How Then Shall We Enjoy?

Kevin DeYoung offers Christians some good advice about confronting the continuing problem of binge drinking on College campuses. Read the whole thing for introduction and explanation, but his five step program is: 1) Know your enemy (i.E. debauchery poses more of a threat to young Christians than anti-Christian arguments), 2) Have a mature attitude towards alcohol 3) Be boldly Biblical 4) Show tough love 5) Remind Christians who they are.

Good list, but I think something's missing. I know what binge drinking look like. I went to a big state school where the T-shirts read "a drinking town with a football problem." My freshman year, we were the #1 party school and the #1 football team. I've seen wasted students do stupid, disgusting things, and I've read about worse. I mourn, not because they partied, but because they failed to party properly.

We serve a Lord who turned (a lot of) water into (a lot of) wine. During his time on earth, he went to a lot of parties, to the point where his enemies not only accused him of hanging out with the wrong crowd, but of being a drunkard and a glutton. But Jesus was neither.

We're not to be drunkards, and DeYoung is right that we should make that clear. Nor should we be gluttons. But I think "mature attitudes towards alcohol" should go more into how Christians should drink. Or, for that matter, how Christians should feast, tell jokes and have fun in general. This should all be in the context of a larger theology of pleasure, where pleasured is affirmed but not worshiped. Without such affirmation, Christian warnings about pleasurable things give the impression that we'd prefer to avoid fun all together. I've seen plenty of college testimonials that went something like this: "I used to party, but then I found Christ, so now I don't." Wow, count me in.

Instead, Christians should learn excellence in pleasure and not hide it. We should show how humor can be hilarious without engaging in cheap obscenities or destructive sarcasm. We should show how we cook, eat and enjoy exquisite foods without making a god of our stomachs. And we should show, especially to those who are still too young to partake, how good drink can enhance flavor, camaraderie, conversation and romance, and that those who settle for the over-consumption of cheap booze are missing out on something far greater. Of course, excellence in pleasure should clearly show that there are times not to partake - that there are seasons of feasting and fasting, and that there are times to be serious and that our happiness does not rely on drink. Excellence in pleasure includes knowing when to stop and when to say no, how to recognize and and give deference to our weaker brothers and sisters.

That's why this passage from DeYoung's post isn't very helpful:

On the other hand, the Christians that recognize the good gift of wine or beer need to grow up at times. Christian upperclassmen (and other adults) who can drink legally should be careful with alcohol consumption around underage believers. They should not talk about beer like it’s the coolest thing since Sufjan Stevens. Christian liberty is no reason for social life and conversation to revolve around the conspicuous consumption of alcohol.

Often, beer is better than Sufjan, Bon Iver, Tupac or whatever else is in your iPad. To not say so would be dishonest. Our social lives shouldn't worship alcohol, but neither should we treat pleasure in alcohol as some sort of embarrassing thing we have to hide. Alcohol is more likely to be a dangerous, forbidden fruit if we treat it like one. Moreover, if Christian youth do not have good models of excellence in pleasure, especially the pleasure of drink, then the alternatives offered by peers and media will be much more tempting.

Loriot, or Why German Humor is a Laughing Matter

Humor is one of those strange facts of existence. It's universal, everyone has it to some extent. It heals, it hurts, it unites, it divides. It helps us to understand, it clouds our understanding. It's important for me just for the way it makes life go down easier, not to mention how it helps do something I'm not always good at: connect.

Humor, of course, is difficult to translate across cultures, and living in another country, the change in humor can have, if you'll take the analogy, similar emotional effects to the change in diet. There are exciting new surprises, but there are certain dishes you grow up with that you start to miss. Here in Germany, I love Swabian comfort food , I've been pleasantly surprised by the varieties in pork and I'd take my wife and mother-in-law's cooking to any fancy schmancy chef. At the same time, I miss good, old-fashioned American chicken dishes and fresh chocolate chip cookies (ok, whenever fresh chocolate chip cookies are unavailable, I miss them, regardless of the cultural context). If you travel a lot, a menagerie of things you miss becomes quilted to your brain so that regardless if where you plant your feet, you're acutely aware that you are missing something. But better to have tasted than to have never tasted, or to have laughed than to have to have never laughed. Better, also, to remain in the present (usually).

Even as I miss semi-ironic banter with my sisters, Saturday Night Live, the Onion, or Jon Stewart, I've found that German humor is a foreign delight. This might surprise you, as every other country in the world judges the Germans as less funny than their own culture. Just across the North Sea, the English judge the rest of the world as less funny than their own culture, and they doubly judge the Germans. My parents have a book of joked about different culture, and it has only one joke on the Germans. It's a quote attributed to Mark Twain: "German humor is no laughing matter." Of course, in Germany, not taking yourself seriously is very serious business, which is why Twain's short piece, "The Awful German Language," sits front and center in most downtown bookshops.

But let me once again insist, German humor can be delightful, and my case and point is Loriot, the German comic died on Monday. Like many of the best comedians, Loriot was a master of his own language, so a proficiency in Deutsch is necessary to get it. Although some of it translates well, and I'll leave it to Philip Oltermann to explain how in his great post on Loriot (he also does a service and links to some of Loriot's best sketches).

I had never heard of Loriot until his obituary was the front page of every newspaper and the feature segment of news station. For the past two nights, my wife and I watched documentaries about him and his work. We laughed together. Loriot's sketches produce that uncontrollable, uninhibited belly laughter, the best kind. Between breaths I notice: life is better now.

That Horrible, Horrible Place Called Ikea

Let me start by outing myself as a user of Ikea products. I sleep on an Ikea bed with two mattresses - my wife's was specially made for her, but mine was from Ikea (we have two-mattress beds here in Germany - which is quite sensible, the more you think about it). My clothes are folded (mostly) and jammed into one of those sturdy, practical Malm dressers. I get a little emotional when I think about the white Erktop couch we left inside the Washington beltway. In fact, I think the chair upon which I sit was a result of that merry band of Swedes, but I'd have to ask my wife as she bought it a long time ago.

But the Ikea shopping experience, which has happened to me several times, is a flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. Their enhanced shopping method is several surreal labyrinths of household goods, worthy of Dante, Kafka, Hitchcock and the latter levels of the original Super Mario Brothers. The purpose of this, to the best I can ascertain (it's always difficult, after Ikea, to remember what's real and what isn't), is that each display, each fluorescent lamp, each bag of affordable power strips, lands a body blow to the mind. Overloaded with information, color, stimuli and a complex series of numbers that supposedly guide the shopper/victim through their warehouse (final level where you fight the big boss if you have enough power points and appropriate ammo, though I really don't remember if that part is true), the shopper is unable to make competent purchasing decisions, so he buys everything on his list and requires a military convoy just to get it all home.

This week, my family, against our better judgment, embarked to Ikea. We have two Ikeas to choose from - I think they hover around major metropolitan areas like those space ships in Independence Day. They lured us in with an email: kitchen chairs were on sale - 20 Euros off. We needed kitchen chairs - four of them. To boot, we also wanted nightstands, various kitchen items and curtains. We hopped in the Ford Focus and drove over there, the day calm, the weather hot but cheerful, rock'n'roll on the radio. We arrived at the mothership and were ushered (invited? Tempted? Who can say?) into a parking garage - it had only two levels, but the first one must have been as tall as Mt. Rushmore, because we drove upwards for miles, our car twisting up the ramp like it was one of the screws holding an Ikea dresser together until, nauseated (and in no condition to drive a car through a busy concrete enclosure, not to mention actually parking the darn thing), we reached our destination.

Somehow I parked, and we walked in, already disoriented. There's a friendly-looking place where you can leave your child with a friendly-looking Ikea employee. I looked over there. Our daughter is only a year and a half years old, and the kids need to be three to be left there. All the kids were watching a movie. I couldn't see what it was. There was a Pixar poster on the wall, but I bet that was a diversion. I suspect that the kids were really watching an instructional video on breaking kitchen chairs and nightstands, so as to send parents back to buy more as soon as possible ("Hi kids! Today, we're going to see what a hockey stick can do to a table leg!").

I'm told all Ikea stores are basically the same, but I never remember what comes first. Beds? Couches? Bathroom? Kitchen? All I remember is that there is a lot of furniture, surrounded my mesmerizing displays of idyllic rooms full of suspiciously perfect right angles. I'm also told that there are shortcuts through Ikea, and if you know what you're doing, you can actually get through the store quickly, kind of like how, at Target, you can buy what you need and escape unscathed (except for being forced to breathe in that inhumane popcorn-maker smell when you walk in the door, but that's for another blog post). Maybe it's true, who can know? But I think it's just a rumor that the Ikea authorities let fester for the sake of false hope. All I know is that when we were in the bowels of the Ikea kitchen displays, we could no longer find the sale we were looking for. Filled with panic, my wife realized she had not printed the sales email. We looked at each other. Beads of sweat grew on our foreheads as I struggled to hold on to my squirming daughter. I knew that if she ran off among the maze of cabinets and high stools, I might never see her again.

My wife took out her cell to call her parents to make sure the email was correct (conveniently, we left our notebook computer on their kitchen table). No signal. Not a bar. I took out my phone. Same results - just a blank screen that glowed uselessly until its automatic lock-down kicked in. In Ikea, no one can here you scream.

My wife and I locked eyes. That's all we had time for. She was beautiful. Quietly, but with a sense of purpose, she raced back the way we came (we had left a trail of those papers where you're supposed to write your product numbers, just in case). Ikea can bring a couple together in our desperation. But it can also tear us apart. I observed another couple arguing. It was a heated, angry exchange about what to buy for their bedroom. The woman was arguing on the authority of her nesting instinct, magazine articles, color patterns and thousands of childhood dreams. The man was arguing on the authority of their bank account and the actual size of their apartment. I didn't see how it ended. In an effort to distract her from the gravity of the situation, I took my daughter to make faces in a full-length mirror.

Time is different in Ikea. Who knows how much time passes outside of the store, or how long we were actually in the store. What I do know is that my wife made it back to us, but I really don't know how long it took. My beard was thicker, though, and my daughter was taller, but that may have been the mirror playing tricks. My wife's parents were able to confirm the sale, even if there were no indications in the mother ship.

Bruised, tired and hungry, we made our way to the cafeteria. Some might argue that the cafeteria is one of Ikea's redeeming features. After all, Ikea is one of the few places in Europe that offers free refills. But, chugging down my third glass of Ikea-brand cola like a Roman oar man on a break, I realized that the that was the catch. The free refills! What spurs the obesity epidemic if not the mass availability of sugar water? And what causes furniture to sag, slouch and break more than obesity? I looked down at the cream sauce oozing over my salmon. I looked over at the fries my wife was sharing with my daughter. I felt my chair creak and struggle beneath me as the conspiracy formed in front of my eyes. I returned our trays, shaken, and we quietly made our way down the escalator to the lower level.

The lower level of Ikea is room after room, stage after stage, of small appliances, lights, silverware, art prints and potted plants. There are baskets of products so inexpensive and appealing that you find yourself filling up your yellow bag with them without really thinking. "Yes, I'll take six of those three packs of picture frames." But the good news is that the cunning furniture displays have mostly stopped, though the damage has been done.

The warehouse is the final stage. The warehouse is where you actually get your furniture, vacuumed packed into immovable boxes, stacked on shelves, row after row after row, like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. After an Indiana Jones-like search, we found our chairs and night stands, which we put on a pushcart and made our way, wearily, yearning for freedom, to the checkout lines. The checkout lines are automated. I scanned the chairs. Still no sale. I swiped the Ikea-family card, which usually is good for a free cup of coffee. Sale! We got what we came for! We got what we came for! My wife and I embraced. My exhausted daughter napped in the umbrella stroller.

We hurried out, making no eye contact with Ikea employees or other customers. We wanted to see the sun again. Under the weight of six, compact boxes, the Focus bent but didn't break. We drove away. What day was it?

Later, struggling to build our new nightstand, I realized I put a shelf in backwards, compromising the entire project. The white boards of some sort of pressed meatloaf wood, twisted and scratched as I tried to correct the error. The horror. The horror.

Did a Big Idea Make Big Ideas Elusive?

This weekend, some friends sent me Neal Gabler's interesting New York Times commentary, "The Elusive Big Idea." In it, Gabler bemoans the lack of influence compelling intellectual ideas have on modern Society. We make icons of those who, in the past, not only thought of something new, but also captured the attention and commanded the respect of the rest of the Western world, to the point where their ideas not only transformed their own field but impacted society as a whole. Freud's study in psychology brought about a paradigm shift in his own profession and influenced literature, theology and much else. The same could be said of Einstein with physics, Niebuhr with theology or Keynes with economics. Not only that, Gabler argues, but the ideas, and the intellectuals who argued for and about them, held more respect in popular culture. He writes:

"A big idea could capture the cover of Time — “Is God Dead?” — and intellectuals like Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal would even occasionally be invited to the couches of late-night talk shows. How long ago that was.

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé."

Now, you might be thinking, isn't the screen I'm staring at now a pretty big, transformative idea? Couldn't we add the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg to our pantheon of people with good, world-changing ideas? No, writes Gabler.

"Entrepreneurs have plenty of ideas, and some, like Steven P. Jobs of Apple, have come up with some brilliant ideas in the “inventional” sense of the word.

Still, while these ideas may change the way we live, they rarely transform the way we think. They are material, not ideational."

In fact, all this information technology is part of the problem.

"Where are you going? What are you doing? Whom are you seeing? These are today’s big questions. It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed."

I understand these this intense need to be informed, and the makers of social media, not to mention search engines, were smart to capitalize on this. A few minutes ago, I had to close the tabs with my Facebook and Twitter feeds just so I could stay focused on this blog. Gabler goes on to write how traditional media, the disbursers of big ideas, is suffering in an instant information society. Print is shrinking in market share, and popular television talk shows no longer invite intellectuals to sit on their couches. Instead of pausing to think, we now have the means to gorge ourselves with information, and we use it.

We're a narcissistic society, it's true, though I'm sure other professors had said that about their students a generation ago. Also, I don't think profit and intellectual thought are as antithetical as Gabler says it is. He admits that there are indeed thinkers with ideas to give and mentions a few examples, but they just don't have the same impact or attention of the idea generators of the past. But I largely agree that today, with our glut quick, instantaneous information and fewer ideas that manage to influence everyone.

Here's the thing, though. Isn't the death of a big idea, in part, the result of ideas themselves? Gabler laments the fall of enlightenment thinking, which he says is related to the death of the big idea, but he never mentions a big idea that critiqued the enlightenment itself: postmodernism. Postmodernism's flagship tenet is the deconstruction of meta-narratives, which is another way of saying big ideas, is it not? Postmodernism became popular, because some big ideas, full of influence, impact, debate, scholarship and much else, were devastating. Consider this neat summary from an Economist article five years ago (about which I wrote here):

"The founding post-modern text (as books are called in pomo) is by two Germans, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Published in 1944, “Dialectic of Enlightenment” examined the culture that had given birth to Auschwitz. It declared that “enlightenment is totalitarian”—that the 18th-century attempt to replace religion with rationalism had supplanted one form of mental slavery with another. God had been elbowed out by fascism, communism, Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism, socialism and capitalism. The post-modernists thought their job was to “deconstruct” these grand theories, which they called the “meta-narratives”. The pomos would free people from them by exposing their sinister nature."

What hath big ideas wrought? Yes, Freud and Einstein had big ideas, but so did Hitler and Stalin. Perverse as they were, they were birthed in an enlightened culture where ideas, to use Gabler's words, were not "intellectual playthings," but had "practical effects." Indeed, it was fear of Hitler that caused Einstein to apply his big ideas towards the creation of the atomic bomb. If big ideas are less important to many of us, it is, in part, because they managed to destroy themselves in the process.

What is the result of the postmodernist critique of big ideas? Well, one is mass individualism, which Gabler laments without naming. As the Economist article points out, Capitalism has taken advantage of this with niche marketing, which is perhaps why Mark Zuckerberg has probably had more of an impact on most of us than Steven Pinker (to use one of Gabler's examples). Aided with technology, we all get to pick and choose what we read, what feed we follow or whose pictures to tag. But it doesn't necessarily mean we cease to think; our thoughts rarely rest in conformity with our preferred ueber-thinker, and when they do, that thinker has less impact on society as a whole. I primarily use Facebook to share links and read the links my friends have posted, and much of it is good, substantial stuff. Ideas are not extinct, but there's a lot more of them, and, for better or for worse, it's less likely that the big few will dominate.

Yes, this leaves all of us wide open for narcissism. Furthermore, I share Gabler's dislike of celebrity gossip and the computer-like gestation of information without thought, not to mention a preference for long, thoughtful essays over the verbal volleyball of cable punditry. I wish Letterman would feature a prominent professor for every actor he hosts. But I would rather live with our frantic, electronic marketplace of ideas and distractions then go back to a time when an evil idea could become so dominate.

Will Wilkinson, in reply to Gabler, believes (and "would bet his immortal soul") that "more big ideas... were studied, discussed and produced in 2010 than in 1950." He goes on to put a sunnier face on modern intellectual discourse:

"A TED talk or a book-talk spot on "The Daily Show" may not have the audience or cultural centrality of a half-hour with Dick Cavett on ABC in 1970, but more people are consuming and discussing big ideas, old and new, than ever before. The difference is that the audience and the discussion has become fragmented and decentralised.

The fun part is that I, as a lay thinker, can join the discussion right here on the information super highway. For those of us who prefer a cooler, more intellectual environment, the answer is to remain relentlessly thoughtful, reading and considering the ideas we come across. Before, of course, we post them on Facebook.

Neurotics Like Us

Over at First Things, Bryan Wandel describes “Christian Neuroticism,” which is particularly acute among American Evangelicals given our historical tension with modernity and the impact of the Pentecostal Movement. Bryan explains: “Thus, many American Christians have had their minds wrung by the challenges of extrahistorical standards (due to the fundamentalist response to modernity) while their epistemologies have been strung out on the throes of immediate communication with God. This is not an enviable situation.” (Read the whole thing, for a fuller explanation of both the history and the psychology involved. I should also point out that I knew Bryan in D.C., and was thrilled to see his name “On the Square”)

It may not be enviable, but he goes on to write that it may not be so bad after all. An advantage to this acute state of being in but not of the world is creativity in line with the likes of Lewis, Elliot, Kierkegaard, Solzhenitsyn and Tolstoy. He goes on to conclude:

“Is the neurotic Christian unhealthy? Possibly. But you would have to judge him according to the norms of both his cultures. Moreover, this tension may be merely an enhanced version of the tension that all people are susceptible to when living in a finite, hurtful world. The world is good, and yet it is bad. People are spiritual beings, but find themselves far from God. The Christian neurotic, with the right guidance, might have the best experience to relate to when the world seems cruel and contradictory.”

I link to this, because Bryan provides a good angle on some of the tensions of Christianity that ceaselessly and with various levels of distraction occupy my mind, but his essay gave me two additional thoughts.

First, if modern American Evangelicals have a tendency towards neurosis, then we’re in good company. Aside from Bryan’s all-star lineup of writers, I know that Baptist Preacher C.H. Spurgeon suffered depression, and modern psychologists would have probably diagnosed Martin Luther with bi-polar disorder. We might even see a little neurosis when we read about Augustine’s spiritual search, and while I am insufficiently read in the old saints, I suspect that these tensions are a common theme. In scripture, we find that Jesus tells us to expect difficulties and opposition when we go out in the World, and the behavior of his disciples (gyrating between cowardice and courage, faith and fear, bold commitment and hesitation) is, in my eyes, comfortingly neurotic. Much of Paul’s pastoral instruction seems to be guiding his flock through the inherent tension between the world and the Gospel of Christ (I’m reading through 1 Thessalonians right now, whose message seems to be “glad to hear you’re doing well, Jesus is coming back!, so be good, keep calm and carry on). Then there are the cries of the Psalms and the prophets, not to mention ancient Israel’s struggle to be a people set apart from the pagans. So, I suspect that if we are a bit neurotic, then we are only experiencing what God’s people have experienced throughout the ages, with our own cultural and historical context to give it a different flavor.

Second, other than creativity and possibility having “the best experience to relate to,” I can think of one more positive result Christian neurosis, one that, used well, will benefit the Christian neurotic as well as those in his life: prayer. Such conflict, such tension, such unresolved stress between our desire to see God’s kingdom come while still live and thrive in our own world should cause us to see our insufficiencies and (if you’ll pardon the cliché) bring us to our knees. A prime benefit of Christianity is that we, by the Son and through the Spirit, get to commune with the Father. Prayer seldom resolves our tensions or fills our lives with ease (though how often we wish it would). But prayer does deepen our relationship with God. We drink living water from the source, and in that, we taste richness of the life He has given us.

Joy in Writing

I've put aside at least two posts this weekend. I also left a couple of post ideas festering in the fantasy stage of the process. My writer fantasies usually involves: 1) a blogpost changing the world for the better 2) it goes on to make me independently wealthy without damage to my soul 3) for my efforts, I am interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. It goes something like this:

TG: Un Till, I have to say, your posts are well-written, inspiring, and worth the outrageous wealth that has been showered upon you. Yet, you keep rejecting a stable career as an Abercrombie model to type on the internet. What is your secret?

UT: Well, Terry (may I call you Terry?), it all comes down to my humble refusal to obsess about myself.

Ahhh.... (dreamy smile before coming back to earth with a frightened shutter)

But the aforementioned posts tempted by anger, and anger, while sometimes appropriate, is a dangerous emotion to publish on the Internet. There is something to this, though. Part of writing's charm and joy is processing our emotional responses to something.

I've been thinking about why I enjoy writing. I wish I enjoyed building machines as some of my relatives do. Building things create beauty and discovery and economic stability, not to mention tremendous opportunity to practice generosity. But I enjoy opening up one of those glowing built things and typing words on it (in between reading words at other growing places). Writing helps me make sense of my reactions to what I read and experience; it helps me sort out my messy top drawer of emotion, imagination, thought and memory. When I'm finished, I better understand close things like my daughter's voice or distant things like another country's national tragedy. Not that I ever truly understand them, but it takes me down the road, loosening some convictions and tightening others. Posting these thoughts where others can read them gives them a measure of discipline and accountability that was not otherwise there. I've journaled before, and I'll probably do so again, but the results are usually (not always!) a fire hose of free-writing gibberish, offering me only outlet without light. The idea that someone may actually read it means I have to make the swarm of bees that I call my brain somehow coherent. And (to the best of my abilities) fair, honest and respectful. Or completely silly.

When he completed the Narnia series, C.S. Lewis received a lot of mail from children asking him if he would ever write any new books about the land of Aslan, Lucy and Caspian. Lewis always wrote back, "no," but he encouraged the children to write their own Narnia books. "It's most fun!" he would write (at least I think that's how he put it - my copy of Letters to Children is elsewhere). And it is, for many of us. Give it a try. After all, part of the great fun of the Internet is we all get to write on here for free. If you find your posts are angry, though, be careful. Shouting "you fool" is a dangerous indulgence.

Thoughts on True Belief

I'm taking "The Response," the much-publicized prayer and fasting rally starring Texas Governor Rick Perry, with a grain of salt. I've grown up in American and Evangelical culture, and both strands are prone to hyperbole. The website reminds us that we are in a "historic" moment that demands a "historic" response and that this "historic" prayer rally will start a "historic" movement towards... what? Prosperity? A more Christian nation? More Christians in the nation? A revival of sorts? Did this "historic" rally go above and beyond all the other "historic" rallies? I've sat in various stadiums and hotel ball rooms to be told how America was on a crossroads so many times that it doesn't really stick anymore.

This is not to downplay the problems in the U.S. or anywhere else. Debt, division and war are serious and sobering things. Prayer and repentance are appropriate responses. But I fear (and I hope my fear is wrong) that much of the hyperbole is to blaze a path for a great man (to rephrase the website), so that Governor Perry or someone like him will be a new Evangelical David, casting stones at Philistines with different political opinions, a legion of praying voters behind him.

These thoughts on The Response were first provoked by Frank Bruni's recent NYTimes column entitled "True Believers, All of Us." After commenting on the media response to, well, The Response, he begins to critique faith in ideologies all together, left and right, religious and political, corporate and private. Aren't we all like those silly Evangelicals in Texas, holding on to our little beliefs and refusing to face reality when challenged? Why do people hold such beliefs? Of course! They want easy answers in tough times. Bruni writes:

"Clarity seduces. So does simplicity. We don’t want to hear that different skills produce different results in different contexts, but rather that there are “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” the number specific, finite. We like to believe that triathlon training will trump genes and keep all major illness and minor sagging at bay, and that the metabolic alchemy of a cabbage-soup diet or a no-carb diet or some other diet will work wonders and obviate humdrum moderation. Magical thinking, all of it."

As for America's troubles, Bruni has a response of his own.

"And right now, with the stock market floundering and our credit rating downgraded and millions of Americans stranded in unemployment and Washington frozen in confusion, the temptation to look for one summary prescriptive — for certainty, even miracles — is strong. We’d be wise to resist it. To get us out of this mess, we need a full range of extant remedies, a tireless search for new ones and the nimbleness and open-mindedness to evaluate progress dispassionately and adapt our strategy accordingly. Faith and prayer just won’t cut it. In fact, they’ll get in the way."

I share his skepticism of clarity and simplicity, five points to happiness, diets that claim you won't feel hungry or pre-canned political solutions. But like it or not, some form of ideology will always drive politics. If Bruni wishes to separate politicians from the ideologies of those who elected them, then he doesn't have a prayer.

More to the point, his criticism of ideology is guilty of the same simplicity admonishes us to avoid. Ideas often come from people with worldviews, and we have a lot of those. If he wants to see a "full extant of remedies" for our economic woes, then he can peruse the websites of various think tanks, newspapers and faculty papers. Few solutions would be faith-free, and I would be suspicious of anyone who claimed no bias. They come from people with different views about government, commerce, responsibility, economy and morality. Most of them are be well-reasoned, logical and accompanied by graphs. All the data, of course, must be interpreted, and here is where humans cease to be computers. We start debating how many angels can dance on the head of a deficit. After all, we don't have labs to test every economic idea in academia and advocacy (and, for good reason, we don't give our government the dictatorial power to do such things). We have data, ideas and history, all of which are opened to interpretation based on what we believe. True believers, all of us.

Rather than encouraging the impossible task of jettisoning belief for the ideal of rational social science, let's encourage our politicians to take Bruni's Times colleague Ross Douthat's advice. No American political party has the majority or the capital for a sweeping ideological victory, Douthat argues. They should not give up on their beliefs nor cease to hope about the future, but while America (and those who represent us) remains divided, they need to remember their responsibility to govern effectively.

Bruni is correct that we long for simple solutions and quick clarity. It sells well, and people in business, politics and religion have all taken advantage of it. But true belief is grittier. Among the reasons I remain a Christian is that Christianity refuses to be the bag of goods some folks sell it as (see the prosperity gospel, for a worrying example of this). Christianity never promises ease, health or worldly political conquest. The Biblical picture of Christianity is one of relationship: often parent to child, husband to wife, even friendship. The best of these relationships, from whatever perspective you experience them, are not a series of simple solutions easily replicated on PowerPoint. But they make life deeper, richer and more hopeful. When these relationships are perverted, we taste hell. Christian faith is a difficult, refining, fiery, trying, dynamic, wonderful, loving relationship with God through Jesus Christ, reconciled by His blood and sealed with His Spirit. It's complexer than the finest of wines, and it's worth drinking deep.

This leads us to prayer. Prayer is not a vending machine button to a better life or a better America. It's a the communication essential for the relationship to function. (For further reading on prayer, I highly recommend A Praying Life by Paul Miller, which I wrote about here). A life of genuine faith and prayer does not "get in the way." More often, it allows us to see clearly and humbly face our problems.

This leads me back to The Response. Again, I'm underwhelmed by hyperbola and weary of any political use of Christianity. But if 30,000 of my brother and sisters genuinely practiced repentance and prayed for their country, then a good thing happened underneath it all. If The Response enriched their relationship with God and sent them back into their communities in humble faith and prayer, then may they be examples and proclaimers of true belief.

Kicking It With the Bundesliga

After waiting at least a month and a half, German soccer is back! That's right, as I write this, defending champions Dortmund are trying to score goals against Hamburg in the opening game of the Bundesliga season (updated - Dortmund dominated 3:1). Now, you might be thinking, why should I care about the Bundesliga? Your thoughts could run something along the line of "wait, aren't the sexiest soccer teams and most tabloid-ready stars in England and Spain?" Or you might be thinking, "aren't I an American, programmed to think that any sport without hitting, either people hitting each other or people hitting a ball with a blunt object, is uncivilized?"

Well, let me make a few points in favor of the Bundesliga before giving you a whistle-stop tour of the league. I've already argued in favor of soccer in general, so let me say that I like hard, clean hits that don't lead from the helmet as much as the next guy, but there's a reason the rest of the world likes soccer. As for the Bundesliga itself, yes, it does lack the star power of the English and Spanish leagues (and Italian, depending on the year), but I would argue (admitting my strong German bias) that it's the most interesting major soccer league. First, there have been four different champions in the past five years. In England, Spain and Italy, you really only have two to choose from. Yes, Bayern Munich is a perennial frontrunner, but what exciting league doesn't have that? Besides, I get the impression that in England in particular, folks (or at least the media) are more interested in the running soap opera of the business of soccer than the game itself. Oh, and one more thing. As ESPN's Uli Hesse (the best Bundesliga commentary in English and one of my favorite sports columnist all around) explains at the end of every season, the Bundesliga teams score more goals per game than any other important league.

Ok, so now that you're convinced, here are some teams to keep an eye on (Fair warning, I will be mixing sports analogies and metaphors to help an American reader understand the league):

1. Borussia Dortmund: The defending champs are one of the most sympathetic and beloved teams in Germany. The teams from the "Ruhrgebiet," mining and industry cities in northwest Germany, are where many of the traditional soccer teams and "real" fans reside, and Dortmund is their flagship. The Ruhrgebiet is what the Great Lakes region is to the NFL, and Dortmund, wearing black and gold, traditional success and national sympathy are Germany's Pittsburgh Steelers. They have two flaws. Last year, they were terrible at penalty kicks, which could come back to bite them in international competition (the top three, this year, four, teams go to the Champions League and compete against other European teams), and their poc-a-dot uniforms were clearly the results of a Middle School art project.
   
2. Schalke 04: Schalke, another great Ruhrgebiet team from the city of Gelsenkirchen, is Dortmund's arch rival. Their cities are so close together, and the rivalry is one of the best in the world's (think Army-Navy, Chicago-Green Bay, Giants-Dodgers before California). Unlike their enemy, Schalke has never managed to win a Bundesliga title. Their biggest success was winning the UEFA cup a long time ago, which is like saying your college won the NIT in the 90s. This run of almost-success makes them the pre-1994 Boston Red Sox of the Bundesliga. They had a rough time of it last year, but did win the German cup and were decent in the Champions league before getting knocked around by Manchester United. At the end of the season, after despondently watching Dortmund hoist the Bundesliga trophy (which would make a great tray to serve deviled eggs), they lost their world-class and German #1 goalkeeper Manuel Neuer to the following team.
3. FC Bayern Munich. Bayern buys superstar soccer players, hogs media attention, considers 2nd place a bad season and has won more Bundesliga titles than any other team. In this, they embody the collective spirit of the Yankees, Cowboys, Lakers and Fighting Irish. So many Germans hate them, yet walk around a random German town on any given day and you'll see about a dozen Bayern jerseys. After their disastrous 3rd place finish last year (the year before, they won the Bundesliga, the German cup, and lost to Inter Milan in the Champions League final) they bought a new coach and several new superstars to even out their already eye-popping line up. If you watched the World Cup, where the Germans ran circles around every non-Spanish team they faced (ok, they fell asleep against Serbia, but that didn't matter in the end), than you've seen most of what Bayern has to offer, including the wonderfully named Bastian Schweinsteiger and the young starlet Thomas Mueller. Their foreign star-power is great as well - in the rare occasion that both stars are healthy, the Frenchman Frank Ribery and the Dutchman Arjen Robben (the World Cup's worst flopper, but a spectacular footballer nonetheless) make perhaps the most dangerous winger combination in the world.
   
4. VFL Wolfsburg: I gave the English a hard time for their soap opera approach to soccer, but Wolfsburg coach Felix Magath is Germany's guilty pleasure. Whether getting fired, getting rehired, winning championships or fighting with players, the former Bayern and Schalke coach turns heads like car accident. The sports how I watched last night gave un-fancied Wolfsburg much more attention than it deserved simply because everyone wants to see what Magath will do next.
   
5. Hamburger SV: Hamburg is one of the oldest, traditional and beloved soccer teams in Germany. So much so, that some post-Christian, sports-crazy fans took the next logical step: they built a cemetery for soccer fans. They were mediocre last season and are currently getting thumped by Dortmund, so their fans might want to consider dying during a season when they can afford some better players (and reconsidering their priorities in general).
   
6. Hannover 96: Hannover is rarely a good team, but they were last season's big surprise with a 4th place finish. Also, American fans should pay attention, because they are captained by Steve Cherundolo, who, evidently, is the only American outside defender capable of taking on a Mexican striker (prove me wrong, Klinsi).
7. Baden vs. Wuerttemberg: Ok, I'm in a bit of a bind as to who I should root for. You see, soccer is angry regionalism in Germany, and the big rivalries are often between different tribes of Germany. I was introduced to the Bundesliga in Freiburg, Germany's answer to Portland, in the solar-powered stadium of this rarely-good but scrappy and appealing team. Freiburg is in the region called Baden, where the ancient Badische tribe of Germans live. However, I married a Swabian, and currently live in the area of VfB Stuttgart - a traditional club who won the Bundesliga several years ago. The Swabians are the Badens' arch-rival tribe, and Freiburg and Stuttgart are rival teams. So, Freiburg is my first love, but I'm surrounded by VfB fever, and hope to get to a game or two this season. I'd like to root for both, but that's like rooting for both Florida State and that team Tim Tebow used to play for (name escapes me...). Thoughts? I can't serve two masters, but can I root for two rival Bundesliga teams?
   

Bowmore Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky “Surf”

The Swiss side of the border. Boasting some of the Alps highest mountains, and presumably some of the best skiing, it also has entire villages that act as airport gift shops. It’d duty free shopping, between Swiss hotels and bubbling mountain streams, you can buy kitschy or profane T-shirts, liquor, jewelry and perfume without being hassled by the taxman. Other than gasoline, which was a good 30 cents per Liter cheaper than what we get in Deutschland, the prices weren’t so outrageously good that we were tempted to max out our credit cards (though other tourists, it seemed, did not share our opinion), but I did take advantage of the to buy some single malt whisky and a small cigar from a certain island country that my home country doesn’t get along with.

Yesterday, the afternoon rains had temporarily cleansed the land of the goopy yellow pollen that had been devouring my body from within. A clear evening beckoned. I took the cigar, the scotch and a my bag of books to the Ferienwohnung’s backyard. Therein, among the impeccable grass and beautiful flowers stands a wonderful building. It’s a combination shed (filled with the necessary equipment for backyard games like badminton) and a kitchen. A lovely stone porch nestles two sides of the building, and I sat down on the side that faced the mountains.

The cigar was mild and modest, a small Romeo and Julia, but delicious nonetheless. The whisky fit perfectly. I developed a taste for Scotch when we lived in a Scottish-American household, but I’m still a novice. My decision at the store was based on no research whatsoever, but was more of that special combination of price and marketing, which influences most of my purchasing decisions. I went with a Bowmore Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky called “Surf.” Surf is the cheapest Bowmore whisky available on the Austrian-Swiss border. Surf offers your palate “warm smoke, oak and honey, balanced with a hint of zesty lime.” Maybe it was the cigar, but I missed the zest lime, but the rest was true. The smoke flavor was strong and came tantalizingly close to the border of overwhelming, but that’s what made it interesting and, let me say, delicious. It also made it go well with the cigar. With smoke in my mouth, I looked to the mountains. The sun weakened, the Alsp turned purple, to the peace and praise of our Creator. Be thankful for his bounty: evening, mountains, cigars and scotch.

Is the Hundertwasser House Germany's Answer to Dr. Seuss?

The most beautiful building in the small city of Plochingen is St. Ulrich's, the Protestant church that presides over the Neckar River with the majesty of an aging monarch overlooking his court. The second most beautiful building is St. Konrad's, Plochingen's handsome Catholic church that lies just down Hindenburgstrasse from my in-law's house. But if you visit Plochingen's official website, the first image you see is a fuzzy-edged picture of the city's own Hundertwasser House.

In the early 90s, the famous Austrian architect and artist Friendensreich Hundertwasser (his name means "Reign of Peace Hundred Waters," though he was never a basketball player) agreed to design a masterwork for this sleepy Swabian town. The house, which is a high-walled courtyard containing apartments and cafes and an enormous "Rain Tower" which may or may not collect rain, stands proudly in the middle of downtown.

The purpose of this courtyard is to convey Hundertwasser's distinct characteristics: "happy colorfulness, round forms and playful balconies." Also, Hundertwasser planted a live trees in the balconies and roofs. These "tree renters" serve as an important testament that not only people, but trees live in apartments.

The other night, my sister and I made an investigative visit to the court yard to, just like a certain bear who went over a certain mountain, see what we could see. It is playful and colorful, without a doubt. The visit confirmed my suspicion that Hundertwasser, much more than an esteemed architect, is the German speaking world's answer to American children's book author Dr. Seuss. To my eyes, the best way to describe the Hundertwasser House, with it's playfully scattered windows, generous reds and sparkly blues, randomly drooping colorful drops (evidently to make it look natural), wonderfully loopy corners and curves, can best be described as Seussville. In fact, now that I regularly read Dr. Seuss's ABC book with my daughter, I was surprised to leave the courtyard without seeing a Fiffer Feffer Feff (with his four fluffy feathers) or the Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz. It would be the perfect place for Thing 1 and Thing 2 to chase the Cat in the Hat in father's ten dollar shoes. They did not serve green eggs and ham, but this didn't surprise me as it would have clashed with the color-scheme (Red Fish and Blue Fish, however, would fit right in). I should also say that I don't know anyone who lives in the apartments, so I can't report whether or not they would object to being called "Whos."

Anyway, I can only approach the Hundertwasser House with the fun and humor, but as the Germans say, nothing for ungood. It's clever, quirky, but very unique. And it makes sense that it is featured on the website; every town in Germany has at least one beautiful church, but who has an avaunt garde apartment complex that will turn heads (for better or for worse) of all the people who commute into Stuttgart? The rain tower sticks out of Plochingen's houses like a balloon salesman sticks out of a crowd of children. The Grinch leans out of it to hear if we are still singing.