A Long, Puzzling, Starry Night

Building on the discussion of pleasures in my last post, I'll reveal here another of my secret pleasures.  I enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles.  This isn't a "catch and release" type of puzzling, though.  I glue them together and put them on the wall when they're done.  My good wife doesn't think they fit the decorating style of our home, so they adorn the walls of my office at school.  Besides a map of Middle Earth and a picture of Luke Skywalker staring at the setting suns on Tatooine, they are mostly fine art like the Mona Lisa, Renoir's  Country Dance (and his City Dance on the back), and one of Degas's ballerina pictures.  I got started doing those back in graduate school after a visit to the Boston Museum of Fine Art, where the Renoir was displayed.  I guess I like the irony of fine art in the medium of jigsaw puzzle.  And as for the puzzles themselves, I like the analytic exercise of breaking something down into its smallest constituent parts and building it up from there.  In that regard, impressionist puzzles are hard.  When you chop them up into 1000 or 2000 pieces, there aren't many identifying features left on an individual piece.  So, you have to stare at the piece for awhile, then stare at the picture on the box for awhile.  Occasionally you'll find right where that piece belongs.  By the time you're done, you know every brush stroke on the painting.  This latest project is Van Gogh's Starry Night.  It was a 2000 piece monster.  I started it over a year ago, and then rolled it up in my handy puzzle carrier and neglected it for months at a time.  This summer I pulled it back out and put it in the sun room, where most evenings I could be found staring at it and listening to Red Sox baseball games.  I hesitate to guess how many hours I spent in this way (though I probably could have become fluent in Farsi had I spent the time on that).  There were a few others who contributed: thanks to Hannah, Mikayla, Taylor, Casey, Trevor, Connor, and Chris who all found some pieces for me.  Though truth be told, about 1,975 of the 2,000 pieces were mine.  Perhaps the most surprising and pleasing aspect of it was that all of the pieces were accounted for after a year of them lying around.  Time to get out the glue.  If you'd like to see the real thing, stop by the office next fall.

The Pleasures of Man of Steel and Inferno

This week I shed my elitist philosopher persona and drank deeply from the well of popular culture.  I bribed my kids to do some work for me around the house by taking them to the new Superman film.  And for Father's Day they got me the new Dan Brown thriller, Inferno, which I read through in a few sittings.  The philosopher in me looks to books and films primarily for profundity, complexity, and subtlety.  And perhaps the best way to measure my estimation of these qualities in such media is how many times I re-read or re-watch them.  I have no plans to re-read Inferno or re-watch Man of Steel.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy them at some level.  I also enjoy at some level sitting on the couch and eating an entire bag of potato chips while I watch those shows about aliens having visited earth (yes, we signed up for cable again).  But after such experiences I can't help wondering whether there are better pleasures to be had than these.  That's a tough argument to make, but one that has some plausibility to it.  We'll come back to that point.

Both of these stories brought up the theory of utilitarianism.  Should Superman ally with his fellow Kryptonians and take over Earth to repopulate their species?  Yes, it would hurt a bunch of humans, but if it resulted in more good (= life) for the most Kryptonians possible, then wouldn't it be worth the cost to humans?  Wouldn't we feel little pang of conscience to sacrifice a bunch of lower life forms to save our species?  Or switching to Inferno, Dan Brown's conspiracy du jour is that it has been mathematically demonstrated that the current overpopulation of the earth will lead to the extinction of human beings within 100 years if we don't do something drastic.  So utilitarianism would suggest that eliminating 1/3 of humans now is justifiable if it saves more people than that in the future.  This is the straightforward "moral" reasoning of Jack Bauer, et. al. in 24: if torturing a guy's kids gets him to tell us where the bomb is in the shopping mall, then shouldn't we do that so it will save lives?

Unfortunately the calculus of utilitarianism is never quite so simple.  Early on, J.S. Mill realized that we can't just calculate how much good or pleasure some action brings about, because it seems like there are different kinds of pleasures.  And he advocated that some of these pleasures are better than others.  And since was an elitist philosopher guy, the best pleasures ended up being those profound, complex, and subtle experiences that can be appreciated such folks.  So the pleasure of a listening to a Beethoven symphony is better than the pleasure of watching two super heroes duke it out for the last hour of that movie.  Or so the argument went.

I have to say I'm sympathetic to this argument at some level.  There was an experiment with mice in which they hooked up some electrodes to the pleasure center of their brains and the mice could learn to active this by pressing a button in their cage.  Once they learned how to do it, they sat there and pressed the button repeatedly until they died (because they didn't stop to eat or drink or sleep).  Is that kind of pleasure good?  Aren't there better kinds?

Reading Dan Brown is kind of fun.  The three page chapters pull you along through the plot at a break-neck speed.  You want to find out where the bag of plague virus is hidden, and you want to find out who is the double-crosser, etc.  There's not much work to reading it.  And I suppose you get out of it what you put into it.  Whenever I've put in the effort to read something harder, though, I find that much more rewarding in the end.  Not everyone has the taste for Anna Karenina, but profundity, complexity, and subtlety are found in much more abundance there.  The same is true for gruyere cheese compared to the nacho cheese dip at the 7-eleven, and for chess matches compared to the NBA, and for reading good blogs compared to watching YouTube.  Should we elitist snob types try to force the good stuff on everyone, or even make the claim that one really is better than the other?

I don't know.  I'm in the mood for a bag of chips.

DJ J.B. - Batter my Heart

My nearly month-long blogging silence has a reason.  I could appeal to the three-week class I was teaching in May, or the writing I've been doing, or the increase in running mileage.  And while all of those are true, none of them are the real reason.  I find that no matter what else is going on in life, there is usually a bucket of time available for staring at a computer screen (what else are you going to do during those first three quarters of NBA games?!).  It's just that my "staring at a screen" time has been taken up with other things besides blogging.

I mentioned a while ago that I'm now the owner of an iPad.  Perhaps one day I'll reflect and write about how that has changed my life in a more general sense.  Today, though, I'll admit to one very specific change: it has brought me into the world of creating electronic music.

It started fairly innocently, goofing around with Garage Band and the fun little beats you can make with its percussion app.  But that is fairly limited and gets old after a few measures.  So with the help of son #1, I graduated to BeatMaker 2, and then had to add Audiobus to be able to import sounds from other apps like Animoog, Magellan, and AmpliTube.  I'm still scouting vocal processors.

Anyway, I've started into what could be my musical magnum opus by taking old famous prayers and mixing them into my new groove.  I'm finding that making songs is like writing an article in that you're never really done, but at some point you stop working on it.  The first of my songs has reached that point, so I've decided to inflict it upon the readers of this blog (if there are any left).

It turns out that you can't upload an audio file into Blogger, presumably so I can't pirate music to the throngs who follow this site.  So, son #3 (who knows about such things) said he could work around that problem by putting it into a "video".  And that has the added bonus of being able to write the lyrics on screen so you can understand the sometimes difficult to understand vocals with their olde English and heavy filtering (remember I'm still looking for a vocal processor that is compatible with Audiobus).  Son #3 is also responsible for donning John Donne with a pair of Beats to set the tone for what you should expect.

Speaking of Donne, he's the author of the text of this first remixed prayer: one of his Holy Sonnets called, "Batter My Heart Three Person'd God".  My kids first thought the metaphor had to do with what you might do to a fish filet before frying it.  No.  Batter, as in pound.  It is a prayer for God to stop taking it easy on us so that we might really come to know him.  My favorite line is the last: "I'll never be chaste unless you ravish me."

So, here we go.  This song was completely composed on my iPad (with the help of a little gizmo that lets me plug in a guitar and bass (I'm also not happy with the in-app bass amplifiers at my disposal yet)).  It sounds best in headphones.  Let me know if you think I should quit my day job and go on tour with Deadmau5 and Daft Punk.

Good Advice from Aquinas on the Bible

I'm in a phase of sporadic blogging again, mostly due to the facts that I'm teaching a three-week course that meets every day for three hours and that I'm working on the manuscript for the Science and Christianity text I have to have finished in a year or so.  In my research for the latter, I came across some words from Thomas Aquinas that I wish today's Christians would take to heart.  He was discussing how to interpret the Bible when it is obvious that the worldview of the original writers and audience is different than our own.  He gives two points, which he believes to be consistent with what Augustine taught:

First, the truth of Scripture must be held inviolable.  Secondly, when there are different ways of explaining a Scriptural text, no particular explanation should be held so rigidly that, if convincing arguments show it to be false, anyone dare to insist that it is still the definitive sense of the text.  Otherwise, unbelievers will scorn Sacred Scripture, and the way to faith will be closed to them (Summa Theologica, Vol. 10:71-73 of the Blackfriars 1967 edition).

Whether we're talking about the age of the earth, the methods God used to create, or the historicity of Adam of Eve, there is no doubt that there are different ways of explaining the text.  So, following Thomas's advice, let's not hold to a particular explanation so rigidly that when convincing arguments come (and they will probably come) that the way of faith will be closed to people today.  I've seen this too often lately.  People who have said, "If this is what Scripture says, then obviously it is a bunch of a hooey."

Back to writing.

More about Women

In my post the other day (here), I just kind of snickered at the position John Piper takes on the role of women.  The position is obviously deserving of more careful engagement.  I don't have the inclination to do that myself, but I'll tell a story and then point to two others who have written more seriously about the topic.

The story has played itself out more than once and so I'll speak in generalities to protect the guilty.  I used to be involved in interviewing lots of people for jobs.  And given that hiring at a place like my institution has a faith/doctrinal component, questions would come up about topics that not all Christians agree on.  Sometimes that was the role of women.  Whenever that came up and the interviewee espoused the hierarchical/complementarian position advocated by Piper and his ilk, I'd ask why he or she held to that position.  Invariably the answer was "1 Timothy 3 clearly says that the overseers (or bishops or elders or senior pastors?) must be men."  Leaving aside the numerous counterexamples to the implied premise that "If the Bible clearly says something, we must do it or believe it" (e.g., Deut. 21:18-21, Mathew 5:29, 1 Peter 5:14), it is easy enough to expose the faulty thinking with their selective interpretation of that passage itself.  I ask, "So, can single men be elders?"  Because the passage clearly says that these overseers must be married.  "Can they be married without children?"  Because the passage clearly says that they have children.  "What if they only have one child?"  Because the passage clearly refers to children in the plural.  The most recent time this story played itself out, the interviewee (who was quite theologically sophisticated) responded with a somewhat nonplussed, "I've never thought of that."

Now just like other passages of scripture we ignore in their literal sense, there are reasons that can be given for why we should only take the maleness of 1 Tim. 3 as important.  The question is whether those are good reasons or not.  Here are couple of Baylor graduate students who have recently engaged the issue.

Rachel Pietka is a grad student in English and responds directly to Piper's podcast from a few weeks ago.  She wrote a blog post on the Christianity Today "Her-Meneutics" portal about why Piper's position reduces to his problems with the female body.  You can find it (the blog, not the female body) here.

And a doctoral student in theology at Baylor, and a figure known to many of the readers of this blog, David C. Cramer has just recently had a paper published called "Assessing Hierarchist Logic: Is Egalitarianism Really on a Slippery Slope."  You can find a copy of it here.  It has received significant attention in the blogosphere because of an entry yesterday on Scot McKnight's very popular blog (here), which McKnight concludes with these words: "For those with a mind to listen, this will be a landmark article demolishing the logic of one man’s attempt to right the ship."  I'm particularly proud of this landmark article and its use of careful logical thinking, because I taught the author logic in his undergraduate education!  (though if truth be told, I suspect that logical insight is more a function of nature than the nurture that comes from a couple of undergraduate courses).

Dallas Willard, 1935-2013

Dallas Willard died today.  He recently revealed that he had very advanced cancer.  Willard was an ordained Baptist minister, a philosophy professor at USC, and the godfather of the contemporary spiritual disciplines movement.  I have been hugely influenced by his work and had the privilege of spending a few days with him.

Back in the year 2000 we had just instituted the philosophy major at Bethel.  We wanted to have an inaugural lecture of some sort to properly christen our new program.  We talked about the people who might best embody what we hoped our program would be like, and after a few names were brought up, everyone settled on Dallas Willard.  So we invited him, and he graciously came.  I picked him up at the airport and was immediately struck by his gentle demeanor and the holiness that seemed to ooze out of him.  For the next few days I accompanied him about everywhere.  Because of the personal impact he made on me, I was determined to read everything of his I could get my hands on.

Particularly important for me was his Spirit of the Disciplines which details the "why" of spiritual disciplines. Willard's disciple Richard Foster (who is more well known by the mainstream of Christian people) has written importantly on the "how", but for me it took the "why" before I understood these things well enough to implement them in my own life.  I'm sure there is some disciplinary bias here, but I think it is because Willard is a philosopher that was able to penetrate so insightfully into the topic.  I remember the first time reading through the book I was taking a retreat at the local monastery and got to chapter seven, "St. Paul's Psychology of Redemption" and I had an epiphany of sorts.  Since then, I've taught through the book and spoken on the topic numerous times.  I tell people that I'm basically a Willard impersonator.  I can't leave this book without quoting from the appendix on the good life.  Lots of people want to talk about the cost of being a disciple, because it takes some work, it means denying yourself and so on.  But Willard asks about the cost of nondiscipleship:

Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God's overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil.  In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).  

I also highly recommend Hearing God, The Divine Conspiracy, and Renovation of the Heart for spiritual formation.  Willard is not the easiest writer to read, but just like the disciplines themselves, if you persevere, they amply reward the effort.  (And remember, as Willard used to say quite often, the grace of God is not opposed to effort on our parts.)

A few years after Willard visited Bethel, I was at a conference where he was one of the speakers.  I was hoping to get a chance to talk to him again, but wasn't very optimistic about this because of the throngs of people that were constantly around him.  Then one afternoon I was skipping some sessions and sitting in the fairly deserted lobby of the conference center, and I saw him walk by himself into the men's room.  I decided then and there that I too had the urge to relieve myself, and tried to time things so I'd be able to "bump into him" in less than awkward circumstances.  I went in and pretended to do my business in the amount of time it took him to finish his so that we would meet at the sink.  It worked like a charm!  I said very casually, "Professor Willard, you meet hundreds of people and I don't expect you to remember me, but you had a big impact on me when we spent a few days together when you were at Bethel College in Indiana a few years ago."  We shook our newly washed hands and he looked at me more carefully and said he did remember that and wondered how things were going for us there.  A bit more chit chat followed, and then I asked a more substantial question and he said, "That might take a little longer to answer.  What are doing now?"  If I would have had an appointment with the queen, I would have said "nothing".  So we went and sat down at a table and talked for an hour.

Willard has said that he thinks the best one word descriptor of Jesus is "relaxed".  Jesus was completely confident that the Kingdom of God was being enacted and that no matter what happened among the affairs of humans, that kingdom would prevail.  Willard himself was relaxed in just this sense.  Would that we might all cultivate the same attitude and approach to life.

3rd Annual Royalties Reveal

I suspect that I have an inner accountant somewhere that has been repressed.  I don't even know what accountants do beyond balancing a checkbook, but there is something in me that takes great delight in organizing things quantitatively.  Actually "great delight" is probably too strong.  It's more like I can't help but do it.  My running and crossfit workouts are meticulously cataloged (currently on wodstack.com).  I keep a list of the books I've read (reported annually here).  I've been compiling details about my family tree (you can view it here).  Perhaps it's not an inner accountant, but more along the lines of Freud's anal retentiveness.  It's funny, though, because I'm not that way about everything.  There are some things that I'm very laid back and easy going about.  Like...  uh...  well, I'm sure there are some things.

But since entering the publishing market, tracking sales figures is one of the things that I'm compelled to do.  And I'm sure there is a different disorder in the DSM-V that explains my penchant for writing personal blog posts.  It is the conjunction of these two mental maladies that has resulted in my now 3rd annual posting in May that reports on the sales of my books.  (find last year's here, and the prior year's here).  This year it is double the fun, since I now have two books to report on.

The newest book is the Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity which I edited (with Alan Padgett), and was published on Wiley-Blackwell last summer.  There is this game that academic publishers play with the libraries which want the latest research and books that will last, so Blackwell only published it in hardback for now and set the list price at $199.  Of course there are various discounts, and the electronic version is cheaper.  All told, by the end of 2012 they had a net sales (not gross, because there are some vendors that return previously sold copies) of 222 books for an average sale price of 72.5 GBP (all the accounting is done in pounds, since Wiley-Blackwell is based in England).  My co-editor and I split 10% of this.  In addition, though, we got a one-time settlement for the rights to have it published in the Blackwell Reference Online collection.  They pay you once for libraries to allow unlimited access (or something like that).  The hope is that in another year they'll publish the paperback version so that normal people might buy it.

My other book is Christian Thought: A Historical Introduction which was co-authored with Chad Meister and published by Routledge in 2010.  So we're up to the third calendar year for reporting on it.  Routledge is basically a textbook publisher, and so the sales of this book are primarily for college and university courses.  Accordingly, the sales of it always jump in August and January, in preparation for the new semester.  It is not easy to find out where it is being used as a textbook.  A Google search turned up a large class at the University of Colorado-Boulder where it is a required text.  And Amazon will now show sales by region, which lets me guess that it has been used at some school in Florida and another in Washington State.  Electronic sales (mostly Kindle, I assume) were up to 56 this year.  Total sales in 2012 were 515, down just slightly from 2011's 523.  It looks like about 1/3 of those were sold through Amazon.  Sales seem to be leveling off here.  We were hoping for more in the crossover market to normal people for this book, but again the pricing of it keeps it out of their reach.  We had negotiated into the contract that our royalty rate would rise from 10 to 14% if there were ever more than 3000 copies sold in a year.  It appears that the publisher agreed to that because they saw no chance of it actually happening.

All told, I was responsible for 737 books being purchased in 2012.  That doesn't exactly put me into upper echelon of published authors, or even of academic authors, or even of academic authors with an arboreal last name. My share of the royalties amounted to a little less than 4% of my income from my real job.  Not exactly a lucrative second job.  I suspect that working on these books is more than 4% of the time that I spend on my real job.  But it is enough to help fund the Stump family vacation this summer.  Much of the rest of my summer will be spent on book #3.  The manuscript isn't due until 2014, but I've already got the column in the spreadsheet where I'll track its sales.  

Piper on Women, Underhill on Prayer

John Piper was recently asked whether it was OK for men to read biblical commentaries that were written by women. (Find the podcast here.) He ruled that it is probably OK to read them as long as the women aren't there physically to assert their leadership or authority over a man directly.  Evidently indirect influence of an absent woman won't stain us men too badly or otherwise overturn the cosmic hierarchy God established, so I felt the freedom to read a book by a woman.  Instead of a commentary, I opted for a devotional classic in the mystical vein, assuming that Mr. Piper would put them into the same category.  The book is Evelyn Underhill's The Spiritual Life, and I feel that I've protected myself adequately from her direct influence since she has been dead for 70 years.

I think her words on the nature of prayer are particularly insightful:

"For prayer is really our whole life towards God: our longing for Him, our 'incurable God-sickness', as Barth calls it, our whole drive towards Him.  It is the humble correspondence of the human spirit with the Sum of all Perfection, the Fountain of Life.  No narrower definition than this is truly satisfactory, or covers all the ground.  Here we are, small half real creatures of sense and spirit, haunted by the sense of a Perfection ever calling to us, and yet ourselves so fundamentally imperfect, so hopelessly involved in an imperfect world; with a passionate desire for beauty, and yet unable here to realize perfect beauty; with a craving for truth and a deep reverence for truth, but only able to receive flashes of truth.  Yet we know that perfect goodness, perfect beauty, and perfect truth exist in God; and that our hearts will never rest in less than these.  This longing, this need for God, however dimly and vaguely we feel it, is the seed from which grows the strong, beautiful and fruitful plant of prayer.  It is the first response of our deepest selves to the attraction of the Perfect; the recognition that He has made us for Himself, that we depend on Him and are meant to depend on Him, and that we shall not know the meaning of peace until our communion with Him is at the centre of our lives."  

Thank you Evelyn.  Too often I sense the half-reality of my own existence and take it for the real thing, dismissing the haunting of the Real as nothing more than wishful thinking or the effects of some bad guacamole.  May my attraction to the Perfect, my communion with the One who made us all for Himself, my life of prayer, be kindled anew this summer.

Summertime

My grades are turned in.  I'm not sure yet how much of a difference that will make in my blogging life, but it will certain make a difference in my real life.  The rhythm of the academic life is one of the great benefits of this line of work as I see it (though certainly second to the opportunity to mold young and impressionable minds).  We professors work pretty hard (or at least we should).  I challenge anyone who thinks that twelve hours of teaching per week is cushy, to see what it's like to prepare to stand up in front of (at least some) bright students and have something meaningful to talk about for a couple of hours each day.  Of course disciplines differ in this regard.  In my discipline (the mother of all disciplines... at least according to us), the situation is compounded by the fact that we don't have ready-made lesson plans, problem sets, or laboratory exercises.  Philosophy is pretty abstract stuff, and it takes a good deal of coaxing (and bribing and threatening) to get students to read some old text and to think carefully about the nuances of it so that the classroom experience will be more than just the sound and fury of my own voice.  Then there is the grading.  Philosophy doesn't lend itself to true or false tests, so it takes some time to assess students' work fairly.  But enough of the pity party for me.  I turned in my last grades yesterday, and my contract says I don't have to report back until the middle of August.

Except that the philosophy professors have to write an assessment report on the major and get it turned in to the powers that be.  And I'm on two different committees that have regular meetings and side work over the summer.  And since salaries keep slipping further behind the norm, I signed up to teach a May term class in which we do a week's worth of work every day in order to cram a semester into three weeks.  And I'm under contract to write a book by the end of next summer, and so need to make some good progress now to avoid 60 hour work weeks next year.  And I've got a couple of new courses in the fall to prepare for.  Yada yada yada.

Still, summer brings a change of pace.  Just like I'd get pretty tired of living in a climate where the weather is always the same, I'd quickly become burned out in a job where the work is always the same.  And I generally like the stuff I have to do.  It is a blessing to be able to make a living doing something you enjoy.  

Predicament of Belief - Part 2

This is entry #2 on Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp's The Predicament of Belief (find #1 a few days ago here).  Chapters 2 and 3 aim to show that it is reasonable to believe that Ultimate Reality is in fact personal, and that the problem of evil does not overwhelm us with reasons to the contrary.  But I suspect most readers of this blog would think that they are going to an awful lot of trouble to argue for such minimal claims.  One of the features of this book, however, is that it is born out of significant engagement with those outside of our normal Christian communities.  Far too much of our Christian "apologetics" is done within our bubbles where we suggest what problems those people on the outside might have, and give solutions to those problems, which results in the inside people nodding their heads in agreement--while the outside people are never given the chance to respond.  We've satisfied ourselves that we've responded definitively to the problems.  Isn't it curious, then, that it is fairly rare that the outsiders overhear our conversations and say, "Oh, I see now.  I'll change my mind completely and enter into your bubble."

In my Logic and Critical Thinking class, I've probably said ten times this semester (with more to come), "If you get only one thing out of this class, I want it to be that critical thinkers acknowledge, understand, and respond to the best objections to their positions."  That's what Clayton and Knapp are trying to do in this book.  In responding to the problem of evil, they confront, motivate, and empathize with the version that is sometimes called the "argument from neglect".  The problem here is not that there is evil in the world.  That seems to be the consequence of free will (for instances of people doing evil things) and of the kind of dynamic environment necessary for sustaining life (for instances of natural evils, like hurricanes and earthquakes).  But rather, the argument from neglect says, "an all-powerful God who cares about us has a pretty abysmal record of inaction in the face of these evils."  Maybe God isn't going override Hitler's freewill and prevent him from trying to kill a bunch of Jews; but why doesn't God at least help more Jews escape?  Or maybe God needs to let nature to take its course and allow the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 to occur; but why not warn the 250,000 people hanging out on the beaches who were swept away?

One of the currently fashionable responses to this predicament is to say that God has reasons for allowing such things, and we probably can't figure them out.  Think of a small child whose little world is often frustrated by adults who take away a lollipop or even administer corporal punishment.  Those children probably can't understand why those things happen, even if the adult may be acting in what is ultimately their best interest.  Maybe God is like that, and we're the children who can't understand.

OK, granted, that is a possibility, say Clayton and Knapp.  But it is not convincing in the least to people on the outside.  Because for them, the amount of inaction by God to prevent or lessen evils is too overwhelming.    Sure, we might each have our personal examples of when God has intervened and aided in some situation.  But from the outside, we've not been fair in acknowledging the times when God hasn't done that.  And from their perspective the percentages come out roughly to what what we would expect by coincidences.  So Clayton and Knapp are driven to a principle that they call "not even once".  They think that God doesn't directly intervene in the physical structure of the world (though God does intervene in the mental realm).  If we were to allow that God stepped in and prevented your loved one from dying in the car accident, then we have to ask why God didn't step in and prevent someone else's loved one from dying in their car accident.  If God does it for some, then why doesn't God do it for all?

That's the really tough question to answer.  The conservative Christians won't like the answer Clayton and Knapp give.  But they're OK with that, because they're not trying to answer the objections of the conservative Christians.  They are trying to answer those who think the notion of God is absurd.  Their's is a way to answer them.

Doubt, Belief, Faith

I got a new book in the mail today: The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith, by Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp.  The latter is president of George Washington University, and I don't know anything about him other than what it says on the flap of the book.  The former--Philip Clayton--is a well known Christian philosopher from Claremont University in California.  I've spent a bit of time with him personally, and I always come away from our encounters with new respect for him, though not always agreeing entirely.  He was the main speaker at the conference I recently attended in Seattle, and I went out to supper with him at Thai Fusion, just down the hill from the campus of Seattle Pacific University (on the recommendation of Terry Linhart).  Because of our conversation and the talks he gave at the conference, I ordered the book when I got home.

For Amazon purchases of books that are more than six months old, I often explore the used providers.  Sometimes you get a deal; sometimes you get a book full of blue highlighter.  This time I was not disappointed.  I got a "like new" copy of the book for less than half the new price.  It came as advertised, and I dipped into it this afternoon and this evening.  I may end up writing a series of posts on it as I read through it.  I think it is important.  At any rate, here is one post on it.

***Warning:  If you are a Christian who has no doubts about the claims of Christianity as traditionally conceived, read no further.  Go on with your life and don't bother with books like this or blog entries like this.  Seriously.  It is not my intention to plant seeds of doubt.  But for those who occasionally have some doubts, read on with an open mind.

Clayton--like a lot of people I have met lately--finds himself in an uncomfortable no-man's-land between the fundamentalist-minded folks who hold onto a cartoonish version of faith that is read off the flannel graphs of Sunday School, and the liberal revisionists who seem to throw out the baby with the bathwater in attempting to keep their faith current and relevant.  I think the conflict comes primarily from the fact that the human authors of scripture believed very different things about the way things are than we do today, and the divine author of scripture didn't seem to feel the need to correct them on these matters.  So God's revelation to us comes strained through their worldview, and too often we confuse their worldview with God's revelation.  They believed the earth was the center of the cosmos, that history was not primarily about recounting facts, that slavery was inevitable, that women were not citizens, that demons were the cause of epilepsy, that the earth was only a few thousand years old, that the kidneys were the seat of emotion, and so on.  Some people think that we should still believe some of these things, since they are right there in the Bible.  I suppose that most of those people stopped reading after the warning given above.  If you kept reading, though, you are probably among the group of us who thinks that the modern world has caused us to change our minds about many (if not all) of those things.  So what are we to do?

Clayton thinks that the first thing to do is to own up to the sources of our doubts--to name them and to face them squarely.  And no softening the blow.  Let's acknowledge the strongest case there is to be made that might make us think that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is just wrong, that Richard Dawkins and his ilk are right, and that we've been massively deluded.  Here is Clayton's list of the top five reasons for doubting the core of Christian beliefs from chapter one:

1. Science.  "Over the course of roughly the last three centuries, the modern era has been deeply influenced by scientific methods, results, and ways of thinking" (5).  The world as we understand it today is vastly different than the world that people believed in pre-1500.  Does this cast doubt on the kinds of explanations that Christianity has offered?
2. Evil.  The problem of evil cannot be waved aside by appeals to free will.  Evolution has exacerbated the problem, but it was there long before Darwin.  If you don't think there is any problem with kinds and amount of evil we find in the world, then you're not thinking hard enough.
3. Religious plurality.  When adherents to other religions all lived in far off lands, it was easier to think that they were all just deluded or crazy.  Now that they are in our neighborhoods, it appears that there is roughly the same level of delusion and craziness among them as there is among us.  How can we claim we're right and they're all wrong?
4. The state of the historical evidence.  Here Clayton has in mind the issues associated with taking the Gospels (and biblical documents in general) as historical.  Look at the different accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection.  Obviously the difficulties associated with the reliability of eye witnesses were not exempted just because they wrote under inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  And how were the documents of the New Testament assembled?  Not by unbiased people, but by those who were concerned to advance a particular understanding of Christianity.
5. The claims of resurrection.  Is it really reasonable to believe that Jesus's corpse came back to life, that it passed through walls, and that it ascended up into the sky?

Different people find different of these more problematic.  And even the same person (me for example) finds some problematic some days, and others on a different day.  Clayton's book is not a straightforward evidential apologetics book that purports to show why these aren't really problems.  Nor does he sweep them under the rug and pretend they aren't there.  Instead, he aims to engage these and to show what committed Christian belief looks like in spite of them.

I'm anxious to see where the argument goes.  How about you?  

Unblogged Ideas

In my blogging absence the last couple of months, there were numerous things that could have been blogged about.  This raises the tree-falling-in-a-forest question: if you don't blog about an idea, did you really have it? This may not be as crazy as it sounds.  Indulge me for a moment.

Ideas come in degrees.  Everyone's favorite skeptic (or sceptic, as the Brits like to spell it--which is a little too close to the tanks I used to install working on a crew one summer in high school), David Hume, recognized the need to distinguish between impressions and ideas.  For him, impressions were just the raw feels delivered by our senses, and ideas were the after-images that remain in our consciousness when we think about them.  I actually prefer Kant's understanding of the matter in that the contents of our consciousness get shaped by our minds (my former students will remember the Play-Doh Fun Factory analogy here).

I've come to think as blogging as a Kantian process of sorts.  The act of writing something out makes the idea take shape in my mind.  Even sometimes when I've been mulling something over for awhile, it is changed considerably when I take the time to write it into a paragraph.  For instance, this post is not at all what I thought it was going to be when I sat down to write it.  Writing happens in fits and starts for me.  There is generous use of the delete key and constant editing and shaping.  New thoughts come when I read over something written down.  So who knows what the "ideas" that I've had the last couple of months would have become?  Even if I were to write a blog entry on them now, I'm sure they would be different than if they were written at the time.  Let's leave it to the metaphysicians to decide their ontological status.  I'll content myself with listing a few of those ideas that never were, children never conceived, falling trees that made no sound.  In no particular order:

1. How my life has changed now that it revolves around an iPad
2. Watching White Collar on Netflix
3. Son #2 beating me in ping pong for the first time
4. Our culture's absurd rhetoric about gun rights
5. A trip to Seattle, complete with botched flight connections
6. The Crossfit competition at Bethel
7. Reading The Chosen for the third time
8. The evolution of my thinking on evolution
9. My good wife and her tolerance of all the testosterone around her
10. Battling squirrels at the bird feeder

No sense pining for what would have been.  We set our faces to the future and march boldly into that great unknown, hoping to shape it in these pages in ways that lend a modicum of understanding.

Welcome Back in 30 Seconds or Less

You (my faithful reader) may not have noticed, but I've been out of the blogosphere for awhile.  I'm not sure why... I just felt blogged out.  The new semester at school started up, and I'm teaching some classes that I really enjoy.  And I've been expending my writing energy on some other things.  So, without any intentional decision, I just sort of wandered away from the blog and found that the stroll has been to my liking.  Occasionally I wondered as I wandered (the Christmas carol allusion seems to have some relevance in northern Indiana as there is still snow on the ground) if I might write up some thought or experience I had--it's not as though nothing has been happening in my mind or life.  But the impression was never strong enough for me to find my way back to this erstwhile clearing in the forest that increasingly seems to have become overgrown with weeds (all metaphorically speaking, of course).  All that changed last night.

We're into spring outdoor soccer season for son #2.  He has a couple of months left until he can drive, so dad's taxi service has resumed operation.  Last night practice was at an elementary school on the north side of town, where most people in our area live; we live on the south side so there is always a fair bit of driving involved for such events.  It is not time-effective to drop him off and go home, so instead I pop down to the Barnes & Noble for an hour and occupy myself with bookish things and libations from the Starbucks.  I see a former student and a current student, and chat with them a bit.  I'm mildly interested to learn that they are romantically involved.  But none of that has much to do with my story.

I have passed on a genetic disease called Raynaud's Syndrome to at least two of my sons.  When it's cold out (and sometimes even when it is not), the blood vessels in our fingers and toes constrict more than they are supposed to, and this can lead to these digits turning white.  It is a little bit freaky for people when they see it the first time, because (literally, I think) all the blood is drained out of some portion of them (the fingers, not the people seeing it).  As far as genetic diseases go, it's really not too bad.  I'm not looking for sympathy.  It's quite manageable, and I don't think it keeps me from living a full and productive life.  I'm on the mailing list for the quarterly newsletter from the Raynaud's Association of America (or some such name) in which they peddle electric socks and feature the testimonies of fellow genetic mutants with whom we can empathize.  That only has a little bit to do with my story.

The real story begins with son #2 getting done with practice and showing me his pearly white fingers and telling me how cold he is (remember there is still snow on the ground around here).  So he makes a pitch to stop at McDonalds and get some hot chocolate off the dollar menu.  I agree, since I know there is a McDonalds right on the way, and I feel some guilt for passing on that part of my genes to him (though I don't recall consciously deciding to give him that part of my DNA--so should I really feel guilty?) and because I've just enjoyed a $5 latte myself.  When we're in the drive-thru he says, "can you ask if they have caramel hot chocolate?"  I'm pretty sure they don't, so I agree to ask.  It turns out that they do, but of course it is not on the dollar menu.  But what am I supposed to do now?  Say to the drive-thru speaker/person:  "OK, I was just taking a poll; I really just want the cheap stuff."  So I pull up to the first window and cough up $2.67.  But there I see a sign that says, "Your 30 seconds start at the next window."  That catches my eye, so I read the fine print.  It says that I'm guaranteed to get my order at the next window within 30 seconds of pulling up or I get a coupon good for my next visit to McDonalds.  Always up for a contest, I instruct son #2 to stop doing whatever it is that he's normally doing on his phone and pull up a timer.  We pull up to the next window, and the clock begins.

There is a clerk there filling up some fountain drink, and I see behind her sitting on the counter a cup of what looks like it could contain a caramel hot chocolate.  So initially I'm a little disappointed.  But the clerk doesn't seem to see it and continues on with her job at the fountain.  I glance over to the stopwatch app and see that we're up to 20 seconds already, and no indication that the clerk knows that we are there or that the cup is behind her.  I try not to make any sudden movements that might alert her to our presence.  Now the clock hits 30 seconds, and still no service from the window, so son #2 and I start a little victory dance in our seats. Now she sees us and opens the window and hands us the beverage.  I hold the timer up to her to show that we are clearly past the guaranteed time of service, which I take to be legally binding.  She sees it and instantly understands what has happened.  Here, as best as I remember it, is a transcript of the ensuing conversation (and to help you have the full picture, she fits the stereotype of a McDonalds worker pretty well, and I've capitalized the words which were particularly stressed in her speech):

Her:  You were NOT timing me.  [I don't sense that this was a question, but more of a statement that seems to define reality itself.]
Me:  Well actually...
Her:  Listen, I was distracted.  Now TAKE your drink and go.
Me:  But isn't there a guarantee for this sort of thing? [I say, pointing to the sign on the window that seems to unambiguously say as much.]
Her:  Get AWAY from my window!

With that, she slams shut the translucent divider between us, which seems to consign us to separate universes--she to the world where she is the goddess because she controls the flow of nourishment (well... calories) to the outside world; we to that other world where we are the pawns of the gods and evidently have no recourse to injustice and cruel fate other than looking at each other saying "did that just happen?"

Anyway, it makes for a good story.  And with that I climb back upon this stump that has grown somewhat mossy and start making speeches again.  Since the meaning of the word seems to have significantly altered in our culture, I have no qualms making a "guarantee" that I'll write some more in the near future.

New Eyes for the New Year

By vocation and avocation, I do a fair amount of reading.  A few weeks ago, a started to feel strain in my eyeballs, especially when I was doing the sort of light reading that had me constantly looking from the book on my lap up to the television screen while a ballgame of some sort was playing in the background--a practice that I do not recommend.  I could get my eyes to focus on those different distances, but it was taking and longer and longer.  I could tell that bifocals were in the future of this middle aged man.

My first thought was that I should go to one of those professional places instead of the "glasses and oil change" places I've gone in the past.  My eyes are my livelihood so I'd better take good care of them.  And I even went so far as to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist recommended to me.  But the next available appointment was three weeks down the road, and I'm afraid I've conditioned myself to want things quicker than that once I've made up my mind (I mean, why isn't there a glasses drive through??).

So one day I went down to the commercial center of the metropolis I call home and found the same place I had gone to five years ago.  The deal of the day was, "free eye exam, and buy one get one free complete pair of glasses."  They got me in to see the eye doctor, who confirmed that I would read much more comfortably with a different prescription.  So, since I was getting two pairs of glasses, I figured I could get one pair of bifocals for reading on the couch, and then another pair that was just distance vision (which had also slipped a bit since my last exam five years ago).  I wandered out through the hundreds of frames for a few minutes, picked a couple of pairs I thought would do the trick, and the helpful staff complimented my choices.  I was told they'd be ready that afternoon.

When I brought them home, it was time for the big reveal of the new me to my good wife.  I should preface this by saying that the fashion sense in our household has not been equally distributed.  Evidently the books I read don't lend themselves to cultivating aesthetics.  Anyway, I showed her the new distance specs, and she responded with a lukewarm, "they're OK".  It was the kind of "OK" that spoke volumes in what was not said aloud.  She was very gracious, but the grace was tinged with sadness that I was perhaps not looking my best.  Maybe they were growing on her, however, because she seemed to talk herself into the judgment that they'd be fine.  "They are not very distinctive, but they'll be fine."

Then I reach into the bag to pull out the bifocals.  My reasoning here was that they would be more effective if they were larger, so that each of the lenses would have ample space to do their respective refracting of the light waves.  I announced the new me saying something about reconciling myself to looking like a middle aged person and then looked straight at my wife through the top half of the lenses.  Her reaction was a cringe and barely audible "Oh dear" (which I don't think I was supposed to take amorously), and then she composed herself and said very calmly, "Well you weren't planning on wearing these in front of people, right?"  Not exactly a ringing endorsement of my new look.

And they didn't wear so well over the next couple of days, because I was wearing them in front of people--namely her.  I thought she looked pretty good as I looked through the glasses; the sentiment was not reciprocal.  So that sent me searching for the return policy on the franchise's website, which was very generous:  "If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with your eyeglasses, return them for a full exchange."  So the next day, my good wife accompanied me to the store, and I found the same clerk who had helped me before, and I announced to her, "I'm afraid that I am not completely satisfied with my eyeglasses."  She saw my wife and immediately realized the situation.  Her compliments on my choices a few days earlier shifted instantaneously to the choices of my wife.  We found two new pairs, and it turned out that they didn't even want the old ones back (is that a bad sign?).  So I am now the proud owner of four new pairs of glasses--one of which in non-distinct, and the other can't go out in public.

Happy Birthday J.R.R. Tolkein!

On this day in 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkein was born in South Africa.  That means that ten years ago today would have been his eleventy-first birthday!  That's one of my favorite neo-logisms to come from his books (along with "second breakfast").

I almost didn't want to go see the current cinematic version of The Hobbit.  I was a pretty big fan of the Lord of the Rings movies, thinking they got the epic scope of the story just right as well as the intimacy of the characters.  And the visuals were fantastic.  But of course the movie makers succumbed to Hollywoodization in several places that left me scratching my head.  And that is what concerned me about what they might do to The Hobbit.

I've read the book three times--first during my college years; then I read it aloud to my class of 7th and 8th graders in Africa in the fall of 1991; then my good wife and I read it to each other in 2001 before the trilogy movies started coming out.  The Hobbit is very different in feel from the trilogy.  I'm afraid the movie doesn't feel any different.  Of course the visuals are still very cool (we saw the 3D version)--especially the beginning with the back story of the Dwarf kingdom under the mountain.  But it feels to me like Peter Jackson et al. said, "Hey, our LOTR trilogy was fantastically successful, so let's apply the same formula and do it again."  There is too much fighting and not enough singing (though the new rendition of "That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates" was pretty good).  Look at the movie poster.  Is that really what the book connotes?

I thought Martin Freeman made a pretty good Bilbo.  I really like Freeman as Dr. Watson in the British Sherlock series.  It is interesting that he is very much the same character there as he is with Bilbo.  I guess most actors tend bring their acting baggage with them into new roles (with the notable exception of Matt Damon).

I'm sure I'll see the other movies.  Just like I'm sure I'll go see the Ender's Game and Silence movies when they're made.  But I have a reputation to keep up as an elitist snob who thinks books are better than movies.  So I'll go ahead and reveal to you right now that those books are better than their movies too!

2012 Reads

It's an end-of-year tradition for me to comb back through my reading journal and see how many books I've read during the year.  In my line of work I flip through and sample lots and lots of books during the year, but for this exercise in anal retentiveness, I only count those that I read cover-to-cover.  In that grand blogging tradition of spilling one's guts to one's reading public (or is it the grand blogging tradition of thinking people actually care to hear personal details of one's life??), I offer my list here for your consideration:

1. Christopher MacDougal, Born to Run
2. Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies
3. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
4. Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game (Kindle)
5. Alexander McCall Smith, The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (re-read)
6. Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam
7. Mary Doria Russell, The Children of God  (Kindle, re-read)
8. Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil
9. Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates  (re-read)
10.  Michael Green, Engaging Philosophy
11. T.H. White, The Once and Future King
12. Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy Davis, God and Cosmos
13. Lawrence Krauss, A Universe from Nothing
14. Jim Nolt, Why Does the Universe Exist?  (Kindle)
15. P.D. James, The Private Patient  (CD)
16. Leif Enger, Peace Like a River (CD, re-read)
17. Spencer Wells, The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
18. Alexander McCall Smith, The Right Attitude to Rain (re-read)
19. Jason Rosenhouse, Among the Creationists: Dispatches from the Anti-Evolutionist Front Line
20. Alister McGrath, Surprised by Meaning: Science, Faith, and How We Make Sense of Things
21. Alexander McCall Smith, The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds

The list is never as long as I think it should be.  If I added up all the hours represented there in reading, would it be as many hours as I spent watching TV?  Given that this was an Olympic and European Cup summer, I'm guessing not.

Then, I have a few reading rules of thumb (which are constantly up for re-vision) that I try to allow to guide my reading habits.  Let's see how I did on these:

1. Read at least as much fiction as non-fiction.  Looks like 10 to 11.  Close enough.
2. At least 1/4 of books should be re-reads.  4 out of 21.  Close enough.
3. Read at least as much by authors who are dead as by the living.  T.H. White and Plato seem to be the only corpses here (though P.D. James is 92 according to Wikipedia!).  Pretty pathetic.
4. Re-read several from my two lists of life books, which (currently) are:

Pre-1900:

The Holy Bible
The Iliad, Homer
The Republic, Plato
Confessions, Augustine
Don Quixote, Cervantes
King Lear, Shakespeare
Rasselas, Samuel Johnson
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevski
The Death of Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy
Heart of Darkness, Conrad 

Post-1900 Fiction:

• The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald 
• Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis
• Things Fall Apart, Achebe 
• The Chosen, Potok
•  Silence, Endo
• 100 Years of Solitude, Marquez
•  Name of the Rose, Eco
• The Brothers K, Duncan 
• The Sparrow and Children of God, Russell
• Gilead, Robinson
  •  

On this rule of thumb I failed miserably.  The only one from both lists that I got in this year was Russell's Children of God (which is fantastic, by the way).  Though it is entirely possible that The Once and Future King makes its way onto the Post-1900 Fiction list (but who would have to leave??).  Pathetic!

And then finally, rule of thumb #5 is to read (or re-read) from my theological conversation partners, which currently are:  Dallas Willard, Leslie Newbigin, Stanley Hauerwas, and NT Wright.  How'd I do here?  A big goose egg.  Really, very pathetic!!

2013 New Year's Resolution #1:  Be a better reader!

Blog Post #200

According to the stats that this free blogging platform provides, this is my 200th published post.  I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to redesign the look of the site (hopefully making it more readable) and to reminisce a bit...

It all began in April of 2007 with this post:  In the beginning.  I blogged pretty regularly through the summer of 2007--mostly philosophical meanderings.  Blogging became a pretty significant part of my mental landscape, and I guess that is what led to me ending the experiment in September once school started up again.  In my 87th post on the 5th of September I whined a bit about how it takes too much time and mental energy to always be thinking about what to blog that day (full post here).  But then I gave some positives I saw about blogging.  They were:

1. I love the medium of language. Others paint or play music or blend media together in movies or what have you; I like straight language. It is remarkable to me that a certain pattern of ink splotches on a page, illuminated pixels on a screen, or vibrations through the air can be such powerful communication tools.
2. Blogging promotes a reflective lifestyle. Most all life forms experience the world (I'm not sure about bacteria...); I'd like to think that we humans are unique among creatures (at least those on earth) in that we are capable of reflection and the organization of our experience. Writing about our experiences is a great way of expressing our humanity.
3. Blogging promotes an interactive lifestyle. I suspect most all bloggers refer consistently to postings in other blogs. The nature of the web has grown this aspect exponentially over things like letters to the editor in a magazine, and I see it as a positive dimension.
4. It feels so hip to mention that you blog.

I started back up on a more limited basis in March of 2008.  According to the aforementioned stats, my most popular posting of all time (in terms of page views) occurred then.  As of this writing, it has been viewed 1428 times--evidently primarily by robotic entities of some sort that leave anonymous messages about websites selling various enhancement pharmaceuticals (if you know what I mean).  I can't figure out why it is so wildly popular among that set.  I quote the Five Man Electrical Band classic song, "Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign."  Perhaps that is it.  We'll see if referring to it again here generates the same thing.

After a couple of months I petered out again--this time for quite awhile: 3 years.  It was May of 2011 that I started up again with a post about blogging eternal security (once a blogger, always a blogger?  Was I just backslidden for those three years??).

Since then I've been going fairly regularly at the one-or-two-posts-per-week rate.  Occasionally I'll miss a couple of weeks when something has come up.  But I don't really feel too bad about that anymore.

I gave a post here about why I write.  Essentially it is because that is how I work things out in my mind.  Many of the posts that generate feedback are on these kinds of posts where I try to tell it like I see it.  Of course many of the posts are just goofy things, and probably too much of what goes on here is shameless self-promotion.

I've always been a data guy, tracking all kinds of things, and for bloggers the main data is how many people are reading what you write.  It appears as though I've developed a somewhat loyal following.  Most posts get around 100 views these days (except when I give my "New Book Update" posts--those are lucky to get 40 views).  Here are the most popular of all time (though I think Blogger only started keeping track of page views since I started back up in 2011):

1. The previously mentioned: Signs, signs, Everywhere a Sign (1428)
2. My eulogy to Gene Carpenter: Eugene Carpenter (1943-2012) (646)
3. A lot of recent traffic due to my mention of angels and shepherds:  Christmas in June? (549)
4. On biblical interpretation:  We should all mean what Olson means... (545)
5. My soccer recap:  Champions league fun (442)
6. Crossfit bragging:  Pilot Crossfit Burpee Champ (417)
7. End of TV:  Wireless and Cableless (343)
8. End of Cornerstone:  Cornerstone R.I.P (311)
9. A new profession:  Philosopher Kings (or at least consultants) (235)
10. More on biblical interpretation:  It's not that simple (sorry) (219)

It's pretty tough to find a common theme in these.  Most of them got re-blogged or re-posted by people from Facebook.  I enjoy hearing from people out there who read.  I'm sure there's some fancy way to track that, but I have to rely on comments to know who you are.

So, thank you for the platform.  I'm open to suggestions for making this better.  200 down.  How many to go??

Good News, Bad News (professionally speaking)

I inherited a bunch of corny jokes from my father, and I'm trying to be faithful and pass them on to the next generation.  Among them are a set of good news - bad news jokes.  I think my dad's favorite was:

The first mate goes below deck on one of those galley ships where slaves have to row with long oars to make the boat move.  He announces to the slaves, "I have good news and bad news; which do you want to hear first?"  They say, "Give us the good news."  So the first mate says, "The good news is that we're having steak for supper!"  Everyone cheers until one guy says, "Well what's the bad news?"  The first mate says, "After supper the captain wants to go water skiing."

My favorite is:

A cowboy injured his leg while rustling cattle, and it had to be amputated.  After he had woken up from the surgery the doctor came to him and said, "Well, I've got some good news and some bad news; which do you want to hear first?"  The cowboy thought a second then said, "Give me the bad news, doc."  So the doctor said a bit sheepishly, "OK, I'm afraid that we cut off the wrong leg, so we're going to have to go back into surgery again.  Sorry."  The cowboy said, "Are you serious??  That's awful.  What could possibly be the good news in this?"  The doctor answered, "Well, there's a guy down on the third floor who said that he'd buy your boots."

This weekend for me has been one of good news and bad news in the professional arena.  Which do you want to hear first?  The bad news?  OK.  I found out that I did not get a big grant I had applied for with a couple of other people.  We made it through the first round and were invited to submit a final proposal in October.  We really thought that it was going to go through and propel us into superstardom in the world of philosophy (which isn't really saying that much).  But evidently it was not meant to be.  And unfortunately they didn't even tell us why--just the standard, "There was very strong competition and we wish we could have funded all of the proposals."

So what's the good news, you ask?  I was mailed an advance copy of Dec 26th edition of The Christian Century, and the article I wrote for them awhile back is the cover article.  That was an unexpected surprise. I wrote an article on cosmology and theology for them back during the summer.  The editor and I had some positive emails back and forth, that resulted in his saying, "we'll move toward publication of this."  Then about three weeks ago I received a pdf of the proofs, but still didn't know it was going to be the featured story.

Now, most of you reading this probably aren't familiar with the The Christian Century.  It is a bi-weekly magazine aimed primarily at the Protestant mainline community (United Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopals, and so on).  I like to read it to stay abreast of the wider Christian thinking in the country.  At some point in the two-week cycle my article should be available on their website here.  They say that they make all of the magazine articles available on a rotating basis.  Then after the following edition comes out, I think it will be permanently available.

Now I'm sitting by the phone, waiting for the Tonight Show to tell me when the jet will arrive to pick me up for my interview.

Connecticut, et al.

On April 16th, 2007 there was a shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech that claimed the lives of 32 people.  At the time, I was the Vice President for Academic Services at Bethel, and the next day (5/17/07) I gave the following devotional at a meeting of the faculty.  It seems relevant given the events of today in Connecticut.

12 years ago today I was at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, where I was working on my Masters Degree. I remember wondering if America was under some sort of attack, thinking how remarkable it was that the attackers got all the way to the center of the country in Oklahoma City, where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building had been blown up and 168 people killed. In the days that unfolded after that, almost more shocking than the event itself was to learn that it had been Americans who committed the atrocity. 

8 years ago tomorrow is the date of the Columbine shootings—again Americans, this time teenagers whose minds had been warped into some kind of sick alternate reality where the actual shooting of 13 students seems almost to be the logical conclusion of the hatred and sociopathic behavior that preceded it.

Sure there’s 9-11 that came as ideological attack from outside our nation. But we do pretty well at attacking ourselves from within. Maybe there’s not the obvious civil war like we hear about from Iraq where the car-bomb-a-day pace has been kept up for a surprisingly long time (and shows no signs of letting up). But here our “freedoms” do a pretty good job of keeping us enslaved and at war with ourselves: capitalism, freedom of the press, entertainment. These are the pillars of American society, and there’s nothing wrong with them in and of themselves. But unchecked they lead predictably to greed and materialism, partisanship and relativism, the glorification of violence and pornography. These are not what our country was founded on, but they are what we feed on today—these “freedoms” for which the terrorists supposedly hate us.

It may sound like I’m poised to go off on some political tirade, but I’m not. The project of modernity, by which political policy and technological progress would bring about some sort of utopian society, was reduced to silliness in the 20th century. The post-modern world was not shocked on Monday when another gunman went nuts down in Virginia. Angry, yes; grief-stricken, yes. But not really shocked. The world is messed up. It is not a safe place. And try as much as we will, we’re not going to make this world a safe place by enacting more regulations. Having to put your toothpaste in a Ziploc baggie at the airport might stop one kind of potential evil but that’s a drop in the bucket.

And perhaps the most surprising thing about this for us Christians is that God doesn’t seem overly concerned about our safety. Remember the Christian girl and her powerful witness at Columbine High School who was one of the victims? And the stories of faith that came out of September 11 tragedies. And I’m sure there were Christians among the victims in Virginia too. I don’t find in Scripture that it is God’s goal for us that we are all safe and untouched by tragedy; I don’t even find that it is his goal for us that we are all kept happy. I find in Scripture that God desires above all that we be made holy, that we increasingly take on the character of Christ, and that we infect the world, not with some kind of superficial religiosity, but with the transforming power of the Gospel.

I believe with all my heart that Bethel has a role to play in this. Tonight I have to give a little speech at the Founders’ Banquet that is being given to those who regularly contribute financially the College. I’m going to do another variation on the one-string banjo theme I’ve been pushing for awhile now, and that is that we strive to instill in all of our students that no matter what their majors, they have a calling, a role to play in the Kingdom of God which Jesus proclaimed to now be among us. And in that sense, we have a lot of influence in seeing the transforming power of the Gospel infused throughout society.

Frederick Buechner is a writer I like to read. He’s not very well known because he’s a bit too religious for the secular market, and a bit too secular for the religious market (those are the kind of writers I’m drawn to). He defines vocation as that place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep needs.

April is a hard month; it always is. Springtime takes forever to get here; we’ve been going hammer down for months; students are squirrelly; contracts for next year come out and rarely do we feel that we’re paid what we’re worth. It is the natural reaction for almost everyone (myself included) to look at everyone else and think “if they would just shape up and do their jobs right, everything would be a lot better”. It’s April. The hardest month of the year in the academic cycle, and this cycle has certainly been the hardest one I’ve been part of. I should have known better than to start off the year at Faculty Retreat with a reflection on pain and suffering. Next fall’s talk will be about wealth and prosperity! 

 I hope in the midst of April, you can still sense a deep gladness. One of the world’s deep needs is reflected in each of our students and their futures. What will they become? How will they influence society? What a great vocation to be in! 

I’m sure you heard about the 76 year old Romanian Engineering Professor in Virginia—he himself a survivor of concentration camps. After hearing the gun shots in neighboring classrooms he tried to hold off the gunman by putting his own body against the door, giving his students a chance to jump out the windows. Talk about a love for students. 

Let’s pray.

I still agree with most of what I said there.  It may sound like I'm not in favor of gun regulation, but that isn't quite true.  I don't think it will solve the problems, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that it will help (I'll save the argument for that position for another day).  That saddest reality of this is that since that massacre in April of 2007 until this one in Connecticut today, there have been these other mass shootings in our country (taken from this website):



September 27, 2012. Five were shot to death by 36-year-old Andrew Engeldinger at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, MN. Three others were wounded. Engeldinger went on a rampage after losing his job, ultimately killing himself.

August 5, 2012. Six Sikh temple members were killed when 40-year-old US Army veteran Wade Michael Page opened fire in a gurdara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Four others were injured, and Page killed himself.

July 20, 2012. During the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, CO, 24-year-old James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58. Holmes was arrested outside the theater.

May 29, 2012. Ian Stawicki opened fire on Cafe Racer Espresso in Seattle, WA, killing 5 and himself after a citywide manhunt.

April 6, 2012. Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, shot 5 black men in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in racially motivated shooting spree. Three died.

April 2, 2012. A former student, 43-year-old One L. Goh killed 7 people at Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, CA. The shooting was the sixth-deadliest school massacre in the US and the deadliest attack on a school since the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

October 14, 2011. Eight people died in a shooting at Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, CA. The gunman, 41-year-old Scott Evans Dekraai, killed six women and two men dead, while just one woman survived. It was Orange County’s deadliest mass killing.

September 6, 2011. Eduardo Sencion, 32, entered an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, NV and shot 12 people. Five died, including three National Guard members.

January 8, 2011. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head when 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire on an event she was holding at a Safeway market in Tucson, AZ. Six people died, including Arizona District Court Chief Judge John Roll, one of Giffords’ staffers, and a 9-year-old girl. 19 total were shot. Loughner has been sentenced to seven life terms plus 140 years, without parole.

August 3, 2010. Omar S. Thornton, 34, gunned down Hartford Beer Distributor in Manchester, CT after getting caught stealing beer. Nine were killed, including Thornton, and two were injured.

November 5, 2009. Forty-three people were shot by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. Hasan reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, killing 13 and wounding 29 others.

April 3, 2009. Jiverly Wong, 41, opened fire at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York before committing suicide. He killed 13 people and wounded 4.

March 29, 2009. Eight people died in a shooting at the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, NC. The gunman, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, was targeting his estranged wife who worked at the home and survived. Stewart was sentenced to life in prison.

February 14, 2008. Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing 6 and wounding 21. The gunman shot and killed himself before police arrived. It was the fifth-deadliest university shooting in US history.

February 7, 2008. Six people died and two were injured in a shooting spree at the City Hall in Kirkwood, Missouri. The gunman, Charles Lee Thornton, opened fire during a public meeting after being denied construction contracts he believed he deserved. Thornton was killed by police.

December 5, 2007. A 19-year-old boy, Robert Hawkins, shot up a department store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, NE. Hawkins killed 9 people and wounded 4 before killing himself. The semi-automatic rifle he used was stolen from his stepfather’s house.

God help us all.