Eschatological Discipleship - A Review

Trevin Wax is one of the most incisive cultural commentators in the evangelical community. He has a talent for moving past pearl clutching about trends in pop culture by asking foundational questions about the ideas that animate to moral activity in entertainment and society. His 2018 book, Eschatological Discipleship is an overt presentation of the theological analysis that is evident in the background of Wax’s popular books and blogs.

Eschatology is the oft neglected and frequently abused topic in Christian systematic theologies. As Wax notes, discussions of the end times in seminary courses tend to be stuck on the end of the course syllabus and often are the first to get axed when discussions of soteriology and ecclesiology run long at the beginning of the semester. More often, the term eschatology is understood to mean endless debate about the nature and timing of the rapture, the intrigue of the mark of the beast, and various theories on the millennium.

This book gets beyond the most common pitfalls of eschatological debate to focus on the core issue of eschatology as it is woven throughout Scripture. In particular, Wax emphasizes the idea of eschatology as a source for telos; it is the theological topic that provides the best evidence for the meaning of life. In other words, eschatology is not primarily about charts and timing, but about providing a lodestar of eternal purpose to navigate life in ever-changing times.

In Eschatological Discipleship: Leading Christians to Understand their Historical and Cultural Context, Wax does something few treatments of the topic do: he offers an analysis of the eschatologies of worldviews that compete with Christianity. His analysis of the eschatology of the Enlightenment, the Sexual Revolution, and Consumerism are unique in their revelation of the unspoken, but evident meaning encoded in those rival systems of meaning. This book provides a framework for discussing the often-obscured theologies of those movements.

Wax begins the book with a chapter defining the term eschatological discipleship. He argues, “eschatological discipleship is spiritual formation that seeks to instill wisdom regarding the contemporary setting in which Christians find themselves (in contrast to rival conceptions of time and progress) and that calls for contextualized obedience as a demonstration of the Christian belief that the biblical account of the world’s past, present, and future is true.” (p. 41) This definition makes clear Wax’s aim, which is to present a theological argument that unquestionably leads to obedience.

In three chapters, Wax presents a biblical theology of eschatological discipleship, beginning with the Old Testament, then focusing on the Gospels and Acts, and concluding with a survey of the topic in Paul’s letters. It becomes evident through this survey that all of Scripture encourages Christians to ask, “What time is it?”, so they can understand their culture and how they should live in their particular context to the glory of God.

Chapter Five presents the idea of eschatology within non-Christian thought, which leads the way into the helpful analysis of the next three chapters. In the sixth through eighth chapters of the book, Wax performs a critical analysis of the eschatology of the Enlightenment, the Sexual Revolution, and Consumerism, which all compete with Scripture to dominate the worldviews of Christians in our age. In the final chapter, Wax shows how his presentation of eschatological discipleship can enhance the practice of evangelical theology and equip every church member to better respond to the confused theologies around them.

Trevin Wax is one of the most gifted writers among evangelicals. This academic book is no exception. The prose is clear and the arguments careful. He manages to raise concern about the real problems within the dominant culture of the West without calling for withdrawal or reflexive combativeness. Eschatological Discipleship is a specimen of Christian scholarship in its most helpful form: theologically precise and readable.

Those who have read other books by Wax will likely see the connection between another of his recent books, This is Our Time: Everyday Myths in Light of the Gospel, and this volume. Eschatological Discipleship makes clear the theological framework that This is Our Time presents in a practical, popular format. The close connection between the two books offer an example for Christian scholars for how to translate scholarship for broad consumption and how to most efficiently steward their research by pitching their arguments to multiple audiences.

Eschatological Discipleship is a useful resource for pastors and scholars seeking to understand the contours of contemporary culture better. Theologically informed laity will likely find this book an accessible and informative volume, too. This is a book that will have enduring value for its analytical content and exemplary argumentation.

NOTE: This article was originally posted at the B&H Academic Blog, which has since been archived due to a change in strategy.

Are Ethics More Important than Theology?

Why do some Christians love theology more than people? After all, from an eternal perspective, people matter more than ideas. It does not matter what you believe as long as you are doing good things in the world. Some people who do not even believe in Jesus are better Jesus-followers than Christians—these people are the real Kingdom of God.

If you read progressive Christian blogs or follow left-leaning Christian pundits on social media, you will have likely heard some of the assertions in the previous paragraph. Some form of them is repeated often enough to be recognizable at a glance.

The basic claim of those who make these claims is that practical Christian ethics is the heart of Christianity, while Christian theology is mere speculation about things that are largely unknown and mostly unknowable. Ethics is reality; theology is speculation. Therefore, ethics is more important than theology.

As a Christian ethicist, I heartily affirm the importance of Christian ethics. However, faithful Christian ethics presupposes a foundation of orthodox Christian doctrine. An authentically Christian ethics is the superstructure on a foundation of an orthodox, biblical theology. We cannot do ethics apart from theology.

In her excellent essay “Creed or Chaos?” Dorothy L. Sayers argues,

It is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology.

She goes on to explain that Christian morality without a doctrinal foundation quickly becomes humanism, which eventually fails to motivate right action.

Doctrine is the very heart of ethics. Unless you believe the right things, there is little hope that you will do the right things. If someone does not believe that humans have inherent value, they are unlikely seek to relieve their suffering or may justify doing harm while calling it good. Proper concern for the wellbeing of other humans is not self-generated; it arises from an anthropology that values people as made in the image of God. When anthropology fails, so does true compassion for other humans.

For example, movements that advocate for voluntary euthanasia are often couched in terms of individual autonomy and alleviation of suffering. Assisting in the suicide deaths of the old and the infirm is ethical if your anthropology presumes that humans have a right to self-determination and that human suffering is purposeless. A deep theological sentiment lies behind a pro-euthanasia ethic. Ethics springs from a foundation of those doctrines that are believed.

Jesus is clear about belief being the basis for human action. Luke records him explaining the relationship between the act of speech and the beliefs of the heart: “A good man produces good out of the good storeroom of his heart. An evil man produces evil out of the evil storeroom, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart” (Luke 6:45, HCSB). Bad beliefs will lead to bad character, which will lead to bad actions.

Those who seek to affirm ethics over theology are wrong to diminish the importance of doctrine. However, a fairer critique could, at times, be that theologically sound Christians sometimes fail to live out the ethics that are demanded by their theology. Such was Carl F. H. Henry’s criticism of early evangelicalism.

The core theme of Henry’s brief volume The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism is that doctrinally orthodox evangelicals (i.e., those who held to the fundamentals of the faith) often fell into the trap of repudiating social ethics simply because social activism was associated with modernist, theologically liberal Christians. This led faithful and theologically sound Christians to reject just action to mitigate harms, though those actions would have occurred in ways that were consistent with and even demanded by a doctrine faithful to Scripture. Such failures, Henry argued, caused early evangelicals to have an uneasy conscience.

Henry’s indictment of his own theological tribe should come as no surprise, since Jesus’ words about the overflow of the heart are followed immediately by a sharp rebuke of those who have a proper faith, but fail to act on it (Luke 6:46-49). Or, in perhaps the most misunderstood verse in Scripture, James 2:14-17 reminds Christians that faith that does not lead to ethical application is dead.

The problem in these situations is not that people were concerned about right doctrine, but that they failed to act upon it. Perhaps they understood the theological propositions, but did not have a living faith to drive them to live the ethical implications of those doctrines. These critiques are reasonable. However, the assertion that doctrine is unimportant is untenable.

The assertion “ethics matters but doctrine does not” requires a presumption that theology is abstract while action is concrete. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ethics is abstract to the extent that even our good actions are tainted by sinful motivations and have unknown consequences. Theology—the study of God and his works—is concrete inasmuch as its object is known and knowable. Orthodox doctrines are not arbitrary constructions that satisfy the desire for completeness and intellectual attainment of theologians and exegetes. Most theology is done in the crucible of real-life concerns in an attempt to discern what is right and godly, which is the only possible foundation for a Christian ethics. Again, Sayers is helpful as she describes the formulation of doctrine:

Dogmas are not a set of arbitrary regulations invented a priori by a committee of theologians enjoying a bout of all-in dialectical wrestling. Most of them were hammered out under pressure of urgent practical necessity to provide an answer to heresy.

This is no less true about the doctrines that undergird human sexual ethics than it is about teachings that deal with Christology. The church has often had to specifically codify previously assumed or unconsidered doctrines in the face of innovative challenges that threaten to undermine the doctrinal core of Christianity. This does not represent a failure to love the people who hold faulty doctrine: it is a sign of faithfulness to the one who calls Christians to love people. Paul’s admonishment is to speak truth in love, not to reject truth in the name of love (cf. Eph. 4:15).

Christians would do well to live out their faith. They would also do well to ponder Jude’s words to the church, which include a call to contend for the faith—the sound doctrine—that was given to the saints because those who rejected those teachings led others to practice bad ethics (Jude 3-4). Christianity is not merely about right doctrine, but orthodoxy cannot be rejected without a grave cost to ethics.

NOTE: This article was previously posted at the B&H Academic Blog, which has since been archived due to a change in media strategy.

The Humane Economy of Wilhelm Ropke

To some people, free market economics is the worst social evil of our age that is responsible for every other social evil. What causes Racism? Capitalism. Child abuse? Free market. Objectification of women? The market economy. War? Economic liberty. Poverty? The same. Bad hair days? Definitely capitalism, too. You get the idea.

On the other hand, there are others for whom free market economics are akin to the good news of Jesus Christ. Andrew Carnegie did, after all, write a book called, The Gospel of Wealth, which largely extols the market economy. There are others to this day who see capitalism as not merely permissible by God, but actually required by a correct reading of Scripture.

In reality, liberty, including economic freedom, is a necessary condition for human flourishing, but it isn’t a sufficient condition. The free market economy the cleanest dirty shirt we’ve got. Like any human system, it has sinful people involved, so it is subject to abuse and distortion. Unlike other human economies that have been envisioned, it has the best means to keep people’s natural tendencies toward evil and oppression in check.

One of the most careful proponents of a free market that I’ve read in Wilhelm Röpke. He was a German who emigrated to Turkey in 1933 because of his resistance to the National Socialist regime. Early in his life he was inspired by socialism, later by the Austrian school of economics, and finally landed on a position that encourages a free market with targeted and limited government interventions. Röpke argued for what might be described as a humane capitalism. Röpke was one of the main thinkers that inspired the creation of the West German economic system after World War II, which helped to shape its balance between social welfare and free market, a system that resulted in West Germany rapidly recovering and developing into an economic power, with East Germany lagging behind, mired in socialism.

Röpke’s classic book, A Humane Economy, is an important book for socialists and libertarians to read so they understand both the needs for and perils of a free market.

One of Röpke’s concerns is over “mass society.” It was the enmassment of human activity that Röpke had witnessed in the rise of fascism in Europe before the war. Like other forms of socialism, the National Socialists ceased to recognize people as individuals or small units, and pursued global solutions with a faceless homo economicus as the actor. This faceless stand in for humans sometimes makes a good generalization, but it fails to take into account the goodness of owning a business, of small firms being able to compete in a grand economy, and of individual craftsmanship. At the extremes, unfettered capitalism and socialism lend themselves to aggregating humans into the faceless mass. Röpke was just as opposed to corporate monopolies as he was to state monopolies. Unlike some contemporary neoliberals, Röpke recognized that the power of the state was essential in preventing any sort of monopoly from forming.

What makes Röpke particularly significant is that he honestly represents the damage that redistributive programs like welfare can have as they encourage inflationary economics and can reduce the incentives to engage in meaningful economic activity. At the same time, he demonstrates that well-designed welfare systems can be essential to provide a safety net and can actually prevent the worst cases of abuse by the state and by corporate entities. Röpke is exactly the sort of thinker that will make people on both poles of contemporary social and economic debate uncomfortable, which is one of the best reasons to listen to him.

Another important aspect of Röpke’s perspective is that he emphasizes the necessary balance between collectivism and individualism. Both ideas in the extreme are debilitating to society. Röpke writes, “Man can fulfill his nature only by freely becoming part of a community and having a sense of solidarity with it. Otherwise he leads a miserable existence and he knows it.” A more apt criticism of most forms of socialism and the contemporary economy in the United States could not be written. In socialism, one is forced to assimilate with the mass, to contribute as the authorities deem necessary and to receive in exchange only that which the collective deems warranted. In late post-industrial capitalism, one tends to be isolated from the collective, set to gain what one can earn on her own, and catechized to believe that individual freedom is something of a summum bonum. To some degree, at least, Röpke seems to offer a golden mean.

In A Humane Economy there is resistance both to state totalitarianism and the totalitarian utilitarianism of some economics. But he is unquestionably opposed to the ravages of Communism. Röpke argues:

“Totalitarianism gains ground exactly to the extent that the human victims of this process of [social] disintegration suffer from frustration and non-fulfillment of their life as a whole because they have lost the true, pre-eminently non-material conditions of human happiness.”

He continues,

“What the free world has to set against Communism is not the cult of the standard of living and productivity or some contrary hysteria, ideology, or myth. This would merely be borrowing Communism’s own weapons. What we need is to bethink ourselves quietly and soberly of truth, freedom, justice, human dignity, and respect of human life and the ultimate values. For these we must set our course unerringly; we must cherish and strengthen the spiritual and moral foundations of these values and vital goods and try to create and preserve for mankind such forms of life as are appropriate to human nature and support and protect its conditions.”

This sort of attitude is what makes Röpke so helpful. He recognizes the horrors of socialistic economics, but also sees the abyss that is a purely materialistic utilitarian capitalism. Röpke reminds us that at the heart of the economy is the human. We are not graphs and statistics alone. Those things can be helpful, but they are not enough. We need to be more humane by treating people around us like humans. Economics can only function when it is constrained by virtue.

A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market

By Röpke, Wilhelm

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Consumer Debt and the Coming Recession

For those that pay attention to such things, the news is filled with extreme views about the current and future state of the economy. At the same moment in time, there are pundits arguing that most Americans are in abject economic misery, while others argue that life has never been better economically. One group is arguing that imminent economic doom is upon us, another tells us that things are only going up from here.

If most of us are honest, in the decade since the Great Recession, things have generally gotten better for most people. However, in many cases, people do not feel great about the economy and, at the same time, are setting themselves up for problems during the next recession.

The Inevitability of Recessions and Stock Declines

News reports predicting a coming economic recession or a significant stock market decline are correct. They have no idea when those things are going to come, but some sort of economic perturbation is pretty much inevitable.

One of the more interesting aspects of our attention economy is that when the next economic dip happens, its significance will be determined, in large part, by how people respond. For example, if people get skittish and sell during a stock market decline, that will make the stock market decline even worse. If people alter their consumer behaviors radically during a recession, that is likely to make the recession worse.

More significant than whether and when a recession is coming (it is and who knows) is how we are living day to day in anticipation of those events.

A Plea for Simple Living

There is no question that some people are struggling to meet basic necessities already. Due to a medical condition, loss of a job, a very low wage job, or bad debt choices earlier in life, many people are living paycheck to paycheck. If that is you, then feel free to check out. This post is written to the vast majority of us who are in the middle class and have some economic margin.

We once received a gift subscription to a magazine called Real Simple that amounts to an advertisement for a high-end consumeristic minimalist lifestyle. All the pictures were of perfect rooms with “simple” solutions to problems like magazine storage or whatever, but the solutions always cost hundreds of dollars. The result was an aesthetic simplicity, but that’s not how they got there. According to that style magazine, simplicity is a consumer good that is really expensive.

Simple living is less about what stuff you own and more about what activities and services you deem necessary. Simple living at its best is simply asking what aspects of life are necessary and eliminating those that don’t fit that definition. Another definition is that simple living is asking what we do that glorifies God and minimizing the extras.

When we stop asking risk vs. reward questions about our lifestyle choices, we put ourselves into the situation like the couple making $160,000 who were described as living in “modest oppression” because they “couldn’t afford” everything they wanted. Alyssa Quart’s description of the largely self-caused mental and emotional stresses of the middle class in her 2018 book, Squeezed, should serve as a warning to rational minds to make better choices.

As Christians in the American middle class, we really need to begin asking “why” questions if we are going to be effective stewards of our time, treasure, and opportunity. We have the means to get the gospel to the ends of the earth and instead we are spending our money to overflow landfills with useless plastic.

The simple life is about being focused on what adds gospel-value to the world and spending our money on that.

Avoiding Comparisons

Also in Squeezed, Quart writes, “While Americans overall may live better than medieval aristocrats could even dream of, that means nothing when oligarchs live next door, flaunting their luxurious homes.”

The funny thing about comparisons is that we tend to make them with those living above our means. Very few of us look at those who are legitimately struggling financially and go home thankful for our abundance. Instead, largely due to the mystique of television and movies in which everything is always perfect, we continually moan about the inadequacy of our resources.

There is a reason God gave us the 10th Commandment.

Did you have a nice vacation at home? Well, the other guy at work took his kids on a safari adventure. Now that vacation doesn’t look so good.

Does your daughter enjoy soccer? The neighbor down the street does, too, so they’ve invested thousands into clinics, travel teams, physical training, and other goods and services designed to get their child ahead. Suddenly the local rec league isn’t very compelling.

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with a big vacation or pursuing excellence in sports, but those are often excesses that we try to have without making sacrifices to compensate.

The result is that many people who are making a whole lot of money are spending all of it and a little bit more.

Rising Debt Loads

One of more frightening statistics, in my opinion, is the rise in household debt to the levels prior to the 2008 recession.

The Great Recession was rough for a lot of people in large part because people were up to their ears in debt when the problem started. For a few years society seemed to learn a lesson, but now it appears that we have forgotten.

I’m not on the “no debt ever” train, for a variety of reasons. However, I do believe that we typically position ourselves better to survive economic downturns if we minimize debt and seek to eliminate it when times are good.

A lot of the debt right now is being driven by a perception that the stock market is going to keep going up and up. In the long run this is probably true, but there may be a point at which half of the money invested in the market will “disappear” just like it did in 2008 and 2009. That is never a great feeling, but it is a really terrible feeling when you know that your pay is likely to stagnate for a while, you may lose your job, and the company bonus you budgeted to pay for your vacation is unlikely to materialize. In other words, when you are up to your ears in debt, the clouds of economic doom look a lot more ominous.

Market expert is not a title I’d claim, but I remember the pain of debt-ridden people who had a high salary but large payments and weren’t seeing the economic growth they were counting on. One way to eliminate that pain is to avoid debt and eradicate it. To do that, we should consider the common causes of debt.

The Cause of Debt

The problem most middle-class Americans have is that they are spending too much on things that they enjoy too little and bring too little glory to God.

Instead of comparing ourselves to our neighbors, we ought to be regularly asking of every expenditure how this glorifies God. We will certainly get things wrong from time to time, but a gospel-focused consumer mind will likely resist the urge to overspend on things that really do little good for anyone.

Once we get above a certain financial level, most debt is driven by buying more car than we need, a nicer house than necessary, services that we only use occasionally, and products that offer little benefit in the long run. Evaluate your household spending for the last year with a critical eye and this will likely become self-evident.

This means that rather than being trapped in system that makes us do bad things, we are in a culture that encourages us to do dumb things and we usually don’t invest the will power to stop.

For most of us, our debt is a problem we have created by being unwilling to limit our consumer choices to that which glorifies God.

We are setting ourselves up for misery in the future with our choices today. Why not begin making simple, better choices that will leave us happier when the next downturn comes?

Back to Virtue - A Review

If I had the opportunity to spend a week with one living scholar, I would probably spend it with Peter Kreeft. There is wisdom and breadth in his writings that would make conversation—better yet, simply listening—an intellectually and spiritually edifying experience.

Kreeft has authored a massive number of works. All of those that I have read have been stimulating, entertaining, and helpful. His work is saturated by a love for God, an appreciation for Lewis and Tolkien, and an intellectual humility that makes journeying along with him a pleasure.

Recently as I re-read his 1986 book, Back to Virtue, which, by its title, is something of a response to Alasdair McIntyre’s book After Virtue. McIntyre is, of course, doing something broad and sweeping and is engaging in diagnosing the problems of a highly relativistic society that has no common moral compass. It is mainly description, with the reader left to develop the solution on his own. Kreeft’s book provides something of a solution. A return to the virtues as they were understood in the medieval Christian tradition. (One of Kreeft’s most significant academic works is editing The Summa of the Summa, thus creating an accessible version of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica. He is, thus, deeply familiar with the Thomistic virtue tradition.)

The book is divided into two parts. The first part lays out the case that society is unhealthy because people are generally not virtuous and, more significantly, virtue is not seen as something to be striven for. Published thirty-four years ago, these three chapters are interesting largely because they adequately describe our own day and age. The landscape has obviously changed, with the Cold War and the seeming imminent threat of nuclear war a distant memory, but his diagnosis still appears to be accurate.

In the second part, which is comprised of eleven chapters, Kreeft shifts to discussing virtue. In Chapters Four and Five, he defines and explains the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues respectively. Chapter Six makes the argument that the Beatitudes help confront the seven deadly sins. The Seventh through Thirteen Chapter each have a meditation on one of those sins and how the Beatitudes help counter them: pride, avarice, envy, anger, sloth, lust, and gluttony. Kreeft closes with a brief exposition of the benefits and goodness of virtue.

This book is refreshing. It is not new material, but the combination of a deep trust in the intellectual and spiritual heritage of the Christian tradition with an affirmation in its goodness makes the both pleasing and instructive to read. Kreeft reminds his readers that it’s good to be a good guy but that most people won’t agree. He writes,

“Moral traditionalists, who believe in the wisdom of the past, seem to their opponents like drab, dour doomers and damners. But they are not. They are rebels, for in an age of relativism, orthodoxy is the only possible rebellion left; and they sing as they fight. They have hope even as they pronounce judgment on our civilization. All the prophets offer hope. The patient is not dead yet.”

This brief passage illustrates the joy of reading Kreeft. He offers critique, but it is a critique with hope. His criticism of culture is not a call to destroy it, or wound those in it who disagree with us. Instead, it is a call to be the sort of person that would make a better society and then to salvage the good of civilization from within. More importantly, he still believed in 1986 it is possible, and his book makes the reader believe that he is correct.

There is no answer to the turbulence of the world around us. No simple solution will resolve the evils of society, cause racism to evaporate, erase the rift between Left and Right, or diminish poverty and all the structural ills of this world. But there is hope in the slow and steady progress toward holiness––through good, old fashioned goodness as it was defined by the saints of yesteryear and through the words of Jesus himself––if we are willing to take up the task.

Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion

By Peter Kreeft

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C. S. Lewis on Christianity as a Means to an End

The genius of C. S. Lewis is, perhaps, most clearly evident in his devotionally rewarding, theologically rich, and whimsical book, The Screwtape Letters. Those brief snippets of supposed letters from a senior devil to a junior one get at many of the issues that were wrong with Christianity in his day, which happen to be remarkably similar to those that are wrong in our day.

In Letter 25, Screwtape writes to Wormwood:

“The real trouble about the set your patient is living is that it is merely Christianity. . . . What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity AND.’ You know––Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring.”

Depending on who reads that paragraph the object to the right of the “And” will vary. It could be social justice, anti-racism, prosperity, comfort, political conservatism, or doctrinal orthodoxy (when pursued for its own sake). In other words, this isn’t a “left” or “right” issue, it is one that can impact all Christians and often the “And” is adopted in the name of making Christianity purer and more proper.

In Letter 23, we get prelude to the “Christianity And” discussion:

“We do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything––even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy [God] demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that ‘only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations.’ You see the little rift? ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game.”

To be clear, Lewis prized actual social justice. Many casual readers of Lewis would be surprised at just how much he wrote on particular social issues of his time in a wide range of periodicals. In some areas he was quite advanced for his time and in other areas he sounds like the dinosaur he claimed to be. But the man was always arguing toward truth from Christianity. He was not attempting to use Christianity as a means to gain something else. This prevented him from falling into the trap of “Christianity And.”

The temptation in reading a moralist like Lewis is to look at what he wrote and say, “Boy, he gave those other guys a good drubbing. Wait until I post this quote on social media.”

The proper response to reading Lewis on these issues, especially in The Screwtape Letters, is to ask that more significant question, “In what ways have I fallen into the trap that Screwtape outlines.” If we are honest, we’ll probably find that we have been at least somewhat guilty at some point. As we pursue holiness, our task is more to knock off the rough edges of our own sanctification than to point out the problems of the other folks.

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The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers

Wipf and Stock

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Technopoly - A Review

Neil Postman’s most well known book is Amusing Ourselves to Death. There is good reason for that, since he both explains the media ecology of the early ‘80’s, including the election of a movie star presidents, and predicts where culture will head. His predictions have proved to be largely true, which is a stunning feat. He provides no timeline for what he anticipates, but he looks at the trajectory of culture and describes where it is headed—for us, where it has headed—in the decades to come.

His book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, is less well-known, but in many ways more powerful and prescient. Published in 1992, Postman was standing at the beginning of the internet age, when personal computers were beginning to be more widely available.

The book is not about some dystopian future where Artificial Intelligence has taken over and time traveling robots have been sent back to wipe out the people that started it all. But it is a book that helps explain what technology is, why understanding that definition is important, and what it is doing to society.

From the very beginning, Postman makes it clear that technology is all around us in ways that we no longer detect. Technology fundamentally changes the way society works and how our brains function. (This is part of Jacob Shatzer’s argument in his recent book, Transhumanism and the Image of God, which is also worth your while.) He begins with one of Plato’s dialogues, Phaedrus, which contains a story of Thamus who resists the use of written languages, especially books, because it will change the way people receive information and allow readers to gain info apart from the oral tradition. To modern readers, so many centuries beyond that technological revolution, and also well beyond the revolution enabled by moveable type on printing presses, it may seem incredible to consider what life would be like without written communication. And yet, that was a technology that has fundamentally changed society in a way that we can no longer fully comprehend because it is so ubiquitous.

The central message of Technopoly is simple, but it is important: Every new technology that gets widely adopted changes society. It would, therefore, important that we ask whether those changes are good or not and what we are giving up by adopting new technologies.

According to Postman,

“Technology is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs. Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity’s supreme achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved. They also believe that information is an unmixed blessing, which through its continued and uncontrolled production and dissemination offers increased freedom, creativity, and peace of mind. The fact that information does none of these things––but quite the opposite––seems to change few opinions, for such unwavering believes are an inevitable product of the structure of Technopoly. In particular, Technopoly flourishes when the defenses against information break down.”

Postman further notes, only a couple of pages later, that social institutions are supposed to function as control mechanisms to help people discern which information is important and which is noise. As he notes,

“Social institutions sometimes do their work simply by denying people access to information, but principally by directing how much weight and, therefore, value one must give information. Social institutions are concerned with the meaning of information and can be quite rigorous in enforcing standards of admission.”

In this information age, even the best of our institutions cannot function fast enough to accomplish this task. And, based on the violation of trust that many institutions have engaged in or been accused of, people tend not to trust some of the institutions that might possibly be able to do a fair job at keeping up with information.

Technopoly helps explain the dis-ease of contemporary culture because we are being perpetually swamped by information and it is difficult to discern what is true. We have few reliable handlers of information that we can count on to present the information in a reasonably unbiased way. Some of the gate keepers of information, including members of the media, abuse their institutional role as information handlers to intentionally mislead through shifting perceptions.

Technopoly predicted our present state and our ongoing trajectory. Postman’s book highlights the epistemic and social nightmare we live in: there is too much information and we don’t know who to trust. Postman has few suggestions for a solution (indeed, he pokes fun at himself in the last chapter for that fact), but simply having the problem exposed is helpful.

Personally, I think that part of the solution needs to be a renewal of the Christian Mind, which I have written about previously and will discuss further in this context in a future post.

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

By Neil Postman

Buy on Amazon

On Our Moral Duty to Wear Masks

During recent weeks, world events have driven people to ask important questions about religious liberty, the role of the state, the nature of the common good, and the balance between individual freedoms and duties. As we’ve all sat in our homes with minimal chance to venture out, there have been gigabytes of data invested in the writing and reading of thoughts about the present, the future, epidemiology, and our longing for the delivery of our most recent online purchases.

One of the more recent questions that has arisen as many states and localities look forward to lifting their restrictions is: Should we wear masks in enclosed public spaces?

Unfortunately, for some, this has been turned into a political question related to a sense of submission and control, but at its heart, it is a question of neighbor love and concern for life. It is that angle—the concern for the preservation of life—that I will examine, ignoring the tangled web of frustration, argumentation, and misrepresentation.

Simply put, at the present time we have a moral duty to properly wear masks in enclosed public spaces.

Efficacy of Masks

Masks are worn because they help to slow the spread of viruses due to coughing, sneezing, speaking, and breathing from the nose and mouth. Essentially, even homemade masks help filter out the virus particulates that may be carried by our breath.

According to the CDC’s website,

It is critical to emphasize that maintaining 6-feet social distancing remains important to slowing the spread of the virus.  CDC is additionally advising the use of simple cloth face coverings to slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others.  Cloth face coverings fashioned from household items or made at home from common materials at low cost can be used as an additional, voluntary public health measure.

There was confusion early on in the pandemic, particularly as people tried to acquire necessary medical supplies and sought to use masks to protect themselves, which led to contrary guidance.

Confusion has been increased because the World Health Organization, which has to attempt to cross cultural barriers and a wide range of socio-economic conditions, is ambivalent on wearing masks to limit the spread of COVID-19. Most of their cautions have to do with the misuse of masks (e.g., repeatedly touching them to adjust them), wearing soiled masks that cannot be cleaned, or that wearing a mask would give a false sense of security leading to people not observing other significant precautions. Given that the WHO recommendations have to somehow support possible solutions in majority world countries as well as highly industrialized countries, it is not surprising there are a range of competing concerns that may be largely contextually driven.

It also does not help that there are intentional efforts to spread misinformation, to divide the nation, and to make simple, empirical decisions seem to be politically motivated. There are so many people writing about this issue that it is entirely possible to continue to search until we find an opinion we like and then point to that as decisive. Our best bet, though it will certainly be imperfect, is to go with the officials appointed by our government to do this research on our behalf and make recommendations. We should, unless it causes us to sin, obey authorities placed over us and use the best wisdom we can about less clear decisions.

Through all of this, we should remember that cloth masks, or simple surgical masks, are not particularly effective at preventing getting the infection. In fact, if you wear mask incorrectly (e.g., are constantly adjusting it, or think it functions as a shield for germs and don’t take normal precautions), wearing a mask may increase your likelihood of picking up germs.

Masks in public, as proposed and sometimes mandated during the current pandemic, are not primarily about protecting yourself. They are intended to prevent being a source of the infection. COVID-19 is unlike other common respiratory diseases in that it has, in some cases, a relatively lengthy asymptomatic period in which a person can also be contagious. There is a long period of time where we may be infected and contagious and have no idea, which makes COVID-19 different than many other respiratory diseases.

The moral duty in the case, is not simply to wear a mask, but to do so responsibly while maintaining other appropriate hygienic precautions, like frequent handwashing and maintaining personal space. We do this for the good of others, not (primarily) to prevent getting it ourselves.

Obedience to Authority

If a legitimate authority mandates that we wear masks, we should wear them properly if we are able. Rom 13:1-7 is fairly clear that we ought to submit to government authorities (or store owners, when on their property, or church leaders, when in their sphere of influence). If you are in a locality that requires masks, then you really don’t need to read the rest of this long article, because it is your moral duty to wear a mask properly, as long as you are able, in those situations mandated by the legitimate authority.

There are reams of explanation by Christians from many ages of Church History explaining that we need not obey authorities if it requires us to violate our conscience. However, apart from really odd reasoning (wearing protective gear obscures the image of God? If so, what do clothes do and what should we do with that?), belief that personal comfort is an absolute good, or some sort of belief that somehow not wearing a mask is subverting a conspiracy for social control, I have not seen much that argues that protecting the lives of others violates conscience.

An obvious caveat to this is that some people do feel an inordinate sense of anxiety due to some significant trauma if they wear a mask. That isn’t most people. But our duty is to ensure we obey authority and not to enforce the rules on others.

Risks of Infection

The likelihood of getting any virus is dependent on the concentration and duration of our exposure to those particles and the fighting ability of our immune system. Assuming equally healthy people, the person who is exposed to the greater number of virus particles for the longest time is more likely to get sick than someone with a lower exposure.

This is why many of the recommendations center on eliminating virus particles (e.g., by washing hands and sanitizing surfaces) and diluting the concentration (e.g., 6 feet distance, occupancy limits, etc.). There is also a time factor in the equation, so that reducing the time we spend in enclosed spaces reduces our risk of getting or spreading the disease, barring excess exertion that makes us breathe especially hard.

These are all probabilistic factors that we do not yet fully understand the exact values of, but reducing exposure is a critical means of lowering the chance the disease is transmitted.

No sane person wants to get the disease and we should take reasonable precautions to avoid it.

However, we also have a duty as Christians to minimize the potential that we spread the disease. Wearing a mask is primarily about preventing the spread of COVID-19.

This is particularly important since current estimates indicate that about half of the people who have the disease remain asymptomatic, there is a lag between becoming contagious and feeling symptoms even in bad cases, and asymptomatic people are capable of spreading the disease. In other words, we can feel perfectly fine and be spreading COVID-19.

Risk of the Disease

It is not clear at this point exactly how deadly COVID-19 is. Everyone admits that the death rates have been skewed upward because of the limited availability of the tests (especially early on when only those very ill could get the tests) and the number of asymptomatic people who are never tested.

However, COVID-19 tends to affect vulnerable populations more significantly. The elderly and those with underlying medical conditions often fare poorly. These are the sorts of people that our society tends to value less, but who Christians should be particularly ready to protect.

Even relatively healthy and youthful individuals who get the disease have described it as being severe. Experiences vary, often depending on the degree of exposure and the immune system’s response. In the most severe cases, people can require ventilators to supplement the body’s natural respiratory function.

It was concern over the availability of ventilators that initially led to the lockdowns in many states and cities.

Some areas, especially those that are populated most densely, have seen significant spread of COVID-19. Other areas, especially more rural parts of the country, have seen few cases.

This has fueled frustration in some less affected areas, which have faced strict restrictions with little visible impact. Those frustrations are increasing as low-density areas are being treated like high-density areas in a way that seems unfair and is damaging to the economy. There is some validity in the frustration; many of the lockdown measures were imposed broadly when narrower targeting would have been sufficient. (I am very thankful not to be one of the people trying to make these decisions right now.)

Presently, the restrictions on travel and commerce are helping to stop the transmission of the disease. However, the increasing frustration and significant economic harm being caused by the restrictions are pushing decision makers to lift those restrictions.

This is exactly the point of time when the tendency will be to relax the protective measures like wearing masks and maintaining personal distance. This is also exactly the point in time when those measures will be most important.

In the current condition, having stayed in contact with our families or very small clusters of friends, we have essentially proved that we have clusters of people who are no longer infected with COVID-19. All to the good.

However, when we begin to more freely associate and travel increases, we will be back to square one, unless we continue some of the basic precautions like maintaining physical distance from one another, washing hands frequently, and wearing masks to protect others.

There is no guarantee that we can prevent from getting the disease. We should protect our health reasonably, but as Christians we should be particularly concerned about protecting the health and lives of others. Our continued adherence to the recommendations of the CDC and other recommendations and regulations of our state and local authorities is part of our moral duty to protect others.

Especially those of us who come in contact with a broader public should be much more careful in preventing our spreading the disease unknowingly and inadvertently. This is exactly the reason properly wearing a mask in enclosed, public spaces is a moral duty right now.

Duty to be Cautious with Life

Most Christians are familiar with the 6th commandment, which prohibits murder. (Ex 20:13)

Contrary to much of the recent online discourse, accidentally spreading COVID-19 to someone who later dies is not murder. Neither is desiring to responsibly engage in economic activity and expression of disdain for healthcare workers or for the vulnerable populations around us.

But Christians have a duty to protect life beyond avoiding maliciously killing others. Christians also have a duty to be careful of life. Humans, even the ones we don’t like, are all made in God’s image and are precious to him.

As John Frame writes in his Medical Ethics,

The general principle of respect for human life also forbids any kind of physical harm (Exod. 22:12–36). God even forbids his people to put others in danger of such harm. (I believe that this is part of what God had in mind by legislating “cities of refuge” in the Old Testament [Num. 35:22-28; Deut. 19:4ff.].) Accidental killing is a crime, because we ought to be supremely careful with human life. . . . The moral obligation to be supremely careful with human life and not to take it accidentally is the fundamental principle of medical ethics: primum non nocere––“first, do no harm.”

He later refers to this as the “doctrine of carefulness,” which I think is an apt description of an obligation to avoid even the careless harm to others.

The doctrine of carefulness is the reason why we follow OSHA regulations at the worksite. It is the reason why we drive at a reasonable speed when there are kids playing soccer on the side of the road, even if we have to go slower than the posted speed limit.

The doctrine of carefulness is the primary driver behind wearing masks properly under the current conditions in enclosed, public spaces.

When we wear a mask, we are protecting the lives and health of others. The worker in the store has to stay inside the enclosed, recirculating building. The other members of our church are breathing in the air we have exhaled. Based on the CDC explanation, mask wearing minimizes their risk, even if it does not significantly protect the mask-wearer.

My Risk or Their Risk

The person who is receiving the risk is a critical element of this argument. In other words, am I putting myself at risk or another person?

If I choose to go skydiving or rock climbing I am taking risk upon myself that is unnecessary. Within certain parameters (i.e., we have an obligation not to be foolhardy to the point of suicidal risk) that is permissible. I can take risk upon myself.

Thus, for me to care for an infected individual is morally permissible, even if I don’t have all of the preferred protective gear. I should be careful, but I assume that risk.

I do not have the right to force that risk on other people, however, according to the doctrine of carefulness.

If I choose not to wear a mask, at this point in the pandemic, I may have been infected and I may therefore be pushing risk on other people that is unnecessary. That is unjust and immoral.

Obviously, it may be that I have been isolated for several weeks and finally returning to the grocery store. It may be that in that situation I have next to no potential to have the infection to spread to others. In that case, if there is no authoritative requirement (the store does not require it and governmental orders have been dropped) to wear a mask, then I am not bound to.

Most of us, however, will be out and about on a regular basis in the coming weeks as the restrictions are lifted. COVID-19 will inevitably spread more rapidly for a period of time after normal social and economic activities are restored. As we go back to stores and back to work, even on an intermittent basis, we will no longer be sure that we are “clean and free” of COVID-19. At that point, even if we believe we do not have the disease because we feel fine, we should choose to wear a mask properly in enclosed, public spaces out of love for our neighbor, to protect his or her life. We have no right to put our neighbor at risk any more than necessary.

There is, I think, in many circles a false sense of security and minimization of the real risk of COVID-19 because the drastic actions taken to reduce the spread have worked. Many people, therefore, do not know someone directly who has suffered from it and have not seen how dreadful it is. By the account of those who are seeing the work of the disease, it is significant and potentially deadly.

Particular Duties of Christians

Christians should likely be among the most cautious of people regarding this infection. Apart from sports, churches are often among of the largest gatherings of people in our communities. We come together a few times a week after we have been separated and gone out into the world, to various businesses and places of work.

Churches, therefore, are likely to be among the main ways that the disease will be spread. Not only do we gather and scatter, but we also often sing, which seems to be a particularly effective way of spreading the disease. Shouting and singing both encourage deeper breathing and, because of the extra force to make the sounds, tend to aerosolize the particulates more, which increases the likelihood that they spread.

Therefore, once we return to gathered worship (may the day come soon), especially inside, we are among the most likely to spread the disease and become infected. As a result, we have a greater chance of imparting risk to those we come in contact with. We should choose, therefore, to bear the mild inconvenience of wearing a mask to protect the lives of our neighbors.

Let us be known as the people who value life even over comfort and personal freedom.

Reasonable steps may include, and I think should include, choosing to wear a mask properly in enclosed, public spaces (beyond church) even after the CDC recommendation has been lifted or the local ordinances are dropped.

Masks and Christian Liberty

Some may argue that the stronger brother (mask wearer) should bear with the weaker brother (non-mask wearer) in this regard, when it comes to social interactions. In other words, I should be able to have the liberty to choose not to wear a mask if I don’t want to. That argument has the actual pattern reversed.

First, we have a duty to obey the authorities of those placed over us unless it causes us to sin. If there is a mandate to wear a mask, then we should wear one if able. Wearing a mask is not sin, even if we chafe at the restriction. If the leadership of a local congregation chooses to require a mask, then we should voluntarily do so.

However, if others in the congregation ask us to wear a mask, we ought to agree to it, even if we don’t like it. We should yield to them as the weaker brother, in this case.

As Paul describes eating meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Cor 8, it is our obligation to yield our rights to others. In this case, we ought to yield our perceived right not to wear a mask to those who feel that a mask is necessary for safety. Aside from the risk we are imparting on the other individual, our refusal to wear a mask is likely to force others to violate their conscience by not attending church. As Paul writes, “But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” (v. 9)

The meat eater must bear with the abstainer, not the other way around. In this case, the bolder action is to avoid the mask, therefore it is the mask abstainer that should yield.

On the other hand, if the congregation agrees not to wear a mask, then they should not look down on those that choose to avoid gathered worship until they feel comfortable. We should not attempt to force people to violate their conscience, even through social pressure, which is Paul’s point.

We have no right to expect others to choose the same level of risk that we accept for ourselves or others. We have no right to expect someone to violate their conscience by risking the spread of the disease. Those that choose to accept the risk should do so voluntarily and be prepared to bear whatever consequence results, but it should be mutually accepted.

Masks and Absolute Morals

One obvious question that arises from this discussion is whether the duty to wear a mask is absolute. How is it that we now have a duty to wear masks, but in January people would have thought us strange for wearing one? Has God’s truth changed? (After all, Scripture says nothing about COVID-19, etc.)

The answer is that absolute truth applied to a changing circumstance leads to a different action.

Sex is not sinful in and of itself. However, consenting sex outside of marriage is sinful. The circumstances are part of the moral calculus.

We have a duty to protect life. When our child is bleeding out in our back seat, that may lead us to violate the speed limit. When there are children playing soccer near the road, that may lead us to go well under the posted speed limit. The duty is the same, but how we live it out changes.

At the present time, the risk—especially the unknown risk—of COVID-19 is such that properly wearing a mask in enclosed, public spaces is morally warranted.

There will be a day at some point in the future that that will no longer be the case. As Christians, demonstrating love for neighbor, we should be among the more cautious when it comes to life. It does us little credit when people who claim the name of Christ demand autonomous personal freedoms without consideration for the vulnerable. We should be willing to sacrifice our comfort and convenience for the sake of the health and lives of others.

The moral absolute here is the duty to be careful with life. That does not mean absolute prevention of risk, but it does mean that we should work to minimize it, especially during a time of relative crisis like this.

We won’t know when the exact moment that it was no longer necessary to wear a mask until some time after it comes. To err on the side of caution is the morally prudent course of action.

Masks as a Historical Practice

Somehow, obscured in the politicization of this issue, people seem to be missing the fact that donning a mask has been a consistent practice recommended for visiting immunocompromised people for years. Perhaps I’m just unaware, but I’ve never heard or read anyone who objected to protecting the life of their child during cancer treatments by wearing a mask.

The duty to wear a mask was always conditioned upon the circumstance. The efficacy of masks has been assumed when dealing with visiting cancer patients, but suddenly it is being questioned now that the request is being made outside the sick ward.

The most reasonable arguments for this are that people aren’t going to wear the masks right, and will assume that the mask keeps everyone totally safe. Therefore, we shouldn’t wear masks.

People can be stubborn and ignorant, but repeated communication should help convince people that physical distance, hygiene, and proper mask wearing are three distinct (but related) measures to reduce spread of COVID-19.

Inability to Wear a Mask

If for some reason someone cannot wear a mask, then they should not wear a mask.

Churches should, within reason, work to accommodate those who cannot have a mask on. However, it may be that, since our buildings were not constructed for a respiratory pandemic, that accommodation may include being treated differently than those who can wear a mask. Different conditions may warrant different treatment.

People that cannot wear a mask can fulfill their duty to protect others through hygiene, maximal isolation, and maintaining distance as rigorously as possible.

We should do our best to bear with those who, for whatever reason, cannot take the same precautions for our health. This may include ensuring those individuals do not have to come in contact with infected individuals by running their errands, etc.

The simple fact that some cannot wear a mask should not prevent us as individuals from wearing masks or congregations from requiring them of everyone who is able. The goal is to minimize risk as much as reasonable, not to pretend we can entirely eliminate it.

At the same time, people who can wear a mask, but don’t want to ought to wear a mask. “It makes me feel hot and fogs my glasses” are not moral arguments against wearing a mask. (Trust me, I’ve worn a mask for an extended period of time during this and it’s no fun.)

Conclusion

Obviously, this is an ever-changing situation. If, for whatever reason, it becomes clear that properly wearing a mask in an enclosed, public space actually infects more people we should not do it. Our duty is to be cautious with life, not to wear a particular article of clothing.

When the CDC recommendations are relaxed, we should consider our own risk of being infected and be cautious about reducing our efforts to put our neighbor at risk. Leaders of churches should be especially cautious, as they will be setting the rules that will protect or endanger their congregations and the local communities. As I noted, churches are among some of the most high-risk activities that exist in our communities when it comes to communicable, respiratory diseases. It’s one thing to threaten someone with the common cold, it’s another thing to put them at risk of COVID-19. And, by putting those that attend at risk, we also put our communities at risk because of the particularly insidious nature of the disease.

We have no obligation to police our neighbor’s Facebook feed to see if they are wearing a mask. Our obligation is to ensure we are not spreading the disease, not to ensure others are not doing so. We should take appropriate care of our own health and lives, which may include avoiding corporate worship if the congregation refuses to take reasonable precautions. However, our goal should not be to shame or divide the congregation, but to reflect a consistent concern for life in a responsible, spiritually mature way.

At the end of the day, we will all give an account to God for our moral choices. Those that are in Christ will be covered by his blood, but our goal should be, as much as reasonable, to fulfill our duties as outlined in Scripture as much as possible for God’s glory. In this case, that requires us to take caution with the lives of our neighbors, which presently includes properly wearing masks in enclosed, public places.

Discernment Bloggers, Truth, and Christian Witness

One of the best attributes of the internet age is that it has eliminated the gatekeepers to public discourse. At its best, the internet enables people to bypass denominational filters, editorial boards at book publishers, and the like. Among other things, it allows for amateur theologians.

The lack of gatekeepers allows us to get access to raw information on a more regular basis. WikiLeaks can publish documents that tell a different story that official channels do. Individuals subjected to abuse without recourse can get their story out and get problematic institutional administrations removed. Pastors and laypeople without access to an official platform can engage in meaningful theological discourse.

There are a lot of positive aspects to the democratizing of information, particularly when it comes to Christian discourse. At the same time, the same democratization can have a dark underbelly.

One example of this is in the rise and proliferation of discernment bloggers. At their best, discernment bloggers highlight areas where institutional reform is needed and push dialog toward those topics with an intent to seek reforms and pursue a measurable good. It might be that a discernment platform might spring up for a season and, having dealt with the issue at hand, recede into the sunset.

In practice, however, discernment blogs often turn from meaningful discourse to perpetual gossip and divisiveness. They use several tactics to pursue popularity, which are exceedingly effective at getting attention, but tend to erode the foundations of morality and truth by those who use them.

Rather than simply relying on truth-telling as the means to communicate, discernment ministries often rely on exaggeration, decontextualization, railing, and intentional ignorance to undermine their ideological victims. What usually results is a shrill, relentless attack on the disliked party and anyone who defends them or looks like them.

Valid Beginnings

A caveat on this discussion is, of course, necessary. Some discernment bloggers started with a legitimate purpose or grievance. Usually that was to deal with a particular local or even national issue.

There are, for example, some discernment blogs that began in order to expose misogyny, clerical abuse, or subversive theological liberalism. Those are worthy issues to be opposed.

The problem is not opposing bad things, it’s that as the platform grows and, perhaps, once the original problem is rooted out and exposed, the topics of concern become broader and the quality of evidence considered for publication sometimes drops lower and lower. Mission creep is a real issue as eventually some discernment blogs have become little more than clearinghouses for ridiculous conspiracy theories. (Sometime consider the number of conservative Evangelicals who are supposed to be rolling in money from George Soros.)

The discernment platform becomes a thing in itself that takes up time and needs constant feeding. Sometimes this is even complicated by it becoming a source of income for the vigilante through advertising and sponsorships.

True Discernment

Discernment is an important attribute of mature Christians. Hebrews 5:14, in a plea for increasing spiritually maturity, states,

But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Beyond the methods of abuse highlighted above, the biggest problem with many discernment blogs is that they are not particularly discerning. Contrary to Hebrews 5:14, they aren’t trained in discerning good from evil, but merely railing against those they don’t like. This is more likely to be true of discernment blogs that have been around for a while, whose missions have expanded from a particular issue to an attempt to take down the world.

Any person or group whose mode of operation is to fixate on someone else’s problem is not exercising true discernment, they are just being divisive.

A gourmet––someone who is fanatical about good food––may complain loudly about bad food at a restaurant. However, a true foodie is as likely to rave about good food as to rail against a disappointing meal. Even as they complain about food at one restaurant, they are likely to tell you where you can get the true and better food in another.

People who like football may despise the opposing team, but will be able to recognize when that team is playing excellent football. A good play may not result in cheers, but it will be recognized as something legitimately good. That’s the difference between enjoying a sport and simply hating the other team.

In many cases, internet “discernment” has become nearly entirely about hurling abuse at the disfavored parties. Biblical discernment looks much different.

Persuasiveness

The purpose of discernment should not be to heap scorn and shame on someone, but to persuade them and others to repent.

Persuasion may be a dying art in our day. The so-called longtail of marketing and the accessibility of media that fits my existing opinions means that entities can spend much more energy reinforcing opinions than persuading people of them.

We might consider persuasion to be yet another casualty of the internet age.

But Christian discernment includes the attempt to persuade. The arc of church discipline from 1 Cor 5 to 2 Cor 2:5–11 is one of redemption through persuasion. In this case, persuasion came about through expulsion. But that expulsion was always in hope of convincing the offender that he was acting like an unbeliever.

Christians ought to be, in fact, some of the most dedicated persuaders out there. As Paul argues in 2 Cor 5:1a,

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.

The large passage that sentence is in talks about the ministry of reconciliation that Christians have been given, our role as ambassadors of the gospel of Christ, and our living compassionately among others.

Persuasion is the better part of true, biblical discernment.

Sweetness of Speech

In his Proverbs of Hell, Williams Blake states, “Damn braces, bless relaxes.”

This is true from both sides of the issue. Satan came to the Garden as an angel of light appealing to Eve’s curiosity and desire for godlikeness rather than as a tyrant seeking abject worship. He was persuasive and we all know the results.

In the same way, gospel evangelism is much more likely to be persuasive if it encourages the unregenerate to consider the beautiful truths of the gospel in light of their own darkness. Persuasion invites, ridicule repels. Evangelism of a rude, confrontational tone is much less likely to result in true (or any) conversions.

This should come as no surprise, as Proverbs 16:21 states,

The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness.

How we say what we have to say is truly important. This is true with regard to our communication of our political opinions on social media and in person. It is also true as we seek to expose deadly sin within the body of Christ.

Persuasiveness allows the words to be sweet even if the truth packs a wallop. Many attempts at discernment in this age have distorted that paradigm: The words pack a wallop, but the truth they express is meager or twisted.

Is Rudeness an Apostolic Ministry?

Discernment bloggers often cite examples in church history of strong rhetoric that appears to have been effective to support their tone and content.

For example, Paul is somewhat hyperbolic in Gal 5:12 when he states that he wishes the Judaizers would mutilate themselves. Jesus himself is pretty harsh with the Scribes and Pharisees on multiple occasions and even uses physical violence to make his point in cleansing the temple.

Outside of Scripture, some of the greats in church history take the gloves off for a round of theological eye-gouging from time to time. I mean, someone has been able to create a database of Luther’s insults to delight the hearts of homeschoolers around the world.

My argument isn’t that there is no place for strong language and rhetorical flourishes. Sometimes a joke at the opponent’s expense is a good way to bring onlookers to your side. It may be persuasive, as long as we recognize that the one being persuaded is not the butt of the joke but those “overhearing” the debate.

The key is that the truth we are communicating needs to overshadow the means by which we communicate it. When we lose that central aspect in our discourse, we have lost the mission.

Paul and Jesus may have used harsh language toward their opponents, but they communicated a positive message, not simply a criticism of someone they didn’t like.

This goes back to the gourmet raving about the good food at a favored restaurant: “Don’t go to Jimmy’s Grill, the steaks are dry and flavorless, but Bob’s Chophouse cooks the most excellent sirloin.” In true discerning communication, there is always an attempt to point toward the good, not simply to highlight the bad.

Throwing rhetorical hand grenades is pretty easy. Building a positive and convincing position is much harder.

Conclusion

One way to identify discernment blogs is that they often have very little positive message. They feed our desire to have our views validated by constantly showing why the other side is wrong, even when we agree with 95% of what the opponent thinks. The differences may be small, but it feels good to be “better” or “more truthful” than the other guys.

Many discernment blogs also handle the truth poorly by editing the words of others and adding their own context to attempt to paint the others in a poor light. This alone should cause those with real discernment to stay away from some of these discernment “ministries.”

As we think about godly communication, the pursuit of purity in the visible church, and legitimate attempts to reveal real problems in the body of Christ, we need to think about what discernment means. A more biblical model of discernment might not be as effective at getting clicks, but it might be more effective at honoring Christ. And, after all, isn’t that what we are supposed to be all about?

Between Life and Death - A Review

Every birthday I have to remind myself there are only two options: Getting old or dying. Each year my mortality becomes a little more real as the physical symptoms of age and decay overtake me and as more people that I know experience medical treatments for major trauma or age-related organ failure.

Other than the drama of television and movies, my first glimpse into the world of the ICU came as a young naval officer, when one of my sailors died due to complications from a surgery. He was in one of the top hospitals in the nation and they couldn’t prevent the problem. That forced me to realize there are limits to the ability of medical professions and available technology to preserve or repair life.

Seeing that formerly jovial, proud sailor wired and tubed in the hospital bed was jarring. I was certainly not prepared to see a 34-year-old (which seemed old at the time) inert and unconscious. Thankfully, I was not part of the decision about future medical intervention, because I was entirely unprepared.

I was, however, in the room when the ventilator was removed at the doctor’s recommendation and at the families’ request, which was supported by the documents he had left behind. He was functionally brain dead, so the only thing keeping him alive were the machines forcing his body to keep working. Once the ventilator was removed, the end came peacefully and swiftly. It seemed merciful, but at the same time left me with questions about whether removing organ supporting medical interventions was, indeed, moral.

Such end of life decisions are difficult for several reasons. First, we do not always understand what the function of specific medical interventions are. Which ones offer remedial help and which ones simply sustain animal functions so the body’s other processes can continue? Second, non-medical personnel have little frame of reference for whether a particular condition is likely to be recoverable. What are the odds that any intervention, no matter how expensive and traumatic, are going to be successful? Third, we often have little idea how damaging the attempt to fix one problem will be and what the likelihood of complications will be. Will a heroic attempt to fix one problem likely doom the patient to major problems later? Fourth, too often we have failed to consider end of life care, even for those who are reasonably approaching the end of life. It is understandable for a family to have no guidance for end of life medical care for a teen or someone in their twenties or thirties. However, by the eighth or ninth decade of life, there is little reason for the individual and their family not to have already discussed options and made some decisions.

Summary

Kathryn Butler’s book, Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-Of-Life Medical Care, is an extremely helpful volume in learning about various critical medical treatments, which can help make the cost/benefit analysis for choosing to continue with interventions. She also carefully sorts through the biblical data to consider whether an ethic of life, which is demanded by Scripture, entails pursuing every medical treatment possible no matter the cost, the low likelihood of success, or the trauma to the patient. Butler, a trauma and critical-care surgeon, has worked at several significant medical facilities and brings her experience and expertise to bear in a compassionate manner in this book.

The book begins by considering the place of death in the human experience. It is unnatural, in that it is a result of the fall, but it is a normal expectation for humans that walk the earth. She also roots her ethic in the authority of Scripture, which reassures the reader that she is beginning from Scripture and interpreting medical technology through that lens, rather than the reverse.

In the second section of the book, Butler offers chapters on resuscitation for cardiac arrest, and intensive care treatments such as mechanical ventilation, cardiovascular support, artificially administered nutrition, dialysis, and brain injury support. The key message here is that whether one of these treatments is warranted is really based on whether it is likely to be a temporary support while the body recuperates or whether it is merely prolonging the inevitable. The medically accurate data in these chapters helps inform the conversations that Butler outlines in the third section of the book.

In part three of the volume, Butler provides an outline of what is constituted by palliative care and hospice, how that is different from physician-assisted suicide, the importance of advance care planning, and the role of individuals designated to make proxy decisions. After the conclusion, Butler offers several appendices that include summaries of organ supporting measures, a sample advance directive, and some Scripture passages that offer comfort for those making these decisions.

Analysis

Between Life and Death is an important book. It was written at an accessible level both theologically and medically. It helpful translates some difficult medical terminology and sometimes confusing ethical language that can make an otherwise painful decision unbearable.

Butler does very well dealing with the difference between killing and letting die. There is a pervasive myth among many American Christians that unless we are doing absolutely everything to sustain life for as long as possible, we are “giving up on” or “killing” the patient. Butler shows that many of these support measures are bringing their own additional trauma, prolonging the inevitable for a short time, and actually increasing suffering. Ceasing supposedly heroic medical interventions is not killing an individual, it is merely allowing the process of dying to take its course. Butler’s book helps readers develop the wisdom to understand the counsel of physicians and make compassionate, Christ-honoring choices.

If this book is revised in the future, it would benefit from a deeper discussion on the nature of and purpose of suffering. The topic is explored somewhat, but Butler’s expertise is really on the technical side of the discussion, so the development of a theology of suffering (which is very important in making these decisions) is a bit thin.

Conclusion

Between Life and Death is the single best book on this topic that I have encountered. It is pastoral, technically accurate, and scripturally framed.

This is a book that belongs in the library of every pastor. Not only that, but it should be read, underlined, and outlined by elders and deacons as they prepare for making hospital visits, offering counsel, and seeking to comfort the sorrowful. This is the sort of book that a senior’s group at the local church would greatly benefit from discussing as they prepare for inevitable decisions. The time to read Butler’s book is not when the beeps and whistles of the ICU are surrounding a patient, but rather months or even years before any such condition is highly likely.

Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care

By Kathryn Butler

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.