Parenting and Entangling Love

Part of having a child, a wife, bills, and interesting things to look at is that I don't write as often as I would like. By way of saying, I wanted to respond from my little corner of the web to an interesting online writing kerfluffle about the challenges and joys of parenting, but I'm a little late thanks to the challenges and joys of parenting (I'm writing these words with one of those Disney sing-a-long films running in the background). Here in Germany, a couple of journalists complained that modern demands of parenting and career simply can't work, but shrug and say they might as well try to make it work anyway. Then, Ruth Graham's protest against all the negative, "honest" parent-complaining drew a lot of attention (at least in my social networking sphere), including Rachel Lu's beautiful, thoughtful response. Lu wrote one of those "I-wish-I-had-written-that" essays clarifying my jumble of thoughts and feelings about parenting-angst with a lovely description of joy and love in parenting. The whole thing's worth a slow read, and I wanted to highlight a couple points she makes towards the end:

Finally, I should address the most critical question: Is it worth it? If so, why? Certainly, there are cultural changes that could make the plunge into parenthood less daunting. It would be possible, too, for parents to feel less stressed and more affirmed. Still, child-rearing will always be miserable and magical, for more or less the same reasons. It’s a “happy pig or unhappy Socrates” sort of conundrum. Parenthood makes life harder, but also richer. It’s less pleasant but more meaningful. That’s because love fundamentally changes us as human beings. Like the dissatisfied Socrates, we can look on the unburdened (including our own former selves) with a certain amount of wistful envy, but it isn’t in our nature to want to stuff love back into its Pandora’s box.

She ends with: 

An employer could never get away with drawing up a contract like the one you implicitly have with your kids. So yes, it’s reasonable to be a little bit terrified. It’s no small thing to let another person become the main star of your life. It’s even harder when you realize that one day they’ll just walk right out the door again, leaving you twenty years older but no longer able to sleep in on a Saturday morning.

Still, if the opportunity beckons, you should do it. Because if you don’t, you’ll be the person who chose the happy pig over Socrates. You don’t want to go to your grave knowing that one of your most important life decisions was to run away from love.

These thoughts are seconded by Jennifer Senior, author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. In her interview on Fresh Air, she documents the "no fun" part then gets to the joy, and like Lu, she knows what we all know, that the joy is worth it, even if it can't be numerically verified:

And, you know, the studies don't focus on (the joy) so much. I have to sort of go to philosophy and novels in order to discuss the joy. The problem with these studies is that if you're feeling good about something, you know, you rank it a five. So that moment that I was describing with my baby looking at me and cooing at me - which was, like, just like this transcendent moment in my life - would rate the same if I'm doing everything on a scale of one to five, as, like, a dinner with a friend, if I had a really great time at that dinner. In the same way that, like, you know, on Amazon, you know, a John Grisham novel and, you know, and Charles Dickens like kind of get fives, you know, but they're not necessarily the same experience, you know. 

And also, I can't remember who said this to me - I think it was George Vaillant, a psychiatrist who is kind of a poet-philosopher, too - he pointed out that, like, it's kind of like using a number to describe a taste. You know, how do you do that? So I think that social science misses a lot of the joy.

And, you know, one of the remarkable things about joy is that it is sort of predicated on this idea of being very connected to somebody. I think Christopher Hitchens described, you know, having kids as, you know, your heart running around in somebody else's body. And that feeling is so powerful, it's almost scary, because there's almost, like, an implied sense of loss about it.

It's, like, you love somebody so much, that you are almost automatically afraid of losing them, like, that this connection is so deep, that you can't think of that connection without thinking of that connection being broken. So joy, in some ways, is almost a harder feeling to tolerate than sadness, in some ways, because it's so powerful and makes us so vulnerable. But it's why it is also so profoundly special and what makes parenting, to so many of us, so huge and incomparable.

So, a hearty amen to both from this papa across the pond. Both women (with an assist from Maria Popova) reminded me of C.S. Lewis' famous reflection in The Four Loves: "To love is to be vulnerable. To love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it in tact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it up carefully with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers and perturbations of love is hell."

Choosing lasting, difficult joy over immediate happiness is an ancient problem, and the fact that children are more of an economic burden than necessity thrusts today's (Western) family into the center of this choice. I've no special insight into this, but I'm encouraged: the fact that we're talking about it means this joy is not dead, and I wonder if paradoxically, we comfortable westerners are taking the joys of entangled love more seriously. This reminded me of something I noticed in that other great love entanglement: marriage. When I first came to Germany, I was told that Germans, consistent with the trends of most of Western Europe, were marrying later than Americans. I assumed that this meant they no longer took marriage seriously, that in a post-religious age they had deconstructed a ritual of religion and state enough to render it meaningless, or at least with much less meaning. Maybe at some point they'll muddle through the ritual and smile for the camera like distracted teenagers in a confirmation class, but more important is a fuzzy concept of love independent of the things our ancients had passed down.

It didn't take long to realize my assumption was wrong, at least among the students, young academics, and young professionals I interacted with. Sure, I'd hear people deconstruct marriage to justify premarital sex, but at the end of the day, marriage was a damn serious thing for most people, particularly for those in relationships. I found those living together didn't see their lifestyles as an alternative to marriage, but they saw marital commitment as something they couldn't lightly go into without a lot of practice and growth together. They were avoiding a complete entanglement, taking tentative steps into the rosebush, keeping the exit available, because they weren't about to make a commitment they didn't think they could keep. From this position, marriage was wonderful but overwhelming. They wanted it as much as the Bible-belt American standing before them, but with a deliberate slowness. I can imagine approaching child-rearing the same way, and it looks like more and more westerners are following in this path. The general seriousness about the topic impressed me, and it still does.

I sympathize. I had always wanted to be married, and yet the act of getting married cost me more courage than I could carry myself. Then our daughter came along, and she flooded our lives with love and joy but also with so many worldly worries that without the help of some god-fearing friends and family members, well, who knows how far we would have sunk. And still, both steps are the steps in my life where I can most clearly look at them and pronounce them good. I say this from a position of privilege - both my wife and I come from great families where martial promises were honored and children were viewed as gifts from the Lord. Not everyone grew up in such luxury, and I can understand how those without it might find the promises of love and joy of children much less believable, and all the "honest" parenting blogs could be a stumbling block for anybody. Entangling yourself in love is more and more a heroic, deeply serious step, the risks are no longer hidden behind smiles, closed doors, and rigorous cultural standards. It's serious stuff, and it's good we're all still talking about it.

Honest talking and writing doesn't hide the mess, the failures, or the heartbreak, but neither does it stay there, and I'm glad Lu and Senior reminded us how to write about the sort of things that don't fit on clever charts or Buzzfeed lists, but fit into philosophy, novels, poetry, and prose. The seriousness with which we're taking the commitments that irreversibly entangle our hearts to others mean that there's a hunger for it. And those of us who are presumptuous enough to tape our thoughts to the Internet should remember that writing about love and joy are worth the effort.

See You Soon, Dr. Willard

A long time ago, a friend told me that by reading the Gospels, she had fallen in love with Jesus once again. That sounded good to me - I mean, loving Jesus was a big part of being a Christian, and I wanted to fall in love with him, just like that old Jars of Clay song. So, I set out and read each of the Gospels. I did this dutifully, from Matthew to John, but I was a teenager and lacked the self-awareness to admit that it didn't have the same effect. The Gospels, the Synoptic Gospels especially, were a sort of mysterious, holy terrain, full of riddles and sort-of-familiar stories that I only assumed had a direct application on my life because I knew they were supposed to. I was down with David and Paul, but I felt like I was missing the main point.

This all changed when I read The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. I may never have learned about the book had it not been assigned reading for my first stint as a campus ministry intern in Freiburg, Germany. It was heady reading for us, and not everyone on my team liked it - I remember one of my colleagues called it "The Divine Confusion" - but for me, it was magic.

The Divine Conspiracy was the first book (or sermon) that took seriously the Kingdom of Heaven. The Synoptic Gospels are full references to it, but it was a phrase I really didn't know how to handle. The Kingdom of Heaven seemed something very different, very separate from the here and now. Of course, as Dr. Willard points out, this isn't the case. Jesus' first message was that the Kingdom of Heaven was something very close. Because of Jesus, God and his own Kingdom, where his will is done, where Love is the law, is something near, if only we repent and belief this Good News.

This is how Dallas Willard explained it, or at least how I understood it. Almost every pastor I've encountered since has stressed that the Kingdom of Heaven is both "now and not yet," meaning that someday Jesus will return and establish the fullness of his Kingdom, but now we get to feel its presence and participate with us, even as we live among a world very much fallen. In The Divine Conspiracy, Willard stresses the "now" part (though the closing chapter is a wondrous reflection of what's to come).  And in his text, following Jesus became an endeavor of delight and urgency. Think of the last project you worked on, be it for work or for school or for whatever, that really felt like it was worth it, like your gifts were being used to create something that, regardless of whatever else was happening, was in and of itself good. That's how Dallas Willard presented the Kingdom of God, and that's how Dallas Willard presented our Lord's opus, the Sermon on the Mount.

The Sermon on the Mount was a particularly hard nut among the Synoptic Gospel mysteries. The understandable critique, a critique that anyone who takes the Sermon seriously has to make, at least once, means: are these even possible? It's beautiful, sure. But it the real world, to rid our lives of anger, contempt, lust, and revenge, not to mention going the extra mile with someone, and all of this without being allowed to show off or worry... well...  It's silly, the way I'm describing it, but it's also honest. It seems a sermon of either ideals or intimidation, rocks that shatter good intentions.

But in a strange way, after reading The Divine Conspiracy, it isn't. To read Dallas Willard means that to follow Jesus in the manner described by his famous sermon is costly, yes, but it's also something rich and rewarding, full of energy without being tiresome. We really can go on the journey rid our lives of these things that suffocate our relationships to our fellow humans - bitter contempt, sexual objectification and revenge fantasies - to live a life where we really love God with all we got and love our neighbors as ourselves. The duty of discipleship became an adventure, a costliness that is worth every ounce of energy expended, for we know that ultimately, it's Christ, his death and Resurrection, that makes the journey possible.

The Kingdom of Heaven is still something mysterious to me, and maybe it's supposed to be. It seems like every pastor or theologian I encounter says something different on the subject, and maybe all of their thoughts fall within a spectrum of truth. But thanks to Dr. Willard, the concept, along with the Synoptic Gospels and the Sermon on the Mount, became something beautiful to me, something that I wanted to enter with all my heart. And with that, Jesus himself, his law, his teaching, his sacrifice and his presence through the Holy Spirit, became more beautiful.

I write this in appreciate and affection for Dr. Willard, who died on May 8th. I am indebted to his life and his teaching, and my highlight-stained copy of The Divine Conspiracy still sits in an open place on my shelf, available for reference.

Two Kinds of Sin in "Perfume"

It's hard to want to read anything else after reading a superb novel. I sit, outside on the balcony, inside a train on the way to work, knowing another world awaits if I could just move on start reading the first book on the pile. And I do, and I'm always happy I did. But that great novel leaves behind a little mist that leaves everything else hard to see. I just keep thinking of them.

Patrick Süskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, gruesome as it is, was the most recent "great novel" on my list. It's the first great novel I've read entirely in the German language. I read translations of Kafka and others in college and I've practice my language with the German versions of fun Swedish thrillers, but I haven't read anything that you could call great literature auf Deutsch, and the fact that I read and understood  Perfume was an encouragement of my own language ability. It's beautifully written - even to my second-language ears - still dark and disturbing yet strangely human. If you haven't read it, let me say that it's well worth it (though, again, gruesome). Oh, and if you haven't read it, then maybe you shouldn't read the following paragraphs. One of the novels pleasures is its unpredictability, and there are spoilers ahead.

In a book about brutal serial killer with an extraordinary sense of smell, it's a credit to Süskind's writing that I came away feeling more philosophical than disturbed. There's a lot in the text I could talk about, but I want to mention how Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's villainy reminds me of something C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity.

Grenouille's first victim is a girl who's smell he simply wants to possess. Her exquisite smell conquers him and he kills her. The scene reminds me of a pit bull attacking a two-week old kitten. It turns him into an animal. But later in the book he becomes something worse. As he realizes what kind of power scent has over a person, he decides to combine the best human smells, which are evidently only possessed by pretty girls. Then, methodical and sinister, he murders 25 of them and steals their scent. Why does he want this master perfume? He wants to be loved and adored by all, and he knows the perfect smell could manipulate this adoration. His animal desire leads to a heinous act; his pride leads to 25 more. Here's what Lewis writes:

You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Later in the same chapter:

It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

You can read the whole chapter here. I'm quoting this out of order, but here is one more point Lewis makes:

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

I have no idea if Süskind considered such religious language when creating his antihero, but it's interesting to note how Grenouille always looks inward and never up.

One Reason I'm Not a Naturlist

A little over a week ago, Alex Rosenberg made a case for naturalism in the New York Times. It's a strong case, and there's a lot I could write in process or in response. But then he writes this:

"That doesn’t mean anyone should stop doing literary criticism any more than forgoing fiction. Naturalism treats both as fun, but neither as knowledge."

Fiction is fun; if it were not fun, I would not read it (and I often stop reading a novel when it ceases to be fun for me). But if fun is the only thing Professor Rosenberg gleans from fiction, then I wonder if he is reading the wrong books.

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.

The Old Yellow Booklet

One of my roommates commended to me an Austin Farrer sermon called "The Old Rosewood Desk." In thinking about his old desk full of youthful treasures, the Oxford pastor, theologian and friend of famous Christians like C.S. Lewis, he reflects on childhood statements of faith, such as a confirmation certificate. Through this, he reminds those of us who have turned to Christ, however, long ago, that a constant factor in our ever-changing lives is fidelity: Our own fidelity to God and God's fidelity to us. The former only being possible through the ladder.

In sum, preaches Farrer:

"Man, knowing that without faithfulness he cannot be anything, looks for a loyalty to which his whole existence, and not part of it only, can be pledged. And who deserves this measureless, this all-embracing faithfulness, except the faithful God? Those childish undertakings, those writings on cards, confirmation professions, have grown dim and somewhat unreal. It is now that we must make up our minds, and pledge our obedience to the faithfulness of God. If we do so, we shall bring our former resolves to life by our new decisions. We shall, indeed, bring to life something older than our youthful resolutions - that is, the grace of our baptism, when the resolution was not yet ours, but our parents'; and we shall bring to life something older even than our baptism - Christ's will for our salvation when he died on the cross; and older than that, the everlating faithfulness of god on which the world was built.

Religion is not self-improvement, or decent conduct or emotional worship. Religion is fidelity. 'Promise unto the Lord your God and keep it,' says the psalm. But the fidelity which is the soul of religion is not our fidelity, it is God's. We give ourselves to him in no reliance on our own trustworthiness. Experience has taught us what we are. Our Confidence is that god's faithfulness will prevail over our faithlessness, that he will recall us, that he will not let us go."

It is appropriate that I quote and write on my mother's birthday. I believe I was five years old when I made a childish promise of my own. When I write "childish", I don't mean in a negative or demeaning sense, but I use the word because I was a child when I made the promise. We lived in a Richmond, Virginia townhouse that had a counter that separated the small kitchen from a carpeted dining room. I sat on one of the three comfortably-padded bar stools on the dining room side, and my mother stood in the kitchen, leaning on the counter with her elbows.

It was there that she shared the Gospel with me. Her tool was the Four Spiritual Laws booklet, designed and used by CCCI, the large para-church organization my parents worked for (and for which I would later work in Germany and New Orleans). If memory serves me, it was the classic mustard-yellow booklet that probably looked cool in the mid-eighties. The color, judging by a pair of pants my middle sister owns, seems to be making a comeback.

It's a simple Gospel presentation - God's love, plan and purpose; our sin and separation; Jesus, the cross, the Resurrection, the way; our repentance. And a few thoughts on what to do next, including further reflection and finding a church. My little mind, in some way, understood enough of this to claim commitment to Jesus Christ as the only hope of my salvation, conduced by a loving mother and a Little Yellow booklet.

I echo Farrer. However much I change, however much I seek to define myself, however much changes of countries, cities, technologies, jobs, churches and friends will alter my malleable body, mind and soul, fidelity remains something constant. This is not because I am good and being faithful. Whenever I stand in my church and confess the Creeds, I am not touting my ability to be true to the three-personal God it affirms. Rather, I am trusting in his fidelity, patient through the eons and the minutes.

It has not made my life easier or more successful. Indeed, I often wonder if I should have chosen more ambition instead of a sort of faithfulness. But to be the beneficiary of a love deep and divine beyond our understanding, to have a hope in a grand and renewed creation, to have genuine intimacy with creator and sustainer of all things, is worth more than anything else I've been offered.

In this post-modern world, fidelity to anything is viewed as suspect. This is for two reasons. From marriage to country to religion, human beings are historically bad at fidelity. I know a man who refuses to marry, because he does not have an example of a faithful marriage in his own family. Second, many who are good at fidelity are faithful to the wrong thing. A suicide-bomber is a hideous example of someone faithful to the end.

Fidelity to Jesus, as Farrer points out, relies on His fidelity, not ours, and in that we can have great comfort. Even better, we are faithful to Love and Justice, Grace and Holiness, God incarnate. We are right to suspect worldly fidelity, but God's fidelity leads to human flourishing. For these two reasons, if you have read this far and have not committed your life to Jesus, why not start now? My mother and the yellow booklet put me on this path. Join me.

Do We Need God to Stand Fast?

Add me to the list of those who recommend Eric Metaxas' excellent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm embarrassed to say that I've personally read very little of Bonhoeffer's works. I have Life Together in German and have been stubbornly trying to read it in its original text. It's possible for me, but it requires an amount of mental energy to keep up, and it sits on our shelf, a reminder of how far my German needs to go. I've recently read some of Wilhelm Busch's (Germany's answer to Billy Graham) straightforward Gospel sermons with more success.

Whether we have read him or not, we Christians are familiar with Bonhoeffer, even if his books are a thick jungle of theology, scholarship and challenge. He stood out among the Christians who stood up to the Nazis. He was theologically sound, truly spiritual and unusually courageous. He helped start the Confessing Church (in response to the nazification of the German church), trained pastors, rescued Jews and conspired to kill Hitler. For his efforts (particularly that last part), he was martyred, executed two weeks before the liberation of his concentration camp. We remember him, because unlike many (and unlike many of us would have, we fear), he did the right thing. He recognized an evil for what it was, recognized it has no place in Christianity, and stood fast to the end.

Who stands fast? Who will do good in the face of such evil? Bonhoeffer himself asked this question (we'll get to that later), and, in his reflection after reading Metaxas' biography (published in The New Republic), Alan Wolfe asks the same question. Take some time to read Wolfe's essay; his reflections are good and provide some additional background. As a Christian, I always wonder how such a work as Metaxas' Bonhoeffer, where a devout Christian honors the life of a considerably great devout Christian, will be accepted. There's a certain comfort to know that Wolfe thinks it a "fine biography," and even more so, it challenges the liberalism in which, to use Wolfe's words, he puts his own faith. It challenged him enough so that he writes a defense in that same TNR article:

"Throughout his book, but especially toward the end, Metaxas turns this erudite and at times abstruse theologian into a living and tragic human being. I would be less than honest if I did not admit that bringing this man—and his intransigence on all the important questions of our time—so vividly to life raises awkward questions for the liberalism in which I put my own faith. How, precisely, would a Rawlsian have acted in those dark times? Must we not move beyond this-worldly conceptions of politics as a struggle for power to other-worldly concerns with repentance and days of judgment, if we are to grasp how the Nazis were able to combine their own rational plans to kill millions with satanically inspired ideas about a Thousand Year Reich, and also how some people were able to resist those plans? Is it possible to face death with courage without knowing that a better life awaits? Can one be loyal to one’s collaborators in the resistance without being loyal to some higher power? Can faith help overcome torture? Lurking behind all such questions is the major one: if the problem of evil is not one that humans can solve, have we no choice but to rely on God for help? Does Bonhoeffer’s greatness prove his rightness?

Yet when I put this book down, I realized that its author, no doubt inadvertently, had helped me to answer these questions. Bonhoeffer may have been convinced that God was telling him what to do, but I am not convinced. Ironically, Metaxas’s passion, the intensity of his engagement with his subject, wound up persuading me of the importance of the very autonomy that Bonhoeffer believed that we do not possess. Even if God told Bonhoeffer what to do, it was Bonhoeffer who chose God in the first place. It was not a humble servant of the Lord who involved himself in the resistance, but a singular human being who, for whatever reason, was able to know what to do when faced with the problem of evil.

It is important to note in this context that there is no simple relationship between faith and courage. The German Christians who collaborated with Hitler may have abused religion, but they considered themselves religious. At the same time, many—if not most—of the resisters to Hitler were not Christian believers and did not take orders from God. They included Prussian generals, and left-wingers (including even a few communists), and the student movement known as the White Rose. Their bravery had nothing to do with religion. One should come away from the Bonhoeffer story impressed by religion, but not in awe of it. The human picture is more complicated."

The human picture is indeed complicated. I wonder, though, if it works both ways. He addresses part of this in his essay, but Bonhoeffer was not proud of whatever human freedom he possessed. In his essay, "Who Stands Fast?", Bonhoeffer writes:

"As to the man who asserts his complete freedom to stand foursquare to the world, who values the necessary deed more highly than an unspoilt conscience or reputation, who is ready to sacrifice a barren principle for a fruitful compromise, or the barren wisdom of a middle course for a fruitful radicalism — let him beware lest his freedom should bring him down. He will assent to what is bad so as to ward off something worse, and in doing so he will no longer be able to realize that the worse, which he wants to avoid, might be the better. Here we have the raw material of tragedy."

Freedom can easily be asserted bad and good, evil and virtue. For Bonhoeffer, the one who stands fast is one who is ready to sacrifice that freedom to his faith in God. Bonhoeffer would say, in disagreement with Wolfe, that this is why he stood. Wolfe, in contrast, does not give us another reason. He only provides examples of religious Christians who compromised, and some non-religious folks who did not (though, among his list, I should point out that at least one of the members of the White Rose movement was a Christian).

I do agree that the relationship between professed faith and courage is complicated. I suspect that Bonhoeffer wrote so strongly, in part, because he was unimpressed by the many Christians who compromised, or perhaps tried to avoid the issue all together. But claiming to follow God does not make us God-followers. I can write, in a comfortable house far away from any sort of political persecution, that however blinded by fear, patriotism or what have you, the religious appeasers of Bonhoeffer's day serve as shameful examples of what not to do in the in the face of evil. Whenever we Christians do wrong, or fail to do right, we are not taking orders from God, whether we believe we are or not. For Bonhoeffer, faith led to actions - actions that, whatever or in spite of our own personal inclinations, took God at his very Word - His Word that took on human form and dwelt among us. His Word who said things like, "love each other," "love your enemies," "I am the way, the truth and the life," and "follow me." This Word took sides with the poor, beleaguered and persecuted, and when Bonhoeffer stood against the Nazis, he did the same. Tell me, whose word does an atheist fail should he not be moral? His own? If so, then on what grounds should that concern him? And why should he not deconstruct those grounds to suit his own purposes?

How then, should we understand the noble non-believers? I'm curious how Bonhoeffer would answer that question (perhaps he has in one of the books that I have not read), but Metaxas provides a clue in the German pastor's reaction to another 20th century giant who did not share his faith. A reoccurring theme in the biography is Bonhoeffer's desire to visit Mahatma Gandhi to learn more about non-violent resistance. He was never able to make the trip, but they did exchange letters. It seems that Bonhoeffer thought God was using the actions of a non-Christian to shame Christians into right behavior. Gandhi did not believe in God in the same way Bonhoeffer did, but who is to say that the same God wasn't somehow involved in those actions? What if he is more intimately involved then any of us could have guessed.

Wolfe writes that there were plenty of heroes resisting the Third Reich who were not taking orders from God. But how could he know? More to the point, maybe the leftists, any non-religious Prussian generals and any other didn't know they were following God's Word, but if they stood for up for the oppressed against unadulterated evil, then frankly, they were. What if they were made in God's image, and there was something written in their hearts that compelled them to right action? What if they were blind agents of God, putting to shame many who claimed to see?

Wolfe did not leave Metaxas' biography "in awe" of religion. That's perfectly fine. Who says we should be in awe of religion? The Bible, with all of its religious instruction, never instructs us to glorify religion. Rather, we should be in awe of God himself. His Word, his fulfillment, was in the person of Jesus Christ. I am impressed with those like Bonhoeffer or anyone else, who follow his example, and I wish to learn from them. My religion does not guarantee that I would stand fast in such a time, nor does Wolfe's lack thereof guarantee that he would not. The answer to Wolfe's and Bonhoeffer's question lies not in some sort of triumph for our own will, but in God and his will. May he give us the grace to stand fast when the time of trial comes.

Garden State Re-Viewed

Yesterday, my wife borrowed Garden State from the library. I had seen Zach Braff's 2004 movie a few years ago, but she had not seen it yet. Aside from being a film we'll one day show our kids when they ask us about hip, turn-of-the-century music, there was a point in the story that struck me as worth keeping. (mind the spoiler) At the end, the main character, Largeman (played by Braff) after kicking the emotion-numbing medication that he used for a decade and a half, realizes that he needs to figure himself out now that he can feel. He had returned home to New Jersey from LA for his mother's funeral. Now, armed with this new self-realization he acquired over his four day return, he boards the plane back to California. His new, life-to-the-fullest girlfriend (my favorite Natalie Portman role) begs him to stay, so that they can make the journey together. Before takeoff, he leaves the airplane and returns to her so they can do just that.

It's a good reminder that most of us need help in our journeys of redemption, and unadulterated individualism rarely works for this sort of thing. As I continue to point out, I've needed help in my journey, and really, that's ok. The better films of this decade have made the same point, of course.

A suggestion beyond Garden State would be to invite God into your journey as well. Whether intended or not, God's absence is deeply and sadly felt in the film, as the characters use legal and illegal drugs, sex, relationships, money, experience - each numbing themselves in their own way. Natalie Portman's character mentions nonchalantly that she doesn't really believe in God. Largeman himself insists that he's not really (as in religiously) Jewish and only goes to Temple on Yom Kippur.

If you find yourself with a sort of familiar ache for a home that no longer exists, which is something the characters talk about in one of the more reflective moments, then consider getting to know Jesus. When I know him, my life is as beautiful or tragic or mundane as anyone else's, but it's filled with something more than can't be replicated. He offers life, and everything that comes with it, only more so.

Meanwhile, if you have not seen Garden State, or have not seen it in awhile, go to your local library and borrow it for the evening. Well worth it.

Technology and Humanity

I'm a huge technology fan (duh - the blog), and I count myself happy to live in the age of the internet. It's wonderful, and the opportunities of daily exploration are nothing short of miraculous. So I wonder if it's ironic that I resinate so much with Bob Herbert's beautiful column in today's New York Times.

"Tweet Less, Kiss More" caught my attention the day after I opened my first Twitter account, mostly to actually experience how it works. Mr. Herbert reminds us that:

We need to reduce the speed limits of our lives. We need to savor the trip. Leave the cellphone at home every once in awhile. Try kissing more and tweeting less. And stop talking so much.

Listen.

Other people have something to say, too. And when they don’t, that glorious silence that you hear will have more to say to you than you ever imagined. That is when you will begin to hear your song. That’s when your best thoughts take hold, and you become really you.

Of course, Mr. Herbert is not the first to to point out the dehumanizing effects of technology. Wendell Berry is my favorite critic of blind technological advancement (famous for his essay, "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer," yes, more irony, read it on your computer. This link includes the letters to Harpers, I believe, where it was first published, and Mr. Berry's witty response). Bob Herbert's column calls to mind a passage from Jayber Crow, which I read last fall, in which Jayber buys a an automobile (I wanted to quote directly, but I forgot that I had lent my book to a friend). Mr. Berry describes Jayber's growing impatience with anything moving slower than he was, particularly on the road, as he drives the car in post-war rural Kentucky, and this attitude eats away at his moral character. Knowing he does not truly need the car, he eventually gets rid of it. I believe somewhere in Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis is less moralistic, but nonetheless on the same train of thought, where he notes that, being born before the invention of the automobile he could better appreciate the nature in his own limited space.

Of course, this question of technological advancement and morals was around well-before the modern era. The Economist describes this story:

IN 1492, the same year that Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, a Benedictine abbot named Trithemius, living in western Germany, wrote a spirited defence of scribes who tried to impress God’s word most firmly on their minds by copying out texts by hand. To disseminate his own books, though, Trithemius used the revolutionary technology of the day, the printing press.

I can imagine that the scribes of old had a sort of patient, devotional and spiritual experience lost on many of us today by daily copying scripture. But, as we all know, the printing press put eventually put them out of business and brought God's word to everyone else.

The Economist article I linked to reviews a book about troubles with modern technology (social media), and suggests that the answer to troubles with technology is moderation, or "old-fashioned self-restraint." Bob Herbert suggests the same.

One of the essential problems of our society is that we have a tendency, amid all the craziness that surrounds us, to lose sight of what is truly human in ourselves, and that includes our own individual needs — those very special, mostly nonmaterial things that would fulfill us, give meaning to our lives, enlarge us, and enable us to more easily embrace those around us.

One caveat with this sentence. Whenever we talk about "what is truly human in ourselves," we can forget that the opposite of whatever we're talking about may be just as human. Technology enables and is enabled by our drive to achieve, our joy in production, our escapism, our fear that we are missing something, our anxiety that we are not keeping up, our need for connection, our appetite for information. Whatever is positive or negative about these traits, they are fully human, keeping phones and computers within arms reach, wherever we go.

Old-fashioned self-restraint means restraining a very human part of us. If it means closing the laptop to pay attention to my wife or my daughter (more irony: as I write this, they are sitting behind me), it means suffocating a very human part me to allow them (or my friends, or my job, or my church, or a piece of art, or ultimately God Himself) to shape me, and make me a better human.

Caught on Camera

Off early for Memorial Day Weekend, I took advantage of a little downtime to enjoy a full episode of This American Life. I commend most episodes, but I was particularly compelled by "Home Movies," because, newly married, newly fathered, I am at a point in my life where the camera starts rolling (in most cases, Justin's flip cam). "Home Movies" features five acts about, well, home movies, in which the This American Life correspondents, years after the fact, give characteristically insightful reflections on their own videos (David Sedaris' reflections on his mother and home movies is especially touching - I'd describe it more, but you'd be better off just listening to it).

The prologue is an interview with Alan Berliner, who made a film from six years of collecting home videos called Family Album. Berliner reminds us (to use the words from the website) that home movies almost always "document rites of passage, like birthdays or weddings, or moments of leisure - the beach is especially big. They show our lives as we want them to look, but maybe not as they actually do."

This is true. But it is tempting to conclude from this sentence that there is something inauthentic about rites of passage or leisure. Yes, these events are the exception and not the norm of how we spend our time. They can even seem anti-climatic when compared to weeks or month of preparation and anticipation. Yet, when I turn inward (my favorite place to turn!), these moments, alongside my greatest failures, that reel round and round in my head. Perhaps a more authentic home video of my life would include failures, humiliations and mundane day-to-day living, but rites of passage and leisure are genuine representations as to where I want to be and what I want to achieve.

Yes, the happy vacationing family may fight and fall apart. More marriages fail than I care to think about. Children singing "Happy Birthday" may grow up to be miserable adults. But keeping the good memories alive reminds us that they are no less real. They don't all need to be plastic castles of matching shirts and overpriced parties. What's "really" going on includes good and bad, happy and sad, mundane day-to-day and beach vacations.

Last week, a rite of passage was caught on tape. My daughter was baptized. There was much that led up to it that was not caught on tape. We spent a lot of time worrying. Where would our relatives sleep? Would we have significant time for them? Who would bake cakes for the party? Do we have enough paper plates? Would my daughter choose the moment of her baptism to soil her white gown with one of her patented "mega-poopies"?

Yet, for all the pomp and circumstance, this was the moment she entered God's church - set apart to reflect Him in His community. The gown - my mother found a hand-stitched English gown, plus a white, drool-catching bib with a cross and two doves (the Holy bib of Pentecost) - she will really only wear once, like a wedding dress and a prom dress. My pastor baptized her, along with two boys, and paraded everyone around the church. We said the Apostles creed, and promised, with God's help, to raise her in the faith, fighting bravely against the world, the flesh and the devil.

This event not only reflects a deeper, authentic reality, but it is this reality that undergirds and shapes the rest of life - celebrations, mundane passages or failures - everything we won't catch on camera.

10 More Books

Some prominent, professional bloggers have taken up David Frum's challenge to post ten books that have influenced their worldview. (I first found out about this reading Ross Douthat's list) The rules are to go with your gut feeling, and not necessarily mention your favorite books. As a non-prominent, non-professional who occasionally updates his blog (and who often fantasizes about prominence and professionalism), I am going to list mine. Fair warning: anyone reading this will probably be more edified going to the pages of these pros, and my books will be less wonkish by comparison, but for what it's worth (in no particular order):

1. The Bible - Jesus. Church. Holy Spirit. Make disciples. I know, forgive the pat Sunday-school answer. But I've truly found it worth believing. It is the one book I have read, in very small parts, nearly every day since I was fifteen. Different parts have meant more to me in different seasons - the Psalms, the Gospels, Romans and Philippians have all featured prominently, and I am, lazily but beneficially, reading through 1 Peter at the moment. Sermons preached directly from its pages have influenced me as much as any of these books. A list of books that influenced me without the Bible would be a dishonest list. When I read some of the "high points" - the Sermon on the Mount, John 14, Romans 8, Psalm 40, what can I say? If only it influenced me more.
2. I just took a break for thirty minutes to find a paper I wrote in college on the Cyprus conflict. I could not find it, but it sites a book whose approach to history and international conflict is better imprinted on my conscience more than the name of the book or the author. (I think the name was something like Cyprus: Island in the Sun, my Google-search was not fruitful either. I remember that the author was British. In any case...) One of the difficulties researching the Cyprus conflict was to find a book that was not clearly biased to either the Greek or the Turkish side. This particularly nuanced book was the only one I found that could effectively explain and analyze both sides. It encouraged or affirmed my mistrust sources who fail to understand their opponents point of view. This affects my faith, my politics and my philosophy of evangelism.
3. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo - It's a 1400 page Gospel Presentation. The first seventy pages describe the character of a priest who only figures briefly into the main plot, and is a wonderful celebration of a Christian. It is blissfully long-winded, purposely poetic and edifying to the last page. If you are only familiar with the film or the musical, let me just say that if you have read the book, they will both come across as superficial. It's pages brought grace, healing and wonder to me in Freiburg's dark, smoky cafes.
4. "The Weight of Glory," C.S. Lewis - Ok, it's a sermon, not a book. But I read it in a book, and, unfortuately, I did not hear him preach it in 1940s Oxford. This serious meditation on heaven is an argument for Christian hope, and as its final paragraphs demonstrate, why Christian hope, true Christian hope, does not keep our heads in the clouds, but propels us to love others. Lewis haunts me with the fact that there are "no ordinary people," that everyone we encounter is either "an immortal horror or an everlasting splendor." This weight, paints the way I ought to treat strangers, colleagues, friends and family (with God's help).
5. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien - My first epic fantasy, I braved Middle Earth when I was thirteen. Deeper symbolism I did not grasp at the time, but often overlooked in this epic is the theme of the unlikely heroes. More than any battles of good v. evil, Gollum's complexity or Christian symbolism in resurrecting wizards or returning kings, the little Hobbits give us the idea that in our own journeys, we can make it, in spite of our inadequacies (with God's help).
6. The Accidental Detective Series, Sigmund Brouwer - While we're all the subject of books I read in Middle School, here is one (or, ok, a series) that actually was written for Middle Schoolers. I read through these books like kids today read through the Harry Potter series. It is certainly not high literature, nor high children's literature like the Chronicles of Narnia or the Wind in the Willows (both of which I better understood as an adult). It did, however, show normal Christian kids living in community with other normal Christian kids that had two very important things: fun and humor. The fact that Ricky Kidd and his friends got into extraordinary situations did not undermine this. In it's own way, they lived out what C.S. Lewis said about merriment in "The Weight of Glory": "We must play. But our merriment must be that kind (and in fact it is the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously." So many children in other Christian stories suffered through dry, stoic lessons that made Christian orthodoxy and morality seem insufferable. At the same time, many of my friends in Middle School played in ways that were cutting and vicious. Brouwer's thirteen-year-old heroes played and joked in the Lewis way, and that example made no small difference in my very young view of Christianity, community and friendship.
7. War and Peace, Tolstoy. I read that Virginia Woolf once commented that War and Peace is a story that leaves nothing out. I agree. Not a page is wasted, not a word is missing. Read it, if you have not. If you are intimidated by the book's length, read it anyway, because it is actually easy reading. The prose is gentle and does not confuse (unlike Dostoyevsky), and it is divided into easily-digestible chunks. Tolstoy simply understands the human nature of each of his characters, and this, in turn, has helped me understand my own.
8. The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard. Though I was raised in a Christian home and went to Bible-preaching churches all my life, I had never really heard much teaching from the Synoptic Gospels, including the Sermon on the Mount (outside, of course, the Passion and Christmas stories). I had plenty of Paul and John, of course. The Divine Conspiracy was assigned reading before I went to Germany, and I devoured every word of it. It taught me to understand and appreciate and truly believe the Sermon on the Mount, and I am indebted to Professor Willard, and Matt, who told us to read it. There may be better Sermon on the Mount stuff out there - my dad, who read it after my enthusiastic recommendation, thought it did not add anything new for him (though my dad has a Master's of Divinity). But no question it was my gateway to a deeper Biblical understanding.
9. Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller. Yes, I know. As a hip Christian, I should probably be over Blue Like Jazz, the same way hip people ought to get over anything that becomes too popular. But so much of evangelicalism seemed to exclude certain political philosophies, certain styles, certain areas of the country, certain lifestyles that Christianity never needed to exclude. In college and in my travels, I met all sorts of people who so needlessly rejected Christ's teaching for all of these reasons. Miller, in a kind, post-modern way, separated the Gospel from these unnecessary chains and looked lovingly at the excluded, saying, "I want Jesus to happen to you." A phrase worth repeating.
10. Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis. I could use a number of C.S. Lewis books for this last spot - the Narnia series, his apologetic works, the Space Trilogy, The Great Divorce. Till We Have Faces (along with Perelandra) was C.S. Lewis' favorite among his works, and for good reason. The best stories are the stories of a discipleship, and a reluctant, angry disciple making her case against God, what we so often do, finally surrendering into the arms of her Lord, is story I live and re-live so often. I love the scene where, in a solemn march to recover the body of her beloved sister, Lewis' heroine is seduced by the beauty of nature. She narrates, "You may believe I was sad enough; I had come on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came, as if it were a voice - no words - but if you had made it into words it would be, 'why should you not dance?'"

I am sure if I wrote the list again tomorrow, other books might be on it. The Father Brown Stories from G.K. Chesterton are a superb collection of Christian fiction (I really want to read The Man Who Was Thursday, but have not yet found it). Wendell Berry's essays challenge more than so many pundits. The Brother's Karamazov remains among my favorite books, and the brother's in question are three of the most compelling characters I have read. The Trial by Franz Kafka is such crazy paranoia that I could not stop reading (though I am not encouraged to re-read).

So, other non-professional, non-paid bloggers and internet surfers, what are your books? I hope my friends will make their own lists (perhaps Justin or Liz or Karin or Joshua).

Cheers, Google

I want to join everyone, including our hometown newspaper, who is praising Google for standing up to China. I am aware of those, like the testy Chinese business professor I heard on NPR the other day, who say their move is purely pragmatic. I do not see the sense in this argument. Yes, their Chinese competitors had a greater market share behind the Great Firewall, and will certainly benefit from Google's withdraw, but simply walking out on a billion upwardly-mobile customers does not seem like a good business strategy to me. Maybe it is possible for corporate executives to make real moral stands.

As a customer of both Gmail and Blogger, I am particularly gratified that they pulled out in response to state-sponsored threats to their users' privacy. As a reward, I will stay with blogger and not switch Un Till to Wordpress (something I had honestly been mulling over).

I understand the desire of a harmonious, controlled society. It can create grand things, as demonstrated by the Beijing Olympics. It can prevent bad things. Among the victims of Chinese censorship are things I find morally reprehensible, like pornography. But the idea that this produces a world and culture that spins in rhythm like a Victorian ballroom is fantasy. It is not worth the crushed lives of those who think, speak, look or feel something other than the dominant rhythm. I am thankful that I live in a society where I can think for myself, where I can choose not to join the dance, where, whenever someone who thinks differently is elected to office, I do not need to fear for my voice.

Cheers, Google.

Is WTF the Only Rational Response to Haiti?

In college, one of my campus ministers told me the following story:

A student he was discipling (i.E: this was a Christian student who he was helping to better grow in love for Christ and others) was devastated that his girlfriend broke up with him. Riding in the car with a young man on the verge of tears, he said something one wouldn't necessarily expect from a professional Christian. "Let's go kick her ass." Some say Christian's shouldn't use such words, but this little crudity was more effective counseling than any wise truths about God's will. Of course, he did not actually mean they should drive up to the heartbreaker's dormitory and physically assault her. He, in effect, said, "I am with you. Those feelings of brokenness and bewilderment, I feel them to. They are valid." He broke holes in the young man's coldness and produced a smile. I thought this was so good that I used the same phrase with a similarly forlorn friend, to the same effect.

Christopher Hitchens has similarly pastoral advice for the suffering, albeit those who have suffered humanities worst catastrophes. He writes these tidings of comfort his eulogy of sorts for Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The apocalyptic events of Tsutomu's life, according to Hitchens, demonstrate the "absolute uselessness of official piety."

"Official piety" seems to mean intellectual religious responses to the Problem of Suffering, and he lists his problems with variations on God's will, karma, and other ways the religious could rationalize such horrors as wars, terrorism and disasters (read the whole thing). About such piety, Hitchens concludes:

"If you think I am being frivolous, ask yourself whether you can picture any religious person explaining Yamaguchi's experience as what it actually was: a mere coincidence that makes nonsense of any idea of any design or predestination. (Either that or something divinely mysterious and inexplicable, which is the same thing as saying that holy men are using guesswork as much as the rest of us.)"

Instead, the only "rational" response is "WTF."

"Unfeeling, you say? Not particularly. It isn't my idea that these capricious catastrophes strike the just and the unjust with such regularity, or that they are soothingly explained away by the pseudo-compassionate. Of all the great cosmic questions, WTF still strikes me as one of the most pressing, relevant, and ultimately humane."

Perhaps it's a dark coincidence that one of these "capricious catastrophes" struck Haiti the week after Hitchens wrote these words. You know the story, ghastly in every detail. Tens of thousands, perhaps upwards of 100,000 are dead. A history of poverty and mismanagement produced such brittle infrastructure, making it all the more tragic. Death and damage would not have reached these stratospheric numbers in Japan or California.

In such situations, I agree with Hitchens that theology is often cold comfort. Even dismissing his straw man versions of "official piety," better theology will likely do little to comfort those who lost family, home and country. Indeed, I think of C.S. Lewis' introduction to The Problem of Pain where he writes, "I must add, too, that the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy much more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all." (The book is worth the read for a more detailed meditation on the "intellectual problem raised by suffering.")

Perhaps one of the first ways we can show some human sympathy is to throw up our hands and, along with those suffering, cry "WTF!" or something similar, as in the case of my campus ministry friend. Raw intellectual theology will not help, not because the questions of suffering are unanswerable, but because having answers, however loudly demanded, does not ultimately heal. But as Lewis implies, and I hope Hitchens would agree, we need to go further than empathetic cursing. And that's where true piety comes in.

Whenever we give time or treasure to those who need it, whenever we put ourselves on the line to suffer with them, whenever we advocate for appropriate long-term change, whenever we reverse the effects of the Fall (as my friend Cam would say), we are being pious. We are practicing what the prophet Isaiah calls "true fasting" and part of what the Apostle James calls true religion. If Hitchens or any of his fellow humanists appropriately respond with charity and relief, they are following our "Dear Leader," whistling in the dark as it were.

Now, someone may respond, "I don't need believe in God to give generously and effectively." True. And I have no doubt that people of all beliefs and non-beliefs are giving (and yes, there have has been at least one atrocious response from a professing Christian in Pat Robertson). So let's take this a step further.

As needs are being met, the Christian can offer hope. Our hope is that death is not final, that there is indeed Resurrection. Moreover, we have hope that the Resurrected Jesus will return and put things right. Every part of us that longs for life and justice points to these truths. This hope is not an excuse ignore present or act as some sort of opiate for failed leadership (as a humanist chaplain implied in an interview I saw recently. I could not tell if he was ignorant or arrogant. At one point, he complained that humanists were greatly misunderstood in our country. I sympathize. Middle-American Christians ranting about "secular humanists" churns my stomach. But I would appreciate a better understanding of the faith he was criticizing). How we work to reverse the effects of the fall, however feeble and finite, pleases the Lord. Lewis again reminds us that the Christians who did the best for this world had the most hope in the next. Ask William Wilberforce, or the ancient Christians in Philppi, where their hopes lie. At our best, we store up treasure in heaven, because this is the one life we got, and it will last a long time. And we know that Resurrection, life renewed, is a comforting thought. Hope beyond WTF.

In Freiburg, after conversing with plenty of German students who share Hitchens' dim view of eternity, it was refreshing to eat lunch with an African professor (I wish I could remember his name). I sat across the cafeteria table from him, and he offered me an apple. He told me this was African hospitality, and he would be offended if I did not take it. It turns out that he was from South Africa and was a visiting professor at the University of Freiburg. As I ate his apple with decreasing appetite, he told me some of the appalling things he witnessed in his nation's struggle with HIV/AIDS. He told me of a vile rumor that if an HIV positive man slept with a virgin, the man would be cured. This prompted some HIV positive men to rape little girls. I struggle to write this, because I cannot think of anything worse. He had met some of the victims.

I asked him if he was a Christians. The South African Professor's face lit up beautifully. "Look outside! It's beautiful! How could I not be a Christian?" Indeed it was a beautiful day. Perplexing as it is, many of those who face life's most horrid circumstances are the most pious. This puzzled Pooja Bhatia, who observed faithful Hatians cry out to God from the rubble. It often puzzles me. But it is.

If you should suffer, and can only cry, "WTF," than I heartily cry it with you. If I am in a position to do so, I pray that God gives me the grace to offer you myself. I pray that you will find hope in Him, perhaps where you were not expecting it.

A Camp for Atheists is a Chance for Engagement

If I had grown up going to the Christian summer camps Lexington describes in this week's Economist column, I think I would start an atheist summer camp too. Atheists, evidently, find comfort that a camp promoting skepticism is joining a market saturated by, among other things, religion.

About the atheist summer camp, Lexington writes: "They are not pushy or preachy, but scepticism flavours nearly everything they do. Lunch comes with a five-minute talk about a famous freethinker. Campers are told that invisible unicorns inhabit the forest, and offered a prize if they can prove that the unicorns do not exist. The older kids learn something about the difficulty of proving a negative. The younger ones grow giggly at the prospect of stepping in invisible unicorn poop."

How should we as Christians react to this? According to Lexington, "the kind of people who send their kids to Bible camp are appalled. Answers in Genesis, a Christian fundamentalist group, berates Camp Quest for drumming a “hopeless” world view into young minds."

I'm not so sure this camp, as Lexington describes it, is any more hopeless than the worldview of their atheist parents, or for that matter, the barrage of media children receive every day. I think, instead, this could help us better approach our atheist friends. Like Christians, and like almost any other subset of people in the U.S., atheists feel alienated. Lexington devotes a good portion of the column to the "lonely 1 in 12," and describes how less likely they would obtain elected office as compared to almost any other unpopular minority. Yet, they do not have networks through churches or other associations that almost any other group would have. Atheists need community, as do all of us. Consider this paragraph, for a moment:

"Many atheists opt to remain in the closet, except perhaps with their closest friends. It is the path of least resistance. Deny the existence of God and you may be challenging your neighbours’ most deeply held beliefs. That could get you ostracised, so why risk it? Yet living in the closet has costs. Christians have their beliefs constantly reinforced by neighbours who proudly and openly share them. Atheists often wrestle with their consciences alone, even though they are perhaps 8% of the population. Christopher Hitchens, the author of an antireligious polemic in 2007, observed that half the people who came to his book-promoting speeches had thought they were the only atheists in town."

Two weeks ago, my pastor preached on hospitality, and that hospitality towards those who provide us with no advantage, including the alienated, is a mark of a mature Christian. Since then, I have wonderd where we are with hospitality. Has Christian hospitality gotten to the point that atheists must wrestle with their consciences alone? Do we really need to ostracize anyone who challenges our most deeply held beliefs? The victims of the so-called culture wars are not necessarily the children who are exposed to pagan or atheistic ideas - that is unavoidable in this world. The victims are those who grow up in an environment where friendship with those of different beliefs is discouraged and conversations between believers and non-believers are squelched. If atheists feel unwelcome in American society, however secular we are becoming, then who can blame them for wanting their own camps and social institutions. We need to see this as a new opportunity for engagement.

There are a couple things to find encouraging about a summer camp for the children of Atheists. First, it is a reminder that everyone is seeking community. God made us for it, and commanded us to love each other. The camp will not last forever, and if we can provide, or at least be part of, community in a way that is genuinely loving and welcoming, there is a good foundation for further, potentially life changing conversation. Second, the seeds of skepticism can be used in our favor. If this camp truly encourages children to "weigh the evidence" and "explore ethical questions," then the foundations can be made for belief. Coming from ministry in Germany, a country where for obvious historical reasons skepticism is held in relatively high regard, I learned that a true skeptic will eventually be skeptical of other skeptics. Moreover, we could almost say that the history of Christianity is rich in skepticism. Jesus taught his followers to be skeptical of the ways of the world, and He ushered in a new Kingdom where the meek were blessed and enemies were loved. They were skeptical of imperialism, revolution and showy religiosity. We protestants can look to Martin Luther, who was skeptical of the structures of the Catholic church. Skepticism cannot be the end-all some may want it to be, but it can be the beginning of changed lives.

We need not always be "appalled," surprised or intimidated by the actions of unbelievers. We need to lovingly engage atheists (and anyone else) at the community level, encourage any honest search for truth, speak the truth ourselves and pray that they will find it.

Is identity reallly such a bad thing?

A good way to understand the belief-fatigue in a post-modern culture is to watch the film Downfall (must-viewing for non-Germans considering ministry in Germany). Downfall depicts the last week of Hitler's life in the famous Berlin bunker, based on the memoirs of his personal secretary (who only died very recently). The film is not so much about the monstrous nature of Nazism (though it does not attempt to cover its monstrous nature), but a dark depiction of men and women holding on to their faith in a dark man and a dark system to the very end.

Among many painfully memorable scenes is one about two Nazi youths, a boy and a girl (perhaps 15 or so), who fight nearby in the trenches against the Soviets. There are few soldiers left, so old men and children are defending Berlin. When it is clear that the Soviet army would overrun the city, the two youths commit suicide. The girl has the boy shoot her as she raises her arm in a final Nazi salute. The boy then shoots himself in the head.

The lesson that many in Europe seemed to take from the war is that belief is not safe. The Nazis bunkered in Berlin died for their faith. People fought wars because they believed in things: their nations, Nazism, Communism, Capitalism, their interpretation of civilization or religion. The post-moderns concluded that in order to preserve peace, we should avoid commitment to any such meta-narrative.

This stands in contrast to the American lessons of World War II. It seemed like belief in country and the righteousness of our cause enabled our eventual victory. Unlike Europe, we walked away stronger. Americans had a strong sense of identity, and most saw nothing wrong with a strong religious or political identity.

That might be starting to change. Strongly identifying with with a country or party or faith is starting to look more and more unappealing. Perhaps September 11 and Islamist terrorism have something to do with it. Perhaps it was President Bush, whose strong religious and national identity helped him get elected, but whose politics from Iraq to New Orleans to the economy has made such identity look foolish. Perhaps ideological bickering among our leaders makes no sense in the wake of an economic crisis. There are likely more positive reasons as well. The rise of mass communication and travel exposes us to more points of view that may challenge the identities we once have. Many of us are tired of it. Paul Graham, observing fruitless religious and political arguments online, is too.

One of Brian's "daily dozens" a couple weeks ago included a Paul Graham essay arguing that we should avoid identity as much as possible.

His begins with observing the seemingly inevitable breakdown of civility when religion comes up on an online forum. He observes, "no thread on Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post a comment on that." Mr. Graham goes on to make the same point about politics.

I mostly disagree with this statement. The Internet surely attracts its share of loudmouths for whom anonymity frees to post whatever they want. But the problem with religion and politics is not one of expertise. Indeed, religion and politics are "for the people." Many of us have attended a religious education class every Saturday or Sunday (or Friday) since childhood. We have been educated in civics, politics and history. Perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking that Javascript has less dimensions that these subjects.

Nonetheless, I feel no small amount of sympathy for avoiding identity. I hate being identified with anything undesirable or foolish. I live in the epicenter of American politics, and I have good friends working on Capitol Hill (for both parties) and in the administration. Many are intelligent and passionate. I am often reluctant to plainly state the few political views I do have. When conversations turn to political discussions, I often fear I don't have enough factual information in my arsenal than those working in political think-tanks with information and experts at their finger-tips. Moreover, I hate being boxed in or pegged down. (I pointed this out to my boss in Germany one time as we were going over my Myers-Briggs results. He said that is a typical response from my personality type)

Like Mr. Graham, presumably, I have a strong distaste for "talk-radio" style political or religious discussion, with all its labeling and appeal to anger and hate. But Graham takes it too far. "People can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity," he writes. Later he says, "More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the participants."

Is this where identity necessarily leads? Idea dodge ball with no end in the best cases? War and terrorism in the worst?

Like, I said, I have a lot of sympathy for post-modern identity-fatigue. I despise fruitless discussion, and I certainly fear terrorists and ideologue politicians. But history has too many examples of people whose very identities played a role for the good. We cannot seriously ignore this. Of less importance, my life has been filled with fruitful, challenging conversations about subjects that all participants identified with.

Mr. Graham's conclusion causes me to wonder about his choice of friends. Do none of them have strong identities, religious, political or otherwise? Has he never once had a fruitful conversation about these issues with them? I worked in Christian ministry in Germany. Essentially, it means I have a strong religious identity, and it was once my profession to talk with others about it (something I still enjoy doing, though I have less context these days). I challenged many identities, and many people were perfectly willing to challenge mine. At the moment, I can think of only once where the conversation was unfruitful due to identity, and the person in question seemed all wrapped up in being unaffiliated. Before my stint in Germany, I went to college. I had all sorts of conversations, both fruitful and fruitless, about religion, politics, you name it. Has Mr. Graham ever taken a philosophy class? Was there not one person in the class who identified with a certain philosophy who could engage in fruitful conversation about it?

Let's move to history. Think of people who really worked for the good in history. Francis of Assisi. William Wilberforce. Abraham Lincoln. Mahatma Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Mother Theresa. These were persons of strong identities, whose identities helped them undertake monumental tasks for positive change. Their identities did not lead to stupidity. Their identities led them to a kind of courage too few of us have.

I think the problem is not identity, but of maturity. The Apostle Paul speaks of this when he warns the Romans of "zeal without knowledge." I would argue that this knowledge includes an understanding and appreciation for basic morality - the golden rule, found at least paraphrased in most religious school of thought: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Zeal without knowledge is behind many violent acts, religious wars especially. Zeal without knowledge remains popular because it is politically useful and makes good television. Talk radio tends to wind it up, and the Internet allows us to express our zeal about anything without taking time to learn and appreciate. Maturity takes time and process and work, whether one is learning javascript or theology.

Perhaps Spiritual maturity would help here as well. Paul again teaches that the Holy Spirit provides this. The fruit of the Spirit, writes Paul to the Galatians, "is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." It's disheartening that the loudest of Christians often posses so little of this. But I know I want to identify with the fruit Paul describes.

So, if we want to avoid being dumb (or fanatical or violent), we can keep our identities as small as possible, as Paul Graham suggests. Or, we can have strong identities, but commit to maturity.