This post was written by Patrick Rist on August 23, 2007
Recently I watched a PBS program on the ongoing “water wars” in the American West. Specifically, this program was about the burgeoning growth of Las Vegas, NV, its voracious appetite for water, and its push to acquire water from the sparsely populated, and mostly agricultural northern part of the state.
One northern Nevada citizen expressed a view that was simultaneously commonsensical and naïve: he said that a city like Las Vegas should limit its growth to its available water resources.
On one hand, this would make sense (putting aside for the moment the obvious fact that by that standard, there really shouldn’t be a city where Las Vegas is). But on the other hand, it struck me that there was nothing so antithetical to the “American Creed” than the idea that we might somehow be limited by our natural surroundings.
When I say the “American Creed,” I’m being a bit facetious. But I think we know intuitively that there are certain ideas or concepts that are either broadly true of American life and history, or that we like to believe about ourselves. These are largely unexamined, widely-accepted values or goods – notions like “success,” “individualism,” “progress,” and the like.
As with any creed, along with the things we believe, there are also a number of things we cannot abide – and I would argue that the possibility of “limits” is one of them. It seems too negative to Americans to suggest that there might be or should be a limit to economic expansion, to individual choice, to personal success. We live in a nation that was founded on the principles of self-government, unbridled by inherited privilege, and on edge of a seemingly limitless wilderness waiting to be settled. We come by our abhorrence of limits honestly.
So far in the history of our nation, science and technology has enabled us to ignore limits – particularly in the natural environment. Another part of the American Creed is the “can-do attitude.” The call of President Kennedy to put a man on the moon may have led directly to the automatic response of “We will rebuild!” in New Orleans after Katrina. It would have been seen as “un-American” to ask, “Wait a minute – do we really want a city this far under sea level?” It would have certainly been politically suicidal.
Now we see the momentum of science encouraging the idea that limits simply don’t exist, particularly in the realm of genetics. If it can be done, it should be. To call this into question is like the Pope refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope.
And yet if we are interested in being Christian before being American, we need to look carefully at the concept of limits from a biblical perspective. The story of the Fall would seem to imply that we will inevitably encounter limits in our lives; the story of the Tower of Babel would seem make it explicit.
God’s law is rife with limits, which is why it is so hateful to the unregenerate. What could be more limiting, for example, than to be told that you should only have sex with one person in your entire life? But if God’s law is a major clue to his very character, then what does it tell us about how he views the concept of limits?
Nor are limits unknown in the New Testament. There is “no other name” but that of Jesus by which we can be saved; an inconvenient truth if there ever was one.
All this is merely prologue – it doesn’t answer the specifics of what limits are appropriate and which aren’t. My point is that Christians should not be allergic to entertaining the idea of limits in the personal and public spheres.
· If you’re like me, you may view those who openly talk about limits (particularly environmentalists) as having unrealistic and even anti-human political agendas. Is this always true, though?
· How might the American dislike of limits affect how we hear the gospel?
· How do we balance a legitimate concern about limits with political freedom?
· Is the notion of limits something that we can introduce into our classrooms? How would it interact with notions of personal responsibility and agency?
This post was written by Patrick Rist on July 3, 2007
In my previous entry, I shared some concerns about the role of the market in our culture. Today I’d like to offer some suggestions and questions for you to consider given your role in the academy.
First, as Christians, we should avoid any Panglossian idea that the market is the cure for all that ails us as a society. Just because all the economic alternatives are, to a greater or lesser degree, lousy, it does not follow that market forces carry within themselves the ability to order our lives in a humane and moral way.
The notion that everyone pursuing his or her own interests produces a just and humane society is highly suspect. What does it mean when most of one’s fellows are debauched and immoral, and/or absorbed by their own short-term gratification? A thoroughly Christian anthropology should cure us of uncritically genuflecting to Smith’s “invisible hand.”
Our culture has lost any common, binding sense of a shared morality. This absence has allowed the market to shape our society in ways that were never intended by our founders. Somehow, and I’ve no idea exactly how, values and morals must be injected back into the system, back into the calculus of how we organize our nation, neighborhoods, and families.
A case should be made that economic factors are not the only consideration – in anything. We should also state boldly that supposedly “neutral” positions concerning economics and the market are a sham; there is no neutral ground. All views of growth, progress, and economic matters carry within them implicit views of the good life. We should strive to make these implicit views baldly explicit, and challenge them as needed.
Issuing such challenges wisely and biblically will require us to delve into the complicated matrix of theology, ethics, justice, economics, and political thought – and that’s probably a woefully incomplete list. Nevertheless, there is arguably no area of academia (and our society) in greater need of a wise and competent Christian voice.
Finally, we should regain our courage (and freedom) to discuss these questions openly with our fellow Christians. A faculty fellowship should be a “safe place” for raising these issues without being accused of being a closet Ralph Naderite.
A couple books by Craig Gay at Regent College in Vancouver have been very helpful to me in thinking about these issues: The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live as if God Doesn’t Exist (Eerdmans, 1998), and Cash Values: Money and the Erosion of Meaning in Today’s Society (Eerdmans, 2003).
The latter, much shorter than the first, would be excellent for a reading group study.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on June 26, 2007
Many of the divisions among Christians involve the role of “the market,” both in the economy and in the life of the nation. On one hand, there are some who are infatuated with the ability of free market capitalism to provide a high standard of living and an abundance of goods and services. But others, who read Sojourners magazine, see free market forces as the source of all kinds of evils. Although I am no economist, I’d like to offer some thoughts on and ask some questions about “the market.”
First, it seems safe to say that “the market” – in terms of the simple laws of supply and demand – has always existed. It was not invented during the Reagan administration or by Adam Smith. Prices of commodities have always risen or fallen relative to the available supply of those commodities.
In that sense, then, the workings of the market display a level of predictability that approaches that of a natural law. To the degree that the “dismal science” is indeed a science, it is due in large part to this fact.
It is the reality of the laws of supply and demand that makes tampering with the market so problematic and so fraught with unintended consequences. We can’t really tamper with gravity, for example. We can only construct ways to fight against it: elevators, steel girders, and airplanes. One brief moment of laxity can bring disaster – gravity always wins.
In a similar way, we know from experience and from history that the market always “works;” that the laws of supply and demand are practically inexorable, and most significantly, economies that harness the power of the market outperform all competitors to a degree that almost beggars description.
This simple fact is the major one to which those who would criticize the free market economy must respond. It seems evident that, for the most part, better performing economies produce a higher level of human flourishing than struggling or backward economies. There are pockets of exceptions, but as real and important as they are, they are only pockets. The verdict of history has been cast in favor of capitalism.
And yet. . .
One should pause here and acknowledge that many Christians (this writer included) are hesitant to question the sufficiency of the market. Part of this hesitation is due to the false dichotomy that has arisen in American political discourse. If one questions the adequacy of the market, then one must be in favor of government tampering and of a planned economy. There are plenty of instances where this would be a safe assumption. Who knew that in the old adage, “It takes a village to raise a child” that the “village” was actually a whole list of state agencies and government programs?
But the dichotomy is a false one. One isn’t a socialist simply for suspecting that market forces alone cannot create the life that we want to live. The market embodies no values except that of price – and values, in terms of what we love and cherish and believe to be true of ourselves and our world, are not the same as valuation.
Nor does the market contain the thicker, harder concept of morality. The market itself is probably amoral – its inexorable forces work indifferent to good and evil.
The market is not the panacea to all our ills simply because not all things are meant to be commodities. We acknowledge that humans fall outside of the realm of commodity; economists like University of Chicago’s Gary Becker would agree, and yet would allow people to commodify themselves piecemeal, by selling their own organs.
Well, why not? The market does not provide an answer to that question; such answers must come from outside of its system. And this is where Christian academics can play a crucial role.
In my next entry, I’ll offer some thoughts on that role.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on September 13, 2006
Many commentators and social critics have observed that we live in a time of increased “weightlessness” – in which the acceleration of our daily experience tends to empty out our lives of substance and meaning. The constant press of the next thing we have to do — the next meeting we have to attend — the next place we have to be — the next appointment in our Treo – all seem to detract from our ability to see any of it having any particular meaning. It seems to be merely the “price of admission” into modern existence.
I’ve recently been reading Orthodoxy by CK Chesterton, written in 1908. It was only an aside, but it was ironic to read Chesterton’s abhorrence of the busyness of the England of his day, almost a century ago. So this impression has been with us for a while.
And yet one wonders if the particular kinds of activities that occupy us today are unique and especially potent in flattening out our world. There have been several articles in the news about “Blackberry Thumb” – the malady that comes from punching in too many messages on the PDA/phone device. My point is not the ailment, but the mania about email that causes the ailment.
Email, which I use every day like everyone else, is a careless, almost substance-less form of expression. If you received a written letter with the same punctuation, spelling and sentence structure as the typical email message, you’d think you were corresponding with an imbecile. I’m not advocating that we construct our email with the precision of a legal document or the style of Dr. Johnson; I’m merely raising the possibility that the use of this media has the effect of downgrading language and language’s attendant meaning.
The internet as a whole probably has the same effect – and the irony that I’m writing this for a website does not escape me here. But I don’t think that it is possible to overestimate the impact that the Web has had on our perception of knowledge and information. Along with the hyper-abundance, there has been a corresponding downgrading of the importance and meaning of individual units of knowledge. How does one examine an individual raindrop in a hurricane?
These phenomena, or perhaps the uncritical embrace of these phenomena, constitute what might be the unique worldliness of our age. Not all Christians throughout the centuries have been learned. Perhaps only a minority could have been accurately called contemplative – either by nature or profession. But never has the regnant world system and its practices been so aggressively set against either learning or contemplation.
And at the height of irony, one sees the modern research university perpetuating the same mindset. In its emphasis on production and achievement, the University merely reflects the culture of business and busyness that we see all around us.
Well, what can be done? Sad to say, there’s no known cure. But, by the grace of God – and let us never regard that phrase as a cliché – I believe that we can be agents of resistance.
We can be models of remembrance – mindful that there are other ways of living, other ways of thinking, other ways of ordering our lives that are not beholden to the latest and greatest technology or trend.
We can be models of intentionality – using discernment and wisdom in the choices we make, utilizing technologies when appropriate and taking a pass on them when not.
And we can be models of excellent difference – choosing, for example, to use proper English, even if no one else is; choosing to read actual books, or even [GASP!] write actual letters.
These are all profoundly conservative activities, but they are not conservative in the political sense. They are conservative in the same way that monks copying classical texts in the Dark Ages were conservative. Who knows – future generations may call us blessed in the same way.
These different “models” are probably worth exploring further — with examples and rationales. We’ll try to revisit these topics in later Antecedents.
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