Gerard David, Adoration of the Kings, 1515 Courtesy of The National Gallery – LondonPieter Bruegel the Elder The Adoration of the Kings 1564 Courtesy of The National Gallery – London
The Adoration of the Kings
Matthew 2:7-12
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Welcome to the Good Creation Podcast. Today’s topic will be a little more difficult than some. And it will take a little longer.
If philosophical analysis is not quite “your cup of tea” as the Brits say, at least scroll down to the video below and take a look.
Ok, here we go….
Some people have been trained to make a virtue out of doubt. They ask questions like: Who can know? Who can tell? Who can judge? For that matter what can we know? (They ask)
These people will approach the question of Truth in a particular way.
But If you believe in a supreme Creator Who is trustworthy, incapable of deceit, and has been revealed to us in various ways, that is to say, if you believe in a God who has not been distantly silent, but One that communicates, then you’re going to approach the subject of Truth differently.
I believe God is knowable and that God’s creation is knowable. Not fully. But truly. Also, as a Christian I believe God’s creation is bi-natured. “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” Both were created. Or as our creeds put it, God created both invisible and visible things. And God’s intent was for that creation to be integrated. Two parts operating as one. As a whole unit.
Now let’s take this right down the scale to the individual person. I believe God created us so that there is harmony between our inner perceptions of the external world and the external world as it actually exists. We can trust that our perceptions under normal circumstances, are not mere mirages. Unless we are taking a leisurely stroll across the Mohave desert we may be certain that we perceive real things. Things that are really out there. Not fully, again, but truly.
How? Because our Trustworthy God created a world where the visible (the outer object) and invisible (our subjective ideas & impressions) can meet and know each other. Not exhaustively, once again, but truly.
This touches on the “mind-body” problem I briefly introduced in my “Starting Again” post/podcast. I’ve repeatedly emphasized on this blog God’s intended creational harmony between, among other things, the mind and the body. God intends perfect alignment between our invisible and visible nature. The ultimate goal of human wholeness brings that perfect alignment. Just like God intends perfect overlapping and interlocking alignment between Heaven and Earth. The central image to help us understand this alignment appropriately is marriage.
God’s bi-natured creation was designed to be an integrated whole but without losing its distinctive bi-natured qualities. Just like a marriage. Today’s gender ideologues argue against any divinely designed human integration and seek to “convert” biological fact so that it aligns with internal identity desires. One partner’s wishes in this marriage is dominant. As we all know, that’s an unhealthy marriage. Also, the human desire to identify as a gender different than their biological sex takes precedent over God’s creational design, according to gender ideologues.
Even if you are not a Christian you surely see the “conversion” logic at work here. Converting a perfectly healthy body with cross-sex hormones and surgeries to fit some internal sense of self is the real conversion therapy.
Of course, Christians know all of us humans have from time to time, disordered desires. Desires, that if satisfied, will actually produce harm. So, if we are thinking correctly, we don’t affirm those disordered desires. We seek healing. We seek creational wholeness.
Philosophy students will recognize the mind/body problem relates to a long standing Epistemological puzzle.”
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, specifically addressing the questions; how do we know what we know? What are our methods for knowing, and what is the scope of possible knowledge?
I believe knowledge of God’s world is possible. I subscribe to the Christian hermeneutic of trust and not the Postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion.
God created an apprehensible world that may be known by persons created in God’s image and shared in common with other persons created in God’s image via a variety of communication methods, including texts. Again, not exhaustively, but truly. Our experiences as humans are not hermetically sealed and incommunicable to others. And speaking more broadly, Sex, Ethnicity, Race & Culture do form patterns of experience which should be accounted for and respected, but in the Spirit of a Trustworthy Creator these boundaries may be lovingly crossed. We can understand one another. And share life together.
I share the Postmodern critique of the pretensions of Enlightenment Modernity with its overweening pride in human rationality and the scientific method, but if nothing can be taken on trust & everything is to be regarded with suspicion you have a philosophy that “eats its own tail.”
Why should anyone trust a philosophy which says nothing can be trusted? Some Postmodern Thinkers believe precisely that. Some believe only the self can be trusted. Or only the group.
I also share the excitement of Christians who believe the discoveries of Modern Physics, i.e. quantum theory, opens up new paths to explore theologically, for example, as it relates to genuine freedom in the Universe. Everything that happens is not predetermined. And yet, we must refuse to worship at the altar of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The words and deeds of a Trustworthy Creator argue otherwise.
I mentioned the word hermeneutic earlier. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. In the case I mentioned earlier, the “hermeneutic of trust” is an interpretive method that extends trust to the “author” of a “text” (text could be any form of communication). This interpretive method understands that most authors are not consciously engaged in subterfuge designed to mask another intention which may be to exercise some level of control over us, the readers/listeners. Rather we believe, those who exercise a hermeneutic of trust, that these authors are genuinely interested in discussing what is True. They may in fact not be trustworthy for various reasons. But we don’t assume that upfront.
Unfortunately, the post-modern hermeneutic of suspicion believes all communication is either knowingly or unknowingly engaged in subterfuge. For the appearances of texts are deceptive and explicit content actually hide deeper meanings or implications. The hermeneutic of suspicion draws its philosophical inspiration from the “masters of suspicion”, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche, and most recently Michel Foucault.
Marx: to understand anybody you must know their class consciousness, a consciousness shaped by their material circumstances and those circumstances alone. If their class is bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production, or have all the money, they will never understand the working class or concepts like social justice.
Freud: teaches us that humans are driven by unconscious desires, desires which are at root sexual, and formed at the earliest stages of human development. Psychoanalysis is required before one comes to terms with these internal drives. A more recent development of this idea is that sexual identity is our core identity.
Nietzsche: Pronounces a pox on all our well-known certainties. Claims to truth are nothing more than metaphors concealing self-interested bids for power. Morality (especially Christian morality) is nonsense, something the weak use to manipulate the strong and squelch the aspirations of the great men among us. We must move beyond good and evil. And allow the creative geniuses, the Supermen, the Uber-menschen to lead us.
Foucault: (and other purveyors of “critical theory”) takes Nietzsche to an extreme. Every claim to Truth is in fact a claim or exercise of power. Everything is being “spun” to exercise power violently over you. It’s a very cynical view of the world and people. Other postmodern thinkers agree and say that any unitary accounts of ‘truth’ are inevitably oppressive.
Each of these driving forces within the individual and within society are often very much out of sight and beneath the surface of things. Therefore suspicion is a social imperative.
I know if you haven’t studied these issues before, it can be more than slightly opaque. But I wanted to give you some philosophical underpinnings to help you understand why we have arrived at today’s Gender Fluid moment.
This is what I think of the “masters of suspicion.” And their, for the most part, atheistic assumptions. I want to suggest that these thinkers should suspect their suspicions.
Because….I believe….
A God who communicates created a coherent, meaningful, knowable world. The pinnacle of God’s creation, God’s image bearers, are capable of apprehending that world as it truly exists and speaking meaningfully to one another about that world. Put very simply, all mentally healthy individuals know the difference between up and down, for example, or male and female, at least they should once the terms are properly defined.
And most of us know radical evil when we see it. Most of us.
I know, I know, at the Quantum or Sub-Atomic Level, we find, we think, an element of randomness and unpredictability from which, in my opinion, many unwarranted philosophical conclusions are drawn.
But I still have faith in a God who created a knowable world. Not exhaustively, but truly knowable. Mysterious at times. But that’s okay. Up here where we human’s live, communicable knowledge and real shared values are possible for God’s Image Bearers.
But today the postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion teaches you to interpret every communication, every action with suspicion. There are hidden meanings and intentions underneath. Nothing can be taken at face value. How does one build a loving community on the basis of that?
Although philosophical skepticism is ancient, ironically doubt as a method got renewed emphasis in the Western world with the work of a Christian thinker by the name of Rene Descartes (1596-1650). In fairness to Descartes he was trying to develop a philosophical system to tackle the problem of doubt.
He failed.
But unfortunately he did succeed in setting us on the philosophical road to radical human autonomy with the ultimate result being alienation, first and foremost a further alienation from God, but also alienation within God’s good creation, for example, the alienation between mind and body.
It’s a long story but it ends with the ruling assumption among many of our elites today and the teachers of our future generations, that objective reality is finally unknowable and incommunicable. So that all we are left with are subjective interpretations of our world. We can’t know anything objectively.
Subjectivism is the doctrine that “our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience.” So as a practical matter, from Elementary school to our institutions of Higher Learning, our young people have often been taught you have “your truth” and I have “my truth.”
Radical Individualism is one expression of this worldview.
Also taught in our institutions of learning is a less radical worldview which says my group has its truth while your group has a different truth. The worldview animating many parts of the today’s Anti-Racism movement taps into this less radical view of group truth.
This view can lead one to understand the world as a never ending struggle of competing “interpretations” or “narratives.” To use the common coin of today, it is sometimes seen as a conflict pitting oppressors against oppressed (a dichotomy borrowed from Marxism). For example, Whites vs People of Color, Rich vs Poor, Male vs Female, Binary vs Non-Binary.
Since it is assumed group truth is largely inaccessible to members of other groups, especially dominant groups, struggle for group supremacy is inevitable. Revolutionary actions are warranted by those who take a more Marxist view of the conflict. Critical Theory (1930’s) from which we get Critical Race Theory (1970’s, developed by Derrick Bell of Harvard and others) are two theories that draw nourishment from the seed beds planted by the “masters of suspicion” Marx, Freud and Nietzsche.
Perhaps you may be somewhat familiar with these less radical worldviews. They’ve been “hangin’ round the house” lately in case you haven’t noticed.
The fundamental teaching is that all Truth is relative and either individuals or groups are the final authority regarding normative questions. There is no universally valid or normative Truth. To suggest otherwise is to engage in an oppressive power play.
Of course all Christians recognize, or at least we should, that Truth in some areas may be difficult to ascertain, therefore humility is advised, and honestly, sometimes we don’t fully know ourselves and our motivations. You can’t read the Bible without being confronted with the fact of our broken human nature. We are easily deceived. But that is not the same as saying any universal claims are illegitimate. And nothing more than a power play. Yet that is what our young people are being taught today. And it has real world consequences. [See the video at the end of this podcast.]
***
As a Christian, I believe there is a unifying center to reality and that center appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. It is a center that allows all who accept the Lordship of Christ to come together as God’s single family in the Temple of God, Christ’s Body, the Church. As Paul said:
For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. [the promise of God’s worldwide flourishing human community on earth.] – Gal 3:26-29 (NRSV)
Ideally, this family unit won’t be characterized by conflicting power relationships, but by mutual love one to another. Which means this community will be characterized by patient receptivity not suspicion. We will read each other through the kind lens of charity, what I like to call the hermeneutic of love. But for this to work, we have to accept each other as family. Not groups pitted against one another. We won’t prejudge anyone based on skin color, for example, or any perceived social or class status. And, as a Christian, I would argue this community only becomes possible by the power of God’s Spirit. For it won’t be easy. And it cannot be coerced.
There is a single grand narrative, a single Truth. It is the story of a creative, loving, Triune God. Before anything was created, there was Loving Community. That’s what the Trinity teaches us Christians. Conflict is not the prime principle that makes things go.… If one begins instead from the Trinity, conflict isn’t the first way one would begin to talk about diversity or change, but rather harmony. And that’s our model.
We all are part of that story. Whether we know it or not. We have all been created by the same Triune God.
***
Hopefully, after these musings and viewing the video below you will see how today’s gender ideology draws “nourishment” from and grows out of the philosophical position known as subjectivism and its variant, group identity.
We can only know what we as individuals know. That’s the claim. Or less radically, what our group knows.
Given this assumption, tolerance is regarded as the highest virtue by many, but not all. Some remain intolerant revolutionaries. I’ve highlighted some of them on this blog (links are below). Those involved in Class Struggle or Race Struggle are typically not concerned with tolerance of every group. Subjugation of perceived oppressors is an ethical imperative for them. And they act on it.
But for most people the reality of human limitation teaches them to be accepting of what others know and believe to be true. So as long as they are not hurting anyone with that belief, it is said, we should tolerate different perspectives. And that is generally a pretty healthy thing to do. Except when it isn’t. If someone rejects reality, that’s unhealthy. They need help.
Which leads me to a classic YouTube video filmed at the University of Washington.
Okay, this is what I want you to do. Pause the podcast and watch this video. Then come back and I’ll finish the podcast.
Links from this blog to online resources don’t necessarily mean I support everything the organization producing these resources might believe. But this video is certainly on point about the “no lines, no boundaries” Western world our young people currently live in.
[RESUME PODCAST]
Our students did not learn this on their own. Adults taught them to think this way. You can certainly see how in a “no boundaries” world, anxious, dissatisfied, depressed young people might be driven to explore unhealthy identity options, and in the process disfigure their bodies. Especially when so many of their online “friends” say this is the secret to personal happiness. And you can also see how a worldview like the one on display in this video would affirm any choice an individual makes. Likewise you can see how the many young leaders of Facebook would feel comfortable listing 75 gender options to accommodate the subjective “truths” of those holding this “no boundaries” worldview.
Tolerance is a fine virtue, still I hope you found that video troubling. Because tolerance of absurdity leads to cultural rot & ruin. There are real world consequences to a “fluid” worldview.
Is this the world we want to live in? We better come up with some answers quick. Things are moving swiftly.
Pupil of Rembrandt, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1646
A burst of brilliant light shines on the newborn Christ, who is watched over by Mary, Joseph and a gathering of worshippers and onlookers. The source of the light is hidden, so it seems to radiate directly from the sleeping child, illuminating the faces of all around him.
The scene represents the episode in the Bible when shepherds arrived to pay homage to the Messiah. One kneels, raising his hands in wonder. Another is silhouetted against the light, while a third stands reverently to one side. Along with the animals in the background, this was the traditional cast of an Adoration of the Shepherds. But the artist added other figures, including the two women holding up a small child, to give the scene a more informal atmosphere.
A closely related version of the Adoration known to be by Rembrandt is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Analysis suggests that it is likely that the London picture is a study inspired by the Munich one, made by a highly competent apprentice.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
