The title of the book is provocative. And it’s message is sure to offend some. But at the same time, its theme will provide encouragement to those who resist the pressure to conform to the spirit of this age.

You Will be Made to Care is due for release this week. It’s subtitle describes its focus: The War on Faith, Family and Your Freedom to Believe. The authors are evangelical Christians who have also been active in the political realm.

I’ve never offered a formal “book review” on this blog, and this will sound decidedly “Christian,” so fair warning for whether or not you wish to read on.

Like the majority of evangelical Christians in the United States, Erick Erickson and Bill Blankschaen advocate what are commonly called “traditional” values. In essence, that means their position reflects the one that was normative in the country until the past couple of decades.

I must acknowledge up front that in light of my review, I will be offered a signed copy of the book itself. I mention that fact because integrity requires me to do so. At the same time, I assure you that my own integrity would not allow me to offer an insincere recommendation, for any inducement. (Besides, having written book reviews for several military and civilian publications in the past, I am aware of the fact that receiving gratis copies of the texts is not uncommon.)

The initial chapter of the book describes the rapid shift in American moral values during the recent past.

After decades of culture wars, failed leadership in both parties, and almost eight years of a progressive president committed to fundamentally transforming America, there’s a sense that we are no longer slouching toward Gomorrah, as Robert Bork famously put it, but rushing headlong toward inevitable decline.

The authors make a persuasive argument that not only are citizens now pressured to tolerate lifestyles with which they disagree (something we understand is a fact of life in a democracy) . . . they are increasingly being pressured to act affirmatively to support and promote those very alternatives. They will be made to care!

My Personal Experience

I served twenty-four years as an Air Force chaplain, with twenty two of that on active duty. The armed forces are considered a bastion of conservative culture. That’s a good thing when it comes to patriotism (something becoming less common in the general culture). It can have some downsides also, but they are outweighed by the stability that is provided for this community that discharges the most important responsibility of any government, protecting the nation (i.e. the people, and in the case here in the United States, of the Constitution itself which enshrines their rights).

Because the president is the commander in chief, and the executive branch controls the military, it is vulnerable to excessive interference. One form of this comes in “social engineering,” where the political powers impose revisions they deem appropriate, with little or no regard for the utility or ethics of that intervention.

In some cases this is a good thing. The Republican dictate that African-Americans should be allowed to serve in the military was one such triumph. Another came more than eighty years later, when President Truman desegregated the armed forces in 1948.

In 1994, President Clinton implemented a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to allow homosexuals to serve in the military. This simply formalized the existing reality. However, in 2011 President Obama removed the ban to public practice of this previously “alternative” lifestyle. But this has not proven adequate for those who would “make others care.”

Through aggressive indoctrination and ruthless suppression of any competing voices, social engineers press forward their goal of eradicating any “traditional” voice on this subject.

And here is where Erickson’s and Blankschaen’s warning becomes most frighteningly accurate. When they have stilled any contrary voices, they notch the pressure up one more degree and say it is no longer sufficient to tolerate a given activity, now you must actively support or even celebrate it.

The pressure is being ratcheted up on chaplains even as you read this. The goal of some would be to purge all evangelicals from the ranks, and replace them with clergy from religious bodies that affirm the new policies. Either that, or dispense with chaplains altogether. After all, to many inquisitors of the new age the very notion of the world having a Creator is itself archaic and regressive.

Do Not Despair

This book would not be worth the read if it merely diagnosed the disease. But the authors also offer a remedy.

Now is not the time for quitting. Now is the time for engaging culture strategically with an understanding of the times in which we live and a reinvigorated faith in God. Now is the time for building up our own faith and intentionally surrounding ourselves with a community that shares our beliefs. These may well be “times that try men’s souls . . . Such times can produce a new generation of heroes because they offer an opportunity for clarity, authentic community, and courageous leadership.

C.S. Lewis, whose words and thoughts frequent the columns here at Mere Inkling, waged a cultural battle during his life. He paid a price for his defense of the Gospel and of traditional values. He was ridiculed for his “simple” faith that trusted the words of Jesus and the Scriptures.

Lewis knew the truth of the Lord’s warning. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:18-20)

Lewis did not bemoan this fact. Rather than be shunned into silence he championed the truth. This book advises we follow the same course (and even includes a couple of pertinent Lewis quotes). The following sounds like something that Lewis would have written if he were alive today (in either Europe or America).

In addition to supporting live-and-let-live legislation and leaders who demonstrate the courage to stand for your freedom of conscience, there is really something much more basic to Christianity that each of us should do as citizens—love your neighbor. I don’t mean love them in some sort of philosophical or esoteric way, but really and truly connect with the people in the community in which you live and do good to and for them.

Right now the publishers are offering a special incentive to preorder the book. By going to this link, You Will Be Made to Care, you will find details about the bonus materials. It’s quite an eclectic list, including a collection of devotions, a sermon entitled “The Believer in the Public Square,” an audio collection, and a PDF cookbook. (Invite me over if you decide to make some of the cappuccino knots; they look delicious.)

A Final Lewis Thought on Government Oppression

I recently read some correspondence between C.S. Lewis and fellow writer Idrisyn Oliver Evans in 1954. Apparently Evans had taken a government job that involved the oversight of some government publications. Lewis’ fictitious titles are entertaining and insightful.

You inflict, as well as suffering, the punishment of Tantalus in your description of your new job. I can’t imagine what sort of books that library contains. Is it titles like Seven Ways of Spoiling a Landscape, The War Against Agriculture, Amenities are Bunk and Liberty: Its Cause and Cure? But I expect you would commit the sin of Tantalus if you told me.

Liberty: Its Cause and Cure. Brilliant!

Lewis was not able to preserve the letter he received, but we do have a copy of this subsequent letter to his friend. I was taken aback by his comment about the civil service. Lewis must certainly have been writing in the context of governmental bureaucracy and the growth of regulations restricting freedom.

The previous criticism, quoted above, is referred to in passing, but Lewis hastens to note it included a “grain of seriousness.”

The words are sobering, especially for those of us who align with civic institutions. And they provide a fitting close for the review of a book warning about the government’s growing predilection to use its coercive power so that we would all be made to care . . .

There was a grain of seriousness in my rally against the Civil Service. I don’t think you have worse taste or worse hearts than other men. But I do think that the State is increasingly tyrannical and you, inevitably, are among the instruments of that tyranny . . .