Another Week Ends

1. Jumping into the deep end, let’s start with Bonnie Kristian’s interrogation of Just War Theory at Christianity Today. Though it has been the predominant philosophical litmus test of whether a war is justified and and how a war is to be fought, when it comes to the horrendous conflict currently underway in Gaza, Just War Theory’s standards are well-intentioned, but deeply flawed.

The problem [with Just War Theory] is that the standard is manipulable. My core critique of Just War Theory is not primarily about hypocrisy, though there is plenty of that. It’s not merely that adherents say one thing and do another — that the theory’s stringent standards are often ignored by those pledged to uphold them.

Just War Theory can all too easily function less as a limit than as a malleable justification for whatever we’ve already decided to do. It needn’t be flouted because it’s more flexible than it seems. Like the legal expert to whom Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), we often ask questions not to better love our neighbors but to justify ourselves […]

In direct contravention of its purpose, Just War Theory becomes retroactive justification rather than proactive restraint.

Donald Rumsfeld invoked the theory to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Barack Obama invoked Just War Theory to explain military intervention against groups in Yemen and Syria that did not exist when that legislation was written. Kristian fears that “the more desperate a situation, the more tempting this kind of ethical elasticity will be. And the situation in Israel and Gaza is extremely desperate.”

However noble just war theory might be, like any law it is prone to the self-justifying abuses of sin, after the fact rationalizations that simply confirm what you already wanted to do. Kristian’s observation that this kind of elastic thinking occurs more frequently when the consequences are so immense is enough to make anyone an outright pacifist.

2. As the holidays draw near, you may be anticipating that very specific feeling of being lonely in a crowded room. Your calendar may be chocked full of Christmas parties and Advent services, while your halls are decked with the pain of isolation. I know this feeling and the party-pooper guilt that it brings with it. The most wonderful time of the year becomes a time of deep personal inventory, reminding you of what you are without.

In a new article at Aeon, Kaitlyn Creasy offers some philosophical rationale as to why this is such a common experience, citing the book Life Is Hard by Kieran Setiya. Setiya’s proposal is that we are “social animals with social needs” that crucially include the need to be loved and to have our basic worth recognized.

Imagine a woman who lands a job requiring a long-distance move to an area where she knows no one. Even if there are plenty of new neighbors and colleagues to greet her upon her arrival, Setiya’s claim is that she will tend to experience feelings of loneliness, since she does not yet have close, loving relationships with these people. In other words, she will tend to experience feelings of loneliness because she does not yet have friends whose love of her reflects back to her the basic value as a person that she has, friends who let her see that she matters. Only when she makes genuine friendships will she feel her unconditional value is acknowledged; only then will her basic social needs to be loved and recognised be met. Once she feels she truly matters to someone, in Setiya’s view, her loneliness will abate.

While it’s true that loving friendships are the most human form of recognition — and that they are essential — it’s also true that they are not a cure all. Right, sometimes the most intimate spaces are the most isolating.

What plagues accounts that tie loneliness to an absence of basic recognition is that they fail to do justice to loneliness as a feeling that pops up not only when one lacks sufficiently loving, affirmative relationships, but also when one perceives that the relationships she has (including and perhaps especially loving relationships) lack sufficient quality (for example, lacking depth or a desired feeling of connection). And an individual will perceive such relationships as lacking sufficient quality when her friends and family are not meeting the specific needs she has, or recognizing and affirming her as the particular individual that she is.

For Creasy, loneliness is abated by an acknowledgement of our particularity. And those with a strong need for their uniqueness to be recognized may be more disposed to loneliness. (Mockingbirds, can you relate?) Here creates a good space for the promises of the Gospel (Matthew 10:30).

Though said differently, Creasy agrees:

But we will so often — perhaps always — have needs, desires and values of which we are unaware or that we cannot articulate, even to ourselves. We are, to some extent, always opaque to ourselves. Given this opacity, some degree of loneliness may be an inevitable part of the human condition. What’s more, if we can’t even grasp or articulate the needs provoking our loneliness, then adopting a more passive strategy may be the only option one has.

For people of faith, the passive option takes the form of raising the white flag of surrender. It is in giving up on our own will — and our own mirky understanding of ourselves — that we receive a way forward out of our isolation and into an unending companionship, even in the loneliest of times.

3. It’s not the first time we’ve said the kids are not alright. A recent study of 1,000 Australian teens sought to clarify exactly why and how that is the case. Clinicians enlisted students into one of two classes: either a typical middle-school health class or one that taught a version of a mental-health treatment called dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT. After eight weeks, the researchers planned to measure whether the DBT teens’ mental health had improved. It had, in fact, deteriorated:

Immediately after the intervention, the therapy group had worse relationships with their parents and increases in depression and anxiety. They were also less emotionally regulated and had less awareness of their emotions, and they reported a lower quality of life, compared with the control group.

One explanation of this surprising failure might just be that the use of mental health interventions for those who have no need of it might itself be damaging, which would have pretty wide-ranging implications for everyone taking quasi-therapy wisdom from TikTok.

Another possibility? Lauren Harvey, the conductor of the study, suspects that the reason for this has to do with a certain amount of coercion. Go figure! Most of the kids enrolled in the DBT class had not expressed a need for this type of therapy, and so they began to resent that it was put upon them. Teens don’t like being told by adults how to think or what to do, even if it’s something that could benefit them, and so the program backfired, says Olga Khazan.

Most teens don’t have their own money or insurance; many couldn’t drive to a therapist’s office if they wanted to. So they turn to social media, which might actually reinforce poor mental health.

The upshot of all of these failed experiments, from the cheesy D.A.R.E. to the trendy mindfulness, is the old chestnut that you can’t change people who aren’t ready to change. Teens can make poor choices, but they are smart and, on some level, know themselves. Alleviating the teen-mental-health crisis may require something that is not altogether comfortable for adults: trusting that teenagers will know when they need help. We may need to make treatment available but not obligatory. Teens have plenty of obligations as it is.

4. Up next, Jeff  Tweedy thought he hated pop music until he heard ABBA’s super hit “Dancing Queen.”

It’s important to admit when you’re wrong. And though I once bristled at the notion that there could ever be such a thing as a wrong musical opinion, I have since come to accept that there is, in fact, such a thing … I’m happy I can admit it, maybe even a touch proud of myself for not digging in my heels and hating this song for even a second longer than I had to (unlike some friends I know who are still holding out). To me, looking back, the weirdest part is that I ever felt I had to hate something so clearly irresistible.

Why did we feel this way? Mostly, I think, because hating certain music gave us a way of defining ourselves. Our identities were indistinct, and drawing a line in the sand between what we liked and what we hated made our young hearts feel whole.

Liking punk rock made us unique …

The divisions we created were embarrassing. I have sometimes even wondered if these youthful skirmishes over musical taste weren’t a childhood version of the current situation our country now finds itself in. Were people of my generation so good at dividing ourselves into factions based on stupid, insignificant differences that we simply never stopped doing it? Someone smarter than me has probably mapped the parallels between Journey fans and X fans and the current binary of political right and left. Or if no one has, someone should.

Not just politics. More often than not, the church has been splintered by antagonisms. Lines of division are more easily drawn than circles of unity when the faithful believe it is solely within their power to define the terms of engagement.

“They dance at the altar? Weird, button it up a little bit.”

“That sprinkle of water is definitely not enough to wash aways that big dude’s sins.”

“Why on earth is she staring so adoringly at that little tabernacle?”

It’s much easier to greet difference with suspicion than it is to greet difference with affection. But suspicion can turn into resentment and resentment into contempt. Tweedy again:

That song taught me that I can’t ever completely trust my negative reactions. I was burned so badly by this one song being withheld from my heart for so long. I try to never listen to music now without first examining my own mind and politely asking whatever blind spots I’m afflicted with to move aside long enough for my gut to be the judge.

5. Now for some laughs from Self-Congratulation Central, Brad Bauer was reportedly extremely chuffed that he had gone an entire day without sinning. That is, until he realized how proud he was of himself.

With no air in her chart, Mother Taurus wasn’t getting along with Baby Aquarius. What was she to do?

Before you start judging me, you have to know I’ve literally never gotten along with an air sign, and I don’t see myself starting now. Had I decided to raise her, we would’ve been in constant turmoil. Leaving her behind in the Electronics section was the best thing for both of us. Sure, maybe I could have made it work if she were a Virgo moon or a Capricorn rising or something — I really vibe with other Earth signs — but that’s just not how things shook out. She’s literally a Sag rising with an Aries moon. Like, could we be more different?

“Feeding on him” has gotten fruity. The Hard Times reports: the Roman Catholic Church recently unveiled a new limited-edition Berry Blast flavor for the Holy Sacrament of Communion, sources at the Vatican confirmed.

Everything is a “don’t” in the new era of influencing. Courtesy Vox media.

6. Wellness is supposed to make us feel great, but the wellness standards set out by the purity set are so expensive and so quick to change that they easily become a test to fail.

Over at the Guardian, Katherine Rowland says “we’re sedating women with self care,” quoting last year’s Mockingbird Conference speaker Rina Raphael, to make her point.

As organized religion has retreated from everyday life, she argues, wellness has rushed in to fill the void. ‘It’s providing belonging, identity, meaning, community. These are all the things that people used to find in their neighborhood church or synagogue. Wellness offers some sort of salvation on the horizon.’ It also offers the illusion of control and empowerment. ‘If you work hard enough and you buy the right things, you’ll be saved from disease and ageing and anything bad happening to you,’ Raphael says.

To believe that you are at the helm can offer respite from the constant deluge of technology, screaming children and a burning planet. But an illusion it remains. Even the best laid plan of diet, exercise and sobriety will dictate only a small portion of health outcomes, because it simply pales in comparison to systemic factors, including the spillage of work into all waking hours, the orange haze that consumes the skies, and the lopsided hazards and opportunities that hew to how much you earn, or the color of your skin.

Rowland breathes a sigh of relief that she has grown disenchanted with the religion of wellness:

Personally, and I say this as someone who has the privilege and suffers a desperation sufficient to throw thousands of dollars toward illusory cures, I have benefited from a loss of faith in what the industry has to offer, and a renewed conviction that the fix lies often beyond ourselves.

7. Finishing off this week with a bit of a hot potato. Over at First Things, Carl Trueman has written a lengthy essay on the use of critical theory, arguing that Christians would be better served to read Augustine, Paul, or Isaiah than reading Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw. The latter “seizes on one aspect of the truth and presses it at the expense of all others.” What has been lost by critical theory? Well, in a word, it’s grace.

Every society contains a great deal of evil, including institutions, social practices, and philosophies that justify and maintain evil practices. Critical theory is correct to war against this passivity and complicity. The challenge critical theory poses for Christianity, therefore, is the perennial challenge posed to orthodoxy by heresy: How can Christianity respond to the truth the heresy articulates and yet set that truth within the context of the faith as a whole?

Though it is often effective in critique, the problem with critical theory in its various forms rests in its lack of a vision beyond mere negation. Thus, Christians who engage critical theory need to use Christian eschatology to frame an alternative approach. This means bringing grace and forgiveness into our social analysis, for these are core elements of Christian eschatology. […]

As is the case with modern critical theorists, Augustine wishes to do more than describe the world; he wants to change it. Yet there is an important difference. Augustine’s debunking of Rome’s self-serving mythology is not for the purpose of “the abolition of social injustice,” as Horkheimer put it. Augustine’s criticism instead seeks to instruct readers about the limits of this world in a manner that precludes utopianism. Instead of advocating revolution against Roman injustice, Augustine says, in effect, “Put not your trust in princes.” […]

As Augustine argues, only the heavenly city can be organized around justice because only in the heavenly city is the final and ultimate injustice — humanity’s rejection of God — finally overcome in the unity of true worship. Unlike modern critical theory, the heavenly city is not a vague notion. In Christ, we see its harmony and good order, for we look upon its King. And in church we gain a foretaste of its peace. […]

Augustine notes that the better the objects of a society’s love, the better the society … But reordering our loves requires a revolution of the common heart, as it were, not a revolution in social structures. Augustine’s notion of love precludes utopian ambitions of the kind that end up striving simply to tear down all that is. Love of earthly things, however elevated, cannot bring about heaven on earth. But recognizing this fact does not prevent our striving here and now for our society to embody a more properly ordered set of earthly loves. We’re better off encouraging a love of country than encouraging a love of wealth, a love of honor than a cult of success.

Strays:

In Matthew Perry’s work and life, he was determined to break the poisonous cycle of shame that had circled around his family for decades.

At Vox, Alissa Wilkinson says the new Paramount+ show The Curse is full of recurring Biblical themes — unsurprising for a story that is fundamentally about generational harm, guilt, and responsibility. Congrats on your new role at the New York Times, Alissa!

An oldie but goodie and perfect for this moment, back in 2017, Plough published excerpts from Dorothy Day’s The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus:

How to draw a picture of the strength of love! It seems at times that we need a blind faith to believe in it at all. There is so much failure all about us. It is so hard to reconcile oneself to such suffering, such long, enduring suffering of body and soul, that the only thing one can do is to stand by and save the dying ones who have given up hope of reaching out for beauty, joy, ease, and pleasure in this life. For all their reaching, they got little of it. To see these things in the light of faith, God’s mercy, God’s justice! His devouring love!