A thought and a prayer

APOLOGIA
By Hendrik van der Breggen
The Carillon, July 12, 2012

A thought and a prayer

A man whom I've grown to respect greatly is Harvard- and Oxford-educated Dr. Robert P. George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.

With Dr. George's permission, below I share his "A thought and prayer for my fellow Christians (and for myself)," written June 13, 2012:

"Surely no one is surprised that many Christians are swept along by cultural trends, no matter how antithetical they are to Biblical principles and the firm and constant teaching of the faith. 'Twas ever thus. (Indeed, 'twas thus for the ancient Hebrews, too, as scripture makes more than abundantly clear.)

"And Christians who fall in line with a trend always find ways to say that the trend, whatever it is, is compatible with Christian faith—even dictated by it! It's hard for human beings to actually be countercultural, and Christians are human beings just like everybody else.

"So when Marxism is trendy, there will be self-proclaimed Christian Marxists. When Fascism is fashionable, there will be self-identified Christian fascists. When racial subordination and segregation is the cultural norm, we'll baptize it. When eugenics is in vogue, there will be Christians claiming that eugenic practices and policies constitute Christian love in practice.

"If polyamory becomes the next cause embraced by the beautiful people and the cultural elite, we will start hearing about the Christian case for group marriage—'love cannot be arbitrarily confined to pairs.' And on and on.

"Being human, we crave approval and we like to fit in. Moreover, we human beings are naturally influenced by the ways of thinking favored by those who are regarded in a culture as the sophisticated and important people.

"When push comes to shove, it's really hard to be true to Christian faith; the social and personal costs are too high. We Christians praise the martyrs and honor their memories, but we are loath to lose so much as an opportunity for career advancement, or the good opinion of a friend, much less our lives. So we tend to fall in line, or at least fall silent.

"We deceive ourselves with rationalizations for what amounts to either conformism or cowardice. We place the emphasis on whatever happens in the cultural circumstances to be the acceptable parts of Christian teaching, and soft-pedal or even abandon the parts that the enforcers of cultural norms deem to be unacceptable.

"We make a million excuses for going along with what's wrong, and pretty soon we find ourselves going along with calling it right.

"Jesus says, 'if you want to be my disciple, you must take up your cross and follow me.' We say, 'um, well, we'll get around to that at some point.' May God have mercy on us."

Amen.

P.S. I highly recommend Robert George's and the late Charles Colson's six-part video series, Doing the Right Thing and its companion Doing the Right Thing Simulcast DVD, available at The Colson Center or your local bookstore. In the simulcast video, Dr. George helpfully puts matters into proper perspective when he talks about the sanctity of human life: "The issue is so foundational, it has to be given priority. There are many other concerns: there is the environment, there is the economy, there is the defence of the nation. No one would treat those as anything other than urgent concerns, because they are. They are very important concerns.... But even more fundamental, and therefore entitled to an even greater priority, is the protection of innocent human life." Again, I say Amen.

P.P.S. Robert George is also an author of The Manhattan Declaration, which I highly recommend, too.

(Hendrik van der Breggen, Ph.D., teaches philosophy at Providence University College. The views in this column do not always reflect the views of Providence.)