Randal Rauser's Blog, page 122

The Most Bizarre Rejoinder I Ever Heard From a Christian Fundamentalist

In 2013 I published my book What on Earth Do We Know About Heaven? in which I presented my core thesis in the following equation: “H=ep.” In other words, “heaven” (in terms of the absolute and final destination for individuals reconciled to God in Christ) is not the otherworldly paradise of the popular Christian (and Platonic) imagination. Rather, it is the earth — that is, the material creation — brought to perfection.

Needless to say, this thesis has implications for how we treat the environment. In the popular Christian (and Platonic) imagination environmental concern is marginalized, even rendered suspect, based on the notion that we are being saved out of the world rather than with the world. In the worst instantiations the notion becomes this: I can live without regard for the environment because creation is doomed to destruction.

Rarely if ever have the environmental implications of evangelical gnosticism been stated with the searing honesty and brutal concision of the following quip from Mark Driscoll:

“I know who made the environment. He’s coming back and going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV.”

Driscoll assumes the biblical images of an eschatological burning of creation symbolize destruction. By contrast, if one interprets these images as the refiner’s fire of purification — if one accepts that H=ep — then one cannot shirk environmental responsibility with the puerile quip that God will “burn it all up.” On the contrary, one must be concerned with creation as well.

To be sure, the matter isn’t simply about falling into the legalism of censuring and stigmatizing those who drive SUVs. (Full disclosure: I have an SUV and a Ford Mustang in my garage. So I’m not about to cast any stones from this glass house.) Rather, it is about a holistic consideration of all our life choices and how they affect the environment. And it’s about coming to ask ethical questions of our environmental footprint as an expression of our Christian discipleship.

A couple years ago I had a conversation with a Christian fundamentalist. (I give him that label advisedly as he was an avowed defender of young earth creationism, a narrow conception of biblical inerrancy, and this quasi-gnostic otherworldly view of heaven.) In that conversation I pointed out how we should always be seeking practical ways to lessen our adverse impact on the environment. I opined, “Even something as seemingly trivial as idling your car unnecessarily is an ethical and theological issue.”

The man’s response brings me to the most bizarre rejoinder I ever heard from a Christian fundamentalist. He replied:

“Look, if I have to choose between sharing the Gospel or not idling my car, I’ll share the Gospel.”

How revealing that statement was! I hadn’t said a thing about “sharing the Gospel” but immediately my interlocutor sought to reframe any concern about environmental impact in terms of a zero-sum relationship with evangelistic proclamation as if one immediately must choose between either protecting the environment or telling people about Jesus.

That false dichotomy was itself rooted in the gnostic notion that God saves us out of the world, But it ain’t so. On the contrary, the Gospel is the proclamation that God so loved and saves the world (John 3:16), reconciling all things, whether things on earth or in heaven, through Christ’s blood shed on the cross (Colossians 1:20).

The post The Most Bizarre Rejoinder I Ever Heard From a Christian Fundamentalist appeared first on Randal Rauser.

False Witness, Lies, Delusions, and Bullshit … and Why the Difference Matters

A couple days ago the New York Times published an opinion piece grandly titled “Trump’s Lies.” The article purports to chronicle  “nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office.” The reader is then treated to a chronicle of dizzying length and breadth chronicling all the public instances where the POTUS uttered false statements. There can be no doubt that the list provides a sweeping indictment of the man and his character. (Sadly there can also be no doubt that most Trump supporters won’t care. Instead, in emulation of their hero they’ll simply ignore the list with a bleat about the “crooked media”.)

The biggest problem with the list is that falsehoods are not the same thing as lies. While Trump is undoubtedly a habitual purveyor of falsehoods, not every falsehood is a lie and it is worthwhile distinguishing different types of falsehoods, not least so we may gain a more accurate understanding of Trump’s pathological inability to track the truth.

We should begin by distinguishing between four different types of falsehoods (the definitions are mine):

false witnessing: “a false statement which one believes to be true and which one communicates to others as true.”

lie: “a false statement which is known or believed to be false and which is communicated to other people as true with the intent that they form the false belief that it is true.”

delusion: “a false belief that is retained despite the lack of evidence for it and/or one’s awareness of counterevidence to it.”

bullshit: “a statement which one does not know to be true or false but which one expresses as true in order to elicit a particular effect in the hearer.” (This definition is based on Harry Frankfurt’s conceptual analysis of the concept.)

For every one of the falsehoods in this very long list to be a lie, Trump would need to know each one was false or misleading at the time he uttered them, and he would need to have uttered them with the intent that others come to believe them as true.

It is manifestly clear, however, that in the vast majority of cases, the evidence clearly underdetermines the conclusion of lying.  For example, consider the second entry on the list. (Note that in this and all other examples, the authors begin by quoting Trump and then providing counterevidence to his claim.):

JAN. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.)

The authors establish clearly that Trump uttered a falsehood (he was only on the cover 11 times, not 14 or 15 times) and thus he is minimally culpable here of false witnessing. But it is also clear that the authors have provided no evidence that Trump lied in this instance. To do that, they would need to provide evidence that he knew he had not been on the cover of Time “14 or 15 times”, and that others had (or likely had) appeared on Time more than he had.

Consequently, instances like this do not obviously illustrate anything more than Trump’s false witnessing.

Let’s be clear, however: false witness does not exonerate a person’s character. If one consistently bares false witness, as Trump does, then at the bear minimum they demonstrate a troubling and morally culpable lack of concern for epistemic virtue.

Think, by analogy, of an electrician who repeatedly fails to install and maintain wiring that meets code. The man may not be deliberate in his ineptitude, but he is morally culpable nonetheless. By the same token, even if Trump isn’t lying, delusional, or bullshitting, he is at the very least a habitual false witness; he’s reckless, incautious, and unreliable with the truth. And that alone is a sufficient indictment of his character.

Having said that, working through the NY Times list I find that in many cases the most plausible interpretation of the falsehood in question is indeed that Trump is lying, or delusional, or bullshitting. So while he is a habitual purveyor of falsehoods, in many cases I believe he is not simply a habitual purveyor of falsehoods.

What is important, however, is that as we offer critical engagement with Trump’s falsehoods, with his habitual inability to track with truth and exhibit epistemic virtue, we not fall into the same trap. And that’s what happens when we incautiously opt to describe all his falsehoods as lies.

Instead, we model a concern for genuine epistemic virtue, precision and truth, when we limit our charges to the evidence: that means charging Trump with false witness when the evidence only warrants that lesser charge, and restricting the charges of lies, delusion, and/or bullshit only in the cases where the evidence warrants the charge.

The post False Witness, Lies, Delusions, and Bullshit … and Why the Difference Matters appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Holy Hilarity: A Funny Study of Genesis: A Review

Mark Roncace. Holy Hilarity: A Funny Study of Genesis (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2016).

I was a big fan of Mark Roncace’s previous book God’s Story. I also very much enjoyed Raw Revelation (albeit with some reservations). So when he offered to send me a review copy of his latest popular study, Holy Hilarity, I welcomed the opportunity.

As the subtitle stipulates, Holy Hilarity aims to be a “funny study of Genesis,” one that consists of 53 short chapters and 220 pages. At the outset we should be clear that the primary aim of the book is not to provide a study of the humor in Genesis (thought it occasionally does so). Rather, it is to provide a humorous study of Genesis. As Roncace puts it,

“That’s the aim of this book, plain and simple: to help you meaningfully engage the Bible with merriment. I want you to laugh out loud and have a rockin’ good time as you contemplate the rich stories of Genesis.” (vii)

“Who is the audience?” Part 1: The Millennial?

It’s a noble goal: everybody loves to laugh, right? (Make that everybody except Grumpy Cat.) But that doesn’t mean everybody is automatically going to be interested in a funny study of Genesis. In short, every author must contend with this question: who is the intended audience of your book? 

In the case of Holy Hilarity one of the endorsements on the back commends the book as “an entry into the biblical texts for a generation raised on Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Samantha Bee…”

Yeah, I don’t see that for a couple reasons. First, I don’t think a savvy and cynical millennial who relishes the progressive, sardonic social commentary of Samantha Bee or Jon Stewart is going to be attracted to a cover that looks straight out of flannel-graphs and vacation Bible school. (In my opinion, the cover of Holy Hilarity is a major misfire.)

And it’s going to take more than a promise of jokes to attract the millennial to a study of Genesis.

Second, I don’t think much of the humor within the book is going to land with a millennial audience. The fact is that a significant portion of Roncace’s material would be classified as dad jokes. And dad jokes are a dicey matter. The best of them are good because they’re so bad. The worst of them are just bad. (I know this well because I myself am an endless repository of lame dad jokes and I have a merciless teenage daughter to separate the wheat from the chaff. And it’s mostly chaff.)

Here is one of Roncace’s lamer attempts at humor, this one commenting on the impact of the fall on Eve:

“The woman’s punishment is nothing to scoff at either: pain in childbirth and, even worse, ‘your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.’ If only God had said ‘drool over you,’ how different our world might’ve been–if a little slobbery.” (15)

The danger with dad jokes is that if they are poorly executed they can quickly alienate an audience, especially a cynical millennial audience. So I don’t think Holy Hilarity will find its primary readership here.

“Who is the audience?” Part 2: The Conservative?

Christian conservatives are much more welcoming of bad dad jokes … and covers reminiscent of flannel-graphs and vacation Bible school. (As a case in point, consider the other book called Holy Hilarity with its satisfying mix of benign jokes fit to tickle the funny bone of Christian conservatives.) So might the Christian conservative be a better audience for Roncace’s book?

I don’t think so. And the reason is that Roncace’s humor is often too risque for a conservative Christian audience. Consider the following examples.

To begin with, Roncace offers the following lighthearted rumination about God’s rainbow promise not to flood the earth again: “The rainbow reminds me personally of gay pride, which makes me think God’s multi-colored sign might have something to do with the diversity of life on our planet.” (37)

Believe me, the suggestion that the rainbow of the Noahic covenant could be linked to LGBT diversity is not the way to get a group of conservative Christians to bust a gut.

Next, Holy Hilarity highlights the many awkward sexual situations in Genesis. But Roncace’s humor here is likely to further alienate conservative readers. For example, he offers the following jovial take on the plagues of Egypt: “God then intervenes by afflicting Pharaoh and his household with ‘great plagues.’ Probably gonorrhea.” (52)

Ouch! Once again, that is not the way to get a group of conservative Christians to laugh. (It does remind me, however, of Larry Norman’s reference to “Gonorrhea on Valentine’s Day” from his hard-hitting 1972 song “Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus?”)

Even worse, when it comes to the destruction of Sodom, Roncace cracks an erection joke, opining that “it’s never good to ‘pitch your tent’ near a place called Sodom.” (56) Oh dear. And then there’s the passing reference to “twerking” (24) and the phallic interpretation of the Tower of Babel (44), and the allusion to Viagra (72).

In short, I don’t see Roncace’s take on Holy Hilarity being welcomed by a conservative Christian readership. And I definitely don’t see it appealing to the millennial. Thus, whatever other virtues the book may have, it seems to lack a ready audience.

The Deeper Virtues

Let’s turn now from the question of audience to highlight some of the admirable virtues of the book. Roncace is at his best when he uses humor to offer wry commentary or highlight difficulties within the text.  For example, when he recounts how God provided verbal instructions to avoid the Tree of Good and Evil, he observes “God should’ve put the command in writing. After all, people never misinterpret the written word of God.” (14) That’s a fine use of sarcasm.

And without ever explicitly challenging a simple literal hermeneutic of all the stories in the text, Roncace gently prods at the plausibility of such an approach. Consider his comments regarding life on Noah’s Ark:

“I bet he [Noah] was really worried about the woodpeckers and termites, and he probably wasn’t sure what to feed the carnivores. Nor did God mention taking beverages. Maybe they were supposed to catch the rainwater? But the two elephants alone would kill that idea–drinking sixty-five gallons a day.” (25)

Roncace wisely offers no resolution here, instead simply allowing the reader to sit with the incongruity.

One of the many difficulties with the narrative consists of the great age of many of the characters. Roncace provides this take on Sarah’s advanced age (i.e. in her early nineties) when she finally gives birth to Isaac: “Nursing is inevitably taxing on the mother, especially if you are as old as Sarah, and hence buying Huggies and Depends at the same time.” (94)

Admirably honest, challenging, and subversive

This leads me to what is perhaps the greatest virtue of Holy Hilarity. It’s an honest take on the difficulties of the text. What is more, it is based on the recognition that the difficulties in the text are providential, that we as readers benefit by wrestling with those difficulties.

This is hugely important. As I’ve lamented in the past, Christians have some common ways of dealing with various difficulties (in particular moral and cultural) within the text. I’ve identified four in particular: omission (we simply ignore problematic details), distraction (we change the topic, often by focusing on some incidental general principle), misrepresentation (we subtly distort details), and blunted affect (we recount troubling details with a flat emotional disposition unbefitting to the content). While these various reading strategies follow a path of least resistance, they thereby inoculate the reader from the full force and challenge of the text.

When Roncace highlights violence, misogyny, favoritism, selfishness, and other ignoble aspects of the characters and their conduct, he is aiming to push readers beyond these various strategies to confronting the difficult realities of the text. For example, when it comes to Jacob, the most complex human character in Genesis, Roncace does not shy away from highlighting his tendency toward selfish concern (155), his penchant throughout his life to show favoritism (206) and even his final apparent descent into dementia (210).

The resulting portrait of Jacob fits poorly with the popular conservative Christian tendency to reduce the Old Testament to a collection of character studies that highlight various virtues of the Christian life. Instead, we get a complicated, challenging, and morally difficult character which invites us to examine our own lives to find similar flaws … and God’s work despite those flaws.

Humor: The Best Way into the Text?

While I would commend Holy Hilarity for the aforementioned virtues, this does bring me back to Roncace’s use of humor as a way to frame a somewhat subversive devotional study of Genesis for a lay audience. In short, I find that while humor sometimes effectively serves the task, at other times it becomes a distraction. Case in point: the bad dad jokes and gratuitous allusions to erections and Viagra.

The focus on levity works best in those moments when Roncace is highlighting ambiguity, irony, or morally troubling aspects from within the text and allowing us to draw the connection to our own lives.

Nonetheless, overall I think the book would have worked better if it had refocused on conveying an honest and challenging study of Genesis while allowing humor to be one of many tools to engage the reader with the text.

It turns out that God has a sense of humor too

Finally, we can conclude with a surprising and unintended example from the text of God’s own penchant for mirthful irony.

When recounting the Noahic narrative, Roncace appeals to some cutting illustrations at the expense of the long-suffering Chicago Cubs. (Infamously, the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908.) And so when recounting that Noah and the animals spent approximately seven months in the ark after the floodwaters had receded, he opines, “The probably felt longer than Cubs fans waiting for a World Series.” (32) Ouch!

A couple paragraphs later, Roncace twists the knife by noting that Noah’s sacrifice of animals who had just survived the flood is like “betting on the Cubs at the beginning of the season to win the World Series, only to watch them blow a 22-0 lead in the ninth inning of game seven.” (32-33) Wow, that hurts.

I trust you know where this is going: the Cubs went on to win the World Series in November 2016, a few weeks before Holy Hilarity was published, and long after any changes could be made to the galleys of the text.

Yes, it turns out that God has a sense of humor too.

You can order Holy Hilarity here.

The post Holy Hilarity: A Funny Study of Genesis: A Review appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Islamophobia? Secular Bernie Sanders meets the Conservative Evangelical

A couple weeks ago Bernie Sanders undertook a provocative line of questioning during the confirmation hearing of a fellow named Russell Vought. You may have heard of this feisty exchange. It certainly got the attention of Christian conservatives who consider it solid evidence of secular incredulity toward and persecution of orthodox Christians. Here is a three minute excerpt from the exchange which was titled “Godless Communist Bernie Sanders YELLS at Trump Nominee”:

Let’s pick up the exchange with Bernie attempting to ferret out Vought’s conservative theology as evidence of bigotry. It begins with Bernie quoting from an article Vought wrote in which he denies that Muslims know God:

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology; they do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, his Son, and they stand condemned.”

Bernie is clearly horrified by what he is reading and he assumes everyone else will be as well. And so like a master prosecutor he then lays down the gauntlet with this question:

“Do you believe that statement is Islamophobic?”

Vought’s matter-of-fact response is charming in a Jimmy Stewart kind of way:

“Absolutely not Senator. I’m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith. That post … was to defend … Wheaton College, a Christian school that has a statement of faith that includes the centrality of Jesus Christ for salvation and …”

At that point Bernie Sanders rudely cuts off Vought and they go back and forth some more. But we have enough at that point that I can offer some reflections.

First, it is clear that Sanders needs to get out more. He has apparently never stopped to consider what many Christians believe. (Perhaps too much time hobnobbing with secular New Englanders at wine and cheese receptions in Vermont.)

Bernie also illustrates the common liberal penchant for attaching the “phobia suffix” to those conservatives with whom you disagree: in this case: “Islamophobia”. News flash to Bernie: having an exclusivist and christocentric soteriology does not automatically entail Islamophobia. (Nor does it entail atheophobia or any other phobia.)

So much for Bernie. There’s no doubt: he comes off very badly in this exchange: perhaps he should go back to talking about health care and taxing the rich.

And what about Vought? While he definitely comes off better than Bernie, his side of the exchange is problematic in a different way, and that relates to his presentation of an exclusivist soteriology as if it reflects Christian soteriology simpliciter.

News flash to Vought: it doesn’t. Throughout history many Christians have rejected his exclusivism. Instead, they’ve seen salvation in Christ extending (or possibly extending) beyond the confines of those who make a verbal confession of belief in Christ. The essence of Christian soteriology is that we are all saved in and through Christ, not that all people necessarily need to believe a specific set of propositions about Christ in order to be saved by Christ.

Think about it like this. Picture a fellow named Ibrahim who is born and raised a Muslim in Saudi Arabia. Ibrahim has never met a Christian and all he knows of Christianity is what he has learned through the local mosque and the Qur’an. But Ibrahim seeks to be a good man: he is kind and gentle and loved by all in his community. And he regularly works to help the poor and fight for the protection of women in a patriarchal society. Then, at 23 years old, Ibrahim is murdered by a fundamentalist who is offended by his defense of women and their rights.

Does Christian belief require one to believe Ibrahim is in hell? No. It. Doesn’t. All Christianity does require one to believe is that if Ibrahim is ultimately reconciled to God then that reconciliation occurs in and by Christ.

Had Vought not conflated his narrower soteriological exclusivism (i.e. one must believe a particular set of propositions to be saved by Jesus) with Christianity simpliciter (i.e. all who are saved are saved by Jesus) he could have avoided this whole confrontation with the benighted secular New Englander, Mr. Bernie Sanders.

And from that perspective, neither one of our two interlocutors emerges from this abortive exchange unscathed.

The post Islamophobia? Secular Bernie Sanders meets the Conservative Evangelical appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Gnu Atheism? Wildebeest and the Problem of Natural Evil

Image Credit: Robyn Preston (Barcroft Media) http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/0...

Natural evil concerns any suffering within nature which is not the result of the morally culpable actions of a moral agent. (For my previous discussions of natural evil see here.)

Instances of natural evil are not hard to come by. Consider, for example, this image of a young wildebeest being eaten by a hungry crocodile.

When we refer to natural evil as a problem we are referencing the notion that this kind of evil is inconsistent with or unexpected based on the existence of God (where God has the attributes described in classical theism including omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipotence).

This image illustrates two specific problems that arise with many instances of natural evil. You see, this poor wildebeest is one of more than a million which partake in a massive migration across the Serengeti every year. At one point in that journey, this vast mass of bovines arrives at the Mara River. In a mass stampede they begin to rush across … and thousands drown in the process. Countless more are killed and eaten by crocodiles. In the aftermath, the river is clogged by a sea of bloated corpses rotting under the searing African sun. (See, for example, this account of the devastation at The Atlantic.)

The annual wildebeest slaughter at the Mara River raises two issues pertaining to some forms of natural evil: scale and system.

Scale is easy to understand. While it is perhaps conceivable that God could have a morally sufficient reason to allow a handful of wildebeests to suffer every year, what are we to think of thousands facing a watery grave on an annual basis? Carnage on that scale seems difficult to justify.

Interestingly, the article from The Atlantic points out that scientists have discovered this mass carnage is a boon for the Mara River ecosystem as these many dead animals nourish countless more creatures in and around the river while enriching the soil and the verdant flora. From that perspective, one might point out that nature wastes nothing. Carnage of natural evil on a scale orders of magnitude beyond the mundane also provides for the ecosystem goods orders of magnitude beyond the mundane.

Perhaps this is often true, but it nonetheless brings us to the second problem: system. This annual catalogue of misery is a part of the healthy functioning of the ecosystem. But why? Why would God design a system that demanded this level of suffering and death simply to function optimally?

Let’s shift our gaze from the Serengeti to a factory. Imagine that we are told this factory must employ small children to reach into the gears of the large machines regularly to remove the broken teeth of the sprockets. The system works well for the most part. But on the downside, small children periodically lose their arms as a result: several a year in fact.

If I were to tell you that the engineer who designed the machines was the greatest engineer imaginable, you’d rightly balk at the notion: no perfect engineer would design machines that required the occasional child’s arm for the proper functioning of the system.

True enough. And by the same token it would seem that one can reasonably think that no perfect designer of creation would design an ecosystem that required the mass annual slaughter of wildebeests.

The post Gnu Atheism? Wildebeest and the Problem of Natural Evil appeared first on Randal Rauser.

An Update on My Next Book

I could’ve called this article “Why I haven’t been blogging much lately.” The reason I haven’t been blogging much is simple: my next book has occupied most of my free time, and this for several reasons.

To begin with, at forty (short) chapters totaling three hundred pages, this is the second longest book I’ve ever written. (My academic monograph Theology in Search of Foundations, published in 2009 with Oxford University Press, is the longest.)

Second, as a theological reflection rooted in personal reminiscences over my last forty years, this next book is also the most personal of all my works … by a wide margin. This kind of writing is particularly demanding. If most of my books are the equivalent of taking friends out for dinner, this book involves inviting the reader into my home. And when you’re inviting friends over for dinner you need to worry about everything from dusting the furniture to cleaning the toilet bowl. Who knew entertaining at home was so much work?

Finally, after eleven books, this is the first time I have ever self-published. While there are many advantages to self-publishing, in my case it meant taking on the task of typesetting the book. And that, let me tell you, is no mean feat. After six weeks of gradually learning the in and outs of Adobe InDesign, I have just handed the manuscript over to a friend to deal with a few remaining issues. I also outsourced the cover design. But beyond that, this work has my personal stamp on it from start to finish.

Back in February I posted an article titled “Today I finished the penultimate draft of my next book.” Penultimate draft? Hah! That post now seems perfectly quaint, especially since the manuscript I called penultimate has been in continuous revision for the last four months. But the upside is that the manuscript I have now is far better than that February draft.

To sum up, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The book should be out this summer and I’ll be releasing further information (including the new title, the cover, endorsements, and ordering information) in the days and weeks to come.

The post An Update on My Next Book appeared first on Randal Rauser.

The Power of the Law of Reciprocity

Are you familiar with the Law of Reciprocity? This is the psychological perception of obligation when we receive a gift, favor, or act of goodwill from someone else. The book The Essentials of Power, Influence, and Persuasion (Harvard Business School Press, 2006, p. 50) describes the law like this:

I’ve been aware of the law of reciprocity for some years now (since I did some reading on persuasion psychology) and I’m quite self-aware of its power over me. Surprisingly, that awareness doesn’t necessarily diminish its power.

Just today I walked into the grocery store and a friendly elderly gentleman was giving away free samples of his smoked sausage. In the moment I knew that walking over and trying a piece would immediately put me at risk of feeling obliged to buy a link, but alas, I went anyway. After trying the first piece he encouraged me to try the chili flavor as he described that their company had just started in December, locally produced with no GMOs or MSG or blah blah blah.

By this time it was too late. I yielded to the path of least resistance and surrendered to the pull of this perceived obligation by placing a link of sausage into my basket.

The post The Power of the Law of Reciprocity appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Transgender at the Spa? The Culture War Heats Up

This is quite the story. A transgender woman (i.e. an individual who is genetically and anatomically male but who chooses to adopt the social role of a woman) was barred from the all women’s Body Blitz Spa in Toronto. As the spa explained, many of their clients undergo their various treatments completely naked and they would be uncomfortable with a naked man in their midst, even if that man identifies as a woman.

This is the moment where we encounter one of the deepest cultural divides in contemporary society, the moment at which two sides stare in mutual incomprehension and loathing at each other across a chasm.

From the perspective of the transgender woman, barring a patron because she is genetically and anatomically male is no different than barring her because she is dark skinned or because she wears a hijab. In all cases, the action is discriminatory, plain and simple, and it constitutes a violation of the human rights of the patron.

From the perspective of the spa’s supporters, this transgender “woman” is a man and the spa is women only. Gender may be (to some degree at least) a socially constructed reality, but sex is not: and this spa restricts its patronage to those individuals who are anatomically female (presumably they don’t do genetic tests).

In case you’re wondering, I’m with the spa on this one. If a business establishment has the right to restrict its customer base to those of the female gender, then the business also has the right to restrict its customer base to the female sex. Of course, you might claim that businesses should not be allowed to restrict their customer base to the female sex. If that is true, then all spas should be fully integrated with men and women. But until we say the spa no longer has the right to exclude men, I say it still has the right to exclude transgender women.

Having said that, I do have sympathy with the transgender woman. Often critics envision the transgender experience as capricious and fleeting: i.e. “Today I’m a woman but tomorrow maybe I’ll be a man. And maybe I’ll come to the spa a woman but leave a man. Who knows?” There may be transgender people like that, but many others have a fixed and seemingly unalterable identity with the other gender. The transgender experience is spurred by a gender dysphoria which can be deeply traumatizing. To be denied entry to a spa could seem, from that perspective, like one more insult, one more prejudicial denial of one’s perceived identity and one’s very humanity.

At the same time, transgender advocates often show little-to-no sympathy with the other side. Certainly that’s evident in the responses I read from supporters of the transgender spa woman. They are absolutely outraged with Body Blitz Spa and their customers who don’t want to see a naked man (where “man” means a genetic and anatomical male) walking in their midst.

Of course I understand why the transgender supporter will be utterly unsympathetic: as the retort might come, “Should I sympathize with the white supremacist who is uncomfortable seeing black people drinking from the same water fountain?” The answer, of course, is no.

And I also understand why supporters of the spa will not see this as a civil rights issue. Gender dysphoria may be a traumatizing experience but the demands of one gender dysphoric individual should not force small business owners and their patrons to change the way they do business.

As a result, each side peers with anger and indignation at the other as the cultural divide widens yet further. Caught in the middle are some small business owners, a number of spa patrons, and one transgender woman who wanted her own day at the spa.

The post Transgender at the Spa? The Culture War Heats Up appeared first on Randal Rauser.

How to make yourself feel smarter

There are many ways that you can make yourself feel smarter.

One way is to gather a gaggle of servile sycophants around a big table and invite them all to pour effusive praise upon you. Yesterday Donald Trump modeled that approach with his stable of servile sycophants.

The best (or worst) was class suck-up Reince Priebus who talked about what a “blessing” it was to work with Trump. (I suspect right about now we can probably all remember a Reince Priebus from our grammar school classroom. He was the one who polished an apple every morning for the teacher.) Little better was Mike Pence talking about how working with Trump was the “greatest privilege of [his] life.” At least he didn’t invoke Trump’s “broad shoulders” this time around. (Pence has gushed about Trump’s “broad shoulders” at least 12 times now. Oh well, better broad shoulders than tiny hands, I guess.)

I digress! The fact is that not many of us have a stable of servile sycophants to draw upon. (Over the years I’ve tried to prepare my wife and daughter for the task but to no avail.) So how can the rest of us make ourselves feel smarter?

Simple. All you need is this quote attributed to philosopher Roger Scruton:

"The greatest enemy of the Left is reality"

— Roger Scruton Quotes (@Scruton_Quotes) June 11, 2017

All you need to do is swap out “the Left” with whatever you prefer: “the Right,” “Christians,” “atheists,” “soccer fans,” “socialists,” “feminists,” “teenagers,” “old people,” or whatever.

Now once you have your chosen outgroup, repeat the mantra until you feel good about yourself.

Like this person:

That is really true!! Excellent quote.

— Lady Patriot (@lynn_weiser) June 12, 2017

The post How to make yourself feel smarter appeared first on Randal Rauser.

The Birth of a Nation: A Powerful but Flawed Film

Things started out promising for Nate Parker’s 2016 film The Birth of a Nation. The film tells the story of Nat Turner, a slave preacher who led a fated slave rebellion in 1831. The movie took the 2016 Sundance Film Festival by storm, winning critical and popular praise along with a stunning $17.5 million payout from Fox Searchlight Pictures for the worldwide distribution rights. By February it seemed to many that a major Oscar contender had already emerged.

The Rape Charge

Then things began to go downhill. Much of the media hype and popular calls for boycotts focused on charges Parker had faced for an alleged 1999 rape. Parker was later acquitted of the charges, though many critics were keen to point out that “not guilty in a court of law” is not the same as “innocent.”

The worry I have is with many of those protesters concerns consistency: I wonder, how many of those who advocated boycotting Parker’s film would still watch a Roman Polanski or Woody Allen movie? How many would listen to a Michael Jackson song? And William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, once revealed that as a young man he tried to rape a 15 year old girl. Should we now banish that book from junior high reading lists?

Which crimes of the past are worth boycotting an artist’s work? Rape is, apparently, as is alleged rape. But what about attempted rape? Murder? Attempted murder? Embezzlement? Physical assault? Burglary? Drunk driving?

I admit it is probably unreasonable to expect that folks will have a precisely worked out framework by which they decide which crimes are worth a boycott. But if they’re going to lead a morally indignant boycott of Parker, shouldn’t they at least try to embed it within a broader theoretical framework? Frankly, many of the attacks on this artist remind me of the low brow mob dynamic chronicled in Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.

The Plot

The basic plot of The Birth of a Nation is riveting and rich for theological and ethical reflection. A charismatic and brilliant young slave boy who learns to read, masters the Scriptures, and becomes a dynamic preacher; as Nat’s reputation grows, his slave master begins to rent his services out to other plantations with the express mandate of preaching a message of compliance to their slaves. As you can guess, a disproportionate number of Nat’s sermons focus on texts like 1 Peter 2:18-20:

“18 Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. 19 For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. 20 For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” (KJV)

It doesn’t take long for Nat to sense an internal conflict with his role propping up a system that feeds uncontrolled barbarism: for example, right before one sermon Nat witnesses the slave owner force feeding a slave by knocking out his teeth with a chisel and then sticking a tin funnel filled with slop into his mouth. Moments later the slave pukes out a mouthful of blood, slop, and teeth. Now time for the call to worship.

In one powerful moment Nat unmasks this pro-slavery reading of the Bible. Here is the scene in the screenplay:

What follows is a brief and doomed rebellion as Nat leads several slaves to take up arms and kill their oppressors before he faces a fate which calls to mind (to my mind, anyway) William Wallace’s execution in Braveheart. 

The great strength of the film is found in laying out this story in broad strokes as it explores the interpretation and appropriation of Scripture in various cultural contexts and the ethical challenges of responding to truly evil systems of repression.

The Whitewashing Charge

I said above the the fortunes of The Birth of a Nation began to fall after its triumphant debut at Sundance. The rape charge may have garnered the most attention, but as regards the film itself the bigger issue concerned historical accuracy. Many critics have observed that Nate Parker avoids depicting the rebellion’s genocidal targeting of women and children.

To be sure, there is a hint of that carnage in the film. In one pivotal scene Nat is depicted ruminating on 1 Samuel 15:3 in which Saul is tasked with the indiscriminate slaughter of Amalekite men, women, and children. But that is perhaps the strongest hint of the unspeakable atrocities carried out by Nat and his fellow rebels against women and children. The carnage of the rebellion focuses instead on the fate of the direct oppressors.

This is really unfortunate. The film would have been far more interesting if it had shown the courage to depict the full range of atrocities committed by the rebels. I can’t help but wonder if Parker (who wrote the screenplay, directed the film, and starred as Nat Turner) grew too close to his subject matter.

There is another aspect to the history that the film skirts and that is the notion that Turner’s rebellion was born primarily of religious visions. The Nat Turner depicted in the film seems to me more like a Marxist revolutionary who seeks to unmask the cynical and exploitative use of Scripture to prop up a system that oppresses an underclass. But history suggests that Turner’s rebellion was borne more by mystical revelations of the divine will. And that is an uncomfortable fact for those seeking to plumb this story for contemporary socio-political commentary. (For that task I would instead recommend the excellent documentary 13th.) The story of Nat Turner and his ill-fated rebelion is complicated and deserves to be told on its own terms rather than appropriated by various special interests.

If these are flaws in the film–and they surely are–I would nonetheless hasten to add that they are not fatal. This is a powerful and thought-provoking cinematic retelling of an under-reported event in American history.

The post The Birth of a Nation: A Powerful but Flawed Film appeared first on Randal Rauser.