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

Faulty Premises- The Trend

A Recipe for Success)

Whenever people decide to push a social, political, or spiritual movement, they justify the changes that they seek by making certain truth claims. They try to get the world to accept that their core premises are true, or better yet get people to realize that they already agree with those premises. And then, if the premises are true, then the logical response must be to make the proposed social changes.

Every movement, whether its premises are true or not, depends on convincing people of them. Thus, the successful movements are the ones that identify what core premises most immediately lead to their desired outcomes and communicate them in a concise, memorable, and convincing way. When a movement is successful, the premise that was taught then becomes part of the societal fabric. It is now an assumed truth, an axiom for ethical and correct behavior, and future generations will be raised to trust it implicitly.

Unintended Consequences)

But that’s where these movements can start to unravel. The original evangelists of the movement may have only wanted to effect one, specific change, but the rising generations will always take things to their full logical conclusion. They will look at the premise and say, “well if this is true, and it justifies this first step, then surely it justifies the second and the third as well.” And so, they push the matter further than the original evangelists ever intended. Indeed, it is not uncommon for earlier-wave members of a movement to express shock and dismay at what their cause has become in the hands of the later generations. Some of them even express regret for having started the movement at all.

This is a pattern that should give us all pause as we consider the changes that we would wish to see in the world and the methods by which we would achieve them. Every one of us ought to give special consideration to the premises that precede those changes, and what their full potential effect could be, and whether they are even true to begin with.

Tomorrow we’ll look at a specific example of one movement that has gone off the rails, the premise that was indoctrinated in society to make it a success, and why that premise logically led to the unintended consequences we see today.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Thy Sins Are Forgiven

One of the most common phrases of Jesus’s ministry was “thy sins are forgiven thee.” When the paralytic man was lowered to him through the roof, Jesus first forgave the man’s sins, then healed his body. When the woman of many sins wept on his feet and anointed them with ointment, he also told her that her many sins were forgiven. The woman taken in adultery he did not directly forgive, but he did provide her a stay of execution and implored her to sin no more, implying that he was giving her time to seek the same forgiveness that the others had received.

Even as he was dying on the cross, Jesus had two famous moments of forgiveness. He interceded for the Romans who were carrying out his execution, observing that they were acting without understanding. He also promised the repentant thief that the two of them would see each other in paradise, implicitly forgiving him of the very sins that the man was being put to death for.

These are nice moments to think on, times where Jesus gave the greatest gift that we can experience in this life. I can’t imagine reading these stories and not being moved with happiness and hope.

But I think it also worth noting the deep gravity behind them also. I think we should always remember that when Jesus said, “thy sins are forgiven thee,” that forgiveness did not pop out of nowhere. Yes, it was given freely, but it was not acquired freely. Every time Jesus uttered those words an implication followed, “thy sins are forgiven thee, because I will die for them.”

In Hebrews it states: 

For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.
For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.
Hebrews 9:16-17

Surely, part of the reason why the death of the testator, Jesus, was necessary, was because his New Testament would take the place of the death penalties in the Old Testament. Thus, when Jesus let the woman taken in adultery go free…it was only because he was going to be killed in her place. And in all the other cases where Jesus pronounced “thy sins are forgiven thee,” those were only words until he paid the price that would give them actual force. The wages of sin are death, and so forgiveness of sin could only be real after his death for them.

We rejoice whenever Jesus’s words of forgiveness, mercy, and healing come upon us, and well we should. We marvel at how freely we receive them, how they seem to come from out of nowhere. But in the midst of our joy, we should remember that the freeness of them is only an illusion from our perspective. In reality, with every word of forgiveness Jesus gives to us, he is agreeing to die for them also.

Posted on by Abe Austin

God Reaching for God

God is the standard to strive for, but He is also the activating agent that makes the striving possible. God lives outside of us, but also part of Him lives inside of us. Thus, it is God that reaches for God and God that raises God, and we simply are pulled along by the part of Him that is inside us.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Hell Within

If you live every day with a level of physical comfort, security, wealth, and peace that almost no one in history has ever enjoyed, yet every day is filled with anger, anxiety, and despair, then perhaps it is time to consider that your hell comes from within.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Prepared to Fail- Martyr or Traitor

Silence)

In yesterday’s post I examined how torture and threats of violence to loved ones are used as tropes in Hollywood to transfer power and knowledge from the hero to the villain. I suggested that the frequency of this pattern might make us believe that these are foregone conclusions, it might train us to give the same response if ever we face the same pressure in our own lives.

One might argue, these are simply narrative tricks, and all they are looking to do is move the story along, not influence personal perceptions in the real world. I would agree that these films may not have the intention of cultivating a defeatist mentality in their viewers, but that can still be their effect when compounded all together. And what’s more, there are examples that are much more explicit in their message.

Silence is a film based on a 1966 novel where Jesuit priests witness the torture and killing of Christian converts in 17th century Japan. While the priests do not actually have their faith broken, two of them ultimately decide to renounce Christ as it is the only way to get the Japanese officials to stop murdering the people. In the film and novel this denial of faith is presented as a morally correct choice, and one that Christ would approve of. However, that argument is not rooted in any actual words of the Savior, it is justified by inventing a message from Christ within its fiction.

I certainly would never dismiss the seriousness of such a situation in real life, and if I ever met a person who abandoned their faith in such a moment, I would firmly leave the judgment for that in the hands of God. But I will judge fictional and solipsistic media that tries to say that sometimes the right thing to do is the wrong thing to do.

Joan of Arc)

Let us look at another example actually from history, one that is actually encouraging. Joan of Arc lived in 15th century France, and she proclaimed to have had visions with angels, which called her to fight for France’s liberation from England. While she went to battle and achieved great victories, ultimately, she was captured and stood trial before the English church.

Joan was found guilty of various sins, including heresy, and brought to the Tower of Rouen and shown the instruments of torture that would be used on her if she did not recant her spiritual claims. She bravely refused, and the judges thought it unwise to actually go through with the torture, so she was spared. Two weeks later, though, she was brought to the execution platform and told she would be burned at the stake that very day. This time they meant it, and this time her conviction wavered. She signed a confession that all her claims had been false.

But that was not the end of her story or her convictions. Only a few days later, pained by her false confession, she reasserted all her previous claims, and accepted the consequences that would follow. On May 30 she was put to the flames, and as she burned to death she called out to Jesus. Today she is considered a saint.

As I said yesterday, I cannot know whether I would prove faithful or not in such a trial. And as I said today, I leave to God the judgment of those who cannot hold to their convictions in such moments. But what I can do and say is that faithfulness to the truth is always the right answer. I can say that I hope to always be true to my Lord. I can say that we have sufficient evidence that people really can remain faithful, even in the face of torture, death, and the loss of loved ones. When evil comes in all its power, there is no foregone conclusion that we must fall to it. We may yet prove faithful and true; we may be martyrs rather than traitors.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Prepared to Fail- Convenient Plot Devices

Movie Tropes)

A movie trope is a recurring plot element that is seen across many different titles. They are a quick and easy way for a writer to reuse patterns that have worked before, and a movie that is full of them is considered lazy and unoriginal.

Tropes provide easy answers to moments of necessary transformation. One common transformation in movies is where the villain needs to gain knowledge to foil the hero’s plan. Another is where the hero has the upper hand, but then that dynamic is flipped, putting the villain in the position of power. In both of these cases, the hero and his allies have something important, knowledge or power, and there needs to be a way for the villain to take that from them.

Common tropes to quickly achieve both of these transformations are to have the villain torture a member of the hero’s group, or to threaten the loved ones of the hero.

You can see this in Pan’s Labyrinth, where Captain Vidal tortures a member of the Spanish Maquis to extract the location of the rebel group. You can see this in Gladiator, where Commodus threatens Lucilla’s son to get her to divulge the plot to overthrow him. And these tropes show up again and again in many, many other stories.

These serve as a narrative shorthand, but what sort of message do they send to society when used so constantly?

A Different Story)

The truth is that torture and threats to loved ones have been used throughout history to try and break the convictions of real people. Early Christian families were burned at the stake, or had their bodies mangled, rather than deny their fealty to their Lord. I’m not saying that such firmness of character is common, or that all of us would hold up under that pressure, but I do think it is important to recognize that the way movies portray such moments as an already foregone conclusion is untruthful.

Whether I could withstand torture or threats to my loved ones, I do not know, but it is good for me to remember that with God people have been able to endure these things and more. Rather than let these fictions poison me with the notion that everyone has a limit on their faithfulness, I’d rather be encouraged by true stories that show that the determination of the soul can be immeasurable.

Tomorrow I’ll conclude this little study by looking at two more examples of conviction and those that surrender them and those that hold on to them.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Prepared to Fail- Common Patterns

I recently concluded a study related to false moral dilemmas, where I sought to dispel the notion that there might ever be a time where we have to make a morally compromising choice. I asserted that there are always the options for finding an outside-the-box moral solution, or the ability to refused to engage with the situation entirely and still keep one’s conscience intact.

As I did this study, I started to notice something else, something that I was going to write about then and there, but I realized it warranted a study all its own. It is a theme that is even larger and broader, something that false moral dilemmas is but a subset of. What I have noticed is that our Western culture and media seem to be preparing us to give up on our ideals when certain triggers are met. Not only the false moral dilemmas that I already explored, but any time that there is a threat of torture or harm to a loved one.

Usually when either of these occur in our modern stories, the victim gives in to what the villains want. Obviously, it serves a narrative purpose to have a way for the villains to obtain their desire at certain points of the story, but the fact that it so commonly comes as a result of these specific methods is very interesting. We may view these sorts of stories passively, but each time we see the pattern repeated it is as if our minds are rehearsing that trigger and response, training itself to make the same surrender if we ever face the same sort of opposition.

In my next post I will examine these movie tropes of how the hero is forced to surrender his ideals, and what the long-term effects of repeated exposure to this pattern might spell for us. I’ll see you there.