A Friend’s Response to Christian Hellenism

My friend Kevin wrote a long response to my post [Christian Hellenism?](http://www.rocketblog.net/archives/2005/04/15/christian-hellenism/). I really like what he had to say, so I’m posting it here in its entirety. I’ll blog my responses to it in a separate post. Everything to follow in this post is his letter…

>Okay, some thoughts, both in concession, and in contrast.

>You mentioned in your blog, “The real tension is between a dominant secular, Hellenistic, ethos and a true Judeo-Christian ethos.”

>Perhaps the problem with the “true Judeo-Christian ethos” is the problem of syncretism.  While I don’t mean to be too semantical, our definition of a true Christian ethic, is in itself becoming combined and fused with secular/Hellenistic belief systems and mores.  I think what I would argue in addition is the challenge to the church for a rediscovery and redefinition of what that Judeo-Christian ethic is.  You do that well when discussing Jesus’ memorization of the Text; I would just throw in the term “syncretism” to help define, perhaps, what is happening in our minds and hearts, and our Christian intellectual culture.  That idea may help to inform why church attendance is low, and the “clamoring in the last 25 years” has proven somewhat fruitless.

>I also can’t help but think that the above is why the so-entitled “Christian nation” of America has become so reminiscent of first-century (AD & BC) Hellenism.  God has become personal, private, individual.  The class I’m currently in is studying “Spiritual Disciplines,” and while I don’t have the book in front of me, the majority of the disciplines mentioned deal with the self, and personal reflection (journaling, prayer, etc.)  (In my gut reactive opinion, with not much thought, the sacrifice of self for a greater self-awareness of God or relationship with Him is a bit oxymoronic)  You mentioned in your blog, “I propose that we can’t make a difference in this world if we simple play by the same rules, living lives functionally indistinguishable from a ‘typical’ member of our society.”  It appears to me that contemporary Christianity doesn’t have any other rules to live by.  Your referencing the “mega-church” movement is quite apropos.  This tainted Christian theology has informed and influenced our ministerial methodology, and vice versa.

>The real issue, is as you mentioned, life.  How Christians live.  Ron Sider’s “Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience” comes to mind, as well as Colson’s “How Now Shall We Live.”

>In Contrast.

>The closing line pre-PS in your blog “We need to be radically different from what our culture expects, so people look at us and say, ”That’s amazing. That’s real. That’s what I want.“ ” is the one I struggle with the most, and that is part of the essential of the problem we as Christians, and we as ministers face.  The very fact that you end with the internal probing of “what I want” is so informative to the very issue being argued.  In my thoughts about this (for quite some time now) the sentence should really just state, “We need to be radically different from what our culture expects.  period.”  Maybe I would even strike the words “radically different.”  The essence of true Jesus-like lifestyle is not in ‘contrast’ or ‘comparison’ with the culture surrounding us.  The essence of true Jesus-like life, as I am beginning to understand it, is simply a life lived for God.  And part of the problem with ministry in an area so difficult as the Bay Area, is the lack of “that’s what I want” in secular/unchurched people.  Ministers, then, are left with the dilemma, the problem that faces all pastors; how much do I compromise?  Sure, no pastor would ever say that, but really, that’s what we all deal with.  (Much more could be said and elaborated on, and perhaps I’ll save that for a seminary paper for later!

>Also, church attendance and other statistics, I think are poor gauges for the movements of God.  The reliance upon that information is, again, in my opinion, more evidence that we’re influenced by our secular culture more than we realize or admit.  While numbers are mentioned in the Bible, to deduce a formula for ministerial or ecclesiastical practice is a very poor hermeneutic.  (In other words, reading the Bible to get principles for “how to do church” is the wrong way to read the Bible).  So while statistics are informative, I’m not so sure we’re looking at the right information, if you get my drift.

>Lastly, (and I better get to work), I’m starting to think that Hellenism is the avenue, not the enemy.  This sounds in direct contradiction (or contradistinction) to the paragraph above, but this is how my brain functions!  Kushner, in his book, “Eyes Remade For Wonder” has a chapter entitled “The Divine Setup” where he describes the Garden of Eden, not as Paradise, or even as a test, but rather a “setup.”  God knew that they were going to eat the fruit, and God knew they would feel shame, distance from God, disharmony with their Creator.  And that’s exactly what He wanted.  He wanted that so they would feel a desire for Him, which they would not have felt before.  Which is why the tree is called the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil.”  While I don’t want to mess with anyone’s theology, I believe there is something mystical about that perspective.  Could Hellenism be an avenue that God uses? (NOT one that God instigates…let me make that clear)

>I asked RVL on the trail, “Are you ever afraid you’re going to lose your battle with Hellenism within yourself?”  His reply, “I’m not afraid I’m going to lose the battle…I’m afraid I will lose my will to fight.”  I close with that thought, and believe that the very fact that there are blogs and discussions, and passionate pursuits of these and other issues, is the engagement of bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.  Why would it need to be brought, if it wasn’t going to replace that which is?

Who is My Neighbor? (Part 1)

I was reading a [post](http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001286.html) over at [Evangelical Outpost](http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/) that notes an [interpretation](http://prosthesis.blogspot.com/2004/01/new-for-me-view-of-good-samaritan.html) of the good Samaritan story. Joe asks an open question of whether this is an accurate interpretation. I want to answer that question, and provide what I think is a more complete interpretation.

This quote from the original post summarizes the viewpoint under examination:

>Jesus is the man by the road. He was on the road to Jerusalem. He was beaten and bloody. Robbers stripped him of his clothes and beat him and left him for dead. And the only person who could be close to Christ at all was the Samaritan because he was free from the law. And because he was free from the law, he was able to lower himself and go down by the side of the road with Him.

>And in that way, Jesus shows the expert of the law that he can keep all the laws in the world, but that won’t allow him to earn eternal life. In fact, in order to gain eternal life, the expert of the law has to stop admiring the priest and start admiring the Samaritan (who he really wouldn’t admire at all). So, what must the expert do? He has to completely change the way he looks at things. He can’t be the priest, he can’t be the Levite. He has to be the Samaritan. And that requires recognizing that the law can do nothing. And, in fact, his only hope is to have a relationship with the bloodied, beaten man by the side of the road.

Is this an accurate interpretation? My short answer is “not really”. I will spend a little time here trying to back that up. The interpretation presented has elements of truth, but it misses quite completely what I believe to have been the primary point of Jesus telling this parable.

First of all, I want to affirm the basic sentiment that we can’t earn salvation. But here’s the first twist. This was not news to the people of the first century. Salvation by the grace of God alone has always been a part of Judaism–then and now. This is the subject of another essay though, so I won’t delve deeper into it here. Taking what I’ve asserted as true, and I know some will not believe this without further information, it seems unlikely that Jesus would have been simply repeating something so obvious. So what was he saying?

To begin to answer this, we have to look more closely at the preceding verses. As the referenced article did, I will use the text [Luke 10:25-37](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=LUKE+10:25-37&version=31;) as the starting point. Consider the first verse:

>On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

So the first question is, who or what is an “expert in the law”? This person is not a lawyer in the Western sense. An expert in the law refers to someone who was an expert in–almost certainly had memorized–the entire Torah, the first five books of the Bible. So this guy was no slouch.

His first question is, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers with a question, very rabbinic in style, thus prompting the man to answer his own question. For Jews in that time period the concept of eternal life was not other-worldly, but rather was more like “living in harmony with God.” So we can rephrase his question as, “What must I do to live in harmony with God?”

All the kids standing around knew the answer to this question. Keep the commandments! For Jesus’s day, this was common knowledge. But the answer that the man gives is still very interesting, because it introduces one of two ‘big’ theological debates of that time that Jesus confronts in this passage.

The man’s answer to Jesus’s question is:

>‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Here, he is quoting [Deuteronomy 6:4-5](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deuteronomy%206:4-5;&version=31;) and [Leviticus 19:18](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2019:18;&version=31;). By saying this he stakes out a position in a theological debate. Jesus then affirms this position, showing that he is on this same side of the debate.

What debate is this? It is a debate of priority of commandments. In the Torah, sometimes commandments are mutually exclusive in a certain circumstance. The Jews recognized this, and set up a series of priorities in the commands. Of course, the debate then became the order of the list. In Jesus’s day, there was a major split between traditionalists and progressives on this issue. Everyone agreed that Deuteronomy 6 was the greatest command:

>Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

The debate started with #2. The traditionalists prioritized keeping the Sabbath, ritual cleanliness, and other commands ahead of “love your neighbor”. The progressives, however, put only “love God” ahead of love your neighbor. So both Jesus and the man questioning him are affirming the progressive position on this debate.

The man realizes this was a bit of a novice-level question, and tries to “justify himself” as the text says–he’s trying to save face.

Part 2 will look at his second question, “And who is my neighbor?” and will dig into the absolutely brilliant nature of Jesus’s answer.

Christian Hellenism?

This long post is a submission for the [Evangelical Outpost](http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com) blog symposium entitled ["Judeo-Christian Morality in an Ethically Pluralistic Society"](http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001265.html). The list of entries can be found [here](http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001267.html).

I’ve been interested for a while in the concept of Hellenism as understood in the first century, and the way it affected the people of Jesus’s time. I’m deriving my definition of Hellenism largely from the work of [Ray VanderLaan](http://www.followtherabbi.com), in particular his essay ["Center of the Universe"](http://community.gospelcom.net/Brix?pageID=2744) and many audio recordings of his that I’ve listened to.

Hellenism began to spread across the world due to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Alexander wanted to spread Greek culture and beliefs, because he thought that they represented the best way of living. To encourage the spread of Hellenism, he used the institutions of the theater (arts), the stadium (sports), the gymnasium (physical and mental education), and the temple (worship). These were the forums for indoctrinating the peoples that he conquered in the philosophy of Hellenism. What is this philosophy? First and formost, it is a philosophy of self. It’s major characteristic is that it is centered on the individual, the human being, as the ultimate arbiter of what is good and what is beautiful. According to VanderLaan,

>Hellenism as a worldview is based on a belief that human beings are the ultimate source of truth and authority in the universe. “Man is the measure of all things of what is and what is not,” said the Greek philosopher Protagoras (481-411 BC). This philosophy provided the foundation for a culture devoted to the supremacy of human beings and human accomplishment…

This philosophy posed major problems for the Jewish people in that time period. At first, under Alexander, the Hellenistic ideas were offered as an alternative, not a forced replacement. Later, though, after [Antiochus Epiphanes](http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1589&letter=A) came to power, the Hellenization became deadly, as he attempted to exterminate the Jewish religion and force the uptake of Hellenistic practices. This led the rise of the [Maccabees](http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=17&letter=M) and their revolution.

Despite the victory of the Jews under the Maccabees, the tension between the Hellenistic viewpoint, where man is preeminent, and the Judaic viewpoint, where God is preeminent, did not subside. This is the context that Jesus lived and taught in. It’s also the world that the disciples moved into the heart of after Jesus’s death and resurrection. I would argue that it also describes the world that we live in today.

In our modern world, we don’t have to deal with Greek gods and sacrificing things to idols; however, the philosophy underpinning Hellenism, that of man being the ultimate repository of Truth, is alive and well in our culture. In fact, it is the defining philosophy of secularism, and I would argue that secularism is the subtext that governs how most Americans lead their lives. VanderLaan goes on in his essay to further describe Hellenism and its effects:

>Since the human being was the “measure of all” people believed that human wisdom is the greatest wisdom. What cannot be understood or explained by people must [not] be true. Human accomplishments in athletics, the arts, and architecture became the motivating drive of society. The human body was considered the ultimate in beauty so nudity in art, in the baths, and in sports was acceptable and even expected. Accumulation of the greatest of material things to provide luxury and comfort for ones self–the ultimate in the universe after all–was considered the normal pursuit of ones life. Anything to improve the quality of human life. Since humans are the ultimate reality, the ultimate human was the greatest of all. To be the best, better than all others at any pursuit was life’s great goal. What could be more natural than to get the most out of life for one’s self?

If you take out the nudity in sports part, this describes American life today incredibly well. Hellenism, stripped of its more overt religious overtones, is the dominant philosophy of our age. If we look at the people who make the most money in our society, they are the actors, the sports players, and the entrepreneurs. Now, I don’t think that there is anything inherently wrong with any of these occupations. I just find it interesting that they exactly fit the ideals of Hellenism.

So, is the primary tension in our society one of Judeo-Christian ethics vs. a pluralistic society, of which secularism is only one of many facets? I would actually argue “no”. The real tension is between a dominant secular, Hellenistic, ethos and a true Judeo-Christian ethos. This is not the battle that most Christians are fighting. Most professed Christians go about their daily lives functionally indistinguishable from non-Christians in the world at large. The common conception of supporting Judeo-Christian ethics in our society usually means complaining that other people don’t live like we think they should, or trying to oppose perceived threats to things that we believe. The issue is not whether we are right or not. We may be right, it may be that they are living in a personally and communally destructive way. But that’s missing the bigger point. We may win some small battles, but we’re like Japanese soldiers stuck on a little island who never got the message that World War II was over. Hellenism dominates our society.

What has our clamoring in that last 25 years for a more moral, ethical society gotten us so far? Church attendance is [down](http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_tren.htm). It’s down dramatically in some of the old mainline denominations, but overall the trend has been a slow decline. Even in the growing suburban mega churches, the emphasis in many cases is on how the church can meet every need of the individual in every conceivable situation–a kind of Hellenism, light. In the societies of Europe further down the road to secularism the trend is more obvious: traditional Christian religion there is dying.

John Derbyshire has a recent [article](http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200504071043.asp) that discusses the legacy of the pope in terms of this general trend away from religion in Western cultures. >Looking back across the past few decades, it’s hard not to think that post-industrial modernism is headed all one way, everywhere it has taken a firm grip. Pleasure-giving gadgets and drugs are ever cheaper and more accessible. The distresses of life, especially physical sickness and pain, are gradually being pushed to the margins. As scientists probe deeper into the human genome, the human nervous system, and the biology of human social arrangements, that divine spark of person-hood that we all feel to be the essence of ourselves is being chased along narrower and darker passageways of the brain and the tribal folkways. Happiness itself, it seems, is [genetic](http://www.forbes.com/technology/sciences/2004/09/23/cx_mh_0923happiness.html).

He thinks that this is heading towards a *Brave New World* type of situation.

>…it seems to me highly probable that the world of 50 or 100 years from now will bear a close resemblance to Huxley’s dystopia — a world without pain, grief, sickness or war, but also without family, religion, sacrifice, or nobility of spirit.

Jim Hoagland in the [Washington Post](http://www.washingtonpost.com) has an [article](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32734-2005Apr6.html) along a similar vein, but with a different conclusion.

>The world has never had more communication and yet produced so little understanding and wisdom. In advanced manufacturing societies, [historian John] Lukacs notes, “the production of consumption has become more important than the production of goods.” While “constitutions and courts have extended lawfulness to private acts of all kinds . . . fewer and fewer people appreciate or are able to cultivate privacy.” [2002 essay "At the End of an Age."]

Why is this happening? Why, with a large majority of people who still consider themselves Christian in this country do we seem to be losing our soul? America is the creator of the technology and lifestyle that has made the world, at least our world, a better place. Yet it is also the world’s leader in consumption of just about everything, at just about every level.

Evangelicals in America need to re-evaluate what it means to have a Judeo-Christian ethic in our culture. We need to figure out first of all how to live a life that is centered on God, and then how to live that life in a world interested in everything *except* God.

Is it acceptable to live a life that explicitly or implicitly endorses the core principles of Hellenism? Is a 10:1 ratio of the time each day I pursue wealth, hobbies, or pleasure to the time I pursue God acceptable? I can make a strong argument that Jesus memorized the entirety of the the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) by the time he was 15. What kind of devotion is that? Do we even have language to describe it?

I propose that we can’t make a difference in this world if we simple play by the same rules, living lives functionally indistinguishable from a ‘typical’ member of our society.

The whole question of how Judeo-Christian morals and ethics compete in our society is the wrong question. We have to compete, if we’re doing our jobs right. The twelve disciples and their disciples converted the most pagan part of the Roman Empire in less than a century, and they were not so popular with the powers-that-be. They certainly weren’t imposing their ethical framework on society. They were *living* their ethical framework *in* society. And living it in an effective way, so that they were different. Different not separate. Different so that they were noticed, and people wanted what they had. We need to build communities that are beacons to the world around them. We need to be radically different from what our culture expects, so people look at us and say, “That’s amazing. That’s real. That’s what I want.”

P.S. As the disciples moved into Asia Minor, by the year 200 it was largely Christian. Then the Christians started to build big, beautiful buildings, and take on the trappings of the what the culture thought a dominant religion should look like. They bought into Hellenism. In 150 years, many of the churches were empty and the bishops were telling the pastors to keep holding services even though no one was attending. [(VanderLaan: From Galilee to Asia)](http://community.gospelcom.net/Brix?pageID=2726)

The American killed in Cairo Thursday has a name

I heard about the [bombing](http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw114176_20050409.htm) in the Cairo bazaar last Thursday, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I figured that it was just one of those things that happens all too often over in the Middle East.

I download and listen to .mp3s of messages from [Mars Hill Bible Church](http://www.mhbcmi.org) pretty much every week. I really like the way the teaching pastor there, Rob Bell, digs into the historical background of the text. This week was different than normal, however. He started out talking about a tragedy that had turned there community upside down, and I was instantly curious about what he was talking about. Well, it turns out that the young man killed in the (apparently) suicide bombing in Cairo on April 7th was named Alex Mirandette, and he was from Mars Hill. Bell went on to tell the story of why Alex and his brother and their friends were there in Egypt, and I find it amazing. And I haven’t seen it reported anywhere else, so I’m going to relay it here, based on Rob Bell’s description.

Alex and his brother Erik were at the end of a trip across the entire length of Africa. According to Bell, Erik had decided to take a leave from the Air Force Academy and go live and work in north Africa working with a ‘global partner’ that Mars Hill has. He wanted to work with refugees and just help people who have nothing. He was driven by a desire to change the world, and wanted to act on it. A few months ago, he and his brother Alex decided that they were going to ride motorcycles from the tip of South Africa to Egypt, and stop at every partner that Mars Hill has on the continent. So they actually did it. They worked with AIDS children and they distributed medicine, and built things, and just volunteered and helped out in any way they could. They made it to Cairo, met up with some friends, and went to a bazaar.

I honestly ask myself when I read this type of thing, why, why, why, why? When someone is walking in the footsteps of Jesus, and doing what it is that they are made to do, why does this happen? I’ve always just kind of figured that God would want to look out for people who were really striving to put him completely first in their lives. Especially from random violence. I mean, Jim Elliot going to the most murderous tribe on earth is in a different category some how. But my faith demands of me that I believe that despite how bad it looks, and despite how senseless the death seems, there is a God and he grieves with the Mirandette family and their community.

Liberation of Buchenwald

[60 years ago today](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GERMANY_BUCHENWALD_ANNIVERSARY?SITE=APWEB&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&reload=true) American troops broke through the barbed wire of Buchenwald, a Nazi death camp near Weimar. My maternal grandfather, Stan Yankunas, was one of the young servicemen that helped to liberated that camp. A soldier’s account, according to the AP report:

>”It was so incredible – stacks of bodies, the smell, the total shock and confusion, people walking around by the thousands,” he said. “We had no concept for this kind of insane cruelty.”

My mom tells me that my grandfather never talked about it, and that it drove him to drink for many years after the war–to forget.

I hope we never forget what we are capable of doing. The evil that lurks just beneath the surface.

A Better Tribute to John Paul II

Nicholas Kristof in the April 6 edition of the [New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com) discusses the ongoing genocide in Darfur and [relates](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/opinion/06kristof.html?hp) it to the massive outpouring of emotion for John Paul II. He suggests that it is hypocritical of us to stage and support a massive funeral/spectacle for a Pope who stood boldly in the face of evil, while we continue to do nothing to stop the Darfur killings.

I wholeheartedly agree with this concept. I think that it would be fantastic if President Bush, Tony Blair, and other leaders of the democratic world used the venue of the Pope’s funeral to announce a multilateral, comprehensive agreement to act swiftly and aggressively against genocide anywhere in the world. What greater example of morality is there than to defend the poor, weak, and powerless?

The situation is not getting better. Kristof notes that the latest atrocity is that young girls and women who have been raped and impregnated by soldiers and roaming militia are being imprisoned for immorality. I feel physically sick reading this account from a 16 year old girl (via Doctors Without Borders):

>”When I was eight months pregnant from the rape, the police came to my hut and forced me with their guns to go to the police station. They asked me questions, so I told them that I had been raped. They told me that as I was not married, I will deliver this baby illegally.

>”They beat me with a whip on the chest and back and put me in jail.”

What madness is this? We have the means to act, so we must.

Kristof also points to the [Darfur Accoutability Act of 2005](http://corzine.senate.gov/priorities/darfuraccountabilityact.pdf) (and [here](http://www.rocketblog.net/media/DAact2005.pdf)) and urges people to contact their senators and representatives and press for passage of the bill. [Save Darfur](http://www.savedarfur.org) has a mechanism that lets you email all your representatives and the President at the same time.

Academic diversity??

A friend of mine sent me an [article](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05krugman.html?ex=1113364800&en=308b64641f4c3ed4&ei=5070) by Paul Krugman today. I honestly find Krugman obnoxious most of the time, and this article is not any different. His basic premise is that the lack of diversity in academia is a result of self-selection. The people who are really smart are the ones in academia and they aren’t conservatives or religious. And the conservative who want in are a band of Bible-thumping neanderthals.

Needless to say, there’s another viewpoint. Jonah Goldberg disassembles the argument [here](http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200504051438.asp). Stanley Kurtz in [the Corner](nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp) has [more](http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_04_03_corner-archive.asp#059974) to add.

It seems that there are a couple of different things going on. Based on the numbers, there is a huge disparity between liberals in English vs. Engineering for example (88% vs. 51%). So it seems reasonable to me that there is a liberal bias at work in the fuzzy subjects, and self-selection in the harder sciences. Goldberg gives [this](http://noleftturns.ashbrook.org/default.asp?archiveID=6437) anecdote, which based on my own experience living on campus at Stanford for six years and counting, is not surprising at all. The end says it all:

>Suffice it to say that at one point I was imprudent enough to let on to a young woman that I had voted for George W. Bush. “And yet you write books,” she responded.

The self-selection seems much more likely to be of the money or normal-life variety than the anti-religious-nut variety. Being a graduate student, I have many friend who have finished or are finishing a Ph.D. Especially in the Bay Area, it’s difficult to have a ‘normal’ family life on the starting salaries for many science positions. You have to give something up, and I’d suggest that conservatives more than liberals value a normal family life over a life of academics. This of course is not universally true, but it may be true enough to have a measurable effect.

UPDATE: More on Tech Central Station [here](http://www.techcentralstation.com/040605B.html) specifically dealing more with the hypocrisy of the argument that Republicans are anti-science, and a personal anecdote of left-wing bias in the academy.

Great essay on gay marriage

[Jane Galt](http://www.janegalt.net) has a fantastic [essay](http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005244.html) on the issue of ‘gay marriage’, and conservatism in general. It’s really long, but well worth the read. Her basic premise is that we all should be more careful in making arguments from personal experience. The basic problem she lays out is that people making arguments may not represent the marginal case – meaning the case where a change is most likely to occur. She discusses three examples:

* The income tax

* Extending welfare to out-of-wedlock women and children

* Relaxing of divorce laws and no-fault divorce

In each of these cases, the ultimate consequences were laughed at by those presenting the reforms (out of good intentions) and underestimated by those opposing the reform. And in all cases the ultimate consequence was much more extreme than anyone guessed.

She claims that we don’t know who the marginal case is, and as a result we should be careful. I would push the argument one step further and say that the people who are making the argument in the public realm are almost certainly *not* the marginal case. Because in many, if not nearly all, policy debates, the people doing the debating are relatively well-adjusted, successful people. It’s self-selecting in many ways. Self-selecting away from being representative of the marginal case. You don’t get to a position of debating something where people actually pay attention to you without some measure of stability and success in your life. So it’s even more of an imperative in debating major shifts in some social/cultural aspect of life that we look well beyond what we think is ‘obviously true’.

She claims agnosticism on the issue of gay marriage because she doesn’t know if it will weaken or strengthen the institution. I respect that, but I would say that the argument she lays out calls for much more restraint and humility than we see in the gay-marriage lobby right now.

Rest in Peace, Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II [died](http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/special_features/hf_jp_ii_xxv_en.htm) this morning. While it is always sad to see a great person leave the earth, I am reminded of something I read in [*Everyman's Talmud*](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805210326/qid=1112487439/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-8001424-7164825?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). It was to the effect that we should not celebrate when a child is born and mourn when someone dies. Rather, we should realize that a child may not choose to follow God, and we should celebrate when a long, good life comes to an end, because we know that they chose to follow God.

If anyone deserves this attitude, it seems it would be Karol Wojtyla. For whatever major or minor theological differences one might have had with him, it can not be disputed that he was a man who loved God passionately and devoted his entire life to that passion. So in that spirit of celebration, na zdrowie! Because after falling asleep here for the final time, he as awoken to the reality of the world to come, where his health will never falter. And l’chaim! Because the world to come is life everlasting.

Terrible Reporting by CNN

The Zimbabwe elections are nearly counted, and Mugabe has gotten his [2/3 majority in the parliament](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/04/02/international/i143322S46.DTL), so he can change Zimbabwe’s constitution however he likes. I am completely stunned at the way [CNN](http://www.cnn,com) is [reporting this](http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/04/02/zimbabwe.earlyresults/index.html). Their headline, as of 3:35 pacific time, is “Mugabe wins big change mandate”. There is no indication in the first 10(!) paragraphs of the story that the election is widely derided as utterly corrupt and rigged by most everyone in the world (see the AP story I linked to in the first line). In fact, this is what their reporter is quoted as saying:

>”Some observers have said they found irregularities on election day — like the electoral centers being based in people’s homes, in chiefs’ homes rather than in neutral places like schools or fields,” said CNN’s Jeff Koinange.

>”But in terms of the counting itself, so far there have been no complaints.”

It makes it sound like it’s Florida!! This is just ridiculous.

For much better reporting, I’ve been following [Publius Pundit](http://www.publiuspundit.com) who keeps up on democratic movements all over the place. His [latest Zimbabwe post](http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=801) gives so much more information on what is going on there compared to CNN. I am disappointed, but not surprised, to see this kind of reporting from one of the main outlets of the MSM.

What does baffle me is the ‘why?’. What’s the point of this kind of reporting? Is it to make us feel better that we are doing nothing? That doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. There are two reasons that do make sense. One is simple laziness. Just bad reporting. If that’s the case, they should just run with the AP reports on this. The other, more conspirational, theory is that they are playing an Eason Jordan Iraq-like game, where they don’t want to get kicked out of the country, so the soft-ball reports. Zimbabweans speak English, so I’m sure those that have internet access look at CNN occasionally. I don’t have any proof of this, but CNN’s track record begs for this kind of speculation.