Civility is Not Coming Back

We live in a day of uncivil discourse.  Hate and contempt along with blame and name calling are the norm.  You will find people calling for civility in discussion and discourse.  Those people are relics of the past who no longer understand the world we live in.  Yes, civility is dead.  And it is never coming back.

Allow me to explain.

In the past, civility was part of the expectation of participation in the public discourse.  When a person lost civility, even if the point he was making was good and valid, he was rebuked for being uncivil and speaking wrongly.  Even Machiavelli was against threats and insulting language, even if it was for self-serving reasons.  Somewhere that changed.  And it changed because the humanity of the opponent was taken away.  The opponent is sub-human somehow (usually through a position they hold or believe), and that status makes his worthy of scorn and contempt, and soon much, much more.  The opponent now is a target worthy of hate.

Please understand, all is acceptable if the target is worthy of hate.  After all, do you really have to be nice to the devil?  Shouldn’t you kill Hitler if you went back in time?  So now, you can punch a person unprovoked in the face, if the guy is a Nazi.  You can say horrible things to people, if that person is horrible to begin with.  This is how actions are now justified, not on the basis of the action in comparison to an objective standard, but on the basis of the recipient of the action.  This extends beyond simple words, but even to shootings. 

The result is a vicious cycle.  In order to make sure one’s actions continue to be justified, part of the goal then is to continue to demonize the target.  Because if the target becomes accepted by the masses or somehow is humanized, then all of your actions that were previously justified are now all unacceptable.  This could in turn make you viewed as a target worthy of hate, and thus all someone else’s actions against you would now be justified.  So, there is never room to stop and talk as equals or what used to be called “being civil”.  Such an idea would tend toward making actions against that person unjustified and could create a situation that endangered me if the tide of opinion turned against me. 

Don’t think I am just talking about politics.  This is everywhere in life.  Everywhere.  There is a minor scandal in the Comic Book Industry about how people handle those who do not like their stories.  One creator tried to start a hashtag #comicsceasefire and got massive backlash.  A liberal MSNBC and Vanity Fair editor spoke up when a comic creator wished a critic had died in Afghanistan, and was amazedat the level of hate he received for speaking up.

Do I need to even remind anyone about sports now?  But even just stating an opinion like Hall of Famer Chipper Jones did the other day immediately is treated as worthy of hate and past sinful actions of Mr. Jones are brought up in order to show he is anobject worthy of hate.  What adultery has to do with gun control is anyone’s guess, but it does make one feel better about dismissing and treating him poorly.

If you want to see more examples of making a person morally worthy of abuse and then giving that abuse both Gamergate and the Sad Puppiescampaign against the Hugo Awards (science fiction awards) are fine examples.  Or go to Twitter and see the daily fights that often reward people with more followers for being completely uncivil and dehumanizing to one another. 

It should go without say why Christians cannot follow or participate in this trend.  We can never “dehumanize” someone made in the image of God.  But we ought to no longer expect that same respect in return.  

Missing Churches in Low Income neighborhoods - Why?

This Atlantic article on churches in poor neighborhoods is an interesting read if you look past the find one emotional example that the author thinks proves his point that characterizes a lot of writing in the Atlantic.  The main point is that half of new church plants opened in wealthier areas and church attendance is on the decline among the poor.  And perhaps that is because it takes a lot of money to run a church and a church in a poor neighborhood might have more financial needs to help out the needy.  But has he really found the reason, finances that churches are down in low income neighborhoods?  Did he miss a very plausible explanation?

I think he did.  I will grant that low income neighborhoods might be less likely to receive church plants than in the past.  The rise in non-denominational churches probably effects this as they have no connections to help fund them from afar that a denomination would provide.  But I still think he has the causes reversed.  Churches are not being planted in low income neighborhoods because church attendance is down in low-income neighborhoods.  The author gives no proof for saying fewer churches leads to fewer attending when fewer attending can very well lead to fewer churches. 

And I think there is ample reason to think the low-income flight from church is a product of a highly anti-Christian culture.  Sociologically speaking, the poor or lower economic classes are quicker to take on the traits of the super-rich, or the culture makers of society.  This is true in almost every category.  Francis Schaeffer noted this in his books on culture.  You can see it in things like baby name trends.  The rich pick unique names, the poor then take up those names and they finally filter into the middle class, but by then the name has become common and the rich have abandoned it looking for unique names again (see Freakonomics). 

And what are the elite and culture makers saying about Christianity?  Christianity is the enemy more often than not.  Whether it is Christian bakers on the news as the backwater bigots or the evil group that empowered Trump, the enemy is evangelicalism.  Maybe they get it from movies like Dogma (1999) where the descendent of Jesus is an abortion worker and the entire thing is an attack on Christians, or more popular and subtle fair like Footloose (1984 remade in 2011), or in award winners like Brokeback Mountain (2005) with its positive portrayal of homosexuality.  Maybe it is from TV in the always award winning Handmaid’s Tale (2017-ongoing) or Modern Family (2009-ongoing).  Maybe it is from books like Da Vinci Code (2003).  The message is the same, church is not good, Christianity is the problem, not the solution.  So, the lower classes are responding and they are leaving church resulting in fewer in attendance and thus fewer church plants. 

The Atlantic Article laments the fact that Christianity could help these people out physically and materially, yet the churches are not there.  But the lack of awareness of the real importance of Christianity and its message of Jesus Christ is striking.  For the author Christianity helps with “positive outcomes” and “assistance for struggling families”, but fails to realize such things are the by-product of the love of Christ manifested in the church.  It is by living out the faith that the Atlantic and Hollywood and many others have spent so much time tearing down. 

In the end, the article provides a beautiful picture into a mind that sees nothing beyond the material and understands little to nothing about the faith.  But it does see the damage caused when people begin to abandon that faith.