We Should Always Be Polite

Recently I was asked why I refer to secular and theological liberals as progressives and neo-Protestants. It’s a matter of manners. As a wee boy I was brought up always to be polite, especially to those less fortunate than myself.

Those usually referred to as liberals today have little connection with a liberal outlook. Classical liberalism was a positive outlook on life which saw humankind developing under the careful tutelage of reason. The essential equality of all was assumed, as was the premise that we move forward together as a society on the basis of a moral framework. At the heart of the movement which helped bring us liberty and democracy was the recognition that it was a moral movement operating within moral parameters. There was a basic unquestioned premise that there was a recognisable right and wrong and that as individuals and society the former should be pursued and the latter shunned. Individuals and society moved forward together.

Today’s secular progressives believe instead that the fulfilment of the desires of the individual is paramount and that the individual has the right to make up his or her own mind as to what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for him. Morality is privitised. This has resulted in the progressives taking liberty, one of the central planks of liberalism, and turning it into licence. Freedom without the constraint of virtue results in nihilism.

The theological progressive, and I am mainly concerned with Protestants because I am one, wants to remake the Christian faith into something new. Progressives don’t demand much in the way of actual belief. They hold to indiscriminate baptism, homosexual ministers, girl bishops and praying alongside Muslims, these are the things which really matter. Oh, they also believe in the Ten Commandments, or “Moses discussion starters” as they think of them, as long as you understand that they are not “carved in stone.”

The Reformed faith has, amongst its saner elements, always seen the need for continual reformation. This continual reformation is to be on the basis of the revealed Word of God. As Calvin put it the Bible is the spectacles through which we can interpret the world aright. The progressive wishes to reverse this, for him the world is the norm through whcih we interpret the Scriptures. When the desires of the individual conflict with Scripture then Scripture must bow. This entails the creation of something radically different from what has gone before. That is why I refer to neo-Protestantism.

It would appear that I am an old-fashioned Scots Presbyterian Whig. Not a Tory intent upon supporting entrenched privilege. Not a Jacobin hoping to overthrow all that has gone before. Rather, because I believe in the God of the Bible, an actual liberal who cares deeply about the free development of humanity and the difference between right and wrong, good and evil.

If Iwere to be pointed I wouldn’t refer to them using their own terminology of ‘progressives’ or the relatively polite neo-Protestants but as Jacobins, people intent on recasting society and beginning again at Day One. But then, I was brought up to be polite.

A Healthy Dose Of Scepticism

One of the great benefits of the Reformation in Scotland was that people were taught to read and to think. A school in every parish eventually had a massive impact on Scottish life.

It is important for Christians today to learn to read. Too often we sit back and let others tells us stories and simply accept their tales without reading what is going on. Read not just the words or images, but the underlying messages.

People buy newspapers knowing full well their political and social bias. The reader of the Guardian is unlikely to vote consistently in the same way as the reader of the Daily Mail. Neither are they likely to hold similar positions on abortion rights, homosexuality or multiculturalism. When it comes to papers we do not wish our worldview to be expanded or challenged, we wish our prejudices to be reinforced.

The main medium shaping our culture today however, is television and despite the internet most people still look to television, particularly news and current affairs programmes, for  information on events around the world. What we overlook is that television is no more value free than newspapers, or blogs.

Andrew Marr, no Christian obscurantist, has said that the BBC “Is a publicly-funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large.” All this he said “creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC.” Working for the BBC Marr’s analysis was focused on the Corporation but applies to the independent broadcasters just as much.

The “innate bias” is important because television not only reports the news but also makes it. A significant factor in David Cameron becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 2005 a mere four years after entering Parliament was the reporting of the speeches he and David Davis gave at the Party conference. Cameron, the progressive metropolitan PR professional with close contacts in the media, was able to play the news media and was more congenial to their world view than Davis the blunt right wing Yorkshireman.

Even entertainment shapes public opinion. Think of how much soaps have done to promote acceptance of homosexuality. Homosexuals are almost invariably portrayed in a sympathetic light. Then think of how Christians are portrayed on soaps, from batty Dot Cotton on Eastenders to Ashley the wimpy vicar in Emmerdale, hardly a normal one amongst them.

Television, rather than exposing the progressive establishment to searching examination is an integral part of that liberal establishment and promotes its values. Those who hold to biblical principles should be aware that television broadcasting, the serious news and current affairs programmes as much as the soaps and ‘entertainment’ shows, has its own agenda.

When we watch a play by Jimmy McGovern we know we are not going to get an unbiased take on life in the army. We don’t go to a Ken Loach film expecting a dispassionate view of the Irish troubles or to Mike Leigh for a cool headed exploration of the complexities of abortion. Although there are those whose knowledge of Sir William Wallace is confined to Braveheart and who think Attenborough’s Ghandi portrayed what happened in India most of us are aware we should be sceptical when it comes to dramas. In dramas the astute expect an angle, are we as sceptical when we watch the news?

Christians must become more adept at ‘reading’ what is actually being purveyed under the surface, especially when it is ‘unbiased reporting.’ We must learn to be just as astute when we watch news as when we watch Coronation Street. Ministers should get back to teaching their congregations how to read.

On Your Knees

So numerous are they it is difficult to determine just what is the greatest sin in the lexicon of progressive neo-Protestantism. I would suggest that it is none of the usual suspects: being less than lukewarm about organisational ecumenism, shunning inter-faith dialogue, refusing to accept pan-sexuality, the usual tedious list. I suggest the underlying sin all conservative (for want of a better description) Christians are guilty of is triumphalism.

By this progressives mean the refusal to accept that Christians must ‘walk humbly,’ not before God but before anyone who has an axe to grind against Christianity. In the face of attacks from radical Islam we are supposed to meekly remember the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 and hold our tongues. When we hear condemnation of the colonialising influence of the Church in 19^th century Africa we are meant to hang our heads in shame. The list of Christian crimes is renewed whenever a new ‘oppression’ appears on the scene.

Sorry, but I won’t. I recognise that the record of the Christian church is far from perfect, but I refuse a) to apologise for things which occurred long before I was born. If there are any MacDonalds out there looking for an apology for 1692 they have a long weary wait ahead of them, and b) I happen to believe that the gospel message is actual truth. Christians should not just sit still and take whatever is thrown at us, even prisoners in the dock have the right to make a defence.

Jesus is clear about the need for repentance, He is clear about love, He is clear about not causing needless offence. I do not see anything there which precludes me from making a vigorous defence of the truth whenever it is assaulted.

One hymn which I have never included in an order of service and never shall is Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. This for the simple fact that it is untrue. Jesus was gentle, He was meek, but He was anything but mild. Think of the traders in the temple whom He beat up. Just read the Lucan Beatitudes. Read what He had to say to and about the religious authorities of His day. The Pharisees were compared to ‘whited sepulchres,’ a traditional translation which hides what Jesus really said, “See you really religious folk, you get right up God’s nose.”

It can be fairly said that Jesus took a robust stance against distortions of the faith and hypocrisy.

Who did Jesus say was the greatest of men? John the Baptist Matt 11.11. Now there was a guy who was no grovelling apologiser for his beliefs. Called before Herod he didn’t prattle about alternative lifestyles, he told it like it was. He paid the price, but he would have paid a far higher price by dissembling and denying and accommodating.

Paul, who wrote so movingly about the primacy of love in I Corinthians 13 spoke out clearly when he had to, and at times he was somewhat blunt. To those who said Christians should be circumcised for fear of offending the Jews his advice for them  in Galatians 5:11,12 was they should go the whole hog.

Funny thing is that the church did not retreat because of this uncompromising stance, it advanced.

To sit back is not an option. We are instructed to defend the faith, not bow our heads before every accusation. To let error or evil to go unchallenged is to become an accomplice to wrong.

Throughout the world today Christians are being persecuted; is it right to hold our tongues when there is hardly a Muslim majority country anywhere which does not persecute Christians? Should we remain silent when Christians are represented as psychologically ill when we refuse to countenance homosexual ‘marriage’? When a sin is made legal by governmental decree does that mean it has ceased to be a sin?

To speak the truth is not triumphalism, it is faithfulness. Unfortunately neo-Protestants refuse to recognise the Jesus of Scripture and have instead remade Him in their own vapid progressive image. They have failed to learn the lesson that we are a minority in an increasingly intolerant culture.

Playing along with secularism has two great faults: a) it doesn’t work, instead it is death by a thousand tiny adjustments, and b) more seriously, it is a failure to walk in the way of Jesus.

We should be on our knees, but only before God not before men.

A Silly Question

In the last wee while I have been reflecting on the fate of two women, both of whom deserve admiration and support.

There is  Aung San Suu Kyi the pro-democracy leader in Myanmar, or Burma as it used to be known. The daughter of an esteemed general, educated in the west, she left everything behind, including her family, to campaign for the freedom of her people. The world rejoiced at her release from house imprisonment, and rightly so. From Jon Snow to Barrack Obama the cultural elite have campaigned for her release and we should rejoice that she at last is free.

Then there is Asia Bibi, a poor Christian Pakistani woman who worked as a day labourer in the fields. Accused by Muslim women of denigrating Mohammed she was nearly lynched and then arrested and tried for the ‘crime’ of blaspheming Mohammed. She has been sentenced to be hanged.

Will there be an international campaign amongst the great and the good for her release?

Silly Question.

Toleration

Tolerance:  a term deployed by progressives when trying to promote acceptance of those whose politics, cultural norms, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from the majority of Britons; term not applicable regarding evangelical Christians, defence of marriage supporters, right to lifers, and generally anyone who disagrees with the political establishment and media elite.

Tolerance once meant you were willing to abide behaviour in others which you found objectionable. Then it came to mean not judging such behaviour at all. Then it moved on to respecting them. Next it came to mean celebrating them, often at the cost of what was once held to be central. Now it means silencing those who continue to find such behaviour objectionable.

If you refuse to celebrate that which you think is unhealthy or wrong then the proponents of toleration will do their level best to stifle your previously free expression of opinion.

One favourite tactic the social, political and religious progressives often use in order to suppress debate is to label opponents as mentally unstable. If you are opposed to homosexual marriage you are labelled ‘homophobic’ or suffering from a psychological malady the symptoms of which are an unreasoning fear of homosexuals. If you speak out against the increasing influence of radical Islam amongst Muslims in the West you are labelled ‘Islamophobic,’ another psychological malady.

The list goes on endlessly. This tactic has it’s own perverted logic borrowed from the old USSR. There dissidents were routinely confined to mental institutions. After all, if you objected to the way the USSR was run you were obviously deranged, after all, wasn’t it a paradise upon earth.

We shouldn’t blame Stalin for this concept, its pedigree is much longer. Diderot in his article on ‘Natural Law’ in the Encylopedie in 1762 wrote “We must reason about all things.” If anyone refused to seek out truth he could no longer be considered human and “should be treated by the rest of his species as a wild beast.” Once the truth was discovered refusal to accept it meant one was “either insane or wicked and morally evil.”

With the advent of the French Revolution this doctrine was adopted, via Rousseau, by Robespierre who used it as part of his justification for the Great Terror.

There is a response to accusations of say Islamophobia. Those progressives who bandy it about as a term of opprobrium in an effort to censor cultural critics will refuse to listen to a discussion of their methods. They are interested in closing down discussion not in opening it up, they have forgotten the first part of Diderot’s argument “We must reason about all things.

Simply ask: Who has an unreasoning fear of radical Islam, the person who speaks out openly concerning its dangers, or the person who is afraid to acknowledge those dangers? Who is afraid of radical Islam, an elderly Danish cartoonist who mocked Muhammad, or the Yale University Press which last year refused to publish the cartoons in a scholarly tome by Professor Jytte Klausen devoted to the incident?

The true ‘phobics’ are those progressives who are so afraid of open discussion of contentious matters that they attempt to silence those who do wish to deal with vital social issues. A toleration which only tolerates those who agree is no toleration.

Culture Clash

Labels such as liberal or conservative almost always mislead, especially when applied theologically. Whilst insisting that I am not a Christian conservative I do, as a Calvinist, reluctantly accept the designation of conservative Christian. This can give rise to challenges, especially from those who rarely think, that there is little difference between conservative Christians and conservative Muslims, by which they mean Islamists.

Indisputably surface similarities between conservative Christians and main-line Muslims exist. Both groups believe in and order their lives by what they hold to be divine revelation. Both are appalled by the moral relativism of society. Both reject the glorification of violence, vulgarity and promiscuity prevalent in society. Respect for education, the family and an enviable work ethic, once the mark of working class Scottish culture, are everyday attitudes amongst our Muslim communities today.

Whilst there are social similarities between the conservative Christian and the mainstream Muslim there are vast differences between the conservative Christian and the Islamist. Let me assure you that, despite what Dawkins implies, just because I believe in God and have a beard does not mean that I wish to explode airliners in mid-flight.

The conservative Christian wishes to see our society flourish. We want our civilisation to rediscover it own foundations. The Judeo-Christian principles and values which undergird our culture have been eroded. The gradual chipping away which has accelerated under post-modernism has left our society resting on increasingly shaky foundations. The conservative Christian wishes to see our culture restored, free and vibrant.

To do this we are willing to engage with the secular modernist on the basis of rational discussion of objective evidence. Try as you might it is impossible to engage with post-modernists who have deliberately abandoned rationality and plunged into a miasma of mindboggling circumlocution.

Christians uphold the primacy of truth John 17:17, want to use reason I Peter 3:15, and value the dignity of the individual Genesis 1:27. The Islamist violently rejects these, they are to be overthrown, not by rational argument but by military assault.

The difference in tactics arises from the vast differenced in theological foundation. Reformed Christians, like most other Christians, place an enormous emphasis on the personal significance and responsibility of the individual. Only the Pollyannas of neo-Protestantism are so enamoured of the touchy feely they see humanity through pink tinted soft focus where all ills are the fault of society. Realist Christians know that what the individual thinks and does is her or his personal responsibility. We dignify people and show them the respect of taking them seriously as responsible individuals.

The Islamist has no respect for the individual as an individual. The purpose and dignity of the individual can only be found as he or she acts as a vehicle for the dictates of Allah. This means that there can be no acceptable human position other than complete submission to Allah, the very meaning of the word Islam.

This means that for the Islamist the only acceptable form of government is a theocracy. Western democracy, which we hold to be essential to civil freedom, is for the Islamist a subjugation to man’s basest instincts, it is open rebellion against Allah.

Without recovery of the foundational concepts of our civilisation we will be unable to confront those whose stated aim is to destroy us.

Follow The Evidence

We poor Calvinists are scorned as the Eeyores of the ecclesiastical world. All because we believe in total depravity, too often misunderstood as being a belief in utter depravity. On the other hand progressives, theological as well as secular, believe in the perfectibility of man. There is a reason for this: Calvinists look at the evidence, progressives don’t.

The Happy Calvinist

With the demise of Christian faith something had to replace belief in God, into the breach stepped belief in man.

Calvinists don’t believe humans are basically evil, rather we believe we were made good but are now flawed. This is undoubtedly sad, but nevertheless a biblical and evidentiary fact which wishful thinking does not wash away. Nevertheless progressives find it difficult to acknowledge such facts and do try to explain them away.

Progressives tend to be unwilling to accept the sadness and pain recognition of reality creates. As a matter of dogma they believe people are basically good and perfectible and any evidence to the contrary is rejected. A recognition of reality would undermine the basic progressive dogma that individuals do bad things because of outside social forces such as poverty, racism, nationalism, capitalism, and very probably botulism.

The vast majority of terrorists who have destroyed aircraft and murdered thousands are young male Muslims. For the progressive anyone who recognises this fact is a racist and British society itself is supposedly racist because most Brits would be happy to have profiling at airports. Hard evidence is shunned precisely because it is hard.

Theological progressives operate on the same dynamic as secular progressives. For the Christian progressive sin is institutional not personal. Confronting the sin and failure of the individual is considered hurtful and judgemental. For them the church should bend its efforts to ensure the eradication of physical poverty, the supposed cause of sin; meanwhile the poverty of soul overwhelming society is neglected.

Progressives are masters of pain avoidance, from school sports days without winners or losers, to exams where it is difficult to fail, to equality legislation which ignores differences between women and men, young and old. Respect for the individual and his or her actions is lost.

Some win, some lose, a simple fact of life progressives reject. It doesn’t even take Calvinism, any supporter of Partick Thistle accepts that losing is an all too frequent fact of life.

The progressive believes in equality of outcome, the Calvinist believes in equality of opportunity.

There are profound differences between those who see what is there and those who see what they would like to be there.

Give Me Joy In My Heart

Why on earth is David Cameron intent on measuring my happiness? Can he even do it? As my family will assure you there are many times when I am quite happy being miserable.

He is rightly concerned about more than economics. I’m sure that as a multi-millionaire he sincerely believes that money can’t buy you happiness. Let me assure him from the other end that it doesn’t necessarily make you unhappy either. In fact studies indicate that until an income level of around £60,000 pa is reached money does make one happier.

This latest idea is nothing new from the boy David: “We should be thinking not just what is good for putting money in people’s pockets but what is good for putting joy in people’s hearts” (2006). “Improving our society’s well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our time” (2007). “It’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB” (2007).

Thankfully Cameron, as a fits-where-it-touches Anglican, does not have the Messianic delusions of the Catholic convert Blair or Methodist evangelical Bush. He does however, seem to see himself as a Bringer of Happiness.

If Cameron is serious about happiness he will have to indulge in the dangerous practice of social engineering. We already have too much evidence of social engineering fiascos.

Here in Glasgow housing asylum seekers and immigrants in sink estates to get them out of the way and “improve racial integration” can hardly be considered a success. The education systems north as well as south of the border have been re-engineered in the name of fairness to such an extent that as exam results have continually improved educational attainment has continually plummeted.

Real change means more than fuzzy feel-good ideas, or readjusting targets to cover social and political failure. It means policies which actually foster happiness will have to be promoted.

Policies such as promoting marriage, not cohabitation or civil partnership, but the stable marriage of husband and wife. Policies which dismantle employment practices which force both parents out to work with the children dumped on a child minder. Policies such as tackling the cultural corrosion of violence and pornography. Policies which deal effectively with the low level crime which distorts life in so much of Britain. Policies which mean hard political decisions.

And you and I know it isn’t going to happen. The policies required to promote happiness are too radical for any ‘progressive’ government. Anyway it is beyond the power of any government to do more than adjust, real change requires something more.

Happiness has a source far more fundamental than Whitehall. It is found in one place alone, and He gives it freely. That is why He came, “I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full” John 10:10.

David Cameron’s heart may be in the right place on this, I’m not so sure about his head. I sincerely doubt his ability to put joy in my heart, or yours.

Mawkish Britain

Sir Robert Fry is still getting it in the neck. Four days after the Lieutenant General, a former commander of British forces in Iraq, commented on  mawkishness over the military he is still being criticised.

In the midst of all the comment on whether this response to the military is healthy or not there are few signs of any thought as to why this “excessive reverence” for the armed forces exists. The reasons for this mawkishness lie in the post-Christian culture of our times.

We have nothing greater than ourselves and so we must manufacture heroes.

Badly housed at home and sent abroad by mendacious politicians to fight unpopular wars, poorly equipped and led by incompetent commanders; this is the general consensus regarding the armed forces today. The war in Iraq has destroyed trust in politicians and service leaders. In a victim culture service personnel are seen as the ultimate victims.

Yet the armed forces play an important role in public consciousness.

With the erasure of Christianity from the public conversation there is held to be nothing more than the physical. If there is nothing beyond this life then the idea of dying for a cause is both less persuasive as a concept and when it does occur is seen as a greater sacrifice.

As a society virtues such as altruism, self-sacrifice and heroism have been replaced by a self-focused desire for instant gratification. The heroes of today are trivial celebrities with their fifteen minutes of fame. In a culture awash with manufactured emotion and sentimentality an obsession with the marital affairs of singers and sports stars has taken the place of respect for the simply good.

Virtues such as heroism, altruism and self-sacrifice have thus been displaced by fleeting indulgence, while true feeling for others has been replaced by maudlin sentimentality. The Dianafication of Britain is nearing completion.

In the face of such cultural corrosion the armed forces remain one of the few focal points of vanishing virtues. Despite everything, discipline, courage, service, sacrifice and stoicism are qualities to which people still respond. The sadness is that in today’s Britain they have no avenue to display such a response other than through a media which turns genuine respect into a relentless search for ratings.

Mad Christians

Yesterday, after our Remembrance Day service, a member of the congregation handed me a clipping from the problem page of Thursday’s Daily Record. A concerned mother shared her worries over her daughter’s behaviour.

“I’m very worried about my 16 year old daughter since she got friendly with a girl at school whose father is a preacher with some Christian group.

“She goes to this church every week and has started dressing very modestly and moaning at us when we swear or do anything ‘immoral.’

“I’ve got nothing against religion, but don’t want my daughter turning into a mad Christian.”

Scotland today, a mother is “very worried” and asks for advice because her teenage daughter won’t dress like a slut or swear like a trooper.