More of Same

A reader commented on yesterday's post as follows:

In situations like this I think it is insightful to reverse the situation and see how it fits.

Let's suppose that George Bush had been captured by Hussein loyalist during his visit and was being shown on Al Jazeera being forcibly examined by a doctor. Would we find that acceptible?

It is marvelous how the perspective you are taking alters the way a situation looks.

It was important to show he was captured but that did not justify intrusive humiliating footage being shown. Let us not forget that he is entitled to be treated humanely and with dignity even though he did not accord others the same privilege. That is what the bible taught me anyway.

My response touches on matters related to the post on the Colson-McLaren debate, so I'm bringing it out of the comments area and onto the main page.

With regard to Saddam, the guy's been on the run for 240 days, driving around in a taxi and hiding out in fetid holes in the ground. I can assure you that he received much better treatment than George Bush would have received if the roles had been reversed. I have done exactly the kind of role reversal exercise of which you speak. Perhaps it would be better if we incarcerated Saddam in one of his own prisons?

How about this interpretation ... we find this guy, and we demonstrate for the benefit of the naysayers in the world the condition in which we found him, we show that we have given him proper medical care, then, because clearly he looks like hell, we clean him up, give him a shave and take his picture again for the benefit of a world that is just waiting for something to show how cruel we are? Nah, that couldn't possibly be what happened because that would neglect the a priori assumption that Americans are morally bankrupt and in need of the rest of the world to arbitrate our judgment. Randy McRoberts pointed to a classic Ann Coulter line today:

If George W. Bush announced that a cure for cancer had been discovered, Democrats would complain about unemployed laboratory rats.

Add the UN to that assessment. The only people who have the right to moralize about this situation actually are the Iraqis themselves. I wonder what they might say about this?

"The Iraqi people are eager to see Saddam in a defeated situation; he looks defeated, he looks little compared to his pictures where he is wearing his uniform ... with ranks on his shoulders, acting like he's the king of the universe," said Entifadh Qanbar, the spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress. "Now he's just a normal person - not even a normal person but a criminal who's been caught ... and is waiting for his punishment."

Quod erat demonstrandum.

You say you want to bring the Bible into this? Oh, my ... let's, shall we? The Bible I read also has some very inconvenient things like this in it:

Then Samuel said [to Saul], "Bring Agag king of the Amalekites here to me." And Agag came to him haltingly. Agag said, "Surely this is the bitterness of death." But Samuel said, "As your sword has made women childless, so your mother shall be childless among women." And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.

- I Samuel 15:32-35 (NRSV)

Now THAT'S treating someone like a cow, Cardinal Martino.

There remains in Western Christianity a thread of Gnosticism that continues to corrupt our moral judgment by overspiritualizing the Gospel. There was a second century heretic named Marcion:

How, Marcion reasoned, could an evil tree bring forth good fruit? So he concluded that there must be two Gods: the Creator God of the OT, who was characteristically a God of Law, who involved himself in contradictory courses of action, who was fickle, ignorant, despotic and cruel. The Supreme God, Marcion held, was wholly a God of Love who had remained completely hidden until he was revealed in the person of Jesus Christ ...

... Marcion refused point-blank to allegorise the OT text instead he rejected it completely. For him it was the true account of the history of the Jews, but spoke of the Demiurge. Paul, Marcion claimed, was the only true apostle and gathered together ten of his epistles, excluding 1 & 2 Timothy & Titus, from which he carefully removed any ‘Jewish corruptions’.

All of the other apostles, he maintained, had corrupted their Master’s teaching by an admixture of legalism. Marcion selected Luke as the only reliable Gospel, editing out all OT references, the accounts of the birth of Jesus and John the Baptist (because they contain OT prophesies and links to historical events), His genealogy, records of historical local rulers of the time (Luke 3:1) and began at Luke 4:31 “...Jesus came down to Capernaum...” By this his readers were to suppose that He simply appeared from heaven, fully grown. Finally Marcion added his own book, the ‘Antitheses’ or ‘Contradictions’, in which he expounded his theology.

I see in the comment above, and in the blogs that set me off in the first place, presupositional elements that bear a distinct relationship to that kind of Marcionite thinking. Many in the church are unable to reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament, so they spiritualize the gospel, lopping off those parts that are difficult and upset one's digestion. They reduce it to a gospel of love and compassion, with milk and cookies for the masses every night at bedtime. They seek justice for the poor by playing Robin Hood with other people's money from the safe vantage point of bourgois existence, motivated by the eye-opening experience of their two week mission trip to Guatemala.

Postmodernism suits such a mindset perfectly. It deconstructs structures of power for no other reason than because they are structures of power. And all that would be fine if they did so in order to understand the structure, then put it back as it was or, dare I think it, better than it was. But that's not the point of it. Rather, it just deconstructs, and when it's finished, Humpty-Dumpty-like, it has no concept of how to put something back in its place because at its core, postmodernism is empty. That is what Chuck Colson is afraid of. He may not be as accurate in his understanding of postmodernism as Brian McLaren would prefer, but he knows, perhaps in a way Brian McLaren may not, the acidic effect of deconstructionists on a culture.

That is why we are no longer able to carry on an intelligent, constructive conversation regarding the role of the United States in the world. My language, the language and worldview of the Lockean paradigm, is declared off limits. If I try to carry on the conversation in the linear style of rhetoric, I'm told by the postmodernist that I must think in a non-linear fashion. I'm capable of doing that, but elliptical thought is not without its own drawbacks. For instance, now before I act to address a present-day situation, I first must ask myself how my ancestors might have contributed to this situation. If there is any blood on their hands, then I am rendered morally unfit to act. Thus we wait around for the parousia until someone with clean hands can take action. Meanwhile, the ghosts of over 300,000 dead cry out for justice.

Posted by Mike at December 18, 2003 01:54 PM | TrackBack