“Check Your Privilege” is a White Supremacist Statement

              “Check your privilege”  is a phrase parts of the left use to point out that someone is being arrogant or making assumptions about a minority issue or a minority person’s situation without having considered it fully or without knowing all the details. It is also used object to any white person disagreeing with leftist orthodoxy and disqualify their right to have an opinion. Or in an attempt to silence any white person complaining about their problems in a way that competes with minorities telling their sob story.

           The idea is that a white person will not have scars on their psyche from having experienced discrimination or fear of discriminate at an early age. A white person will develop confidence and resilience from knowing that they fit in and that they will be likely to be given the benefit of the doubt in dicey situations. You can sort of see how a specific background experience applied to a specific situation could give someone an advantage you could call “privilege”

           But the way this “privilege” concept is used it applies globally to the person. In an essay foundational to the topic Peggy McIntosh says “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.” … “such privilege simply converse dominance because of one’s race or sex” ... “unearned power conferred systematically.”When the concept is applied in actual conversation, it is even treated as attaching to the fact of a racial makeup rather than specific life experiences. It is treated as incommensurate with any other sort of advantage or power so that a minority person could never have something to match that “privilege” no matter how hard they tried. It is treated as ineradicable, as inalienable, so that the white person always automatically has this extra power that gives them an advantage in any project they undertake.

           This usage of “privilege” is often seen in academia and similar areas where the main goal is to evaluate fairly. But they seem to being failing to correctly evaluate how this translates into an arena where what is most important goal is getting things done, including things that may be very hard. In many cases narrative about how hard the department tried is going to be totally ignored in favor of asking “Did you get results or not?” In those cases the doctrine of “privilege” would mean the only rational choice for manager would be to hire white people for all the critical positions while disguising the non-critical responsibilities of minority hires with deceptive job titles and descriptions so they don’t get caught and punished. After all, if their livelihood is on the line, wouldn’t they choose to play on the easy setting as much as possible?

           “Check your privilege” proclaims that if you are white you are elevated by your very birth. It lets a white man show magnanimous humility and willingness to sympathize with the less fortunate while slipping in the assumption that, if results Really matter in situation, then you should put him in charge. It’s basic assumption is that the most fundamental and far reaching thing about someone is the broad racial category into which that were born. It declares that white people will always be better able to handle things, just all around better at getting things accomplished, just based on their race. An this in plain not true. So I reject “check your privilege” utterly.

To Gnon or not to Gnon

                Gnon is an NRx reference (obscure because that’s how NRx rolls) to “Nature or Nature’s God.” Specifically this is used in relation to the facts that harshly constrain us from eating our cake and having it too, no matter how much of a temper tantrum we throw. That saying “can’t we all just get along” doesn’t mean our needs will be compatible with the needs of other individuals or other states or even that they will want to get along in the first place. That just because it would make things more “fair”, we still can’t re-write human nature.

                Gnon is a personification of the power of the universe. The idea of thinking this way is coming from atheists and agnostic, so there isn’t much input from special revelation at work in this concept. This is just based on empirical experience of life as a sceptic. Gnon isn’t assumed to be good, or interested in humans, or even to align particularly well with human ideas of a coherent personality. Having no prima facie requirement of being nice, he is often conceptualized as being sort of mean from the human perspective.

Gnon: I like arms races, and rain my blessings upon them. Pretty much the only reason I’ve put up with the monkeys as long as I have is to use them to play arms races. It’s the only interesting stuff they’ve ever done.
                                                                                                -Nick Land

 

                I find there is something about the presentation of Gnon that resonates with me. There’s some insight here that is worthy of being affirmed. But from a Christian perspective there are certain issues. It has been pointed out that Satan has been given certain power in this world, and that those who projecting from their experiences indiscriminately may be confounding their idea of the Almighty with elements of Satan’s handiwork. However I don’t want to be so quick to dismiss this basic intuition of God’s existence.

Gnon fishin

This is the God of common revelation. This is what can be known of the Almighty without the prophets and apostles bringing special revelation of His grace and redemption. This is the face God turns towards cut off from Him by our own wickedness and corruption. I don’t think God finds our struggles and failures without him exactly funny, as Gnon is sometimes protruded as doing. But His judgment is that it is fitting and proper that, if we reject Him, our end is ruin and destruction. God wants suffering and sorrow done away with if and only if sin is done away with too, not lessened, not put in a corner and ignored, but utterly done away with.

It’s important to acknowledge that those without a relationship with God can have some perception of Him, if a dimmer one than revelation provides. But it is also a different view than those of us enfolded be the cleansing gift of His redeeming love experience in our everyday lives. There are several important thinks to be gained from engaging with and even embracing God-as-seen from an outsider’s perspective.

First is understanding why we do evangelism. I was talking with a liberal Christian about the possibility that, since the patriarchs were saved without knowing the name or story of Jesus Christ, those in remote areas unreached by missionaries might be saved by believe in God and trusting him based on the limited revelation they do have. I was arguing that just because they could didn’t mean they would and so we still needed to send missionaries to invite them to be saved. I realized later that what I was missing was an appreciation that the un-evangelized would be experiencing Gnon., awesome, but also terrifying. When you realize how immiscible God is with un-redeemed humans, you realize how unlikely it is that someone would make a leap of faith to trust God with your life unless someone brings the good news of redemption and forgiveness to them. A few might do it, but not nearly as may as would trust Jesus once they understand the gospel.

It is also helpful, when communicating with unbelievers in our own culture, to understand that unless there has been a special intervention of the Holy Spirit, the only personal experience non-believers will have had of God will look like Gnon to them. For those like me who grow up as believers from a young age, our lived experience having God respond to us with concern and gentleness is so normal and expected that it takes a deliberate effort to imagine what it is like to experience God as His enemy.

                Being aware of Gnon can also help our own spiritual growth. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You can’t develop towards a full understanding of God without an appreciation of how unbending He is towards sin and evil. An awareness of Gnon as how God can look to those not reconciled by the blood of the lamb can guard us against ignoring an important part of God’s character. Satan is the father of lies and he can use anything that is not true as an opening wedge. One lie he will use is that this world is already adequately reconciled to Him and that we can becomfortable and accepting of everything about it. Instead we need to remember that the kingdoms and powers of this world are under his wrath, that our current bodies are still those we inherited as part of a condemned world and still carry that taint until they are changed in the twinkling of an eye.
                One way this can be seen is in understanding the continuity between the old and new testaments. I’ve heard from a number of sources the impression that the God of the Old Testament is wrathful and the God of the New Testament is loving. I confess that my first reaction to this is to think “You didn’t actually really the book did you? Because that sounds like the result of just reading the cliff notes.” But more charitably I must confess that the Bible is complex and subtle saga and it can be hard to hold the whole thing in your head for some people. And if whole sections down to one simple take away it can look like there are contrasting themes.  Bringing an awareness of Gnon affects in the world today can help bridge that gap and make it easier to understand the coherence of God’s justices and His mercy.

                So I would argue that Christians in the Reactosphere need to embrace Gnon. Not accepting uncritically every characteristic or action attributed to him as reflecting God, but seeing in Gnon accurate insights into the God we worship. We should be willing to use Gnon as a common ground for discussions that increase the understanding of other and of ourselves.

Telling the Sob Story

In reading about Kelli Stapleton I was struck by this statement: “She had gotten her child into a residential placement, there were some issues with her school, but she had been getting a whole lot of help — including securing almost continuous care in the home, a level of support far higher than almost anyone else in the state was receiving”

Kelli Stapleton tried to kill her disabled daughter Issy, and she has been telling her story about how stress and despair drove her to do it.  She got a whole show on Dr.Phil. But reading that statement about how much help she had I wondered if  the driving factor of the attempted murders wasn’t that Kelli had  an unusually tough time raising her daughter but that she had fallen the habit of telling a sob story.

A culture that doles out help and consideration in proportion to a perception of need that is indexed by the evocation of pity encourages telling and retelling of tales of woe that creates a narrative of pityable ness. Our disability services system is designed to let a web of gate keepers direct limited government resource to those who need them most. So in order to get the extraordinary services, to get upgrades to the basic level of support, you have to present a narrative of why you really, really need the extra resources. The social workers and other helping professionals you deal with will be empathetic people who will respond to how deeply you feel and how passionate your cries for help are.

By Laura Beaudin from Edmonton, Canada
(Crocodile Tears) CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

 

Telling sad stories of how abused and downtrodden you are, can change your perception of reality and depressed and desperate, worsening your subjective situation. Negative self-talk can be a contributing factor in depression. This effect must magnified when you are not only telling yourself but telling others and presenting a coherent picture of need and helplessness. Regardless of how desperate the situation is objectively, subjectively the situation will be worsened by making the negative to focus of your speech and your relationships.

This can lead the needy and vulnerable to a downward spiral. While help received in return for the need being convincingly expressed can help the situation, it can also set-up a pattern. If the answer to life’s problems becomes convincing everyone how pitiable you are, then if you aren’t satisfied with something, the solution can seem to be talking yourself into seeing your situations as even more miserable than you already feel. At some point the help received doesn’t surpass, doesn’t even balance out, how much worse you’ve made yourself feel. But the solution to that which will feel natural is to wallow in missery more strenuously.

Kelli Stapleton's statement: “We obtained the single opening for the Michigan children’s waiver for the whole state!  So Issy has funds for staff at home.  Her very own human for nearly all of her waking hours!  Can. You. Imagine?!” is a declaration of triumph, her strategy has worked. But it also represents something darker. It appeared on Kelli’s personal blog actually called “The Status Woe.”  As I read it I’m struck by how much focus there is on how Kelli is put upon both by her daughter’s condition, by people who don’t do what Kelli wants them to do to help her, and just by the inconveniences of life that get magnified when you deal with a disability.  

            I see the same underlying strand in other deaths of Autistics, like Jude Mirra. When I read about his murderer and mother, Gigi Jordan, I’m struck by how unlikely it is that all of the many accusations she makes of people abusing her and her son can all be true. She had the money to get practical help. But instead she seemed obsessed with making things hard on her self, and flying around looking for a savior, a miracle worker, who could answer her cries with help that would somehow make everything match her vision of perfection.

          This problem is not just Autism community. This situation is endemic among those America is tying most to help. Danusha Goska sums it us:

“They don’t know about believing in themselves, or stick-to-itiveness. … My students know — because they have been drilled in this — that the only way they can get ahead is to locate and cultivate those few white liberals who will pity them and scatter crumbs on their supplicant, bowed heads and into their outstretched palms. My students have learned to focus on the worst thing that ever happened to them, assume that it happened because America is unjust, and to recite that story, dirge-like, to whomever is in charge, from the welfare board to college professors, and to await receipt of largesse.”

             We need to stop encouraging people denigrate themselves in hope of receiving extra help. We need a way of making needs assessment that is less dependent on the ability to craft a sad narrative. Even if that makes me seem heartless towards a person who is practically having hysterics. The harder a person starts sobbing is the face of denial the more likely it seems to me that that person is addicted and needs an intervention rather than another fix.

We need to find a way to reward the needy on the basis of how much effort they are putting out. So there can be concrete motivation to work to get yourself out of poverty. There also needs to be positive recognition and even rewards given for those achieving results, rather than just a snatching away of benefits. We need to value this once again:

“The “broken people” are out there everywhere, inviting us to their pity parties. But I think about my ancestors, and I also think about Muhammad Ali, the best boxer in history. Of all his many great moments, his greatest was a fight he lost. In 1973, Ali fought Ken Norton, a Marine Corps veteran who broke Ali’s jaw — yet Ali did not quit. He went the full 12 rounds and lost a split decision to Norton, but the fact that he finished the fight with a broken jaw is a testament to Ali’s toughness.

                -Stacy McCain

Full Armor of God

I remember studying this verse when I was younger and not seeing anything beyond a vague idea that armor was good to have in battle and these things were good to have in the Christian life. But studying this passage recently I felt I really got it this time and that makes me so excited.

By Sheldon Martin
[CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Ephesians 6:10-18 (NASB)
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints

Girdle of Truth: This is your strong core, the keeps you steady in intention among the tug and shove, it holds your position together and maintains your integrity, have a good word to world fit. think of it as a weight lifting belt. It’s easy to think that a little lie will make the conversation more pleasant or help everyone to get along or let you win an argument. But always sticking to the truth is what gives you integrity It’s what holds your witness and your life together.

Breastplate of Righteousness: You have done wrong in the past but once these things are repented and confessed, they no longer affect your moral standing, or your standing with God, AT ALL. even with the things you still struggle with, the check to clear them is already in your hand. With this standing the damages and hooks of evel can’t penetrate to your heart or your guts. Repent and confess where needed but then don’t be ashamed of anything because you are relying not on your own righteousness but on Christ’s.

Feet Shod with the Preparation of the Gospel of Peace: Gospel literally means good news but in the greek world of the New Testament it also had an additional meaning of a royal announcement, especially the proclamation of a new King or a new Emperor. Jesus is the true king and God has ordained the temporary power, the decisions of the temporary power can be important but they aren’t ultimate, we can afford to be calm because what we’re really concerned with is already decided, at the same time we can step into any area because Jesus is Lord of all. We should be continually prepared to take our standing from that truth and no other.

Shield of Faith: It can seem like the enemy is about to burn up all your accomplishment, but it’s your sins that will be burned up on judgment day, what you do for God is seen and remembered, and when, by faith, you see that you can put out the threat. You won’t be overcome with worry or anxiety if you can interpose Faith. You won’t be overwhelmed by defeats in worldly matters because you know your have treasures in heaven. And you won’t be dismayed by obstacles or seeming setbacks to kingdom work because you know Jesus will triumph in the end.

Helmet of salvation: God has saved you once for all, by His strength, not yours, nor by what a good before and after story you can tell, don’t let the enemy get into your head with doubts. Evil wants us turned around and confused, worrying about ourselves and always looking inward rather than outward. Having made a decision for salvation let it wrap around your thoughts and hold your inquiries and your reasoning in stability.

Sword of the spirit: God has communicated His character to us in the Bible, the commands Jesus have given should be on our lips, and the Holy Spirit should be controlling and energizing our application of God’s guidance. Scripture allows us to slice through spiritual confusions and disguises. It allows us to laid powers and principles bear and drive back that which is evil.

    We are going to be dealing with the corruption of sin and the destruction it scatters all around this world. We can’t just close our eyes and turn our backs, that will only leave us vulnerable. We need to take the protection god has given us and defend ourselves.  And how do we get this armor and make sure it is in good repair? With prayer and more prayer.

A Matter of Faith, Part 1

    I imagine the scene: All I have to do is sign on the line and pay my $100 co-pay and they will drug me, deliberately give me hypothermia, crack open my skull, stop my heart, drain a bunch of blood from my body and stick a knife in my brain. I’d have to be crazy to decide to have that done to me right? But I can see making that decision under certain circumstances. I can see making it on behalf of a loved one or a child. Because, I just have that much faith in science.  

In case you didn’t catch the word ‘co-pay’ this describes a medical procedure. For certain rare cerebral aneurysms doctors know that letting them go untreated they will kill the person who has it sooner or later. But if doctors try to operate on it with the heart pulsing blood through the area it will kill immediately. So to operate they have to stop the blood flow, and they have found that hypothermia will allow someone to survive a short period of having their blood flow stopped. It’s been demonstrated that patients can live through this type of operation.

Really, though, I don’t trust science all that much. I know that science has come to a lot of faulty conclusions that it has had to revise over the years. A when you are talking about dealing with situations where there are uncontrollable variables, like medicine is, science can’t confidently predict the outcome of a specific case. In fact before I consented to the above surgery I would probably have to sign a paper saying I understood there was some risk of death from that surgery.



photo by Sibeaster, via Wikimedia Commons

I have much greater faith in God than in science. But in the post I would fail Abraham's test Rachel Held Evans scolds me for being ready to put as much faith in God as I would put in science. When Abraham heard heaven in Genesis 22, it didn’t just "sound like" God’s voice. Abraham had heard God before and knew from experience this was His voice. God had proven Himself faithful over the years. And in particular, God had worked miracles before in protection of the promise of His blessing to the bloodline of Abraham and Sarah. When God says “Take now your son, your only son,” I don’t think He is forgetting Ismael, I think He is alluding to the fact that Isaac is the only son of promise, the promise that God has proven Himself faithful to.

I don’t think Abraham was being any more immoral in trusting that God had a plan to preserve the promise of Isaac and make things right than we are if we trust our children's lives to a medical doctor, or an airplane pilot. Our minds have to stretch further to trust that which is beyond human comprehension, and our hearts much expand to encompass that fullness, and yet will still overflow, but there is no moral difference. I believe and hope that I would pass Abraham’s test.

The Burden of the Law

I was reading the blog post Unburdened about how hard it can feel to keep god’s commands. And I was struck by this statement: “the commandments are indeed burdensome, that burden has been laid on the shoulders of [Jesus]. … That same weight that threatens to break our backs actually did crush our savior.” not because I agree with it but because I think it indicates a fundamental mis-understand of the law and our relation to it.

By Pavel Ryčl (http://www.ehm.cz/,
 via Wikimedia Commons

          I don’t think Jesus felt the law as a crushing burden during His ministry here on earth. I think he felt more the challenge of a supreme athlete performing at the height of His powers. Perhaps like a gymnast performing a world class routine that was supremely choreographed to perfectly fit his talents and style. It was a task that demanded strength, balance, focus and effort. But it was also a task that created joy and exhilaration not heaviness and distaste.

         I remember when I was 20, slim and health. Lost in my own imagination, thoughts of exciting adventure would spur me to run, and I would feel the joy of exertion and skillful balance and the a speed that could make still air a breeze. Now that I’m forty and fat, running doesn’t feel the same at all. It’s something I do out of duty rather than desire. It’s something that feels awkward and unnatural, something that quickly becomes tiring and painful, something that can remind me how un-fun a bit of asthma is. The requirements of running haven't changed, my body has. It’s no longer fit for running. But I’d like to keep running to get at least a little of that fitness back. If I’m dedicated I might be able to lose some of the weight. But I’ll never have body I had at 20 again. No amount of exercise will actually reverse the wear and tear of time.

          Without salvation our efforts to follow the law are like me trying to make myself 20 again by discipline and effort. I might get back to that weight, I might put on more mussel than I had then, I might develop more skill in some athletic discipline. But I’ll need actually roll back the years by working out harder. In the same way following the law in our own strength without the redeeming work of the cross is futile. We might manage to look better to other humans, we might manage conform better to certain outward forms, but we would never get back to that pristine innocence

          And this is what Jesus meant by his burden being light. Choosing to follow Him doesn’t change God’s commandments or the requirements of holiness. It changes how we relate to it and where we will end up in relation to it. Redemption changes our struggle with sin from one that is like growing older where we inevitably lose ground feats athleticism sooner or later, to one that is like growing up, where we naturally gain strength and coordination over time and where the destined result is a coordinated and stable adult body.

        The promise of the Father, the life of the Son, and the seal of the Holy Spirit are out guaranty that no matter what awkward and gangly stages we go through here in this life, in the world to come Jesus will bring his work to completion and we will display full maturity there. Jesus assumes the consequences of all the bumps and scrapes, all the wear and tear, all the mistakes, so that even if we spend our time here in the moral equivalent of curling out on the couch and eating ice-cream, never learning how to throw a ball or ride a bike, He will still present us fit for his Father’s presence.

And that was what was as a crushing burden, bearing all our sins on the cross. This was an unimaginable weight, which was born only through God’s infinite strength. Jesus took all our awful decisions, our rebellious stunts, our misunderstandings and ingrained bad habits to the cross. He felt the impact of all those deforming shapers of character and still He submitted his spirit into the hands of a Father who He could no longer feel. He was buried under the consequences of all our unholiness and rejection of God’s law.

So we don’t have our bad choices deforming our character anymore. While we are still in this world we still feel their ghost in the scares and dents they have left on or bodies and brains. We are still sense the reverberations from the God dishonoring actions of other humans. We don’t have the spiritual body that can perform the perfect and glorious dance of praise to our King that is obedience. But we can practice the steps in the sure knowledge that one day we will be conformed you our resent Lord and therefore be able to join in that performance of perfect beauty and grace.

What if someone thinks you're stupid?

       Some time ago I was in a discussion and my conversation partner vigorously objected to a line of argumentation I was pursuing. Part of the objection was to the obstreperous style I was employing. But what has stuck in my mind was the complaint about the substance of the argument: “It feels like you think I’m stupid.”

          I didn’t precisely feel that she was stupid in any global sense. But I did feel that the argument she was using, (the idea that you can take an anti-judgmental stance and then judge someone else for being judgemental,) was stupid. Not only is it a tell that you’ve realized you are not going to win the argument on the facts, it’s self contradictory and so self-evidently wrong. Useing it is the logical equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. It’s evidence of at least having been dumb in this particular instance.

       But my conversation partner felt that someone knowing that they were perceived as dumb was beyond the bounds of civil discussion. That’ been percolating in the back of my mind. How could any sort of politics or any sort of civilization carry on if no one could be allowed to find out that sometimes other people thought her ideas were dumb.  Without open and honest admission of when you think someone else is being dumb, there is no discussion, just empty flattery.

       Then I read Dave Pascoe’s post about the prevalence of hate in our public discourse, and I connected up this rejection of honesty with the human tendency to generalize from the evaluation of a specific believe or act to a global evaluation of the person. The tenancy is rooted in practical reality. If I meet an anonymous stranger and observe them using a bad argument , all that I’ve learned about them is the in a small isolated instance that did something dumb. But on the other hand that’s ALL I know about him; it can’t help but influence my global evaluation of him.

       Our tolerant society has made this problem worse. In our effort to combat bias we are taught not to have expectations based what people wear, their social standing, their profession, or any other category they are apart of. So instead of having a template based on the influences that might have shaped them, a template that could be quite nuanced, each new person is practically a blank slate. Any evaluation of their behaviors during an encounter will be the only legitimately considered data in the global evaluation of a person.

        Now my conversation partner, from the top of this post, and I have known each other for a great many years and I’ve observed her being smart in many circumstances. There is a certain carry over from the more general situation based on habit. But I think there is something deeper there: a significant connection to our societies developing a tendency towards hating.

       In our eagerness to be nice and not hurt anyone, broad sections of our society have made it a social crime to express disapproval of any fundamental character trait, deeply held belief, or sincerely felt emotion. The only way it’s acceptable to experse a truly negative opinion is when it’s about those classed as outside the bounds of acceptable society. You have to excoriate a person as so lost to reason and good feeling that no right thinking person could have a friendly fellowship with them, before it feels right to disparage an opinion they are championing. I’ve sometimes gotten the impression that I’ve expected to be openly affirming of everything about a person or I’m seen as not really recognizing their humanity, much less being friendly.

        Of course this is a self reinforcing loop the more disapproval is expressed only of those beyond the pail, the more it’s a dehumanizing insult to let slip disapproval of anyone who hasn’t already been cast out. And when any negative evaluation can’t be brought out into the light and put into a rational and just perspective the more it will fester and turn into irrational hate.  I think this is already bringing a lot of fracturing between different groups and is going to bring more in the coming years.