If you have not read the post below on the Folly of Forced Compassion, this post will probably make little sense. This is not a response, per se, to that post, but it does seek to unpack further the actual application of a society that has eliminated “forced” compassion in favor of “free” compassion.

Let me begin with tithes and offerings in churches. Many churches allow for the receipt of automatic electronic fund transfers. In other words, a church allows for its parishioners to establish a monthly automatic withdrawal of ten percent of their income to be electronically transferred into their church’s bank accounts. I have to admit, there is nothing explicitly stated in scripture which would prohibit such actions. After all, the person is tithing, right? On the other hand, this is slightly against the spirit of tithing, which is an act of faith and an act of compassion (see Malachi 3). An automatic withdrawal takes little thought. (I don’t think about my mortgage payments because they are automatically withdrawn.) At least using online bill pay causes me to think for a second about the tithe I am making to my church as I click the ‘pay’ button. While convenient, automatic withdrawal affects the spirit of giving to the church and makes it too routine.

Now consider ‘forced’ compassion through welfare and taxes. Unintended consequences have occurred because human thought has been largely removed from the process. Rather than thinking about having compassion on others, money is simply removed from my check by the IRS and deposited where needed. Although Dan excluded Social Security and Medicare from his post, having these withheld from my check causes me to stop thinking about caring for those around me who are older, causing me to forget that care of the elderly means more than financial assistance. Compassion that is forced becomes routine and viewed as a garnishing of ‘my’ money.

So, let’s eliminate ‘forced’ compassion! But hold on a second! We all agree that we ‘must’ (whether compelled by God or by government) have compassion. And some would argue that government should not be the compelling force. But let’s be honest. Would the elimination of a compelling human force that has caused the elimination of thought and heartfelt compassion suddenly lead to increased thought and heartfelt compassion? I think not. When the computer system goes down and EFT’s don’t work, few think to write paper checks to their churches. Human hearts do not have a switch in them that suddenly begin to think and feel when they have stopped thinking and feeling.

This is one of the major points of contention about medicare, welfare, and social security. Those in favor of ‘forced’ compassion fear that if there is no force, compassion will not take place. Those in favor of ‘free’ compassion argue that it will. I agree with those who say it will not take place; the human heart simply does not change that fast. If we simply eliminate force, compassion will not take place until the situation of certain individuals becomes so dire that suddenly we are compelled to have compassion upon those we have come to resent. I would estimate that this would take at least one generation of the poor, and that is simply one generation too many to sacrifice. However, I am in favor of “free” compassion that does involve thinking and heart-felt compassion. So how do we solve this impasse? Simple: double the compassion.

What I am proposing is shocking and wildly unpopular because it is ‘my’ money. I’m suggesting we put our money where our mouth is and give twice as much. It’s easy to stand on the side lines and claim the government should not force compassion, and Dan makes a great argument for why they should not force compassionate behavior. But the reality is that while government does “force” compassion, they do not “restrict” compassion. In other words, they dictate that x number of dollars must be spent on compassion, but they do not state what the rest of our income must be used for. Why can’t we use the rest of our income for so much compassion that the government realizes that they do not need to force compassion? Sound impossible?

In the second century, a Roman official wrote to the Emperor to explain why his city was no longer in the Roman welfare system. The reason: The churches in the city did so much that welfare was unnecessary. The church, a group of thinking and compassionate individuals, took such good care of the poor, orphans, and widows, using their aftertax income, that they rendered government assistance programs in the Roman Empire unnecessary! So why don’t we do this? Because we think it is ‘our’ money.

Back to tithing. Tithing a tenth is an admission to God that all of it is HIS money, we are simply stewards of it. It does not mean “ten percent is Gods, ninety percent is mine.” Instead, it is a demonstration that 100 percent is Gods, I just get to use it. We get upset that the government takes “my” money to use how it sees fit, but then we keep the rest and use it on something other than the very compassion we argue that the government should not be doing. For further evidence, just ask your pastor what percent of your church gives ten percent? I guarantee you will be shocked by the low number. Why is this the case? We think it is “our” money and we should use it as we see fit..

The early church though saw religion that was pure and undefiled as caring for the poor and orphans (James 1:27) and did not make excuses that the government took 25 percent of their income. Our goal should not be to get the government out of the compassion business. The goal should be to have compassion, but we are so busy blaming the government for taking “our” money that we fail to use the rest of “God’s” money to be compassionate. The reality is that we can do a better of job of compassion because compassion is God’s business. So let’s stop telling the government to stop and instead put our money where our mouth is and put them out of business. Let’s take back “God’s business” using “God’s money” to accomplish “God’s mission.” This means that I give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s (the rest!). Wow, that’s an awesome statement! I should patent that! Funny that “me” is not even mentioned.

Lots of commentary around the web on the new Pew survey finding a sizeable chunk of Americans have shifted from “Protestant” to “unaffiliated,” such that the Protestant category is now in the minority for the first time. As many have pointed out, the unaffiliated generally are not atheists or even agnostics but have some religious beliefs; they just don’t identify with a particular religion. Yet the trend has troubling implications.

The most insightful comment I’ve seen so far is this, from Terry Mattingly:

After decades of sobering statistics about rising intermarriage rates, falling birthrates and their declining flocks, eventually Jewish clergy began talking about a future in which there would be “fewer Jews, but better Jews.”

Faced with sobering evidence that the number of priests was falling, along with statistics for Confession and weekly Mass, many Catholic leaders started talking about a future in which there would be “fewer Catholics, but better Catholics.”

Now, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Protestant leaders should start preparing for a future in which there will be “fewer Protestants, but better Protestants.”

Is the second part – “better Protestants” – wishful thinking? I don’t believe so. I think that after a century of confusion in the wake of the modernist/fundamentalist split, we are at last becoming better Protestants.

But there are clearly fewer of us, and that will make discussions such as the ones here on HT all the more problematic.

Which reminds me, I’ve owed Dan a reply on the epistemology of elite cultural institutions for almost two weeks – have to get to that soon!

This year’s nominations are now open for the prestigious Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year award!

This is a tradition I have delighted to participate in for several years now. As many of you know, I also blog at Jay P. Greene’s Blog, one of the nation’s leading blogs on education policy. Back in 2008, reports circulated that in 1997 Chicago had given its Citizen of the Year Award to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Jay decided to respond by naming Al Copeland, the founder of Popeye’s Chicken, as his blog’s Humanitarian of the Year:

Al Copeland  may not have done the most to benefit humanity, but he certainly did more than many people who receive such awards.  Chicago gave Bill Ayers their Citizen of the Year award in 1997.  And the Nobel Peace Prize has too often gone to a motley crew including unrepentant terrorist, Yassir Arafat, and fictional autobiography writer, Rigoberta Menchu.   Local humanitarian awards tend to go to hack politicians or community activists.  From all these award recipients you might think that a humanitarian was someone who stopped throwing bombs (sort of like the pleasure of stopping to hit yourself in the head) or who you hoped would picket, tax, regulate, or imprison someone else.

Al Copeland never threatened to bomb, picket, tax, regulate, or imprison anyone.  By that standard alone he would be much more of a humanitarian.  But Al Copeland did even more — he gave us spicy chicken.  You see, Al Copeland was the founder of the Popeyes Chicken chain.  Copeland was a humanitarian because he developed a product that people really wanted and voluntarily paid for.  The Dr. John jingle says it best — “Love that chicken from Popeyes!”

By developing a product that people enjoyed, Copeland was able to build a chain of restaurants that served millions of customers while employing tens of thousands over his career.  Making products that people want and giving people opportunities for employment isn’t just a good strategy for making a profit, it’s also a morally desirable activity.

The next year, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Jay decided to rename his prize the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award and throw open nominations to anyone who wanted to send them in. That year, I nominated Ralph Teetor, the inventor of cruise control. In spite of his truly amazing life story, Ralph lost to Debrilla Ratchford, inventor of the rolling suitcase. The lineup of nominees that year included Steve Henson, inventor of ranch dressing, and Fasi Zaka, a Pakistani talk show host who makes fun of the Taliban.

In 2010, I succeeded in nominating my first and only winner of “The Al”: Wim Nottroth, a heroic television journalist in the Netherlands who was arrested for an act of civil disobedience protesting the forcible destruction of a mural on private property. The mural read “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and was put up in the wake of the murder of Theo van Gogh. I also nominated Marion Donovan and Victor Mills, who invented the disposable diaper. Another nominee that year, equally heroic and entertaining, was Herbert Dow, who used ingenuity and good old fashioned American guts to destroy European chemical cartels.

Last year’s winner was Earle Haas, inventor of the tampon, for his contribution to the liberation of women. My nominee that year, in reaction against an alarming court decision denying that people have a fundamental right to own or consume what they wish, was Charles Montesquieu.

One more entertaining note: I am responsible for the only person ever to be disqualified from winning The Al: William Higinbotham, inventor of the video game. He was deemed unworthy to recieve The Al because he believed that his advocacy for nuclear non-proliferation was more important than his having invented the video game. As I wrote at the time: “That’s a stick in the eye to everything the Al Copeland award stands for.”

The nominations for The Al have become some of the best material we post on Jay P. Greene’s Blog. We get to tell funny and inspiring stories, and contemplate what it truly means to improve the human condition. Celebrating the accomplishments of people who make the world a better place but are overlooked by other awards is one of the most fun and at the same time most edifying things I think we can do.

By tradition, nominations for The Al are opened each year when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, and the winner is announced on the weekday closest to Halloween (that holidy having been deemed representative of the “spirit,” so to speak, of The Al). So keep your eyes on Jay’s blog this month, and consider sending in your own nomination!

Collateral Damage is the term used by the military for damage done to civilians in order to accomplish a military mission. It seems to me that this debate between Greg and Dan is over collateral damage.

Greg argues Both Christian teaching and conservative beliefs about human behavior explain why we shouldn’t expect to find that our opponents are conscious of the destructiveness of their policies.

Dan disagrees by saying Let’s not step into the OK Corral thinking the cultural elite don’t know what they’re doing. 

The question is do the cultural elite know what they are doing? To Dan’s point, of course they do! To Greg’s point, of course they don’t! How can both Dan and Greg be correct. The answer is collateral moral damage. In Dan’s examples, the cultural elite certainly know that supporting abortion does harm for the sake of sexual liberation, just as the media chooses multiculturalism over the defense of women and children. What these entities do not recognize is the moral damage done well down the line.

Consider the influence of psychology in our country. I’m a supporter of psychology and believe it has a lot to offer, but when self-esteem and psychology became the basis of morality, moral character slowly disappeared. Check out James Hunter’s excellent book Death of Character. Did the elites know this would happen? No. In fact, they still don’t know that it has happened and is happening but still think psychology will pull us out of the moral pit that psychologically based moralism took us into! Why did they not see this coming?

They did not see the moral damage because of their misunderstanding of human nature, which is Greg’s point. Entities who do not believe in the corrupt nature of mankind cannot predict the moral fallout of their policies because they lack an understanding of the depravity of the human heart and soul! They believe that people are by nature good and have such a positive view of humans that if mankind is simply released from what supposedly holds it back people will flourish and lead moral lives. The reality is that mankind will seeks it owns selfish ends and invent new ways of doing wrong. The issue is not simply epistemology but anthropology.

In the short term, Dan is right. Entities know that they often have conflicting, destructive policies. Greg’s point is that since these cultural elites have an errant view of human nature, they cannot predict the depraved twisting of the best intentioned policies. Consider Gay Marriage. Do those in the places of power understand the contradictions and immediate consequences of such policies, such as the devaluing of marriage and the elimination of gender? Of course they do. But do they understand what happens to a culture when masculinity is emasculated and men no longer step up as leaders? No, they cannot predict the Hell that will break loose when men are no longer men and women are no longer women. Do they foresee what will take place morally in this country when all decisions are based on what feels good, regardless of order or design? That is collateral moral damage that can only be predicted by someone who understands the depravity of mankind.

So, I would say Greg hits Dan in the leg with his first volley. Dan then wings Greg in the arm with his response, at which point they up in side by side hospital beds sipping coffee and watching the presidential debate.

Greg’s post about the new catechism from TGC sparked a thought in my mind about a theme which we have mentioned several times on this blog–the importance of education. I don’t just mean teaching the ability to read and right, but the importance of teaching people the basics tenet of the Faith and of Morality. In the arena of attempting to create a moral consensus as we are on this blog, teaching morality is of utmost importance.

Consider the moral consensus of Old Testament Israel. The book of Joshua ends with the people declaring their allegiance to the LORD God of Israel, but the book of Judges opens after the book of Joshua with everyone doing what was right in their own eyes. Moral consensus quickly disappeared. It was not simply because Joshua died and no strong leader appeared, but because parents did not teach their children. [Judges 2:10 And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.] Without being taught about the God of Israel, the people quickly abandoned the covenant which had provided their moral consensus.

The purpose of a catechism is to teach the basic doctrines of a given faith. Unfortunately, catechizing children has become less emphasized today than of old. Perhaps that is because ‘doctrine’ is not viewed as important in many churches, but my fear is that parents no longer view it as part of their responsibility to teach the faith to the next generation. Instead, we might teach our children Bible stories and tell them to be good boys and girls, but many Christian parents do not even do that. The result is a spiritually illiterate group of children who could answer Bible trivia about a given story but cannot relate the importance of that story to the history of redemption in Christ.

The same is often true of morality. For Christians, morality should be based in scripture, but I often wonder how so many  Christians can hold such varied positions on morality. Again, I think the answer is often a lack of parents educating their children on the relationship between faith and real life. The result is young adults who cannot judge a topic on the basis of morality, but they know how many stones David had when he fought Goliath!

This is a real travesty in our culture and in our churches. Parents have been called to teach their children (Deuteronomy 6) about faith and morals. Establishing a moral consensus starts at home as parents pass on a moral religious heritage to their children. I praise Greg for catechizing his daughter. I do the same with my three daughters. My two-year-old even has the first three questions of the CYC memorized and will often chant the answers to herself in the car–“God, all things, own glory.”  I want to encourage all parents that read this blog to fulfill their calling as parents and pass on to their children a moral faith framework.