On Friendship

If man likes all he has no enemy, but neither does he have a friend. For to like all is to be indifferent to all.

In the ancient world friendship was viewed as the highest form of love, the most important relationship. A man could live without sex, for what good is sex is something that even beasts share with men. But friendship is something typically human. Think of Socrates: at his death he sends his wife and children away so that he may end his life with his friends. Likewise, Jonathon and King David were said to be closer than brothers.

These examples stand in clear contrast with friendship in our time and culture. Here sex is valued far more highly than culture. There is plenty of evidence of this ranging from the commonality of sleeping with a friend’s spouse to the places we spend social time (generally noisy bar type areas designed to meet potential mates rather than quite places to cultivate friendship.

This is not to say that friendship should be valued more highly than the marital relationship (indeed it should not), but rather only to point out the fact that friendship within our culture is very cheep. Friendship is cheap: we only keep a friend so long as they benefit us in the sense that we enjoy their company or they make us happy, but the second they fail to meet our perceived needs we accuse them of changing and drop them like last week’s mail. They are boring, they make us uncomfortable, we are no longer happy when we are around them—whatever it is, we no longer want to be around them.

In fact in our culture friendship is loosely defined as merely knowing someone. You can have met someone a week ago, but when you introduce them to others you introduce them as your friend. A friendship so easily formed will be just as easily discarded.

Further, our friendships have no obligations. But a relationship without obligation is one without depth or real benefit. This tends to confuse foreigners who believe that friendship entails responsibility and requires time to form. They tend to think that Americans make bad friends simply because we define the term too broadly and loosely.

In focusing in on sex (where a true ‘friend’ is but a wing man) and the perceived meeting of our needs we have lost one of the greatest gifts God: a friend.

Genocide in the Bible?

Why did God instruct Moses and the Israelites to wipe out entire communities when they entered the promised land?

Short answer: Nagasaki and Dresden.

Longer answer: 1. Why did we kill a quarter million in Nagasaki and over a million in the fire bombings of Dresden? Because we were fighting against unjust states and unjust states cannot exist without popular support; because the people, through their leaders, committed unjust actions. E.g. Germany acted as an aggressor against Poland and perpetrated genocide against the Jews; likewise Japan tried to conquer other territory and they committed great slaughter and other unmentionable outrages against the Chinese). For these acts they both deserved punishment and our bombs did the punishing.

The ancient occupying societies of Israel were about as unjust as societies can be. Child sacrifice was rampant and of those that lived, the majority (if not all), of the kids were at an early age forced to work as cultic prostitutes. The people in these societies either actively participated in these despicable acts or they were complacent. Therefore all of them deserved death.

2. Going along with this, ancient societies had more of a collective notion of guilt, rather than a more modern notion of individual guilt. Societies, not just the individuals, were guilty of crimes. Think of Achan from the Book of Joshua Chapter 7. Achan disobeyed God after the military defeat of Jericho by stealing goods reserved for the Lord. As a result of his sin Israel suffers military defeat. All the people suffer until he is punished for sins have collective consequences.

When a society sins it effects the land like a cancer (e.g. Abel's blood cries out from the ground, the Law talks about blood guilt and healing for the land, and the prophets over and over repeat that the land cries out against injustice). So again, when a society lives in rampant injustice they must be wiped out in order to cleanse the land (think of Sodom, and when all the earth was evil, the flood).

3. Finally, the actions of the Israelites were in line with the rules of warfare at that time. If a town surrendered, you treated them well. But if they resisted it was expected that you would wipe them out (for the hardship you endured in besieging them). This is what Rome eventually did to Carthage. At first they showed mercy, but a generation after they had first defeated Carthage, they themselves were almost defeated by Carthage. Annihilation was the only way to be safe. In the same way Israel’s safety, to some degree, required them to completely defeat their enemies. (And oddly enough Carthage was a Phoenician colony that worshiped the same child 'eating' God Baal as did the inhabitants of ancient Israel).

4. One more things must be noted: in the case of Israel, none of these people had to die. There were instructions in the law of how to bring outsiders into the Israelite community (if they so desired). We have examples of this in Rahab and Ruth. Both were so integrated into the Israelite community that from their lines descended Christ, and Ruth herself was the grandmother of King David.

Judgment only befell those who rejected the invitation to join the Israelites (and we have no idea how many people joined or refused to join them). In the same way Noah invited people to join his ark, but those that rejected this invitation incurred judgment. There is an obvious parallel with salvation here. God invites all to join His people. It is only those that reject this invitation that will meet judgment (in their case, Hell).

Paul says that the stories in the OT are examples for us of spiritual truth. Those that rejected the invitation to join God's community were judged by means of temporal/physical death. In the same way those that reject the invitation into the Church will be judged by eternal/spiritual death. The former is like a living parable (just as Isaac was a Christ figure, the Red Sea a form of baptism, etc).

Liberty, Equality, and Tyranny

We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal.

But equal in what way? I am smarter than some, shorter than others; I can run faster than some, but others jump higher than me: in what way are we equal?

We are in no way equal in ability. However our value is not based on our abilities. Therefore we may be unequal in ability while remaining equal in worth.

This is an important distinction because many who talk about equality want men to be equal in ability. Equality in this sense is impossible and it undermines men’s liberty. Take the following example as an illustration.

I decide to challenge LeBron James (i.e. King James for the layman) to a game of one on one hoops. Every time I go to shoot, he blocks my shot. In order to have a ‘fair’ game, he must be told not to block my shots. As we continue he proceeds to steal the ball from me. This is not ‘fair’ as it gives him an undue advantage and makes the game unequal. We make another rule that says he cannot steal the ball. Still, he shoots better than me. We make a rule that he must give me some of his points so that our game may be ‘equal.’

In making our game ‘fair’ LeBron has lost the liberty to play basketball. The same is true in our society. Some in our society are able to make more money or have other advantages. In order to make them ‘equal’ with others, they must lose the liberty of developing their God given potential.

Furthermore there is an intimate connection between creating a more ‘fair’ society and creating a dictatorship. The Gracchi Brothers, Caesar, Robespierre, etc, all these men set out to help the less fortunate. But just like my hypothetical basketball game, more stringent measures were needed than originally supposed to bring ‘fairness’ to society. As society was hesitant to accept these measures, the reformers needed to claim more and more power for themselves to push these changes through.

This is not to say we should not help the poor. However, I do believe we should be hesitant of any leader who purports to help the poor for as many who have claimed to do this have done so for the sake of aggrandizing power for themselves.

The Church and Sex

It seems that every so often some church comes up with what they take to be a new gimmick to get people into its doors. The latest is this advertisement campaign boasting that: ‘Christians have the best sex!’ Others hold parenting seminars or economic forums in order to demonstrate how their faith will help you have a more pleasant family life or more money in your pocket for which to indulge yourself.

Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a better parent or being more responsible with money. What is wrong with this approach is that it treats Christ as a means. One may continue to value the things they value apart from Christ (sex and money) and they may continue to seek after them and place them first in their lives. Christ is only valuable in that He is the most effective means to attain one’s ends.

But this is false. Christ is the end, the only End that lasts or matters. Only in Him do we become fully us. If we do not put Him first we will lose Him and all else. Think of the parable of the men with the talents. Those with much (Christ) will get even more; him without Christ will lose even the little that he has.

So instead of treating Christ as a frosting to which we add to our already sweet life, I would like to see Christians scorn at the things of the world in favor of Christ. Instead of a sermon that promotes better sex, I would like to see one entitled: ‘We live in a world that values sex and money above all else. REPENT! So long as you seek after things besides Christ you will never be satisfied and if you continue to persist you will ultimately forfeit your very self, your soul!’

The church should offer a true alternative to the world; not just what the world has to offer, but in a better way. Doing so will require that people repent and change their thinking. In this case it will require them to make Christ their Lord in the place of sex. The purpose of our faith is not to make our life more pleasant here; the purpose of our faith is to reconcile us with God so that we may know Him and spend eternity in bliss with Him. No matter how great our life is on this earth it is but a shadow of the True Life which is to come. As a church we should spend more of our time brining men into this True Life rather than aiding them in their quest to construct the best possible shadow (a task in which we often lose sight of the Light).

The Counter-Cultural Church

Every society has its peculiar emphasizes: some they get right, some they get wrong. For example, the Romans excelled in both courage and chastity, but were often times very cruel. We modern westerners are much more kind, but we are far more cowardly and far less chaste.

Every society in which the church has existed has influenced the church. For example, the church under the Roman Empire excelled both in courage and chastity (one need but consider for a moment the bravery of the martyrs), but they often lacked kindness (in St. Augustine’s time a rival group of Christians known as the Donatists murdered rival bishops and sacked their churches). In our age the church, like society, is cowardly and unchaste (see our identical divorce rates for proof), but we are more kind (accepting those who are different, etc).

Before I proceed I must make one thing clear: the values of God are incommensurate. That is to say, they cannot be compared. Our kindness does not make up for our lack of chastity just as the chastity of the earlier church did not excuse its cruelty. We cannot compare sins just as we cannot compare the things God values (e.g. justice is not twice as valuable as beauty).

Given that all the things that God values are, well, valuable, the church should ideally value and display them all. But short of that, I believe the church has a responsibility to intentionally value those values of God which are ignored or mocked in our society.

Courage and chastity were held as virtuous by all men during earlier periods. Yes the church was right in being both courageous and chaste, but it need not emphasize them for in doing so they merely reinforced what people believed. Their time would have been much better spent promoting kindness. In the same way, today kindness (tolerance, diversity, etc) is in the very air we breathe. It is not to say that this is not valuable (rightly understood, it is), but only that the church should spend more of its time promoting values (like chastity) that are not widely held and are in fact openly mocked.

But instead we see the opposite. We see the church more and more moving toward accommodation, wanting to be more like the world in tolerating a lack of chasteness and worshiping tolerance so that the world we see us as one of their own and maybe somehow we will be able to trick them into our pews.

I do not see mega churches as a testimony to the church’s success, but rather to its failure. The world killed Christ and His disciples. Yet significant parts of the church today our accepted by our increasingly worldly society. The fact that they are accepted and not persecuted is probably evident that they are too much like the world, not only in it, but of it, that they have lost their light, for the darkness cannot tolerate the light.

Should the church not try to be so friendly or cool? The church should not focus on results. We are to preach the gospel and have faith in God to take care of the rest. If we do any more we risk perverting our task (preaching the gospel) in order that we may do something we are not asked to do (save the souls of men—that is God’s job). In doing this we not only corrupt our rightly given goal, but put into jeopardy that which we were never asked to do (it is difficult for a man to repent if he is not given the true gospel message!)

The Danger of Attaching God to our Idiosyncrasies

We all have different personalities (which is obvious enough). There is nothing wrong with a personals personality: it is not better to be naturally outgoing or inverted or sanguine or melancholy. What is wrong (or in the least, foolish) is claiming that our certain predisposition is somehow blessed by God and model to be imitated by other Christians.

For example consider the notions of obstinacy and pliability. Some of us are more naturally obstinate. Once we come to an idea we are slow to change our minds. Use rightly this could be considered the gift of faith; used wrongly it can become stubbornness or even pride. Others of us are more naturally pliable. That is we are more apt to change our minds. In its right form this is humility (the ability to admit when one is wrong), in its wrong form one becomes double-minded (in the sense used by St. James) and without faith.

It is neither wrong nor right to have either characteristic—both are naturally occurring tendencies. What is wrong (or, if it is not wrong, it can certainly lead one to wrongs), is to say that one or the other is Christ like. For example, one should not say that it is better that they are more naturally full of faith (for it is just as true that they are more naturally prone to be stuck in a false idea). Nor should one attach these things to denominations (Catholics are too dogmatic, etc), for being that these are a personality traits, they are found across all denominations (and even all faiths).

What should one do? Recognize their tendency and be on guard against it. If one is more prone to obstinacy, they should pray for humility and that God will guide them away from false beliefs while they retain the true. If one is prone to pliability, they should pray for faith and being that they are so easily influenced from one view to another, they should do all they can to surround themselves with good influences. And each should recognize the weaknesses of others: the obstinate man may be able to be around great sinners without falling, but the pliable man may not. If the obstinate man calls the prudence of the pliable man sinful, he risks causing his brother to fall into sin.

Public and Private Choices

All agree that liberty requires a private sphere free from government influence. But what exactly is a private choice?

Sexuality in all its forms has become the quintessential example of a private choice. But how private are our sexual choices?

For example, say a man and women copulate and the woman is impregnated by means of this coupling. If they stay together and raise the child as a family, the choice remains a private one. But say the woman wants to get an abortion. She has to go to an abortionist—not so private anymore.

Or say the woman keeps the child but the man does not stick around. A child raised by a single mom is more likely to require additional educational assistance, the mother and child are more likely to get food stamps and housing subsidies (for the number one cause of poverty in this country is the breaking up of families; and indeed is this not logical? It takes twice the income to support two households than one) and the child is more likely to commit violent acts and require incarceration of some type. This does not sound like too private of a choice anymore.

We do ourselves a disservice when we assume that our ancestors were idiots or fascists or religious zealots to try to regulate the family structure (regarding the religious argument, see Plato and Aristotle). There is a reason people have done things (like regulate family structure and promote man and wife as the idea) certain ways for long periods of time—it has worked! Just because we cannot see the benefits of their customs and traditions does not mean we should discard them. They learned things the hard way so that we would not have to. Yet if we mock their lessons we will find ourselves subject to repeating them.