Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments

Identical Killings in Italy

"Sad but true" doesn't say the half of this story from Italy. Killed the wrong twin? So they kill the second because he has Downs. We hear about the end of Italy, "deeply Catholic," as the article puts it. This may be the beginning. The abortion rate in "deeply Orthodox Greece" is appallingly high, so what's that say about Greco-Roman civilization? Maybe it's just reverting to pre-Christian practices.

The Librarian as “Professional” (Not “On Subject,” but Unquestionably a Mere Comment)

[Although my writing is supposed to appear on this site at least once a week, lately, it hasn’t. My excuse is that as I grow older I am less inclined to speak until I have something to say, thus, I hope, relieving the world of at least a small measure of the verbal superfluity in which it already swims. This morning, however, I found myself suffering from the need to disgorge the following thoughts about the library world in which I spend quite a bit of my time, so beg the reader’s indulgence for what follows.]
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Is a librarian a “professional?” I suppose that depends on whom you are asking, when. If you consult the literature of the trade the answer is certainly Yes, for librarians, although they are generally expected to possess a Master’s degree that is an unnecessary qualification for the kind of work they do (a college major would more than suffice--that is why they can, and are, being replaced by less expensive paraprofessionals), librarians like to think of themselves that way, and, when they are not operating as clerks, baby sitters, or security guards, are found at least somewhere on professionalism’s fringe, particularly when they are bona fide subject specialists.

If you ask their employers during contract negotiation time, “library employees” would seem to be the preferred designation, while at the annual evaluation “professionalism of the highest order” is called for from the same quarters. If you ask the contrarian patron the librarian must “deal with” because he is in the library to do his own thing, however obtrusive he may be to others, the answer is “not if I can help it,” while those for whom the librarian ferrets out a bit of obscure but desperately needed information will have an altogether different take on the matter.

It is in the interest of library management--and as Dilbert would tell us, is the province of every manager--however, to demand that the librarian operate at the highest level of responsibility, subject expertise, and social competence, while at the same time keeping him low, docile, and paying him as little as possible.

One way to help several of these goals along is to decree, as was recently attempted in my library, that he wear a name tag that displays only his first name. Numerous studies, we were told, indicate that patrons behold reference librarians, who supposed to be there to help them in a friendly way, in an unapproachable nimbus of awe. We, after all, sit behind desks, surrounded by the accoutrement of knowledge’s authority, and generally look as though we are about some very serious business. (In fact, we are probably gravely informing someone that Curious George is checked out and that they must put him on reserve.) To interrupt would be an imposition upon the time of a busy and important person. In short, they are viewing us as professionals, and thus giving us the same sort of natural deference one might give to a teacher, an attorney, or a physician, whose time is worth money, and whom one does not consult without a good reason.

Therefore, managerial logic has it, the librarians need to get up and walk around, be very, very friendly, and wear those eminently gemuetlich name tags. Who, after all, is more effectively able to deliver the reference goods, some glowering demigod behind a desk, or Ormuntrude the Jolly Stack-Wanderer?

This way of ordering things serves several valuable functions. The most presentable reasons are that it makes the library a friendlier place and serves its high mission of information service. Just as valuable to the managerial mindset, but not explicit, is that it serves the perennial goal of reducing the perceived status of the librarian from “professional” to, well, something less, while taking advantage of every professional quality for which we are given, as my boss says, the “big bucks,” and for which we are, of course, condignly grateful.

While one who goes to the physician must wait one’s turn, while the lawyer does not (well, most of them don’t) prowl the aisles of Wal-Mart drumming up business, and while the teacher is generally addressed by title unless they explicitly invite one to do otherwise, the New Reference Librarian, half clown and half sage, is sent discalced out into the world on his apostolic mission of information service, inviting the public at large, including the child, the adolescent, the kook, the hostile, and the badly-brought-up (who will do it anyway because it is both friendly and egalitarian) to call him by his first name with never a by-your-leave.

The principal problem this new necessity points to, though, is not with librarians in general, the place in which they must sit to be found by those who are looking for them, and where they must do most of their accustomed work (now at a computer terminal), but a dereliction on the part of those who supervise them. The answer to the problem of the perceived distance of reference librarians from the public they serve is not to remove from them either the vague appearance of professional status and responsibility they occasionally enjoy, or the social distance--the relative height--they need as leverage for the duty they are customarily given to manage patron activity on the floor of the library. What is required is that the managers do their duty in managing the librarians who make reasonable patrons feel uncomfortable approaching them for help.

Most librarians I have met are friendly, competent, reasonable, sensitive, and welcoming--and many are paragons of all these traits. This cannot, however, make up for the behavior of those who are not, for “most,” leaves many who for one reason or another make seeing a reference librarian a less than happy experience--ranging from the relative innocence of using a stentorian voice to say, “Let me make sure I understand you clearly: You want a book on impotence? Would you like something on Viagra, too?” to the far more subtle cruelty of the offhand look and slightly ironic tone that suggest only a stupid person would ask a question like that. Making these reform, or toe the line, or get therapy, or leave, is the responsibility of their superiors. This is perhaps one of the hardest and most unpleasant--and therefore most avoided-- supervisory responsibilities, but if one will pardon me for saying it, it is one of the things for which managers are paid the big bucks. It is far easier to issue what I call avoidance edicts, like the despicable teacher (supported by the even more despicable principal) who, lamely citing the deterrences of peer-pressure, makes the entire class stay in from recess because little Johnny, a budding sociopath who doesn’t give a damn for peer pressure, or whose peer group thinks him cool for managing the coup, won’t behave.

The librarian who uses his job as a field for the exercise of obnoxious personal traits which normal people find off-putting, and which lodge in their memories, sometime with very great force, as reasons to fear the reference desk, is perhaps one out of ten at most--which is to say, such librarians, while not by any means the norm, are also not by any means uncommon. The answer to the problem is not to strip the other librarians of the reasonable and necessary prerogatives of their work with one of the all-too-common administrative fiats which issue from ill-considered and self-serving interpretations of statistics, but doing the supervisory work for which one receives the unquestioned status and the salary of a professional.

Sex: Big Bed and Sangerian

In Their Daily Bed, the always interesting Dawn Eden reports on a church offering sermons on sex, using a king size bed on the stage as a prop. You may also find interesting her Margaret Sanger is alive and well and living in the blogosphere.

Biblical Gas

I sent some priests I know the link to an article in Outreach magazine offering as their "Idea of the month," a "gas buydown," when local churches would subsidize the gas at a local gas station in exchange for the chance to tell buyers about their church.

One of them responded: "How biblical! 'You are Peter, and upon this petrol I will build my Church!'"

Good Guys Winning, Liberals Losing

In Reform rollback or emerging ‘sane modernity’ – Evangelical Catholicism triumphant, John Allen, the National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent, declares that

a profound shift in the [Catholic] church’s geological plates, and perhaps the best way of describing the resulting earthquake is as the triumph of evangelical Catholicism.

. . . Liberal Catholicism enjoyed a heyday from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, and it’s not about to die off, overeager prophecies in some circles notwithstanding. During the last quarter-century, however, the evangelicals have won most of the fights in terms of official Catholic policy. Whether that’s a rollback on reform or the emergence of a “new, sane modernity,” as Pope Benedict XVI claims, is a matter for debate, but there’s no mistaking which way the winds are blowing.

Real Bishops

Patrick Henry Reardon's "The Arius Factor" in the current issue of Touchstone (available in print!), came to mind this morning when I read about one of the saints commemorated today, August 31, in the calendars of both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church: Paulinus, bishop of Trier.

Paulinus met Athanasius who was in exile in Trier for his support of orthodoxy in the mid-fourth century. At the synod of Arles (353) Paulinus not only defended Athanasius but strongly denounced Arianism. The emperor Constantius II apparently favored the more "reasonable" Arian doctrine and sought to silence orthodox critics. So he had Paulinus shipped off to Phrygia, where he died.

Paulinus was mentored by Maximinus, his predecessor as bishop of Trier. Maximinus had offered the exiled Athanasius refuge in 336, and the same to Paul, patriarch of Constantinople when the emperor booted him into exile.

I propose that no bishops be consecrated in any church unless they have studied and inwardly digested the full ecclesiastical history of the fourth century, beginning with the mass persecutions, then on to Nicaea, the Arian-inspired exiles and persecutions, and beyond. They should be rigorously quizzed on the names, the dates, the documents, the accounts of the martyrs, and then sign a form (in triplicate, of course!) saying they will faithfully walk in the steps of these orthodox bishops (and saints), and defend, to their last breath, that which was handed on from the apostles, and if not, then get a real job.

Two Kids Enough in Philippines?

Will the Philippines adopt a two-child per family policy? (Do they need to?) According to Joseph A. D'Agostino, the UN Population Fund thinks so, as do a number of governmental leaders there. Playing off recent comments about how Western civilization has become infantilized--adults act like kids--maybe the push to reduce the number of babies can be seen ironically as "there's no room in my life for kids 'cuz I'd have to stop being a kid." Of course, there's more behind the UN push than this. Why the push to slide further down the hill toward the demographic winter being grudgingly acknowledged as imminent? Amazing: global warming alongside demographic winter.

Episcopalians in My Backyard

I remember 27 years ago talking to an Episcopal priest in Chicago, an Anglo-Catholic, asking him about the future of ECUSA (I was personally interested). He described the then-current bishop as a "totalitarian liberal" and predicted that the future for orthodox Anglicans would end in some sort of separate "province" at safe arm's-length from the liberal bishops of ECUSA.

In some ways his prediction came true, though not on the timetable nor through the means he expected. There was no coordinated, effective move en masse of "conservative" Episcopalians into another province or any other kind of clear cut separation, but now we see "orthodox Anglican" parishes hither and yon under the oversight, in communion with, certain African and other "third world" Anglican provinces. There are American "Anglicans" in communion with most of the world's Anglicans who wouldn't darken the door of an ESUA parish.

I heard Episcopalians in Chicago complain for a long time that there were few if any choices if you wanted to attend an orthodox parish in the diocese. There now are a number of the African-affiliates in the area, however.

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What's become of the Chicago ECUSA diocese? Well, there's now an Episcopal vacancy, reports the Chicago Tribune, and of the (so far) 5 candidates for the cathedra, three are women, and one of those is Tracey Lind, a lesbian who has an open "relationship" with a partner. The current bishop, William Persell, thinks this is all fine:

"My hope is that people get beyond that," Persell said. "It would be unfortunate if the focus becomes 'lesbian for bishop.' ... The focus really should be on the diocese and the candidate as a whole."

Lind has this to say:

"Since the day last winter when I was asked to make myself available to this nominating process, my discernment prayer has been that God would continue to lead me to serve God's new creation in the church."

Yep, there is definitely a new thing going on in the Episcopal diocese in my backyard--has been for some time--only I have to attribute the source of it to someone else.

Eloi, Eloi

     By now many of you have no doubt seen the Time Magazine article by David Van Biema on Mother Teresa's long spiritual night.  As James Kushiner's excellent post below suggests, it is an astonishing and deeply moving revelation.  In fact it cannot be understood in the world's terms; the world knows nothing like it.  The feral Christopher Hitchens is quoted to the effect that Mother Teresa came to understand what all good, brave, proud atheists know already, that there is no God, and that she declined to dig for herself an even deeper hole by coming up with "reasons" why there must be a God.

     Christians ought to know by now that there's no winning such an argument, which sets reason aside (Aquinas? Avicenna?), and which forgets its own former claims in the heat of apparent triumph.  The same people who rejoice that Mother Teresa experienced the pain of doubt used to say that she served the poor in Calcutta only because it did her good -- because she selfishly derived joy from it.  Now, if that is what it means to be "selfish," to identify yourself with the filthy and pustulent outcasts of the world, without self-aggrandizement, without promoting some great social or political program, but merely because you are commanded to love, then so be it, let us all be selfish, let us all heap up treasures of love for ourselves, the love we give and the love of God we will enjoy.  But that stretches the word "selfish" beyond all recognition.

     But it turns out that Mother Teresa's life in Calcutta was not a life of what we would recognize as joy.  I hesitate to claim that she did not know joy: as I would hesitate to claim that anyone so thoroughly abandoned to the call and life and grace of Christ could ever really be separated from Him, regardless of whether the affective response of her heart, how she felt her union with Christ, was what we call happiness.  The world thought it knew her, and thought it could dismiss her charity with a smile at her naive belief and childish enthusiasm.  But it cannot do that now, so it dismisses her by claiming her as one of its own -- not seeing that Mother Teresa's life looms as an even greater and more inexplicable mystery for those who say in their hearts, "There is no God."

     It is not a mysterious thing, after all, that a young and enthusiastic person should become disillusioned after a month or two of the squalor of the Black Hole of Calcutta.  People lose their faith all the time -- and people gain their faith all the time, and often they are the same people.  What is mysterious is that after her visions of Jesus ceased, after all the inner consolations were taken away, after the locutions, what my evangelical brethren call "words of knowledge," fell silent, still Mother Teresa clung to Christ.  She retained her faith without the emotional accompaniments (and here let married Christians take heed). She continued to serve the poor of Calcutta even though the nagging little viper at her shoulder must have whispered to her, constantly, "This is all absurd."  Let us be absolutely clear about this: outside of the ambit of Christian culture, no one goes to Calcutta.  What Mother Teresa did, no one does, not even for a year, without having been influenced by the message and example of Christ.  And to live there for good, no one does at all without the virtue of faith.

     Towards the end of the excellent film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, the rural mandarin (Robert Donat) announces his conversion to Christianity to his brethren of the village council.  He is moved not by theological argument but by the stunning example of courage shown, in utter selflessness, in willed poverty, in persevering charity, by the lady missionary (Ingrid Bergman).  He understands that when you see what is not only a new thing in the world, but a great goodness that the world on its own would never produce and cannot even explain, then you should submit to it and follow where it leads, with theology halting behind.  Here with Mother Teresa we have even more: a great goodness united to quiet suffering, unspeakable patience, and a kind of bright and steely charity, for how easy would it have been for Mother to try to salve her sores by "sharing" her feelings with her fellow sisters?  A worldly man may enter the Peace Corps because he "believes" in it and wishes to do good; he will not stay there one month after he has ceased to believe.  Mother Teresa never ceased to believe, even in and through the silence.

     Dubiety is inseparable from the human condition.  We must waver, because our knowledge comes to us piecemeal, sequentially, in time, mixed up with the static of sense impressions that lead us both toward and away from the truth we try to behold steadily.  The truths of faith are more certain than the truths arrived by rational deduction, says Aquinas, because the revealer of those truths speaks with ultimate authority, but they are less certain subjectively, from the point of view of the finite human being who receives them yet who does not, on earth, see them with the same clarity as one sees a tree or a stone or a brook.  It should give us Christians pause to consider that when Christ took upon himself our mortal flesh, he subjected himself to that same condition.  He did not doubt; His faith was steadfast; yet He did feel, at that most painful of moments upon the Cross, what it was like to be abandoned by God.  He was one with us even in that desert, a desert of suffering and love.  Nor did the Gospel writers -- those same whom the world accuses on Monday of perpetrating the most ingenious literary and theological hoax in history, and on Tuesday of being dimwitted and ignorant fishermen, easily suggestible -- refuse to tell us of that moment.

     In her love of Christ -- and the world does not understand Christ, and is not too bright about love, either -- Mother Teresa did not merely take up His cross and follow him.  She was nailed to that Cross with him.  She was one with Him -- it was His greatest and most terrible gift -- at the moment when he cried out to His Father, and the worldly Jews beneath mistook the name of God for Elijah.  We Christians must trust that she is also one with Him now too, sharing in the glory of His triumph over darkness and the grave.  "See," He says, encouraging us to persevere and be fearless, "I have overcome the world."

But He's a Catholic....

Jerod Patterson writes at Frontpage.com about the political controversy that arose between Evangelicals supporting either Gov. Huckabee (a former Southern Baptist pastor) or Sen. Brownback (a former Evangelical now Roman Catholic).  The "Catholic card" it seems may be played against Brownback, though Huckabee won't have any of it, calling Brownback his "Chrisitan brother."

I've met Brownback and have heard him speak and give his testimony. I don't see why he should have any problem with (most!) Evangelicals when it comes to his "Catholic" faith being a "turn off." (No endorsement implied.) One may have a perfectly orthodox and sincere faith and be a very inept governor, so I do not look for theological orthodoxy in candidates, but I do expect it from clergy. 

(Thanks, Judy Warner!)

Mother Teresa's Little Faith

The "media" seems to be all over the "revelation" that Mother Teresa, according to her letters soon to be published, had lots of doubts. Some are quick to suggest she had "lost her faith." Others, those in religious media who actually know a thing or two about Christianity, don't find any of her doubts surprising. According to Catholic World News:

Cardinal Julian Herranz, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts (the Vatican's top canon-law body), told the Italian daily La Repubblica that Mother Teresa clearly suffered through the "dark night of the soul," like many other great saints.    

The book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light includes letters that Mother Teresa sent to her confessors and spiritual directors over a period of years, recounting her internal struggles and her sense of aridity in prayer.

Cardinal Herranz noted that leading mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross wrote extensively about the "dark night of the soul." Their spiritual trials reflect the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, he said. They should be recognized, the Spanish cardinal added, as "a test of greatness of faith."

Of course, none of this is news to serious Christians, only to secular journalists and those seeking any rhetorical advantage in the New Crusade Against Religion.

Serious Christians perhaps may be somewhat surprised at the frankness or intensity of the darkness and doubts (I haven't read any of the content of the book), but upon a moment's reflection doubts about the doubts disappear. This is old hat: St. Peter denied Jesus; Thomas doubted the Resurrection; in Matthew's resurrection account the disciple worshipped the Lord, but "some doubted." Unbelief is open in the Bible, a condition uncovered, addressed, and part of the program.

When you look at ideological secularist believers it seems you consistently find cocksure visionaries and revolutionaries--or have I missed massive cover ups recently exposed by publication of Vladimir Lenin's Gulag of the Soul, or Meine Angst by Adolph Hitler (sorry; someone will fix the German here)?  The doubts of our secular materialists don't seem to be anywhere in sight.

That some secular journalists will go ga-ga over what appears to them a chance to discredit a Christian only shows how dogmatic they are about their own secularism. They assume that real Christians are as untroubled by contrary thoughts as they are.

When's the last time you read of a secularist, pro-choice liberal admit that once in a while he has serious doubts about what seems to have become a mainstay of the program, that maybe, just maybe, that little "tissue" that can be easily disposed of in a "abortion clinic" might be, really and truly, a human being? Wouldn't dream of it....

I for one experience doubt. But that's because it's a struggle to remember certain things--not ideas or doctrines, but lines of evidence, unimpeachable testimony, the experience of millions, including mine, of things that definitely point to something beyond the hermetically-sealed dreams of secular materialists. Doubt creeps in because faith has to do with things we can't, quite, see with our naked eyes--most of the time.

A doubt is not a thought in its own right with its own legs: it depends upon a truth-statement or a reality against which it cuts. It is a faculty of evaluation, independent of settled convictions. Faith is always solid when it is true faith, even if only the size of a mustard seed.

Commentaries and Character

What if you know the writer of the book you're reading, and he's a jerk?

Some folks have offered some recommendations for biblical commentaries on the Book of Hebrews, suggestions I appreciate. I pondered as I read them why I favor one commentary on the Book over the others: that of William Lane. Lane wrote a two-volume set for the Word Biblical Commentary series that is impressive. Still, I prefer his popular level, more devotional work, Call to Commitment.

Most of the reasons for this are related to the quality of the work, but not all of them. Much of it has to do with Lane himself. I never met him, and don't know much about him personally. But I have read and heard first-hand of the way he discipled men I respect greatly, such as singer/songwriter Michael Card and Hebrews scholar George Guthrie.

In this line of work, one tends to know many of the evangelical (and other) scholars who write much of the theological and biblical studies work in the field. This guild is awfully small. It is easy to see at conferences and society meetings brilliant scholars who are consumed by vanity, lovelessness, rivalry, fits of rage, envy, or factiousness.

That's actually good for me. It helps me to remember that I am an even greater sinner and the writer of the commentary or article or systematic theology or blogpost I'm reading is a sinner for whom Christ died. I believe, after all, in total depravity and so shouldn't be surprised by such things in others, though I should be horrified by them in myself.

Still, it is a rare providence to read a commentary by a man his own disciples still revere, because he washed their feet, gave his time and energy away to them, and pointed them to Christ. At least that's the testimony of Lane recorded in, among other places, Card's reflections on Lane in his book, The Walk. Whether or not Bill Lane lived up to the honor given him by his students, we should all pray that we would.

It is much the same when I am reading a Pauline theology or commentary on Romans by my favorite living New Testament scholar, Tom Schreiner, my next-door neighbor, while watching him across the way pruning flowers in his backyard. I didn't know Bill Lane, but I see Tom Schreiner everday. His peace, joy, love, kindness, gentleness, and self-control might not cause him to conjugate Greek verbs any quicker. But these virtues point to a reflection on the Scripture that will lead to a body of work that is more than wood, hay, and stubble.

They also remind me, as I read, that I believe in more than just total depravity. I believe in the Holy Spirit.

Letter from God Knows Who

This Sunday I am starting a new sermon series on the Book of Hebrews, and have found myself looking at commentaries all week. One of the commentaries is a used copy of F.F. Bruce's volume in the New International Commentary on the New Testament series that I found in a second-hand bookstore somewhere years ago. The text of the commentary was helpful, but what was perhaps most helpful to me were the handwritten pen marks along the side of the text. Whoever the text had belonged to had marked notes in the margins, along with questions and notations of "main point" or "conclusion." The questions were not profound, just little question marks or underlines that caused me to think about the writing more.

As I read the commentary, I became grateful for the little question marks along the way, even though I have no idea who made them. Who owned this book? Was he a pastor preaching through his own series on Hebrews? Was he a churchmen seeking to understand better his own pastor's proclamation of the Book? Was he an atheist or a liberal scholar seeking to discredit Christian interpretations of an ancient text? I don't know. But his little question marks helped me focus on Bruce's argument.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that my unknown co-reader was playing something of the same role as the author of Hebrews himself. Unlike the epistles of Paul or Peter or James, the church has not been told who the writer of this text is. Options abound, from Paul to Luke to Barnabas. Some feminist theologians prefer to think Priscilla penned Hebrews. I once served with a pastor who believed it was Matthias, though I was never sure exactly why. I, with Martin Luther, tend to believe the arguments for Apollos are strong and convincing. Nonetheless, at the end of the day (at least of this day), we just don't know who is addressing us in the Book of Hebrews or who exactly his first hearers were.

But, in a real sense, we do. It seems that the writer of Hebrews remains intentionally anonymous. In this sermonic letter, he exhorts the congregation (whoever they are) from the very first paragraph that God of their fathers has spoken to them in his Son. It seems that the writer of Hebrews wishes to identify himself less with the prominent names of the fathers in Hebrews 11 and more with the "others" mentioned but not named, for lack of time, in 11:36-38.

In his voice, the writer of Hebrews calls us to listen instead to another Voice, a voice of a Father echoed in that of the Son. The small "a" author is not the point; the capital "A" Author is, just as the small "t" tabernacle is not the point, but the capital "T" Tabernacle is; the small "p" priesthood is not the point; and so on.

The writer of Hebrews is much like the scribbled notes on my old commentary. The anonymous author of the one just wants to put some question marks around a biblical scholar's argument. The anonymous author of the other places some question marks around fear and slavery, with some exclamation marks around the Gospel of Jesus.

Losing and Love

     The end of summer has always been bittersweet to me, with all my accumulated memories of last trips to the lake, last ballgames in the morning, and then the early walks to school, with all its small indignities and smaller pleasures, and mainly hours spent daydreaming or doodling or calculating the percentage of the school day left on the clock.  It remains so.  I'm returning to resume my part in the national swindle called higher education.  Some people I loved have retired.  Many are grayer and more stooped.  One, my close friend and mentor, I will not see again in this world.

     My son Davey, who is a high-performing autistic kid, takes these days pretty hard, because they mean returning from a summer in Canada, where we know a lot of people and see them all the time, to the crowded States, where aside from my job and our homeschooling group we don't know anybody.  It's hard for him to make friends -- unless you want to talk about computer systems, his areas of conversation are pretty limited -- and so he feels the loss of people who will talk to him most acutely.  In Canada, those people are mainly old folks, retired, often not in the best of health.  So Davey knows what the rest of us don't want to say openly, that there will come a day, and maybe soon, when we will say goodbye to the old fellow with the yard sale up the road, and that will be that.  The man's wife said as much to me this time, catching me by surprise: "I'll see you next summer," she said, with a sad kind of jest, "if I'm still here next summer."

     It's hard to explain to my son why he should be grateful for the blessing of things we must lose.  All he can think about, for a while anyway, is the loss, no more.  It makes me wonder what our lives would be like if medicine made the ultimate breakthrough, and could prolong our lives indefinitely, barring our stepping on a landmine or being crushed under a backhoe or something.  If the Father had allowed us to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life, to endure unending and pointless life as sinners, ungrateful, selfish, slack, backbiting, cowardly, easily roused and more easily bored, what would the long years be like?  Is there any wickedness imaginable that we would not pitch ourselves into, if only for the thrill, to ward off the terror of the same, the same, a loveless life under the film of familiarity, forever and ever?

     My favorite old materialist, the poet Lucretius, says that our wickedness is born of the fear of death, and that seems partly right to me.  To use his own example, it may be that a miser hoards up wealth as compensation for his fear, as a vain stay against the inevitable.  But it seems just as accurate to say that, such as we are, we mainly learn to love only those things we can lose.  People pull for the Cubs and the Red Sox not exactly despite their long haplessness, but because of it; they feel protective of them, even as they cuss them out for allowing a pop fly home run, or for leaving a young and exhausted starter in the game one batter too long.  No one, not even a Yankees fan, could love a team that could not lose.  People love the gentleness and vulnerability of children.  Look at your sleeping child -- the smooth chin, the wispy hair -- and your heart can ache; you would give anything, you would cast your own life away, to keep that frail being from loss. 

     Such as we are, we do not love what we have no fear of losing, in some fashion or another, and this applies even to our love of God.  I don't mean that we should lose our confidence in God's saving might, but that if God could make His existence manifest to us all -- not His Being, but the fact of His existence -- it is by no means clear that such proof would cause us to love Him the more ardently.  We might, such as we are, take Him for granted.  We might turn away in ingratitude and self-regard.  Satan knows that God exists, and hates it.

     But loss is a part of God's plan for us here; without it, we would grow hard of heart and would not love those beautiful but mutable things we should love.  With it, we can be moved to love, yet the loss teaches us that the final object of our love, the Selfsame, is not here.  We learn to love, and we learn to give away what we love.  We learn to die, and so learn to live.

     Christians, then, do not seek life interminable, but a different mode of life, what Jesus called life, and that in abundance.  Death is the enemy not simply because it puts an end to things in time, for to be in time is to change.  It is the enemy because it separates us from the fullness of love, for God and one another; and in this sense, if we could lengthen out our selfish lives for a thousand years, we would prolong a living death.  The words of Jesus ring true: he who would save his life must lose it.  We seek not a prolongation of this shadowy and often lonely life, but a new life, one whose permanence is both ancient and ever new, and that will fulfill our hearts, be the end or goal of our beings, because that life is love.  It is in God, and it is God.

Hitchens v. McGrath

If you are in DC October 11, book this one:

The Ethics and Public Policy Center and The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University will host a debate between writer Christopher Hitchens and Oxford University professor Alister McGrath on the role of religious belief in the modern world.

Details are here. McGrath, for the record, was a young atheist when he went to study at Oxford. He became a Christian while there. (His personal account of this, along with an interview with him, was published in Touchstone in 1992, but, alas, is not on-line.) Hitchens, well, you know all about him, I suppose, and his recent book, God Is Not Great will be reviewed in the October issue of Touchstone.

Fish Riding Bicycles

Today Kairos Journal runs a story on women in the UK conceiving babies without a husband --and without any act of sexual intercourse to boot. Fresh sperm donation is on the rise. So if the old feminism of "a-woman-needs-a-man-as-much-as-a-fish-needs-a-bicycle" variety were to triumph, they'd have to make a minor adjustment: they'll need the males for a few drops. So have a kid or two, yes, both boys and girls, but once the boys reach puberty, get them to donate, them bump them off before they ruin everything.

The Offensive Name of God

Most of you have read about the Dutch Bishop who has suggested that Christians in that country start calling God "Allah."

Albert Mohler blogs about it:

Bishop Tiny Muskens of Breda, a former missionary to Indonesia, suggested that conflict between Christians and Muslims could be lessened if Dutch Catholics followed the lead of some Christians in Muslim-dominated lands and adopted Allah as the preferred name for God.

And Mohler zeroes in on what the real problem is: this "Allah" [the Arabic word for God, true enough] doesn't have a Son, whereas our God the Father does.

So, a man appointed to be a guardian of the Gospel of the Son thinks that relations will be better with Muslims if we start saying "in the name of Allah..."? Does he also think they will improve when we continue "... the Father, Allah the Son, and Allah the Holy Spirit?" (not that I am suggesting this....) I assume he believes that Jesus is True God of True God, and I hope that isn't too much to ask.

Besides, if I'm going to slip into a semitic language in addressing God, I think the word is Abba, Father. The Holy Spirit inspires us to pray Father, and also call Jesus Lord. There's no avoiding the offense of Christianity.

Touchstone Archive Classics

We are constantly adding content to the Touchstone Back-Issues Archive. Most recently, we have added articles from the Spring/Summer 1989 issue here.

Over at our Treaders discussion page, a Touchstone classic from 1993, Recognizing the Church by Thomas Howard is available for comment.

Sick-attle Is Worse Than New York?

That's what David Klinghoffer claims. At NRO Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews  Klinghoffer (who lives in Seattle) about his book Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments to Our Peril and what it means for places like Seattle:

In Seattle, the city government — an extension of the citizens — doesn’t believe it has a moral right to clean up the street outside the building where I work. It’s right smack in the middle of the top tourist district but it’s a gathering place of all the city’s scariest Youths, along with meth addicts, crack dealers, stumbling drunks, crazy people, and so on. This neighborhood, in terms of tourist traffic, is the New York equivalent of that stretch of Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick’s up to the museums. New York would never tolerate letting that corridor become the way Seattle’s Pike and Pine Streets are.

What Klinghoffer says about police is increasingly true even here: no sense of authority, with the courts assuming the role of protecting the criminals from the police. So the news from the Windy City isn't much better, but at least you can walk down the Magnificent Mile without seeing such a scene as he describes in Seattle. Or at least I think you can.

A Word from Julie

I am posting this at the request of our Development Director, Julie Grisolano:

You know through Mere Comments that the previous fiscal year, which ended June 30, was challenging for us. Little did we know how the Lord would work. What transpired was amazing: more than a thousand Friends of Touchstone and “Mere Comments” readers sent in contributions, and we met our fundraising projections. We give thanks to God that we ended well enough (we had a manageable deficit).

Many of our “Mere Comments” readers also receive Touchstone’s quarterly fundraising appeal. For those of you who will be receiving this letter, I ask you to prayerfully consider sending in a donation--and also to keep in mind a possibility that would greatly assist your gift in going even further: the matching gift program.

A reader recently brought to my attention that his company matches any donation he makes to a non-profit, 501 (c) 3 organization, dollar-for-dollar. His gift of $50.00 turned into $100.00 through this program.

So I ask that when you receive our quarterly letter in the next week or so from Anthony Esolen, would you consider sending in a gift? And consider doubling your gift through your company’s matching gift program? You can email me at grisolano@fsj.org and I can assist you. If you are not aware of your company having a matching gift program I will find out on your behalf.

Thanks again to all of our “Mere Comments” readers for your support. When we were in need, many of you responded with financial generosity and many remembered our ministry in your prayers. May God bless you!

--Julie Grisolano

Educate Early and Often: School Daze

The World Congress of Families provides some statistics for these "back to school" days:

54%   Percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in school in October 2005.

70%   Percentage of children enrolled in kindergarten who attended all day, as of October 2005.

Plus:

Among the extensive findings pulled together by institute president and early education authority Darcy Olsen, the most riveting is her observation that the huge expansion of early education since 1965 has not yielded rising outcomes of elementary school students. In 1965, only five percent of three-year-olds and 14 percent of four-year-olds were enrolled in pre-K programs. Today, those figures are 39 percent and 66 percent, respectively. Yet statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show how fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores have stagnated since the early 1970s and in some cases fallen, even as the nation has tripled spending in education, increased teachers' salaries, and reduced class sizes. Nevertheless, even in these subject areas, American fourth-graders still outperform their peers in France, Italy, and Germany, countries that have the kind of universal pre-K system that some want here.

And today in Time (August 27, 2007) I read this:

Popular videos such as the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby series have attracted millions of parents eager to give their babies an intellectual leg up. But a recent study shows that these products may be doing more harm than good. Experts at the University of Washington reported early in August that for every hour each day that infants watched the kaleidoscope of changing images and music on these DVDs, they understood an average of seven fewer words than babies who did not use such products.

That really should read than "babies whose parents did not subject them to such products." The parents--who spent $200 million last year on Einstein--are advised:

They might consider instead the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends that  infants under 2 not watch anything on a screen and just interact with their parents.

If there's not a shred of evidence that the billions of dollars spent to improve education by starting it earlier and earlier, why all this rush? Government officials and politicians seem to be the only ones who can get away with asking for and getting more money to invest in a product or program without showing that it really makes an important difference.

I would have not survived an all-day kindergarten. I hated half-day kindergarten as it was, and all-day first grade was torture. I learned nothing and hated it. And see where I ended up? I coulda been an Einstein!

Big Kids

John Leo in the Wall Street Journal engages Diana West's Death of the Grown-Up,which argues that adult adolescence is a product of the 1960s rebellion, still with us today via the Boomers. Leo thinks she should have looked back to the 1920s for deeper roots for the fact that a video game of SpongeBob SquarePants, "intended for the 6-to-11 age group, draws almost 19 million viewers from the 18-to-49 crowd."

He's probably right that the Great Depression and World War II and the immediate post-war period focused people's minds on more serious things than fun and games. Remember that for what seems like a brief moment, after Sept. 11, 2001, people seemed to shift their concerns from entertaining themselves to more basic concerns. A few more people even darkened the doors of churches, where they wanted to find something serious and sober in the face of death.

Reasonable Without God

Michael Shermer, the Skeptic, urges atheists to be more reasonable than some of them have been of late. Among the points he makes in Scientific American.com:

3. Rational is as rational does. If it is our goal to raise people’s consciousness to the wonders of science and the power of reason, then we must apply science and reason to our own actions. It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind. As Carl Sagan cautioned in “The Burden of Skepticism,” a 1987 lecture, “You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don’t see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.”

Well, for once I am not inclined to argue with Mr. Shermer, a lapsed Evangelical Christian. But Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett might. He names all of them in a paragraph about a new militancy among atheists, though doesn't accuse them directly. It's more about "irrational exuberance." But then again, they might respond, "Of course, Michael. We know this. Thanks for the friendly reminder." And continue their campaign.

The 167 Steps

Cameron Wybrow reviews Michael Behe's new and generally-savaged book, The Edge of Evolution in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution, provides some hard numbers, coupled with an ingenious argument. The key to determining the exact powers of Darwinian evolution, says Behe, lies with fast-reproducing microbes. Some, such as malaria, HIV, and E. coli, reproduce so quickly that within a few decades, or at most a few millennia, they generate as many mutations as a larger, slower-breeding animal would in millions of years. By observing how far these creatures have evolved in recent times, we can estimate the creative limits of random mutation.

In the case of malaria, the creative limits appear quite low. Over the last few thousand years, several thousand billion billion malarial cells have been unable to develop an evolutionary response to the sickle-cell mutation, which protects its human bearers from malaria. On the other hand, malaria has proved able to develop Darwinian resistance to the antibiotic chloroquine. This resistance is based upon two simultaneous mutations affecting a malarial protein. Yet this rare double mutation has occurred fewer than 10 times since chloroquine was introduced 50 years ago, during which time a hundred billion billion malarial cells have been born. If this indicates the typical rate of occurrence of double mutations, then the Darwinian transformation of our pre-chimp ancestor into homo sapiens, which would have required at least some double mutations, would have taken at least a thousand trillion years, a time span greater than the age of the universe.

Perhaps so. I would expect someone could point out that what may be true for particular microbes may not be true for other life forms or species, however. Maybe man evolved from the chimp or whatever it was via more mutations coming faster than they would for a microbe. Or maybe not.

I think it about this way: How much has homo sapiens evolved in 6,000 years? I use that number for, roughly, that's how long our "history" is, in the sense that everything else is literally prehistoric. For the last 6,000 years, we have a Man that  basically looks like ourselves in 2007. Let me enumerate a few things that occur to me:

1) He's concerned about death and buries his dead and make plans for his own burial.
2) He wears clothing. The women wear jewelry.
3) He is prone to crime and murder, but also punishes offenders.
4) He thinks about himself and his origins.
5) He looks at the stars to determine meaning and grander purposes. (SETI, anyone?)
6) He passes on memory to others and devises stories that secure memory.
7) He is basically monogamous (other arrangements obtain under unusual circumstances, e.g., men of peculiar wealth might have more wives, but not your average guy, obviously)
8) He is a fabricator of devices and tinkerer with technology. This includes particularly buildings for burial (number 1 above), and is evident in the high level of intelligence, many moons ago, of the Egyptian pyramid builders, and even the builders of the mega-lithic tombs of northwestern Europe (which predate the pyramids). Those guys were pretty smart, and had ways of communicating measurements and other bits of information that still are in use today.

When we read the oldest texts available, we are reading minds that are recognizably human. Even cave art is distinctively human and sometimes a cut above things I've seen hanging on walls of contemporary museums of art.

So in this historic period, just how much evolution in homo sapiens has occurred? I don't know the definitive answer to this, but as far as I am aware, zilch. (And I would expect to have read about it were it otherwise.) So, if in 6,000 years we're basically the same, how much change can we extrapolate backwards to say, one million years, to some unnamed hominid?

Nobody expects clear evolution in a bare 6,000 years--that, of course, has always been a required non-expectation because you have to explain a non-occurence that is already a fact on the ground. Instead, you simply say "there hasn't been enough time" and talk about "millions of years" for human beings.

But wait a minute: 6,000 years, really, isn't that small a slice of a million, is it? Say that one evolution "step" takes place every 6,000 years just for the sake of argument. That would mean that our ancestral hominid living in 998,000 BC could take 167 mutationally-driven evolutionary steps over the next million years to become me typing at this computer. Is that a large number of steps or is it large enough to bridge the huge gap between me and the ape? Perhaps so, but has this been proven?

How far can a hominid evolve in 167 steps? But this is assuming these evolutionary steps occur often enough--on average every 6,000 years--for that figure of 167.  I am not aware that there is a significant  evolutionary difference between me and the chief engineer building one of those pyramids, so may maybe, given Behe's and others work on microbe mutations, even a million years isn't near long enough, but more like "a thousand trillion."

Wybrow concludes:

The Edge of Evolution makes a serious, quantitative argument about the limits of Darwinian evolution. Evolutionary biology cannot honestly ignore it.

Let's see who can answer such questions. I find them simply fascinating.

America Houses of Modernity

The Weekly Standard's contributing editor Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote an editorial "for the editors" in the August 20/August 27 issue about Barack Obama's comments on Pakistan and foreign policy initiatives to engage Islamic radicalism. My comments have little if anything to do with Obama, so I have nothing "political" in mind here at all. What jumped out at me were two sentences in the final paragraph that I found stunningly blunt.

But first, the set up. What leads into Gerecht's editorial ending are his comments about Obama's plan, in Obama's words, to "open 'America Houses' in cities across the Islamic world, with Internet, libraries, English lessons, stories of America's Muslims, and the strength they add to our country." Gerecht's reply:

Senator, go visit the many Internet houses of Peshawar in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, and you will find young men everywhere surfing porn. They are free to view other glories of Western civilization, but they choose to focus on young women. . . . Open "America Houses" and we will surely increase the knowledge of such Hollywood entertainment more than we will of the Founding Fathers or the lifestyle of Muslim Americans. The "American Dream" is alive and well in the Middle East, but it is vastly more complicated than Obama seems to realize.

Then, more bluntness:

What [Obama] does not seem to grasp--and the Bush administration is no better--is that America is the cutting edge of a modernity that has convulsed Islam as a faith and a civilization. This collision will likely become more violent, not less, as Muslims more completely enter the ethical free fall that comes as modernity crushes the world of our ancestors.

He says "our" ancestors, not just Muslims. To tell the truth, I feel the world of my near ancestors--meaning my mother and my father and their generation and their parents'--is being crushed. I can only imagine what "modernity" looks like to Muslims. Aspects of it are slightly disgusting and something from which any decent parent would want to protect children. Instead, we've got influential people openly talking about protecting children from religious indoctrination, for example, as in "first communion" for Catholic children.

Imprecations & Praying the Psalms

Doug Giles writes at Townhall.com about using imprecatory psalms. He will offend many, no doubt. I remember the experience of praying from the psalter a week or so after I had started to pray an abbreviated form of the canonical hours. On the morning of September 18, 2001, my very first morning back in the States after being away for nearly ltwo weeks, I walked down a residential street on the way to work and the quantity American flags startled me. It was perhaps only then that I realized how much 9/11 had shaken my fellow countrymen. I was praying matins and first hour and two phrases from the psalter jumped out at me:

"... like one forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave."

I could not but help think about the thousands who lie dead in the pit at Ground Zero, a massive grave of the slain.

And then from first hour: "The Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men."

I couldn't help but think of the 9/11 murderers. I know it is customary (and helpful) to read the imprecatory psalms (the verse above is hardly imprecatory, though it could set the stage for one) in light of Christ, applying the enemies to the demonic forces, the sins and passions that wage combat against the soul.

But I can understand how human it is to desire the destruction of a mortal enemy, especially in time of war. To be moved toward even cursing bloodthirsty treachery is understandable. It is cursed. But to pray for our enemies is Christian. We cannot ignore our Lord's words from the Cross, where all enemies are truly defeated in a much more potent way than we can even imagine. All of the psalms are our inheritance, to be prayed in and with Christ.

The Hole in the Heart of His Story

I hope I won't be thought lazy in simply presenting MC readers with this link, without further comment. Except to say that the venue in which this stunning article appeared is nearly as amazing as the article itself. I am sure that readers will have plenty more to say.

Theodore "Religious Right" Roosevelt?

Kairos Journal today sent this quotation from Theodore Roosevelt about the bane of "easy divorce."

[E]asy divorce is now as it ever has been, a bane to any nation, a curse to society, a menace to the home, an incitement to married unhappiness and to immorality, an evil thing for men and a still more hideous evil for women.

He also notes conversations that he found "shocking."

Kairos notes that divorce laws were being relaxed even back in the 19th century:

The result was a catastrophic rise in the divorce rate. In 1880, only one in twenty-one marriages had ended in divorce; by 1916, it was one in nine.

Of course, TR had no idea: we've made "easy" into "easier" and "easiest," and have a divorce rate even higher, and more children living apart from their natural parents.

Anyone who repeats what an American president said 100 years ago is likely to be counted as a member of the dreaded Religious Right.

Editor on the Air

Tonight, Touchstone's executive editor and Mere Comments regular, James Kushiner will be on the Live from Seattle with Thor Tolo show on KGNW, 820 AM in Seattle. The show runs from 4 to 7 PM Pacific time, and Jim will be on during the 6 o'clock hour (the third of the three hours). You can also listen online if you do not find yourself in Seattle this evening. Guest host Grant Goodeve (yes, the one from Eight is Enough) will be talking with Jim about Touchstone and the other work of FSJ.

The ELCA: “Another Sodomite Sect”

The biographical notes on my Touchstone writings have for years noted my theological training at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. I found this meant I was frequently mistaken for a Lutheran, which I am not, so in 2005 I wrote an explanatory note on this site which included these remarks:

 . . . . because my own theological viewpoint is as opposed to the liberal Lutheranism of that school as it could possibly be, it is most unlikely that the Lutheran School of Theology, if it is paying attention at all, is pleased to have its name appear next to mine on the pages of a magazine like Touchstone--so here I do it the service of issuing a disclaimer on its behalf.

In another sense, however, I regard myself as a true son of that institution. People like me, who manage to squeak out of mainline academies, are, I often think, products and representatives of the prayers and gifts of the faithful who gave to those schools with the understanding that a considerably different gospel than moves groups like the ELCA and its flagship seminary was being taught there. It is not, after all, your grandfather's (well, at least your great-grandfather's) Lutheranism that is promulgated by the typical seminary of that synod, but something far more, shall we say, evolved. 

Well, there comes a time when even such tenuous ties must be severed, when any fraternal association with the ELCA must be renounced. This month the delegates to its biennial convention approved a resolution that urged all denominational leaders not to discipline (as it has in the past, in accordance with church rules) sexually active homosexual clergy in “faithful committed same-gender relationships.” 

Of course, we are seeing a great deal of effort on the part of ELCA officials, who obviously fear the effects of this resolution on church life and funding, to nuance what this means. But a brief visit to the blogsites of Lutheran homosexual activists makes it clear that they understand its significance. Something immensely important has happened; the floodgate is now in fact open. The ELCA joins a number of other mainline Protestant denominations as, as one Catholic observer put it, just another Sodomite sect. 

No doubt we will now begin to see, as we did in former years among the Episcopalian traditionalists, the embarrassing spectacle of denial, declarations that “I didn’t leave the ELCA, the ELCA left me,” profession of loyalty to something that no longer exists, local resistance, and splintering. People who anticipate a large harvest for the Missouri Synod don’t understand the dynamics of American Lutheranism. I can predict with fair confidence, however, that the (fairly conservative) ELCA majority will continue to slide deeper into the dotard’s sleep of nescience and morbid tolerance that allowed this to happen in the first place, now and then mumbling something unintelligible about the gospel, Lutheran tradition, and evangelical catholicity. I hope I’m wrong, but doubt it. 

One small thing that will happen, however, is that the name of the Lutheran School of Theology, that Urquell of silliness and pretension, that notable sniffer of whatever airs blow from the theological academy of hell, will no longer appear in my biographical note. “Marty,” contrary to one of its advertisements, would not be proud, and we all have our limits.  

Redbook Badbook

Marcia Segelstein, who has written a couple of articles for Touchstone over the years, writes today as a guest columnist over at One News Now about the last issue of Redbook that she perused while at the doctor's office. She thinks we ought to know about it, but warns:

Before you read this column, be warned that it may contain material you find offensive. But what you might find truly shocking is that all the potentially offensive material comes straight from the pages of the July issue of Redbook magazine.

I will not repeat the details (I did read them). I have no idea whether such "material" would have (dis)graced the pages of Playboy 40 years ago. Maybe not. But Redbook, I am sure, has no qualms. Someone from Playboy recently said that Playboy is not pornography, so mainstream has it become that it's sometimes had to tell the difference between the sewer lines and water main.

God's Warriors Three

I see from an ad that Christiane Amanpour will be covering "God's Warriors" on CNN--a 3-night event starting Tuesday, August 21.

Three nights, three groups of warriors:

Aug. 21: God's Jewish Warriors: A settlers movement that battles to control the Holy Land.

Aug. 22: God's Muslim Warriors: Fighting to make Islamic law the law of the land--with an extreme fringe that uses terror as a weapon.

Aug. 23: God's Christian Warriors: They say their battle is for the social, political and religious future of the U.S.A.

Amanpour's next show, by the way will be, perhaps, in September, covering child abuse:
Part 1: Bullying
Part 2: Beating and killing
Part 3: Religious indoctrination.

No parallel between the two 3-part lists is implied.

Let's Get Metaphysical

Dennis Overbye writes in the New York Times about the phrase the God particle and the use of religious words and metaphors in promoting and discussing science. Einstein spoke of "God" but not a personal God.

There is an increasing use of theological language today in discussions about cosmic origins and the underlying reality of Everything. It's inevitable: science is running out of tools as these questions reach far beyond what empirical science can objectively deal with in the search for The Explanation, but that doesn't stop scientists from assuming the contested and previously discredited mantles of the philosophers. They are moving from physical to metaphysical, and as I like to ask, if they can get metaphysical on us, why can't others get metaphysical too? Because they avoid using "God" theologically, that's why. As long as they express no faith in that "God," they can banter around words like design and creation.

If you remain a scientist and don't speak of faith, you now have permission to be a philosopher.

More Piggies for China

Allan Carlson, President of the Howard Center, sponsor of the recent World Congress of Families, today calls China's recent ban on "crude slogans" in population-control programs a "cover-up":

“Instead of abandoning its draconian program of forced population control, China is trying to put a happy-face on its extreme anti-family policies,” charged Allan C. Carlson, International Secretary of the World Congress of Families.

According to an Associated Press story, Beijing has banned the use of what it calls “crude slogans,” such as “Raise fewer babies but more piggies,” which have angered rural residents.

Also discarded are slogans which reveal too much about the way the nation’s one-child-per-family policy is enforced, such as “Houses toppled, cows confiscated, if abortion demand rejected.”

There’s enormous pressure on local officials to hold down birthrates, especially in rural areas. In turn, this has led to forced abortions and fines as high as $1,300 levied on villagers who have a second child (ten times the annual income in these areas).

“It has also resulted in aborting female fetuses and even female infanticide, among couples who want at least one son,” Carlson noted. “This has led to a gender imbalance in China’s population – a male-female ratio of 119-100.”

Especially in farming communities, young men can’t find wives, which has resulted in stealing female babies and an upsurge of prostitution and sexual slavery.

“These horrors were inflicted not by a conquering power but by the Chinese Communist Party,” Carlson declared. “Sometime in this century, China will experience a labor shortage. Even now, there are too few workers to care for the elderly.”

So what do you do with 19 "surplus" men per every 100 women and 100 men? Why, export them, or put them in an army and find something for them to do.

 

Al Qaeda Reader

Just released today by Broadway/Doubleday: The Al Qaeda Reader, by Raymond Ibrahim, with an introduction by Victor Davis Hanson. From a review at Amazon:

This extraordinary collection of the key texts of the al-Qaeda movement—including incendiary materials never before translated into English—lays bare the minds, motives, messages, and ultimate goals of an enemy bent on total victory. Al-Qaeda’s chilling ideology calls for a relentless jihad against non-Muslim “infidels,” repudiates democracy in favor of Islamic law, stresses the importance of martyrdom, and mocks the notion of “moderate” Islam.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these works is how grounded they are in the traditional sources of Islamic theology: the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet. The founders of al-Qaeda use these sources as powerful weapons of persuasion, reminding followers (and would-be recruits) that Muhammad and his warriors spread Islam through the power of the sword and that the Koran is not merely allegory or history but literal truth that commands all Muslims to action.

Raymond Ibrahim is a historian of the Middle East and Islam. He works for the Near East section of the African and Middle Eastern division of the Library of Congress, where he discovered many of the never-before-translated Arabic texts that make up the bulk of The Al-Qaeda Reader.

Pessimism, Caffeine & Satire

Reader James Altena mentioned a website in a message, where I found a Pessimist's Mug. Our Caffeinated Christianity mug is more uplifting, truly, and less expensive to boot, but the other is amusing and perhaps even useful for some. But that website was being compared somewhat to another website of posters satirizing the emergent church movement. For what it's worth. I guess I do like a bit of satire now and then, as well as selling our mugs, though I've resisted the urge to create a "Beer Christianity" mug with CSL's mug on it. (Aren't you glad?) I better sign off before this gets worse.

The Twin Idols

     I was talking to a friend the other day about the striking absence, in the Hebrew Scriptures, of any nature-worship, any procreation by or of the gods, and any idolatry of the city as such.  He's a confirmed atheist, a geologist by trade, who is fascinated by the rise of civilization -- cities -- in some places, and not in others.  (Not, for example, in pre-Columbian North America, since the lack of oxen and horses makes plowing the rich but heavy soil impossible on any large scale.)  He mentioned a recent book that argues that a male cabal in the Babylonian exile assiduously excised from the Scriptures any reference to a wife for God, along with the last traces of polytheism and fertility cults.  The exiles were also, understandably, not too fond of cities, having Babylon for their prime example of one.

     Well, that can be dismissed pretty easily, I think; it's equally plausible to suppose that the exiles would insist upon their own panoply of gods to beat the Babylonian, or to fashion for YHWH a procreative history to beggar the paltry ruttings of Ti