Useful Education

Here's an exceptional essay that incorporates many of the thoughts I've had recently on the value of education. The best section:

Of further concern to the groom’s critics was the fact that it appeared his education would be wasted; that it would not be put “to use.” But in what sense can education be used? Is it not the same as saying that love should be used or hope should be used? Education can be used no more than the sun can be “used” by a plant in its growth. The sun is a natural and integral part of the flourishing of a plant. It is not “used” to grow a plant—it is not imaginable that a plant could flourish without it. It is the same with human flourishing. Education is as essential as the sun. It may be formal or it may be informal, either way it is essential. Education is not money; a commodity that can be exchanged in the market place. Education is an integral part of life—it is an aspect of being human. To demand that education be used is on par with demanding that people be used, and that demand is not uncommon in our age.

Passion-ate Bloopers

If you think The Passion of the Christ was "one of the greatest evangelical opportunities of all time" or felt that seeing it was itself a religious experience, you may be offended by this. If, on the other hand you were skeptical (like me) of the film as anything more than a product of Hollywood, you'll likely find it hilarious.

The Conservative Way

Found a delightful website you should check out: The New Pantagruel, an ecumenical journal run by some young old-school conservatives. A refreshing breather from breathless (and often senseless) neocons.

There is, I'm convinced, a way carefully to navigate between the Scylla of a stringent neocon social agenda and the Charybdis of liberal permissiveness and moral bankruptcy. Conservative policy needs to be informed by the traditional Christian moral standard, but when anti-homosexual or anti-abortion or pro-ten-commandments-in-the-courthouse policy becomes the sum total of our political agenda, we descend into strident moralism that repels, rather than persuades.

The many branches of conservatism--classic Reagan cons, southern conservatives, libertarians, Catholic traditionalists, neocons--were once united in an all-consuming struggle against Communism. That war is gone now, and the fissures inside the conservative movement are getting deeper. It remains to be seen whether the various factions will be able to unite on some sort of common set of goals and strategy, or whether they'll split permanently.

I'm a summer teen camp counselor this week, so blogging will be light.  I'm busy preparing devotions and "missions" for 80 "spies."

Joe Wilson and The War's Justification

My take on the ongoing Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame/Niger uranium flap, and a hindsight look at the Bush Administration's reasons for going to war: Read it here.

Film Review: King Arthur

My review of King Arthur is up. Check it out here.

Condiment Campaigning

This reminds me of the day, around the beginning of the war in Iraq, when I went to our school's cafeteria and found the "French's" label cut off of all the mustard. Is there no aspect of our lives untouched by politics these days?

John Kerry Shows His Stuff

This speech is why I'm going to vote for George W. Bush. (If you need help, see Andrew Sullivan's critique.)

President Bush may not be a true conservative in some important areas, but Kerry is undeniably and unabashedly an extreme liberal. So is Edwards. Electing Kerry would be bad for the country--bad for prosperity, bad for security, bad for liberty.

The blog, it is a-changin'

I have the same trouble with HTML, it seems, as I always had with math: forget one little bitty symbol and everything gets screwed way up. Momma always said I'm not a detail person. Guess she was right.

Anyway, now that I've spent nearly an hour working on figuring out how to do things with the sidebar, I should be adding more stuff there soon. For now, though, here's something: Check out Third Millenium, a Reformed theology website. I find the Q&A section most interesting, but there's a fair amount of other good stuff there, too.

Dune Review

Just finished Frank Herbert's Dune and Dune Messiah, as well as a prequel to the series called The Butlerian Jihad, co-written by Herbert's son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson.

Dune was excellent. Herbert did a wonderful job establishing an epic story. The book is set in an enormously well-conceived and elaborate universe, a rarity for sci-fi books. It also displays surprising strengths, including well-written characters and a fascinating plot.

Messiah was disappointing. Mostly a collection of half-baked philosophical diatribes, the characters who were so engaging in the first book were flat and incomprehensible in this one. The book also suffers from a frustrating lack of plot, with a conspiracy among incomprehensible characters that isn't explained or developed. More than anything else, the book is plagued by overuse of surprising, exciting, innovative elements from Dune that make them dense and commonplace in Messiah. I feel something of an obligation to read the rest of this series which is so legendary in the science fiction world, but after reading Messiah I'm not sure I want to.

The Butlerian Jihad, unsurprisingly, is substantially different from Herbert's works. Disappointingly, they're far less literary in style than Dune, and they feel like many other modern sci-fi stories (Incidentally, the only other book of Anderson's which I've read, the Star Wars novel Darksaber, is among the worst books I've ever read.) This makes it a quick read, but an interesting one nonetheless. Particularly interesting is the story of a sentient robot trying to figure out what makes humans human, and emulate it. It's worth a quick read, particularly if you've read Dune and want to know more about the foundations of many of the facets of its universe.

Back to my regularly scheduled reading...

Marxism-Leninism?

I'm reading Paul Johnson's Modern Times at the moment, as part of my campaign to read through ISI's fifty best books of the century list. The editors at ISI called it "the most personal, yet the most objective, history of our time." I agree.

One thing of note: I've found it fascinating to read Johnson's account of how different Lenin's philosophy really was from that of Marx. One often hears the term "Marxism-Leninsm" used to describe the political dogma of the former Soviet Union, making it easy to assume that Marxism and Leninism are virtually the same thing. Not so. What made Lenin's thought--and his belief in a revolution in Russia--distinct from Marx's philosophy was the absence of a proletariat. In the early 20th century, Russia was not yet industrialized to the point of creating a large working class, which Marx thought was the key to revolution. Lenin, however, believed this could be overcome through the leadership of a "vanguard," an intellectual elite. Lenin believed himself to be the center of this vanguard, its originator and driving force. The result, as history has seen, was catastrophic. A few men, and ultimately a succession of individuals, held the power in Russia, not the proletariat.

No posts in over a month. Shameful. You'd think I'd have been been prolific, what with lots of hours to burn sitting at the desk on security duty. No, my laziness wins again.

A new prohibitionism?

Just finished Andrew Sullivan's book, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality. I found it, like all of Sullivan's work, clear, insightful, and thought-provoking. Therein, he outlines four basic political positions on homosexuality, incisively critiquing the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Sullivan shows that prohibitionism, the category into which most conservative Christians fall, is seriously flawed--at least as it's usually stated. Prohibitionists agree on one fundamental point: homosexual behavior is morally wrong and socially unacceptable. From this, they reason that it should be proscribed both in the public square and the private sphere. There are two distinct positions within the prohibitionist camp, however.
The first holds that homosexual action is simpy a behavioral aberration, a voluntary perversion of the natural order. All humans, they believe, are by nature heterosexual, and so homosexual behavior is morally wrong at least because it's a betrayal of nature. This sort of prohibitionist does not believe that anyone is fundamentally or naturally a homosexual--whether because of genetics or their emotional-mental structure. Homosexual behavior is at some level voluntary, and condemnable.

The second position--notably the stance of the Catholic Church--holds that a fundamental homosexual orientation is a reality for some. They can be naturally and involuntarily attracted, both emotionally and sexually, to members of the same sex. Because this orientation is involuntary, it's not sinful and should not be condemned. Homosexual behavior, however, is sinful, because it is voluntary.

Each of these positions has serious flaws. The first fails to account for the personal experience of most homosexuals. For some, homosexual attraction and behavior may actually be a choice. For most, however, the attraction to members of the same sex is as deeply emotional and sexual as is the inclination of straight folk to members of the opposite sex. It is an integral part of their personhood.

The second position also has a host of associated problems. It takes no genius to realize the extraordinary tensions caused by telling people their orientation is all right, but the normal, inevitable output of that orientation is wrong. It dooms homosexuals to a life of miserable, conflicted celibacy, without the opportunity to emotionally and spiritually bond with another person as spouses do (or should).

There is a third prohibitionist position, however, which avoids these pitfalls and maintains Scripture's position of the sinfulness of homosexuality. It recognizes the possibility that many people, perhaps most homosexuals, are deeply and fundamentally oriented toward their own sex. It also says, though, that even this orientation, though unchosen, is sinful. The Catholic Church, and many evangelicals, have a theologically distorted view of the nature of sin. Sin is the natural, unchosen human condition, but this doesn't negate man's free agency or his moral responsibility for sin. This orientation manifests itself differently for different people--an inclination to materialism, to pride, to idolatry, or to homosexuality. There is thus no moral distinction between the homosexual act and the homosexual condition. They're both sinful, even though they are both somewhat natural.

There are two definitions of "normal," when it comes to human thought and action The first is what men, free of controlling external influences, naturally are inclined to. The second is what man in his unfallen state would be inclined to, perfectly displaying the way God created humans. This second sense is what mainline prohibitionists mean when they talk about the normalcy of heterosexuality--God created men to be emotionally and sexually drawn to women, and vice versa. God also created humans to be perfectly loving towards Himself and their fellow men, but that orientation is perverted as well.

In conjunction with a clear explanation of the Gospel, this new understanding of homosexuality, and the prohibitionist politics to which it gives rise, are capable of being clear, Biblically accurate, and even compassionate. Christians must make clear to homosexuals that though their behavior and homosexual orientation are sinful, they're no more sinful than our own particular sins. All are a manifestation of the deeper problem of our sinful nature. All, in turn, can be redeemed and changed by the power of the Gospel. Prohibitionists must get a handle on this message, for homosexuality is a tremendous force in modern culture. The message must be publicized, but compassionately. It must be communicated, but without patronizing homosexuals and in a way that honors their humanity and the richness of their experience.

The beginning of history?

The concept of history's end was made popular by Francis Fukuyama a few years ago with the publication of his book, The End of History and the Last Man. A few days ago, a different thought occurred to me: the start of history. Or, more accurately, the re-starting of history.

I had the chance to hear an interesting lecture in Washington a few days ago. The speaker mentioned the current debate and controversy surrounding the Iraq war, and said she'd like to speak about the "bigger picture" of the Middle East situation and America's role in foreign affairs. Immediately, she launched into a detailed explanation of the Bush Administration's understanding of and purpose in the struggle against terrorism and Islamic extremism, beginning with the events of September 11.

This was nothing unusual per se, but the juxtaposition of her sentences triggered a thought: "Did history re-start on September 11?" Ever since then, you see, discussion in America of foreign affairs, and much of domestic affairs, has been oriented to and from 9/11. Almost every conversation assumes 9/11 as the starting point, the baseline of consideration. America is now overwhelmingly shaped and defined by the war on terror which was jumpstarted by the events of that day. To listen to most journalists, pundits, and commentators, today's international situation can be explained by the events of the last three years.

This seems a rather odd state of affairs. Certainly 9/11 was a significant event. It brought precipitously to boil a problem--Islamic extremist terrorism--that had been simmering for years. It was one of the clearest indicators that old ways of looking at international affairs had to change. I can't help thinking, though, that Americans treat September 11 as more of a breaking point than it should be. If we have to deal with new threats, we must still remember that these threats rise out of conflicts hundreds of years old. After 9/11, we still live in the same world as before, with more or less the same international players, and pretty much the same alignments. We must analyze the current Middle East crisis in light of its place in history, and not as a completely new occurrence. History hasn't yet ended, and it hasn't re-started either.

Primus Nomen

Ah, the first post. Many a journal, and many a blog, have started here and gone little further. Hopefully mine will be an exception--hopefully it won't meet the same fate as my previous journal attempts. Perhaps the fact it's public will help me keep going.

On the recent scandal over the horrific mistreatment of prisoners by US troops in Iraq: Though I love, respect, and support the President on most issues, I have to disagree with him here--the depraved character displayed by the soldiers at Abu Ghraib is in fact shared by most of the rest of the US military. I think most US soldiers are capable of this kind of atrocity, at least on some level. So are Iraqis. So are the British. So are the Spanish, and the Italians, and the Portugese, and the Japanese, and all of the other coalition members. The bottom line is that everyone is naturally susceptible to evil like this. By God's common grace, most of us are socially conditioned so that it's unconscionable and revolting. Given the stresses and trials of the Iraq war front, however, it's not particularly unsurprising that soldiers' natural inclination to evil should manifest itself in some way.

Let me be clear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying the troops' abuses are excusable. I'm not saying that those responsible for these things should not be identified and punished accordingly. I'm not saying Iraq is no better under American monsters than under the former monstrous regime. Few people with common sense and a moral orientation will fail to see the lie there.

What I am saying is simply this: evil is unsurprising. It's the normal inclination of the world. Whether it manifests itself in prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib or terrorists flying planes into buildings, we can be angered, saddened, disgusted, and terrified, but we really shouldn't be surprised. Nor should we delude ourselves by thinking it's the exception, that the rest of the US or the world is basically good.

Isn't that a cheery beginning? Email me and I'll tell you the other side of the coin--the good news.