Full Contact Christianity

On a discussion forum I’m part of, someone, a parent of teenagers, I believe, posted a list of questions about sex education. I think it’s a great list, and bears discussing. I’ll give my answers below, but I’m going to just give you the questions first. I’d encourage you to take a crack at answering them for yourself before you read mine.

1. Is there a genuine difference between “Christian sex ed” and secular information, or do we just add a few Bible verses to the same biological facts?
2. What is God’s actual design for sex? (Looking for biblical evidence here, not just traditional “churchy” opinions.)
3. Does the Bible even offer a blueprint for sexual education, or have we been winging it for centuries?
4. How do we stop the cycle of “sex-negative” or “sex-neutral” parenting? Can we actually give what we never received?
5. Is “taboo” ever healthy? Is there any topic that should remain strictly off-limits between parent and child?
6. Is there a “too early,” or is our silence just giving the world a head start?
7. Is it time to scrap the “mom talks to girls, dad talks to boys” rule? Who is truly responsible? Does the gender of the parent or child even matter in these conversations, or is that just a cultural tradition?
8. Silence is not consent—if a child never asks, are we failing them by not forcing the issue? How do we handle the “shut down” and the averted eyes?
9. If we aren’t the primary source, who is the safest “second-in-line” for our kids?
10. Is the church (or small group) actually stepping up, or are they just outsourcing this uncomfortable job back to parents?
11. How can we advocate for “waiting” today? (I’m looking for arguments that a teenager can relate to, even if they haven’t had a conversion experience yet!)
12. Can we define “boundaries” before marriage without turning it into a legalistic checklist of “how far is too far”? What is your exact answer if your kid asks for it?
13. How do we address the “puberty gap”? What should a young person do with being biologically mature when marriage is still far (5-10-15 years) away? When the Bible was written in the Middle East, women often married at 12-16, which almost coincided with puberty—this meant something entirely different back then!
14. How do we dismantle the “test-drive” argument? Is compatibility something you find or something you build?
15. Our own marriage as a “silent teacher” of intimacy. How/What kind of example can we set for our children in this area through our own marriage?

Give yourself some time to think those over. I’d love to hear your answers to these questions. I’d especially love to hear what you think is missing from the list here—what other questions that should be here? What other insights need to be part of a well-developed perspective? What do you think?

When you’re ready to continue, my answers are down below.

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1. Is there a genuine difference between “Christian sex ed” and secular information, or do we just add a few Bible verses to the same biological facts?

Yes. The materialists are wrong about everything, all the way down to the ground. The world is not what they think it is; humans are not what they think we are; heck, even matter is not what they think it is. And they don’t know what anything actually means. Secular information is not “right as far as it goes,” it’s fundamentally wrong about absolutely everything. That doesn’t mean we can’t draw information from pagan sources, but when we baptize it, we need to make sure we’ve done a thorough job. We’re going for “dead and resurrected,” not a light rinse, and that’s harder than most people think. 

2. What is God’s actual design for sex? (Looking for biblical evidence here, not just traditional “churchy” opinions.)

Natural law gets to weigh in here, too: designed things “want” to be used in particular ways. It doesn’t take you too long to figure out which end of the paring knife to hold. For sexuality, fruitfulness is a major purpose of the design: it’s our reproductive mechanism, and we’re powerfully driven to exercise it. The hormonal effects of sexual union are also a big deal, and show that bonding and communion are also major purposes of sex. It’s enormously pleasurable, and God designed it to be. Say thank you. 

Looking to Scripture, we find that fruitfulness is the very first recorded blessing and command to man and woman (Gen. 1:28). Zooming in on the creation of humanity in the next chapter, we find that sexual difference is specifically designed by God, and designed to motivate a man to leave his parents and take a wife. This moves the conversation in a different direction than the way I was raised. Instead of my constant young male horniness being sinful fleshly weakness to be ashamed of, it’s the motivator God designed to create a new household. On this account, then, the fact that the desire is so powerful isn’t because you’re extra sinful, it’s because sexual desire is the mainspring of the household, which is in turn the building block of civilization. Of course it’s strong! We’re supposed to be exercising dominion over the whole world! Weak, take-it-or-leave-it desire wouldn’t do the job, would it? 

3. Does the Bible even offer a blueprint for sexual education, or have we been winging it for centuries?

Neither. The Bible is authoritative on everything it speaks to, and it speaks to everything – but not necessarily in the format we were wishing for. It’s not enough to let the Bible supply our answers; we also need to let it critique our questions. So no, the Bible doesn’t provide a blueprint for sex education; it provides an extensive set of blueprints for marriage. The Church has not been winging it for centuries; what we’ve been doing (in our better moments) is building our education on the Bible’s blueprints for marriage, so that when we teach about sex, it’s in its proper context. 

4. How do we stop the cycle of “sex-negative” or “sex-neutral” parenting? Can we actually give what we never received?

You can’t give what you ain’t got, but you can and do give your kids all kinds of things that you didn’t get while you were a kid. Unless you seriously think that we’ve gotten worse every single generation since Adam and Eve, then yes, you can give your kids something you didn’t have as a kid. That’s how generational advance works: our ceiling is their floor. 

5. Is “taboo” ever healthy? Is there any topic that should remain strictly off-limits between parent and child?

Strict taboo, absolutely not. Are there topics that we must not approach casually or flippantly? Of course, and I suspect that’s how the taboos come to exist to start with. Some topics are very high-stakes, and you can’t afford to do them badly. We then begin to fear making mistakes, and from that fear, we begin to think it’s safer not to approach those topics at all. We start saying stupid things like “You just have to be so careful…” no matter how someone is approaching the topic. That’s nonsense, and God has not given us a spirit of fear. It’s precisely in giving due weight to consequential topics that we render the taboos ridiculous. 

6. Is there a “too early,” or is our silence just giving the world a head start?

That’s a judgment call you have to make in your context. If you’ll pardon a horrible example, there are ages where it’s “too early” for a kid to learn about rape, but if it happens to them or one of their friends, you’re not (I hope!) going to tell them “It’s too early to talk about that.” It might be too early, but so what? If that’s what they’re dealing with, then we’re gonna talk about it. In a sane world, a lot of this stuff might wait until later…but we don’t live in a sexually sane world, and you can’t fight lies with silence.

7. Is it time to scrap the “mom talks to girls, dad talks to boys” rule? Who is truly responsible? Does the gender of the parent or child even matter in these conversations, or is that just a cultural tradition?

This would be a good place (like #2, above) to ask for biblical support. Where did this “rule” even come from? It certainly doesn’t come from Scripture. Of course the gender matters in these conversations, and that’s precisely why God gives a kid a mom and a dad. Every kid should hear from both of them.  

The first time we did a unit on this in youth group, we had a 6-week series on marriage and sexuality, and we had only a portion of one session that we split by gender. It’s important to have that opportunity, because kids sometimes raise questions that they wouldn’t raise in a mixed-gender group, but the kids also need to see adults interacting intelligently and calmly with members of the opposite sex on these topics. They take their cues from us: if we’re afraid or uncomfortable, they will be too. If we’re sober, reverent, and clear-headed, they’ll learn to be that way themselves. 

8. Silence is not consent—if a child never asks, are we failing them by not forcing the issue? How do we handle the “shut down” and the averted eyes?

You are failing them if you don’t deliver what they need to know, in exactly the same way you’d be failing them if you didn’t teach them division or reading or how to eat their vegetables. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child;” it’s not their job to dictate what they’ll learn. And also, if you manage to deliver the material in a way that’s forced and makes them hate it, you’re failing them, in the same way that you can make them hate math by approaching teaching division poorly, or make them hate broccoli by boiling it until it’s grey. As with food, so with education: nothing is so good you can’t bungle it. There’s no substitute for knowing your kids well and leading their hearts well, in any topic. This one too. 

9. If we aren’t the primary source, who is the safest “second-in-line” for our kids?

First of all, you should be the primary source. Unless you’re radically disqualified in some odd way, you have no business shirking your responsibility to speak to your children about sexuality. And also, as with anything else from driving to calculus to piano lessons, there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing a portion of the work to trusted members of the community. There’s no rule that says your kid has to learn only from you. 

As far as who you trust, of course that’s a judgment call you make in your context. I think it’s safe to say that if you’re relying on government-funded schools to do the heavy lifting for you, you’re bound for trouble. You can’t hand your 5-year-olds over to enemies of the faith to be catechized for years on end, and then be surprised when your 16-year-olds act like they’ve been catechized by the enemy. So stock their lives with people that you trust to talk with them about topics that matter. Too many Christian parents isolate their kids. Sometimes it’s out of fear, but often there’s an ego component. It starts with a (possibly well-intended) sense that “I should be the person my kid talks with about this,” but then proceeds to wondering, “What does it say about me as a parent if my kid talks with someone else?” Finding that option intolerable, the parents attempt to deny their children other options. Listen, I’ve been doing youth work for a really long time. I promise you, if you draw the circle too tight, they’ll find someone outside your circle, and it won’t be someone you’d have picked. It’s much smarter to give your kids easy access to interested and trustworthy adults, and then trust the adults to do the job. Paradoxically, if you’re not afraid, your kids will see that, and most of the time they’ll come to you.

10. Is the church (or small group) actually stepping up, or are they just outsourcing this uncomfortable job back to parents?

Again, depends on your context. But first of all, whaddaya mean “uncomfortable job”? Who says? Kids are naturally curious about everything, and educating them is a natural part of preparing them for the world. Why do we just accept that we’re somehow obliged to be performatively uncomfortable telling them about sex? There’s nothing inevitable about that, and mostly the recipe for being comfortable with it is “decide you’re going to be comfortable with it.” Emotions are contagious; the kids will mostly take their cues from you. So govern yourself. If you dramatize it, they’ll treat it like forbidden fruit. If you hem and haw and look at the floor, they’ll be uncomfortable. If you’re at peace with it, they will be too—and then sex won’t have the wrong kind of mystery attached to it.

There’s a lot of weird evangelical folkways around this. Different families handle things differently, and some parents are really spiky about other people answering their kids’ questions, so people are understandably cautious. If you surround your kids with a community that can actually handle adult matters like adults and give straight answers to serious questions, then you’re gonna be fine. Just don’t be overly precious about it, and let your community do its job.

11. How can we advocate for “waiting” today? (I’m looking for arguments that a teenager can relate to, even if they haven’t had a conversion experience yet!)

This would be another place to go back to Scripture first. Because God says to. If your 15-year-old isn’t prepared to remain chaste simply on that basis, then you have much, much bigger problems than who they’re gonna sleep with.

But it turns out that God has pretty good ideas, so if we dig into how all this works, we will discover that His instructions are also a wise way to live. You wait to ignite sexually until marriage for the same reason you wait until you’re out at the fire pit to start your fire, instead of starting it while you’re sitting on the couch: sex is unbelievably potent, and marriage is the container that will hold it safely.  There’s a lot of potential starting points, but here are two of mine:

A. If you’re not ready to pay for the doctor bills, the diapers, the baby food, the whole shebang, then you’re not ready to do the things that lead to babies. And don’t tell me about birth control; it fails. Not a ton, these days, but if you’re the one it happens to, it won’t much matter that it is statistically rare. You made that kid; you owe your child the best launch into the world you can manage, and that means having adult money. Feeling really impatient and horny? Excellent—channel that energy into building the life you need; that’s the very first thing your sex drive is for.

B. Bad things happen when intimacy and commitment don’t match. If you get commitment too far ahead of intimacy, you’re a stalker. If you get intimacy too far ahead of commitment, you’re going to get really hurt. These two things are meant to go together, and intimacy within the shelter of that commitment is an entirely different experience than having sex in sales-and-marketing mode, trying to elicit commitment. (In a way, it’s analogous to the difference between doing good works because God graciously saved you versus trying to earn your salvation with your works.)

12. Can we define “boundaries” before marriage without turning it into a legalistic checklist of “how far is too far”? What is your exact answer if your kid asks for it?

That’s a conversation to have, not a set of rules to give. I usually aim to elicit the boundaries from them rather than just give them an answer. (Depending on the kid. I’m not averse to just giving an instruction if they really need it, but it’s better if they think it through themselves.) If they understand what marriage is for, and what sex is for, and how sexual attraction is designed to work in the mating process, then it’s not that hard to reason out a set of guidelines that makes sense. 

“How far is too far?” is fundamentally the wrong question. It’s the question you ask when you’re chasing pleasure for its own sake, playing stupid games trying to stand as close to the edge of the cliff as you can without falling over. We’re not trying to just-barely-not-miss the target; we’re trying to hit the bullseye! There’s a better question to ask.

“What is my sexuality for?” is the right question. The goal is to deploy sexuality as a tool and enjoy it as God’s good gift without damaging each other in the process. We’re on a mission to take the world here, and sexuality is the mainspring of the whole enterprise. Once we’ve accepted that, we’re no longer preoccupied with how close to the line we can get without falling over. We’re pursuing the goal, and that’s a whole different conversation.

Once you’ve got the right question in front of you, it’s pretty obvious that if you don’t have a life and a marriage, but your hands are down somebody’s underpants, you took a wrong turn somewhere. If I need to get more directive at this point, I can, because now the “rules” aren’t a system to game, they’re just trail markers to let you know you need a course correction. If I need to: keep your clothes on. Keep your hands out of each other’s clothes and off each other’s genitals. Clothes notwithstanding, keep your genitals off each other too; until you’ve built a life and a marriage, you have better things to do than dry hump. This very minimal rule set is not in the Bible and I make no promises that if you keep them, you’re in the clear. NOT A CHANCE. No list of rules can do that; “if there had been a law that could have given life, truly righteousness would be through the Law.” That’s just not how it works. You have to reckon with God, and He knows your heart. Keep your heart in the right place, and you’ll be fine. Get sidetracked into pursuing momentary pleasure for its own sake, and I can’t help you no matter how many rules I give you. No amount of rules can save a wrongly directed heart.

13. How do we address the “puberty gap”? What should a young person do with being biologically mature when marriage is still far (5-10-15 years) away? When the Bible was written in the Middle East, women often married at 12-16, which almost coincided with puberty—this meant something entirely different back then!

As much as you can, minimize the gap. In my community, we’re raising them to be ready to step into adulthood at 18, and marry soon after. The ridiculously protracted childhoods we visit on our children do them a lot of damage. When teenagers make big drama out of something stupid, it’s frequently because they’re emotionally capable of caring about big things, but we won’t let them have anything big and consequential to care about. A 14-year-old can have a business they run themselves with a little oversight (that’s late, actually). A 10-year-old can cook a meal for people that won’t eat tonight if he doesn’t get it done. Expect and empower them to do consequential things, and they will. Nice side benefit: having perspective cuts down on stupid drama.

In God’s good providence, we may have kids that marry older, and they’ll have to learn how to live a chaste single life long-term. They’re not alone; Isaac didn’t marry Rebekah until he was 40 (Gen. 25:20). We can’t control everything. But there’s no reason why a 25-year-old should be struggling with long-term chastity because the kid is just not marriageable. We can get them ready early, and we should. 

14. How do we dismantle the “test-drive” argument? Is compatibility something you find or something you build?

No two sinful human beings are compatible, period. You build compatibility with patience, self-control, and care for each other. Your brains aren’t fully developed until you’re 25, so that’s another good reason to marry young—God designed us to grow together in our latter years of development. It’s easier to become compatible if you get married while the concrete is still wet.

The stats on “test driving” are actually not that encouraging, so that’s worth looking into as well.

15. Our own marriage as a “silent teacher” of intimacy: how/what kind of example can we set for our children in this area through our own marriage?

Embody the distinction between private and secret. Your sexuality is private, shared between the two of you, but it is not secret. You have sex. You enjoy it. You are attracted to each other. We all know, and that’s ok. These things are not secrets, and you should not treat them like secrets. Struggling with what private-but-not-secret looks like? You poop. You do it in private. But it’s not a secret, and you’re not overly disturbed if someone happens to realize that you’re pooping right now, behind that door over there. In fact, for someone to be preoccupied with you pooping would be a sign of fairly serious immaturity. You poop discreetly, and intelligent, mature people discreetly leave you to your business. We all appreciate the same consideration from you; not everything needs to be a topic of preoccupation or conversation. Some things were made to be private.

You need not sneak about like adulterers in your own house. You’re living righteously in front of your kids; why would you model sneaking around? It’s ok for your kids to learn that if the bedroom door’s locked, they shouldn’t knock except in a real emergency. When they ask why, it’s ok to tell them “Mom and Dad need private time” and leave it at that (or however you choose to handle it). It’s ok for them to figure out what’s happening behind that door. It’s ok to teach them not to be preoccupied with it; don’t they have math homework to do or something? And those baseboards are starting to look pretty dirty…there’s an old toothbrush and a spray bottle under the kitchen sink….

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What about you? How would you answer differently? What questions would you add to the list?

Reading the early chapters of Revelation, have you ever wondered who, exactly, the Nicolaitans were? So have a lot of other people. There’s not really an answer in the Bible itself.

Some people will try to tell you that it refers to a kind of clericalism. This is based entirely on etymology, dissecting the parts of the word. The theory goes that “Nicolaitans” comes from two Greek words: nikao, “to conquer,” and laos, “the people.” By this reasoning, the Nicolaitans aspired to be a clerical ruling class in the church seeking to control and subdue the people.

Among those who accept this definition, there’s quite a range of application. Some folks will use it to condemn Roman Catholic clericalism, but be fine with Baptist practice. At the other extreme, some folks will use it to condemn any hierarchy in the church at all. (They have to do some really fancy dancing in passages that talk about obeying your church authorities!) Of course, there’s a range of options in between, with various…let’s say interesting…embroideries on the theme. Some while ago, I encountered a guy who, in all seriousness, discouraged us from having a pastor, lest we fall into Nicolaitanism, and then volunteered to serve as our bishop so that we would have a “proper covering!” In practice, the working definition of Nicolaitanism is often “anybody who has more authority than I do.”

But this is all nonsense. Trying to reconstruct a whole belief system based only on the etymology of the group name is the equivalent of some archaeologist 2000 years hence claiming that the Rotary Club believed in reincarnation, based entirely on their name. It’s just not good evidence. For all we know, it was a cult of personality following a guy named Nicolas, with totally different heretical practices. There simply is no evidence that the Nicolaitans were clericalist, by whatever definition.

The best evidence we have is from the memory of the very early church. There turn out to be some records on this, and they don’t all agree with one another; that’s history for you. If you believe that George Washington, Ferdinand Magellan, and Julius Caesar were real people, this kind of evidence is why. Discernment and sober-mindedness are very much required, but this is a kind of evidence that honest people can work with. If you’d like to explore what our forbears remembered and wrote down, Dan Jennings was kind enough to collect a bunch of the early church references to the Nicolaitans. Enjoy.

Zach McCartney has published “A Plea for Biblical Scholars” wherein he asks for more biblical studies scholars. We need a generation of fresh, believing scholars, he says, to step in and protect hapless seminary students who are being led astray by the materialist assumptions of their biblical studies textbooks.

Now, biblical studies scholars who actually believe the Bible are a Good Thing and there should be more of them. Thus far, Mr. McCartney and I agree. A seminary student has a right to expect that his textbooks won’t poison him; I agree there, too.

But these students he’s talking about — what are they doing in seminary? A Christian man who’s going to be led astray by basic materialism has no business in any grad school, still less in preparation for the ministry. Who are these people? Where is their discernment? Where is their courage? Who thought it was a good idea to send them to seminary? Inquiring minds want to know.

I also want to know about the institution that uses such texts as if they are reliable resources for their students. We’ve talked before about the relationship between materialistic doubt and academic respectability, but it’s worth revisiting here. Our academic institutions frequently define success and prestige in the same way as their secular counterparts. As a result, your average Christian scholar needs the approval of the academic guild far more than the approval of the Church. Whatever norms the secular academic world cooks up for itself therefore come seeping into the Church by way of our schools — and it happens a lot faster in schools devoted to “excellence!” Discerning Christians may be called to redeem such institutions, but until that effort is successful, we have no business funding them. Moreover, we ought to be policing the incentives that shape our career academics. People who are unwilling to forego the praise of the secular elite have no business in the Christian academy at any level.

As with our mentoring crisis generally, the solution here is mainly small-scale. Churches must be most interested in discipling whatever students, faculty, or administrators that are within the fold. You don’t need a fancy campus ministry with a bunch of big, well-funded events (not that there’s anything wrong with that) nearly so much as you need 30 ordinary Christian men willing to disciple one college student each.

Once upon a time certain groups of Christians decided that in order to live a holy life, they would put all worldly amusements and accoutrements behind them. Of course this included things like card games and the theater, but also included things like wearing colors. The result was a drab form of dress that, in its own way, called as much attention to itself as flashy dress.

Various wags had things to say, as they always do. One of my favorite barbs comes from Dr. Samuel Johnson: “Sir, a man who cannot get into heaven in a green coat will not sooner find his way thither in a grey one.”

Of course the observation seems both funny and a trifle obvious to us, but that’s because it’s lampooning a folk piety we do not have. The same spirit, turned around on our own shibboleths, will be just as funny, and will hurt a good deal more. So give it some thought: what are the folk pieties of our own day, and how could you harpoon them in a similar way?

Of course you’ve heard the story of the prodigal son, and the story of his older brother who was so angry when the father restored him. Less commonly known is the story of the third brother. Gather round, children, and let Uncle Tim spin you a yarn….

After the prodigal son made his scandalous request, took his inheritance, and left for a far country, the third brother went to work. Of course the whole town already knew what his brother had done; dad was rich, and you can’t move that kind of wealth around without everybody finding out about it. But the third brother wasn’t interested in spreading the tale; he was interested in what it meant. Obviously, no true son of his father could ever do such a thing, he would say to anybody that would listen. By the roadside, in the marketplace, down at the corner restaurant, he was spreading the word: his prodigal brother’s conduct just showed that he was never really a son to start with.

Some fools will listen to any salacious gossip, but of course the wiser neighbors just ignored him, because he was obviously an asshole.

What are we to do with an apostate? For 10 years, 20 years, sometimes more, the guy was one of us. Then he kinda disappeared a couple years back, and now he’s popped up again, ardently practicing black magic, of all things! Some people want to dismiss this kind of question as an extreme hypothetical case. Extreme? Yes. Hypothetical? Not so much. I’ve encountered these folks too — several years ago, I found myself working for a business whose owner was a former evangelical worship leader turned full-blown shaman (disciple of Alberto Villoldo, in fact). A Bible college buddy of mine is worshipping Thor these days. A couple other folks are trying to stay connected to Christianity while practicing witchcraft too.

Where do you start?

At square one (which is Creation, not the cross, but that’s another post.) It’s entirely possible that there was some crucial flaw in their grasp of Christianity to start with, so it makes sense to go back over all the basics. It’s not that strange of an idea; Hebrews speaks of people who “need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God,” who “have come to need milk and not solid food.” But we do not believe that understanding is all there is to it: following Jesus takes dedication and sacrifice. If that’s the case, then the problem may not have been with a lack of understanding at all. They may have defected because they were more attracted by something else, or because following Jesus got harder than they were willing to endure.

The point is, we often have no idea what actually went wrong, and such a person is an unreliable narrator of their own experience; everything they tell you will be riddled with blameshifting and lame rationalizations.

“But Tim,” people often ask me, “is this person going to heaven?”

Ya know, my New Birth Detect-o-Matic is on the fritz, so it’s hard to be sure. If I were just meeting the guy today, of course I’d be skeptical. But if I knew the guy back then and was firmly convinced that he was a believer back then, I don’t really see a reason to question it now. I thought he was born again back then because Scripture teaches me to think that way: people who believe in Jesus are born again. There simply is no biblical text that gives me grounds to turn around and doubt him based on his scandalous present behavior. Everywhere you might expect to see that, what you see instead (if you actually read in context) is assurance: a challenge to live up to the new birth you have, not a question about whether you really had it.

But honestly, I think that (like the problem of evil) this is not a hard question logically; it’s a hard question emotionally. We don’t want to believe that a genuine believer can really fall all the way into something as dark as straightforward demon-worship. It troubles us to think that someone found our faith so un-compelling that they left it for something else, and something so wicked. We want to believe that we would never apostatize, and seeing someone do it — someone we thought of as “just like me” — shakes our complacency. That sort of thing. So, to set all our minds at ease, here’s a list of the sins the Bible tells us that no genuine believer could ever fall into:

Yup. That’s it. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Guard your hearts, folks. It absolutely can happen to you.

Have you seen this meme? Don’t say “I don’t like DEI,” it exhorts us. What, exactly, don’t you like? Is it diversity? Then say “I don’t like diversity.” Own it, man. Don’t hide behind an acronym.

Before I step up to the pinata, allow me a moment to point and laugh: have we all forgotten that the DEI acronym (like the ill-fated term “social justice warrior”) was invented by its proponents? You know you’re in a bad way when you start complaining that people are “hiding behind” your own term. If you wonder why it’s acquired unfortunate connotations, check the mirror. 

Ahem…as to the DEI pinata: as St. Orwell taught us, newspeak is doubleplusungood, and it’s always reasonable to hate it. As Orwell also taught us, always, always look to the definitions. In DEI discourse, the words “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” are used in ways only vaguely related to the actual meanings of those words, and therein lies their motte-and-bailey utility. Suppose you oppose a hiring quota wherein you can’t accept qualified candidates from already “overrepresented” groups. “How could you be against diversity?” they say. The invocation of “diversity” in that (DEI) context is not an invitation to thoughtful discourse; it’s meant to throw you into a rhetorical hole wherein you now have to prove that you’re not “against diversity.” In other words, it is a thought-terminating cliche. Same goes for “equity” and “inclusion.” These words were always meant to be thought-terminating cliches; their proponents are just upset because people began to notice.  

Let’s break it down: 

In DEI discourse, “diversity” means people who look different in a picture but think the same, which is why, in a workplace as allegedly “diverse” as NPR, even Uri Berliner couldn’t generate any interest in viewpoint diversity – got run out of the organization for trying, in fact. That kind of “diversity”…isn’t anything of the kind. I dislike it for the same reason I dislike counterfeit money.  

“Equity” in DEI terms means poo-pooing equal opportunity in favor of trying to guarantee a favored outcome. In practice, that means you’re going to indulge in a series of transparent manipulations in order to advantage some and handicap others in pursuit of some idealized vision which is, ex hypothesi, The Way The World Should Be (cf. complaints about Asian “overrepresentation” at certain colleges). In other words, you’re committing to a visibly unjust process today in hopes of achieving a just result in a distant future. “Let us do evil that good may come” has always been morally bankrupt; suggesting that these folks, of all people, possess special insight into The Way The World Should Be…jeepers, it would be laugh-til-you-pee funny except that people actually mean it.  

“Inclusion” in DEI terms plays on your good desire to make someone feel welcome, but that’s not what “inclusion” means in this context. “Inclusion” gets used as a cover for rushing people into situations for which they’re not prepared, in order to make everybody else feel righteous about themselves. For example, “inclusion” in education has frequently meant mainstreaming students with special needs (lest they be stigmatized), with the result that they don’t get the specialized support that they need, the classroom environment is constantly disrupted, and teachers aren’t able to do their actual job for either group of students. (Then the school district blames declining test stores on the teachers, and funds more DEI initiatives in hopes of improving things. Lather, rinse, repeat.) 

The DEI discourse versions of diversity, equity, and inclusion set forth a regime that every good, discerning human ought to hate. As Reagan once said of communism, the only places such a regime could work are heaven, where they don’t need it, and hell, where they already have it. 

Be kind. Tell the truth, even when it’s hard. Don’t be a douche to your neighbors. Love the actual humans that are within your reach. And because you love what is good, true, and beautiful, hate fake virtue dressed up in swanky-sounding abstract nouns. 

A friend recently raised the question of how to cultivate reverence for God. In a culture of therapeutic moralistic deism and “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” music, how do we keep ourselves from treating God casually, even flippantly? This was my answer.

I remind myself who I’m dealing with: the God who made the world and everything in it (and then de-created and re-created it all in the Deluge), crushed the Egyptians’ gods and slaughtered their firstborn, came on Horeb in earthquake, fire, and storm, invaded Philistia alone by allowing the capture of the Ark so as not to reward Israel’s faithlessness, and emerged with offerings, triumphant. The God who fulfilled His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who opened the secrets of the kings’ dreams to Joseph and Daniel, who used Balaam (1400 years before the event) and Daniel (550 years before the event) to send the Magi to fund His Son’s life-saving flight to Egypt. The God who has never failed to notice a sparrow falling from a bough, who numbers the very hairs on my head, who knows my every sin, failing, weakness, and character flaw, and has aggressively forgotten them all.

I’ve spent time with some dangerous men over the years — good men, but dangerous. (I’ve spent time with dangerous men who were not good, too, but I’m talking about the god ones right now.) Sensible people do not treat such men carelessly: you think before you speak, attend to small courtesies, go somewhat out of your way to avoid giving offense unnecessarily. And if you’ve given offense, you face it decisively and take the consequences as they come.

I remind myself to treat God at least as reverently as that. He is *for* me and He loves me, but He is not to be trifled with. Wise men remember that.