Our small group from church tonight watched a fascinating film called Mountain of Fire. It followed a couple of guys who decided to search for Mt Sinai, and seem to have found it in Saudi Arabia. The stuff they found was just unbelievable. If you can get a hold of this movie, it would make good viewing for any church group.

I've noticed that one of the "favorites" for the next pope is Francis Arinze of Nigeria. Makes me wonder if I'll start getting emails like this:

Dear Sir or madamm,

You have probably heard of the recent seccession of my cousin's brother-in-law, Francis Arinze, to the ofice of Pope in Italy, Europe. Our accounting ofice has noticed that there is the amount of SEVENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS ($75,000,000) which we need to remove from Rome ASAP.

Your aid in this matter is greatly appreciated and we simply need you to send us a prepaid envelope to mail you the money. COntact me directly for further details.


XXXXX XXXXX
Lagos, Nigeria

From all I've heard, Pope John Paul II was a fine and upstanding fellow, but I sure hope they choose a new pope soon. I've been seeing a lot of Jesuits wandering aimlessly in the streets. Bit of a road hazard.

I was noticing that the last three Netflix films we saw were in some way about violence, although with the first one I'm cautious af making many judgements.

Andrei Rublev is a period piece about the famous Russian icon painter of the 15th century. It's a strange film in many ways, especially as it never once, in three and a half hours, shows the title character painting anything. It does feature some of the most extraordinary violence I've ever seen in a film in a sequence where the site of a cathedral under construction is attacked by Mongols. First time I've ever seen a cow on fire.

While I appreciated the artistry and skill of Tarkovsky, I was a bit baffled all the way through. The second film was much more accessible to americans: Changing Lanes. The story follows the path of two men who collide on a busy road in NYC. The wealthy, rising lawyer, played by Ben Affleck, claims he doesn't have time to take care of things properly (he's late for a court appointment), and just writes a blank check. The middle class insurance worker (Samuel L Jackson (I still don't know what the "L" is for)) is also late for his own court appointment in family court where he was hoping to do som reconciliation with his estranged wife and kids. This starts a cycle of revenge, all of which was occasioned by the accident, but all of which is clearly perpetuated by each party being unwilling or unable to forgive the other. I suppose you could call it a study in why forgiveness is so difficult.

The third was City of God, which for some reason I expected to be a vaguely religious film (probably the title). For those who haven't seen it, this is one of the most colorful, personal, authentic well directed gangster movies ever made. The center of the film is a war between two drug gangs in a favala, or slum, in Rio de Janeiro. What marks it as unusual, is that as each character appears, a flashback tells his story. There are perhaps a dozen of these, and it makes for a remarkably human look at how gang violence develops and is perpetuated.

All three of these were top notch, though the first one is not for folks who are short on patience.

Perhaps you will allow me, on the occasion of the hubbub over the fate of Terri Schiavo, to recommend a couple of books on medical ethics from two thoughtful Christian writers.

First, A Doctor's Casebook in light of the Bible by Paul Tournier. Tournier was a physician from Switzerland who put a lot of thought into holistic ideas of medical care. His faith was not fully orthodox from my point of view (he was a universalist), but his mind was very penetrating about issues of health. It is unfortunate that his works are not very popular in the States. His writing reminds one of CS Lewis, with whom he was friends iirc.

The other is Truthfulness and Tragedy by Stanley Hauerwas. Prof. Hauerwas takes a very sharp look at a number of specific issues, including abortion and the problem of the limits of medical responsibilities. Certainly a more philosophical work than the other, but well worth examination.

My friend Todd has published a very fine Good Friday sermon. Go read it.

Anyone still want to maintain that we live in something called a "Christian nation"?

Apparently there's still one across the pond, though. ;)

I don't know much about genetics, but this sounds pretty interesting to me. I guess they're doing good work at my brother's university. No coincidence that he is there, I'm sure.

A fairly lengthy but considered commentary on why Terri should be allowed to die. I feel like I'm the only person I know who thinks that position is basically the right one. While ordinarily withdrawing food from someone should be conisidered evil, I think in this case the person involved is already substantially dead and those who have weighed the evidence have felt that Mrs Schiavo would have wished to be able to die in some timely fashion rather than having death prolonged indefinately.

While I tend to dislike the rhetoric and positions of many "right to die" folks, at least when they advocate assisted suicide and such, I think our society, particularly in the area of medicine, does not have any sort of coherent idea about death anymore. Somehow it is seen as both unavoidable as well as needing to be fought tooth and nail at every turn. People don't seem to realize that medicine cannot prevent death, it can only, sometimes, postpone it or make it less painful.

Lenise pointed out to me yesterday that my son's 6 month birthday is the same as Johann Sebastian Bach's 320th birthday.

In our small group meeting this week we talked a little bit about forgiveness. Just got me thinking--I wonder if sometimes we don't harbor some "safe" sins, that is, sins we aren't too embarassed to confess. "Yes, I've been a little lazy this week, and also I ate more dessert than I should have." I'm just thinking that we might treasure these sorts of things as insurance against confessing those things about which we are truly ashamed, the things we really do NOT want to tell anyone. Just a thought.

Sorry, IE has been acting up on my lately. It does weird things like not letting me use links very well. Trying to figure out how to fix it without reinstalling XP altogether.

You can't make up quotes like this:

"A greyhound ought to be a dog in the state of Kansas," said Kevin Neuman, of Overland Park.

gggggggggggggggggg64cbh vvv ce [']\\s


--John Sebastian Baxter

Last week I completed reading through all of the Gene Wolfe series books. I was talking about Wolfe with someone yesterday and thought it might be good to say a word about him here.

Wolfe is in my mind one of the most brilliant writers that the US has yet produced. I would suggest that his obscurity is due to two factors. One is that he writes within the science fiction genre, the other that he is erudite and likes to challenge his readers. His books are generally full of puzzles, hints, allusions and assorted arcana. But I have always enjoyed a good challenge and love see authors who don't feel the need to talk down to their audiences.

In addition to a number of stand alone novels and short stories, Wolfe main work to date has been three inter-related series of "sun" novels. The first set deals with an earth of the far, far future, the second with a generational spacecraft (that is, a large space ship intentionally designed to be a home for several generations of colonists on their way to a new world), and the third with the settling of a new world (or pair of worlds to be more precise). All of these were excellent and tied in so many themes and ideas that it would be an exercise in frustration to even attempt to characterize them further.

In contrast, his new two volume work, The Wizard Knight, is written an essentially an adolescent level. I would not feel hesitant about having, say, an average high school senior read it. The story follows an american boy who unexplainedly finds himself suddenly in another world. This world is the world of Celtic and Norse mythology. If you've read Nikolai Tolstoy's The Coming of the King, some elements will seem familiar to you. The subject finds himself unable to remember his name or much at all of life in america beyond the name of his friend Ben, to whom he relates his story.

The focus of the story is how one becomes an honorable man. Our protagonist, through an encounter with a fairy queen early in the story, finds himself in a large, very muscular body and is give the name Sir Able of the High Heart. He is told by this fairy that he is a knight. He believs this himself and tries to act as a knight would act. Early in the tale this mostly involves bullying people to achieve his objectives. Also early inthe story he meets a "real" knight who demonstrates to Able bravery and other knightly virtues.

As Able travels around the land, his claim to be a knight is constantly challenged. He has no "gentle birth" and many he meets do not believe in the existance of fairies, and thus doubt his commission. Able's only response to these situations is to always act as he thinks a knight should act. Of course this often offends, and also brings Able into a number of dangers, many of which he is unprepared to handle.

I don't really want to summarize the plot, as it is quite a long tale and would be considerably diminished by my retelling of it. It does provide a wonderful picture, to my way of thinking, of Aristotle's idea that to acquire virtue one must do virtuous things. This has always been something of a puzzle. If one is not brave, how can one do brave things? Sir Able answers this by believing he has virtues first, then trying to practice them. He is constantly plagued by the notion that he is "just a boy", and his reflections on his actions often show that he is ashamed of much he has done, but throughout is the recognition that virtue can only be achieved through practice. It cannot be conferred by someone else.

Teething going on, simultaneously hurting John's gums and my eardrums.

Surprise of the day: seeing a license plate on our street that said I R L33T.

I draw your attention to this modern day MacGyver. Not only can she tell you moment by moment the course of the war of 1904-5, but she can also do surgery with an unsterilized fruit knife. Plus, gents out there, she's still single.

Anyone want to try to beat my grammar/spelling score? I'll put my scores in the comments so you can try it before you compare.

It hadn't happened in a while, but blogger ate my last post. It was a wondrous recounting of the events of this past Sunday in which I eloquently described the visit of my friend Sasha from Kiev, rhapsodized about Daniel Kirk's Sunday School class, and poigniantly related a touching incident with one of my firends in the youth group.

Alas, such prose is now lost in the cyber-ether. If you would do me a favor, though--no advise about how I should have written into a text program and copied it to blogger. Thanks.

BTW, John has been very grumpy for the last couple of days and seems incapable of sleeping for very long at any one time. Last night he slept for almost 3 hours before waking up at 1, and 1:30, and 1:50, and 2:15, etc.

I guess this could send huge economic dislocation to the Russian economy.

Some things protestants miss by not reading the apocrypha. This is from Ecclesiasticus chs 18-19:

Do not be governed by your passions, restrain your desires. If you allow yourself to satisfy your desires, this will make you the laughing stock of your enemies.

. . .Being too ready to trust shows shallowness of mind, and sinning harms the sinner. Taking pleasure in evil earns condemnation; by hating gossip one avoids evil.

Never repeat what you are told and you will come to no harm; whether to a friend or to a foe, do not talk about it, unless it would be sinful not to reveal it; you would be heard out, than mistrusted, and in due course you would be hated.

Have you heard something? Let it die with you. Courage! It will not burst you!

A fool will suffer birthpangs over a piece of news, like a woman laboring with a child. Like and arow stuck in the flesh of the thigh, so is a piece of news inside a fool.

Ditto for this one.

One of those stories I just wish were true.

I had been planning for several days now to write a little diatribe about how iPods represent everything I find wrong with way our society handles music these days. You were only spared because I've been out of the house a lot plus I wasn't sure how to organize my thoughts on it. Well, lo and behold, Andrew Sullivan summed it all up nicely for me this morning. Key quote:

Music was once the preserve of the living room or the concert hall. It was sometimes solitary but it was primarily a shared experience, something that brought people together, gave them the comfort of knowing that others too understood the pleasure of a Brahms symphony or that Beatles album.

But music is as atomised now as living is. And it’s secret. That bloke next to you on the bus could be listening to heavy metal or a Gregorian chant. You’ll never know. And so, bit by bit, you’ll never really know him. And by his white wires, he is indicating he doesn’t really want to know you.

While I think this (possibly) is the more serious of the two points I wanted to make on the issue, the other is the issue of how we have turned music into something which happens at the push of a button, something we have farmed out to profesionals instead of learning to do for ourselves (and for others!).

It has become exceedingly rare, at least among white americans, to find people who sing. Singing is, without doubt, the easiest, most natural form of musical expression. I would assume it is naturally available to virtually everyone. I harbor the suspicion, which I'm afraid cannot prove, that many of those who claim they can't sing suffer from some form of neglect of natural talent, akin, I suppose to saying that one cannot drive. Almost anyone can learn to drive, barring major physical/mental defects. And most of those defect would not prevent someone from singing.

More health care news. If this becomes trendy, I think hospitals will just close up and we'll all have to go to Mexico to get care or something.

While I'm not really in favor, I have to give these folks points for creativity, so to speak.

Do you think this guy will actually get out of jury duty? I suppose if being dead isn't enough, maybe being the victim will get him some sort of consideration.

Not that anyone asked, but I thought I would mention a little about my reading habits. Somewhere around 10 years ago I started growing frustrated with myself about having started a dozen books but not being able to finish any of them before starting more. I made a simple resolution to myself that I would start reading books all the way through. Over time this evolved into a system whereby I allow myself three books at a time, but I won't start a new one until I finish one. While I will make an exeption from time to time, I have kept pretty closely to this system.

I also realized at some later point that I wasn't reading the quality of literature I wanted to, so now I try tomake sure I only purchase books which I've gotten some sort of strong recommendation for. I read very few best sellers. I try to make my fiction reading to be of high quality authors as much as possible, and my non-fiction reading broad, though I have certain categories I try to get some depth in.

In terms of systemetizing that aspect, I keep a reading queue. Any new books I get go to the end of the line. I occasionally feel frustrated that I can't read anything quickly, in terms of getting the book and immediately setting down to read it, but I'm pretty happy with the way things have gone. Delayed gratification is a good thing and I always need things to help teach me patience in our instant gratification age.

I try to make up for the frustration by setting high reading goals for each week. Two years ago my goal was 2 books per week. This was done fairly easily, so I made it 3 books per week last year, and that worked out pretty well. I've treid to maintain that this year, but I'm a little behind. It always depends on exactly how heavy the individual books are. I've got Norman Davies' fat History of Europe staring at me on my shelf, challenging me to start it and finish it in some reasonable time. I've got a bunch of skinny books in the queue, so I may start it soon and work a bunch of other books around it. I did that last year with a World Literature textbook which took me 3 or 4 weeks to get through. Was fun to read short stories from Africa and Japan and so forth.

As Daniel has already mentioned, we had a couple of wonderful weekend visitors to our church from South Africa to speak about reconciliation. What I just love about our church is that our senior pastor invited Union Baptist, the largest black church in Durham, to come join us for the Sunday evening session. Union provided all of the music, which was terrific. Their last piece was a alto solo with the choir singing "God is my All in All". It rocked. Their pianist was one of the best blues/gospel stylists I've ever heard. Had a good time talking to him afterwards. Most pianists are usually interested in my profession :)

The one comment that really stood out from the message, though, was Micael Cassidy saying that one of the white churches in SA condemned his views as too political for opposing apartheid. Somehow opposing apartheid is political, but supporting it is not. It apllies well here, in the sense that just as all things can be considered "religious", so all things can be considered "political". Its not a matter of "whether" politics, but "which" politics.

We have a train track that runs through the middle of Mebane. One of the main intersections in town has a traffic light on both sides of the track, which leaves the possibility, of course, of people stopping on the tracks to wait for the light. There are signs conveniently posted which say "Do Not Stop On Tracks", but many ignoe these. So just a few minutes ago I heard a loud BOOM. I looked outside and saw smoke rising, so I decided to go down and have a look. It so happened that a car was hit by an Amtrack train and exploded. No further details. I hope that this is the past time this happens in Mebane for quite a while. Fear always served me well as a motivator to stay off the tracks and I hope that will spread to the rest of the town.

If your name is Mark Horne you may click here.

It's a good thing that such potential injustices are being protested and brought to light. Think what might have resulted.

Given my abiding interest in the subjects of honor and shame, I found this fascinating. Are other authors questioning modern notions of identity? I a couple of Charles Taylor's books on my "to read" shelf, and I suspect he talks about the issue of modern identity to some extent.

I remember when I was teaching on ancient ideas of personality using the "Who are you" question as a jumping off point. I realized that the way we think of personality these days is rather problematic. When (and how) do you really know someone today? What do you have to know about someone to say you know them? Is it even possible to know another today?

Part of the answer today seems to be in consumer choices. I remember at one point amazon.com had a program called "Just Like You", where you could look at the user profiles of other people who had purchased similar products or rated products similarly to you. Thus one's identity becomes "I am the sort of person who likes [x movie] or [y book] or [z tv show]" etc.

A must read interview with Neal Stephenson. WHo knew he was reading Walter Wink?

Two words for you. Napoleon Dynamite. This would the opposite sort of movie to the one mentioned below, but hey, a good comedy is perhaps harder to come by than a good drama. I can't ask any High School friends to see this one cuz they've already seen it.

Ordinary People. Strong movie. I would love to watch this with some of my more mature high school student friends. Especially the young lady who's on the swimming team. Anyone watched it lately?

We've got problems. Of course the problem, so far as I can tell, is that we just consume way too many health servces, and increasingly costly ones. Broadening coverage, socialized or not, can only exacerbate that, unless that means that we make doctors' offices and hospitals so awful that no one wants to go there.

A little dream sequence for all of you who are paranoid about technology and personal freedom.

Last night we watched a French film called He Loves me, He Loves Me Not. About a third of the way through I thought it was pretty awful, but then something weird happened in the story and suddenly I was fascinated. You have to see it, but I don't want to spoil anything. Its an interesting illustration, though, of how "facts" don't interpret themselves but always require an interpreter. Plus it has Audrey Tautou of Amelie fame.

Someone should take up a collection for these girls. Perhaps the most ridiculous "no good deed goes unpunished" story I've seen, ummm, ever. Link via The Corner.

--Update, already being done.

Well, it seems that the story linked below in the Telegraph regarding Germany was probably rather inaccurate from the get go. Sorry about that. But hey, it COULD happen, right?

Riddle for you. How does a man born blind learn to paint? Be sure to look at the pictures.

Java version of the board game I played with Kirk yesterday.

Say what you will, european critics of american "puritanism", but we haven't quite come to this yet. Unfortunately, I see very little reason why such a move would be dificult to make here. Once you go to legalization, who knows what could follow.

If you haven't yet been overloaded with the issues surrounding copyrights recently, this is a well written article covering a lot of the major issues. I find these things compelling reading myself, but I'm pretty weird, to say the least.

Hmm, how tempting. I got an offer in the mail from our power utility for their wonderful FIXED PAYMENT PLAN! I can now know EXACTLY what my power bill will be each month. I think they are counting on people not reading these things. I came across the following sentence in the brochure: "If your electric usage under the program remains consistent with your actual usage during the last one to two years, adjusting for the effects of unusual weather, you may pay up to 10 percent more than you would have paid under your standard rate schedule plus a $1 monthly administrative fee." The fee is undoubtedly to hire more people to figure out what to do with all the extra money they take in.

This is very funny, and the first time I've seen that particular stunt.

Haave you ever had the experience where you liked something so much that you despair of ever enjoying another of that type of thing again? Well, I just watched Once Upon A Time In The West and don't know if I'll ever enjoy another western. While it might not be quite the "perfect" film, I don't know that I've seen another where all the artistic elements came together so well. For three hours everytghing about the film is riveting.

If you would like to be part of a PCA blog aggregator, check this out. Basically this would mean that your blog entries would be noticed on a list of a great number of other presbyterian bloggers, and conversely you could find out what others inthe denomination arw writing about.

I have to admit that I often find myself baffled by Eastern Orthodox writers, but this is just an amazing piece of writing.

Random Wodehouse quote generator.

My sister-in-law, Mindy, recommended that we watch a film called Heavens Above. Given that all I knew about it was that it was a 60s film about religion starring Peter Sellers, I was a bit skeptical. My skepticism was unfounded. This was a terrific movie, and one of the best blends of Christian idealism (in the sense of "go sell all you have and give to the poor") and realistic consequences (fickle, scheming poor people, local economic collapse) that I've ever run across in any form. The only draw back is that it focusses almost entirely on the interpersonal charity aspect of the gospel that it ignores a lot of other essential Christian themes. But it handles the idea of charity so well that I have no hesitation in recommending it to you. It's very funny as well.

My father taught me a long time ago that the government doesn't always hire the sharpest people.

I was thinking in the shower today (I wonder how much of my thinking I do in there), a not very original thought, I'm sure, i.e. that our minds are like soup pots. Each idea/flavor we add in is going to react to whatever else is already in there. Some ingredients probably won't do well until others have been already established. If your first ingredient in your soup is pepper, it won't be very palatable for a while. Things need to be balanced out.

I was thinking this regarding how my views of politics and religion have been formed and changed since college. Due to the influence of certain people I won't name, I came to read a lot of literature associated with a movement referred to as "theonomy" during and immediately after college. The general gist of this movement is that Jesus (and Paul) affirmed a continuing role for the OT law, not just at the individual level, but also for society widely. Greg Bahnsen set out the most systemic exegetical foundation for this in his book Theonomy and Christian Ethics, basing much of his case on his reading of Matt 5:17-20. The movement died a slow death, I suppose, throughout the '90's, facing both internal and external problems and criticisms.

Certain writers of this movement, the most prolific being Gary North, tried to take a thorough going look at the OT and make some effort to find applications of the particularities of the various laws to contemporary society. Those of a generally antinomian mindset found this patently ridiculous, but I always thought this was a worthwhile exercise, at least in principle. North himself always chided his critics that if they didn't like his work, they should go do thier own homework and present a rival vision.

I had put this subject on the back burner (or do I have to put the whole pot on the back burner?) to try to read more widely. Then I ran into (like a brick wall) the work of Stan Hauerwas. It's more than I can handle here to lay out Stanley's positions on politics, especially as he is everything except systematic in his writings. Much of what he said, though, had odd echoes of what the theonomists lad also said. He wrote in defense of casuistry (the close reading and application of texts), sharply and mercilessly criticized pluralism and liberalism, and even seems to think highly of John Calvin. Yet so much was strikingly different as well. For one thing, Hauerwas' intended audience seems to be the mainstream, liberal academic and religious community rather than the conservative, fundamentalist and reformed communities addressed by the theonomists. More at the heart of things, though, Hauerwas criticized the view of power and violence which have become foundations of our way of life in America.

Following the work of John Howard Yoder, Hauerwas feels that be be a Christian means to follow the example of Jesus, and the example of Jesus was to eschew violence in favor of suffering and martyrdom in the face of evil. Also Hauerwas focused on how the church is an alternative politics to the politics of power and violence which the state always seems to represent. I could go on, but perhaps that's a close enough summary.

Anyhow, I picked up a book which had been sitting unread on my shelf for a very long time, God and Politics: Four Views on the Reformation of Civil Government. The four views style themselves "Theonomy", "Principled Pluralism", "Christian America", and "National Confessionalism". I'm only half through at the moment, but it seems thus far that each position is well within the reformed/puritan tradition of emphasizing a positive view of OT law in political analysis. Their differences, to this point, are not really radical ones.

While I don't know what I would have made of this book had I read it ten or fifteen years ago, I suspect I would have seen Bahnsen (theonomy) as the "good guy" and the others as wrong insofar as they diverged from him. At this point I find myself thinking that none of them have come to terms fully with the question of why a "christian" view of politics should focus on America.

Sorry for the rambling, long winded nature of this. If I was more systematic I would have thrown in lots of relevant quotes and made this into a good 15 page paper, so be thankful its as short as it is.

Pseudonymity, Part Two

I had some additional thoughts on this subject to add. These were not thought of in response to the comments to the post below, but I think they do intersect in some ways. One of the areas of life and thought I've been working on in my thinking and reading in the last few years is the subject of habits, practices and virtues. This isn't the time/place to set that all out in a systematic way, but I think there are some lessons for this particular topic. Again let me assure you that I am not feeling judgmental of any of you who use pseudonyms, but rather just hoping that we can all think a little further about this stuff.

One of the "advantages" of intentional anonymity in internet publishing is that one can write about people with impunity. Many times I've had situations of frustration or anger or disappointment with people I deal with in various ways (home, work, church or elsewhere) that I thought I might like to write about. Given that I committed very early on to using my own name on this stuff, I have been learning just to keep my mouth, or keyboard, shut on most of this. There is always the possibility that someone will find out that I wrote about them. There was one situation last year that really impacted me emotionally, but it involved someone's shameful behavior and I definitely would have been out of line to write about it.

Thus one argument for identifying oneself is that it leads to the practice of restricting our natural tendencies toward gossip. I'm tempted to go off about the funny ways we use the word "truth" these days (often using it to mean, "here's something evil I'd like to tell you about so and so"), but I won't. Stanley Hauerwas has written very eloquently on this particular subject, and I'll try to look up some referenced for any of you who care to look them up, rather than giving you my half-baked version.

As for TulipGirl's point about the semi-permanence of our immaturity, I am sympathetic. I hope, though, that recognizing that we are publishing whenever we hit that send button will help us learn to be cautious. This is a problem that any writer has to face, and I know I've heard numerous writers express grief over things they wrote "early on". Establishing identity strikes me as the more responsible way to handle things.

I think it may be good or useful to have occasions and places to be pseudonymous, just as it is occasionally cathartic to go to a costume party, or perhaps a faraway city where we are not known, but there are also significant moral risks that go along with these things. Let us strive to be ourselves, to be wise and sober, and write responsibly. Now I'm starting to sound like one of those ads about not drinking and driving.

Identity, Anonymity, Pseudonymity: A Plea to Humanize the Internet

I've noticed a great divide on the internet among those who use their own names and those who do not. I want to say first that many of my favorite people to read on the 'net are writing pseudonymously. Having said that though, I think it is not helpful in the broad scope of things.

I remember debating a little bit with Seth, now no longer active, on the subject of whether one could rightly consider the people one interacts with in a positive way on the internet as friends. He maintained that friends was not acceptable, preferring the term "buddies". This bothered me a little. I think it is perhaps hard for any of us to define "friends" with any precision, but I certainly think of some people I have met through the 'net as friends, even if in a different sense than some of my more local friends. But it strikes me that the way one perceives this question is going to affect the reality, that is to say, if one perceives internet transactions as "virtual", as anonymous bit of data we might say, then perhaps the result will be a less human interaction. When I interact with someone who uses their own name, I have a stronger sense of dealing with a person, rather than a persona (or avatar, or what have you).

To draw one positive, and personal, example, I have enjoyed greatly interacting with Joel Garver in various ways over the last several years. This has been through email lists, discussion boards, his own blog, comments on my blog (and other mutually read blogs), and via IM. Joel has, especially on his blog, made some effort to root himself in his own space, that is, he writes from time to time about his church, his family, and his city and his workplace. All of this helps me seem him in a more real way, despite the fact that he is a philosopher, dealing in the more ethereal sorts of issues and topics.

The most negative feelings I tend to have are toward those who I only "meet" though comments left on various blogs signed with a pseudonym. I generally think to myself, "gee, this person isn't even willing to put his or her own name to this, and he expects me to respect his point of view." I find myself thinking that often no matter what the content of their expressed opinion is. While I recognize that this is not a very helpful attitude, it is an involuntary one.

To draw an analogy from another field (and my wife's bete noir), I will mention the problem of bad drivers/road rage. I am given to understand that a major underlying cause behind aggressive or rude driving habits is the insularity of the automobile. We tend to perceive others on the road as cars rather than as people. We will say things like, "that blue Honda just cut me off". Often we cannot even see the drivers. If we somehow knew that the blue Honda was driver by a friend or beloved relative, I know that our anger would be greatly reduced and our forgiveness more forthcoming. It is much easier to be angry at a fleeting inanimate object.

In the same way, it is much easier to treat badly on the 'net those we don't know, those we cannot see, those who will not have a direct impact on our lives. Seth, as mentioned above, took the position that this is just part of the fun. We can send our personas out to do battle with each other, recognizing that they are not "us", but more like our battle robots or something. Insofar as we distance ourselves from these battles, we don't get hurt. My preference is to go entirely the other way. To recognize that the internet is a means of communicating with real people, that people can be hurt by what they read, that we should all be quick to apologize and seek forgiveness for wrongs done "in here", and that we should be willing to be seen as human.

I think this will get too long for dealing with the topic or the risks associated with openness on the 'net, so I'll leave that unsaid for now. Will be happy to continue this at a later time.

The Book Meme

I pretty much never do these things, but this one is my speed.

Copy the list, then remove from it the names of any authors not in your home library, replacing them with names of authors you have. Boldface the ones you’ve added.
(I'm leaving Kundera on my list on the grounds of a short story in a lit collection, bold authors are ones I've read in the past year)

taken from John "W" Bush

1. Pascal
2. Walker Percy
3. James Ellroy
4. Anthony Trollope
5. Jane Austen
6. John Piper
7. Milan Kundera
8. Gene Wolfe
9. V.S. Naipul
10. William Shakespeare

YAAWHL (Yet Another Award Winning Headline)

My computer screen is a lot cleaner now.

At one time I used to beat up on Ron Sider's writings (and perhaps in his past writings there is much worth beating up on), but I have to say that on the whole this is an very fine article, my only quibble being that in the section on America's wealth in comparison to other nations he does nothing interesting with the information and additionally falls into the trap of thinking that per capita income is a relevant comparison with third world nations.

Finished two books while on my trip. One was Veiled Sentiments, a cultural anthropologist's account of her feildwork among Bedouins in Western Egypt. A couple of things really stood out here. One was that the society functioned in a stable and fairly happy way with a very high degree of gender segregation without the women seeming to feel like they were being mistreated. Studies like this need to be considered by those who find "misogyny" in biblical texts. Patriarchalism, and perhaps even sexism (in the sense that males would consider themselves in some way morally superior to females), but not really hatred of women.

The other aspect was the role poetry plays in Bedouin society. Abu-Lughod quotes a number of ghinnawas--short two line poems--she heard and recorded in her field work. The interesting part was that that "meaning" of the poem in that society was almost entirely a function of the social context. To put this in another, perhaps more comprehensible way, when she would ask someone what a certain poem meant, they would invariably respond by asking who said it.

The second book was a short paperback entitled Who is For Peace, made up of three fairly short essays on war and peace, occasioned by the 1983 Catholic bishops pastoral letter on the subject. On the whole the book was very disappointing. Francis Schaeffer wrote the first essay where he equates the ability to demonstrate strength with the obligation to somehow use violence to protect the weak. He does not really go to any length to show how this might be effective, draws a caricature of pacifism as the "do nothing" option, and provides no specifically Chirstian analysis of the problem despite calling his position a "Christian Worldview".

The second, and longest, essay was Vladimir Bukovsky's. He retold some of the horror pepetuated by the Soviet Empire and accused the peace movement of acting as an agent for the furtherance of totalitarianism. His statements, while seeming a little dated now, did have plenty of weight to them, since he showed that many of these "peace" movements were funded by the Soviets themselves, taking advantage of the desire to avoid violence on the part of the liberal West. My only response to much of this was that truth telling all around was certainly called for, rather than the intentional blindness many leftists seemed to have in the 20th century, but that that is not by itself a reason to oppose non-violence.

The third essay, and certainly the most rigorous, was James Hitchcock's analysis of the Catholic bishops letter itself. He argued that the whole thing was disingenuous. Part of his evidence was that the letter equated war and abortion (seeming to show that being a good catholic would involve opposing both of these), and yet it was received gleefully in many qurters where abortion was sacrosanct without raising any eyebrows. All in all this was the only portion of the book I found interesting at all. Was hoping to find a bit more intelligent interaction from some sort of just-war perspective, but I guess I'll have to look elsewhere.

Here's John trying to get a leg up on his future ecclesiastical career. 

Just got back home from Monroe. Pretty exhausted. Don't even want to think about what I have to catch up on right now. The conference was terrific. The real take home for me was that Wright's Pauline theology is not considered, at least by Dr Gaffin, as substantially different than reformed theology as it's been developed by Ribberbos et al. The structure of the conference, for those who were not there. Was for each speaker to present five lectures on the basics of Pauline theology--these were alternated between the speakers--as well as having three Q&A sessions where Wright and Gaffin would ask each other questions then answer a few submitted by the attenders. The mood of the whole conference was quite friendly. I got the feeling that a few people wanted to see some sparks fly, and there were, of course, a few points of disagreement, but both men genuinely seemed to appreciate each other's work and felt that their perspectives were ratheer similar.

Daniel Kirk has pointed up the main point of contention that Wright raised about the way Gaffin portrays Paul. To put it as quickly as I can, Wright felt that not enough attention has been paid to the idea that Paul sees the work of Christ as the culmination of God's work/covenant/what have you with ISRAEL, rather than a general timeless sort of thing. That would need to be nuanced a lot more to be fair, but it gets to the heart of the matter.

I doubt I'll have much more to say about the conference, since I have a lot less of an emotional/political/vocational stake in it than many other attenders. It was great to see quite a few people whom I had only encountered online heretofore, such as Tim Gallant, Barb Harvey, Kevin Bush, Jim Jordan and many others.

A good New Year to you.

Yet another article on the risks of risk avoidance, this one in a case where the stakes are quite high. If you read this and find yourself interested in a more thorough treatment, I highly commend the PBS Frontline special (you'll have to find it yourself) called Harvest of Fear. They did a great job of presenting all sides and letting people speak for themselves, which of course made one side look like total idiots.

From the International Partnerships HQ:

December 27, 2004
Dear Friends,

Thank you for your continued prayers for Ukraine! We still haven’t heard the final count of votes, but as I am writing this we know that with 99.89% of votes counted Yuschenko (good guy!) wins by 8 %! We are VERY happy and VERY excited! We are also thankful that God allowed us to be participants in making this victory! It is such an awesome privilege!

Ps 3:8: “From the Lord comes deliverance, may your blessing be on your people”.

“Ukraine has been independent for almost 14 years, but it became free only today”, said Yuschenko at 3:00 am while speaking to 50,000 people that gathered on Independence Square to celebrate victory together. Thousands of people spent the whole night there as one big family, cheering and congratulating each other. Nick and I wished we could be there too, but kids were sleeping and we just couldn’t go. Yuschenko finished his speech with his usual words: “Glory be to God!”

We spent most of last night between TV, internet and phone calls to friends trying not to miss any important details of what was going on as the voting places closed and committees started counting the votes.

We trusted the Lord because we knew it was all in His hands. Our prayer for Ukraine was similar to one in Ps 130:5-8: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning. O, Ukraine, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love. He Himself will redeem Ukraine from all their sins.”

But even though we gave all our concerns, dreams, hopes to God I have to confess we could not help but worry. Two of our staff, Tolic Korzhov and Igor Samohin (from Odessa team), went to Donetsk (a very dangerous place during these elections) to be members of election committees there. We were praying for their safety as we heard about cases of Yuschenko’s representatives in Donetsk being beaten up or kidnapped.

We were also concerned about threats that we had heard from Yanukovich (the other candidate ) that if he doesn’t win there will be 35,000 self-organized armed men coming to Kiev to defend him. The Orange Revolution has been peaceful so far and even though we now know that a couple times our existing president was very close to giving orders to the military to attack the crowd, he didn’t dare do it. But, these threats from Yanukovich sound very serious since everybody knows that there are criminal gangs standing behind him.

When we heard results of exit polls last night and then results of actual vote count we rejoiced! This is what the Orange Revolution was for - transparent and honest elections. But it’s still not over.

Yanukovich announced that he is going to try to prove that elections were not legitimate and will appeal to Supreme Court. He has no chance to win, but it seems that his strategy is to further destabilize Ukraine. Please pray that he will just give up and let Ukraine enter this New Year with new hopes and optimism, instead of the frustration and irritation everybody is feeling right now toward him.

We also want to ask you to pray for people in Eastern and Southern regions of Ukraine. I think we shared with you earlier that propaganda in those regions tried to set people there against the rest of Ukraine. They were successful. There is a great deal of aggression in those regions. My brother’s wife’s parents live in Donetsk region. They call their daughter and verbally attack her on the phone. Our relationships with many friends we have in Donetsk are very strained.

Half of IP teams are in the Southern and Eastern regions. They tell us about a very heavy atmosphere of fear and aggression. They say it feels like darkness.

Pray that we can love those people in the East and South so much that they see the truth. During the revolution when men from Eastern Ukraine came to Kiev, people here took food and warm cloths to them and won their hearts -not with logical arguments but with love and care. We need to keep winning with love those people who have lived in informational isolation during these past couple of years. As Romans 12:21 says: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”

Please, keep praying for Ukraine! I see the other part of my country full of passion right now. People who participated in the revolution are inspired by victory, they are proud of making their contribution in changing the future of Ukraine, they are full of hopes and optimism! This is wonderful! But we know that if people just put their hopes only on the new president (even a good one like Yuschenko) eventually they will get disappointed.. We don’t want our people to fall into despair again. We know that what they really need is Christ; only in Him their hopes are secure.

Pray for our staff both in those regions that are in darkness of fear and aggression and in those regions that are in joyful celebration of victory. Pray that God will give them wisdom to use whatever circumstances people are in to help them find Christ.

Thank you again, our friends, for being with us through your prayers and support! We hope you feel how God is greatly using you in bringing change to Ukraine! You are in our prayers too!

In Christ,

Nick, Maia and IP staff

We spent a lovely Christmas Day at the Nelson's with the 6 of them and our 2 Russian friends. Plenty of food and drink and sweets. We contributed a new game we picked up called Balloon Cup.

As an aside, if there's a Games Galore (or similar store) in your area, the clerks there are very knowledgeable about games and can recommend things for whatever taste or needs you have. The fellow in the Raleigh store got out 3 games and ran me through sample play on them so I could see how they worked.

I'll try to post my favorite books of the year here in the next week. One difficulty is that many of my favorites I loaned out, so they are "out of sight, out of mind." I'll try my best though.

My wife begged me to post this one. This is from my friend Ted. Ted has been studying some advanced technology field or other, but has been working as a rabbit farmer to make ends meet (and also because he likes rabbits). I know we shouldn't laugh at grammar mistakes and such, but they make me smile. Here it is :

Hello Paul!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
My best congratulations on the occasion of the coming New Year and Christmas. I wish you and your family be happy, healthy and wealthy. May all your dreams come true! I hope you are all well. I am very good. In December 16 I had finished my University. I am very happy about this. Now I have holidays and search a work. First elections in Ukraine was falsify. Every day we had many strikes. Now we have criminal government, and I believe we change government. We have good chance to change life. I think you know about situation in Ukraine. I hope new elections will be more fair. We have many observers from many countries. Our candidate Uschenko can change life in Ukraine. Many people support our candidate because they don`t want criminal goverment. Americans have liberty country and I believe after 26 of December Ukraine will have liberty country too. This strikes unite many people and gave hope and faith to live in prosperous country. We have had orange peaceful revolution. Many people, cars and houses have orange materials. It`s cool. All churches are praying for Ukraine and I believe God helps us. I saw pictures of your baby it is interesting. I hope all will be good.
God bless you!
Ted

Many of you have expressed concern over this post from a few days ago. I'm finally able to bring you a little bit of video to show what we were dealing with.

A bit of an economic view of Santa. via Chris O'Donnell

Nothing says winter in the great north like exploding zambonis. Would be a good name for a band as well.
[edit video available here!]

One of the things I enjoy about our area, especially over the last several months, is some of the local programming on WUNC radio (our NPR affiliate). One show is called Back Porch Music, featuring an amazingly broad variety of american folk music, music of which is just fabulous. The other, more recently in mind, is a state issues program called The State of Things. Episodes I've enjoyed lately have featured authors James Ellroy and Tom Wolfe.

Today they interviewed a man named Donald Duncan who is employed as story teller-in-residence by the Krispy Kreme Corporation (I thought about spelling it Korporation but didn't like th initials). Mr Duncan is a retired UMC pastor and now full time story teller. When asked how his work was different than that of a motivational speaker, he responded that stories are a sort of mirror which show us things about ourselves in a way that slips past our defenses. I believe he mentioned Nathan the prophet in this regard. So much of what he said seemed relevant to the things I've learned in the last few years regarding narrative theology.

I wish for all of your sakes (and mine as well) that WUNC archived and made these shows available on the web, but I believe they do not right now. Another reason for you to move to North Carolina I suppose.

[edit: they do make it available here.

Ha. It turns out that the name Trinity Foundation was already taken. Key article quote:

"It's a strange fact, but when you study the Scripture seriously it brings out all this stuff in people," Bloom says. "You'd think you were going to read the Book of Ephesians and suddenly someone was saying, 'Oh, my crack-addicted sister came over last night and slapped my daughter.' And that's what you ended up dealing with."

or this:

Later, at some local dive, he'd ask Anthony what all the ruckus was about. "Romans. We're still studying the Book of Romans," Anthony would tell him.

"What specific aspect of Romans is causing this level of interest?"
"Well, we were talking about your place in the body of Christ. And I told one guy his place was to be a pimple on the ass of the body of Christ. I just said it. It just came out."
"And he didn't agree?"
"A lot of these people are clinging to their miserable little self-images. They don't understand that it's about God. It's about them, but only the part of them that contains God. They still think they're special."


If you don't know what I meant in my first line, trust me, you are the better off for it.

On a serious personal note, my son just had the largest bowel movement in the history of the western world. I think we're going to have to burn the house down and start over.

I hope y'all notice that my son can find middle C here with very little help. Ok, maybe a lot of help, but for 3 months old I say its pretty good.

With thanks once again to my friend who shall remain nameless (Kirk Nelson), I point you to an article on the Presbyterians, Free Masons, and Kenyan Iconoclasm. I couldn't make this stuff up, really.

Just found the website of my old piano teacher, now working as a composer. I'm enjoying the music samples quite a bit. He was a great musician, great pianist and very nice person. Hope he does well.

I bet this is getting pretty heavy traffic, but you should probably read this story on Anthony Flew. My favorite part is (atheist) Richard Carrier reassuring his followers that its only a minimal god Flew is believing in. No cause for alarm.

I think the interesting idea in this is that a philosopher and pretty much lifelong atheist would find that a) the evolutionary explanation for the origin of life was not credible, and thus b) there must be a god. I guess some of the traditional arguments still work.

If I thought Psychology Today published articles like this one all the time, I would subscribe in a heartbeat. I really couldn't agree more with the general tenor of the argument. Kids, I believe, cannot learn unless given the possibility of failure, with its accompanying pain.

I've been constantly amazed as a new parent with all the "safety" items which are now considered mandatory (either legally or socially) which did not exist when I was a child. Undoubtedly some are good, and with an infant you do have to be quite careful to prevent serious harm, but I have to think that all the insulation from pain has to have negative developmental results, as the article would suggest.

In our small group Bible study last week we were discussing Mark ch 4, which contains this passage:

21He said to them, "Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don't you put it on its stand? 22For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. 23If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear."
24"Consider carefully what you hear," he continued. "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you--and even more. 25Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him."

I asked people what they thought Jesus meant by the lamp imagery in v 21. BTW, I wasn't leading the discussion, but we're fairly democratic, so they let me ask my own questions sometime. Someone answered that Jesus was saying that we should live our lives in public in such a way as to draw attention to the gospel (or words to that effect). It occurred to me while I was reading the passage that that interpretation desn't seem to make sense at all within the context. The light here seems to be revealing things which are secret. The broad contextual idea seems to be preparing for the judgement of God. Anyone else thought about this particular verse?

I am, despite what you might hear from my wife, an acquisitive person. As you might know or have guessed the area where I allow the most free rein to this vice is in the acquisition of books. I've been relatively disciplined about this over the last year or so. I've tried to work out a plan where I'm pretty much just buying books from my amazon wishlist, thus cutting down on impulse buys. I allow myself to add freely to that list, but I restrict my purchasing. What I have been doing is allowing myself one used book purchase off the list each month. I also get occasional gift certificates (from my amazon visa card and actual gifts sometimes) which I'll use to purchase new books.

I've been keeping more or less to this plan. I'll make exceptions for odd things like library sales, or books I can use for my profession. I just get frustrated a bit looking over my wishlist and thinking how long it will take me to get to some of these books. OTOH, I've got maybe 70-80 books in hand that I haven't yet read, so it's not like I'm running short of material. Still, I wonder if I could allow myself a small raise in the old book budget. Maybe every other month buy $25+ to get the free shipping or something.

Anyone else fret over their book budget? Anyone else HAVE a book budget?

Links all updated today. This is pretty much the list of blogs actually on my favorites sidebar in IE, so they are what I actually check regularly. There are many, many others I check occasionally, through y'all's links, and my list is always in flux, but I really hate updating this stuff, so if you made this cut, you are doing fairly well (or I owed you a favor or something).

Calling All Geographers: Your Country Needs You!

My friend Andrea points out that the US is doing pretty badly in the geography olympics. Last check we were at 118 (Ukraine was up at number 10--those smarties). Do your civic duty. You can play up to three times each day.

A few thoughts on Paul Owen's recent post on dialogue in Acts 17.

1 Mr Owen seems to equate, with no particular argument, the Greek dialogizomai with the English "dialogue". While it might be possible to translate the word that way, the word generally means reason or argue. The fact that in English the word means a conversation between two people doesn't mean the Greeks always used it that way. In any event, we don't actually see any dialogue (in the modern sense) in the passage. We only see Paul speaking and the Greeks passing judgement on him in a general sort of way.

2 What Mr Owen calls dialogue here seems to me to be better referred to as "rhetoric". What we see illustrated is Paul's usage of the standard means of persuading others. This, of course, involves winning them to your side by arguing from some premises you know them to hold. Of course Paul did not let the Greeks determine the style, the content, or the direction of his remarks. Since the result Paul wanted to see in his audience was a total upheaval in their worldview, it would not suit to argue within their categories of thinking, but rather to use some of their terms to subvert their own thinking.

I think we would do well to think more than we do about rhetoric in the modern world, and some of Mr Owen's comments in that line are certainly helpful. But, on the other hand, we mustn't miss the fact that Paul, like any other scholar of his day, studied rhetoric formally, that is to say he practiced from early on the various means and styles available to persuade people of a point. the only place in modern american society I see this going on is in sales training (or perhaps some of the cults).

3 While dialogue may be commendable, it seems odd to praise it and yet not allow comments on the post.

Keep getting emails from Ukraine today. From the sounds of it, we are getting better quality and faster news here than they are there, but it all seems to match up. Apparently pretty much everything has shut down there. My 13 year old friend said that all the schools are closed. I think she was a bit disappointed since she's such a good student. Please pray for a peaceful resolution to their election problems.

On the random-live-journal-picture-generator-page I'm finding lots of random Ukraine pics. Here's one of Yanukovich and Yuschenko supporters getting along well enough to have their picture together. No idea what the text says though.

I found this very interesting. I've been reading Walter Brueggeman's The Prophetic Imagination, which talks quite a bit about the idea of empires (Egypt, Rome, Babylon, and Solomon) freezing time into an eternal now. Fascinating stuff. I highly recommend Brueggemman if you haven't read him yet.

I've been pretty well glued to the news from Ukraine, thus my lack of blogging. I've gotten a few emails from friends in Ukraine in the last day or so letting me know that things are tense but alright so far. I really don't know what to expect to see. I think perhaps the most likely thing at this point is a revote with a bit more transparency, but who knows. The idea of Yanukovich just ceding the election seems a bit too much to ask for.

A thoughtful article on personality tests by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell, who writes for the New Yorker, is the author of The Tipping Point, which I just finished this week and highly recommend. There are plenty of other interesting looking article on his website, so poke aound.

I've gotten about 30 calls this week from people trying to set me up with credit card payment systems. If I get one more I think I'll scream. Got an ad in the mail about it today too. There must have been some big event (some legal change as a result of the visa/mc v Walmart suit?) that kicked this off, but it sure is annoying. Anyone else having this problem?

It seems like this story really needs a punchline, or at least a moral.

One of my high school friends--which is to say someone currently in high school, not someone I went to school with--has started a "guys' movie night" at our church. I think this was the third or fourth week, but it was the first one I was able to attend. I'll give you a clue about the film we saw, it had a magic fish, and the line "love and hate are two horns on the same goat".

Unfortunately, that phrase is easily googleable, so you could find out pretty quickly that I'm referring to the 1958 Kirk Douglas pic, The Vikings.

Kudos to Christina for finding this great Jerusalem Post article on a roadmap to peace.

I really like this line of argument. As I have been thinking about the issue of marriage definition (and I suppose we've all been thinking about it), one of the nagging and difficult to define issues is the one of commitment. What legal forms of commitment can/should be attached to marriage? Also, if "gay marriage" begins to become a legal reality in various parts or the whole of our country, how many people will decide to become "legally gay" for the purpose of obtaining benefits of some kind? I'm afraid this will all be getting only messier over the next 20 years.

If you, like us, are not entirely sure what to do for Thanksgiving this year, here's an alternative which involves very little wear on your oven or teeth.

Today in my reading queue I got to a book on ecumenicalism and utopianism (forget the exact title, by one Peter Beyerhaus. I found it on a sale rack one day and it looked well worth the 88 cents. Beyehaus is a German evangelical theologian (how many Theologians have both Tubingen and Trinity (Deerfield, IL) on thier resumes?) and missiologist who has been an eyewitness to many of the ecumencial missions conferences of the last 40 years. It seems that the book is about the split which has developed in the ecumenical movement between the conciliarists and the evangelicals. I diecided to look up his name on google top see what I could see. The top response in English shocked me once I started into it. Apparently (really) vast conspiracy theories are not limited to politics (though if you stick with it you will find the standard Rockefeller/CFR references of course).

I forgot to mention that I enjoyed meeting this fellow a couple weeks back. Very interesting person.

Quite an article here on environmentalism and economics.

I'm not sure if this is a reversal of the early Christians under Rome or the story of Daniel. What do you think?

A little election day humor to lighten things up.