Just Sophisticated Slime: Young Men and School Shootings

I wrote this over a month ago, but wanted to wait to post it until we were a bit removed from the event.

The school shooting in Florida has once again ignited the standard debate that erupts after these events.  One side screams that if you don’t want to get rid of guns immediately, you don’t care about the children.  The other side claims that any gun control will immediately result in the United States spiraling into absolute totalitarianism.  Both arguments are irrational; both are, simply put, dead wrong.

I’ve posted over 100 times since 2014: only one other time did I discuss gun control (here ) and I didn’t argue for or against it.  I believe in private ownership of guns because of the 2^nd Amendment, just like I believe in free speech and freedom to exercise my religion because of the 1^st Amendment.  However, just as there are limits on the 1^st Amendment freedoms (for instance, I can’t use my free speech or my freedom to exercise my religion to defraud or defame someone) there can be appropriate limitations on gun ownership.  I guess you could say I take a middle of the road approach.

I could cite plenty of numbers to back up a reasoned argument that gun deaths are an insignificant portion of deaths among teenagers [you can review the CDC numbers on teenager deaths for yourself  here.]  When you combine those numbers with the number of children in middle and high schools across the nation it becomes clear, via simple math, that there is no school shooting epidemic that requires instant and drastic intervention.  See the NCES numbers here.   What the numbers suggest is that it is irrational for a parent or a child to fear there is anything more than an infinitesimal chance that child will ever die in a school shooting or even be present when a school shooting takes place.  This is much like the very irrational fear that flying in an airliner is at all likely to result in death (there were ZERO deaths from airliner crashes in 2017, across the entire world).[1] 

I fully understand it is no consolation to a grieving parent, family member or friend to know your teenager’s death was a relatively unlikely occurrence.  Nor am I, by citing these statistics and numbers, attempting to make light of any teenager’s death.  Far from it, I believe each one of these teenagers was a soul made in the image of the God of the universe and, for that reason, had value, meaning and purpose imbued into their very existence.

If people truly want to figure out how to minimize these school shootings, the question we should be asking isn’t about guns, but about why these young men make the choice to go on these rampages.  I believe the answer lies in what we teach them about who and what they are.

Our society has for many years promoted a materialist understanding of reality.  By this I refer to the view that the material universe is, as Carl Sagan liked to famously point out, “all there ever was, all there is and all there ever will be.”  There is no room for the supernatural and very little room for religion of any kind.  As a consequence, our public school students, in particular, learn from the time they are very young that they are nothing but animals – higher order animals to be sure, but animals nonetheless.  Oh you can fantasize about being “stardust” and get all jittery and spine-tingly about it, but the consequence of this belief system results in an understanding, learned all too well, especially by testosterone laden young men, that human life has no true meaning, value or purpose.  We are merely cosmic protoplasm that has developed for no particular reason into human animals due to forces that operate without any morals, standards, or design.  Thus, since we have no intrinsic value, meaning or purpose, young men have nothing restraining them from engaging in these kinds of acts.  Moreover, this nihilistic tendency absolutely follows from such a dim and dark view of reality. Rather than asking why these shootings happen, we should really be asking why don’t they happen more often. 

Until we are prepared to acknowledge this reality, we will never get a handle on the school shooting problem.  If we keep teaching our children that they’re nothing more than an accidental blip in the evolutionary ladder, our young men will continue to believe their lives have no meaning, value or purpose.  Once they imbibe this teaching, particularly young men who have no influences outside school to give them some counter-balancing, we’ll continue to get school shootings.  Or go ahead and take guns away and you’ll get kids crashing cars into crowds of students or kids using knives or baseball bats or making homemade bombs or finding other inventive ways to take lives.  It’s not a gun question; it’s a moral, philosophical and, most importantly, theological question.

There is, of course, an obvious way out.  Allow students freedom to use their 1^st amendment rights to actually “exercise” their religion.  That would mean that, yes, some students would actually proselytize others.  But it also means that many Christian students and teachers would seek ways to engage students with kindness and generosity and acceptance.  They would be allowed to actually pray for them while on school grounds without fear of reprimand.  They would be allowed to actually speak the name of Jesus or read the bible to others.

I’ll ask the question I asked a friend of mine years ago when he claimed religion didn’t belong in schools: what are you afraid of?  Are you worried that kids will become Christians and will suddenly start treating each other with greater kindness and respect and dignity.  Oh, how awful that would be. 

I can hear the cacophony of “but what about homosexuality and transgenders – you Christians are bigoted, misogynist, et ceteras when it comes to those things.  How can we trust you to treat young men right?  We don’t feel like you treat us with kindness, respect and dignity.”  Some who claim the name of Christ are not always sensitive about how they present the gospel message; this is true.  Yet, Jesus met a woman at a well who was a sexual sinner of significant magnitude and he called her out on it.  He wasn’t mean, nor did he dwell on her sin.  But he didn’t hide from it, either.  As Christians we have an obligation to explain what the Bible teaches, even when it’s unpopular.  The Bible teaches that everyone, including lost young men, lost homosexuals, and lost transgenders have value, meaning and purpose and that all who call on the name of Christ will be saved.  It is absolutely necessary that Christians explain what sin looks like, just as Jesus did with the woman at the well and it should be done with reserve and respect.  But until someone recognizes they are a sinner, just like every other human who has ever lived, save Jesus, they will never see the need to call on the name of Christ. Those who claim the message is bigoted, etc. need to take that up with the God of the universe – he inspired the writing of the book such that it would say what it says.  No man simply wrote what was on his mind.

This is incredibly important to understand because Christianity teaches, Jesus teaches, the Bible teaches, that all people are meaningful, purposeful and valuable.  The secular materialist viewpoint teaches people have the value assigned to them by society’s whims.  Don’t get me wrong, Christian beliefs won’t inoculate the schools from ever seeing another school shooting.  But it would sure go a long way toward teaching these young men that their lives and other’s lives are worth something.  It’s really hard to randomly start killing people if you think they’re something more than just a mere animal.  It’s even harder to do if you believe your own life has value, meaning and purpose.  But as long as we continue to teach children they come from primordial slime, they’ll keep growing up to act like the slime they’ve been told they are.

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[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aviation-safety/2017-safest-year-on-record-for-commercial-passenger-air-travel-groups-idUSKBN1EQ17L

Did a Mom Really Compare Abortion to Re-arranging Furniture?

I recently read an article written for New Yorker Magazine by a mother who has a son with Cystic Fibrosis.  In case you don’t know, Cystic Fibrosis is a devastating disease and most people who have it die young – typically by age 30.  It’s also very debilitating in its final stages and wracks the body horribly.  You can read the article HERE.

I recognize this mother’s plight – she has a child that will almost certainly not outlive her.  That’s a terrible burden for any parent to bear.  I’m a parent of two boys (one a fully grown man, one still a young man) and the grandparent of a 15 month old boy.  It would be devastating for me to know with almost guaranteed 100% certainty that any one of them would die before me.

But here’s the rub: no matter what, I would not trade out having any one of those three guys around.  You see, my grandson was born at 24 weeks – almost too young to make it.  He endured three months of living in a neonatal care unit with all the bells and whistles that go along with such an existence.  He’s now growing and thriving.  My son and daughter in law were told by one medical doctor to have an abortion – they refused.  It could have gone very badly for them.  Fortunately, it didn’t.  That’s one of the risks of having children, though.  You are never completely sure what you’re getting.

So this author writes the following:

The more I discuss the abortion I didn’t have, the easier that part gets to say aloud: I would have ended the pregnancy. I would have terminated. I would have had an abortion. That’s firmly in the past, and it is how I would have rearranged my actions, given all the information. It’s moving a piece of furniture from one place to another before anything can go wrong, the way we got rid of our wobbly side tables once Dudley learned to walk.

She equates having an abortion with “moving a piece of furniture from one place to another before anything can go wrong.”  How tragic to see a human life with this perspective.

Of course, she says she loves her son and I don’t doubt that she’s doing all she can to make his life bearable and livable.  The angst with which she writes is clear and heart-rending.  But one has to wonder, given the tenor of the article, is her angst more about her or about her son?  As I read the article my conclusion was that she lamented having the child because of how she feels not because her son is suffering.  In fact, the more I read, the more the word sanctimonious came to mind.  Poor, poor pitiful me.  My child has an incurable disease and but for some medical personnel failing to properly inform me about the possibility, he wouldn’t even be here and wouldn’t be weighing me down with all these darn feelings of guilt and of what could have been.

As if many parents, many mothers, haven’t had to deal with the heart wrenching reality of their child suffering?  What about the mom who did all she could and her son dies of cancer at age 5?  Would you have aborted your child if you could predict that?  And why?  Mostly to protect your own feelings, your own concerns, your own sense of what you deserve.

This isn’t about this little boy, Dudley, a child made in the image of God.  The author clearly doesn’t believe in God, as she asserts at one point that she “made” Dudley.  This is unfortunate.  She can’t acknowledge this reality, which leaves her to make the ironic and inconsistent claims that she loves her son but would have “spared” him this life had she been better informed.  Why assume his life is so awful?  Is she, or any of us, really capable of determining whether he would have been better off never being born?  How is anyone able to even make such a calculation?  Who is prepared to engage in the spectacularly arrogant presumption of claiming they know the answer?

Why believe that his life means so little?  What if her Mom had foreseen she was going to have this child and decided, based on that, to abort her?  Looking back is she willing to say that would have been acceptable?  Or, is it the case that because she doesn’t have a debilitating disease she is somehow more valuable, more meaningful, more purpose-laden than her son?  Is she so ready to write off his life when she can’t possibly predict the future with any real accuracy?

Yes, it’s incredibly likely her son will die around 30 years old or sooner.  But 30 years is time enough to live an amazing life.  None of us get a guarantee when our children are born.  But that’s what this woman wanted – either give me a child who doesn’t burden me, or let me dispose of him like a piece of old furniture.  I wonder, is she in favor of killing off her son now?  Why not?  If he was worthy of being aborted before he managed to be born, why is being born the sine qua non of humanness such that to kill him off now is morally problematic?  The very same problem presents itself – he’s got a debilitating disease that will require her to spend a great deal of energy and time taking care of him.  What is the moral difference?

We know the answer – as does this mother – none.  Yet, she clearly wants to do the best she can for her son and that is commendable.  However, given the worldview that undergirds her article, it’s irrational.  Living with that cognitive dissonance every day has to be tiring and painful.  This is what makes the Christian view of the world so uplifting – it brings hope to the hopeless, faith to the faithless, love to the unloved, joy to the joyless, meaning to those who believe their life is meaningless, purpose to those who think they’re purposeless.  Apparently, the best this Mom can do is grit her teeth and bear it.  What a horrible way to “love” your child.

SBC: The World Hates Us Anyway - A response to the Paige Patterson Matter

I had a post here on the Paige Patterson situation.  I have removed it, not because of what I said, but because I think I need to take my own advice and think more about this situation before commenting at length.

However, I do want to say this much: there is an on-line petition signed by 2400 people directed to the trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary which does not ask for Patterson to be fired, but certainly the implication is there.  I want to ask two questions of those who signed the petition:

1.  What is the biblical basis for doing such a petition in such a public manner?

2.  How many of you have any real connection of any kind to Dr. Patterson beyond what you've consumed via media?

Graham and Hawking - Which One Really Understood the Theory of Everything?

Two well known men died in the past few weeks.  Their deaths serve to show the large chasm that exists between Christian and secular thinking.  Billy Graham was a stalwart Christian evangelist who went around the world preaching a simple message of forgiveness through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ.  I did not know Billy Graham, and I would not claim he was perfect, but by all accounts he was a good man.  He believed in the message of salvation through Christ and wanted as many people as possible to hear this good news.  What is truly odd is that even by worldly consideration, Graham was a decent fellow.  He was true to his wife; was by all accounts a good, if imperfect father; was never entangled in any kind of financial scandal (not even a whiff); and was generally thoughtful and reasonable in his remarks about others.  Of course, he had bad moments, but by worldly standards he measures out pretty well on the scales of goodness versus badness.

Another man died recently: Stephen Hawking.  He was a theoretical physicist - sometimes called a cosmologist.  He wrote numerous articles, was at Cambridge University in England for many years, and, among other things, wrote a book called A Brief History of Time, which is written for lay people to understand some pretty intense physics.  His writing certainly conveyed a sense of humor and an ability to make complicated physics reasonably understandable.  I did not know Stephen Hawking and, again, would not claim he was perfect, but, by all accounts he seemed to be a reasonably decent fellow and by worldly standards he measures out pretty well on the scales of goodness versus badness.

Here's the rub though:  many in the secular media (and some in "Christian" media) had only harsh words about Billy Graham and some even took a sort of good riddance to bad rubbish attitude.  George Will, the iconic conservative columnist, for instance, was rather abrasive in his commentary on Graham.

Yet, thus far, the commentary about Hawking has gushed with praise.  Except for the inevitable complaints by those who don't want his very obvious physical condition to be mentioned, the overall tenor of discussion about Hawking has been kind and generous. 

That is how it should be.

I have nothing against Hawking and feel badly that such a brilliant mind will, barring a deathbed conversion we have not heard about, spend eternity apart from the God who created him.

I do, however, find the media coverage bizarre.  People felt no compunction about roundly criticizing Graham for any foible they could gin up (whether they actually knew him or not - cue George Will).  Yet, Graham himself would have been the first to admit his failings and his frailties.  You will not see anyone in the Christian media tar and feathering Stephen Hawking (nor should they).  I seriously doubt anyone in the secular media will criticize Hawking for any reason.  The irony is inescapable.  It cannot be the case that Hawking was perfect and never committed the kinds of sins common to all people, yet you will not hear anything about his personal shortcomings, whatever they were.

Interestingly enough, though, this is precisely what Jesus predicted for his followers: in Matthew 24:9 Jesus said about his disciples "you will be hated by all nations because of me."

So Billy Graham is treated as despicable because he dared to have clear rules about how he interacted with women; how he handled the finances of his organization; how he handled his dealings with presidents and other leaders; whether he did sometimes sin (yes, per his own admission).  Hawking is treated as some sort of icon because he . . . theorized about black holes and did extremely high level mathematical equations to make predictions about how the universe operates.

 I lament Hawking's loss because he could have been an amazing evangelist for Christ.  It's ironic that he spent so much time looking for his theory of everything when it was right in front of him - God. The very uniformity found in the cosmos, that allowed Hawking's life work to make sense, is one evidence of design that demands a designer.

Hawking had a great mind, and was a good man by worldly standards.  Our eternity, however, isn't judged by worldly standards - it's judged by our repentance of sin and belief that Jesus died on a cross for our sins and was resurrected after three days.  Billy Graham understood that simple truth and is now receiving his reward and gets to be with the answer to the theory of everything every moment for eternity - he is with God.





 

Post Harvey Weinstein - Do Feminists Owe Mike Pence an Apology?

Earlier this year there was a media firestorm about Mike Pence’s “rules” for his engagement with women who are not his wife.  Waaaaaaay back then (a mere, what, six months ago?), feminists crushed him for his “anti-woman” ways.  Soraya Chemaly at the Huffington Post for one:   Mike Pence is why we should stop excusing religious sexism.  In light of the current Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Judge Roy Moore, and numerous politicians in Washington sexual scandals, where are the apologies, the mea culpas, or at least some sort of well, gosh, gee-wiz, maybe just maybe there’s at least some slim possibility that what  Mike Pence has been doing for years actually WORKS!!!!

Here’s what Soraya Chemaly has had to say about Pence now:  What School Dress Codes have to do with Harvey Weinstein.   Oh wait, no, that’s her explanation of why school dress codes are part of the reason society objectifies women.  What has she said about Pence’s rule . . . . . . . . . . .

Do you hear the crickets chirping?  Is hell freezing over?  White noise? [Insert your own favorite cliché here].  She has said absolutely NOTHING.

Nor will she.  Hopefully you are asking, why won’t she?  Because she’s at least smart enough to realize that if she tries to talk about Pence right now she’ll have to twist herself into a kind of word pretzel that will defy all rationality.

Ms. Chemaly and others like her see the world through a hyper-feminist lens.  Everything, everything, everything (did I mention everything?) revolves around almost all men (with rare exception) doing everything they can to dominate women and keep them down.  Sure, some men have moments where they “get it” but for the  most part men are simply sperm machines who really fulfill no other function.  In Ms. Chemaly’s world almost all men spend their time figuring out ways to keep women oppressed and objectified.  So Ms. Chemaly can, in all seriousness, claim that school dress codes are nothing more than a part of the male domination machine designed to keep girls in their place. 

The broader point here is inescapable.  Ms. Chemaly and those who think like her have fallen into a most bizarre place morally.  Mike Pence is a cad because he goes out of his way to avoid situations which might tempt him or a woman who is with him and is not his wife to see each other in a romantic and/or sexual light.  Seems to me every feminist ought to be on board with guys exercising whatever means are required to keep things on the level.  But this is not good enough for the Ms. Chemaly’s of the world.  No, apparently men must actually put themselves into positions to be tempted then never give into temptation to prove their worth.  So when a guy like Harvey Weinstein takes advantage of his power and obtains sexual favors from women in exchange for movie roles, it’s just proof that men can’t be trusted and are simply power hungry and care only about using or abusing women for their own ends. Both men are wrong and morally bankrupt in Ms. Chemaly’s world.

Here’s the problem: the man Ms. Chemaly (and I presume others like her) seeks doesn’t exist.  She’s living in some fantasy world where biology simply doesn’t matter.  So, I guess (I don’t know) Ms. Chemaly would be okay with a voluptuous teenage girl showing up at school in a halter top and shorts which cover only part of her derriere?  Teenage guys are then, I guess, just supposed to “exercise self-control” and avoid thinking even one sexually charged thought when they see this young woman?  Look – from a biblical standpoint I would urge all young men to get away from such a young woman as quickly as possible in order to avoid temptation – even the temptation of just thinking about her in a sexual way.  But the bizarre rub is that Ms. Chemaly apparently (again, I don’t know) would argue that’s not what young men should do.  I guess she would argue they should feast their eyes on this young woman, all the while simply thinking about . . . I dunno  Baseball?  Apple pie?  Chevrolets?  Even secular thinkers get that biology just doesn’t work that way.

The bible tells us to “flee” from sexual immorality.  Paul told early Christians it was better to get married than to burn in sexual lust because he knew the result would be immoral behavior (consensual or otherwise). 

So Mike Pence is “fleeing” because it’s a solid answer to the problem of lust.  It’s an actual recognition that women deserve better treatment than to be seen as sexual objects.  It doesn’t mean that every woman Mike Pence sees is somehow mere eye candy.  What it does mean is he holds women in sufficient regard, including most especially his wife, that he doesn’t want to put anyone in an uncomfortable or compromising position. 

Harvey Weinstein, on the other hand, has no such scruples and gave into his biological “burning.”  He deserves the scorn he is receiving.  It is worth noting that some of Weinstein’s victims engaged in quid pro quo consensual acts.  This does not justify Weinstein’s conduct, but, yes, it does call into question the morality of the women who engaged in such acts.  I get there was pressure to say yes, but at some level isn’t this just the reverse of the very kind of argumentation Ms. Chemaly makes about how men should just “control themselves?”  Shouldn’t women just say no at that point and walk away?  Or is it morally acceptable to voluntarily give into sexual predation to get the job, then complain about voluntarily giving into sexual predation to get the job?  This kind of thing doesn’t happen in the Mike Pence scenario. Hmmm.

In an ideal world none of this would be an issue. But we do not live in an ideal world and, here’s the problem for Ms. Chemaly and her hyper feminist true believers: we will not live in such a world until Jesus returns.  In the meantime, sin rules the day and the best we can do is find ways to work around it.  Ways that work.  Maybe the way Mike Pence does it?