Retconning George Floyd, Reading the Old Testament & the Real Problem with Project 2025
Here’s your weekly roundup of everything I’ve curated or created online, February 18–24, 2024.
Thought-Provoking Content
Canadians Aren’t Actually ‘Woke’ by Eric Kaufmann in The Hub:
Culture war issues are far less settled than a lot of mainstream commentary would have Canadians believe.
If English-Canadian public opinion is largely aligned with the others, why have its policies and politicians diverged from their British, American, and Quebecois equivalents?
One possible answer is Canadians’ relatively high trust in elites and institutions.
The Retconning of George Floyd by Radley Balko in The Watch:
So to sum up, it’s true that until recently, the Minneapolis Police Department trained officers in something called the Maximal Restraint Technique. In it, officers were instructed to use a knee to apply light to moderate pressure on the back of a suspect who posed a threat to police, others, or themselves. But the knee was to be applied only for a short period of time—specifically, only long enough to apply a hobble—after which officers were to turn the suspect on his side as soon as reasonably possible. They were also taught to be aware of positional asphyxia, to be alert to the possibility of cardiac arrest, and to monitor suspects the entire time.
Derek Chauvin put approximately half his weight on George Floyd’s back for around five minutes, and then shifted his weight onto Floyd’s neck for an additional four—for a total of nine minutes. Chauvin never used a hobble. He never moved Floyd to a recovery position. And even after Floyd was unresponsive, had gone limp, and showed no sign of a pulse—even as onlookers pleaded with Chauvin that he was killing Floyd and fellow officers told him Floyd had no pulse and suggested rolling him onto his side—Chauvin continued to put his weight on Floyd for another three minutes.
Chauvin’s use of force on Floyd was not a simple error. It was not a “departure from policy.” It was callous disregard for another man’s life. It was blithe indifference to George Floyd’s humanity.
In Part 3, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter admit they were duped, but Coleman Hughes doubles down.
Reading the Old Testament Through Ancient Egyptian Eyes by Carmen Joy Imes in Christianity Today:
A garden temple recognizes God as Creator and acknowledges God’s role in the flourishing of the natural world.
Step Aside, Fani Willis by Richard W. Painter in The Atlantic:
Supervising one’s paramour while paying him out of taxpayer funds is unacceptable. Another unconflicted public servant should be asked to assume the supervisory role. That did not happen after Willis began her relationship with Wade.
Whether their romantic relationship began before or after Willis hired Wade to work on the case is secondary [DH: It turns out she may have perjured herself on this point]. Once they were in a romantic relationship, she had no business supervising his work or approving payments from Fulton County to him. The fact that these payments ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, far exceeding Willis’s own salary, makes the conflict of interest worse. The fact that Georgia taxpayers picked up the tab erodes public confidence in the district attorney’s office.
Are Christians the Only Ones Who Care? by Kent Anhari in Plough:
Sweeping generalizations about Christianity’s exceptionalism are often premised upon incuriosity toward the breadth of non-Christian moral inquiry, and few traditions have been victim to this incuriosity as consistently as China’s.
What I Wish More People Knew About American Evangelicalism by John Fea in The Atlantic:
Seeing the good in evangelicalism is essential to understanding its appeal to millions of Americans.
My father did not need James Dobson to teach him how to be a patriarch. He was a patriarch years before he picked up a copy of Dobson’s Dare to Discipline or tuned in to Focus on the Family on WFME radio broadcasting out of New York City. Dobson had a different influence on him. My father took to heart Dobson’s lessons that as the male head of the household, he had the responsibility to lead the family with love and compassion.
Secularization Comes for the Religion of Technology: Or, How to Make Sense of Techno-Optimist Manifestos, the Open Ai/Altman Affair, EA/e-acc Movements, and the General Sense of Cultural Stagnation by L. M. Sacasas in The Convivial Society:
The flip that I’m describing corresponds to the transmutation of Christianity through the 19th century into the secular techno-faith of Western modernity. In this transmutation, traditionally religious and theological categories are immanentized or secularized.
The Real Problem With ‘Project 2025’ by Bettina Krause in Liberty:
Not only would using the law in this way strike at the heart of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion—it would also send a clear message that anyone outside the dominant Christian tradition belongs to a lesser class of citizens.
However, it seems to me that Project 2025's "alternative view" on the subject is widely held by Adventists (see p. 589).
Fragments
Love Reality Tour Theology Summarized
God has already forgiven us fully and we don't need to ask for it we just need to believe that it is true.
Repentance means a change of mind: Instead of thinking sin is freedom, now we know it is a prison; we used to believe that we were waiting for healing, now we know we have already been healed.
Repentance doesn't make God forgive us because he's already forgiven us.
Confession means agreeing with what God says about us—that we are saints and not sinners and have been made holy—not asking forgiveness for sinful acts.
Because our “old man” has died (that is, we died in Christ when he was crucified) we don't have a sinful nature and sin does not dwell in us, therefore, when we are tempted, it is not from within but from without, by Satan, like Jesus was in the wilderness.
Sanctification is not a work of a lifetime but has already been done in us.
Righteousness is imparted, not forensic, therefore, we cannot be saints and sinners at the same time.
On Love Reality Tour Theology
It seems that the interpretation past, present, and future of forgiveness is the crux of the Love Reality Tour (LRT) theological package. The interpretive moves Jonathan Leonardo makes in his book, Free From Sin, put as much of the reality of divine forgiveness into the past as possible in order to quell anxieties in the present about the future about our salvation so that we can get over feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame that prevent sensitive consciences from experiencing freedom from sin. This is addressing a real problem, so I think the theology is well motivated and like how he puts it in these two sentences:
“We participated in sin because we were slaves to it, but now, through Jesus, freedom has been secured. Forgiveness (the absorption and release that is our freedom) has been offered to us because it is true in Him” (p. 169).
What I disagree with are the many statements he makes elsewhere in the book where he talks about forgiveness as not only secured in the past and offered to us in the present but as something that is already the case before we believe and receive (pp. 155–157). This is not only incoherent (how can we be offered something we already in fact have unless we're equivocating about two different senses of ‘having’ it?), but it moves so much of forgiveness into the past that the present and future of it become irrelevant, in my opinion.
(Again, this is an evaluation of the theology, which is the attempt to speak truly about God, not of how they plays out in the practice of any LRT associated community.)
I think my other concerns with the theology of LRT are connected to this emphasis on the past reality of divine forgiveness. Note well that I do not say "over"-emphasis, for I do not think we can over emphasize how much Jesus has secured for us in the past. But there is also a need to expound to a similar extent on how much Holy Spirit does to make forgiveness ours in the present, as we open ourselves to his love, and how much God will accomplish for us in the future, when the hope of eternal life for the forgiven is realized when the possibility of death due to sin is removed. So, having accepted God's offer of forgiveness secured by Christ, I propose that we can say that by the faith God gives that I am forgiven, by love God gives that I am being forgiven, and by the hope God gives that I will be forgiven—all at the same time.
It seems to me that if LRT theology construes the reality of past forgiveness as extending into the present such that it is unequivocally ours by extension without any response on our part. The problem with this is not so much that there can theoretically be no response required. In fact, LRT theology affirms the need to respond to the forgiven state and denies once-saved-always-saved. It does not logically entail monergism. Rather, the problem with past forgiveness extending into the present such that it is unequivocally ours by extension without any response on our part is that it makes the present and future realizations of forgiveness taught by Scripture redundant. (I take it for granted that those interested in Love Reality Tour are familiar with the biblical case for present and future dimensions of the reality of forgiveness, even if they don't believe in it for whatever reasons.)
This is not intended as a devastating critique or refutation (don't take it that way), or even necessarily as a warning (though one could take it that way), but as a request for further clarification and nuance on the part of the LRT and as an evaluation for others who may have encountered these ideas to consider. I know this group has come under a lot of critique lately, much of it from sources that I know are not as fair as Christians should be, so I hope what I have written will be received in the spirit with which I trust I wrote it.