Constructive or Critical Thinking?

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-preferential-option-for-the-poor

The Public Square

R.R. Reno

June/July 2011

When faculties meet to discuss the goals of higher education, the scientists want fact-based knowledge while the humanists insist on the more plastic arts of interpretation. The psychologists, economists, and sociologists promote their favorite methods and theories. But at a certain point, everyone almost always agrees: College professors are supposed to teach “critical thinking.”

It’s a consensus that often extends beyond the walls of the academy. Whether discussing current events or moral issues, we quickly slide into habits of mind that focus on social and historical causes, psychological factors, and other layers of influence that shape our beliefs and opinions. We may not have read Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, but these days most of us are masters of suspicion, quick to adopt a critical stance and eager to avoid being taken in.

As a young teacher I was part of the critical-thinking consensus. I tried to inculcate into my students a questioning, skeptical attitude. What are your assumptions? How can you defend your position? Where’s your evidence? Why do you believe what you believe? Why are you so sure?

I wasn’t wrong. It’s good to critically examine your beliefs. The human mind is made for truth, not falsehood, and we do well to understand the cultural forces that shape our minds. It’s a mode of self-knowledge that helps us sift and weigh the evidence and arguments so as to avoid believing as true that which is actually false.

No, I wasn’t wrong, but then again I wasn’t altogether right either, because I wasn’t critically examining my commitment to critical reason. Reading and teaching (which is often the incentive to reread carefully) John Henry Newman helped me see that I was complicit with the modern tendency to make a god of critical reason, as if avoiding error rather than finding truth is the great goal of life.

Like Plato and St. Augustine, Newman presumes that human beings seek to know the truth. Our hearts are restless, not with fear of error, but with a desire to rest in God, who is the fullness of all truth. The fundamental and fulfilling activity of intellectual life, therefore, is to affirm truth rather than recoil from falsehood. We want to know, not to know that we don’t know.

Newman recognizes the value of critical methods in our efforts to seek the truth. Those methods involve parsing arguments, examining premises, and testing hypotheses. In his sermons on faith and reason, he sometimes calls this use of the mind “strict reason.” It slows us down, filtering our beliefs according to stringent and exacting standards of proof. In this way we are protected from the danger of overcommitting ourselves and thereby coming to believe as truth things that are in fact false.

But Newman also sees the danger of this strict reason. It is critical, not creative. Its methods “will pull down, and will not be able to build up.” Clear-minded and scrupulous analysis clears the underbrush of error—a very good thing to do—but it cannot plant the seeds of truth; it burns away the weeds but won’t fertilize the fields. To do so we must be receptive rather than cautious. We need to develop the habit of credulity, which literally means the capacity and willingness to accept or believe, for that is the only way truth can enter into our minds. To hold anything as true we have to be able to say, “Yes, I think that’s true.” Critical reason, by contrast, trains us to hesitate, interrogate, and withdraw our assent: “Hmm, I wonder if that’s true. Perhaps it’s false? How do I know it isn’t?” We don’t so much seek as wait—wait for compelling evidence or solid proofs.

Therein lies the danger of our enthusiasm for “critical thinking.” If we fear error too much and thus overvalue critical reason, we develop a mind active and able in doubt but largely untrained to move toward belief, which is, after all, the main work of the mind. A mentality too quick to find reasons not to nurture convictions runs the risk of ending up more empty than accurate.

In my experience it’s not just a risk but a reality. Although the modern university is full of trite, politically correct pieties, for the most part its educational culture is skeptical and cautious to a fault. Students are trained—I was trained—to believe as little as possible so that their minds can be spared the ignominy of error. The consequence is an impoverished intellectual life. The contemporary mind very often lives on a starvation diet of small, inconsequential truths—facts and theories unrelated to any deeper meaning—because those are the only truths of which we can be sure we’re avoiding error.

In a startling passage Newman writes: “I would rather have to maintain that we ought to begin with believing everything that is offered to our acceptance, than that it is our duty to doubt everything. The former, indeed, seems the true way of learning.” Of course we don’t face such a stark choice: believing or doubting everything. But by putting it in exaggerated terms, Newman helps us see that in the intellectual life we invariably lean one way or the other. We tilt in the direction of either believing in order to know or doubting in order to avoid error.

A great deal is at stake, and we are foolish indeed if we imagine, as I once did, that critical thinking offers nothing but advantages. We can rightly worry about getting on the wrong train in the foreign train station whose signs we can’t read. But we should also worry about dithering in the station too long and thus failing to get on the right train, which is the reason we went to the station in the first place. This, it seems to me, is the essence of Newman’s insight. Sometimes the dangers of failing to affirm the truth are far greater than the dangers of wrongly affirming falsehood.

If we see this danger—the danger of truths lost, insights missed, convictions never formed—then our approach to reasoning changes, and the burdens of proof shift. We begin to cherish books and teachers and friends who push us, as it were, onto certain trains of thought, romancing us with the possibilities of truth rather than always cautioning and checking our tendency to believe. Errors risked now seem worth the rich reward of engrossing, life-commanding truths—the truths that are accessible only to a mind passionate with the intimacy of conviction rather than coldly and critically distant.

There are some things that we can know only if we embrace them in love, giving ourselves to beliefs with a seemingly reckless abandon—and this critical reason cannot train us to do. As the ancient Greek translation of Isaiah 7:9 puts it, “Unless you believe, you shall not understand.” It’s a truth that St. Anselm formulated as a maxim, not just for the life of faith but for the life of the mind: Credo ut intelligam, I believe so that I may understand.

How to Help the Poor

The Preferential Option for the Poor

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-preferential-option-for-the-poor


"Want to help the poor? By all means pay your taxes and give to agencies that provide social services. By all means volunteer in a soup kitchen or help build houses for those who can’t afford them. But you can do much more for the poor by getting married and remaining faithful to your spouse. Have the courage to use old-fashioned words such as chaste and honorable. Put on a tie. Turn off the trashy reality TV shows. Sit down to dinner every night with your family. Stop using expletives as exclamation marks. Go to church or synagogue.

"In this and other ways, we can help restore the constraining forms of moral and social discipline that don’t bend to fit the desires of the powerful—forms that offer the poor the best, the most effective and most lasting, way out of poverty. That’s the truest preferential option—and truest form of respect—for the poor."

- R R Reno


The Public Square

R.R. Reno

June/July 2011

A year or so ago I got together with some college friends. Good guys—careers, families, some churchgoers, others not, all involved in their communities. For the most part bourgeois in the best sense. But a few were perplexed. They wanted to know why I had become a social conservative.

I wasn’t able to give a very good answer. But I’ve continued to think about it. Yes, I’ve come to see the moral urgency of protecting the unborn and defending traditional marriage, as well as restoring the virtues of civility and self-discipline. But there’s something more, and it concerns a basic biblical principle.

In the Gospel of Matthew we find Jesus warning us about how our lives will be judged. His words are pointed. We are to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner. For what we do to the poor and the destitute—“the least of these my brethren,” says Jesus—we do to the Lord himself.

It’s a sobering warning, and I fear that I’m typical. For the most part I think about myself: my needs, my interests, my desires. And when I break out of my cocoon of self-interest, it’s usually because I’m thinking about my family or my friends, which is still a kind of self-interest. The poor? Sure, I feel a sense of responsibility, but they’re remote and more hypothetical than real: objects of a thin, distant moral concern that tends to be overwhelmed by the immediate demands of my life. As I said, I’m afraid I’m typical.

That’s why the modern Catholic tradition of social ethics has consistently insisted that the needs of the poor must take priority. In Octogesima Adveniens (1971), an encyclical marking the eightieth anniversary of Leo XIII’s seminal treatment of modern social issues, Rerum Novarum, Paul VI evoked the fundamental importance of a transformative spirit of self-sacrificial love. “In teaching us charity,” he wrote, “the Gospel instructs us in the preferential respect due to the poor and the special situation they have in society: the most fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods generously at the service of others.”

“Preferential respect” became the handier slogan “preferential option,” a formulation that first emerged from liberation theologies in South America but has percolated into a great deal of Catholic pronouncement on social ethics in recent decades. It captures a fundamental Christian imperative. When we think about politics and culture, our first question should be: “What are the needs of the poor?”

Today, there is certainly material want in America. People who have lost their jobs can’t pay rent. Unmarried young women who have courageously refused to abort their children struggle to make ends meet. Illegal immigrants are exploited; the homeless need shelter; the hungry, food.

Some say the best way to meet these needs involves adopting tax policies designed to stimulate economic growth, along with redoubled efforts of private charity. Others emphasize public programs and increased government intervention. It’s an argument worth having, of course, and to a great degree our contemporary political debates turn on these issues. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there is a unifying consensus: The moral character of a nation is measured to a large degree by its concern for the poor.

On this point I agree with many friends on the left who argue that America doesn’t have a proper concern for the poor. Our failure, however, is not merely economic. In fact, it’s not even mostly economic. A visit to the poorest neighborhoods of New York City or the most impoverished towns of rural Iowa immediately reveals poverty more profound and more pervasive than simple material want. Drugs, crime, sexual exploitation, the collapse of marriage—the sheer brutality and ugliness of the lives of many of the poor in America is shocking. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, poverty is not only material; it is also moral, cultural, and religious (CCC 2444), and just these sorts of poverty are painfully evident today. Increasing the minimum wage or the earned-income tax credit won’t help alleviate this impoverishment.

We can’t restore a culture of marriage, for example, by spending more money on it. A recent report on marriage in America from the National Marriage Project under the leadership of W. Bradford Wilcox, When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America, paints a grim picture. The lower you are on the social scale, the more likely you are to be divorced, to cohabit while unmarried, to have more sexual partners, and to commit adultery. One of the most arresting statistics concerns children born out of wedlock. In the late 2000s, among women fifteen to forty-four years old who have dropped out of high school, more than half of those who give birth do so while unmarried. And this is true not only of those at the bottom. Among high-school graduates and women with technical training—in other words, the struggling middle class—nearly half of the women who give birth are unmarried.

A friend of mine who works as a nurse’s aide recently observed that his coworkers careen from personal crisis to personal crisis. As he told me, “Only yesterday I had to hear the complaints of one woman who was fighting with both her husband and her boyfriend.” It’s this atmosphere of personal disintegration and not the drudgery of the job—which is by no means negligible for a nurse’s aide—that he finds demoralizing.

Teachers can tell similar tales. The wife of another friend told me that her middle-school students in a small town in Iowa were perplexed by Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter: “What’s the big deal about Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale gettin’ it on?” It was a sentiment that she wearily told me was of a piece with the meth labs, malt liquor, teen pregnancies, and a general atmosphere of social collapse.

Preferential option for the poor. A Christian who hopes to follow the teachings of Jesus needs to reckon with a singular fact about American poverty: Its deepest and most debilitating deficits are moral, not financial; the most serious deprivations are cultural, not economic. Many people living at the bottom of American society have cell phones, flat-screen TVs, and some of the other goodies of consumer culture. But their lives are a mess.

And why? It’s a complicated question that I can’t convincingly answer here. But I want to end with a suggestion, if not an argument.

On the question of social justice, Pope John Paul II once wrote, “The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich.” For most of my life (I was born in 1959), the rich and well-educated in America have desired nothing more than the personal freedoms of bohemian liberation. The rich, we must be clear, include the secure and successful academic and professional upper middle classes. I am not talking only about people who live in penthouses, but about people like us and those we know.

This bohemian liberation has involved the sexual revolution, of course, with the consequent weakening of the constraining and disciplining norms of a healthy culture of marriage. But the ways in which the rich have embraced their freedoms hasn’t involved only sex and marriage. It also includes the verbal antinomianism typified by George Carlin’s campaigns to normalize obscenity, suburban librarians insisting on the right to view pornography, tech billionaires who dress like dockworkers, a feminism that mocks the social mores that make women ladies and men gentleman, and many other attacks on older notions of bourgeois respectability.

Here’s a typical story. A few months ago, a Northwestern University psychology professor invited a sex entrepreneur to speak to his class, and the visit concluded with a sexual performance that, as one newspaper discreetly reported, involved “a woman, a man, and an electric-powered device.”

The powers that be squirm a bit when lifestyle revolutionaries frighten the horses and bring bad publicity. Northwestern’s president, Morton Schapiro, put out an anodyne statement: “Many members of the Northwestern community are disturbed by what took place on our campus. So am I.” But elite sentiment remains indulgent, if not positively solicitous. The rhetoric of liberation (“Sexual minorities need to be accepted!”) throws up a smoke screen, and there’s lots of earnest talk about academic freedom. Meanwhile, the rich get their freedoms, which have very little to do with justice and everything to do with marrying wealth and status to the delicious benefits of a diminished conscience. And all this takes place in an environment furnished with the safety nets of therapists, detox clinics, watchful friends, and economic security.

The social reality of contemporary America is painfully clear. By and large, the rich and powerful don’t desire more wealth nearly as much as they desire moral relaxation and the self-complimenting image of themselves as nonconformists living a life of enlightenment and freedom in advance of dull Middle America. Meanwhile, on the South Side of Chicago—and in hardscrabble small towns and decaying tract housing of old suburbs—the rest of America suffers the loss of social capital.

I must admit that I often feel frustrated by my liberal friends who worry so much about income inequality and not at all about moral inequality. Their answer is to give reparations. Are we to palliate with cash—can we palliate with cash—the disorder wrought by Gucci bohemians?

No. Progressives talk about “social responsibility.” It is an apt term, but it surely means husbanding social capital just as much as—indeed, more than—providing financial resources. In our society a preferential option for the poor must rebuild the social capital squandered by rich baby boomers, and that means social conservatism. The bohemian fantasy works against this clear imperative, because it promises us that we can attend to the poor without paying any attention to our own manner of living. Appeals to aid the less fortunate, however urgent, make few demands on our day-to-day lives. We are called to awareness, perhaps, or activism, but not to anything that would cut against the liberations of recent decades and limit our own desires.

Want to help the poor? By all means pay your taxes and give to agencies that provide social services. By all means volunteer in a soup kitchen or help build houses for those who can’t afford them. But you can do much more for the poor by getting married and remaining faithful to your spouse. Have the courage to use old-fashioned words such as chaste and honorable. Put on a tie. Turn off the trashy reality TV shows. Sit down to dinner every night with your family. Stop using expletives as exclamation marks. Go to church or synagogue.

In this and other ways, we can help restore the constraining forms of moral and social discipline that don’t bend to fit the desires of the powerful—forms that offer the poor the best, the most effective and most lasting, way out of poverty. That’s the truest preferential option—and truest form of respect—for the poor.

The World's Oceans - Should We Worry?

http://musingsonscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/the-world%e2%80%99s-oceans-%e2%80%93-should-we-worry/#more-677

by rjs5

posted June 21, 2011

Scot put up a post last Saturday You Might be an Evangelical Reject if you … that received a fair bit of attention and comment. Much of the comment centered on the sentiment, rare but not unheard of, that connects Christian eschatology with resistance to environmentalism … the end is coming so we should concentrate on evangelism not environmentalism. Certainly there is a connection made, both within parts of evangelicalism and in the broader culture. Environmentalism or “creation care” is a rather abstract concept though – so I would like to put up a specific example from a recent article for consideration and comment. From the BBC: World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline:

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.

In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.

This is a pretty devastating report … accelerated melting of arctic and antarctic ice sheets, sea level rise, over fishing, pollution. A little later:

But more worrying than this, the team noted, are the ways in which different issues act synergistically to increase threats to marine life.

Some pollutants, for example, stick to the surfaces of tiny plastic particles that are now found in the ocean bed.

This increases the amounts of these pollutants that are consumed by bottom-feeding fish.

Plastic particles also assist the transport of algae from place to place, increasing the occurrence of toxic algal blooms – which are also caused by the influx of nutrient-rich pollution from agricultural land.

In a wider sense, ocean acidification, warming, local pollution and overfishing are acting together to increase the threat to coral reefs – so much so that three-quarters of the world’s reefs are at risk of severe decline.

The story is picked up as well in the Huffington Post State Of The Ocean: ‘Shocking’ Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress. (see earlier article on this blog)

How do you evaluate claims such as this?

Assuming that it is true, how should we respond?

Among the recommendations arising from the report:

1. Immediate reduction of CO₂ emissions.
2. Urgent actions to restore the structure and function of marine ecosystems.
3. Proper and universal implementation of the precautionary principle so “activities proceed only if they are shown not to harm the ocean singly or in combination with other activities.”
4. Urgent introduction by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly of effective governance of the High Seas beyond the jurisdiction of any individual
   nations.

Do these recommendations seem reasonable?

Does your faith in God or your understanding of eschatology play any role in your position?

How should Christians respond?

This report comes from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), from a meeting that brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists. You can find the preliminary reports here. IPSO was established by people, scientists and others, because they believe that there is a serious threat to the health of the world’s oceans.

Does the “bias” of IPSO cause you to question their report?

If so what kind of group would you believe? Why?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If you have comments please visit The World’s Oceans – Should We Worry? at Jesus Creed.

Mass Extinction in the Oceans

State Of The Ocean: 'Shocking' Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/ipso-2011-ocean-report-mass-extinction_n_880656.html

Travis Donovan

updated June 21, 2011

donovantravis.donovan@huffingonpost.com

If the current actions contributing to a multifaceted degradation of the world's oceans aren't curbed, a mass extinction unlike anything human history has ever seen is coming, an expert panel of scientists warns in an alarming new report.

The preliminary report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) is the result of the first-ever interdisciplinary international workshop examining the combined impact of all of the stressors currently affecting the oceans, including pollution, warming, acidification, overfishing and hypoxia.

“The findings are shocking," Dr. Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director, said in a statement released by the group. "This is a very serious situation demanding unequivocal action at every level. We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime, and worse, our children's and generations beyond that."

The scientific panel concluded that degeneration in the oceans is happening much faster than has been predicted, and that the combination of factors currently distressing the marine environment is contributing to the precise conditions that have been associated with all major extinctions in the Earth's history.

According to the report, three major factors have been present in the handful of mass extinctions that have occurred in the past: an increase of both hypoxia (low oxygen) and anoxia (lack of oxygen that creates "dead zones") in the oceans, warming and acidification. The panel warns that the combination of these factors will inevitably cause a mass marine extinction if swift action isn't taken to improve conditions.

The report is the latest of several published in recent months examining the dire conditions of the oceans. A recent World Resources Institute report suggests that all coral reefs could be gone by 2050 if no action is taken to protect them, while a study published earlier this year in BioScience declares oysters as "functionally extinct", their populations decimated by over-harvesting and disease. Just last week scientists forecasted that this year's Gulf "dead zone" will be the largest in history due to increased runoff from the Mississippi River dragging in high levels of nitrates and phosphates from fertilizers.

A recent study in the journal Nature, meanwhile, suggests that not only will the next mass extinction be man-made, but that it could already be underway. Unless humans make significant changes to their behavior, that is.

The IPSO report calls for such changes, recommending actions in key areas: immediate reduction of CO2 emissions, coordinated efforts to restore marine ecosystems, and universal implementation of the precautionary principle so "activities proceed only if they are shown not to harm the ocean singly or in combination with other activities." The panel also calls for the UN to swiftly introduce an "effective governance of the High Seas."

"The challenges for the future of the ocean are vast, but unlike previous generations we know what now needs to happen," Dan Laffoley of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and co-author of the report said in a press release for the new report. "The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now, today and urgent."

Rob Bell - First Love (Rev 2)

LETTERS TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES – REV 2: FIRST LOVE

  *This was one of my favorite sermons by Rob.  - skinhead  

Commencing the Season of Lent
on the way to Resurrection

http://marshill.org/teaching/2011/03/16/letters-to-the-seven-churches-rev-2/

(click here to hear sermon since Google's video link won't upload the .mp3 file)

Blessed are those who mourn,

for they shall be comforted

Blessed are the thirsty for they

shall find water

Blessed are those in darkness

for they shall find light

Blessed are the dying for they

shall know the gift of life.

...When your job is uncertain
...When you lose money!
...When your husband is distant
...When your wife is critical and closed down
...When your children say things that hurt you
...When your parents donʼt approve
...When youʼve just done something bad
...When the house is a mess
...When youʼre about to eat your next meal
...When youʼre on vacation
...When you wake up each morning

This is not a call to despair.

This is a call to appreciate, enjoy, and celebrate

every moment you have in this hevel life.

Be Always Ready With An Answer?

http://rachelheldevans.com/ready-with-answer

by Rachel Held Evans

posted  June 21, 2011

Well, we’ve worked our way through Evolving in Monkey Town, just in time to mark the one year anniversary of its release. Thanks so much for your engagement and participation. Today’s excerpt comes from the final chapter, entitled “Living the Questions":

...I’m no longer ready to give an answer about everything. Sometimes I’m not ready because I feel that an answer does not do justice to the seriousness or complexity of the question. Sometimes I’m not ready to give an answer because I honestly don’t know what the best one is. Sometimes I’m not ready to give an answer because I can tell that the person asking doesn’t really want one anyway.

Unfortunately, saying “I don’t know” has fallen out of vogue in Christian circles, and I’m still trying to get used to saying it myself. Opinionated and strong-willed, I’m always afraid that if I remain silent or show signs of ambivalence, people will assume that I can’t think for myself, that I haven’t studied an issue or thought it through. As my friends well know, I’ll tolerate a barrage of vicious insults before I’ll tolerate the mere suggestion that I might be uninformed. I would rather people think I don’t bathe enough than think I don’t read enough.

In a way, the same has been true of the church of late. Sometimes Christians worry that if we don’t provide bullet-proof answers to all of life’s questions, people will assume that our faith is unreasonable. In reaction to very loud atheists like Richard Dawkins, we have become a bit too loud ourselves. Faith in Jesus has been recast as a position in a debate, not a way of life.

But the truth is, I’ve found people to be much more receptive to the gospel when they know becoming a Christian doesn’t require becoming a know-it-all. Most of the people I’ve encountered are looking not for a religion to answer all their questions but for a community of faith in which they can feel safe asking them.

When Peter first penned the words “always be ready with an answer,” he was writing to the persecuted church during the time of the emperor Nero…This was not advice for a debate team; it was advice for martyrs! Peter asked his readers to take courage, to look into the eyes of their assailants with patience and compassion, gentleness and respect. He urged them to live lives that are beyond reproach, to follow the teachings of Jesus and love their enemies to the point of death. This passage is not about fearlessly defending a set of propositions; it’s about fearlessly defending hope—a wild, bewitching, and reckless thing that cannot be systematized or proven or rationally explained.

Peter knew that such behavior might arouse some curiosity. He knew that his fellow Christians would be subject to interrogation regarding their radical community and unconventional lives. In preparing them to give answers, Peter assumed they’d be asked questions. Our best answers in defense of Christianity have always been useless clanging cymbals unless our lives have inspired the world to ask.

What are you not ready to give an answer about these days? What questions are you living through?

Biblical Considerations for an Inclusive View of Salvation

http://rachelheldevans.com/bible-inclusive-salvation-heaven-hell

by Rachel Held Evans

posted November 16, 2011

In light of our conversation about Anne Frank yesterday, I thought I’d repost this rather lengthy piece from 2008 (back when I thought people liked to read 1,000-word blog posts) that details some of the biblical support for a more inclusive view of salvation.

Now I’m not a biblical scholar, but these passages of Scripture have informed my view of the “un-evangelized” and given me much hope regarding God’s love for humanity and his intention to restore all things to himself.

I’m indebted to Clark Pinnock and his excellent book A Wideness in God’s Mercy for helping me see some of these familiar passages in a new light.

I’m also thankful to NT Wright for explaining that salvation isn’t simply about “winning souls to heaven” but about being part of God’s relentless work of restoration, reconciliation, and redemption among all of humanity.

Some Things I Know:

• If the God of the Bible is true, then His love is universal, and His grace is not limited to certain people groups or nations. (Genesis 9:17; Psalm 82:8; Isaiah 25: 6-8; John 3:16; 1 John 4:14; Acts 10:34-35; Romans 2:11; I Cor. 2:19)

Some Things That Give Me Hope:

• To the same degree that the Fall devastated mankind, God’s grace is able to redeem it, “for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” (I Cor. 15:22) God did not lose his hopes and dreams for humanity to Satan when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. Total depravity, though devastating, is not beyond total redemption. (See also Romans 5:12-21)• God does not appear to relish in the damnation of the unsaved, but desires that all receive His mercy. (Isaiah 30:18; 2 Peter 3:9; 2 Timothy 2:4; Romans 11:32)

• God may have determined when and where people would be born, but He did not leave Himself without a witness among them. (Acts 17:26-27) He created people in such a way that “they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us.” (Acts 14:16-17) This is commonly called general revelation.

• Since creation, God’s “invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature” have been revealed to all. Those who practice unrighteousness are “without excuse” because they have access to enough general revelation about God to know better. (Romans 1:20) Exclusivists usually stop there, but as Dale Moody comments, “What kind of God is he who gives man enough knowledge to damn him but not enough to save him?” It is reasonable to assume that just as God has revealed enough of Himself for people to reject Him without excuse, He has revealed enough of Himself for people to accept Him without rejection.

• Scripture makes it clear that people are justified by faith. It does not stipulate how much a person needs to know about God in order to be saved, but simply qualifies that the fruit of saving faith is good works. Paul writes that “it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.” People who have no knowledge of the Law but who “do instinctively the things of the Law,” will be judged, not on the basis of how much they know, but on the basis of how they respond to their conscience. (Romans 2:9-16)

• Throughout Scripture, we find evidence that God worked in the lives of people who were neither Israelites nor Christians. Take, for example, Job, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Melchizedeck, Abimelech, Jethro, the Queen of Sheeba, the Magi, and Cornelius. The famed Hebrews 11 passage includes several of these so-called “pagan saints,” in its elite “cloud of witnesses,” emphasizing that they were saved by faith in a God who “is a rewarder of those who seek him.”

• Although God revealed Himself uniquely through the person of Christ, God’s grace is not limited or exhausted by Christ. If we truly believe in the Trinity, then we know that God the Father and the Holy Spirit are also at work in the world, and that the breath of God is free to “blow where it wishes.” (John 3:8) Looking at things from this Trinitarian perspective, it is reasonable to assume that one can maintain a saving relationship with God the Father through the Holy Spirit without necessarily knowing the name of Jesus Christ. Just as a right relationship with Jesus results in a right relationship with God, a right relationship with the Father is, in effect, a right relationship with Christ. (John 8:19, 42)

• Jesus says that when it comes time to “judge the nations,” the Good Shepherd will separate the sheep from the goats based on their treatment of “the least of these.” (Matthew 25:31-46) We forget that Jesus Christ is indeed present in every nation. He is present in the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, and the imprisoned. Perhaps many will choose to reject or accept Him as he appears in that unlikely incarnation.

• The book of Revelation paints an extremely optimistic picture of the universal scope of God’s salvation. The prophet writes that great multitudes will worship God in heaven, “from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues.” (Revelation 7:9; see also Revelation 15:4; 21:24-26; 22:2.)

• Throughout the Bible, the consistent theme concerning judgment is that of God separating the wicked from the righteous, not separating the elect from the non-elect or the Christians from the non-Christians. The focus is on justice. Isaiah wrote that “a throne will be established in loving kindness, and a judge will sit on it in faithfulness…He will seek justice and be prompt in righteousness.” (Isaiah 16:5) The writers of the Hebrew Scriptures look forward to the day when the unrighteous will finally receive justice and the oppressed mercy. (Psalm 1:5; Psalm 94:15;Ecclesiastes 3:17) James writes that “judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:13)

Some things I don’t know:

• I don’t know the degree to which God is present in religious systems. I’ve seen both very good and very bad fruit come from organized religion--including Christianity--and prefer to think of each individual as spiritually unique rather than the sum of his or her religious culture. I can only hope that non-Christians would do the same for me.

• I don’t know exactly how God will judge in eternity and I don't presume to know where other people stand in relation to their creator. However, I know that those of us blessed with the knowledge of Jesus Christ, should be slow to judge and careful of over-confidence, always heeding Christ’s warning that “not everyone who says to Me on that day, ’Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…” (Matthew 7:21-23; See also Matthew 12:26; Romans 2:1-5; I Peter 4:17)

• C.S.Lewis put it this way: “We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.”

• I don’t know how to interpret Christ’s teachings regarding hell. I’ve heard theologians make a good case for the impermanent “trash heap” [(the theory of annhilation)] and a good case for the traditional view of eternal torture. But I'm still sorting it all out.

Rob Bell, the SBC, and The Age of Accountability

http://rachelheldevans.com/rob-bell-sbc-age-of-accountability

by Rachel Held Evans

posted June 22, 2011

As you may have heard, last week the Southern Baptist Convention responded to pastor Rob Bell’s controversial book, Love Wins, with a resolution declaring that “the Bible clearly teaches that God will judge the lost at the end of the age,” and that such judgment will include the “conscious, eternal suffering" for all non-Christians.

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, explained the rationale behind the resolution as such:

"The publicity surrounding Bell’s new book indicates that he is ready to answer one of the hardest questions -- the question of the exclusivity of the Gospel of Christ. With that question come the related questions of heaven, hell, judgment, and the fate of the unregenerate. The Bible answers these questions clearly enough, but few issues are as hard to reconcile with the modern or postmodern mind than this. Of course, it was hard to reconcile with the ancient mind as well. The singularity of the person and work of Christ and the necessity of personal faith in him for salvation run counter to the pluralistic bent of the human mind, but this is nothing less than the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation."

Rustin J. Umstattd, assistant professor of theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary added:

"It is clear that Bell is not comfortable with the idea that billions of people may suffer in hell. But then, who is comfortable with that? The majority of evangelicals who hold to the orthodox understanding of hell…are troubled by its implications. But being troubled, even deeply troubled, by the implications of the biblical text does not give us a reason to abandon the text or force it into a mold that rests comfortably with us. It should be our goal to let the Bible be the source and shaper of our doctrine.” (emphasis mine)

In other words, Christians cannot allow their instincts to inform their theology, only Scripture.

But this rationale represents a major inconsistency in Baptist teaching.

If the members of the Southern Baptist Convention truly believe that only those who place personal faith in Jesus Christ will be saved and that no concessions to this belief should be made on the basis of its troubling moral implications, then for consistency’s sake, they must also vote to condemn the teaching of the age of accountability.

The age of accountability refers to a belief that children under a certain age (usually twelve or so), will be granted salvation regardless of the religious affiliation of their parents. Most Baptists I know believe in the age of accountability, and even the SBC's Baptist Faith and Message makes it implicit in its statement that people are not morally accountable until “they are capable of moral action.”

And yet this concept is never explicitly stated in Scripture, nor does it appear in any of the historic Christian creeds.

The age of accountability is a concept born from the compassion of the human heart, from a deep and intrinsic sense that a loving, good, and just God would not condemn little children or the mentally handicapped to such suffering when they could certainly bear no responsibility for their faith. It is a theology created by discomfort.

I’m not interested in defending Bell’s book in its entirety—I thought some of his exegesis was sloppy—but the questions he raises about the destiny un-evangelized are not that different from the questions traditionally raised by Baptists about the assumption within other Christian traditions that unbaptized babies spend eternity in hell.

What is the difference, really, between a four-year-old child who is incapable of making a conscious decision to trust Jesus because of his age and an adult living in outer-Mongolia in 50 A.D. who is incapable of making a decision to trust Jesus because he couldn’t possibly hear of him? Aren’t both of them born with a sin nature? And aren’t both of them inherently valuable to God? If exclusivism is true, then the majority of the human population was damned to hell without even the possiblilty of being saved.

I am often told by fellow Christians that an inclusivist reading of Scripture is the result of a sentimental “bleeding heart.” And yet most of those people embrace without question the age of accountability and reel at the idea of a non-elect two year-old burning alive for eternity. I believe we were created to reel at that idea, just as we were created to reel at the idea of a young Muslim woman being tortured forever by a God whose name she never knew. I believe that our impulse towards grace is a reflection of God’s image inside of us, not a weakness of which we should be ashamed.

In matters like these, Christians should of course be careful of asserting with absolute certainty how God will judge our fellow human beings. We should also be wary of any suggestion that our instinctive desire for love and compassion is a weakness that should be overcome. The very formation of the Southern Baptist denomination reflects the disastrous consequences of confining morality to that which is explicitly stated in Scripture to the neglect of the conscience. Conscience should be tested with Scripture, certainly, but it should never be silenced.

Regardless of one’s position on the theological issues here, it’s plain to see that if the members of the Southern Baptist Convention intend to hold to their exclusivist position consistently and condemn as dangerous all who seek to harmonize scripture with the human conscience, then it’s time for them to confront their own theological accommodations and declare the unconverted child as hopeless as the unconverted adult.

I only hope that this time it will be harder for the delegates to raise their hands.

Reforming the Reformed

Having become recently acquainted with Roger Olson's very firm personal position of Arminianism and having read his submitted article to Christianity Today below, it would be stating the obvious his frustrations with today's contemporary Calvinists declaring unsupportable claims to their positions within Calvinism.  Besides being wholly inconsistent and unhistorical, they as well argue against non-Calvinistic positions in regularly inconsistent and unhistorical subjective dogmas. This gets Mr. Olson's "dander in a dither" as one would say and, as evidenced by his personal statements below, he again shows the inaccuracies of these newer Calvinists in their positions and statements both to their doctrinal support to a type of Calvinism they think this dogma teaches, as well as to the type of dogma they think other non-Calvinistic positions teach. Their statements are wholly unsupportable and inaccurate in Olson's opinion as they stir-in their very personal eclectic pot of theologies, speculations and accusations. Thus, my publication of Roger's many good observations on the more theologically consistent Arminianian position he maintains and duly proclaims while doggedly noting Calvinisms many theologic shortcomings both as a dogma as well as a doctrine. So that some of his previous sentiments now bleed through again in the following journal below as we would do well to duly and somberly note.

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Calvinists, says one Calvinist,

misunderstand some of their history and theology.

A review of  'Ten Myths About Calvinism.'

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/may/reformingreformed.html

by Roger E. Olson

posted 5/18/2011

Ten Myths About Calvinism: Recovering the Breadth of the Reformed Tradition by Kenneth J. Stewart IVP Academic, 2011 255 pp., $15.49

Type "Calvinism" into any web browser and you're likely to find multiple misconceptions about Calvinism and Reformed theology. Ironically, many come from the pens and mouths of Calvinists themselves. In Ten Myths About Calvinism: Recovering the Breadth of the Reformed Tradition (IVP Academic), Kenneth J. Stewart demonstrates that confusion and misapprehension reign among adherents as much, if not more, than among outsiders and opponents.

Stewart, professor of theology at Covenant College, a Reformed school in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, knows the terrain. Ten Myths, an extremely well-researched and lively tour of Reformed theology's history, sets the record straight regarding Calvinism's heroes, legends, beliefs, and fluctuating fortunes. The movement, Stewart argues, is currently riding the latest of six "waves of Calvinist resurgence" since the French Revolution. But all is not well. "It is no time," Stewart warns, "for triumphalism."

Much to my surprise, I discovered the author, a dedicated convert to Calvinism, chastising many who proudly call themselves Reformed. Even when writing about non-Calvinists' misconceptions, he seems intent on calling the new Calvinists and their leaders to a course correction. "We need fewer angular, sharp-elbowed Calvinists who glory in what distinguishes their stance from others," Stewart argues, "and a lot more supporters of the Reformed faith who rejoice in what they hold in common with others." What non-Calvinist wouldn't agree?

I should confess before continuing that I am one of those non-Calvinists, although I have tried to maintain a friendly, irenic tone. I find Stewart's approach refreshing; it gives me hope that both sides can be self-critical and fair as they discuss their differences.

Room for Debate

Four of Stewart's ten myths are held by many Calvinists themselves. First, John Calvin and his Genevan experiment do not determine the entire Reformed tradition. According to Stewart, "Calvinism" is something of a misnomer. Certain Reformed leaders disagreed with Calvin's theology and did not regard him as their spokesman. After Calvin, the movement branched off in several directions, not always remaining strictly faithful to his example.

Stewart's second myth might also come as a shock: Calvin's acolytes do not uniformly share his view of predestination. Many Reformed theologians have argued for single predestination (God has marked some for salvation) rather than Calvin's double predestination (God has marked some for salvation and some for damnation).

Stewart calls for all Calvinists to be more historically aware, to stop thinking of Calvinism as a system derived straightforwardly from the pages of the Bible.

The third myth is that TULIP must be the benchmark of the truly Reformed. (TULIP stands for the doctrines of Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints.) Stewart's thorough history shows that the acronym probably was coined around 1913. Many enthusiastic converts among the "young, restless, and Reformed" will be shocked to hear a sympathetic voice arguing that "TULIP cannot be allowed to function as a creed." According to Stewart, Reformed theologians past and present have wrongly turned this five-point doctrine into a "Procrustean formula"—an inflexible yardstick of belief.

Stewart's fourth myth is that Calvinists dislike revivals and awakenings. He attributes this misunderstanding to contemporary Presbyterian and Reformed dismay over the manipulative methods used by some revivalists, pointing to the targeting of 18th-century evangelist Charles Finney by anti-revival Calvinists. Stewart recalls the leadership of Calvinist heroes like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield in the First Great Awakening of the 1740s. "Today, by contrast," he laments, "so many have adopted the view that revival is a dark secret, a part of our Reformed family history best kept in the closet."

Neither I nor any informed critic of Calvinism has held or promoted any of Stewart's myths. Admittedly, however, many untutored persons, not least among them committed Calvinists, have fallen under their sway. Stewart wrote this book in large part simply to correct his co-religionists.

Calvinists need not worry, however, as Ten Myths also defends the Reformed tradition preferring, for example, "definite atonement" or "particular redemption" [as applied to the converting believer] to "limited atonement," because the latter seems to limit the value of Christ's death.

Sense of History

By correcting contemporary Calvinist myths about Calvinism, Stewart intends to overcome a "self-imposed ghettoization" that may evidence "an unacknowledged remnant of the fundamentalist era of the early twentieth century." He calls for all Calvinists to be more historically aware, to stop thinking of Calvinism as a system derived straightforwardly from the pages of the Bible. However, he still affirms the essential Calvinist view of God's sovereignty over salvation known as monergism—that God saves people without their cooperation. One has to wonder if his call for a more generous, conciliatory Calvinism augurs any willingness to seriously reconsider its substance.

Perhaps the most interesting portion of Ten Myths is the final chapter, titled "Recovering Our Bearings: Calvinism in the Twenty-First Century." There Stewart's agenda becomes clear. He writes not so much to answer Calvinism's critics as to urge several adjustments to contemporary Calvinism. Clearly he believes that even misunderstandings of Calvinism can teach Reformed Christians important lessons.

Stewart chides major personalities of the current Calvinist upsurge for thinking as though it "appeared Melchizedek-like, 'without genealogy.'?" He names two heroes of the mostly 20-something crowd of new Calvinists, John Piper and Mark Driscoll, as culprits of this de-historicized vision of contemporary Calvinism. Stewart concludes that the new Calvinists need to recognize how their movement "stands in succession to and dependency on … earlier movements." Recounting the stories of five earlier Calvinist upsurges, he calls on contemporary Calvinists to admit interdependence between past and present, show loyalty to both, eschew triumphalism, and practice unity and forbearance.

Young, restless, Reformed Calvinists—indeed, all of Geneva's progeny—ought to heed the sage advice of this Reformed theology professor and scholar of Calvinist history: "If a Calvinist movement stresses only the reiteration of ideas and doctrines from long ago, its tendency will be antiquarian and old-fogeyish; its devotees might actually wish to be living in a different time and place! On the other hand, if a Calvinist movement glories chiefly in its affinities with the contemporary scene … the necessary link with historical markers of the movement may be very hard to locate."

In fact, every Christian movement needs to recognize that there is really nothing new under the sun—a recognition that cultivates humility and willingness to learn from past mistakes.

Roger E. Olson is professor of theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary and author of the forthcoming Against Calvinism (Zondervan).

continue to -

 

Index to past articles on "Calvinism v. Arminianism"

 

 

 

 

 

Raising Yeshua-Followers in the West Bank

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/2011/06/parenting_lessons_from_the_wes.html

Ariella, a Messianic Jew, raises four children amid violence in the Holy Land.

by Michelle Van Loon

June 15, 2011

“It’s ironic, but I feel that my kids are safer here than living in the U.S.,” said Ariella B. I met Ariella nearly two decades ago when we were attending the same Chicago-area congregation. Recently I had a chance to visit her on a recent trip to Israel. She is now a vivacious 40-something wife and mother of four elementary-aged children living in the West Bank.

“Safe” is probably not the word that comes to mind when most of us think about raising a family in a Jewish settlement on the far side of the Green Line. But Ariella insists that her family’s rhythms would be familiar to most American parents: school activities, piano lessons, chores and outings shape their day-to-day life.

“We don’t have too many fears of child abduction or mugging. There are the usual safety measures - areas you know to stay away from, and where pickpockets are in the Old City. But normally, kids stay out late here with no problem. Everyone here is required to serve in the army, so everyone knows how to take care.”

Ariella, who emigrated to Israel from the U.S. nearly 15 years ago, is a Messianic Jew. “Our town of about 40,000 is a short distance from Jerusalem. Most living here hold to some form of religious Zionism, otherwise they would not feel comfortable living here.

“When I was 13 and had my Bat Mitzvah - my coming of age ceremony - the Torah portion for that week was Ezekiel 36:24-39. This set of verses turned out to have incredible impact for me in my 20s as I came to faith in Yeshua (Jesus), and again a few years later when I became part of the community of returning exiles.” She married another Jewish believer she met after moving to Israel.

Though the number of believing Israelis is growing (current estimates place the Israeli Messianic population at around 10,000 out of a population of more than 7 million), Ariella and her family have long been accustomed to living as a sometimes-persecuted minority in the country. They attend a small Hebrew-language Messianic congregation, but have friends in many other congregations as well. This network of relationships provides support as they live their lives among those who don’t share their faith in the Messiah.

“We have a lot in common in terms of morals and lifestyle with our neighbors,” Ariella noted. “My husband and I believe God brought our family to this community. The move here was attractive as well because rents are sky-high in Jerusalem. We can afford to live here.”

There is a cost to that affordability: bars on every window of their one-story home, an armed security guard at the entrance to her community, and the gauntlet of checkpoints, concrete barriers, armed soldiers, and United Nations monitors, all ever-present reminders of the tensions that exist in her region of the world.

Two incidents of terrorism this spring struck especially close to home for Ariella’s family: the massacre of a five members of the Fogel family in Itamar, another West Bank community, and a bombing that killed a Christian Bible translator at a Jerusalem bus stop. The Fogel murders shook the entire country to the core. The funeral was broadcast live on Israeli television. Days later, the bus bombing triggered fears that a third intifada had begun.

Talking with her children about the danger in their world is a necessity, but Ariella’s approach is shaped by her faith as much as it is by the hard facts of life on the other side of the Green Line. “All Israeli kids are briefed not to touch or be around objects left alone without an owner, for instance. They know that terrorists don’t want us here. My family prays regularly for those who want to harm us. We pray for their salvation, that God will have mercy on them and stop them from doing evil.”

Ariella noted that prayer doesn’t automatically banish fear in her household, but she and her husband process scary issues as they arise in order to prepare their children to embrace their role in their culture. “They understand that here and being a believer means they won’t have an easy life. But I also want them to know that only God’s promises are our foundation for safety.”

Ariella believes she's responsible for modeling openness and fear-free engagement with both their Jewish neighbors and the Arab community. “God has given my husband and me opportunities in our daily lives to share God’s love with Arabs. I like it when the children are with me for these ‘divine encounters’ so they can witness them. Last week, I met a lady from Gaza who was in a hospital waiting room with me. In the course of our conversation, I shared my faith with her. She knew I was Jewish, but I explained my faith in Yeshua (Jesus) to her, and she let my 7-year-old daughter and me pray for her healing. My little girl has been praying for her since that encounter.”

Ariella and her husband are quick to counter any hatred the children may pick up from the polarized culture in which they live. “We don’t want the prejudices of others to be the foundation for our family’s responses,” she said. “The children know God’s heart to redeem, and that brings perspective.”

And according to Ariella, that healthy, hopeful perspective is a gift parents can give to their children, no matter what their zip code is.

Why Men Should Read Jane Austen

Occassionally I like to break out of Christian topics and simply look at culturally relevant material like this CT article below. However you may identify with it I think it behooves us to better listen and learn from one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

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And, how we all should read works like ‘Pride and Prejudice.’
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/2011/06/why_men_should_read_jane_auste.html

 

by Gina Dalfonzo

June 20, 2011

 

Nobel-winning novelist V. S. Naipaul recently started a firestorm with his remarks about female writers in general and Jane Austen in particular. According to the Guardian:

In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society on Tuesday about his career, Naipaul, who has been described as the "greatest living writer of English prose", was asked if he considered any woman writer his literary match. He replied: "I don't think so." Of Austen he said he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world". 

He felt that women writers were "quite different". He said: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." 

The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too," he said.

Naipaul’s words caused controversy for obvious reasons: They were self-serving, condescending, and, as any of Austen’s millions of devoted readers could attest, wholly untrue. Not only was Austen’s talent equal to that of virtually any other great writer, but she was about as “sentimental” as a surgeon’s scalpel.

As my friend Lori Smith writes in her book A Walk with Jane Austen, “Biographers sometimes wrestle with Austen’s complex character—the good Christian girl with the biting wit, with the ability to see and desire to expose the laughable and ludicrous. . . . She had a capacity for devotion as well as an ability to wryly, if at times harshly, engage the world around her.”

But Naipaul’s words will blow over before long, as publicity stunts tend to do. What should be troubling us is that his attitude seems to be deeply embedded in our culture. I’ve known quite a few men—educated, well-read men—who either dismiss Austen as “chick lit” or simply never bother to give her a thought. (I’ve even heard one man say that [Austen] didn’t know what she was talking about because she never married.) There are men who still read and enjoy her, but their number seems to be diminishing.

One reason for this, I’m afraid, is the way that many of us women read (and watch) Austen these days—drooling over the romances while passing over the satire and ignoring the fact that, as Lori puts it, “the triumph of [Austen's] books . . . is not only that the relationships come together but the kind of people who are allowed to come together—two people with characters that have been hammered out a bit, with faults that have been recognized and corrected.” In other words, the books are not just about love triumphant, but about the formation of good character and good values.

We Austen readers miss so much when we ignore the religious and moral bedrock of these novels. Sometimes we “use” the books rather than truly reading them (as C. S. Lewis expressed it in his insightful work An Experiment in Criticism), getting only romantic gratification out of them instead of thoughtfully taking in all that they have to offer. I’m not saying we shouldn’t enjoy the romance, but when we enjoy only that, we create an impression that that’s all these books are good for—and that’s an impression that’s hardly appealing to the average male reader.

Another reason is that we as a society seem so determined to segregate children by gender as soon as they begin to read. It’s not that we do it out of bad motives; it’s more a matter of wanting to make sure that both girls and boys will love to read. The way to do that, most of us believe, is to offer books that appeal to them on the basis of gender—just as pop culture offers them movies and shows and games on that same basis. Have boys read only boyish books, the theory goes, and they’ll want to read more and more. Except that it doesn’t seem to be working out that way.

When we at BreakPoint started covering books for teens and tweens, we heard from several parents begging for some good reading options for their sons. Yet the libraries and bookstores are full of books about boys and their pursuits. Why, then, do parents have such a hard time finding material?

Maybe the answer lies in what we’ve taught them to enjoy. Everyone has different tastes, of course, but I wonder if we adults have had more input into children’s tastes than we realize. In fact, I wonder if our gender-based ideas have created something of a vicious circle: The more we promote books that we think boys will like—always exciting, not too difficult, with as many boys and as few girls as possible—the more we help to narrow their minds and ensure that they’ll never try anything else. And in the process, we’re exhausting the amount of literary resources available to them.

This problem doesn’t just involve gender, of course; it’s also about what Lewis called “chronological snobbery,” which is far more rampant in our time than in his. It leads too many parents to dismiss shelves full of classics that appealed to children in earlier generations, in endless pursuit of the modern and relevant. We send them the message that classic literature is too hard, too boring, too far removed from their lives—is it any wonder they believe it? And this doesn’t apply just to Jane Austen, or even just to female authors. Try running a blog about Charles Dickens, and finding yourself constantly explaining to people that (1) yes, Dickens is worth reading, (2) no, he was not “paid by the word,” and (3) no, they do not deserve to be pitied for the rest of their lives because a teacher “forced” them to read him.

I realize I’m asking for a lot here. These days, teaching children, regardless of gender, to enjoy all sorts of literature from all sorts of authors is generally held to be far too difficult and not worth the effort. I’m not saying it would be easy, but I am saying it would be very much worth the effort. Aside from the obvious benefits to their intellect, vocabulary, and faith—for many of those great writers incorporated a Christian worldview into their work—it would broaden their horizons and teach them that it might just be possible to learn something from people who are different from them.

V.S. Naipaul might not approve, but I’ll bet Jane Austen would.

Gina Dalfonzo is editor of BreakPoint.org and Dickensblog. She wrote "The Good Christian Girl: A Fable" and "God Loves a Good Romance" for CT online, and “Guarding Your Marriage without Dissing Women,” “Bill Maher Slurs Sarah Palin, NOW Responds,” “The Social Network’s Women Problem,” "Facebook Envy on Valentine's Day," "What Are Wedding Vows For, Anyway?" "Why Sex Ruins TV Romances," and "Don't Think Pink" for Her.meneutics. Her book, “‘Bring Her Down’: How the American Media Tried to Destroy Sarah Palin,” is now available on Amazon.