Ramble On

WWI, Modernism, and the Holocaust

2012-01-19T02:35:00.000-08:00

What produced the Holocaust?

This question has haunted the West since the first death camps were liberated by Allied soldiers in 1945. Of course, a myriad of answers have been proposed that lay the blame on, variously, anti-Semitism, Hitler's evil/mad genius, the psyche of 'ordinary Germans', European Christianity/Lutheranism, the Treaty of Versailles, modernity, etc. (I assume the Christian doctrine of sin to be a necessary component of any theory of explanation - not that such horrors can be 'explained'). There's obvious truth to all of these answers, especially when taken together in some combination. But, in my reading on this subject there's always been something missing from all the attempts to get at what could have prepared the most advanced society of its day to carry out the slaughter of millions of people.

For the past few years, this gap has started to be filled by two sources: studies of WWI and of turn-of-the-century German culture. Recently, to my great joy, I discovered a book that brings these two topics together: Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins.

The first part of Rites of Spring is a study of how the turn-of-the-century cultures of France, England, and Germany enabled them to enter into and fight the truly mad and frivolous Great War. In chapter two, Eksteins turns his focus on Germany. He examines European modernism as it took root in the German soil of romanticism, idealism, nationalism. The fruit of this combination was a culture trapped in its own delusions of aesthetic grandeur and cultural superiority, primed for war. Eksteins produces evidence for this war-lust in Germany. In the month after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the German population gathered by the thousands in town and city squares across the land, demanding retribution. The author also shows that frenzied support for military action was nearly unanimous among all classes of society, especially among intellectuals, artists, and those on the political Left. Eksteins quotes one observer who recalled that in those days in Germany "The incomparable storm unleashed in the people has swept before it all doubting, halfhearted, and fearful minds" (63).

One would think that the components of German culture that led the nation to war in 1914 would be critiqued and rejected after its devastating defeat; certainly, many did exactly this (Barth, Rosenstock-Huessy and the Patmos Circle, et al). But for many more in Germany, those same cultural forces remained solidly in place, fueling a bitter reaction to the catastrophe and setting the stage for the rise of National Socialism and the even greater tragedies that followed.

There's far more to Eksteins' book than what I've discussed here: he spends several chapters on the war itself. The last section of the book examines in detail National Socialism, Hitler's triumph and Germany's ultimate downfall in WWII as (partly) an outcome of the cultural forces examined in part one.

Not only is Rites of Spring worth reading on its own terms; it also nicely complements a few other books on these subjects that I recommend as highly as this one:

1). Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust, a study of how the German embrace of modernity (rationalization, industrialization, the embrace of 'technique,' efficiency, managerial bureaucracy, etc.) was essential to the mentality and methods of the architects of the Holocaust.

2). Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Out of Revolution written during the 1930's in Germany by a WWI survivor who classifies WWI itself as the fruit of a European-wide revolution that continued to gain power in Germany after WWI. ERH's analysis of 19th-20th century German thought, politics, culture, as well as his contemporary reaction to Hitler and the National Socialism is spread throughout the book.

3). The correspondence of Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig, Judaism Despite Christianity, carried out while each was deployed with the German army in the early days of WWI. While the letters focus on religious and philosophical questions, the backdrop to the discussion is the war, and each man's awareness that their country was in the grip of deadly fantasies that could lead to national disaster. This book was out of print for many years, but has recently been republished in a new edition that includes several helpful essays about the correspondence and its historical context.

The Christian Revolution

2012-01-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

D. B. Hart argues in The Atheist Delusion that moderns fail to understand the impact of Christianity on the ancient Roman world because we are so unfamiliar with just how different that world was from ours.

In a New Yorker review of several books on the legacy of Rome in the West, Adam Kirsch says the following: "In general, the lot of the ordinary Roman was no different from that of the vast majority of human beings before the modern age: powerlessness, bitterly hard work, and the constant presence of death. The thing that strikes Knapp [author of Invisible Romans, a book under review] most about Roman popular wisdom is its deep passivity in the face of these afflictions, which feels so alien to moderns and especially to Americans. The Romans, he writes, had no concept of progress: 'The implication is that the order of the universe is static, that social perspectives do not change; they must be the way they are. The "is" and "ought to be" of the world are the same.' (January 9, 2012, p. 74).

Hart argues brilliantly in his book that this despairing passivity in the face of a fixed world order was a persistent feature of ancient paganism; and that it took Christianity, with its "ought to be," to challenge it and bring to pass much of the positive change we take for granted in the modern era.

Mavis Staples sings "The Weight" with Wilco and Nick Lowe

2012-01-07T13:32:00.000-08:00

Here.

Belle in outdoor attire

2011-12-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

Sullivan nailing DFW again...

2011-12-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

'He's maybe the only notoriously "difficult" writer who almost never wrote a page that wasn't enjoyable, or at least diverting, to read.' - John Jeremiah Sullivan.

That's exactly how I felt about Infinite Jest: 'crap this is hard' and 'man this is fun' too.

DFW's Impact on Writing

2011-12-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a thing that is hard to imagine: being so inventive a writer that when you die, the language is impoverished. That's what Wallace's suicide did, two and a half years ago. It wasn't just a sad thing, it was a blow. - John Jeremiah Sullivan

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/books/201105/david-foster-wallace-the-pale-king-john-jeremiah-sullivan#ixzz1hI0Qoq5D

Great Christmas Read or Gift...

2011-12-21T17:16:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite Christmas reads in the last few years has been The Narnian, Alan Jacob's brilliant literary-spiritual biography of C. S. Lewis. What makes the book so edifying are Jacob's expositions of the major themes in Lewis' writing. A great Christmas gift for the old or new fan.

Last Advent Sermon: On Feeling Forsaken During the Holidays

2011-12-19T10:07:00.000-08:00

Here's the link. It's also podcast at iTunes ('Redeemer Memphis').

Looking at how Christ's cry from the cross ("my God, my God, why have your forsaken me?") is the answer to that very question we ask during our suffering. Christ's cry assures us that God is with us and for us during our darkest times.

Exchange on race

2011-12-14T12:10:00.000-08:00

A Sr Editor of The Atlantic responds to a simplistic analysis of American racial inequality:http://bit.ly/tGRut5

(HT: Alan Jacobs at 'More than 95 Theses').

Dignan's 50 Year Plan

2011-12-11T12:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to Dignan's 50 Year Plan, from the movie Bottle Rocket, that I mentioned in the sermon today (Advent 3: Why is it so Hard to Follow You?).

Advent Sermon (2), Post 1: Topic, Link, Anne Rice.

2011-12-04T15:25:00.000-08:00

Advent Series 2: The Questions of God - 'Who are you?'

In this sermon we look at two of the points at which people get stuck in trying to deal with Jesus: the point of initial, casual interest and the point of final decision.

Here's the quote from Anne Rice about moving from mere interest in Jesus to investigation:

I had taken in a lot of fashionable notions about Jesus…that the Gospels were ‘late’ documents, that we really didn’t know anything about him…I’d acquired many books on Jesus…. But the true investigation began in 2002…I put aside everything else and…decided that I would give myself utterly to the task of trying to understand Jesus himself and how Christianity emerged.

Advent Sermon (1), Post 3: God Questions Us.

2011-12-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

So, if we all struggle (because of sin) with such bias against God and his truth as seen in the previous post, how do we ever come to any knowledge of God?

Only through God.

The great theologians of the church have always taught this truth based on 1 Corinthians 2: “Only God can reveal God.” The God who reveals himself speaks personally to us, reaching out in love to his furious runaways, and exposing us to his grace and truth.

“We do not reach truth unless we allow ourselves to be exposed to and drawn by a truth which is beyond our present understanding.” – Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 90

“It is as the one who overcomes our alienation from the truth that God reveals the truth…It has become possible for us to know God and to speak confidently of God only because the beloved Son who knows the Father has taken our place in our estrangement from God and has made it possible to come to a true knowledge of God through him. So the revelation of God given to us in him is not a matter of coercive demonstration but of grace, of a love that forgives and invites.” – Ibid., 78.

“Because ultimate reality [God] is personal, God’s address to us is a word conveying his purpose and promise, a word which may be heard or ignored, obeyed or disobeyed. Faith comes by hearing, and unbelief is disobedience.” – Ibid., 14.

This whole sermon series is about us questioning God. But it’s really more about how God questions us; how he often responds to our questions with questions of his own that are his ‘answer’ to us.

God the Father addresses us through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, reforms us through his questions, and leads us to himself.

“That is the truth which we cannot tell ourselves. We can only let it question us and press itself upon us in its majesty and ultimateness for our recognition and worship. That is what takes place still when we are face to face with the Truth of God as it is in Jesus, for through its questioning of us in answer to our questions, it does not hold itself aloof from us, so throwing us back upon ourselves for the verification and the answer we need…” (Torrance, ‘Questioning in Christ,’122). Rather, God lays “hold of us in our blind hostile questioning in the dark to change it into something that brings light and truth.” (Ibid., 125).

“Genuine questioning here leads to the disclosure and recognition of the Truth in its own majesty and sanctity and authority, which cannot be dragged down in order to be controlled by us. It is the prerogative of the ultimate Truth, the Truth of God, that it reigns and is not at our disposal, that it is, and cannot be established by us, Truth that is ultimate in its identity with the Being and Activity of God and cannot be dominated by man, Truth that is known only by pure grace on God’s part and in thankful acknowledgement on our part. In the last resort it is we who are questioned by the Truth, and it is only as we allow ourselves to be questioned by it that it stands forth before us for our recognition and acknowledgement.” (Ibid., 121, slightly paraphrased).

Confessions of Spiritual Bias in the Search for Truth

2011-11-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

The following are two examples of the spiritual bias that can distort our search for truth as we ask our questions of God. Remarkably, both come from intellectuals who are openly confessing this.

'I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.' - Thomas Nagle, from The Last Word.

'We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.’ -Richard Lewontin, ‘Billions and billions of demons’, The New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, p. 31

Just what you asked for: a catalogue of mustache names

2011-11-30T06:05:00.000-08:00

"The Imperial, the Walrus, the Stromboli, the Handlebar, the Horseshoe, the Mustachio (also called the Nosebeard or the Fantastico), the Pencil, also called (by idiots) the Mouthbrow...the Fu Manchu...the long, droopy Pancho Villa...the Toothbrush." - Rich Cohen, 'Becoming Adolf' from Vanity Fair, November 2007.

“Are you still beating your dog?” Or why there is such a thing as a ‘bad question.’

2011-11-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

[This is my first post on sermon 1 “Where are you?” from my Advent Series “The Questions of God.” You can find the mp3 of this sermon at the Redeemer Memphis website or as a podcast via iTunes.]

We’re taught from childhood that ‘there’s no such thing as a bad question.’

We hear it from teachers trying to coax shy students into revealing where they need help. More generally, our culture’s embrace of all questions and questioning stems in part from the triumph of the Enlightenment, which used 'rational' questions as a tool for subverting the authorities of tradition, religion, and oppressive political regimes.

To us, it’s unquestionable that all questions are good, and all questioning innocent.

But this is too simple.

Yes, questions are an indispensable tool for gaining knowledge. True - the Christian church had to learn the hard lesson of what happens when legitimate questions (particularly from its youth) are ignored, dismissed, or too hastily answered.

However, despite all this, there are such things as bad questions – questions based on false assumptions, questions that presuppose their own answer, questions asked out of false motives, questions that don’t fit their object, etc.

In the quote below, theologian Thomas F. Torrance helps us see the difference between good and bad questions:

What, then, is the nature of true questioning? A genuine question is one properly open to the object of inquiry, but a question cannot be open to the object of inquiry if it is foreclosed from behind [before-hand]. Hence to be genuine, a question must allow itself to be called in question; it must be ready for reconstruction in light of what the inquiry reveals.

What Torrance is saying is that when you ask a question, you do so because, presumably, you do not yet know the answer! And if that’s true, then authentic questions require 1) that we be truly open to receiving new information or knowledge, and 2) that we allow such new knowledge potentially to challenge or revise our original question and previous assumptions.

The open nature of a true question is especially important when the ‘object of inquiry’ is God. For “the more ultimate” the question, “the more completely” the questioner must let “himself and all his prior understanding be called into question.”

(Thomas F. Torrance, ‘Questioning in Christ,’ in Theology in Reconstruction, 123-124).

This is one of the points I was trying to make in the first Advent sermon yesterday in which we looked at the most fundamental question we can ask God - the question of his reality or existence.

Of course, it’s vitally important to call people to ask such questions when (not if) they have them. As Francis Schaeffer put it, the “donkey of devotion” can only bear so many unanswered questions before it lies down and dies. In Scripture, God’s people are always voicing their questions about God to God; just read Job or the Psalms. God’s people today must exercise the same freedom within their Christian communities.

But we also have to be aware of the opposite problem, of how our questioning of God can become unhelpful. That’s what I tried to address some yesterday.

We should ask our questions honestly; and with the kind of genuine openness and humility Torrance recommends above.

New Advent Sermon Series

2011-11-26T16:11:00.000-08:00

I'm starting a new sermon series for Advent tomorrow at Redeemer called "The Questions of God." First one is on "Where are you?", dealing with our struggle to know God's reality, existence, presence.

Fall Reading

2011-11-23T08:34:00.001-08:00

For the last year or so I've tried to faithfully update my Good Reads page with what I'm reading but have fallen off this fall. Now that I'm restarting this blog, I plan to put those quick updates here (and do Good Reads if I have the time).

So...here's what I've read this fall:

The Rule of St. Benedict. Published in the Library of Christian classics along with Sayings of the Desert Fathers (that I scanned through) and the Conferences of Cassian. For all that's been made about Benedict's rule (and I've greatly benefited from its exposition by others), reading the actual document was somewhat disappointing. Maybe I'm missing something.

Jonathan Franzen, The Discomfort Zone. Franzen's partial memoir about growing up in Webster Groves in St. Louis. His writing about his relationship with his parents is especially insightful and moving. The chapter on his youth group experience in a liberal Protestant church is worth the price of the book.

T. F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction. As with other Torrance I've read in the past year, this book is a mixture of 1). some of the most profound theology I've ever read (on Trinitarian theology, Christology, analogy, the ministry of the Spirit), 2). the most impenetrable writing I've ever read, and 3). what seems to me pretty straightforward theological error (often because of the subtlety and far-reaching power of Torrance's overall 'system' that, to me, requires his doctrines of universal union with Christ in the Incarnation, Christ's assumption of fallen human nature, a Barthian-like view of election and Scripture, etc). Still, there are sections that are beautiful and deeply edifying. His chapter on 'Questioning Christ' is enormously helpful and helped inspire my upcoming sermon series for Advent at Redeemer.

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea. Hadn't read this since high school; was one of my favorite books then that I re-read several times. Wasn't disappointed; so short and powerful.

Robert Graves, Goodbye to all That. This book and its author is discussed throughout Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory and I ran across it at the local library book sale. Graves is one of the primary British literary figures to emerge out WWI and Goodbye to all That is his war memoir. A fascinating sketch of pre-War British society and its dying Victorianism. Graves' descriptions of trench warfare, the at-times absurd army culture, post-war Oxford capture a moment of cultural transition. And though hard to believe, the book is funny too.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy & Franz Rosenzweig, Judaism Despite Christianity. In keeping with my recent and growing fascination with 'ERH' - who I'm convinced will be as important to future generations of academics as some of his more famous colleagues were to ours - I ordered this new version as soon as it was available. There are several essays of historical background and interpretation in the book, aside from the correspondence itself. A couple of these essays are by ERH and shed great light on the correspondence; there's also a letter from ERH to a student on Hitler and prayer (!) that's stunning. Then there's the correspondence itself, which is unlike anything I've ever read. Both men were deeply passionate, creative thinkers and actors, with ERH being the elder. They wrote the letters while each was deployed during WWI in the German army. As top-level scholars their level of casual erudition is daunting (lots of Greek, Latin, French, German phrases, quotes, references - thankfully translated in most cases) and the strength and candor of their debate thrilling. Of course, I resonated most with ERH's presentation and defense of Christianity, but Rosensweig's own thought emerges in the letters with real force. Reading these letters is like watching two giants do battle with all their heart and mind about the most central questions of life, religion, and philosophy. Ironically, their careers went in different directions after this exchange; Rosensweig's genius was recognized in his few works produced in the 20s and 30s (especially his The Star of Redemption, which was greatly influenced by ERH's thought) but he died early (by the late 30s). ERH lived another 50 years and produced dozens of volumes of work, but was mostly unrecognized by the the academic establishment.

Frederick Dale Bruner, The Christ Book (Commentary on Matthew). Read just parts of this for my Fall Adult Ed class at Redeemer, but have to say that it's probably my favorite commentary. Completely unlike anything else: unapologetically theological, filled with application to church life, creative, pastoral, and still excellent on exegesis and interpretive issues. If you're intrigued, just read his section on Matthew 1 and the geneology: beautiful. And his Sermon on the Mount material was, again, the best I've read on it. I look forward to using it in the future.

Good and evil

2011-11-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

"..evil exists...and evil increases automatically. Inertia, laziness, cowardice, death, are self-multiplying...good 'is' not, except by propagation; it is not in any man, but originates only between teacher and student, between father and son...No man is good. But the word or act that links men may be good. And by link-work evil has to be constantly combatted...[but many] ignore this constant reproduction of the good, and leave the arousing, evoking and conveying of goodness to accident." - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, 'The Soul of William James,' in I Am An Impure Thinker, p. 27.

A. N. Wilson's return to Christian Faith

2009-04-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

Read his testimony here.

Infinite Jest

2009-03-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

I just finished Infinite Jest last night, which I’d decided to read upon hearing about DFW’s suicide last fall. All the obits were calling it his most significant work and I’d already loved his two essay collections and got IJ for Christmas.

This book is one that surely gives book reviewers (which I’m not), as DFW says, “the howling fantods,” because 1). it’s impossible to do justice to in a review and 2). there’s so many different brilliant facets in the book it’s hard to know where to start in response.

So I decided to go with bullet points. These are intended to summarize some of my reactions, but more to convince anyone on the fence about taking the IJ plunge, that it’s worth it. (There are no true spoilers below):

this book is very long, as in over 1000 pages and took me 2 ½ months to read. But, unlike every other real long novel I’ve ever read, I didn’t have trouble staying engaged. To be honest this was partly because a lot of the time I was having to work to keep track of what was going on (especially in the beginning). But just as I began to wonder if a master plot would emerge from the tangle of different characters and vignettes, the big picture did start to come together for me around the 200 page mark.

to my surprise, I found this overall plot compelling and kept wondering where he’d go with it.

IJ has the best narrative descriptions I’ve ever read about a host of subjects:

alcohol and drug-abuse (especially pot and prescription drugs)
the recovery culture (AA, NA, etc)
youth competitive tennis
clinical depression
a certain kind of dysfunctional family – withdrawn alcoholic father, overcompensating impossibly-perfect mother.

the book is set in the near future and, considering it was written in the early 90s, is down-right prophetic about the technology-driven entertainment/information revolution we’ve lived through in the past decade.

the book is comedic satire of the highest order, especially of the following subjects:

America
our addiction to entertainment
terrorists
college radio
avant-garde film

fair warning: I was disappointed in the ending and feel (as of now…this could change) that it’s the weakest part of the book. DFW intentionally decided not to tie up the plot’s loose ends and I wish he had. But I could be missing something about his intentions here, and the disappointment doesn’t come close to outweighing the joy I got from reading this thing.

Notes on the Nature of Sin, Part Three

2009-02-22T15:14:00.000-08:00

The Progress of Idolatry.

First, idols attract us with a promise. “If you live for me and serve me, you’ll get what you’re ultimately after in life – happiness, success, significance, approval.” So the immanent work idol promises the glory of success, security, power. The fitness idol promises beauty, approval. The money idol promises ultimate security, power.

However, the idols’ promises are conditional: idols require sacrifice, service, work. You’ll only get what the idol promises if you live for it. You must pay the price the idol demands. So, idolatry always generates tons of stuff you “must do” to get the life offered. Secular idolaters experience these as “compulsions” or addictions. For example, “I must work 80 hours this week, I must be with this person, I must have this sexual experience, I must exercise this much, eat this much…” Religious idolaters experience these as “commands,” behaviors or feelings you must do in order to satisfy the god/religion/authority figures. “I must share the gospel 5 times this week, must pray 30 minutes, never taste alchohol, be a leader in the church, meditate this way, complete this ritual..”

Idolatry generates lusts of all kinds. Lust is disordered desire; desire ‘out of bounds’ and desire ‘out of balance’ (Allender).

And idolatry is by nature legalistic; the salvation is offers is always only “by works.”

As the idol is served, the idol enslaves its worshipper. Though initially idolatry makes you feel like you’re in control, the longer you serve it the more your come under its control. You find that your idol requires more and more sacrifice for fewer results. “An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula” (Lewis). You keep “enlarging the very void you’re trying to fill” (Plantinga). This bondage leads to intense frustration, anger, pain, a sense of meaninglessness, as well as awful consequences in your own life. Yet, even though life is unraveling, pride often keeps people going: “I will make this work!”

Keller points out that because idolatry is built on lies, our idols generate “delusional fields” in which our thinking and reasoning becomes deeply distorted and detached (to varying degrees) from reality. Idolatry leads us to engage in all kinds of rationalizations, willful blindness, and avoiding/tampering with evidence.

In the end your life becomes a deeply distorted charicature of real human life as it was created to be lived. You always resemble what you worship (Jerram Barrs). If you spend your life worshipping work you’re “all business.” If you spend your life worshipping sex you wind up a “dirty old man, a perv.” Someone who lives for money is a “miser.” Idols turn us, literally, into a joke. But idols don’t only destroy us; they destroy the ones we love, our relationships; and depending on which idols we choose to serve, they can destroy our health, our finances, our careers, our minds, our emotions, our will.

Idols lie, curse and kill.

Idolatry is the sin beneath all our other sins.

Idolatry breaks the first commandment (have no other gods before me) and the greatest commandment (love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength); and breaking these central commands leads us to break others.

Finally, idolatry breaks our hearts and the heart of God who made us for himself.

Changing Idol-Sets.

Idols are obviously destructive and many people become aware of this during the course of their lives, especially when some catastrophe hits as a result of idolatry. For example, a sex or substance addict eventually gets fired and ends up bankrupt and divorced. He is tasting the bitter fruits of his sin. He may see that his idolatry or addiction is ruining his life and may attempt to ‘turn over a new leaf’ and change. However, it is very common for a person in this situation merely to choose another set of idols for which to live. The idolater may exchange his alcohol/comfort idols for religion/control idols (his ‘bad’ idols for ‘good’ ones). The reverse often happens as well: the religious idolater experiences some tragedy and embraces sex or substance idols for the comfort and escape they offer. (In The Simpsons’ Movie, when the town panics everyone in the church runs into the bar and everyone in the bar runs into church!). This is essentially what you see the younger brother and older brother doing in the parable in Luke 15. The younger brother, presumably, has been living at home working for dad, doing the right thing. He’s doing his religious/relational duty. He then punts this relationship and becomes the rebellious prodigal. His return causes the righteous older brother to rebel against the father, leave the house, humiliate his dad, makes insulting demands, just like the younger brother had done.

Another way to put this: there’s something like a “righteous” vs. “rebellious” or “legalism” vs “license” dialectic movement to our sin. We tend to go from one pole to the other, but all in the mode of idolatry and alienation from God. In the south it’s very common to go from one pole to the other throughout life: growing up you’re religious, during the teenage/college years you’re rebellious, during early adulthood you’re religious again, during mid-life you’re rebellious, and the last phase is often religious. The tragedy is that so many do not truly ever repent of their idolatry and turn from their religion/rebellion idols to worship and serve the true God.

Of course, it’s possible and quite common for these two different idol sets to co-exist in someone’s life at the same time; for us to be “righteous/legalistic” in one area of life (our public, church life) and “rebellious” in another area of life (our private life, our sex life, etc). This produces the “double-life syndrome,” which is especially common among church pastors and leaders.

Notes on the Nature of Sin, Part Two

2009-01-30T08:41:00.000-08:00

Idolatry, Idols and Idol-Clusters.

In our proud unbelief and self-trust we turn away from a worship-relationship with God. But, when we stop worshipping God as God, we necessarily worship something in his place; we adopt god-substitutes. The first thing we worship in God’s place, the first god-substitute we choose, is ourselves. In our unbelieving state we dream of being god (Gen. 3). In other words, we not only rebel against God, we seek to usurp his throne and take his place. This is the first dimension of idolatry produced by the root-complex of sin: the idolatry of self rooted in our desire to be god.

Ezekiel 28.1-3:

1The word of the LORD came to me: 2"Son of man, say tothe prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord GOD: "Because your heart is proud, andyou have said, 'I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas, yetyou are but a man, and no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god…"

We all seek to make ourselves gods in certain ways; most fundamentally, we aspire to transcend human limitations and secure God’s glory, his “godness” or transcendence. Keller suggests that there are four primary aspects of God’s transcendent glory that we strive to secure in our pursuit to be gods: comfort, approval, control, and power.

Comfort: pleasure, freedom, lack of care/stress, rest, play/fun.

Approval: affirmation, love, acceptance, intimacy, beauty, relationship.

“Glory” Control: order, security, certainty, discipline

Power: success, winning, influence, responsibility.

These are the self-oriented “heart idols” that generate all other sin in our lives.

In order to attain one or more of these ultimate ‘glory’-goals, we go on to partner with immanent idols (Keyes): some aspect of creation that we think will give us what we’re after (Jer. 2.10-13, Romans 1.18-25). It’s important to see that we always employ our immanent idols in the service of our ultimate, transcendent idols. For example, we use sex (an immanent idol) to gain god-like comfort; or we use strict religious performance to gain god-like approval from others; or we accumulate massive wealth to attain god-like power.

Here is an expanded list (partly drawn from Keller) of other aspects of creation that we may worship as immanent idols: physical beauty, body/fitness, image/reputation, safety, work, sex, alcohol/drugs, success, art/creativity, sports, sleep, religion, possessions (car, clothes, house, watch, vacations, etc), morality, performance, other people (spouse, kids, parents, friends, boss), some group (church, guild, peers, club, the ‘inner ring,’ race, culture, city, family), suffering, politics/agendas, knowledge, expertise, technology, information, talents, intellect, emotions, etc.

Calvin said our hearts are idol factories. We really can worship just about anything. And the combination of immanent and transcendent idolatries are almost endless.

It’s possible to group immanent idols into idol sets or clusters. Broadly speaking, we see two primary idol sets or clusters in the Bible: idols of “religion/morality/duty/order” and idols of “rebellion/immorality/desire/freedom.” These produce, respectively, the “sins of moral/religious people” and the “sins of immoral/irreligious people” (Keller). See the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18), the Younger and Older Brother (Luke 15), Simon and the Prostitute (Luke 7), the 2 sides of the flesh in Gal. 3 and 5 (Gal. 3 is the flesh idolizing goodness, responsibility, tradition, duty, law, roles, work and Gal. 5 shows the flesh idolizing pleasure, immorality, freedom, sex, money), pagan type sins in Romans 1 and religious type sins in Romans 2. (Interestingly, these poles also align with the ancient Apollonian and Dionysian poles in Greek religion and the Gnostic and pagan categories one finds across various world religions and philosophies where either the immaterial/spirit/soul or the material/body is worshiped).

A friend of mine (David Jones) suggests that another pair of contemporary idol sets are idols of achievement (rule) and idols of belonging (relationship) and that each person and culture tends to gravitate to one or the other.

Notes on the Nature of Sin, Part One

2009-01-27T16:56:00.000-08:00

What follows below is something I wrote up for our elder training this past spring. It summarizes thoughts on the nature of sin that have slowly come together over the years. Alot of the ideas below are influenced by Sinclair Ferguson, Tim Keller, Richard Lovelace, Jack Miller, et al.

Notes on the Nature of Sin & Idolatry: Part One

Introduction: Sin is notoriously hard to define; in fact, some theologians say that since evil is by definition absurd, explanations of it will always be impossible. In any case, we can summarize Scriptural teaching on sin and one of its primary expressions, idolatry.

Towards a Definition of Sin.

One classic biblical definition of sin is to say that sin is breaking God’s law; or, as the WCF puts it, “sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of God’s law.” Sin always violates God’s moral standards that are communicated to us in his Word, witnessed to by the order of creation and human conscience. We break God’s moral law in thought, word, deed, in sins of omission and commission. But, while sin is never less than breaking God’s law, it is much more than this.

One way we can more deeply grasp sin is to understand that sin has an internal root that bears external fruit in our lives. External sins involve more obvious expressions of rebellion against God and his order: murder, adultery, verbal cruelty, preening self-righteousness. Such external sins are the fruit of more internal, root sins of the heart, mind and human personality. For example, the root sin of anger can produce, if unchecked, the fruit sin of murder. Therefore, if we’re going to understand sin we need to understand its root as much as is possible.

Sin, at its root, is the natural human disposition against God that is a blend of pride, unbelief and self-reliance. Lovelace, following Luther, argues that unbelief is logically primary: unbelief that God is good and good to me, and therefore unbelief that God’s word to me is reliable, true, trustworthy. (Or, to put it the opposite way, sinful unbelief is actually the belief that God is not good, trustworthy, or just – see Genesis 3.1-6. I discussed this more in a post a while back here). But note that already inherent in this unbelief are a host of other sins. Unbelief contains an inherent self-reliance or self-trust (Jer. 17.7-9): every time we disbelieve in God we are automatically believing in or ultimately trusting ourselves and our goodness, judgment, knowledge more than God’s. This, of course, is incredibly arrogant – thus, unbelief also partakes in the sin of pride. Perhaps these three parts of sin – unbelief, self-reliance and pride – are best thought of as perspectives on the heart of sin as it operates in fallen human beings.

Christmas '08

2008-12-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

Sources for Renewing Theology

2008-09-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

Maybe this is a shameless plug but the following list of sources didn't get put up with my original 'response' post in the discussion over at Common Grounds online. So here it is:

John Frame "Machen's Warrior Children"

John Frame Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought

Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine

Tim Keller, "How Shall We Then Live Together?" Essay on subscription available at: http://djchuang.googlepages.com/GAKeller.pdf

Tim Keller "The Cultures of the Presbyterian Church in America": available at: http://www.epcnewark.org/recread/TKeller_CultureofthePCA-rev.pdf

Tim Keller "Contextualizing Ministry: Wisdom or Compromise--Parts 1 & 2." Mp3 lectures available at http://www.covenantseminary.edu/resource/default.asp

Carl Trueman, The Claims of Truth: John Owen's Trinitarian Theology

Discussion about PCA Renewal

2008-09-16T18:45:00.001-07:00

Common Grounds Online is hosting a blog-discussion of the Conversation on the Denominational Renewal of the PCA held last year in St. Louis. Tim Keller and Ligon Duncan have already responded to Greg Thompson's address and each of the talks given at the conference will be discussed by different respondents. My talk on Renewing Theology will be taken up next week.

The site also links the mp3s of each of the talks.

The PCA Needs Marriage Counseling

2008-07-24T17:25:00.001-07:00

I have hesitated for some time now to comment on any particular controversial matters relating to my home denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, not only because I don't want to assume everyone's interest in such things, but also because I don't want to become part of the angry, almost entirely unhelpful ecclesial blogosphere that seems to bring out the worst in nearly all parties.

But: I think, talk, worry, pray, get upset about, etc., all of this stuff all the time (way too much) and maybe the few of you who read this and are invested in the PCA will engage me on what follows.

John Gottman is one of the premier marriage researchers in the country and his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work has been enormously helpful to me, not only in my own marriage but also in trying to help married folks in our church. Gottman's basic argument is that the heart of marriage is intimate friendship, commitment and the deep interpersonal unity that results. Through his research into nearly 4000 couples at his 'love lab' at the University of Washington, Gottman has identified a cluster of behaviors that are the true culprits in causing divorce and marital break-down. He calls these "the four horsemen of the apocalypse": criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. These actions over time produce 'negative sentiment override' in which everything the partner says or does (or has done) is interpreted in a negative manner.

The really important insight here is that these everyday patterns are the real sins that kill the heart of a marriage and produce the conditions of loneliness, pain, and physical/emotional distance in which adultery, abuse, desertion typically take place. Thus, the first step in repairing damaged marriages is to replace the four horsemen with good communication patterns. Then, the conflicts that have been handled poorly can actually be discussed in a fruitful way.

But there's more: once the four horsemen are cleared out of the way, Gottman has specific advice on handling areas of conflict and disagreement within a marriage. He says that most big, lasting areas of disagreement between couples are rooted in deep value differences that are themselves tied into each person's past experience. In this situation, the only way to move forward is for each person to listen to the other as they talk in depth about why they hold the values the do. Gottman says that if this kind of safe space can be created for honest discussion and sharing then the listening process can engender (at least) some measure of mutual understanding and empathy for the value difference in the other. Finally, with the four horsemen replaced by understanding, the couple can begin to negotiate their different approaches to issues and find ways forward that satisfy to some degree their differing values.

What does this have to do with the PCA?

The different parties in the PCA are like married partners whose ecclesial marriage relationship has been deeply damaged by the presence of "the four horsemen": criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. (Actually, if we add incessant gossip and slander then that makes six, but who's counting). While sin is certainly enough to produce these kinds of destructive behaviors in all of us, they often rage during church conflicts where both sides see the issues very differently. (The fact that our system of polity is court-based and legal in nature only makes adversarial stances and strategies all too easy). I am suggesting that, as may be obvious, our disagreements are rooted in different theological or ecclesial values held by the parties in question. Much of the time, even in more constructive dialogue, all the conversation partners attempt to do is clarify their points of agreement and disagreement, while offering a critique of the other's position; while this kind of 'charitable debate' format can be helpful, Gottman's insight into the dynamics of crumbling marriages suggests that it's not enough.

The differing parties within the PCA need marriage counseling along the lines Gottman suggests. First, safe spaces must be created for conversation in which each 'side' can honestly describe the ecclesial values they hold dear and, more importantly, why they do so. There must be a commitment first to understanding the other and why they believe the way they do. Such an exercise, undertaken in reliance on the Holy Spirit and a posture of humility, prayer, and repentance, could actually produce genuine empathy instead of angry debates and dismissals. Presumably, these kinds of conversations would surely bring to light much relational sin of which to repent. Perhaps new relationships and even friendships would emerge with the strength to withstand further discussion. If such reconciliation occurred between the polarized PCA parties, fruitful negotiations could then go forward and (maybe) creative solutions be found to many of the issues that vex us.

Of course, at the end of all this, deep differences - even at the level of values and vision - would probably still exist (as they continue to exist in most marriages!); but the process would leave the partners in a different place than where they began. And that couldn't but be a good thing.

Summer Nuttiness

2008-07-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

Wow.

The summer has, as I anticipated, been a little crazy, trying to make it to a couple of different training events (RUF, RYM) as well as taking vacation and planning for the fall at Redeemer. Oh, and then there was summer baseball during May and June for Isaac, Lucy, and Nathan (that's him on the left).

I've gotten a little reading done that's been helpful. The three most important things are: The Churching of America, by Stark and Finke; Christ and Culture Revisited, by D. A. Carson; and Searching for a Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism, by Muether and D. G. Hart. The three were interesting to read together because both Churching and Searching advance ideas about why Presbyterian (Searching) and Methodist (Churching) denominations declined in America. Carson is especially helpful on pointing out the limitations of Nieburh's critique and suggesting that the ideal relationship between Christ (or the church) and any particular culture can only be decided in specific contexts.

More to come. Just thought I'd throw up this brief update.

Augustine on Christian Motivation

2008-03-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

During seminary I was introduced to the ethical debate within the Reformed tradition about the biblical motivation for obedience. Boiling it down, some argue that love born of faith is the only proper motive; others argue that different motives, such as fear, are also acceptable.

Here's Augustine on the subject. He's describing the legalistic obedience of some of the Israelites under the old covenant.

"...[they] received the law. They did not observe what is in the decalogue. And any who did comply did so out of fear of punishment, not out of love of justice. They were carrying the harp, but they weren't singing. If you are singing, it's enjoyable; if you are fearing, it's burdensome. That's why the old man either doesn't do it [obey] or does it out of fear, not out of love of holiness, not out of delight in chastity, not out of the calmness of charity, but out of fear. It's because he is the old man, and the old man can sing the old song but not the new one. In order to sing the new song he must become the new man.... If you do it [obey] out of love, you are singing the new song. If you do it out of fear but do it all the same you are indeed carrying the harp but you are not yet singing.... Anyone who is still singing the old song has not yet come to an agreement with his adversary [God and his Word]. He is afraid of God coming and condemning him. Chastity has no delights for him yet, justice has no delights for him yet, but it is because he is in dread of God's judgment that he abstains from such deeds. He does not condemn that actual lust that is seething inside him. He does not yet take delight in what is good. He does not yet find there the pleasant inspiration to sing the new song, but out of his old habits he is still fearing punishments. (From "Sermon 9" in Essential Sermons, trans. Edmund Hill, 32-33).

What struck me in this passage is its similarity to the argumentation in the Reformed tradition used by those who assert that love for God is the only proper motivation for obedience. Even the use of the image of singing a new song to represent obedience out of love for God is used by Jack Miller in some of his "sonship" teaching. And the argument that obedience out of fear is actually a form of disobedience (because the person does not yet delight in the law nor hate his sin) is common too.

Imaginary Career by Rilke

2008-03-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

At first a childhood, limitless and free

of any goals. Ah sweet unconsciousness.

Then sudden terror, schoolrooms, slavery,

the plunge into temptation and deep loss.

Defiance. The child bent becomes the bender,

inflicts on others what he once went through.

Loved, feared, rescuer, wrestler, victor,

he takes his vengeance, blow by blow.

And now in vast, cold, empty space, alone.

Yet hidden deep within the grown up heart,

a longing for the first world, the ancient one...

Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.

God doesn't save idiots, Eli.

2008-01-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

There Will Be Blood is an instant American classic, simply a masterpiece on every level. Some critics are calling Day-Lewis' performance one of the greatest in film history. When I left the theater the other night I wondered "is this what it felt like to walk out of The Godfather?" The movie itself deals with so many American themes at the same time and reminds you (without being repetitious) of great characters, people, novels, and other epic movies from the past. It felt like I didn't see a movie but a great American novel that was made as a film instead of written as a book.

(Warning: massive spoilers ahead).

There's alot of controversy about the ending which is the only thing about the movie that even had me wondering if it 100% worked. Upon more reflection I think it does, in a sort of Flannery O'Connorish way. Some critics are saying the whole last 1920s part of the movie is off and that's nuts to me. I always thought Daniel would kill Eli; they were playing the same game from different sides. I expected the oil/blood connection to be made explicitly, even that Daniel would baptize himself with Eli's blood in the last shot of the movie - maybe too over the top? The whole last segment is a brilliant portrayal of what our idols do to us: they turn us into charicatures of ourselves and our appetites. Daniel becomes greed incarnate, literally 'beating the competition' to death. He's the ultimate consumer capitalist, sucking the life/oil/blood out of Eli and everyone in his life.

Something none of the critics I've read comment on is the theme of father-son abandonment that occurs here as in PTA's other work. This is where Day-Lewis' portrayal (and PTA's writing) of Daniel's character is so careful; for Plainview is far from a monster during the first 2/3 of the film. He takes the orphaned boy in during the first act, and even though his relationship with "H.W." is far from ideal, he does evidence genuine affection for the boy which becomes apparent when H.W. is hurt by the gusher and when Daniel weeps after leaving him on the train. Of course, H.W. is only the latest in a string of abandoned sons in PTA's films. When Daniel is forced by Eli to repeatedly scream "I've abandoned my son!" it reminded me of Frank T. J. Mackey's breakdown at his dying father's bedside "I hate you, don't leave me!"

Final thought: PTA is a generation-X film-maker and even though There Will Be Blood is (almost) universally recognized right now as an instant classic, I wonder if it may be resisted by some of the older school film critics and/or the Academy Awards (for everything but Best Actor which almost has to go to Day-Lewis). I thought about this after reading Roger Ebert's semi-critical review where he said point-blank that he considered No Country for Old Men a perfect movie and that There Will Be Blood is not perfect. As I posted about last month, No Country blew me away and I do think it is perfect technically-speaking; but There Will Be Blood not only seeks to accomplish more than No Country does thematically, it does so with a few unorthodox twists - the score by Johnny Greenwood, the over-the-top ending. It's these breaks with classic film-making tradition that mar There Will Be Blood in Ebert's (and other critics') eyes and, at the same time, make it even more powerful to me, someone of PTA's generation. And I guess that's what fascinates me so much about PTA and this movie: he is telling a classic story, even a classic American story, in a pretty straight-forward way for the most part and doing it with stunning excellence. Yet, even in the midst of working within the epic film tradition, he updates it, not only in terms of style (score, ending, etc) but also in terms of theme (consumerism, father abandonment).

2007 Finds

2007-12-27T17:27:00.000-08:00

You'll get no 'best of' nor 'top ten' lists from me; that's way too much pressure. In the few posts I've been able to manage I've already pointed out a few favorite things from this year. So here's a couple of things I left out that I ran across this year.

Poet Franz Wright

I don't recall now how I ran across this name but I ended up getting Walking to Martha's Vineyard (which won the Pulitzer Prize) and was blown away. I haven't read alot of poetry since college, though I do enjoy dipping back into a few of the modernists now and then. But you don't need a class to understand Wright; this is sparse, strong, direct and raw language and his topics range through addiction, abandonment, faith, spiritual yearning, gratitude. Upon finishing Walking I immediately ordered and read God's Silence and The Beforelife, both excellent. (Then, in haste, I ordered both Earlier Poems and Ill Lit before realizing that each is a collection of Wright's earlier work and that the books overlap quit a bit - though Ill Lit has some translations by Wright that are amazing and which aren't in Earlier Poems). I'm enjoying Wright tremendously and find myself returning to certain poems again and again; these pieces will be, I sense, lifelong companions. I recommend starting with Walking to Martha's Vineyard.

Finally, some good overviews of developmental psychology.

Being a dad has sparked my interest in child and developmental psychology and for a long time I searched and asked around for a readable overview, to no avail; everything was either too "boiled down" or too specialized. But this past year I've found a few good resources that have been very helpful in trying to understand my own children and what they're going through as they grow up:

David Elkind, The Hurried Child, chapter six "Growing Up Slowly." This is the best short overview of child development I've found.

Chap Clark, Hurt and Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a Myspace World, both of which focus on adolescent development; very helpful description of early, mid-, and late adolescence.

Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society and Identity and the Life Cycle. From what I can gather Erikson is sort of the father of developmental psychology and his eight stages were enormously influential on succeeding generations of theorists.

This American Life podcast.

I've known I would like this if I ever got into it and the free podcast has been the perfect opportunity to do just that; I still can't believe these things are free. It seems that about every third or fourth show simply kills me. A few favorites so far: #317 Unconditional Love, #69 Dreamhouse, #188 Kid Logic, and #322 Shouting Across the Divide.

No Country for Old Men

2007-12-06T14:29:00.000-08:00

It's rare for things to come together as beautifully as they do in this film.

Subjectively speaking, you have the pairing of two of my favorite artists: Cormac McCarthy and Joel and Ethan Coen - one of the greatest living writers paired with the Coens, one of the greatest film-making teams around. This is a match made in heaven; I'm not sure I've ever seen an interpretation of a novel as fitting and wise as this one. The Coens faithfully translate McCarthy to the screen: his land-scapes, narrative pace, the rural characters and their speech. They avoid trying to do the impossible, which is to completely reproduce the longer speeches of the Sheriff in the book. The casting is perfect in the cases of Moss and Sheriff Bell; but Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh is a visual incarnation of the kind of mythic evil that shows up so often in McCarthy's fiction.

The ending is stunning; again, captures McCarthy about perfectly.

Go see it.

(Warning: it is violent).

Coming up for air

2007-11-20T13:36:00.000-08:00

So would you guess that we just had a fourth child?

Irene's age reflects the nearly 6 week hiatus I've taken from this blog.

Here's a few pics from a day recently when my mom came to visit and an old friend (John Harper) just happened to be in town. Another friend showed up bearing a mullet wig (don't ask) and the result was the picture here of my son Isaac sporting the wig during a game of street football. (Note that this wig was also referred to as a "meth" wig). You'll also see me in this photo proving that (as some onlookers were heard to say) "he's still got it."

Irene Fairley Jones

2007-10-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

Born October 7th at 6:15 a.m.
6 lbs, 12 oz.
Momma and baby are doing great.

Augustine and Holistic Witness

2007-10-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

It seems to be generally acknowledged now by Christian observers of postmodern culture that old "presentation style" evangelism and rationalistic apologetic approaches are largely ineffective. Tim Keller, Bill Edgar, Lesslie Newbigin, and others have all helped articulate a holistic approach to Christian witness to our age. Keller especially has described coming to faith as a long-term process in which various "mini-decisions" are made regarding the plausibility, relevance, credibility, content of Christianity.

So it was remarkable to run across the following section of Augustine's Confessions where he describes his own holistic, multi-stage journey towards embracing Christ.

Here he describes the impression made upon him by Ambrose: "That man of God received me in fatherly fashion, and as an exemplary bishop he welcomed my pilgrimage. I began to love him, at first not as a teacher of the truth, which I utterly despaired of finding in your Church, but as a man who was kindly disposed toward me." As always, love is the greatest apologetic.

Augustine goes on to describe how he listened to Ambrose's preaching at first more out of interest in his rhetorical abilities than his Christian content. But, he found that the beauty of Ambrose's language carried the content of his message into his heart: "with the words, which I loved, there also entered into my mind the things themselves, to which I was indifferent. Nor was I able to separate them from one another, and when I opened up my heart to receive the eloquence with which he spoke, there likewise entered, although only by degrees, the truths that he spoke." Witness is not just a matter of truth, but also of beauty.

Next, Augustine clearly speaks of reaching a point where Christianity has become plausible to him: "I now judged that the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against the Manichean objectors, could be maintained without being ashamed of it." The gospel first had to become a real option for him before he could take it seriously.

Finally, Augustine, having come this far (and rejected Manicheism), decides to continue seeking the truth in the church, even though he has yet to grasp it fully: "I determined to continue as a catechumen in the Catholic Church, commended to me by my parents, until something certain would enlighten me, by which I might direct my course."

Help

2007-09-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

Finding God at Home

2007-09-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

I love used bookstores for the same reasons as alot of other people: the highly improbable hope that I will run across a signed, first edition of As I Lay Dying (or something similar) wedged between a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Book of Mormon.
This hasn't happened to me, at least not yet. Mostly, I scan the religion, philosophy, and psychology sections and then give half a glance at the fiction aisle on the way out the door. But every now and then I stumble upon something that meets some of the more realistic criteria for a good used-bookstore "find." In this case, it's a book that is: 1) cheap, 2) I've never heard of before, 3) looks like it could be great, and 4) actually turns out to be great once I take the plunge to buy and read it.

The recent used bookstore"find" in question is Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline by Ernest Boyer, Jr. Boyer trained under Henri Nouwen and writes out of the Roman Catholic tradition. His intent is to develop a theology of family life that pays particular attention to the mundane struggles that attend marriage, child-rearing, house-keeping, living together, passing through different familial seasons of life, etc. There's alot of great wisdom here about how to seek God's face in the midst of life at home; below are a few samples.

"In addition to courage, persistence, trust and forgiveness there is a fifth element of the sacrament of the care of others: the ability to balance the tension between holding on and letting go....Caring is holding...But caring is also letting go. It is releasing those we love to go in the direction they need to go and to develop in ways that may at times be perplexing to us their husbands, wives, parents, or friends, but ways essential to their growth. The difficulty comes in finding ways to do both of these, both holding and letting go, within the same relationship...The general movement of parenthood is from holding - a holding that is almost constant in the early days - to letting go, although each stage of raising children involves a little of each....[This process of holding and letting go] involves for the child a long pattern of stepping out and returning, stepping out and returning, each time going further and further, developing more and more, always in ways that ask the parent to let go, then hold, let go, then hold - but each time to let go a bit more fully than before."

"We are reluctant to see how much God loves us not out of humility, but out of pride. Each of us secretly wants to be perfect. many of us carefully avoid looking at those aspects of ourselves that seem to us to be less than perfect. But to really know God's love, those aspects must be acknowledged simply because they too are a part of what God loves."

"Christianity is the story of something that happened in the past that points to a better future through a life with God in the present."

Another cool feature of the book is that there is a prayer at the beginning of each chapter, most of which are perfect for harried parents: "Dear God, whose name is Love, who in love and with love formed all that is, teach me to see the great worth of those small, everyday tasks involved in the care of others. Teach me to see them for what they are: re-enactments of the greatest truth there is, the truth of your unfailing care for me and for all that is."

Famous Waits Interview

2007-09-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

Here.

Bird

2007-09-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

Someone once asked me, with all seriousness, "are you a redneck?"
I suppose this post answers that question.
Isaac's first kill.

A Collision Course with Justice

2007-08-21T08:24:00.001-07:00

I feel that I've been on a collision course with justice for a while now. Coming out of the evangelical tradition, the "continuing" Reformed tradition in the twentieth century, and (in some sense) the southern Presbyterian tradition, the biblical teaching on the ethics of justice is not a strong suit for me - this despite the fact that my own family history is heavily implicated in the racial issues that define the white southern experience. In short, I knew the Bible talked about justice but I didn't know much about what it said and what it meant for me, my life and vocation.

All that began to change last spring when I read two books which broke through my relative indifference: Mountains Beyond Mountains and Until Justice and Peace Embrace. The former, by Tracy Kidder, tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health and advocate for health care among the poor (especially in Haiti). Until Justice is the theory, the theology, that undergirds Farmer's vision; it's a translation of the justice tradition into Reformed theological and philosophical categories by one of the best thinkers around, Nicholas Wolterstorff.

The next stage of the collision just happened; I bought Gary Haugen's Good News About Injustice last Friday and had finished it by Saturday night. This time the theology of justice and the story of its incarnation are woven together as Haugen tells about his U. N. mission to Rwanda to investigate the genocide and how it led him to found International Justice Mission in 1994.

Finally, I read the introduction and first essay in Charles Marsh's The Beloved Community about MLK in Montgomery. I was struck by his youth (25 years old!), his spiritual transformation, and, of course, his moral courage. A couple of beautiful stories: after his house was bombed, with his wife and baby inside, King showed up and single-handedly calmed and dispersed the angry crowd, exhorting them to "love their enemies." And, after their boycott victory, King and his followers instructed the blacks of Montgomery on how to board the buses with dignity, respect, and a hand towards reconciliation with their white oppressors.

The biblical theology of justice presented by Haugen and Wolterstorff, together with the stories of its application told by Haugen, Kidder, and Marsh, offer a compelling vision for the pursuit of justice in today's world. Perhaps these books will serve to awaken other "sleepy Christians" to God's call to "seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, and plead the widow's cause" (Is. 1.17).

No Country for Old Men

2007-08-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

This is an old review I wrote about Cormac McCarthy's 2005 book No Country for Old Men. I'm posting it because since this McCarthy has published two more books, The Road and the play The Sunset Limited, both of which seem to support my main thesis below. (Plus, No Country for Old Men is being made into a movie by my faves the Coen brothers).

Cormac's latest

Despite being spoofed by Wes Anderson in The Royal Tennenbaums, Cormac McCarthy is still one of my favorite contemporary novelists. I just finished his latest, No Country for Old Men. The pace is similar to that of Blood Meridian, and No Country has already been compared to it in terms of its violence. (By the way, the violence of this latest book doesn't come close to Blood Meridian, which is still, by far, the most violent book I've ever read). The body count is high, and also like Blood Meridian, much of the carnage is caused by a mysterious, nearly supernatural figure of evil, Anton Chigurh. These men haunt McCarthy's other novels, including Outer Dark, Child of God and The Border Trilogy, and are the subject of most of the metaphysical speculation that takes place among the characters.

The worldview presented in McCarthy's books seems to be similar to some ancient form of gnosticism. (Modern self-described gnostic Harold Bloom discusses this in his introductory essay to Blood Meridian included in the Library of America edition). But it's a gnosticism that posits evil, not good, as the primary supernatural reality. History and human beings are strictly determined, infected with evil from the beginning and fated for a life of suffering, conflict and (of course) violence. "You think people was meaner then than they are now? the deputy said. The old man was looking out at the flooded town. No, he said. I don't. I think people are the same from the day God first made one" (Child of God, 168). The bleak nihilism that results can be seen most clearly in Blood Meridian: "You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow" (19). The book's Judge Holden is the most philosophically articulate of McCarthy's characters: he describes the true nature of the world as "a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning" (245). He sees war as "the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god" (249). Holden at times sounds like the wild west's answer to Nietzsche: "Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak" (250). And: "Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance" (331).

On the surface No Country for Old Men seems to mark something of a change for McCarthy. The principle "old man" in the story, Sheriff Bell, establishes a strong moral tone throughout the book in his italicized soliloquies included at the start of the chapters. In these sections Bell laments the moral state of contemporary America with its mindless violence and concludes that society has grown worse, evil more rampant. The principle cause of his concern is the string of murders committed by Chigurh, who appears as the perfect killing machine. Chigurh spouts a similar brand of nihilism as the other villains in McCarthy's ouvre. But this time his perspective is answered at much greater length by Bell's ruminations.

Bell's moralism has been ridiculed by a New York Times reviewer as "red-state" ruminations that may indicate McCarthy's descent into a kind of fundamentalist stupor in his old age. Not only is this line of thinking completely asinine, it misses the point of Bell's sections which conform to a pattern present throughout McCarthy's fiction. All of his primary villains have moralist counter-parts who, to wildly varying degrees, try to resist the total domination of evil but always to no avail. Think of The Kid and the ex-priest in Blood Meridian, and the young cowboy protagonists in The Border Triology. Though these men often speak with a sense of moral hope, they are always defeated in the end; more precisely, the majority of them end up on the slab.

Sheriff Bell is no different from these earlier good characters, except that he escapes death by abandoning his pursuit of Chigurh. However, this "defeat" is "more bitter to him than death" (306) because he must live with his moral failure, all the while knowing that Chigurh is still at large. In this aftermath Bell confesses in total despair: "I don't have no answer to take heart from" (303). He is, like the rest of the old people he discusses throughout the book, completely lost and adrift in a world plagued by unfathomable and invincible evil.

The Primacy of Legalism

2007-08-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

"Satan is a legalist."

Those words come from Sinclair Ferguson during one of his lectures on the "Marrow Controversy" at a pastors' conference many years ago (available here). Ferguson's three lectures - on the free offer of the gospel, the nature of legalism, and the nature of antinomianism - have had a seminal impact on my thinking since I first heard them about 8 years ago, shortly after I started work as a pastor.

One of the many insights Ferguson shares (one also shared by the Marrow Men and their followers) is that an aspect of the essence of sin is legalism. The argument runs like this: God created us for union and communion with him by faith, which is trust in God's goodness. At the heart of sin, therefore, is unbelief in God's goodness: believing that he cannot be trusted to love and take care of me, keep his promises, etc. This is the dynamic driving the first temptation and sin in Genesis 3 and all subsequent sin.

Ferguson argues that this unbelief in God's goodness drives all of us into a legalistic stance with God (and/or the false gods which we inevitably choose to serve in his place) where we seek to leverage the divine with our rules and rituals in order to get what we fear God isn't good enough to give us. Since we don't trust God to provide for us, we have to take care of ourselves through manipulating him.

This legalism rooted in unbelief is the basic posture of the human heart in sin. Ferguson goes on to point out that many theologians accept this account up to a point but then posit that the sinner eventually throws off his legalism and rebels against the divine, rejecting all religious rule-keeping and ritual, in order to pursue an autonomous antinomianism. Certainly this dialectic between legalistic religion and non-legalistic irreligion is what appears to happen. But, Ferguson says, the fundamental posture of the heart towards God has not really changed in antinomianism: the primal distrust of God is still there and the "legal frame" continues to serve as the lens through which the sinner sees God. In antinomian license the sinner is merely expressing the same unbelief in a different way, choosing another strategy to try to get what he wants. The antinomian is a frustrated legalist, still desperately trying to escape the bondage of his distorted view of God.

Thus, Satan, the ultimate antinomian, is at heart a legalist.

Much like Keller does with the concept of idolatry, Ferguson shows that the legal heart bound in unbelief drives both religion and irreligion, pursuits of righteousness and rebellion, legalism and license.

All sin is a form of legalism.

Tim Keller's - and the CCEF crowd's - work on idolatry, mentioned above, fits in with this account by Ferguson. They point out that all sin is idolatry; and that's true. Maybe we could say it this way: all sin is idolatrous legalism (or legalistic idolatry!) driven by a heart that no longer believes in God's goodness. Satan is a legalistic idol-broker to a deluded human race. (Jack Miller, Richard Lovelace, Ferguson, and Keller have all done wonderful work preaching, teaching and applying these truths in books, articles, sermons, their ministries, etc).

I bring up this "sin as legalism" idea for a couple reasons.

One has to do with the fine posts over at Sean Lucas' blog on "Cheese, Fundamentalism, and Antithesis." Sean is interacting with some of the Reformation 21 folks about how the "antithesis" theme in Reformed theology influences our Christ/culture theory and our evaluations of movements within fundamentalism, broader evangelicalism, and the Reformed world (something I'd like to post on soon). Part of the follow-up discussion occurs between ex-fundamentalists (in the socio-cultural sense), some who appreciate aspects of their fundamentalist experience and others who see it as deeply destructive. But I wonder if part of the "balanced" evaluation of both the positives and negatives of fundamentalism is rooted in a tendency to see legalism and license as equal, opposite errors; for if Ferguson's (and Keller's, et al) account is right, they're not. We should, like Jesus in Luke 15, understand legalism as the primary problem and license as just one of its expressions. Thus, I side with the more critical evaluations of fundamentalist institutions with a history of legalism because of Ferguson's account above: legalism, especially in its orthodox Christian form, is one of the primary evils in our world, which literally wrecks people and the church. Those of us in the pastorate know how long its effects can linger in the consciences and hearts of its victims; we know how many "younger brothers" are driven secretly by a legal frame. Thus, legalism can't be described as one error among many, it must be seen (along with idolatry and pride) as a primary enemy of the gospel and the church and given no quarter.

Ferguson's account of legalism also has ramifications for the whole "new perspective on Paul" debate. There are several weaknesses in the new perspective that have been pointed out by many: weak historical-theological scholarship, a neglect of detailed discussion of the ordo salutis, etc. But my main problem with the new perspective is it's apparent lack of pastoral and biblical attention to the nature of sin generally, and legalism specifically. Of course, these scholars are at pains to correct the long-standing popular charicature of 1st century Judaism as filled with blatant soteriological Pelagians; point taken. But legalism, at least among theologians and scholars of Scripture, is rarely that obvious; and that's true whether we're talking about the 1st century or the 21st. In fact, what the Marrow Controversy and its lessons teach us is that one's creedal theology may be entirely biblical in its understanding of grace - and, at the very same time, our hearts still be dominated by legalism. For legalism is not a historical-theological error that comes and goes, but the repetition of the oldest lie there is: the fundamental lie about God's goodness that comes as naturally to us as breathing and that never fully leaves us, despite the substantial freedom we have from it in the gospel. It's this legalism that Jesus and Paul, Luther and Calvin, were dealing with in their day and that we must deal with ruthlessly in ours.

Arcade Fire & Morrissey

2007-08-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

Two good articles over at The Believer.
One is a review of The Arcade Fire's first tour.
The other is a longer essay examining the phenomena of Morrissey's iconic status among his fan base, and, more specifically, his popularity among American Latinos. A couple of classic Smiths legends are repeated here, like the one about a crazed fan who took over a radio station and forced the DJ (at gunpoint) to play nothing but The Smiths for hours.

Summer of Deliverance

2007-08-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

I just finished Summer of Deliverance, by Christopher Dickey about his relationship with his famous poet-novelist father, James Dickey. Although I've never read any James Dickey (I did see the movie Deliverance) I've heard stories about him from my step-father who was a student of his at USC. I knew that the elder Dickey was quite a character and had read a couple of positive reviews of this book by his son.
The book is not a biography of either man; it's a semi-autobiography of a relationship between father and son written from the son's perspective. The story told is far from rosy; James Dickey was a dedicated narcissist, more devoted to his artistic craft and the persona that arose from his success than to his family. He was a serial adulterer, a mean drunk, a habitual liar and (at least in the opinions of many literary critics) a genius. The art world only read the poetry and his one great novel; Dickey's family had to live with the rest. Thus, Summer of Deliverance speaks powerfully to the question of the relationship between art, the artist's character and relationships. It's been far too easy for critics and readers to dismiss the destructive personal lives of many great artists as part of some necessary price they paid to make their work. Woody Allen quotes Oscar Wilde (?) to the effect that "Ode to a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies." But when one of the old ladies in question is your mother - as it was in Christopher Dickey's case - the statement, and the lifestyle it's intended to defend, is revealed as simply cruel.
What's most remarkable about Summer of Deliverance, however, isn't the pain of James Dickey's family life; it's the story of a redemption long sought and finally experienced by the father and son in their relationship. Christopher Dickey has given a gift to all fathers, sons, and artists in this wise, moving book.

Open

2007-08-04T20:51:00.000-07:00

Well I'm biting the bullet and starting this, against the swarm of urges to qualify everything to death, to fend off all possible judgments. But there's alot of wisdom in not taking yourself too seriously, although I realize that blogs can be an exercise in precisely the opposite. Public narcissism ain't pretty. But neither is hiding in self-conscious fear or a perfectionism that demands everything be 'just so.'

So we'll see what happens.

I'd like to post on whatever comes to mind, but will probably discuss theology, parenting, kids, psychology, music, movies, books, pastoring, church life. I may post sermons, papers, reviews and stuff like that too.
Peace.