Inspired by a True Story

Halloween, Christians and the Paranormal: What's to Be Afraid of?

I know Halloween is controversial among Christians. If you doubt me, take a quick surf through the Christian blogosphere and you'll see various positions served up sometimes with heaping piles of emotion.

As for us, we're going trick-or-treating. Our daughter will be a bunny. I will be Papa Rabbit, a role I consented to play only because the costume consists of just a set of velvet ears with a strap. The Mrs. will be Mama Rabbit.

Today is the one day a year when most people give some thought to the paranormal. I've written before that this is a long-standing, year-round interest of mine, especially "ghosts" and "ghost-hunting". Of course, I'm interested in how these things interact with Christian theology and belief. I'm planning a longer essay as part of my ongoing writing project to explore these issues in greater depth than I can on the blog. In the meantime, you can read the basics of my approach here, here, and here.

As part of my research in this area, I subscribe to this wonderful podcast. The show consists of stories listeners email to the host. He reads and records them almost without comment. A few months of attending to these stories show at least one thing. The Enlightenment model of reality we've been bequeathed that says there is no supernatural, no God, and definitely no ghosts, is bunk.

Over and again regular people write in with tales of truly strange things that have happened to them. There is no shortage of these. If we turn then from listening to the ideological dreams of the Enlightment Divines and listen instead to the experiences of these people, we'll soon see that what we think of as paranormal is really just plain ol' normal.

An Honest Pro-Abort

Here's an excerpt from a very good post by a pro-abort who is making the same argument I have been making about the disingenuousness of calling oneself "pro-choice."

He writes:

I am pro-abortion. Not pro-choice. Pro-abortion. I think this is an important distinction because I hear some pro-choicers say they support the right of a woman to choose, but they would never want to have or would want their lover/girlfriend/wife to have an abortion.

I don’t get that. I can’t say I support the right for a woman to get an abortion and then say abortion is bad. Abortion is good. When a woman evaluates where she is in the universe and decides that she should have an abortion, she is doing the right thing. And she is doing a good thing.

An abortion is nothing to be ashamed of. However, saying you are pro-choice and with the next breath saying you would never get an abortion is shaming those who have.

I hate that. “I’m pro-choice, but I would never get an abortion.” Or, “I’m pro-choice, but I would never want my girlfriend to have an abortion.” Or, “Abortion is never a good thing, but we need to protect a woman’s right to choose.”

If the right to choose is good, then abortion is good. Does that mean we need more abortions – more of a good thing? No. We need as many abortions as we need. No more, no less.

This kind of honesty I can respect. No matter how repugnant his position is, at least this guy isn't afraid of his own opinion.

The Purposeless University

In a society which has jettisoned its religious heritage along with any framework for transcendent meaning, any sense of purpose must arise from the self. In place of imperatives to obey the will of God, we have only our own aspirations to carry us through. The oft-repeated secular commandment to follow your dreams is this generation's cry of despair.

The meaninglessness is everywhere. You can see it at every level of education as well as in every segment of the population.

I thought this video did a great job capturing the malaise and confusion of many of today's university students.

Rudy and the Republican Loss of Soul

Great column this morning from Pat Buchanan describing the crumbling of the conservative monolith.

Buchanan nails exactly what a Giuliani presidency would mean.

He writes:

A Giuliani presidency would represent the return and final triumph of the Republicanism that conservatives went into politics to purge from power. A Giuliani presidency would represent repudiation by the party of the moral, social and cultural content that, with anti-communism, once separated it from liberal Democrats and defined it as an institution.

Rudy offers the right the ultimate Faustian bargain: retention of power at the price of one's soul.

Exactly.

A Giuliani victory, even if it kept Hilary out of the White House, would really be a loss for those of us who see the issues where he is most liberal as the most basic to preserving this culture. We would be destroying the foundation for the sake of the house.

Rudy's Confusion

Political conservatives continue to pressure evangelicals to support the probable presidential nomination of Rudolph Giuliani. The stumbling block, of course, is that Giuliani, like his Democrat opponents, is a pro-abort.

The argument in support of Giuliani is essentially that though he is a pro-abort, he isn't as big a pro-abort as Hilary. He will appoint judges who will help overturn Roe v. Wade, they say. He wants to reduce the number of abortions and will work toward that end, they say.

I don't believe it. I don't trust Giuliani on this because his position is inherently contradictory, which makes him seem like he's pandering to pro-life voters to get elected.

What I need to know from him is whether abortion kills a human being. If it does, then why does he support the murder of those human beings in any circumstances?  If he believes abortion is murder but thinks the murder of a certain class of human beings, the unborn, is acceptable, then I don't want him to be president.

On the other hand, if he does not think abortion kills an innocent child, then why does he go around saying he wants to make it more rare? If no one is hurt in an abortion, why should the number of them be reduced? If abortion only involves removing a lump of tissue from a woman's body, then why make a political issue of it at all?

Giuliani's tactic here is to obfuscate the issue, to try to confuse rather than to clarify the issue. While I'm no fan of Hilary, at least she's not fudging on this issue. She's all for murdering babies and is happy to say
so. Rudy would do well to follow her example.

Rode to Ruin

I have been disappointed to see that WORLD magazine's new online presence features a series of first-person reports from a young woman who has enlisted in the fight to help spread the West's sexual confusion.

In her first report, Sara Rode, a 2006 King's College graduate, wrote:

I shocked my parents the day I graduated from The King’s College in 2006 by telling them that I would pursue becoming an officer in the Marines. My family was initially skeptical of my decision to join because I was a 5’3, 105 lb girl: not the typical Marine.

and

As a Christian woman and an American, however, I recognized the global war against terrorists as the great calling of my generation.

She couldn't be more wrong. The greatest calling of her generation is to live faithfully according to God's plan for the individual and the family and to accept that He has provided different roles to men and to women. As a woman planning to lead troops into combat, Rode is violating that divine plan.

Just as a husband should love his wife as Christ loves the church and lay his life down for her, men in general should carry the burden of defending women and children and the cherished artifacts of home.

It's a shame this young Christian woman has been duped into believing otherwise, and even a greater shame that WORLD magazine has chosen to lionize her foolishness.

No More "Good Old Golden Rule" Days

Education is an inherently moral business. There's no escaping value judgements when we enter into the job of deciding what young people ought to know and how to go about teaching them.

A society that has cut itself off from every religous and traditional source of morality in search of some new code more to its liking is bound to find its educational system mired in constant ethical confusion and unable to give kids any ultimate reason for obeying the rules adults lay down.

All that remains are appeals to bald power or to the kids' self-interest. No motives for obedience beyond the enrichment of the self or, possibly, escaping the power of the state to punish can be admitted to the conversation.

Two stories in the news today illustrate the chaos.

First, in Florida, a group of teenagers are suspended from school for wearing Goth-style make-up.

From the story:

Principal Jim Miller said the students "made a choice to leave. Students need to understand that this is not the mall; this is not a dance; this is not a concert. This is school. Their attire needs to be appropriate."

Notice the principal's appeal here is to what is "appropriate", not to what is "right". He knows he doesn't want the kids in school dressed this way, but is unable to articulate his reasons in any way that goes beyond appealing to mere social convention.

"Well," he seems to be saying, "that's not the way people usually dress when they come to school, so those kids shouldn't dress that way today." It's easy to see why that argument might not fly with his rebellious students.

Meanwhile, in Texas, a teacher faces possible criminal charges after including a book by Cormac McCarthy which, according to the story, is about  "a murderer who has sex with his victims' bodies."

The criminal charges represent the kind of visceral overreaction that is common in the absence of real moral reflection on the content of art and what is appropriate for the state to supply to young teenagers. The parents have a right to be upset, but one can only wonder what they expected when they surrendered their children to a system they knew to be morally and spiritually bankrupt.

Ellen and Her Little Lost Dog

It’s hard not to feel sorry for a crying woman. Still, when Ellen DeGeneres went on her popular talk show this week and broke down, her behavior was so manipulative it was hard to feel sympathy for her.

There was a dog involved. Apparently, Ellen and her girlfriend, actress Portia de Rossi, had adopted a puppy from a rescue agency. In doing so, de Rossi signed a paper saying that if the adoption didn’t work out, the animal would go back to the agency.

According to the Associated Press:

"DeGeneres adopted the dog, then gave it to her hairstylist's family after the dog, despite training, couldn't get along with the comedian's cats, her publicist has said.

Marina Batkis and Vanessa Chekroun, owners of the nonprofit Mutts and Moms agency, claimed that DeGeneres violated the adoption agreement by not informing them that she was giving the dog away and removed Iggy from the hairstylist's home Sunday.”

DeGeneres has now gone so far as to cancel a taping of her show because she is so broken up over the incident.

Her behavior has been despicable. Since DeGeneres made her dispute with the agency public, the owners have received death threats.

This incident reveals the heart of our culture. In her televised plea, DeGeneres admits the agency acted according to its policy. She admits that she and De Rossi were aware of the policy. She admits she broke her word to return the dog if the adoption did not go smoothly. Nevertheless, she used her television show to create a drama in which she is cast as the victim.

All she wants, she says, is for the dog to be returned to her stylist’s two little girls who love it. Her exploitation of these little girls is gruesome. DeGeneres is suing their sadness to garner attention for herself and to increase her audience’s love for her. She knows they will see her as someone unable to hold back her emotions as she just tries to help the children.

And it is her audience that is of greatest concern because their reactions, ranging from starting “Free Iggy” petitions to issuing death threats, say so much about our culture. Once, this situation would have been handled differently. Ellen would have apologized for her mistake to the agency and to the family to whom she gave the dog. She would have asked the agency to allow the dog to stay with the family. If they refused, it would have been expected that the little girls would have been sad for a while, but eventually they would have been encouraged to put their hurt behind them and move on.

Not any more. Now, we consider tears, especially televised ones, a powerful argument. No matter how wrong DeGeneres’ behavior might have been, once she goes on television and cries about what’s happened, the audience, who did not think but only feel, will be really mad at the mean, mean people who would make their buddy Ellen so sad.

Principle and responsibility no longer matter. All that matters is that the audience gets what it wants: a chance to take a side in an unfolding drama, an opportunity to pat itself on the back for being the kind of people who hate whom they are told to hate, and above all good television in the afternoon.

Another Update

One reason my posting frequency has fallen off is that I am spending much of my available writing time trying to produce a series of essays, some of which, I hope, might turn into magazine articles or even a book.

The first one, about some of the practical dynamics of sin on our thinking, is coming along. If any good passages actually turn up, I'll post them here. Otherwise, I'll be posting from time to time when opportunity and inclination meet.

If any of you have read something here you think might make a good essay topic, or if you've seen something you think needs further development, let me know. Who knows, there could be an essay there just waiting to be written.