Bad Meme Alert

A double-edged meme

A break from theology today to take on another one of my favorite subjects: meme analysis.

A friend of mine posted the above meme on Facebook.  (I posted a short response to him already...and remember, I love you guy, even if I don't find this meme compelling.)  I've seen memes like this before, and it's clear what the intended message is: when those of non-Native American descent criticize immigration, they're being hypocritical.  They (or their ancestors) were immigrants to the Americas, and it's hypocritical to be against immigration now, if you (or your ancestors) were beneficiaries  of immigration in the past.  In other words, it's criticizing our idea of fairness--having one standard of behavior for yourself (or your ancestors) and another for others.

If left at that level, this would be a pretty good message to support the idea of immigration.  No one wants to be a hypocrite (or at least called out as one).  Most of those with European ancestry here in the Americas feel at least a twinge of guilt over what was done to the Native Americans.  I mean, it's pretty hard to argue for the morality pushing people off their land and taking it for yourself simply because you're stronger than them and you can.

So we might say "Hey, I feel bad about what my ancestors did to the Native Americans.  And I'm a beneficiary of that.  And I can't be against refugees coming here, unless I also am against what my ancestors did.  And if I'm against what my ancestors did, I'd pack my bags and return to Europe if I really meant it."

But let's take a deeper look.

First, I think it's pretty uncontroversial to say that great evil was done against the Native Americans.  (And if someone brings up atrocities that Native Americans did to European immigrants, let's remember that we came uninvited.  Those atrocities could not have taken place had our ancestors stayed in their own homeland...just like if someone decided to take your house and you pushed back a little too vigorously)  So this brings up the first counter-point to the meme:  the Native American had a completely rational fear of immigrants.

Let that sink in: maybe in some cases it was just a handful of refugees who were more or less willing to live at peace with those already in the Americas (think the Pilgrims or Quakers).  But it's obvious that that was just the nose of the camel.  A Trumpesque Native American in the 17th century, crying alarm at immigration, was completely rational, as history bares out.  Many of the immigrants from Europe--it didn't have to be all of them, mind you--were willing to kill the Native Americans and steal their land that, in the end, the country was won for Europeans and lost for Natives.

And European Americans not only took the land, they attempted to stamp out Native cultures.  Forcing Native children to attend schools where only English was taught, and where their religious beliefs and practices were looked at as laughable superstition and they had to be "corrected" to become Christians in the way the Europeans understood Christianity to be.

So...if the Native Americans had a legitimate fear of immigration, perhaps those against immigration today have legitimate fears, too.  They may not, but this meme, rather than attempting to say "immigration is nothing to fear" does exactly the opposite.  By bringing up the fate of the Native Americans, one might think that it's perfectly legitimate to fear immigration.  Maybe people who come to this country with a completely alien way of life, with different values, could change the shape of this country.  Unquestionably, European immigration (and forced African immigration on slave ships) made the Americas incredibly changed from what the Natives had.  Can other waves of immigration further change this country as well?  (A melting pot doesn't make everyone like what was their before...it mixes what was here before with what comes later.)

Secondly: does anyone think that more immigration will help Native Americans?  At best, it would just mean status quo...but ultimately, it means a greater non-native population.  If it was wrong for non-natives to immigrate to America because of what it did to the Native American population, why would additional immigration be considered something that would help them?  Thus, bringing up sympathy for Native Americans as a reason to have sympathy for refugees makes little or no sense.  Just as European civilization was completely different from Native cultures, Middle Eastern, African, and Asian cultures are likewise alien to the Native American.  Indeed, additional immigration is actually the exact opposite of helping the Natives in their own lands.

Thirdly: very few Americans, no matter how guilty they might feel about what happened to the Native Americans, are actually going to do the one thing that they could do to address this specific thing: that is, give their property back to Native Americans, pack their bags, and return to their ancestral homeland.  That is a true cost, a true sacrifice.  But it could be done, and it would actually directly address the theft of Native lands.

You could also create a time machine to help Native Americans...



Instead, many will bizarrely double-down and essentially say: "Yeah, immigration was totally bad to the Native American peoples.  So because I feel bad about that, we need to do something about it.  What can we do?  More immigration!"

That, of course, makes less than zero sense.  But it's a lot easier to let someone move in (as long as they don't take your property directly) than to voluntarily move out and give away your property.  There is little direct cost in supporting immigration--and a pretty steep cost in supporting personal emigration.  And at least you can say "Hey, I'm not a hypocrite--my ancestors were immigrants, and I'm not barring new immigrants!"  The conscience is soothed at a relatively light cost.

There may be hundreds of reasons to be against immigration, and hundreds of reasons to be for it.  But, like most memes, this one adds little to the conversation, and indeed ends up failing to communicate what it's allegedly trying to.  Like all memes, it is more emotive than demonstrative.  Rational discussion and debate is short-circuited, and a false either/or binary choice is fostered: either you are for unlimited immigration with no restrictions, or you're a xenophobic isolationist who wants zero immigration.  Very few people actually fit into this binary pattern, but like all things on the Internet, it is easier to demonize and categorize than to have conversation and careful analysis.

More on the "Evil God" Hypothesis

Last post I ended by introducing Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (or MTD) that focused on a definition of "good" that assumed "good for me"--that God's essential purpose was to make my life pleasant, and my purpose was to experience that pleasure.  God wants nothing more than to make me happy.

Though common today, MTD is a parody of historical Christianity.  Indeed, it is essentially anti-Christian on several levels.

Primarily, consider what Jesus said here:

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him wdeny himself and xtake up his cross and follow me. 25 For xwhoever would save his life7 will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For ywhat will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or zwhat shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 aFor the Son of Man is going to come with bhis angels in the glory of his Father, and cthen he will repay each person according to what he has done. --Matt 16:24-27

Denial of self is not the telos of MTD.  It's the paradoxical claim of Christ: to find your life, you must lose it.  To lead means to serve.  Love your enemies, not hate them.

12 When he had washed their feet and hput on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, i“Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 jYou call me kTeacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, lyou also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example, mthat you also should do just as I have done to you. 16 Truly, truly, I say to you, na servant3 is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 If you know these things, oblessed are you if you do them.--John 13:12-17

The key to life is death, and the key of leadership is servanthood.  We are to emulate this.  Yet, again with the paradoxical claims of Christ, He Himself is a servant of all.  He is Lord, yet serves--serves to the point of death.  And not just death for nice people...death for sinners in rebellion against Him (Rom 5:8).

So...God's goodness is shown in His service, God's love is manifest in His sacrifice.

And if we stopped there, we would have MTD.  But the Bible does not stop there.  Jesus taught us, like Him, to take up our cross and follow Him, to deny our life.  To seek not our comfort, our preeminence, our comfort, our glory.  He loved us enough to reach out to us, His enemies who quite literally hated Him, hated His call of Lordship over our lives, the One who dared call us to account as our Creator.  Yet despite this, He reached out to us and pulled us from the mire.

And His love continues--not just to rescue us from a deserved fate of eternity cut off from our Creator, but to make us as He is: loving, serving, sacrificing.

And again, if we stopped there, it would be pretty good--we need to do good to others, seek the best for others, and so on.  It would certainly make for a nicer planet.  But that would reduce Christianity to simply a system of ethics (mixed in with some sentimentality of heroic deaths).

No...we need to look beyond that call to why that call was made.  As Jesus prayed:

27 s“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, tsave me from uthis hour’? But vfor this purpose I have come to uthis hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then wa voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” --John 12:27-28

Jesus here says quite plainly: His purpose was to glorify God.  That was His focus--not sentimental love for the sick, but glorifying God.  That is His telos in life. 

Jesus repeats this several times in last days of His earthly life.  Glory to God was His motto.

11 In him we have obtained zan inheritance, ahaving been predestined baccording to the purpose of him who works all things according to cthe counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be dto the praise of his glory.  13 In him you also, when you heard ethe word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, fwere sealed with the gpromised Holy Spirit, 14 who is hthe guarantee4 of our iinheritance until jwe acquire kpossession of it,5 lto the praise of his glory. --Eph 1:11-13

Paul doesn't just say "we're saved--yay!"  He outlines the purpose: "to the praise of His glory."  Twice.

And this is not something isolated in Scripture.  Over and over again God acts for His Own glory.  For example, God defeats Pharaoh for His glory (Ex 14:17-18).  God seeks His glory in His actions.

The glory of God.  What does it mean?  Why does God seek it for Himself?  Does God do so because He is an insufferable egotist?  Some have said so, and indeed explicitly state that is one of the reasons they object to the theistic concept of God.  And I will address this concern more fully in my next post, God willing.

What if God was evil?

So last post I wrapped up the discussion on the "ick factor" by arguing that the foundations of all ethical systems essentially had presuppositions based upon what some find "icky."  We might find human suffering as distasteful, so we seek to limit it.  There are good, evolutionary reasons why we find certain things icky or distasteful--for example, if enough people found babies icky and distasteful (and maybe found infanticide not-icky), then the human race would quickly die out.

But it's hardly earth-shattering to accept these utilitarian arguments...nor do they offer any kind of ultimate moral clarity to the situation.  One can challenge the assumption that underlies this by asking "why is the survival of human beings considered a good?"  Indeed, in a materialist point of view, there is no "ultimate" good, no telos for the universe.  (One could argue, indeed, that the good of many species would be enhanced by humanity being taken out of the picture.  Indeed, some do argue this.)

So there is the non-materialist proposition: what if, beyond the cosmos, there is a Being (beyond Whom there is nothing greater) that has in mind a telos for the cosmos?  This is the usual answer of theistic systems when challenged to give a foundation for their moral framework: we believe that some things are good because they move us closer to the telos that God intended for the universe; other things are evil when they move us further away from that telos.

But, the materialist may argue, what if that telos is one of suffering and pain?  What if, in a word, God is evil?

And the materialist making this argument will gladly point out things in the universe as evidence to support this claim.  If there is a God, then why is there so much suffering?  Why do people who do evil things often prosper, and those who do good things suffer and die?

Or turning to the Bible, the materialist will point out events in which God does (or orders to be done) things that we might call "evil".  If he is good, why then is this the case?

There is a weak way to present this argument, and a stronger way.  The weak way is not conscious of the standard by which he or she is judging God's actions (or lack of action) as "good" or "evil."  This position is that of unexamined utilitarianism, where it's merely assumed that certain things are objectively "good" or "evil."  In effect, the materialist here neatly takes him- or herself out of the equation and assumes the position of moral arbiter, outside of the observed universe.  (This can also be a failing of the materialist view of rationality as well, but that topic's for another day.)

But the stronger approach doesn't make this error.  Rather, the stronger form looks for consistency in an ethical system.  If a purported ethical system is internally inconsistent, it is assumed false (such as a scientific model that is inconsistent in its approach.)  Thus, it makes no immediate judgment on the first principles; rather, it simply tests if these principles are consistently applied, and if not, it appears as though the system does not cohere, it does not "hang together"--it is incoherent.  It is not based on a single axiom from which the various points are related.

So to call God "good", one must have an idea of what is good.  Some theists will argue "good is whatever God wills", but then "good" simply becomes a synonym for "God's will" and it tells us nothing.  In the broadest sense, it would mean that there is nothing evil, for an all-powerful God can accomplish anything, and therefore, if He didn't want something to happen, He could and would stop it.  If it happens, He must be ok with it--therefore, by this definition, it cannot be evil, it is "God's will."  This isn't precisely Leibniz' optimism (since God is good, we live in "the best of all possible worlds"), it's simpler and broader than that: merely the assertion that if something happens, it's good, because "whatever is, is right" (yes, I know Pope was deeper than that--but this phrase sums up this view.)

Though some theists will accept this implication and be completely fatalistic, most theists have a concept of good and evil--yes, evil exists, but also yes, God is all-powerful.  How is this reconciled?

One thing to consider is that "good" must always have a referent.  That is, "good" is never abstract--it is always good--for whom?  Some might consider a well-prepared beefsteak as "good", with the unnecessary addition "for me" and ignore how the bovine who expired in order to harvest the steak may not consider it "good."  Indeed, a bear eating a human might subjectively consider the human a good meal (I don't know if bears feel this way, but the fact that the bear was nourished surely causes some primal sense of satisfaction in the ursoid brain), but humans will normally be horrified at the thought of anyone being eaten by a bear.

Now, as humans, we tend to think of "good" in the sense "good for humanity" (or, sometimes more selfishly but more honestly, "good for me.)  And again, we get back to the utilitarian assumptions of maximizing human happiness as a measurement of "good."  And in our particular western culture, it seems axiomatic that when we speak of God being good, we must mean that He's good for humanity.

Indeed, popular theology presents God as pretty much existing for the benefit of human beings.  This idea is often summed up as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" (MTD for short).  The idea is that God's identity of being "good" is fully identified as "good for people."  And the idea of what is good for people is bound up with temporal happiness and being nice.

But this idea is not necessarily where historic theism comes from.  Indeed, it is a relatively modern mutation of historic faith.  And I'll continue on this thought next post, God willing.

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