Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-8-18

There is a coming conflict in America, a war – a civil war – whose first battles are being waged already.

The contentious nomination, debate, and confirmation of a Supreme Court justice has merely accelerated the bellicosity. We are living through a rapid decline in society’s civility, which reminds us that most of history’s civil wars commence as “civility wars” – when factions no longer reasoned together, and have abandoned good will toward their enemies who yesterday were merely opponents.

Judge Kavanaugh’s victory will not change this devolving dissolution; nor would his Congressional defeat have interrupted the trajectory of toxicity. America is in a fateful vortex; no longer a slippery slope that so long was warned. The bizarre acceleration is stark when we recall that the nomination, hearings, and confirmation of another judge – of virtually identical background, resume, clerkship under the same Justice, service on the appellate bench, and judicial philosophy – encountered opposition, but was approved amid comparative calm. Eighteen months later, there were cries of apocalypse and unprecedented angst.

It is as if a bandage has been ripped from a festering, not a healing, wound.

I truly believe that a conflict is coming, and as I said, already here in many ways. This does not mean I welcome it; although I am increasingly convinced that difficulties must be endured and burdens borne, because if one “side” hates, our other side must love, or hate, and otherwise engage… but cannot ignore. Because in that hatred, the secularists hate not only us, but tradition, religion, the Constitution, the heritage of societal norms, the family unit, and nature’s apportionment of gender aspects.

This is not overstating the case, either as concerns fact or prediction. The French Revolutionaries were not content to behead members of royalty (then nobility, then clergy, then merchants, then the middle class) but introduced new calendars and clocks. No matter that their “bellyful” of “reforms” were short-lived, nor that history recorded that such revolutions turn on themselves as they collapse. And, by the way, in their deadly futility usually usher in reactionary counter-revolutions.

I am not an alarmist, except to the extent that alarms need to be sounded.

We cannot turn the clock back, even a couple of years. There will be no more civil debates in primaries or elections any more. There will be no more inaugurations or confirmation hearings without violent and obscene protests, complete with arrests. There will be no more debates, in town halls or national television, without gratuitous accusations whose bases in fact are now regarded as peripheral.

Democracy has failed. The Republican (dictionary meaning) form of government has been subsumed.

The coming conflict is a civil war more desperate than most. The War Between the States was largely geographic but today the divides are within towns, job sites, neighborhoods, classrooms, even families.

We can understand things a little better if we examine one issue that both characterizes the crisis, but also animates it. Let us call it the New Scarlet Letter.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eponymous novel, the Scarlet Letter was “A” and stood for adultery. The book superficially was an indictment of Puritanism but was a metaphor for the nation’s hypocrisy, the sin of slavery in his day. Today there is a new “A” that fuels debate, challenges traditions, overturns norms, confronts conceptions of morality… and divides families. It, too, has enormous consequences, far-ranging implications. That “A” is Abortion.

Abortion has become the litmus test of candidates (now on the Left, no longer exclusively the Right); the bottom line of political activists; the symbol of the New World. I believe if Judge Kavanaugh adhered to ALL the views he advanced, but declared a commitment to abortion on demand, his confirmation would have been Springtime in Washington. “A” is the new password to the virtual future.

About the New “A,” it is interesting to me to read comments along the “personally opposed, but…” and “abortion is regrettable but government should not be involved” arguments… So I can imagine how these people might have responded at other times in history:

“I am personally opposed to slavery. But it is too well established… the slaves are better off than in their previous lives… they could not successfully thrive in society outside the slave system… it is not my job to interfere with their owners’ property…”

or

“I am personally opposed to discrimination against Jews… it is none of my business, however, if other people do… a lot of people believe that Jews are not actually humans on our level, and who am I to force my views on them… prejudice would not necessarily lead to discrimination; discrimination would not necessarily lead to violence; violence would not necessarily lead to arrests; arrests would not necessarily lead to deaths – that is not who we are… Jews want freedom? Well, I am free to do what I please, too…”

But right is always right, no matter the consequences or personal inconvenience to us. Slavery took a war to end (and it still is rampant in the world – which does not suggest that we be resigned to live with it, but that we maintain integrity and fight in new ways); abortion is not right merely because many people support it. I once supported it, to my everlasting shame. The new Scarlet Letter is not right or wrong based on a poll taken yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Abortion is wrong because it kills babies.

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Click: Komm, süßer Tod

10-1-18

Statistics don’t lie, we are told; but statisticians do. More dispositive is that our perceptions often are more aggressive than the biased sources. The corollary is true, I fear – that our biases filter our perceptions. It was not always the case in our culture, not to the extent from which we suffer; and my view is that the Media-Industrial Complex has forced people to be discriminating.

This is not unique in human history, and is famously prophesied in the Bible – we have become a people with “itching ears.” Sometimes wisely picking and choosing; but many people only hearing what they want to hear.

This could be regarded merely as abstract: a society of people withdrawing to their own groups and self-interests. Tribalism, really. But it is more, a crisis of the old order. The West is too integrated, too inter-dependent to allow us to function as myriad separate islands.

History has placed us in a chess tournament, and we cannot pretend it is checkers. We can yearn for simple melodies, but the musical score before us is a complex fugue.

Drift and dissolution are swift. A stark barometer informs us. I observe that a year ago, the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court evinced hand-wringing, angst, and gloom from opponents in the press and politics. The nomination of a man with fairly identical credentials and prospects, now, is met with apocalyptic frenzy.

In 2018, so many geniis have been let out of bottles that a virtual fog surrounds us. It seems impossible to imagine that any Supreme Court nominee henceforth will not be a pawn in bloody wars between right and left.

Or that football and other professional sports will ever again be unaccompanied by contentious politics.

Or that the entertainment world, especially as exemplified in awards programs, will ever be free of political statements and attacks.

Or that town councils, school-board meetings, indeed school textbooks and curricula, will never more be bloody fights between opposing worldviews.

This is the inheritance of an amazing civilization – a culture rich in material goods and intellectual promise, of spiritual foundations but ultimate philosophical drift. Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” America is populated today by thankless children, ignorant or even dismissive of the precious heritage vouchsafed to us, arrogant in assumptions, and increasingly intolerant.

You might agree with me, or not. However I think everybody will agree that the battlegrounds I describe are real; and are many. That these are relatively recent phenomena in America does not mean that they will be fleeting.

Polls and statistics can frighten us, and of late there are so many gloomy assessments that our senses are dulled. It is ironic that in the midst of so many encouraging economic signs – are we getting of winning? – the social signs are dropping like rocks. Notice that the areas of controversy I have listed above are philosophical.

The state of our society is increasingly schizophrenic. Yes, economic signs are positive. Social signs are… disastrous. This ought to trouble us quite enough, and demand our attention and action. But when accompanied by the philosophical disagreements we have listed, it is a crisis, not a challenge, that confronts us.

A bewildering complexity of horrible situations, however, need not defeat us.

History provides the detailed stories of cultures and civilizations – societies and empires – that have crumbled and dissolved. Even disappeared. We could learn lessons. Self-realized revival has been a scarce commodity throughout history, however.

But despite what History tries to teach us from complicated narratives, the Bible provides the simplest of solutions. It has the answer to all of life’s problems – rather, it is the answer to all of life’s problems. In this Age of Anxiety, it is tempting to distrust the wonder-working power of the Prince of Peace, who still speaks through His Word.

“Yes, but…” One negative aspect of education, especially Christian education, is the tendency to think that if we know the answers, we have the answers. With proper stress, that WE have the answers. And that maturity – spiritual or civic – is charging off as lone crusaders.

As Abraham Lincoln wisely noted, it is not important that God is on our side; what matters is that we be on His side. As Grace gives us that sight and perspective, we may proceed to redeem our households, our communities, our culture.

We can put on “the whole armor of God,” but must realize that the Bible’s fashion guide in that passage points mostly to how we may be protected. Once equipped, we can do the Lord’s work.

It seems counter-intuitive, but I think the righteous in America today don’t need a mighty army. Boldness has its place, but so does humility. We might win – or lose – votes, but America might be coming to a place where we wonder what we defend these days. We cannot argue that it is impossible for the secularists, the Left, to impose values bureaucratically downward… only to assume that we can.

Our own hearts, our own households, our own children, our own churches and communities, our own priorities, must change before our own nation can. One person, with God at his or her side, can be mightier than any army. We don’t need to be superheroes: That is why the Holy Spirit was sent. Jesus said that our yokes will be light when He assumes them.

Humility demands that we think less about how bad “others” are; but how we have not been good enough. We are not saviors; we already have One. In the meantime, where have all the average people gone?

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Click: Where Have All the Average People Gone?