Walter Russel Mead is discussing the breakdown of religion in America and how it affects social outcomes. He neglects the beached whale in the room. But he does think that people can be taught religion. I’m more of the opinion that it is a cultural thing. The more chiseling you have to do to make it the worse the spiritual environment. The USSR/Russia is a prime example and America is becoming the USSR. We have our secret police (we call them “undercover” in America – it has a better ring) and we have a class of widely desired prohibited goods.
In any case, if they aren’t smart enough to do science and math what makes you think you can teach them religion, Walter?
And if these folks aren’t getting religion isn’t it a failure of religion?
Personally I never liked organized religion of any kind. Talking directly with the Head Office has served me well though. I heard there was some kind of breakthrough with that in the 60s. Suppressed by Government and the Churches. You know how middlemen hate it when you cut them out of a deal.
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What are we to think of a country that has declared war on 5% to 10% of its citizens on account of they have habits which some others find distasteful? I must admit however to not beginning completely conversant with Christian Civilization.
I failed to notice Jesus saying,”First we get a hold of government and then we can do what we want to people we don’t like.” But then again I’m not too familiar with the Christian canon.
A similar discussion is going on at Talk Polywell where I had this to say about various implementations of Moral Authority in society:
Well yes. Law Enforcement. Until they start running pogroms for you. Then they lose moral authority. And the people advocating those pogroms also lose their moral authority. Perhaps you failed to notice the effect of advocacy of Alcohol Prohibition on the stature of the churches. Instead of healing the afflicted some churches (staunch Christians to be sure) declared war on them. Many churches are prone to the same bad habits today. With similar results.
May I repeat?
Making war on 5% to 10% of the population because of matters of taste hardly seems civilized to me. But then again I’m not all that familiar with Christian Civilization.
Let me add that there is nothing like a major prohibition regime for breaking down the rule of law. All law. Moral, Spiritual, Criminal. It is plain as American history 1920 to 1933. Perhaps you never studied it. Pity. Those condemned to history are bound to repeat it.
The religious have done more to destroy their moral authority than all of their enemies combined (including prosperity) have done.
H/T Instapundit
Comments
21 responses to “The Drug War Is A Spiritual Problem”
Since there are no circumstances under which you would admit they have moral authority (unless they agree with you, oh Arbiter of Moral), I fail to see why they should care.
The drug war is immoral. Actually Jesus was a stoner:
http://cannabis.net/articles/jesus-cannabis.htm
The link above is missing the “l” at the end. Here’s the correct link:
http://cannabis.net/articles/jesus-cannabis.html
SDN,
Please give me the moral authority for Alcohol Prohibition that so many churches supported. And even supposing the moral authority was there. Was the policy a wise one?
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In any case it doesn’t matter what I think. But if there are more than a few that think like me. Well. The civilization is in trouble. Where can I turn in this world for moral guidance? No where. I’ll keep my personal connection with the Head Office – thank you very much.
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And SDN the moral failures of the church are glaring, obvious, and repeated. Look around you. And if you know your history you know that when it gets this bad there is either a Reformation or civilization is destroyed. If you are typical it would be unwise to bet on anything but destruction.
[…] M. Simon has an interesting post commenting on Walter Russell Mead’s “Inequality Grows As Poor, Ignorant Atheists Swamp US” which Glenn linked earlier. […]
When I and others like me point out Christianity’s shortcomings through the ages, most modern Christians agree that their religious forefathers were wrong in their beliefs and actions.
Here are a few things that come to mind:
Persecution of Jews and other religious minorities. Warring over religious doctrine. Trial by ordeal. Slavery. Racial discrimination. Displacing and warring on the indigenous populations in the western hemisphere. Jim Crow. Ku Klux Klan. Cruel and unusual punishments in Christendom. Witch hunts. The Inquisition. Frances Farmer committed to a state asylum for her atheism.
Fortunately, very few Christians today will try to defend any of this. Of course, they will tell you that while Christians were wrong on all these things in the past, they know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the moral proclamations made and the corresponding political stances taken by contemporary Christians are beyond reproach.
My question to them is how can they be so certain they are right on anything, given all these instances where Christians were sure about something in the past but now reject that same thinking today? And one doesn’t have to go back very far in history to see the failings of Christianity. The civil rights movement happened in the 50’s and 60’s. The Frances Farmer horror happened in the dark ages of the 1930’s. Given the track record of even recent Christianity, it seems quite likely that future Christians will be disavowing the actions of today’s Christians.
And this track record is one reason why Christianity doesn’t carry the moral authority that it once did. How many times can your creed be found morally deficient and dramatically change its tune, yet maintain, with a straight face, that others should still look to you as moral beacons and the arbiters of true morality?
Yet Christians still insist that they have all the answers, moral or otherwise. Talk about hutzpah!
If Christians of today don’t want Christians of the future to have to disavow their actions, they should actually start living by the Golden Rule instead of giving it lip service. Because when you look at Christianity’s historical failings, the common theme throughout is that they didn’t practice the Golden Rule. In my list above, when Christians of the day finally did live up to the Golden Rule and change, both Christianity and the world was a better place afterwards.
So come on Christians! Get it together! I’m rooting for you!
I Needed That!
Randy, if you are going to come out with guns blazing, pack something besides BB’s in your holster belt.
And get Chutzpah right. If you meant to make a point spelling the word the way you did, believe me, it was lost.
You make a ton of accusations, without, I noticed most specifically, backing up a single one. You just went down your little laundry list (it is little, I have bigger questions of faith than the juvenile stuff you listed), expected everyone to back off and be amazed at your intellectuality, and you could smile and say “I showed them.”
You are a flipping idiot—and idiot means-self-absorbed—unwilling to examine anything beyond cursory and juvenile BS.
About where I place your comment.
But’s that’s ok . . . Jesus loves you anyway. Perhaps one day you will get over yourself and listen to what He had to say.
I Needed That!
Randy, if you are going to come out with guns blazing, pack something besides BB’s in your holster belt.
And get Chutzpah right. If you meant to make a point spelling the word the way you did, believe me, it was lost.
You make a ton of accusations, without, I noticed most specifically, backing up a single one. You just went down your little laundry list (it is little, I have bigger questions of faith than the juvenile stuff
you listed), expected everyone to back off and be amazed at your intellectuality, and you could smile and say “I showed them.”
You are a flipping idiot—and idiot means-self-absorbed—unwilling to examine anything beyond cursory and juvenile BS.
About where I place your comment.
But’s that’s ok . . . Jesus loves you anyway. Perhaps one day you will get over yourself and listen to what He had to say.
jb,
It is you who have failed to answer the question.
How can we be sure the amorphous thing called the church is not making errors today similar to the errors it made in the past.
Take Drug Prohibition. Are the churches morally outraged at the war on the afflicted? Or are they cheering it on?
That one is so glaring and obvious I’m surprised you missed it. I mention it often enough around here.
Simon–
I addressed Randy’s comment, which were painted with the swath of a three-mile wide brush. Whatever he meant with references to Frances Farmer I have no idea, unless he is calling Christian Scientists Christians, which they most certainly are not. She converted to Roman Catholicism, so at least she knew the difference Randy did not make.
He assigned blame to the Church that had nothing to do with the Church, or, if there was a connection, it was at times the Church operated like gummint, or was, in fact, partially ruling with gummint, which did not make it “church” by any stretch of the imagination or the intellect.
The Church is not amorphous, as you assert, in is concrete and visible. I can not speak to sects and the Puritanical mentality that grips many, including you, holding yourself above everyone else by virtue of your opinion of God and your relationship with Him. That is precisely the mentality that had some in the Church thinking they were fit to be or act like the gummint and tell others what to do.
Richard Nixon and the federal gummint decided to make the war on drugs what it is, the Church had nothing to do with that whatsoever.
Randy did not “ask” a question, he made a whole host of assertions, several of which he ended with a question mark. That does make them legitimate questions.
There may well be a breakdown of religion in America, as Mead posits, but that has absolutely nothing to do with Christ and His Church.
And if you, or Randy, do not understand that critical distinction, then we are not even in the same book, never mind on the same page.
Pax
OK. I get it. They weren’t Real Christians™
That still doesn’t explain why such a wide swath of Churches in America favor punishing the afflicted (The War On Users of (Some) Drugs).
There seem to be a lot of Not Real Christians™ in America. In fact the place appears to be swarming with them. It is a wonder.
Randy got it right. When the church or its So Called Adherents™ forget about the Golden Rule things get rather dark indeed.
You know, brotherly love instead of just love the brothers.
“Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.” – Robert A. Heinlein
Generally we can keep our brothers a lot better if we just keep out of their way. No matter what.
According to my religion I don’t have to get people to believe in the One True God™ all I have to do is help them be nice to each other. Doable. Very difficult, but doable. Faith is harder. Which is why I don’t have much faith in it.
Faith is rather fun. I enjoy it myself. But it is no substitute for facts. Nor is it a very good guide for the interpretation of facts.
JB
Some nice table pounding there. Bravo.
The point of my post is quite clear. The history of Christianity is filled with practices, attitudes and actions taken en masse by Christians of the past that modern Christians reject and denounce as wrong. As they’ve been wrong quite often in the past, it is quite likely that certain “stake in the ground” positions held by today’s contemporary Christians will be denounced by Christians in the future. Given this history, modern Christians might want to be a little more circumspect with the moralizing.
The cause of Christianity’s past failures was its failure to fully employ the Golden Rule properly. At least that’s how I see it. (FYI, I was raised in an active Southern Baptist family). I look at the landscape today and see Christianity is still failing to fully employ the Golden Rule. That means it is quite likely that Christians of a few decades or centuries from now will be shaking their heads in amazement and disbelief that their Christian ancestors of the 20th and 21st centuries were so wrong.
The WOD is an example where Christians are failing to live up to their theological teachings. Many Christians think recreational drug use is sinful and needs to remain a crime. And Christians say that faith in Jesus is the only escape from sin. The Bible even teaches that sinners will, indeed, sin. Yet Christians give political support to laws that demand “sinners” not sin! Why do Christians expect and even demand that sinners not sin when their own Bible teaches that unbelievers/sinners will sin? In fact, the Bible teaches that sin is mankind’s natural state, yet Christians demand people give up sin without coming to Jesus first.
Most Christians believe in freedom of conscience, yet deny that people have freedom of action. IOW, most of today’s Christians readily accept that others will reject their religious message. Yet if a person’s freedom of conscience leads them to engage in actions which are disapproved by Christians (drug use, sexual promiscuity, aka vice), Christians want that person punished. Freedom of conscience and freedom of action go hand in hand, yet Christians will not accept this.
IOW, if I can’t act on my rejection of Christian morality without fear of punishment due to non-Christian mores being made crimes, then the freedom of conscience Christians say I have is meaningless.
I look at modern Christianity and in one hand I see them holding out Jesus and the Bible as the answer to mankind’s ills, while their other hand places a club in the hand of governmental authorities to beat sinners down the path of righteousness if they won’t come willingly as Christians. Sort of like the Pharisees of 2000 years ago.
As for Frances Farmer, she made a public statement that she thought that many of the tales from the Bible were myths. That set off a string of events that put her, a perfectly sane woman, in a mental asylum where she was sexually abused and suffered unwanted and unneeded medical treatments for her “illness”. If you have any evidence where any prominent Christians came to her defense, let’s hear it. The fact that this could even happen in this country in just the last 80 years is quite frightening to me.
Randy
Yet again you just made a whole host of accusations, offering no proof save your anecdotal stories about your time with the Southern Baptists (whose theology does not represent that of the far more orthodox branches of the faith), and your tale of Frances Farmer and her involvement with a sect that represents nothing of orthodox Christianity. That she converted to Roman Catholicism . . . would you call that “brain-washing” to fit your narrative as well?
And I might add a touch of perspective to you ruse of Farmer—shouldn’t you be far, far more worried about the power of gummint in the last 100 years to foist wars and dictatorship that killed almost 100 million people, and who truly run the WOD? And none of that had anything to do with any church body.
And saying “most Christians” is very much an overly broad generalization about which you offer nary a statistic, but only more of your opinion.
You have formed a very narrow view of a large group of folks, judged them far more harshly than they would ever judge you, and you are just as insistent in forcing your opinion as you claim they are.
I can list 10 stories daily about the way gummint screws folks’ lives into the ground with the apparent general approval of society.
You have a problem with politicians and laws—and you need a whipping boy because you aren’t able to much with those gummintal clowns, either. If you do a little historical research, you will find that it is gummint, not the Church, that is the major culprit by far.
The War on Drugs most of all. That you are somehow trying to pin that on the Church or Christians says much about your total lack of objectivity and history.
Start with Nixon, and move forward year by year, and you will have the real answer to your gripes. It won’t be the Church.
And do a bit of theological training along the way so you know what “christian” groups might abandon the faith to such worldly/political issues, and which stay true to their mission.
That should keep you busy for a couple of years, and perhaps, even temper your animus toward others in general, not merely Christians.
JB
Let’s see. I’ve made two posts to this thread, and you’ve made two responses. Neither of which have, in any way shape or form, even attempted to address any of my points, either in part or in whole.
As for my criticisms of Christianity, I promise you I will stop when Christians start acting more like Jesus (and less like Pharisees) toward their fellow man.
I sincerely hope that it is sooner rather than later.
So long.
I don’t have any interest in getting in the way of the bar fight that’s just broken out here, but it does seem as though there’s a flaw in your original premise, Randy.
There’s no question but what evil things have been done in God’s name by many people. Many of them were at least nominal Christians. Some of them were certainly people who had received salvation through through faith in Jesus. However, that fact doesn’t mean they were perfect and it doesn’t mean they had perfect understanding of how to translate the values Jesus gave them into a full expression, especially as filtered through some pretty ugly cultures and ages.
In the same way, there are some people today who are saved, but can be wrong about some things. I don’t think JB — or anyone else — would argue that all pronouncements from any Christian or any church are perfect. You seem to be saying that since we can’t prove that the modern church is right about everything, we should throw out everything it believes. This isn’t logical.
If you take that position, you have to apply the same logic to science and philosophy and anything else you put any trust in. I can easily point to leading scientists in the past who were completely wrong about things (Lord Kelvin’s famous comment about the impossibility of manmade machine flight is an obvious example), but that doesn’t invalidate everything science says — then OR now.
As a Christian, all I can say to you is that I know what I believe. It’s a faith that I believe God has given to me. I don’t claim to be better than anybody else. God has — quite literally — saved me from myself by taking away the penalty for sins I deserve to be punished for. It’s also clear from what you say that you don’t believe. If God gives you faith, you will feel entirely differently. If He doesn’t, nobody in the world could possibly “sell you” on becoming a Christian — because it’s purely about faith, given as a gift from God, not about an individual making a “purchase decision.”
So I respect your right to believe whatever you choose. It’s not my responsibility to decide what you believe or what actions you take or who you respect. That’s up to you. But it’s logically inconsistent to claim that because previous Christians have been wrong about some things — and modern Christians are probably likewise wrong about some things — that they have no moral authority. We can argue that Christians make mistakes, and no honest Christian would disagree. But to argue — as you seem to be — that you can invalidate everything based on scripture because of human beings’ weaknesses and mistakes doesn’t make much sense.
And now, please return to your fighting positions. 🙂
Randy
Try making a point.
David,
Being wrong is not the problem. Being wrong and organized to do something about it is what is wrong.
Local error is tolerable. Systemic error is quite dangerous.
Simon, I’m unclear what your response was intended to say in relation to my comment to Randy. I’ll be happy to respond if you’ll clarify what you’re saying (in context of what I said).
As for my criticisms of Christianity, I promise you I will stop when Christians start acting more like Jesus (and less like Pharisees) toward their fellow man.
I sincerely hope that it is sooner rather than later.
OK. I’m sorry for being too subtle.
ORGANIZED RELIGION IS A TOOL OF THE DEVIL
Join it with the fasces of government and things really go south.
Did I make myself clear?
[…] At this point the general population is mostly ignorant of the above facts. That can not last indefinitely. What happens to all the churches (Catholics I’m looking at your Pope on this one) and “Christian” supporters of the policy? Well making war on the sick and infirm violates the Love and Compassion tenets of the Christian Religion. Very fundamental stuff. How will you ever live that down? When asked for God’s mercy you beat his children with a stick. […]