We Don't Have to Live Like This

Don Cicchetti  9.28.17

Watching my friends on Facebook debate the meaning of the death of Hugh Hefner has been most engaging on several levels.  I have very smart friends and they run the gamut of perspectives, but there's been something missing and quite noticeably so.  There are things we can no longer talk about.  In my own lifetime, we have become utterly lobotomized on many subjects.  Here's just a few:

Martin Luther King jr. taught us that we should be judging others, not on skin color, but on our characters.  That was called being color-blind.  We didn't see color, we saw people, we saw souls. In the process of coming to this perspective, we all gained a commonality, a shared existence, a brotherhood.  Today, it matters not what our character is like, but very much what our skin color is.  White skin is often assigned to wickedness, prejudice and ironically, privilege, while darker skin tones are assigned the role of victim.  This phenomenon take no account of the actual decency of the white person, nor the natural gifts, money, good looks and brains, (privilege) that a black person may have.  This process, a part of Critical Race Theory (and also Cultural Marxism and identity politics) divides us.  It was intended to divide us.  Our nation being divided serves the grievance industry well, and character matters today not at all, with so-called civil rights leaders now espousing a level of bigotry not seen in 60 years.

My point is not that things are bad (although they are) my point is that we can't even talk about any other perspective today.  King's color-blindness is today a basis for indicting others with the title of "racist" and the very idea of righteous white people, causes a collective gasp that is nearly deafening.  But that is who King was speaking to when he said:

" I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Black people did not need to "rise up" to this promise of equality and love.  Many white people did, and that's who King was speaking to, because he knew that decent white people were the key to success in reaching the better world he envisioned.  It was a compelling vision, and has succeeded in large part.  The remainder of white racism in America is largely un-amenable to either inspiring speeches, or laws.  Why? Because it is a failure of the heart and soul; it's a sin.

But here's the rub: We can't even speak of such a world today!  To even say "I don't see color, only a child of God" is considered racist.  This is a measure of the success of Critical Theory in our culture, and it is absolutely devastating in it's impact.  Character does not matter; only your identity, your tribe.

Take the relationship between men and women.  There are no more natural allies than men and women, yet we have gotten to the point where a great marriage is difficult to the point of being nearly impossible.  Why?  It started with the phrase "the personal is political", and it ends today, with a level of gender warfare I almost cannot imagine. 

When literally everything is political, is there room for love?  Genuine, world-changing love? 

We start with a "women's movement" that politicizes women's bodies, our love, our children, and our marriages, and then in reaction, we get a "men's movement" that creates a caricature of masculinity that would have been laughed out of even a locker room in 1910.  Worse, everyone knows it's a caricature, and no one really takes it seriously.  How many discussions have each of us seen where some guy says "real men don't drive minivans" or "real men don't go to certain movies", or the classic, "real men don't eat quiche". 

What's wrong with these things?  Real men don't let other guys tell them what to do.

So, we have bro-country caricatures of masculinity marrying women who always have one foot out the door, because after all, he's part of the "patriarchy" and they know the he-man routine is just an act.  Hats and boots; not much more.

Again, there's something we can no longer talk about.  Know what it is?

Genuine, transforming, world-changing love. 

Women are meant to trust, completely, a man, who was raised by a man, who is calm, wise, funny, and decent, and couldn't care less about what someone else thinks a "real man" does.  (Does the image of a Navy SEAL driving a mini-van disturb you?  Go ahead, insult him over it, I dare you)  Women are meant to create the home with their man, to fill in all those things he's simply no good at, and he is to do the same for her.  Allies. But we can't talk about those things any more.  Now, it's feminism's war on masculinity, and the boys-raised-by-boys war on women, whom they alternately lust over and despise.

Which brings us to Hefner.  Hefner made fools of both feminists, who could never explain why the woman in the magazine shouldn’t "do what she wants with her body" and the superficially religious who quietly sneaked a good long peak at Hef's magazines while condemning him out of the other side of their mouths.

Like the other issues above, there is something here we are not allowed to say about all this Hefner business (and the great stinking flood of porn that followed him)  What is it?

We are not our bodies.   Acting as if we are, reduces us to meat. 

Which is right where the secularists (and Hefner) want us.  Nothing but meat.  Not a son or daughter of God, created for love.  Just meat.  That is what Hefner made his women into, and feminists instinctively knew it, (and recoiled) but had no real moral or intellectual basis upon which to object to it because they themselves were, and are, secular. Libertines, of course, were and are thrilled that their pleasures became less shameful, but the result on our culture, in terms of STD's, the horror of human abortion, broken marriages, children, homes that never were, suicides, depression, and all the rest, almost cannot be overstated.

"If it was assumed that the church had essential knowledge of life, without which human beings could not live well, or live at all, there would be no question of separation of church and state. The idea of separating church from state, which means separating religion from political processes, that whole idea is predicated upon the idea that religion has nothing to say about reality.  And if it were thought that, for example, if you practiced a certain kind of religion, that would substantially transform the human situation, there would be no issue about separation of church and state, any more than there is an issue about separating physics from state."

Dallas Willard

"You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies."

1 Corinthians 19:19-20

It's time to start talking about these things again.  we don't have to live like this.  We don't