I’m happy to add “Mere Comments” to the blogroll under the “St. Anne’s on the Hill” category. Mere Comments is another group blog of mere Christians–in fact, the magazine they are associated with was part of the inspiration for Mere Orthodoxy. I’m looking forward to reading them in a more regular fashion!
President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan has just dissolved the committee responsible for reunification with China. Taiwan split from its mainland red giant 57 years ago, and China has had its greedy eyes on the island democracy ever since. Read the BBC article
Here is an inspiring example of a democratic leader boldly asserting his nation’s interests, at the risk of violent confrontation. Granted, it’s easier to be bold when the US is your chief ally, but Taiwan knows that Washington would be extremely reticent about getting involved in an Asian war.
It is so easy to play clever and scoff at the rhetoric of “freedom and democracy” against “the forces of tyranny and evil”–it’s so easy because the lines aren’t as clearly drawn as we’d like them to be. As Tolkien once said, unlike Gondor, we have orcs in our own camp. But maybe we can be collectively inspired, if only for a moment, by the courage of Taiwan. In the shadow of humongous power, a tiny island democracy plants its feet and says, No.
A brief note: During the various conversations and activities I engaged in today, I was struck with a renewed realization that everything, from what job I have and how well I might do, to the people I relate with and how well or poorly I relate to them, to the speed and amount I grow as a person, are all directly dependent on God’s love for me. If he did not love me, personally and profoundly, I would not have the strength or self-confidence with which to take risks and grow as a person… (nor could I find or accomplish the steps needed to participate in sanctification.) Without his love, I would be grasping for and clinging to the love I receive from friends and family, unable to relax, to serve, and to give. And, without his active love for me, I would have no “mission” or purpose in life to apply myself to, for “unless the Lord builds the house, the workman works in vain,” and all of my efforts would come to naught. Praise the Lord that he does not ignore, does not neglect, does not disdain us, nor does he force himself into our lives and our worlds, but rather, always the gentlemen, kindly invites us to join him (along with the happiest group of people in the universe), in paradise.
For the first time in eight years, I am on an organized basketball team. I will be blogging the season–why? Because I know you care. Really.
Team name: Rational Animals (Yes, it’s an awesome name).
Team captain: Alex Plato (with a name like “Rational Animals,” you would expect Aristotle. But you would be wrong.)
Preseason: vs. City of Portland
Recap: It went from bad, to worse, to awful. I’ll spare the details. Final score: 57-25. Ouch.
Matt’s line: Too ugly to mention. 0-6 (including 3 wide open looks), not nearly enough rebounds and probably 4 turnovers. Plus the humiliation of being a non-factor.
I figure (a) sharing my shame with the world is good and (b) knowing that I’m sharing my shame will give me impetus to improve. It will not always be this ugly. At least I hope not.
In my previous post, I pointed out that there is some debate about the number of ’signs’ Jesus does in the Gospel–while I began this series convinced that there are seven signs in John, I am no longer as sure as I once was. What we do know is that specific signs are written ’so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God” (20:31). In other words, they authenticate Jesus’s divinne authority.
It is this ‘divine authority’ that is the issue of the book of John. While the ’signs’ authenticate his authority, the concept of ‘bearing witness’ in John seems to refer to a spoken testimony about Jesus’s authority. It is to this concept of ‘witness’ that I’ll turn next.
John the Baptist occupies a curious position in John’s Gospel. While many scholars think that John is writing for a primarily greek audience, John seems insistent in the first chapter to deny that John the Baptist is ‘the Christ’ (see 1:8, 20). This, combined with the pervasive presence of other Jewish imagery, traditions, and interaction suggest that John might have a more Jewish audience in mind than most scholars think (such an audience would still need to see Jesus interacting with Gentiles, as in John 4, in order to understand the inclusive nature of the covenant). Regardless, John emphasizes that John the Baptist’s purpose is to “bear witness of the light.” (more…)
On Sunday my church considered Genesis 18:16-19:38, the story of the destruction of the infamous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. A key character in the story is Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who decided to go down into the fertile valley of the cities. Apparently, Lot found himself in the midst of a horrendously wicked group of people and his reaction to that situation in the unfolding of this passage of Scripture tells us a great deal about how Christians ought to interact with the culture surrounding them – namely that one must either actively confront the culture or retreat, passivity is not a good strategy.
When the two angels of the Lord in human form come to Lot, we find him mingling amongst the people of the city. He graciously takes in the two men, but soon the whole of the men of the city, both young and old, are banging at the door clamoring to rape the new guys. Lot steps outside his home in the middle of the city in an attempt to calm the crowd and calls them “brothers” or “friends” showing that he was intimately involved in the community.
Daniel Dennett is the new H.G. Wells and Leon Wieseltier is his Chesterton.
Dennett’s latest book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon, seems to be an updated version (and narrower) version of Wells’ Outline of History in which Wells attempted to explain the events of history with an evolutionary framework (see also the abbreveiated A Short Outline of History). Chesterton responded to Wells’ effort with his own ‘history’ in The Everlasting Man, a work that remains a compelling and entertaining defense of Christianity.
While Dennett’s project (as outlined in this review by Leon Wieseltier) sounds eerily similar to Wells’, Wieselteir’s response is as strikingly Chestertonian (though he may not think this a compliment!). The review opens with a bang:
THE question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. Scientism, the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is a superstition, one of the dominant superstitions of our day; and it is not an insult to science to say so. For a sorry instance of present-day scientism, it would be hard to improve on Daniel C. Dennett’s book. “Breaking the Spell” is a work of considerable historical interest, because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.
It gets better. About agreeing with Dennett, Wieseltier writes: (more…)
The simple and powerful life of Maria Zeitner Linke from her childhood through her release from the Russian gulags is plainly and honestly conveyed in Ruth Hunt’s East Wind.
Mrs. Linke’s story opens in Germany in 1945, as the Russian army rolls into the shambles of Hitler’s fatherland. A Russian-born German, she finds herself an outcast in Germany and Russia as each government rejects her as a traitor or a spy. Captured by Russian soldiers and brutally raped, Mrs. Linke finds herself standing on the tailgate of an army truck, one end of a heavy rope tied around her neck, the other end lashed to the overhanging branches of a sturdy tree. Moments before her death, she remembers her broken promise to God, made as a young girl, to be a faithful witness to others of the truth and grace of God which she had experienced and received.
A few things learned and remembered in Phoenix:
1) Tom Ward is smart. Ridiculously smart. No one in the room (8 people) came close to understanding his paper. I might be able to get it with a hard copy, but even then…..
2) I’m going to have to live up with a mispronounced college name the rest of my life. A direct quote from the lady who introduced Tom: “Thomas Ward has a Bachelor’s degree from Bee-ola University.”
3) Pizookie is really, really rich. If you have never had the rich, chocolate-chippity goodness (either from BJ’s or, if in Phoenix, Oregano’s) I highly recommend it.
4) Connecting with good friends after a long absence is really, really refreshing.
5) Connecting with good friends after a long absence is really, really difficult when you can’t talk or breathe very well.
It was the best of times and the worst of times, but not like you’d think. Two American women Olympians showed what’s best about America and worst about America. Lindsey Kildow and Lindsey Jacobellis represented their countries in very different ways today at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy.
Kildow took a horrendous, gut-wrenching fall on Tuesday and had to be hospitalized overnight with severe injuries to her leg muscles. However, she rolled out of her gurney the next morning, got dressed and took to the slopes to compete in the downhill – where she got 8th!
Today, still fighting through extraordinary pain she raced in the combined skiing race. She finished admirably in the first run – not finishing near the top but fighting all the way. When she reached the bottom of the slope she hunched over and fought off tears of pain. Quitting, though, was never an option.
“I wanted to do it even if I wasn’t going to do well,” Kildow said. “I just had to try. It’s the Olympics. You work so hard to be here. You can’t just give up.”
She didn’t give up, although her battered body failed causing her to fall and become disqualified.
Our hearts rallied for Kildow and, as ESPN writer Eric Adelson puts it so well: “The regular fan can only crawl out of bed and get back to work, fighting the arms that grab us and hold us back, ignoring all the reasons to crumble. And for that, the regular fan has Lindsey Kildow, and the feeling of watching her do what we all imagine ourselves doing in such a moment of terror and agony.”
On the other hand, Lindsey Jacobellis, with all the talent in the world and a wide open lane to the finish line, decided to act in an arrogant way, which created a moment she’ll wish she had back forever. Crusing all alone to a gold in the snowboard cross finals, Jacobellis decided to hot-dog it off the second-to-last jump. This caused her to fall literally and in disgrace. She still came away with a silver, but her name is all over the internet at websites reporting on her disgrace.
“I was caught up in the moment,” Jacobellis reported, “I was having fun. Snowboarding is fun. I was ahead. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd. I messed up. Oh well, it happens.”
It’s hard to appreciate Jacobellis’ action as “sharing enthusiasm with the crowd”, but we do see the self centered attitude of “having fun.” She is an incredible athlete, who worked as hard as anyone to get there, but she failed to recognize her role as an ambassador to the world from our country. There is a reason it is so special when they raise your flag at the medal ceremony.
I don’t mean to make this out to be more serious than it is, but our athletes must recognize that the world judges the rest of us in part based on their actions. They represent not just themselves, but our country. The Olympic games are about representing your people to a larger audience – they always have been, even hundreds of years ago in Greece. What the USA does not need is to be perceived as brash and, well, silly. I hope that what we are is something more like Lindsey Kildow. Pushing through obstacles and striving to achieve excellence despite the personal cost. Jacobellis may have won a medal, but Kildow won respect.
***I think I’ve been a bit hard on Lindsey Jacobellis. I just heard her comments on TV and she honorably took full responsibility. She also pointed out that the US is still on the podium. She’s also only 20.
I’ve recently lost my fight against a cold. The first advance it made was against my sense of warmth–after defeating those defenses, it moved to my muscles and has now decided to wage war against my chest. I’m taking a weekend off to rest up and see good friend and Mere O contributor Tom give a paper that I am assured of not understanding. logging will resume again next week when I will return to my series on John.
If I call into my banking institution today, I hear a friendly-sounding lady answer the phone, and say “Welcome to Wells Fargo. To access your accounts, press, or say, “one.” To open a new account, press, or say, “two…” And so on. If I press 1, she kindly says, “Thank you. To expedite the handlng of your call, please enter your account number, followed by the pound key.” She asked me nicely, said please, and even explained the purpose of her asking… After I enter the account number (5114-30-5337*) she thanks me again.
The convention of automated “receptionists” has already taken hold of most large corporations and businesses… the convention of automated receptionists who respond not only to touch tone commands but voice commands is slowly setting in.
Certain credit card companies are striving more and more to imitate a casual, friendly conversation between you and the “customer service rep” on the other line. They hire professional voice-actors with calm, melodious voices to replace dry, formal, lines like “Your number could not be recognized. Please try again” with the more colloquial “Hm, I couldn’t get that to work. Can you say the number again for me?” To which you respond by speaking into the microphone. (more…)
The human experience is a sexual experience. As we are physical creatures, sexuality is interwined into the very essence of our being. On the other hand, sexuality is about more than physicality–it is about our human persons and our relationships with them.
