The Christian Mind and Christian Worldview Education

“There is no longer a Christian mind,” writes Harry Blamires.

This is a rather bold statement at the beginning of a volume titled, The Christian Mind, but Blamires makes a fairly convincing case over the course of his pages.

He goes on:

“There is no longer a Christian mind. There is still, of course, a Christian ethic, a Christian practice, and a Christian spirituality. As a moral being, the modern Christian subscribes to a code other than that of the non-Christian. As a member of the Church, he undertakes obligations and observations ignored by the non-Christian. As a spiritual being, in prayer and meditation, he strives to cultivate a dimension of life unexplored by the non-Christian. But as a thinking being, the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion––its morality, its worship, its spiritual culture; but he rejects the religious view of life, the view which sets all earthly issues within the context of the eternal view which relates all human problems––social, political, cultural––to the doctrinal foundations of the Christian Faith, the view which sees all things here below in terms of God’s supremacy and earth’s transitoriness, in terms of Heaven and Hell.“

Perhaps another way to say this is that there is too little contrast between Christians and the remainder of the world.

This is readily apparent in the world of politics in the United States where political affiliation is a pre-determining factor in which political candidates and, more significantly, which policies they will support. A progressive Christian will be robustly anti-GOP and oppose policy that sounds “conservative,” whatever the content. On the other side, there are “conservative” Christians whose definition of conservative has more to do with economic libertarianism and globalization than faithfully adhering to the orthodox teachings of the Church.

There is no Christian mind because Christian has become an adjective that describes our lifestyle brand instead of the noun that encompasses the reality we seek to fulfill.

Catechesis and Christianity

Catechesis has traditionally been a central plank of making robust Christians. It was often a function of both the local congregation, particularly the clergy, in partnership with the family.

However it was accomplished, passing on the doctrines of the faith to the next generation was considered a significant goal. At least, it was considered so on paper. What we have documented are often the idealized instances where it actually occurred (as with John Newton teaching the local urchins, etc.).

But, perhaps more significantly in the Anglo-American tradition, society typically functioned as part of the catechetical system. There was inarguably a general consensus of society that the Judeo-Christian thought-world was normative. Thus, stealing was considered universally wrong and sexual promiscuity, while often tolerated to a significant degree, was seen as below standard. The point is not that people effectively lived out a Christian life, but that there was a tacit assumption of the truthfulness of Christian doctrine and practice.

Catechesis in an environment that assumes the Incarnation was a fact, for example, has a radically different feel than catechesis in a culture where only “truths” that bring immediate comfort to the individuals are deemed worthy of consideration.

Passing on Christian doctrine and teaching children to think as Christians is difficult in our world of constant entertainment and distraction, but that is why it is so very important. The lack of a Christian mind is a failure of discipleship.

Catechesis and Christian Worldview Education

One attempt at catechesis, especially in theologically conservative circles, has been by teaching curricula on a “Christian worldview.”

There is consistently a good intent in most attempts at spiritual formation, but often the product and practice is deficient. There are likely many contributing causes, but three seem to be more significant to me.

First, a great deal of the Christian Worldview curricula significantly over-simplifies various contrary viewpoints. This is necessary at some level because to have a conversation the students and teacher need to have some common definition of what a theological liberal, a Hindu, or a Muslim is. Then, when the individual gets out into the wild, they find significant variations in the actual beliefs and much of the worldview curriculum seems to crumble.

Second, many Christian Worldview curricula reduce acceptable Christian beliefs to a very narrow stream of Christian orthodoxy. It has come to the point where there is a strong overlap between Christian Worldview education and what amounts to a particularly American brand of Fundamentalism. You’ll often find an absolute emphasis on a six-day creation with a young earth, on separation of church and state, and on the rights of the individual. None of these are outside of the streams of orthodox Christianity, but in some circles they are treated as clear boundary markers of the apostolic faith.

Sometimes, it seems our efforts at discipling our children is more concerned with transmitting our second-order opinions than reinforcing the central Christian truths of the faith. We can become more concerned that our child will become a socialist than that they will have the tools to sift through the canons of Christian orthodoxy to embody a lively faith.

Third, some Christian worldview curricula tend to make over-confident prigs out of our children. Then, when they get destroyed in a later debate over their poor assumptions and pat arguments, many reject the faith or raise up a bunker of Fundamentalism to defend their opinions. Both are unhealthy responses, and neither reflects the Christian mind.

Teaching worldview can be helpful, but it needs to be done carefully, with nuance, and often needs local teaching that can be tailored more than canned curricula.

Toward Reinvigorating a Christian Mind

If we are to reinvigorate a Christian mind, I believe it will have to be done on a small scale by careful discipleship. But it will also have to have spaces for healthy conversations and controversy in public, as well.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers

Wipf and Stock

Buy on Amazon

The current knee-jerk mood of our culture is unsuitable to cultivating deep thinking of any stripe. For example, a Christianity Today article advocating against the sitting president on moral grounds was met by a bi-polar response along distinctly political lines, even among people with nearly identical doctrinal beliefs. But many of the supports and rebuttals were phrased as doctrinal rebukes. Politics was the driving force behind what people thought the magazine ought to publish, rather than doctrinal concerns.

To have a Christian mind, we have to be willing to have people disagree with us in public. We have to be willing to be proved wrong. We have to be willing to have our minds changed. This doesn’t mean we need to court every conspiracy theory and spend time debunking the obvious fringe theories, but it does mean that discussions can’t begin as anathemas.

As a population of individuals called to live as salt and light in our communities––as a contrast community within a community––the first step to having a Christian mind is to be able to have a Christian conversation. This is the sort of conversation where Christian orthodoxy is central, and doxology is perpetual, but where peripheral disagreements are possible with good will.

If a robust, white-hot, doctrinally orthodox Christianity is to be the reality of our lives, then we need to explore what that means in our local communities and public. We should be able to have disagreement on implications of Christian faith in public as we ask honest questions about the thought processes that led to those implications. Our Christianity, therefore, needs to be more robust than a lifestyle brand and become the character that defines how we think and live.

Perception, Reality, and Failed Epistemology

Someone shared a post on Facebook. It’s one of those half-thoughtful pieces of writing from a website that make its living getting clicks that lead to them betting paid for the ads that dominate every page.

In this case, the article was more substantive than most, because it dealt with the way photos can manipulate public perception. In this case, they show a series of images in the article (it isn’t actually one of those annoying slide shows) of people apparently too close together in a line, except a different angle shows that the people are really about 6 feet apart. Then there are people that are “obviously” sitting closely together, but another photo shows they are actually a reasonable distance apart.

The purpose of the article is to show that images can mislead. And it does demonstrate that photographic evidence can misrepresent the actual circumstances. Good enough, as far as it goes.

However, the title and the first line of the article reveal a radical failure in epistemology (i.e., how we know things) that I believe is too common and is problematic. The fact that the article got through whatever editing process shows that someone actually thinks that reality—not simply our perception of it—is flexible.

Failure in Epistemology

The title of the article is wordy in that attention-grabbing inconclusive way: “Photographer Takes Pics of People in Public From 2 Perspectives and It Shows How Easily the Media can Manipulate Reality.” Unlike many titles it actually communicates the gist of what the post tries to argue. But the assertion that you can actually “manipulate reality” is the problematic phrase.

The article opens, “Everyone knows that reality is subjective. Our perception may change in an instant depending on how much and exactly what we know.”

The second sentence is exactly correct. Our perceptions will change radically depending on the facts that we are given. But “perceptions” in sentence two functions as a synonym for “reality” in sentence one. That is an epistemically horrifying statement, which is reinforced by the miserable generalization in the first line that “Everyone knows that reality is subjective.”

Given that this is a click-baity website post, I’ll forgive the Valley Girl tone of the piece. In fact, I am thankful for this little piece of unsophisticated folk-epistemology, because it reveals what I believe to be a commonly held perspective.

Reality is Fixed, Perception is Subjective

The authors of the article in question understand the rudimentary fact that reality is fixed, even though they state the opposite. “Everyone knows that reality is subjective” makes no sense as a statement in article whose point is that camera angles and lenses can be used to misrepresent true reality. Reality isn’t subjective, it is objective. The camera angles show how the misunderstanding can evolve.

But the subjectivity of reality, as it were, is a basic tenet of contemporary epistemology. It shapes the way many social sciences present their findings. It is the foundation of so many movements that center around identity.

“My perception is reality,” is the battle cry of social media, which has largely shaped our view of the world.

Early in the Corona Virus pandemic a medium sized Twitter-mob was mobilized by a video claiming that a white woman was racist, because she covered her face and moved away from an African-American man (we presume, based on who posted it and claimed to film it) who was filming her and began coughing in her vicinity. His caption stated that she was a racist and provided the video to prove it.

Knowing nothing about the person who took the video or the woman in the video, I have little to go on. She may, in fact, be a KKK member on weekends. But that video provided no evidence of it. In fact, all that is showed was that an exceptionally nasty individual was attempting to ruin someone else’s life by making accusations without evidence.

The video showed someone covering her face and moving away from someone who was coughing. It isn’t clear where or why that would qualify as a racist act in the middle of a pandemic.

At the point when we understood very little of how the virus spreads, it was wise for someone to cover their face and move away from someone coughing, when the subway was mostly empty and there was plenty of room to spread out.

But the “reality” of the Twitter-mob was shaped by their false perception created by the words over the video. She was a racist because (a) she was white, (b) because the videographer said so, and (c) because she moved away from someone when there is significant concern over life-threatening airborne pathogens. That was the scenario that lead to hundreds of people commenting on the video about the bodily harm they would like to inflict on the woman, how much they hate white people, racists, and anyone who might think to disagree.

Many of these people have been conditioned to believe that perception is reality. Thus, when the national news posts a picture of an activist beating a drum in the face of a teenager in a MAGA hat and tells us that the boy is harassing the elderly activist, there are some people that truly believe that, despite other photos, video evidence, eye witness testimony, and personal statements from the activist that contradict that initial reading. Perception is reality, especially if that perception supports my prior assumptions.

Or, consider the nakedly false assertion by Planned Parenthood and its supporters that the Center for Medical Progress’s undercover videos that exposed them selling dismembered parts of babies is deceptively edited. This narrative is conclusively believed because it has been asserted by a favored group (who is deeply invested in arguing that point), despite the posting of the full, unedited videos online for anyone to verify. For many people, perception, especially if it supports the right conclusions, is reality and nothing can shake that.

This is an epistemic nightmare that has been inflicted on society by people seeking to change society—sometimes for the better–– but has come to be adopted by the majority of the culture regardless of party affiliation or place on the political spectrum. Reality is not subjective. Our perception of reality is, though.

The Fruit of Bad Epistemology

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are reaping the fruit of this bad epistemology.

There is legitimate confusion about a new disease, possible preventative measures, potential treatments, etc. The confusion isn’t necessarily the result of a failure on anyone’s part, it is often driven by people drawing early conclusions from insufficient information. Sometimes its just the best guess from what we know. Leaders are trying to make decisions to protect people with very little information, which may (and does) get contradicted by new information that comes weeks or even days later. It’s an unenviable position.

But as confusing information gets promulgated to a population primed to believe that reality is subjective, it is no wonder that different groups choose their preferred understanding of reality. That is exactly what the culture has conditioned people to do.

If feeling oppressed is the essence of oppression, even apart from any evidence of personal or systemic bias, then protest over a feeling of oppression is just as legitimate as anything else. If there is conflicting information or data from different settings that supports a desired action, then we have been told we can believe that absolutely as long as it is the politically preferred version. If labelling someone as racist or pathologically afraid of a sexual minority is enough to make it true, then excluding expert testimony that is based on the best data available is permissible if it comes from someone that can be labelled as part of the non-preferred group.

A large percentage of the major intellectual institutions have invested the past decade trying to convince people that obvious physical observations about sex and gender can be overridden by the approved intelligentsia with questionable pseudoscientific studies. It’s little wonder that now, when it comes to life and death, people have come to accept that epistemology. This time it’s working against many of those who want control and may, in fact, be working against the common interests of our communities.

Society has invested a generation or more in teaching people that reality is subjective. Now that it matters, we’re reaping the fruit of that position. We are due for an epistemological revolution.

Hope for Recovery

The answer is not to revert to the very modern idea that we can absolutely know objective truth.

The closest we can get to absolute truth is divine revelation, which still requires interpretation and systematization. Absolute truth exists and we should pursue it, but we’re not going to get it this side of glory.

One of the failures of modernity was that it presented an epistemology that ignores the position of the observer. There are roots to this perspective in ancient history, but, in part, they took off because of a shift toward placing humanity at the center of all knowledge during the Enlightenment. The Modern folk-epistemology that developed out of that teaches that reality is objective and that we can know it absolutely and objectively.

Post-modernity brought some blessings in that it reminded us that we are subjective people with biases. We stand in a particular place to observe. There is no way for us to totally step outside of our own viewpoint to see things perfectly as they are. This is helpful, because modernity often steamrolls those who view thing outside the accepted perspective.

But many people take that helpful revelation of post-modernity too far and argue that their viewpoint is reality. That is the folk-epistemology evidenced in the BoredPanda article that inspired this post. Thus, the media can “easily” “manipulate reality.” That leads to an even more unlivable society than the strictures of modernity.

We need a more incredulous people who are willing to question their assumptions before grabbing the pitchforks and torches or undermining millenia-old understandings of the world. We also need more honest curators of the news that make a faithful attempt to present reality as it is, rather than trying to score clicks and political points. Until our world has a better epistemology, we are in for perpetual conflict. We may also be in danger of an enduring pandemic because of deeply faulty epistemology.

The Madness of Crowds - A Review

I was on a major university campus recently and was struck first by the affluence that surrounded me. Beyond the significant tuition payments and nice dorm buildings, there were very few “beater” cars on display. Most of the vehicles looked fairly new—something radically different than the way college kids used to drive. The university is huge, so it is really a city within a city, and both of those cities are affluent. There was a rarefied air of wealth and sophistication.

More significantly there were posters, fliers, and bumper stickers that declared opposition to “colonization,” support of various identities, and a host of other positions that reside somewhere on the left-wing of global politics.

To be clear, racism remains a significant issue in our world and must be combated. There are still misogynists and cads who use their power to abuse and undermine women. There are bullies that pick on anyone who doesn’t fit in with certain norms and attempt to demonize them.

At the same time, there are significant points where the movements that are calling for “justice” along different lines of gender, race, and identity seem to make their arguments on indefensible and sometimes self-contradictory grounds. Though they profess to be concerned about others wielding power,they seem to be altogether too prepared to swing their own billy clubs, often figuratively and sometimes literally, in the name of their preferred positions. This extra-judicial enforcement of their ideas and positions seems to undermine the nature of justice as it has been understood in most civilizations of which we have record.

Douglas Murray’s book, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, takes a closer look at the various neo-Marxist movements to examine their foundations and abuses. Murray stands on what would be described the “conservative” side of many of these debates, since he indicates a belief in truth that should be pursued apart from one’s self-interest. At the same time, Murray is himself an openly gay atheist. This means that he certainly does not agree with many social conservatives on issues like the redefinition of marriage, the morality of same-sex erotic relationships, and the existence of God. This makes his critique of the various identity movements intriguing and, perhaps, more powerful.

Summary

As a gay man, Murray begins with a critique of the portion of that portion of the left’s culture war. While he is openly in support of recent inventions like the Obergefell decision that arbitrarily redefined marriage, he is careful to note that within the last decade, there were multiple gay-rights organizations, including the Stonewall organization, that opposed gay marriage. A big portion of his argument here is that, although he thinks the changes are largely good, it might be more reasonable to expect people who hold to millennia-old positions on sexual morality to take a while to come around to an affirmation of a newly invented concept.

In the second content chapter, Murray examines the current presentation of the feminist movement. His point in this chapter is that the movement is largely contradictory and puts everyone in a nearly impossible situation. There are obvious statistically significant differences between men and women in general, but to note those things publicly is, for some, a high crime. Attempts to undermine bias have created processes that necessarily bias organizations and culture in ways that tend to cut the feed from under those they are intended to help. In addition, the identity-oriented science arguments of feminism (e.g., there are no fundamental differences between men and women based on genetics) come into direct opposition with the theories favored by many in the various gay movements (e.g., there are fundamental differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals based on genetics), which creates issues. The issue becomes more epistemological than political at some point.

The third content chapter wrestles with the racial justice movement, which in its best aspects has led to awareness of systemic wrongs and worked to correct them. On the other hand, the same movement has also sought to make race (one of) the most important aspects of a human’s essence and thus made it more possible for systemic bias to continue or grow. In some cases, the result has been a new systemic bias against a different set of minorities, as has been evidenced by Harvard’s discrimination against Asians in admissions. This also puts people in weird spots, so that whites have to self-deprecate to speak against racism or be perceived as colonizers. The struggle in many cases seems to be more about power than truth.

The final content chapter discusses the transgender movement. Murray expresses sympathy with individuals who legitimately struggle with a sense of discomfort with their bodies and believe they would be more satisfied presenting as the opposite sex. At the same time, he notes that the movement for trans-rights has short-circuited the processes that might guard someone from making irreversible, life-altering decisions without considering that there might be another possible cause or solution. He discusses multiple examples where people who express minimal discomfort with their sex are quickly stepped down the road toward chemical and surgical transition, without a thorough vetting. Again, there are epistemological questions about the nature of truth and whether even asking questions (“Is your feeling true and lasting?”) is perceived as harmful.

Between each of these chapters is an interlude that explores some of the underlying causes and further consequences of this rapid epistemological shift. Murray discusses the Marxist foundations of the movement, which serves to continually enhance human discomfort by undermining power structures. He notes the impact of tech, with rapid communication, the inability to have a private conversation, and the work of Google’s search manipulations to present an alternate reality. Finally, he includes a section on one of the worst aspects of these movements, which is that there is no place or possibility of forgiveness. Statements that were uncontroversial a decade ago can now be used to destroy people who are deemed undesirable. Context matters little, as long as the right things are opposed violently and openly.

Analysis and Conclusion

Murray’s book is helpful in many ways. He points to the unsustainability of much of what passes for the social justice movement. The quest for destruction of power necessarily creates an oppressive power that will likely be as bad or worse a master.

The danger of Murray’s book is that his examples of gross abuses of various identity movements to pursue hatred and destruction of the innocent may lead some to believe that we need only resist those movements. That is most likely to occur among those who don’t actually read the book, or do so only cursorily. Murray takes concerns for the persecution of gay and trans individuals seriously, but notes that the movements that claim to support them are destroying the possibility of their being accepted or the society that will be able to accept them. In attempting to shift the Overton window, these groups may rip the house off its foundations, leaving us all cold and miserable in the winter storms.

The value of this book is that it looks beyond the gross abuses of violence and power by the various identity movements to interrogate the intellectual basis and question the logical conclusions. The result is an exposé that is illuminating, even if readers do not agree with all of Murray’s conclusions. There are a few points where Murray seems to drift a bit into outrage porn, but on the whole, he takes a fairly balanced view and calmly makes his arguments. This book, of course, is likely to be panned as violent oppression by many within the various justice movements simply because it questions some of the foundations and outcomes of their movement. However, it would benefit many on the left and the right to read the book and consider their own positions.

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

By Murray, Douglas

Buy on Amazon

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.

Scams and Christian Education: Inflated Credentials and Fraudulent Accreditation

A while back I encountered a book by a self-published author that was presented as very helpful and offered for free, but when I picked it up, it was such a basic and low-content product that it might do more harm than good. It showed a real lack of expertise in the content and in style. That isn’t too uncommon for self-publication, but it is sometimes interesting to see how an author got to the point of self-importance that caused them to want to publish something absent expertise.

To find out more, I read the author’s biography. This is something I’ve gotten used to doing as a serial book reviewer. Before I read a book, I tend to ask myself why this author is the person who has something to say on this particular topic. There are gems that can be found by people who have no clear qualifications or experience on a subject, but they are rare. I don’t consider it my responsibility to find and expose those gems.

What drew my attention in this case was that the author listed an advanced degree from an institution I’ve never heard of. It was a doctorate of some variety in biblical studies. (The author’s website actually lists a degree the institution does not offer, but that is a topic for another post.)

Not being a known institution of higher learning may reflect more on my ignorance than the quality of the education, but my interest was piqued. So, I searched for the institution online. And I found it. It has a very elementary website with a number of missing elements (e.g., the institutional history claims to be under development), typos in menus (e.g., “Distance Learning” became “Distant Learning”), and interesting language about accreditation, which led me on my quest. The issue went beyond careless typos into blatant dishonesty.

What I found is a profoundly deceitful example of trying to ape the world’s standards dishonestly. It was an attempt to inflate credentials for the individuals. For the institution, it was an opportunity to make a little money by offering a knock off imitation of a product very much in demand. It is likely that the primary target audience of the institution’s sham degrees is people overseas who want an American education at a developing world price.

Basically, what I discovered in following this trail was a Diploma Mill designed to inflate credentials and put of a false front of credibility. More significantly, the false front was deepened by relying on an unrecognized “accreditation agency” whose approval is self-designated and, therefore, virtually meaningless. It was a Diploma Mill certified by an Accreditation Mill: a double deception destined to dishonor the name of Christ.

Background on Accreditation

Maintaining accreditation can be a difficult process. Not everything in the accreditation process is really helpful or cost effective, but overall, it does provide some assurances of institutional integrity and quality that protect students and faculty from various forms of abuse. I say this as someone who has worked on accreditation reaffirmations for several institutions.

In the United States, accreditation is unlike many other countries. The federal government authorizes the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and US Department of Education to set standards and vet the agencies that accredit programs and institutions. CHEA and USDE both accredit accreditors. Neither accredits specific programs or even whole institutions.

There are six regional accrediting agencies that oversee the accreditation of institutions along distinct geographic lines. If you are looking at schools in the U.S., this is generally the mark of a degree that will have value in the marketplace after graduation. Regional accreditors certify the quality of an entire institution and do not accredit specific programs.

In addition, there are specialized accreditors that approve specific programs at an institution. For example, there are two accreditors for nursing programs recognized by CHEA and/or USDE. Those agencies are focused on nursing and will come into an institution (which is likely accredited by a regional accreditor) to check the specifics of the nursing programs. They will not look at the English major (for example) when they come to visit. If you are shopping for programs in a distinct professional discipline, it is often very beneficial for your program to be accredited by one of the recognized specialized accreditors. You can get a degree in nursing (for example) from an institution that is only regionally accredited and does not have a specialized accreditation, but that may have negative implications for hiring or licensing.

To be clear, a good education can be attained apart from accreditation. There may come a time when accreditation of orthodox, faith-based institutions in the U.S. will not be possible. However, at the present time, degrees from regionally accredited institutions are the baseline standard in the marketplace. Employers expect you to have a degree of a certain quality from an institution certified by an authorized accreditation agency. In certain fields (like engineering, seminary degrees, nursing, and other professional fields), specialized accreditation is also necessary for the degree holder to enter the workforce in their chosen specialty.

Diploma Mills

Other than hiring practices and licensing requirements, CHEA and USDE derive their significance from being gate keepers to federal aid money. Institutions that are accredited by CHEA or USDE recognized accreditors can (but don’t have to) allow their students to get subsidized student loans, federal grants, or other government authorized aid. Part of the reason for the rise in significance in accreditation was to ensure that GI Bill money and other Federal student aid money was being spent on real, value-added educational programs.

However, as educational opportunities have proliferated, undergraduate degrees have become more of an entry ticket into more stable professional employment. (There are signs that this is changing, which I generally see as a good thing.) This has made it more important for people to have “the piece of paper” that states they completed a specific degree. Enter the Diploma Mill.

A Diploma Mill is an organization (or individual) representing itself as a legitimate educational institution with degree granting authority, but which does little or nothing to validate the recipients of that degree have the knowledge, skills, or experience that the degree normally implies in common usage.

For many people, going to school to obtain a degree is a schedule and/or financial impossibility. It becomes very tempting for institutions to pop up to offer easy access to get degrees. In the worst cases, these “institutions” are simply people with a nice printer that will spit out a personalized piece of parchment with a legitimate sounding school name on it for a few hundred dollars. In less egregious cases, there are actual institutions that offer real classes, but the amount of work required to complete courses is far below reasonable expectations or the amount of credit they grant for experience is well above normal limits. Often the faculty at these institutions have degrees from other Diploma Mills (even the one they teach at), so have never been exposed to experts in the field.

These, and the variants between, are all referred to as Diploma Mills. Most of these institutions make no claim to accreditation, it is up to the buyer to figure out the potential market value of the offered degree. The price seems too good to be true and the product much needed. Most of the time, the product is cheap because it is fake.

To be clear (and fair to some good actors), there are non-accredited institutions that offer legitimate educations. In some cases, there are ideological arguments for not seeking accreditation. For example, some Fundamentalist Christian schools believe that seeking accreditation requires a compromise of the principle of separation from sin. We can debate the merits of that position, but it is a legitimate one. In other cases, an institution may simply not have existed long enough to have accreditation. An institution cannot get accredited until it has a track record of operation for the accreditor to evaluate. Accreditation is also a costly process, so some young or financially struggling institutions that are academically sound may not be able to afford it. Not having accreditation, however, should be plainly stated with an explanation somewhere in the institution’s literature and website. The simple lack of meaningful accreditation does not make an institution a Diploma Mill, but it bears further investigation.

Accreditation Mills

The rabbit hole that I followed based on the author biography, however, revealed a third type of institution: a school that asserts it is “Fully Accredited” with a link to an “accreditor” that is not recognized by either CHEA or USDE. The accreditor, in this case, is actually an “Accreditation Mill.”

Simply put, an Accreditation Mill is an organization that claims to offer a value-added certification of the quality of the degree from an institution but does little to ensure its quality. It offers the appearance of legitimacy, without the necessary diligence to ensure it.

In the world of educational deception, Accreditation Mills are generally more morally insidious than bald-faced Diploma Mills. Accreditation Mills are tools used by illegitimate degree conferring institutions to maintain the appearance of validity without doing the work needed to have it.

In the best light, a struggling institution may purchase their “accreditation” from an Accreditation Mill to stay alive. It’s hard to attract students to a school that is not accredited. However, purchasing that accreditation is an act of deception intended to give the appearance of legitimacy to an otherwise low to no value degree. It is, necessarily, a form of dishonest misrepresentation.

Institutions that represent themselves as “Accredited” or, worse, “Fully Accredited” by an “accreditor” that is not recognize by USDE or CHEA are using people’s general ignorance as a tool to legitimate them. It is, at the heart, a fundamentally dishonest and despicable practice.

A Problem of Standards and Legitimacy

Out of curiosity, I moved from the website of the Diploma Mill in question to the “accreditor” from whom the institution received their status as “Fully Accredited.”

As a side note, no institution or program should ever claim to be “Fully Accredited.” (Just as a woman cannot be a little bit pregnant, but is either pregnant or not.) In legitimate regions of higher education, there is accreditation or no accreditation. An institution may have findings against their accreditation status, but they are still either accredited or not. Some legitimate institutions mistakenly publish themselves as “Fully Accredited” due to ignorance in their administrations, but that term should be a flag to ask further questions.

In the case under investigation, the institution claims to be “Fully Accredited,” but the “accreditor” is not certified by either the USDE or CHEA, nor are they pursuing any official status. The claim is a false front design to deceive the ignorant about the market value of the degrees.

If you know what to look for, it can be easy to pick out this misrepresentation. In this case, helpfully, the organization is pretty plainly a low-grade confidence scheme. The “accreditor” has a link from their main page offering to explain their “legal status.” Their website advertises them as a registered 501c3, showing a recent filing as a non-profit entity in Florida (despite being based in Missouri). Above that document there is a strongly worded paragraph that warns visitors they are a legitimate organization and that they have sued and will sue anyone who publicly describes their disreputable activity as…disreputable. They object to the term “accreditation mill” and “diploma mill.”

Most dishonest people don’t see themselves as bad guys.

Below their Florida entity registration area host of mean letters they have paid lawyers to send to bloggers and review sites to attempt to have the evidence of their perfidy scrubbed. [Incidentally, I am not putting these frauds “on blast” by name because I don’t feel like wasting my time on exposing them, and dealing with frivolous complaints, when the type of fraud is much more significant and widespread that this one Accreditation Mill.]

The organization also attempts to mislead visitors to the website by having a “US Government” link on their main page, which has links to documents that in no way connect them to the U. S. government in any meaningful sense. Oddly, the jobs page provides links to several positions at public universities (including an LGBT diversity coordinator, which is odd for an organization that “accredits” KJV loving institutions) that are outdated by several years and well out of the reach of anyone who graduates from a school “accredited” by this organization. And, to top off the wonder of the train-wreck, they list a Gmail account as one of the primary emails for the site.

For those who explore the links, there are a large number of warning flags.

Even more telling, perhaps, is that there are typos in the accreditation standards on their website. For example (and sic), “Institutions muse provide a time requirement…” Such an obvious typo in one of the few standards the “accreditor” has seems sketchy, to say the least. Not to mention that the accreditation standards are so far below any accepted standards of quality as to be meaningless.

The whole thing is a fraudulent shell game. It is a dishonest ruse.

Why Is This Bad?

The ruse works because most people who are seeking a degree do not understand how accreditation works. It intentionally trades on general ignorance of what accreditation means

The ruse is damaging for several reasons.

First, some people may do the work and pay for the degree from one of these fraudulent institutions and not recognize that it is making claims that are fundamentally dishonest. When businesses require an accredited degree, they mean one that has been accredited by a recognized accreditation organization. Ignorant people who get jobs based on untrue claims, even if it is not due to their own dishonesty, may face job loss. Or, they may find that they get rejected for employment because the hiring manager investigates their qualifications and writes them off as either a fool or a trickster for representing themselves as having a valid degree. In either case, the too good to be true degree that they got is really false and can cause damage down the line.

Second, counterfeit degrees devalue real degrees. Someone who invests four years going through the work of earning a 120-semester hour Baccalaureate degree deserves more credit than someone who spent a year and a couple thousand dollars doing busy work (if that much) for a Diploma Mill diploma or a degree from a non-accredited institution. Getting a degree may not mean you are a better person, but it should mean that you’ve done something recognizable and meaningful. If someone does not value the process of becoming accredited or earning a degree, then be honest and don’t pretend to have the product.

Is this Illegal?

What many of these Diploma Mills and Accreditation Mills are doing is likely not illegal.

It is dishonest to take advantage of people’s ignorance or confusion to sell them a low-quality, low-value degree, even if it is at a cut-rate price. However, in the cases I examined neither the school nor the “accreditor” make openly false statements about the value of their accreditation or their relationships with the US government.

This is simply a case of using information superiority to take advantage of ignorant people who think they are buying a product they are not.

The guy selling “Oakley” sunglasses on the streets of New York may never tell you they are actually brand name products. He allows you to draw that conclusion from the similar logo and look without making the overt statement. His conscience is clear (maybe) and he is not legally liable because, in some sense, you have deceived yourself. He just set up the conditions for it to happen.

Diploma Mills and Accreditation Mills are immoral, but they may not be illegal.

Why this Annoys Me

In this case, the author whose biography prompted this whole investigation makes a claim to hold a doctorate. I happen to hold a doctorate from an institution with both a regional and specialized accreditation. My doctorate took me years and required me to write a book-length dissertation. His dissertation was completed online in monthly installments and required a “thesis” that would be a lengthy seminar paper in most PhD programs.

The problem here is that to the average person on the street, his credentials are the same as mine. The difference is that he didn’t do the formative work to earn that title or status, and it shows in the results he puts on display.

The individual who sparked this post got my attention for offering a low-quality book, but also because he preached one of the most illogical and rhetorically poor sermons I have ever heard. The credibility of his preaching was raised in the eyes of some because of his “doctorate.” The fact that he said multiple things that were incoherent or simply factually false discredits my degree, because a religiously-based doctorate becomes associated with foolishness. When people see his errors and associate them with the education he claims, it decreases the trustworthiness of those who earned their credentials from a reputable, accredited institution.

Worse still, people who hear him are going to assume that his objectively false statements are valid because he is supposed to be an expert. Having a degree in the field about which you are speaking should ensure some credibility. In the case of this author and speaker, any credibility would be falsely assumed.

Degrees from institutions that misrepresent the nature of their “accreditation” are issuing counterfeit credentials that devalue the perceived value of degrees for those who do the work to earn them from legitimate institutions. This is dishonest and represents a failure of neighbor love.

Both the dishonesty and the degradation of my earned credentials rub me the wrong way.

Degrading Christianity and Christian Institutions

Perhaps more significantly than my personal annoyance, however, is that creating Christian Diploma Mills or pursuing an Accreditation Mill certification to misrepresent reality is a form of treachery.

Notably the Accreditation Mill that I was focused on is “faith based.” When I did a search for institutions that were “accredited” by them, the ones I clicked on all claimed to be Christian or at least to offer some sort of theological education. (This despite the fact that one of them included “State” in their name to masquerade as a public university.)

Several of these institutions issue semi-standard fundamentalist warnings that their degree was not intended to advance your “secular career.” The insinuation is that non-Christians are likely to look down on your degree simply because it comes from a religious institution.

There may be some validity in that, though it has not played out that way for institutions like Notre Dame, Baylor, and Georgetown.

However, these institutions are working toward devaluing degrees from religious institutions because they are putting forth low quality substitutes for the real thing and crying about it. In truth, overtly Christian institutions that provide excellent educational opportunities tend to have students that do well in both “secular” and faith-based fields.

There are enough cultural forces trying to put highly qualified Christians in a dhimmi status without creating a back-alley café with greasy silverware and claiming it is just as good as a highly rated New York bistro. Being a shyster as a representative of Christ is a good way to get everyone to think that all Christians (or most) are shysters.

If institutions don’t want to play by the accreditation rules, that is fine, but it degrades Christianity and legitimate Christian academic institutions when people falsely claim to produce excellence when they are pumping out excrement. This dishonors Christ because it is intentionally deceptive.

Why Is This Dangerous?

The false credentials purchased through these online programs can be dangerous because it can produce people who, to those who aren’t aware, have the letters that signal expert without the knowledge to back it up. The low-quality book and poor sermon of the “doctor” I encountered is a symptom that could have truly negative consequences in another field.

For example, one of the institutions “accredited” under this false front offers a “Doctor of Psychology” degree for about $8,000. The courses for this degree are all “accelerated” with one offering noting that it expects students to do a 6-semester hour course in 6 weeks.

This requirement is unrealistic.

Most institutions of higher learning expect, for undergraduate programs, a basic 2:1 ratio between homework and class time. They also anticipate that a given semester hour will have 50 minutes of contact per week for 15 weeks. So, a typical 3 credit course could be expected to have 2250 minutes of contact time—or classroom time for traditional education—per semester with an additional 4500 minutes of homework. For those good at math, that is an expected 6,750 minutes of total work for the average student to master the material in that course. That comes to 112.5 hours.

This 6-semester hour course, therefore, could be expected to consume at least 225 hrs of the students’ time during that 6 week period. That is 37.5 hrs per week.

What are the odds that the amount of work in this class actually matches that standard expectation for an undergraduate program? Recognize that the work for a graduate or advanced course is usually more taxing.

I didn’t register for the class (and the syllabus was not online) to find out, but I’d lay even money that this class isn’t that rigorous otherwise no one would finish the program. Even if a student crams through some material in this six-week session, how much are they likely to retain? How can someone who has crammed that much material hope to be exposed to the range of literature in the field? Education typically requires soak time.

At the end of a series of these classes, someone with a little extra time and a few thousand dollars has a piece of paper that lists a degree that could convince a patient to come listen to their advice and pay them for it. Even if they never get a job from a medical practice, someone with no real knowledge could be giving advice to people in desperate need of real help.

All of this is an issue because people rely on degrees, accreditation, and certifications to mean something. Beyond being immoral and dishonest, when bad actors intentionally misrepresent their product, it could lead to real danger.

Conclusion

Credential inflation is not something new in the Christian world. The number of honorary doctorates given by Fundamentalist Christian institutions in the 20th century could probably feed a bonfire for a decade.

Credential inflation is problematic because it reflects a desire to see oneself as more important than one really is. It is an attempt to claim a level of expertise and experience that is not legitimate. It is an attempt to gain honor from the work that others have done.

Significantly, institutions and individuals that misrepresent their own credentials are dishonoring the name of Christ by putting their own honor above the truth. It is not strictly necessary to say something untrue to lie, one can simply intentionally mislead.

As Christians we ought to be known for our adherence to truth. Pursuing inflated credentials or misrepresenting the nature of credentials offered by an institution within the body of Christ should be unthinkable. May it become so soon.

The Green New Deal - A Review

The Green New Deal (GND) will either take off or get crushed by this most recent economic crisis. On the one hand, proponents of the GND argue they can provide everyone with everything they need (and a pony) while making everything greener, safer, and happier. On the other hand, we are doing a pretty solid dryrun of the Green New Deal and most people aren’t having much fun.

Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth, takes a swing at making a case that a centrally planned (if not centrally controlled) economy can make things better in every respect—better jobs, more money, better ecology, etc. This has been his focus for decades now.

According to his website, Rifkin serves as an advisor to leaders in the EU on their movement toward a green economy. He also lays claim to “advising the leadership of the Peoples Republic of China on the build out and scale up of the Internet Plus Industrial Revolution infrastructure to usher in a sustainable low-carbon economy.”

Of those two significant claims to authority, the second one helps shape my concerns about his proposed policy and show why the GND may not be the good deal that its proponents support.

One of Rifkin’s major claims is that fossil fuels are on the wane and that our current economic structure, which includes a significant amount of formal and informal infrastructure based on the assumptions of a certain mode of power, will be obsolete in roughly a decade. He argues that renewable energies like solar and wind will replace the bulk of coal and natural gas generation. He also argues that regulation and obsolescence will help push the internal combustion engine far to the margins for transportation.

(On a side note, one of the major Green New Deal advocates, Alexadria Ocasio-Cortez recently celebrated the economic harms done to the oil industry by the current pandemic in a tweet. She subsequently deleted the tweet and modified it to make it sound like her joy was less effusive about other people’s pain, but whatever her intent is or was, it is clear that she and other GND advocates see the current economic crisis as an opportunity to push their plans on the world.)

Inasmuch as Rifkin sees a rise in the prevalence of solar and wind generation, I think he is correct. Those technologies are quickly becoming economical. Even without the tax subsidy provided by the federal government, I would have probably installed the solar panels on my roof. Solar, in particular, is an energy source that has many more advantages than disadvantages. Wind, too, is very clean, though there are issues with migratory bird deaths, disruption of bird nesting areas, and aesthetic concerns for people who live near them. There are more kinks to work out for wind, but there is a great deal of promise, too.

The present problem is that displacing the baseload generation of traditional power plants requires a rapid development and deployment of hydrogen storage technologies (or another storage method) to be effective. In a May 2019 article on hydrogen storage notes that, “Hydrogen may be stored at elevated density in various ways but few of these have reached commercial maturity for large scale applications.” Rifkin’s promise of an all renewable future relies on that technology maturing and being put into largescale use in just a few years. I find that unlikely.

A better answer to a shift toward hydrogen storage might be an increase in nuclear power generation, which has small scale options that are nearing approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US that promise a significant reduction in risk and construction costs. The latter of which is the most significant issue with nuclear, though perceived risk is often the greater issue in the mind of the public.

Beyond what I view as excessive optimism is a much more insidious element of the Green New Deal in Rifkin’s model, which is that it requires submission to an increase in personal surveillance and loss of control by individuals and families.

One of the more significant demands in Alexadria Ocasio-Cortez’s grandiose GND proposals was to “retrofit every building in America.” To most people, that sounds like a promise to put in more insulation, add some weather-stripping, and maybe add a programmable thermostat. However, Rifkin gives some context to what that retrofit would include.

Rifkin is a big fan of the Internet of Things. A lot of Americans are, in fact, though the wisdom of that remains to be seen. The Internet of Things (IoT) is when people’s home appliances, home security systems, traffic lights, etc., are all connected to the internet. This is advertised as a boon because it allows you to check on your babysitter when they are alone with your child, monitor for porch pirates stealing your Amazon packages, validate whether or not you have another gallon of milk in your home, and remotely control your thermostat or garage door while you are on vacation. For Rifkin, by putting homes and civil architecture on the IoT, algorithms and the really smart people that develop them can gain efficiency. It also means that control of your privacy and your home is transferred to the entities that control the internet.

The GND infrastructure Rifkin is arguing for is one of heightened public surveillance. He outlines a failed public-private partnership in Ottawa. “The plan is to build out Canada’s first smart, digitally connected urban neighborhood, replete with state-of-the-art sensors across a seamless Internet of Things neural system. Ubiquitous sensors will provide surveillance, collecting data on activity taking place in the homes, the shops, and the streets, with the goal of helping speed efficiencies and conveniences in commerce, social life, and governance.” (38) The plan eventually fell through because people got nervous about Google’s participation. Rifkin remains very positive about the idea—in fact it is the soul of his proposal—as long as the government retains control.

There is a willfully blind aspect to Rifkin’s proposals. As he states, he is deeply involved in China’s rapidly expanding surveillance state. The ongoing human rights violations of the Chinese Communist Party against their people has been widely reported and is largely facilitated by the technological infrastructure that Rifkin is proposing. His overwhelmingly positive attitude toward China, which continues to be one of the worst polluting nations on the planet, is mysterious and naïve. This is no tu quoque argument, because Rifkin repeatedly cites China as a prime example of a nation that gets his vision.

Rifkin makes it readily apparent he is all for controlling the flow of information. He writes, “The dark side of the internet will require vigilant regulatory oversight at the local, state, and national levels. . .” (22) In context, he’s obviously concerned with controlling hackers, as the remainder of the sentence goes on about building in redundancy into the smart grid to minimize digital disruptions. It is also entirely clear from the paragraphs surrounding this brief snippet that Rifkin’s model of regulation includes more than digital redundancy and includes significant intrusion into the use of the internet. All of this intrusion for a “conceivable” chance to “increase aggregate energy efficiency to as high as 60 percent over the next twenty years.” (23) And, of course, he states that we must shift to this new remotely monitored infrastructure “because the only other alternative is to remain trapped in a dying, carbon-based Second Industrial Revolution economy.” (23)

All of this surveillance makes it possible Naomi Klein’s vision of controlling individual economic choices, in her book, On Fire, where she argues:

“Most fundamentally, any credible Green New Deal needs a concrete plan for ensuring that the salaries from all the good green jobs it creates aren’t immediately poured into high-consumer lifestyles that inadvertently end up increasing emissions––a scenario where everyone has a good job and lots of disposable income and it all gets spent on throwaway crap from China destined for the landfill.” (284)

When you are monitoring people’s activities in their homes, on the roads, in the sidewalks, and everywhere they do to maximize their commercial lives, then it is possible to ensure they don’t slip up and order an extra shirt online.

That others aren’t cringing at the proposals embedded in the Green New Deal shows that they have either gone round the bend, presuming a beneficent ruling class in government and in corporations, or they haven’t read the published literature. As for me, I want a greener future, too, but the vision outlined by advocates of the Green New Deal make it clear that our hope for the days to come lies in radically different places.

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth

By Rifkin, Jeremy

Buy on Amazon

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

What Kind of Value Does Creation Have?

The amount of energy Christians invest in creation care should depend greatly on the value of the created order. Understanding how God values his creation should be at the heart of a Christian vision for environmental ethics. Scripture reveals that creation has more than instrumental value; it has a purpose other than simply supporting human life. But attempts at assigning intrinsic value to creation have a tendency to lead to indecision in important ethical questions and even nature worship in extreme cases. Instead of intrinsic value and in addition to instrumental value, creation has inherent value, which is value that is determined by its proper relationship to the value giver, according to how well it fulfills its purpose. Creation’s inherent value is maximized when it fulfills the purpose for which it was created.

Value of Creation in the Old Testament

The Bible opens up with a description of the Triune God’s creative act, by speaking all of creation into existence. Seven times God declares the goodness of creation in the first chapter of Genesis. The first six times Scripture declares that what God has just created is “good” (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), while the seventh time Scripture declares the whole of creation “very good” (Gen 1:31).

A cursory look at Genesis 1 may raise a further question whether creation was good because God declared to so or whether it had value because of its very nature. The text is helpful in answering this question. Each time the pattern repeats itself in Genesis, we see that “God saw that it was good.” In other words, God observed the goodness of what he created. It was not good simply because he arbitrarily declared it so, but because of some characteristic it had. In this case, its goodness is based on its proper relationship to the Creator.

Another natural question that comes from reading Genesis 1 is why God deemed creation “very good” after the sixth day. One argument is that God was especially pleased with the finalized creation because it included humans made in his image.[1] That view is possible, but a more natural reading of the text in its context indicates that God’s satisfaction with the whole of the created order, in which satisfaction he rested on the first Sabbath (Gen 2:1–3). There is a unity between non-human and human creation, with the distinction between their value residing in the image of God resting uniquely on humans.

In Genesis 3, non-human creation is cursed because of Adam’s sin. “Thorns and thistles” interfere with human flourishing, but the goodness of creation is not destroyed by Adam’s sin or by God’s curse. The continued value of creation in God’s eyes is affirmed by the institution of a covenant between God and all of creation (not just humans) in Gen 9:12–17, when God promises not to destroy the entire earth through flood again.

Scripture also gives evidence that God delights in his creation, despite the effects of sin in it. Psalm 104 offers a poetic vision of God’s continued sustenance of his creation. One striking pair of verses indicates that part of God’s creative purpose was for his creatures to play: “Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.” (vv. 25–26) Whatever Leviathan is, God created it to play in the sea. This has profound implications for leisure, but also for ways that God may receive joy from his handiwork.

God’s rebuke of Job in Job 39–41 also gives testimony of God’s care for his creation. Part of God’s challenge to Job in response to his complaint is to ask whether Job could provide for all of creation. God asks, “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions?” (39:39) In this passage God reveals that he is intimately involved in sustaining creation, even down to providing for individual animals.

Value of Creation in the New Testament

God’s particular providence for his creatures is clear in the New Testament, as well. For example, Matthew’s Gospel records Jesus saying, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” (Mt 10:29) The obvious point of the passage, when read in context, is God’s intended providence for his people, but the text leaves no doubt that he cares for all his creation, not just humans.

John 3:16 also includes a subtext of God’s care for his creation, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The primary focus of God’s saving work is the redemption of fallen humans, therefore when this passage is preached, it is usually assumed that “the world” refers to all the people, but the Greek phrase is actually to cosmos, or the whole creation.[2] To be clear, the restoration of creation is not like the salvation of humans; creation did not sin and therefore will not be saved in the same sense that humans will. Nevertheless, Christ’s death will lift the curse from the non-human creation as well as paving a path for redemption for his elect.

Christ’s role in creation is critical in understanding its value. In John 1, after declaring the deity of Christ and his coeternal existence with the Father in verses 1 and 2, the apostle declares that Christ created all things. However, the connection is even more intimate. In Col 1:15–20 Paul describes an ongoing connection between the divine Christ and his creation. Christ is the “firstborn of all creation,” by which Paul meant that he is the preeminent being within creation, an interpretation that is made clear by Paul’s assertions in verses 15 and 16 that Christ created all things. But Christ did not merely create and leave the world to function on its own, he became part of creation by taking human flesh, which is part of what the Christ-hymn in Colossians is explaining. Additionally, all things “hold together” (v. 16) in Christ, which refers to the sustaining work of Christ in creation. And Paul clearly declares that Christ will “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (v. 20). The implications are significant for creation care and the value of creation because of Christ’s participation in its formation, his sustenance of it, his identification with it, and finally his future reconciliation of it as one of the results of his death on the cross.

God will eventually renew all of creation because of the value he places on creation. There are differing views of the means by which God will renew all of creation, whether by destroying the present creation and re-creating it entirely or by purging the sin from it and refurbishing the present creation. However, the vision that Scripture casts for creation is one where the effects of sin are eliminated. In Romans 8:18–23, Paul explains that the created order is longing for the redemption of humans, with the implication that when sinful humans are glorified, the curse of Genesis 3 will be lifted from creation. Thus, Revelation 21 records a vision of the New Heavens and New Earth, where there is no longer any suffering or sin. Whatever process God sovereignly uses to take away the curse from creation, it is clear that the renewal of the whole cosmos is part of God’s ultimate plan for creation

Both the Old and New Testament show that God values creation. We have seen that Christ identifies with creation closely, as evidenced by the incarnation and his continued sustenance of the created order. It is necessary to development an environmental ethics that balances the goodness of creation with the special role of humans to establish some sort of vocabulary or set of categories that can help us communicate a biblical vision for creation. The following sections will address two common categories of value used for creation and offer a third that helps navigate resource usage by humans and God’s valuation of creation.

Instrumental Value

Instrumental value is the most common category for describing the worth of something. By definition, instrumental value is the utility of an object to a subject.[3] Instrumental value is highly dependent upon the situation and the position of the subject. The same object may have incredibly high instrumental value in one situation and almost none in another. For example, a $100 bill has almost no value to someone shipwrecked on a deserted island. The value ascribed to an object largely depends on the opinion of the individual or group making that judgment at a given time.

Creation has instrumental value. Humans eat plants and animals to survive. Homes are built from stone and wood. Trees provide shade. Fossil fuels provide much of the electricity of the world. Water is useful for cleaning, for sustaining life, and for recreation. Mountains can be useful for providing aesthetic pleasure when people admire them. The instrumental value of any of these things is dependent upon how people value them at a given time.

However, it is not enough to say that creation has only instrumental value. God values parts of creation that have no useful purpose, like Leviathan playing in the sea or the sparrow on the wing. As stewards, humans have authority to utilize creation, but its usefulness does not exhaust its value.

Intrinsic Value

To counter an overemphasis on the instrumental value of nature, some environmentalists argue that creation has intrinsic value. Philosopher C. I. Lewis defines intrinsic value as “that which is good in itself or good for its own sake.”[4] This category of value certainly elevates the worth of creation beyond its usefulness to humans, but it creates significant problems at the same time.

To have intrinsic value, an object would need to have value if nothing else existed.[5] For example, if a tree has intrinsic value, then it would be valuable if it were floating in space before the creation of the world and—if this were possible—without the presence of God. Lewis, an atheist, argues that nothing has intrinsic value, because there must always be someone to ascribe value to an object.[6] Christians, recognizing the eternal existence of the Triune God in perpetual communion will recognize that God fills the category of intrinsic value quite well. However, when the category of intrinsic value is used in contemporary environmental discussions, it is sometimes meant in the sense that creation would have value even apart from the existence of a divine creator.[7]

At its worst, believing that creation has value in and of itself can lead to panentheism (the belief that the divine is present in matter) or pantheism (the belief that creation is itself divine). Much of liberal theology through the past century has tended toward a diminution of the distinction between creation and God, so the use of the term intrinsic value with the possible misconceptions is not surprising.[8] The close, though unnecessary, relationship between these theological errors and environmentalism has been a significant contributor to orthodox Christians not engaging in creation care in a biblical manner.

We must be clear that describing creation as having intrinsic value is not always a marker of nature worship; the definition offered by an author matters. For example, Francis Schaeffer uses the term intrinsic value to refer to creation in Pollution and the Death of Man, where he qualifies the value of creation as being derived from its relationship to God, not its self-existence.[9] What Schaeffer needed was another term that allows for non-instrumental value for creation. The term inherent value would have provided what he needed.

A more practical problem arises from assigning intrinsic value to creation, because it makes decision making about environmental priorities impossible. Sahotra Sarkar, writing on philosophical arguments for biodiversity, argues that attributing intrinsic value to biodiversity removes grounds for moral obligation because obligation stems from relationship, which is no longer necessary. Even accepting there is moral obligation, intrinsic value puts all of nature on par, so that there are no grounds preserve an endangered species at the expense of another plentiful species because both are equally valuable. Sarkar offers a definition of intrinsic that sounds more like the next category of value we will discuss.[10]

Inherent Value

Inherent value is sometimes used interchangeably with intrinsic value,[11] but the vocabulary of C. I. Lewis is again helpful. Lewis carves out a category of inherent value where the value of an object is determined by its relationship to the valuer.[12] Another way of saying this is that an object has inherent value that corresponds to its fulfillment of its intended purpose. Inherent value is subjective value, but it is properly determined by God. For Christians, creation has inherent value when it is fulfilling God’s purpose for it.

This middle category of value between the absolutes of intrinsic value and the utilitarianism of instrumental value provides both a means for creation to be stewarded for non-utilitarian reasons and for something that has non-utilitarian value to be utilized when needed. Animals were made by God to glorify him and have inherent value. Humans can eat animals (Gen 9:3), but that does not give humans the right to kill animals wantonly or mistreat them. Because animals have inherent value, in addition to their instrumental value, we should treat them compassionately and consistently with their purpose.

Purpose of Creation

To summarize John Edwards’ philosophical treatise, The End for Which God Created the World, we know that God created the world for his own glory. In his tightly-reasoned argument, Edwards argues that God values objects according to how well they fulfill the purpose for which they were created.[13] Leviathan glorifies God when it plays in the ocean, because that is the purpose for which it was created. Humans, whether eating or drinking, glorify God by living according to the proper order of the universe. (Cf. 1 Cor 10:31) The degree to which creation is allowed to exist according to God’s design within the created order determines its inherent value.

Psalm 19:1 reminds readers, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” Creation certainly is useful for supporting human life, but it also has a cosmic purpose in revealing the character of God. (Rom 1:19–20) The character of God is glorious. Creation testifies to that. When the goodness of creation is distorted to mask the glory of God—when it is polluted or worshipped—its inherent value is diminished.

Summary

Creation has value because of its relationship with the Creator. Christ made all things and sustains all of creation. His love for all of creation is so significant that he died on the cross, was buried, and raised three days later to redeem, restore, and reconcile all of creation to himself for his own glory. Much of creation has instrumental value, but it also has inherent value. We glorify God in how we utilize creation by doing so with gratitude to the Creator and by honoring the created order in the manner in which we use it.

[1] Elmer Towns, Theology for Today (Mason, OH: Cengage Learning, 2008), 555.

[2] Derek Carlsen, “Redemption versus the Fall,” Christianity and Society 14.4 (2005): 45–50.

[3] C. I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1946), 392

[4] Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 382.

[5] Robert H. Nelson, “Calvinism without God: American Environmentalism as Implicit Calvinism,” Implicit Religion 17, no. 3 (2014):259.

[6] Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 432.

[7] Earth Bible Team, “Guiding Ecojustice Principles,” in Readings from the Perspective of the Earth, ed. Norman Habel (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2000), 44–47.

[8] Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 1999), 550.

[9] Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer (Downers Grove, IL: Crossway, 1983), 5:32.

[10] Sahotra Sarkar, Biodiversity and Environmental Philosphy (Campbridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 45–60.

[11] E.g., Mark Liederbach and Seth Bible, True North: Christ, the Gospel, and Creation Care (Nashville, TN: B & H Academic, 2012), 35–50.

[12] Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, 391.

[13] Jonathan Edwards, Dissertation on the End for which God Created the World, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2003), 94–119.

Richard Baxter on Churches Meeting When Forbidden

The following is an excerpt from The Practical Works of Richard Baxter, the fifth volume, in his Christian Ecclesiastics, where he details answers to nearly 200 questions dealing with Christians and matters of conscience.

Richard Baxter

Baxter, an English Puritan, was obviously writing in a different day under a different set of laws, but I think that his response to these two questions is pertinent and helpful at this present time. I disagree with a few of the particulars (e.g., that it might be ok for the government to restrict meetings smaller than ten), but the general intent is, I think, well-considered and generally helpful as we process living under temporary restrictions driven by COVID-19.

Of particular value, I think, is the explanation Baxter offers regarding ceasing to hold services under orders of the magistrate due to “a time of pestilence.” He writes, “If the magistrate for a greater good, (as the common safety,) forbid church assemblies in a time of pestilence, assault of enemies, or fire, or the like necessity, it is a duty to obey him.”

As I understand it presently, that is the condition we are under. I do not like the requirement, but I think that, as long as there is a universal ban against large assemblies, we will do well to honor the orders to forebear meeting. This is not a change in position from my earlier post, which called for grace and prudence as congregations decide whether to meet or not, but a reflection of the changed circumstances. The earlier post was written when bans were not in effect and congregations were making decisions based on prudential data.

Baxter on Meeting When Forbidden By the Government

Question 109: May we omit church assemblies on the Lord's day if the magistrate forbid them?

Answer 1. It is one thing to forbid them for a time upon some special cause as infection by pestilence fire war &c and another to forbid them statedly or profanely.

2. It is one thing to omit them for a time, and another to do it ordinarily.

3. It is one thing to omit them in formal obedience to the law; and another thing to omit them in prudence, or for necessity, because we cannot keep them.

4. The assembly and the circumstances of the assembly must be distinguished:

(1.) If the magistrate for a greater good, (as the common safety,) forbid church assemblies in a time of pestilence, assault of enemies, or fire, or the like necessity, it is a duty to obey him. 1. Because positive duties give place to those great natural duties which are their end: so Christ justified himself and his disciples violation of the external rest of the sabbath. “For the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath.” 2. Because affirmatives bind not ‘ad semper,’ and out-of-season duties become sins. 3. Because one Lord's day or assembly is not to be preferred before many, which by the omission of that one are like to be obtained.

(2.) If princes profanely forbid holy assemblies and public worship, either statedly, or as a renunciation of Christ and our religion; it is not lawful formally to obey them.

(3.) But it is lawful prudently to do that secretly for the present necessity, which we cannot do publicly, and to do that with smaller numbers, which we cannot do with greater assemblies, yea, and to omit some assemblies for a time, that we may thereby have opportunity for more: which is not formal but only material obedience.

(4.) But if it be only some circumstances of assembling that are forbidden us, that is the next case to be resolved.

Question 110: Must we obey the magistrate if he only forbid us worshipping God in such a place or country or in such numbers or the like?

Answer: We must distinguish between such a determination of circumstances, modes, or accidents, as plainly destroy the worship or the end, and such as do not.

For instance,  1. He that saith, You shall never assemble but once a year, or never but at midnight; or never above six or seven minutes at once, &c. doth but determine the circumstance of time: but he doth it so as to destroy the worship, which cannot so be done, in consistency with its ends. But he that shall say, You shall not meet till nine o’clock nor stay in the night, &c. doth no such thing.

So 2. He that saith, You shall not assemble but at forty miles distance one from another; or you shall meet only in a room that will hold but the twentieth part of the church; or you shall never preach in any city or populous place, but in a wilderness far from the inhabitants, &c. doth but determine the circumstance of place. But he so doth it as tends to destroy or frustrate the work which God commandeth us. But so doth not he that only boundeth churches by parish bounds, or forbiddeth inconvenient places.

3. So he that saith, You shall never meet under a hundred thousand together, or never above five or six, doth but determine the accident of number. But he so doth it as to destroy the work and end. For the first will be impossible and in the second way they must keep church-assemblies without ministers, when there is not so many as for every such little number to have one. But so doth not he that only saith, You shall not meet above ten thousand, nor under ten.

4. So he that saith, You shall not hear a Trinitarian, but an Arian; or you shall hear only one that cannot preach the essentials of religion, or that cries down godliness itself; or you shall hear none but such as were ordained at Jerusalem or Rome, or none but such as subscribe the council of Trent, &c. doth but determine what person we shall hear. But he so doth it as to destroy the work and end. But so doth not he that only saith, You shall hear only this able minister, rather than that.

I need not stand on the application. In the latter case we owe formal obedience. In the former we must suffer, and not obey.

For if it be meet so to obey, it is meet in obedience to give over God's worship. Christ said, “When they persecute you in one city, flee to another:” but he never said, “If they forbid you preaching in any city, or populous place, obey them. He that said, “Preach the Gospel to every creature, and to all nations, and all the world,” and that “would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” doth not allow us to forsake the souls of all that dwell in cities and populous places, and preach only to some few cottagers elsewhere: no more than he will allow us to love, pity, and relieve the bodies only of those few, and take none for our neighbours that dwell in cities, but with priest and Levite to pass them by.

On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal - A Review

In February 2019, a member of the U. S. House of Representatives released a bold new plan to take over the U. S. economy in the name of “climate justice.” Modeled after, and of greater scope than, FDR’s New Deal plan, the proposal was called “The Green New Deal.”

The proposal obviously caused a big stir, not least because the first released edition of the FAQs for the proposal including information about the difficulty of eliminating “farting cows.” After the online mockery of some of those more drastic proposals ramped up, the claim was made that this was an early draft and not the final version. An edited version with more professional prose was later released, but thankfully, the original version was not memory holed (not yet anyway).

The elimination of farting cows is funny, but more concerning is the call by to “retrofit every building in America,” among other things. This shows the sheer scope of the economic control desired by proponents of the so-called Green New Deal: They want the ability to remodel your home, modify your church, and rebuild your business after their own desire.

This sounds alarmist. To a degree it is, but the actual claims of proponents of the so-called Green New Deal make it clear than nothing but a total transformation of every aspect of the economy and social life in our country will satisfy them. Naomi Klein, an activist who has written journalistically in favor of socialism and the environment, released a book in late 2019, which both supports the Green New Deal program and illuminates the level of control desired.

Klein’s Case

On Fire claims to present The Burning Case for a Green New Deal according to the subtitle. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this book is that it fails to make a case. For those readers who are deeply concerned about environment and the impact of global warming, but also curious as to why granting total control of the economy to socialists would be beneficial, will find that this book under-delivers on its basic claims.

To be fair, this volume is a collection of slightly revised opinion pieces (some were published as journalism) and political speeches that Klein has previously published in other outlets since 2010. There is little cogency in the argument, and, truthfully, little more than assertion throughout. This is a book that is more likely to galvanize the will of the already convinced than it is to convince anyone to jump on the bandwagon. For a book that claims to make a case for a sweeping and potentially devastating economic revolution (if historic examples of socialism are any indication), there is very little research and very few arguments made. A topic this important deserves better work.

Klein is a rabid proponent of socialism, as evidenced by her earlier published works. This book does not advance significantly from her published arguments in This Changes Everything.

What is clearer in On Fire is that Klein and other proponents of the so-called Green New Deal are not merely shooting for economic control, but for a total ideological overhaul of the world’s societies. She laments the divisions in the world that have prevented the hegemony of climate activists and argues that “a Green New Deal could instill a sense of collective, higher purpose.” (26) This plan requires less journalism and more activism on the part of the media (243–44).

But, more insidiously, it requires all streams of communication to become focused on presenting this controlled narrative: Just as in the New Deal era when “Playwrights, photographers, muralists, and novelists were all part of telling the story of what was possible. For the Green New Deal to succeed, we, too, will need the skills and expertise of many different kinds of storytellers: Artists, psychologists, faith leaders, historians, and more.” (271)

This might seem less difficult, if Klein did not also actively support the intimation by revisionist Roman Catholic, Sean McDonough in his suggestion that, “Scripture is ever evolving, and should be interpreted in historical context. If Genesis needs a prequel, that’s not such a big deal. Indeed, I get the distinct sense that he’d be happy to be part of the drafting committee.” (145)

Any societal narrative must be widely repeated if there is to be coherence. Many of the failures in American society to date have been exacerbated by a lost common narrative. However, it seems a bit insidious to simultaneously propose control of the economy from the top and working to control the messaging. History shows that such a central focus on ideology is damaging to the willing and unwilling subjects of those who have gained such total control. What Klein describes is forceful propaganda designed to choke out opposition.

Although this sounds like an exaggeration, it is fairly clear the book is not making an argument in good faith. This is base-energizing propaganda designed to demonize any opposition to their control. In reflecting on Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, Klein notes,

“Never, ever underestimate the power of hate. Never underestimate the power of direct appeals to power over “the other”––the migrant, the Muslim, black people, women. Especially during times of economic hardship. Because when large numbers of white men find themselves frightened and insecure, and those men were raised in a social system built on elevating their humanity over all these others’, a lot of them get mad. And there is nothing wrong in itself with being mad––there’s a lot to be mad about.” (191)

This sort of “us vs. them” argument is written throughout the book. Often this is in the explicitly in the language of intersectionality, which in its more invidious forms privileges certain theories over others simply because of the personal characteristics of the individual or group that seems to support the theory.

At one point, Klein quips, “To change everything, it takes everyone.” (202) But clearly, Klein doesn’t include anyone who has even minimal disagreement with her in any area. If the goal were to improve the quality of the environment, there might be aspects of the Green New Deal to discuss, but this is a call for granting total control to an ideologically driven group who see their theories as a moral imperative.

Klein makes this clear, she notes, “Winning is a moral imperative. The stakes are too high, and time is too short, to settle for anything less.” (242) Of course, winning involves implementing the plan of imposing the Green New Deal through legislation. Klein writes,

“The plan is pretty straightforward: elect a strong supporter of the Green New Deal in the Democratic primaries; take the White House, the House, and the Senate in 2020; and start rolling out on day one of the new administration (the way FDR did with the original New Deal in his famous ‘first 100 days,’ when the newly elected president pushed fifteen major bills through Congress.)” (31)

All we need is single party control of the entire government to ensure that what promises to be a reasonable, balanced legislation through. Actually, Klein notes that understanding the implications of proposed policy is not a significant point of concern. She argues, “we don’t need to figure out every detail before we begin. . . What matters is that we begin the process right away.” (39) Do something, even if you don’t know who it is going to harm or how much.

But this is where the odd contradiction comes in because while arguing for total control of the centralized government and unilaterally imposing sweeping legislation, she also states that we should avoid “highly centralized, top-down transformations.” This is because,

“If we defer to central governments in that way [like wartime mobilizations] in the face of the climate crisis, we should expect highly corrupt measures that further concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few big players, not to mention systematic attacks on human rights . . .” (36)

She lays these abuses at the feet of capitalism, of course, but what she describes sounds like the effects of single party control in socialist systems like Venezuela and the former Soviet bloc countries. Notably, socialist countries are not well known for their respect of human rights, peaceful transfer of power, or, oddly, for their positive record on the environment.

Klein casually admits to the environmental abuses of historical socialistic implementations:

“But we have to be honest that autocratic industrial socialism has also been a disaster for the environment, as evidenced most dramatically by the fact that carbon emissions briefly plummeted when the economies of the former Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. And Venezuela’s petro-populism is a reminder that there is nothing inherently green about self-defined socialism.” (251)

Apparently, the control imposed by environmentally engaged socialists in upending all of society will be much gentler than previous versions of single party, socialist rule.

Of course, that claim doesn’t mesh with Klein’s claim that,

“Most fundamentally, any credible Green New Deal needs a concrete plan for ensuring that the salaries from all the good green jobs it creates aren’t immediately poured into high-consumer lifestyles that inadvertently end up increasing emissions––a scenario where everyone has a good job and lots of disposable income and it all gets spent on throwaway crap from China destined for the landfill.” (284)

I’m trying to find a way that such total control of everyone’s individual economic choices could be managed apart from a strenuous totalitarianism, but I haven’t been able to imagine one.

Conclusion

To be fair to Klein, I’m a fan of the free market in addition to being deeply concerned about the environment. I picked up the book with the expectation of disagreement. I have previously reviewed her book, This Changes Everything, which makes the basic assertion that climate change is bad, therefore socialism is needed. I didn’t like that book, but I’ve softened in my views in some ways, matured in others, and was hopeful that perhaps she had a published a book with a better argument. I remain disappointed.

Though I have become less of a libertarian, Klein has become much more extreme. If anything, though the quality of thought has not changed, the content is more disturbing because Klein presents a direct hostility to those who think differently. In the previous book she merely ignores opposing views; in the present book she is outright nasty, including likening President Trump (of whom I’m no fan) to a “fatberg.” Mildly humorous, but rather atypical in a book by a careful thinker.

This sounds somewhat extreme, but given the unfettered ideology with no clear limits on power, a sense of unassailable moral high-ground, no clearly defined goal (lower global temperature is rather open-ended in my opinion), and a belief that everyone who disagrees is a mortal enemy in a battle over an existential crisis does not lead me to believe Klein and those who advocate for the Green New Deal are prepared, if they ever gain power, to accept losers without retribution.

Klein is correct, “To change everything, it takes everyone.” That leads me to wonder what will happen to those who don’t agree with her proposed changes.

On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

By Naomi Klein

Buy on Amazon

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.

Discernment Bloggers, Truth, and Christian Witness

One of the best attributes of the internet age is that it has eliminated the gatekeepers to public discourse. At its best, the internet enables people to bypass denominational filters, editorial boards at book publishers, and the like. Among other things, it allows for amateur theologians.

The lack of gatekeepers allows us to get access to raw information on a more regular basis. WikiLeaks can publish documents that tell a different story that official channels do. Individuals subjected to abuse without recourse can get their story out and get problematic institutional administrations removed. Pastors and laypeople without access to an official platform can engage in meaningful theological discourse.

There are a lot of positive aspects to the democratizing of information, particularly when it comes to Christian discourse. At the same time, the same democratization can have a dark underbelly.

One example of this is in the rise and proliferation of discernment bloggers. At their best, discernment bloggers highlight areas where institutional reform is needed and push dialog toward those topics with an intent to seek reforms and pursue a measurable good. It might be that a discernment platform might spring up for a season and, having dealt with the issue at hand, recede into the sunset.

In practice, however, discernment blogs often turn from meaningful discourse to perpetual gossip and divisiveness. They use several tactics to pursue popularity, which are exceedingly effective at getting attention, but tend to erode the foundations of morality and truth by those who use them.

Rather than simply relying on truth-telling as the means to communicate, discernment ministries often rely on exaggeration, decontextualization, railing, and intentional ignorance to undermine their ideological victims. What usually results is a shrill, relentless attack on the disliked party and anyone who defends them or looks like them.

Valid Beginnings

A caveat on this discussion is, of course, necessary. Some discernment bloggers started with a legitimate purpose or grievance. Usually that was to deal with a particular local or even national issue.

There are, for example, some discernment blogs that began in order to expose misogyny, clerical abuse, or subversive theological liberalism. Those are worthy issues to be opposed.

The problem is not opposing bad things, it’s that as the platform grows and, perhaps, once the original problem is rooted out and exposed, the topics of concern become broader and the quality of evidence considered for publication sometimes drops lower and lower. Mission creep is a real issue as eventually some discernment blogs have become little more than clearinghouses for ridiculous conspiracy theories. (Sometime consider the number of conservative Evangelicals who are supposed to be rolling in money from George Soros.)

The discernment platform becomes a thing in itself that takes up time and needs constant feeding. Sometimes this is even complicated by it becoming a source of income for the vigilante through advertising and sponsorships.

True Discernment

Discernment is an important attribute of mature Christians. Hebrews 5:14, in a plea for increasing spiritually maturity, states,

But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Beyond the methods of abuse highlighted above, the biggest problem with many discernment blogs is that they are not particularly discerning. Contrary to Hebrews 5:14, they aren’t trained in discerning good from evil, but merely railing against those they don’t like. This is more likely to be true of discernment blogs that have been around for a while, whose missions have expanded from a particular issue to an attempt to take down the world.

Any person or group whose mode of operation is to fixate on someone else’s problem is not exercising true discernment, they are just being divisive.

A gourmet––someone who is fanatical about good food––may complain loudly about bad food at a restaurant. However, a true foodie is as likely to rave about good food as to rail against a disappointing meal. Even as they complain about food at one restaurant, they are likely to tell you where you can get the true and better food in another.

People who like football may despise the opposing team, but will be able to recognize when that team is playing excellent football. A good play may not result in cheers, but it will be recognized as something legitimately good. That’s the difference between enjoying a sport and simply hating the other team.

In many cases, internet “discernment” has become nearly entirely about hurling abuse at the disfavored parties. Biblical discernment looks much different.

Persuasiveness

The purpose of discernment should not be to heap scorn and shame on someone, but to persuade them and others to repent.

Persuasion may be a dying art in our day. The so-called longtail of marketing and the accessibility of media that fits my existing opinions means that entities can spend much more energy reinforcing opinions than persuading people of them.

We might consider persuasion to be yet another casualty of the internet age.

But Christian discernment includes the attempt to persuade. The arc of church discipline from 1 Cor 5 to 2 Cor 2:5–11 is one of redemption through persuasion. In this case, persuasion came about through expulsion. But that expulsion was always in hope of convincing the offender that he was acting like an unbeliever.

Christians ought to be, in fact, some of the most dedicated persuaders out there. As Paul argues in 2 Cor 5:1a,

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.

The large passage that sentence is in talks about the ministry of reconciliation that Christians have been given, our role as ambassadors of the gospel of Christ, and our living compassionately among others.

Persuasion is the better part of true, biblical discernment.

Sweetness of Speech

In his Proverbs of Hell, Williams Blake states, “Damn braces, bless relaxes.”

This is true from both sides of the issue. Satan came to the Garden as an angel of light appealing to Eve’s curiosity and desire for godlikeness rather than as a tyrant seeking abject worship. He was persuasive and we all know the results.

In the same way, gospel evangelism is much more likely to be persuasive if it encourages the unregenerate to consider the beautiful truths of the gospel in light of their own darkness. Persuasion invites, ridicule repels. Evangelism of a rude, confrontational tone is much less likely to result in true (or any) conversions.

This should come as no surprise, as Proverbs 16:21 states,

The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness.

How we say what we have to say is truly important. This is true with regard to our communication of our political opinions on social media and in person. It is also true as we seek to expose deadly sin within the body of Christ.

Persuasiveness allows the words to be sweet even if the truth packs a wallop. Many attempts at discernment in this age have distorted that paradigm: The words pack a wallop, but the truth they express is meager or twisted.

Is Rudeness an Apostolic Ministry?

Discernment bloggers often cite examples in church history of strong rhetoric that appears to have been effective to support their tone and content.

For example, Paul is somewhat hyperbolic in Gal 5:12 when he states that he wishes the Judaizers would mutilate themselves. Jesus himself is pretty harsh with the Scribes and Pharisees on multiple occasions and even uses physical violence to make his point in cleansing the temple.

Outside of Scripture, some of the greats in church history take the gloves off for a round of theological eye-gouging from time to time. I mean, someone has been able to create a database of Luther’s insults to delight the hearts of homeschoolers around the world.

My argument isn’t that there is no place for strong language and rhetorical flourishes. Sometimes a joke at the opponent’s expense is a good way to bring onlookers to your side. It may be persuasive, as long as we recognize that the one being persuaded is not the butt of the joke but those “overhearing” the debate.

The key is that the truth we are communicating needs to overshadow the means by which we communicate it. When we lose that central aspect in our discourse, we have lost the mission.

Paul and Jesus may have used harsh language toward their opponents, but they communicated a positive message, not simply a criticism of someone they didn’t like.

This goes back to the gourmet raving about the good food at a favored restaurant: “Don’t go to Jimmy’s Grill, the steaks are dry and flavorless, but Bob’s Chophouse cooks the most excellent sirloin.” In true discerning communication, there is always an attempt to point toward the good, not simply to highlight the bad.

Throwing rhetorical hand grenades is pretty easy. Building a positive and convincing position is much harder.

Conclusion

One way to identify discernment blogs is that they often have very little positive message. They feed our desire to have our views validated by constantly showing why the other side is wrong, even when we agree with 95% of what the opponent thinks. The differences may be small, but it feels good to be “better” or “more truthful” than the other guys.

Many discernment blogs also handle the truth poorly by editing the words of others and adding their own context to attempt to paint the others in a poor light. This alone should cause those with real discernment to stay away from some of these discernment “ministries.”

As we think about godly communication, the pursuit of purity in the visible church, and legitimate attempts to reveal real problems in the body of Christ, we need to think about what discernment means. A more biblical model of discernment might not be as effective at getting clicks, but it might be more effective at honoring Christ. And, after all, isn’t that what we are supposed to be all about?

Prudence and Grace in the Face of Pandemic

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Heb 10:25)

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. . . .  Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.  One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind (Rom 14:1, 3-5)

Fears about COVID-19 are spreading, which is leading organizations around the globe to make difficult decisions about the common good, economic needs, and individual well-being. Christians, too, must wrestle with these basic, but difficult questions.

For example, in light of a virus that is spread largely through human-to-human contact, should we meet together on Sunday to shake hands, pass the offering plate, and share the Lord’s Supper as we gather in our classrooms and sanctuaries?

Beware those for whom the answer to this question seems obvious. On the one hand, we should avoid glib over-confidence as if there is nothing to be concerned about. On the other hand, we should not too quickly abandon meeting together to renew one another in the love of Christ. Different concerns will play into decisions about whether to gather or not, and we should be careful not to judge those too harshly that disagree with us.

To Gather

My own bias is to continue to meet with any others that are willing to come out. I do not want to forsake gathering with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I would prefer to continue to spend time with my church family, as long as we take reasonable precautions.

Among those precautions are encouraging others who are not well to stay at home, washing hands carefully and frequently, and minimizing close, personal contact to a reasonable degree. There are simple measures to take to change the way the offering is collected and to change the delivery of the Lord’s Supper that can make continued gathering safe and encouraging.

Recognize that in this decision, I am middle aged with younger children that are not as significantly affected by the disease. We also homeschool, which minimizes the danger that we pose to others, though my job puts me in contact with a range of people during the day.

Not to Gather

At the same time, there are some for whom getting COVID-19 is a factual, significant risk. It is entirely reasonable for those with compromised immune systems to remain home, especially since there is a fairly lengthy period of contagiousness while someone with the virus is asymptomatic.

Additionally, there are those for whom sickness would be a greater economic burden due to lack of paid time off. It may be wiser for someone with a greater risk exposure to listen online.

And there may be some people for whom the fear of the virus is so great that it makes being in a space like a local church a source of great stress. It should not be a misery to attend church. If someone is really that fearful, then they should stay at home.

Prudence and Grace

In this time when there is a great deal at stake and a great deal of confusion, the best policy is to begin by being prudent and gracious.

People who are not well should be encouraged to remain at home. Those with compromised immune systems should listen online. Church leaders should evaluate practices to minimize close contact and limit the risk of spread. These are all prudential measures. It may be necessary for a church to “meet online” for a couple of weeks if the area is experiencing a high level of infection.

This requires those who continue to gather to be gracious. Cancelling services due to an abundance of caution is not a failure to love Jesus; it is an attempt to love neighbors faithfully. We may not agree, but each should be convinced in his or her own conscience. Not cancelling services is not necessarily a sign that a congregation doesn’t love their neighbor; it is merely a way of recognizing the importance of corporate worship and the encouragement it offers.

In the end, this virus will pass like an inconvenient blip in the memory of most of us. But we must remember that some people are not going to make it through it. There is no reason to take undue risks to keep average attendance at a certain level. Grace and prudence are in order.

Obedience to Authority

In some cases, the government may recommend or, perhaps, require cancellation of services. This, again, is a matter of conscience. I believe that a temporary cessation of services would be wise in the face of a government order, because the intention is to preserve life and minimize spread. We should not feel obligated to meet simply to spite the government.

Romans 13:1 urges us, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.”

There are certainly limits to this, but it is unclear to me that it is absolutely necessary to resist a temporary order not to meet. In the face of real risk, and not simply religious persecution, I see a temporary cessation of in-person meetings as a reasonable accommodation, although I do not like it.

In the end prudence and grace must be measured out in equal shares again.

Conclusion

There is no simple answer to the question of what to do in light of COVID-19.

However, whatever we do should be done for God’s glory and with the love of our neighbor in mind. We should be careful not to bind each other’s consciences or see ourselves as better than others for our decision to gather or not.

Ultimately, God will judge our deeds and our motives. We should be thankful for his mercy.