RIDING STORMS

History Never Lies

2012-02-07T19:32:00.001-08:00

'I suppose history never lies, does it?' said Mr. Dick, with a gleam of hope.

'Oh dear, no, sir!' I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous and young, and I thought so.

[Dickens, David Copperfield.]

Poetry

2012-01-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

The Romans . . . now began to have a relish for poetry, which, in every civilized nation, is the first liberal art that rises, and the first also that decays.

[Roman History, Oliver Goldsmith.]

2011 Books

2012-01-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

Here are the books I've read, the worlds I've visited, in 2011. N. D. Wilson's Henry has 100 cupboards in his house that lead to strange places; I've got a thousand. Here are twenty-five of them in the order read.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Shakespeare.
Running with Joy. Ryan Hall.
The Lady of the Lake. Sir Walter Scott.
Fairy-Gold: A Book of Classic English Fairy Tales. Ernest Rhys.
The Weight of Glory. C. S. Lewis.
The Horse and His Boy. C. S. Lewis
The Silver Chair. C. S. Lewis
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Jules Verne.
Phantastes. George MacDonald.
Lilith. George MacDonald.
Orthodoxy. G. K. Chesterton.
Mere Christianity. C. S. Lewis
Grimm's Fairy Tales. Grimm Brothers.
Daddy Long Legs. Jean Webster.
Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll.
Cheaper by the Dozen. Gilbreth & Gilbreth.
Hamlet. Shakespeare.
The Dragon's Tooth. N. D. Wilson
The Rage Against God. Peter Hitchens.
Why Ministers Must Be Men. Douglas Wilson
Captains Courageous. Rudyard Kipling.
History of the Jews, Volume 1: From the Earliest Period to the Death of Simon the Maccabee. Heinrich Graetz.
In the Beginning. Chaim Potok.
Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. W. B. Yeats
Melmoth the Wanderer. Charles Maturin.

And the prize for the most unexpectedly enjoyable read of the year goes to Daddy Long Legs.

Lists from 2010 and 2009.

Keeping a little fire on our hearths

2012-01-03T08:41:00.000-08:00

It is better doubtless to believe much unreason and a little truth than to deny for denial's sake truth and unreason alike, for when we do this we have not even a rush candle to guide our steps, not even a poor sowlth to dance before us on the marsh, and must needs fumble our way into the great emptiness where dwell the mis-shapen dhouls. And after all, can we come to so great evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths, and in our souls, and welcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself, whether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the dhouls themselves, 'Be ye gone'? When all is said and done, how do we not know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees!

W. B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight.

Sledding

2011-12-23T21:36:00.000-08:00

Today was sledding at Glade Park, my second-ever trip to the second-best sledding spot I know. The first trip came when I was about fourteen. Yesterday, Western Colorado got a snowstorm -- an inch in Grand Junction but more in the heights like Glade Park -- so conditions seemed ripe. The Grand Caravan slid and spun up the snow-packed road just below the sled hill, never losing enough momentum to make things dicey, but coming close at times. It was like riding the back of an oiled flatworm ascending an intestine.

Well, there was plenty of snow, but it was dry and fluffy from the cold and wouldn't stay put. Step on it with your boot and it moved aside nicely. Except that good snow -- good sledding snow -- is supposed to pack. This made for some interesting runs. After blazing a slow trail through the stuff, we could gain pretty decent speed; enough speed to beat the flatworm's pace at any rate. What wasn't so good was the rock. Rocks. These are found under the snow, well-covered, so that discovery occurs painfully. All was well until I hit one particularly jagged specimen, likely waiting its entire existence for a moment like this when it could dig straight into my tailbone, with brutal force, and then watch the resultant fun: me prostrate in the snow in a daze of agony.

We chose another route without demonic rocks. The rest of the runs cooperated. Wild, but not too wild. But I think that this was all a big plot: last I sledded here, it was a memory for the ages with perfect, smooth, fast conditions and no hint of injuries; but now, grown up, I run into trouble. Rocks that didn't exist in my childhood stab the underside of my sled with obvious sadism, and the perfect, wet snow of yore won't come out to play. This is the same species of plot as the enormous landscapes of childhood that become strangely small as an adult; the vast and pristine lake, full of mystery and wonder, that as a grownup is stagnant and twelve feet across. The Earth is a mischievous shape-shifter, and it loves a good joke. Let's just say my tailbone was the butt end of it.

Incarnation Now

2011-12-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas is the best holiday because it marks the focal point of history, Christ made flesh. Even though this happened at a specific point in time, it's also now. Joy to the world: the Lord is come. Good Christian men, rejoice: Christ is born today. Christ's incarnation was not then. Christ's incarnation is now. Christ's incarnation is always. It gets in your bones.

We're in it. The Christmas story is not in the coffin of History. We're not across some unbridgeable gulf of time thinking about a finished, dead event. We're participants in the Story. Here are the shepherds now. Here are the magicians from the East. And there is Herod.

Providence in the Chubby Things

2011-12-01T18:15:00.001-08:00

Clyde has entered the beginning stages of thinking he knows everything, and why on earth won't anyone listen to me? By heaven, I've been out of the womb nearly six months and know a thing or two. He manfully pounds his high-chair demanding more food if Mommy so much as dares take a bite of her own dinner. If it's been too long getting the diaper latched (3 seconds), time to roll over and squirm, half-naked. Obviously. On to better things where diapers are optional.

And by it all he does exactly what he's supposed to do. Be a baby. He's a perfect cherub-Napoleon. He is king.

Hitler was once Clyde's age. I bet he did the same weird stuff to food that Clyde does.

But I bet he didn't have the same daddy.

Surrounded by Presents

2011-11-21T19:35:00.001-08:00

Being thankful is fun because it is active. You get to take and you get to eat and none of it has to be with a sense of obligation, none of it with the nagging voice in your head that's trying to figure out how to repay all this kindness. Thankfulness is open-mouthed joy at all the things you get to have. You are the kid surrounded by presents, and God sees that it is all very good. You know where it all came from. You know that you have nothing otherwise. So you acknowledge gratitude by saying, but also by doing. You rip open the presents, and you eat lots of food.

The Magic of Rice Cereal

2011-11-15T17:04:00.001-08:00

Kids bring us back to basics. I knew this was coming with Clyde, and I haven't been disappointed. Clyde loves stuff. He can't enough of it. Every time he wakes up, his ridiculously big grin (together with whole-body convulsions) shouts one thing: let me see more stuff!

But slight clarification: for Clyde, it's not stuff. It's magic. Toys, Mom's eyes, Dad's grab-able nose, sun making checkered patterns on the floor, fluttering book pages, any old sound -- impossibly fantastic to him. And I've discovered that he's right. They are magic.

My brain hasn't been infected by cutesy baby thoughts. Clyde is actually right. My brain has been infected by gradual blindness over the years, and I've stopped seeing things as they are. I haven't been using my eyes since I was a kid. In Orthodoxy, Chesterton, who I'm sure loved babies (See? Look at picture now.)

said this:

The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are theterms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment." They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhillbecause it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.

Chesterton is hereby Clyde's (momentarily dead) godfather.

Worth a time-machine: Churchill

2011-11-13T14:37:00.000-08:00

I've begun reading Churchill's The Gathering Storm, the first of his six volumes on World War II. It's lots of fun. Personal, candid, adventurous. I'm not sure when I've read a good history written by someone in it all. Stories are much more fun when told by someone who's been scuffed up by the story. Scars and bruises add a nice touch.

I began three days ago in 1919 with an upside-down-fish Germany, and Mr. Churchill has since taken me with foreboding and suspense to 1935. A lethargic England, drugged with thoughts of peace, wakes too late to a German shark. And now the desperate scramble to 1939. . . .

Out in the Magic

2011-11-12T11:36:00.000-08:00

Today we are taking Clyde to the zoo. Outside, a storm is circling and blackening, and we might get rained on. That's okay. Storms are people too.

We'll also be seeing wild animals, which is definitely not something just for the little kiddies. I suppose the bars and cages are necessary. But anyone who thinks it's old hat to see feral beasts and mythological birds right in front of your face (with a storm overhead) never really saw them at all.

Behold now behemoth,

Which I made with thee;

He eateth grass as an ox.

Lo now, his strength is in his loins,

And his force is in the navel of his belly.

He moveth his tail like a cedar:

The sinews of his stones are wrapped together.

His bones are as strong pieces of brass;

His bones are like bars of iron.

Blithe Craziness

2011-11-11T21:11:00.000-08:00

I've just gotten myself into a fix.

I organized a Scripture memorization challenge for upper school students. There are points and prizes on the line, of course, and a wide range of passage lengths. Some passages are four verses long. Some are over a hundred verses. One is two-hundred and twenty two. (The book of Ecclesiastes.) Both simple and adventurous. They must recite by April.

But for whatever reason, I didn't stop there. I decided that, for bonus points, they could call my bluff. Recite successfully, then (without warning) say, "Your turn." I'd have to recite the same too.

No problem. There are a scant 1,100 total verses. None of which I've really memorized before. And it's not as though my dignity before my students is on the line.

Mortify the . . . imagination

2011-11-06T14:08:00.000-08:00

First, a side note: Calvin strangely thinks that the Israelites were only enslaved in Egypt 200 - 210 years, and that the phrase "the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years" (Ex. 12:40) refers to a period that began "from the date of the covenant with Abraham" (Commentaries, Ex. I. 7.). This interpretation makes little sense given Genesis 15:13, where God tells Abram that

thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years

and given Acts 7:6 where Stephen says that

God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years.

But so much for that. Calvin's main point is to emphasize the quick work of Israelite baby-making. They had lots of babies fast. From the seventy souls "that came out of the loins of Jacob" to the "six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children" that left Egypt, four hundred years later, it's quite a feat any way you look at it. Yet with any extraordinary event come the dull-eyed skeptics, and so Calvin says:

Certain skeptics, perceiving that the relation of Moses surpasses the ordinary ratio of human propagation, and estimating the power of God by their own sense and experience, altogether refuse to credit it. For such is the perverseness of men, that they always seek for opportunities of despising or disallowing the works of God; such, too, is their audacity and insolence that they shamelessly apply all the acuteness they possess to detract from his glory. If their reason assures them that what is related as a miracle is possible, they attribute it to natural causes,--so is God robbed and defrauded of the praise his power deserves; if it is incomprehensible to them, they reject it as a prodigy. (Commentaries, Ex. I. 7.)

And because this is the nature of fallen man, skepticism carries to the present day, infecting the magic and wild transcendence of everyday life. David Hicks, in Norms & Nobility similarly points out that

The modern school . . . narrows the search for truth and the free exchange of ideas by rejecting immaterial categories of thought . . . establishing aprioric rules for perception, thought, and experience and inviting [students] to dismiss subconsciously the impalpable, the marvelous, the inexplicable. Essentially, it is a method uneasy about life's monumental, problematic concerns -- a method that puts these aside, distrusts them.

Tales for my boy

2011-11-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I picked up three books for Clyde. I remember these editions and stories from my childhood, and in these cases, good illustrations make the book. Classic fairy tales and adventures, retold well, are still common. But almost always, their pictures are hopelessly goofy. These three editions thumb their noses at all that nonsense:

1) The Children's Homer by Padraic Colum. A great retelling of the adventures of Odysseus.

2) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Mr. Badger, Ratty, Otter, Mole, and Toad on their tunneling escapades.

3) American Tall Tales by Mary Pope Osborne. The accounts of Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, John Henry, Johnny Appleseed, and others.

The Laws of Fairyland

2011-11-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

A law implies that we know the nature of the generalization and enactment; not merely that we have noticed some of the effects. If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a fairy prince. As ideas, the egg and the chicken are further off from each other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then, that certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the unphilosophic manner of science and the "Laws of Nature."

[G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.]

2011-11-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

"A 'sanctuary' is Yahweh's place, and holy things are Yahweh's things. This is why there are a lot of rules about what Israel may and may not do in the tabernacle: You shouldn't mess with Yahweh's things. In the New Testament, the church is the temple of God, made holy by the Spirit. If anyone messes with us, he is attacking God's holy things and messing around with the furniture of God's house. As the history of Israel shows, the Lord gets angry when people mess with His stuff."

[Peter Leithart, A House for My Name, p. 83]

The Theology of Work

2011-10-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

One of my rhetoric students is writing a thesis on the importance of engineering as a part of godly image-bearing: God built a beautiful world; we should build beautiful cities. Knowledge must be applied or else the knowledge is useless. This answers a certain school of thought which maintains that "pure" math, philosophy, or theology is of a higher order than "applied" math, philosophy, or theology. Theology -- and any other study -- must come out the fingertips. The conversation below speaks to this.

Academics & Work: Divorcing intellectual and physical work (Part 1 of 11) from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

Empty your mind?

2011-10-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

In which there is no tabula rasa and no neutral location in reality:

"You want to rage, but there is no object for your anger. There is no wall to punch. Because above you and them is 'only sky.' You want to rail against God, but He is not there. But that means He didn't do it. So who did? There is no who. Only sky above us and only dirt below. In short, you have no right to exhibit the slightest bit of indignation over 'the neglect' that is being shown to these particular end products of mindless evolution. There is no neglect. Nature eats her own and will do so until every last sun has gone out. Deal with it."

[D. Wilson, Letter from a Christian Citizen, p. 53.]

Bloom's Western Canon

2011-10-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

Attached for your viewing pleasure, and for your pursuit of copiousness, is Harold Bloom's Western Canon. I'm sure not every good and influential book has been included here, and some that are included perhaps shouldn't be, but it's a good source for knowing what the good books are. Bloom has divided the literature according to chronology: (1) The Theocratic Age, (2) The Aristocratic Age, (3) The Democratic Age, and (4) The Chaotic Age. Each category has its own tab in the document. Snapshot below.

The Gardens of Fantasy

2011-10-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

I originally found this in Kirk's Redeeming the Time, which, far from stereotypical doomsday predictions, seems to be proving true:

As the astronauts soar into the vast eternities of space, on earth the garbage piles higher; as the groves of academe extend their domain, their alumni's arms reach lower; as the phallic cult spreads, so does impotence. In great wealth, great poverty; in health, sickness; in numbers, deception. Gorging, left hungry; sedated, left restless; telling all, hiding all; in flesh united, forever separate. So we press on through the valley of abundance that leads to the wasteland of satiety, passing through the gardens of fantasy; seeking happiness ever more ardently, and finding despair ever more surely.

Malcom Muggeridge, "The Great Liberal Death Wish."

Honesty

2011-07-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

A fundamental principle of life, not to mention Christian life, is that you must first do yourself what you instruct others to do. You must practice what you preach. The old card game "Go Fish" bears this out, because the only way to request a card, which is to progress in the game, is to have a copy of that card yourself. But the purpose for this is not simply pragmatic, as any general who wishes to be followed starts first as a private (as though there was a choice) so that he can say to them, after giving a command, "I was once in your place." A father isn't first diligent with the simple hope that his son will emulate him, even though this might be the result if he is lucky. Instead, a general is first a private because privates occupy a noble and necessary rank. A father is diligent first because he believes in the inherent goodness of diligence. We do not practice what we preach for the sake of results; we practice what we preach because we believe the goodness of it. But the whole point is that when this is backwards, and results are desired selfishly and hypocritically, the results never actually come. The father who lounges on the couch and commands his son to dig out the ditch in the name of fostering diligence, does not believe in the virtue of diligence at all. The irony is that everyone sees this but him; he alone is deceived. The father has waylaid a virtue to make it his own talisman, and beats others over the head with it. It is no wonder that his son obeys the distorted virtue with clenched teeth, bides his time, and hates his father.

Nothing

2011-07-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to picture real nothingness. The closest we come to the idea, if we are not careful, is to think of it as a space containing no materials. But simple space is not nothing any more than a blank page is not paper. Then, if we are keen enough to understand that it is not space, we think it is at least blackness. But simple blackness is not nothing any more than a dark room is not nothing. So when we think of the origin of the universe, we must come to grips with the fact that not even space was there, not even absence of color (whatever that means), let alone infinitesimal matter. We must realize that matter cannot explode in a void; no educated scientist would tell you otherwise. So the aspiring universe, before igniting, must have first provided for itself a space in which to be born. The little chick, needing a place to develop, first created an egg for itself. The apple, realizing that it needed a branch on which to grow, created an apple tree for itself. To understand the universe, we must realize that fruit, though dependent on trees, comes first. An egg preceded the first chicken. Milk predates the cow. The painting is older than the artist. And laughter was heard jumping the gun before the first satire was ever told.

Quiet, incalculable wildness

2011-07-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. . . .

It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to get itself called round, and yet is not round after all. The earth itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is called after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point; but it doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet and incalculable.

[G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy]

The Harvest

2011-06-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

The future is bright, and history is intentional. From "The New Ordinary," a sermon by DW on March 3, 2008:

The resurrection is not this odd event in the middle of an unchanged world. The resurrection is the pivotal event which begins the transformation of the world.

In [the] other view, the cross and resurrection are the "gospel," which means that we can be "saved," which means that in turn we will go to heaven when we die. And the ultimate hope is going to heaven when we die. We live in this messed up world, and if we find Jesus, or if Jesus finds you, and you are forgiven of your sin, you claim the gospel, you close with Christ . . . then what is your hope? "Well, I hope to go to heaven when I die." Well, it's right and proper to want to go to heaven when you die; it is not proper at all to have that be the end of the story. That is a secondary way-station on the way. It's important for us to note that when Jesus says, "In my father's house are many rooms, many places; I'm going to prepare a place for you," the word he uses to describe the preparation he's making for us in heaven is the word that you use for an inn, a motel, a temporary abode. When we go to heaven, if you go to be with the Lord, you are going to be with him temporarily. Because the biblical hope from beginning to end is the transformation of the world here. The message is Christ's kingdom coming here.

Try this image instead: at the fall, human history became a movie that we are watching in grainy and scratchy black and white. When Christ rose from the dead, a point of blinding light appeared at that place, and from that place, odd things started to happen. Not in the plot line of the story, necessarily, right away (that develops), but rather in the nature of the storytelling itself. Color starts to slowly spread out from that resurrection point, and the graininess starts to slowly disappear, and it's gradually transformed . . . .

This means that the resurrection was not an odd event in the first century with all normal things staying the same. The resurrection was the central event of all history, but we have to take this as the central event for all history. It defines history. It establishes the trajectory of the remaining story. We know what Jesus did. We know where we're going. We know it's all part of one big harvest, and we want color to spread and grow. We want light to spread and grow. We want all the enemies of God to be subdued, and we know that we're not going to be completely done until the harvest comes in and the last enemy, Death, is destroyed. . . .

Most Christians now think of salvation as "up" instead of thinking of salvation as future. . .That is true, you are going to go "up" to be with the Lord, but that has become a central hope, something we call "going to heaven." But the Bible doesn't talk like that. The Bible doesn't talk about, "Now make sure you believe in Jesus so you can go to heaven when you die." The Bible talks about the hope as being a hope for this planet, a hope for this world. The resurrection at the end of history is going to be part of the history of this world. When Jesus comes back and the dead are raised, the resurrection of the dead will be as much an historical event as the Battle of Waterloo, as the founding of the United States, as the coronation of Charlemagne. It's an historical event. Jesus came back from the dead in history, and that is part of the harvest that is going to culminate human history. In other words, the harvest, the resurrection of the dead is not this thing that goes on in the eternal state after human history; it is the crowning event of human history.

[Douglas Wilson, "The New Ordinary." March 3, 2008.]

Stories

2011-06-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

Good stories make us good at life, because we are all living stories. If we don't particularly care for stories, or think they aren't much use, we fail to see the great Story around us. We fail to see purpose, grand scope, and beauty. We do not understand destination. This makes for remarkably dull people and dull lives. But good stories (among which Life's is the best) breed thankfulness, so it's no wonder that children have the perfect response after hearing a good one: read it again!

A Sham Salvation

2011-06-12T15:20:00.000-07:00

"Food and food related issues are very hip right now. Our culture is desperately struggling to capture nostalgic and "genuine" community, to slow down and become more "local" through our eating, (tweeting throughout the meal to keep everyone posted on our efforts, if possible). While torn with guilt at every act of consuming, it is a sham salvation offered through consuming. Eat the right things and it will mean something. Don't eat sugar cereal and you are doing something special. Eat what you grew in the back yard and you are really starting to get somewhere. And while it is true that fellowship around the table defines a people, it is not what we are putting into our mouths that defines us. It is our exports - what is coming out of our mouths. Are we thankful? Even for Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Then we are productive members of our community. Do we fail to find mercy on our plate if it developed a carbon footprint on it's way to us? Then we are nothing but guilty consumers."

[Luke Jankovic, "Buy Local." Credenda Agenda, November 2009.]

There Abideth the Darkness

2011-06-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Now here is some great storytelling:

I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest. In the middle of this clearing stood a long, low hut, built with one end against a single tall cypress, which rose like a spire to the building. A vague misgiving crossed my mind when I saw it; but I must needs go closer, and look through a little half-open door, near the opposite end from the cypress. Window I saw none. On peeping in, and looking towards the further end, I saw a lamp burning, with a dim, reddish flame, and the head of a woman bent downwards, as if reading by its light. I could see nothing more for a few moments. At length, as my eyes got used to the dimness of the place, I saw that the part of the rude building near me was used for household purposes; for several rough utensils lay here and there, and a bed stood in the corner. An irresistible attraction caused me to enter. The woman never raised her face, the upper part of which alone I could see distinctly; but, as soon as I stepped within the threshold, she began to read aloud, in a low and not altogether unpleasing voice, from an ancient little volume which she held open with one hand on the table upon which stood the lamp. What she read was something like this:

"So, then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever have an end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of aught else, is its affirmation. Where the light cannot come, there abideth the darkness. The light doth but hollow a mine out of the infinite extension of the darkness. And ever upon the steps of the light treadeth the darkness; yea, springeth in fountains and wells amidst it, from the secret channels of its mighty sea. Truly, man is but a passing flame, moving unquietly amid the surrounding rest of night; without which he yet could not be, and whereof he is in part compounded."

As I drew nearer, and she read on, she moved a little to turn a leaf of the dark old volume, and I saw that her face was sallow and slightly forbidding. Her forehead was high, and her black eyes repressedly quiet. But she took no notice of me. This end of the cottage, if cottage it could be called, was destitute of furniture, except the table with the lamp, and the chair on which the woman sat. In one corner was a door, apparently of a cupboard in the wall, but which might lead to a room beyond. Still the irresistible desire which had made me enter the building, urged me: I must open that door, and see what was beyond it. I approached, and laid my hand on the rude latch. Then the woman spoke, but without lifting her head or looking at me: "You had better not open that door." This was uttered quite quietly; and she went on with her reading, partly in silence, partly aloud; but both modes seemed equally intended for herself alone. The prohibition, however, only increased my desire to see; and as she took no further notice, I gently opened the door to its full width, and looked in. At first, I saw nothing worthy of attention. It seemed a common closet, with shelves on each hand, on which stood various little necessaries for the humble uses of a cottage. In one corner stood one or two brooms, in another a hatchet and other common tools; showing that it was in use every hour of the day for household purposes. But, as I looked, I saw that there were no shelves at the back, and that an empty space went in further; its termination appearing to be a faintly glimmering wall or curtain, somewhat less, however, than the width and height of the doorway where I stood. But, as I continued looking, for a few seconds, towards this faintly luminous limit, my eyes came into true relation with their object. All at once, with such a shiver as when one is suddenly conscious of the presence of another in a room where he has, for hours, considered himself alone, I saw that the seemingly luminous extremity was a sky, as of night, beheld through the long perspective of a narrow, dark passage, through what, or built of what, I could not tell. As I gazed, I clearly discerned two or three stars glimmering faintly in the distant blue. But suddenly, and as if it had been running fast from a far distance for this very point, and had turned the corner without abating its swiftness, a dark figure sped into and along the passage from the blue opening at the remote end. I started back and shuddered, but kept looking, for I could not help it. On and on it came, with a speedy approach but delayed arrival; till, at last, through the many gradations of approach, it seemed to come within the sphere of myself, rushed up to me, and passed me into the cottage. All I could tell of its appearance was, that it seemed to be a dark human figure. Its motion was entirely noiseless, and might be called gliding, were it not that it appeared that of a runner, but with ghostly feet. I had moved back yet a little to let him pass me, and looked round after him instantly. I could not see him.

"Where is he?" I said, in some alarm, to the woman, who still sat reading.

"There, on the floor, behind you," she said, pointing with her arm half-outstretched, but not lifting her eyes. I turned and looked, but saw nothing. Then with a feeling that there was yet something behind me, I looked round over my shoulder; and there, on the ground, lay a black shadow, the size of a man. It was so dark, that I could see it in the dim light of the lamp, which shone full upon it, apparently without thinning at all the intensity of its hue.

"I told you," said the woman, "you had better not look into that closet."

"What is it?" I said, with a growing sense of horror.

"It is only your shadow that has found you," she replied. "Everybody's shadow is ranging up and down looking for him. I believe you call it by a different name in your world: yours has found you, as every person's is almost certain to do who looks into that closet, especially after meeting one in the forest, whom I dare say you have met."

Here for the first time, she lifted her head, and looked full at me: her mouth was full of long, white, shining teeth; and I knew that I was in the house of the ogre.

[George MacDonald, Phantastes]

The Maid of the Alder

2011-06-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

"It is my white lady!" I said, and flung myself on the ground beside her; striving, through the gathering darkness, to get a glimpse of the form which had broken its marble prison at my call.

"It is your white lady," said the sweetest voice, in reply, sending a thrill of speechless delight through a heart which all the love-charms of the preceding day and evening had been tempering for this culminating hour. Yet, if I would have confessed it, there was something either in the sound of the voice, although it seemed sweetness itself, or else in this yielding which awaited no gradation of gentle approaches, that did not vibrate harmoniously with the beat of my inward music. And likewise, when, taking her hand in mine, I drew closer to her, looking for the beauty of her face, which, indeed, I found too plenteously, a cold shiver ran through me; but "it is the marble," I said to myself, and heeded it not.

[George MacDonald, Phantastes]

Drinking Deeply

2011-06-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to receive without being a giver. It is also difficult to give without being a receiver. Avery Cardinal Dulles says that

If we did not receive, we would have nothing to give; and if we were not disposed to give, we would be spiritually unprepared to receive

and further

to become sources from which living waters flow, we must drink deeply from the wellsprings of life . . . [and] the more concerned we are with service to others, the more receptive will we be to the gifts of God. ["Love, the Pope, and C. S. Lewis," First Things, January 2007]

In other words, we must become good at giving things. This much is obvious. What isn't so obvious is that we also must become good at receiving things. Each enables the other.

What this does not mean is a selfish sort of receiving. Gifts are never owed, and so gifts should never be treated as an obligation. Neither are gifts something to lust after. But receiving also must be without a sense of guilt. Gifts are free. Gifts are a demonstration of love. They are not a two-way transaction. We are fond of saying, "You shouldn't have!" Of course they shouldn't have -- but only if they expected something of you in return. We are even fonder of feeling hesitation at accepting a gift because it burdens us with a sense of debt; we must repay them for their gift soon. But this means it was never a gift at all. You don't have to love someone or sacrifice for them if you know what you give will be repaid. Neither do you have to be thankful (actually thankful) if you plan to do something in return for the purpose of evening the balance sheet.

Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore we keep the feast. We receive his gift with open arms and are thankful. Christ gives us grace upon grace. We therefore reach out and take it, gladly and wholeheartedly. This sort of receiving takes practice. True thankfulness takes practice. But with true thankfulness, we are thereby enabled to give to others as Christ gave to us.

Something to bite besides its own tail

2011-06-06T19:54:00.000-07:00

The cross has become something more than a historical memory; it does convey, almost as by a mathematical diagram, the truth about the real point at issue; the idea of a conflict stretching outwards into eternity. It is true, and even tautological, to say that the cross is the crux of the whole matter.

In other words the cross, in fact as well as figure, does really stand for the idea of breaking out of the circle that is everything and nothing. It does escape from the circular argument by which everything begins and ends in the mind. Since we are still dealing in symbols, it might be put in a parable in the form of that story about St. Francis, which says that the birds departing with his benediction could wing their way into the infinities of the four winds of heaven, their tracks making a vast cross upon the sky; for compared with the freedom of that flight of birds, the very shape of the Swastika is like a kitten chasing its tail. In a more popular allegory, we might say that when St. George thrust his spear into the monster's jaws, he broke in upon the solitude of the self-devouring serpent and gave it something to bite besides its own tail. But while many fancies might be used as figures of the truth, the truth itself is abstract and absolute; though it is not very easy to sum up except by such figures. Christianity does appeal to solid truth outside itself; to something which is in that sense external as well as eternal. It does declare that things are really there; or in other words that things are really things. In this Christianity is at one with common sense; but all religious history shows that this common sense perishes except where there is Christianity to preserve it.

[G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man]

Why History?

2011-06-05T15:46:00.000-07:00

Because history is now just another genre, and because reading history is simply like reading a novel that actually happened, and because many think it’s a subject only for those interested in it, I thought I’d give a few reasons why reading history isn’t optional.

1. History tells great stories. There are few things more compelling than a good yarn. There are few things more influential than a fine tale. When these stories are actually real, their force is considerable. It may be that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction (not always, for sure), but truth is always a better story. Fiction has appeal and vitality, but a story that’s true has the unstoppable power of reality. “Did that really happen? How is that possible? I can’t imagine doing that myself. What resolve! I want to be like them.” These are questions that come from real things. These are questions that inspire action.

2. History involves real people. Poorly written textbooks, keen on dates, controversies, and propaganda are pretty good at making historical figures look like figures and not people, but a true history, in all its romping, story-telling glory shows them as men. It shows them as women. They lived as we live. They thought the thoughts we think. They struggled with the same temptations. They ate, slept, went to the bathroom, and dressed. They had quirks and personalities. Of course they were great. Of course they were noble. Of course they were evil. This is why they are in books. But we forget that they were men as we are men, in every particular, and this should give as perspective, respect, wisdom, and inspiration.

3. We are history’s actors. The present is now the past. History is not just about those people over there: it is also about us. Just as the men and the women of the past shaped events to bring us to now, so we are shaping now to make the future. This is our sobering and fantastic responsibility. We are called. We have roles to fulfill.

4. History is thankfulness, because it gives us an ability to honor our forbears. We owe everything to those who went before us. Our primary attitude should be, “How is it that we have so much?” and never “Why do we have so little?” Why should any of life be even remotely pleasant? Why are we free? Why can we choose our religion? Why can we have any beliefs we wish? Why financial well-being? Why any finances at all? Why are we educated? Unless we are content to forget origins and assume all these things are rights, history gives us reason to be thankful in everything. Those who went before us gave all of themselves to us.

5. History is thankfulness, because it gives us an ability to condemn our forbears and avoid their paths. History is full of wicked people. History is full of vice personified. Knowing history allows us to discriminate and condemn for the glory of God and the future.

6. History is teleological, not cyclical. It’s true that history repeats itself because of the changelessness of human nature, but this is not the overall character of history. History has an end. It has a goal. It is driving toward something. It is intentional. From the dawn of time, through the rise and fall of many civilizations and religions, there has been progression. Knowledge has grown steadily. The stories of law, politics, philosophy, medicine, and religion have developed and matured. And Christianity arose at a specific moment and changed the face of reality. Christ was crucified and revealed the purpose laid out for history since the foundations of the earth.

7. History tells us what God is like. History, together with all its stories and events, is God’s one great story. History is the story of darkness and light. It is the story of conflict and resolution. It is the story of sin and redemption. God loves cliffhangers. He also loves happy endings and righting wrongs. This is all played out in the pages of history, and when it is all over, in the fullness of time, the ending will be glorious and purposeful. This is the end we are striving for.

What Adam Thought

2011-06-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

Our baby is about to enter the world from the womb, and when it does, it will gradually increase in consciousness. It already has a basic level of consciousness, although it is not yet aware of that consciousness, and there is no memory. Contrast this with Adam, who one moment was not but in the next existed in the immediate fullness of thought. Adam, in the first seconds of existence, had both memory and a conception of his just-then nonexistence. In other words, whammo! followed by "Where did that come from?"

And so Adam, in his unfallen state, was privileged to experience what we only acquire in the infinitesimal degrees of long years. Yet even then, unfallen, he was not yet matured enough to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Even he had his childhood state.

You can call the sky purple

2011-05-31T18:59:00.000-07:00

Acts 2 has the remarkable episode of the apostles speaking in tongues, or other languages, and then being accused of being drunk. At Pentecost, when they were all in the same place,

suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind . . . then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

But far from nonsense, or even sounding like nonsense, "devout men, from every nation under heaven" were amazed and said to each other

'Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs -- we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.'

In other words: "How are these low-class, uneducated fishermen multilingual and theologically mature?"

But then the rub:

Others mocking said, 'They are full of new wine.'

And here we have the madness of unbelief, which really is laughable in this case, as it denies a plain reality: the apostles were speaking several languages. This was clearly unusual, yet confirmed by legitimate witnesses. The problem is that these "others" reasoned that anything apparently miraculous must necessarily have a non-miraculous explanation. Calvin notes that

Hereby it appeareth how monstrous as well the sluggishness, as also the ungodliness of men is, when Satan hath taken away their mind. If God should openly (and visibly) descend from heaven, his majesty could scarce more manifestly appear than in this miracle. [Commentaries, Acts II, 12.]

So when the unregenerate mind is faced with the plainest of things (miracles among them), they conjure the best possible "rational" explanation of the facts. "Because miracles don't exist, these events are best explained this way. . ." The problem is, some phenomena have no natural explanation, and so the facts must be changed: "They are drunk with wine."

You can stare at the sky and call it purple and then write a book about it. You might even convince a few people too. Unfortunately, truth doesn't spring from the ultimate authority of the human mind.

Thankfulness, then philosophy

2011-05-26T07:06:00.000-07:00

That Paul's persuasive power and linguistic ability are top-notch, even considered apart from substance, only a simpleton would deny. And yet Paul says that

My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory.

[I Corinthians 2:4-7]

So Paul strikes down the wisdom of the philosophers from Plato to Ibn Tufail to Buddha to Kant to Spinoza to your local university professor. The key word here is human. Paul does not repudiate wisdom itself, because wisdom is an attribute of God. What he denies is the notion that the validity of the gospel is subject to our human understanding of it; that Christ must be demonstrated empirically (which, incidentally, he has been); and that human reason must be the foundation for all other knowledge. God is not the plaything of the human mind.

Only when wisdom is based in Christ crucified do things make sense; we must realize that Reason is a God-given tool and not the ultimate measuring stick. But this is difficult, because

natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.

[I Corinthians 2:14]

And so what is really clear-eyed thankfulness is deemed blind faith.

Having a say

2011-05-24T20:21:00.000-07:00

A few days out from Charlotte's due date and everyone still loves saying what they think the sex of the baby is. Just today, a complete stranger said to Charlotte, "It's a boy," and then added, for effect, "because you're pointy."

Others say things like, "What's the infant heart rate? Over 140? It's a girl!"

"You're carrying low. It's a boy."

"Look at how low you're carrying. Must be a girl!"

"What have your dreams been like? Do you dream boy or girl?"

Or to me: "I think it's a girl. I see you more as daddy's girl."

Recently, we've been eating lots of watermelons. Heap many watermelons. Because of this, we've frequently observed how other people choose which watermelon to buy. Tap tap tap. Thunk thunk. Tap. Discard. Select. Pay. "What are they banging on the poor fruit for?" we wonder. Are they looking for a certain timbre? A healthy resonance? To see if the melon shrieks? Don't buy that one.

We decided it was so that they can feel like they are in control. They are professionals. Professional watermelon selectors. The purchase feels much more prudent and comfortable after you've hammered on a few rinds.

I reckon it's the same with gender guessing: Let me tell you. I've had two whole kids and both of them were boys and with both of them I fell out of my bed during my first trimester. Did you fall out of your bed during your first trimester? No? It's a girl!

Bearing up as a means of escape

2011-05-23T19:11:00.000-07:00

Paul has an interesting twist on escape when he says

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

All is well until the final phrase where we realize that escape is not a magical jailbreak. Bearing it comes first. While complete freedom from temptations exists, bearing up under the temptation is the escape. Resistance is rest. Flight, though the temptation still pursue you, is the faithfulness of God working itself out. Sanctification is a process and takes time. Reformations are difficult and messy.

But Paul faced all this too, and said, "When I am weak, then I am strong."

The Religion of Humanism

2011-05-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

Laws grounded on the Bible do not attempt to save man or to usher in a brave new world, a great society, world peace, a poverty-free world, or any other such ideal. The purpose of Biblical law, and all laws grounded on a Biblical faith, is to punish and restrain evil, and to protect life and property, to provide justice for all people. It is not the purpose of the state and its law to change or reform men: this is a spiritual matter and a task for religion. . . .

[H]umanistic law has a different purpose. Humanisitic law aims at saving man and remaking society. For humanism, salvation is an act of state. It is civil government which regenerates man and society and brings man into a paradise on earth. As a result, for the humanist social action is everything. Man must work to pass the right set of laws, because his salvation depends upon it. Any who oppose the humanist in his plan of salvation by law, salvation by acts of civil government, is by definition an evil man conspiring against the good of society. . . .

The new America taking shape around us . . . is a morally minded America, but its ethics is the new morality, which for Christianity is simply the old sin. The new, revolutionary humanistic America is also very missionary-minded. Humanism believes in salvation by works of law, and, as a result, we are trying as a nation, to save the world by law. By vast appropriations of money and dedicated labor, we are trying to save all nations and races, all men from all problems, in hopes of creating a paradise on earth. We are trying to bring peace on earth and good will among men by acts of state and works of law, not by Jesus Christ.

[Rushdoony, Law and Liberty]

The Point of Wisdom

2011-05-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

Ben Merkle's sermon of May 1st at Christ Church said that the purpose of wisdom is not to get us through trials but rather that trials give us wisdom. So when we say that wisdom is the scriptural application of knowledge, conforming our mind to Christ, we do not seek this as a means to an end. Wisdom is the end. Wisdom, Merkle says, is the principle thing.

A trial -- to be distinguished from suffering -- which tempts us is meant to be overcome, but getting through it shouldn't be mindless. It's been sent to us by God. Satan asked that he be allowed to torment Job, but Job's afflictions were from God's hand, as Job 42:11 says that:

All [Job's] brothers, all his sisters . . . consoled him and comforted him over all the adversity that the LORD had brought upon him . . . .

A trial is overcome by realizing why it was sent: to bring us wisdom and to conform us to Christ's likeness. This is sanctification, and this is life. Wisdom is life. It calls aloud in the streets, in the marketplaces, and at the gates of the city: "Here I am. Close. Reach out your hand and take me."

Of Melkor

2011-05-05T19:59:00.000-07:00

Last of all is set the name of Melkor, He who arises in Might. But that name he has forfeited; and the Noldor, who among the Elves suffered most from his malice, will not utter it, and they name him Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World. Great might was given to him by Iluvatar, and he was coeval with Manwe. In the powers and knowledge of all the other Valar he had part, but he turned them to evil purposes, and squandered his strength in violence and tyranny. For he coveted Arda and all that was in it, desiring the kingship of Manwe and dominion over the realms of his peers.

From splendour he fell through arrogance to contempt for all things save himself, a spirit wasteful and pitiless. Understanding he turned to subtlety in perverting to his own will all that he would use, until he became a liar without shame. He began with the desire of Light, but when he could not possess it for himself alone, he descended through fire and wrath into a great burning, down into Darkness. And darkness he used most in his evil works upon Arda, and filled it with fear for all living things.

Yet so great was the power of his uprising that in ages forgotten he contended with Manwe and all the Valar, and through long years in Arda held dominion over most of the lands of the Earth. But he was not alone. For of the Maiar many were drawn to his splendour in the days of his greatness, and remained in that allegiance down into his darkness; and others he corrupted afterwards to his service with lies and treacherous gifts. Dreadful among these spirits were the Valaraukar, the scourges of fire that in Middle-earth were called the Balrogs, demons of terror.

Among those of his servants that have names the greatest was that spirit whom the Eldar called Sauron, or Gorthaur the Cruel. In his beginning he was of the Maiar of Aule, and he remained mighty in the lore of that people. In all the deeds of Melkor the Morgoth upon Arda, in his vast works and in the deceits of his cunning, Sauron had a part, and was only less evil than his master in that for long he served another and not himself. But in after years he rose like a shadow of Morgoth and a ghost of his malice, and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the Void.

[J. R. R. Tolkien, "Valaquenta."]

A bit on Osama

2011-05-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

I didn't quite expect there to be so much worry about how Christians should respond to Osama's death. It has provided, at the very least, an interesting benchmark of current evangelical wisdom and maturity. This is a good example where Christians need to remember to think like adults and remember that God doesn't deal in nice, pretty, tidy, feel-good, easy-to-manage categories. God takes deep sorrow in death, is infinitely merciful, and still rejoices in the death of the wicked. The problem comes when well-meaning but theologically weak-kneed people say that we shouldn't triumph over our enemies' downfall because we should mourn their eternal damnation. Then usually-well-meaning but theologically bombastic others come along and say how God smote his enemies with a great slaughter in the Old Testament, and therefore: "Booyah! God slapped Osama around!" They gloat over death for the sake of death with no gospel spirit. So we have people from both camps flinging their respective verses at each other, like so many grenades, all of them Scripture, and none of them in context.

God hates death. The Bible says so. God is grieved when his covenant people reject him. The Bible says so. But God rejoices when the wicked perish. The Bible also says so. God dances on the graves of his enemies. God gloats at their downfall. Consider this victory rally hot on the heels of a significant body count:

"Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the LORD. . .

I will sing to the LORD,
For He has triumphed gloriously!
The horse and its rider
He has thrown into the sea! . . .
Pharaoh's chariots and army He has cast into the sea;
His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea;
The depths have covered them;
They sank to the bottom like a stone.
Your right hand, O LORD, has become glorious in power
Your right hand, O LORD, has dashed the enemy in pieces
And in the greatness of Your excellence
You have overthrown those who rose against You.
You sent forth Your wrath;
It consumed them like stubble."
[Exodus 15:1-7]

The modern evangelical mind does not like this second aspect of God. It doesn't fit in with their Cuddly-Kitten-Poster Christ and their beautiful Sunset-Framed Bible Quotes (which always tend to be about God fulfilling all our wildest dreams). God hates wickedness. God despises sin. God could have chosen Osama as one of his elect, but he did not. Osama was evil, and God delights that he is dead. How could he not? Did God make a mistake in forgetting to choose Osama for salvation? God is God, and he chose Osama for his fate, before the foundations of the world, for His glory. Osama's death glorifies God. As such, it is cause for rejoicing, and as such, if we fail to rejoice, we have become deadened to the full evil of sin.

But God is God and we are not. Therefore, just like we can't fashion a whip of cords and go on a rampage like Jesus did through the temple, we cannot gloat and rejoice in quite the same way as God's perfect rejoicing. We will undoubtedly get carried away. So we recognize the tragedy and sadness of Osama's life, the tragedy of his death, and then we also raise the roof that he his no longer here. We raise the roof that he is in Hell. His wickedness has been defeated. This in no way means we deny that "but for the Grace of God go I;" it simply is rejoicing in God's perfect judgment, perfect justice, and perfect plan. I wish Osama had come to Christ, but I wish more for God's will. Incidentally, God's will is what happened. Therefore, I rejoice that Osama is dead.

Life

2011-04-27T20:09:00.001-07:00

Christian living is not Christian living. That is, the Christian life is not an option or alternative where some instead choose atheism and some Buddhism. Christianity, if anything at all, is Reality for the Christian and non-Christian. The 'Christianity' of extracting scriptures from Scripture and applying them to life is anything but Christian. A Christian does not tote Christ on his back and thrust his hand into a bag of assorted scriptures as he goes from place to place. A Christian plunges into the Reality of the Word. There is no life jacket and no life line. There is no alternate truth and no alternate reality, for as Lewis says --

What cannot be admitted . . . is the idea of something that is 'our own,' some area in which we are to be 'out of school,' on which God has no claim.

Calvin

2011-04-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

The great DW has come out with an Institutes study guide, which is a great idea, and I'm already taken with the introduction. This should tell you something. If an introduction to something can get you jazzed up to read the book, boy. Usually introduction writers try so hard to sound so smart that nobody can really enjoy them, but not here. Here are a couple fun parts from the intro, also written by DW:

Here are a few suggestions on the use of this study guide. C. S. Lewis points out, in his essay on the reading of old books, that classics are often unnecessarily intimidating for modern readers. But many of them became classics precisely because they were so accessible -- it is their commentators that are opaque. As one old parishioner said to his pastor after the sermon, "This here Bible sheds a lot of light on them there commentaries."

and at the end

In closing, be prepared for surprises in Calvin. He is a Calvinist, obviously, but he is no tidy, doctrinaire Calvinist. The words of Karl Barth are descriptive here -- "Calvin is a cataract, a primeval forest, a demonic power, something directly down from the Himalayas, absolutely Chinese, strange, mythological; I lack completely the means, the suction cups, even to assimilate this phenomenon, not to speak of presenting it adequately." To which I can only add, no kidding.

You can get the study guide here.

The Beauty in Science

2011-04-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a transcript of a five-minute talk I gave at Providence Classical School this past Thursday. The audience was parents of upcoming seventh-graders who wanted a glimpse into classes and methods in our Upper School, because after sixth grade, Grammar School is over.

If you talk to the average person about classical education, you’re likely to get the question, “Don’t those students just end up majoring in English?” Or maybe the question, “What do you do about science classes?” Common assumptions about classical education are that it does not teach science effectively, that it does not teach science at all, or that no classically educated students ever become scientists. These are unfortunate assumptions, because they’re largely false, but we do need to understand that people hold them for a reason. We need to ask ourselves, “Where are our Christian scientists?”

Providence Classical School heartily embraces the sciences as a crucial part of classical education, beginning in the Grammar School and continuing at the start of Upper School in 7th grade. Our science department is committed to the interconnectedness of knowledge, and committed to the truth that all knowledge is God’s knowledge. Science, like Latin, is part of God’s truth. Science, like History, reflects God’s character. Science, like all other subjects, is necessary to know God as fully as we can.

I’d like to briefly show how excellence in science education at Providence matures students into whole human beings who see the complete, beautiful picture of God’s reality.

First, we believe that science classes are important – not just a necessary evil. God has given us two primary forms of revelation: specific revelation through the scriptures and general revelation through creation. General revelation is the physical world. General revelation involves the sciences. Can we know God fully by minimizing an aspect of his revelation? Can we expect to impact our culture for Christ and yet be ignorant of a large part of his character? Knowing God means becoming experts on the created order.

Second, we think science is beautiful. Students – especially young students – are good at seeing amazing and beautiful things. As they get older, they copy us and stop looking. We want to keep the glories of creation alive in science classes. At the start of Upper School in 7th grade, students learn general science called Earth Science, studying astronomy, meteorology, geology, and oceanography. These are all worlds to explore, and everything to be seen is beautiful. Our goal is to cultivate a true appreciation of beauty that does not fade, but grows with age.

Third, we believe science requires hard work. Seventh grade is no exception, so new students may find themselves making an adjustment they’re not too fond of. There are lots of memorization and lots of detail. But we’re with them to show the way. The survey of science subjects is beautiful and rich, but it is difficult. Yet this prepares them for the rigors of Biology and Chemistry in high school and holds them to the high standard God has set for all of us in life.

Finally, Providence seeks to raise up godly scientists to impact our culture for Christ. We realize that science is not the most important subject by any means, and we realize that not all students are called to careers as scientists. This is good. But regardless of calling, we want to raise up students who know their science well, even if they are writers or attorneys vocationally. Whether a student becomes a musician, a teacher, or a biochemist, we want them to be able to speak the language of science. Science is relevant. Who will carry the torch into the fray of stem-cell research, for example? Of drug development? Of human cloning? Of eugenics, euthenasia, and abortion? Of Darwinian Evolution and its consequences? Who will defend a creation account persuasively? Who will defend it on a legitimate scientific basis? And on a different note, who will continue to make brilliant practical advances like the light bulb, the vaccine, and the iPhone? Are we content to leave it to others?

And who will claim the beauty of things through all this? The matchless, unjaded wonder of things? If we are to truly impact our culture for Christ, we must know what God is saying about what he made, and we must love it. We must be as nimble navigating the sciences as we are Latin and Logic.

I want to leave you with a short reading that captures the beauty and wonder we try to convey in science. Because at the core, this is about glorifying God and enjoying God. This is from author N. D. Wilson, whom some of you know as Douglas Wilson’s son. Others of you may know Douglas Wilson as one of the founders of modern classical education. The book is called Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Sitting on my log in the early stirrings of spring, the stream overwhelmed me. I sat, staring, trying to comprehend its sheer massiveness. Yes, its massiveness. I could have jumped over it (maybe) and yet it was beyond comprehension. I wanted to know how many molecules were sliding past me per minute. I wanted to know where they had spent their lives, lives that stretched back to the beginning of the world. Most of them had probably been snow, recently delicate, now reveling in the rough and tumble world of a fast mountain stream. Before the snow, where had they been? Steam coming off a cow’s back? Evaporation from a kiddie pool? Most were probably oceanic. Formerly waves. But before then? How many times had each of these molecules fallen from the sky, contributing some little corner to a snowflake? How many times divorced into lonely hydrogen and oxygen, how many times remarried? These things had travelled, no doubt. These things had even been around when Moses did his business with the Red Sea. Had they been there? Had they heard about it from friends?

There is water somewhere in the world that ran down the body of the Word himself as John, his cousin, baptized him. No doubt it is water still, uncherished by man, known only by the Author of this story. Drops were chosen to serve as his tears beside Jerusalem, more were chosen to wait in his side for the tip of a Roman spear. They burst forth and completed their poetic calling, a flourish in the story, a picture within a picture. . . .

Do you understand photosynthesis? Especially the whole making-trees-and-leaves-and-fruit-out-of-thin-air part? Go blow on that bush. You can’t see it, but the bush will turn your breath into raspberry juice. We could improve on the name. Photosynthesis. I’ve suggested green magyk, but no one listens to me. . . .

What belief means

2011-04-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

We like to believe things, but only if they stay on paper. Ask yourself what you believe. Ask yourself in detail: what accounts for reality? What did it? Who? What is right? What is wrong? What are the universal truths? Are there universal truths? What do they mean? How should I act?

These are common enough questions though the answers diverge. Christians find their answers in the Bible, Muslims in the Koran, and so on. Then we preach those texts, memorize them, and teach them to our children. We believe them.

Yet they remain on paper. Bring to the fingertips an especially difficult truth you've never encountered before. Let that truth come to a place, directly before you, where it must be applied. You've never faced this truth anywhere before except on paper; now you must carry it out. What do you do?

Create an exception. Reinterpret it. Ignore it. Whatever the case, it doesn't apply now.

Then tomorrow, we nod at the teacher who applies that truth elsewhere. Amen. Speak the word.

Creators

2011-03-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

Aristotle said that man by nature desires to know. I suppose this is characteristic of and even unique to man in most senses, though cats poke their noses into every possible nook and dogs want to find out what that smell is. But man by nature is a creator, and this is something no animal can claim. From the earliest stages of life, children build things out of sand, scratch out crude drawings, and conjure wild stories of nonsense or adventure. At later stages, man creates music, designs beautiful buildings, and spins fantastic stories that last a thousand years. Where is the animal that recognizes beauty and desires to imitate it? Where is the dog that wishes to throw off comfort and survival for a moment to compose a epic chorale of howls? Or the horse who will stop grazing to set up a monument to the tastiest species of alfalfa?

God, the Creator, made man in His image, and it is no mistake that our unique enjoyment of art, which brings no survival advantage, is 'the signature of man.'

Getting comfortable with hallucinations

2011-03-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

"Evolution itself," [D. M. S. Watson] wrote, "Is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or . . . can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible." Has it come to that? Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend not on positive evidence but simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice? Was it devised not to get in facts but to keep out God? Even, however, if Evolution in the strict biological sense has some better grounds than Professor Watson suggests -- and I can't help thinking it must -- we should distinguish Evolution in this strict sense from what may be called the universal evolutionism of modern thought. By universal evolutionism I mean the belief that the very formula of universal process is from imperfect to perfect, from small beginnings to great endings, from the rudimentary to the elaborate, the belief which makes people find it natural to think that morality springs from savage taboos, adult sentiment from infantile sexual maladjustments, thought from instinct, mind from matter, organic from inorganic, cosmos from chaos. This is perhaps the deepest habit of mind in the contemporary world. It seems to me immensely unplausible, because it makes the general course of nature so very unlike those parts of nature we can observe. You remember the old puzzle as to whether the owl came from the egg or the egg from the owl. The modern acquiescence in universal evolutionism is a kind of optical illusion, produced by attending exclusively to the owl's emergence from the egg. We are taught from childhood to notice how the perfect oak grows from the acorn and to forget that the acorn itself was dropped by a perfect oak. We are reminded constantly that the adult human being was an embryo, never that the life of the embryo came from two adult human beings. We love to notice that the express engine of today is the descendant of the "Rocket"; we do not equally remember that the "Rocket" springs not from some even more rudimentary engine, but from something much more perfect and complicated than itself -- namely, a man of genius. The obviousness or naturalness which most people seem to find in the idea of emergent evolution thus seems to be a pure hallucination.

[C. S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?" From The Weight of Glory.]

The Man in the Cave

2011-03-11T16:24:00.000-08:00

It would come back to this; that he had dug very deep [into the cave] and found the place where a man had drawn the picture of a reindeer. But he would dig a good deal deeper before he found a place where a reindeer had drawn a picture of a man. That sounds like a truism, but in this connection it is really a very tremendous truth. He might descend to depths unthinkable, he might sink into sunken continents as strange as remote stars, he might find himself in the inside of the world as far from men as the other side of the moon; he might see in those cold chasms or colossal terraces of stone, traced in faint hieroglyphic of the fossil, the ruins of lost dynasties of biological life, rather like the ruins of successive creations and separate universes than the stages in the story of one. He would find the trail of monsters blindly developing in directions outside all our common imagery of fish and bird; groping and grasping and touching life with every extravagant elongation of horn and tongue and tenacle; growing a forest of fantastic caricatures of the claw and the fin and the finger. But nowhere would he find one finger that had traced one significant line upon the sand; nowhere one claw that had even begun to scratch the faint suggestion of a form. To all appearance, the thing would be as unthinkable in all those countless cosmic variations of forgotten aeons as it would be in the beasts and birds before our eyes. [He] would no more expect to see it than to see the cat scratch on the wall a vindictive caricature of the dog. The childish common sense would keep the most evolutionary child from expecting to see anything like that; yet in the traces of the rude and recently evolved ancestors of humanity he would have seen exactly that. It must surely strike him as strange that men so remote from him should be so near, and that beasts so near to him should be so remote. To his simplicity it must seem at least odd that he could not find any trace of the beginning of any arts among any animals. That is the simplest lesson to learn in the cavern of the coloured pictures; only it is too simple to be learnt. It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

[G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man]

The glory of the KJV

2011-01-19T14:34:00.000-08:00

Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing. But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea.

John XXI. 3-7.

By Diligent Application Soon Despatched

2011-01-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

Perseverance is never lacking in great men. Laziness resolves and loses interest; greatness resolves and sees tasks through. Samuel Johnson says of Alexander Pope:

Next year [at fifteen years of age] he was desirous of opening to himself new sources of knowledge, by making himself acquainted with modern languages, and removed for a time to London that he might study French and Italian, which, as he desired nothing more than to read them, were by diligent application soon despatched. . . .

Concerning his studies it is related that he translated Tully On old Age; and that, besides his books of poetry and criticism, he read Temple's Essays and Locke On human Understanding. His reading, though his favourite authors are not known, appears to have been sufficiently extensive and multifarious; for his early pieces shew, with sufficient evidence, his knowledge of books.

So it is notable not that Pope wished to learn French and Italian at fifteen but that he actually did learn them.

Self-incurred immaturity

2011-01-17T20:24:00.000-08:00

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!

[Kant, 'What is Enlightenment?']

Outwardly Glittering Misery

2011-01-16T14:09:00.000-08:00

[A]s long as states apply all their resources to their vain and violent schemes of expansion, thus incessantly obstructing the slow and laborious efforts of their citizens to cultivate their minds, and even deprive them of all support in these efforts, no progress in [moral maturity] can be expected.

[Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose." Proposition VII.]

He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha!

2011-01-14T06:31:00.000-08:00

Hast thou given the horse strength?
Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper?
The glory of his nostrils is terrible.
He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength:
He goeth on to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted;
Neither turneth he back from the sword.
The quiver rattleth against him,
The glittering spear and the shield.
He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage:
Neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.
He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha;
And he smelleth the battle afar off,
The thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

[Job 39:19-25]

Certain Comedy

2011-01-05T09:50:00.001-08:00

Below are two related discussions, one about the end of history and the other giving 10 reasons to use an iPod. Both are quite good. I've given snippets below and linked to the full articles.

1. "Calvinism, Eschatology, and the New Media" (from Mablog):

Jesus is the Lord of history, and this is why we don't need to be afraid of Twitter. Or Facebook. Or teenagers typing with their thumbs. Jesus is the Lord of history, which is why we don't need to worry about Google making us stupid. . . .

We live in a time of tremendous innovation, development, and apparent chaos. There are many opportunities to worry about it all, and so I want to lay my cards on the table, and talk about why I am excited about the future. This is going to sound funny, but I am excited about the future because I am a postmillennialist. And I am a postmillennialist because I am a Calvinist who believes that the sovereign God over all things is truly, inexhaustibly, and fiercely good. He keeps His promises.

2. "10 Reasons Why to Use an iPod (and Earphones)" (from Magister Perotinus):

That teenager, doing the closest thing to lying down that you can in a chair, eyes on vacation and slobber collecting on his lip. Yeah, him. He has earphones in and he understands about popular music what Classical musicians don't understand about their music. We think he's rude when it takes yelling at him to pull him out of his musical seance. He probably is. But what if, instead of our caricatured teenager, we have someone whose profession in life is the study of J. S. Bach. Suddenly, the fact that it takes yelling to get him out of his iPod infatuation is a good sign. Like the college student engrossed in his calculus. Or biology. Or history. Or Latin.

Or music.

The Beginning of Education

2011-01-04T20:19:00.000-08:00

One of the more dangerous assumptions of adulthood, I think, is that education is now over. The bachelor's or master's or PhD has been gotten and that is it. Schooling is finally complete and now to the real world. But while formal schooling is perhaps finished, education should have only begun. The job of the university, after all, is to equip people to think, whatever they might do later, but certainly not to close the book on their learning once for all.

So now adults think it odd to read poetry or study the life of Leibniz, and of course the fairy tales and great story books in the house are just for the children. And what does this assumption mean? It means that adults have no imagination because they were never taught that learning was anything more than a task to complete. Notably, as they now complete their adult tasks, this lack of imagination means lack of sight, and they have no message of the world's beauty to pass along to their children. They have no long views.

Talking to the wrong people

2011-01-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

Defenders of [a] transparency approach [to communication] will say that they are trying to facilitate open communication. But what they are doing is destroying open communication. Imagine a teenaged boy who tells his mom something about the struggles in his thought life. And imagine his mortification a couple days later, when he hears her talking to some of her friends about it. Think he is going to say anything to her about that, ever again? Her verbal intimacy with friends is the principal threat to true intimacy. The same goes for married couples. Talking to the wrong people disrupts your ability to talk with the right people. Intimacy with everybody is simply intimacy inflation, and makes true intimacy impossible. . . .

[E]very godly family has to have a structured series of fences, concentrically arranged. As you proceed outward, it is appropriate for the fences to get lower, but near the center, it should be like the Holy of Holies, guarded jealously. If someone gets too close the center of our lives, he should encounter priests with spears.

Read the full article.

[D.W., "Priests With Spears"]

Trying to learn to use words

2011-01-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

These past two weeks I've been reading a lot of T. S. Eliot, and these lines from "Four Quartets" are powerfully relevant. They come from a man who won the Noble Prize in 1948 and who according to Edmund Wilson "left upon English poetry a mark more unmistakable than that of any other poet writing in English":

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years --
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres --
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate. . . .

[T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets." East Coker, V.]

Smoking Loon

2011-01-01T12:35:00.001-08:00

Last night, some fine friends brought over a bottle of Smoking Loon for dinner. I've enjoyed this wine a time or two in the past, but I've never had the pleasure of reading the back of the bottle. I have no idea what the lines mean, but they somehow make a glass all the more excellent, which reminds me that T. S. Eliot says

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood

though I'd be hard-pressed to admit these lines are poetry:

"Besides his bein' kinda crazy, they called him the Smoking Loon 'cause he was so dam' efficient," Jake began, stubbing out his cigar. "He'd take care of business an' get in an' out before anybody'd see him comin' . . . leavin' no trace 'cept the lingerin' sound of his eerie, loon-like cackle. No one was really sure who he was or who he worked for, but when word got out someone needed his services, the Smoking Loon just appeared on their doorstep, like outta thin air or somethin'."

We are all editors

2011-01-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

[D]oubtless it always has been desirable for more Americans to know more about affairs abroad; it is particularly desirable today. But information scarcely is lacking already. Are there no newspapers, popular magazines, serious periodicals, television sets, radios, teachers? The mass of miscellaneous information thrust upon us already is overwhelming. . . .

Mere "speeding up" of the deluge of information cannot help us: for already information rushes upon us daily with a terrible velocity that the average man and woman, or even skilled journalists, cannot endure. How many newspapers are we to read, how many books on current affairs are we to absorb, how many lectures are we to hear? . . . .

What we need is not more information; what we require, as a public, is the ability to discriminate and integrate that mass of information, and to to reflect upon it.

[Russell Kirk, Redeeming the Time]

2010 Books

2011-01-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

Below are the books I read in 2010 in chronological order. Compare to 2009's list here.

Alexander Hamilton -- Ron Chernow. Good.
Ivanhoe -- Sir Walter Scott. Matchless.
Against Christianity -- Peter Leithart. Important.
The Inheritors -- William Golding. Colorful.
The Language of God -- Francis Collins. Problematic.
Anathem -- Neal Stephenson. Mediocre.
Don Quixote -- Miguel De Cervantes. Fantastic.
100 Cupboards -- N. D. Wilson. Great.
Dandelion Fire -- N. D. Wilson. Great.
Future Men -- Douglas Wilson. Crucial.
Life With Father -- Clarence Day. Hilarious.
The Scarlet Pimpernel -- Baroness Emmuska Orczy. Lottafun.
1776 -- David McCullough. Good.
Wieland -- Charles Brockden Brown. Curious.
The Canterbury Tales -- Geoffrey Chaucer. Fantastic.
Fidelity -- Douglas Wilson. Crucial.
The Chestnut King -- N. D. Wilson. Great.
What Difference Do It Make? -- Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Important.
Same Kind of Different As Me -- Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Important.
Invisible Man -- Ralph Ellison. Decent.
Inferno -- Dante Alighieri. Fantastic.

I hope you've enjoyed the one-word summaries this year. An obvious update from last year's full sentences.

Bearing Up

2010-12-31T16:15:00.000-08:00

I've just finished reading through Dante's Inferno again and enjoyed a few lines in particular. They come at a fascinating time, when Vergil and Dante are climbing up a difficult face on their way from the Hypocrites to the Thieves. Dante describes the hard climb:

The breath within my lungs was so exhausted
from climbing, I could not go on; in fact,
as soon as I had reached that stone, I sat.

We all know the feeling. Yet after Dante sits down, Vergil says this:

"Now you must cast aside your laziness,"
my master said, "for he who rests on down
or under covers cannot come to fame;
and he who spends his life without renown
leaves such a vestige of himself on earth
as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water.
Therefore, get up; defeat your breathlessness
with spirit that can win all battles if
the body's heaviness does not deter it . . . . "

[Dante, Inferno. XXIV, 43-54.]

Reading Well

2010-12-29T08:53:00.000-08:00

Going on seventy, one doesn't want to read badly any more than live badly, since time will not relent. I don't know that we owe God or nature a death, but nature will collect anyway, and we certainly owe mediocrity nothing, whatever collectivity it purports to advance or at least represent.

[Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why]

Christmastide

2010-12-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

I

Now is the advent of our expectation.
Without chime or click
The corner clock strikes twelve, marking midnight –
The moment slips from then to now
With the quiet perfection of electronic time.
Now is Christmas
And underneath the blinking silence
Of incandescent lights in plastic evergreen
Is an unverified expectation.

Can we conjure the desired sense
With foreign potions
The sense born of chocolates and mints and sauces
That we remember with unassailable fondness?
And can we shape with uncertain hands
Amid memories of Salzburg, Stilton, and gløgg
A newborn tradition?

II

Outside in the empty midnight street, sentinel lights
Emit tired yellow cones into blocks of night
Nobody sees. Far flung constellations
Arc through the zodiac
Orion wings his white arrows
The dippers plumb the galactic matrix –
Their changeless covenant, as though sealed
In reverse by helium fusion, whirls its changeless course
And yet this round,
This round through the wild skies, above
The quiet electric lamps, above
The winking incandescent lights, is new.

III

Paint me a logic for joy unwavering through tears
For what lurking consequence down the years
Might yawn and blink
And tear out our insides if at the end of the day,
Gorged with sausages and nuts and sherry, we say
“Perhaps some prime rib next year,” and walk slowly home
Through the snow, stumbling from tradition to tradition
While the Great Bear wheels brightly overhead?

We have chased after voices in the wind
We have grasped at images on cracked sheets
Seeking them along the corridors of time
In old forgotten rooms which for us
Are Endor’s crone, calling up wizened delights
While the end of history draws us struggling
Toward a reckoning
Where the shining consequence down the years
Waits with a sword in its fist
To make all things new.

Time

2010-12-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
[T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"]

~

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
[Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"]

What isn't said

2010-12-23T06:43:00.001-08:00

[T]he Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states, "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." The Constitution itself says nothing about education, for the same reason it says nothing about families or marriage or child-rearing: the federal government should not control or regulate these. Parents and teachers, not the federal government, teach children. What they teach them matters most, for without proper moral and civic education a republican form of government will falter.

[Larry P. Arnn, "Outline of a Platform for Constitutional Government"]

Self-motivated detective work

2010-12-22T15:03:00.000-08:00

Studying the great actors of history reveals a common thread: nearly all of them read a remarkable amount, and none of them read very many romance novels or bestselling thrillers. Gorham Munson says this about T. S. Eliot, for instance:

[To understand Eliot fully, his reader must] have a considerable learning in letters or be willing to look up references in Milton, Ovid, Middleton, Webster, Spenser, Verlaine, St. Augustine, etc. etc., in order to associate them with their first context, he must read Latin, Greek, French and German, he must know Frazer's 'Golden Bough' and steep himself in the legend of the Holy Grail, studying in particular Miss Weston's 'From Ritual to Romance.'

with the obvious implication that Eliot was familiar with all these works himself. Peter Ackroyd further notes that

[Eliot] picked up in the library of the Harvard Union Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature . . . a book, he was to admit later, that influenced the course of his life.

and that

In his final year at Smith . . . Eliot was studying Hill's Principles of Rhetoric, Shakespeare's Othello, the Golden Treasury, Milton, Macaulay, Addison, Burke's Conciliation with America, books III and IV of Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid, Cicero, Homer's Iliad, Racine's Andromaque and Horace, Hugo's Les Miserables, Moliere's Le Misanthrope, La Fontaine's Fables as well as physics and chemistry.

But while this last group of readings isn't particularly surprising since it was studied at university, some of the works are very difficult to find. At best they are weirdly printed, which means that not only are they not being read nowadays, but they're not being taught either. If this seems improbable in our invincible technological age, try hunting down Malachy Postlethwayt's Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, which was Alexander Hamilton's muse:

Probably the first book that Hamilton absorbed was Malachy Postlethwayt's Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, a learned almanac of politics, economics, and geography that was crammed with articles about taxes, public debt, money, and banking. The dictionary took the form of two ponderous, folio-sized volumes, and it is touching to think of young Hamilton lugging them through the chaos of war. Hamilton would praise Postlethwayt as one of "the ablest masters of political arithmetic" . . . In the pay book one can see the future treasury wizard mastering the rudiments of finance . . . Hamilton's notes from Postlethwayt showcase his exemplary discipline in undertaking private courses of study. [Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton]

Yet these volumes, inspiration for the man who founded America's financial system, are nowhere to be found.

And so the reasons for this strange case of disappearing literature are legion, and Harold Bloom notes the outlook:

Not to read King Lear fully (which means without ideological expectations) is to be cognitively as well as aesthetically defrauded. A childhood largely spent watching television yields to an adolescence with a computer, and the university receives a student unlikely to welcome the suggestion that we must endure our going hence even as our going hither: ripeness is all. Reading falls apart, and much of the self scatters with it. All this is past lamenting, and will not be remedied by any vows or programs. What is to be done can only be performed by some version of elitism, and that is now unacceptable, for reasons both good and bad. There are still solitary readers, young and old, everywhere, even in the universities. If there is a function of criticism at the present time, it must be to address itself to the solitary reader, who reads for herself, and not for the interests that supposedly transcend the self. [Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why]

So any attempt to imitate the greats by reading what they read becomes a continual bout of self-motivated detective work.

Cider in a mug on a winter night

2010-12-18T20:56:00.000-08:00

The Fangs [of Dang] walked about like humans, and in fact they looked exactly like humans, except for the greenish scales that covered their bodies and the lizard-like snout and the two long, venomous fangs that jutted downward from their snarling mouths. Also, they had tails.

~

Before roaring over Fingap Falls, the River Blapp was wide and peaceful, clear as a spring, and the fish to be caught there were both delicious and docile, except for the many fish that were poisonous to the touch, and the daggerfish that were known to leap into boats and impale the stoutest fisherman.

~

As for the Igiby family? Well, except for the way they always sat late into the night beside the hearth telling stories, and when they sang in the garden while they gathered the harvest, and when the grandfather, Podo Helmer, sat on the porch blowing smoke rings, and except for all the good, warm things that filled their days like cider in a mug on a winter night, they were quite miserable.

[Andrew Peterson, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness]

The Rhinoceros

2010-12-16T11:58:00.001-08:00

The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he's not a feast.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros.

[Ogden Nash]

The problem isn't the foul language

2010-12-15T15:03:00.000-08:00

Effects are sometimes viewed as the root evil, and so it's interesting to note that the real problem with morbid obesity is not being fat. The problem is not even risk of heart failure. The problem with obesity is gluttony. Similarly, adultery is a problem even when an "enlightened" couple say they have no problem at all with it; the unfaithfulness is still there.

Reactions to effects change over time, but moral standards do not. Obesity is now a disease and sexual habit an unassailable choice, but the root problem is still rebellion.

What is Man?

2010-12-14T19:27:00.000-08:00

Who is this who darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?
Now prepare yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer Me.

[Job 38]

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand,
Measured heaven with a span
And calculated the dust of the earth in a measure?
Weighed the mountains in scales
And the hills in a balance?

Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket,
And are counted as the small dust on the scales.

All nations before Him are as nothing,
And they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless.

He brings the princes to nothing;
He makes the judges of the earth useless.

His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,
But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

[Isaiah 40]

Memorization

2010-12-14T08:54:00.000-08:00

Knowledge is impossible without memorization, and yet it's said that the internet has rendered memorization unnecessary. If information is available in the blink of an eye, memorization makes little sense, the argument goes, as though the whole point of knowledge is its availability or proximity.

Of course this isn't what memorization is at all. The purpose of memorization is not to create Google inside of our brains so that we can easily call up knowledge. The purpose of memorization is to let us think.

If I see the lines

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me never shall be free, nor ever chaste except you ravish me.

I might think them beautiful or even profound, but until I memorize them I can't use them. If the book is shelved and the browser closed, the lines are only foggy memory that I know was good and that is all. Ten minutes later it is difficult to even restate the general idea of the lines.

Or consider this verse:

If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same

and imagine it memorized. Memorized, its truth takes up residence in your brain, or as Keats would say, it swims into your ken and then pops up at various intervals, usually very relevant intervals, and stares you in the face. You suffer a tragedy, and the lines predictably appear telling you what an imposter it all is. But then, awhile later, things have changed for the better, and the lines, not so predictably, are back again: this too is an imposter. What do you think about that? Now you wonder if you actually agree like you always thought you did.

Then you come across another line, years later, that says nearly the same thing in nearly the same way but in an entirely different context, and for the first time you see a new dimension in Kipling.

And sometimes randomly, but really because they have been simmering in your brain for awhile, a new interpretation of the lines carrying new consequences occurs to you, and you see several issues at once in a new light, all because the lines had been brewing below the surface for so long.

This is called thinking which cannot be done without memorization. Knowledge, summoned up in a blink from the internet and then tossed aside the next moment, is impotent. And the consequence is notable, because knowledge that is impotent is not knowledge at all.

Against Arbitrary Goodness

2010-12-12T18:13:00.001-08:00

I am far removed from the opinion of those who maintain that there are no rules of goodness and perfection in the nature of things or in the ideas God has of them and who say that the works of God are good solely for the formal reason that God has made them. For, if this were so, God, knowing that he is their author, would not have had to consider them afterward and find them good, as is testified by the Sacred Scriptures -- which seem to have used such anthropomorphic expressions only to make us understand that the excellence of God's works can be recognized by considering them in themselves, even when we do not reflect on this empty external denomination which relates them to their cause. This is all the more true, since it is by considering his works that we can discover the creator. His works must therefore carry his mark in themselves . . . .

Thus, in saying that things are not good by virtue of any rule of goodness but solely by virtue of the will of God, it seems to me that we unknowingly destroy all of God's love and all his glory. For why praise him for what he was done if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the exact contrary? Where will his justice and wisdom reside if there remains only a certain despotic power, if will holds the place of reason, and if, according to the definition of tyrants, justice consists in whatever pleases the most powerful?

[Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics]

Eliot on Chesterton

2010-12-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

For an otherwise brilliant mind, Eliot trips a bit here without much explanation, which is ironic given the nature of his critique:

Mr. Chesterton's brain swarms with ideas; I see no evidence that it thinks.

[T. S. Eliot, from Henry James]

Running with Horses

2010-12-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you,
Then how can you contend with horses?

[Jeremiah 12:5]

Now it happened in the meantime that the sky became black with clouds and wind, and there was a heavy rain. So Ahab rode away and went to Jezreel. Then the hand of the LORD came upon Elijah; and he girded up his loins and ran ahead of Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.

[I Kings 18:45-46]

I do not want to lose my flesh. I want better flesh. I want to be able to run with these horses, like Elijah.

Has anyone known joy like Elijah racing the storm?

[N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl]

Clarity

2010-12-07T11:59:00.000-08:00

Robert Frost shows us the beauty of simplicity through "The Door in the Dark":

In going from room to room in the dark
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair anymore
With what they used to pair with before.

The novice poem, on the other hand, attempts intricacy and produces only posturing. It gives little meaning to us. Diction in these poems is cumbersome; small words are ignored. References are vague, and so the reader is left with an impression about that person without empathy, and the poem remains at a distance. And so when Eliot says in The Wasteland

Frisch weht dur Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mine Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
[I. 31-34.]

we find it an obscure reference [Tristan and Isolde, V. i. 5-8] but not a vague one. We are allowed empathy. Knowing the reference, and that it points to related ideas, suggests a sympathetic community of this experience. And when he says

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
[V. 423-24.]

we trace the lines to Weston's From Ritual to Romance, as Eliot intended us to do.

And yet even references like these, real but obscure, risk generating alienation, for Gorham Munson says:

[The Waste Land] is artificially concocted by omissions, incompletions and unnecessary specialization in the assembling of those circumstances which ought to evoke in the reader the whole effect of the given emotion. Again the question rises, why does Mr. Eliot tamper with these circumstances so as to make them not explicable in themselves?
["The Esotericism of T. S. Eliot"]

But even so, poetry retains its clarity through these difficult references because they point to history, at the very least, and invite us to join in that universal conversation of ideas. But those references which point to nothing but individual experience give us no reason to read them let alone enjoy them; they are the product, after all, of a selfish imagination.

Damned without Baptism

2010-12-07T06:07:00.001-08:00

Apparently Vergil was sinless but lived on the wrong side of history. He also forgot about baptism. Now he's in Hell:

"Do you not ask who are these spirits whom you see before you? I'd have you know, before you go ahead, they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits, that's not enough, because they lacked baptism, the portal of the faith that you embrace. And if they lived before Christianity, they did not worship God in fitting ways; and of such spirits I [Vergil] am one."

[Dante, Inferno. IV, 31-36.]

Drawing Up Characters

2010-12-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

A 'living' character is not necessarily 'true to life'. It is a person whom we can see and hear, whether he be true or false to human nature as we know it. What the creator of character needs is not so much knowledge of motives as keen sensibility; the dramatist need not understand people; but he must be exceptionally aware of them.

[T. S. Eliot, Philip Massinger]

Three Slices of Toast

2010-12-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

Mums makes tasty toast in a small pan. After toasting one side of a slice, she turns it over. Each side takes 30 seconds.

The pan can only hold two slices. How can she toast both sides of three slices in 1.5 instead of 2 minutes?

[From Boris A. Kordemsky's Moscow Puzzles, 86.]

VI

2010-12-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.

[T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday]

The Effects of Advent

2010-12-03T12:35:00.000-08:00

Advent is the season of anticipation when we prepare to celebrate Christ's incarnation. This has more effects than saying, "Jesus is the reason for the season," or arguing that Jesus is better than Santa. In reality, it's a season defined by thankfulness and lavish giving.

Thanksgiving appropriately ushers in Advent, setting the tone for a season of gratitude, which sets the tone for the next year and the rest of our lives. Christ was incarnate, and everything we have is from His hand. Everything we don't have is from His hand. If we celebrate Advent and Christmas scripturally, our actions will be infested with thankfulness.

And thankfulness is demonstrated by giving. God gave to us, not sparing his own Son, and so we become like him when we give. God gave lavishly to us, and so when we give lavishly to others, we become like him. Giving things away, and then giving away still more reflects God's glory. Expensive presents model Christ. Outrageously expensive presents model Christ.

Greed at Christmas is a problem, but a greater problem is stinginess. God is not stingy with us, and while financial wisdom is required here, it is not (as DW says), a stingy wisdom.

Content to pick at the surface

2010-12-02T05:06:00.000-08:00

Paul packs lots of Truth into small spaces, and Calvin, pointing it out as ever, notes Colossians 2:2 --

That their hearts might be comforted . . . unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding

and of the italics he says

As many, contenting themselves with a slight taste, have nothing but a confused and evanescent knowledge, [Paul] makes mention expressly of the riches of understanding. . . .

In the term assurance, he distinguishes between faith and mere opinion; for that man truly knows the Lord who does not vacillate or waver in doubt, but stands fast in a firm and constant persuasion. [Commentaries, Col. II. 4]

TSA Scanners

2010-11-30T18:08:00.000-08:00

Here's an important article, excerpt below, on TSA and their new full-body scanners:

Extend the logic for this lunatic way of fighting terrorism, and see how you like it. In a free society, crowds gather in more places than in airports. And when they gather, they are vulnerable to anybody with a bomb, an automatic weapon, or a canister of poison gas. Make a short list -- malls, football games, concerts, etc. If the TSA imbecility is sound with regard to airports, then the first successful attempt on life at some public event (as was attempted a few days ago at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland) will necessitate nude scanners and pat downs at city squares, subways, bus stations, train stations, basketball games, etc. When they are done securing our liberties, we can all rest easy. The radical Muslims can never get at our liberties now. We don't have them anymore. Our liberties are in a box in a TSA warehouse, along with 10,000 nail clippers.
So if such security measures are not consistent with life in a free society on the ground, then they are not consistent with life in a free society in the air. We need to do something differently. As in completely differently, and I don't mean changing the color of the TSA uniforms. We need to spend all that money on hunting terrorists. We should be looking for certain kinds of people, not certain kinds of objects. . . .
I would suggest that any travelers who are concerned about [TSA full-body scanners] should opt out [and instead get the pat down] -- if you get the pat down, you know exactly what you are getting, and can serve as a witness of the whole transaction. But if somebody off in another room is getting his jollies by looking at your daughters, you have no idea and cannot serve as a witness, except as a witness to the general degrading spectacle. Also, if you opt out, I would have a small slip of paper that you can hand to the person who hunting on your person for threats to our nation's liberties. It should read something like:
"My need to travel should not be taken as my consent to the unconstitutionality of warrantless searches of my person and my possessions. I am accepting this process under protest."

Continue reading. . .

Ahab's leadership

2010-11-29T19:23:00.000-08:00

The name Ahab is synonymous with evil nowadays, and for good reason. Ahab was an evil Israelite monarch from 1 Kings, and in literature, the sinister, mad sea-captain from Moby-Dick.

Of the historical Ahab, it's important to note what he wasn't. He wasn't murderous. He wasn't mad or wild. He did not "shed very much innocent blood" or make "his sons pass through the fire" as Manasseh did. He did not kill Naboth, and yet Naboth was murdered. He did not pursue Elijah after the 400 priests of Baal had been killed, and yet Elijah had to flee. Graetz says that Ahab was

weak, mild, loving peace and comfort, rather disposed to avoid disturbances and obstacles than to seek or remove them. [History of the Jews, Vol. 1. X. 196.]

Ahab was evil because he lead badly. His role was leadership, kingly leadership, and he lead through abdication. It was his role to lead, and so he couldn't not lead; he simply lead sinfully through moral laziness. There was a hole of leadership in him, a negative leadership, and as all holes must be filled, something filled it.

Jezebel, that fiend of Phoenicia, filled the hole. Where her husband sat back, she stepped in. Where he abdicated, she lead. His abdication was bad leadership, and her role-reversing leadership was bad leadership. She killed Naboth. She installed the 400 priests of Baal. She pursued Elijah when he killed them. She tried to destroy the name of Israel through a suffocating integration of Phoenician gods.

Yet this was all Ahab's evil. With leadership comes responsibility. Good leadership acts, gives itself away, and does all to God's glory. Poor leadership infolds on itself, thinks of itself, and festers in itself. But each kind of leadership has responsibility, and history has named Ahab evil because of his watery-eyed, weak-minded inactivity whose sole motive was self.

Deep Sight

2010-11-29T17:58:00.000-08:00

Never having been a human . . . you don't realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. . . .

They find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on [them] the ordinariness of things.

[C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]

Instruments and Tools

2010-11-28T08:41:00.000-08:00

There were half a hundred books that first autumn and winter in Oxford. We became interested, absorbed, in the study of Christianity right from the start -- though, still, it was only a study. It was fortunate that I chose to read that C. S. Lewis science-fiction triology first, for, apart from being beautiful and enthralling, it made me conscious of an alliance with him: what he hated (That Hideous Strength) I hated and feared. Much more important, perhaps, the triology showed me that the Christian God might, after all, be quite big enough for the whole galaxy. Nothing was proved except that, quite reasonably, He might be big enough; but, in fact, and insuperable difficulty -- that of Christianity's being only a local religion -- was overcome. Apart from Lewis, we read G. K. Chesterton, who with wit presented in The Everlasting Man and other works a brilliant, reasoned case for the faith. And Charles Williams, theologian and novelist, who opened up realms of the spirit we didn't know existed, was tremendously important to us both. Graham Greene showed -- terribly -- what sin was, and what faith was -- also terrible. Dorothy Sayers made Christianity dramatic and exciting, and attacked complacency and dullness like a scorpion. We had read T. S. Eliot for years, but now we began to see what he was really saying in Ash Wednesday and the Four Quartets -- and it scared us, rather. His description of the state of being a Christian lingered in our minds: 'A condition of complete simplicity/(Costing not less than everything).' Everything! There were many other books, including Christian classics like St. Augustine, The Imitation of Christ, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. And we read the New Testament, of course, in numerous translations along with commentaries. But there is no doubt that C. S. Lewis was, first to last, overwhelmingly the most important reading for us both. Only someone who has faced the question -- is Christianity false? -- can help someone else resolve the counter-question -- is it true? We read everything he ever wrote, including Great Divorce, Miracles, Problem of Pain, Pilgrim's Regress (which I found very meaningful), and much more, including his scholarly works, such as The Allegory of Love. The man's learning was immense, in English literature, in the classics, and, despite his disclaimers, in theology. His was perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most lucid mind we ever knew: he wrote about Christianity in a style as clear as spring water without a hint of sanctimoniousness or vagueness or double-talk, never suggesting that anything be accepted on other than reasonable grounds. He gave us, simply, straightforward, telling argument laced with wit. And that incredible imagination.

[Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy]

The Universality of Faith

2010-11-27T19:13:00.000-08:00

At the core, there are just a few options:

One either believes in (1) God or (2) doesn't.

If (1), then faith is required as God's existence can't be proved. Still, this option explains how things got here.

If (2), then there isn't a god. Because the world clearly exists, one must show where it came from. It either came from (a) The Big Bang (sans-God style), (b) nothing, or (c) has always been here.

If (a), something exploded and one must determine where that something came from. To bang, even if from a singularity, matter must exist. Because God does not exist in this paradigm, the matter that banged came from somewhere else, but since God's existence cannot be disproved, an assumption of God's nonexistence is required in (a) for viability.

If (b), then one must adopt matter ex nihilo. Matter came from nothing. In the natural world, this has not yet been demonstrated and contradicts the law of conservation of mass. Matter ex nihilo cannot be positively demonstrated and thus (b) requires a level of faith for viability.

If (c), then matter is eternal. This is in a certain sense possible. Yet similar to (1), it cannot be proven and requires faith for viability.

Because all options require faith (in the assumptive, amoral sense), which makes the most common sense?

Expansive Reason with Withered Common Sense

2010-11-25T15:37:00.000-08:00

Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner . . . He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. . . .

Just as I am affected by the maniac, so I am affected by most modern thinkers. That unmistakble mood or note that I hear from [an asylum], I hear also from half the chairs of science and seats of learning today; and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in more senses than one. They all have exactly that combination we have noted: the combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense.

[G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy]

Baked Apples

2010-11-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

Apples come with the fall.
Ripe in the colder air,
They fatten to tartness
So that I can bake them.

Several cluster round
On the counter, streaked red,
Earth-red and not shiny,
Smelling of summer past.

I dig out the rough cores
And stuff in a spiced mix:
Butter and cinnamon,
Chopped walnuts and raisins,

Then bake them together
In the oven. Juices
Bubble, and skins wrinkle
Around softening flesh.

When they are done, the change
Is like the passage of
Swift time, when strapping youth
Becomes soft, wizened age.

So when I eat them hot,
Piping hot, I think of
My grandmother, who once
Taught me how to make them.

Not Acting

2010-11-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

It's plain enough that certain things aren't very good to say, but the opposite holds true too: certain things must be said. Not saying them, when you know they should be said, isn't any good. The Book of Common Prayer affirms this, saying

We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.

Speaking is action, and rescuing truth with your mouth is necessary just like it's necessary to rescue someone from danger. With words, this is particularly difficult because it risks offense. Augustine says that

often do we ignore the duty of teaching and admonishing, and sometimes even of rebuking and correcting, sinners. We do this either when we weary of the effort, or when we hesitate to offend their dignity . . . because of a weakness which loves a flattering tongue and human praise and fears the judgments of the vulgar and the hurt or destruction of the body. It is, in short, because of certain ties of selfishness, and not the offices of love. [City of God, Book I. 9.]

So we can say that it isn't just a good idea to speak out for the truth but rather an essential, unavoidable duty.

"I'm just sayin'. . ."

2010-11-22T19:43:00.000-08:00

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Everyday one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern skeptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance.

[G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy]

An unseen God who lived only in their memories

2010-11-21T16:55:00.000-08:00

Reading through stories in Scripture that involve wayward humans, I often think, "I wouldn't have done that." Joseph's brothers tossed him into a well. Peter denied Jesus three times. The disciples shooed the kids away from Jesus. The rich young ruler, after an actual conversation with Jesus, walked away saddened. I don't think I would have done any of that.

On closer examination, I'm not as sure, and I think this is one of the points of these stories. Studying the context of biblical history helps in recognizing this.

Take the case of the Israelites wandering in the desert. They complain and revolt at every opportunity:

1. And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So they were very afraid . . . and said to Moses, "Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness?" [Ex. 14:25]

2. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter . . . And the people complained against Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?" [Exodus 15:22-24]

3. [They] camped in Rephidim; but there was no water for the people to drink . . . And the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses, and said, "Why is it you have brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? . . . Is the Lord among us or not?" [Exodus 17: 1-7]

4. Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." [Exodus 32:1]

Of the third incident, Calvin says

[God] had brought them [manna] when they were suffering from hunger; why do they not fly to Him when they are oppressed by thirst? [Commentaries, Exodus XVII. 1.]

and further

[God] had promised that He would never fail them; why then, now, when circumstances demand it, do they not assure themselves that He will assist them . . . . ? [Commentaries, Exodus XVII. 2.]

But Heinrich Graetz sheds some contextual light on this belligerent forgetfulness when he says that the Israelites, still in Egypt

had a dim knowledge that the God of their fathers was a being very different from the Egyptian idols; but even this knowledge seemed to decrease from day to day. Love of imitation, sore oppression, and daily misery made them obtuse, and obscured the faint light of their hereditary law. The enslaved labourers did not know what to think of an unseen God who only lived in their memories. [History of the Jews, Vol. 1, I. 11.]

Further, after God's law had been revealed to them from Sinai, Graetz notes that

This spirit of equity and brotherly love, pervading the ancient code of laws, could not at once change the habits of the people, [and they created the golden calf]. Moses, on descending from Mount Sinai, ordered the Levites to put to death some thousands of the people. Nothing but the exercise of extreme rigour could have repressed this worship of idols. [History of the Jews, Vol. 1, I. 25.]

God hardens hearts for his glory, but we are all sons of Adam. It is easy, looking back on ancient history through the revelation of the gospel, which these Israelites did not have, to think that we aren't.

Dying Well

2010-11-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

No one has ever died who had not been going to die eventually . . . It is one thing to consider death as something that the fearful instinct of the flesh seeks in its infirmity to flee from, and another to contemplate it carefully with the reason of the mind. Death is not to be deemed an evil when a good life precedes it; nor is death made an evil except by what follows death. Therefore, those who are of necessity bound to die need not care greatly by what means they will eventually die, but into what place they will be brought by dying.

[Augustine, The City of God, I. 11.]

The Fire

2010-11-19T20:02:00.000-08:00

I dreamt I built a fire

Outside in the dim dusk.

I built the fire fat to

Make it push at the dark.

The orange was warm, making

Shadows out there stay back.

I could not see them, but

They lay somewhere hiding,

Hiding things out of sight,

Away from seeing flames,

Flickering flames I kept

Alive so I’d have light.

Sight, choked on dark, faded.

In my dream the fire died

Slowly, pressed low by dark,

And my sight shrunk down close.

The dark clamped down, and I

Had to face the shadows,

Face the shadows to find

Wood to build up the fire.

I crept into the black.

The fire that was not there

Wrapped me in sightless dread.

I groped wide-eyed and blind

For wood to build the fire,

The dying fire back there,

Wood coarse and rough and hard,

Not like the smooth darkness.

I could not find the wood.

The dark had taken it

Into itself, away.

I could not find the wood.

The fire was dead, blackened

Without wood, without light.

I stopped crawling, frozen,

Waiting for shadow things.

Wolf, Goat, and Cabbage

2010-11-19T06:08:00.000-08:00

Here's a problem from The Moscow Puzzles by A. M. Kordemsky.

WOLF, GOAT, AND CABBAGE.

This problem can be found in eighth-century writings.

A man has to take a wolf, a goat, and some cabbage across a river. His rowboat has enough room for the man plus either the wolf or the goat or the cabbage. If he takes the cabbage with him, the wolf will eat the goat. If he takes the wolf, the goat will eat the cabbage. Only when the man is present are the goat and the cabbage safe from their enemies. All the same, the man carries wolf, goat, and cabbage across the river.

How?

Saint John and his sense of humor

2010-11-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

In which the disciples think that Jesus snitched some food:

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, 'Give Me a drink.' For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, 'How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?' For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said to her, 'If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, "Give Me a drink," you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.'. . .

His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, 'What do You seek?' or, 'Why are You talking with her?' . . .

[Then] His disciples urged Him, saying, "Rabbi, eat.'

But He said to them, 'I have food to eat of which you do not know.'

Therefore the disciples said to one another, 'Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?'

John IV. 7-33.

More fun than it has to be

2010-11-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

Most elements in nature, found on the periodic table, are not pure elements. 66 of 94 natural elements have multiple flavors. In other words, fluorine is not just pure fluorine; lead is not simply pure lead. They are an average of several variations, specifically isotopes, of that element condensed into the one found on the periodic table. And God said, "Let's make things more interesting than they have to be."

An isotope is a varation of an element; the variation involves the number of neutrons. Everything else about the element is the same. It's like Bach's Goldberg Varations: the same theme and the same song throughout, but with different characteristics in each variation.

"Lithium" as we know it on the periodic table is made of two isotopes: lithium-6 and lithium-7. The "6" and "7" are lithium's atomic masses: the number of protons and neutrons combined. Since lithium always has 3 protons, lithium-6 therefore has 3 neutrons versus lithium-7's 4 neutrons. Variations on a theme. Yet lithium's atomic mass -- it's atomic "weight" -- is 6.941 overall as listed on the periodic table. Not 6 and not 7, but a combination of both isotope's masses.

But you'd think the average mass is 6.5. Its actual mass of 6.941 means that the lithium-7 isotope occurs a lot more often than the lithium-6 isotope. In fact, if you were to go on a hunt for lithium isotopes in nature, 92.5% of your findings would be of lithium-7. You'd only discover the elusive lithium-6 7.5% of the time.

Yet both varieties make up "lithium" over all. Similarly, as you eat a banana, you're not just consuming "pure" postassium. There are a bunch of potassium isotopes in that banana.

A bit like alien anthropologists saying, "And there, on planet Earth, we have the peculiar species human," which is a perfectly sensible generalization despite our wide variety of races within humanity.

Practical Nonsense

2010-11-16T10:07:00.000-08:00

Scripture was written down so that human beings could do what it says. Nobody ever writes anything with the express intent that it stays up in your brain. Nothing has been written so that it won't later come out your mouth or show itself in your actions. Writing is for doing. You just have to read it to get there.

Most books aren't authoritative like Scripture. You read it and then act accordingly as you must. You have an objective standard to follow, and that standard informs your actions.

But not if you're an atheist. The problem with atheism is that it has no standard. Actions follow from whimsical readings and various influences. Your actions as an atheist have a reason, but those reasons tell nothing about whether the action is right. They tell nothing of whether anyone else should do the same as you.

If you ask an atheist, as Doug Wilson asked Christopher Hitchens in Is Christianity Good for the World?

When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended? . . . Given atheism, objective morality follows . . . how?

what can the atheist say?

Scripture, as the objective standard, is written for action, which means it is practical. Theology is practical. You can never say, "I just don't get theology" or "those theological arguments are too esoteric" because you're saying that life is incomprehensible, or at least the life well-lived is incomprehensible. These sentiments simply betray a refusal to complete the system: theology must proceed to life.

Christians and atheists alike are up in arms about Amazon.com's sale of The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct by Philip R. Greaves II. Though Amazon.com has, for now, stopped selling it, people are disgusted that it was sold in the first place.

First, if you're a Christian, how do you respond? Splutter and shake your fist and say, "Sweet Jesus, come quickly!"?

Second, if you're an atheist and think this is a fine example of free speech, good for you: it's an absurd but honest view. Your code is consistent.

But if you're an atheist upset by this, good for you -- but why? Why shouldn't it be sold? Going further, why is it wrong to actually rape a child?

As an aside, it's a bit silly to sell this sort of book as a pedophile needs no prompting in methodology. But for both Christians and somehow-morally-conscious atheists, the serious problem is that selling this book condones its content, promoting the general sense of "Who's to say?" applied to just about any issue. But like a vote for a candidate who supports abortion is a vote that condones abortion, and like a man who commits adultery by lusting after a woman in his heart, the "real problem" doesn't begin only after the action of pedophilia starts. Knowing this, a Christian has an objective basis for righteous fury; the atheist has none.

Again from Wilson to Hitchens:

What I want to know (still) is what warrant [atheists] have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." If both are innate, what distinguishes them? What could be wrong with just flipping a coin?

The point of this example is that God is glorified. Through the absurdity of selling this sort of book, and for thinking that it is freedom of speech, God's glory is revealed. This sort of groundless nonsense is normal in a reality without God. What else should we expect? So our job, as Christians, is to name reality boldly, without compromise, and without mouth-foaming, hair-brained indignation. Are we doing Scripture or just reading it? God's truth speaks plainly, and the logical absurdities of sin only glorify him more.

Truth is stranger (and funnier) than fiction

2010-11-13T18:00:00.000-08:00

"It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist, and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't."

[G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy]

The Son of Man

2010-11-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

"He parted the heavens and came down;
Dark clouds were under his feet.
He mounted the cherubim and flew;
He soared on the wings of the wind."

[Psalm 18:9-10]

"Look, he is coming with the clouds."

[Revelation 1:7]

"Cherubim are coming. I can hear their laughter, the roaring in the sky."

[N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl]

Movements of a Bewildered Ape

2010-11-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

"It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, 'Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape.' The young skeptic says, 'I have a right to think for myself.' But the old skeptic, the complete skeptic, says, 'I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.'"

[G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy]

Chesterton's Genius

2010-11-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

"The only possible excuse for this book," says Chesterton of his Orthodoxy, "is that it is an answer to a challenge. When some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers, under the name of 'Heretics,' [G. S. Street said] that I had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example. 'I will begin to worry about my philosophy,' said Mr. Street, 'when Mr. Chesterton has given us his.'"

And then comes a magnificent line:

"It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation."

So thus came Orthodoxy.

Chesterton, in his life, wrote lots of books. The American Chesterton Society says that

He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, [yet] considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly. (To put it into perspective, four thousand essays is the equivalent of writing an essay a day, every day, for 11 years. . . .)

This is influence at its finest: a deep love of words, a serious joy in their power, and an urgency to use them. Most of us will not write as well or as prolifically as Chesterton, but we should all write. We should have a ready answer for critics and a ready pen to describe the realities we see.

Great men and women wrote. Historians wrote; philosophers wrote; and of course writers wrote. But so did chemists, mathematicians, and explorers: Lavoisier, Newton, Faraday, and Raleigh.

And often, they were quite normal people: it was their writings that made the course of history change. They're in the history books now, undying, but then, they were regular flesh-and-blood people who were fearless enough to undertake influence themselves.

Write.