If You Can’t Stand the Heat…
June 09, 2005
Having acquired a seat at the rich banquet of late Liberalism, thanks in large part to their expose of the “naked public square,” Ray Pennings chastizes unnamed Christians who fail, by his tastes, to dress appropriately:
…there is such a thing as ugly religious clothes. This ugliness takes many forms, and there are plenty of examples even in our recent history to create quite a rogues gallery. There are those who speak in the name of truth and love but have no hesitation getting caught up in the political game and misrepresenting their opponents in the most uncharitable manner. There are those who speak about the importance of speaking from conviction, but show no respect for the deeply held convictions of others with whom they disagree.
I regard the flushed “we have arrived” presumption in the evangelical-reformed bloc as cheap hubris bordering on farce. TNP finds itself aligned with hardline Marxists in vehemently dismissing Liberalism’s party wholesale, in large part because it leads to Penning’s evidently assimilationistic, happy-to-be-co-opted, politically naive and “namby-pamby” sentiment, which he articulates even while trying to avoid it:
This is not a plea for a namby-pamby nice-ness that refuses to take clear stands or differ with others. It is a plea that the tone of our discourse and approach to the debate will be decidedly different than those with whom we differ. And while, there may from time to time be a place for righteous indignation, such a place is really quite rare.
I submit that the last statement is patently false. As Graeme Hunter comments on Pope John XXII’s damning and reproving of Meister Eckhart as “heretical, indiscreet and ugly,” “What pleases … about these words is not so much their truth, about which I am still undecided. It is their self-assurance, that hits you like a snort of vodka at a Baptist picnic. Even our previous and current pope, who stand above their age like giants, even they might learn a thing or two from such medieval predecessors.”
It is a severe fact that one cannot take clear stands on many critical issues without expressing contempt for “the deeply held convictions of others with whom [one] disagree[s].” The proper attitude toward a person or position one regards as contemptuous of, say, human life, is contempt–which need not preclude pity, fear, and even compassion. Anything less indicates one does not really take the matter seriously. It is always the fitting implication and sign of honesty in even the most “civil” disputes that the disputants are clearly antagonists whose differences cannot be reconciled or infinitely deferred without there being a winner and a loser.
This has always been the reality of “civil” or political discourse. And when confronted with people who are so profoundly disordered so as to advocate policy that breeds individual and social disorder, the “difference” is not a mere matter of “opinion;” it is a deep spiritual difference of great consequence. (Incidentally, biblical discourse recognizes the reality of irreconcilable differences rooted in contrary orientations of the human heart and typically responds to the infernally oriented with the language of divine wrath, which is to say justice.)
It is one thing to issue ignorant and facile polemic; it is another to speak the truth and to occasionally decorate it so as to maximize rhetorical impact and advantageous political ends. What works, works–an ounce of quality sarcasm, for instance, is worth a pound of argument, to say nothing of the common machinations of shrewd Machiavellian campaign strategists.
Like it or lump it: the more heated cultural politics of the day frequently merit returning fire in kind, firing pre-emptively, or deploying “nuclear options.” Of course things can get out of hand, and one might be wrong in one’s thinking and choices–that is always the risk of any serious exercise of power. But short of the danger of touching off real, bodily conflict (which hardly seems a pressing risk) Christians ought not even consider erring on the side of caution, at least in Penning’s sense of caution. The side of that caution is also the side of false friends, dangerous appeasements, and emboldened enemies. In the long run, a civility maintained by putting love ahead of truth and justice leads to the entrenchment of hostile interests insulated from removal by normal political means.
This is If You Can’t Stand the Heat… in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Boyagoda on Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century | Next: “Whiggish” Histories and Historians | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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