Friday, May 29, 2009
Free Market Faith
"Globalisation is leading to more belief, not less. Caspar Melville talks to the editor of The Economist about his new book tracing the rise and rise of religion."
Leap in U.S. Debt Hits Taxpayers With 12% More Red Ink
"Taxpayers are on the hook for an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments made just in the past year for retirement benefits, the national debt and other government promises, a USA TODAY analysis shows."
Clarity, Community, and Scripture 2
Texts have the power to challenge us, to confound us, or even to reform us. If textual meaning is mediated through a cultural hermeneutic, through a standpoint and tradition, it is neither the sole property of them. It can speak from without, acting as partner in the learning. Yet these textual meanings must be subject to a particular Christian practice of learning. That we are social beings; that our personhood is woven with others; that we are destined for a community of shalom; that we created for communion--all this suggests that at the heart of our textual, interpretive nature is a call to love. Interpretative learning should be works of Christian charity.
Reading any human work calls for discernment and skill. We have to learn what this work will offer us. Alan Jacobs observes that too often readers act as if practicing discernment equals going to a text with preconceived notions of what they will find:
A healthy suspicion, bounded by a commitment to the love of neighbor, is more properly discernment: not the discernment of Nietzsche's serpent, which can only suspect and therefore is not discernment at all--since its conclusions are preestablished--but the discernment that is prepared to find blessings and cultivate friendships; in short, to receive gifts.
In other words, true discernment is looking to learn. True learning requires hope for something good, as well as a sifting of what is deceptive. Isaiah tells us that we should be wary of calling the sweet bitter and the evil good. Most (if not all) texts are going to be a mixture of the two, and it is work of interpretive kindness to treat them with a modicum of humility and respect. I have as my responsibility providing resources, methods, and models for how to interpret and how to interpret wisely. Milton in his famous treatise against censorship, Areopagitica, argued that books are expressions of rationality and, therefore, of the imago dei:
[A]s good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
For Milton, to censor a book is akin to the murder of ideas. I admit that I am sometimes willing to practice something like censorship in my choice of texts, not to kill a book, but to save it. If a reader is not prepared for a text, the text will speak to her in a distorted way, seeming to offer a message other than what the author intended or even the text seems to allow.
We are not always prepared to receive the gifts before us. How, then, do we help ourselves and our students reach this place of epistemic charity and justice?
Reading any human work calls for discernment and skill. We have to learn what this work will offer us. Alan Jacobs observes that too often readers act as if practicing discernment equals going to a text with preconceived notions of what they will find:
A healthy suspicion, bounded by a commitment to the love of neighbor, is more properly discernment: not the discernment of Nietzsche's serpent, which can only suspect and therefore is not discernment at all--since its conclusions are preestablished--but the discernment that is prepared to find blessings and cultivate friendships; in short, to receive gifts.
In other words, true discernment is looking to learn. True learning requires hope for something good, as well as a sifting of what is deceptive. Isaiah tells us that we should be wary of calling the sweet bitter and the evil good. Most (if not all) texts are going to be a mixture of the two, and it is work of interpretive kindness to treat them with a modicum of humility and respect. I have as my responsibility providing resources, methods, and models for how to interpret and how to interpret wisely. Milton in his famous treatise against censorship, Areopagitica, argued that books are expressions of rationality and, therefore, of the imago dei:
[A]s good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
For Milton, to censor a book is akin to the murder of ideas. I admit that I am sometimes willing to practice something like censorship in my choice of texts, not to kill a book, but to save it. If a reader is not prepared for a text, the text will speak to her in a distorted way, seeming to offer a message other than what the author intended or even the text seems to allow.
We are not always prepared to receive the gifts before us. How, then, do we help ourselves and our students reach this place of epistemic charity and justice?
Clarity, Community, and Scripture 1
Christians with their Bible in hand, in mouth and ear, on scroll, codex, leather-bond or scrolling again across the screen, have always been concerned with interpretation. Claritas Scripturae, the efficaciousness or sufficiency of scripture to communicate its message to the people of God via the Holy Spirit, was one of the clarion calls of the Protestant Reformation, but it need not nor should be a call to either a closed interpretation by one group or, worse, by one person. A Christian catholicity is always gathered at the communion table of ecumenism, trusting that the clarity of the Bible fully speaks and guides our differing tradition-shaped hermeneutics, but this promise never deifies our traditions or their shared, often troubled ecclesial history.
Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin used the term claritas to argue that scripture was not the custody of only the church elite but could be read and understood by all Christians. This was a rich insight, for it freed up whole generations of Christians to more directly encounter God's Word. Before many had only received it in mediated forms through sermon, play, and visual art, and there is much to be said for this, but there is also a particular power in having access to the texts yourself, at least in translation. Unfortunately, this call for clarity was abused by some who used it to suggest that readers of scripture could safely ignore the gifts of scholarship, as well as the teaching of other Christians. Some went so far as to believe that a Christian's personal understanding of scripture was not open to any external test or gauge of its validity. This was a radical individualism that the Reformers were shocked by.
Luther and Calvin did not understand the clarity of scripture to suggest that it was not in need of interpretation but that it was sufficient for God's purposes and that scripture possessed the resources aided by the Spirit to test the fallible understanding of each generation of the church. Indeed, scripture as the instrument of the Spirit could act as a corrector and refiner of received understanding. This is why the public reading and preaching of scripture in corporate worship is so essential. That corrective is mediated via the community of interpreters, the church as the people of God, the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Spirit. Scripture is not the sole trust of any one class of Christians, and as such, it is therefore best understood by bringing together the insights of the larger people of God. This claritas does not deny the need for tradition as the bed in which our readings lie nor does it mean to discount that Christo-typological reading which shapes and collects the Canon.
Scripture carries a certain authority and perfection that no other text has. It therefore has a uniqueness that sets it apart in vital ways from other works. God's Word is without fault, while human works always carry some fault line of error. God's speech is always the prophetic pouring forth of his divine love; Revelation is an act of divine beauty and grace. And the love that dwells in perichoresis is found in words and images. The Son is the eternal Logos of the Father, and the Holy Spirit continually teaches us that Word in the apostolic testimony.
Yet scripture also shares a human element with other words. The clarity of scripture reminds us that human texts are best understood in a community of interpreters with a tradition and a history of reception. We need multiple counsel to explicate meaning, and that counsel is more than our contemporary debates. We learn with the Christian dead, the communio sanctorum (“the communion of saints”), by subjecting our interpretation to the history of interpretation. Equally, scripture's clarity also reminds us that texts are partially independent of our understanding of them, even as they are taught in a history of professional and readerly reception.
Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin used the term claritas to argue that scripture was not the custody of only the church elite but could be read and understood by all Christians. This was a rich insight, for it freed up whole generations of Christians to more directly encounter God's Word. Before many had only received it in mediated forms through sermon, play, and visual art, and there is much to be said for this, but there is also a particular power in having access to the texts yourself, at least in translation. Unfortunately, this call for clarity was abused by some who used it to suggest that readers of scripture could safely ignore the gifts of scholarship, as well as the teaching of other Christians. Some went so far as to believe that a Christian's personal understanding of scripture was not open to any external test or gauge of its validity. This was a radical individualism that the Reformers were shocked by.
Luther and Calvin did not understand the clarity of scripture to suggest that it was not in need of interpretation but that it was sufficient for God's purposes and that scripture possessed the resources aided by the Spirit to test the fallible understanding of each generation of the church. Indeed, scripture as the instrument of the Spirit could act as a corrector and refiner of received understanding. This is why the public reading and preaching of scripture in corporate worship is so essential. That corrective is mediated via the community of interpreters, the church as the people of God, the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Spirit. Scripture is not the sole trust of any one class of Christians, and as such, it is therefore best understood by bringing together the insights of the larger people of God. This claritas does not deny the need for tradition as the bed in which our readings lie nor does it mean to discount that Christo-typological reading which shapes and collects the Canon.
Scripture carries a certain authority and perfection that no other text has. It therefore has a uniqueness that sets it apart in vital ways from other works. God's Word is without fault, while human works always carry some fault line of error. God's speech is always the prophetic pouring forth of his divine love; Revelation is an act of divine beauty and grace. And the love that dwells in perichoresis is found in words and images. The Son is the eternal Logos of the Father, and the Holy Spirit continually teaches us that Word in the apostolic testimony.
Yet scripture also shares a human element with other words. The clarity of scripture reminds us that human texts are best understood in a community of interpreters with a tradition and a history of reception. We need multiple counsel to explicate meaning, and that counsel is more than our contemporary debates. We learn with the Christian dead, the communio sanctorum (“the communion of saints”), by subjecting our interpretation to the history of interpretation. Equally, scripture's clarity also reminds us that texts are partially independent of our understanding of them, even as they are taught in a history of professional and readerly reception.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Image of God in Education--Part 4
Pentecost in Acts 2 is about the restoration of Babel. It is a bringing together of diverse, Spirit-inspired voices, no longer as a curse on the hubris of humanity, but as blessings of communication and fire. The Pentecostal, ecumenical catholicity of the Church reminds us that cultures are not completely incommensurable to each other. They can communicate across diverse languages and practices. Yet at that same, our particular denominational experience keeps in view the hard work of that communication. Cultural exchange is difficult not because translation is impossible but because languages favor certain economies of expression; they privilege certain words and their referents. The terms and vocabulary we favor shape the ease with which we discuss and debate certain ideas. Thus, learning calls for a "multi-lingual" attempt at learnign the language of other tribes.
The Pentecostal experience is always a diverse one, for while something like Jürgen Habermas' ideal speech situation arises within it, it need not be accomplished by a liberal public sphere that actually elevates modern individualism and the state’s best interests. We may desire in education to be guided by the dictates of a common reason and common rules of dialogue; however, each moment of contact, of understanding or confusion, is unique though not as an atomic solitary. We should be in education always striving toward a dialogue bounded by faith, hope, and love. This requires a more intuitive, flexible learning, not one subject to predetermined limits as to how conversation will advance.
It does have in mind a certain character of learning. Like any good drama, there are some expected qualitative outcomes to the performance. The Church advances in understanding together with mutual discipleship and holy agape. Our education should have both sides of this cautious truth-seeking at its center. There is, then, an ethic of multi-cultural education, but I would argue that it is not to be found in relativism nor in a supposed neutral secular marketplace of ideas. Instead, a particular practice of incarnational learning must undergird our cultural negotiations, and this calls for humility of learning, even while eschewing a relativism of “equal regard” that hides from itself its worldview. In short, we come to the conversation with a particular set of stories already in place. The language, views, and assumptions of each culture are not left at the door; they are not artifically shifted out by the "rationality" of modern Western Enlightenment. They are each partners in education, even as one tradition acts as the host to the conversation.
The Pentecostal experience is always a diverse one, for while something like Jürgen Habermas' ideal speech situation arises within it, it need not be accomplished by a liberal public sphere that actually elevates modern individualism and the state’s best interests. We may desire in education to be guided by the dictates of a common reason and common rules of dialogue; however, each moment of contact, of understanding or confusion, is unique though not as an atomic solitary. We should be in education always striving toward a dialogue bounded by faith, hope, and love. This requires a more intuitive, flexible learning, not one subject to predetermined limits as to how conversation will advance.
It does have in mind a certain character of learning. Like any good drama, there are some expected qualitative outcomes to the performance. The Church advances in understanding together with mutual discipleship and holy agape. Our education should have both sides of this cautious truth-seeking at its center. There is, then, an ethic of multi-cultural education, but I would argue that it is not to be found in relativism nor in a supposed neutral secular marketplace of ideas. Instead, a particular practice of incarnational learning must undergird our cultural negotiations, and this calls for humility of learning, even while eschewing a relativism of “equal regard” that hides from itself its worldview. In short, we come to the conversation with a particular set of stories already in place. The language, views, and assumptions of each culture are not left at the door; they are not artifically shifted out by the "rationality" of modern Western Enlightenment. They are each partners in education, even as one tradition acts as the host to the conversation.
The Image of God in Education--Part 3
Nothing about this pedagogical model should demand that we treat all cultural creations and patterns as equally important or valuable. We are in a fallen world, now.
The Zeitgeist may be demonic.
Instead of the politics of recognition and equal identity and dignity, we need a Christian polity of learning that knows how to balance our non-negotiables with the embedded lessons in the wider world. It is the nature of convictions that some beliefs and practices are more long-lived than others. Some are more central to a tradition; some have greater explanatory power. Furthermore, some are so central, so justified, that we have strong expectation and thick confidence in their endurance as the hypergoods (to use Charles Taylor's term) that shape and reorient other goods, evaluating them and defining them. Reorientation and revaluation are in the nature of education. A hypergood can literally take something once considered a mark of excellence and make it a vice or a temptation.
In turn, some beliefs may be fundamentally destructive in their centrality. A Christian view of culture and of education sees an element in all cultures that is self-blinding to the truth, that is subject to the fallen powers, and that invests itself in false promises. However, cultural depravity and cultural vice neither suggests an imperial project that settles on only one all inclusive pedagogy as "civilized" nor a hard relativism which leaves it unexposed to critique from the outside. We can’t expect to learn one method of critique and learning and then apply it across the board to all global and disciplinary subjects or even to every particular historical moment. I would contend this is as true of the natural sciences as is it the social sciences and humanities.
But neither does this mean that every textual or pedagogical encounter carries equal weight or equal fecundity. This is why a certain preference for the Christian tradition is incumbent in Christian education. Wisdom is to take in the multiplicity of good counsel with its refracting diversity, especially when this diverse counsel comes from others along the same broad axis of understanding. The church's experience of diversity is like canonical diversity. It is not a hodge-podge of alterity and relativity, but an interacting set of close practices that complement and course correct each other over time guided by the gift of the Spirit. Our pedagogy is to search for the same--it must take in the diversity of the Christian church and the cultural embeddedness of its global existence, all the while recognizing incompleteness and need for mutual help in pursing the truth together.
The Zeitgeist may be demonic.
Instead of the politics of recognition and equal identity and dignity, we need a Christian polity of learning that knows how to balance our non-negotiables with the embedded lessons in the wider world. It is the nature of convictions that some beliefs and practices are more long-lived than others. Some are more central to a tradition; some have greater explanatory power. Furthermore, some are so central, so justified, that we have strong expectation and thick confidence in their endurance as the hypergoods (to use Charles Taylor's term) that shape and reorient other goods, evaluating them and defining them. Reorientation and revaluation are in the nature of education. A hypergood can literally take something once considered a mark of excellence and make it a vice or a temptation.
In turn, some beliefs may be fundamentally destructive in their centrality. A Christian view of culture and of education sees an element in all cultures that is self-blinding to the truth, that is subject to the fallen powers, and that invests itself in false promises. However, cultural depravity and cultural vice neither suggests an imperial project that settles on only one all inclusive pedagogy as "civilized" nor a hard relativism which leaves it unexposed to critique from the outside. We can’t expect to learn one method of critique and learning and then apply it across the board to all global and disciplinary subjects or even to every particular historical moment. I would contend this is as true of the natural sciences as is it the social sciences and humanities.
But neither does this mean that every textual or pedagogical encounter carries equal weight or equal fecundity. This is why a certain preference for the Christian tradition is incumbent in Christian education. Wisdom is to take in the multiplicity of good counsel with its refracting diversity, especially when this diverse counsel comes from others along the same broad axis of understanding. The church's experience of diversity is like canonical diversity. It is not a hodge-podge of alterity and relativity, but an interacting set of close practices that complement and course correct each other over time guided by the gift of the Spirit. Our pedagogy is to search for the same--it must take in the diversity of the Christian church and the cultural embeddedness of its global existence, all the while recognizing incompleteness and need for mutual help in pursing the truth together.
The Image of God in Education--Part 2
Learning may a postlapsarian necessity, but it was a prelapsarian gift. Awareness and questioning; the mutual existence called male and female--how we complemented each other, imaging God together; the Adamiac naming of the creation; and the vocational gift of the garden, all these remind us that the purpose of art and imagination, of science and work, is to stir us up to know God.
The arts and the sciences, which we often now treat as conflicting visions of reality, were meant to meet in the personal character of knowledge, in the metaphor making and modeling, and in the iconic referencing we see in the Garden of Eden. This is all the opposite of idolatry and the false exaltation of our heretic images. We were meant to share in the created order, its differentiation, classification, and inherent goodness. We were created to make and name and model.
As J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote:
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
This ability to model and name and make, shared in such differing ways by the arts and sciences, was also never intended to produce a uniform content. Miroslav Volf, following Cornelius Plantinga, notes that in Genesis 1, God is about both "separating out" various aspects of creation, distinguishing between light an dark, earth and sky, sea and land, plant and animal, and "binding together" these creational entities in a web of co-dependence. God, especially, binds human beings to his creation with the responsibility of being its stewards and caretakers. In God’s pattern, differentiation encompasses both "separating-and-binding (Exclusion 65-66). Human nomenclature, logic itself, requires that we distinguish things one from another. What this model of differentiation reminds us of is that a thing can be understood not only as a point in and of itself, but also as a part of a larger process or system. When we define or differentiate something, we place boundaries around it, but to place boundaries around something is not to close it off from the larger system. Boundaries are permeable.
What this creation narrative suggests is that God designed human beings for difference/diversity. We shouldn’t be shocked that humans take on differing cultural characteristics and patterns. Our cultural creativity is an extension of being the imago dei. Nor should we be surprised when these cultural and disciplinary creations shift and evolve. A biblical balance is needed that not only recognizes boundaries but also sees how porous they are. We must also recognize how these differences bind us together. Cultures are diverse, and because they are so, they carry on debates and dialogues.
This negotiation over meaning is an aspect of God's creational intent for them--looking back to the Triune divine life. This flourishing diversity, therefore, points to a cultural and pedagogical practice that is always dialogical. The subcreative abilities of human beings, the naming and modeling and making, reveal themselves in numerous styles and trends and practices within various peoples. Ideally, the end of shalom was meant by God to guide the debates and practices within traditions that give rise to new cultural combinations and creations, and this higher end of love and fellowship should shape all incompleteness this side of the eschaton. In an unfallen world, if you will, there would still have been diverse models that complemented one another. Humans would still have learned within creational limitations and worked together to uncover more truth.
The arts and the sciences, which we often now treat as conflicting visions of reality, were meant to meet in the personal character of knowledge, in the metaphor making and modeling, and in the iconic referencing we see in the Garden of Eden. This is all the opposite of idolatry and the false exaltation of our heretic images. We were meant to share in the created order, its differentiation, classification, and inherent goodness. We were created to make and name and model.
As J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote:
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
This ability to model and name and make, shared in such differing ways by the arts and sciences, was also never intended to produce a uniform content. Miroslav Volf, following Cornelius Plantinga, notes that in Genesis 1, God is about both "separating out" various aspects of creation, distinguishing between light an dark, earth and sky, sea and land, plant and animal, and "binding together" these creational entities in a web of co-dependence. God, especially, binds human beings to his creation with the responsibility of being its stewards and caretakers. In God’s pattern, differentiation encompasses both "separating-and-binding (Exclusion 65-66). Human nomenclature, logic itself, requires that we distinguish things one from another. What this model of differentiation reminds us of is that a thing can be understood not only as a point in and of itself, but also as a part of a larger process or system. When we define or differentiate something, we place boundaries around it, but to place boundaries around something is not to close it off from the larger system. Boundaries are permeable.
What this creation narrative suggests is that God designed human beings for difference/diversity. We shouldn’t be shocked that humans take on differing cultural characteristics and patterns. Our cultural creativity is an extension of being the imago dei. Nor should we be surprised when these cultural and disciplinary creations shift and evolve. A biblical balance is needed that not only recognizes boundaries but also sees how porous they are. We must also recognize how these differences bind us together. Cultures are diverse, and because they are so, they carry on debates and dialogues.
This negotiation over meaning is an aspect of God's creational intent for them--looking back to the Triune divine life. This flourishing diversity, therefore, points to a cultural and pedagogical practice that is always dialogical. The subcreative abilities of human beings, the naming and modeling and making, reveal themselves in numerous styles and trends and practices within various peoples. Ideally, the end of shalom was meant by God to guide the debates and practices within traditions that give rise to new cultural combinations and creations, and this higher end of love and fellowship should shape all incompleteness this side of the eschaton. In an unfallen world, if you will, there would still have been diverse models that complemented one another. Humans would still have learned within creational limitations and worked together to uncover more truth.
The Image of God in Education--Part 1
We should remember as Christian professors that creation was ordered by God’s love for worship. Students are doxological or they become deranged, and thus, creation is dependent upon love of God and of human to realize its very nature. At the heart of a biblical notion of personhood is the belief that human beings are the imago dei, the image of God (Gen 1:26-27, James 3:9), we are created to be illuminated by the Spirit and to participate in the whole cosmic sign language, ballet, and concert concerning God's beauty.
Christians have differed over where to locate this imaging of God in humans. Theologians have categorized these different understandings, thusly:
Christians have differed over where to locate this imaging of God in humans. Theologians have categorized these different understandings, thusly:
- Substantive Views: The imago dei refers to certain kinds of innate qualities people have (e.g. reason, the will, our ethical sense, etc.)
- Relational Views: The imago dei is found in humanity's relationship to God and/or the creation. To be the image of God means to be able to encounter God or others as God does, that is personally.
- Functional Views: Our imaging of God is found in our acts as human beings, particularly in carrying out the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28-29.
The imago dei has, therefore, been placed in the will, consciousness, reason, intuition, imagination, embodiment, an ability to respond relationally, an openness to future, our actions, and in a composite unity of all these.
It is this last option that I am most convinced by (Rom 12:1-2, I Cor 15:45). Our full humanity is what, in differing ways, images God. The right use of our reason as humbly guided by God's law is an expression of his purpose for education. But our reason cannot be entirely isolated from our desires, emotions, intuitions, and so on. Likewise, our volitional capacity, our free will, is always conditionally free as it finds fulfillment in learning and living out God's form of truth for us. Personhood offers a model of learning that is social in many of its elements, and the cultural nature of cultivating the creation points to a purpose for our learning--a set of mission statements and objectives to guide what we give priority to in our institutional evaluations.
The biblical conception of the heart is useful here (Prov 4:23, 27:9, Deut 6:5, Rom 2:29, II Cor 3:3, Rom 1:32, II Cor 9:7, Heb 4:12). The "heart" (whether the Hebrew Leb or the Greek kardia) implies the full person of a human being—the intellect, emotion, volition, even body. As Karl Barth affirmed: "[T]he heart is not merely a but the reality of man, both wholly of soul and wholly of body" (436) As such, to know with our heart is to employ our whole person. Human beings, indeed, all creation, has meaning as it references and imitates God: "Borrowing is the highest authenticity which can be obtained" (James K. Smith).
As our colleague David Naugle has suggested, worldview is an embodied way of living, not just a perspective, and it is one embedded in our contexts not a claim to absolute knowledge. It is, to use his coinage, kardi-optic. We need kardioptic pedagogy that recognizes this full measure of learning.
The Trinue Nature of Education
Love is that which transcends freedom and necessity, and the perfect outpouring of love in the Triune God is always a outward offering of divine love, so that just as the Father glorifies the Son and the Spirit, so do they each glorify the other members, the Godhead each receiving and dependent upon the other members for their divinity. This overflowing mystery of outward moving and self-differentiating love makes our own being and our own unity possible. The koinonia fellowship of the Trinity establishes an ontology of communion, of perfect shalom, which in turn establishes the very conditions of our very personhood.
As John Zizioulas has observed, "Being is communion;" we are persons because we move to transcend ourselves by finding ourselves in others and by offering ourselves to them. Or as Charles Taylor has observed, the most important aspects of our selves are found in relation with others not in isolation. We cannot even speak of ourselves rightly without acknowledging the debt we owe to all that defines us and gives us life. This is true because in a more profound, perfect way this same shared personality is found in God. Christ, eternally begotten of the Father is ever a fountain of love. The Spirit ever proceeds from the Father and through the Son as the love outpouring between them. We, too, in embodied ways are also “ekstastic” beings--we go out of ourselves for others' benefit, and in turn our very selves are based on others going out to us (Stanley Greenz 131-139). The joy of our existence is in fulfilling our personhood woven together with God and others and the creation itself. Such a web of existence reveals some essential aspects of education:
First, sociality is essential to the structure of the universe and, therefore, to teaching, especially the psychology of sociality and its eschatological possibilities for learning. Our desires and bonds of community are intended for the end of perfect fellowship and blessing in God, and we best change with that end in mind. Personal fulfillment is intinamtely related to our place in the web of relationships that make us who we are. Christians should mistrust models of education based on excessive competition, as well as academic environments that promote distrust and "dog eat dog" scholarship.
Second, our capacity for receiving and understanding truth, dependent upon the communicative virtues, is also a matter of the social nature of love in all its facets. The capacities that make good communication possible make great love possible, and together they offer a picture of the academy not as a place of self-advancement or ego-driven competition, but as one of the sharing of research and learning with the end of agape in ourselves and for God and others before us.
Third, the perfect shalom in the blessedness of the Godhead is part of the future promised us by the Christ-event. Until the Messiah completes his people in their maturity, presenting them to the Father, when all will be all in all, we are longing to recover some measure of that lost charity of relations and by his grace, modeling it. We are ever learning anew to love and loving in order that we might learn. Our pedagogies cannot overlook the interpersonal nature of teaching, learning, and acting, which we are ever seeking to settle into.
Fourth, being a "servant-leader" implies forming dispositions of giving and receiving well the gifts that are in all aspects of study. A personal relationship is always mediated with existing tangible objects and subjects. We don’t serve in the abstract; neither do we learn with theory alone before us. Theory is a form of praxis, not a foundation for action, but an implicate of practices with histories. The learner does not exist in some auto-didactic damnation of total isolation and self-reference. Such would be the solipsist's self-imposed nightmare. "Which way I fly am Hell; Myself am Hell," intoned Milton's Satan.
Phrases like "learning community" and "service learning" have become a bit trite through overuse, but their truth is ever true. We mirror God's fellowship when we image God together, and we image God together when we learn together. The question that remains before us as Christian educators is whether our teaching promotes this eschatological testimony found in discipleship groupings or a modern pedagogy of selves "delivered" from the oppressive “soul cages” of families, towns, and churches.
As John Zizioulas has observed, "Being is communion;" we are persons because we move to transcend ourselves by finding ourselves in others and by offering ourselves to them. Or as Charles Taylor has observed, the most important aspects of our selves are found in relation with others not in isolation. We cannot even speak of ourselves rightly without acknowledging the debt we owe to all that defines us and gives us life. This is true because in a more profound, perfect way this same shared personality is found in God. Christ, eternally begotten of the Father is ever a fountain of love. The Spirit ever proceeds from the Father and through the Son as the love outpouring between them. We, too, in embodied ways are also “ekstastic” beings--we go out of ourselves for others' benefit, and in turn our very selves are based on others going out to us (Stanley Greenz 131-139). The joy of our existence is in fulfilling our personhood woven together with God and others and the creation itself. Such a web of existence reveals some essential aspects of education:
First, sociality is essential to the structure of the universe and, therefore, to teaching, especially the psychology of sociality and its eschatological possibilities for learning. Our desires and bonds of community are intended for the end of perfect fellowship and blessing in God, and we best change with that end in mind. Personal fulfillment is intinamtely related to our place in the web of relationships that make us who we are. Christians should mistrust models of education based on excessive competition, as well as academic environments that promote distrust and "dog eat dog" scholarship.
Second, our capacity for receiving and understanding truth, dependent upon the communicative virtues, is also a matter of the social nature of love in all its facets. The capacities that make good communication possible make great love possible, and together they offer a picture of the academy not as a place of self-advancement or ego-driven competition, but as one of the sharing of research and learning with the end of agape in ourselves and for God and others before us.
Third, the perfect shalom in the blessedness of the Godhead is part of the future promised us by the Christ-event. Until the Messiah completes his people in their maturity, presenting them to the Father, when all will be all in all, we are longing to recover some measure of that lost charity of relations and by his grace, modeling it. We are ever learning anew to love and loving in order that we might learn. Our pedagogies cannot overlook the interpersonal nature of teaching, learning, and acting, which we are ever seeking to settle into.
Fourth, being a "servant-leader" implies forming dispositions of giving and receiving well the gifts that are in all aspects of study. A personal relationship is always mediated with existing tangible objects and subjects. We don’t serve in the abstract; neither do we learn with theory alone before us. Theory is a form of praxis, not a foundation for action, but an implicate of practices with histories. The learner does not exist in some auto-didactic damnation of total isolation and self-reference. Such would be the solipsist's self-imposed nightmare. "Which way I fly am Hell; Myself am Hell," intoned Milton's Satan.
Phrases like "learning community" and "service learning" have become a bit trite through overuse, but their truth is ever true. We mirror God's fellowship when we image God together, and we image God together when we learn together. The question that remains before us as Christian educators is whether our teaching promotes this eschatological testimony found in discipleship groupings or a modern pedagogy of selves "delivered" from the oppressive “soul cages” of families, towns, and churches.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Daniel Hauser
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521889,00.html?test=latestnews
Daniel Hauser, a 13 year old boy, and his mother returned yesterday after fleeing their home. A judge ordered the boy’s mother must seek medical treatment for Daniel according to the court’s ruling. Daniel has Hodgkin's lymphoma. Chest x-rays revealed the boys’ condition had worsened prior to their flight to California. The boy has refused medical treatment and wants alternative treatments for his disease. The court is expected to make a determination on Daniel’s custody arrangements and what will be the next step in his medical care today.
Delinda White
Daniel Hauser, a 13 year old boy, and his mother returned yesterday after fleeing their home. A judge ordered the boy’s mother must seek medical treatment for Daniel according to the court’s ruling. Daniel has Hodgkin's lymphoma. Chest x-rays revealed the boys’ condition had worsened prior to their flight to California. The boy has refused medical treatment and wants alternative treatments for his disease. The court is expected to make a determination on Daniel’s custody arrangements and what will be the next step in his medical care today.
Delinda White
Sonya Sotomayor
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_supreme_court
Today, President Obama announced his pick for the replacement of David Souter in the United States Supreme Court. He chose federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor. She would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and only the third woman to serve in the Supreme Court. The GOP has been reserved about this announcement stating that we should not “pre-judge” her until the confirmation hearings. Both sides are eagerly reviewing her record to decide if they approve of the President’s nomination.
Delinda White
Today, President Obama announced his pick for the replacement of David Souter in the United States Supreme Court. He chose federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor. She would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and only the third woman to serve in the Supreme Court. The GOP has been reserved about this announcement stating that we should not “pre-judge” her until the confirmation hearings. Both sides are eagerly reviewing her record to decide if they approve of the President’s nomination.
Delinda White
Property Taxes
http://online.dbu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl%3Fcourse_id%3D_19398_1
I came across this article about property taxes. Two things interested me in this article. First it takes place in Detroit, my birth place. And second property taxes. Living in Texas now, property taxes always seem to be on a homeowner’s mind.
For me this article covers a few areas. First, another Politian with tax problems they deny or claim ignorance. JoAnn Watson a Detroit city council member paid $68.00 this year for property tax. Supposedly because the city tax assessor assessed the property as vacant. Secondly, if you knew your property taxes dropped to a minimal fee your honesty should have taken down to the tax collector to inquire about the drop. Thirdly, common sense would have told you that something is wrong. ~Chris Carson
I came across this article about property taxes. Two things interested me in this article. First it takes place in Detroit, my birth place. And second property taxes. Living in Texas now, property taxes always seem to be on a homeowner’s mind.
For me this article covers a few areas. First, another Politian with tax problems they deny or claim ignorance. JoAnn Watson a Detroit city council member paid $68.00 this year for property tax. Supposedly because the city tax assessor assessed the property as vacant. Secondly, if you knew your property taxes dropped to a minimal fee your honesty should have taken down to the tax collector to inquire about the drop. Thirdly, common sense would have told you that something is wrong. ~Chris Carson
Hate Crimes Bill
Here is my blog post. Thanks!
Title - Hate Crimes Bill
A Hate Crimes bill was recently introduced to the Senate titled the Matthew
Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act while a similar bill was also passed in
the house. "The legislation is intended by its sponsors to protect
homosexuals and transgendered people from violent hate crimes by expanding a
list of federally protected groups to include sexual orientation, gender,
gender identity and disability". Coral Ridge Ministries is claiming that the
hate bill can have negative impacts on the Christian community and possibly
limit free speech for those speaking out against homosexuality. "Although
the Senate version contains provisions that appear to protect constitutional
speech and free expression, Parshall contended they are just "nice political
banter" for debate that are not substantial protection for free speech."
Many Christians have claimed that there has been an increase in backlash
towards Christians because of things like Prop 8 or even Miss California's
comments.
Having punishment against hate crimes is a good thing and as Christians we
should love everyone, but do you feel that this type of bill could limit
free speech?
Andrea Brooks
http://www.christianpost.com/Ministries/Culture/2009/05/ministry-hate-crimes-law-will-fuel-hostility-toward-traditional-morality-17/index.html
Title - Hate Crimes Bill
A Hate Crimes bill was recently introduced to the Senate titled the Matthew
Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act while a similar bill was also passed in
the house. "The legislation is intended by its sponsors to protect
homosexuals and transgendered people from violent hate crimes by expanding a
list of federally protected groups to include sexual orientation, gender,
gender identity and disability". Coral Ridge Ministries is claiming that the
hate bill can have negative impacts on the Christian community and possibly
limit free speech for those speaking out against homosexuality. "Although
the Senate version contains provisions that appear to protect constitutional
speech and free expression, Parshall contended they are just "nice political
banter" for debate that are not substantial protection for free speech."
Many Christians have claimed that there has been an increase in backlash
towards Christians because of things like Prop 8 or even Miss California's
comments.
Having punishment against hate crimes is a good thing and as Christians we
should love everyone, but do you feel that this type of bill could limit
free speech?
Andrea Brooks
http://www.christianpost.com/Ministries/Culture/2009/05/ministry-hate-crimes-law-will-fuel-hostility-toward-traditional-morality-17/index.html
Interesting Story!!!
Interesting Story!
28 Prisoners in the Mississippi State Penitentiary received their bachelor's
degrees in Christian Ministry on Wednesday from the New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary. Most of them are long-term prisoners and have been
working on obtaining their degrees since 2004. Among the prisoners were
murderers, rapists, and robbers who will probably never be released from
prison. For them it was a great accomplishment and a way for them to be able
to minister their fellow inmates. Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said
the prison is "going to allow them to go to different units in this prison
and minister to the other inmates" and also says "As we invest in them, we
wean them to work back in the system". One of the inmates that graduated
said "The Lord put it in my heart that I needed to make a change, I want to
open their eyes up that God really loves them".
What an amazing story of redemption, God's grace, and an awesome way to
minister to the other inmates in the prison!
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090521/NEWS/905210338
28 Prisoners in the Mississippi State Penitentiary received their bachelor's
degrees in Christian Ministry on Wednesday from the New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary. Most of them are long-term prisoners and have been
working on obtaining their degrees since 2004. Among the prisoners were
murderers, rapists, and robbers who will probably never be released from
prison. For them it was a great accomplishment and a way for them to be able
to minister their fellow inmates. Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said
the prison is "going to allow them to go to different units in this prison
and minister to the other inmates" and also says "As we invest in them, we
wean them to work back in the system". One of the inmates that graduated
said "The Lord put it in my heart that I needed to make a change, I want to
open their eyes up that God really loves them".
What an amazing story of redemption, God's grace, and an awesome way to
minister to the other inmates in the prison!
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090521/NEWS/905210338
Can Family Refuse Chemo??
Dr. Sullivan, Here is my 2nd blog.
> Article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/16/teen-
> family-cannot-refuse-chemo/
>
> Should Government be allowed to Mandate Chemotherapy/drug Treatments?
> The recent case of Daniel Hauser has encouraged much debate among
> citizens regarding the role of government in our personal lives. Is
> Daniel Hauser posing any real threat to other Americans? Have
> people been healed from cancer through other more "natural"
> treatments compared to Chemo? Regardless of our personal views on
> Cancer treatment, we must carefully consider the implications of
> government intervention in these situations. Medical practices
> have certainly evolved over the decades. Doctors used to bleed
> patients as a form of treatment, feeling confident it was the right
> thing. Perhaps in the next 50 years cancer treatments will be more
> developed?
>
> This is not the first instance of parents having to fled to protect
> their ill child. According to an article on yahoo news, (http://
> news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/ap_on_re_us/us_forced_chemo) at least
> 5 other families have fled with their child to avoid "medical
> treatments". In 2003, Parker Jensen, a 12 year old boy, fled from
> Utah to avoid court-ordered chemo. He survived without chemo-therapy.
>
> Would you want the government to mandate certain treatments that
> may, or may not be considered "safe" or available on the market in
> the years to come? Consider the drug Gardasil that has been
> recommended to young girls as a preventative for HPV. State
> requirements for this drug proved to be very controversial when it
> was introduced. Some additional details now include: 20 deaths
> after Gardasil injections, and a small number of cases of Guillain-
> Barré Syndrome. This treatment is recommended to young girls around
> the age of 11, although there is no real evidence of the long term
> effects of the drug. Merck & Co. (the pharmaceutical company
> responsible for the drug) guarantees the effectiveness for only 4
> years after treatment, and have no approved booster shot available
> on the market after that 4 year period. All considered, girl’s from
> 11-15 are 60% "safe" from HPV and Merck is making billions.
>
> Merck & Co. is one of the seven largest Pharmaceutical companies in
> the world. Like others, their legal history is far from perfect.
>
> - A 58 million dollar settlement for deceptive marketing
> tactics to promote Vioxx.
>
> - 2004 removal of their drug Vioxx from the market. After
> 60,000 lawsuits, they agreed that long term (18 month) / high dose
> use raised concerns for increased heart attack and stroke.
>
> - Currently, the FDA is looking into a link between Merck &
> Co. drug Singular, suicide, and other psychological side effects.
>
> Before chastising families for taking personal responsibility for
> the health and care of their own children rather than depending
> upon the medical industry and drugs that the FDA deems "safe", stop
> and consider the amount of legal commercials you watch for drugs
> that have recently been removed from public use. Hundreds of
> millions of dollars are awarded to citizens each year for the long-
> term effects of these "unnatural chemicals," but that doesn't even
> compare to the multi-billion dollar Pharmaceutical industry profits.
>
> -Jamie Herndon
>
>
> Article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/16/teen-
> family-cannot-refuse-chemo/
>
> Should Government be allowed to Mandate Chemotherapy/drug Treatments?
> The recent case of Daniel Hauser has encouraged much debate among
> citizens regarding the role of government in our personal lives. Is
> Daniel Hauser posing any real threat to other Americans? Have
> people been healed from cancer through other more "natural"
> treatments compared to Chemo? Regardless of our personal views on
> Cancer treatment, we must carefully consider the implications of
> government intervention in these situations. Medical practices
> have certainly evolved over the decades. Doctors used to bleed
> patients as a form of treatment, feeling confident it was the right
> thing. Perhaps in the next 50 years cancer treatments will be more
> developed?
>
> This is not the first instance of parents having to fled to protect
> their ill child. According to an article on yahoo news, (http://
> news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/ap_on_re_us/us_forced_chemo) at least
> 5 other families have fled with their child to avoid "medical
> treatments". In 2003, Parker Jensen, a 12 year old boy, fled from
> Utah to avoid court-ordered chemo. He survived without chemo-therapy.
>
> Would you want the government to mandate certain treatments that
> may, or may not be considered "safe" or available on the market in
> the years to come? Consider the drug Gardasil that has been
> recommended to young girls as a preventative for HPV. State
> requirements for this drug proved to be very controversial when it
> was introduced. Some additional details now include: 20 deaths
> after Gardasil injections, and a small number of cases of Guillain-
> Barré Syndrome. This treatment is recommended to young girls around
> the age of 11, although there is no real evidence of the long term
> effects of the drug. Merck & Co. (the pharmaceutical company
> responsible for the drug) guarantees the effectiveness for only 4
> years after treatment, and have no approved booster shot available
> on the market after that 4 year period. All considered, girl’s from
> 11-15 are 60% "safe" from HPV and Merck is making billions.
>
> Merck & Co. is one of the seven largest Pharmaceutical companies in
> the world. Like others, their legal history is far from perfect.
>
> - A 58 million dollar settlement for deceptive marketing
> tactics to promote Vioxx.
>
> - 2004 removal of their drug Vioxx from the market. After
> 60,000 lawsuits, they agreed that long term (18 month) / high dose
> use raised concerns for increased heart attack and stroke.
>
> - Currently, the FDA is looking into a link between Merck &
> Co. drug Singular, suicide, and other psychological side effects.
>
> Before chastising families for taking personal responsibility for
> the health and care of their own children rather than depending
> upon the medical industry and drugs that the FDA deems "safe", stop
> and consider the amount of legal commercials you watch for drugs
> that have recently been removed from public use. Hundreds of
> millions of dollars are awarded to citizens each year for the long-
> term effects of these "unnatural chemicals," but that doesn't even
> compare to the multi-billion dollar Pharmaceutical industry profits.
>
> -Jamie Herndon
>
>
Will This Ever End!!!
Will This Ever End?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30930197/
Is this corruption or just a simple and honest oversight? With all of the political corruption that has been uncovered or exposed in that last several years, one might ask the question, will this ever end?
Who knows whether Detroit councilwoman seriously believed that her property tax had dropped so dramatically because of a hole in the roof caused by a tornado or if there was any (GOOD OLE BOY) type politics involved. Watson’s home has been appraised at just $1,698.00 for the last ten years because the records mysteriously changed to show that there was no house there and so her last years taxes were a whopping $68.00.
She has said that the change happened before she was elected to the city council and that she had nothing to do with the change. The person who did have something to do with the change, however, could not be reached for comment. Coincidence or just gone for the long weekend?
Joe Stanley
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30930197/
Is this corruption or just a simple and honest oversight? With all of the political corruption that has been uncovered or exposed in that last several years, one might ask the question, will this ever end?
Who knows whether Detroit councilwoman seriously believed that her property tax had dropped so dramatically because of a hole in the roof caused by a tornado or if there was any (GOOD OLE BOY) type politics involved. Watson’s home has been appraised at just $1,698.00 for the last ten years because the records mysteriously changed to show that there was no house there and so her last years taxes were a whopping $68.00.
She has said that the change happened before she was elected to the city council and that she had nothing to do with the change. The person who did have something to do with the change, however, could not be reached for comment. Coincidence or just gone for the long weekend?
Joe Stanley
California Faces Fiscal Reckoning!!!
California Faces its Day of Fiscal Reckoning
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30893006/
California’s day of fiscal reckoning has arrived. When everyone it seems, is having to cutback in the world because of what seems to be a global recession, California seems to be beyond just a cutback. California is looking at a $24 billion dollar budget deficit, which is more than one quarter of the states general fund.
The governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he intends to close the gap by drastic spending cuts. I think when this starts and I question whether it will, I think that the pushing and shoving may get so out of hand that it will make the gay marriage issue seem like a school yard scuffle.
The article goes on to say that the problem exists because California has been over spending and living beyond its means. That has to be the understatement of the year. The article is complete with a statement that Arnold took over a mess from the previous administration. (Where have we heard that?) It also says that he promised to clean up the mess by eliminating wasteful spending. (We’ve heard that before too!)
I have been saying for years that we are all going to have to suffer in order to clean this mess up. We don’t want to hear this but we are all going to have to adjust our lifestyles in order to save our country. And if we do nothing, which seems to be a trend of our elected officials we will all be forced into facing and dealing with many years of a much worse situation.
Joe Stanley
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30893006/
California’s day of fiscal reckoning has arrived. When everyone it seems, is having to cutback in the world because of what seems to be a global recession, California seems to be beyond just a cutback. California is looking at a $24 billion dollar budget deficit, which is more than one quarter of the states general fund.
The governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he intends to close the gap by drastic spending cuts. I think when this starts and I question whether it will, I think that the pushing and shoving may get so out of hand that it will make the gay marriage issue seem like a school yard scuffle.
The article goes on to say that the problem exists because California has been over spending and living beyond its means. That has to be the understatement of the year. The article is complete with a statement that Arnold took over a mess from the previous administration. (Where have we heard that?) It also says that he promised to clean up the mess by eliminating wasteful spending. (We’ve heard that before too!)
I have been saying for years that we are all going to have to suffer in order to clean this mess up. We don’t want to hear this but we are all going to have to adjust our lifestyles in order to save our country. And if we do nothing, which seems to be a trend of our elected officials we will all be forced into facing and dealing with many years of a much worse situation.
Joe Stanley
One Nation, Seven Sins
Researchers at Kansas State University examined the prevalence of the "seven deadly sins" across the United States and created maps of them.
Article:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/mar/26/one-nation-seven-sins/
Here are the maps:
http://flowingdata.com/2009/05/12/maps-of-the-seven-deadly-sins
Article:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/mar/26/one-nation-seven-sins/
Here are the maps:
http://flowingdata.com/2009/05/12/maps-of-the-seven-deadly-sins
Thick Ecumenism--A Better Model Than Mere Christianity
What kind of confessional model should shape the Christianity in question at a Christian college? My students often appeal to a broadly defined general Christian belief, something not unlike C.S. Lewis' notion of "mere Christianity." Yet I would contend that there are reasons why this general belief system is not enough. Consider the idea of "thick ecumenism."
Thick ecumenism begins with something like a thin consensus of common confession, a "mere Christianity," but it cannot stay there because the central doctrines of the faith intersect and branch out in their numerous implications for all of life. Instead, ecumenism promotes a conversation among the Christian traditions, searching for points of commonality and difference, but not as a simple exercise in comparative theology, liturgy, or spirituality. In other words, we are teaching and confessing our faith within certain traditions of the Christian faith. I teach at a Baptist school; my friend teaches at a Presbyterian one. We certainly share much in common, but there are differences, and these differences are interwoven with our basic beliefs. What I believe about church and dissent interacts with my understanding of salvation and God and sin, as does his beliefs. Yet we dialogue in hope. The hope is that our conversation will mutually illumine all involved and that this illumination will offer a continued course correction in doctrinal development and polity.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer in his work The Drama of Doctrine employs the dramatic image of table fellowship in which the varying interpretative traditions and practices come with their noisy conversation to sup together, not just for a rowdy table-pounding boasting match, nor for a polite "no offense intended" high tea, but for a true family meal. Vanhoozer points out that this family diversity has its very legitimacy in the "Pentecostal plurality" of scripture's own canonical diversity. We sup together that we might become stronger together. We are about more than sampling each other's dishes in smorgasbord gluttony; we are learning to "taste" better by cultivating together a culinary delight in all that is true and beautiful (272-278)
While such a gourmet practice in the academy certainly gives pride of place to Christian tradition, it also contains an inclusive search out beyond that tradition. Thick ecumenism must teach the larger global conversation, one in which in its Christian strands also move out to encompass the ideological contexts where the faith struggles to exist as martyr and as witness. However, we should keep in mind that this pedagogical multiplicity is also not a simple confirmation of diversity for diversity's sake, a multi-cultural and global sampling that really privileges Western notions of individual identity as the trump card of libertarian values, what Stanley Fish has derisively labeled "boutique multiculturalism." Neither is it a blind relativism that refuses to evaluate the actions and ethics of the other.
Instead, ecumenism longs to fulfill the promise of Pentecost, that by speaking in many tongues the gospel reverses the curse of Babel. Thick ecumenism suggests not only a method by which to explore diversity but also a larger purpose that can guide pedagogical decision-making, admittedly one with a lot of hard work in listening and learning.
Thick ecumenism begins with something like a thin consensus of common confession, a "mere Christianity," but it cannot stay there because the central doctrines of the faith intersect and branch out in their numerous implications for all of life. Instead, ecumenism promotes a conversation among the Christian traditions, searching for points of commonality and difference, but not as a simple exercise in comparative theology, liturgy, or spirituality. In other words, we are teaching and confessing our faith within certain traditions of the Christian faith. I teach at a Baptist school; my friend teaches at a Presbyterian one. We certainly share much in common, but there are differences, and these differences are interwoven with our basic beliefs. What I believe about church and dissent interacts with my understanding of salvation and God and sin, as does his beliefs. Yet we dialogue in hope. The hope is that our conversation will mutually illumine all involved and that this illumination will offer a continued course correction in doctrinal development and polity.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer in his work The Drama of Doctrine employs the dramatic image of table fellowship in which the varying interpretative traditions and practices come with their noisy conversation to sup together, not just for a rowdy table-pounding boasting match, nor for a polite "no offense intended" high tea, but for a true family meal. Vanhoozer points out that this family diversity has its very legitimacy in the "Pentecostal plurality" of scripture's own canonical diversity. We sup together that we might become stronger together. We are about more than sampling each other's dishes in smorgasbord gluttony; we are learning to "taste" better by cultivating together a culinary delight in all that is true and beautiful (272-278)
While such a gourmet practice in the academy certainly gives pride of place to Christian tradition, it also contains an inclusive search out beyond that tradition. Thick ecumenism must teach the larger global conversation, one in which in its Christian strands also move out to encompass the ideological contexts where the faith struggles to exist as martyr and as witness. However, we should keep in mind that this pedagogical multiplicity is also not a simple confirmation of diversity for diversity's sake, a multi-cultural and global sampling that really privileges Western notions of individual identity as the trump card of libertarian values, what Stanley Fish has derisively labeled "boutique multiculturalism." Neither is it a blind relativism that refuses to evaluate the actions and ethics of the other.
Instead, ecumenism longs to fulfill the promise of Pentecost, that by speaking in many tongues the gospel reverses the curse of Babel. Thick ecumenism suggests not only a method by which to explore diversity but also a larger purpose that can guide pedagogical decision-making, admittedly one with a lot of hard work in listening and learning.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Mysterious absence from blogging - explained
Here's the reason for my absence from blogging!
Introducing - Christian Thomas Bikis! (May 20, 2009)
Thank God from whom all blessings flow!
Life Together, Life Alone-Part 3
"Every Christian community must know that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the community."--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Such a stance taken in the face of Nazi Germany revealed that Bonhoeffer's insights were inherently political, even though the polity they embody does not seem obviously so at first glance. He understood that a true community could not be founded on the destruction of lives considered useless nor could it exist in the delusion of strength. The Christian opposition to gossip and slander contain in them a profound spiritual discipline that opposses this kind of practice:
God did not make others as I would have made them. God did not give them to me so that I could dominate and control them, but so that I might find the Creator by means of them. . . . God does not want me to mold others into the image that seems good to me, that is, into my own image. Instead, in their freedom from me God made other people in God's own image. I can never know in advance how God's image should appear in others. That image always takes on a completely new and unique form whose origin is found solely in God's free and sovereign act of creation. . . . [T]he complete diversity of individuals in the community is no longer a reason to talk and judge and condemn, and therefore no longer a pretext for self-justification. Rather this diversity is a reason for rejoicing in one another and serving one another. (95)
The bearing of the burden of another's freedom strengthens in us the respect for another's dignity and the building of the bonds of trust that are essential for true shalom to flower. For Bonhoeffer, this reality is found in the Table of the Lord, which essence is gift: Christ, the giver of gifts; our gifts given for the sake of Christ; and Christ as the gift given to us in the sacrament of bread and wine. The community of forgiveness reaches its purpose and foretastes its end in that of joyful communion.
Such a stance taken in the face of Nazi Germany revealed that Bonhoeffer's insights were inherently political, even though the polity they embody does not seem obviously so at first glance. He understood that a true community could not be founded on the destruction of lives considered useless nor could it exist in the delusion of strength. The Christian opposition to gossip and slander contain in them a profound spiritual discipline that opposses this kind of practice:
God did not make others as I would have made them. God did not give them to me so that I could dominate and control them, but so that I might find the Creator by means of them. . . . God does not want me to mold others into the image that seems good to me, that is, into my own image. Instead, in their freedom from me God made other people in God's own image. I can never know in advance how God's image should appear in others. That image always takes on a completely new and unique form whose origin is found solely in God's free and sovereign act of creation. . . . [T]he complete diversity of individuals in the community is no longer a reason to talk and judge and condemn, and therefore no longer a pretext for self-justification. Rather this diversity is a reason for rejoicing in one another and serving one another. (95)
The bearing of the burden of another's freedom strengthens in us the respect for another's dignity and the building of the bonds of trust that are essential for true shalom to flower. For Bonhoeffer, this reality is found in the Table of the Lord, which essence is gift: Christ, the giver of gifts; our gifts given for the sake of Christ; and Christ as the gift given to us in the sacrament of bread and wine. The community of forgiveness reaches its purpose and foretastes its end in that of joyful communion.
Life Together, Life Alone-Part 2
"Without the burden and labor of the day, prayer is not prayer; and without prayer, work is not work. . . . The unity of prayer and work, the unity of the day, is found because finding the You of God behind the It of the day's work is what Paul means by his admonition to 'pray without ceasing.' . . . Thus every word, every deed, every piece of work of the Christian becomes a prayer, not in the unreal sense of being constantly distracted from the task that must be done, but in the real breakthorough from the hard It to the gracious You."--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
This is a deeply monastic insight on Bonhoeffer's part. It recalls Brother Lawrence's "practicing the presence of God." Bonhoeffer was concerned that prayer, whether alone or together, bring one into reality and not away from it. Reality is in Christ, while unreality is that of our own narcisstic experience. This insight also shows the influence of Martin Buber's I and Thou. Work by its hardness creates a world where people and their actions are robbed of relationship, while prayer draws us into a personal relationship with God, including as he is experienced in the actions of daily vocation.
The tests of daily life reveal whether our prayers have been true or mere illusions of our own making. One reason he encouraged the discipline of confession of one's sins to another mature Christian was to test if our confessions were truly to God or simply to ourselves--we can most easily forgive ourselves. The same is true for intecessory prayer--we uphold another in Christ and not in ourselves. Such prayer is the opposite of our self-comfort and emotional indulgence.
Bonhoeffer very sensibly warns that every instance of Christian community will be tested by natural rivalries. We are always dividing ourselves and comparing ourselves to others: "No sooner are people together than they begin to observe, judge, and classify each other. Thus, even as Christian community is in the process of being formed, an invisible, often unknown, yet terrible life-and-death struggle commences" (93). The hallmark of Christian community should be service, service which takes us out of ourselves in order to serve another.
This is a deeply monastic insight on Bonhoeffer's part. It recalls Brother Lawrence's "practicing the presence of God." Bonhoeffer was concerned that prayer, whether alone or together, bring one into reality and not away from it. Reality is in Christ, while unreality is that of our own narcisstic experience. This insight also shows the influence of Martin Buber's I and Thou. Work by its hardness creates a world where people and their actions are robbed of relationship, while prayer draws us into a personal relationship with God, including as he is experienced in the actions of daily vocation.
The tests of daily life reveal whether our prayers have been true or mere illusions of our own making. One reason he encouraged the discipline of confession of one's sins to another mature Christian was to test if our confessions were truly to God or simply to ourselves--we can most easily forgive ourselves. The same is true for intecessory prayer--we uphold another in Christ and not in ourselves. Such prayer is the opposite of our self-comfort and emotional indulgence.
Bonhoeffer very sensibly warns that every instance of Christian community will be tested by natural rivalries. We are always dividing ourselves and comparing ourselves to others: "No sooner are people together than they begin to observe, judge, and classify each other. Thus, even as Christian community is in the process of being formed, an invisible, often unknown, yet terrible life-and-death struggle commences" (93). The hallmark of Christian community should be service, service which takes us out of ourselves in order to serve another.
Life Together, Life Alone--Part 1
"Whoever cannot be alone should beware of community. Such people will only do harm to themselves and to the community. . . . But the reverse is also true. Whoever cannot stand being in community should beware of being alone. You are called into the community of faith: the call was not meant for you alone."--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
I've just finished reading Bonhoeffer's wonderful little book, Life Together, and while the work is not directly concerned with the matters of the political economy and polity that we have been exploring in this blog, it nonetheless contains a number of wise insights that may suggest at least the prophetic witness that the church should model in its critique of the City of Man. For Bonhoeffer, Christian freedom can only be understood within the drama of Christian salvation. Freedom is our delivery from sin by the power for righteousness. We are crucified with Christ, buried with him, and raised with him. The end for our identity in Christ is shalom, a restored relationship with God that therefore restores relations with humanity and nature. We are for Bonhoeffer, "scattered like seed" in the world as a "visible community" in "gracious anticipation of the end time" (28).
Because we are being redeemed in Christ, we model through confession to one another, service to all, speaking the Word in truth, learning to truly listen, and so on, a community that is based in Christ and not in our unmediated psychological need. Bonhoeffer warns that a community not based in Christ turns to self-seeking, self-justification, and selfish emotion. In the former, we learn to lay aside our unredeemed definitions of community, while in the later, we grow quickly angry when community does not match our self-defined needs: "Those who want more than what Christ has established between us do not want Christian community. They are looking for some extraordinary experiences of community that were denied them elsewhere" (34).
Bonhoeffer explores in some detail the nature of corporate morning and evening prayer, the public reading of scripture, daily and yearly cycles of worship, the praying of the Psalter, singing together, and eating together. Each of these practices has a formative element. They make us more like Christ and his Body. They act as a different way of living than the cultures we are residing in.
I've just finished reading Bonhoeffer's wonderful little book, Life Together, and while the work is not directly concerned with the matters of the political economy and polity that we have been exploring in this blog, it nonetheless contains a number of wise insights that may suggest at least the prophetic witness that the church should model in its critique of the City of Man. For Bonhoeffer, Christian freedom can only be understood within the drama of Christian salvation. Freedom is our delivery from sin by the power for righteousness. We are crucified with Christ, buried with him, and raised with him. The end for our identity in Christ is shalom, a restored relationship with God that therefore restores relations with humanity and nature. We are for Bonhoeffer, "scattered like seed" in the world as a "visible community" in "gracious anticipation of the end time" (28).
Because we are being redeemed in Christ, we model through confession to one another, service to all, speaking the Word in truth, learning to truly listen, and so on, a community that is based in Christ and not in our unmediated psychological need. Bonhoeffer warns that a community not based in Christ turns to self-seeking, self-justification, and selfish emotion. In the former, we learn to lay aside our unredeemed definitions of community, while in the later, we grow quickly angry when community does not match our self-defined needs: "Those who want more than what Christ has established between us do not want Christian community. They are looking for some extraordinary experiences of community that were denied them elsewhere" (34).
Bonhoeffer explores in some detail the nature of corporate morning and evening prayer, the public reading of scripture, daily and yearly cycles of worship, the praying of the Psalter, singing together, and eating together. Each of these practices has a formative element. They make us more like Christ and his Body. They act as a different way of living than the cultures we are residing in.
Friday, May 22, 2009
This post discusses the possibility of guns being allowed in Texas Universities. The bill would only allow students to carry a handgun on campus if they are 21 or older and licensed to carry a concealed handgun.
If the law passes is it right that private universities could opt out?
The last statement in the article:
“Yet, when it comes to gun-related incidents, we seem to think that putting more guns in the mix will lead to a good, rather than bloody outcome,” Ellis said
Is Sen. Rodney Ellis right? Technically, I think it would be a bloody outcome either way. But at least an armed student would have a better chance of walking out alive if they had a gun (and trained) than they would by throwing a book at the gunman.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6432279.html
Chris Carson
If the law passes is it right that private universities could opt out?
The last statement in the article:
“Yet, when it comes to gun-related incidents, we seem to think that putting more guns in the mix will lead to a good, rather than bloody outcome,” Ellis said
Is Sen. Rodney Ellis right? Technically, I think it would be a bloody outcome either way. But at least an armed student would have a better chance of walking out alive if they had a gun (and trained) than they would by throwing a book at the gunman.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6432279.html
Chris Carson
Boxer Battalion
http://iphone.foxnews.com/story/0/521138-Gates-Hails-Soldier-Snapped-in-Pink-Boxer-Shorts.html
I found this article interesting. A U.S. soldier from Ft. Worth was photographed fighting the Taliban in his pink boxer shorts. This reminds me of the off-duty police officer in his boxer shorts, that was reported chasing a criminal a few months ago. It appears that terrorists and criminals should always be on guard because the authorities are ready (or not so ready) always.
Some may view this response as disrespectful to the U.S. for failure to comply with uniform requirements. I think this is giving the terrorists exactly the kind of respect they deserve.
The article points out the bravery of this young soldier to fight wearing his pick boxer shorts. It certainly makes him a target, but maybe Gates was correct about psychological warfare. It is probably only a matter of time before others try this new form of psychological warfare. What about Football players or hockey players showing up out of uniform to play. That would be brave!
-Jamie Herndon
I found this article interesting. A U.S. soldier from Ft. Worth was photographed fighting the Taliban in his pink boxer shorts. This reminds me of the off-duty police officer in his boxer shorts, that was reported chasing a criminal a few months ago. It appears that terrorists and criminals should always be on guard because the authorities are ready (or not so ready) always.
Some may view this response as disrespectful to the U.S. for failure to comply with uniform requirements. I think this is giving the terrorists exactly the kind of respect they deserve.
The article points out the bravery of this young soldier to fight wearing his pick boxer shorts. It certainly makes him a target, but maybe Gates was correct about psychological warfare. It is probably only a matter of time before others try this new form of psychological warfare. What about Football players or hockey players showing up out of uniform to play. That would be brave!
-Jamie Herndon
Hmmmm!!!
The headlines of the story caught my attention but once I read the article I was even more surprised. A politician with a sense of honesty. I was discouraged by the revelation that this relationship had been going on while he was seeking re-election.
However, I believe this politician ultimately made the right decision. It may have taken sometime before he arrived at the correct decision but at least he appears to have allowed his conscience to assist in his decision-making process.
I do not agree with trying to have an illegal re-enter the country, especially if they violated the terms under which they were allowed in this country to begin with. Additionally, the type of relationship makes the revelation even more disturbing which makes me believe may be they should stay in Mexico.Regardless of the details, the mayor ultimately made the right decision which unfortunately does not seem to be a trait found in many politicians even on the local level.
Vicki
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6436282.html
However, I believe this politician ultimately made the right decision. It may have taken sometime before he arrived at the correct decision but at least he appears to have allowed his conscience to assist in his decision-making process.
I do not agree with trying to have an illegal re-enter the country, especially if they violated the terms under which they were allowed in this country to begin with. Additionally, the type of relationship makes the revelation even more disturbing which makes me believe may be they should stay in Mexico.Regardless of the details, the mayor ultimately made the right decision which unfortunately does not seem to be a trait found in many politicians even on the local level.
Vicki
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6436282.html
That was Real?
One of the famous examples of Cold War paranoia inspired cinema is Dr. Strangelove. Strangelove was a dark comedy driven by the legendary performances of George C. Scott and Peter Sellers of Pink Panther fame. Sellers played three roles including the president and an insane scientist who who developed a fail-safe measure that averted a full blown nuclear war while only killing 4o-50 million people.
What a wonderful work of fiction!! The only problem is that the plan was very real!!
What a wonderful work of fiction!! The only problem is that the plan was very real!!
Jack Kemp, RIP
I have delayed a post on Jack Kemp's passing for too long. He was one of the most interesting members of Congress and the Republican Party. A creative thinker with a keen mind, he was more private regarding his Christian faith compared to other aspiring politicos which may be another way of saying he never leveraged his relationship with Christ for political gain.
Sadly, the Republican Party and George H.W. Bush chose Dan Quayle for the veep slot in 1988 when Kemp was ready to assume the mantle. Kemp did not realize his opportunity until 1996 with the DOA Dole campaign.
One of my favorite writers is Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook is one of the more interesting public policy authors on the web and in print. He is a fellow at the Brookings Institute.
Odd as it may sound, his most widely read work is on ESPN.com. He writes a football column there covering the NFL as well as whatever he finds important at the moment. He penned a nice article that illuminates Kemp's legacy.
Sadly, the Republican Party and George H.W. Bush chose Dan Quayle for the veep slot in 1988 when Kemp was ready to assume the mantle. Kemp did not realize his opportunity until 1996 with the DOA Dole campaign.
One of my favorite writers is Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook is one of the more interesting public policy authors on the web and in print. He is a fellow at the Brookings Institute.
Odd as it may sound, his most widely read work is on ESPN.com. He writes a football column there covering the NFL as well as whatever he finds important at the moment. He penned a nice article that illuminates Kemp's legacy.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Visual of the day - unemployment
From The Wall Street Journal.Before the US unemployment rate peaks, it will have doubled from its lows two years ago. And it will not stop rising until well into 2010. The unemployment rate is typically a lagging indicator, since companies tend to wait until a few profitable quarters have passed until re-starting hiring after a recession. About the best to look for in the near months is just a slower rate of increase in the unemployment rate.
More Americans are Pro-Life
This post discusses the latest Gallup Poll result that indicates 51% of all Americans are now pro-life. The author makes the interesting point that this will actually hurt the Republican Party.
So, this story is interesting in that it reports the polling results while providing a compelling example of media "logic" to analyze.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2009/05/15/growing-anti-abortion-ranks-will-keep-republicans-marginalized/comments/
So, this story is interesting in that it reports the polling results while providing a compelling example of media "logic" to analyze.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2009/05/15/growing-anti-abortion-ranks-will-keep-republicans-marginalized/comments/
Monday, May 18, 2009
Visual of the day - US budget deficit in context
(image from hotair.com)This chart of the US budget deficit (the amount by which government spending exceeds tax revenue any given year) helps us put in context the size of the 2009 deficit. My friend Steve Conover at sceptical optimist is not worried about large debt. Are you?
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Universe
Beautiful pictures taken by the Hubble space telescope. Images like this always make me wish I had a nice telescope in my back yard!
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Republicans happier than Democrats
New study confirms - Republicans are happier than democrats.
...Happiness is a complex thing. Past studies have found that happiness is partly inherited, that Republicans are happier than Democrats, and that old men tend to be happier than old women....If you're thinking that Republicans are happy just because they perhaps make more money, that does not seem to be the case. The study that found Republicans to be happier than Democrats also showed that it held true even after adjusting for income.
Anyone want to venture a guess as to why this may be the case? Do you think the happiness differential exists or are people of one party more honest than people of the other party?
(The rest of the article is here)
Friday, May 15, 2009
Another example capitalists are making your life better while you sleep
This presentation of a brand new search engine will be worth your time!
Wolfram Alpha (make sure to turn on sound and listen to commentary).
Wolfram Alpha (make sure to turn on sound and listen to commentary).
Visual of the day - inflation's recent history
The blue line tracks the changes consumer prices for last few decades. In April CPI (Consumer price index) increased by about 0.25% (annualized rate).
By the way, the gay areas indicate official US recessions.
The chart is from Angry Bear.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
In Europe, Social Safety Net Softens the Slump
"While economic forecasts are just as dire on this continent as in the United States, Germany’s citizens — and, indeed, most across western Europe — can count on a broad government safety net that includes generous unemployment checks, universal healthcare and inexpensive university education to tide them over."
Bill Requires Calorie Labeling on Menu
"A bill introduced in the U.S. Congress would require fast-food and other chain restaurants to post calories and nutrition information on menus."
Religion and Money: The Price of Faith
"For the most devout practitioners - perhaps 15% of Americans, if measured by how frequently they attend services - following their faith's precepts often has a profound financial impact: Religion guides how they make, spend, and invest their money. And it often leads to financial decisions and stresses far different from those of people who don't share their beliefs. To explore how religion affects the way people manage their money, we visited with three families of different faiths who are struggling to reconcile their spiritual beliefs with their wallets. Their stories, and our advice to them, follow. What all three households have in common: the desire to let faith guide their economic prospects, without undermining their family's security or long-term goals. As you'll see, that isn't always an easy task. . ."
Consumer rights - what are they?
President Obama is speaking to consumers about their rights and credit card company abuses. "These practices, they've only grown worse in the middle of this recession, when people can afford them least," he told the friendly crowd of about 2,000. "You should not have to worry that when you sign up for a credit card, you are signing away all your rights."
What exactly are rights of consumers? Are there any rights consumers have in addition to the good old individual rights? Seriously.
Aren't we lucky that our leader(s) know not only what kind of slaries our banks should pay their CEOs and what types of cars the country should be made, but also what rates our credit card companies need to charge?
Can You Name Who Said This?
“Organized religions in general, in my opinion, are dying forms. They were all very important when we didn't know why the sun moved, why weather changed, why hurricanes occurred, or volcanoes happened . . . Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology. But there are people who interpret the Bible literally. Literally! . . . . I choose not to believe that's the way. And that's what makes America cool, you know?"
No cheating, and leave your guesses in the comment section.
No cheating, and leave your guesses in the comment section.
Chruch Dogs
OK guys, I am not making this stuff up. You cannot imagine articles this crazy!!! Jeff Martin recently released an article in USA Today about churches which have encouraged dog owners to bring their pets to church: “Church Services put Paws in the Pews.” One parishioner exclaims:
"I hadn't been to church in many, many years, and this gave me a reason to come back with my friend.”
Martin writes, On this night in Omaha, a recent Thursday in March, Balestri is preaching to the largest crowd to attend the weekly "Paws and Prayers" service since it began in December. There are 57 people, and an estimated 50 dogs. . . . Parishioners request prayers for homeless animals and homeless people. One man requests prayers for a deceased pet who "went over the rainbow." There are prayer requests for people, as well. When the offering plate is passed, people place their gifts inside and take squares of cheese for the dogs. "You feel good when you leave," says Pam Weiss, with Baxter, a Pomeranian mix.
Any thoughts on what this article reflects regarding the nature of church attendance?
"I hadn't been to church in many, many years, and this gave me a reason to come back with my friend.”
Martin writes, On this night in Omaha, a recent Thursday in March, Balestri is preaching to the largest crowd to attend the weekly "Paws and Prayers" service since it began in December. There are 57 people, and an estimated 50 dogs. . . . Parishioners request prayers for homeless animals and homeless people. One man requests prayers for a deceased pet who "went over the rainbow." There are prayer requests for people, as well. When the offering plate is passed, people place their gifts inside and take squares of cheese for the dogs. "You feel good when you leave," says Pam Weiss, with Baxter, a Pomeranian mix.
Any thoughts on what this article reflects regarding the nature of church attendance?
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Visual of the day - recent events
Athanasius on Death and Martyrdom
Here's two passages from Athanasius' classic work On thr Incarnation that speak to a Christian view of death. How might the following speak to John Tarwater's discussion of burial and cremation?
For that death is destroyed, and that the Cross is become the victory over it, and that it has no more power but is verily dead, this is no small proof, or rather an evident warrant, that it is despised by all Christ's disciples, and that they all take the aggressive against it and no longer fear it; but by the sign of the Cross and by faith in Christ tread it down as dead. For of old, before the divine sojourn of the Saviour took place, even to the saints death was terrible , and all wept for the dead as though they perished. But now that the Saviour has raised His body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ tread him under as nought, and choose rather to die than to deny their faith in Christ. For they verily know that when they die they are not destroyed, but actually [begin to] live, and become incorruptible through the Resurrection. And that devil that once maliciously exulted in death, now that its pains were loosed, remained the only one truly dead. And a proof of this is, that before men believe Christ, they see in death an object of terror, and play the coward before him. But when they are gone over to Christ's faith and teaching, their contempt for death is so great that they even eagerly rush upon it, and become witnesses for the Resurrection the Saviour has accomplished against it. For while still tender in years they make haste to die, and not men only, but women also, exercise themselves by bodily discipline against it. So weak has he become, that even women who were formerly deceived by him, now mock at him as dead and paralyzed. For as when a tyrant has been defeated by a real king, and bound hand and foot, then all that pass by laugh him to scorn, buffeting and reviling him, no longer fearing his fury and barbarity, because of the king who has conquered him; so also, death having been conquered and exposed by the Saviour on the Cross, and bound hand and foot, all they who are in Christ, as they pass by, trample on him, and witnessing to Christ scoff at death, jesting at him, and saying what has been written against him of old: O death , where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting.
. . . . For when one sees men, weak by nature, leaping forward to death, and not fearing its corruption nor frightened of the descent into Hades, but with eager soul challenging it; and not flinching from torture, but on the contrary, for Christ's sake electing to rush upon death in preference to life upon earth, or even if one be an eye-witness of men and females and young children rushing and leaping upon death for the sake of Christ's religion; who is so silly, or who is so incredulous, or who so maimed in his mind, as not to see and infer that Christ, to Whom the people witness, Himself supplies and gives to each the victory over death, depriving him of all his power in each one of them that hold His faith and bear the sign of the Cross. For he that sees the serpent trodden under foot, especially knowing his former fierceness no longer doubts that he is dead and has quite lost his strength, unless he is perverted in mind and has not even his bodily senses sound. For who that sees a lion, either, made sport of by children, fails to see that he is either dead or has lost all his power? Just as, then, it is possible to see with the eyes the truth of all this, so, now that death is made sport of and despised by believers in Christ let none any longer doubt, nor any prove incredulous, of death having been brought to nought by Christ, and the corruption of death destroyed and stayed.
For that death is destroyed, and that the Cross is become the victory over it, and that it has no more power but is verily dead, this is no small proof, or rather an evident warrant, that it is despised by all Christ's disciples, and that they all take the aggressive against it and no longer fear it; but by the sign of the Cross and by faith in Christ tread it down as dead. For of old, before the divine sojourn of the Saviour took place, even to the saints death was terrible , and all wept for the dead as though they perished. But now that the Saviour has raised His body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ tread him under as nought, and choose rather to die than to deny their faith in Christ. For they verily know that when they die they are not destroyed, but actually [begin to] live, and become incorruptible through the Resurrection. And that devil that once maliciously exulted in death, now that its pains were loosed, remained the only one truly dead. And a proof of this is, that before men believe Christ, they see in death an object of terror, and play the coward before him. But when they are gone over to Christ's faith and teaching, their contempt for death is so great that they even eagerly rush upon it, and become witnesses for the Resurrection the Saviour has accomplished against it. For while still tender in years they make haste to die, and not men only, but women also, exercise themselves by bodily discipline against it. So weak has he become, that even women who were formerly deceived by him, now mock at him as dead and paralyzed. For as when a tyrant has been defeated by a real king, and bound hand and foot, then all that pass by laugh him to scorn, buffeting and reviling him, no longer fearing his fury and barbarity, because of the king who has conquered him; so also, death having been conquered and exposed by the Saviour on the Cross, and bound hand and foot, all they who are in Christ, as they pass by, trample on him, and witnessing to Christ scoff at death, jesting at him, and saying what has been written against him of old: O death , where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting.
. . . . For when one sees men, weak by nature, leaping forward to death, and not fearing its corruption nor frightened of the descent into Hades, but with eager soul challenging it; and not flinching from torture, but on the contrary, for Christ's sake electing to rush upon death in preference to life upon earth, or even if one be an eye-witness of men and females and young children rushing and leaping upon death for the sake of Christ's religion; who is so silly, or who is so incredulous, or who so maimed in his mind, as not to see and infer that Christ, to Whom the people witness, Himself supplies and gives to each the victory over death, depriving him of all his power in each one of them that hold His faith and bear the sign of the Cross. For he that sees the serpent trodden under foot, especially knowing his former fierceness no longer doubts that he is dead and has quite lost his strength, unless he is perverted in mind and has not even his bodily senses sound. For who that sees a lion, either, made sport of by children, fails to see that he is either dead or has lost all his power? Just as, then, it is possible to see with the eyes the truth of all this, so, now that death is made sport of and despised by believers in Christ let none any longer doubt, nor any prove incredulous, of death having been brought to nought by Christ, and the corruption of death destroyed and stayed.
Congress Weighs Soda Tax
"With health care reform expected to run the government around $1.2 trillion, Congress is looking for ways to pay for it. A new idea bouncing around Capitol Hill is a soda tax, reports the Wall Street Journal. “Soda is clearly one of the most harmful products in the food supply, and it's something government should discourage the consumption of,” says a public interest advocate."
Contemporary Reflections on Death Have Been Cremated
The New York Times’ Gabrielle Glasser wrote an article last month entitled, “The Funeral: Your Last Chance to Be a Big Spender.” In this article, Glasser noted various ways that the funeral business has adapted to the changing desires of society, in particular the desire for people “to have what they want.” Thus, the industry has made special caskets for “bikers” so that they can be pulled by a Harley rather than a traditional hearse; or gardeners can select a variety of wildflowers to be included in their funeral plans.
Glasser also noted the number of changes that are resulting from the rising costs of funerals. She writes:
The death industry is facing something of an existential crisis. Cremation, which can reduce costs by half or more, is a strong trend. (The average cost of a funeral and traditional burial is about $8,000.) Families are increasingly abandoning traditional religious funerals, which are typically organized by funeral directors, in favor of secular ceremonies they may arrange themselves. Natural burials, which avoid embalming and concrete burial vaults, are more commonly considered than they once were, while a minority of families are bypassing funeral homes altogether to take care of their dead themselves.
The rise of cremation in the past forty years has been astounding, with cremation now accounting for more than 38 percent of all burials, in comparison to just 26 percent in 2000. Jerry Sullivan, a second generation funeral director remarks, “And if you care a little bit less about ceremony, and are ready to allow your body to go up in smoke, then all of the trappings of traditional funerals matter less as well — like fancy caskets.”
As a Christian, I believe that the church must give greater reflection to the moral issues surrounding death and how we handle our dead. Is burial nothing more than the disposal of a person’s housing—with the real person (i.e., soul) having already “departed to be with the Lord?” If it is, then certainly better reasons must be given for cremation than “it cuts funeral costs in half” or one is prepared to “go up in smoke.”
To be sure, the Vatican’s decision in 1963 to lift its ban on cremation has led to more individuals choosing this route. But is there something more that has sparked an even greater surge in the choice of cremation. In his article “Grave Signs,” Russell Moore draws attention to how Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave at Mamre and how those closest to Jesus sought to prepare his body for burial after the crucifixion. The point he so powerfully makes is that the people of God deal with their dead in a way that not only honors them, but also in a way that historically has been drastically different than the pagan world. Indeed, Stephen Prothero’s Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America emphatically demonstrates how the practice of cremation practically disappeared in areas where the church spread, finding continued practice only among those who rejected a future resurrection of the body.
Consequently, questions remain: Can Christians morally choose cremation? Or an even greater question, will Christians even ask the question?
Glasser also noted the number of changes that are resulting from the rising costs of funerals. She writes:
The death industry is facing something of an existential crisis. Cremation, which can reduce costs by half or more, is a strong trend. (The average cost of a funeral and traditional burial is about $8,000.) Families are increasingly abandoning traditional religious funerals, which are typically organized by funeral directors, in favor of secular ceremonies they may arrange themselves. Natural burials, which avoid embalming and concrete burial vaults, are more commonly considered than they once were, while a minority of families are bypassing funeral homes altogether to take care of their dead themselves.
The rise of cremation in the past forty years has been astounding, with cremation now accounting for more than 38 percent of all burials, in comparison to just 26 percent in 2000. Jerry Sullivan, a second generation funeral director remarks, “And if you care a little bit less about ceremony, and are ready to allow your body to go up in smoke, then all of the trappings of traditional funerals matter less as well — like fancy caskets.”
As a Christian, I believe that the church must give greater reflection to the moral issues surrounding death and how we handle our dead. Is burial nothing more than the disposal of a person’s housing—with the real person (i.e., soul) having already “departed to be with the Lord?” If it is, then certainly better reasons must be given for cremation than “it cuts funeral costs in half” or one is prepared to “go up in smoke.”
To be sure, the Vatican’s decision in 1963 to lift its ban on cremation has led to more individuals choosing this route. But is there something more that has sparked an even greater surge in the choice of cremation. In his article “Grave Signs,” Russell Moore draws attention to how Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave at Mamre and how those closest to Jesus sought to prepare his body for burial after the crucifixion. The point he so powerfully makes is that the people of God deal with their dead in a way that not only honors them, but also in a way that historically has been drastically different than the pagan world. Indeed, Stephen Prothero’s Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America emphatically demonstrates how the practice of cremation practically disappeared in areas where the church spread, finding continued practice only among those who rejected a future resurrection of the body.
Consequently, questions remain: Can Christians morally choose cremation? Or an even greater question, will Christians even ask the question?
The Gospel of Life
John Tarwater's post below reminded me of this passage from John Paull II's encyclical, Evangelium vitae (1995):
23. The eclipse of the sense of God and of man inevitably leads to a practical materialism, which breeds individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism. Here too we see the permanent validity of the words of the Apostle: "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct" (Rom 1:28). The values of being are replaced by those of having. The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one's own material well-being. The so-called "quality of life" is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions-interpersonal, spiritual and religious-of existence.
In such a context suffering, an inescapable burden of human existence but also a factor of possible personal growth, is "censored", rejected as useless, indeed opposed as an evil, always and in every way to be avoided. When it cannot be avoided and the prospect of even some future well-being vanishes, then life appears to have lost all meaning and the temptation grows in man to claim the right to suppress it.
Within this same cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other's richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated: in this way the marriage union is betrayed and its fruitfulness is subjected to the caprice of the couple. Procreation then becomes the "enemy" to be avoided in sexual activity: if it is welcomed, this is only because it expresses a desire, or indeed the intention, to have a child "at all costs", and not because it signifies the complete acceptance of the other and therefore an openness to the richness of life which the child represents.
In the materialistic perspective described so far, interpersonal relations are seriously impoverished. The first to be harmed are women, children, the sick or suffering, and the elderly. The criterion of personal dignity-which demands respect, generosity and service-is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness: others are considered not for what they "are", but for what they "have, do and produce". This is the supremacy of the strong over the weak.
23. The eclipse of the sense of God and of man inevitably leads to a practical materialism, which breeds individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism. Here too we see the permanent validity of the words of the Apostle: "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct" (Rom 1:28). The values of being are replaced by those of having. The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one's own material well-being. The so-called "quality of life" is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions-interpersonal, spiritual and religious-of existence.
In such a context suffering, an inescapable burden of human existence but also a factor of possible personal growth, is "censored", rejected as useless, indeed opposed as an evil, always and in every way to be avoided. When it cannot be avoided and the prospect of even some future well-being vanishes, then life appears to have lost all meaning and the temptation grows in man to claim the right to suppress it.
Within this same cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other's richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated: in this way the marriage union is betrayed and its fruitfulness is subjected to the caprice of the couple. Procreation then becomes the "enemy" to be avoided in sexual activity: if it is welcomed, this is only because it expresses a desire, or indeed the intention, to have a child "at all costs", and not because it signifies the complete acceptance of the other and therefore an openness to the richness of life which the child represents.
In the materialistic perspective described so far, interpersonal relations are seriously impoverished. The first to be harmed are women, children, the sick or suffering, and the elderly. The criterion of personal dignity-which demands respect, generosity and service-is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness: others are considered not for what they "are", but for what they "have, do and produce". This is the supremacy of the strong over the weak.
Hold on to your 403-b and 401-k
Ever since 2000, as the years go by, the projections for survival of Social Security and Medicare keep getting shorter, and shorter, and shorter.Projections from yesterday give Medicare a life expectancy of 8 years and Social security - of 28 years.
Graph from New York Times.
Effects of Drug Decriminalization in Portugal
"On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not 'legalized.' Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense. . .Notably, decriminalization has become increasingly popular in Portugal since 2001. Except for some far-right politicians, very few domestic political factions are agitating for a repeal of the 2001 law. And while there is a widespread perception that bureaucratic changes need to be made to Portugal's decriminalization framework to make it more efficient and effective, there is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for 'drug tourists' — has occurred."
Reproductive Technologies: Approaching the Moral Limits of Christian Ethics?
Several weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that Travis County probate judge, Guy Herman, ruled that a mother could harvest sperm from her dead son’s body. The mother, Marissa Evans, stated: “I want him to live on. I want to keep a piece of him.” Evans and her attorneys were attempting to save the sperm for a future surrogate pregnancy.
In many ways this type of story is becoming quite common; likewise, so are the moral complications that arise from it. Consider the story reported just a year ago regarding a doctor who donated his sperm to a gay couple. Even though it was over eighteen years ago, he is now being forced to pay child support. The reporter writes:
The donor was a married doctor at a Long Island hospital in the late 1980s when he donated his sperm to a female hospital resident who was trying to have a baby with her lesbian partner, the Post reported. Although the donor gave up all claims and rights to the child, he allowed his name to be put on the birth certificate.
For several years after the boy’s birth in 1989, the doctor sent the child gifts and money and cards signed “Dad” and had regular contact with the child, the Post reported. However, when the boy moved to Oregon with his mother and her partner in 1993, regular contact stopped. Since then, the man’s contact with the child consisted of seven phone calls and one brief meeting over the past 15 years.
A New York family court judge ruled last month that the man must now pay child support for the boy, now 18 and heading to college, the Post reported.
These reports remind us of the multiple moral and legal questions that arise from reproductive technologies. Indeed, writing in his The Ethics of Sex, Helmut Thielicke argued that artificial insemination is a “borderline” case that confronts the marriage relationship at the “extreme.” What is it about this type of reproductive technology that makes it “borderline” and “extreme” for Christians?
These reproductive practices, especially AID and surrogacy, have often been labeled extreme by Christian theologians because they separate procreation from marital conjugal relations. That is, rather than children being the offspring of a couple’s total love giving, they are seen as the product of a couple’s will. Although this may seem small on the surface, it reflects a deep theological understanding of the nature of humanity, namely that we are ‘begotten not made,’ as Oliver O’Donovan rightly argues in his book by the same title. By absolutely severing conjugal relations from reproduction, we have perhaps missed part of the meaning of love. Sex certainly represents more than just an act of the will; it is a passion that expresses our inner most desires. Meilaender argues that children are “God’s yes to such mutual self-giving.”
Leon Kass demonstrates best how our language regarding “making babies” exposes this moral deficiency in our thinking.
Ancient Israel, impressed with the phenomenon of transmission of life from father to son, used a word we translate as “begetting” or “siring.” The Greeks, impressed with the springing forth of new life in the cyclical processes of generation and decay, called it genesis, from a root meaning “to come into being.” . . . The premodern Christian English-speaking world, impressed with the world as given by a Creator, used the term “pro-creation.” We, impressed with the machine and the gross national product (our own work of creation), employ a metaphor of factory, “reproduction.”
Kass’s story beautifully and powerfully illustrates our culture’s thinking that children are the products of our will, not a “heritage from the Lord.” Consequently, reproductive technology of the type reported in Associated Press indeed is “extreme” and “borderline,” making evident our selfish desires rather than demonstrating our yearning to live for God’s glory.
In many ways this type of story is becoming quite common; likewise, so are the moral complications that arise from it. Consider the story reported just a year ago regarding a doctor who donated his sperm to a gay couple. Even though it was over eighteen years ago, he is now being forced to pay child support. The reporter writes:
The donor was a married doctor at a Long Island hospital in the late 1980s when he donated his sperm to a female hospital resident who was trying to have a baby with her lesbian partner, the Post reported. Although the donor gave up all claims and rights to the child, he allowed his name to be put on the birth certificate.
For several years after the boy’s birth in 1989, the doctor sent the child gifts and money and cards signed “Dad” and had regular contact with the child, the Post reported. However, when the boy moved to Oregon with his mother and her partner in 1993, regular contact stopped. Since then, the man’s contact with the child consisted of seven phone calls and one brief meeting over the past 15 years.
A New York family court judge ruled last month that the man must now pay child support for the boy, now 18 and heading to college, the Post reported.
These reports remind us of the multiple moral and legal questions that arise from reproductive technologies. Indeed, writing in his The Ethics of Sex, Helmut Thielicke argued that artificial insemination is a “borderline” case that confronts the marriage relationship at the “extreme.” What is it about this type of reproductive technology that makes it “borderline” and “extreme” for Christians?
These reproductive practices, especially AID and surrogacy, have often been labeled extreme by Christian theologians because they separate procreation from marital conjugal relations. That is, rather than children being the offspring of a couple’s total love giving, they are seen as the product of a couple’s will. Although this may seem small on the surface, it reflects a deep theological understanding of the nature of humanity, namely that we are ‘begotten not made,’ as Oliver O’Donovan rightly argues in his book by the same title. By absolutely severing conjugal relations from reproduction, we have perhaps missed part of the meaning of love. Sex certainly represents more than just an act of the will; it is a passion that expresses our inner most desires. Meilaender argues that children are “God’s yes to such mutual self-giving.”
Leon Kass demonstrates best how our language regarding “making babies” exposes this moral deficiency in our thinking.
Ancient Israel, impressed with the phenomenon of transmission of life from father to son, used a word we translate as “begetting” or “siring.” The Greeks, impressed with the springing forth of new life in the cyclical processes of generation and decay, called it genesis, from a root meaning “to come into being.” . . . The premodern Christian English-speaking world, impressed with the world as given by a Creator, used the term “pro-creation.” We, impressed with the machine and the gross national product (our own work of creation), employ a metaphor of factory, “reproduction.”
Kass’s story beautifully and powerfully illustrates our culture’s thinking that children are the products of our will, not a “heritage from the Lord.” Consequently, reproductive technology of the type reported in Associated Press indeed is “extreme” and “borderline,” making evident our selfish desires rather than demonstrating our yearning to live for God’s glory.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Visual (and musical) of the day - Inflation or Deflation
I saw this at Greg Mankiw's blog.
(by the way, in case you wonder why they mention Zimbabwe, the reason is this: Zimbabwe's inflation rate is currently at about 516 Quintillion percent.)
My answer to the question "inflation or deflation" is - deflation in the short run and inflation in the long.
UPDATE: The other video might be even better as far as country-singing-economist-humor is concerned. And who doesn't like country-singing-economist humor?
Notes Toward a Theology of Comedy
This may seem like a strange post to apply to our obesity discussion today, but I think that the bodily nature of our limitations and the comedy of what Francis of Assisi called Brother Mule (i.e. the body) make this material applicable. Enjoy.
"Humor is a grace. It's absolutely a grace because, if people laugh, willy-nilly they make commitments to what's going on. They make good commitments, too. They covenant. Laughter is a kind of covenant, a spiritual covenant."-- Walter Wangerin
"You will find that you survive humiliation/ And that's an experience of incalculable value."--Edward Chamberlayne in The Cocktail Party
"Humor is a grace. It's absolutely a grace because, if people laugh, willy-nilly they make commitments to what's going on. They make good commitments, too. They covenant. Laughter is a kind of covenant, a spiritual covenant."-- Walter Wangerin
"You will find that you survive humiliation/ And that's an experience of incalculable value."--Edward Chamberlayne in The Cocktail Party
- Playfulness and a creativity are character traits and actions which the Christian can affirm that God created us for. God's playful creativity is expressed in the universe, and our human dominion of creation is also playful. Surely, then, we can affirm that we were created in part to enjoy the whimsical and ironic.
- Good humor practices the virtue of truth-telling. Humor reverses our expectations, showing the wise to be foolish and the foolish, wise. This is a good thing, for we should always be about the pursuit of truth and honesty.
- Peter Berger suggests that a comic debunking of society actually allows us to love our enemies because we take them less seriously than they do.We may learn to love the political braggart or the boasting literary type. We may have compassion on the hypocrite.
- Comedy often stresses the burly, eccentric bodily world as a worthwhile emphasis. God's creation of the world and Christ's incarnation remind us that God created the physical, bodily world and called it good, even if it is now also subject to sin and corruption. The Christian is one who exists in this world with its eating, defecating, and procreating. Christian comedy, then, should affirm and laugh at human life.
- Robert Roberts suggests that comedy's perception of incongruity arises from the "perspectivity" of the perceiver. There must be a vantage point from which something appears incongruous. He goes on to distinguish 1) "having a perspective," which is "to be capable of adopting" the perspective since it is "available or accessible" to you, from 2) "owning a perspective," which implies a tendency towards regularly adopting the perspective, and from 3) "adopting a perspective," which implies the actual activity of having a perspective present in oneself. In this sense, one can temporarily experience another perspective through humor without necessarily being convinced by or abiding by it in any habitual way.
- Roberts also argues that this disassociation that humor produces makes humility possible, for the person who finds his or her own behavior funny is able to see its dangers. More specifically, for the Christian, there is always the incongruity between one’s sinful, current self which will only be complete in the eschaton, and one’s positional, justified self, the self that God sees us as in Christ.
- Reinhold Niebuhr argues that our "provisional amusement" with the world’s incongruities must either move to faith and joy or bitterness and incredulity. Humor has its limits; if laughter seeks to deal with ultimate issues, it turns bitter because it is overwhelmed. Humor alone cannot find a way to deal with human sin and wickedness.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Visual of the Day - Spending in average US family
This nifty graphic shows the spending of an average American household by major category (per year). Click to zoom. Graphic comes from Time Magazine's Curious Capitalist blog.
An Analogy to Explain Derivitives
I received this story to help explain how derivitives work. What do you think? Is this helpful or distorted?
Derivative markets explained. An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets:
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit ... She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.
One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He soinforms Heidi. Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being nemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lies off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, and non-drinkers.
Now, do you understand?
Derivative markets explained. An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets:
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit ... She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.
One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He soinforms Heidi. Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being nemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lies off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, and non-drinkers.
Now, do you understand?
Multiple Enlightenments
I, like most people, tend to paint with a broad-brushstroke, and in this blog I have several times referenced "the Englihtenment" as a broad historical change that Christians should challenge. We should keep in mind, however, that the Enlightenment was not a monolithic conspiracy. It was and is a multifaceted movement, existing in tandem with its Christian and non-Christian predecessors. Historian Henry May has suggested that there were four Enlightenments:
- The Moderate Enlightenment (Locke, Newton): mechanistic and mathematical models of nature and humanity are empirical and no threat to religion or traditional morals.
- The Skeptical Enlightenment (Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau): mechanistic and naturalistic models do call into question traditional religion, morals, and claims for human knowledge.
- The Revolutionary Enlightenment (Paine, Godwin): direct attacks on traditional religious, familial, economic, and political structures.
- The Didactic Enlightenment (Reid, Stewart): softens radical implications of Enlightenment thought, a preference for natural and inductive explanations over supernatural and deductive ones.
The Enlightenment in its moderate form, and to some extent in its didactic form, I have far less trouble with than the more skeptical and revoluntionary strains. Likewise, it is important to remember that no form of the movement was (or is) so airtight and doctrinaire that it contains no truths to learn from, and that the various strains of the movement were often for a time bedfellows, strange or otherwise, with movements in the 18th to 20th centuries that as a Christian I could at least be a co-belligerent with. (For example, abolitionism, women's suffrage, or the protection of human rights.)
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