Ethics

I commend the entire interview series that Ed Stetzer recently did with Esau McCaulley. Among many highlights, I appreciate McCaulley’s following answer to the question of negotiating the differences between protests and riots. Again, read the whole interview and series, but here’s a key section related to concern about rioting and lawlessness: [Ed Stetzer] We both agree: Protests are good. Riots are not. Unpack that for us from your context. Esau: There is a cycle of what happens. There’s a racial incident. African Americans protest. Some of those protests from people inside and outside the community turn violent. People say, “Hey, look at this. Why aren’t the Christians who are speaking out against the racial injustice equally strong speaking about the riots?” There are couple of things that I want to say about that. First, there is no real question as to where Christians stand on riots. There isn’t a kind of evangelical pro-riot, black riot faction. Therefore, on one level there is not a need to condemn rioting as a form of social protest, because everybody’s clear about this. The problem is that the very people who are mad at us for not being strong enough against riots are the same people who say systemic racism isn’t a problem. This only manifests the contradiction. There is no question we are all opposed to riots. There seems to be a question as to whether or not Christians should speak out against systemic oppression. There needs to be a public and robust statement that the followers of Jesus are on the side of those who are being unjustly treated. The second thing that I want to say about that is that if you want to talk to someone who is behaving in a way that is counterproductive, the first thing you need to do is actually show some empathy. If the first thing you do is you come in and say, “Law and order, law and order, law and order,” you’re not understanding the deep sense of frustration. A riot is the manifestation of hopelessness. The first thing that I try to do, and you’ve seen many African American leaders do this, is to say, “I get it. You’re frustrated. It seems like these videos will never stop, and this has been going on for years.” Then, once you’ve established that you care, you can begin to push back on the riot themselves. You can’t come to a community that you hate and then rebuke them for behaving in a way that you don’t find is appropriate. You didn’t care about them anyway. The only people who have the social and moral standing to speak to a community of unrest is people who at least can begin to understand the cause of that unrest. As a Christian, I believe that the means and the ends must be one. You can’t have a good end with an improper means. If the end is justice, for the Christian the means themselves have to be just. The Christians who are protesting against systemic oppression, at least those who are biblically faithful, are the ones who are saying, “Ultimately, even if I understand some of the frustration that is going on, these riots are not a Christian means of advocating for social change.”

Certainly, the Bible has much to say about individual sin and redemption. But (1) focusing on “systemic” issues doesn’t need to negate a focus on “individual” issues. In fact, a focus on “systemic racism” actually exerts a lot of pressure to evaluate people individually, and not on the basis of their race—as long as we keep in mind how those supposedly individual evaluations are often subtly (and nefariously) shaped by systemic issues. ...

The “Occasional Prayers” section of the Book of Common Prayer is a goldmine, particularly when the going gets tough. The following prayers come from the Anglican Church in North America’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer. You can view the text of the 2019 BCP here. And you can download a Word document containing all of the Occasional Prayers here. 58. FOR A PERSON IN TROUBLE OR BEREAVEMENT O merciful Father, you have taught us in your holy Word that you do not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men: Look with pity on the sorrows of your servant N. Remember him, O Lord, in mercy; nourish his soul with patience; comfort him with a sense of your goodness; lift up your countenance upon him; and give him peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. ...

This code of conduct very much relates to Rapoport’s Rules, Adler’s advice, and Alan Jacobs’s “The Thinking Person’s Checklist.” SOURCE: T. Edward Damer, Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments, 6th ed (Australia ; Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2009), 7–8. 1. The Fallibility Principle Each participant in a discussion of a disputed issue should be willing to accept the fact that he or she is fallible, which means that one must acknowledge that one’s own initial view may not be the most defensible position on the question. ...

The following checklist, found on pages 155–56 of Alan Jacobs’s excellent book, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds (paid link) (affiliate link), is a worthy addition to “Rapoport’s Rules” and “Adler’s Advice” (mentioned in my previous post, “Help me come up with ‘rules for conversation’!”). Emphasis added in **bold**. When faced with provocation to respond to what someone has said, give it five minutes. Take a walk, or weed the garden, or chop some vegetables. Get your body involved: your body knows the rhythms to live by, and if your mind falls into your body’s rhythm, you’ll have a better chance of thinking. Value learning over debating. Don’t “talk for victory.” As best you can, online and off, avoid the people who fan flames. Remember that you don’t have to respond to what everyone else is responding to in order to signal your virtue and right-mindedness. If you do have to respond to what everyone else is responding to in order to signal your virtue and right-mindedness, or else lose your status in your community, then you should realize that it’s not a community but rather an Inner Ring. Gravitate as best you can, in every way you can, toward people who seem to value genuine community and can handle disagreement with equanimity. Seek out the best and fairest-minded of people whose views you disagree with. Listen to them for a time without responding. Whatever they say, think it over. Patiently, and as honestly as you can, assess your repugnances. Sometimes the “ick factor” is telling; sometimes it’s a distraction from what matters. Beware of metaphors and myths that do too much heavy cognitive lifting; notice what your “terministic screens“ [See pages 90–91] are directing your attention to-and what they’re directing your attention away from; look closely for hidden metaphors and beware the power of myth. Try to describe others’ positions in the language that they use, without indulging in in-other-wordsing. [See pg. 106: “We see it every day. Someone points at an argument—a blog post, say, or an op-ed column—and someone else replies, ‘In other words, you’re saying … ‘ And inevitably the argument, when put in other words, is revealed to be vacuous or wicked.] Be brave.

In my role as Managing Editor for AnglicanPastor.com, I’m realizing the need to develop some “rules for conversation.” We describe the tone that we’re after as “clarity and charity,” which is an excellent summary. However, to guide our blogposts and comments, I think we need something more detailed and concrete. With that in mind, “Rapoport’s Rules” and “Adler’s Advice” seem like excellent starting points. But, if you have any further suggestions, please let me know in the comments! ...

The following is from Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship (usually known as “The Cost of Discipleship” in English, although the original title in German was simply Nachfolge). Bonhoeffer considers how we might respond to Jesus if Jesus were to show up and make the same kinds of concrete commands that he did in the Gospels. NOTE: I’ve taken two paragraphs in the original and broken them up into smaller chunks to facilitate reading here. ...

From “In Praise of Boredom,” by James K.A. Smith. But I know at least this: Instagram won’t save us, and tweeted verse will not undo what we’ve done to ourselves. But neither is there any special enchantment to reading in print. So this is not the Luddite’s redoubt, nostalgically canonizing codex or canvas as if history had come to an end in some glorious past. Every medium now reaches us inside the ecology of attention masterminded by Silicon Valley. We take pictures of our books and coffee, for heaven’s sake. The point isn’t platform but desire: what do we want when we pick up our phones? We don’t need better media, or to romanticize old media. We need to change what we want. In a world of incessant distraction, the way out might look like learning how to be bored. A little ennui could go a long way; it could be the wardrobe we need now. We need to learn how to be bored in order to wean ourselves off distraction and open ourselves to others and the Other—to make ourselves available for irruptions of grace.

I’m reading Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s excellent book, Think Again: How to Reason and Argue (paid link). In it (on pages 25–26), I came across “Rapoport’s Rules.” First formulated by mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport and discussed by Daniel Dennett (Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (paid link), 31–35), here they are: 1: You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” 2: You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3: You should mention anything you have learned from your target. 4: Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism. ...

To start off the semester the other day, we prayed this prayer of confession together as a class. The professor didn’t remember where the prayer was from, so I tracked it down online. According to Justin Taylor, it was written by Bob Kauflin. Holy and righteous God, we confess that like Isaiah, we are a people of unclean lips. But it is not only unclean lips we possess. We are people with unclean hands and unclean hearts. We have broken your law times without number, and are guilty of pride, unbelief, self-centeredness and idolatry. Affect our hearts with the severity of our sin and the glory of your righteousness as we now acknowledge our sins in your holy presence. ...

Based upon my work over at Rookie Anglican, I was asked by The Telos Collective to write a blog post about the different ways that people are coming into Anglicanism. What’s drawing them in? You can read my full post over at the Telos Collective blog, but here’s a taste: Anglican Christianity, precisely because of its weirdness, can remind us that, in the words of Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger in Exploring Ecclesiology, “The church is a cultural community. It is Christ’s eschatological kingdom community, itself a culture that engages other cultures from Christ’s kingdom vantage point” (p. 207). No “culture of this world” can be equated with the culture of Jesus Christ. This is, I suggest, the important sense in which Christians (and not just Anglican ones) should not be “seeker-sensitive.” And yet, on the other hand, the very mission of the church seems to demand that Christians be “seeker-sensitive” in the best sense of the phrase. This is because the gospel, though it does contain a powerful critique of a world alienated from God, is only “good news” to the extent that it resonates with (and does not merely refute) the cultures in which it is proclaimed. So, perhaps we Anglicans need to do a better job of being “seeker-sensitive”—in the sense of resonating with the culture(s). “Resonating” with the culture, however, does not necessarily mean “approving.” Instead, the church’s resonance with the cultures around it will frequently be “subversive” (again, see Scot McKnight’s previous piece). Toward that end, I’d like to consider some ways in which I’ve noticed the Anglican tradition subversively resonating with the culture(s) around it—especially those in the United States of America in recent years. ...

Previously, I catalogued a bunch of different takes on Jordan Peterson, before giving my own take. Since that post, two other pieces about Jordan Peterson have been written that I’d like to share. “Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy,” by Nellie Bowles (New York Times) Nellie Bowles writes Mr. Peterson, 55, a University of Toronto psychology professor turned YouTube philosopher turned mystical father figure, has emerged as an influential thought leader. The messages he delivers range from hoary self-help empowerment talk (clean your room, stand up straight) to the more retrograde and political (a society run as a patriarchy makes sense and stems mostly from men’s competence; the notion of white privilege is a farce). He is the stately looking, pedigreed voice for a group of culture warriors who are working diligently to undermine mainstream and liberal efforts to promote equality. ...

The following is a guest post written by my friend and former college roommate, Zak Weston. Zak’s been working in the area of food ethics, and I asked him to write up a post about why Christians should care about these issues. It’s an area in which I need to make some changes in my own life. He delivered this thought-provoking and challenging piece. I hope you enjoy. Introduction The three or so decisions you make each day about what to eat are some of the most consequential choices you make in your life. ...

UPDATE: Read my post, “Two More Pieces about Jordan Peterson.” If I remember correctly, I first heard of and listened to Jordan Peterson on an episode of The Art of Manliness podcast. (Or perhaps it was this episode.) However, I could be mistaken, because Peterson’s been popping up in conversation all over the place in my circles. Blog posts, podcast episodes, conversations with friends – Peterson has been popping up everywhere, so it seems. ...

Maybe you, like me, consider yourself quite the introvert. Maybe you, like me, have a difficult time walking the tightrope between feeling quickly overwhelmed by interpersonal relationships, on the one hand, and feeling incredibly lonely, on the other hand. Maybe you, like me, feel these problems acutely as a male (although I’m sure that females are having their own relational struggles as our culture increasingly pressures us all to be “alone together,” looking at our screens instead of looking each other in the eye). ...