Profits and prophets

The recent health care speech and debate has turned our attention to the idea of a profit motive.    Despite scare-mongering to the contrary, the plan on the table does not socialize medical care.  But President Obama makes no bones about the idea that the profit motive in this case needs to be kept in check.

I think he’s right.  And I think that’s these special ways that this plays out for Christians.

Many people believe that the more unregulated the profit motive is, the more efficient we, as a society become.  Self interest, they say, is the only trait we can really expect from people.  We end up saying if a person behaves in their own self interest this is a morally good thing for them to do.

But are we prepared to deal with the fall out when we apply this logic to providers of health care?  Some of the following are theoretic problems.  Some are actual, every-day, real world problems.  But all of them are examples of health care providers acting to maximize profits:

* Whenever it is cheaper to let a person die than treat a person, it is in the best interest of the provider to allow the person to die, if treatment will be more expensive than the premiums that the person will pay for the rest of their life.

* Whenever amputation is cheaper than rehabilitation or treating an ailment, we should expect the provider to amputate, provided that the amputation won’t interfere with the patient’s ability to pay premiums.

* The cheapest treatment will be preferred.  Even if this treatment is painful, inefficient, carries side effects, etc, this is the one that a rational health care provider will go with.

Their is a public relations aspect to all this.  It can be argued that companies might be willing to lose some profit because the negative PR will cost them more.  And sometimes this helps.  But the PR thing, it’s just another expense.  It’s just a further piece for the executives to figure into the equation.  Somewhere, right now, there is a guy in a suit.  And he is saying “If we do X, we will save Y dollars.   However, the negative PR will cost us an extra ___ dollars.  Which decision leads to a larger profit?  Is there a way we can spend a few dollars to undo that negative PR?”

I’m not meaning to demonize the executives.  They are between a rock and a hard place.  The problem is with the system itself.

For Christians, there is a further complication in all this.

If it’s true that self-interested decisions are the only reliable motivations, then this is a result of man’s fall.  Are we really foolish enough to want to court this?  Are we arrogant enough to think we can harness this?  Do we realize that this really is a deal with The Devil himself, in quite a literal way?

In so many things we are faced with a very difficult balancing act.  On the one side, we must accept that the world is a certain way.  On the other side, we should try to hope, work, and fight for a world that is better.  On the whole, an economy which is capitalistically oriented is a wise recognition of the way that a world is.  But to suggest that industries such as health care ought to be driven by capitalism is to go to far in this direction.

Love and Humility for the Mentally Ill

What is the nature of the soul, and how is it related to the mind and the brain? Why do bad things happen to good people, how do these trials shape them, and what can be said of God when there seems to be no relief? What does it mean to be born again and made new in Christ? How should the truths of scriptures be understood in our modern world, which is so often viewed through a scientific lense?

How we answer these questions shapes the very most basic parts of our faith. And all four of these q uestions are just the very beginnings of how we view mental illness.

Mental illness. Is it going too far to call mental illness the dirty little secret of the church?

I’m not sure that this would be an exageration at all. I think we’d all be hard pressed to name a single issue which has effected so many but which is so rarely discussed. It would almost be a good thing if we could, in fairness, say that the topic was controversial. I almost wish that we could say that the church is divided on the issue. Because this would imply that we’re at least trying to deal with it. This would imply that we’ve at least recognized that it’s an issue.

It’s not altogether surprising. The secular world doesn’t do much better in this regard.

And a person could spend his whole life on any one of the questions mentioned in the beginning of this article. Yet, too formulate a cohesive and Christian response to the fact of mental illness almost demands an answer to all of those questions at once.

Consider the question of the relationship between soul, mind, and brain: The use and sometimes-success of medications imply that there is some physical aspect to mental illness. The very use of the term, “mental illness” draws a comparisons with physical ailments.

Or begin with the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Mental illnesses are not brought on by any doings of the person who suffers from them. “How do trials shape us?” Even a casual survey of the research leaves one understanding that traumatic events impact the brain itself. “What can be said when there seems to be no relief?” One of the most heart-breaking aspects of mental illness is that it is so very unpredictable. It can go on for years and decades, being mostly the same. And then? Then it gets better. Or it gets much, much worse.

What does it mean to be born again, or made new in Christ? People accept Jesus as their savoir, and their mental illnesses linger. Others, who are life long Christians develop mental illnesses. It is a real and legitimate question: where is Jesus’ healing for them?

The question of where Jesus healing is for the mentally ill leads to that last fundamental question: “How should the truths of scriptures be understood in our modern world, which is so often viewed through a scientific lense?” In the entirety of the bible, the events that seem like the nearest descriptions to mental illnesses are in fact examples of demonic possession. Yet modern science has no room for this explanation. And modern science has sometimes been succesful in explaining and even managing mental illness. How do we handle this tension?

This is not a series of abstractions. This is not an interesting quandry. If you are fortunate enough to not have grappled with this yet, you will.

If you spend long enough in ministry, you will wrestle with how best to hold someone accountable for actions they may well have no control over.

If you spend long enough trying to bring Jesus’ love to everyone, you will find people so thoroughly depressed that they can not feel His love or hear the truth of your words.

If you spend long enough in small groups, you will become authentic enough in your community that someone will share these troubles, that can be so very hard to understand or change… unless of course you suffer from mental illness yourself. And if you do, you may find that there are no lonlier places that a person might be.

I am not suggesting that there is no answer to these questions. In fact, I believe there is a desperate need for better answers to these questions.

But I am clear that we do not have these answers. Not fully, completely, or consistently.

And I have seen the damage, the terrible damage inflicted by people who believe that they did have the answers.

I think one of the lessons that God wants us to learn from mental illness is that He will not be placed in a box and He will not work on our time tables or according to our plans. I do not believe that mental illnesses occur so that God can teach us these things. But I do believe that He uses mental illnesses to teach us these things.

I believe that when we don’t see healing the way we think it should occur, when the same issues and challenges wear and tear on us year after year, I believe we are all confronted with a decision. Will we take the path of Christ? Into the pain and doubt and suffering? Or will we take the path of Judas, into the safe and comfortable?

In small ways and big ways I have shunned the suffering. The suffering are reminders that I am not God, and I can not heal whoever I choose. The suffering are reminders that God is not a genie, he is not a cosmic ATM. I repent, right here and now, of all the times I have taken the path of Judas.

The mentally ill are not the only people who are suffering. But there are a few cruelties we save for them alone. There are limits to the comparisons between mental illness and physical illness. But there are ways it is a useful comparison.

Yet most of us don’t encourage people with high blood pressure to stop taking their medications. Most of us do not think that the people who wear glasses among us lack the faith for healed eyes. Most of us don’t cast doubt on the ideas that a secular doctor might have some good insight about our flat feet.

There is a part of me that wishes so desperately that I had more. And yet, over and over, in the scriptures, we are told that love and humility is enough, they are more than enough.

So may all our actions be saturated in love and humility. Whatever specific things we do, I think they will be the right things if they begin in love and humility.

Our own human attempts at love and humility are so small but I know that there is an infinite storehouse of love and humility in Christ. And I know that we can access this storehouse in Him and through Him… That is not the end but the only worthy beginning.

What would Jesus do?

What would Jesus do?

WWJD?

A friend pointed out that the question is incredibly important, even if it’s seen as passe.

I’d go so far as to say it might be the most important question.

And yet… Can you ask it outloud?  Can you ask it with a straight face?  Can you ask it with out shuddering and feeling like the worst kind of cheese?  (Which might be cheddar.)

I can’t.

Perhaps I’m rationalizing here, but I want to say that I’m not ashamed of my faith or Jesus.   And as my friends observation,  implies, I’m not alone in this aversion to the question.

Satan is smart.  This would be terrifying if it weren’t for the fact that God’s a gazillion times smarter.

There’s a brilliance in how Satan worked all this out.   He recognized that there was a powerful question: What would Jesus do?  And he did his best to castrate it.

He began with the people who popularized the question.  He turned it into an omnipresent slogan.  We saw it everywhere.  He oversaturated the world with it; on books, C.D.’s, bracelets, billboards, necklaces, notebooks, pencils, stuffed animals…

This first step did two things: Firstly, it triggered all the defenses we normally employ against marketing that has reached the saturation point.  We naturally just filter things out that we see over and over again.  Did you ever notice how you stop noticing strong smells when you’ve been around them long enough?  It’s like that.  You’re so close to it you don’t see it anymore.

Perhaps more damagingly, people made profits, tremendous profits,  off of those four little letters.  It called thier motivation into question.

And then there are the people who asked it.   Rightly or wrongly, a perception popped up about the sort-of people who regularly asked this question.  (Like many stereotypes, there probably is a root of truth in this perception. )

This perception is that WWJD became WWMSLPJD: What would my silly little preconcieved Jesus do?

People began with a rigid, innacurate, tiny picture of who Jesus was.  And they basically used the question to reaffirm the things they wanted to believe.   The marketing didn’t help.  It allowed this to become a fashion show.  It created a possibility to be pharisitic, to show off our holiness with wristbands and t-shirt, rather than internalize our holiness.

And now, the question, “What Would Jesus Do?” Doesn’t actually mean “What Would Jesus do?”  Grabbing on to the letters “WWJD” means aligning oneself with this whole history of a certain group who answered that question in a quite specific way, which was arguably not the way that Jesus himself would have answered it.

It’s a bit like the whole “Christian” thing.  People who reject the label generally recognize that it doesn’t matter what the dictionary says, in this case.   They grab terms like Christ-follower, because the term “Christian” has picked up this whole connotation as a result of the history of the people who chose this term.

So there’s a disconnect between what a word (or question) should mean and what a word (or question) does mean.  “WWJD” began it’s life like the term “Christian”.   They had these meanings, based merely on what made them up.

It’s a bit like a person: when we’re born, all we really are is the things that make us up.  (Genetics, soul, call it what you want.)

As these words begin to have an independent life, things happen to them.  They gather a reputation, they are changed.  Just like a growing person, who might choose to hang out with drug users or heroes, who might choose to live healthily or live destructively.

Of course, we should never give up on people.  But I think it’s a valid question: At what point do we give up on redeeming words and phrases?  The perversion of the question “WWJD” confronts us with this decision.  And that’s a sad thing.

Big brother, little brother

I’ve been reflecting a lot on the end of Genesis.  If you’re a regular reader, you know that I spent several posts wondering about the transformation of Israel (the person, not the nation.)

I had this idea that maybe Joseph was the end of a dysfunctional legacy of parents showing favortism.  There was this generations-long pattern of people seeking their own selfish interest even at the expense of family, more specifically, there was this pattern of younger siblings attempting to cheat older siblings out inheritances.  I thought maybe Joseph was the first biblical figure to get past that.  He certainly had his act together better than his dad and brothers!

But near the death of Joseph’s dad, Joseph presents his sons to him.  And Joseph engages in the same manipulation that’s gone on before, criss-crossing his dad’s hands in a blessing so that the youngest recieves the blessing intended for the oldest and vice-versa.

The more things change…

As I’ve tried to come to terms with what this is all about, I’ve been pondering some things.  We have the privilige of looking at the “Old Testament” through a lense that the ancients did not posess.

One of the most powerful aspects of Jesus’ teachings is sometimes called “The Third Way.”  Over and over again, Jesus is confronted with a multiple choice test.   The world presents us with two options.  Upon close inspection, these options are usually equally lousy.  Jesus solution, over and over again, is to give a solution that’s bigger than the question itself, that’s not limited to the narrow vision implied by the choices.  Jesus is asked “Which should we choose, A or B” And Jesus says “Choose C.”

Here’s how this connects up:

The world says that the eldest should recieve everything.  There are others who say that the youngest should get everything.  Or they say we should buck tradition for the sake of bucking tradition.  Or that it should be merit-based, and the offspring who somehow is “the best” (Whatever that means) deserves to recieve everything.

And the one who gets everything should be able to hoard his inheritance,or to spend it selfishly.

Through Jesus, we Christians are in fact the younger offspring.  And there is this strain of Christian thought that says “We are entitled to steal the inheritance which by traiditon would go to the oldest sibling: The Jews.  And once this inheritance is stolen, we are entitled to squander and hoard this inheritance in any way we wish.”

Jesus, I think, would reject the whole notion.   I think he would say that the traditionalists are wrong: and those who fight for the rights of the youngest sibling are wrong.

Jesus, I think, would say that like everything else, none of us truly owns our inheritance.  We prove whether or not we are legitimate care takers by what we do with it.  It does not matter if we are the older or younger siblings.  If we hoard it or squander it, we were not worthy caretakers. 

The question of who inherits what ends up having no practical value if we’re obliged to share it as soon as we recieve it.   Joseph ended up moving in the right direction.  He offered forgiveness and safety to his family.  But he didn’t have Jesus available in the same way that we do.  He was as lost without Him as all of us are.

The Estates, Part I

When The Owner began, the land was wild. 

All manner of trees and plants grew every which way.  Wild animals wandered about the place.  Thorny flowers and poison ivy over ran it. 

The man first built a shelter.  The shelter became a house.  The house became a home that was almost a mansion.

The land near the home was cultivated.  Long, long rows of trees grew.  Fields of fruit were there.  And farm animals.  It became something of an estate.  It ran efficiently.  It was nearly perfect.  And so it was for some time.

But the man saw that it was missing something.  There was no one to enjoy the harvest with him.  There was no one to learn His ways… Really, what was the point of it all?  Just simply to perpetuate itself? 

And so The First Helpers came.  They lived in the man’s mansion. 

Some of The First Helpers did not understand.  They were spoiled perhaps, because they had never known how things were before.  They thought that the man was unnecesary.  They did not see that his rules were what gave the place its beauty.  With a heavy heart, he cast out those among The First Helpers who would not submit.  They took up residence in the wastelands beyond the estate, in the wilderness beyond the farm.

The First Helpers who remained grew in harmony with the place.  It was almost as if they were a part of the place itself, so smoothly did they integrate themselves to the day-to-day running.  But there was a wall, an upper limit.  They loved each other, the old man and The First Helpers… but there was this limit on the communion they could enjoy together.  It was something about the fact that they had been brought into the mansion.  Somehow, they had become disconnected from the very ground that was underneath it.  Somehow, they failed to grasp that there was something larger than the four walls they lived in.  They listened carefully.  They learned from the man.  They took his word for it.  But they couldn’t actually experience the truth themselves.  As wise, benevolent, and loyal as they were, in some way they were simply stunted.

And so the man hired a servant.  And the servant lived in the garden.  The man would come down from his mansion each day.  They would spend time together, the man and the servant. 

“This is your home.”  The man said “Perhaps some day you will join me up on the hill.  But that is another day.  For now, I would like you to live here.  Lie in the cool shade of my trees.  Discover who you are, in this place.”

What the man and the servant discovered is that the servant was lonely.  He was a social creature, the servant.  He would discover who we was only with the help of another servant to help define him, to help him understand himself.

And so the old man welcomed another servant.  He spoke to them both.

“Pluck my vegetables from the ground.  Pick my fruits from these trees.  Slaughter my animals when you are hungry.  Make this place your home.  Discover who you are: together.  But know this, too: This place was made by my two hands.  No one knows a thing like the one who built it.  And I did build this place.

You may feel that you could build a place like this.  I will tell you that you could not, but I fear that you will not take my word for it.  I love you.  But I also love this place that I have made.  If you will not work in harmony with this place I have made, then it could all be ruined.  So I will tell you this: there are rules here.   If we can not agree that my ways are the ways which make this place operate, then we endanger the very fabric of this estate.  And so I will set this rule before you: There is a tree which is mine, and mine alone.  There is only one tree, in the whole of this place, which you must leave alone.”

How happy should we be?

In a comment here, David asked:

“i’ve spent some time thinking about the topic of happiness.. how happy should we be as Christians?”

I’ve been mulling that over.  I was hoping somebody else would come in and offer up some thoughts.  Because I think this is far from a complete answer.  But for whatever they are worth, here goes.

There is a brand of happiness which is shallow but pervasive.  It’s the sort-of happiness that we don’t have to work at.  It’s the result of outward experiences going our way, of getting what we want.  I would feel happy if I won a million dollars (or a thousand, or a hundred, or heck, even ten)

I think Christians have done a lot of damage by acting like God wants them to experience this form of happiness.  They have acted like they feel this form of happiness.  They have sought after it to the point of making it an idol.

I think that this easy brand of happiness can be a crutch to our spiritual development.  Scripture seems clear that sometimes God will challenge us with circumstances that are unfair and not happiness-producing.   Our faith is in the idea that Jesus was undeservedly crucified.  I don’t know of a more thorough argument against the claim that God wants our outside circumstances to be easy.

There is, however, this whole other thing.  It’s like intense satisfaction pepper extensively with joy.  It’s this feeling of worship-surrender.  It comes from recognizing that there are more important things than creating more comfortable life circumstances for me.

I wonder if the guy who wrote “Blessed Be” was thinking about this difference.  In the chorus, it seems like he’s saying “I’ll praise when you have the shallow kind of happiness” and “I’ll praise you when I have that deeper kind of happiness.”  Maybe I’m reading into it a bit… Does anybody have the lyrics to that song?  I can’t remember them word-for-word.

So maybe I’ve got five bucks.  I’m headed to get an iced coffee.  On the way, I see something God calls me to use that money on.

If I get the iced coffee I’ll experience the first kind of happiness.  If I spend it on what God wants me to spend it on I’ll experience that second kind of happiness.  It’s funny how addictive the first brand of happiness is.  And yet the second is so much more fuffilling.  Almost every time I engage in it (which isn’t nearly often enough) I think “Wow, I should do this more often.” And yet without fail, I go back to my buy-the-iced-coffee-for-myself ways.

(A great read which touches on this subject: The Geography of Bliss.  It’s a secular book that started with a list of the most happy and least happy places in the world.  The author travels to these in a quest to get at what makes the people happy.  Along the way he shares some pretty interesting research about the nature of happiness itself.  Some of the conclusions that jump out at me that he shared:

People who report going to church also report being happier.

People who give away a gift report being happier than keeping a gift to themselves.

We appear hard-wired to give in a more primitive portion of our brain than anybody would have expected.

This distinction between the two different forms of happiness is a product of my own brain.  Therefore none of the above mentioned research discriminates between them.)

Identity and opposition

I’ve been contemplating how much we define ourselves by the people, things, and ideas that we oppose.

For example, it’s easy to say “I’m a Christian, so I don’t…”  Fill in the blank.  Often times we probably fill in that blank with lots of things we are wise not to do.   And other times we probably fill in that blank with things that are kind-of silly.  And of course, it’s not all about Christianity.  “I’m a Republican, so I don’t…”  “I’m a Democrat, so I don’t…”  “I’m a member of the middle class, so I don’t…”  “I belong to such-and-such a group so I don’t…”

There are some dangers, though to this.  The first danger is that as soon as things we are opposing ceases to exist, then so do we.  If my identity as a Christian is wrapped up in the idea that I don’t listen to punk music, what happens when punk music goes away?  At some point, I’m tetheting my faith to the whims of public opinion, as much as if I worshipped punk music.

I don’t want to start a debate about whether or not homosexuality or abortion are good things or bad things.  But I know that this is a single-minded obsession for some of my brothers and sisters in Christ.  I wonder about these people: What if they got what they wanted?  What if they managed to outlaw abortion, or even homosexual acts?  What if they managed to actually be able to enforce these laws and they did away entirely with homosexuality or abortion?  How long would the celebrations last?

I suspect for some of them, it wouldn’t last for very long.  Because I think that some people define themselves by these sorts of fights. 

There are all sorts of issues we use in a negative way to define ourselves.  I’m a good Christian because I don’t drink.  Or watch R-rated movies.  Or vote for pro-choice political candidates.  

More subtely, we emergents do the same thing in reverse.  It can be easy for me to define myself as a not-conservative.  I’m a good Christian because I don’t follow those silly legalistic rules of the traditional folks.  I’m a good Christian because I don’t seperate myself from the world.  I’m a good Christian because I don’t…

If we started considering Rob Bell’s opinion Orthodox and started looking at Pat Robertson as a heretic, it would be hard for me.  Some of my identity is wrapped up in not only affirming Bell’s opinions about a bunch of things, but I also have parts of my identity wrapped up in being against what Robertson says, just because he said it.

The definition of Holy is “To be set apart by God.” I used to think that what we were being set apart from is the world itself.

There’s a problem with this idea, though. 

The problem is that this is a self-defeating idea.  God wants us all to be holy.  If we made all of us holy we’d all be set apart by him, together.  That doesn’t really make any sense.

It’s a bit like a recipe.  Sometimes a recipe says you need 2 cups of something for the whole recipe.  You might need that something for two different parts.  Maybe it’s sugar.  And the sugar is needed inside the muffin and also for the crumby topping to the muffin.

It would make sense for the recipe to say “Set aside 1/2 cup”.  It would even make sense, (though be a little stranger) for the recipe to say “Set aside 1 1/2 cups”  But the recipe wouldn’t bother to specify “Set aside the whole 2 cups” If you started with 2 cups, you can’t set aside the whole of the 2 cups. 

If I hold on to the idea that holiness means to be set aside by God, it doesn’t seem like it could mean being set aside from other people.  Because at some point, we’ll all be holy.  And who are we set apart from then?

To be made holy must mean to be set apart from my own self desires, my own flaws, selfishness, and greed.

On the ground, it could end up looking the same.  I have a desire to fit in, to belong, to be one of the cool kids.  Holiness is being bigger than these desires.

So God might call out a person or a group to do something different.  In scripture, he often calls on the Israelites (and later, the first Christians) to act differently, to eat differently, to dress differently, to speak differently.

We always talk as if the idea is to seperate them from other people.  He’s making them holy by placing them in a different group. 

But what if we’ve got the cart before the horse?  What if all those things weren’t done to make them seperate from the other groups: what if they were done to seperate them from the worst parts of themselves?

And once they’ve been made holy, that group could serve as a shining example to everybody.  If they taught everybody what they learned through obedience to God, we could recapture a closeness that is so much more important than the tread mill of popular opinion.  The closeness we’d experience would be so much greater than the faux-closeness that they experienced before God went began the process of “seperating” his people from those around them.

God does not want you to be a comic book geek.

So I have this confession: I managed a comic book store through most of my adolescence.

It was sort of like the Simpsons.  Or that movie High Fidelity.  (except that was in a record store.)   Folks that were pretty low on the world’s pecking order came in and established a completely different pecking order.  In the outside world, coolness was based on toughness, talent (in something useful), competence, money.  Mostly, the folks who frequented the store  were distinctly lacking in coolness.  They were not tough, talented, competent, or wealthy.   These attributes were so low in most of the customers that they could not be measured by any instruments known to man.  As a result, the pecking order in that place had to be established based on different criteria.  (Because we all know that we need a pecking order… If we stopped trying to figure out who was on top we might actually all start to get along.)

I should say at this point that I manipulated my way out of the pecking order.  I didn’t do the right thing and squash it.  The stereotype holds true: in those sort of specialized mom-and-pop stores, customer service means that you might wait until they left the store to mock them.  My status as the guy running the store established me as some sort of nerd Alpha wolf.

At any rate, I observed the heirarchy that they established.  It was not based on competence or toughness or money.  It was based on treating every ridiculous and insiginificant detail of whatever comic book was cool like it was divinely inspired.  It understates the case to say that the attitude was as if the characters were real.  The real world paled to isignificance when compared to the importance of whatever revelation had just been unvieled in Spiderman, or whatever X-man had just been brought back from the dead, or what new fact about the Sanman’s realm had just been brought to light.

Ignorance was dealt with scorn.  Disagreements that would be seen as insignificant matters of opinion by normal people were treated as objectively verifiable and critically important.  And whoever was wrong had not only missed out on issue blah-blah-blah of title blah-blah-blah.  They were somehow morally deficient.   They were placed at the bottom of the heap by a group of people who normally inhabitted the bottom of the heap.

They had these Comic Book Conventions.  Yes, they are everything you’d imagine them to be.  Put these sad little people in a room with the creaters of the focus of these people lives.  There were basically two different ways I ever saw this go:

Scenario A: The creator was some frustrated art student.  He treated the fans with contempt.  Questions about continuity, trivia, and details were seen as irrelevant.  The fans drank this contempt like a fine wine, and chased after these guys all the more.  They seemed to have this sense that the creator actually possessed all the answers, but just didn’t want to share.  The fans seemed to believe if they were just persistent enough, eventually the artist would give in.  (Anybody seen Misery?)

Scenario B: The creator was basically a grown up fan and seemed to relish the silly-seriousness of it all.  He had answers worked out to the questions and apparent contradictions.  He could quote issue numbers off the top of his head just like a fan.  (Anybody remember Galaxy Quest?)

I got this image in my head today.  It was a dialogue between a creater of some work of art (I don’t care what: an opera, a comic book, a movie, a TV show, a novel) and some over-the-top fan.  (He probably lacked some basic sanitation skills.  This is unfortunately another portion of the stereotype that my experience bore out as true.)

I have this image that the fan might open with some question about characterization.  And the creator might ask “what did you think of it?”

And the fan might express curioisty about how the warp-field-gizmo-whatsit works.  And the creator might ask “But did you like the story?”

And the fan might proudly ask for an explanation to the apparent contradictions that come to light if you watch the directors cut of one thing and contrast it with the Europen pilot episode of the other.   And the creator might ask “But did it move you?  Were you effected?  Inspired by it?  Anything?”

God is of course the creator of everything that there is.  The creator of creators.  The creator of comic books fans.  The creator of comic books.  The creator of stars.  And belly button lint. 

And as I thought about God as the creator, I had this realization: I haven’t really grown out of these ridiculous debates.  I don’t read comics anymore, so I’ve changed the subject matter.  (Actually, if you want to know the deep truth, every now and again, when I think nobody is looking, I’ll open up one of those old comics.)  These days I don’t listen to conversations about who the toughtest Robin was.  I’ve disengaged from conversations about whether Kirk was cooler than Piccard.  I’m no longer interested in what color of Kryptonite gives Superman a wedgie.

These days the conversations I’m involved in are a little more likely to be about predestination or the nature of the trinity.  But the thing is, It’s hard for me to imagine that God views them as much different than I now see those ridiculous conversations in the Comic Book store.

Before the doctrine police prepare there rebuttals, I’d like to say that there are a few– a precious few– of these conversations which might be important.  I am not making the claim that all discussions about doctrine are irrelevant.  But I am willing to be make the claim that almost all of them are.

It’s not that they are not destructive by themselves.  But they are addictive to somebody like me.  And then there is that pecking order… I have to say that the ghost of that old pecking order it comes back, every now and again.  We’re a little more suble and sophisticated.  Most of us are good at hiding it from ourselves when we’re busy dividing the world into the groups of cool kids and un-cool kids.

But I know that I still make judgements.  Focusing on the things that divide us isn’t good because it focuses me on these things, and this is not where my focus is supposed to be.

Someday, I think the creator of the  universe will ask me “What did you think?  Did it inspire you?”

I hope I’ve got a pretty good answer ready.

This post was my entry into Marty Holman’s weekly blog Carnical, Monday Moments.  Click here to check other great posts at the carnival.

 

Some arguments that need to be “Expelled”

The movie “Expelled” has refocused some attention on evolution, creation, intelligent design, etc.
And this attention makes me feel like somebody watching his kid at the high school talent show about to walk on the stage and publicly humiliate himself by doing something epically uncool like play a polka.
My embarassment is for my brothers and sisters in Christ. But it’s not that I want us to be the cool kids. I realize that we’re not supposed to be the cool kids. It’s because I believe real damage is being done to our credibility and this translates to damage being done to the testimony we give for Christ.
I am not arguing here with anyone’s right to dispute the evolutionary account. Nor do I take issue with somebody wanting to assert that they have a right to determine what their child learns.

The problem is that we are using tired, disproven arguments. We can do better. There are much more convincing arguments against evolution. These are a little more work. They will take more patience to understand. They will require a bit more background knowledge to explain.
I believe so strongly that if we’re not going to put this effort into the thing, we should just step out of the debate, because we are doing so much more harm than good. In this post I’m going to highlight the two most foolish objections we cite to evolution, then I’ll explore why I think it’s so important that we have our ducks in a row on this.

Argument #1 that we need to stop using:
Evolution is only a theory.
The problem is not that this argument is untrue. The problem is that it’s a meaningless claim. All science does is generate theories. Nobody is debating that evolution is a theory. When folks who oppose evolution say “Evolution is a theory” they usually want to say “Even scientists aren’t confident in evolution, that’s why they call it a theory.” Neodarwinian evolution isn’t called a theory because anybody is tenative or unsure of it. Neodarwinian evolution is called a theory because that’s what science does: make theories.
There is this idea that scientists develop a certain ammount of confidence in a theory, or they discover a certain ammount of evidence for a theory, and suddenly there is a graduation ceromony, and then idea that used to be a theory becomes a “fact” or a “law.”
That idea isn’t how it works. Most scientists are just as confident in the neo-darwinian account as they are in our other most basic understandings of the universe.
This argument is sometimes closely tied to the fact that we have not directly observed macro-evolution. This is again missing the point. The scientific method has operated on inferences in thousands of areas. In an awe-inspiring number of cases, we’ve ended up being right-on when technology caught up with our inferences and we became able to more directly verify our assumptions. (Two examples: background microwave radiation left over from the big bang and the relativistic theories about the passage of time when accelerating compared to the passage of time when not accelerating. Ask for details if you care to and I’ll explain.)

The closest we can reasonably come to rescuing this objection is to say something like this: “my issue is with evolutionary theory is that evolution is an understanding generated through the scientific method. Scientific understanding is always changing. Scientific conclusions are always tenative. As soon as a better explanation comes along we give up on or modify the old one. For centuries, for example, we thought we understood that gravity was a property inherent in matter. Just recently we’ve come to understand that gravity is actually a result of the ways that large masses warp the fabric of space-time itself. The truth I believe is rooted in an unchaning source, and is eternal.”

Argument #2
Life on earth can’t be a naturalistic occurence, it violates the laws of entropy.
I think I’ll put everybody (including myself) to sleep if I get into the nuts-and-bolts of this. If somebody believes that this is a valid argument and wants more details for why I believe it’s not, I hope they’ll leave a comment. I’ll be happy to draw this out. Put very briefly: people believe that the naturalistic account implies that reality is growing more organized with the passage of time; this is impossible because elementary physics state that systems grow more chaotic over time. The reason that this doesn’t work is that the overall system is growing more chaotic as the sun emits energies that warm the surrounding space; only a tiny fraction of this energy is actually captured by the biosphere through photosynthesis and getting used for the creation of order.

These arguments are so often-repeated and so easily defeated that it makes us look shrill and ignorant. If we’re going to claim to deserve a seat at the table of respectable academia, we ought to be prepared to perform at the level the rest of the table is performing at. When they respond (generally not very nicely) to our arguments, we need to work on not simply rehashing them over and over again.
Secular scientists would never even get to do science if they spent their time listening to and responding to every creation scientist who wants a debate with them. The fact that the creationists apparently can’t be bothered to look at the last 87 times that very same objection was answered doesn’t inspire the secular folks to want to make time to including the anti-evolutionist at the table.

We have quite a challenge in front of us. Of course it’s one we can achieve. But it is a challenge. The challenge is this: a secular scientist can be a jerk, or a hypocrite, or be unkind without jeapordizing his status as a scientist. More specifically, if Richard Dawkins is unpleasant, there is no good reason to think his conclusions are untrue.
On the other hand, if I’m claiming that Christianity is part of my motivation for disputing scientific claims, and then I act like a knucklehead, it’s a different matter. If I’m unkind in my public behavior, if I ignore what’s been said to me, if I’m too lazy to do my homework, my actions are demonstrating that my commitment to Christ is only skin-deep.
I understand the concern. Extremists on both sides potray neodarwinian evolution and biblically truth as mutually imcompatible. This leads people on one side of the divide to think that neodarwinian evolution has to go.
But the reasons that people came to Christ nearly always don’t have to scientific understanding. It’d be quite a challenge to find somebody who desperately longed for God but couldn’t commit because of the fact that the fosill record does not coincide with the order that things pop up in Genesis. (just for the record, that oder isn’t too far off.)
On other hand, I believe that there are millions who desperately long for God but who find that the people who claim to be his diplomats, emisarries, and spokespeople are intolerant, anti-intellectual, close-minded, and unloving. Even if we’ve never heard the words we all get the idea that “by there fruits you shall know them.” What do our fruits look like to somebody within evolutionary circles?

Yoklohoma where the sun beats down on the plain…

It’s interesting.  I’ve never written much that was directly related to the idea of romantic relationships between Christians and non-Christians.   Nonetheless, this is an area that I have some opinions about, and an area I have some experience in.   There’s probably some connection between the fact that my experiences and opinions appear to be unusual ones.   And it seems like a topic we ought to be talking more about.  I’ve had a few people kind enough to ask me my opinion on this very topic.  (You can find some on this blog.)  These thoughts, then, are a bit of a summary of what I’ve said to the people who’ve asked my thoughts on the whole issue of should we as Christians seek out romantic relationships with people that aren’t Christians.

But before I get to what I think, I’ll do a quick biography.  For a much more detailed bio, click here.

To make a long story short:

I grew up a seeker. 

 I fell in love with a Christian.

Early on in our marriage we both acted like idiots.

She stopped acting like an idiot.

She almost died.

I came to Christ.

(Wow, what a depressing and liberating exercise, to boil down your life into 6 short sentences.  Everybody ought to try that.)

Anyway, that’s where I’m coming from.  In no particular order, here’s a few specifics about what I believe and why I believe it.

#1) God was trying hard to reach me.  I was to pig-headed to respond and so he continually upped the ante.  I don’t know if I would have come to Christ without the woman who is now my wife.  God is almighty and probably would have found a way.  But it’s hard for me to concieve of what this would have been.  Not because God isn’t powerful but because I can be a stubborn bone head.

#2) It wasn’t easy for my wife.  Her walk probably suffered for what she did.

#3) By the world’s standards, according to the criteria I was judging, I just about always won our verbal debates.  I’m good at manipulating arguments and twisting words.  She probably lost more ground than she gained on those rare occasions that she’d debate verbally with me.

#4) We were married about 5 years before I came to Christ.  For about 2-3 of these, she’d made the decision not to follow the foolish, destructive script that I’d gotten used to.  It took me that long (2 1/2 years!!!!) to ”get it” that I was being hurtful and destructive and she wasn’t striking back.  Two and a half years is a very long time to live that way.

#5) A lot of people who should have been supportive to my wife within the Christian community weren’t.

#6) One of the most powerful things she ever said to me, before I was a Christian: “Someday I think you’ll be a great man for God.” I didn’t understand why this effected me when she said it.  Much later I came to understand that among other reasons for rejecting Christianity was the simple fact that I didn’t think I could do it.  Hearing her say that she believed that I could do it and do it well was a huge thing.

Later, I’ll post some wider, more theological and less personal thoughts on this subject.