Let Others Speak, Part 2 8.4.10

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." -- G. K. Chesterton

The 'Right' Side Of History: Every Knee Shall Bow

It's an idol worth examining. It's the idol of history.

Not long before the U.S. general election in 2008, a reader of this blog emailed me, in light of my opposition to Barack Obama, to ask if I was "afraid of being on the wrong side of history." Another email came shortly after the posting of my essay in which I confessed the election of Barack Obama did not FEEL all that special to me: "Time will prove you are on the wrong side of history," I was told (I could feel the finger wagging). 

A blogging friend, one who supported Mr. Obama, rebuked me at his/her website with similar censorious vigor: I, Bill Gnade, would be stuck on the wrong side of history voting against Mr. Obama (I wrote a poem that partially replied to that rebuke).

But such love of history's good side is not limited to my friends or readers of this blog. Such love reaches high places. For example, regarding Republican opposition to Democratic health care reform projects, U.S. Senator and Democrat Harry Reid had this to say last December:

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.'

After it was revealed earlier this year in Game Change that Harry Reid had used racially-charged language in 2008 describing then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, Mr. Obama came to his defense:

[Reid] is a good man who has always been on the right side of history.

What is it about being on history's good side that is so important? What does being on the "right side of history" even mean?

____________________

THE DEIFICATION OF HISTORY

In one sense, this adoration of history is about vanity, even envy. Certain people, Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not least among them, have an obvious existential need to be remembered in the history books: their apparent anxieties about death -- of being forgotten among the riff-raff -- clearly motivate them to get attention, to seek approval; to be remembered as special. After all, at least according to the old progressive adage, history is written by the victors. Mr. Obama and company need to be on the side of history's approving stenographers, not for political but spiritual and psychological reasons: they are desperate to be thought wonderful, good, consequential. This is about the limelight in perpetuity. It's about living an enviable life. It's about leaving an obituary that others will envy.

But it is more than vanity at play, it's religion. Atheist, agnostic, theist -- it matters not. In the secular arena there is the cult of history, where history is divinized and adored (as long as it flows according to progressive ideals). History is spiritual. History is a force, a will: time ALWAYS progresses towards a happy end. It has a plan; progress is God's goal, at least the goal of the idealist's god. Hegel comes to mind here, as do other idealists who believed that the universe was driven by an unfolding self-consciousness that moves ONLY in one purposive direction: more order, more justice, more approval of progressive golden calves in a cheery dialectic. Change, progress, an increase in justice -- these are irresistible and inevitable. To go with the tide of change, to flow with history's wondrous ends in mind, is the essence of being on history's "right side." To stand in the way, to walk against the tide; to deny that history is Spirit unfolding in blessed clarity, is to be on the wrong side of history, where the gods wag their fingers in your face, shaming you for recalcitrance. It's to where history's stenographers condemn you -- "YOU! You are on the wrong side of HISTORY! We are in charge of the narrative now." 

And note that the "right side of history," which is the only authentic side of history, is always infallible, inerrant. It is the place of the always correct idea, deed, policy. It is indeed the place where the gods reside, happily, given to great applause. 

But there is something odd, really, about it all. No doubt there is Darwin to consider. His genius was in seeing that things seemingly change without purpose, without a guiding hand from Spirit or the gods or history. But the heretics who adore him who've corrupted his vision with ideas of progress fail to see their mistake: they've imposed a meaning on the world the world does not provide. No one can say that the human species is more progressed or more advanced than an amoeba. Darwin surely can't. But the tendency toward narcissism, and the apotheosis of history, results in this religious idea that time and evolution and progress are all connected, and that the future is a land of undeniable bliss promised us by the mechanics of Darwin's theory. Humans are more advanced than an amoeba, or so the heretics declare, unaware that they've invented that value out of nothing but their own conceit. Evolution tells us nothing about worth, value, advancement, status -- or sophistication. 

But the odd thing is that no one knows exactly where we are going. We are on a journey toward some progressive end -- some telos -- that is apparently akin to perfection, nirvana. But no one knows what the end looks like, or where it lies. As G. K. Chesterton so wonderfully pointed out, the confidence in progress is thus insane. If we do not know where we are going, then how do we know we've gotten any closer to arriving at our destination? If we don't know our destination, how can we tell our travels are not leading us further from our goals? 

Undeniably and predictably, progressives will scoff at such talk. Of course we know where we are going, they will assert in question-begging confidence. 

We do? Who says? 

Peace.

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

I WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE MY INDEBTEDNESS TO HERBERT SCHLOSSBERG, AUTHOR OF IDOLS FOR DESTRUCTION: THE CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN FAITH AND AMERICAN CULTURE  AND ROGER LUNDIN, AUTHOR OF BELIEVING AGAIN: DOUBT AND FAITH IN A SECULAR AGE. BOTH AUTHORS HAVE CRAFTED EXCELLENT CHAPTERS REGARDING THE IDOL OF HISTORY. 

On The Virtue Of Knowing Nothing

For some reason, today I remember M., a college acquaintance who years ago talked to me in my dorm room late into the night. You see, M. had just completed a semester at The Oregon Extension (OE),† a sort of academic retreat in the southern Oregon mountains, where students live in cabins while exploring their Christian beliefs in an open-minded yet academically rigorous community. Upon his return to our New England campus for the spring trimester, M. sought me out, eager to report on his experience in Oregon.

M. was not the first OE alumnus I knew. I had already heard back from several other alumni who found the place all rather magical. OE had provided a truly transformative experience, at least for most folks. However, one of my friends, a man I had known since middle school, was not as taken by the OE curriculum.

But M. was taken, completely. He had sought me out with an almost furious energy; there was an urgency in his tone. And so, as I reclined on my bed, my back against the wall, M. gave me his impassioned report on what he had learned, and what he had learned could be boiled down to two things: He had learned that Christianity is all about grace, and that he knew absolutely nothing.

I recognize that this is hardly news that suggests epiphany. But for M., well, he had been transformed. He waxed on about Karl Barth and presuppositions; he mentioned paradigms. And he could not reiterate often enough that what OE had given him was the liberation that can only come from great insight: He knew nothing at all.

What M. was not saying was what Socrates may have said, namely, that in order to learn a man must first admit that he does not know what he claims to know. M.'s sort of doubt wasn't even Cartesian, for Descartes at least landed on something relatively familiar: his own self. What M. was really saying was that he had found a new virtue; that not knowing anything, at least anything certain or foundational, was a glorious gift, one wrapped and tied in bows of God's abundant grace. Ignorance was a liberating virtue.

_______________________

I recall overhearing a psychology professor at my thoroughly Protestant college tell a colleague that he "love[d] shattering the presuppositions of the undergrads." I am sure this professor's pleasure was rooted in love, or so one should infer within the context of a Christian institution of higher learning. But what I noticed then, and notice even now, is that many so-called "Christian intellectuals" seem very much interested in the demolition of their students' presuppositions, but have little interest in renovation, which seems a rather limited view of things. After all, it is all very well and good to knock down walls, but if the building is left razed, is this pleasing and wise?

When I told another OE alumnus about the psych prof's pleasure in dismantling, he opined that he felt the prof's words encapsulated what his experience at OE had been: professors delighting in deconstructing without taking to time to help rebuild.º

________________________

So why do I think about M. today? Maybe because, in part, I am thinking of some of the "new virtues" before us: tolerance, multi-cultural empathy, open-mindedness, are forerunners of the new virtues, but they seem almost antique by comparison. No, there are even newer virtues, like "multi-tasking," flippancy, and maintaining a vital Internet avatar, to name a few. But the one virtue that I believe M. and his peers presented far ahead of their time is this necessary and seemingly humble admission that each of us knows nothing; that each of us must admit that we not only could be wrong, but we are wrong. To such humble folks, a sophisticated mind is a ceaselessly nuanced one; every answer, if one can be found, must be hopelessly complex, or complicated by the never-ending deferences that such a mind makes in the face of a problem, or in reply to a question. The truly smart person thinks, without necessarily ever landing on a solid answer; the inquiry is all that matters, complete with certain prescriptions against appearing too certain, too provincial, too anthropocentric or patriotic or partisan or American or patriarchal. An intelligent person is a cosmopolitan one, where everything bears equal moral and intellectual weight; where no one wants to land on one idea, even if it is demonstrably right, for fear of looking like that immodest man who decides, who prefers one country or region over all others; that simpleton who prefers Tuscany to Campania.

No, the intellectual is a person who believes in process, in pursuit. Actually landing on an answer, well, that is for those who possess a fearful mind, full of anxiety; an intellectually incurious mind that clings to God and other soothing constructs. The true intellectual is too democratic to have an answer, even a conviction, that is not arrived at by consensus, collaboration or roll call.

______________________

In reading G. K. Chesterton's glorious Orthodoxy once again, I find that in 1908 Mr. Chesterton was already aware of what would perhaps become the 20th- and 21st-centuries' most pervasive intellectual movement (or mood). And it appears that M.'s insight is really not that new at all, at least to Chesterton:

"At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he could be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. ...Scoffers of old were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced."

The new virtue, this humility and modesty of which M. seemed so enamored, is the result of upending the very meaning of humility:

"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. ... But what we suffer from to-day is a humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly that part he ought not assert -- himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt -- the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from nature. But the new sceptic is so humble he doubts he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that kept him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."

Chesterton is quite clearly on to something here, while I am most likely not. Clearly, I am struggling towards something. I want to know why many of those folks who most often tout the virtue of "thinking for oneself" seem to think for themselves the least; and why what appears to be an intellectual trend toward solipsism, where the self can only know its own claustrophobic self, instead trends towards the fad, the popular, the consensus. Why do those who tell me that I must find my own truth -- a truth that is binding to no one but me -- always seem to fall back on what everybody else thinks -- what the committee or voters or members or citizens or consensuses or Europeans think?

And why is it that M., who claimed to know nothing but the grace of God, knew enough to tell me that knowing nothing was liberating? And why, in the end, is God always reduced to either His ferocious law (ostensibly by those absurd conservatives) or His judgment-free grace of which M. so passionately spoke?

And I wonder why my more religiously liberal peers believe that there is at least one thing God damns: the self who dares assert that something is absolutely true.

Food for thought, or not.

Peace.

†Please note that I am not interested here in besmirching what others have found so helpful. I am merely using OE as a springboard, though not entirely. Alas, there are some things I must keep to myself.
ºI recognize that the goal of many Christian educators is to knock down false idols, and then cultivate in each student the necessary skills and passion so that he or she might erect a faith and Christian worldview that are self-determined.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Ex Libris Contratimes

I've read six books since Christmas, four of which were Christmas gifts and five of which I would like to recommend.

For readers interested in the atheism/theism debate, there is hardly a better book than There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind, by Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese. Flew is the aforementioned notorious atheist, and I'll dare say his arguments will have atheists in a bind. I'll further state that his book -- even if ultimately wrong -- sets atheism back at least a decade ... once the full impact of what his book represents is realized.

Also, the appendices in the book are outstanding, particularly Church of England bishop N. T. Wright's wonderful defense of the resurrection of Christ. While the book is a great read, Wright's addition is a must-read.

Theodore Dalrymple's amazing little book, In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas, is refreshing in its common sense and invigorating in its brisk walk through the pitfalls of prejudice, and the foolishness of most attempts to purge prejudice from the human mind. The quick pace of this finely-wrought work explores the silly ideal that the highest good of any man is to dwell on the land without prejudice. Dalrymple argues that even biology equips humans for survival's sake with the habit of prejudice; and while he notes that racial prejudice is a gross mistake, the far greater mistake is to think that the absence of prejudice of any kind is a sign of moral authenticity, health and superiority. It simply isn't it, and the absurdities around this allegedly noble goal lead us to all sorts of moral confusion, including excusing a man for being a crook or lout because he is free of prejudice.

Connected to Dalrymple's beautifully written work is Shelby Steele's White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. For me, this is the only book I've read in a long time that I would describe as transformative. I can hardly tell you what was good about it since the book has left me nearly speechless. If anything, let me say that it made me realize that I -- raised in the public school system in the 1960s in northern New Jersey and in the '70s in southwestern New Hampshire -- was sold a whole boat of load junk about the white and wise solution regarding racism. My "white guilt" is both misbegotten and misplaced; Shelby Steele -- a "conservative" black man born of a white mother -- has shattered something in me I did not know even existed. My eyes have been opened: They have been lying to us. And I've been lying to myself -- unwittingly!

Steele's book is not perfect; and although I think he creates a dilemma -- especially for white Americans -- that he does not see, his work is so brilliant, so beautifully and powerfully brilliant, I believe it deserves a place in the great books list. You will see things about yourself and American politics and education you did not see before. I promise.

What higher praise can I give a work than to say it transformed me? Perhaps I can say that it stopped me in my tracks. (My wife, who passed this book along to me, considers Steele one of the bravest men in America. I think she's right.)

Falling in perfect harmony with White Guilt is Michael Gerson's lucid and well-written Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve To Fail if They Don't). Gerson, as some of you know, is the Wheaton College-educated former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. (If you are not aware, Wheaton [Ill.] College is arguably America's premier evangelical college, and is a great school.)

I liked most of this book, if for no other reason than it revealed to me the presidential power that a speechwriter possesses. Gerson is indeed a great speechwriter; but his influence on the presidency was nothing short of astounding. He, not Bush, is responsible for many of the most memorable phrases from the formative years of the Bush presidency: Bush, ultimately, may own these phrases, but Gerson (and his team) is the brain inside the teleprompter. And what an interesting, lucid brain it is! While I found myself disagreeing with Gerson in the book's opening chapters, I also found myself mostly swayed by him by book's end. In fact, by the time I finished his book, I was thinking of changing careers, of finding a noble cause for which to fight. It is an inspiring book, and is a trenchant analysis of conservatism's heart. Gerson convinces me that that heart is getting better in most of the right ways.

Also, Gerson's back room view of the Bush presidency (Gerson was witness to a lot of really inside stuff) is revelatory. His description of President Bush is not one-whit idolatrous. He is critical in all the right areas. It's just that he manages not only to humanize the president, he manages to show a man who is strikingly heroic in many ways and will never be noted for it among the media or ruling classes. After all, Bush policies -- at least his foreign efforts -- are some of the most noble and boldest in decades. The War on Terror -- which is really the institution of democracy and liberty everywhere neither is known -- is the most obvious of Bush's efforts; but his generous help in addressing poverty, malaria, and AIDS in Africa largely goes unnoticed. Gerson shows not only why these smaller things were necessary, but how good they are for our world.

Lastly, I very much liked Frederick Buechner's tiny little volume, Speak What We Feel (And Not What We Ought To Say). Buechner examines the key work of four writers -- poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, G.K. Chesterton -- exploring what it means for these men to have written their greatest works "in blood." Buechner delves into the darkest hours of these men, their great intellectual and spiritual struggles with demons past and present, and how they, in effect, wrote themselves free of all that threatened to bind them. The Twain chapter was very touching to me, as was the chapter on Chesterton. Great stuff about some of my very favorite writers.

In closing, all these books have one thing in common. I will read them again.

(The other book I read, if you are wondering, was G. K. Chesterton's glorious The Man Who Was Thursday. I have read it many times before.)

Peace this day.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Flashpan: Sparks About Anything

1. This morning, in the wake of last week's major raid on illegal immigrants working at a New Bedford, MA factory, the New York Times offered us this editorial (Immigration Misery), which began with this dandy lead:

"A screaming baby girl has been forcibly weaned from breast milk and taken, dehydrated, to an emergency room, so that the nation’s borders will be secure."

Let us ignore the fact that this is yellow journalism from capital to period. Let us also ignore that the crying baby story is apparently not even rooted in fact. Instead, let's focus on mere rhetoric: What this sentence and the rest of the editorial represent is a glaring example of the fallacy argumentum ad misericordiam. In other words, it is a blatant appeal to misery or pity to lend gravitas to an argument. It is not an attempt to reason, but to affect or persuade. It is not an appeal to the mind -- to logic or science or analysis -- but to the emotions. It is heart-string stuff; counter-rational and, sadly, untrustworthy.

It is also shameful and sickening. And all too common.

But in the last analysis I think we should note that it is perhaps bad practice for any journalist to forcibly wean a screaming baby from breast milk in order to find a lead.

2. If you have not seen world-renowned Islamic scholar and Princeton professor Bernard Lewis deliver the 2007 Irving Kristol Award lecture, then you should. It is a great lecture, irrespective of whether the man is at all right. He is 90 years old however, so there are moments when his throat gets a little froggy; you'll find yourself clearing your own throat in sympathetic reflex as you watch. But the man is a giant of a scholar. I found the whole thing riveting. But I am a nerd. You can watch the lecture here.

3. I cannot over-praise the essay in this month's First Things called "Just War and Iraq Wars," by George Weigel. Weigel is consistently one of my favorite First Things contributors. Unfortunately the essay is only available in the print edition of First Things, so you'll have to either find one on the newstand or steal one from the seminary library (or you pastor wannabes should get a subscription ). The article is the best thing I've read on the battle for Iraq and the war on terror. And by best, I mean the best thing -- by a long shot. But in lieu of Weigel's fine work, there is this First Things debate about George Bush's effectiveness. The debate is really quite good, though it is between two men who undeniably fall on the conservative side of the issues (not that there is anything wrong with that). Check out what Joseph Bottum and Michael Novak have to say.

And then get a subscription. It is truly a great journal. Besides, you'll just dig Richard John Neuhaus as he extemporizes out in the public square.

4. Now that I have mentioned Joseph Bottum, I can't ignore his disheartening blog entry from yesterday. No, it's not that he dealt with some sort of bleak tragedy or dark tale. He merely observed that much of what is published in the blogosphere is pure rejectamenta. But not everything. Bottum's essay is part lament, for sure, but it is also part paean: he finds prose that sets him laughing or sets him reeling, both with delight. And he further observes that no one has yet found this generation's on-line Chesterton. Not that the world even needs another Chesterton; I believe Gilbert Keith might holler that there is more than enough of him walking these streets. But Bottum's essay in the final analysis disheartens me not because he is a hard editor to please (I bet he is) or that he has rejected my mean efforts at smooth and elegant prose, but because his words prompt me to reject them myself. It is one thing to be heard, and another to be appreciated; but neither compares to being original and interesting. Any fool can write something a reader might not easily forget, but it takes a certain talent to write something a reader might take pleasure in remembering.

It is odd that I should find myself tempted to measure success in terms of how quickly I reach Bottum.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.