We North Americans have an uneasy relationship with authority. We admit that we need it to order our lives in community, yet we are suspicious of it at the same time. “Question authority” is an adage that appeals especially to the young, as they struggle to find their own place in the world after moving out of the parental home. But some would go even further, as the image above indicates: “Stop believing in authority; start believing in each other.” At first glance, this sounds appealing. We should all look out for our neighbours and readily co-operate with them for the common good.
A Humane Vision for Human Relationships
In January 2014, M. G. Bianco published Letters to My Sons: A Humane Vision for Human Relationships. I am thoroughly enjoying this book and will write a full review of it when I finish, but for now here’s a portion to whet your appetite. Although I have not finished reading it yet, I can already highly recommend it to everyone. It is a work worthy of reading. Twice.
Here’s the quote for today:
We need to recognize that to fail to treat others as they deserve is to objectify them. When we limit someone by the way we look at them we are objectifying them. To objectify another human being is to reduce them to something other than their full humanness. I will use the term “dehumanize” in these letters to refer to the way we treat others improperly. For many of these letters, we will consider how we dehumanize others with our eyes, our thoughts, and our sexual behaviors toward or with them.
Think of it in terms of the phrase, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” What is meant, of course, is that you cannot know the true value of the words within the book simply by looking at its cover. How much more true is this of humans? The complexity of the human person prevents us from truly knowing their inner beauty and goodness, their value and dignity as humans created in the image of God. When we determine that someone is not worth getting to know or have a relationship with because of how we have judged their appearances with our eyes, we are objectifying them, we are dehumanizing them.
As M. G. Bianco states in the subtitle, he has a “humane vision for human relationships.” The purpose of these letters is to pass this vision along to his sons. Through the pages of these letters, now published, the non-Biancan reader can also see with new eyes that which is a very old vision, for it is the vision of the triune God, who created humanity in His very image.
Go to Amazon, and buy your own copy via this link. Hard copy or Kindle.<>
The Tender Mercies of the Wicked
by Marc Hays
In 2008, presidential candidate Barak Obama promised that he would bring about the end of childhood hunger in America by 2015. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that these were not merely empty words aimed at winning him an election—a huge assumption, I know, but work with me here—would three meals per day, every day, for all the children in America necessarily make America a better place? In order to answer that question, one would need to know how this lofty goal was going to be accomplished. Does “ending childhood hunger in America” justify any means necessary? For example, if America invaded some other country, took all their food, brought it back here for our children, while the other country’s children starved, would that make America a better place? What if we killed all the babies under two and fed them to all the children old enough to make the cut—an immodest proposal, indeed—would that make America a better place? Certainly not. The two preceding options may appear to be more far-fetched than the current administration’s model for the redistribution of wealth; however, I assert that the current model is destroying the next generation, as well as our country, rather than improving them.
In the beginning, before any sin, cruelty, or suffering arrived on the scene, there was hunger. In the garden there were trees and these trees bore fruit, which was beautiful and good for food. In the garden was a man and this man bore an open ended digestive system, which was capable of being full and becoming empty. The fruit was designed to be eaten; the man was designed to eat. It was a match made in Eden.
But Adam had hunger pains that did not come from his belly and so do we. God created man, in His image, to work and to keep the garden; then to expand the garden by filling the earth and subduing it. Why has man—even the seed of Cain—gone out and tended gardens, flocks, and herds; invented the wheel, the tractor, and the combine; built trucks, trains, and ships? He was hungry for food. Why has man—even the seed of Cain—developed musical instruments, weaved ornate tapestries, and accomplished amazing architectural feats? He was hungry for more than food. We were not created to be merely practical, i.e., to get enough calories for the day; we were created in the image of God with the desire to create beautiful things for his glory, in response to his grace. This non-digestive “hunger” is evidenced in the beautiful things man has created.
Not only were people designed with a hunger for beauty, but also with a hunger that is only filled by finding satisfaction in the work of one’s own hands. You know that feeling you get when the work is done; you stand back, looking at it, and say to yourself, “Yeah. I did that, and it’s done.” That’s not always some sort of unbiblical pride. Your heart is not always an “idol factory.” The satisfaction you take in your work is a gift from God. He created you to work; he created you to enjoy working; and he created you to rejoice in the fruit of your hands. At the end of each day of creation, God “stood back,” assessed the work, and rendered a judgment: “That’s good.” This personal satisfaction, which can only come from personal labor, has been stamped in man’s very fabric. Perpetually giving food to those with no vested interest in its production may fill the belly, but it is a great injustice to the person, for it will strip the person of the dignity that comes from a “job well done.”
If any person, family, organization, or institution, such as the Federal government of these United States, believes that they can walk away from what God has said about man, while at the same time providing what children need to thrive, they are grievously mistaken. They imagine the child to be a creature with no Creator, therefore bearing no resemblance to that Creator. In their vain imaginations, they devise schemes which aim at seemingly noble purposes, but in the end will eliminate all hunger, including the hungers to work, to beautify, and to find satisfaction that every image-bearer of God needs to thrive. They destroy human dignity; they decay entire cultures; and they deny obeisance to their Creator. In the end, the well-intended, but ill-conceived mercies of the wicked are cruel.
For further study, check out this article by Theodore Dalrymple. It is his accounting of the real-time effects of the social welfare state in Great Britain.
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How the Messianic Tendencies of the Government Promote the Suicidal Tendencies of the Poor
Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, an English medical doctor/psychiatrist and essayist. He is quite the essayist. First-rate if you ask me, and he has greatly informed and influenced my understanding of the plight of the poor under a socialist regime.
I have been reading his collection of essays entitled, “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.” The front cover bears a recommendation by Thomas Sowell which states, “A classic for our times. It is as fundamental for understanding the world we live in as the three R’s.” If I wrote a book that Thomas Sowell viewed as fundamental, I would say so on the front cover, too. Dr. Daniels is a physician in England, and has served in inner-city hospitals and prisons in London and Sub-Saharan Africa. Wikipedia reports that he interviewed over 10,000 people who had attempted suicide as research for this book. Needless to say it is a sad book. It is sad because it relates stories of hopelessness and despair, brought on by murder, rape, theft, domestic abuse, child neglect, drug addiction, and drunkenness, which are all proliferated by the government’s attempts to fix everything. It is also sad because Dalrymple’s penetrating analysis falls woefully short of producing an answer to the problems. These people are not only caught in the downward spiral of the government’s social commode, but they continue to make wicked personal choices, which are no one’s fault but their own. They need the Light that shines in the darkness if they are to find the pathway out of despair.
However, this is not to say that Dalrymple’s analysis of the situation is fatally flawed. He is a “scientist,” and has collected the “data” from his lifetime of interviewing. Though failing to correctly abstract the Biblical “universal” problem at hand, he has correctly diagnosed many of the symptoms. Through Dalrymple’s essays, I am becoming increasingly convinced that it is not only outside the God-ordained duties of the civil government to legislate and oversee the redistribution of wealth for the supposed betterment of the poor, but also that, despite the best of intentions, this perpetual “help” from the government becomes a detriment to their personal and social well-being. Dalrymple has correctly identified this detriment as a petrification of their state of squalor by the creation of a world view that holds them captive.
Dalrymple relates that there is squalor in England, but it is not economic. It is spiritual, moral, and cultural. The transformation of the lower class into the lower caste, from which there is rarely an opportunity to escape, has been caused by a social welfare system that has inasmuch removed any fear of the possibility of hunger. From the dawn of time men and women have been driven to work, beg, borrow, or steal for the purpose of getting enough calories in order to make it to the next meal. Even the poorest of people in non-socialized countries have a telos, a purpose. Their purpose is to survive the day, and that purpose brings a certain amount of satisfaction when they accomplish it. Dalrymple’s essays remind us that without the chance of starvation, the poorest of society have their sole purpose removed. Instead of it being replaced by something profitable, they are left with boredom, which will eventually lead to crime, gluttony, drunkenness, illicit sexuality, and eventually despair. This kind of life destroys any real self-esteem, and “with no self-esteem, there is no chance of self-improvement.” This purposeless life leads many to regret being alive at all.
“That’s easy for a middle-class guy in America to say,” you might be thinking to yourself, “telling people to find their purpose and satisfaction in surviving the day.” Yeah, it does come across as harsh, but the reality of the matter, one that many refuse to accept is that you cannot legislate away poverty and you cannot ultimately sidestep your Creator. If He has created you in His image, and He has, then certain rules apply. Not just rules like the “thou shalt nots,” but the underlying fabric from which all of the positive laws spring. The two realities that God is, and God made us in His image.
There is a Messiah, who will set the world to rights. He delights in feeding the poor. In healing up the broken-hearted. In bringing joy to those who despair. In setting the prisoner free. In giving purpose to the hopeless. His name is Jesus, and next post, I will examine Dalrymple’s conclusions in the light of His Word.
Here’s a link to purchase this important work on Amazon:
Life at the Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple
If you’re a Kindle person, you can get the book for cheap!
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