Fragments and Links 7

From time to time I group random quotes and brief reflections (generally on television and music) in a single post…like this one. It got longish. Skimming is recommended.

Quotes

"I am obsolete. This must be what old people feel like…and blockbuster." –Topher - Dollhouse

“If Favre hoists the Lombardi trophy, Packers fans are going to react like someone just bought them a treadmill: abject fear, horror and confusion.” -Bill Simmons

“Today, a real naked woman is just bad porn.” – Matt Chandler[1]

“It is far better to be industriously asleep than lazily awake.” -Spurgeon

“Far too many people, Christians included, are self-centered preoccupied with their own marital problems and their attempts to engineer solutions to them. A theology of marriage can help them achieve a God centered look at the larger situation of which their marriage constitutes a small, but by no means unimportant part of the whole.” -Geoffrey Brinuket - God and Marriage[2]

I think I know why I enjoy blogs. It is because I find people so fundamentally interesting. Not so much people like Tom Cruise, whose life I could never imagine or be inspired by, but regular people. Take Stacey from Louisville for instance. She included this line in her second annual blog post on white elephant gifts[3]: “For a few fleeting moments it's as if Santa is just asking to be depantsed in the name of universally lame gift giving.” I mean, seriously, who is this person and why is she so freeking interesting?

“Much modern study of literature has simply rejected the idea that we have access to the mind or intention of a writer. The road to hell is paved with authorial intention.”[4] NT Wright - The New Testament and the People of God (p55)

OK, that is hilarious. But, it turns out that NT has a very high view of the author as the arbiter of meaning: “It remains, at least in principal, possible to know an author’s basic intention, and to know that one knows it…The philosophical tricks by which authorial intention has been dismissed from the reckoning are in the last analysis no more impressive than the well-known mathematical trick which keeps the hare in permanent pursuit.[5]” p 58

I have been into Cursive lately: “My ego’s like my stomach, it keeps sh$#ing what I feed it” Cursive - Recluse - The Ugly Organ

“I have heard it said, Evangelicals are people who approve of Billy Ghram.” –the late James Boice It is with great difficulty that most of us try to define the word evangelical. Boice did not believe this definition was sufficient. But I find it hilarious in its pragmatic functionality.

‘When I was young they didn’t have enough to teach us so we had to learn Latin.’ -Dr Strong (My professor for Intro Ecology and Evolution)

I mentioned in a previous post that Dr Strong articulated (presumably in jest) an unconventional form of the teleological argument.[6] Well he did it again near the end of the class. He suggested that if you were looking for evidence of a benevolent meddler in the natural world, one might want to consider that the only reason most large marine mammals (whales and sea lions) still exist is because of ‘the discovery of standard oil just as the whale population was about to go extinct.’[7]

There is actually a lot going on here philosophically. NT Wright would say that a historical exegesis like this totally in line with Hebrew providential monotheism. Mark Knoll (author of ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind’) would argue that ‘methodological naturalism’ should be applied to history as much as it should be applied to biology. But I think it is interesting as a piece of advice (which is how I think it was offered). Prof Strong is essentially saying – “If you are going to try to make the case that there was a creative agent in life history then try to explain an actual instance of apparent benevolence in the realm of something I care about based on empirical data I can verify.”[8]

This quarter I am taking upper division ecology and have the venerable Art Shapiro (a Davis institution generally known as ‘the butterfly guy’), who I have heard described as looking as though he came in directly from morning chores on the farm (as well as far less flattering descriptions).[9] But he is one of the finest professors I have ever had. He thinks about science as narrative with characters and plot twists.[10] Plus, he THINKS about science, he doesn’t just do it. ‘The Butterfly Guy’ is one of the first science professors who seems to have actually given thought to the philosophy of science and is conversant with Popper and Khun. A few weeks ago, he sent out an e-mail that included this:

“If any of you are devout Christians wrestling with how to deal with evolution, you might like to read the Wikipedia article about Lack [11] . He wrestled with the problem throughout his career and even wrote a book about it.”

Providing Christian students with robust resources to help them negotiate the cognitive dissonance inherent in a field based on evolutionary theory not only demonstrates that he is one of the most reflective and best read scientists I have studied under, but, also, that he is one of the classiest.

Television

I gave up on Community after two episodes. [11.5] The characters seemed clichéd and the pacing seemed poor.[12] I simply could not vest in the romantic story lines because they had not been given enough time to develop to a reasonable level. But I was encouraged to take another look at it by a Michial Farmer's facebook status, and have come to esteem it as one of best new comedies in years. If I was going to recommend a prototypical episode, it would have to be episode 9: Debate 109, which centers around a debate regarding whether humans are fundamentally good or evil.[13]

Well, we knew it was coming. Dollhouse has come to an unceremonious though at least a complete end.[14] I don’t suppose there will be a Firefly like uprising or cult following. But there were some scenes and lines worth noting in light of my previous post:

"Brain science is all about hardare and software - there is no mystical in between." -Topher

I think the undisputed best scene was Topher talking to an imprint of Topher about his crush on Summer Glau’s character.

Incidentally, another odd role for Summer. She is falling into the strangest type cast of all time (socially awkward, genius, understated hottie, who you DO NOT want to mess with). In fact, after Firefly, Teminator, and Dollhouse I was beginning to thing xkcd was right suggesting that what we are seeing was just ‘Summer being Summer’ (in the same way that Denzel Washington just plays himself in every movie he is in –except his brilliant turn in Training Day- but we don’t mind because we like Denzel) until…



…there was an epic scene in Big Bang Theory[15] that consisted of 4 nerds trying to hit on Summer (playing her self) on an Amtrak between LA and SF. She played herself as a sweet, kind, socially adept (if self forgetful) ‘normal’ girl who was as accustomed to the disproportionate romantic overtures of nerds as one could expect her to be.

Then there was this quote which I cut from my relationships talk…but it was my final cut because I love it. “You shared one room for months and you never slept with her, you could have but you didn’t, if that’s not love…” Alpha[16]

With Dollhouse going the way of Firefly[17] another show is playing with the idea of the mind/soul/body distinction. Stargate Universe[18] has a device that allows people in distant universes to take over each other’s bodies. So, stranded explorers use the device to consensually trade bodies with earth based military personnel and then proceed to use the bodies to make conjugal visits with their spouses and lovers. I found this startling. Does that strike anyone else as weird? Is this infidelity by any of the three parties (the earth wife, the earth body or the occupying husband consciousness)?[19] The producers have even made an interesting visual decision by using the actor whose mind is being represented (for audience reference) rather than the actor that the other characters are supposedly seeing. So, SG Universe is taking a firm stand on ‘what part of you is the real you.’ Interestingly, it is a dualism that both a skeptical philosophy of mind and an orthodox Christian theology would probably reject.

Amanda and I blew through Lost Season 5 in about 2 weeks. We liked the season. Once a show sets and end date, it usually gets better (See Battelstar Galactica). But there were two details in this season that I suspect might fit David Swanson category of ‘signs of life’:

First, they used one of my Favorite Caravaggio’s in the context of a discussion of doubt. Now, the dialog wasn’t that great. But that painting…that painting almost gave it the gravity it lacked. Second, Lost is a show that has always been fascinated with books. It has been a running theme that one thing everyone brings on a plane with them is a book so it is the one thing that there seems to be an abundance of (though Sawyer seems to be the only one who took advantage of them). But in the Jacob episode it shows him reading Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge”.

This is particularly interesting given my friend JJ’s theory that the scene in which Ben Linus is deceived into killing Jacob (essentially for his hiddeness) is full of Biblical allusions – pushing the show into the realm of cosmic morality play.

Other

Nic and Alexi taught a series on Jonathan Edwards’ resolutions. I thought this was a fantastic idea for a series and I am almost positive that I will one day steal it. But in this one of the talks he cited a debate we have enjoyed from time to time. It goes something like this: Which thinker do you wish had another decade? So many of the great ones died young and at the heart of the debate was whether or not Keirkegaard was done.[20] But, two guys we agree on are:
1. Pascal
2. Jonathan Edwards

There has been a lot of backlash about the campaign finance Supreme Court decision. It boils down to an accusation of hypocrisy. Conservatives have been whining about activist judges for years, but now that they have a majority, they are legislating to their heart’s content. I am sympathetic to this argument[21]. But I am not sure it is right. Don’t get me wrong, I HATE this ruling. I think it is just about the worst thing that could happen to our country right now. But…I am not sure the ruling is wrong constitutionally. It seems to me that the definition of a non-activist court would be the ability to make a decision that the judges themselves hate but had to make. If a justice is constantly making decisions that they feel comfortable with, they are probably legislating.

I am really enjoying the work of Jon Forman. Switchfoot gets abused for being part of the explosion of bad Christian music in the 90’s and ‘naughties.[22] But here’s the thing. They weren’t part of the problem. I am embarrassed to admit I like Switchfoot because of the cultural baggage that is associated with them and the drivel that shows up on their Pandora channel…but it doesn’t change the fact that they have made some very good music over the last decade. That said, Jon Forman’s[23] solo work (which is stripped down, lyrically focused, and just him and his guitar) is gorgeous.


I generally boycott any site that revels in celebrity gossip. So when the Tiger stuff happened, there were a lot of links that I refused to click on. But I got some of it through sports sites…and have to admit, there is part of the story that intrigues me. I couldn’t articulate it clearly until I read this correspondence in a Bill Simmons mailbag:

Q: So I was at a bar with a friend of mine the other night and naturally talk turned to Tiger. He mentioned his "Genie in a Bottle Theory." If a genie asks a guy to make three wishes that she will make come true, what would the guy say? "I want $1 billion dollars, a swimsuit model wife and the chance to play golf every day." Tiger had all that and apparently it wasn't enough to make him happy. Now I'm just depressed.
--Lee, Washington, D.C.

The Tiger story is so intriguing because it makes the case for a principle that most of us know but few of us believe: that within reason, happiness is a function of character rather than circumstance. If appetites grow at the same pace as means, contentment remains elusive.

My last post focused on our time in youth ministry in Buffalo. But while I was scanning pictures, I found two that really captured Buffalo urban life, but didn’t really fit in the last post.

Mardi Gras on Allen Street.

Of the two years we lived downtown, the city shut down twice on account of snow. Once, part of the city got 72” of snow in 24 hours.

While I am showing pictures, we had a birthday party for our youngest. The theme was the hungry caterpillar. My wife made the cake from split bunt cakes. My friend John suggested that the best thing about the cake from a nerdy, quantitative perspective is that it is fully scalable. You can just add body segments as your guest list grows.

The Power and The Glory may be the best novel I have read not written by a tortured Russian.

This post was prepared while listening to Appeal to Reason by Rise Against

___________________
[1] Chandler was suggesting that porn has become the normative sexual experience relegating natural sexual enjoyment to a perceived sub-standard experience. In a marginally related story, Chandler was very recently diagnosed with a devastating and lethal brain cancer. This is the hardest I have taken the illness someone I don’t know, but he is standing up under it. Someone tells his story here.
[2] The implication that a relationship that is an end in itself can not bear the weight of significance placed upon it. I believe this.
[3] I linked to her first one a year ago or so…but if you haven’t read it, I can not recommend it highly enough.
[4] Wright goes on to assert that in rejecting the author as control pietism and deconstructionism become surprisingly difficult to distinguish. He goes on to quip "There are some strange bed fellows in the world of literary epistemology.”
[5] I loved this analogy since I encountered Zeno’s paradox in Jr High and was befuddled by it for nearly a decade. The answer, of course, is the very genesis of Calculus. But I think Wright’s analogy here is stunningly apt.
[6] Essentially, that most fixed carbon in the earth is too diffuse to be recovered economically. This is the only thing that keeps us from suffocating ourselves…potential evidence of a benevolent creator.
[7] Blubber lamps were the way most people illuminated their homes. The market for blubber pushed every population of blubber laden marine mammals to near extinction. Just before they were wiped out, however, oil was discovered in PA, and blubber lamps were obsolete within two years, allowing populations to rebound.
[8] OK, one final Dr Strong quote: “It is an immoral world out there. We didn’t need Darwin to tell us that.”
[9] I suspect that his disheveled appearance is partly studied eccentricity, partly intentionally ordered priorities, but mostly due to the fact that he spends about 300 days per year in the field.
[10] In one of our first discussions one of the students whined ‘does he always teach like that. It is as if he is telling a story.’ Most in the room nodded. This might be the ‘oldest’ thing I have ever said, but the Univeristy is a banquet most teenagers are just not hungry enough for. Second place for 'the oldest thing I have ever said': 'When I listened to rap the artists had social consciences. It was urban poetry on purpose.' Buy me a rocking chair and a half pint of curmudgeon juice.
[11] One of the giants of mid-twentieth century ecology, who became an Anglican in mid-life. [11.5] I was predisposed to dislike it for 2 reasons. I have never been a Chevy Chase guy and, I was sick one weekend and spent 3 days watching hulu in bed...during which I saw aproximately 300 bad commercials (actually 2 bad comercials repeated 150 times each) promoting the show.
[12] In fairness, I hold that the first two episodes were formulaic and poorly paced. I do not believe Jeff cared enough about Britta in the first two episodes for me to care about their relationship. But after eight episodes, as the characters broke out of their clichéd niches like the Hulk busting out of Banner’s optimistically restrictive every day cloths and, after countless flourishes of linguistic and comedic virtuosity, I actually care..a lot.
[13] The two episodes released since I wrote this paragraph have only strengthend the argument. I cannot remember laughing that hard or being so consitently surprised by a show in a long time. Unfortunately, the entire thing rests on the relationships and character development…so it might be better to get it on Netflix than try to pick it up in the middle on Hulu.
[14] Speaking of shows that came to an unceremonious end. Amanda and I finished ‘Pushing Daisies.’ We agreed that it was one of the finest television shows in years. Only Lost has enjoyed the same level of joint affection from us. Each episode was a piece of art. Anyway, as the final episode wound down, I was bummed that we were just going to be left hanging on so many story lines, until…they rattled through a rapid fire resolution of nearly every plot line in the last 90 seconds of the show.
[15] A show with a networky feel but that is among the most consistently entertaining visual media content out there now.
[16] Alen Tudyk’s Alpha stole the show every time he was on the screen. I particularly loved the exchange between him and Echo (both of which had been imprinted with multiple personalities)
“He’s 10X the man you are and you’re like 40 guys.” –Echo
“Get over it babies…love the ones your with.” –Alpha
[17] Though the latter, indisputably, was the greater loss.
[18] I am contemplating a post of the theology of the 10 season SG-1.
[19] Also, what about VD or pregnancy?
[20] You will not find a bigger Kierkegaard fan than me, but I argue that he was done.
[21] Full disclosure: I have been accused of being a liberal on this blog. That is fair in most senses. I lean liberal on most legislative issues. But I prefer conservative courts. I want constructionist judges. Uber-legislators destroy democracy. Fundamentally, this is a hermeneutics issue. I believe in the value of an adjudicating text…as long as it is allowed to adjudicate. But as soon as men and women speak with the authority of the text but not with its content, the system is undermined. (If you are sensing a not-so-subtle parallel to other aspects of my world view…it is intentional).
[22] I am still working on that 3 part post on Christian music…but unless it gets less bitter I’m not sure I am going to post it.
[23] Jon is the front man for Switchfoot.

Boys n the Hood: Random Memories from our Season in Urban Youth Ministry

On Tuesday, I am planning to tell the story of ‘the rib incident’ as my culminating illustration in a talk on the church in Antioch (Acts 11&13 – manuscript and MP3 should show up by midweek). ‘The rib incident’ is a piece of Gibson lore from our season in urban youth ministry at Refreshing Springs Church, on the edge of Buffalo’s east side. As I wrote up the story and waded through some pictures for the ppt I got sentimental and decided to share a series of random memories about the hugely influential years we spent leading a ghetto youth ministry.[1]

-First, some background. This is where I grew up:

-I was raised as a nice little pluralist and taught that all people were fundamentally the same and racism was bad. This was mostly a lie. (Except the ‘racism is bad’ part…racism is, in fact, bad. It is just far more pervasive than I ever dreamed, especially in my heart.) For someone raised like that, racism get worse before it gets better. I was raised to expect that the only difference between the black community and the white community was something as arbitrary as skin color and that if everyone would just wake up and get modern, ethnic tension would simply evaporate. Imagine my surprise that urban black culture was, on the whole, substantially different than my culture in ways I liked and in ways that I didn’t like. Imagine my surprise that interacting with black urban Christians revealed sin and brokenness in me that I had never seen hanging out with white rural kids and Geneseo college students. Imagine my surprise that I had something unique to offer in a predominately black church because of my cultural background. The prescription for racism and prejudice is not pretending differences do not broadly exist or to reject your culture as of no real value…it is to be quick to repent of self righteousness, quick to ‘consider others as better than yourself,’ and slow to judge intentions behind actions you do not understand.[2]

-After Calvin and Darleen (the youth leaders when we got there) moved on, the elders put us in charge of the youth ministry. There was an obvious co-leader for the women. Tanya, an electrical engineer[3], who was among one of the most faithful, kingdom possessed Christians we have met to this day.

(Amanda and Tanya 'singin the blues')

For me, there was not an obvious choice. I told the elders that I would do it, but my co-leader had to be black. The elders told me ‘We don’t usually consider that sort of thing, but in this case, we agree.’ So I got Phil. Whenever Phil is mentioned in our house, both Amanda and I just pause and smile. Phil had only recently started coming to the church and, may have only been a Christian on the order of weeks or months. But that was not the remarkable thing about Phil being assigned as my black co-leader. The remarkable thing was that he was really angry at African Americans. His father moved to Buffalo from Africa when he was young to get a PhD. It was the 70’s and Phil’s father decided that he wanted to live in solidarity with his black brothers, and moved to the ghetto. And Phil proceeded to get the crap kicked out of him every day for months, until his family moved to Hamburg (one of the whitest suburbs in the region) and Phil lived the rest of his school years and young adulthood as the only black person he associated with outside his family. Phil was whiter than I was.

He once told us a story about going to a wedding at one of the urban mega churches and said, “I walked in and looked around, and the only white person was the guy running the video camera, so, of course, I felt totally uncomfortable.”[4] It is hard to articulate the amount of affection that Amanda and I developed for Phil and Tanya. Phil played cello, watched French films and refused to own living room furniture in an act of intentional simplicity. When we joined him for a meal we would eat it on a blanket, like an indoor picnic. He told us once that if we wanted him to feel loved, we would stop by without calling first. This grated so deeply at my upbringing that I almost could not do it. But before long, it started to be fun. ‘Let’s drop in on Phil’ one of us would always say when we were in his part of town and he never failed to greet us as if he had been expecting the visit and looking forward to it for days.[5]

-Our youth ministry philosophy[6] was to build the events around a quality, pedagogically useful, fun activity and a quality, accessible, interactive Bible study. For the ‘game’ portion of the evenings I quickly tired of the standard youth mixer options. So I acquired a couple of books on team building exercises used by corporate trainers. The Bible studies were pretty good…but the games were EPIC (if I say so myself).

(yes, those are mousetraps on the floor)

-One night we got a new student. His reputation preceded him. He was a handful. He came in late and a complicated activity was already under way and several students were waiting their turn. He watched for a while and then said…’I want to go next.’ Maintaining my commitment to the rule of natural law I said, ‘You will have to wait your turn. There are at least three groups ahead of you.’ He looked straight through me. His eyes got wild. And he said, ‘You are just making me wait because I am black.’ I panicked. Was he right? I had been raised to believe that the race card was the trumpest of all trump cards. But then I looked back at him as seriously as I could and said, ‘Yes. Yes, it IS because you are black.’ And then I kind of paused and looked around and said, ‘Hold on, so is EVERYONE ELSE.’ He tensed, as if to strike, and then started to giggle and said, ‘Hey, that’s cool, I can wait.’ I never had a problem with him again. Once, when I asked him to help set up some chairs or something, he smirked playfully and said ‘It’s cause I’m black isn’t it’ and then did it.[7]

-Many of our favorite memories of Buffalo include ‘The Pearl Street.’ We would usually drop the last kid off by 10 and roll into our street parking by 10:30. We’d go up to our apartment, drop off our stuff, and then cross the street to Gabriel’s Gate. Gabriel’s was one of like 14 bars on our street, but for character, we have yet to see it’s equal. Besides the bronze angel with actual flaming torches (described in this poem) standing watch over the medieval bronze entrance and the full sized carousel horses adorning the interior, there were at least 5 wood burning fire places inside. Every Friday night, we would get a table by one of the fire places and Amanda would order ‘the Pearl Street’[8] and we would try to ‘one-up’ each other with ‘you will not believe what happened tonight’ stories (since the guys and girls met separately). I think there is a correlation between how hard kingdom work is and how sweet it seems in retrospect.[9]

-I can’t really write about Refreshing Springs without writing about Emory. He was the pastor. I am not sure I have met more humility and grace in a senior pastor. Most of what I believe about what the Bible teaches about ecclesiology I learned from him. He truly believed that the church had to be led by a group of interdependent leaders that shared authority or responsibility. He was a ‘paid, preaching elder’ but he did not run the church…even though he founded it. Emory was a fine preacher who resided in theologically deep waters and, I suspect, I picked up a fair bit insight[10] from him. But we learned far more, by watching him. That is at least one of the differences between a preacher and a pastor.

-You are not supposed to have favorite students. But I had a protégé.

I wrote him for a couple of years after we left but have no idea what happened to him. I still think about him often. His mom was devastated to see us leave and he was the kind of kid that wasn’t afraid to tell you what you meant to him. In the end, we actually asked, do we give the rest of our 20’s to Buffalo for one kid? But nothing has been as hard on our marriage as that youth ministry.[11] So, we took the job in California. We are not optimistic about where many of those kids ended up. We just hope we offered them something of value…something that changed their lives for the better and made Jesus a little more real…because that was our experience of them.

This post was written while listening to Satellite[12] by POD
___________________
[1] I am sure that several times in the course of this post I will unwittingly write something ignorant, racist, unenlightened, offensive or all of the above. Ethnocentrism, racism, self righteousness, tribalism and pride are so deeply rooted in the human heart that I am pretty sure I am unable to talk about cross-cultural events and ideas without lapsing into crass sin. But, there is so much beauty and redemption and joy in these stories for me that I consider that a cost of humanness. Most of us are all far too afraid of being labeled a racist to even broach these issues with any honesty. So let me preempt that fear. My heart bears the dark disease of self righteousness. I am probably a racist by most useful definitions. But not voluntarily, and these stories are part of the incomplete narrative of repentance and healing of my cultural self righteousness and imperialism. Jesus heals brokenness that I didn’t even know I had.
[2] Prejudice is a different story. Prejudice is simply taking a tool as useful as correlation and applying it to people. I am a scientist. Correlation is one of my most useful tools. If one functional variable is related to another, I can use the one to predict the other. But this breaks down when it comes to people. There are broad cultural trends. To suggest otherwise would be empirically absurd. To predict the behavior of an individual based on trends developed from their cultural or ethic associations is expedient (which is why it is so prevalent)…but it is also patently unfair. People are not like rocks. We can correlate them, but we must not because they are each so unique and valuable. I think this is at the heart of the famous ‘do not judge’ passages of the Bible. Jesus is not saying that we can not know right and wrong. He is saying that human motivation is highly complex and textured and cannot be deduced from a few external variables.
[3] When I talked to the boys about what they wanted to be when they grew up I was told that a young black man had three options: rapper, basketball player, or crack dealer. But a couple of the better students would replace ‘crack dealer’ with ‘or an electrical engineer like Tanya.’ What I did for a living was not inspiring to them, presumably because I was white and expected to have some stuffy job. But Tanya drove a nice car and had a nice apartment on the East side. Whatever it was exactly that she did, maybe they could too.
[4] Amanda had a similar experience moving to Davis. Between Refreshing springs and her nursing degree at ECC’s city campus, she was unaccustomed to dealing with white people (who, if you are out of practice, can be really complicated to deal with). Davis was culture shock for her.
[5] I am going to arbitrarily bring the Phil stories to an end here. They are endless. He told us that one day, he would just disappear. A few years after we left, friends dropped by to say hi and his apartment was empty. The furniture that friends had snuck into his house at one point was at the side of the road with a free sign. We could not be more privileged to know some of the people God has allowed us to co-labor with for a season.
[6] And I use this word in the loosest possible sense. I had read a couple books and taken no classes on youth ministry. We were entirely unequipped.
[7] I always feel uncomfortable telling this story. I am not entirely satisfied with my response. I am not trying to claim it as clever or wise. It is probably offensive on some level. But it is the moment that I love. In a few seconds, I watched this young man transform from combatant to friend. To this day, I am not sure why but I suspect I observed something supernatural.
[8] A chicken finger and Swiss sandwich. Years later, we returned and were devastated to find it no longer on the menu…but the waitress managed to work something out.
[9] As long as you love the people you are doing it with. My brother once made the distinction between ‘sweet hard’ and ‘hard hard.’ I think ‘sweet hard’ is when something is hard but you love the people you are doing it, you are under caring and humble leadership, and you fundamentally believe that it is something Jesus wants done. Hard-hard lacks one of those qualities.
[10] Not to mention homiletics tips.
[11] I would start dreading the Thursday phone calls on Tuesday. It was this ministry that convinced us that we were not wired for full time ministry, particularly cross-cultural ministry. In retrospect, if I had simply had someone who would make the phone calls and drive some of the kids, we could have done it indefinitely. As it was, we lasted about as long as the average youth worker…2 years.
[12](Satellite was the hands down favorite cassette when the guys were in my car. I just couldn’t seem to get them interested in Rich Mullins, who was my favorite artist at the time. I have a couple particularly fun memories of yelling “The world is a ghe-tto.” or “Boom…Boom” with the 4 kids in my car as loud as we could. Phil, a Yo-yo Ma devotee, was not impressed. Sometimes the boys would ‘battle’ in the car, but I had a no-profanity rule, forcing them to rely on word and rhyming-pairs they were unaccustomed to. The fun thing is that I would occasionally throw down and acquit myself surprisingly well simply on the strength of a reasonable vocabulary and thousands of hours of listening to old school hip hop in high school

My Top 14 Favorite Hikes: Part 3 - The Final Countdown #5 to #1

part 2 is here
part 1 is here

This is the final installment of my top 14 favorite hiking and backpacking trips of all time. I am wrapping up with the top 5 and I thought I’d count them down in reverse order.

#5 Burgess Shale Hike: Kootenay, Canadian Rockies (1 day, 15 miles)

Of all the hikes on the list, this one was less of an adventure and more of a pilgrimage. The burgess shale was the first early Cambrian Lagerstätten (which in an extremely fun side note is the German word for motherlode).[1] This providential[2] preservation of the soft body portions of organisms of the early Cambrian Sea provided our first window to the ‘Cambrian Explosion’. It seems to indicate[3] that only 30 million years elapsed between the development of multicellular organisms and the evolution of every major body plan that can be observed today (plus several others). But, most know the Burgess shale because of the seemingly improbable critters its consolidated, anoxic sediments record. These are critters that can decidedly cause one to ‘remember his name.’ It is also worth noting that Walcott himself and Simon Conway-Morris (the current authority on the shale) were/are both Christains.

The Burgess Shale is a world heritage site, in the Yoho National Park in the Canadian Rockies. We had to book a guided tour and were told that if we wanted to remove a rock, we were going to have to commit a body cavity to its concealment. The other hikers were, without exception, fascinating people. The most memorable one was an economics professor who studied how punctuated equilibrium could be used to predicatively model economic systems. However, while this hike might have been primarily about the history of life, it was still a fifteen mile round trip in the vastly underrated Canadian Rockies including the requisite glaciers and the trips finest waterfall. Just a thrilling day to wrap up our Glacier-Banff trip.

#4 North Lake to South Lake: King’s Canyon (4 ½ days, 55 miles)

This had to make the list simply because of its scale. It was the longest trip we have taken. It would have crept higher if we had taken longer to do it. But it is difficult to get more remote in the lower 48 than in King’s Canyon’s Evolution Valley. Hikers were scarce, passes were dramatic and the alpine meadows were pristine and unmatched. We also saw golden trout, which are famous and only life in a few lakes in the southern Sierra[4].

#3 Piegan Pass: Glacier National Park (1 day, 10 miles)

Almost everyone I know who has been to Glacier, lists it as their favorite national park, including Amanda and I. It is so startlingly original with the sharp, thin monoliths jutting wherever you turn, like the blades of an enormous gauntlet. This was our first time hiking where Grizzly’s roam and Glacier backpacking permits are notoriously hard to get so we decided to keep to longish day hikes. The whole trip was remarkable. We saw big horn sheep, mountain goats, strike-slip faults, and even a Grizzly at about 30 ft.[5] But I have never seen anything like Peigan Pass.

The soft colors and steep but rolling slopes of the landscape were offset by the stark, watchful presence of ‘the Garden Wall’. The Garden Wall competes with El Capitan as the most sublime geologic feature in the lower 48. It is a razor thin (by geologic standards), stripped[6], arête that runs through the center of the park. This is the first time I have been hiking and literally felt like I had entered a mystical parallel reality. Lakes are not supposed to be that blue. Cliffs are not supposed to be that shear. Geology is not supposed to be that mind blowingly sublime. Days are not supposed to be this full of wonder.

#2 Copper Ridge: Cascade Mountains (3 days, 25 miles)

There is a theme in the final two hikes. They are both multi-day ridge trips. Ridge hikes tend to be fantastic since you get sustained views for relatively little work (once you actually get on the ridge). We spent more time on the trail during this trip than we needed to and our packs were heavier than they had to be because Washington trails[7] are literally lined with huge blueberries in August. We would linger often to eat them and then not be hungry for meals.

Most of the trail and both campsites were well placed for extraordinary views of the Cascades[8]. The first night we looked out over the palisades range into Whatcom Pass and the second night we had great peaks to the South and our own secluded alpine lake to the North. The lake was unsurprisingly frigid, but a brief swim was still required.

A lonely Ranger manned a shelter on the highest point of copper ridge. He said that one to four groups passed through each day and was starting to get a little desperate for human contact. We also got ‘charged’ by a black bear.[9]

#1 Teton Crest Trail: Teton National Park (3 Days, 32 miles)

This was part of a 10 day Yellowstone-Teton trip[10]. The Teton hike was so spectacular; it left us feeling underwhelmed by Yellowstone. Still early in our backpacking careers, I pitched this one to Amanda by sharing that it starts with a ski lift deposits you at a starting elevation of 10,450 ft. The hike was not without elevation gain, but there was no grueling first day as is common with ridge trips. The highlights of this trip included happening on a moose[11] and cresting the ridge so close to the three stark peaks you felt like they were in reach. The loop ended at Jenny Lake where a water taxi picked us up and took us back to the parking lot.

It is hard to articulate why Teton is our favorite. But it was not even really close. Maybe it was the towering, triangular peaks. Maybe it was the lush canyons which seemed to simply be a string of one waterfall after another. Maybe it was the satisfaction of getting and staying so high and taking in so many dramatic views while skirting the pesky 4,000 foot first day. Maybe it was just 3 sweet days with my wife touching the sky and huddling under a little tarp, warming hot chocolate as the hail beat down. But the Teton Crest trail is the winner of a VERY worthy field.

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[1] Since its discovery by Walcott in 1909, similar sites have been discovered in China and Greenland.
[2] Yeah, I believe that. I’m not sure who would be more offended, Fundamentalists or Atheists.
[3] Being a punk-eek (punctuated equilibrium) guy, I unsurprisingly agree with Gould in this assessment. But our guide simply would not buy this. He champions the alternate hypothesis that multicelular evolution was going on at thermal vents for millions of years before, but was just not recorded in the fossil record. His commitment to gradualism, however, also gave rise to an awkward resolution of the problem of the surprisingly early development of life. He credits extra-terrestrial migration. He could be correct on both counts (though the former seems more likely than the later). But, I say, let the rocks tell the story.
[4] We spent the last night at Golden Trout Lake. I took a picture of one and sent it to my brother. Got a one word response. ‘Jerk.’ I think he thought I was gloating. He might have been right.
[5] We were coming back from Ptamagain Pass on a trail that also leads to the more modest destination of Ice Lake. The trail had been closed our whole time there because of bear activity, but I desperately wanted to do it, and it opened up on the last day. The hike was stunning, but on the way back, within a mile of the trailhead, there was a crowd of Ice Lake day hikers who had been rounded up by a ‘Bear Ranger.’ (Glacier has special rangers dedicated to grizzly ‘situations.’) A bear had taken up residence in the middle of the trail. The Ranger made us wait about an hour until the bear had moved 30 ft off the trail and then had us quickly ferry by while he stood between us and the completely unpulsed beast with one hand on his mace and the other on his sizable side arm.
[6] I find the stripe to be just startling…and beyond fascinating from a geologic perspective
[7] This trip also included extended day hikes in Olympic where we ran into the same thing.
[8] Maybe the most underrated mountains of the lower 48.
[9] What actually happened was that hikers farther up scared it in our direction. It changed course as soon as it saw us. But for a terrifying few seconds it looked like it was charging us on a thin ridge with few places to hide.
[10] This trip started oddly, as I spent time in all 4 major US timzones in a span of 48 hours. I was teaching a class in Jefferson City Missouri the week before. But my grandmother died at the end of that week, so I flew directly from Kansas City to Syracuse, drove late that night to Norwich, NY for the funeral, then caught the red eye from Syracuse to Sacramento, and then drove to Wyoming the next in time to use our permit which had been locked in months in advance.
[11] The moose was so quiet that we were surprisingly close when we noticed it. But…we only saw the moose because we took a wrong turn and got lost for a mile (loosing ~800’ of elevation in the process). I called it our moose diversion. Amanda was not as willing to rename it. We also saw a whole family of mountain goats. The kids were really young and incredibly cute.

Wisdom and the Heart: The Role of Affections in Epistemology

The Scriptures teach two basic things about wisdom:

1) It is the among most valuable things you can acquire. It is far more so than material wealth
2) It is also decidedly difficult to acquire and is apparently the result of a protracted, intentional process.

But what is it? If we are to be about the business of acquiring wisdom, shouldn’t we understand what it is? For years I operated based on this anecdotal distinction: knowledge is the accumulation of facts and wisdom is the ability to bring facts to bear effectively on a particular decision. This has been a descent working definition for me for years. But I recently have had to question it on the grounds that it is far too cognitive.

You see, the book of Proverbs (the go-to Judaeo-Christian text for all things wisdom) describes it as a far more complex phenomenon. I was startled into this recognition when I happened upon the following verse.

Proverbs 16:21
“The wise in heart are called discerning,
and pleasant words promote instruction.”

It describes wisdom as a property of the heart as well as the mind. Once I saw this, I could not believe how ubiquitous it was.

Proverbs 2:10
“For wisdom will enter your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.”

Proverbs 18:15
“The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge;
the ears of the wise seek it out.”

Proverbs 23:12
“Apply your heart to instruction
and your ears to words of knowledge.”

Proverbs 23:15
“My son, if your heart is wise,
then my heart will be glad;”

Proverbs 24:32
“I applied my heart to what I observed
and learned a lesson from what I saw:”[1]

Wisdom as the Bible talks about it is not just a condition of our cognitive faculties but also our hearts. But does this make sense? Isn’t this phenomenological language anyway? Isn’t the ‘heart’ (or, in the Hebrew idiom, ‘the bowels’) is just a specific function of the brain anyways?

Well, yes, but there does seem to be a basic principle here that good choices are not co-extensive with good decisions. Or to put it quasi-quantitatively:

Choice = Understanding + Volition

There are two ways a choice can go poorly. I can not know the right thing to do or, I can know the right thing to do, but, for any of a variety of motivations, do something else anyways. Understanding is only part of the equation. Wisdom is not just sound understanding, but also sound affections. It is not only a function of what we know, but also what we love.[2]

But the epistemological waters are even muddier than that. Because of the problem of confirmation bias,[3] the well documented phenomenon that the human brain over represents the reliability of information we want to believe…understanding itself is a function of our affections.[4] Wisdom has to include not only knowing the right things but also wanting the right things.

Many of best theologians recognized this[5]. They saw the process of spiritual growth, not simply as training the mind, or training the will, but of cultivating a new set of affections. We are motivated by what we love. The standard cultural advice to ‘follow your heart’ is not only destructive…it is fundamentally useless. We WILL follow our hearts. We WILL act on behalf of our deepest affections. Spiritual growth is the process of training those affections towards the best things.

This post was written while listening to This is War by 30 Seconds to Mars
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[1] Also Proverbs 2:1-2, 10:8, 14:33, 15:14, 16:23, 23:19
[2] Jesus takes this idea up when he says ‘out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.’ Actions betray affections. That is why Christians don’t just talk about the message of Christ but also the work of Christ. Because we don’t just require better information on how to live, we require better passions to live it for.
[3] The idea of ‘Confirmation Bias’ has recently found its way into popular parlance, mainly through the work of the ‘New Atheists.’ It is a helpful and sound critique. However, it is the classic example of a two edge sword that wounds the bearer as deeply as the assaulted. (Swords like that are best reserved for the self immolation of honest reflection.) The ‘New Atheists’ brandish confirmation bias as if it is only theists that are subject to it, but can not demonstrate why a secular worldview is an antidote to this phenomena.
[4] The idea that ‘the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge’ also bears on the idea that epistemology is far more complex than simple cognition, but that is a topic for another day…and probably another author.
[5] Particularly, Jonathan Edwards and Augustine are known for this.

Labor, Art or Sacrament? - Lessons from a Year of Preaching (Part 1)

I am preparing a post on lessons I have learned from my first year of regular preaching.[1] The first point, however, kind of spun out of control and became its own post. The second has too. So I have decided to make it into a series. Here it Part 1.

The first major question that emerged as I struggled to produce frequent, quality, pulpit content was one of taxonomy. What was it, precisely, that I was doing? Was it a labor, an art or a sacrament? Unsurprisingly, the answer is yes. But it is a result I am still coming to terms with.

At the heart of this categorization is the question: “To what extent is the effort expended correlated with the outcome?” It is pretty clear that in most cases, preaching quality has a strong functional relationship with preparatory effort expended.[2] To this extent, it is a labor. Work produces results. But the infuriating part is that effort is not fully predictive. In other labors I engage in, be it programming, engineering projects, chores, exercise, studies or even a backpacking trip[3], the effort expended is strongly predictive of the quality of the result. But I gave talks that required 20 hours of prep that were better than talks I sunk 60 hours into.

In this way preaching feels like an art. While most great artists are extremely disciplined individuals,[4] it is the field where effort seems least correlated with effectiveness. One thing I have heard creatives of all kinds talk about is the capricious and fragile nature of the creative process. When it is there, it is there and when it is gone, there is no amount of work you can do to retrieve it. They live in constant fear that they will wake up the next morning and it will be gone. They don’t exactly know what has generated the creative gift and so they have no promise that it will continue. It is a fearsome and tenuous existence. I experienced some of these same feelings in the pursuit of excellent preaching. The main difference is that I can talk to mysterious source of inspiration who joins his power to my effort to determine the efficacy of the outcome.[5] And in that way, preaching is a sacrament.[6]

In, Imagine: A Vision for Christians and the Arts, Steve Turner said, “The power of effective preaching isn’t a question of art.” It was a disappointing statement in an otherwise very good book. To relegate creativity as the image of God to the musicians and fine artists, we impoverish our imaginations about what preaching could be. But Turner’s basic point has some weight. Preaching is, at least in some ways, a mystical sacrament. I expend rigorous labor and creative effort in the preparation process to honor God’s self disclosure (the Scriptures) and attempt to make it culturally clear. But there is a sense in which I would not expect effort to be strongly correlated with outcome.

I am, after all, participating in a gift. The tools are not mine. The raw materials are not mine. The primary passion is not mine. The results should not be mine. By my evaluation, my best outing last year came in a week that I felt underprepared.[7] Some would use this as an excuse to put less effort into the preparation. This would be an error…a kind of ‘convenient calvinism[8]’ that disregards God’s proclivity for inhabiting human efforts. And it is worth noting that while success is not highly correlated with effort, dismal failure IS highly correlated with lack of effort.

But there is a sense in which I would find it offensive if the success of this endeavor was a deterministic predictive function of effort. If preaching is something I can simply learn how to do and then bang out like spread sheets and journal articles, it becomes self refuting. Only in its laborious, creative, sacramental form, where there is genuine terror but there is also divine access, can it really be a conduit of the transcendent.

This post was prepared while listening to Fall/Winter by Jon Foreman
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[1] Though I am well into my second year, so I might have to change the name.
[2] This, of course, is not universally believed. I served under a youth pastor for a while who believed that evidence of a teaching gift was the ability to teach on any topic with no notice. This, however, demonstrates insufficient esteem for the scriptures or respect for the listeners, in my opinion.
[3] And, to some extent, even relationships.
[4] This is one of the myths of ‘the arts.’ Shiftless bohemians use ‘the arts’ as an excuse for aimless reflection and dabbling. But the vast majority of artists I have heard describe their work describe a life of discipline, order, regularity, and long, long hours. I applied to colleges as an art major with the vision of a life of leisure in front of me. But good art is some of the hardest work out there.
[5] Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of all time, puts this well: “None are so able to plead with men as those who have been wrestling with God on their behalf…Most preachers who depend upon God’s Spirit will tell you that their freshest and best thoughts are not those which were premeditated, but ideas which come to them (in prayer), flying as on the wings of angels; unexpected treasures brought on a sudden by a celestial hands, seeds of the flowers of paradise, wafted from a mountain of myrrh.” Lectures to My Students (p45)
[6] I can’t help it…one more Spurgeon quote: “All our libraries and studies are mere emptiness compared with our closets…If you dip your pens into your hearts, appealing in earnestness to the Lord, you will write well: and if you can gather your matter on your knees at the gate of heaven, you will not fail to speak well.” (p43)
[7] Though, paradoxically, it was the week I had spent the most time preparing for.
[8] Which is far more like Gnosticism than and form of robust Calvinism.

2009: A Year in Books

I have two friends that try to read 52[1] books per year. For the last two years Joel has posted updates on how he did and brief thoughts about each work. I liked the idea...so I am stealing it. I do not remotely try to read 52 books per year. Twenty is more my pace…particularly because I take detailed notes on many of them in an attempt to retain the material.[2] Here is my 2009 in books.

Pigeon Feathers - John Updike
I am embarrassed to admit that the first time I heard of Updike was the day he died. I LOVED this little book. The man could write, and had an uncanny window into my psychology[3] in a way I suspect few experience. There is a sense in which I wonder why he has such wide appeal, because his work appealed to me on such a personal level and I consider my experience to be relatively eccentric.

Culture Makers – Andy Crouch
I was disappointed by this book. It was long and sluggish (especially for a book on Culture). But, as I look back over my writing and preaching since I read it, it is clear that Crouch has influenced my thought or, at least, has flourishes of quoteability. He did change the way I read some OT prophetic work.

Perelandra (A)[4] - CS Lewis
The best volume of Lewis’ space trilogy. Lewis’ fiction is mostly uneven.[5] But his playful and creative mind cannot be held down by his lack of mastery of the genre. There are flourishes of absolute brilliance. And these alone are worth the price of admission.

Ender’s Game (A) - Orson Scott Card
I am trying to consume more classic Science Fiction since that is what I have been writing lately. I listened to this while exploring Portland one week while I was there on business. For me ‘The Gate is Down’ will always be associated with morning runs along the Columbia and evening walks through one of America’s finest cities. I liked it, but have come to the conclusion that the criteria for artful prose is lower for classic SciFi than for contemproary or classic novels. At least I finally get a whole genre of nerdy jokes:

Imagine: A Vision for Christians and the Arts - Steve Turner
A book that culminates in an analysis of U2 isn’t exactly ground breaking, but despite a slow start and a predictable end, Turner can write and brings a pretty withering analysis to Christianity’s relationship to the arts. The middle chapter ‘The Split’ is, by far, the best.

Life Together - Dietrich Bonheoffer
Bonheoffer is one of my favorite theologians (maybe my favorite). I have taught classes on his theology more than once. But I had never read his work on community. It started a little slow but, on the whole, was unsurprisingly stunning.

Stumbling on Happiness (A) - Daniel Gilbert
My last post emerged from this book, but does not even begin to plum its value. The book’s general thesis is that humans are very bad at predicting what will make us happy and that the accounts of others who have been through a given event are much more reliable at predicting our experience of the event than our personal prediction.

In Cold Blood (A) - Truman Capote
Capote can write and can also structure a story. I am still amazed that he manage to spring a twist ending on me in a book that was supposed to be as predictable as Titanic.

Downtown Owl – Chuck Klosterman
Lets be fair. I am a Klosterman fanboy. He could probably write a diary of a year of bowel movements and I would read an enjoy it. But I was apprehensive about his first work of fiction.[6] I liked it.

The New Testament and the People of God[7] - NT Wright
Sweeping scholarly work tackling the literature and worldview of the inhabitants of Israel from about 200 BC to about 125 AD. Wright’s thing is to try to walk the line between what he calls ‘the two arrogances’ of fundamentalism and reductionism. He is a scholarly giant who brings to bear the best scholarship to first century studies and finds the outlines of an orthodox Christian faith[8] in the morass. I found that some of the points I thought were insufficiently argued in his popular works were thoroughly demonstrated in this volume.[9]

Acts for Everyone: Part 1 - NT Wright
But, the really intriguing thing about Wright is that he can switch hats so effortlessly. He can produce some of the best NT scholarship being written and then turn around and churn out these helpful, readable, accessible and enjoyable commentaries for preaching help and devotional use.

City of God - Augustine
I have written plenty about this tome in this space.

Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
I wrote an extended piece on this and my friend Joel wrote an extended response.

Assassination Vacation – Sarah Vowell (A)
Friends have recommended Vowell to me for years, so I finally picked upp her only work the Library had in Audio for our two ‘through the night Tampa<-->Panama City drives’ during our holiday vacation. It was very good. Though I was left wondering if Assassination Vacation should have been more like Killing Yourself to Live or visa versa. Vowell is insightful and funny, but her Northeastern Liberal requirement to express moral outrage[10] at most things southern got in the way of handling the Lincoln assignation sites in the nuanced, even handed way she treated the Cleveland and McKinley sites.[11]

The Rise of Christianity - Rodney Stark

I wrote a post on this one.

A Short History of Nearly Everything (A) - Bill Bryson
I am a sucker for science as story. Seriously, tell the historical narrative of how something came to be known, believed, or disbelieved, include a couple of outlandish personalities, make a couple jokes and I’m happy. Bryson’s little romp through a history of science was insightful, artful and entertaining.

Partial Reads

My reading time is probably my most limited commodity. Therefore I do not waste time finishing books that: (a) could have been pamphlets and yield most of their useful insights in the first 100 pages or (b) suck or (c) do not demonstrate enough potential to out compete the shiny new volume in the just-arrived Amazon box for my time.

Marriage: Sex in the service of God (30%)
Ash’s work is sound, scholarly and weighty. I got a lot out of what I read. Unfortunately, it is also dry. I’m not sure if it is a compliment or an outrage that he managed to make a book about sex boring, but I am going to go with both.

Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit - Clark Pinnoch (50%)
Pinnoch’s book on the Holy Spirit was really good, but not good enough to finish.

Life: The Science of Biology – Sevada (30%)
This was the text for the two Biology classes I took in the Fall. It is actually very good. Well written, well illustrated…I enjoyed reading it and did most of the assigned readings though I knew they would not help me much on the tests.

The Message of Acts: The Spirit, the Church and the World – John Stott (30%)
Really liked Stott’s commentary on Acts – but only read the passages I preached on.

That Hideous Strength - CS Lewis (60%) (A)
This is Lewis’ attempt to make his argument from The Abolition of Man in a fictional work. I simply haven’t finished it yet. But it says a little about my ambivalence about the Space Trilogy that I was able to put it down and not completely compelled to return to it.

How Fiction Works - James Wood (70%)

My friend Tiffany recommended this after taking a look at one of my short stories. It was excellent, but I was not ready for it. There are two chapters on how Flaubert changed the novel. I have not read Flauber. So, hopefully, my 2010 list will include a couple of his novels and then I will revisit this text.

Apostolic Fathers - ed Michael Holmes (60%)
The Fathers were thrilling, but I got bogged down in the Didichae and the Shepherd. The latter are such crass moralists I had trouble identifying with them. But Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp et al were like finding family I did not know I had.

Mere Christianity - CS Lewis (50%)
I have decided to revisit some of Lewis’ writings. While his fiction can be uneven, his prose is unmatched. So much of contemporary Christian thought is just a repackaging of the things he wrote.[12]

From Every Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race - J. Daniel Hays (50%)
This text is full of intriguing factoids and effectively makes the case that the world of the Old-Testament must be read as a thoroughly multi-ethnic world. Unfortunately, it seems that Hays is an OT scholar and I read the book hoping it would help me unpack and preach the issue of ethnicity in the early church. Sadly, there were only four pages on Acts. This seems like a pretty dramatic failure, seeing as ethnic tension/reconciliation is probably one of the top 3 or 4 themes of this central Biblical text.
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[1] Joel and Alex – that’s one per week.
[2] I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on ‘year in review’ blogs, but surely I am flirting with it.
[3] As a quasi-existentialist, post-neo-orthodox Christian strongly influenced by Kierkegaard and Chesterton.
[4] (A) stands for audio book. I consume most of my fiction and popular literature through audio media. But I count these as ‘books I read.’ It's ok, you can judge me.
[5] With the exception of The Great Divorce, which is mostly dialogue, and, therefore, is just a more readable version of his prose.
[6] Apparently, I’m not the only one. He had to sign a two book deal to get this published, promising the same publisher his next major essay collection, Eating the Dinosaur which just came out.
[7] I finished this at the beginning of 2010, but am including it anyway
[8] Even if it is, at times, a strained orthodoxy.
[9] Which is the first of a 4-5 volume set.
[10] Yes, we understand, slavery was bad. We are not going to think you are a racist if you fail to express moral outrage every time you mention it.
[11] In a related note, she caricatured Jonathan Edwards, using him to demonstrate why an upstate NY free sex commune (where the middle aged men ceremonially ‘deflowered’ the girls) wasn’t so objectionable after all. How could someone who is so deeply curious and interested in the complexity of American History so completely mischaracterize (though it is a popular mischaracterization) one of our most interesting historical figures. Her penance should be to do an Edwards/Wesley/Awakenings book - that could really be in her wheelhouse.
[12] In fact, a recent CT article argued that Lewis is the bane of Christian writing because nearly anything we try to articulate, he has already done and with more insight and creativity.

Our Brain’s Surprising Mistake: Freedom, Prediction and Marriage

There may not be a more intensely American value than Freedom. It is one of the few things seen by almost all as an unqualified good. The last administration used it as a trump card in support of foreign wars and domestic tax cuts. The current administration has followed suit, leveraging[1] our passion for freedom on behalf of their pursuits. In a world where we can not remotely agree on what is good, valuable or beautiful, the thing we fight most intensely for is self determination of those criteria. Many of fiction and history’s most compelling figures were revolutionary agents for their self determination. Shoot, the climatic moment of one of the best movies ever simply consists of the disemboweled protagonist yelling ‘FREEDOM.’


In our country’s founding document Freedom is listed as one of the foundational, self evident, divinely granted human rights…along side ‘The Pursuit of Happiness.’ We have since generally assumed that freedom and happiness are strongly correlated. But this is an assumption that is worth revisiting. Surely, slavery, communism and fascism impinge on personal happiness…but within the context of most western societies, does increased freedom actually increase happiness?

Daniel Gilbert, the Harvard College Professor of Psychology[2] says no.

In his excellent book Stumbling on Happiness[3] he cites a study in which students in a photography class produced a dozen black and white photographs and printed their two best and were allowed to keep one. The students were divided into two groups, 1) the escapable group and 2) the inescapable group. The first group could exchange their photograph for the other one at any time in the future and the second group had to make a final, irrevocable decision on which photograph they would keep. Then the researchers followed up on the students and ‘measured’[4] their satisfaction with the photographs. Which do you suppose were more satisfied? If our fundamental assumptions that self determination and increased options produce happiness are true, then we would expect the first group to be the most satisfied.[5] But the opposite was true.

“The escapable group liked their photographs less(emphasis original) than the inescapable group…Apparently, inescapable circumstances trigger the psychological defenses that enable us to achieve positive views of those circumstances, but we do not anticipate this will happen. Our failure to anticipate that inescapability will trigger our psychological immune system (hence promote our happiness and satisfaction) can cause us to make some painful mistakes…but most people seem to prefer more freedom to less…


...Our fetish for freedom leads us to patronize expensive department stores that allow us to return merchandise rather than attend auctions that don’t, to lease cars at a dramatic markup rather than buying them at a bargain, and so on…


...Committed owners attend to a car’s virtues and overlook its flaws, thus cooking the facts to produce a banquet of satisfaction, but the buyer for whom escape is still possible is likely to evaluate the new car more critically, paying special attention to its imperfections as she tries to decide whether to keep it…We have no trouble anticipating the advantages that freedom may provide, but we seem blind to the joys it can undermine.”[6]

And this, in part, is why I believe marriage[7] is vastly underrated. Marriage is not exactly at the peak of its popularity, particularly among young men.[8] I believe that one of the fundamental reasons for marriage’s disrepute is this perception that limiting our freedom is the surest way to limit our happiness. It is ironic[9] that such a widely held tenet of our cultural narrative is based on a nearly universal misunderstanding of how our brains work.

But marriage only works if it is an ‘all in’ proposal. ‘For better or worse’ is the currency of marital satisfaction. It is the engine of contentment. According to Gilbert, inescapability is the catalyst of disproportionate focus on the admirable aspects of your selection. It is an unconscious building block of a life of gratitude. Our brains are wired in such a way that frequent re-evaluation undermines our happiness.

The volitional and intentional limitation of options is a counterintuitive path to happiness. In his theological work on marriage, Christopher Ash, argues that this is because marriage is the way of grace over works:

“When we focus on the gradually deepening (or evaporating) relational intimacy as the locus of marriage, paradoxically a terrible insecurity is engendered…To live outside is to live by works, to be constantly on our best behavior, to be only as good as the last time. To live inside (the covenant of marriage) is to live in grace, responding freely to unconditional pledged love, not to have failure and personal inadequacies drive us to paralyzing despair.”[10]

It is only when marriage is seen for what it truly was meant to be, that the Scriptures’ repeated comparison of marriage and the gospel begin to make sense. And, of course, the principal that limiting one’s freedom can actually augment one’s happiness has spiritual implications beyond marriage. A common objection to Christianity is that it limits our freedom and, thus, our potential for happiness. But, deconstructing the fundamental connection between freedom and happiness destabilizes this objection.

I think the Psalmist essentially articulates the same thing Gilbert reports when he says: “Yahweh, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.”[11]

This post was written while listening to the Rise Against station on Pandora

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[1] Or manipulating our passion for freedom, depending on one’s political perspective.
[2] At Harvard University.
[3] This is not nearly the saccharine self help book it sounds like. Rather, it is a well written and insightful review of recent psychological research on the phenomena of human happiness and why our brains are not particularly good at it (or, conversely, why we are sometimes better at it than the ‘facts’ warrant).
[4] So, I am what is called a ‘hard’ scientist. I realize that moniker is self serving, but if you are skeptical about how this was ‘measured,’ um, well, me too.
[5] In fact, this was another facet of this study. Several of the students were asked to predict if they would be more satisfied if they had the option to exchange and most said they would.
[6] Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness – p 183-5
[7] In its covenantal, vowish, form rather than its dissoluble social contract form.
[8] Chuck Klosterman has a great quote in Killing Yourself to Live that really encapsulates the contemporary perception of marriage. He seems genuinely confused at the controversy in the Episcopal Church about same-sex marriage and quips “In my opinion we must legalize gay marriage. Gay men are the only men in America who still want to be married.”
[9] Again, ironic in the Alanis Morissette ‘as it has come to be know’ usage of the word.
[10] Marriage: Sex in the Service of God p 74-5
[11] Ps 16:5-6