I am a big fan of Jonathan Haidt. We did a series of reflections on his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion back in July, 2017. The Righteous Mind is one of the most important books I’ve read on how people think and reason morally, and why we tend to live in different “moral matrices” such as the political “left” and “right” in America.
Haidt (along with Richard Beck) have convinced me that when we take a stand for “truth” or “morality,” we are primarily revealing deep, fundamental visceral and emotional feelings and then using rational arguments to justify our “righteous” position. Furthermore, those who are on the more “liberal” end of the spectrum react intuitively to different things than those on the “conservative” end. Finally, this intuitive moral reasoning has social aspects which bind us together into tribe or teams and blind us to those who reason from different instinctive roots. As Haidt writes elsewhere, “Part of what we do when we make moral judgments is express allegiance to a team. But that can interfere with our ability to think critically. Acknowledging that the other side’s viewpoint has any merit is risky—your teammates may see you as a traitor.”
I found Haidt’s analysis enormously helpful in this polarized age in which we live. It helped me more fully understand where people are coming from when they express their values, and it is hoped that will continue to help me as I engage in conversation both with those who agree and disagree with me.
This book is about ideas, particularly a few bad ideas, that are being widely disseminated throughout our culture. These bad ideas, according to the authors, appeal to our basic instincts in ways that cause us to develop bad mental habits and unhealthy social behaviors.
Greg is a First Amendment attorney who advocates for academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus as the head of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Much of the impetus for this book grew out of changes he witnessed on campus cultures across the U.S. Jon’s work on “consensual moral matrices” — the “echo chambers” we often find ourselves in where we only hear and act in ways that reinforce our group’s perspective and lead us to act in ways that can be unintelligible to outsiders — shows how some of these bad ideas have grown in influence.
Here is their overview of three such ideas:
This is a book about three Great Untruths that seem to have spread widely in recent years:
The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
While many propositions are untrue, in order to be classified as a Great Untruth, an idea must meet three criteria:
It contradicts ancient wisdom (ideas found widely in the wisdom literatures of many cultures).
It contradicts modern psychological research on well-being.
It harms the individuals and communities who embrace it.
• The Coddling of the American Mind (p. 4)
Before the book came an article in The Atlantic that raised a lot of discussion and controversy. Critics of Lukianoff and Haidt accused them of being “grumpy old men” who were simply engaging in the perennial bashing of the younger generation by their elders. But they are careful to going beyond a surface critique of “political correctness,” instead identifying how a culture of “protective vindictiveness” has seriously limited speech on campuses and led to truly pathological thinking and behavior.
I encourage you to follow the link and read the article in The Atlantic as a way of entering into today’s discussion. Next time we’ll start discussing the “bad ideas” or “untruths” the authors say are infiltrating our lives and making us less prepared to live mature lives of wisdom.
Jesus makes things very complicated for American Christians. If you simply follow him around in the Gospels, you are going to get into trouble. Why? Because he isn’t just talking evangelism. He’s talking about a whole life of Kingdom-dominated, life-transforming discipleship.
Let me use an illustration. Years ago, I found myself in a young adult men’s Sunday School class at the church I was serving. I was joining in for some fellowship with men my age, and I wasn’t teaching. The lesson that day was on Matthew 19:21-24. Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell all he has and give it the poor, then come follow him. The young man refuses, and Jesus says it is very difficult for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom.
There was a tangible discomfort in that room full of young doctors, lawyers, realtors and entrepreneurs. They didn’t consider themselves “rich” by American standards (which is absurd,) but the text hit close enough to home that the discussion quickly took the tract of “Well….of course, he didn’t mean that we should actually do that. Right?”
I don’t want to critique those guys. I just want to note that when the Jesus of the early chapters of the Gospels gets loose at the party, things don’t head directly to the subject of church growth or the latest evangelism tract. He gets inside ylur suit, and he irritates you. He wants things to change, and it makes us nervous.
You see, Jesus is proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:14-15), and at the heart of it are two things that are fairly challenging to all of us in the materialistic, prosperous west.
1) The announcement that a climactic time has arrived, and the present age has come to it’s fulfillment point. In other words, a new world, a new creation, is arriving with Jesus. Something happens. “Personal Savior?” I don’t think so.
2) The call is not simply to believe some short form outline of “How to get saved,” but to repent and believe the good news. There is a reorienting/rebirthing of life at fundamental levels. Big questions get asked and answered: What is your God like? Who is your neighbor? How does the Kingdom look when you live in it? Will you follow Jesus to the cross?
These concerns are present in the epistles, but the Gospels go far beyond the epistles in putting the Kingdom in front of us, because everything Jesus says and does is dominated by this Kingdom he is announcing…..and his actions and words make it very clear what kinds of changes must take place. The disciples are blown away by it all, and that’s our cue to get our helmets on as well.
So when you read the Gospels, Jesus is including the excluded, healing the hopeless, remaking Israel, reaching out to the pagan, overturning the religious professionals, redefining all the predictable terms, shocking those who know all the answers and, in general, making it unmistakably clear that the Kingdom isn’t just about forgiveness and “heaven,” but about the life we are living- and will live- in the Kingdom here, now and in the future.
Most of our study of the early chapters of the Gospels ignore what Jesus is doing, and leave the impression that Jesus wandered around Galilee proving that he was the Son of God, so that when he died we would get the whole, “God’s Son died for your sins” thing. We don’t seem to get the purpose of all of this. It’s not the warm-up act for the cross: it’s the Kingdom. It’s what Jesus came to bring, and to give to us. It’s a Kingdom with a crucified and risen Messiah, but it’s always a Kingdom where believing and belonging mean revolution.
In fact, Jesus is teaching, eating, doing miracles, staging prophetic announcements and performances, shocking the authorities, teaching on a reborn/remixed Israel, training disciples, telling stories and all the rest for the express purpose of saying that if God is here now, and his Kingdom is present now, then YOUR life is going to be deeply transformed. God himself is going to give your life an entirely different definition and direction.
Men go to war for a hundred reasons, But they all come back with the same demons.
• Slaid Cleaves
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None of us who have escaped our nation’s veterans’ experiences on the battlefields can ever truly relate to what they’ve seen and known. We pin medals on their chests, honor them with annual holidays, put them on public display at ballgames, and wax poetic about their sacrifices. No doubt many of them are proud of their service and grateful for the recognition. However, I wonder if they think the rest of us are just spouting a lot of public patriotic bullshit when we so often forget about them in private, where such a great number of vets are homeless, jobless, fighting PTSD and countless other war-related debilities, going through divorces, battling alcohol and drug abuse, and at high risk for suicide. It must make a person feel freakish when he or she can’t attend a patriotic fireworks display because the explosions are too jarring, too upsetting.
I have so many mixed feelings on Veterans Day.
First of all, I have little personal experience with the military. My father and my father’s father and I were lucky. Our lives fell right in the cracks between wars in the 20th century, and though they performed military service in peacetime, I did not.
I turned 18 in 1974, barely missing Vietnam and the draft. Some of you know what that time was like in the U.S., and I was one who was not in favor of the war, to put it mildly. I had no interest in the military in those days.
My sons and daughters now live in the age of the all-volunteer military, and none of them enlisted. I’m glad, especially given the extended wars we have fought over the past twelve years.
Second, I have made the acquaintance of many who have served, and who are veterans of wars. One of our churches was near Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago. We had military personnel and families in and out of our congregation, and I visited patients in the VA hospital there. Since becoming a hospice chaplain, I have had the privilege of conversing with many veterans, especially from World War II. Most are loathe to speak of their war experiences in specific terms, and for good reason. I’ve met people who fought in most of the great battles of that war, which is to say, they have seen horror and human suffering on a scale and in detail that I can scarcely imagine. I have gained great respect for these G.I. Joes. In fact, I admire them, like them, and have grown to treasure learning from them. But it sickens my stomach to think of my sons or daughters or grandchildren going through what they endured.
Third, I am not a proponent of civil religion. I do believe that love of country is natural and good, a gift of common grace. I consider it a duty to show appreciation for those who sacrificed to make our lives better. I am also proud to honor the symbols of our nation and embrace the notions of liberty and representative democracy that they represent. But I do not give them ultimate value or worship them. The national flag does not belong in the sanctuaries of our churches — they are foreign embassies of a different Kingdom. I pray “God bless America” as a part of my intercessions “for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions” (1Tim. 2:1). A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that says, “God bless all nations,” and I concur. Veterans Day is not a holy day on the church calendar, though at the same time, such remembrances do (and should) play a role as we think about our faith.
Fourth, all my life I have heard, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” What I’ve seen is that remembering doesn’t seem to help much either. We continue to fight wars, thinking they will bring peace. In fact, we are just wrapping up the two longest wars the U.S. has ever fought, and the possibility of future wars lies just beyond the horizon. The amount of resources we have expended to defeat our enemies over the past twelve years boggles the mind. The human cost has been and remains staggering on all sides. For generations, families will suffer because this generation felt it necessary to go to war. “Remembering” on Veteran’s Day must not only involve rituals of honor, but also a renewed commitment to care for those whose lives have been disrupted and devastated by war. And above all, we must pursue determined, diligent efforts to promote liberty and justice for all, the things that make for peace.
Fifth, when thinking about these things, I try to take my cues from the Bible and the best of Christian tradition. Scripture reflects the violence and conflict that is pervasive in a sinful world, even among the religious. Church history likewise. However, from both we also hear prophets’ voices above the din, bringing words from God, proclaiming and promoting shalom — human flourishing in a renewed and reconciled world. The ultimate vision of Christianity is a new creation in which the Tree of Life provides healing for all nations. Veterans Day provides yet another opportunity for the Church to proclaim this hope-filled Gospel, this message of the peace that was won when Jesus absorbed violence rather than exercising it. Losing the war, he won shalom for all. Eagerly, we now long for its consummation.
And how, on Veterans Day, shall we be messengers of that peace?
As he taught, he said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’
He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’
• Mark 12:38-44
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The Widow’s Mite. Glanzman
Every once in a while in my work, I get to know a patient whose family expresses a specific concern to me. The patient is is usually an older woman who is very religious. Problem is, despite her small, fixed income, she is sending money — sometimes lots of money — to televangelists or to certain television religious programs. Often these so called “ministries” are the kind that constantly promise their viewers blessings for giving financially. They preach a prosperity gospel, making claims that God will bring a harvest of financial blessing to those who plant “seeds of faith” by sending them money. Some of these preachers live lavish, luxurious lifestyles, flying around in their private jets to and from their mansions, while many of their supporters are humble people like the elderly women I visit who really can’t afford to be sending them money.
In today’s Gospel, we meet someone who reminds me of these women, a widow who spends her last few coins at the Temple. I’m afraid that we have long misunderstood her story and what Jesus was trying to tell us by pointing her out.
The story we know as “The Widow’s Mite” is closely tied to the story that comes right before it. The key to understanding why Jesus directed our attention to this woman lies in reading the two stories we have in today’s lesson together.
In the first story, Jesus calls attention to the scribes. The scribes were part of the religious leadership of the Jewish people. They were, as it were, religious lawyers who handled matters of interpretation. They ruled on religious disputes, based upon interpretations of the scriptures and other religious writings and laws.
One example of their rulings is found in Mark, chapter 7. Jesus criticized them for making a ruling known as “corban.” Under the corban principle, a person made a vow declaring that a portion of his money was devoted to God. That meant it could no longer be used for other things. Even if the man’s parents became poor and needed that money, the scribes ruled that it had been given to God by a sacred vow and was no longer available to help them.
Jesus disagreed. He said there was a more fundamental and important law that said “Honor your father and mother.” God’s laws were given to help people, not hurt them. They were given to promote love and justice, not to help us find ways around being loving and just.
In today’s text, Jesus criticizes the scribes for treating widows the same way. He says that the scribes were “devouring widows’ houses.” In other words, the scribes were part of a religious system that had devastating effects on the poor and needy people of Israel.
This leads us to the second story in today’s Gospel. Immediately after criticizing the scribes for their mistreatment of widows, we have the story of a widow — a poor woman who goes to the Temple and puts her last two coins into the Temple offering box. Jesus points her out to his disciples as she puts in everything she has.
Now the question is this: why does Jesus point her out?
The interpretation I have heard most often is that he is commending this widow as an example of sacrificial giving. In contrast to wealthy religious people like the scribes, who only give a portion of their income, this woman gave her everything. She represents total devotion to God, while many of the religious people only give a little bit of the riches they have.
I do not agree. I don’t think Jesus is celebrating this woman’s generosity.
Instead, I think he is lamenting that she is part of a religious system in which she thinks she has to give all she has to live on to be acceptable to God. The scribes, Jesus said, were part of a religious system that devoured widows’ houses. Now, here is a poor widow whose house is being devoured. Because of her religion, she gave and gave until she had nothing.
Let’s imagine that this woman came to you for counsel. If she said, “I only have five dollars left in my bank account. The church is having a special offering this week and I think God wants me give it all to the church,” how would you advise her?
I doubt very much that any of us would think that God wanted her to give her last little bit to the church.
Wouldn’t we all think — hey, this poor widow needs help! As the church, we should be giving to help her, not demanding that she give every penny she has to help the church!
But she was part of a religious system that led her to think she had to sacrifice everything in order to be a good religious person. Like the thousands of poor people who send money to televangelists thinking that it’s the way to get God to bless their faith, this woman had been brainwashed into a faulty view of God and what it means to love God.
No, Jesus is not celebrating her sacrificial faith, he is weeping because the religion she’s part of is leading her astray and ruining her life. And he is pointing out to his disciples that this is not the way God means it to be. It would only be a few days later that that same religious system hung Jesus on a cross.
As Lutherans, we are heirs of a tradition that has fought against this kind of religion ever since the days of Martin Luther. Back then, the issue was indulgences. The church developed an entire system of the afterlife and then sold people tickets out of Purgatory to finance its building projects. Poor people all over Europe coughed up the little they had so that great monuments might be built. The people thought they were doing the right thing, the religious thing. They were contributing their money for God’s glory. They were winning their salvation. But Luther saw that it was all a sham and he condemned the injustice of it all.
Right after this story about the widow, Jesus and his disciples leave the Temple. As they converse, Jesus pronounces God’s judgment on the religious system that took advantage of poor widows like this one. “One day,” Jesus said, “this Temple and the unjust religion that has developed here will come tumbling down until there is not one stone left upon another.”
Jesus and Luther both helped to remind us that we are not here to serve God by following manmade religious rules and expectations. We are here to receive God’s love by faith and then to share it with one another and our neighbors, especially those in hard and sad life situations.
I think God is calling us today to have our eyes open, to look around us as Jesus’ disciples did that day, to let Jesus show us that even religion can have a damaging, deadly effect on those who are involved with it.
In contrast, the faith of Christ enlivens us, empowers us, and frees us to do what is just, to be devoted to faithful love, and to walk humbly with our God. May it be so with us.
Welcome to Brunch this Saturday. Snowflakes have been in the air ’round these parts this week, and although I took pictures like the one above just last weekend, now brown and gray are beginning to dominate nature’s color palette. With no baseball to buoy my spirit, a guy could get depressed. Thankfully, I have you — my friends — to share coffee and conversation with on this frosty November morning. Snacks today courtesy of The Far Side.
To get the conversation going, let’s begin with a few questions to bat around the table…
ALBERT, FRANCE – NOVEMBER 08: The sunrise burns off the morning mist over the remains of trenches in the Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont Hamel on November 09, 2018 in Albert, France. The Somme was one of the bloodiest battles of World War One with more than one million casualties over 141 days. The fighting began just before 7.30am on the morning of July 1, 1916 and was to become known as the allies bloodiest day. The centenary of the end of World War One will be marked this Sunday with commemorations and services of remembrance by people around the world. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
This Sunday marks 100 years since the Armistice was signed in November 1918, bringing an end to the First World War.
The agreement between the Allies and a vanquished Germany required the latter to leave all occupied territories in Western Europe within two weeks and surrender 5,000 guns, 25,000 machine guns and 1,700 planes.
Big Ben sounded in Parliament Square to ring in the news as thousands gathered in Westminster and outside Buckingham Palace roaring in celebration, sparking three days of jubilation across Britain, with members of the public climbing the lions in Trafalgar Square and tearing down advertising hoardings appealing for investment in war bonds to burn on bonfires.
In the House of Commons, the prime minister, Lloyd George, concluded his address with the declaration: “I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came an end to all wars.”
Workers at the insurance market Lloyd’s of London watch as poppies fall through the atrium of the building during Friday’s commemoration serviceIn Hull Minster, people admire an installation created by artist Martin Waters entitled “Coming Home”Thousands of individually knitted poppies cascade down the side of St John the Baptist church in North Baddesley, HampshireMeanwhile Down Under, EU ambassadors help to install poppies ahead of Remembrance Day commemorations in Canberra, Australia“Still now and always in our hearts”: Crosses at the official opening of the Field of Remembrance in the grounds of Lydiard House and Park, Royal Wootton Bassett
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Looking out across a battlefield from an Anzac pill box near the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders in 1917.
The First World War killed fewer victims than the Second World War, destroyed fewer buildings, and uprooted millions instead of tens of millions – but in many ways it left even deeper scars both on the mind and on the map of Europe. The old world never recovered from the shock.
• Edmund Taylor
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Computers coming between us…
As a hospice chaplain, I use a laptop computer to document my visits and do other work-related tasks. Our nurses and some of our other clinicians carry their laptops into homes and other care settings, and in many cases this is necessary and appropriate. But, as a chaplain, I have never felt comfortable having my computer open during a visit. Eye contact, body language, and paying attention in the strongest ways possible is essential to my work. I can’t allow myself the distraction of a computer between my patient/family and me.
Dr. Atul Gwande, one of our best writers about medical care in our day, has written an article in the New Yorker called Why Doctors Hate Their Computers, in which he says that many doctors are feeling more and more trapped behind their screens.
My hospital had, over the years, computerized many records and processes, but the new system would give us one platform for doing almost everything health professionals needed—recording and communicating our medical observations, sending prescriptions to a patient’s pharmacy, ordering tests and scans, viewing results, scheduling surgery, sending insurance bills. With Epic, paper lab-order slips, vital-signs charts, and hospital-ward records would disappear. We’d be greener, faster, better.
But three years later I’ve come to feel that a system that promised to increase my mastery over my work has, instead, increased my work’s mastery over me. I’m not the only one. A 2016 study found that physicians spent about two hours doing computer work for every hour spent face to face with a patient—whatever the brand of medical software. In the examination room, physicians devoted half of their patient time facing the screen to do electronic tasks. And these tasks were spilling over after hours. The University of Wisconsin found that the average workday for its family physicians had grown to eleven and a half hours. The result has been epidemic levels of burnout among clinicians. Forty per cent screen positive for depression, and seven per cent report suicidal thinking—almost double the rate of the general working population.
Something’s gone terribly wrong. Doctors are among the most technology-avid people in society; computerization has simplified tasks in many industries. Yet somehow we’ve reached a point where people in the medical profession actively, viscerally, volubly hate their computers.
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50 years ago in music…
Two landmark albums were released fifty years ago, and now commemorative editions are available to not only remind us of the great music but also to take us behind the scenes so that we can learn about how these musicians plied their craft.
In late May, 1968, the Beatles convened at guitarist George Harrison’s English country home with an extraordinary body of raw materials for their next album. The so-called “Esher demos” — 27 songs taped on Harrison’s four-track machine — were at once stark and full, solo acoustic blueprints already outfitted with signature flourishes: double-tracked vocals; John Lennon’s raindrop-arpeggio guitar in “Dear Prudence”; the future guitar solo in “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” hummed by Paul McCartney.
There was evidence too of tension and estrangement: Lennon’s jagged rhythms and aggressive cynicism (“Revolution,” “Yer Blues”); McCartney’s determined optimism (“Blackbird”) and almost mutinous cheer (“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”). In his Appalachian-ballad draft of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” Harrison pointedly censured his bandmates, singing “The problems you sow are the troubles you’re reaping.” He dropped the line in the final version. His dismay in the song remained.
Those recordings, issued in full for the first time, are the dominant revelation in the 50th-anniversary expansion of The Beatles. At 30 tracks on two LPs and dubbed “The White Album” for its blank-canvas sleeve, it was the group’s longest, most eclectic and emotionally blunt record – an admission of frayed nerves and strained bonds in the zigzag of garage-roots rock, delicate balladry, proto-metal fury, country ham and radical experiment. The “Super Deluxe” edition of The Beatles has even more. In addition to the demos and a new remix of the album overseen by Giles Martin, son of the late producer George Martin, there are 50 tracks of the work in progress – outtakes and sketches; roads not taken and songs left behind – across the summer and fall of 1968.
Even diehard Hendrix fans have probably lost track of how often the guitarist’s 76-minute opus Electric Ladyland has been reissued. It was the first and only of his three albums to hit the top of the Billboard charts after its October 1968 release and remains not only his best-selling work, but his most influential and critically acclaimed one.
Books have been written about the disc, but suffice it to say that Hendrix not only freed himself from the tightly constructed song structures of his first two sets, but also included more of the myriad influences that ran through his music. It was also the first time he had complete creative control — at least musically — over the final product. From deep-blues jamming (the quarter hour “Voodoo Chile” never lags) to stoned out psychedelic space-rock (13 mind-expanding minutes of “1983 … [A Merman I Should Turn to Be]”), jazzy improvisation (“Rainy Day, Dream Away”), politically edged rockers (“House Burning Down”), pop-crunchers that could have been on his earlier discs (“Gypsy Eyes,” “Crosstown Traffic”), and even a few he didn’t write (Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”), bassist Noel Redding’s somewhat incongruous bit of UK glam, “Little Miss Strange”), this was Hendrix’s most expansive and personal statement. It was also the last studio album he’d live to see released.
Did Birds Get Their Colorful, Speckled Eggs From Dinosaurs?
An article in Gizmodo alerted me to a study from last year (unfortunately behind a paywall) that was able to analyze fossil eggs of certain dinosaurs. Researchers found that birds’ close dinosaur relatives had eggs with traces of two pigments—a red-brown one and a blue-green one. This same pair of pigments mixes and matches in today’s bird eggs to produce colors ranging from robin’s egg blue to red to yellow to green. What’s more, the analysis of pigments showed that dinosaur eggs even had spots and speckles.
Researchers previously found evidence that oviraptor dinosaurs had pigment in their eggs just like birds do. They discovered this by slicing off a piece of a dinosaur egg and putting it through a molecule-identifying mass spectrometer machine. For the new study, rather than sampling pieces of the eggs, they used Raman spectroscopy —hitting the samples with a laser and detecting the wavelengths of the light that bounces back. The colors of the scattered light reveal the kinds of molecules present in the eggs. The researchers sampled 19 eggs from the group that includes crocodilians and dinosaurs. Pigment did not occur in the crocodilians or the sauropods, but did in the theropods—long thought to be the dinosaur group that evolved to become birds.
For a long time bird experts assumed that egg color appeared in modern birds’ eggs multiple times, independently. Modern birds use only two pigments — blue-green biliverdin and red-brown protoporphyrin IX — to create all of the various egg colors, spots, and speckles. They found the pigments in eggshells belonging to Eumaniraptoran dinosaurs, which include small, carnivorous dinosaurs such as Velociraptor.
Contrary to “Jurassic Park” movies, Velociraptors probably looked like this…The inference is that egg color evolved along with open nesting habits to protect the eggs from predators. Colored eggs have been considered a unique bird characteristic for over a century but the researches now suspect that like feathers and wishbones, egg color evolved in their dinosaur predecessors long before birds appeared.”
It will be interesting to see how young earth creationists try to handle this latest data. The YECs have a tough time with the tremendous finds in the last decade of feathers on dinosaurs. In a May 30, 2015 article in Answers in Genesis, Avery Foley says:
Did dinosaurs have feathers? In a biblical worldview, we do not expect to find feathered dinosaurs. Currently the evidence does not support the idea that dinosaurs were covered in feathers. Now while we may not know for sure what dinosaurs looked like, what we do know is that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs.
One has to ask upon reading this “how does a biblical worldview inform us that dinosaurs didn’t have feathers?” Why couldn’t they have feathers? Foley seems to just assume that the exclusive defining characteristic of a bird is having feathers and thus it would be impossible for a dinosaur to have them. Why? The bible does not define birds as synonymous with feathers. In fact the bible does not even define the flying things as synonymous with what scientists call birds since bats and pterodactyls also fly and they lack feathers. Why couldn’t God have made some dinosaurs with feathers? Even if most dinosaurs did not have feathers that would not preclude some dinosaurs from having them. Foley follows here definitive statement about feathered dinosaurs with “we may not know for sure what dinosaurs looked like” and yet her biblical worldview is somehow informing her that dinosaurs would not have had feathers? She is very confused.
A dinosaur fossil with preservation of feathers.
The problem for YECs is the Liaoning Province in northeastern China. This area, 120 million years ago, was forested lakesides filled with diverse wildlife. Nearby active volcanoes would periodically erupt, sending clouds of poisonous gas and ash into the air, and killing anything in the way. The gas killed any living thing and the dead were sometimes covered with a fine powder of volcanic ash, protecting their bodies, and enabling preservation in great detail.
Those details continue to support the evolutionary paradigm that dinosaurs evolved into birds. The colored egg data is one more piece of evidence that fails to falsify the evolutionary hypothesis. In point of fact, birds are dinosaurs. Birds are utterly amazing creatures. Dinosaurs are also amazing creatures. They captivate the imagination like no other beasts real or imagined. I find it both emotionally and intellectually satisfying that God preserved these animals through the creative process of evolving them into the fascinating and wondrous kingdom of birds.
I can’t recall the author, but I once read someone who portrayed evangelical Christians as people using all their abilities to get other people to agree to evangelistic sentences.
The sentences mattered very much; more than almost anything else. Correctly worded sentences, turned into prayers, lectures, books and so on.
Miroslav Wolf said that Christianity carries a life lived alongside its truths claimed. Saint Francis — and many others — have suggested that the life-lived communicates far more profoundly than the truths claimed, especially if it’s a matter of which shouts the loudest.
One blogger recently lamented the callous behavior of knuckle-headed cage-phase Calvinists, and also lamented the theological cynics who act as if theology doesn’t matter. Having been one and constantly suspected of being the other, I liked what he said.
He makes a good point. The knuckle-headed cage-phase Calvinist has theological problems as well as human relationship problems with manners, maturity and civility. My experience tells me that the two are more related than we like to think. The person who says that theology and those who live to obsess over it are an unmitigated good seem to be, uh…a bit overly optimistic.
Take, for instance, the seminary student who discovers that one theological system has all the answers he’ll ever need. All he needs is to buy the books, go to the conferences and check the websites. In more than a few cases, it would be best if he simply stopped his education and went home until he’s willing to learn something again. While he’s certain that he’s right, and he’s correcting his professors and working to overthrow any teacher who doesn’t subscribe to his hobby horse theological system, he’s useless as a student and probably off balance as a human being. The wise and the know-it-alls have no reason to learn from those who can’t/won’t/don’t see the light. (Yes, that’s me in the corner…losing my religion…)
The real problem is whether our know-it-all student is still devoted to Jesus and to what Jesus means in his life. No doubt he’ll say that it’s for Jesus’ sake that he’s hassling his professors, pastor and friends. It’s for Jesus’ sake that minutia now matters more than his anniversary. It’s for Jesus’ sake that theology stirs him and evangelism/church planting need more study.
But does Jesus matter? Period?
The competition to make theology the main thing and just about the only thing is quite real. I have two recent letters from an IM reader distressed that I admire John Lennon as an artist. I assured him that I do not admire Lennon’s atheism, but a piece is still out of place. What’s of real interest to me is why my faith and loyalty to Jesus have to be screened through what I think of John Lennon.
…I’m more than ever determined to make Jesus the center, the substance and the unavoidable conclusion of my theology. And when it comes to equipping my students with an understanding of the Bible, I’m going to be sure they understand the relative importance of the recipe, the cake and all subsequent opinions of either one.
…When I replace the Great Commission with the “Great Ongoing Polemic To Prove My Theology Isn’t Wrong,” it’s time to pull over and check the map and see if I’m anywhere close to where I think I am.
Am I standing on my own trap door when I say “Jesus isn’t identical to anyone’s theology and someone says “Without theology, who or what is Jesus?” Possibly. That’s another argument that can go in circles forever. Count me as one who’d like to find a place to stop, rest, and as the carol says, “Now let us all with one accord sing praises to the heavenly Lord.”
Note from CM: It’s election day here in the U.S., as citizens go to the polls to vote in the midterms — the elections between our quadrennial presidential decision. Here is a simple reminder from over a century ago of the humble grandeur of this privilege we participate in as Americans.
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If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, ‘Twould not be you, Niagara — nor you, ye limitless prairies — nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite — nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon’s white cones — nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes — nor Mississippi’s stream: — This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name — the still small voice vibrating — America’s choosing day…
Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?
• Jeremiah 23:29, NRSV
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One of my personal goals in life is to be well-spoken.
I am tired of “lingo.”
I reject group-imposed boundaries around how to express what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, what I’m considering. I want to find a way to say it so that it grabs, sticks, bites, hurts, heals. First, in my own heart. Then, if anyone should listen, in theirs.
Hell is being trapped in a world of clichés. Nothing is real. Nothing has weight or substance. Nothing penetrates. Nothing wounds or nourishes. I want words that bring the dead to life.
Bounded, insider language is a Christian problem (and a problem for all “tribes”).
Words create worlds. We live in those worlds and they define us. Someone using different words doesn’t fit in our world. We can’t listen to them. We find it hard to take in their foreign phrases, to translate them into something we can grasp. We summon the auto-immune response and reject them out of concern for safety. We watch, we listen to, we read those whose language fits the preconceived notion. We deem them “safe.” They will not disturb our world.
In this world, we get together day after day, week after week, year after year, and say the same damn things to each other! Imaginations atrophy as we sit there safe, sipping our iced tea.
These gated worlds!
I want words that shatter worlds! And speak new ones into being! Let there be light!
A coworker once gave me information about a new patient and his family. Baptists, of the independent, fundamental variety. King James Only. White shirt, dark tie. Nothing but the blood Baptists. Straight as an arrow. Locked in a narrow world.
“I can speak that language, ” I said.
I made the visit. I asked the standard introductory questions, using their terms. I inquired. I listened. I showed respect. They allowed me to enter their world because I could verify the passcode. I knew the secret handshake.
But once inside, the conversation shifted. I sat in silence where one might have expected a platitude. Then I spoke a single turn of phrase that caught them off guard. Tears welled up. For a brief moment, a slice of raw humanity appeared through a crack in the gate. Their pain bled out a little. I’d like to think a bit of healing took place.
In that moment, no shibboleth was spoken. No Christianese. No lingo. Just a human heart bleeding and a wordless moan.
Many of us are not ready for that. I wasn’t, not for years. Even today, there are times when the reality is too sharp, too uncomfortable. Discomfited by the heaviness, I blurt out some cliché. And my mouth tastes like dust.
The authors and speakers and friends I love rarely if ever fall into this trap. I never know what they’re going to say or how they’re going to say it. They speak epiphanies. They build metaphorical worlds that carry me away and I am along for the ride: rising and falling on an open sea inhaling sharp salt air one moment, feet sinking into a spongy forest floor the next. It’s fairies and rabbit holes, wardrobes and windswept plains, ball yards and small town backyards, hobbits and desert saints and boarding school wizards, slums and palaces and log cabins and creaky old Victorian mansions.
But it’s not just the pictures they paint, the metaphorical worlds they create, it’s the medicine they give: words fitly spoken. Words that turn my head, that cause my jaw to drop. Words that make me stop and turn around. That make me shiver. That wrap me in a warm sherpa throw. That make my heart bleed ’til it’s whole again.
Not the same old lingo. Not tired trade language. If ever they use such words, they do so only as a foil for that which is clearly genuine.
Don’t let me settle for it, Lord. Put fire and hammers and balm and blankets in my mouth. Heal the sick, raise the dead, comfort the brokenhearted. Make the story real and build a new world.
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