Interracial Dating and the Fools Who Don't Like It

She told me she was depressed because of the trouble her daughter was in.  Something was very wrong -I had never seen her so upset - so I sat down and asked her to tell me about it.

"She's dating a black man," she told me.

"Go on," I said, stirring my coffee.  I was waiting for her to get to the interesting part, but she just stared at me with tears welling up in her eyes.  I was confused.

"I'm so sorry for you," said a man in the room, "it's not that it's bad...it's just not something you want your own children to do."

Call me stupid, but I still had no idea what they were talking about.

"I must have missed something,"  I said, "what happened to your daughter.  You told me she was in trouble."

Was she using drugs?  Had she stolen a car?  I wanted to know but no one was talking.  But, as they stared at me, I finally worked it out.

The problem was that her daughter was dating a black man.  That was it.

"Isn't that wrong, you know, in the Bible?" She asked me.

I almost exploded.  Was she being serious?  Did she really think that the Bible had a section condemning this sort of thing, but she had just never run across it?  Didn't she know that Moses' wife may have been black?  I tried to express myself but I mostly just stammered.  I was so dumbfounded that I couldn't reply.

But they were convinced that the daughter was doing something sinful.  Where had this room full of "adults" gotten this poor teaching?  And what possible theological implications could there be in such a thing?  (Did they know that Jesus, a Semitic man, probably didn't look like an American white boy?  I guess He wouldn't be good enough for their kids.)

The Bible doesn't tell us how to date.  It speaks very little about marriage (despite what you've heard).  And it's not concerned about relationships between people of different skin color.

For those of you who don't remember middle-school biology, there's no such thing as "race" amongst humans.  The biological differences between whites and blacks are only as significant as the differences between blonds and redheads. There's no deeper meaning to skin color and there's no difference in our humanity.  (You probably remember learning about phenotypes in school.  Here's a refresher.)

Surely, no one would hold on to outdated biological theories just to keep blacks out of their families... right?  And, surely, no one would presume that the Bible is against interracial marriage - and even teach that falsehood from church pulpits - just to advance their own racist agenda.

Right?

C. S. Lewis Is One of the Great Philosophers

I may have disagreed with C. S. Lewis on some theological points (see here, here, and here.). But that doesn't mean I don't think very highly of him.

An expert on Boethius defines a philosopher as "a wise cognitive manager and developer of civilization." By this definition of a philosopher, C. S. Lewis might be the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.

I think a lot of people know that Lewis is a great Christian worldview writer, by which I mean that if you want to know how to view the world Christianly, you need to read C. S. Lewis. (More good Lewis work: The C. S. Lewis Blog.) Fewer know that he's a very good philosopher, at least by this definition of philosophy (and some others).

One of these things is not like the others! Most of these pictures are of great philosophers. But one isn't. Can you tell which one?
(Pictures from here, here, here, and here.)

I bet no one else managed to summarize Plato's Republic in eight words: "The head rules the belly through the chest" (from The Abolition of Man).

I recently learned, in another book by Lewis, that this illustration wasn't originally his; he borrowed it from some medieval literature. It just goes to show that C. S. Lewis doesn't have a lot of original thoughts. I mean that as a very high compliment.

Original thoughts are overrated. Lewis was wise enough to want good thoughts, not original ones. He understood that, in the span of a single lifetime, we will have more success having good thoughts if we study the thoughts of good thinkers from ages past than if we just try to come up with our own.

Lewis' own thoughts came to him through Scripture, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, and even Confucius. He put these thoughts into new settings, his great books: Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, The Abolition of Man, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Space Trilogy. I would speculate that no one in the twentieth century did more than he to preserve the wisdom of past civilizations: ancient Greece, ancient Rome, medieval Europe, ancient Israel, and even Confucian China.

Some of these people didn't have a lot of original thoughts because their minds were filled with the thoughts of great philosophers and theologians. One of them didn't have a lot of original thoughts because his mind was almost completely empty.
(Pictures from here, here, here, and here.)

It's fitting that Lewis was one of the few great readers of Boethius in our age. Boethius is just such a philosopher. His greatest work, The Consolation of Philosophy, available here, also contains very few ideas that were his own; they were borrowings or developments from earlier thinkers like Plato, the Stoics, and Augustine. (Literary elements are also borrowed from Homer, Greek myths, Augustine's dialogues, and sources I'm not educated enough to recognize.) But Boethius' combination of all these ideas and literary elements was a highly original masterpiece.

Boethius himself wrote in the days of the declining Roman Empire. But his book preserved some of the best things from ancient Greece and Rome, and it helped to create medieval Europe. If modern Western Civilization should fail, don't be surprised if Lewis' books help to create the civilization that replaces it.

Several videos featuring the Boethius expert I mentioned begin here. This video will help introduce you to Boethius' Consolation. (As usual, the book is way better than the movie.)

Protecting Biblical Marriage and the Family?

As most of you probably know, North Carolina citizens yesterday voted to add an amendment to their state constitution defining marriage as between a man and a women, basically assuring that it would be even more difficult for gay marriage to ever be legal in the state.  (Gay marriage is already illegal in N.C., but a state constitutional amendment is MUCH more difficult to overturn than a state law).  If my numbers are correct, I think that's 30 states now that have such an amendment, while 6 states (plus the District of Columbia) allow gay marriage.

When I listen to those who support such state amendments (or a corresponding federal amendment) the arguments seem to revolve around a few related  assertions: 1) homosexuality is a sin, 2) God has defined marriage in certain ways, and we need to follow suit, and 3) the family must be protected as it is the basic building block/bulwark of a healthy society.  The third one, especially, makes the situation so serious that it merits involving the power of the federal and state governments to insure that marriage and family (and thus the nation itself) are protected.

In your face, Europe! 

Now since the stakes are so high and God's standards are so important, I'm excited to announce a new campaign to add a new amendment to the Texas constitution making it illegal to get divorced (except for maybe a few very particular circumstances) and making it illegal to be a single parent! Sign up now!




Wait? Where is everyone going? I thought we had to uphold God's best! I thought we had to protect marriage and the family! I thought the very future of the nation depended on it!  Think of the children!

The logic is sound, people.  God hates divorce.  Absolutely hates it.  It's sin.  (By the way, that's why in none of our churches do we allow those who divorced for unbiblical reasons and who remain unrepentant to hold positions of leadership.  In fact if they want to remain members, we insist on church discipline.  We do that stuff, right? Right???)

Children from broken homes or who don't even know who one parent is suffer significant effects because of it.  I mean, if we decide it's prohibitively harmful to allow gay people to raise a child together, then we must want what's absolutely best for the kids.  Let's use the power of the state to round up all the single-parent children.  They'll be much better off in the foster system, anyway.

If the family is the cornerstone of our society, then we can't afford to let people get divorced! We can't afford to let two people who have a child together not get married afterwords! It's the family and the nation at stake here, people!

Think of marriage counseling as the adventure of a lifetime ...

If you're worried about issues with the legal system, etc that gay marriage would bring about ... how much money, time, and energy do you think we would save every year and how much more simple would the legal system be if we simply refused to let people get divorced?

I'm not actually suggesting such amendments, of course.  This was an exercise in the absurd meant to make a point.  Nor am I trying to demonize either divorced people or single parents.  But I want you to think about why the idea of such an amendment made you nervous in the first place.  Is it because divorce and broken homes aren't as serious a problem to God or for the Church or society as homosexual marriages and homes? Is it because such an amendment ia an abuse of state power, and who wants the government dictating to its citizens like that?

I don't understand at all.

I don't understand why Christians aren't holistic in their announcement to the world of the coming kingdom and God's standards of holiness, as well as His bountiful and readily available grace.

I don't understand why we pick out pet issues and ignore others.

I don't understand how we determine when to involve the state and when to let it stay a matter of personal conscience.  I don't know why we insist on liberty for ourselves in some instances, yet wield Constantine's sword on a hair trigger.

I don't understand why some people are so convinced that God will punish our nation for homosexuality and abortion, yet never breathe a word of concern about how He's going to view the rampant divorce rate, the way we treat the poor,  or racism and imperialism in our past and present.  Are those slap on the wrist offenses or something?

Someone help me make sense of all this.

There are Reasons to Keep Men Out of the Ministry!

From Byron Borger over at the Hearts & Minds Books blog comes a very enlightening article - 10 Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained For Ministry.  

My favorite?  Number 8:

The physique of men indicates that they are more suited to such tasks as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do ministerial tasks.

Read the whole thing!  (And fetch me a mountain lion.)