I have officially plunged into the world of e-commerce. My wife and I purged our book collection we somehow picked up and no longer want. The result was a three hour listing session on Half.com. We’ve saved our good books, of course, so there’s not much to choose from, but take a look and if you see something you like, email me and we’ll work out a private sale.
The contemporary scholarly climate is, I hear, one of scientism and naturalism. Thinking peoples do not currently believe that there is any way to know anything but by means of touching, tasting, hearing, smelling, or seeing. Scientists are the only arbiters of truth.
I would like to propose a simple challenge to this view.
If there is a single object of knowledge that I can show is not known empirically, then it will open a Pandora’s box of sorts for these thinkers, and the possibility of non-empirical ways of knowing will be accepted and discussed among intellectuals (as it has been, incidentally, for the last 2,500 years or so.)
I think there is such an object, and, I will begin the demonstration with a question: Who is reading this post?
“I am,” you might say.
“Who are you?” I ask. Or, better, “What are you?”
“I am a human being, of course, you silly blogger,” You might respond.
“Well, have you, reader, ever seen, smelled, touched or tasted yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now have you ever seen, smelled, touched, tasted your consciousness?”
“No, but I see where you are going. You are going to say consciousness is non-physical or some such nonsense. That is simply not the case. We have not done enough neuroscientific research to discover how it is that the brain produces consciousness, but we will, so your silly argument falls flat,” you might say.
“You are getting ahead of me. Let’s start here: Have you ever seen your brain?”
“Not mine, not personally.”
“Yet you say that your thoughts are physical events in your brain, correct?”
“Right.”
“Do you say that you are aware of and have some knowledge of your own thoughts, and, more generally, of yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you have never seen your thoughts, or ‘yourself’, that is, your conscious self?”
“We do not understand enough about consciousness.”
“I agree. But we understand enough to say that we are aware of our thoughts and our personal identities, right? As you read this, you can close your eyes and think about what you had for breakfast, how you feel, what you are thinking.”
“Right.”
“Is there any reasonable doubt that at least these two things: my thoughts and my personal identity, are things of which I can be aware non-empirically? Do you not assume that you are knowable to yourself? That when you say, ‘I,’ you are referring to something to which you have direct access, rather than by way of your brain?”
“I do assume it, but we do not understand enough about consciousness to say one way or the other. It is perplexing, I will grant that, but there is no reason to jump to such unlikely conclusions as that we are metaphysical ghosts.”
“You say this conclusion is unlikely. Is it unlikely for this reason, or some other? That we are assuming the ‘metaphysical’ does not exist. An assumption that, if true, makes any assertion of non-physical substances absolutely silly and impossible…?”
“That is the reason,” You might say.
“Why are we assuming that?”
I do not know what you might respond here. If you have a response, please share it in the comments. I will conclude with an invitation to consider this assumption in light of the fact that the most reasonable explanation we have at this point in time — it may change with the research, I will grant that — is that conscious identity is non-physical. If this is the case, then there is at least one way of knowing that is non-empirical, namely introspection, or something like it.
If I have made some mistake in reasoning, I would be pleased to have it pointed out to me that I may be refuted and change my beliefs. If not, I want to explore the nature of ways of knowing, empirical and otherwise. And rather than fear what else might be in Pandora’s box, let us search for the truth and rejoice in the identification and rejection of falsehood, no matter how dear to us it once was.
Whether or not being able to sit still in silence is a “spiritual discipline,” I do not know. I have learned by experience, that it is probably one of the most valuable abilities I have spent time practicing, with the deepest and most far-ranging side-effects.
Do you have an “internal dialogue”?
If so, have you noticed how much more difficult it is to listen to the words of an external speaker, that is, your family or friends, at the same time that this internal dialogue is taking place?
Imagine having control over when you think (and what you think about) and when you do not.
You could develop this control, with practice. Simply practicing attending to yourself and to God, in a quiet place, every day.
First, here are two reasons not to do so.
1. There is work to be done. It is good to attain the momentum of doing, of getting things done, and maintain the habit of doing so.
2. Every one who tries to sit still for longer than a few minutes finds their mind wandering and often discovers a great deal of pain hidden within themselves.
On the other hand, the Lord says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
In response to 1., I will point out that when one is “getting things done”, one may or may not be getting the right things done. “All is vanity.” How much of your day was spent on activities you could look back on at the end of your life and feel proud that you spent your time on? Doing the wrong thing is more damning than anything else, and actually takes more time (given clean up, or the time it takes to undo what’s been done) than if one had just started on the correct thing in the first place. Without a careful consideration of what needs to be done, the doing of them may be more bad than it is good. And careful consideration is best done with a quiet mind. So the habit of sitting quietly and attending to oneself and God is the best and, owing to the reduction in detours, the most efficient means of “getting things done.”
In response to 2., the difficulty of a thing does not deny the worth of a thing. Indeed, difficulty is a necessary (if insufficient) condition of worthwhile pursuits. The wandering of the mind is exactly the problem and is to be expected. It will decrease with practice. Imagine being able to control when you think (and what you think about). Not just this or that part of your day would be improved, but your day entire. The consciousness you use during the entirety of your day would be clearer, and better, and more effective. Is it not a desirable goal?
For practical guidance on how to begin this discipline today (without having to become a Buddhist), read Herbert Benson’s excellent research on the subject and follow his advice. You can learn the simple steps of practicing sitting still at: http://www.ucop.edu/humres/eap/relaxationrespone.html
or follow (the very similar) advice of John Main, at
http://www.wccm-usa.org/meditate.asp
Let me know how it goes.
Dr. John Mark Reynolds has posted the homily from our wedding on his blog–I was planning to also make it the first post for me as well. In essence, Dr. Reynolds said for our wedding exactly what I had been thinking (yes, that does sound presumptious!) when I chose the readings. On the eve of our wedding, I told the rehearsal dinner party that the entire service had been crafted to make clear that the love Charity and I share is but a reflection of the love of Christ for us. Dr. Reynolds drove the point home on Saturday. Anyone who knows my beautiful bride knows that she, more than any woman I’ve ever met, is fit to be the “warrior queen” Reynolds describes.
But, without further ado, Dr. John Mark Reynolds (copied in full with permission):
Homily for Mealman/Anderson Wedding
June 25th 2005 by JM Reynolds
We have been reminded by the readings of the Great Marriage that is to come – the Marriage that even this happy occasion can merely foreshadow. For no matter how perfect, even this day carries with it the petty imperfections that mark and mar every event this side of Paradise. Just this week my wife and I celebrated 19 years together – years marked by God and marred by our sinfulness – but years that have enriched us and made us eager for the Perfect Wedding that is to come.
May you both share a fraction of our joy – and come with us to greater feast – there with eyes made strong to see the shining glory of His wedding. But that hope is not yet – that perfect culmination still to come. It can be talked about and even dimly experienced, but it is not yet and we live now. So what of now?
Three weeks ago almost to the day, I stood on the island of Patmos in the very cave in which church history tells us John saw the Lord and heard His thunder. My soul cried out to God as I heard His faithful servants still speaking and singing the praises of God in that place. I thought of the old man, the last living of the disciples, the last of the friends of Jesus, exiled. Tortured. Nearly alone. And yet still found in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. Christ can come to such a man – faithful, full of love and not just talk. Christ did appear to him and showed the old man great and mysterious things. And yet when the last seal was broken, the last trumpet sounded, and the last “Amen” written by his scribe Monday would have come to John on Patmos. He still would have been exiled, old, broken – and so what difference did it make? Diocletian still ruled in Rome. What did the great Revelation matter?
The answer, it seems to me, has a great deal to say about this Sacrament of Marriage we are seeing here today. To some marriage has become a great party – an excuse to justify actions most have taken earlier – or worse, an excuse to compete, to see who can have the biggest and most elaborate event. Relatives are keeping score – and the credit card bills will not come for a month. Now there is nothing wrong with a party – the Kingdom of Heaven is going to a great one and I hope we will soon be enjoying a foretaste of that event. But there must be more to a party than the party – what are we partying for? In the same way the big noise and flash of the Revelation – with verbal effects not even Peter Jackson could visually match – has to be for something or it is just noise and not very comforting.
Did John wake up with a spiritual hangover on Monday morning? God forbid we even think it! The outer vision of the Revelator was matched by an inner work of the heart. The entire world was spiritually changed, least for John, that Sunday on Patmos. The Roman madman Diocletian might bully and posture for another few years, but John knew that Jesus was Lord! John had spiritually entered the Heavenly Kingdom and there was no going back – he had seen the Truth as last.
In the same way, in a manner you will only dimly grasp, at this time and on this day Matt and Charity will enter into the reality of the wedding feast that is coming. Today, as a bride, Charity is all of us – the pure Church clothed in white – and Matt, unworthy as we all are, stands as an image of that greater bridegroom. As Matt receives Charity so Christ will receive us. This is a great mystery – and it is an exciting thought.
Today each one of us must renew our vows. Each husband must repent of failure, I most of all, and vow to show the inner truth plainly by laying his life down for his beloved. Each wife must turn her heart to her husband and vow eternal faithfulness to him. What God has joined together no man can put asunder. And those blessed with singleness can freely image the Great Love to the Heavenly Lover. We are all brides to Him in the end. His great I AM reducing the rest of us to an echo of the most perfect brides – “be it done unto me according to Your will.”
And so we are left with this parting word to the couple before us. You are both precious to us – good, brilliant, and holy. We know you are not perfect – but love helps us see each of you as Christ sees you. Charity, do not forget that submission is not an easy vow. It is part of the bloodless martyrdom of marriage. It does not mean destruction of self – but the affirmation that bending the knee is the first step to great honor. Matt is your lord – and you will be his lady – not simpering and docile, but a fierce warrior queen. You can be like Judith, Esther, or Mary – greater by being who you are. And knowing this great lady, with a fine mind and virtuous soul, is enough to humble any lord. So it should be for you, Matthew – lost in the wonder that she would willingly, for God knows you have no right in merit, tie her fortunes to yours and take your name, such as it is. But of course, like all of us mulish men you know this with your head, but not yet fully with your heart. It will be the years of laying down your life for her that will teach you. Pride will be your greatest foe – never demand her fealty – but simply love her and watch her voluntary service with joy. If Christ could humble Himself to die for us as our better, how much more should you die to every other passion and serve Charity – always moved by charity to Charity.
Each one of us who witness this event feel bittersweet. For some of us it marks the passing of time – were we ever so young?! For others it reminds us of failure. Broken vows. New starts. Small selfishness that seem obscene in this Holy Place and Time. But the good news is this – One who is Ever Young will make all of us New, if we will know Him. One who never breaks a vow will come and keep His word and take us to His home and give us His name. The very scars of our sins He will mysteriously transform into the birthmarks of our new birth.
There is such a wedding coming! Matt and Charity – you will fight and fail – but He will never oppose this vow you make to Him today. From this day forward He is on the side of you two! He will never forget – He sees! Both of you had to give up lesser goods, and some evils that aped the good, to stand here today. Most in our culture never get to this place, because they will not go on to Patmos – by moving on. They would hang on to childish pleasures and lose this thing. Having begun well – end well – move forward in joy. Keep giving up and you will get more together – and then on some sad day death will part you. A final giving up – the greatest loss it will seem. Only persist and you will see – you will close your eyes in sorrow only to open them in joy – and you will be together with all God’s saints in a Wedding and a Marriage that will never end. Today is your Patmos, your revelation that will be your divine culmination. Joy, feasting, love. Grand and glorious charity that will never end so long as Christ rules and God is true.
My wife, Malea, is an excellent writer and thinker. She has spent much time contemplating and practicing the disciplines and here is what she thinks about them:
Spiritual Disciplines:
Described and Explained
Spiritual Disciplines aid us in becoming more like Christ and less ruled
by our flesh. In other words, it is a way to use our bodies to put on the
fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness and self-control) and to free our lives from vices
or sins. (Pride, envy, anger, laziness, greed, gluttony, and lust, just to
name a few).
Any soldier or athlete has different disciplines he uses to become better
at his particular activity. The Christian life is the most fundamental
part of who we are and so it makes sense that we ought to “train in
godliness” with even more enthusiasm and fervor than in any other
activity. God made us to be a certain sort of person—one who is constantly
yielding to Him and yet becoming more and more himself (with the
personality and the gifts God has given). The fullness of joy, for a
human, is only found when we “put off the things of the old life” and “put
on the character of Christ.” We must, like Paul, “beat our bodies into
submission.” (1 Cor 9:27)
It is important to understand that the things we give up for the purpose
of training our bodies are not bad in and of themselves. They either have
too much control over us, or are a way to gauge how strong certain desires
are in our life and how much they control us. Eating is not a bad
activity, neither is dressing nice, nor making a lot of money, but it may
be good to give all of them up at different times to see how much they
control our lives.
Also, different disciplines may be more or less helpful for different
people based on our various temperaments and areas of struggle. Even
within ourselves, the sins each of us needs to master in our lives will
most likely change over time. Younger men may need to fast often to
overcome lustful desires, whereas a middle aged man may need solitude from
his busy work schedule to learn to be understanding towards his wife and
children, (hold his temper, set the direction of his family) and an older
man may need to overcome his grumpy desires and speak kindly or commit
himself to study of God’s Word. Within our lives, God takes us through so
many different circumstances and we should constantly be looking to
cultivate godly qualities, and overcome our sinful/selfish desires.
There are two main divisions of spiritual disciplines—those of abstinence
and those of engagement. A simple way of thinking of them is that
abstaining from things helps us to overcome bad desires and actions, while
engaging in certain disciplines can help us develop good desires and
actions.
Last week I attended a summer class put on by a fairly typical Southern California church on spiritual disciplines. I thought it was cool that they even cared about spiritual disciplines – a subject grossly neglected by most evangelicals. For this reason, I was excited to go to the class, thinking I may have found a kindred spirit in the teacher. My enthusiasm quickly waned, however, as the pastor could not distinguish between doing things for the purpose of earning God’s love or salvation and doing things for the purpose of increasing sanctification. The lowpoint of the message came near the end when the pastor encouraged his flock to “do those disciplines that come most naturally to you.”
That’s great, I thought, Encourage the congregation to keep on settling for the mediocre Christian life they’ve always known. Why do you need to be disciplined in something you’re already good at?!
The poor quality of the message lit a fire in me to seek some reconciliation on the matter of the relationship between spiritual disciplines and salvation. First, “spiritual disciplines” are activities we do such as fasting, prayer, and meditation done in order to gain control over the body and the desires thereof as well as the mind, for the purpose of allowing God’s Spirit to work through us.
Dallas Willard, in his gem of a book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, has an excellent chapter on the history of the disciplines. His thesis is that we as evangelicals, in our reaction to Roman Catholicism, have by and large rejected spiritual disciplines because they were abused as things that had to be done to merit salvation. He suggests that evangelicals re-engage with the disciplines, knowing that they are essential to living the sort of Christian life intended for us by God. After all, the prime model for us in the manner of life we ought to lead is Jesus Christ. He happened to regulary engage in the disciplines. For example, He fasted (for 40 days at times), He studied to the point where He could discuss Scripture with the Rabbis at age 12, He spent extended times in prayer, He withdrew for solitude and silence, and He watched (a form of discipline in which one goes without sleep).
So I was reading Romans today and found a place where Paul said something very interesting on this topic. Romans, after Galatians, is the key book in the New Testament on the subject of grace and the necessity of it for salvation. After extended meditation on the way to salvation through faith alone, Paul rhetorically asks, “What shall we say then? Are to to continue in sin that grace may abound?” If we are saved by grace, why do we need to stop sinning? Paul’s answer is profound.
“By no means”, he declares (6:2), “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” He then speaks about how we, by putting our faith in Christ and undergoing death to our own desires and devices, now are alive to God. If we are alive to God, we cannot engage in behavior leading to death, which is sin. Thus, Paul commands, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” (6:12) The spiritual disciplines are specifically aimed at training the body to get out of the way, so to speak. Once the body stops demanding that we focus on our own needs, we can live for God.
For instance, if I am hungry I tend to become selfish and a habit of thinking that my needs are more important than others creeps in. That is why I fast to practice living for God in the midst of my hunger. Perhaps the next time I’m hungry I can keep my body in submission so I can be of service to those around me. Now that’s living a life “alive to Christ!” Focussing on myself is a straight path to death.
That’s why Paul goes on to say: “Do not present your members (i.e. body parts) to sin as instruments for unrighteousness (or injustice), but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” (6:13) Now, the important thing to keep in mind is that the whole presenting our members to God thing only happens after the whole salvation by grace through faith thing that Paul has elaborately described in the past two chapters. It’s important to remember because this verse can sound as if you have to get your body in submission before you can be a Christian. Paul speaks of just the opposite: he says that we have to be saved, have the Spirit dwell in us, and then our efforts in conjunction with and in acknowledgement of God’s grace will yield the result of sanctification.
Paul didn’t have to mention that disciplines are the way to get there, because he had been practicing them from a very early age. At the time, any one seriously religious would do disciplines to avoid being ruled by the base passions.
So the life of grace entails practicing disciplines. Post-salvation Christians should be most concerned about becoming effective instruments to God. They shouldn’t confuse the cause of their salvation with the effort put into spiritual disciplines. The cause of their salvation is God’s grace and His love cannot be separated from us – read Romans 8!
My sincere hope and prayer is that we evangelicals would embrace spiritual disciplines and get serious about Christianity. It’s God’s grace, I daresay, that we have the impact we do on our culture.
To close, one of the best exhortations to spiritual growth in the Bible – Romans 12:1-2: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal fo your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
A Foxnews.com article contains an interview with friends of Shahzad Tanweer, a 22-year-old Leeds man suspected of participating in the suicide bombings in London.
The interview contains some pretty creepy quotes from this man’s friends. For instance, one friend, explaining the motivation for Tanweer’s actions said, “He was a Muslim and he had to fight for Islam. This is called jihad,” or holy war, said Asif Iqbal, 20, who said he was Tanweer’s childhood friend.
I’ve found in life that it’s very difficult to trust academics, politicians, and people who have been in the business world for more than 5 years. But you know you can go to a radical college-age person and get a straight answer. Asif Iqbal, therefore, strikes me as completely believable. He has read the Koran and had conversations with his friends and religious leaders and here is his conclusion: being a Muslim means fighting for Islam. For all the good things about it – and there are some or so many people wouldn’t adhere to it – Islam simply is a religion of violence.
Another friend, Adnan Samir, 21, nodded in agreement.
“They’re crying over 50 people while 100 people are dying every day in Iraq and Palestine,” said Iqbal. “If they are indeed the ones who did it, it’s because they believed it was right. They’re in Heaven. Have you ever been inspired in life?” he asked.
Crying over 50 people!!! First of all, I would like to point out that that comment is completely unsympathetic. If a right-winger were to say something to that effect, he or she would be all but terrorized by the media and academia. The article would surely be censured. But in our age of “tolerance” it’s okay for a Muslim to say this because they are different from those in the west.
The crucial difference between Palestine and Iraq and London is that London is one of the cities in the world from which civilization flourished and flowered for the last 1,000 or so years. Palestine and Iraq have experienced violence from the beginning of history. The London bombings don’t just mark an act of terrorism, they are a threat on civilization as we know it. All the arts and customs we cherish from the west are contingent upon the ability to be safe when we walk down the street. The more we worry about our lives, the less creative we can be.
A final, chilling quote:
Friends Iqbal and Samir claimed ignorance as to how their friend became involved in Islamic militancy and how he became a prey to terrorist recruiters.
“All Muslims are connected,” Iqbal said.
“All Muslims are connected.” Why do liberal pundits still doubt that the connections between terrorist cells are non-existent? Why do they persist in the belief that terrorism and Islam are linked at a deep level? Christians understand this a bit better than the secular world because we know the bond between us and other believers no matter what ethnicity or geographical location, because we believe the soul of a person is what really matters and we believe in the same God. Secularists look only to the physical world, so ethnic and cultural boundaries stand in more stark of contrast. It’s assumed that communication can’t travel from Pakistan to suburban England because they are so different. Well, Islam happens to be universal and it’s message travels wherever it does. That message is clearly to fight until no infidels are left.
The London bombings show us that there is no more chance of brushing aside Islam as another nice cultural phenomenon with whom we can join hands in a big, warm circle extending around the world. It must be taken seriously and those who would act out in terrorism must be stopped and punished.
For Christians, prayer, apologetics, and a revival of Christian culture are the best ways to fight against Islam. Unlike their religion, Christians are told not to fight – see Jesus telling Peter to put away the sword in Gethsemane. God preserves freedom of the will and does not operate with forced conversions as Allah does.
In a forthcoming book, Bono has some very outspoken things to say about Christ and his relationship with Him. You can read an excerpt of the interview here.
Here is a choice passage:
Assayas: The son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.
Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: “Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there’s mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions.” The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled… It’s not our owngood works that get us through the gates of Heaven.
He also had some insightful things to say on the difference between Grace and Karma, which you can also listen to in his song Grace from “All that you can’t leave behind.”
(Note: I’m republishing this review as I am currently in St. Louis. Normal blogging returns Sunday).
On a recent foray into our library, I picked up Gordon Fee’s Listening to the Spirit in the Text. A treasure trove of previously published (or delivered) essays by Fee, Listening is an excellent introduction to the role of the Spirit in the New Testament.
Fee is a scholar par excellance–I was first introduced to his work through his excellent commentary on Phillipians. Fee is an eminently careful exegete, but also writes with a sensitivity to the Spiritual life, which as Fee has taught us, in the New Testament means nothing other than “life in the Spirit.” This, of course, is not surprising. Fee is a pentacostal scholar whose massive work on the Spirit is nothing less than authoritative. His ability to combine Spirituality with careful thinking makes his work as meditative as it is instructive.
That said, a few highlights from Listening:
Fee consistently argues that there are fewer normative claims in Scripture regarding men and women, Church government, and church worship than we usually think. Rather, we need to read into the text to find the “(S)pirit of the text” and be consistent in our claims. For instance, he points out that those who accept 1 Timothy 2:11-12 as normative, often do not accept 5:3-16 as normative, a glaring inconsistency. He also questions, on this count, the requirement that the church leader be “the husband of one wife.”
This is the great problem, of course, of hermeneutics, and it is a problem that has achieved increasing attention in recent years (see here, for instance). Fee doesn’t attempt to formulate an answer here, though the question arises often in his writing. I disagree with his use of “finding the spirit of the text”–Fee fails to give boundary conditions for the principle–but the disagreement is slight. Furthermore, I am far more impressed by his exegesis than his discussions of method–his ear for the text and the Spirit is extremely well developed, and anyone interested in New Testament theology would be well served to train their ear under his, beginning with < Listening to the Spirit in the Text.
The German magazine Spiegel ran an article recently attacking the notion that aid to Africa is as effective as commonly conceived. The article argues that aid to third-world African countries fosters an unhealthy dependency and has been proven to be ineffective.
One major problem is that aid is delivered to governments who have almost no incentive at all to make the programs work for which the money is donated. Small businesses almost never get aid. A capitalist brother in Kenya has this to say:
James Shikwati, head of the Inter Region Economic Network in Kenya thinks that aid should be funneled into private business, rather than state projects. “Instead of looking at the private sector, where profit guarantees discipline and efficiency, politicians concentrate on governmental projects which are not subject to profit and loss.”
Also, the recent legislation by the G8 has forgiven loans to poor African countries. That really got the ire of Kenyon officials because Kenya has been faithful to pay their debts, which in the long run has been 0% helpful to them.
“Those countries who, like us, have always paid their debts have been ignored, while those countries who have simply stopped paying are now getting all the attention,” complains the Kenyan minister for planning, Peter Anyang Nyongo.
The loan forgiveness program only encourages countries to sit on their debt and wait for world leaders to forgive it.
While the situation in Africa is a sad one that calls for a great deal of help on the part of Western nations, the way we are going about it is clearly ineffective. Our post-colonial angst has caused many to blindly throw money at the perceived source of guilt in hopes it will go away. The guilt, however, will only mount as we engender dependence and undercut small business in Africa. The bottom line is that souls need to be changed in Africa by Christians to foster integrity and political leaders ought to focus on changing economic policy to establish incentive for self-reliance.
Lately I’ve been reading St. John Chrysostom’s homilies on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. A striking feature of Chrysostom’s writings (Chrysostom means “golden mouth” in the Greek for etymologists out there!) is how evangelical they sound! Yes, I mean evangelical as in the kind of church many of us Americans attended today.
The way in which I find him to be particulary evangelical is his historical approach to Scripture. He is very concerned with the audience St. Paul is writing to and what the date of the composition of the epistle is. In fact, he exclaims that such information is essential to a proper understanding of the text. The meaning of the epistles, as all the books of the Bible to one degree or another, rely upon the historical situation of text. For instance, we can’t really know what the purpose of Romans is without some idea of what was going on in the Roman church and in the ministry of Paul at the time of the writing, because of the assumptions Paul makes that inhere to letter writing.
Because Chrysostom believes that Scripture is inerrant, as all true evangelicals and all other forms of orthodox Christianity throughout church history believe, to get at the meaning of the Word of God, we must know small historical details such as the demographics of the Roman church in the 1st century. God cares about minutia such as this, which is a breathtaking statement about His attention to His church. That the God of the universe used the lives of a bunch of believing Jews and Gentiles who lived in Rome and became Christians to impact believers for two millenia is a staggering statement.
This is an anachronistic comparison – isn’t it evangelicals that sound like Chrysostom? – but the reason I make it is to highlight that the evangelical church isn’t some wild branch far from the trunk of the historical church. Rather, it is firmly rooted in the true gospel and is in spirit, if not in practice (i.e. liturgically) the closest thing we have to the first generation of the Christian church.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Londoners, Brits, and especially those with friends or family injured or killed by the bombing this morning. I can only imagine how frightening such an experience would be.
Two helpful news links I found were on the London Times. The first is a graphic of where the blasts hit in London for those somewhat familiar with the city and the second is a timeline of the key events that transpired today.
The big question now, to be decided in the next 3-7 days, is whether Brits will fight back or retreat. Will they pull their troops out of Iraq or will they aggressively pursue the terrorists and those who support them? My impression from being in England is that British sentiment is against the American approach of heartily going after terrorists, even when the link is indirect. The large protests to Bush and Blair’s policies on Iraq serve as evidence. Blair, however, has promised to bring those who did this to justice. That sort of speech closely mirrors Bush’s words after 911. If Blair follows through, the big question will be whether or not he can convince his countrymen to rally around his policy.
On this Fourth of July weekend our great nation remembers those who fought for independence and established our venerable republic. The men who did this did, indeed, have some economic incentive, i.e. no taxation without representation and therefore lower taxes. However, they were public servants.
A public servant is one who willingly serves his or her community, region, state, or country to make life better for those who live in it. John Adams was a paradigmatic example of a public servant. He spent long stretches of time away from his family and quaint farm in Braintree, Mass. to attend long meetings of the Continental Congress in the sweltering heat of a Philadelphia summer. He was not paid for this sacrifice. Granted, he had enough money to live on with a manager and his incredible wife running the farm, but he certainly wasn’t gaining personal possessions while assisting in the formation of the founding documents of the USA. (This comes from McCullough’s biography of Adams.)
Do public servants like John Adams exist anymore?
I don’t think so, for the most part. We, the people, have made some severe mistakes by deciding to pay high salaries and bloated pensions to those who work in civil government. For instance, a California congressman or senator who serves more than one term in Sacrament is entitled to a pension of 50% of what they were making as a congressman or senator for the rest of their lives. Public school teachers, while providing a valuable service, are reasonably compensated for their pains. You just have to put in your time and then start collecting that handsome pension. The premium benefits package is a boost, too. LA policemen, again, are doing awesome things on the streets keeping us safe, but they too are very well rewarded. Many LAPD cops make $75,000. And, after a number of years they qualify for the DROP program (deferred retirement option plan). This program means that when they “retire” on Friday, they are earning their $75k salary. On Monday, they go back to work for the same salary and collect 60% of their salary in the meantime. They can do this for up to five years before they have to retire. The math works out to the point where LAPD officers really ought to be millionaires by the time they are through.
Now I’m not saying that cops, teachers, and legislators do not do incredibly valuable and necessary things. What I am descrying is the lack of public servants in our society anymore. Government jobs do have some prestige associated with them, which provides an intangible incentive for some to take them. But increasingly a government job is the way to secure a stable job that offers a fat retirement package.
If fundage for these jobs were significantly slashed, would there be enough people willing to do this kind of work? Does our society have a sufficient amount of sacrificial people working in it who care about the civic good more than their own? I hope so, but I rather doubt it.
I know that the military is a bright spot where such people still exist. They work for pathetic wages – though I admit the GI Bill is nice – and put their lives on the line consistently (depending on the job a soldier performs). My brother is one of these and I’m very proud of him today on his birthday. My prayers are with him as he heads to Iraq to help others enjoy freedom like we enjoy it here as well as keep us safe.
