Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-13-17

Curioser and curioser.

Usually I cite the Bible here; often Theodore Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Today it is Alice’s turn, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And I am well aware that there are few new things under the sun, yet things surprise us every week.

The revelations of sexual advances and disgusting behavior are new… yet their existence surely is not. Few people are, or should be, shocked that Hollywood producers and powerful executives, politicians, and bosses have acted this way. In fact it is almost a cliché – one could say a stale stereotype from am unimaginative movie script – that women have had to deal with disgusting suggestions, “casting couches,” and threats of blackballed careers. An afternoon’s work for Harvey Weinstein, by reports at least.

We all knew it, not only the women under pressure. Men occasionally felt bizarre pressures, too – not always sexual, but of the “dirty little secret” varieties, for instance the soft pressure of racial bias and class preference. Homosexuals have been pressured negatively and sometimes favored, as have people of political persuasions.

Racial and sexual injustice are at the forefront these days, and the major surprise to me is that people are acting surprised. For years it was common talk – not whispers – that directors like Alfred Hitchcock were perverts who demanded favors; in politics, Bill Clinton; in sports, Jerry Sandusky… and so on.

I have been on the periphery of some of the players in the Clinton scandals. Kathleen Willey (attacked by Bill in the White House the same day her husband committed suicide) bears emotional scars. I know Lucianne Goldberg, who convinced Linda Tripp to convince Monica Lewinsky to record Pres. Clinton’s phone messages and to keep the infamous blue dress. And 21 years ago I interviewed Gennifer Flowers, who related that Bill Clinton, in pillow talk when she was his mistress, laughed about Hillary having more girl friends than he did.

Seemingly overnight, the “establishments” of Hollywood and the media regard it all as taboo, even when charges are unsubstantiated (as are, at this writing., the accusations against a US Senate candidate). The anomaly is that people are suddenly opposed to sexual predation, not that they are surprised by it. Yesterday an accepted joke, today an offense, tomorrow anathema.

If we sniff a bit of inconsistency, I do not demand that society be consistent! Sometimes we awaken to harmful things, to bad behavior, to sin. The unfortunate pattern in social mores is that what offends people one bright day… they are often inured to in days subsequent. God forbid it will be that way with sexual predators and gross insensitively of the kinds in recent headlines.

The human race has changed its attitude toward slavery, for instance – except when it hasn’t. The public attitudes might be different, but the practice around the world is still with us.

The human race has changed its attitude toward wanton slaughter of animals – except human animals. War, oppression, trafficking, ethnic cleansing, euthanasia, and abortion are rampant.

The human race has changed its attitude toward freedom of expression – largely when threatened by governments; but seemingly comfortable when “soft” censorship exists by Big Media, news monopolies, internet moguls, and dictators of Political Correctness.

I can quote Ralph Waldo Emerson and his Law of Compensation – things get better here, and worse there. Healthier in some ways; toxic in others. Maybe that is how life works.

Let us not be cynical, however. We should pray that what recent societies called Puritanical attitudes – courtesy between the sexes; probity; common respect – might not be fads but a moral palliative, a New Normal.

And while we are praying… if the grosser aspects of the Sexual Revolution might become extinct, if predators might become an endangered species, is it too much to add items to our prayer lists?

Human trafficking? The drug culture? Persecution of Christians and minorities? Child abuse, spousal abuse? Divorce?

Readers of the future will look back on this essay and know, as we cannot, whether the New Puritanism, at least as it concerns Hollywood and Celebrity sexual predators, is a tool for the self-righteous to attack others, or is the beginning of a return to civility and respect, manners and solid social standards. As Emerson might observe, while we conquer physical diseases, we are infected by moral blight. Epidemics.

Writers like H L Mencken and Ralph Barton Perry almost a century ago decried the Puritan strain in the American culture, but such manifestations as Prohibition were purged. There were no crippling effects on the onward march of society. When corrections need correction, they are corrected. When things needing correction are ignored or enjoy benign neglect – enabled, really – they fester. And we die.

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The question, ultimately, is a personal question, because we are the building-blocks of society. And it concerns our hearts, not our political affiliations or backgrounds or economic status. Bennie Tripplett of the Church of God wrote a gospel song made famous by the Blackwood Brothers:

Click: How About Your Heart

11-14-11

Lunatics are running the asylum. Having been in the humor business most of my life, I feel like it is becoming difficult to be more outrageous than reality. Last week I had an accident when I sneezed while driving. After the police showed up and made their report, I was charged with Driving Under the Influenza. No, not really, but things have almost gotten that absurd.

On the serious side, we see the economies of the world crumbling before our eyes. The distress of mighty nations and powerful leaders affects each of us in the smallest compartments of our lives… and it will get worse. The Penn State scandal, a cancerous obscenity at every level we know of (and probably more details to follow) is, sadly, an age-old story of personal sin, and of moral cowardice on the part of others who might have intervened. Yet the twist of contemporary American culture is thousands of students rioting because their idol of a coach – a false idol, clearly, as guilty as clergymen who cover up for fellow pedophiles – is reprimanded for complicity in molestation. “Building men” on the field, and letting boys be destroyed in the locker room.

Elsewhere in the news, the “Occupy” movement, to me, is partly humorous and partly troubling. Add partly offensive. Which adds up to totally dangerous. I feel like a latter-day Rip Van Winkle – where have these unwashed, hirsute, malodorous hordes been until two months ago? Are they some new species, a “42-year locust”? The Sixties are repeating on us, like a side dish of rancid sauerkraut.

Less amusing (?) is the lack of discourse in what purports to be a protest movement. Beating drums, robot-like chanting, three murders, rapes, vandalism, defecation on sidewalks and on police car hoods, public intercourse, intimidation of pedestrians… these are not traditional seeds of economic reform. But these are new times. Maybe end times.

Then there is the dangerous aspect, that the cultural establishment and a portion of the political elite regard these folks as modern Washingtons. They aren’t Washing-anythings. But the Occupy movement might well become the tail that wags the dog of political debate in this country. And just as financial thievery in exalted boardrooms can affect our own kitchen pantries… so can lice-infested rabble in city parks affect mighty governments and their agencies. It surely is possible.

I have a friend who equates a proposal to eliminate food stamps as a willingness to watch millions of Americans starve to death. Hyperbole masquerades as propositional truth every day these days. But in a democratic republic, Theodore Roosevelt reminded us, the sin of envy is as evil as the sin of greed. And when Christ adjured us to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he did NOT want believers to surrender to the government our charitable impulses nor our responsibility personally to care for the sick and needy.

On television we see street riots in Oakland, in Rome, in Greece… and we are reminded that “democracy,” a word with Greek roots, was to be avoided, as a step preceding mob rule.

Occupy Wall Street. Occupy banks. Occupy cities. Occupy parliaments. Let us, as Christians, as we are concerned with justice, and work as representatives of Jesus in this world, remember at the same time to be concerned with the ultimate activism – that we Occupy Heaven.

Instead of changing people’s hearts, many well-meaning churchgoers – and a lot of ill-intentioned political thugs – would rather pick people’s pockets. Of course, the hearts we should most be concerned with changing are our own. We can miss Heaven by scheming for worldly solutions to spiritual problems. But by holding high the Cross, in our hearts as well as in society, we can storm Heaven’s gates, some day as redeemed and sanctified children of God, to Occupy Heaven.

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It is the desire of God’s heart that we Occupy Heaven. For those who accept Christ, there are no “off-limits signs,” or “No Trespassing” rules. There is not only a way to Heaven, but a Highway to Heaven. Here is the rousing gospel song, exciting a staid British audience, by Jessy Dixon.

Click: The Highway to Heaven