I'll Know It When I See It

This week we had our Picnic in the Park. As I talked with new folks and got caught up in reminiscing with old friends, I just sat back and reflected on our LifeGroup. We’re 6 months in and thriving. New people are coming almost week after week, our discussions are amazing, and I’m really thankful to have this community with you all.

I’ll Know It When I See It

A brief history lesson to begin. In 1964 the United States Supreme Court took on a case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, which involved an examination of that state’s obscenity laws. Nico Jabobellis managed the Heights Art Theatre in Cleveland Heights and exhibited Louis Malle’s The Lovers, a film that addressed the topic of adultery and contained a brief moment of nudity. While not a critically beloved film, it was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1958. But he was charged and convicted of violating the state’s obscenity statutes for showing the film. {**Tangent**- Please do not think little of Malle, his earlier Elevator to the Gallows is a great crime thriller, and his poignant semi-autobiographical film Au Revoir Les Enfants is excellent!} But at issue was the law in Ohio and whether or not it was in violation of the First Amendment right to Free Speech. The Court found that it was but could not agree upon a rationale. The majority had four different opinions, and one of the concurrences, written by Justice Potter Stewart, was made famous. He stated that the Constitution protected all forms of obscenity, with the exception of “hard-core pornography,” and laid out his reasoning as follows, “I shall not today attempt to further define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” (emphasis mine).

The admission is an important one in light of the context of First Amendment jurisprudence during the counter-cultural revolution. Just 7 years earlier, the Court created what is known as the Roth test, which involved questioning whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find the material appealing only to a prurient interest in sex or whether the material was utterly without redeeming social value. It was then 11 years after Jacobellis, 1973, that the Court removed the “utterly without redeeming social value” portion of the test and altered it to that which lacks “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” in Miller v. California. It was this reading of the law that allowed the mail-order pornography business to continue, but keep in mind it was the customer that allowed it to flourish. And this gets us to the center of the issue at hand. Part of the reason we can watch the standards of the court decline over time is that it reflected the social decay that the counter-cultural revolution brought with it. But here is where most folks miss the mark. Just because something is legally allowable does not make it morally correct.

That is what makes our court cases so fraught and impactful. Because the moral foundation of society has become unmoored, it is left to the courts to define the new boundaries. The church was rejected as a central authority, so a new one had to be established. So instead of one Judge upon a throne, we’re given nine educated folks in robes. I’d opt for the throne. Because you can see, just over the course of barely more than a decade, how fickle the approach is to just one single issue. This moral laxity allows one to draw a line from Louis Malle’s The Lovers (where the state sought to remove objectionable material from the marketplace) to Gender Queer (where state schools provide this free to elementary school children via the in-school library). “When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.” (A Man for All Seasons) And chaos is what we find ourselves mired in today.

The issue, in a nutshell, is that we, collectively as a society, have outsourced monumental decisions of morality and decency to an unelected political branch. To the secular mind, this makes a tremendous amount of sense. It allows arguments on both sides to be made. It allows an identifiable group of intellectuals of significant respect and stature to weigh those arguments. And it allows a finality of judgment that is publicly made and thoroughly established. All very sensible and forthright, except it is utterly insane. It places people at the center of our most entangling moral questions and expects fallen, faulty, short-sighted creatures to wade into causes célèbre without passion or prejudice and render a verdict approaching justice. But even the most fastidious safeguards cannot even dream of attaining what we get from our Righteous Judge. Eternity. The judgments rendered by man are necessarily temporary, and one generation cannot force another to remain beholden to it. But God’s word is everlasting and unchanging. In the search for justice, there is only one authority.

“I know it when I see it” is a statement of faith, but of faith misplaced. It is an assumed faith in our own future judgment, betting on ourselves. Where we once quibbled about the appropriateness of a film, we now use the court as a battleground to decide what is and is not a woman and whether children should be free, not to vote or enter into contracts or drive, but to agree to life-changing medical surgery without parental consent. We cannot be trusted. Because there is a fatal flaw in the “I know it when I see it” mindset. Just viewing the objectionable material has an effect all its own. Online content moderators consistently prove this. Those whose job it is to review banned content on social media, ranging from benign copy-right infringement cases to violent and pornographic ones, run the extraordinary risks of PTSD, higher rates of burnout, relationship breakdown, and in the most dramatic cases even suicide. “I know it when I see it” is superseded by “Be careful little eyes what you see.”

For many, seeing is believing. It’s a common refrain in religious discussions. We even see this mindset in the apostle Thomas. Forever associated, unfortunately, with doubt, we know Christ’s response to Thomas’ hesitation, “Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29) {**Tangent**-Please do not think little of Thomas, earlier in John, “Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14:5) Church tradition (not gospel) holds that Thomas carried the Word into southern India, some even say into China, returning to India where he met a martyr’s death. Once he was shown the way, he followed it to the grave.} But his better-known instance of doubt addresses our obsession with observation. This brings to mind the account of the Israelite spies in the land of Canaan. After reporting the magnificence of the Promised Land to the community, 10 of the 12 spies sent out had this to say, “But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large…We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are” (Numbers 13:28 & 31b) The problem with our sight is that we view the world through the lens of our own experience and nothing more! Thomas did not allow the impossible to enter his mind. The 10 faithless spies could not comprehend winning a military victory over a “superior” force. Both exclude God’s infinite power and complete control. Believe without seeing! “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)

A final note about faith. The rules for God do not apply to us. When it comes to living our faith, it turns out that God wants to see the results. Our Sunday group is working through Jeremiah, and the warning from that prophet to the Israelites could be given in any pulpit in America today, “If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to you own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever.” (Jeremiah 7:5-7) Four aspects to repentance, and the first three listed are observable actions with other people. And Jesus warns against the coming of false prophets this way, “By their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit, you will recognize them.” (Matthew 7:16-20) Glancing at our culture today, what sort of fruit do you see being borne? {**Tangent** Please do not think little of people. “We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)} What fruit does your life bear, what are you looking for, in whom is your faith placed? “A person may think their own ways are right, but the Lord weighs the heart.” (Proverbs 21:2) Our words can mislead, our actions can misdirect, but the Lord judges the heart. What will He see when examining yours? Because it’s either one or the other. Are you a false prophet doomed to be cut down and fire-bound, or a true believer? He’ll know it when He sees it.

Jordan Williamson