Second Drafts

Black Friday Haiku

Black Friday masses
Discounted idol worship
Redeemed by retail?

On the 10th Anniversary of September 11th

Never mind the fact that it's my favorite U2 song and the single greatest performance in the history of SuperBowl half-time shows, but I remember how healing and powerful U2's 9/11 tribute was in February of 2002. Even watching it now, I'm blown away by the visual of bright hope emerging from the dark background of tragedy.

Maybe this (among other reasons) is why, ten years later, my sense of grief is not as personally paralyzing as it seems for others. Some may roll their eyes, but in reflecting back, I think Bono and the boys helped me deal with it then...not completely unaffectedly I'm sure, but in a way that allowed me to move on.

"Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building, then burning down love
Burning down love, and when I go there
I go there with you, it's all I can do"

For those struggling with today's 10th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings, I hope this can be of some comfort to you. (Thanks to my friend, Al Li, for reminding me of this tribute.)

On Teachers, Students, and Social Media

In yet another example of ridiculous government over-reach, the governor of my previous state of Missouri signed into law a bill banning public school students and teachers from communicating and being "friends" on Facebook. Here are some article excerpts:

"'Teachers cannot establish, maintain or use a work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child's legal custodian, physical custodian or legal guardian,' the law states. Teachers also cannot have a non work-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student. The law is not limited to Facebook and applies to any social networking site. Although Facebook fan pages will still be allowed, direct communicaton between teachers and students on the site will be banned."

And:

"Although some critics have said the concept sounds positive on the surface, they worry it may imply that teachers may not be trusted on the site without legal intervention. Others worry that restricting sites such as Facebook could hinder the educational process in the future."

And:

"In 2010, Lee County school district in Florida advised teachers not to friend students on social networking sites, claiming that teacher-student communication through this medium is 'inappropriate.' This was the first school district in the state of Florida, possibly even the country, to issue teacher-protocol guidelines for social media."

I have a hard time believing this last paragraph. 2010? Seriously? In 2008, my administration at Westminster Christian Academy, knowing that I used social media and was "friends" with several of my high school students, asked me to draft a document that later was adopted as part of the school's social media policy. Here's what I submitted:

• Never initiate the friend, wall-to-wall, inbox, birthday, or other functions; always be a responder to students, but even then, refrain from excess posting on their pages.

• Unless you have a pre-determined set of relationship criteria (i.e. males only, females only, etc.), do not discriminate among friend requests; accept all or accept none.

• Always maintain a degree of formality despite the informal medium; keep titles (Mr., Mrs., Miss) and try to relate with as similar a classroom tone as possible.

• Realize that conversations you may have in other networks may be privy to those in your network unless you set up different access levels. Use discretion, as you are exposing students to your college/post-college discussions and topics, which may or may not be helpful to your students.

• Use good punctuation and grammar whenever possible; avoid slang and model excellence as an educator in your communication.

• Do not post pictures of yourself that are questionable, sensual, or ridiculous; if other friends include you in such pictures on their profiles, ask to remove them or untag yourself from them.

• Do not delete inbox or wall-to-wall conversations; always keep a record.

These guidelines were helpful as I related to students online. Some teachers were more reticent than I was to be online "friends" with their students; others not so much. The school did not take a hard and fast stance on the issue; the point was that all of us were encouraged to think about what we were doing and to use common sense concerning our online interactions with students.

The problem, of course, is that common sense is not so common, and the American response to the ills of the few has increasingly become a legislative knee-jerk against the good of the many. Maybe I've just been fortunate enough to know and work with too many caring, dedicated teachers, but I don't know anyone (public or private school) who has abused or been accused of misusing Facebook with his or her students. (Actually, I've read a whole lot more in the past six months about congressmen sexting pictures of themselves to interns. Where's the "no social media" law against them?)

I'm sad for my public school teacher friends in Missouri who just lost a way to be an invested, influential voice among the milieu of madness that is a teenager's online world. And, I'm a little nervous where this kind of thing might go for my private school teacher friends, as some fearful parents, school boards, or administrations may over-react with their own knee-jerk policies in the wake of the new law.

Just today I got a Facebook message from one of my first students (now a college sophomore at Ball State University in Indiana) with whom I've been "friends" since his freshman year of high school. In reading his words, walking through high school with Daniel - even from a distance via Facebook as I was only his teacher for one year - obviously meant something to him.

I'm just glad I moved to Oklahoma so he could tell me.

Always Pain Before a Child Is Born

I've been listening to a fair amount of U2 the past couple days as part of my preparation (yes, preparation) for the upcoming concert at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. If you remember, we're planning to take the girls on Sunday, and I can't wait for their reactions to all that they will see, hear, and experience at their first-ever rock concert.

I've written before about the band and the fact that their music has served as a soundtrack for just about every major transition I've experienced. True to form, six months before we moved to Oklahoma, we bought tickets to the St. Louis show for July 17th and gave them to the girls for Christmas, not knowing until a few months later that we wouldn't be living there anymore come summer. When I took the new role, the only contingency was that we could take a week of vacation leading up to the concert. I won't say it would have been a deal-breaker...but it could have been.

As it turns out, "vacation" started Saturday, but it's not exactly the one we originally planned. Megan and the girls arrived in St. Louis as of Sunday night, but they've spent the past two days in the dentist and optometrist offices trying to get one last round of check-ups in before our insurance transfers in August.

I'm still in Oklahoma as I felt the need to be at several important meetings yesterday and today. I'll fly up early Wednesday morning to join the ladies for a couple days at the farm before spending Saturday and Sunday around a hotel pool gearing up for the show that night. We'll then drive back to OKC all day Monday (I'm looking forward to the drive, as it will be the first time we all will get to process the concert at length together).

Today, while making the drive up and down I-35, I listened to "Yahweh" from How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Below is the acoustic version of the song (the album version includes the bridge and features a more rock arrangement) from the Chicago concert we were actually at in 2005 (don't make fun of Larry's one-finger string arrangement - he's a drummer, God love him):

The song is a prayer - a prayer I prayed with tears today as I wove in and out of traffic trying to get where I needed to go. It's how my prayers to God sound these days - prayers filled with painful self-awareness of my inadequacies as well as angry frustrations at my limitations. As in the chorus, the desperate cry of "Yahweh" was about all I could manage to get out while driving through Oklahoma City, and that was okay.

What's weird is it's been a great six weeks - six weeks that I would change very little about in terms of what we've done and accomplished. But six weeks does not a school build, nor a church plant. Every day has been hard, and from what I can tell, every day is going to be hard for a long time. I'm embarrassed by my impatience, but grateful for it too in that it reminds me I still expect God to do something here (and there is so very much that only He can do).

In looking through the playlists posted from the last few U2 concerts, I don't see "Yahweh" anywhere on them. Still, maybe the Lord will spark Bono to change things up and do it Sunday night, which if that happens, I will break down weeping at the gift it would be while my wife and daughters (once again) wonder what's wrong with Daddy.

And the answer is nothing...and everything - all of which God - Yahweh - cares for deeply.

 

Take these shoes - click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes and make them fit
Take this shirt - polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt and make it clean, clean
Take this soul - stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul and make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn

Take these hands - teach them what to carry
Take these hands - don't make a fist
Take this mouth - so quick to criticize
Take this mouth - give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahewh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Take this city - a city should be shining on a hill
Take this city if it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart, take this heart
Take this heart and let it break

You Know You're in Amish Country When...

Maybe I'm more Amish than I think, as I would so take the buggy over a trip to Disney.

In Apple Creek, Ohio, for our fifth Biblical Imagination conference, this one here:

Follow me on Twitter for conference quotables from Mike Card over the next day-and-a-half, or visit the site for details as to where and when we're going next.

A Primer on Conferencing

 

I'm here in Atlanta with 944 other folks for the 17th annual Association of Classical and Christian Schools conference. It's quite a gathering, with some neat folks from all over the country in attendance, and I'm grateful for the chance to join them.

The schedule is pretty straightforward: morning plenary, two morning workshops, afternoon plenary, two afternoon workshops. Evenings are free to process or collapse, depending on your temperament. The stage is sparse and the visuals non-existent (two critiques I have of a conference with a workshop titled "The Imperative of Beauty and the Aesthetic Call"), but the facility is terrific, the content is great, and there's always plenty of people to watch and wonder about (like the guy who is the spitting image of Richard Dreyfuss as a young Glenn Holland in the film, Mr. Holland's Opus - weird).

Because I used to periodically attend conferences when I was with The Navigators (not to mention design and run them at Glen Eyrie), I've developed my own set of conference-going habits for taking part in these kinds of gatherings. Granted, this event is more professional than personal, but some guidelines still apply. For instance:

• With regard to speaker notes, I don't bother filling in blanks or capturing every point speakers make; instead, I listen for quotables that strike me and capture them on paper or online, as those are what I'm more apt to remember and want to revisit (to follow my quotable tweets from this conference, go to Veritas' Twitter page).
  
  
• Because conference-attending is a huge commitment not only of money but of time, I give myself permission to work on other tasks while listening. This doesn't work for everybody, but I'm primarily an auditory learner, so the plenary pedagogy works well enough for me (plus, I get some things done, and there's a lot of those things to do now that I'm one week into the role).
  
  
• I also give myself permission to skip sessions I'm not interested in, switch workshops from ones that aren't well-prepared to others that are, and take needed naps to stay fresh because, let's face it, most conferences are overprogrammed with little time built in to process and play around with ideas otherwise.
  
  
• I always try to identify 3-4 people - presenters, fellow conferees, people who just look interesting, etc. - with whom I can schedule individual meals and breaks before, during, and after sessions. While there are a couple of moderated group lunch discussions I plan to attend with an eye to content, I don't find those nearly as engaging as sitting down with someone eyeball-to-eyeball to ask questions, to listen, and to try to learn something specific.
  
  
• Rarely do I stop and visit the vendor booths unless 1) there's something very, very specific I'm interested in, and 2) the vendors aren't there (this is the best time to pick up free promotional material without having to endure the spiels). Yes, I know this seems both non-curious and cruel, but they're getting their material into my hands...I'm just controlling the delivery system a bit.
  
  
• Finally, I pray for Megan and the girls and keep in touch so they know that just because I'm away doesn't mean they're forgotten. I know from experience how hard it can be on a spouse holding down the fort while the other is traveling, enjoying some schedule autonomy, and experiencing new intellectual stimulation. This is probably why Megan and I talked tonight about her attending the ACCS conference in Dallas with me next June.

I thought about listing the sessions and workshops I'm planning to attend, but it might be more interesting to give you an idea of how weird (but wonderful) a world this whole classical Christian education is by listing a few of the more intriguing workshop titles:

• Terque Quarterque Beati: Unpacking Virgil's Tripartite Soul
• Everybody's Reading Boni Libri
• Bring It (Don't Dumb It) Down: How to Teach a 12-Year-Old a Classic
• I See Dead Lines: Cultivating Students' Sixth Sense Through Poetry
• Progymnasmata in the Classroom

To quote presenter Douglas Wilson: "Books are the original distance-learning packets, but the Bible assumes true education within a godly community of others."

It's good to be here talking about Christian ideas from the classic books, and doing so in the context of others. Perhaps the greatest benefit of a classical Christian education can be summed up in this realization: I have much to learn.

And I do.

Seinfeld on Cell Phones

I've been out of the cell phone world (or rather, cell phones have been out of mine) for six years and here are some reasons why.

For better or worse, however, I'm back in the market because of my new role starting in June, so if anyone has any helpful recommendations, comparison links, or best deal sites for me, send them my way.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy my last three weeks of non-cellular existence while constructing a portable phone booth similar to the one pictured here.

A Pre-Election Thought

A fellow colleague sent the following email to our faculty last week:

"I heard this story on NPR this evening regarding skills the next generation needs in an increasingly competitive job market. Such skills include: 'Analytic and quantitative skills; social awareness (social IQ as I call it); creative problem-solving; the ability to be adaptable; language skills, foreign languages; and then of course, communications skills.'"

I wrote back:

"Whew. Looks I’m off the hook. No one’s calling for ethics (obviously)."

Folks, regardless of your preferred political party, say a prayer when you vote on Tuesday that, in the midst of all the politics and power grabs this fall, God would mercifully cause our elected leaders to grow and follow a conscience informed by a biblical ethic. I can't think of a more needed skill for Congressional-types and kids alike.

Live-Blogging: God in America (Parts 1 & 2)

I've been pretty excited about the PBS series, God in America, largely because of Boston University professor of religion Stephen Prothero's involvement in it. While Prothero makes no claim to Christian faith, his books are well-written, insightful, and usually (but not always) accurate. I also appreciate his call (albeit in the name of pluralism) to teach religion in public schools for reasons of basic religious literacy. Here goes:

8:10 - Native American pluralism vs. Spanish Catholic exclusivity. Ten minutes in and Christianity's the bad guy already.

8:15 - Ben from LOST is a Puritan! Weird.

8:19 - Prothero on the Puritans: "The fate of the society hung on the religiosity of the society." Really?

8:27 - Interesting stuff on Puritan Anne Hutchinson - accused of heresy, sedition, gender.

8:36 - Anglican George Whitefield is up now concerning spiritual rebirth.

8:41 - Historian Harry Stout on Whitefield: "He combined the sincerity of a missionary combined with the thrill of a performer."

8:46 - Tying Whitefield back to Hutchinson (but on a larger scale) in terms of personal experience overruling Puritan authority.

8:49 - Whitefield impact montage a bit much; "interviews" directly looking at camera too distracting.

8:55 - Timeout. Are they seriously going to skip over Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theological mind this country has ever produced? Seriously? Boo.

8:58 - Yep. They did it. Nothing on the Great Awakening. Zilch. Unbelievable.

9:00 - Hey, it's my friend, Lauren Winner, starting out part two, "The New Eden." Way to go, Lauren!

9:03 - Enter the Baptists, complete with token white commentator speaking with southern accent.

9:07 - Girls doing a great job watching and wondering about claims presented, but alas, it's bedtime.

9:08 - Prothero on Thomas Jefferson: "He was what we might call today 'spiritual' rather than 'religious.'"

9:09 - Irony? Jefferson + Baptists = freedom of religion bill of 1786.

9:14 - Prothero gets distinction right on "wall between government and religion;" it's not a prohibition of religion but a statement that no religion would be established by government.

9:20 - James Finley leaves his Presbyterian Calvinism for Arminian revivalism; represents shift from belief in sovereignty of God to Americans' freedom of choice, from more traditional Protestantism to more charismaticism.

9:24 - Lame: reality television camera mounting as Finley walks through the forest. Seriously?

9:27 - Methodism: "a religion of the heart" (but no mention of the brothers Wesley).

9:32 - Actually heard the name "Jesus" used; might have been the first time in an hour and a half.

9:33 - Nice to hear acknowledgment of what evangelicals did in 1800s - schools, hospitals, prisoner care.

9:34 - Here come the Irish Catholics, much to the chagrin of the "strong Protestant ethos" of America.

9:40 - Interesting: Catholic schools formed in mid-1800s as much to deal with Protestant bigotry as to educate children in Catholicism.

 

Man Crushes & Bromances: The Movie

Jon Barlow and I have been online "friends" (Facebook, blog comments, etc.) for probably 4-5 years, live five minutes apart, are graduates of the same seminary, have many mutual friends in the PCA, and are involved with the same school (I'm a teacher; he's on the board). Both of us have four kids each (I have four daughters; Jon has four sons), and we both love our wives, our kids, theology, philosophy, good writing, interesting music, and well-made films. We both think pretty well in terms of pop culture, and both of us probably spend too much time online (though Jon's finishing his PhD at SLU, so I'm not sure).

The funny thing is, while there seems to be a degree of mutual respect for one another, Jon and I have never met face-to-face. I think our story would make a good movie.

Here's the thing: the thirties are a busy time - possibly the busiest, I've been told by many, for a variety of reasons (young families growing, career paths taking off/changing, etc.). For those of us guys who are more introverted and emotionally fragile (yes, I'm being serious), it can be hard to get below the surface of news, weather, and sports with other men. While I can't speak for Jon, I know I haven't had the depth of male relationships in my thirties that I had in my twenties; more breadth, yes, but depth, no.

Here's a post from Jon's blog which, after reading, I knew we could be friends:

"At church, I feel like a ghost. It is so hard to get to know people in the few milling-around minutes that are available each Sunday. Especially when you've gotta watch your four boys to be sure they aren't running around or misbehaving. At school, I feel like a ghost. What am I going to do - hang out around the office and talk theology? How is that going to ever happen? I'm least ghost-like at home in the few hours between when I get home and when the boys go to bed, and I'm least ghost like in situations where I have to be there for a set amount of time to do some task. But even at the office, I find it hard to really get into my co-workers lives and learn about them. I keep thinking how the boss needs to get this project finished so he can bill it and make payroll for me and the others.

Part of this is also just the season of life that one is in at the time. When kids are young, you can't really be hitting the nightlife, whether recreational or educational, even in a great city like St. Louis and even community involvement is very difficult. And so I think you grin and bear it and hope for a better day and just try to stay sane and healthy and do what you can. The hard parts are those quiet moments - maybe you wake up before everyone else or you're in a public restroom or walking somewhere and there's no radio, no television, no one talking, and you're just stuck with yourself and all the crap in your life is circling your brain like electrons around the core of an atom and you're bewildered and saddened. But I guess that's why they invented the cell phone, so that a game of solitaire is never too far away. Pitiful, but true."

What if Jon and I - without ever meeting - wrote a screenplay about two average, semi-interesting, clearly heterosexual guys who are married, have children, and struggle to make ends meet in their quest to educate themselves and others about God's Word and world. And yet while they know of, know about, and know electronically the other, they never meet - on purpose, it seems - even though they have every opportunity to do so geographically, vocationally, and relationally? What would be gained or lost? And do they meet in the end (and so what if they do)?

Last week, Jon posted on his Facebook page that he was in need of some new clothes because, after years of seminary and grad school, all his clothes were wearing out all at once. I happened to have pants that no longer fit me but matched his measurements, so I messaged him and told him I'd be glad to get them to him if we could figure out a drop that maintained our non-acquaintance existence (the whole thing has kind of become a joke between the two of us, but honestly, I think we're both a little afraid of what might happen if we actually meet face to face - too much friendship pressure). As he had a board meeting at school (in my room, no less), we agreed that I would leave the pants in a bag on my desk for him. The drop worked and we maintained our no-meet streak.

Think of all the humorous scenes we could play out like this in a movie. We've already been in the same room together with neither one of us realizing it until later; we've both found out after the fact that we've been at my township's local arts fair at the exact same time but our paths never crossed; we've both had people tell us (or at least I have - I won't speak for Jon) that we'd be fast friends, but for whatever reason, even when we once tried to get our families together for dinner, things didn't work out. (I'm sure we've been at other events that neither one of us knew about the other being there as well.)

But here's the best part (for the movie, at least): What if, after we get the screenplay written (separately, of course) and some independent film company picks it up and produces it, what if as part of the build-up and promotion of the film, we finally meet on opening night at some film festival somewhere, families in tow and with the joke finally over? What if the film turned into some huge commentary on the challenges of real male friendship in an extremes-preoccupied world (sports fans on one end, geeks on the other), as evidenced by the reality that terms like "man crush" and "bromance" have crept into the vernacular as guys try to describe respect and even affection for one another without being talked about with raised eyebrows? What if?

I'm just throwing it out there. Would you go see a flick like that? What other motivations, scenes, or characters might make it compelling to watch? What would you call it? And do any guys resonate with what I'm talking about, or is this a movie no one would go see? I know the idea is rough and needs refining, so here's your chance to make it better.

We Interrupt Our Normally Non-Scheduled Weekend...

Here are some groovy events - several of which I'd love to see a familiar face at if you're in the area - that I'll be part of in the next six weeks. (If you or anyone you know has questions about the conferences, click the links or let me know and I'll fill in details.)

SEPTEMBER

17-18: Griggsville Apple Festival (Uptown Square, Griggsville, IL)
I've written about this cultural tour de force before, but words and pictures just cannot do justice to my hometown's annual fall celebration; you just have to be there. That said, I'm once again looking forward to more time on the farm (now in harvest mode) since our Labor Day visit two weekends ago, as well as to seeing some former high school classmates from back in the day (when you graduated in a class of 30, it doesn't take much to have a yearly class reunion each September).

24-26: Annual Fall Family Camping Trip (Babler State Park, Wildwood, MO)
We always schedule this trip the weekend following Parent/Teacher conferences (after talking with parents for six hours straight and the struggles many of them are having in connecting with their students, I'm usually newly motivated to spend time with my own kids). New activity this year: the family bike ride, as all six of us are bike-mobile (now we just have to figure out how to get all six bikes there).

OCTOBER

1-2: Tour de Cape (Downtown Pavilion, Cape Girardeau, MO)
Speaking of bikes, I've been pseudo-training (about 30 miles/week) to take my first "century ride" this weekend with a couple of co-workers (both of whom are much better bikers than I am). I've never before ridden 100 miles in a day, so we'll see how much Advil it takes to do it when it's all said and done.

8-10: Biblical Imagination Conference with Michael Card (Fredericksburg, VA)
I wrote about this not too long ago, and it seems a little strange that we're less than a month out already. I'm pretty stoked to hang out on the east coast with Mike and company. This is the first conference of what I hope are many to come, so if you're too far from D.C. this time around, hang in there: odds are we'll be coming to you soon.

15-17: TwentySomeone/ThirtySomewhere Conference (Memphis, TN)
My good buddy, Mitchell Moore, is a pastor at Second Presbyterian in Memphis, and he's asked me to come down to speak at a retreat for peeps in their 20s and 30s. Revisiting the material (as well as working on some new for the next book) has been really fun, and I'm still "smokin' what I'm sellin'" (figuratively speaking, of course) in terms of making the most of these decades. Megan and the girls are coming with me, and we'll sight-see around Memphis on Saturday afternoon.

22-24: Megan at The Relevant Conference (Harrisburg, PA)
The good news: I'll be home (and probably won't leave the house if I can help it); the other news: Megan won't be. As she did in Colorado in July, my wife will be taking in another blogging conference - this one of a more devotional than technical nature - in Pennsylvania. I'm interested to see what comes out of her time there, as well as to what degree the two conferences overlap and supplement each other.

That's all for now. We now return you to our normally non-scheduled weekend...

Communications or Entertainment?

"Here we are now...entertain us"
Nirvana

So Megan and I, having been the victim one too many times of AT+T raising our home phone/DSL rates again, have re-entered the fray of trying to figure out the best communications deal out there. If you've done this recently, you know it isn't easy: there are far too many options, and none of them seem all that great bundled together for our particular purposes.

Our particular purposes, I suppose, are part of the problem, but so are the prices. In researching options, I was amazed both at the breadth of what's available as well as what the market is apparently willing to bear per month to subscribe to them. By my estimation, families with a land line, multiple cell phones (say 3-4), 300+ TV channels with multi-channel DVR capabilities, and broadband Internet across multiple computers could be paying as much as $400-$500 per month in fees, which doesn't even include hardware (cell phones, receiving dish or cable installation, computers) costs on the front end.

We currently have a land line, one pay-by-the-minute cell phone ($100 goes about 6 months), antenna television (6 channels), a mid-level (two movies out at a time) NetFlix subscription, and DSL. Add on a subscription to Covenant Eyes for the computers and we now pay about $120 in monthly fees, which we've determined is too much for our budget.

We'd like to find a cheaper land line provider (or drop the land line altogether and bite the bullet financially and philosophically by going to two cell phones), but we can't make the numbers work (and, of course, none of this even deals with the whole television part of the equation, nor the movie rental fee).

How much is too much in this area of communications? And is it really "communications" being talked about, or is our culture's thirst for entertainment - visual, digital, social - behind the willingness to pay ever-increasing amounts of money to ensure access to it?

For the Christian, how does what gets spent on entertainment compare to what gets given to the Kingdom each month? How much is too much/too little? Where's the line and what are the reasons for where it's been drawn (or re-drawn) over the years?

Wrestling through this anew these days. Feel free to add your two cents and share your own communications/entertainment experiences, ideas, and counsel. I'm open like 7-11.

On the Yard Sale

So we had a yard sale this past Saturday. Apart from the 95-degree temperature and the 100% humidity, it was good: we got rid of some stuff, made some money, and had a very good reason at the end of the day to collectively hit the sack at 9:30 p.m.

Personally, yard sales are too intimate an experience for me to really enjoy; there's just something awkward about strangers publicly evaluating what you once thought you wanted. Maybe I just felt self-conscious about all the old Stephen King novels I was getting rid of (would you want to know that YOUR neighbor has read a majority of the man's books?), but the whole process seems a huge invasion of privacy.

As I was enduring the invasion, I took some mental notes on the variety of yard-salers we encountered during the day. I don't pretend that this list is exhaustive (and feel free to add your own set of usual suspects in the comments below), but generally speaking, here's who I did business with during our particular sale on Saturday:

The Early Bird: This person pays no attention to any printed given times as to when the yard sale officially begins; if the sign says 8 a.m., then 7:30 it is. Thankfully, she doesn't talk much and rarely gets offended if and when you have to ask her to move so you can set up another table of items you're trying to sell, so it's usually best to just let this one be.

The Snob: This person parks right in front of and as close as possible to your yard, gets out of her still-running car with her nose stuck up in the air to pick up your sale's "scent," and surveys what she already knows you have - nothing she would ever want. Having convinced herself of this truth, she gets back in the car and drives off, grateful once again that she did not waste her time on your junk (and, honestly, good riddance).

The Critic: This person is a distant cousin to The Snob, the difference being that he actually gets out of the car to look through your stuff. Unfortunately, while The Snob communicates her disdain for your offerings from a driving-off distance, The Critic chooses to verbalize his disgust on-site instead, particularly if he feels you have overpriced anything (and especially if he secretly wants to buy it).

The Cheapskate: This person looks through everything - and I mean everything - you have in your yard, taking his time to muse over what its value must have been to you at some point and wondering what must have happened that you would put it up for sale now. Having so cheaply entertained himself with various and sundry scenarios and plots, he finally picks one item priced at fifty cents and asks if you would take forty for it (after all, one's man's memories are another man's bargains).

The Haggler: While often confused with The Cheapskate, The Haggler is actually willing to spend money for what she wants...so long as the sale price is below the amount that's currently listed. Hers is not a campaign motivated by finances but by victory, as every piece she has ever purchased at a yard sale comes with a complete oral tradition of how much it was, how much she ended up talking the owner down, and why the difference between the two prices makes her superior to the rest of humanity.

The Scanner: This person is usually drinking Starbucks and shows up with his own hand-held bar code scanner, which he uses to check resell value on anything with a bar code. Never mind what the item actually is or what the book in his hand might be about, all this guy cares about is what it's currently going for on Ebay or Amazon, as this will determine his purchase decision. This was a new one for me.

The Road Trip: This person is not really a person but multiple persons all crammed into one vehicle out hitting yard sales en masse. The goal (I assume) is to have fun going to yard sales together (which seems incredibly flawed thinking in itself); the reality is that with so many people in the car, there's no room for what one might want to buy, especially if it's a bigger item. Tip: Be sure to get their money before you promise to hold something for them while they go and get another vehicle (no sense losing a possible sale if they happen to get in an accident joy-riding).

The Buzzard: This person shows up toward the end of the sale and, since she missed all your good stuff, somehow feels entitled to a much lower price than the one listed before she will even think about buying your pathetic leftovers. Sadly, though you'd like to ask her as a matter of principle where she gets off imposing her discount assumption on you, you know she has you, as you really don't want to haul your stuff back in the house; thus, you end up (grudgingly) caving to her demands.

I'm sure there were plenty of others I could list if I really wanted to get mean, but I'll stop for now (I do wonder if different geographic areas of the country sport different yard-saler species or if they're just variations of the ones above). Of course, there were plenty of really nice people - friends, neighbors, people we'd never met before - who stopped by as well, bought some lemonade or stuff, and just talked a while, which was nice.

All in all, it was a good day and I'm glad we did it, though as with every yard sale, I'm always glad when it's over and am in no hurry to do one again anytime soon.

Summer 2010 Preview, Etc.

Sitting here on a Sunday night listening to some Lucinda Williams and doing a little writing. It's been a while since I've done a summary post of sorts, so since Megan and the girls are out of town and we're collectively an entire season behind to really make the LOST finale worth watching, here are a few things I've been thinking about and/or looking forward to:

School: This week is finals week, so I'll be spending most of my time grading. The good news is, unlike the past three years when I was evaluating projects and papers, I'm going into finals week with nothing other than finals to grade, so that should make for a little less consuming week in general.

In other school news, I've signed on for another year at Westminster, but my role is changing a bit as I'll be leaving the world of freshmen New Testament behind for fourth section of sophomore Ethics and one section of senior Worldviews next year. I'm glad for the transition all around.

One last note on the school front (this time the homeschool front), we're going to be entering a new stage of education here at home. This fall, our two oldest girls will be full-time students at Central Christian School in Clayton, while Megan continues leading the Classical Conversations group and homeschools our younger two (here are details from Megan's perspective).

Summer: In addition to writing (more on that below), my primary goal in June is to hang out with the little ladies, read some books, and get a few projects done around here. In addition, I'll help coach our Westminster summer baseball team for a week in June, as well as get trained on some new school information software, as I've been asked to be a mentor teacher to the rest of the staff this fall.

July ups the ante considerably in terms of travel, as we're planning a family trip to Colorado Springs, as the girls are now old enough (somehow) to attend The Navigators' camping programs (Eagle Lake and Eagle's Nest) we helped lead back in the day. I'll try to see as many folks as I can in a few days' time before I jump on a plane from Denver to Portland for my third year as part of Westminster's Summer Seminar. This time, I'll be investing ten days with 25 soon-to-be seniors in Washington state instead of South Dakota, after which I'll fly back to Colorado and then we'll all drive back to Missouri.

August sees staff reporting as earlier as the week of August 9th, but I'll have a few publishing projects to edit and design from the Washington trip, as well as a fair amount of prep work to finalize for my new Worldviews class. Orientation starts the 12th and the first day of class is the 16th.

Studying: Despite baseball high-jacking my time and energy, I've been reading in a couple areas of interest this spring, not the least of which has been the study of the end times, or eschatology. N.T. Wright's book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, has been helpful, as has revisiting my notes from seminary (particularly Dr. Dan Doriani's notes from his Epistles and Revelation class). Of the three years I've taught Revelation to my freshmen New Testament classes, I feel like I've done the best job this year.

I'm also finishing up a couple books on education, namely John Dewey and the Decline of American Education by Henry T. Edmondson III, Curriculum 21 edited by Heidi Hayes-Jacobs, and The Secret of TSL by William Ouchi. It seems I've been reading these for a while (and I have), but there's been some good content that's come as a result.

Looking ahead, I have some Worldviews reading to do this summer, including (Re)Thinking Worldview by J. Mark Bertrand; The Compact Guide to World Religions edited by Dean C. Halverson (ed.); The Journey by Peter Kreeft; Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey; and The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire. Should be fun.

Writing: Now that my second book, Learning Education: Essays & Ideas from My First Three Years of Teaching, is finished, I'm turning back to finishing the ThirtySomewhere manuscript this summer. I'm still looking for a formal publisher to get behind it, but now that I've experimented with the self-publishing gig a bit (and am still experimenting), I may go with what I've got at some point this fall and see what happens. We'll see.

I plan to continue blogging here, though I really wonder how much people are interested in anything longer than 140 Twitter characters these days. Speaking of which, I've enjoyed Twitter enough to keep using it, but there again I just have no way of really knowing how far the medium's actual reach is so as to invest more time in it. Oh well.

Guess that's it for now. There's more, but this is long enough. I'll try to post a few more thoughts later on this week (nothing brings out literary creativity like the desire to avoid grading). Have a good one.

Journeying On

Read this in The Valley of Vision this morning:

JOURNEYING ON

Lord of the cloud and fire,
I am a stranger, with a stranger's indifference;
My hands hold a pilgrim's staff,
My march is Zionward,
My Eyes are toward the coming of the Lord,
My heart is in thy hands without reserve.

Thou has created it,
redeemed it,
renewed it,
captured it,
conquered it.

Keep from it every opposing foe,
crush it in every rebel lust,
mortify every treacherous passion,
annihilate every earthborn desire.

All faculties of my being vibrate to thy touch;
I love thee with soul, mind, body, strength,
might, spirit, affection, will,
desire, intellect, understanding.

Thou art the very perfection of all perfections;
All intellect is derived from thee;
My scanty rivulets flow from they unfathomable fountain.

Compared with thee the sun is darkness,
all beauty deformity,
all wisdom folly,
the best goodness faulty.

Thou art worthy of an adoration greater than
my dull heart can yield;
Invigorate my love that it may rise worthily to thee,
tightly entwine itself round thee,
be allured by thee.
Then shall my walk be endless praise.

Wow and amen.

Concert Review: Jason Aldean

And now for something completely different...

Megan somehow scored free backstage passes, a private "concert"/photo op (with eats and drinks), and free tickets to the Jason Aldean concert at the Family Arena in St. Charles Saturday night. I don't know how she finds this stuff, but I've learned over the years not to ask too many questions so as to not attach myself as an accomplice in whatever illegal activities she may engage in for a cheap date night. But I digress...

Let's be clear: while I appreciate the lyrical cleverness of country music, I'm not that big a fan of the musicality of the genre. Still, a free concert's a free concert, and since "She's Country" at heart, Megan and I went and enjoyed the gig. Jake Owen ("one of People magazine's sexiest men in country music" - oh boy) was the opening act, but everyone was clearly there for Aldean.

Rather than write a detailed review that no one may particularly care to read, I thought I'd record a video blog (vlog) to pseudo-capture the evening. What follows are my hardly technical, barely coherent, and honestly raw thoughts on the show.

Thanks to Megan for her filming/editing job, as well as for treating me to more culture than one man should be allowed to experience in a night.

Why Johnny Can't Write (Part 2)

(Continued from my previous post on the topic; sorry for the delay/random smatterings. Can't believe it's taken two weeks, but I'm guessing you found other things to read).

With regard to the problem of teaching and learning the Bible, David Nienhuis sums up the problem nicely: "Biblical literacy programs need to do more than produce informed quoters. They need to produce transformed readers."

Most Scripture memory programs focus on the imperative verses (what to do), almost completely ignoring the indicative verses (what is true). In other words, we in the church spend more time telling kids (and ourselves) what to do for God rather than what God has done for them (and us). In the evangelical church, we're all about the what and how, and hardly about the when, where, and why.

But let's not pretend that decontextualization is just a biblical literacy problem specifically; in today's postmodern world (or post-postmodern world some would say), it is a literacy problem in general. Here's where we come back to basic reading and writing skills, and these skills' corruption by the very thing so many proclaim will help - technology.

There is, after all, a difference between learning something and learning how to search for something. Is one better than the other? That's a debated question: does a kid really need to learn when or where or why an historical event took place, or does he just need to learn how to search for it effectively with Google? How you answer this question has everything to do with your pedagogy, and while I don't think the two answers are mutually exclusive, I do think the former gets short shrift compared to the latter.

Think about this: nobody memorizes phone numbers anymore because we can just input them into our phone, press the name of the person we want to call, and dial the right number. This works great...as long as we have the phone. But what happens when we lose the phone or the phone stops working? How do we get a hold of the person we're trying to call? What do we really know? We know that we want our phone back and working again, and we realize how lost we feel without it. (Note: For the other two of you in the world who, like me, don't own a cell phone, apply the idea to losing your Web browser bookmarks...it can seem like the most helpless feeling in the world.)

The point is that we live such a wi-fi-enabled, out-sourced, off-site, backed-up life that we use our brains for little more than remembering where we store our passwords than what it is (stories, ideas, responses, reflections) they protect. Ours has evolved into such a non-oral tradition "tradition," that the thought of memorizing sonnets from a poem or narrative stories from the Bible for meaning and not information seems archaic and unnecessary. If we think we need it, we can find it; we don't need to learn it. And if we don't think we need to learn it, well, who cares?

The result of all this (or at least the result I see in the classroom) is a student who struggles to write or process ideas that take more than a paragraph to explain (see this Onion article for a humorous version of the problem) growing up in a culture that validates his multi-tasking dysfunction despite studies like this one and articles like this one that question it as a good means to deal with life. As an educator, I suppose I risk becoming suspect to students and parents (and perhaps colleagues and administrators) in calling for moderation and (at times) sobriety when it comes to drinking the technological Kool-Aid, but when I watch a program like Frontline's Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, it confirms my concerns. Again, I'm not down on technology, but idolatry is a different matter.

Maybe it's because of the subjects I teach (New Testament and Ethics) or the experience (or lack thereof) I've had in the classroom, but depending on technology instead of using technology to teach seems ridiculous for many reasons, not the least of which is this: what if the power or the Internet goes out? If I can't teach apart from my laptop with its Keynote presentations and Web-access and wikis and online forums and Skype conversations and YouTube clips and ITunes access and podcasts and Scripture software - all of which I use in the classroom - then I'm not sure I'm really much of a teacher.

I need one more post to respond to some of your questions about how we try to apply any of this here at home with our own kids. I promise I won't take another two weeks to get to it, so hang in there. In the meantime, here's a link to the blog of one of my students who has the increasingly rare gift of being a sophomore in high school and able to utilize technology while still thinking and writing meaningfully. Enjoy.

We Were Young and We Were Improving

When we moved from Colorado back to the Midwest five years ago, Megan got her first real taste of my tiny hometown's passion for all things basketball and baseball. While she mocked it a bit then, she's since come around to a more accepting position, which was helpful this month, as I was invited back to Griggsville to join in celebrating the career of my junior high school coach, Ken Stauffer.

Coach Stauffer's coaching legacy includes 1,130 wins split between Griggsville's seventh and eighth grade basketball teams, countless regional and sectional trophies, two state basketball championships (with more appearances), and induction into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He retires with something north of a .750 winning percentage with only two losing seasons over his 38-year career. (For the record, the 7th and 8th grade teams I played on were a combined 39-2. Booyah.)

 

Speaking of those teams, here are seven of the eight guys in my grade who played for Coach Stauffer all through junior high school. Six of the seven of us went on to experience continued team success in our high school years, and as this was the first time all of us had been together in Griggsville in 25 years, a picture seemed appropriate.

As part of the celebration, the school had pulled out a lot of old trophies and pictures, one of which I had completely forgotten about from 1982, but that Megan and the girls found particularly humorous. I was one of two fifth graders to make the eighth grade team that year, and though I didn't get to play in the tournament, I went on to enjoy good success in both junior and senior high baseball later (my only real credential for what I'm doing this spring...ahem).

 

All that to say, it was a fun weekend at home honoring Coach Stauffer, seeing old teammates, and reliving a few of the glory days. Granted, Megan reminded me of her original Uncle Rico post, and my girls couldn't quite believe I was once the age that my oldest is now, but to quote my favorite Midwestern poet:

That's when a sport was a sport
And groovin' was groovin'
And dancin' meant everything
We were young and we were improvin'

Laughin', laughin' with our friends
Holdin' hands meant somethin', baby
Outside the club, 'Cherry Bomb'
Our hearts were really thumpin'

Say, "Yeah yeah yeah"
Say, "Yeah yeah yeah"

-- from "Cherry Bomb" by John Mellencamp

Yeah.

Adapting to Digital Discipleship?

Most readers don't consider me a Luddite when it comes to technology, but some may be surprised that I tend to be a slow adapter/adopter when it comes to new stuff. Consider:

• I recorded three of my own CDs before I actually owned a CD player.
• My first cell phone was a late-90's Ericsson (I don't own or use one now by choice).
• My first iBook was second generation.
• My current MacBook is second generation.
• Our iMac is second generation.
• Our iPod Shuffle is second generation.
• Our iPod Nano is second generation.
• My iTouch is second generation.
• Our current video player is a 12-year-old dying dual VHS/DVD player, but I don't even know what options are out there if/fwhen it goes.
• It took me a year or so to come around to Twitter, but I'm liking it (enough) now.

Here's where I've been more on the technological front-end of things:

• With the exception of a six-month sabbatical in 2005, I've kept one of several blogs since August of 2003 (TwentySomeone (2003-2005), Seminary Tychicus (2005-2007), and Second Drafts (2006-present).
• I was on MySpace and Facebook pretty early (a fact my students still don't believe).
• I got a Gmail account as soon as the service was available. I also got in early on GoogleWave as well, but the tide is out right now on that, at least for me.

I suppose the main observation I make is that, with the exception of Twitter, I tend to be on the cutting edge of technology when it's free; anything I have to pay for I tend to wait to see how it turns out (and it usually takes me a cycle to justify spending money, though if I had the money, I'd probably spring for Apple's rumored iTablet/iSlate the first time around).

What does any of this have to do with the price of eggs in China? I'm getting there.

This weekend, an acquaintance emailed about an opportunity to do some research that would eventually be part of Monvee, a website/database designed to be a systematic approach to (for lack of a better phrase) "digital discipleship". Pastor/author John Ortberg seems to be the main name attached to this initiative (though there are several other endorsers), and while I'm not that familiar with Ortberg's present ministry, I know he was involved with Willow Creek for ten years, particularly in the area of spiritual formation.

Spiritual formation, apparently, is what Monvee is all about; in fact, it claims it is "the future of spiritual formation" (no expectations there). If you watch the preview video, you can get an idea of what Monvee understands spiritual formation to be in terms of meaning and methodology. In the video, co-founder Eric Parks sums it up this way: "I like to think of the Monvee...as the eHarmony for my spiritual life, but instead of finding a mate, Monvee discovers how I'm wired and how I grow best." (Note to Parks: Comparing Monvee to eHarmony is not going to win me over to using your product. Bad analogy.)

After you complete Monvee's three-minute survey, Monvee apparently helps you discern what your spiritual needs are, how you best learn, and how you can grow and best connect with God. Monvee then customizes a plan - "a spiritual guidebook for life" - that covers four areas: time (practices); mind (books, videos); relationships (mentors, groups); and experiences (service). It then pulls and ships all the materials you need right to your door, prints email reminders for what you're supposed to do each day, and somehow tracks your spiritual progress in real-time.

But wait, there's more: If you're a church leader who uses Monvee with your entire congregation, Monvee can provide "a spiritual dashboard of insight into how your church is growing...on a live and on-going basis...with real data, in real-time, and about real growth."

Here's my question: Is my hesitancy to support this "digital discipleship" justified or is it just another example of my technological tendency to slow adaptation/adoption?

From my perspective, the pros are that the technology seems well done, and for someone with absolutely no help, I could maybe see how this could be useful initially in self-analysis and resource selection. But the cons run along the line of the rampant individualism this could promote, the dependence on database diagnostics rather than the Spirit of God for one's sanctification, and probably just how Parks ends his video with "Let Monvee help you find your way" (creepy).

What do you think? Would you buy in/encourage someone to buy in or not? Should I?

Kids (and Parents) These Days

Megan and I had a memorable evening Friday night that got us talking about some things that, well, we're not sure we're excited to be talking about. Maybe we're showing our age or our upbringing, but last night was an introspective evening for us in a lot of ways.

The cause of this introspection was Westminster's Christmas Banquet - a formal, end-of-semester dinner for which we were asked last-minute to serve as chaperones. Being the cheapskates we are, we were happy to get gussied up for four hours with 500 of our closest high school-age friends - the food at the Airport Hilton was decent, the service was good, and it was a nice way to officially kick off Christmas Break (even though I've STILL got grading to do this weekend to meet the Monday morning deadline).

Our first moment of introspection came as we dropped our four girls off at our pastor's house for the evening. Our daughters and their daughters (four also) are all roughly the same ages and absolutely love each other, so that wasn't the issue; what was different was Andrew and Lisa also had a Christmas party Friday evening, so the eight little ladies were going to be on their own for the night. As their oldest is 12 and our oldest is ten days from being 11, we were okay with this, but it was a bit surreal leaving the girls without adult supervision for four hours. It seemed we'd crossed a threshold of sorts, so we talked about it for the 15-minute drive to the hotel and decided that, indeed, we had.

When we showed up (early) for the banquet, we found our seats (in back), so we sat and talked about what we might expect this evening. Megan doesn't know many of my students as their paths don't really cross, so the evening was going to be a parade of nameless high schoolers for her; I, on the other hand, knew probably half of the students by name from class or the hallways, and was excited to see them in a different light, one which might give a hint into who they are and are becoming outside of my classroom.

Unfortunately, what I got was an eyeful of how little parents seem to care about their kids (especially their daughters).

With guys in tuxedos and girls in dresses, we expected to see a fair amount of awkwardness as the students adjusted to their fancy duds; what we didn't expect was the ridiculous amounts of make-up, skin, and cleavage we were bombarded with, nor the (short) leather skirts and (tall) stiletto heels that came with them. I couldn't count the number of times I saw girls having to pull up the tight tops of their low strapless dresses in an honest effort to keep themselves from walking right out of them.

The guys were awkward in their own way (one freshman actually wore his cumberbund up around his ribs all night and looked like a mover in one of those support belts to aid his bad back), but you can't tell me they didn't enjoy just sitting back and taking in everything that was about to fall out right before their eyes. I've never seen these guys smile as much as they did last night.

At the risk of sounding like a puritanical prude, the question that kept coming to my mind was "Where are the parents?" Oh, I forgot: they were busy planning the "after-party," the non-WCA-sponsored dance at another hotel where, from reports I always get from the kids the week after such events, is where the real party happens.

Apparently, in addition to providing the DJ and dance floor, these parents "supervise" the opportunity for high school students to "grind" on one another to their hearts' (among other bodily organs') content. I can't count the number of students who've asked me over the past three years if grinding is wrong - they bring it up every time we study (get this) the seventh commandment prohibiting adultery. When I tell them that, yes, grinding is wrong because it's basically "sex with clothes on," you wouldn't believe the pushback I get. You'd think I had accused Bill Clinton of having sex with Monica Lewinsky or something.

This - all this - made up the discussion Megan and I had on the drive back to pick up the girls. If we enroll the girls at WCA (or any school), do they accept a boy's invitation to be his date at a banquet. If they want to, sure, so long as she's dressed appropriately (that is, wearing clothes) and simply going to enjoy the evening with a friend who happens to be male. Do we let them go to "after parties"? A trickier question, but one we will hopefully attempt to answer with them by talking about all the realities in play. Decisions like these come down to clued-in parent involvement - both now and (for us, at least, before) - and I'd sure like to see more of this informed kind at WCA.

Granted, not every WCA student nor every WCA parent is suspect in this, and I could name plenty of students who were appropriately dressed at the banquet who probably didn't attend the after-party due to parental intervention. But as a current high school teacher and future high school parent, let me encourage anyone with kids to re-consider the fact that no one's going to parent your kids for you; frankly, God didn't give us the option when he gave them to us. Hear the words of Deuteronomy 6:5-7:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise."

In other words, we are to parent according to our love for God and the words of his Scripture, and we are to parent as we (and they) go. There are no breaks; it's 24-7, baby, and we will be held accountable for every decision we make (or don't make) in training up our children in the way they should go. Might I humbly suggest that public cleavage and grinding have no place in this biblical equation? God help us all.

Worldview: A High Schooler's Perspective

Got this from a former Ethics student who is now a senior taking Worldviews here at WCA:

Lately when I've been on You Tube, I've seen some pretty stupid videos (like REALLY stupid videos) of ignorant people saying ignorant things and it makes me so mad!!! My heart hurts really bad and I feel horrible when people challenge or attack Christianity. This year, Worldviews has helped me SO MUCH in broadening my er...worldview (I love it but I can't test on it for crud).

Anyway, I was just wondering what my role is in this situation? I don't like standing back and watching people sling mud at my religion with really bad arguments...HORRIBLE arguments that I could easily counter, but it's not my job to convert them...is it? And is it my job to educate them? I feel like if I put a cork in their mouth nicely and logically they might not convince anyone else to convert to "atheism" or whatever.

Here's how I responded:

A few thoughts:

1. You probably need to consider the source before you get too angry. The greatest strength of the Internet (self-expression to the fullest) is also its greatest weakness (no checkpoints whatsoever); thus, anybody can say anything for any reason and, in the true spirit of pluralistic relativism, there exists this assumption that you have to take it all seriously and view it all as equal in terms of truth. The good news? You don’t have to do either.

2. While I appreciate your heart for the name of Christ, God does not need a defense lawyer; rest assured justice will be served in his time, and he is certainly big enough to take it. This is not anything new that Christianity has not already endured for hundreds and thousands of year, and Jesus warned us about this kind of stuff in the gospels. He’s not surprised (and we shouldn’t be either) that those who don’t know him would think of him as they do.

3. As for your role in any of this, the thing I would encourage you with is to rejoice that, by God’s grace, your conscience seems to be working, that you don’t desire to do the same thing, and that you have an opportunity to pray to resist judging those who seem to hate us (that “love your enemies” thing seems appropriate here). Use all this as a check on your own life, pray for those who persecute you, and give thought and prayer as to how to love them. Maybe this indeed leads to a response of some kind, or maybe not (I’ve found Internet discussions like this are usually pointless); regardless, look for the same kinds of discussions going on around you (in the student body or with friends) that you might be able to jump in, join, and engage.

I’m thrilled that you’re enjoying Worldviews (I thought you might). Don’t worry about the testing part; the important thing is to grasp what you’re learning and think about holding onto it both now and into the future.

I noticed on your Facebook page that you’ve been reading some good stuff and I wonder if I could make a book suggestion for over the Christmas break? The book I’m thinking of is The Reason for God by Tim Keller. It’s very well-written and deals with a lot of what you’re struggling with in terms of responding to the online stuff, and doing so in a tone that I think would really be helpful for you to hear. Would you consider picking up a copy and reading it over the break? I believe the library may have a copy (and I’ll be glad to go to bat for you for an over-Christmas-break check-out if that would serve).

I’m proud of you for caring about this. Stop in and let’s catch up sometime and maybe we can talk more about all this. Congratulations on being halfway through senior year. I’ll be cheering for you when you graduate.

Hope some of this helps,

Mr. D.

'Tis the Season...

...when Megan bakes cookies and leaves them around for me to pretend to ignore. It's also when we put up a tree and clutter it (and the house) with all things Christmas holiday. Ah, the sights, sounds, smells, and stuff of the season.

But I digress. Lots going on this week. Here's a rundown:

• The two-year hostage situation of St. Louis' main east/west artery has ended, as I-64/40 is open again. If all goes according to plan, I should be able to cut 10 minutes off my once-25-minute commute to/from school and seminary, which is exciting. All in all, the process wasn't that bad, but I wouldn't want to do it again anytime soon.
• I'm finishing up the fourth and fifth commandments with my Ethics students, as well as the book of Matthew with my New Testament kids this week. Finals are next week, so I've got a few tests to write and more than a few papers and assignments to grade. Glad to be two weeks away from Christmas break.
• This week is a big one in terms of finishing my seminary studies for the semester. I have an hour-long group project presentation on Monday, a paper due on Wednesday, and two finals to take by Sunday and then I'm down to my final semester at Covenant (and probably forever, unless some university wants to give me a full-ride to work on a Ph.D.). It will feel really good to finally be finished, both in a week and in five months.
• Megan and I are turning in our collective resignation letter to Nick at the Covenant bookstore, with our last day being December 30th (Nick's actually known about it for months, so it's not that big a deal). It was a good year-and-a-half at my first real retail experience, but I've got to make room to coach JV baseball in the spring, so something had to go.
• I'm planning to post my 2009 booklist in another week, so check back soon if you're still looking for readable gift ideas. I was initially disappointed in my list this year, but at second glance it's not that bad (though I definitely didn't read as much fiction as I have in the past). Look for it in another few days.
• Speaking of books as gifts, TwentySomeone wraps as well at Christmas as at graduation time (just wanted to let you know in case you're still looking for a present for a hard-to-buy-for twentysomething in your life).
• And speaking of Christmas, in addition to the obligatory family roadtrips/celebrations, we're planning to paint another room (dining) over the holidays and get some time hanging out here at home. We're also looking forward to seeing the movie Up in the Air with George Clooney, as parts were filmed in St. Louis (and some of those parts right here in our little Maplewood community).

Guess that's about it. If you're in town or passing through over the holidays, come on by - being the introverts that we are, we might not answer the door, but you'll enjoy the trip.

City of God or Country of God?

Maybe I've read too many Wendell Berry books, but it's taken some time for me - a country boy - to come around to the thought of the city being a cherished part of the Christian mission. Indeed, I get the concept of the biblical narrative taking us from the Garden (Genesis) to the City (Revelation), and it does seem God spends an awful lot of time in the Scriptures interacting with ancient cities and their inhabitants, but it's only been since moving to a big city myself that my heart has warmed to the idea.

Growing up six miles outside a town of 1,200 (Griggsville, IL - "Purple Martin Capital of the Nation") two hours north of the STL, my big city experiences were few and far between. When I did visit St. Louis or Chicago (which my family rarely did), or even when I traveled overseas at the age of 16 to major cities like London, Paris, or Munich, I was rarely scared by them, but I was not all that enamored, either. While I enjoyed the idea of being there, the cities all felt too touristy to me (granted, a tourist), and I just couldn't figure out who or how one enjoyed living in a place so overrun by millions of non-residents.

This theme continued when I moved west. Colorado Springs - as beautiful as it can be - seemed to prostitute itself to the spring break and summer tourist crowds. Add to that feeling the fact that there's absolutely no good way to drive east-west in town (which was unfortunate, since that was how we had to go to get to our PCA church), and I began to lament our attempts at church community in the city. I couldn't figure out how church "happened" naturally and personally in a city of 350,000, let alone 3.5 million.

Then we moved to St. Louis - a classic example of an American city that has suffered from decades of racial tension, white flight to the suburbs, and inner-city poverty (both financial and human). As the middle-class moved out, so grew with them the megachurches. Harvie Conn, in his book The American City and the Evangelical Church, sums up well what seems to have gone on here and in other metropolitan areas like it:

"The community church has become a regional church. And in becoming a regional church it becomes a megachurch...In this decentralized world the church loses its grip on local geographical neighborhood and is transformed into a megachurch, twenty-five minutes by car. The size of the megachurch becomes limited only by the size of its parking lot. And the lost community created by this change finds its replacement in the small cell groups and house meetings also characteristic of the successful megachurch." (p. 191)

(Random thought: Maybe this is why I really don't like small groups - it's an unconscious rebelling against megachurches everywhere. Actually, I love the Catholic "parish model" with churches geographically placed throughout the city and members living within the neighborhood attending; in fact, if it weren't for those pesky doctrinal issues - worship of Mary, sainthood, purgatory, etc. - I'd probably have become Catholic by now if for no other reason than I love the architecture. But I digress.)

After we moved to Maplewood (where we live half a house from the St. Louis city/county line), we knew we wanted to be part of as local a PCA congregation as we could. Thankfully, Crossroads Presbyterian was just a ten-minute walk around the corner and up the hill from the house we bought, and we're glad for the fact that in terms of both vision and facility, there are no plans nor means to grow the church beyond 300 members without planting another church (which we're actually doing now) first.

All that said, my heart for the city (Maplewood and/or St. Louis proper) is growing in addition to my heart for the country. Yes, I'm still waiting for the PCA to catch a vision for church planting in more rural areas, but I know it's tough financially and (honestly) culturally. But, while I still feel the need to be an advocate for rural ministry here in the city, I'm glad to feel an expanding love in this country boy's heart for the city as well.

So, with apologies to Augustine, is it the city of God or the country of God that matters?

My best answer: yes.

Let's Squish Our Fruits Together

Let me just say that I'm fairly astounded by a lot of things in this - the songwriting, the singing, the acting, the quality of the recording - but none of them compare to the power and thrill of live, unedited performance. Bravo.

Aussies (or at least this school in Australia) Get It

I don't know if you've heard/read about this, but my Bible department head, L.B. Graham, is married to an Aussie who happened to be on the receiving end of the following email:

"This is the message that the Maroochydore High School, Queensland, Australia, staff voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine. This is the actual answering machine message for the school. This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework.

The school and teachers  are being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades - even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough school work to pass their classes."

Attached to the email was this audio attachment containing the school's aforementioned voicemail message - a swift kick in the parental pants that American educators can only dream about giving. As the Aussies say, "Dig a hole and bury me, it just doesn't get any better than this!"

Putting the Mental in Fundamentalist

The hubbub caused by President Obama's planned "Welcome Back" speech to school children on Tuesday is interesting to say the least. For those of you just tuning in to the debate, here's a helpful summary of arguments from all sides concerning the public school arena - not much I could or would add to any of that. However, as I haven't read much from a Christian private school perspective, let me get the conversation started.

On Friday, Westminster received several phone call from parents asking if the school was going to participate in watching the President's speech. The official WCA position for this and other such live presentations is that they are not to take the place of our own academic presentations - those prepared lessons that fit within the planned curriculum for the courses we teach; thus, as guided by our scope and sequence, there is no official planned showing of the President's live presentation in WCA classrooms on Tuesday.

Maybe because we've already had three weeks of school and the idea of a "Welcome Back" speech seems past the expiraton date, I didn't think too much about the email. While I always want to consider whether something like this applies to what we're talking about in Ethics, in light of the fact that my students are gearing up for their first major test next week (and Tuesday finishes up our discussion for that), I figured I'd watch the speech on YouTube and, if anything seemed to apply, bring it in to class afterward.

This idea might get complicated, however, as apparently we had parents (not a lot, but a vocal few) express that if WCA showed the speech, they would keep their kids home from school.

Seriously?

When I got home later in the day, I asked Megan what she had been reading in the blogosphere about President Obama's planned speech, and she told me there were several "sick out" campaigns being organized for Tuesday, mostly by parents whose kids were in public school (though homeschoolers seemed all too eager to jump on the bandwagon as well). When I told her about the phone calls at Westminster, her response was the same as mine.

Seriously?

Am I missing something here? If it's not in the home (and why a homeschooling family would not use this as an opportunity for discussion I have no idea - we are), I would think parents would at least want their kids engaging live presentations like President Obama's in a Christian school, where I as a teacher am going to ask questions like "What can we affirm?" (importance of education, faithful study, etc.) or "What needs to be challenged?" (ideas different from Scriptural truth, etc.). It shouldn't matter who the speaker is - these are the conversations I would think a parent would be PRAYING to take place. Why keep your kids home from them? This logic does not compute; after all, why are they/we here?

At some point, Christians have got to stop putting the mental in fundamentalist and start interacting with the world. Teaching our kids to stick their heads in the sand and ignore anyone they may not totally agree with is, in a word, unChristian. Folks, we can't counter the culture unless we encounter the culture, so let's take off the blinders, read through Acts 17 again, and be some salt and light around here for crying out loud.

Thoughts?

Rock the River (and Why I Didn't)

I hesitate writing this kind of post this soon back on the blog, but after reading the Facebook statuses ("stati"?) of many of my students - several of whom went to the Rock the River music tour here in St. Louis on Sunday - I feel compelled to do so. (Note: For any die-hard evangelicals out there, you might want to stop reading - this is gonna hurt.)

Full disclosure: I used to live in Colorado Springs, the evangelical Mecca of the United States (and possibly the world). I spent twelve years in the Springs - a city of 350,000 home to ministry headquarters for multiple, mostly parachurch groups like Focus on the Family, Compassion International, Young Life, at least a dozen Christian book publishers, half a dozen radio stations/networks, and one of the first organizations to take up residency in the Springs, The Navigators, with whom I was on staff.

So you know, I consider myself an evangelical, though I identify much more with the Reformed version of evangelicalism (click here for a brief explanation of what I mean).

If you know anything about The Navigators, you know that the organizaton has always had a strong connection with Billy Graham and his evangelistic crusades; Billy and Navs founder, Dawson Trotman, were the best of friends, and the Navs did most of the follow-up training after Billy would come through a town. Together Billy and Daws created created an evangelistic opportunity and then met needs for evangelistic and discipleship tools, many of which have helped thousands - yea, millions - of people in their understanding of aspects of the Gospel. Indeed, illustrations like The Bridge and The Wheel were once helpful to me twenty years ago.

But here's the rub: Graham's Crusades and The Navigators' tools (not to mention those of countless other organizations and evangelical churches) too easily reduce the Gospel to an incomplete presentation (at best), and little more than a self-help proposition (at worst). For an example of what I'm talking about, watch this presentation of The Bridge; it's called "Steps to Peace with God" and runs about three minutes, which is approximately how long we were told we had to share it with someone before they lost interest. (Note: If this isn't "hip" enough for you, try this one, entitled "Graffiti Video.")

The problem with either? Gone is any connection to actual history (i.e. the story of creation, Israel as God's Old Testament chosen people, or the Church as God's New Testament chosen people); missing is mention of the coming consummation (i.e. the ultimate redemption of all God has made). Instead, what presentations like these leave people with - indeed, what I had left people with - is simply the opportunity to "make a decision" and "invite Christ into their lives," though they have no real idea who Christ is, what was behind why he did what he did (hint: the answer goes beyond just John 3:16), or how any of it connects to the history or future of the world and those who have and will inhabit it as members of God's Church. (Click here for Franklin Graham's Gospel presentation Sunday afternoon for another example of what I mean.)

It's not that these Gospel reductions are necessarily wrong; it's just that they're painfully incomplete. True, they may have been semi-effective 50 or 60 years ago, or even helpful to a degree in the past 20 as part of an explanation of God's mission, but they are woefully limited and lacking in explaining God's redemptive-historical meta-narrative (overarching story) that our increasingly biblically illiterate population needs to even begin to process (let alone understand) what we're saying.

Which brings me back to my students: Rock the River is (and is being billed as) an event - a happening that kids can attend with their friends. And that's great: there's music from "some of the hottest Christian bands," a "relevant message," and, best of all it's free (an evangelical church's youth pastor's dream). What's interesting to me, though, is that a lot of kids I know who aren't Christians and don't make any attempt to live Christianly are still excited about going to this event. They know what it is and what it is about, but they don't seem at all put off by the possibility that what they might hear will speak against what they believe or how they live.

Why is this? Could it be that a propositional presentation of the Gospel is not connecting? Could these kids have already chosen to "make a decision" by simply saying no to the Gospel in its propositional form; thus, they can enjoy the rest of the evening (and their lives) without a second thought about God? They've answered the question they were asked to answer, so what's left to talk about? Let's rock!

I'm not trying to be critical, but I am reminded anew of the responsibility we as Christians have to expand our presentation of the Gospel to capture the beautiful story it is rather than reduce it to an equation that boils down to almost nothing. Jesus is not waiting for us to "invite him in" through propositional acceptance; rather, he chooses to say, "Come, follow me," which is his invitation to respond to the person of God and his story. And what a story it is - eternity past, present, and future...

Granted, there are those believing students who don't require huge events to grow their faith, but my experience is that even they are susceptible to confusion about them, especially when their youth pastors and youth groups seem to endorse/encourage/push them. Parents can also be enablers here, as the more "active" they see their kids being involved in "Christian events," the more convinced they are that their kids must be Christians, which is not always the case (and sometimes the furthest thing from it).

For other kids - those who, in their New Testament papers in my class, equate "sharing Christ" with "bringing friends to youth group" - an event like this is right up their alley - all they have to do is show up, have a good time, and let God (or at least the band member speaking on God's behalf, which can sometimes get interesting) do the rest. What could be easier to fulfill their end of the post-salvation proposition, often called "discipleship"?

Reformed evangelical scholar Mark Noll wrote, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." In a brash case of plagiarism and to finish my thought here, I might revise his quotation to say, "The scandal of the evangelical Gospel is that there is not much of an evangelical Gospel." Indeed, we get bits and pieces in here and there through our illustrations, equations, and propositions, but most of us (myself included) would benefit from a review of what the Gospel is in its fullness as God's redemptive-historical story - with promises, names, dates, places, and responses of those in the Scriptures (as well as our own) to God's grace.

Jim Rayburn, founder of Young Life, used to say, "It's a sin to bore a kid." There's a reason kids today are bored with the Gospel: we've somehow convinced them it fits on a napkin.

All Must Be Well

My mom and I had lunch Saturday, as she was in town for a Mary Kay conference at the St. Louis Convention Center. I took her to Tigin, an Irish pub Megan and I had discovered as part of a mystery shop date a few months ago - cool place. I can't remember the last time I had a meal with my mom that didn't include Dad, Megan, or any combination of children, so we had a novel time catching up.

The conversation went a variety of directions, but one topic that came up was all the debt America is accruing and the impact of that on multiple generations. I've never known Mom to get upset by too many things political, but she had obviously spent some time thinking about the consequences for her children and grandchildren. She was concerned, she said, and spoke of how, the older she gets, the more realistic she's trying to be in adding to - rather than spending - our inheritance.

Thanking her for her thoughtfulness and honesty, I shared a little of my perspective (semi-transcribed versions here and here if you're interested) on the mess the government is making of the financial sector, as well as a little about the moral dilemmas (here, here, here, here, and here just to link a few) that will impact our nation's future in ways as significant as any financial crisis. The conversation could have turned into a real bummer had not we ended up agreeing there's really little hope for things apart from the grace of God. Simply put, it was a good and meaningful time.

Finishing lunch and dropping Mom off at the Convention Center for the rest of her conference, I made my way to Clayton for a wedding. My friend and teaching colleague, Abby Doriani, was due to get married at 2:00, but I underestimated the hassle the I-64 repair shutdown from Kingshighway to Hanley would be and realized I was going to be late. I finally made it to Clayton, found a parking place, and ran up to the church, figuring I missed Abby's procession, but would at least make it for the remainder of the ceremony and reception.

As I opened the front door to sneak in, I almost ran over Abby's dad, Dr. Dan Doriani, who was leading Abby and the bridesmaids up the stairs into the foyer before proceeding into the sanctuary. As I had Dr. Doriani for several classes at Covenant, I smiled and shook his hand, trying to be mindful of the fact that he probably had a lot on his mind and now might not be the best time for small talk. I waved to Abby, who looked beautiful in her wedding gown, and then I headed up the stairs to the sanctuary to find a seat.

At the top of the stairs, I saw Abby's mother, Debbie, and gave her a hug. Far from being a dreaded mother-of-the-bride, Debbie was all smiles, asked how I was, thanked me for coming to the wedding, and reassured me there were plenty of seats left, but I would have to go in after Abby and her dad did as the seating of grandparents had already started. She gave me a quick wave, then took her place at the door to the sanctuary and was escorted in by one of the ushers, followed by Abby's first two bridesmaids.

This left Abby, her dad, her two younger sisters (each of whom was a matron/maid of honor), and me standing in the foyer. Abby noticed me trying to blend into the wall so as not to intrude on the family moment, but as it obviously wasn't working, she humorously asked how I was enjoying my behind-the-scenes experience of her wedding. I laughed and said I was just taking notes. Her sisters each gave her a kiss and went in, and then it was Abby's turn to walk arm-in-arm with her dad through the doors to get married.

More than most, the wedding ceremony was a very warm reminder of how the God-given institution of marriage is (and is to be) a reflection of Christ's relationship with his bride, the Church. In his charge to the couple, Dr. Doriani spoke of the differences between romantic and divine love, but stressed the need for both in marriage. Vows were taken, the community affirmed them, and everyone rejoiced in the fact that two were becoming one before their very eyes. It was a beautiful thing, and afterward, we all went downstairs for cake and punch (another beautiful thing).

For me, the afternoon was an insightful one: in light of the good but sobering discussion with Mom at lunch, I needed the reassurance of Christ's relationship with his Church that a marriage ceremony can provide; despite the pressures of the day, I saw parents who didn't make their daughter's marriage all about them (or even about her), but about Christ's relationship with his Church; and, strangely for the first time, I imagined my own daughters getting married - each with her three sisters as bridesmaids - and prayed that their weddings would reflect Christ's relationship with his Church as well...even if there's little money to pay for them...or even less morality left in our culture to care.

This morning at church, we sang the following verse:

"We expect a bright tomorrow, all will be well
Faith can sing through days of sorrow, all is well
On our Father's love relying, Jesus every need supplying
Yes, in living or in dying, all must be well"

Because of Christ's relationship with his Church, all must be well...both in the now and the not yet. I needed that reminder, and I'm grateful to God for it this Lord's Day.

Getting Schooled

Before professionally stepping into the role of teacher three years ago, my previous experience of the classroom was as a student (elementary, junior and senior high, college, and then graduate level at seminary). Maybe it's because I've had such little formal training that I am fascinated by educational history and the theories behind what goes on in classrooms. While I used to feel intimidated by what I thought I didn't know as a teacher, my increasing sense over the past three years is that I may not have missed as much as I once imagined, mostly because so much of it is out-of-date.

Last Friday, Westminster hosted a teacher in-service for educators within independent schools of St. Louis. The speaker was Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, and there were about 300 folks in attendance. I've been to a few of these day-long training sessions before, but this one topped the list in terms of providing the best mix of theoretical/practical and strategic/tactical content.

While Westminster is further down the road in several ways in providing a 21st-century education, we got the equivalent of an educational spanking (made easier by some dry humor and a free lunch), as what has been taught and passed on for decades within the American school system is painfully outdated, and our best effort at making a shift forward is barely keeping up. This doesn't mean there aren't some good or even "out front" things going on in American education today, but compared to the rest of the world, we're lagging behind as a whole.

Think about this:

• The majority of schools (public or private) are running on an educational model established in 1892 (think factories and mass production), with most "current" curricula and practices created and coming out of the 1970s.
• What is needed to improve this reality is two-fold: short-term upgrades (revision and replacement of dated curriculum and assessment types with more vital contemporary forms), and long-term versioning (new versions of the program structures in our school and institutions that house curriculum and instruction). We shouldn't go "back to basics" but "forward to new basics."
• Assessment is a demonstration of learning in which the focus should be on feedback. We should design cumulative assessment that helps the learner revise his or her performance independently rather than the teacher revising it for him or her. The focus should be on developing self-assessment rather than just providing teacher assessment.
• We need a curricular commitment from each teacher with regard to technology. What this commitment includes should be an integrated use of technology that enhances content, an application to a specific unit of study, and one that is evidenced directly in student products and performances. What this commitment is not is the limited and immediate use of a technological tool (i.e. using an LCD projector vs. an overhead; using a computer vs. a typewriter; or using a smart board vs. an LCD projector).
• Each teacher should commit to identifying at least one specific unit to revise; planning to replace a specific content, skill, and assessment practice with a 21st century upgrade within the unit; sharing the proposed change with colleagues; learning to use the tool that will be requisite to replace the current unit design with the new practice; revising the unit and begin implementation with students; tolerate a certain degree of frustration; celebrating victories; and reviewing and sharing results with peers.
• With regard to issues of schedule, student grouping patterns, teacher configurations, and space (both physical and virtual), decisions have to be made about all of these elements together, as the whole is the sum of the parts. Key principle: form should follow function (not reverse). I've appreciated Westminster's approach to much of this in the new building currently in design.
• More on grouping students: we need to replace "ability" groups which focus on student labels and focus on grouping by skills, literacy (language, information, cultural, global), and independent study needs. We also need to rethink lower and upper classmen models and seek to boost the dignity of both college and vocational career paths; in other words, all students should have some experience regarding both.
• Based on world population percentages and realities, we ought to bag teaching French and focus more on languages like Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic (we currently teach French, Spanish, and Latin). We also need to teach all subjects with a more global emphasis (geo-economics, geo-politics, etc.) and do away with state-distinctive education, especially since our American population is so mobile between states.
• We need to rethink the length of the school year, which, since 1892, has roughly been 180 days and largely based on an agarian calendar. At least five of these days should be allotted for professional development and review of assessment data. Considerations need to include year-round or summer semester possibilities, with consideration given to days not having to be on-site-task vs. seat time.
• Teacher configurations should include multiple affiliations and task forces grouped to solve specific problems. We should also group teachers both vertically (departments) and horizontally (grade level/age level/skill level) so as to foster better continuity in advancing students.
• We should rethink our "12 grades" compulsion, allowing for early graduation if/when a student is ready, or an additional year if/when the student is not. We need to replace seat time with task completion that might be accomplished virtually.

There's plenty more where all that came from, but I won't bore you. The fact is that the American education system is in dire need of a major philosophical shift, but this transition seems next to impossible because the key elements of the system (schedule, student grouping patterns, teacher configurations, space) have been in place for the past 100 years. It's the 21st century, but the American school system is and has been stuck - not in the 20th century, but in the 19th!

It's been a slow week (month, year) for comments, but does anybody feel like weighing in on this?

38 Today

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

Mark Twain

I turn 38 today. While my mother may have a story or two from my childhood to the contrary, for as long as I can remember I've never really cared that much about my birthday. For some (and you know who you are), a birthday is (or should be) a national holiday, but even if mine were, I don't think I'd care (they usually don't officially set aside those days until after you're dead anyway). To me, it simply is what it is.

Thankfully, God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, graciously granted me a daughter who shares my date of birth, which makes it easier to endure the fuss about the fact that we were born, as it's usually (blessedly) pointed in her direction instead of mine. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad to be alive and believe that every year - yea, every day - is a gift from God. But a birthday is like any other day for me. I just don't get the preoccupation.

I also don't get the fear of birthdays and what the accumulation of those birthdays represents. Our culture is so paranoid about growing older and puts so much into fighting (both physically and psychologically) the effects of aging that it's amazing we haven't collapsed into one giant heap of adolescence.

Children aren't taught to grow up to be adults in society; they're taught to grow up to be teenagers. Adults aren't embracing their position of elders in the world; they're fighting tooth and nail to get back to their glory days and not be viewed as old. (For more on this, read my post on Diana West's book, The Death of the Grown-Up.)

In case anyone's wondering, I have no plans to color the spreading amount of gray in my hair or trade out the beige Delta 88 Land Yacht I drive for a fiery red sports car. My goals do not include proving to myself or anyone else that I can still woo the ladies or that I can keep us up with the Joneses.

No, I'm content trying to act my age, even to the point of occasionally going beyond it in wisdom if/when God so enables. I'm more than happy trying to make better decisions about health, as opposed to merely ones made in pursuit of a more attractive body. I'm simply humbled trying to walk with God in a way that models love to my wife, children, and neighbors, rather than appearing religious and (self-)righteous.

So, I'm 38 today, and I'm glad to be so. I look forward to 40...to 50...to 60...all of it's gravy when you consider I don't deserve to live even a day, for "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5). From this perspective, I can say with honesty and awe that it's good just to be alive, no matter how old I may be.

Relearning Diligence

Normally a prep period (and a really nice way to end the day), seventh hour in my classroom today played host to one of eleven experiments by our Bible department in which our seniors in Worldviews "taught" our eighth grade Bible students lessons stemming from the Proverbs.

The seniors (about 6 per group) were to create a 7-10 minute documentary-format video illustrating the principles of their assigned proverbial topic. Following the video, each of the seniors was to speak a few minutes from his or her own experience on the topic, and this was to be followed by a 15-minute Q&A time facilitated by the seniors and involving the eighth graders. (Over the course of the next few days, the teachers will process with the seniors while the eighth graders interact in a protected digital environment about what they learned, which will be monitored and "graded" by their teachers.)

As I have neither seniors nor eighth graders, I had little more to do with the initiative than serving as room facilitator and grader. My group had been assigned the topic of diligence to focus and teach on, and despite their tendency toward mouthfuls of imperative legalisms and telling rather than showing their point, they did a decent job with their presentation. Rarely have I seen seniors respect both the task and their younger audience as these students did, and the eighth graders were equally respectful and appreciative of the seniors' attempts to present and interact. It was a nice dynamic.

If there was anything concerning about the experience, it would be my group's seeming replacement of faithfulness with success as diligence's final result. This switcheroo is not unique to our seniors and I'm not meaning to blame them for it here; it is a pathology that plagues so many kids I teach at the freshman, sophomore, and junior levels, probably because it plagues their parents as well. It goes something like this:

diligence = good grades = college of choice = good job = happiness = success

Nearly every senior story followed this flow. The progression wasn't formally charted, but it was certainly assumed and accepted to be true. If I had to sum up what was taught in my classroom seventh hour, it would be that diligence always equals success, and that success will be what you want it to be, so get to work.

In other words, it's what you and I, in our "best" works-based faith, tell ourselves every day of our works-based lives. Who says kids today can't learn?

Granted, the proverbs can certainly be read with a very "name it-claim it" hermeneutic (an unfortunate Christian manifestation of our nation's American Dream religion), but we have to read it within the genre of wisdom literature which tends toward trajectories rather than guarantees. For instance, when we read a verse like Proverbs 10:4 which says, "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich," we have to understand that just because we avoid sloth does not automatically ensure wealth. Sure, one has a better chance at financial success by working rather than vegging, but that trail is a trajectory, not a guarantee.

After all, life happens; so does God, and God's idea of "success" often (though not always) has more to do with faithfulness than finances (see Psalm 73 for more on this). How do we explain when one works hard but doesn't make it into the college of his choice? How does our theology make sense when one is diligent and doesn't succeed at the level he or she expected to?

Generally speaking, diligence in the Scriptures tends to look and feel a lot more like perseverance than success. Indeed, God in his gracious goodness as a Father tends to bless diligence (Proverbs says so), but that doesn't give us the right to demand such blessing or to remind God of His part in our equation. God owes us nothing and is debtor to no man; we would do well to remember and live by this if we are to walk with Him on His terms. We'd be more humble and grateful people in doing so.

So, we as teachers have some work to do - not only in our students but also in our parents, certainly within the Church and, if we're honest, probably within ourselves. Indeed, we should be diligent because the Scriptures tell us to be so, but let's not be surprised by how God might respond, rather than demand He do what we think He should to keep up His end of the deal. Who becomes God then?

(Note: For more on how parental pressure and material advantage are creating a generation of disconnected and unhappy kids, read The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine. Accurate and thought-provoking.)

The Color of Heaven

We had quite an international experience Friday night. Our friends, the Venkatesans, are from India and invited a few families over for dinner to celebrate Arun's birthday (he's a doctor here in St. Louis). In addition to the Venkatesans and us, there was another American family, another family from India, and a family from Pakistan who joined us for the festivities. I was asked to pray for the meal, which I did, and then we ate.

Despite my having the world's blandest taste buds, the authentic Indian cuisine was amazing as Reena toned down the spices a bit in honor of her American guests. The kids (15 in all) were all over the place playing together, and we adults laughed and laughed at the stories Arun (pronounced "ah-roon") and Reena told us about their families, their childhoods, and their time in America.

The thought that kept running through my mind during the evening was just how wonderful living in a culturally diverse eternity is going to be. No language barriers, no racial profiling/stereotyping, no bad blood between nations - just people of all colors whose defining commonality and sole identity is that they love and are loved by God:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." Galatians 3:28-29

Of course, we are to work toward this kind of manifold eternal existence in our temporal one, but it can be difficult because of the challenges mentioned above. Still, what can help in the pursuit of what seems impossible here and now is the vision of what one day will surely come to pass:

"A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!'” Revelation 7:9-10

In case you've never thought about it, Heaven is going to be a very non-white place with lots of Indian (among other) food. How do I know? I tasted it last night.

Not Even Jack Bauer Can Get Us Out of This One

Powerful episode of 24 Sunday night. "Redemption" caught us up with illegal expatriate Jack Bauer (played by Keifer Sutherland) coming to the aid of African children kidnapped to be made into child soldiers under a would-be dictator.

As always, the show's story was straight out of news headlines, even including a presidential transfer of power in Washington, with the only major detail missed being the casting of the new President as a woman instead of a black man (apologies to both Senators Clinton and Obama). In a word, the episode was heartbreaking, as the use of thousands of child soldiers is going on in at least 17 different countries today.

For the past two years, Westminster has been involved with an organization called Invisible Children, whose Schools for Schools initiative exists "to creatively raise money for the schools of northern Uganda, improving the quality of education for war-affected students." So far this fall, the WCA student body has raised over $15,000 (mostly in spare change) to help the same secondary school in Gulu that we helped last year, ranking us first in the country of all participating U.S. schools with less than a month to go of the 100-day window.

While I'm not a big fan of the competitive giving strategy utilized by the organization (and enabled by Westminster), I was glad that one WCA student, as well as my friend and teaching colleague, Ann Heyse, "won" the opportunity to represent our school in Gulu this past summer. Ann spent six weeks with Invisible Children, training teachers and teaching students with her expertise in English, and based on both her personal testimony and her excellently-written blog documenting her experience, it seems the organization does good work in a place that needs much good work done.

Last night, as I watched the two-hour teaser that creatively gets Jack Bauer back to the United States for the show's seventh full season beginning in January, I found myself overwhelmed by the realism of it all...that is until one particular commercial break when there was a quick screen shot for the Human Rights Watch website, followed immediately by a national Pizza Hut commercial, and then a local ad for St. Louis' very own Casino Queen ("home of the loosest slots"). Whew. Assuagement by advertising.

What an incredibly confusing postmodern culture we have created, one in which almost every aspect of life is separated from any true and meaningful meta-narrative. How strange to go from African children dying to ordering two-for-one pizzas to having a great time gambling, all in the course of 60 seconds. And yet for those of us who have been breathing this postmodern air our entire lives, the progression doesn't seem strange at all; it is exactly what we have come to expect (at least, that is, before God's revelatory red pill of the gospel allows us to see power, gluttony, and greed for what they really are).

We live in a broken world, friends. Whether in Africa or America, ours is both a needy place and time to be alive, and not even Jack Bauer can get us out of this one.

The Kids Are Growing Up

A thought crossed my mind this week that I'll throw out to see if it sticks. For many of you, this may fall in the "I could care less" category, but since I spend a majority of my time with teenagers, I'm interested.

It seems to me there's a major generational shift going on in the teen entertainment business. For instance, earlier this week, the MTV show TRL (Total Request Live) took a final bow after ten years of attracting the "biggest and hottest recording artists, actors and celebrities on most weekday afternoons," all while playing "the most iconic videos of the day." For better or for worse, a majority of the boy bands, pop tarts, and rappers of the past ten years got a whole lot of promotion via TRL, a fact wonderfully and cynically documented in the 2001 movie (not the 70s TV show) Josie and the Pussycats, one of my favorite commentaries on the youth culture of the time.

But that's not all that makes me think about a shift occurring. This weekend, the movie Twilight - teen romance with unfortunate vampire issues - comes out, and the teen world all over will be filling theaters for weeks on end tomorrow to see it. I was intrigued by a comment one of the girls in my class made when, commenting on the "hot or not" looks of the movie's Edward character (Jane Austen fans, imagine a teenage Mr. Darcy with fangs), she said, "He's not even really that cute. All the cute guys - with the exception of Zac Ephron - are older."

Hmmm.

Finally, I don't know if anyone's seen the trailer for J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek movie, but there's nary a recognizable face among the actors playing the new (and young - very young) versions of Kirk, Spock, Scotty, et. al. Granted, Abrams' name is the draw (he of Alias and Lost fame), but with him at the helm, it's interesting there isn't more familiar young "star power" (notice I didn't say "talent") attached.

Is something going on here? Anyone have any thoughts, or am I just spending too much time with high schoolers? My interest is not in the fact that I'm getting older (I know that already), but in the fact that the youth culture of recent years seems to be.

Is the Unexamined Friend Not Worth Friending?

About six months ago, I reached the point where the people whom Facebook thought I might know were ones I didn't. This bothered me then, and still does now.

According to Facebook, I have 369 "friends." Yes, yes, I know most of these people, but I only really know a handful of them. My overall list ranges from old high school classmates to high school students I now have in class; in between are a few friends from college, several others from years in Colorado, a bunch of seminary folks, a few acquaintances from church, and various and sundry individuals who I've never met but still felt guilty about not "approving" them when their friend request came in.

One could call it "forced friendship" - like what a shotgun wedding must feel like (minus any responsibility and, well, the shotgun) - but it's really neither (forced or friendship). The sooner we come to understand this, the better we might realize that we are the ones to blame for our superficial idea of what being a friend means.

I used to not approve requests from people I didn't know - at least not without a quick message back asking how we knew each other. I stopped doing this as it seemed too snobbish, but I'm not sure the alternative has any more integrity. Is it better to seem accessible to people you have no reason or plan to engage with, or do you say "thanks, but no thanks" on the front end, perhaps coming off a little precocious at the beginning, but at least authentic to actual reality?

For most of us, our teleology tends to have everything to do with the value of Facebook (or any other social network on the Internet, for that matter), but it seems there should be a more humanity-valuing principle and approach to the dilemma than just a utilitarian/egoistic tendency regarding it. Where's Socrates when we need him?

What would Jesus do? Would Jesus accept all Facebook friend requests, or would he only accept ones from those he chose? The analogy breaks down from a theological perspective (at least from a Calvinist systematic), as only those whom Jesus initially chose would choose to add him as a friend anyway, so never mind.

Forget the question of stealing bread to feed your family; never mind the ethical intricacies of mercy killing and war. To accept Facebook friend requests or not - and then whether to secretly "unfriend" later - this is what this ethics teacher wonders.

(Note: For another take on the topic, try "The Facebook Commandments" at Slate).

"Just" Words?

We've had quite a discussion on the topic of, well, discussion, specifically that of teenagers and their misuse of "like," "kinda," "sorta," etc. To clarify, the point I feel needs reiterating is that we are not trying to nit-pick kids' language to death at the expense of being able to speak into their lives; rather, we are trying to care about who they are (and are becoming) as a whole person, which requires caring about their language as well.

When does giving grace enable bad behavior? Answer: when truth is removed from the equation. The truth is that our students (and our culture) do not value - nor are held accountable for - properly expressing themselves anymore. No one's trying to be mean in addressing the issue here, but we are trying to be intentional. Believe it or not, the kids don't seem to resent it; if anything, I've had a few thank me for challenging them on it (probably - and unfortunately - because they don't get it from other sources).

Now for another can of worms: a perceptive reader (who asked to remain anonymous) sent me an email with this thought:

"Perhaps the overuse (assuming there is some legitimate use) of 'just' in public prayer is a religion-based subcategory of this lamentable feature of our vernacular."

Anybody want to weigh in? Is there something to be addressed here, or do we in the Church "just" leave it alone?

Famous, Like, Speeches in Teenspeak History

A few of my fellow teachers and I are on a crusade against the misuse of the words "like," "sorta," and "kinda." The goal of "The Movement," as we are calling it, is to combat what historian David McCullough calls "verbal diarrhea" in one's conversations. We think of ourselves as fiber for the teenage vernacular.

Last week, we were interviewed by the school paper regarding our cause. As teachers who desire to show as well as tell, we thought it might be a good idea to suggest what famous speeches of the past might sound like in teenspeak. Below is the short list we submitted (feel free to add your own in the comments):

• “I, like, think, therefore, I am…sorta.” Descartes
• “Blessed are, like, the meek, for they will kinda inherit the earth.” Jesus of Nazareth
• “The only thing we have to fear, kinda, is like, fear itself.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• “I kinda have a dream, sorta.” Martin Luther King Jr.
• “Mr. Gorbachev, like, tear down this wall.” Ronald Reagan
• "The, like, only thing I can kinda offer is, like, blood, sweat, toil, and, like, tears.” Winston Churchill

I'll let you know what comes about as a result of our efforts...and if our students still speak to us in the hallways.

A Call for Links

In light of the results of last week's poll (still going on), I'm wondering if any of you would kindly recommend the one non-news, non-political, non-anything-but-cultural/media link you cannot live without. I'd like to add a few to my bookmarks.

Bailing on the Bailout

I haven't written too much about the current financial crisis/bailout/circus of late, partly because I'm still trying to figure it all out, and partly because I've written before about the problem of big government handling anything. While I love being right, I hate being redundant.

I was not in favor of a bailout, yet assumed it was going to pass, only to be somewhat surprised it didn't (at least as of Monday). My mentality and situation mirror those of my friend, Clay, with whom I've exchanged an email or two about all this. He writes:

"I don't have a lot of capital in this game, so I can be pretty free and easy with my opinions. I could be labeled a constrained visionist (a la Sowell) and have a core belief, a faith, that the free market system (process belief) is better able to sort this out than Hank and Ben (unconstrained, result-oriented action).  If I have to bet my (lack of) wealth on anything, I'll take the market over Bush any time."

I've always thought of myself as a free-market guy, too, though Robert T. Miller's A Conservative Case for the Paulson Plan gave me pause to think on it a few days back:

"Are you an economic conservative who thinks that the government should intervene in the market only when markets fail and it is efficient for the government to act? Then you should support the bailout plan because what we are seeing in the credit markets is probably the most serious market failure that will occur in our lifetimes. Are you an economic conservative who thinks the government spends too much and the national debt is too high? Then you should support the bailout plan because the government will likely make money in the long run and so reduce the deficit. The intelligent conservative position here is to support the bailout."

Then this morning, I confess I almost drank the bailout Kool-Aid when my usual voice-of-reason hero, New York Times columnist David Brooks, criticized the Congress as being leaderless in their "no" decision regarding the proposed bailout:

"This generation of political leaders...have failed utterly and catastrophically to project any sense of authority, to give the world any reason to believe that this country is being governed. Instead, by rejecting the rescue package on Monday, they have made the psychological climate much worse....The only thing now is to try again - to rescue the rescue. There’s no time to find a brand-new package, so the Congressional plan should go up for another vote on Thursday, this time with additions that would change its political prospects."

Hmmm. Later this afternoon, however, I came across Jeffrey Miron, senior lecturer in economics at Harvard and one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the bailout plan. In a special to CNN, he wrote a commentary titled "Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer," saying:

"The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company. Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable."

At the end of the piece, Miron gets practical as to where we go from here:

"So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending...The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer."

That resonated with my gut sense. Why bail out a bad system? This again from Clay:

"All I know with respect to handing this Administration vast discretionary power over something of immense national importance is, 'Once bitten, twice shy...' The market abuses that went on came from a lack of information and transparency and a lack of timely-targeted regulation to mitigate the worst of unregenerate human nature."

In other words, we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us - now that's a concept I get (and a biblical one, too). True, the system was bad, but who created the system? Government leaders pandering to a constituency demanding cheap loans with little to no accountability.

I remember reading an intriguing book a few years ago by Jane Jacobs called Dark Age Ahead. Jacobs, an urbanist, argued that North American civilization showed signs of spiral decline comparable to the collapse of the Roman empire. Her thesis focused on “five pillars of our culture that we depend on to stand firm" (see the last one especially):

• the nuclear family
• education
• science
• representational government and taxes
• corporate and professional accountability

What do you think? Have we officially arrived at Jacobs' "dark age" in America? Are you for or against a government bailout?

From my perspective, It's time to own our mistakes and, while it might will be hard, reap what we've sown in the way we've handled our economy; God, after all, will not be mocked (Galatians 6:7-8). What say you and why?

September's Third Weekend

For as long as I can remember, my hometown of Griggsville, IL (population 1,300 and self-proclaimed "Purple Martin Capital of the Nation"), has always hosted its annual Apple Festival on the third weekend of September.

Put briefly for my more urban readers, the Apple Festival is a semi-epic celebration of small town life, complete with more small town culture than you can shake a stick at...and I've got proof.

We knew it was going to be a great weekend right off the bat when, just ten minutes before arrival in Griggsville, we saw this on the way:

Yep, that's Jesus joyriding in the back of a camouflage-trimmed Hemi. Megan and I saw it, turned to each other as we drove by, and knew we would be turning around to get a picture (or two). Nothing says "Bless me, Lord, as I blow away this deer" like a concrete statue of the Savior in the back of a camo pick-up. Here's a closer look:

Friday evening at the Apple Festival is always magical, with the dark of night and generally inadequate lighting covering a multitude of aesthetic sins. The stage - the same one used for the past 25 years - is decorated in some random theme that has nothing to do with apples or the region, and this year, the theme had something to do with the Wild West (as illustrated by the Looney Tunes cactus and floating horseshoe):

Still, my favorite decoration theme remains the elephant background from 2005:

But I digress. Friday finished up with some good, greasy eats and two hours of questionable parenting ("What, you want to run around by yourself on the square among hundreds of people you don't know? Okay, as long as you're in pairs."). Halfway through the Miss Apple Festival pageant, we decided it was time to go and herded everyone up and headed for the farm for some shut-eye.

Morning came early. In honor of my sister, Jamie's, birthday (on Apple Festival weekend, no less!), we had a wonderful breakfast that my mom, Char, fixed. The girls and their four cousins then played outside for most of the morning as the weather was beautiful. Later that morning, Megan and I went for a nice walk and listened to the corn grow before heading into town for lunch. From there, it was parade time.

Back in the day, I marched in the marching band eight years in this parade (from 5th grade to senior year). Previous to that, our family always entered a float and threw a whole lot of candy out to scrambling kids along the side of the road. In more recent years (that is, since moving back to the Midwest in 2005), we "floated" with our kids, but last year the family retired from "floating" and let our kids scramble for the sweets this time around. They enjoyed it, as evidenced below:

Here's Grandpa (center) carrying the American flag in the local Legion's color guard:

Here's Barney Fife's police car from The Andy Griffith Show (don't ask me why or how):

Here's one of Griggsville's three fire trucks (complete with softball team riding on top):

Here's one of seven marching bands (favorite band tune of the day: "Don't Need Nothin' But a Good Time" by Poison; yeah, that covers well with horns):

Here's a blow-up Officer Friendly (a person was inside making the arms wave):

Here's the "Mohawk Farmer" (as dubbed by Megan):

Here's one of only a few floats (this one in the "apple-themed" category) in the parade:

Here's Grandpa again, hamming it up for the grandkids and driving an old-time tractor (he had a quick turnaround from the color guard - notice the American Legion pants):

And here are some horses to signify that the parade is officially coming to an end:

After the parade, we walked up to the square and watched high school band members excitedly win donated seed corn caps and T-shirts thrown from the stage, while adults who entered the hourly raffle won things like free 64 oz. sodas from the local convenience store (a $2 value!) and rabies/distemper shots from the local veterinarian (for their pets, presumably).

At this point, Megan and I looked at each other and agreed we'd had our fill and were ready to head home. With John Mellencamp singing "Little Pink Houses" on the iPod and four little girls delirious from all they had experienced (or as likely, consumed), we made the trip back to St. Louis grateful to have once again made this rural getaway.

"Oh, but ain't that America - you and me
Ain't that America - something to see, baby
Ain't that America - home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses for you and me"

Getting Out of Dodge

Yesterday I asked my friend and bookstore boss, Nick, how he was doing. His response: "Life's winning." Seeing as how I feel the same way, we're heading to the farm this weekend for the Griggsville Apple Festival (and a break).

Megan jokes that the Apple Festival should be renamed the "Corn Dog Festival," as there's nary an apple to be found (the town's two orchards closed down years ago). We'll leave the naming rights to someone in charge and instead enjoy some butterfly porkchops, funnel cake, and a bit of authentic rural Americana.

For a look at least year's experience, click here.

“...to serve musicians, to serve artists, to renew the city...”

Our associate pastor, Greg Johnson, just forwarded a review of the art show going on at The Chapel, the "sanctuary for the arts" run by our church. We're thrilled about the good press, especially coming from The Vital Voice. Here's an excerpt:

"I must confess that when I got there my mood was as wrinkled as my slept-in shirt and scruffy as my unshaved, nubby face. I don’t know if it was the weather, the wine, or the wonderful art but everything weary, worn and cynical in my soul discernably dissolved and took a hike somewhere, maybe crossing Skinker into Forest Park to hit the links with the frou-frou."

You can read the whole review here.

Review: The Dark Knight

As it's rare for me to see a movie in the theater within a week of its opening, I thought I'd celebrate the occasion by posting some actual thoughts here on The Dark Knight. For the sake of not spoiling things, I'll try to refrain from plot details and instead focus on some of the mental gymnastics it takes to follow the movie.

This is a very complex film - the most of any superhero movie to date. A lot of folks raved about the emotional depth of the Spider-Man movies, but The Dark Knight asks questions that go far beyond Peter Parker's personal struggle in figuring out his responsibility to his power; as other reviewers have noted, The Dark Knight is a morality play that poses huge questions about the nature of humanity and asks the audience to share responsibility in answering them.

The dominant perspective is the Joker's. While Heath Ledger's performance is indeed intoxicating, what I think audiences are really responding to is Ledger's portrayal of the Joker's horrifying authenticity in living so consistently by his belief that anarchy is the only logical response to a world that does not make sense:

"Do I really look like a man with a plan, Harvey? I don't have a plan. The mob has plans, the cops have plans. You know what I am, Harvey? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. I just do things. I'm a wrench in the gears. I hate plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's. Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I am not a schemer. I show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are...Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I am an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It's fair."*

The exception to the chaos, of course, is Batman (Christian Bale), who, though flawed, manages to make choices that go against his human nature. Still, Bruce Wayne (Batman's alter ego) wants out of the Batman business, as it seems the cause of - rather than the solution to - the problem of freaks like the Joker coming out of the woodwork. Eventually, Wayne comes to understand (with the help of Alfred and others) that a flawed Batman is better than no Batman at all, but it takes some time (and a little melodrama at the end) to reach that conclusion:

"Bruce: People are dying, Alfred. What would you have me do? 
Alfred: Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. He'll hate you for it. But that's the point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the righteous. 
Bruce: Well today I found out what Batman can't do. He can't endure this. Today you finally get to say 'I told you so.' 
Alfred: Today, sir, I don't want to."*

Serving as a composite of sorts of the Joker and Batman is Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, Gotham City's new District Attorney. Not much has been made of Eckhart's role in the film, but his seems the key to understanding the movie, particularly at the end after he becomes the coin-flipping, fate-tempting Two-Face. Up to that point, Dent represents an unblemished hope of law and order for Gotham City citizens ("a white knight" of justice as opposed to Batman's "dark knight" of vigilantism); however, between tragedy and timely coaching - both at the hands of the Joker - Dent resorts to playing the blame game with fate:

"You (Commissioner Gordon) thought we could be decent men in an indecent world. But you were wrong; the world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance."*

In many ways (and without trying to overanalyze things too much), The Dark Knight looks at the world through three lenses: the anarchy of the Joker (frightening in its degradation); the fatalism of Two-Face (depressing in its meaninglessness); and the brokenness of Batman (frustrating in its reality). One of these is how most of us tend to live life, and The Dark Knight provides an intriguing look at where and how these paths diverge and - when played out to their logical extremes - eventually end up. The question left for the audience to answer is, of course, which to choose?

(*Quotes from Internet Movie Database)

Other observations:

• Christopher Nolan's direction is seamless, well-paced, and engaging; you forget you're watching a movie.


• Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, Michael Caine as Alfred, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox are always easy to watch; they bring acting credibility and great presence to the big screen.


• Maggie Gyllenhaal is an improvement over Katie Holmes in the role of Rachel Dawes; the role itself, however, comes off more inspiring to the motivation of the romantically-involved characters (Wayne, Dent) than it really should be, which doesn't ring as true as the rest of the film.


• I don't think it's just because I've spent time there, but using Chicago as Gotham City was really distracting; Gotham City needs a darker, more New York kind of feel.


• The lack of dependence on CGI for many of the action scenes and stunts was refreshing and made the movie more realistic; there was really only one scene (the extraction in Hong Kong) that I felt required too much suspension of belief.


• Though I always liked (a lot) the arrangements of the original Batman movie soundtrack by Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer builds good suspense at just the right times; plus, I love the rich, bold sound of the trombones in his theme swells.


• Overall the movie (2-1/2 hours) feels just a little long, but I'm not sure what I'd cut; it takes that kind of time to tell this kind of story.

For those who've seen it, what would you add/delete/change?

Taking a Break from Boxes Linkage

It's been a long while since I've posted some linkage, so in light of it being Friday, here you go:

• We're still in need of about $1,000 for our home closing (in four days), so if you've yet to take advantage of our $10 Gets You 15 Songs deal, now is the time.


• In case you're wondering, Megan thinks she's losing it (but she's really doing okay).


• My friend, Jeff Morrison, sent me a link to the Breathe 2008 conference he's leading at Glen Eyrie next month. Between Jeff's heart and abilities in worship and the beauty of the place, this will be a good conference for all involved.


• Looking for a new bike? Consider (or don't) the vicious cycle. (hat tip: Coudal)


• Two weeks from today: The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Bring it.


• Interesting piece in Slate about the challenges public schools have to overcome to hire and keep good teachers.


• The folks at Mental Floss have some pretty clever T-shirts for sale. My favorites: Apathy, English Major, Entropy, Beethoven, and Hyperbole.

We're off to take a black lab named Bruce to his new home on the farm. Have a good weekend.

Sign of the Apocalypse?

It's the end of the world as some know it (here's the spin official press release from Starbucks).

Summer Seminar

Beginning Monday, I'm out of town for the next two weeks as one of seven staff taking 28 soon-to-be-seniors on Westminster's Summer Seminar to South Dakota. Though I hate being away from Megan and the girls that long, I'm looking forward to the trip. Here's the official write-up:

"The Summer Seminar in Liberal Arts is an interdisciplinary course designed to stimulate physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth. Over a 12-day trip through the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota, students will explore the theme of “shalom” (restoration) through three, two-day course cores in literature, ethics, and science.

The focus of the course is the development of a biblical understanding of 'shalom' (restoration) as finite creatures living the reality of the Gospel in community with each other and the whole of creation. Students will interact with a variety of literary selections and participate in a three-day bike tour, selected day hikes, and a two-day float trip down the Cheyenne River.

The Summer Seminar is not designed to be an 'adventure' course. While the physical activities will be demanding, the seminar is an attempt to integrate reflection, aesthetic appreciation, and the life of the mind in the formation of a Christian understanding of the world. Ideally, each student would complete the seminar having integrated the Creator’s imprint in nature, community and the liberal arts into his or her understanding of restoration. Students may take the course for a one-semester elective credit."

Parts of the itinerary I'm most looking forward to are:

• being at Wounded Knee (I've been reading this book all week for some good background)


• seeing the Black Hills and Badlands (including Mt. Rushmore, though I'm not feeling all that patriotic after reading how our government treated the Indians in acquiring land)


• meeting and talking with Dan O'Brien, author of Buffalo for the Broken Heart, about his vision for bringing buffalo back to the West (we also share publishers)


• biking almost 100 miles in three days on the Mickelson Trail (I went on my first ride in years this past Friday and rocked it - that is, I didn't die)


• hiking around Devil's Tower in Wyoming (and humming John Williams' famous five-note greeting from Close Encounters of the Third Kind)


• kayaking on the Cheyenne River (though the water is really shallow and muddy)


• finishing up the trip with a nice night at Firesteel Creek Lodge (former Cardinals pitcher Todd Worrell is the owner and a Westminster dad)


• and, of course, camping out for ten days and spending 30-40 hours in a van with high schoolers (at least none of them get to drive)

Unless I find some free wi-fi (and some spare time), I doubt there'll be much action here on the blog over the next couple of weeks. In the interim, if you happen to land here and think of us, pray for safety and meaning on the trip, as well as that Megan and the girls will be okay while I'm gone (don't worry - they've got plans).

Happy trails.

The Brutality of Love

Getting back to our final installment of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Interpretation, what do we do with the perception in the minds of most modern people that "the Bible is a deeply ugly book"? With regard to passages like Leviticus 19:18b and Deuteronomy 13:7-11, what were Moses’ purposes and the needs of the nation (not the state) of Israel that led him to encourage loving one’s neighbor in Leviticus and, at the same time, punish his neighbor so violently if he enticed him to forsake God? Don't Christians have to apply even the most brutal passages then to be consistent today?

As I mentioned in my post on Women and Head Coverings, context always comes into play; we can't read our 21st-century perspective back into an ancient text, but have to allow it (and what we have learned about it) to inform us before we try to apply it. This is especially important in understanding the many casuistic - or "case" - laws in the Bible and what they were trying to protect; to do otherwise would be akin to someone three thousand years from now reading our modern-day traffic laws and determining that, because we place limits on speed, we worship slowness, when what we're really trying to do is save lives.

Gordon Wenham writes in his Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Pentateuch:

"They (case laws) do not express Old Testament ideals: they only deal with problems...they deal with serious contraventions of the law and thereby set a floor for social behavior. There is...quite a gap between the ethical ideals of the Old Testament, that is how it was hoped people would behave, and the laws which define minimum standards of behavior...The modern reader must bear this in mind in reading these laws. They are designed to curb the worst excesses of Old Testament society: they do not define its ideals." (p. 71)

So how do we apply this thinking to passages like Deuteronomy 13? Again, let's start with context. From where were the Israelites coming? From Egypt, a land whose people worshipped man-made gods, and, as a result, treated the Israelites as slaves in the building of temples to these gods for 600 years. In addition, the Egyptians determined that the Israelites had become too numerous, so they began a program not unlike genocide to control and contain their numbers. This was when God, because of his covenant with the nation of Israel, intervened and called Moses to lead them out of Egypt.

To where were the Israelites going? To a strip of land smack in the middle of other nations of multi-god-worshipping peoples. God did not remove the Israelites from interaction with other nations; he led them into more of it because of his love and commitment for all of his creation, not just the Israelites. To this end, God instructed the Israelites by his law - a reflection of his character and for the Israelites' good - to learn both how to function as a people (remember - they had been slaves for 600 years and didn't know the first thing about being an organized, functioning society), as well as how to be the people of God (hence the emphasis on exclusivity in the midst of so many peoples worshipping other man-made deities).

J.A. Thompson writes in his commentary on Deuteronomy:

"The number of gods that might claim Israel's allegiance was considerable, 'gods which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples that are round about you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other' (verses 6-7). By means of this vivid language it was made plain to Israel that no god whatever was to take Yahweh's place (5:7)." (p. 175)

Thompson then writes on the punishment for such practice:

"The penalty prescribed was severe, stoning by the whole community with the family leading the way. It was more necessary for the family than for others to show that it neither had been nor wished to be a partaker in the evil deed. Until recently many societies in the Western world prescribed the death penalty in order to stress the serious nature of certain crimes. While, in practice, this penalty was not always carried out, it remained as a measure of the seriousness of the crime." (p. 175)

F.F. Bruce elaborates in his NIV commentary on the "due process" often forgotten in a cursory reading of the text and agrees with Thompson that, just because the law was on the Israelities' "books" does not mean it was always carried out (God himself sets this precedent of mercy in his interaction with Cain after his murder of Abel - see Genesis 4, particularly verses 15-16):

"The responsibility of 'casting the first stone' would both discourage careless accusation and - unlike capital punishment today - make the 'executioners' personally involved in the sentence...The emphasis on purging the community of infection corresponds to Paul's demand in 1 Corinthians 5:1-13. Yet there is little evidence that the death penalty was generally exacted in this and in similar cases (17:12; 19:11-13; 21:18-21; 22:21-24; 24:7) so that it has been suggested that the provision was intended basically to emphasize the gravity of the offense." (p. 269)

Thompson once more:

"Whatever the origin of such a law, it served the purpose of making clear to a man who acted in this way that society disowned him, and that it would collectively destroy him. The procedures here accord well with the strong emphasis throughout Deuteronomy that society as a whole was involved in the national life. Conversely, each individual was required to play his part in the maintenance of the national life and the good order of society." (p 175)

Christopher J.H. Wright, in one of my favorite Old Testament works, sums things up well, transitioning from the practice the Old Testament law prescribes to the principle of it that Jesus lives out in the New Testament:

"Deuteronomy 13 is one of the starkest chapters in the Old Testament, dealing with the threat of being enticed into the worship of other gods. With immense realism and perception it anticipates that the temptation to go after other gods may come not only from highly plausible but spurious wonder-workers (verses 1-6), not only from the social pressure of a whole disaffected community (verses 12-18), but also from within the bosom of one's closest family - 'your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend' (verses 6-11).

Even if so, the enticement is to be resisted with a steely firmness that puts loyalty to the Lord alone above even such familial ties. This was a choice Jesus himself faced - not in the sense that his family wished to entice him into blatant idolatry, but rather that in pressing him to return to his family responsibilities they were inadvertently drawing him away from obedience to the will of his Father. Jesus promptly highlighted the stark nature of that choice when he redefined his family in terms of those who, like himself, would put the will of his Father above all else (Matthew 12:46-50)." (p. 344)

So what does this mean for us today? Do we dismiss the Old Testament as simply too brutal to be taken seriously? Hardly, especially since mankind is just eight years out of the most violent century (the 20th) in the history of the planet (and not exactly off to a great start in the 21st). Instead of kidding ourselves that we've made so much "progress" regarding human life, we ought to recognize that death is still a strong deterrent for most of us, as well as an ultimate punishment that illustrates how seriously God takes life, which is what God's laws have always sought to protect.

Are we to stone family members who do not worship the God of the Bible? No. We are not a theocracy (Oxford American Dictionaries: "a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god") as the nation of Israel was in the Old Testament, nor are we called to be one. Jesus' new covenant (see Jeremiah 3:31-40 and Luke 22:14-20) established the Church in the New Testament as the chosen people of God, not the nation/state of Israel. This does not automatically exclude Jewish people, but it does not automatically include them, either (read Romans 9-11 for more on this).

That said, in our world today, we as the Church are called to apply the same single-hearted commitment to God as encouraged by the Old Testament laws and modeled perfectly by Jesus. This is why Leviticus 19:18 still applies: the idea of loving God was truly the only way one could love his neighbor. This "brutal" love for God and (as a result) neighbor is why God gave the law in the first place, and what Jesus later explained in Matthew 22:34-40 as the basis of the life he lived as the Fulfillment of both the Law and the Prophets:

"But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?' And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Thoughts?

Women and Head Coverings

Before we try to apply a right hermeneutic to one of the passages in question, let's apply its principles of authorial intent and audience need to the Bible as a whole. Allowing the literature to provide its answer of authorship, we understand the Scripture was written by God. Granted, there are huge questions that go with this statement (who is God? what does inspiration look like?, etc.), but for the sake of brevity (and regardless of what we think about it), we must understand from the text (see 2 Timothy 3:16 for an example) this ultimate ascription.

That determined (again, whether one agrees or not is not the point; we're simply trying - from the text - to establish claimed authorship), what was God's intention in inspiring/writing it? Based on numerous passages of Scripture, God's ultimate goal seems to be revelation - the revealing of himself as author, creator, redeemer, savior - of those he claims to have created and for whom he takes responsibility. In other words, the authorial intent is that God wants people to know about him so people can know him.

Know him why? What do we understand from the text as to what the author claims his audience's need is? There seem many possibilities: love, forgiveness, redemption, discipline, provision, care, etc. Without necessarily agreeing or disagreeing on one or more for now, if we rightly understand the overarching narrative that runs through the Bible - not just pulling out strange or confusing passages (we'll deal with those later) - we recognize that, when it's all said and done, 1) the author is telling one ultimate story; and 2) that story - like all the best stories (think Lord of the Rings) - is made up of many smaller stories that help tell it.

Now, with regard to Paul and the early church concerning women, what is the author's (Paul's/God's) intent and the audience's (people then and now) need? Some cultural background (taken from Dictionary of Paul and His Letters):

"Although some Greek and Roman women became philosophers, higher education in rhetoric and philosophy was usually reserved for men. In a society where most people were functionally illiterate (especially much of the Empire's population), teaching roles naturally would fall on those who could read and speak well. Nearly all of our Jewish sources suggest that these roles were, with rare exceptions, limited to men." (p. 589)

This in and of itself is descriptive, not prescriptive; in other words, just because the Greek and Roman cultures were like this does not mean it was right, nor that Paul/God endorsed it; it was simply (and sadly) reality. But what about Paul's words about women in 1 Timothy 2:11-12: "Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence"? Doesn't this line up with the same perspective held by the Greeks and Romans?

Here's where our historical/cultural (I would argue "American") prejudice I mentioned in my previous post comes in. In light of our preoccupation with/worship of freedom and free speech, we read Paul's words as limiting, sexist, and (perhaps the biggest offender) un-American. But think about this with regard to the Timothy passage, as well as the other controversial passages on the topic (1 Corinthians 11 and 14):

"It was common in the ancient world for hearers to interrupt teachers with questions, but it was considered rude if the questions reflected ignorance of the topic. Since women were normally considerably less educated than men, Paul proposes a short-range solution and a long-range solution to the problem. His short-range solution is that the women should stop asking the disruptive questions; the long-range solution is that they should be educated, receiving private tutoring from their husbands." (p. 590)

While feminists today would probably scoff at this as patronizing, we have to remember that, for the time, Paul was among the most progressive of ancient writers on the subject of a woman's intellectual potential. The issue of "in silence" was not how just women were to learn; this would have been the way all novices were to learn, and characterizes the desired behavior of the whole church (1 Timothy 2:2).

What about the question of a woman teaching? Again, let's consider the context of the audience's need in Ephesus (the city in which Timothy was pastoring) and Paul's intent as evidenced by the text in addressing it:

"Clues in the text indicate the following situation: male false teachers (1 Timothy 1:20; 2 Timothy 2:17) have been introducing dangerous heresy into the ephesian church (1 Timothy 1:4-7; 6:3-5), often beginning by gaining access to its women, who would normally have been difficult to reach because of their greater restriction to the domestic sphere (2 Timothy 3:6-7). Because the women were still not well trained in the Scriptures, they were most susceptible to the false teachers and could provide a network through which the false teachers could disrupt other homes (1 Timothy 5:13; cf. 1 Timothy 3:11). Given Roman society's perception of Christians as a subversive cult, false teaching that undermined Paul's strategies for the church's public witness could not be permitted." (p. 591)

As I've already mentioned, Paul's solution to dealing with these heresies was not to shut women up but to let women learn, which they did. So does that mean women should be free to teach? No and yes. F.F. Bruce writes in his NIV commentary:

"When, however, it comes to the matter of teaching, Paul's tone becomes more authoritative. In addition to repeating his exhortation regarding 'quietness,' he declares categorically, I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. This prohibition in no way contradicts Titus 2:2-3. It relates to teaching in the church in the presence of men and to the fact that authority in matters concerning the church is not committed to women. The apostle's argument is founded on the initial relationship of man and woman." (p. 1477)

In other words, Paul's statement of the differences between the roles of man and woman is one of purpose, not of worth or order. This goes back to God's original model in Genesis 2:18-24 (again, we have to remember to keep the smaller narratives within God's larger, overarching narrative as the text claims he is the ultimate author), and I don't find this model changed or repealed in the Scriptures since. As Jack Collins notes in his commentary on Genesis 1-4:

"Paul's argument does not turn simply on the order in which they were made; otherwise the animals would be over man! Rather, the Genesis text itself declares a rationale for the woman: she is not the same as the man but complements him. For many people in the modern Western culture, this is sexist or discriminatory. This is because for them, to be equal means to have equal access to any role one aspires to...[but] simply to label something sexist because it sees a difference in men and women does not say anything worth saying, because nature itself is sexist in that sense (since men do not have access to child bearing). Rather, a more useful definition would be one that grounds any differences between men's and women's roles in different relative worth of men and women - and there is no evidence that the Bible employs such a rationale in its teaching." (p. 141-142)

With regard to head coverings, we need to understand their purpose at the time and in the culture - to outwardly illustrate the aforementioned idea of women submitting to God in their role of complementing men. Should women have to wear head coverings today to do that? Based on our study, no - there are plenty of more culturally acceptable ways for women to demonstrate obedience to God's purpose for them (not crying "sexist" would be one), so ladies, feel free to leave the head coverings at home.

Okay. We've tried to understand authorial intent and audience need with regard to Paul's/God's teaching about women in the church. If I were teaching my high schoolers, this would be where I assign a response essay; instead, I'll just ask you to comment. What do you think?

I'll try to deal with the Old Testament passages in question in another day or two.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Interpretation

A few weeks ago, a post in which I wrote on gay marriage got quite a bit of traffic and discussion. In the midst of the interactions, some important questions came up pertaining to my use of the Bible as the basis for my thinking.

For instance, escapethedrain wrote in comment #2:

"If you are using the bible to prove your point that homosexuality is wrong, then you also have to include the scripture that says:

(1 Tim. 2:12)
'Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.'

(Lev 19.18b)
'You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.'

Do you believe in this as well? I am interested in your response."

In addition, transientreporter wrote in comment #3:

"Mull over this:

(Deuteronomy 13:7-11)
'If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or your intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known,gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you. You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the LORD, your God…'

The bible is a deeply ugly book."

I summed up the tensions (see comment #5) as being 1) the use of ancient Scripture (Old and New Testaments) to address modern issues, and 2) the brutality of the Bible. While I'm not sure if the two readers who asked the questions are still reading (thanks for sticking around if you are), I promised to try to address their questions, so I will (though it's going to take a couple of posts to do it - hang with me).

Let me start with an illustration. As part of the recent build-up to the new Indiana Jones movie (which I've still yet to see), Slate ran a review that started with this:

"If some 32nd-century archeologist were to unearth a DVD copy of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Paramount), her first task—after converting the barbaric early digital technology to a more current brain-wave-based viewing system—would be to understand what this object meant to the culture that created it...Though it's a scholar's job to shed her 32nd-century prejudices and understand the belief systems of those long dead, our archeologist will have to ask herself: What were these scribes thinking?"

When I read this, I thought immediately of our recent discussion. It's true: many aspects of the Bible can seem foreign to us because of where we are (or aren't) historically in relation to them. However, we aren't being fair to the Scripture (or to any ancient text) if we approach it with our 21st-century prejudices.

For instance, I just finished reading Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. Make no mistake, Dawkins is a good writer, but listen for the modern bias in his take (found on page 269 in case anyone's following along) on the beginning of the Old Testament:

"Begin in Genesis with the well-loved story of Noah, derived from the Babylonian myth of Uta-Napisthim and known from the older mythologies of several cultures. The legend of the animals going into the ark two by two is charming, but the moral of the story of Noah is appalling. God took a dim view of humans, so he (with the exception of one family) drowned the lot of them including children and also, for good measure, the rest of the (presumably blameless) animals as well."

Dawkins continues:

"Of course, irritated theologians will protest that we don't take the book of Genesis literally any more. But that is my whole point! We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories. Such picking and choosing is a matter of personal decision, just as much, or as little, as the athiest's decision, without an absolute foundation."

Dawkins then dismisses the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 and 19 and the Levite and his concubine in Judges 19 before starting in on the New Testament and questioning Jesus' "somewhat dodgy family values" (page 284).

For the record, I agree with Dawkins that, unfortunately, there are plenty of theologians who don't take Genesis literally any more, but I am not one of them. This doesn't (or shouldn't) make me a flaming fundamentalist by default; I do not read Genesis as a science book anymore than I read Song of Songs as a recipe. I read Genesis as narrative and Song of Songs as poetry, for reading either as something they're not does not respect their genres as literature, which, in my mind, is as big a problem for fundamentalists as a figurative-only reading.

But I digress.

My point is that Dawkins (an evolutionary biologist) gives little to no consideration to the first basic rule of hermeneutics (interpretation) - that is, we have to understand an author's intent as well as the needs of the author's first readers to rightly understand the text. Dawkins seems only interested in picking apart the text; likewise, if any reader does not interact with ancient writings beyond their words, then she is not playing by the rules of good exegesis.

So, getting back to the questions above, what was the Apostle Paul's intent and his audience's needs that caused him to write about women and submission? What were Moses' purposes and the needs of the nation (not the state) of Israel that led him to encourage loving one's neighbor in Leviticus and, at the same time, punish his neighbor so violently if he enticed him to forsake God? We have to try to get as close to these original intents and audiences before we can begin figuring out what (if any) meaning these passages have now.

And that's where we'll start tomorrow...

Here's the Story...

The girls have been bingeing of late on DVD episodes of The Brady Bunch. I've decided I would be a better parent if all my decisions were accompanied by cheeseball music and a laugh track.

Curse you, Mike Brady...and a pox upon your architect's desk.