Yahweh's Whistle

“[The Lord] will raise a signal for nations far away, and whistle for them from the ends of the earth; and behold quickly, speedily they come!” (Isaiah 5:26).

“In that day the Lord will whistle for the fly that is at the end of the streams of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria,” (Isaiah 7:17-18).

What if Israel truly understood that the world superpower they feared was only called forth by the whistle of Yahweh?  The great Assyria is like a little fly, like a dog being summoned, like a little peon that Yahweh finds scantily useful.  A great superpower that is actually a pawn and it doesn’t even know it’s a pawn.

What if we truly believed superpowers today are only pawns?  Sometimes useful, sometimes obsolete, yet they are always little pawns in a greater scheme –a greater scheme that will never make the NY Times.

Marriage in Culture

The general response I received when Heidi and I announced our engagement last year was very interesting.  Most people sought to temper my natural excitement with some measure of realism.  “It will be good, but it will be hard.”  “Marriage isn’t just happily-ever-after.”  The second most common response was pure cynicism.  “Well good luck with that one!”  “Hopefully your marriage will last a few years longer than mine... haha”  Out of so many responses, I had only two men share personally from the other end of the spectrum. “Getting married is the best thing I’ve ever done,” said one husband and father.  Another friend said, “I know you have lots of high expectations going into marriage, but after a couple years you will realize that it will actually be better than your expectations!”  These two stuck out to me because you never hear statements like these, particularly from men.  Perhaps it’s worth asking the question, why?

I mean besides America having the highest divorce rates in the world and therefore lots of first-hand experience with marital destruction, there is also, in addition, a well-entrenched culture of avoidance and bemoaning toward marriage.  My wife told me a story of an older couple asked to publicly share their marital advice to some newlyweds on their wedding day.  The husband got up and said to the groom “Run.  Run Away.”  Besides how ugly and tactless it was, a man would never say that publicly unless there was already a deep culture of collective cynicism --a culture more likely to laugh at such a public ridicule of his wife, rather than rebuke him. 

Maybe we can start to answer the question by jumping off Stuart Coupland’s observations.  He says we live in an ‘extended adolescent’ culture.  It is a culture most characterized by a deep disinclination to long term commitments and responsibility.  It is a video-game, fast-food, culture of instant gratification. A lot could be said in response to this, but I guess I just wonder how seeing your autistic son graduate college, or your life’s work being manufactured on the global market, or reconciling with your estranged brother in heartfelt tears, etc. --I wonder how these could ever be in the same ballpark as hedonistic bodily pleasures (what Aristotle called the pleasures of swine).  But for our 'extended adolescent' culture, instant gratification is not just on the same playing field, it almost always holds the trump card!

I guess I would just echo to our generation what Lewis told his.  Ironically the problem is not that our desires are too strong, but too weak.  “We are far too easily pleased.  We are like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea,” (Weight of Glory, pg 26).  When you taste what it means to live for something bigger than your immediate sensations, than whole new worlds open.  And I suspect worlds that would have a very different way of talking about marriage than ours.

A Commandment of Life

“And now, O Israel, listen to the statues and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live…” (Deut 4:1).

The promise of life is more than an escape from divine judgment.  Reading the Old Testament (especially the legislation portions) we have tendencies to carefully file all the commands into ones that apply and ones that don’t apply.  And then, taking the rules that do apply, we try really hard to follow them so God doesn’t get mad.  So we read “do them, that you may live…” as “do them, so you avoid God’s displeasure and his punishment.”

Instead a parallel verse gives us a more helpful direction.  “Keep them [the statutes and rules], and that will be your wisdom and understanding...” (4:6). Commandment-keeping produces “life” in Deut 4:1 and it produces a way of living that is full of wisdom and understanding in Deut 4:6.  It is “life” in the fullest sense of flourishing and thriving.  This commandment-keeping is not producing “life” in the mere sense of survival.  It is not simply dodging the divine rod.  It is living and doing what we were made for --living beautifully under his rule and reign.  A taste, you might say, of the Eden that we lost.  So the bible pleads for us to see commandment-keeping as flourishing and life in the fullest sense.  And incidentally the death that came to Adam (and also to Israel) from stepping outside his statutes, was not “death” as meaning sudden cardiac arrest.  It is “death” in the fullest sense: corruption, deterioration, darkness.  It is the opposite of flourishing and thriving, the opposite of ‘life.’

When you hear God has commands pointed directly at you, do you think more of God’s potential displeasure and the possible consequences thereof?  Or do you see them as a beautiful path being spread before you, beckoning you to flourish?

Some Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton

“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother. Nature is our sister.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908

Incarnated Ideas

Alister McGrath (Christian Theology, pg. 36) writes that "Scholasticism is probably one of the most despised intellectual movements in history."  He attempts a definition: "Scholasticism does not refer to a specific system of beliefs, but to a particular way of doing and organizing theology -a highly developed method of presenting material, making fine distinctions and attempting to achieve a comprehensive view of theology."

It's what happens when philosophers get a hold of theology.  They ask funny modal questions like: "Could God have become a cucumber instead of a man?  Could God undo the past by making a prostitute into a virgin?"  The reason scholasticism was terribly despised during the renaissance is different than the reason we would despise it today.  Erasmus hated it because of the frivolous and ridiculous ways it was debated.   But today, we have little patience with the questions at all.  We are pragmatists of the highest order.  How would this help my marriage?  How do details of omnipotence re-launch my sputtering career?  And in our hyper-practicality we miss how the answer to every practical question really does have deep worldview assumptions.  Assumptions the scholastics tried to work though, but never managed to bring together. 

The lesson for the scholastics is that ideas, no matter how abstract, have to incarnate themselves into tangible ways of testing and living them out to be meaningful.  The lesson for us is that there really is a world of ideas behind every tangible movement and desire (yours included) that demands our exploration. 

Introducing my New Blog (cont)

No one puts visiting Walmart’s parking lot on a to-do list.  No one ever says "I had a fulfilling day at the downtown parking structure."  No one comes by to admire the shrubbery or the colorful symmetrical pavement.  A parking lot is a place to stop off on your way somewhere.  In fact, if you're not on your way, you're loitering.  You're breaking the law.

A parking lot is a place I've spent one third of my life.  Loading vehicles, supplying carts.  Helping people get on their way.

Ideas are not ends in themselves.  (I must remind myself of this often.)  They are structures we use to form and reform our lives.  Intellectual structures, you might say.  They are supposed to take you somewhere useful, maybe somewhere beautiful.  Helping people get on their way.  Good lives are built around good ideas.  And the opposite is unfortunately true as well.  Destructive ideas are poison.  They parasitically destroy our lives from the inside.  What ideas do you build your life around?

I like helping people get on their way.  That’s the purpose of this blog.  The hours musing around my parking lot have swirled together many ideas.  Some bad ones, that I try to leave behind.  Some good ones that I try to share with co-workers and others.  However much fun I have with it, I want something more than just the intrigue of wrestling with them.  I want my ideas to settle in my heart, settle in my life.  To take me somewhere majestic, somewhere beautiful.

Introducing my New Blog

I am starting to discover a love for writing.  It is a glorious medium for exchanging ideas. And since idea exchanging happens to be one of my deepest loves, I want to invite you to share yours, as I share mine.

So naturally, philosophy will find its way to these pages.  So will theology.  Beyond being much of my life's study, good ideas don't really get much traction without interaction with these two fields.  My walk with Jesus is also integral to who I am, and it also has some foundational things to say about good ideas.  Current events, good quotes (I'm very picky about these) and almost everything I read are fair game.  Affirm, redirect, or push back on my ideas.  And through our interactions maybe we'll come to some good ones.

This blog was my wife's idea.  She has lots of good ideas =)