The Epistle to Diognetus

I have recently began reading through the first volume of the Anti-Nicene Fathers collection by A. Cleveland Coxe. I have not gotten far, as I have other reading commitments, and I am taking the time to soak in the wisdom of the Apostolic Fathers. A short passage in the Epistle to Diognetus stood out as a foundational theology for the Christian religion. The Epistle to Diognetus is attributed to an Apostolic Father known simply as Mathetes, which is Koine Greek for "Disciple". While his name may be lost, his insight on the nature of God should not be forgotten and lost to the ages. 

The nature of Mathetes' theological insight regards the nature of what the Christian means when s/he references God's glory. The Glory of God is a basic concept in Reformed Theology where it exists as the supreme good in reality, and where everything exists for God's glory. Yet, the precise nature of this glory is somewhat vague and abstract. In Calvinism, the glory of God generally exists as a Monarchial Majesty. John Piper defines it, "[T]he infinite value of God, the infinite intrinsic worth of God... The public display of the infinite beauty and worth of God is what I mean by 'glory'...".  

It is not difficult to detect the violence inherent within this Monarchial Glory. God alone is the true glory in Himself. Everything therefore exists to aggrandize His Own Glory. God's value is "intrinsic value" in Himself. The loci of attentions all converge on God in Himself. God is the Monarch to whom we must all bow because of His resplendent majesty and sacrifice all for. 

It is little wonder, in the age of democracy, that many people revolt at such a conception of God. It is a starkly anti-humanist understanding of the Sacred. God becomes an egotistical, jealous God. For this reason, John Piper writes in the same post, "Not 'John is glorious,' but 'God is glorious!' (Which is probably why God lets us sin as much as he does. But that's another question.)."  

The understanding of God's Majesty in Mathetes is the inversion of this Piperian logic. Instead of God's Majesty being abstractly intrinsic, it becomes relational. In his Epistle we read:  

"For it is not by ruling over his neighbours, or by seeking to hold the supremacy over those that are weaker, or by being rich, and showing violence towards those that are inferior, that happiness is found; nor can any one by these things become an imitator of God. But these things do not at all constitute His majesty. On the contrary he who takes upon himself the burden of his neighbour; he who, in whatsoever respect he may be superior, is ready to benefit another who is deficient; he who, whatsoever things he has received from God, by distributing these to the needy, becomes a god to those who receive [his benefits]: he is an imitator of God" (Epistle to Diognetus, Ch. X). 

Notice the profound reversal of the concept of majesty between Piper and Mathetes. Glory is no longer an egotistical, jealous concept that compels all to service it. Majesty is not found in a puffed up chest that demonstrates how superior one is to the other. God forbid! Real majesty is not in those who lord over others. Real Majesty is found in the Lord Christ, who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 

Mathetes has a theology of God wherein His majesty does not arise from a Monarchial Egotism, but in a Selfless Altruism. God's Glory is not something that exists beyond His Love for His Creation. Love is not optional. We glorify God, and God is glorified, precisely because He has no ego-self. God empties Himself for the Other. God gives away all His goods to those who are poor, and therein exists His Real Majesty. It is this concept of the Selfless Self that makes God Good, that makes God Majestic. It is this selflessness that makes God God.

Note: The use of the term "monarch" in this post is in the derogative sense. It is not to impinge upon the political philosophy of monarchism which believes the duty of the monarch is to act as the stewart of the people and to rule in their best interest. On second consideration, I should have chosen the word "dictator". My apologies to all the good monarchists out there.

Believe, Peter Rollins and Being Good

Believe (2014) is a promising new series that was unfortunately canceled due to poor ratings. The series revolves around 10-year-old Bo Adams (Johnny Sequoyah), a extraordinary girl with a host of psychic powers inherited from her deceased Mother. In the pilot episode, we learn that Milton Winter (Delroy Lindo) has whisked her away from the sinister organization Orchestra headed by the world renown geneticist Roman Skouras (Kyle MacLachlan). Bo's foster parents are assassinated by Moore (mastery played by Sienna Guillory) and against commonsense Winter breaks out William Tate from death-row to rescue Bo from a hospital before Moore can get to her. It is quickly revealed to the viewer that Tate is actually Bo's long-lost Father. The gem of the series is the insanely beautiful relationship between a Father and his Daughter.

  

I want to say this is a scene from a promo for the series finale.

The show revolves around Tate and Bo on the run from Skouras's Orchesta and the Government. Bo and Tate have a cute, sanguine relationship that involves much bickering as the two clash on the correct corse of action to take. Besides being chased by the baddies, a common theme in the series is Bo using her precognition to help the people she meets along the journey. This aspect is quite reminiscent of Touched by an Angel. Tate argues with her to mind her own business and not risk going out of their way to help those in need. Tate is cynical and Bo is optimistic, overflowing with good intentions. It is not until the end of the series that Tate comes to terms with Bo as a perpetual goodie-two-shoes.

I want to draw a comparison between Bo, deconstruction, and the postmodern theologian, Peter Rollins. Jacques Derrida, the founder of the post-structuralist philosophy known as deconstruction, has spilt much ink philosophizing about the idea of the gift. His theory of the gift revolves around the idea that a pure gift is that which is given away without receiving something in return. Like a crafty philosopher, Derrida informs us that even if we are thanked for a gift we have given, it is not a pure gift: we receive the social thank you in exchange. Even if we receive a conscious, warm fuzzy feeling from our gift, it is not a pure gift. Derrida has made the pure gift practically impossible, and this is his intent. 

Tate hugging Bo after he discovers that she is his daughter.

Peter Rollins takes the Derridean insight and twists it to be applicable to the Christian concept of Love. His approach to Love is closely associated with the old Greek Virtue Ethics. In other words, love, or the good, is about being good. It is about forming a disposition that is naturally good. This virtue/Derridean ethic of his stands in stark contrast to the conscious choice ethics without passion of Kantianism, of which Nietzsche wrote, "What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty?" (The AntiChrist, §11). Rollins argues with Nietzsche, not for an automaton of duty, but an automaton of passion and being. He declares:

For a love that is born from God is a love that gives with the same reflex as that which causes a bird to sing or the heart to beat. For a concrete example of this, we can say that an act of love could involve giving money to someone on the street without stopping to think, or talking to someone who is in pain without thought that we are doing anything special or different from any other daily activity. Is this not what is really meant by the biblical injunction to give so as the right hand does not know what the left has given? The love that arises from God is a love that loves anonymously, a love that acts without such self-centered reflections, that gives without thought" (How (not) to Speak of God, p. 74).

Bo giving Tate the thumbs up after controlling the roulette ball for him in Atlantic City.

Bo exists as the perfect representation of a truly loving individual in the Rollinsian sense. She does not have to compel herself through a monumental force of the will to do good unto others. It comes naturally for her. The opposite is true. Bo has to force herself to do something "wrong," exempli gratia, Tate has to convince her that if she does not help him cheat at roulette with her psychic abilities, that she cannot eat (for they have no money). And what does Bo do with the thousands of  dollars they win? She gives the lion's share of it away to a sick boy who is suffering from cancer, and whose mother is struggling to pay for his proper treatment. Bo gifts the money away without a second thought. It is simply who she is. She is the special girl who helps people. 

Tate fights Bo most of the way. His cynical attitude demands that your first priority is to look after yourself. Yet, Bo is quite selfless. On the eleventh episode, she directly marches into a subway station where her premonition told her something terrible would happen. Towards the end of the series, a character develop in Tate's character is that he finally learns to stop fighting Bo, and to simply let her be herself. Everybody wants her to be somebody else, but Bo just wants to be her caring, loving self. She does not know anything different. She doesn't know how not to care. Her heart bleeds out of her natural being. 

And, for that, Bo is one of the subversive and crafty archetypes of Christ. Out of the mouth of babes, comes a logic that subverts the wisdom of the world. For all their machinations, nobody can stop Bo from being the bearer of the Spirit of Christ in her body. She is not a self-righteous Messiah who comes with power to change the world. The subversive revolution of Bo begins with the real, the everyday. Using her gifts, to help those around her, because that is her natural passionate being.

The Subversive Insight of MTV's Faking It

MTV's Faking It is centered around the original idea of best friends (Karma and Amy) faking a lesbian relationship for popularity in their super-liberal, oddball Austin, Texas high school. The premise is that in this high school, the misfits are the cool kids. Being different is considered a virtue as opposed to something that will get you ostracized from the group. The plot is driven by the event of Amy discovering, that in the process of faking it, she has unmasked real feelings of love for Karma. The latter, however, is hopeless obsessed with Liam, the handsome artistic boy, who begins to fall for the redhead, who also remains oblivious to any feelings Amy might have for her. Other characters include the sassy, gay Shane and the somewhat conservative soon-to-be Amy's stepsister, Lauren.   

 A screen capture from episode 2 of the series, featuring a dream sequence where Karma (right) kisses Amy (left).  

The aim today is not to discuss the main storyline. While the dynamics between the incredibly endearing Amy and self-centered Karma can tug on the heart strings, there is nothing particularly unique there. The genius comes in the writing craft of Carter Covington, the series' creator, who himself is gay. Covington's genius exists in the subversive message hidden underneath all snappy dialogue. His subversion appears to have escaped the purview of the actors, who seem to have only nice things to say about the fictional high school.

It is effortless to mock conservatives. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert do it non-stop during the weekdays. It sometimes gives us a good chuckle. Yet, it is a more difficult thing to mock liberals who are supposedly all about humanist tolerance and progressive values. Covington has succeed in subverting the liberal discourse through satire, exposing its hypocrisies and bigotries from a progressive standpoint. The magic of Faking It is that it is a satire which simultaneously critiques both conservatives and liberals. 

Karma and Amy's high school appears to be tolerant of everybody, but their tolerance is merely a façade; a de-humanizing sort of toleration. Covington demonstrates a liberal tolerance that is obsessed with categories which does violence to the singularity of the Other by reducing that singularity to a mere category. Shane thinks he has discovered that Karma and Amy are gay, but too afraid to come out of the closet. In front of all the people at a big party, he announces that they should elect them homecoming queens. He had mentioned to his best friend Liam that he has been wanting to make lesbian friends, and that these two will do the trick. 

Shane nominating Amy and Karma for homecoming.

The students at the school support Karma and Amy as the poster couple, not because they are a good couple, not because of any virtue of theirs, but simply because they represent a new category for the school to feel more liberal, more tolerant. Karma's parents are so happy that she has come out as lesbian, since in their circle of friends this makes them the cool parents with an edgy lesbian daughter. Saying, "I have a lesbian daughter" is mark of social distinction. At homecoming, when Amy makes an off-the-cuff joke, another girl says, "I love lesbian humor," as if everything she does it lesbian, lesbian, lesbian, all the time lesbian. All she is to them is the Lesbian.

Covington has created a brilliant critique of liberal tolerance that is reductionist and violent against the singularity of the Other. In a poststructural vernacular, it is said that this liberalism pretends that the categories are presence without absence, without a remained. Faking It reminds me of that old Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode where Carlton confronts the frat-boy who wants to keep him from entering the fraternity for not being authentically black (see the Fresh Prince Moment). Carlton protests that, "Being black isn't what I am trying to be. It's what I am." Covington is doing for sex and gender what Will Smith did for race. 

Covington's Faking It explores the dynamics between the category and singularity in a way that is uncommonly critical of liberalism. The modern liberal tradition has a violent tendency to reduce people to their categories—denying absence. Liberal feminism has been criticized for thinking that merely by flooding public offices with women, that feminist objectives will be accomplished. It is a reductionist position because it assumes that women think, believe, act like x. They will do all of this because they are this category. People thought that President Obama would shake up the status quo, because his identity being more or less African American. Yet, once in power, nothing has changed. The color of a man's skin or the fact of female genitalia does not ultimately define a person one way or another. Perhaps this is a natural consequence of identity politics, but it is a violence against singularity nonetheless. 

Such is not to say that categories do not matter, or that identity politics is wrong. Oftentimes, hegemonic relations seek to dominate through an appeal to a common humanity that just happens to be created in the image of the dominant category. The fictional Austin high school is not portrayed as wholly bad. In fact, sometimes its drive towards tolerance can be warm and inviting. Yet, Covington had the genius to subvert liberal tolerance and show how it often turns into its opposite as symbolic violence against the actual person. It is something you rarely find on television today.

Oral Fixation and Mazophilia

The common heterosexual-male fixation on the female breast has been an idea that has been on my mind for quite a while now. Particularly because, while I identify as a heterosexual male, I do not appear to share in the fetish — known as mazophilia. So it has gotten me wondering what it is that drives the masculine-heterosexual fixation on the opposite sex's breasts. The question that begs to be answered is essentially: why are female breasts considered so widely to be a sexual object?

An evolutionary psychological interpretation I have come across is the idea by Larry Young (Ph.D.) that the ground of mazophilia lies in the neuropsychology of the female breast. When the nerve endings of the breasts are stimulated, oxytocin is released in the brain. This flood of oxytocin creates warm and fuzzy feelings, bonding the mother to the child on a deeply emotional level. Consequently, the same release of oxytocin occurs with stimulation during the sex act, bonding the female to the their male or female partner. Dr. Young writes:

"So joke all you want, but our fascination with your breasts, far from being creepy, is an unconscious evolutionary drive prompting us to activate powerful bonding circuits that help create a loving, nurturing bond" (Huffington Post).

Regardless of the positive aspects, I think we all have to agree that while mazophilia is not terrible in-itself, it is often demeaning, lewd and objectifying in practice. And while I find the evolutionary psychological perspective highly intriguing and think that probably puts together a piece of the puzzle, I find myself wondering what the psychoanalytic perspective can add to the discussion of the nearly ubiquitous phenomenon of mazophilia in our Western society.

The image above is from Jessu at DeviantArt. The name of the art is "oral fixation," and besides the title I chose it because it poignantly exemplifies the underlying sexual nature of oral-fixation. 

It is my hypothesis that we must return to the oral-stage of human psychosexual development in order to fully understand mazophilia. For those unfamiliar with Freudian psychoanalysis, the oral-stage is the first stage of psychosexual development, that begins from birth until about one-and-a-half-years. The infant receives its primary source of pleasure from the mouth: eating, drinking and sucking. The mouth therefore becomes the infant's first erogenous zone.

What appears ubiquitous in human history is the phenomenon of breastfeeding; both the male and female infants naturally receive nourishment from the female breast. Two points need to be noted to ensure an accurate treatment of the subject: (i.) In antiquity, if the mother did not want to breastfeed the child, a wet-nurse was paid for (or coerced through the practice of slavery) to feed the child. Therefore, it was not always the mother who nursed the child; (ii.) in modernity, mothers often opt out of breastfeeding their children and substitute formula. However, the infant is still bottle-fed with a faux-nipple.

So, it is my hypothesis that mazophilia has its ground in infant's oral-stage, when the infant's libidinal-energy is focused on the satisfaction it receives from sucking on the breast. That object of our libidinal-drive does not merely disappear, but transforms itself along with much of it being repressed. Adults gain pleasure/gratification from the stimulation of the lips and the tongue. The human act of kissing can also be looked upon as a moment of oral-fixation.

The societal obsession with breasts as a sexual object is then a sublimated form of the original incestuous desire for the Mother's breast. The Freudian analysis can be pushed even further to say that all oral gratification is a transformation of the infantile incestuous desire. Such is not to impugn the legitimacy of the attraction to the female breast. In the psychoanalytic tradition, healthy sexual desire exists as a transmutation of the original incestuous desire for the Mother.

In other words, I think that the Freudian psychoanalytic attention on the libidinal union of Mother and child provides the link that Dr. Young's analysis misses. His theory focuses on the pleasure the female receives, but the psychoanalytic theory provides an answer as to why the Other finds the female breast an extremely erogenous body part.

Nevada Militia and Left-wing Radicals

The news stories coming out about the Nevada cattle rancher who had armed post-hoc right-wing militia form to defend his property against Government seizure has me troubled. I am not weighing in on whether the Nevada rancher was right in his claims, or whether the Government was right in its claims. I also do not particularly care whether the post-hoc militia were defending justice or unjustly destabilizing the rule of law. What bothers me is the way it was handled in relation to how the Government has historically handed other dissident activities.

A picture of armed, government militia confronting a workers strike from the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.

It is my belief that the capitulation on the part of the Government had mostly to do with the fact that post-hoc militia were right-wing and defending the institution of private property. In Marxian political theory, the State is the monopoly on the use of legitimate violence for the maintenance of private property. The police and the military serve the primary purpose of protecting private property. In On the Jewish Question, Marx writes:

"Security is the highest social concept of civil society, the concept of police, expressing the fact that the whole of society exists only in order to guarantee to each of its members the preservation of his person, his rights, and his property... The concept of security does not raise civil society above its egoism. On the contrary, security is the insurance of egoism. None of the so-called rights of man, therefore, go beyond egoistic man, beyond man as a member of civil society – that is, an individual withdrawn into himself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and separated from the community."

The τέλος of the police is the shared aim of what the post-hoc right-wing militia were fighting for in Nevada. Obviously, the interests of each individual capitalist and the libertarian ideology of capitalism do not always coincide with the interests of the State and its vision of capitalism. Yet, it is undeniable—from the Marxist perspective—that there is a certain affinity between the two camps.

My concern is what would happen if a leftist-socialist community decided to take a similar action. What if an organized collectivity of agricultural workers decided that they were going to disobey the Government and refuse to turn over the products of their labor to the absentee capitalist owner? What if they armed themselves into a militia in exactly same manner?

It is doubtful, in my humble opinion, that the Government would roll over and play dead. It is doubtful the Government would accept the new ownership of the workers collective. I imagine that the situation could dissolve into bloody skirmishes and that many arrests would definitely follow. I cannot envision the Government capitulating, permitting this socialist dissidence.

The Sublime Poet within Chris Daughtry

Continuing stride from the previous post, I thought a short comment on the lyrical brilliance of Chris Daughtry was in proper order. It is not certain, from my brief investigation, what Daughtry's current religious sensibilities are. I am not sure if he is religious or irreligious. I am not sure it matters. Though by my guess, he is at least somewhat religious. The only definite statement I found from the horse's mouth was: "I'm not out to force my political or religious beliefs on anyone. If I can influence people, I hope it's to follow their own hearts... [I] had a very conservative, Christian upbringing. As you get older, different things develop that can maybe contradict what you grew up believing in. You get a more worldly view of how the world works" (USA Today). 

A screen-capture from Daughtry's music video, Waiting for Superman.

Whatever the state of his religiosity, Daughtry professes a rare insight into the nature of God and Grace in his song, Baptized, a track on the album, also given the name Baptized. His lyrics are often sprinkled with the sensibility of faith and spirituality. About the song, Daughtry has said, "The song 'Baptized' isn't a spiritual or gospel song in the traditional sense, but I wanted it to have that 'O Brother Where Art Thou' type gospel feel to it, complete with a chanting section... Lyrically, it's really about me and my wife Deanna, but it's also very powerful in the way of analogy for this rebirth in my career" (Songwriter Universe). The lyrics read:

It's safe to say I'm lost,

Without you in my arms,

So I call your name and I pray you might,

Come and wash over me like the pale moonlight,

Until the sun comes back around.

Take me down, take me down by the water, water,

Pull me in until I see the light,

Let me drown, let me drown, in you honey, honey,

In your love I wanna be baptized.

Take me down, take me down by the water, water,

I wanna be baptized.

And the days and nights are cold,

Without your body to hold,

So I close my eyes hoping you'll appear,

Cause it feels like grace every time you're near, yeah,

Don't leave, until the sun comes back around.

Daughtry masterfully crafted a lyrical poem in which the Love for, and of, his wife becomes a baptism. Baptism is a sacrament in which our old self is drowned in the waters—for water in the rite represents death—and our new self rises again to new life. Without the sexual (physical) presence of his wife, Daughtry is forsaken and broken. It is only with her sexual presence near, "in my arms", that new life exists within him—that he can be brought to the fullness of life. 

Yet, many people bicker about the real intention of this song. One side insists that the song is a metaphor about Christ (or God). Daughtry is a Christian, so this song is obviously a belabored metaphor for the close relationship between him and Christ—their logic contends. The other side places attention on the sexual language in the lyrics, and therefore insists that it is a metaphor for the beautiful relationship Daughtry has with his wife. Daughtry uses sexual/bodily imagery, so this song is obviously not about God—their logic contends (see image below).  

I pasted together Youtube comments using GIMP to artificially create this image
 and give it some coherence.

The trick to understand this is to abandon the either/or logic with which these commenters comprehend the topic at hand. We need to embrace a logic of both/and. Notice that Daughtry writes, "Cause it feels like grace every time you're near". Perhaps I am doing violence to the song by reading my own theological/philosophical predilections into the song, but it appears to me that the song tells us that God's Grace (God's Godself) permeates throughout the Love Daughtry and his wife have for each other. Sexual Love is truly dying and rising again, because it is the very space where the God is immanent. It is not merely an earthly event, but a heavenly-transcendent process, this falling in love. It is God's essence which permeates the entire sexual event between Daughtry and his wife. The movement of their Love is the movement of God's Grace. If this were not the case, the identification with baptism would be a mere similitude. Yet, I think the sublime poet within Chris Daughtry is trying to tells us something more. His song is not mere poetry. It is poetry-plus. It is a poetry which seeks to reveal the Divine immanence in the very act of sexual love. 

Chris Daughry sings about the Love he shares with his wife, and in doing so, he equally sings about God, and his relationship with Him.

Christ Has No Body But Yours

Something clicked in my head while I was praying in the mystical union of the Mass last week. The night before I had read the poem by St. Teresa of Ávila through the visual benediction on Work of the People. And the words penned by the most blessed saint remained stuck in my mind. The words are august and haunting: 

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks.

I wish I knew who painted this august and stylized Pietà.

The Mass, when read through the perspective of St. Teresa, becomes the sacrifice where we bring our bodies to the Altar of God so that in partaking of the Body of Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, our body becomes transformed into the Body of Christ. It is a mystical union of Man and God. One should not forget the classical theology regarding theosis, or divinization, that remained central among the early Church and the Church Father. St. Teresa's insight forces us to take the notion of the Church as the Body of Christ with much more gravity, and to understand the notion of good works as a necessary part of salvation in a whole new light.  

The Mass read through St. Teresa offers us a non-magical understanding of God, Christ and the World that breaks through spiritualist and materialist barriers. The common ontology is that God acts as an external divine magician in the world. A bolt of lightening here, and your illness is cured, a bolt of lightening there and your soul-mate falls in love with you. The alternative ontology of God proposes that Christ/God has a physical Body with which to move and act in the World, and that this Body is composed of the visible and invisible Church. A human being becomes the literal Body of Christ so far as s/he does justice to the Divine Essence in his or her actions. 

A doctor removes a blockage from a patient's artery and God has effected His miracle, here, a person falls totally in love with her significant other, and God has effected His miracle, there. Divinity is no longer conditional on the result of magic, but rather is conditional on the depth and transcendence in human experience and action. It is a solemn notion, but one that appears much more august and profound than magic, because it speaks to the deepest humanity in us. The further we are joined to the Sacred, the more we instantiate God in the World, the more real the Kingdom of God becomes.

This places new justification for the Roman theological emphasis on works as a necessary component of justification. God's effect on the World is not external to humankind, but rather internal to the process of human life itself. The Kingdom of God cannot come except through the internal development of human action in the life of the Church. There is no grand outside source of effectual change outside human praxis. We cannot sit on our hands thinking that God will magically heal the sick. We need to transform our hands into the instruments through which God effects the miracle of healing. There is nothing concrete outside works, for these are the very concretization of the Miracle of God.

John Piper and the Parable of the Sex Trafficker

"God in eternity looked upon me foreseeing my fallenness, my pride, my sin and said, ‘I want that man in my family! I will pay for him to be in my family with my son’s life.’ That’s love folks, that is mega-off the charts love!" — John Piper

If the above comment is abstracted from its context, it is a wonderful quote. I could gleefully digest it as a Roman Catholic. In the concrete totality of Piper's theology, it is a cruel monstrosity. It is a mockery of Christian theology and the notion of Love. In fact, I should think it were the cruel joke of Satan whispering into the ears of the faithful, ridiculing their faith in God. 

In order to demonstrate the sadism of John Piper and his blasphemous joke, I wish to tell a parable about sex trafficking. 

A picture of actress Jamie Chung in the 2012 film, Eden, portraying a Korean-American girl abducted by sex traffickers.

In a small town in Vietnam, there was a foreign man named Godot. One night, as Godot was walking through a slum littered with brothels, his heart was moved with compassion towards the girls he found having unspeakable acts performed upon their bodies. The man screamed to the heavens, "I want those girls to be free! And I will pay for their freedom with all my worldly possessions." The man burst in through one of the doors and announced that he is willing to pay for the bodies of all these kidnapped girls to do with as he pleases. Few questions asked, the traffickers handed over the lot of the girls to Godot. 

The foreign man took the girls to the prosperous city, and payed for their housing, food, clothing and for their education, so that in a certain years time they will be able to find gainful employment. At the end of the week, once he had gotten the girls settled in to their new life, he packed his bags and began to exist the compound. One of the girls he had rescued, Ai, latched onto his leg, kneeling in the dirt, and said, "Oh kind man, who are you that you could have sold all your worldly possessions to save the lot of us who were dying in our misery?" 

Godot turned on his heal to face Ai and brought his eyes down to meet hers that were looking up at him. "Why, my dear," he said with a kind expression on his visage, "I am the sex trafficker who was in charge of bringing all those girls to the network of brothels you were also brought to. I am off to a rural village in south to bring more girls to that terrible place. And after that I am heading to an interview in New York City with Nicholas Kristof to tell the story of how I rescues all of you, for the praise and glory of my name." 

With that Godot walked off to continue his job. 

The reason Jesus spoke in parables was because the narrative format has a peculiar power to reach the core of our being and influence our spirit. It allows us to understand at the level of the intellect and the heart simultaneously. Godot in my parable takes the place of God in the Calvinism of John Piper. In the deterministic world of Piper, God is the one who sells us into slavery and then expects a grateful reaction from the slaves, and the others, when he chooses to save a small portion of them, leaving the rest to rot in their misery. How could this monstrous theology be conceived of any less than a cruel joke?

Prostitutes, Liberals and the Satanic Mills

The liberal justification for the legalization of prostitution has been swirling around in my head this past month.^† I had done some research as an undergrad exploring the topic. I enjoy readings on the institutions of prostitution and sex trafficking, such as Melissa Farley and Kathryn Farr. I find it fascinating, since it boggles me on the level of the heart how anybody could be supportive of prostitution, viewing it as a positive social institution, or even as a tolerable social phenomenon. And at the same time, on a philosophical level, I perfectly understand the justifications made for the prostitution phenomenon — even if I disagree with their validity.  

What I want to draw attention to in today's post is the similarity in the philosophic discourse used to justify prostitution and that used to justify the exploitation* of the working class during the Industrial and Progressive eras. The idea came to me while reading Marx's chapter on the working day in Capital Vol. I. Marx dedicated about 100 pages to a prolonged discussion of the fight to reduce the length of the working day in 19th century England. A particular section caught my eye where the capitalist class made the argument that workers should not be limited in the number of hours they can work if they want to improve their lot. In other words, why should not somebody be able to work extra hours in order to earn more income for themselves and their families? Or, why should somebody not be able to work in a toxic factory environment if it earns them extra income? It might be more financially beneficial than working the family farm. 

The Satanic Mills of the Industrial-Age.

I have found a parallel discourse among modern liberals who seek to vindicate prostitution as a legitimate profession. Even if many of those in prostitution have psychological traumas (particularly a history of sexual abuse), who are we to tell them they should not be able to make needed money by selling their sexual body to another person? Sometimes the most economic decision for a girl from a third-world country, who is pretty and has very little education, is to sell her sexual body for money to improve her lot and perhaps the lot of her family. It might be more financially beneficial than working in a rice patty. 

On the face of it, prima facie, this liberal logic appears reasonable. Even if we view this as an evil, prostitution appears to be, sometimes, the lesser of two evils. And yet, it still leaves a horrible aftertaste on the tongue when the words themselves have been spoken in justification. The fault of this thinking is that it does nothing to challenge the systems of oppression in our world, but rather tacitly supports them and gives them validity. It is the last sigh of a politics that has surrendered to monstrosity.

Without working day legislation—based on the hours and conditions of labor—that limit the arbitrary freedom of workers to sell their labor power to the capitalist factories, we surrender to the system of inhumanity. Some workers may make less money for their families if we limit the length of the working day. Requiring companies to pay for the healthcare of employees may cause capitalists not to hire as many workers, or lay off some workers, than they would before the legislation. Yet, I am not convinced that is a valid reason not to pass said legislation, since the alternative is merely to give capital whatever it wants without struggle. It is to wave the white flag. And, historically, it is not what liberals have done. The progressive movements, in the first half of the 20th century, fought virulently for humane working conditions.

From what I understand, this is a real picture of a British prostitute working her territory.

I am not trying to find commonality with the liberal who thinks that sex work is a social positive, and who glorifies the social institution.^‡ I am trying to draw a parallel between the sex work and industrial-age factory work for the liberal-minded who already believes there is something disordered in prostitution. It is the point that the legalization of prostitution comes from a libertarian ideology, where the free market is the idol, rather than the same progressive spirit that sought to place many restrictions on factory owners and factory labor.

A progressive spirit of liberalism should not glorify the institution of prostitution, based on the same logic used in the struggle for the working day. It should work against its proliferation, for if prostitution is seen as an exploitative form of work,  then the next logical step is to work to eliminate it, just as the progressive movement abolished child labor from the factory system. The ideology which seeks to legalize prostitution possess more genetic similarity to libertarianism than with the spirit of the progressive labor movement. The logic contemporary liberals purport, for the legalization of prostitution, is the same logic capitalists used during the progressive era to justify the exploitation of labor.

Notes:
† I am using the word "liberal," here, in terms of social (modern) liberalism. It is the brand of liberalism that has moved beyond classical liberalism and has incorporated social protections against the unbound logic of the capitalist market. 
* The word "exploitation" should be read in a general sense, here in this post, and not in technical Marxian sense. 
‡ Kari Kesler writes in Sexualities: "I believe that some prostitutes, the ones who exercise control and autonomy in their lives and who have both freely chosen and enjoy their work, can be held up as role models."

Cafeteria Catholicism or Loyalist Dissent?

The name "cafeteria catholic" is commonly thrown, by staunch Vatican party-member Catholics, at those of us who remain united with the Roman Catholic Church, but do not doctrinally follow each and every pronouncement of the Magisterium. The adjective "cafeteria" is a belittling and symbolically violent word which tries to trivialize the faith of Catholics, such as myself, who break with the Magisterium on some doctrinal issues. 

"Cafeteria catholicism" implies that the faith and intellectualism of dissenting Catholics is based upon the crass notion of consumerism. Our faith is implied to be one where we shop for what happens to tempt our palate at the moment. In the cafeteria, if we do not like a food (for any whimsical reason) we move on and choose some other food that appears more appealing. The implication is that those of us who dissent from the Vatican party-line are just as arbitrary and capricious in our religion and faith as in the cafeteria searching for something to eat. When a doctrine that the Magisterium has proclaimed does not suit our desire, we simply move on to something else, choosing another notion that better suits our appetite.

The charge of "cafeteria catholicism" glosses over the reality that many of those of us who break with the Magisterium do not do so wantonly or blindly, but that we have very firm reasons from within the tradition. In other words, those of us who consider ourselves loyal dissidents, often dissent precisely for the sake of the tradition. The tradition (auto)deconstructs itself and pushes beyond the limits it has set for itself.

Jacques Derrida insisted that deconstruction is always auto-deconstruction. In other words, deconstruction is an internal process that works from within the discourse under analysis, not an external violence that bastardizes the text. It is the subject/object's own movement which is the process of deconstruction. 

Let me provide a lucent example. In the early centuries of Christian history, the value of sexuality was highly suspect and virulently denounced by giants of the Church. St. Augustine developed the notion, in his theology, that human beings are born into sin, because we are born from a sex act. The sex act is a necessary sin for the propagation of the human race. Pope Gregory the Great proclaimed that the pleasure derived from sexual acts was itself inherently sinful, assenting with the Augustinian theology, and citing as his proof Psalm 51:5, "Behold I was conceived in sins, and in delights my mother bore me." Pope Gregory commanded husbands or wives who had engaged in lawful, marital sexual relations to "abstain (from entering the church at once)."

With the coming of Vatican II, the Roman Church began to adopt a more positive, romantic view of sexual relations (at least as far as marriage is concerned). It could no longer be maintained that sexuality, created by God as a part of our human nature, was wholly aberrant to goodness. The council of Cardinals and advisors at Vatican II reformed the notion of sexuality to place it more in line with what they believed the whole breadth of the Roman tradition demanded—a stark reversal of previous sexual ethics, but one that was true to the spirit of the faith.

A loyalist dissident, such as myself, believes that this is how we are proceeding when we criticize the Vatican's theology of the body, as it applies to contraceptives, homosexuality and pre-marital sex. We believe with firm conviction that we are carrying the insights and spirit of Vatican II forward to its logical conclusions. We criticize the procreationist view of the sex act, because it does violence to the notions of love and intimacy that Vatican II elevated as the blessings of marriage.

And it is for this very reason that we stay Roman Catholic. Protestants and party-member Catholics commonly ask me why I remain Roman if I do not believe everything the "Church" teaches. The previous paragraphs provide the perfect answer: because I believe I am carrying forward the banner of the Spirit of God further within, not outside, the tradition that Christ has bequeathed to us.