From the Princeton Seminary Application

In one paragraph, comment on a book, issue or theological idea that has engaged your attention recently.

I figure I'll be doing better if I can try this out before I send it to them - you'll probably get another one for the long essay, and another for the other short essay, but let's start where we are, shall we?

I recently picked up a text called "An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility" by Martin Luther. Having never before read Luther, I wasn't sure what to expect. I found his style confrontational, his points aggressive, and his position unshakeable. I was most struck, first, by his deep-seated anger at the Pope. I wouldn't characterize most of what he writes as a personal attack, but rather fury at the misuse of the Papal office. I noticed, then, that many of the proposals he made in the first treatise are now institutions of Protestant Christianity. Through consistent logic and thoughtful belief, one man was able to deeply affect Christian thinking. Finally, though, I was struck by the depth of his concern for Christians - going so far as to discourage pilgrimages, on the grounds that people should be invested in their own neighbours. Knowing more of the history of the church, and of one man's passion for the members of the body of Christ, helps me to see what I can do

Please, folks - comment. I need advices on this more than I was expecting.

Conversatio: Cantus Incantabans

A draft section from A Pilgrims' Congress

Then, as I was walking, a man joined my road. We greeted one another - I told him my name, and he said that his name was Cantus Incantabans. He asked me where I was going, and I told him of my quest to find the foundation stone. He looked shocked and said:

"My dear boy, that's the very object of my travels! I hear that the road to it is this very path, and that to find that stone we must walk the path to its end!"

Naturally I was very pleased to find another traveller of my persuasion, and we talked for a time of our trials and the views of the road. He was very dry, and we laughed ourselves sick at the folly of my countrymen.

Wiping my eyes from tears of laughter, I asked him, "Well then, what of you? What manner of house will you build on this cornerstone of ours?"

He looked very surprised, and not a little ashamed. "Well, now...there's an assumption there that need not be made. Why should I need to build the thing? No, it's best..."

Here he trailed off, for my incredulity could scarce have been more clear had I cursed him for a fool, then and there. "Don't act so surprised," he said. "What need should there be of a house itself? The foundation is enough for me."

"Enough?" said I. "What is this stone of which you speak, so worthy of a grand edifice, that shall have none upon it? Why, then, do you seek it?"

Said he, "I would simply that I knew it to be there, to have that comfort in my life. To have it to rely on."

I shook my head at this, and was about to grant him the benefit of his opinion when he said, "If I were you, I should do the same. There's no need to muck about with all this tedious construction of yours. Let us simply find the thing, and have done."

I rounded on him, and faced him as a man. "You fool," said I, "you know not what you say. I take the journey to find the stone to build the house. I should not be other than I am if I failed in any part. Get yourself from me - I will have no more to do with you."

And so I left him standing on the road like a landed fish, gaping after me and moving his mouth in consternation. I, though, proceeded upon my way, fuming at the lazy believer as I passed.

Death by hilarity

This site, which is now on my awesome list, pointed me here.

1: NSFW
2: Not to be read with a full bladder.

You have been warned.

In other news - seminary looks to be an impending disaster - the theological sword of Damocles. If any of the two people who read this have any advice on ille, I would appreciate hearing it. The good news is that the theological bent of this thing won't be going anywhere. Politics, academics, yes - theology until my dying breath.

Today

Today I won life. Like all good games, you want to keep playing after you "win," and so the game becomes a series of victories, but today was clearly game point to the Good guys in the old tennis match of Humanism versus Christianity. The score stands, as it has for some time, at Humanism - 1,343,789,021, Christianity - ∞ .

I've been working for about a month on energy and economics. It seemed to me that there the problem lies, and that if we could solve the problems of energy and economics - the gathering of energy and the distribution of energy benefits - we could cinch the whole thing up tight! No one is hungry - no one wants - all is available - all is well.

Of course, to put that together, every human being would have to contribute to energy gathering and energy distribution - a sort of communism, if you will. Which happens to require universal participation.

This typically initiates my "gnash" reflex, but for some reason today...I just realized that it isn't going to work. All the effort and expense and Brownian motion of mankind - it's not efficient enough. The goal of humanism, futurism, communism, etc., is a closed system. The perpetual motion machine, perfectly efficient. And all these little "ism"s claim to be a path to a Perpetual Motion Mankind, provided everyone pulls together and puts their back into it.

Ben Bova, in his book Mars, talks about thermodynamics in a lovely homespun way. "You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game." And where two or three humans are gathered for any reason, there is disagreement. Which then magnifies into dischord and strife. War. So, all the isms are fundamentally flawed - too much grit in the works, too much friction in the universe.

What we need, then, I reasoned, is something to believe in, a solution, which doesn't require universal human participation. Something that get us through the grinding ill, but doesn't need everyone's signature.

I started off pointing to religions in general - the Barkeep most rightly pointed out that Judaism and Islam may be exempted, the one promising reward only to a chosen people, the other's utopia requiring the religious conquest of the world. But, of the big five, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism all have that vast uncaring about what others do.

In essence, as I told the Barkeep, I needed to remind myself that I was a Christian first and a humanist second. I have a lot of good humanist stuff - I like what we're about. But Christ is the centre. There can be no other path.

So, Sugarbutt! That for your futurism! Let's watch, and see who wins.

We live in a phenomenal world...

Yeah we do. Yeah we do.

I've been developing the language and the thought about this, ably assisted by the Barkeep and Sugarbutt (my shoulder angel and atheist, respectively), and it's time to take another stab at a theology of the phenomenal.

We live in a physical world. If you fail existentialism and accept some of the more obvious assumptions that we can make about living on earth (everyone else exists, everything we can experience with the senses is, to a greater or lesser extent, real, etc.), then you've got a nice duality of choices about the rest. Deity or not? Created or cosmic accident? Spiritual, inexplicable, mysterious, or methodical, predictable, Newtonian? Chaos and determinism on both sides of the crater, lava below, survival above.

But on either side of that question, and in every flavor of the middle, the world is standing there, staring you in the face, trying to get your attention. Every time I try to come up with an example of this, it sounds so banal, but think for a minute about trees. What? Why on God's/chaos'/Darwin's blue earth should there be life at all? Why should some of it grow tall, and somewhat hard? Leaves, bark, what's that all about? Burn it or build a bungalow, wood is bizarre.

And it's all like that! Bugs, electricity, humans (especially humans), we're all wired to simultaneously accept all this stuff that's in our faces on a daily basis, because it's always been there, but it's weird! It's weird just by being there, and whether it was adapted to fit us, or we to fit it, we live in a world to which we're ideally suited. The phenomena of our material universe, of which we are admittedly one of the strangest instances of the class, cry out to be acknowledged. This is smelling the roses on speed - take a moment and wonder that there are roses at all!

This is just a part of a larger idea - I'm still working on the unifying theme, but trust me when I say that levelling the accusation at the universe that it should be other than it is isn't helpful - the universe we have is a wonder, full of tragedy, triumph, and beauty. And it will be so, whatever the fate of mankind may be.

Only So Much Foucault

I want to talk to you today about torture.

There's quite a bit of hullabaloo regarding torture in the news today, and there has been for some time. Any reasonable, liberally-minded individual living in America must be disgusted by images such as those out of Abu Ghraib, or any other vision of torment and inflicted pain.

And I am.

Why, then, can an evangelical, an avowed Christian, and this nation's spiritual and moral leader condone the torture, interrogation, and the privation of human rights that "enemy combatants" endure in our present conflict?

And I think I understand.

It is not the role of the President to be nice. It was not Secretary Rumsfeld's job to be popular. In both cases, the job is to protect and pursue American interests at home and abroad. I say that, knowing full well that right now, not so very far from where I am sitting, individuals could be tortured for information in pursuit of this war.

The problem is that that information may be vital to the national security. And Messrs. Bush, Cheney, et al., and Mme. Rice, believe it to be true.

And I don't have a problem with that.

Al Qaeda will have (has had) no objections, on a moral level, to torturing, maiming, and beheading innocents and journalists, as well as our combatants. It is asked, why should we treat them any better, and as an American citizen, my answer must be, we can't. This isn't that kind of war. For the safety of our children, we must take radical, unprecedented, unfortunate steps.

And I don't have a (big) problem with that.

Are you ready for the turn? Because here it is. The current administration is doing what they think is right and necessary, and they will continue to do so, and it is right that they do.

But I will call, after the end of the administration, for an investigation into the acts of the administration. At the end of the war, I want to know what happened during the war. And those who committed crimes should be brought to justice for them.

As he's walking out of the White House, take all of President Bush's files, and find out who did what. Take them to trial. Let them be held accountable by US law.

Because that's the thing that must make us different from Islamic extremists. And from Communist guerillas. And from every other force for murder and torture in this world. We live under the rule of law - it is for that we fight. I can allow for the use of extreme force in the face of extremism. But I cannot condone its going unpunished.

I see a human intelligence operative in the streets of Moscow. He has a job, and he does it cleanly, and effectively. There's a silencer, a dark alley, an unfound murder, unanswered questions, and American lives are saved. It's vile and reprehensible, but for the state, it must be done.

And on the day that the USSR fell, I see him going to his local police department, or that of the Soviet Union, and turning himself in. I see this in my mind, and I cannot smile. It isn't a good. But it is there, and it is better than the alternative.

This has happened but two times that I know of, that a man guilty of crimes undertaken on behalf of his own nation was willingly and legally punished. Both were honest men; both did what they thought was right; both paid for it with their lives.

But even having escaped judgment in this life, I know that President Bush, in his own heart and mind, will have to square every act of torture, every death he undertook, with his own God. And that may be the greatest punishment that could be devised for a man of conscience.

And that I can ride with.

Erro, errare, erravi, erratus

This will not be the best-connected post in the history of blog.

I have an awful lot of tags. I felt bad about this until I realized that I had an awful lot of things I talked about. I consider eclecticism no more a sin then asceticism, and so, will carry on ballooning the wealth of tags at my disposal.

At some point I would like to re-do the style sheet for this page, and that may well be today. I like this initial style, but everyone does have it, and over-familiarity (as well you all know) breeds despite.

I understand more fully now than ever before in my life the scourge of poverty. It's not bad because some people have plenty and some live in want. That's a good objective measure for poverty, but I think JK Rowling says it best.

Probably the very best thing my earnings have given me, though, is absence of worry. I have not forgotten what it feels like to worry whether you'll have enough money to pay the bills. Not to have to think about that any more is the biggest luxury in the world.

I think one could extend that even further for true poverty. If you want to talk about the great tragedy of being poor (whose depths I have not nearly plumbed, and hope to avoid), I suspect that it is, above all, that of wasted potential. Surviving does not permit for thought beyond oneself and loved ones. Living lets you think about the plight of the world. When I worry about my job in a few weeks, and about what I shall eat and where I shall sleep (and yes, I am trying to keep Christ's words in front of me. What I wear is a matter of some indifference to me - food is rather a more important consideration), I cannot divide myself away from my immediate circle. Me, Penelope, the Barkeep, Sugarbutt, the Alchemist, the Hero and a few others I can consider and work with/for...everyone else seems to fall by the wayside. I wonder if, in Africa and Southeast Asia, in South America, if the social problems stem from that narrowness of circle, the refusal to open up to those outside, because of the need to survive.

It's not fully developed, I know, and me talking about poverty is Solomon bemoaning penury to a Nigerian slum-dweller. I will not swear, but I would that I could, if not redress the balance, than at least find a method for every person to live, truly live, rather than just survive. I think that life in Christ must be a part of that, but even Christ fed his people. When did Christ take an offering? Christ gave an offering, was an offering.

Now I have visions of being a pastor, of distributing bread, and meat, and water to all who come and ask, every Sunday, before worship. A glorious hope.

So. I have wandered a bit, as well I should from time to time. I'll be in touch.

Peace.