Mortal Remains
Alas, Average at Best
by S. M. Hutchens
Once again, this time in a story covering the pending liberal/traditionalist division over homosexuality in the United Methodist Church, I have encountered a journalist's assurance that religious conservatives are less educated, accomplished, and culturally sophisticated than their liberal antagonists. The implication is that those in the churches who oppose what used to be universally acknowledged in them as sexual sin are, on the whole, inferior human beings by the most meaningful indices of personal worth—they are, as Michael Weisskopf alleged in his infamous 1993 Washington Post story, "largely poor, uneducated and easy to command."
This observation, now more often insinuated than so flatly stated, is not uncommon. Fear not—the journalistic mandarins assure readers who may hesitate before the idea that religious traditionalists might be right about perversion and all that—superior people like us agree against the inferior sort that this is progress, and not "going
bad."
The Normal Condition of the Church
These assurances are, I think, bait to which orthodox Christians who are just as bright and accomplished as any liberal should not rise to. The principal reason is that early on, no less than an Apostle pointed out that across-the-board averageness was the normal condition of the Church. St. Paul, after all, had told the Corinthians that with regard to their gifts and accomplishments they were merely a cross-section of the population:
Consider your own situation, brothers: Not many among you are intellectually sophisticated, wield secular power, or are members of the best society. . . . (1 Cor. 1:26)
Note he does not say that none are thus gifted, just "not many," so that the generality of Christians are in a position where those who look unsympathetically at them from superior heights will be easily able to identify believers as an inferior caste, placing the wisdom of their wise, the power of their strong, and the rank of their noble at a heavy discount because of the downward pull of their common association in the Church. They can regard the believing intellectual as an anomaly, the holder of power a probable gamester, and the wealthy as eccentric, exploitative, or psychologically unhealthy, whichever can be made to fit best.
Thus it was from the beginning, since the worldly stations of the faithful are rooted in the God who is no respecter of persons and thus—unlike those concerned with leveling the wrongs of inequality as a mandate of their faith—exercises no preferential option for any of the natural conditions of men. The old charge that the Lord was not terribly particular about his friends was perfectly true when it was first made and still stands.
The Terminus of Faith & Knowledge
Christians who are tempted to take the disdain of their betters to heart risk being lured into a game they cannot win in this age, for the contempt arises from the indelible hatred of the demons for Christ himself and precedes the discovery and punishment of any similarly hate-worthy attributes in his followers. In this spirit, fanfares are written for the common man, for the beauty of his ordinariness, while the commonness of Christians implies no kind of nobility, but provides a reason for disgust. (The world-spirit is not neutral on these things.)
But hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of the world and its media? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know him through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we in our collective unremarkability preach to save those who believe. For while religious people require empowering experience, and intellectuals demand proofs confected of what they can currently regard as fact, for those who hear the voice of God, Christ himself is the terminus of both faith and knowledge, which makes no sense to the adepts of either party.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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