”It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.”
It is the first weekend of summer, and what fun I’m having here in . . . rainy Indiana. Groan!
Oh, for a seat on one of those colorful beach chairs with a Corona and lime in my hand, floppy hat on my bald head, salt air in my nostrils, and the sound of my grandchildren frolicking in the waves! Ain’t gonna happen for awhile, but a Chaplain can dream can’t he?
Until then, I’ll have to settle for the joy of sharing a little brunch with my friends. Welcome to Saturday!
In November, Google released an online game called Quick, Draw!, in which users have 20 seconds to draw prompts like “camel” and “washing machine.” It’s fun, but the game’s real aim is to use those sketches to teach algorithms how humans draw. By May this year, the game had collected 50 million unique drawings.
We used the public database from Quick, Draw! to compare how people draw basic shapes around the world. Our analysis suggests that the way you draw a simple circle is linked to geography and cultural upbringing, deep-rooted in hundreds of years of written language, and significant in developmental psychology and trends in education today.
Well, what did the circle game say about you?
Which reminds me…
• • •
THE MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING CHAMPS
Salt Lake Tribune – 7/24/11
It seems that Utah is the number one state in the U.S. for multi-level marketing, and that its Mormon culture is a primary reason why. According to this article from KUTV in Salt Lake City:
There are at least 15 major MLMs in Utah County alone, generating billions in annual revenue and making direct sales the second-biggest industry in Utah behind tourism, according to Loren Israelsen, executive director of the Utah-based United Natural Products Alliance.
Per capita, Utah has more MLMs than any other state.
“It must have something to do with the way LDS culture works in the valley,” said Ann Dalton, CEO of the beauty product direct-seller Perfectly Posh, from her Salt Lake City office.
Connections fostered in LDS communities, said Dalton, create a hotbed for businesses with a social sharing model. The prevalence of national and international missions by young men and women for the LDS church, she speculates, plays a huge role.
“You get a lot of return missionaries who speak every language on the planet, then all of a sudden you have a sales force that’s very well connected,” she said. “They’re connecting with their friends, they know the languages, they’re tech savvy. That’s my untested theory.”
The article goes on to say that Utah’s high percentage of stay-at-home moms contributes to the prevalence of MLM businesses, with some estimates that as many at 75% of Utah women are involved in some kind of direct sales business.
Looks like one distinctively American religion promoting another from my perspective.
• • •
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Richmond VA – “Cathedral of the Confederacy”
The article quotes a piece by Wheaton College communications professor Theon Hill:
The goal of removal efforts is not to erase history, but to recontextualize it. The Confederacy with its vicious legacy of white supremacy should not be honored but lamented. … This debate extends beyond questions of who we were to who we want to be. Commemorating the past elevates it as an example to emulate in the future. David continues to be held in high esteem within the Judeo-Christian tradition because even when he failed, his heart was bent toward what was right. The Confederacy is not an honorable example of imperfect people trying to do the right thing, but a tragic warning of what happens when we pursue our interests at the expense of others’ humanity.
• • •
TAKIN’ MY BALL AND GOIN’ WHERE I CAN SET THE RULES…
Meanwhile, in the evangelical megachurch world in Chicago, Pastor James MacDonald has popped up again, and it ain’t pretty. This is from The Elephant’s Debt, a website that was started to track the former troubles and scandals in MacDonald’s fiefdom. Seems Sir James is in hot water once more.
Two days ago, on the 14th of June 2017, a letter purportedly written by James MacDonald was sent to the approximately 150 senior pastors that comprise the Harvest Bible Fellowship (HBF). In that letter, James announced two significant events. First, the local Harvest Bible Chapel of which he is the Senior Pastor would be pulling out of the Harvest Bible Fellowship. Secondly, he, himself, would be “resigning” his role as the President of HBF. Control of the HBF church-planting organization would be given to Interim Executive Director, Brian White and his “governance leaders,” including: Ron Zappia, Bill Borinstein, and Robbie Symons. Sources indicate that in the immediate aftermath of James’ “resignation,” most (possibly all) of the HBF staff were subsequently terminated.
As surprising as this may be to some readers, the language used in the letter distributed to the former HBF churches suggests that this may not be a voluntary “resignation.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I think it would be pretty hard not to be in constant trouble when your role model for leadership is this guy!
If you like this sort of thing, you can read the MacDonald story in all its gory details over at Wartburg Watch, where our vigilant friends have been warning about his “ministry” for years, noting: “Throughout the years, MacDonald has been known for the firing and berating of elders, then apologizing much later, allegedly driving up enormous debt in his organization, living a fabulous lifestyle and indulging in gambling trips to Las Vegas with his other BFF, Jerry Jenkins. We have written extensively about all of this and have provided numerous links at the end of this post for those of you who need to play catch up.
WW reports that MacDonald’s church has now become a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. Perfect.
• • •
Speaking of the SBC, Wartburg Watch finds it interesting that the new breed of SBC neo-reformed church planters can’t find it in their vocabulary to say they’re Baptists. An article WW quotes says that the “baggage” associated with the name Baptist is turning people away and churches are dying. One pastor put it this way when asked about his church’s “re-branding” — “It’s a more inclusive name, a consumerist attempt to recast a super conservative image.”
Despite the fact that there are more church plants and more established churches becoming SBC affiliates, baptisms, church attendance, and church membership is down significantly. Ed Stetzer, who analyzes church trends for the SBC, even said in 2016, “Southern Baptists are shrinking faster than United Methodists.”
Our friend Dee at WW ends with this sad reflection:
I, too, am one of those 1 million people who left the SBC. I found a home in a liturgical church and am growing in my faith as I experience the love of the pastors, something lacking in my former SBC church whose pastors always told us that they were soooo overworked.
There are no coffee bars, incredible bands, and hipster presentation that will cause the SBC to grow. It will need to dig deeper and get very, very uncomfortable in order to deal with the difficult problems that face the convention. I am not sure they are ready to do so. When pushing the doctrines of grace, hardball church membership, protectionism of churches which covering up child sex abuse, domestic violence and abusive church discipline takes priority over faith and love, the SBC will continue to decline.
• • •
THE TRANSFORMATION OF A CHRISTIAN “MOMMY-BLOGGER”
Now here’s something completely different. From Elle:
Let’s pretend for a minute that it’s early 2016 and you are Glennon Doyle Melton—wife, mother, spiritual exemplar, sun-bronzed poster girl for a kind of messy, beautiful domestic imperfection that, somehow, makes you even more perfect. You’re the world’s most famous Christian mommy blogger, a heroine and role model to your one million social media followers. Your first memoir, Carry On, Warrior, was a best-seller. Now you’re about to release your second—Love Warrior, a gripping chronicle of how you saved your marriage following your husband Craig’s infidelity. The book ends with you and Craig standing on the beach facing the Gulf of Mexico, renewing your vows and affirming the gritty path of the Warrior: “Love, Pain, Life: I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”
And then, right before the book is published, you attend a literary conference and spot a woman across the room. She has spiky, platinum-tipped hair, an impish smile, and calf muscles the size of tree trunks. She is U.S. soccer superstar Abby Wambach. And you know instantly that she is the love of your life. What do you do?
And so, “the world’s most famous Christian mommy blogger,” face and voice of The Momastery and author of the viral post, “Don’t Carpe Diem,” did a full 180◦ turn, despite many warnings. One of her friends wrote, “Think about it … this is brand suicide. It’s just such an extreme pivot. Everyone else who cared about her said, ‘Don’t do this thing. You’re going to sabotage your life. Everything you’ve worked so hard for is going to be destroyed.’ ”
Guess what? Melton lost 4,521 followers, but she gained 6,670. And her book, Love Warrior now has more than 500,000 copies in circulation and been translated into 18 languages.
However, Christianity Today called her transformation a conversion to the “gospel of self-fulfillment” It became one of CT Women’s top 10 articles of 2016. In another scathing article at CT, Lore Wilbert urged her to stop writing so that she could “save her soul,” and to stop pandering to “the altar of personal narrative that readers, writers, and publishers worship at.”
Melton and Wambach were recently married, and Melton made these comments: “When Craig and I sat them down to tell [our children] about Abby I started by saying: ‘In our family, we live and tell the truth about who we are no matter what, and then love each other through it — and I’m about to show you how that’s done.’”
• • •
ANOTHER CONTROVERSIAL PARENTING DECISION…
You’ve heard of the Benedict Option? How about the Ecuador Option?
Wendy DeChambeau says she and her husband determined that the only way to save their kids was by moving the family out of the U.S. to a small mountain village in Ecuador. In her opinion, it’s the best parenting decision they’ve ever made.
Some of our friends turned on us, calling us terrible parents, or saying we were unpatriotic. Why would we want to leave the land of the free and the home of the brave? And where was Ecuador, anyway? Somewhere near Mexico? Africa? We were taking our children to a country that most Americans can’t even point to on a map. What were we thinking?
Well, we were thinking a lot of things, and taking a number of factors into consideration. In America, it seemed every third child was taking pharmaceuticals to treat behavioral issues, anxiety, or depression. High school students were unloading automatic weapons into their classmates. Opioid use was reaching all new highs. Bank executives were defrauding their customers and Wall Street was walking an increasingly thin tight rope. It felt like The American Dream as we knew it was all but gone, having transformed into a shadowy unknown. We fretted about what the future would hold for our family. We thought maybe, just maybe, a simpler lifestyle somewhere else was the answer. And so, in 2011, our family walked up to the edge of the unknown, took a deep breath, and jumped.
After the inevitable culture shock and questions about whether they had been wise in emigrating, DeChambeau says that they began to see changes in six months. “But within six months, our plan began to work. Our kids were soon chatting away in Spanish to their new friends and started showing interest in learning other languages. Some of Latin America’s best features were rubbing off on us, like the emphasis on family time and community involvement, which I loved.”
She notes that their kids have no “privileged first-world” lens through which they view the world. The spirit of materialism and consumerism have largely bypassed them. In a land where “instant gratification” is a joke, they’ve learned to wait for things to happen. In a world devoid of man-made attractions, they’ve learned to appreciate the wonders of the real world around them.
Today I have two teenagers who I truly love spending time with. They’re well adjusted, curious, and mature for their age. Maybe I just got lucky with genetically programmed great kids. Maybe things would have turned out just as well if we had stayed put. But I’m confident that life in Ecuador has molded them — more than I ever could — into the promising young men they’ve become.
Eventually my boys will return to the U.S. to attend college and build their adult lives. When they do, they’ll have a leg up. In a world where the up-and-coming generation is castigated for their feelings of entitlement and inability to handle disappointment, my sons have no notions of being owed a thing.
• • •
PICTURES OF THE WEEK
What Saturday would be complete without some magnificent animal pictures?
Here are a few of the winners in the Dog Photographer of the Year Contest, an annual event organized by the UK-based animal welfare organization the Kennel Club. See more at Digg.
• • •
[THE ONLY] QUESTION OF THE WEEK
At Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight asks a question I’ve always wanted to ask soterian gospel folks. Now, it’s a rather serious question, perhaps better suited for another day, but it’s been bugging me ever since I read Scot’s post, and so I thought I’d bring it as the one and only question to the table for this Saturday’s brunch. There’s nothing that says we can’t have a hearty theological discussion over our eggs and sausage, is there?
How are we to process the many passages in Psalms where the psalmist appeals to God on the basis of his own integrity?
These texts have always confused me. I understand the deadly sin of self-righteousness; indeed, I consider it the most poisonous disposition anyone can harbor and I think every person, not just every religious person, is subject to its deceptive infiltration of our hearts and minds. I know that I and all human beings constantly try and justify ourselves and cover up what we are terrified of revealing in the depths of our souls, boasting in our own innocence and advocating for our own status and advancement. And self-righteousness is not only evil in and of itself, but it gives birth to a host of other hateful attitudes, such as prejudice, inhospitality, and cruelty of all sorts.
I have been taught, as an evangelical Christian, that I should never appeal to God on the basis of God’s justice, for if I were to truly receive justice for what I deserve, I would be cast away. My only appeal is on the basis of the mercy and grace of God revealed to me in Christ. And yet this is what the psalmists do, time and time again. In addition to the passage that Scot is dealing with in his post, take these for examples:
Chagall, David & His Harp
The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. (7:8)
Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. (26:1)
But you have upheld me because of my integrity, and set me in your presence forever. (41:12)
Are these sentiments just more evidence of human weakness and hyperbolic, emotional languagein the psalms, like the imprecations and curses upon enemies? Do these appeals represent the honest but mistaken perceptions of the pray-ers? Are these claims that the psalmists have walked before God in righteousness and integrity shams of self-deception?
Or is something else at work here?
Go. Pass me some more eggs and I’ll listen while you discuss this.
• • •
MUSIC OF THE WEEK
One of the blessings my family has experienced has been to have a connection to Canadian singer Anne Murray. My sister-in-law was her hair and make-up specialist, traveling with Anne for years, and my daughter got to spend a summer on the bus with the band. We’ve enjoyed great seats at several of her concerts.
Yes, that Anne Murray. She was Canada’s original country, pop, adult-contemporary crossover who baffled publications, critics and music programmers with her refusal to be bound by genre. She was also the first Canadian female solo singer to score a No. 1 hit in the U.S. with her 1970 breakthrough, “Snowbird.” Twenty-plus years before [Shania] Twain’s fly-trap-sticky choruses became the karaoke anthems that bridged generational, gendered and geographical divides, Murray — a Springhill, N.S., gym teacher-turned-award-winning vocalist — was the country’s gold-standard superstar.
…A woman who’s sold more than 55 million albums, who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, who used to roll in circles that led to this photo of her, John Lennon, Alice Cooper, Micky Dolenz and Harry Nilsson, and who never shied away from her ambitions — professional or personal. She vocalized a clear, focused pursuit of a career throughout her interviews in the ’70s and ’80s. Interviews that Twain, Céline Dion, k.d. lang and countless other aspiring musicians — all influenced by Murray — would have grown up watching and reading.
Murray was also a one-woman hit machine for 40-plus years, shouldering the expectations of fans, media and the music industry alike. She won Grammys, a record number of Junos and amassed more than 70 singles to her credit. Between 1968 and 1988 alone, she churned out at least a record a year (and sometimes two or three).
Thanks Anne. Lots of great memories and tender moments with your music as the soundtrack.
Here’s my favorite Anne Murray song, from a performance with the Boston Pops:
Americans take for granted, even idealize, the ideal of personal autonomy. Many Americans believe that autonomy is achievable and that it’s the most honorable lifestyle there is. They believe that people are autonomous individuals. Even if I’m not as autonomous as I should be, because I lack courage or will, those people over there are — the survivalists, Amish, and Waldenites, for example. (I’m not saying these people are autonomous, just that we idealize them that way.)
There are a lot of words for it: autonomy, independence, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, not being a burden, not taking hand-outs, taking care of my own, standing on my own two feet, freedom. But autonomy is a myth, not a reality. For the sake of convenience, I’m going to dub the adherents of the myth “autonomists,” even though Spellcheck won’t like it.
Autonomists think that people can live entirely by the fruits of their own efforts, not relying on outside people or society. They imagine that they can interact with people solely as they choose, not being a burden to them or having them be a burden in return, entering into relationships and leaving them whenever they want to. They believe that they are entirely in control of their thoughts and choices, that they direct their wills, and that their true moral guidance comes from their own hearts.
This mythology is not a new thing for most Americans. To some extent our geography has shaped it. Historically we’ve had the sense that there’s always new land out there, waiting to be subdued, where men are men and women are tired. There’s room never to have to be part of a neighborhood. When those mythic Americans, the pioneers, saw the chimney smoke of a new neighbor on the horizon, they could move farther out and wrest an independent living from the land, with no revenuers or government agents breathing down their necks. Of course this is no longer true, if it ever was, but the mythology of autonomy remains with Americans today.
Philosophy has also shaped our mythology. Many of the earliest and most influential European settlers arrived during the intellectual ferment called the Enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophers held, and the common people absorbed, the ideas that there was not a personal god, that mankind was perfectible by its own efforts, and that through reason and science we could break the bonds of oppressive religious, governmental, and personal relationships. In fact, some of the philosophers believed that the interdependence of people was what created evil in the world, that perfectly detached people would be perfectly good. Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau even abandoned his own (illegitimate) child to be raised in a convent, feeling that the smothering interdependence of father and son would distort the child’s psyche and prevent his growing up free. (Whose freedom was Rousseau concerned with?)
The American Revolution seemed to reinforce the convictions that independence and self-determination were the supreme good and were achievable by our own efforts. According to the mythology, the Civil War, too, was fought over the issue of independence — of states’ rights or personal independence from slavery. Although the Civil War could more properly be seen as a contest of the cooperative life of the Northern towns versus the autonomous life of the Southern landowner, in which the Northern way of cooperation won, nonetheless autonomists see the war as a triumph of personal freedom. And so the myth of self-reliance continues until today.
It’s time to debunk this mythology of honorable autonomy and consider the nature of our true relationships with the world, each other, and God.
First of all, we aren’t living the autonomous life that we idealize. All of us depend on other people every day. Even the few who look like they’re self-sufficient really aren’t. The survivalist hunts his own meat and tans the hide, but did he smelt the ore to make his guns and traps? Amish farmers raise both food and buildings, but they didn’t plant the trees that they cut down for lumber, nor did they mine the iron for the nails. In fact, they didn’t give the trees the power to grow or place the raw materials in the earth. They — we — all rely on provisions from outside ourselves for life.
Even the autonomists who say that they’ve worked for all they have, that they’ve never taken a hand-out from anyone, aren’t telling the strict truth. They may have started their own business, but they didn’t make the economy or customers or infrastructure that made the business possible. They didn’t create and raise and educate the human capital that keeps their business running. And ironically, not only do they rely on others for their success, but others rely on them to provide something they need. Even autonomists are part of a web, not an isolated entity.
One barrier that autonomists erect to preserve their illusion of autonomy is the cash nexus. If I pay you, I don’t have an interdependent relationship with you. You aren’t another person made in the image of God, you’re an employee, or a nursing home attendant, or a shopkeeper. I can pay you to look after me when I want you to and go away when I don’t, and then we’ll never be a burden to each other. But paying for food, education, care, services, and goods doesn’t make people autonomous. It just moves the relationship they have with the providers of goods and services a little farther away.
Even our thoughts are not autonomous. All people are products of their culture, time, and place. We’re not entirely in control of the choices we make nor do we act and think independently of society. Consider Ralph Waldo Emerson, an undeservedly popular American essayist and contemporary of Henry David Thoreau, the ultimate guru of autonomy. In his essay “Self-Reliance,” Emerson writes, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.” In other words, don’t let anyone or anything affect your thinking, but rely only on yourself. The big joke is that now, 150 years later, graduate students are writing dissertations on where Emerson got his ideas, because they understand, as he didn’t, that no one develops in a vacuum.
What’s the problem with an independent spirit anyway, even if maybe we Americans exaggerate our autonomy a bit? The problem is that autonomy is the road to Hell. It is entirely contrary to the Christian life. No one who insists on autonomy can ever know God.
Jesus doesn’t say, “You should try as hard as you can to grow independently and produce fruit.” He says, “I am the true vine . . . Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me” (John 15:1 and 4). An autonomous branch is a dead branch.
Saint Paul doesn’t say, “You’ve been set free from sin and death, now go do what you want.” He says, “When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. . . . But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life” (Romans 6:20 and 22).
We’re branches, not the vine. We’re slaves of God if we’re not slaves of sin; we have no independence to boast of. “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not” (1 Corinthians 4:7)? We don’t create ourselves, we don’t raise ourselves, we don’t provide for ourselves. We are part of a whole larger than ourselves. We’re a unique part, true, and within the whole we have wonderful freedom, as a train has freedom to operate perfectly on the rails it was designed for. But we aren’t the master of our fate or the captain of our soul, and as long as we think we are, we’ll think we can ignore the maker of the universe and all he’s done for us.
Some time ago, on iMonk, the original discussion of autonomy involved a hypothetical old lady with a painful, humiliating, and incurable disease. One commenter offered assisted suicide as a dignified, kindly option to preserve her autonomy and maintain her freedom from being a burden. I said there, and affirm here, that this woman’s tragedy is better seen as an opportunity for interdependent charity than for perpetuating the myth of autonomy. I was asked whether I thought that the old woman should suffer just so I could buff up my spiritual life by performing acts of mercy. Well, yes, actually, though not in those terms.
God’s economy is different from ours. That old lady is not her own; she was bought at a price (1 Corinthians 6:19 and 20). She exists for God’s purposes, not her own. God interacts with her for her own redemption but also uses her for the redemption of others.
Autonomists don’t like that. Nobody wants to be “used.” Most of us try above all things to preserve our autonomy, our comfort, and our lives. But God doesn’t care much for those things. He’s willing to scrap them all for the sake of our growth and salvation. To us that seems cruel, but the real cruelty would be allowing human beings to remain in their mythology and spend eternity in the perfect autonomy of Hell. If I were that old woman — and I may be one day — I would have to accept that my suffering might be someone else’s opportunity to grow closer to God, that my pain might be the cost of someone else’s good. I would have to accept the invitation to be, in that sense at least, like Jesus. I would be given the true dignity not of autonomy but of being a participant in God’s plans of redemption.
If that seems costly or cruel to you, I understand. God’s ways have often seemed costly and cruel to me, but by faith I accept that I don’t yet see them as they are. I can only say with the Psalmist, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness” (Psalm 115:1).
Today Part 8, Chapter 14: Does God Guide and Direct Us?
Jeeves student raises the question about how to acknowledge the diversity of views about how Christians get guidance from God for life’s choices. How much involves using the mind? How much depends of feelings and emotions? What about hearing voices and seeing visions?
First of all, Jeeves notes the episodes in Scripture where dramatic guidance is given. The Saul-to-Paul-Road-to-Damascus experience, Moses and the burning bush, Balaam and the donkey, and so on. He notes that, as far as he can see, nowhere in Scripture are we encouraged to see these as the norm. Hearing voices and seeing visions can be strong pointers to psychopathology, and with suitable drug treatment the visions disappear and the voices can be cured. He noted in the previous chapter (13: Does my Brain Have a God Spot) early researchers noted a relationship between religiosity and epilepsy. In fact, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, called it “the sacred disease”. But the most recent research shows a lack of link between religious experiences generally, religious awareness in particular, and selective activity of certain parts of the brain. Jeeves concludes Chapter 13 with:
Ultimately appealing to subjective experiences alone as the grounds for beliefs is an unsure and moving foundation. It was certainly never one used by the early Christians. If you read the accounts given in the New Testament, for example, you will find that the constant grounds appealed to for taking seriously the claims of Jesus Christ are not subjective feeling in time of ecstasy, but the many and varied accounts of the life, teaching and activities of Jesus and his disciples.
In other words, for those who are willing to examine the evidence with an open and critical mind, the evidence—or perhaps better, the testimony—is open and available. It’s important to say that it is open and available, and does not require any presuppositions, although many agree that there is more evidence for the existence and the life of Jesus Christ than for other historical figure around the same time that most people take for granted, such as Julius Caesar. As Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote recently in his 1161-page magisterial volume Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, “There is, however, an important aspect of Christianity on which it is the occupation of historians to speak: the story of Christianity is undeniably true, in that it is a part of human history.” Ultimately, however, at no point, as far as I can see, is the claim made that people are to be argued into the kingdom of God. Rather the main thrust of the message is that Jesus Christ is alive and offers the opportunity of entering into a personal relationship with him.
Paul on the road to Damascus
Jeeves cites the groundbreaking study by neurologist Antonio Damasio on studies of individuals with injury to the orbital frontal cortex of the brain, explored in detail in his book: Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. According to Damasio’s theory, our life experiences help our minds develop automatic responses to events. At moments when our consciousness lacks the relevant knowledge for a decision, we are guided by subtle emotions and intuitions. The implications of Damasio’s theory is that emotions deliver many of our most complex and rational judgements about the world, guiding us in our moment-to-moment decision making. Without knowing why, we often just feel that this or that is the right thing to do.
Jeeves mentions this an example of the artificiality of thinking we can totally disconnect mind and emotion. That’s not the way we are made. That is not how the brain works. The question remains how to keep a proper balance. There are no simple answers, certainly not from within neuropsychology. When I have shared my story (especially on-line) of how I moved from atheism to Christianity I always get criticized by the atheists for “letting my emotions play too major a role”. Conversely, I can’t hardly count the “deconversion” stories I have read where the interlocutor insists they have disconnected their emotions and made a decision strictly based on the empirical evidence and their rational thought. That’s not the way we are made. That is not how the brain works.
So, does God guide and direct us? Of course to the materialist the answer is an emphatic NO! All such claims of guidance and direction are simply an exercise in self-delusion. The consensus of Internetmonk over the years, I think, would be termed “apophatic”. We know how God DOESN’T lead us and guide us, let us count the non-ways: liver shivers, warm fuzzies, spine-tingles, goose flesh, words-of knowledge, prophecies, Bible roulette, proof texts, dreams, visions, coincidences… I like how Jeeves puts it:
St. Ignatius 1491-1556
I also believe that too often we fail to learn from wiser Christians of former generations such as Saint Ignatius, who had much of importance to say about guidance. He reminded us that, at times, a careful and deliberative process must be involved. It includes weighing up certainties and doubts, consolations (things that see to draw us closer to Jesus) and desolations (what seems to draw us away from Jesus), what attracts and appeals, what seems to be highlighted and what isn’t. In this way, gradually, we sense God’s calling and we make a choice. This is Saint Ignatius’s preferred way. Keep the mind fully engaged and then, because of how we are made, our emotions will play their proper part…
And in the context of our present discussion I would add that it is together that we can be guided as, in love, we give frank advice to our fellow Christians who face choice points in their lives requiring, at times, difficult decisions. It is so easy to deceive ourselves with wishful thinking that we need to test our thoughts against the sounding board of fellow believers. They may bring a wider perspective on an issue with which we have become so preoccupied that it has grown out of all proper perspective.
Art from the Orthodox Chapel at the Gangites River. Lydia and women at the river as Paul approaches.
Ordinary Time Bible Study
Philippians: Friends in the Gospel Study One
Ask any number of people to name their favorite Pauline letter, and the majority will say Philippians. For good reason. Whereas we meet an erudite Paul in Romans, a bombastic Paul in Galatians, a sometimes caustic Paul in 2 Corinthians and a sometimes baffling Paul in 1 Corinthians, here we find a very personal and warm human being who pours out a heart of affection for his friends in Philippi. In short, many of us like Philippians because we like the Paul we meet there.
• Gordon Fee
• • •
The first book of the Bible I preached as a pastor was Paul’s letter to the Philippians. I had fallen in love with it in Bible college, and could think of no better way to start my ministry. Of course, my understanding was minimal and I was as green behind the ears as a young minister could be, but looking back, I think my instincts were correct. This was thirty years before I heard Michael Spencer use the phrase “Jesus-shaped spirituality,” but that kind of spiritual life was what I found in this delightful epistle.
Jesus the Christ is mentioned three times in the first two verses of Paul’s greeting.
Paul looks forward to the Day of Christ and the harvest of righteousness that will come through Christ.
He says he loves his friends with the compassion of Christ.
His perspective on his current imprisonment is that it is for Christ.
Despite wrong motives of his competitors, he can still rejoice that Christ is being proclaimed.
For Paul, to live is Christ.
To depart is to be with Christ, which is far better.
He expresses confidence that their prayers and the help of the Spirit of Christ will lead to his deliverance.
He wants to share in their joyful boasting in Christ when he rejoins them.
Paul urges them to live worthy of the gospel of Christ.
He reminds them of the privileges of believing in and suffering for Christ.
And that’s just chapter one!
Also, although I’m sure I had no understanding of this as a novice pastor, Philippians was an excellent place to begin because it portrays a pastoral figure (Paul) and a congregation of people who, for the most part, get along and are engaged in a vibrant “partnership in the gospel” (1:5, NIV). They had their problems, and Paul had to exhort them pretty directly at times (when was the last time your pastor pointed out people by name from the pulpit? — see 4:2). But he could do this because of the quality of their relationship, which had been shaped by acts of mutual service and love. On the whole, the church of Philippi appears to have been one of the healthiest and stable churches in the New Testament. What better place was there for me to start in a new ministry than with this positive, uplifting, encouraging letter?
As we study Philippians together during Ordinary Time this year, I hope we will all be buoyed up by the Spirit of God and refreshed in our faith.
For my primary resource in this study, I will be consulting Gordon Fee’s brief but excellent commentary on Philippians in the IVP NT Commentary Series. NOTE: You can read this commentary at no cost online at Bible Gateway. Fee also has a longer, more scholarly commentary on Philippians in the NICNT series.
If anyone would like to read along with a good devotional, pastoral guide, I recommend Tom Wright’s volume on the Prison Letters in his NT for Everyone series.
Of course, there are many other good commentaries out there, including two that are usually rated highest as the best seminary level texts: Peter T. O’Brien’s The Letter to the Philippians (NIGCT) (out of print) and Moisés Silva’s Philippians (BECNT).
• • •
I have entitled this study “Friends in the Gospel.”
In previous studies, I used the phrase “Partnership in the Gospel” as my main theme, building upon Phil. 1:5, as Tom Wright does in his guide. However, Gordon Fee has persuaded me to change my approach from “partnership” to “friendship” based on his discussion of the genre of Paul’s epistle.
In the ancient Greco-Roman world, letters followed certain forms depending upon the writer/recipient relationship and the content of the letter. Without repeating the details, Fee notes that Philippians reflects the characteristics of (1) letters of friendship, and (2) letters of moral exhortation. Philippians is rather unique among Paul’s epistles in following the friendship form, and this is why many people find it so attractive. Paul followed the forms of his day, but he also transformed them into distinctly Christian communications by filling the forms with Jesus-shaped content.
Fee cites one scholar who found seven general characteristics of Greco-Roman friendship letters, which we see in Philippians:
Address and greeting (cf. 1:1-2)
Prayer for recipients (cf. 1:3-11)
Reassurance about the sender and his circumstances (cf. 1:12-26; 4:10-20)
Request for reassurance about the recipients and their circumstances (cf. 1:27-2:18; 3:1-4:9)
Information about the affairs of mutual friends/intermediaries (cf. 2:19-30)
Exchange of greetings with third parties (cf. 4:21-22)
Closing wish for health (cf. 4:23)
But this is mere form. Paul fills out the letter with effusive expressions of friendship (matching the ideals of friendship accepted in his culture) such as their working partnership, joy in their relationship, the mutual affection they share, the generous and practical help they have given each other, their mutual desire to see each other face to face, and their mutual desire for each other’s well being.
One interesting feature of Philippians as a “friendship” letter is that, even though it contains exhortations and appeals, Paul does not appeal to his apostleship and authority but rather to their mutual faith in Christ and the example he and others have set for them. There is a remarkable sense of egalitarianism in their relationship, especially when contrasted with letters such as Galatians and the Corinthian correspondence.
Gordon Fee ultimately casts Philippians as “Christian hortatory letter of friendship.” Each of those terms is key. Philippians is about friendship. It contains appeals and exhortation. The letter is centered upon Christ and their union with Christ and therefore, with each other.
The marks of the letter of friendship are everywhere. Philippians is clearly intended to make up for their mutual absence, functioning as Paul’s way of being present while absent. …Thus he informs them about his affairs, speaks into their affairs and offers information about the movements of intermediaries. Evidence of mutual affection abounds. The reciprocity of friendship is especially evident at the beginning and the end, and thus is probably to be seen in the other parts as well. Moreover, in the two sections in which Paul speaks into their affairs the letter functions as moral exhortation, which is tied very specifically to exemplary paradigms.
…He is altogether concerned for his friends in Philippi and their ongoing relationship with Christ.
It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be “as gods.” We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.
Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and “one body,” will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from the failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my integration in the mystery of Christ. This was was the poet John Donne realized during a serious illness when he heard the death knoll tolling for another. “The Church is Catholic, universal,” he said, “so are all her actions, all that she does belongs to all. …Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings: but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?”
Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part and a member of mankind. Every Christian is a part of my own body, because we are members of Christ. What I do is also done for them and with them and by them. What they do is done in me and by me and for me. But each one of us remains responsible for his own share in the life of the whole body. Charity cannot be what it is supposed to be as long as I do not see that my life represents my own allotment in the life of a whole supernatural organism to which I belong. Only when this truth is absolutely central do other doctrines fit into their proper context. Solitude, humility, self-denial, action and contemplation, the sacraments, the monastic life, the family, war and peace — none of these make sense except in relation to the central reality which is God’s love living and acting in those whom He has incorporated in His Christ. Nothing at all makes sense, unless we admit, with John Donne, that: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
Saving My Neighbor — Just How Connected Are We? By Father Stephen Freeman
If you are in the “helping professions,” confronting problems in people’s lives, it doesn’t take long to realize that no one is purely and simply an individual. The problems we suffer may occasionally appear to be “of our own making,” but that is the exception rather than the rule. Whether we are thinking of economic or genetic inheritance, or the psychological and social environment, almost all the issues in our lives are a matter of “connection.” The same is true when it comes to virtue and wholeness. Saints are not a phenomenon of individuality.
There is a model of what it means to be human that is simply wrong, regardless of its elements of truth. That model envisions us primarily as free-agents, gathering information and making decisions. It emphasizes the importance of choice and the care with which decisions must be made. It lectures long on responsibility and the need to admit that we are the primary cause of our own failings. It praises hard work and admires those with creative insights. Success comes to those who master these virtues and we encourage everyone to take them as their models.
This model of human agency is written deep in the mythology of American culture, and, with its global influence, has become increasingly popular elsewhere. Many elements of contemporary Christian thought assume this model of agency to be true and have interwoven it into the notion of salvation itself. The scandalous popularity of the novel teachers of prosperity and personal-success-schemes have raised this model of humanity into something like cult status. But even those who are scandalized by such distortions of the gospel often subscribe to many of its ideas. Those ideas are part of the “common sense” of our culture.
They are also part of the nonsense produced by our culture’s mythology. There is virtually nothing about human beings that, strictly speaking, is individual. Beginning from our biology itself, we are utterly and completely connected to others. The same is true of our language and our culture. None of us is an economy to ourselves. Even those things we most cherish as uniquely individual are questionable.
We celebrate choice as the true signature of our individuality. However, if you scrutinize decisions carefully, they are something less than autonomous exercises of the will. Americans have a strange way of choosing like Americans (often to the dismay of the rest of the world). We are “free agents” who play the game of life on a field that is deeply slanted.
As I noted at the beginning, it is easy to describe the many-sourced nature of failure. With a bit more effort, we could see that “success” is equally derived from many sources outside of the self. It should not be surprising then, to see that salvation (and condemnation) are also corporate matters rather than strictly individual. Indeed, the corporate nature of our existence lies at the very heart of the classical doctrine of Christian salvation.
Cigar Guy 2015
One of the earliest complete accounts of Christian salvation was written in the 4th century by St. Athanasius the Great. It has long been recognized as a touchstone of Christian theology. In that work, On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius explains in detail that the salvation of humanity is brought about through the action of God becoming human. The work of Christ’s death and resurrection are not external to our humanity. Rather, their power to work salvation lies precisely in the fact of our communion with Him through the single common human nature that He assumed. Our cooperation with that action completes and makes effective what has been given to the whole of humanity through the God/Man, Jesus Christ.
Our cooperation (a choice) is only effective, however, because of the communion established in the Incarnation. Salvation is not a reward given to someone who chose correctly. Salvation is a new life that is lived as a communion, a mutual indwelling (koinonia).
That primary saving reality, our common nature and its communion with the God/Man, is something that has largely been lost in our modern understanding, dominated as it is by the myth of individualism. Christ’s incarnation is only effective if our humanity has a corporate reality (it would make little sense otherwise). It was classically summed up in the fathers by saying, “He became what we are that we might become what He is.” This is only possible if there is, in fact, a “what” that we all share. This “what” makes possible not only our communion with Him, but also our communion with each other.
St. Silouan famously said, “My brother is my life.” He was not speaking figuratively. Rather, he was giving assent to the very mechanism of our life and salvation. We were created to live as beings-in-communion. Adam declares of Eve, “This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” The story of sin is the story of the disruption of communion:
And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.” To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.” Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying,`You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:15-19)
The communion between persons is disrupted, as well as the communion with animals and creation, all ending in the dust of death. But even that death is a communal death: none of them die alone.
For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living. (Rom. 14:7-9)
This is the very heart of our existence, and of our salvation as well. In some manner, we carry within us the whole of humanity. St. Silouan called this the “whole Adam.” We could extend that and say that each of us carries within us the whole of the created order. St. Maximus the Confessor called us a “microcosm” (“the whole cosmos in miniature”). The life we live is a life for the whole Adam, the whole cosmos. In some manner, our salvation is the salvation of the whole cosmos. We hear this in Romans 8:
For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God…. because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Rom. 8:19, 21)
Our salvation can be described as the restoration and fullness of communion with God. But that same salvation includes the restoration and fullness of communion with one another and with all of creation. Just as Christ’s communion with us is the means of our salvation, so our communion with everything and everyone works towards that same salvation.
[God has] made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth– in Him. (Eph. 1:9)
Earbuds 2015
The modern myth of human beings as individual, self-contained moral agents is not just incorrect. It is also a tool of deception. The myth is often used to absolve us from the mutual responsibility that constitutes a just society, as well as to falsely blame individuals for things over which they have little or no control. That contemporary Christianity is often complicit in this deception is perhaps among its greatest errors.
It has long been observed that the greatest weakness of the Reformation was ecclesiology (the doctrine of the “Church”). Reformers found it difficult to articulate the reality of “the Church” without undermining their own reforming project. From its inception, the Reformation was not a single work, but an immediate work of divisions and competing reformations. There has never been a “Protestant Church,” only “Churches” that were mutually exclusive in their origins. That modern ecumenical theories have invented the notion of the “invisible Church” to mask this essential failure does nothing to address the real problem. Indeed, it has provided the fertile ground for the individualism of the Modern Project with all of its concomitant destruction.
It is deeply scandalous today to quote St. Cyprian’s contention that “there is no salvation outside the Church.” It might be better understood if it were acknowledged that “Church,” in its true form of ecclesial existence as communion, is what salvation actually looks like. We cannot, as individuals, possess that which is only given to us in communion.
Woman & Child Watching, Black Brigade Monument, Cincinnati OH
(Click on picture for larger image)
About Today’s Picture
This statue of an African-American woman and her child, is part of the Black Brigade Monument in Smale Park on the riverfront in Cincinnati. It honors the courageous and city-saving contributions of a group of African-Americans who defended Cincinnati from Confederate forces in 1862. Here is a marvelous video, produced to introduce the monument, which tells the story of the Black Brigade and the making of the public art that pays them tribute.
The particular statue we feature today, created by Carolyn Manto, commemorates the watchfulness, fear, and hope of the women and children whose husbands were kidnapped and forced to work on the Kentucky side of the river in slave-like conditions. General Lew Wallace (of Ben Hur fame) became alarmed at the reports of their forced conscription and how they were being treated. He chose a local judge, William Martin Dickson, and asked him to remedy the situation. Dickson went to the camps of the various regiments, retrieved black men who had been seized, and brought them back. He let them return to their homes and families to make preparations for service under more humane conditions. The next morning, September 5th, about 700 African-American men voluntarily reported for duty, making them the first African-Americans organized and utilized for military purposes in the North. Manto’s statue captures the moment when the families of the returning captives saw them coming back across the Ohio River.
• • •
The Gospel for this Sunday in Bach’s day was the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31). This was Bach’s first Sunday in Leipzig, May 30, 1723, when he presented his cantata BWV 75, “Die Elenden sollen essen, daß sie satt werden” (The meek shall eat and be satisfied) to the congregation there. The early reviews were favorable: “On the 30th of the same month….the new cantor Collegii Musici director Herr Joh. Sebastian Bach, who came here from the princely court in Cöthen, performed his first music to good applause.” It was well received.
Written in two sections, part one was performed before the sermon and part two after.
Michael Beattie says of this cantata, “The BWV 75, Die Elenden sollen essen the first cantata of Bach’s Leipzig tenure, overflows with invention. Critics and musicians have noted its somewhat unruly proportions, citing the truncated opening chorus and sprawling tenor aria, but it is filled with superb arias, engaged recitatives and very colorful orchestra writing; the cumulative dramatic effect of the piece is thrilling.” Craig Smith calls it, “one of the longest and grandest of all of the cantatas.”
Here is a performance of the delightful sinfonia that begins part 2. Note the lovely chorale tune featuring the trumpet:
The first aria in part 2 is sung by the alto, in which she expresses her desire to have true riches, no matter what the world may offer.
Jesus makes my spirit rich. If I can receive his Spirit, I will nothing further long for; For my life doth grow thereby. Jesus makes my spirit rich.
The bass aria then proclaims with enthusiasm, to resounding brass accompaniment, that Jesus is the true Treasure of the heart.
My heart believes and loves for the sweet flames of Jesus which are the source of mine, altogether overwhelm me, since he gives himself to me.
This cantata ends with a powerful, uplifting affirmation of faith, reprising the music of the chorale fantasy that ended part 1.
What God does, is well done, I will cling to this. Along the harsh path trouble, death and misery may drive me. Yet God will, just like a father, hold me in His arms: therefore I let Him alone rule.
”It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.”
GRILL DADDY WANTED
Good morning. I’m Steve Inskeep. Some men are searching for a dad. They’re in their 20s, live in Washington state not with their dads and advertised on Craigslist for an actual, experienced dad to grill burgers and hot dogs for them on Father’s Day weekend. They tell KHQ-TV they’re not ready to fill the B-B-Q dad role. They had best be careful because when they find a dad, he’s liable to just tell them to get on the grill, do the job themselves and when they’re done, call their dad.
Just a thought: these guys never went to Mark Driscoll’s church, right?
• • •
THIS DAD HEARD TWO GREAT CONCERTS IN A WEEK!
Not only did we get to hear Paul Simon last weekend, but on Tuesday night the boys treated mom and I to an outdoor feast of music by Wilco here in Indy. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if they’re not the best rock band on the planet, they’re in the discussion. Especially live.
Here’s a story about music that makes my heart sing…
The Dallas Street Choir is a group composed of the city’s homeless. Though its lineup has varied over the years, over time it’s become a more concrete unit, and 25 of its most dedicated singers — including some with mental illness and addiction issues — have been picked to tour the East Coast.
Its stop Wednesday night in New York is historic: Never before in its 126-year history has Carnegie Hall hosted a musical ensemble solely comprising performers who are homeless. And what’s more: Tickets have been donated so hundreds of New York City’s homeless, from all five boroughs, can attend.
…the Street Choir will be joined at Carnegie Hall by some of the brightest stars from Broadway and the opera. These include composer Jake Heggie, who has has arranged music and will accompany the choir on piano. Mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade will join the singers again, after she performed with them in Dallas two years ago.
Heggie, whose opera Great Scott was next door at the Winspear Opera House, was in attendance that night in Dallas. “[My cast and I] were in the back row listening to this group of people who don’t have a voice or face and we were all weeping,” he remembers.
The Street Choir’s performance reminded the celebrated composer of something he’d started to lose track of in New York City: why he started doing this in the first place.
• • •
PLEASE PRACTICE SAFE CELL PHONE USE!
This one’s not funny. This woman was seriously injured. Please be careful.
• • •
ANOTHER STEP TOWARD WORLD DOMINATION FOR AMAZON
NBC News reports that Amazon will buy the natural and organic grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.
Which sent Amazon’s stock price soaring (they basically bought Whole Foods for $0), which sent other grocery chains’ stock prices into the toilet, and which prompted tweeters everywhere to sound off.
Probably the biggest crisis in Christianity right now is that no one has put all the pictures of Adam & Eve together and ranked them according to how hot they are. But wait, some will say. Shouldn’t Christians resist judging people based on their physical appearance? Yes, of course, if you think you might get caught. But Adam and Eve are almost certainly dead by now, so I think it’s okay. Besides, if you make adolescent jokes while you’re judging them, that’s two sins, and two sins always cancel each other out, Jim Bakker taught me that.
Visit the site and choose for yourself, but this was my favorite, not least because I can totally see Ken Ham getting turned on by it. Pierce’s comments and ranking follow.
This was the coolest photo on the floppy disk that came in the Answers in Genesis curriculum pack that your parents picked up at the homeschool convention in 2000. Does Adam have big biceps? Does Eve have nice legs? It doesn’t matter; all that matters is that young earth life, trick.
(-500) Sexy Points for supremely weird-looking hair
(+200) Sexy Points for successful usage of the Kurt Warner Perpetual Five o’Clock Shadow
(-100) Sexy Points for inability to hold an apple correctly. It’s not a dang Poké ball, Eve
(-100) Sexy Points for Adam dangling his sling and two smooth stones into thick foliage. That’s how you pick up a rash, guy.
• • •
ADROIT VEGETARIAN DROWNS RABID RACCOON
At least that is the headline I would have written about this story from the BDN Maine Midcoast website.
While jogging on a familiar, overgrown, wooded trail near her home on a recent warm afternoon, Rachel Borch thought to herself, “what a beautiful day.”
Little did she know she was about to be attacked by a rabid raccoon she would end up killing with her bare hands.
In the midst of appreciating the weather and scenery, she looked ahead and noticed a raccoon obstructing the narrow foot path, baring its tiny teeth.
Suddenly, it began “bounding” toward her, Borch recalled Wednesday afternoon during an interview at her home on Hatchet Mountain Road in Hope.
“I knew instantly it had to be rabid,” said Borch, who remembers ripping out her headphones and dropping her phone on the ground.
What felt like a split second later, the furry animal was at her feet. Borch said she was “dancing around it,” trying to figure out what to do.
“Imagine the Tasmanian devil,” she said. “It was terrifying.”
The path was too narrow for Borch to run past the raccoon, which had begun lunging at her. With adrenaline pumping, Borch suspended her disbelief.
“I knew it was going to bite me,” she said.
Figuring she would have the greatest ability to defend herself if she used her hands to hold it down, she decided that probably would be the best place for the aggressive animal to latch on.
The raccoon sank its teeth into Borch’s thumb and “wouldn’t let go.” Its paws were scratching her arms and legs wildly as Borch screamed and cried.
In a matter of seconds, Borch, who could not unhinge the raccoon’s jaw to shake it off her hand, noticed that when she had dropped her phone, it had fallen into a puddle in the path and was fully submerged.
“I didn’t think I could strangle [the raccoon] with my bare hands,” she remembers thinking, but holding it under the water might do the trick.
Connecting the dots quickly, Borch, then on her knees, dragged the still biting raccoon, which was scratching frantically at her hand and arms, into the puddle.
“With my thumb in its mouth, I just pushed its head down into the muck,” Borch said.
With the animal belly-up, she held its head under water. “It was still struggling and clawing at my arms. It wouldn’t let go of my thumb,” she said.
Borch said she held it there for what felt like an eternity until finally it stopped struggling and “its arms sort of of fell to the side, its chest still heaving really slowly.”
…The dead raccoon was retrieved by Borch’s dad, who packed it into a Taste of the Wild dog food bag and handed it over to the Maine Warden Service.
Hope Animal Control Officer Heidi Blood confirmed Wednesday that the dead raccoon later tested positive for rabies by the Maine Center for Disease Control.
…Borch has received six shots so far, including the rabies vaccine, and immunoglobulin and tetanus injections. She is slated to receive her last injection this weekend.
“If there hadn’t been water on the ground, I don’t know what I would have done,” Borch said of drowning the animal. “It really was just dumb luck. I’ve never killed an animal with my bare hands. I’m a vegetarian. It was self-defense.”
Pastor Dwight McKissic, author of SBC “alt-right” proposal
[T]he Southern Baptist Convention this week condemned the alt-right, declaring itself opposed to “every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The denunciation did not come easily for the convention, which was founded in the 1840s after leading Baptist societies prevented southern slaveholders from becoming missionaries. The Southern Baptist Convention, CNN points out, did not officially apologize for its pro-slavery beginnings until 1995.
The Atlantic magazine reports that the denomination’s 2017 annual meeting, held this year in Phoenix, turned “chaotic” after the proposal was first pushed aside by the resolutions committee.
…The proposal was rewritten and presented to the resolutions committee, where it again failed to get enough support. But backers of the proposal refused to give up and pushed for yet another vote. Finally, it passed. Its proponents believe the final vote saved the convention from “disaster.”
“It was critically important to get this right,” said Russell Moore, president of the convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “The alt-right isn’t just some sociological movement. The alt-right is contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ and Satanic to the core. We need to be very clear on that.”
• • •
FROM THE DAILY BONNET (satire for plain people)
ATLANTA, GA
According to tradition, the preferred cola of Mennonites has always been Pepsi (accompanied by a Ravel bar). In an effort to win over some of the Mennonite market share, Coca-Cola has recently introduced a series of Mennonite-named bottles including Abe, Nettie, Menno, and Taunte Lina.
“We think that if Mennonites try out our product, they’ll realize it’s not as cloyingly sweet as our competitors,” said Coca-Cola sales rep Patricia Carmichael. “We hope that these names will really appeal to the good folks of Gnadenfeld, Kleefeld, and Gruenfeld…all the felds really.”
Thanks to the new bottles, Mennonites are now able to ‘share a Coke with’ all of their frintschoft.
“There are only about a dozen Mennonite first names, so it wasn’t a difficult task,” said Carmichael. “Basically we just browsed a Grunthal phone book and, within minutes, we had our list of names.”
After nearly 7 decades of drinking Pepsi, Taunte Lina of Gnadenfeld was initially reluctant to try a Coke for the first time in her life, but the eponymous bottle convinced her.
“Oba, I naver thought I’d see my name on a Coke bottle yet,” said Taunte Lina. “I write my names on the margarine containers in the church kitchen, but naver a Coke bottle. It doesn’t give such.”
Representing over 70% of sales, all the Abe bottles in southern Manitoba sold out within 20 minutes.
For, with the old order destroyed, a universe cast down is renewed, and integrity of life is restored to us in Christ.
Prayer offered during Mass: May 3, 2015
• • •
The phrase “integrity of life” reached out and grabbed me when I heard it a few months ago. Those three words express what I’ve always been trying to work toward: why I’ve several times given up my old life and gone to live in primitive circumstances; why I’ve worked, raised my family, and ordered my daily tasks the way I have. I have been trying to find integrity of life. I’ve never achieved it, and sometimes I feel I’m farther from it now than I’ve ever been. But it is what I’m seeking. I understand it to be life at peace with myself, the world, and God, a life that integrates work and play, necessity and joy, one that works with nature and not in opposition to it.
[Disclaimer: This essay is not about going back to the good old days of caves, tooth decay, whooping cough, and raw meat. I love antibiotics and effective food storage. Please believe me.]
There are other people seeking integrity of life, in their own ways. Daniel mentioned the Benedict Option recently; apparently Daniel and I read many of the same blogs and news sources. I don’t really want to discuss Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option itself or argue for or against it, especially since it is a work in progress. However, I do want to think more about Dreher’s list of Benedictine imperatives and about culture. I may sound as if I am talking about the “culture wars” that we all hate: the strident political, legal, and commercial attempts to make other people agree with us and act as we want them to. But I’m not. These “culture wars” are not worth spending time on, because they are ineffective, unkind, unchristian, and show profound ignorance of history and of the real sources of human behavior and change. Their deepest flaw is assuming that the shape and boundaries of our current culture are universal and that the Christian response must be to dress that culture in Christian clothes.
I prefer the term “countercultural,” but even that is a limited concept. It exists only in reaction to something and is still shaped by the thing it rejects. For example, our modern society believes in the religion of progress – I think it is a false religion, wrong both morally and thermodynamically. The countercultural response to the religion of progress is “degrowth,” or “the limits to growth,” or Herman Daly’s “steady state.” I find these ideas more congenial and more accurate. But what if there is another way of seeing human life that doesn’t even think in terms of progress, regress, or a refusal to move? I can’t say what it would be, because I’m also conditioned by my time and place – although I imagine that permaculture comes close. However, just accepting that there could be other forms of human culture than the ones we’re familiar with makes the culture wars and even counter-culturalism too limiting as a means of cultural renewal.
So how do Christians find integrity of life in a post-Christian society? [Disclaimer Number Two: I don’t think we ever will find it in this fallen world; when it arrives, it will be a gift of grace breaking through and not a result of our own efforts. Still, like Cornelius in the book of Acts, we would do well to work toward integrity as best we can while waiting for grace to arrive.]
The first thing we should do is give thanks for a post-Christian society – that we are now spared the damnable temptation to conflate our American way of life with the Kingdom of God. That temptation beset recent generations but is no longer open to us.
Second, we should always place before us, not what we object to in society, but what God has given us as timeless guidelines—not what we’re against, but what we’re for. You know these:
And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22: 37-40)
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)
Third, we should live out our convictions and not just philosophize on the internet. Dreher lists the following as the foundations of Benedictine thought: order, stability, discipline, community, and hospitality. I mentioned that the culture wars were wrong in how they went about trying to change culture. Benedict was wiser: his five elements form both the content of culture and the means of perpetuating it. Culture is a direct result of the order, stability, discipline, community, and hospitality with which a person is raised and formed.
To be specific: in a post-Christian world, Christians should strive to achieve order, stability, discipline, community, and hospitality, not just because they are good things but because they are the building blocks of true human culture and always have been. You can read the rule of Saint Benedict and visit current monasteries to see what they look like in monasticism. Here are some ideas of how these five things might look in our everyday lives.
Eat real food prepared by real people, all sitting together, young and old at the same table, with no distractions. Make this a priority every day. Do not allow anything – even work, even church programs – to interfere with communal mealtimes, but feel free to choose the best time for your family – breakfast or afternoon tea works as well as dinner. Train children to stay seated, listen, and partake. Discuss heatedly but don’t fight. Stay at the table slightly longer than it takes to eat the food. Clean up together. Invite guests. If you live alone, still have sit-down meals of real food, and try to have others join you frequently.
Visit your food before it gets to your house. If you can’t, your food’s probably coming too far. Grow some yourself.
Read aloud, to children especially, but to all ages as well. Several insightful commenters on iMonk have mentioned that the technology we use plays a huge role in shaping who we think we are and what we think the world is – in forming culture, in other words. Reading a book, more than partaking in modern forms of electronic media, is by its nature an ordered, stable activity, that requires discipline; reading aloud builds community and can contribute to hospitality. Some of you may wisely point out that reading itself is a relatively new skill and one that historically has only involved a tiny minority of people; you may point out that Socrates didn’t trust it, and that I, in objecting to Twitter, Google, etc., am fighting the same useless reactionary, rearguard battle that Socrates was. Well, that’s good company to be in, but let me concede two extremes if you like. First, if you don’t want to read books, go primitive – tell stories to your family and friends. Real stories, not just gossip or anecdotes. These stories are the foundation of our personal identity, just as the common stories of literature, art, and music are the foundation of our cultural identity. Or second, be advanced and try reading aloud from Twitter and Google to your friends, families, and housemates. At least then your reading will be a communal activity, not just a solitary one, and you will be protected from the dangers of the echo chamber by the questions and reactions of those you’re reading to. I suspect you’ll find, however, that your children would rather be on your lap listening to Make Way for Ducklings or the story about how Grandpa got arrested for driving with a pig in the front seat than watching the back of your head while you read aloud from some website.
Go outside and get dirty. Get wet when it rains. Get chilled when it’s cold. Sweat. Walk places. Notice where the sun rises and sets. Remind yourself of your size and your place in the natural world.
Make your own music. Draw a picture. Write someone a letter on real paper.
Throw stuff out. One of the most troubling symptoms of our cultural poverty is the proliferation of self-storage facilities. Where I live, even towns of 800 people have self-storage buildings. Buying and hoarding stuff does not create a living culture; rather it drags it down to its death. Think deeply and honestly about what you buy and use and why you buy it and use it. How many outfits do you need? How many kitchen implements do you need? How much time do you spend dealing with things – dusting, taking out, putting in, organizing and reorganizing – instead of people? We have fallen into the belief that culture consists of the stuff we own and consume. If that’s true, then it makes sense for Christians to try to own and consume different stuff, stuff that is distinctively Christian. But is that what culture is? No. Culture is not stuff but the shared experience of order, stability, discipline, community, and hospitality provided by our families and our society as a whole.
Sleep when it gets dark and get up when it gets light. Try instituting an electricity-free day every now and again.
Pray always, even when it doesn’t seem to be “doing anything.” Pray while doing all the other things on the list.
(That’s interesting. I had no intention of replicating the Benedictine lifestyle of ora et labora, or prayer and work, when I started typing the previous thoughts, but it seems to have happened – much of what I suggest is what I gather Benedictines do as part of their daily disciplines.)
There are many other aspects of integrity of life that occur to me – free time, personal appearance, holidays, rituals, social structures, and others – but I don’t want to cram too much into a short post. This is just a start, and a deceptive one to boot. A truly integrated life can’t be lived from a checklist like the one above. But still, we can find it helpful to begin there in examining why we live as we do – in examining the culture we have received and the one we want to pass down to others. I’ve started a book about integrity of life, consisting ideally of the words and experiences of people farther along than I am. In the process of writing it, I am having to remind myself not to spend all day alone at the computer, to get outside even though it’s raining, to play a game with my family, to bag up some junk for Goodwill, and several times a day to throw the spit-caked tennis ball for the dog to fetch. I’ll go do that now.
Chapter 9: What Makes Us Human? The Development of Evolutionary Psychology
Chapter 10: Are Humans Different? What About Morality in Animals
Chapter 11: What is the Difference Between Altruism, Altruistic Love, and Agape?
Chapter 12: Does Language Uniquely Define Us as Humans?
We are going to skip over Chapter 8: Don’t Parapyschology and Near-Death Experiences Prove the Existence of the Soul? I understand Jeeves got the question from some of his students and wanted to cover it for completeness sake, but I think most of us at Imonk would agree the answer is no. Jeeves answer is no as well. I’m lumping chapters 9-12 together because, in them, Jeeves is exploring the question; what makes us unique from other animals? I think that is a worthwhile question to discuss.
From the beginning philosophers have agonized over the question of what makes us humans. Is the difference in kind or merely a difference in degree between ourselves and other animals?”
I think that puts the question in its basic essence: difference in kind or merely in degree? Blaise Pascal wrote in 1659:
It is dangerous to show a man too clearly how much he resembles the beast, without at the same time showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to allow him too clear a vision of his greatness without his baseness. It is even more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both.
The discussion among Imonk commenters last time pretty well concluded that the difference between humans and other animals isn’t the presence of some immaterial soul magically implanted by God. In fact the demonstration from the Bible itself (as exegeted by professor of Old Testament at Asbury seminary, Lawson Stone) shows we are “souls” that is “living beings” as are at least the higher, more sentient animals.
The main issue in this chapter, for Malcolm’s student, is the evolutionary basis of evolutionary psychology. If you believe that God’s mechanism of bringing humans into existence was a special, instantaneous, creation event, then you are going to view evolutionary psychology as presuppositional atheistic materialism. If you believe that evolution was God’s mechanism for creation then “out of the dust of the ground” becomes the metaphor for God forming us through a process of development from non-living matter to living simple organisms to living complex organisms to living complex organisms that recognize and relate to him.
So what characteristics of the mind are uniquely human? Jeeves cites research on “mind reading” or the ability of an animal to understand the mind of another animal. Jeeves cites the work of Michael Tomasello who published a study in 2010 where he gave a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to three groups: a large number of chimpanzees, a group of orangutans and a large group of two and half year old children. The test battery apparently consisted of a whole lot of different nonverbal tasks designed to assess cognitive skills, involving physical and social problems. Tomasello and his colleagues found that, as reported in the past, the children and the apes show similar skills when dealing with the physical world, but already by age 2 1/2 the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills than either of the ape species studied when it came to dealing with the social world. “Distinct species-unique skills” of what the researchers called social cognition had emerged in the children by age two and a half.
The next chapter deals with the question of morality in animals. Jeeves first discusses recent research that show the existence of “cultures” in animals. He notes a study by Frans de Waal that showed tool use in a subset of chimpanzees that seemed to be passed on by culture and tradition, and another study from McMaster University in 2010 that showed similar social learning in mongooses, animals not normally regarded as close to us from an evolutionary point of view.
Jeeves then quotes Francisco Ayala, leading American evolutionary biologist, who believes the clue to understanding how humans differ from non-human primates is to be found in the difference between what Ayala and fellow evolutionary biologists can adaptations and exaptations. Ayala (“The Difference of Being Human: Morality”, Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences 107, May 11, 2010: 9015-22) says:
Evolutionary biologists define exaptations as features of organisms that evolved because they served some function but are later co-opted to serve an additional or different function, which was not originally the target of natural selection. The new function may replace the older function or co-exist together with it. Feathers seem to have evolved first for conserving temperature, but were later co-opted in birds for flying… The issue at hand is whether moral behavior was directly promoted by natural selection or rather it is simply a consequence of our exalted intelligence, which was the target of natural selection (because it made possible the construction of better tools). Art, literature, religion, and many human cultural activities might also be seen as exaptations that came about as consequences of the evolution of high intelligence…
The capacity for ethics is an outcome of gradual evolution, but it is an attribute that only exists when the underlying attributes (i.e. the intellectual capacities) reach an advance degree. The necessary conditions for ethical behavior only come about after the crossing of an evolutionary threshold. The approach is gradual, but the conditions only appear when the degree of intelligence is reached such that the formation of abstract concepts and the anticipation of the future are possible, even though we may not be able to determine when the threshold was crossed.
What Ayala is saying is what I was trying to get across with my analogy of water flow going from subcritical to supercritical. Not everything in nature is a gradual continuum or spectrum. Sometimes there are “nick points” when a certain threshold is reached and a jump is made to a wholly different level from what existed before. After all, whoever went to Africa to study a group of nonhuman primates and found they had hospitals, libraries, technology parks, art galleries, churches, symphony orchestras and so on and so on? It seems to me that it has become too easy to gloss over these enormous and fundamental differences, but the question is why, with such similar brains, are we so comprehensively different?
In Chapter 11, Jeeves discusses altruistic behavior in humans and animals. Evolutionary theory attempts to answer the question of self-sacrificial behavior by arguing that genes favoring altruism can spread in future generations if their costs to the altruist’s personal reproductive success is outweighed by the benefits in reproductive success of altruists’ relative carrying copies of the same genes – what is called “kin selection”. Second, it proposes that genes favoring altruism could spread if the altruism is sufficiently reciprocated, what is called “reciprocal altruism”.
Honey-pot worker ants
One of the most graphic examples of the first is honey-pot worker ants, who do nothing but hang from the ceiling of their ant colony, acting as receptacles or storage jars for honey, which some workers fill them with and which the colony draws on when needed. At an individual level, that is self-sacrifice. Examples of reciprocal altruism appear to be much rarer. The classic example is vampire bats, who are in real danger of starving if they do not get their blood meal on a particular evening. If this happens they are fed back in their colony by an unrelated nest mate, to whom they are likely to repay the favor on another night.
These two examples necessitate a warning: we must not assume that because two behaviors are similar, the mechanisms underlying them are necessary similar or identical. Jeeves notes that leading evolutionary psychologist Frans de Waal has written helpfully about how to understand altruistic behaviors, as well as other kinds of behaviors, that traditionally have been regarded as showing evidence of some sort of moral sense in an individual or group. In his book, Good Natured , de Waal warns against unthinking reductionism. He cautions:
Even if animals other than ourselves act in ways tantamount to moral behavior, their behavior does not necessarily rest on deliberations of the kind we engage in. It is hard to believe that animals weigh their own interests against the rights of others, that they develop a vision of the greater good of society, or that they feel lifelong guilt about something they should not have done.” And he goes on, “To communicate intentions and feelings is one thing; to clarify what is right, and why, and what is wrong, and why, is quite something else. Animals are no moral philosophers.” Of the moral sense he later writes, “The fact that the human moral sense goes so far back in evolutionary history that other species show signs of it plants morality firmly near the center of our much-maligned nature.”
De Waal gives a good summary of the issue, I think, and it points again to the “nick point” nature of the evolutionary transition from non-human to human.
The waggle dance – the direction the bee moves in relation to the hive indicates direction; if it moves vertically the direction to the source is directly towards the Sun. The duration of the waggle part of the dance signifies the distance.
In the next Chapter 12: Does Language Uniquely Define Us As Humans, Jeeves take a similar tact in the discussion. He notes the abundant research that shows all types of rudimentary language use in animals from the bee waggle dance to the learning of sign language in the great apes. But then he quotes from a 2006 report of a working group of the Academy of Medical Sciences in Britain, “The Use of Nonhuman Primates in research.”
The outstanding intelligence of humans appears to result from a combination and enhancement of properties found in non-human primates, such as theory of the mind, imitation, and language, rather than from unique properties.
So what about love, and in particular, agape love? Jeeves notes: Altruism is what we might call having regard for the actions or motivations of others. Altruistic love normally adds an additional feature, a deep affirmative affect, to altruism. And agape is altruistic love extended to all humanity. But in addition to that, it has a very special use in the hands of the New Testament writers. There agape is the Greek word used to describe a form of unlimited altruistic love seen supremely in the self-giving love of Christ on the cross (and in rough equivalents in Judaism, Buddhism and other great religious traditions). Jeeves concludes:
My own view is that from a Christian perspective there are no grounds for believing that we are all created identical in terms of things like personality. Indeed, the apostle Paul makes it clear that we are in fact all very different and we have many different gifts. I was reminded recently when reading some of the things that the apostle Paul had to say to Christians at Corinth about the way that some of them were boasting about themselves and their behavior. Paul said that by the standards of the world, the Corinthians may have had something of which to boast, but that Christians do not accept the standards of the world. Christians acknowledge that in themselves they are nothing. They owe everything to the grace of God and there is no place for boasting about one’s achievements. As Christians we acknowledge that we are all different, and it is the grace of God that enable us, in the context of the individual differences, to show agape love as much as we are able.
For my primary resource in this study, I will be consulting 
series.
.
in his NT for Everyone series.
.
It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be “as gods.” We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.
(and notes he is a leader in the field):
The Internet Monk Archives 