Article VI Blog

I was hanging out with a friend a few months ago and we were discussing my difficulties in controlling my weight.  I mentioned that one of the things I do is eat “Lean Cuisine” and its other branded equivalents most weeknights.  My friend confessed that he found such ill-seasoned, portion-size-controlled frozen boxes so distasteful that he could not even try to choke them down.  I told him that I did not particularly care for them either, but that was not the point.

Simply put, some choices are a matter of simple preference, or taste, and some choices need more careful consideration.  My issue with weight control means that I cannot make my dining selection based on what I prefer, but rather I must make them based on what can allow me to sustain my weight both physically and psychologically.  Thus while I would greatly prefer an almost immeasurable array of things to one of those boxes for my evening meal, its ease of preparation (keeping me out of the kitchen which always leads to snacking) and controlled portions (meaning I can eat everything I see and not have overeaten in the process) makes it the meal of choice for me.

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote on the impending IPO of Facebook and carried on at great length about the marketing value of the “Like” button.  “Like” at Facebook is a simple thing – it is a statement of preference.  Increasingly the force of marketing tempts us to invest in our preferences rather than in what reason and circumstances say we should.  How many people are overextended on credit cards, not because they are out of work and used them to get by, but because they simply overbought?

Don’t get me wrong, following your taste or preference is harmless within certain constraints.  It’s a great way to decide what to watch on TV tonight, provided your tastes do not run to the obscene – in which case you have with television the same kind of issues I have with food.   But there are some decisions that simply demand we set our preferences aside, or at least deeply subordinate them, in favor of our reason and a sober assessment of circumstances.

Buying a house would be one example.  Before I can even begin to concern myself with things like style and floor plan, I must seriously look at costs and financing.  Once I have determined the price I can afford then I can use matters of taste to differentiate amongst the available houses in that range.  If my “dream house” costs more than I can afford it must stay a dream.

This same principle holds when it comes to our political decisions.  I was deeply struck a few days ago by a NRO piece by Wesley J. Smith:

When Pliny the Younger was a provincial governor in the Roman Empire, he wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan asking whether he should execute Christians who refused to burn incense in worship of the emperor. Pliny, in keeping with the customs of the empire, did not care about forcing Christians to believe that the emperor was a god. But in public they had to behave as if they did. Thus, the Christians were in the dock not so much because of their faith in a risen Christ as over their willful refusal to declare themselves part of the reigning social order.

I thought of Pliny when I read that the Obama administration, in creating specific rules to implement Obamacare, will require all employers (with a very narrow exemption discussed below) to offer their employees health insurance that provides FDA-approved contraception, female sterilization, and other “reproductive” services free of charge — even if the employer is a religious organization and doing so violates its doctrine. I also recalled the times that President Obama and other members of his administration have supported “freedom of worship.” However, as in Pliny’s time, “freedom of worship” is not the same thing as “freedom of religion.” The former means that one may believe whatever one wants and worship privately without interference, whereas the latter allows one freedom to live in the world at large consistent with one’s faith tenets, even if they are not endorsed by the state.

That distinction between religion and worship is an extraordinary observation.  Smith goes on about its political consequences and Roman Catholic concerns, but it is deeper than that still.  It is particularly pertinent to Evangelicals, and even Protestant Christianity generally.  Within these circles there is something called the “Worship Wars.”  Google the term and you will be amazed how much discussion there is about it.  Essentially the battle is between organ music dominant liturgical forms of worship and “modern” guitar music dominated “freer” forms of worship.  Much of the fight centers on matters of taste in music and other forms of religious expression.  But in the fight people often neglect that there are consequences that go far beyond simple matters of taste.

One of the outfalls of this “inside baseball” battle has been that many, many people have come to confuse “worship” with Church.  This is something I could go on about until well past the time your interest waned completely, but let’s focus on the fact that this confusion has deep political consequences.  Smith’s piece looks at some of the consequences on a policy level, but I want to examine it on a retail politics level.  Obama is flat out betting on the fact that most people are stuck in this confusion and cannot tell the difference between worship and religion – or more directly they simply think worship IS religion.

How else could Obama allow the abysmal ruling vis-a-vie forcing Catholic institutions to provide insurance that provides for medical services antithetical to church teaching and come out just a few days later and at the National Prayer Breakfast sound just like a preacher?  There are many, many theological, policy and hermeneutical nits to pick with the president’s prayer breakfast speech, but I just want to focus on the incredible chutzpah  (to borrow a term from yet another religious group) of such seemingly diametrically opposed actions.

But for those actions to be diametrically opposed, religion has to be a matter of more than taste.  Yet as the “worship wars” indicate, for thousands and thousands of Americans religion is little more than a matter of taste.

When I started thinking about this whole “taste and thought” thing I was going to write about it in response to all the people I have heard on talk radio and elsewhere in the last several weeks talking about how Gingrich resonated with them and expressed their feelings (a matter more or less of taste) and they simply did not care about the reality of the politics on the ground (a matter of thought.)  That still applies, but this has turned into something much more important.

I am deeply concerned that if people continue to view religion primarily as a matter of taste we are lost.  There are undoubtedly some that will tell me I am part of the problem having insisted these many years that Mormons deserve a place at the table.  Read Smith -  once we understand the difference between religion and worship then we can begin to truly understand what freedom of religion really is  and come to understand its necessity for the operation of our nation.

It is time for those of us of faith to engage our brains and subordinate our taste to our reason.  There is simply too much at stake.

Posted in Doctrinal Obedience, Political Strategy, Religious Freedom, Understanding Religion | 4 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

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