The point is that from the outside, belief looks like a series of ideas about the nature of the universe for which a truth-claim is being made, a set of propositions that you sign up to; and when actual believers don't talk about their belief in this way, it looks like slipperiness, like a maddening evasion of the issue. If I say that, from inside, it makes much more sense to talk about belief as a characteristic set of feelings, or even as a habit, you will conclude that I am trying to wriggle out, or just possibly that I am not even interested in whether the crap I talk is true. I do, as a matter of fact, that it is. For the record, I am not pulling the ultra-liberal, Anglican-going-on-atheist trick of saying that it's all a beautiful and interesting metaphor, snore bore yawn, and that religious terms mean whatever I want them to mean. . . I am a fairly orthodox Christian. Every Sunday I say and do my best to mean the whole of the Creed, which is a series of propositions. No dancing about; no moving target, I promise. But it is still a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don't have the feelings because I've assented to the ideas. (18-19)
13 December 2014
Unapologetic
Today I started reading a book that I have been looking forward to for a long time: Francis Spufford's Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. Spufford is a British author and novelist as well as a believer. Unapologetic is his effort to show that Christianity is not merely a matter of believing a set of facts but living a set of emotions. I read the first chapter, and Spufford already has pulled me in with something very near and dear to my heart. I have nothing to add; simply read this:
09 December 2014
Advent
One of the things that I love most about remembering Christ's coming during the advent season is the way this remembering gestures toward the future, toward the second coming of Christ, the one in which he will wipe away every tear from every eye, in which he will take all of the brokenness and frailty and decay of this world and make it all new, in which people from every tribe, tongue, language, and race will come before him and cast their crowns at his feet. Ah, for that day.
I was playing with my son the other day. We were both pterodactyls; his pterodactyl name is Quackie (did you know that pterodactyls quack like a duck?) and mine is Daddy Pterodactyl. We were flying around doing pterodactyl stuff like pterodactyls do, when Quackie decided that we should play with some bear cubs and lion cubs. Daddy Pterodactyl thought that sounded like a terrific idea but had one concern: won't the lion and bear cubs (who are all named Owen, by the way) try to eat pterodactyls if we come into their cave? No, Quackie assured. I don't know, Quackie, I think they will try to eat us. No, they won't, he affirmed. He then sealed his argument with the clincher: Jesus came back and made them good and now we can be friends with them.
My son is going to have random memories of me grabbing him up into a huge hug and kissing his face off when he says what to him are probably random things, a habit I promise to stop by the time he is 14. What a beautiful idea he has and how true to Scripture's promise. This is the promise. Christ will come back. He will make enemies friends. Pterodactyls will play with lion cubs. I will fulfill my lifelong desire to wrestle with a bear.
Advent points us both backward and forward. Backward to the miracle of the incarnation, the mystery of God-made-man, the miracle of Emmanuel, God with us, "pleased as Man with men to dwell"; backward to the physicality of our faith, the real blood that coursed through real veins, the real cries fueled by real pain and real lungs that broke the silence of that night, the utterly non-metaphorical presence of God in the here and now.
And forward to that promised day when King Jesus comes back again in glory to judge the living and the dead. The future promise of Christ's reign is one of the things that resonates so deeply in Milton's "Nativity Ode." Here he pictures the eventual triumph of Christ:
The aged earth aghast,
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake,
When at the worlds last session,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.
And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
Th' old Dragon underground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swings the scaly Horror of his folded tail. (160-172)
The caveat, of course, in the triumph is the already-not-yet paradox of Christianity. The triumph has begun as he says so beautifully in that line: we are living in the midst of a partially restored cosmos, though one that still longs for its full redemption. Advent reminds us of our suspension, cautioning us to beware lest we fall into either side of the ditch. For the world is neither abandoned by God nor are his promises all fulfilled. There will be a day when he comes again, the "dreadful Judge" arrayed in splendor, and because of the first incarnation we can look forward to his return.
Advent is about waiting, too. Israel waiting, mourning in lonely exile until the Son of God appears. We Christians now waiting for the trumpet sound and to meet the Son of God in the air and welcome him back to his kingdom. Help us as we wait, O Lord. Help us to wait well.
I was playing with my son the other day. We were both pterodactyls; his pterodactyl name is Quackie (did you know that pterodactyls quack like a duck?) and mine is Daddy Pterodactyl. We were flying around doing pterodactyl stuff like pterodactyls do, when Quackie decided that we should play with some bear cubs and lion cubs. Daddy Pterodactyl thought that sounded like a terrific idea but had one concern: won't the lion and bear cubs (who are all named Owen, by the way) try to eat pterodactyls if we come into their cave? No, Quackie assured. I don't know, Quackie, I think they will try to eat us. No, they won't, he affirmed. He then sealed his argument with the clincher: Jesus came back and made them good and now we can be friends with them.
My son is going to have random memories of me grabbing him up into a huge hug and kissing his face off when he says what to him are probably random things, a habit I promise to stop by the time he is 14. What a beautiful idea he has and how true to Scripture's promise. This is the promise. Christ will come back. He will make enemies friends. Pterodactyls will play with lion cubs. I will fulfill my lifelong desire to wrestle with a bear.
Advent points us both backward and forward. Backward to the miracle of the incarnation, the mystery of God-made-man, the miracle of Emmanuel, God with us, "pleased as Man with men to dwell"; backward to the physicality of our faith, the real blood that coursed through real veins, the real cries fueled by real pain and real lungs that broke the silence of that night, the utterly non-metaphorical presence of God in the here and now.
And forward to that promised day when King Jesus comes back again in glory to judge the living and the dead. The future promise of Christ's reign is one of the things that resonates so deeply in Milton's "Nativity Ode." Here he pictures the eventual triumph of Christ:
The aged earth aghast,
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake,
When at the worlds last session,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.
And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
Th' old Dragon underground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swings the scaly Horror of his folded tail. (160-172)
The caveat, of course, in the triumph is the already-not-yet paradox of Christianity. The triumph has begun as he says so beautifully in that line: we are living in the midst of a partially restored cosmos, though one that still longs for its full redemption. Advent reminds us of our suspension, cautioning us to beware lest we fall into either side of the ditch. For the world is neither abandoned by God nor are his promises all fulfilled. There will be a day when he comes again, the "dreadful Judge" arrayed in splendor, and because of the first incarnation we can look forward to his return.
Advent is about waiting, too. Israel waiting, mourning in lonely exile until the Son of God appears. We Christians now waiting for the trumpet sound and to meet the Son of God in the air and welcome him back to his kingdom. Help us as we wait, O Lord. Help us to wait well.
19 November 2014
Where Does Morality Come From?
During the early part of the fall I read Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Formerly of the University of Virginia, now at NYU, Haidt is a moral psychologist specializing in the ways in which we develop our moral intuitions. In this work, Haidt is asking the nearly impossible--for a bit of mutual understanding in the midst of the culture wars; for Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, and Dennis Kucinich to, if not smoke the peace pipe, at least put down the weapons. There are many different aspects of the book I want to jump into, and, with an eye to my prior success in blogging through multiple topics in a single book, I hope to write about a few in the coming weeks.
One of Haidt's central points, and the one he begins the book with, is that humans by nature desire to be righteous. We are not only "intrinsically moral" but also "intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental" (xix). We do not merely want to be right; we judge everyone who might feel differently. These righteous minds of ours make it possible for us to exist in large cooperative groups but also demand that those same groups be marked with "moralistic strife" (xx). In fact, some degree of conflict is what allows societies to flourish.
Haidt's first chapter addresses the question posed in this post title: where does morality come from? Haidt's central claim here is the claim that dominates Part 1 of the book: intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. There are two traditional explanations for morality: nativist or empiricist. A nativist believes morality to be inscribed in our nature, whether by God or by evolution (Christians and Darwin are in agreement here). The empiricist position is that we are born more or less as a blank slate and we learn from our culture and upbringing what is right and what is wrong.
While Haidt was receiving his education in the field, a third option had emerged and immediately dominated: rationalism, which says that kids "figure out morality for themselves" (6). It is neither innate, nor learned directly from adults, but "self-constructed, as kids play with other kids" (7). We learn principles of fairness by playing games, and we reason to these conclusions in a utilitarian, greater-good mode of rationality. Haidt points out that liberals were quite taken with the idea of children as "moral philosophers trying to work out coherent ethical systems for themselves" (9). Indeed, most proponents of this moral development schema actively argued that "parents and other authorities were obstacles to moral development" (10). Further studies seemed to show that children intuited that rules about clothing, food, and many other things were merely social conventions, which can be changed or modified, while rules that prevented harm of others were moral rules. Thus, morality outside of principles of harm were all relegated to mere social convention, something perhaps valuable but ultimately mutable.
Haidt felt the instinct to challenge this (liberal) conviction. For him it seemed "too cerebral" and lacking the emotion most of us feel about moral issues. When another child steals a toy from my son, he doesn't respond, "Dear sir, you have violated our social convention concerning property rights and a greater moral issue of harm to my welfare. Do consider returning the stick I am pretending is a sword forthwith." Haidt's research led him to tribes around the globe and over time he developed the conclusion that Western views of morality were almost entirely unique in the world.
Many of the differences in morality between the West and other cultures can be distilled to the intense individualism of the West in contradistinction to the sociocentrism, wherein the group or the tribe comes first, of much of the rest of the world. The liberal theories of western psychologists make sense in a western framework but would be unrecognizable to vast swathes of other cultures. In an individualist culture, anything that assaults the freedom of the individual can be questioned. In a sociocentric culture, anything that assaults the harmony and functionality of the group must be challenged.
As part of his doctoral research, Haidt organized a study to challenge the western perception of moral development. He wanted to pit "gut feelings about important cultural norms against reasoning about harmlessness, and then see which force was stronger" (22). One of the biggest surprises in Haidt's research was the number of people who tried to create victims in a clearly victimless violation. One of the taboo stories he had given was about eating a dead dog:
If harmfulness is the deciding factor in moral decisions, then this scenario should not alert moral alarms for people. But people feel a natural disgust toward dog-eating and tried to explain their revulsion in terms of harm (i.e. many people said the family would be harmed by getting sick from eating the meat). Haidt discerned that these justifications were simply "post hoc fabrications." People knew right away that something was wrong, but after the fact tried to come up with a rational explanation for why it was wrong. They reasoned from their gut and then counted on their brains for justification.
The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume wrote in 1739 that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them" (qtd. in Haidt 29). This is a controversial position and I have been in more than one good-natured argument on the subject in the past six months. We want to believe we are rational creatures, driven by our minds to discover truth and make moral decisions reasonably. But the evidence is pointing in the other direction. As Haidt claims, "moral reasoning [is] often the servant of moral emotions" (29).
Rather than coming from our minds, morality seems to come from our gut.
One of Haidt's central points, and the one he begins the book with, is that humans by nature desire to be righteous. We are not only "intrinsically moral" but also "intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental" (xix). We do not merely want to be right; we judge everyone who might feel differently. These righteous minds of ours make it possible for us to exist in large cooperative groups but also demand that those same groups be marked with "moralistic strife" (xx). In fact, some degree of conflict is what allows societies to flourish.
Haidt's first chapter addresses the question posed in this post title: where does morality come from? Haidt's central claim here is the claim that dominates Part 1 of the book: intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. There are two traditional explanations for morality: nativist or empiricist. A nativist believes morality to be inscribed in our nature, whether by God or by evolution (Christians and Darwin are in agreement here). The empiricist position is that we are born more or less as a blank slate and we learn from our culture and upbringing what is right and what is wrong.
While Haidt was receiving his education in the field, a third option had emerged and immediately dominated: rationalism, which says that kids "figure out morality for themselves" (6). It is neither innate, nor learned directly from adults, but "self-constructed, as kids play with other kids" (7). We learn principles of fairness by playing games, and we reason to these conclusions in a utilitarian, greater-good mode of rationality. Haidt points out that liberals were quite taken with the idea of children as "moral philosophers trying to work out coherent ethical systems for themselves" (9). Indeed, most proponents of this moral development schema actively argued that "parents and other authorities were obstacles to moral development" (10). Further studies seemed to show that children intuited that rules about clothing, food, and many other things were merely social conventions, which can be changed or modified, while rules that prevented harm of others were moral rules. Thus, morality outside of principles of harm were all relegated to mere social convention, something perhaps valuable but ultimately mutable.
Haidt felt the instinct to challenge this (liberal) conviction. For him it seemed "too cerebral" and lacking the emotion most of us feel about moral issues. When another child steals a toy from my son, he doesn't respond, "Dear sir, you have violated our social convention concerning property rights and a greater moral issue of harm to my welfare. Do consider returning the stick I am pretending is a sword forthwith." Haidt's research led him to tribes around the globe and over time he developed the conclusion that Western views of morality were almost entirely unique in the world.
Many of the differences in morality between the West and other cultures can be distilled to the intense individualism of the West in contradistinction to the sociocentrism, wherein the group or the tribe comes first, of much of the rest of the world. The liberal theories of western psychologists make sense in a western framework but would be unrecognizable to vast swathes of other cultures. In an individualist culture, anything that assaults the freedom of the individual can be questioned. In a sociocentric culture, anything that assaults the harmony and functionality of the group must be challenged.
As part of his doctoral research, Haidt organized a study to challenge the western perception of moral development. He wanted to pit "gut feelings about important cultural norms against reasoning about harmlessness, and then see which force was stronger" (22). One of the biggest surprises in Haidt's research was the number of people who tried to create victims in a clearly victimless violation. One of the taboo stories he had given was about eating a dead dog:
A family's dog is killed by a car in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog's body and cooked it and ate it for dinner. Nobody saw them do this.
If harmfulness is the deciding factor in moral decisions, then this scenario should not alert moral alarms for people. But people feel a natural disgust toward dog-eating and tried to explain their revulsion in terms of harm (i.e. many people said the family would be harmed by getting sick from eating the meat). Haidt discerned that these justifications were simply "post hoc fabrications." People knew right away that something was wrong, but after the fact tried to come up with a rational explanation for why it was wrong. They reasoned from their gut and then counted on their brains for justification.
The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume wrote in 1739 that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them" (qtd. in Haidt 29). This is a controversial position and I have been in more than one good-natured argument on the subject in the past six months. We want to believe we are rational creatures, driven by our minds to discover truth and make moral decisions reasonably. But the evidence is pointing in the other direction. As Haidt claims, "moral reasoning [is] often the servant of moral emotions" (29).
Rather than coming from our minds, morality seems to come from our gut.
30 October 2014
It Is Well With My Soul
One of the blessings of my job teaching at a Christian school--and one entirely unique in my prior work experience--is the chance to work to glorify Christ as part of my work. This past Monday at our English department staff meeting our department head played the hymn "It Is Well With My Soul" to get the meeting kicked off. There is something about that song. It stayed with my all day; I have been singing it in the shower all week.
Many of you know the backstory. Horatio Spafford, the hymn-writer, and how he came to write the song. Spafford was heavily invested in Chicago real estate and was nearly bankrupted by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Distraught, he scheduled a family vacation to Europe to relieve the stress on his family. Delayed by business, he sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him. On their Atlantic crossing, the ship carrying his wife and daughter was struck by another ship and most of the passengers, including Spafford's four daughters, were killed. Spafford's wife, Anna, lived and upon arriving in England telegrammed Spafford the haunting words, "Saved alone."
Spafford left the United States to be with his wife and England and on the voyage across the ocean he penned the song "It Is Well With My Soul." The courage and faith required to write something like that in the face of such tragedy is something I cannot even imagine.
The third verse of the song is my favorite and the reason the song has been playing on auto loop in my head this week:
My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought
My sin not in part but the whole
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul
The older I get the more aware I am of my own sin. I do not mean that I told a white lie to my wife last week or that I drank too much while in New York for a friend's wedding or that I swore while watching the Royals lose the World Series. I mean that deep down in my bones I am a sinner. That profound evil and depravity rule my nature. This awareness can easily lead to guilt and often has. But the faith that Christ has taken all of my sin and nailed it to the cross, that the record of debt that could be used to condemn me has been set aside, pulls me out of that despair.
In Knowledge of the Holy A.W. Tozer writes:
Many of you know the backstory. Horatio Spafford, the hymn-writer, and how he came to write the song. Spafford was heavily invested in Chicago real estate and was nearly bankrupted by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Distraught, he scheduled a family vacation to Europe to relieve the stress on his family. Delayed by business, he sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him. On their Atlantic crossing, the ship carrying his wife and daughter was struck by another ship and most of the passengers, including Spafford's four daughters, were killed. Spafford's wife, Anna, lived and upon arriving in England telegrammed Spafford the haunting words, "Saved alone."
Spafford left the United States to be with his wife and England and on the voyage across the ocean he penned the song "It Is Well With My Soul." The courage and faith required to write something like that in the face of such tragedy is something I cannot even imagine.
The third verse of the song is my favorite and the reason the song has been playing on auto loop in my head this week:
My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought
My sin not in part but the whole
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul
The older I get the more aware I am of my own sin. I do not mean that I told a white lie to my wife last week or that I drank too much while in New York for a friend's wedding or that I swore while watching the Royals lose the World Series. I mean that deep down in my bones I am a sinner. That profound evil and depravity rule my nature. This awareness can easily lead to guilt and often has. But the faith that Christ has taken all of my sin and nailed it to the cross, that the record of debt that could be used to condemn me has been set aside, pulls me out of that despair.
In Knowledge of the Holy A.W. Tozer writes:
“The mercy of God is infinite too, and the man who has felt the
grinding pain of inward guilt knows that this is more than academic.
‘Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.’ Abounding sin is the terror
of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind. However sin may
abound, it still has its limits, for it is the product of finite minds and
hearts; but God’s ‘much more’ introduces us to infinitude. Against our deep
creature-sickness stands God’s infinite ability to cure.”
What Tozer is driving at here, and what Spafford assures us in his song, is that our sin is weak and empty in the face of what Christ has done. The love and grace of God to us is infinite--boundless--while our own sin and failure and evil is finite--contained. We can only do so much that is wrong, our depravity can only go so far. But the mercy of Christ is contained by nothing, is inexhaustible. Where my sin abounds, his grace abounds far more.
That is why we can say that it is well with our souls.
24 October 2014
A Soldier of the Great War
I am currently reading through Mark Helprin's novel A Soldier of the Great War, an epic take on the life of Alessandro Giuliani, the son of a wealthy Roman lawyer who becomes a soldier and then a professor of aesthetics. Beyond that, I am not too sure what happens. I am on page 300 of over 800 so there is still some work to do.
The book is my sanity read. Teaching can be so all-encompassing that I have to work hard to maintain time for other reading projects. Generally speaking, my brain is also taxed at the end of the day to the point that a theological tome sounds daunting. Therefore, the novel. I also love being swept up in a story, not reading for scholarly ends or to determine What This Means About the World, but simply to lose myself in the story and let the prose wash over me.
Here is an excerpt from the book, a conversation Alessandro has with an unnamed fellow soldier Helprin calls the Guitarist while awaiting an attack from the Austrians in a trench. They are talking about the prospect of the afterlife, a matter on which Alessandro is dubious:
The Guitarist died when Alessandro's position was overrun by the Austrians at the end of the summer.
The book is my sanity read. Teaching can be so all-encompassing that I have to work hard to maintain time for other reading projects. Generally speaking, my brain is also taxed at the end of the day to the point that a theological tome sounds daunting. Therefore, the novel. I also love being swept up in a story, not reading for scholarly ends or to determine What This Means About the World, but simply to lose myself in the story and let the prose wash over me.
Here is an excerpt from the book, a conversation Alessandro has with an unnamed fellow soldier Helprin calls the Guitarist while awaiting an attack from the Austrians in a trench. They are talking about the prospect of the afterlife, a matter on which Alessandro is dubious:
The Guitarist thought. "You mean, if there's something on the other side of the fence?"
"Yes."
"I don't know. All logic says no, but my wife just had a baby boy--I've never seen him. Where did he come from? Space? It isn't logical at all, so who cares about logic."
"It takes a lot of balls to risk the hope, doesn't it."
"It does. I have the feeling that I am sure to be punished for the presumption, but I've already had the bad luck to have been a musician and a soldier, so maybe I'll get a break. Music," the Guitarist continued, with affection, "is the one thing that tells me time and time again that God exists and that He'll take care. Why do you think they have it in churches?"
"I know why they have it in churches," Alessandro replied.
"Music isn't rational," the Guitarist said. "It isn't true. What is it? Why do mechanical variations in rhythm and tone speak the language of the heart? How can a simple song be so beautiful? Why does it steel my resolution to believe--even if I can hardly make a living."
"And being a soldier?"
"The only halfway decent thing about this war, Alessandro, is that it teaches you the relation between risk and hope."
"You've learned to dare, and you dare to believe that someday you're going to float like a cloud."
"If it weren't for music," the Guitarist answered, "I would think that love is mortal. If I weren't a soldier, I might not have learned to stand against all odds." He took a deep breath. "Well, that's all very fine, but the truth is I just don't want to be killed before I see my son" (283).
The Guitarist died when Alessandro's position was overrun by the Austrians at the end of the summer.
19 October 2014
Mark Driscoll Steps Down
The Christian corner of the internet has no doubt been buzzing at news of Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll's resignation from Mars Hill, the church he founded and which grew to encompass large parts of the Seattle area and spawned a church-planting movement that today is doing fantastic work. I say "no doubt" because I refuse to read anything about this situation.
I am sad about this, and I imagine others are using the opportunity to gloat or feel vindicated or otherwise coat themselves in smug self-righteousness, and I just don't want to read their thoughts.
I am sad because Driscoll is something of a hero of mine. He was the man who almost singlehandedly introduced me to the Reformed faith, if only by introducing me to the work of others who claim that proud tradition. I remember well the first time I heard one of his sermons. I was living in New Orleans in that city's post-Katrina malaise, and a friend at my house was watching a video of a Driscoll sermon. I was enthralled. This guy had, for want of a better word, balls, a quality generally lacking in many pastors. He was bold and brash, but seemed to really love Jesus and want to make him known. It was immensely attractive to a 21 year-old kid turned off by the effeminacy so prevalent in much of the church. I was hooked. Returning to Colorado, I had a 2 hour round-trip commute every day and I filled a good chunk of the listening time with Driscoll sermons on my trusty iPod (that thing still works!). We were in Seattle a few years ago for a backpacking trip and Clara and I attended a Mars Hill service at their flagship location in Ballard. The church wasn't really my cup of tea, but it was great to get to hear Driscoll live.
I have fallen out with Driscoll in recent years. Some of his alpha male bravado wore on me and I didn't appreciate the book he and his wife wrote on marriage (though not because Driscoll cheated to get the book turned into a bestseller). And I am not writing here to defend him necessarily, or even to say that he shouldn't have stepped down. Who in the world am I to make that judgment? He did and said some detestable things and in this culture where people love nothing more than to be offended, that type of personality is always going to have issues.
But I will say in his defense, that he has never backed down from his own sin or made light of his shortcomings. He has always been forthright in asking for repentance. That is an admirable quality.
Also in his defense I will say that God, scripturally and anecdotally speaking, seems to love to use brash, arrogant men whose hearts are softened by the gospel of Jesus. It is rare indeed that a pusillanimous people-pleaser comes to lead a revival. Those guys make excellent critics, though.
I am not saying this to suggest that we sweep everything unseemly a successful pastor does under the rug. The problems with that approach are manifold, and well-illustrated by a take-your-pick glance at recent church scandals. I am saying that I don't think God is done with Mark Driscoll. I am praying for him now, that God would take those great gifts he has given the man and continue to refine his character. That he would surround himself not with the sensitivity crowd, but with people full of grace and truth that want to see him be used and God be glorified and not strike a point for their pet cause. That as the gospel grows in Driscoll's heart he becomes the type of man he always showed signs he could one day be. I do also pray that there would be healing where there is hurt he has caused, genuine healing, and true repentance from Driscoll, but that his critics who were not directly involved in any of these events have the humility to recognize their own sin and pray for their brother.
I am sad about this, and I imagine others are using the opportunity to gloat or feel vindicated or otherwise coat themselves in smug self-righteousness, and I just don't want to read their thoughts.
I am sad because Driscoll is something of a hero of mine. He was the man who almost singlehandedly introduced me to the Reformed faith, if only by introducing me to the work of others who claim that proud tradition. I remember well the first time I heard one of his sermons. I was living in New Orleans in that city's post-Katrina malaise, and a friend at my house was watching a video of a Driscoll sermon. I was enthralled. This guy had, for want of a better word, balls, a quality generally lacking in many pastors. He was bold and brash, but seemed to really love Jesus and want to make him known. It was immensely attractive to a 21 year-old kid turned off by the effeminacy so prevalent in much of the church. I was hooked. Returning to Colorado, I had a 2 hour round-trip commute every day and I filled a good chunk of the listening time with Driscoll sermons on my trusty iPod (that thing still works!). We were in Seattle a few years ago for a backpacking trip and Clara and I attended a Mars Hill service at their flagship location in Ballard. The church wasn't really my cup of tea, but it was great to get to hear Driscoll live.
I have fallen out with Driscoll in recent years. Some of his alpha male bravado wore on me and I didn't appreciate the book he and his wife wrote on marriage (though not because Driscoll cheated to get the book turned into a bestseller). And I am not writing here to defend him necessarily, or even to say that he shouldn't have stepped down. Who in the world am I to make that judgment? He did and said some detestable things and in this culture where people love nothing more than to be offended, that type of personality is always going to have issues.
But I will say in his defense, that he has never backed down from his own sin or made light of his shortcomings. He has always been forthright in asking for repentance. That is an admirable quality.
Also in his defense I will say that God, scripturally and anecdotally speaking, seems to love to use brash, arrogant men whose hearts are softened by the gospel of Jesus. It is rare indeed that a pusillanimous people-pleaser comes to lead a revival. Those guys make excellent critics, though.
I am not saying this to suggest that we sweep everything unseemly a successful pastor does under the rug. The problems with that approach are manifold, and well-illustrated by a take-your-pick glance at recent church scandals. I am saying that I don't think God is done with Mark Driscoll. I am praying for him now, that God would take those great gifts he has given the man and continue to refine his character. That he would surround himself not with the sensitivity crowd, but with people full of grace and truth that want to see him be used and God be glorified and not strike a point for their pet cause. That as the gospel grows in Driscoll's heart he becomes the type of man he always showed signs he could one day be. I do also pray that there would be healing where there is hurt he has caused, genuine healing, and true repentance from Driscoll, but that his critics who were not directly involved in any of these events have the humility to recognize their own sin and pray for their brother.
14 October 2014
After the Praying, I'm Still a Bastard
In my junior classes we just wrapped up a unit on faith poetry. We surveyed a broad range of poems, ranging from atheist screeds against belief to faithful endorsements of God's power and beauty.
My favorite (new) poem from the unit was "Unholy Sonnet: After the Praying" by Mark Jarman. I will reproduce it below and then explain what I loved about the poem:
After the praying, after the hymn-singing,
After the sermon's trenchant commentary
On the world's ills, which make ours secondary,
After the communion, after the hang wringing,
And after peace descends upon us, bringing
Our eyes up to regard the sanctuary
And how the light swords through it, and how, scary
In their sheer numbers, motes of dust ride, clinging
There is, as doctors say about some pain,
Discomfort knowing that despite your prayers,
Your listening and your rejoicing, your small part
In this communal stab at coming clean,
There is one stubborn remnant of your cares
Intact. There is still murder in your heart.
Ah! That last line. But to begin at the beginning, it took me awhile to move past a bit of a superficial interpretation of lines 2-3. I had read it fairly straightforwardly as the "world's ills" being stuff like poverty and pain and war and how our own ills are "secondary" in the face of the overwhelming suffering in so much of the world. However, Jarman isn't making a surface-level comment here, but indicting the preaching in both conservative and liberal churches for being too outward in their denunciation of evil. In both places, the world's ills are emphasized to the point that our own fallenness, our own depravity, somehow becomes secondary.
For conservative churches the world's ills are gay marriage or cohabitation or wealth redistribution, so as long as you aren't living with your gay partner and voting Democrat you are doing well. For liberal churches the world's ills are poverty and conformity and capitalism, so as long as you are against poverty in the abstract, heterodox in your religious beliefs, and can go on a good rant about the evils of major corporations you also are doing well.
This is a caricature, of course, and painting with too broad of a brush, but I think the point holds. The churches that appeal to me, the ones that will last when the liberal or conservative topic du jour has lost its intensity are the ones that speak to me not about how bad stuff is out there and how messed up other people can be--be they communists or capitalists, homosexuals or homophobes--but about the murder in my own heart. In other words, I need to be reminded regularly how big of a bastard I am. I can always readily nod along to condemnations of evil in others. Who can't? Part of being a really big bastard is that it is easy to see how other people are bastards. What I need when I sit before the word of God is to hear how bad I am and how good Christ is to me. Despite my bastardness.
I love how Jarman forces us to consider the question of the efficacy of church: does church work? There is violence in this poem. The light swords through the sanctuary. The dust motes are scary in their sheer number and cling to the air, which for those paying attention is impossible to do. We make a stab at coming clean. And for our efforts we leave and feel better, but there is that unsettling small voice when we leave reminding us that this did not do the trick. What ruins us is not on the outside, but on the inside. Despite the prayers and the sermon and singing we are still murderers.
My students seemed to view this as entirely cynical and hopeless. I let them think that for awhile. I try not to be too directive in guiding their interpretations. After their frustration mounted, I told them that this is the gospel. This is who we are. Murderers. Adulterers. Thieves. Greedy. Covetous. Blasphemous. There will always be murder in our hearts. No communal stab, no sermon, no song will cleanse us. In Christ alone our hope is found.
My favorite (new) poem from the unit was "Unholy Sonnet: After the Praying" by Mark Jarman. I will reproduce it below and then explain what I loved about the poem:
After the praying, after the hymn-singing,
After the sermon's trenchant commentary
On the world's ills, which make ours secondary,
After the communion, after the hang wringing,
And after peace descends upon us, bringing
Our eyes up to regard the sanctuary
And how the light swords through it, and how, scary
In their sheer numbers, motes of dust ride, clinging
There is, as doctors say about some pain,
Discomfort knowing that despite your prayers,
Your listening and your rejoicing, your small part
In this communal stab at coming clean,
There is one stubborn remnant of your cares
Intact. There is still murder in your heart.
Ah! That last line. But to begin at the beginning, it took me awhile to move past a bit of a superficial interpretation of lines 2-3. I had read it fairly straightforwardly as the "world's ills" being stuff like poverty and pain and war and how our own ills are "secondary" in the face of the overwhelming suffering in so much of the world. However, Jarman isn't making a surface-level comment here, but indicting the preaching in both conservative and liberal churches for being too outward in their denunciation of evil. In both places, the world's ills are emphasized to the point that our own fallenness, our own depravity, somehow becomes secondary.
For conservative churches the world's ills are gay marriage or cohabitation or wealth redistribution, so as long as you aren't living with your gay partner and voting Democrat you are doing well. For liberal churches the world's ills are poverty and conformity and capitalism, so as long as you are against poverty in the abstract, heterodox in your religious beliefs, and can go on a good rant about the evils of major corporations you also are doing well.
This is a caricature, of course, and painting with too broad of a brush, but I think the point holds. The churches that appeal to me, the ones that will last when the liberal or conservative topic du jour has lost its intensity are the ones that speak to me not about how bad stuff is out there and how messed up other people can be--be they communists or capitalists, homosexuals or homophobes--but about the murder in my own heart. In other words, I need to be reminded regularly how big of a bastard I am. I can always readily nod along to condemnations of evil in others. Who can't? Part of being a really big bastard is that it is easy to see how other people are bastards. What I need when I sit before the word of God is to hear how bad I am and how good Christ is to me. Despite my bastardness.
I love how Jarman forces us to consider the question of the efficacy of church: does church work? There is violence in this poem. The light swords through the sanctuary. The dust motes are scary in their sheer number and cling to the air, which for those paying attention is impossible to do. We make a stab at coming clean. And for our efforts we leave and feel better, but there is that unsettling small voice when we leave reminding us that this did not do the trick. What ruins us is not on the outside, but on the inside. Despite the prayers and the sermon and singing we are still murderers.
My students seemed to view this as entirely cynical and hopeless. I let them think that for awhile. I try not to be too directive in guiding their interpretations. After their frustration mounted, I told them that this is the gospel. This is who we are. Murderers. Adulterers. Thieves. Greedy. Covetous. Blasphemous. There will always be murder in our hearts. No communal stab, no sermon, no song will cleanse us. In Christ alone our hope is found.
09 October 2014
The Word of God and the word of God
As most of you know, this is my first year teaching high school and thus the past two months have been chaotic. We are settling in to a new house, and both Clara and I to new jobs. Roots seem to be sinking, some traction digging in.
I do not have many preliminary reflections on teaching. Most of the time I still feel as if I am trying to keep my head above water, but the schedule seems to be coalescing and I am hopeful to have more time to read, write, and reflect about other matters tangential to my job teaching. My hopes might be misplaced; it certainly wouldn't be the first time.
I did want to make one comment about teaching, though, one thing that has surprised me: I enjoy teaching grammar. Grammar instruction is a huge component of our curriculum, especially at the freshman level and one of my favorite parts of the week is teaching that week's grammar lesson. I have never been anti-grammar, whatever that might mean, but I have respectfully ignored spliced commas, dangling modifiers, unclear pronouns, and their brethren in bad grammar. In fact, while teaching writing at the collegiate level I was explicitly instructed to ignore grammar errors. I could mark them on the page, but errors could not be punished in lowering the student's grade.
Not so here. At my school we aim to produce students who write right, right? There is a precision to grammar that I love--the aim to say precisely what we mean in the most rhetorically effective manner. I found this John Piper quote where he discusses the importance of grammar to a Christian. Read this:
Piper is driving at the fact that since God has revealed himself to us through Christ and through the language of Scripture we ignore both to our peril. In the incarnation Christ becomes present to us in our humanity, humbling himself in our form, and God likewise condescends to speak to us in words that are intelligible to us, words meant for our instruction and delight. When we see the syntax and grammar of Scripture we are seeing a piece of the mind of God. Words and how we use them are important if for no other reason than our God has deigned to speak to us in words. The power of words is blessed by the power of God.
Therefore, grammar instruction is not pedantry, precision in language is not becoming a grammar nazi. Caring for words reflects our care for the word-giver. And that is sufficient to make me excited to teach the subject to kids who couldn't care less.
I do not have many preliminary reflections on teaching. Most of the time I still feel as if I am trying to keep my head above water, but the schedule seems to be coalescing and I am hopeful to have more time to read, write, and reflect about other matters tangential to my job teaching. My hopes might be misplaced; it certainly wouldn't be the first time.
I did want to make one comment about teaching, though, one thing that has surprised me: I enjoy teaching grammar. Grammar instruction is a huge component of our curriculum, especially at the freshman level and one of my favorite parts of the week is teaching that week's grammar lesson. I have never been anti-grammar, whatever that might mean, but I have respectfully ignored spliced commas, dangling modifiers, unclear pronouns, and their brethren in bad grammar. In fact, while teaching writing at the collegiate level I was explicitly instructed to ignore grammar errors. I could mark them on the page, but errors could not be punished in lowering the student's grade.
Not so here. At my school we aim to produce students who write right, right? There is a precision to grammar that I love--the aim to say precisely what we mean in the most rhetorically effective manner. I found this John Piper quote where he discusses the importance of grammar to a Christian. Read this:
"An evangelical believes that God humbled himself not only in the incarnation of the Son, but also in the inspiration of the Scriptures. The manger and the cross were not sensational. Neither are grammar and syntax. But that is how God chose to reveal himself. A poor Jewish peasant and a prepositional phrase have this in common; they are both human and both ordinary. That the poor peasant was God and the prepositional phrase is the Word of God does not change this fact. Therefore, if God humbled himself to take on human flesh and to speak human language, woe to us if we arrogantly presume to ignore the humanity of Christ and the grammar of Scripture."
Piper is driving at the fact that since God has revealed himself to us through Christ and through the language of Scripture we ignore both to our peril. In the incarnation Christ becomes present to us in our humanity, humbling himself in our form, and God likewise condescends to speak to us in words that are intelligible to us, words meant for our instruction and delight. When we see the syntax and grammar of Scripture we are seeing a piece of the mind of God. Words and how we use them are important if for no other reason than our God has deigned to speak to us in words. The power of words is blessed by the power of God.
Therefore, grammar instruction is not pedantry, precision in language is not becoming a grammar nazi. Caring for words reflects our care for the word-giver. And that is sufficient to make me excited to teach the subject to kids who couldn't care less.
24 August 2014
The Guns of August, 2
When war broke out the various nations that would play a part in the conflict began mobilizing their forces. Germany's entire war plan counted on a quick strike. In order to ensure victory, they had to seize victory in the west before Russia could mobilize and strike in the east. Russian mobilization was expected to take longer than six weeks. Thus, Germany's plan called for victory over France in 40 days.
A few obstacles to this goal arose. First, was Belgium. Belgium was a newer nation, small in size and not able to fight against one of the continental powers. Thus it was protected by the other powers, including England. Strategically, Belgium was hugely important to Germany. If they occupied Belgium they could strike directly south to France. The German war plan called for the rightmost soldier to brush the channel with his sleeve. In order for that to happen, Belgium's neutrality and sovereignty would have to be violated. German leaders were not concerned about the military threat posed by the Belgians. If anything they expected them to roll over. The timetable for swinging its right flank through the country neglected to account for any Belgian resistance at all. The problem with invading Belgium, from the German perspective, was that once Belgian sovereignty was violated England would be treaty-bound to enter the war. The British military, especially the British Navy, was of concern to the Germans.
When German boots crossed into Belgium they did not find a compliant people or a feckless king. The Belgians resisted, decimating the German army in an early series of battles. Victory by the Belgians was never a possibility, but their fierce resistance slowed down the German advance. Moreover, it emboldened the world to speak out against Germany's aggression. News of German retaliations against Belgian citizens was broadcasted to the world, and the world turned against Germany. England, goaded by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, declared in favor of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to occupy the left flank of the French forces. Though poorly led and mostly retreating the first month of the war, the French rallied the English to their cause when von Kluck exposed his right flank and the BEF was a key part of the battle of the Marne.
Another obstacle to the German timetable was Russia. The Russian behemoth mobilized much quicker than was expected. Spurred on by the French, the Russians sent armies into the field that were grievously unequipped for war with Germany but even 1,000,000 poorly-equipped soldiers is something that has to be dealt with. Germany dispatched two key battalions to the eastern front. Russian losses were staggering, but they accomplished the goal of making Germany fight a two-front war.
In a sense, then, Russia and Belgium are responsible for saving Europe. England might not have entered the war had Belgian neutrality not been violated and popular opinion so enamored of the conduct of the Belgians. If that hadn't happened the Germans would have enveloped France and taken Paris by the middle of September. If the Russians hadn't sacrificed thousands of men in an ill-fated early attack on Germany, the two German battalions called away might have given the Germans all they needed to overrun both the French and the British forces in the west. All of this three years before the U.S. entered the conflict.
The Battle of the Marne was waged over a week in early September of 1914. It falls out of the purview of Tuchman's book, which keyed in only on the first month of the conflict. In that week, though, 500,000 soldiers were killed or wounded. It was the bloodiest-per-day battle of the conflict. While it was ultimately an Allied victory and the Germans would never get as close to Paris as they had been in August of 1914, the victory also set the stage for four years of trench warfare and the madness and killing and senselessness of that war. With victories like that, who needs defeats?
A few obstacles to this goal arose. First, was Belgium. Belgium was a newer nation, small in size and not able to fight against one of the continental powers. Thus it was protected by the other powers, including England. Strategically, Belgium was hugely important to Germany. If they occupied Belgium they could strike directly south to France. The German war plan called for the rightmost soldier to brush the channel with his sleeve. In order for that to happen, Belgium's neutrality and sovereignty would have to be violated. German leaders were not concerned about the military threat posed by the Belgians. If anything they expected them to roll over. The timetable for swinging its right flank through the country neglected to account for any Belgian resistance at all. The problem with invading Belgium, from the German perspective, was that once Belgian sovereignty was violated England would be treaty-bound to enter the war. The British military, especially the British Navy, was of concern to the Germans.
When German boots crossed into Belgium they did not find a compliant people or a feckless king. The Belgians resisted, decimating the German army in an early series of battles. Victory by the Belgians was never a possibility, but their fierce resistance slowed down the German advance. Moreover, it emboldened the world to speak out against Germany's aggression. News of German retaliations against Belgian citizens was broadcasted to the world, and the world turned against Germany. England, goaded by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, declared in favor of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to occupy the left flank of the French forces. Though poorly led and mostly retreating the first month of the war, the French rallied the English to their cause when von Kluck exposed his right flank and the BEF was a key part of the battle of the Marne.
Another obstacle to the German timetable was Russia. The Russian behemoth mobilized much quicker than was expected. Spurred on by the French, the Russians sent armies into the field that were grievously unequipped for war with Germany but even 1,000,000 poorly-equipped soldiers is something that has to be dealt with. Germany dispatched two key battalions to the eastern front. Russian losses were staggering, but they accomplished the goal of making Germany fight a two-front war.
In a sense, then, Russia and Belgium are responsible for saving Europe. England might not have entered the war had Belgian neutrality not been violated and popular opinion so enamored of the conduct of the Belgians. If that hadn't happened the Germans would have enveloped France and taken Paris by the middle of September. If the Russians hadn't sacrificed thousands of men in an ill-fated early attack on Germany, the two German battalions called away might have given the Germans all they needed to overrun both the French and the British forces in the west. All of this three years before the U.S. entered the conflict.
The Battle of the Marne was waged over a week in early September of 1914. It falls out of the purview of Tuchman's book, which keyed in only on the first month of the conflict. In that week, though, 500,000 soldiers were killed or wounded. It was the bloodiest-per-day battle of the conflict. While it was ultimately an Allied victory and the Germans would never get as close to Paris as they had been in August of 1914, the victory also set the stage for four years of trench warfare and the madness and killing and senselessness of that war. With victories like that, who needs defeats?
17 August 2014
The Guns of August
In August of 1914 the world erupted into the conflagration that came to be known as the Great War. After the European powers repeated the steps less than thirty years later, the Great War was amended to World War I. It is a conflict about which I know very little. Its brutality and pointlessness do not make way for glory in the same way as its better known child. There is little glory at the bottom of a trench, nothing rousing in a pile of young bodies rotting in no man's land.
Attempting to rectify my ignorance of the conflict I spent the past month or so reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, her account of the first month of the war. Superlatives fail. It was a fascinating read. Even though the Europe it conjures is scarcely a century past (there are people in your town who were alive during the conflict), it is an entirely foreign world--a world of princes and kings and archdukes and detente and entente and confusing treaties and the vast progeny of Queen Victoria. It was an era that still believed in honor, that took a nation's right to dominate whatever was within its power to control as a piece of natural law, that saw Europe as a continent of competing powers and not some panEuropean utopia.
Tuchman begins with a vision of old Europe. The death of King Edward VII of England was attended by nine kings, five heirs apparent, forty imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens, and numerous ambassadors. The Kaiser of Germany, William II, rode in attendance; the new King of England, George V, rode in the front row; King Frederick of Denmark was there, as was Alfonso of Spain and Manuel of Portugal and the soon to be famous Albert of Belgium. Franz Ferdinand was there, accompanied by the old Emperor Franz Josef. Crown Prince Rupprecht, who would lead the German army in battle, was there. Edward had broken England's isolation, uniting the nation with France and Russia, two old enemies and the upstart Japan.
The unity with France unsettled the Kaiser and prevented him from pursuing a better peace with England. The Kaiser longed for the acclaim of France, dreamed of being paraded through the streets of Paris. Tuchman notes, "it is perhaps the saddest story of the fate of kings that the Kaiser lived to be eighty-two and died without seeing Paris." The rapprochement was not to come. The new Germany, united by Bismarck, emboldened by the victories over France in 1870, chomped at the bit, straining to assert itself in a continent that openly derided its parochialism and provinciality. Germany would soon get its chance.
England's unity with Russia was even more of a blow to the German people. Alexandra, Czar Nicholas's wife, was German. Nicholas and William were cousins. But Alexandra hated William and the czar was constrained by his more evenhanded ministers from signing an entente with Germany. Germany was, for all intents and purposes, surrounded. France to the west, Russia to the east, England on the seas. Their alliance with Italy was suspect and Austria could not provide enough protection against the hulking beast of Russia to give Germany freedom to fight only on one front in the west. A two-front war haunted Germany's military minds.
However, much of this was subliminal at the death of Edward. Peace seemed to be the order of the day. Germany could pontificate and quotes its Nietzsche and thump its chest, but the balance in Europe seemed to be stable. In 1910, the year of Edward's magisterial funeral, Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, which "proved that war had become vain." Given the economic interdependence of the nations, no country would be foolish enough to start a new war. A cult grew around the book and optimism seemed to replace predilections of war.
But at the end of June, Gavrilo Princip's shot rang out in the Sarajevo morning and the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire choked to death on his own blood in the back of his motorcar. Austria declared war on Bosnia, Bosnia was defended under treaty by Russia, Germany came in for Austria under odd pretenses. Thus the war in the east began. Inventing a threat from France, Germany violated Belgian neutrality in order to invade France from the north. Treaty-bound to defend Belgium, England declared for the side of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to France. Thus the war in the west began.
Four years later, after 16 million people had died, the madness was put to bed for a time.
In my next post I will take a brief look at how that first month played out and how it served as a harbinger for the horrors to come. I would love to have more time to engage with the book, but tomorrow morning I start teaching and will be pretty busy for the next several months. My posting has fallen off the map since moving to Colorado, but I anticipate being able to post once per week during the school year. I should have a follow-up post by the end of next weekend.
Attempting to rectify my ignorance of the conflict I spent the past month or so reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, her account of the first month of the war. Superlatives fail. It was a fascinating read. Even though the Europe it conjures is scarcely a century past (there are people in your town who were alive during the conflict), it is an entirely foreign world--a world of princes and kings and archdukes and detente and entente and confusing treaties and the vast progeny of Queen Victoria. It was an era that still believed in honor, that took a nation's right to dominate whatever was within its power to control as a piece of natural law, that saw Europe as a continent of competing powers and not some panEuropean utopia.
Tuchman begins with a vision of old Europe. The death of King Edward VII of England was attended by nine kings, five heirs apparent, forty imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens, and numerous ambassadors. The Kaiser of Germany, William II, rode in attendance; the new King of England, George V, rode in the front row; King Frederick of Denmark was there, as was Alfonso of Spain and Manuel of Portugal and the soon to be famous Albert of Belgium. Franz Ferdinand was there, accompanied by the old Emperor Franz Josef. Crown Prince Rupprecht, who would lead the German army in battle, was there. Edward had broken England's isolation, uniting the nation with France and Russia, two old enemies and the upstart Japan.
The unity with France unsettled the Kaiser and prevented him from pursuing a better peace with England. The Kaiser longed for the acclaim of France, dreamed of being paraded through the streets of Paris. Tuchman notes, "it is perhaps the saddest story of the fate of kings that the Kaiser lived to be eighty-two and died without seeing Paris." The rapprochement was not to come. The new Germany, united by Bismarck, emboldened by the victories over France in 1870, chomped at the bit, straining to assert itself in a continent that openly derided its parochialism and provinciality. Germany would soon get its chance.
England's unity with Russia was even more of a blow to the German people. Alexandra, Czar Nicholas's wife, was German. Nicholas and William were cousins. But Alexandra hated William and the czar was constrained by his more evenhanded ministers from signing an entente with Germany. Germany was, for all intents and purposes, surrounded. France to the west, Russia to the east, England on the seas. Their alliance with Italy was suspect and Austria could not provide enough protection against the hulking beast of Russia to give Germany freedom to fight only on one front in the west. A two-front war haunted Germany's military minds.
However, much of this was subliminal at the death of Edward. Peace seemed to be the order of the day. Germany could pontificate and quotes its Nietzsche and thump its chest, but the balance in Europe seemed to be stable. In 1910, the year of Edward's magisterial funeral, Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, which "proved that war had become vain." Given the economic interdependence of the nations, no country would be foolish enough to start a new war. A cult grew around the book and optimism seemed to replace predilections of war.
But at the end of June, Gavrilo Princip's shot rang out in the Sarajevo morning and the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire choked to death on his own blood in the back of his motorcar. Austria declared war on Bosnia, Bosnia was defended under treaty by Russia, Germany came in for Austria under odd pretenses. Thus the war in the east began. Inventing a threat from France, Germany violated Belgian neutrality in order to invade France from the north. Treaty-bound to defend Belgium, England declared for the side of the Allies and dispatched an expeditionary force to France. Thus the war in the west began.
Four years later, after 16 million people had died, the madness was put to bed for a time.
In my next post I will take a brief look at how that first month played out and how it served as a harbinger for the horrors to come. I would love to have more time to engage with the book, but tomorrow morning I start teaching and will be pretty busy for the next several months. My posting has fallen off the map since moving to Colorado, but I anticipate being able to post once per week during the school year. I should have a follow-up post by the end of next weekend.
01 August 2014
The Key to Paradise Lost, or One Nominal Theory on the Issue of the Hero of the Epic
I do not know that I have found the key to understanding Paradise Lost. Maybe. The title of the post is a nod to the wonderful pedantic Edward Causabon of Middlemarch, whose life's work was to be The Key to All Mythologies. Unfortunately for the world, Dr. Causabon died, victim to the harshness of George Eliot's pen, before he could complete his tome and enlighten the world.
In general I am leery of theories or claims that are as absolute as "the key to this" or "the until now overlooked aspect of that." People who make claims like that are mistaking boldness in rhetoric for boldness in thought. That large caveat aside, in my Scripture reading the other day I did come across a verse that can function, while perhaps not the key, at least a very useful lens for adjudicating the great Satan debate in Paradise Lost.
For those of you further down on the nerd scale, the debate basically centers around the hero of Paradise Lost. PL is an epic and all epics come equipped with a hero. The Iliad has Achilles. The Odyssey has Odysseus. The Aeneid has Aeneas. But Milton doesn't have a straightforward hero. People who enjoy controversy and quite literally playing the devil's advocate claim Satan as the hero. William Blake, a great reader of Milton and wonderfully visual poet, wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that "Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it."
A straightforward, maybe simplistic, reading of the poem can lead to this conclusion. Satan has all the best speeches. He is defiant and brave. "To reign is worth ambition though in hell/ Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." That is a great line. He refuses to accept defeat after literally waking up in hell. In other words, of all the characters in the epic Satan most embodies the classical traits of the hero.
But maybe Milton didn't want a classical hero. Maybe, in fact, he was sending up the ideals embodied by the classical hero. I have long sensed this as I have engaged with the poem, but in reading Romans 2 the other day it was brought home in a different way. Here is the text:
"He will render to each according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." (Romans 2:6-8 ESV)
The classic course of the hero was to seek glory and honor and immortality. It was why Achilles went to Troy. But there is nothing more antithetical to the classical notion of heroism than the idea that glory and honor and immortality are achieved through "patience in well-doing." Glory and honor and immortality, for the ancients, had to be grasped at, struggled for; you had to do bold things and risk daringly, like Satan in Paradise Lost. But for the Christian we live patiently and do the good works God has prepared for us in Christ. A bit less grandiose. Not too many three hour blockbusters made about a Christian businessman living a patient life of good works in his suburban community.
But the quest for the Christian is different. What we need to do has already been done in Christ. Our job is to use the faith we have been given to endure. To finish the race. To continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that we heard. My ambitions when I was younger were for grand things. To change the world. To die a glorious martyr for Christ. Now my goals have changed. Life is long, the race is hard, and I just want to make it. When all hell breaks loose in this world and in my life, I want to stand.
I think Milton was on to this in setting Satan up as the most heroic character in the epic. If heroism leads to being Satan then what value is there in that type of heroism? Better to be patient. Better to endure. Better to live out good works. Better to, as Milton puts it in another poem, "only stand and wait."
In general I am leery of theories or claims that are as absolute as "the key to this" or "the until now overlooked aspect of that." People who make claims like that are mistaking boldness in rhetoric for boldness in thought. That large caveat aside, in my Scripture reading the other day I did come across a verse that can function, while perhaps not the key, at least a very useful lens for adjudicating the great Satan debate in Paradise Lost.
For those of you further down on the nerd scale, the debate basically centers around the hero of Paradise Lost. PL is an epic and all epics come equipped with a hero. The Iliad has Achilles. The Odyssey has Odysseus. The Aeneid has Aeneas. But Milton doesn't have a straightforward hero. People who enjoy controversy and quite literally playing the devil's advocate claim Satan as the hero. William Blake, a great reader of Milton and wonderfully visual poet, wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that "Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it."
A straightforward, maybe simplistic, reading of the poem can lead to this conclusion. Satan has all the best speeches. He is defiant and brave. "To reign is worth ambition though in hell/ Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." That is a great line. He refuses to accept defeat after literally waking up in hell. In other words, of all the characters in the epic Satan most embodies the classical traits of the hero.
But maybe Milton didn't want a classical hero. Maybe, in fact, he was sending up the ideals embodied by the classical hero. I have long sensed this as I have engaged with the poem, but in reading Romans 2 the other day it was brought home in a different way. Here is the text:
"He will render to each according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." (Romans 2:6-8 ESV)
The classic course of the hero was to seek glory and honor and immortality. It was why Achilles went to Troy. But there is nothing more antithetical to the classical notion of heroism than the idea that glory and honor and immortality are achieved through "patience in well-doing." Glory and honor and immortality, for the ancients, had to be grasped at, struggled for; you had to do bold things and risk daringly, like Satan in Paradise Lost. But for the Christian we live patiently and do the good works God has prepared for us in Christ. A bit less grandiose. Not too many three hour blockbusters made about a Christian businessman living a patient life of good works in his suburban community.
But the quest for the Christian is different. What we need to do has already been done in Christ. Our job is to use the faith we have been given to endure. To finish the race. To continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that we heard. My ambitions when I was younger were for grand things. To change the world. To die a glorious martyr for Christ. Now my goals have changed. Life is long, the race is hard, and I just want to make it. When all hell breaks loose in this world and in my life, I want to stand.
I think Milton was on to this in setting Satan up as the most heroic character in the epic. If heroism leads to being Satan then what value is there in that type of heroism? Better to be patient. Better to endure. Better to live out good works. Better to, as Milton puts it in another poem, "only stand and wait."
30 July 2014
Tomorrow, I Teach
Tomorrow I start my training to be a high school English teacher. The road to this point I have already documented and you can read if you wish. I do not have much more to say on the topic right now. Only that I am very, very grateful.
We have been living in Colorado for just over a month now, out of suitcases in my parent's house. And it couldn't have been better. The weather, the mountains, our families, our friends. I have climbed mountains and run trails, sat outside on cool July evenings and slept under the stars at 11,000 feet above sea level.
When we first arrived in town I actually got a head start on my teaching experience. My new school had a project starting this summer that my department head thought I would be a good fit for: a Great Books project, or a history of philosophy. We took critical Western thinkers from the past 3,000 years, read their works, and wrote a 4-5 page chronicle of their biography, the themes in their writing, and their legacy in Western life and thought. In my 2+ weeks on the project I covered the following thinkers: Milton (obvs), Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, William James, John Dewey, Dante, Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Horace, and Edward Gibbon. In other words, I was paid well to do what I would have gladly done for free. The goal of the project is to have a Great Books elective for our students and hopefully to use the curriculum we develop in other schools as well. Thus far in my life it is the coolest intellectual project I have ever been involved in.
I am excited, which is why I am writing at what is typically my bedtime. It is not often in life that everything seems to align perfectly and you understand why it is that you have traveled the road that you have. I spent most of the past four years wondering what in the world I was doing with my life, and now it appears I have my answer: preparing for this.
We have been living in Colorado for just over a month now, out of suitcases in my parent's house. And it couldn't have been better. The weather, the mountains, our families, our friends. I have climbed mountains and run trails, sat outside on cool July evenings and slept under the stars at 11,000 feet above sea level.
When we first arrived in town I actually got a head start on my teaching experience. My new school had a project starting this summer that my department head thought I would be a good fit for: a Great Books project, or a history of philosophy. We took critical Western thinkers from the past 3,000 years, read their works, and wrote a 4-5 page chronicle of their biography, the themes in their writing, and their legacy in Western life and thought. In my 2+ weeks on the project I covered the following thinkers: Milton (obvs), Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, William James, John Dewey, Dante, Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Horace, and Edward Gibbon. In other words, I was paid well to do what I would have gladly done for free. The goal of the project is to have a Great Books elective for our students and hopefully to use the curriculum we develop in other schools as well. Thus far in my life it is the coolest intellectual project I have ever been involved in.
I am excited, which is why I am writing at what is typically my bedtime. It is not often in life that everything seems to align perfectly and you understand why it is that you have traveled the road that you have. I spent most of the past four years wondering what in the world I was doing with my life, and now it appears I have my answer: preparing for this.
26 June 2014
Tim Keller on Miracles
The Coffmans have arrived safely in Colorado. We have settled into my parents' house while we look for a home of our own on the south side of Denver, so I am living with my parents for the first time since moving to college in 2002. They will probably let me stay out as late as I want these days, though my mom will probably still call to check on me if I am out past dark.
I have been preoccupied with the logistics of the move and have had little time for reflection or writing. So, I am pawning off someone else's thoughts on you. I am rereading Tim Keller's book The Reason for God and here is what he has to say about miracles:
"The most instructive thing about this text [the stories about Jesus' resurrection] is, however, what it says about the purpose of Biblical miracles. They lead not simply to cognitive belief, but to worship, to awe and wonder. Jesus' miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like: 'See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!' Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming." (99)
I find that beautiful, the distinction between suspension and restoration. One day our Lord will make all things new. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
I have been preoccupied with the logistics of the move and have had little time for reflection or writing. So, I am pawning off someone else's thoughts on you. I am rereading Tim Keller's book The Reason for God and here is what he has to say about miracles:
"The most instructive thing about this text [the stories about Jesus' resurrection] is, however, what it says about the purpose of Biblical miracles. They lead not simply to cognitive belief, but to worship, to awe and wonder. Jesus' miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like: 'See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!' Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming." (99)
I find that beautiful, the distinction between suspension and restoration. One day our Lord will make all things new. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
19 June 2014
On Leaving Kansas for What I Hope Will Be the Final Time
The first time I moved from Kansas to Colorado I was 10 years old. Nearly 11. Ten and three-quarters. I had just finished the fifth grade. I remember wanting to walk home from school that final day, enjoy one last slow amble with Joe Mabon and Brad O'Bryhim and whoever else walked with us whose names I have now forgotten, loping down the middle of the street in a town where that was still safe. But it was raining instead. Brad's mom met us at the school offering us all a ride home. I looked out the window of her minivan as the town flashed by us too quickly, chewing up in seconds what we could have stretched to minutes. And then I was home. Alone. Mom and Ty were still at the elementary school, mom wrapping everything up for the year. Tyler causing trouble, undoubtedly.
I came inside our house and slinked out of my jacket and backpack and lay down on the couch and looked out the window and stared up into the gray sky through the branches of a tree that had yet to bloom in the late spring. My life was ending. A new one would begin. And I had no idea what that meant or what it would look like. I only knew I had loved what I had in that little town in that little school with my little group of friends and that I might never have anything so good again.
When you are 10 years old you have no conception of something like The Rest of Your Life. I remember wishing that we could be living in Kansas again in time for me to go to high school with all of my friends. Play football together. Drive to school. Kiss the girls who would allow it. But I was leaving and those dreams of mine were dying in a way I only half-understood.
Fifteen years later I moved back. Not to that little town. But back to Kansas. Chasing a degree and a half-discerned dream, trying to plant a church. Those were the intentions anyway. Mostly, God gave us two kids and the trial by fire that is a Master's program.
And now I stand on the cusp of leaving again. This time I am not stretched out on the couch, feeling nostalgic in the way only a sensitive pre-adolescent can, but as grateful as I am to be returning to Colorado, as much as it feels like answering a call and bringing my dreams to fruition, I would be remiss not to look out of our bay window at our chicken coop and the rabbit picking its way through our Bermuda grass and not feel something. To watch my son run through the yard, shirt covered in sweat from the humidity, laughing and playing and mowing the yard with me. Every time we leave a place we give up something, even if at the time we cannot discern what that may be. For as much as my life in this place wasn't all that I wanted it to be, it was a great life.
This is where I learned how badly I needed to be a parent. How wonderful contentment in the home can be. How true it is that happiness is largely a choice. Leaving a place you don't like very much (Salina, not Kansas itself) is like going to the funeral of someone you didn't like very much: still sad. And no time to be petty. I have great hope for the future, trusting that this is God's will for our family and his vocation for my life. I am not sad in the slightest to be going to Colorado, only sad to be leaving Kansas. And, I trust that is right.
To the next step, my friends, may it be the last for awhile.
I came inside our house and slinked out of my jacket and backpack and lay down on the couch and looked out the window and stared up into the gray sky through the branches of a tree that had yet to bloom in the late spring. My life was ending. A new one would begin. And I had no idea what that meant or what it would look like. I only knew I had loved what I had in that little town in that little school with my little group of friends and that I might never have anything so good again.
When you are 10 years old you have no conception of something like The Rest of Your Life. I remember wishing that we could be living in Kansas again in time for me to go to high school with all of my friends. Play football together. Drive to school. Kiss the girls who would allow it. But I was leaving and those dreams of mine were dying in a way I only half-understood.
Fifteen years later I moved back. Not to that little town. But back to Kansas. Chasing a degree and a half-discerned dream, trying to plant a church. Those were the intentions anyway. Mostly, God gave us two kids and the trial by fire that is a Master's program.
And now I stand on the cusp of leaving again. This time I am not stretched out on the couch, feeling nostalgic in the way only a sensitive pre-adolescent can, but as grateful as I am to be returning to Colorado, as much as it feels like answering a call and bringing my dreams to fruition, I would be remiss not to look out of our bay window at our chicken coop and the rabbit picking its way through our Bermuda grass and not feel something. To watch my son run through the yard, shirt covered in sweat from the humidity, laughing and playing and mowing the yard with me. Every time we leave a place we give up something, even if at the time we cannot discern what that may be. For as much as my life in this place wasn't all that I wanted it to be, it was a great life.
This is where I learned how badly I needed to be a parent. How wonderful contentment in the home can be. How true it is that happiness is largely a choice. Leaving a place you don't like very much (Salina, not Kansas itself) is like going to the funeral of someone you didn't like very much: still sad. And no time to be petty. I have great hope for the future, trusting that this is God's will for our family and his vocation for my life. I am not sad in the slightest to be going to Colorado, only sad to be leaving Kansas. And, I trust that is right.
To the next step, my friends, may it be the last for awhile.
17 June 2014
Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars is blowing up both the bestseller list and the box office these days, as hordes of (mostly) adolescent (mostly) females rush to the cineplex in order to cry their freaking eyes out. I mean, we all know how hard it is to milk pathos out of (spoiler alert) kids dying from cancer. It takes a nimble mind to feel sad about such a thing. The author, John Green, was recently profiled in the New Yorker where he comes off as a dumbed-down Malcolm Gladwell for the millennial crowd (which is a complisult). I watched one of his videos and found it cute and it gives you the impression you just learned something. And he is just so derned earnest about the whole thing, messing up his hair and everything!
Typically this would not be a book I would read. However, seeing as I am going to be teaching some of our nation's youth starting in a couple of months I figured I ought to read the book that is currently most popular among that crowd. And believe me, I began fully intending to hate this book. I have written a cynical review in my head and it is awesome and hilarious. But to tear down a book written for 14 year-old girls is not much of a task, and besides my intent in reading wasn't to point out how silly a good chunk of the book comes off to an adult but to try and understand why such a book would mean so much to a 14 year-old girl.
And I think I get it. Green's book is so successful in the teen crowd because it takes teens and teenage ridiculousness seriously. In an infamous example of teenagey things, the protagonist Hazel (a cancer kid) goes on a lengthy riff to her parents about the injustice of scrambled eggs being relegated to breakfast alone and left out of other meals. I guffawed reading this section, but then of course I'm supposed to. I am an adult. If people in their thirties talked about stuff like that it would be even more stupid than a 16 year-old doing the same (which is still stupid).
But you are supposed to be stupidly earnest and tritely philosophical when you're 16 in the hopes that you're earnestness will one day be matched with intelligence and your philosophizing backed by actual thought. In other words, in the hope that you will grow up. I never said anything quite like the scrambled eggs business when I was 16, but I could imagine thinking something like that. I do remember conversations, multiple, with a friend on the comparative merits of Dr. Pepper versus Mountain Dew, a smackdown for the ages. A few years ago while camping by a lake I was even part of a discussion (sideline to a discussion, more accurately) in which college students were asked to ponder, and I so wish I was kidding, how the difference between a log that had fallen out of the firepit for roasting 'mallows and the logs that remained within the firepit reflected certain spiritual truths about our own spiritual fervor for God. The discussion lasted for several minutes. It was one of the first times in my life I remember feeling old. I just wanted to put the blasted log back in and move on.
Another natural complaint about the book is that no teenager in America talks the way the protagonists, Hazel and Augustus, regularly do in their intellectual banter. The characters are walking thesauruses (thesauri? These whip-smart teens would probably know). This complaint is probably true. But I want to say two things on this matter: first, this book is in a certain degree aspirational. Teens want to sound this intelligent, even when they do not or cannot. Hazel and Augustus, with their high-flown phrases and dictionary vocabulary are merely articulating what teens feel in a way the teens themselves are not yet able. Besides, this complaint seems misplaced and doesn't crop up in criticisms of other types of literature. After all, how many people have ever spoken like a Jane Austen heroine? How often in your life have you given a soliloquy? There is an emotional realism to this book even if it lacks, or seems to lack, linguistic realism.
The second thing to note is that teens confronted with death, as the main characters here are, will grow up and mature differently than teens planning to coast from high school into a six year college degree, drink a ton of alcohol and play video games and move back in with mom and dad. Hazel and Augustus stare death in the face and will view life differently for that experience. People who criticize the hyper-maturity of the characters are chronologically snobbish. For centuries before we invented adolescence 100 years ago real people regularly grew up quickly when forced to do so. They went to college at age 11, served as Prime Minister at the age of 24, wrote sonnets lamenting their lack of accomplishment when they turned 23, etc. Hazel and Augustus's disease plucked them out of the normal tenor of adolescent life and they matured quicker than their peers. That makes psychological sense.
I hesitate to even call this post a book review, because I am not really reviewing the book. It was not written for me. As a book it was fine. Two and a half stars, if you must know. I have spent five hours more foolishly in my past. But it is not something I will reread and I will not be joining the throngs at the theater to sob over the death of the young, heart-rending though it is.
But again that is not the point with a book like this. For me it has helped remind me of the sublime awfulness of being a teenager. And hopefully it has given me a window into the world of the students I will be teaching in the near future. And, more importantly, a greater degree of compassion for their plight. You will get through it teenagers. It gets better. And you don't have to die to figure that out.
Typically this would not be a book I would read. However, seeing as I am going to be teaching some of our nation's youth starting in a couple of months I figured I ought to read the book that is currently most popular among that crowd. And believe me, I began fully intending to hate this book. I have written a cynical review in my head and it is awesome and hilarious. But to tear down a book written for 14 year-old girls is not much of a task, and besides my intent in reading wasn't to point out how silly a good chunk of the book comes off to an adult but to try and understand why such a book would mean so much to a 14 year-old girl.
And I think I get it. Green's book is so successful in the teen crowd because it takes teens and teenage ridiculousness seriously. In an infamous example of teenagey things, the protagonist Hazel (a cancer kid) goes on a lengthy riff to her parents about the injustice of scrambled eggs being relegated to breakfast alone and left out of other meals. I guffawed reading this section, but then of course I'm supposed to. I am an adult. If people in their thirties talked about stuff like that it would be even more stupid than a 16 year-old doing the same (which is still stupid).
But you are supposed to be stupidly earnest and tritely philosophical when you're 16 in the hopes that you're earnestness will one day be matched with intelligence and your philosophizing backed by actual thought. In other words, in the hope that you will grow up. I never said anything quite like the scrambled eggs business when I was 16, but I could imagine thinking something like that. I do remember conversations, multiple, with a friend on the comparative merits of Dr. Pepper versus Mountain Dew, a smackdown for the ages. A few years ago while camping by a lake I was even part of a discussion (sideline to a discussion, more accurately) in which college students were asked to ponder, and I so wish I was kidding, how the difference between a log that had fallen out of the firepit for roasting 'mallows and the logs that remained within the firepit reflected certain spiritual truths about our own spiritual fervor for God. The discussion lasted for several minutes. It was one of the first times in my life I remember feeling old. I just wanted to put the blasted log back in and move on.
Another natural complaint about the book is that no teenager in America talks the way the protagonists, Hazel and Augustus, regularly do in their intellectual banter. The characters are walking thesauruses (thesauri? These whip-smart teens would probably know). This complaint is probably true. But I want to say two things on this matter: first, this book is in a certain degree aspirational. Teens want to sound this intelligent, even when they do not or cannot. Hazel and Augustus, with their high-flown phrases and dictionary vocabulary are merely articulating what teens feel in a way the teens themselves are not yet able. Besides, this complaint seems misplaced and doesn't crop up in criticisms of other types of literature. After all, how many people have ever spoken like a Jane Austen heroine? How often in your life have you given a soliloquy? There is an emotional realism to this book even if it lacks, or seems to lack, linguistic realism.
The second thing to note is that teens confronted with death, as the main characters here are, will grow up and mature differently than teens planning to coast from high school into a six year college degree, drink a ton of alcohol and play video games and move back in with mom and dad. Hazel and Augustus stare death in the face and will view life differently for that experience. People who criticize the hyper-maturity of the characters are chronologically snobbish. For centuries before we invented adolescence 100 years ago real people regularly grew up quickly when forced to do so. They went to college at age 11, served as Prime Minister at the age of 24, wrote sonnets lamenting their lack of accomplishment when they turned 23, etc. Hazel and Augustus's disease plucked them out of the normal tenor of adolescent life and they matured quicker than their peers. That makes psychological sense.
I hesitate to even call this post a book review, because I am not really reviewing the book. It was not written for me. As a book it was fine. Two and a half stars, if you must know. I have spent five hours more foolishly in my past. But it is not something I will reread and I will not be joining the throngs at the theater to sob over the death of the young, heart-rending though it is.
But again that is not the point with a book like this. For me it has helped remind me of the sublime awfulness of being a teenager. And hopefully it has given me a window into the world of the students I will be teaching in the near future. And, more importantly, a greater degree of compassion for their plight. You will get through it teenagers. It gets better. And you don't have to die to figure that out.
12 June 2014
Wild Things
This spring I read two books about vanishing species and the people who are trying either to save them from extinction or save themselves from a beast humans have feared for millennia. The first was The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant. Vaillant's book recounts the story of a vengeful tigress in the taiga of far eastern Russia who killed at least two hunters, both of whom it is theorized had antagonized the tiger previously, perhaps even poaching. The vengeance in the title is the tiger's though eventually, of course, a group of hunters tracks her down and kills her. The second, Ghost Grizzlies: Does the Great Bear Still Haunt Colorado?, is different in scope, geography, and emphasis. Author David Petersen tells the story of the grizzly in Colorado and offers evidence that the bear still survives in the backcountry of the San Juan national forest in southwestern Colorado.
The two books really do not have a lot to do with one another. Vaillant's book offers a portrait of life at the edge of humanity, in a place where tigers and men butt up against each other and for the most part have learned to live together. When one tiger attacks a hunter and his dog outside of his illegal cabin the entire region is thrown into chaos. A special force specifically designed to perhaps paradoxically protect the region's tigers and put down tiger threats finds evidence that the hunter had shot and hit the tiger previously and that she had stalked him down, hunted him, eventually killing the man and mutilating his body. Injured and scared she was going to be a danger to anyone she came into contact with. An impoverished young hunter disobeyed the orders of the government, going into the taiga to hunt. He was killed as well. Eventually the tiger was tracked down and killed. And the region was free from at least that one animal.
Petersen's book about the San Juan grizzlies is part cultural history of our encounters with the great bear and part mythic tales of alleged sightings since the last confirmed sighting. In 1979, a full 27 years after the Department of Wildlife declared Colorado grizzly-free a hunter and his guide were bow-hunting elk in the remote San Juans. Hearing a rustle in the bushes, Ed Wiseman, the guide, was attacked. He pulled an arrow out of his sling and stabbed the bear through the freaking heart, like a total badass. The bear wandered a few steps away from Wiseman, lay down and died. Wiseman sustained serious injury but survived and continued to guide. The narrative from the various government agencies in the succeeding 35 years has been the same as it was from 1952-1979: "This time we know for sure that was the last bear." But there is a cadre of folks in the region who beg to differ, insisting that enough virgin land remains for limited numbers of the bears to roam free.
I am neither the first nor the last to lament the loss of wildness from our world. There are pockets of wilderness and creatures still left in our world whose sublimity strikes fear into our collective psyche and for that I am grateful. God commanded us to steward creation and I don't think he meant to kill everything that frightens us and rape the land for profit. However, I am a city boy. For me the idea of a grizzly bear or a mountain lion or a tiger or a shark is a romantic idea. I have never lived in the taiga and had to wonder if I was being stalked by a tiger on my walk to school.
One of the questions each book poses in its own way is, what now? We humans have trammeled the land, hunted these species to extinction, and are still governed by a primal fear of the great predators. If the Department of Wildlife promoted grizzly rehabitation and one killed a hiker a holy poopstorm would rain down on everyone's heads. While my idealistic side says that it is worth it, they are not talking about reintroducing the bear in south Denver so the chances it would have any bearing on my life are quite slim (though my brother-in-law and I intend to use our family camping trip to Pagosa Springs this summer as an opportunity to search for grizzly). So many of us want to know that wildness exists out there somewhere. It is this that underlies the great and persistent appeal of the National Parks: elk! moose! mountains not being razed for coal mining! But then we go back to our climate-controlled environment and read Outside magazine.
In other words, it is really easy for me to say Protect the Tiger! or Bring Back the Grizzly! because to do so costs me very little. And I do genuinely think we should protect these wild species. For one, they act as a much-needed check to our egos. Our reign on the top of the food chain would seem precarious if our sixth sense caused us to intuit a tiger was watching us and determining its next move, no matter the caliber of the gun in our hands. We need things out there that make us feel small. For another, the plight of such gorgeous creatures (I hope I can wrestle with a grizzly bear in the new earth and run with a tiger) underscores the effects of our darker impulse to conquer without thought to consequence.
In the end I don't know what to do in situations like this because I don't know what can be done. Is the population of tigers in the taiga genetically different enough to sustain itself over time, assuming its survival? The same question applies to the San Juan grizzlies. Suppose there are a dozen brown bears roaming the Weiminuche. Left to their own devices would they still be around 50 years from now? Is our intervention going to help or harm? These questions are vexing and necessitated by the way we have treated these creatures for so long.
But the human element must be considered as well. I love grizzly bears and would thrill with the idea of sharing a mountain with one, but if one attacked someone and I had the means to stop it of course I would do so.
Maybe the lesson for Coloradoans pining for the return of the grizzly is the one the denizens of the taiga have learned and one that I am trying to teach my toddler son: sometimes you just have to share.
The two books really do not have a lot to do with one another. Vaillant's book offers a portrait of life at the edge of humanity, in a place where tigers and men butt up against each other and for the most part have learned to live together. When one tiger attacks a hunter and his dog outside of his illegal cabin the entire region is thrown into chaos. A special force specifically designed to perhaps paradoxically protect the region's tigers and put down tiger threats finds evidence that the hunter had shot and hit the tiger previously and that she had stalked him down, hunted him, eventually killing the man and mutilating his body. Injured and scared she was going to be a danger to anyone she came into contact with. An impoverished young hunter disobeyed the orders of the government, going into the taiga to hunt. He was killed as well. Eventually the tiger was tracked down and killed. And the region was free from at least that one animal.
Petersen's book about the San Juan grizzlies is part cultural history of our encounters with the great bear and part mythic tales of alleged sightings since the last confirmed sighting. In 1979, a full 27 years after the Department of Wildlife declared Colorado grizzly-free a hunter and his guide were bow-hunting elk in the remote San Juans. Hearing a rustle in the bushes, Ed Wiseman, the guide, was attacked. He pulled an arrow out of his sling and stabbed the bear through the freaking heart, like a total badass. The bear wandered a few steps away from Wiseman, lay down and died. Wiseman sustained serious injury but survived and continued to guide. The narrative from the various government agencies in the succeeding 35 years has been the same as it was from 1952-1979: "This time we know for sure that was the last bear." But there is a cadre of folks in the region who beg to differ, insisting that enough virgin land remains for limited numbers of the bears to roam free.
I am neither the first nor the last to lament the loss of wildness from our world. There are pockets of wilderness and creatures still left in our world whose sublimity strikes fear into our collective psyche and for that I am grateful. God commanded us to steward creation and I don't think he meant to kill everything that frightens us and rape the land for profit. However, I am a city boy. For me the idea of a grizzly bear or a mountain lion or a tiger or a shark is a romantic idea. I have never lived in the taiga and had to wonder if I was being stalked by a tiger on my walk to school.
One of the questions each book poses in its own way is, what now? We humans have trammeled the land, hunted these species to extinction, and are still governed by a primal fear of the great predators. If the Department of Wildlife promoted grizzly rehabitation and one killed a hiker a holy poopstorm would rain down on everyone's heads. While my idealistic side says that it is worth it, they are not talking about reintroducing the bear in south Denver so the chances it would have any bearing on my life are quite slim (though my brother-in-law and I intend to use our family camping trip to Pagosa Springs this summer as an opportunity to search for grizzly). So many of us want to know that wildness exists out there somewhere. It is this that underlies the great and persistent appeal of the National Parks: elk! moose! mountains not being razed for coal mining! But then we go back to our climate-controlled environment and read Outside magazine.
In other words, it is really easy for me to say Protect the Tiger! or Bring Back the Grizzly! because to do so costs me very little. And I do genuinely think we should protect these wild species. For one, they act as a much-needed check to our egos. Our reign on the top of the food chain would seem precarious if our sixth sense caused us to intuit a tiger was watching us and determining its next move, no matter the caliber of the gun in our hands. We need things out there that make us feel small. For another, the plight of such gorgeous creatures (I hope I can wrestle with a grizzly bear in the new earth and run with a tiger) underscores the effects of our darker impulse to conquer without thought to consequence.
In the end I don't know what to do in situations like this because I don't know what can be done. Is the population of tigers in the taiga genetically different enough to sustain itself over time, assuming its survival? The same question applies to the San Juan grizzlies. Suppose there are a dozen brown bears roaming the Weiminuche. Left to their own devices would they still be around 50 years from now? Is our intervention going to help or harm? These questions are vexing and necessitated by the way we have treated these creatures for so long.
But the human element must be considered as well. I love grizzly bears and would thrill with the idea of sharing a mountain with one, but if one attacked someone and I had the means to stop it of course I would do so.
Maybe the lesson for Coloradoans pining for the return of the grizzly is the one the denizens of the taiga have learned and one that I am trying to teach my toddler son: sometimes you just have to share.
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