Daily Archives: August 13, 2009

Making Conservatism Hard

Posted by on August 13, 2009 Comments Off

Ross Douthat has a superb column about the latest (and best, though worst-received) Judd Apatow movie, Funny People. It really gets at both the conservative subtext of Apatow’s films and the nature of the widespread conservative sentiments held by the American public:

More than most Westerners, Americans believe — deeply, madly, truly — in the sanctity of marriage. But we also have some of the most liberal divorce laws in the developed world, and one of the highest divorce rates. We sentimentalize the family, but boast one of the highest rates of unwed births. We’re more pro-life than Europeans, but we tolerate a much more permissive abortion regime than countries like Germany or France. We wring our hands over stem cell research, but our fertility clinics are among the least regulated in the world.

In other words, we’re conservative right up until the moment that it costs us.

Both “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” were designed to hit this worldview’s sweet spot. There were threads of darkness in both stories, but for the most part they made their moralism look appealing by making it look relatively easy.

Still a virgin in middle age? Not to worry — you’ll find a caring, foxy woman who’s been waiting her whole life for an awkward, idealistic guy like you. Pregnant from a drunken one-night stand? Good news — the oaf who knocked you up will turn out to be a decent guy, and you’ll be able to keep the baby and your career as a rising entertainment-news anchorwoman. Frittering away your life on porn and pot? Fear not — your wasted twenties won’t stop you from being a great dad.

With “Funny People,” though, Apatow is offering a more realistic morality play. This time, doing the right thing has significant costs — but you have to do it anyway. This time, doing the wrong things for too long has significant consequences — and you have to live with them. It’s the first Apatow film in which love doesn’t conquer all. And it’s the first Apatow film in which you get punished for your sins.

In that sense, “Funny People” is the most conservative of all his movies. That’s probably what American audiences don’t like about it. But it’s what makes this film his best work yet.

Yoder on Just War 4

Posted by on August 13, 2009 19 comments

To my mind this quote is the final nail in the coffin to any who would argue that John Howard Yoder’s engagement with the just war tradition amounted to a claim that either just war or pacifism are acceptable options for Christians:

. . . we must proclaim to every Christian that pacifism is not the prophetic vocation of a few individuals, but that every member of the body of Christ is called to absolute non resistance in discipleship and to abandonment of all loyalties which counter that obedience, including the desire to be effective immediately or to make oneself responsible for civil justice. (The Original Revolution, 72)

Whether or not one ought to agree with Yoder’s terminology and force on this point here, no one can plausibly argue that he ever viewed pacifism as just one possible form of Christian witness. Rather, for Yoder it is the very form thereof.

A Stanley Hauerwas Classic

Posted by on August 13, 2009 15 comments

This is one of my favorite Hauerwas stories. Let me say at the outset that I’m pretty sure the university in question was, in fact, Harvard. I might be wrong about that, but it makes no real difference.

So this one time, Stanley Hauerwas was at Harvard to deliver a lecture and, being there early and still need to do some preparations, set out to find the library. Not finding it he stopped a student and proceeded to ask him, “Excuse me, where’s the library at?”

The student, looking incredulously at him responded, “Sir, at Harvard we don’t end our sentences with a preposition.”

Stanley paused for a moment and then rephrased his question in a more grammatically appropriate manner: “Where’s the library at, asshole?”

Insane Quote of the Day

Posted by on August 13, 2009 13 comments

Politics is direct involvement in democratic partisan activity with the goal of changing the law so as to facilitate either social service, social action or both. The Church and clergy should stay out of politics and Christians should participate as individuals in existing parties or through Christian parties.

This has got to be one the most naive and asinine definitions of politics ever to be written, even from the ranks of fundamentalists. Apparently politics only happens in democracies between partisan political parties. Aren’t we lucky that America came along and invented politics, kids?

And the fantastically contrived dichotomy between “the Church” and “Christians as individuals” is something I really wish people would see the stupidity of. If individual Christians are the real political agents and the church needs to quietly stay out politics, then why don’t we just fess up and admit that we don’t really think the church exists at all? If the church is not a social and political body then it is nothing. Or at least nothing like what Scripture indicates about the church.

Don’t even get me started on “Christian parties.” This has got to be the most mind-numbingly ridiculous construal of the role of Christianity in politics that I’ve read in ages. Sigh.

Round Again with Gendered Language

Posted by on August 13, 2009 7 comments

One point that really needs to be emphasized in the dispute over gendered language has to do with the importance of a literary work ethic. What is at play in the problem of gendered language is twofold. First, there is the ethical problem of referring to both genders only using masculine terms. For most people who aren’t strong patriarchalists today, this is at least acknowledged as an important problem. Second, there is the grammatical problem of how to write well when using an indefinite singular pronoun. If the English language had one readily available this whole discussion would likely be a non-issue. However this is the impasse as things stand. Attempts to create new pronouns seem bound to fail. As such we must pursue other options.

We’ve already seen that in a wide variety of cases the universal “they” is literarily appropriate, and offers a way out of many of these sorts of problems. However, as we’ve also seen that there are clearly some cases where such usage of “they” is pretty difficult grammatically. What to do?

My most basic answer here, as an editor who has a vested interest in good writing, is simply that writers need to be less lazy. In almost every case where we seem to need a singular pronoun there is generally an easy way to write the the sentence using different syntax that does not require the use of the problematic pronouns. It just takes some actual thought and work when writing. Speaking as one who has to edit the work of authors all the time, I would really suggest that one of the real issues at play here is the issue of laziness. To write in ways that are both grammatically appropriate and gender-accurate is more difficult. It takes more work. Some authors don’t want to take the trouble. But good writing demands that we take both matters seriously rather than looking for the easy way out by trying to deny one of the problems.

For some examples of how to do this, read on after the jump. Read more »

God as Mourner

Posted by on August 13, 2009 3 comments

Its not often thought about as a key mark of God, but in the Old Testament, one of the key images of God is that of a co-mourner with Israel in her distress and suffering. Ezekiel 19, for example is quite striking in God’s command to the prophet to take up a lamentation for Israel. Verse 18:32, which immediately precedes the lamentation reads “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.” God’s own longing for people to flourish rather than suffer is what occasions the lament, clearly implying that the lament reflects God’s own feelings on the matter.

The book of Jeremiah is even more rife with examples of God being portrayed as a mourner, and most strikingly, God is often seen to mourn not for Israel but for the foreigner:

We have heard of the pride of Moab— he is very proud— of his loftiness, his pride, and his arrogance, and the haughtiness of his heart. I myself know his insolence, says the Lord; his boasts are false, his deeds are false. Therefore I wail for Moab; I cry out for all Moab; for the people of Kir-heres I mourn. More than for Jazer I weep for you, O vine of Sibmah! Your branches crossed over the sea, reached as far as Jazer; upon your summer fruits and your vintage the destroyer has fallen. Gladness and joy have been taken away from the fruitful land of Moab; I have stopped the wine from the wine presses; no one treads them with shouts of joy; the shouting is not the shout of joy. Heshbon and Elealeh cry out;  as far as Jahaz they utter their voice, from Zoar to Horonaim and Eglath-shelishiyah. For even the waters of Nimrim have become desolate.  And I will bring to an end in Moab, says the Lord, those who offer sacrifice at a high place and make offerings to their gods. Therefore my heart moans for Moab like a flute, and my heart moans like a flute for the people of Kir-heres; for the riches they gained have perished. (Jer 48:29-36)

What is interesting about this, and similar passages is that even when God is portrayed as the agent of judgment, that is coupled with God’s own anguish about the suffering of those involved. What this means is obviously an important theological issue, but my point here is that the language of the prophets portrays God as one who laments and mourns over suffering.

Perhaps the most explicit of these sorts of passages is found in Jeremiah 9:17-19:

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider, and call for the mourning women to come; send for the skilled women to come;  let them quickly raise a dirge over us, so that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids flow with water.  For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: “How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed, because we have left the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.”

What is portrayed so beautifully here is that the expansion to the first person plural, “we” is clearly meant to include God along with the mourners. It is God’s eyes no less than ours that overflow with tears over the calamity at hand.

The point of all this is just to say that folks who get suspicious about people who speak of God mourning with those who suffer or sharing the in the sorrow of those in pain is at variance with the biblical prophetic tradition. According the prophets, God is not detached form the suffering of God’s people, and indeed the suffering of all people. Rather God weeps and mourns over suffering and death. Saying so is not some limp-wristed attempt at sentimentalizing God, but merely following in the footsteps of Jeremiah.

Note: For more on this theme, read Terence Fretheim’s The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective.

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