big wooden house

I endorse Ron Paul for President

2012-01-03T08:50:00.001-08:00

The Future of Publishing? I'm Hopin'

2011-11-07T17:08:00.000-08:00

I'm probably the last on our block to realize this (and I live on a block of hicks), but the paper-and-ink publishing industry is dying.

No no, you say, people love books. They love the feel of books. They like paper and bookmarks and dog-ears. They like to cuddle with them in front of the fire. They share their intimate thoughts with them in highlights and exclamation points and notes in the margin. Heck, they even like that musty, old-book smell.

I know. I'm the same way. I love books.

But they're dying anyway. It's inevitable.

Look at what's happened already in the last year or two. E-reader users didn't like to scroll. They wanted to turn the page, so the e-reader makers listened. Now they flip and you don't even have to lick your fingers. And no one liked the look of the e-readers. It wasn't like real pages. It wasn't book-like. But have you seen a good one lately? They look great, clearer than paper, and you don't need light.

And people are voting with their dollars. Amazon recently announced that ebooks, for the first time ever, have out-sold hardcover books. Paperbacks, no doubt, are next. The market share of ebooks in the overall publishing sector has gone from 1% in 2008 to 3% in 2009 to 10% in 2010. I won't plot that on a chart right here, but if you can picture a graph going up like a skate ramp, you're on the right track.

But maybe the most telling piece of data is this one: people aren't going back. Talk to a Nook, Kobo, Sony, Kindle, or iPad reader--they're utterly, unapologetically sold-out to e-reading. And they're just blazing the trail for you and me. Oh yes, we'll be there too some day. The only way I can read an actual book in the morning is if I wear two pair of glasses at the same time. Seriously. And I look just as stupid as you're picturing me. An e-reader would fix that problem (it will fix it when I finally break down and get one--I was also the last on my block to get a cell phone, but I got one).

Anyway, all of this to say that as a bumbling author, I'm encouraged. Because as the book-printing part of this industry dies, so does the front-office part. The gatekeepers in this new game won't be the old guard. It won't be some intern with an English degree fishing manuscripts from a slush pile. It will be readers who'll decide whether something is or isn't worth reading. It will be the free market at work.

Of course, in another way the author's work will be harder. In the old paradigm, agents and publishers (if you could get them to take a risk on you) took most of the burden of book promotion. But today's author is on his own. For example, he'll have to plug his new e-books (click here for The Cornshuck Memoirs, here for Boy Soldier, here for A Sword for The King, and here for The Left Foot Says, "GLORY!") all by himself, at every opportunity, and in creative and winsome ways.

But I'll probably be the last on the block to learn those tricks too. Oh well. If it's anything like e-readers and cell phones, I'll eventually see the light.

Freedom Ain't Cheap

2011-10-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

Been busy lately, so I haven't posted in a while, but today I'm driven to it.

I've been checking essays--persuasive essays that my juniors are doing to prepare for the ACT--and their positions, their supporting arguments behind them, have me just a little freaked out.

Some background...

I teach an ACT prep course. It's what most juniors take as one half of their 11th grade English requirement. Every couple of weeks we do an ACT-style essay. 30 minutes to take a position on an issue and argue it convincingly. It's not an easy thing to do, so we practice a lot.

Here's this week's prompt (a short version follows):
In many of the largest airports around the country, full body scanners (sometimes referred to as “naked scanners”) and enhanced pat-down procedures have been implemented. Some groups are calling for these measures to be removed, claiming that they not only violate the 4th amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and protection of privacy, but are ineffective in catching potential threats. Others claim the new procedures better ensure the safety of the passengers, crew, and those on the ground by acting as a deterrent to terrorist attempts. Should such technology and procedures be the standard rule for all of our nation’s major airports? In your essay, take a position on the issue. You may write about either of the two points of view, or you may propose a different point of view. Use specific reasons and examples to support your position.

Short version: Has TSA gone too far with airport security?

So anyway, I'm grading these essays and coming across a LOT of comments like these:

"Our safety is the most important thing..."

or "No constitutional amendment is more important than our safety..."

or "If better security means dumping the 4th amendment, then so be it!"

Some of these are actually coming from kids who, in less than two years' time, will be in the military, risking their lives to secure freedom. They'll be proving by their actions that there are things that are more important than safety and security. But some are coming from kids who just can't see past their own skin.

As a teacher, I'm torn as to the root cause here. Do they not see the disconnect? Are they still at a place on the learning curve that this example--allowing our gov't to violate a constitutionally protected right to freedom from unreasonable search--just doesn't have the same form that physically fighting an enemy has?

Or maybe it's that they don't understand that the greatest threat to our freedom is, and always has been, ourselves, and that the constitution is there as a protection between the governed "us" and the governing "us." It is, after all, much easier to see the enemy in that desert over there, or on that continent over there, than it is to see that the enemy is us, and the treason is in our own hearts.

Or maybe it's that they don't see the logical end of such a position, that a compromise here says that all provisions in the Constitution are up for grabs and that the Fed's enumerated powers are more like suggestions. It takes a lot more dot-connecting to see this than it does to see some foreign tyrant who wants to put chains on you.

But even if they don't get the deeper spiritual stuff, or the logical implications, you'd think they would at least respond to the whole romantic, patriotic notion of freedom having a great cost to it. I don't think any of them would disagree that giving up our lives to defeat Hitler was worth it.

Again, maybe the example here is just too subtle.

This week, as the kids were writing, I got to thinking about this prompt more than I usually do, and before I even saw what they were doing with it, I decided to write the essay myself. So here it is, my ACT essay on airport security:

Beware the term“post-9/11 world.” Too often these days it’s used to justify some governmentmeasure limiting our civil rights. From illegal wire-taps to an openassassination of a UScitizen, such actions are justified by the simple response that we live in apost-9/11 world. Just because the terrorists ignored our Constitution when theystruck the twin towers doesn’t mean that our government should ignore it too.But the invasive use of technology and search methods in airports today doesjust that. Moreover, it hasn’t proven any more effective in deterring terrorismthan the methods it replaced. And if the 4^th amendment can be setaside with a simple memo from the President’s desk, what’s next? Our freedom ofspeech? Freedom of the press? The safety that the TSA promises—even it waseffective—is simply not worth the cost of our freedom.

For 230years our people have paid the ultimate price to defend our liberties and makeit possible that following generations could live in freedom. That’s what we’recelebrating every Fourth of July, Memorial and Veteran’s Day. Even in times ofpeace we remind ourselves that freedom comes at a cost and that the cost—anabsolute cost for some—is worth it. What’s changed? Why do we not demand thesame sacrifice today? In fact, our government today makes the opposite demand, tellingus that by giving up our rights (freedom from unreasonable search, freedom ofprivacy) we’ll be securing our safety by deterring terrorism. Our government issaying the exact opposite of what it says when our sacrifice is needed. They’resaying that our freedom is not worth risking our lives over. They’ve flippedthings around on us. So which is more valuable? Freedom and the risk of deathor tyranny with safety?

But that’snot even the choice we’re given because the increase in safety is unproven. Infact, given the available data, safety is impossible to improve upon. Since9/11, there have been exactly zero lives lost to terrorist attacks on airplanesor airports in the US.How do you improve on 100%? Whatever security measures we’ve been using for thelast ten years seem to have worked just fine. So why the changes? Why has theTSA embarked on what can only be described as an attack on the Constitution andthe people of the United States? Thomas Jefferson said that the priceof freedom is eternal vigilance. He understood, as did all the founding fathersand drafters of the Constitution, that people are power hungry, that at thefirst opportunity, our leaders will grab for more power over their people. Boththe current and previous administrations have proven Jeffersonabsolutely right in this. We’re being stripped naked and radiated by ourgovernment because they saw an opportunity for more power. And they know thatif we’re compliant in this, if we don’t refuse it, then the door is open forthem to take even more.

So far,we’re lying down and taking it. The next question must be “What’s next?” Forthe sake of fighting an enemy that hasn’t touched us in ten years will we giveup our freedom of speech? It looks like that’s already in the works. The TVnetworks and national magazines and newspapers have for a long time now alignedthemselves with political parties, so the “free speech” we have there getssifted and filtered according to their values. That’s nothing new. The latestthreat is to our last and best source of free speech and press—the internet. Andthey’re using the same tactic here that they used in the airports: fear. Toavoid the next great terrorist attack—a cyber attack on our computer networks—asenate bill was introduced this year to give the President an internet killswitch. This would give the executive branch of our government another powerthat directly violates the Constitution. With the push of a button, thePresident can shut the internet down until he believes the threat is past. Butwho or what will be the threat? No one knows. We would just wait to see whatthe President decides. It could be a terrorist. It could be you or me becausewe disagree with him. Again, what do we value more, a risky freedom or atyranny that claims to protect us?

It may notseem like a big deal. Shuffle through the line with the rest of the sheep.Don’t complain or make noise. But ignoring the Constitution is a big deal. No other country in historyhas gone to such lengths to protect its people from the tyranny of its own government,and that protection lies in the specific provisions of our Constitution. Freedomis not free. It’s not even cheap—it should cost us something that has realvalue. Isn’t each person who enlists in our military saying exactly that? Wemay live in a post-9/11 world, but the most important things about us haven’tchanged at all. We love our freedom, and we’re willing to sacrifice for it.Let’s do that today in our nation’s airports and show our enemies that we’re stillfree and we’re still not afraid.

I'll read this to them next week. Maybe it will get some wheels turning and I'll see that my freaking out is premature.

Maybe.

Life-Changing...

2011-09-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

The Otter and the Ocean

2011-09-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

One morning, Otter was awakened bythe sound of the ocean, so he said to himself for the very first time, "Iwonder."

Later that morning he and his olderbrother were in the shallows breaking clams open with stones."Brother," said the younger otter, "have you ever seen thebottom of the ocean?"

"Of course I have," saidhis brother. "I know the ocean well."

"What's it like?" asked Otter.

"Oh, it's very deep," said hisbrother.

"Is it?" asked Otter, andhe dropped his clam, half-eaten, in the water.

"Sure. Watch this!" And thenOtter's big brother shot out past the sand bar to the middle of the bay. Therehe lifted himself halfway out of the water, waved, and plunged below. He wasgone for less than a minute, but to Otter it seemed much longer. When hefinally did break to the surface again, he held up a paw. But Otter could notsee that he was holding tiny pebbles and bits of shell until his brother hadswum all the way back to the shallow.

"Rocks and shells," said hisbrother, "as far as you can see."

"Really?" asked Otter.

"Oh yes, that's what the oceanis like, a floor of sand that goes on and on. But don't worry. You'll see itall some day."

But to Otter's thinking there was nothing mysterious in rocks and shells.

That afternoon, he and his fatherwere busy with the work of opening a new den—much higher over the water thantheir old one—when Otter said, "Father, have you ever seen the bottom ofthe ocean?"

"Of course I have," saidhis father. "I know the ocean well."

"What's it like?" asked Otter.

"Oh, it's very deep," said hisfather.

"Is it?" asked Otter, andhe stopped his work to listen.

"It is. In fact, it's as deep as afull-grown stalk of kelp, and you know how long those can grow." Then hisfather took him to the entrance of the den and pointed to the ocean beyond thebay, to where the kelp beds began. "Many times I've had to hunt for clamswhere the kelp grows from the bottom," his father said with evident pride. "And it is like swimming through aforest at night."

"Really?" asked Otter.

"Oh, yes," said his father,"and that's what the ocean is like, a forest of kelp that goes on and on. Someday when you're older you'll find out for yourself."

But again, Otter couldn't help but bedisappointed, for he could see nothing more frightening in a stalk of kelp thanhe could in rocks and shells.

That evening, Otter was walking alone alonga cliff overlooking the bay and the ocean beyond it, thinking of rocks and sandand kelp when he came upon his grandfather. He was sitting on a patch of lichenwatching the sun go down. His grandfather was very old, the oldest otter in thecolony. The fur around his eyes and mouth was gray, and he let the younger ottersgather clams for him now. He was old, but most thought him to be very wise.

Otter sat down next to him. "Grandfather,"he said, "have you ever seen the bottom of the ocean?"

His grandfather was quiet for a moment, andthen he said, "I'm afraid I know very little about the ocean."

Oliver's shoulders fell at the words, andhe rose to his feet to go, but his grandfather kept talking, "When I wasyoung, about your age, I swam to the bottom of the ocean, and it was sandy andflat."

"Really?" said Otter, but if hesounded curious he didn't mean it.

"And when I was older and had cubs ofmy own," his grandfather continued, "I swam to the bottom of theocean, and it was like walking through a forest of tall trees at night."

Otter stood quietly and waited for hisgrandfather to finish. He was hopingthat he might still have time to play in the high tide.

"But one day, while I floated over thekelp beds preening my fur, a storm came in suddenly and took me far out to sea.I grew hungry, so I dove hoping to find food. I dove so deep that the watergrew cold and pressed in on me, but I knew that if I didn't eat, I would die,so I went deeper."

"Deeper?"asked Otter, sitting down again.

"Finally, Ireached bottom."

"And what did you see?" askedOtter.

"I saw the edge of a cliff, like theone we are on now," said his grandfather, and then he peered over theedge, and Otter knew that he was remembering that day.

"And what else?" asked Otter,"What was at the bottom of the cliff?"

His grandfather turned to Otter and shookhis head. "There was nobottom," he said, "just a darkness that went on and on." Then hesmiled. "Like I said, I know very little of the ocean."

Otter drew in a deep breath, and then hewatched the setting sun until it winked out under a pink and orange sky, forhis hopes of playing in the tide had slipped quietly away at the thought of abottomless ocean.

The left foot says, "Glory!" The right foot, "Amen."

2011-09-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

This is how I want life to go: raise my kids in the fear of God...teach them to plod well...have them close when my end comes. That's what this story is about.

The Left Foot Says, "Glory!"

Aman walked to the City of the King. His children, a boy and a girl, walked withhim. The road was long, and the entire length of it—in this direction atleast—slanted upward toward the city, which sat high on a hill.

Oneday, where the road was particularly steep, the sky went dark, and it began torain.

"Canwe stop now, Father?" asked the boy. "This seems like a good place to stay."

Thefather answered, "It will rain often on this journey, and the city isstill miles and miles ahead." Then the father took the boy's hand in hisand said, "Say these words with me as we walk, 'The left foot says, Glory!The right foot, Amen!'"

Sothe little boy said the words with his father as they walked in step, "Theleft foot says, Glory! The right foot, Amen!"

Glory!

Amen!

Glory!

Amen!

Andsoon the boy no longer thought about stopping, and he felt fine with the rainon his face.

Anotherday, in a place where the road was nearly flat for a stretch, the sky cleared,a breeze blew gently, and the sun shone bright.

"Canwe stop now, Father?" asked the girl. "This meadow under the blue skyand bright sun would be a wonderful place to stay."

Thefather answered, "The sun will shine often on this journey, and there willbe many meadows, but the city is still miles and miles ahead." Then thefather took the girl's hand in his and said, "Say these words with me aswe walk, 'The left foot says, Glory! The right foot, Amen!'"

Sothe little girl said the words with her father as they walked in step,"The left foot says, Glory! The right foot, Amen!"

Glory!

Amen!

Glory!

Amen!

Andsoon the girl no longer thought about stopping, and she felt fine with thebreeze cool in her hair and the sunshine warm on her skin.

Thethree walked together for many days, passing under every kind of sky andthrough every kind of weather. The road was very long. Sometimes it wound,sometimes it stretched out. It was rutty in places, and smooth as still waterin others. It rose steeply or gently, but always it rose.

Oneday, as they were climbing the very steepest part of the road, the sun stooddirectly over their heads and beat down on them with a fierce heat. There wasno breeze, and the dust of the road hung round them like fog.

"Children,"said the Father. "Let's stop now. This spot of shade by the road is asgood a place to stay as any."

"Butit is summer," said the girl. "There will be many hot days likethis."

"Andour road is a long one," said the boy.

Butthe father had grown older on the journey, and he sat down heavily under theshade of an apple tree.

Thegirl looked up to where the road seemed to crest at a hilltop. "Let'slook," she whispered to her brother.

Thefather watched as the two walked to the top of the hill. They stood there for amoment, their backs to him, and then turned and raced back down the hill towhere he sat.

"Father!"shouted the girl.

"TheCity!" shouted the boy.

Sothe father took a deep breath and stood. Then his children both took one of hishands in theirs.

"Theleft foot says, Glory!" said the boy.

"Theright foot, Amen!" said the girl.

Andthe three of them began to march in step up the last steep hill before the Cityof the King. And as they came over the hilltop and on to the gates of the city,the King himself could hear them shouting,

Glory!

Amen!

Glory!

Amen!

Andthe father no longer thought about stopping, and he felt more than fine withthe King smiling down on his old face.

You've Been Disconnected

2011-09-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

Here's one of MSNBC's lead headlines from today: "GOP Race Shaping up as Two-Man Confrontation." It's about the debate last night, the two men being Romney and Perry.

And here are the results of MSNBC's viewers' poll.
Ron Paul . . . . . . 52.6% of the votes
Mitt Romney . . . 16.3%
Rick Perry . . . . . 13.6%
Huntsman, Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann, and Santorum . . . all below 7%.

MSNBC ran the debate.
MSNBC ran the poll when it was done.
MSNBC ran the headline the next day.

See the disconnect here?

But it's not just on the Left. Oh, no.

Today Sean Hannity tells Romney the debate made it clear that "You and Rick Perry are the frontrunners." Finally, the Right and Left can agree on something.

The disconnect is not between the media and some guy running for Pres. It's between the establishment and the people. The mainstream media are just as much a part of the establishment as any smokey backroom in DC. They're thumbing their nose at us and at the same time sinking deeper into irrelevance.

I love it.

hmmm...The Sun...

2011-08-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

[posted August 28, 2011 by James Delingpole]

If Michael Crichton had lived to write a follow-up to State of Fear, the plotline might well have gone like this: at a top secret, state of the art laboratory in Switzerland, scientists finally discover the true cause of “global warming”. It’s the sun, stupid. More specifically – as the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark has long postulated – it’s the result of cosmic rays which act as a seed for cloud formation. The scientists working on the project are naturally euphoric: this is a major breakthrough which will not only overturn decades of misguided conjecture on so-called Man Made Global Warming but will spare the global economy trillions of dollars which might otherwise have been squandered on utterly pointless efforts to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions. However, these scientists have failed to realise just how many…

Read the rest.

Hilarious...and Scary

2011-08-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Ron Paul for 2012

2011-08-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

I don't stump for politicians. There are no McCain-Palin or Obama '08 stickers on my car. I'm not even registered with a party. But I like Ron Paul enough (and like our Constitution enough, even think we should keep it around) to devote a blog post to him.

A few things about this video:

1. It's dated, produced for his run in 2008, but that says a lot about Ron Paul: His message is exactly the same for 2012. Which is exactly the same message he's had since he got into politics in 1976.

2. He briefly defends the charge that he is an isolationist. Below the video is a more filled out response by Paul. It's great. Read it. You can read up on all of his positions at ronpaul.com.

3. It's corny at times - sorry - but very informative if you don't know much about the guy.

From "Free Trade with All, Entangling Alliances with None" by Ron Paul (Sept. 22, 2009)
Free trade with all and entangling alliances with none has always been the best policy in dealing with other countries on the world stage. This is the policy of friendship, freedom and non-interventionism and yet people wrongly attack this philosophy as isolationist. Nothing could be further from the truth. Isolationism is putting up protectionist trade barriers, starting trade wars imposing provocative sanctions and one day finding out we have no one left to buy our products. Isolationism is arming both sides of a conflict, only to discover that you’ve made two enemies instead of keeping two friends. Isolationism is trying to police the world but creating more resentment than gratitude. Isolationism is not understanding economics, or other cultures, but clumsily intervening anyway and creating major disasters out of minor problems. [emphasis mine]

This is soooooo a sport!

2011-08-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

It's called SEPAKTAKRAW. It needs a new name, but otherwise it's a sport (for a reminder of the soon-to-be-universally-accepted 4 criteria for sport, go here).

Grammar vs. Standard Usage

2011-07-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

There's a difference between good grammar and standard usage. Anyone who communicates clearly using a native language has good grammar. Standard usage is another matter.

Consider this sentence from my four-year-old: "I bringed you a book, Daddy." Bringed is not standard usage. Bring is an irregular verb so its conjugation doesn't follow the "add an ed to the end to make it past tense" rule of usage. But the grammar template in my daughter's head is just fine. She knew, and without my ever teaching it to her, that the past tense of verbs is formed by adding ed to the end. That's good grammar; the grammar part of her brain is working. But as she hears the construction a few hundred or a few thousand times, she'll add that little exception to the grammar in the form of a standard usage rule.

Her grammar is good, but her usage is not yet standard.

I talk about this with my students all the time.

"I ain't got good grammar," says Billy.

"Billy," I say, "your grammar's just fine. For example, in that sentence you just put a nominative case subject before your verb, you contracted an informal version of an auxiliary verb and added it correctly to a past participle to form the past perfect tense. And I understood you perfectly. Nice grammar, son."

Billy then looks at me sideways and I explain how his brain's grammar was formed and pretty much fixed by the time he was 13 (You can test this yourself: find an adult international who still has an accent, then ask when they arrived here. It was probably after the age of 12. Before that, when the grammar template in the brain is still forming, the new accent--American English--will replace the old one. It's a general rule, so you'll find exceptions.). What Billy's learning in my class now is the standard usage of American English.

So the next time you think to yourself, "My grammar sucks." Take heart. If you can make yourself understood in English then your grammar's just fine. It's your usage that sucks.

Ain't that great?

Psych Refresher - Milgram's 65

2011-07-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

There was a story in the news recently of a man who drowned himself in the San Francisco bay. Sadly, there's nothing newsworthy about suicide. It happens all the time. The reason the story went national is that people there knew what was happening before it happened. They called the authorities, who quickly arrived at the scene. And then everyone--bystanders and first-responders alike--stood on the beach and watched him drown.

It wasn't that the water was too deep or moving too fast or dangerously cold. It was a beach . . . in San Francisco. They watched him die because due to recent budget cuts, going into the water to rescue someone "wasn't policy." So when those in uniform didn't respond, neither did anyone else. They were all deferring to an authority (albeit the wrong ones--official policy, uniforms), so they all did nothing but watch.

We're all under authority, many authorities in fact. As I read the story, I thought of this. I also thought of a Peter Gabriel song and something haunting I learned in Mr. Sparling's high-school psych class...

In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram was trying to make sense of Nazi Germany and the Jewish Holocaust and human nature and all that, something a lot of people in the social sciences were doing in the years following WWII. One of the questions he was asking himself was whether the people most directly involved in the events shared some dark moral illness or was there something in the authority structure that would explain how such things could happen? So he began a series of experiments testing human subjects' responses to authority.

Here's how his experiment worked: There were two groups of participants--"teachers" and "learners." The "teachers" were the oblivious volunteers, the true subjects of the experiment. The "learners" were actors paid by Milgram to do what actors do--to be convincing. Before they were divided into their two groups, they supposedly drew lots, slips of paper, for those roles. But all the slips said, "teacher," so the volunteers didn't know this was a blinded experiment and that all the "learners" would be acting their parts.

The groups were then paired off and separated so that each teacher and learner worked in different rooms with a wall between them. They couldn't see one another and communicated only through a one-way intercom through which the teacher could speak, and a push-button display through which the learner could respond.

They were then given a task which involved learning word pairs. The teacher would first read to the learner the entire list of word pairs. The teacher would then read the first word of a pair and four possible answers for the second word. If the learner got the second word wrong, the teacher would be instructed, by someone in a white lab coat holding a clipboard, to remotely administer an electric shock to the learner (before the experiment began, the teacher would be given a real sample from a shock generator--that way he or she knew what was at stake.). The shock administered to the learner was fake, of course, but the teacher didn't know that, and the learner would do the appropriate acting to express pain based on the supposed voltage.

Milgram designed the experiment so that the "voltage" would increase by 15-volt increments for each wrong answer. And with each wrong answer the learner's performance would rise accordingly--screams of pain, shouts for the experiment to stop, pleadings that their "heart condition" might kill them. The climax of the learner's performance would involve banging on the walls for the teacher to stop, and then silence--no response at all to the shock generator, as though the learner had gone unconscious or even died from the shocks.

All the while, white-lab-coat guy is standing over the teacher, prodding him to push ahead. And all the while, the teacher really believes that he is shocking the learner in the other room.

At any time, if the subject (the volunteer "teacher") expressed a desire to stop the experiment, a series of prompts would be given by the authority until the teacher either continued or insisted on stopping.

The prompts went like this:

Please continue.

The experiment requires that you continue.

It is absolutely essential that you continue.

You have no other choice, you must go on.

If, after all four prompts, the teacher still wanted to stop the experiment, it would be halted. Otherwise, it didn't stop until the teacher had given the learner the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.

But here's where things got scary. Before any of these experiments had been run, Milgram polled 14 Yale senior-year psych majors to predict the behavior of 100 hypothetical "teachers." All those polled believed that only a small number of the teachers would inflict the maximum voltage. The poll results were between 0 and 3 out of 100, an average of 1.2. Milgram also informally polled his colleagues and found similar results. And since then, countless psych teachers in high schools and colleges have introduced these experiments and polled their own kids before revealing Milgram's results. The predictions are consistent. Most people believe that most of the subjects will stop the experiment before it gets out of hand.

Here's what Milgram actually found: it wasn't 1.2% of the participants who went all the way to the maximum voltage, but 65%! 65% of the teacher participants--the blinded volunteers--reached the final, massive 450-volt shock. Despite the fact that they believed their learners were in great pain, despite believing that their actions might even be causing severe injury to another human being, almost two thirds continued to follow the instructions of the authorities and administer the shocks. And these weren't folks who were employed by the authority or who had pledged themselves somehow to follow the authority or who had guns at pointed at their heads; they were just in the same room with a guy from Yale wearing a white lab coat.

And that was authority enough.

The experiments have been repeated since then with much the same results. Not surprisingly, the 65% diminishes as intimacy between teacher and learner is increased. Two-way voice communication drops the rate substantially. Removing the physical barrier between the two results in an even more dramatic drop. After all, it's hard to cause pain to someone you're looking at eye-to-eye. But these just illustrate both our pathetic ability to see what is true and our misplaced trust in feelings as our guide to right behavior. The Yale psych majors and Milgram's colleagues got it way wrong, and they were shocked by their own ignorance. But then, faith in humanity--humanism--always disappoints.

There is one group, though, who shouldn't be shocked, because their teaching predicts exactly what Milgram "discovered." The Christian who looks into God's word, who understands that our depravity is beyond understanding not only can expect results like these but should. Only the Christian faith teaches that we are so hopeless that we must be saved from ourselves by someone outside of ourselves. By that light, Milgram's results aren't a surprise, they're evidence of the depravity of man, and without the Christian worldview, events like the Holocaust must go unexplained and must be repeated.

All authority belongs to Christ, so all people will (now or at some point in their future) submit to God's word. Under God's word men don't torture others because a man with a clipboard says to, and men don't withhold help from others as they drown. But for the humanist, and for the complicit bystander, "it's policy" is authority enough.

"We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)"
by Peter Gabriel

we do what we're told
we do what we're told
we do what we're told
told to do

we do what we're told
we do what we're told
we do what we're told
told to do

one doubt
one voice
one war
one truth
one dream

Sport - A New Definition

2011-07-16T13:29:00.000-07:00

So I'm channel flipping and I come across a hotdog eating contest on ESPN.

A hotdog eating contest.

That shouldn't have surprised me when I recall that I've recently watched a spelling bee, snowmobile and airplane races (separate, not racing each other, as cool as that would be), poker, billiards, skeet shooting, and fishing all on the same network.

Now, I'll grant this--the E in ESPN does stand for entertainment, and those things are no doubt entertaining to some segment of the viewing public. I love airplane races and did get sucked into a riveting half hour of spelling where I at least once shouted at the TV, "Get the language of origin!" So I'm not suggesting such things aren't entertaining or competitive. They can be. I just can't help but wonder if there shouldn't be clearer lines drawn, lines that would separate things like rugby from kids spelling words-you've-never-heard-before or football from men playing card games. ESPN is the sports network, right? There should be clearer lines around this stuff, right?

I think, yes. So I'm going to help ESPN by proposing some new lines, a change in the definition of the word sport. This should help their programming decisions immensely.

Here it is...

Sport: n. an activity in which two or more participants engage in all of the following: 1) they compete with each other directly; i.e. both competitors are present simultaneously in the area of play; 2) it's athletic: a majority of the body's muscles must be skillfully utilized; 3) there is a ball (or some other object: e.g. puck, shuttlecock) that acts as the central point of contest; and 4) there is a clear method of scoring that does not require a third-party judge (referees and umpires notwithstanding).

That's it. Four simple criteria that anyone can apply to any competitive situation for a quick assessment as to its sportness. No more guessing, doubting, guffawing. It's black and white.

This doesn't mean there aren't athletes in other activities. This isn't about that, it's about semantics. I'm just not going to refer to those activities any longer as sports, and it's my hope that the world will join me. Boxing, biking, skiing, all forms of racing--these are not sports. Are there athletes competing in them? You bet. They're just not athletes competing in sports; they're competing in...well, boxing, biking, skiing, and racing. Competitive activities, but not sports.

It's a realigning of categories, that's all.

So the biggies are still in: football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, cricket--yes, cricket--rugby (trying to think internationally). These all meet the criteria. They're all sports. Admittedly, the new definition does allow for some questionable entries--ping pong, for example. At the gut level, ping pong (or anything else you can do in your basement) just doesn't seem like a sport.

But wait! We don't need the gut any longer. The objective criteria will tell us. Two competitors directly and athletically involved in a clearly score-able contest using a ball? Yep, ping pong's a sport. How about skateboarding--is that a sport? Let's see, two or more participants in the same space? Nope. Is it athletic? Yes. A ball? No. Is it self-score-able or do you need a Judge? Judge, so no again. That's one out of four, folks. Skateboarding's not even close to being a sport. Not anymore. We all knew that intuitively, but now we can say it to the punks in front of 7-11 with some confidence.

So congratulations to ping pong and dodgeball. Apologies to my many golfing friends (you lost sports status on point #1). But guys, you knew all along didn't you? Deep down, I mean, you knew that anything you could do while drinking that much beer could not possibly be a sport.

ESPN, I look forward to seeing what you do with this. You're Welcome.

God and Pronoun Case Form

2011-07-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

Much of grammar involves putting things into categories. Case forms of pronouns are one group of categories, and I spend a lot of my grammar-teaching time talking about case forms of pronouns.

For example, we say "Please take a picture of Abdul and me." Not "Abdul and I." Why? because the pronoun me is in a particular category; it's in the objective case. That is, it's acting as an object. Something is pointing at it--either a verb as in "do you love me?" or a preposition like the of in our example. I, on the other hand, is never an object. At least it's not supposed to be. It does other jobs, the primary one being subject. Then there's the possessive case, as in my, mine, his, her, your, our, their. That one's easy--it's the form a pronoun takes when showing possession.

So I've been thinking about case form lately, not because I teach it but because I find myself conceiving of God in certain ways. There are times when I am unusually aware that everything around me is oriented toward God. Everything is pointing to God. Ontologically, God is in the objective case, not only in a category sense, but in an ultimate sense. He is the object toward which all things point and move. Of course, everything is always oriented toward God in the sense that all things exist in God and are held together by God. But my awareness of this is as variable as wind. I wish I were more constant.

At other times, I have a stronger sense that God is the prime mover behind things, and I conceive of him as being in the nominative case. He is the original subject, actor, force, first cause. He is before all things and "in him all things consist." And yet, all things are still oriented toward him, so he is both subject and object, and there's no category for that. After Jesus calmed the storm, the disciples asked, "What manner of man is this?" In their amazement, they were pointing out a theological truth--that there is no known category to put Christ into, that he is unique.

He is both nominative and objective.

Oh yeah, he also owns everything, so he's possessive too. That would be all three.

Like I said, it's only a sense I have that drives this thinking, so I'm careful with it. The Bible doesn't use grammatical terms (except the Word) to describe God, so I should emphasize that these are only senses that point me to what is already stated as truth: That God is the prime mover behind all things, that all things are oriented to him, that he owns and rules over all things. He is nominative, objective, and possessive.

And that's our grammar lesson for today.

"Worthy are you, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created."

Just Funny

2011-07-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

Fathers and Sons and Treasure

2011-06-28T05:09:00.000-07:00

I was watching a show about gold miners in Alaska, and one of the guys is complaining about how his dad doesn't trust him to lead the operation. Another responds, "Yeah, seeing eye to eye is impossible. Too many memories."

For a show that's basically about fixing broken machinery in the woods, that was pretty deep. And it got me thinking.

When I look at my oldest son now I see every age he's ever been. I can picture him at 3 walking around the optometrist store with his new glasses just as clearly as I can the 14-year-old mowing the lawn. So in a way, seeing eye to eye with the older Charlie is impossible because the younger one's there too. For good or for bad, he'll always be a composite, and I'll always have to struggle with seeing him and treating him as the right-now Charlie. Too many memories.

Those miners were wise, sort of.

From my perspective, this has two implications that I see: one, there is a desire on my part to protect my toddler from the mean and nasty world; and two, there is a tension (as in a challenge to me) to see him as the man God is making him to be. I should see both as blessings. The first as a grace to carry me through these awkward, sometimes very awkward teenage years. The tenderness that I feel for my younger children is still there with Charlie, but buried under a lot of other affections. The second is a blessing because as I'm reminded that my son is not mine (and has never been) but God's very own, I'm also prompted to give praise to God for his creation. This is humbling. I have to let go of him--I'm only a steward.

For him, those implications are true, but in reverse. As I get old and my faculties diminish, he won't be able to help himself from seeing the dad that was stronger than anyone and who knew everything (I can't help but see my own that way). In Charlie's eyes the young me will always be there, somewhere, under the wrinkles and frailty. But he will also be very much his own man--a wise and faithful man (if I do my job well) who is also my son. He'll be to me a brother in Christ who sees my need, whatever that might look like. Again, these will be as God's grace to both of us.

Those miners in Alaska diagnosed the problem well but that's as far as their wisdom could take them. They had no hope in their fathers because--as far as I could tell from the hour-long show--they had no such God as mine to hope in. Their treasure lay elsewhere.

Nouns and the Realpolitik

2011-06-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

I run a search for the term Web site and find these: website, web site, web-site, Website, Web site, Web-site, and even Web Site, and WebSite. What gives? What’s a well-meaning writer to do?

What gives is that the term Web site hasn’t grown up yet. It’s a still-awkward post-adolescent, not quite come into his own. And what I’m to do is the same as I would with any search: sift, cut, discern, and in the end go with whatever variation’s got the most clout.

And in a way, I’m casting a vote. And in this way, English usage works–-sort of-–like a republic. Its form and pattern of convention are shaped by popular will but (like your vote for President) along a circuitous route. And like other democratic processes, at the murky center of things are the opinion leaders, the informal authorities that push and pull at the machine. Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, Wired Style—these are the fatcats in the smoke-filled room.

Here’s a common scenario: Wired, let’s say, decides that Internet, heretofore capitalized because it’s a one-of-a-kind, will lose its proper-noun status and join the rank-and-file common nouns as humble internet. There may be good reason to do this, as there was probably good reason to capitalize it in the first place, but none of that matters. This is what matters: Wired (out of a growing pressure within its own ranks maybe) has changed policy and will henceforth cast the term as internet, small i.

So what happens next? and how do we plebs know that this change has been made? Does a committee stamp something? Is there a press release, or even a memo to writers? No. And in this we find the proof of real clout. Wired is rendering internet in the common; and like magic, like opinion polls and approval ratings, the rest of us eventually come along and wonder how we could ever have been so silly as to capitalize internet. And this sort of thing—slowly and out of sight, like committee work—is happening all the time, all around us.

Of course, a change in language usage doesn’t move at the speed of a presidential election cycle, but neither is it like stone eroding. Internet andWorld Wide Web were new to us less than two decades ago, less time than it takes for a human to reach adulthood, and in that time we’ve made both terms common, and effectively dropped the world wide.

But the internet, you will say, is an anomaly, statistically insignificant in a population as large as that of English words. Nothing in our lives has come about so quickly and convincingly as the internet. And you’d be right. But the example still illustrates the process. We could mark out similar patterns for words like baseball, railroad, airplane, email, and most other closed-compound words that, over time and use, have collapsed from two words into one, a kind of etymological entropy. But in each case the change is hurried along by one of these informal authorities. If Miriam Webster says that copyeditor is a closed compound, then the publishing world (and soon the rest of us) will follow. Or maybe Webster follows Chicago. It’s not exactly a chicken-egg thing, but close.

That such wild, ungovernable processes determine usage can be frustrating both to the rule junkie and the rule weary. The junkie because it all seems so un-rule-like, and the weary because there’s still authority, however nebulous, determining something. It might be helpful to both if we define terms:

· in written language, rules are subject to the consensus of the governed

· a rule without an exception is no rule—it’s a law, and as language users, we don’t like laws

· the rules of usage, grammar, syntax, and mechanics are the servants of expression, not its masters

· while grammar and syntax tend to change more slowly as they are more closely tied to logic, usage and—to a lesser extent—mechanics follow the logic of fashion

So formal rules of language lie somewhere between guidance and prescription. Submit to them according to your own lights. But if you want to avoid the risk of obscuring meaning, if clarity is paramount, then follow a good set of rules consistently.

But whose rules? To whom do I look as an authority?

To answer that, let’s extend further the democracy metaphor. Like an election-coverage map, usage has its red states and its blue. We’ll call those in the book-publishing industry red for no other reason than the authority they look to—The Chicago Manual of Style—is actually red. Those in the newspaper and magazine publishing industries tend to follow the AP Stylebook. It’s not blue, but for the sake of our metaphor, it’s blue.

If I see myself as red, I’ll defer to Chicago on matters of usage and mechanics. If I prefer blue, I’ll line up with AP. If I feel no affinity to either party, I can join a third; there are other style guides out there. I can even call myself an independent and build my own rule book, picking the best from the big hitters and making up the rest. This is fine as long as I’m consistent throughout. Readability is key, and consistency is one of the most considerate things you can do for your reader.

Put another way, when it comes to language, there is no legislative body, no executive branch looking to make war on or with words, no high court handing down punctuation pronouncements. Authority is in the collective will, and the collective will, ultimately, is weighed and assigned value in the smoky backrooms.

So what do I do with Web site?

Professionally, I may live in a red state, but for this issue, I’m jumping to the party with the most clout in on-line usage. And since Wired makes a good case for casting Web site as a common, closed-compound noun, that’s how I’ll write it: website

Sports II

2011-06-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

H.G. Wells imagined a world where the globalists could quietly go about their business of world dominance because the masses - that's you and me - would be too busy cheering on their local deities as they competed in gladiator-type games in giant stadiums.

I think of that when I see this commercial: it's the one where the guy's watching NFL on TV, and as he walks out of the room he grabs the TV and folds it up into a laptop, then it becomes a phone, then he arrives wherever he's going and it's a TV again. The point being that you can always be watching the NFL, no matter where, no matter what, no matter the season.

I think about it because that commercial scares me as much as Wells does.

I get the feeling sometimes that sports are hypnotizing us. I watch ESPN and think, "these are really smart people spending their whole lives analyzing boys' games played by adults." (they used to be boys' games, then college sports came along, then pros; and all of that is relatively modern). Have you ever listened to a good sports analyst? It's like listening to a scientist or an economist or any expert on a topic complex enough to be analyzed. It's really quite impressive when the person knows his stuff.

I mean, what are we doing? Aren't there worthier endeavors? Wouldn't studying the stock market bring more happiness and prosperity to humanity? Or what about teaching? If those smart guys on espn had all gotten their degrees in teaching or went on to be college professors teaching other teachers, maybe our educational woes would be less woeful. Maybe. Or what if they all gave up their sports and put their heads together to stop global warming. Is there global warming? Or are we getting colder? Yeah, they could answer those questions first. And what about time travel, or flying cars, or toilet seats that aren't cold in the morning, or pot-hole-proof roads?

What's the opportunity cost here for humanity by having smart people commit their lives to studying sports? Think about this: just maybe, locked away in some sports analyst's head, is the cure for---sorry, gotta go. Top Ten Plays are on.

Silly H.G. Wells.

It's All Gonna Burn!

2011-06-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

I currently have FIVE active blogs. It's ridiculous. I have a Versitext blog (copy writing stuff), a fiction blog (yep, for my fiction), a blog called GUM (grammar, usage, mechanics), another called Neologistics (it's weird - you don't need to know more than that), and this one--Big Wooden House.

I'll say it again - It's ridiculous.

So as of today, I'm disabling all blogs except BWH. All posts, no matter what their content or intended audience, will go here. I'll be salvaging a few old favorites and re-posting them, but the rest will go the way of all things created--they'll burn (in a digital sense).

This will be cathartic. I'm looking forward to it.

Charlie's 14th

2011-06-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm off by a day, but we're celebrating it tonight. H and I and Charlie at Pizza House. Last year, I had a few guys over to help bring him into his 13th (nothing bizarre, no hazing, just a campfire). This is the letter I wrote and read to him then. It's good for me--and for Charlie, I hope--to think of these things again, a year later:

Dear Charlie,
There's nothing magical about your 13th birthday. You've been baptized into Christ's church, and you've proclaimed publicly your faith in him, so the milestones that matter most are behind you. But some of us have noticed that we're not very good at acknowledging our boys becoming young men, so we thought we'd do something about that. This may not the best way to do it, but it's a start. We've been experimenting on you all along, and we see no reason to stop now.

In 1 Cor 13, Paul writes, "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." We don't want to read too much into this. Maybe Paul had in mind a specific time when he became a man; his culture certainly gave it more thought than we do. But we can say that Paul saw a time when he was a child and a time when he was a man, when childish things--childish speech, thoughts, and reasoning--had to be put away and grown-up things put on. No, we're not saying that you need to put away all things of childhood. We want you to enjoy the good things God has given you. But we are saying that you need to hold onto these things loosely and with the discernment of a Godly man, to put on more and more the new self, to seek those things that we know make up biblical manhood. To put it simply, we want you to pursue Christ as a man of God does. These are the things that all the men here tonight are striving in God's strength to do.

So I've decided to do this tonight with several purposes in mind: one, to give you a kind of peg to help organize your growing-up memories, that there might be in your thinking, years from now, at time that you can point back to and say, "I became a young man then." We do this to put before you a charge - that Christ calls you, as his man, to obedience to him, to conformity to the Word of God. We do this as a promise to you - that we will help you in this, disciple you in this, and bear with you any burdens or joys God brings you to as you grow into manhood. But mostly, we're doing this to pray, to commend you to our Lord as a brother who's starting a new, wonderful, often confusing period of life.

I love you very much, Charlie. You're my oldest son, and though I can't say I love you more than your siblings, I can say that I've loved you longest. I've also prayed longer for you, that you would grow in grace and in the knowledge of Gd. We want to continue that tonight. So listen carefully, think back often on what you hear these men say--and I'll help you to do that--but most of all cling to Christ, the only one who can show you what being a real man means.

Now, as I've said to you often as you're going to bed, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you tonight, and always.

Love, Dad.

Rich Man

2011-05-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the value of motherhood, specifically the value of my wife's work in the home as a mother and home educator, when I said to myself, "No, you can't put a value on something like that." Then my other self said back to my first self, "Yes, you can. In fact, you do it every year she stays home to teach your kids."

What my other self was thinking was something called Opportunity Cost.

Before Heidi started home-schooling full time, she was teaching in one of the area's higher paying districts. She had 11 years in when she quit. She would have had 18 years in by now. By not doing that work and taking on the work of home-schooling instead, she gives up $75k a year in income and another $15k in benefits. That's the cost incurred by me (and her, and the whole family) to have her stay at home. We're "paying" $90,000 a year--more than half a million dollars so far--for Heidi to home school.

But my other self wasn't exactly right because $90k is only the baseline opportunity cost. That's just what she would be making as a public school teacher. The fact is Heidi's a flat-out steal at that price. She works as hard as any corporate CEO and builds a product that will outlast anything any Fortune 500 company can put out. She's also great to the stockholders (I'm the majority holder), and the employees love her. In fact, she doesn't know this but I'd go a lot higher--a million a year, ten million maybe--to keep her at home doing exactly what she's doing. Maybe first self was right, maybe I can't put a value on something like that. But $90k doesn't even come close.

I need to keep that in mind because when things are tight--which is always--I'm tempted to look around and bemoan what we don't have. It's easy for me to forget that I'm surrounded by the very best of things. I have a beautiful, smart, loving wife raising my kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord. That makes me the richest of men.

Perspective

2011-03-23T17:37:00.000-07:00

When I first started hunting, I saw deer everywhere. My vision--at the corners of my eyes, especially--was full of motion from deer running, deer jumping, deer fleeing my fearsomeness. Eventually I realized there weren't any deer in the woods around me. In fact, there was nothing moving at all, nothing except me. My eyes were deceiving me.

When you walk through woods, your perspective is continually changing so that every angle, shadow, patch of dark and light, is in constant motion and in constant change with relationship to the things around it. A snowy gap between two trees closes, and from the corner of your eye it looks like movement. The angle of one branch shifts along another as you walk, and it looks like movement. But it's not. It's just shifting perspective.

It's important when hunting that way that you not spend the whole day moving; in fact, most of it should be spent stationary. You only move to get to a new stationary perspective. And there, all the false movement of shadow and light stops. What's left is the real motion of bird and squirrel and falling leaf. And hopefully deer.

But to move constantly without stopping to fix your perspective is confusion. And foolishness.

Life's the same. We move constantly, and so the fixed things around us have the illusion of movement; the things that are really moving get exaggerated. In the woods I can stop, lean up against a tree, and look around me. But what do I do in life? How do I stop the whirl of time, the spinning of earth and stars? How do I see clearly when my vision is filled with the shadows of fear and chaos and calamity? In life, is there a place to simply stand and fix my perspective?

There is. In this life, the things around me appear as they truly are only when my feet are fixed upon the rock of God's word. It's the only constant thing in a world of changing perspective. It's solid ground when light and dark, shadow and substance threaten to confound me. In the woods, in this life, my eyes deceive me, so I have to stop often and just stand there. It's then that I see things as they really are.

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging."
~ Psalm 42:2,3

Rob Bell's Missed Opportunity

2011-03-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

Maybe you've seen it. Most of the evangelical world has. It's an interview with Rob Bell on msnbc. The interviewer is Martin Bashir. If you haven't seen it, here it is. Be forewarned: the images you're about to see are uncomfortable...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-qgmJ7nzA

Bashir's first question is one most Christians have heard before: Given the tragedy we're seeing in Japan, which of these is true: Is God all-powerful and not loving? or is he loving but not all-powerful? My reaction as I heard this was "That's an easy one. Ask him something hard!" Not only was it framed as a logical fallacy--either or reasoning--it's also an easy one for any good, thinking Christian to knock down because there's a clear answer, a 3rd option.

So I waited for him to knock it down.

And I waited.

But Bell just talked in circles (the circles would take up the next 7 minutes). Then I realized something--that Rob Bell wasn't going to knock it down because he didn't have an answer, and he didn't have an answer because his theology had eliminated the third option. So in Bell's case the either-or question is not a fallacy at all but a real question that can't be answered because he's removed God's Holiness and Justice as the third - and correct - option.

God is love, and God is all-powerful, but God is also holy. When God intervenes in human tragedies and relieves our temporal suffering, he's showing us mercy--undeserved, as any mercy is. When he leaves us to our suffering, he's showing us his justice--rightly deserved, as all justice is. And he is sovereign over both. That was the right answer, but I think Bell gave up right answers a long time ago when he gave up an orthodox understanding of original sin.

I used to listen to Rob Bell. I went to his church for a summer. He seems like a really nice guy. I sincerely hope that he doesn't have to learn about God's justice the hard way, that God will show him mercy instead. Not the Rob Bell kind of mercy that goes out like halloween candy to everyone, but the sovereign God kind that loves and saves its own.

But either way, God Wins.

Sports

2011-03-03T06:43:00.000-08:00

My son wants to be a professional athlete. He's not particular about the sport - football, baseball, basketball - he'd take any job. I tell him that no one makes it to the big leagues except freaks (the ratio of pro athletes to regular folks qualifies them as freaks), but that doesn't make much difference.

My first instinct when he brings this up is to belittle sports because they're frivolous. They don't manufacture a product like the auto industry does or provide a needed service like a plumber. They don't serve anyone in meaningful ways like a doctor or teacher or social worker does. But then he plays his trump card. He says this to me...

He says, "But Dad, what about Tim Tebow?"

Tebow is to the you-shouldn't-be-a-pro-athlete argument, what dynamite is to rock/paper/scissors--nothing beats it. It's also not fair, just like dynamite.

The Tebow model for justifying a career in pro sports, in case you're not familiar with it, goes like this: professional sports provides a platform for Christian influence, ministry, and evangelism that no other industry provides. Just as look at what Tim's done with it! It has to be good and right! Right?

Like I said, it's unfair.

Here's why: Tebow's justification doesn't work as the justification for a career in sports because it puts the same Tebow expectation on any and every professional Christian athlete. Not everyone is called to be a pastor or teacher or evangelist. Not everyone is called to be Tim Tebow. Some are called to Jason Hansons. Quiet, steady, rock-solid Jason Hansons.

Would it be un-Christian to quietly go about your athletic career, working hard, working as unto the Lord, without praise, and doing it in such ways that only your teammates and coaches know anything about your faith? If the answer is no, if it wouldn't be un-Christian, then the Tebow model doesn't stand up as the justification for such a career. It may be his, but not everyone's, and not necessarily my boy's. If the answer is yes...well, the answer's not yes, it's no.

So there must be more to our choice of vocation than the potential leverage for proclaiming the gospel.

I look again at my gut objection, that pro athletes "don't serve anyone in meaningful ways like a doctor or teacher or social worker does." As I think about the nature of work, I realize that my perceptions of value here are arbitrary. My gut tells me that the work of a doctor is intrinsically more valuable than that of a mechanic, whose work is more valuable than that of a pro athlete, whose work might be just a smidge better than a Hollywood actor.

Why do I think that? I shouldn't think that.

If I work in a plant in Louisville producing baseball bats, will I be doing more valuable work than playing the game for a paying audience? Less valuable? Is writing code for an actuarial table intrinsically better than writing it for a computer game? If so, how does the line get drawn? If not, why do we find it so easy to draw such lines?

I've always thought, and so told my kids, that a career in professional sports is silly and beneath one's dignity. Now, I'm not so sure. Jobs have become so specialized and fragmented that it's hard to qualify one as noble and another as silly. There are extremes, of course, and those tend to be easier to classify. A farmer works hard and feeds people. That's a good job and a no-brainer, right? A drug-dealer or day-time talkshow host destroys lives--his own and others. No-brainer, again. But between the two, where most of us work, it gets difficult. And I think it's difficult because, extremes notwithstanding, it's a futile exercise. To try to assign some value to work based on its cosmic good, or whatever, is just silly. It breaks down as soon as you look closely at it.

If Joe works in a factory producing picture frames, does he need to discern the empirical value of picture frames in society in order to determine the value of his work? We don't need picture frames, not really. They're nice but not necessary. But if Joe stops his thinking there, then he's sunk. He's living a wasted life. On the other hand, if Joe remembers that he's providing for his family through "honest" work, that God hasn't prohibited us from making picture frames (not that I'm aware of), that he's exercising dominion over the earth by subduing raw materials and creating something useful, then Joe has a career to be proud of. One of the leading Christians of the church in Philippi was Lydia, a seller of purple. Does anyone really need purple? No, but God made purple, so it's good. There's no scriptural prohibition against it, and as far as we know, God left her alone to keep selling it.

So maybe the criteria for work's value is not an empirical quality of the service or product, but something in the act of working itself. But that begs a question: what is the something?

The answer to that helps me draw my lines clearly. The something is faith. Paul says in Romans 14, "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." And what is faith? Believing that God's word is true and that it's our only guide in all of life. If my son's choice (should he have the opportunity) to become a pro athlete proceeds from that, genuinely proceeds from that, then who am I to stop him?

Of course, he'd have to play on Sundays.

Hmm...maybe I need to check my gut again.

Children are a (very practical) Blessing

2011-02-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

Children are a blessing from the Lord in many ways: they're cute when they're little; they'll take care of us in our old age; they'll give us grandkids and anniversary parties and lives to live vicariously through. They'll contend with us in the gates (i.e. they've got our backs). All this is true. But what I've been thinking about lately is the very practical aspect of having kids who can handle responsibilities.

Now that's a blessing.

My two older ones, Charlie and Lewis, are evidence of this. They more than pull their weight around the house: they babysit, haul wood, shovel snow (I spared them this last time and sprang for a plow truck, but they know how to shovel), clean the kitchen and bathrooms, vacuum acres of carpeting. The youngers are right in the olders' footsteps, fully immersed in "blessing" training. No, we're not breaking child labor laws--it's just chores--but regular chores have proven an integral part of running a well-ordered home (H will roll her eyes at that, but I know better). Sure, they grumble in their minimalist, slope-shouldered way, but I'm convinced they feel a greater sense of being vested in the home through the work they do here. It might be hard to confirm that until they're much older and can look back with some perspective, but that's how it feels to us now, and that's what we've been hoping for all along. It's one of the key reasons we chose homeschooling: that we'd be in it--in all of it--together.

Occasionally, when I find myself in conversation about how many kids I have (and I only have "a lot" in certain circles), I'll say something like, "There's a point where you have an economy of scale, and the older kids start taking care of the younger ones." Then I'll say, "So you may as well have a dozen." The other person will then laugh and say, "I don't know how you do it." And while the whole conversation comes off as a joke, the economy of scale thing, thankfully, is really very true.

So I'll let Heidi know we can have six more.

"Christmas" Letter Brainstorm

2011-01-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

It's not a Christmas letter, but that's what we still call it. I think of it more as a 1st quarter letter. This way the letter's not late; I just have to get it out by end of March.

But I'm not waiting until March. I'm writing it today, and since I haven't blogged in a while I thought I'd post the brainstorm session and kill two birds with one in the bush. Now, Heidi can't say, "you were supposed to start the letter and you blogged instead?!" Pretty smart, huh?

So here goes. I'll start with the kids...

Charlie - he's getting tall. I can almost wear his shoes, and since his tend to be newer and in better shape, he won't be tempted to wear mine. It'll be a good arrangement once it gets moving. I used to steal my brother's clothes all the time. He had better fashion sense. I figure by next year I'll be looking quite nice in Charlie's sweaters.

Lewis - wrenched his knee in basketball this week. We definitely feel his absence around dinner time when he can't do his chores. Children are a very practical blessing, especially when they're old enough to clean the kitchen, haul wood, and shovel driveways. Lewis does all three well, and then some. (this is a brainstorm - I'll come up with warm fuzzy stuff later).

Max - coming along as a point guard, and his piano playing is starting to sound like Miss Cathy knows what she's doing. As always, Max is cheerful and quick to talk to the closest human. He's got my flakiness and a true man's inability to find whatever he's lost, and he loses stuff with the best of em.

Hudson - It will be interesting to see how living life in pursuit of a bunch of older, bigger kids will play out in Hud's development. So far so good; He can hang with anybody. And though he does get sat on more than anyone else, we haven't noticed any response or coping mechanisms that might call for therapy later in life. I can see some of Charlie's science bent, Lewis's perpetual motion, Max's good nature, and Heidi's cheek dimple.

Elizabeth - she's a great big sister. And though she tries to make up for Bennett's lack of comprehension with sheer, high-pitched volume, she seems to be one of the boy's favorites. She's definitely girl-wired. Her proclivity towards all things pink and princess-ish is continuing on in the same trajectory. If there's any tomboy there, we ain't seen it yet.

Bennett - kind of a pain right now. H and the boys are at enrichment day, and he reeeeally likes to be held. He doesn't do much either. No skills at all. I tend not to find much interest in my kids until they're at least one. I love them, of course. They're just sort of lumpish until then.

Work - same. I'm thankful to be employed. Heidi's thankful she can be at home.

Friends, family, church life, personal interest stuff -- saving all that for the letter. I'll post it here too when we're done. Probably some time this summer.

We Don't Need Self Esteem - We Need its Antidote

2011-01-12T12:09:00.000-08:00

I heard recently about a report on US students' math and science scores in comparison with the rest of the industrialized world. Apparently we suck at both subjects, but especially when we're compared with Asian nations. That wasn't a surprise. Japanese and Korean kids go to school a bazillion hours a day, all year long - hardly an arrangement I want my kids trading up to.

What did surprise me was another stat. Apparently, US students did score higher than any other nation in one category - confidence. Our students think they're great at math. They feel good about themselves and their math skills and believe in themselves (whatever that means). In contrast, students from Asian countries--and this may surprise you--are not only less confident in their abilities, but they actually dislike math and science more than US students do. So how do we make sense of this? I think it's easy - our students don't feel like they need it - we've protected them from such feelings - while the rest of the world knows they need it.

The self-esteem nonsense we've been feeding our kids for a few decades now is bearing its fruit: Our kids no longer excel at math and science because they no longer have to. They feel good and fine right where they're at. And why shouldn't they? They're learners, and we've been teaching them that they're just fine since they were teachable. Unfortunately, in this respect we've done our jobs too well. We've taught them right out of teachability and into complacency. No one is teachable who thinks he knows it all. No one is teachable who thinks she doesn't need the knowledge.

Of course, no teacher is telling students explicitly that they know it all, or that knowledge and skills are unnecessary. But if a student is told for years that his work is good when it's not, that he should feel proud of his efforts when he should feel shame, if he's been affirmed in things that should have been torn down, then his perception of ability and need will be skewed. In such a head, self becomes the determining agent, and all things, including knowledge, must submit to it. In "teaching" our kids self-esteem, we've thrown out the one thing our students need most - the humility of a teachable spirit.

So how do we reverse course? Well, we don't just do the opposite. The remedy to being bit by a snake is not to bite it back, but to find an antidote. The opposite of self esteem is not self negation or self immolation or self anything. It's not an inward or even a horizontal perspective at all--it's vertical. The only way to reverse the damage that self-esteem teaching has done and is doing to our kids is to show them who they really are before a holy God. And then show them what God's really done in Christ. We need to teach them that they're not fine, that they're not ok, that they have nothing in themselves on which to base confidence. But we don't stop there. We also teach that there's a place on which to build true confidence that is much broader, much stronger than self. We teach them Christ esteem.

That's what I'll do with my own kids, but as a public school teacher, I don't think I'll be attending in-services on it any time soon.

Stuff I Like Right Now

2011-01-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

Heidi thinks some of my posts are too . . . something. Heavy? This one's not heavy, not at all.

Some stuff I like right now...

Mumford and Sons. I did a FB status a few weeks ago asking for music suggestions and got a few nods to M and S. Thanks.

Same for Kings of Leon.

True Grit. Haven't seen a movie in at least a year, maybe two, but when I saw the trailers for this film, I really wanted to see it. It occurred to me only then that I also like...

Westerns, at least recent ones (The Unforgiven, 3:10 to Yuma, Open Range). And because I really like...

Cohen brothers films (I've always known that), this one did not disappoint on either category.

Pizza. I have in mind a particular recipe, a childhood memory of eating pizza with cousins in Chicago at Gino's or Uno's, can't remember which. I'll be taking a shot at it soon, just need the right sauce. Suggestions are welcome.

Nyquil. I've been sick most of Christmas break (I'm sick every break; my body has a good sense for the calendar and knows when it can fall apart with minimal disruption to the rest of life), but I've been sleeping well. I recommend cherry flavored.

Bowl games. Doesn't matter who's playing, there's just something about watching college athletes playing what for many of them will be their last organized game of football. Whatever the something is, it's patently missing at the pro level.

My 55" TV to watch bowl games. I'm not audio/video guy. I'm not any sort of techie; in fact, I've never bought a TV in my life but have done pretty well with hand-me-downs. A couple years ago, a buddy upgraded and gave us his old one. Love it. Thanks, Tim.

Tea. It's cold out and I don't drink coffee.

My wood stove. There will come a time this winter when I'm sick of burning wood and everything associated with it. I'm not there yet. Wood is still good.

This post has caused me to think about two things: 1) I haven't included anything like wife, kids, friends, church, God. Somehow, telling the world that I like these things diminishes them. Such things are for a different category - they'd be sullied by lesser company; and 2) I don't like this kind of blogging. It's exactly the kind of writing that gives me a funny, slightly queasy feeling when I hear the word blog. The topic is me and I'm uncomfortable writing so closely on it. It's the same feeling I get when I begin, then delete, a FB update and say to myself, "who really cares what I had for dinner?" So if you said something like that to yourself as you read this, I apologize.

That being said, however, I'm not going to delete this. I want it on record that I posted a fluffy piece on stuff I like. But I think I'll stick with the heavy from now on.

Sorry, honey.

A Picture? Or a Thousand Words?

2010-12-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

I recently heard this narrow slice of our modern era—the late 20th, early 21st century—described as the “age of image.” The notion behind it being that our use of information today is primarily image-based rather than word-based.

It’s not hard to see how this is true. Consider that in the last century we’ve seen not only the advent of digital media, but—going waaay back—of picture books for kids and pop-culture magazines that have had their verbiage squeezed out a little each decade by images. Our children today, and for the last couple of generations, really, have been raised, educated, pacified, and entertained with images.

This would seem to speak to the old proverb that a picture is worth a thousand words. But is it? The answer, of course, depends on the words. For example, one picture cannot express…

a mission statement
your epitath
a knock-knock joke
what Emily Dickinson can with 10 words
the simplest legal document

I understand what the maxim means to say: that some pictures—pieces of photo journalism come to mind—communicate ideas, truths, impressions that could not be captured in the same way with words. I don’t dispute that. But there’s a kind of job that images can’t do. They can’t argue. Not really. Images can’t present claims. They can’t reason syllogistically. They can’t sequence premises, conditions, and conclusions. For communication that compels a reader to action—whether the action is a change in thought, an emotion evoked, or a purchase—we need words.

I am not proposing that words are innately better than visual images. That would be like saying trees are better than clouds; each has value within a particular context. And the context in which words have value is that of human thought and expression. More than these even, words have value that's rooted at our most fundamental essence. The power of words for humans is derivative; i.e. God first used words to form creation, and our use of them derives from being made in his image. Words are permanent (they can't be replaced by images) because they’re somehow essential to existence itself.

So we can call this the bit of history—and the next one, and the one after that—whatever we want, but one thing’s certain, we’ll use words to do it.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T10:42:00.000-08:00

Last night, as is the tradition in my extended family, one of the kids read the Christmas account from Luke 2. And though the angel proclaiming the news to the shepherds does refer to the child as "Savior", the focus of the narrative is on the circumstances of Christ's birth, not the reason. To fill out the reason, we can look to other scripture.

Here in Paul's letter to the Colossians we have the objective of Christ's incarnation:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And in his letter to the Philippians, we have the attitude that such a mission required:

...Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross.

So the baby in the manger came to die, "to reconcile to himself all things...by the blood of his cross." And while it's true that Christmas points to Easter, we should be careful here. To say that one celebration is better than the other (and I've heard the statement before) is to miss the point. The objects of both Christmas and Easter celebrations are part of the same story, which is the story of the entire Bible and the whole of the Christian faith--that God is a redeemer and he redeems at his own expense.

As I teach my kids to think about the incarnation (and it's an amazing thing to ponder), I must remember that it fits within a broader context--the whole gospel of Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas!

Put Christ Back in Christmas? No way.

2010-12-21T04:41:00.000-08:00

Before you read this, you might brush on these two stories:

Nadab and Abihu and unauthorized fire

Uzzah and Ark of the Covenant

God knows our hearts. In Exodus (c.20) he tells the people that when they erect an altar they’re not to add images to it. In fact, says God, don’t even use a tool on the stones or you’ll “profane it.” This prohibition, this tether on the Israelites’ creativity was not repression but kindness. He knew then, as he knows now, that once a tool was applied to the stones, the next thing to follow would be a carving, an image, something aesthetic and more to their liking than plain field stone. And of course, one image would not suffice. The unadorned stones would cry out for the same treatment, and soon the entire altar would be swallowed up in a work of art. So what’s wrong with art?
Nothing, in and of itself. Creativity is part of being made in God’s image, so it’s good. But art, visual art especially, when it comes along side worship won’t be content as an aid. It will make itself front and center. We like to see things. We crave image and spectacle, and our sinful hearts will always turn from the invisible and the realm of faith and bend toward the visible and the realm of the senses, especially if the visible thing is made by our own hands. The Bible calls this idolatry.
We don’t need to look far to see this error play itself out to its logical ends. Just open your eyes between Thanksgiving and New Year's. What began as an aid to worship, a special season marked out on the calendar to celebrate the incarnation (seems innocent enough), has become an orgy for the senses. The “aid” itself has taken center stage, making Christ a bit player. So we need to put Christ back in Christmas, right? 

Wrong. 
God never asked for our help here. Nowhere does his word prescribe the Christmas celebration or anything like it. And it’s no wonder—he knew we’d screw it up. He knew we’d get out our tools and start carving away, and we’d end up with something more aesthetically pleasing, more to our liking. He knew we would fashion an idol. What arrogance then to think that worship, as God himself specifies it, requires any help from us. Forgive us, Lord.
Instead of putting Christ back in Christmas, let’s do this: let’s recognize that he never asked to be there in the first place. Let’s use our tools for what they were meant for—subduing the earth and having dominion over it. And let’s let God determine how we’ll worship him.

And if Christmas for you is more about presents and eggnog and, yes, even family, then take Christ out of Christmas, lest his name be profaned. He's King of kings, after all, not a bit player.

Contentment and Martyrdom

2010-12-17T19:55:00.000-08:00

I've been reading through Revelation (it's never the same book twice, is it?) and was struck by this:

[The beast] was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

If anyone is to be taken captive,

   to captivity he goes;
   if anyone is to be slain with the sword,
   with the sword must he be slain.

   Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. (c.13)

Whether you read this as a future event or one that's already passed doesn't matter. Either way it's scary because it presents a plausible death for any Christ follower. We might die by a sword or a bullet or a bomb. And our profession of faith might be the trigger.

I think it's a perfectly healthy practice for Christians to consider their own martyrdom. I do it all the time. I hear some horrible, glorious story of endurance through persecution or faithful testimony in the face of torture, and I wonder, "What would I do?" And then I remind myself of how God's grace comes to us in our time of need, that I'm not strong enough or courageous enough to withstand such trials, but that Christ is and that he'll provide what I need when I need it.

It's the gospel, and it's all true, of course, but today I had another thought. What if I'm not calling out to Christ now? What if here in the day of small things, when torture is a clock that ticks too slowly and persecution is a student who snickers when I say I went to church last Sunday--what if on days like these I habitually try to get through them on my own? Will I know how to persevere in Christ under a "big" trial when I can't or won't do it under a triviality?

I'm thinking no.

I murder time. I hold the clock in contempt and despise the day of small things, and it’s a flat-out sinful act of rebellion. The small days are just as much God’s unfolding of his will as are centuries and millennia. Same goes for the circumstances that fill them. Cancer and colds are both God's, both to be used as sanctifying means for his children, and we're to seek him in both.

So while it's a hard lesson, and one I'll have to learn again and again, it's always true that I can always be content because I am always in the exact circumstance of God’s ordaining. Whether it's a Monday afternoon meeting or a 7pm diaper change on Tuesday or 4th hour on Thursdays, I'm always where God my father wants me.

I'm just now learning to see that enduring such times alone is stupid when I have the gospel. I need God's grace to be content where I'm at, and I need to practice it daily, for there can be no doubt that someday I'll need his grace for a day of bigger things. If I'm not depending on Christ now, I probably won't do it later. And that makes passages like Revelation 13 really scary.

Writer, Proof Thyself

2010-12-13T04:25:00.000-08:00

Proofing your own copy is like tickling yourself—you'd think it would work, but it doesn't. Just ask Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Here’s the complete title of her book:

Eats, Shoots and Leaves:

A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

And in the subtitle we find, of all things, an error in punctuation. The compound modifier zero tolerance, because it modifies a noun immediately following, needs to be hypenated, as in zero-tolerance approach.

(It’s a great object lesson for anyone proofing copy, but don’t let the slip-up prejudice you against Truss’s book—it’s a great read, and no, I’m not forgetting that it’s about punctuation.)

The more time a writer spends with a piece of work, the more familiar it becomes. If errors aren’t caught early, the writer’s eye and brain (they’re the same organ, really) will begin superimposing correct form onto the copy. You’ll read it correctly because the sentence’s content and syntax encourage you to anticipate and assume the correct form. It’s nothing new; we see what we want to see.

Some remedies:

spell check is a start, but it will miss distinctions between words like wear and where
reading aloud is helpful for broader form concerns like sentence fragments, misplaced or dangling modifiers, and style, but it won’t catch spelling and typo problems
reading copy word for word in reverse—this eliminates the brain’s assumptions about form since there’s no syntax to hypnotize you. This is a good complement to reading aloud as it will only catch spelling and typo errors.
farming the copy out to a proofreader for one last pass

But your best bet is to be doing all four. That’s the true zero-tolerance approach to proofing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need my wife to read this before I post.

Weird: Dillard's Insight into Sight

2010-12-11T12:08:00.000-08:00

In a recent post, I looked at how sight and meaning develop together, that we only ever see a thing with our physical eyes if there’s a corresponding knowledge of it in our brains. But what if the brain develops apart from sight? What if we’re born blind? What then?
What happens then is just downright weird.

If I had to cite only one writing influence in my life it would be Annie Dillard. And if I had to recommend only one of her books, it would be her break-out, Pulitzer-nabbing Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In it, she writes, among many other things, on the phenomenon of seeing. She refers to an account by Dr. Maurice von Senden of surgeries done in the early 1960s on congenital cataract patients (blind from birth) and writes,

“...The vast majority of patients, of both sexes and all ages, had, in von Senden's opinion, no idea of space whatsoever. Form, distance, and size were so many meaningless syllables. A patient ‘had no idea of depth, confusing it with roundness.’ Before the operation a doctor would give a blind patient a cube and a sphere; the patient would tongue it or feel it with his hands, and name it correctly. After the operation the doctor would show the same objects to the patient without letting him touch them; now he had no clue whatsoever what he was seeing.”

It sounds crazy. A blind person touches a ball and a cube. He’s given sight but can’t tell by looking which is which. The problem with our understanding of what’s going on here is that we can’t separate out the experience of shape without sight. The two are too closely tied. Try it yourself. Put something in your hand and close your eyes. The skin of your fingers and palm, the muscles of your arm holding the object’s weight are drawing on visual sense memory to “create” an image of the thing in your hand. Your brain can do that because the visual information is there and retrievable. For a person blind from birth, there are no such files to draw from. But there are plenty of touch files. So the newly-sighted patient looks at the sphere and cube, and shrugs. But he reaches out a hand and touches them, and knowledge is there, as instantly as turning on a light in a dark room.

Their perceptions of themselves occupying physical space were just as bizarre as the ball and cube. Dillard writes:

“Of another postoperative patient, the doctor writes, ‘I have found in her no notion of size, for example, not even within the narrow limits which she might have encompassed with the aid of touch. Thus when I asked her to show me how big her mother was, she did not stretch out her hands, but set her two index-fingers a few inches apart.’ Other doctors reported their patients' own statements to similar effect. ‘The room he was in ... he knew to be but part of the house, yet he could not conceive that the whole house could look bigger. . .Those who are blind from birth . . . have no real conception of height or distance. A house that is a mile away is thought of as nearby, but requiring the taking of a lot of steps. . . . The elevator that whizzes him up and down gives no more sense of vertical distance than does the train of horizontal.’”

Reach out and touch the screen or the coffee cup in front of you. The thing only exists for you in space because you know space visually. Your arm is extended out, slightly down, and touching the coffee cup, and you can imagine it sitting on your desk 18 inches away because the knowledge of physical space is already there. You know the context. But what immediate knowledge does a blind person have of such an object? The knowledge of hard, smooth, and cool, of arm muscles contracting a certain way--all touch sensations that don't have anything at all to do with space. Imagine, if you can, a brain formed in that way, for which sensation is primarily touch and feel. There could be no perception of space (as the sighted know it) because space is purely perspective and perspective is purely visual.

I look at my screen now, and can see the edge of a picture frame. I know the monitor hides the rest, the image of Elizabeth, because the idea of space and that something can exist behind something else is a visual thing. Now try to imagine--and you can't, but try anyway--by sense of touch alone, something hidden behind something else. If you're a seeing person, or even if you've not been blind for life, you can't do this without bringing in the visual. You can't do it because the whole phenomena, for us the sighted, is one of perspective. And your perspective is based on visual perception. Even with your eyes closed, it’s based on memory of your visual perception. Ideas like behind, in front of, and hidden only exist as a function of perspective.

One more thing. Of the accounts of Jesus healing folks while he was here on earth, I’ve always thought this one strange: In Mark 8, Jesus heals a man of blindness. He does it in stages, and after the first round of spitting and laying on of hands, the man says to Jesus, “I see men, but they look like trees walking.” Like trees? Until I’d thought about these matters of sight and blindness and perception, that always sounded strange to me. Trees. It doesn’t anymore. It makes perfect sense. A tree to a person born blind is man sized, limbed, up and down. So I thought this especially fascinating: Dillard, quoting von Senden, writes, “One girl was eager to tell her blind friend that ‘men do not really look like trees at all.’” hmmm.

Told you it was weird.

Nouns - the Last Frontier

2010-12-04T08:37:00.000-08:00

We’re running out of frontiers for carrying out our dominion mandate, but I think I’ve found one—the world of nouns. Not the concrete kind. Those have it easy. They get named as soon as they’re sighted. But the abstract kind, situations, particularly—they’re the shadowy corners of the word world.

Here’s a few that I’ve taken the liberty of naming. I’m not sure that I’m really the first to do it, but I don’t see any flags planted on these, so I feel ok about it. They’re in dictionary format to make them seem, you know, real. And there’s an example for each because I’m, you know, an English teacher...

1. sermat (sir maht) n.: the sudden, sometimes awkward silence that can arise during group discussions. (Note: there is a belief that sermats occur most often at 20 minutes to and after the hour; this is a stupid belief.) From the Latin sermo meaning to talk and the Greek stamato meaning to stop or pause. Ex: A lively discussion on God’s sovereignty flowed on into the early hours, interrupted only by the pizza-delivery guy and the occasional sermat.

2. floscus (flah skus) n.: the explosive effect that can occur as one takes the very last bites of a closed, sandwich-type food item. From the latin fluo, meaning flow, and esca meaning food. Ex: You’re getting near the end of that burrito, Lewis, and that’s a clean shirt—watch out for the floscus!

3. incurputation (in ker pyu tay shun) n.: an encounter in which two people, approaching from opposite directions, attempt to pass by one another; but in the attempt to make room, each chooses the same side, thereby running into the other. This is often followed by a series of similar side-to-side moves as each participant tries to get past the other. Incurputations are often terminated by one or both parties smiling or laughing awkwardly and saying something like, “shall we dance?” Variations include two or more cars starting and stopping simultaneously at a stop sign, a European kiss to the check where the parties bump noses, and introductions between people from the West and Far East in which the opposites can’t figure out whether to bow or shake hands and so attempt to do both, alternately, clumsily, ineffectively. From the latin incurse meaning to collide and the Greek perpate meaning to step or walk. She had determined to make an elegant entrance into the restaurant, but a blushing incurputation with a waiter spoiled the effect.

There. Flags are planted. Time to go look for more land.

"When Lilacs Last on the Roadside Bloom'd"

2010-11-29T17:51:00.000-08:00

Staring at my four-month-old got me thinking about brains. That and Monday Night Football tonight (as lame a match-up as it's likely to be) made a good argument for recycling a post from one of my early attempts at blogging....

"When Lilacs Last on the Roadside Bloom'd"

One afternoon, a few years back, I learned to see lilac bushes. My father-in-law, a world-class talker, pointed to a bush and said, “That’s a lilac.” It was the first time I’d ever really looked at one, so I listened as he said that it was a favorite, that it was the most spring-ish of spring-time flowers, that it bloomed in white, red, purple, and—naturally—lilac. And that was all. It was a discourse of about one minute, and I planned on forgetting it.

But then a miracle happened. Overnight, across the state of Michigan, along highways, driveways, back roads, and backyards lilac bushes sprang up full grown and in bloom. For days after, I could hardly turn my eyes to any familiar stretch of countryside without seeing a lilac bush where there had certainly not been one before.

The miracle, of course, was in my own brain. That the new information about a flowering tree should so quickly change the way I saw the landscape was to me, and still is, miraculous. And it’s an every-day miracle. Scientists believe—and good ones, I presume—that a baby can’t see things until his brain learns that such things really are. So a newborn may see the shape of a face, but not the nose. He can’t (or doesn’t) see nose because there’s no corresponding knowledge, no nose file to refer to. As he has more and more experience of nose, his ability to see it fills in, slowly, like a lens bringing an image into focus.

Maybe you’ve heard the eye described as being an extension of the brain; it's a helpful notion for seeing how closely the two work together to bring our world into focus, to make of it something solid and navigable. Until there’s enough input, we simply don’t see whatever it is our brain is making sense of. You can test this yourself. Look at a page of text written in an unfamiliar language—say, German. You see nothing but letters broken up into what seem to be word-sized chunks. But there’s no recognition beyond that. You see no patterns, nothing familiar. Now glance at a page of English text, and it’s all familiarity, like the faces of friends. The content is the same: German and English use the same alphabet. But it’s the patterns of letters and their correspondence to known words that make up the seeing as we read. Knowledge here literally gives sight.

So what was there before, there in the lilac-bush place of my mind’s eye? There’s no way to know now because the lilac bush is one place in the scene to which I, apparently, paid no attention. I don’t remember it being a blank or a gray smudge in the picture, but maybe it was. Maybe it was filled in with some stock photo from my head called “bush” or “nondescript shrub”. And here’s fascination for you: that our vision is always filled with something. Our page of German, indecipherable as language, is still filled with clear black and stark white, with letters and punctuation. It’s filled but waiting for more.

My brother-in-law can see deer in the woods. That may not seem like a feat unless you’re with him, unless he’s pointing at a curved piece of gray-brown lump pressing out from a thick tree trunk. And no amount of squinting and straining, no trick of the imagination will allow you to see what he sees, not until the lump moves and either disappears behind the tree or materializes into a deer. His brain has long been trained to see forest patterns and therefore breaks in the patterns. And those breaks, at certain heights off the ground, in certain un-tree-like curves and colors are often deer. But, like learning a new language, it takes years to see that way. And yet always, at all points in the education of our eyes, the forest is full of something.

I’m only now learning to see the trees that hide the deer. Four years ago, I bought a house that has a wood stove, so I’ve spent some time in woods, felling, splitting, and hauling a variety of hardwood and not-so-hardwood trees. I’ve learned to see maple and cherry and oak and beach and poplar and elm. They look different, these trees. Their bark, leaves, limbs, and shapes are different. And I’ve learned this so gradually that I can’t remember what woods looked like when they were filled only with tree. So how do I know that I’m seeing more now that I once did? Because I narrate. I walk the woods and practice the vernacular. “That’s dogwood…old beech…maple there…nice cherry tree…beautiful sycamore.” I didn’t do that just a few years ago because I wasn’t really seeing different trees. I had not the vocabulary for it. And now, as my tree vocabulary grows, so does the variety and complexity of what I see.

And I’m just a neophyte. If I leaned in close to a biologist in the woods, would I hear the synapses pop and crackle as his eyes sweep across a field of vision packed with pattern and familiarity? No, I don’t think so. The brain seems to have an inexhaustible capacity for more and finer detail—I doubt that a biologist's head makes any more noise than mine does. But in the woods he must see more than I do, just as the German speaker must see more in the written language.

This idea that seeing is powered by knowledge brings me to more questions: what am I missing right now? What parts of my nascent vision are comprised of stock footage? And am I even able to detect such blindness? It gets very tricky here. To be able to see a blur, a lack of pattern, requires first a recognition of pattern. So no, I can’t detect the blindness. I can’t look around at the landscape and say now there’s a lack of clarity and detail just waiting to be filled in with knowledge. I can’t because there’s too much detail already filled in around it, the detail exactly matching the knowledge beneath. I can’t see potential patterns anymore than a child can see the inches he has yet to grow or read the language he has yet to learn.

But that’s part of the nature of God’s creation and our experience in it. The visual detail keeps up perfectly with its growing, corresponding knowledge. I learn that the difference between the black maple and the silver maple right next to it are its smoother bark and fewer leaf lobes. And then vision! From that point on, I see them differently. I watch a rugby match, and it’s all chaos and confusion. But a friendly hand points out the patterns in strategy, and the game becomes something new. Knowledge comes and makes vision possible. It differentiates and brings order.

So where there was once at the side of the road a passing blur of white or red or purple, there is now a lilac bush, syringia in all of its deciduous detail. I’m still calling that a miracle.

WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. ~ Walt Whitman

Called it!

2010-11-27T09:13:00.000-08:00

In case the grid ever goes down--I mean really down, as in complete societal collapse, no wifi, cannibalism, that sort of thing--and in the aftermath we’re reduced to small, tribalistic, local agrarian economies, I call brewer!

I could go a few ways with this. I could explore the simple, beautifully efficient parliamentary procedure of calling. I could break down the various ways the "grid" could go down and the harrowing events that might follow. I could examine the economic implications of the industrial and post-industrial ages. Or I could talk booze.

I think the choice is clear.

God seems to have made the world in such a way that it just wants to ferment. Wine practically makes itself. Expose grape juice to the air, and yeast will find it and do its thing. Beer’s a little more complicated, but not much. Barley right from the field needs only to be soaked and dried a few times, and it’s ready for yeast (some Belgian beers are still made using open-air vats. The wild yeast that comes in on the breeze does the work). Let’s face it: where there's cultivation, there's fermentation.

I’ve thought about this, and I’ve thought about the other jobs I’d like to have: the village blacksmith, the village baker, the village cheese maker (that’s right, cheese), but I keep coming back to village brewer. Here’s why...I think: making your own adult beverage out of something as commonplace as juice or grain has magic to it. It’s alchemy, and it makes me say wow. There's no wow in bread. I like bread. It's just that it makes plain sense to me. You mix stuff together, heat it up, and it cooks. It, or something like it, happens every day in most kitchens. Cheese, now that’s a little more interesting, but not much. It's still a process that seems to be in the cook’s hands the whole time. Separate curds from whey, add a little flavor, you got cheese. But beer...Beer’s mysterious.

It also spans more disciplines than mere cooking. Yes, at first it’s culinary. It’s mixed like soup--grains and hops are steeped, spices are added, yeast is pitched. But then it goes in another direction. It goes scientific. You have airlocks and fermenting carboys, surgical tubing, and hydrometers. Your wort (the malted barley, grains, hops, and yeast mixture) sits in a dark, cool place for weeks where chemical reactions change sugar to CO2 and alcohol. Then the bottling. The process has now gone from culinary to scientific to industrial so that different apparatus is needed--bottles, a bottle capper, a bottling bucket, priming sugar for carbonation. Your kitchen’s an assembly line. A week or two later, you have something that should not have come from a kitchen or basement but from a pub or a 7-11.

I’ll say it again. It’s magic.

A long time ago, before cities became the centers of culture, there was the expectation that if you got good at something, you really could be the best around. Of course, the around was much smaller, no bigger than your village. But still, you could ply your craft or trade and be appreciated by those who found value in it. Yeah, it still happens today, but not on the same scale. You get good at something now, and maybe the people in your department or on your floor or branch will notice, but odds are there’s a guy in the next cubicle doing the same work. And odds are real good that the work you’ve gotten good at is the work that offered the best prospects for a paycheck.

Take my own job--teacher. Today you couldn’t throw a copy of the best-selling and widely-acclaimed Dragon Haint across a room and not hit a teacher. But in a little, post-apocalyptic village, you’d have just one, probably teaching in a one-room school house, and everyone around would know exactly who the teacher is. They’d probably call him or her “Teacher.” And next door to Teacher would be Smithy who lives next to the Millers who are neighbors with the Masons and the Bakers and the Treecutters (whose name might change in later generations to Wood or Sawyer). And just up the rode, in a brown wooden house would live the Brewers. No more Beals. I’m Brad the Brewer now, and when my boys marry, they’ll be raising little Brewers, expanding the shop, carting our brew all over lower central Michigan. And someday my great, great grandson will make brew commercials on the moving picture screen.

Or, maybe my sons decide to be the village something-else. If the village is still small enough, that is. That’s one thing we’ve lost to modernity--the chance to be the village something. But maybe we'll get that chance back.

Go ahead, Heidi, roll your eyes, but the grid’s going down some day. Better call your job now before someone else does.

I call brewer.

the 3 most disturbing words on TV: "Move That Bus!"

2010-11-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

If you have in your head a picture of my big wooden house and it's anything other than a drafty, leaky, ergonomically hazardous eyesore, please discard it. Yes, it's big. Almost three times the size of our last one, but it's low-end big. It's pole-barn big, not Pottery Barn big, if that makes sense. It's squat and brown and cedar sided. I often refer to it (privately, as H doesn't like me to say it out loud) as "the turd." Don't get me wrong. I like my house. It serves my family well. But it's just a house.

I was reminded of that last night as I watched water drip from the ground-floor bathroom ceiling. I was reminded for the next hour as I crawled through the space above trying to sort out the maze of pipes--water, drains, and roof vents. And I'll be reminded again over the weekend when I re-grout the boys' shower. It's just a house, just a temporary place this side of eternity to spend our days out of the weather. But it's sooo easy to make it something more. Mike Cosper of the Gospel Coalition speaks to this tendency to make our homes, and other "lesser things", idols to be worshiped: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2010/11/22/the-3-most-disturbing-words-on-tv/

It's also a good follow-up to Kevin's sermon on holiness from last Sunday. And Kevin's blog post for today is a good summation of that sermon: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2010/11/23/the-hole-in-our-holiness/

whatever you do, don't open your Bible

2010-11-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I had one of those magnifying mirrors that women use for make-up shoved into my face, and I was shocked. I’m getting old, but I had no idea I was that old. Wrinkles gaining ground. Pores of my skin big as smallpox scars. Nose getting bigger—no one told me about that! And double bags to go with my double chins.

My first reaction? To shut my eyes tight and think of something pleasant.

OK, this is what we in the profession call a metaphor (from here on, I'll try not to use any more technical, highly-sophisticated Greek terms like metaphor). It wasn’t a mirror in front of me. It was the Bible, 2nd Peter. And the one holding the mirror was my pastor, Kevin DeYoung. Throughout the book Peter admonishes his listeners (it would have been read aloud to the church) that though we are elect, chosen by God, we must still be eager to make that calling and election sure. In other words, though God chooses and keeps us, we must strive (by grace) to live holy lives.

And that's hard. Actually, it's much more than hard—it's absolutely impossible. No wonder people don’t want to open a Bible or go to a church where someone else might open one. And by people, I mean unbelievers and Christians both. Unbelievers don't want to be shown God's holy standard because deep down they know it's an impossible one, so they know they're doomed. Their logic goes like this: God is holy. I'm not; therefore, I'm doomed. Better to kill God by atheism or indifference. But believers also don't want to be shown the standard, not because they know they're doomed, but precisely because they know they're not. They know the Gospel, so they know it is possible, if not to live it out perfectly, then at least to move toward that standard. Their logic goes like this: if God commands it, and if I have his Spirit, I can obey it. But I don't want to change, so I'll just shut my eyes and ears to it.

The world has hold of the unbeliever outright, but it still pulls at the believer, and we believers like our shows, our movies, our music, our friends. We've killed the big sins, or at least made them quiet; surely God doesn't want us to be legalists over all the little ones, right? But we forget that obedience is not legalism. To that end, Kevin made this great point: we want to feed the poor, and the Bible has a few verses on that; we want to evangelize, and the Bible has a few verses on that too; but we don't want to live holy, Godly lives, even though the Bible has many, many more verses on that. From 2 Peter alone, Kevin pointed out 20 reasons that Peter gave for his church to be holy. Of course, we don't need 20 reasons to obey. We only need one—that God says so. But God knows what we're made of—dust, grass, sheep matter. He knows it's hard, so in his grace he gives us many reasons.

Here's the good news, both for the believer and unbeliever: the Gospel replaces what we see in the mirror because it replaces the object within it. So while it doesn't make us beautiful, it does show us Christ because a very real exchange has been made, our condemned life for his perfect one. This blows apart the poor logic of the believer and unbeliever alike. In fact, if we submit ourselves to Christ and his word, he will show the unbeliever how he's no longer doomed, and will share with the believer his own desire for holiness. We'll be holy because he is holy (Justification), and we'll want to be holier because he is holy (Sanctification).

But if you can't handle the shock of seeing your un-holiness, whatever you do, don't open your Bible. Instead, just close your eyes, maybe stick your fingers in your ears, and try to think of something pleasant. As for me, it's too late. I've seen myself up close.

"...be holy, for I am holy." - Lev. 11:44

family worship = gov't in action

2010-11-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking lately about family worship and about government. Not together, but as separate topics. Then I remembered hearing or reading somewhere this propostion: that God’s primary unit of government on earth is the family. If that’s true--and I believe it is--then what God says about the family's role should give us some help in what we think about government's.

And what do we think about government's role? Some smart guys a long time ago thought this:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I have to say first I’m embarrassed and ashamed (both as a citizen and an English teacher) that for my whole life I’ve read this wrong. I had always read it to mean in order to form a more perfect union, we the people do these things: we establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense, promote general welfare, and secure blessings. And on top of that, we write this Constitution.

Not only does that not make sense (how can you do those things apart from the C?), it’s not at all what the grammar makes it say. What it really says is this: We the People do ordain and establish this Constitution in order to...

form a more perfect union

establish Justice,

insure domestic Tranquility,

provide for the common defense,

promote the general welfare,

and secure the Blessings of Liberty

So we the people don’t do the benefits. We the people do the Constitution in order to promote the benefits.

So what’s that got to with family worship? Everything.

As God’s primary governmental unit on earth, the family (I should qualify that: the family with Christ at its center, the worshiping family) effects the same benefits that our Constitution is supposed to. Let's look at each. I’ll save the first for last--you’ll see why.

1. The worshiping family establishes justice. It acknowledges that God is the first and only source of Law and that God is both merciful and just.

2. The worshiping family insures domestic tranquility. When Mom and Dad’s eyes are on Christ first and most, the family does not fall apart. It grows in grace like a tree planted by water.

3. The worshiping family provides for the common defense. Christ teaches us to lay our lives down for each other. Could there be a more effective call to the common defense than Christ’s call to take up our cross, die to ourselves, and follow him?

4. The worshiping family promotes the general welfare. To treasure Christ above all things is to obey Him, which means we love our neighbors as ourselves, we hold loosely to things of this world, which is passing away. To obey Christ is to “work as unto the Lord” with “honest weights and measures.”

5. The worshiping family secures the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity. When we worship Christ, we worship the actual source of liberty. Christ destroys chains, and Christ promises his blessings to those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.

6. Finally, if the nation were made up of worshiping families, and we were receiving all the benefits of 1 - 5, how would we not form a more perfect union?

Our Constitution, as good a document as it is, is no match for the government of the Christ-centered family. So parents, gather your family around God's word and get to the work of governing.

you root for Vick because Jesus is coming

2010-11-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

Did you root for Michael Vick last night? It’s ok. You can admit it. Even dog lovers are warming up to the guy.

There's not a QB in the league I like to watch more than Michael Vick, and last night was as much fun as this pseudo-sometimes sports fan has ever had watching two teams I don’t care about. And though the 3 hour praise-fest was a little gratuitous (it put in mind network anchors gone giddy over Obama in ‘08), I found myself joining in on the superlative heaping.

Which got me thinking: if Vick hadn't been brought so ignominiously low two years ago, would the announcers—would I—have such enthusiasm for him now? The answer is easy—no way. In fact, it’s the brought low in his story that makes him so much fun to root for. More than that, it’s the fact that he put himself there that makes it work.

We may love the rags-to-riches, by-the-bootstraps story because we love the thought of exaltation, of someone being lifted up out of circumstances that would otherwise destroy. But there’s more than mere exaltation in Vick’s story. It’s precisely the fact that he caused those circumstances, that he did something reprehensible, that he made us all think he was a low-life scrub good for nothing but writing off that makes his story so compelling. There’s no story here without the crime. There’s no redemption without the guilty verdict. Of course we need other things—contrition, confession, a demonstrable change in direction—but it’s the guilt that makes a performance like last night’s such a story.

His comeback is a kind of redemption, and we long for redemption because we all know the original redemption story. At least deep down, a part of us knows it because the Law written on our hearts testifies to it. Christ's redemption of his people, culminating in his return, is the original version of this story. All else is shadow. And when we see its shadow—publicly on football fields, privately when mercy is given—we hear within ourselves, whether we know Christ or not, a corresponding and compelling ring. It reminds us that there’s another very old, but very true, redemption story.

To put it simply, you root for Michael Vick because Jesus is coming back for his people.

good preachin, Pat

2010-11-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

Pat Quinn preached from Hebrews last night on Christ being both God's exalted son and our incarnate brother. One part stands out for me, not because it was new, but because it's very, very old, and because I've thought of it many times.

He talked about microscopes.

Actually, what he said was that Christ is Lord over both the macro and the micro, that the creation was spoken into existence through Jesus, and that Jesus now holds the galaxies and quasars together by his power and will. He's the designer, engineer, and maintainer of big things like planets and stars and gravitation and electromagnetism.

But he's also Lord of the small, the atomic and subatomic. He is the strength behind the forces that hold the various parts of atoms and molecules together. After the sermon, as I was talking to the kids about this, I used a spring as an analogy for God's strength in the universe. If I squeeze a spring together and hold it, it doesn't move, but it has energy behind it, energy that would be released if I let it go. In the same way, the universe--at both the micro and macro levels--is being held together by God; and behind everything we observe or theorize, there is great energy. That energy is Christ's hands holding all things together.

The unbeliever looks into a telescope and sees the size and grandeur of the universe and claims that if there is a god, we're too small to merit his attention. But have the skeptic turn the telescope around and look in at the microscopic and he'll see that things go on in that direction in the same way. We're not at the little end of things--we're suspended between, with infinity on either side. It still means we're small, of course, but it makes God something else completely. It puts him beyond size itself, beyond big or small.

Like I said, it's not new to me, but every time I think of it I'm amazed. At any given time, the very atoms of my own body and the world around me are at that moment being held together by Christ because he wills it. How could I not acknowledge such a one as Lord?

Thanks for preaching, Pat. And thanks for the reminder.

does the world need another book?

2010-11-12T09:52:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last 15 months writing what I think is a book (it's 106k words cut up into chapters--surely that's a book?) But not once during that time did I ever ask myself if the world needed it.

I mean, who really operates that way? No one I know. We do whatever we do according to what we most need or desire (there's a refutation of man's so-called "free" will in that sentence if you care to look). But I don't think that's bad. We’re made in God’s image, with a bent toward creativity. Much more than that, we’ve been charged--through the Word, through our dna--to subdue the earth and have dominion over it. So we create because God first created and because God gave a tiny reflection of that ability to us. Yes, we mishandle it, pervert it, twist it to our own evil ends, but the original impulse to build and to bring order out of chaos is a good thing. And no, there's nothing wrong with weighing the merits of our works to be sure they're adding value and benefit to the world around us. But we don't first make those choices based on such value. Rather, we pursue our desires first and then we see how they stack up. As much as we'd like to think it's the other way around, it just ain't.

So when it comes to evaluating our desires, the question does the world need it? is probably the wrong one to ask. A better question is does God's word give us the freedom to pursue it? The world may not have needed another book (it certainly didn't need another blog), but as sure as I need to eat and to procreate--and because I'm free!--I needed to write one.

But if we still want an answer to the what-the-world-needs question, there is one--it's Christ. The world, every corner of it, needs Christ.