Why Sexual Morality May be Far More Important than You Ever Thought · Fr. John Peck - by Kirk Durston

One winter afternoon I was relaxing with a half-dozen fellow graduate philosophy students discussing theories of law and punishment. About an hour into the discussion, it occurred to me that some moral laws are necessary because, although they might limit pleasure and enjoyment in the short term, they actually minimize suffering and maximize human fulfillment in the long term.  

A few days ago I finished studying Sex and Culture for the second time. It is a remarkable book summarizing a lifetime of research by Oxford social anthropologist J.D. Unwin.[1] The 600+ page book is, in Unwin’s words, only a “summary” of his research—seven volumes would be required to lay it all out.[2] His writings suggest he was a rationalist, believing that science is our ultimate tool of inquiry (it appears he was not a religious man). As I went through what he found, I was repeatedly reminded of the thought I had as a philosophy student: some moral laws may be designed to minimize human suffering and maximize human flourishing long term.

Unwin examines the data from 86 societies and civilizations to see if there is a relationship between sexual freedom and the flourishing of cultures. What makes the book especially interesting is that we in the West underwent a sexual revolution in the late 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s and are now in a position to test the conclusions he arrived at more than 40 years earlier.  

Unwin’s cultural categories

Unwin described four “great patterns of human culture” and degrees of flourishing measured in terms of architecture, art, engineering, literature, agriculture, and so forth. The primary criterion for classification was how they related to the natural world and the forces it contains.[3]

1.     zoistic: Entirely self-focussed on day-to day-life, wants, and needs, with no interest in understanding nature. Described as a “dead culture” or “inert”.

2.     monistic: Acquire superstitious beliefs and/or special treatment of the dead to cope with the natural world.

3.     deistic: Attribute the powers of nature to a god or gods

4.     rationalistic: Use rational thinking to understand nature and to make day-to-day decisions.

Unwin’s degrees of sexual restraint

Degrees of sexual restraint were divided into two major categores—prenuptial and postnuptial. Prenuptial categories were:[4]

1.     Complete sexual freedom—no prenuptial restraints at all

2.     Irregular or occasional restraint— cultural regulations require an occasional period of abstinence

3.     Strict Chastity —remain a virgin until married

Postnuptial categories were:[5]

1.     Modified monogamy: one spouse at a time, but association can be terminated by either party.

2.     Modified polygamy: men can have more than one wife, but a wife is free to leave her husband.

3.     Absolute monogamy: only one spouse permitted for life (or until death in some cultures) 

4.     Absolute polygamy:  men can have more than one wife, but wives must “confine their sexual qualities (i.e., activity) to their husband for the whole of their lives.”

So what did he find?

I have prepared a 26-page collection of quotes from his book that summarize his findings; but even that would leave you with a significant under-appreciation of the rigour and fascinating details revealed in data from 86 cultures. Here are a few of his most significant findings:

1.     Effect of sexual constraints: Increased sexual constraints, either pre or post-nuptial, always led to increased flourishing of a culture. Conversely, increased sexual freedom always led to the collapse of a culture three generations later. 

2.     Single most influential factor: Surprisingly, the data revealed that the single most important correlation with the flourishing of a culture was whether pre-nuptial chastity was required or not. It had a very significant effect either way.

3.     Highest flourishing of culture: The most powerful combination was pre-nuptial chastity coupled with “absolute monogamy”. Rationalist cultures that retained this combination for at least three generations exceeded all other cultures in every area, including literature, art, science, furniture, architecture, engineering, and agriculture. Only three out of the eighty-six cultures studied ever attained this level.

4.     Effect of abandoning prenuptial chastity: When strict prenuptial chastity was no longer the norm, absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking also disappeared within three generations.

5.     Total sexual freedom: If total sexual freedom was embraced by a culture, that culture collapsed within three generations to the lowest state of flourishing — which Unwin describes as “inert” and at a “dead level of conception” and is characterized by people who have little interest in much else other than their own wants and needs. At this level, the culture is usually conquered or taken over by another culture with greater social energy.

6.     Time lag: If there is a change in sexual constraints, either increased or decreased restraints, the full effect of that change is not realized until the third generation. (Note: I’ve added a clarifying footnote at the end of this article. See footnote #13)

How does this compare with our culture today?

Unwin published his findings in 1936, long before the sexual revolution that occurred in the West. We now have an opportunity to test his conclusions by observing if our own culture is following the predicted pattern. Unwin’s “generation” appears to be approximately 33 years, so it should take about a century for us to see the cultural changes take full effect, but we are far enough along in the process that we should be able to observe certain predicted effects.

We now have an opportunity to test his conclusions by observing if our own culture is following the predicted pattern.

Prior to the sexual revolution which began in the late 1960’s, prenuptial chastity was still held in strong regard by Western culture. But, starting in the 1970’s, pre-marital sexual freedom became increasingly acceptable. By the early 2000’s, the majority of teens  were sexually active, to the extent that remaining a virgin until marriage was regarded with disbelief if not ridicule. At the same time, our culture moved from a social norm of absolute monogamy to “modified monogamy”. 

Unwin’s predictions for our culture

Thanks to the rationalist generations that preceded them, the first generation of a society setting aside its sexual restraints can still enjoy its new-found sexual freedom before any significant decline in culture, but the data shows that this “having your cake and eating it too” phase lasts a maximum of one generation before the decline sets in. Unwin wrote:

The history of these societies consists of a series of monotonous repetitions; and it is difficult to decide which aspect of the story is the more significant: the lamentable lack of original thought which in each case the reformers displayed, or the amazing alacrity with which, after a period of intense compulsory continence (sexual restraint), the human organism seizes the earliest opportunity to satisfy its innate desires in a direct or perverted manner. Sometimes a man has been heard to declare that he wishes both to enjoy the advantages of high culture and to abolish compulsory continence. The inherent nature of the human organism, however, seems to be such that these desires are incompatible, even contradictory. The reformer may be likened to the foolish boy who desires both to keep his cake and to consume it. Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.[6]

Looking at our own sexual revolution, the “having your cake and eating it too” phase would have lasted into the early 2000’s. We are now at a stage where we should begin to observe the verification or falsification of Unwin’s predictions. 

Unwin found that when strict prenuptial chastity was abandoned, absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking disappeared within three generations.

Unwin found that when strict prenuptial chastity was abandoned, absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking disappeared within three generations of the change in sexual freedom. So how are we doing as we enter the second generation since our own sexual revolution at the end of the 20th century?

1.     As predicted, absolute monogamy has already been replaced with modified monogamy. Common-law relationships are becoming the norm. Although divorce occurred prior to the 1970’s, the mainstream of our culture still maintained the view that marriage should be for life, and common-law relationships were regarded with some distaste. That has clearly changed. Those who actually practice life-long commitments in marriage have become the minority, with couples born prior to the sexual revolution much more likely to maintain a life-long commitment in marriage.

2.     Deism is already rapidly declining, exactly as predicted. Prior to the 1960’s, a combination of rationalism and a belief in God was the norm for mainstream culture. Not only has belief in God greatly decreased since the 1960’s, but there has been a trend to remove the concept of God from government, the educational system, and the public forum. Those who still believe in God sense a strong societal pressure to keep deistic beliefs private. In its place, is a surprising rise in superstition,[7] classified by Unwin as a “monistic” culture, two levels down from the rationalist culture we had prior to the sexual revolution. There has also been a huge increase in the percentage of the population that classifies itself as non-religious, a symptom of the lowest, “zoistic” level of Unwin’s categories.[8]

3.     The swiftness with which rational thinking declined after the 1970’s is astounding. In its place arose post-modernism, characterized by “scepticism, subjectivism, or relativism” and “a general suspicion of reason”.[9] But it gets worse … post-modernism is giving way to “post truth”. In direct contrast to rational thinking, a post-truth culture abandons “shared objective standards for truth” and instead, stands on appeals to feelings and emotions, and what one wants to believe.[10] People can now “identify” themselves as something which flat-out contradicts science and rational thinking and, in many cases, receive the full support and backing of governments and educational systems. Not only do people feel they have a right to believe what they want, but any challenge to that belief, even if supported by truth and logic, is unacceptable and offensive. Here is a quote from Unwin that has become particularly a propos in the last couple decades since our own sexual revolution …

If I were asked to define a sophist, I should describe him as a man whose conclusion does not follow from his premise. Sophistry is appreciated only by those among whom human entropy is disappearing; they mistake it for sound reasoning. It flourishes among those people who have extended their sexual opportunity after a period of intense compulsory continence. [11]

Summary of where our culture is going, given Unwin’s findings

For the first part of the 1900’s, mainstream Western culture was rationalist and experienced enormous technological advances — from horse-and-buggy to cars; from hot air balloons to supersonic flight and spacecraft landing people on the moon; from slide rules to computers. Unwin’s three main predictions — the abandonment of rationalism, deism, and absolute monogamy — are all well underway, which makes the ultimate prediction appear to be credible … the collapse of Western civilization in the third generation, somewhere in the last third of this century. 

Unwin’s three main predictions — the abandonment of rationalism, deism, and absolute monogamy — are all well underway, which makes the ultimate prediction appear to be credible … the collapse of Western civilization in the third generation 

Will our culture be the exception?

I suppose we can hope, but there is always a tendency to want to believe “it cannot happen to us.” Unwin describes this attitude as a “pardonable egocentricity” and a “quaint and comfortable doctrine”, that flies in the face of data, which indicate that the pattern of decline happens with “monotonous” regularity. That’s another way of saying that “insanity is doing the same thing yet again but expecting different results.” The primary predictions are already unfolding with alarming “alacrity”.

Why is there such a “monotonous” perfect inverse correlation?

The old adage, “correlation does not entail causation”, probably holds true here as well. Unwin makes it clear that he does not know why sexual freedom directly leads to the decline and collapse of cultures, although he suggests that when sexual energy is restrained through celibacy or monogamy, it is diverted into more productive social energy.

Perhaps, but I find it difficult to accept it as a primary cause. Mary Eberstadt’s recent research into mass killings, the substantial rise in mental health issues including depression, and the explosion of identity politics is a “primal scream” due to the loss of identity that was once provided by growing up in a long-term, immediate family with siblings and a sizable group of cousins, aunts and uncles, all of which provided identity—essential for well-being. Eberstadt shows and documents from various studies that this decimation of the family was a direct consequence of the sexual revolution at the end of the 20th century.[11]

Eberstadt shows and documents from various studies that this decimation of the family was a direct consequence of the sexual revolution at the end of the 20th century.

Her research indicates that increased sexual freedom led to the decimation of the family, which resulted in the loss of family identity, which produces Eberstadt’s ‘primal screams’—a massive increase in mental health issues, mass killings, and the rise of extreme identity groups at war with each other … all symptoms of a society rapidly spiraling into collapse. This appears to have greater explanatory power than Unwin’s psychological suggestion, although the two may actually be closely related, given what Eberhardt shows.

Both Unwin and Eberstadt provide substantial evidence that a sexual revolution has long-term, devastating consequences for culture and civilization. As Unwin states, “The history of these societies consists of a series of monotonous repetitions,” and it appears that our civilization is following the same, well-travelled road to collapse. 

Back to the philosophical thought

So back to that afternoon in the philosophy seminar when it occurred to me that some moral laws will seem to limit human pleasure in the short term, but will prevent great suffering or maximize happiness and fulfillment in the long term. For years, it has been my thinking that God’s moral laws are not simply a bunch of arbitrary rules given to restrict mankind’s freedom. Instead, they are like operating instructions designed to spare people from suffering while maximizing human flourishing. Unwin’s and Eberstadt’s research provides strong rational justification for the inference that God’s moral laws pertaining to our sexuality, although they may restrain us from some immediate pleasure, protect us from enormous long-term suffering while maximizing our long term flourishing.

References and Notes:

1.     A downloadable, pdf version is available here.

2.     I have prepared a 26-page collection of quotes that can provide a more detailed understanding of Unwin’s book, but it is highly recommended that the reader, at minimum, at least skim Unwin’s book to get a better idea of the rigour and breadth of his research, as well as some of the many examples the data provides.

3.     See section 7, Unwin, page 13 for a fuller understanding of these terms.

4.     Unwin, page 341.

5.     Unwin, page 342

6.     Unwin, page 412

7.     See, for example, Stuart Vyse, ‘Why are millenials turning to astrology?’, Skeptical Inquirer, 2018. (https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/why_are_millennials_turning_to_astrology/) and Denyse O’Leary, ‘As traditionalism declines, superstition—not atheism—is the big winner’, Intellectual Takeout, 2018. https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/traditional-religion-declines-superstition-not-atheism-big-winner )

8.     Note: A non-religious culture is not necessarily an atheistic culture. They do not deny or accept the existence of God or gods. Rather, belief in a god or gods is simply not part of their lives; it is irrelevant.

9.     Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy

10.                        Description of Post Truth

11.                        Unwin, page 413

12.                        Mary Eberstadt, Primal Screams: How the sexual revolution created identity politics.

13.                        A loosening of sexual constraints probably does not occur in one year or even one decade. In our case, one could argue that the sexual revolution began in the late 1960’s, lasted throughout the 70’s and possibly into the early 1980’s. According to Unwin, only small changes in a culture occur in the first generation, due to the cultural ‘momentum’ of the previous generation, which still continues to be a heavy influence in the generation after the loosening (or strengthening) of sexual restraints. The changes become more prevalent in the second generation, but it is not until the third generation, after the initial generation has completely died off, that the changes reach their full effect, occurring rapidly over the course of that third generation. By the end of the third generation, the changes have fully taken place and the culture stabilizes at its new level. However, if it has stabilized at the highest level, then the flourishing of that culture continues to increase in subsequent generations (though Unwin observes that no culture maintains that state very long). If it has stabilized at the lowest level (i.e., a “collapse”), then that culture is destroyed from within, or conquered or taken over by a more “energetic” culture.

https://frjohnpeck.com/why-sexual-morality-may-be-far-more-important-than-you-ever-thought/

The West is a Third World Country: The Relevance of Philip Rieff - BY CARL RUSSELL TRUEMAN

Cultural conservatives face a time when it is not simply a question of debating the nature of our culture on some commonly agreed foundation. It is a time when we face the complete transformation of our culture into an anti-culture.

Perhaps one of the most confusing aspects of this present age is the sheer speed with which unquestioned orthodoxies—for example, the nature of marriage, or the tight connection between biology and gender, or the vital importance of free speech to a free society—are either crumbling before our eyes or have been completely overthrown. If cultural conservatives are to respond to these changes, it is not enough to address each of them as isolated, discrete phenomena. We must first understand them as symptomatic of deeper cultural pathologies; and that requires a broader theoretical framework that sets the iconoclasm of today in the context of wider, deeper, social and cultural changes.

One thinker who can help us with this is Philip Rieff. Rieff is today justly famous for his 1966 book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. With this remarkably prescient analysis of how personal, psychological well-being would become the primary purpose of life, Rieff spoke more truth than he could possibly have anticipated. The world in which we live today, where everything—even biological sex—is to be subordinated to how we feel inside, was barely conceivable in 1966. Today it is hard to imagine a world where the therapeutic is not normative.

Yet Rieff’s significance as a cultural critic is broader and greater than his analysis of Psychological Man, and it is here where he can help address that question of why we now have so much cultural iconoclasm of such speed and intensity. The key text is his posthumously published trilogy, Sacred Order/Social Order, where he reflects on the emerging culture of the West in a way that helps to clarify why our age subverts so much those institutions, beliefs, and practices that have traditionally defined Western civilization. The reason, Rieff argues, is a seismic change in how our society justifies its beliefs and practices, a change hundreds of years in the making whose results are now arriving thick and fast in the public square.

Sex, Religion, and Civilization

To grasp the underlying thesis of Sacred Order/Social Order, it is first helpful to understand something of Rieff’s debt to Sigmund Freud. Rieff was a scholar (and admirer) of Freud. His first major work was Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959), and his cultural criticism reveals debts to the psychoanalyst at several key points.

First, Rieff agrees with Freud that civilization is the result of a trade-off. For human beings, sex is the key to happiness; but if all human beings indulged their sexual instincts as they wished, there would be total chaos. Civilization therefore involves repressing and redirecting sexual urges so that people can live together in relative harmony. Nobody will enjoy perfect happiness—hence the “discontents” in the title of Freud’s famous essay, Civilization and Its Discontents—but more people will enjoy more happiness for longer than in a world of sexual anarchy. All that repressed sexual energy will go into cultural projects, such as art, music, and commerce.

We might summarize the implications of this by saying that, for Freud (and subsequently for Rieff), civilization is defined by what it forbids, particularly in the sexual realm. Culture is defined by that set of institutions, practices, and beliefs that inculcate and transmit these prohibitions from one generation to the next.

This leads to Rieff’s second debt to Freud in the realm of cultural criticism: the role of religion. For Freud, religion was an illusion. That is not primarily a statement about its metaphysical truth—though Freud was himself an atheist. Rather, it means that religion fulfills a specific purpose. It offers a picture of the world that grounds the prohibitions that constitute civilization in a transcendent order of being. For example, the Ten Commandments in the Bible are designed to reflect the character of God. They are therefore not presented as arbitrary, and they possess authority, not because they reflect the immanent concerns of Jewish culture, but because they are spoken by a creator and redeemer God.

Sacred and Social Orders

In Sacred Order/Social Order, Rieff offers a historical scheme for categorizing cultures in light of these basic insights. Rieff calls these First, Second, and Third World cultures. First Worlds are characterized by a variety of myths that ground and justify their cultures through something that transcends the immediate present. These might be the tales of the gods and heroes in the Iliad or the Norse sagas, the philosophy of Plato, or the mythic stories of origin found in Native American societies. Whatever their specific content, what they share in common is that they make the present culture accountable to something greater than itself. Rieff says that a belief in fate is perhaps the key here.

Second Worlds are characterized not by a belief in fate but by faith. The great examples would be Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, where cultural codes are rooted in the belief in a specific divine and sovereign being who stands over and above creation, and to whom all creatures are ultimately accountable. First and Second Worlds are similar in that both set their social order upon a deeper, even sacred, order. It is the Third World that represents a decisive rupture on this point.

Third Worlds are characterized by their repudiation of any sacred order. There is nothing in a Third World beyond this world by which culture can be justified. The implications of this are, according to Rieff, comprehensive and catastrophic. First, because of their rejection of a sacred order, Third World cultures face an unprecedented challenge: that of justifying themselves on the basis of themselves. No culture in history, Rieff notes, has ever done this successfully. It is a fool’s errand that ends in cultural collapse:

No culture in history has sustained itself merely as a culture, however attractive and authoritative. Cultures are dependent on their predicative sacred orders and break into mere residues whenever their predicates are broken. That is the main reason why our late second cultures and early thirds are increasingly unstable.

Living in a Third World Culture

To return to our initial question—why is so much traumatic cultural change occurring with such rapidity and intensity today—we can helpfully apply this scheme to our current context. The proliferation of identities and the consequent chaotic militancy of identity politics is inextricably related to the collapse of the sacred, to the demolition of any transcendent metaphysical basis on which a coherent social order might be founded. Even the question of “What is human nature?” becomes something impossible to answer with any degree of certainty or consensus.

Rieff also notes that Third Worlds are marked by scorn for the moral codes on which Second Worlds are based. They turn these into matters of scorn, and vice comes to be regarded as virtue, a message pressed with vigor by Third World cultural elites whose dominant attitude to any semblance of a sacred order is one of mockery, cynicism, and irony. Perhaps the Rolling Stones capture the Third World cultural mood best: “Now that every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints.” That neatly summarizes Rieff’s description of a dying society. The name of the song from which those lyrics come? “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Third World culture is, of course, the culture of the Psychological Man and the therapeutic quest for well-being that Rieff so brilliantly described in his earlier works. If there is nothing beyond this world for which to strive, or by which we are held accountable, the gravitational pull toward personal happiness as the purpose of life becomes irresistibly strong, and the rationales for repression become increasingly weak.

Again, we might apply this therapeutic aesthetic to our current context. What is the increasingly thin foundation on which today’s sexual codes are built? Mere consent. It is not the intrinsic nature of the individual sexual act that renders it unacceptable today. Rather, it is whether those involved are willing participants. Negotiating personal desire, and not objective moral judgments, has become the ethical order of the day.

This leads to a second point: Third Worlds inevitably tend toward individual, personal hedonism. That means that the purpose of sex will be transformed, and the taboos surrounding it abolished. Abortion is emblematic of this. It shatters the idea of sex as having a teleological purpose in reproduction, and it removes evidence of past sexual activity. All that is really significant in the act of intercourse is the moment of sexual encounter and the instant of passing pleasure it provides. This hedonism undermines the prohibitions on incest, homosexuality, and any other kind of sexual coupling one cares to imagine. It furthers the idea that such taboos are arbitrary at best, and thus ripe for abolition.

The Anti-Culture and Its Deathworks

Given that Rieff believes cultures to be defined by what they prohibit, particularly in the sexual realm, the Sadean vision of the Third World as one of the abolition of sexual codes, of “forbidding to forbid,” has far-reaching significance. Indeed, it leads Rieff to call this type of culture an anti-culture. Its purpose is not to transmit beliefs and practices from one generation to the next. Its purpose is quite the opposite: to shatter past values and to engage in the constant revolutionizing of beliefs and behavior. While all First and Second World cultures acknowledged the reality of transgression, in the Third World transgression becomes the norm. In fact, given that it is forbidden to forbid, the very concept of transgression ceases to have any stable meaning.

There are two other distinctive pathologies of the Third World that we see all around us and that Rieff argues are unprecedented. First: the cultural elites, committed to the Third World project, are essentially proponents of anti-culture. In the past, elites worked to transmit the sacred order/social order from generation to generation. Not anymore. Iconoclasm is cool and liberating

Second, this iconoclastic destruction of the older culture is conducted by means of the characteristic “cultural” production of both latter-day Second Worlds and nascent Third Worlds: the deathwork. A deathwork is something that takes the idioms of the Second World and subverts them in a way that destroys the very foundations on which the social order was built. Examples he gives include the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, Serrano’s Piss Christ, and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. All in their different ways mock the values of religion while proposing nothing of any great significance to replace it.

A good example of how this plays out in our world is provided by the fate of the concept of sexual modesty. In a Second World, debates about modesty would concern its definition and limits, because the concept itself is grounded in a higher authority. In a Third World, that foundation has gone, and the concept itself is therefore not simply to be revised but rather to be abolished. This is achieved via various means: for example, the prevalence of pornography and the constant ridiculing by the elites of those ideals that originally gave sex meaning and significance, such as chastity, self-control, monogamy, and so on.

If we truly want to understand not just the individual symptoms but the underlying causes of our current cultural chaos, we should ponder Rieff’s later works. His approach to culture gives us insights into much of what is happening around us in terms of its content, its speed, and its intensity. The adulation of iconoclastic figures such as rock stars, the constant sneering at traditional Second World beliefs and social practices in movies and on television, and the popularity of the vulgar, amoral anarchy of reality TV—these all represent aspects of the Third World and its deathworks and anti-culture. Even the cynical irony with which many of us are tempted to view the world is a deathwork. And that is depressing because it shows the depth of the problem. We live at a time when it is not simply a question of debating the nature of our culture on some commonly agreed foundation. It is a time when we face the complete transformation of our culture into an anti-culture.

Rieff’s approach is not without its problems of classification. For example, is militant Islam—of the kind represented by Islamic State—an example of a Second World sacred order or a deathwork? In other words, is it seeking to ground culture on the transcendent? Or is it trying simply to smash the culture that exists? Perhaps it is a form of Fascism in religious garb, as some have cogently argued.

Either way, Rieff’s basic insights seem sound, and there is no doubt that the overall picture is bleak. Cultural conservatives (in the true and literal sense of the term) are not engaging opponents with whom they simply disagree about the content of culture. They disagree with them on what exactly culture is: either it is something grounded in a sacred order or it is something free-floating and up for grabs. Those are incommensurable positions. If Rieff is right, the prospect for improvement is minimal. As Nietzsche’s Madman pointed out many years ago, if you unchain the earth from the sun, you end up plunging into total darkness.

About the Author

CARL RUSSELL TRUEMAN

Carl R. Trueman teaches in the Calderwood School of Arts and Letters at Grove City College, PA. He writes regularly for Modern Reformation and for First Things.

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/02/49239/

Matt's Musings: The Pharisees Weren’t Church Leaders (They were more than that!)

So often you will hear like for like comparisons made between church leaders and Pharisees. People will say stuff like: Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for the religious leaders. A famous passage where Jesus does this is Matthew 23 where Jesus gives us such pearlers as: “2 The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger” (vv.2-4). Or how about this: “15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (v.15). Or this one here, “You blind fools” (v.17). “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness” (v.27). And my favourite verse in this whole passage - “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (v.33).

So, they were lazy, hypocritical, whitewashed tombs, snakes, vipers, and children of hell. I could give you a rundown of modern versions of all these insults, but I want to keep my job as a pastor, so I’ll let your imagination run wild. But suffice it to say Jesus hammers these mongrels with enough invective that we can pretty accurately declare that he didn’t like these guys at all.  

Now, the common, and very powerful application that is often made is as mentioned above: Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for the religious leaders, and therefore so should we. And there is certainly more than a grain of truth in this, as the Pharisees were religious, they were often leaders, and as Jesus said, they sat in Moses’ seat. This application is then further extended to filter down to every level of the church leadership, and then on to all Christians who have what is considered unreasonably high standards of behaviour, or are considered too judgemental, or who add to the commands of scripture, or who nullify passages of scripture because of certain traditions, etc. Every Christian is aware of the way this teaching on Jesus' anger towards Pharisees is used to challenge church culture.

I have made many similar applications myself in many sermons over the years. And I will put my hand up and admit to being a Pharisee more than once, and I take very seriously the need to examine myself, reserve judgement, and seek not to put burdens on people with my teaching, so as to not be a Pharisee in practice. But I know I don’t do it perfectly, I admit that, many of us Christians fail in this regard more than we should.

Now there are those who see Jesus attacking these religious leaders and they add this to their application of this passage: you should never use such strong or harsh language with non-believers, because Jesus only reserved it for Christian leaders. But here is the quandry: the Pharisees weren’t church leaders. So, to compare them to church leaders is not quite exact or completely accurate.

The Pharisees would better be described as thought leaders, culture leaders, culture pushers, or even culture watch dogs. Some of them would have been synagogue leaders, and members of the Sanhedrin, or part of the Levitical priesthood, etc. But there is a really big difference between Jewish culture in the 1^st century AD and our culture in the modern West that people often miss: the Jews in first century Israel, and indeed prior to that century, lived in a culture that did not separate the Church and the state, as we do in our modern culture. Therefore, in their culture there wasn’t a distinction between the religious leaders, and secular leaders, there was just the leaders. Our modern culture has, to a large degree, split the leadership of the church, and the wider society apart. Where, apart from the occasional exception, religious leaders and, say, government leaders, or culture leaders are not the same thing.

So, it would be much more accurate to say that Jesus was attacking the leaders of the Jewish people. When he says that they sat in Moses’ seat this means that they sat in the role of judgement of the people on what was right and what was not right. Moses was a prophet, he was a Levite, but he was also a judge who had to determine what we would consider both civil and religious matters of law. So being in Moses’ seat would include our modern equivalent of religious leaders, and it would also include, judges, politicians at every level, media commentators, opinion journalists, and many other people in our modern culture.

Indeed, if I were to explain it this way: the Pharisees were the equivalent of the thought police in their day, who rallied up antagonism against those who broke social taboos, expected synagogue leaders to tow their very strict, but to some degree subjective, interpretation of a morality code, who got people fired and persecuted for not living according to their values, and made everyone around them walk on egg shells regarding what they said and did…who would this remind you off?

Well it sounds so much more like the modern progressive left than the actual Church in 2019.

Don’t get me wrong the Church has engaged in such behaviour at different points in the past, and likely will again in the future. But the Church is no longer the dominant cultural force in modern Australia. People don’t get harassed at work for not wearing crosses, or Jesus fish, and not celebrating Christmas. They get harassed at work for not wearing rainbow flags, or celebrating pride month, or sharing Bible teachings that contradict our sexular culture.

The new cultural leaders have a very different ideology to the Pharisees of the 1^stcentury, but they are the exact same type of person: they are the people who want to enforce their morality on others, who make others feel judged and pressured into complying, and who, even though they are a minority, punch above their weight precisely because they are so radical.

So, when you realize that Jesus wasn’t talking to church leaders, he was talking to culture leaders in a religious society, and that equivalent people in culture can be found both inside the church, and outside the church, then you realize that Jesus didn’t reserve his harshest words just for corrupt religious leaders. He reserved his harshest words for leaders who harm people. He reserved his harshest words for leaders who police people according to ridiculous standards of morality, they themselves don’t even try to uphold. He reserved his harshest words for those who like whitewashed tombs virtual signal on the outside, but on the inside have evil intentions, and love the attention virtual signalling affords them.

If you took a Pharisee and transported him to today’s world, he might not recognize much of the world we live in today. But he would work out pretty quickly who to cosy up to so that he could gain the social recognition in society he craved, and it would be just as likely he found those people outside the church as in it.  

If this is the case, and it surely is the case, then maybe we in the church should not get so pedantic and precious when every now and then someone responds to the Pharisees of the modern sexual culture in the same way Jesus spoke to the Pharisees of his day. Every culture has its harmful culture police, who place insane burdens on people’s backs. And in every culture they should be challenged by those who believe in the beautiful, the good, and the true, whether they go to church or not. And if sometimes they are harsh, like Jesus was harsh to the Pharisees in sharing his message, then that's ok. There are many things we should imitate Jesus in, and one of those things we should imitate is Jesus' anger towards leaders, whether thought leaders, culture leaders, or other people powerful people, who harm people with their ridiculous virtue signalling moral policing. The next time you see someone challenging the cultural progressives the way Jesus challenged the Pharisees, harshly, rather than simply telling them to be more polite, stop for a moment and ask yourself: might their anger be warranted? There are times when it is the only just response. We should be slow to anger, but not so slow that we allow people to be harmed.         

http://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-pharisees-werent-church-leaders.html

So...who is Antonio Gramsci? - By Bionic Mosquito (on the purposeful destruction of Western Culture)

Appendix I

As it plays a critical part in the story, I must comment on the purposeful destruction of Western Culture, best explained by Antonio Gramsci (emphasis added):

While firmly committed to global Communism, [Gramsci] knew that that violence would fail to win the West. American workers (proletariat) would never declare war on their middle class neighbors as long as they shared common Christian values. So the Italian communist — a contemporary of Lenin — wrote an alternative plan for a silent revolution. The main weapons would be deception, manipulation and infiltration. Hiding their Marxist ideology, the new Communist warriors would seek positions of influence in seminaries, government, communities, and the media.

Gramsci himself rejected Christianity and all its transcendent claims. Nevertheless, he knew Christian culture existed…. For that was the force binding all the classes… into a single, homogeneous culture. It was a specifically Christian culture, in which individual men and women understood that the most important things about human life transcended the material conditions in which they lived out their mortal lives.

The first phase in achieving “cultural hegemony” over a nation is the undermining of all elements of traditional culture.

He has a thing for Christian culture, don’t you think?

What does this have to do with my theory of history?  Disallow others from controlling.  Common culture provides governance with much less government.  Destroy common culture and you inherently invite more government, more control.

But why the focus by Gramsci (and others, continuing to this day) on Western, Christian culture?  Why not African culture, Chinese culture, whatever?

From which culture came forth the idea of liberty, from the earliest days of the Middle Ages?  Where was the highest level of liberty achieved (over a meaningful population) by man on earth?

That’s why.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/06/bionic-mosquito/1-target-marxists/

"We Europeans Are Christians": Christmas Address 2017 by Viktor Orbán - Hungary PM

Today the attack is targeting the foundations of our life and our world. They do not want us to be who we are; they want us to change. By the light of Christmas candles we can clearly see that when they attack Christian culture they are also attempting to eliminate Europe…

Editor’s Note: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary delivered this Christmas Address on December 27, 2017.

We await the Christian world’s great festival: the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. In silent waiting we raise our eyes, we free ourselves from the worries of everyday life, and the soul’s horizon opens up. In this special atmosphere we can sum up the past year and think once more about the nature of our tasks in the world for the year ahead.

Whether or not we admit it or realise it, we Europeans live in a culture ordered in line with the teachings of Christ. Here I can quote the well-known words of an earlier Hungarian prime minister, the late József Antall: “In Europe, even an atheist is Christian.” We Hungarians rightly regard ourselves as a Christian nation. Our mother tongue, through which we have grasped and shaped reality, is not related to that of any other European nation. This also has valuable consequences.

From Mihály Babits we know that the Hungarian spirit was born when our Eastern character met Western Christian culture. And we can add that this was the source of the Hungarian worldview and mentality. But this has also caused much difficulty, incomprehension, loneliness and, occasionally, a feeling of being strangers to those around us. Nevertheless, for a thousand years our Christian essence and our living faith have kept us in the heart of Europe. This is why, right down to the present, we remain true to the culture of our mother tongue, and we are proud of the contribution made to the rise of Europe by our nation’s achievements over the course of a millennium.

According to the Gospel of Saint Mark, Christ’s second commandment is “Love your neighbour as yourself.” There has been much talk of Christ’s commandment in Europe nowadays. It is used to rebuke us for declaring ourselves to be Christian, while at the same time declaring that we do not want millions of people from other continents settling in Europe—and that we even refuse to let them in.

But this commandment consists of two parts, and our accusers have forgotten the second part: we must love our neighbour, but we must also love ourselves. Loving ourselves also means accepting and protecting everything that embodies what we are and who we are. Loving ourselves means that we love our country, our nation, our family, Hungarian culture and European civilisation. Within these contexts, our freedom—Hungarian freedom—has unfolded, and can unfold, time after time.

For centuries our lives were shaped by the knowledge that Hungary’s freedom was also a guarantee of Europe’s freedom. It was with this sense of mission that we stood our ground during the period of Ottoman conquest, it was this which sharpened the blades of Petőfi and his fellow rebels, and it was this which emboldened the Lads of Pest. Our Fundamental Law says, “We are proud that our king Saint Stephen built the Hungarian state on solid ground and made our country a part of Christian Europe one thousand years ago”, and “We recognise the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood”.

When we draw the boundaries of our identity, we mark out Christian culture as the source of our pride and sustaining strength. Christianity is a culture and a civilisation. It is within this that we live. The essence is not how many people go to church, or how many pray with true devotion. Culture is the reality of everyday life: how we speak and behave towards one another; the distance we keep from one another and how we approach one another; how we enter this world, and how we leave it. For European people, Christian culture determines the morals of our daily lives. In borderline situations, this gives us a benchmark and a compass. Amidst the contradictions of life, Christian culture shows us the way. It determines our understanding of justice and injustice, the relationship between men and women, family, success, work and honour.

Our culture is the culture of life. Our starting-point—the alpha and omega of our philosophy of life—is the value of life, the dignity that every person has received from God. Without this we could not evaluate “human rights” and similar modern conceptions. This is why we doubt whether we can export this into the life of civilisations built on other foundations.

The fundamental elements of European life are now under attack. There is now a threat to the self-evident nature of European life: those things one should not need to think deeply about, but on which one only has to act. The essence of culture is that if it is not self-evident, we the people will lose our reference points: one will have no footholds, and one will have nothing against which to check one’s clock or one’s compass. Regardless of whether or not we attend church—or if so, which one we attend—we do not want to be forced to celebrate Christmas behind drawn curtains to avoid hurting the feelings of others.

We do not want our Christmas markets to be rebranded, and we definitely do not want to have to retreat behind concrete barriers. We do not want our children to be deprived of the joys of Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus and the Christmas angels. We do not want to be robbed of the Feast of the Resurrection. We do not want our religious festivals and ceremonies to be haunted by anxiety and fear. We do not want our women and daughters to be molested in crowds of New Year’s Eve revellers.

We Europeans are Christians. All this is ours, and this is how we live. Hitherto we have seen it as natural that Jesus was born, died on the cross for us and then rose from the dead. For us our religious festivals are self-evident, and we look to them to give meaning to our everyday lives. Culture is similar to the human body’s immune system: as long as it is working properly, we do not even notice it. It becomes noticeable and important to us when it is weakened. When crosses are airbrushed from photographs, when people seek to remove the cross from a statue of Pope John Paul II, when they try to change how we celebrate our festivals, then every right-thinking European citizen bristles with anger. This is also true of those for whom Christianity—as Gyula Juhász brilliantly put it—is “just paganism with holy water”. And it is even true of those like Oriana Fallaci, who feared for Europe as “an atheist Christian”.

Today the attack is targeting the foundations of our life and our world. Europe’s immune system is being deliberately weakened. They do not want us to be who we are. They want us to become something which we do not want to be. They want us to mix together with peoples from another world and, so that the process will be smooth, they want us to change. By the light of Christmas candles we can clearly see that when they attack Christian culture they are also attempting to eliminate Europe. They want to take our life from us, and exchange it for something that is not our life. In return for the life we have lived up to now they are promising one which is new and more enlightened. This, however, is a utopia: not the essence of real life, but distilled from abstract, theoretical sophistry. Utopias are dreams: potentially wonderful, and therefore alluring. But they are just as incoherent, impenetrable, obscure and meaningless as dreams are. One cannot live in them, or be guided by them.

We cannot claim that Christian culture is the peak of perfection. This is precisely the key to Christian culture: we are aware of imperfection, including our own imperfection; but we have learned to live with this, to draw inspiration from it and to derive impetus from it. This is why for centuries we Europeans we have been striving to improve the world. The gift borne by imperfection is that we are given the opportunity to improve. Those who promise a beautiful, new, mixed world now want to take this opportunity from us. Now they also want to destroy everything that we must preserve for future generations; our duty to do so is derived from the knowledge that, when called upon to do so, our ancestors shed blood to preserve it for us.

Although the fact was forgotten for a while, ever more frequently nowadays I hear that sixty years ago the European Union’s founding fathers marked out the route: Europe, as Robert Schuman said, will be Christian, or it will be nothing. The year 2017 has presented European countries with a historic task. A new task has been given to the free nations of Europe and the national governments elected by free citizens: we must protect Christian culture. We must do this not to oppose others, but to defend ourselves, our families, our nation, our countries and Europe, “the homeland of homelands”.

In 2017 we also saw that leaders of the European countries approach the task in different ways: there are those who say that this problem does not exist; others believe that this is progress itself; and still others have set out on the path of surrender. There are also some who sit on their hands and wait for someone else to solve this problem for them. Hungary’s one-thousand-year history proves that we are not like this. We tread a different path. Our starting-point has always been that we have the right to our own life. And we have defended this right whenever we have had the strength to do so. That is why for years we have been working to strengthen Hungary so that it can finally stand on its own feet again.

As far as 2018 is concerned, we can say that for as long as the national government leads the country, we shall work intelligently, calmly but uncompromisingly to ensure that our homeland remains a Christian culture and a Hungarian country. And we shall do our utmost to ensure that Europe remains European.

 I wish everyone a Happy Christmas.

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http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/12/viktor-orban-european-christian-christmas-address-2017.html