New Dark Ages Culture

2012-01-07T14:10:00.000-08:00

I wish to see all arts, principally music, in the service of him who gave and created them. Music

is a fair and glorious gift of God. I would not for the world forgo my humble share of music.

Singers are never sorrowful, but are merry, and smile through their troubles in song. Music

makes people kinder, gentler, more staid and reasonable. I am strongly persuaded that after

theology there is no art that can be placed on a level with music; for besides theology, music is

the only art capable of affording peace and joy of the heart...The devil flees before the sound of

music almost as much as before the Word of God.

Martin Luther, from the introduction to Johann Walter’s hymnal: Wittenberg Geystliches gesang Buchleyn (1534).

2011-12-12T16:19:00.000-08:00

Here's the chart again -- let's see if it works this time. And in all that long foolishness, I neglected one question about what would have happened had we not bailed out GM and Wall St. I really don't know. But in principle, I think the government should stay away from getting involved with private enterprise. If it fails it fails. The problem is that one could say the failure came about by way of government intervention to begin with, through Fannie/Freddie, so they (Bush, anyway) felt a need to fix what he had helped damage?

Politics and the Economy

2011-12-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

Some of my friends and I have been talking about the political landscape on FB, and since my replies are getting longer and longer, I have answered here instead. The most recent posts were:

I'm curious. If we are to oppose a nuclear Iran, albeit with better information than we had when we went into Iraq, how can we do this without increasing spending? It's to a large degree this defense spending over the last 8 years that has put us in our current financial position. This is what troubles me about the Republican candidates; like Bush in 2000 (in the initiatives Ted notes), their claims for change have to be backed up with money, so their limited government ambitions are countered by their political aims. Paul would basically be arguing for an isolationist standpoint, so he's the only one who could back up his claims with a political ideology.

And what would have happened if Obama had not bailed out GM and Wall Street? I mean both on the short term and the long term? Do you think really think the free market would have bailed them out?

Would appreciate your thoughts.

and another:
Ron Paul knows exactly what to do to fix our financial crisis and has no other political aims that would stop him from doing so. Our economy and the world economy are the #1 issue right now and no other candidate aside from Paul has shown me that they will make the hard decisions to correct the mistakes that has put us in the horrible position we are in now.

These are great questions - thanks for making this a real discussion, you all. Andy, I think opposing a nuclear Iran right now will save us a lot of defense dept spending down the road as we wouldn't then have to fight another 10-year lite war as we did in Iraq. Some of the candidates have mentioned ways to restrict Iran without spending war-levels of money. (gasoline embargoes, et c). We can't pretend not to be a super-power (as I think it is clear Ron Paul's isolationism would have us do) but still we can listen very carefully to Paul's proposals, as well as Rick Santorum's -- each knows a great deal and has a lot of good advice, even if it is opposite in content. They are good men. You are right that Paul's position is consistent and clear - but it is mistaken, I believe. I am with him on the Constitution and the economy, but not on foreign policy. If we could have stopped Hitler in 1937, should we have done it?

One more point about the Iraq and Afghan wars -- I don't agree that they were the cause of our financial woes today. The combination of those two wars since 2003 doesn't come close to the spending lost through the housing crisis. "The sum of all the deficits from 2003 through 2010 is $4.73 trillion. Subtract the entire Iraq War cost and you still have a sum of $4.02 trillion." (that is from this write up on the issue ---- http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/iraq_the_war_that_broke_us_not.html.) The federal budgets were in the hands of the Dems since FY 2008, and the increase in spending is head-spinning. Bush added $4T to the deficit in 8 years, and Obama added that much in 2. Each should have to answer to the American people for their gross mis-management of our tax dollars, I think. But as to the war - the entire Iraq War, from 2003 to fall of 2011 cost $709B. In the first few months of Obama's term, the Dem-controlled congress spent more than that on one stimulus package. This is just the truth. Here's the chart:

SO about the bailouts, I am surely not an expert in this field, so I don't know what to suggest -- I AM an expert about my own household economy (not that I handle it well, only that I know more about it than anyone else...), and I find that when I spend more than I make I get into trouble. I would assume that the principle extends to governments as well (and I hold Greece and Spain up as examples). I think there has been a very sincere attempt on the part of many well-meaning people to do something good for those in need, namely help more low-income people into houses and out of renting. However, it was a little like trying to help more people get where they are going faster by getting them to flap their arms and jump off high buildings. It may seem like a good goal, but it doesn't take reality into consideration. So - we had a lot of people hitting the economic pavement at terminal velocity. It didn't matter to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd - they were receiving kickbacks from Fannie and Freddie to write the laws to exempt the mortgage houses from careful scrutiny. (If the Occupy WS folks really wanted to address corruption, all they would have to do is read the books being written on the Fannie/Freddie horrors.) Countrywide made out well for a long time...but then Wall St bundled those bad debts and sold them to unsuspecting investors, spreading the disease around the world, and THIS is the reason we have such a terrible economy now, and that's why Bush and Obama felt the need to spend the the breathtakingly huge amounts in bailouts. The Dems passed spending bills without the need for a single Republican vote in 2009, including the Obama health care bill (that came in at $1T all by itself, and they now say was grossly under estimated). This is the reason why the Dems lost the House and nearly the Senate in 2010. I think that (if the country doesn't have short-term memory loss) the House and the Senate and the WH will be in Republican hands this time next year.

2011-12-12T12:09:00.000-08:00

Why does it need to be so difficult? The reason that Europe is going under financially, and the USA is not far behind, is that countries have decided to care for the poor through the government rather than through the Church. When the Church cares for the poor, the poor are given a much larger gift than simply food or money. When the government is first told that it can have no religious affiliation, then is told it must be compassionate, it cannot help but offer only short-term material benefit, and so has no hope of getting the better of the problem. The church offers spiritual help as well as material help, and the Church offers the possibility of membership in a community - a community of people who are dedicated to living their lives for God instead of for themselves. This one aspect would disallow an individual to remain on welfare for very long.

Say you had a classmate who could never get his papers written on time, and regularly asked to copy yours and turn them in as his own. What if you had actually agreed to do this several times? Wouldn't you eventually try to explain to him that it actually would be better for him in the long run to get his own C than to get your A? Can you imagine how you would feel if a majority of your classmates and teachers sided with him arguing that they couldn't see how a C is better than an A in any way, so you should be more compassionate and let him copy your work each week? This is what it sounds like to those who are already paying most of the nation's taxes when politicians tell them, "you have to pay your fair share." The amount considered "fair" is not based on how much an individual should be required to contribute to the government, rather it is based on how much the individual will have left over compared to those who are less well-off. It is as though an equal amount of money for each citizen is a right that can be enforced by the government. Our ancestors called this tyranny. I don't believe that replacing the current president with another will solve this problem, but if he were replaced, it would be a sign that our country may have what it takes to survive this world-wide economic madness, and might be able to show the EU an alternative to the welfare state. If we all agreed that we mustn't bankrupt our government, and drastically reduced our spending in nearly every area, we would all be motivated to find an alternative to provide help for those in need - an alternative that would have to take a person's entire humanity into consideration, as the Church does.

2011-11-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

In order for a culture to accept homosexual practice as a cultural norm, people need to sever the link between enjoyment and purpose.

It is easy to see why people want to turn the question of homosexual marriage into a civil rights case. People should be free to marry whoever is preferred - society and its government shouldn’t be able to interfere in the personal lives and loves of its people. It is such a basic thought that to question it is to question both individual freedom and the very institution of marriage. God, rather than being a Designer with our best interests at heart, seems to become a cosmic kill-joy, creating people with desires they cannot satisfy. It seems we should oppose this limitation on principle, even if it doesn’t apply to us personally.

But on the contrary, God’s design of us must make us reconsider. Even if my opponent has dismissed the possibility of God himself, he can’t ignore the very specific practical purposes of the “hardware” we have each been given. (on a side note, it is not surprising that in a world that believes only in the physical, when the physical reflects a Designer, the first response is to ignore it, and if it cannot then be explained away, the next option is surgery...in any case, the physical MUST not be allowed to stand in the way of personal gratification.) In order to embrace (forgive the pun) the homosexual life as culturally acceptable, we must disengage the passionate experience from the purpose. If the sexual climax becomes the goal of the act, then who is to say that there is only one way to accomplish it? Why not two men? But with this reasoning, why should one stop there? Why not 3? Or with machines, or animals, or children? By rejecting the idea that the male is made for the female and vice versa, and separating the experience of sex from any sense of purpose for the act beyond momentary pleasure (building relation between husband and wife for raising the children they make; literally making the children; forging links in the generations of an extended family), we have become sexual anorexics. We like the taste of the food, but we reject (and eject) the nourishment. Imagine a culture that spent all of its time preparing and chewing the finest of foods but never swallowing. Wouldn’t that group eventually have to find ways to artificially ingest nourishment? IV lines into the arms, taking vitamins... and wouldn’t they necessarily have increased illnesses, physical and emotional? Is our culture not that way to a degree already? If we divorce the connection between nourishment and pleasure we will misunderstand the entire eating process. The same is true of sexuality. If we disconnect the pleasurable experience from the function, we will misunderstand the entire plan and purpose.

And it is no good claiming this is only a problem with those who practice homosexuality, it is just as much a problem for those heterosexuals who have made this separation. To indulge the pleasure of the moment without a knowledge of the purpose of the act is like clear-cutting forests or strip mining land. We want the profits and don’t care about what we do to our selves, our partners, or our homes. In each case, we need a re-grounding in the design of the Designer, and a reminder about how we are to both tend AND keep the world we have been given: tending means to help it come to fruition, and keeping means to protect and cherish.

When two men decide to care for one another in the way of husband and wife, they are not only going against the physical evidence, they are misunderstanding the nature of marriage. Marriage is the harmonizing of two people. Harmony in music (at least since 1100) can only happen when there is more than one pitch: a unison is not harmony. Two of the same gender cannot create harmony, harmony requires difference. And it is interesting that when two different pitches are tuned properly they generate overtones - some of which are actually new pitches, not merely octave representations of the original two.

What’s more, the greatest example of harmony is to be found within the Trinity. There, the three Persons have been in harmonic relation throughout eternity, making one single God able to love and relate in harmony, not unison. There are not three Fathers, or three Sons, or three Spirits -- there is one of each, and they have specific relations and roles they each play in relation to each other. Marriage is designed to be an imitation of that relation: a harmony of one made up of two different ones, and that cannot be accomplished if the two are of the same gender.

For those who look on reality from a sentimental point of view, it may seem harsh or unkind to put limits on the definition of marriage when it means that many desires will go unsatisfied. But surely this is a view that places individual desire above reality? Don’t we have rules that keep peoples’ desires in check in other arenas of life? Don’t we say that it is wrong to have sex with minors? (there are those trying to change that too, by the way, and on the same principles) and don’t we say that it is wrong to favor your own gender or race above others in court or business hiring? Why should those desires, preferences, and inclinations be limited when sexual desires are allowed free reign?

Why do you suppose past generations have been so clearly against homosexual practice? Could it be that they understood the design of the world better than we do, and, like the reasonable ban on adultery, knew that certain practices, if allowed free reign, would destroy the society?

2011-10-13T13:13:00.001-07:00

Bill is a coal miner. His father was a coal miner, and his grandfather was too. Here’s a picture of him coming out of the mine one day, with his fellow workers in their hard hats, grinning, looking forward to lunch.

But last year, Bill turned 22, and began to think that the mines were not as safe as they should be for the men who worked in them. He thought that if they were designed differently, he might be able to reduce the number of cave ins, so he began to think like an engineer, and learned quickly that he didn’t know what he needed to know about mine design, so he decided to start an engineering degree at the local vo-tech college. He took out a few student loans, and finished his degree nights while working a few shifts to make ends meet.

Once finished, he worked in the engineering office as an apprentice for a couple of years, and eventually was able to craft some designs of his own that were indeed very helpful for the company, and as a result, he was hired as an engineer (which paid, by the way, a salary higher than the hourly he drew as a miner). As the company implemented his designs, there were fewer problems, and the company turned a greater profit. As a result, he was given a bonus from the owners, and even some stock in the company.

Later, with his own salary, he purchased more stock in the company, as he wanted to invest something back into the business that had given him a livelihood. (He could have invested in pork bellies, or aerospace, and might have made more money in the long run, but he didn’t know anything about them, and his heart was in mining). So after awhile, he found that he owned a good portion of the company that he was working for, and as a result, as the company prospered, so did Bill.

Here’s a picture of Bill at age 62, leaving from the board room after discussing with the board the best designs for some new mines. Mines they were able to purchase partly because Bill had made the company more efficient. The company’s profits were spent opening these new mines, hiring more miners, and raising the hourly rates of the best miners (they wanted to keep their best producers happy).

Let’s compare the two pictures. The first is of Bill, dirty but grinning, wearing a blue collar and helmet; a worker. And the second was of Bill, clean, wearing a white collar, and looking for all the world like “management.”

But it is the same person. He was only a member of a “class” of people when you see his life in still photographs. If you see his life as a movie, day to day, his life is quite different.

Why should we be told in our country that “The rich are getting richer” or that “the corporations are taking the profits” as though these things are bad things? The only way the rich get richer is if the business is profitable. The only way the business is profitable is if they have product and buyers. The only way they have product and buyers is if the company is producing, and the only way the company can produce is if jobs are assigned and each does his job well. The CEO all the way to the least experienced miner. And the only way that you can hire CEOs OR miners is if you pay them a salary commensurate with their abilities. That means that some will be paid more than others. If some are paid more than others, it means by necessity that there will be the well-paid (rich) and the lesser-paid (poor). There is nothing insulting, sinful, degrading, or cruel about paying one more than the other. Bill was paid to dig coal by the hour when he started out, and was paid to design mines for coal workers to work in, and the two amounts were not the same. The difference in pay was simply a designation of the fact that the design work was considered more valuable by the hour than the digging (rather like a pound of diamonds are worth more than a pound of mulch). This was the result of the kind of gifts being exercised, and the rarity of those gifts. It really is the result of supply and demand: the supply of coal miners is larger than the supply of mine engineers, and the supply of those who have the ability to run the company are rarer still. The greater the supply, the lower the salary one can require. Likewise the demand: there is a demand for coal miners, otherwise none would be hired. It is not the kindness or cruelty of the owner of the mines that many or few jobs are offered to miners -- the demand for the coal dictates how much coal he needs to produce, and that dictates how many miners he needs to produce that amount. If the demand for coal suddenly went down, he would make less money with the company, and there would be no need for all the workers. On the other hand, if the demand goes up, the owner needs to hire more workers, and as the demand for workers goes up, so does the pay for a miner (meaning that the worker benefits when the company does well). If the owner were to keep all the profits for himself, he would not be putting the money into the pay for the miners, and they would not produce the amount of coal that he needs for the demand. This (like another still photograph of one moment in time) LOOKS possible, but it is only possible for a few moments before the company falls apart. The way the owner makes money is not by hoarding profits, it is selling the coal that he pays the miners to collect. If they don’t produce, he doesn’t have any profits to “keep.” If the demand for an excellent CEO or a trained mine engineer is high, there will be competition for their services at more than one company. The market-rate for hiring someone with that rare set of skills will go up, and the miner is a fool if he complains that those with greater or rarer skills are making more money than he is. It is part and parcel of the same system that pays him for the work he is doing. Destroy or interrupt the market’s influences on others and you will soon find that your own position is destroyed or interrupted as well. It is all the same piece of cloth.

In one picture, Bill looks like “the poor” in another he looks like “the rich” -- but he is the same person. Conservatives are accused of protecting “the rich” while abusing “the poor” - as though they are protecting Bill the coal miner from Bill the stock-purchasing mine engineer. But they are the same person. What conservatives are actually trying to do is to remember that life is not a still photograph but a moving, living, breathing day-to-day life where people are in flux, and because of this, they think that the best way to proceed is to protect freedom for each and every person regardless of position when the picture is taken. This is the freedom that Bill benefitted from.

Attacking the rich to serve the poor only makes sense if you see the world in categories suggested in still photographs. The attack takes all those in one category and forces them to help those in the other. If you see life more as a movie, the result of this attack is only to discourage Bill from studying, improving his gifts and offerings, and contributing more to the need of the company and the community. The result is that Bill remains a miner all his life (which is not bad in and of itself) but because of that, he doesn’t improve the mines, which in turn leads to more injuries and deaths. It also leads to lower profits for the company in the long run which means that they are not able to buy more mines and employ more workers, and the miners that ARE working are paid less than they would have been. How is this better in any meaningful way?

This is the reason we have a stagnant economy right now.

ps - some would say that I am not an economist. They would be right. But what about my parable here is wrong? It may be an oversimplification of more complex issues, but I would rather have you think of it as principled. Where are the principles wrong? I will consider any argument on that level. Arguments that suggest simply that I have neglected the complications of economics because I am not an economist must first address how those added complications oppose or change the principles I am offering before they will carry any weight with an honest man.

2011-09-21T09:13:00.001-07:00

Rational activity involves both ends and means. In a technological age we acquire an increasing grasp of the means to our goals, and a decreasing grasp of the reasons why we should pursue them. The clarity of purpose that I observed in Homer’s Odysseus is not a clarity about means: it is a clarity about ends, about the things that are worth doing for their own sake, like grieving and loving and honoring the gods. The mastery of means that emancipated mankind from drudgery has brought with it a mystery of ends - an inability to answer, to one’ sown satisfaction, the question what to feel or do. The mystery deepens with the advent of the consumer society, when all the channels of social life are devoted to consumption. For consumption, in its everyday form, is not really and end. It destroys the thing consumed and leaves us empty-handed: the consumer’s goals are perpetually recurring illusions, which vanish at the very moment they loom into view, destroyed by the appetite that seeks them. The consumer society is therefore phatasmagoric, a place in which the ghosts of satisfactions are pursued by the ghosts of real desires.

Roger Scruton, from An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture, page 32

2011-08-31T10:47:00.001-07:00

I would like to make a case for something that should need no case – faith. Ultimately, faith itself is nothing – it is the object of faith that is significant (obviously I could have faith that my pen would save me – and a nice pen it is too – but God Himself is a bit more authoritative regarding my soul). So I don’t mean in any way to say that it doesn’t matter who you put your faith in. However, I would like to take a minute to consider faith itself and what part it plays in the life of a person.

I have often fallen into a way of thinking that goes sort of like this: there is a clear choice in life. You can either live by faith, or you can live by sight. The Christian (and followers of other religions) live by faith, the typical atheistic scientist lives by sight. And this dichotomy runs full through all things – you can know by faith (that is, taking the bible seriously), or you can know by sight (that is, trusting your senses, your experiences, the latest science). Knowing itself is accomplished by 2 different routes, and the Christian is on one, and the majority of the academic world is on the other. (Small wonder we have such dissonances at college!)

But this is a cheat – what I am finding is that it is not this way at all. It turns out that living and knowing by faith is the default position, and that even those who claim to be living and knowing by sight are not able to do so. In fact, no one lives without faith. By that, I mean everyone lives trusting in things he cannot see or touch.

When you go to the dentist, a strange and mysterious thing happens – a person (and perhaps someone you don’t even know), in a mask and white coat, picks up a needle, or a sharp instrument, or sometimes something that sounds like a tiny buzz saw, and asks you to open your mouth. Now, one might question a person’s sanity at what happens next. Like lambs to the slaughter, we dutifully open our mouths. It happens every day, at hundreds of points around the city, and no one thinks anything of it. Nothing on the news… but if you want to see just how insane this act is, just change the circumstances. Let’s say you are walking down a dark alley one night and out from the shadows jumps a guy with a needle in one hand and a sharp instrument in the other and he says “Open up!” The mask and white coat that seemed so reassuring on the dentist would only make this guy creepier. In each case we have to make a decision about obeying or politely refusing the command. How do we make that decision? Faith. If you believe in the person making the request, you can obey. If you don’t you can’t. That’s the way of the world. It is the same way with God – if you believe Him, you can obey Him, if you don’t, you can’t. And suddenly, it makes sense to hear Him tell us that without faith it is impossible to please God. Or that the righteous will live BY FAITH.

In fact, we do nearly everything by faith – we certainly believe when we do things like taking wedding vows, or trusting the promises in the scripture. But these acts are not as strange as the world thinks when we point out that we also sign contracts, cross streets in front of busses, pet our dogs, and sit in chairs by faith. We believe bus drivers won’t run us over, or that our dogs won’t bite us, and that a chair will hold our weight.

You may rightly say that having faith in God and having faith in my chair are not the same thing, and you would be right, but not in the way people usually think. The argument usually goes that faith in God is faith in something we can’t see while faith in the chair is in something we do see. And furthermore, that we have experience with chairs, so we are trusting in our own experience and our senses. This sounds very good until you think about it a little more deeply.

We actually are unable to trust our senses and experience unless we have a world that is coherent – that is, if we pet a dog six days in a row without a bite, we probably don’t even think about his biting us on the seventh. Or the scientist in the lab who yesterday put two chemicals together and observes the result assumes that if he today combines the same chemicals in the same situation, he will observe the same result. But there is no reason to believe this. Why would that be? Why isn’t the universe actually random? Why don’t dogs change their personalities on an irregular basis? Where do these laws of nature come from if there is no design that they adhere to? And how can there be a design if there is no designer?

Fact is, there is not only no reason to trust the uniformity of the laws of nature, there is no reason why we should be able to trust our senses – why don’t we SEE differently from one day to the next? Can’t our senses be fooled? Have you noticed how in the last 10 years there have been a lot of movies about false realities? Did you see the film The Matrix? Or the 13^th Floor? Or Dark City? Or The Truman Show? They are all about how our senses are fooled into thinking that we are experiencing reality when we are actually not. We know that our eyes can be fooled by certain sensual experiences – when we see a pole in the water that looks broken by refraction, or see a mirage on the road due to heat and reflection, et c.

And one more element: memory. For things to make sense we have to REMEMBER what happened the last time we pet the dog or combined the chemicals. If we don’t, we don’t have the benefit of predicting the outcome, and it is that prediction that makes it possible for our actions. Have you noticed how many films there have been in the last 10 years about the loss of memory? Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Paycheck, What Dreams May Come, even Dorrie in Finding Nemo. Each of these films has at least one character who has lost his memory – and there is always something horrible about that experience – we know ourselves by our memories as well. Who we love, who our family and friends are, where we live, work, how to work the cell phone…

My point in all this is that without faith, we cannot obey God, but neither can we obey our dentist. Without faith we have to give up the Christian worldview, but we also have to give up the scientific worldview because we cannot trust our senses, our experiences, or our memories unless there is a God who designed everything, gave us senses to see things as they really are, and memories that are reliable. In the end, it is NOT a question of living by faith or living by sight – it is only a question of what or who you are going to put your faith IN. Saying that we are not going to live by faith is really a little like saying I am not going to breathe air – I can try water or chocolate pudding, or ammonia, but it won’t last long…the reason is, we were MADE to be faithful creatures.

So it shouldn’t surprise us that God teaches us that

1 - we can’t please Him without faith,

2 – that our righteousness is accomplished not by our obedience, but by our faith in His obedience,

3 – that we should walk by faith not by sight, and even that

4 – we should always remember what the Lord has done for us (Deut 6)

When Moses knows he is going to be leaving the Israelites, he gathers them around to tell them one last thing: and that is to ALWAYS REMEMBER. Why? Because they were to pass the faith down to the next generation, and our memory of what God has done for us tells us who we are, why we are here, and where we are going. All things quite necessary for us to remain sane.

One last point: this all means that revelation and reason are not two different ways to know things: they are two sides of the same coin. We don’t think that there are two ways to go, like faith OR science – revelation OR reason. Both are gifts from God given to better know Him, His plans, and how we fit into them. We know that revelation is a gift from God, but it turns out reason is a gift too – given to be able to make sense of revelation. And revelation comes in two types: Special and General.

2011-08-25T07:21:00.000-07:00

In a blog today, someone called Steve Aden had an interesting point: "In law and culture, as in all spheres of life, the “natural order” tends always to disorder. Culture, as the term implies, must be cultivated, because bad ideas drive out good ones like weeds in an unkempt garden."

He went on to speak rightly of the need to stand against abortion, but it seemed to me as I read it that it could be equally a call to stand against the foolish thinking in many other areas of political and cultural life.

I have never read Mr. Aden before, but I think he hit on something when he said that culture comes first, then law. And while we may understandably feel overwhelmed when we as individuals think of making or remaking laws, making culture is a matter of daily choice for each and all of us. Culture is simply the fabric we create when we make the thousands of little decisions every day about how we will choose to live. Will we mow our grass or not? Where will we invest our time and money? Dine at home or out tonight? What shoes will I wear? How will I arrange our bathroom cabinet? What will we do for a living? Do those drapes go with that couch?

And these questions are answered only after we have answered more fundamental ones: what do we believe is valuable? what true? what good? what beautiful? What/who do we trust to guide us when we define these categories?

But this leads me back to the first quote from Mr. Aken. In all spheres of life, the natural way is toward disorder. Things, if left alone, will fall apart, not come together. It requires energy, time, expense, focus, discipline, for good to occur. In short, it takes a will to work to make things good. A culture declines as soon as it thinks that good can occur without work. If we were ever, for example, to come to the point that most people wanted to live well without working, we would come apart at the seams as a culture. We would go down in the history books like Rome: defeated not by outward attack, but by a lack of inward commitment to the good, true, and beautiful. Without the will to strive for these things the natural forces take over, and we decline into barbarism. Cultures decline due to exhaustion - we can rest on our rakes, but we can't put them away. Things don't stay neutral, they decline, so without a vision, there is no work to accomplish that vision, and thus the people perish. The welfare state/big government issues are not my point here - big government is the natural result of what I am saying which is that making cultural decisions like what is beautiful, and what is delicious turn out to be far more important than we have been led to believe. Those commitments to the good, true, beautiful, by millions of people, leads to civilization with wiser laws, more honest governors, truer charity, and sounder fiscal policy. In the long run, we must be committed to principles that make a certain course of action distasteful (even if it is legal), and so rejected because it runs against our corporate vision of the human life well lived before God. Without these inner commitments, there is no civilization in our culture.

2011-08-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

Did you ever fear that God's requirements of you were too much to ask? That death to self was just a little too far? There really HAS to be some part of your life that you can call "your own"? That God keeps His hands off? What if we were looking at that the wrong way, and that everything we keep for ourselves will eventually die? Here's CS Lewis from a little-known essay:

"For some (nobody knows which) the Christian life will include much leisure, many occupations we naturally like. But these will be received from God's hands. In a perfect Christian they would be as much part of his "religion" his "service" as his hardest duties, and his feasts would be as Christian as his fasts. What cannot be admitted - what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy - is the idea of something that is "our own," some area in which we are to be "out of school" on which God has no claim.

For He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There's no bargaining with Him."

from the essay, "A Slip of the Tongue," CS Lewis (The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)

Praise God that He won't allow us even the smallest part of our own lives...it is out of His love for us that He does not.

2011-07-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, you dads, let's say you have a teenaged daughter who borrowed the credit card for one purchase, then used it to run up a huge balance buying the "latest things" that she convinced herself she couldn't live without. Once she got into the delightful rhythm of buying anything anytime, not really thinking about anything but the joy of spending, she didn't want to give the card back. "Just one more day, dad! I'll be careful!" How could you refuse? But after that first week the bills were staggering. The second week balances that were only terrible turned astronomical, and you insist that she give the card back. Now she won't. Perhaps she can't. What would you do?

There seem to be two schools of thought on how to proceed. One way is to call the credit card company and stop the card. Then, tell the girl that the only way to put things right would be to get TWO jobs and work until the balance is paid off, even if it takes a year or two. The other way is first to go along, then ignore, then finally when your wife insists you do something, tell the girl that you'll make a deal with her. If she will just begin to curb her spending -- not stop altogether, just make a reduction of, say, 2% a year -- you will call the credit card company and ask them to raise the limit on the card so that she can continue to spend.

Why would anyone choose the second course of action? Perhaps we think the pain of the cuts will be too hard, and the daughter will have to suffer too much. (was it a gift you gave her, or a right? That will go a long way to helping clarify things.) We might also think we dads are partially to blame anyway, because we didn't raise her right, or gave her the card before she was wise enough to use it. (sound condescending?) Or, we might be tempted to take this second route if we knew we were planning to divorce her mom and move away soon, leaving the girl and the debt with mom...

For him who has ears to hear...

2011-07-24T09:08:00.000-07:00

I thought you'd like to see this interesting piece written by a friend of mine, Vishal Mangalwadi on the work and long-lasting influence of William Carey in India. It speaks volumes about the importance of all we just discussed about "what is man?" at the Circe conference in Dallas: how the cultural aspects of the Faith take root in the lives and practices of a people, giving an Incarnational reality to teaching. And notice that later even at a point when many no longer believed the Gospel, Indians still live and think according to the patterns of a Christian culture, and benefit from them (for example, no longer practicing sati or child sacrifice).

I am not advocating this approach because I give greater value to cultural influence in this world then to the state of souls, I am just pointing out that when souls are converted, they begin to consciously change language, literature, technology, politics, et c., in accordance with the innate nature and value of the human being. The result is a culture that makes the Faith all the more reasonable, and harder to disagree with than it would be without it -- for example, when one Indian says to the other, "This Christianity cannot be true." The other might say, "I don't understand all of it, and I don't much care for the whole 'death-to-self' that it teaches, but look at the more humane way of life we now have. We don't starve while protecting cows, we no longer perform child sacrifice, our political system no longer withholds justice from the poor simply because of their poverty, we are safer on the streets, we have universities and hospitals, people live more hopeful lives, and government corruption is down, so we have more money. It may be that Christianity is not true, but if it is a lie, it is certainly a helpful one. Maybe we should give its beliefs a second look before we give up on it."

In the West today, it would be good to get a glimpse of what life was like before the Christian mind led the culture. To do so, we would have to go back a lot farther into our own past than the Indians do -- perhaps back to Old Testament times to read how the Persians, or the Philistines, or the Cartheginians lived. Or maybe not that far back - perhaps the Celts, Goths, Saxons or Vikings before they were converted. These cultures lacked more than just electricity or anesthesia (neither of those was available as late as the American Civil War), what they lacked was a view of the human that couldn't even imagine universities, hospitals, or statues of blind justice.

In a culture in decline, a Christian standing alone but calling on his cultural inheritance stands in the midst of a majority. To cultures in ascent, the work may be to call barbarians to imagine what the culture might become, but today we are in decline, and dismissal of our own history and cultural inheritance will only make the Gospel less compelling. In either situation, however, Christians are advocates of the "permanent things," not looking longingly back to a golden cultural past, OR hoping for a utopian cultural future. Of course those things do exist. The Faithful, simply living out belief in permanent things, generate times that in retrospect will seem golden, and contemplate a future that will actually BE golden.

2011-07-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. James 2:10

Imagine that you are asked to sweep the porch, but you take one straw out of the broom you have been given and insist on sweeping with that. It would certainly take you a lot longer. No one could complain that you are not sweeping -- you are. No one could complain that you are not using a broom -- you are, albeit a very small one...

This is what happens when a culture decides to remove one virtue from the bible to use to bring about good in the world. No one can complain that you are not attempting to do good -- you are. And no one can complain that you are not quoting from the bible -- you are, albeit only part of what it says.

It is no good trying to pull society in the direction of a particular virtue unless you are willing to call them to ALL virtue. It is right and good to call the rich to care for the poor (the bible condemns the rich using their wealth to withhold justice from the poor), but not without also calling the poor to work for their employers as though they were serving Jesus Himself (Eph 6:7), or denying food to those who don’t work (2 Thess. 3:10). And this doesn’t begin to touch on the call to sexual purity, soberness, and honor of parents...

Today, we hear each of the political parties claiming moral high ground for their positions: “stop greed!” or “grant liberty!” But it is no good removing these straws from the broom of what CS Lewis calls “the Tao” and attempting to sweep with them. The only thing worse would be to remove two from the broom and pit them against each other. Then even the sweeping stops, and the devil just laughs as we use our straw to beat each other. "How can you be against us? We are for liberty!" or "Anyone who opposes us is in favor of greed!" More than that, don’t we assume that only the rich can be greedy? And don’t we really think that liberty only means the right to be left alone to do as you please? Even the definitions of these virtues need to be drawn from the broom. The broom offers far more benefit than great numbers -- each individual virtue is limited by and defined by the others in the broom, and only in the broom can they do the work they are able to do. The broom teaches that greed is universal, and can be just as strong in the poor as in the rich. Having money doesn’t make you greedy, being greedy just makes you focus on acquiring money. Liberty is only meaningful if it is used to do the right thing, not anything. So, not only do we need liberty, we need a definition of the right toward which we might exercise our liberty.

The reality is that anything short of the full person of Jesus is going to be short of true goodness.

2011-06-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

TS Eliot was right, there are two ways to go: you can hold a progressive view of the world, or you can hold a tragic view. Who would choose the latter when he could have the former? Progressive sounds so new and intelligent and so forward-looking, and optimistic. The tragic view sounds so negative, so old-fashioned, so hopeless. Who would knowingly choose to view the world as tragic? Besides, Christians are to see the story as having a happy ending, right? Jesus wins! Life is not a tragedy! In fact, there's even to be a wedding! Why. so. serious?

The problem with the progressive perspective is that it is an attempt to have the happy ending without Jesus. If Jesus is leading his followers to a happy ending, it seems a little like bad taste to see things as tragic. We just need to be optimistic. Ah, there's the rub: optimism. To be an optimist one needs to believe that the world is basically good, and that given time and a little room to maneuver, things will turn out right. But this dismisses the most important point of our reckoning: the Fall. The world is not how it was supposed to be, and all the king's horses and all the king's men...

The worst aspect of progressivism shows up in a Romantic view of the world. The Romantic says sensation is the best guide, experience is the best mode of learning, and human maturity is measured by how much depravity you have been exposed to. Today, young people are surrounded with media (books, tv, movies, internet, social media) that are considered "edgy," "dark," "cool" based mainly on how far they are willing to use foul language, on how many extreme experiences they address (such as cutting, rape, incest, drug use, suicide, et c.), and generally on how frequently they offer subjects that their parents would oppose. Without cultural events that celebrate a young person's entrance into adulthood (getting a driver's license, or reaching the drinking age are seemingly the best we can do), it is not surprising that it seems to a teen that "pushing the envelope" is the normal course of maturity.

But isn't this just how the entire culture thinks? To progress we think we need to try the newest thing, the newest stimulant, sexual perversion, expensive toy, sensational movie, get-rich scheme, restaurant, slim-down plan, fashion, definition of marriage, faddish scientific theory? Some say that if we stand for nothing we will fall for anything. When we find our culture falling for anything can we assume that we are standing for nothing? If we leave God our of our cultural calculations, we have no sense of direction, our reasoning won't give us much guidance either, and we are left with being led by our sensations. Even those who claim to follow Jesus can be swept up in the overwhelming current of the current.

So are we left with the "tragic" view? Why is it called tragic? Because it DOES take the Fall seriously. There was a real fall, things are not the way they are supposed to be, and it doesn't take long to come to the conclusion that there is nothing we can do about it. So the gospel is actually good news, but only to those who have accepted the tragic view of things. Didn't Jesus say that he didn't come to heal the healthy but the sick? Eliot puts it this way, "Our only health is the disease/if we obey the dying Nurse/ whose constant care is not to please/but to remind of our and Adam's curse./ And that to be restored, our sickness must grow worse."

2011-06-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

Some want to say that our greatest need is to overcome poverty. We couldn’t agree more. However to say that poverty is simply a lack of money is to misunderstand poverty altogether. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” We need to minister to more than the lack of money. IF we believe that this world is all there is, then a lack of money is the worst thing that can happen - it makes life in this world less comfortable. But to live for comfort is to live the life of death. But if this world is NOT all there is, there must be more to life than gaining wealth. If we teach the poor that they somehow deserve as much wealth as their neighbors, and that are being oppressed because they don't have as much as their neighbors, we are only making them twice as fit for hell as we are ourselves.

2011-04-24T21:38:00.000-07:00

It never pays in the long run to leave your Creator out of your equations. We may be seeing a financial meltdown of the world's strongest economy. One of the reasons is that we are spending more than we can possibly tax. It doesn't matter if we raise taxes on the rich, we can't possibly tax people enough to pay for a budget that spends over 20% of our GDP.

One of the reasons the debt is so high is that welfare and medicare/aid payments increase each year as more of the baby-boomers reach retirement age. These programs were put in place in Europe and the US when legislators couldn't imagine a declining birth rate, BUT for the last 3.5 decades we have been aborting our children. We have aborted more than 50 million of our children in the US between 1973 and 2008.

We are arrogant to the point of insanity. We make decisions about who we will love, where we will work, what laws we will pass, what medical decisions we will make, and how many children we will have all without considering what God thinks of it all -- and then we are surprised when we find that our calculations don't reflect the realities of life.

What is more, the rich themselves will become poor if they scorn marriage vows, as that results in unwanted pregnancies that end fatherless children or abortion. It is secure families with responsible fathers that make for wealthy and stable communities. We are literally destroying our future generations through debt and abortion, and only now does it dawn on us that the two are related. If we abort our children, why shouldn't we find one day that there are not enough workers to pay for our government programs, or manage our debt service?

So, we covet, murder, and dishonor our parents, overspend to have all the creature comforts we want, then when we feel guilty instead of repentance and love of neighbor, we turn and offer the same materialist life to those who are less fortunate: we demand that the government pay for comforts for everyone, which runs our government into bankruptcy. But then we control the future generations through abortion in order to save ourselves the shame, duty, cost, or trial of caring for the children we have conceived. This is the very definition of madness. Could this be our lot when we decide to leave God out of our decision process? Read Romans 1 again.

"It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations if you live near him." said JRR Tolkien.

God is much closer than any dragon, and ignoring Him is infinitely more dangerous.

2011-04-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

“Seven Stanzas at Easter”
from Telephone Poles and Other Poems by John Updike.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping transcendence;

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel,

weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen

spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle,

and crushed by remonstrance.

(ed note - this version is a better reproduction of Updike's original layout).

2011-03-08T13:35:00.000-08:00

ON ABORTION AND RIGHTS

The abortion debate seems to be the conflicting interests of two groups of individuals: the woman and her rights, vs. the unborn baby and his rights. When a government legalizes abortion on demand, it is saying that the rights of the mother outweigh the rights of the unborn child, and that legalization doesn’t REQUIRE anyone to go against his conscience, so has no power to coerce anyone against his conscience.

There are several problems with this approach, of course. First, it seems obvious that there is no one to stand up for the rights of the child. If we are to consider individual rights, don’t we need to consider those? But could it be that this argument assumes the PUBLIC approach to the question? By assuming the highest good is to protect the rights of the individual, we pit the right of one against another and can’t win (of course, the woman’s “right to choose” is itself an example of begging the question as it assumes its conclusion in its premises. If the question is, “Is abortion on demand moral?” we assume the answer is affirmative when we claim the inherent good of “a woman’s right to choose” -- a woman may have many rights, but she has no right to do evil. We don’t say that robbing a liquor store is something a woman has a right to choose, so there is a category of actions that are not allowable -- we are trying to decide if THIS is one of them or not. To claim that a woman’s right to choose is an argument in favor of abortion on demand is to claim that the abortion itself is NOT in that category of disallowable actions.)

The other problem is that we may be giving too much ground to the PUBLIC approach over that of the COMMUNITY (to use Wendell Berry’s terms). The PUBLIC assumes that the rights of the individual are paramount, the rights of families are secondary. But the COMMUNITY, a collection of individuals who have exercised their freedom of choice to define marriage in a biblical fashion, holds that the family is the smallest unity and as such, deserves protection. In the case of the COMMUNITY, the argument against abortion is far more than a debate between the right of mother as an individual and the right of the child as one. It is between the survival of the family and its extinction. The argument against abortion on demand may be better put by addressing it as one part of a larger and more multi-faceted attack against families in general. It absolves men and women of the responsibility to raise are care for a child, it ends any responsibility on the part of the father altogether, and it encourages the mother to pursue the level of responsibility allowed the father. In other words, abortion undermines the basic structure of the family, and through it, the family’s significance in the Community, thus ending the Community.

All the statistics about crime, school dropout rates, poverty, sexual promiscuity (and more) stem from broken families - why can’t we argue that anything that undermines the family will have the result of undermining the culture at large?

The reason is clear - to buy this definition of family without buying into the rest of the Christian view of the world is next to impossible. The moral restrictions seem too binding to lead to personal happiness, is the entire thing is rejected. Without a definition of marriage that has authority, we will (as a culture) embrace self-centeredness and each become an individual and expect the government to defend the rights of individuals against any choice the Community might make (and think they are doing a good thing when they do so.) If we Christians buy into this and attempt to argue pro-life law from a position of individual rights (of the baby) we may have already lost the war as we have assumed the individual rights argument is the only one that is valid.

2011-03-02T07:41:00.001-08:00

Once there was a man who died and was offered a chance to visit both heaven and hell before he took up his eternal residence. First he was shown hell. There, he saw a great round supper table which sat many people. At the center of the table was a pot full of beef stew that smelled delicious. Each person around the table had a long-handled spoon that could reach the pot of stew easily, and there was plenty there to go around for everyone. However, there was a problem. A spoon handle that was long enough to reach all the way to the food was too long to reach your mouth, and as a result, everyone in the room was in a state of eternal starvation and all within a few feet of a feast. This scene was not for the man, who asked to be shown heaven. On arrival there, the man was astonished to see the exact same scene: a table, delicious food, and long-handled spoons longer than your arm. But here, everyone was eating and fully satisfied with as much as they wanted. The only difference was that they were feeding each other.

We are told that the Kingdom of God is not of this world, and that it has come to this world - it is all around us if we can but see it. It is like a mustard seed that is the smallest of seeds but grows into a tree that is large enough that birds can nest in it. We are told it is like a little bit of yeast that slowly works its way through the whole batch of dough. CS Lewis said that the point of death is not the beginning of life in heaven or hell, it starts right now, in every moment we live. We will look back from our eternal resting place and realize that we have always been there. That we experienced aspects of heaven or hell even while we lived.

The story above (like Lewis’ The Great Divorce) is a story not about life after death, but about heaven and hell, which are available not only after death but today, now, here. The one difference is that the ability to choose between them is available only before death.

Look around you and you can see hell. You see people with the ability to do many things. They can cook food, sell life insurance, tell stories, practice medicine, but they use their abilities for themselves, and find that they don’t want to cook for themselves, there is no need for life insurance if it is only for yourself, stories are meant to be shared, and physicians can’t heal themselves...

Look around you and you can see heaven. You see people with the ability to do many things, but they know that their abilities were never intended to provide for themselves. They cook food, sell life insurance, tell stories, practice medicine, but they do so in order to care for others, not worrying about how God is going to choose to care for them. These are the ones who live now in heaven already, and are clearly enjoying its freedom and joy now. Here. Today. They live in community with others to share their abilities with others, not only to get their own needs met. The only difference between heaven and hell is the selflessness of the redeemed, not the circumstances or gifts and abilities of each.

The socialist is the one who thinks that the people in hell are being wronged by the Cook who set the table. The leadership who made the stew and set the table must go, and allow us to take over the entire operation ourselves. Should the socialist ever get his way, he would set the table with proper spoons so that the people can feed themselves. Those who want to retain their long-handled spoons would have to first be shouted down, and eventually “liquidated” so that the rest would move into the new day of short spoons. (They would argue, “How can those long-handled guys be so cruel and heartless? Don’t they see how their insistence on long-handled spoons causes everyone to starve?”) However, once the spoons are shortened, everyone finds that the food is now too far away to reach. Their next step is to change the shape of the table, and when they find that it requires that some lose their seats at the table, they argue that it is a small price to pay for the majority to be able to eat. After some time redesigning the table again and again, only a very few seats at the table can both reach the food and feed themselves. As a result, only the strongest are able to take and hold a seat long enough to eat before being unseated by someone else, and the darkness called the “law of the jungle” descends.

The capitalist is the one who sees the truth that no one is equipped to feed himself, but attempts to make a profit for himself when he feeds others. This will work for a while, but eventually he will be tempted to think that he is surviving due to his own cleverness or business sense, and will become blind to the reality that he survives only because of the generosity of others, the same way they do, and that unless he uses his ability to feed others only for their good and not secretly for his own, he will find that he is increasingly hungry. His solution will be to raise his prices, and increase his “marketing.” If he is able to convince everyone else that they too should charge for their work of feeding others because then everyone would be able to provide for himself through money, he will unseat the spirit of selflessness. Inevitably this leads to a socialist uprising because while everyone needs food, only the most clever will make any money to buy it, and this will seem very unfair to the majority.

God has placed within the hearts of men the notion that selflessness is the path to life. The socialist and the capitalist use this notion to gather support for their respective causes. The socialist claims that “we” are being selfless, but “they” are not. We are the majority, but they have control over the food, the table, the size of the spoon handles...if they really cared about us, they would build it all differently so that we would not starve. (don’t ask HOW they should build it differently - the fact that it is not working right now is enough proof that our leaders are selfish and need to be replaced with us.)

The capitalist also sees this notion, but tries to convince everyone that in order to help others you must first help yourself. This works for a while, because it is true that you can’t give away what you haven’t got, so first grow your crops, then you can give them to your neighbors. But a seed of self-centeredness can be sown there. The problem comes when we begin to think about how much we want for ourselves. Why don’t I keep a bit for myself first, to be sure I have enough, then I’ll give away the rest. Let’s say, 30% for me, then give away the other 70%. Then, well let’s make it 40/60% or 50/50%. Heck - why do I have to give ANY of it away? I have enough for myself, so I don’t need to ask anything of anyone else. That’s a good thing, right? Not being a burden on my neighbors? So, why don’t they do the same? Aren’t they the selfish ones when they demand that I feed them?

In both cases, the internal notion that selflessness is inherently good is used to justify “our” actions as selfless, and condemn “theirs” as not. It is the very definition of irony to use a law written in our hearts by God to justify our sin. It is almost as though we are unable to save ourselves. It seems that on our own, self-centeredness is all that we can know and experience. Who will save us from this body of sin and death?

How do we offer heaven to the world? It seems it is true that the only way to live -- truly live -- is to die to yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus. That to die is gain. That to join and build a community of people who are willing to trust God for their needs really IS what it is all about. To be anxious about what we will eat or wear is how the pagans live, we are told. To worry is to give up on the one question that matters, and to be in hell already. Live it out yourself. Be the example of trust. Be fearless. Be selfless. What does it matter if we die in the attempt? We have already died. (Gal 2:20).

2011-01-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

What would it be like if the people in our world believed that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, sent to save us?

Sometimes I think we evaluate whether or not people are being faithful by what they claim to believe, but perhaps the real sign is what they DO (James).

And by this, I don’t mean that we find a project or a cause and go out and join it - don’t drum up something to show God or man that you are a “good person” - rather, live today faithfully. Full of faith. How would you live if you actually believed that Jesus had come to save you, and had already given you all you need to spend eternity with Him?

Would you worry about that financial need? Would you be concerned about what people thought of you? Would you be fearful about the future? Would you wonder about your own significance? What need do you have that won’t be filled by the God who loved you even before you knew Him? What can man do to you by his evaluations and judgments if God is for you? What ills can the future hold that you must go through alone, or that haven’t come from His hands? And what could be more significant than to be told “well done” by God Himself?

So, maybe faithfulness is a far smaller and more real thing than many think, and the result of many faithful decisions results in a world that is more just, more peaceful, more compassionate, more free from illnesses and the results of our sin. Could it be that we are only willing to tackle the BIG things (world peace, global justice, racism, hatred, poverty) but on the level of our day-to-day lives, unwilling to live without worry (for example) because we don’t REALLY believe that God has provided for us? How can we convince a watching world that everyone would be better off if they would put their trust in Jesus? I don’t think we can accomplish it by trying to impress them with our devotion to causes. On the other hand, true belief will lead to actions that don’t need to be seen. The Pharisees were the ones, after all, who were told “don’t let your right hand know what your left is doing.” Pray in secret, fast in secret, give anonymously. In other words, don’t do your “good deeds” for your own promotion, or they are not really “good.” Let's encourage each other to faithful living, rather than success and happiness, and see if we don't see less poverty, less hatred, less injustice.

2010-12-29T19:09:00.001-08:00

December 18-19th issue of the Wall Street Journal had this article on the importance of a right understanding of the place of the Humanities in a university education. The article can be read here.

I enclose my letter to the editor for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Dear Editors:

Thank you for printing the piece by Alain de Botton Dec 18. He rightly sees the importance of the humanities to humanity, and we applaud him as he calls the modern university to task for its utilitarian approach to education. The great books, art, and music of our culture can indeed act as a “storehouse of useful ideas,” and those ideas more than justify four years' study at university.

However, when he encourages the thought that the culture might serve as a substitute for scripture, Mr. de Botton underestimates the foundational place of scripture in our art. The humanities can indeed speak to the needs of the human, but the majority of the cultural power that he rightly finds in the great books of the West is the result of centuries of reflection on and belief in the biblical narrative and its view of life. The great books carry the wisdom of the ages in the same way a river carries water. The river and the water are as one to us, so we might be excused for thinking that the book and its contained wisdom are also one, but we would never imagine for a moment that the river created the water. Mr. de Botton helps us see the benefit that comes from knowing the work of our best writers (not to mention our best composers, architects, and filmmakers), but they did not create the wisdom they espouse. Artists discern it then embody it in their artistic expressions. The help they may offer their readers about marriage, death, and work is founded on a picture of those subjects found in the Bible. So the view that scripture and culture might serve as two potential options for the foundation of a civilization misunderstands the relation of the two elements: scripture is the water, culture is the river. The Western dismissal of scripture as the source of wisdom is simply bad scholarship -- it ignores most of the very points of the books Mr. de Botton sites, and can only end up misinterpreting the work of Suger, Dante, Durer, Botticelli, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Bach, Mendelssohn, Eliot, Rouault, et c.

This misunderstanding may very well be the reason for the loss of purpose Mr. de Botton finds in many humanities departments. Perhaps we have substituted culture for scripture already -- in the 18th-19th century? We first lost the water, and as a result the river dried up. How can we claim the humanities can offer wisdom if we no longer believe in the Giver of wisdom? We are right to try to regain the humanities, but without their foundation in theology they dry up, and even their most ardent supporters find it hard to give reason why they should be studied, apart from a vague sense that they are more meaningful than the robotic pragmatism preached in every public square. It is no wonder we have become a culture of utilitarianism, we doubt everything else.

We applaud Mr. de Botton’s new work in London for calling us back to the humanities, but fear that without the underpinning of biblical virtues, it may lead only to a repeat of the errors of Modernism. In the end, there are only two ways to go: either to accept the cultural relativism presently taught in the trendier humanities departments, or do the hard scholarly work of rethinking the connections between faith and reason that were lost in the Enlightenment. We are humbly attempting the latter.

2010-09-21T08:11:00.001-07:00

A student asked me about the Old Testament law and why there are parts of it that we no longer keep. Here's the response I gave.

That's a good question, and the answer is definitely NOT that we are a different culture...some laws (like against eating pork) have been over-ridden (see Acts 10:13-15). But mostly it is because in the NT we have a deeper understanding of the law. It is like the spirit of the law is more nuanced than the original law. You know, when you first learn to write, you are told always use this, never use that, but when you start reading great writers, they sometimes do the very thing you have been told not to do. But you learn that those are exceptions that are not contradictions, rather they are genius -- the great writer saw deeper than the rules...the OT law is the minimum requirement for faithfulness, but keeping that law is not impressive to God - He wants us to (in one sense) forget about trying to keep the law - He has a higher plan for us. Those who point to the law and say "see? I kept the law here and here and here..." are the dorks who don't get it. Sort of like a 1st grader who is proud of the fact that he can draw his numbers perfectly within the lines but knows nothing of what numbers really represent in physics or calculus. At one point in the life of the faithful, number-drawing is good, but as we grow we begin to see that learning to write numbers is only the barest beginning, and to perfect our drawing when we should be considering differential equations is goofy.

In the same way, God taught us laws that then we no longer needed -- what He always wants is faithfulness, not adherence to laws per se...the laws are not arbitrary, He really does want us to not lie, murder, worship idols, but the best way to stop doing that is to put our faith in His fulfillment of the law, and live "in Him" by that faith. Again, it is the faith in His person that fulfills the law for us. Once He came to earth and we heard Him speak, we (like Paul) realized that there is a lot more to real life than laws, but like the first-grader, we need the law first, then we can in a way surpass it. The law is a mountain that we need to climb, find we can't and then receive grace. But then, and only then, do we see the reality that the peak of the mountain is really only the starting point -- we (to borrow from Lewis) were meant to get to the top of the mountain so that we might sprout wings and fly.

2010-09-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

Since I posted the last, I thought you might like to hear my Muslim friend's response to my long post (names are withheld, and are not important). Here it is:

Thank you very much for your answer Mr. Y, (ZZZ) is getting these messages too.

I understand what you're saying from your perspective and it sounds correct. I watched the video an CNN and maybe I need to watch it again to understand better. They are talking really fast. However if somebody supports such suicide attacks I cannot agree with them since I am a muslim.

You're right that not every Islam world leader denounced suicide attacks or bombings. But for Turkey I know many Islamic Scholar that they denounce those kind of acts. I like the commentators point on "muslim people are victim of terrorism as well as christian people are". There shouldn't be problem between real believers otherwise the dark powers are going to try to have us fight with each other for those acts that real muslims and christians do not accept. I know you since we met and spent some time, and I did not have any hesitation about your position on that matter I mean I don't think that you think this is real Islam.

We as Turkey have some Al-kaide members in our country's prisons and they did some suicide bombings in Turkey at several locations before 9-11 and after 9-11. I am trying to say that we started to deal with terrorism before 9-11 so I understand your feeling about it. However, we have to work together and protect each other, or they bomb a mosque today and then bomb a church tomorrow then uneducated people think that this is a war between religions. That would be a chaos.

I think we should talk about this on this sunday.

Regards,

XXX

(the Sunday he is referring to is an evening discussion group we have with college students. We have invited this young man, and he has come several times -- once he even cooked dinner for us, and it was GREAT!)

2010-09-06T07:49:00.001-07:00

Lately, I have had a great conversation with a friend who is foreign Muslim studying in the US. He wrote me, asking about how people can think that Islam can be linked to terrorists. I believe him to be honest, but not seeing that connection is strange to me, and here is how I answered his sincere question (the reference to Keith Olbermann is because my friend sent me one of Mr. Olbermann's MSNBC rants, and I felt I should address it to the degree KO deserves...):

Hi, XXX - I welcome your reasonable mind and gentle heart, and would love to speak with you about this issue, as I need your perspective. I know a little, and will be glad to lay out what I have understood about it. Please feel free to correct me if you find I am misled.

You ask how it can be that some people are connecting Islam to terrorism. You have perspective that I do not, as you see Islam from the inside, as one who practices the religion. I think most Americans see it from the outside (that is, they are not Muslims themselves) and so see only what Muslims do and say rather than what they believe. It is a hard fact to get around that 100% of the terrorism in the world is committed by people who claim to be doing it in the name of Allah. Of course it is foolish to reverse this and say that 100% of the Muslims of the world are terrorists, but the distinction between those who are and those who are not is best accomplished through the way real Muslims denounce terrorism (as you have done).

Mr. Olbermann is a poor spokesman for anything reasonable. The problem I have with his approach to most subjects (and this video clip is a good example) is that he likes to leave out large portions of his opponents' arguments, then act as though his opponents are fools (which can be very annoying.) I find this approach foolish, and does little to clarify issues.

The opposition to the Mosque/Community Center is not opposition to Islam, or a sign of not wanting Muslims to be able to worship or own property in the US, or a lack of understanding that we were assisting Muslims in Iraq when we fought a war against Hussein (a few of Mr. Olbermann's arguments). These are what we call "straw man" arguments. There are many mosques in NYC already, so Muslims are not being singled out for abuse. What's more, the opponents of this particular project are not saying that the Imam doesn't have the right to buy and build there. It is a free country - he can do so if he wants to, just like any other American. What opponents are saying is that it feels like disrespect and insensitivity to the very people with whom he says he wants to have "dialogue". It is a poor start to a conversation.

But there are other questions that have been raised about this particular project. Representatives of the project have been asked directly if they renounce terrorism and agree that Hamas is a terrorist organization (as America's government officially states). They are willing to renounce terrorist acts in the abstract, but refuse to renounce Hamas. Also, they have said they are willing to accept donations from Saudi and Iran, two of the world's greatest exporters of terrorism, and supporters of Hamas. Because of this, many have been unwilling to support the plan to build this building.

If it is hard for supporters of the Park51 building to see what respect would look like, I would like to suggest a way. I think that the Imam and his donors, who say that they want to build bridges and dialogue with Americans, should instead offer to donate the money they have raised for the Park51 building to help rebuild the Trade Center Towers. This would show the world (and especially the terrorists in the world) that they are Americans first, that there is NO connection between real Muslims and those who flew the planes, and it would prove to Americans that the money donated is not from terrorists. Does this seem outlandish? How important is it to begin real dialogue and prove that there are no ties between these folks and terrorism? It would also show the terrorists that they have no fear of them.

One other reason why Westerners link Islam and terrorism is hearing reports like this one about the Imam of a London mosque who actually supports Osama bin Laden and encourages Muslims to blow up buildings and people in order to teach the West a lesson for supporting Israel. I heard him speak on CNN last Saturday night. (see the excellent interview here: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/09/05/gps.int.jihadi.cnn?iref=allsearch). It would be horrible to think that there could be a mosque that preaches this kind of hate right next to the hole in the ground that came about from this kind of preaching.

While there are certainly Muslims who say, like you do, that one can be a Muslim, or a terrorist, but not both; there can be no doubt that there are Muslims who say the full opposite: that Muslims must take their faith seriously enough to die in its cause: that to be a real Muslim one MUST be a terrorist. Therefore, it seems to most of us in America that there is a civil war of sorts within Islam between those like you and those like this London Imam. And we are watching to see who will win. It seems to me that the questions you have are good ones, but they need to be addressed to the London Imam, and those like him, who claim to be "first and last a Muslim." (quote from the interview)

If there were Christians who spoke this way, calling for recruits to kill unsuspecting shoppers and businessmen to bring about the will of God, there would be world-wide outrage, and Christian leaders would be called upon to denounce this horror. The only reason why people would be reluctant to do so would be if they were afraid they would be the next targets of the terrorism. Is this the case in the Muslim world? Do you think moderate Muslims are afraid to speak up and denounce those who commit these horrors in the name of Allah because they are afraid they will be targets?

We would love to see you anytime, XXX, and will bake brownies specially for your visit! Thank you for speaking with me about this issue - relations between Muslims and Christians may be the most important issue on the planet at this time.

2010-09-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

ISLAMOPHOBIA.
I think it is actually quite reasonable for people who have seen the continued terrorism over the years -- all from cowards screaming "Allahu Akbar" as they kill unsuspecting civilians -- to be fearful about Islam as a religion. It is more reasonable to use the word "homophobia" than "Islamophobia" but each is used in its sphere simply to stifle debate. But fear of Islam is quite reasonable, given that all the terrorist activity -- ALL of it -- has been carried out by smiling, lying, cowards who claim to be Muslims. It is rather incumbent on those who claim that Islam is a religion of peace to prove their case by their actions, and understand that a watching American public should not be asked to take their word for it. When we invaded Iraq, our troops went out of their way, placing themselves in danger to prove to the Iraqi people that we were NOT there to harm them. And we were liberating them from Saddam! We were fighting on their behalf! It was incumbent on us to prove by our actions that we were not there to colonize, destroy, steal their oil, et c. We shouldn't be ashamed of ourselves and be cowed just because we are called names like "Islamophobic." It is incumbent on the Moderate Muslim to prove that he is peaceful and not acting like the terrorists who cite Islam as their motivation.

"You will know them by their fruits" we are told. A religion should be judged by its actions, and when someone does something evil in the name of God, the true believers are responsible to distance themselves from the act. It should not be reversed and pressure put on the victims of these attacks to make fine distinctions between smiling, honest "moderates," and smiling, vicious liars who are attempting to destroy us with whatever means necessary, including deceit.

This is said in sober logic, not hot anger. This is only being reasonable, and treating American concerns as seriously as we would treat the concerns of Iraqi civilians, or German civilians in WWII. I think it is unreasonable to turn victims into the "bad-guys" and act as though they should be the ones to fix the problem brought about by the actions of the terrorists. It is absurd to say, "We shouldn't be held accountable for the actions of those terrorists - they hold to a completely different religion than we do. We are peaceful Muslims, but they on the other hand, are terrorist Muslims - a VERY different thing altogether. We read the Koran, they on the other hand, read the Koran." But we, the non-Muslims are supposed to be able to parse out the differences, and know that one is good and the other bad? Do you know how the terrorists fought our troops in the desert? They would fire on us without uniforms, then run into the city where they were indistinguishable from the local innocent civilians. These are vicious and cowardly enemies. And if we shoot the wrong one, WE are instantly the bad guys. If they are successful in killing one of our guys either by posing as a local civilian, or by using local civilians as human shields to hide behind to keep us from firing on them, they are heroes to their people! Why should American civilians be expected to be this discerning, or not make decisions out of fear? "Islamophobia" is irresponsible use of language, because it ignores the reasonable fear of the victim.

2010-08-31T09:29:00.000-07:00

I would like to be able to write like this:

A Piece of Chalk

by G.K. Chesterton
(from an essay in TREMENDOUS TRIFLES. The original essay appeared in the DAILY NEWS, November 4, 1905)

I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick, and put six very bright-coloured chalks in my pocket. I then went into the kitchen (which, along with the rest of the house, belonged to a very square and sensible old woman in a Sussex village), and asked the owner and occupant of the kitchen if she had any brown paper. She had a great deal; in fact, she had too much; and she mistook the purpose and the rationale of the existence of brown paper. She seemed to have an idea that if a person wanted brown paper he must be wanting to tie up parcels; which was the last thing I wanted to do; indeed, it is a thing which I have found to be beyond my mental capacity. Hence she dwelt very much on the varying qualities of toughness and endurance in the material. I explained to her that I only wanted to draw pictures on it, and that I did not want them to endure in the least; and that from my point of view, therefore, it was a question, not of tough consistency, but of responsive surface, a thing comparatively irrelevant in a parcel. When she understood that I wanted to draw she offered to overwhelm me with note-paper.

I then tried to explain the rather delicate logical shade, that I not only liked brown paper, but liked the quality of brownness in paper, just as I like the quality of brownness in October woods, or in beer. Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright-coloured chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness. All this I said (in an off-hand way) to the old woman; and I put the brown paper in my pocket along with the chalks, and possibly other things. I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

With my stick and my knife, my chalks and my brown paper, I went out on to the great downs. . .

I crossed one swell of living turf after another, looking for a place to sit down and draw. Do not, for heaven's sake, imagine I was going to sketch from Nature. I was going to draw devils and seraphim, and blind old gods that men worshipped before the dawn of right, and saints in robes of angry crimson, and seas of strange green, and all the sacred or monstrous symbols that look so well in bright colours on brown paper. They are much better worth drawing than Nature; also they are much easier to draw. When a cow came slouching by in the field next to me, a mere artist might have drawn it; but I always get wrong in the hind legs of quadrupeds. So I drew the soul of a cow; which I saw there plainly walking before me in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver, and had seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all beasts. But though I could not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape, it does not follow that the landscape was not getting the best out of me. And this, I think, is the mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care very much about Nature because they did not describe it much.

They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills; but they sat on the great hills to write it. The gave out much less about Nature, but they drank in, perhaps, much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. . . The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo.

But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a most exquisite and essential chalk, behind. I searched all my pockets, but I could not find any white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with all the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel, or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age has realised this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it were really true that white was a blank and colourless thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funereal dress of this pessimistic period. Which is not the case.

Meanwhile I could not find my chalk.

I sat on the hill in a sort of despair. There was no town near at which it was even remotely probable there would be such a thing as an artist's colourman. And yet, without any white, my absurd little pictures would be as pointless as the world would be if there were no good people in it. I stared stupidly round, racking my brain for expedients. Then I suddenly stood up and roared with laughter, again and again, so that the cows stared at me and called a committee. Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for his hour-glass. Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought some salt water with him for his chemical experiments. I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk. The landscape was made entirely of white chalk. White chalk was piled more miles until it met the sky. I stooped and broke a piece of the rock I sat on: it did not mark so well as the shop chalks do, but it gave the effect. And I stood there in a trance of pleasure, realising that this Southern England is not only a grand peninsula, and a tradition and a civilisation; it is something even more admirable. It is a piece of chalk.

G K Chesterton

2010-08-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

Wedding sermon, based on Revelation 19:7-9 (given July 31, 2010)

Why do we cry at weddings?

We cry for several reasons, one of which is that everything is so beautiful at a wedding - the bride with her beautiful dress, the flowers, the candles the fine music -- the tradition of it all. I find that when God wants to get my attention, he sends me one of two things: suffering, or beauty. Each pierces my cold heart, and grabs my attention. And that’s just what God wants at a wedding - to get our attention, because He has something he wants to show us.

Have you noticed that when it comes to planning a wedding, even the most informal folks return to formal traditions? We may be ok with informality in our church services, but when it comes to a wedding, most of us want the traditional groom in the front, bride in white coming down the aisle, organs and baroque music and flowers and candles...

I think it is because a wedding is more than just the union of two people - it is an important part of the the life of a community. It defines something about what we think is important - what we value. The way we do weddings is important to all of us, not only the bride (regardless of what we see on Bridezilla). This whole ceremony is like a play, and we each have our roles to play - the bride, the groom, the parents, family, and friends, the pastor...and if each takes up his role, everyone leaves satisfied. If you doubt that there are roles, just imagine attending a wedding in which the groom walked down the aisle to join the bride in the front, or more bizarre still, that the groom wears the dress. Do you think that is arbitrary? All the roles resist being interchangeable.

So if this is a play, with specific roles, dress, and action, who wrote the script, and where do we get this notion?

From the verses we just read.
  For the wedding of the Lamb has come,   and his bride has made herself ready.   8Fine linen, bright and clean,   was given her to wear." (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)

I remember being in Bratislava one Saturday and walking by a church just as a bride and groom came out -- and she was in white, and everyone on the street stopped and looked, and smiled, and even applauded them...why is even a stranger’s wedding beautiful, and brings tears to the eye?

Could it be that we are haunted by a longing for something -- something we can’t name -- that is hinted at in the wedding? We want our bride in a fine dress because she is playing a part.

The beauty of the wedding ceremony, with its radiant bride, handsome groom, loving friends and family, is only a shadow of a larger reality. It is like children playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes, or pretending to be a pro quarterback, or a ballerina. Everyone knows the joy of pretending as children, but wouldn’t it be strange if there were no actual reality we were pretending about? Wouldn’t it be weird if we encouraged our boys to pretend to be a quarterbacks but had forgotten what the game of football was? -- or encouraged our girls to pretend to be ballerinas but knew nothing of ballet? The only reason children dress up in their parents’ clothes is that there actually IS an adult world - a world to which they aspire. But the world over, while we still dress our brides in the finest of clothes many of us have forgotten that there is a reality the tradition represents. We are haunted by a meaning we have forgotten; a meaning that still sways our choices without our being aware of it consciously; a meaning that is even more beautiful than Catherine or any specific bride; a meaning that touches us at our deepest levels and draws tears: the secret is that the beautiful bride represents US -- the Faithful Church of Revelation 19 --- the Church won over by the love of Jesus...the Church purified by her Lord, and made ready to spend eternity with Him. Our beautiful Catherine represents the Body of Christ, and she is dressed in the finest linen because it represents the righteous works the Church has done because of what her Lord did for her. She represents all of the faithful: men and women both - we all play the feminine role in a great wedding. No wonder we relate to her. No wonder her beauty delights us all - she is the way we hope one day to be! We cry partly because deep down inside we long for the day when the Bride will be united with her husband Jesus, and all the evils of the fallen world, even death itself, will be done away with. Now THAT is going to be a party! Hallelujah!

Her beauty and fine clothes represent OUR status after what Jesus has done for us. He has forgiven us and made us pure. But we must never forget that she has prepared herself for her husband the groom. It is not just the bride who plays a role in this play: the groom plays a role as well. We must never forget in our weddings that the only reason brides choose dresses and march down aisles is because the groom first proposed. Most people still hope that the groom will do the proposing - why is that? Is it just old fashioned? Or is it too an echo of a deeper truth? Don’t we always want to know HOW he proposed to her? (and Andrew’s story is a great one, so get him to tell you if you don’t already know...) Now be honest - wouldn’t you be just a little disappointed if we heard he didn’t initiate and propose? It is just not as “romantic.”

This turns out not to be just an old tradition with no foundation -- it imitates the reality that Jesus is the one who proposed to us -- “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” we are told. It is the love of the groom that chose the Church, called her, wooed her heart, fought dragons to free her, and finally won her affections. It is not by accident that all the fairy tales work this way - she is to be cherished and loved, fought for, there should be some sacrifice on the part of the groom to win her, because that is how Jesus loves us. Then, he gave her the beautiful dress to wear, and put the wedding together to show the world His love for her. It may seem like a little thing, but is EVERYTHING: the groom proposes and the bride accepts. He initiates, she responds. He leads, she follows. In the language of Ephesians chapter 5, he loves, she submits.

If you are like me, you find yourself conflicted about this last word. Somehow it isn’t fair, I think. Why should it be that he gets to lead? Yet, I wouldn’t feel right if she leads and he follows either exactly... Why is this a conflict? Because we like calling our own shots. We don’t take well to being under someone else’s authority -- remember the temptation of the Serpent in the Garden? “You shall be as gods” -- you can call your own shots and not have to answer to anyone!

But this is why Christian weddings are so helpful - not only to get the bride and groom off to the right start, but as a reminder to all of us who are either married or considering being married. If we understand that we are taking up roles -- that husbands are to be like Jesus, and wives are to be like the church, then it becomes easier to understand -- the wedding itself is an imitation of this larger reality that carries on throughout the marriage.

But if you are still not convinced, there is an even deeper magic - one that makes the reality of the Revelation 19 wedding itself an imitation of something deeper still. The relation of the groom to his bride is a picture of the relation of Jesus and His church, but the relation of Jesus to His church is an imitation of the relation of God the Father to God the Son. And here we finally come to bedrock. The ultimate reality is the eternal and Holy Trinity, from Whom all goodness, truth, and beauty flow. Throughout eternity the Father leads and the Son follows. The Father creates, the Son is the one through whom the creation is accomplished. If you were ever tempted to think that the follower is inferior to the leader, that is, the bride inferior to the groom, or the church inferior to Jesus, think again. No one follows because he is inferior - we take up these roles because that is how the dance of love goes -- the husband leads and the wife follows because Jesus leads and the Church follows -- and that happens because the Father leads and the Son follows. We are all in imitation of the Trinity, and there is not ONE IOTA of inferiority in the Son. He is completely God with nothing missing. He doesn’t follow because he lacks anything, he follows because He knows how love works. Because the Triune God IS what love is, so in marriage, He invites us to participate in that love. The husband sacrifices himself for the wife, and the wife submits herself to the husband, because in the few times that we get that right, we experience a small taste of divine joy. It is like the perfect waltz - the two become one precisely BECAUSE they take up different roles - we were built this way. Only in retaining our differences can we become complementary, and only complementary things can become one. This is the misunderstanding of much prevailing thinking today about marriage -- we think the two should become identical/interchangable because we assume this will assure equal treatment. But two who become identical forfeit their ability to become one -- the only way to become one is to be complementary. One leads, one follows, and each does his part for the glory of God, and the delight of the other. Never for himself. He who leads for himself becomes a tyrant. She who submits for herself becomes a manipulator. But when each is done for the benefit of the other, we experience a taste of divine joy. Andrew - I charge you to be careful never to take Catherine’s willingness to follow for granted - she doesn’t OWE it to you, she grants it to you for the glory of God and to help you to become the man God designed you to be. And Catherine, I charge you to be careful never to take Andrew’s provision for you for granted. He doesn’t OWE it to you, he sacrifices freely for the glory of God and out of his love for you - know that it is a blessing from God through Andrew for your good, and be ever thankful. In this way your trust in each other will increase.

We faithful Christians are members of the Bride of Christ, and we are being given the incomparable invitation to participate in the dance of love that has gone on eternally within the Trinity. In that dance is life, love, and meaning. Apart from Him you can do nothing. The bride and groom in our wedding today imitate this great dance when the groom proposes, the bride accepts, and then prepares herself for HIM. The Bride of Christ is invited to enter into love itself: the love that the Father and the Son have shared since before time began. So it shouldn’t surprise us that our bride and groom promise to love one another for the rest of their natural days. The bride here is invited to spend her life in love as well: to join in the dance that takes its rhythm from the music of heaven.

Andrew and Catherine would be the first to say that while today is their wedding day, they are not the center of this ceremony. It is not all about the bride and her dress; neither is it all about the groom and his proposal. It is ultimately about Jesus and HIS proposal to us His Church - will we accept Him? Will we allow Him to provide us with a dress of fine linen as He desires? THIS is what is at the center of our joy today - this is why we cry tears of joy - this is why the bride’s beauty is so important, and this is why the groom can’t stop smiling: this is the mystery: the two weddings become merged and indistinguishable -- the beauty of the Revelation 19 wedding lends meaning to the ceremony here -- the very real beauty of our bride here lends a tangible reality to the invisible Bride the Church and the love of our groom here helps us see a glimpse of the love of Jesus for us His bride. The promises of Jesus and the Church to one another are manifest in the lives of these two making promises today. And heaven rejoices and sings with us over such an exhibition of love and devotion.

So this is why we cry at weddings: they represent something that is just outside our grasp -- something invisible, yet truer than anything visible. This wedding today is beautiful because it joins two in Love with a capital “L”: may their marriage continue to reveal what they have begun to reveal today: the invisible relation between our Lord and His bride - and may they walk in His Spirit all the days of their lives.

And as for us? We are told:
'Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!' " And he added, "These are the true words of God."
Let us pray.
Father - bless this union with your presence and joy. That Catherine and Andrew may always walk in your Spirit, bear one anothers’ burdens, and know that you brought them together for their delight and your glory. In the name of Jesus, our Lord and Groom, Amen.

2010-07-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

There's an old joke: they say that in heaven all the cooks will be French, all the policemen will be English, all the engineers will be German, all the lovers will be Italian, and the Swiss will run the trains. In hell, it is all off by one: all the cooks will be English, all the policemen will be German, all the engineers will be French, all the lovers will be Swiss, and the Italians will run the trains.

What if this is the way of the denominations? What if in heaven all the systematics profs will be Presbyterian, all the cultural philosophy will be done by Romans, all the lawmakers will be Lutheran, personal holiness taught by the Baptists, and all the creative artists will be Anglicans. In hell, the Lutherans would write the poetry, the Presbyterians would make the laws, the cultural philosophers would be the Anabaptists, personal holiness would be led by the Anglicans, and the Romans would teach systematics. (I am sure that I have offended ALL now, but I mean this lightheartedly! Ps 133:1)

2010-07-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

How is it that we have so many for-profit colleges cropping up? University of Phoenix is only one of many, the most recent of which is Victory University. They have cropped up because we have become a culture that requires a college diploma as de rigeur for anyone hoping to land any job of any significance.

Where did this come from? The idea that we need a diploma (of any kind from any institution) to find a job is based on the thought that making a living in this world is the end of human endeavor. That comes from dismissing anything that smacks of eternal-ness. If we as a culture no longer believe in the God of the bible, we no longer believe that our actions in this life have eternal consequences. If there is no eternal aspect to the work we do in this life, what else is there but making this life as comfortable as possible? The way to do that is to make as much money as possible. The way to make money is to have a good job, and the way to weed out the numbers of people applying for "good jobs" is to require a college diploma. This means there is an increasing demand for diplomas. Not education, mind, only the symbol of that education, the diploma.

Why should we then be surprised that the ingenuity of our best and brightest (if not most virtuous) is spent on finding ways to satisfy the demand for diplomas? The problem is that college education is quite expensive. Wouldn't we be doing a good deed if we could find ways for those with few resources to get to go to college? It worked with the housing market -- let's offer low interest government loans to everyone who wants to go to college! First the government evaluates the student's ability to pay and turns the student over to private banks, offering to back the loans with tax-payer funds. But this year, our mental giants in the government have decided the private banks are just in the way -- why not give the tax-payer funds directly to the student -- better still -- directly to the college. The student pays his loans back when he gets out of school and begins earning income. What could go wrong?

Well, the whole system could go wrong because we have forgotten what governments are for, and what colleges are for. Governments are not banks or investors, they are to provide for common defense and establish and enforce the laws the people enact through their representatives. Colleges are not to provide jobs for people, but rather to pass on the accumulated wisdom of our civilization through its cultural inheritance. Ironically, passing on these definitions are what colleges SHOULD be doing, and if they do not, we are left to the whims of re-definition with each passing generation.

The way it goes wrong is that once forgetting and redefining government and college, the student does not have what the college diploma symbolizes. He has the paper and not the wisdom. Strangely enough, knowing these definitions and being a person educated in our cultural inheritance makes a student better prepared for any work he takes up -- so with the loss of this education, he is also nowhere NEAR as prepared for a job as he might be, and the inevitable result is that he finds he can't earn after all, and defaults on his loans. The government, which backed the system to begin with (the road to hell is paved with good intentions), swallows the loans, and bails out the students with money they print or borrow, which has the inevitable result of first inflating the money supply, then adding to the already astronomical debt, and finally one day helps throw our country of now uneducated barbarians into bankruptcy.

We are a rudderless ship. We no longer know the definition or telos of either government or college, and as a result will destroy them both by recasting them. If our colleges were still teaching what these definitions and purposes were, we might have a hope that one day we could put the pieces back together, but without them, we are lost. To continue the metaphor, if the rudder is the definitions, the sea anchor and the keel are the inherited artifacts and philosophies of our culture. The music, art, literature, architecture, history, and philosophy of Western civilization cannot make up for the loss of the Holy Spirit-defined guidance system, but they serve as ballast and drag against the fickle winds granting us time while we pray for spiritual revival and a re-forged rudder. Without a vision the people perish.

2010-06-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

It seems that the Swiss have voted to refuse to allow mosques to build minarets. There are four in the country right now, and they will be allowed to remain, but they don’t want more built because they are considered political expressions, and are thus against the Swiss constitution.

It is a strange notion that Westerners should refuse minarets while allowing mosques. If the Muslims are religious without being political, it is a benign symbol and therefore the buildings should be allowed, minarets and all. If Muslims are religious and political, then a minaret can be taken as a sign of intention to encroach, but then so are the mosques themselves, and both should be outlawed.

When are we going to admit that religious convictions are the foundations for political actions and beliefs? One has to think only for a minute to see that if the West were a culture based on Muslim belief, there would be little freedom for Christians and Jews to build their churches and temples. Why can’t we see that the Muslims are only free to build mosques in Swiss and American cities as a result of the freedom to practice religion that is based on Christian vision for a good society? A society that is free is free to do the right thing. Christians know that coercion is never going to lead to truth – people need to choose to love God, not be forced to do so. That is why we hold the political belief that governments should guarantee the free practice of religion. (of course when the founders of the US wrote that the government should not restrict the free exercise of religion in the Bill of Rights, they were intending to keep the country from establishing a national denomination – Anglican or Lutheran or Roman Catholic – I think they would have been extremely surprised that their rules have allowed the practice of Islam, Buddhism, et c. in America. This is a different world than they had, but the idea of free exercise is still a good one.)

It is a sort of cultural amnesia that allows our present political leaders, colleges, schools, even churches to think that there are no connections between the freedoms we enjoy and the Christian thinking that founded our countries. (I am not saying that everyone who founded our countries was a Christian – but the influence of faithful men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, Shakespeare, Bach, Newton, Kuyper, George Washington, TS Eliot, and a thousand more, is undeniable). It is as though we have built the massive skyscraper of the West on the sound foundation of a Christian view of life, God, and man, then decided that we can make changes in the foundation without causing any effect on life at the 21st floor/century. This is the result of forgetting history.

When are we going to say, “You may live here, but understand that the freedoms you enjoy are due to the sacrifices of many generations of Christians. We require that you show respect.”? The freedom the Muslim enjoys to worship his god in his way is one of the benefits of Christian culture, not Muslim culture. We would require the same if anyone came to live in our homes. Hospitality is a two-way relationship: there are rules for the hosts, there are rules for the guests. Violation on either side can ruin the relationship.

So what are the Swiss trying to say with their ban of minarets? That they don’t mind the mosques, just the visual symbol of their presence? How does one separate the minaret from the mosque? As time goes on, the differences between the three cultures are going to become increasingly apparent.

2010-06-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

Commencement Address given May 2010

Honored seniors, students, respected faculty, staff, and administration, fellow board members, friends, and most of all, parents, I am delighted to have the honor of addressing you on this important night when we celebrate the commencement of our latest senior class. I have enjoyed working with you seniors in Capstone all year, and in Theology III last year, and apart from two rather inexplicable attachments of yours, I am very proud of your accomplishments. The first is your attachment to the High School Musical movies, and second is to the name “The Great Hodge-Podge.”

Brevity is most certainly is the soul of wit, and while I am ordinarily reluctant to take any advice from Polonius, if there were an appropriate place to be brief, it would be when you are standing between a wild-eyed senior class and its stack of diplomas. I want to promise you that I will indeed be brief, to the point, time-conscious, brief, short-winded, timely, brief, and most of all, redundant.

Seniors, you have been told for years now WHAT a Classical/Christian education is, not only through the content of your classes, but in parent meetings and assemblies – some of you since kindergarten -- and you would probably rather have a root canal than hear it discussed in public again, and I can’t blame you. So, I’m going to make you a second promise, one that is even more daring: I am NOT going to tell you what Classical/Christian education is again…even if you beg. If you don’t know by now, there is really very little help for you, anyway.

However, I do want to tell you a secret. I want to tell you WHY we did it. We, that is, the faculty, staff, board, and most of all, your parents, who chose to put you through this peculiar education when you could have been sent to public and private schools already in existence. It would have been easier, less expensive, and just the thought of the extra free-time we’d all have had --- well, all I can say is that we would all have better golf games…

Why did we do it? Because we believe it is the best way we know to prepare you to be used by God. Make no mistake - this education is not for you. It is for God. The command to be fruitful and multiply given in Genesis was taken rather seriously by your parents, and you are the resultant fruit -- once they got over the initial shock of bringing you into the world, they found themselves in the somewhat Abrahamic position of knowing that you would one day have to be sacrificed. (don’t look so alarmed, Katie - I am speaking figuratively...) Your parents began to see their responsibility to train and teach you so that you would be able to accomplish whatever work God would have in store for you.

What I mean is that your life is not your own. You didn’t make yourselves, and you didn’t raise yourselves -- and you don’t give yourselves meaning. You were created for God’s purposes, and your parents, who have rightly taken the responsibility for your education, have turned to our school to help them prepare you in this life for the next. Yes - it is part of the medieval mind that the purpose of education is to prepare you for eternity. Of course, there are consequences in THIS life when you believe. Being prepared for eternity means that you will live the life you live BEFORE death DIFFERENTLY than others around you.

You have heard it said that the Classical/Christian education is the somewhat awkward combination of Greek reason and Christian revelation, and that this combination is the foundation of Western civilization. Actually neither of these statements is completely true. First, the only reason that the combination of reason and revelation is in any way awkward is that the two sides of reason and revelation have been rather brutally separated by our recent ancestors, and putting them back together is a little reminiscent of Humpty Dumpty. And secondly, the only reason we think of this hybrid as the foundation of Western civilization is that we have overlooked what really IS the foundation of Western civilization, a foundation that is at once more clear and more mysterious.

You will recall that God had to throw the Apostle Paul down to the ground and blind him in order to get his attention. What really interests me tonight in this story is that when Paul is led blind into Damascus, God speaks to a fellow called Ananias, and tells him to go heal Paul. Well, Paul’s motto was always “stone first and ask questions later,” and Ananias was understandably a bit reluctant to meet him. But God convinces him by telling him that he has chosen Paul to be the one to take God’s name to the gentiles. Why did He choose Paul?

Who can fathom the plans of God? But we can speculate a little -- Paul grew up in a Jewish home, learned his scriptures, knew the ways of temple worship, and by his own admission, kept the law perfectly. But in addition to being the consummate Pharisee, he had also been given a Greek education. He knew his revelation, but he also knew his rhetoric. He embodied the Athens/Jerusalem combination: reason and revelation, knowledge and belief, eloquence and wisdom. It should not surprise us that God chose this man to be the one to speak for him. He had been prepared for this job long before he had any idea what he was going to do. Think of how Paul used his rhetorical ability combined with the truth of God’s revelation to him!

A side bit of advice – it is not unusual NOT to know what you are going to be doing in life. Yes, we all like to have a plan, but God is in the business of changing your plans when it serves His purposes, and His purposes are always better for you than your original plans. What’s more, no authority figure above you can ever do anything to you that God doesn’t allow, so don’t ever be afraid of losing your job. Do what is right in all cases. This life is very short, and you want to be able to be proud of your decisions, so always make them in faith and trust that God has all things in His control. Hold those plans loosely.

So how did God’s chosen spokesman know where to preach? You will recall how in Theology III we discussed Acts chapter 16 about how Paul says he desires to turn east and preach to the eastern world but he is specifically stopped by the Holy Spirit, and given a dream of a man in Macedonia, that is in the west, calling him to come and preach the gospel to them. He interprets this dream as a command from God, and immediately obeys, traveling across the Aegean Sea to Macedonia, then south into Greece, and winds up in Acts 17 on Mars Hill in Athens, the center of the ancient Greek world, then returns to Jerusalem.

In his third journey, he repeats his trip to Greece and writes his epistle to the Roman Christians, showing that his eyes and heart were facing even further west. Of course, in his final missionary journey, Paul goes to Rome. You see, from the point of that miraculous dream, Paul never again looks east. Once God set him on this path, he never looked back. It can rightly be argued that THIS is the true founding of what is known as Western civilization – all the accomplishments of the Greeks were astonishing, but until their reasoning was teamed up with the revelation of Jesus in the Christian church, the West as we know it could not be born. That means that all the accomplishments of Augustine, Boethius, Bede, Anselm, Suger, Thomas, Dante, Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, Leonardo, Shakespeare, Milton, Rembrandt, Handel, Bach, Pascal, Newton, Burke, Wilberforce, Mendelssohn, Rouault, Eliot, Chesterton, and even what’s-his-name who wrote the Narnia stories, all these people owe their accomplishments to one man who was prepared when God told him to preach the gospel to the west. And how many more in the future will be blessed by this event? How many in East Africa, East India, East China, SE Asia, and in the dense jungles of East Memphis owe their knowledge of the Savior to the Western culture that was born out of the combination of one man’s obedience and education? This is how Western civilization was born. Not simply through a forced combination of two competing schools of thought, Athens and Jerusalem, science and faith, reason and revelation, but through one unified thing: an obedient Christian who was educated to think well.

Do you see why your parents thought this was worthwhile? Why the board, faculty, staff, and administration would sacrifice their golf games to be sure this education was passed on? Do you see how you COULD have attended a school with excellent academics but didn’t teach the Faith? Or how you might go to a school that is thoroughly Christian but sees little value in teaching logic and rhetoric? We are part of a long history of faithful men and women who have passed on what they knew, regardless of the cost, and you are the next link in the chain. We are hoping that you will embody what is truly great about the West – that you will be a group of people with a command of language, and a command of the Scriptures. Then, armed with the indwelling Holy Spirit to guide you, you will be equipped to live out the truth, and be witnesses to God’s work of redemption in this world as long as your life lasts or He tarries. It is not by accident that you have been trained this way -- you have been chosen too, just like Paul – you have been educated for a reason. You are going to be ready when the Lord says, “not this way, that way” – and the result of your faithful choices will echo through the future generations just as Paul’s have.

But always remember that without the leading of the Holy Spirit, your education is of no value at all. In fact it could make you quite proud, which is deadly. It required a conversion, not a diploma, for Saul to become Paul. So in a way we are taking a big chance. An educated man who refuses God’s leading can do more damage than he could have done without the education. An educated man has the ability to lead - so you will be leaders, like it or not -- where will you lead us? Will you allow the Holy Spirit to lead you as He did Paul?

At this point in the speech, most commencement speakers tell you that this is an exciting time – the beginning of your careers, you can be anything you want to be, just believe in yourselves. But I am not going to say any of that. There are two good reasons why I won’t: first, it is a load of foolishness, and second, it is a load of foolishness. This IS an exciting time, but it is not because you can be anything you want to be – for example, I can say without too much fear of contradiction, that none of you will have much of a future in the NBA. You can’t be ANYTHING, but that’s a GOOD thing -- saves on loads of wasted time wondering! The point is, you weren’t built to be anything – you were built to do the specific work that God has called You to -- “you are God’s workmanship, created for good works in Christ.” You will embody the faith, communicating it to your watching pagan/barbaric neighbors -- and you’ll do it through your academic work, through the way you raise your children, through your writing, artwork, science, through the businesses you start, the churches you lead, through the way you spend your leisure time, through your carefully chosen words, and most of all, through the way you love one another and those pagan/barbaric neighbors – in short, the Lord will be made visible through the WAY you “do” culture.

Through you we hope to see a genuine turn back toward civilization again. It is a mighty burden to place on such a young and small group – and it may be that it will only be possible through your great-grandchildren -- but it will be accomplished, if it is accomplished, through a million little faithful decisions day-by-day, week by week by a growing community of believers who reveal the truth by their actions. By the way you look at the ways of the World, with its eyes on efficiency and “bottom line,” this-world benefits, and saying - NO. There is a goal others can’t see - a target we live for that they don’t know about - our decisions are made by aiming at eternal targets, not at a comfortable life of money and power in this world. As I told you in my one bit of advice, life is very short, and it will gone before you know it -- I know it doesn’t feel that way now, but ask your parents and grandparents and see if I am not right about this. Life is just a breath long when compared with eternity, and the only work that will stand is that which is done in faith. If we are each faithful in our own generations, God can and does use us to accomplish His work, and what better thing can there be than that?

May our Lord bless you each and keep you safe as you enter into the world of academics, and give you great joy as you stand with and for Him there. So -- I promised I’d be brief, and I promised I would not explain the Seven Liberal Arts again -- but now I want to ask YOU to promise ME something: promise that you will never apologize for faithfully holding fast to both these God-given gifts: revelation and reason – they are your inheritance as godly men and women of the West. Promise?

2010-04-14T14:50:00.001-07:00

What would happen to a culture if they dismissed God's picture of sinful behavior (the law)? For example, our culture has given up the idea that ENVY is a sin. But this has serious repercussions. You'd think that giving up envy as a sin would lead us all to be more satisfied with our respective lots -- but no! Envy continues to rear its ugly head, only now we don't shame people who admit to it. Instead, we see envy in one person (or group) as a signpost that points to the inevitable conclusion that there is some sort of inequity present. Envy, instead of being a character flaw in the one who has it, becomes the alarm revealing "social injustice." If there were no social injustice, everyone would be at peace, right? QED.

There are many problems with being our own moral indicators, but for the sake of the line of thinking, let's accept the premise. Then the worst is yet to come. What is the solution for social injustice? Equalization, which usually takes the form of the redistribution of wealth. The people who have unjustly gotten more than the others should be penalized: fined, taxed, made to pay restitution -- in short, anytime envy rears its ugly head, we call for the one who is envied to pay. This is like the parent who, when confronted with the inevitable, "That's not fair -- he got more than I did," takes a part from the one who has more and gives it to the one who has less. What lesson is learned? That if you want more, just whine about it, and the powers that be will get it for you.

The reason this approach commands such attention in our day is that it seems compassionate. How can you want those poor people to be abused? What have they ever done to you? The question is not what have they done to me, but what have they done to God? Envy is a sin because it breaks the 10th commandment: No coveting your neighbor's anything! Why should we not allow coveting? Because it is faithless. This brings us full-circle: we envy because we don't believe that God will provide for our needs. We have dismissed God from the equation, so when we see imbalances between the haves and have-nots, we assume that there is an injustice, and try our best to fix it from our own perspective. The trouble is, envy is NEVER SATISFIED, and imbalances will be ALWAYS WITH US. No matter what we do, we cannot make the playing fields level. We can't make everyone have the same upbringing, same IQ, SAT scores, go the same colleges, have the same character, the same work ethic, the same capital, the same talents, or the same investments. The outcomes are always going to be different because WE are simply different. The only answer is to allow God back into our explanation about life, and trust that His love will bring about His good in our lives no matter what our circumstances. Of course with this love comes His description of reality, and part of that description says, "No coveting." It is sin. This just means that when we sense envy in our hearts, we call it the ugly evil that it is, and pray for help getting rid of it. Then get on with the difficult work of standing against the effects of the Fall, and fighting real injustice, not the injustice we have to modify with the word "social."

For an example - have a look at this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/business/15mortgages.html

2010-03-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

What if we have been looking at money the wrong way? What if it were not a commodity to be gathered, but simply a means -- a series of numbers -- that we use to reflect our common value system? We pay more for an hour of a brain surgeon's time than we pay for the plumber's time because we as a community value the work of the brain surgeon more than the work of the plumber. (I am not saying what we SHOULD value, just that we DO value it this way. One could certainly make the case that the plumber's abilities contribute more to a greater number than the brain surgeon's...but I digress...)

If we saw money only as a snapshot of our value system, then every price setting would become revelation of our convictions as a group. And instead of striving to gain money, as though it were a commodity in itself (currency traders notwithstanding), focus would be shifted to how one can EARN A LIVING. The only use for money is to trade for other things, and the only way to gain the power to trade is to have something to offer (a trade, a skill, an ability). We like to think that people can do whatever they like, and that they should be able to live the way they would like to live. But what if we were to think that one needs to earn a living again?

2010-03-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Four votes shy...

So why is this health care bill so important? Why are so many so up in arms about passing it or defeating it?

Say you arrived on Mars, and found two groups of Martians, the Hoes and the Whiches, heatedly debating the subject of whether or not to carry red rocks in their pockets. You might understandably lack any real appreciation for the subject, not living there, or knowing any of the reasons for or against the practice.

But say you learn along the way that the Hoes outnumbered the Whiches in their parliament, so that the Whiches didn't really have any chance to win a vote unless many of the Hoes voted with them. So the entire debate is within the Hoes' contingent.

Those who are against the issue argue that this is a bad idea because it would have terrible effects on the financial life of the population, reduce individual liberty, increase government control over more of life, and would go against the laws they already have on the books about red rocks. They offer that if given the chance they would be pleased to consider addressing the problem (whatever it is) together, but that this way is bad for them all.

Those Hoes in favor of this issue are lying in their press releases, knowingly overestimating the benefits of carrying rocks, and ignoring the costs, as well as offering huge payoffs, court appointments, kickbacks, exemptions, promises of support in the next elections, and even threats in order to purchase enough votes from the opposition Hoes (they don't even TRY to win any Whiches to their cause) to win the vote.

Not knowing anything about the details of the plan, which side would you be more attracted to?

The point of the exercise is to see how important the MEANS of winning the debate are to you. Do ends justify means? No matter what you think about the idea that health care should be a right for all, are you willing to compromise your souls in order to have it? I believe there are those in our country today that don't believe enough about virtue to allow it to alter their choices.

2010-01-07T09:23:00.001-08:00

If we are to suppose that the Bush administration was over-zealous, war-mongering, and constitution-shredding, what are we to make of the events since the new president took office? After 9/11/01, there was not a single successful terrorist plot on American soil until this new administration. Every one was stopped. Every one. And we know now that there were many attempts. The only successful terrorist activity in this country since 9/11 has been under the new administration.

The Ft. Hood shooting was clearly Islamic terrorism: the cowardly murder of unarmed men and women. The Christmas "panty-bomber" (thanks, Mark Steyn) too was clearly an Islamic terrorist, in a cowardly attempt to kill unarmed men, women, and children in the air and on the ground. The administration must see this as failure.

In addition, the war in Afghanistan has heated up, and there has been little strong leadership from the White House (in spite of the president's rhetoric before the election that this was the "good" war). The winding down of the Iraqi war had begun under the previous administration, and whatever the degree of its long-term results, its success is due to the "surge" mounted and maintained by the previous administration in spite of the opposition of the Democrats.

It seems that 1/3 of all the terrorist plots in the last decade have happened during 2009. (See Victor David Hanson's piece on NRO: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjYyYzhlZWM3NGViOTEwMmE1NGNlY2M5MGMxMzM4ODY=). The numbers of attempted attacks are (as predicted) going UP under this new administration. Charles Krauthammer said the other day that we should consider the Christmas bombing a success for the terrorists as it should have worked, and would have apart from the bomber's ineptitude and the heroism of one Dutch fellow.

What will it take to turn this around? Quietly, the present administration is adopting the very policies of the Bush/Chaney White House that they criticized so blatantly during the 2008 campaign. Hanson writes, "Given his adoption of the Bush protocols, Obama might show the same magnanimity toward his predecessor that he does toward the Muslim world."

I won't hold my breath.

2009-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Had a long talk with a Muslim man the other day -- 3-4 hours of delightful, respectful, in-depth discussion of our various positions. Questions were freely made and respectfully answered, friendly concern not to offend each other, but no sense of "walking on egg-shells" or either side being easily offended.

I came away from the encounter with several thoughts, listed below. In summary, he claimed:

* one cannot be both a terrorist and a Muslim. If you are one you must forswear the other -- that Islam and the Koran teach that killing others or yourself goes against everything that is holy and good,
* the idea of "jihad" in the Koran has nothing to do with forcing others to become Muslim, or holy war against those who are not Muslim. Rather it has to do with the internal/spiritual war we all fight in our own hearts against sin and evil,
* that starting even with its founder, Islam has been willing to live in peace with other faiths -- that the Ottoman Empire was quite willing to allow those it conquered to continue in their respective beliefs and practices,
* and that Christians and Muslims have a lot in common when it comes to believing that the world was created by God -- that the atheistic scientist is foolish when he claims the design of the world can be explained by accidental forces.

In addition, we spent a good amount of our time discussing the differences in theology between Jewish/Christian thought and Muslim. He held that Muslims believe:

* that Allah created man/woman to be sinful from the beginning -- and that this explains how we can be so sinful today, and why it is not surprising to Allah that we are sinful,
* that sin needs to be opposed in our lives every day all the time,
* that each individual fears Allah, but also is optimistic that he will be merciful in the judgment,
* that no one can know for sure whether or not he will be embraced by Allah until the judgment day,
* that no amount of good work in life can offset our sinful selves,
* that to think that one can be "saved" is actually a formula for potential passivity and moral degradation.

I told him about:
* how we were made good but fell through disobedience,
* how (since we cannot do enough good work in life to offset even the smallest of sins), we need someone to pay that price for us,
* how Jesus' substitution of Himself for me fully paid for me,
* and how while I COULD sit the rest of my life in my house doing nothing and still be acceptable to God, I am motivated to do in life now because of LOVE for the God who saved me.

There were several of these ideas that were new to the other --

I had never heard that Muslims disavow violent action on behalf of Allah. I told him several times that it would help a great deal if Muslim leaders around the world would stand and condemn terrorism in the name of Islam. He seemed to think they did already, but eventually agreed that there could be far more done along this line.

I had never heard that Muslims believe man was created by design to be sinful. This seemed to me to attribute evil to God, something that would lead to a loss of the category of "good" altogether. It turns out that it was news to him that Christians hold to a good creation gone bad, and thus have no need to attribute the source of evil to the Creator.

He had not considered that it could be possible to be out from under (my words, not his) the weight of sin in life. This, I believe, is the most important of all the things discussed, and I hope that it will haunt him the rest of his days. Christian hope looks quite different from his perspective: it seems irresponsible and passive. With genuine and kind curiosity he wanted to know if our beliefs allowed us to do nothing the rest of our lives...and I could see what he meant. This thought is hard for Christians to believe as well. Not because either of us are incapable of understanding, but because the idea is so impossible. How can we not fear? How can we not want to do good in the world? How can we not want to make things better -- even better for God? Of course we DO, but we do so now without fear, and BECAUSE of His love freely given, rather than in hopes that His love will BE given. This is the radical nature of the Christian's motivation. No other way of thinking allows for such radical and complete unity with God -- and it is accomplished without the slightest notion of pride, since it had nothing to do with us. This is hard for anyone to believe, but it is what makes the good news good.

We parted friends and invited him to return to discuss further any and all questions. He accepted and wants to cook us dinner. I need to read the Koran.

2009-12-08T07:52:00.001-08:00

What if great minds of the past could be called on to address present concerns? Why, that's just what books are for!

What if we could get, for example, Ronald Reagan to speak directly to Barak Obama and the democrats who support government-run health care? Well we can! That's why we record speeches!

Here is a 10 minute speech that Ronald Reagan made in the early 60s. Give it a listen, and let's talk about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0NWqvRidlk&feature=related

2009-11-19T09:07:00.000-08:00

A word on Capital Punishment

Q: Is the scriptural prohibition against murder necessarily a prohibition against capital punishment?

In a civilized society, guilt and innocence of crimes is decided on by a justice system, rather than by the offended party. To say that it is wrong for one to murder is not the same thing as saying that a murderer should be executed by the state.

Murder is the taking of a life for personal reasons: revenge, robbery, general hatred, personal offense, et c. Capital punishment is one in a long list of penalties that can be handed down by the courts in response to legal criminal convictions.

In the former, the person doing the killing is being faithless: he believes that justice will not be done (taking it into his own hands); or that the victim has something he wants (money, property) that he desires but can’t have as long as the victim is alive; or that the victim represents some one or group that the murderer despises. In any of these cases, the commandment not to murder is a commandment to despise faithlessness: God is the one who brings justice, not I; God is the one who provides for our needs, not I, and God is the one who calls us to love even our enemies.

The arguments against capital punishment go that if we are not to murder individually, how can we justify killing another through the courts? Is that not simply murder as well, only through the government? If revenge is a bad motive for taking a life, isn’t doing it through the court system still revenge? And if murder is wrong for one because it is faithless, isn’t it wrong on the governmental scale for the same reason? Both ends the life of a person made in the image of God.

There are several reasons why these are not the same.

First, it is not revenge when the government executes a convicted criminal. Revenge is the action of the offended party – justice is the action of the government. The governmental court system is in place to protect the rights of the accused as well as to protect the rights of the offended parties. Just as it is unjust to allow victims to seek revenge, it is unjust to allow offenders to commit crimes without having to be called to account for them. In order for this justice to come about, dis-interested parties have to be called in to consider both sides of the issue, and we have decided that it is important that the prosecution prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) its case against the defendant – that is, that innocence is assumed. If the courts have convicted one of a capital crime, it is the result of justice, not revenge.

Second, it is not inherently faithless to execute a convicted criminal. If God has set the death penalty as just in the Old Testament, it needs to be proved that it is no longer just in the time of the New Testament.

Third, God has expressly said in the New Testament that we Christians are to obey – even submit to – the governing authorities (Rom 13:1-7). In verse 4 Paul writes, “For he (the authority) is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” This sword implies deadly force, that is, capital punishment.

It can be argued that while the governments are God’s servants to bring and keep justice, there may well be punishments that are cruel, or unjust inherently. Cannot punishments be changed to be more humane, and couldn’t it be argued that capital punishment is in need of change for these reasons?

This is a worthy question, and goes beyond the question of whether or not murder and execution are the same thing. What we need to argue here are (barring offense) what the reasons are in favor of capital punishment.

Many argue that capital punishment is indeed civilized vengeance. The courts side with the offended party, and in so doing allow that offended party to kill out of hatred. But this position ignores the spiritual aspect of the issue. Assuming that guilt has been rightly discovered by the courts, and that the convict’s sentence is death, the system is actually giving a message to the convict on two levels: first that his crime is worthy of the supreme penalty – that is, that our society is agreed that his sort of crime requires this sort of response for justice to be accomplished as best we can in this fallen world; and secondly that he is a soul, and that there are actually worse things than death that can happen to a person. If we were to give you the impression that your crime were not this serious, we would be doing damage to your eternal soul. If a dog injures a neighbor, the dog is killed – this is done so that the dog won’t injure anyone else. If a man murders a neighbor, it may be also good to end his life so that he won’t kill again, but that theoretically could be accomplished by a life sentence without parole, so why the death penalty? Because there is a person’s soul at stake – he needs to know that this murder is a sin against God and that he needs to repent and get right with God before he leaves this earth. The death penalty can do what no other penalty can do: force a convict to meet his own mortality. He knows when his life will end, while the rest of us can only surmise. He has only so many days, weeks, months left to put his soul in order. To confess, repent, and be forgiven. And THIS is more important to us as a society than revenge.

It can be argued that our culture is no longer Christian, so we cannot count on our civil secularized courts to think in spiritual categories any more. However, this is not a case against capital punishment any more at all – we should call our courts back to Christian thinking on all fronts, not just the question of capital punishment. We should be considering the souls of our drug dealers, our corporate embezzlers, and our domestic disturbers as well, fitting punishments that call them to consider the need for repentance, restoration, and apologies as well – it is just that the punishment must fit the crime. If you steal from your company, you should be required to restore all that was stolen and then some, PLUS have to right any broken relationships. There should be punishments that fit the other crimes as well, punishments other than imprisonment, which should be kept for the unrepentant. There are those who would grow from being forced to spend the next number of years working to pay back those he stole from. Or be forced to serve the family he offended.

But in the case of capital crimes – when one person is murdered by another – the penalty has to be as serious as the crime. This is not said with the vindictiveness of a victim, but with the disengaged wisdom of the community. There are some crimes that we won’t tolerate as a society, and the perpetrators of those crimes should know ahead of time that the punishment is death. This supports the last point in favor of capital punishment, that the death penalty can be a deterrent. It is true that many murders are committed in the heat of passion. However, many more would be planned and concluded if there were no fear of death.

2009-11-15T07:02:00.001-08:00

Is history repeating itself? Iran and Iraq.

This morning, the AP reports that Iran is unhappy with President Obama, saying that he is just as bad as George W. Bush, and that all his rhetoric about change was just a lie (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575187,00.html). It seems that another middle east country is threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction, and the U.S. is standing in their way. Once again we hear that there are UN sanctions, funds being frozen, weapons inspectors denied access... Our present President is going to find himself in the real world his predecessor had to deal with, only this time he has a weakened country and world backing him up. In his work undermining the strength of America in the world (politically, economically, troop morale-wise), he has actually undermined the very strength he needs now to use. It is easy to be a radical community organizer, "power to the people!" when the real power and responsibility rests on those evil "other guys" that they think they can hate with impugnity. But when that power is actually transferred to the community organizers, and they dilute it (underfunding and vision with Gitmo and Afghanistan, economic disasters at home like the health plan, TARP funds, et c), they may find that what they really need is the very power of a consolidated country, a strong military, and the robust free-market underneath it all -- they may find that what they really need is respect, not love, from the rest of the world.

What if we are going through the 2002 Iraq conflict all over again with Iran? Will we have to invade? What would keep us from it? If it unfolds as the last did, we say: we cannot afford to have WMDs in the hands of rogue nations like Iraq/Iran, so we need UN sanctions. When they don't work (the people suffer while the leaders find ways to sell their oil on the black market to willing countries like France and Russia: Oil-for-food scandal, remember?) someone will have to enforce the UN sanctions. Who will do it except the US? In order to keep the WMDs out of the hands of terrorists, or to keep them from being a threat to Israel, we will have to require proof (Iran is denying it has such weapons, sound familiar?), and if Iraq/Iran will not allow us to confirm that they don't have WMDs, we will have to use military force in some way. What will this do to Obama's reputation as being different from "W"? The country will have to go to war again, and many will have to apologize to Dick Chaney. That will be a bitter pill to swallow for the left.

2009-11-14T07:51:00.000-08:00

I have an uncontrollable urge to tell everyone about this video (http://www.pjtv.com/v/2235), partly because I wish I had written it. Whatever you think of Sarah Palin, we are in a war for the truth. Do we as a culture put up with irrational, emotional personal attacks in the place of ordered debate? Does even that question seem to have no traction in your soul? Has it lost its appeal? Does something in your heart sink when it is asked, knowing that it will go nowhere and accomplish nothing?

How can this be? Are we so deaf to the call of the truth that we have resigned ourselves to a culture that runs on power instead of logic? Could it be that we are so overwhelmed that we think the only approach is cynicism toward all things reasonable?

This is just the place that the devil wants us to occupy -- no ability to think clearly or willingness to throw the weight of our lives and energies behind a the good where we find it. What if we were such moral cowards that we would rather be in with the hip crowd than take a stand for the true and the good when we find them?

I have been reading Saul Alinsky's book "Rules for Radicals," and he is an amoral, pragmatic, shell of a human being who will do or say anything (and teach others to do the same) in order to achieve power for the people he represents. This is ALWAYS the problem: the people you would LIKE to have lead you are people of character, but the only people who can rise to power are those who are willing to compromise character to achieve power. What hope do those who are NOT willing to do anything have? When it comes to "the Chicago way," Sean Connery's character in The Untouchables says, "if they pull a knife, you pull a gun; if they put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue...how far are you willing to go?" That's the question, and in the movie it seems like a call to courage in the face of opposition -- but can we fight the devil on his own terms and not lose our souls?

The plan put forth by the Cloward-Piven bunch is being put into practice all around us. (If you don't know about the Cloward-Piven strategy, read about it here: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967) The idea is to bring the present government down by overloading the system wherever it is weakest. The applications of this approach are everywhere:

Health care: because 20-40 million Americans don't have health insurance (and somehow folks are convinced everyone has a right to insurance), let's revamp the system for all 300 million of us and pay for it all through the government. This destroys the medical care for everyone, and incidentally crashes the economy. We were vulnerable because the country generally accepts the idea that the government should provide health care.

Housing: because a small percentage of the population don't own their own houses (because their finances are such that they are bad loan risks), direct the nation's banks to lower their standards and raise the loan risk level and loan requirements so that we can get everyone his own house. This overextends banks (on the promise that the Fed government will back defaults), loans fail, foreclosures ramp up, banks are bought out by the very government that said they'd back them, house prices fall, owners find they have negative equity, savings are lost, and the economy crashes. We were vulnerable because the country bought the idea that everyone should be given what they haven't earned (for whatever reason).

Voter registration: because it seems there are a lot of people who have not (for whatever reason) registered to vote, community organizers launch grass-roots projects to get everyone registered. Sounds good, but the real reason is not to get general registrations (as they tell the Republicans knowing it will stop their opposition), or to target groups that will vote Democrat (as they tell the Democrats, knowing it will stop their opposition), but that it will bring the election system to a collapse. The organizers know the voter registration offices are woefully understaffed, thus vulnerable to an overwhelming flood of paperwork that will lead to choke-points all through the system, bringing it all to a standstill. The registrations sent in by ACORN "volunteers" by the thousands were often frauds, but it takes time to track them each down to confirm. Not only does this slow the entire process of voting, it gives the enemies of the system credibility when they claim voter fraud -- "just look at all those illegitimate ballots!" they cry, knowing that they sent them in themselves. We are vulnerable precisely because of our conscientiousness.

In fact, we are vulnerable to these sorts of attacks because we want to be "good people" at every turn. Our very consciences are being used against us. What are people like Sarah Palin to do when they are attacked for being horrible, nasty, self-centered people who don't care about those without health care, housing, or the vote? Honest people want to address the accusations and redress any wrong they think they have caused -- and this is their mistake: they think the accusations must be somewhat true or they wouldn't be so raised. But dishonest people USE this honesty against them.

Why DON'T we expect Bill Clinton, Charles Rangel, Dan Rather, or Barney Frank to be ashamed of themselves for their actions? Why DOESN'T ACORN act ashamed when they are caught in blatant illegality/immorality? Imagine the storm of moral indignation if it were found that Sarah Palin had had sex with an intern? Or that George Bush had been running a homosexual escort service out of his home? What if it were found that Rush Limbaugh had knowingly faked and lied on his show in order to undermine a candidate he wanted to see fail? This fellow (on the video) says "of course we don't expect morality from them, they are Democrats." Have we as a COUNTRY really sunk so low? Is there no category from which to evaluate both parties on their honesty? This is how the empire can fall -- from the inside. Our own desire for open honesty and sympathy for the underdog is being used to neutralize our best and brightest.

Have a look at this and tell me what you think.

http://www.pjtv.com/v/2235

2007-02-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who does a lot of teaching in Africa. He says that the number of conversions to Christianity in the southern 2/3rds of the continent has skyrocketed in the last century. But there is little change in the poverty level, AIDS epidemic, general promiscuity, ethics and corruption levels, housing and latrine arrangements, et c. The reason is that while folks become Christians and look forward to heaven with Jesus, they have not been taught the whole story of the Faith. That is, they have not understood what a Christian worldview is all about. They don't see that God created things, created all men and women in His image (with the proper dignity that deserves), what it implies now that God called unfallen Adam to name animals and till the garden (order, organize, learn to plant and harvest, exercise dominion). They don't see about the space/time Fall that has affected all things, not just their individual souls, and that redemption means that God has not only given us heaven but calls us to justice and righteousness here and now. That we must stand against the effects of the fall in all of life, that we must use the life we have for His glory in the here and now. That the Lord loves His creation and once called it good, and that in the next life we will have heavenly bodies, we'll not just be disembodied spirits, that we are made for physical communion, et c.

In place of a fully-orbed Christian worldview, the African Christians continue to hold to animism -- the same animism they held when they were "converted." So, in this world they believe one thing, and for the next world they believe something else. It is as though the gospel really were John 3:16 without the rest of the bible for context (and even then you have to insert your own name instead of "world" to keep it as narrow as people are taking it).

I think we are doing the same thing in our culture here -- we think the work of the Christian is to preach the gospel and convert souls, and beyond that the only connection the Faith has with day-to-day life is that it calls us to help the new converts go out and create more converts. It is the "life-boat" mentality that sees this world as a sea to be resucued out of -- we have to reach into the sea of this world (with all its commerce, music, film, art, relationships, meals, sports, pets, education, politics, history, sex, and books) and save people into the lifeboat of the church. Then the Church becomes a safe place to stay until we go home to be with the Lord. In that Church, we can live without questioning our assumptions about life -- we can continue to be materialists just like the Africans continue to be animists. This is why the Church has so little influence on the way we do our politics, commercial endeavors, academics, or spend our leisure. We in the West are simply living on the borrowed capital from past generations who DID know what this all meant, whereas the Africans have spent all their capital (or have never had it).

This is why I think the answer to the decline of the West (and the poverty of India and Africa) is a restatement of the whole Gospel, with all its implications for justice, commerce, art, education, leisure, marriage/sex, family, politics, et c). We should be reading Schaeffer and Kuyper, as well as Pope John Paul II's work on the connections between reason and faith. It is not at all impossible that we will soon have a generation that sees no connection between what they do on Friday night and what they say they believe on Sunday morning. When Paul writes "don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" he is writing to the Roman CHRISTIANS -- he is not calling unbelievers and pagans to faith in Christ, he is calling the faithful to do more than just hope for heaven. (this is by no means to say that we have to have our worldview in place before He'll save our souls -- rather this is the work He saves our souls FOR. We don't need an education to become Christians -- thank God! -- but after we are His, He begins to teach us what it is all about!)

Integrity means that we DO what we say we BELIEVE. (may our gracious Lord grant us His power to bring these two together in our lives).

2005-12-26T08:44:00.000-08:00

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.

GK Chesterton, from "Heretics"

2005-10-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

On Integrating Faith and Learning
An essay on the purpose of a Christian liberal arts education
by Sorcamford

The goal of education is not to simply teach knowledge, but to help God shape the soul to love those things which are lovely.

Summary:

Two most important influences on western culture: Athens (reason) and Jerusalem (religious revelation).

Origin and purpose of first universities: to know God and the world rightly through theology (the “queen of the sciences”) and proper use of reason. The joining of Athens and Jerusalem.

Influence of secularism in universities has been to lose the theological underpinnings of real knowledge, effectively separating faith and learning.

The purpose of the Christian liberal arts education: to re-integrate faith and learning, or Jerusalem and Athens.

A short history of the relation of faith and learning:
Starting with the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia, and working through history to the point we find ourselves in today, there have been two major influences on us in the West. One came from ancient Greece, through Rome; the other came from ancient Jerusalem, through Rome.

The Greek influence, symbolized by the city of Athens, represents the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the mathematicians and early astronomers, the historians, playwrights, and of course the granddaddy of them all, Homer. From these come the various liberal arts of grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The Greek civilization was succeeded by the Roman Republic, then the Roman Empire, and the Romans copied and extended this Greek culture throughout the world.

Into this Roman Empire comes Christianity, extending, completing and transforming the ancient Jewish culture. The Jewish/Christian influence, symbolized by the city of Jerusalem, represents the idea of revelation: that the Creator of all things has actually spoken to us directly, revealing Himself and His plans for His creation to mankind. The assumption within this revelation is that mankind alone (to whom it is directed – no revelation seems sent to planets or bears…) has the mental ability to rightly comprehend this revelation. That is, human beings have the ability to reason about the revelation given. This ability to reason is the cross-point between Athens and Jerusalem, and almost immediately the early Christian church asked the question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” That is, what relation does Greek/Roman thinking have to do with Judeo/Christian believing? Or, what does learning have to do with faith? The Church Fathers (Tertullian -- who first asked the question -- Athanasius, many others, and finally the greatest of them, Augustine) addressed this question as they hammered out what was Christian theology and addressed heresies in the early church. We are deeply indebted to them for the church and the Bible as we know them, but also for how to think about God – that is, for the subject of theology. Theology was considered a science – the work of applying our reason to God’s revelation. There was in the end no contradiction between God’s words and our using reason to comprehend and apply those words.

In the Middle Ages, after a 1000 years of church history, the writings of Aristotle were reintroduced into western Europe. The result was a revitalized interest in the question of the relation of Athens to Jerusalem, or learning and faith. Rising to the occasion, theologians attempted to address how Christians did not need to choose one or the other – revelation and reason can work together without losing either the supremacy of scripture or the significant accomplishments of pagan reason. They simply needed someone to synthesize the two seemingly disparate views of knowledge. The result of their work was the birth of the Cathedral School, which ultimately served as the model for the first universities. In the university one studied the ancient liberal arts in order to know first how to think clearly (by proper use of language: Latin grammar, logic, rhetoric); and to understand the world around us (through the proper understanding of number: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). These basic tools prepared a student to undertake more extensive studies in law or theology, but were essential to becoming an educated person.

Universities were established in Bologna, Paris, and Oxford to begin with, then extended over the next 500 years into all parts of the world, including the new colonies of America, all with the idea that Christianity gives the right view of the world, and that through it human beings can be trained to think rightly about the world around them. Added to the curriculum along the way were the great accomplishments of the scholars, scientists, and artists who benefited from its tutelage, and these became the arts and sciences.

With the rise of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, a wave of secularism swept through the universities, and the theological underpinnings for reason were lost, even while the attempt was made to retain reason itself. Scholars didn’t see why theology and religion should limit the work of the scholar, and so slowly Jerusalem was eclipsed by Athens, and a secularized humanism replaced what had been a proper Christian humanism (the humanities are the study of the human experience in history, art, literature, music, and to a degree in the softer sciences of anthropology, sociology, and psychology – and as long as they are properly understood in light of Christian revelation they prosper).

With the secularization of the universities, Western civilization became more secularized, with the result today that most of the general cultural indicators show a loss of morality, virtue, and self-denial, but ironically also a loss of a belief in truth – even the hard sciences are now doubting whether or not things can be properly known. The Christian argues that the Medieval schoolmen had it right when they said that reason rests on revelation, and once revelation has been dismissed as superstitious, reason would not last long. Reason without revelation (Athens without Jerusalem) has had a run of about 250 years, and in the last 40 years has faltered. This is often called the death of Modernism (some people say that political Modernism was established in the French Revolution of 1789 and was deposed with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 – exactly 200 years), and what we are left with today is a post-modern world that has now lost both revelation AND reason.

What can a Christian College do?
The Christian liberal arts college is in a unique position at this point in history. We can reestablish a right understanding of revelation and reason and thereby reestablish both the place of the university and the place of a Christian worldview in the life of our civilization. The university has been reduced to offering elective courses combined into diverse degrees designed to attract students interested in preparing for particular jobs. If a student wants to become an engineer or a dancer, the university designs a series of courses that will prepare him or her for that career. As a result, there is little agreement among universities about what defines an “educated person”. The Christian liberal arts college claims to know what an educated person OUGHT to know – and this is somewhat scandalous in an academic climate that both doubts that anything can even BE known, and scoffs at the idea that there are some things that are more worth knowing than others. But the Christian liberal arts college has the history of the university on its side, and can reestablish ties with that tradition by asserting both theological truths (that Jesus did rise from the dead, that God has revealed Himself as a Trinity, that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, that human beings are made in the image of their Creator, that the course of history is Creation, Fall, Redemption, Glorification, etc.), AND that reason can further our understanding of reality (that there are natural laws that can be discovered by scientific inquiry, that applying the theological doctrines to the rest of life generates real knowledge of those areas – more on that in a moment).

At Crichton College, we have the opportunity to re-connect Athens and Jerusalem. If we take this job on, each of our scholars (faculty) will have to ask him/her self what does theology have to do with my subject matter? The reason for this is that each of our faculty has been trained by the university of the last 250 years – the secularized university that has continued to apply reasoning to the subjects generally without the benefit of revelation. So, our work is to properly re-integrate revelation and reason, or faith and learning. What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?

What will integrating faith and learning look like?
The Christian liberal arts college will be led by its faculty, which is doing the career-long work of thinking through the implications of theology for their fields. The psychologist will ask, “Assuming the Fall, what affect does it have on man’s psyche?” The scientist will ask, “Assuming that the universe is designed by a Creator, how is that design reflected?” or “How can the study of biology help establish or undermine the present theories of the origins of life?” or “What does the doctrine of the Imago Dei – the image of God in man – say about the limits of scientific inquiries such as fetal tissue research or cloning?” The artist will ask, “What is the purpose of artistic endeavor in God’s design for human beings?” or “How will creativity reflect God’s glory?” or the Business professor will ask, “How should God’s ethical laws be reflected in the workplace?” or “What happens to the Imago Dei when people are thought of as ‘human resources’?” Each subject, school, discipline, or division will be asking the question, “How do the doctrines revealed in scripture fit with our study of the general revelation of God in the Creation?” and “How can I apply the salt and light of the scriptures to my particular field to purge my field of the secularizing influences of the past 250 years, and set my field on a course that will further reveal the glory of God in it?” If our faculty would take up this challenge, and our marketing department would tell our community of our efforts, we would attract students who are enthused about this vision of education. Once students begin to come (as many have already) and their stories are included in our marketing work (just ask me about names!), we will begin to see our college become the tool our Lord wants it to be: a tool to reintegrate faith and learning in the next generations, and transform our culture with the Gospel by sending forth students to take up positions of significance in the various fields of endeavor in our community – not just to make a living, but to transform those fields with clear-headed application of a Christian worldview. Just think of what our culture would look like if not only our missionaries and pastors thought this way, but our artists, and our lawyers, and our shopkeepers, and our CEOs, and our social workers, and our bankers, and our mechanics, and our marketing directors all knew how to think in Christian terms about the culture they engage everyday. This would mean that we need to teach some very specific things (a core curriculum for Crichton College): Theology, the definition of a Christian worldview, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, languages (biblical and modern), the arts and sciences, and finally the majors. We would teach our students not only how to witness to their co-workers, but that they have Christian reasons for making films, and leading corporations, and repairing cars. They know why work itself glorifies God, and they trust that their needs will be met by God Himself, rather than by their own ambitions for more money. This seemingly utopian picture is only possible by the combination of God’s work of regeneration and redemption in the souls of our students, combined with God’s work of honing their minds to think His thoughts after Him in all the disciplines. The combination of these two things, faith and learning, is the work of the Christian liberal arts college.

2005-10-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a horse. It was a marvelous horse, tall in stature, proud in character, rich brown in color. People came from miles around to see this horse, as it was the only one they had ever seen. It was the only one in existence.

Scholars decided to study the horse to see what could be learned about it, but there was so much to the mighty creature they decided to each address a portion of the horse to save time. So one studied the nose, another the flanks, another the hoofs, another the ears, and together they marveled at the details they uncovered and shared their discoveries with each other. The one who studied the nose spoke of its shape and nostrils, the one who studied the hooves spoke about the curve of the hoof, and the difference between the hoof tissue and that of the rest of the leg, the one who studied the ears spoke of their ability to turn in various directions and the cartilage he could feel through the flesh on the outside. Each was amazed at the living breathing creature, and how many facets it had.

So much so, that when they went back to their own homes, they began to try to describe this animal to their friends. These descriptions were so astounding that they began to hear of others who wanted to come and study with the scholars about this horse they had inspected. The one who had studied the nose could describe the nose in detail, but the details about the rest (since it had not been his specific area) were more vague in his mind. Likewise, the others found that when they were apart they could describe the area of study they had each undertaken, but it was difficult to describe the whole horse, and even harder to describe the awe they had found in its presence.

The scholars decided that they should band together to properly communicate the entirety of the horse to their individual students, all in hope that they would be able to recreate in their students the awe they had each felt. But to do so, they needed each other's expertise. The one who studied the hoof was in need of the one who studied the ears, and the one who studied the tail needed help from the one who studied the flanks, et c. The horse was too much for anyone to grasp completely, so they followed their studies in the various horse-disciplines, but always with an eye to make sense of not just the whole of the parts, but the life that that whole seemed to contain.

So the scholars began a school for students to learn about horses. There was no real point to this study apart from the amazing knowledge itself. It would not directly give anyone special advantage in the pursuit of wealth or power, but they found that when you got a glimpse of the living breathing horse itself, you were astounded and awestruck. This experience became a motivator for the scholars to continue to learn and grow in all areas of knowledge, and as a result, knowing about the horse as a whole seemed to give one a better understanding of life in general. Employers began to look for people who knew about the horse because those people always seemed to be in awe about life in general, and this made them more interested in learning other things, like how to market products or design Powerpoint presentations, and those seemed to guarantee sales. (oddly, as the years went by, the more marketing and presenting these horse-scholars-turned-businessmen did, the less enthusiasm they had for horse-studies, but ironically the less interest they had for business practices too, and most ended up watching a lot of cable television and muttering to themselves, but that is another story.)

As the generations went by, the students grew and began to teach about the horse themselves, and, as might be expected, they mostly discussed the aspect of the animal that their individual teachers had studied the most. So there came to be schools of thought about the horse. The “students of the nose,” as they were called, came to believe that their part of the animal was the most important, as did the “hoof scholars” and the “mane institute” – and they passed their best information on to the next generations of students as best they could, writing in the “New Albany Journal of Horses," all about their individual studies, and about how each thought his study really got to the most fascinating and essential parts of the horse.

After several more generations, the various schools decided to separate to pursue their respective studies. This came about because each scholar began to think that his individual area of study was not only the most important in knowing the horse, but was also somehow limited by close proximity with the scholarship of the department nearest him. One can’t study the hoof completely without constantly running into the “leg scholarship” guys, and one can’t study the mane of the horse without always having to keep the nose, mouth, and eye guys “out of your hair.” (which is, of course, how that phrase came to be).

So, the various schools broke the tenuous connections they had held through inter-school communications, the New Albany Journal, and the National Horse Conference, to pursue their study of the horse without the limitations of the others. They each founded their own journals, started conferences specifically for their individual area of study (The Hoof College held its first annual Hoof and Nail Conference that later became an international event). This made it possible to really dig deep into the details of the various aspects of the horse. The mane scholars found that there were many different lengths and widths of hair in the mane, and the hoof fellows found that there were all sorts of diseases that could be addressed by proper care for the hoof, and the flank guys studied the ribcage showing through the thin skin on the flanks, and speculated about what could be found underneath the ribs.

So the awe for the life of the original horse was slowly transferred to the awe for the details the scholars could show, and then eventually awe for the scholars themselves. Just look at the insight, the detail, the well-organized facts about the various aspects of the horse! The schools even began to compete with each other over how many details they could catalogue. Also, in their free time they established football teams made up of students from the various schools to give them momentary diversions from their studies. These teams built huge followings and in some ways overshadowed the original purpose of the horse studies, but that is another story.

Eventually the horse studies became known simply as “the studies” since everyone knew they were all about the horse, and the various schools became known by the specialty they each offered. The Nose School, the Tail Way, the Hoof Gymnasium, the Mane Institute… and each found that by studying a particular aspect, students became quite good at certain aspects of life. Those who studied the nose became skilled at predicting diseases in people, those who studied the tail found that they could build great violin bows, those who studied the hoof found their way as manicurists, and those who studied the mane seemed to become experts in cosmetology.

As centuries went on, an entire culture rose up around those who were doctors, musicians, cosmetologists, et c., and a certain demand sprang up for these abilities. Eventually scholars simply taught medicine, music, and hair-styling without bothering to make reference to the parts of the horse at all. The courses that connected the vocations to the horse itself were ignored or discontinued in hopes of making the students’ years of study as efficient as possible so that they could enter into their desired jobs as quickly as possible. Eventually, there were so many schools cropping up, the competition among the various schools became quite fierce. The schools who received fewer students found that they were not able to pay all their faculty, so since they did not want to shut down, they hired marketing firms to bolster their images and attract students. As soon as one school went this route, others had to follow, since their market share was becoming threatened. So they all turned to advertisers and marketers who would write ads and marketing sloagans for each school, and be paid by them all. They would get paid huge sums for, “We noses can get you a better job than those ear guys.” and other witty aphorisms.

There were still some schools that attempted to connect studies to the parts of the horse that originally inspired them, even though these schools were considered out-of-touch with the mainstream, and taught useless information. One day, at the Mane Institute of Technology (at this late date, few knew anymore what the word Mane actually referred to -- the Institute, or MIT, was now most highly regarded for doing the physics and chemestry work needed to produce acne products), a graduate student, deep in the recesses of the library was going over ancient references to hair follicles and discovered the definition of something called "the mane." He asked his study partner, “just what is this "mane" anyway?” The partner, a junior, had no real idea. "And it is in the name of our school, too." And the two of them began to wonder why they were studying follicles, hair thickness, and length, and began to ask what was both north and south of the mane. Their faculty at first resisted their questions, but then began to be curious as well. One called over a scholar from the Left Ear Institute at a football game their teams were playing, and asked, “What do the names of our schools have to do with education?” “Who cares? Go Earholes!” he shouted as they scored.

But the Mane Man was not daunted – he began to imagine what the field of study would look like if all of them gave up for a moment pursuing the studies of music, medicine, law, and glue manufacturing, and got together to pool their knowledge about the ancient and lost arts of nose, ear, flank (no one studied this one anymore), hoof, tail, etc. He formulated a conference and invited the top scholars from each of the present schools, and these debated the differences among their various fields. After some time they were able to piece together on paper a picture of their combined subjects, and make educated guesses about which parts were missing. The result was a very awkward and fractured picture of a horse. They were each amazed and a strange awe swept over them all. Could this be what the ancients were about? It was an amazing sight, and one that none of them had ever seen before. “It’s beautiful,” said one, and all agreed. “But what good is it?” asked another. There was silence around the room.