Don’t Draft Me For Your Culture War (Pleadings for the 4th of July)

Note to Christian Culture Warriors:  It’s your war, not mine.  This rambling treatise is just to say that I’m not in a war with my culture, so I’m dodging your draft.  No offense, but I’d rather Hillary Clinton be elected for president than your theocratic candidate.  Waaay less scary.  I mean, she’s not pro-stoning, right?  See.  I’d vote for her. 

In my opinion, fighting against my “culture” doesn’t do anything.  I did it for awhile. It just made me operate on high-alert, suspecting everything from the newspaper to the kiddie-playland at the grocery store.  Being in a Culture War made me suspicious of everyone, even those possibly in my own camp, from the friend who was a ”Christian” and an artist (But, come on.  How can you be a true Christian if you aren’t inserting Bible verses into your paintings?), to the sweet grandparents who would let the kids watch Sesame Street (Ack!  Bastion of liberaldom!) or a Disney (owned by new-agers and humanists) film when they babysat.  Being in a Culture War had me convinced that practically everyone and everything was out to get me and my family, put me on the defensive, made me shrill, quick to fight and slow to hear. 

Now bringing love, joy, peace, gentleness into the earth?  Absolutely.  Loving the unlovely?  Absolutely.  Releasing the captives, the trodden-down, the unwanted?  Absolutely.  But fighting my culture?  It’s a lesson in missing the point of the Incarnation of Christ, for one thing.  He was born into a culture—on purpose.  Cultures, all cultures, have elements of good and elements of evil.  It’s not the enemy anymore than it’s the savior.  It’s just the backdrop of the scene in which I play my small part of bringing Christ into the earth through my own humble hands and feet and smile.    

Besides, what happens if you win your war?  What “new culture” are you going to impose that will somehow be better than the one we’re in?  Would, say, ”modesty codes” fix all of our problems?  Okay, but how do you plan on enforcing them?  Are we going to get all Amish-ish and hold meetings over whether printed or plain cloth? 

Are you going to have police officers wear measuring tape next to their gun holsters, so that they can make sure my skirts are the appropriate length?  Required suspenders and an immediate ban on all saggy gangsta jeans?  Would you prefer a Taliban-like public beating for women who show their ankles, or would you like a quieter, though not necessarily cleaner, “modesty ticket” inserted into any and all exposed cracks? 

How about television?  Maybe a return to family values would be a positive thing, but who’s “family values?”  Who decides, and how is it enforced? 

What are “family values,” anyway?  Seems like for some people it’s often a fancy way of talking about a much idealized 1950’s era status quo.  Remember the 50’s, right?  Unlike today’s monsters, that was the era where children were obedient.  Like, if Daddy was “visiting” with you at night, you didn’t say anything.  (Besides, if you did say anything, which is assuming you knew he was wrong and you were worth being protected, which is assuming a lot, no one would believe you).  Good old fashioned authority still existed then.  People knew their place.  Like women, blacks, children, and the underclass.   

Ah, the 1950’s.  That was the era where stay-home mom’s weren’t odd—and neither was their deep and undefinable depression.  For some strange reason, these women weren’t content staying home with their shiney kitchen appliances all day, dislocated from community, from challenge, from thinking.  Yes, the lovely fifty’s, the era where a host of nice well-mannered grade-school children grew up to be the fire for a raging rebellion of young adults demanding the right to not accept the world only in terms of textbook/workbook questions and answers.   Funny, how they didn’t seem to appreciate the decade of their childhood.  This is where stoning would come in handy. 

So if the fifties weren’t perfect, maybe we should go back the the late 18th, early 19th centuriesto help us define Family Values.  Yeah, that time period was a real beauty.  Little boys chained to their factory stools for twelve hours without a bathroom break, upperclass women wearing corsets that deformed their bodies, no such thing as a “union” or “workman’s comp” to protect the father when a cave-in at the ol’ coal mine forever buried his left arm.  That’s assuming he was able to survive getting it hacked off with no anesthesia or antibiotics. 

Okay, maybe not.  But some folks have an easy answer—they don’t want to “return” to any era, persay, they just want to get into power and get laws passed that will reflect their values.  Though one problem with reflecting their values may include the fact that other people’s values then aren’t acceptable.  And let’s just admit it: allowing freedom of expression means that your enemies get to freely express themselves just as much as you do.   

Which brings up some big questions.  Don’t want anyone curtailing your right to preach your faith on the street corner?  Then you’d better stick up for the rights of the gay man who wants to hold his boyfriend’s hand on that same street.  Because once you set precedent for restricting some people their freedom of expression, get ready to kiss your own freedoms goodbye. 

You might look with disdain at that kid with the multiple piercings and want pass a law curtailing his right to use his body as a vehicle for expression, fine.  But know that whoever looks at you with disdain will use that same logic to deny you the right to wear your cross necklace and your Christian t-shirts, just as soon as they get into power.   

“Oh, but this is different,” you say.  “We’re Christians.  We don’t have to give those people equal rights just so that we can keep ours, because the humanistic satan-worshiping liberals aren’t going to get into power!  We’re going to get “back to the Bible,” and rule this country God’s way.” 

Yeah, well, pardon me, but anyone who promotes a theocracy and wants to rule the nation “by the Bible,” makes me want to move to another country.  Going “by the Bible” means a different thing to every person, and depending on who’s doing the interpreting will decide everything.  Shall we be like the Taliban leader, no, wait, he wasn’t a fundamentalist Muslims, he was a fundamentalist Christian Rushdoony and his Christian reconstructionist band (like homeschool peddlers, Vision Forum, etc) and advocate stoning sinners? 

Not just adulterers, but anyone who blasphemes God, is considered an “apostate,” curses their parents or has sex before marriage.  That’s just for starters.  Sorry if most of you fit that profile, but we’re going back to the good ol’ Old Testament law, baby, and cleaning up house is the first step.  Because Family is important.  Because Morality is important.  Don’t you know, we’re in a Culture War?  And the biggest thing that’s caused all of these problems in the first place is that we made the mistake of letting people have the right to think what they want to think.  Thankfully, Andrew Sandlin of Chaldecon reminds us, 

  Reason itself is not an objective `given’ but is itself a divinely created instrument employed by the unregenerate to further their attack on God.” The “appeal to reason as final arbiter” must be rejected; “if man is permitted autonomy in one sphere he will soon claim autonomy in all spheres….We therefore deny every expression of human autonomy–liberal, conservative or libertarian.”

Exactly.  So what is the real crux of the Culture War?  That if the culture warriors win, you and I aren’t allowed to think in any way other than what the “new” State says is appropriate. 

Oh, sure, at first take it all sounds nice, especially because it’s usually framed in sweet words and delightful images.  Who doesn’t get warm and fuzzy (and have visions of Little House dance through their head) when someone talks about returning to the family—focusing on family.  And aren’t the pictures sweet, showing us “just what life will be like” if we submit to their paradigm.  What could go wrong?  Gee, it’s kind of like when you read the stories of how communism was introduced to the Russian school children.  Boy, it was exciting to be a member of the Young Pioneers and wear that pretty red scarf…   

Oh, don’t worry.  We’re not talking about evil Communism, we’re talking about a good thing.  We’re talking about upholding the fine Biblical vision of the family.  We’re talking about valuing it as sacred, protecting it, putting it up on the pedastal it rightly deserves.  You don’t mess with family.  As Reconstructionist Gary North once said,

“The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death.”

“Family Values,” anyone?