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Whatever Happened to Personal Responsibility
There is an old adage which states that you do not know how big a tree is until you try and cut it down. Today, as cultural forces slowly destroy it, we are beginning to understand that the same thing can be said about personal responsibility.
Society no longer believes that people ought to bear their suffering with dignity and grace. Rather, it now believes that the problems of the individual ought to be made the problems of the community. Individual problems are no longer the consequence of individual decisions, but come as the result of race, gender, class, and so forth.
The result of this move towards collective responsibility has been the invention of victim culture. According to this culture, non-whites are the victims of racism and white privilege, women are the victims of the patriarchy, homosexuals are the victims of a heteronormative society.
The 20th century is a perfect example of what happens when responsibility is taken from the hands of the individual and placed in the hands of the mob. The twin evils of communism and Nazism – which blamed the problems of the individual on economic and racial factors, respectively – led to the deaths of tens of millions of people.
Furthermore, such ideologies led otherwise decent individuals to commit acts of unspeakable violence. Whilst observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a former SS soldier who had been one of the architects of the Holocaust, the writer, Hannah Arendt was struck by the “banality of evil” that had characterised German war atrocities. Arendt noted that the men who conspired to commit genocide were not raving lunatics foaming at the mouth, but rather dull individuals inspired to commit evil due to a sense of duty to a toxic and corrupt ideology.
The Bolsheviks taught the Russian people that their misfortune had been caused by the wealthy. And that the wealth was gained through theft and exploitation. Likewise, the Nazis convinced the German people that their problems could be blamed on the Jews. It is not difficult to see how this philosophy led, step by step, to the gulags and the concentration camps.
The same thing is happening today. The only difference is that those who play it have become more sophisticated. Today people are encouraged to identify with identity groups ranked by so-called social privilege. Then they are taught to despise those with more social privilege than them.
Under this philosophy, crime is not caused by the actions of the individual, but by social forces like poverty, racism, and upbringing. Advocates claim that women should not be forced to take responsibility for their sexual behaviour by allowing them to essentially murder their unborn children. Sexually transmitted diseases like HIV is caused by homophobia rather than immoral and socially irresponsible behaviour. And alcoholism and drug addiction are treated as a disease rather than a behaviour the addict is supposed to take responsibility for. The list is endless.
Personal responsibility helps us take control of our lives. It means that the individual can take a certain amount of control over his own life even when the obstacles he is facing seem insurmountable.
No one, least of all me, is going to argue that individuals don’t face hardships that are not their fault. What I am going to argue, however, is that other people will respect you more if you take responsibility for your problems, especially if those problems are not your fault. Charity for aids sufferers, the impoverished, or reformed criminals is all perfectly acceptable. But we only make their plight worse by taking their personal responsibility from them.
Responsibility justifies a person’s life and helps them find meaning in their suffering. Central to the Christian faith is the idea that individuals are duty bound to bear their suffering with dignity and grace and to struggle towards being a good person. To force a man to take responsibility for himself is to treat him as one of God’s creations.
You cannot be free if other people have to take responsibility for your decisions. When you take responsibility from the hands of the individual you tarnish his soul and steal his freedom.
Freedom from responsibility is slavery, not freedom. Freedom is the ability to make decisions according to the dictates of own’s own conscience and live with the consequences of that decision. Freedom means having the choice to engage in the kind immoral behaviour that leads to an unwanted pregnancy or AIDS. What it does not do is absolve you from responsibility for those actions. Slavery disguised as kindness and compassion is still slavery.
Hypocrisy and Double Standards: Reflections on the Massacre in New Zealand
Just over a month ago, a crazed gunman entered the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch. Armed with an arsenal of weapons which included semi-automatic firearms, he began to shoot worshippers engaged in Friday prayers.
Fifteen minutes later, the gunman repeated his dastardly deed at the Linwood Islamic Centre. In the end, fifty people lay dead and thirty-six lay injured. The entire incident was broadcast live on Facebook.
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, denounced the massacre as a ‘terrorist attack.’ She echoed the sentiments of the general public. In response to the attacks, three thousand people participated in a “march for life” in Christchurch carrying signs that read “Muslims welcome, racists not”, “he wanted to divide us, he only made us stronger”, and “Kia Kaha”, which means “stay strong” in Maori.
The Muslim call to prayer was broadcast on television and radio with twenty-thousand-people attending prayer services in the park across from the Al Noor Mosque. And two New Zealand rugby teams – the Chiefs and the Hurricanes – paused for a moment’s silence before the Super Rugby game in Hamilton.
New Zealanders have been praised for their unity and compassion in response to the attacks. But what would happen if the roles were reversed? When it is not a Westerner killing Muslims, but rather a Muslim killing Westerners? Then the response, or lack of response, is rather telling.
At this stage, I should point out that what happened in New Zealand was an act of evil. The massacre of any group of people for any reason whatsoever is an act of evil. I am not trying to condone attacks against Muslims, I am merely trying to expose to the hypocrisy of our so-called betters.
The point I am trying to make is not that the Christchurch massacre was somehow a form of justified retribution. It clearly was not. The point I am trying to make is that our leaders say one thing when an attack is perpetrated by Muslims and another when the attack is perpetrated against Muslims.
To put it bluntly, whenever a terrorist attack occurs involving a Muslim or a group of Muslims, politicians and the media are quick to downplay the Islamic elements. But if it is a Westerner targeting Muslims, or any other minority group, accusations of racism and xenophobia are repeated ad nauseum.
Whenever a Muslim, whether affiliated with a terrorist organisation or not, commits an act of terror, his actions are typically met by that all-too-common disclaimer: “it had nothing to do with Islam.” Even when the perpetrator expressly states that he is committing his heinous deed in the name of Islam it still has “nothing to do with Islam.”
The British journalist, Douglas Murray made similar observations when he appeared on Fox and Friends. “We’ve had a different response when it comes to Islamic terror”, he stated. “Consistently we find out there are people [after a terrorist attack] who knew about the extremism [and] didn’t report it, members of the community who say they don’t want to go the British police, and we find out Mosques people attended are being run by radicals.”
Murray has accused the West of resorting to the “John Lennon” response to terrorism. “They blow us up, we sing Imagine”, he says. “Our politicians still refuse to accurately identify the sources of the problem and polite society remains silent.”
I think it is self-evident that there would have been an entirely different response had it been a Muslim perpetrator attacking Westerners. There would not have been the protests, the moment’s silence, the religious and cultural messages broadcast on television and radio. Politicians and media identities would not have condemned the attacks as viscerally or as quickly as they did. There simply would not have been the same level of outrage. Instead, the Islamic elements would have been dismissed and the incident largely would have been ignored.
It is hard to believe that this kind of willful ignorance boils down to mere incompetence. To acknowledge that Islam has been responsible for a great deal of misery in the world is to go against the narrative that anyone who is not a straight, white, male, Christian is a member of a victim group. To acknowledge Islam’s role in a great deal of the misery in the world is to acknowledge that Muslims can be, and frequently are, the villains.
The left and the media, but I repeat myself, reacted to the Christchurch massacre in the way that they did because they want to elevate Muslims to the category of victim. It is a blatant attempt to sell black and white and white as black. And if you dare suggest the advertisement is misleading, you’re a bigot.
It really boils down to virtue signalling. That self-centred and cowardly habit of making vacuous comments in an attempt to make yourself look good. Public figures will now say anything that makes themselves appear more virtuous than everybody else. They resort to making statements that appear say something intelligent without really saying anything at all.
TRANSGENDERISM IS NO BASIS FOR PUBLIC POLICY
It has been over fourteen-year since David Reimer, the victim of an insane and evil scientific experiment, committed suicide. After his penis had been burnt off in a botched circumcision, David’s parents had turned to the infamous sexologist and social constructionist, Dr. John Money for help. Following Dr. Money’s advice, David’s parents agreed to allow a sex change operation to be performed on their young son and raised him as a girl.
Despite Dr. Money’s boasting that his experiment had been a success, however, David Reimer did not settle comfortably into his female identity. David tore up his dresses at three, asked if he could have his head shaved like his father, and engaged in all manner of boyish behaviour. David was bullied at school and, upon hitting puberty, decided that he was a homosexual (in reality, of course, he was heterosexual).
Finally, when he was fourteen David’s parents revealed the truth about his gender identity. David reverted to his masculine identity, broke off contact with Dr. Money whom he described as an abusive brainwasher, and received a non-functioning penis through phalloplasty. Unable to handle the immense psychological damage that had been inflicted upon him, David Reimer blew his brains out with a shotgun at the age of thirty-eight.
For all of human history, boy has meant boy and girl has meant girl. Traditionally, sex was used to refer to the biological markers of gender. If you were born with a penis and an XY chromosome, you were a man. If you were born with a vagina and an XX chromosome, you were a woman. One’s gender expression was thought to compliment one’s biological sex. A biological man would have masculine personality traits and a biological female would have feminine personality traits. These complimentary characteristics, among them body shape, dress, mannerisms, and personality, were thought to be produced by a mixture of natural and environmental forces.
Recently, however, gender theorists have begun to question the relationship between biological sex and gender identity. They argue that gender, which they see as distinctive from sex, is a social construct. Since gender refers to the expression of masculinity and femininity, gender is something that a person acquires. (Needless to say, this movement is driven by a pernicious post-modern, Neo-Marxist worldview). Under this philosophy, gender expression is the manner in which a person expresses their gender identity. Gender identity is expressed through dress, behaviour, speech, and nothing else besides.
Neuroplasticity provides the gender theorist with perhaps his greatest argument. If underlying brain processes are theoretically strengthened through repetitive use, it follows that gender identity comes from a narrowing down of potential gender categories through the repetitive use of certain brain processes. However, it also reveals a fatal flaw in the gender theorist’s (and social constructionist’s) philosophy. If the human brain is so malleable that an individual’s gender identity is constructed, then why can’t the brain of a transgender person be adapted out of its transgenderism?
The primary problem with gender theory is that it just plain wrong. The idea that gender is distinct from sex has absolutely no basis in science whatsoever. As Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychology/philosopher, has stated: “the idea that gender identity is independent of biological sex is insane. It’s wrong. The scientific data is clear beyond dispute. It’s as bad as claiming that the world is flat.” Men and women differ both at the cellular and the temperamental level. Unlike men, for example, women menstruate, they can have babies, and they show a slew of personality characteristics that mark them as different from men. David C. Page, the Director of the Whitehead Institution at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has even claimed that genetic differences exist at the cellular level asserting that “throughout human bodies, the cells of males and females are biochemically different.” These differences even affect how men and women contract and fight diseases.
The philosopher Alain de Benoist has also strongly criticised gender theory. De Benoist argued against the scientific errors and philosophical absurdities in his work Non à la théorie de genre (No to Gender Theory).
First, De Benoist points out that the gender theorists have used the fact that some gender characteristics are socially constructed to argue that all characteristics are socially constructed.
Second, De Benoist argued that the “hormonal impregnation of the foetus” (as De Benoist puts it) causes the brain to become genderised because it has a “direct effect on the organisation of neural circuits, creating a masculine brain and a feminine brain, which can be distinguished by a variety of anatomical, physiological, and biochemical markers.”
Third, De Benoist argued that biological sex has a profound effect on the way people think, act, and feel. In order to support their theory, gender theorists are forced to deny the natural differences between men and women. De Benoist wrote:
“From the first days of life, boys look primarily at mechanized objects or objects in movement while girls most often search for visual contact with human faces. Only a few hours after birth, a girl responds to the cries of other infants while a boy shows no interest. The tendency to show empathy is stronger in girls than in boys long before any external influence (or “social expectations”) have been able to assert themselves. At all ages and stages of development, girls are more sensitive to their emotional states and to those of others than boys … From a young age, boys resort to physical strategies where girls turn to verbal ones … From the age of two, boys are more aggressive and take more risks than girls.”
Furthermore, gender theory cheapens what it means to be a man or a woman. And, by extension, it denigrates the contributions that each gender has to make to civil society. Gender values give people ideals to strive for and helps them determine the rules that govern human interactions. The idea that men and women ought to be treated the same is ludicrous beyond belief. No parent would like to see their son treat a woman the same way they treat their male friends. Men have been taught to be gentlemen and women have been taught to be ladies for a reason.
All of this is not to say, however, that those pushing transgender rights do not have a case. They are right when they claim that the transgender peoples of the world face discrimination, prejudice, and violence. Some countries treat transgenderism as a crime, and it is certainly true that transgender people are more likely to be victims of violence, including murder. A reasonable transgender rights argument would be that transgender people cannot help their affliction and that society ought to treat them with kindness, tolerance, and compassion.
Unfortunately, that is not the argument that gender activists like to make. Rather than focusing on promoting tolerance, gender activists have instead sought to do away with gender distinctions altogether (which is, more likely than not, their actual aim). Using a very tiny minority of the population as their moral basis, the gender activists are attempting to force society to sacrifice its traditional classifications of male and female.
Transgenderism is clearly a mental health disorder. In the past, it was referred to as “gender dysphoria”, considered a mental illness, and treated as such. To assert the fact that transgenderism is a mental health disorder is not a denial of an individual’s integral worth as a human being. It is merely the acknowledgement of the existence of an objective reality in which gender is both binary and distinct. Unfortunately, this is not the attitude of those who influence public opinion. Consequently, programs for LGBTQ youth have seen an increase in youth who identify as transgender. The transgender journalist, Libby Down Under, has blamed instances of rapid-onset gender dysphoria on the normalisation of transgenderism in the culture. With a slew of celebrities coming out as transgender (former Olympian Bruce Jenner being a primary example), and with transgender characters being featured on numerous television shows, many teens and tweens have suddenly decided that they are transgender despite having no prior history of gender confusion.
Transgender youth increasingly feel that it is their right to express themselves however they please. And they feel that it is their right to silence all who dare to criticise or disagree with that expression. Cross-living, hormone therapy, and sex reassignment surgery are seen as part of this self-expression. Alarmingly, the mainstream response of psychotherapists to these children and adolescents is the “immediate affirmation of [their] self-diagnosis, which often leads to support for social and even medical transition.”
It is a classic case of political posturing overshadowing the pursuit of truth. Most youth suffering from gender dysphoria grow out of their predilection. Dr. James Cantor of the University of Toronto has cited three large-scale studies, along with other smaller studies, to show that transgender children eventually grow out of their gender dysphoria. The Diagnostic and Statistics Manual 5th Edition claims that desistance rates for gender dysphoria is seventy to ninety percent in “natal males” and fifty to eighty-eight percent in “natal females.” Similarly, the American Psychological Association’s Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology concludes that the vast majority of gender dysphoria-afflicted children learn to accept their gender by the time they have reached adolescence or adulthood.
It is not a secret that transgenderism lends itself to other mental health problems. Forty-one percent of transgender people have either self-harmed or experienced suicidal ideation (this percentage, of course, does not reveal at what stage of transition suicidal ideation or attempts occur). The postmodern, neo-Marxist answer to this problem is that transgender people are an oppressed minority and that they are driven to mental illness as a result of transphobia, social exclusion, bullying, and discrimination.
It is typical of the left to presume that society is to blame for an individual’s suffering. And to a certain extent, they are right. Transgender people are the victims of discrimination, prejudice, and violence. But it is more than likely that these abuses exacerbate their problems rather than causing them. One in eight transgender people, for example, rely on sex and drug work to survive. Is that the fault of society or the fault of the individual? The National Center for Transgender Equality claims that it is common for transgender people to have their privacy violated, to experience harassment, physical and sexuality violence, and to face discrimination when it comes to employment. They claim that a quarter of all transgender people have lost their jobs and three-quarters have faced workplace discrimination because of their transgender status.
In Australia, there has been a move to allow transgender children access to hormone-blocking drugs and sex-change surgeries. Australian gender activists – surprise, surprise – support the idea of as a way to reduce the rates of suicide among transgender people. The Medical Journal of Australia has approved the use of hormone therapy on thirteen-year-olds despite the fact that the scientific community remains, as of 2018, undecided on whether or not puberty-blocking drugs are either safe or reversible.
In the United States, a great deal of debate has occurred over transgender rights. In particular, there have been debates over what bathroom they should be allowed to use, how they should be recognised on official documents, and whether they should be allowed to serve in the military. In 2016, former President Barack Obama ordered state schools to allow transgender students to use whatever bathroom they desire. Similar ordinances have been passed in hundreds of cities and counties across the United States. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia are subject to ‘non-discrimination’ laws which include gender identity and gender expression. These include restrooms, locker rooms, and change rooms.
In March of 2016, North Carolina passed a law which required people in government buildings to use the bathroom appropriate to their biological gender. The US Federal Government decried the decision as bigotry and accused the government of North Carolina of violating the Civil Rights Act. The Federal Government threatened to withhold over US$4 billion in education funding. The government of North Carolina responded by filing suit against the government of the United States. The US government responded by filing suit against North Carolina. North Carolina received support from Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas whilst Washington received support from most of the northern states.
Pro-transgender bathroom policies are not limited to government, however. Many businesses in the United States have similar bathroom policies. Many large corporations, among them Target, allow transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice. And they are perfectly prepared to enforce these policies, as well. A Macy’s employee in Texas was fired after he refused to allow a man dressed as a woman to use the female change rooms. Similarly, Planet Fitness revoked the membership of a woman who complained that a transgender man was in the female change rooms.
The most alarming trend of the gender theory movement is the attempt to indoctrinate children through changes to the education system. In 2013, France unleashed the ABCD de l’égalité (the ABCs of Equality) on six hundred elementary schools. In their own words, the program was designed to teach students that gender was a social construct:
“Gender is a sociological concept that is based on the fact that relations between men and women are socially and culturally constructed. The theory of gender holds that there is a socially constructed sex based on differentiated social roles and stereotypes in addition to anatomical, biological sex, which is innate.”
The creators of the program are smart enough to include the disclaimer: “biological differences should not be denied, of course, but those differences should not be fate.”
Fortunately, it would seem that many people are not taken in by this race to fantasyland. They are not taken in by the idea that the program merely exists to combat gender stereotypes and teach respect, and have protested. The French Minister of Education dismissed the protestors by saying that they “have allowed themselves to be fooled by a completely false rumour… at school we are teaching little boys to become little girls. That is absolutely false, and it needs to stop.” In America, The Boston Globe dismissed the protests against the program as being motivated by fear. Judith Butler event went as far as to say that France’s financial instability was the true cause of the protests.
And such a profound misuse of the education system isn’t limited to France, either. In Scotland, teachers are given guidance by LGBT Youth Scotland, children are expected to demonstrate “understanding of diversity in sexuality and gender identity”, and children are allowed to identify as either a girl or boy, or neither. The government of the United Kingdom has mandated that transgender issues be taught as part of the sex and relationships curriculum in primary and secondary school. Justine Greening, the education secretary, said: “it is unacceptable that relationships and sex education guidance has not been updated for almost twenty years especially given the online risks, such as sexting and cyberbullying, our children and young people face.”
It is in Australia, however, that there is the most shocking case of gender theory indoctrination. A great deal of controversy has been generated over the Safe Schools program. The program, which was established by the Victorian government in 2010, is supposedly designed to provide a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment for LGBTI students. It states that schools have the responsibility to challenge “all forms of homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, intersexism to prevent discrimination and bullying.”
The Safe Schools program promotes itself as an anti-bullying resource supporting “sexual diversity, intersex and gender diversity in schools.” It requires Victorian schools to eliminate discrimination based on gender identity, intersex, and sexual orientation, including in terms of an inclusive school environment.
The program addresses the issues of sleeping and bathroom arrangements and dress code. In terms of dress code, the program states:
“An inflexible dress code policy that requires a person to wear a uniform (or assume characteristics) of the sex that they do not identify with is likely to be in breach of anti-discrimination legislation including under the Equal Opportunity Act (1984) SA”
Likewise, the program states on the issue of bathrooms and change rooms that “transgender and diverse students should have the choice of accessing a toilet/changeroom that matches their gender identity.” In addition, the program states:
“Schools may also have unisex/gender neutral facilities. While this is a helpful strategy for creating an inclusive school environment for gender diverse students broadly, it is not appropriate to insist that any student, including a transgender student, use this toilet if they are not comfortable doing so.”
The idea that a transgender boy or girl should be allowed to sleep, shower, and defecate in the same place as a group of boys or girls ought to ring alarm bells for everyone. It increases the risk of sexual activity, sexual assault, pregnancy, and the transmission of sexually-transmitted-diseases. There is a reason why schools segregate changerooms, toilets, and dormitories.
The tragedy of David Reimer reveals just how dangerous it is to ignore the truth in favour of a false and malevolent social philosophy. It is one thing to seek tolerance and compassion for those in the community who may be struggling with their identity. It is something else entirely to use the plight of transgender peoples as a means of cording society to change the way it categorises gender. And it is completely insane to allow a false philosophy like gender theory to be used as the basis of public policy. If we don’t want more tragedies like David Reimer’s, we should put gender theory out in the trash where it belongs.
WHAT ARCHER REVEALS ABOUT HUMAN GOODNESS
There is great truth to the sentiment that what appears simple and childish on the surface often hides the most profound and universal ideas of human goodness.
A cultural example of this phenomenon comes in the guise of the animated show, Archer. A show centred around the trials and tribulations of the men and women of the fictional independent, New York-based spy agency, ISIS (International Secret Intelligence Service).
That the show is both popular and critically acclaimed is self-evident. It has received an audience score of ‘9’ on Metacritic (based on 375 ratings) and an audience score of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critically, it has been nominated for fifteen Annie Awards, and has won the Prime-Time Emmy awards, four Critics’ Choice Awards, and two Gold Derby Awards.
Archer’s popularity comes from two places. First, it’s exemplary use of meta-comedy, referenced-based humour, and use of rapid-fire dialogue that creates comedic elements which are, at the same time, crude and witty, nihilistic and meaningful. And second, its ability to create well-rounded characters who, despite their insufficiencies, are always willing to help one another.
It is the second part of this equation that I would like to focus on.
The primary example of this is displayed in the show’s protagonist, Sterling Archer. A man who could accurately be described as an immature, self-centred, narcissistic, and egotistical man-child. Archer is clearly a man who suffers from an abundance of emotional deficiencies. His abandonment issues stem from the lack of love he received as a child. His constant need to overcompensate for his insufficiencies, typically through drink, women, and sheer stupidity, is the result of being bullied at school.
As a consequence, Archer is a socially inept alcoholic and sex addict. And when combined with his narcissism, results in the kind of man who behaves recklessly not because he is fearless, but because he genuinely believes himself to be impervious to harm.
This is actually the primary joke of the show. Archer is not the “world’s most dangerous secret agent” because he is highly competent. Rather, he is the “world’s most dangerous secret agent” because his ineptitude makes him a danger to everyone around him.
Then there’s Archer’s boss and mother, Mallory. In many ways, she is worse than her son. She is, like her son, narcissistic and self-centred, and perhaps a little too fond of the bottle. However, unlike her son, who is capable of showing some humanity in spite of his self-centredness, Mallory is an emotionally cold, unloving, and hypocritical woman. She berates her employees but frequently embezzles money from her own company (usually for one materialistic splurge or another), and she’s perfectly willing to exploit the talents of her staff for her own personal gain.
Finally, there is Cyril Figgis, the mild-mannered and softly-spoken accountant who is, perhaps, the worse of the lot. Crippled with self-doubt and frequently the target of Archer’s provocations, Figgis is a man brimming with hatred and resentment. He is a man who abuses power once he gets it and fails to accept either advice or help from
What makes Archer a compelling show is that these characters are willing to help and forgive one another in spite of all their insufficiencies. Even Mallory Archer and Cyril Figgis are prepared to help their colleagues when they get into trouble, albeit begrudgingly. Sterling Archer may be a self-centred buffoon, but he’s the first person to come to his friend’s aid when they get in trouble. Heck, he even describes Pam Poovey, the overweight human resources manager, as his best friend.
This is why Archer is compelling to watch. It reminds us that human beings are not perfect, but they can still find it within themselves to help one another.
IN DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
In 2017, the online video subscription service, Hulu, embarked on the production of Margaret Atwood’s (1939 – ) 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The story is set in the fictional, totalitarian state of Gilead: a society run by fundamentalist Christians who overthrew the previous secular state and set up a theocracy in its wake. For years, influential thought leaders and other arbiters of popular opinion have espoused the opinion that broader society would greatly benefit from the abolition of Christianity. It is my belief that such an occurrence would have precisely the opposite effect.
No group has criticised Christianity more than the New Atheists. Frequently deriding it as nothing more than “science for stupid people”, prominent New Atheists have ridiculed Christianity and dismissed its positive effects. Atheists and anti-Christians turn Christianity into a straw man by reducing it down to his most basic elements (they are helped, unfortunately, by those fundamentalist Christians who still assert that the earth is literally six-thousand years old). They then use this straw man to discredit the idea of faith. The philosopher, Sam Harris (1967 – ) argued in his book, The End of Faith that religious belief constituted a mental illness. More alarmingly, the British Scientist, Richard Dawkins (1941 – ) took things one step further by claiming that religious instruction constituted a form of child abuse.
The basis for much of Christianity’s negative portrayal finds its roots in the philosophies of the political left. A central tenet of the left-wing worldview is an adherence to secularism, which appears set to replace Christianity as the prevailing cultural belief system. (This is not to be confused with atheism, which denies the existence of a creator). On the one hand, secularism promotes both religious liberty and the separation of church and state (both of which are good things). On the other hand, however, proponents of secularism reject the knowledge and wisdom religious institutions can impart on the world. In a secular society, God can be believed to exist, but not in any sort of a productive way. God is something to be confined the private home or the sanctuary of one’s local Church. God is something to be worshipped behind closed doors where no one can see you.
Of course, anti-Christian rhetoric has been a facet of popular culture since the 1960s. Today, finding a positively-portrayed devout Christian family is about as likely as finding a virgin in the maternity ward. Christians are routinely depicted as stupid, backwards, hateful, and extreme. By contrast, atheists are routinely depicted as witty, intelligent, and tolerant. In short, Atheism is deemed as good and Christianity is deemed as bad. And, of course, this attitude has filled some with a kind of arrogant grandiosity. During an interview in 1966, John Lennon (1940 – 1980) opined: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.”
The mainstream media rarely discusses the persecution of Christians. Indeed, prejudice and discrimination against Christianity is treated with a type of permissiveness that prejudice and discrimination against other religions, Islam being a primary example, is not.
Christians are estimated to be the victims of four out of five discriminatory acts around the world, and face persecutions in one-hundred-and-thirty-nine countries. Churches have been firebombed in Nigeria. North Koreans caught with Bibles are summarily shot. In Egypt, Coptic Christians have faced mob violence, forced removals, and, in the wake of the Arab spring, the abduction of their females who are forced to marry Muslim men.
In China, Christian villagers were instructed to remove pictures of Christ, the Crucifix, and Gospel passages by Communist Party officials who wished to “transform believers in religion into believers in the party.” According to the South China Morning Post, the purpose behind the drive was the alleviation of poverty. The Chinese Communist Party believed that it was religious faith that was responsible for poverty in the region and wanted the villagers to look to their political leaders for help, rather than a saviour. (Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Chinese Communist Party looked at their own evil and ineffective political ideology as the true cause of poverty in their country rather than blaming it on religion?). As a result, around six-hundred people in China’s Yugan county – where about ten percent of the population is Christian – removed Christian symbology from their living rooms.
Popular culture and thought in the West has attempted, with a great deal of success, to paint Christianity as stupid, backwards, dogmatic, and immoral. It is the presence religion that is to blame for holding the human race back. It is religion that is to blame for racism, sexism, and all manner of social injustices. It is religion that is the cause of all wars. So, on and so forth.
I strongly disagree with this argument. Indeed, it is my belief that the abolishment of Christianity from public life would have the effect of increasing intolerance and immorality. Christianity’s abolishment will have precisely this effect because it will abolish those metaphysical doctrines – divine judgement, universal and absolute morality, and the divinity of the human soul – that has made those things possible.
Christianity and Western Civilisation are inextricably linked. In the field of philosophy, virtually all Western thinkers have grappled with the concepts of God, faith, morality, and more. As the writer, Dinesh D’Souza (1961 – ) wrote in his book, What’s So Great About Christianity:
“Christianity is responsible for the way our society is organised and for the way we currently live. So extensive is Christian contribution to our laws, our economics, our politics, our art, our calendar, our holidays, and our moral and cultural priorities that J.M. Robers writes in Triumph of the West: ‘We could none one of us today be what we are if a handful of Jews nearly two thousand years ago had not believed that they had known a great teacher, seen him crucified, died, and buried, and then rise again’.”
The primary contribution of Christianity to Western civilisation has been to act as a stabilising force, providing society with an overarching metaphysical structure as well as rules and guidelines that act as a moral foundation. This shared metaphysical structure and moral foundation, combined with traditions and cultural customs, has the effect of bringing a country, a township, even a school or parish, together.
When Christianity lost its supremacy in society it was replaced by smaller, less transcendent and more ideological, belief systems. Where people had once been unified by a common belief, they have now become more divided along ideological lines. Religious belief has not been replaced by rationalism or logic, as the New Atheists supposed. Rather, people have found outlets for their need to believe in other places: social activism, political ideologies, and so forth.
The most prevalent contribution that Christianity has made to the Western world comes under the guise of human rights. Stories like The Parable of the Good Samaritan have had a remarkable influence on its conception. Human rights stem, in part, from the belief that human beings were created in the image of God and hold a divine place in the cosmos. Christianity has played a positive role in ending numerous brutal and archaic practices, including slavery, human sacrifice, polygamy, and infanticide. Furthermore, it has condemned incest, abortion, adultery, and divorce. (Remarkably, there are some secularists who wish to bring back some of these antiquated practices).
Christianity placed an intrinsic value on human life that had not been present in pre-Christian society. As the American Pastor, Tim Keller (1950 – ) wrote in Reasons for God: “It was extremely common in the Greco-Roman world to throw out new female infants to die from exposure, because of the low status of women in society.” Roman culture was well known for its brutality and callousness. Practices of regicide, gladiatorial combat, infanticide, and crucifixion were all common. Seneca (4BC – AD65), Nero’s (AD37 – AD68) chief advisor, once stated that it was Roman practice to “drown children who, at birth, are weakly and abnormal.”
Christian morality has had a notable effect on our views on human sexuality and has helped to provide women with far greater rights and protections than its pagan predecessors. Christianity helped to end the hypocritical pagan practice of allowing men to have extra-marital affairs and keep mistresses. It formulated rules against the cohabitation of couples prior to marriage, adultery, and divorce. Unlike the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans, Christians do not force widows to remarry, and even allowed widows to keep their husband’s estates.
The Christian faith has been instrumental in the enactment and promotion of public works. The instigator of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) championed the idea of compulsory education and state-funded schools. Similarly, the Lutheran layman, Johann Sturm (1507 – 1589) pioneered graded education. Christianity has been the source of numerous social services including health-care, schooling, charity, and so forth. Christianity’s positive belief in charity and compassion has lead to many orphanages, old-age homes, and groups like the Sisters of Charity and Missionaries of the Poor, the YMCA and YWCA, Teen Challenge, the Red Cross, and numerous hospitals and mental health institutions being founded by the faithful.
One of the frequent criticisms levelled at the Christian faith, particularly the Catholic Church, has been that it has stymied scientific and technological development. In truth, Western science and technology have been able to flourish because of the influence of Christianity, not in spite of it. This is because the Christian belief that God created everything lends itself to the idea that everything is worth contemplating. It is certainly true that the Catholic Church has been hostile to those discoveries that do not conform to its doctrine. Galileo, for example, was forced to retract his claim of heliocentrism because it challenged the Church’s doctrine that the earth acted as the centre of the solar system. For the most part, however, Christianity has been largely supportive of scientific endeavour. Christian scientists have included Gregor Mendel (1822 – 1884), Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543), Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630), Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642), Arthur Eddington (1882 – 1944), Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727), Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662), Andre Ampere (1775 – 1836), James Joule (1818 – 1889), Lord Kelvin (1824 – 1907), Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691), George Washington Carver (1860s – 1943), Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895), Joseph Lister (1827 – 1912), Francis Collins (1950 – ), William Phillips (1914 – 1975), and Sir John Houghton (1931 – ), and more.
The forces behind the stratospheric success of Western civilisation has not been its art or music or architecture, but the ideas it has built itself upon. It is notions like the rule of law, property rights, free markets, a preference for reason and logic, and Christian theology that are responsible for making Western society the freest and most prosperous civilisation that has ever existed. It cannot survive with one of its central tenents removed.
The Qualities That Build Society
Everyone versed in culture and politics understands the truth in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (1792 – 1822) argument that creators of culture are the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Our view of the world is derived from our religious beliefs, the stories we read as children, the movies we watched, the cultural customs we become accustomed to, and so forth. It is not that culture constructs the physical edifices of civilisation per say, but that culture forms the values and philosophies upon which civilisation is founded.
In the west, the prevailing cultural narrative champions wholesome virtues: kindness, compassion, love, fair-play, and so forth, as being the only way to achieve prosperity and success. The individual must avoid combat with others, and be polite, civil, pleasant, and diplomatic to all. To be seen using aggression or wanting power leads to social isolation. This has certainly been the message in culture. In Shakespeare’s Richard III, the title character is a corrupt, twisted, and Machiavellian prince who schemes his way into power. By contrast, the future Henry VII is seen to be fair and humane. By the end of the play, Richard dies hated even by members of his own family, whereas Henry is celebrated as a noble hero.
This worldview bears little resemblance to reality:
“The manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself with the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since anyone who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good. It is essential for a prince who wishes to maintain his position, to have learned how to be other than good, and to use or not to use his goodness as necessity requires.” (Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1532, Chapter 15, page 114)
Bubbling just below the surface are the real, amoral virtues which foster prosperity and success. In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) puts forth the following proposition:
“Suppose nothing is given as ‘real’ except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other ‘reality’ besides the reality of our drives.” (Beyond Good and Evil, page 59).
Maybe we aren’t as driven by morality and Godliness as we like to think we are. Maybe we are driven by lust for power, material wealth, and sex. (This, of course, brings forth the possibility that the purpose of wholesomeness is to temper our real desires).
Even though we loathe having to admit it, all of us want power. Power gives us greater control and makes us feel more secure. But since it is socially unacceptable to be seen wanting power we are forced to rely on subtlety. We are forced to become honest on the one hand, and duplicitous on the other, congenial yet cunning, democratic yet devious.
In chapter twenty-one of the Prince, Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) wrote: “Nothing makes a prince so well thought of as to undertake great enterprises and give striking proofs of his capacity.” Our civilisation was built through ambitious and power-hungry individuals. Not by the wholesome virtues presented to us.
THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARRIAGE
The focus on rights and privileges has become a major characteristic of our modern culture. This focus has manifested itself in a variety of ways. One of these has been the focus upon the denial rights of the so-called underprivileged and oppressed – these namely being women (who, for some reason, are considered a minority), homosexuals, transgendered peoples, non-whites, non-Christians, and more. This focus on rights and privileges has perverted and corrupted all aspects of social and cultural life, including marriage.
For centuries, numerous political philosophers have seen the organisation of sex and reproduction as being vital to the health of a society. The most obvious form of this organisation could be found in marriage: an institution used by society to regulate family life, sex, and reproduction. The American political scientist, James Q. Wilson (1931 – 2012), said in his book, the Marriage Problem (2002): “Marriage is a socially arranged solution for the problem of getting people to stay together and care for children that the mere desire for children, and the sex that makes children possible, do not solve.”
Wilson observed in his book, the Moral Sense (1993):
“In virtually every society, the family is defined by marriage; that is, by a publicly announced contract that makes legitimate the sexual union of a man and a woman. Even in societies where men and women have relatively unrestricted sexual access to one another beginning at an early age, marriage is still the basis for family formation. It is desired by the partners and expected by society. Marriage, in short, is not simply a way of legitimizing sex, and so it cannot be dispensed with just because sexual activity need not be made legitimate. Marriage exists because people must take responsibilities for child care and assume economic obligations. Marriage, and thus the family that it defines, is a commitment.”
Christianity sees marriage as a covenant based on duty and commitment, not one based purely on feelings. Christian marriage is based on agape: the sacrificial love for another person. It is a love that is genuine, that endures through both good times and bad, that is not diminished by time or circumstance, that has a spiritual dimension, and is based on words and actions. This is a compassionate love, not a romantic one.
Marriages work when husbands and wives contribute equally to its health and vitality. Suffice to say, both husband and wife have duties and responsibilities in this regard. The first duty of the individual, then, is to psychologically separate themselves from their parents and siblings and form a new identity as husband or wife. (It is important to note here that this does not mean alienating or abandoning one’s birth family). After this, husbands and wives are duty-bound to love, honour, and trust each other. They should avoid any activity that may cause reasonable suspicion our jealousy so they may live in peace and harmony with each other. Finally, they ought to treat each other with reverence and respect: tolerating each other’s imperfections and being kind and charitable with one another.
The modern obsession with rights and privileges has created an imbalance. This imbalance can only be redressed by asserting the importance of individual responsibility. One of the central places this can occur is through the focus on the obligations and responsibilities of spouses within the confines of marriage.
GRATITUDE
Once a week, King Alfred Press will be examining an aspect of the Judeo-Christian faith. This can include a Biblical story, religious philosophy, religious culture, a value, a theological idea, or anything else that can carry a spiritual dimension.
This week’s topic is ‘gratitude’, or the ‘state of being grateful.’ The importance of gratitude is expressed numerous times in the Bible. In the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians, we are advised to “give thanks to God in all circumstances” (chapter five, verse eighteen), whilst in Ephesians, we are reminded that it is “by grace we have been saved” (chapter two verse eight).
Gratitude acts as a reminder of our origins. We are all creatures created, loved, and cared for by a just and merciful God. Beginning and ending every day with a thankful attitude reminds us of the gifts God has bestowed upon us.
Through the constant practice of gratitude, combined with trust in God and repentance of our sins, we are able to achieve joy. By practising gratitude, we develop kindness, charitableness, mercy, and humility. It is a habit we should practice every day of our lives.
