Education: What’s the point?
January 21st, 2012 § 2 Comments
Several years ago, Becca and I were sitting in a restaurant booth with our good friend Bob, talking about education. Back before we had kids, our educational theory (or what we had of one, anyway) was entirely informed by Becca’s experience teaching English in middle and high school. Which is to say, we believed in the importance of public schooling—and we told Bob as much: “Public schools will never get better if good parents take good students somewhere else.”
Then Bob said something that would change our minds entirely. “Your job as parents is not to improve the public school system,” he told us. “Your job is to make sure Jack gets the best education he can.”
Bob is right, and for years that was enough. Being free from the obligation of sending Jack to a struggling public school—and the guilt of actually considering sending him somewhere else—was a welcome relief. But now that kindergarten is creeping over Jack’s horizon, I’m realizing that we can’t talk about giving Jack the best education we can without deciding what exactly makes a good education. In other words, What’s the point of education?
There are plenty of possible answers here: to learn the essential skills (reading, writing, ‘rithmetic) that will form the basis of the rest of Jack’s schooling (and, to some degree, his life), to form his character, to let him socialize with other children, to expose him to diversity and the world around us, to place him under authority figures other than his parents, to prepare him for gainful employment, to allow opportunities for extracurricular activities.
All of these are good things, no doubt, but which of them is primary? What is an education supposed to do?
I found a delightful answer in the pages of C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man, and it’s an answer that’s growing on me.
“Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like or dislike what he ought,” Lewis writes. “Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting and hateful.”
James Matthew Wilson expressed a similar sentiment when he wrote that “the one true mission of education [is] the initiation of young persons into the contemplation of unity, truth, goodness, and beauty, that they may name and know God.”
According to this point of view, the purpose of education is to train Jack to recognize and properly respond to that which is good and bad in the world around him, so when he is grown he is able to do the same on his own. It follows that the place where Jack can get the best education is that place which can do this best. It doesn’t matter if he’s a nuclear physicist or a garbage collector. Rich or poor, these are lessons that will give Jack the ability to properly respond to and deal with whatever life throws at him.
Walter Russell Mead wrote, regarding the recent economic and moral failure of the players on Wall Street: “We never told them that the virtuous life was both necessary and hard, that character was something that had to be built step by step from youth, that moral weakness was both contemptible and natural: and we are shocked, shocked! when, placed in proximity to large sums of loose cash, they grab all they can.” These were well educated people, to be sure, but all of the test scores and reading levels and school standards in the world only failed in the end.
Of course, not everyone agrees that the things in this world can objectively merit a particular response.† And there are even more people who wonder what the big deal is—because, after all, shouldn’t they just teach kids how to read and write?—never knowing that, as Lewis puts it, “ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake,” even in something as simple as a grammar book.
In short, I think I’ve landed on character formation as the most important part of education. It’s something that begins at home, for sure, but should be supplemented and reinforced in his schooling. I’d rather he learn how to be a good man than memorize his multiplication tables. Ideally he’ll learn at a place that teaches both.
____________________
† Lewis spends significant time on this topic in The Abolition of Man. If you’re interested, I highly recommend reading the short book. In the meantime, though, here are two quotes on the topic:
“Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt… The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions.”
“[T]o call children delightful or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not… And because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it).”
Close your mind on this
July 25th, 2011 § 1 Comment
There are some people—and I am one of them—who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy’s numbers, but still more important to know the enemy’s philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether in the long run anything else affects them.
—G.K. Chesterton
These past few weeks have seen several conversations about (and clashes between) worldviews — those metanarratives that form a framework for understanding our cultures and places, and which direct so many of the opinions we form and choices we make every day.
I won’t be going into specifics about these conversations, or laying out a defense of my own worldview (which can be too often interpreted as forcing it down one’s throat), but I am interested in discussing the importance of having a stable worldview. And (despite a handful or recent accusations about my own close-mindedness) to lay out the reasons I believe it’s important to engage with people who disagree.
The truth is, I’m a bit miffed when some people consider me close-minded, because I think I am (for the most part) anything but. Yes, I believe there is a right and a wrong, and that said right and wrong are knowable, and that we should do our best to change our behavior so it lines up to that right while disavowing that wrong. And, I know that this makes me horribly, even tragically, old-school and just plain repulsive. I’d be much better off if I donned my skinny jeans and black rimmed glasses and got my postmodern, relativistic groove on—and we all know it.
But my particular worldview doesn’t necessarily mean I’m close-minded, that I’ve shut myself off for considering the ideas or engaging the people who disagree with me. In fact, my life is filled with people who believe different things. Some of the people I look up to and respect the most are liberals and agnostics and secular humanists. I’ve befriended Muslims and Jews and homosexuals and (*gasp*) Democrats and all sorts of other people who I might be expected to close myself off from. But I haven’t. These people help me, they force me to look at my presuppositions and question them, they force me to refine and sharpen my worldview, they point out the places where I’ve gotten some things wrong. They help me dig. They challenge me, and I’m far better for it.
The truth is, having people in my life who disagree with me is one of the healthiest and most mature things I know how to do, and it’s also why I think it’s important that other people expose themselves to me and my worldview. Not because I want to impose my worldview, but because I can, to some degree, force him to look at his own worldview; I can ask honest questions, point out the holes that need filling, and, if necessary, encourage him to change it from time to time. There’s nothing oppressive or ideologically aggressive about that at all.
If there’s one thing I want you to get from this post, it’s this:
If your worldview doesn’t work, find a new one.
There are certain things that need to be critically examined, and some of them are very popular right about now. Things like (stop me if you’ve heard this before) “There is no such thing as right and wrong.” Some people call that a suicidal worldview, because as soon as you open your mouth to assert that there is no right or wrong (that is, the moment you claim you’re right) your worldview kills itself. It eats its own tail. It proves itself wrong. It cannot continue with any sort of respectability because it destroys itself in the very act of being spoken.
Another example might be the virtue of tolerance, which sounds nice until it runs into intolerance, which it won’t tolerate, and thus kills itself. One more here: “You’re too close-minded for me to listen to what you have to say.” Wow. Ironic and more than a little bit sad.
All that to say, whenever we look critically at something we believe in and it doesn’t cut the mustard, the only responsible thing is to throw it out. It’s vitally important that we examine our worldviews because worldviews, while they seem like theoretical and intangible things, have very real consequences.
I’m not talking about political or social concerns here, although a person’s views on politics, abortion, homosexuality, global warming, economics, civil unions, religion, charity, morality, &c. certainly have consequences. No, I’m talking about the plainer, more everyday decisions that shape our lives. The worldview that says, for example, that we’re at liberty to treat others as rudely or inappropriately as we like so long as we feel justified. The worldview that makes our feelings the sole judge of truth; the worldview that elevates self-expression above civility and respect; the worldview that wants nothing to do with proper authority or just order. Like all worldviews, these — and the actions that flow from them — have very real consequences, and we need to make sure that we’ve weighed those consequences carefully.
And here’s the heart of the matter: It’s harder to weigh those consequences and examine our worldviews when we surround ourselves by people who simply reinforce and encourage us rather than those who, for right or wrong, think they see shadows on the road ahead and take the trouble to tell us about them.
That’s what disappoints me most about people who dismiss me because they disagree with my opinions: It’s very hard for either of us to grow that way.
Storytime pt. Three, or My Little Warrior
June 23rd, 2011 § 4 Comments
“My Little Warrior” is a guest post by my wife, Becca, who blogs at www.beccasbalancingact.com, where this post first appeared. She is a phenomenal writer — a better writer than I am — and when I read this post I felt a twinge of jealousy before realizing how well it fits into my series on Story. I wish I had written it; it’s that good. But The Rib has done it already, and with more eloquence than I ever could. Not only is Becca a phenomenal writer, but she’s also an incredible woman, wife and (as you’ll see below) mother.
A Schleich dragon.
Tucking Jackson into bed tonight was especially precious. Not only because we continue to work on the art of snuggling, but because he asked me, “Mom, can you tell me a story?” and I replied, “Yes. I want to tell you a story about God.” I began the creation story describing something I can’t comprehend myself: nothingness. I tried to describe the emptiness that existed before God made the world. And if Jack was a little bit older, I would have parked there for a while because not only was I trying to imagine the unimaginable, I was trying to do so through the lens of a child. It was overpowering. Jack currently has no concept of outer space other than knowing, “Hey! There’s the moon!” And my understanding isn’t much greater than his. So even though the depth of my own fascination was swelling as I spoke to him, I summed it up quite simply: “God decided to make the world because it was a very good place, including oceans, mountains, animals, and even people.”
It didn’t take me long to arrive at the Noah’s Ark list of animals that God put on the Earth: lions, cheetahs, elephants, bears, whales, turtles…etc. Jackson has three interests right now: dinosaurs, knights/dragons/castles (they go together), and animals. His Schleich collection is beyond extensive for a not-even-three year old.
Animals entertain and enthrall him. He’s either playing with an animal or pretending to be one. It’s crazy that I get the privilege of using one of his greatest interests to teach him about the grandeur and creativity of God. And this very lesson has me overwhelmed and astonished every time we discuss the subject. When we stop to explain things to a child, we, too, should become absolutely amazed that the same God that designed the butterfly also designed us, except with much greater intentions in mind! Yes, Jackson, it is that amazing.
But, within the creation story is something very real and difficult for a mama to share with her baby boy. I told him that people decided to disobey, and so that’s why bad things happen. It’s so simple and ever so true. There’s a reason why his knights need swords and why a princess needs to be rescued: evil is on the prowl. He learns quite graphically from Disney movies that bad guys are in the world, and it’s up to the good guys to defeat them. We watch Lion King as Scar–the liar and betrayer–is dropped from a rock to his death, and we watch Jafar in Aladdin get consumed with jealousy, crave power, abuse that power, and even use fear by turning into a giant snake. I have no intention of over-exposing my son to the reality of the world, but it’s becoming more and more important to me (and even more so to Josh) for Jackson to understand that things in this world aren’t right. Dragons aren’t tame; deception is real; people get sick; marriages fall apart sometimes, strangers can be dangerous. And, really, it’s all our (humans’) fault because life is infected by the consequence of wanting to be like the God who made us in the first place.
For some reason, I never thought I’d have a boy, and I never thought I’d be thinking of my own child as a future defender of evil. In fact, that normally would sound really dramatic or extreme to me, not applicable to everyday life. I didn’t like Christians who even used words like “evil” and “warfare” because they felt so condemning and heavy. Looking back, I mostly didn’t like it because I felt intimidated and inconvenienced. But, I can’t even tuck my child in bed telling the creation story without the awareness that evil has an agenda. I can’t watch the Repunzel story “Tangled” without explaining that the bad woman is selfish with horrible intentions for others, and there are people like her. I can’t play “knights” with Jack without pretending there’s a dragon or a bad guy coming to hurt us.
As my faith in Jesus grows stronger, and as I (finally) wholly submit to the authority of Scripture…I can’t help but be aware of the similarities between the stories I tell Jackson about heroes, victory, defeat, etc. and the greater story that has been going on since creation. I know we’re all fighting and managing the evil in our lives, even if it’s just breaking up sibling fights or trying to maintain self-control around the fridge, with alcohol, or with the checkbook. Or for many of us, our battles are much more difficult, like divorce, betrayal, denial, cancer. The world, as it is, is just not right. I’m so glad God is giving me the courage to raise my son hopefully and prayerfully prepared as a warrior, aware of the bigger fight, and strong enough to take it on.
Yes, Jack, even though the world was once perfect, people disobeyed. And yes, we need to work very hard to keep bad guys away. No, Jack. The world is not the way God wanted it to be. But don’t worry, sweetheart. It won’t always be that way. You’ll see…
Storytime pt. Four will be on its way soon…
You got burgled
June 15th, 2011 § 2 Comments
First of all, a disclaimer: I am not a linguist. I’m not qualified to discuss why we choose the words we use, or the history of language development, or the differences between regional or national dialects. I am, however, interested in digging deeper into a conversation we had with our Cable group last night. (For those not in the know, a Cable group is what our church calls a small group.)
Here’s the short of it: A few days ago, Gary and Kacie were having a friendly marital debate about what a burglar has done in the past. Kacie said that the burglar burgled while Gary insisted that the burglar burglarized. So they called another Cable couple: Chris is an English teacher, and he put the question to his wife, Cara, and a carful of people. He came back with a unanimous burglarized. Sorry, Kacie.
So when all this came up over Natty Light and apple pie à la mode, I said that I wasn’t so sure. I granted that burglarized is more common, but I wasn’t about to rule out burgled as a possibility. We looked it up at dictionary.com, where we learned that burgled is indeed a word. Kacie and Gary were both right; imminent divorce has been averted.
But I wanted more, so I went to the Google Books Ngram Viewer. This is, of course, one of the reasons I am not a linguist: I consider dictionary.com and the Google authoritative sources. In any case, I expected to see that burgled was more popular in the past, but with burglarized taking a healthy modern lead. And that’s precisely what I found:
Blue = burglarized, Red = burgled
Burgled peaked with a strong lead in the 1930s, then dropped in the ’40s and was more recently overtaken by burglarized. The difference wasn’t quite as overwhelming as I would’ve guessed, though. I never (and I do mean never) hear anyone use the word burgled. Maybe it’s an American thing, I thought. So I searched the same terms in the American English corpus and came up with this:
Blue = burglarized, Red = burgled
That’s more like it. They were close in the 1930s, but burglarized has dominated thieving vocabulary ever since. And how.
But the strong burgled showing in the English corpus had to come from somewhere. British English corpus, here we come:
Blue = burglarized, Red = burgled
It looks like almost no one gets burglarized in England. The word is nearly nonexistent on the other side of the pond; burgled is certainly more common in America than its over-syllabized counterpart is in England.
I don’t know why Yanks use one word and Brits use the other, but I do know why I prefer burgled: it’s shorter, it makes as much sense, and I’m a long-time Anglophile. It’s mostly the Anglophilia, though.
Storytime pt. Two, or The Power of Stories and the Hidden Shape of Reality
June 10th, 2011 § 1 Comment
While sitting around the lunch table a couple of days ago, one of my coworkers mentioned that she had a professor who hated Disney stories with a passion. They’re too simplistic, the professor said, too black and white. They don’t represent the real world, which is much more complicated than good guys against bad guys.
I disagree — not that the real world (especially the people in it) is more complicated than good good guys and bad bad guys, but that such stories are too simplistic. If such stories are anything, they are too powerful.
I wrote in my previous post, “I think it’s important for Jack’s stories that the heroes be brave, the princesses beautiful, the dragons bad, and the danger real.” Add to my list, then, that the good guys be good and the bad guys be bad.
See, these stories aren’t really about the good guys and the bad guys. Everyone I know and everyone I know of has the potential for both good and evil. The good guys are capable of horrible atrocities, and the bad guys are capable of profound goodness and grace. It’s part of the human condition. This conundrum is answered, of course, in Christianity’s epic story of man created in the image of God (good) yet stained by sin (bad). It’s no surprise, then, that each of us is both good and bad. So far the professor is half right.
But the very best stories aren’t about good guys and bad guys; such characters aren’t intended to represent real people. The good guys in the tale are not a symbol of the guy so much as a symbol of the good; they represent qualities of goodness and badness, which makes them much more Real and True than the mistaken professor will allow. In A Landscape with Dragons, Michael D. O’Brien writes, “The meanings of symbols.. are a language about the nature of good and evil.”
These stories teach us that good and evil are real. They teach us the qualities of good and evil. They teach us that good can triumph over evil, and how to fight for it. To quote G.K. Chesterton’s famous line, “Fairy tales do not give a child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
The dragon, in other words is real, and we need stories to teach us what to do when we encounter him.
This is why stories are so powerful: they peel back the world and show us what lies beneath. They expose us to things that we cannot otherwise know precisely because our world is too convoluted to show us.
O’Brien explains this in some length:
All of us readily grasp the language of a parable drawn from the universal human story. The forms may be dressed in elaborate costumes and enact impossible dramas, but they enable the lover of tales to step outside of himself for a brief time to gaze upon his own disguised world. What is the value of this temporary detachment? It is an imaginative withdrawal from the tyranny of the immediate, the flood of words and sensory images that often overwhelm (and just as often limit) our understanding of the real world. A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world’s struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand for the first time his own worth. He is involved, not in a false or spurious world, but in the sub-creation of a more real world (though obviously not a literal one). I say more real because a good author clears away the rampant undergrowth of details that make up the texture of everyday life, that crowd our minds and blur our vision. He artfully selects and focuses so that we see clearly the hidden shape of reality.
I’ll be the first to admit that Disney too often encourages the rampant undergrowth of details, and that its presentation of good and evil often leave something to be desired. But the problem is not that Disney draws too sharp a line between good and evil, but that it so often blurs what should be clear. Only by giving children unmissable examples of good and evil, of black and white, can we give them the framework to navigate their relationships with gray people in a disingenuous world.
Jack will learn the contradictions and complexities of human nature soon enough. Until then, I’d rather give him stories that teach him about good and evil — teach him that evil is real and must be overcome and how to overcome it, especially when he finds that evil within himself — than those that give him a flaccid worldview which cannot come to terms with the presence of evil, and certainly cannot defeat it.
In part three, I’ll discuss the qualities of a Good Story.
Storytime pt. One, or Scrappy Jack and Books My Son Can’t Read Yet
May 30th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
There isn’t a boy in this world who can resist the siren call of adventure on the open sea. So when a pirate ship showed up in the harbor beyond the hill, the boy ran home, packed a bag, kissed his mother goodbye, and sprinted to the quay and up the gangplank, where he asked the weathered captain if he could join the crew. The captain, of course, said yes, and Scrappy Jack, at 2.5 years old, became the youngest pirate boy to ever sail with such a ragtag bunch of ne’er-do-wells as this.
Scrappy Jack has been sailing and pirating for well over a month now. And his stories — filled with mermaids and dragons and buried treasure and the smell of sea salt on the breeze — are already the stuff of legend (and a bedtime necessity) for my son, Regular Jack. I suspect that as Scrappy Jack grows up with Regular Jack his stories will become the sort of stories that I actually want to tell: mutiny and murder, cannonballs and bloodied cutlasses, stowaways and shanghaies, and terrors too dark to tell. But right now, they’re stories for a two-year-old who is scared of ghosts (or, as he calls them, “dhosts”) and are a little less exciting:
Scrappy Jack looked down into the water and saw a big shark with scary white teeth.
“Hello,” the shark said. “What’s your name?”
“Scrappy Jack,” said Scrappy Jack. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Archibald,” said the shark, “and I’m a nice shark. Will you be my friend?”
“Yes, Archibald,” Scrappy Jack said. “I will be your friend. It’s nice to meet you.”
See what I mean? That’s downright embarrassing, in an age-appropriate sort of way. Last night, Scrappy Jack fished a message in a bottle out of the foam and opened it to find a treasure map for a mysterious island. And the night before, a star fell into the ocean, so Scrappy Jack tied it to an arrow and shot it back into the sky. With his faithful dog, Luther, at his side and Sir Blunderbuss the Kindly Knight always ready to lend a hand, there’s no telling where Scrappy Jack will go.
It’s stories like these that make me think of the stories I read when I was a boy, and the stories I wish I had read. I cut my teeth on the Hardy Boys, devouring the adventures of those amateur detective brothers Frank and Joe Hardy as they traveled to Anchorage or Mexico in their teenage quest to fight crime. From there, I moved on to Great Illustrated Classics, a series of adaptations that distilled great literature into kid-friendly language and a picture on every other page. It was here that I first discovered the Great Stories: Last of the Mohicans, Around the World in 80 Days, Mutiny on the Bounty and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
After these, I eventually moved on to the full, unabridged versions of these books and others (I was especially captivated by the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson), and I can’t help but believe it shaped me. That’s why stories are so important, particularly the stories we tell our children: The stories that Jack hears will shape him. They’ll inform his worldview and his ideas of right and wrong; they’ll give him a guide to help him make decisions about behavior and belief. I plan to elaborate on this in another post or two — why stories are so important and powerful, and what stories we should be telling our kids — but for now it’s enough to say that I think it’s important for Jack’s stories that the heroes be brave, the princesses beautiful, the dragons bad, and the danger real.
For now, though, I’m stocking his bookshelf with volumes that he won’t be able to read until he’s older — including a few books I wish I had read when I was younger. He’s got Narnia and The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Hobbit, of course. And Treasure Island and The Riddle of the Sands and E.H. Gombrich’s delightful A Little History of the World. He has Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga, and both volumes of Fin’s Revolution by A.S. Peterson, which has an ending more sad and beautiful than the final pages of most any book I’ve read. I wish I had read Fiddler’s Gun and Fiddler’s Green when I was 12 years old; my own son will.
But Jack’s not 12; he’s 2. So we’ll stick with Scrappy Jack at bedtime for at least a little while. Tonight he just might slay a dragon. Or rescue a princess. Or both. Who can tell?
Check back soon for Storytime pt. Two, in which I will explore why stories are so powerful.
But for the grace of God
May 8th, 2011 § 2 Comments
The other day, while discussing some not unsubstantial family problems, someone asked me, “How is it, Josh, that you turned out the way you did?”
I assumed this was meant to reflect positively on me, and replied, “Only by the grace of God.”
In retrospect, my response sounds a little trite; it’s the sort of insincere response that people often give without thinking much about what exactly they’re saying. But I meant it. I mean it. I’m not sure of much in this life, but I am sure of this: I could very easily have walked a different path to end up in a much darker place and as a far worse person. And I’m not on my current path—a path of faith and hope and grace and life—because of anything I did. No, I’m walking this path in spite of anything I did. Left to myself, left to my pain, my past, my family, my circumstances and the natural consequences of my too often foolish decisions, I would not be here. But for the grace of God.
So I mean it when I say it. Which brings up another question: Why? Why have I experienced an inordinate amount of God’s grace? I’m not asking what exactly about me merits God’s grace, mind you. This is a question of what God intends me to do now that he’s been gracious. Surely God, who has given much grace, will require much in return.
In his recent, controversial biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas wrote:
This was a very radical and dramatic thing to say, but it is the perfectly logical conclusion to the idea that apart from God’s grace, one can do nothing worthwhile… What did it mean to be ‘grasped’ by God? And why did Bonhoeffer already begin to have a deep sense that God had ‘grasped him,’ had chosen him for something?
Now, by no means do I consider myself on a par with Bonhoeffer, a great theologian and brave man who was executed for his role in the attempted assassination of Hitler. But I ask myself the exact same questions. Why has God blessed me? Why has God given me so much grace? Why has God grasped me?
The answer is found, in part, in Genesis. A few days ago, my daily reading brought me to the story of Abram. More specifically, to God’s promise to Abram: “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (Gen. 12.2). Here, God’s blessing is intended that Abram might bless others. So on the basic level, it’s clear that I have been given much grace so that I, too, will bless others.
Of course, that still doesn’t tell me what it looks like, exactly. I’ll probably wrestle with that for the rest of my life. But I am increasingly convinced that, however God uses me, he will use me in three areas:
1. In my family.
2. In the local church.
3. In my vocation.
I’m still trying to figure out what each of these means, and I’m sure I’ll touch on each of them, to one degree or another, on this blog. But for now it’s enough. I’m satisfied knowing that God has grasped me and placed me here. And I feel the incredible weight of the burden—there is much responsibility here, and I do not want to fail.
On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure I want to succeed. It all sounds great when we say that God blesses us to bless others, but we mustn’t forget one of Bonhoeffer’s most famous lines: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” I believe Pastor Dietrich is right, and it scares the hell out of me.
In any case, onward.
When life hands you Lemonade
October 12th, 2010 § 7 Comments
When I pulled up to the parking lot of Engedi Church last night, I was surprised to see how many cars were there. Certainly more than I had expected for a Monday night — nearly as many as I find for a proper Sunday morning service. We had shown up at the abandoned strip mall-turned church building-turned temporary movie theater for a screening of Reparando, a documentary film about Guatemalans who are “embracing the pain of their past to repair the next generation.”
After watching the trailer, I had planned on seeing a powerful film. What I hadn’t planned on was seeing such a moving testimony about the power of the gospel to transform lives. The documentary follows the stories of Tita and Shorty, two Christian leaders who work passionately to improve their community, La Limonada (‘lemonade’). La Limonada is an asentamiento, an urban slum community that, if I remember correctly, is home to some 60,000 people. It’s the largest slum in Central America. This is a story that needs to be heard.
As much as I liked the film itself, though, I especially liked the Q&A that followed with the folks from Athentikos, who were very straightforward about the incarnational theology that motivates Tita, Shorty, and others like them. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” as John put it, so these people do the same: dwell among the destitution of La Limonada.
Here’s a synopsis of the film:
On the morning of June 18. 1954, the US CIA dropped leaflets in Guatemala City demanding the resignation of the president. Guatemala was ravaged by Civil War for the next 36 years. But hope is rising. In the midst of incredible odds, victims have been transformed into champions who willfully embrace the pain of their past to help repair the next generation. This is their story. Shorty – a former gang member who is now a pastor, and Tita – a woman who started a school in Guatemala’s most notorious slum have joined forces to repair La Limonada.
I’ll share a few more thoughts about the film in a moment, but first, the trailer:
There’s always a risk that people will watch these movies and feel guilty. Guilty about having too much or having a disposable income or having a standard of living that quite frankly looks like gaudy opulence when compared to a guy who has spent the past 35 years digging through raw sewage for scraps of metal to sell for a few bucks. But the point isn’t to feel guilty, and I don’t. I feel other things instead.
First, I feel blessed. Right now, as I type, Becca is laying the couch watching a popular show TV show that we recorded earlier on the DVR. It’s warm and cozy within these four walls. Jack is sleeping in the next room, safe from poverty and gangs and drugs. He’ll have three square meals tomorrow. We have two cars in the driveway. Our house is, to be completely honest, filled with things that we don’t need. They’re nice things, but rather than feeling guilty that I have them I feel immeasurably blessed. I don’t deserve my happy little life, but it’s mine and it’s good and I thank God for it every day. I shouldn’t have to trade it for poverty so I can feel good about myself.
Second, I feel responsible. I don’t feel responsible for the conditions in Guatemala (although the U.S. government had a big hand in creating the problems), but I do feel responsible to the people who live there, to those who live in similar conditions around the world, and (to a lesser extreme) to the needy in my own community. Because I have been blessed, I have the responsibility to use my resources to bless others.
I’m not very good at this. Or, in any case, I could certainly do better. The day before I watched Reparando, Brian preached about compassion, and one of his more painful statements — the one that made me look at Becca and wince — was, “If your giving does not cut into your lifestyle, you need to give more.” While I don’t feel guilty about my lifestyle, I also acknowledge that I can definitely do a better job with the gifts that I’ve been given.
It seems to me that this is the only appropriate response when faced with the injustices of this world: First, thankfulness that God is good, and second, action. It is, after all, the goodness of God that motivates people like Tito and Shorty to live and move and have their being in La Limonada; it is the goodness of God that should motivate each of us to bless others where and how we can.
If you’d like to give to organizations that directly impact the lives of the needy in Guatemala, you can do so through Lemonade International, the Reparando website, and Engedi Church.
Book review: Jayber Crow
September 29th, 2010 § 2 Comments
I picked up a copy of Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow on the recommendation of Andrew Peterson and some of the other folks at The Rabbit Room. It promised to fit into my recent exploration of agrarianism, simple living, and earthy Christianity — and in that regard I wasn’t disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed in most regards. The book was brilliant. It’s the closest thing to literature that I’ve read in some time (too much Hornby and Bryson and McCall Smith for me of late), and I’m glad I took the time to invest in this one. The writing is at once simple and profound, and it’s filled with snippets of Berry’s wisdom like: “Every shakeable thing has got to be shaken,” and “But here is maybe a harder thing that I have thought of at last: What if they endured and suffered through so many years together because, even failing each other, they loved each other?”
Here’s a longer selection of Berry’s prose, just for a better idea of what the novel is like:
I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready.
The whole book is like this: rhythmic and poetic and sorrowful and real and filled with simple wisdom. I could only hope to write this well. In short: buy it, read it, love it.
But that isn’t to say I thought it was perfect. No, I ran into a huge problem with the story at the end of Part II and the beginning of Part III — the climax. The point where the narrative reached its peak and the book took an inescapable turn. And I hated it.
[SPOILER ALERT — if you want to read Jayber Crow without having it ruined, stop now]
To sum up: Jayber has, through much of the book, suffered with the pangs of unrequited love. He is in love with another man’s wife (though it must be said that he has no designs on her), and at one point in the book he realizes that her husband is unfaithful to her.
“What I needed to know,” Jayber explains, “what I needed to become a man who knew, was that Mattie Chatham did not, by the terms of life in this world, have to have an unfaithful husband—that, by the same terms in the same world, she might have a faithful one.”
Later, Jayber has an actual conversation with himself:
‘You love her enough to be a faithful husband to her? Think what you’re saying, now. You’re proposing to be the faithful husband of a woman who is already married to an unfaithful husband?’
‘Yes. That’s why. If she has an unfaithful husband, then she needs a faithful one.’
‘A woman already married who must never know that you are her husband? Think. And who will never be your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you foreseen how this can end? Can You?’
‘No.’
‘Are you ready for this? Think, now.’
‘Yes, I am ready.’
‘Do you then, in love’s mystery and fear, give yourself to this woman to be her faithful husband from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death?’
‘I do. Yes! That is my vow.’
I’m all about unrequited love; it’s one of the most compelling, painful, romantic themes in life and in literature. So I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is that, in this passage at least, Jayber is clearly delusional because he isn’t, in any meaningful sense of the word, Mattie’s husband.
He loves her: fine. He can’t betray that love by being with another woman: fine. He spends the rest of his life in love with a woman he can’t have: fine. But to pretend to marry her? Not so much.
On the one hand, marriage is about love and romance; but on the other occasionally more important hand, it’s institutional, contractual, legal, and mutual. Jayber may love Mattie, but he cannot marry her.
To be fair, Jayber acknowledges that “Maybe I had begun my journey drunk and ended it crazy,” but it isn’t as if Jayber is an unreliable narrator. Instead, he seems more often to serve as Berry’s eyes and mouth, passing along his understated philosophies of community and economy. We’re asked to trust Jayber throughout the novel — or at least to learn with him as he becomes wise — and this is the one point where I can’t agree with him. Unfortunately, it seems to be the point on which the entire novel hangs.
So, it took me several chapters to get over Jayber’s selfish, masochistic vow to marry an already married woman without ever really marrying her. And, in some respects, it tainted the rest of the book for me. In many respects it ruined the ending.
Thankfully it didn’t ruin the whole book. I still enjoyed the writing and voice and most all of the philosophy that drove the 360+ pages. I liked the understated way that Berry used fiction to lay out his beliefs without ever sounding preachy, and he’s got me pretty well convinced that he’s right about a lot of things. He just happens to be wrong about marriage and, to a lesser degree, about love.
Introducing: 11th Hour Ale
September 18th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of hops—and wort—and homebrewed beer—
Of barley malt—and yeast.”
You’re right — the Walrus never said any of that. But no one cares about cabbages and kings, right? Not when my first attempt at homebrewing is sitting in the fridge, waiting for me.
And so, in honor of the occasion, I present to you, the faithful few, my inaugural live blogging endeavor:
9:51 — I’m looking at a bottle of beer. I’ve done this before. Looked at bottles of beer, I mean. Full, then with middling amounts of ale, then eventually (sadly) empty. But I’ve never looked at my beer before.
Truth to tell, I’m more than a little nervous about this. There were a few glitches in the brewing process, most important of which was the fact that the thermometer that came with the kit only reads temperatures up to 78˚ or so, and I had to pitch the yeast at 90˚ — but whatever, right? Oh, and I had trouble with my hydrometer, and I let the beer sit in the fermenting bucket for an extra month before I found the time to bottle it. But all that aside, there’s no reason this beer won’t taste awesome, is there?
9:56 — I’ve got my Craftsman bottle opener in hand. It’s the only Craftsman tool I own, and I’m somehow proud of that. I don’t even know if my beer carbonated correctly. Will I hear that satisfying hiss when I pry the cap off the bottle?
9:58 — Yup, it was there. Good. I may be able to pull this off.
9:59 — The first whiff. It smells like I imagine a pale ale would smell after it’s been sitting in a bucket in my basement for six weeks, and then in the paint cabinet after that. I’m getting some pretty strong hints of yeast, though.
10:01 — Into the pint glass you go. The bottle says “Good-good-good-good-good,” as it pours. I hope it isn’t lying to me.
10:03 — There’s a bit too much head to it as I pour. I’ve got to learn how to do that properly. Better let it settle for a minute. The color, though, is nice. Fairly clear, but a little more on the golden side of yellow than the pale side.
10:04 — Alright, that’s enough of that. The head’s gone down, and I can see a bit of sediment from the bottom of the bottle resting in the foam. Oh well. Bottoms up.
10:06 — Ahhhhh. It’s not the best pale ale I’ve ever had, but it’ll do. I can definitely taste more of the yeast than I would like, and it isn’t quite as smooth as some of the craft beer I’ve actually been buying in stores, but it’s good. All in all, I’ll give it a strong B–.
10:10 — I think I could get used to this. I don’t really have a choice: there are 48 more bottles in the basement.
