Written on the heart

J. Budziszewski, a political philosophy professor who has written much about the natural law tradition, is interviewed here about that subject and about his new book The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction. Parts of the interview:

7. What in your experience are the major obstacles to recognizing or accepting the natural law in today’s society?

Several years ago I suggested that we are passing through an eerie phase of history in which the things that everyone really knows are treated as unheard-of doctrines, a time in which the elements of common decency are themselves attacked as indecent. Nothing quite like this has ever happened before. Although our civilization has passed through quite a few troughs of immorality, never before has vice held the high moral ground. Our time considers it dirty-minded to treat sexual purity as a virtue; unfeeling to insist too firmly that the sick should not be encouraged to seek death; a sign of impious pride to profess humble faith in God. The moral law has become the very emblem of immorality. I still think this is true. The question is why it is true, and what can be done.

8. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the moral and political future of American society?

I never predict; I hope. If I believed in extrapolation, I would be pessimistic, because things are falling apart more and more rapidly. But I don’t believe in extrapolation, partly because human beings are not iron filings in a magnetic field (as I once believed), and partly because we have help. Doesn’t our very nature long to love better than it does? Doesn’t this longing leaven the listless dough of culture so that it quickens, rises, and glances upward? And what of that veiled and clandestine grace obscurely moving among the nations, silently entreating them to feel after the unknown God, darkly inciting them to long for light and purity, prickling them with sparks from hidden fire?

9. In your most recent book, The Line Though the Heart, you talk about the importance of revelation for the natural law. What are the implications of this relationship for the reception of natural law arguments in modern secular societies?

Quite apart from revelation, there are compelling reasons to believe in natural law. However, revelation helps to see more deeply into it. To give but a single example, we are at odds with our own nature, and natural law theory alone does not contain the resources to explain either why this is true, or what the cure may be. Our actual inclinations are at war with our natural inclinations; our hearts are riddled with desires that oppose their deepest longings; we demand to have happiness on terms that make happiness impossible. These disorders merely stun the mind when contemplated apart from the graces of creation and redemption. For this reason, a truly adequate understanding of nature’s malaise requires some hint, some glimpse, some trace of its supernatural remedy.

Some thinkers would find these remarks scandalous. The philosophical method of our day is minimalist. It assumes that people can consider propositions about reality only in small doses, one dry pill at a time. I suggest that at least sometimes, the very opposite is true. The reason the pill goes down so hard is that it is only a pill, for the mind, like the stomach, desires a meal. Just as some foods are digestible only in combination with other foods, so also some insights are difficult to take in except in combination with other insights. In order to stand firm they need context, as the single stone requires the arch. ....

12. Could you recommend a few recent books on natural law that everyone interested in the subject should read?

That everyone should read? That means the books should be fairly accessible. And how recent? Books on natural law don’t age quickly. An eclectic starter set might include Hadley Arkes, First Things; Russell Hittinger, The First Grace; and C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man. Robert George, The Clash of Orthodoxies, defends a somewhat different theory of natural law. John Paul II, in Fides et Ratio and Veritatis Splendor, places natural law in the context of Christian revelation. David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism, provides a Jewish perspective on the tradition. Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and the Natural Law, illustrates the post-World War II neo-Thomist revival and the foundations of humans-rights jurisprudence. If you want to take a chance on one of my own books, try The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction. [more]

Thanks to Insight Scoop for the reference.

An Interview with J. Budziszewski

You don't exist

Somehow or other up until this point I have missed out on CollegeBinary's Three Minute Philosophy YouTubes. The entry on David Hume:

YouTube - CollegeBinary's Channel

To End All Wars

Brandywine Books posts this preview of a new release of a 2001 film I haven't seen. I think I should see it.

Boredom

Has ADHD become the new normal? Adam J. Cox in The New Atlantis, "The Case for Boredom," describes a condition hardly limited to adolescents:

.... The adolescent mind is nowadays so hyper-stimulated that the absence of stimulation — boredom — is unsettling, while the chaos of constant connection is soothingly familiar. A languishing teenager feels irritable and instinctively knows how to rev up: go online, turn on the TV, call someone, text. Continuous stimulation and communication comprise the new normal. It is a state of being that conflates sensory pleasure with happiness. Meanwhile, the gaps between moments of heightened stimulation have been shrunk, and are on the verge of disappearing altogether. ....

As the synaptic mindscape of daily life becomes increasingly marked by peaks and the disappearance of valleys, we might reasonably expect to see some signs of distress among the hyper-stimulated. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, we are witnessing an adaptation so massive and rapid that it raises the question of where disorder really lies: when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that many millions of Americans meet the diagnostic criteria for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, this putative disorder is arguably no longer a disorder at all — it’s just the way we are. .... [more]

About which Alan Jacobs comments:

“The Case for Boredom” isn't really a case for boredom as such, but for pauses — for moments, especially in the lives of young people, when external stimuli cease long enough for some actual thought to arise, or contemplation to occur, or (mirabile dictu) mere silence to settle in for a time.

In Boredom: the Literary History of a State of Mind, Patricia Meyer Spacks explains that boredom as such is a relatively recent invention, from the eighteenth century at the latest. Before that we had melancholy (which was a kind of affliction of the spirit) and, further back still, acedia (which was a sin). What’s distinctive about boredom is that we don't see it as either a condition of our own selves or a sin, but rather something that just happens to us. When we’re bored, we don't think there’s anything wrong with us: we think the world is at fault. Stupid old world — it doesn't interest me. And interesting me is the world’s job. [emphasis added]

Constant external stimuli aren't necessary if you are capable of thought, or reflection, or, perhaps, prayer. The alternative to boredom needn't be "continuous stimulation and communication."

The New Atlantis » The Case for Boredom, Text Patterns: boredom

"In a culture of hurt feelings and thin skin"

Kevin DeYoung is doing a series on "The Ministry of Rebuke" and all four parts have now been posted. This is how he introduces the subject:

There are two kinds of Christians: those who like to rebuke and do it often and those who are scared to rebuke and never do it. The irony is both kinds of Christians are prone to sin. Those who enjoy giving a good rebuke are usually the least qualified to give one, while those who would rather do almost anything else are often the very people who would serve the body best with their correction.

We live in a strange day. With email, blogs, and social media, rebuking has never been easier. And yet in a culture of hurt feelings and thin skin, rebuking has never been more suspect.

So which is it? Do Christians rebuke too much or too little? Well, of course, that depends. Some Christians are limp noodles. Others are trigger happy. One-size advice does not fit all. We need wisdom.

At the risk of excessive enumeration, let me suggest a twenty point checklist in administering rebukes. The twenty points can be distributed under four headings: Why we rebuke. When to rebuke. How to rebuke. How to receive rebuke.

The links:

• Why We Rebuke
• When to Rebuke
• How to Rebuke and
  
• How to Receive Rebuke [the third and fourth headings are in the same post]

The final point in "How to Receive a Rebuke":

Jesus sees all your sins right now. Why not see them for yourself? The way of godliness is the way of confession, cleansing, and change. One of the reasons we aren’t really changing, is because we aren’t really confessing. And we aren’t really confessing because we aren’t really seeing. And we aren’t really seeing because few of us love enough to give a rebuke and very few are humble enough to receive one.

The Ministry of Rebuke: Why We Rebuke, When to Rebuke, How to Rebuke and How to Receive Rebuke

"Variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful"

Russell Kirk was my introduction to political thought. I read and re-read The Conservative Mind and then everything else of his that I could find, including the fiction. One of the highlights of every issue of National Review was his column about educational matters. After a lecture in Janesville, Wisconsin, a friend and I had the opportunity to sit and talk with him. He was gracious and friendly and talked of his upcoming book about T.S. Eliot's work that became Eliot and His Age. An article about him by John J. Miller, originally published in 2007, has been made available online. Some excerpts:

At a time when conservative principles are reshaping American law and culture, it is difficult to imagine that half a century ago, the conservative movement barely existed. Its few adherents struggled against the widespread perception, voiced by 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill, that they comprised “the stupid party.” The literary critic Lionel Trilling equated conservative thought to “irritable mental gestures.”

Into this environment stepped Kirk, who claimed that conservatives were the inheritors of a proud tradition whose members included the likes of Edmund Burke, John Adams and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This genealogy was idiosyncratic as well as useful: it presented conservatives with an intellectual pedigree that they sorely needed.

“Before Kirk came along, conservatives didn’t even know what to call themselves,” said Lee Edwards, a historian at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. “After Kirk, they had a name for themselves.”

In The Conservative Mind, Kirk outlined a set of basic principles that defined conservatism, such as belief in a divine moral order, an understanding that private property and political freedom are linked, and a disapproval of radical change. Above all, Kirk insisted on a deep respect for time-tested traditions: “Even the most intelligent of men cannot hope to understand all the secrets of traditional morals and social arrangements; but we may be sure that Providence, acting through the medium of human trial and error, has developed every hoary habit for some important purpose.” He often made this point by stating, simply, “The individual is foolish, the species is wise.” ....

By the time Kirk finished his doctoral studies in Scotland, he concluded that although he might have made a career as a professor, he didn’t want one. Shortly after the release of The Conservative Mind, he informed the administration at Michigan State that he didn’t want to return. He resettled in Mecosta and spent the rest of his days at the old farmstead, a home, barn and assorted outbuildings he called Piety Hill.

Kirk typically woke late, answered correspondence in the afternoon, and worked on his books and articles when the sun went down. He dressed formally, even when he didn’t plan on seeing anybody in particular. .... His jackets were specially tailored to include what he called a “poacher’s pocket” on the inside—a pocket big enough to let him carry a book wherever he went. He also loved to go on long walks, often planting trees in areas that had been clear-cut many years earlier. ....

This night-owl routine produced not only an enormous amount of writing, but also an enormous range of it. In addition to high-minded nonfiction, Kirk published short stories in Fantasy and Science Fiction, London Mystery Magazine and New Terrors. In 1958, T.S. Eliot wrote to him: “How amazingly versatile and prolific you are! Now you have written what I should have least expected of you—ghost stories!” ....

“Mine was not an Enlightened mind,” [Kirk] wrote, “it was a Gothic mind, medieval in its temper and structure. I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful.” .... (more)

Kirk once wrote an appreciative review of a book by an author even more important to me: C.S. Lewis's spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy.

Russell Kirk Shaped Conservative Thought from a Northern Michigan Farm - My North - August 2010 - Northern Michigan

"The funniest writer ever to have put words on paper"

Wooster: "If you ask me Jeeves, art is responsible for most of the trouble in the world."
Jeeves: "It's an interesting theory, Sir. Would you care to expatiate upon it?"
Wooster: "As a matter of fact, no Jeeves. No The thought just occurs to me, you know, as thoughts do."

Last night I began watching, once again, the Jeeves & Wooster series starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry and recovering, as I always do when reading Wodehouse or watching this version, a thoroughly innocent pleasure quite abstracted from the controversies of this day. The Amazon price for all twenty-three episodes, all four seasons, is a genuine bargain — just over a dollar an episode.

Today I came across this 1999 article, "Wodehouse saved my life," by Hugh Laurie in his Bertie Wooster voice:

.... I was, in truth, a horrible child. Not much given to things of a bookery nature, I spent a large part of my youth smoking Number Six and cheating in French vocabulary tests. I wore platform boots with a brass skull and crossbones over the ankle, my hair was disgraceful, and I somehow contrived to pull off the gruesome trick of being both fat and thin at the same time. If you had passed me in the street during those pimply years, I am confident that you would, at the very least, have quickened your pace.

You think I exaggerate? I do not. Glancing over my school reports from the year 1972, I observe that the words "ghastly" and "desperate" feature strongly, while "no", "not", "never" and "again" also crop up more often than one would expect in a random sample. My history teacher's report actually took the form of a postcard from Vancouver.

But this, you will be nauseated to learn, is a tale of redemption. In about my 13th year, it so happened that a copy of Galahad at Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse entered my squalid universe, and things quickly began to change. From the very first sentence of my very first Wodehouse story, life appeared to grow somehow larger. There had always been height, depth, width and time, and in these prosaic dimensions I had hitherto snarled, cursed, and not washed my hair. But now, suddenly, there was Wodehouse, and the discovery seemed to make me gentler every day. By the middle of the fifth chapter I was able to use a knife and fork, and I like to think that I have made reasonable strides since.

I spent the following couple of years meandering happily back and forth through Blandings Castle and its environs - learning how often the trains ran, at what times the post was collected, how one could tell if the Empress was off-colour, why the Emsworth Arms was preferable to the Blue Boar - until the time came for me to roll up the map of adolescence and set forth into my first Jeeves novel. It was The Code of the Woosters, and things, as they used to say, would never be the same again.

The facts in this case, ladies and gentlemen, are simple. The first thing you should know, and probably the last, too, is that P. G. Wodehouse is still the funniest writer ever to have put words on paper. Fact number two: with the Jeeves stories, Wodehouse created the best of the best. I speak as one whose first love was Blandings, and who later took immense pleasure from Psmith, but Jeeves is the jewel, and anyone who tries to tell you different can be shown the door, the mini-cab, the train station, and Terminal 4 at Heathrow with a clear conscience. The world of Jeeves is complete and integral, every bit as structured, layered, ordered, complex and self-contained as King Lear, and considerably funnier. .... (more)

Wodehouse saved my life

God is not distant

And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for He has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.
[Luke 1:46-49, ESV]

Rev. Ben Dueholm last Sunday:

.... Reflecting on the approach of death, and the question of God, [Roger] Ebert writes:

"I was asked at lunch today who or what I worshipped. The question was asked sincerely, and in the same spirit I responded that I worshipped whatever there might be outside knowledge. I worship the void. The mystery. And the ability of our human minds to perceive an unanswerable mystery. To reduce such a thing to simplistic names"—I imagine here he has in mind God, YHWH, Allah, Christ, and the rest—"is an insult to it, and to our intelligence."

I should say before I go on that I love Roger Ebert and don’t mean to bag on him. .... His words are eloquent and the sentiment is common. It is even, in a way, noble. Lots and lots of people look for God—forgive my use of a simplistic name—at the edge of life. We look for God at the edge of consciousness, at the edge of scientific knowledge, at the moment of death. ....

This is a very different claim about God than we hear in the famous song of the Blessed Virgin Mary in today’s Gospel. Mary’s God is at the center of life, not at the edge of it. Mary’s God is magnified by her very soul, by her mind. She does not place God in a void at the outer limits of her mind’s journey. She unabashedly accepts that God has done great things, not just in general but for her. Her God is not an unanswerable mystery, but a God who inspires fear and grants mercy. God sets the proud wandering the their own futile thoughts; breaks the thrones of the mighty, feeds the hungry, spurns the rich, and makes and remembers promises to the people of Israel.

This God is known by many names, perhaps all of them simplistic, but Mary blesses God’s proper Name as holy. There is nothing in Mary’s witness of faith that reduces the mystery of God. Rather she celebrates it, magnifies it, worships it.

...Mary’s God is not at the margin, watching and waiting for our awe, intervening now and then. Her God is at the center of life, and at this moment the center of life is her. Jesus is growing in her womb, conceived in mystery. She has heard the awful charge from the angel to bear this wondrous child despite her own fears and her own frailty—she was just a girl and the pregnancy was potentially scandalous, after all. The mystery was not out there past the limit of her knowledge; it was what she knew, what she felt every day as it quickened and took flesh within her. And in doing that, God truly is thwarting the mighty and lifting up the lowly. God indeed is scattering the thoughts of those too proud to find God in such a humble place, who take God’s silence for God’s absence, who make God in their own majestic, glorious, noble image.

This is the God not of the void or of the beyond, but the God of the center, the God of Jesus Christ. God is not distant but near. God is not where we give up. God is where we start—in our homes, our work, our knowledge, here in our gifts of bread and wine. God is also where we end—in wonder, in fear, in the void, at the hour of our death. And God is present in between, as we are born, as we struggle, as we serve, and as we learn and change. .... [more]

The Private Intellectual: The God of the Center

Continuity, roots and staying power

Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk is posting a series about "movements" among evangelicals. He intends to discuss "the ancient-future movement spearheaded by Robert Webber; second, the emergent/emerging movement spearheaded by young thinkers and leaders like Brian McLaren ... and third, the revival of Calvinism among the NeoReformed." His attitude about them [with which I am in sympathy]:

The longer I have been a believer in and follower of Jesus, the less I have been attracted to “movements” (“fads?”) in the church. I realize this puts me at odds with those who think I am constantly missing “catching the wave of the Spirit” as he does “new and exciting” things among his people. It’s just that, the older one gets, the more one sees these movements come and go, ebb and flow, morph and get swallowed up into other waters. The relentless changes and enthusiastic voices exclaiming the arrival of the “next wave” get shrill and annoying after awhile. Count me as one who longs for continuity, roots, depth, and proven staying power with regard to matters of faith.

If that makes me an obstreperous old coot, then so be it.

The first of the movements he is discussing is the emergent/emerging one — which many evangelicals argue is already passing or past. He confesses that he has never read anything by Brian McLaren put off by the titles alone [e.g. "The Secret Message of Jesus sounded too much like gnosticism to me, Everything Must Change—well, no"].

I wonder whether his yearning for "continuity, roots, depth, and proven staying power" may incline him to be more sympathetic to Webber.

Convince Me! | internetmonk.com

A monument to criminals

It would be nice to hear more voices acknowledging that the issue regarding the mosque in New York City is about the wisdom of the decision to build at that location — not the First Amendment or the rights of private property. Provocation is incompatible with reconciliation. From a column yesterday in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, director-general of Al-Arabiya TV  "The Majority of Muslims Do Not Want or Need a Mosque Near Ground Zero."

.... I can't imagine that Muslims [actually] want a mosque at this particular location, because it will become an arena for the promoters of hatred, and a monument to those who committed the crime. Moreover, there are no practicing Muslims in the area who need a place to worship, because it is a commercial district. Is there anyone who is [really] eager [to build] this mosque?...

...[T]he idea of a mosque right next to a site of destruction is not at all an intelligent one. The last thing Muslims want today is to build a religious center that provokes others, or a symbolic mosque that people will visit as a [kind of] museum next to a cemetery.

What the citizens of the U.S. fail to understand is that the battle against the 9/11 terrorists is not their battle. It is a Muslim battle – one whose flames are still raging in more than 20 Muslim countries... I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a monument or a place of worship that tomorrow may become a source of pride for the terrorists and their Muslim followers, nor do they want a mosque that will become a shrine for the haters of Islam....

Al-Arabiya Director: The Majority of Muslims Do Not Want or Need a Mosque Near Ground Zero

Arguing for the sake of Heaven

Via Brandywine Books, a quotation from the Introduction to Stephen Prothero's God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter:

To claim that all religions are the same is to misunderstand that each tradition attempts to solve a different aspect of the human condition. For example:

• Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission
• Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation
• Confucianism: the problem is chaos / the solution is social order
• Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is enlightenment
• Hinduism: the problem is the endless cycle of reincarnation / the solution is release
• Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is our return back to God and to our true home

When we gloss over these differences we fail to appreciate each religion on its own terms.

And from a recent essay by Prothero, "Against the 'Answer Bank' Theory of Religion":

.... One of the most common misconceptions about the world’s religions is that all of them plumb the same depths, ask the same questions. They do not. Only religions that see God as all good ask how a good God can allow millions to die in earthquakes and tsunamis. Only religions that believe in souls ask whether your soul exists before you are born and what happens to it after you die. And only religions that think we have one soul ask after “the soul” in the singular. Every religion, however, asks after the human condition. Here we are in these bodies. What now? What next? What are we to become?

There are wonderful traditions of argumentation in Hinduism’s Upanishads, Tibetan Buddhist sutras, and Christian theology. But the argumentative tradition that has most captured my imagination in recent years has been created and sustained inside rabbinic Judaism.

This tradition makes an invaluable distinction between two types of arguing: arguing for the sake of ego (which it does not value) and arguing for the sake of heaven (which it does). Today our radio and television stations are clogged, on both the Left and the Right, with arguments on behalf of ego. The point is to cling to the answers you already have, even as you shove them down the throat of your antagonists. It is no wonder that so many of my students are allergic to argument. Happily, however, there is an alternative.

The name Israel refers to one who has wrestled with God (Genesis 32:28), and for millennia, Jews have done just that. They have also wrestled with one another, and with their own tradition’s tensions between story and law, exile and return, mercy and justice. According to the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, “If a Jew has no one to quarrel with, he quarrels with God, and we call it theology; or he quarrels with himself, and we call it psychology.” .... [more

Brandywine Books, Against the “Answer Bank” Theory of Religion | Big Questions Online

Fundamentalisms

One of the differences among us is the ability to deal with ambiguity. There are those who are willing to believe that various approaches to truth may provide seemingly contradictory answers and who are willing and able to wait to discover which is true or whether there may be satisfactory ways to reconcile the contradictions. Others insist that their internally consistent system rules out any other possibility. Peter Berger belongs to the first category. From his blog, "The Return of the Village Atheist":

Over the last few years there was published a flurry of books marketed and discussed under the heading of “The New Atheism”. The best-known authors are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. While differing in emphasis and style, their books have in common an aggressive, indeed vituperative hostility to religion in all its forms (though particular venom is directed against Christianity and Islam). Agnosticism is rejected in favor of an unambiguous atheism. Also rejected is the widespread tolerance of non-believers for believers deemed moderate—all religion is dangerous and morally objectionable. ....

The books at issue here regard atheism as science. It is useful to compare them with a vastly more successful genre of books which treat faith as science—the literature spawned by creationism and “intelligent design,” mostly written by American Evangelicals (though some Catholics have jumped on the bandwagon). Though often thrown together by the media, these two attempts to support faith by an alleged science are quite different. Creationism proposes to demonstrate, scientifically, that the Biblical account of creation is correct—thus alleging that the theory of evolution is false and that the earth is only some six thousand years old (the creationists have a nice term for this—they speak of a “young earth”). “Intelligent design” does not challenge modern biology, but asserts that the universe simply makes no sense unless one assumes that it is the product of an intelligent creator. This assertion is also allegedly supported by scientific evidence.

These two projects of deploying science in the service of religion are very different. It seems to me that anyone who successfully completed a high school course in biology could not find creationism plausible. The phrase used by its adherents, “creation science,” is an oxymoron. On the other hand, “intelligent design” reiterates what any religious believer (certainly a believing Christian, Jew or Muslim) would say—that the universe provides testimony to its creator. In the words of Psalm 19: “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” ....

The “New Atheists” have a faith masquerading as science. The creationists are doing the same, on the other side of the fence. And the ID types mistakenly want science to provide a way of proving faith. All three are variants of fundamentalism—the assertion of certainty where no certainty is to be had. There are perfectly plausible reasons for being an agnostic: God, if he exists, has not made it easy to believe in him. Atheism is an altogether different matter. An atheist could be defined as someone to whom a voice from heaven has proclaimed that there is no heaven. ....

What impresses me most about atheists is the flatness of their worldview. They have this in common with all fundamentalists, religious or secular. Fundamentalism is a decision to avoid the mystery of the human condition. [more]

The Return of the Village Atheist - Peter Berger's Blog - The American Interest

Christian community

Chaplain Mike commends Bonhoeffer's understanding of Christian community and concludes "Nothing I have read describes Jesus-shaped Christian community better than Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together." From the post:

.... What interests me at this point is ... the theological bases upon which he believed Christians ought to relate to each other as they share the common life in Christ. He had a specific concept of what “life together” is about. And what I love about Bonhoeffer’s understanding is how Jesus-shaped it is.

Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Christ Jesus. (Life Together, p. 7)

Bonhoeffer warns us that our conceptions of Christian community may be flawed. Many have a strong desire for “something more” than what Christ has established—an extraordinary social experience, some wishful, utopian ideal of ecstatic experiences, lofty moods, constant joy and peace, and profound piety.

He urges us not to love our dreams of Christian community more than the reality. If we insist on our dreams rather than on what God has actually given, we will become proud and demanding, turning against our brethren and ultimately against God himself. A Christian community that springs from our own “wish-dreams” rather than from the reality that we are sinful human beings brought together only by God’s grace and forgiveness in Christ will lead only to disillusionment.

God has given us this: brothers and sisters “who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace.” The key to genuine Christian community is learning to give thanks for the actual brothers and sisters who are related to me in Christ. .... [more]

“Wish Dream” Community | internetmonk.com

"He who marries the spirit of the age..."

From comments responding to a post on "The Sad State of Pastoral Thinking" at Internet Monk:

Lauren says:
August 13, 2010 at 9:22 am
The modern church seems to confuse “relevant” with “cool and hip.”  I'm certain God and His Word do not need our help to be “relevant.”

Chaplain Mike says:
August 13, 2010 at 9:25 am
As a wise person once said, the only way to be always relevant is to focus on the eternal.

Miguel says:
August 13, 2010 at 12:35 pm
…and another said, He who marries the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widower.

The Sad State of Pastoral Thinking | internetmonk.com

Youth ministry: why equipping is better than entertaining

I passed thirty-five years spending most of my professional day every day with people between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. During that time I made some discoveries: it is impossible for an adult to be "cool" by trying, and it is impossible to keep up with what is "cool" because it changes about every five minutes. If kids like and respect adults, the reason is likely to have more to do with integrity and lack of artifice than with anything more superficial. Actually enjoying and liking teenagers helps a lot, too. And if you are a teacher, genuinely, transparently, and effectively conveying that what you are offering and demanding is valuable — and interesting — goes a long way.

These thoughts were inspired by Jon Nielson's essay about the challenge of being a youth pastor: "Teens Want More Than Pizza."

.... Faced with increasingly busy schedules—packed full of sports, music, drama, and college-prep classes—many teenagers are finding little time (or need) for the church. While youth group and youth retreat attendance skyrocketed in the late 1990s, many youth pastors are now finding that students are “not even coming for the pizza anymore.” Maybe the pizza was part of the problem to begin with. ....

I’ve been a high school pastor for about eight months now; I certainly have much to learn! In just those eight months, though, I have formed a few convictions from which, by God’s grace, I will not soon depart:

• I cannot compete with my students’ culture in the area of entertainment.

Some youth pastors can keep up much better than I can. Still, even the savviest, coolest, most-in-touch youth pastor around will find himself unable to entertain students in a way that will keep them coming to his youth group. The competition is simply too stiff.

• I can offer high school students the real gospel of Jesus Christ—and they can handle it.

The gospel—the objective reality that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” which is received by faith alone—is what high school students really crave. The amazing (and constantly humbling) thing about continually offering the gospel to students is the response it brings. The response is not: “Wow, Jon, you’re cool,” or “That music was off the hook!” It’s actually a much more biblical response: repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. High school students crave the real, true, life-changing, not-watered-down gospel of Jesus Christ. Woe to us if we give them anything less.

• Growth happens not by entertaining, but by equipping.

.... It is time that youth pastors return to a surprisingly ancient concept. God gave pastors and teachers to the church to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry” (Eph. 5). Chris Palmer, a youth pastor quoted in the USA Today article, was on to something when he described his new approach to youth ministry: beginning to teach that following Jesus is “hard work,” as well as “radical and exciting.” If high school students crave the true gospel of Jesus Christ, they desire to see lives (including their own) that are radically and genuinely affected by a relationship with Jesus Christ. They spot hypocrisy better than most of us adults. .... [more]

Teens Want More Than Pizza – The Gospel Coalition Blog

Must we choose?

Christopher Benson is engaged in an exchange at Evangel about what Christians must or needn't believe about evolution. Yesterday he provided links to a number of "Resources on Science and Religion." One of them is a paper by Tim Keller, "Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople [pdf]," from which I excerpt the following as he lays out the problem:

Many secular and many evangelical voices agree on one ‘truism’—that if you are an orthodox Christian with a high view of the authority of the Bible, you cannot believe in evolution in any form at all. New Atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins and creationist writers such as Ken Ham seem to have arrived at consensus on this, and so more and more in the general population are treating it as given. If you believe in God, you can’t believe in evolution. If you believe in evolution, you can’t believe in God.

This creates a problem for both doubters and believers. ....

In my estimation what current science tells us about evolution presents four main difficulties for orthodox Protestants. The first is in the area of Biblical authority. To account for evolution we must see at least Genesis 1 as non-literal. The questions come along these lines: what does that mean for the idea that the Bible has final authority? If we refuse to take one part of the Bible literally, why take any parts of it literally? Aren’t we really allowing science to sit in judgment on our understanding of the Bible rather than vice versa.

The second difficulty is the confusion of biology and philosophy. Many of the strongest proponents for evolution as a biological process (such as Dawkins) also see it as a ‘Grand Theory of Everything.’ They look to natural selection to explain not only all human behavior but even to give the only answers to the great philosophical questions, such as why we exist, what life is about, and why human nature is what it is. Doesn’t belief in the one idea—that life is the product of evolution—entail the adoption of this whole 'worldview'?

The third difficulty is the historicity of Adam and Eve. One way to reconcile what current science says about evolution is to propose that the account of Adam and Eve is symbolic, not literal, but what does this do to the New Testament teaching of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 that our sinfulness comes from our relationship with Adam? If we don’t believe in an historical fall, how did we become what the Bible says we are—sinful and condemned?

The fourth difficulty is the problem of violence and evil. One of the greatest barriers to belief in God is the problem of suffering and evil in the world. Why, people ask, did God create a world in which violence, pain, and death are endemic? The answer of traditional theology is—he didn’t. He created a good world but also gave human beings free will, and through their disobedience and ‘Fall’, death and suffering came into the world. The process of evolution, however, understands violence, predation, and death to be the very engine of how life develops. If God brings about life through evolution, how do we reconcile that with the idea of a good God? The problem of evil seems to be worse for the believer in theistic evolution. ....

...[B]elow I will lay out three basic problems that Christian laypeople have with the scientific account of biological evolution. Nothing here should be seen as meeting the need for rigorous, scholarly arguments in answer to these questions. These are popular-level pastoral answers and guidance. As a pastor I have had to draw heavily on the work of experts. The first question, about Biblical authority, requires that I draw on the best work of exegetes and Biblical scholars. To answer the second question, about evolution as a ‘Grand Theory of Everything,’ I need to draw on the work of philosophers. When we come to the third question regarding Adam and Eve, I must look to theologians.

In short, if I as a pastor want to help both believers and inquirers to relate science and faith coherently, I must read the works of scientists, exegetes, philosophers, and theologians and then interpret them for my people. .... (and he does, here in his paper)

Timothy Keller, "Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople"

Tom and Huck today

According to Anne Applebaum today Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn would be in Special Ed, probably medicated.

...[T]ry, if you can, to strip away the haze of nostalgia and sentiment through which we generally perceive Mark Twain's world, and imagine how a boy like Tom Sawyer would be regarded today. ....

...Tom is not merely ODD: He clearly has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well, judging by his inability to concentrate in school. "The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his mind wandered," Twain writes at one point. Unable to focus ("Tom's heart ached to be free") he starts playing with a tick. This behavior is part of a regular pattern: A few days earlier in church (where he had to sit "as far away from the open window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible"), Tom had been unable to pay attention to the sermon and played with a pinch bug instead.

In fact, Tom manifests many disturbing behaviors. He blames his half-brother for his poor decisions, demonstrating an inability to take responsibility for his actions. He provokes his peers, often using aggression. He deliberately ignores rules and demonstrates defiance toward adults. He is frequently dishonest, at one point even pretending to be dead. Worst of all, he skips school — behavior that might, in time, lead him to be diagnosed with conduct disorder (CD), from which his friend Huck Finn clearly suffers.

.... Although ADHD and ODD are often dismissed as recently "invented" disorders, they describe personality types and traits that have always existed. A certain kind of boy has always had trouble paying attention in school. A certain kind of boy has always picked fights with friends, gone smoking in the woods and floated down the river on rafts. .... [more]

Applebaum worries that, although there were opportunities for such kids in the 19th century, they don't exist any more. I worry that every behavior problem is medicalized and every eccentricity is defined as a behavior problem. As a teacher I found ODD [oppositional defiance disorder] particularly annoying, since it seemed to provide an excuse for bad behavior and turned perpetrators into victims.

Anne Applebaum - Tom Sawyer and today's children: Same behavior, different treatment

"Greater love hath no man..."

Both of my parents suffered from dementia as they grew old, and my mother, especially, failed to recognize people she had known for years. Consequently, what Elizabeth Scalia wrote about "Love, Limits and Loss" struck home. So did the comparison. Via Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO:

“He is a saint. Every day he brings his lunch and eats with his wife. She doesn’t recognize him, so every day she is meeting a new friend. When we told him he needn’t come so often he said, ‘But she is my bride; if I did not see her, I would miss her.’”

The man’s wife had changed, but if she was no longer capable of seeing her groom, he still beheld and adored his bride. Their marriage, then, is the microcosmic reflection of the macro-love of God for his people and the love of Christ for his church. Love without limit, love without fear, love without desertion; love in joy and in pain, love in the shallows and the depths, love without end.

We cannot see God except as he is made manifest through us, and in the covenant of marriage his faithfulness is beautifully reflected. We look to this manifestation—in all its turbulent courses—to get an inkling of him. When we cannot see the great love of God reflected so near to us, we are diminished.

When love is rationalized into limits, we have sold love, and ourselves, short. If God is love, we have sold God short, too. We have chosen to walk around a fire, rather than through it, chosen not to trust that our sufferings have meaning and that they are, on balance, the crucibles of our commonalities, which mold and strengthen our societies. .... [more]

Love, Limits, and Loss | First Things

"Hollow hearts and depraved sensibilities"

Otto Penzler, who is a genuine authority on crime fiction, writes about why one genre differs from another in "Noir Fiction Is About Losers, Not Private Eyes." What redeems "noir," and makes it enjoyable, is the fact that "it...has a character with a moral center" — perhaps only one, but at least one with whom the reader can identify.

...[N]oir is about losers. The characters in these existential, nihilistic tales are doomed. They may not die, but they probably should, as the life that awaits them is certain to be so ugly, so lost and lonely, that they'd be better off just curling up and getting it over with. And, let's face it, they deserve it.

Pretty much everyone in a noir story (or film) is driven by greed, lust, jealousy or alienation, a path that inevitably sucks them into a downward spiral from which they cannot escape. They couldn't find the exit from their personal highway to hell if flashing neon lights pointed to a town named Hope. It is their own lack of morality that blindly drives them to ruin.

Noir fiction has its roots in the hard-boiled private eye story that was essentially created by Dashiell Hammett in the pages of Black Mask magazine in the 1920s. There are tough guys in his stories, and lying dames, and violence, double-crosses, murder, and nefarious schemes.

But—and this is where the private detective story separates itself from noir—it also has a character with a moral center. Sam Spade knew that when somebody kills your partner, you're supposed to do something about it. Raymond Chandler, whose splendid prose illuminated his novels and stories, compared his private detective to a knight, describing his as someone who walked the mean streets but was not himself mean. ....

The noir story with a happy ending has never been written, nor can it be. The lost and corrupt souls who populate these tales were doomed before we met them because of their hollow hearts and depraved sensibilities.

I love noir fiction. It makes doom fun. And who doesn't like fun? .... [more]

Thanks to Brandywine Books for the reference.

Otto Penzler: Noir Fiction Is About Losers, Not Private Eyes

The Library of Historical Apologetics

Several sites call attention to the "Library of Historical Apologetics," a new online resource "Rediscovering Forgotten Defenders of the Faith." Two of those listed as associated with the effort are William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas. The purpose of the site:

...[O]ur mission is to be the world’s leading resource for lay apologists, pastors, students, and scholars seeking historical apologetics materials for self-study, church classes, sermon preparation, and research. Our digital collection currently contains references to about 3,000 items with a focus on works in English from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. ....

They are just getting started, but this looks like one of those resources worth bookmarking.

Library of Historical Apologetics