The Two Obamas

New York Times columnist David Brooks explains the problem with dismissing Barack Obama as just another naive liberal:

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church wherethe pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.  This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama David Brooks

Bill Clinton Snaps at Pro-Life Students

Thanks to Students for Life of America for making me aware of this video. A group of over 100 pro-life students attended a Clinton rally in Steubenville, OH last night. The above is what happened when one of them interrupted and asked about his support of abortion on demand.

“I gave you the answer. We disagree with you," Clinton said. "You wanna criminalize women and their doctors and we disagree... I reduced abortion… Tell the truth, tell the truth… If you were really pro-life, if you were really pro-life, you would want to put every doctor and every mother as an accessory to murder in prison. And you won’t say you wanna do that because you know that because you know that you wouldn't have a lick of political support. Now, the issue is who … the issue is, you can't name me anybody presently in politics that did more to introduce policies that reduce the number of real abortions instead of the hot air putting out to tear people up and make votes by dividing America."

“This is not your rally. I heard you. That's another thing you need is a president, somebody who will stick up for individual rights and not be pushed around, and she won't."

Technorati Tags: abortion pro-life pro-choice pro-abortion Bill Clinton Hillary Clinton

Evangelicals for and Against a Palestinian State

The New York Times reports on a coalition of 34 evangelical leaders (including Fuller Seminary president, Richard Mouw, Gordon MacDonald, Ron Sider, and Christianity Today editor, David Neff) that supports the creation of a Palestinian state:

On Friday, these leaders sent a letter to President Bush saying that both Israelis and Palestinians have “legitimate rights stretching back for millennia to the lands of Israel/Palestine,” and that they support the creation of a Palestinian state “that includes the vast majority of the West Bank.”

They say that being a friend to Jews and to Israel “does not mean withholding criticism when it is warranted.” The letter adds, “Both Israelis and Palestinians have committed violence and injustice against each other.”
[....]
“This group is in no way anti-Israel, and we make it very clear we’re committed to the security of Israel,” said Ronald J. Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, which often takes liberal positions on issues. “But we want a solution that is viable. Obviously there would have to be compromises.”

The article quotes megachurch pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, as claiming that "Bible-believing evangelicals will scoff at that message" and draws attention to how differences in eschatology lead to differing stances on political policy with respect to Israel. Mention is made of a CUFI conference in Washington earlier this month that had an attendance of 4,500. Thanks to Collin Hansen, one of the guest bloggers at Between Two Worlds, for pointing to this video by Max Blumenthal who attended that conference (until he got escorted out by D. C. 's finest) to do some investigative reporting. Interesting viewing to be sure.

UPDATE: I just read Dr. Ben Witherington's thoughtful commentary on the video in which he lists what he considers its top five most chilling elements.

Kudos to Salvo!

Thanks to friends at the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (Thanks, Joe and Danielle!), I finally secured a copy of the premier issue of Salvo Magazine, a quarterly publication of The Crux Project. I first heard about it from Melinda Penner, whose description made me think it was the kind of magazine I'd enjoy. I'm not disappointed in the least. To say that I'm impressed by the quality of this magazine's layout and content is an understatement.

The publishers describe the magazine's mission as:

Blasting holes in scientific naturalism, marveling at the intricate design of the universe, and promoting life in a culture of death.

Critiquing art, music, film, television, and literature, interrupting mass media influence, and questioning the sanity of our consumerist lifestyle.

Countering destructive ideologies, replacing revisionist fictions with undeniable facts, and paring away political correctness.

Debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence.

Recovering the one worldview that actually works.

The people who put this magazine together not only utilize artistic flair and intellectual sharpness but also hilarious satire. Part of the fun of reading this issue has been finding the mock ads strewn throughout. One of them (for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects) made me laugh out loud when I read it while waiting at the barber shop. "STOP THE INSECTICIDE!" reads the caption beneath a magnified picture of an ant. "One million ants are slaughtered every month by careless missteps, cruel young children with magnifying glasses, and newspapers wielded in ignorance and fear. Feeling bugged? To learn what you can do to help stop the insecticide, or to sponsor an orphaned pupae, call...." (It's like The Wittenberg Door meets Philosophia Christi on a popular level.)


In a letter to readers, founder and editorial director, Richard Moselle says something I've believed for some time. The culture war being waged in America cannot be reduced to conflicting political visions. It is the clash of diametrically opposed philosophies of life or worldviews, out of which particular political stances emerge. Here's how Moselle puts it:

About eight years ago, I came to realize that it was these two worldviews-as opposed to, say, political differences-that have led to our current cultural divide. Not that I wasn't previously cognizant of conflicts over "traditional morality" and the like; rather, I saw for the first time that such conflicts ultimately arise from two distinct ways of looking at reality: one predicated on belief in transcendent truth and the other committed to the notion that such truth is a myth.

Unfortunately, there aren't many media outlets for the discussion of the subjects that matter most. Philosophical and theological discourse don't make scintillating programming. Neither can they be easily condensed into talking points and/or sound bites.

Regrettably, it sometimes seems that Christians share this general impatience with and disinterest in such subjects, often preferring political activity over reflecting deeply on the underlying worldview issues. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether American evangelicalism's attitude might properly be summed up by the phrase, "You can tinker all you want with my theology and doctrine but don't go messin' with my politics!" That thought came to mind as I read the recent New York Times article about Greg Boyd's disowning of conservative politics. My reaction was similar to Russell Moore's at Mere Comments:

Evangelicalism has taken on a political identity while shedding a theological one. A thousand people left Boyd's church. They held a "conservative" stance on issues such as the church's role in society. And yet, for years, Boyd has taught that God does not know the future free actions of people. He has preached that the universe is a democracy rather than a monarchy, and that God's purposes are thwarted by human and angelic decisions he didn't anticipate and he can't overturn. He has articulated an egalitarian view of men and women fully in line with the feminist movement and fully out of step with the biblical canon. Where were the thousand "conservatives" then?

But, I digress. Back to Salvo. I showed my copy to our youth pastor a few minutes ago and he agreed that the format and content would be inviting to high school students who might not otherwise engage these topics. From what I've seen of the first issue, I've decided to get a personal subscription and urge our church's library to subscribe as well. I assure you, I have no affiliation with the magazine nor am I on commission to boost sales. I'm just excited about a new resource that has the potential to promote critical reflection about the ultimate issues of life on the part of both Christians and non-Christians. I encourage you to check it out for yourself.

Barack Obama on Religion and Politics

Illinois State Senator Barack Obama (D) recently delivered the keynote address at a conference sponsored by Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty in America. He candidly expressed his wrestling with the relationship between his politics and his professed Christian faith, including internal turmoil stirred by Alan Keyes's claim toward the end of his 2004 campaign that Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama:

Now, I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement seriously, to essentially ignore it. To them, Mr. Keyes was an extremist, and his arguments not worth entertaining. And since at the time, I was up 40 points in the polls, it probably wasn't a bad piece of strategic advice.

But what they didn't understand, however, was that I had to take Mr. Keyes seriously, for he claimed to speak for my religion, and my God. He claimed knowledge of certain truths.

Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, he was saying, and yet he supports a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination.

Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, but supports the destruction of innocent and sacred life.

And so what would my supporters have me say? How should I respond? Should I say that a literalist reading of the Bible was folly? Should I say that Mr. Keyes, who is a Roman Catholic, should ignore the teachings of the Pope?

Unwilling to go there, I answered with what has come to be the typically liberal response in such debates - namely, I said that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can't impose my own religious views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois.

But Mr. Keyes's implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me, and I was also aware that my answer did not adequately address the role my faith has in guiding my own values and my own beliefs.

From his address, it seems that Senator Obama's is relativistic when it comes to religious claims. All are valuable and valid to the extent that they offer their adherents community, meaning, and moral guidance. I'm pretty sure that the senator would be quick to add "for me" to any assertion he made about Christianity being true. Nevertheless, his address raises critical issues about how we engage in moral discourse in a pluralistic society and why the demand that religious beliefs be excluded from those conversations is historically unprecedented and practically impossible:

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Senator Obama has always struck me as a reflective, intelligent, and judicious man. I'm glad he's thinking and talking about these matters and hope he will continue to do so.

UPDATE 6/30/06: Al Mohler identifies an internal contradiction in Senator Obama's position in his post Secularism With A Smile.

Poli Psych

Glenn (Instapundit.com) and Dr. Helen Reynolds recently talked to Dr. Nicholas Cummings about the politicization of psychology (HT: Stones Cry Out). Here's their summary:

Is psychology over-politicized? We interview Dr. Nicholas Cummings, a past President of the American Psychological Association, and coauthor of Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm, about the injection of politics into mental health in general, and the American Psychological Association in particular. Plus, why men are disappearing from the psychological profession.
You can listen to the podcast directly (no iPod needed!) by clicking right here, or you can get it via iTunes right here.

I blogged about the book here and here. Tom Gilson at Thinking Christian has also written about how a liberal political ideology, rather than sound research, appears to be driving the APA's stance on abortion and homosexual marriage.

Al Franken the Originalist?

I woke up from dozing in my living room chair just long enough to catch Al Franken on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night. When Leno asked his thoughts about Supreme Court Justice nominee Samuel Alito, Franken replied that he has some "scary" ideas like that of a woman having to inform her husband before having an abortion. He also said that Alito believes in "the right to bear machine guns," adding that he doubts the framers of the Constitution ever envisioned anything like that. I wonder what he thinks they envisioned about a mother having the state-protected right to kill her unborn child.

Ms. Brown Goes to Washington: Atheists Get a Lobbyist

The Secular Coalition for America, a non-profit political organization for atheist groups, has hired former Nevada state senator Lori Lipman Brown as its congressional lobbyist and national voice. Her mission:"to educate the public about mistaken notions regarding atheists while making sure religion doesn't get a ringside seat at issue debates."

Brown is quoted as saying: "My beef is with people who have taken [religion] out of the 'sacred' sphere and used it instead as a political tool. Having done that denigrates religion." That sounds at first as though she esteems religion and wants to safeguard it against being abused. But not so quick. The article goes on:

Brown has strong convictions when it comes to keeping religion out of government. She would like to spread the word that even people without religion have morals. Brown believes the secular people her group represents can work side by side with religious people.

In other words, religion is fine as long as it stays in its place - the private sphere. As long as your religion is confined to personal ethics and feelings it's OK. But if it maintains, as Christianity does, that it is a source of knowledge and thus has bearing on all aspects of life including social issues, then it has overstepped the bounds secularists have established. And all this is done in the name of rationality, neutrality, and objectivity. Ms. Brown will be seeking to influence public policy issues such as stem cell research, access to emergency contraception, and physician assisted suicide and well she should. But she and those she represents should readily admit the philosophical (dare I say, "religious"?) system that guides their reasoning (see my previous post, I Believe in Matter Almighty). [HT: The Revealer]

One Nation Under God (As I Understand Him, Her, It, Etc.)

In response to yesterday's ruling by a California federal judge that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional, Joe Carter traces the concept of civil religion back to atheist philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and notes the irony that so many Christians appear to be committed to it. He reminds us that

There is a vast and unbridgeable chasm between America’s civil religion and Christianity. If we claim that “under God” refers only to the Christian conception of God we are either being unduly intolerant or - more likely - simply kidding ourselves. Do we truly think that the Hindu, Wiccan, or Buddhist is claiming to be “under” the same deity as we are? We can’t claim, as Paul did on Mars Hill, that the “unknown god” they are worshiping is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Pledge is, after all, a secular document and the “under god” is referring to the “Divinity” of our country’s civil religion. Just as the pagan religion of the Roman Empire was able to incorporate other gods and give them familiar names, the civil religion provides an umbrella for all beliefs to submit under one nondescript, fill-in-the-blank term.

Our God is a jealous God and is unlikely to look favorably upon idolatry even when it is put to good service. While we should be as tolerant of “civil religion” as we are of other beliefs, we can’t justify submitting to it ourselves. That is not to say that we can’t say the Pledge and think of the one true God. But we should keep in mind that this fight isn’t our fight and the “god” of America’s civil religion is not the God who died on the Cross.

Al Mohler offers similar thoughts in his commentary, Is the Pledge of Allegiance Unconstitutional?:

Christians should be careful to think clearly about the Pledge of Allegiance and the current controversy. Secularists like Michael Newdow represent the hard edge of ideological attacks upon all expressions of theistic belief in the public arena. The truth is that the courts have allowed and driven a constriction of religious liberty such that any public reference or acknowledgment of the beliefs common to vast millions of Americans is now considered to represent an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the government.

All this puts believing Christians in a difficult position. After all, the Court has ruled that symbols and references to a divine being are allowable only insofar as those references point to no specific deity. Beyond this, the courts have ruled that the only permissible reference to deity is a reference that so reduces the definition of deity that it appears difficult for all but the most ardent atheist to object.

Because of this, Christians must not defend the presence of the word "under God" in the Pledge as a direct reference to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--the Triune God whom Christians worship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At best, the presence of this language in the Pledge and similar expressions on the nation's currency represent an acknowledgement of a power higher than the State itself and the nation's dependency upon that power for its safety and well being. Nevertheless, a decision from the Supreme Court that would require the removal of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance would represent a disastrous imposition of official secularism as the nation's public commitment.

It does seem that we're between a rock and a hard place -- civil religion that tips its hat to a vague, non-descript deity on one hand and state-sanctioned secularism on the other. No follower of Christ finds the latter appealing but we have to watch against siding with the former because of its perceived utility in advancing (or at least sustaining) politically and socially conservative goals. In his excellent book Political Visions and Illusions, David Koyzis identifies two principal reasons why conservatives are likely to profess Christianity. The first is that they genuinely believe that its teachings are true. The second is because of the large part Christianity has played in Western cultural heritage. "For those conservatives who are Christians for this reason," he writes, "the issue of the truth of the faith is secondary to the social utility of its ethical teachings."

Some friends and I are reading John Piper's Pierced by the Word. We were all stopped in our tracks by this sentence: "God will not be used as currency for the purchase of idols." Civil religion, while it may use the word "God," sacrifices biblical truth on the altar of a political ideology.

Frist's Folly: How Does He Do It?

This morning in a reply to a friend who expressed her appreciation for the title of last Friday's post about Senator Bill Frist, I mentioned that I still can't get over how contorted his reasoning is. I also commented that I don't know how the man can sleep with all that cognitive dissonance ricocheting around. 

Christianity Today's Stan Guthrie shares his own wonderment at the senator's "marvelous burst of logical and moral incoherence." Commenting on the Mr. Frist's affirmation that he is pro-life and that the human embryo "deserves to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect," Guthrie asks, "In other words, treating human embryos with 'the utmost dignity and respect' includes killing them for research—as long as that killing is done 'within ethical bounds.' That's pro-life?"

Guthrie concludes his appropriately titled article, "Frist's Folly", with this important reminder:

Finally, Frist's flip-flop reminds Christians that we cannot rely on any political party—even one officially "pro-life"—to always make moral (or even logical) decisions. While we may make temporary alliances with this politician or that, ultimately we do not belong to any party. We belong to Jesus Christ.

Bill Frist Supports the Destruction of Human Life AND Logic

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's decision to support a bill to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research is all over today's news. Frist professes to be pro-life and says that it's a "fact of science" that an embryo is "nascent human life." From the other side of his mouth, however, he says, "I also believe that embryonic stem cell research should be encouraged and supported."

Mr. Frist insists that the bill provides an ethical framework because federal monies would only be used to fund research on embryos that would otherwise be discarded. It seems to me that if the senator were consistent with his stated belief that conception marks the beginning of a distinct human life, he'd be opposed to all forms of embryonic destruction. It shouldn't matter whether they're thrown out like yesterday's trash or experimented on for the noble cause of seeking cures for terrible diseases. In either case, a defenseless human life is being terminated unnecessarily.

Mr. Frist would have us believe that it's ethical to kill an innocent person who was going to be killed anyway as long as it's for the greater good. I'm sure he wouldn't want to state it that plainly but when you excise the euphemistic rhetoric that's what you're left with.

Thank You, New York Times!

I'd like to thank the New York Times for providing an excellent illustration of the faulty thinking I referred to yesterday in today's editorial. The article faults President Bush for imposing (there's that word again! It appears three times in the brief piece) his theological beliefs concerning the humanity of embryos on our pluralistic nation.

Concerning President Bush's statement that federal funding of embryonic stem cell research would "take us across a critical ethical line," the Times says:

Never mind that this particular ethical line looms large only for a narrow segment of the population. It is not deemed all that critical by most Americans or by most religious perspectives. Rather, the president's intransigence provided powerful proof of the dangers of letting one group's religious views
dictate national policy.

Apparently, the Times would have us play ethics by the numbers. Right and wrong are determined by straw poll. We don't have to turn far back in our history books to find proof of where that kind of thinking leads, do we? Beyond that, the Times is being disingenuous in suggesting that the only reason for concluding that human embryos are individual human beings is religious. Prior to the politicization of the issue with Roe v. Wade in 1973, numerous textbooks on embryology and reproduction pointed to conception as the beginning of an individual's life as evidenced by the following quotes appearing in Frank Beckwith's Politically Correct Death:

[A]ll organisms, however large and complex they may be when fullgrown, begin life as but a single cell. This is true of the human being, for instance, who begins life as a fertilized ovum. (Dr. M. Krieger, The Human Reproductive System, 88 [1969])
The formation, maturation and meeting of a male and female sex cell are all preliminary to their actual union into a combined cell, or zygote, which definitely marks the beginning of a new individual (Dr. B. Patten, Human Embryology 43 [3d ed., 1968])

The Times editorial goes on to say:

The president's policy is based on the belief that all embryos, even the days-old, microscopic form used to derive stem cells in a laboratory dish, should be treated as emerging human life and protected from harm. This seems an extreme way to view tiny laboratory entities that are no larger than the period
at the end of this sentence and are routinely flushed from the body by Mother Nature when created naturally.

The conviction that embryonic life should be protected is only "extreme" if one begins with the premise that the value of any particular human life is proportionate to its size. But that's sheer nonsense. Our obligation to protect another human being from harm does not increase with his or her size or maturation. If anything, the reverse is true. The more vulnerable a person is to being oppressed and mistreated by those more powerful, the greater our responsibility to protect him or her.

To argue from the fact of spontaneous abortions (the natural expulsion of zygotes from the womb) to the conclusion that the intentional destruction of embryos is therefore moral, is to commit what's called the naturalistic fallacy. Many of the degenerative diseases that proponents of embryonic stem cell research are hoping to cure occur naturally but I don't think the Times would therefore conclude that it would be moral to afflict individuals with those diseases if we had the ability to do so. What's the difference?

The editorial proceeds to advance its discriminatory agenda when it says:

These blastocysts, as they are called, bear none of the attributes we associate with humanity and, sitting outside the womb, have no chance of developing into babies. Some people consider them clumps of cells no different than other biological research materials. Others would grant them special respect but still make them available for worthy research. But Mr. Bush is imposing his different
moral code on both, thereby slowing research that most consider potentially beneficial.

How foolish and/or deceitful can one be? Blastocysts bear all of the attributes associated with humanity at that stage of human development. The issue isn't what some people consider them. The issue is what they actually are. Some people consider members of certain minority groups inferior. Some consider children desirable sexual partners. Some consider the Holocaust a fictitious event. Others even consider it a good event. What do any of those statements tell us about the objects of consideration? Nothing. But they tell us much about those doing the considering.

Imposing Left Morality: Erwin Lutzer Answers John Spong

In today's Chicago Tribune, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, senior pastor of the Moody Church, responds to an essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong ("Political pulpit - The Bible as weapon in the culture war") that appeared in last week's Sunday paper. Spong, singing the well-worn chorus of "separation of church and state," took issue with conservative Christians who, according to him, are seeking to impose their naive, unscholarly (read contrary to the Jesus Seminar) interpretations of Scripture on the general populace. Lutzer notes:

What Spong fails to point out is that the liberal left also seeks to impose its agenda on the rest of us. The three examples he gives--same-sex marriage, abortion and the Terri Schiavo case--all point to a conflict of opinions, and no matter which side one takes, somebody is imposing his morality on someone else.

Concerning the privatization of religion he writes:

When I visited the People's Republic of China in 1984, our tour guide justified the government's policy on religion by arguing for a separation of church and state. She said that religion was free to operate in all of those areas that were not controlled by the state. When we probed more deeply, she said that religion was a private matter and that the people of China were free to be as religious as they wanted to be "within their own minds."

and asks:

....if religion is deemed to be private, who is to say that the day might come when it is completely restricted to houses of worship, eventually to our homes, or even limited to our own minds?"

Read the rest here (free registration required)

Why Would an Unbeliever Root for the Religious Right?

OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto answers:

I suppose it is because I am put off by self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, and contempt for democracy and pluralism--all of which characterize the opposition to the religious right.

Read the rest here (free registration required).

Christians and the Left: Who's Warring Against Whom?

National Review Online contributing editor Stanley Kurtz relates his reaction to Harper's Magazine's May cover stories on "The Christian Right's War on America":

I fear these stories could mark the beginning of a systematic campaign of hatred directed at traditional Christians. Whether this is what Harper’s intends, I cannot say. But regardless of the intention, the effect seems clear.

The following excerpt illustrates points I made in recent posts on the inconsistencies of relativism and the myth of religious neutrality:

The Left is loathe to treat Islamic terrorists as moral reprobates, but when it comes to conservative Christians, Hedges calls on his fellow liberals to renounce their relativist scruples and acknowledge “the power and allure of evil.”
....For a very long time now, secular liberals have treated conservative Christians as the modern embodiment of evil, the one group you’re allowed to openly hate. Although barely noticed by the rest of us, this poison has been floating through our political system for decades. Traditional Christians are tired of it, and I don’t blame them. That doesn’t justify rhetorical excess from either side. But the fact of the matter is that the Left’s rhetorical attacks on conservative Christians have long been more extreme, more widely disseminated, and more politically effective than whatever the Christians have been hurling back. And now that their long ostracism by the media has finally forced conservative Christians to demand redress, the Left has abandoned all rhetorical restraint.

Read the rest here. Then, read Jesus:

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant about his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. So have no fear of them... (Matthew 10:24-26a).

Morality and Reality

In today's New York Times op-ed section, columnist David Brooks (free subscription required) claims that the arguments on both sides of the Terri Schiavo debate are flawed. Social conservatives insist that all human life is of equal value and warn of the dangers involved in ascribing greater worth to some individuals on the basis of their ability to function on higher levels than others. "The true bright line is not between lives," he writes, "but between life and death"

While recognizing the moral force of this line of thinking, Brooks says that its flaw lies in that "for most of us, especially in these days of advanced medical technology, it is hard to ignore distinctions between different modes of living. In some hospital rooms, there are people living forms of existence that upon direct contact do seem even worse than death." A further weakness, according to Brooks, is the fact that the majority of Americans believe in some kind of life beyond death in which case it's not necessary to "cling ferociously to this life." "Why not allow the soul to ascend to whatever is in store for it?" This is to resort to the same kind of pragmatism he later criticizes liberals for. (Unfortunately, I've heard Christians use the same argument, one that if consistently applied could be used to justify the murder of any believer experiencing adversity).

Social liberals, on the other hand, defend the right of each individual or family to determine for themselves when life is no longer worth living."They don't emphasize the bright line between life and death; they describe a continuum between a fully lived life and a life that by the sort of incapacity Terri Schiavo has suffered, is mere existence." Brooks accurately notes:

The central weakness of the liberal case is that it is morally thin. Once you say that it is up to individuals or families to draw their own line separating life from existence, and reasonable people will differ, then you are taking a fundamental issue out of the realm of morality and into the realm of relativism and mere taste.

What begins as an appealing notion - that life and death are joined by a continuum - becomes vapid mush, because we are all invited to punt when it comes time to do the hard job of standing up for common principles, arguing right and wrong, and judging those who make bad decisions.

I agree with Brooks that the liberal argument is flawed. It is self-referentially incoherent in that it denies the existence of objective moral truths in which case the appeal to end Terri's life on the grounds that it is the merciful and right thing to do is undercut. Where Brooks errs, however, is in claiming that the pro-life argument is flawed as well. He has not identified a flaw in the argument. Rather, he has described the difficulty we often face in consistently applying a pro-life ethic. It doesn't follow from the fact that we find a particular course of action hard, that that action is not right. The fault doesn't lie in the argument but in us.