Dinesh D’Souza, who was a hero to all of us Young Republicans in the oh-so-PC 1990s, has a good post at his website tothesource.org defending the classical argument for the existence of God as First Cause. D’Souza shows how professional atheists Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris once again really don’t understand the intellectual legacy they’re ridiculing:

Think of the chain of causation in the universe as represented by a series of dominoes falling. Each domino that topples over is itself knocked over by another domino. The dominoes have been arranged so that, when the first one falls, it knocks over the second one, and so on. The trail of dominoes may be extremely long, but it cannot go on forever, because the whole process is only triggered by the fall of the first domino. If the first domino isn’t toppled, then the second and third and fourth ones aren’t going to fall either. Moreover, the first domino isn’t going to topple itself. It relies on some agent outside the series of falling dominos to knock it over….

Given that nothing in the universe is the cause of its own existence, the universe cannot be explained by an infinite regress of causation. If there were infinite regress then the series would not have gotten started in the first place. The universe is here, just like the fellow who has gotten his driver’s license or like the dominoes that we see toppling over before our eyes. And just as there had to be a first number at the DMV that got the sequence going, and someone or something that got the dominoes to start falling one by one, so too there must be a first cause for the universe that accounts for the chain of causation that we see everywhere in the world. We may not be able to say much about what this first cause is like, but we have logically established the need for it and the existence of it. Without a first cause, none of its effects—including the world, including us—would be here.

The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21-28 has always disturbed me . It’s tough to put a positive spin on Jesus seeming to reject a mother’s plea for her sick child (and not very politely at that) because she belongs to the wrong race. Lately I’ve been wondering if he was testing her, to see whether she responded to prejudice with humble and unshaken faith rather than returning hostilities. A variant of his question to the man at the pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to be healed?”

Garret Keizer, who really ought to be the most famous Christian writer in America, offers a unique perspective in this Christian Century article from 1999:

What the gospel tells us, first of all, is that even Jesus sets limits. Even Jesus does not expect to help everybody. He is sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He can refuse to answer a ringing telephone. “He did not answer her a word.”

But even Jesus, who presumably has divine authorization for his limits (“I was sent …”), allows those limits to be stretched by another’s necessity. In other words, the rule here is that there is no rule, only a creative tension between our finite capacities and the world’s infinite need. And we shall perhaps have more energy for meeting the latter if we stop believing that the presence of tension in our lives argues for some deficiency in our faith. The servant is not above his master.

(Read the full article here.)

I think Keizer’s realistic humility is a compelling alternative to the rich liberal guilt trap. As Americans, we feel ashamed of the wealth gap between ourselves and the rest of the world, but the potentially infinite demands on our generosity cause such burnout that we then feel entitled to pamper ourselves. This is why so many liberal sermons on the “ethics of Jesus” depress me, with their simplistic emphasis on wealth redistribution rather than wealth creation, as if the only reason children were starving in Africa was that you (yes, you in the third pew, I can see you) had to have a new Treo 750. But I believe that everyone, no matter how strong, needs help and spiritual nourishment; everyone, no matter how weak, has a role to play as an active participant in her own healing.

Today in church, in the space of 90 seconds, our minister said, “Resist consumerism this Christmas – make donations in your friends’ names to Episcopal Relief and Development” and “Crafts from last week’s Christmas Fair are on sale in the parish hall at coffee hour”.

Me (driving home from the gym, worrying about my place in the literary pantheon and whether it’s really a virtue to eat an entire fruitcake so it won’t go stale): “If only I knew how to be happy! Oh, Jesus, why can’t I be happy?”

Jesus: “If you wanted to be happy, you would be. Obviously you want something else more. What is it?”

Me: “I want to be important.“

Jesus (who lately has been channeling Mr. T): “I died for you, fool! It doesn’t get more important than that.”

Me: “Um, that’s really nice of you and all, but it feels kind of generic. I mean, you died for everyone and I’m just incorporated by reference. Is there anything that makes me important as me?“

Jesus: “All operators are busy assisting other customers…please stay on the line…”