Lost Causes

As I continue to work through the life of Donald Davidson for my thesis, I am amazed at how easy it is to get mixed up in lost causes. The idea of the lost cause is a favorite of historians, especially those of the Civil War era. Davidson backed the agrarian movement, the regionalism movement, and the distributist movement. All of these failed completely to make any changes in national policy about anything.
What is a lost cause? My first year of post-baccalaureate work required me to take a senior level history class called Great Losers. Each week we had to write a presentation that presented some person or civilization as a great loser in history. The genius of this class was, of course, you had to really know about history in order to argue that someone was a great loser. The idea of losing is really significant to us, I think. It goes right along with the idea of martyrdom. We are drawn to ideas and movements that create martyrs because we are mystified by the fact that anybody would die for anything. How can someone believe something so much that he or she would be willing to die for it. Davidson was not a martyr, at least not in the traditional sense, but he did latch onto several movements that were destined to fail.
The draw of the lost cause, I think, is the notion that you stood with something when there was little to no evidence that you ought to do so. The decision to remain on the sinking ship has a heroism about it that we relish in, if even vicariously. Tennyson wrote about the lost cause in the Charge of the Light Brigade.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

So many events come to mind when we consider the idea of lost cause. The Song of Roland captures the imagery of such an event, as Roland makes the decision to remain an fight, knowing death waits, to give the rest of the army time to get away. The Battle of Dunkirk is another moment when the idea of the lost cause rears its head, though in point of fact, not much was really lost then; maybe dignity. This brings us to one of the underlying roots of the lost cause and its attraction. Who could not have respect for someone who stood for a lost cause? Well, that depends on the cause I guess. It depends on whether your lost cause was the rescue of British soldiers from the beach of Dunkirk or racial segregation. They would, and should, be perceived very differently by most people. But in a majority of cases, someone who stood for a lost cause is going to get a lot of respect for having stood firm. That is because we are intoxicated with the desire for perseverance. We show so little of it, yet it permeates our human emotions. We persevere at so little that we are drawn to those who do, for whatever reason. I suspect that most people even have a minuscule amount of admiration for religious extremists simply because they believed what they believed so much that they were willing to die or blow themselves up for it. Most of us would not admit that in public, but I'll bet its there.
Sadly, this devotion to the lost cause because of the lack of evidence is where many people get stuck with religion. There are many people out there who are attracted to religious movements because they are the underdogs of society. Science and modernity are the big guys on the block these days and religion has been kicked to the corner. But along with religion has gone much of our social consciousness as well as those intangible things like manners, civility, honesty, integrity, and so forth. Many people cling to religion as a means to get those back and back the underdog at the same time. This is not right!
Rather we should consider the ways in which biblical, orthodox Christianity is like a lost cause to see why it isn't. First it certainly seems as though the reality of Christ's reign is disputed by every event of history. If Christ were ruling, how could cancer be so prevalent among us? If Christ were reigning, why would sexual predators get away with so much? It feels like a lost cause. But feelings can be deceiving. The objectivity of Christ's reign is not in the headlines, but in the Scriptures which declare, without compromise, that Christ reigns until His enemies are made His footstool. All the enemies of the gospel (not the established church, mind you) must be defeated through the spread of the gospel (Rev. 19:15).
Second, the social benefits of biblical Christianity are rooted in the faith of Christianity. Those who cling to religion for the social benefits usually do not really accept the faith. They are social Christians. Many people, especially in the South, have been reduced to this kind of faith. This is due to the fact that the modern world has tried its best to erase the antithesis from life. They are deceived into believing that they can synthesize Christianity and modernity into one seamless whole; that they can have their cake and eat it too. We want to be able to rebel against the law, to be antinomian, and have the benefits of the law at the same time. We want a religion that does not criticize our decisions to have pre-marital sex, view pornography, be deceptive for our own gain, or ignore the suffering of others. But at the same time we want the social benefits of the faith. We want people to get along, be civil , to each other. We want people to share of their good fortune with others. We want happiness.
Davidson, I think, understood that you can't have it both ways. That is why he chose to draw the line with the lost cuases. All of his lost causes were causes that stood in line with biblical Christianity, even if he didn't necessarily, against the failure and lies of modernity. Davidson understood the antithesis and stood firm, even if it meant ridicule or disdain, which it did.