The Constantine Option

The Logical Conclusion of Blank Slate Theory

They may not be literate enough to know it by name, but nevertheless the moderns have evangelized the blank slate theory so effectively and for so long that it's nearly dogmatic in the West. For the unfamiliar, blank slate theory is the idea that people are born, well, a blank slate. This is to say, a person's psychology, personality, sense of morality, and therefore all their behavior is learned, not innate. Claims to the effect of "it's just how they were raised," "he's a product of his environment," and "socioeconomic factors" necessarily start with the premise of the blank slate theory.

It should go without saying to my audience that this view stands in stark contrast to Christianity, and in particular the doctrine of original sin. We understand that all mankind is born into the sin of Adam, stained by his guilt, and because of this we have a wicked nature from the womb. The whole Law and prophets existed to communicate this to mankind, and without this understanding we cannot appreciate the work of Christ at all. When He came, His kinsmen expected Him to relieve them of their environment, their "socioeconomic factors," if you will, but He refused. He did not come to relieve them of their nurture, He came to relieve them of their nature.

The West, however, is no longer Christian, and in losing Christ we lost also our immune response to diseases such as this. So long have we been infected by nonsense such as this that the very late stages of disease are becoming visible.

Incubation

The problem of evil, it turns out, is much more a problem to the secular modernist than to the Christian. The Christian answers it as we already have, by understanding that the evil is deeply within us, and God is merciful by not irradiating evil (us) from the world. The modernist throws off religion and expects to find evil easier to understand without it, but is instead tortured by the wickedness of mankind. He answers this riddle the best he can in natural terms, which is to say not very well, by saying evil men must have learned to be evil from other men.

Like all modernist inventions, it soothes the conscience by moving the problem where it cannot be seen. The thief is not evil, he was simply taught to be a thief, or made into one by circumstances, and in either case the true criminal is nowhere to be found. The murderer is not evil, he was simply made into one by his traumatized childhood, and is as much a victim as the widows and orphans in his wake. Already you can begin to see how the moderns have come to be so soft on crime.

Illness

The modernist is compelled by his wicked premise that no one can truly be accountable for his actions, because he is merely tossed about by the waves of circumstance. This reasoning applies to a whole nation as much as to a single man, and it is from this broad application of the theory that the notion of the "noble savage" is born of. So it is that the modernist comes to excuse the human sacrifice, cannibalism, and genocide of other cultures - they cannot be punished for this, because it is to them as morning coffee is to us. "It's just how they were raised."

Criminals are not to be punished at all, they're to be rehabilitated. They must be nurtured, because it was their nurture which caused them to commit the crime to begin with. If we could simply amend their nurture, we could cure their disease. This delusion now makes the modernist vulnerable to whole philosophies preaching utopia. Socialists are not made by theories of economics, they're made by theories of mind.

Death

Taken to its logical conclusion, the blank slate assumption leads to a complete rejection of evil as a concept. If every act is nothing but a grand sum of lived experiences up to that point, no one has agency at all, and justice is impossible. The only injustice would be to punish the criminal as though they did have agency, to hold him accountable for his deeds.

It is at this point that even murder can be excused, even in civil society, by appealing to some circumstance. Mothers slaughter their unborn children appealing to their finances, even their already born children appealing to postpartum depression, and find broad support. At this very moment, Lindsay Clancy is on trial for triple murder of her children, appealing to this very thing, and finding broad support among women. Nearly a million dollars have been crowdfunded for her.

This is perfectly to be expected. It is entirely downstream of this reasoning. She is not evil for murdering her children, she is simply a product of the tribulation of postpartum depression. Her circumstances are to be blamed, not her. She is a victim, even the murder she committed.

Rebirth

There are only two ends to this madness. Either we return to Christ and to sanity, or He will give us over to be devoured by our desires and our delusions. Whether we are reborn or allowed to die as a civilization, He is the beginning and the end. Therefore, our dilemma is as much a political matter as an ecclesial one, and the church must act accordingly. We will be derided for "legislating our morality," but behold, the moderns are already legislating theirs. It's as simple as deciding whether we will be governed by the Truth or by lies. It is not a difficult choice.