Posted on by Abe Austin

False Agendas

Justified Suffering)

An ideology predicated upon a lie is perhaps the most destructive force in the world. More than nuclear weapons, more than natural disasters, a false agenda that takes hold will fracture an entire society, kill millions of innocents, and leave the survivors in disarray.

The danger of a misaligned belief system is our innate understanding that suffering is justified for the greater good. Under normal conditions, this instinct is a wonderful good, a necessity for overcoming the evil of the world. Being able to stand up for what is right, no matter the cost, has seen the end of slavery, the birth of liberty, and the restoration of spiritual truth.

But now see how that virtue is twisted when applied to a false cause. Because the cause is false, meaning it is contrary to what is true and right, it will inevitably tear large gashes into society as it is pushed forward. But because it has already been decided to be the right thing to do, the painful consequences are excused as the necessary cost for progress. Thus, we gravely wound our society, and don’t even end up getting something good out of it!

An Example)

Perhaps the most recent example of this in western culture has been the feminist movement. First, the ideology was established by the twisting of a truth. It was correctly noted that men and women are created equal, sharing the same promise in Christ, exactly as taught by Paul:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Galatians 3:28-29

But then the metrics of equality were dragged down to earthly standards. First, the stations of men were inappropriately exalted. Leadership offices were seen as positions of power, not of service and obligation. The making of money and acquiring of fame became markers of success, rather than the creation and cultivation of the family.

Next, it became the agenda that women should be elevated to the same levels of power idolatry as men. It became the “greater good,” worthy of inflicting damage and suffering to achieve it. Ever since, we have paid the terrible costs of the family system being completely deconstructed, men and women competing as enemies to one another, the cratering of the birth rate, the collapse of civil society, and the murder of millions of unborn children! We have suffered all of this, and all to gain progress in a false agenda!

The Wrong Solution)

This is worse than short-term gains for long-term losses, for there aren’t even the short-term gains! What we should have done is re-established the notion of servant leadership demonstrated by our Savior, eschewed the temptations of fame and fortune, and preserved the cooperative union of men and women as intended by God.

Now things are twisted, hurting, and many more false beliefs have been sown in the cracks of our society. The potential for continued false agendas, which further push suffering and confusion on the world, is great. The path back to genuine truth and healing is growing smaller and harder by the day. If we are not at that point already, soon only an act of God will be able to get us back to what is right. Thank heaven that acts of God remain the one thing we can always rely on!

Posted on by Abe Austin

Faulty Premises- A Better Example

Scrutinize Premises)

Over the last two posts we discussed two social movements which made their gains under slogans that were untrue. For feminism, its “what a man can do, a woman can do as well,” was explicitly false, describing an equivalency that never has and never will exist between the sexes. For the LGB movement, its “love is love,” was implicitly false, as the subtext of that statement was that “any romantic or sexual union was good and equal to any other,” which we easily disproved yesterday.

The fact that each movement was founded on a lie means that either the changes being championed were either motivated by the wrong reasons or were fundamentally wrong no matter the motivation. Since each movement prevailed by getting society to accept its false premises, society was then set on a track that could only lead to harm the further it was pursued.

As mentioned at the start of this study, every movement is trying to convince society of some premise, which, if accepted, naturally leads to the changes that the movement desires. We should highly scrutinize any such premise, as if it is accepted its effects will go far beyond its initial campaign. We need premises that are good and true. Even if our cause is just, but the premise is faulty, then the long-term damage will be worse than any short-term positive outcome. And if our cause is not just, then the premise will always be faulty, no matter how we try to work it.

Hate and Love)

To finish this series, I wanted to present an example of another campaign slogan, one that has at its core a truer premise. When I think of Martin Luther King Jr.’s branch of the Civil Rights, one of the key phrases that defined that movement was, “hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” This was a premise which, if accepted, would lead his followers to treat their foes with kindness, would encourage onlookers to join the cause of brotherly love, and would make his foes question their motivations. Thus, it was a premise which, if accepted, would likely lead to the changes that the movement sought for.

But we dare not only consider its short-term effectiveness, we also have to consider the truth of the statement itself. It wouldn’t matter how noble King’s motivations were, or how good his short-term objectives were, if the banner by which he got there was twisted against reality.

As with the “love is love” slogan, let us consider the subtext of these words. The “hate” that Martin Luther King Jr. is referring to is that of one group of people seeking to harm another, and the “love” that he is referring to is one group of people showing kindness and grace to another. King is presenting love and hate as opposites, and just as only light can illuminate the darkness, and only filling can remedy emptiness, and only good can overcome evil, so, too, only love can drive out hate.

Notice that hate is both a state and an action. If there is a state of hate in the world, and we attempt to erase it through more acts of hate, we leave those acts behind to be the new state of hate. Hate used as a cure produces more of itself—and invites another cycle. It is trying to wipe away filth with mud; thus, no matter how much we scrape away, we keep adding more grime. Hate therefore requires a different active force to extinguish it, an anti-hate. Something that can dispel hate, without regenerating it. Anti-hate means the opposite of hate, and as mentioned before, the opposite of hate is love.

To me, the underlying logic of King’s slogan was sound, and therefore worthy of being adopted. Not only for the changes that it would cause in the Civil Rights, but because any further changes downstream would likely be sound and positive as well.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Faulty Premises- Campaign Slogans

What a Man Can Do)

Today we are looking at an example of a campaign that was built on a faulty premise that led to extreme results beyond its original intentions: feminism. This movement has had a few campaign slogans, but arguably the most prominent were the ones that begin with “What a man can do…”

Interestingly, there have been three variations of this slogan, each going further than the last. In the late 19th century it was, “What a man can do, a woman can try.” Then, at the start of the 20th century, under the suffrage movement, it became, “What a man can do, a woman can do as well.” Then, still later, it became, “What a man can do, a woman can do even better.”

Obviously, the last two versions of the slogan are explicitly untrue. In reality, we understand that biological differences make certain things possible for men and impossible for women and vice versa. Of course, the falseness of the statements was part of the design, making them provocative and controversial. One might say these statements were never meant to be taken literally, just as a rhetorical flourish.

Fair enough, but that raises the question, “what are the long-term effects of founding a movement on a faulty premise?” Even if the faulty premise is tongue-in-cheek, can it really portend good things down the road when that is your foundation? Perhaps it is effective at getting the changes that you want today, but what sort of changes are likely to follow later on?

From Twisted Beginnings)

A movement that accepts a lie at its origin is a movement with a twisted foundation. It is somewhat misaligned with reality at the very beginning, and it is sure to become even more misaligned as more and more structure is built on top of it. This is especially true when we realize that yesterday’s rhetoric becomes tomorrow’s dogma. In my experience, there are many that have taken the provocative, tongue-in-cheek message of “what a man can do, a woman can do as well,” and actually believe it literally. They take it as an undisputed fact that men and women are totally equal in all regards, and that leads to some shocking conclusions.

Most recently, this line of thinking was clearly a main contributor to the transgender movement, which fully embraced the idea that there was little or no difference between a man or a woman, and that one could become the definition of the other at will. I think it’s safe to say that such a notion was far from the mind of old-time suffragettes, but this is simply the long-term consequences of the seeds that they, themselves, planted.

This is an example of a campaign built upon an explicit lie, but what about a campaign built upon implicit lies? We’ll look at an example of that tomorrow.

Posted on by Abe Austin

False Moral Dilemmas- Desire for the Gray

The Desire to Excuse)

At the end of the last post, I acknowledged the fact that each one of us will break conscience at some point or another, but that it isn’t as though we have to do that. We do it as a choice. We have an alternative path that remains morally upright, and we reject it, and choose something wrong instead.

In my personal experience, and in my daily observations, I think that this is one of the most difficult things for us to accept. Truly owning our failures does not come easy. We shrink at the notion of saying, “I hurt someone. I didn’t have to, but I chose to because I’m selfish, and there’s no justifying it. It was just wrong, plain and simple.” I think we all know that this is true of everyone else, so certainly it must be of ourselves also, but we keep trying to distance from it. Even when we do acknowledge our failings, we prefer to do it for past versions of the self. “The old me did that, the current me never would.” Thus, even harder than admitting that we did wrong is admitting that we are wrong.

And with this in mind, I think I think one of the reasons why we would be obsessed with so-called moral dilemmas is clear. We can deny all our guilt once we assume a paradigm that this world is fraught with no-win moral dilemmas. We tell ourselves that all of us must face choices where moral compromise is the only option, that sometimes doing wrong is better than doing the worse wrong, so there’s no helping that we have soiled our souls. If we convince ourselves that all the world is gray, then it is a meaningless homogeny where our own “gray” choices can’t be held against us.

The Courage to be Honest)

From this perspective, false moral dilemmas are not simply a misrepresentation, they are a coping mechanism for our shame. We rely on them because saying “there were no good options,” is much easier than saying, “there was one good option, but I didn’t have the courage to face its consequences.”

The solution, then, is having the honesty to admit that we are flawed individuals, guilty of choosing wrong, and needing grace to get by. We need to be able to acknowledge the perfect path that was available and how we far strayed from it. When we have courage enough for this, then we won’t need to cast the world in shades of gray, we will be able to admit the white that was there, the black that we are, and the grace that makes us pure again.