11AR16-13

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Apologia Report 16:13 (1,063)

April 13, 2011

Subject: Is God "violent?"

In this issue:

ISLAM - a progressive Muslim scholar's remarks on apologetics and the subjugation of non-believers

McLAREN, BRIAN - Is God Violent?, his controversial response

PORN - when will the masses learn "The most frightening truths about sex"?

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ISLAM

In his review of A Muslim View of Christianity [1] by pluralist Muslim scholar Mahmoud Ayoub, Jon Hoover explains in passing that one essay in the book addresses "modern Muslim apologetics and polemics toward Christians." Though nothing more is said on the subject, we mention it here because such references are too rare in our experience.

Hoover finds that Ayoub often "develops a distinction ... between true faith that seeks religious and social reform on the one hand and institutionalized religion expressed in laws and customs on the other.

The latter is inherently deficient in Ayoub's eyes, which often leads him into polemic against traditional Muslim jurists. A good example is found in Chapter Nine where Ayoub seeks to mitigate the severity of the term dhimma for Christians. [See AR 16:11] He argues that dhimma in the Qur'an and Hadith refers primarily to God's protecting, faithful relationship with humanity and also to the principle of honorable relations among human beings. It does not refer to the subservient legal status of Jews and Christians under Muslim rule found in traditional Islamic law. The legal sense of dhimma only emerged as Muslim jurists degraded the concept from its original moral and spiritual sense found in the Qur'an." Muslim World, 101:1 - 2011, pp113-115.

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McLAREN, BRIAN

"Is God Violent? What does the violence in the Bible tell us about the nature of God?" by Brian McLaren -- the print version's subtitlereads: "The Bible seems to be a God-ordained bloody mess." McLaren begins: "I recently received a note from a pastor and missionary we'll call Pete. It went like this: 'I have read most of what you have written ... I would say I am in agreement with [much of what you write], but I do think you bring disservice to this argument in the evangelical world when you shun the 'violence' of God and the subsequent need for the cross' justification, which was also quite violent.'

"He continued: 'You have a lot to say to the church, but when youmake these kind of statements that don't really appear to hold weight under the plethora of biblical examples, it mutes your voice. The fact is the Old Testament is a God-ordained bloody mess, and the cross is the ultimate expression of it. This only highlights God's holiness, and when we try to mitigate this reality to save him from a secular mind, we mitigate the power of the cross as well, and end up with a less powerful narrative.'

"I don't know which shocks you more - that I would question God's violence, or that Pete would defend it."

McLaren confides that he aspires to live by the idea that "violencein any form is absolutely forbidden, no exceptions." He also says that he can accept the idea that "human violence is always a violation of our creation in God's image - both for the perpetrator and the victim. If it is ever employed, it is always tragic and regrettable, never justified." Sojourners, Jan '11, pp16-20. <www.tinyurl.com/3cd54gd>

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PORN

"Hard Core: The New World of Porn Is Revealing Eternal Truths about Men and Women" by Natasha Vargas-Cooper -- in reading that is not for the faint of heart, the author reports that "in 2007, a quarter of all Internet searches were related to pornography. Nielsen ratings showed that in January 2010, more than a quarter of Internet users in the United States, almost 60 million people, visited a pornographic Web site. ... That number ... doesn’t even take into account the incomprehensible amount of porn distributed through peer-to-peer downloading networks" and other options.

In an October 2010 study published by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, co-author Debby Herbenick "believes that Internet porn now 'plays a role in how many Americans [mostly boys] perceive and become educated about sex.'"

Vargas-Cooper refers to "rapidly shifting sexual mores [which] have been popularized and legitimized by porn." In the process, she acknowledges "The granting of sex is the most powerful weapon women possess in their struggle with men. Yet in each new sexual negotiation a woman has with a man, she not only spends down that capital, she begins at a disadvantage, because the potential losses are always greater for her." The author also notes that "the reactionary political correctness of the 1990s put forth a proposition even more disastrous to women than free love: sexual equality."

Further observations include: "Internet porn ... shows us an unvarnished (albeit partial) view of male sexuality as an often dark force streaked with aggression." And males "make up two-thirds of all porn viewers. ...

"'Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness,' Susan Sontag wrote in Styles of Radical Will [2]. Yes, it's a natural, human function, and one from which both partners can derive enormous pleasure, but it is also one largely driven by brute male desire and therefore not at all free of violent, even cruel, urges. ...

"Pornography, with its garish view of male sexual desire, bares an uncomfortable truth that the women's-liberation movement has successfully suppressed: men and women have conflicting sexual agendas. ...

"The new neo-feminists ... argue that the primary obstacle to women's gaining greater equality in the political and economic sphere is today's 'hypersexuality,' and specifically the spread of online porn. This is a somewhat new take on an old position. ... "Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis compared porn to science fiction: 'Like sci-fi, porn replaces existing realities with wild alternative universes (against which to measure the lackluster, repressive world we've inherited).' ...

"Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality [3], frets that the overwhelming exposure to emotionless, rapacious sex on the Internet will socialize men to find degradation of women sexually arousing." Nevertheless, Vargas-Cooper reports: "I have yet to see a single credible study that links proliferation of pornography to an increase in abuse of women." She finds "the main problem with the new anti-porn critics is their naive assumption that if only we could blot out Internet porn, then the utopia of sexual equality would be achieved. But equality in sex can't be achieved. Internet porn exposes that reality; it may even intensify that reality; it doesn't create it.

"This isn't to argue that pornography is harmless or even that it shouldn't be censored: its pervasiveness clearly exacerbates the growing moral nihilism of our culture."

Vargas-Cooper concludes by noting that "the common but annihilating emotions that fuel [sex acts are] desperation and loneliness. It's the clash between vulnerability and indifference that transpires after sex that is so savage. This is what [film reviewer Pauline] Kael called 'realism with the terror of actual experience.' The most frightening truths about sex rarely exist in the physical, but instead live in the intangible yet indelible wounds created in the psyche. Go try to find that on the Internet." The Atlantic, Jan '11, pp97-106. <www.j.mp/fzsQZq>

Christians who read this catalog of depravity may well experience a profound sadness concerning the state of our world.

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - A Muslim View of Christianity, by Mahmoud Ayoub and Irfan A. Omar (Orbis, 2007, paperback, 264 pages) <www.j.mp/gA1xv1>

2 - Styles of Radical Will, by Susan Sontag (Picador, 2002, paperback, 288 pages) <www.j.mp/dVykVC>

3 - Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Se-xuality, by Gail Dines (Beacon, April 2011, paperback, 240 pages) <www.j.mp/eZzrnL>

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