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.

My New Indie Favs

I stumbled across a music downloading site called NoiseTrade (find it here).  It appears to be on the up and up.  Perhaps everyone else out there knows about this; I'm not often accused of being on the cutting edge of the internet (have you heard about this site where you can post pictures??).  There are lots of independent bands that give you a sample of their latest cd's.  And it is organized to let you discover new bands based on what else you like.  Here are four I've downloaded and been listening to this week:

Elenowen.  This is a husband and wife duo somewhat reminiscent of Over the Rhine (except they both sing).  Evidently they were on NBC's "The Voice".  They have a self-titled EP that is very nice.  "We were better off" could be the anthem of twenty-somethings these days who aren't quite sure if they want to grow up.  Find their official site here.

Ivan & Alyosha is another folksy band from Seattle--though The Cabin Sessions which I downloaded from NoiseTrade is listed as acoustic rock by my media player.  Evidently these guys have been featured by NPR--which is very cool to middle-aged academic types.  My favorite song of the four included is "Don't Wanna Die Anymore."  Their name must obviously come from The Brothers Karamazov, and if they're interested in expanding to a trio, I'd volunteer to be Dmitri.

Band #3 is La Resistance (website here), which I couldn't resist because their album is called Philosophy.  Listen to tracks #2 and #5 and you'll be hooked. Here's how they describe themselves on their website:

"La Resistance is the past and the future. The old and the new. The classic and the experimental. Their unique sound and perspective is hard to categorize, but their influences range from New Order, Radiohead, The Cure, and Echo and the Bunnymen, to Interpol and Arcade Fire. Without departing from the timeless foundation of catchy melodies and poetic, poignant lyrics, La Resistance has an eye for the future, pushing the words and music to a place that is altogether inspiring but never ostentatious."

And finally, a solo guy by the name of Heath McNease.  The album from NoiseTrade is The Weight of Glory: Songs Inspired by the Works of C.S. Lewis.  These are 11 songs, the titles of which are taken from the titles of Lewis's popular books (plus one called "Edmund" after the Narnia character).  It is mostly acoustic stuff with some interesting electronic beats and such.  Good stuff.