Interesting Quote

I ran across this quote from a letter of Henry Ward Beecher to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in the book A Ruined Land: The End of the Civil War: "We are in danger of too much northern management of the negro. The black man is just like the white, in this--that he should be left, & obliged to take care of himself. I think nursing will only pauperize him. I see in the movements about here a tendency to dandle the black man" (256-257).

Any thoughts?

What are your crutches supporting?

Your average skeptic or atheist is likely to consider Christianity a 'crutch.' Because it's so nice to believe in a Savior and a God who takes care of you, those not man enough to face reality buy in to the dream (their reasoning goes), because they cannot live without it. One can easily answer this claim, of course. God has manifested Himself in incontrovertible ways, and by no means is facing up to your sin and then denying self a command for the fainthearted.

In a sense, of course, every belief system is a crutch. Atheists' disbelief in God is a crutch for their faith in science, their faith in their own reasoning, their supposedly courageous embrace of 'reality,' and their self-absorption. It is a crutch that provides their rationale for ignoring God's commands. Polytheism is a crutch constructed out of the desire to appease the natural world. Humans are crippled: that's the point. We can't make it on our own. So, rightly construed, it is not really inaccurate to call Christianity a crutch, because it recognizes a key truth that Christ, of course, knew. Humans cannot spiritually (or physically, for that matter) support themselves. We do not move and act in a vacuum, but rather in the context of our beliefs about core aspects of humanity and the world.

But enough clarification. If Christianity may be rightly understood as a crutch, that is, Christ bearing our burdens, in another sense Christianity can be a crutch in a disturbing and insidious way. A way that gives the atheists some room to point their fingers. It is one that many Christians, I fear (including this one) are guilty of to one degree or another, perhaps especially in the West. We can make Christianity a crutch to support our daily routines--to make ourselves feel good about our lives. We pray, read the Bible, attend church, take communion, and put fish on our bumpers, but when it comes to stretching beyond those activities, which in the United States are, except in a few rare circumstances, entirely without opposition of any kind, we balk.

Vibrant faith can be tough as nails. It can be as simple a difficulty as smiling at someone your flesh wants to hate, or as hard as raising an autistic son for twenty-five years, dealing in a Christ-like way with a beloved spouse's adultery, or staring down at a gun barrel and saying "Christ is my Lord." We don't have to be missionaries to Bengal to be good Christians. I don't feel a call to be a missionary. But if I were, for a moment, to let concern for the world's opinion influence the content of my essays or novels, or to keep my mouth shut when I should speak because I fear what men might think--then I have made a concession to the world. When someone else is hurting, when an issue needs defending, when a friend needs rebuking, when our testimony needs to be given, when our precious self needs denying, when ten children need to be raised, when a monotonous job requires twenty years of your uncomplaining labor, when a dream needs to be abandoned, when an addiction needs to be broken, faith says Go. The flesh says Wait, the flesh says It's too hard, the flesh says You'll be embarrassed, the flesh says You don't want to get involved just now, but since when are we supposed to listen to the flesh?

We must be careful that our faith isn't a little furry thing we keep under the table. We crippled humans, dead in sin, certainly need a crutch. But Christ did not die so that we might live comfortable lives. War is not comfortable. We are at war. A war almost literally as old as Adam. Whatever our place in it, whatever our duties, great or small, at home or abroad, let us look to Christ and be bold, vigilant, and undismayed.

Petroleum Musings

I've been thinking about colleges for months now, but only very recently has the possibility of a massive slump in the airline industry been a potential factor in my decision-making process. During my brother's whole four years as an undergraduate, flights, though not effortlessly affordable for everyone, were certainly available. Now some people are predicting a 20% drop in flights (I don't know with how much authority). If the situation is indeed that dire for the airlines--if gas prices really sink them--then attending a college 2,000 miles away is suddenly not just daunting on the emotional level of being far from home, but also daunting to the pocket book, and perhaps as a logistical difficulty too.

There is a book that came out some years back, which as far as I know is still popular today, called Who Moved my Cheese? that many business distributed to their employees as a kind of inspirational manual. I've never read the book, and it seems a bit of a childish story to market to adults, but I know that its main thrust is that trusting blindly in the eternal presence of a particular resource without planning for its eventual exhaustion is foolhardy. Two people find a big stockpile of a cheese somewhere and use it as a food source, but one is prescient and the other is not. The prescient one explores further and finds other sources of cheese, but the thickheaded one keeps on eating without any exploration until, lo and behold, all the cheese is gone. And so he asks where it went, not even comprehending that some day he would eat it all.

We seem to be reaching that point. We aren't running out of petroleum products yet, though many sources have been deemed inaccessible, and oil companies barred from tapping into them (offshore reserves, Alaska, etc.). But for the first time in my living memory, and for the first time since the late 70s, we're facing a belt-tightening oil dearth where skyrocketing prices have left SUV sales in the dust and attracted everyone to hybrid cars. Civilizations sprang up and survived without petroleum for millennia, so it's not as if people can't do with out it. It's not like the dearth of food in Ethiopia. Our society, however, is one built on petroleum. Modern western society is built on petroleum. Cars, ships, airplanes, stoves, lawnmowers, bulldozers, semi-trucks, and factories all depend on it. In the adjustments that we will have to make over the next few years--for we will have to adjust to some extent, whether the effects of this are mild or catastrophic--I see a lesson in caution, reticence, and stewardship. It is a lesson I fear will be forgotten as soon as the situation stabilizes. But the truth is that wise men husband their resources while there is an abundance, not while there's scarcity. The man who frantically scrabbles around for coin when his creditors come knocking is the foolish one, but likely enough he was laughing at the man who carefully husbanded his money when there seemed to be no fear of want.

Dorothy Sayers predicted in one of her essays on work that the "whirligig of production" couldn't go on spinning forever. One of the unfortunate aspects of our society is the seemingly insatiable drive to keep on producing, and consuming, more and more. It is ironic, though not terribly surprising, to see people blessed with so much prosperity lumbering around in indolent obesity while 10,000 miles away 120,000 Ethiopian children have a month to live. The whirligig has overheated a bit, and people are waking up, looking around, and adjusting the speed to compensate. I hope--I dearly hope--that the lesson will be learned that the produce of the earth is meant to be enjoyed, but not to be squandered. We can never assume that what we use will last forever.

Obama's Foreign Policy Stance(s)

Here is an intriguing article by Karl Rove (that scary guy who most liberals seem to hate). And here is another one from David Reinhard in the Oregonian.

SETI

For some years now, since some modicum of technology has been in place to scratch around above our atmosphere, people have been searching for extraterrestrial intelligence--or, as most people know them, aliens. An entire company or research team was created by alien-believer Carl Sagan called SETI--Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Science fiction writers have for years envisioned cultures on Mars or other celestial locales. On the Internet, Mom recently came across a survey asking whether the proven presence of extraterrestrial life would undermine one's faith.

I got thinking and wondering about this. Why the rage to see if there are other peoples in the universe? Natural curiosity may have something to do with it, of course. After Amundsen, we didn't have many frontiers left to conquer, and there would be brain-food for more than just explorers: sociologists, psychologists, linguists, philologists, politicians, philosophers, theologians, writers, tourists, and many others would have a vested interest in the place. There has thus far been no credible evidence for the presence of extraterrestrial life, however, to my knowledge, and the expense of looking for it is quite large. If the technology is innovated that would allow men to travel and explore to further reaches of the solar system or beyond, the cost would rise considerably.

I very much doubt that there are aliens, and if there are, God didn't see fit to tell us about them and (I would guess) would have made them impossible for human ingenuity to find. But supposing we found some evidence of them, the extra-Hollywood notion that these extraterrestrials would be both pacific of intentions and advanced far beyond humans in development also seems doubtful. How could we possibly guess with any certainty whatsoever one way or another? The assumption or hope that aliens would not only understand us, but also desire contact with us, and peaceable contact at that, and then perhaps solve the world's problems, does seem to be present in some circles.

It occurred to me that there may be something more basic at work here than mere curiosity which might explain this curious hope in benevolent and spiritually advanced aliens. After all, if exploration or professional interest were the only motivator, I would think that suspended judgment and caution would be the order of the day. Now, not having done much study at all on this field, my theory could be wrong or in some ways misguided, at least as concerns some particular individuals. I'm sure not everyone thinks this way. This tendency I am about to mention is not, however, limited merely to this field. It is, in fact, a tendency that can be found almost everywhere, and I would be surprised not to find it somewhere in the field as theoretical and limited as this.

What I would guess is that part of this hope in benevolent aliens comes from the universal desire for an outside source of power and help (that is, the remnant of the inbred desire for union with God). Alien civilization, if it existed, would be 'out there,' mysterious, and ripe for speculative projection. And what better to speculate about than a race of supermen, angelic creatures, who could reach down from the depths of space and wipe out the curse? If only the misery and conflict in the Gaza Strip, Burma, China, Darfur, etc. could be wiped out by the waving of a Martian wand. This desire for a savior is, of course, unsurprising, but it is very sad that it should be directed toward the supposed presence of space aliens. After all, is this professional curiosity or a timid cop-out? There are very human problems that are affecting millions of people right now. The one answer to these problems is the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and spreading that Gospel, as the Scriptures and history plainly demonstrate, is not a walk in the park. It takes faith, guts, resources, and all the varied talents of the body of Christ. I find myself often harping on these posts about how resources are being used up in vain pursuits. By and large, this seems to be one of them. Even if we found a footprint on Alpha Centauri, it's almost 26 trillion miles away--more than an eight-year round trip if we could build a space ship that could maintain the speed of light for the equivalent of two terms of presidential office. Imagine finding that there were only footprints and bones there.

Space exploration is fascinating to a degree, but honestly, where is it going to get us? To me it seems like only a vain hope to find some shortcut to solving the world's problems. To invent the technology, if it could be done, might take centuries, and the monetary cost would be staggering. And I believe that it would all be for nothing anyway. Once again, shall we turn our attention to more immediate problems, and stop frittering away our time on things like this? I don't think that huge amounts of money alone can solve those problems, of course, but the vast resources of wealth and machinery available to us in this century could clearly be marshaled more effectively.

So Much Better Than This

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face...
~1 Corinthians 13: 12a

When I mow the lawn, I wear earmuffs (the kind that reduce sound, not the ones that warm the ears; I gather that they have the same name). Mowing both our lawns probably takes half an hour or so, and by the time I finish, my level of hearing feels fairly normal. I've grown used to the earmuffs, and I don't actively think, "Wow, how dull everything sounds!" But when I take them off, there is a rush of noises that realize I had not been hearing: small insects, passing cars, the breeze in the leaves.

The same goes for sight. Anyone else who wears glasses or contacts will know what I am talking about. As you grow older and your vision changes, the prescription in your particular lenses is not correcting your sight enough, but you don't really notice, because you are used to them. Then an optometrist puts a new pair of glasses on you and the distant sign in the store suddenly leaps into clarity. Colors are sharper and richer. For a few hours (until you get used to the new pair), the world feels like it's been baptized with light.

C.S. Lewis compares the "new world" Narnia at the end of The Last Battle to a country seen in a mirror: better, richer, beckoning exploration, full of promise. I think one may also compare the experience of Heaven, insofar as the Bible tells us of an experience that we cannot fully understand until we get there, to taking off earmuffs or putting on glasses. Everything that we see, hear, touch, feel and think in this world will pale in comparison to that which comes after. We cannot feel the comparison empirically, but that is only because the dark glass has not yet been taken away.

When I look around at springtime, I experience wonderful things: fresh green leaves, colorful blossoms, and awakened birdsong. How wonderful it is to know that things will be so much better than this for those who love the Lord.