Monday, 12 January 2009

  • Authoritarians

    Perhaps it is true that in matters of culture the Church always ought to define itself in contra mundum, but I find the paradox too strict to bear; that while in ages of inequality the Church exalts woman to a place of spiritual equality, yet in ages of equality the Church ought to subordinate woman's very soul to men; that, rather than being the picture of moderation in all things, the church should rather seek the extreme opposite of all things worldly, to perfect the Manichean dialectic...

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

  • Modern Guilt

    In his song "Modern Guilt," Beck sings:

    Modern guilt, I'm stranded with nothing
    Modern guilt, I'm under lock and key
    Misapprehension
    Is turning into convention
    Don't know what I've done but I feel ashamed

    This is an excellent diagnosis of the pervasive sense of guilt in our culture. Guilt kills joy and actually prevents people from making a positive difference. We feel we can never do enough to overcome our guilt--and we can't! So most of us give up and harden our hearts, and even those who don't or can't cope in this way become more and more wracked with guilt the more they try to fix the many problems of our society. I believe guilt is even more effective than fear in resisting humanitarian social change. Even in the absence of actual opposition, people doubt their own ability or motives because of real or assumed guilt.

    But it's not just a modern problem. It's part of the human experience, and it's real. The problem is that we misinterpret guilt and try to get rid of it in the wrong ways.

    St. Paul offers the right diagnosis:

    ...just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law...

    The problem with guilt is that it's real and we can't get rid of it--except through Jesus Christ, who gave himself so that we would not have to suffer under guilt.

    ...the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

    Once a person has been freed by Jesus Christ from the power of sin, the condemning voice of the law, and the reality of guilt, there's absolutely nothing for him or her to be guilty about. He or she is then truly and perfectly free to do good in the world for the sake of Christ.

    Romans 5: 12-13, 15-16
    Currently
    Modern Guilt
    By Beck
    Modern Guilt
    see related

Tuesday, 02 December 2008

  • From "Wilderness"

    Marilynne Robinson. The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought. New York: Picador 2005.
     
    Unless we can reestablish peace and order as values, and learn to see our own well-being in our neighbor's prosperity, we can do nothing at all for the rain forests and the koala bears. To pretend we can is only to turn our backs on more painful and more essential problems. It is deception and self-deception. It stirs a sad suspicion in me that we are of the Devil's party.
     
    I think we are desperately in need of a new, chastened, self-distrusting vision of the world, an austere vision that can postpone the outdoor pleasures of cherishing exotica, and the first-world pleasures of assuming we exist to teach reasonableness to the less fortunate, and the debilitating pleasures of imagining that our own impulses are reliably good. I am bold enough to suggest this because, to this point, environmental successes quite exactly resemble failure. What have we done for the whale, if we lose the sea? If we lose the sea, how do we mend the atmosphere? What can we rescue out of this accelerating desperation to sell -- forests and weapons, even children -- and the profound deterioration of community all this indicates? Every environmental problem is a human problem. Civilization is the ecology being lost. We can do nothing that matters if we cannot encourage its rehabilitation. Wilderness has for a long time figured as an escape from civilization, and a judgment upon it. I think we must surrender the idea of wilderness, accept the fact that the consequences of human presence in the world are universal and ineluctable, and invest our care and hope in civilization, since to do otherwise risks repeating the terrible pattern of enmity against ourselves, which is truly the epitome and paradigm of all the living world's most grievous sorrows.
     
    (pp. 253-54. The last two paragraphs of Robinson's essay entitled Wilderness.)

Monday, 06 October 2008

  • Reasons to vote Democratic

    1. The government knows better what to do with my paycheck.
    2. Right and wrong is whatever the government says it is.
    3. Free speech is fine as long as it doesn't offend anyone.
    4. All we need to do to stop terrorism is be nice to terrorists.
    5. Why should I be concerned about millions of at-risk babies as long as there are criminals facing execution?
    6. I'm sure climatologists can predict a long-term 2° increase in global temperature even though they can't predict next week's weather.
    7. Business owners can't be trusted to use their profits responsibly--but the government can.
    8. Lobbyists and special interests can be trusted for impartiality and having the best interest of the people at heart.
    9. The government can defend me well enough--I don't need to own or know how to use firearms.
    10. I can marry whomever or whatever I want.
    11. I hate thinking for myself.
    Currently Listening
    Oh Mercy
    By Bob Dylan
    Most of the time
    see related

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

  • Adventures in cooking.

    I'm mostly just posting to get that silly mailbox post bumped down the page.

    Today I made dinner, which isn't all that unusual, except that I had the opportunity to plan ahead and so was able to pull off something real nice.

    Vegetable Quesadillas with Balsamic Sauce

    Slice and dice:
    1 medium onion
    1 bell pepper
    2 green squashes
    A head of broccoli
    2 heaping tbsp. diced garlic

    Sautee' these vegetables separately (because some take longer than others). They should be thoroughly browned but not to the point of being burnt.

    Combine vegetables.

    On a hot and lightly greased griddle, briefly heat a flour tortilla. Sprinkle cheddar cheese on it evenly, but not too thickly. When the cheese has just begun to melt, add vegetable medley to one half of the tortilla. After the cheese has melted evenly, fold the tortilla to enclose the vegetables. Continue to cook the quesadilla until the outside is somewhat toasted and it looks hot.

    MEANWHILE: the sauce.

    Combine 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add about 3/4 cup of finely diced onions. When onions are very brown, add 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. Cook for a few minutes. Then add a cup of heavy cream. When mixture simmers, add half a cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and stir until melted. Take off the heat.

    Serve quesadillas with sauce over them.

Wednesday, 30 July 2008

  • Coincidence?

    A couple of days ago a flier was distributed in the neighborhood. It was very clever. It seemed at first glance to be from the Home Owners' Association, although it wasn't, and it stated that the next day this business would be replacing mailboxes in the neighborhood--and would replace yours also for a reasonable price.

    Well when we all left for work the next morning, someone had taken a baseball bat to the majority of the mailboxes in the neighborhood. It was impressive just how thorough they had been. Ours got dented, but it was sturdier than others. The folks with armored mailboxes didn't have a dent or a scratch.

Sunday, 20 July 2008

  • The Dark Knight: A courageous film

    As a student of political theory, I was impressed by the way The Dark Knight approached many critical dilemmas of human political existence. What price can be placed on the value of human life? Is it ever right to commit the injustice of killing one man so that others may live? How must governments and citizens respond to terrorists who hold their lives--and their moral values--hostage?

    The Dark Knight approaches these questions practically, and answers them without simplifying them. There are no perfect solutions, and often perfect justice is unattainable in a world of unjust men. But this movie teaches us to hope that people can be inspired to act in a decent and even altruistic way.

    A strong political subtext was also inevitable, given the themes of terrorism and citizens who are weary of a constant struggle with evil. This film courageously insists that even in a world weary of conflict, evil must be opposed at any price.
    Currently Reading
    Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying (The Ethics of Everyday Life)
    see related

Thursday, 26 June 2008

  • ROFL!

    Bill of Rights or Bill of Goods?

    By JAMES TARANTO

    "The [Supreme] Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons," Justice John Paul Stevens writes in a brave dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller, the just-decided case striking down the federal district's near-total ban on firearms.

    Stevens is right. Who are they trying to kid? And yet a razor-thin majority of the deeply divided justices expect the American people to swallow this hoax. Supporters of this so-called right to keep and bear arms claim that it dates to 1791. (That faux precision is a nice touch--not 1790 or 1795 but 1791.) A bunch of dead white males are supposed to have gotten together and assembled something called a "bill of rights." The more extreme exponents of this view claim that the so-called bill limits the tools available to elected officials not just with regard to firearms but a whole host of other things: "freedom of religion," "freedom of speech," "cruel and unusual punishment," etc., etc.


    Read the whole article here.

Saturday, 14 June 2008

  • Some related verses.

    And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?"
    (Job 1:8)

    Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
    (Job 1:20-22)

    Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
    (Job 2:9-10)

    "'See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
    (Deu 32:39)

    I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior. I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and I am God. Also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?"
    (Isa 43:11-13)

    I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things.
    (Isa 45:7)

    And the LORD said to Job: "Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it."
    (Job 40:1-2)

    Then Job answered the LORD and said: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
    (Job 42:1-3)

    Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him. And each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold.
    (Job 42:11)

    In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will...
    (Eph 1:11)

Friday, 13 June 2008