Beyond Madness

Every year, basketball pundits declare that we have just experienced the craziest March Madness of all time. They seem surprised, as if the name March Madness didn’t almost necessitate craziness. This year it has been beyond madness, though. I don’t even know of a word to describe it (and I’m an English major who owns a thesaurus),  but it has easily been the craziest year I have ever seen. And we’re not even done. Virginia Commonwealth might be cutting down the nets in Houston next Monday.

It would be difficult to provide a systematic analysis of what has just happened. I won’t even try. I glanced over the carnage of my bracket today almost in disbelief. For the first time that I have ever filled out a bracket for this tournament I have zero of the final four teams. Zero. None. UNC and KU both went down today, the final two I had. My national championship prediction. And I wasn’t even surprised. VCU’s ride has an air of inevitability, providence even, about it. From the moment they stepped on the court against KU this afternoon it felt like they were going to win. There was an aura surrounding the game of certainty. It was weird. If I were a betting man I would have bet the farm on VCU... against Kansas... in a basketball game. Can you believe that? Likewise with Butler. Everything has been going their way. My mind is spinning circles right now trying to decide who I want to pick for that matchup. I just wish they could play in the national championship. The combined ages of Brad Stevens of Butler and Shaka Smart of VCU add up to Jim Calhoun of Connecticut, another coach still dancing. You can’t make that up.

Part of me can see now why March Madness has its naysayers. No one, mind you, will say that it is anything other than utterly mad. But people say, and this has more than a grain of truth, that it is not a great method for crowning the truly best team in college basketball. VCU loses eleven times in the regular season, gets into the tournament ahead of “more qualified” teams, plays all out for 40 minutes and beats a team from a power conference who lost twice all year. To the naysayers this is insincere. Anything can happen in one game. If KU and VCU go best of seven, KU wins the series 4-1, or so the argument goes. After a year like this, and a succession of games like we have just witnessed, this strikes me, or I want it to strike me, as valid.

But that is not what college basketball is about. This is what makes it so much fun. Practically speaking, would NBA style playoffs really work at the collegiate level? First of all, there are 346 teams in DI college hoops. The NBA has thirty teams. Where do you draw the line for a basketball playoff? The top eight? Sixteen? It doesn’t work that way. Would anyone want to watch three months of college playoffs like the pros have to go through? These are students, after all, not professional athletes (an ever blurring distinction). Given these restrictions and complications it has to be this way. Will the winner of this year’s tournament really be the best all-around basketball team in the country? In a sense, and depending on your metric, no. It rarely works out that way. But the team who is able to win six games in a row in a ferocious format will be declared the champion of this tournament. And on the first day of games, that privilege is available to all 68 teams who are competing (and this year we have to stretch to those first four). Not everyone has an equal chance, of course. But everyone has a chance. David can beat Goliath and Goliath will stay dead. No matter how many people they beat before then or how many future NBA players are on the roster. One loss and your dreams are over. And the little guy lives to fight another day.

Long live the madness.

Libya 2

Here are a few links to some articles I read this week on Libya that I found interesting. The outcome of this conflict is far from decided and for now I have settled on praying for the best.

Here is a measured piece from The Economist that suggests the differences between Libya and Iraq and the hopefulness of the ability of the United States to withdraw soon from the coalition effort.

This one is a little less even-handed and certainly less optimistic about the chances for success, though worth reading and thought provoking.

Here, Newt Gingrich was for Libyan intervention until Obama decided to intervene, and then, of course, he was against it.

Also, watch the video from John Stewart's "The Daily Show" further down on that page about Republican vacillation on the issue. This has far more to due with the toxic nature of politics these days than with anything substantial regarding Libya. The Democrats hammered Bush unfairly for everything he did, thought, or said for eight years (excluding the week or two following 9/11) and now it is the Republicans' turn to act as the party of grown-ups and rise above this petty politicking. Or, to do the exact same thing.

Libya

I don’t write too often about politics these days. My affection for the subject has waned in recent years as I have come to understand that I have less and less of the complexities of this world figured out. The human race doesn’t work in the neat conservative/liberal divide that our modern media so easily presumes. Also, our fragmented and ever-changing political system leaves little stability and the constant news cycle leaves a steady stream of Pyrrhic victories for the cable news shows to fret over for a few days until the next big thing happens. However, this current escalation in Libya leaves me wondering about a few things:

1) What is the goal of our involvement? Do we want to oust Qaddafi and will stick around until that happens? Do we want to provide a safe zone for rebels and leave Qaddafi and his loyalists entrenched in Tripoli? Do we want to support a democratic regime change in the country? We don’t know any of this. Obama has hinted towards a Qaddafi ouster while Admiral Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seems to indicate the goal is containment. Until we know what our goal is, how can we have a metric for victory? It is this sort of shaky commitment that led to, not so much Iraq and Afghanistan, as Somalia and Kosovo in the ‘90s. We need a clear vision.

2) Can the objectives of intervention, whatever they may be, actually be attained without putting boots on the ground in Libya? If the only goal is to provide air support for the rebels than the answer to this question is yes. However, if the goal is for any broader level democratic efforts or even the ouster of Qaddafi the answer is no. Are we willing to commit ground troops to this enterprise? Can we avoid it without leaving the rebels out to rot?

3) Do we know anything about the rebels and are we confident they are any better than Qaddafi? As bad as Iraq has been (and as improperly handled) I can only imagine how much worse it would have been for the Iraqi people had we merely removed Saddam and left a giant power vacuum in the country. How do we avoid giving power in Libya to the devil we don’t know? This is a huge unknown and I haven’t heard anything hinting toward a satisfactory answer.

4) Why Libya and not Yemen or Bahrain? The same day we announced support for intervention in Libya, news broke of Yemenis troops opening fire into a crowd of protesters, killing hundreds. A state of emergency was declared in the country, an act that usually allows the power class the right to restrain and punish opposition in the name of protecting against chaos. Why is this less worthy of intervention than Libya? This, of course, opens a whole other can of worms concerning intervention. When do we do it and why? What are the metrics for intervention? A certain number of people dead? an offensive and evil ruler? our chances for success at promoting democracy? the support of a broad international coalition? This gets tricky. And picking one over another does not seem to clarify the issue.

Of course I wish for success in the effort, but am not entirely hopeful. I keep thinking of the Thomas Jefferson quote, “The tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Perhaps when a rebel group declares its democratic intentions and promises to abide by certain standards for support, we could provide them with the means to topple dictatorship, but it seems foolhardy to just start dropping bombs and hoping for the best. That’s my two cents.

Also, I encourage a reading of David Brooks’s op-ed from the New York Times today about the perils of multilateral intervention. Really, you should just read Brooks every week if you don't already.

N.T. Wright 2

As promised in the preceding post, here is a review of N.T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope. Though I would rather be chiming in to the chorus of voices on Grand Rapids pastor Rob Bell and his new book, I will probably have to wait until the semester is over and I have time to do some luxury reading to give it the attention it deserves (but do watch this video of Bell getting grilled by an MSNBC reporter). I could do as some have done and review a book without having read the whole thing, but Jonathan Swift has some harsh words for critics who act in this manner. After I extricate myself from Marxism in the seventeenth century, the vanity of youth in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and certainty in the works of John Foxe compared to doubting and uncertainty in John Donne (my term papers for this semester) I look forward to taking a close look at Bell’s work.

What makes the mention of Bell relevant in the context of an N.T. Wright post is that in many ways Bell seems to see himself as an American proponent of Wrightian theology. Bell, though, seems to circumvent the traditionalist stance taken by Wright in his works and has not even come close to the level of scholarship Wright has under his belt, but Bell seems consciously aware of the influence of Wright and has back-cover endorsements on at least two of Wright’s popular level books. Anyways, this sounds like it is turning into a review of Bell, which I already promised I wouldn’t do. On to Wright.

The biggest theme of Surprised is rethinking the popular concept of heaven, the afterlife, and the power of the resurrection of Christ as well as the resurrection of Christian believers and how a reexamination of these truths will lead to a more theologically coherent and missiologically sound church. Perhaps Wright’s biggest target relating to this guiding theme is the popular conception of a disembodied, ulterior realm called heaven as the final dwelling place of the saints of God. This is a position that has never sat well with me, reading passages such as: Romans 8 where Paul tells us that creation is groaning in anticipation for the day when it will be redeemed--if God is just going to destroy it someday, will that really be redemption?; 1 Corinthians 15, the most famous passage (and famously confusing) in Scripture on resurrection where we are told that death no longer has dominion and has lost its sting--if we simply go in spirit form to an alternate, disembodied realm can death really be said to have been defeated? It seems rather that though still dead we continue some sort of spirit existence; nearly the entire book of Revelation, where we are told about the new heavens and the new earth descending and our glorified Lord tells us that he is making all things new does not make any sense whatever if the earth is fully bad and irredeemable and must be destroyed some day. Building off of these, and other, passages, Wright builds a case that when we die we will join Christ immediately (as was Paul’s clear hope: Philippians 1), but that there is a day also when the dead in Christ will rise and be joined together with him and his reign on this earth will begin. To a theological geek like me this was thrilling reading and I wish I had time to get in to all of the sub points Wright examines along the way, but the big question arising from all of the book is why does this matter? Heaven/new earth, spirit/resurrected body--who cares?

Wright here argues that our views of eschatology (death and/or the end of the world) have practical effects on the way we live out life on this earth. If we believe that this planet is cursed and God is going to zap it some day there is no point in cultivating it in love as his creation, bearing the divine imprint. In this view of the world, only things done for the “gospel” will be seen by the church to have an substantive value and everything done in the world--working hard at a job, writing a great Master’s thesis, being a really great plumber--will seem valueless because it is fleeting. But if we believe that God is coming back to this place and will restore it and that at this moment we are caught somewhere between creation and new creation, our work in this world will take on immense value, everything done in this world that is done in faith and in pursuit of God’s glory will be eternal, whether it is doing missions work in the Middle East or changing an old couple’s tire or studying for a Physics exam when you would rather watch a movie. What is done on this earth matters and will last.

For me this is glorious, liberating theology. My life at school--reading Marxist historians on the English civil war, helping college freshman write composition papers, working diligently so as to be able to participate in class lectures--would all seem like a waste of time if the above paragraph were not true. As Christians, in a world starkly divided between the things of God and the things of this world only the things of God seem to matter. When we refuse to see the world in this dichotomous relationship, though, and see creation and new creation intertwined what we do has value.

This is not to say I didn’t have reservations reading Wright’s work. One of the more frustrating elements of Wright’s work is the shortness of the book. Since he has written in-depth, 700+ page defenses of the resurrection in other places, this book functioned as a sort of Reader's Digest version of these earlier texts. This left Wright’s exegesis of certain Biblical texts foundational to his argument short on depth--his numerous references back to his earlier scholarship has convinced me to purchase a couple of earlier books but did not provide the Biblical meat behind Wright’s claims that one would hope for a popular level book. In a sense, writing for a popular audience instead of a more narrow scholarly world I would contend that one has to be even more careful with Biblical explication since the readers will not share an intuitive understanding of the original languages and could become convinced on the basis of the author’s authority rather than Scriptures. In no way do I think this was Wright’s intent, but it is an unfortunate consequence of boiling such an important topic down into such a relatively small book.

Twice he makes a statement along the lines of, “If you remove the birth of Christ from Scripture you lose two chapters in Matthew and two in Luke, but if you remove the resurrection you lose the entire New Testament” (rough quote). While I understand the larger point he is trying to make--that our faith hinges on the resurrection, which is true--it is a bit foolishly controversial to seem (twice) to downplay the virgin birth of Christ as somehow unimportant because it didn’t receive the page space devoted to the resurrection. Indeed, without the virgin birth there is no atoning death or resurrection to speak of and we are still in our sins. Yes, its that important.

Also, Wright shares the typical mainstream aversion to speaking in concrete language on hell. He doesn’t deny its reality, but tries to twist away from it, arguing that hell is a condition where an individual has so denied and defaced the image of God within him/her that the image flickers out and this individual no longer bears God’s image. This is certainly a way of saying what hell might be, but in a book that is mostly concrete and direct in language, this sort of dance around hell struck me as Wright’s acknowledgment that he had no desire to speak on the subject--a feeling I happen to share, but one which, unfortunately, our Savior chose to repeat time and again.

Ultimately, though, I found Wright’s book extremely valuable and illuminating. It has quite literally changed the way I think about my life and my mission and how I can glorify God (this book worked brilliantly in concert with another book I recently read, James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World). While Wright’s statements have an air of radicalism, this is only because our culture has imbibed the thoughts on the afterlife from a nineteenth and early twentieth century evangelical tradition. Martin Luther understood where Wright was going. Talking about how we may give glory to God, he said the following: “A dairy maid can milk cows to the glory of God.” What we do matters. And, Luther again, speaking what he would do if he knew Christ were coming back the next day: “I would plant a tree.” What we do matters, because this place will last.

N.T. Wright

N.T. Wright is an interesting figure in contemporary Christianity. His books are bestsellers across the conservative-liberal ideological divide, and he infuriates people on both sides of that unfortunate aisle. He first came to my attention when John Piper, beloved prophet of we modern Calvinists, took aim at Wright’s theory on justification. In essence, they wrote books to each other each staking out his own position. Given my deep appreciation for Piper and his work, I was naturally skeptical of Wright and would have blithely dismissed him were it not for the encouragement of one of my good friends to give him a try.

Wright is a one-time Anglican bishop. (He recently stepped down to focus more on writing, speaking, and teaching) He is one of the most prominent voices in the old mainline faiths and, like his good friend the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, routinely makes enemies in all quarters--he is neither liberal enough for the full progressivists nor conservative enough for the staunch traditionalists. Wright is also one of the foremost Bible scholars in the world today, having taught for over 20 years at Oxford, McGill, and Cambridge. I recently read two of Dr. Wright’s books--Simply Christian and Surprised by Hope--and while I certainly found things to disagree with, moreso I found him to be a wonderful voice speaking the truth of the Christian gospel, mission, the purpose of the church, and the purpose of the individual Christian. Simply Christian is a sort-of modern Mere Christianity, with Wright asserting the basic doctrines of Biblical Christianity held across all theological traditions while framing the old story under an aesthetic designed to appeal to the educated, much like Lewis’s rather difficult and similar book. In many ways Wright reminds me of that other Anglican whose books have provided me with so much over the years, C.S. Lewis. I cannot say that I agree with all of Lewis’s theology, or even methodology, but he is a believer in the gospel, a compelling voice standing against the tide of universalism or liberalism or even reactionary conservatism, and has so much that is so good that I can read his books with discernment and be incredibly blessed by them.

In the next post I will review the second of Wright’s books that I have read, Surprised by Hope, but for now I want to come out in defense of the all too easily dismissed bishop. When you consider the milieu in which Wright works, his defense of the traditional Christian doctrines of creation, fall, redemption, resurrection, and the setting to rights of the universe in the coming of the new heaven and the new earth he looks extraordinarily faithful and countercultural. Now one could bemoan this as further evidence of the failure of the mainline denominations--that a man holding to basic doctrine is held up as a model of doctrinal purity--but let us be more generous than that to Wright’s endeavors and humble enough to face that whatever evangelical non-denomination we see ourselves as part of was only made possible by the extraordinary sacrifices of those easily maligned mainline churches. William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury (highest position in the Anglican church) was not ordained until he made up his mind that Jesus rose from the dead. David Jenkins, one of Wright’s predecessors at Durham, referred to the resurrection as a matter of conjuring tricks on the part of the disciples. Jenkins and John Dominic Crossan, another of the more renowned contemporary Bible scholars made famous for co-founding the Jesus Seminar, hold to what is called the moral objection of the resurrection: that Jesus was raised from the dead is all very well and good for him, but since God doesn’t intervene to stop hurricanes and earthquakes like he did to raise Jesus from the dead than what is the point of the resurrection?

Given this backdrop, my appreciation for Wright is immense and grows every time I consider it. Preaching what Wright preaches would not be difficult in a Southern Baptist church in Alabama. In fact, if he didn’t come off a little more conservative he would be booted from a job preaching there. But holding to a literal death and literal resurrection and literal salvation and real eternity is not easy in the Anglican communion. The institutional pressure before Wright and Rowan Williams became more prominent was to slide further into liberalism.  Wright and Williams are both working to arrest that slide. May God bless them as they try and may we not judge Wright according to our own supposed doctrinal purity. Let the mere in mere Christianity and, for Wright, the simple in simply Christian outweigh our own pet concerns.

About Basketball

I have been really busy lately with school so instead of trying to write a blog post full of critical thought, theology, or, really, anything written with any effort at all, I have decided to write about the remarkable resurgence of the Kansas State men’s basketball team in the past few weeks. Because it has been that awesome.

The text message I received from my dad on Saturday, February 12th said it all: “The year from hell.” I had to agree. K-State had just lost by two points to Colorado because Rodney McGruder’s final second miracle shot left his hand about a tenth of a second too late. You couldn’t argue with the call. The replay official froze the screen when the clock expired and the ball was still clearly on the fingertips of K-State’s sophomore guard. It was a rough moment, the seeming culmination of a rough year.

Though I disputed our pre-season ranking of #3 in the country and #1 in the Big 12--the pathway to the Big 12 championship always runs through Lawrence--I never imagined we would completely fall apart like we did. Our two senior leaders got suspended for taking “improper benefits”, our star recruit from last year left the team, even the 45 year-old Colombian on the team bailed. It was awful. Everything that could go wrong, seemed to go wrong, and then we invented stuff to go wrong and that went wrong too. And the ball on McGruder’s fingertips was just the ultimate example of all of that. We walked into a hostile Boulder crowd, played well, made a miraculous shot, but it left the hands a blink of an eye too late. That was the year. You couldn’t argue with anything. It wasn’t like our football team’s loss in the Pinstripe Bowl when the referee decided it was on him to decide the outcome with a superfluous excessive celebration call. There was no arguing this. We were playing bad basketball (trying to escape Boulder with a win?), our leaders were showing no leadership, Frank Martin seemed to be losing control. And then Kansas was coming to town. It was Valentine’s Day and we were hosting KU on Big Monday after losing to CU less than 48 hours before. Needless to say, I was not feeling a win coming.

But, of course, it did. We played extremely well. Kansas looked flat. We dominated them in every part of the game. Our 7’ center who I could beat in an arm-wrestling match owned the paint against the musclebound Morris Twins. Pullen was shooting like it was a video game. KU was turning the ball over blithely. It was an amazing night.

Then, of course, you are worried about the comedown. You beat number one in a shock the nation type game and then, naturally, you expect to lose to a struggling Oklahoma team. But we didn’t. Pullen didn’t play great and it took us awhile to pull away but McGruder continued to step up and has been our surest hand in this great run. Then there was the final date in Lincoln to take on a surging Nebraska who had just beat #2 Texas at home a few days before. Again, I was expecting it to all come apart. After the year we have had, what else could I expect? But we won that one, too. Despite anemic three point shooting.

Then we hosted #21 Missouri. Pullen had another big game. Nick Russell hit clutch free throws down the stretch and another victory. But perhaps the toast of them all was taking down Texas (#8 at the time) in Austin. It was the Wildcats first road victory against a top ten opponent in 17 years. And we played great. McGruder was unconscious and had ice in his veins as he stroked absolutely crucial shots. Pullen hurt his wrist and kept going. And we reeled it in. It should be noted as well, that I believe it is official that we now... OWN TEXAS!!! I can’t even remember the last time we lost to them in a major sport. Basketball or football, Austin or Manhattan--bring it on, Longhorns.

Now, I don’t know exactly where all of this is going. This could fizz out and we could lose in the first round of March Madness. But we are surging at the right time and it has come out of nowhere. While I was expecting to be disappointed to a certain degree this season, I was not anticipating how bad it did get. Likewise, I could never have foreseen this late surge. And this is one of the million reasons why sports are so much fun and why, despite my literary snobbishness and Indie-music enthusiasm, I will always watch them and love them and get excited and nervous and jump up and down and scream or think words that I shouldn’t scream or think.

Technology 3

It appears I can’t let go out technology. A friend of mine on Facebook recently expressed his disapproval of technology through his iPhone, using a Twitter account, that automatically updates his Facebook status. In other words, his disapproval came wrapped in three layers of irony. Any such modern discussion of technology is almost bound to go this way. We are so surrounded by technologies engulfing every portion of our lives that it is difficult, if not impossible, to speak of Technology, as if it were a monolithic expression of anything using twentieth or twenty-first century inventions. What my friend most likely was referring to in his condemnation of technology was not the automobile, contact lenses, the vacuum cleaner, sliced bread, bound books, the mechanical pencil, the telescope, bicycles, paper, or the wheel (all revolutionary technologies in their own way, sliced bread obviously being the most important of these products if popular sayings be any accurate measure of these things), but one of the products or pieces of software he was using to communicate his disapprobation.

In an entertaining article (again in the New Yorker, I don’t know what it is about this magazine) Adam Gopnik, a columnist who I have a love/hate relationship with (for starters, on the hate side, he loves hockey and is Canadian, what’s with that?), writes about the problematic nature of talking about technology in any effective way. The impetus for his article is the division of contemporary writers of technology into warring camps, camps Gopnik labels the Never-Betters, the Better-Nevers, and the Never-Wasers.

Into the first camp go the prophets of technology, the men and women who claim we are living in an era of unprecedented opportunity, communication, and interconnectedness that will surely lead to a techno-utopia where wars are thwarted by a Twitter conference between opposing factions, the lion and the lamb frolic through verdant fields, and human nature is overcome by the ubiquitous posting of baby pictures on Facebook. The Better-Nevers, on the other hand, claim that technology is destroying the foundation of our society, impairing the ability of the individual to think rationally and deeply, destroying the richness of print culture, and we would all be better off if the development of further technologies had ceased with the printing press and maybe electricity so that the mass of intellectual giants restrained today by time-wasting  modern technology could plumb the depths of Cicero’s oratories under better lighting. The Never-Wasers are the naysayers to both groups--new technologies have been developed in cultures for hundreds of years. They are always controversial, always have their preachers and their detractors, are always accused of deadening the mind of the broader public, are always hailed as the next step toward a better world, and generally speaking wind up being neither or some weird mixture of both.

The printing press led to greater access to scripture and the Greek classics and provided a platform for contemporary authors to reach a wider audience. Likewise, the printing press was appropriated by royal governments in their suppression of dissent (the internet is used for similar purposes today) and, since royal families had more money, most of the stuff printed for the first couple hundred years of the printing press was pro-government propaganda. The eighteenth century saw the so-called Enlightenment, but the seventeenth century (the first full century where the printing press was in wide use) was marked by awful wars and conflict. The English even cut a king’s head off. The printing press which led to the print culture so much admired by the Better-Nevers has a checkered past and was itself derided by humanist scholars like Erasmus of Rotterdam for its dehumanizing, mechanized quality. In the same manner, the printing press which the Never-Betters claim as an historical model for what the internet and social networking are achieving for our contemporary period did not lead inexorably toward progress and civility, but was used by human beings of various persuasions, some desiring to carry out noble ends and some desiring to kill and suppress as many of their enemies as possible.

As should be clear from the argument of my first post on technology, I tend toward the Never-Waser side of this debate. The Better-Nevers imagine a golden period in the past that is receding with every new subscriber to Facebook. Conversely, the Never-Betters imagine a culture finally breaking free from the restraints of the past and exploring a golden age unlike any seen before us. The Never-Wasers call bunk on the whole thing. This earth is messy, and its inhabitants are messier still. Imagining that a piece of technology will a) clean up the mess, or b) destroy the whole thing, is far too glib of an assessment. The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in the murky middle.