Jesus, President Obama, Trigger Warnings, and "Never Taste Chemicals"

As my son entered his junior year of high school, the requisite number of start-of-school release forms and acknowledgments seemed to grow exponentially. I don't recall having to mutually sign a form with my parents regarding whether I bothered to read the syllabus or not. Many things were just assumed back in the day — if the school or its personnel generate it, action is required. It was on his science class syllabus and lab rules that the phrase caught my attention:

Never taste chemicals.

You'd think such would be painfully obvious, but there it is. Because some citizens occasionally deny what is obvious — including reality itself — these things are necessary these days. And yet, what isn't obvious in all the paperwork, is the presupposition underlying it all:

It isn't that we don't trust your kids not to do something stupid. We're terrified your kid will actually do something stupid, and you'll sue us for his or her stupidity.

I've had great conversations with my own kids about why this paperwork is "necessary." Schools have now had to protect themselves from the mentality of a society that rewards participation and hands out trophies just for showing up. It's sad when a pro football player has to point out the obvious and it seems like a breath of fresh air on a stifling day. (He wasn't without his critics, though.)

In counseling, I've sat across the table from folks who have been through some horribly traumatic experiences. To hear their stories can be difficult. But one thing stands out between them and something I've noticed while teaching college classes: having your beliefs challenged is not the same thing as being emotionally traumatized. I fear our society is losing that distinction.

The Atlantic ran a recent editorial that captures that particular notion quite well. A "trigger warning" is, by definition, an announcement to listeners of a lecture (or viewers of a video) that material is included that could trigger emotional distress. It has become a matter of concern on many college campuses that trigger warnings should be given by professors if the material they cover may be upsetting to someone in their class. (God forbid someone needs a trigger warning for trigger warnings. Talk about an infinite regress.)

Way back in the day, in one of my design classes, I had my head buried in my ever-present sketchbook. Good ideas can be fleeting and need to be recorded if and when they strike. My professor unfortunately misinterpreted my focus as disinterest, and his words to me were quite blunt:

Phillips, you're really starting to piss me off.

In this day and age on college campuses, such a comment would clearly be deemed a microaggression; I doubt any professor these days would feel free enough to make such a statement for fear of student reprisals. (Just prior to graduation, at an end-of-year department banquet, my professor and I actually shared a laugh about the experience; he claimed that as soon as the words left his mouth, it dawned on him that, in his words, "You're twice as big as I am." I responded by saying, "I've been insulted by littler men than you." I wonder where he was when he caught exactly what I meant.)

However, I sense the onslaught of trigger warnings is not to protect students from emotional distress, but is actually an effort to add another layer of protection for the faculty. If comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld will no longer play college campuses for fear of political correctness, heaven forbid a student should have their thinking challenged through cognitive dissonance and Socratic teaching methods.

Thinking critically about tough issues is not the same as enduring emotional trauma. We've become a nation where emotions drive our actions; the reality is this: emotions are not an indicator of truth. I personally was never the fastest runner, or the best baseball player, or the best shot in basketball. Some folks are physically gifted. God bless 'em. There's no emotional distress in those words; it is an accurate depiction of reality. Constructive criticism is not hate speech.

President Obama even mentioned his concern this week. In an address at Des Moines, Iowa, he went on record with the following, using specifically the word "coddling" when describing today's crop of college students:

I've heard some college campuses where they don't want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don't want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you, I don't agree with that either. I don't agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with 'em. But you shouldn't silence them by saying, "You can't come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say." That's not the way we learn, either.

We now live in a culture where merely describing reality is designated as microaggression. Bernie Sanders just spoke at Liberty University. Inviting a progressive socialist to a conservative evangelical university would seem to invite trouble in this day and age — especially at a school where attendance at such events can be mandatory. But things were civil, much as to be expected, at a school where behavior is an outgrowth of the university's student code of conduct. The students had questions, as expected. It is actually good for everyone concerned, and here is why.

Jesus Himself is the ultimate in cognitive dissonance: to the rich, He is a threat to their money. To the overly religious and the self-centered, He points out their good works cannot save them. To the atheist, He has some good moral teachings, but He isn't divine. To those who view Him as myth, He forces them to deny the reality of history. To those who view marriage as merely a social construct, His words can be discarded. He is singularly the ultimate stumbling block to every person born: accept His words as truth, or face the consequences of the decision to dismiss them.

Cognitive dissonance allows a person to sharpen their own beliefs. It shouldn't be feared; it should be encouraged. We should be asking one another Socratic questions about abortion, divorce, marriage, euthanasia, taxes, metaphysics, ethics, economics, environmental responsibilities, and the meaning of life. Sheltering yourself from challenging your thinking is to deny the reality of the world we live in. (Just wait a couple decades when this current group of college students starts obtaining positions of power. Yeehaw!)

Jesus, County Clerks, and Oaths of Office

It's much like watching a car wreck: how the Federal Court will decide the fate of Kim Davis, Rowan County (KY) Clerk. There seem to be a number of issues in play here, as all sides have a vested interest in the matter. Here's the irony in the entire affair: if a person follows Christ, there really is no halfway—you're either all in or not. There is no picking or choosing of what He had to say for the sake of convenience.

The forgotten precedence is this: Jesus gave a strong command in the Sermon on the Mount to not take oaths. It reads as such:

Again, you have heard that it was said to an older generation, 'Do not break an oath, but fulfill your vows to the Lord.' But I say to you, do not take oaths at all—not by heaven, because it is the throne of God, not by earth, because it is his footstool, and not by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King. Do not take an oath by your head, because you are not able to make one hair white or black. Let your word be 'Yes, yes' or 'No, no.' More than this is from the evil one. (Matthew 5:33-37, NET)

There are those who will want to digress into arguments as to whether the Sermon on the Mount is a sermon to Jews or to Jews and Gentiles combined, or whether this is an Old Covenant (pre-cross) sermon or a sermon looking forward to the New Covenant. I'm going to set those aside, because this isn't guidance on Levitical ceremonial rules, but a clarification of Leviticus 19:12, offset in single quote marks in the preceding quote; this is a moral entreaty that goes back to the Decalogue (the seminary term for the 10 Commandments).

Jesus was "tightening down," if you will, on the fact that many children of God were attempting to invoke God in the taking of an oath. The problem is, if one invokes an oath using God's name and breaks it, you have just made God party to a lie. Hence the commandment of not taking the Lord's name in vain (Exodus 20:7). Folk Christianity / Churchianity has replaced that meaning with a command against the language of cursing and "cuss words." As well-intended as that might be, it's terribly shallow, and shows a distinct ignorance of biblical culture and biblical knowledge.

For the record, here is the Oath of Office Kim Davis took, most likely with her hand resting on a Bible:

I do solemnly swear [or affirm, as the case may be] that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this Commonwealth, and be faithful and true to the Commonwealth of Kentucky so long as I continue a citizen thereof, and that I will faithfully execute, to the best of my ability, the office of [...] according to law; and I do further solemnly swear [or affirm] that since the adoption of this present Constitution, I, being a citizen of this State, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State nor out of it, nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person thus offending, so help me God. (Kentucky Constitution, Section 228, revised September 28, 1891)

Now the problem can be seen for what it is. And it isn't the fact that Kentucky still prohibits dueling with deadly weapons to this day. When the Pharisees attempted to corner Jesus regarding Caesar, coins, and taxes, Jesus pointed out that the Roman Emperor was going to extract his pound of flesh from everyone (yes, my paraphrase of the pericope beginning in Matthew 22:15.) It is inescapable for Christians in any society. Because the United States is not a Christian theocracy—as much as some folks like to pretend it is—there will always be friction between the laws of a secular society and the laws of God. It cannot be any other way.

I'm not attempting to throw stones with this statement; I'm a big a hypocrite as anyone else sitting in a church pew. But the obvious truth seems to be this: Kim Davis has brought this upon herself. God didn't do it; Jesus didn't do it; the Commonwealth of Kentucky didn't do it. Ms. Davis took a public oath, invoked the name of God—against the better recommendations of Jesus—and is now paying the price in both the courts of public opinion as well as the U.S. District Court in Ashland, Kentucky. God is no more obligated to bail out Kim Davis than the person who jumps in a barrel to go over Niagara Falls and cries out for protection halfway down. Proceed at your own risk in such games.

We all know how this is going to play out. The reality of the situation is this: Jesus doesn't play around. If a person is going to follow Him, be prepared to suffer the slings and arrows of interaction between what is secular and what is sacred, based upon the choices you make.

Edit: clarified the quotation in Matthew.

Interpreting the Language of Non-Prophets

Anger is a funny thing. Of all the emotions, none can so instantaneously make a person say or do something later regretted. And yet we use a phrase to justify actions when something has violated our sensibilities: righteous anger. Jesus' actions in clearing the Temple serve as motivation for many. During the heat of the moment of throwing over tables, the text frames a metalepsis, when Jesus claims the words of YHWH as his own (cf. Jeremiah 7:11, and Isaiah 56:7c.)

More than once in a biblical counseling session have I experienced a person who interprets events within our culture's history as the definitive line that, having been crossed, will ultimately lead to "another civil war." (Yes, actual words.) A person's worldview, when filled with various severe stressors, tends to function much like a hammer — everything begins to look like a nail. The problem really boils down to this: in their current emotional state, the "world" remains just beyond the reach of their control. Body language manifests emotional postures, future outlooks get filled with emotionally-driven content, and words get filled with emotional rhetoric.

A person's languages, spoken and unspoken, betray how he or she is interpreting the events going on in the world around them.

Our culture ebbs, flows, and swings back and forth to a degree as a result of competing worldviews. At times, the language expressed seems rooted in common sense; at other times, the language gets pointed towards ideals, which to some, seem to override or even lack common sense. It is when language is codified to a specific end that it can be misunderstood, often times painted as superior to those who "just don't get it."

In the case of the Planned Parenthood videos, the language expressed within them are typical of how the words we use are "massaged" to elicit a particular outcome. Advertisers have known this for years; there's a reason automobile ads, particularly for SUVs, feature emotionally pleasant situations of beach-and-forest family getaways rather than the product features of asymmetric four-wheel-drive. Apple is brilliant in its marketing, as it positions its iPhone on what people experience as they use it (typically world travelers in exciting locales having the time of their lives with the people they love), whereas the latest Samsung ad demonstrates the G6 Edge lights up. . . on its edges.

Because language can be manipulated to elicit emotions, it can also be manipulated to the converse: to remove emotional content. And it is here we find an odd fusion of non-emotive terms with the language of a non-profit organization.

We've all encountered the language of non-profits, even if we run in different circles: PBS and NPR have their pledge drives, and based on the level of giving, you can receive a nice "gift" of a DVD or concert tickets in exchange for your tax-deductible donation. The same language is heard in churches as well, typically in late January or early February from the church treasurer: your "giving statements are prepared for you to itemize on your taxes." Anyone who has ever sat on the board of a non-profit organization can attest to the inordinate amount of time spent on massaging language to fit government regulations.

This is how the dance unfolds with non-profits; they present information utilizing a language game that has its roots in governmental legislation-speak. Non-profit organizations must be careful and overly cautious to present the fact nothing is being purchased. Although money is changing hands, and you may receive a DVD in return, nothing is being purchased. But start selling things, and your 501(c)3 or (c)4 can be revoked, or worse yet, officials can be investigated for receiving inurements.

It is purely a donation.

Herein lies the rub with the Planned Parenthood affair: depending on how you personally use language, and how you see the world, is how you will fill in the blanks in the following sentence:

Planned Parenthood received a _____________________ in dollars from a medical research company for the ________________________ of a fetal _______________________ for resale to research universities and medical organizations.

Government-spurred-non-profit-speak will use the words donation, transfer, and calverium; common sense uses such words as payment, sale, and head.

Elsewhere, carefully chosen non-emotive words such as tissue are used. Deborah Nucatola, M.D., uses the word calverium — a non-emotive medical term describing the upper portions of the skull and brain case — whereas a person on the street might simply say, "head." From the time we are children, we quickly learn of rhetoric and the arguments that ensue, and how it can be tiring for all parties involved.

Using the words head and body parts imply personhood, whereas calverium does not, as it is divorced from everyday conversation. It therefore carries no emotional baggage. Based on Justice William J. Blackmun's majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, the unborn are not considered persons, and therefore lack the constitutional protections as afforded by the Fourteenth Amendment.  The first three words of that amendment's first sentence cleared the way for the majority conclusion in their interpretation: "All persons born. . . ." And so, idealistic language gives way to idealistic thinking; if a fetus isn't a person — a common-sense use of language — then the words used are only describing a clump of cells, no more, no less.

Throw in images of aborted fetuses, though, and the story changes. What is it about visual imagery and visual language that evokes such an emotional response? Interestingly enough, it is the same reason music videos destroyed the music business in America. Before music videos, music lovers were free to interpret songs with no constraints in their own personal thought-life. Music videos force everyone to hear the song through someone else's eyes.

If no images of aborted fetuses were available, recent arguments would be a lot more tidy for Planned  Parenthood supporters. It's why pro-life protestors get thrown off college campuses. There is inherent meaning in a visual image that contradicts or destroys the coherence of certain ideals, such as just a clump of cells. It's why memes get shared on social media. In articles, such as the one just mentioned, or in videos, such as the initial Planned Parenthood response here, the words generally seem to be couched in idealistic language, never really addressing the issue at hand. The visual contrast of Dr. Nucatola casually eating her salad creates cognitive dissonance with her words heard in conversation.

Regardless of how a person views him- or herself in relation to reality, the types and kinds of words spoken by someone else holding to a different set of ideals can be troubling. The apostle Paul knew firsthand the importance of balancing righteous anger with self-control. Living solely off emotions profits no one. It seems our culture thrives on its emotions, which can be dangerous; emotions are not an indicator of truth. Truth needs to be called out for what it is.

When faced with the workings of the Temple Cult, Jesus called it as he saw it: a carefully-manicured veneer of respectability hiding an out-of-control entity which, as a direct result of its function, brought spiritual death. Things on the surface may have even functioned as advertised. Planned Parenthood carefully cultivates its veneer of respectability in words peddled by a cult of personality, yet as a direct result of its function, peddles physical death. Actual physical death. Calling things as we see them won't make anyone popular, but the truth borne of common sense will always cut through false impressions conveyed by those desiring to maintain an illusion for false gain.