Brave New World Continued

The other night I saw a PBS program about a group of physicists who detected a large cavern inside Khufu's Pyramid at Giza without actually opening up the Great Pyramid. They used an advanced technology called muography which is similar to X-ray technology. Part of the technique involved the use of holographic images and I couldn't help but think that soon people would be able to visit each other via holographs. We could project an image of ourselves into people's living rooms across the globe without ever leaving home. A quick Google search revealed that it's already been done during the current pandemic and soon we'll be saying Zoom meetings are so 2021.

Welcome to the world of Deep-Fake. Photoshopping. Avatars. Holographic images. Nothing new, really. Huxley introduced us to the reality-escaping drug "soma" and the "feelies" in his utopian World State in Brave New World. A new totalitarianism is growing in this brave new world of ours and we are seeing it being honed and perfected in many ways and places. The Chinese, for example, have a program called Social Credit and it's achieving the impossible - monitoring every citizen's deeds and misdeeds and meriting, or demeriting, them accordingly. It feeds into consumerism in that it involves the relinquishing of privacy for rewards from the state. Free-thinking principles aren't important, only doing what pleases the government-created culture and reaping its material rewards for consumption.

The Chinese have their way of doing things and we Westerners have ours. The differences are equally utopian, or dystopian. Daily around the world we are subject to a barrage of advertising never before experienced in history. We are constantly being propagandized with the values of the spirit of the age, a spirit that has no values, little coherence, and mostly heat without light. Here, your true self can be your avatar. Create your own reality on social media and make it the real you. Adopt your own truth and live it. If you don't like your gender, you can change it. We aren't quite there yet with race but if you can change your gender, why not your race? Just asking.

Recently, Canada's Parliament outlawed conversion therapy, which includes all forms of counselling a gay person to function heterosexually. By and large, it doesn't bother Christian churches too much. Most recognize that this doesn't work and only creates anguish in people. It's notable that even the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination, doesn't endorse it. The insidious part of the new law, however, is that it says it's a crime to even counsel someone who is confused or just immature about their gender identity. Whatever a person's reality is at a given moment, no one else is permitted to redirect them. In the name of love and inclusion, society must go along with it. 

I give this next example dispassionately. It articulates the inversion of values in Western society in just this past generation. In his book When Harry Became Sally, Ryan T. Anderson referenced a New York Times op-ed piece from late 2018. It was written by a person named Andrea Long Chu who wrote about her (but really his) gender dysphoria. In Andrea's own words, "Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months...This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don't expect it to. That shouldn't disqualify me from getting it...No amount of pain, anticipated or continuing, justifies its withholding...the surgery's only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want." 

The zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, says we can do what we want simply because we want to. No outside justification is necessary. The consequences to ourselves and others are of no consequence. The creed of this worldly religion is we believe what we believe because we want to. This spirit says that real liberty demands uninhibited expression - coherence and accountability be damned - because we have the right to live "our truth" as we see it. 

The Old Testament Book of Judges ends with, "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes". Followers of Christ and adherents of the Judeo-Christian ethic are called old fashioned. However, runaway sin and the self-centered life are much older.

Wise Like Daniel

The current situation involving the jailing of Pastor James Coates of Grace Life Church in Edmonton, Alberta has divided the larger Christian community. Some believe, along with Coates, that freedom of religion rights under this country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms are being violated in Canadian churches with the imposition of crowd and other restrictions due to COVID-19. Conversely, many believe that no such violation has taken place because all the other churches in that city are allowed to hold regular services, albeit under the Alberta Health Services pandemic guidelines. Pastor Coates holds that any attempt to limit the number of people in his church or to inhibit the services in any way, such as requiring people to wear masks, is unconstitutional. A quick observation for the record: under Canadian law, at least on paper, Coates’s and his congregation’s rights are not being violated. The Charter considers it reasonable to impose limitations on such freedoms in emergency circumstances like a pandemic.

Background: Pastor Coates and his congregation have been holding regular open and unmasked services since at least December 2020 (one parishioner said they were doing it well before then), thereby contravening the COVID-related health restrictions limiting public gatherings, religious or otherwise. On several occasions he was warned against this and ordered, through the courts, to comply. He refused each time. The church was also fined $1,200 in December. The last straw was on February 14 when he led an unrestricted service with the police and an AHS official visiting the church. Coates turned himself into police two days later and was placed under arrest for non-compliance with health restrictions and breach of an undertaking. At a bail hearing, he was set to be released on the condition that the church impose the restrictions. He again refused and was taken back to jail.

I don’t think much of what Coates is doing. He's spinning this as a case of religious persecution. I would be on his side if he was being told what he could or could not preach but that is not the case. That has never been the case. Nor was he ever compelled by anyone to say or do something that violated his faith. The RCMP is on the record as saying their only concern is with Coates’s repeated and open flouting of the law as regards the AHS restrictions and the court orders he was given. It’s notable that all the other churches in the area have conducted their services without interference and have made them work with the restrictions. A little inconvenient, perhaps, but they are conducting them just the same.

If Christians are willing to investigate, there are some related lessons to be learned from the prophet Daniel. When he was forbidden to pray to anyone but the king for 30 days, he disobeyed. He was not one to compromise on the proper worship of God. Yet, he did compromise on something else once. At the beginning of the book that bears his name, Daniel refused to eat the king’s food and drink the king’s wine that was provided for him and the other exiles who were being pressed into the king’s service. They felt it would defile them before God. This upset the king's steward because he could lose his own head if the exiles weren't properly nourished. However, instead of boycotting all meals from the king or standing on his inalienable rights as a human being, Daniel said to the steward, “I’ll tell you what. Give my friends and me vegetables and water and see how healthy we are after ten days”. The steward agreed and after ten days, Daniel and his friends were in excellent condition and the steward was greatly relieved. Daniel didn’t stubbornly refuse to eat all food from the king, just the food that was forbidden by his faith. He made a wise compromise. In that same spirit, most Alberta churches said, in effect, to the government, "Tell you what. We'll obey the guidelines you set in restricting the number of people and wear masks and physically distance without changing the content of our services even if we have to run multiple ones." Premier Jason Kenney, Dr. Deena Hinshaw and the health police were satisfied and even encouraged. That was a wise compromise.

The Scriptures tell us that Daniel had "an excellent spirit". To be sure, there were lines he wouldn't cross. However, he also knew how to not only get by in a pagan society, but to thrive in good conscience in one, to the benefit of many. He understood that accommodation can sometimes be a good thing and is not always a betrayal of godly values. In this day of post-modernism where we're told we can't know anything for sure and that truth is a personal construct, this kind of discernment should be preferred and applied over knee-jerk resistance and a troubling lack of concern for the welfare of others.

Donald Trump and the Politics of Malice

Donald Trump is the holder of a dubious record. He is the only American president to be impeached twice - and that in just one term of office. He was indicted by the House of Representatives on charges of inciting insurrection and other things against the U.S. government on January 13, a week to the day after his supporters stormed and desecrated the U.S. Capitol building, an action that left five people dead. A week to the day after he was impeached, the formally disparaged president left the White House in the morning to make room for its new occupant, Joe Biden. Trump was in Florida by the time Biden was sworn in at his inauguration. 

In the days leading up to Trump's Senate trial much speculation will be made over his statements that allegedly pushed the mob of his supporters over the edge on January 6. Said he, "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and congresswomen, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." And then sometime later, "And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." Whether those statements will lead to a conviction remains to be seen. Subornation may be hard to prove. His defense team may well argue that his statements were weak and that Trump couldn't have known that the marchers would do what they did. We shall see.

It may very well be true that Trump thought the January 6 demonstration would be just a peaceful, though loud, protest in his favor. It may also be true that his words that day were not meant to incite the violence that took place. But all that hardly matters. Go back to his early comments when he first declared his candidacy for president. At the primaries in 2015, when confronted by then-Fox News's Megyn Kelly about publicly calling women derogatory names, his answer was, "Only Rosie O'Donnell." There were slurs against Mexicans and Muslims. He mocked writer-reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from a joint movement disorder, by making spastic motions in front of the crowd and cameras. Then there was this from 2016, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?" There was no condemnation of white supremacy when former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke endorsed him. He said he would bring back waterboarding for interrogating terrorists and advocated killing their families. There were the conspiracy theories, such as Senator Ted Cruz's father handing out communist leaflets with Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, a story he got from the National Enquirer. He appealed to the large segment of the U.S. population that is sick of political correctness and thereby awakened a long-lost sense of purpose in this segment's lunatic fringe. Consider not only David Duke but Richard Spencer's National Policy Institute (the "Hail Trump!" people) and the Charlottesville melee. 

Many Christian leaders believe Donald Trump to be a man of God. But the man who actually was (and is) God said we would know the tree by the fruit it bears. A police officer died the day after he was assaulted by the rioters. Many people were injured and damage to the Capitol building was estimated to be in the millions. All the lies and invective of the past six years led to January 6, 2021 and Trump's second impeachment. And the tragedy of that day was set in motion the day he first sought to exploit society's factions to gain for himself the presidency. 

 

Dead Man Talking

                     "What a field day for the heat. A thousand people in the street. 

                        Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly saying 'hooray for our side'."

                                                                    For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1967

In the waning days of the Donald Trump presidency things are anything but smooth and peaceful during this time of power transition in Washington, D.C. Mr. Trump is clearly not going away quietly nor did anyone really expect him to. His subtle nudging of people to storm the Capitol building on January 6 and the subsequent trashing of offices and chambers proved just how upset he and his followers are that he lost the election. Before this happened I amused myself with silly imaginings of the outgoing president chaining himself to the Resolute desk in the Oval Office with the Secret Service men getting out the bolt cutters and hauling the screaming man away so the new one could come in and set up shop. Sad to say that what happened last week easily topped any imaginings I had. 

The job of POTUS is hard. It's the only world leader job where the president is not just his own country's leader but is also the de facto leader of the free world. The White House occupant must not only consider America's interests but balance them with the interests and protection of her allies as well. The daily pressure must be enormous and it shouldn't surprise anyone that it can break men. In fact, many are broken long before they get the top job. To begin with, each would-be president must be ferociously ambitious, otherwise they couldn't stand the manic campaign pace. There are the personal sacrifices of family time and friends, the cut and thrust of partnerships and betrayals, the egotism, the slander and the compromises in principle (and sometimes legalities) they all must partake of at some point - and all of it under the endless, hounding scrutiny of the media.  

There are few jobs that people don't get personally attached to, especially jobs in public office. It's a rare person who doesn't draw some self worth from their vocation. This makes a career in politics particularly dangerous to one's well-being because the business is, in the words of Bill Clinton, "the politics of personal destruction".

Lee Atwater was U.S. Vice-President George H.W. Bush's campaign manager in the latter's bid for the presidency in 1988. Atwater was notoriously vicious in attacking Bush's main opponent, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. Bush, of course, won and the new lows that Atwater brought into presidential campaigns made their way into political playbooks everywhere. Then something happened. Just over a year after Bush's inauguration, Atwater was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. His illness was terminal. As awful as that was, Atwater saw it as a blessing in disguise and became deeply repentant and reportedly made his peace with God. Faced with his mortality at age 39, he wrote personal letters of apology to those on the receiving end of his "naked cruelty", as he called it, and in early 1991, he wrote these words for Life magazine.

"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The 1980s were about acquiring - acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul." Atwater died a month later at the age of 40.

"It is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime". There is more than just one take-away from Lee Atwater's story and I see an opportunity here. It's not enough to just preach concepts like "kinder and gentler" (the elder Bush) and "compassionate conservatism" (the younger Bush). We need to act on things the way Lee Atwater did and commit to learning Atwater's lessons on his dime while there is still time, before we have to learn them on our own the hard way.