Some Facts Do Care About Our Feelings

If there’s anything less interesting than a post defending morality, I can’t imagine what it might be.  Nonetheless, here goes… 

We’ve heard the statement, “facts don’t care about your feelings,” but I’d like to point out that morality is the one set of facts that really does care about your feelings. 

Some people question whether morals are facts at all and not just personal preferences.  Our frequent disagreements encourage that doubt, but let’s look a little deeper.   Two firemen may disagree about the best way to enter a burning building, but they both want to save the child trapped inside.  Our ethical arguments are often like that.  Most of us want to reduce suffering.  We agree about something very important, but disagree about how to get there.

Adding to the confusion, we tend to argue about buildings already on fire, and in that urgent, terrifying moment, who wants to talk about how to prevent fires?

So, our conversations about ethics often miss the point because we argue about the wrong things at the wrong time, and this is where morality can help.  Far from a set of dry rules, morality cares about our feelings.  It exists to increase our peace and reduce our pain.  It pleads for a society in which people do not prey upon one another or injure themselves.

Even so, we don’t hear much good about morality in our day.  It’s treated like a minority view, but throughout human history, in almost every place and time, morality has said the same thing*.  Don’t cheat or steal.  Tell the truth.  Respect your ancestors.  Protect the weak.  Treat others as you want to be treated.

Of course, we don’t really need to be told these things.  Something inside us confirms they are true, and we’re unhappy when this code is violated at our expense.  We know the code.  We respect the code.  Yet we have turned away from the code as a guide to our culture, and the consequences have made our nation less united, less kind, less happy, and less safe.

Perhaps it is too late to go back.  The fractures in America are hard and deep, and, to be frank, some people like it that way.  Anger is becoming the new religion, and it’s certainly easier than love.

But there are good reasons to go back.  The dazzling elegance of this world, our startling abilities to think and love and choose – these still shout that life is no accident.  Our shared belief that kindness is good and cruelty is evil only proves our knowledge that people are important.

Add to this the shocking fact that even morality’s detractors claim to be moral.  If, as Mr. Darwin proposed and conventional wisdom now assumes, our lives are a biological accident and not a divine creation, we should admire domination, not kindness.  We should aspire to deceit and not courage.  And yet, surprisingly, cannibalism is discouraged in polite society, though it perfectly reflects polite society’s view of human life.

It seems that humanity is doomed to recognize the difference between right and wrong.  This is a terrible inconvenience to jerks (like me) who would misuse their fellow man, but it simultaneously provides protections that make friendship, family, business, and a free society possible.

Morality may not be an exciting topic, but it is the one set of facts that really does care about our feelings, preventing excruciating fires that destroy lives and relationships. 

* See C. S. Lewis’ survey of the Tao in “The Abolition of Man.”  (https://www.amazon.com/Abolition-Man-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652942)

“Treat others just as you want to be treated.”  -Jesus (Luke 6:31)

“Do not murder.  Be faithful in marriage.  Do not steal.  Do not tell lies about others. Respect your father and mother.  And love others as much as you love yourself.”  -Jesus (Matthew 19:18)

The Abortion Argument Comes To An End

It must be painful to surrender so many arguments at once. For years, we were told the thing could be done because the subject was not alive. Or, if alive, it was not human. Or, if human, it was only part of another body. These were passionate claims, screamed in holy rage and not to be denied.

But, in one day, that has all changed. The claims have been denied – and denied passionately – by the very people who made them. After fifty years, we find that it was all a show.

The occasion for this change is a proposed new law, which is actually a very old law. Thou shalt not kill. Even if it’s a little kid whom you were hoping to kill – a little kid now squalling on a surgical table, clearly alive and human and not part of anyone else’s body.

This newborn child, though small and helpless, defeats the tired old arguments, and now we see what pro-choice really means. It means this cold and naked baby is about to be killed.

Many people will find the treatment of this child troubling, but 210 of our elected representatives – an entire political party and nearly half of the House of Representatives – insist that she really ought to die. In Nancy Pelosi’s words, those who would protect this child “disrespect a woman’s right to choose the size or timing of her family.”

The arguments for abortion were loud, but they never mattered, even to those who screamed them loudest. It was never really a question of whether the child was alive or human or part of another person’s body. It was only this: she has been chosen for death, and nothing may stand in the way.

For more information about the bill and vote, see: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/democrats-party…/

The Quiet Light of Christmas

The Christmas tree stands quietly in the corner, its little lights pushing back the darkness, a silent memorial to a not-quite-silent night. The father was afraid, the mother in great pain, and the baby probably howled as babies do. They made sounds of distress and confusion, though we sing of comfort and joy.

This is the shock of Christmas, which remains a comfort and a scandal 2,000 years later.

It is shocking because, according to the story, this baby had a choice – to lay himself in Joseph’s hard hands, to plant himself the smallest seed in Mary’s womb, to burst frail and naked into a cold dark world.

Might God come gently? Allow himself to be overlooked and rejected because he so loves the world? Many hope not, for a loving God is still God, and no God is wanted here. They are done with Jesus as almighty Rome was done with Jesus. But Rome is long gone, and Jesus remains.

The light of Christmas is still pushing back the darkness, even here in America, where darkness grows. Even to us, a child is born, and to us, a son is given, calling across the ages that God is with us in our distress and confusion, that he came gently to offer us comfort and joy.

Perhaps we will welcome the Christ-child this year, amazed by the love and humility of God. Perhaps we will turn away. But this much is certain. When America has returned to dust as Rome returned to dust, Jesus will remain.

A Shepherd’s Story

I am the last man on earth to be telling this story – a ragged man who smells of sheep and earth and campfire. I would not tell it, except that it happened to me.

An hour ago, we were in the fields, throwing sticks on the fire and trying to stay warm. An hour ago, I don’t think I believed in angels. Well, I am warm now, and I know more about angels than most any man alive.

I was watching the stars when it burst into view, a towering monster of light with blazing eyes and a voice like a trumpet. I was terrified until I noticed the expression on his face and realized I could understand his words.

He was glad – glad with some gigantic joy, and soon there were hundreds of them – hopping about like excited children, shouting, and singing like their hearts were on fire.

I was still shaking, but the joy on their beautiful faces broke my heart. Whatever they were telling us, it was shaking them, too.

When they left, we stared into the suddenly dark and silent sky, breathed air that stirred in their wake and smelled like springtime, and the sea, and some strange incense, all mixed together.

For a minute, no one said anything. I trembled, but I was no longer afraid, maybe not even surprised. Somehow, I think I knew there was such beauty in the world – there was a place for it in your soul, just waiting. But I never expected to see it, had almost forgotten it was there.

We will find him in Bethlehem, they said – just over those hills – and so we run with our own gigantic joy; run so far that my lungs are on fire, just as my heart is on fire.

And now, still panting, I step into the dark barn, duck under the cobwebbed timber, and stop. Lamplight flickers over the drafty room. A man leans against the wall, and a woman leans against him. In front of them, a rickety feed trough, and there the child lies.

If I had not seen the angels, I would not understand what I feel right now, the sparks shooting through my arms and face as I step carefully over the straw and kneel before the manger. I would think I had lost my senses, not awakened a new one.

But somehow, my heart knows you, child. It knew there was someone like you in the world, though it did not know that it knew. To meet you is a remembering. To kneel here is a coming home. My heart burns like an angel, like a moth rushing toward light. I am only a shepherd, but I know I was made for you.

I take one more look as we turn to leave, shake my head as I step into the night. How strange that this is the story of God and that I, who smell of sheep and earth, am the one telling it.

I would not tell it, but this is where the angels sang. We are ragged people, but it was to us the Christ-child came.

—-

This story is a dramatization of events recorded in Luke 2.

Written for LIFE International, 2021.

Are We Done With Wonder?

In this season, dominated by the claim of an ancient miracle, I’m thinking of the book in which this claim is recorded. It is a strange book, tone-deaf to our modern sensibilities.

It used to be called ‘the good book’, which seems odd because it speaks with moral authority and it claims definite knowledge of God’s thoughts and intentions. In our culture, that’s considered a recipe for evil, not good.

And, of course, the book speaks of miracles – lots of miracles – which, to a culture steeped in Darwinian disbelief, sets it squarely in the realm of fairy tale.

Take, for example, another story from the book; the story of Jonah in the belly of a whale. This story reports – I grant – a highly unexpected turn of events. If you think that the whale found the Jonah thing hard to swallow, just imagine the modern reader. In his experience, people who enter fish don’t come out in one piece. His disbelief, he thinks, is reasonable; a product of his experience.

But another, less obvious factor also deserves consideration. What if the tables have somehow been turned; that what we record as experience is actually colored or filtered by our disbelief? What if, because of his presuppositions, the modern reader has given little thought to the world he lives in, to even the body that he lives in? Perhaps he is less qualified than he thinks to measure even his own story’s plausibility.

Is it a greater miracle that a whale should swallow a man or that such an unlikely creature as a whale should exist at all? Is it a greater wonder that Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale or that the reader has spent 270 days in the belly of a giantess? Very likely, the reader has somehow forgotten that fact or – more to the point – he has forgotten the wonder of it.

He lives in a world perishing for lack of wonder. He moves through it with eyes cast down, focused on what is man-made and man-sized. He thinks the cell phone in his pocket is a miracle and the intricate dance of the solar system a monotonous routine.

He thinks he knows the difference between the natural and the supernatural, but perhaps he is mistaken. He thinks that if something happens once, it is a miracle; if it happens a thousand times it is not. He thinks that the repetition of something marvelous removes the marvel and cancels the need for explanation or gratitude or reflection. He is surrounded by wonders that he has lost the ability to see.

And so, this ancient book is, in his ears, no longer ‘good.’ And of this ancient miracle, he thinks, we should not speak its name, let alone allow a cow or manger to appear in public. He is done with wonder.

But wonder is not done with him. After fishing Jonah from the whale, God said to him, “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

The greatest wonder in this universe, the Christmas story that no one can suppress, is this: “he has come to seek and to save those who are lost.”