By Selwyn Duke
Not too many things raise my
eyebrows in these days of through-the-looking-glass America, where I fully
expect up to be down, left to be right and right to be wrong. It’s not that I’m a pessimist — just a
realist. And this is why hearing mainstream-media
newsman Brit Hume recommend Christianity over Buddhism on FOX News Sunday,
well, made my eyebrows say bonjour to my hairline.
In case you missed the story,
Hume was addressing Tiger Woods’ womanizing woes and recommended that the
golfer seek his answers in Christianity, saying, “I don't think
that faith [Woods’ Buddhism] offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that
is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger,
turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great
example to the world.’” While pleasantly
surprised, I knew Hume was going to take heat for straying outside the Box of
Tolerance, which is about the size of Get Smart’s Cone of Silence. And the reaction came promptly. Describing it at Politics Daily, Carl M.
Cannon wrote:
Jay
Bookman of the Atlanta Journal
Constitution asserted that "faith is a private matter between that
person and God, and is not a matter to be judged by some pompous TV
anchor." In case Hume was misunderstood, Bookman
subsequently called him "rude and crass" and guilty of "bad
manners." MSNBC
anchor David Shuster maintained that Hume had somehow
"denigrated" and "diminished" Christianity. Even
knowledgeable religion writers were nonplussed by Hume. USA Today
religion writer Cathy
Grossman asserted on her blog that the Fox commentator was "talking
trash."
Now, Cannon must be unusually
kind, because a writer who is “nonplussed” by Hume is certainly not
knowledgeable. Nor is he religious — at least not in any sense beyond the
recreational.
But let’s cut through the
nonsense here. I’m always amused when
people object to others’ efforts to convert them, especially since it’s a daily
occurrence. What I mean is, conversion
is the business of most of the world — and it’s especially the business of the
commentators criticizing Hume. Democrats
want to convert others to being Democrats, liberals want to convert others to
liberalism, Muslims to Islam, Coca-Cola to Coke-drinkers, Ford to Ford-drivers,
homosexuals to homosexual “rights” supporters, dairy farmers to milk-drinkers
(it does a body good), and the United States Golf Association to golfers. And don’t the liberal commentators
criticizing Hume try to convert others to supporters of things such as
universal healthcare, faux marriage, and anti-spanking laws? This is why it’s nonsense when Bill O’Reilly
(who defended Hume) says, as is his wont, he’s not trying to change anyone’s
mind. Unless someone is so mercenary
that he renders opinion simply to make money, he must care about certain things
enough to want to win philosophical soul mates.
I mean, could you imagine, let’s say, Jay Bookman stating, “You know, I
like universal healthcare, but, hey, dude, whatever works for you”? Could you imagine him applying his own
standard to political proselytization and refraining from mention of the issue? I guess he can’t, either, because Bookman has
been quite unabashed in his advocacy of Obamacare, writing,
for instance, “By any measure, we are grossly inefficient in health-care
delivery compared to our industrialized competitors.” Is that like Buddhism being grossly
inefficient in salvation delivery compared to Christianity? Stop being “rude and crass,” Bookman. That’s my country you’re talking about.
You see, playing the “I’m
offended!” game is a lot easier than actually thinking. But I accept that liberal journalists will
portray America as inferior to other nations in manifold ways. What is far more offensive — that is, to any
discerning intellect — is the profound stupidity and prejudice reflected in a
double standard that denies only Christians (and perhaps a few other groups)
the right to advocate their beliefs.
Yet something must now be asked
about this notion that “faith is a private matter.” If secularists are so adamant about it, why
do they never admonish the Richard Dawkinses and Christopher Hitchenses of the
world to mind the principle? Hitchens
wrote a book titled God is Not Great and
makes a lot of money and waves parading around the country spreading his
anti-theist (as he puts it) message. And
there is no shortage of liberal journalists echoing his sentiments in their
effort to convert others to their way
of thinking (or, I should say, feeling). Am I to understand that faith is private when
you want to spread it but public when you want to condemn it? The contradiction here is so thick that, were
I as intellectually sloppy as those I criticize, I’d call them hypocrites. But they’re too philosophically juvenile to embrace
their contradiction with full knowledge.
So I’ll be kind and just call them ignorant.
At this point, many will aver
that there is a profound difference between politics and religion. This idea has given us not just the
separation-of-church-and-state principle (flawed and misunderstood in itself)
but also has been expanded into what Brit Hume violated: the
separation-of-church-and-society principle.
In reality, though, if there is no reason for religious proselytization,
there is also no reason for the political variety. After all, why do we argue about political
ideologies? It’s because different
ideologies espouse different values, and we can’t have a healthy civilization
unless we adopt the correct values.
Thus, the ideology we embrace matters.
Likewise, different religions
also espouse different values; therefore, applying the same principle, a
conclusion is inescapable.
The
religion we embrace matters.
Many people are uncomfortable
with this, as they fear the messy business of actually determining what Truth
is; thus do they embrace religious-equivalency doctrine and claim all faiths
are morally equal. But since different
religions do espouse different values, they cannot all be morally equal unless
all values are so. This is moral
relativism, and, sure, it would render religious proselytization
unnecessary. Yet it would also do the same to the political variety, for
then all ideologies would have to be equal as well. Perhaps politics should be a private matter,
too.
Of course, settling these
matters really is messy business. This
is why we hear, “Never discuss religion or politics,” an admonition as stupid
as the counsel “Faith is a private matter.”
Both are prescriptions for superficiality because they mean, logically
rendered, “Never discuss anything of importance.”
So today we live a
contradiction. We seek to convert
politically while condemning as intolerant those who seek to convert
religiously, failing to realize that politics and religion are inextricably
linked. After all, politics is about
putting into practice what is good, and this is impossible unless there is a
good and we know what it is. And there
cannot be good in a real sense unless there is moral Truth, something outside
of and above man that is the yardstick for making value judgments, and this
implies God. Thus, we cannot determine
good as a society unless we discuss Truth, God — those things categorized under
“religion.” Ergo, faith is not a private
matter.
It is in fact the most public
of matters because it deals with the most important of things.
Note that I haven’t discussed
here the relative merits of Christianity and Buddhism, as that would be
premature. Without understanding there
is Truth, that eternal yardstick for judging religions, ideologies and
philosophies, it is a waste of time. It
would be like debating which diet is best with people who won’t acknowledge that
there are rules of human nutrition or which car design is best with those who
won’t acknowledge the laws of physics.
Or, it’s like debating politics with someone who won’t acknowledge there
is Truth. The lesson here is a
tautology: First things come first.
There are some of us, though —
and perhaps Hume is one of them — who have escaped the contradiction. We don’t preach more than the relativists,
just with less hypocrisy. We don’t say
there is no God but then talk about good.
We don’t say good is opinion but nonetheless impose it on
others. We don’t say there is no great
treasure, but we’ll search for it anyway.
Some of us also know that what really stops secularists from hashing out
the Truth is not that it’s messy, but that it’s scary. It places limitations on our personal lives,
ambitions and agendas; we can no longer play God. Why, we may even learn that while faith should
not at all be private and constrained, sex certainly should be.
And we also know something
else. As our confused world at the edge
of a precipice proves, while determining Truth can be messy, messier still is
not doing it at all.
This piece first appeared at American Thinker on January 11, 2010
© 2010 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved
selwynduke.com 
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