Bill's Notes

UPDATE: As usual, C.S. Lewis has summed up in a few words what I struggled, and failed to do, in 100 times as many.

Kathy over at MCJ described Lewis' comments as follows: "We've got an inversion going on where feeding the poor is the reason for Christianity, instead of Christianity being the reason for feeding the poor."

(Note: The old post follows.)

*****

Pope Benedict 16 came out with a remarkable book, Jesus of Nazareth, and I only stopped reading it because it was so rich in thought and implication, that it was too much to process at once. Though the Pope isn't the greatest writer, he has come out with a series of pointed articles and books that have correctly diagnosed the problem with the West's "culture of death."

I can't really do his point justice, but one critical point is the first temptation of Christ. Jesus has spent 40 days in the desert, in prayer and fasting. The devil appears and says to Him, "If you are the Son of God, make these stones become bread." And Jesus responds, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of the living God."

I've always thought this was about the devil causing Jesus to doubt Himself. That is, the first line is "If you ..." Jesus knows Who He is, and doesn't need to respond to anything that follows. But there's a lot more to this passage.

The deeper lesson is about a certain attitude, specifically, that we need to feed the world before we go through the process of conversion. It's a call for Jesus to wipe away hunger and want — if you are who you say you are, then feed the world.

Christ calls us to feed the hungry, as well as clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted, visit the imprisoned and sick, and bury the dead. Indeed, we are largely judged on our behaviors toward our neighbor. Good intentions don't count. But we are also called — first — to the word of the living God, the source of life.

In other words, the attitude that's tempts here is, "What's really important is that we take care of the poor. The rest is quibbling over religious concepts." Look at the Millennium Goals of the Episcopal Church and some Episcopalians' attitudes toward it. It boils down to "sin isn't important, what's really important is our acts toward social justice."

The reason it's a temptation is because it contains a half-truth and a diversion, which is one of the oldest plays in the devil's playbook.

BTW, the ole bastard gets me with this all the time. I will correctly diagnose someone else's problem (or our culture's problem) as a diversion from my own "issues" — the half-truth is I'm often (arguably) correct in pointing out the issue. The lie is that I'm using this truth to cover up something I don't want to deal with about myself.

So, yes, the Millennium Goals of the Episcopal Church are diversionary — let's talk about our virtuous efforts and laudable intentions (and they are virtuous and laudable) so we don't have to talk about the "sin" stuff we don't want to deal with.

And similarly, those who support a big welfare state while ignoring or even contributing to the cultural causes that create poverty and the need for a welfare state, are similarly falling into this temptation. (Again, this doesn't mean we shouldn't try to help others, it's a question of wrong emphasis at the expense of other things. It's sort of turning everything 90 degrees.)

And then of course, what follows is "I [Bill the conservative] don't want to deal with my own stuff, so I'm going to point out the flaws in the Episcopal Church." And then someone comes along and says, "Bill is an idiot/misguided/delusional and I'm going to point out his flaws" and miss that unconsciously they are diverted from their own stuff.

There's also the temptation of "I haven't achieved perfection yet, so I'm not going to do works." Or focusing entirely on spiritual acts of mercy at the expense of the corporal ones.

One thing I learned in my charismatic days is that the devil has three tactics to take our eyes off God and lead us to perdition: lies, deception and games. The first temptation of Christ is a deception — it folds laudable intentions back upon themselves and diverts us from real knowledge of God, at which point works can be blessed with faith. And worse, failure to see the deception leads to various psychological and spiritual games, such as the projection example above.

Why do we many of us fall for this so easily and so often? Pride, I suppose.

Lord have mercy on us all. "Can these bones live?" "Lord, thou knowest."

*****

I'm still having trouble articulating this point. The deception of the first temptation concerns not just that we get diverted from the Gospel in the search for social justice. There's a deeper level, too. It concerns magic — the idea that God should do for us what He has clearly told us to do for ourselves. We are to work out our salvation through faith and works.

So the point is not that if you're volunteering for a soup kitchen, you should stop. And the point is not that if you're praying that the poor be fed, you should stop. It's recognizing our dependence on God first and foremost, and then continuing to do so as we act out the works of mercy.

God isn't going to wipe away the poor. Man, dependent on God and responding to the Gospel, is charged with helping the poor. That doesn't mean a big secularist welfare state. That doesn't mean that the state isn't called to help the poor. Only that it's not enough, and it will never be enough. The welfare state is (often) a Christian virtue unhinged from the Gospel and then wedded to a statist philosophy. And that's falling into the first temptation.

Which is why many conservatives say that the United States' Constitution cannot live up to its ideals without being populated by Christians and Jews. Anyone else will inevitably lapse into some form of idolatry — and lose the freedom promised by the Constitution.

My two cents.

Last night, I briefly saw Obama give a speech. Three things came to mind:

1. He uses rhetoric in a classically left-liberal way. That's to say, he expands the rhetorical base of a subject and broadens in such a way that it has primarily an emotional appeal, and you're no longer talking about what you thought you were talking about. This is called sleight-of-hand.

Example:

"I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans," explained Obama. "I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny."

Jeepers, Batman. And here I the part of a president's challenge in his job was to handle trade and budget deficits. I'll have to try this at work. "You talk about the deficit between my talk and my action. But what more broadly about the empathy deficit, the moral deficit, the deficit between our hopes and dreams, between what we can do and what we must do, between the challenges we face and the efforts we make."

2. He talked about "institutional racism." Bzzttt! Thanks for playing. Institutional racism is leftist way of saying you need to sign on to the entire leftist, statist, PC program.

All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price. But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts."

Well, I am convicted by the Spirit! And I suppose Obama is the one who has that broadened mind and heart and can show us the way. Thanks for the condescension. For the record, this is Christianity unhinged from Christ and matched instead to statism. Or as G.K. Chesterton said, these are the Christian virtues unhinged from Christianity.

Not only that, but the problem is not so much "institutional barriers" but profound cultural ones -- cultural barriers that the Left (not Democrats) have largely infected our country with, and then made profoundly and pervasively worse.

3. Obama has an Achilles Heel. But it's not a personal weakness. And it's deeply unfair to him. But Obama must be very careful when he expresses any emotion that gets near anger. To a certain extent, this is true of anyone who appears on television. TV is a "cool" medium and tends to make anyone appearing angry look unreasonable, whether the anger is reasonable or unreasonable. It is one of the distorting effects of television. But black candidates, in particular, get into more trouble if they appear angry than white candidates. So far, it hasn't been a problem. But I could see it potentially being one.