Matt’s Marvelous Mailbag seeks to provide marginally adequate answers to much better questions about politics, economics, social life, theology, or any potpourri you see fit to have answered. Send questions to mailbag.bereans@gmail.com.  

Ah, 2019…..feels a lot like 2018 to be honest, but it’s good to back. I don’t have much to say for an introduction apart from my hope that all are well and swell as we undertake season 3 of the Donald Trump show. I hear the new cast hires are a rather rambunctious rabble, so I’m sure we’ll be in for a treat. But, for now, to the mailbag:

Q: Theodore asks: “What are you thoughts regarding the False Flag shenanigans in the Alabama Senate race?  Maybe it’s just a shrewd use of technology but it seems to be a pretty shady practice.  Is this the future of political discourse in this country or has it always been this way….just a different modus opera di?”

A: I think you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head with the “shrewd, but shady” description. Off the top of my head, I am not sure of the legal issues involved here, but I doubt they would amount to anything criminal considering the LinkedIn co-founder was technically funding one of the efforts, and all he did was apologize. That being said, here’s some scattered thoughts I have:

1. Much like the Russian influence campaign in 2016, I highly doubt either one of these operations swayed the election for Doug Jones. Roy Moore took that job upon himself about 30 years ago when he harassed young women. Go back to the main headlines surrounding that election, and I deign to think you would find ‘Dry Alabama’ topping the list of press concerns. There was simply too much else going on at the time.
2. But, since we’re comparing this to Russia, let me poke a little bit. The New York Times itself has made the claim that the individuals behind this were using the same tactics as used in the Russian influence campaign. Accordingly, shouldn’t we see the same kind of huffle-puff and much-ado about this effort as we are still seeing years later with the Russian effort? I mean the vote differential was only 22,000 votes, right? Surely this could have swayed the election. Shouldn’t we be outraged over this attack on our electoral system? Hmm??? HMMMM?!?!? Of course not. There are millions of little efforts influencing American elections every cycle, but the reason most people don’t give two hoots about them is because most voters never see them. Those of us who are devoted to the life of politics and economics have the luxury of tracking some of the more minute efforts, but, even then, we generally read about them after the fact. Most Americans simply tune out the noise, pick the candidate they like best (or at least go against the one they hate), and go about their lives. Blaming Hillary’s loss on Russia is a remarkable stretch and, likewise, blaming Roy Moore’s loss on the false flags is equally as unbelievable. They were both terrible candidates who ran terrible campaigns. The apparent difference, however, is that one of those blame-game narratives is being played as gospel right now. It would behoove us to ask why.
3. Somewhat tangentially to this, I’d recommend this piece by Tyler Cowen on internet censorship, paying particular attention to his ‘trilemma’ of censorship.

Q: Judy asks: “What are your thoughts on efforts to make the National Day of Prayer an ecumenical event?”

A: In short, it’s a very fuzzy, feel-good, and nonsensical effort. Part of the issue here is the upside down nature of this particular drive for unity, which is a noble goal but has some qualifications to it. Unity is one of those words that just gets tossed around in a kind of kumbayah fashion without anybody actually understanding what they’re unifying around, or if they actually are unified or not in the first place. And, of course, on the other hand is the equally fluffy ‘diversity,’ which has its own ethereal ring to it.

Now unity and diversity, like any good gift of God, have great potential for good and bad embedded within them. The great paradox is how we hold these two grand forces in balance with one another. Do we want unity, or do we desire diversity? I say amen and amen. Part of the beauty of being a part of the body of Christ is how this paradox gets resolved. We have one God, one fundamental set of principles we hold to, and one ultimate goal in life as we strive for His glory and coming kingdom. We are, or at least ought to be, wholly and totally unified in Christ. Yet, God has called all nations, all tongues, and all races into this one body; some as eyes, others as ears, and a humble portion as the blessed and faithful little toes. Thus, the many converge as one and the diverse stand united, holding firm together as that vivid, radiant, and fiercely brilliant image we call community.

My attempts at waxing eloquent aside, the point is this. Unity forms the basis for diversity. I believe groups will be most successful when they are united in their mission and diverse in their talents — unity in first things and diversity as to the rest. But flip that order, and you’ve created an instability that cannot last, hence part of the problem with joining together for an ecumenical day of prayer. It’s akin to a man turning to his wife and saying, “Honey, for our date night, I thought I’d invite some other women along for the ride.” Christians are to be exclusive in their worship of Yahweh, so how could we possibly worship together with those who worship another? Can we love them, pray for them, help them, befriend them, and even lay down our lives for them? Absolutely, but our worship is exclusive, and the strength of our diversity is found in the unity of our devotion and truest affection.

This is, of course, said with the realization that the National Day of Prayer has been and more or less still is a distinctly Christian event. I understand this gets into the issue of whether or not the government should even sponsor a day of prayer, but I’ll leave that issue to the side for now. My points don’t particularly hinge on the answer to that question.

Q: Shelly asks: “How were the books of the Bible brought together?”

Phew…how much time do you all have left to read? This is actually a current investigation of mine, so I will refrain from saying too much for now as I’m still going through that learning process, though I do have a few highlights to share:

• One of the things we have to realize about the Bible is that it did not fall out of heaven as a completed manuscript nor was it written by God overriding the faculties of its human riders. Commonly, we think of the process as such: Prophet gets up in the morning to start making breakfast. He plops a pop-tart in the toaster when, all of a sudden, his muscles go stiff, his eyes turn glowing and golden, and his hand just starts to move a quill across several pages. Twenty to thirty minutes later, he breaks out of his trance, looks down, and goes, “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle; there’s the book of Isaiah. How about that…” Just let the Bible be what it is. You needn’t sacrifice inspiration by granting its very human efforts in composition.
• One of the common questions related to this is how we know what the originals said when we only have copies. The short answer is textual criticism, and I am only half-joking when I say that textual critics are probably going to sit closer to Christ than just about anyone other than the apostles. There is a bundle of material you can read on this front, but even from most secular textual critics, we have about a 99.999% certainty on the original text. The two big sticking passages at this point are the end of Mark and the woman caught in adultery story (John 8), and textual critics have a pretty good idea about what happened with Mark, so it’s basically just the beginning of John 8 at this point. In short, you can trust what you have.
• More to the actual process of how we have the current books, I would direct you to this article as a good starting point. One of the myths about the canonization of Scripture is that life was just kind of humming along with no one really knowing what was and was not Scripture, ’til one day a council got together, picked a few books they liked, and declared them to be the Word of God. The reality is substantially less shady. Canonization was very much an organic process, and people had fairly good insights as to which books were canonical long before any council declared some sort of edict.

I guess the last thing to say here is to not let research in this area scare you off. Yes, the process is not as clean-cut and scientifically rigorous as we moderns would prefer it to be, but it’s hardly a nebulous field of guesses and best tries. Biblical scholars have spent centuries going over these issues, and the lattice work isn’t going to come crumbling down because we ask some questions here and there.

Q: Thomas asks: “Any thoughts on the Alabama-Clemson championship game?

A: One or two, yes. For starters, I am a die-hard Buckeye, so watching these constant Clemson-Alabama shootouts are not particularly enjoyable for me. Clemson embarrassed us two years ago in the playoffs, and Alabama was was allowed to just float into the 4th spot last year over us. That being said, I did pull for Clemson, if for no other reason than to spite the juggernaut of Alabama. That may change after last night if this happens again. Second, I did not expect Alabama to just roll over (tee-hee-hee…puns) and expire like they did. No magic, no comebacks, no pretense of holding on to the end; it was just an unmitigated, moribund disaster for them. It was good to see Alabama look human, if even just for a second. Third, I do hope this breaks some of the magic spell that the SEC has held over the CFP. Is the SEC good? Yes, but I think they’ve also been given the benefit of doubt in years past when other conferences were better. Regardless, I offer my congrats to Clemson and wish both teams a series of swift defeats at the hands of Big Ten teams next year.

With that, I think class is dismissed for this week.  As always, mailbag.bereans@gmail.com is ready and waiting for your burning questions.  ‘Til next time.