Category: Culture

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In the Beginning–What Creation Means for Human Creativity (Part I)

The popular term, which began as a joke but lingered as a classic understatement, is THE BIG BANG.  It all began, they tell us, from a point infinitesimally small and dense.  That point experienced an unimaginable burst of energy, and here we are!

With some explaining to do.

Here’s another way to say it: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The first ten words of the Bible are infinitely small compared to the universe, but also infinitely dense, like the first instant of the Big Bang.  Its meaning spirals out like the arms of a galaxy.  Is it a summary statement of the rest of the chapter?  Or is it one side of the “gap”?*  Or does this verse establish the setting and protagonist of the story, in a manner similar to

Marshall Kane squinted as he stepped into the dusty sunshine of Dodge City’s main street.

There’s a character, an action, and a place.  But the first three words of Genesis establish something else: something vital, something we take so much for granted we don’t think about it.  In the beginning sets out the phenomenon of forward motion.  In other words, Time steps out and makes History.

In the beginning, God created the beginning.

What happens when I try to imagine timelessness.

There was no time before this, because there was no “before” and no “this.”  We can’t understand it; we must accept it, as children answer their catechism question: God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable.**  Some atheists pose the question, Who made God? as though it were unanswerable.  We laugh: No one!  A being who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable doesn’t have to be “made.”  But when we try to think through what that means, we stop laughing.

We can’t go there, to the place where God existed infinitely.  We can’t let go of time.  We have no way to even think about timelessness; those categories don’t exist in our imagination.  Genesis 1:1 establishes that we can only go forward.  We can’t go back, because there is no “back.”***

Neither science nor philosophy can say what happened before time—the words what and happened and before are meaningless outside a time matrix.  If there was a great explosion of matter from energy, we are part of it, and our minds still ring, however faintly, with the echoes.  Strangely enough, the human mind seems to hold within it an idea of something—actually, Someone—who is responsible for all we see.  All cultures at all times have passed on their notions relating to what sort of being this might be, and how he/she/it might have existed before everything.  After thousands of years of speculation, the possibilities boil down to three.  Which are

  • God existed as that incredibly dense point, and now inhabits the universe in every particle.
  • God existed as an unimaginably powerful Force, which arose somehow from eternal matter with which he (she/it) shaped the universe.
  • God existed as a relationship of three “persons,” co-equal, co-eternal, none before the other, whose mutual love is so dynamic and powerful it must find expression.  As a painter uses vision and craft to create an image, an author uses action and character to produce a story, a musician uses mood and tone to write a sonata–so God, using the relational dynamic of himself, tossed out the heavens and planted the earth.

NOTE: Since this is an investigation rather than a mystery story, I plainly state my preference for Theory 3.  Not only does the Bible report it, but all creation supports it, as we shall see.  Also, most intriguingly to me, it’s the theory we could not have made up.  Of all religions and philosophies, only one proposes a Trinitarian deity.   In only one does this odd, difficult, troublesome doctrine appear—which, once accepted, explains so much.

We still want to know a few things, such as, do “the heavens” include Heaven, or does it just mean “space”?

In the Genesis context, probably the latter.  With the creation of space (the heavens), there must of necessity be something not-space, and that’s Heaven.  How do we picture it?  Not accurately, for these are truly things too wonderful for us.  Still, for reasons yet to be explored, our minds are tirelessly forming pictures of things we can’t understand.

Suppose, rather than an ever-expanding sphere, the universe is hollow.  We can never see the end of it because like a ring it does not “end.”  It’s like a balloon that expands as we blow it up, with solar systems and constellations and galaxies strung along its surface, spreading apart as the universe grows.  The air in the balloon is not, strictly speaking, the balloon, but it defines its shape and keeps it whole.  That’s Heaven.

Or the balloon exists in an atmosphere, a negative space that hosts it without being it.  That’s Heaven.

Or, as ancient sailors believed about the earth, the universe is a flat plate you’ll fall off if you sail too far.  Beyond the edge is Heaven—a mystery, but also our destiny.

All we know is that it’s eternal, beyond time and space, and the angels are there.  I don’t make a fetish of angels, but they are persons of interest—the only extra-terrestrials we know of, whose story touches ours at several telling points.

But more of angels later.  For now, as the Bible directs us, we should turn our attention to our own homey, comfortable, mysterious, terrible, and beautiful planet.  What happened on the first day of creation?

Here are my thoughts: Where Does Darkness Come From?  Creation, Day One.

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Questions to think creatively about:

  1. Have you ever heard the expression, “land before time”? Can time exist without space, or vice versa?  Why or why not?
  2. Do you believe in God? No, seriously: do you find yourself sometimes not believing, even though you call yourself a Christian (or other “faith tradition”?)  Can belief exist alongside unbelief?  Is your faith mostly intellectual, or mostly emotional, or both?
  3. “There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment.  And yet it eludes us completely.  All the sadness of life lies in that fact.  In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passing through our head.  Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant” (Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel, p. 25).  What does “now” mean to you?  Does it seem as elusive as Kundera describes?  Do you find that “sad”?
  4. Next week, we’ll think about “Let there be light.”  But if God is light, where did the darkness come from?

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* The “gap” theory of biblical creationism proposes that Gen. 1:1 takes place during an indefinite, but very long, period of time, after which the earth takes shape during a series of six twenty-four hour days.

**Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q&A 4

***Time travel is theoretically possible (though unlikely), but only if we go forward—there is no credible mechanism for traveling backwards, wormholes and time tunnels notwithstanding.

 

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Nine Things the Church Needs to Understand about Art (and Artists)

Makoto Fujimura, “Still Point – Evening”
  • Art is not a separate category of human endeavor, like “business,” “psychology,” “pest control,” “education,” or “politics.”  Some men and women make a living by creative pursuits, and we call them “artists” (or dancers, authors, screenwriters, photographers).  But in the broadest sense, art is something we are all called to, as imitators of our creative Father.  Art is one way we experience life, and to pay little or no attention to it is to miss an entire dimension of human experience.
  • Artists are not special people—they’re just like you and me, with families, backgrounds, financial concerns, virtues, and sins.  Some artists like to think they’re special, it’s true.  They’re the ones who give “art” (scare-quote art) a bad name.  If God isn’t front and center as their Maker and Redeemer they’re likely to set themselves up as makers and redeemers of the culture, and with a whole lotta luck and the right connections, they might even get paid for it.  But church-member Michael who owns a share in the downtown gallery and teaches drawing at the local community college—and comes late to Sunday school and doesn’t say much—isn’t one of those.  He’s a guy with a particular vision and gift.  You should talk to him about it sometime.  Don’t be intimidated.
  • Art is not a matter of knowing what you like.  It’s a matter of seeing what you haven’t seen before, or hearing what you haven’t heard.  This isn’t teaching, exactly; art can’t teach.  It’s not a substitute for sound doctrinal exposition, but can act as a mediator between sound doctrine and life as it’s lived. Also,
  • Art is not a tool; it’s an encounter.  Bible-story pictures, chalk talks, extended metaphors serving as sermon illustrations—those are tools, direct and unambiguous, and they can be useful for getting a point across.  Art is by nature ambiguous and will affect each member of its audience in different ways, or not at all.  A story, a painting, a song or symphony doesn’t make points or teach lessons.  It sidles up to the individual and walks alongside for a while, leaving its companion a little more insightful or sympathetic, even a little more human, for that brief acquaintance.  More about that below.
  • Art is not an esoteric subject that only specialists understand.  Here again, some artists have muddied the water by creating a club of the like-minded for the benefit of each other—when they’re not stabbing each other in the back, that is.  Also for looking down on the rubes.  But most of us rubes can be taught to see if we are trained to look.  That’s one vital service artists can perform for their church body: sharing what they know and opening windows of understanding for the rest of us.  (Wednesday-night art appreciation class after the prayer meeting?  Why not?)
  • Art should be encouraged.  That appreciation class?  It’s not just for the ladies’ book club and the amateur painter, but also for the pastor and elders and their wives and women’s ministry leaders.  They should go.  And they should ask questions.*
  • Art, like everything else, stands in need of redemption.  That’s where artists need the church, as much as the church needs them.
  • Art can’t do everything (like teach or preach).  But what it can do, it does like nothing else: 1) awaken the imagination—the “bright wings” that gild ordinary experience; 2) illuminate what we already know, and breathe life into propositional truth; 3) unify the mind and heart.
  • Art is for all Christians, who are equipped to know, better than the secular-minded, what it’s for.  They just need to better understand what it is.

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*Come to think of it, the whole church would benefit if some time were set aside, once/quarter or once/month, for members to share about their profession: what it entails, how it benefits the community, how they do it for the glory of God, and how they might do it better.   Retired people and stay-at-home moms, too!  Think how much better we could know and encourage one another if we knew what occupied 1/3 of a brother’s or sister’s time!

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Sad Kids

At National Review, Mona Charon writes about an extensive study reported in the journal Translational Psychiatry: “Sex differences in recent first-onset depression in an epidemiological sample of adolescents.”  (Here’s an abstract of the study)  The sex difference findings are interesting—teen girls are twice as likely as boys to feel depressed—but the real punch to the gut is in the sheer numbers of kids who manifest severe anxiety, depression, and other forms of mental illness: about one in four.

Could this be due to more awareness of mental health issues, and better reporting? Less stigma or ignorance about depression, or even increased self-dramatizing among teens?  Maybe a little, but a pediatrician responding the Charon’s column on another website added an informal statistic that makes it real.  While reading, he checked his phone for the current status of the Emergency Department in the children’s hospital where he worked.  At that moment, 28% of patients were there for “suicidal ideation.”  “What Mona Charon writes about is the lived experience of every children’s hospital around . . . This is a national crisis.”

People were less depressed during the Great Depression.

People were less depressed during the Great Depression.

The two obvious questions are Why is this happening now? and What should we do?

As to why, social media, family breakdown, economic anxiety, political turmoil (it’s Trump’s fault!), and education all come in for blame.  But what do kids need that they’re not getting? Pretty much the same things we all need, which are

  • Meaningful relationships.  I would trace most of our social problems to no-fault divorce, which made the most essential social bond a matter of personal preference.  Since then, children have had the rug pulled out from under them.  Single-parenting is a huge predictor of all kinds of negatives, from low school performance to relationship failures in adulthood.  In the teen years, when kids begin the transition from parental relationships to peers and others (which should eventually lead to stable marriages of their own), social media is lurking for them.  Instead of bonding with friends, they bond with their devices.  Their real friends are their phones.
  • Meaningful education.  Somewhere in the early 20th century, public education began to divorce brains from souls.  Reductionism took over: humans can dream up whatever metaphysical system they want in their spare time, but at school, we’re all utilitarians.  Transcendence has no place in a melting-pot schoolhouse where not everybody shares the same religion or philosophy.  This wasn’t so obvious in my southern-culture elementary school, with our morning devotionals and music classes, but the trend was in place–it’s the subject of The Abolition of Man, a brief treatise that C. S. Lewis considered his most important work.  The intense focus is on academics now, to the detriment of the arts and even recess.  That’s because we’re educating brains, not people, and the supplementary education kids used to get from church or their parents is less likely to be there for them.
Those three summer jobs were at least as useful to me as the classes I took in school.
  • Meaningful work.  Who likes working?  I didn’t.  My mother had to push me out the door to get a
    job after graduating high school—otherwise, she said, no college.  I didn’t have the best reasons for going to college and no clear idea of what I wanted to do, but it was that or a full-time job.  Horrors!  Summer jobs were bad enough.  And yet, those three summer jobs were at least as useful to me as the classes I took in school: practical experience, being responsible, listening to instruction, getting chewed out when I didn’t.  (“At least you didn’t cry,” said my supervisor after one of those times, just before I escaped to the bathroom and bawled my eyes out.)  Every legitimate job is meaningful because it connects the individual to his community and creates a sense of obligation (as opposed to entitlement).  You show up; you do the job; you get paid.  Less than half of Americans get jobs while still in their teen years, and when they do enter the work force in their mid-twenties, they don’t seem to know what to expect.  I hear about millennials who have to be corrected carefully so as not to ruffle their feathers, and who get frustrated after eight months because they’re not “having an impact.”  Then there are those blue-collar dropouts who simply don’t show up.
  • Meaning, period.  Q: What is the chief end of man?  A: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question #1)  What can beat that for significance in life and death?  There you have it all: relationship, education, work—and heaven besides.  Even an atheist, whose philosophy offers him no objective reason for meaning in anything, can find it in family, art, democracy, benevolence, etc.  But it takes a strong will and other advantages, such a good parents, to find your own meaning in life once you’re turned loose to live it.   And if your life ultimately means nothing, why not OD on heroin and end it sooner?
We despise our youth, loading them up with the accoutrements of adulthood without expecting them to act like adults.

And that’s what we do: turn them loose.  A 16-year-old girl gets mixed messages about empowerment and victimization, while she longs for a loving relationship; a 19-year-old boy is told he’s toxic and unnecessary, while he inarticulately searches for some dragon to slay.  We despise our youth, loading them up with the accoutrements of adulthood (sex, cars, phones) but not expecting them to act like adults.

What to do?  Rescue them, one at a time.

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Spirit in the Qubits

Just when you think you might have a grip on Schrodinger’s cat, along come qubits.  I started hearing about this when a theoretical 7-qubit computer made the news in the spring of 2000.  Now teams are experimenting with a 20-qubit computer, and a 49-qubit machine is supposed to be just around the corner.  49 is the magic number that smashes the frontier established by classical computers (“classic” in the sense of classic Rock, i.e., less than 40 years old).  A 49-qubit computer will be able to solve mathematical problems far beyond the capacity of the swiftest AI today—specifically, factoring very large numbers.  Since most encryptions are based on factors of very large numbers, one practical effect of quantum computing is that no encryption is safe.  Yippee!

If I have my facts straight, quantum computing is based on two principles of quantum mechanics: that a subatomic particle can be in two positions at the same time (superposition), and that compatible particles affect each other even if they’re separated by millions of miles (entanglement).  Unlike classical computing bits, each of which can have only one value—either 1 or 0—a qubit can hold both 1 and 0, depending on its position and its relationship to other qubits.  Thus its capacity in combination is vastly greater and much more versatile than the clunky, value-exclusive bit.

Those are the facts, but what they mean and how they apply is beyond me.  Quantum mechanics gave us transistors, semiconductors, and laser technology, leading to personal computing, MRIs, GPSs, and smartphones.  Where quantum computing might lead is all the buzz, especially now that Google, IBM, and Microsoft (among others) are sinking tons of money into it.  Genetic manipulation is child’s play–why not just rearrange matter to create news substances?  Einstein was uneasy at the very thought of separated particles affecting each other—he called it “spooky.”  What if fooling around with subatomic consciousness takes us to the point where realities converge and universes overlap?

A culture that accepts “gender fluidity” shouldn’t have any qualms about shifting matter, but I suspect the idea makes most of us a little nervous, like Einstein. It shouldn’t.  No advance on the frontiers of science speaks to the reality of God better than the quantum revolution.  The basic theory states that two mutually exclusive propositions can be true—the cat is dead and alive, the particle is here and there—until the moment they are observed or measured, at which time they “decohere.”  It’s the observer who settles the issue of just where the particles are at any given time.

So, who’s observing the universe?  Doesn’t there have to be a conscious intelligence making it what it is?  Without intelligence, matter is a fog of particles, neither here nor there, randomly spinning.

Quantum theory is the basis for speculation about parallel universes and alternate realities and other notions that make the head spin.  To me, it’s the last nail in the coffin of the rigid materialism that began with the Enlightenment and ended sometime in the mid-20th century.  The theory of evolution is in thrall to materialism, but even rock-ribbed evolutionists will, I think, be forced to concede that something moves the earth besides physical mechanics.

What quantum reality resembles, more than anything else, is Spirit.  We are told that God, in Christ, upholds the universe by the word of His power (Heb.1:3).  Not only did He create, He also maintains.  The particles “decohere” when God observes them; the universe is particular and discoverable because all things are under His powerful gaze at all times.  If He were look away (literally or figuratively), it would all come apart.

The testimony of nature supports the testimony of scripture, and if you ever wondered about certain gospel paradoxes, the subatomic nature of matter offers a clue: Christ can indeed be all God and all man.  Salvation can be a matter of free will and predestination.  The Trinity can be the ultimate reality, and yet beyond our comprehension.  Faith and doubt can coexist.

It all depends on the Observer.

 

 

 

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The Age of “Horrific”

It happened again—suicide bomber blows up self in a crowded venue, taking about two dozen immortal souls with him.  There’s always some extra hellish touch to these events.  This time it’s the nature of the crowd: teenagers, most of them, the vast majority girls.  Girls in swift transition, trying to figure out who they are and what they’re worth, temporarily attracted to a pop singer.  I don’t know anything about Ariana Grande, but they would have grown out of her, probably, if someone had not decided they didn’t deserve to live.  Girls–screaming, bleeding, writhing, dying.

It was a nail bomb, I hear.  The damage would have been caused by hot metal propelled at bullet-speed in random directions, each fragment taking the path of least resistance with an excellent chance of plowing into soft flesh.  Any such wound is ugly; even the non-fatal ones could cost an eye, a vertebra, a scoop of brain.

I guess horrific is as good a word as any for that.

As memory fades, the adjective drops off, the incident sinks into the historical mist and takes a number and a ranking.

The problem is, it’s become the obligatory adjective.  In editorials, commentary, news reports (as in, “Police have made another arrest in connection to Monday’s horrific attack”), the word is a necessary rider.  At least while the blood is still fresh.  As the memory fades, the adjective drops off, the incident sinks into the historical mist and takes a number and a ranking.  Such as, “Third major Jihadist attack of 2017,” or “Second deadliest incident to occur on British soil since 9/11.  Don’t check my figures.  I haven’t been keeping track, and not many others are either.  Just how many major Jihadist attacks have occurred this year?  How does the Manchester incident rank in comparison with the London subway incident, the Nice incident, the Christkindlmarkt incident, or the Orlando nightclub incident?  I forget, but they were all horrific.

However–if something happened to my kid or grandkid, if someone near to me was ripped up by flying shrapnel at a concert or a football game, I would feel like screaming every time I heard that word.  Yes, yes, this is horrific.  You have no idea how horrific it is.  But stop saying it and do something about it!

Do you ever get the feeling that words have replaced actions, at least in the Western world?  Words can be powerful, but only when backed up—by deeds, by convictions, by rational therefore’s and so that’s.  If these incidents are going to continue, what then?  What’s a reasonable response?  Anybody got a plan?

If our words are strong enough, maybe that means we don’t have to do anything.

I’m not seeing one.  If our words are strong enough, maybe that means we don’t have to do anything.  I get it.  But let’s try to come up with another word, okay?  We’re wearing the sharp edges off this one.

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Mother’s Day: No Laughing Matter

I realized something for the first time when my kids were of an age for sleepovers and birthday parties: dads are funnier than moms.

I might have noticed it in my own house if it wasn’t right under my nose.  My husband was the one to get on the floor and wrestle, start sock fights, and make jokes when it was time to get serious.  That’s not to say I could never be found on the floor with kids crawling all over me, but there’s something different about mommy wrestling as opposed daddy wrestling–a certain lack of abandon and goofiness.  My daughter would come home from a party or church event with stories about how Cheri’s dad had made them laugh while driving them to the skating rink, or how Leslie’s dad had played a stupid trick that backfired.  It was never the moms.  Mothers could certainly be fun (I’d like to think I was. Maybe. Sometimes.), but seldom funny.

Several years ago Jerry Lewis made a controversial statement when asked who his favorite female comedians were.  His answer: None, because women aren’t funny. That raised a stink among women, many of whom seriously protested that they were funny—which kind of proved his point, in a way.  I would say that women aren’t funny in the same way.  They can be witty (as my mother was), clever, sharp, catty, artless, or charming, but there’s a reason male standup comics far outnumber females, and it doesn’t have much if anything to do with discrimination.  Of those few successful female comics, most of them are known for the mordant kind of humor: the biting, even bitter kind.  It’s because women, more than men, have a tragic view of life.  And that’s because of one thing: women have babies.

I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;

in pain shall you bring forth children. (Gen. 3:16)

The Pain

The obvious interpretation of this verse limits the pain to labor and delivery.  But the pain of bearing a child lasts a lifetime, and it’s a particular pain that fathers do not share.  That’s because of the essential differences between the two:

Fatherhood is by choice; motherhood by necessity.

Fatherhood is dogmatic; motherhood is organic.

Fatherhood is straightforward; motherhood is serpentine and multi-faceted.

Fatherhood is tangential; motherhood is central.

Fathers are distinct; mothers are intimate.

At the back of a mother’s mind lurks a gigantic fear that something could happen to her baby, even if her baby is 45 years old.  The world yawns wide for our children: busy streets and nefarious strangers, fast cars and bad company, drunk drivers, sexual predators, drug dealers, gang leaders.  A good father will experience these same fears, but probably not until there’s some pretext for them (no what-if speculations for Dad), and not in the same gut-wrenching way if they occur.

Also, from the day our babies are born we have to start letting go of them, and sometimes it’s hard to know when. And how.  It isn’t just a matter of teaching them to crawl, walk, run, and drive; it’s teaching ourselves to stop identifying with them.  They were us; how can they stop being us?  When does their behavior stop being our responsibility?  When do their choices no longer reflect on our child-raising skills?

The Gain

Of course, there are mothers . . .

And yet, a great irony: The more a mother clings to her child, the smaller motherhood becomes.  The true joy of mothering increases with every step your child takes away from you.  Conceiving, carrying,

bearing, and delivering a baby into this world is the beginning of the pain, but also of the gain: a mature human being with his or her own personality, gifts, and vision.  That’s the goal, and I challenge anyone to name me a better one.  No six-figure income or tabloid-worthy career even comes close.  Motherhood is a double investment in life: the opportunity to grow up again by experiencing its primary discoveries through the eyes of a child and the understanding of a grownup, and the chance to pay it forward with a human being who will make the world a slightly better place.

If your grown child causes you more grief than joy (and a lot of them do), first check your expectations to

. . . and there are mothers.

make sure you’re not looking for Mini-me: someone who thinks and acts as you do and agrees with 95% of your political and theological positions.  (If you actually ended up with a kid like that, you’re either very exceptional or your son or daughter got swapped for a robot somewhere down the line.)

But say your expectations were reasonable and your child-raising skills were at least adequate.  What went wrong?  Maybe nothing; maybe it’s time to let disappointing children become themselves, and answer for themselves. Trust God with them.  They are still human beings with immortal souls.  Yours will always be the first warm touch they felt, the first loving voice they heard. You pushed them out and raised them up—this is the great human enterprise, and mothers are right in the middle of it.

That’s not funny.  But it’s phenomenal.

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Back in the Lifeboat

Try this thought experiment:

You’re the captain on an ocean liner.  While en route to Europe your ship strikes an iceberg and starts sinking fast—so fast that the majority of passengers are drowned, and of the remainder almost all have panicked and piled into lifeboats that capsized or failed to launch or met some other tragic end.  A handful of passengers are left—twelve, to be exact—and one inflatable raft that will hold only seven (including you.)  Who would you choose to be in the boat with you?  There’s the brilliant but arrogant doctor, the young musician who speaks no English, the combat vet who hears voices, the muscular cage fighter, the alcoholic carpenter, the disabled tech genius . . .

Forget it.  As soon as that raft inflates there will be a mad dash for it, and you’ll be reduced to throwing out the weakest six.  Better bulk up, or you may be one of them.

Of course, the “Lifeboat Game, or Problem, or Exercise, was never meant to be a real-life scenario.  We heard about it back in the 1990s, when “values clarification” was an educational buzzword.  Nothing much was clarified, unless it was sneaking reinforcement for a utilitarian worldview, for the only objective criterion for a seat on the boat was the perceived usefulness of the passengers.  Take the drug-dealing doctor over the Baptist co-ed in a heartbeat, even if the girl was traveling to France for one last visit with her dying grandmother.  And what good is a twelve-year-old recovering from leukemia?  Unless you can eat him once he croaks.  Even as a theoretical exercise the Lifeboat Game was repugnant at best and destructive to human values at worst—if it’s still used in classrooms we don’t hear about it.

Women and children first! Oh wait–can they fix a leak? Fight off a shark? Perform an emergency appendectomy?

But a version of it recently surfaced in North Carolina, when a history teacher asked students to decide which four of the following they would allow in their bomb shelter during a nuclear attack:

  • A 35-year-old White male construction worker who is a racist
  • A 40-year-old Black female doctor who is a lesbian
  • A 50-year-old White male who is a Catholic priest
  • A 25-year-old Hispanic male who is a lawyer
  • A 30-year-old Korean American female who is a former college athlete
  • A 20-year-old white female who is pregnant, has a two-year-old son, and is on welfare

It’s the old “values clarification” shell game, this time with a racial/political edge.  Instead of, “Who’s the most useful?” kids also get to determine, “Who’s the least worthy?”  Because, obviously, if you pick the racist White guy (who might be helpful when it’s time to rebuild), what does that say about you?

The teacher only meant to provoke lively dialogue in the classroom, but real-life parents—both black and white—complained, quickly and loudly, and the exercise disappeared with apologies.  Parents rightly pointed out that there were better uses of classroom time, such as learning civics or algebra, but there’s also something creepy about activities that force us to assign value to people rather than ideas.

Because when we’re looking at functions, sexes, and colors, we’re not seeing people.

Because when survival is understood as the ultimate value, love, courage, and sacrifice take a back seat—or they stay aboard the sinking ship, to go down singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

But what’s the harm if it’s all theoretical?  Some theoretical alleyways should be avoided because bad things happen there.  When people are seen as units to be evaluated, not to help but to eliminate, pogroms and ghettos and extermination camps may not be far behind.  Not always, but never without the lens of functionality or race or creed.  We tend toward that kind of evaluation anyway; why encourage it?

Here’s an alternate exercise:

You love to cook, but your latest dinner party fell through when all the guests cancelled at the last minute.  Outside your downtown apartment are an Asian dance instructor, a Black single mom pushing a stroller, a homeless white guy, a gay couple waiting for the bus, a Hispanic nurse getting off her shift, and a white Christian homeschool mom with her ten-year-old son.  How will you persuade them all to come in and share your dinner, and what will you all talk about?

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Arrival and the Right Choice

Arrival, a science fiction movie about aliens visiting earth, is equally irritating and moving, but after some thought I decided the moving part has the edge.  Not that anybody asked me, but here’s why.

Irritating: So, 12 gigantic pod-like spacecraft land at strategic locations scattered over the globe.  Rather than attack at once, world leaders wisely decide to try to communicate with the aliens, setting up synchronized command centers and recruiting specialists, such as Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist.  Louise joins a team including physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly and travels to Montana, where the army has set up a base camp around one of the alien ships.  The plot follows Louise as she forms a bond with the aliens and begins to puzzle out the mystery of their language, meanwhile experiencing disturbing flashbacks.

It turns out (spoiler alert) that the aliens’ purpose is benevolent: they’re here to give us a useful tool that will blur the edges of time and help us see our experience as a fabric not a thread.  That tool is their language, which is visual rather than aural and spherical rather than linear. When Louise begins to understand it, she drifts away from her own linear time line.  Interesting!  But how is this a benefit to humanity?  There’s something about the aliens needing to return to earth in a few thousand years and so they’re passing along their language now to help things along later—but that motive almost seems tacked on.  The impression left on the viewer (okay; this viewer) is that the visitors have thrown the world in an uproar and risked mutual annihilation so that one woman can see one life in a circle not a line that will affect one major choice.  This kind of solipsism dominates our present way of thinking—the significance of any event comes down to what I do and what I feel.  What about the rest of the world?

Moving.  Maybe I’m being too hard on the creators of Arrival.  The classic technique of fiction is reshaping big, universal themes in intimate, personal terms (and Louise’s discovery did prevent the alien visitation from blowing up in everybody’s faces).  When Drs. Banks and Donnelly meet, he reads a passage from her latest book, which he happens to have with him:

He: ‘Language is the foundation of civilization.  It is the glue that holds people together.  It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict . . .’ (Looking up from the book)  It’s great.  Even if it’s wrong.

She: It’s wrong?

He: Well, the cornerstone of civilization isn’t language, it’s science.

No, he’s wrong, even though I suspect the distinction between foundation and cornerstone is intended.  Language is foundational, and Louise will be vindicated.  Science is derivative, the servant not the master, and life will be vindicated.  It takes wise alien messengers to teach us this, patiently trying to communicate while humans frantically run around, compare observations, recalculate their calculations, and figure their best chances for survival.

Maybe survival isn’t quite the same as life.  Maybe life is worth choosing, even if it doesn’t always occur in optimum conditions; maybe even if it’s tragically fraught and short.  Maybe the last word should be Yes (as, in fact, it is).

Think back to a Spirit brooding over the face of the deep, contemplating all living things soon to be.  History cries No!, recalling all the sorrow spiraling out from earth and sea and all that dwell therein.  Spirit says Yes, lifting bright wings into the darkness and flooding every corner with light.

Louise makes a choice that scientific calculation chalks up as wrong.  God, unbound by time, and circular rather than linear, makes the same choice. We can’t say it’s wrong.

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Let’s Talk: Can the Affordable Care Act be Improved? and Should It?

Here we go again: my college friend Charlotte and I, Ms. Blue and Ms. Red, discuss how to improve government-subsidized healthcare. Is anyone on Capitol Hill listening?  Charlotte goes first this time.

Charlotte: You and I wound our way through a couple of discussions that brought us to a shared conclusion that Americans should have access to affordable medical insurance and health care. Now we are considering our differences of opinion on the role of government; should federal and state funds be used to provide health care and subsidize insurance plans? Is that a proper function of government? I say yes.

You said in an earlier discussion that many governors resisted Medicaid expansion because they couldn’t figure out how to pay for it. A recent Vox article shows how Medicaid expansion has actually worked better than anyone expected it to. Even Republican governors were vocal in their protest against the failed Republican plan to decrease that program.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners reminds us that “a budget is a moral document.” How our government leaders propose to spend our pooled citizen resources demonstrates their core values. The current budget Blueprint and the proposals in the failed ACHA display efforts to increase the advantages of the already advantaged and compromise the lives of the already vulnerable. I say such inequitable use of our common funds is inherently immoral.

A recent op-ed by Paul Krugman says building on Obamacare and improving it doesn’t have to be that complicated. He gives several good suggestions, as do Sarah Kliff and Ezra Klein in the Vox article. I think you and your Republican friends can make a big difference here by speaking out for reform and insisting the Republican leadership collaborate with their Democrat colleagues. It’s high time for some bipartisan cooperation. Letting the current system implode when it can be tweaked and improved is ludicrous. And again – immoral.

State and Federal governments will be able to figure out how to pay for these kinds of crucial services when they take their responsibilities seriously to put people over profits. “Promoting the common welfare” is not only a Constitutional mandate; it is also the moral and ethical obligation of government.

One other thing on my mind: in an earlier conversation, you pondered why health costs in America are so high. I’m not smart enough to understand all the complex reasons, but my default response to problems like that is: “Follow the money.” The medical industrial machine in this country wields immense power. I found this quote in the Vox analysis:

“Regulating health care prices was never a serious part of the Affordable Care Act debate. The Obama administration made a conscientious decision, at the start of its health care effort, to get all major industry groups to stand behind the law — or at least not work against it. Regulating health care prices would have meant that hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies would all earn less. The idea was a nonstarter…”

It was a “non-starter” because of the out-of-proportion weight lobbyists hold in our political conversations.

Did you know that in America, 9 out of the top 10 highest paid professionals are doctors? American orthopedic surgeons earn three times what their counterparts in France will earn in a year. Of course this is complex as well: education and insurance are more expensive here than in other countries. But when we look at the costs involved with paying our doctors exorbitant salaries; the costs of our hospital services, especially in light of some of the over the top salaries of too many CEO’s; the costs of our medications, especially in light of some of the highly publicized price gouging by pharmaceutical companies (plus the bombardment of advertising. Why the heck should a pharmaceutical company be advertising anyway!?) … This is just a beginning. Reining in the medical industry is no small challenge. The money-is-power principle will continue to hold sway over our health care system until enough wise, courageous politicians finally step up and confront this problem.

But I don’t see this confrontation coming from the current Republican leadership in Congress. From what I can tell, Republicans are all about increasing the advantages of the already wealthy. If regulation of health care prices was too big a battle for the Democrats, then I’m thinking the Republicans – in their disdain for regulations in general – will not engage this fight either.

Here is an excellent example reminding us that “regulations” are actually “protections” against corporate abuses of their customers and the general public. I know you have taken issue with my position on this before. I would be interested to hear your critique of regulations and restrictions appropriate to the health care industry.

In our last discussion, you insisted that governments should be “impartial” – that is, “government should not favor either rich or poor, but protect both.” Isn’t it the purpose of regulations to work towards this goal?

Okay, your turn.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Janie: I appreciated the Vox article—it was reasonably balanced and somewhat fair, and a clear exposition of where folks on the center left stand, so that’s useful to know.  I’m sure the ACA can be improved, but can’t intelligently address how because a) the thing is over 2000 pages long, with ten times that many pages in regulations already, and 2) I’m not at all sure it’s the best option for the most people.  In fact I’m convinced it isn’t.  Here’s a quick summary of the main problems with it: http://www.dailywire.com/news/12146/11-biggest-problems-obamacare-aaron-bandler

Like you, I can’t track the ins and outs of why medical care is so expensive now.  I do know one thing: it was simpler and cheaper before the government got involved with Medicare and Medicaid and regulation of the insurance agency.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against regulation per se, and I’m not opposed to all government aid for the indigent and the elderly.  But remember how my family was able to pay for life-saving medical treatment for me, including an entire month in the hospital, on the income of a humble credit-union employee (my mother).  She got her insurance (Blue Cross) through her employer, which of course was a big help, but it was also cheap at the time. That’s mainly because it was market-based; insurance companies ran the actuarial tables and balanced the risks and figured out how much they could charge to cover expenses and make a profit, which is what business is all about.

That’s not to say insurers are the good guys.  When business gets involved with government, market factors go by the wayside.  The main reason why consumers can’t purchase insurance across state lines, which would force insurance companies to compete for their business, is because the insurance industry wants to maximize profits without competition.   The big players influenced laws in their favor, as they always have and always will.  They don’t just influence Republicans; they also influence Democrats.  No party is immune from this, and no law will eliminate it.  The rich and the powerful will always find a way around the law and regulations; that’s one reason why they got to rich and powerful.  The only real safeguard against undue influence is a free market (which I’ll admit is never really free, but nothing’s perfect).

The ACA attempts to blend private insurance with heavy government subsidies and mandates, and it wasn’t so great.  The AHCA tried to build on that platform, only by eliminating the mandates and a few free-market gestures, and it might have been even worse.  But since I don’t like the platform I can’t address how to improve the ACA in detail.  The healthcare reform I’d really like to see is very different.  I know I’ve mentioned elements of it, but here’s the capsule version, for future reference:

Most citizens responsible for their own basic care and maintenance.  This used to be taken for granted: you paid for your doctor visits and routine medications out-of-pocket.  Is that too expensive for most of us now?  No.  I realize that with medical advances come higher costs, more expensive equipment and drugs, etc.  Still, the market keeps those prices down better than price controls do—just think how cheap smartphones have become in a mere ten years!  Competition works for doctors, too: at this moment, in Springfield, Missouri, there are at least ten fee-for-service and medical concierge centers that charge anywhere from $50 to $150 per month for a menu of routine health services and 24-hour consultation.  Even surgeons are banding together to establish cash-only surgical centers.  With paperwork cut to a bare minimum and no time wasted on checkboxes, they cover their costs and make a profit.

Affordable catastrophic health insurance available in an open market, for emergencies, surgeries, and life-threatening illnesses like cancer.  That’s what Blue Cross was for my parents—my dad also spent weeks in the hospital due to back issues, but they could afford it.  Nobody was turned out on the street to die or to suffer without treatment, even before Medicaid!

Religious organizations encouraged to open and operate their own health ministries for the poor.  A lot of Christian, Jewish, and probably Muslim organizations are doing this already, and I’ll admit I don’t have a clear idea how governments could “encourage” more of it.  But this is the kind of personal, hands-on care that homeless, rootless, and hopeless people need most.

A government safety net, such as a scaled-down Medicaid, for the truly needy.

Health-savings accounts for each citizen, to which the federal government contributes a small amount during the citizen’s working years, to be increased after retirement age.  Perhaps Medicare could be incorporated with something like this.

Having said all that, I recognize that once we’ve started down the road of government control of health care, it’s very difficult to turn back.  That’s why Canadians and citizens of the UK and other countries with single-payer programs don’t want to give it up: they can’t see the alternatives and can only picture themselves adrift without any support at all.  Yet the single-payer model has its own problems, namely an expanding bureaucracy, rationing, and lowering standards as it’s less able to pay for itself.  Besides, single-payer plans always develop a two-tiered system with the best care going to those who can pay for it and everybody else getting the leftovers.  It can still work okay in a smallish country with a relatively stable population, but the U.S. is a big country with an extremely dynamic population, including legal and illegal immigrants.  For us, I believe the more options, the better.

A couple of postscripts: First, could we refrain from ascribing motives to people we disagree with, such as, “From what I can tell, the Republicans are all about increasing the advantages of the already wealthy”?  No doubt some of them are.  No doubt some Democrats are as well.  But Republicans are people too—even the politicians!—and are, like me, sincerely concerned about making health care affordable but have a different opinion about what works best.

Second, you say,  “Reining in the medical industry is no small challenge. The money-is-power principle will continue to hold sway over our health care system until enough wise, courageous politicians finally step up and confront this problem.”  I’d say the money-is-power principle will always hold sway in government, because government is about power, and something will always influence power.  In our system it’s money because we don’t have aristocracy.  This isn’t cynicism; it’s realism.  The genius of our founding fathers was in assigning legitimate powers to the federal government and leaving the rest to local (state) governments and individual citizens.  It’s not perfect, because people aren’t perfect, but it spreads the power around so no single entity has too much of it.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Charlotte: You’ve talked about your childhood illness before and the good care you got because of your family’s coverage by Blue Cross. I’m so glad! Above you claim that this employer-provided insurance was affordable mainly because it was market-based. Maybe that was a factor. But according to the history of Blue Cross, the primary reasons your coverage was inexpensive were because it was subsidized by non-profit hospitals and because it was offered as a community service.

For more than forty years, virtually all BCBS plans were organized under federal law as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations which were “engaged in promoting the common good and general welfare of the people of the community. Such an organization is operated primarily for the purpose of bringing about “civil betterments and social improvements.”

501 (c) (4) corporations were non-profit and tax exempt.

I mention this because you seem to put quite a bit of faith in the free market. You say: “The only real safeguard against undue influence is a free market…” I strongly disagree. Governmental protections are safeguards put in place because businesses and corporations demonstrate repeatedly that they will take advantage of people every chance they get.

This one anecdotal experience with Blue Cross worked for your family in a simpler time. Much has changed in our society since then so that today charities and non-profit associations must find help and partnership with local, state and federal government. We cannot go back to a simpler time; it doesn’t exist. We must move forward.

For me, single payer is a very logical, tried and true approach for moving forward. In most every Western nation, single payer insurance and governmental health care has worked and worked very well.

Jerry and I spent several years in the Navy where all our medical care was provided by the federal government. It was excellent care offered by conscientious and competent people. In my opinion, Medicare insurance for all and public clinics would be a huge step forward.

To your request that I not ascribe motives to people I disagree with: I try very hard not to lump people into categories. I know full well Conservatives are not a monolithic group just as Liberals are not. In my opinion, you are the poster child for the classic Compassionate Conservative and I know there are many other good people like you out there.

I disagree that I was “ascribing motives” to the Republicans in the White House and Congress. Rather I will argue that I am judging them by their actions. Here’s my edited sentence. I can’t back down on my opinion any farther than this:

“… the current Republican leadership in Congress. From what I can tell, these Republicans are all about increasing the advantages of the already wealthy…”

So basically, you don’t trust government and I don’t trust the free market. You think the ACA is not worth fixing and I think it is. Looks like we are at an impasse in this discussion.

I asked Jerry to read this before I sent it to you. I think he makes an important point:

The problem for both of you, as I see it, is that you are thinking in either/or categories. And both of you are right: Janie doesn’t trust government because government too often is corrupt and inefficient, and you don’t trust markets because markets too often are corrupt and greedy. Both opinions are well-founded.

What is needed is democratic tension, not ideology. How can we work together to solve problems, realizing that any solutions necessarily are imperfect, provisional and in need of constant revision? The willingness to solve problems with creativity and compromise is what’s missing in the current political climate where everything is polarized by ideology. At some point, if our politicians want really to accomplish something, they have to say, to hell with ideology, let’s figure out something that might work. And let’s fix it when it doesn’t work the way we thought it would.

You and I disagree on several fundamental issues, Janie, but we do agree that there is too much polarization in our current public conversations. That’s what started us on this shared blog quest in the first place. I truly am good with “democratic tension.” Here is another brilliance of our Founders: united but independent states, three branches of government, numerous and various representatives. It’s our broad diversity that makes us stronger and wiser.

None of us has all the right answers; we need each other. But we need to listen to each other better, respect each other more and collaborate with each other in good faith. I feel helpless to influence our tone-deaf politicians and this outraged public. Maybe what you and I are trying to do doesn’t really matter. But then again, maybe it does.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Janie: That’s a good way to wrap this one up.  I appreciate Jerry’s point of view: both of us have good reasons to distrust both governments and free markets, since every human institution is prone to corruption.  That’s why I don’t totally trust any human institution, including the free market, and believe it’s a good idea to spread power around so nobody has too much of it.  I understand Jerry’s to hell with ideology, too, if what we mean by “ideology” is a certain set of core principles each side identifies with and won’t budge on.  Still, everyone is driven by ideology to a point; that is, we all ascribe to certain broad principles that we believe to be true, either from experience or prior commitment (or both).

To sum up my end, I’d like to quote from an article in National Review: Repeal and Piecemeal: a Better Obamacare Strategy.  It’s mostly about policy and process, but I’m in agreement with the writer’s general idea about what public health care should look like (emphasis in the original):

Modesty means recognizing that nobody in Washington is smart enough to design a better health-insurance system on his own.  The best system is one that is relatively simple, doesn’t try to do everything at once, and leaves the largest possible amount of power in the hands of individual consumers, and the power of experimentation in the hands of all 50 states.  A system that is designed to solve all today’s problems for all time—even if it succeeded—would cast in stone an inability to respond to tomorrow’s problems until they reach crisis proportions.

Whatever happens, I’ll live with it.  But it’s vitally important that we keep talking to each other, in websites and on debate stages and over cups of coffee.  We are not enemies, but friends.  Thanks for being my friend!

Charlotte: My pleasure, dear Janie. Our think our friendship has grown even deeper through these conversations.

So your Right leaning National Review and my Left leaning husband both agree: Let’s figure out what works and then keep improving as we go along. (By the way, my friends on the Left would benefit from reading this analysis by Dan McLaughlin. It’s calm and well reasoned and helps us understand our friends on the Right a little better.)

I think “we the people” need to lead the way and remind our so-called leaders how to sit down together, talk and listen to each other and actually solve some problems; our politicians seem to have forgotten how.

What’s next? I wonder if any of our readers have a topic they might want us to explore.

 

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Dear Mr. Keller

Abraham Kuyper, who would not have approved.

Early in March, Princeton Theological Seminary announced the winner of their annual Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Teaching and Public Witness: Tim Keller, long-time pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in New York City.  On March 22, Princeton President Craig Barnes announced that the prize would be revoked, due to a rising tide of objections regarding his denomination’s stance on ordaining women and professing LGBT Christians, as well as a “complementarian” view of husband-and-wife relationships.  Though he will not receive the prize, Rev. Keller has agreed to give the annual Kuyper lecture on April 6.  The pros and cons of Princeton’s decision have been hashed out elsewhere; I’m just thinking how I should respond if I were in his place.  (Which, since I hold to a complementarian view, I never will be!)

 

If you are insulted for the name of Christ you are blessed for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.  I Peter 4:14.

Princeton Theological Seminary would vehemently deny that the insult is to Christ, who preached love and acceptance for all.  Wouldn’t Christ be insulted in turn to see prominent pastors—in this day and age—holding to outmoded doctrines that encourage the subjugation of women and the inclusion of fellow believers?

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the insult is not to Christ. But is it not an insult to the word to God that Christ came not to abolish but to fulfill?  Is it an insult to Christ’s servants Peter and Paul, who taught (we believe) under the inspiration of God, at the cost of their lives?  And whose teaching the church is built on?  The insult is also to generations of witnesses, martyrs, scholars, pastors, translators, evangelists, and other unknown, unsung heroes who now surround us in a cloud.

So, going back to Peter: If Christ identifies with his church, and the witness of the church is insulted, you are blessed.

I believe you’ve been right, all these years, to preach Christ and him crucified at Redeemer Church, in the heart of the secular city.  You were right to welcome seekers, sinners, strenuous opponents; right to keep the focus on Jesus through it all, wherever your listeners ended up on secondary and social issues.  And you’re right to stand firm on traditional (we might even say, plain-as-day understanding) of those secondary and social issues.

The prize would be nice: another plaque to hang on the wall and a few thousand bucks to bank or give away.  I’ll bet you know some people who could the money.  But there is an unfading crown of glory waiting its proper time.  I hope you give the talk, and I hope it’s gracious and glowing and Christ-honoring—because, remember, you are blessed.