Vision
Worldviews
All people conduct their lives within the framework of a vision or model of reality. Everybody, that is, has a worldview. Howard Darmstadter explains that everyone constructs a model of ideas that represents the real world and allows them to navigate through it more or less effectively (“Why We Can’t Agree,” Philosophy Now, April/May, 2015). “An effective model is simply one that often gives useful representations in those situations that most often confront and are important to the model user.” He insists that no model is perfect and, thus, we ought to be tolerant of other peoples’ models and look more to converge where we can rather than to convert at all costs: “We may feel challenged...when confronting humans whose models differ from our own...[I]n a global society we may often deal with people whose situations and wants are different from our own. A multi-model understanding tells us that such differences may make conversion unlikely. Once we give up on conversion, we may look for those mutually beneficial accommodations that are possible even when models differ.” I doubt that ISIS would accept such a reasonable suggestion. But then, neither will secular, naturalistic atheism. Marxists? How’s their record at “live and let live”? Should we expect the gatekeepers of our public education system once again to allow free and equal teaching of the Christian worldview? The fact is, only Christianity makes room for people to be wrong, without feeling the compulsion to deprive them of their liberties simply because they won’t believe. Now, of course, that has not always been true in practice. However, it has always been true in principle, while, increasingly, the principles of Enlightenment rationalism are being invoked to redefine and limit the freedoms of those whose worldview does not conform to its evolutionary, rationalistic, pragmatic, materialistic, and utilitarian assumptions. Mr. Darmstadter’s suggestion that we stop trying to convert the world and find ways simply to get along would be fine, if every other worldview besides Christianity weren’t ready to invoke the power of the sword to make the unconvertable submit.

Disciplines
Social Science
The blood bond between science – especially social science – and government is not to be trusted implicitly. First, two explanatory notes. (1) The preoccupation of government is power, acquiring, wielding, preserving, and expanding it. In the name of the common weal, government serves its own interests, which are the interests of power. In a democracy, the preoccupation of government depends on its power to persuade, and its power to persuade depends on its ability to marshal and disseminate “facts.” (2) The preoccupation of science, especially social science, is, on the surface, the discovery of “facts.” But the real preoccupation of social science is money, and lots of it. Social science trades “facts” or the promise of “facts” for money, which it acquires through government grants crafted to persuade government to fund its quest for “facts” as a means of fulfilling its own preoccupation. So it should not surprise us when the results of social science studies point in the direction of more intrusive government. Case in point: Two articles in the 27 March 2015 issue of Science summarize a thirty-year study of the transmission of child abuse between generations (Emily Underwood, “Measuring child abuse’s legacy,” and Cathy Spatz Widom, et al, “Intergenerational transmission of child abuse and neglect: Real or detection bias?”). In short, previous social science was wrong about the so-called “cycle of violence” which held that children who were abused grow up to be abusers. However, it did discover, from its limited base, that sexual abuse and child neglect do seem to transfer, and that these have not been as carefully monitored or as broadly investigated as these new “facts” suggest. This is good news for Child Protective Services in every state. Ms. Underwood summarizes, quoting Dr. Widom, “many cases of abuse in other families may be slipping by unnoticed, Widom says. To her, that is an important message of the study. ‘We really need to shift our focus to prevention, by promoting child wellbeing and strong families.’” You can be sure that neither social scientists nor government bureaucrats think this is a job for the Church.

Education
The doctrine of en loco parentis as applied to the work of teachers means that teachers stand in the place of parents to prepare children for life according to the vision, values, and priorities of parents. Back in the early days, when America had over 100,000 school boards – one for each political precinct – that doctrine had some teeth. Now, with only 16,000 school boards serving a population 10 times larger than it was in 1830, America’s public schools are beyond the control, or even the meaningful input, of parents, and are increasingly shaped and ruled by government bureaucracies and special interests, including unions. Larry Sand explains the creeping control of unions over California’s public schools in a recent post at City Journal (“Elementary Indoctrination,” 24 April 2015). He shows how unions are re-writing curricula to maximize their own interest at the expense of other groups, such as, for example, Christianity. Unions are determined to make the plight and fight of workers a central motif in the minds of school children, at all times taking care to show only their best face to the kids. This is a serious problem, not least because as curricula and textbooks go in California, so goes the nation. Mr. Sand calls parents to stand up and resist before it’s too late. But it may already be too late to prevent the continuing indoctrination of school children into the worldview of egalitarianism, socialism, rights, and dues – especially union dues.

http://city-journal.org/mobile/story.php?s=11447#.VTvWG3D3aK0

Universities
The situation is no better in the colleges and universities of the land, as Jackson Lears explains in a book review at Commonweal (“The Liberal Arts vs. Neoliberalism,” 20 April 2015). American higher education is devoted to an economic and materialist agenda. All that matters is preparing students for jobs beyond college. There is no self or soul or person to shape or nurture, only the technical human cog to ready for its place in an engine of getting and spending. He joins the author of the book under review in condemning “the carcinoma that afflicts higher education—the primacy of technocratic, monetary standards.” He urges a more prominent place for the humanities as an antidote to the current crisis. But the humanities have been corrupted by postmodernist, Marxist, and egalitarian thinking and can only present a reductionist view of such things as the self, the soul, and the person. Nothing short of a great awakening can provide the worldview revolution that is needed to keep this country from becoming first, a brave new world, and then an animal farm.

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/book-reviews/liberal-arts-vs-neoliberalism

Outcomes
Social Justice and Spirituality
The term “social justice” describes the effort to bring corrective action against obvious and egregious social ills. It usually implies the generation of a movement or other large-scale coordinated action. As such, “social justice” is a useful term. A problem arises, however, when “social justice” comes to stand for justice in general, so that the variegated nature of true, Biblical justice becomes obscured or lost altogether (the same problem can arise with the use of the term, “restorative justice”). In an excellent article in the Christian Scholar’s Review, Steve L. Porter et al describe efforts at Biola University to connect social justice with spiritual life (“Spiritual Formation and the Social Justice Turn,” Spring 2015). The authors’ assertion is that justice should flow from love for God and neighbor, and not simply be the result of moral outrage, ego-satisfaction, or some attempt to fill a spiritual vacuum in one’s life. They make a valid point. However, the focus on social justice as a “turn” in the contemporary evangelical community makes the pursuit of justice a “movement” effort rather than a way of life. Justice is not merely the work of coordinated activists; the term describes the normal Christian life of love for God and neighbor. Social justice activities are likely to be more sustained and effective when they coalesce out of lives committed to everyday love and justice, consciously and conscientiously pursued. I would like to see these authors address their thesis to all five aspects of a Biblical view of justice – obligatory, preventive, restorative, retributive, and distributive – and not just to the rather more fashionable arena of “social justice.”

Envoi
Q & A

One question, one great urgent question drives
the soul of every woman, every man.
It burns like thirst. Like raging hunger can
incite to violence, it can shatter lives
or sate them. It inspires, directs, and rules 
all choices, every action, each next move.
Likewise, one answer, only one will prove
the problems posed by sages and by fools,
by kings and paupers, children, old men, youth,
tycoons, repeat offenders, men on knees
imploring mercy or asking, “Marry me, please?”
One answer only is all Yes and Truth.
  These both are one, as everyone must see:
  They’re Jesus. All between is you and me.

T. M. Moore