The price of rebellion is always going to be darkness

"You are not your own."

- Paul, in his first letter to the church at Corinth

Do you ever come across a book, essay or article that really sticks to your ribs and then, over the course of a few days, run into some other reading matter with which it exquisitely dovetails, leading to a thought process that won't let you go?

That has just happened to me, and, of course, I've been compelled to write an LITD post as a result.

I'm going to start with the second of the two writings, though.

It's your must-read for today, this weekend, this month, maybe this year. I'll be amply excerpting from it here, but do check out the entire thing.

It's an Anthony Esolen essay at Public Discourse entitled "When Reason Does Not Suffice: Why Our Culture Still Accepts Abortion." His basic point is that abortion is ultimately one aspect of a larger spiritual-cultural dilemma that humanity must resolve if it is to survive.

He begins by asking why there is still significant public support for abortion, even though all the excuses for it have been debunked.

We have known that it is never medically indicated to kill a late-term child rather than to deliver it alive by Caesarean section. We have made the moral arguments to distinguish abortion from medically necessary procedures that save a mother’s life but that have as an unintended side effect the death of the fetus. We have met the objection that we care only for the life of the newborn and not for the mother and the growing child, by establishing and funding all kinds of crisis pregnancy centers (which the pro-abortion people have tried very hard to shut down), homes for unwed mothers, and adoption agencies (which the pro-gay-marriage people have threatened with destruction, unless we subordinate our faith and our reason to their passions sexual and political).

There's something deeper at work than the levels on which these arguments are put forth and addressed. It is, in its essence, the fact about us as humans that I have put in boldface. It's a little jarring on first reading, so go over it a few times and let it really sink in.

“Our problem is to achieve detachment,” says Leclerq, because “worldly goods are a tyrant,” especially when, as in the modern west, “the whole existing civilization centers on productive labor.” But “love of money is a mortal sin, because it alienates the mind from God.” We are terrified of the freedom that real poverty holds forth to us. We fear even the freedom that detachment offers. It feels better to be a slave with good meals every day, a job with a fancy title, and a cavernous home not smudged by the fingers of many playful children than to be free and in the hands of God.

Here Leclerq connects the high voltage with the steel pole: “We must note the connection between poverty and humility . . . that virtue by which man acknowledges his dependence as a creature on his creator.” That acknowledgment is easy so long as we keep it theoretical. When it makes demands on us, to renounce our attachment to things, then do we behave like the rich man in Jesus’ parable, who builds his barns as big as he can. “The rich and powerful trust in themselves,” says Leclerq, “and feel no need to turn to God for help.”

Poverty begetting freedom? Wow, is that ever the exact opposite of the message with which we're generally inculcated.

Rants against materialism are not at all uncommon. In fact, they're so dime-a-dozen that we've become inured to them. But maybe a reason for that is that what we should be rather than materialistic is so seldom discussed with any specificity.

And abortion does not exist in a vacuum. It's not a "social issue" to be placed on a checklist, but rather one manifestation of our willful divorce from our humanity.

Every time a man and woman go to bed together to do the child-making thing, the question is present, because they may make a child. To say, “You may not kill the child you make,” is to imply, “You have no business doing this thing in bed, if you are in no position to care for a child.” To imply that is to imply that we are not the lords of our bodies. The earth heaves from beneath us.

For then the entire “culture” of sexual autonomy is to be rejected. Feminism, which is based on a separation of woman’s interest from man’s interest, and of either interest from that of the child, is to be rejected. Man’s use of woman for sexual release, without reference to the family, is to be rejected. The nightmare world of pharmaceutical and surgical mutilation, to try to squeeze the body into the phantasmagorical molds of the imagination, is to be rejected. Sodom and Gomorrah are to be rejected, Seattle and Portland, Hollywood and Wall Street, Yale and Princeton, insofar as they build upon sexual autonomy as allowing for, and lubricating the quest for, avarice in all its forms, are to be rejected. Man is for woman, and woman for man, and both together for the child.

Then let the pro-life movement be advised. We are really asking for a moral revolution. If the child lives, the mother’s life will not be the same, because if we accept the principles that allow the child to live, none of our lives can be the same. There is no way to guarantee, as some pro-life people seem to want us to do, a world safe for the unborn child that is also a world of total sexual and economic autonomy. In any world in which autonomy is the highest ideal, the child—that incarnate sign of our dependence and existential poverty—must go. 

Now, the other piece of writing referred to above is a book I was given as part of a swag bag at a luncheon I attended last week. The luncheon featured a speaker, Kevin DeYoung, whose topic was Biblical Complimentarianism. The talk was part of the three-day national convention of The Gospel Coalition, of which DeYoung is the board chair.

The book is Men and Women: Equal Yet Different by Alexander Strauch. I've been reading it since last Thursday, and it's bringing up my stuff.

I'm still new enough to real Christianity that some doctrinal tenets just hit me like sour musical notes. I spent so many decades in the secular-agnostic trenches, sort of adhering to a quasi-Eastern, all-is-one spiritual outlook, yet refusing to relinquish my intellect's role as the captain of my journey through life, that I still have to occasionally wrestle with "because the word of God says so" as the answer to anything I come across.

So I've found myself on the verge of playing gotcha with Strauch and his argument.

Early on, he points out that the two main approaches to man-woman relations within a Christian framework are complimentarianism, which he espouses, and feminist evangelism, which posits that there were no specific gender roles prior to the fall depicted in Genesis, so that pre-fall state is what we should aspire to. And I'll be candid; I've found myself thinking that the latter had the better argument.

I've found myself thinking, in response to the assertion made plain in his book's title, "Mister, you say that, and then you spend the rest of your book stressing that men are to lead and women to submit."

He helps a guy like me inch toward being convinced Chapter Three, when he says

Christian marital submission does not mean that

• The wife is inferior
• The wife is to be passive or surrender all independent thought
• The husband is to stifle the wife's creativity, gifts or individuality
• The wife is to do everything the husband demands or that the husband is to oppress the wife
• The wife is to enable the husband's sin or irresponsibility
• The wife is to live with a psychologically dangerous  or abusive man

Still, how can one possibly say that these two genders are equal if one leads and one submits? A bit further on, he reminds us that the point of a man and woman getting married is to become one flesh. It is the same principle one sees regarding the right arm and left arm, or, probably more to the point, head and heart. Distinct body parts, yet mutually dependent and also part of one organism. This marital unit exists for a purpose, a purpose designed by God: to further His Kingdom and glorify Him

Strauch also alludes to a broader argument, one that I have discussed here at LITD as I've grappled with this matter. The world is constructed patriarchally. Most heads of kingdoms, empires, and nation-states have been men, as have their generals. Most scientists, discoverers, philosophers and artists have been men. The founders of the world's great religions have all been men. That last point brings us back to a spiritual level of delving into this. Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, was a man. He spoke at great length about his Father.

And it is to that Father that a husband and wife are to be looking, with eyes affixed Heavenward in unison.

The union itself was designed by Him, for His purposes. Marriage is not for economic or social advantage, or to maximize the quality of any children's genetic stock, or even because we've found someone who is fun to hang out with. It is to deepen our humanity by submitting (there's that word again) to the bond that gives us our best glimpse at what relationship with Him looks like.

And, to come full circle, this is not abstract theology. It has real-world implications for the wholly innocent and wholly needful babies that one creates either by engaging in physical marital love or by engaging in recreational sex.

Esolen ends his piece with this line:

The serpent says we shall be as gods. That is the argument we must defeat.

Exactly so. The serpent basically argued to Eve, "Oh, come on, do you see any difference between this apple tree and the others? Aren't you the least bit curious as to whether the fruit is any different? And, besides, when was the last time you saw Him?"

I imagine her as putting up at least a feeble argument along the lines of, "No, He said not to eat of that one tree."

But the serpent got to her. It convinced her that she could be her own deity. She decided she could choose any way she pleased.

That she did not have to submit.

 We all still do that.

And then all Hell breaks loose.