What A Difference Fifty Years Can Make

Psychology, Sin, and Bigotry

In 1960–more than half a century ago–a prominent psychologist, O. Hobart Mowrer wrote the following in the American Psychologist:

For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch-making.  But at length we have discovered that to be “free” in this sense, i.e., to have the excuse of being “sick” rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost.  This danger is, I believe, betokened by the widespread interest in Existentialism which we are presently witnessing.  In becoming amoral, ethically neutral, and “free” we have cut the very roots of our being; lost our deepest sense of self-hood and identity; and with neurotics themselves, find ourselves asking: “who am I?”  O. Hobart Mowrer, “Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils,” American Psychologist, XV (1960), pp. 301-304.

Fast forward to the present decade.
  The pervasive attempt to expunge sin from human being-ness, replacing it with “sickness”, has developed still further now that we are fifty years down the track.  In the present climate “sickness” is a no-no.  The identification of another as “sick” is pilloried as pejorative discrimination.  It has been trumped by the politics of identity.  In the sixties and seventies, sin was re-categorised as sickness; now sickness has been re-categorised not an illness at all, but as one’s true identity.  “I am who I am.  Human being-ness necessarily involves the realisation and acceptance by me (and others) of who I really am.  If society maintains a primitive prejudice against my identity, society, not me, commits a great sin, and is itself evil.” 

We see it all around us.  “I am gay.  I am bi-sexual.  I am trans-sexual.  I am trans-gendered.”  This is sufficiently widespread that Facebook has had to “create” fifty gender and sexual categories to provide sufficient choices for people to proclaim their self-identity.  Those who dare criticise, let alone condemn as immoral, the self-identity of the new human being-ness represent what is the true evil. Not “sickness”, mind, but evil.

Sin initially was parsed as “sickness”; then it morphed from “sickness” into self-identity; but the concept of “sin” did not depart the lexicon.  Rather, sin was imputed to anyone who did not accept and support one’s new self-identity.  The cardinal sin has now become bigotry–if one dares maintain a critical rejection of another’s self-identity, true evil has become unmasked.  Both the bigot and his perverse “identity” require execration and rejection and judgment, and, ultimately, punishment.

What will be the consequences of all this?  More self-loathing.  More true moral guilt.  More hopelessness.  More lashing out.  More ceaseless threshing.

Mowrer again:

Recovery (constructive change, redemption) is most assuredly attained, not by helping a person reject and rise above his sins, but by helping him accept them.  This is the paradox which we have not at all understood and which is the very crux of the problem.  Just so long as a person lives under the shadow of real, unacknowledged, and unexpiated guilt, he cannot (if he has any character at all) “accept himself”; and all our efforts to reassure and accept him will avail nothing.  He will continue to hate himself and to suffer the inevitable consequences of self-hatred.  But the moment he (with or without “assistance”) begins to accept his guilt and sinfulness, the possibility of radical reformation opens up; and with this, the individual may legitimately, though not without pain and effort, pass from deep, pervasive self-rejection and self-torture to a new freedom, of self-respect and peace. [Ibid.]

The strategy of the Church need not change.  Fifty years ago when perversions were rebranded as “sicknesses” faithful Christians and churches demurred, and continued to call such things sinful and evil, using the scriptural lexicon, not pop-psychology’s inanity-du-jour.  The message was: stop sinning.  Repent.  God has promised not just to cleanse, but to forgive and make whole. 

Now pop-psychology has moved on from “sickness” to “identity”.  Now not to accept and champion the self-identity of another is to commit grave harm.  But the Christian response has not changed.  No matter what evasive labels are given to sin and its perversions, sins and perversions they remain.  The only possibility of escape is to accept the judgement of God, return to Him, and plead His loving forgiveness through Christ.  Only under the gentle yoke of Christ will the deep, pervasive self-rejection and self-torture cease, to be overtaken by a new freedom, new self-respect and wholesome peace. 

Back in the day, pop-psychology slammed Christianity as stupid fundamentalist ignorance.  Now that the diagnosis of “sickness” has been upstaged by “identity”, pop-psychology indicts Christianity not just with ignorance, but with hateful bigotry, worth punishment.  But the abiding truth has not changed one iota.  We will continue to proclaim the eternal message: stop sinning; turn to Christ; be cleansed and made whole.  Nothing less will suffice.

Nothing New

Taking Offence at God

Lucia, over at NZ Conservative, says she has come across some folk amongst the Chattering Classes who lump the Bible in with Mein Kampf because, by their lights, both are equally offensive.  The pretext has been the revelation that an aspiring politician in this country, a German national no less, has a rare signed copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in his possession, along with a pen once owned by Stalin and a cigar holder once owned by Churchill.

Books can offend because of what they avow.  The Bible clearly offends multitudes of people because of what it reveals and avows.  After all, the Jewish leaders and the multitudes were grossly offended by Jesus Christ, the Son of God and had him executed with the willing complicity of the Gentile rulers, Pilate and Herod.  But not just the leaders were offended.  Common people who became his disciples for a time were so disillusioned and offended by His teaching that they turned away and had nothing more to do with Him (John 6: 66).  Even His own family rejected Him for a time.
  He has warned us that if they did that to Him, we can expect likewise.  Consider how the Apostle Paul, before he was converted, was filled with murderous rage against Christians, (Acts 9: 1). It takes special divine intervention to change sides from rejection of the Christ to humble repentance and faith in Him. 

Whence this enmity?  Again, the Bible is very clear on this: there are two human races–the descendants of the woman, Eve and the descendants of the serpent.  According to Genesis 3:15 God says to the serpent, He will put enmity between the two races:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise you head, and you shall bruise his heel.  [Emphasis, ours.]

Thus, people taking offence at the Bible is to be expected.  It is the norm.  When Unbelievers tell us that they are offended by the Bible, the appropriate response is to agree with alacrity: “Of course you are.  We expected that would be the case.”  So much so, that it is pleasantly surprising when Unbelievers show a positive interest and curiosity about the Bible.  It is so counter-normal it can be taken as a sign of God at work in their lives.

What then should we make of those who slander the Living God by putting the Bible in the same category as Mein Kampf–that is, equally offensive?  We know that such opinions are either disingenuous or ignorant.  Moreover, there are grounds to suspect that the protagonists have read neither book.  The two books are so dissimilar that to claim offence at both is  as nonsensical as taking offence at both ice-cream and granite.  While the vehemence of prejudice is evident, meaning or coherence has not even drawn nigh, let alone entered the room.  It is a silly statement, derived from ignorant prejudice and a contumacious bent.

But had they read both, we would not be surprised that the deeper wells of outrage would bubble up against the Bible, not Mein Kampf.  It is the natural mien of Unbelief–murderous rage against Christians and the Messiah, whereas Hitler has been repeatedly dismissed in our day as a mere lunatic (by implication needing loving care, understanding,  and medical intervention of some kind).

But as for us and our houses, we fear Living God, love the Lord Jesus as our Sovereign King, and seek to serve His people and do good to all men.  As for Hitler, he was no madman–but a true son of his father, the Devil. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Seven Thoughts On Becoming a Better Hater

Posted on Wednesday, January 1, 2014 

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

My resolution for the new year to become a better hater. But I suppose this requires at least some explanation before itemizing the ways I propose for improving on our hatreds.

“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov. 8:13).

The fear of the Lord is to hate what is evil. We should be able to immediately see that there is no virtue or vice to be found in a transitive verb. By themselves as verbs, love is not good and hatred is not bad. 
Everything rides on the direct object. If you love your mom, that is great, but if you love child porn — same verb and everything — you are being wicked. In order to honor God, the right verb has to be lined up with the right direct object. Genuine love lines up with certain things, and so does true-hearted hate.

In the passage quoted, the direct object for hate must be evil, pride, arrogance, an evil way, and perverted speech. If you look around at the landscape that lies before us in this freshly minted 2014, there are many objects that rightly qualify as direct objects of our hatred — if we are to be disciples of Jesus in 2014. We live in what military men call a target-rich environment.

So here is how I propose growing in our ability to hate properly. These are the areas I think we should all focus on:

1. Learn to love properly. We should want to give ourselves to the love of God and the love of our neighbor. We should want to rejoice in the Lord, in the public worship of God, in the ordinances He has given to us, and in hunger for His Word. We should be eager for evangelism and mercy work. We must love our husbands, wives, children and grandchildren. The more we are given over to these things, the more difficult it will be for the bad guys to level the charge that our hatreds are somehow “phobias,” or some other sign of a broken mind. We don’t hate because we love hating. We hate because we love what we are defending.

2. Learn to hate hypocrisy. When we hate the sins of others more than we hate sin in ourselves, we are a couple of miles down that deadly road already. When we judge others by their actions and words, and judge ourselves by our motives, we are already in the grip of this evil thing. When we judge others by a different standard than the one we desire to have applied to ourselves, we are living in high disregard of the Lord’s teaching. Judgment begins with the household of God, and this is why there will never be a restoration of the republic without a reformation in the church.

3. Learn to hate jargon, buzzwords, cant, and Kant. Words detached from the objects they are supposed to represent — which is what happens with a denial of the correspondence view of truth — is the first step in getting our duties with regard to true hatred completely muddled. So learn to love objective truth, and hate all subjectivism. Learn to mean what you say, and say what you mean. Target every form of verbal pretension and postmodern word games. What is needed here is precision. So put a scope on your rifle. Sight it in. Go out for target practice in an abandoned garden patch. Get a bead on the pumpkins of postmodernism. Use hollow points. The results will be gratifying.

4. Learn to hate every form of egalitarianism, feminism, metrosexuality and associated swisheries, pomosexuality, and androgyny. In the image of God He created them, male and female (Gen. 1:27). And every true Christian has since that time said, vive la différence. On a practical level, the single biggest theological issue of our generation is what God allows as a turn on, how we get to the point of orgasm, and whether or not that experience is a gift that must function under authority. You cannot be wrong on this without being wrong everywhere else.

5. Learn to hate every attempt to turn the Scriptures against itself. No verse trumps any other verse. No word from God is at war with any other word from God. The very first thing that “red letter Christians” do in their insistence to go “by the words of Jesus only” is reject the words of Jesus about the rest of Scripture. All you need to grow in this hatred rightly is a special edition of the Bible, which you can get at any Christian bookstore, with the words of the Holy Spirit in black. Tota et sola Scriptura. All of Scripture and only Scripture — that is the ultimate and infallible rule of faith and practice. Those who seek to divvy up the Word are hostile to the Word, and so we must return that hostility with warmth.

6. Learn to hate every form of coercion that is not mandated by the Almighty God Himself. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Love liberty, and love it in every lawful form. Hate every suggestion that would — apart from an explicit requirement from the Creator — bind, restrict, limit, constrain, constrict, curb, inhibit, stifle, bridle, disallow, immure, compel, or deprive the lawful liberty of another. This is not done for the sake of an abstract idol called “individualism.” It is nothing more complicated than love of neighbor. In this, our statist and despotic age, it is not possible to love your neighbor without also hating five-year plans and new deals, wrapped in golden chains. And hatred of coercion also includes every form of unjust warfare — hatred of ungodly compulsion is not limited in any way to domestic politics.

7. Learn to hate the suggestion, made by some ostensibly on our side, that we “take no prisoners.” The strategy outlined by the Lord Jesus, and which is obligatory for us as Christians, is that we disciple the nations, baptizing them and teaching them obedience. This means that we first find them undiscipled, unbaptized, and disobedient. The whole point is to persuade them, not to nuke them. As we undertake the endeavor of hating well, in our midst we will soon enough discover more than a few who do not know what spirit they are of (Luke 9:55).

The Lord Jesus famously admonished the church at Ephesus, telling them they had fallen from their first love. We must never let that happen to us. But we too often forget that when He came to praise them in what they had retained, He commended them for their hatred. “But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (Rev. 2:6).

So the new year is now before us. We must learn to become better haters in it. It is long past time for new year’s resolutions to contain hatred for something other than calories.