Journeyman
A Journal for the Inquiring Christian

Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2001 The Month(s) Overview: Obligatory comments on The Story Will our collective mugging cure what's wrong with America? If Islam is so peaceful .... Thoughts on my high school reunion In this issue. by Greg Krehbiel Review and comment on September and October I had just finished uploading the files for the inaugural issue of Journeyman when I heard the news about the trade towers. It's amazing how things have changed. Before September 11 we were talking about Gary Condit, shark attacks, global warming and petty legislative disputes. Liberals were trying to convince us that Dubya is a dunce. The very idea that we would trade any civil liberties for anything — especially at the say-so of the military or the CIA — would have seemed ludicrous. But since then we've been mugged, and being mugged sends people to the local gun store. You've heard the expressions. A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. A social conservative is a liberal with a teenage daughter. A hawk is a dove who's been attacked. And on and on it goes, the lesson being that the chief enemy of liberal ideology is reality. Liberals are offended by reality and wish to change it — which is a good thing — but they don't know how to deal with it in the meanwhile. Note: I'm really not talking about liberal politics here. The more I learn about politics and politicians, the less I care about the political differences between the left and the right. I still care, but I care less than I used to. I care a lot about liberal social policy, which I think is a demonstrable catastrophe. But that's for another day. Perhaps we can hope that this national mugging has cured the nation of the worst of liberal ideology. Along those lines, Thomas Sowell quotes Edmund Burke to have said: "There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." My main concern in the on-going war on terrorism is our apparent effort to appease radical Arab groups. President Bush's speech set exactly the right policy: you're with us or you're against us. But then we immediately turned to coalition building and the diplomats got involved. When it comes to diplomats, I'm with Commander Montgomery Scott: the best diplomat is a fully armed phaser bank. If nations that formerly supported terrorism have learned the error of their ways and now want to side with civilization, then let's thank God and welcome then in — provided we keep a close eye on them. And perhaps President Bush is being very shrewd about this. Perhaps he's accepting support from these nations so that he can test their commitment. If they stray, add them to the list of targets. I hope that's what he's doing. I'm sick of the mealy mouthed Saudis, and I hope we don't think we can just blow up a bunch of rocks in Afghanistan and pronounce the world safe. Nutty Moslem fundamentalists believe this is a war between cultures — the secular, hedonistic west vs. a culture defined by its submission to the divine will. An editorial in The Economist expressed the typical response: "The west has no quarrel with Islam. The west is secular." How does a Christian take sides in such a wrong-headed struggle? In our effort to seem "secular" we've become the world's chief apologists for Islam, and while no thought is given to making our soldiers fight on Sunday, we once halted our campaign on a Friday, and for a while there was talk about a reprieve for Ramadan. (Thankfully that was rejected.) Who doubts that if we stopped our military action for the 12 days of Christmas the ACLU would sue? We're told again and again — mostly by non-Moslems — that Islam is a peaceful religion and that, after all, there are Christian nuts in the world too, like the Aryan Nation and the boys in Ireland. Yeah, right. And if somebody from the Aryan Nation were to kill a Jew, hundreds of thousands of Christians would take to the street and shout "Death to Zion," "Kill the Jews," "Down with the Great Satan." Politicians in Christian nations would be afraid to denounce the violence because of the backlash from the Christians. Pastors and priests would tread lightly in their sermons, afraid to rile the faithful. Let's get serious and quit this silly lie. I'm sure there are forms of Islam that are peaceful, just as there are forms of Christianity that are anti-sacramental, pacifist and afraid of technology. But it's an obvious fact that the Moslem world is chock full of screaming lunatics who want nothing better than to destroy the west. We are at war with that form of Islam, and the sooner we realize that (and quit making excuses about it) the better. I'm still waiting for the "Give War a Chance" bumper stickers. I attended my 20-year high school reunion recently. Herewith some reflections. The relatively short time we spend in High School seems to make a disproportionate impact on life. Of course High School is a completely artificial, structured environment designed to make a big impact on your life. I'd like to learn a bit more about why it is so successful. I would imagine that it's a combination of the frantic pace, the raging hormones, the transition to adulthood, the discovery of new (or the blossoming of old) talents, the intense peer pressure, the screaming voice of culture that tells you it is one of the most important times of your life, and the keen, idealistic, young mind trying to make sense of it all. I was very fortunate to attend an excellent High School — Eleanor Roosevelt in Greenbelt, Maryland. It was a special school for the study of science and technology. You had to pass a test to get in. We were all there to get a good education, and we knew it. There were very few (hardly any) discipline, race or drug problems. If I could send my kids back in time to that school, I'd do it. But times change, and so does the culture. When I was in school we talked about Fonzie (of Happy Days) at the lunch table. (When else in life do you get the chance to spend a half hour with your friends — every day — over lunch?) Today they'll be talking about Boston Public. Our music wasn't written by Charles Wesley, but it wasn't the filthy trash of today either. In short, things were quite a bit cleaner. Of course I'd like to send myself back in time to High School and re-live those days with the wisdom I've acquired from 20 years of reflection. While that's not an option, I have high hopes that I can impart some of that wisdom to my children so they can avoid falling in the same pits. I know, I know. Why should I expect that to work? My parents lectured me and I didn't listen very well. Why should I expect that my children will listen to me? I have my theories. First of all, I did listen, sometimes, and I think I avoided some trouble through their warnings. Second, today's parents have been beaten into hopelessness with the message that they can't lecture their kids: they won't listen, it will only make them angry, and so forth. My parents heard that same message, although I think not with the same intensity. In other words, they probably held back some of those lectures, and they might have done me some good. Third, my parents didn't have my secret weapon: the Bene Gesserit. They are an order of women in Frank Herbert's Dune who, through years of disciplined study and the patient accumulation of wisdom, have become (or so they think) the puppet masters of human destiny. They are both wise and formidable, and they got that way because they listened to the wisdom and warnings of their foremothers, built on their knowledge and avoided the adolescent tendency to repeat your parent's mistakes. I tell my kids this story every chance I get to drill into their minds one essential truth of human existence: Every person who has ever lived has rebelled against his parents' advice only to find out later that his parents were right. Human history is like an endless line of idiots who fall into a pit, turn and say, "Watch out for that pit" to the next idiot in line. He replies, "What do you know? Don't tell me what to do." And then falls into the same pit. My hope is that this message can be drilled into the adolescent brain and make a Bene Gesserit instead of an idiot. Back to the reunion. A common theme was how refreshing it is to have grown out of all the petty quarrels and pretentiousness of high school life. There's no more worry about cliques and alliances and all that. But I wonder if that's less the result of maturity than the certain knowledge that we're not going to see these people every day for the next couple years. In this issue Tim Enloe replies to my essay Those Catholic Presbyterians with an article titled Ecclesiology Isn't Geometry. His title follows that unfortunate tendency of the boys from Moscow to call any solutions to their problems "perfectionism" — a word you will find a few times in Tim's essay — as if an unworkable answer in Chemistry can be excused by saying, "but this isn't geometry." Some of Tim's arguments sound very familiar. I made them myself, once upon a time. The question in dispute is how someone knows the content of the Christian faith, and how the church fits in to that equation. When someone asks Tim that question, he rightly answers, "the faith taught in Scripture." To the next question, "Which interpretation of Scripture is the right one?," Tim again correctly replies, "the one taught by the church." But from that point he departs both from reason and from clear Christian tradition. His answer is, "the church that teaches true doctrine," which leaves the inquirer scratching his head and remembering warnings against circular reasoning. A Catholic answer (which, by the way, is the answer that played out in the history of the early church), answers the "which church?" question without this circular reasoning. It points to the fact that Jesus founded the church on certain individuals, the apostles, and to the bishops who were appointed in lawful succession from them. That route is uncomfortable to Tim because he doesn't believe in apostolic succession or episcopacy. Then, of course, the question arises, "which collection of bishops represents the right church?," since a few different churches (e.g., the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, the Nestorians and others) can claim lawful succession from the apostles. The Catholic answers, "the ones in unity with the successor to Peter." (See my essay Bible, Tradition, Church and Pope.) In other words, the Catholic (1) follows the tradition of the church and answers the question the way the church answered the same question hundreds of years ago, and (2) gives a sensible answer that doesn't turn back on itself in a subjective loop. Tim and the boys from Moscow don't like the fact that Catholics can solve their problems so they complain that we're just being "perfectionists," which is a weird thing to call people who can actually answer a question. Oh well. I still say the whole "Catholic Presbyterian" effort is a step in the right direction. Next they need to admit that an answer is better than a non-answer. Steven Badal gives an interesting twist to the "charismatic gifts" wars, arguing that Catholics are the true Pentecostals. I quiver at the thought, having never wanted to be either. In any event, he outlines an interesting way to look at the issue. Artie Megibben gives an interesting review of heightened airport security since Sept. 11. Kelly Brimmer-Pittman reviews There We Stood, Here We Stand -- a collection of stories about Lutherans who poped. Shawn McElhinney gives The Cloister Walk four stars.