Love

A poem for today:

Love

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I'd lack'd any thing.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit downe, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

-George Herbert

The Tio

I watched a PBS special last night about the workers in a Bolivian mine. They live on the bleak foothills of a mountain, and men and children make the trek up the mountain to pry minerals from the mines. Many of the mines have been active since the 17th century, and they are very nearly dried up. One thing struck me about their culture, though.

"Out here," one of the miners said, "Jesus is our Lord. We cross ourselves before we go to work." And indeed they did. They went to mass; they received the eucharist. But then they went into the mine, and they passed a stone crucifix. That marked the end of Christ's power.

"In here," he said, "Tio is our god." The Tio is a stone statue that resides somewhere in every mine. Tios look like devils, with horns and inset green crystal eyes. The Tios were erected by the Spanish conquistadores to frighten the Indian miners into working, and the Tios' effect remains strong. When the miners first work in a new mine, the foreman will take them to the Tio, and the miner will decorate it with necklaces and offer it alcohol, coca leaves, and cigarettes. They bribe the Tio, and then they pray to it for protection.

The documentarians interviewed the town priest. Among the dirty miners, the priest stuck out as a model of cleanliness and order. Throughout the entire documentary, he was never shown without his priestly vestments. Only his missing teeth betrayed his peasant status. He stood in front of them reciting a vigorous homily: "Jesus will never stop loving you. No matter what." He pleaded, and the miners stood still, unconvinced. It wasn't Jesus's love they doubted, it was his strength. They simply didn't believe that Jesus's power could stretch into the black, dust-choked mine. The priest spoke of this in his interview: "They have to know that there is a God stronger than the Tio."

And after mass, every Sunday, the villagers would head out to the entrance of the mine. There they stood, dancing and celebrating. A shaman trotted in, pulling a white llama. He sat sharpening a knife on a rock, and then presented it into the air. He took the knife and cut the llama's throat, end to end, as women scattered to collect the blood in basins. The men smeared the blood on their faces, and the women threw the basins full of blood onto the entrance to the mine. "When we give it blood," a boy said, "the Tio drinks the blood, and then he won't want our blood, and we'll be safe."

And this is me. Standing incredulously before God and church, I return to my mine, a forgiven man with blood on my face, communion wine on my lips, still demanding justification.

All for the Constitution

For those of you who haven't followed the story, the FBI recently searched the congressional office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), after they found $90,000 in bribes hidden in his home freezer. Ok, so another congressman is corrupt; let the partisan mugslinging begin.

But that hasn't happened. On the contrary, congresspeople from both sides of the aisle have come out against searching a congressional office. They say that the office of a sitting congressperson has never been searched in the 217-year history of Congress. So what's the problem? Some members of Congress have suggested that this a serious separation of powers issue. They interpret the Speech and Powers clause of the Constitution as preventing any sort of search of a Congressional leader's office. For the record, the text of the Speech and Powers clause is as follows:

[Members of Congress] shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same, and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

So Congress takes that to mean that they are free of searches on their property. The courts, however, have held up the legality of the search.

One of the chief congressional opponents of the measure, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL), has run into some trouble since he began speaking out against the search. On Wednesday, ABC News reported that Rep. Hastert was "in the mix" in a justice department inquiry into the dealings of Jack Abramoff. The tip came from an anonymous source, and the Department of Justice immediately contradicted the report. Both ABC News and the DoJ are sticking to their guns on the story, but Hastert is taking it personally. He has accused the DoJ of intimidation. Hastert thinks that the DoJ is trying to scare him away from talking about the search. A bold claim.

So now Hastert is threatening to sue ABC News for libel and defamation, and, on Thursday, he sent a threatening letter, which says:

We will take any and all actions necessary to rectify the harm ABC has caused and to hold those at ABC responsible for their conduct.

So Hastert, who is so concerned about the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution, is much less concerned about the First Amendment. It's amazing how the Constitution is pliable for these members of Congress.

It's time that someone steps up and decides that Congress needs to do a better job of policing itself. Constitutional smoke and mirrors are no longer acceptable.

Sports and Causality

The illustrious Malcolm Gladwell has a great article in this week's New Yorker dealing with the perception vs. the reality of greatness, particularly in sports. You can find it here. The article talks about Allen Iverson and his remarkable basketball skills. Then it talks about how two avant-garde basketball statisticians, through many man-hours of plugging and chugging, have made a startling revelation. They state that, although his statistics are good, Iverson does little to contribute to his team's success. They even ranked him as the 91st best player in the league in '00-'01, the year in which he won the MVP. Ouch.

This goes against everything that basketball fans see and think. They know he puts up 30 a game and has remarkable quickness and drive to the basket. And while everyone who watches the NBA will admit that Iverson is selfish and isn't the best shooter, they certainly wouldn't rank him 91st in the league in his MVP season.

A similar crisis of statistics is happening in baseball. The traditional measures of player efficiency--batting average, home runs, runs batted in--are being replaced by OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage). Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane has made a career out of taking players with strong non-traditional stats and molding them into successful teams year after year. He manages to do this with a budget that is less than half of what the Yankees spend.

So what's going on here? I think the central problem of sports and statistics is causality. Things in life simply don't connect in cause-effect chains. They are messy and unpredictable. Mathematicians call this acute sensitivity to initial conditions, and it is explained in Chaos Theory.

Chaos Theory began when a meteorologist at MIT named Ed Lorenz made a computer program to simulate weather patterns. He would input some initial conditions, such as wind speed and temperature, and the computer would use basic meteorological principles to output new wind directions, speeds, and temperatures. Lorenz's machine became a fun guessing game around the office, as the MIT meteorology department would come in and place bets on which way the winds would blow.

One day Lorenz decided to re-run a series, so he re-inputed some parameters from a test the day before. To his surprise he got different results. Lorenz struggled to explain why he inputed the same numbers two days in a row and got different results each day, but eventually he figured it out. The second day's numbers were rounded off. Lorenz had assumed that a tiny, infinitesmal change to the original parameters would make no difference to the end result, but the opposite was true. Tiny, imperceptible changes in initial conditions make huge differences in results.

Nowhere do we see this more than in team sports. How can we quantify the value of a player like Iverson? We can't know, because we can't possibly know how much he contributed to the performance of a team on a given night. Chaos Theory tells us that the parquet of the floor or what the team had for dinner could have had a bigger effect. Would the 76ers have won more games if, for instance, Kobe Bryant or LeBron James were their star guard? No one knows, and conjecturing is dangerous.

That is why it is important to recognize the vast complexity of any complex system, be it a basetball team, a company, or the economy. The economy serves as an excellent example of the dangers of causality. I have heard people give credit to everyone from Ronald Reagan to George Bush, Sr., to Bill Clinton for the booming economy during the 90s. But the economy simply doesn't work like that. The boom-times of the 90s were accreditable to millions of factors, from the rise of day-trading to the spread of the internet. Assigning causality has become a tool for anyone who wants to make a point and needs numbers to back them up.

Thus Republicans credit the great economy in the 90s to Bush and Reagan, and the Democrats stick to Clinton. Likewise, Steven Leavitt, economist extraordinare, attributes the precipitous drop in crime in New York to abortion--a conclusion that I doubt a pro-life economist would have come up with. And likewise we have to realize that people who rank Iverson low probably have an agenda, too. I suspect that they miss the good old days of basketball, when shorts were short and players were unselfish. We need to realize that numbers are just as subject to bias as anything else.

Fear the Greeks, even when they bring numbers.

Bonhoeffer Quotes

Below I will list some quotes from Bonhoeffer that I've gotten from reading his biography. Check 'em out.

Against a political party in Germany that invoked the name of God to win votes:
"We read that a government has proclaimed that a whole nation is to be saved from collapse--by the Christian worldview. So we, individually and as a nation, are escaping from an inconceivable final catastrophe. 'In the name of God, amen,' is again to be the slogan, religion is again to be cultivated, and the Christian view of life is to be spread. How very meager, weak and pitiful it all sounds: do we believe that we will truly let ourselves be taken in by this 'In the name of God, amen'? That all our actions shall be governed by it? That we, rich and pooor, Germans and French, will allow ourselves to be united by the name of God? Or is there not concealed behind our religious trends our ungovernable urge toward...power--in the name of God to do what we want, and in the name of the Christian worldview to stir up and play off one people against another?...Our disobedience is not that we are so irreligious, but that we are so very glad to be religious...very relieved when some government proclaims the Christian worldview...so that the more pious we are, the less we let ourselves be told that God is dangerous, that God will not be mocked."

As he saw the onset of Hitler's rule in Germany and the church's acquiescence to it:
"We should not be surprised if times return for our church, too, when the blood of martyrs will be called for. But this blood, if we really have the courage and the fidelity to shed it, will not be so innocent and clear as that of the first witnesses. On our blood a great guilt would lie: that of the useless servant."

At a celebration of the anniversary of the Reformation:
"It should gradually have become clear to us that we are in the twelfth hour of the life of our Protestant church, so that not much more time remains before it is decided whether everything is over or weather a new day is to begin....The church that is celebrating the Reformation does not let Luther rest in peace, he must be dragged in to justify all the evil that is taking place in the church. The dead man is propped up in our churches, made to strech out his hands and point to this church, and repeat with self-confident pathos: Here I stand, I can do no other....It is simply untrue, or it is unpardonable frivolity and pride, when we hide behind this statement. We can do otherwise!"

At an ecumenical conference:
"We are more fond of our own thougths than of the thoughts of the Bible. We no longer read the Bible seriously; we no longer read it against ourselves, but only for ourselves."

At an ecumenical conference:
"The church must be able to say the Word of God, the word of authority, here and now, in the most concrete way possible, from knowledge of the situation, or else it will say something else, something different and human, the word of impotence."

Pacifism and Romans 13

Regarding my pacifism post, a friend quite rightly called my attention to Romans 13. What does Romans 13 have to say about war and pacifism? You can find the text here, and I will respond as best I can.

For a proper interpretation of this text--and, for that matter, of any text--we must start by closely examining the context. What is Paul addressing here? Why does he write? As we will see, these questions are of the utmost importance in deciphering this passage.

So who was Paul writing to? Paul says in Romans 1:7 that he is writing to "all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his servants." He is writing to the Christian church in Rome. When Paul writes to a church, he typically advises them about topics relevant to the church at hand. He does this in 1 Corinthians, where he repeatedly exhorts the Corinthian church away from their sexual immorality. Likewise, Galatians is written to address the Judaizers, who had been demanding that all the new Christians in Galatia circumcise themselves. So when Paul makes an ethical exhortation, it is designed to address some issue within that particular church.

So why did Paul feel the need to exhort the Roman Christians to submit to the government? The answer involves a wide cast of players, including the Roman Jews and Christians, as well as the emperor, Claudius. In the first century, there was still a strong connection between Jews and Christians. They often worshipped in the same temples, and the Romans had trouble telling the two apart. Paul himself frequently used the synogogues as a home base for evangelism. Many Christians were former Jews and maintained their Jewish commitments.

With the missionary movement in full swing, the Romans began to view the Jews, as well as the Christians, with concern. Respect for the Roman gods was crucial for order in Rome, and the Roman aristocracy became suspicious of these religious upstarts. In a dire move, the Roman emperor, Claudius, expelled the Jews from Rome (see Romans 18:2). He later allowed them to return, but he imposed the rule that Jews could no longer move into Rome in unrestricted numbers.

So relations between Jews and Romans were particularly tense. Add to that the Jews' unrest over the Roman rule of Israel, and the political cauldron in Rome was boiling over. The dissent spilled over into the Christian community, which consisted of many recent converts from Judaism. So what was this band of Christians to do in the face of a government that simply didn't like them?

According to Paul, submit. Paul's argument goes as follows: authority is set up by God, and authority does not exist without God's approval. When someone resists the authority of the government, they face punishment, for the government "does not bear the sword in vain." Paul uses as an example taxes, which one must pay or incur punishment.

I argue that this section is primarily an extension of Paul's "all things to all people" philosophy. He seeks to avoid political entanglement in order to win people to Christ. This was a successful strategy for Paul, who maintained generally good relationships with local magistrates and enjoyed the protection of the Roman empire. So what of the "submission"?

The word "submit" here, in Greek, means to place one's self under the authority of another. That means that on all manners morally neutral, one must place himself or herself under the authority of the state. Orders that are wrong, however, must not be obeyed. Paul was exhorting the Jewish Christians not to attempt to overthrow the state. That doesn't mean that Paul felt that every order the state issued had binding ethical authority from God. Thus Paul established obedience to the government as the preferred state, but obedience to God remained the first priority. So if God deems war wrong, then the state has no power to annul that.

What of the state "[bearing] the sword?" I have heard this interpreted that the state has the right to go to war, as long as that war is in accordance with just war theory. I don't think that makes sense in the context of Paul's argument. In Paul's argument he is laying out a clear cause-effect chain. If you are disobedient, then recognize that the government bears the sword, and you are under its punishment. Paul's statement here smacks more of a recognition of reality than of divine approval.

In conclusion, I argue that Paul here is encouraging the Jewish Christians--and, by extension--all Christians of all ages--not to cause undue trouble in their government. I do not think that he is making any statement about war or the government's authority to participate in a war. This passage does present a very real catch-22 for our modern times, however, in that we are not ruled by an emperor or a despotic dictator; we are ruled by ourselves. Submission is still the course of the day, but we have the right to overthrow the government every four years. A biblical definition of proper behavior for a Christian in a democracy is very difficult to come up with, simply because there were no democracies in the times of the New Testament. The only democracy that existed at any point during which the Bible was written was the Greek democracy, and the Israelites had no contact with it. So that is another issue, and one that I do not have time, space, or thought to deal with here.

Again, I welcome questions, comments, and criticisms, as I am still refining my ideas on war.

Thanks!

The French!

An article in the Telegraph, a major British paper, says that Europeans hate the French. Join the club, Europe. These days it seems that everyone hates the French, and no one hates them more than Americans. But the world consensus on hating France made me think. How could a people be so universally hated?

I always cheer for the little guy, and in that moment France won my heart. There was something charming in their snobbish aloofness, their sense of condescension, and their pretension. I couldn't figure out why I liked them so much, but I began to study them, and I believe I have solved the puzzle. I have cracked the Chirac code (although no novels are forthcoming).

Here's the theory: the French are kidding. That's right. Sometime after the French revolution, the whole country got together and had a meeting. It went like this:

"Ok. Here's the deal. Let's all wear berets. Don't tell Europe. Act like we really like them. We'll wear them all the time."

"That's rich! Pierre, you're hilarious!"

"Let's not stop there. We'll talk through our nose, and let's all act like we don't know English."

"Too funny. I got one too! Let's act like Francois isn't a sissy name."

"Classic. This guy is classic!"

That's my theory. The other half of the theory is that sometime around 2050 they're going to let everybody in on the joke. And we're all going to have a long laugh together.

Christian Pacifism

As many of you may know, I've been toying with pacifism for some time now and trying to put my ideas about it together. So I will take this opportunity to try to write up everything that I've been thinking about. Feel free to criticize.

The call of Christ begins with a fundamental divorce from the prior way of living. We see with this in Peter dropping his nets, or Paul becoming a missionary. In Luke 9:57-62 Christ himself sets down the call to obedience that Christianity entails.

"To another he said, 'Follow me.' But he said, 'Lord, let me first go and bury my father.' And Jesus said to him, 'Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.'" (59-60)

When Christ calls this man, the man responds with a perfectly reasonable request: let him bury his father first. But Christ says no. Leave your father to rot and proclaim the gospel. Such is the call that it dissolves all prior earthly connections.

Christ reiterates the all-consuming nature of the call in Luke 14:26:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."

In the call of Christ there is no room for earthly connections and loyalties; all must be brought under the command and word of Christ. It is said best at Matthew 6:24: "No one can serve two masters." The final call comes down to Christ and Christ alone. No peripheral commitments can be tolerated in the call of Christ.

So what's the upshot of this? This means that no national, international, or community commitments can trump the call of Christ. We are citizens of the United States, but we are first and foremost Christians. We do not make decisions as citizens, but as Christians. Flag-waving jingoism has no place in the life of a Christian. Likewise, Christians must remember that there is nothing inherantly good or Christian about the United States government. It is a Christian government only insofar as the people governing it make Christ-like decisions. As Augustine said, "In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?" In this way the US government must prove itself just every day.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the neo-orthodox theologian, suggested in his book Moral Man and Immoral Society that people tend to delegate their immorality to their governments. It is nearly impossible for me to imagine killing a person, but it is much easier to vote for my government to do it for me. In a governmental decree, people find justification for their actions. Thus those who would never kill feel comfortable shooting at strangers because war has been declared.

In order properly to discuss war, we must start by stating that the government has no power to justify an action. An action is good or bad because God decrees it to be so. If that is the case, what does God say about killing? The attitude of the New Testament is clear: over and over again it states that we must accept injustice from our enemies and respond with love; this is particularly evident in the Sermon on the Mount: "But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." (Matthew 5:39)

Also, there is a specific call from God himself in the Old Testament variously translated as "You shall not murder," or "You shall not kill." I do not claim to know Hebrew so that I can intelligently comment on the issue, so I will deal with both cases.

1) If the verse is properly translated "You shall not kill," then it is simple. Killing is wrong, and no state authorization will change that. Some would counter that the Israelites did lots of killing, throughout the Old Testament, and God seemed to approve. That's true, but the Israelites had an over-riding command from God to purify the land and to stave off invaders. Israel was the promised land, and God authorized Israel to take steps to secure it.

2) If the verse is translated, "You shall not murder," then the message is still clear. Murder is killing someone unjustly. Who defines justice? God himself. Therefore a killing without the approval of God is murder. Since God only granted approval for wars fought to defend the promised land, we cannot extend this approval to any other war.

Since the coming of Christ, there is no evidence that God approves of any war, violence, or killing. That being said, I will offer two exceptions to my brand of pacifism.

1) The first exception is what I call the hostage situation. The hostage situation is when malevolent forces have a group of people in captivity that they intend to kill unless action is taken. Germany in World War II is a great example of this. If someone did not act, Germany was going to exterminate every Jew in Europe. Since killing is the inevitable result either way, this situation demands action by Christians. Those Christians, however, must go in knowing the weight and seriousness of what they are doing. They are violating God's commandment and hoping that God will vindicate them. Only a person convinced of the righteousness of his action will take part in this kind of an offensive. Again, this is no place for self-righteous jingoism. One must approach his action with sober judgment.

2) The second case is a modified version of the hostage situation: self-defense. Self-defense is a modified version of the hostage situation in that the hostage is yourself. Again, great seriousness and humility are necessary when approaching such a situation.

I think these two situations are the only two where exceptions that can be allowed. I recognize that I am giving perhaps too much wriggle room in the hostage situation, but that is a risk I am willing to take, as I do not feel that every war is unjust. Some will contend that the Iraq war happened to free Iraqi citizens. An attempt to secure freedom or democracy or any pre-emptive motive does not meet the standard of the hostage situation. The equation must be as follows: there must be a group, in power, who wishes the death of a group of people and has no reasons not to kill them. The killing must be imminent.

That's why the Iraq war fails the test. There was no clear evidence that Americans or Iraqis would have died if Saddam Hussein remained in power. Since then, many Americans and Iraqis have died without clear purpose, especially after the WMDs were never found.

This description of my theory of war came out of my dissatisfaction with just war theory, which prevails in Christian circles but has only a tenuous connection with Christ. Please send coments, questions, or anything else as I am still trying to refine it.

Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange, and Reality

Recently, I have begun reading Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. I will do my best to summarize some of Baudrillard's ideas with a little Tim Dees flavor.

Baudrillard's philosophy grows out of the soil of capitalism. In capitalism we see the birth of money, and money spells the end of intrinsic value. A new car has vastly more intrinsic value than 20,000 green pieces of paper; however, the consumer will make this transaction, because he understands that the money has symbolic value. This is called symbolic exchange.

The trouble with symbolic exchange is that it is not just a system, it is a way of thinking. As people become progressively more comfortable with symbolic exchange, everything becomes symbolic. A purse no longer merely holds personal items, it holds layers of symbolic meaning. It can be used to make generalizations about the person's status, gender, sexuality, personality, age, and employment. For instance, if one sees a small, cylindrical Louis Vuitton purse, one can assume that its holder is a wealthy woman younger than 50.

In a pre-symbolic world, meaning and truth were clear. In a post-symbolic world, meaning and truth are marketed. Ancient farmers selected plows based on which plow did the best job of plowing. Functionality was the primary concern, and functionality was easy to quantify. In contrast, today we select cars based on what they say about us, and this statement is established through marketing.

Marketing was the subject of a recent Frontline episode. In that episode, one marketer was discussing his technique. The key to marketing, he said, is finding out what statement the consumer is making by buying the product. When one has established the intended statement, one can begin to find the "code" for that product. For SUVs, the statement was domination, and the code was enormous size, tinted windows, and imposing grilles. And in a world of symbolic exchange, all that makes sense.

In a pre-symbolic world, however, you cannot help but be struck by the gross impracticality and inefficiency of SUVs. As our world becomes more saturated by marketing, it becomes harder to see truth. The pervasiveness of symbolic exchange, Baudrillard contends, creates what he calls a "hyper-reality." In hyper-reality everything is more real than in actual reality. You see this watching movies. The snap of a Chuck Norris kick connecting with a henchman's face sounds believable, while a normal face-kick sounds bizarrely silent. In every way, movies create a new reality: girls are prettier, blood is bloodier, and danger is, well, more dangerous.

So what's the danger here? The danger is that the symbols trump reality. Hyper-reality displaces actual reality. Marketing replaces truth. And this has happened in many spheres of our lives.

There's an urgent, specific call to Christians embedded in all this cultural criticism. When Christians talk about cultural relevancy, they are sometimes just talking about how to market the gospel. Unhappy with the reality of the gospel, they try to push it into hyper-reality, and they communicate the gospel using techniques derived from marketing. The problem is that the gospel does not compress itself into 30-second commercials. And there are no "easy payments", or "no strings attached", or "satisfaction guaranteed." And when we try to market Christianity that way, we get Christians who simply don't understand the gospel. As Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. " You can't put that in a commercial.

Good baseball vs. bad baseball

For those of you who are unaware of major events in sports, the Yankees defeated the Rangers Tuesday night, 14-13. The Yanks trailed 9-0 in the third and made a startling comeback to win the game in the ninth with a Jorge Posada home run. Was this an amazing comeback? Yes. Was this good baseball? No.

The world of sports journalism seems to think otherwise. Sportscenter devoted its final five minutes to an in-depth recap of the game, and it made the front page of papers across New York. When discussing the game, a sober Rick Sutcliffe described the Yankees' gameplay as "smallball--station to station." By all accounts this was a great game. But let's look at the facts.

Good baseball demands good pitching. How could one describe the pitching in a 9 inning game in which 27 runs are scored? Terrible. That's a combined ERA of 13.50. Both teams batted .425. And who pitched? Stars? You be the judge: Koronka, Feldman, Benoit, Bauer, Mahay, and Otsuka for the Rangers and Chacon, Small, Villone, Proctor, Farnsworth, and Rivera for the Yankees. The starters both have career ERAs hovering near 5. Besides Rivera--who, incidentally, almost blew the game--none of these pitchers are worth paying the cost of admission at Yankee stadium to see. As for Sutcliffe's proclamation of "smallball," the teams left a combined 16 men on base.

The players are afflicted with the same mass delusion. Mark Teixeira, in a postgame interview, actually said, "[The game] had a lot of runs. It had good pitching, at times. It had defense. It had balls caroming off runners." While I applaud Teixeira's use of the word "caroming," a word rarely found in postgame interviews, the Georgia Tech grad is either crazy or profoundly confused. As for good pitching, out of the 12 pitchers who pitched, only 3 allowed no runs, and these three combined for a measly 2.2 innings. As for defense, it had 3 errors.

As for me, I'll be watching the Mets against the Cardinals or the Braves against the Marlins.

Recommended Reading

For lack of substantive things to blog about, I have decided to post a list of my 20 essential books. These are the books that you must immediately buy, read, and enjoy. I will include a brief description, so enjoy. (In no particular order)

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Simply the best piece of fiction ever conceived. If you don't have the time to commit to this rather lengthy work, simply read "The Grand Inquisitor." You know something's thought-provoking when I've heard atheists say that it is a great argument for atheism and Christians say that it is one of the best presentations of the gospel.

The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Life-changing, life-changing, life-changing. Bonhoeffer calls us away from the cheap, lazy, cross-less grace that popular Christianity is so quick to bestow and calls us to discipleship.

Poems, by John Donne. One of the books that I come back to over and over. Donne was a writer of style and subtance, coupled with enormous theological heft. The Holy Sonnets are one of the high-water marks of Christian literature.

Dogmatics in Outline, by Karl Barth. The title is demanding, but the book is a mercifully straightforward expression of everything that it is to be a Christian. He manages to write simply, beautifully, and with unrivaled depth.

Opened Ground, by Seamus Heaney. Seamus Heaney is the best living poet writing in English. His poems have a stroll-through-the-countryside pace with a sense of political urgency. "Mid-Term Break," "The Mossbawn: Sunlight," and "Post-Scriptum" are wonderful, moving, and smart.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Aldous Huxley was perhaps a bit curmudgeonly, even in his younger days, but his writing is brisk, subversive, and important. Every day more of his prophecies are fulfilled.

The Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning. Brennan Manning gets the gospel as only he can. It takes a man who spent half of his life as a priest and the other half as a drunk to begin to understand the love of Christ. The two most important books in my spiritual journey have been this and Bonhoeffer's Discipleship, and I think that the two must be taken in equal portions.

Christian Theology, by Alistair McGrath. The eminent professor of theology at Oxford swings for the fences with this invaluable reference work. If you want to understand the questions of theology, go here.

St. Francis of Assisi, by G.K. Chesterton. It's a toss-up to decide which Chesterton to include. Orthodoxy and the Everlasting Man are great, and also highly recommended, but St. Francis has proved to be an excellent companion on the road of faith.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. By all accounts, a book I should hate. I hate fantasy, and I have no interest in reading 800+ pages for leisure. But I did, and I loved every minute of it. This is a book I feel very comfortable recommending.

Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan. Again, a toss-up to pick one McEwan book. I could have chosen Saturday, which is also excellent, or Atonement, which is perhaps a bit more polished, but I love the story of Enduring Love. It's weird, strange, dark, and disorienting, and it's McEwan at his most delicious.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, by Eberhard Bethge. Ok, I admit, I haven't finished it yet. In fact, I'm not close, but it is over a thousand pages. That being said, Bonhoeffer is one of the truly challenging figures of the 20th centuries. You cannot read his life without examining yours.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers. Eggers's book chronicles the true story of how his mother and father died within a month of each other, and then, at nineteen, he was left to raise his 10-year-old brother. He dates, pursues a career, grieves, and plays frisbee, and does everything in a style that is disarming, funny, and affecting. A heartfelt, genuine book.

Collected Poems, by Patrick Kavanagh. I felt that I had one poetry spot left and it came down to T.S. Eliot or Kavanagh. I went with Kavanagh because I get him a little more. His poems are deeply spiritual, moving, and, above all, Irish.

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. A book that no one seems to no what to do with. Critics are mixed about this little novella, and grizzled Hemingway aficianados can't seem to stomach the sentimentality of this wee fairy tale. I have been haunted by it for five years, since the afternoon I read it at my grandmother's house.

Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky. The only repeat author on the list. I really struggled about whether to include this, but no book, excepting the Ragamuffin Gospel and the Cost of Discipleship, has changed my ideas so drastically. This book made me care about the poor.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter. Yes, that was an umlaut. Hofstadter imbues science writing with all the joys of discovery. This book is challenging, but it is also tons of fun, and you wind up appreciating the length and width and depth of man in a new and unexpected way.

The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould. The eminent scientist gives us a healthy reminder that science is rarely objective and can be used for good or evil. I read The Bell Curve first, which Gould responds to, and The Bell Curve reiterates the immediacy of everything that Gould writes about.

The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith. JKG died just a few weeks ago, and his influence is hard to calculate. This book made me into a fiscal liberal, for better or for worse.

How to be Good, by Nick Hornby. Read Nick Hornby. He is funny, but always smart and challenging. How to be Good is my favorite, but don't forget Fever Pitch (which, by the way, has very little connection to the Jimmy Fallon movie of the same name), High Fidelity, or About a Boy. He is endearing and wise. The Washington Post once wrote: "He is a chronicler of the things that wrap themselves around our heart and will not let go." Wow.