Month: August 2014

On Becoming Christian

For 60 years or so now, including the nearly 17 years I’ve been Orthodox, I’d have called myself a “lifelong Christian.” But now I’m wondering whether that’s accurate.

I’ve thought, you see, that I became a Christian around age 4 or 5, when I did something mean to my younger brother, made him cry, got called on it, and suddenly the light went on that I had just disappointed Jesus, who loved me. I asked Him to forgive me. As a good little Evangelical boy, I asked Him to come into my heart. And never thereafter did I say “I changed my mind. Please leave now, Jesus.”

But I’m now thinking a probably became a Christian when I was 17.

How can that be?

Because I wasn’t baptized until then. Baptism makes Christians. Only if I’d been baptized as an infant would it be unequivocally true that I was a “lifelong Christian.” But unless I had stayed the course, that wouldn’t be saying much, because I could well have been a really miserable excuse for a Christian without, despite that, ceasing to be Christian.

“Christian” isn’t an encomium;  it’s a fact. That identity is not created by bare volition, but by initiation.

That’s exactly backwards from how an Evangelical sees it. If I’d been baptized as an infant but never “gave my heart to Jesus” until I was 17, they’d say I wasn’t a Christian until age 17. If I gave my heart to Jesus, then got baptized, and then behaved very badly, all Evangelicals except for those I call “One-point Calvinists” (of which there are tens of millions) would say I’d ceased being a Christian (the One-point Calvinists would insist I was still “saved” because, well, “Eternal Security”). I guess if you had multiple personality disorder, you could be Christian or not according to which personality you were sporting that day?

That’s a pretty deep difference. It leads Evangelicals, who really aren’t heartless people, to do unbiblical things like “dedicating” their babies to Jesus without baptizing them. And then they fault ecclesial Christians for not following the Bible! Real Chutzpah!

Dear Evangelical: Hear me now. Baptism is to Christian families and their children what circumcision was to Jewish baby boys.

I knew that even as a Calvinist, though I now suspect I “didn’t know the half of it.” In an important sense, parents determine a child’s religion not only by precept, but by initiation.

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Still recovering from political addiction

I keep catching myself clicking through on internet stories on what the GOP must do now to survive, to regain its glory, to avoid wholesale abandonment by young, dark-skinned or immigrant persons, and so forth. But it’s a sign of recovery that before reading two paragraphs, I invariable think “what do I care?” and close it out.

Maybe there really is something terribly virtuous about “the two-party system,” but when the Democrats are the party of vote your vice,” and are dead serious about it, while the Republicans are insincerely for virtue, solely to attract votes from gullible religious folks, I have a little trouble getting excited about those virtues.

It might be worth noting here that I never became a Republican activist. I was a pro-life activist, and tried to remain as neutral as possible in partisan politics, in the delusional hope that Democrat officials, especially Catholic Democrat officials, would see the error of their ways, rise up and play Robert Casey Sr. or Bart Stupak (before his vote on the ACA at least). It always struck me as odd that liberals should so completely forsake a vulnerable group,

Now, I think 1972 was the Democrats’ turning point, when they went over to the Dark Side of the Sexual Revolution, subordinating all else to that. That reality is accelerating today – and the strategy appears to be a political winner for them, as a big chunk of the population has as it’s top priority avoiding imposition of any sexual restrictions on their lives.

Meanwhile, “between the lines,” it was and remains clear that many Republicans were on the side of virtue (civic and personal) and of the unborn only as memorized talking points.

There being no acceptable third party I’ve found yet, I cheerfully conclude that we are doomed and look forward to what Phoenix shall from the ashes rise, since human nature won’t forever remain oblivious to the ravages of life lived sub-humanly.

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I have a number of connections to Indiana’s new Chief Justice, Loretta Rush, starting with observing that this young woman a year behind me in law school was one of the grown-ups, despite being maybe 22 at the time. Not all my classmates were grown-ups.

It’s a little bit embarrassing that only she, and none of her male colleagues, was asked about work-family balance at Tuesday’s public candidate interviews by the selection commission. But I’m just not going to hang my head in abject shame, because the embarrassment I feel is that the Commission was too naïve to know that one does not mention certain truths in polite society, such as that tables have “legs” in Victorian times and our own taboos today.

“Women are asked that question more often than men are. It’s just assumed that it’s going to be more of an issue with women,” says Joy Dietz, director of the Women in Management program at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management (Journal & Courier editorial). Yeah, in my experience, on average it is more of an issue with women, which may reflect more badly on fathers than on mothers, and a 56-year-old Supreme Court Associate Justice, mom or pop, might reasonably be assumed long ago to have reached a workable modus vivendi on the matter.

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.