Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand
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I recently wrote a column criticizing my university for releasing a list of “gay-friendly” churches in the Wilmington area. I was disappointed with the list for several reasons. One reason was that a government institution—the UNC-Wilmington LGBTQIA Office—was helping private citizens select churches, and that they were doing so using taxpayer resources. It also bothered me that they only selected five churches as “gay-friendly.” The implication was that the other 245 Wilmington churches were somehow “unfriendly” towards gay people. I don’t think that’s true. The response to my column was predictable: I was accused of being a “homophobe.”
I asked my accusers these two questions (using a form email response):1. What exactly does homophobia mean?
2. What does homophobia have to do with the situation at hand?
Unsurprisingly, I did not receive a single response to either of my very simple questions. The reason for that is also very simple: homophobia is a loosely defined term that is used to describe any opposition to the gay political agenda. It is broadly and carelessly used against those who are not afraid of speaking out against the gay agenda in the hopes that they will be silenced because they are afraid to speak out. In other words, the people who complain about “homophobia” are not really fighting against fear of gay people. They are deliberately encouraging it.
LETTER 34
Matthew 23
Dear Zach,
I was once challenged by a couple of young Christian men who were dissatisfied with my response to a controversy involving the promotion of the transgender movement at my university. The controversy began when the feminist leadership of my department (The UNC-Wilmington Sociology and Criminology Department) sponsored a film that encourages young people who are considering having sex changes. I responded with a scathingly sarcastic editorial ridiculing them for doing so. I’ll explain why I did that after I explain why the feminists did what they did.
The motivation for encouraging sex change operations is rooted in a feminist agenda that denies any significant biological differences between the sexes. The feminists want to show that any unequal outcomes between men and women are due to patriarchal oppression. Therefore, they try to show that all differences between the sexes are merely “socially constructed.” This is done in order to garner political support for massive social engineering. In the end, it produces a society with two kinds of people: women and women with penises.
Zach, I want to be clear on two preliminary matters:1. I support the right of feminists to argue completely ridiculous positions. If the feminists are too dense to recognize the many and profound biological differences between the sexes, so be it. The more often they make absurd arguments, the easier it is for me to destroy the credibility of those who murder innocent children in the name of “choice.” In other words, I will defend vigorously their right to make fools of themselves.
2. When these feminists engage in speech that is both a) knowingly false, and b) harmful to other people, I will use a lethal combination of truth and ridicule to destroy their credibility. I do not do this out of a desire to hurt the feminists. I do it out of a desire to help the people the feminists are hurting.
Although the use of ridicule can be effective, many Christians shy away from using it under any circumstances. They do this largely because of a misunderstanding of what the Apostle Paul said in the Epistle to the Ephesians. In Ephesians 4:15, Paul issued a command to speak the truth in love. But those who know anything about the manner in which the Bible was written know that it was not divided into verses originally—in fact, not until hundreds of years after it had been written. If we read individual verses of the Bible while ignoring surrounding verses in the larger paragraph—or chapter or book—we are likely to fall prey to mistakes of interpretation.
To put things in context, Ephesians 4:15 is part of a larger section of Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians that exhorts Christians to speak kindly to one another in the process of resolving church conflict. But many Christians misinterpret the passage in two important ways:1) by assuming that the passage applies to all Christian communication in all contexts, and 2) by thinking that it precludes any and all use of ridicule.
Such an interpretation is demonstrably false unless we want to believe that one part of the Bible contradicts another part of the Bible. Since Jesus himself uses ridicule—most notably in Matthew 23—it would be a contradiction to assert the existence of a Biblical ban on ridicule. Nonetheless, Jesus did not use ridicule toward everyone. In fact, Jesus seems to have reserved it exclusively for a special group of teachers called the Pharisees, who incurred his wrath more often than anyone else featured in the Gospel accounts.
Jesus’ wrath was directed especially towards the Pharisees’ hypocrisy—an often-used but seldom understood term. For Jesus, the term hypocrisy seems to mean more than simply failing to live up to the standards one articulates. Although that is a common understanding of the term, it really is meaningless. Everyone fails to live up to his own standards—at least occasionally. Therefore, under this definition, anyone can be deemed a hypocrite. If the term includes everyone, it excludes no one and is therefore meaningless.
The Pharisees were different in that they did not even believe the things they were saying. That is the true definition of a hypocrite: One who preaches something that he does not practice and that he does not even believe. It is a dangerous trait for a teacher to possess. Put simply, it is bad when people speak untruths, but it is worse when they do so knowingly—and it is simply inexcusable when they call themselves “teachers.”
So Jesus would certainly have us speak the truth in love to fellow Christians when we have disagreements. That is what I am trying to do now with young Christians who believe we should always abstain from litigation and also abstain from the use of ridicule. Thankfully, it is easy for us to tell the difference between a Christian brother or sister and a hardened Pharisee.
The people in my department who have no qualms about encouraging minors to get sex changes can rightly be called Pharisees. They want us to believe that there are two kinds of people in the world—as I said before, women and women with penises (and if you would like to be the former rather than the latter, the solution is just a few quick trips to the doctor, or so they say).
These Pharisees whom I have ridiculed do not misrepresent the truth innocently. They knowingly lie about biological differences between the sexes. As I stated earlier in my letter, they do so in order to attribute any differences in outcome between the sexes to “patriarchal oppression.” This, in turn, is done to facilitate more social engineering, which creates more jobs for self-proclaimed social engineers. Of course, they are the social engineers who would benefit from those jobs.
Lying to students about basic biological facts in order to encourage genital mutilation is bad. The only thing worse would be lying about basic biological facts in order to encourage murder. As you will recall from our previous correspondence on abortion, the modern-day Pharisees are not above that either.
LETTER 35
How Great Mao Art
Zach,
Once again, I’m packing in preparation to return to Colorado for the summer. Congratulations on your impending graduation. I’ve enjoyed discussing these issues with you in greater depth in my office hours this year, as well as in our correspondence. Now you’re ready to take off into “the real world,” where you’ll find plenty of opportunities to use the debating skills—and the courage—that you’ve honed here on campus. I want to send you just one final letter, about the deep contrast between the progressive worldview you have left behind and the Christian worldview you have chosen to accept.
A student in California once wrote to tap into my thoughts about Marxism and how it relates to Christianity. Specifically, he asked whether Jesus, if he returned today, would be a capitalist or a socialist. I recommended that the student read Money, Greed, and God by Jay Richards. His is the best book I’ve read on this issue, which should not be a very difficul
t one for most Christians to resolve.
There is some confusion on this topic as a result of some misinterpreted passages in the Book of Acts. Those passages describe an early congregation of Christians that voluntarily shared all things and all possessions as common property. See Acts 4:32-37 for a full overview and proper context.
Unfortunately, some Christians equate the voluntary sharing of property initiated by individuals with the involuntary sharing of property compelled by governments. In fact, the distinction is no less subtle than the distinction between charity and theft.
It is also worth noting, before we proceed, that the assumption of private ownership of property is implicit in the Tenth Commandment, which tells us not to covet other people’s property. Coveting is not possible if all property is shared and there is no private ownership.
Put simply, forcing people to turn over their property at the point of a gun destroys Christian charity. There can be no charity without free will. Furthermore, if one were to insist on calling forcibly redistributed wealth “charity,” there is still an additional problem—socialism reduces wealth and, hence, reduces the absolute volume of one’s giving.
Capitalism is the only known economic system that actually produces wealth. Therefore, it increases the size of one’s tithe—as well as making it possible to give freely in the first place.
But there is an even better reason for Christians not to abandon capitalism for Marxism. Look at the following list of twentieth-century regimes that committed at least a million murders in the name of utopian Marxism:
China 65 million
U.S.S.R. 20 million
North Korea 2 million
Cambodia 2 million
Afghanistan 1.5 million
Vietnam 1 million
Before we condemn capitalism as falling short of creating heaven on earth, we must admit that Marxism has come close to creating hell on earth. But heaven is not an option here on earth. We must simply choose the best available alternative—and as you can see from the statistics above, Marxism is not a good alternative.
Nonetheless, our country has moved in the direction of socialism over the last few decades, and the consequences of our socialist War on Poverty have been devastating. In 1965, the illegitimacy rate was 24 percent among blacks and 3 percent among whites. Within twenty-five years it had risen to 64 percent among blacks and 18 percent among whites.
Surely Jesus would not approve of the socialist policies that have so crippled the American family in recent decades. It seems that those policies have had the effect of weakening the basic family structure that is established in the Bible.
But why are the results of socialism always so bad? I think it is fair to say that socialism is largely a rebellion against the Judeo-Christian view of human nature that is established very clearly in the Bible—specifically, in the third chapter of Genesis.
One cannot resolve the discrepancy between the view that man is fallen and in need of the redemptive power of Christ with the view that man is perfectible and in need of the redemptive power of government.
As I have said before, the fundamental mischaracterization of human nature has consequences. One of those consequences is policies that de-incentivize work. The assertion that work has significant intrinsic value to God is quite obvious and has a sound Biblical basis. God had Adam and Eve working in the Garden of Eden even before sin was introduced into the world.
After Christ returns, we are told that people will beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. In other words, people will be expected to work and to be productive. Godly economic policies are ones that encourage productivity, not sloth.
Our War on Poverty is not one that lives up to that standard. It has been more like a War on Productivity. It is no wonder that grown men who will not work to support themselves are also abandoning their children in record numbers.
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith said that capitalism would work best among people possessed of moral resources. Such moral restraints would keep their self-interest from becoming unfettered greed. This is consistent with what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 2:4 when he called on us to balance our self-interest with the interests of others.
We will never be able, as mere mortals, to bring about heaven on earth. But we can prevent hell on earth by basing our economy on Christian capitalism, not Marxist atheism. Even Friedrich Nietzsche understood that if God is dead, then chaos ensues—and in the end, the only redistribution of wealth comes at the hands of thieves, burglars, and brigands.
The basic choice that we face in every area of life is the same—whether we’re talking about politics, family life, economics, gender roles, racism, crime, or poverty. Man is either an accident of nature whose choices are determined by his circumstances—so that we only need to tear society apart and remake it, in order to cure every problem and create a perfect world—or else a fallen creature who has used free will to rebel against a loving Creator and his moral law, which is written on human hearts so that we’ll never be happy (or even reliably in touch with reality) unless we acknowledge his law and return to his love.
Zach, this is the intellectual and spiritual battle we’re in. The good thing is, you’ve already picked the right side.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to my old high school principal Henry Thornton. I remember when he got ahold of me in high school and took an interest in the fact that I was wasting my life by not engaging my mind or honing my reading and writing skills. I appreciate the fact that he sparked my interest in reading and writing at a time when I could not care less about school. When I finally turned things around—a couple of years after graduating near the bottom of my high school class—he was there to cheer me on every step of the way. When it finally appeared that I would graduate from college, there was no masking his enthusiasm. It was contagious, and it inspired me. I am so glad we have reconnected over the last few months. It has really put this project into perspective.
I owe special thanks to David A. Noebel, the founder of Summit Ministries, who got me out to Colorado for the first time back in 2008. By 2010, I was spending entire summers speaking at Summit Ministries. That gave me the time to get away and write this book. It also gave me the exact perspective I would need to write it. In 1962, “Doc” Noebel started Summit Ministries as a two-week Christian worldview camp. The idea behind the camp is that students can come out for a couple of weeks to study theology, philosophy, and current events. They do not merely examine issues within the framework of a Christian worldview. They also examine them in relation to other worldviews. Many students come out here as young as age sixteen, and because of the camp they are less likely to fall away from their faith once they go to college. In other words, because of Doc’s ministry there are fewer young people wasting their lives being angry over things that aren’t really true. The ministry has been a great inspiration to me.
I also want to thank Gabe Schneider and Suzanne Nichols Kroleski for their editorial assistance. The staffers at Summit Ministries are the greatest. I thank them for taking time out from their duties to assist me with mine. They helped get the manuscript ready to submit to Regnery.
Speaking of Regnery, signing with them was the second best decision I ever made as a writer. Editors Harry Crocker and Elizabeth Kantor vastly improved the manuscript in the months leading to publication. I think that in its final form it will be far more likely to move readers to consider what is at stake in the current culture war. That is important to me. I did not write this book to entertain people. I wrote it for a lost generation and the parents who need help reaching them. Lives are at stake here. Elizabeth gets that. So does Harry.
The best decision I ever made as a writer was choosing D. J. Snell as an agent. Like many of my best decisions, it was done at the suggestion of my good friend and wise counselor David French. D.J. and David are pretty bright for a couple Harvard Law graduates. I’m glad I retained them both.
Index
1984 (Orwell)
A
ABC
abortion(s),
arguments about
author’s speech on
“back-alley,”
breast cancer risk increased by
as child abuse
disproportionate number of African Americans and
handicapped baby and
as human rights issue
inability to afford baby and
miscarriage versus
mother as victim of rape or incest and
as murder
“my body, my choice” and
number of, in U.S.
parental notification laws and
personhood of unborn and
punishment and
reporting statutory rape and
revenues generated by
Silent Scream, The and
ultrasound of
“unwanted baby” and
as women’s issue
Abort73.com
Adams, Bryan
affirmative action
lowering bar for human achievement and
African Americans,