Archive for August, 2009
Quarreling About Words
Friday, August 14th, 2009
My friend Taylor Williams recently pointed out a verse I hadn’t really given much time to before: 2 Timothy 2:14.
Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen.
I often find myself frustrated over arguments about words. They seem so pointless and divisive. It’s nice to see the thought in one of Paul’s letters.
We Need More Sentiments Like This
Friday, August 14th, 2009
… on both sides! I’ve been trying to (gradually) expand my blog readings to include folks whose worldviews I don’t agree with as much, and occasionally I’ll find a gem of common sense and human decency, like this post on The New Republic’s blog The Plank. I’m not sure if leftists would agree, but I think Ramesh Ponnuru and some others (not everyone, unfortunately) on National Review Online are also good at giving the benefit of the doubt to the other side and having fair, thoughtful debates without compromising their positions. At least they give that impression. If only all political debate could be like this.
In fact, it’s easier to concede points to the other side when you don’t get the impression that they’re out to destroy you. Your personal pride is less of an issue. An environment of mutual respect makes it easier, I imagine, to arrive at something like the actual truth.
Allan Bloom
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind until I read the essay that presaged it over on National Review Online. It’s an awesome read (although kind of dense), and not as long as the book. (For those who’ve never read Bloom, his book is an exploration of the modern philosophical environment found in universities – how the “democratic ethos” has waged war on the pursuit of truth, among other big, important issues.)
I also find it interesting how, in spite of Bloom often being claimed by conservatives, many liberals aren’t at all hostile to his arguments. I found this interesting article in the New York Times trying to claim Bloom as a friend of both left and right, and I think it makes a number of fair points. Bloom, being a classicist and lover of the quest for virtue, was not necessarily a friend of populism – and a certain breed of modern conservatism, represented by, say, Sean Hannity or Sarah Palin, relies heavily on populist sentiment. I’m not really big on that part of conservatism either.
Nor am I big on the idea of “the market” as a good in and of itself. As far as I’m concerned, capitalism, being essentially “freedom,” is the freedom to do good or to do bad. Such freedom is necessary but not sufficient for good to occur. Capitalism and democracy are not intrinsically good – they’re better than the alternatives in lots of important ways, but they’re not enough. And there’s certainly a great deal of evil that such freedom allows – evil that has to be fought. So those particular arguments against conservatism don’t much bother me. (Christ is higher than politics, after all.)
So I guess all this to say that I’m heartened that folks from both sides of the political spectrum can come together around Bloom’s writing – if this article is representative of anyone on the left other than the author. I hope so.
Reading “Surprised By Hope” By N.T. Wright, Part 1 (I Hope)
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
I’m not very good at reading theology books. I’m not a big reader to start with, but theology books are even tougher to get through – very rarely have I found a book that I actually thought, after reading, “Wow! That was enlightening/useful/unexpected/good in some way!” I think I had those kind of thoughts about Mere Christianity, but that was back in like the 7th grade.
Not that there haven’t been times where I’ve longed for some wise believer to be able to make sense of things for me – the Bible is not the easiest book to grasp, and there’s lots of potential for misunderstanding and self-deception. But the “wise believer makes it easy for me” thing just doesn’t happen. Too often you get books that start by telling you how “shocking” their conclusions are and generally not leaving you to make up your mind about their arguments, or spend a lot of time trying to elevate issues that struggle to feel like they matter, or tell smarmy anecdotes, or belabor obvious points for chapters upon chapters, or hide seething judgmentalism, or any number of things that leave me going, “Is there any wisdom in the entire world of Christendom? Anywhere?”
N.T. Wright’s book What Paul Really Said was one of the rare books I really enjoyed reading, although I think I didn’t (and still don’t) really grasp his point. He spent a good deal of the book trying to elaborate on what was meant by “the gospel” and how it was larger than what we usually mean when we say “the gospel,” but his thoughts didn’t gel sufficiently. Nonetheless, he seemed to be the scholarly, wise believer I was hoping for, so I kept reading over certain passages trying to figure out what he was really getting at. I’m still not really sure.
I’m not really enjoying, however, Surprised by Hope. Nonetheless, I hope that by blogging my thoughts about it as I read (slowly), I’ll be motivated to actually finish it. Surprised by Hope is about heaven – or really, about the resurrection, and how there’s an important difference between the two ideas. Wright tells us that our beliefs about the resurrection matter because they affect our engagement with the here and now.
There’s truth in his arguments, I suppose. He elaborates for a while on how vague, syncretic, strange, and mixed-up the average Christian’s view of the afterlife really is. There’s really no arguing with this.
Where I find myself questioning his thesis is on the idea that any of this actually matters. He argues that our belief in a disembodied heaven versus a bodily resurrection coincided with, and also inspired, Christianity’s disengagement from efforts to improve society. He hasn’t convinced me – at least not yet. It seems improbable, because I don’t give a flying small mammal’s posterior about the question – either way could be right and it would affect me emotionally not the slightest. The idea that God is in control and will reward righteous behavior and show mercy to those who believe is really the big, important point. The details seem to be (a)beyond our comprehension, and (b)irrelevant.
I’ve always hated arguing about eternity – as though it were possible to stick a concept like heaven or hell or the soul or divinity in a box and reason about it in some productive, not-intrinsically-stupid way. God has revealed things to us, and we know pretty much what God told us. Arguing about the nature of hell beyond “it’s going to royally suck and you DON’T want it, whatever it is, to happen to you,” is silly. Arguing about what eternity looks like for the saved beyond “it’s going to be really awesome and, whatever it is, you DO want it to happen to you,” is silly. Arguing about whether we have “an immortal soul” is silly. Arguing about the trinity is silly. It doesn’t leave a lot of space for intellectualism, but I shed no tears for that.
So, at least, as of midway through Chapter 3, Wright hasn’t convinced me that he’s not just piddling around in silliness. He hasn’t yet offered any evidence other than a sort of vague correlation that our belief about this particular afterlife-related question is related to our view of social justice. It seems more probable to me, at least at this juncture, that if Christians disengaged from trying to improve the world, it’s because they came to feel that they owned the world – the Constantinian problem. They became a fundamentally conservative force – preserving the power they had acquired – rather than a force for change. I don’t know that evolving (or devolving) beliefs on the nature of the afterlife had anything to do with it. It would surprise me, at least.
Now, this could certainly all be premature on my part. Part of me hopes it is, and I’ll get to write a “I was wrong and stupid about N.T. Wright’s book” post. Hopefully, I’d be tough enough to own up to it. We’ll see.
A Promising Story
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
There’s an article in the Washington Post on a Harlem private school program (and then some) that seems to be having good results with children from problematic backgrounds – it’s encouraging to read, and I pray that stuff like this takes off.
I have to wonder, though, whether it might be defeating the purpose for the Department of Education to get involved in “spreading the model,” so to speak, since (as a conservative) I have to wonder whether the fact that this program ISN’T a bureaucratic, publically funded institution is part of the reason for its success in the first place (although the article itself is careful to say that the full success of the program is yet to be gauged).