Month: September 2015

Irving, Texas Saved from Homemade Clock

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Texas Muslim Student Clock
Ahmed’s clock, pic from the Irving police (via Wired).

That is a picture of a homemade clock that Ahmed Mohamed took to school to show his teachers. This turned out to have been a bad idea, as The Dallas Morning News reports:

Ahmed’s clock was hardly his most elaborate creation. He said he threw it together in about 20 minutes before bedtime on Sunday: a circuit board and power supply wired to a digital display, all strapped inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front.

He showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning and didn’t get quite the reaction he’d hoped for.

“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Ahmed said. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”

He kept the clock inside his school bag in English class, but the teacher complained when the alarm beeped in the middle of a lesson. Ahmed brought his invention up to show her afterward.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said.

“I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”

The teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn’t get it back.

He suspected that he wasn’t going to get it back, but he probably didn’t expect to get interrogated, intimidated by his principle, and then led away in handcuffs. For making a clock.

822 - Ahmed in Handcuffs
Ahmed being led away in handcuffs. Thats’ a NASA shirt he’s wearing, by the way. Very ominous, am I right?

Since then, some semblance of sanity has apparently returned and the police say that Ahmed will not be facing any charges. That’s good. On the other hand, they are standing by their initial decision. That’s hardly surprising. It will be a cold day in Hell before a police force in this country (or any country) voluntarily acknowledges that they made a mistake. That’s how authoritative institutions work: they preserve their own power at any cost.

At a press conference today, a police spokesperson claimed that the device was both “a hoax bomb” and a “naive accident.” That position makes no sense. A hoax is a deliberate attempt to deceive people. An accident is not. Which is it? Given that Ahmed’s behavior it is obvious to any sane human being that it’s really neither. It’s just a talented kid who wanted to show something cool that he’d made to his teachers.

The outrage factor on this one is high, and–while I admit I’m seething–I’d like to step back from just shouting at stupid people doing stupid things because they are stupid. That’s not productive. What might be instructive is this article from Gawker: 7 Kids Not Named Mohamed Who Brought Homemade Clocks to School And Didn’t Get Arrested. So: Let’s not pretend that Ahmed’s name is not irrelevant here. Obviously it is.

Although charges were never filed by the police, Ahmed was suspended for three days by his principle. For what? According to US Today:

The principal referred questions to the district, which released a statement: “We always ask our students and staff to immediately report if they observe any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior.”

So. “If you see something, say something.” The problem with vigilance is that if you don’t know what to be vigilant for you’re not actually being vigilant. You’re being paranoid. His English teacher was scared. What does his English teacher know about explosives? Or electronics? Not much. The police were scared. One said, “It looks like a movie bomb to me.” Clearly we’re dealing with professionals here.

I know I’m veering into sarcasm again, but there’s a sincere point I want to make. Prejudice obviously played a role in this case, and prejudice obviously plays a role in a great deal of the injustice that happens in our world. But prejudice alone doesn’t explain everything. What happened in Irving took prejudice but also ignorance and especially fear. Fear and ignorance are catalysts that exacerbate underlying prejudices.

If you want to make the world more just and more fair, don’t exclusively oppose prejudice. Prejudice is hardcoded into human nature at a pretty low level. We generalize (make groups) and we infer (draw conclusions about general categories based on individual examples). Neither generalization nor inference are going away, nor should they; we need them to think. But as long as they are around, trying to train people to not apply generalization or inference in certain cases is fighting an uphill battle. It’s worth fighting, but maybe we don’t need to put all our eggs in that basket.

I’ve written about fear a lot recently, once in the specific context of refugees and migrants and more generally when it comes to security and safety. The message in both cases is pretty similar. First, we need to be willing to assess risks rationally to the best of our abilities. Second, doing the right thing means confronting fear. There is no progress without a general willingness to take risks. They come down to the same thing: don’t let fear be in control.

There’s a saying that all motivations in life boil down to two things: love and fear. Or, less poetically but more accurately: attraction and aversion. Even the tiniest microorganism has to make that decision constantly: do I approach (a potential food source) or avoid (a potential predator)? As a general rule, I think life goes better when we let love lead the way. When we are motivated by what we want to go towards rather than what we’re trying to get away from. When we strive towards what we want to make happen by rather than what we want to prevent.

So, in addition to our conversations about prejudice, it might help to also have a conversation about basic bravery. About setting aside our worship of fear. When 9/11 happened, it made the country better in a lot of ways: it brought us closer together (for a while, at least), it focused our priorities on what really matters (for a while, at least), and it reminded us of what real heroism and sacrifice look like (we seem to be doing a better job of remembering that one). But it also had some dark effects, and those effects are lingering stubbornly. Chief among them: it taught us a new kind of fear. That fear has already convinced us to trade away an awful lot of money, an awful lot of lives, an awful lot of our principles, an an awful lot of our civil liberties. We’ve spent an awful lot of time–individually and as a nation–being motivated by aversion. By fear. Maybe it’s time to change the motivation.

They say that we should never forget 9/11, but I think that depends on exactly what you’re trying to enshrine in memory. If you’re talking about the sacrifices and bravery of first responders and the folks on Flight 93, then of course we all agree. But maybe there’s more we should remember, like what it was to be an American on 9/10, before our national psyche was scarred. I think there were some things we did better then. Like not overreacting to some poor geek and his harmless hobby just because his name is Ahmed. We can’t just turn the clock back. We can’t literally forget, and we shouldn’t. But if we can get back even a little bit of that openness and confidence it will mean something. Because this time it we will be choosing openness and confidence and bravery in spite of fear rather than merely stumbling into them.

Let’s recognize prejudice for what it is and fight it. Let’s do the same with fear.

Close-Minded Christians Protest Bernie Sanders… Oh Wait…

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825 - Bernie Sanders at Liberty

Jesse Singal makes a simple but worthwhile point at NYMag: Liberty University Students Survived the Unsafe Space Created by Bernie Sanders and His Pro-Choice Views (somehow). The backstory is simple: Bernie Sanders came to speak at notoriously conservative Liberty University and, although he faced tough questions from a generally hostile crowd, no one protested to deny him the opportunity to speak and no one interrupted his speech. Contrast that as Singal does, with basically any liberal-dominated college you can think of:

For example, Emily Yoffe, who has written about the connection between alcohol and sexual assault, had a speaking offer at a West Coast college rescinded after a student organization told her that her presence would make victims of assault “feel unsafe.” At my alma mater of the University of Michigan, for example, a showing of American Sniper wascanceled (though later un-canceled) after students complained that the movie’s depiction of Iraqi Muslims would make “students feel unsafe and unwelcome.” Unsuccessful attempts to get Bill Maher and George Will canceled as speakers at the University of California – Berkeley andMichigan State, respectively, involved similar arguments about creating dangerous-feeling environments.

There are plenty more examples where those came from, of course.

I’ll tell you one thing: the word liberal sure doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

824 - You Keep Using that Word

Futurism’s Cultural Blindspot

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There’s a thought-provoking article in the recent issue of Nautilus on futurism’s blindspot: culture. The author argues that our “innovation-obsessed present” conditions us

to overstate the impact of technology not only in the future, but also the present. We tend to imagine we are living in a world that could scarcely have been imagined a few decades ago. It is not uncommon to read assertions like: “Someone would have been unable at the beginning of the 20th century to even dream of what transportation would look like a half a century later.” And yet zeppelins were flying in 1900; a year before, in New York City, the first pedestrian had already been killed by an automobile. Was the notion of air travel, or the thought that the car was going to change life on the street, really so beyond envisioning—or is it merely the chauvinism of the present, peering with faint condescension at our hopelessly primitive predecessors?

…We expect more change than actually happens in the future because we imagine our lives have changed more than they actually have.

I think this point about technology is debatable. However, the main thesis is that “Ideas, not technology, have driven the biggest historical changes. When technology changes people, it is often not in the ways one might expect:

…Why is cultural change so hard to predict? For one, we have long tended to forget that itdoes change. Status quo bias reigns. “Until recently, culture explained why things stayed the same, not why they changed,” notes the sociologist Kieran Healy. “Understood as a monolithic block of passively internalized norms transmitted by socialization and canonized by tradition, culture was normally seen as inhibiting individuals.”

In other words, “when it comes to culture we tend to believe not that the future will be very different than the present day, but that it will be roughly the same. Try to imagine yourself at some future date. Where do you imagine you will be living? What will you be wearing? What music will you love?”

Predicting the behaviors and ideas of the future are far more difficult than predicting the technology.

The Martian is Awesome, Humanity Less So

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826 - The Martian

If you haven’t heard of The Martian yet, you’re in for a treat. The self-published novel by Andy Weir was a sci-fi phenomenon when it came out in 2011 and lots of people (myself included) were irritated that it couldn’t be considered for the Hugo award when it was republished in 2014. There’s already a movie–directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon–slated for release in the US on October 2, 2015. It also looks fantastic.

Epic, am I right?

An article from MoviePilot.com goes even farther, however, and argues that “The Martian Heralds A New Era Of Realistic SciFi.” Here are some thoughts about this story, about sci-fi, and about humanity.

First, the book was great, but even as I was reading it I was pretty sure it would make an even better movie. It is really well-suited for visuals and would retain all of its punch even when shortened and simplified for screen. So, yay.

Second, I do hope that it heralds the dawn of some more realistic sci-fi. Don’t get me wrong: alien invasion stories are fun and FTL and artificial gravity are fine and dandy as plot devices go, but at a certain point I feel that scientific pseudobabble can kind of lead to all-around laziness. I mean, universal translators? They don’t even make sense conceptually. Sure, it may have been necessary for Star Trek, but it’s all the imitators who take the same liberties that drive me nuts. It’s not hard to see a trend from Star Trek to the absolute nadir of big-budget science fiction film (and the worst movie I have personally seen in my life): Wing Commander.

Finally, I also hope that realistic and popular sci-fi might lead to some renewed interest in space exploration. Because as it stands today, humanity kind of sucks on this front. No human being has been beyond low earth orbit in my lifetime. That’s really, really frustrating and should be a species-wide source of shame and humiliation. It’s not even close, by the way. That last time we (meaning: anybody) sent an astronaut outside of low earth orbit was Apollo 17. That’s 1972, people. Nineteen seventy-two. We’rec coming up on a half century since venturing outside of our atmosphere.

You really need to see a picture to understand just how pathetic this is, so here you go:

826 - LMH Earth Orbits

That tiny smidgen of blue hugging the surface of the earth? That’s LEO. The green stuff is medium earth orbit. The red is high earth orbit. The moon–which, remember, we’ve been too once or twice–is way, way out beyond that. That’s how far we were able to go 50 years ago. And that’s how far we haven’t gone in my lifetime. And we call ourselves explorers? Adventurers? It’s a disgrace.

Oh, and while I’m venting, I may as well not hold back on this either. From the MoviePilot post:

There’s something simply satisfying about a survivor tale, and the idea of being marooned has intrigued writers for centuries. The Martian takes this concept and runs with it, propelling the age old tale to a new era by placing it in an interstellar setting. And with NASA scientists advising the screenplay, could The Martian help put the realism back into sci fi? [emphasis added]

The word “interstellar” has a meaning. It means “between stars.” Does Mars orbit a different star? No, it does not. So The Martian is interplanetary, not interstellar. In any other article I would have just rolled my eyes, but come on! The thesis of this article was realistic sci-fi and the very next sentence talks about “NASA scientists advising the screenplay,” but you could even get the word “interstellar” right?

OK, I’m going to go see if there are any kids on my lawn I can shake my cane at.

NYT Op-Ed: Buying Sex Should Not Be Legal

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Another way of stating that is “buying women should not be legal”. The latter statement seems more clear, or at least I assume it is, given Amnesty International’s potential call to end laws against sex work for all involved, for the sake of “human rights”.  Because nothing says human rights of women like legalizing the roles of pimps and johns, whatever they do to “their” women.

amnesty-international
Amnesty International is about to vote on their stance on sex work. This will potentially harm women and girls across the world.

The NYT has posted a great op-ed discussing the (lack of) merits of such a legal move.  I’ve yet to read a convincing argument on how decriminalizing pimps and johns actually protects women, but in this op-ed we get a real solution to the abuse, force, and trafficking that often goes hand-in-hand with sex work.  The author, Rachel Moran, was once a sex worker herself, beginning at the age of 15 (does that look like human rights to you?).  She suggests making the sale of sex legal, but keeping the purchasing of sex illegal, and she has data to back this stance up.

In countries that have decriminalized the sex trade, legal has attracted illegal…. In New Zealand, where prostitution was decriminalized in 2003, young women in brothels have told me that men now demand more than ever for less than ever. And because the trade is socially sanctioned, there is no incentive for the government to provide exit strategies for those who want to get out of it. These women are trapped.

There is an alternative: an approach, which originated in Sweden, that has now been adopted by other countries such as Norway, Iceland and Canada and is sometimes called the “Nordic model.”

The concept is simple: Make selling sex legal but buying it illegal — so that women can get help without being arrested, harassed or worse, and the criminal law is used to deter the buyers, because they fuel the market. There are numerous techniques, including hotel sting operations, placing fake ads to inhibit johns, and mailing court summonses to home addresses, where accused men’s spouses can see them.

I’m not sure if the “Nordic Model” leaves room to criminalize the roles of pimps, but overall seems like a much better solution, one that really protects the human rights of women and girls (girls! people, girls).  Moran even has great suggestions on what to do with the fines collected from prosecuting johns, read the whole article to find out (hint: it involves helping women).

The Moral Psychology of Microaggressions

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Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has an engrossing outline of a fairly new study on what are known as microaggressions. The study examines our transition into a moral culture of victimhood. The 18th and 19th centuries saw a shift from cultures of honor to cultures of dignity. Honor-based cultures tend to lack strong legal authority and institutions, thus socializing individuals to rely on their own bravery and capabilities to avenge insults and consequently earn honorable reputations. Dignity-based cultures see the worth of individuals as inherent rather than bestowed by public opinion. This moral paradigm is reinforced by the reliance on third parties (i.e., police or courts) for egregious offenses, though frivolous use of authority is often condemned and a general “thick-skinned” approach to insult is the standard. This emerging culture of victimhood combines the sensitivity to insult of honor-based cultures with the reliance on third parties from dignity-based cultures. Sympathy is preferred to honor and victimization is emphasized rather than inner strength and worth. The status of the “virtuous victim” has risen to the point of creating competition for the coveted title of most oppressed. This leads to the reporting (and fabrication) of slight offenses toward marginalized groups (i.e., microaggressions). Yet, this publicizing of microaggressions often takes place in already highly egalitarian, diverse, and affluent pockets of society with strong administrative bodies (such as university campuses). As progress is made toward increased equality and diversity, the standard for offense paradoxically drops. In other words, the richest, most equal, most diverse societies in the world will make the loudest denunciations for the smallest possible offense (whether actual or not).

It’s an absolutely fascinating read and an incredible insight into our current culture.

Thoughts on Immigrants, Refugees, and Fear

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Aerial view of Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan (Wikipedia).
Aerial view of Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan (Wikipedia).

I’ve been following a lot of the stories about the refugee crisis in Europe. Obviously it’s a very different situation from the American debates over illegal immigration, but some important parallels have shaped my views on both issues.

I do not believe that most opposition to illegal immigration in the United States is born out of bigotry or hatred. It comes from fear. It comes from security fears (we don’t know who is coming across the border), and it comes from cultural fears (we don’t know how the influx of illegal immigrants–people who are poorer, less educated, and speak a different language–will change our culture and nation).

These fears are often exaggerated. Take the fact that Korans and prayer rugs are allegedly being found along the border. This is one of those things that may sound vaguely ominous, but only until you actually start to think about it. First of all: why would terrorists sneaking into the country carry prayer rugs and Korans in the first place? That doesn’t seem very sneaky. Second, why would they then discard these items right along the border? Not only is that not sneaky, but it’s also just nonsensical. The whole thing is rather silly, upon farther reflection.

But underneath the paranoia there is the reality that we have a porous border with a violent and sometimes unstable neighbor on the other side of it. That is a risk. So is the risk of large groups of immigrants deciding not to integrate. Although, on that latter piece, you have to think that being constantly threatened with mass deportation might play a pretty big role in the failure of integration, right?

Still, eight or ten years ago you would have found me talking about securing the border first and then mumbling about the importance of law and order. It took some fairly strong statements from the leaders of my Church to get me to change my stance on the issue. Once I did, however, I came to see my prior position as being one of fear by default. When in doubt: go with fear.

That happens to be the subject of a new essay by Marilynne Robinson, author of the incredibly powerful novel Gilead. Her piece in the New York Review of Books is titled simply: Fear.

“America, she begins, “is a Christian country.”

Now, I have to take a brief digression to point out that this statement is indeed shocking from any publication with “New York” in the title, but Robinson quickly allays liberal concerns:

This is true in a number of senses. Most people, if asked, will identify themselves as Christian, which may mean only that they aren’t something else. Non-Christians will say America is Christian, meaning that they feel somewhat apart from the majority culture. There are a large number of demographic Christians in North America because of our history of immigration from countries that are or were also Christian. We are identified in the world at large with this religion because some of us espouse it not only publicly but also vociferously. As a consequence, we carry a considerable responsibility for its good name in the world, though we seem not much inclined to consider the implications of this fact. If we did, some of us might think a little longer about associating the precious Lord with ignorance, intolerance, and belligerent nationalism.

Now, as much as I’m tempted to be cynical about only being allowed to suggest that America is a Christian nation in the context of condemning America, the fact is that Robinson is right. We do default to fear, and we have at least since 9/11. Here she states why this is such a problem in the context of Christianity:

My thesis is always the same, and it is very simply stated, though it has two parts: first, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind.

Robinson manages to avoid quoting the obvious verse, but I cannot. “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice,” writes Paul, “but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

Here’s the thing: it’s always easy to act like the good guy when you’re the one who has everything to lose. The dynamic is simple: whoever is on top is predisposed to oppose change and support the status quo because they already have it good. This is a universal tendency of human nature, and it explains everything from every day fights between older (bigger) and younger (smaller) siblings to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In that case, just to show how this works, Israel tends to behave much more responsibly, has rule of law, has protections in place for Arab citizens, and even has a strong domestic peace movement while Hamas indiscriminately launches rockets from school yards. It is easy to attribute the difference between the two to culture or religion, but the reality is that power is the simple, universal explanation for much of it. When you are on top, you care about stability and reputation and order. That means it is easy to talk, debate, deliberate, and do all of the other things that we associated with civilization. When you are on bottom, you care less about stability and reputation and more about fulfilling base needs. From that perspective change, chaos, and disorder look much more attractive.

If you want change, then you’re always going to be working against the interests of the powerful and comfortable. Always. This means that if you are one of the powerful and comfortable, you cannot work for positive change in the world without going against your own interests to at least some degree. If you are among the powerful and the comfortable, you cannot work for a better world without working for a world that is–for you, at least in the short-run–more risky.

This has powerful implications for Americans and especially for American Christians because–as much as our internal debates about social justice focus on incremental differences in privilege between different Americans–the reality is that all Americans are privileged relative to the rest of the world. We are, by any feasible international standard, the powerful and the comfortable. And that means that we if we are not willing to accept risks and face our fears, that we will never be able to be a force for good on the global scale. If fear is our guiding star, then we risk obstructing progress towards a brighter future.

This might be part of the reason Christ–who was so concerned with the treatment of society’s poor and vulnerable–was so opposed to fear. He knew that fear is the ingredient that turns otherwise decent people into passive oppressors. It’s not enough to be benign. You have to be actively engaged in facing your fears and in making sacrifices or you will remain part of the problem.

So that is the attitude that I think we need to apply not only in our policies dealing with illegal immigration here in the United States, but also with respect to the historical refugee crisis spreading from the Middle East into Europe right now.

Although the situations are certainly not identical, we’ve got essentially the same two fears at work. First, there is the fear that terrorists will slip in among the refugees.”The jihadists [ISIS] hope to flood the north African state with militiamen from Syria and Iraq,” says an article from the Telegraph, “who will then sail across the Mediterranean posing as migrants… The fighters would then run amok in southern European cities and also try to attack maritime shipping.”

Second there’s the fear that–even without any intentional aggression–the culture and infrastructure of Western democracies will be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of incoming immigrants. Thus Buchanan adds numbers upon numbers in contemplating the potential horde that could sweep into Europe:

For the scores of thousands of Syrians in the Balkans, Hungary, Austria and Germany are only the first wave. Behind them in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan are 4 million refugees from the Syrian civil war. Seeing the success of the first wave, they are now on the move.

Behind them are 2 million Alawites and 2 million Christians who will be fleeing Syria when the Bashar Assad regime falls… Now the Iraqis, who live in a country the prospects for whose reunification and peace are receding, have begun to move… When the Americans leave Afghanistan and the Taliban take their revenge, more Afghans will be fleeing west… Africa has a billion people, a number that will double by 2050, and double again to 4 billion by 2100. Are those billions of Africans going to endure lives of poverty under ruthless, incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical regimes, if Europe’s door remains wide open?

A lot of those whose hearts have been broken by the horrible images of the crisis have an instant reaction to shout down these fears. And yes: a lot of them are overblown, again. Of course ISIS is going to say that they have plans to send in elite terrorist squads with the refugees because they are interested in stoking the fires of suspicion, violence, and hatred. But why should we believe ther threats? The reality is that this is not a new problem and modern countries have methods for screening large refugee populations.

There is also validity to the second fear. Breitbart describes the influx of 25,000 migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos (population 85,000) as a “war zone” due to intense clashes between Syrian and Afghan migrants. Other coverage is less colorful, but still mentions the tension between middle-class Syrians (apt to take selfies with their smartphones when they arrive) and the much more destitute Afghan refugees. The International Business Times reports that “Greek authorities have sent troops and riot police” to Lesbos after “locals are alleged to have thrown a petrol bomb at refugees and fights have broken out between migrants from Syria and Afghanistan.” As with the instability with American migrants, however, a lot of this may be due to the conditions surrounding their arrival. The countries involved (like Greece in this case, or Hungary as another example) do not have the resources to handle this number of refugees and, in any case, are just an inconvenient way station as the refugees flock farther north and west to reach Germany, Scandinavia, or the UK. With planning and resources, a lot of the tension that leads to violence could be abated.

In other words: there’s no reason to panic but there is also no reason to believe that there is no risk at all. There is a risk. Of course there is. We–the United States and also Western and Northern Europe–are rich. We’re on top of the pile these days. For us, any major change is more likely to be threatening than not. But if we want to do good in the world, then taking risks is part of the job description.

I believe we should–as Westerners in general and as Americans in particular–be much more willing to open our hearts and borders and homes to refugees and also to migrants because it is the kind of risk that Christ would want us to take. We should not be reckless and we should not be irresponsible, but we should also not be afraid to take chances to do what ought to be done.

And here are just a few closing thoughts.

First, some have pointed out that rich Arab countries (like Saudi Arabia) are not doing very much at all to assist. Others argue that these nations are often very tiny (think Kuwait or Bahrain) and that even the big ones like Saudi Arabia do not have a habitable space. Both views are correct. There is probably no way that they can take in huge numbers of refugees, but they absolutely should take in some and–in addition–they should absolutely donate significant resources to the European nations who can absorb larger numbers of people.

Second, even if we accept large numbers of refugees, there are still going to be horrible long-term losses from this mass movement of people. Think of the communities–some of which have existed for thousands of years–which may never recover. How will small groups who have preserved their language and culture and religion and identity survive when they are transplanted to new nations and, quite possibly, split up across continents? We should not only react to the short-run crisis, but also do our best to plan for the long-run repercussions.

Third, as long as we’ve decided to help (and we should help!), we ought to do so with as much love and generosity as we can. The Book of Mormon teaches:

For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth itgrudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God.

If we’re willing to follow this proscription, then there is room for hope and optimism as a light at the end of this tunnel. There is room to believe that–if we are willing to be vulnerable–we may begin to heal the rift that has widened between Christian and Muslim, between East and West, and undercut the darkness and the hatred and the violence that has caused this crisis. God works in mysterious ways, but you only get to see the hidden beauty if you’re willing to be a part of it, I think. So let’s go ahead and take this chance, and do all we can to welcome those who so desperately need our help.

 

Don’t Blame Cars if Your Church is Weak

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831 - Cars

There’s an interesting article over at First Things: The Death of the Parish. David T. Koyzis is fundamentally right about the importance of not being free to pick-and-choose your congregation. The alternative–which most of us are living today–means that we cannot avoid a consumerist approach to our worship as we pick-and-chose a congregation that fits what we’re looking for. That meets our needs.

Of course, as a Mormon, I’m coming at this from the opposite side of the coin. Mormons–who do drive cars just as much as anybody else–do not pick and choose their congregation. With almost no exceptions, we go to the ward (congregation) we are assigned to based on our address. In fact, back when I was growing up in Richmond, I went to three or four different wards in two different physical buildings (sometimes multiple congregations share meetinghouses) based on how the church redrew the geographical boundaries of the congregations. It was always jarring and often unpopular to split and recombine congregations, but we all went where we were told to go to.

Only in later years did I come to realize how important this was. Not being able to choose who you rub shoulders with every Sunday is a big and important part of why Mormon congregations feel like family: you’re stuck with people. So you sort of have to learn to love them, or at least live with them, just to make life bearable.

All of this makes me rather dubious of Koyzis’ argument (based on Adam Graber’s piece “How Cars Created the Megachurch and put churchgoers in the driver’s seat”) that cars are to blame:

Now it is not quite right to blame the automobile as such for this defective ecclesiology. After all, it is our use of the automobile that lies ultimately at its origin. Yet no technology is neutral. The automobile has exacerbated the individualistic tendencies already at work in our culture, empowering individuals to treat even so central a community as the church as a mere extension of their personal tastes.

But there’s a flipside to this. If I didn’t have a car–if I was very limited in where I could go to Church–I would possibly not be able to visit a Mormon congregation. Not that I have anything against worshiping with other denominations from time to time (I have done so, and always enjoyed it), but for me and for most Mormons living in suburban America, the car is an enabler of our commitment to a particular faith tradition rather than some kind of individualistic corrosive. So, perhaps, it’s not the car that is really the problem here.

This is especially apparent when you consider Koyzis’ proposed solutions:

However, what if every new church building were to forgo the ubiquitous parking lot in the interest of restoring a normative ecclesiology? Might it force the churches to reach out to their own neighborhoods? Might it compel people to re-embrace the parish model, attending the church to which they can most easily walk?

Not only is the proposed solution untenable–many churches are only accessible by car for all practical purposes–but I just can’t imagine it even beginning to work. The totally unworkable nature of the cure highlights the fact that the ailment itself has been misdiagnosed.

Christian denominations in America are weakening, and it is a problem. But cars are not the issue.

Where’s the General Christian Defense of Marriage?

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835 - Christian US

Last week I pointed out that a lot of the liberal glee at Kim Davis’s apparent hypocrisy was disingenuous. One of our commenters who supports same-sex marriage countered that there is reasonable grounds for suspicion about conservative motivations for opposing same-sex marriage, however. He wrote:

There’s a slightly deeper issue at play, which none of the news or reporters that I’ve seen has addressed. That is the observation that for “Christians opposed to marriage” (my term), the reasons–including scriptures and arguments about what’s best for children or ‘family’–ought to sound as loudly with respect to divorce. And yet in many voices divorce seems to get a pass.

This is a legitimate point, and it’s worth more of a reply than I gave in the comments at the time. So, what explains the discrepancy between Christian opposition to same-sex marriage (which seems loud and absolute) and Christian opposition to divorce (which seems quiet and muddled)?

1. People are selfish hypocrites sometimes, and this includes Christians. Divorce is something that a lot of heterosexuals have participated in and/or may expect to participate in at some future time. So it effects them in a way that gay marriage simply doesn’t. Therefore opposition to divorce is seen as either limiting their future options or condemning their past actions, and so they are more likely to accept it than same-sex marriage which they can safely depend on never impacting them directly.

2. According to Christian sexual ethics, divorce (or something like it, e.g. separation, annulment) is morally acceptable and even beneficial and necessary in a small but regular and persistent set of cases (e.g. in cases of abuse). But, by the same code of ethics, same-sex behavior is not routinely acceptable, even in a minority of cases. So you can’t attribute all the discrepancy between opposition to divorce and opposition to gay-marriage to selfish-hypocrisy, because some of the difference is actually intrinsic to the underlying Christian philosophy. Of course, I don’t expect any same-sex marriage supporters to accept that this is correct, but at least it is consistent.

3. Christians have been more opposed to divorce than I think the general public is aware. This is simply because conflict draws attention. When Christians oppose divorce and try to strengthen marriage they are, for the most part, not really arguing with anyone. There is no broad, popular movement that celebrates divorce or infidelity or walking out on your family. As a result, Christian opposition to these things tends to fly under the radar and go unnoticed. But it is there. In fact, that’s what made me think of this post. Thrice, which is my favorite band, has not one but two tracks on their fairwell album Anthology that address this issue directly. Here’s one of them, “The Weight.”

The other is “Promises.” Both of them are full-throated condemnations of modern sexual morality, including not only infidelity but serial monogamy, which is generally accepted through most of American culture.

Or how about Fight the New Drug? The anti-pornography organization “presents itself as a non-religious and non-legislative organization”. That’s not at all dishonest–the group has no religious or political dogma or goals, but it is a marketing tactic to have a broad-based appeal. The fact remains that all four founders of the group are Mormon.

Then, as I mentioned in the comments at the time, there’s also covenant marriage:

Covenant marriage is a legally distinct kind of marriage in three states (Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana) of the United States, in which the marrying spouses agree to obtain pre-marital counseling and accept more limited grounds for later seeking divorce.

This is a pretty direct attempt to mitigate the effects of no-fault divorce and, while it is not become at all common even in the states where it has been enacted, it illustrates a Christianity that is working to bolster traditional views of sexual morality in the public sphere.

The reality is that the Christian fight to defend and bolster marriage is only visible when it conflicts with the mainstream of society, and it is visible in direct proportion to the extent of that conflict. When Christians sing about fidelity and marriage, basically no one notices. I’d wager that a lot of fans of Thrice don’t even know what Dustin Kensrue is singing about. When Christians campaign in ways that are indirectly opposed to social trends, such as fighting for abstinence-only or abstinence-first sex education–they are seen as obnoxious, backwards meddlers. But it’s not exactly headline news. And when Christians find themselves in a fight with an organized, dedicated, savvy coalition such as the gay-marriage campaign, then they are seen as bigots and it absolutely does become headline news.

In other words, a lot of the impression that Christians mysteriously decide to care about marriage just in time to oppose same-sex marriage is a function of the fact that no one notices what they are doing the rest of the time.

Now, a couple of closing caveats / clarifications. I’ve said “Christians” a lot, but traditional Muslim and Jewish traditions also oppose same-sex marriage. So do a small number of atheists and agnostics, including some homosexuals. But the focus here was on Christians, so that’s what I emphasized. There’s also some ambiguity around the term “Christian.” Is everyone who is born and raised as a Christian really a Christian? I don’t want to get into the business of being a gatekeeper and judging who is “good enough” to be Christian. That’s misguided, counterproductive, and distasteful. But it is worth noting that, when you see polls that show the extent to which individual Catholic opinion differs from Catholic teachings, a lot of that has to do with the interplay between religious conviction and sheer social-cultural inertia.

As long as religious belief is the default, and for the time being it still is in most of America, being an atheist is going to be a much more meaningful descriptor than being a Christian for the simple reason that–by and large–atheists are people who choose to be atheists. The same can’t be said of Christians, since the category embraces both people who consciously choose to be Christian but also people who haven’t really given it much thought and just happened to be born into a Christian family (to, quite possibly, parents who also haven’t given it much thought).

This is important, because it means that you should not be surprised when a minority of Christians actually get out there and support Christian beliefs. That’s not because Christians are more hypocritical than other groups. It’s because, as the dominant religious group in the US, the category includes a lot more “by default” members than other groups. That’s just something to keep in mind.

NYT: The Myth of Quality Time

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832 - Quantity Time

Excellent NYT article about the value of quantity time over so-called “quality time.”

There’s simply no real substitute for physical presence.

We delude ourselves when we say otherwise, when we invoke and venerate “quality time,” a shopworn phrase with a debatable promise: that we can plan instances of extraordinary candor, plot episodes of exquisite tenderness, engineer intimacy in an appointed hour.

Frank Bruni is right. There is no substitute for being there, and there is no way to schedule the most important moments of your life. They just happen or, if you’re not there, they just do not.

It’s an especially apt piece, of course, as my kids head back to school for the first day of the new academic year.