"Draw! Please, draw!"

It is simple enough, but it is one of my favorite John Wayne lines.

In the movie Chisum, Wayne's character has formed a posse to hunt down two lowlifes who murdered his friend. He corners one of them in the saloon, and the guy is clearly thinking about pulling his gun but thinking it is not such a good idea, but he has his hand close to his holster when Wayne's character, who is ready and itching to shoot, yells at him "Draw! Please, draw!"

That's how I feel about the DNC talking up this campaign against Congressman Allen West. I think it is all talk, but I hope they go for it!

Allen West is someone I have come to admire for lots of reasons. West is not a career politician or someone from a well connected legacy family, but an American hero who has dedicated his life in the service to this country. Furthermore, West is quite capable of taking on the DNC machine and exposing the Democrat Party as the bunch of softcore racists they really are who basically treat black voters like Democrat field hands.

West could probably put that racecard on the heads of the DNC power brokers and their allies in the media, which could really damage their image.

So I say to Steve Israel and the rest...go on and "Draw! Please, draw!"

Charter Schools—Not Another ‘Fairy Godmother’ Fad (part 2)

Most Americans can understand why there is more technology in the classroom today than when they were in school, or why history or science textbooks are updated from when they read them. However, most Americans probably don’t understand why education today seems so trendy.

Americans of my generation grew up watching Dead Poets Society or reading the Harry Potter novels where we got the same ideas about education that our parents got from theirs—-that schools are sanctuaries of knowledge and fortresses for individual learning and growth. This is the old, classical notion of a liberal arts education. Though this idea of education has not been a reality for some time, I think that the notion of a universal, stable, and personal education looms large in our imagination.

I think this is one reason why when people who are not educators want to talk to me about what I did at my latest professional conference (beyond what I ate for lunch in downtown Louisville, etc.), they’re a little taken back when I say, “We discussed getting rid of class goals and replacing them with learning outcomes for students instead,” or, “the presenter argued that writing assignments should incorporate forms of service learning.”

While their unfamiliarity with foggy educational schemes of thought can quite naturally baffle people, I think more people are stunned to see education in such a constant state of vogue and flux: all they ever say—-if they say anything—-is something along the lines of “well school sure sounds different” or “when I went to school…” That so many people—-whether they are 30 or 60—-have such a reaction leads me to think the idea they had of education was less mutable than the reality I describe.

Public education, however, has become a very capricious field since the 1980s. For example, when I prepared my first syllabus, I was told to write out the course goals and objectives that I was going to cover in class. What a goal was in those days, was what I wanted my students to be able to do once they had completed my class, and so using the template I was given, I would write out something such as this in such a simple statement format: “recognize 20 common errors,” etc.

This seemed simple enough, if not a tad perfunctory.

Then suddenly we started hearing about how ‘learning outcomes’ were all the rage now, and that we were to incorporate them into our course syllabuses—-never mind all that stuff about ‘goals’ now. (No one thought of explaining what was so wrong with goals that they had to be replaced…it was all a ‘what everyone is doing now’ sort of thing.) To write a learning outcome, we had to spell out what our students were going to learn or be able to do after being taught in our class. I remember telling the educational specialist, who was being paid to do this workshop at my school, that “We’ve written that down already.” But we were told to take 10 minutes and turn one of our goals into an outcome.

Since we were forced to cancel a full day of teaching to do this, I thought the specialist was asking us to do something difficult…otherwise, why would the school pay her to come here? It took me about 9 of those minutes to realize that what she wanted me to do was ridiculous, easy, and useless. I simply rewrote my goal of “recognize 20 common errors” to “Students will be able to recognize 20 types of errors that are common in most writing.”

Did we really need to pay this woman or cancel a day of class…for this?

Furthermore, since students rarely look at a syllabus (or its goals or outcomes) except during the first week or (if I'm angry) when I make them take it out, the whole situation here was not about the pedagogy inside the classroom, but was preoccupied with the liability outside of it. But most of all, please notice that the only difference between a goal and a learning outcome is that the latter is an independent clause that begins with ‘students’ as its sentence subject. The goals were more like imperatives that used simple phrasing. In other words, the only difference between a goal and an outcome is the style, not its content.

Why on Earth do teachers all over the United States waste their time doing things that won’t make any difference in student achievement?

The answer is this: our public education institutions are addicted to fads. The people who control public education (administrators, university theorists, touring speakers and specialists, etc.) will never admit that they have run out of ideas or that the current system cannot be reformed: to do this, they would have to surrender both power and prestige. Therefore, they attach themselves to the latest gimmicks being presented at professional conferences or printed in whatever educational publication they happen to superficially peruse.

Therefore, teachers are bombarded with different schemes, and theoretical phrases such as ‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs’ and ‘Bloom’s taxonomy’ are dropped at meetings as God-terms for months at a time, and then abandoned with more practical concepts such as ‘service learning’ and ‘media center,’ etc. All of this is done with such a rapacity that it all becomes muddled into ‘white noise’ for teachers who sit through hours of this baffled and numbed.

And of course, the students who we were supposed to prioritize get lost in all of this fad frenzy—they become an ancillary concern beside the ongoing power struggle between tired and fed-up teachers and administrators who are perpetually acting out a new and improved dramatic version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Instead of another fad, we must understand charter schools as part of a long awaited and much needed philosophical shift in American education. This new philosophy has 4 main characteristics, all of which I will discuss in more detail in a later blog post: (1) decentralization, (2) teacher-student centered, (3) full-circle accountability, and (4) a foundation of student/parent involvement.

Where charter schools fit into all of this is that while charters are not a ‘cure all,’ they help us to begin creating a new system of education that this country needs. I want to see a new movement arise in America and I think that charters, vouchers for private schools and home schooling, and more school choice will all be part of this.

The United States must have a new education movement because the old system, after 40 years of trying at the federal and state levels, seems non-reformable. If the old guard has their way, they will continue to tell us ‘all is well’ while they go on with forcing teachers to chase fads.

In the meantime, students will continue to graduate from some of our high schools reading and writing on a 5th grade level. They will continue to lack some of the basic skills they need such as critical thinking and reasoning, which they need to be good citizens and good voters. (On that note, they will also need some knowledge of history and government.)

And of course, they will continue to be weak in the areas of math, science, or computer technology—this means that they will be unable to compete in the high-tech job market that is now evolving.

Charter Schools—Not Another ‘Fairy Godmother’ Fad (part 1)

In the ongoing discussion about strengthening our charter school laws, I am glad to see excitement in my home state of Mississippi about having more school choices (even if I am, so far, disappointed with the political results). I was also happy a few years ago when Davis Guggenheim’s produced his film Waiting for Superman (2010), which showcased some (if not enough) of the problems I have noticed with our public education system.

However, despite Lt. Governor Tate Reeves’ warning to voters that charter schools are not a ‘panacea’ for all educational woes, I’m concerned that human nature (being what it is) might see the creation of charter schools as some sort of magic wand. I worry that the long-term cost of such euphoria will transform the public mood into something either (1) more cynical about dealing with educational issues or (2) launch us into a frenzied and more large-scaled state of trends and fads that has consumed public education.

Charter schools are not another ‘cure-all,’ but are part of a larger struggle surrounding all educational conflicts in America today. To make sure we don’t fall into this fashionable thinking, I have an old anecdote I’ve been saving.

Teachers love to talk about ridiculous school policies. I think talking is therapy to keep us sane, and every teacher has a favorite story. Many of the stories are hilarious and full of irony and elasticity.

One of my stories (sorry, it’s not funny) comes from when I worked at a badly-managed school: one problem we had was that there were no printers at our desks. Our faculty area had a reliable risograph for 50 or more copies for a class (assuming that it wasn’t jammed or out of paper!). However, there was no central printer for us to make a single ‘master copy’ for the risograph. Every teacher had to print all of their master copies at home—tests, quizzes, notes, daily activities, study guides, etc.

Needless to say, most of us were sore at the administration for making us do something at our own expense that was both work-related and an absolute necessity if we were to fulfill our commitment to our students.

We raised this concern with our administrators at faculty meetings—by the time I was teaching there, they were obviously numbed by everything they called a ‘gripe sessions.’ They told us not to worry about master copies because we did not need paper anyway! We should go ahead and put all of our assignments on our online learning system and let our students complete them that way.

No problem, right?

The difficulties with that solution, as we always pointed out, was that (1) we didn’t have enough computers to do that amount of in-class online work on a daily basis, and (2) we knew our students would not do extra online work outside of class because they rarely completed the supplementary work we were already giving them.

For the teachers, putting a significant number of work and daily grades online would mean that we would be giving out Fs like fluffy popcorn in a mega-sized movie bucket—which would mean, in the long run, that we would be blamed for their failure to achieve their learning outcomes.

‘Psst…Hey. Anyone want to be unemployed next year?’

After all the threats and counter-suggestions, I still didn’t understand why they just didn’t get the printer? Sure, it would cost some money, but it was for the benefit of the students, right? And besides, weren’t printers and paper something you were supposed to budget anyway? Finally, one veteran teacher told me—I cannot recall her answer word for word, but I can audibly remember how her answer began:

“Well, a few years ago Dr. Buckles went to a conference where he was told that…”

Years in education, years of talking to fellow teachers about some of the silly administrative things that make their jobs more difficult than they need to be, I have heard this opening phrase (or some variation of it) many, many times. However, I think it reveals something larger about our education system.

It is easy to blame the teachers for the failure of our students, or to blame the students for being lazy or the parents for not raising better children. Of course, all of us should be more involved, and all of us can do better.

However, one of the biggest problems is an obstruction that is hardly discussed: we have an entrenched class of educators who will not surrender their long-held power and influence to teachers and parents, and so they fight any form of school choice. I will save most of what I have to say on this for another blog post.

For now, I will say that while this entrenched group insists on clinging to their power and prestige, they have no new ideas about how to help our students because everything they've tried to do has failed. As a result, these people have become addicted to the latest trends in education, and they keep pushing fad after fad onto their teachers in more meetings and workshops (taking the teachers out of the classroom to do all of this, away from instructing the kids).

All of this accomplishes nothing except to exhaust the teachers, and the students end up becoming an ancillary concern in the midst of this scramble when they should have been the primary focus of everything we do! But it does not matter because in the scheme of things, they-the-empowered must at least appear to be doing something!

A “Made-up Deity”...?

Where do unbelievers come up with the audacity to claim that the God of Christianity is a “made up deity”? I imagine they believe they are being 'scientific' about it. After all, they have been led to believe that science teaches that no one can rise from the dead, no one can perform miracles, and that there is no God. Never mind that science teaches us none of these things. (In fact, science tells us that there are things it cannot measure because some things cannot be measured by the scientific method.)

People who don't believe talk about science as if it is a worldview or a philosophy for life. (That is actually not science at all, but the modern paganism for our age.) However, what these people forget is that science is actually a method for the empirical study of matter and records. This method came to science from the techniques used my theologians of the Protestant Reformation such as Luther and Calvin. And while this method might not help us as much with ontological questions such as "Is there a God?", it can help us in other areas about the God of Christianity since He has left his physical footprint (literally) upon our world. The birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a pagan myth or a secular superstition (cloaked in the language of scientism), but is a historical fact that exists and is verifiable on the same proofs as Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, the repeal of the Corn Laws in Great Britain, or Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House. There are plenty of scholarly books that have been published over the last 10 years on this, and I would be happy to recommend some of them (such as some of the recent books by New Testament scholar N.T. Wright). However, the evidence for Jesus Christ and what he did has been an unquestioned actuality since for nearly 2000 years. In light of this, why does it have to be Christians who are making up some deity to make themselves feel better? Maybe it is the God-deniers of our era who are making up conspiracy theories (cloaked carefully in language that sounds scientific to the uneducated or overconfident mind) so that they might believe what they want rather than believe what they ought.

On Christian Anger (Not the Angry Christian)

Then the LORD sent Nathan to David. And he came to him, and said to him: “There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” So David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man…” (2 Samuel 12:1-7).

Allow me to confess a secret. When I’m tired, I enjoy reruns of King of the Hill. One of my favorite episodes is when Nancy Gribble, who has been having a thirteen year affair with John Redcorn, her American Indian ‘therapist,’ discovers love again with Dale, her credulous, long-cuckolded husband. After an evening of dinner, dancing, and wine, Dale and Nancy make love for the first time in awhile, but afterwards Nancy is plagued with feelings of guilt and betrayal for cheating on John Redcorn! Nancy struggles to come to terms with her renewed feelings for Dale and the end of her relationship with John. Nancy’s inverted feelings of guilt and betrayal is what is fascinating (and humorous) about this story: having sex with her own husband and abandoning her longtime paramour causes Nancy far more emotional trauma than the previous 4 seasons when she cheated on Dale with the rapacity of a wild goat.

The producers of King of the Hill hit upon a truth in this episode, which is that our passions (pathos) can mislead us if not checked by reason (logos) and a system of beliefs that shape our character (ethos). Such a lack of balance can be comedy with Nancy, but it can also be tragedy with Othello.

Nevertheless, our feelings are an important and often pleasurable part of ourselves, and we live in a culture where the suggestion of ‘denying our feelings’ is the only heresy. When it comes to our feelings, Christians should not be rationalists who hold our emotions in disdain, nor should we be sentimentalists who give (as many do) their feelings complete sovereignty. Instead, our feelings should be one of our tools to serve us in our mission as Christians. But how do we do this? Our opening reading from the Old Testament indicates one possibility.

The story of David, the king, Bathsheba, the wife Uriah, and Nathan the prophet, is the story of human feelings: erotic desire, envy, anxiety, treachery, and anger. Not all of these desires are viewed as bad in our contemporary society: indeed, our society and its obsession with ‘nondiscrimination’ (often to the point of discrimination) has made it ‘politically incorrect’ to scruple over any spoiled form of eroticism. When it comes to the emotion of ‘envy,’ which the Old Testament and the Ten Commandants expressly forbid, and which Aristotle called the most shameful feeling a human could ever have, our democratic institutions seem to encourage this form of personal resentment.

However, in this instance, David’s emotion of anger proves to be the most productive. On the one hand, there is a warning for us: beware of the measure of justice you pronounce on others. But on the other hand, the story Nathan tells, of the man with many lambs who steals a lamb from the poor man, awakens David from his moral stupor and unleashes his righteous fury, and through his anger David comes to the truth about himself. David realizes what he has done, what it will cost, and the price he will have to pay. And yet, this is the beginning of David’s repentance and his return to God’s favor, and David’s return to the truth began with his feelings of anger and indignation. But in our modern society, David’s anger might be the only emotion in this story that would not be commended. Our attitudes towards anger can be seen in our popular culture, such as in the Star Wars movies where the good Jedis are never to use anger, even to achieve a good end, or in our approved history lessons such as when we learn of Gandhi’s pacifism in the face of Nazi horror. In any case, the lesson is usually ineluctably clear:

(1) anger is always wrong, (2) it never leads to anything positive, and (3) there are no conditions where anger is excusable in any human being.

As with all human expressions of passion, our emotion of anger often sublimates itself in wrong and insalubrious ways. From the autumn outbursts of rage in our major cities such as New York City and Oakland, to the recent school shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio, the results of unmanaged feelings have boiled over into a destructive rage that has created new difficulties and tensions for our society. Furthermore, few of us want to be around an angry Christian, an angry coworker, an angry voter, an angry student, or an angry relative: in other words, we try to avoid the company of people who live in a constant state of anger. We also worry for a spouse, a family member, a friend or loved one, or a fellow Christian who is too often given to feelings of anger. This concern, at times, is justified if the person who feels anger has a medical or psychological problem, or if his or her feelings can lead to more intense and vengeful states such as rage or wrath. Also, we must recognize that the passion of anger can be an outward sign of an inward sin such as pride, envy, resentment, or selfishness. Much has been written on this topic. But for Christians, can anger ever be a natural, and even a needed reaction, to the conditions we find in our world? When we are confronted with the sufferings and injustices of our friends and families, when we are severely overburdened in times of social or economic stress, or when we see or experience harsh pain or grief, is some form of anger appropriate? More than this, can anger even be useful and beneficial for a Christian? When first considering these questions, I searched some of the books and online writings that dealt with the topic of Christian anger. There were some fleeting references to ‘righteous anger,’ which is a reaction to external conditions in our world meant only for God and a few saintly people. Otherwise, anger is off limits for Christians. In a sense, the whole question of anger has been reduced to a dualism between righteous anger and the other sort of anger which is usually described as sinful and personal. One illustration of the modern fashion of Christian thought is Robert Jones’s book Uprooting Anger:

Anger is a universal problem, prevalent in every culture, experienced by every generation. No one is isolated from its presence or immune from its poison. It permeates each person and spoils our most intimate relationships. Anger is a given part of our fallen human fabric…Sadly this is true even in our Christian homes and churches (Jones 13).

Jones’s choice to describe anger in medical and pathogenic terms is typical: Jones could have treated the emotion of anger as a natural feeling that can be corrupted and turned into a destructive agent, but that is not what Jones does here. No, anger itself is a disease—a ‘poison’ as Jones calls it, and he implies that the emotion itself is a sin by calling it a ‘part of our fallen human fabric.’ As I said, Jones’ assessment is only a sample of the general tone on the topic of anger. Part of its success after the 1960s in redrawing our westernized lexicon was that the New Left has taught us to speak (and therefore, to think) about issues such as poverty, war, crime, and sexual violence as forms of cultural diseases rather than the effects of human choices or historical causes. Christian critics have not been immune from the new vernacular, and, as Jones illustrates for us, it has altered our thinking. While I agree with much that has already been said within the Christian communion, I also believe that some ideas about anger have taken root within the church that are not Christian, but come as a result of the influence of other faiths and cultures, a misreading of the scriptures, Freudian psychoanalytical and New Leftist theories, and social factors within the Church. What we have here, then, is a view that is not Christian itself, but is part of the trend towards private pietism that has been a trend in the Christian community since the early 20th century. Jones’s view that anger itself, rather than how we handle it, is a sin (and a shameful one at that) is not supported by the Holy Scriptures, though some interpretations of them may seem to support this view. For example, Saint James tells us that

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you (James 1:19-20, NIV).

In this passage, James paraphrases some of what the Psalms and Proverbs say about the passion of anger. It is easy to read over the verbal qualifiers here (‘slow to become angry’, ‘man’s anger’) and conclude that James is condemning all forms of anger. However, this is not true. First of all, while God is ‘slow to anger’ (Psalm 145:8), no one can deny that anger is an emotion that God reveals to us through the Scriptures. For example, Elijah tells Ahab that the king had ‘provoked’ God ‘to anger’ by leading Israel as a nation into terrible sin (1 Kings 21:20-22). One of the most amazing illustrations of God’s anger in the Old Testament is after God instructs Balaam to speak ‘only the world which I speak to you,’ Balaam then goes to the princes of Moab intending to say something else.

Then God’s anger was aroused because he went, and the Angel of the LORD took His stand in the way as an adversary against him. And he was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him. Now the donkey saw the Angel of the LORD standing in the way with His drawn sword in His hand, and the donkey turned aside out of the way and went into the field…(Numbers 22:20-23).

God sending his holy messenger with a drawn sword to block Balaam can hardly be mistaken for an act of pious civil disobedience, but is an illustration of the measure of God’s extreme displeasure with Balaam’s choice to side with the princes of Moab rather than to obey Him and help God’s chosen people. Like a good earthly father who is rearing his so-far-uncomprehending toddler, God dramatically illustrates for us--as he does for Balaam--his pleasure and his outrage in our behavior so that we might know what is Holy and what is the right thing to do. When Jesus comes to the temple in Jerusalem, anyone expecting the Son of God to have a more moderating personally is going to be disappointed. On His arrival,

Jesus…began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple,

and Jesus accuses the temple elders of making this

‘house of prayer…a den of thieves (Mark 11:15-19).

Jesus increases his institutional unpopularity by overturning the tables of the money changers and drives their sheep and oxen out of the temple, using ‘a whip of chords’ according to Saint John (John 2:13-16). We must remember here that not only had the temple become a market as well as a symbol for a religious conformity that was devoid of any inward relationship with God, but that the temple itself had also become a record of debts and outstanding balances for the Jews of Jerusalem: it had become a place of financial imprisonment rather than a place of spiritual liberation. As N.T. Wright reminds us in Simply Jesus, the temple of God, which was supposed to be the one point of confluence between heaven and earth, had become a corrupt abyss of any holiness. And then along comes Jesus, who is to become the living temple for Jews and Gentiles, and far from being the pensive, stained glass Messiah that the western world has come to tolerate, Jesus becomes the human manifestation of the divine anger of God when He is confronted with how His temple is being misused. But the anger of Jesus also seems to stem from a divine vision that is so far beyond our sinful one: a vision of His creation as it was intended, without sin, which, when contrasted to the world human beings have corrupted, sparks a passion of divine anger. Though our God is ‘slow to anger’ and constantly restrains his powers, clearly His passion for creation and his compassion for His people move him in ways beyond a pliant state of quiet optimism. But as we move from infallible God and return to ourselves, what does this mean for our own anger? When we look across our cultural landscape and see our modern day temples—a world in trouble, institutions that have come to personify the very social evils they were designed to confront, etc.—what should our response be? When author Jerry Bridges discusses the issue of anger, in his book Respectable Sins, he argues that

[in] facing up to our anger, we need to realize that no one else causes us to be angry…the cause lies deep within us” (Bridges 122).

Of course, Bridges is sometimes right about anger. But in the case of Jesus, did the cause of his anger come within Him? When Christians are confronted with similar situations, does the cause of their anger always lie within them? This sounds like the dualism we discussed earlier, and I think it oversimplifies the issue. Perhaps another question should be asked. As we become more like Christ through worship and imitation, and as we come into closer communion with God by sharing His vision and writing his commandments in our hearts, can human beings begin to develop divine attributes? Our stories of sainthood are replete with examples of human beings who—whether from their kindness to their enemies, or their compassion for others, or from living lives that are joyously free from sinful desires—seem to belong to another kingdom altogether than the world they share with us. As Christians, we are called to adhere to a higher vision than that of the world around us. However, do those Christians who are further along ‘the way’ have a perspective on the world that is different than the rest of us? Do they share a perspective that is more inline with the vision of God than human beings? This question can only be explored here. I am not sure this question could be answered in a longer work, or even on this side of our sunset. However, the uniqueness of our human perspective is explored by John Poulakos in his rhetorical discussion in his essay “Towards a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric” (1983) where he attempts to recreate the nearly vanished philosophy of the Sophists. Poulakos argues that one of the rhetorical teachings of the Sophists was that after a speaker “captures the appropriate and places it temporally,” then he naturally “moves toward the suggestion of the possible.”

The starting point for the articulation of the possible is the ontological assumption that the main driving forces in man’s life are his desires, especially the desire to be other and to be elsewhere...Consideration of the possible affirms in man the desire to be at another place or at another time and takes him away from the world of actuality and transports him in that of potentiality (42-44).

Poulakos argues that each human individual is naturally drawn to desire ‘the possible.,’ and he draws on the work of French philosopher Georges Poulet, who argued in his book The Interior Distance (1959) that human beings find themselves

[in] Two realities which simultaneously exist at a distance and which reciprocally deny each other:

and these are

the reality in which one lives and that in which one does not live, the place in which one has situated one’s dream and the place where with horror one sees oneself surrendered to chance and ill luck (239).

If Poulakos and Poulet are correct, then we can conclude that God constructed us as creatures of the possible, and this is what makes us distinct from all of creation. Of course, like all of our other human attributes, it is easily corrupted--mistaking sex, money, trills, fun, relationships, or personal success as the potentiality that will complete us rather than a relationship with God. However, when God begins to allow us to see the possibilities for our world as He in his divine wisdom sees them, then what would happen if we were constantly forced to contrast God’s perfect and benevolent vision for creation and for all of His creatures with the ‘moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent’ in our present surroundings? Could we simultaneously gaze at two such conflicting visions without feelings of sadness or even anger? While God wants us to learn, as Moses had to, to control our anger so that it can be used for His purpose, I wonder if God has much use for Christians who can watch human beings destroy themselves, misuse His creation, violate His will, and remain ‘blithe and bonny.’ I believe the pathogenic approach to anger, while having some case-by-case therapeutic uses in some circumstances, has been deleterious to the Church universally and to Christian faith: not only does it create an impossible standard for faithful people who live and minister in our broken world, but this attitude has made the Church an impotent force in a world that is full of pain, sin, and suffering. Earlier I criticized much of modern Christian thought on anger for its tendency to divide all types of anger into two broad categories. As we saw with David’s anger that leads to a new awareness of his sin and renews his covenant with God, such a dualistic scheme will not work. But can our anger at times not only strengthen our relationship with Christ, but also give us greater resolve to bring God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven”? I believe it can, and I pray to God that it will.

Christian Accountability--to ourselves, and to those outside the faith

Earlier I was describing to an unbeliever how Christians are accountable to each other within our community of faith--a community which has at it's head, God. This person wrote back to me, asking, if Christians were not equally accountable to non-believers as well. I'd like to take a moment and deliberate on this.

First of all, we need to distinguish between personal and public accountability.

A Christian is personally accountable to a body of believers for how he lives his life. If I fail to live a sacramental life, then it is the duty of my fellow followers in Christ to point this out to me and encourage me to do better and to pray for me. Furthermore, as a lay minister (non-vocational) in an Episcopal church, I am expected to live a life worthy of Christ, and I can be brought to account by my priest or the vestry of my church if I consistently fail to live a sacramental life, or if I dishonor my wife, or fail to provide for my family, etc.

Being a Christian means, by definition, to be accountable to others. In other words, once you choose to accept justification through faith in Jesus Christ, you don’t get to choose whether or not you will be accountable. Grace of God should encourage gratitude and love for God in our parts, and we should want to please Our Father just as he wishes to take care of us and reward us when we do well.

In contradistinction to the Christian life, 20th century pagans (I consider atheists to be irreligious, not nonreligious, since atheism is mere superstition explained in the vernacular of scientism or modern dogma, etc.) were accountable by choice, and they chose what they would be accountable for. In other words, a ‘classical atheist’ chooses (1) if he wants a life of accountability and (2) he chooses the conditions for which he will be accountable.

For example, the ‘old guard’ guys like Bertram Russell chose to hold themselves accountable for philanthropy to the poor, the spread of peace and wisdom, etc., but not so much to hold themselves accountable to their wives or their nations. Choosing the terms of accountability is probably an even more radical departure from our classical notions of morality and ethics than choosing whether to live a life of accountability or not.

None of this means that someone like Russell could not be, in many aspects of his life, a moral and decent man. However, most unbelievers seem to miss the point here: Russell’s goodness and his morality (when it was not skewed by his moral shortcomings) were not due to his personal traits or his biological makeup, but were the result of two things: (1) God’s grace and mercy and (2) dumb luck. The reason for this is that men and women cannot evolve into better beings without God because it takes justification through faith for men and women to evolve at all.

Moving on to the 21st century, we see a ‘new guard’ of pagans starting a new trend that would probably frighten Bertrand Russell into turning to Christianity: (1) this ‘new atheist’ chooses to deny any accountability for himself, but (2) he has no scruple about trying to force others to be accountable to them. This is why you have such odd scenes such as protestors defecating in public places and wiping their feces on police cars, but they demand that Wall Street bankers be held to account; or you have teenagers in London telling BBC reporters that they can destroy local shops and harass residents to show ‘rich people they can do anything they want’; this is why you see Occupiers ordering women victims at the Occupy Baltimore camp not to report that they have been raped or sexually assaulted to the police, but they demand that more affluent Americans pay whatever arbitrary sum of money that they the Occupiers decide is somehow a ‘fair share.’

I think the difference between someone like Bertrand Russell and the Occupiers is that Russell was an overall good man because he was still living in the shadows of a Christian society and he had been exposed to the teachings of Jesus, and he was still influenced by his Christian background. Many of the Occupiers are pure, mindless heathens because they have been generations removed from Christ…so it really isn’t completely their fault that they are so selfish and destructive because they’ve never been taught anything. So sad, really.

However, my point here is that Christians have a different form of personal accountability than nonbelievers do. It is a covenant with God and his Church (the body of Christ) made up of fellow believers...and we are all accountable to each other. While you can hear good advice from all manner of persons in life, and while I do not advocate dismissing their advice outright because they believe differently, I also think it is inappropriate for a nonbeliever, who has not committed himself to the same covenant as me, to lecture me about all of my failings...especially if he is simultaneously not bound to the same restrictions and tenets that I am trying to follow. After all, we are usually skeptical of anyone who offers his advice or opinion on a subject (lawyering, teaching, sportsmanship, etc.) in which he has no expertise or involvement. For example, if I have a hard day at work and am a little short with a troublesome coworker one day, I'll listen to what a non-believing observer has to say about my conduct: but should I take it to heart? Honestly, to me it is all a little too much like armchair quarterbacking. This is the job for the Body of Christ, my community of believers.

Public accountability for Christians is a different matter.

On the one hand, a Christian officeholder should uphold the oath he or she takes to the laws of the land (meaning the real laws such as the ones found in the enumerated powers of the U.S. Constitution…not make-believe laws that pagan persons think exist but really don’t, such as the assumption that faith and religious expression has no place in the American public sector or public policy, etc.)

If we abide by the laws of the land, then how do we fight injustice and ungodliness in our society?

Some Christians choose to use the legal system to fight unjust laws such as Roe v. Wade, and this is okay because they are simply using the legal means available to them to bring about social change. (God forbid that our system of government be open to and used by Christians equally as it is by pagan and heathen activists!)

Some Christians, like the Civil Rights activists of the 1950s and the antiwar protesters of the 1960s, resort to civil disobedience…or, breaking the law in a nonviolent way to make a political point. I’m of two-minds about this.

On the one hand, I prefer effective legal action or petitioning the legislative branch to pedestrian marches and demonstrations. However, as in the Roman days, when you feel the entire apparatus of public office is either ignoring your cause or even against it, sometimes you have to take to the streets. Obviously, with civil disobedience, the protesting offender takes the consequences of his or her legal transgression and accepts the consequences, whether that is 2 hours in flesh-cuffs…or being crucified upside down like Saint Peter.

But in short, the answer to the unbeliever's question is yes! Christians are accountable to nonbelievers, but not personally as they are to fellow believers. Instead, Christians are accountable to their public oaths and under the enumerated powers of our laws, and therefore we are accountable to unbelievers in so much as we are publicly accountable to Caesar or the US Constitution. Furthermore, our covenant with God demands that we treat unbelievers well, pray for them, and bear their burdens when they are in desperate need.

However, what unbelievers cannot do (and what they often seek to do) is to take advantage of our covenant oaths to weigh us down with human judgement and human guilt for our personal shortcomings while they themselves are unburdened and unbound. Therefore, they will put us (if we let them) on this obstacle course of their own making where we must always struggle not to be 'hypocritical', while they themselves are free to stretch their flippancy to all new hypocritical levels.

Do not let such wicked people torment you. God forgives you and He knows we are all trying to do better.

And the people He has sent into your life know this too.