A return to orders...

Of late, I am rereading formative books I read long ago, or finally chipping away at that endless list of "books I've been meaning to read for a while now,"[1] and I'm currently enjoying Vinoth Ramachandra's staggeringly good, yet seemingly underrated, Gods That Fail: Modern Idolatry & Christian Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996). The book was life-changing for me, not only because it cemented my conception of Christianity as a global missionary religion (particularly by opening my eyes to Christianity in Southeast Asia, which was a factor in my decision to live and serve in Taiwan for what ended up being nine years, and where I met my wife!), but also because it introduced me to the work of Fr. Stanley Jaki, which was a crucial factor in my conversion to Catholicism. 

Ramachandra's second book, Faiths in Conflict? Christian Integrity in a Multicultural World (IVP, 1999), was just as enriching, though mainly by deepening my understanding of and appreciation for Southeast Asia. I have not had a chance to read his most recent book, Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping Our World (London: SPCK, 2008), but I intend to do so once I finish rereading the first two books. 


As an author, Ramachandra is as challenging as he is edifying because of the intellectual balancing act he performs, and which he makes the reader perform with him. On the one hand, he gleefully and deftly skewers anti-European, anti-Christian propaganda that portrays Christianity as a means of oppression by the West, or that non-Christian cultures were and are better off before and without Christian influence. On the other hand, he is anything but a stooge for Western neo-liberal progressivism, and denounces globalist malfeasance just as deftly. He casually uses buzzwords that reflexively give American conservatives, like myself, the jitters, but does so amidst a larger argumentation that ultimately undermines the ideology behind those buzzwords, and behind much of what passes for American conservatism these days, in order to hobble them in subjection to the demands of the Gospel.  

The following passages, beginning on page 116 of Gods That Fail, arrested me not only because it nicely captures Ramachandra's ability to hobble non-Christian idols on both sides of the aisle, as it were, but also because it ties in well with discussions I've had over the past couple years about "Making America Great Again" versus "Making Americans Godly Again."

Let us join Ramachandra on the tightrope: 

Development is one of those words which, far from being innocuous, has served to reinforce the hold of modern idols over vast populations in the Third World (or, the South, to use a geographically appropriate term). It has become a source of propaganda for a particular way of life. In other words, it is an ideology. ... From 'westernization' to 'modernization' to 'development': images that turned the West, whether in its capitalist or socialist expressions, into the definer of the 'good life' for men and women across the globe.  

Not surprisingly, 'development' became a neo-colonial [gasp! a librul buzzword!] project through which an aggressive, expanding Corporation Culture sought to establish a bridgehead among political and commercial elites of the Third World. The attraction of 'development' is that it has brought substantial improvements [gasp! a neo-conservative talking point!] in health care, education and general well-being to scores of people inmany [sic] countries. But it has , more often than not, given legitimacy to the acquisition and control of other people's resources, inevitably increasing poverty and distress under the guise of eliminating them. 

"It never ceases to amaze me," continues Ramachandra on page 117,

how many Christians, in the North and the South, continue to refer to the former as the 'developed' and the latter as the 'developing' world. ... All our normative images and yardsticks of 'devcelopment' are ideologically 'loaded'. Who dictates that mushrooming TV ariels and skyscrapers are signs of 'development'? Who, apart from the automobile industry and the advertising agencies, seriously believes that a country with six-lane highways and multi-story car-parks is more 'developed' than one whose chief mode of transport is railways? Does the fact that there are more telephone lines in Manhatten [sic], New York than in the whole of sub-saharan Africa, mean that human communication is more developed in the former than in the latter?

Keep in mind that I read these words shortly before I (grudgingly) bought my first cellphone, and Ramachandra wrote them years before the explosion of social media that now dominate our lives. And yet, his critique is just as salient, if not more so, for predating our "new and improved" means of "keeping in touch." But Ramachandra's bipartisan critique is not over yet. 

The commonest measure of 'development' (on the basis of which entire societies are classified hierarchically) is the Gross National Product per capita. That improving levels of income are an important aspect of human well-being..., I do not deny. But GNP per capita tells us nothing about the distribution of income in a given society. It is a well-observed fact that, even as the GDP per capita increases by leaps and bounds, the purchasing power of whole segments of the population may decline and levels of of absolute poverty in the country actually increase. As we saw in Chapter 2, no Christian assessment of human well-being can ignore the issue of distributive justice, the access of the poor to the wealth that is generated. [p. 118]

Ramachandra is referring to arguments he mounted beginning on page 44. "The privileged, who may also happen to be 'religious," notes Ramachandra, 

often feel that their social and economic privileges are somehow a solemn, basic, God-given right. In many legal systems down to the present day, the sanctity of private property has been upheld ... with greater religious indignation than the sanctity of human life. As the economist John Kenneth Gilbraith comments, tongue-in-cheek, 'The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich'.[2] But, someone may object, what about the apostle Paul's injunction to Christians to be content with their material state (1 Tim 6:6ff)? 

Firstly, answers Ramachandra, "Paul is not addressing those whom modern economists would describe as the 'absolute poor': namely those people ... whose basic needs of nutrition, clothing, health care and housing have not yet been met." On the contrary:

He assumes (in v.8) that these primary human requirements have been satisfied.... Where these needs have not been satisfied, it is usually because of a failure to share material resources, which in turn is a result of the arrogance of the rich and their refusal to fulfil their obligations to the poor (see v.17,18). Secondly, Paul's warnings are not directed at the legitimate aspirations on the part of the poor to be freed from exploitation and material want. Rather they are directed at human greed, the 'love of money' (v.10), the spirit of acquisitiveness which is rampant among 'the rich in this present world' and which leads to idolatry and a false sense of security (v.17; cf Col. 3:5). ... [In a word,] Paul's warnings are based on the assumption that a world of gross material inequality is a world that is dominated by false gods, by empty sources of security (v. 7,17). 

Ramachandra continues by reminding us that "the great thinkers and preachers of the Christian church have affirmed the economic rights of the poor" (p. 45). "Not only did they remind the relatively well-to-do of their charitable duty to the poor," argues Ramachandra, "but they also insisted on the right of access on the part of the poor to adequate means of sustenance." As St. Ambrose teaches, "Not from your own do you bestow upon the poor man, but you make return from what is his."[3] Even more boldly, notes Ramachandra, did St. John Chrysostom preach: 

That is also theft, not to share one's possessions. ... [T]he rich man is a kind of steward of the money which is owed for distribution to the poor. ... So if he spends more on himself than his needs require, he will pay the harshest penalty hereafter. ... [N]ot to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life.[4] 

Presumably heading off a "conservative" objection to his "liberal" arguments, Ramachandra notes that the suggestion "that the concept of rights is a product of the humanism of the Enlightenment, is historically misleading."

Although the word 'rights' may not have appeared with much frequency in the great patristic and medieval church leaders, the thought that the poor in society have legitimate claims on the rich..., and that to withold what was in one's power to grant in situations of material deprivation was to do moral injury to the poor, permeates their writings. [As such, it] is morally permissible for an extremely impoverished person to take what he or she needs for sustenance from a person who has plenty.

More concretely, Ramachandra explains, "If I have food in my house which you need for your survival, but which is not indispensable for mine, then it rightfully belongs to you." As a result, "If I offered it to you, it would not be an act of charity on my part as much as granting you your rights under God." Ramachandra then invokes the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica: 

In cases of need all things are common property, so that there would seem to be no sin in taking another's property, for need has made it common.... Hence whatever certain people have in superabundance is due by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.[5]

An obvious retort -- and certainly my own reflex -- is to say that, in our modern world, and in our daily lives, it is so rare to encounter so radical a case of need that theft against us would be mere justice. However, the retort seems to prove too much, since, if there are no realistic conditions under which we could see ourselves being obliged to follow the injunctions levied above, then we are effectively removing the moral burdens of the traditional teaching about distributive justice. In other words, if we no longer have to worry about the demands of distributive justice "in our day," then it follows that distributive justice is not a universally (i.e., transhistorically and transculturally) binding moral principle. As such, it was never, in principle, a binding principle, and therefore we are refuting the teaching of Sts. Paul, Ambrose, John Chrystostom, Thomas, et al. Rather than parrying the implications of the Christian teaching about distributive justice with sophistical qualifications, it behooves us to discover fresh applications of the Christian teaching, beginning in our own lives and communities.

Meanwhile, how did such materialistic sophistry come to hold sway in the modern Western Christian mind? Part of the problem, according to Ramachandra, is that "the market mechanism for allocating resources was raised to a semi-divine status by Adam Smith's (1723-1790) occult notion of an 'invisible hand' steering human self-interest to socially beneficent ends" (p. 110). In Smith's defense, argues Ramachandra, "Smith has been associated, rather unfairly, with the nineteenth-century [and Social-Darwinian] advocates of laissez-faire capitalism and their counterparts in the post-Thatcher-Reagan era in the West." Smith's main concern, contends Ramachandra

was to defend free trade against mercantilist arguments that a strong government was needed to protect the interests of producers. Many of the mercantilist writers were themselves merchants who saw their own interests as best served by a nation-state which used economic policy as a means of reinforcing its own power. Smith rejected any action by government which discriminated against some citizens by supporting the interests of others.

Modern defenders of laissez-faire capitalism shore up their ideology in Smith's name by leaving his position at that, but thereby do him a great injustice. For, as Ramachandra clarifies, "while [Smith] opposed any government intervention in the operation of markets, he was aware of the responsibility of government to protect human welfare." It is often overlooked that Adam Smith was a professor of moral philosophy, and only accidentally an economic philosopher. Indeed, his 1759 book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, not only predated his famous The Wealth of Nations by seventeen years, but also classified "Economics" as a subset of, or at least a shorthand name for, "Familial Rights." 

As such, his economic theories were intended to be read in the context of his larger moral philosophy. It is in that context, Ramachandra notes, that Smith 

defined three duties of government, the latter two proving a source of embarrassment to advocates of 'minimalist' government who look to Smith for support: namely, the 'duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it', and 'the duty of of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which can never be for the interest of any individual or small number of individuals...'[6] 

"Smith," Ramachandra concludes on page 111, "may be the patron saint of capitalism and neo-classical economics, but like all such saints his texts are used selectively by his devotees"—just ask Sts. Paul, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, et al. 

With the larger moral context of Smith's economic theories in mind, and the larger demands of Christianity in the socioeconomic sphere fresh in our hearts, let us return to Ramachandra's previously cited critique of 'development' (p. 118). Not only, recall, does a higher GNP per capita not necessarily result in equal development for all, but "a nation's GNP only indicates the volume of circulation of goods and services in the economy [i.e., among families]." Beyond that, however, the GNP per capita "tells us nothing about the quality of those goods and services: are they beneficial or harmful, do they enrich or damage life, do they meet the actual needs of the community?" In other words, to recall an earlier dichotomy," is a robust economy "Making America Great Again" at the expense of "Making Americans Godly Again"? If so, how we can harmonize the two aims? 

Until we achieve such a reconciliation, Ramachandra notes laconically that it "is perfectly possible to have a society with a high GNP per capita, thriving solely on the manufacture and export of armaments, heroin, tobacco and pornography." (Some might call this a libertarian utopia, but I digress.) The question Ramachandra imposes upon us is, "Would such a [commercially successful] society be regarded as 'developed'?" Under the reigning neo-liberal ideology, it would, contends Ramachandra.

In any case, I trust that the foregoing suffices to demonstrate why Ramachandra is an author well worth exploring.

NOTES:

[1] Hence, "a return to orders" I placed long ago.

[2] The Age of Uncertainty (London: BBC, 1972), p. 22.

[3] Quoted in C. Avila, Ownership: Early Christian Teaching (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983), p. 50.

[4] On Wealth and Poverty, tr. Catherine Roth (New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), pp. 49-55.

[5] Pt II-II, Q66, Art 7, tr. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger Bros., 1948).

[6] An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), ed. Edwin Cannan (1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), Vol. 2, pp. 208-209.

JUST DO IT: Rogue Blogger Edition - The Problem of Evil Again

As I may have explained before, possibly around August of last year, I find myself unable to access my previous Wordpress blog, so I'm just going to get over it and start fresh here, on older turf.

- St. Michael and The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Peter Paul Rubens, 1623

Someone dear to me recently expressed grief and confusion about the highway accident in March involving a tractor trailer and a children's school bus, resulting in the death of two special-needs children.

It's the usual question, though not to be slighted for being so common: "Why would God allow this?"

I decided it would be easier to reply in a long-formish way, rather than by texting, and God knows I need all the practice I can get to return to the vita bloggensis.

First, let us note that the agonized question makes an important theological assertion in its own right, namely, that God allowed X to happen, not that He actively willed it to happen. This is a verbal summary of what Our Lord's Passion iconically teaches us: God Emmanuel, God-with-us, quite literally suffers-with-us; none of the woes in this vale of tears derive from His active will; they are complications that arise from the conditions He established in the very act of creating one finite but good world among other finitely good other worlds.

Our woes can not, in this sense, ever outweigh God's own, for at least we can derive errant pleasure from the ways in which we contribute to the fallenness of a primordially fallen world, while God has no recourse but to redeem His own errant creatures by Christ's theandric Passion, or damning those same creatures to Hell if they never abandon their errant ways. It is in this sense that the agonized question itself declares that God very often "leaves us to our own devices", rather than dragging us around like passive puppets for His own amusement. God commits no evil; He does, however, endure it along with us.

Second, on that note, why would God, so to speak, abandon us to our own freedom? Just as it is impossible to prevent oneself from thinking of a tiny pink elephant when one is told not to think of a tiny pink elephant, so, in the same paradoxical way, it is impossible for God to compel His creatures to love Him by forcing them into corners where they have no choice but to love Him. God is literally powerless to force us to freely love Him, just as He is powerless to force Himself to violate His own goodness. The only way He can be is good, and the only way He can be seen as good, is if we freely recognize Him as such.

Pardon the arcane phrasing above, but the point is that, a perfect, accident-free world that would, seemingly, make God's goodness irresistibly compelling to the human will, is just the kind of world God cannot make, since His own goodness has dictated that the world He created must end in freely returned love, or nothing at all. "Christ or nothing," to paraphrase David Bentley Hart's famously stark formulation.

In that sense, God "lets bad things happen" to remind us that our fundamental choice is between "things" and God -- between a world qua world that can only succumb to entropy and corruption, and a Creator who can heal all wounds.

As John Magee explains,

According to Aquinas, no world is so good that God is bound to create it, no[r] so bad that, so long as it has some share of being, he is prevented from creating it. ... God could prevent natural evil, but its occurrence does not imply that God is either not omnipotent or not all-good. The prevention of natural evil is possible for Aquinas precisely because God is omnipotent, but his failure to do so would not entail that God is less than all-good.

And, to recall an earlier point about freely proferred love and idealized painted corners, it is precisely by seeing, in the face of fresh evils, that we can only have a choice -- that we are not free not to be free in choosing -- between hermetic despair and healing transcendence that we glimpse why God might allow this or that particular evil: quite literally, for all we know, it may be this or that evil mishap that inspires us to place our freedom into God's goodness, or to plunge into the suffocating tar pits of despair. And seeing a single sinner place his trust in God on the rubble of some fresh evil, gives the angels in Heaven more joy than seeing ninety-nine self-righteous pundits placing their trust in the solace of entropic silence.

Third, and finally, I recall what I said about "for all we know" to defend a truism as much maligned by atheists as the original question may be maligned by anxious theists. The truism that "The Lord works in mysterious ways" is a truism precisely because it is true.

Every evil that forces us back under the interrogation lamp of our conscience and into earshot of the ceaseless beckoning of God's transcendence, is a reminder that we know too little to despair as much as we do. To take the bus accident as an example, quite literally for all we know (i.e., considering how little we grasp), the accident may have been God's way of delivering those children from this world while they were in a perfect state of grace; may have been the event someone needed to finally defeat their alcoholism; may have been the spur someone needed finally needed to look beyond the endless tumult of entropy that is this world and firmly entrust his soul to the eternal God who suffers with us; may have been the event that led someone to resume pondering and writing about the deep things of God and thereby saving his soul from torpor; may have--

And that's precisely the point: the particular evil that we so luxuriously find ourselves conflicted by, while hundreds of other evils have washed over us as so many drops of rain, may be any number of things, but the one thing we can't definitively say is that it is sure proof of an evil God. As Magee further explains, in an essay previously cited:

"This is[, argues Aquinas,] part of the infinite goodness of God, that he should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good." The ... argument from natural evil [against the existence of God] ... does not vitiate our assurance in the existence of God. Knowing that God exists and is all-good and all powerful, the existence of evil is a mystery, but it does not undermine this knowledge. If God allows evil, then he [qua all-good Creator] must bring good out of it. Yet, God's permission of evil is not necessitated by anything. On the contrary, Aquinas believes that evil did not exist for humans in an Edenic past, and it will be eliminated in a heavenly future.

It is on that note that I wish to close.

The conventional response to evil in this life is that it somehow mitigates against the goodness or sovereignty of God, but I have come to hold a much more Augustinian view of the problem: the fragility of this world is actually one of the most compelling indicators that this world, in its own right, is beneath us, and that we see there is more to The Story precisely when this world-stage fractures and fails. Overcoming the illusion of the self-sufficiency and satisfaction of this terrestrial stage, is one of the major steps we can make towards enjoying the God-sufficiency and satisfaction of the Beatific Vision. To paraphrase something a buddy of mine says, "If this world is so great, why is it so awful?"

For one thing, the fact that we are able to judge the corruption of the same world that has formed us from head to toe, is a sign that our formation transcends the parameters of this "badly failing" world. To channel C. S. Lewis, if all we knew or could expect were confined to and derived from this world, we would have no more qualms about the twists and turns of this world than a fish would have about the variability of the water that shapes and encloses it. The very fact that we register dissent to the fractured limitations of this world, reminds us that we were created to transcend the confines of this crumbling greenhouse ghetto.

As St. Paul teaches in I Corinthians 6,2-3:

Know you not that the saints shall judge this world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? 3 Know you not that we shall judge angels? how much more things of this world?

While people generally react to evil mishaps as if they alienate us from the all-good God, I have come to see that they really remind us just how thin the ice is between our world and the promise of eternal life -- in other words, how dramatically they remind us that we are "that close," at any moment, between our mundane lives and the demands of eternity. In this sense, evil incursions on our illusory security are blessings in their own right, since they remind us that we too are at any moment a hair's breadth away "from meeting God for good" (in both senses, or in neither).

Imagine a man confined to a chamber that was never disturbed by the goings-on of the house above him: it is the perfect picture of neglect and degradation. By contrast, imagine a man who happens to find himself in a chamber the walls and ceiling and silence of which are constantly being penetrated by light from the life above it: it is the perfect picture of a man who know there is far more to his enclosed life and who in a paradoxical sense relishes every 'evil' disruption and fracture that exposes the finite sterility of his private world. By learning to savor, as it were (or at least 'appreciate'), every evil intrusion on our path to God, we gain a dim glimpse of how Christ could count every shiver of pain and loss as divinely ordained goods that He drank with free will as a sign of transcendent love.