Over at ConversantLife, we’re through the Preface of the “dating book.”  It really needs a title–any suggestions?

This week, we’re going to be working our way through the first chapter.  My central contention–that dating and courting as institutions are dead–is perhaps the most difficult to prove.  For those readers whom have contact with high school or college students on a regular basis, I would love to hear your thoughts.

For everyone else, the commenting action has been a lot of fun.  It has been nothing short of invigorating, which I suspect will spill over to this blog eventually.  

One final note:  if you’re reading by RSS and don’t want an additional feed, I’ve spliced together only my posts from Mere-O and my posts at ConversantLife for your convenience.

Since the mid-20th century, Christianity has happily played the role of cultural follower.  Our art, our music, our literature has reflected the ongoing innovation of the world around us.  Nowhere has this been more true than online.  While Christians began writing blogs early enough (especially those in the emerging church), those early adopters rarely went on to create new technologies.  

Brant DeBow is one Christian who is trying to create new programs, rather than simply use existing programs, for the kingdom of God.  His company iHabitus, has released a new application for the iPhone that is designed to help Christians reflect more consistently on the meaning of Advent.  Though I don’t have an iPhone, it looks quite good.

What is iHabitus?  They explain:

Our goal is to foster the daily practice of faith through technology. Our method is to deliver creedal Christianity’s rich, high culture traditions through the latest in modern technology in a way that is careful, reverent and deliberate. Careful, because technology can too often lead to distraction over devotion.  Reverent, because we act as ambassadors of Christ.  Deliberate, because we must not let the medium define the Message.

If you have an iPhone, download the application and email me at matthew dot l dot anderson at gmail dot com.  I will be happy to post your review here.

This Sunday marks the first Sunday of the Advent season.  Though historically neglected by many evangelicals, Advent has made a resurgence in recent years.  We will be updating and editing posts from previous years to celebrate the Advent season.

“Come, Lord Jesus.”  This is the prayer that we pray on the First Sunday of Advent.  It reminds us of the dual orientation of the Christian life:  we look forward to His coming as preparation to celebrate his Incarnation.

But why orient our minds and hearts around the second coming of Christ, especially now, at the start of the Christmas season?

In the book of Revelation, John describes the return of our Lord with triumphal imagery:  he shall ride on a white horse, with a sword in his hand.  The stirring image reminds us that the Jesus who died for our sins is the same Jesus who wishes to rid them from His world.  On that day, righteousness and peace shall finally kiss.   As we anticipate his coming, we are shaped to love his justice and to seek his righteousness for ourselves, and for the world around us.

At the root of our reflection on Advent is a question:  When he comes again, will we be on his side?  In reflecting on his judgment, we are invited to repent and return to the God who yet rules the world.  

Our reflection on his Advent, however, ought not be done ahistorically.  He will come again because he came once.  The two historical moments should not be separated, for they are a part of the same saving action by God.  The judgment of the world is the world’s redemption:  its salvation is its conviction.

It is our task to reflect on both realities, and to reflect upon them in the proper way.  In Advent, we look forward to the final judgment of the world, and tremble.  At Christmas, we look back to the redemption of the world, and rejoice.  The descent of God into the world at the Incarnation allows us to return to Him–and in that return, we learn to long for his vindication of his people and the rebirth of the world.

From our vantage point between these two historical moments, then, we perceive the decisive acts of God in history: the inaugaration of his Kingdom at the Incarnation (repent, for the Kingdom is at hand!), and the fulfillment of his Kingdom at his return to the earth (repent, for he comes to fulfill his judgment!).

Christ has come, and Christ will come again.  We stand where the comma lies: with sorrow for our sins, joy for their atonement, and with a holy longing for for his righteousness to cover the earth.

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

On this day, many Americans will engage in the semi-religious rituals that compose “Thanksgiving.”  We gather together in our communities, put on the appropriate costumes, and entertain and amuse ourselves before sitting down for a celebratory feast.

Though thoroughly secular, the Thanksgiving holiday returns many people to that primal sense of indebtedness that is near the heart of all religion.  To engage in Thanksgiving demands acknowledging that one is not–can not be–autonomous.  What we have, who we are, depends upon what is given to us.  

In Christian households, this acknowledgment has taken the form of “saying Grace.”  The expression fits the activity–in our prayers before the feast, we name the unmerited blessings we have received.  Of courese, such saying of grace ought not be limited to meals.  As Chesterton famously wrote, “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

As American, we have much to give thanks for this year.  While grace resists secularization–at its core, it is always the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ–we are reminded on this day of our dependence upon others, and of the ultimate dependence of all good things we enjoy on the One Father who gives them all.

Last Friday and Saturday the world celebrated World Philosophy day.  Where were you?

Were you trapped in a Sartean Hell with No Exit and the only windows being the eyes of your tortured inmates?

Or were you finding your intial enthusiasm beginning to flag while you waited for Xeno’s paradoxical turtle to cross a finite race track by infinitely crossing half the remaining distance?

Perhaps you found yourself flummoxed by the Heraclitean suggestion that no man steps into the same river twice and, upon attempting to wade the Potomac found that no sane man steps into any river this time of year.

If you’re like me you may have found yourself puzzling over the sort of world we live in (leave the issue of whether or not it is the best of all possible worlds to Anselm of Canterbury and another day) in which UNESCO can institute a World Philosophy Day and so few of the residents of the world could possibly care.  Perhaps your tastes are different than mine and an agenda of colloquim discussions of “Rights and Power”, particularly from the perspective of psychoanalysis sounds like a fit and thrilling way to recognize and advance the place of philosophy in the development of the individual and society.

Any takers?

For my part, if one is going to waste a day making pompous speeches and forwarding exotic theories of human behavior that likely will do little to help the widow or the orphan, except perhaps convince them that they aren’t really widows and orphans (or worse, that someone owes them something for allowing them to endure such ravages of human existence), it might as well be wasted with a bit more humor.  Pop over to the BBC and try out its philosophical puzzles.

If you happen to find a solution to them, do publicize…it might do more for the poor and hungry of this world than anything Francoise Dolto and her UNESCO friends have come up with.  There is real power in truth, and the truth will set the captives free.

Eyes are on Peru this week, and this time they aren’t the ever-watchful eyes of NGOs monitoring fair and just elections, nor are they the eyes of the bulldog military that are constantly on guard against drug trafficking. Peru is striving to enter en force on the international trade scene and, ten years after becoming a member of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), secured the opportunity to host the 2008 APEC forum. A huge honor for Peru which, when compared with some other APEC member economies like the United States, Japan, and China, is still a relative nobody in the Asian-Pacific economic market. Nonetheless, Lima’s hospitality and show of economic growth (Peruvian GDP is up 9% despite the global financial ills) are a very positive sign for the future of the country and the possibilities the free market holds out for lifting this country from the category of “developing” to “developed” country.

A visit to Peru’s capital in support of the U.S. presidential visit to Lima for today’s speech to APEC heads of state afforded me with a unique opportunity to catch the city cleaning up its act and putting its very best foot forward in preparation for visiting dignitaries from some of the world’s most powerful leaders. City sanitary workers swarmed the streets to pick up garbage and dirt while colorful posters and banners unfurled themselves with flare from every other available light post along the main Limean thoroughfares.

Peru is still a developing country with a GDP of $107 billion (U.S.) and an average per capita income of $3,826 (U.S.) and a poverty level of approximately 40%. However, it has 125 countries ranked below it on the IMF’s 2007 GDP list and is projected to keep growing, especially as it moves towards the free market and continues its fight against political corruption.

With the opportunity to showcase it’s growing economy, the city was abuzz with an excitement that worked its way down from the halls of government and the glassed-in conference rooms of big business to the smaller vendors in the services industries. A shop owner next to the fascinating Museo de Arquelogia, Antropologia, y Historia Natural rolled her eyes and said things were going to get very busy over the next few days, all the while smiling as she anticipated a boom in her own profits. Whether or not the excitement and optimism will last remains to be seen, however President Bush encouraged Peru and Latin America to press forward with their free market policies,

Over the decades, the free market system has proved the most efficient way and the just way of structuring an economy. Free markets offer people the freedom to choose where they work and what they want; offers people the opportunity to buy or sell products as they see fit; gives people the dignity that comes with profiting from their talent and their hard work. Free markets provide the incentives to lead to prosperity — the incentive to work, to innovate, to save and invest wisely, and to create jobs for others. And as millions of people pursue these incentives together, whole societies benefit.

“No region of the world demonstrates the power of free markets more vividly than the Asia Pacific. Free markets helped Japan grow into the world’s second-largest economy. Free markets helped South Korea make itself one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth. Free markets helped Chile triple its economy and cut its poverty rate by more than two-thirds over the past two decades. And last year, free market policies helped make Peru’s economy the second-fastest growing in APEC.”

In the midst of the turmoil and fear surrounding the global “crisis” and the accompanying calls for greater government involvement and protectionism, it is wise to look outside the usual American and European markets where one can be reminded that free market policies, capitalism, and democratic principles are astoundingly successful in raising the quality of life of entire nations and bringing a new level of peace, well-being, and stability—all of which lend themselves to the good of the individual and the world.

While some complain that the APEC summit is nothing more than a week-long vacation for world leaders and results in little more than niceties and platitudes being bandied about, the overall increase of trade between Latin America and Asian nations, and the accompanying reduction of poverty, leaves me optimistic that the free market may do more the world than the most stringent military platforms or strident calls for global socialism.

On September 15th, 2005, I told the Mere-O audience that I was setting out to write a book on dating.  The publishing leads were all lined up, my thoughts were all ready to go, and my level of enthusiasm was through the roof.

So much has happened in my life since then that it is hard to believe only three years has gone by.  Since that day I have written numerous pages on dating and relationships and have spoken to several hundred high schoolers about the issue, but not once have I released my writing to the world.

That is about to change.

Over the next three to four months, I will be systematically releasing every single word of my manuscript on dating and relationships at ConversantLife (see more details here).  I thought about doing it at Mere-O, but figured that our target audience probably wouldn’t suffer through four months of non-stop talk about youth romance.  I will be posting weekly updates, but that’s about it.  Regular blogging will continue as much as possible.

ConversantLife is itself a decent story.  In 2005, I looked at the changing landscape of publishing and realized that traditional publishing houses were going to struggle to sell books.  What was needed was a fusion of an online content provider that had the ability to produce traditional more cost-effectively than traditional publishers might.  I almost started such a platform, until I found out ConversantLife was doing it first.  It is a unique platform that is still very young, but showing promise.

I am excited to (finally) let go of this project.  I have no idea if any hardback book will come of it, but at least all my thoughts will be collected in one place and viewable for the whole world to see.

Of course, there is no audience in the world whose feedback I would appreciate more than Mere-O’s.  If you find it in your heart (and in your schedule) to help me out, I would appreciate you reading and offering your always insightful commentary, and passing word along to your friends and networks.

At the end of the day, my aim is to help as many Christian high school and college students learn how to make wise decisions and avoid many of the mistakes that I made.  The “Build a Better Dating(?) Book Project” is the best way I know how to do that.  I hope you’ll come and play.

G.K. Chesterton is best known for his apologetic works Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.

But the work that earned him some of the highest praise was Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox.

The story of how Chesterton wrote the book is well known in Chestertonian circles. It is said that he dictated the book over the course of a week while casually flipping through a few biographies of Aquinas that a friend in London had sent him. The end result prompted Etienne Gilson, one of the 20th centuries foremost Aquinas scholars, to remark: “I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement.”

Chesterton was no professional philosopher.But that didn’t prevent him from grasping the essence of Thomas’s philosophy:

Without pretending to span within such limits the essential Thomist idea, I may be allowed to throw out a sort of rough version of the fundamental question, which I think I have known myself, consciously or unconsciously, since my childhood. When a child looks out of the nursery window and sees anything, say the green lawn of the garden, what does he actually know; or does he know anything? There are all sorts of nursery games of negative philosophy played round this question. A brilliant Victorian scientist delighted in declaring that the child does not see any grass at all; but only a sort of green mist reflected in a tiny mirror of the human eye. This piece of rationalism has always struck me as almost insanely irrational. If he is not sure of the existence of the grass, which he sees through the glass of a window, how on earth can he be sure of the existence of the retina, which he sees through the glass of a microscope? If sight deceives, why can it not go on deceiving? Men of another school answer that grass is a mere green impression on the mind; and that he can be sure of nothing except the mind. They declare tat he can only be conscious of his own consciousness; which happens to be the one thing that we know the child is not conscious of at all. In that sense it would be far truer to say that there si grass and no child, than to say that there is a conscious child but no grass. St. Thomas Aquinas, suddenly intervening in this nursery quarrel, says emphatically that the child is aware of Ens. Long before he knows that the grass is grass, or self is self, he knows that something is something. Perhaps it would be best to say very emphatically (with a blow on the table), “There is an Is.” That is as much monkish credulity as St. Thomas asks of us at the start. Very few unbelievers start by asking us to believe so little. And yet, upon this sharp pin point of reality, he rears by long logical processes that have never really been successfully overthrown, the whole cosmic system of Christendom.”

Chesterton proceeds to point out that any given thing at any given moment is something, but it is not everything it could be. There is a fullness of being—a perfection of being—upon which the existence of all other objects depends. That Being is God.

Whether Chesterton’s articulation of Thomism and its emphasis on Ens—that is, Being—is correct is a question for the philosophers. That it shaped Chesterton’s worldview is undeniable.

In Orthodoxy, he writes:

“Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended upon not doing something which you could at any moment do and which, every often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is that to me this did not seem unjust. If the miller’s third son said to the fairy, “Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace,” the other might fairly reply, “Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace.” If Cinderella says, “How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?” her godmother might answer, “How is it that you are going there till twelve?” If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible of the towering trees.”

Chesterton’s point is a moral one, but it rests on the metaphysic;  the experience of joy does not stem from discovering what a thing is, but simply that it is.  The doctrine of conditional joy is predicated upon the doctrine of conditional being, and it is precisely that doctrine that Thomism emphasized.  The universe could have been other than it is–the real mystery is that it is.  

It is Thomism and its emphasis on the contingent nature of human reality that undergirds Chestertonian wonder. The fundamental fact of the universe is that there is something rather than nothing, and that something is intrinsically good. Chesterton, though dressed in Victorian garb, is actually a medieval.

I have always thought that every academic–or wannabe, such as myself–ought have one or two hypotheses that are held very loosely, are somewhat defensible but impossible to prove, and just fringe enough to make academic parties mildly interesting.

One such hypothesis that I have occasionally advanced is that G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is the most important work of the 21st century, even though it was written in the 20th….

For the rest of the argument, click over to Evangelical Outpost.

Tonight, the American people spoke and elected Barack Obama as their–as our–President.  It is a historic decision, and one that will doubtlessly be scrutinized relentlessly.  Barack Obama has run a masterful campaign–perhaps one of the most effective campaigns in history–and the prevailing winds that favored his election do not detract from the momentousness of his win.  My congratulations to our newly elected President, Barack Obama.

(Update:  for a roundup of reactions, see the Confabulum over at Culture11.  I’ll have more tomorrow.)

There are questions as to what this election means, of course.  The historic nature of this election is one thing:  the political implications are quite another.  Does this represent a shift away from the “center-right” basis of America?  Will the Obama Presidency represent a revival of a robust Democratic ideology, or will Obama take the road to popularity and avoid getting his hands dirty–much as Bill Clinton did while he was in office?  What will conservatives rally around to win back seats, as Democrats rallied around opposing the Iraq War after 2004?

Such questions will be answered in future weeks and months.  For conservatives now, disappointment is inevitable.  At this critical juncture, conservatives had hoped for so much more.  The “promised land,” however, has been denied.  It is our turn to get used to the wilderness.

The choice before us is stark:  we, like the children of Israel, can harden our hearts and grumble.  We can seize on the anger that comes from losing and use it to propel our efforts.  We can allow the policies of Barack Obama to force us to shape ours defensively.  

This is, dare I say, the path that Democrats chose to travel the last 8 years.  Conservatives, I hope, will choose otherwise.  There is a way of being in the wilderness that will make conservatives stronger, not only for 2010 and 2012, but for long thereafter.  On this election evening, though results have not gone as I hoped, I remain cheerful.  Today is a good day:  America has elected its first African American President. Conservative principles are still true, and so will not be long out of favor.  The Republican party is disorganized and divided, but so was the Democratic party four short years ago. 

The next four years, I hope cheerful conservatism prevails.  If I have anything to do with it, it will.  But for now, congratulations to our next President of the United States.

The national badge of pride today is the ubiquitous, modest, and yet glorious sticker sporting the (short and yet complete) sentence: “I voted.”

Anyone sporting this sticker is rewarded not only with the pride of civic duty accomplished, but free free donuts, free Baskin Robbins, and free Starbucks.

But less known are the following related (complete-sentence) stickers…

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Sticker for the Winner of the 2007 Annual Canada Chili Eating Contest:

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First-time Sky-Diver Sticker:

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Sticker given to those who help the environment by using “green” grocery bags  instead of the traditional plastic:

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Sticker worn by God two days after the world-wide deluge:

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But who will get to wear the second-most-coveted, most glorious, sticker yet…?

For pro-life conservatives, this election is different than most.  Years of pro-life gains–and yes, in case you haven’t heard, the pro-life cause extends beyond overturning Roe–stand to be overturned.  The malaise currently affecting the Republican party could give Democrats power that is unprecendented in my lifetime.

Justin Taylor has summed up what I think is the decisive case against Barack Obama:

But I want to plead with fellow evangelicals to recognize that this is a watershed election with regard to abortion. Barack Obama has promised to make signing the Freedom of Choice Act his first order of business in the White House–and with a Democratic Congress, he will be able to make this happen.

The Knights of Columbus recently catalogued the many small successes achieved in the pro-life political process since 1973:

• The Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortions;
• The federal law banning partial birth abortions, which was finally upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2007;
• The “Mexico City Policy,” which has barred the use of federal taxpayers’ money to pay for abortions in other countries;
• Laws in 44 states that preserve a parental role when children under 18 seek abortions;
• Laws in 40 states that restrict late-term abortions;
• Laws in 46 states that protect the right of conscience for individual health care providers;
• Laws in 27 states that protect the right of conscience for institutions;
• Laws in 38 states that ban partial birth abortions;
• Laws in 33 states that require counseling before having an abortion;
• And laws in 16 states that provide for ultrasounds before an abortion.

With a stroke of the pen, all of these would be gone.

I am under no illusions that electing John McCain will necessarily lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But I do believe that McCain would be a good pro-life president, I know that McCain would veto the radical FOCA, and I know that Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to ever run for president.

I believe evangelicals should care deeply–though not idolatrously–about this election, and that they should do what they can to stop, or at least slow, the slaughter of the innocent. Voting is one of the things you can do. I encourage you to do it, and to do so with a view toward the weakest and most defenseless members of the human race–3,700 of whom are being killed every single day in the United States.

The decision is clearly one of great import.  Should Barack Obama win tomorrow, conservatives would do well to remember the words of that eminent conservative, G.K. Chesterton:

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and, eclipse….For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

I have frequently argued that it is the cheerfulness of conservatives that set them apart online.  You may think that Hugh is wrong, but you may not think him unhappy.  You may find DailyKos correct, but I suspect you will also find them angry.  There is a place for anger in the emotional life–and the reality of abortion is enough to justify it, I suspect–but tomorrow, if they do not have the opportunity to demonstrate their gracefulness in victory, conservatives have an opportunity to demonstrate their optimism that America can overcome every challenge and setback.