Book Review: "Made This Way" by Leila Miller & Trent Horn

Amidst our shifting cultural landscape, a plot of solid ground is valuable real estate. Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today's Tough Moral Issues provides the terra firma that parents are seeking. And while this book brings an abundance of Scripture and Church teaching to bear on issues, its keenest strength is grounding its moral arguments in the natural law - the universal moral truths discerned by reason and known to consciences (Christian, theist, and atheist) the world over.

Trent Horn and Leila Miller are the perfect duo to craft such a book. Trent is one of the most gifted thinkers and apologists on the scene, and Leila is an outspoken mother of eight whose blog and last two books address the most pressing needs of today's children.

Miller and Horn tackle ten issues: Sex outside of marriage, same-sex "marriage," divorce, contraception, abortion, reproductive technologies, modesty, pornography, transgender identity, and homosexuality. Each is addressed via the three-pronged approach of: 1) what the Church teaches; 2) how to address the topic with young children; 3) addressing it with older children. The book is written  in Leila's melodic voice, but the brilliance of both minds is on display.

As I said, readers are given a crash course in Scriptural passages and Church documents pertinent to these issues, but most helpful for parents will be the rubber-meets-the-road examples and faultless reasoning they can bring into conversations with their children, especially their teens. An example from the chapter on transgenderism:

When a person has a body dysphoria unrelated to sex or "gender," everyone understands that the person needs help. When an anorexic looks in the mirror, she might see someone who is obese, even if she weighs much less than everyone else her age. We don't tell that girl, "That's right, you are overweight, and we will help you reach the weight that's right for you." Instead we say, "What you perceive yourself to be, well, that isn't you. In reality, you are dangerously underweight, and because we love you, we aren't going to help you harm yourself." That is the loving response.... 

....[I]f we are rightly disgusted that a doctor would amputate the healthy limbs of a person who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder [or trans-ableism], then why aren't we equally disgusted by doctors amputating the healthy genitals of persons who identify as transgender? This mental gymnastics of holding both positions at once (trans-able = bad; transgender = good) is not tenable, unless we completely obliterate in our own minds that man and woman mean something objectively, as we know that healthy and disabled do. (p. 210-12)

That is powerful reasoning, one that any teen should be able to grasp and bring with her into conversations with peers of different religious and philosophical backgrounds. My favorite part of their argument on this subject, however, was when they raised the example of Rachel Dolazel, the former head of the Spokane NAACP, a caucasian woman who claims to be "trans-black":

...[I]f Dolazel had claimed she was a black man, then her "progressive" critics would have said she was half right. Yet, how can we tell a person she's wrong about her sincere sense of her racial identity, but right about her sense of gender identity - when both exist only in the imagination? There is no logic to saying we affirm your "sense" of being a man but we condemn your "sense" of being black. Your teens will see the contradiction here. (p. 211)

Yes, I dare say they will - as should anyone sincerely committed to logic and common sense.

Miller and Horn have created a resource that will be cherished by every parent looking to raise their children on tried and true, solid moral ground. Made This Way (Catholic Answers Press, 2018) has my wholehearted endorsement.

Moral Relativism - Making Conversation

Here are some common things you will hear from people who subscribe to moral relativism and brief responses that you can use in challenging them to rethink their position.  Again, let me acknowledge my debt to Beckwith & Koukl's Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air 

“You shouldn’t force your morality on me.”

Is that your conviction?  You honestly believe that?

Well, my conviction is that I should try and convince others of my moral beliefs.  Are you telling me that my convictions are false?  How can you say your convictions are true and mine are false?   What gives you the right to force YOUR CONVICTIONS on me?

“You shouldn’t force your morality on me”

Why Not?  If you think about it, you are trying to force your morality on me - your belief that it is wrong for me to try and "force" my beliefs on someone else.  You are trying to get me to change my behavior; and that's the very thing you just told me not to do.

“Who are you to say?”

You can respond with, “Who are YOU to say, ‘Who are you to say?'  I’m not asking you to agree with me because I’m some kind of moral authority.  I’m asking you to explore this issue with me rationally, in the belief that intelligence and reason can lead us to an understanding of right and wrong.

“Jesus said, ‘Judge not lest you be judged.’”

I like to respond, “and what was Jesus next statement?”  It was “condemn not, lest you be condemned.”

When Jesus said that we are not to judge, he meant it in the sense of not concluding that an individual was damned in the eyes of God. He did not tell us to refrain from judging actions.   

HE SAID THIS IN THE MIDST OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.  It’s a three chapter sermon on what ACTIONS, on what BEHAVIORS, are virtuous and which are sinful - which behaviors will lead you to the kingdom of heaven or Gehenna!

Tolerance is given to people, not ideas or behavior.  I won’t despair of a pedophile's salvation, God can bring anyone to repentance.  But I do want him incarcerated, and I will shout that pedophilia is a disgusting wrong from whatever tower you’ll allow me.  I’ll do that for a long list of human behaviors.  
Jesus certainly has not revealed to me who is going to heaven or hell - there is such a myriad of variables involved that no one but Him should ever attempt to make that kind of statement.  What Jesus has done is tell to us, objectively speaking, what actions lead to each destination.  No one but He is aware of an individual soul's culpability.

Battling Moral Relativsim - Resources

Hey, here are those links to resources I promised on today's radio show. 

Lets start with links to writings from Blessed Pope John Paul II:
Faith & Reason (Fides et Ratio)
The Splendour of Truth (Veritatis Splendor)

Next, let me recommend a very readable, down-to-earth presentation of the issue, Francis Beckwith & Gregory Koukl's Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air
 
Now, for the more philosphically-minded out there, looking for a bit of a challenge.  Let me point you to pertinent sections from St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa:
Natural Law, Summa Theologica > First Part of the Second Part > Question 94
Truth, Summa Theologica > First Part > Question 16

And then there a some helpful articles on these same points in the Catholic Encyclopedia (they break down Aquinas' thought a bit more):
Natural Law
Truth

If you come back tomorrow I'll put up some of those tips Dr. Vost and I shared for talking with people who embrace moral relativism.

Special Education - "Spirituality" in Public Schools?

I heard a fantastic homily awhile back – well, the first part of it anyway.  Father’s initial comments set me on a train of thought I will pass along in the body of the article.  Father asked us to contemplate the incredible gifts that God has given us.  He pointed out that we humans are the most complex life form on earth, and that it is our ability to think that gives us that position.  He pointed out what a quantum leap human intelligence was.  Other animals have "intelligence;" they can be trained.  Other animals display emotions; my dog will whimper when he’s denied a treat.  But only we human beings have the ability to step back and reflect upon our actions and words – and even our thoughts and emotions!  And then Father said something that really jumped out at me:  “We have a responsibility to develop our thinking powers, to grow our God-given intelligence.  That’s true whether you are in MENSA or a special education classroom.”  With that, my own mind was off to the races; I've had the privilege of working in special education. 

Father’s words got me thinking about the downright “spiritual” quality to human intelligence.  What do I mean by that?  Well, we invest a lot of time thinking about things that are not composed of molecules, that cannot be investigated or confirmed in a laboratory.  I’m referring to “things” like fairness and human rights.  As my friend Michael Vento likes to point out, “Has someone ever seen a human right?  How many inches long is it?”  We take other nations, such as China, to task for their human rights violations.  We expect a nation, a completely different culture on the far side of the world, to recognize them.  We’re absolutely convinced these things exist, constructing our whole legal system upon them; and yet they are non-physical.

Our federal and state governments are convinced that every student, no matter how severe his or her disability, has the right to a “free and appropriate education” (FAPE in educational parlance), “in the least restrictive environment possible” (LRE).  Interpretation:  School districts must provide whatever staff and materials are necessary to make sure that every child can take part in the education process, and that the child should be educated alongside his/her regular education peers whenever possible.  Speech-language, occupational, and physical therapists are there to facilitate that.  For some medically fragile students this means hiring a personal nurse to accompany the student throughout his/her day.   Children's educational rights have to be a substantive reality for the federal and state governments to devote so much money to them, don't they?  The right to an education, like every right, is something immaterial; and yet we fight legal battles based upon our convictions that they are in fact real.

Can’t you hear someone coming at this completely from the outside though?  “Shane, some of the children serviced in special education have conditions that will probably never allow them to progress past the age of three cognitively.  Some children have conditions that will prevent them from living to adulthood.  You want us to continue allocating millions and millions of dollars to this based upon something called a ‘right’?  I don’t believe there is any such thing; you can’t show it to me!  Don’t try to impose your beliefs (you can also read 'spiritual tenets' or 'religion') on me.  We have a separation of church and state in this country.”

And what I would respond with, and I think the federal and state governments would have to as well, are the words Thomas Jefferson placed in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  Government does not exist to create laws or legislate morality, but to safeguard people’s rights – the opportunities and treatment to which they are objectively due.  “But how do you come up with these rights?” our objector might respond.

Wonderful question – like Jefferson, we are falling back on what at an earlier point in the Western world was called Natural Law.  ( C.S. Lewis called it the Tao.)  They are the truths that are self-evident to us simply from observation and the use of our reason, our power to reflect upon actions, words, thoughts, and attitudes.  How did we arrive at a child who has a severe disability having the right to a “free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment possible?”  Because we can see that this is a child, and we know that children have a right to be loved.  Part of loving them is giving instruction and welcoming them into the community.  And so, we must do this.

No one religion is being forced upon people, but there is this implicit understanding that there is an objective order, a standard of right and wrong, to which we human beings are expected to adhere.  It doesn’t matter that someone feels an “overwhelming urge” toward a behavior the Natural Law recognizes as “wrong” –ask any person sitting in jail!  The Natural Law - and the desire to pretend that it doesn't exist -  is at the root of many of the social battles going on in our country.  We'll look at a couple of those in upcoming posts.