by the time Weber connected the dots between the doctrine of vocation and the rise of free enterprise, he had already begun to see this unfortunate consequence of detaching work from its religious moorings, lamenting as he concluded his book that the ouster of the religious underpinnings of the spirit of capitalism had led to a kind of involuntary servitude among impersonal, mechanized industry.

An Integrated Life
This is precisely where the Jonases can help us reestablish the connection between life, work, and living out vocation. Jim Jonas had never heard of the Reformation doctrine of vocation, but as he talks about what he does, it becomes clear that he lives it anyway. “When I’m out there making soap, I know one of these bars is going to be for a baby who’s got eczema. That baby’s miserable and doesn’t know why. All he knows is his skin hurts, and the poor child is screaming because he’s miserable, which makes the parents miserable.” Into this unhappy predicament, Jim finds satisfaction in serving God and these “neighbors” by creating a solution for their problem.

In God at Work, Veith says that vocation, when lived out according to its original meaning, encompasses all of one’s life and “transfigures ordinary, everyday life with the presence of God.” Marriage is a calling. Parenthood is a calling. And since the caller is the same God, the various callings complement, rather than work against, each another. The Jonas family bears this out too.  “We don’t compartmentalize our lives.” Jim says. “Family time, work time, school time, church time, are all integrated.”

An understanding of vocation leads one not to ask, “What job will I pursue?” but rather, “What is God calling me to do?” The answers are as unique as the individuals who ask, but there is a satisfying answer for everyone who dares to ask.

Chaotic as it may get at times, with a large family and the demands of caring for animals and running a business, the Jonases obviously find satisfaction and joy in living out the answer they got. “God can do anything,” Jim says. “And I think he has something for each of us. It’s just a matter of finding out what that is. For us, it turned out to be soap.”

The Jonas Family

Only an outside-the-box Creator could think up a story like that.

This article first appeared in Salvo 15, Winter 2010.