Month: March 2006

One of the things I’ve noticed in writing this blog is that I have a tendency to worry about seeming inconsistent or failing to present a coherent perspective on the topics I write about. This is ironic because one of my reasons for starting the blog was as a way of thinking aloud about things that I didn’t necessarily have fixed views on (that and sparing my long-suffering wife of my tedious rants on the issues of the day).

My sense, though, is that once you become aware that you’re writing for an audience (however tiny!), there is a pressure (maybe self-imposed) to present a voice that is self-assured and confident in its arguments and conclusions, rather than tenative and exploratory.

So, in the interest of getting back to the original mission of this blog, what are some issues (political, religious, philosophical, etc.) that I’ve changed my mind and/or am uncertain about? Here are a few just off the top of my head:

• I don’t have a settled view on Atonement theory. I do think that the classic Anselmian satisfaction theory gets short shrift from many of its critics who seem frequently to attack straw man versions of it, but I wouldn’t confidently say I think it’s right.
• I’m much less certain than I used to be that human beings have libertarian free will (in the metaphysical sense) and that it necessarily matters if we do.
• At one time I was a strict political libertarian. I’m not anymore, but I still think they get important things right. And I still find myself unable to embrace liberalism or conservatism in any straightforward way.
• I think pacifism is incorrect, but I’m not sure that it is.
• I’ve gone from being mildly in favor of the death penalty to being opposed.
• I don’t know what the proper legal response to dealing with abortion is, even though I’m fairly confident that there’s no non-arbitrary moral line to be drawn between a fetus and a newborn infant.

What about you? What big ticket issues have you changed your mind about or are an incorrigible squish on? Or, is there something on the above list where you’d like to show me the error of my ways?

P.S. For what it’s worth I’ve also changed my mind on things like the existence of God and the truth of Christianity, but that predates my blogging days and those are settled convictions that wouldn’t be easily overturned. The issues above are ones I’m decidedly squishy on.

This bit from a news account of a speech President Bush gave yesterday in Ohio on the state of the Iraq war made me chuckle:

One woman asked Bush if the war in Iraq and rise in terror were “signs of the Apocalypse.”

“Hmmm,” Bush replied. “I haven’t really thought of it that way. … I guess I’m more of a practical fellow.”

Translation: leave me alone, crazy lady!

Despite his reputation as the poster boy for the Christian Right, Bush has always struck me as pretty much in the mainsteam of the evangelical wing of mainline Protestantism in his religious beliefs (he is a Methodist after all). By contrast, I seem to recall that the not particularly pious Ronald Reagan gave a considerable amount of thought to apocalypticism when he was in the White House.

Slate has an article on the “dark side” of Whole Foods and an insider’s guide to Trader Joe’s for New Yorkers who are apparently about to get their first store (can it really be that Philly is ahead of the curve for once?).

The article on Whole Foods makes the point that buying organic and buying local can, and frequently do, come into contact. Leaving aside the question of the health and/or environmental value of organic produce, taste-wise you’re almost always better off buying local. Not that I think there’s necessarily any extraordinary virtue in buying local on principle, but it sure makes a difference when it comes to produce.

Personally I almost never shop at Whole Foods, but shop at Trader Joe’s often. This despite the fact that the byzantine Pennsylvania liquor laws prevent us from getting access to the two buck Chuck and other delights that are available at the TJ’s in more civilized states like California or Indiana. Whole Foods always strikes me as almost insufferably smug (not to mention pricey) compared to the atmosphere of wacky friendliness I find at TJ’s. Of course, we do our main shopping at the local big grocery chain; TJ’s is more for supplemental goodies.

Religious Affiliations of Comic Book Characters (via Noli Irritare Leones). All we Lutherans got is Jimmy Olsen. Bah.

Afghan may die for conversion to Christianty

KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country’s Islamic laws, a judge said yesterday.

The trial highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here, four years after the United States led the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

The defendant, Abdul Rahman, 41, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada said in an interview. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam and his trial started Thursday.

During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Mawlavezada said.

“We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law,” the judge said. “It is an attack on Islam.”

Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months.

Love that quote from the judge – Hey, we’re not against any particular religion, but if you convert to one we’ll kill you!

At Right Reason, philosopher Edward Feser argues, contra paleoconservative critics, that the Iraq war was “at the very least defensible from the point of view of traditional just war theory” (here and here with a third post to come, I think).

I haven’t had a chance to read through Prof. Feser’s argument, but it appears to be a serious and well thought-out one.

Just to refresh our memories, though, my reasons for opposing the Iraq war were primarily that I didn’t think, based on what we were told, that the Iraqi regime posed a serious enough threat to justify war, both in terms of the destruction and death that would be wrought on the Iraqi people and the lives and resources that the U.S. would have to devote to such an undertaking.

As a side note, assuming that war is ever justified, are there some cases where war is permissible but not obligatory? Or do wars always fall into the category of obligatory or forbidden? In other words, can there truly be justified discretionary wars?

UPDATE: See Brandon‘s response to Feser here. I think his point 2 in particular is one that is frequently ignored or distorted by defenders of the decision to go to war.

Here’s a really nifty article by Reformed thinker Calvin Seerveld on “How to Read the Bible Like a Grown-Up Child” (via Gideon Strauss):

It’s not easy to read the Bible. It’s easier to read it wrong or not to read it at all. To read the Bible the way it is written takes some coaching (Acts 8:26-31). But a lot of people don’t want that. They want an easy fix, and after a while they give up on Bible reading.

That’s because we often read the Bible for what it’s not and seldom read it for what it is. Here’s what it is not: It is not a book you use to prove a point. Neither is it a book written to solve your personal problems. Here’s what it is: It is the true story of what God has really done in history. It is a true account of how God works and what God wants done on earth.

To read the Bible the way it is written, you have to give up your own agenda. You have to dwell in the text and see the whole woven tapestry of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. When you do, you will find that God speaks to you and with you.

Read the rest here.

I’ve sometimes described my political outlook as “chastened liberalism”, or, more grandiosely, “Augustinian liberalism.” Imagine my interest, then, when I came across these couple of articles:

A Christian Argument for Political Self-Restraint

Augustine and the Case for Limited Government [PDF]

Probably the secular thinker who’s influenced me the most in this area is F.A. Hayek, whose argument for limited government and against a planned economy rests more on the inherent limitations of our knowledge than on a theory of natural rights. This resonates well with an Augustinian emphasis on our fragmented and fallen state I think.

P.S. A valuable Christian thinker in this vein is Glenn Tinder. See especially his The Political Meaning of Christianity.

I suspect many Christians who blog might see themselves as doing the sort of thing that 1 Peter advises:

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

However, the very next sentence may bring us up a bit short:

But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

Speaking for myself alone, there have certainly been times when I’ve blogged with something less than “gentleness and respect” (let’s not even talk about my behavior in real life!). It’s so easy to be snarky or dismissive or just plain mean in the relatively anonymous realm of the internet.

So, is blogging a spiritually dangerous activity?

Any article that begins with this awesome story is worth reading:

Thomas Jefferson stood, dressed in a black suit, in a doorway of the White House on Jan. 1, 1802, watching a bizarre spectacle. Two horses were pulling a dray carrying a 1,235-pound cheese—just for him. Measuring 4 feet in diameter and 17 inches in height, this cheese was the work of 900 cows.

More impressive than the size of the cheese was its eloquence. Painted on the red crust was the inscription: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” The cheese was a gift from religious leaders in western Massachusetts.

Steven Waldman goes on to discuss how modern evangelicals have departed from the tradition of their 18th-century forbears who “provided the political shock troops for Jefferson and Madison in their efforts to keep government from strong involvement with religion.”