More 10-second thoughts

10-second thoughts being about all I can muster these days, here are some more:

1. Does Terrell Owens have to take a pill every day to stay so stupid?

2. If you know what "OBHWF" stands for, you probably need to be thinking about new ways to entertain yourself after, say, 2007. And I wouldn't count on many dates to fill the time.

3. Only a couple more days until I get to start a solid twelve months of referring to my son as a "one years old boy."

4. If you added a food's quality of taste to its coolness of name, jambalaya would be champion of the world.

5. In descending order of hilarity, it's Guffman, Spinal Tap, Best In Show, and A Mighty Wind. But you can't go wrong with any of them.

Thoughts upon completing Harry Potter VI

Firstly, I'm pretty sure there are no spoilers in here. But if you're going to be a real baby with your definition of a spoiler (e.g., you think my telling you how good this one is compared to the others would be a spoiler), you should probably shove off now. But first, a piece of advice. If you find yourself reading the chapter titles in the Table of Contents before starting the book, stop yourself. I have never done this before and have no idea why I did it this time, but one of the chapter titles gave away the book's biggest surprise. It didn't ruin it for me, but if you're sensitive about spoilers, it might ruin it for you.

Secondly, my thanks to Lisa, who loaned me the book. She's doing something admirable (if crazy) and reading the book one chapter at a time with her son, who is visiting his grandparents this week. Hence her freedom to let me take the book after church on Sunday. Since there has been an unexpected pause in my Emergent Convention/Brian McLaren writing, I was able to squeeze the book in yesterday (well, finished at 2:30 a.m., technically "today"), which worked out nicely. Except that now I once again will have to wait two years for the next installment. Not sure what I'll do after that, since it will be the final one. At least Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) churns out his books yearly and was kind enough to plan a series of 13 books.


"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6)" (J.K. Rowling)

It's too early to make this judgment, really, but I think this might be the best book of the series. It's definitely right up there with Azkaban (Year 3, the only one that ever kept me up later than this one did) in my mind. The length is just right (whereas Years 4 and 5 were a bit too long), and the plot proceeds at an enjoyable pace, i.e., without any "Grawps." We learn a lot more about the HP universe, which is fun if a little alarming all at once. And although more questions are answered in this volume than in any previous one, the future is most uncertain as it concludes. Several times I laughed out loud, which I don't remember doing much in the past. This all makes for a satisfying read.

I like the philosophical/ethical twist that this year brings, too. Questions about free will in relation to prophecy and the role of vengeance in our moral construct arise at several points in the book. Nothing on the same scope as Boyd or Basinger, but still quite interesting, and carefully inserted considering it is, after all, a children's book.

I was appalled that there were two typos early in the book. The first was "site" instead of "sight," and I can't remember the second. And since I already returned the book, I can't tell you what it is. Sorry. But there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for this kind of nonsense. This is likely to be the top-selling book of the decade, and the publisher and editor couldn't stand to have a few keen-eyed people read it carefully before it went to press? Come on.

My favorite part of the book is that there was only one instance of Ms. Rowling's most annoying literary habit, excessive identification of the pronoun-antecedent relationship. Actually, that's inaccurate. There were many instances of this annoying habit, but only one instance of its most irritating form, the dreaded "he, Harry." I always got the sense that good ol' Jo doesn't give us English-speakers enough credit for being able to identify the person to whom the "he" refers. In this installment, unless I missed some (and I clench up every time I read it, so I don't think I did), it only happened once, and not until the last few pages.

The funny thing about writing about this is that there isn't one single thing I could say or do to make people read the book if they weren't planning on it, much less make them refrain if they were. That, combined with my rather considerate avoidance of any significant plot detail, means this probably goes down as the most pointless blog entry ever. But I liked the book a lot and wanted to write about it, so there you are.

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Emergent, Part 2

Part two of the PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly report on the emerging church movement has aired and is now online; the link is here. This time, there is a soecific focus on Brian McLaren and the controversy about some of what he says. (In case you missed part one of this report, that link is here.)

If you can stand to use the hideous RealPlayer, you can watch the whole report online. (Heh, it's not that bad; it's embedded in a browser window and all, but it ain't QuickTime...) Or they have nice summaries in the form of partial transcripts for each installment.

An old Holy Observer article

This article, which we originally published two years ago today, seems fitting as Scholastic releases Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tonight at midnight: The Holy Observer: Millions More Damned For Harry Potter-Related Sins.

Looking back, it could have been funnier, but then again, I was only 26 when I wrote it. My sense of humor is way more mature now. Oh well. I hope you still enjoy it.

[UPDATE: Turns out that since I am now 27, I was actually only 25 when I wrote the article. This proves my point even more strongly. Apparently my maturing sense of humor has not affected my math skills, however.]

Tiger and "Dashboard"

One of the cool features of the new version of Mac OS X ("Tiger") is Dashboard. This is a feature that whisks in several small apps, called "widgets," with the touch of a button. You can use them (to look up a word, find a Chinese restaurant, multiply some numbers, etc.) and then send them back from whence they came, with no need to load a full application. It's very handy. There is a cool demo here if you're not a Mac user and are interested in how it works.

The reason for this post is to inquire of my Mac-using, Tiger-running friends about your favorite widgets. Which ones do you use every day? Which third-party widgets should I try out on my system?

Here are the widgets I use.

Dictionary/Thesaurus: I use this several times every day. Indispensable.

Weather: I'm generally skeptical of meteorology. They're so often wrong that I don't see the point. But I like to know what the temperature is, and the graphics on this widget are pretty. I keep the 6-day forecast up for Rochester, and just the temp and conditions up for Las Vegas, just to see how nasty it is back there.

Stickies: I always liked the Stickies app in OS X, but I was bothered by it taking up space in my dock when it was open. Problem solved.

Address Book: Nice to have quick access to this info without waiting for the full app to open.

iTunes controller: Handy, but the response is a bit slow. Still, better than keeping iTunes itself open and having to bring it to the front whenever I want to skip a track.

Pac-Man: I used to play this game 2-player with my dad at the arcade when I was young and it had first come out. It's fun to kill a few minutes once in a while.

Capture: This is a great screenshot widget. If you ever use screenshots, go get this! It makes it so quick and easy, and allows you to capture the whole screen, a selection, or an individual window very easily, with or without Dashboard's shadow visible. Also, it exports to a variety of file types.

What great widgets would you suggest, Mac friends?

Emergent Convention Seminar: Pluralism Revisited

This entry is the second in a series of reactions to content from the Nashville Emergent Convention, which I attended in mid-May with my colleagues from Artisan Church. In each of these entries, I'll post a link to the audio file of the seminar I'm discussing. I will then provide a written summary and response to the content of the seminar. This series of entries is part of an independent study in the so-called "emergent church" that I am doing for the final two credits of my M. Div. degree at Northeastern Seminary. For those who might be curious or downright baffled about the "emergent" church, I recommend Emergent Village as the best place to start. [UPDATE: Another decent intro to the emergent church is PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly special, which can be found here.]

(A note to my regular readers: the posts in this series will be quite a bit longer than my usual posts, and you may very well find it more boring, too. This one in particular is rather lofty at points, and tops out at about 2600 words! You're most welcome to read it and comment on it, but I understand if you skip it. I promise I'll get back to slamming Microsoft, complaining about foolish people, and opining sarcastically about everyday life soon enough.)

Pluralism Revisited
Brian McLaren, senior pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, MD

If the emergent "conversation" has one distinct face, it is that of Brian McLaren. McLaren is a pastor, writer, and speaker whose work has inspired many thousands of Christians to think in new ways about how the church interfaces with culture. Though the folks at Emergent (McLaren included) hasten to point out that no one within Emergent speaks for everyone who is involved in the conversation, McLaren has become something of a father figure and, at times, a spokesperson for Emergent. Although he is certainly not old, he is still older than most of the other high profile emergent leaders. And when Larry King comes calling for an emergent pastor to appear on CNN, Brian McLaren is the one he calls. (Here's the transcript, if you're interested.) So even though Emergent recently named Tony Jones its first National Director, it is Brian McLaren who remains the face of the emerging church movement.

McLaren's best known books are probablyA New Kind of Christian (Jossey-Bass, 2001) and A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004). As an aside, I will also be writing a synopsis/review of these books for this project. I don't plan to publish that in this blog, but I'd be happy to share it with anyone who is interested in learning more about McLaren's writing.

This particular presentation was about pluralism, a term which has a handful of meanings depending on context. In this context, pluralism means a philosophical system that recognizes more than one ultimate principle. (McLaren's more specific definition will come later.) Pluralism is a very hot topic in the church right now, as Christians around the world struggle with how best to coexist with people of other faiths. When conservative Christians utter the word pluralism, they tend to emphasize it in that disdainful way, spitting the syllables out of their mouths like bits of rotten meat. As a Christian who has spent much of his life in conservative circles, McLaren's aim in this talk was to revisit the idea of pluralism and its consequences: to evaluate its origins and its place in the church during the emerging postmodern era.

Relevant Links:

www.anewkindofchristian.com
Emergent Village
Cedar Ridge Community Church
Audio from McLaren's presentation (link not yet active; coming soon, I hope)

Brian McLaren began his talk on pluralism by displaying a photograph of a bridge in Honduras that is resting, useless, next to the river it once spanned. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch changed the course of the river, rerouting it around the bridge. (The photo is distributed by www.off-the-map.org and can be seen here.) The image provides a striking metaphor for our times, when major structures and systems that once provided passage over murky and dangerous waters are no longer useful because the waters themselves have moved out from under the bridges.

Here is Brian McLaren's presentation in summary. The long italicized section that follows is a restatement of his presentation; it does not contain my own ideas or reactions. (That will follow after this section.)

At the beginning of the modern era, the Roman Catholic Church had a system for preserving moral order: the notion that truth resides in certain people—and thus, so does authority. Martin Luther questioned this system and argued that individuals are capable of understanding the Bible rightly, and—radical idea coming—that the authorities can be wrong.

The authorities believed that this rebellion would result in anarchy, violence, and atheism. Were they right? What if we are in a similar time today?

Questioning how truth is known and disseminated is not a new problem:

The Sophists (5th century B.C.) had skepticism about the ancient pantheistic myths, and said humans can’t know what is true; we can only know what works.

Socrates searched for a new theory of ethics.

Plato searched for the essence of all things so that all things may be truly known. For Plato, geometry was the basic knowledge needed to understand abstraction—to the point that tradition tells us that he had the phrase "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter" engraved at the door of his academy.

Aristotle shifted the focus from the essence to the particular, to substance. Biology and botany become the model: all things grow and become and move toward full development, and Aristotle taught that destiny is more important than present reality. In other words, what something "is" is less important than "what it is becoming."

Descartes, prompted by a series dreams brought on by the unrest between Catholics and Protestants in France, inspired a new epistemology (theory of knowledge) based on reason. The trouble being stirred up by French Protestants who doubted the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church was very unsettling to the devoutly Catholic and patriotic Descartes. Several fevered dreams led him to believe that God was giving him the message, "Use the weapons of the enemy to defeat the enemy." The "enemy" was doubt of the authorities.

All of this led Descartes to an experiment in which he would use doubt to defeat doubt. He locked himself in his room and pondered everything, doubting it all. His finding was the paradoxical idea that he could doubt his way to an undoubtable statement. That now-famous statement became the foundation for the new epistemology: “I doubt, therefore I exist.” We commonly remember this axiom as "I think, therefore I am," but this is too simplistic. In this context, "think" means "think for myself," which in turn means "doubt the authorities." So doubt, in this sense of the word, is the basis of existence, and that understanding is undoubtable.

This perfect, undoubtable statement functions as a foundation, and Descartes felt that if he build upon that foundation using flawless logic, he could build an "incorrigible" statement (one that is incapable of being corrected). His famous treatise Discourse on Method proposed a method that he hoped would allow Protestants and Catholics to come together on the basis of reason.

The summary of this brief intellectual history is this: For modern Christians to think that we're the only people in the history of the church to struggle with epistemology is ridiculous. It has been going on as long as people have been thinking.

But the larger point is that the consequences of Descartian reason have been tragic. White Europeans, the heirs of this legacy of rationalism, have wrought death and destruction everywhere. In the 20th century, in the center of the modern world, German Nazis committed genocide. The Stalinists in Russia were just as brutal. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the mistreatment of blacks in America, recalling slavery and echoing the conquest and mass murder of Native Americans. The scientific community began to understand extinction, and ecology entered mainstream understanding.

All of this led to a profound crisis on conscience: the knowledge that we white European are extremely dangerous. How could we do this? Had reason failed? Where did we go wrong? Some philosophers identified the problem as excessive confidence in the absolutism of our epistemology. Postmodern philosophers such as Jacques Derrida decried the universal systems and totalizing metanarratives of Enlightenment thought. (Although metanarrative means simply "big story" by denotation, for Derrida, it has a violent, domineering, ugly connotation: that grand stories trying to explain life are nothing more than disgusting propaganda used to control people and to justify atrocities.)

For centuries, Christianity has been controlled by absolutism. We can define absolutism this way: Upholding the conviction a) that one single explanatory system or view of reality can account for all the phenomena of life and b) that conceptions of truth and moral values are timeless.

Absolutism would be nice and comforting if it hadn't been at the root of so much evil. As it is, absolutism is like cancer: consuming, uncontrollable, and deadly. This metaphor will function well for a discussion of pluralism. First we must understand that absolutism is a terminal condition. It will kill us. How can we treat the "cancer" of absolutism? Theologians are increasingly turning toward the "chemotherapy" of pluralism and relativism. Here are definitions for these terms:

Pluralism: A condition in which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups are present and tolerated within a society, and the belief that such a condition is desirable or socially beneficial.

Relativism: A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.

These are the chemotherapy treatments for the cancer of absolutism. Remember, of course, that chemotherapy itself is toxic, poisonous, and risky. No healthy person should ever undergo this kind of treatment. In fact, many of the cancer patients who die in treatment die as a result of the chemo, not the cancer. But if left untreated, the cancer will kill, so patients take the risk. In this context, pluralism is an understandable alternative, if not a vital and healthy epistemology itself.

Here is a thought experiment that may help us understand that we Christians have moved beyond strict absolutism, even though we still want to reject pluralism:

Before the September 11 attacks resulted in the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, that regime destroyed several pre-Islamic Buddhist statues in eastern Afghanistan. The decision was met with international protest. If Christians were in control of Afghanistan, should they have done what the Taliban did? Most people would answer "No," but if that is the answer, we must not believe that the Christian metanarrative abolishes all other metanarratives.

In order to track the development of knowledge, it is helpful to adjust the way we think about how it grows. Human knowledge does not grow in a line; rather, it grows by rings, with each ring being a layer that adds girth and height. Here are several rings of knowledge, in historical order—offered without much explanation, though it should be fairly easy to think of cultural examples:

1. Magical/Tribal
2. Imperial/National
3. Historical/Progressive
4. Objective/Scientific
5. Colonial/Absolutist
6. Pluralist
7. Relativist
8. Beyond relativist??? (not yet discovered or articulated)

The great question for Christians at this time in history is this: Is the need of the hour to retract into absolutism, to stay in relativism, or to move beyond into the unknown? If anyone can provide a better alternative, it should be the followers of Jesus Christ. But we must repent of the murderous absolutism.

* * * * * * *

Response:

I'm not sure I agree that absolutism is a cancer, at least not in all its forms. Continuing on with medical metaphors, I see absolutism as more of a carbuncle than a cancer. It is ugly, annoying, and painful, and it can get infected. Certain extreme cases can lead to fatal complications, but it's not in the same league as cancer. I mean, I know some absolutists. My friend K. is probably something of an absolutist, but he's not out there cutting people's heads off or converting them at gunpoint. He's just a little...immobile on what I consider to be peripheral theological issues.

On the other hand, I'm also not sure I agree that pluralism is a poisonous and deadly chemotherapy. I see pluralism as the way things already are, and nothing to get worked up about. Of course other religions exist, and of course we should allow them to practice their faith! The idea that we shouldn't tear down ancient Buddhist statues is not all that perplexing to me. It may be the ultimate testament to the pervasiveness of the so-called postmodern mindset that I, a person who was raised in a thoroughly modern, conservative evangelical church, can think of no other way to understand my world.

Relativism, on the other hand, may be dangerous. In my mind, there is a difference between acknowledging the value and beauty of other religions and throwing up your hands and saying "It doesn't matter; everything is equal." That is to say, I want to reserve a special place for Christianity without reducing other religious and cultural expressions to rubble. In another seminar, a speaker (it may have been McLaren) observed that the early Christians struggled with how to allow Gentiles into the faith. What eventually happened, of course, was that they allowed converts to keep much of their cultural (and even philosophical and spiritual) fabric intact within the all-defining context of following Jesus. (I would also remind Christians that St. Patrick employed a similar strategy with the pagan people of Ireland.) The speaker went on to suggest that a similar allowance might be appropriate for Muslims and Buddhists with whom we share the gospel story: that we might be best to allow them to be Muslims and Buddhists who are followers of Christ, that stripping off all cultural identity causes irrevocable damage to the person.

Whether this is less offensive than outright relativism depends on who hears it, of course. Some people no doubt wonder what the point of evangelism in the traditional sense would be, considering this worldview. That's really the question for most evangelicals, isn't it? The jump from "Don't abolish other metanarratives" to "Don't bother to spread the gospel" is pretty easy to make, fairly or not. And if we're not spreading the gospel, aren't we ignoring the clear command of Jesus Christ?

To those who are deeply troubled at the idea of Muslim or Buddhist Christians, I offer some insight from a conversation with a friend, who said this of "traditional" evangelism: "I often wind up in the camp of 'Don't spread the gospel,' not in mind, but in action, because I don't see the value in burning others' stories to the ground on the altar of Christianity, and I feel as though most people's exposure to evangelical Christianity is just that. So, the pendulum has swung far to the left for me as a reaction. Working it back towards the middle will be good."

In other words, there is a very real sense among postmodern people that no evangelism is better than absolutist evangelism. If the only viable alternative for me and my peers is something else, something we might call "pluralist evangelism," is it wise to condemn it? Clearly there are no easy answers. But I've decided to throw my hat in the ring with the people who are at least asking difficult questions. Kyrie Eleison.

Fire

image uploaded using Flickr.

Everyone's fine. But it was a scary few minutes.

We were cooking dinner and feeding the boy some tofu and peaches when I noticed black smoke pouring out of the vent at the back of the stovetop. Then I noticed large yellow flames coming up over the rack where our bread was, um, browning.

I raced upstairs to get our fire extinguisher while Tracey called 911. I tore back down the steps, reading the instructions as I went. I haven't operated a fire extinguisher since 9th grade health class. (Don't ask me why I did then, because I am really not sure what it had to do with health.)

Tracey had taken Abel outside, because the smoke was really getting thick. When I got to the stove, I pulled the pin out and squeezed the lever. Nothing. I swore in terror and tried again. Ah, I had pressed the wrong place. This time it worked, and the fire was out in less than a second.

But now the smoke was even thicker, and on top of that, the chemical powder from the extinguisher was airborne. I heard the fire trucks arriving; never have I enjoyed that sound so much. (Or at all, in fact.) There were soon three trucks and no fewer than ten firemen in front of our house, all for a little flaming bread.

After complimenting us on getting the fire put out before any damage was done to the kitchen, they brought in an industrial exhaust fan and pulled out the remaining smoke and powder. There's still a lingering odor, and a little cleanup to do in the kitchen. But thankfully, we're all safe. And I will never complain about the sound of fire engines again. Well...that's probably not true.

On the fire lieutenant's suggestion, we bagged the soiled pasta and ordered Chinese.

This title should have had a pun using the word "justice"

Is everyone ready for a really ugly political battle over the President's Supreme Court nominee? I know I am! Mmmm, ugly political battle...

If you're thinking "Oh goody, he is going to tell us who he thinks Bush should nominate," you're bound to be disappointed. There are plenty of lawyerly types out there who would do a much better job on that than I. My comments will be more general.

So far, I don't like what I'm hearing from Congress on this matter. And it's likely to get worse, not better, as the nomination draws closer. Democrats are already murmuring about the consequences of a "hard-line" or "right-wing" conservative. I'm not sure, but I think I heard Ted Kennedy use the term "wingnut" on C-SPAN the other day. (Just kidding; I don't have cable.) There will be hell to pay, say some Democrat lawmakers, if the President nominates an ideologue to the bench. I'd like to think that the "extraordinary circumstances" clause in the deal brokered several weeks ago to stave off judicial nominee filibustering and the "nuclear" option would really be "extraordinary." A major ethical scandal, perhaps, or a judge who might be forced to recuse himself from cases about terrorism (Alberto Gonzales, I'm looking in your direction).

But I fear "extraordinary circumstances" might just be a code word for "conservative nominee." And although generally speaking, I would rather see a so-called "conservative" nominee than a so-called "liberal" one, I hope what I'm about to say is not motivated by my own moderately conservative political persuasion.

If Democrats don't want a conservative nominees to the Supreme Court, they should win the presidential election once in a while. You see, and I know this is a really difficult and little-known Constitutional principle, the President gets to nominate judges for court vacancies. That is one of his (or hopefully someday, her) rights and duties. The Senate gets the less powerful role of "advice and consent." Since the two stiffs the Democrats ran up against George W. Bush couldn't manage to defeat him, their party does not get to participate in the nomination process, only the confirmation process. (And the seats the bled off in the last few elections have made their role in that process less significant, too.)

Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a very liberal but consistent and articulate justice, to replace Byron White (a dissenter in Roe v. Wade), and he had every right to do it. He was the President.

All this talk of nominating someone who will "maintain the balance of the court" or "continue in the moderate legacy of Sandra Day O'Connor" is absolute, total rubbish. It is, to quote Phyllis Tickle on a different topic, "horse manure." The court does not have some innate balance to maintain. There is nothing that says a judicial nominee must be of roughly the same political persuasion as his or her predecessor. The symbol for justice is a blindfolded woman holding scales, not a yin-yang. It's the Supreme Court, not the force, for crying out loud.

So when this ugly battle begins, remember that judicial balance is an illusion, a diversion, a distraction employed by a party out of power trying to be powerful. Understandably, liberals do not want the court to become more conservative. The opposite is also true, obviously. In this arena of ideas, the balance of power is ultimately determined by the voters: by you and me and our friends and family. This is how it should be. Like it or not (and I'm sorta iffy on this myself), we reelected George W. Bush. Now it is time to allow him to do one of his jobs.

It really is mini. And it really was free!

uploaded using Flickr.

Or as Tracey put it: "WOW, it's smaller than your HEAD! Now can you please put that box out in the hall?"

Thanks again, Gratis!

But even more: thanks Amy, Andy, Bryan, Dan, Gail, Mom & Dad, Nate, Scott E., and Tyler.

If anyone else would like to get a free Mac mini, please check it out with Dan's referral link. He's the only one from my list still going for it.