Josh Benner

Category: Philosophy

  • Equality vs. Equity: Kamala sells impossible vision in ad


    Vice presidential candidate (and possible president, if the ticket wins), Kamala Harris shared an ad on her social media sites this weekend talking about equality vs equity.

     
    It’s a 50 second spot narrated by Harris which begins: “so there’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests how everyone should get the same amount. The problem with that, not everybody’s starting out from the same place. So if we’re all getting the same amount, but you started back there and I started out over here – we could get the same amount, but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. It’s about giving people the resources and the support they need, so that everyone can be on equal footing and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.” 


    It’s the last sentence of that ad that’s especially noteworthy. “Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place?”

    I realize it’s a campaign ad. It’s pandering. 

    But really consider the logic of what she’s saying. The government cannot guarantee we all get to the same place because of the uniqueness of people. And the only way to even attempt to make such a thing happen would be for the government to control every aspect of life: education, industries, wages. 

    But even if that happened, we can’t all get to the same place. Because we’re different. Some people have better parents than others. You can’t guarantee equity in upbringing. Some people are more attractive than others, which attracts other attractive people. So you can’t guarantee equity in relationships and marriage. We don’t have equal genetics. Some of us are more prone to diseases or obesity. People have different skills, different interests. 

    Someone might say, “but it’s a great vision!” 

    No it isn’t. 

    She’s selling people an idea that the government should take care of every aspect of their lives. That isn’t a great thing for people. It’s dehumanizing. Because the ability to succeed, to take risks, to fail, to learn from failure and overcome adversity is part of what makes us human. Not some utopian vision of everyone having the same results in life. 

    It’s also hypocritical. She’s saying we should all get to the same place. Well she’s a vote away from being the vice president. She has the best healthcare a person can have. She has a big staff that tends to her. She has secret service protection.

    Reminds me of Orwell’s famous line from “Animal Farm” “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” 

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  • The Problem of Pain: C.S. Lewis and human suffering

    painOriginally published November 14, 2012 as “The Problem of Pain and C.S. Lewis”

    Early in the book “The Problem of Pain,” in an analogy which is the epitome of the brilliance and humor of C.S. Lewis, he compares the relationship of God and man to that of a dog owner and his dog. It is for the dog owner’s joy that he owns the dog. It is not inherently for the dog’s joy. It is also so that the owner has another being that it can love. The master values the dog loving him too, but to mature the dog, there are things which must be done that might not always be pleasant for the canine. Being washed, trained not to steal, and the dreaded process of house training are all part of the process. But in the end, those unpleasant activities are for the good of the dog.

    With his rapier wit, Lewis writes, “To the puppy the whole proceeding would seem, if it were a theologian, to cast grave doubts on the ‘goodness’ of man: but the full-grown and full-trained dog, larger, healthier, and longer-loved than the wild dog…would have no such doubts.” (more…)

  • Jussie Smollett: truth matters more than narratives

    Jussie_Smollett_(26362136311)
    Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

    The media jumped on a ridiculous story that has now totally unraveled. Empire actor Jussie Smollett claimed that two men assaulted him, poured bleach on him, put a noose around his neck, while telling him “this is MAGA country” in Chicago. (more…)

  • What’s the greatest danger to the church?

    photo-1476455479340-25ee0cee09bf.jpeg
    There are 300,000 churches in America.
    There are many wonderful churches that boldly proclaim the gospel and faithfully teach the Bible every week. There is no perfect church in the world, because every church is full of members who are imperfect people.
    I think that the biggest issue the American church faces today is related to truth and love.
    Love that undermines truth and truth that doesn’t practice love. I’ll briefly explain what that means.
    Love that undermines truth 
    Love is important. The greatest command in scripture is to love God and to love people. God is love.
    But some churches can emphasize love to the point where it undermines truth.
    For instance, there is a temptation in some Christian circles to consider the love of God and reason that: “since God is love, his love extends to all people, whether or not they believe in God and whether or not they want or accept his love.”
    God is love. But that is just taking a slice of the character of God and acting as if that’s the whole pie. God is love. But he is also just, and righteous, and holy. He judges, he has wrath towards sin. God has all of those qualities at all times.
    God is love. But the idea of love is not only exclusive to what our culture defines love as.
    We tend to value acceptance and tolerance as what it is to love. And it’s true that God meets us where we are, but Jesus doesn’t save us to keep us the same. God is a perfecting God. We sin. We sin so much that we needed a savior, and the gospel is not a message that teaches us that we’re ok and we should just keep doing what we’re doing. We need to live for God and pursue him.
    Making love purely about acceptance and tolerance is not the full Biblical scope of what love is. And so it undermines the truth of scripture. And it runs the danger of undermining the inerrancy of scripture (taking the Bible as practical wisdom rather than the infallible word of God). And this view runs the risk of undermining the gospel itself.
    Assuming that love and  demand for justice are mutually exclusive.

    I observe this being the great risk in more liberal denominations.

    Truth that doesn’t practice love

    I think this is more of a danger in conservative and evangelical circles. We place a high value on the scripture and theology. And well we should because both of those are hugely important.

    But we can get so preoccupied with having the right answer that we lose sight of actually living out what we know. This is very similar to the failure of the Pharisees in the gospels. They were very well studied and trained in theology, but they missed the heart of the message.

    It can be easy to know the right answer but it’s difficult to live it out in practice.

    Truth and love. It comes down to belief and practice. We need both.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Why did Jesus have to come in the first place?

    athanasius

    Why did Jesus have to die? For years, this puzzled me. I could get on board with the idea that I fell short of God’s perfect standard. But why did Jesus need to die? Couldn’t God have just forgiven me? Like some sort of Spiritual write off?

    One of the best explanations I have ever read for this comes from a fourth century bishop named Athanasius in a work he produced entitled “On the Incarnation.” (more…)