Keeping Pure

My discussion groups for fans of C. S. Lewis is having a discussion on the notion of 'keeping pure'. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, the core idea is that as Christians, were supposed to be engaged with the world, but not to be corrupted by it. One of the posters on the list, Donald Williams, wrote a post that I found interesting, so I asked him for permission to repost it here.

How do we maintain Christian virtue in a corrupting
world which is dangerous to us but which we must know
and touch in order to reach? Three passages are
essential to any biblical view.

”I have given them thy word; and the world has hated
them because they are not of the world, even as I am
not of the world. I do not ask thee to take them out
of the world, but to keep them from the evil one”
(John 17:14-15).

This is where we get the formula “In the world but not
of it.” Forbidden are two approaches to the world:
identification with it and isolation from it. There
is a sense in which we do identify with the world: in
its need and its suffering, as our Lord modeled. But
we do not find our identity in the world, we do not
allow it to define us, and we do not allow ourselves
to be forced into its mold (Rom. 12:1). We identify
not with the world but with Christ. He defines us, he
transforms us, and we find our identity in him.

Unfortunately, the easiest way to avoid identification
with the world is to try to withdraw from it, that is,
to practice isolation. We create our Christian ghetto
and withdraw within its borders so we won’t be
corrupted. We write our own music and books and
create our own TV, all of which somehow turn out to be
strangely cheap imitations of what the world is doing.
But this is a false approach, and Christ makes it
clear he does not mean us to take it, both by his
prayer here and by his example, hanging out with
publicans and sinners and scandalizing the religious
of his day.

Somehow we must be “in” and “not of” at the same time.
But that is difficult. Instead, we create our
(partially) insulated parallel universe, with borders
guarded by ever-increasing lists of Rules. “We don’t
cuss, drink, smoke or chew, / and we don’t go with
girls that do.” But we can do all of that in the
flesh. We do not have the ability to be “in” and “not
of” at the same time. That requires the wisdom and
power of God; that requires discernment. And so it is
not to be thought of by half-hearted Christians; and
so it is seldom seen.

Yet that is precisely what is commanded: not isolated
prepositions in the flesh, but the integration of the
two prepositions in the Spirit. But how can we do
that? A good question: it leads us to the next verse.

”Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is
honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if
there is any excellence, and if anything worthy of
praise, let your mind dwell on these things” (Phil.
4:8)

What kind of command is this? It is a positive
command. It is about what we are positively supposed
to dwell on. But in our application we have almost
universally turned it into a negative command, about
what we are not supposed to read, watch, or listen to.
Why have we been so inattentive? Because the
negative approach is easier. It is easier to boycott
all movies than to use discernment; it is easier to
swear off of “secular” music or “rock” than to listen
critically to what the world is actually saying in
these media, understand with empathy the cries of its
lost voices, but then choose the good, and dwell on
that.

I repeat: this verse says not one word about what we
cannot read, watch, or listen to. It says not a
single word about what we must turn a blind eye to,
pretend isn’t there, or be ignorant of. It says a lot
about what we should nourish and feed our minds on. I
read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings twice in 1968,
the year I discovered it, and have read it annually
since. That is what the verse is talking about.

I am not saying there is nothing so raw, so evil, so
corrupting that we should not expose ourselves to it.
But our strategy is too often negative, while the
Bible’s is positive. This makes Phil. 4:8 the answer
to the dilemma raised by Jesus in John 17. How do we
live “in” the world without becoming “of” it? Do not
focus on what you can not read, watch, etc. Rather,
positively feed your mind on what is Good, True, and
Beautiful, and then it will respond rightly to the
rest.

”If you have died with Christ to the elementary
principles of the world, why, as if you were living in
the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as
‘Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!’ . . .
These are matters which have the appearance of wisdom
in self-made religion, self abasement and severe
treatment of the body, but are of no value against
fleshly indulgence” (Col. 2:20-23)

It is not just that the negative approach is less
valuable. The Apostle says it is of no value at all!
Why? Because you can abstain not only from Rock but
also from Country--hey, Mozart and Wagner were
supposed to be immoral people, so we’d better abstain
from Classical too. You can abstain from everything
except the Psalms in the original Hebrew sung to
Gregorian Chant, and still be proud, envious,
wrathful, slothful, greedy, gluttonous, and lustful.
The absence of the Evil (or even the Questionable)
does not equate to the presence of the Good (or
Virtue). A negative photograph of the “world” is not
necessarily a positive portrait of Jesus.

O.K., so what does work? Phil. 4:8. The cornerstone
of our approach to maintaining Christian virtue in a
corrupt world should not be the things we do not read,
watch, or listen to. It should be a mind really fed
on and nurtured by the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful, as we find it in Scripture and in the best
of the Christian and classical traditions. You cannot
keep the “impure” out of your mind. But you can keep
the fresh water of Scripture flowing strongly through
it, so that the impure is constantly being washed
away. And that is the only way to keep it pure.

CONCLUSION: Milton asked, “What wisdom can there be
to choose, what continence to forbear, without the
knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider
vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet
abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer what is
truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.” He
concludes, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered
virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies
forth to face her adversary, but slinks out of the
race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not
without dust and heat.”

Feed your mind on the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful, and it will respond properly to the rest.
Develop uncloistered virtue: positive, discerning,
unafraid. Then we may say with Bunyan’s Pilgrim,
“Apollyon, beware what you do; for I am in the King’s
highway, the way of holiness; therefore take heed to
thyself.” And the gates of Hell will not prevail
against us.

Bash quote

Since I was bored in class, I thought I'd post one of my favorite quotes from bash.org. My apologies if I've posted it before. You can find the original post here.

DragonflyBlade21: A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you're a great guy, but I don't like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we're not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we're going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn't work out, we'll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.

A Rant on the Purpose-Driven Life

This rant is brought to you courtesy of the letter Q.

Recently I saw Avenue Q, which I found to be a wonderful musical. But it reminded me of the idea some people have that they have a Purpose in life, which they somehow just have to find.

In itself, I suppose that the idea isn't too bad, but few people believe that their purpose in life is to answer phones in an office, or to make auto parts. They are here to change the world by opening a pre-school, or becoming a supreme court justice, or president, or something. But not everyone can be a supreme court justice. And so, when they have a bit of life experience, and discover that they're meant to be an average lawyer in Springfield, IL, they get a bit depressed.

The idea, I suppose, originates in the evangelical Christian idea that God has a purpose for everyone. And it's quite natural for everyone to believe that God wants them to do great things. But God's idea of great things isn't our idea of great things. And so if we dwell on the idea that we're meant to do great things, we're bound to become bitter when we discover that we will never do anything we consider great. The other difficulty is that this concept leads us to believe that certain parts of our life (commonly, college) are mere preparation for the great things we will be doing later in life. And we don't do the things we should be doing at the time. We're so busy waiting for great things to come along for us to do that we don't do the good we should be doing now.

The better proposal, I think, is to 'live for the moment'. I don't mean to discard any sense of permanence or commitment in life. Rather, I mean we should look to the good we can be doing right now, to do well by our partners, our family, our friends, and our bosses, rather than viewing our life as preparation for some great event that will never come. We should accept our lot in life, not with resignation or bitterness, but with the joy that comes from knowing that it is here, and nowhere else, that we can do good.

New Meme

A new meme, courtesy of discourse.net:

As far as I know, no one has tagged me with this blog meme, but I’m still going to participate as it looks fun.

Instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book (that is at least 123 pages long).
2. Open to p. 123.
3. Go down to the 5th sentence.
4. Type in the following 3 sentences.
5. Tag five people.

The nearest book is "The World is Flat", by Thomas Friedman.

He was not amused. That bio entry was being read and repeated all over the world. On November 29, 2005, he wrote the following in an op-ed piece in USA Today:

I'll spare you the lengthy quote and the tagging.

"Just Law" as Rhetorical Trope

Jurisprudence

Assignment #2

Was law in ancient times less fair, less just than 21^st Century law?

First, we have to ask what law is. Law is a set of rules promulgated by a legitimate, general authority. By legitimate, I mean an authority which is generally accepted as legitimate by those over whom it exercises its authority. By general, I mean to exclude cases like the mafia and backgammon clubs. Therefore, the fact that something is not promulgated by a legitimate authority does not mean it’s unjust, it means it’s not a law. However, the term ‘unjust law’ is sometimes used in this sense (sense one).

So what else could we mean when we call a law unjust? It seems that we mean to refer to some general notions of morality which we assume our audience holds. It doesn’t matter to this analysis whether there is some actual morality underlying our audience’s beliefs, only what they believe. Rhetoric using the term ‘unjust law’ is meant either to change that law internally (through, say, an elected legislature) or to change that law externally (through, say, the use of force). This we can call (sense 2).

It is clear that, were we to describe the laws of ancient Babylonia, they are either not unjust, or the term unjust does not simply apply. There is no reason to think they were unjust in sense one, since there is no reason to think that the Babylonians viewed their monarch as illegitimate (to the extent they thought about it at all). Moreover, there’s no point in trying to get the ancient Babylonians to change their laws. They’re dead.

However, perhaps we could envision what a contemporary of the Babylonians might say to criticize their system. This allows for some sort of meaningful criticism. But there’s no reason to think that a contemporary would have any more meaningful criticisms of Babylonian law than a contemporary of our society would have of ours. So there is no reason to think that Babylonian law is any more unjust than ours.

Let me close by addressing one additional issue. One might say that we’re better off because we’ve outlawed things like slavery, which are very clearly bad. However, this cuts both ways. It’s true that we’ve outlawed slavery, and I’m happy to assume that that’s good. However, we also made usury legal. In other words, there are some things we believe should be illegal that the ancients didn’t, like slavery. However, there are also some things the ancients believed should be illegal that we don’t, like usury. So it seems that, even if it’s legitimate to proceed by comparing different ethical beliefs of this sort, such a comparison will only show the systems to be incommensurate.

Jurisprudence Assignment 1.5

On Whether there is Moral Progress

There is no moral progress. Whether there is moral progress can be judged in three possible ways: either we recognize more virtues, we have a more sophisticated ethical discourse, or we better live up to the virtues we have. None of these criteria show any moral progress.

First, the claim is that we recognize more virtues. This claim is either irrelevant or false. Assuming we recognize more virtues, this does not make us more ethical. A society that recognized all the same virtues we do, plus recognized cruelty as a virtue, would not therefore be more ethical. And it’s not clear in any case that we recognize more virtues than the ancients did. While there are things we think of as virtues that they did not, there are also things they thought of as virtues that we do not. Rather, the better claim is that we are more correct in our recognition of virtues. That is, where we differ from the ancients about whether or not something is a virtue, we are more often correct.

However, it is hard to see why this must be the case. Take magnanimity, the virtue of profligate spending by the rich. It is recognized as a virtue by Aristotle. Most of our contemporaries, however, would not recognize it as a virtue. But it’s hard to give a principled reason why it should or should not be a virtue. Most contemporaries would say that it requires wealth, and wealth has no necessary connection with virtue. But that again is an assumption, as is the related assumption that there is no such thing as moral luck. At the end of the day, it seems that different systems of virtue are incommensurable.

Second, we might claim that moral discourse has grown more sophisticated. This is perhaps disputable, but seems likely. We have grown a veritable hedge maze of ethical concepts to enrich our discourse. But it’s far from clear what relation there is between talking about ethics and actually being ethical. Some would probably even claim that there is an inverse relationship between the two!

Third, we might claim that we are better at living up to the virtues we have. But first, there is little evidence for this claim. We simply don’t have enough information about the life of the average Greek, or Roman, or Frank, to compare their ethical life to the ethical life of the average American. And second, it’s not clear that, based on what evidence we do have, that this is the case. There were many violent Franks (even by their standards); there are also many violent American. There were many venal Romans, but there are also many venal American. There were many unreflective Greeks; there are probably more unreflective Americans. So it seems there is no reason to think that we are any better at living up to our own standards than the ancients were.

Allyson doesn't have to worry

I'm planning a more substantive post for later this week, but thought I'd post this, courtesy of the Volokh Conspiracy:

And Now, An Important West KeyNote:

[2] Key Symbol 399 Vagrancy
Key Symbol 399k1 k. Nature and Elements of Offenses.

It is not a crime to be a "hippie".

Source: The West KeyNotes associated with Hughes v. Rizzo, 282 F.Supp. 881, 884 (E.D. Pa. 1968) (Fullam, J.) ("It is not a crime to be a ‘hippie’, and the police could not lawfully arrest on the basis of suspicion, or even probable cause to believe, that the arrestee occupied the status of being a homosexual or narcotics addict.").