Rushing to Judgment
Rushing to Judgment
We all know, I assume, that we can quickly get the goat of the most ardent ethical relativist by going for their peculiar convictions. If there is no right or wrong, for instance, who could complain if my idea of a good time is torturing goats? Indeed, who could complain if my idea of a good time is torturing relativists? We score our points, and we move on. But relativism not only makes you look silly in conversations around the water cooler, you cannot construct a culture around it.
The greatest weakness with having no truth and no goodness is that you can have no purpose. Destroy ethics and epistemology and you have dropped a nuke on teleology. You cannot know if goal A is good if you cannot know anything and nothing is good. And it need not matter whether goal A is the overarching corporate goal for mankind, or goal A is getting your teeth brushed.
Yet somehow, adrift without a rudder, we still manage to steer the ship straight toward the rocks. Consider Rush. In the space of two days he offends the gods twice. First he notes that there is a greater connection between a football player's Q ratings and the culture's hyper-color sensitivity than there is between his Q rating and his performance. Second, we find out he is the celebrity version of a crack addict. And which one, do you think, is everyone more worried about?
Moral relativists are not afraid to use the power of the sword for their own telos, to make sure no one takes any unauthorized drugs. But they positively insist on making sure no one remarks on any weaknesses, not just of a general stereotype, but of any individual in a protected class. Or, worse still, they positively insist on making sure no one remarks that anyone in a protected class is in a protected class. They deny that protected classes exist, and if you want to know which ones not to mention, they'll be happy to send you a list. The lunatics are running, and there is no asylum.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
You probably missed it. I know I did. Not really sorry about it. Or sad. And maybe I shouldn't say missed it. But last week in Toronto was the World Rock Paper Scissors Championship. I don't know who won or where he was from, and I don't know what the prize was for winning the World Championship. I don't suppose he can support a family as a rock paper scissor champ, but I could be wrong. I don't even suppose he could support himself. I even pretty much doubt that the prize was enough to cover his travel expenses. But who knows?
Maybe the whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek, just a bunch of guys sitting around a pub, kind of like how the Guinness Book of Records started. That would be cool enough. And maybe they just take Ecclesiates 9:10—"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might"—a bit hyper-literally. My fear is that this is an extreme slacker sport on the order of video gaming, or blogging.
It is a sign of the world around us that the driving aspirations of young men (and young women) are aimed so low. And our young men and young women in the church are little different from the world in this way when they aspire to be known someday as great lawyers, or great statesmen, or great professors. They are this way because we are this way and our parents were this way.
But our calling is make history, not to make it into the history books. Our calling is to remain true to our calling. Our calling is to work on our sanctification and those for whom we are responsible. There need be no aspiration stronger than to remain faithful. Faithful to Jesus, our spouse, our parents, our children, our neighbors, and our enemies. Aspire to faithfulness, not greatness.
Curses, Foiled Again
In The Screwtape Letters, Wormwood the demon explains that the low command in hell seeks to create a culture that is at once modernist and pagan, skeptical and superstitious, naturalistic and animistic. They have succeeded. As I write the Yankees and the Marlins are playing in a World Series that was supposed to star the Cubs and the Red Sox. I say 'supposed' not because they were on paper the best two teams, but because all but the most parochial Miamans and New Yorkers in their hearts hoped to see a curse broken.
There is no sport more given to the scientific treatment than baseball. The Elias Sports bureau, the keeper of the most arcane statistics, serves as baseball's Scientific Institute. They can tell you precisely what the last guy on the bench has done each time facing Roger Clemens, with a lead, at night, with a man on second, when he's behind in the count. Their version of baseball is played while wearing lab coats. And the great mass of fans join in this reduction of the game into binary.
But at the same time they also know what's not in the stats. They know that everytime a team trades the Bambino, they will never win a series again. They know that everytime a goat is told that the confines of Wrigley Field are not so friendly, they too will never win the World Series. They know that there is no science for lifting a curse—and neither, it seems again, is there any voodoo to do the job.
But intermingled with this unruly hodgepodge of science and superstition is the real lesson—faith. For no matter what the numbers, no matter how black the curse, there is always next year.