Whichever passage in the synoptics you read it in, Christ's call to people to take up their cross and follow him is a stark commandment. Here is the passage in Luke's gospel:
23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his crossdaily and follow me.24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamedwhen he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:23-27)
Christ is here murdering our self-justifications: what God wants from us is to try our best; it is our heart that counts; I keep the whole law!; and the ways in general that we compartmentalize our lives. Christ's call is total. There is no equivocation here. He does not stutter and he is not apologetic about what he asks. There is no hedging. Cross. Everyday. Unashamed. Part of me reads this and gets excited; part of me reads this and is filled with dread. I want so badly to lay down my life for Christ, to put sin to death in my life, to live for his glory, and the prospects of a life lived in service to those ends is exciting. I dread this passage because I am so terrible at doing all of those things. Most days I think nothing of the cross, nothing of the strangeness of Christianity and the humiliation of following Christ. In this passage in Matthew's gospel Peter takes Jesus aside after he has foretold his crucifixion and rebukes him telling him that there is no way this can happen. God wouldn't let something bad happen to someone good, right? In response, Jesus calls Peter Satan. The cross is how we come close to Christ. This perverse symbol of human depravity is what cancels our depravity. We cannot remove the cross and its shame. We cannot remove the real blood and the real death that stands at the center of our confession. I think that along with excitement and dread this passage ought also to induce in us a great sense of gratitude. The way of Christ is the cross; the way of the Christ-follower is the cross. True. But by God's mercy the work of the cross is counted toward us, the righteousness of Christ is imputed as our own. Human Toby reads this passage and thinks, "No freaking way. I cannot do this. I cannot lay down my life like this, I can't shoulder a cross everyday. I can't give up my life everyday." And God in his mercy says, "You're right. That's the point." Jesus does what we could never do. Our Older Brother laid down his life everyday before he laid down his life on the Day. Our older brother shouldered a cross everyday before he shouldered the Cross. And we, in the great transfer, have been crucified with him and we no longer live. And our life in this flesh is lived by faith, including the faith to believe that we are both to take up a cross everyday and that our Lord has given us an easy yoke and a light burden. I am so grateful for the cross.
Most everyone knows that Washington was elected unanimously to the office of the president for the first, last, and certainly only time in our nation's history. He did not campaign, deliver rousing speeches, kiss babies, or try to reach out to Joe Sixpack. He was just like, "Look, who else would it be?" and people were like, "Yeah, you right." There were no challengers and there were no parties. Washington saw himself as above the idea of a party politician and actively hoped that the partisan spirit would not take root in the United States. Ha! Politicians love arguing and politicians also love being able to blame some other people if stuff goes bad. Parties were bound to happen. None of us can conceive of politics without parties for a reason. The alternative is hard to imagine. Also, you need people to disagree about stuff. You need people to say, "Government is bad! Businesses never do anything shadily or excessively." And you need other people to say, "Government is good. Government can solve all of our problems. You like roads, dontcha?" Both people are idiots but they provide a nice balance to each other. Anyway, Washington's high-mindedness aside, parties were always going to happen, but Washington was probably pretty p-o'd that the first real division was within his own cabinet. On the federalist team we have Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, who was like, "Remember how we needed a national army to win the war? Maybe we need a strong federal government." On the republican side we have Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, who was like, "We must be debt free as a nation, but taxes levied to pay those debts are evil. Oh, and the states pretty much have things covered, you snooty northerners." These guys hated each other. They each funded newspapers to sling mud at the other side. The dude Jefferson hired even castigated Washington for owning slaves. Thomas Jefferson, plantation owner of Monticello, baby daddy to Sally Hemings, berating another man for owning slaves. Pot, kettle, etc. It was weird stuff. Washington's own affections were more of a Federalist nature. The war had impressed upon him the need for a strong federal government, without which the unity and cohesion needed to win another war would be severely lacking. Washington was not a big government Democrat, by today's standards, just convinced that the nation needed an identity as a nation and not merely a conglomerate of states geographically related. Given this bent, much of Washington's implicit and explicit support was directed toward Hamilton. This, of course, earned him the ire of Jefferson and Madison and some of the other republicans. Which Washington hated. People could badmouth him in that purple prose eighteenth century style and he just had to take it. It frustrated him to no end, but he held the dignity of his office as of more value than scoring political points. Though he vented his exasperation in private, he never let it spill over to the public. He was a good man.
By now in our country's history we are all familiar with the role of the president: you promise a bunch of stuff on the campaign trail (maybe you mean it, maybe you don't, frankly it is hard to tell), get elected and realize how hard it is to get stuff done and change things, become a punching bag for whichever side is now out of power, get really gray hair, get one or two things accomplished that because of the weight of partisan opposition suck anyway, have people in your own party disown you for this or that (usually because you don't realize how totally great they are and how much you should be listening to them), convince yourself to run for a second term, usually win it, and then do mostly nothing while contenders in your own party and across the aisle ready themselves for the next election. Then you write a book, smile for some photographs, and pretend like you still give a tinker's damn about this country (sometimes you might even paint pictures of yourself in the bathtub). But when Washington took office no one had really figured any of this out yet. He was a trailblazer in the role, there was hardly even a historic precedent to look to within the previous 1500 years. Cromwell's Commonwealth? Not a great example. From my readings of these chapters, and from the perspective of a biographer who is very compassionate towards the challenges Washington faced, it seems like he was competent. When he was a general he didn't win many battles but he won the war by holding things together. The same thing sort of played out in his presidency. He had a number of strategic victories and perhaps amplified the constitutional intent for the role of President, but for the most part he left personally frustrated and with a deeply divided nation. As to the adjective competent, though, I don't want this to seem as if I am damning with faint praise. Competent is fantastic for a president. It has been awhile since we have gone there as a nation. Maybe it is from going to business school when the book Good to Great was all the rage, but the transformative, charismatic leader usually sets up his successor to fail. Washington refused to become a demigod. Though his ultimate goal was to rise above the fray he was forced to get his hands dirty. Perhaps his ultimate accomplishment was serving as an emotional ballast in a heady time for revolutions. The French revolution bathed Paris in blood, but there was no similar bloodletting for the United States in the wake of victory. Washington's calm demeanor, however carefully crafted, saved what could have been the almost universal tendency to replace one sort of tyranny with another. Washington restrained the worst impulse of revolutionaries, both in his role as general and as president, and I don't think we can underestimate what an amazing accomplishment that is in light of what could have been. Some additional thoughts on his presidency to come. Until then, have a wonderful holiday weekend.
The other night I was watching the kids while Clara worked. Ellie was taking a nap and Owen and I were outside playing. Owen is a worker, just like his mom. We spent a chunk of time in the front yard where he was mowing with his lawnmower. He chastised me for not mowing, but in my defense I had mowed the night before with my lawnmower. Though I don't mind looking the fool for my kids, pushing a lawnmower around my front yard without turning on the engine to amuse my son is just a bit too far. After mowing to his satisfaction he went through our yard and picked up all of the sticks to put in a wood chipper (he hands them to me and I make a buzzing noise). From there we moved to the backyard. "Will you rake with me daddy?" "Sure, buddy, let me go check on your sister first." I went upstairs and Ellie was awake so I grabbed her and headed back down. When we got to the backyard Owen was working with his rake up close to the house in a spot that sees no sun throughout the year and therefore has no grass. He was raking the loose dirt into a pile and had grabbed his wagon and shovel out of the shed. I had watched him maneuver it out from the upstairs window. He then set about scooping up the pile he had raked and putting the dirt into his wagon. Ellie and I sat in the yard to watch. He steered the wagon over to the swingset and began unloading the dirt beneath the slide area. It was 95 degrees that day, and humid. The sun was beating down and his entire head was soaked with sweat. After he stopped getting enough dirt in a shovel scoop to justify the use of the tool he reached with both hands and grabbed loose dirt and tossed it into his new pile. Of all the innocuous moments of parenting, moments that bleed into one another and are quickly forgotten, there was something about this one that I wanted to cling to. This image of my nearly three-year old son glistening with sweat in the early summer sun grabbing fistfuls of dirt and throwing them under a swingset. The sun on his face, the dirt accumulating all over his body, sticking fast to the sweat. The simple, dexterous movements. The confidence in his abilities. The total focus on a (for an outsider) completely silly task. My son's whole body and mind were devoted to this act. He could not have been more content anywhere in the world. He craned his fingers into every nook and cranny of that wagon until he was satisfied that he had scraped free everything he could. Then he turned the wagon on its side and dumped what was left into his pile. I didn't have the heart to tell him he could have saved himself some time and a mess if he had only started with that move. He'll figure stuff like that out when he gets older. But I am in no rush. I could watch my son empty dirt from a wagon for hours.
Last week I wrote a review of James KA Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom, which you can read here. I mentioned toward the end of my review that I feel like this is a book that is going to stick with me, that even though I felt Smith overstated his point his point was still well worth making. In my reading in the past week or so there have been a couple of other things that have made me think about the importance of liturgy and worship. The first, N.T. Wright's thoughts on the subject which are outlined briefly in his recent tome on the Apostle Paul. The second, a novel I am reading about a young Hasidic Jew. Wright's work is something I plan on engaging with often and at length as I work my way through its 1800 or so pages, but for my purpose in this post I want to draw out some of his thoughts on "worldview" that are germane to Smith's work. Smith balks, somewhat, at the language of worldview altogether, since such talk privileges, as he sees it, the life of the mind over a more embodied, holistic experience. Wright is not entirely comfortable with the term "worldview" himself, but caveats noted he says in reference to the worldview of Paul,
"the life of the mind was itself elevated by Paul from a secondary social activity, for those with the leisure to muse and ponder life's tricky questions, to a primary socio-cultural activity for all the Messiah's people. The interesting question of whether one thinks oneself into a new way of acting or acts oneself into a new way of thinking will, I suspect, continue to tease those who try to answer it (not least because it is of course reflexive: should you answer it by thinking of by acting?). . . Worldview creates a context for theology, but theology is necessary to sustain the worldview." (PFG 27)
Wright is driving toward something here that is tricky when evaluating a work like Smith's. While I agree with Smith's assessment that humans are by nature worshiping beings and that this is an inextricable part of our humanity, the call to discipleship within Christianity demands that we engage fully with our minds as well as our bodies and our affections. Which is merely to say that both men are right. At certain times and in certain contexts (such as Smith's Reformed world) it is right to emphasize the centrality of the body and of desire to Christian worship. At other times and in other contexts, for example a believer who only reads the Bible devotionally or refuses to deal with any "theology" cuz that's bad and divisive, it is helpful to be reminded that we are instructed to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. As to the second provoking text, this week I have been reading (and loving) Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a young Ladover Jew in Brooklyn who is blessed with a gift for painting. Perhaps I will write more about the book at some point, but for the subject at hand what stands out to me is the way the faith of the Ladovers invades every portion of their day. They pray at morning, noon, and night. They sing Psalms, they study Torah, they recite Scripture. Their days are infused throughout with reminders of their core identity: Jewish followers of the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Even their dress and hairstyle are formed in such a way as to set them apart. I found myself reading Asher's father asking him every night to say his Krias Shema ("Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one") and longing for that level of devotion, that simplicity of faith standing at the center of one's identity. Theological and cultural differences aside, I find it extremely admirable. Moreover, kids raised in this tradition will know that their faith marks them out from the world at large, that to follow God is a costly and precious thing. They will grow up with Scripture grafted into their heart. I can hear some people already casting doubt, claiming that such a system would only breed rebellion. My response: at least children raised under such a system would know what they are rebelling against. Given the Biblical illiteracy of even church-going Christians today, whose kids by and large walk away from the faith in rebellion anyway, I wonder if those kids have any idea of the depth of the tradition they are casting aside. With my own kids, I want them to see the depth of their faith tradition, to taste of its riches when they are in my home, and know that to follow Christ is no mean pursuit. And they would feel what it is to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
I knew in some distant, ill-used corner of my brain that there was a time lapse between the end of the Revolutionary War and Washington's election as the first president of the United States. But I had forgotten that it was nearly six years, roughly the amount of time Obama has been president. Which is to say, quite a while. Six years ago I was child-free, roaming the deserts of west Texas and New Mexico, just starting to read books again. In other words, a not insignificant period of time. There was a lot of speculation about what role Washington would take. The Constitutional convention that paved the way for the presidency had not yet taken place and there were many who were eager to crown Washington as a sort of new king for the newly-minted nation. If the temptation to receive endless accolades and humbly accept the role of monarch was ever entertained by Washington we have no record of the fact. By all appearances, both public and private, Washington was eager to lay down the mantle of national figurehead and retire to managing Mount Vernon and live out his days in peace and prosperity. The historical figure Washington very intentionally called to mind was the Roman general Cincinnatus. In ancient Rome, with the fledgling nation under attack by the Aequi, an emergency counsel named Cincinnatus temporary dictator of Rome. He rose to the challenge, soundly defeated the Aequi, and then relinquished the powers he was given the very next day. He held them for less than two weeks. Washington's reticence to claim power and willingness to retreat to a rural life exemplified the ideals of sacrifice for the nation without a view to personal gain. I mentioned in the last post the degree to which Washington crafted and manipulated his public image and there is no doubt that some of that was at play here. However, with one eye on his public perception, it is nevertheless true that Washington feared a monarchy and aristocracy arising in infant America and was hellbent on resisting the human impulse to crown a king. While content to play a marginal role in national affairs, it is safe to say that Washington could have had no conception of the ultimate role he would be asked to play as the father of his nation.
It should be noted before I get into the body of this post that there is today no more beautiful novelist in the world than Marilynne Robinson. I have read Gilead four times and Home three times and I am anticipating Lilawith great eagerness. I have read all of her books of nonfiction as well and have always found her to be an engaging thinker. A solid part of me is convinced that she couldn't possibly be as simplistic in her responses as it is conveyed in the interview she gave to Religion News Service. I hope she finds occasion to elaborate at some point in the near future. For now I am giving her the benefit of the doubt that she just may not interview very well or that her responses were injudiciously truncated. You can read the interview I will be referring to here. There are a few things I would take issue with in her responses, not least of which is her glib dismissal of any notion of historic Christian ethical teaching. The interviewer asks her two questions about gay marriage, the first asking if people with differing opinions can coexist on the issue with the second asking if the size of the population opposed to gay marriage will shrivel to insignificance in the near future. While her answer to the second question is maddening for its deliberate anachronism and lack of cultural awareness, the first is almost more frustrating for its arrogance. In answer to the first question, Robinson replies:
Sometimes I wonder about the authenticity of the controversies themselves. My own denomination (the United Church of Christ), has blessed same-sex relationships and married them as quickly as it became legal in my state. It has been a process that’s gone on for a long time. Nobody gives it a thought, so when you read in the newspaper that there are people calling down brimstone, it’s startling. In time it will become an old issue for the culture that simply will not bring out this kind of thing anymore.
My people are so awesome and progressive on this issue that it is difficult for me to even conceive that there are still knuckle-dragging troglodytes out there somewhere who might disagree. First of all, come on. Second of all, there are fewer than one million people in the United Church of Christ so I am not sure in what world the views of its membership are taken to be representative for Christendom in general. Thirdly, it is not like Iowa started blessing same sex marriages in the 1820s. The state Supreme Court ruled on that in two-thousand-freaking-nine. I have pairs of socks much older than same sex marriage in Iowa, yet Robinson acts as if she can conceive of the state in no other way. Fourthly, are we to believe that the church that dove headfirst into blessing gay marriages before the ink was dry on the Supreme Court decision really didn't "giv[e] it a thought"? The mix of arrogance and head-in-the-sandiveness of this comment is incommensurate with the best American novelist. Her answer to the second question, about whether all of the knuckle-dragging troglodytes will eventually shut up and die, repeats the tired assertion that since we mix fabric in our clothing and for the most part refuse to stone witches and kill children who disobey their parents then the whole Levitical teaching on sexual ethics must be tossed aside as well. Again, I have written before how frustrating it is to have the Bible's teaching on the subject, as well as traditional marriage supporters knuckle-dragging troglodytes' arguments in favor of traditional marriage the ancient and oppressive tool of the patriarchy, reduced to the phantom contemporary preacher of Leviticus, but here we are yet again, with America's greatest living novelist. Robinson doubles down on pro-gay marriage boilerplate by saying that since Jesus never explicitly condemned homosexuals and dudes were into dudes back then that maybe we should just be like Jesus and never teach or sayanything controversial. This is ridiculous, again, on any number of levels. First, Jesus also didn't say anything about the government's role in ending poverty, but Robinson seems to find a definite argument in favor of government assistance in his teachings. Second, Jesus was preaching to mostly Jews in Judea. In other words, he was speaking to people who from birth had imbibed the Old Testament sexual ethic. This is not to say that homosexuality did not exist in first century Judea, just to say that there was no question about where Yahweh stood on the issue. Paul, writing to different people in different contexts, has to be more explicit in dealing with the issue and for those who have spent any time reading Paul (like presumably Marilynne Robinson has) this should not be a controversial point to make. In the very next question, one asking about Hobby Lobby and issues of religious freedom, Robinson continues to parrot the arguments of a commenter on The Daily Kos. Here is Robinson's response:
That seems to me like an artificial problem. I wish I could go to the Supreme Court every time I saw somebody trying to cut food stamps, or pre-K, or any of these other things. These people that are so attentive to babies that don’t exist yet, and so negligent of babies that need help. It’s part of the narrowing of the culture, so that only certain things are considered to be religious controversies. It’s a religious controversy, to me, that we would think of cutting back on help for the poor. Especially after our financiers have crashed the economy.
Again, Robinson seems to be all over the place here. 1) The religious freedom of business owners is artificial; 2) Conservative Christians are somehow negligent of babies that need help; 3) Cutting back on aid to the poor is a religious controversy; 4) Financiers, who were all Republicans, right?, wrecked the economy, which is very relevant to a question about the HCA's contraceptive mandate. That is one busy paragraph. All of these statements are strange in their own way. What makes forcing someone to go against their conscience because Big Brother says so an artificial issue? Who in the world does more for impoverished children than Christian organizations? I hate the false antithesis between concern over state-sponsored baby-murdering and concern for babies once they are born. Maybe the same state that thinks it is within the moral pale to kill babies in utero is not the best judge of how to care for these children post utero? I don't know, just thinking and typing here. Finally, she knows the guy who owns Hobby Lobby was not a Wall Street financier, right? I really don't know what else to say other than I am disappointed that this is the best we could get from Robinson. I already knew she would disagree with me on any number of things and that is fine. I don't expect to ideologically agree with all of the novelists I read, or any of them for that matter. I simply expected someone with Robinson's prodigious mind and research in historic Christianity to have a more nuanced view of these issues than some bastard child of a Paul Krugman and Maureen Down column. None of this changes the fact of Robinson's greatness as a novelist, but for someone who delights in being contrarian (rehabilitating Calvin for goodness' sake) it is unfortunate that she doesn't even seem to have considered both sides to important questions for our culture. In essay after essay in The Death of Adam she asks her reader to reconsider previously held notions about Darwin and Calvin and the Puritans, and it is this type of intellectual curiosity that drew me to Robinson as a thinker. Here, though, she is monochromatic, unoriginal, and seems to have closed off thought altogether.
Self-fashioning is something my generation knows very well. We have been trained to cultivate our lives on social media to the point where it depresses a lot of people to go to these sites. No one ever posts a picture of themselves working a job they hate, having a fight with their spouse, yelling at their kids, or going to bed lonely on Facebook. You only put the good stuff, which distorts people's notions of your life. Even when we put the bad stuff in a post we are really only looking for affirmation ("He IS a jerk"; "Being a mom IS so hard, but you're doing great!"; "I can't believe someone called you [fat, ugly, stupid], you are simply wonderful"; etc.). Sometimes I am tempted to think that this current malaise is unique. Certainly to a degree it is. Never before have people on such a scale been so careful to present to the world an idealized picture of their life. But a fastidiously guarded care about how we are perceived is nothing new, it simply used to be mostly confined to the upper classes. Nor has it been uncommon to assume that other people--coworkers, friends, fellow parishioners--have it better than you. "The grass is always greener" wasn't coined in 2005, after all. Washington was convinced of his place in history. He knew this war he was leading was an epochal event. His desire was that posterity have a sense of his management of the colonial forces. As such he was conscious with every letter he wrote that it would one day be read by historians of the war. In fact in the middle of the conflict he assembled a team whose sole duty was to transcribe and bind his correspondence. He gave meticulous directions for how to copy it out and make it look presentable. There was certainly vanity to this, but there was also a desire for a measure of control. Another aspect of Washington's self-fashioning is found in the number of times he sat for a portrait. This was a tedious and time-consuming affair yet Washington found time in an already overly-packed schedule to sit for numerous portraits. There is no record if he did the duck face for any of these. Washington carefully molded and often manipulated his public image. By all accounts he was a naturally temperamental and passionate man who subdued himself at all occasions to become the staid, dignified figure demanded of the Father of his nation.
One of the most misused words in our culture has to be hypocrisy, especially when it is bandied about as a pejorative concerning Christians in particular or the church in general. You hear all of the time that the church is full of hypocrites, by which people generally mean "people in the church are still sinners." Indisputably, unquestionably, indelibly true. But hypocrisy doesn't mean that you are bad at living out your ideals. Hypocrisy is lying, not actually believing what you say you believe. We get the word from the ancient Greek word for "actor." You are playing a part, and while that is certainly true of some within the church, for the most part the church is full of fallible people trying to live up to a pretty high standard: holiness. That they fail does not make them hypocrites, nor would it come as a surprise to any Christians throughout history, least of all the Apostle Paul. It simply means they are still fallen, still waiting for their Lord to return and make all things new. In my review of James K.A. Smith's Desiring the Kingdom, the first in his cultural liturgies series, I want to think about why it is that we struggle the way we do with sin. While this struggle doesn't make us hypocrites, it is not desirable and we are not ultimately to accept defeat. What I am trying to get at in this thought experiment isn't a better definition of our fallenness but, as Smith would have it, a better definition, not to mention a better understanding, of our affections. Smith's central argument in the book is that Christian education (whether formal or informal) ought to be oriented towards shaping more than our minds, but our desires and our love as well. To put it another way, we are not primarily disembodied minds wandering through the world that need to be filled with the correct information, but bodies, affections, and minds that need to be formed (or conformed) to Christ. Any form of education that disregards this central fact of existence is going to have a hard time in a visceral world. So while hypocrisy might not mean what we think it means, one of the most intractable parts of the Christian life is that we all fail to measure up to the standard we assent to with our intellect and believe with our hearts. Smith asserts that this is the case because we are worldly and our affections are shaped by the competing liturgies and pedagogies of the world. What's more is that we rarely recognize innocuous places like the mall or bits of a culture like a favorite television show as shaping us in profound ways. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but we spend an hour and a half at church on Sunday, read our Bibles devotionally for 15-30 minutes per day, and pray for a few minutes when we wake up and before meals, yet we spend way more time consuming the world's liturgies and practices. Weighed in that balance, we too often are shaped more by the world than by our faith, without even necessarily recognizing the shaping influence of the competing pedagogies of the world.. In a sense this book is Smith's clearing of his throat as he begins what is to be a trilogy on cultural liturgies (both within the church and without) [the second book, Imagining the Kingdom was published last year; I am, alas, behind the times]. There is much to commend in Smith's style, theology, and conviction about his subject. And for the most part I agree with him. After a lengthy first chapter in which he draws out his thesis--that we are feeling and emoting beings more than intellectual beings--he takes a look at three different cultural institutions that, while not necessarily pernicious on the surface, are competing kingdoms to the kingdom of God. The first is the mall, or consumer capitalism writ large. The second is the power of the state and the way we can often be tempted to see ourselves as Americans before we see ourselves as Christians. The third is the university. The mall was the most humorous of these reflections. With its sanctuary (even with a nave in the middle of many malls), relics (stuff for sale), saints (models), and anthropology (not only the store that sells $42 dish towels, but also the notion that stuff makes us better and happier, stuff like $42 dish towels), the mall (and capitalism more generally) is an obvious competitor for our desires. One that often wins. His observation of many Christian schools pledging allegiance to the flag before pledging superior allegiance to Jesus (if that is done at all) through the recitation of an historic creed or confession is convicting. The university is also a proving ground for his central idea of the power of the affections over the mind. His example of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, a book about a college freshman desiring the "life of the mind" who is chewed up and spit out by the sexual culture of an elite college, makes his point nicely (and is a brutal book in many ways). All of these institutions understand that we are desiring creatures and the way to our affection is not through our mind but through our gut. My one major criticism of the book is that it often seems as if Smith protests too much. He seeks to deconstruct the mind-body duality of Platonic thought, but seems to do so by constructing a body-mind duality in its place. What I mean is that where earlier thinkers argue for the primacy of the mind to the exclusion of the body, Smith argues (or seems often to be arguing) for the primacy of the body over the mind. What is perhaps more confusing is the tension he puts between theology and worship, as if worship does not flow from theology. Indeed he sets up an odd juxtaposition between theology and worship and foists it onto the life of the early church, arguing that before any explicitly theological reflections were made the church was primarily worshiping (drawing on the Acts 2 passages about the early church). This line of thought is patently wrong in any number of respects. For one, the oft-quoted passage in Acts 2 includes the early church sitting under the apostles' teaching which just might have had some developing theology in its message. They weren't just breaking bread together. Further, when the Apostle Peter preached to the crowds at Pentecost the message he delivered was strictly theological: he quotes the prophet Joel and King David and runs through Jewish history to show that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. Three-thousand people weren't saved at Pentecost by an interpretive dance. Or by their guts for that matter. To bolster his point, Smith cites the early hymns of the church (Philippians 2:5-11) and the early creeds (1 Corinthians 15:3-7) as further evidence of the slow development of theology and the emphasis on worship. Again, this dumbfounds me. What is more explicitly theological than the Trinitarian poem of Philippians or the story of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15? For this bifurcation to work, Smith has to strip theology of any actual meaning. In this universe the word "theology" is used like the word "religion" is by people who want to emphasize that Jesus is all about relationships, man, and not religion. Theology, in this context, is reduced to academic hairsplitting like Dr. Causabon in Middlemarch, allowing it to be nicely contrasted to the embodied and fervent worship Smith prefers. For as astute a thinker as Smith, I found this reduction altogether crude. My reservations about some of Smith's claims aside, his ideas are nonetheless important and in a more muted form his arguments bear great weight. Clara and I went on a talking date the other night and our conversation kept circling around to some of Smith's assertions. I find him a hard thinker to get out of my mind (or my gut, maybe). This book is provocative, intentionally so, and I understand why Smith can be totalizing in his claims. We humans are, ultimately, worshipers (I mean, no less a theologian than Bob Dylan was on to this years ago!). The question we must answer is what we will worship. True Christian worship, by the work of the indwelling Spirit, channels our innate affections to God, driving us to more and deeper worship of him. Smith, by highlighting both the importance of the body and the folly of thinking we can or ought to escape desire while we still stalk the earth in this mortal coil is highlighting in bright pink the importance of considering not just whatwe believe but also what we love. Since reading this book I have been eager to seek out ways in which my affections can be molded more by Scripture and Christian worship than by the competing liturgies of the world. To come back around to where I started, it strikes me in no way outlandish to think that it is in fact our (unwitting?) devotion to the competing liturgies of capitalism, the State, entertainment, and even to a certain degree the family that prevent us from living out our sanctification to its full, God-glorifying extent. I once heard a preacher tell a group of college students that if they read their Bible for 15 minutes and play video games for six hours that he had a way to save them 15 minutes. I think in our media-saturated, hedonistic culture this can be all too true. Our Lord tells us that where our treasure is, there will our heart be also. This book has driven me to reexamine this question. Where is my treasure? Is it where I think it is? This can be an uncomfortable question to ask, because it can unsettle our routines and habits and drive us to confront other words of Christ: that we are to seek his kingdom first. That is the kingdom we ought to desire. In word and deed. In spirit and body.
The Coffmans are headed back to Colorado, plus two from the time we left almost seven years ago. Sing along to some John Denver with me.
One more:
Alright, now that we have that out of our system. Here are some details, or 'tails if you are Tom Haverford. The short version: a couple of weeks ago I was offered and accepted a position teaching English at Valor Christian High School in Highlands Ranch. The longer version, for those inclined to hear it: To those who have had much contact with me in the past couple of years it would come as no surprise that I was less than engaged at my current place of employment. Water under the bridge, bygones being bygones and all of that, I will just let that comment stand. About a year ago I really started considering seminary as an option, a sort of lifeline. I started an application and got counsel, but for some reason I could never really commit. A couple of months ago there was an opening at the Christian school in our little Kansas town. A friend told me about it and recommended that I apply. I didn't really want the job because I did not want to stay here, but I filled out an application anyway. Part of it included writing a statement of teaching philosophy. It took me about ten minutes to write it. Not that its great writing or anything, but it just flowed out of me. Writing that out was sort of an epiphanic moment. I realized that while I didn't want to teach junior high at a school in Salina I did want to teach. The next day I started looking for jobs, starting in Colorado of course. There was nothing available that I could find on the website that I was using so I decided to be a bit more proactive. I went to the website for Vail Christian and emailed the headmaster. I told him who I was, what my background was, and asked him if he were me where he would start. He told me they would have nothing available but pointed me to two schools in Denver, one of which was Valor. I went to their website and they had an opening in the English department listed for next school year. I browsed further and got really excited. It seemed to be the perfect fit. I filled out the online portion of the application that day. A good part of the job hunt consists in being excited, but not too excited. I tried to suppress my anticipation and just trust that if this is what God had for us then it would happen. Two days later I got an email telling me to go through to the second part of the application, which included answering about a dozen questions in essay form and the school making contact with my references. As a sidenote, this was easily the most rigorous application process I have ever been involved with (I'm still ending sentences with prepositions until I start teaching). I wrote over a dozen essays that probed deeply into my beliefs, theology, and teaching style. It was very intimidating, but it also only served to confirm that this was what I wanted to do. A similarly intense process at a business job would have felt tedious. About a week and a half later I got another email, this time from the head of HR, asking me to do a Skype interview. During that hour I was interviewed by the Director of Academics, the Academic Dean, the head of HR, and the head of the English department. At the end of the interview they asked me to come out for an on-site interview as well as a teaching interview (I would teach two classes). Given spring break and other scheduling issues it was not until April 7th that we were able to arrange everything. I took the whole family out to Colorado for the interview. The night before I was preparing and Owen came and sat next to me on the couch. I asked him if I would do a good job at my interview tomorrow. He said no. I asked him if I would still get the job. He said yes. Gentle reader, my son is a prophet. I felt tongue-tied and out of sync for much of the interview day, an eight hour whirlwind of teaching two sections, being peppered with questions by the rest of the English faculty, a spiritual interview with the Director of Spiritual Life, and a lunch interview with two other English faculty. I didn't feel like I bombed or anything like that. Interviews in general are followed by a round of self-incrimination where you go through what you could or should have said. When they last all day you only have that much more fodder for reflection. In any event, my only option was to trust that if God wanted me there I would be there. I had to wait three agonizing weeks after my interview while other candidates went through the same rigmarole. And then I got a call while I was at work from the Director of Academics offering me a position. I thought I was going to jump through the roof. There was much sushi-ing, wine drinking, and general merriment in the Coffman household that night. I was puzzled most of the time I was in Salina over why in the world I was here. I now have my answer. My discontent over my job here prodded me into reading about 70 books last year, dreaming of a world where books meant something to people. That time of study laid the groundwork for this job. In fact, it was mentioned to me during my interview that one of the things that caught the school's attention was the amount of reading I do. And from there everything clicked. I am so happy to be moving close to family and close to my mountains, but more excited to feel as if I have found my vocation. There was a famous Latin saying during the Reformation: post tenebras lux. After darkness, light. I am awash in light.
The tone of this blog has been entirely too serious for some time now. As I ramp up running again in the two weeks of spring we get in Kansas, and inspired by my first weird pooping location of the year, I thought I would make a list of the places I have pooped while running. In no particular order: 1) Uncountable port-a-potties. Thank you, construction workers. 2) A ditch 3) Someone's front yard (I had no choice) 4) A cornfield 5) A trash can 6) Behind a dumpster 7) Behind so many trees 8) Someone's backyard (unfenced) 9) Gas stations, without buying anything, slinking out in shame 10) Gas stations, with the token purchase of a granola bar or a bottle of Gatorade to try and convince the attendant I had not just come there to poop 11) In the middle of the desert into a hole I dug with a jagged stone like a freaking caveman, at least five times 12) Behind a tractor (the tractor was in use when I came back by the scene of the crime)
There you go. If you are ever tempted to take me too seriously, you now have permission to refrain. I mean, I have pooped in people's yards for goodness sake's. Running is madness.
The Revolutionary War has been called a bloodless affair, an assertion that is true, of course, only in comparison. At least 25,000 American soldiers were killed in the conflict, which puts it on par with Antietam which lasted for one day. But it is far more than we have lost in 11 years in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Number games like that are silly anyway. The intensity or whatever of a conflict is not necessarily answered by the number of deaths. What gives this impression more than any relative disparity in the death toll is the long periods of time in which absolutely nothing happened. That is what is most striking about the war to me. Wars were still fought in seasons in the eighteenth century. Troops moved by foot or by boat, if available. As many died from disease as died on the battlefield. Brutal stuff, even if there was not day to day fighting. Another striking feature of the war is the frequently cited difference between the colonial troops and the French and English regulars. The French in their blue, the English in their red. The military discipline to their life. The French and English officers, though on different sides of the war, had more in common than the French did with their American comrades. America was a provincial backwater and hardly worth the efforts expended by the soldiers of great empires. What was so remarkable about Washington's performance in the war was not his military skill and battle acumen. He lost far more battles than he won. His true genius lay in keeping the army together at all. For this he was widely lauded by both sides. There was no regular army, no standing continental army, just a ragtag group of militias with varying terms of employment. Washington kept this army together and kept it moving. It was his singular accomplishment in the war. This ability to keep rival factions together is what paved the way for Washington to become our first president and what allowed our fledgling nation the time needed for the French to mastermind the brilliant siege of Cornwallis at Yorktown that ultimately led to victory. Sometimes you really do win by just not actively losing.
Really, the post title says it all. I am hesitant to even add to it in case I dilute the core message. So I will return to it from time to time, lest anyone doubt the true meaning of this post. Imagine me intoning in my best Gregorian chant "Game of Thrones sucks. Amen." I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty here of why I hate Game of Thrones, that ubiquitous piece of cultural trash that people try to pretend is anything other than deranged fantasy fulfillment. I had been happy to leave the show behind, but then I read an article about the sister-rapiness of the last episode, yep, you read that correctly, and felt the need to chime in for those who might be tempted by the omnipresence of the artifact to assume that it did anything other than totally suck. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.") By way of clearing my throat allow me to catalog briefly my experience with the show and book. Show: I watched the first two seasons, roughly. Book: I threw the first book across the room in disgust after 100 pages and then just threw it away. Literally, threw it away. I never do that, but I didn't want someone to pick up a copy at the Salvation Army under the assumption that the book did anything other than totally suck. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.") You will hear the defenders of the show, and they are legion, tell noobs like me that unless you have pored over every jot and tittle of the doorstop books, watched and rewatched every episode on HBO, and perused the Wiki page for the show than you have no business critiquing it. To which I say, posh. How many bites of an elephant turd sandwich must one take before we are convinced that it is an elephant turd sandwich? Maybe one more bite will redeem it all! Or, to stick with my theme, sometimes my suck meter just doesn't take that long to start blaring. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.") One of the common defenses of the show it that its "gritty" and "real." While I wonder if the people who praise its grittiness have ever done or seen anything gritty in real life themselves (nota bene: living in New York decidedly does not count), I also do not think this is in any way a credit to the show. In the latest episode, which again I have not watched, a brother rapes his sister over the grave of their incestuously conceived son. Can you taste the grit? Huh, can you? You know what else is real and gritty? Child pornography. Perhaps HBO should team up with NAMBLA for their next big hit. Ooh, ooh, ooh, or how about a real and gritty show about sex tourism in Thailand or forced prostitution anywhere in the world. Hey, hey, hey. Don't be shocked. This is real life, man. People rape their sister, people cut off other people's ding-dongs, people regularly use women of ill-repute for target practice. That's life, bro. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.") One of the defenses I read for the sister-rapey episode was that it was all from the book. As if this man somehow represented some moral standard. Indeed, people treat George R.R. Martin as if he were some modern day Dostoevsky. To which I say, maybe, if Dostoevsky was a bad writer, pure id, and a sexually-deviant imp. But so far as I know he was none of those things. Moreover, this defense is stupid. Just because a twisted sex act is described in detail in a book, there are probably 8 kabillion other things in the books that don't make it onto the screen. But penis flagellation and sibling on sibling rape made the cut. Because, for all anyone might say otherwise, the gratuitous sex and shocking violence of the show are precisely the point. Without regular and ample displays of breasts and rutting and without gory and over-the-top violence, this show is just some fantasy show. But people try to pretend that anything other than gratification draws them back. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.") Which brings me to my final comments and then I shall be done. People also praise the show for its shock value, not just with sister-raping, but with untimely deaths of beloved characters. And I will readily admit that the death of Ned Stark, the show's hero and moral center, at the end of Season One shocked me greatly. But here's the thing, shock can be shticky and predictable just like the happy ending of an episode of Full House. In other words, once you declare that everyone you love will die it is no longer surprising when they do. Further, it does not take creative brilliance to kill off lead characters. At a certain point it becomes a gimmick. Ned's death was shocking because unexpected. Can that really be said for any other character after that point? This ends poorly, then, carries about the same weight eventually as, this ends with smiles, hugs, and a nice life lesson. Again. . . ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.") Part of me is always just kidding around writing things like this (as in the elephant turd sandwich bit). But part of me is deadly earnest. This show really does suck, really is corrosive to your moral sense. We like to pretend that unfettered media consumption has no effect on our understanding of the world, but we are naive to believe that. At least give art enough respect to acknowledge that it is affective. We are shaped by what we consume, what we love, and what we sacrifice to have. Horace issued a famous dictum for art a couple of thousand years ago: "The aim of the poet is to instruct or delight." I think he is precisely right and my fear in the popularity of shows like Game of Thrones is not that we have abdicated as a culture the ends of art as relayed by Horace, but that they are all too fulfilled in garbage like Game of Thrones. In other words, we are both instructed and delighted by things like Game of Thrones. Which is all the more reason to declare once more with feeling: Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.
