Europe Fiascos

There are times in life that can only be described as a fiasco. In travel, the only way out, usually, is to throw money at it.

Today’s fiasco started innocently at 3:30am, the hour I decided to get up, after being pestered by the high pitched whine of hovering mosquitoes in my hotel room (I don’t know why the invention of the screen has for the most part been absent from most of Europe). I had only slept for about an hour. Two days prior I had changed my plans to go to Paris so that Danny and I could have another try at getting into the La Scala Opera house at Milan for a performance on Saturday. We were told it might be easier for Monday so we planned a last-minute, one night excursion into Switzerland with the intention of coming back to Milan for the Opera. This would require, for me, that I fly straight to London from Milan on an inter-European flight with only about two hours for me to transfer planes and fly Delta back to Los Angeles. I booked an early morning Easy Jet flight out of Milan at 7am to London. The two hours to go through customs and check in to my flight in London was enough because I was using the smaller airport, Gatwick., although there would be no room for error. After seeing the Opera, I was up until 2:30am packing and planning, making sure all my ducks were in a row. I decided to take the 4:15 bus to the airport instead of the 5am option, just to be safe. I walked down to the train station at 3:50 with all my luggage and noticed a few sprinkles of rain, just a few drops. Once at the airport (the rain was coming down a little harder, but nothing extreme, it seemed to me), I checked in smoothly, in spite of the fact that I had a very heavy bag and thought I might get slapped with an overage fee.
That done, I had plenty of time after going through security to have a last cappuccino in Italy along with a pastry filled with “marmalada.” Upon boarding the plane, I thought about the fact that I’d have to hurry upon arrival, no time for dawdling. A strange nervousness came over me. I was due back in the states for a job on a movie in Pittsburg. I had about a 12 hour turn-around before I needed to be on another plane. I decided worrying wouldn’t help anything and thought I’d catch a quick nap. I laid my head against the window and was quickly asleep.
I awoke to an announcement over the intercom. I sat up with a start and looked at my watch. We were still on the ground and it was an hour past our departure time. My stomach sank. The page declared that the plane would remain grounded until the weather cleared. Outside it was really coming down and lightning was illuminating the sky. My heart rate quickened as I thought about what to do. Should I call Delta? I turned on my iphone, then realized I didn’t have their number. I googled it, but the international data roaming wasn’t working. I tried calling 411 and 1800-free411, and then added +1 on the front for calling the States. Someone answered on the other end “Pronto?... Pronto?!!” That didn’t work, and was probably a very expensive wrong number, I thought. I figured I should turn off my phone before I incurred any more outrageous charges.
Once underway, nearly a half hour later than we were supposed to arrive in London, I asked the flight attendants if they thought I had a chance. “Maybe,” they speculated, if I really hurried. They moved me to the front of the plane and insured that I was the first passenger off.
I raced through the airport like the skilled traveler I thought I was. Boom! Through customs in 30 seconds, down the long hall and the escalators to the baggage check, just like I’d been told to do. Yes! My backpack was one of the first on the conveyor belt. I shouldered it, wished the other passengers who were also missing fights good luck and race off. Down the stairs, to the transfer train to the north terminal; I bounded up the stairs and looked for Delta. There it was, right under section E. Now sweating and breathing heavily, I skidded up to the counter and blurted “I’m going to LA, is it too late?”
“Oh, not today you are not,” a nice British woman replied. “We closed the gate at 9:45.”
“Alright,” I said, “what do we do now?”
After typing a bit, she offered that I could leave the next morning.
“But I need to be in Pittsburg tomorrow!”
Money was all they wanted. I forked over more of it and then solutions started presenting themselves. I ended up on a bus to Heathrow airport, on a plane to Atlanta and was home by 10pm that night.

Note to self, don’t allow for only two hours between flights in London unless you are willing to pay the consequences.
As it turns out, I bought a ticket at La Scala for 12 Euros to see Aida, but the actual cost was a bit more once you factor in the intangible. Was it worth it? Was it worth the extra money to see an opera in what is arguably one of the greatest opera houses in the world? If I could do it over, would I still do it?

Would you?

Italy Weeks 1 and 2

Well the class is done and we all had a great time. As it turns out, I was so busy with the group activities and photography that I never followed through on my experiment in the post below. I'll try to do better for the rest of the trip. In the mean time, here is a little time-lapse video I shot in Orvieto. This is the kind of stuff the new digital SLR's can do. I really am blown away by the quality of this new camera.

Italy Day 1

Hello everyone! I’m safe and sound in Rome, Italy and am starting the first day of my three week journey, which will include Rome, Orvieto, Assisi, Sienna, Florence and Venice, and who knows what else.

I’ve decided to perform an experiment of sorts on this trip. In the spirit of learning about the monastic life (we will be staying in a convent and taking a course on Catholic spirituality), I thought it might be fun to make the theme of this trip be prayer. I’ve always been one of those Christians who talks a lot about God (I talk a lot of theology) but has tended to spend a much smaller amount of time actually talking to God (although that is changing). So what I think I’ll do is every morning, write out a prayer, picking something small to ask for or reflect on for that day and then seeing what the course of the day brings. I’ll be borrowing my themes (at least to start) from the book of Proverbs, which will be the other spiritual focus of the trip for me. I’ll be reading through (and perhaps periodically commenting on) a commentary of the book of Proverbs that I’ve brought with me. My hope is to get up early in the morning (wherever I happen to be staying) for some morning photography, a cappuccino and some reading of the commentary on Proverbs, followed by a simple prayer. After that I’ll just simply go about the day as normal, allowing the themes of that day’s reading about practical wisdom and insight and the prayer that I pray to be the lens through with I will reflect on the day.

For those of you (if anyone is still reading my blog, ha ha) who find this ultra cheesy. I’m sorry. But I hope that these prayers won’t smack of sentimentality, and that I’ll be able to make these spiritualized insights and activities relate to everyday life in a way that makes sense.

Day 1:
Understanding, according to my commentary, is the ability to “discern between” good and evil. Wisdom is free and available to everybody, but it requires a conversion and the willingness to be a disciple.

Morning Prayer:
“Lord I pray that you will help me come out of my shell today. Help me to engage others, not because I want my own glory, but out of love for them (whatever that looks like). Help me to remember why I am here, why I am alive, which is to love others and enjoy you and your creation and works forever. So fill me with joy and thanksgiving today and may that joy overflow to the others I encounter today.”

Some Pics from Rome

Italy 2009

Hello all!

I'm here in Italy and I'm in class right now so I'll be brief. I'll start posting photos and stories from the trip soon.

First Talk

So I thought the talk tonight raised some interesting issues. The talk was on whether or not there is a "conflict" between science and religion. Plantinga basically argues along familiar lines, saying that there is no necessary conflict between theism and the theory of evolution, which is popular in science these days. However, if one holds to both evolution and naturalism, there is an inconsistency, namely that the two (evolution and naturalism) are self-defeating; or in other words, you can't rationally believe them both at the same time.




One thing is for sure: it is absolutely beautiful here with perfect weather.




















This is a photo of Einstein's house. I plan to find Jonathan Edward's grave while I'm here as well, if I have time.

Tonight's Talk

The conference this year at is on the philosophy of revelation. I'm looking forward to Plantinga's talk tonight entitled: "Religion and Science: Where the Conflict Really Lies." This talk may have relevance on some of the recent conversations I've been having here (on the blog). We shall see!

I'm always a bit wary of blogging about what I hear a conferences ever since I posted something a while back and the speaker whom I'd been criticizing somehow found my blog and posted a response. Not that I would mind that if I'd been expecting it, but I try to keep my on-line communications casual and separate from my actual academic writings. The blog is just for posting thoughts and getting responses from my friends, and not intended to be a foray into the world of academic rhetoric. So if something strikes me, I'll post it here, but I may avoid using names so that I'm not accidentally misrepresenting someone on the world wide web. One has to be careful these days of treating public communication as if it were private. At any rate, keep an eye out for my thoughts concerning the rest of the conference!

Princeton Seminary Day 1

I'm a HUGE Jim Gaffigan fan

...now that I've see the above video.

Richmond Pics

Francis Collins and Theistic Evolution

So Francis Collins was at Cal Tech here in Pasadena the other day. I told everyone from church that I would join them and attend the lecture. For some reason I forgot and the day came and went. BUT I found a lecture on line similar to the one he gave here and I'll now post it for you, so that you can not watch it because it takes nearly an hour of your time. After you have not watched it, I'll briefly summarize it, which you can skim. Then I'll present a couple of my thoughts. That way you can get on with your day quickly, instead of spending all your time at Wine Cheese and Theology.



Alright, so Collins basically outlines his reasons for belief, offering an account of a scientist coming to faith in a way similar to C. S. Lewis' account in Surprised by Joy. As a skeptical scientist, he sought out to research the validity of belief in order to have reasons to offer to people when he would tell them why he didn't believe. In the process, despite his attempts to resist, he became a believer himself.

The two main ideas that he points to are the fine tuning of the universe for life and the moral law within. Our planet is perfectly tuned such that the slightest change in its development would have disallowed for the existence of any life at all, let alone the complex variety that we find here. He finds that remarkable and points towards the existence of God. He also finds the fact of morality to be a pointer to a moral God. After researching various religions, Collins settled on Christianity as a unique religion founded on the resurrection of Christ, a validation of his teaching that turned out to be much more likely (as a historical event) than he had thought.

However, as a scientist and a geneticist, he still believes that Evolution (including the development of humans from apes) is the most likely explanation for the origin of the species that we find on earth. He thinks, however, that this view is not incompatible with Christianity. He grants that many do not share his view, but maintains that a large percentage of the scientific population agree with him. Obviously he parts ways with young earth Creationists and must maintain that, for example, the book of Genesis should not be taken literally. Many old earth creationists (of which I probably am) agree there, but don't think that his further step, of denying a historical Adam and Eve is necessary. But Collins the geneticist doesn't think it makes sense to say that the human race started from only two people. It's not possible. So he remains an Evolutionist, and I remain a little fuzzy on just how the synthesis works out.

The biggest conflict, it seems to me, between a classical theistic worldview and the evolutionary worldview is the place of struggle in the world in light of the providence of God. If history can be said to be guided by the providence of God in some way, then I think we should have no trouble in saying that the development of species was guided by God. But the difference is in the explanation of how that takes place. In evolutionary theory, history moves forward through struggle, whereas, in a classical theism, providence is a guiding force that works in spite of struggle.

For example, if Joseph's brothers had not thrown him down the well and sold him into slavery, the land would have not been saved from famine. What the brothers meant for evil, God used for good. That seems like providence to me.

But in evolution you have this idea that the strong survive, and that natural selection weeds out the weak and inferior. In this case, the death of the weak is a good thing, because that is what moves things forward.

So I think that we would seriously have to tweak the concept of evolution if we were to take Collins seriously. We would, perhaps, have to build in a kind of providential thinking to our description of evolution. The philosophical systems that were the intellectual offspring of Darwin, most notably Marx and Nietzsche, certainly had a different account of the operation of history. In Marxism, it is alright to induce struggle and suffering in order to bring about the next level of "upgrades" to society or the world. It is a kind of human-guided evolution. In Nietzsche, the strong, the elite and the powerful are seen as better than the weak, the resentful and the herd. In other words, the evolutionary value-judgment seems to be contrary to the values of Christianity. Indeed, they seem to be contrary to the innate moral law, which first brought Collins to belief. If they are ever to be reconciled, this will have to be addressed.

In the past, supposed conflicts between the dominant scientific sentiments of the day and the dominant theology of the day were, in hindsight, more reconcilable than everyone thought, even when science "won." There is probably no one today that finds the concept of a heliocentric universe as conflicting with scripture. But there is no value system built in to the concept of a heliocentric universe, so the transition is easily made. But evolution seems to place the categories of providence, struggle and suffering in different places. Collins (or someone) needs to do more philosophical/theological work (admittedly not his area of expertise) before I'm convinced that there is not a conflict between theism and evolution.

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Check out an advertising campaign in Britain here. I'm looking in to the ordering of some shirts.



Here is a quote from the article:

'Atheists just believe that we all have a capacity to be good to one another without having the threat of eternal torture hanging over us.'

This is no doubt true of most atheists, i.e. it is what they actually believe.

However, theists do not believe (if they are biblical) that "the threat of eternal torture" will make anyone good. In fact, according to Paul, just the opposite is true. The threat of judgment (the blessing/curse conditional nature of the law) incites sin.

The real question is: if the above is true, then will we all be good when all threats are removed?

Another question that this raises is the following: It seems possible, when things are going well, to "stop worrying" and enjoy your life. But in the face of injustice in this world, which positions invites worry? It seems to me that the oppressed, the poor, the powerless and the needy will (and should) have much more to worry about if there is no God, since all the evil in the world will go unpunished. Suffering and death will be the final reality.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon is able to make the case that life can be enjoyed as a gift, even though it is, from our perspective, hebel (translated as meaningless, useless or absurd). It can be enjoyed as a gift of God, precisely because God will one day make everything right. But the t-shirt seems to suggest the opposite. Nothing will ever ultimately be made right, so enjoy what you have while you have it. This only works if you are one of the "haves" in society. Don't worry about the millions of people suffering for no reason other than the fact that they were born in a certain region in the world, enjoy your life. Don't worry about the fact that your death hangs over you as the one inevitability in your existence; enjoy your life. Now that's a message we can all get behind.

David Powlison said somewhere that one of the consequences of practical atheism is the fact that the individual becomes much more important (in the eyes of that individual). This is because everything is now up to you and you alone. Tragedies are more pronounced and more final in a world without God because they have the last word. The result is a more heightened climate for anxiety. This is the climate into which the gospel of peace speaks. It speaks order into chaos, hope into despair and promise into absurdity.

Arlin Faber

Once again I am humbled. I have to be honest. I walked out of the romantic comedy, Arlin Faber, thinking that it was a little too formulaic and predictable. It had shades of As Good As it Gets, and other romantic comedies where the isolated but brilliant author who has quirky intimacy issues meets a woman who draws him out and instigates a change in him. But the more I think about it, the more I like it.

John Hindman, the director, came in to talk to us today about the film. He says that one thing he has learned is to have his actors, "act for the people who are paying attention." Arlin Faber is an author who has written a national bestselling book, "Me and God" twenty years ago. But in reality, he is angry at a God that he does not have. The story, John says, is about fathers, missing fathers, surrogate fathers, and maybe a heavenly father.

Arlin eventually meets Elizabeth, a chiropractor/massage therapist who is new in town when his back goes out. He uses his "answers" about God to get her to fall in love with him. But when she finds out that he doesn't really care about people deep down, she breaks up with him. The model of the story, as described by Hindman, is someone pretending to be someone he's not to get someone to fall in love with him.

While Arlin offers a lot of answers to questions about God in the movie, Hindman says, "I do not suppose to have any answers." And we get the sense at the end of the movie that answers are not that easy in coming. This is very interesting, sort of reminds me of Job. The answers are not given in the narrative itself. Hindman says that he wanted to take someone who thinks he has all the answers and then "bring him to his knees."

Despite the lack of explicit answers, Hindman seeks to provide a commentary on the search for meaning that can be accessible to a wide audience. "Whether you are an atheist or a fundamentalist Christian, you can enjoy the movie." The work of God in the movie (or we might call it the Holy Spirit) is done, not through the giving of answers, but as characters are going through circumstances. "Sometimes God or life opens your heart a crack at a time," Hindman says, "I'm no good with options, my ass needs to be in the fire."

This is a good film. I recommend it.

Sundance Day 4

Today we have a special guest out to talk to us, Cary Fukunaga, director of the Sundance film, Sin Nombre. Sin Nombre is a story about a fractured family from Honduras trying to make it through Mexico to America, riding on the tops of trains. Things are complicated by the introduction of a couple of young gang members, "Willy" and "Smiley" as they are struggling to belong in a gang community.

Cary spent a couple of years researching the story in South America, actually riding on the trains for a time himself. In the interview, Cary actually resolved some of the criticisms I had had about the film. I had found, after watching the film, the subject matter to be so serious, so solemn, that the highly entertaining nature of the film bothered me. Why, I wondered, did he choose to make a feature film? Why not make a documentary to create awareness? Would the thrilling nature of the story and the heightened violence cause us to miss the point? But Cary mentioned that he had been a cinematographer for documentaries in the past and had had trouble with the intrusion that the inevitable camera brought to the situation. He found it easier, in this case, to live with the people for a while, talk to them, and simply take notes, rather than shove a camera in their face. Later, he was able to incorporate the conversations and characters he encountered into the fictional screenwriting. This makes sense to me. Dealing with touchy subject matter, concerning violence and oppression, perhaps it is better to leave specific names and faces out of it.

In our global economy, we see a lot of imbalances in terms of wealth. The cost of living versus income is very desperate. As long as the economies are imbalanced, you will have people moving, and in that context, there is a lot of human conflict and drama going on. It was into this context that he wanted to pull out a story. "I'm always fascinated by the idea of how human beings create community and family, sometimes in healthy ways and sometimes in destructive ways."

One of our students asked where the hope comes from in the film. Cary replied that it came from the people he encountered in his research. When he asked the immigrants about the dangers they would always say, "it's in God's hands."

Sundance Day 3

A little short film called Short Term 12, directed by a Point Loma graduate, Destin Cretton, and produced by Michelle Steffes, a Taylor graduate, won best short film this year. Michelle and Destin met last year at the Windrider Forum. They collaborated on Short Term 12 and submitted it to Sundance this year.

The film simply follows one hectic, chaotic, day in the life of a couple of characters working in a juvenile delinquent facility. It is a tough film to watch. It's theme, as Destin puts it, is the exploration of "screwed up people taking care of screwed up people." All seem to agree that it captures a very real interaction between kids in a facility carrying a lot of pain and a couple of young adults trying to help but at the same time dealing with their own problems.

It is always a little ironic for me to see the sorts of people that attend the Sundance Film Festival and the types of stories portrayed on the screen. The people I often run in to on the bus or in the screenings are well dressed, good looking, and really the upper class of society, the privileged. And the people on screen are the underprivileged, the oppressed, the broken and often the hopeless. I wonder, sometimes, why this is the case. Why do the privileged choose to watch films that seek to expose wrongdoing? What is the draw for these difficult films?

Meanwhile, here at Windrider, we have just finished a wonderful discussion about Short Term 12, the nature of sin and society, abuse, youth workers, and the ins and outs of ministry to troubled teens. The film had the unique ability to open up the floor for discussion, input by experts, thought and reflection, in ways that I rarely see.

Sundance Day 2

Yesterday I saw a couple of films and attended an "industry" party.

In the morning we screened a couple of short films followed by discussion and then most of us went out to see a movie starring Kevin Bacon called Taking Chance. It is a true story following Lt. Col. Michael Strobl as he volunteers to take the body of a fallen soldier, Chance Phelps, home to his family. It becomes a kind of cleansing journey for Lt. Col. Strobl, feeling guilty about the fact that he never returned for a second tour of duty himself after the first Gulf war. Through the journey, he grows to feel as if he knows Chance, as he mourns his loss with those he encounters on the journey as well as Chance's own family and friends. The film tends to repeat beats, rather than moving forward in typical narrative style with complications and story events. For example, we experience the details of what goes on in the process of cleaning up a body that was shipped to America, put in a uniform, shipped across the country with an escort/witness. At every stop, Lt. Col. Strobl stands at attention as the coffin is moved from one plane to another, or from the plane to the car. As he does so, the people around him join him in moments of respect and solemn mourning.

Before I post my thoughts, allow me to plug a few links to other on-line discussions going on concerning the films at Sundance. As I type this, I am watching a live podcast at the Windrider forum here featuring a couple professors on a panel discussing Taking Chance. Check out this blog here, and the podcast here.

Nicholas Wolterstorff in his book, "Art in Action," argues that there is no (necessarily) single purpose for art. Like words or language, art can function as an instrument of action. In other words, a work of art is more than merely a description of the world, or an attempt to capture beauty, but can be an instrument of action, used to do something. In this case, it mourns. It helps us mourn. It allows us to go through the process of mourning with the character in the film. As Craig puts it as I'm writing this, "The film invites us to pause" and mourn the death of a fallen brother, son and friend.

Sundance Day 1

It's going to be another great year at Sundance. I arrived in town yesterday afternoon and swung by Park City Vineyard Church to see how all the Biola, Taylor and Fuller students were doing. The sanctuary of the church was full of people. Tables were spread out and chairs were set up and people were eating food prepared by the members of the church for the students. Every year I come here I see the same faces, putting students up in their homes, cooking food for us and, in general, serving us. This year the group is even bigger, but the smiles are always there.

Come evening, after a few people made it out to see a quick afternoon film, we all gathered to watch some of the award winning student short films picked by the Angeles Film Festival. These filmmakers were invited to come and hang out with us for the week, screen their films and engage in discussion. We saw a short about a little girl waiting for the tooth fairy, a film about communist North Korea, and a short documentary about dating in the Orthodox Jewish community in Manhattan.

All three films were very well done, touching and thought provoking. I am continually amazed at the quality of films that the Windrider Forum manages to bring in. Throughout the week we will hear from more filmmakers, some invited for special screenings here at the church and some who have films showing here at Sundance invited for discussion.

Fame Junkies

I'm reading an excellent book right now, mainly as research, called Fame Junkies. Jake Halpern starts his research of the fame culture looking at child celebrities and the industry of fashion, modeling and acting schools that foster the goal of stardom.

"Over the following days I interviewed Lucinda Wells and virtually every other girl in attendance that night (at a school called "Personal Best" in Buffalo, NY), an our chats were generally dominated by talk of fame. Many of the girls plainly wanted celebrityhood, but when I asked why, they were often at a loss. 'You can ask anyone in my family or any of my friends, and they will tell you that what I want more than anything is to become famous,' Lucinda told me. When I pressed her on the matter, she added emphatically, 'It's just what I want to do. It's the one thing that makes me feel good about myself" (11).


There is a correlation, Halpern says, between the desire among kids to be famous, and how many hours of television they watch, and how much they read magazines like Entertainment Weekly, Us, and People. Also, the more they are exposed to that sort of reading material, the more likely they are to believe or expect that they will become famous some day.

N.T. Wright

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/174352/june-19-2008/bishop-n-t--wright

What Dawkins seems to be right about and where he seems to exaguragte

I continue to be fascinated with the conversations going on over the supposed conflict between religion and science carried on by the new atheists.

I am therefore, just for fun, going to pull out some of the quotes from Dawkins from the video for interaction:

"Isn't bracing truth better than false hope?"

That, of course, depends on what you think "good" is. Good for whom? I think how you answer this question depends on who your "God" is. If he is a god of truth, then, yes, bracing truth is better than false hope. But if there is no God, then it depends. Bracing truth may not be better. Are people happier believing a lie?

"Science is an investigation and constructive doubt questing with logic, evidence and reason to draw conclusions. Faith by stark contrast, demands a positive suspension of critical faculties. Science proceeds by setting up hypotheses, ideas or models, and then attempts to disprove them. So a scientist is constantly asking questions, being skeptical. Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time."

"Science is about testing, comparing and corroborating this mass of evidence, and using it to update old theories of how things work."

This definition of science is, of course debatable. Dawkins, I think, is right to say that science starts with a hypothesis or idea. In other words, it starts with something that is unproven. However, as Thomas Kuhn argues in The Structure of Scientific Revolution," science (in practice) looks for evidence for the hypothesis. It is only when the process of trying to prove one's hypothesis is run into the ground that science can be said to "progress." A more accurate description of the process, according to Kuhn, is rather to say that little schools of thought form around a given explanatory hypothesis in opposition to rival groups. The rival groups tend to "do" science differently because they are operating out of a different hypothesis which they are trying to support. Each group essentially calls the other a "heretic" and "not a true scientist."

Eventually one method will usually win out over the other in terms of popularity, claiming that their model does a better job of explaining empirical reality. They will gain converts in the process of debate until the older hypothesis eventually falls to the wayside. Thus at any given time, a "normal" scientist (Kuhn's term) will be actively trying to support his or her thesis until this proves impossible. But rather than "updating" the theory, what typically happens is that the new paradigm takes over as the accepted method in opposition to the older theory and the older theory is rendered obsolete.

Now, if applied to the case here, we have a very nice 'for instance.'

Dawkins is an evolutionist, meaning that the hypothesis that he is trying to support is the theory of evolution (or natural selection or what have you). He asserts that his hypothesis is correct and essentially calls anyone in a rival camp a heretic. He is not, notice, trying to disprove his position. He is doing just the opposite, trying to disprove the rival position (most notably the ID theory). Now, if we note this, his contrast between science and faith, it seems to me, is less stark. Rather, what we have are two rival hypotheses, and each camp is trying to support their respected position.

The psychological theory behind this is that we actively filter the information we encounter in order to support our own goals and aims. We will, in other words, suppress the truth if it is in our interest to do so, in order to support what we hope to be true.

"Every person needs, at the center, some sense of meaning about existence. It is life or death to us, it makes us who we are. Yet most of us as we grow up and become responsible adults, accept that life is complex, that we live in a world of suttle shades, not sharp black and white. I worry that these "born agains" are being persuaded to return to childish certainties. The only truth they need is God. God as interpreted for them by their pastors."

In a sense I think he's right here. I do worry about the state of evangelicalism in America. Anti-intellectualism and hypocrisy abound, God is reduced to either another product in the marketplace or a justification to do whatever it is that we want. Certainly, in the political arena, it can be used as a tool for manipulation in the interest of power.


"I want to say that killing for God is not only hideous murder, it is also utterly ridiculous. Unlike religion, science doesn't pretend to know everything. There are still deep questions about the origins of the universe that are yet to be explained. But just because science can't answer them right now doesn't mean faith, tradition, revelation or an ancient holy text can. Science can't disprove the existence of God. But that does not mean that God exists. There are a million things we can't disprove.

The Philosopher Burtrand Russell, had an analogy. Imagine there is a china tea pot in orbit around the sun. You cannot disprove the existence of the tea pot because it is too small to be spotted by our telescopes. Nobody but a lunatic would say, 'Well I'm prepared to believe in the tea pot because I can't disprove it.' Maybe we have to be technically and strictly agnostic, but in practice we have to be all teapot atheists. But now suppose that everybody in the society, the teachers, the tribal elders, all had faith in the teapot. Stories of the teapot had been handed down for generations as part of the tradition of the society, there are holy books about the tea pot, then somebody who said they did not believe in the teapot might be regarded as eccentric or even mad."

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies believe in. Some of us just go one god further."

I want to say that Dawkins is not a practical atheist, he's a practical theist in many ways. Here is why:

Dawkins says that if we can't prove the existence of the teapot, we have to be teapot atheists. Interestingly, that's what Nietzsche did. He said that from the beginning, he found the Christian story to be ridiculous. But, he argued, this particular belief has implications. If we are really going to be atheists, he said, we have to be real atheists, not functional Christians, which is what he saw in the intellectual climate around him. His twin doctrines that came out of this task were "will to power" and "amor fati".

Will to power is the idea that the will is primary, and that the intellect is secondary. Those of you who read my post on Darwin and Daniel Denett will remember that I talked about Denett's idea that a "mind first" universe contrasts with the theory of evolution. The idea is that mind emerged out of chaos and not the other way around. Thus the mind is always, in that sense, in service to the will. The mind is, indeed, a product of the will. Thus desire will always rule reason. At the end of the day, in other words, your desires are what drive you, irregardless of what your intellect tells you about that. Thus the permutations of power, even if they are objected to on moral grounds (a product of the intellect) will always win out. The world is "will to power and nothing besides." The great conflicts among religions, therefore, are, at root, motivated by will to power. Scientific theories are, at root, motivated by will to power. What teachers tell their students are, at root, motivated by will to power. Teaching Christianity is motivated by power and evolution is motivated by power.

The other doctrine of Nietzsche's was "amor fati" or love of fate. This idea is that we are to love and accept the world as it is, a product of will to power, because it is not going to change. It will always be struggle. The theory of evolution, in essence, is the theory that history can be explained in terms of the struggle for survival. Thus struggle, conflict and power conflicts are the lens through which everything is interpreted.

So the problem with the teapot analogy (among other things) is that it paints a picture in which the object believed in has no implications. Of course it is easy to be a teapot atheist if there is no consequences. The teapot has nothing to do with day to day life. Belief in gods, however, is quite different. Depending on which god you believe in, there will be implications for how you live your life.

Dawkins, I would venture, on this count, is not an atheist. He clearly does not believe that the world is "will to power and nothing besides" because he believes in human faculties of reasoning as well as moral absolutes. He also believes in evil, and further, that it should be combatted. Good for him. To bring it back to his example, if we change the story to say that the teapot has implications, we would then have to say that while Dawkins may publicly disbelieve in the teapot, he lives as if that teapot were there.

Another Trailer for the Hitchens vs. Wilson movie

I tells you I can't wait for this to come out. I hope it lives up to all my expectations.



If you would like to read a bit about the Darren Doane, music video and independent film director, click here.

This Poem Stretches the Potential of Metaphor to Its Utmost

John Donne (1572-1631)

Holy Sonnet XIV:

Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearley'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

Prop 8 the Musical

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... by Jack Black

Hmm... gay marriage will save the economy eh?
What's interesting about this little video is that everyone agrees that the bottom line is money. That song at the end is kind of catchy "There's money to be made..."


Doug Wilson has a post about this video here.

I can't really say much more than what he's already said.

Thoughts?

Evolution and Religion - Part 6

A New Yes

Walter Kaufmann notes that early on in his life Nietzsche was given to contrasting the Dionysian with the Apollonian, but later fell to contrasting the Dionysian with “the Crucified.” Struggling to deal with the implications of the death of God, Nietzsche saw the origin of the concept of the Christian God as initially an answer to the problem of suffering. The idea is that promises for and subsequent hope in the afterlife allows the “herd” to deal with their own suffering, to give their suffering a kind of meaning. The world is full of suffering but there is a hope in a savior, the “Crucified” who will transport the believer to another, better place. Of all the values that needed to be reevaluated, it was this, the doctrine of Christian hope that provided the most formidable obstacle for Nietzsche, for any hope in a beyond served for him as a mechanism for devaluing this life. He rightly points out that hope lost is much worse than if there had never been any hope in the first place. In The Anti-Christ he says:
With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity: I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions…its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal…For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery! … - this is Christian dynamite…[it is] against life itself.

He wanted to find a “new yes” that would essentially abolish all hope in the beyond and infuse the now with meaning. The new yes for Nietzsche had to be found in the now, not in the future. This is to be done through the “Dionysian cult” of life affirmation, and, as we have seen, since all of life is “will to power and nothing more,” we are to affirm the world as it is, in other words to see the world as struggle and power-play and be alright with that.

"Such an experimental philosophy as I live anticipates experimentally even the possibilities of the most fundamental nihilism; but this does not mean that it must halt at a negation, a No, a will to negation. It wants rather to cross over to the opposite of this-to a Dionysian affirmation of the world as it is, without subtraction, exception or selection…The highest state a philosopher can attain: to stand in a Dionysian relationship to existence-my formula for this is amor fati."


So amor fati, love of fate, will constitute the new yes. No matter how disappointed we are with this life, we should love what is, instead of expressing dissatisfaction of what is through Christianity. Thus we should affirm life, by living in the now, rather than hoping in the future. “Nothing in existence may be subtracted, nothing is dispensable-those aspects of existence which Christians and other nihilists repudiate are actually on an infinitely higher level in the order of rank among values than that which the instinct of decadence could approve and call good.”

To illustrate this point, Nietzsche poses what Tillich calls an alternate “metaphysic.” This is his doctrine of Eternal Recurrence. What if, he speculates, the whole of history is cyclical, and you will be destined to live your life over and over again in exactly the same way. He says this:

"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything ultimately small or great in your life will have to return to you, all the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust! Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"


Neiman argues that Nietzsche was using his formula as a new criterion for valuation. Appealing to those who have the “strength” to live in this world as it is and love it, he is thus able to judge among individuals and cultures once more. For example, “Greek gods suffered the kinds of experiences you can imagine taking up and calling life interesting: betrayals of love and honor and power, treasures lost and stolen, plans failed, promises broken…by contrast, what Jesus took up was so fearful and awesome that not even eternity may suffice to redeem it…you will give all of yourself out of love for the Other and in return have your flesh slowly tortured, your person despised.” Only a deeply sick soul would will such a life.
Atheistic Theodicies?

Thus we can see that in Darwin (perhaps unknowingly) and more blatantly and consciously in Nietzsche, we have attempts to understand, explain and evaluate the problem of suffering in the world. The shift described by Dennett from the view of the world as primarily intellect or mind, to the world as first and foremost will, power and struggle served as the answer to so many prior attempts at theodicy. It was not therefore, “honest (read, disinterested)” science that got us here, although surely scientific discoveries and the like allowed the post-Darwin view to flourish. But Nietzsche shows that these ideas are by no means new, stretching all the way back to the pre-Socratics, albeit with a different spin.

However, the “irreligious” implications of this paradigm shift gave rise to the problem of value. The problem is that under this new theory we are apparently at war with different parts of ourselves. The intellect, having its morals, it’s thoughts about the good life and desires for harmony is in fact in service to the will to power. Behind every thought is a sinister motive of some sort, a resentment for power lost, or a play for power desired. Nietzsche, in seeing this problem, seems to bite the bullet. If it is true that the world is thusly constituted, that the world is will to power and nothing more, then we must accept it, consequences and all. “We few or many who again dare to live in a dismoralized world, we pagans in faith: we are probably also the first to grasp what pagan faith is:-to have to imagine higher creatures than man, but beyond good and evil; to have to consider all being higher as also being immoral. We believe in Olympus-and not in the “Crucified.”

Neiman argues that the work of Nietzsche continued to give resonance to the problem of evil. “Long after it (the problem of evil) was found to be unsolvable, we could not let it go. Its sources were too deep, its orbit too wide. Too many needs fueled it; too many concepts were conditioned by it. It was simply too big to be defeated by argument-or even by the death of its leading protagonist. Nietzsche confirmed that the problem of evil may engage you most in the moments when you reject its most central premises.” Yet, one can’t help but notice that at times, Nietzsche seems to take on a kind of religious sensibility. He describes the death of God as a religious sacrifice, he tailors the speeches of his fictional character Zarathustra to mimic Jesus, he employs language that sounds like a kind of statement of faith; he even has an alternate metanarrative in his doctrine of Eternal Recurrence. He looks forward to the day when all the followers of his fictional prophet Zarathustra will follow in his footsteps of life-affirmation.

Evolution and Religion - Part 5

What Constitutes “Better” Post-Darwin? Nietzsche and the Revaluation of Values


Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo argues in After Christianity that Nietzsche’s famous announcement, “God is dead” was not an atheistic thesis (i.e. God does not exist) but is instead a comment on the process by which “the faithful” have driven God out of their thinking. God, Nietzsche asserts, has been “killed by the faithful.” After the death of God in our thinking, it is inevitable that morality, truth and objective meaning should be reduced to subjective opinion, or at best, intersubjective consensus. But according to Nietzsche, thinkers had not, at his time, understood these implications and still strove for some sort of objective grasp of the nature of the “real” world, and retained a measure of optimism, as we have seen in Darwin himself.

Nietzsche too placed hope in the evolutionary process, speculating that there may be some kind of superior man in the future, an eubermich, or superman. However, Nietzsche’s optimism is arrived at in a quite different way. Paul Tillich highlights the connection between Nietzsche and Darwin in Nietzsche’s concept of the uebermich.

"Where does this superior man come from? He comes out of the development of mankind in a Darwinistic sense. When you study Nietzsche you never should forget that this is also the time in which Darwinism reached its high point. And he simply followed the idea of Darwin, the selective process of life, where the weaker forms are being annihilated and those who are stronger survive and produce the higher species…the idea of the superior man is the evolutionary Darwinistic idea."

However, Tillich argues that Nietzsche’s idea of a higher man is not arrived at in the way others had gone about arguing for the superiority of mankind (including, as we have seen, Darwin himself). As we see in Darwin above, the argument usually says that “man” has progressed in the areas of ethics, spirituality (or religion), culture and aesthetic sensibility and thereby risen above the animal kingdom and the “savage.” The insight that Nietzsche brings is the idea that a change in origin also calls for a revaluation of our values. In other words, Nietzsche is prepared to question the values that Darwin and the like had heretofore presupposed. Do the Victorian virtues have any justification in light of the fact that they arose from this history of struggle and survival?

For Nietzsche, argues Tillich, the system of evolution is taken much more literally and he allows the implications to spread much farther. Unlike Darwin, Nietzsche saw it getting worse before it got better. The world had to first deal with the death of God and all the ideals that are supported by and connected with that notion. This would mean the undermining of Darwin’s implicitly cherished Victorian moral ideals and a reevaluation of the condemnation of the “lower” instincts, such as those found in Darwin’s savage Feugians.

The project of revaluation most assuredly would lead to a kind of nihilism in the sense that we would find out that our values are not objective, but perspectival and rooted not in universal laws but in contingent history. Furthermore, an exploration of the origin of religion would reveal Darwin’s principle of survival at work even in this area. In placing chance and struggle before mind and intelligence, Darwin had shifted the ultimate driving force of history from intellect to will. In Nietzsche’s terms, this is the will to power. His idea is that if you run with the implications of Darwinian evolution, you find that the fundamental fact of reality is not mind but power. Thus the intellect, as we now know it, is in service to the will. To illustrate this contrast, Nietzsche distinguishes the Apollonian, the intellect, associated with the classical Greek god of Apollo, with the god of Dionysius, the god of passion and wine, to represent the will.

Richard Schacht puts it this way:

"In all events, he contends, this same fundamental tendency is at work. ‘And do you know what the world is to me?’ he asks; and after characterizing ‘this world’ as ‘a monster of energy, without beginning, without end,’ at once ‘eternally self-creating’ and ‘eternally self-destroying,’ he goes on to suggest that the ‘solution for all its riddles’ is this: ‘This world is the will to power – and nothing besides!’" (W 1067)

In choosing between these two options, Nietzsche comes to the conclusion that Dionysius represents life itself, and that the embracement of the Dionysian side of life therefore constitutes an embracing of life itself. It is in this way that Nietzsche proposes to move “beyond nihilism” and make room for the eubermich. Thus we have, like Darwin, a hope placed in the process of evolution itself. But it comes at the cost of sacrificing the system of western values in general and what he sees as Christian values more specifically.

Begbie on Beauty and the Problem of Evil

"It is one thing to claim that God can and does bring good out of evil, that sin and death are constrained by divine providence to serve God's transcendent purpose; it is quite another to imagine that in the eschaton we will look back on some event of mindless cruelty in history and say: 'Now, in the total scheme of things, I can see why that had to happen.'...Disentangling beauty from sentimentality is unlikely to be accomplished until it is recognized that evil (as with God's saving grace) cannot be accommodated within systems that seek to 'make sense' of all things within closed cosmological and metaphysical systems."

- Jeremy Begbie "Sentimentality and the Arts" from The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts (60)

Evolution and Religion - Part 4

It has been well known that Charles Darwin feared criticism from the religious community as a result of his publications. We might think that these fears are rooted in the fact that his theory of natural selection, as an alternative explanation for the origin of humankind, seemed to conflict with the concept of creation, that it would undermine Christian theism. Daniel Dennett argues that the “dangerous idea” implied in Darwin’s theory of the origin of species through natural selection is that apparent design can come from chaos. “Darwin was offering a skeptical world what we might call a get-rich-slow scheme, a scheme for creating Design out of Chaos without the aid of Mind.”

Indeed, Darwin left out his section on the origin of man from his publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. It was not until much later in life that he felt free to speak out about his true views, which came out in his publication of The Descent of Man. However, even as he argued for an alternative explanation for the origin of our species, he did not explicitly denounce the religion of his culture. Towards the end of The Descent, he writes this:

"I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth of both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclusion, whether or not we are able to believe that every slight variation of structure-the union of each pair in marriage-the dissemination of each seed- and other such events, have all been ordained for some special purpose."

He goes on to marvel at the fact that certain characteristics in mammals are confined to one sex or the other and seem to be connected to the process of reproduction. “Certain characters are confined to one sex; and this alone renders it probable that in most cases they are connected with the act of reproduction…It is to be especially observed that the males display their attractions with elaborate care in the presence of the females; and that they rarely or never display them excepting during the season of love. It is incredible that all this should be purposeless.”

On the next page, Darwin outlines his essential difference with the average creationist,

"He who thinks the male was created as he now exists must admit that the great plumes, which prevent the wings from being used for flight, and which are displayed during courtship and at no other time in a manner quite peculiar to this one species, were given to him as an ornament. If so, he must likewise admit that the female was created and endowed with the capacity of appreciating such ornaments. I differ only in the conviction that the male Argus pheasant acquired his beauty gradually, through the preference of the females during many generations for the more highly ornamented males; the aesthetic capacity being advanced through exercise or habit, just as our own taste is gradually improved."

Note that Darwin attempts to leave room for theism here. He seems to imply that the process of natural selection can exist along with the idea of a creator, and perhaps, even along side the doctrine of providence. After all, the pheasant seems to be developing along quite nicely.

Darwin assumes that the stage to which the Argus pheasant has thus far advanced, as well as the point to which the qualities of human kind had risen, in distinction from the savage or the ape, is a good place. In other words, he seems to think that the aesthetic tastes of the female pheasant have developed in the right way. For the ornaments of the male Argus pheasant really are beautiful. Similarly, he argues, the admirable qualities found in his own civilization are good things. The fact that they only manifest themselves as the result of a great struggle for survival does not take away their value. “For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afford the basis for the development of the moral sense.”

Darwin describes the “distasteful” realization he had upon seeing a party of “savage” Feugians on his trip aboard the Beagle, “such were our ancestors.” His ancestors were no better than the savage, and this was a humbling thought for Darwin. However, he saw himself at that moment, clearly a superior animal, yet as having gradually risen from the lowly state of the humans before him. He is thus able to conclude, from the fact that he had risen so far, that there are still higher places to go. “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future.”

Of course this kind of thinking is not going to fly for later thinkers. The presupposition implicit in Darwin’s attempt to calm the nerves of his readers would soon be brought to light. The question needed to be asked: if our values have a pre-history, are they not just as arbitrary as the feathers of the pheasant? In other words, if Darwin’s theory is correct, he has no justification for smuggling in his own value system in order to continue defining “the good” for us in terms of the value system that supposedly came from God. Perhaps the first to face this notion head on was Friedrich Nietzsche. He was not afraid to question these values (to reevaluate them) in light of the death of this mind-first view.

Evolution and Religion - Part 3

It is against this background and climate (see previous two posts) in which Charles Darwin wrote. Daniel Dennett notes that the effectiveness of Darwin’s message spread in large measure because of everything else that went on prior to his publication of The Origin of Species. Ideas like that of evolution had been around prior to Darwin, but they had not taken off. Why not? Dennett seems to think that everyone was so saturated in a theistic intellectual climate that thinkers were more or less bound to presuppose what he calls a “mind-first” view of the universe. The only explanation of the order found in nature was that there had to be intelligence behind nature. I would argue that the spread of the theory of evolution after Darwin makes sense in light of the failure of the theodicy project that Neiman describes.

Perhaps the effect of Darwin on the religious notions of the time, therefore, can best be explained in terms of theodicy, rather than in terms of science. The problem for religion at the time, as I see it, was not the incompatibility of the notion of creation with the notion of natural selection, but the justification of the problem of suffering. As we have seen in Neiman’s history of enlightenment philosophy, the attempt at theodicy in light of the evils of experience had already become an increasingly difficult task.

Darwin’s theory then solved this very huge problem. The idea of history as struggle provided a better explanation for the problem of suffering in a way that Dennett’s conception of the pre-Darwinian “mind-first” view could not. If intelligence is on the far side of chaos, rather than the other way around, then no one is responsible for natural evil. The only evil that can be connected to any sort of agency is moral evil. However, the solving of the one problem gave rise to a different sort of problem; namely the problem of the meaning of life. Dennett puts it this way:

"Darwin’s dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our most fundamental beliefs than many its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted, even to themselves…Not all scientists and philosophers are atheists, and many who are believers declare that their idea of god can live in peaceful coexistence with, or even find support from, the Darwinian framework of ideas. Theirs is not an anthropomorphic Handcrafter God, but still a God worthy of worship in their eyes, capable of giving consolation and meaning to their lives. Others ground their highest concerns in entirely secular philosophies, views of the meaning of life that stave off despair without the aid of any concept of a Supreme Being…But can any version of this attitude of wonder and purpose be sustained in the face of Darwinism? From the outset, there have been those who thought they saw Darwin letting the worst possible cat out of the bag, nihilism. They thought that if Darwin was right, the implication would be that nothing could be sacred. To put it bluntly, nothing could have any point."

Darwin (unwittingly or wittingly) solved the problem of natural evil by countering the mind-first view, effectively eliminating any purpose that might be attached to our prehistory. In other words, the evils of the past become pointless if they are a result of chance as opposed to intelligent design or providence. However, the pointlessness of our origin seems to spread like leaven in bread. If our origin was pointless, the implication goes, then isn’t everything pointless? Does this not, as Dennett wonders, lead to nihilism? It is to this question to which much of philosophy was required to turn, beginning with Darwin himself.

A Jumble of Words

I always write on slips of paper
Then later
Find them in my pocket
Just before putting the pants in the wash

This one says
"A bonfire of cell phones"
And under that
"Everyone has a documentary crew following them around"

Who, I think to myself
Are these notes for?

They are what I use to fight
The last enemy
The long sleep in which
I will have no thoughts

Except, perhaps
Those that survive
In the form of old crumpled notes

Which by now are littered
Across at least two continents
In waste baskets next to washing machines

Evolution and Religion - Part 2

Suzan Neiman in her book Evil In Modern Thought suggests that it was not until the concept of God began to fail as a solution to the problem of suffering that first of all deism, and then later atheism really became a legitimate and respectable position. She argues that the history of philosophy can be explained in part as driven by various attempts to answer the problem of evil.
The failure of this campaign, according to Neiman then led to the rejection of God as involved with the world. The move was not to full-fledged atheism, but from the concept of a personal God to a deistic God. It became increasingly clear that this world just simply is not the best of all possible worlds. Philosophers such as David Hume argued that the evil in the world is more likely evidence of an infant God, making practice worlds that are not perfect. However, as Daniel Dennett points out, even Hume stopped short of what we would consider atheism today, opting for a kind of deist agnosticism.

As it became clear that theodicies were not going to work, confidence in the existence of God waned while the centrality of the problem of evil in philosophy remained. Unable to conceive of God as good and in control of the world, philosophers began to distance him, until with Kant we have God reduced to a “thing-in-itself”. Rather than God being creator of the world in which we live as creatures, Kant had us creating laws of nature independent of God’s influence as rational beings and ordering the world with our minds such that we do not need God’s influence in order to have knowledge.

The moral law, created by us as rational beings, enables us to define the good for ourselves in the expression of duty through rationality. The problem of evil is thus marginalized. It is placed outside the realm of knowledge and pure reason, just as every other theological issue is beyond pure reason for Kant. But at the same time, God is distanced from being able to have any real interaction with the phenomenal realm. He becomes an unknowable place-holder, useful only to inspire moral duty in us.

It was precisely this type of reasoning that later lead Nietzsche to pronounce the death of God, killed by the faithful. In his Twilight of the Idols, he presents us with a brief history of philosophy:

HOW THE "TRUE WORLD" FINALLY BECAME A FABLE. The History of an Error

1. The true world — attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it. (The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")
2. The true world — unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man ("for the sinner who repents"). (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible — it becomes female, it becomes Christian.)
3. The true world — unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it — a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian.)
4. The true world — unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us? (Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism.)
5. The "true" world — an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating — an idea which has become useless and superfluous — consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it! (Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)
6. The true world — we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one. (Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.) (TI I)

The “true world” the world of the forms (for Plato) or the noumenal (for Kant), the realm of things-in-themselves, the realm where God resides, had been effectively placed in an “unattainable” place. This lead to the (for all intensive purposes) abolishment of the true world, leaving only the “apparent” world, the realm of the finite, the contingent and perceived. But once the true world is abolished, the apparent world is no longer “apparent” but the only “world” left. This is how Nietzsche can say that the world itself is interpretation all the way down. The apparent becomes the real. The “moral law within,” far from being the universal foundation for pure religion, as Kant had hoped, was exposed as a contingent by-product of our pre-history. Behind the apparent good will of morality lies the shady motives of resentment and will to power. Of course, for Nietzsche, this would lead to nihilism. If God has nothing to do with this world, then there is no overarching meaning to be discovered and no universal truths of reason. The supposed universal truths of reason are exposed as dependent upon a set of contingent historical truths. Instead, one is required to invent, or posit one’s own meaning into the reality of appearance and interpretation.

Evolution and Religion - A Series of Posts

So what should we think about the culture war currently going on between the evolutionists (lead by what some call the militant atheists, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens) and he religious community? Last year I had the privilege of taking a class on the history of Atheism from Nancy Murphy here at Fuller. I found it to be very interesting. I'd like to share a portion or two of the paper I did in her class, having recently re-read it.

One of the things that is interesting about the new atheism movement is that these guys are intellectuals that have a popular appeal. I read a lament somewhere recently about the regrettable decline of the public intellectual in America and how the public attention is dominated by more or less non-intellectual celebrities. So it is in this sense that I am grateful for the new atheism movement. One of my professors told me once that when she was in college she had two kinds of teachers about religion, those that thought it was still worth while to argue against theism and those who did not. Well the new atheists have at least decided that it is worth while to engage with the religious community once more and, no matter what your perspective, this is probably not a bad thing. You have to hold a measure of respect for a view that you intend to criticize.



Don Cupitt in After God argues that religion generally, and Christian theism more specifically has been figuratively dying out; this for a variety of reasons. Attempts by “the faithful” (to borrow Nietzsche’s famous phrase) to preserve elements of their faith in the midst of widespread attack (real or imagined) runs along four basic planes: 1) Religion, it is argued, can survive as values (as in right-wing political discourse), 2) within the private, domestic realm (as in groups that form traditional communities), 3) within individual subjectivity (as in I’m “spiritual but not religious”), or 4) as a counterculture.

Without going into detail about the various groups, we can see that versions of all four approaches to religion are still around today and have had representatives from the past going all the way back to Kant (for number one), Orthodox Judaism (for number two), Kierkegaard and Bultmann (for number three). An example of number four might be the Jesus movement of the 1960’s in America and also in historical figures like Joachim of Fiore. Cupitt argues that each of these four areas of survival are destined to fail as a way to legitimately preserve religion in any meaningful sense.

Similarly, theologian David Wells argues that we in the west now live in a largely post-Christian environment. The events leading up to the place that we now find ourselves involve not only intellectual arguments and movements, but social and economic forces. For example, in citing Allen Bloom’s famous book, The Closing of the American Mind, Wells notes that it is slightly naive to connect the relativistic nihilism of college students in the 1980’s to the proto nihilistic writings of 19th century German philosophy (as Bloom does). While there may indeed be a connection, we should not overlook or fail to appreciate the fact that we are embedded in our culture and “how this acts upon us, and what its shaping forces are.”

Given, then, our society’s move from the broad categories of Christian to post-Christian, and the fact that there are multiple causes and influences, it might do us well, in attempting to understand how we got here from there, to take another look at some of the notions bound up with our ideas of ourselves and our relation to God. It is the case, I would argue, that how we think about ourselves profoundly affects how it is that we relate to and think about our notion of God and how we think about God affects how we think about ourselves.

Taking inspiration from philosopher/historian Susan Neiman, I want to argue that an understanding of the various attempts in the 19th century to deal with the problem of evil will shed light on what many think of as the decisive blow contributing to the de-Christianizing of the west, Darwin’s theory of evolution. In other words, the failure of the theodicy projects prior to Darwin removed obstacles for the acceptance of his theory. The problem of evil led to the rejection of a personal God, and therefore an alternate explanation, an impersonal explanation of the origin of humankind is easily accepted. At the same time, the paradigm shift that we find after Darwin (for lack of a better marker in time) profoundly affects how we think about ourselves. Friedrich Nietzsche perhaps saw this fact most clearly, and was able to trace out the implications of “the death of God” for how it is that we now (if we accept most forms of Darwinism) must think about ourselves. This is intended as an attempt at understanding the largely post-Christian and indeed, pluralistic environment in which we find ourselves. It will largely, therefore, be a descriptive enterprise.

Billy Collins, Thanksgiving and Travel

I have been blessed this past year to do some traveling, which I love, which is a privilege, which is an answer to prayer, which is a fact for which I want to give thanks to God. This was my thought, as I rose early in the morning in Sorrento, Italy this summer and snapped a picture of my breakfast as I watched the sunrise over the sea, grateful to be alive, grateful to be breathing and grateful to be there in that moment.

This is the breakfast I ate...



And this was the view I had...





I couldn't help but wish, however, that this experience could be shared in some way. So often in my life the experiences that are the most profound, the most worship-provoking, are experienced in times when I am alone, in which the world around me bustles about, yet I sit quietly observing. There were tourists hurrying to their next destination that morning, waiters and cooks working at the outdoor cafe, people in their cars and on their vespas hurrying down the street, accomplishing goals, living and surviving. But I just sat there, thanking God, enjoying the beauty, with just my Italian phrase-book, a little book on theology and my camera. Everyone was going somewhere and I was going nowhere.

Sometimes that's the beauty of travel, the ability to go very, very far away in order to do nothing. Perhaps that's one reason why I enjoy it so much.

But we were built to function in relationship. We were made to live in community, and I couldn't help but regret the fact that these individual experiences are only individual experiences.

Recently I came across a poem in the new Billy Collins book that, I think, speaks to that sensibility. It is called"

August in Paris

I have stopped here on the rue des Ecoles
just off the boulevard St-Germain
to look over the shoulder of a man
in a flannel shirt and a straw hat
who has set up an easel and a canvas chiar
on the sidewalk in order to paint from a droll angle
a side-view of the Church of Saint Thomas Aquinas

But where are you, reader,
who have not paused in your walk
to look over my shoulder
to see what I am jotting in this notebook?

Alone in this city,
I sometimes wonder what you look like,
if you are wearing a flannel shirt
or a wraparound blue skirt held together by a pin.

But every time I turn around
you have fled through a crease in the air
to a quiet room where the shutters are closed
against the heat of the afternoon,
where there is only the sound of your breathing
and every so often, the turning of a page.



It is interesting that through art, we are able to share experiences that would otherwise be un-shareable.

So take a look at the photo below, taken by me in Scotland, on a rainy afternoon, and in the spirit of thanksgiving, thank God for the beauty of the reflections on a rainy street, that he has been pleased to present to me as a gift, an experience that I hope you too can worship through.

The mail

It hit me a few weeks ago that I'd never picked up my diploma from Cal State Long Beach. So I called them up, thinking for a second that maybe I'd forgotten something. Well everything was fine and it came in the mail this week. Am I supposed to get a frame for it? File it away? What does one do with a diploma?

Neo-Conservatism

I think it is obvious that, after the recent election, the ideology of the political right is currently being questions and/or re-thought. Not that I really have any sophisticated understanding of politics whatsoever, but in the interest of fun, here are some thoughts. My contention has been that there is really very little fundamental difference between the status quo on the left and the status quo on the right in Washington (rhetoric notwithstanding).

Part of the reason for that is the rise, over the last thirty years, of Neo-Conservatism. Neo-Conservatives share many values that are prevalent in the far left.

For example, the tactic of a preemptive political approach to policy is common to both sides, justified in part by the idea that America has a unique calling to be the savior of the world.

On the neo-con side, it generally takes the form of preemptive war. This is the idea that there need not be evidence of an actual threat to national security in justifying military action, there only needs to be a plausible prediction of a future threat. This philosophy really has its roots in the cold war era. It is a foreign policy that operates on the fear of imagined or possible outcomes, rather than actual crimes and justifies the use of force in order to spread democratic or capitalistic ideals. The basic idea is this: communism (or terrorism, or radical Islam or whatever political/social system you want to put here) has the intent to destroy us. Therefore we must preemptively attack in order to install our system of government in the area where the threat is likely to occur. This was clearly followed in policies (or philosophies) such as the Bush Doctrine or the Patriot Act (not to mention the Iraq war). The increase of the power of the federal government both at home and abroad is justified in virtue of America's supposed calling to rid the world of evil. Included in the definition of ridding the world of evil are such things as re-drawing the map of the Middle East, forcing the collapse of communism around the world and rooting out the dissenters at home.

On the left side, similar rhetoric is used in the context of the environment. For example, notice that talk of policy addressing the global warming crisis can take on a similar character. Again, it is not policy concerning what has happened but on the possible or imagined predicted outcomes. Usually the rhetorician with the greatest imagination, predicting the most dire future events gets the most attention. He or she will argue that if the government does nothing, that the end of the human race will be the result. Here too, America (and government) is construed as the only possible savior from the destruction that supposedly awaits us. Therefore, the argument goes, we need to spend money and resources and implement policies that will result in America fulfilling its calling as the savior of the world.

Note that usually the rhetoric of both the democrats and republicans embrace the above philosophies at least to some degree. Note that both Obama and McCain advocated policies that preempt terrorist attacks (or apocalyptic scenarios like the destruction of Israel) based on the idea that it is the job of the American government to police the world. Both sides advocated spending government money, policies and resources on environmental issues both home and abroad. Both sides seemed to buy into the idea that the American government will somehow save us from coming disaster.

So in summary, the preemptive policies that are designed to save us from imagined or possible future outcomes of world-destruction on both the right and left of the political status quo have a common denominator, scare tactics that result in the people giving permission to the government to increase its power and influence on the dime of the American people. Both sides are espousing quasi-apocalyptic scenarios, and both sides think the government's use of power is the solution. They differ mainly in which apocalyptic scenario is more likely and how exactly the government ought to go about solving the problem. Critics point out that if this doesn't stop (using government to solve any and all real or imagined evils in the world), then whatever happens to "the world" is going to happen, but America will crumble and soon be out of resources and out of money.

Of course, it is necessary that I qualify all that I've said up until now because some of you are, as we speak, likely getting the wrong idea. I leave that for the comments section. In the mean time, below is a speech by Ron Paul a few years ago on the Neo-Conservative movement. It's 50 minutes long but if you can sit through it, I think you will find it very informative.




Note - I certainly don't agree with everything Ron Paul says, however I find him fascinating because he seems to be the only politician that is saying these kinds of things, and the only one running on a platform that is truly different. Furthermore, his predictions are starting to come true.

Thoughts on the Debate In Previous Post

Opening talks:

Wilson sets up his presuppositional approach right away (interesting that he is doing it in the very place where Van Til taught). He says that he is interested not only in what sort of arguments are used et cetera but the floor that one is standing on to make those statements. I think it was Bahnson who said at some point that in order for a child to slap his father in the face he has to be sitting on his lap. That's basically what Wilson is trying to prove, that any attack on Christian Theism on Hitchens' part can only be done if he is standing on God's lap. Wilson basically raises the problem of values for atheism. How is it possible to make a value judgment (of any kind, whether it be about truth, beauty or goodness) if the world is nothing more than matter in motion?

Hitchens' responds by waxing eloquent about the universe. It is beautiful, awe-inspiring and amazing in and of itself. There is no need to postulate anything more in order to understand that. When talking about a Black Hole, he marvels about how much more amazing and beautiful it is than say, a herd of pigs being possessed and run into the sea.

My note on that would be that the existence of a black hole does not challenge the theistic worldview in any way whereas the miracles of Christ do challenge the atheistic position. Christ claimed to be God whereas the black hole claims nothing.

Hitchens appeals to "innovation, discovery, doubt and inquiry" as the only means by which beauty and subsequent awe can be achieved.

This is interesting because I think Christians agree, they just include in that field of inquiry the inquiry into the biblical redemptive-historical drama. If the coming of Christ is an intervention of the divine into the realm of ordinary history, it is worth taking note and studying, inquiring and perhaps, discovering.

Towards the end of the Q & A session, they get into a discussion about the nature of revelation, the authority of the Bible vs. Reason and the nature of faith. Hitchens ends up with the last word as he protests that books written by men (such as the Bible or the Koran), if considered to be revelatory, preempt any attempt to examine them as a source of authority. This is so because once one accepts the Bible (for example) as authoritative, all inquiry stops.

Now, this makes a lot of sense. However, I think that a good presuppositionalist ought to reply that the acceptance of the presupposition of the authority of the Bible is not done in a vacuum. Part of the way that it comes to hold a place of authority in a person's life is through theological inquiry as well as through transcendental observations (here I am using transcendental as in the transcendental argument for theism). The transcendental observations are simply this: if we remove Christian theism generally from our worldview, then intelligible inquiry becomes impossible. So the answer to the question: "on what basis do you accept the authority or the truth of the bible as revelation?" The answer is in part: because of the impossibility of the contrary.

It was precisely that, the impossibility of the contrary (i.e. Hitchens' own worldview) to which Wilson was attempting to appeal. Wilson was attempting to get Hitchens to refrain from borrowing from the theistic worldview by, for example adding "or not" to Hitchens conviction "we are going to have to do away with slavery on our own." Or for another example, pointing out that Hitchens shouldn't have a problem with killing Amalekites.

One final quick thought is this:

Hitchens argued that he opposes the killing of Amalekites on the grounds that he could have been an Amalekite. But later in the Q & A he argued against the golden rule "treat others as you would be treated" saying that we sometimes have to treat people in ways that they do not want to be treated.

Audio on the Wilson Hitchens Debates

Click here. And read some of what Doug has to say about the making of the film et cetera.

After that, you can download the below audio files (click the links) onto your computer, so that you can listen to them at your leisure, say on your ipod in the car while stuck in LA traffic (as I likely will do) or in any other scenario.

To listen to the introduction click here.

To listen to the debate at Wesminster Theological Seminary click here.

To listen to the Q & A click here.

Now, please comment if you can. I'd like to know what you think of Wilson's presuppositional apologetic most of all and also who you thought "won" the debate (particularly Jason).

So true...

Say... wouldn't it be great if Obama had a blog?

I'd read it...

Redemption in Film

I just finished reading "Screen Christologies" by Christopher Deacy. It is a very interesting read. His argument is basically that the film noir genre offers a fertile ground for a redemptive reading against the backdrop of a Christian view of the world.

Redemption for him, as far as I can tell, is the struggle to overcome and confront the sin and guilt that is inherent in the characters of the films. I recently watched two noir films with his book in mind, "Double Indemnity" and Martin Scorsese's "Cape Fear."

If you watch the films while keeping in mind the themes of guilt, confession and the quest for absolution, as well as the idea of redemption through suffering, I agree, redemptive themes are everywhere.

In Double Indemnity for example, Fred MacMurray's character begins the film confessing that he'd murdered a man to his boss at the insurance firm, "Keys." The whole story is told through the narration of this confession as MacMurray speaks into a recording device. Keys can be seen as the one in whom MacMurray seeks absolution for his crimes. Key's character is established as one who bestows honesty on others. A man early on in the film, tries to blow up his truck and collect on the insurance. When Keys confronts him with evidence of what he did, the man says,
"I don't feel so well." Keys replies,
"Here, sign here, it will make you feel better."
After the man signs a wavier on his insurance claim, Keys says,
"There, now you are an honest man again."

At the end of the movie, MacMurray is unable to escape and spends his last moments as a free man confessing everything to Keys. He ends up, likely in prison or "San Quentin" but is "an honest man" once again.

The first time he meets Mrs. Dietrichson he openly flirts with her even though she is married. Later, after she proposes that they pull an insurance scam together an knock off her husband for the life-insurance money, he tells her no. But we learn in a voice over that he "cannot get rid of her that easy." When they later confront each other at the end of the movie she says "We are both rotten." MacMurray had been rotten from the beginning, Dietrichson had just brought that rottenness to light. His rotteness had, in a sense, been attracted to what she represented. It was not until he had gone through the ordeal that he was truly "an honest man." But the redemption did not come without sacrifice and suffering.

Wilson vs. Hitchens

I tells you I am soooo excited about the documentary chronicaling the Hitchens vs. Wilson book tour for "Is Christianity Good for the World?" Check out the trailer and then click here.




PatrolTV: Christopher Hitchens & Douglas Wilson from Patrol Magazine on Vimeo.





This is the type of thing that I'd love to see more of the good reformed theologians doing.

Leithart's take on Ruth

Peter Leithart has posted an excellent short series of posts on the book of Ruth here. Very, very good.

Thoughts on Obama

It seems pretty clear to me that Obama is pretty straight-forwardly a liberal Christian. He never claimed to be otherwise. He is actually rather consistent with the denomination that he belongs to. He believes in the relegation of religious belief and conviction to the private realm (an enlightenment tenant) and that public policy should be grounded in public arguments. This sort of thing has been going on ever since Kant (who relegated faith to the neumenal realm, beyond actual knowledge). For example, Thomas Jefferson wrote a version of the Bible that was devoid of miracles, useful, in his mind, only for the moral teachings. Obama is not much different than that (theologically speaking).

That being said, it is important that we do not go as far as Dobson does in the above clip. When Obama says that "religious people don't have a monopoly on morality" he is right. While it may be the case that the only legitimate ground for morality lies in God, it is not necessary, for example, that one believe in God to be moral. Of course, I think it would be legitimate to point out that if one does not believe in God, then morality (if one is consistent) is reduced to pragmatics. However, the unbeliever by common grace is almost always inconsistent on this matter and remains moral, in spite of a lack of a legitimate ground in his belief system as justification for it. This is due to the fact that we cannot get away from the fact that we do live in a moral universe. The unbeliever can recognize that fact without recognizing the existence of God. Similarly, it is quite often the case that professed believers turn out to be highly immoral. This happens because everyone is an active suppressor of the truth in unrighteousness (as it says in Romans). Therefore practical atheism abounds in the ranks of believers.

But the question, when it comes to his worthiness to lead us, is not the status of his personal belief, but rather his ability to govern justly. One part of the Christian worldview that he does embrace (at least in his rhetoric) is Micah 6:8:

"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

He represents, I think, a slightly different manifestation of the most popular American religion, moralistic, therapeutic deism...the biggest prophet of which (I've been saying for a while now) is Oprah. It is no wonder that Oprah so avidly supports Obama (see below). Oprah, like many in her generation, grew up in black churches in America, but then moved on to a more neutered version of spirituality that stresses the fundamental goodness of all things. It is a move, to borrow from theologian Paul Tillich from one type of religion to another. It is the move from the "meeting a stranger" religious varietal to the "overcoming estrangement" type.



Moralistic therapeutic deism, I would argue, takes on a specific flavor in America. It is an amalgamation of several religious and philosophical traditions. It sports a Judeo-Christian eschatological language, as we can see in the closing sentences of Obama's acceptance speech: He says he wants to, "restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace, to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that out of many we are one, that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those that tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the people, yes we can."

Borrowing from Martin Luther King's "Mountain Top Speech" given the night before he died (see below), Obama hopes for a promised land, and hopes for a better world.



The difference is that Dr. King grounds his hope in the fact that "mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" vs. Obama's mantra "yes we can."

Note who the "bad guys" are in his rhetoric, those that would tell us we "can't." He seems to believe that the human spirit can "overcome" the evil in the world so long as it is given a chance. Of course, McCain and George Bush are no different on that sentiment. Obama just represents a very well articulated version of what most people in America already believe, or at least want to believe.

Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Should we believe in the triumph of the human spirit? Well, I think that it depends on what we are triumphing over. Watch for how, in the coming months and years, Obama defines for us who the bad guys are, and what it is we need to overcome. If he is to walk (as he says he will) according to the tenants of Micah 6:8, then look how he defines the quest to seek justice (does he, for example, see the reduction of abortions as a way to seek justice), and how he defines one ought to "walk humbly before God." My guess is that he will end up putting a slightly humanistic spin on that. But we shall see.

Thoughts?

Heading Home

After a tremendous week in Savannah, I'm now at the airport waiting to board my flight back home. Its time for me to return to my normal life in which I am no longer an honored guest. I will no longer be able to use my precious "F" pass (indicating that I'm a filmmaker at the festival) to bypass long lines at the theatre. I will not be able to flash that pass to get into the hotel dining area three meals a day. I will no longer be able to use it to get into parties or panel discussions. No, in my ordinary life I will once again have to buy tickets for movies, to pay for my meals and, if I so choose, for a glass of wine at a local pub. I will not be asked to explain to small gatherings of moviegoers what "inspired" me to write my script. People will probably not be as fascinated by my story of the time I flew in to Russia to work on a movie, jet-lagged and dehydrated and tried to buy a bottle of water with a hundred dollar bill. I will probably not turn to someone sitting next to me at the movies and say "I felt that the movie was about redemption, and I think the scene where they burn themselves with lighters represented circumcision." Ah yes, it was fun while it lasted. I've had well over fifteen minutes of "fame" on this one, which is more than I deserve anyway.

Thanks to everyone in Savannah, to the Savannah College of Arts and Design students and to the hospitable locals. Thanks for allowing us to mildly amuse you for ten minutes with a short film. Thanks for all the discussion and thought provoking film selections. Hopefully someday we will be back!

Tales From Savannah

Welp, it's Halloween here in Savannah and I've got one more film to watch before I head home tomorrow morning.

All in all it has been a really great time. This festival treats its filmmakers very well. The fly us out, put us in the historic Marshall House in downtown Savannah, feed us three meals a day AND, get this, free drinks at the parties every night (if you are not a filmmaker, you pay 500 for a pass to get you into all those parties). The films have been great, the conversations intelligent and the company pleasant. Since the College of Art and Design is attached to the festival, it creates a more communal environment, rather than the star-studded business side of so many festivals. In short, Savannah Film Festival is a class act.

Savannah Film Festival

Obama's Theology

Oprah and O'reilly talk about American Culture Wars

'Tis true, every time I have a paper due, I blog more, especially now that I've heard of the concept of "constructive procrastination." I could be procrastinating in far, far worse ways.

Ok take a look at the below videos. Is there a culture war going on?

The Number One Intellectual Hangup (besides the problem of Evil)

I've been privy to quite a few conversations in my day and I'm a fairly observant one. I try to remember the conversations I've had an overheard.

The ultimate question, when it comes to Christianity, is, "Why believe?" Why believe that what was written down in an old collection of writings is a word from Creator God? Why put your faith and trust in the triune God?

Over the years, I've been most convinced by a presuppositional apologetic. Presuppositional apologetics typically spends time discussing the flaws in any worldview besides Christianity. For example, the evolutionary argument against naturalism (it seems to me) does a nice job of showing how it is inconsistent to believe in a world that has basically came into being and developed by chance and at the same time believe that my mind is likely to lead me to truth. If everything has come about by chance, and particularly, if the theory of evolution is true, then it is extremely unlikely that my brain, my logic and my reasoning capacities will lead me to the truth. There is no reason to believe that it would. AND therefore, since our reasoning capacities have led us to the theory of evolution, there is reason to doubt that.

Yes, yes I know that sounds like some intellectual hoop-jumping. But I think about those sorts of things quite a lot and for me it is quite convincing. The world we live in does not have the quality of a chaotic universe, rather it has the feel of a disordered universe. This, of course presupposes that there is an order in the first place. In other words, our world ought to be a certain way and is messed up. It is not the case that our world is completely random.

Anyway, presuppositional apologetics tends to do things like that, show the flaws in typically secular or, to use an older word, pagan worldviews.

But here is the one stumbling block, and it is on the positive side of belief. In other words, it has to do with the consistency and coherency of Christian belief. If we are to take the Bible as the word of God, what justification do we have in doing so? How exactly do we know that this collection of books, as opposed to some other collection, is the right one? It seems to me that this is the Achilles Heel of Christianity (not the problem of evil, as so many have suggested).

So how about some help here? Does anyone out there know any good resources on canonicity? This has always been tough for me. Partly because the typical fundamentalist line of reasoning tends to have weak argumentation ("If he can create a world, he can write a book, et cetera). And the more scholarly positions tend to abandon a respect for the Bible as such. For example, we start getting into rhetoric about multiple Isaiahs and the theology of Paul vs. the theology of James. In the hands of the more liberal theologians, the Bible becomes a cacophony of voices, painting different pictures of God, with cultural and political biases and motivations. Kevin Vanhoozer said somewhere that postmodern hermeneutics makes mince meat out of the scriptures.

If all of my time studying philosophy and theology has taught me anything, it is that Christian scholarship (when it is done thoughtfully and honestly) tends to be richer, more exciting and more, shall we say, beautiful than reductionistic or overly skeptical alternatives. This may be the main reason why I am still in the camp that I am. I enjoy the narrative of scripture, the drama of doctrine, the sweetness of the gospel and the joy of worship. I appreciate the ability of Christian philosophy to transcend the dialectic of rationality vs. irrationality and to make sense of human nature.

However, about a month ago, when a friend of mine told me that she was questioning the authority of scripture, and the criterion for canonicity, I didn't really know what to make of her questions. The Bible is tough to interpret. NO ONE takes it absolutely literal (protests not withstanding) and yet we are supposed to give it a place of authority in our thinking. The Bible is not a science book, it contains many genres and is surrounded by diverse historical contexts. It cannot, therefore, be read literally in a simplistic sense of the word, but it also has what theologian Karl Barth calls, a strange, otherworldly quality (the "strange new world of the Bible"). But even Barth refrains from clinging to any one passage with a tightly clinched fist. He doesn't even believe (as far as I can tell) in Hell.

Are there any resources out there that speak to canonicity? Does anyone have any thoughts?

Back to Basics

I've been busy, I've been neglectful, and it's time to stop. It's time to get back to the basic task of this blog, the idea I started out with: (no, not to shamelessly put forward my thoughts whether or not anyone cares to listen) to foster dialogue between the religious and the non-religious, the philosopher and the theologian, the thoughtful Christian and the wider culture, the agnostic and the believer. Below is an interview with Bill Maher on his new film "Religulous." Click here to read the review by a prof of mine and watch the video below.




Any thoughts? I'll probably go see the movie one day this week. Let me know if you decide to go see it and if you have any thoughts!

Dennett Talks at TED

I found this talk very interesting.

New L.A. Actors Trailer

LA Shortfest Went Well

Thanks to everyone who came out to support us. I was surprised how good the film looked on a big screen projected in 35mm. There were elements of the short that didn't seem to work on the small screen that did this time. It's amazing what a difference the size of the screen makes.



After the screening Ric and I along with David Hlebo (our composer) and two of our actors, Peter and Allen, sat down for an interview. I'm working on getting a link to that.

Palm Springs and LA Lineup for LA Actors

So tomorrow is the big day of our screening at the LA Film Festival. I'm excited to see all the cast again (nearly a year after we shot) and to see how it fares in the midst of a bunch of other short films. There are 10 other films in the screening and ours is second-to last. I don't really know what to expect but whatever happens, I'm sure it will be good times. If you are planning on coming, tickets can be purchased here. We are in Shorts Program Number Three at 5:15pm.

NEXT week I'll be in Palm Springs, and that should be a good time. The schedule just came out and we will be showing Saturday night, the 23rd as a part of the "Shooting Stars" shorts program. You can get tickets here.

I don't know who writes the summaries for the films but this guy did a decent job. He says this:

Where does the real world begin and the made-up world of movies end? Tony Shaloub stars as an uncooperative, self-absorbed actor starring in a real-life movie within a movie, set in an fake world which just happens to look a lot like Los Angeles.

Now, if anyone would like to go to Palm Springs next week, I've got the film-festival works. I have a stack of tickets, postcards to hand out to promote the film and shirts that say "Nobody Knows I'm an Actor" to wear around.

LA Actors Poster

The Thesis

The other day I received a package in the mail. "More books," I thought to myself, "I don't remember ordering any books lately." But I shop on amazon a lot, A LOT, and so I figured that I must have ordered something and forgotten about it.

I opened the package and found four binded copies of my MA thesis. So this is tangible proof that I DID indeed go through a master's program and finish everything like I was supposed to.... although, I haven't received my diploma in the mail yet...

But the point is that now someone could go to the library at Cal State Long Beach, and, if that someone happened to want to read some scholarly material on recent philosophical work done on the meaning of life and the concept of the absurd, then they could check out a copy of my thesis.

I imagine that this someone would be reading my words while sitting at Aroma Di Roma cafe on 2nd street, not realizing that the seat that they are sitting in is in fact the very same chair in which most of the words were composed. And they would read the concluding sentence just after they take a sip from their cappuccino, "Perhaps this too, is yet another "wild longing" that is not grounded if indeed we are living in a universe without God, leading lives without a purpose, our only fate leading to the grave." And they would sit back in their chair and contemplate the depth of that thought, look up at the sky, and then skip out on the bill for their coffee.

LA Actors at the LA Shorts Film Festival

LA Actors will be premiering here in Los Angeles at the Sunset Laemmle theatre at the LA Shorts Film Festival August 15 at 5:15pm, shorts program three. The film has new music (composed by David Hlebo), and a new sound mix and will be seen on a 35mm print. Hopefully with the help of all of that technical quality the story will come through.

Please come out and see it if you can!

Italy - First Week

I've noticed that when you are taking a class and traveling that you do not have as much time to blog because you are forever reading and writing the stuff you have to turn in. That's what it has been like this week. The work load was not that bad really, but slightly more than I thought it would be, and I may perhaps be writing more than the others. Either way, it's been taking some time.

Anyway, so I arrived in Orvieto with my bags at this Monastery door and rang the bell. It wasn't long before we were all having some pizza and wine together in an echoey room meeting each other and talking about the week ahead.

I'm sharing a room with a psych student Robert, and I'm so glad that we, the two most easy-going guys out of the group, ended up rooming together. Basically, we are perfect for each other.

Safe in Italy

Hello everyone! I am safe and sound here in Orvieto and we are on our second day of classes.

I left Saturday night and, after stopping off in London just long enough to have a plate of fish and chips with mushy peas, arrived in Rome late Sunday evening. I ended up staying in a hostel right near the Termini, or the train station in Rome. Then I hopped on the train to Orvieto Monday afternoon. We all seemed to arrive together and got settled in our rooms that night.

Every morning I usually get up and do a little reading and head out for a cappacino with a couple of the classmates. Then we have lectures from 8:30 to 12:30 at which point we break for lunch and head over to a restaurant that serves us two meals a day, one at 12:30 and the next at 8pm.

Aaaand I'm off to Italy

Friends... my apologies for the scarcity of posts over the last few weeks. It feels like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders (if you will allow me to be cliche for a minute) to turn in my last three papers and take my final final of the quarter today.

And just like that I'm off to fly to Rome tomorrow. I'll arrive on Sunday night and stay somewhere in Rome (I'm not sure where yet) and then take the train to Orvieto. I'll be taking two classes with Fuller over the next two weeks. It promises to be a culturally enriching experience.

Stay tuned for photos, updates and stories from the trip!

Helio the Brazilian Baptist

Helio has asked my permission to publish my post on "Nietzsche vs. Ecclesiastes" on his blog, after translating it to Portuguese. Why yes, I say, translate away. You can see his blog here.

Good to see that there is a healthy interest in the philosophy of Nietzsche and the book of Ecclesiastes among the Brazilian Baptists.

Sex in the City: Just some thoughts

I haven't seen much of the TV show but I do know that, apparently, what Star Wars is for guys, Sex in the City is for women. It represents the cultural tension between the two patterns of courtship, the relationship cycle system and the Cinderella story. It explores the emerging post-feminist, post-egalitarian, post-girl-project female identity. It highlights cultural themes such as the distrust of the institution of marriage and the quest for happiness in love.

I was seeing the movie alone, which is what I do when I find myself in a city more than 20 miles from home during rush hour. Yesterday I happened to be in Northridge around 5pm.

I think I was the only guy there. Apparently, Sex in the City is a chick flick, but not a date movie. All I could see was groups of women from where I was sitting.

At one point in the movie, Mr. Big did something that I couldn't really understand ("I wouldn't do that" I said to myself). Carrie's reaction seemed to me to be out of character as well. So I looked around to see if the women of the theatre were buying it. They were not only buying it, they were feeling it, strongly.

Interestingly, this week we had been talking about weddings in my liturgy and ritual class and our prof mentioned that he wouldn't marry anyone without premarital counseling. "This should have come up in the premarital counseling sessions." I thought to myself, "not on the day of the wedding."

I analyzed, but the girls cried.

The driving force of the plot seems to be: "How can a successful girl in New York find love?" It's a twist on the classical Cinderella story wherein love finds her. Or is it?

I won't spoil the movie for you but suffice it to say that the plot turns out to be quite a bit more conservative and traditional than most Sex and the City fans would likely describe themselves.

Theologically, we might want to ask the following question: if God is love, then how does a single girl in New York find love? If the mystery of earthly marriage points to the mystery of the purposes of God and the world, how does a single girl in New York find Love?

Does she: 1) by working things out with her boyfriend like an adult? or 2) Does Love find her... when she least expects it, in spite of all odds against it?

Will He who is Love pursue you, when you are not looking for it, when you are preoccupied with other things, when you would rather have your dignity and pride? Will he humble you, sweep you off your feet and place a blue slipper on your foot? ... well, maybe not the slipper....

A friend of mine asked me why I didn't cry in the movie. "How could you NOT cry? What's wrong with you??" I told her that I'd already used up my crying earlier that day... reading this:

"beginning with Adam awaking from a deep sleep to find Eve, through Satan’s seduction of Eve at the tree of knowledge, through Jesus awaking from death to see the women come to the garden tomb, to the final revelation of the bride at the end of all things, the bride-city that surrounds her Husband and is filled with His glory. As As Johnathan Edwards puts it, the Father created a world so that His Spirit could prepare a bride for His Son, marriage is the alpha and omega of human history" (quoted from Peter Leithart).

We love because he first loved us.

Christians in Theatre Arts

June 10 - 13 there will be CITA conference at Azusa Pacific University. It is an organization called Christians in Theatre Arts. Now, Abraham Kuyper would be proud of such an organization, because theatre arts are a self-sufficient sphere of life that stands "directly before the face of God." I think I may attend (as much as I have time, since that will be finals week for me) the class on theology and theatre, co-taught by Fuller prof. Todd Johnson.

Check out the conference here, and let me know if you would like to join me!

Abraham Kuyper on Art

"It is the vocation of art, not merely to observe everything visible and audible, to apprehend it, and reproduce it artistically, but much more to discover in those natural forms the order of the beautiful, and, enriched by this higher knowledge, to produce a beautiful world that transcends the beautiful of nature."

This, I would add, is grounded in the cultural mandate of creation. The narrative movement of scripture is from garden to city and implies that there are human creations of beauty that add to and "fill" the garden. It is part of our purpose and the task of art to "glorify God and ennoble human life."

Kuyper continues: "Your decision here depends entirely upon your interpretation of the world. If you are considering the world as the realization of the absolute good, then there is none higher, and art can have no other vocation than to copy nature. If, as the pantheist teaches, the world proceeds, by slow processes, from the incomplete to perfection, then art becomes the prophecy of a further phase of life to come. But if you confess that the world was once beautiful, but by the curse has become undone, and by a final catastrophe is to pass its full state of glory, excelling even the beautiful of paradise, then art has the mystical task of reminding us in its production of the beautiful that was lost and of anticipating its perfect coming luster... From this standpoint, Calvinism honored art as a gift of the Holy Ghost and as a consolation in our present life, enabling us to discover in and behind this sinful life a richer and more glorious background. Standing by the ruins of this once so beautiful creation, art points out to the Calvinist both the still visible lines of the original plan, and what is even more, the splendid restoration by which the Supreme Artist and Master-Builder will one day renew and enhance even the beauty of His original creation."

I was sitting

outside a hooka lounge/coffee shop smoking a cigar and drinking coffee in Old Town the other day reading "Natural Theology" the famous debate between Emil Brunner and Karl Barth. A backwards capped, low-pants wearing young man walked by and asked me what I was reading.

"Natural Theology" I siad.
"Natural What?" he asked.
"Natural theology," I said. "it's a debate between one theologian and another theologian. One guy says that we can have positive knowledge of God through nature and the other says we can't."
"Oh yea?" he said. "Which one do you agree with?"
"Well," I said, "I'm not sure... but I think I'm leaning towards the first guy."
"That God is nature?"
"No, that we can know God through nature."
"Yea," he said, "I agree with that." ... and he walked off.

Brunner says this: "Wherever a man of science investigates the divine laws of the starry heavens, wherever an artist creates any great works, there the spirit of God is active in him, there he is in relation with divine truth."

Barth says this: "I do not know whether my words have the power of warning him and making him stop. What is certain is that on this road things can only become worse and worse, i.e. he cannot but move further and further away from the postulates of evangelical thought which he himself has set down at the beginning of his essay."

Palm Springs

Undoubtedly I'll post more on this later, but very quickly I have some news. Those of you who are familiar with the sordid tale of my little ten-minuter, the film, LA Actors, will know that it's had a rough go of things. We shot the thing back in September and really spared no expense and ran up a credit card or two. However, it was only accepted to the South African film festival (which, as much as we'd like to, are not attending), had an unofficial screening as the Savanna festival and was turned down by Toronto, Cannes, Sundance and (although I had thought otherwise) Newport Beach. It was accepted to a small underground festival here in LA called "Method Fest" but we didn't want to spend the money to clear up some of the problems we were having with music rights and neglected to premier it there.

HOWEVER, it has finally been accepted to a festival of noteworthy class, the Palm Springs Festival. So we are going to go ahead and spend the money to clear up the music issues and put it on a 35mm print. All this so that I can FINALLY go to a festival for once and be able to say, "Yes, I am one of the filmmakers."

Don't worry, DVD's are in the works so those of you who haven't had a chance to see it will get a chance soon.

It takes 10 minutes

for me to walk from my apartment to Fuller. I had an exam at three PM that required a pen and a blue book. Come 2:30 I said to myself, "Welp, it's time for me to stroll over to the Fuller bookstore, pick up a pen and a blue book and then maybe get a coffee, and then go to class." So I head over to the bookstore.

Not it takes ten minutes, mind you, for me to make this walk. So that puts it at about 2:40 when I arrived at the Fuller Bookstore... which was CLOSED. Closed for inventory, the sign said. "Hmm," I said to myself, "where on earth am I going to go to buy a blue book right now?" I headed over to the library, thinking that maybe, just maybe the library people had gotten together and said to each other, "it's the week of midterms and undoubtedly the students of Fuller are going to need some blue-books, so let's have some on hand here just in case since the bookstore is closed." But alas, 'twas not the case. Everyone looked at me as if I was a sorry specimen who was unfemiliar with school policies.

I realized the situation was dire and that standing around in the library lamenting the fact that the bookstore was closed was not going to help me. I started jogging in the direction of a small bookstore that I knew was on Colorado Blvd. I arrived shortly, out of breath.

"Do you have any blue books?" I asked.

"What's a blue book?"

"It's a little book of blank paper that you write your answers to an exam in. I'm a Fuller student and I need to take an exam in five minutes."

"Why didn't yo go to the Fuller bookstore?"

"It's closed for inventory. But that''s ok, do you have any pens?" I asked.

"No, we don't sell pens."

I realized this place was not going to help me so I ran down Colorado, heading for a school supply store two blocks down. I burst in the door and announced that I needed a blue book. The kind lady inside showed me to where they were and I purchased three of them.

"Do you have any pens?" I asked.

"No, we don't sell pens." She said. "But we have pencils. Lots and lots of pencils."

"This is school supply store, how could you not sell pens?'

She smiled sweetly at me.

"We don't have any."

I put my hand to my forehead and looked at the floor. But wait, right there right next to her register was a cup full of novelty Winnie the Pooh pens with giant flowers on them. I grabbed one and said, "Here I'll take this."

"My my, you ARE in a hurry, aren't you?" she said.

And yes, dear readers, I was. I WAS in a hurry.

Things I Learned at the Sexuality Talk

I just got home from the talk by Mark D. Regnerus (see post below) and found it very informative. He is an evangelical but does not claim to be a theologian, just a sociologist. He provided a critique of the way the church typically counsels young people and talks about sexuality in light of sociological research. He makes a couple valid points:

The first is that the church tends to preach on "abstinence" in a time when the average age for first marriage is increasing (25 for women and 27 for men, up 10 years from the 1960's). The result is that evangelicals tend to wait longer before they have sex, but very rarely all they way until marriage. Evangelicals DO tend to have more self-control then their non-Christian Neighbors, but this only delays the date for premarital sex.

Another strong point was that we tend to think of certain individual acts, such as an individual waiting until marriage, or two people getting married as isolated events. In fact, these are social achievements as well. What people tend to view as "normal" in the world of sex, dating and marriage is very much influenced by the context around them. If premarital sex is more common, then people are more likely to see it as normal. If delayed marriage is more common, people see that as normal. Thus the preacher can preach on abstinence and treat it as if it is a private, individual choice and miss the fact that there are social and collective realities that have a huge bearing on the individuals involved. In fact, the sexual choices of an individual are embedded in a larger context and are therefore not merely private decisions, triumphs or struggles. They are social as well.

He talked a bit about the concept of a "sexual economy." A sexual economy is the idea that there is a theoretical "price" that women require men to "pay" in order to have access to sex. Various surveys show that in general women are the "gatekeepers" of when and how often men are granted sex. In one survey, an attractive male and an attractive female researcher would ask members of the opposite sex (strangers on a college campus) three questions after expressing their attraction. 1) Will you go on a date with me tonight? 2) Will you come back to my apartment with me tonight? 3) Will you sleep with me tonight? 75 percent of men said "yes" to question three and ZERO percent of women said yes. Another survey asked men and women how far along in the relationship they would likely have sex (two weeks, three weeks, a month et cetera). The men tended to be way off and the women right on. Thus, in the "sexual economy" women are really the ones who hold the keys to sex, and the men are the ones who have to "pay" for it. Now the "price" varies from time to time. The highest price would be a life-long commitment to love and provide for her and her alone. A much cheaper price might be one dinner date, and of course there is everything in-between (engagement, a promise to exclusive dating, et cetera). In the world of the sexual economy, we find the existence (still) of the "double-standard." This is the idea that women are socially treated far more harshly for sexual promiscuity then men. There are no male equivalents for the terms "slut" and "whore." The reason, in economic terms, is that girls who drive down the price of sex affect all women, in the same way that a homeowner who sells his house for less than the market rate will drive down the price of all the houses on the block. If women start "giving it away" for less, men in general will expect to pay less and the women who are charging more will end up without a man. Similarly, the existence of accessible pornography in the community affects the "market price." Since an alternative outlet for sexual expression exists, it by nature, drives down the overall "price" of sex for the community.

Now, in the church women are generally encouraged to "charge" the highest price, i.e. hold out for that man who is willing to "pay" lifelong commitment and devotion and economic support. However, sadly for these women, the church-going demographics are against them. First of all there are more women in the world then men in general. Second of all, there are much more women in church then men. Thus many women are forced to spiritually "date down." If they are to find a mate at all, he is likely (just going by the numbers) to be less spiritual and devout than her. Since he is likely to be less devout, he is also less likely to pay the highest price for sex, leaving the woman with a choice: either compromise and "charge" less for sex, or hold out for that unlikely spiritual guy. Often this results in years of waiting to the point that she is past her optimum child-bearing years and the pool of eligible guys (in general) is even smaller.

Regnerus' main point is the idea that the teaching of abstinence coupled with the delay of marriage is not working. People are neither remaining abstinent nor getting married, as it turns out. He thinks that the church ought to focus more on teaching men to become adults sooner and to be ready for marriage sooner, as opposed to discouraging young marriages. It seems we have adopted the decidedly Greek ideal (implicitly or explicitly) on the search the perfect soulmate as opposed to the (more Hebrew) covenant helpmate ("wife of my youth").

In the culture, it seems (now this is me talking) that this Greek idea is pretty much universal coupled with a kind of rampant individualism. Rather than seeing marriage as the occasion for two people to grow together in love and service to each other, the idea is that we need to "find ourselves" as individuals first, and then find someone who ware "compatible" with, or that one soulmate out there who is going to complete us as our other half.

Regnerus' suggestion that the church ought to see the delay of adulthood as a problem is in fact very biblical (not to mention that it goes against biology and history). Many people that I've talked to seem to have a problem with Paul's suggestion that it is "better to marry than to burn" as completely unrealistic and absurd, pointing out the fact that "incompatible" people are getting married so that they can have "sanctified" sex. I'm not saying that we should be telling young people to marry just anybody. See that's part of the problem. We are not really taught how to relate biblically to the opposite sex, rather we are told not to have sex until marriage; we are not teaching our young men how to prepare for marriage, rather we are telling them to focus on their careers and getting educated as a priority. We are not encouraging people to see themselves as either called to celibacy or to marriage and to act on that calling, but rather they are given permission to remain adolescents for an additional ten years of "in-between" time.

I've hinted at this before. But allow me to be blunt. It seems that young men growing up in the church (I can't really speak for women), being taught to "kiss dating goodbye" are expected to learn how to relate to women, learn how to assess a woman's character in preparation for making the (arguably) largest decision of his life (to choose a mate), and learn how to initiate a courtship pretty much with no instruction or teaching whatsoever. We are taught not to date, and not to have sex, but what we do is up to the individual. Many of us have been not dating and not having sex for years... and we don't have a clue about how to relate to a woman. I'm not saying that these teachings are wrong, I'm merely saying that we need to work more on teaching young men what to do when it comes to relating to women (one of which will be his wife), and perhaps less on what not to do.

Attend a talk by a Texas Sociologist

I'll be attending a lecture next Monday if anyone would like to join me. It is at Fuller and entitled: "Forbidden Fruit? Sex and Christianity in the Lives of Young Americans" by Mark D. Regnerus at 7pm at the Travis auditorium at Fuller. It's free and promises to be an interesting discussion. Read a review of his book here.

You can hear an interview with him here, and check out his websight here, where you can find the NPR interview.

Wine Videos

Well I've found a couple of interesting nooks on the web. Initially I stared on this websight. Wonderhowto.com. There you can find any number of "how-to" videos. Aaaand I happened across this sight that gives you a simple wine 101 education. I just thought I'd pass it along.

A new MLit 1-year Program at St. Andrews

I have been hearing about this for a while now and just saw that the St. Andrews websight has been updated to include a description of their new Master's Program. It is a one-year masters of literature in theology, imagination and the arts. I was just looking over some of the courses and I can't believe how perfect they are. Check it out here.

I'll be visiting St. Andrews in Scotland the first week of July... anyone care to join me?

I'm not Endorsing anyone...BUT I have a prediction

This year's presidential campaign reminds me of last year's World Series.

Going into the World Series, the Colorado Rockies were hot. They had won something like 17 out of 18 games going into the playoffs and then they swept the Phillies and the Diamondbacks. But then they had to wait around for a week before they were able to face Boston in the World Series. They lost because they were no longer the hot team that had been on a roll.

I'm sitting here in my apartment watching Obama make his "losing" speech in Pennsylvania. Even though he lost in Pennsylvania he is still ahead of Clinton with delegates and he is using the fact that he continually has a national stage from which to speak as an opportunity to campaign against John McCain. Because the race between Hillary and Obama is so close, they are getting far more media attention than any Republican.

If advertising theory has any merit, then we know that the brands that we are the most familiar with are the ones we are more likely to buy. Whoever wins for the Democrats (and that will most likely be Obama) will have had much much more face-time on television and in newspapers come next November. This is simply because news coverage about McCain is not very exciting right now since he has the republican nomination all but sealed up.

Because the two Democrats are campaigning so diligently in every state (appealing to independents, signing up new voters et cetera), they are increasing the chances that a Democrat will win at the end of the day.

Does Ought Imply Can?

St. Augustine - "Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt."

NPR on Teens on Line

Check out this segment on NPR about the effects of on-line social networking sights and the blurring of what we typically think of as "public" and "private" space here. Will the next generation growing up have different notions of the public vs. the private?

Another Great Apemantus Forum Post

My buddy Chris has posted a great little note on the reformed view of sanctification here. I can't really add anything to it.

Theology and Art

To continue my paper-procrastination, I present to you: Jeremy Begbie, director of ITIA, Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at St. Andrews speaking at Berkeley a few years ago. The video is a little long so you have to be patient, settle down and have a cup of tea or something.

Speaking of Wittgenstein

I got to talking about Wittgenstein last night and came across this video. Kind of hischool-play-esk but it illustrates a little of what I was saying in the previous post.



I think he would have had a thicker German accent.

Another Leithart Quote

"Modernity has for many moderns been a singularly joyless place...And no wonder: if the burden of reducing the world to order fell on you; if you were tasked to construct a theory of everything and then write out the equation; if you had to be on constant patrol along the empty razor-wired borders between religion and politics, art and life, theology and philosophy, nature and society, us and them; if you had to ensure that the trinity of control, freedom, and progress remained in place for the ages-if you had all this to do, you might not exactly be bubbling buoyantly with childish glee." - Solomon Among the Postmoderns

This is so true of most modernist enterprises. So damn boring, daunting and stern-faced. For example, I can remember taking a class on Wittgenstein a year or two ago and comparing the early Wit to the later Wit. Wittgenstein was a German that went to Cambridge to study under Burtrand Russell. He begins his first book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by saying that the world consists of "facts." The picture you get is that if we had a list of everything that was true, that would be the world. I am sitting on a chair, the chair is on the floor of my apartment which is in Pasadena, which is next to the San Gabriel Mountains, on earth... it would be quite a list of facts, including, I assume everything down to what my mental states are right now, I desire an orange juice, feel a bit of stiffness in my neck... My my my, THAT's a stern-faced way to look at the world (just the facts).

After writing the Tractatus, Wittgenstein said that he had "solved" philosophy. It was a kind of "welp," that's done, what's next?" Well Wittgenstein went on to do other things and ended up teaching grammar to kids, of all places. And it hit him. He had run the modernist conception of reality and of language as far as it could go and it didn't work. Language isn't just the practice of stating facts, of mirroring the facts in the world. Rather it includes all sorts of other things, such as promising, encouraging, invoking, and pronouncing. The world just didn't fit into the "just the facts ma'am" paradigm. It exploded out of its restrictive categories imposed on it by Cambridge philosophers and spilled out all over the place. So Wittgenstein went back in to philosophy and is now known as a landmark thinker, not for the Tractatus, but for a new understanding of language that would have bit us it was so obvious and right in front of our faces.

Obsessive use of Scare Quotes "by me"

We had an "emergent" "leader" come in to visit us today in class. I had to put those terms in scare quotes because I think that he would say that he is neither emergent nor a leader, but somehow, at the same time, he is. Anyway, I forgot his name now.

Somehow during the course of our round tableish discussion, "we" and I mean that in the collective sense and generally I exclude "me" from "we", came to the conclusion that the "institutional" church is "dying."

Anyway, so some of the students were wondering how they can best help the old bugger die, and the consensus was that there should be no grave-pushing or Kavorkianesk assistance. No, she will die on her own, "we" concluded.

I started to listen closely for the definition of the "institutional" church and here is what I came up with: She operates according to a "postal" "top-down" system as opposed to an "organic" "email" system. She is usually run by one guy, as if he was a C.E.O. This one person does everything, the "pastoring" the "teaching" and, I would imagine, even the vacuuming. Of course all that stress usually sets the poor fellow up for a moral failure and probably a church-split.

As with most of the emergent types, I agree with much of their critique but differ with them on the scope of the problem (they tend to look at the church 20 years ago or even 10 years ago and think that that must have been how it's been forever, or at least since the enlightenment). As MacIntyre says, most reactionary movements tend to react to the recent past while failing to appreciate what came before what they are reacting to (if you will allow me to end a sentence with a preposition). In this case, it seems to me that some of the emergent guys are reacting to the megachurch model or, to be generous, modern American evangelicalism. They call this the "institutionalized Church." In other words, they are pronouncing the death of a culturally located and generationally unique form of doing church.

I for one, not least because I no longer attend such churches, would probably not show up to the funeral if the predictions turn out to be true.

BUT, the rest of the church, that church that has been around for two thousand years, tends to get lumped in and pronounced dying as well (while, strangely enough, described as a megachurch). This sort of thing, of course, is what people have been saying since the enlightenment anyway and is largely the reason for the existence of liberal theology. Indeed, it was supposed to have died quite some time ago, the coffin has been paid for and the funeral date set. But somehow, she seems to have the lives of a cat.

Don't misunderstand me, I don't want to ignore the incredible de-Christianization of the west. "Christianity" as defined largely by those who wouldn't call themselves Christian, may indeed by dying. In fact, I'll follow Peter Leithart in saying that Christianity as a label, like "religion" designed to marginalize those people who are "that" ought to die (not the people, but the label).

Oh I might as well just quote Leithart, he spins his words better than I do anyway:

"The Bible never mentions Christianity. It does not preach Christianity, nor does it encourage us to preach Christianity. Paul did not preach Christianity, nor did any of the other apostles. During centuries when the Church was strong and vibrant, she did not preach Christianity either. Christianity, like Judaism and "Yahwism." is an invention of biblical scholars, theologians, and politicians, an one of its chief effects is to keep Christians and the Church in their proper marginal place. The Bible speaks of Christians and of the Church, but Christianity is gnostic, and the Church firmly rejected gnosticism from her earliest days" (Against Christianity 11).

But listen, neither evangelicalism nor traditional denominations, nor (sadly) the megachurch will likely die any time soon. But through all of this the church herself will always remain, even, or perhaps I should say "in spite" of the fact that we will continue to bicker on the proper way to "do" church.

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

Peter Leithart's new book, Solomon Among the Postmoderns is another ...I don't want to use the phrase "life changing" but for me, perhaps. Over here at Fuller, as some of you know, there is quite an emphasis on the book of Ecclesiastes and the apparent parallels in the messages of so much contemporary art. Johnston, director of the Brhem center here has a book out precisely dealing with what he sees as the relationship between Ecclesiastes and contemporary film. The idea that you get from Johnston is that contemporary film can provide "lenses" through which we can appreciate anew the message found in scripture.

Leithart offers a slightly different take, maintaining the authority of scripture and its ability to speak to us in our current context while at the same time taking seriously the thinkers with whom he interacts.

The hebrew word hebel used so much in Ecclesiastes has been translated as "meaningless, useless and/or vanity." The literal translation is "vapor" or "smoke." If the enlightenment project, often referred to as modernism was an attempt to "sculpt the mist" or "control the vapor", then postmodernism is vapor's revenge. The world is just not going to allow itself to submit to our control. The tight categories of so called modernist thought turn out not to capture reality as it was hoped. Posmodernity is the confusion of Babel to modernity's attempt at constructing a tower. Amidst all of this, the message of Ecclesiastes has something to say to us.

Aaaand that's it for today's lesson. Tune in next week to hear just what that "something" is.

Greenpeace

So I was strolling down Colorado blvd. just about to pass the Apple Store when I was heralded by a Greenpeace guy.

Greenpeace guy: "Sir, can you spare just a minute of your time?"

Me: "Uh, yea."

Greenpeace guy: "I'm from Greenpeace and we are here, hittin' the streets of Pasadena here."

Me: "Do you want money."

Greenpeace guy: "No, no, just wanna talk."

Me: "Okay"

Greenpeace guy: "We are trying to get people to stop buying Kleenex."

Me: "No Kleenex"

Greenpeace guy: "Nope, no kleenex."

Me: "What if I need to blow my nose?"

Greenpeace guy: "We don't joke about that sort of thing....so whaddya say? Do you want to sign up? We need more people to hit the streets, and warn everyone about the dangers of kleenex."

Me: "Alright, well, let me have some of your literature and I'll get back to you."

Greenpeace guy: Narrows his eyes...

Me: "Oh, of course, what am I thinking. You wouldn't have paper, would you?"

Greenpeace guy: "You are wasting my time."

Flower Pedal Stories

I read on Andrew's blog that he likes a jin and tonic every once in a while and I figured I'd try it. I'm having one now (mostly tonic, not that much jin), eating a rasberry chocolate truffle that I got down at the cool little chocolate place (called "Temptations") two blocks over and watching Love Actually, and its raining out.

I am rather struck by the strength of characters in the film. There seems to be a newish little genre that is becoming popular that follows a flower structure. This is where you have several intersecting story lines surrounding a central theme. Each story line can be thought of as a pedal on the flower. This is opposed to the usual where you would have a central narrative with one or two sub-plots. On the flower model there is no real distinction between the central plot and the sub-plot. This provides a unique way to get at or uncover a certain theme.

Bowling Alone

"Americans in 1995 devoted on average only two-thirds as much time to religion (both worship and religiously related social activities) as we did in 1965 - a steady decline from one hour and thirty-seven minutes a week in 1965 to one hour and seven minutes in 1995. It is not that sermons were getting shorter; rather, the fraction of the population that spent any time on religion at all fell by nearly one-half... What is more, in all these cases, the more demanding the form of involvement - actual attendance as compared to formal membership, for example - the greater the decline. In effect, the classic institutions of American civic life, both religious and secular, have been 'hollowed out.' Seen from without, the institutional edifice appears virtually intact - little decline in professions of faith, formal membership just down a bit, and so on. When examined more closely, however, it seems clear that decay has consumed the load-bearing beams of our civic infrastructure." (72)

"Privatized religion may be morally compelling and psychically fulfilling, but it embodies less social capital. More people are 'surfing' from congregation to congregation more frequently, so that while they may still be 'religious,' they are less committed to a particular community of believers... 'privatized religion knows little of communal support, and exists by and large independent of institutionalized religious forms; it may provide meaning to the believer and personal orientation, but it is not a shared faith, and thus not likely to inspire strong group involvement... 'Believers' perhaps, but 'belongers,' not." (74)

Journeys

Roughly two years ago we sat every Sunday in the same pew. Two of us, soon to be married, one of us discovering reformed theology for the first time, another of us planning to graduate from Biola and head down to Wesminster Seminary, one of us contemplating the possibility of a career in criminal justice, and I still struggling through my master's thesis at Cal State Long Beach. I was the only one of the group to regularly attend the adult sunday school class on the trinity, and afterwards we would debate where to go to lunch. We went to each-other's birthday parties, bought each-other beers, watched each-other's Lost DVD's and through it all, discussed theology. We had all come from different places and ended up, somehow, together on that pew for a period of time.

In a Sunday or two I plan to visit that pew again, to hear the organ music, appreciate the choir in the back of the room and taste the communion wine that is not grape juice. But the pew will never be the same. Now, after two weddings, a change of living for each one of us, one apparent loss of faith, two graduations, four different grad-schools begun and one move out of greater Los Angeles, the pew and its trappings remain as the only constant. The excellent education that we received, the solid biblical teaching, the book recommendations, the audio archives and the subsequent discussions have now dissolved into our history, even as we bear the marks and benefits of that teaching like the rings on a tree. The events surrounding that pew, seeming to be such an ordinary thing have formed each of us in slightly different ways, and we venture off in all directions having been forever changed. That teaching from Numbers, for example, now travels to USC law school, UCLA medical School, Fuller Theological Seminary and into the classroom where kids are taught. It's been, while perhaps not audibly or visibly, to Russia, to Italy and Germany, to Hong Kong, and to Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State.

Here is to that Pew, second (or was it third) from the front on the right-hand side, may it continue to support the weight of those who will receive the waters of grace that come from the gospel proclaimed from the pulpit and carry that living water to...

Le Scaphandre et le papillon

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a movie about a man with "locked-in syndrome," based on a true story.

Here is the trailor:

I was really impressed with the cinematography actually. Very innovative and creative.



I seem to be running across this idea of art as therapy more and more among filmmakers these days, the idea that making a movie can somehow help us deal with such things as the reality of death.

There is a sense in which I agree...and another sense in which I find art insufficient.

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

I'm reading Robert Putnam's book "Bowling Alone" right now. Here is a little something from his chapter on religion and community, or, as sociologists put it, "social capital." Faith-based organizations are generally good social capital, he says. First of all, here are a couple quotes concerning the nature of social capital.

"Social connections are also important for the rules of conduct that they sustain. Networks involve (almost by definition) mutual obligations; they are not interesting as mere "contacts." Networks of community engagement foster sturdy norms of reciprocity; 'I'll do this for you now, in expectation that you (or perhaps someone else) will return the favor. 'Social capital is akin to what Tom Wolfe called 'the favor bank' in his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities'... It was, however, neither a novelist nor an economist, but Yogi Berra who offered the most succinct definition of reciprocity: 'If you don't go to somebody's funeral, they won't come to yours.' ...(the more valuable social capital) is a norm of generalized reciprocity: 'I'll do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road." (20-21)

Now, what do churches do for social capital according to Putnam?

"Churches provide an important incubator for civic skills, civic norms, community interests, and civic recruitment. Religiously active men and women learn to give speeches, run meetings, manage disagreements, and bear administrative responsibility. They also befriend others who are in turn likely to recruit them into other forms of community activity. In part for these reasons, churchgoers are substantially more likely to be involved in secular organizations, to vote and participate politically in other ways, and to have deeper informal social connections. Regular worshipers and people who say that religion is very important to them are more likely than other people to visit friends, to entertain at home, to attend club meetings, and to belong to sports groups; professional and academic societies; school service groups; youth groups; social clubs...Religiosity rivals education as a powerful correlate of most forms of civic engagement. In fact, religiously involved people seem simply to know more people. One intriguing survey that asked people to enumerate all individuals with whom they had had a face-to-face conversation in the course of the day found that religious attendance was the most powerful predictor of the number of one's daily personal encounters. Regular church attendees reported talking with 40 percent more people in the course of the day. These studies cannot show conclusively that churchgoing itself 'produces' social connectivity-probably the causal arrow between the two points in both directions-but it is clear that religious people are unusually active social capitalists."

Hello Pasadena

I've posted some pics of my new place in Pasadena on my facebook, check them out here.

Review of Purple State of Mind

One of my profs here at Fuller, Craig Debtweiler, has co-produced a documentary called Purple State of Mind. You can read a review at Books and Culture here. And you can see a little preview here.

The movie is basically an interesting conversation (actually three conversations) between two former college roommates, Craig and John. Craig made the film while still teaching at Biola so he enlisted students to help with some of the shooting on campus. They two of them dig into the issues of faith vs. unbelief, the benefits/drawbacks of religion, the truth or untruth found in the Bible et cetera.

Overall, I find it to be a good discussion-starter. The film itself is not bad.

Charles Spurgeon

"May God the Holy Spirit, the true Comforter, work in you mightily! Surely the God who gives food to ravens will not deny peace and pardon to seeking sinners. Try Him! Try Him at this moment! No, do not run away! Try Him now." - Spurgeon

Goodbye Long Beach

It's time, dear readers, for me to say goodbye to the city of Long Beach, my home, lo these past four years.
So goodbye old probably 1970's built kitchen. Even though your dishwasher didn't work and the sinks didn't drain water very well, I washed many a dish and baked many a store-bought frozen pizza in your oven.

Goodbye 710 traffic.

I will remember you well, and how the on-ramp always seemed to put me right in the path of oncoming trucks undoubtedly hauling goods of some sort from the port of Long Beach to LA somewhere.

Goodbye Cal State Long Beach.



I learned many a philosopher in your halls, and will never forget the time our metaphysics prof drank too much egg nog before our final, told us she loved us and then nearly forgot to administer the test.



Parting is such sweet sorrow. I will never forget, Cal State Long Beach, the short walk across campus every Wednesday morning to meet with Prof. Huges on the 9th floor of the Mac building to discuss philosophy of religion.



I will never forget the summer courses on the meaning of life, reading my paper on Nietzsche and Christianity in front of the class, our philosophy of love seminar discussions and the satisfaction of submitting my final thesis to the thesis office.



Goodbye Chipotle, I know we had a falling out over your music piping policies, but I enjoyed our burritos together and the cool ocean breeze on your patio.



Goodbye Wiing Stop, although your spicy sauce was at times a little too much for me, you pushed me to new levels of spice-tolerance.





Goodbye intersection of Bellflower and Stearns. I usually had groceries in my truck when I'd stop at your red light, and you never steered me wrong.



Goodbye 7 eleven where I would get my morning coffee. Even though you would occasionally run out of the Blueberry Creme coffee that I loved so much, you made up for it by giving me a free mug and allowing me to wash it in your sink every morning before refilling it.



Goodbye house on Hackett avenue. You were large, your pool was very cold but nice in the summers, your lawn left something to be desired and you need a new deck out back. But you were in a peaceful neighborhood, you were warm in the winter and cool in the summers.



Goodbye Hackett avenue. I walked and jogged on your sidewalks untold amounts of times. You were close to school, close to the canal and an excellent running trail, and right off the freeway, I could not have asked for more than that.



As the sun sets on my Long Beach experience, I say, here's to you, Long Beach, I will drink a Mexican beer in your honor, like the ones I used to get at Taco Surf. From 2nd street to downtown to that mall where there is a Trader Joe's and a Beverages and More, I will hold the memories of you in my heart and think of you wistfully whenever I pass by, wizzing on the freeway on my way to somewhere else. And I will think of the movie I never returned to the Bellflower blockbuster, because I'm keeping it with me, as a momento.

Radical Third Way

I'm currently listening to David Powlison's lecture series for his class, Dynamics of Biblical Change. I thought I'd mention a couple of his insights.

We live in a world of sinners. Consequently we sin against others and they sin against us, we are both victims and victimizers. We develop two opposite reactions, each a distortion of love. Rather than love, we either "cower or tower." We play the victim/doormat (because we are victimized, stepped on) or the victimizer (because we do use/take advantage of/step on others). The doormat mentality is a distortion of love insofar as it reduces love to mere niceness. It seeks to placate, to appease, to avoid what is wrong and needs to be made right. It says "you are ok" when the person is not ok. Often the doormat will wake up and realize that they have been allowing themselves to be stepped on and jump to the other extreme, the opposite distortion of love, that of the tyrant. The tyrant ignores the caring/supporting side of love and lets the other person have it. "This is what I think of you."

The radical third way, the way of true, undistorted love speaks the truth, does not tolerate wrongs but seeks to right them in a truly loving way. It lies in between the doormat and the tyrant, it avoids the over reactions of cowering or towering, it refuses to play the victim and refuses to victimize. I'm reminded of the two ways God relates to us, his call, "come as you are" and his command, "be perfect, therefore as your father in heaven is perfect." He meets us where we are and he does not tolerate sin. This is the sweetness of the gospel, the paradox of simultaneous mercy and justice, and it is a radical critique of our distortions.

In the language of the Psalms, Lord have mercy upon me, do not look upon my sin, search my heart and know me and lead me like a shepherd.

A couple Sundance Pics

Sundance Wrap Up

Well I'm back in So Cal finally. As it turns out Frozen River won the best picture award at Sundance, so we were all happy about that. Please, please get out and support it when it arrives at a theatre near you.

On Saturday night the Windrider Forum guys invited a young Israeli filmmaker to the church to screen her documentary for us, To Die in Jerusalem. It made me think that all the writing I do is pure pretentious drivel. I'm always writing about a boy who can't get a girl, or a writer who can't write, or an actor that can't act, somebody who can't do something. But I can't stop thinking about this film. I am humbled by it and was deeply affected. It follows the story of two mothers in the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Israel. A Palestinian girl blew herself up about five years ago or so and killed only one person, a Jewish girl about her age. Director Hilla Medalia followed the two mothers over the course of a couple years and we got to see how they were dealing/interpreting the tragedy. Both women saw it as tragic, but offered different solutions for the problem. The film culminates in a four-hour (they don't show all of it) conversation between the two mothers via satellite (apparently a face-to-face meeting proved impossible after several attempts because of the nature of the borders and such).

Check out the podcast interview with Hilla here.

All in all the week was very inspiring and exciting. We have to give special thanks to the Park City Vinyard church for hosting this event every year, feeding us, opening their homes for students to stay and providing the building for us to meet. Fuller Seminary along with Biola and Taylor Universities are becoming a recognizable presence at Sundance as the Windrider Forum gains momentum.

Of course we need to note that it would behoove us to be careful theologically as well as morally when you are on the front lines so to speak. While there were several amazing films, I have to say that this is not the norm. There were a couple of films that I have a hard time appreciating and one that I honestly think should not have been made.

But it has been a good thing to participate in the conversations that are going on out there. These filmmakers are concerned: we are going to run out of water (Flow: For Love of Water), we should not be dependent on foreign oil (Fields of Fuel), Immigration policies can tear families apart (The Visitor), war is a terrible thing (CSNY Deja Vu), relationships so often fail and suicide is a real option for many (The Last Word and The Wackness). I heard David Powlison say somewhere that the religious function that ordinarily or traditionally existed in the church has moved into the secular arena. The priests of our culture are the shrinks, and the prophets, I would argue, are often the filmmakers. As we in the church move away from the "Christ against Culture" position, we need to be careful not to overreact. Over this next year at Fuller, I hope to do some writing in this area, in the attempt to articulate a robust theology of culture and the arts.

Sundance Day 3, 4, 5 and 6

Well it's been a really fun week. I've seen some absolutely great films and I've seen some really, really really bad ones.

It's been fun to hang out with all the other Fuller, Biola and Taylor students, going to films together, having discussions and attending class every morning. If you want to hear a taste of what has been said, take a look at the Kindling's Muse podcast here. If you can get a chance, check out the interview with the cast and director of Frozen River, by FAR the best film that I've seen in a long time. I'm pulling for actress Melissa Leo to win the best actress award here this year. We will find out tonight.

The next best film was The Visitor, a film about immagration. It raises a few political issues and, like many films here at Sundance, do a very good job of exposing an injustice, a tragedy or a misfortune and then leaving the audience with the sense that resolution of the tension is not going to come easily or quickly.

Sundance Day 2

I saw a film this morning called The Last Word, about a troubled young youth who writes suicide notes for other people for a living. Somehow he falls in love with Winona Ryder, the sister of one of his clients. Of course he can't tell her what he really does for a living. In the end he ends up making friends and starting another business with another former client (who doesn't go through with it in the end) played by Ra Romano. He loses the girl because she finds out who he really is.

At the question and answer after the film the director remarked that he thought it would be a mistake to have them get together in the end. I think when he comes to our group to give a little talk (tomorrow I think), I'll ask him why. Is it because it is not believable that she could forgive him for lying? I find that more and more the boy ends up losing the girl in so many of the movies out here and needing to find happiness in the aftermath of broken relationships.

Sundance Day 1

Well folks, I am so very sorry but I've left the cable that connects my camera to my computer at home so I won't be able to post any pictures until I get back.

We saw one film this morning, "The Wacknees" in which a troubled drug-dealing youth learns how to see the dopeness in life's situations instead of the wackness of them.

In reviewing the films that I'll be watching here at Sundance, I'll be using the narrative critical methodology of Wesley Kort from Duke, also used by Rob Johnston at fuller to analyze movies. Kort argues that narrative has a fourfould structure. Usually one of the four elements will rise to the surface as the primary narrative element, even though all four are always present.

They are:

1. Character
2. Plot
3. Atmosphere
4. Tone

Character is the relationship between characters (obviously). Often the supporting characters will pull the main character towards opposite poles.

Plot is the sequence of events as the characters pursue their object of desire. Forces of antagonism get in their way and force them to take alternate paths and make character-revealing choices.

Atmosphere is the background against which the story is set, the "given" that informs the telling of the story.

Tone is the point of view from which the story is told.

I've said it before, but I'm starting to see a trend here. In answer to the problem of suffering, much of current art wrestles with the temptation to return to stoicism. The solution is not primarily to hope for change, but to accept what we can't change. Furthermore, the class of things that would fall under the heading of what we can't change seems to be growing. We seem to be struggling to accept the "fact" that people are going to be messed up and depressed, that relationships will not work out, and that (as is the case in the movie) your dad won't make enough money to stop the family from being evicted.

This one was primarily a character story and secondarily an atmosphere story.

Cameron Duncan, a knowledgeable spectator, as well as an experienced film-industry professional, says that the character's journey was "from apathy to direction." I agree, and would add that his movement out of apathy required that he make himself vulnerable to the possibility of pain, realized in the fact that he gets his heart broken by his girlfriend who "got bored with him."

In other words there are two possible solutions to the problem of suffering in the film. The first is the rout of apathy. If you fail to have hope, or establish any goals, you are immune to pain in a sense, but you are bored. This is represented in the girlfriend character, Stephanie, and the main character in the beginning of the film. But as he falls in love with Stephanie, all sorts of things are awakened in him and he falls in love with her. Suddenly he's not bored and he has hope for the first time. But at the end of the day (so to speak) Stephanie gets bored of him and breaks his heart. But along the way she teaches him to see, as I said before, the "dopeness" of all situations. This is evidenced in a moment at the end of the film when he is about to board the elevator to leave Stephanie and he says that he wants to remember the moment because, "This is the first time I had my heart broken."

Long Beach Airport

Long Beach airport, I have to say, is the easiest airport I have ever flown out of. Parking is close, you just pull up and walk into the terminal. It only takes about 20 minutes to do everything, from getting your ticket to going through security. My only regret is that I left my house too early, for now I've got to wait for an hour before my plane leaves.

Off To Sundance

Well I'm going to be taking a class for Fuller entitled "Engaging Independent Film" in Park City next week, mostly consisting of us watching a whole bunch of films together, discussing them, probably eating at some restaurants, and of course I plan to visit that brewery up at the top of main street in Park City like I do every year. Of course, in Utah, as I understand it, you can't call bars bars, because they are actually private clubs, clubs to which you must purchase a membership in order to drink there. This is what I've been told. But I've also been told that that whole story is a lie. (Hmm, that's three instances in three sentences in which I was able to write the same word twice in a row).

So I'll keep you guys posted on the festivities as we go along as much as I can.

Things I would make my wife do (if I had one)

At the risk of sounding, er, strange or something, I hope the reader can take the following list as written in good fun. I have always loved the humor in writing down lists. Calvin in Calvin and Hobbs, writes lists such as:" People who I hate." It's never clear exactly why he is writing the list other than the idea that he just has to get it down on paper. It is in that spirit and with that attitude that I offer to you the following list, which I have poured over with much thought. We often wonder what our lives would be like if they were differently constituted, and one of the biggest differences between the lives of some and the lives of others, is the status of being single or not. But we might entertain the idea of what it would be like to occupy the position on the other side. It was just this thought that inspired the following list for me.

Things I would make my wife do (if I had one)



1. Stay up all night with me and listen to sermon after sermon after sermon from the sermon archives on my Church’s web page while drinking hot apple cider.
2. Listen to me read aloud the entire Brother’s Karmasov.
3. Sit through a whole class session when I'm teaching so that I can point to the back of the class after saying something crazy and say, “That’s my wife back there, she agrees with me, don’t you honey?”
4. Time me when I’m studying to see if I can beat my record for straight studying from the day before.
5. Wait until it is raining and then make her go for a five mile run in the rain with me; we would both get a cold and call in sick for work the next day.
6. Watch all of Woody Allen's films in a weekend and discuss them (except, perhaps, some of his bad ones from the late 90's).
7. Go to an Angels game all decked out in Dodger gear, Dodger jersey, dodger hat, and blue everything, to a game in which the Dodgers are not even playing.


Of course I'm open to other suggestions. I might as well get the list nice and complete now, while I have time to think it over. It seems I need three more, to make it an even ten. Any suggestions that you have would be greatly appreciated. Now if you are thinking to yourself that she may not want to be "made" to do such things. You would certainly be right in your thinking. But that just serves to justify the publication of the list all the more. Better to get all this out in the open so that it will not be a surprise to anyone down the road. It's part of my non-negotiables, so to speak. You want to marry me, well know that you are going to have to do at least one run in the rain, one all night sermon binge, and one Angels game dressed in Dodger gear.

Peter Leithart knows what he's talking about

I've had Peter Leithart's book, "Heroes of the City of Man" for a while now but never got around to reading it until this week. He's such a good writer that when you pick up one of his books you feel at home somehow. Just the introduction to the book is eye opening. In justifying the study of ancient pagan literature, he says that he seeks to understand "Athens" as "an author who resides contentedly in Jerusalem." He does this in part by noting that "the Bible is the 'epitome' of all books, containing a key to all other books and stories. Tragedies, specifically, are 'fall stories,' similar to the biblical stories in Genesis 3 or I Samuel 13-15, while comedies are 'redemption stories.' similar in structure to the overall redemptive narrative of the Bible. A reader can begin to discern the shape of a story by slotting characters and events into the pattern of biblical stories. All heroes my be compared to the true Hero, Jesus Christ; all damsels in distress are comparable to Christ's Bride, the church; all rescues are acts of salvation; all weddings anticipate the feast of the Lamb; and all villains, serpent-like, spread their several varieties of poison."p.24

This is a great introduction into the way one might go about thinking about, analyzing and understanding the myths and stories of any age.

Aaron and Emily

For those of you who missed the wedding, I thought I'd post my Dad's exhortation that he gave before he led Aaron and Emily in repeating their vows and exchanging rings. I found it to be quite solid, grace-based truth and very well said indeed.

So here is to Aaron and Emily and a long a fruitful life and marriage!

It’s both holy and fearful as well as wonderful and exhilarating to make the kinds of promises and vows that you make today in committing to share life together as a couple. Starting today you will be living hopes and dreams together, sharing everyday life and possessions together, sharing money, plans, your physical bodies, as well your deepest thoughts and emotions in this life long journey together.

The vows that you make today are large and sweeping, historical and Scriptural, and almost fearful in their responsibility. Soon you will speak promises that I know you each fully mean and desire to fulfill wholeheartedly. Your parents, in weakness and fear have done their best to model and instruct you at home about marriage, and what has been lacking in any way in the home has been graciously provided and underscored by the good teaching and example of Christian community that you have witnessed and received among many of those seated here. As a father I am grateful that you make these vows in the midst of a covenant community that carries with it a commitment on our part to hold you accountable to your vows and to help you in prayer and every practical way to fulfill them in Christ.

But with such sweeping and life altering promises come the ever present, unfortunate, possibility of struggle due to our fallen nature and our constant need for grace.

Emily, if you are to submit yourself and your future to Aaron’s leadership, and Aaron, if you are to lay down your life for your wife like Christ did for the church; if all the various roles and responsibilities are to be fulfilled so that your marriage glorifies God and provides fruitful companionship, it’s also important to remember, as Paul said, that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, and that we have the regrettable tendency that, “the good we would like to do, we don’t do; but the evil that we would not do, that we practice.” (2 Cor.4:7; Romans 7:19)

So, I want to charge you, appeal to you, and urge you to embrace the only means with which you can uphold your end of the covenant. I exhort you to listen to the apostle John as he exhorted the early church regarding the practicalities of loving one another.

1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” John exhorted them to love and obedience, but didn’t leave them there simply with the commandments. He gave them the power of the gospel to help them remember to turn their hearts toward Christ’s enabling grace or they would not be able to love one another well.

The Scripture says that the way to love one another and keep ones promises is to first receive experientially and by faith, the free, daily gift of Christ’s love, and then you will have the measure of grace you need to pass on to each other. Indeed Scripture says that His mercies are new every morning.

We love because He first loved us.

As you have experienced a measure of Christ’s grace in your personal lives – I exhort you to continue on in life in the grace that was bought for you at the cross, for in it you will find an empowering grace to share with each other as you receive it afresh by faith.

When trouble comes or confusion reigns seek His love first and be reminded of the gospel and the mercy of the cross.

I remind you that
• Matthew 6:33 says the same, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
• Revelation 2:4-5 appeals to you that if you have fallen in any way, to return to your first love, Jesus Christ.
• Proverbs 3:5-6 tell you to trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways know Him and He will direct your paths.

If at any time the planning, figuring, trying hard and choosing wear thin…. Remember that:

• Psalm 33 16-18 says that “no king is saved by the multitude of an army; A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. ….but behold the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His unfailing love.”
• Philippians 3 and 4 (3:3, 7-8, 12-14; 4:17, 11-13) tells you to put no ultimate confidence in the flesh but to count all things loss in comparison to the excellence of the knowing Christ Jesus our Lord and pressing on to lay hold of Him.
• For as you walk through all the phases of life together, and experience together times of being full or being hungry, times of abasing or abounding, times of abundance or need, like Paul, you can trust God’s promise that you can do all things through Christ who constantly infuses strength into you

So, please receive this word, as we receive the integrity of your words of promise to each other…..You have God’s word that as you imbibe His love to you first, you will be enabled to love one another and fulfill your vows in a way that will glorify Him.

Indeed, we love because He first loved us.

And what shall we say to these things…..If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things (Romans 8)?


December 28. 2007

Incidentally, if any of you would like to see some photos from the trip/event, click hereor here.

Letter to Chipotle

Today I was cleaning out my car and I found, buried under a pile of books, a crumpled-up note book. It was probably the note book I was using during the period of time when I was working on my MA thesis. In it I found the following letter I must have written about six months ago. I only vaguely remember writing it. I was probably going a little nutty from all the studying or something:

Dear Chipotle,

I do enjoy the quality and freshness of your food. I like to come to your location, get a burrito bowl how I prefer it, with pinto beans, no sour cream and chicken, and take it out to your patio. I am a student and I do quite a bit of studying. The complaint I have is that there is nowhere in your restaurant where I can sit in peace and quiet. The music is piped loudly and all too efficiently to every square inch of the store. I have no say in the he volume of it and since it seems that no matter where I sit there is a speaker above my head, it is near impossible to read, or even have a low-toned conversation. Is it possible to accommodate those of us who prefer the quiet to the overly noise-polluted eating experience? I would not mind so much the situation if you had not installed extra speakers outside on the patio. I can understand loud music inside your walls but must you blast its banal mediocrity outside as well? What if someone just wants to hear the distant traffic and the sound of the breeze whistling through the sparse trees in the parking-lot? I had hoped that our relationship would be a fruitful one. You a business in need of regular customers and I a student who does not like to cook, enjoys a good burrito and who might even treat himself to a Mexican brand beer every now and again. But I am afraid, so long as this noise pollution persists, that it cannot work for us. Sure you will have your soccer moms, your rap-loving teenagers and even your orange-county uppity beach bums who really aren't bums because they have money. But you will not have me. And one day you will look out your window and wonder, whatever happened to that guy who always complained about the music and hated sour cream? This hurts me more than it hurts you...but go I must.

Sincerely,

J

No Country for Old Men

Now remember, if you don't want the movie spoiled, then go watch it before you read the last of this post.

This has to be one of the Cohen Brother's best films, right up there with Fargo and The Man Who Wasn't There, although "Man" is still my favorite of theirs.

The novel on which which the movie is based takes inspiration from W.B. Yeats' poem , "Sailing to Byzantium". Here it is below:


THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.


It seems to me that the movie is about the first stanza, the nature of this world that is "No country for old men". It is a world teeming with life, but those that try to swim up stream, like the salmon, are in a futile struggle, and everyone is begotten, born, and dies.

Yeats goes on in the next few stanzas to introduce the idea of a transcendent beyond the world of the temporal. He synthesized the eternal with the present in the last stanza by imagining that he could be in Byzantium, or "eternity" and yet sing about temporal events, "past, passing or to come." But the Cohen brothers don't seem to make it to Byzantium, content to explore this world, reducing any hope of escape to a faint hint.

The movie is about Llewelyn Moss, who finds a stash of drug money out in the desert and is pursued by serial killer Anton Chigurh. As we can see from the clip below, Chigurch, the man in black, represents fate.



Other lines in the movie suggest that this is true. He is supposed to kill those that he kills, and he has no power to go against the coin. He is, ironically for a serial killer, a man of "principles."

We watch the events unfold through the eyes of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, the local law in pursuit of Chigurch, The events are just so horrible that he is left baffled by the evil in the world. It seems these "principles" of Chigurc function as a kind of absolute law, only they are evil. The idea is that "fate" is in pursuit of every one of us, just as Chigurch is in pursuit of Llewelyn Moss. There is no avoiding the inevitable end, that of death and destruction.

Therefore, once again, we find a movie that plays out with the presupposition of determinism and the inevitability of decline. The world is such that things are bound to get worse, and this is an unavoidable fact. Furthermore, as Sheriff Bell tells us in the voice over that opens the film, this is not something that we are able to understand. There are numerous references to human limitations in knowledge, ability and perspective, yet the one thing we can know, is that fate is not going to let us get away.

Now, to spoil the end for you. Below are the closing words, spoken by Sheriff Bell, talking to his wife after having retired on account of feeling "over matched," Chigurch having done all that he said he would do and still at large. Sheriff Bell tells his wife that he had dreampt a couple of dreams the night before.

"Okay. Two of 'em. Both had my father. It's peculiar. I'm older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, first one I don't remember so well but it was about money and I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and snowin', hard ridin'. Hard country. He rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and that he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. Out there up ahead. And then I woke up."

This is the hint of hope that we are left with at the end. But the fact that it is a dream suggests that this hint may be simply a myth...or it could be leaving things open for the possibility of someone bringing light into the cold-darkness. This light must come from someone who is able to get away from the principle of decline as symbolized by Chigurch, however, there seems to be no character, including Llewelyn Moss, the most heroic and strong of all the characters, capable of doing this.

I ask you dear reader, is there anyone, any hero, capable of breaking the cycle of decline, of conquering fated death, and of brining light into the cold darkness?

It's time for more poetry

Psalm 106


To exchange glory
For image

To exchange rest
For craving

To soon forget
Earnestly

To play a deed
Being harlot

To join
To lifeless
And yoke
To death

To envy

To sink low

To get
The wanted

To consider
To believe
To trust
To hear
To sing
Not

To murmur
To complain
To defile
To mix
To pollute
To anger
To provoke
To test
To kindle

Nevertheless yet AND indeed
Dear child
Therefore

To earnestly remember
In spite

To hear
To see
Distress

To relent
To turn away

To become
To be
To have been

Blessed favored
Compassioned upon

To Lovingkindness
To Everlasting

To rejoice
To gladden
To benefit
To keep
To do
To thank
To be justice

To and for His comfort

For His sake
For their sake

For our sake

On the Evils of Multiple Choice

I've got to get This off my chest.

I will never, never, never... um, never... never never never. Issue a multiple choice test once I'm a real teacher, and here's why:

1. It does not provide an accurate indication of whether the student has actually learned the material or not. So much depends on the wording of the questions and whether or not there is an "all of the above" option. I venture to say that some of the smarter students will be able to recognize more nuance in the question, and therefore might find all the answers insufficient. Oh sure, teachers try to get around this by emphasizing that they are looking for the quote, unquote "best" answer. O really? Best according to who? Yea...

2. A student who does not know the material will often do better than they deserve, and a student who has studied hard will often do worse than they deserve.

3. If a student wants to go above and beyond, to put a little extra into the test, there is nothing you can do except for maybe add an exclamation point after the circle you fill in.

4. If teachers don't say they that they are only doing a multiple choice test because they don't want to have to grade all those essays, then they are lying... yea, I said it.

5. People learn more when they have to write essays, it's true. Heck, even short answers at least give you the chance to demonstrate that you were paying attention.

So what's the conclusion here? Welp, it's dishonest, wrong, immoral, anti-educational, anti-knowledge, anti-um...fairness, and probably the people who invented multiple choice tests were the type of people who kick their dogs for no reason.

Learning Communities

After spending some time over the last couple of years in no less than five universities, I believe I'm in a position to note the following observation:

People in different communities have their own authorities, their own trend-setters and usually, a group that they define themselves against. In other words, there is usually a rival group, a rival way of thinking that the leaders of the community define themselves as not. Meanwhile everyone is reading similar books, visiting similar internet sights and taking classes from the same profs. Thus the students take pleasure in reveling in what I will call their notness.

For example: WSC is not evangelicalism, which is to say its not Calvery Chapel or megachurch, it's not NPP and not FV. Fuller is not fundamentalism (which is to say it's not Biola, and certainly not Master's College), but it is certainly not not NPP, and it does not know what FV stands for. Biola is not liberal, which is to say it's not Emergent, like the Irvine extension of Fuller, who of course are not modernists in any shape or form.

Everyone at WSC has read the confessions, Kline, Calvin, Horton and Clark. Probably you will find good old fashioned reformed books on their nightstands. I doubt whether a single student at Fuller has read the Wesminster confession. Everyone at Fuller has read Bonhoffer, Barth and MacIntyre, not to say the WSC students don't read these authors, its just that they won't define themselves by them. Biola students are busy reading Moreland and engaging in conservative politics. Fuller is busy being tolerant and diverse, which is to say they probably vote democrat.

Now, if you happen to show up to a study session, you ought to learn who you are not supposed to be, if you don't want to make waves. For example, don't start talking about the evils of the NPP at Fuller. It's much easier, coming from the outside, to talk about what you are, which is alright nearly everywhere, as long as you don't label yourself as what you are not supposed to be. For example, I could probably espouse Catholic doctrines all I want at Fuller and nobody would bat an eye, as long as I don't call myself as such. If you want to be a Calvinist, just stay away from the headline distinctives. I'd bet that 90% of what Calvin wrote would not sit ill with anyone as long as you leave the label off.

Darwin on Religion and his theories in “The Descent of Man”

“I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth of both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclusion, whether or not we are able to believe that every slight variation of structure-the union of each pair in marriage-the dissemination of each seed- and other such events, have all been ordained for some special purpose (emphasis mine).” 683


He goes on to marvel at the fact that certain characteristics in mammals are confined to one sex or the other and seem to be connected to the process of reproduction. “Certain characters are confined to one sex; and this alone renders it probable that in most cases they are connected with the act of reproduction…It is to be especially observed that the males display their attractions with elaborate care in the presence of the females; and that they rarely or never display them excepting during the season of love. It is incredible that all this should be purposeless.” 685

On the next page, Darwin outlines his essential difference with the average creationist, “He who thinks the male was created as he now exists must admit that the great plumes, which prevent the wings from being used for flight, and which are displayed during courtship and at no other time in a manner quite peculiar to this one species, were given to him as an ornament. If so, he must likewise admit that the female was created and endowed with the capacity of appreciating such ornaments. I differ only in the conviction that the male Argus pheasant acquired his beauty gradually, through the preference of the females during many generations for the more highly ornamented males; the aesthetic capacity being advanced through exercise or habit, just as our own taste is gradually improved.” 686-7


Darwin assumes that the stage to which the Argus pheasant has thus far advanced, as well as the point to which the qualities of human kind had risen, in distinction from the savage or the ape, is a good place. In other words, he seems to think that the aesthetic tastes of the female pheasant have developed in the right way. For the ornaments of the male Argus pheasant really are beautiful. Similarly, he argues, the admirable qualities found in his own civilization are good things. The fact that they only manifest themselves as the result of a great struggle for survival does not take away their value. “For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afford the basis for the development of the moral sense.” 688-9

Darwin describes the “distasteful” realization he had upon seeing a party of “savage” Feugians on his trip aboard the Beagle, “such were our ancestors.” His ancestors were no better than the savage, and this was a humbling thought for Darwin. However, he saw himself at that moment, clearly a superior animal, yet as having gradually risen from the lowly state of the humans before him. He is thus able to conclude, from the fact that he had risen so far, that there are still higher places to go. “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future.” 689

Nietzsche vs. Ecclesiastes

I've been writing and thinking a lot about Nietzschean themes in art and the book of Ecclesiastes.

Both say that we should enjoy life here and now. Both point to contradictions and puzzles in life.

Nietzsche poses a thought experiment in his doctrine of Eternal Recurrence.

What if, he speculates, the whole of history is cyclical, and you will be destined to live your life over and over again in exactly the same way. He says this:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything ultimately small or great in your life will have to return to you, all the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust! Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

Trevor Hart explains Nietzsche’s doctrine this way:

The idea of eternal recurrence functions as a kind of illumination of what it would really mean to accept fully the lack of meaning and purpose in the world. To live without a metanarrative, liberated from the Christian and modern dream of a reality different from what actually is, should mean to be able instead to affirm the totality of life just as it is.

Nietzsche is not after an escape, for that would be a curse on life. He is after a kind of acceptance, or affirmation of this life, love of fate.


The book of Ecclesiastes opens up with the teacher, Qohelet, announcing that all is hebel. This can be translated as “vanity,” “vapor” or “useless.” Scholar Michael Fox translates it as “absurd.” Fox draws upon the definition of absurd given by existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. For Camus, the Absurd is the disconnect between pretension and reality, between what we expect to be the case and what really is the case. For Camus, it is an empirical fact that we expect certain things of the world. We have a desire, or expectation for justice, for there to be a personal aspect to the universe, and for things to make sense. But that is not in fact what we find. Instead we find a world filled with injustice, and the universe is profoundly indifferent to our presence.

Similarly, in Ecclesiastes, Qohelet explores the areas in life where pretension disconnects from reality. We think that knowledge and wisdom should lead to happiness, but instead it often ends in sorrow (1: 16-18). Pleasure ought to lead to happiness, but instead it is fleeting and ultimately useless (2:1-3, 2:10-11). Work ought to lead to satisfaction and fulfillment but instead we find that its rewards are fleeting compared to the effort put into gaining them (2:4-9, 18-19, 21). Not only is our work temporal and fleeting, but so are we; death is inescapable (2:16, 3:21). Righteousness ought to be rewarded and wickedness punished (8:12-13), yet often it seems to work the other way around (3:16-21, 4:1-3, 7:15, 10:7). Perhaps the ultimate disconnect is due to the fact that “[God] has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done form the beginning to the end” (ESV 3:9b-11). We in some sense long for or expect “eternity” yet live in time. We cannot, as Camus says, “reduce the world to a rational principle” or explain all the loose ends of life (its injustices, quandaries, oppressions and sufferings). The world is just too big for us to work things out and we are finite by nature (3:1-8, 8:6-7, 8:16-17, 9:11-12).

But rather than despair, Qohelet finds that God, in the midst of absurdity, in finite time, bestows temporal enjoyments. These fleeting pleasures are to be enjoyed as gifts (2:24-25, 3:12-13, 22, 5:18-20, 8:15, 9:7-9). In this way we can embrace our humanity with its temporality, finitude and even its suffering. We do this by enjoying these gifts with gratitude and with hope (9:4). At root we find a fundamental faith in the writings of Qohelet in spite of life’s absurdities. We are able to enjoy the temporal pleasures in life precisely because we know they are from God. Furthermore, while it is true that from our vantage point the world is absurd, Qohelet advocates a faith in the God who has a larger vision (5:1-7, 12:13-14). Vaporous gifts, fleeing pleasures and fading beauties are seen as appropriate for our “lot” in life in virtue of the creator-creature distinction.
So while Qohelet highlights the cyclical nature of life (1:4-11, 12:7, 3:15). He at the same time embraces a forward-looking element, a hopeful element. While it is true that from our point of view injustice reigns, pleasure is elusive, and paradoxes abound, we get the idea that God is up to something far bigger than we can conceive. “Then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it” (ESV 9:17). “There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God” (ESV 2:24). Again and again, Qohelet juxtaposes these two realities, pointing out the absurdities of life and then telling us to enjoy our lot in life (no less than six times, by my count, in chapters 2-9). Finally, he ends the book with the admonition to fear God and a reference to God’s eventual judgment (12:13-14). Peter Leithart puts it this way:

Like the closing chapters of Job, Ecclesiastes teaches that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in our philosophies or theologies, that God is up to more than we can possibly conceive and that, limited and finite as we are, it is only natural that our grasp of the pattern of history is partial and our control of life is limited…Solomonic joy is a hedonism that arises from the confidence that the world is always under Yahweh’s control…Instead of chafing at our finitude and yearning to be gods, Solomon counsels that we rejoice in our limits and in all the vaporous life that we are given.

So what is the fundamental difference between Nietzsche and Qohelet? In these two thinkers we find identical imperatives with opposing indicatives. For Nietzsche, we are to enjoy life (imperative) because this is all there is (indicative). For Qohelet, we are to enjoy life (imperative) precisely because what we see is not all that there is (indicative).

Anthony Flew's New Book

I just got a copy of Anthony Flew's much anticipated new publication, the account of his turn to theism, or should I say deism, since he says he believes in the God of Aristotle, the unmoved mover.

I havne't finished the book yet but here is an example of the flavor of the book:

"Imagine that a satellite phone is washed ashore on a remote island inhabited by a tribe that has never had contact with modern civilization. The natives play with the numbers on the dial pad and hear different voices upon hitting certain sequences. They assume first that it's the device that makes the noises. Some of the clever natives, the scientists of the tribe, assemble an exact replica and hit the numbers again. They hear the voices again. The conclusion seems obvious to them. This particular combination of crystals and metals and chemicals produces what seems like human voices, and this means that the voices are simply properties of the device.

But the tribal sage summons the scientists for a discussion. He has thought long and hard on the matter and has reached the following conclusion: the voices coming through the instrument must be coming from people like themselves, people who are living and conscious although speaking in another language. Instead of assuming that the voices are simply properties of the headset, they should investigate the possibility that through some mysterious communication network they are "in touch" with other humans. Perhaps further study along these lines could lead to a greater understanding of the world beyond their island. But the scientists simply laugh at the sage and say: 'Look, when we damage the instrument, the voices stop coming. So they're obviously nothing more than sounds produced by a unique combination of lithium and printed circuit boards and light-emitting diodes.'"

What do you guys think? Is this good philosophy or has Flew become senile?

He does have some interesting autobiographical content. He talks about the times that he heard Wittgenstein lecture on Descartes "I think therefore I am." At the end of the lecture, he had not talked about cogito ergo sum (Descartes' "I think therefore I am"). So another prof got up and said, "Her Wittgenstein, what of cogito ergo sum? And Wittgenstein pointed at his head and said, "'Cogito ergo sum,' what an odd sentence."

Returning to the Marriage Subject

I've found an excellent book by Kevin J. Vanhoozer called "Everyday Theology."

In it he outlines his method for "reading" a cultural text. This is more or less what I've been trying to do for the last several years now with movies. However, I've noticed that my series of posts on marriage and courtship fit his method as well.

To practice "everyday theology," he says that you first deal with the "world-in-front," and try to pull together the "thicketst possible description of what is really going on" with respect to your "cultural text." You do this by taking on an interdisciplinary approach. There are levels of meaning in cultural texts. So you might look at the economic level, the sociological level, and then move on to the philosophical or theological level. You look at, in other words, what is "behind, in and in front of the text."

As he puts it:

"Cultural texts and trends are meaningful works that convey either explicit messages or implicit pictures of the world. To interpret culture, we must describe what is going on in a cultural text at various levels and form a variety of perspectives. Readers of culture ought to be able to answer the following questions: Who made this cultural text and why? What does it mean and how does it work? What effect does it have on those who receive, use, or consume it? Perhaps the essential feature of a cultural text is the world it projects: its proposal about what it is to be human." (50)

"What we are ultimately trying to understand when we read cultural texts is how its producers view the meaning of life."

"Cultural propositions are not units of thought so much as units of life. What a given cultural test ultimately proposes is a 'world of meaning,' a way of being human." (51)

Well anyway Chapter 11 is about weddings. How can we "read" a wedding as a cultural text? What do weddings say about those who put them on as a "unit of life"? Now I know that Aaron, Emily and company are in the process of planning just such a life unit as we speak (or rather, as I type). Perhaps it would be appropriate to look briefly into the cultural practice of celebrating a marriage.

Sometimes it is helpful to come up with a "root metaphor." That expresses the heart of the meaning of a given cultural unit. In our culture, what's the root metaphor for the wedding? What should its root metaphor be?

With respect to this, some observations are in order. In wedding planning, the subject of marriage rarely comes up for most people. The focus is on the day, the event, and not so much the union it is put on to commensurate. Interestingly, as the expense, extravagance and production value of weddings have increased, the institution of marriage itself has become more fragile, shorter on average and less stable in general. Anderson and Sleasman (authors of the chapter on marriage in the book) suggest that root metaphors for a wedding in our day and age might be "a party of a lifetime" or "a special day of a princess." (237) However, I think another one could be "your one day to pretend you are a celebrity," or "your one day to be a star."

When I was earning extra money for myself in my college days by shooting weddings on the weekends, I would constantly hear things like "everything's got to be perfect because this is my one wedding day." Part of the reason for all the stress, and consequently the short tempers and nerves on the day-of, was the fact that perfection was expected. Everything had to be perfect and if not, then the day was a failure.

Now, biblically, we see that it is certainly true that a wedding day should be a special event and a celebration (John 2: 1-11, Matt 22: 1-4, Rev. 19: 6-9). But it is certainly possible to forget what a wedding is for in the process of trying to construct the perfect party. Weddings are for commemorating a marriage and function as a metaphor for the marriage of Christ to his bride. In light of this, the extravagant spending that we find, the scrupulous planning, the spotless photographs, the desire to be seen as a "star," come close to looking like what Paul Tillich defines as idolatry: "Idolatry is the elevation of a preliminary concern to ultimacy."

Now, the proper way to act, as a cultural agent, in light of the prioritizing that we learn from the bible, is to affirm what is good and look to redeem was is bad in our cultural practices.

Suggestions in this direction might be to build into the ceremony a communication of the gospel, for that is what a marriage is supposed to symbolize, the culmination of the story of redemptive history. Another idea might be to put in perspective what "successful" wedding entails. Rather than thinking in terms of perfection, think in terms of service. A good party is not only one in which the host is glorified (although it is partly that). A good party can also be defined in terms of whether or not the guests were served/honored. Thus we might question the over-emphasis in looking and acting like a star at one's wedding, and using that as a measure of whether or not it was successful. While it is not wholly wrong (the party should be exciting, the decorations should be apt, the bride should be beautiful, the photographs should provide a record), it runs the risk of missing much of the point.

These are all things that I know Aaron knows, and I'm sure Emily does as well. But I thought this might be a helpful reminder, in the hope of increasing joy, for that is often the result when things are put into perspective. We are part of a much bigger story, in which we are participating. In the words of Vanhoozer: "Christians need to be able...to remind themselves that Christians are, or should be, what we celebrate each time we share the Lord's supper: a communion of saints who share new life as the body of Christ." We are what we celebrate.

The Problem of Hidden Beauty

Abraham Kuyper says that in Christ we see a movement "...from the depths of scorn to the most beautiful harmony of glory." This, he says, is the paradigm for beauty.

In this fallen world we notice that it is a fact that moments of the experience of beauty are fleeting and that everything tends towards decline. Like the young Alve Singer in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, we know that the universe is "expanding" and that our bodies are just going to get older and older until we die. We think that it is such a shame that beauty is so transient, so fleeting and so short-lived. This leads many of the ancient pagans (and now many of those that might call themselves postmoderns) to see life as essentially consisting of moments here and there of pleasure/beauty, but overall tending towards decline and ending in nothing (Peter Leithart points this out in his little book "Deep Comedy").

What can we do? We can cling to these moments when they do come, knowing how fleeing they are. We can adopt a kind of existential awareness like Kierkegaard and Heidegger talk about. Because of the dread of death, the awareness that death is inevitable and that it is only a matter of time before it happens, we can posture our lives in such a way that we can "catch" these moments when they occur. Fro Heidegger, dread helps us live better in the now because it puts our mortality into our consciousness and focuses our awareness to the life we have in front of us.

In other words, you might think of it this way. Given the fact that beauty is fleeting, that death is inevitable, I have two choices. I can look for something more substantial, or I can accept how things are. If I go with option number one, I'm going to miss the moments of beauty when I encounter them. I won't "stop to smell the roses" because I'll be thinking that there is some sort of "ultimate" rose somewhere down the path. I'll end up having sort of glossed over and failed to appreciate the moments of my life because I'm looking for something more, something better, something that fulfills me completely, rather than just hinting. So, the argument might say, stop doing that. Realize that the rose is all there is. Smell it for heaven's sake when you get the chance because there are precious few moments like these in your fleeting life and you will die before you know it.

Friedrich Nietzsche famously illustrates this way of thinking in his doctrine of eternal recurrence. What if, he speculates, the whole of history is cyclical, and you will be destined to live your life over and over again in exactly the same way. He says this:

"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything ultimately small or great in your life will have to return to you, all the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust! Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'Your are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"

Many writers these days are fond of pointing out the parallels between this kind of thinking and the book of Ecclesiastes. Themes in Ecclesiastes include such things as our finite nature, the fact that work so often fails to fulfill and the vanity of existence. But it also affirms the idea that we should enjoy the fleeing and ultimately useless pleasures of life. They are gifts of God to be enjoyed.

On the surface of things, I agree.

Take, for example, the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Without going into the details of the plot, suffice it to say that the movie is about the fact that love so often sours in relationships. People fight, get bored with each other, annoy one another, disagree and quarrel. But yet there are moments of beauty as well. Sometimes it is difficult to believe that we could experience that much pleasure with someone and also that depth of emotional pain. At the end of the movie, when Joel and Clem are about to break up, the worldview I just outlined comes out. Clem says that she "knows" what is going to happen if they stay together (actually, since their memories were erased, if they start over again). She knows that while it looks like they are made for each other now, that she will get bored with him and that he will grow annoyed with her. It's the nature of things. Joel stops her in her tracks as she's about to leave by saying, "okay." The idea being, we have to take the moments of beauty along with the moments of hurt and pain. The relationship as a whole is a good thing, he is saying, and he is willing to accept the good with the bad in a sense. This is how the movie ends, a far cry (perhaps) from the "happily ever after" romance of days past.

Now, Ecclesiastes seems to paint a similar picture. We are to accept limits, the fact that we are finite, the fact that the world is messy, the fact that work is frustrating, and the fact that we will die. It too affirms that we should enjoy the moments of goodness, beauty and pleasure in life. This has led some to point to the "natural theology" or "general revelation" and most certainly the "common grace" in the wider culture.

But what I think many of those doing theology and film are ignoring (ironically, given the postmodern focus of so many of them) is context. The desire is often to find parallels between what it says in the bible and what is being said in movies. I'd rather look a bit deeper. In other words, while Eternal Sunshine shares some themes with Ecclesiastes, it comes from a very different place.

Ecclesiastes has the ability to look through the moments of beauty and to see them as promises, thus acquiring the ability to take both of the two options I mentioned above. In other words, I would argue that the context of Ecclesiastes is the Old Testament which is infused and saturated with promise and fulfillment, with hope. It is this hope surrounding the enigmas of life that enables us to enjoy the fleeting moments of beauty in life. We see them, as C. S. Lewis puts it, as promises. They are glimpses of a world that is functioning rightly. They point us forward. We have, therefore, an entirely different type of rose-smelling in Ecclesiastes. We enjoy the moments in hope for more fulfillments. Our problems come, I would argue, not from failing to smell the roses, but from thinking that the moments are all that we have. If we put them in their proper place, as is the point of Ecclesiastes, then it frees us up to enjoy them. If we elevate them as the ground for all happiness, then we are ironically unable to appreciate them.

Suppose you are enjoying a sunset and I whisper in your ear, "enjoy it now because in five minutes it'll be gone." You will find that the awareness of its end will cloud your ability to enjoy it. If, on the other hand, I whisper, "this is the first of many moments of beauty we will have together," I think it will enhance your experience.

Now, to return to Abraham Kuyper, he says that, "Art points out to the Calvinist both the still visible lines of the original plan, and what is even more, the splendid restoration by which the Supreme Artist and Master-Builder will one day renew and enhance even the beauty of his original creation."

His predecessor, Herman Bavink says that, "(Beauty) deepens, broadens, and enriches our inner life, raises us momentarily above the horizontal, sinful, and sad actuality, and in a purifying, liberating, and saving manner affects our bowed and disconsolate hearts."

Jeremy Begbie, in interpreting Kuyper and Bavink says that the beauty we find in art, "lends a uniquely prophetic character to creaturely beauty, momentarily lifting us above life's conflicts, reaching out for something not yet revealed; earthly beauty is a 'prophecy and pledge that this world is not meant for destruction, but for glory, the nostalgic longing for which dwells in every heart'" (p.99 "Voicing Creation’s Praise").

Beauty is fleeting because it points ahead, it is not that which is to come, but it is a glimpse of it.

Quote

"For his neighbours' sake if for no other reason, the Christian should beware of becoming a person of so few earthly interests that he cannot sustain a conversation, let alone a friendship with anybody outside his religious circle. To have a genuine and discriminating pleasure in some human pursuit is to be halfway toward deserving human confidence and without confidence people cannot be led towards the knowledge of Christ, they can only be prodded." - Derek Kidner

Another Poem

Isolation

Entertainment gadgets
And reduction

Utility of the immediate
And that's all you get

That thing and no more

A payment and an exchange
A polite smile

It's good for business

I say this and you say that
Cuz I'm looking right past

A consuming robot
Or a selfish pig

Somehow I'm both

Meanwhile we wait
Waste or kill time

And you know where it ends

More Quotes by this guy

Let me throw in a couple more quotes from this certain theologian that I've been reading. So far we have only had one guess. So let's see if I can make it a little more clear by quoting a little more.

"The chief point in my Speech is now uttered. This is the peculiar sphere which I would assign religion-the whole of it, and nothing more....Your feeling is piety, in so far as it expreses, in the manner described, the bing and life common to you and to the All. Your feeling is piety in so far as it is the result of the operation of God in you by means of the operation of the world upon you...these feelings are exclusively the elements of religion, and non are excluded. There is no sensation that is no pious, except in indicate some diseased and imparied state of the life, the influence of which will not be confined to religion. Wherefore, it follows that ideas and principles are all foreign to religion. This truth we here come upon for the second time. If ideas and principles are to be anything, they must belong to knowledge which is a different department of life from religion."

"Make sure of this, that no man is pious, however perfectly he understands these principles (of religi