D-8 Christian Impact on Modern Civics.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”   John 10:10

Full disclosure: I am a Christian. I do have an agnostic side to me. What I mean by that is: despite being Christian – I don’t claim to know or have a great deal of certainty on the metaphysics of God beyond Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity beyond acceptance of the Nicean Creed.

Gnosis means ‘know’ in Greek. Agnosis or Agnostic means “don’t know”. I don’t know, though I suppose some times I speculate, beyond what Christianity says in the Nicean creed. We are finite creatures with finite minds trying to contemplate the infinite. The nature of existence for us is uncertainty. So I presume that uncertainty is something we, or at least I, must accept. God might have other dimensions, other creations, maybe our universe is just like a terrarium in his room, and he’s got another one just like it next to ours – I have no idea. So I’m agnostic about a lot of things. Maybe much of Hinduism is reasonably accurate in its metaphysics. Maybe some of Buddhism is also. Maybe God saves everyone, maybe he saves only 144,000 souls (I hope its more the former than the latter). So, I have, I think, a lot of doubts about metaphysics that maybe other Christians don’t have. I do know and firmly believe, that my safety comes in getting close to Jesus; As close as I can get. At my last breath, I’m hoping he reaches down, catches me, and hauls me on board his vessel – despite whether I’m worth it or not, or whether he can stand me or not. I’m thinking, and hoping, I can get better in that regard. So, I’m a Christian, just not a big one. I’m a little Christian.

The concept of the trinity takes much of humanity to frontiers of conceptual understanding of metaphysics. It’s easier for some people than others to accept it. People can get a headache trying to conceptualize what it means although I’m content to think what logic is to us, paradox might be to God. And the fingerprint of paradox is all over Christianity, things like “in giving we receive, in pardoning we are pardoned, the stone thrown away becomes the corner stone, and in dying we are born again” are both fun to hear but taxing to consider more deeply. Still, paradox happens a lot in life. Jerry Seinfeld did a show about nothing, and it turned out to be really something (at least at the time.) So we have to hope that all of that is all good news and we’ll “get it” when the time comes.

Maybe this is why I enjoy seeing debates on youtube from exotic but well thought out opposites. Two of my favorite debates, the first was between a former atheist cosmologist who, because of the description of creation in the bible he found to be basically valid, became an evangelical Christian debating against a former Muslim who had become atheist of the secular human type. The discussion they had was great fun. The second discussion I enjoyed was between an Eastern Orthodox Priest and an Evangelical Pastor. I learned some great things from these. Paradox – it’s not just for divinities.

In truth, I want to keep my core belief system simple, so I can concentrate on things that I really like, like the social sciences. So, I’m not a big fan of the old testament. Nothing against it, it’s complicated, and I’m trying to avoid the complexity. Also, I keep thinking those people didn’t have showers, or drug stores, or deoderant and toothpaste, and so on. For the most part, all I care about is Jesus. In the new testament, I don’t care a whole lot about the epistles of Paul, John and James. If they keep it simple, okay. But those are just people who are believers like me, talking about their beliefs. I attend religious services where their epistles are read, sometimes I get something out of them but I’m trying to keep things simple, and I’m really just waiting on the Gospel reading. The other readings are just opening acts. So that leaves me with just the Gospels, and of that, what Jesus said. I don’t mind the Acts of the Apostles and maybe even a little Revelation thrown in from time to time – but very limited, but I really just think the one thing for me to focus on is the Gospels. I want to know about Jesus, what he said, what he taught, what he espoused and so on. I think the one thing, the big thing, is just try and get close to him.

But, like the cosmologist that found his way to Jesus through the validity of creation story in the bible, I found my attachment to Jesus because of what he has to say about civics. I found my passion for the social sciences by the time I was 10 years old. When I was eleven I learned about the constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the fact that it separates church from state. I grew up in a mixed community: half my class was Jewish, half was Catholic and half was Protestant, and from all different ethnicities, and we all got along famously, while the history of Europe was of death, destruction and wars between peoples related to me and my class mates. We got along famously. And about the same time, I mean the very same week, give or take one or two weeks, the Gospel reading at mass covered Jesus saying “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.” It was 1971, John Kennedy had been dead only a few years. Echoing Kennedy’s own statements on the subject, the priest in the homily said “as Catholics we believe in separation of Church and State.”

I was raised in a religiously mixed family. My father had no religion. My mother was a converted Catholic. They were both born and baptized Lutherans. My parents wanted us to have moral teaching, and my dad was satisfied with it being Catholic, half his buddies growing up were Catholics, but never was it assumed or drummed into me that when I became an adult, I would have to be a catholic. What I believed was up to me to determine. Even to this day, asking someone what they believe, in my family, is a little bit like telling someone to turn their head and cough, only a profession is allowed to do that and in a professional clinical manner. Two of my brothers practiced no religion as adults. But I walked out of that mass, and I thought, well, okay, the separation of church and state seems like divine wisdom to me. And the historian in me likes the direct ties back to the Roman era, so I guess I can be catholic then.

You see, my initial adoption of catholicism was based on what Jesus has to say about Civics, and the fact that the Catholic church accepted it. 32 years later a Catholic bishop was telling me that if I voted for a Democrat it was a grave sin. And just like that, they broke the deal. Just like that, I had a huge crisis in regard to orthodoxy. But as to Jesus, I was sure separation of church and state was divine wisdom. Some Catholics in the hierarchy of the religion just rejected that. But we were learning how flawed so many of the catholic clergy was by then. I like the liturgy, but you can find it in other orthodoxies; Eastern Orthodox, Episcopalian/Anglican, Lutheran, and I assume others. I believe it was John Lewis Stephanson who said: “In the final analysis, we are all our own doctors of divinity.” Whatever orthodoxy you attend, your belief is going to be still be somewhat unique to yourself. In regard to the Catholic church, all those other religions allow their priest to marry. And once upon a time, Catholicism did too. So these other orthodoxies’ problems are not as severe as Catholicism. The problems in the Catholic church are equal to the extent Catholicism is not consistent with the teachings of Christ. I’m about to give some examples of how they miss some very important points, especially as regards to civics.

I have moments of deism. Perhaps moments of atheism. Religion is not my forte. Orthodoxy is not my forte. Faith is not my forte. (Along with other things, like math, spelling, grammar, and speed reading, amongst all the other things that are not my forte). If I have a forte, it might be analytical thinking, but its probably in the social sciences. It is probably in Geography and History, but consequently Civics is a stronger, rather than a weaker point – which is why I have this website. And over all, I’m rather strong in almost all fields classified as social science.

[Note that conceptually I am good at economics, but as economics gets dragged into applied math, I begin to lose interest.]

All of this is to say that while I am a Christian, I have enough agnosticism to be open minded about metaphysics beyond the faith laid out in the Nicean creed. Also, I have no problem with science. Religion addresses the question of “Why?” in regard to creation, science address the question of “How?” in regard to creation. In my mind they are perfectly compatible and when we know everything there is to know, they will harmonize and fit together perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle.

But getting back to my forte: Social Sciences. What Jesus has to say about civics is extremely sound.

One has to accept that Western Civilization is highly reliant upon what a first century carpenter had to say about civics, metaphysics and epistemology and theology and so on.

The more sophisticated one’s knowledge of civics, is, the more one is amazed at the coherent theory of civics that comes out of the Gospels.

Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz says the rise of the West has to do with how it found a way to ensure that truth prevailed. For that to happen we had to value it highly in the first place. It is central to how Jesus talks about truth, how he values it. Not every society values truth the same way. In the United States truth is ALWAYS a defense to slander. Not true in Korea and other some Confucian countries, which value saving face more. In South Korea, when I lived there, truth was never a defense to slander. South Korea is considered a Christian country. (Half of South Koreans are a-religious, of those that are religious, half are Buddhist, and half are Christian of about 4 or 5 sects, including about 7 million Catholics). Islam has an entire doctrine for deception (called Taqiyya).

So, you can see, the importance of how a culture’s values can shape it. Jesus put great emphasis on us searching for truth. He doesn’t put a gun to our head. We are given free will. He encourages us to pursue the search for truth. He spends much of the gospel trying to teach us how to look for it, how to recognize it (the fruit of the tree), what to beware of (like false prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothes), He promised us that truth will set us free. He also told us he is the truth. The theology is worked out in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal Son exercises his free will, it takes him far away, he has horrible experiences, and that eventually leads him back to his father. Essentially, that is all of our’s biographies told from God’s perspective. But critical to it all is truth and the freedom to seek it, and find it or not.

Consider what I learned from the discussion between the Orthodox Priest and the Evangelical Pastor. God created us with just enough freedom to not choose him and one of the first things we did was not choose him. And so the relationship was broken. Now consider – we are not created with total freedom: we didn’t choose our gender, we didn’t choose our intellects, and most of us did not choose our sexual orientation. (Gay people I’ve talked to said they knew they were gay long before they hit puberty). Be that as it may, we all have just enough freedom to not choose God. And the first thing we did was not choose him, and we still have a habit of not choosing him. The Catholic’s I think, refer that as original sin – you are guilty even before you are born. So at that point the relationship with God is broken, and we are be-damned. But God doesn’t want that for us. So through Christ, he provides us a way back to him, to fix the relationship, WITHOUT US LOSING OUR FREEDOM. (Now at this point, there is a fork in the road – most Christians believe Jesus pays for our sins – by living a perfect life, and yet suffering his passion [judgment, condemnation, torture, death and then rising again] – not all Christians believe that redemption was necessary [certainly the orthodox priest did not seem to think this – to him this was just Jesus call to us to follow him and his rising from death was to show us what he has planned for all of us. But my point in laying all this out is to emphasize the point of FREEDOM – or FREE WILL.

Good could have made us without free will in regard as to whether or not to choose him. He could have hard wired into us to do the right thing always – to always choose him – to not become broken from him in the first place. He could have made us that way. And if he had, we would have never not chosen him and we would have never broken our relationship with him and we would never have become broken, and if he had done that, he would have never had to come into our world to fix us, to restore our relationship with him, and would never have had to suffer his passion.

Please thing about what that means. Jesus did not come into the world just to save us. He came into the world to save us in the context of our freedom. Our having freedom – free will – is so important to him he’s willing to suffer the passion to ensure we have it and can still be saved for having it.

If it wasn’t for our freedom Jesus would have never have had to suffer his passion.

He wants us to have freedom. The price he pays for that is extremely high. Now think about the Pharisees asking him about paying the taxes. In truth its a sore spot for him. He wants us to exercise our freedom to seek the truth, so that we can arrive at him by our own volition – just like the Prodigal Son did. By separating Church and State, religion from civics, it means, that government, by definition must be secular. Why would he advocate for that? Maybe because a state that is secular is not trying to hammer a truth into us. A secular state then gives us a big head start – of a starting point in seeking the truth if we aren’t already hampered by an imposed truth – a politically imposed truth.

You can kind of read in between the lines, that Jesus is kind of ticked off in dealing with this. He knows he’s going to have to die, for the sake of our freedom. So he probably doesn’t like being dragged through this discussion and having to make this point. He could have said: “you do know I have come here so you can keep your freedom and still be saved, don’t you? You do know that I’m going to have to be whipped, tortured, tripped and murdered for this.

When I was 11 years old and the Priest said “Catholics believe in separation between Church and state” it was because Jesus commanded us to do that. And I thought it was divine wisdome then because it allowed us all to live in peace despite different religions.

30 years later I believed it was because Civics has to make ethical compromises that religious ethics cannot make. We know that gambling is a vice; drinking is a vice, divorce is prescribed by Jesus (another one of his very few commandments) and yes, even abortion is wrong. Back in the 1920s they prohibited alcoholic consumption as a matter of law. Very quickly we found that suppression of that vice, gave birth to even worse vices, gangsterism and mob warfare. So the secular state had to reverse the prohibition and allow for consumption of alcohol, even though a majority of Americans thought it was a sin. Once again, in a matter of civics, Jesus was right. Civics has to make compromises that religious ethics cannot – and so alcohol and many other vices and sins are legal.

So while I still believe that separation of church and state allows us all to live together more peaceably, I also believe it allows for a secular government to pursue sound civics, without having to distort that for religious ethics but the biggest reason is to allow all of use to have freedom to follow the Prodigal Son’s footsteps. Jesus wants us to find our way to him via our own volition, and only freedom will allow that.

Now, one evangelical preacher has said that the reason for this is that love can only exist in a context of freedom. We can’t find our way to love God, if we have a gun against our heads. Love can only manifest in its most meaningful sense, if one is free to not love. And so for that reason, Jesus suffered his passion.

So there are now three principles: Love, Freedom, and Truth. They are interlocking and interdependent, kind of like the trinity; how paradoxical.

So, there’s an enormous amount of profound consistency in the Gospels in regard to civics.

So Joe Stiglitz point is correct. Western Civilization was walking on the moon while Islamic civilization still had people living in ignorance and poverty in caves, and Confucianist societies were playing catch up while trying to save face.

Compared to other civilizations, the west was living a more fulfilling life, and I would argue, because it finally found its way to the Civics that Christ espoused in the Gospels – beginning with separation of church and state, but there is so much more. So let me continue

I think it can be argued that Christianity is a form of proto-socialism but Jesus does not advocate for ideology, be it socialism, fascist or capitalism. In fact he advocates away from any and all ideologies, for this see the parable of the Good Samaritan [the Jews follow their ideology, the Samaritan follows his values, then Jesus asks: who is the better neighbor?]. 

Civics is a good path towards recognizing the divine wisdom in Jesus teachings, but you need to really know and understand civics – not some 8th graders knowledge of civics but advanced civics. In the “Evolution of Cooperation” Univ of Michigan scholar Robert Axelrod proves, using game theory and game testing, the advantage that forgiveness proffers a society. (It’s a cheap and easy read, the thesis is laid out in the first 15 pages or so). 

Ideology, adhered to, no matter left or right, always leads to nihilism. That’s part of the lesson in the Good Samaritan parable.

Why does ideology always lead to nihilism?  Because ideology attempts to answer a question before it is asked.

Eventually reality serves up a context that renders the ideology absurd – leading to “we had to destroy the village in order to save the village” type of situations – true absurdity. 

I was raised catholic and still attend a catholic services on most Sundays (sometimes I attend Episcopalian) but Catholicism has some very well known problems. Those problems have to do with Catholicisms adherence to ideology. 

Catholicism could allow at least one order of priests to marry – but they don’t. As a result, especially in the 20th century, they allowed some very bad people who don’t want to be married to become Priests – they don’t want to become married because they were pedophiles and/or sex predators. The Church allowed them in and so they entered with the quid pro quo that these predators will reinforce the ideology and in return the church had a blind eye to their actions. So here is another incidence where adherence to ideology has, once again, delivered nihilistic tragedy, in this case, to the Mother Church of Western Christianity.

Jesus, in the parables, demonstrates an alternative to ideology. That alternative is value weighing pragmatism in the context where a decision is being made. The Jews in the Good Samaritan parable adhere to their ideology and avoid the injured man. The Samaritan weighs his values in the context and acts on the value that weighs most heavily on him. This is, in the event, a very simple and constant lesson taught in the Gospels. 

Should a man, on the sabbath, not be allowed to pick fruit from a tree if he is starving? The ideology of the Jews said he must starve, Jesus points out the absurdity of that.

The Catholic Church values love, and it values pro-creation. In the context that you have two people of the same sex who love each other, (created that way by God mind you, most people don’t have a choice when it comes to sexual orientation, and nobody knows that better than catholic clergy), do we throw out the former value (love) in favor of the latter value (pro-creation)? The Catholic Church, in adhering to its ideology, says yes, a Good Samaritan would not. 

I came by this wisdom studying law. (You can read a fuller story of this in Column C, “The Jurisprudence of the Carrot and the Stick” – on “Mechanisms in Civics”.) English Common Law is Judge made law. Judges were asked narrow questions, and provided narrow answers, (Situations like: “Your tree dropped an apple on my land, so who owns the apple? [that kind of question]). The Judges weighed values and interests of all the parties [the litigants + the king, who paid the judges salary] and rendered a decision that fit the context using common sense – and not ideology. Along the way, over the course of the better part of a millenium, they embraced every ideology possible where and when it made the most sense and ignored it where and when it did not. Over a millennium of thousands of decisions, they created a society that Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to as a patchwork of ideologies. 

On the soundness of this system, Anglo-Saxonism went from a small territory on a small Island, off a small continent to a global phenomenon. When I looked around for another example of values-weighed contextual based pragmatism, I finally found it in the Gospels.  How is it that the Catholic Church missed this? I doubt that they did. (I also wonder if they notice how the vatican can kind of look like a later-day Sanhedrin? I sure wish they’d get their act together on all of this.)

So Anglo-saxon societies (Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States) arrives at the 19th century with civics that includes “valued weighed contexed based pragmatism” as a system of law, separation of church and state, a value of truth and freedom in civics and other intellectual pursuits. These are all principles of civics that Christ taught. If you sow it all together, you see he has created a consistent comprehensive but complex system of civics. It just took us nearly 1800 years to implement it. Constantine may have set us back 1500 years when he made Christianity a state religion.

Those societies have thrived like nothing ever seen before. Then we go back and re-read John 10:10 – “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” You know, when it comes to civics, maybe Jesus just got lucky. Maybe its just coincidence that he left us with a widespread, complex, comprehensive system of civics, and maybe its just a coincidence or dumb luck that Western civilization made it to the moon before the end of the 2nd millennium. Maybe its just a coincidence that Western societies provide for a better way of life. But he did say he came so that we could have that.

Now, as to the doom continuum.

Per the Doom Continuum (See the Doom Continuum in Column “C” – Mechanisms in Civics).

Concentration of wealth caused the collapse of Ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom, the Roman Empire (Wealth had concentrated so much that 6 senators owned half of North Africa – the wealthy and powerful used their influence to avoid paying taxes, the Empire lacked the political will to raise armies to protect it’s borders – at a time it controlled all the resources of Western Civilizatation, when it iclude the Near East and North Africa — See Nobel Laureate, Douglas North’s “Structure and Change in Economic history, pages 100-115), Byzantium, Medieval Japan, Republic of Venice, Hapsburg Spain, Bourbon France, Romanov Russia, Coolidge/Hoover’s America (concentration of wealth/power was at an all time high, triggering the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Holocaust). of civic

The solution to the Great Depression was discovered in the Anglo-Saxon nations – a characteristically mixed economic systems, with socialist elements and capitalist elements where they makes sense. 

Every form of insurance is a form of socialism. The fire department saving your house is socialism. Making money from investments that’s capitalism. Our society is a patchwork quilt of ideologies – each used where they make sense, each ignored where they do not. Again, I think Jesus was espousing common sense, but once again, he was right.

The Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz says that the ascent of the West is the result of it finding a way to allow truth to prevail (academically). The value of truth is planted in Western civilization by Christ. The theology, and therefore the value, of freedom, free will, in the search for the truth is explained in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The separation of church (religion) from state was one of Jesus few commandments, but what other way to put us in a context where we can exercise our free will in the search for the truth?  In John 10:10 Jesus says “I have come so that they may have life and life in full filament.

It took more than a thousand years for value weighed pragmatism to manifest itself in England. The search for academic truth took off with the enlightenment. It wasn’t until 1791 when the American bill of right’s separated church from state officially. In doing all those things, Western Civilization took off.  In 1969, Christians were walking on the moon while Muslims were still living in caves, and Confucianist countries were playing catch up to save face – or, as Jesus might say, we were living life to the fullest. 

We know that ethics/decency/morality/values are a middle class characteristic: the rich don’t need them, and the poor can’t afford them.

We also know that poverty is a form of violence, – the worst kind (per Ganhdi) and that sometimes that violence manifest itself in the form of abortion. (There is little sense preaching antiabortionism to desperately poor people. They aren’t emotionally, intellectually or materially situation to hear such preaching, let alone act on it. Just like with prophibition of alcohol, the prohibition of abortion will not eliminate it, it will only created a black market where the poorest and weakest people in our society will have to absorb the violence of our choice to choose to allow poverty spread far and wide).

Maybe if we take better care of the poor, and workers, we won’t have to sturggle with violence and poverty and vice.

Maybe if the Catholic church got back to putting emphasis on Catholic Social teaching, the middle class would expand in both directions, and people would be more decent, more ethical, more moral and there would be less abortions, as well.

Again, the Catholic church knows all of this. Why are they acting as if they don’t? Is there another agenda with them besides what Jesus taught? What is the source or reason for their blindness?