“Modern pluralism not only represents a multiplicity of ways of perceiving and comprehending the world but also a multiplicity of plausibility structures that make those perceptions credible in the first place. Put another way, fragmentation not only occurs among worldviews, but in the social structures that support those worldviews. The number and variety of cultural systems means that the social conditions supporting any particular belief system are necessarily weaker. Belief is certainly possible, but it is necessarily different. The confidence borne from beliefs that are taken for granted typically gives way to belief plagued by ambivalence and uncertainty. The uncertainty is not a matter of insufficient will or deficient commitment but a natural social psychological reaction to weakened plausibility structures. In such circumstances, one is no longer enveloped by a unified and integrated normative universe but confronted by multiple and fragmented perspectives, any or all of which may seem, on their own terms, eminently credible. This social situation obligates one to choose, but once the choice is made – given the ubiquitous presence of alternatives in a market culture oriented toward consumer choice – one must reaffirm that choice again and again. These are social conditions that make faithfulness difficult and faithlessness almost natural.” (James Davison Hunter, To Change the World, pp. 202–203)

What, you ask, might these be? Well, don’t strain your imagination. The Prohibitionists make Egan think of “the increasingly unpopular Tea Party” – who else?

What (he asks with Okrent) could possibly have led people a century ago to embrace such a “social engineering nightmare” as Prohibition? “How did a freedom-loving people decide to give up a private right that had been freely exercised by millions upon millions since the first European colonists arrived in the New World?” I confess, my first thought on reading this was what Egan’s question might have to do with Obamacare, but for some reason his mind went elsewhere: how can freedom-loving people be so enamored of a political outfit (think headdresses and barrels of tea) that promises “to amend the Constitution in several ways to take away freedoms”? One such amendment “would prevent gays from ever getting married. Another would outlaw a woman’s right to decide when to end a pregnancy.” And so on.

Which just goes to show what a difference presuppositions make. My assumption (whether shared by the Tea Party, I couldn’t say) is that government is accountable to a higher and divine Lawgiver; that its laws must be good in His eyes; and that where it has not been given jurisdiction to act, it has no authority to act. (I know, I’m about 150 years behind the times, but then, that’s not so very long.) Egan’s assumptions have little to do with transcendent things: his bottom line is a fairly foggy, but all-embracing, notion of individual rights. Government must preserve the individual’s right to act as he or she pleases, without moral imposition. (It’s a fetus, not a child, as any idiot knows – Justice Blackmun said so! And don’t tell me your stupid metaphysical ideas about the non-interchangeability of men and women should have the force of public policy; any fool knows men and women are interchangeable where consensual sex is concerned!) On the other hand (and here’s where the foggy part comes in), government shall ensure the physical and psychological well-being of its citizenry, even if it means doing so by force. If you want to kill one of your children in the womb (my mistake: “reduce” your pregnancy), government will stand by and cheer. It will, however, insist that you use its health care plan to cover the expenses . . . or else. Oh, and if you make too much money, it will tax the hell out of you (at gunpoint, so to speak) to make sure your neighbor’s retirement, groceries, fuel, post office, education, senator’s salary (including retirement), and Xbox Halo are comfortably paid for.

Beware the purists, my friends. They’re everywhere.

As I write this, thanks to storm Irene, we are nearing thirty-six hours without electricity (except what can be run in the window from our van). What’s odd about this little episode of inconvenience is that I’m actually dreading its coming to an end (the Long Island Power Authority assures us it eventually will). I’ve learned – and remembered – some things about the world during the past few days, things that seem valuable enough to record.

Time has slowed to a crawl in the hours since early Sunday morning. The reason isn’t far to seek: I have much, much more time at my disposal. People can’t reach me on either land line; neither is working. They may be trying to email me, but I’m oblivious. Even our cell service has been spotty. The net effect is that I’m not tied to my phones and computer. There’s no way to watch TV or a movie. As in, I suddenly have hours and hours available that would ordinarily be eaten up by a machine. I have stuff to do, but there’s more than enough time to do it all in. I’m briefly removed from the acceleration and omnipresence with which the last two decades of digital technology have blessed us. It brings back memories of a youthful world I once knew, years ago (many years, it seems).

Wonder of wonders, with more time has come more connectedness with people. Yep, it’s true: Dad has more time with his kids when he isn’t sending emails and they aren’t watching a movie. We’ve raked the yard together (twice!), played dominos together, read books, and – shockingly! – enjoyed three meals a day together. My five-year-old commented particularly on this last phenomenon: “Dad, how come you’re eating with us all the time?”

Or let me speak of time with my wife. Deprived of the never-ending voyeurism of Facebook, away from the mental burps of the Twittersphere and the relentless incoming surges of email, we have found ourselves face-to-face – and not out at a restaurant, in our own home! After the kids were in bed last night, we danced by candlelight to 1930′s music (played on a battery-operated radio) in the living room. That would never have happened if the Internet was working.

The connections have been more than just domestic. No one from the church could get a hold of us yesterday, so a family actually came to the house last night to check on us. I can’t express how moving that was. Not a text, not an email, not even a phone call – an unannounced visit. It meant the world. So have the kindly visits since then, dropping off packs of ice for our food supplies. Real-life, real-time, face-to-face community. I mean, it’s not quite the same as a poke on Facebook, but we’ll get all that back shortly.

Did I mention that I met my neighbor? Ran into him out on the street last evening (I haven’t seen this many people out walking in our neighborhood since the block party), and he needed a three-prong adaptor for a pump he was trying to run in his basement. I happened to have one, we struck up a conversation, and by today we were raking our lawns together while our kids played in the leaf piles rained down by Irene. For a moment or two, it was like living in a real neighborhood, where people across the street know each other by name and have something in common besides a ZIP code. Why? Well I, for one, had the time. Nothing else more urgent to do. My brain wasn’t plugged into the data-force that is the modern world. I was . . . available.

So anytime now, the electricity will come back on, and when it does, I’ll rush to post this on my blog, check my email and Twitter accounts, and read the latest avalanche of news. Life at breakneck speed will resume. And I wish it wouldn’t. I wish I could just sit here writing with pen and ink, while my wife sits on the couch near me reading, and my kids play in the yard. I wish the hum in my ears could be the katydids I hear right now, instead of the white noise that usually drowns them out. I wish I could look up through my skylight every night and see the stars the way we did last night, when there weren’t a million lights to push them out of view. I wish the quiet in my soul could go on and on, pouring out in prayer and meditation, study and observation, unhurried love for my family, and unrushed availability to my neighbor. I wish I had the fortitude to live in a world of digital speed and not lose composure. I wish I could ride the storm of hurry and not end up with hurry sickness. Ready or not, the storm’s coming back. Maybe that’s why the Lord sent me these lessons from Irene.

http://trinitychurchlongisland.com

Very excited about this launch!

Now there’s some insight for you. News to pay for.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that this has been the Great Dream of my generation: to position ourselves in such a way that we’re beyond mockery. To not look stupid. That’s the biggest crime of all – looking stupid. That’s why they’ve turned Stewart into a demigod, because he knows how to make the other guys look really stupid, and if you’re on the same team as Stewart, you’re on the safe side of the mockery, rather than dangerously vulnerable to mockery.”

Bells went off when I read this. The constant difficulty one faces when dealing with the “post-everythings” of my generation is that they mock (in ways ranging from skilled to imbecilic) all things concerning which they are “post,” but it’s well-nigh impossible to pin them down on what they stand for, because they stand for something only so long as it’s something concerning which the in-crowd of mockers is not yet laughingly “post.” We’re a generation defined by ridicule, but we’re impotent to present anything constructive, because as soon as something is constructed, someone starts laughing at it, and we’re petrified of identification with anything the scoffer-elites are laughing at. We’re neutered by our own fear; there is no other word for it. We’re cowards who can’t withstand the faintest breeze of mockery. Which is crippling, for the simple reason that nothing today – absolutely nothing – is beyond the reach of pillorying. Tell me one serious thing Jon Stewart can’t make look foolish. I defy you. I mean, the guy is freaking good at it.

It so happened that around the time I read Ames’s post, I also read this from Psalm 69:

“For zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me. When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach. When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them. I am the talk of those who sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.”

Let us be clear. Jon Stewart & Co. would laugh at Jesus, if He were walking around today. They would laugh at Abraham if he were alive, and Moses, and David, and the prophets and apostles. They laugh, and will continue to laugh, at every believer whose heart is poured out in this psalm. They laugh because they don’t believe in anything enough to stand for it. That kind of belief, after all, requires courage. It requires conviction bloody but unbowed. It requires iron in the soul. It requires sacrifice. It requires one to embrace looking like a fool; it requires one to accept misunderstanding, rolling eyes, mockery, and scorn. It requires everything one despairs to find among post-everythings.

My hat is off to Ames. He and I wouldn’t agree on much politically, I suspect; but we could raise a glass together to all those who have understood, even in this generation, that “to move the world you must have a place to stand.”

I’m pretty sure gays should have Islamophobia (something about sharia law), and I’m pretty sure a lot of Muslims have Homophobia (something about sharia law). So either we need to get the Muslims over sharia, or we need to get gays over their gayness, and it’s pretty clear where Wright would come down on this one. There just ain’t a “benign context” big enough to fit sharia.