about music, and the woods, and about God

We live in a world where, as John Milbank says, “all education is being subordinated to politics and economics.” I would go even further; everything in the Western world lies under the domination of political and economic considerations. Removing from our subconscious the automatic reduction of individuals, of government, of nations, of peoples to political and economic units requires a heroic and consciously sustained effort. Mostly we don’t even realize that our conception of life and of the world begins and ends with these two tyrants.

When I came to Hillsdale, I was a libertarian. Hillsdale College possesses the personal library of Ludwig von Mises, patriarch of Austrian economics. I find a humorous irony, then, in my drastic move away from the principles of classical liberalism. This rejection did not stem from a perception of inaccuracy in Austrian economics. The problem is not factual error. Instead, I reject libertarianism because it is, as Herbert Butterfield would say, a terrible simplification. Mises et al take a small truth about mankind’s economic behavior and make it the only truth. This materialistic ideology forms an inflexible structure in which all mystery disappears and all questions are answered; the implicit comparison here with Karl Marx is intentional.

Such explanations are too easy, too terribly simple.

•••

I cautiously call myself a conservative these days, always following that statement with a plea to whoever asked that they not consider it a political position. Certainly conservatism informs my political and economic stances, but that arena matters only tangentially, peripherally.

•••

Are you surprised that I find a socialist like John Milbank much more appealing than a classical liberal? Well, Milbank calls himself a socialist; I might be inclined to call him a liar on that count, for he is also a conservative Anglican who believes that “there is no progressive plot to history.” Is it possible to be a socialist and deny progressive history? Nor is he a statist, for "...solutions do not lie either in the purely capitalist market nor with the centralized state." A socialist, but not a progressive or a statist?

He states, “...a predominantly secular culture will only sustain the neo-liberal catastrophe." I concur and find his truer liberality – "a creed of generosity" – a more comfortable friend to Kirk, Eliot, Dawson, and Tolkien than Mises and Hayek.

•••

On the other hand, much of what Milbank says radically overreaches; he creates straw men, to the point that at times he seems to become a caricature of himself. Comparing Nazi tyranny with the presidency of George W. Bush is the classic example of absurd leftist excess, where legitimate criticism becomes humorously silly hysterics. Though I agree with most of his charges against liberal democracy’s materialistic flaws, his statement that “the ‘modernity’ of liberalism has only delivered mass poverty, inequality, erosion of freely associating bodies beneath the level of the State, and ecological dereliction of the earth” can be dismissed as histrionics… unless he’s arranged his definition of the “the ‘modernity’ of liberalism” in such a specific and strained manner that it ceases to mean anything at all. Further, for all his Catholic orthodoxy (and he considers Catholic Christian thought to include “Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and even some reformed strands”), I suspect that his radicalism has allowed for a bit too much mysticism and flexibility where rigidity ought to be, to the point that he flirts around the edges of pantheism and animism at moments.

So when I recommend that you read his “Liberality versus Liberalism,” I do so with trepidation. Guard your hearts and minds, for we are all far too easily swayed, too quickly pleased. I am a conservative because we ought not to subject conservation to innovation; every time we seek to right an injustice, we run the risk of creating more horror and pain and evil than we eliminate. Intentions very rarely match results, to the extent that it is only under the Sovereignty of God that I feel free to do anything. Humility dictates that we recognize our own frailty; the greatest thinkers and actors of today cannot bear comparison with the accumulative work of Christendom over two millennia. And so we should imaginatively defend our great inheritance while prudently and prayerfully embracing humane subcreative work.

Though I found Milbank’s vision of a humane society dangerously wishful and idealistic, I was surprised that this non-statist socialist strongly supports the ownership of land by as many as possible. "For all the neo-liberal talk of freedom, it is not an accident that so few are allowed to possess the kind of property that permits one to leave a creative mark in the world. This is above all true of land…. As I have just indicated, property that involves self-fulfilment rather than accumulation, is the foundation for the free-giving and receiving that helps compose a wider social household." While I certainly agree with the premise, his apparent vision of a (non-statist?) redistribution of property seems outdated, counterproductive, and violently unlikely.

•••

"Does all this sound fantastic?” he asked me at the conclusion of his essay. “No, the fantastic is what we have: an economy that destroys life, babies, childhood, adventure, locality, beauty, the exotic, the erotic, people, and the planet itself."

A friend was pondering the influence of Zoroaster on Christianity, particularly in our ideas of heaven and hell and judgment. I was a bit stumped, knowing that Christian theology does, in fact, bear the influence of the cultures and religions with which it makes contact. This is part of Christianity’s beauty, that true Christian dogma is universal. Diversity in cultural expressions of dogma glorifies and magnifies our God.

But we ought always to fight the tendency in every culture to make these culturally specific manifestations part of Scripture, or, for that matter, to treat all genuine Scriptural truths as dogma.

Think of it as three spheres.
-The core sphere is dogma – that which defines you as a Christian. Were your dogma to change, you would no longer be a Christian. Aspects of the personhood of Christ, for example, are key. If you think Christ as a great prophet and not the Son of God and God Himself, you have rejected Christian dogma.
-Outside of this (relatively small) core stands Scriptural truth. Not all Scriptural truth is dogma. There is a Scripturally correct way to approach sin in the Church, but should you be wrong in this area, you would not cease to be a Christian. These peripheral matters of Scriptural truth are significant and not to be approached flippantly; however, they are not dogma and should not be treated as such.
-Beyond this ring stands cultural manifestations of Christianity. Order of service at the gathering of believers, the language used, and the preferred music: all these are cultural matters. (bear in mind that tradition – the themes of how Christians have lived out their faith over the past 2,000 years – stands in a grey area on the border between Scriptural truths and cultural expressions. Tradition cannot be discarded or treated as a minor influence. Are we 21st-century American Protestants so arrogant as to suppose that as individuals we can “do” Christianity or understand Scripture at a deeper level than the millions of believers collectively in the past millennia? God forbid.)

Often the way we think about Scriptural truths and how we perceive the very character of God are colored by our cultures. This is dangerous, because soon we make our “lenses” of understanding equivalent to Scripture itself.

My friend’s specific point, or rather the point of the professor to whom she referred, was that the Old Testament had no real concept of heaven and hell. I wouldn’t say that’s quite true, but the idea is so embryonic as to have been little more than a subconscious impulse that shows up occasionally. The professor’s assertion was that the New Testament’s embrace of heaven and hell was really just a rephrasing of Zoroastrian ideas. Christians took Judaism, threw Zoroaster into the mix, and out popped the New Testament.

I do not believe this to be true. Instead, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Greek have colored the way that we’ve read the New Testament, and we’ve inserted these ideas into the text. Again, these ideas do not come from the writers and the text but from typical interpretations of the text. As an example, N.T. Wright beautifully explicates Philippians 2, rejecting the traditional Greek reading of the passage and instead explaining it the way a Jew would. This passage has no direct bearing on this specific Zoroastrian question, but it does show how the “Greek-ness” of the passage comes from our lenses, not Paul’s text. Ask me about it in person sometime.


Addressing, in a shallow manner, the specific issue of heaven and hell:

One of N.T. Wright’s better-known sayings is that “heaven is great, but it’s not the end of the world.” Wright, to the chagrin of many in the Church (and to some cries of heresy), posits that perhaps we aren’t destined for some escapist heaven, but rather that the new earth will be the kingdom of God initiated on earth.

I read something by Mike Mason yesterday morning that furthered this line of thinking. Mason used as his text Job 19:25-27, which reads in the ESV:

“For I know that my Redeemer lives
and at last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!”

…our God is so much more earthy than we give Him credit for. In fact for the Old Testament believer the entire focus was not on some mystical “Heaven” or “hereafter” but on the here-and-now. As David prayed in Psalm 39:13, ‘Look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more.’ Even the New Testament, surprisingly, turns out not to be so Heaven-centered as we may have thought. The great concluding prayer of the Bible is not ‘Take us to Heaven, Lord Jesus,’ but rather, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ (Rev. 22:20).[…]
The fullness of the gospel vision does not lie in the idea that the soul (or even the whole person, resurrected body and all) is to be transplanted out of the earthly realm and into the spiritual, but rather that the Kingdom of Heaven must descend right down into this present world, so that like some cosmically inconceivable sperm and egg the two spheres will merge together to form something stupendously new.

I am left to wonder how much, in fact, our visions of heaven are a result of Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism influence on the cultures into which Christianity came rather than Scripture itself. Are our ideas escapist rejection of creation and the material world?

By authors wiser than myself I have been led to reject the idea of white-knuckle, hold-on-till-death Christianity. Shane Claiborne is fond of saying that Christianity’s best offer is not life after death but, in fact, life before death. Claiborne, I fear, takes this a bit far and, like just about all progressives, flirts with immanentizing the eschaton, which is itself a form of Gnosticism.

Brad Birzer explicated a bit of Saint Augustine’s wisdom concisely: we must always work for the Kingdom of Heaven, but we must never believe that it can be realized in the here-and-now. This paradox bridges the gap between heresies. On the one side lies passive apathy; on the other, catastrophic deception.

Since the days of Paul we believers have been called to distinguish between truth and falsity, to accept truth where we find it and reject the lies inevitably entangled within. This is a difficult proposition. So when Zoroaster speaks truth, we ought to agree with him. Yet we must be careful that we do not read Scripture through a lens of Zoroastrianism or Gnosticism or progressivism or political conservatism.

----

This, by the by, is an absolutely beautiful and entirely unrelated song:

( Sodom, South Georgia by Iron & Wine )

A friend recently asked me what Christian hedonism and Christian humanism are all about, since I purport to subscribe to both. The following is essentially my response; if you would like a little peek into how I view God, history, literature, the world, etc. read on.

A Christian hedonist essentially says that whatever you take greatest pleasure in is your god. So if coffee gives you more pleasure than anything else, coffee is your god. If your wife gives you more pleasure than anything else, she is your god. The idea is NOT to minimize pleasure, as we (I) so often do in the Christian community. Rather, the idea is to cultivate our passions and pleasures to the point where we see God as the highest pleasure. ( The most famous enunciation of this idea comes from The Weight of Glory by CS Lewis )

A more concise summary might be Psalm 37:4 -- "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Unfortunately, we most often seem to think that means that if we delight ourselves in God He give us [insert car, hot wife, etc]... instead, I think it means that He will give us HIMSELF, because nothing satisfies the desires of our heart but God Himself. Anything else is a counterfeit doomed to fall short or run out.

---

Christian humanism essentially says that all truth, beauty, and goodness stem from God Himself (cue Larry P). So wherever you find beauty or truth, you find something that praises God, even if that source is a Greek pagan, a Muslim cleric, or an atheist. The Christian humanists task, then, is to sanctify these things -- that is, to extract and praise what is best from all of humanity as a true imprint of the Creator. This does not mean that falsity and lies are accepted, but it does mean that the automatically dismissive attitude of most Christians towards anything branded secular or godless is unacceptably simplistic. The Christian humanist must find a way to reconcile the beauty inherent in Nietzsche's writing with Christ while yet rejecting the overall philosophy and view of reality as godless and deadly.

( Acts 17:22-31 provides best Biblical example of Christian humanism. )

My last mass TS Eliot post. Scout's honor.


-First, some excerpts from a talk by TS Eliot entitled “The Church’s Business to Interfere with the World”:

“Morality is a means and not an end. The Church exists for the glory of God and the sanctification of souls.”

“…as the Christian attitude towards peace, happiness and well-being of peoples is that they are a means and not an end in themselves, Christians are more deeply committed to realising these ideals than are those who regard them as ends in themselves.”

“It is easy, safe and pleasant to criticise foreigners; and it has the advantage of distracting attention from the evils of our own society.”

“…if our society renounces completely its obedience to God, it will become no better, and possibly worse, than some of those abroad which are popularly execrated.”

“For only in humility, charity and purity—and most of all perhaps humility—can we be prepared to receive the grace of God without which human operations are vain.”

Take note you who are swept up in social causes:
“It is not enough simply to see the evil and injustice and suffering in this world, and precipitate oneself into action. We must know, what only theology can tell us, why these things are wrong. Otherwise we may right some wrongs at the cost of creating new ones.”

“And without this firm assurance of first principles which it is the business of the Church to repeat in and out of season, the World will constantly confuse the right with the expedient.”

“Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.”

“And here is the perpetual message of the Church: to affirm, to teach and apply, truth theology… The Church has perpetually to answer this question: to what purpose were we born? What is the end of Man?”



-Now, back to “The Idea of a Christian Society,” the third and fourth chapters.

Ch 3

“Heresy is often defined as an insistence upon one half of the truth; it can also be an attempt to simplify the truth, by reducing it to the limits of our ordinary understanding, instead of enlarging our reason to the apprehension of truth. Monotheism or tritheism is easier to grasp than trinitarianism.”

“…missionaries have sometimes been accused of propagating (through ignorance, not through cunning) the customs and attitudes of the social groups to which they have belonged, rather than giving the natives thee essentials of the Christian in such a ways that they might harmonise their own culture with it.”

“…truth is one and… theology has no frontiers.”

“But it must be kept in mind that even in a Christian society as well organised as we can conceive possible in this world, the limit would be that our temporal and spiritual life should be harmonised: the temporal and spiritual life would never be identified. There would always remain a dual allegiance, to the state and to the Church, to one’s countrymen and to one’s fellow-Christians everywhere, and the latter would always have the primacy. There would always be a tension; and this tension is essential to the idea of a Christian society, and is a distinguishing mark between a Christian and a pagan society.”


Ch 4

“To identify any particular form of government with Christianity is a dangerous error: for it confounds the permanent with the transitory, the absolute with the contingent.”

“We have no assurance that a democratic régime might not be as inimical to Christianity in practice, as another might be in theory: and the best government must be relative to the character and the stage of intelligence and education of a particular people in a particular place at a particular time.”

“What is more depressing still is the thought that only fear or jealousy of foreign success can alarm us about the health of our own nation; that only through this anxiety can we see such things as depopulation, malnutrition, moral deterioration, the decay of agriculture, as evils at all. And what is worst of all is to advocate Christianity, not because it is true, but because it might be beneficial.”

“To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christianity morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.”

“It is not enthusiasm, but dogma, that differentiates a Christian society from a pagan one.”

“But we have to remember that the Kingdom of Christ on earth will never be realised, and also that it is always being realised; we must remember that whatever reform or revolution we carry out, the result will always be a sordid travesty of what human society should be—though the world is never left wholly without glory.”

“I would not have it thought that I condemn a society because of its material ruin, for that would be to make its material success a sufficient test of its excellence; I mean only that a wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God, and that the consequence is an inevitable doom.”

“We need to know how to see the world as the Christian Fathers saw it; and the purpose of reascending to origins is that we should be able to return, with greater spiritual knowledge, to our own situation. We need to recover the sense of religious fear, so that it may be overcome by religious hope.”

“…unless we can find a pattern into which all problems of life can have their place we are only likely to go on complicating chaos.”

(remember, 1939)
****“If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.”

Sent this to a professor of mine. Felt it appropriate for "public" (aka three people who read this) consumption with some changes:

---
At your recommendation, I'm starting "Christianity and Culture" by TS Eliot today. I'm very excited. I bought it at "Agia Sophia" [snipped: how much I like the place].

I'm spending my summer at Eagle Lake, a camp located @ 9,000 feet in the heart of Pike National Forest in the Colorado Rockies. It is a great place to understand Romans 1:20.

Many of the staff here at camp are progressive evangelicals, a curious blend of orthodoxy, postmodernism, Christian humanism, Christian hedonism, humanitarianism, etc. I've read a lot of work by progressive evangelicals in the last year (my favorite is a book called "The Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne -- a man truly living out James 1:21, yet one who at the same time dangerously threatens to destroy "the Western heritage"). I've begun wrestling with how, as a Christian humanist, hedonist, and conservative (in, I hope, the best senses of the three words), I ought to respond to the progressive movement in evangelicalism that's beginning to explode. My initial reaction was wholesale rejection. I read the writings of the movement's catalysts, and I tend to find a complete lack of grounding in t/Tradition. There's not a rejection of the past or heritage because it's basically not even addressed.

I've begun to think a bit differently now, because I don't want to (pardon the cliche) throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's a lot of bathwater, but there's definitely some baby. How to fight for conservatism, but also to sanctify the best of man's work for Christ? What can the conservative grasp as truth and beauty in the progressive evangelical movement? I'm no longer satisfied with outright and wholesale rejection.

---

PS: Three of my friends and I just finished a forty-minute interaction with a wasted old man in the parking lot of Texas Roadhouse. He first asked for a meal. When I offered to buy him one, he quickly changed the subject. He was an odd blend of complete honesty ("I just want some alcohol and pot" "I can turn this eleven cents into alcohol" "If I make you smile, you'll probably give me money for alcohol") and complete lies (Vietnam, 72-years-old, pretenses of wanting food, etc). I have never so clearly seen Christ in a sinner before. My heart aches. I told him there was no way I would give him money for alcohol ("Brother, at least your honest"). I told him I saw Jesus in him (he changed the subject). We laid hands on him and prayed for him in the parking lot. We spoke truth.

I know he's heard it all before. I know we offered him nothing new. I know he'll probably wake up tomorrow and go find more alcohol and drugs. But we spoke the word of God. We spoke Gospel, and we spoke truth. So maybe. Just maybe... he'll wake up tomorrow and remember that some dumb college kids saw Jesus Christ in him and prayed for him at nine o'clock in the parking lot while he was wasted and looking for more. And maybe at the age of "72" he'll trade alcohol and drugs for Christ.

Extremely unlikely, I know. Extremely naive, I know. But truth and Gospel transcend our silly expectations, or God is not Who He says He is.

I
Jeremiah 15:15-21

II
Great men pierce the soul.

III
What are you faking, little one? What do you want? You cannot excel. You are but a drop, a spec. Child, step back from your tragically insignificant victories. As you throw nine-year-olds to the ground, dear ten-year-old, do you not feel the ancient wraiths chilling the air? The memory of their memories, the last gasp of a fading glory, moves a mountain while your living presence is merely a nuisance.

IV
The quickening power, Mike, is almost spent. They can taste a residual flavor, exotic and exciting. But no further. Why give an invitation given to children who cannot find their way? They may, in their little minds, appreciate the beauty of the card, but since they will never be able to plumb deeper, is it not better to withhold the taunting first glance? Or must you speak truth to the ignorant anyway?

V
If the fathers of grandfathers are mute, who will speak? And if our sages cannot comprehend the good, who will? Blind cripple, will you show your sons and daughters the Way?

VI
Apply pressure. Stench the flow. Fend off good-hearted murderers. And pray, boy, pray that the doctor will come. You are overwhelmed; disbelieve this, and you will assuredly drown. Recognize the inevitability, and perhaps you can keep life-blood inside until he arrives. So pray and press, fight and hope; else comes the whimper.

"...the unreasoning fear of suffering. Metus doloris. Take it together with is positive equivalent, the craving for worldy security, for Eden, and you might have your 'root of evil,' Doctor Cors. To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law -- a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security."
-A dying abbot in A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.

“Implicit in [Job] is the lesson that theology must not try to be any clearer about God than God is about Himself. This is where so much fundamentalist religion goes astray, as it seeks to pin things down that are unpinnable, to systematize truths that by nature are unsystematic. Pharisees theologize the life out of truth. They are so wrapped up in expounding the Word of God that they forget it is the Word of God which expounds us.” –Mike Mason

I like this quote, and find it true, but I also find it dangerous. Recognizing the limits of doctrine and dogma is good; discarding them because of their dangers is deadly. Their can no faith without dogma.

There's a growing disgust for liturgy, tradition, and the old within American Christianity. To be honest, it really makes me want to convert to Catholicism. I won't, because I can't buy the authority claims, but I'd rather be an orthodox Catholic steeped in the tradition of our fathers than a free-floating, disconnected innovator with no accountability except to my own emotions.

Flannery O'Connor and T.S. Eliot tasted like postmodernism. The mastery of grotesque and discordance in their work outpaced the postmodernists, and this drew -- especially with Eliot -- sharp criticism from conservatives. Lewis saw Eliot as a wolf who sometimes assumed sheep's clothing, and until late in life he thought Eliot was truly the enemy. He was wrong, deeply so. O'Connor drew less criticism, but that's mainly because she wrote Southern grotesque. Most of the critics who read her were postmoderns themselves, and they assuredly did not get her, often mistaking her heros for villains, her Satanic figures for enlightened guides... And by the time she was writing, the conservative camp -- Kirk, et al -- had learned that, in fact, postmodern style did not automatically mean devilish intent.

But the amazing thing about O'Connor and Eliot -- and Dostoevsky, arguably -- is that they managed to be terribly traditional and orthodox despite their style. O'Connor's work dismembers postmodernism and secular humanitarianism; Eliot's even more so. And though O'Connor's favorite figures were protestant Jeremiads, she herself was entirely orthodox, despising the idea that the Church ought to change for culture... rather than change culture.

Further, they did not write in a certain way because they felt they "ought" to. Eliot did not write as he did because someone told him he'd be more "relevant" if he did so; if he had done so, he would have been canny, fake, and watery. O’Connor calls fiction “in incarnational art,” asserting that the author must begin with an inherent sense of manners (NEVER an assumed style or persona – you cannot write outside of your own mastery, which usually means you must write out of the culture and community you are in) and a natural story… rather than beginning, as so many authors do, with an idea or abstraction, and subsequently constructing a story to house the concept. You must begin with the story and you must already have the mannerisms. If nothing of substance naturally flows from your manner and your style, it probably means you have nothing of substance in you, or you’re simply not cut out for fiction.

I charge you, and I charge myself:
-Do not dress the truth up for culture or be "a filtered subcultural version" of yourself, as the good Derek Webb puts it… do not make a mask to be more palatable, and do not be something you are not.
-Do not assume irrelevancy in the old. Truth does not grow outdated, though a dying culture may be deafened to it.

I challenge:
-Speak truth, and do so genuinely. No facades, no tricks, no makeup. Do so in love, and love sometimes means knowing when to speak and when to be silent. But do not confuse love and cowardice; love does not disguise truth.
-Change culture, but do not change for culture.

*puffs on pipe*

One of my favorite over-the-top Hillsdale mind-images for me now is Russell Kirk sitting in some big leather chair in a softly-lit personal library, puffing on a pipe, removing the pipe, and, while contemplatively motioning with his left hand (holding the pipe), meditatively pronouncing, "Oootium..." (Latin for leisure, peace, recreational time).

I don't know why, but it absolutely cracks me up. Oh Hillsdale.

In any case, I do enjoy having the time to read over the summer.

1. I've finished one book -- "To Own a Dragon: Reflections on Growing up Without a Father" by Donald Miller. Decent book -- very "self-help" as far as books go. It's neat in some ways, as it's essentially the story of being discipled by older men of God. But it's also a bit contrived -- trying to hard to imitate the style of Blue Like Jazz.

Favorite quote, talking about his struggles to find out if he was a "real man":

"And so for a long time I wandered around in a fog. Manhood felt like something had been handed to me accidentally. I just knew somebody was going to explain I was actually a lesbian with a penis, and if I wanted I could continue to watch college football, but should probably tone down the interest in post-season baseball, as this territory was reserved for men who had killed sleeping bears."

His basic point was that a real man is someone who has a penis. Never tell a guy that to be a "real man" he has to do something -- manhood or womanhood, for that matter, is something God hands out from birth. Men need to know their men; in my experience and in my father's (who has been mentoring guys full-time for 25 years), the #1 source of relational problems for men is insecurity, and that almost always has to do with a doubt about manhood. The only ultimate end to insecurity is at the Cross, but part of getting there is excepting that God made you a man, regardless of whether shooting big living things or engaging in quasi-violent sports is your shindig. In any case, his basic point was that all these things we say a "real man" does are really things a "good man" does. You're a "real man" if you have a penis, even if you break promises and hate Jesus. And I mostly agree with Miller, though I would say that true, Christ-imitating masculinity involves being a good man...




2. You must read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. It's an outstanding novel -- a quick read, and, in fact, in some places a bit "cheap fictionesque," if you will. But the beautiful imaginative portrayal of myth and symbol at the heart of culture and civilization is amazing.


"Look at him!" the scholar persisted. "No, but it's too dark now. You can't see the syphilis outbreak on his neck, the way the bridge of his nose is being eaten away. Paresis. But he was undoubtedly a moron to begin with. Illiterate, superstitious, murderous. He diseases his children. For a few coins he would kill them. He will sell them anyway, when they are old enough to be useful. Look at him, and tell me if you see the progeny of a once-mighty civilzation? What do you see?"

"The image of Christ," grated the monsignor, suprised at his own sudden anger. "What did you expect me to see?"

I was LJ surfing and happened to come across some random honors freshman from Hillsdale who was bitching about how Birzer's class kicked her butt and how mad she was that she worked so hard and yet she was still getting a C or a D and how Birzer was a history revisionist blahblahblah.

I laughed a lot. And I really like Birzer -- even more now.

--
On a side note, if you want to write me or send me good things this summer:

Eagle Lake
Attn. Mark Perkins
P.O. Box 6819,
Colorado Springs, CO 80934

Says Alfred:

"I will even answer the mighty earl
That asked of Wessex men
Why they be meek and monkish folk,
And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke;
What sign have we save blood and smoke?
Here is my answer then.

"That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly,
And you hang over us like the sky,
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.

"That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

"That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again."
[Ballad of the White Horse/GK Chesterton]

-----------

For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying...
["The Dry Salvages"/The Four Quartets/T.S. Eliot]

-----------

"The world is ours if we could only let it be."

["Hurry"/Sleeping at Last]

Dr. Birzer talked about Harry Potter at length today as a huge pop culture icon rife with myth, symbol, and imagination. He argued in defense of HP, pointing out tons of classical imagery and Christian imagery that, as an Oxford-educated Scot, she would probably not have accidentally inserted. I’ll just present Birzer’s arguments as best I can with as little of mine as possible this time, and you can make of them what you will:

-Spells: all spells are cast in Aramaic, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon (Birzer might have mentioned another classical language I missed). Interesting note: all dark spells are in Aramaic.

-In the Philosopher’s Stone, we find Voldemort drinking the blood of a Unicorn. Note, first of all, that the Unicorn was a common medieval reference to Christ. Someone (maybe Dumbledore, can’t recall) in the book talks about the damnation Voldemort brings upon himself by drinking the Unicorn blood, saying that drinking something so pure in evil is drinking one’s own condemnation: practically Paul’s own words regarding the Eucharist.

-Phoenix named Fawkes… The Phoenix is, of course, associated with fire. And the name Fawkes? In Britian, Fawkes only means
one thing: Guy Fawkes, who attempted to blow up Parliament. Interesting imagery, not sure I (Mark Perkins) got the connection. There are a thousand other connections to the Phoenix in ancient myth, too numerous to hash out or necessarily distinguish.

-There’s a clear connection between the wars of wizards and the wars of the rest of the world… we can see Voldemort’s return accompanied by war outside the wizard world. With that in mind, it’s interesting to note that Dumbledore’s two great victories over Dark Wizards were in 1945 and 1989. (Me: Clearly no coincidence there; Rowling seems to be more genuinely following the Inklings [whom she has called her greatest influences] in their battle against ideology than I had ever believed. It was hard for me to buy, because she had been associated with ideological Manicheanism and Gnosticism before; Bendict has attacked the books as such, and though I don’t always agree with Benedict, I certainly respect his authority when it comes to understanding the classical influences in today’s society)

-Dumbledore’s love previously mentioned. In this passage he also says something to the effect that Voldemort was so busy mutilating his own soul, that he missed how powerful an untarnished soul protected by love would be… splitting one’s soul is unnatural, evil – basically an abomination. VERY Greek.

-Birzer surmised that, given Rowling’s current track, it is almost a given that Harry Potter will have to sacrifice his life for his friends and for the world, and Ron and Hermione may have to as well. He also thought that there may be a figure to emerge greater than Dumbledore, Harry, or any of the current “players.” Just a possibility, he said, noting that ALL of this is dependent upon what happens in Book 7… that Book 7 could classify this as a Christian work, a work easily sanctified, or a truly Gnostic/Manichean work…

The subtitle could be “A Battle Between Christianity and Gnosticism.”

In one of my classes, we recently had a discussion related to miracles and magic as viewed by Eric Voegelin and JRR Tolkien, with a sidenote related to ‘arry Potter.

I’ll attempt to address the difference between the two, the implications of each related to the author and to the culture that produces and follows each. Track with me here, read the whole thing, or you’ll errantly begin to think I’ve joined the anti-Harry Potter crowd.

Some preliminary and extremely basic explanations of Gnosticism are in order. I’ll keep it concise – too brief, in fact, to explain it in any serious significance, but enough to perhaps see the relevance.

Gnosticism is a post-Classical-Greek Hellenic philosophy. It emerged from Greece about six-hundred years prior to Christ, like other Greek philosophies of the time (e.g. Stoicism, Epicureanism,, etc), as a way of wrestling with the deterioration of the polis and of community in Greek life. The points of reference by which Greeks once defined themselves – as members of the polis, occupying a distinct place in the local community – were falling away, and new ways of thinking about the world around and the individual began to emerge. Gnosticism has an element of “flungness” – that is, a feeling that we are spiritual beings cast into a harsh and alien setting. Gnostics were hostile to the material world, in large part, desiring escape. The Gnostic sees the world as a place of oppression, not beautiful but brutally unfamiliar. We are not meant to be here, says the Gnostic. Why are we here, and how will we escape? Who has flung us here?

An element of Christianity greatly appealed to Gnosticism. Rather than seeing Christ as the perfect union of flesh and Spirit, the fully man and fully divine Son of God sent to sanctify and purify man… Gnostics saw Christ as the figure sent to rescue us from the evils of the material world. Paul cries out against the wickedness of the flesh. Gnostics, believing the physical, material world, latched onto that element, detaching it from the whole of Christianity and rejecting the material creation of God. Many Gnostics accepted Christ in a sense, but chose to believe that Lucifer was superior to YHWH. YHWH is too blame – He sent us here. Lucifer, they believed, is the god of light and imagination, the one who sent Christ to rescue us from this world. Many, though, stuck with YHWH but drastically changed his nature and purpose. And thus the earliest of Christian heresy was born, a heresy still insidiously prevalent in the Church.

On to magic and miracle. Understand that I am using magic in a very specific sense, which I will explain. Some things called magic are in fact “miracle;” some things called miracle are “magic.” Some are not easy or simple to classify. Hopefully by the conclusion of my discourse you’ll have a clearer view of the lines of distinction between the two.

According to Eric Voegelin, a culture’s fascination with magic generally displays a heightening in Gnostic tendencies. Often, magic is merely the defiance of the physical, the created and natural world. Movies like the Matrix resoundingly echo the message of flungness, the desire to escape the physical, the idea that the world we live in is foreign, alien, hostile, wicked. The desire to escape the bounds of our created world through secret knowledge and skill shout Gnosticism, shout a disillusionment with the creation of God.

Of course, the problem is that we do live in a fallen world, a creation made hostile by the twisting of sin. The Christian recognizes that the earth is a fallen domain, given over to a sinister evil bent on our destruction. The difference, the critical line of division between Gnosticism and Christianity, is that we should seek to sanctify the world, not flee it. We recognize that it is given over to evil only for a season – that God’s original creation is good, and that no matter the twisting of sin, the stamp of the Creator still perseveres. We recognize the flesh as fallen, but not inherently evil. To be sure, we are depraved, but not irredeemable. To redeem and sanctify the earth is our mission, not to destroy, dominate, or flee.

And what, then, distinguishes miracle from magic?

The differences are in the source of the action and the purpose of the action.

The source of magic tends to be hidden power in oneself or some mystic outside force, spirit, or spirituality. The purpose can be to overcome the natural world, to gain power, to assert domination over another, increase one’s sphere of manipulation, yaddayaddadyadda.

Miracle, contrarily, comes straight from the Grace of the Creator. It is not an overcoming of the creation, but transcendence of it. One does not dominate, overpower, or manipulate nature. One transcends it through the power and grace of the God of creation. The purpose is always in favor of creation as an agent of the Creator. Never to destroy or escape, but always to sanctify, to remind all that this world is only temporarily in the clutches of the evil one.

This distinction is emphatic in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf, a sort of lower angel actually, draws on the source of Illuvatar, Creator, for his magic. His spells are works of grace, obviously working with the goodness of the created world to fight the evil, the power that would seek to tarnish and twist Middle Earth. Sauron, by contrast, is the ultimate Gnostic practicing the false magic that seeks ever to dominate the created world and flee the power of the Creator.

A similar distinction, though less developed or powerful, can be found in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. The Deep Magic of the Emperor Over the Sea is clearly miracle – the invocation of the grace of the Creator imbedded in His creation. The White Witch, of course, draws on powers of evil, a twisting of creation, an escape.

Scripture establishes a similar distinction with the story of Simon the magician in Acts 8. Simon, this magician, is astounded by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the disciples. When he sees the Holy Spirit filling people through the work of Peter and John, he’s astonished. Simon was a practitioner of “magic arts” who impressed the locals, and probably made a tidy profit too, because he offers the disciples a sum of money in return for being “taught” how to perform what he obviously sees as high magic art. Peter roundly condemns Simon, stating that “the gift of God” cannot be purchased with money.

How, then, does Harry Potter fit into this? Prior to Book Six, the series was largely Gnostic with allusions to more. The “flungness” of Harry, the escape from nature (though Rowling clearly does not show the abhorrence and hatred of the natural world to the extent of ancient Gnosticism), the freeing nature of secret, hidden knowledge. All very Gnostic. However, throughout the first five books there is the reference to love being higher than magic, to the power of love being ultimately significant. However, prior to The Half-Blood Prince, the references were rather vague and tended to suggest that “love” might just simply be the vague spiritual force typical of Gnostic magic. However, in Book Six, Dumbledore says something to the effect that “there is something higher than good magic or bad magic. There is love.” Of course, this could still be some sort of mystical force of escape. But the firmer statement reduces the Gnosticism of the text as a whole. One need only ask what or who the source of love is, supply the proper answer, and Harry Potter becomes miracle, not magic. Miracle with some great Gnostic tendencies, but miracle nonetheless.

The beauty of the Triune God is the mystery, the paradox. The Grace and Righteousness of God are fierce, beautiful, frigid, austere, intimate. We are dashed against the rocks of His Love, broken to pieces by the Grace that offers hope in a hopeless world. We live in a damned, doomed, depraved world. And yet in that despair is our hope. Nothing will ever be purely right in the world of humanity. No good will be untainted by connection to such tarnished beings as ourselves. Still we bear the IMAGO DEI, the image of the Almighty, and the severe signs of His Grace are imprinted in history and in our lives. In the Aftermath of the Fall, in the wickedness of our hearts, God is glorified and magnified. And we are loved by a pure and infinite Love.

-----

"Ideology provides sham religion and sham philosophy, comforting in its way to those who have lost or never have known genuine religious faith, and to those not sufficiently intelligent to apprehend real philosophy." -Russell Kirk ("The Errors of Ideology")

"Since [the end of the Age of Discussion], we have been living in the Age of Propaganda, or of what has been called "the engineering of consent" - governed by the public-relations expert, the newspaper editor, the TV commentator, the motion-picture producer, the lobbyist, the political manipulator... No mysterious wisdom abides in the bosom of the People to which we can appeal in this hour of our need. The public is not going to protest against stupid television-programs or hysterical newspapers or the decay of our schools. The public, or the masses, have no mind or coherence, accurately speaking. In our time, the public takes what it is given. It is useless for us to form committees and draw up petitions if we act upon the fallacy of vox populi, vox Dei. The nineteenth-century delusion that reason and decency inevitably will triumph, if only schooling is made general and restrictive forces are abolished - the delusion of Jefferson and of Mill - now, indeed, is doing great mischief among us..." -Russell Kirk (Prospects for Conservatives)

"Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything... If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." -From George Orwell's 1984

"The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. 'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
'How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.' " -Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Madman" from The Gay Science)

"Historically, the murder of God is not followed by the superman, but by the murder of man: the deicide of the gnostic theoreticians is followed by the homicide of the revolutionary practitioners." -Eric Voegelin ("The Murder of God")

" 'It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom,' said the Voice... 'My name also is Ransom.' "-C.S. Lewis (Perelandra)


"For who shall guess the good riddle
Or speak of the Holiest,
Save in faint figures and failing words,
Who loves, yet laughs among the swords,
Labours, and is at rest?

"But some see God like Guthrum,
Crowned, with a great beard curled,
But I see God like a good giant,
That, labouring, lifts the world.

"Where was God in Golgotha,
Slain as a serf is slain;
And hate He had of prince and peer,
And love He had and made good cheer
Of them that, like this woman here,
Go powerfully in pain"
-GK Chesterton (The Ballad of the White Horse)


"The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

"Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
[...]

"The dripping blood our only drink
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good."
-TS Eliot ("East Coker" from The Four Quartets)


"Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,

"'This is the Covenant that I will make with them
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws upon their heart
And on their mind I will write them,'
He then says,
'And their sins and their lawless deeds
I will remember no more.'
Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

"Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near."
-Hebrews 10:11-25

I'm back on LJ. I guess.

Classes began today. I've got GREAT classes. Some thoughts from my classes.

Latin w/ Dr. Weaire
-Very good professor. Rather inspired me to want to learn Latin, not just squeak through my language requirement. The idea of being able to read the Vulgate (haltingly and with helps) by the time I've finished my third semester was pretty incredible.

Political Economy w/ Dr. Wolfram
-This is going to be good.... some reflections on what he talked about:
*Seeing versus observing... people tend to see things that are bad (i/e extinction of animals), but they don't observe well. They know things are going badly, but they don't sit down and think rationally through their actions.
*We talked a lot about endangered species and the endangered species act... interestingly enough, the only animals that are in any danger of extinction are animals that are not privately owned, and the only animals pretty much guarunteed to never go extinct are privately owned. His observations: if the Manitees off Florida's coast were owned by Disney (who could then capitalize by using glass bottom boats and other commercial enterprise), the moment something started killing them you'd have a dozen biologists out there getting it diagnosed and fixed. Instead, because there is no compelling interest in keeping them around, you have to hope some U of Florida biologist decides to squeeze in extra time to study the issue. Another example: making ivory illegal means that the only people interested in selling ivory are criminals. It also means no one generally has any compelling interest in owning elephants and supporting them. So you have poachers who don't give a damn about future profits killing them off to make a quick buck. If, instead, they made the sale of ivory legal, you'd no doubt have a few forward-thinking, intelligent businessmen who would buy and breed elephants. Instead of generally indifferent and over-stretched governments supposedly running protection, you'd have businessmen with vested interests being certain to protect their investment, and insure that their investment isn't killed off. There's no way an intelligent businessman would pay big bucks for an elephant and just kill it off. He'd breed it to make sure that he could capitalize on his money fifteen years down the road. In other words, if you want to save an animal, have somebody own it.
*The endangered species act basically states that if any endangered species gets on your property, you can't use it. At all. So let's say International Paper has 50,000 acres of forest in Canada that they paid millions and millions of dollars for. If a spotted owl shows up, it's worthless. So what are they going to do? They're going to make their land as unfriendly as possible to spotted owls. Predatory birds and the like. And if one does show up, there's a solid chance they'll shoot the thing and bury it, or bring a hawk by to do the dirty work. The endangered species act basically makes any businessman close his property to endangered species.
*Minimum wage.... great idea... let's say you're the local McDonalds and you have $750 to spend on wages for the next two days. You can pay $5 an hour and hire out 150 working hours to cover those 48 hours. But minimum wage forces you to pay $7.50 an hour, and you'll only hire 100 working hours. Don't think businesses are gonna start spending a ton more money on employees because you raise minimum wage.... nope, they're just gonna fire people or give them less hours (which in turn reduces their ability to qualify for employee benefits). So either you've got a privileged group making more with more people out of a job, or you've got everybody with a better wage but a worse job. Generally it's the first. And who's the first to get fired? In our prejudiced world, you hire the people who make your customers most at ease. Middle class white kids. The ones who get screwed are black teens and young men. There's a clear connection between increased minimum wage and higher unemployment for young black men.... Furthermore, what's the only industry in America without a minimum wage? Crime -- drugs in particular. Which is probably why there's a disproportionate number of young black men selling drugs.... and then getting jailed, which goes on their resume, which means it's even more likely they can't get a job, which makes dealing drugs an even more inescapable alternative, which puts them back in jail... that's one reason why recidivism rates are so high. So raise that minimum wage and screw minorities. Take note that %50 of McDonald's corporate employees (i/e the ones working corporate jobs in management at the national level) started out working as bottom-level employees in McDonald's. You increase minimum wage, you kill the opportunity to rise through the system, a genuine possibility at most places (Starbucks is another place that commonly draws it's top positions from it's local stores. Brinker International as well [parent company to Chile's, On the Border, Macaroni Grill, etc]).
*What this all comes back to is what is called the moral hazard = creating a system that encourages poor behavior or one that makes unethical actions economically appealing... such as the endangered species act, in which the economically desirable action means killing and shunning endangered species. Or unchecked, unlimited unemployment insurance, which removes the incentive to hold down a job. Or collision insurance on your kid's car, which lessens the incentive to drive safely. We SEE, but we don't OBSERVE. We SEE endangered species dying but we don't OBSERVE that it's because nobody has any real interest in keeping them alive due to governmental restrictions.

American Order and Disorder w/ Dr. Birzer
-This is gonna be a great class. Birzer is a great professor. Some reflections:
*He brought up something he apparently talked about in his freshman history classes... how cult (religious faith and religious community) creates culture which in turn defines all else -- politics, law, economy... How it always should be in that order and that you can't go in reverse order. Brought me to thinking about contemporary American conservatives, particularly those of the FOX News or Pat Robertson variety... the Republicans who want to legislate Christianity. Christians who think that a Christian nation is one with Christian laws... How they're all furiously mopping the flooded floor instead of turning off the damn water... attacking the consequences instead of addressing the causes. Ever since I've entertained more libertarian views, I've struggled with the link between my relationship with Christ and views on government. The two cannot be compartmentalized, of course... but how do they effect each other? I think I used to be a libertarian in spite of my Christianity. Now I'm libertarian *because* of my Christianity. Note that I'm libertarian... not a libertarian... a libertarian tends to believe that people should give in to their appetites and no one can make any value statements effecting others. A libertarian tends to say, "Whatever works" and follow utility at the expense of truth and beauty and compassion. A libertarian tends to be completely self-reliant, refusing to acknowledge the need for God or the generally crippled and depraved state of mankind. I am not a libertarian. How does it work though that my Christianity produces libertarianism? Because I believe what Birzer says -- the cult is the source. A nation is only Christian when its citizens are committed to Christ. You will not find the Christianity of a nation in its laws and politics, though you can trace the signs back. Furthermore, people should, in a sense, do what they want. If you follow Christianity because you feel like you have to or because you're legally compelled to, your faith is worthless and you might as well just screw it and become a hedonist. You follow God because He changes your heart, because He makes you stop wanting the things of the world and start desiring the things of God.
*We also touched on beauty versus utility, how value is not in usefulness.... how standardizing the world into a big uniform monstrosity destroy true and beautiful diversity... how the ridiculous idea of total equality kills us as people, kills who we were made to be. It made me think of a Piper quote from a sermon Andrea sent me that goes something like, "Unity in diversity is greater than uniformity," referring the racial and cultural harmony Christ desires in His body. He doesn't want us to be all the same because that is bland and boring and does not display the beauty, majesty, and creativity of the Creator.... but for us to be different and yet unified, of the same mind, striving together and encouraging one another... is a beautiful thing.... how our desire for the familiar and refusal to accept change or to allow for differences is a reflection of the Fall, of our sin nature...

In any case, my classes rock and it's gonna be a great semester.