On complexity

JCW, thanks for writing in again. You asked about "complexity" in the post above. I suggested, if you remember, that complexity is required in ethics and politics. But this complexity should not be confused with ambiguity. Complexity, as the opposite of simplicity, requires the hard work of wisdom, which is never genetic, and always comes by hard work and not just by hard knocks. Many people are called through experience. Few are chosen through meaning.

My concern for complexity rises mainly in the area of politics. Most Christians who read the Bible are understandably attracted to the radical social leveling that leaps from the words, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3.28). But this leveling obtains only in the human nature established in Christ. In politics, this leveling can not obtain and should not be sought in the world. Much heartache (let alone embarrassment) has been the reward for most attempts at imposing Gospel egalitarianism on the nations. In this age, there is secular government ordained by God for the restraint of evil. There is also an inevitable social stratification which is compelled by sin and death, and is accommodated by the Law -- a Law which is fulfilled by the Gospel, but not negated by it. We constantly overlook the distinction between this fulfillment and negation to our peril.

The rich and the powerful thus we will always have with us, until the Lord returns and makes all things new. In this vale of moral shadows, I am poorer than many, I am richer than most.

And the rich and the powerful will always float up to power and authority as the sparks fly upward. This is the way of the gentiles and will always be. Besides, the poor are historically no good at government (e.g., Munster, Venezuela). Worse yet at governing are poor intellectuals (especially those romantic "lovers of mankind" who attempt to re-define mankind as something else) who usually start out as nice liberal socialists, but end up as monsters. Look at what Rousseau did, along with Robespierre. Imagine Freud in power. If you mess with human nature, you will become unnatural. "Normal," perhaps, but unnatural.

Complexity in ethical reflection is necessary in this environment, where lawlessness is a real and increasing peril, and shows up in the most innocent-looking (and jejune and naive) political statements by our friends on the religious right. The angel of light does his best work in mystification and in the indolence of the righteous -- which is usually experienced, unwittingly, as headache and whimpering disillusion.

I referred to the most telling example of naive fundamentalist politics in the post above: the Christian Right complains about abortion, the destruction of embryos, hyper-socialism, termination of the aged and disabled, and the chic redefinition of aberrant sexual proclivity as conferring "minority" status – these are all issues about which I wholeheartedly agree with my right-wing heterodox friends.

But they are not-so-strangely silent, in their insouciance, about encroaching totalitarianism, consumerism, war-as-aggrandizement, environmental rapine, and hyper-capitalism: these concerns are just as Biblical, and should be just as salient -- even in such a restricted view that sola scriptura allows.

Even now you would be hard pressed to find a fundamentalist Christian who will ever say a critical word about capitalism, given their multi-generational catechism that defines the Beast as a red communist for sure. If you turn the radio dial (or the url-bar) enough, late at night, you can still hear the static of cheap polyester declaiming Gog and Magog at the Kremlin.

I suppose we must think of it as a gain that many "emergent" and neo-evangelical folk are becoming more consistently prophetic in their outlook. Nevertheless, it is difficult for them to experiment with these novel approaches and to remain rational, with all the attendant roller-coaster excitement of thinking new liberal thoughts that would make their elders blanch. I believe Frank Schaeffer documents this prurient experimentation pretty well.

But the difficulty inflicts itself right at the point of Natural Law, as you might expect. When the "neo" sort of evangelical churchpeople (can't say "churchmen" anymore) break free from the confining fundamentalistic strait-jacket of their upbringing, they enthusiastically embrace environmentalism, civil rights, a semi-pacifism and a concern for the poor and the marginalized. Look, for example, at this recent "manifesto" from Os Guinness et al (of course it's called a "manifesto": there seems to be no other modern word for "confession"). Or, for another example, this "reflection" (as way, way opposed to that nasty word, "dogma") from the emerging people.

But many of them find themselves so caught up in the enthusiasm of the Democrat boutique that they load their carts with other, less defensible, wares. Into the basket goes the embrace of the metrosexual re-edit of human nature, or -- I suggest -- "Release Anthropology 2.0." You will find the likes of Tony Campolo and Brian MacLaren smack dab in this heady mix.

Also in the modern shopping basket is a tacit acquiescence to the new economy of fornication that seems to reign supreme nowadays. We shouldn't be so surprised. The surfeit of foreplay splayed out on virtual reality monitors (some of the appliances are wetware like human cerebellum) almost commands sexual activity -- and it matters little what sort of partner should be found as the object of this activity.

This new moral economy produces sexual activity at the earliest ages ever, surely hastening the constant advance of menarche. It also produces, or urges, serial "hookups" that precede marriage, all expressed in various forms, ranging from furtive gropings, oral agreements, to the full monty capulet-montague coupling.

In a 2007 government study on adolescent attitudes and behavior, evangelical teen-agers were found to be more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants, and Jews. In the linked New Yorker article, there is the usual hackneyed complaint about evangelicals failing to ape the Anthropology 2.0 doctrine holding that all should learn the art condom-ation. Nevertheless, there is that wretched truth that the evangelical love-affair with the TV Nation has wreaked gross hyper-sexualization in its younger members. (And, I should add before I get charged with insufferable smugness: the Orthodox population is no better.)

This activity is enthusiastically (but silently) endorsed by church kids whose virginity is unlocked by latch-keys, and whose sexual emancipation is ratified by dual-income households pledged to the American Dream.

The Washington Post's Katherine Parker (and other ilk like Princetonian Jeffrey Hart from Reagan's speechification league) reports that the Republicans lost because of the influence of their "low-brow" second-cousins from the sticks. She really means an insult here, just for you, if you are reading this from the Religious Right. That's right: the Republicans are blaming you, Dobson, and you, pro-lifers, and you, Proposition 8'ers. Ms. Parker says that the GOP should free itself, quickly, of any conservative religious constraint.

I know: "conservative religious" is a redundancy. There is no such thing as a liberal religious constraint. License, yes, constraint, no.

I hope that the GOP takes Parker's advice quickly, because neither the elephant nor the ass is worthy of the Cross. The Republican Party is not worthy of Orthodoxy, as you might have expected me to say. But neither is it worthy of the Evangelicals. (Neither, it goes without saying, are the Democrats.) The Republican/high-finance Party's cynical exploitation of proletariat fundamentalists (they will cavil at this brand) is nothing short of despicable. It is high time that evangelicals return to the conservative politics where they rightly belong.

I wonder. Why can't someone like Palin insist on the environment and the provision of a family wage, along with her well-known (and rightly lauded) opposition to abortion? On the other hand, why can't the National Council of Churches insist on the male-ness of the priesthood and the male-and-femaleness of marriage, along with its well-known (and rightly lauded) critique of this present capitalistic war?

Why oh why is our stewardship of creation contingent upon inane arguments about global warming (I'm against it)? Is it not enough that we are asked to fast and feast, to renounce avarice in favor of simplicity in beauty, to remember the names of animals and to tend the Garden? When was this responsibility abrogated? Since when has the Creation become a monster, a mother, a mine, an asset, a construct of google-earth? Since when have we forgotten brother sun and sister moon? And danced?

These present political groupings are a bunch of rhetorical simplicities. Today's labels, like the Rhetors of old, give rhetoric a bad name, and they all deserve Socrates' fabled evil eye. He would glare at the Republicans, who are "for" the unborn (maybe). He would cast the hairy eyeball at Democrats, who assure him that they are "for" the workers (just as maybe).

These groupings are becoming increasingly meaningless. But they remain simple in their nomenclature, and therefore provide a sort of self-administered opiate of false familiarity and the worst of smug generalities.

So you asked, JCW, for some help in this necessary task of complexity? I will list a few bullets for your diversion:

• Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples … To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them (Isaias 8.16, 20). The only rock upon which the house of intellect (and culture, even secular) may be built is the Law – that is, the doctrine and anthropology of Holy Tradition. The matter of which can be leaked into general knowledge, but the truth is from there no less.
  
• In other words, read the Bible and the Fathers.
  
• Read history. One of the glaring negligences of the Orthodox Church is the neglect of American history. In the glowing Thomas Kinkade-like nostalgia for bygone empires, there is a forlorn penchant (not just in the ecumen) of glossing over local and historical particularities, in favor of a new global Rome. Well, sir, I think that any new rome is too close to the old babel if you ask me. Too many official Orthodox pamphlets embrace globalization as a given, and fail to see the inherent lawlessness in the plan. Utter, nutter, uber ugh.
  
• Practice the political and ethical judgment that, for an Orthodox Christian, can be gained only from spiritual discernment. This discernment, in turn, can be gotten only from apatheia, which is the balance of the powers of emotion, drive, and intellect, and the cessation of the revolution of passion in the soul.
  
• As all history begins in the nous, all demonic revolution starts in the passionate revolution of souls. Christian peace starts in the soul and is exalted in koinonia and yearns for the New Jerusalem.
  
• Beauty is the spiral ascension of the simplicity of person artfully expressed in the complexity of society, and back again, but higher, and again and higher.
  
• Be complex in this mortal vale but not perplexed. Work hard. Believe and trust as a child, with faith like a seed. Be innocent as doves, but be complex about the world, you know: be wise as serpents. That sounds hard and complicated to me.
  
• But not hopeless.

Comments

[JCW]

Father Tobias:

Father, bless.

What can I say to this except "Thank you"? I especially appreciated the last "diversion": "But not hopeless."

Joshua

[Mother Clement]

Father, I have neglected for some time to offer my thanks to you for your insights.
I read your posts on a regular basis and am always blessed by them.
I appreciate this post ("On Complexity") most especially, as you have managed to articulate much of my own thinking on such matters.

If you should have the time and feel so inclined, there is a question I have that as yet I have not gained any answer to.

During the emotional frenzy of the past election, someone suggested to me that one cannot be "anti-abortion" without at the same time being "pro-life" in the other related issues: anti-capital punishment, anti-war, etc. And they presented this to me as being a general concensus of Orthodoxy (being Orthodox Christian themselves).

My personal feeling is that they were using this position to justify their liberal political choice.
It all seems rather convenient to me and I would very much like to hear exactly what the general concensus of Orthodoxy is in this respect.

I am on the path (at least I hope) of developing an Orthodox phronema and the more I study the Bible and the Fathers in this light I find that I do not so much discover anything new as I receive affirmation of Truth I have always known.

Thank You for your writings.
I remember you in prayer always.
PAX,
Mother Clement, OCB