Another Example of Harmful Risk-Aversion

More on Mr. Doug Phillips soon, but a discussion at Dalrock’s prompted me to respond because I’ve written on it before.

My friend Empath wrote this:

[I] am not defending CTS’s behaviors. I’m not wanting them left alone, unchallenged. Maybe I want to know what the label is for the Christians who remain after the CTS’s offenders are stricken from the list. What are we? What group(s) do we share the most values with? Are there really so few of us special Christian snowflakes that we have a clique here in these parts and thats it, because we have sorted all of what SHOULD BE natural allies out and away? Worse, when we see the secular AMEN! chorus from soulless left, or the overtly libertine, whatever group that represents values diametrically opposite what ours should be….but they eloquently wax in agreement about that bloody CTS’s do we not get it that we too are held in derision by them, but like a ManBoobs type association with feminists, they tolerate us because it feels really cool to hear what to them is us running us down.

This is a problem of conservative-minded people. It may be intractable.

Similar problems are what drove Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle first to shut up, and then to start attacking whites in the media even though it was whites paying them.They meant to tell revealing and thoughtful jokes about black people to black people. When too many white people started laughing too loud…they got nervous. I’m sympathetic, but I think they should have continued. It would have been better to ban whites from the audience than for them to crawdad the way they did.

In hindsight: Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle traded their jokes on a conservative understanding of the world because they are (unknowingly) conservatives. So fundamental is their conservatism that as penance for causing whites to laugh at blacks they both took back-to-basics trips to Africa; that they might be cleansed.

On commented blogs, the problem can be exacerbated because while laughter is hard to measure, comments are easy. To my mind, Dalrock speaks as a challenger to his own group to get them to wake up; preaching truths his own hostile choir. He is not an outsider, but one of them. It remains that unless he is more ruthless in moderating comments then his message gets confused with the rabble’s. He starts to sound like Chris Rock telling black jokes at an impromptu meeting of Kinists. Yet if he does start moderating or banning people, then he will surely (if inadvertently) ban others who are like himself; preaching truths to a hostile choir.

What’s to be done? The only solution is for those convicted by Dalrock to get louder; to challenge those in their own little midsts. Sounds like the liberal response, doesn’t it? Fists in the air; rock the vote; we won’t be silenced; etc.

Let’s notice who is on the offensive; who is taking dog-tags off dead conservatives. Which brings us back to the point of why this is a problem of conservative minded people; because we just prefer to take our balls and go home.

Doug Phillips of VF and Biblical Vision: On Lenses

I’ve been recently reading about the Doug Phillips affair, and thinking about how the media coverage has been purposefully and maliciously skewed. Even–perhaps especially– by Christian sites which have covered Ms. Lourdes Torres-Manteufal’s suit against Phillips have used unfair weights in their measure of reporting. One gets a sense of this with the manner of the reporting of their names; which is just as I have done here. Lourdes is presented with her title and full name throughout the coverage. This conveys a sense of status. Doug, after the first introduction in a report, is relegated to merely “Phillips”.

Before I discuss the particulars of what I found in that sorry mess, I want to talk about my priorities in examination; how I look at the things I see. Like anyone else, those near me in my youth greatly informed how I perceived the world. By God’s grace (and not a little discipline) my lens has been ground down and refined as I realized (to my surprise, anger and sadness!) that–with the unstudied lens I had–I could not touch truths that appeared to be right at hand, yet toppled over stumbling blocks that had seemed much smaller and distant than they really were.

The successful bits of the lens-grinding process, basically, was to encounter pain and trouble and then turn to the Lord in prayer (often angry and bitter), the Bible, and the counsel of men I respected…part of the grinding process was to scratch off the list of the respected those men whose counsel did not match my readings of the Bible; many of them my close friends.[1] Do not put too much emphasis on the word match and think I mean verbatim, or exactly. I mean that there was no resemblance to the Bible’s teachings. My lens was revealed to have been largely formed by a haphazard scouring of instincts, baseless taboos, unfounded liberties, and platitudes; all conserved as a sort of tradition.

Unless you have experienced it you cannot imagine the joy and peace of relief  from simply the acknowledgement from the Bible and Its pin-point descriptions of the distortions around and within me, and to which others around me were pained (while yet oblivious!) about the causes. There was no fix applied to me, per se; just relief that I was not insane.

I want that those problems were fully behind me, but there is still more work needed. Though…sanity can be lonesome.

[1]I’m very sorry to say that my family was eradicated from the list. I still see these people; still love them. We’re just not close. Cannot be close, however we try.

National Fool’s League

I am perplexed by the continuing acceptance and popularity of the NFL; especially by men who otherwise I would consider in pursuit of honor and righteousness. From every aspect I consider, the NFL is a monster.

• It was acceptable to the NFL that Adrian Peterson father multiple sons (are there daughters, too?) out-of-wedlock and largely abandon them to the half-life of bastardy. On this they are silent. However; when he makes an error in attempts to raise and discipline his sons: The NFL bans him.
• It was also acceptable to the NFL that Ray Rice carouse and fornicate with women before marriage, but when he makes an error in defending himself from a drunken harlot then the NFL bans him. It is inconsequential to them that the two made peace, and even married.
• The NFL repeatedly perverts eminent domain laws meant to provide for the common welfare to instead build palatial monuments to themselves. Thus “dedicated to the good of the community”, they strike me as temples to other gods. If you pay, they will bless through mystical and arcane “laws of economics”. Yet the NFL does not pay the evicted even one year’s minimum salary for their incursion upon the innocent; who are often old, poor, and without recourse.
• They make grown men wear explicitly female garb for a month every year. Pink is not an essentially female color, but it remains that it is clothing that is chosen precisely to represent women. It’s light cross-dressing to feign solidarity.
• From stats to cheerleaders to fantasy leagues, the NFL distracts many men from properly prioritizing their lives and time. Christian men who are familiar with the first and last names of every starting player on their favorite team–some of which change from year to year–, but can’t summarize the Gospel, list the Major Prophets, give St. Paul’s birth name, or even how many books are in the Bible.

On that last bullet point, some of you will want to retort, “Oh, well, that’s not the NFL’s fault.” That’s not Christ’s perspective. We do have a responsibility to our brothers, and to the extent that the NFL or anyone undermines that: We should carefully consider whether we ought to support them. Taken along with the rest, abandoning the fools to the peripheries of our consciousnesses seems obvious.