I’m happy to talk about sexual morality - but mainly to say it has a lot more to do with taking care of ourselves and each other and a lot less to do with stoning people. I think that could be said about nearly any “morality” - a word that is quite possibly more dangerously legalistic and loaded than it is helpful.

Is there a problem with having a strong defense?

Just made a long comment on your post from several weeks ago about Bailie and Christian apologetics. I was a bit critical there, so I wanted to also say that I really like the general direction you take things here in this post. I think scapegoating in place of real self-reflection is all too common on the left, the right, and everywhere in between (including in me).

Where I part ways with you is where you say “Talk of social justice abounds, but too often such talk doesn’t call into question our lifestyles; it focuses on oppressive structures. The scapegoats are the consumerists, materialists…”

If we’re scapegoating “the consumerists” or “the materialists”, then we aren’t actually “focusing on oppressive structures”. We’re just blaming people.

I really don’t think the solution is less focus on oppressive structures and more focus on our “lifestyles”. On the contrary, I think “lifestylism” can be a real easy way out (for Anabaptists especially), where we substitute a self-gratifying quest for personal purity (Jesus wasn’t much for that) in place of a real commitment to confronting unjust systems (Jesus was big into that).

We don’t need more lifestylism, we need a better understanding of what we are talking about when we talk about “oppressive structures”. We need a better understanding of how systems are not just the sum of their parts, how dynamics of privilege and exclusion function (with no need for a single malevolent guiding hand or conspiracy) in our institutions, how the Powers (as Walter Wink calls institutions) in their fallen-ness can manipulate all of our best intentions to serve evil purposes.

Most of us aren’t used to thinking in systemic terms, so discussion can easily devolve into personal namecalling and scapegoating (and I’ve been guilty of that as much as anyone). So let’s have less scapegoating, more focus on oppressive structures, and leave excessive lifestylism to the Pharisees (oops, that’s us).