When Thieves Sue

We've all heard of cases where a thief is injured in the process of their thieving and then they turn around and sue the person they are stealing from. One of many examples can be found here. While we are familiar with the ridiculous idea that thieves would sue their victims, I have not yet found an example of a thief winning their lawsuit. Perhaps some have, but it seems that would be the rare exception.

This idea of stealing from someone and then turning on them however is far more common in the world of ideas. In particular people endlessly purloin their favorite bits of the Christian worldview only to turn and pounce on the person they just plundered. A recent example can be seen in Anne Hathaway's speech when receiving the Equity Award from the Human Rights Campaign. The especially important part of the video is between 2:59-5:15 which has been edited down and is floating through the Twitterverse.

A whole series of posts could be written to interact with the ideas Anne propounded, but for this post there are only two points that I shall focus on because they are both examples of pillaging the Christian worldview. First, is the declaration which closes the Twittered clip in the time segments above where she states, "Love is love," and the second point revolves around her gallantry regarding human rights which afforded her the opportunity to make the speech in the first place.

Love is love

Hathaway clearly agrees with Hamlet regarding the glories of love, "Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love." After all, "love is love."

While this saying seems simple enough, the landmines hiding in this hazardous copulative sentence are legion. Conquering the urge to pontificate about tautologies, let us instead consider ontologies. Ontology is the study of being or existence. It seeks to dive down into the crevasse of the question, "What is ... IS?"

Now dear Anne's statement makes far more sense - Love exists. Where ever love is ... there it is. Comparing such words to the endless volumes of sagely wisdom proves that Anne's astuteness is to be found in a league all its own. The "League of the Extraordinarily Obvious" perhaps?

The problem is that while Anne grew up Catholic and then did a short stint as an Episcopalian, she is now "nothing" (warning Hathaway's other nickname is Potty-mouth Annie). There is a deep irony in Hathaway's hallmark claim to spiritual nothingness and being a work in progress, because that is exactly where a non-Christian universe comes from - NOTHING. And to quote the late, great Francis Schaeffer, "Not just nothing, but nothing nothing."

Start with nothing nothing and work your way up to "love is," how many ingredients must we pick up at the ontology superstore? I'll give you three guesses, but you should only need one.

This is where Hathaway's hijacking of the Christian worldview becomes so clear - she desperately believes in and loves love, but if the stars burn with fire because they are the accidental collocation of atoms then love is nothing more than a chemical reaction in our brain. If the first principle of this universe is accident how in the world (double entendre intended) can love be intentional?

Only by assuming this world was lovingly made by an eternal lover can Anne's statement come anywhere close to being coherent. Only in the triune God where Father loves Son and Spirit, and Son loves Father and Spirit, and Spirit loves Father and Son can there be found the proper ground required for love. "We love, because he first loved us."

Anne wants the love only God can provide, but she wants to have nothing to do with the Lover. So you see Hathaway has haphazardly stumbled upon a great truth - Love really is love, but only by holding to the Christian worldview.

Human Rights

This second point will be far shorter because it travels on the coattails of the first. Atheist philosopher Luc Ferry in his excellent book A Brief History of Thought has marvelously argued that human rights are entirely bound up with Christianity. Ferry writes, "Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity - an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance" (72). 

The deepest of ironies lies under Hathaway's receiving an Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign which fundamentally denies the only worldview which can adequately account for human rights in the first place. To quote Tevye's nearly soaring wisdom from Fiddler on the Roof, "If you spit in the air, it will land in your face." 

Before you get your panties twisted up like a cheap hammock, please understand that I am supremely for human rights. I am able to say that because I believe that humans are valuable because the eternal, all-powerful God created them in his image. We are those created by the only God who can ground love and human rights, the God who calls us to enter into the Trinitarian dance of love as C. S. Lewis put it. 

The problem is that we believe we are more loving than the eternal lover. We believe we are more inclusive than the eternal community to which we are called to be joined to by union with Christ. The most amazing thing is how we as sinful people demand that God be formed into our image and define love and inclusion the way we want to define it.  

But even more amazing is that God did become formed into our image in Jesus. He looked "not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others" because "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:4, 6-8). 

Jesus was formed into our image and lived as a servant for the express purpose of dying for those who were seeking to rule over him. He died for those who wanted the love and inclusive community which flow from him alone and yet who denied him his rightful place as Lord. I hope that the Holy Spirit will awaken Anne to see how she is stealing the gifts of God while also attempting to sue the Giver. 

One day the King will come back and there will be no mulligans, it will be too late to apologize. When the King returns we are either those who are found on the guest list for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb or we are on the menu for the Great Supper of God (see Revelation 19:6-21, and here is a sermon to explain this further). 

How about you - have you been kiping the King's worldview but denying his lordship? If so I hope you will think carefully on the origin of love and human rights so as to see the necessity of grounding those things in the God who became human.