{"id":2549,"date":"2005-01-10T20:26:30","date_gmt":"2005-01-11T01:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/01\/10\/2549.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:47:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:47:30","slug":"spitting-on-madison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/01\/10\/spitting-on-madison\/","title":{"rendered":"Spitting on Madison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Well, and I’m sure by now all you Gentle Readers know that our very own Tom DeLay, the only House Majority Leader we have, showed remarkable taste in choosing Matthew 7:21-27<\/a> for last week’s Congressional Prayer Service. Now, most of the hallooing is going to be about the metaphor Matthew uses: a foolish man builds his house upon sand, and the floods came and washed it away<\/a>. Nice time for that, Hon. Mr. DeLay, sir.\n

Digression: if you prefer Luke, the parallel is Luke 6:49<\/a>. I prefer the good doctor, myself, but then I’m no Christian. The version that gets quoted is the Matthew one, which in itself is interesting to those interested. Mostly, though, Your Humble Blogger is just saying: I’ve got a Throckmorton<\/a>, and I know how to use it. End Digression.\n

My own take is that the choice was deliberate, and the resonance was deliberate, and that libs and lefties will be making a grievous error to wail about it, given that the Republicans have already hung the ‘Dems hate the Bible’ frame around us. Politically, it’s more important for Dems to show they support (or at least tolerate) faith-driven politics than to score any minor point over the bad taste of a Texan. But that’s short-range thinking, and you can go to any blog for that sort of thing.\n

What I wanted to toss on my Tohu Bohu is that what I hear when the Hon. Mr. DeLay chooses that particular passage is not the passing evocation of the news headline, but the deeper divide in American society, and thus in American politics. And, as it’s the thing I’ve been meaning to write about for weeks, I suppose I should write about it.\n

What many people read from Matthew 7 is the absolute necessity of accepting the Gospel for salvation. That is, rejecting Jesus as the Messiah is equivalent to accepting damnation. Further, only really<\/I> accepting him counts; only genuine profession puts one among the saved remnant. I know that this is only one interpretation of the passage, and I am only raising it above the others because of what I perceive as its resonance with a large number of Americans, and because, due to that perception, I think that the Hon. Mr. DeLay meant to evoke that resonance with his choice. In other words, I don’t think our House Majority Leader was talking about floods, I think he was talking about damnation.\n

The essential dividing line in American culture at the moment is the answer to this question: do you believe that all those outside of your church tradition are damned? I’ll call those who answer yes exceptionalists, and those who answer no pluralists, although I’m not terribly happy with those terms; Gentle Readers should feel free to supply me with better or at least more widely-used terms. Anyway, a lot follows for exceptionalists that pluralists have a hard time even following, much less swallowing. Here’s an example: many Christian exceptionalist organizations are very big on prison-release halfway houses. They feel (with Matthew) that criminal behaviour is a symptom of the true problem, which is the refusal to accept Jesus as saviour. Even for those felons who profess Christianity, they feel it can’t quite have taken, and I have a good deal of sympathy for that feeling. It follows, then, for them, that by getting the convicts right with Jesus, they can get them on the right track with their lives. It follows, then, further, that all of the rehabilitation and reintegration programs that don’t<\/I> focus on salvation are doomed to failure, as the ex-con will eventually revert to form, and besides will be damned eternally, and what does that merit him (or her)? When I<\/I> look at such programs, I’m looking for actual rates of recidivism as well as some fundamental constitutional issues of preferential treatment for certain religions, and I frankly don’t much care if the ex-con is saved<\/I>, as long as he’s treated humanely and society is safe.\n

Digression: in fact, I find the whole salvation thing totally perplexing. My own slice of Judaism doesn’t have eternal damnation, even for really bad guys, so salvation, as such, isn’t a big deal. I can understand, though, for those who focus on it, that there just isn’t anything more important. And as an answer to theodicy, Paul’s answer makes a lot more sense than Job’s. I don’t actually think the question is answerable, so can take Job’s easier than Paul’s, myself. Which should surprise no-one. Anyway, Judaism has a pretty good tradition of combining a certain kind of Chosen-People exceptionalism with a basic pluralism; in the Land of the Eternal Sabbath, not just the ger<\/I> but the actual goy<\/I> will be welcome, but Jews will live in the Holy Land. Noah Ish Tzaddik<\/I>, but forbid your daughter should marry him. Still, he remains tzaddik<\/I>, righteous, and it’s clear that there are always righteous non-Jews. Which is good, because otherwise we’d have to proselytize, and that’s just tacky, and besides, who would want to live in a world of only Jews? End digression.\n

Anyway, it’s pretty easy to see how the split between exceptionalists and pluralists drives a lot of the issues in politics and culture. Gay marriage doesn’t hurt anybody? Sure, if you’re a pluralist, and willing to accept that if a person claims to be happy and healthy and shows every exterior sign of happiness and health then that person is, in fact, likely to be happy and healthy. If, on the other hand, their rejection of the Law (and, again, I know this is one interpretation thereof, but a common one) is clearly a symptom of a flight from Grace, then all that happiness and health nonsense is just a fa\ufffdade. Taking the Lord out of the national pledge is another symptom, as is Janet Jackson’s exposed breast. As, frankly, is support for Democratic candidates and positions.\n

I don’t know what to do about this split. At least, I don’t see any chance of convincing committed exceptionalists of pluralism’s superiority as a principle. I do think that I can make an argument that whatever you happen to believe, public (governmental) support of pluralism is good for society, at least if you define ‘good’ and ‘society’ more or less the way I do. If, however, your focus is entirely on the remnant, ‘good’ and ‘society’ are totally different concepts, and we will have difficulty even talking about government policy. Further (and more important) I would argue that whatever your actual theology, acting as if<\/i> you were a pluralist will help you with day-to-day ethical issues. But, again, that argument depends on definitions of ‘acting’ and ‘ethical’ that are scarcely unanimous.\n

There are, however, a ton of people who are neither committed exceptionalists nor committed pluralists, who in fact have no substantially well-defined answer to the question. I think that it would be good for society as well as for the individuals within it if some persuasive people were to lay out pluralism as if it were not self-evident. I’d like those ideas to be widely understood, at least, and ideally to gain new adherents. I’d like there to be lots of proud pluralists, who can stand together—well, near each other, anyway—and say that we all are on different paths, and it isn’t given to me to know whether the path I’m on is the straight and narrow or the winding or even the downward one so famously paved with good intentions. No more is it given to me to know where my path ends, much less other people’s. There are some pretty obviously bad ones, and it’s a good idea to avoid those and to warn other people about them, but there are a lot of good ones, too. I’d love to have a Majority Leader or even a Minority Leader saying that, if we have to have a Congressional Prayer Service at all (which service culminates, I assume, in the traditional spitting on the grave of James Madison).\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, and I\u2019m sure by now all you Gentle Readers know that our very own Tom DeLay, the only House Majority Leader we have, showed remarkable taste in choosing Matthew 7:21-27 for last week\u2019s Congressional Prayer Service. Now, most of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17254,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions\/17254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}