Triumph of the Lackadaimonians

Langue!

2006-11-22T23:38:00.000-05:00

As an amateur linguist, I have spent the better part of my recent life dabbling in a few languages, and I must say that I've found a few that I thoroughly enjoy. Here's a quick list of languages that I love, and languages I hate.

Languages I dig:

1) Ancient Greek. It's like a giant logic puzzle. Nightmarishly complicated, but always rewarding and with an enormous and excellent body of extant literature.

2) Icelandic. Fun and jangly. While most languages are virtually unrecognizable from their predecessors 500 years prior, Icelandic has remained virtually unchanged since the 12th century. So a modern Icelander can still read classic Icelandic texts from way back in the day. Try doing that with English.

3) Latin. Your grandfather's language is still fun and erudite without being complex. It is the picture of Roman elegance, with straightforward grammar and a sound that is pleasant without being cutesy (see Italian). It's also a nice entry-level language to get you into all the other romance languages.

4) German. Yeah, yeah, I know. But it's so jaunty and idiosyncratic, and it is quite endearing once you get to know it. Also, I honestly think that there is nothing better than German poetry. If you don't believe me, check out "Mondnacht" by Eichendorff, which is genuinely beautiful.

Languages I strongly dislike:

1) French. Maybe I'm being overly iconoclastic here, but I just don't get the appeal of French. Of all the Romance languages, its literature interests me the least (Don Quixote, the Divine Comedy, or The Remembrance of Things Past--which one would you pick?). It's whispery and endearing, yes, but it's also nasal and awkward and very difficult to hear. Not to mention that we have them to blame for our horrendous English spelling.

2) Russian. This is a truly tone deaf language. I'm sure it could grow on me if I let it. But I simply don't intend to.

For languages I know almost nothing about but wish I knew more, see Dutch and Irish (Gaelic).

Saddam and the Kurds

2006-11-07T19:32:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging for the deaths of 142 Shi'ite villagers in Dujail in 1982. It seems that every community in every country reacted differently to the verdict, from the widespread criticism of the death penalty in Europe, to glee from Iraqi-Canadian ex-pats. I am not morally opposed to the death penalty, although hanging does seem an archaic means of execution. The bigger issue, I think, is that this could allow Saddam Hussein to avoid a trial over the Kurdish genocide.

For Saddam, the killing of 142 Shi'ites was by no means an isolated incident, but he killed Shi'ites randomly. He killed Kurds systematically. The al-Anfal campaign that Saddam conducted between 1986-1989 killed tens of thousands of Kurds and forced the relocation of hundreds of thousands more. He used poison gas against entire towns of Kurdish civilians. The Kurdish people deserve the right to force Saddam to sit and hear testimony from the families, wives, executioners, and everyone else affected by or involved with that wretched campaign. The Kurds deserve their day in court, and the world deserves to see a wicked man shamed once again.

(Not so) bright eyes

2006-10-28T02:12:00.000-04:00

I've been listening to the Bright Eyes song, "First Day of My Life." It's a touching, finger-picking love song with Conor Oberst's warbling croon and jangling guitar. But there's one line that really strikes me. It's when he says,

Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you'll like me.

It's effectively the last line of the song, and it sneaks in like a sucker punch to remind you that anything real or sincere in life is the exception. In that word, "Maybe," you're reminded that there's an implicit other half of the statement: maybe this time is just like every other time, and you won't like me. He can't write a love song with a straight face. He has to give a nod to brutal, harsh reality.

Welcome to the brave new world we've created. We can't grin at love without winking at rejection. And we undercut ourselves and write our second-rate love songs, and we'll whistle along, all the while knowing that we live in a world that we've given up on.

It's a peculiar nihilism.

The apple doesn't fall far from the....

2006-08-03T21:04:00.000-04:00

Marketing isn't just a force in our culture; it's the force. It's the organizing principle. And there is no greater proof than the popular conception of Microsoft and Apple. Everyone knows that Microsoft is evil. Google even picked their slogan--"Don't be evil"--as a not-so-subtle dig at Microsoft. Their public perception is so bad that no one defended them during their ludicrous antitrust trial, or in the suit's aftermath. That antitrust case was the low point of the lousy tenure of a lousy attorney general (not that Alberto Gonzales is much better). Let's review the facts of the case: Microsoft bundled Windows with Internet Explorer, and this bundling was deemed so repugnant to consumers that Microsoft was found in violation of antitrust law. Netscape was still easily downloadable on Microsoft's operating system.

Apple, on the other hand, makes it impossible to play music downloaded from iTunes on any non-Apple mp3 player. That's right, you bought the music, but you can only use it on their product, and iTunes has 70% market share. That's like if 70% of gas stations in America only allowed you to fill up Fords. Furthermore, they made a product (the iPod) that had a battery that died after 18 months. They knew the battery died after 18 months, but they neglected to tell consumers. When the first generation of iPods began dying, Apple offered to replace the batteries, but for almost the full price of a new iPod. It took a class action lawsuit to force them to replace their batteries for a decent price.

But the case against Apple doesn't end there. Printed on the box of every iPod is the phrase, "Designed in California by Apple." So if they're designed in California, are they assembled there? Uh, no. According to the Daily Mail, iPods are made in a factory in China where workers are paid approximately $50 a month. The workers live in dormitories which house approximately 100 employees each, and the "iPod city," as it is called, has a population of 200,000. The plant is closed to outsiders and is secured by Chinese police. Perhaps the most absurd part of this story was when Apple stated that its iPod factory was "completely in accordance with the requirements of Shenzhen labor supervision departments." That's right. Apple said that their factory stood up to the rigorous standards of Chinese labor laws, so everything was kosher. This story went almost unreported in the U.S.

The most shocking aspect of the reign of Apple, however, is the religious fervor that Apple's customers have for their products. Magazines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and every other form of media imaginable has sprung up to report exclusively on Apple products. And if you want to understand the full measure of Apple's hegemony, start explaining to an Applehead the evils of Apple's ways. They will (this is almost unvariably true) react emotionally and, at times, angrily to any challenge to Apple's dominance. It reminds me of the way Catholics respond to challenges to dogma.

Which leads me to conclude one thing: Baudrillard was right. Capitalism is not about choice or freedom, it's about the illusion of choice and the illusion of freedom. We think we have a choice, and that's what's so brilliant. We think that we pick iPods because they are the superior product, when we would probably pick them anyway. We pick them because the flashy commercials and impossible-to-miss white headphones (which, incidentally, are complete pieces of crap) convey a picture of life that is completely irresistable to American consumers. After a while the Apple tumor has metastasized until it can no longer be removed. It's wrapped around the fabric of American life, and its associations and semiotic chains are iron-clad. Apple has found a narrative. When you buy an Apple product, you are smart, trendy, techie (but in a good way), urban, and cool. Or at least Steve Jobs wants you to think so. But at the end of the day, Steve Jobs is chasing the same dollar as Bill Gates.

But maybe the difference is that we're all complicit with Apple. Microsoft came to power in spite of everyone's wishes. MS-DOS snuck up on us, and everyone hated it, but it took power, and then it was too late. The regime was established, and the only thing we could do about it was our tiny acts of rebellion: jokes, Microsoft-bashing, or, if you're the DOJ, prosecution. But we let Apple come to power. We invited it to reign over the hearts and lives of techies everywhere.

This case is like the rise to power of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. He came to power as a reformer, and he was a great reformer. Then he corrupted. Now he's a tyrant. It's difficult, however, for the people to stand up to the man they put in power; they realize that they're complicit in his rise. So it's easier to turn a blind eye upon his failings than to admit that you made a mistake.

Well I made a mistake. I bought an iPod. It's a silly product, and I was swayed by lifestyle marketing that told me that the iPod would make me cooler, happier, more fun. But I'm not going to sit by and defend Apple anymore. They can continue producing iPods in sweat shops and swindling American customers, but I won't be buying anything they make. Mr. Jobs, consider this a boycott.

Messianic Complexes, and all that

2006-08-01T00:51:00.000-04:00

Bono recently made a reference to his "Messianic complex." When I heard him say it, it sounded so flippant and foolish that I dismissed it as another instance of Bono's brand of rock star Christianity. But maybe he's onto something. By Messianic complex, he means he wants to come to the world and overhaul it, fix it, repackage it, give hope to the huddled masses, feed the hungry, and make the children laugh again. It sounds silly and prideful when you say it that way, but I want the same thing.

I want to matter, so desparately and cloyingly that I spend my nights staring into the blackness of the lights-out night, lying on the couch, iPod playing some wistful prog rock, and I sit convinced that I'm one neuron-fire away from the Big Idea that will change the world. I have assured myself that I have some weird cocktail of talents that I will one day tame, and then, then, then I will pull it all together. People will be inspired, hearts will be open, and I will matter.

And then there's Christianity: ah, there's the ticket! What better place to nurture a Messianic complex than the religion that coined the term. The message of Christianity is that the last shall be first, and that a single man can matter. That's what it sometimes sounds like to me.

And if you completely eviscerate Christianity, the hollow shell looks like that. It takes a genuine theological dwarf to talk yourself into turning Christianity into rugged individualism. But I do it every day. I stare at the crucified Christ, and I look him in the eye and say "Yes! You did that for me." And I celebrate as if redemption is a line on my resume. I have taken the cross of Christ and turned it into a first step on some ladder of self-importance.

It's a picture of the peace and humble submission of Christ that he goes on, day after day, and week after week, and lets me walk on him. 2000 years ago, Christ died. And if his corpse were still around, I would step on it, climb over it. That's the form of sin: staring at Christ in all his blessed humiliation, and asking for a little more. We hoist ourselves on our self-made crosses and stare down and furrow our brows. We look at God with disbelief, convinced that someone has to fix this broken world, and Christ sure didn't do the job right.

There are two kinds of Christians in the world. The people like me, the flailing saints, demanding that the world be fixed. We are so self-righteously upset by poverty and genocide and terrorism and a million social ills, and like petulant children we pray for God to fix it. And then there are the real saints, who lie face-down on the ground, palms toward heaven, praying for mercy, mercy, mercy.

Only the man who can smell the gangrene of his own sin can find any value in the cross. In that sad sorry rot, God can implant a soul that's clean, a soul that can breathe, if we'd lie still long enough to let it.

Seven Storey Mountain

2006-07-24T00:02:00.000-04:00

I am currently reading Thomas Merton's brilliant Seven Storey Mountain. You should read it, but in the meantime read these quotes:

"When I think of that part of my childhood, the picture I get of my brother John Paul is this: standing in a field, about a hundred yards away from the clump of sumachs where we have built our hut, is this little perplexed five-year-old kid in short pants and a kind of a leather jacket, standing quite still, with his arms hanging down at his sides, and gazing in our direction, afraid to come any nearer on account of the stones, as insulted as he is saddened, and his eyes full of indignation and sorrow. And yet he does not go away. We shout at him to get out of there, to beat it, and go home, and wing a couple of more rocks in that direction, and he does not go away. We tell him to play in some other place. He does not move.

And there he stands, not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad. And yet he is fascinated by what we are doing, nailing shingles all over our new hut. And his tremendous desire to be with us and to do what we are doing will not permit him to go away. The law written in his nature says that he must be with his elder brother, and do what he is doing: and he cannot understand why this law of love is being so wildly and unjustly violated in his case.

Many times it was like that. And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is that the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carrry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation."

The Darko Principle

2006-07-09T00:05:00.000-04:00

I've had this theory percolating in my head for a while, and it's starting to become fully shaped. It's something that I call the Darko Principle. The Darko Principle refers, of course, to Darko Milicic and the debacle that was the 2003 NBA draft. In that draft, LeBron James was universally acknowledged to be the best player, so the Cavaliers took him first. After LeBron, things got fuzzy. The second overall pick belonged to the Detroit Pistons, and they had a bevy of options for improving their already stellar team. There was a host of can't-miss former college standouts, including Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, and Carmelo Anthony, but there was one player who was a wild card: Darko Milicic. Darko played professional basketball in Europe, and scouts praised his "upside." Because he played in Europe, it was hard to gauge his talent, but scouts were in agreement that with a few years of development, Darko would develop into an excellent player.

So the Pistons took Darko. And now, a few years later, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, and Carmelo Anthony have developed into perennial all-stars, while Darko is still sitting on the bench (and not even the Pistons' bench anymore). So what gives? Why would anyone pick a guy who should develop into a great player when there are great players strewn everywhere? My attempts to explain this kind of madness are where the Darko Principle gets it genesis. The Principle goes as follows:

People prefer potential to skill, fantasy to reality, and mystery to clarity.

A corollary to the Darko Principle is the Dwayne Wade Corollary: When people make decisions based on the Darko Principle, they tend to make bad decisions. This logically follows, because decisions based on murky, vague, and hopeful data tend to come out pretty bad, especially when compared to decisions made on concrete, straightforward data. The applications of these two theories to sports are obvious, but I argue that we operate on the Darko Principle in our everyday life, and it always come out bad.

In economics, dating, psychology, or pretty much anything else, we see people exercising the Darko Principle every day. You see it in the way people naturally prefer stocks to bonds; they'd rather possibly make tons of money than definitely make some money. And I'd rather buy a CD from some artist I've never heard of rather than Thom Yorke, even though I know that everything that Thom Yorke has ever made has been terrific. We want new, different, unknown.

So the trick is spotting ourselves doing Darko thinking and reminding ourselves of the Wade Corollary. For inspiration refer to the following excerpt from the movie High Fidelity. Go and do likewise.

-That other girl, or other women, whatever, I was thinking that they're just fantasies, you know, and they always seem really great because there are never any problems, and if there are they're cute problems like we bought each other the same Christmas present or she wants to go see a movie I've already seen, you know? And then I come home and you and I have real problems and you don't want to see the movie I wanna see, period. There's no lingerie...

-I have lingerie!

-Yes you do. You have great lingerie but you also have cotton underwear that's been washed a thousand times and its hanging on the thing and ... and they have it too just I don't have to see it because it's not the fantasy ... do you understand? I'm tired of the fantasy because it doesn't really exist and there are never really any surprises and it never really...

-Delivers?

-Delivers. Right. And I'm tired of it and I'm tired of everything else for that matter but I don't ever get tired of you.

Darko just doesn't deliver.

Gender roles

2006-07-05T00:13:00.000-04:00

The German word for the Enlightenment is the Aufklarung, which roughly translated means the "clearing up." It means that during the Enlightenment the West performed a sort of spring cleaning on its ideas. I believe that we are now experiencing a second Aufklarung, but it is a social one, and, like the last Aufklarung, this one has a tendency to dismantle ideas recklessly, with the ravenous need to destroy of a mother cleaning out her son's closet.

One particular area that has been uprooted has been the area of gender. The movement happened so fast that many of us missed it. When I go to my father's hometown of Live Oak, Florida, to visit, I see a world of women told to be submissive, who often are full-time moms, while the husband provides for the family financially. At family gatherings, the women cook, clean, and dish gossip, while the men watch sports and grill meat. Areas of responsibility are clear: the woman manages the house, while the man manages the yard. When I was in this environment, the clarity of these spheres felt confining and freeing at the same time. I feel liberated because I understand what is expected of me: the yard must be kept up, money must be provided, and sports must be watched. If I can meet these simple conditions, I will meet the approval of my peers. The same impulses are enormously confining as well. There is an expectation of masculinity that is deeply troubling. Men cannot be nurturing or caring, they cannot play with the children or talk about relationships, and women cannot have a career or speak of serious things.

But then I return to my world, where women and men are hardly distinguishable, except physically. It's a more complicated, messier way to live, but it's not always worse.

Independence Day

2006-07-04T23:27:00.000-04:00

Today is the day, I suppose, where we think about the long sequence of events, both providential and auspicious, that went into the establishment of this American democracy. From the Boston tea party (which seems, in retrospect, more like a frat-boy prank) to the oft-overlooked Louisiana Purchase, this country is assembled from a million swirling currents, and they all run together now. The recipe is somewhat irrational: combine the Enlightenment, a small group of Founding Fathers with hearts of steel and minds built like British dreadnaughts, an economy teetering on the backs of slaves, add a dash of heavy-handed English government, and churn until revolution foments.

And it does us well today to remember the mixture of fortune and steely effort that brought us here. Benjamin Franklin, for instance, was the son of a candle-maker, a low-born tradesman, yet he conquered the worlds of printing and science, and he charmed the French in a way no American has done since. This is significant because he talked the cash-strapped French into giving the colonies enormous loans of money and troops. He could conduct himself with ease in the rural setting of the colonies, or in high society London, or in Enlightenment France.

That was his greatest gift: his hell-bent confidence. Benjamin Franklin--and the other Founding Fathers--believed that they belonged. There was a place at the table for this ragtag bunch of gentlemen. They didn't merely stand opposed to England, they stood opposed to the idea of England, its sense of aristocratic pietas that demanded that rank and class mattered. The American experience said that men were not their titles, or their lands; they had a right to make their way in life.

And 364 days a year, we blow hot air about American exceptionalism and the greatness of our democracy, and it turns into little more than political posturing. But maybe just this one day we'll sing songs and wave flags, and that'll be ok.

Silence before the cross

2006-07-01T00:29:00.000-04:00

When Christ was taken in by his captors, he faced a series of sham courts, complete with false witnesses and trumped-up charges. There he stood, a holy God, a battered man, being accused. And then he did the one act that we would never expect or accept. He got up in front of those vile men, and he said nothing.

In many ways, this act was the first shot fired for the gospel. It was an act that recalled everything Jesus did and foretold everything that Jesus would do. It was the first shot across the bow of death and sin. But I want to ignore it.

If there's anything that I want, it's something to say when the world accuses me. "You've wasted your life," they would say. And I would want to produce a resume, replete with acts of holiness and humility. "You're unloving and prideful," they'd say, and I would produce a wife of character and love, who respected me for who I was. "You're lazy and a waste of potential," they'd say, and I would point to my achievements.

But Christ's silence portends the end of all that. His silence says that God loves us, in a way we don't understand. It says that he loves us not because of what we've done, but because of who we are. Christ's silence means that we have nothing to say before the world anymore. The charges against us are made by a world with no authority.

And that's the hardest part: we have to learn to be silent before the world. That all our ambitions are doomed attempts to gain the respect of a world dying away. Paul said that everything that he'd ever done was all loss before Christ. Loss! That means all of his education, his accomplishments, his hopes, his dreams. Paul was a well-schooled aristocrat toiling away at a series of meager jobs, travelling from city to city, never able to settle down. One early account of Paul describes him this way: "a man little of stature, thin-haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of body, with eyebrows joining, and nose somewhat hooked, full of grace."
He was a man who was short, fat, bald, with a unibrow, empty of himself, but full of the grace of Christ.

Alan Paton and culture

2006-06-27T23:53:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in my basement, buried in boxes of books in need of shelves, lies a copy of Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton. Five years ago I deemed the cover irreparable, and I replaced it with duct tape. All that to say, the book is good. It's a novel about the tragedy of mid-20th century South Africa. Its brilliance lies in Paton's ability to see the enormous complexity of racial problems, and, peering into the blackness of the human heart, to see possibilities for reconciliation. He could, as W.B. Yeats said, "hold in a single thought reality and justice."

As Paton sets out the central conflict of the novel, he makes one statement that forms the thesis of the first portion of the book: "The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief--and again I ask your pardon--that it cannot be mended again." In this statement Paton caught the first winds of the gathering storm of globalization. The white man--and Western culture, and the global economy--have broken the tribe, and it will not be mended.

So we're left here, with fragments of broken cultures, baubles left over from something grand and important, reduced to a price tag, or a dance performed for tourists. I am tempted to say that globalization turned our world upside-down, but that's not the case. Globalization shoved our world toward the middle. What used to be a world of fragmentary, unique, patchwork cultures is being shoved toward a centerline. In many countries--including America--we can now speak of Culture with a capital C. Homogeneity has replaced originality, and that homogeneity, rather than feeling diverse, has come out feeling bland.

In America today many people will start their day with yoga, have Chinese food for lunch, and then watch the World Cup while they eat their dinner. These swirling cultural currents have left the Western world without a firm grasp on anything. Culture is something to be consumed, not possessed or experienced, so marketers hijack consumables from other cultures and sell them to Americans, who then relish their own hipness at being the first on the block to have tried the new Thai place.

But the tribe is broken, and it will not be repaired. So it's up to us to create a new culture, not based on consumption, but on digging deep into the mines of our creativity and coming up with something fresh, something unborrowed.

As Kavanagh said,

That in the end
I may find
Something not sold for a penny
In the slums of Mind.

Civil liberties and all that jazz

2006-06-26T22:32:00.000-04:00

While I will immediately admit that I am no supporter of the Bush administration, I don't buy the conspiracy theories. I've heard the left-leaning elements of the media carry on about how Bush is a war-mongering simpleton, or an oil-consumed, plutocratic nincompoop, but I just don't think so. I don't think he started a war because of a generational grudge, and I don't think that he destroys the environment just because he can. I really think that he is attempting to do his best.

That being said, there is one thing that does genuinely concern me about Bush, and that is his haphazard curtailment of civil liberties. The recent flap between the administration and some members of the press--specifically the Times--is an example of the Bush administration's attitude toward the smaller freedoms the constitution affords us.

For those of you not familiar with the incident, on Thursday the Times reported that the US government has a program in place that looks at records of international bank transactions in hopes of "following the money" to find out just who finances terror operations. Members of congress had been briefed on the program and found no fault with it; however, the program has not been tested in court.

Shortly after the report aired, a number of members of the administration--including Bush, Cheney, Snow, and a host of others--lashed out against the report, arguing that revealing such a program hamstrings the government's ability to conduct anti-terror investigations. Some even called for prosecution against the Times, and in particular against executive editor Bill Keller. Keller shot back against these calls with a letter, which emphasized that the Times considered thoroughly whether or not they should release this information, and that it was deemed in the public interest to green-light the story.

Bush's response to this story has been animated, calling the report "disgraceful." This has been an archetypal exchange between Bush and the press lately: the press reports on an anti-terror operation of questionable legality, the administration gets angry at the press for reporting it, and the schism between the administration and the press widens.

On one point I agree with Bush: revealing these programs may hurt their effectiveness. Likewise, revealing Abu Ghraib probably hurt the effectiveness of that institution, and revealing Haditha probably hindered the effectiveness of Kilo company. But these little inconveniences are the inevitable results of democracy, and they are to be celebrated.

The difference between the US and totalitarian states is that we believe that we have nothing to be ashamed of. We don't deal in misinformation, but in facts, cold and hard, and we trust the public to judge them appropriately. We stand by democracy because we believe that power corrupts, and that accountability is the only cure for the moral flim-flam of the demagogue. We believe that the morality of the many outweighs the morality of the few.

The founding fathers chose to allow a free and vigorous press because they stood by the idea of public oversight. Hopefully, Bush can understand that public oversight, while it is an inconvenience, is always a necessary part of a free and worthwhile democracy. While fighting the war on terror, we must remember not just what we fight against, but what we fight for.

Good ole Liz

2006-06-18T01:15:00.000-04:00

I have recently discovered Elizabeth Bishop, the poet, and I think that I could do you no greater favor than to point you to "The Moose," my favorite of her poems.

Just click here.

The Literary Culture

2006-06-09T02:40:00.000-04:00

I've been having this realization lately that text as a medium of communication is dying. To say this is sad feels trite. This is an atrocity. In a recent Time article, John Updike recounts his childhood, when everything was stacked with piles of books. Lending libraries were everywhere. He even remembers when departments stores had lending libraries. Those days are gone, and our great writers are dying. Updike is 74, Philip Roth is 73, Cormac McCarthy is 72, Toni Morrison is 75, Seamus Heaney is 67, and Don DeLillo is 69. Worse yet, all of these writers are feeling more and more irrelevant. Updike's new book, The Terrorist, feels awkward and feeble. He tries to portray an 18-year-old driven to Islamic extremism, but it feels so out of touch that I had to put it down.

Candidates are interviewing for the title of great young fiction writer, but all come with gaping holes on their resumes. Dave Eggers has yet to handle fiction with grace, and his po-mo cutesiness has proven to be an enormous handicap. David Foster Wallace is perhaps just a little too dark and a little too unreadable to find an audience. I'm convinced that Jonathan Lethem is holding back on us, but only time will tell. The sad thing is that even if these writers wrote a masterpiece, no one would read it. It would languish on book store shelves, and there it would die. I wish I could turn off TVs and force us as a people to learn to read again, to find margin in our days, but I know that's not possible.

The World Cup

2006-06-08T00:37:00.000-04:00

If you're not yet excited about the World Cup, you ought to be. The world's largest sporting event isn't just a bunch of teams kicking around a soccer ball, it's the discovery of national identity. In our soccer teams, we find reflections of ourselves: the German team is meticulous and perhaps a tad bit boring, the Brazilian team plays with spunk and a sense of fun, and the Americans just run until their legs fall off. That's where the fun comes in. The World Cup ends in an affirmation of one country's life--all of it--its culture, style, language, and everything else.

The Brazilians won the Cup last, in 2002, and it was a celebration of Brazilian culture--its sense of joy and fun, its carefree lifestyle, and its sense of blue-collar hard work. Ronaldinho, Brazil's best player, represents the apotheosis of everything it is to be Brazilian. He plays soccer like he dances at the carnivale, with quick feet and a giant smile. Likewise, Landon Donovan is the epitome of America: talented, never quite accepted in Europe, a bit petulant, but always playing his heart out.

And it in the World Cup that we find a safe microcosm for all our eccentricities, triumphs, and failures. The World Cup isn't just a bunch of soccer matches, it's a proving ground for our national character. Will we win or we lose--and how will we win or lose? Will we be out-thought, out-worked, or out-classed? Because at the end of the day, that's what the World Cup is all about.

And the great wonder is how everyone slips into the first-person plural talking about their country. Perhaps that's what makes it so special: in the World Cup we find a place where America is not an idea, or a government, it's a group of revolutionaries, always hustling, always striving.

Response from the Monaghan

2006-06-08T00:12:00.000-04:00

The Reidster responded to my previous post, and quite adroitly, I may add. An excerpt:

But slow down a tad and admit it - it would be cool if a 2500 sq ft house was purchased rather than a 5000. A 250K one rather than a 400K one...and the rest of the wealth given to the poor and the Kingdom. But I feel you brother, but maybe there is helpful practical advice for those following Jesus as Lord in the burbs. It is at least hypothetically possible, no?
Afterall, for some strange and mysterious contours of divine Providence...he did ordain that the suburbs be. Now, dear Jesus, Sovereign Lord, please help us to escape the burbs!!!

The POCblog. You just can't beat it.

Christianity and Suburbia

2006-06-07T02:15:00.000-04:00

In his blog, Reid Monaghan called my attention to this article, which is a review on two books about how to be a Christian in suburbia. So this is now a blog about a blog about a review about books. And before I talk about it, one quick caveat: I am not saying that it is better to live in or out of suburbia. God calls people everywhere. There is nothing noble about living in one place or another. So that being said, let's move on.

The book review covers a book by David Goetz, Death by Suburb, and a book by Albert Y. Hsu, called The Suburban Christian. A few excerpts from the article appear below:

Goetz identifies eight "environmental toxins" that plague suburbia and offers a spiritual practice to purge each toxin from your system and help you realize that "even in suburbia all moments are infused with the Sacred." By packaging his insights in this self-helpy formula—7 habits, 8 practices, 40 days to a more authentic Christian life—Goetz obviously opens himself up to criticism: this blueprint recapitulates some of the very problems of the suburban mindset that he is trying to offset. But I suspect he knew what he was doing, and chose the idiom to convey a subversive message to his target audience....

Consumerism goes hand in hand with suburban living. How can we "consume more Christianly"? Shop in locally owned stores; create holiday rituals that don't revolve around gift-giving; regularly fast, not just from food, but also from media, new technology, and new clothes; buy organic, fair-trade coffee produced by companies that don't destroy rain forests. (And if you agree with the skeptics who find the "fair-trade" crowd self-deluded, there are plenty of other ways to become a more discriminating consumer.) A basic guideline for simple living, says Hsu, is "to live at a standard of living that is below others in your income bracket. It you can afford a $400,000 house, live in a $250,000 one instead. Or, if you can afford a $250,000 house, live in a $150,000 one."

So that's the plan. 8 steps, buy the more expensive coffee at Starbucks, and all is well. What if Christ actually operated this way? It might have looked like this:

Jesus: "Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Disciples: "Jesus, we're really slammed, and this fishing thing is really taking off."

Jesus: "Ok, well how about this. Don't worry about following me, but at least use dolphin-safe tuna nets."

Disciples: "Done deal, Jesus!"

(high fives ensue)

The problem with suburban Christianity is the very message that these books preach. Christianity is not about wedging Christ into the empty space in your life on Sunday morning. It's not about requesting Christ's participation in your suburban lifestyle. It's about learning that Christ doesn't come along with you on your journey to the top of the corporate ladder. He leads, or he simply doesn't participate. The problem with these books is that they ask the wrong question: "How do I slightly change my daily actions to make them more Christ-like?" The question we should be asking is, "How can I learn to be obedient to God's calling, even if it means calling me away from lattes and picket fences altogether?"

Christ did not die on the cross because he bought fair-trade coffee or shopped in locally-owned stores. I think sometimes we skip right over the verse where it says that God will not be mocked. Indeed, he won't. The call of Christ is the upending of our lives, or it is nothing.

George Herbert

2006-06-03T01:43:00.000-04:00

I recently bought a beat-up little collection of the metaphysical poets from my local used book store. It has not let me down. One member of the collection, George Herbert, is first-rate. He wrote only theological poems, and did a darn good job of raising great questions and stating truths in profound and fresh ways. Check him out. And here's one for ya.

Marie Magdalene

WHEN blessed Marie wip’d her Saviours feet,
(Whose precepts she had trampled on before)
And wore them for a jewell on her head,
Shewing his steps should be the street,
Wherein she thenceforth evermore
With pensive humblenesse would live and tread

She being stain’d herself, why did she strive
To make him clean, who could not be defil’d?
Why kept she not her tears for her own faults,
And not his feet? Though we could dive
In tears like seas, our sinnes are pil’d
Deeper than they, in words, and works, and thoughts.

Deare soul, she knew who did vouchsafe and deigne
To bear her filth ; and that her sinnes did dash
Ev’n God himself ; wherefore she was not loth,
As she had brought wherewith to stain,
So to bring in wherewith to wash :
And yet in washing one, she washed both.

Love

2006-05-29T02:26:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-28T00:19:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-25T14:56:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-25T01:52:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-25T01:16:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-22T23:14:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-05-20T01:21:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-19T15:40:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-18T22:34:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-18T00:49:00.000-04:00

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.

First things first

2005-07-21T13:42:00.000-04:00

Most people only have one blog, or none at all. I, however, have decided that I will have two.

Begin eager anticipation.