Ideas Have Consequences Except When They Don't
The problem with this classic evangelical catchphrase
In 1948, Richard Weaver published Ideas Have Consequences, a classic of conservative thought. And he was right. Ideas do have consequences. For example, as our culture has increasingly come to accept the belief that humans are sovereign over their lives, it has fed directly into abortion and assisted suicide amongst other evils. The problem with this phrase is that it seems to have more explanatory power than it really does. Ideas have consequences, yes. But so do material conditions. So does our environment. Also, we can’t often disentangle the web of ideas that produced an outcome. It’s not just one idea, but several. “Ideas have consequences” is a powerful phrase to use when there is a tidy direct line to draw from, say, radical individualism to assisted suicide, but even then we must be cautious. What role does the medical industry and cost-saving measures play? What role does our disrespect for the elderly play? It’s complicated! What I want to argue today is that we should be very cautious when arguing that ideas have consequences. Not that we shouldn’t make that case, but that we shouldn’t flippantly use that phrase as a causal argument. Sometimes things seem to have a direct causal relationship based on an ideology, but that isn’t evidence that there is a causal relationship. The reality is, ideas have consequences, except when they don’t—which is all the time! And evangelicals across the theological and political spectrum use this phrase (despite its conservative origins) as a hammer to hit at their opponents. Progressives claim that abuse is consequence of the ideas of complementarianism. More conservative types claim that sin is the consequence of the ideas of more centrists types. When the reality is much more complicated and human. We’d all do well to use this phrase sparingly.
