Musings

INTENTION “I meant to.” “I was going to.” “I wish I would have.” If you’re like me, those phrases make me wince. I have said them too often. Whatever the situation, whomever the person, whichever issue, I must make a choice, to do. Action must follow decision, set by intention. Call a friend. Set a lunch. Send a “Thank you.” Visit your parents. The investment of a few moments of time will cement a lifetime of friendships. Life is short and opportunities are few. Make deliberation, deliberate.

PRESIDENT’S DAY should cause Americans to be thankful for the U.S. Constitution. Limits on presidential powers were in part born of concern over human nature. Usurpation by any person or group could eventually destroy a nation. The unique “separation of powers” approach to authority was intended to create governmental boundaries. American citizens would do well to consider the importance of our founding documents. If nothing else, we can find common ground in acknowledging that the many should be protected from the power of the few.

ELIMINATION Yesterday in class I was encouraging students to ask questions of those who disagree with their point of view. In social media world, it is good to ask at least two: (1) Why am I always hearing about ___? (2) Why do I never hear about ___? We should want to hear competing truth claims. But if one side is never heard, there is no competition; only elimination.

I AM CONVINCED that the care you show people for their ideas, their point of view, will win a hearing for your ideas, your point of view. There is no need for anger in disagreement nor do you have to capitulate your strongly held beliefs. What’s necessary? Attentiveness. Generosity. Kindness. Winsomeness. Discernment. Prudence. Self-control.

I AM ALSO CONVINCED that communicating truth is essential in the face of claims that oppose my own. Our culture views truth as relative, often left up to individual decision for what is and is not “truth.” But I am also aware that even our desire to talk about facts, truths, or accuracy demands a standard. I am glad to have discussions with anyone whose views of “right” differ from my own. But the only reason we can even have the conversation is that we both know a standard exists.

SERIOUS I may believe that my work is critical, crucial, or important – it is one way to look at the word “serious.” But my work may also be consequential, its impact far-reaching – another way to view what I do as “serious.” It is the second meaning in Proverbs 3:35 that bears consideration. “The wise inherits honor.” Esteem and respect are given, a possession passed along – an inheritance – as a deserved consequence of an upright life. We should all be so “serious.”

RESTRAINT Sometimes I have to bite my tongue until it bleeds. There are occasions where I would love to say what I’m thinking. But Proverbs reminds me “whoever restrains his lips is prudent” (10:19) and “he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding” (17:27). A phrase I heard constantly in my childhood has a similar (though negative) suggestion, “Better to be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.”

RESPONSE MODE. I constantly feel the pressure. The latest ‘happening’ draws my attention. The current conversation beckons my participation. Situational politics attracts my desire to speak out. Yes, I believe I bear responsibility to bring true Truth to cultural-political concerns. But staying on mission, on task, fulfilling the role I’ve been given for my time, place, and giftedness makes me fight the fracturing nature of response mode to maintain the calling.

GOOD & BAD Do not be too quick to label something “good” or “bad.” The end of something may matter more than its beginning. [Ecclesiastes 7:8]

Musings over the Week of October 7-14

JUSTICE There can be no peace without justice and there can be no justice without righteousness. A standard for justice arises from a Transcendent source. So, justice is impossible if it’s left up to just us. If there is no justice after life, there can be no absolute, lasting justice in this life. The Christian must have both a short-term and a long-term response to injustice. Indignation about and participation in just causes is a proper, personal response to injustice. Yet, the only ultimate redemption available is the unadulterated innocence of Jesus’ sacrifice. [Prepping for teaching Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:3 this Sunday.]

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE “The Maid” will rip out your soul and return it to you splintered. For those women who have lived through DV and for those of us (as children) who looked for a cupboard to crawl into to duck flying projectiles, be wary. The action on screen, mirrors reality. “The Maid” is hard to watch and you must not look away. I found myself experiencing flashbacks to the awfulness of those days. I cannot recommend this limited series highly enough nor can I caution DV survivors loud enough. And for those onlookers, let your soul be splintered; learn how to care for mothers and their children in distress, for they too are “widows” (James 1.27). https://youtu.be/tGtaHcqsSE8

I am a BIG fan of Ray Bradbury and the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and it’s director Dr. Jason Aukerman . Come see the exhibit at Campus Center IUPUI

SUFFERING. We contend with awful personal or family situations, hidden from public view. Our pain is real. But no one knows. Our anguish is constant. And we struggle to cope. What we don’t want to hear, but we often find to be true, is that good comes from bad. Ask, “What do I have, what do I know, that could be beneficial to another?” Take 10 minutes to read this story. Note both the heartache and the hope, the facts and the faith. https://www.theatlantic.com/…/engineers…/620172/ [Don’t miss the power of story and a book our family loves: “Ada Twist, Scientist”]

FREEDOM OF SPEECH As an academic, I speak loudly and often for freedom in general, freedom of speech in particular, and viewpoint diversity in the academe. [I am a member of the Heterodox Academy ] The Dorian Abbot story should not happen in academia. But it does. Often. And most of the time, in one direction. Please read this plea from a University of Chicago scientist asking the question, “What kind of country do I want my first child to be born into?” Thanks to Princeton University and Robert P. George for extending the speaking engagement to Professor Abbot, after @MIT cancelled the event. https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/mit-abandons-its-mission-and-me

“LEFT” AS AUTHORITARIAN It was interesting to find this article in The Atlantic. While I appreciate the evenhandedness of the magazine to explore a full range of ideas, my thoughts were not about “Left” or “Right” but about a universal principle. The study here referenced “a shared psychological core.” As a theologian I would call this “our shared inherent corruption,” or more simply, “sin.” We are all susceptible to a desire for control. We are all quite capable of becoming authoritarian monsters. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychological-dimensions-left-wing-authoritarianism/620185/

MUSINGS the week of 25 July 2021

26 July 2021 Beware, be aware of our UNCONSCIOUS. How have we been influenced by groups, organizations, institutions, or communities? How do our views of life intersect with how we have been trained, mentored, educated, or directed? How do movies, music, art, or reading mold our minds? How does the time, place, culture, or context of our person subtly transform us? How do our emotions, will, or the threads of our interior person impact our motivations and decisions? We must not kid ourselves. The race car driver’s uniform has nothing on us. We wear the advertisements of one hundred influencers, we bear the marks of their influence in one hundred ways. Do not think that we stand unsullied by the marketing from the latest logo. If we want to be our own person, we must first answer “Who owns our person?”

28 July 2021 UNTETHERED When I was a boy the game “tether ball” was popular on the playground. A tall metal pole was sunk into the ground rising six feet or more (depending on the age of the children expected at any given park). A rope was attached to the top of the pole, a volleyball size leather ball hung at its end. Two players would stand opposite each other. The point of the game was to hit the ball with one’s hand or fist in one direction, wrapping it tight around the pole. Keeping the ball from being returned (hit in the opposite direction) was the game’s strategy. Depending on the skill of the players, tetherball could be quite the display of physical exertion.

It strikes me now, as I look back on my childhood, the importance of the pole. Everyone who played the game took for granted the immovable object. The game could not be played without it. Were the pole to move, leaning to one side or the other, it would mean that the game would be patently unfair; one person gaining advantage over the other with the easier ability to hit the ball. Were the pole to wobble, stability in the game itself would be lost. All the fun of competition would be removed. A backyard game epitomizes to me the necessity of structure, of permanence.

Unthinkingly, we all depend on the constants of life. Everything from a stop-sign to a driver’s license, to state laws, to police officers stopping speeders is the dependability we have come to expect while driving a car. Permanence creates structure giving boundaries allowing for constants that permit us to live our lives with the unconscious knowledge of some law embedded in our lived lives. Of course, there are some behind the wheel who exercise their autonomy, racing their vehicles in ways that break the law.

But what if there was no law? Perhaps the better question is, “What if there was no permanent thing to which we could confidently assume provided stability in life?” Tetherball is a useless game without an immovable pole. Now, imagine living life untethered from a fixed moral grounding.

29 July 2021 MR. JONES An orange is the only color in the scene. On a train bound for the hinterlands of the Ukraine, Gareth Jones sits among starving peasants. Stirrings of hunger prompt Mr. Jones to reach in his satchel for an orange. Every eye in the train car focuses on that piece of fruit. Mr. Jones, at this point in his journey, is unaware of the starvation being imposed on Ukrainians by Joseph Stalin. One orange images a story Mr. Jones must tell. One courageous man. One cadre of self-serving Western journalists, covering the truth by silencing their pens. One megalomaniac dictator. One nation on the brink of starvation. One movie that will smash vapid idealistic visions of communism. If you want to know why history matters in the present, please watch Mr. Jones. [Streaming on Hulu]

30 July 2021 MARKERS Signposts along the highway point out directions, distance, the next gas station, not to mention the names of towns along the route. We would be lost on the road were we not following points on a map. GPS does the work for us, but it too depends on uploaded details on the web. Ads for groceries tell us what is on sale. News explains the latest events. Weather forecasts tell me to bring an umbrella. And students know if they can take a class from me, my name attached to an online listing. There are other kinds of markers, unseen, yet of absolute necessity.

We depend on RELATIONSHIPS which assume a personableness in the universe. If we are nothing but accidents and the earth an evolutionary ball spinning in space, there is no “personal” without a Personal God. We may not believe in this God but there is a dependence upon intimacy that we have long forgotten or taken for granted. It may not bother us, indeed, nothing will necessarily change in our world. But the words “person,” “personal,” or “personality” are rendered null and void in a purely naturalistic, materialistic universe.

We depend on BELONGING to a community, family, or group, the presumption of a world patterned after the Personal and also Triune God. The three Persons of the Trinity is reflected in the way the world works, its coherence, its synthesis. The farmer grows a crop which the trucker takes to market which is sold by the grocer which product finds its way into our pantry. We assume the organizational structure of a beehive, ocean currents, and the functioning systems of the human body without thought to how everything fits together. A universe devoid of a Triune Sustainer is bound not by order but by chaos.

We depend on COVENANTS, a result of universal commitments, born of this Personal, Triune, Eternal God. Covenants can be time-sensitive, creating conditions: if you do this for me, I will do this for you. But the unconditional covenant of a personal relationship, say, in marriage, comes out of eternity: no matter what, I will do this for you. Sure, covenants are broken all the time. Indeed, the conditional model, say, in written contracts, can be disputed creating a litigious society. But why make a commitment in the first place? What draws us toward a desire for longevity in loyalty? We mirror the eternal, our want of “always” and “forever.” These desires are not born of a God-less, Designer-less universe. Were it so, our calls for kindness, love, or sensitivity would only be the stuff of dreams.

I travel some of the same routes to employment or family on a regular basis. I have become accustomed to highway details along the way that I take for granted. The markers along my path have become second nature to me. I presume them to be true. And then I think of this life and the signposts along the human highway.

Mark writes daily on social media platforms including WarpandWoof.org and MarkEckel.com via Facebook.

COLERIDGE on Transcendence, RILEY on Racial Attitudes, and Lloyd-Jones on Pastoral Attacks

Coleridge (poet) and his theory of ideas. EXERPT

Coleridge similarly sided with the supporters of the spiritual and transcendent against those who maintained the reality of the material and immanent only. In this way, he took part in the ‘Pantheism Controversy’ that raged primarily across German philosophy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Coleridge argued for the transcendence of God rather than holding, with Baruch Spinoza, that God is a wholly immanent power identified with the natural world. Characteristically of Coleridge, however, he didn’t dismiss Spinozistic arguments, but adopted parts of them to fit within what he saw as a wider whole. ‘Spinoza’s is … true philosophy,’ he wrote, ‘but it is the Skeleton of the Truth.’ It needed to be fleshed out in order to let ‘the dry Bones live’.

Coleridge’s thinking provides a bridge between materialist and dynamic views in the sciences

This inclusive attitude is one of the strengths of Coleridge’s approach, which grew from his celebrated powers of synthesis.

Jason Riley “Race Relations in America are Better than Ever” (WSJ) EXCERPT

What explains the wide perception of racial retrogression at a time when surveys show that racial attitudes and behaviors have never been better? Mr. Kaufmann cites ideology, partisanship and the media’s ability “to frame events and social trends.” The political left has a stake in overstating both the existence and effects of racism so that it can advocate for more and bigger programs to combat it. And the media has long been willing to do the left’s ideological bidding. Social media allows for wide publicity of statistically rare incidents that are in reality getting even rarer, giving the impression that isolated and infrequent events “happen all the time.”

 Martin Lloyd Jones Confronted a Negative Pastor

“What I say to that is this: I am a physician but there is such a thing as ‘a surgical mentality,’ or of becoming what is described as ‘knife-happy.’ I agree, there are some cases where you have got to operate, but the danger of the surgeon is to operate immediately. He thinks in terms of operating. Never have an operation without having a second opinion from a physician.”

“Well,” he queried, “what about this: you remember Paul in Galatians 2? He had to withstand Peter to the face. He did not want to do it. Peter was an older apostle, a leader and so on. Paul did it very reluctantly, but he had to do it for the sake of the truth. I am in exactly that position. What do you say to that?”

“I would say this,” I responded, “that the effect of what Paul did was to win Peter round to his position and make him call him ‘our beloved brother Paul.’ Can you say the same about the people whom you attack?”

Dr. Lloyd-Jones became more firmly convinced of the way in which an orthodox ministry can be spoilt by a wrong spirit and by wrong methods.

“Who watches the watchmen?” is a classic question advanced in the “Watchmen” graphic novel series. Similar concerns have been advanced by great sci-fi authors such as Bradbury, Asimov, Orwell, and Huxley. One of the current watchmen in our culture is James O’Keefe of Project Veritas. His Twitter account has been removed after the undercover expose of a CNN director (projectveritas.com). The arbitrary removal of a voice from social media (Twitter has vague “rules” and “standards” without so much as an explanation of how those rules and standards are applied) should matter to everyone. [The “Twitter is a business” trope is a vain attempt to cover the obvious bias of such actions; I have spoken to these ideas in past writings here and elsewhere.]

Now some might think, “Good enough for him! His kind of ‘lies,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘whistle-blowing’ need to be shut down!” I say to us all, *beware.* Every time you utter such thinking not only do you marginalize another person’s voice, not only do you become an arbiter of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ but you begin to limit your own FREEDOM OF SPEECH. [I have made it clear from the outset of my social media platforms that I will always speak on behalf of pro-life and pro-freedom.] The narrowing of others’ voices will someday narrow your own.

Perhaps this has already occurred for you. You find yourself careful not to speak to certain topics or utter certain opinions because you are afraid of the blowback at your workplace or in the marketplace. [I am not speaking here of the classic biblical rejoinder “be quick to listen and slow to speak” James 1.19.] Ask yourself,

(1) Do I self-censor because I am in any way fearful of what others may think or say about me?

(2) Do I have no concern for others, for their point of view being heard?

(3) Do I care about knowing when journalistic bias may be true of my favorite news source?

I say to all of us, if we do not care, if we do not speak up, if we do not defend the rights of others to speak their perspective, it may not be long before our voices will be silenced for standing up for free speech. And, again, be wary that your views of what may be ‘misinformation’ may itself be based on misinformation. “Who watches the watchmen?” is a question that should concern us all.

Posted on my Facebook page, 16 April 2021