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.
My guess is that everyone is a little angsty after the midterms, seeing as no one really got the result they wanted. But, hey, you’re here now, and all of life’s dilemmas are about to be answered for you in under 3000 words if I’m lucky/linguistically concise. So, put down the kitchen knife, grab your herbal tea and settle in. It’s mailbag time! Woot!
Q: Jordan (not my brother, just a good friend) asks: In chapter 12 of Heretics, Chesterton argues that the three distinctly Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are all paradoxical. Christian charity, specifically, he says consists of showing love to the undeserving. “Charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice.” Does that mean that charity to the undeserving is unjust? My question comes when I try to reconcile this in light of God’s virtues and the necessity of the cross. The typical explanation as I have understood it is that God loves mankind, and thus desires to save them, but his justice prevents him from simply canceling our sins without payment. So Christ offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to satisfy the Father’s wrath. Now the Father credits Christ’s righteousness to our account. It seems like after having Christ’s righteousness put on us, we now deserve the Father’s love, in a sense. Can you see the apparent contradiction? Sorry for the long question, I’ve tried to explain it as clearly as possible. I hope you can share some thoughts to help me understand it. Thanks!
A: Well, this is a tough one to be sure. Let’s do this in two parts. To the part about charity to the undeserving being unjust, I don’t think that’s the necessary implication of Chesterton’s phrasing. Rather, charity to the undeserving is merely what we call ‘grace’ or ‘mercy.’ If I steal $100 from you and am caught, you hold the legal rights to exact recompense from me in a manner accordant with the law. In this case, it actually falls into the lap of a judge to mete out justice or, as Chesterton phrases it, “charity to the deserving.” It is a loving thing to you to apply the law fairly and bestow on you your due recompense, but it is framed primarily as ‘justice.’ Now, suppose I come to you and penitently beseech your forgiveness for my petty theft, and you, being a magnanimous sort, absolve me of my debt. Are you unjust? Of course not! You held the legal right to recompense, but you chose to show mercy, and the mercy triumphs over judgment in this case. Asked another way, think of your question as: “Would you ever classify forgiveness as a perversion of justice?”
- Was sacrifice in the OT necessary for people to be in right relation with God?
- If yes, was Daniel in right relation with God while in exile?
- When we forgive, do we exact payment in order for our forgiveness to be effective?
- Could people be saved and forgiven before the cross?
- Which is more important for right standing with God, (a) sacrifice and ritual, or (b) obedience and loyalty?
Q: Lynn asks: “If C.S. Lewis and Charlie Daniels were having a conversation about the song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” would Lewis commend or correct Daniels on the attitude he displays in the lyrics?” Jodi also posits a question to this effect: “I read that you were listening or reading the Screwtape letters recently and I’ve always wondered about the “theology” behind that song. You listen to it and you think ‘Take that devil’, but I’ve always thought the devil probably is walking away smiling and thinking ‘That was easy.'”
A: Just to show our level of dedication, we here at Bereans have spared no expense for our valued readers, going so far as to actually obtain a snippet from an old lecture Under Secretary Screwtape gave to a freshman class of tempters around the time this song was released. It was recently leaked, much to the misfortune of several associates from Grindelsnort Academy, and we’ll relay it to you now.
“I was most disappointed recently to hear of several comments from this student body, mostly bad and insufferable points of ignorance, related to our father’s apparent “humiliation” at the hands of a rogue fiddler with a penchant for competition. You young tempters never cease to amaze me with your nearsightedness on these matters, supposing in the first place that our father cares even one iota about competing with the little vermin as if he were such a blunt fool as to reduce the whole game of the soul-getting to the melodic movement of two objects. Have you all forgotten that it is the great accomplishment of our Public Relations department, over the past few centuries, to bring about just the sort of nebulousness in the humans’ minds about our existence as to lead them into all manner of beneficial mistakes? I suspect that if you spent any decent amount of time studying the various depictions the insufferable creatures make of us, you would find yourself quite amused and perhaps somewhat astonished, though I am not quite certain of this seeing as the current class of freshmen apparently wants to conjure images of horned beasts and dashing devils in their minds. This is entirely misplaced, I must say, as it jumps the gun too quickly. Much better to keep the fog thick, rolling, and black as it is now, knowing that Hell will provide the acute clarity and reality you fools are trying to rush. Now, as to the particular matter at hand, I’m quite concerned that you do not grasp the simple, yet subtle methods our father has employed in procuring the man’s soul. It’s really just a feigned withdrawal. The fiddling buffoon gets his cheap trick, and we get his smug pride to twist for our own advantages. Even the most novice of tempters should be able to see this. There is, however…..a particular danger here. If we are not careful, we run the very real risk of having the situation’s own ridiculousness be revealed to the sniveling, little worms, thereby affording them the most reprehensible opportunity to appreciate the music for its own artistic sake. This, I confess, would leave us in a truly unfortunate position of having our own campaign of misinformation turned on us by The Enemy for his own ridiculously hedonistic purposes, thereby allowing the dusty parasites to enjoy excellence in its own right. You must not forget that the our whole campaign rests on basic principles: opacity over clarity, prudishness over pleasure, and pride over humility. The moment that humans begin to realize the incident’s own implausibility, we really have let the situation get out of hand. Professor Tumblewart may have some words to say about this tomorrow.”
Q: Sam asks: If you were suddenly given complete control of the state of Illinois, what actions would you take to resolve the debt issue? You can’t divide Illinois among its surrounding states.
A: How about just sinking the whole state? Will that work? We can just make the whole thing into a giant lake, themed as an amusement park attraction about the “Lost City of Chicago.” Alternatively, we can simulate some ‘Mad Max’ scenarios there; we have the open space to do it. No, realistically, the way you get out of debt doesn’t really change that much except for the scale. You sit down, make a budget with income>expenses, and you follow it, adjusting on the margins as necessary. Honestly, the first step is probably the hardest one because it’s the most difficult politically — you have to stop promising pensions you can’t keep. That’s how Illinois got into this problem in the first place, and it’s part of why they keep sinking deeper into the debt wormhole. Instead of cutting the unreasonable pensions somewhere, they just raid the treasury/other parts of the government budget and raise taxes to try to cover the rest. So, assuming my benevolent dictatorship, some people would have to bite the bullet (age, income, and other retirement savings probably would be large factors here) to start. Once you do that, and no more unreasonable pensions are being promised, the process is more straightforward. Balance the budget by appropriate, sensible measures and start your giant debt snowball. Again, it’s not particularly complicated; it’s just political suicide.
Q: Jordan (my brother this time) asks for my post-election thoughts.
A: Well, Dr. Smith and Dr. Clauson beat me to the punch on this one, so I don’t have too much to add beyond what they have said. What I will add is this. There’s seems to be this idea floating around Republican circles that Trump can conjure up victory from the jaws of defeat at a whim. That is patently baloney for one main reason: only Trump is Trump. I think Republicans got this idea after 2016 that the polls were always going to under count the Trump effect on elections, but they’ve actually been fairly accurate since then which just seems to back up this claim of mine. Conventional wisdom won out in this election. Trump may have his own personal blend of electoral magic, but it only works on him; you can’t just sprinkle his orange pixie dust on other Republicans and expect them to have the same over-performing gift that he has. To that end, I think Ben Shapiro has the right insight. Whoever gets to the suburbs first is going to own the future. It’s possible that Republicans may be able to play a delicate balancing game by letting Trump continue to be his own Trumpy self while the rank-and-file members reach out to the suburbs. Politics still has a local tinge to it, and this “one Trump fits all” / “You get a Trump, and you get a Trump, you all get a Trump” approach is not going to cut it. Time will tell.
Q: Lennart Torstensson, Count of Ortala, Baron of Virestad asks: “Today we talk a lot about elections as ‘popular mandates.’ Would our Founders have embraced the idea of a popular mandate in American politics? Would they have accepted that popular mandates can be clear and decisive for political action?”
A: These names are just getting ridiculously fun. I think I have to come down with a ‘negative’ on this question if for no other reason than the very design of our government. It’s supposed to be doggedly difficult to get anything sweeping done in the government, which is quite intentional. In its original form, you had to get the (1) the approval of the citizens through the House, (2) a dual approval of the states through the Senate and the President, and (3) and the approval of constitutionality from the Supreme Court. Ideally, that slows everything down to the point where only the best or most innocuous pieces of legislation get through, but even then the process would be slow and deliberate. Moreover, when Madison talks about ‘ambition countering ambition,’ it’s clear that he’s not jumping on board with a whole lot of majority-mandated government action. You couple that with their broader talks of protecting the minority from an aggressive majority and wanting political parties to proliferate so that they would cancel each other out, and the idea of ‘popular mandate’ seems to be rather antithetical to their vision. We have a pretty pervasive view nowadays that government is the primary way of getting major things accomplished, and I just don’t see that kind of sentiment reflected by the Founders.
Q: Lenny also asks: What are your thoughts on Florida’s decision to loosen restrictions on felons’ ability to vote? Given the bipartisan coalition in favor of the change, does it signal a broader range of policy adjustments that could garner support from both sides of the aisle at a state or local level?
A: Not sure on the second part of your question. I’m sure there are plenty of bipartisan policy adjustments available, but I wouldn’t read too much into this one decision on that point. To the first part of the question, I care less about whether or not they can regain their ability to vote (except for more heinous crimes) and more about the process. From what I’ve read, it seems like there was no standard for reinstituting voting ability, and that was leading to inconsistent decisions. If a concrete process can be put in place, I’m less concerned about its stringency. This is simply not a high-priority issue for me, so if the process is definable and equally applicable to all pertinent individuals, I’m fine with it. That being said, I’m not blind to the elephant in the room here. Most felons who regain their vote tend to use to favor Democratic candidates, so we Republicans are obviously going to have a certain degree of brouhaha and tsk-tsking about this. At the end of the day, though, if the process is standardized, and it was passed via legitimate means, then that’s the deliberative process working correctly; we should be thankful when that happens.
Q: Brandon asks: In your opinion, will Dr. Clauson post again in the next six months? Will it be longer than this most recent one? Should we embed a stopwatch on the Bereans website to show time between Dr. Clauson’s posts?
A: Hopefully, frequent readers of the Bereans will realize that Dr. Clauson is a man unlike any other, and, as such, we must be careful not to over-saturate our audiences with too much of his polymathic genius. Think of him like a fine wine, continually enhanced by age but necessitating a degree of moderation as to avoid overconsumption. At this stage of his eminent development, it is more likely than not that we will be able to provide his posts within a six-month frequency, but the time may be fast approaching when even our servers will not be able to contain the weight of wisdom and insight from two of his posts in one year’s time. At that point, we will have to gather the nations together once a year to behold his radiance for a single day, a day that will sustain us mere mortals for the year until we pine yet again for his indelible thoughts.
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach