Philip Yancey and Paul Brand on love.

Philip Yancey contributes his usual thoughtful and probing work to our new book, Faith Seeking Understanding, in chapter one, entitled "A Doctor' Defense of Pain."  The doctor referred to is Dr. Paul Brand, whose life is one of the inspirations for this book.  The second half of the chapter includes some of Yancey's on-going conversation with Dr. Brand.  In this post I quote two of Yancey's queries about Christian charity, specifically about the danger of "compassion fatigue" in a global media market, and Dr. Brand's responses. 

 

Yancey: Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Modern media has made that command infinitely more complex and burdensome.  Because of television, the whole world is our neighbor.  On evening news programs we watch the effect of famines, wars, and epidemics.  How can we possibly respond to all of these disasters?

Brand: You can’t, not in the sense in which Jesus meant it, at least.  You must remember the context in which Jesus was speaking.  He meant family, nearby villages, Capernaum.  Jesus healed people, but in a very localized area.  In his lifetime he did not affect the Celts or the Chinese or the Aztecs.  And I think an intolerable burden of guilt such as you describe merely numbs us and keeps us from responding.  We must have a sense of touch with those we love.

Westerners, with our opulent life styles, are very sensitive on this point.  But I really don’t believe that children born in Bangladesh amid poverty suffer all that much more than a spoiled child in a rich country.  In The Cave, Plato pictured people being born and brought up entirely in darkness, and as a result their range of appreciation of beauty, light, and joy was very different from that of a person outside.  When they come up to the light, dazzled, they learn to appreciate a new range of happiness.  This, to me, is a deep perception of the human spirit.  A child develops a norm, above which is happiness and below which is suffering.

U2, Loftus?

John Loftus is to arguments against Christianity what Ronald McDonald is to hamburgers.  The quality may not be very high, but given mass-production techniques, the quantity is unprecedented.  Maybe that's what his cowboy hat is all about -- like Colonel Sander's beard, or Ronald McDonald's clown costume.  Billions and billions served! 

"Thousands and thousands
served."

This morning he's come up with a new one: the "You Too, Fallacy."  The tomato is oozing off of the bun, and the hamburger patty is off-center, and the katsup machine misfired -- in short, the argument is a bit of a mess. I'm not even sure whether John is saying I commit the fallacy, or that I criticize someone else for committing it -- so feel free to read it for yourself.  Loftus also objects when someone points out that his own faith of Secular Humanism fails his "Outsider Test for Faith," far more callamitously than Christianity does.  But this morning, the matters Loftus has on his mind are the "Problem of Pain," and the use of so-called "faith-based reasoning."  (Here's where I embrace the U2 fallacy with open arms -- atheists do and must think by means of faith, and without faith, cannot reason.  All reasoning is based on faith, in the Christian sense, as Descartes and the latest Matrix film show with equal clarity.  Unless you trust your mind, you cannot reason. Unless you trust your senses and other people, for good reasons, of course, as the Bible demands, you cannot use reasoning to learn much of anything.)

Yellowstone bubbles and flows.

In early August, John, James and I spent two days in Yellowstone -- Saturday, entering from the Northwest, and driving up along the Madison River (pictured here).  This river was beautifully clear, reeds growing in it, and a bed with soft rocks that made it nicely wadable.  The water was warm enough downstream (thanks to all the thermal springs) to swim comfortably, even at 6000 feet above sea level. 


Bison coming over the hill -- a noisy animal, with
a more intelligent-sounding language than cattle.

Where were the animals?  We did see some elk
the first day -- but then, whole herds of elk are our neighbors back home in the Snoqualmie Valley.  Our first "new" animal came in a valley a few dozen miles north of Yellowstone Lake -- these herds of bison, some of them right along the road.  Then just after that we encountered a lonely coyote, hunting in the sagebrush on the other side of the road. 

Where's that rabbit?



Near Old Faithful.

 

My last visit to Yellowstone, when I was a high school myself, ended when I ran through a plate glass window in Old Faithful lodge, not seeing the glass, and in a hurry to find my parents so they could open the door and I could fetch my camera.  What rare natural wonder did I want to take a picture of?  The president of the United States, and not even a very good president -- yes, Jimmy Carter. After I broke tendons and nerves and the doctor dug the glass -- most of the glass -- out of my right hand and forehead and leg, the rest of the trip was a bit of a rush.  We stopped to photograph moose off the road, to walk around Mammoth hot spring -- but it was a bit hard to handle things well, also I yelled at night quite a bit. 

This time we had time to stop and take lots of pictures, hike up the Tetons and to a waterfall in Yellowstone surrounded by little puffs of thermal mist, look for animals, swim in two rivers and two lakes, and generally see more of this magnificent bit of creation. 

John is off to college now, so I'm glad we had the chance to take this trip together.  I also had the chance to speak at First Presbyterian Church in Idaho Falls, spend a couple days at the home of the Spielmans, and meet some nice people at the church, several of them scientists working at a nearby federal nuclear facility.


Now why do they call it Yellowstone?  And why do people come here from
around the world? 

Why do atheists spell "God" with a little "g?"

I had a conversation today with a man we will call M, posting in the comment section for an Amazon review of our e-book, True Reason, which came up with the crocuses this spring.  (And whose cellulose leaves are due to drift down in physical form this fall.)  He admitted, in his initial post, that he was confused by a popular argument that God is the necessary source of morality.  Four rounds of back-and-forth showed that he really was confused, and seemed to want to draw others into that state as well.  But ironically, from all the confusion a measure of clarity seemed to emerge on a question I've often asked in recent years: why have so many Internet atheists taken up spelling "God" with a small "g" lately?

Why Brian McLaren is wrong about Islam and Christianity

CNN recently posted an editorial by Brian McLaren on a sensitive subject, the "bad blood" between Christians and Muslims.  He seemed to argue that American Christians are as much to blame, or to blame in much the same way, as those radical Muslims with whom we are at presently so publicly at loggerheads.  And indeed, among the thousands of comments beneath his post, appeared some that did seem to imbibe something of the paranoia of the crowds in Cairo:

"What instigated the attack on the Twin Towers, Flight 93 and the Pentagon?  And what drives today's 24/7 mosque/imam-planned acts of terror and horror? The koran, Mohammed's book of death for all infidels and Muslim domination of the world by any means.  Muslims must clean up this book removing said passages admitting that they are based on the Gabriel myth and therefore obviously the hallucinations and/or lies of Mohammed. Then we can talk about the safety and location of mosques and what is taught therein.  Until then, no Muslim can be trusted anytime or anywhere . . . "

This is, as I said, a sensitive issue, and Christian scholars who are friends disagree profoundly about it.  Sometimes I find myself in the middle of the firefight.  For instance, I found Don Richardson's Secrets of the Koran a bit over the top, but then wrote a long letter to Christianity Today defending Richardson against Warren Larson's critique in that magazine, which seemed even more over-the-top.  And Miriam Adeney, who contributed a wonderful chapter on world religions to our new book, Faith Seeking Understanding, strongly disagrees with Don on this, too. 

So let's examine McLaren's post with a view not to a muddle through the middle, nor even to resolve all conflicts -- we don't need to agree about everything -- but to at least frame the issues a little more reasonably.    

2nd Most Popular: Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts

"Read it!  Give it to friends!"

*****

(152 + / 5 -)

We continue our countdown of my most popular and unpopular reviews on Amazon.  I think I warned you, already, that my counting may be a little off.  I may try to sneak a few extra reviews in.  But for now, Eternity in Their Hearts is my second most-popular review on Amazon.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  For the moment. 

2016 election cancelled!

Update: the 2016 election has been cancelled, except in southern states.  Western states are due to be auctioned off to settle the National Debt on January 31st, 2013, with China and Japan the leading contenders for the choice states, and India a dark horse.  New York City has been bought by a Saudi Prince as a theme park: the New England states will be paved for parking.  Midwest states have petitioned Canada for admission.  The District of Columbia will secede as an independent kingdom, with five royal golf courses in Virginia and Maryland (this took some negotiating, and repeated Air Force flyovers) to settle the Royal Nerves after the close reelection victory. 

St. Anselm: Climbing by Faith

Note: I'll be posting exerts from our new book, Faith Seeking Understanding, off and on over the following weeks.  I hope you enjoy these passages, find them tantalizing, go and buy a copy here for yourself, then buy another one for your best friend for Christmas!  This first passage is from my introduction. 

“Faith seeking understanding” was the motto of St. Anselm, remembered today as a kindly reformer, philosopher, and gadfly, an 11^th Century Archbishop of Canterbury who was exiled by two English kings.  But long before such career advances and recessions, Anselm was a climber of mountains.  What Anselm meant by “faith seeking understanding,” and how this Medieval relic of an idea can transform the world today, was foreshadowed in his experiences growing up in the Alps of what is now northern Italy.

The city of Aosta, Anselm’s hometown, rests in a narrow valley surrounded by ten thousand foot peaks on three sides.  Anselm believed (it seems more literally than most young hikers) that heaven was to be found above the tree line.  One night in a dream, he was told to climb a mountain to the court of God.  On the way up, he passed women who were reaping the king’s grain in a slip-shod and lazy manner.  Received by God and his steward at court (everyone else was out working the harvest), the steward presented him with the “whitest of bread” to eat. 

Sometime after this dream, Anselm’s mother died, and his religious zeal waned.  He fell out with his father, renounced his patrimony, and set off across the Alps westward with a servant.  On a fine day, climbing to the pass below Mount Cenis (now, fittingly, part of Gran Paradiso National Park) must indeed have seemed like entering the courts of heaven: serrated peaks rise on all sides, ibex graze the slopes, grass and wildflowers wave in the breeze, and a large alpine lake reflects valleys and clouds beyond. 

But the main pass (which Constantine and Charlemagne had also ascended) was almost 7000 feet above sea level, and Anselm tired.  The travelers ran out of food: Anselm gnawed snow to assuage his hunger.  His servant gave the donkey’s saddlebag a final, desperate search, and was surprised to uncover bread “of exceptional whiteness,” like the bread in Anselm’s dream.  Refreshed, the travelers resumed their journey. 

Anselm later wrote of God as “the highest of all beings.”  His famous ontological argument, still debated by philosophers, can be read as a kind of prayer in dialogue with and in search of God, “he than whom there is no greater,” as if he were still looking for firm footing, ascending some alpine valley.  Nor did he forget the lazy farmers in his dream. He worked in the fields of God with diligence and compassion.  People who were afraid to approach the pope, “hurried” to meet Anselm, including Muslim vassals of Count Roger of Sicily.  He gently admonished kindness to children in the monasteries he supervised, was offended by abuse of animals, and played an early role in the anti-slavery movement.  Doubtless it is due to Anselm’s kindness that his story comes down to us: the historian Eadmer, who tells it, was one of many devoted students. 

Christians believe not just in abstract dogmas, but in truth “made flesh, and dwelt among us.”  From Anselm’s life we similarly begin to see what “Faith Seeking Understanding” might mean, not just as a sticker a Medieval schoolman might have pasted to the rear bumper of his ox cart, but as a lived solution to the urgent intellectual challenges of our own time. 

Two great errors confuse the modern world about faith.   Many see faith as a leap off an intellectual precipice.  Faith, Richard Dawkins famously informed us (he was not the first), means believing “not only in the absence of evidence, but in the teeth of evidence.”  Others seem to see faith as the ultimate karmic bailout: live as seedy and frivolous a life as you please, then Jesus comes with a big red checkbook and buys you out of prison.      

But faith for a mountain climber is neither blind nor lazy.  Calf muscles and eyes engage in the climb, as you step over stones and roots, and skirt puddles.  Or perhaps you trip, lose your way, even wind up like Otzi the Ice Man, found after 5300 years, encased in an Alpine glacier near another Italian border.  For Anselm, faith meant applying a mind rich in curiosity, imagination, and insight, along with alert senses and reasonable trust in other people, to explore the rugged landscape of an often demanding and complex Medieval world. 

The two men to whom this book is dedicated also set remarkable examples of lives fully engaged in ascending the peak of God’s truth, and describing what they saw from different slopes of that summit. 

Miracles or Magic? Four more characteristics

Here is the second and final part of my description of how miracles and magic differ, from Chapter 11 of Jesus and the Religions of Man.  For Part I, follow that link. 

(2) Miracles tend to be practical; Magic is often showy.

            When I lived in Taiwan, God seemed to meet my needs in remarkable ways at times.  A place to stay was provided where I knew no one, home-cooked meals when I was lonely, money when I was broke, and a cheeseburger and a song as specific answers to two doubting, but specific, prayers.  Another time I was out of money and worried about holes in my socks.  Just then I received a package in the mail, not from my mother, or aunt, but from the young woman who later became my wife.  Inside, I found several pairs of clean white socks.  After we married, I asked why she sent such an unromantic gift.  "I just felt like that's what I should send," she told me.

Can John Loftus question his faith?

From Loftus this morning:

 

David Marshall asked me three questions:

 

What existentially difficult questions do you even admit face you, as an atheist? What contrary evidence troubles your confidence? Do you dare confess?

Miracles or Magic?

People often conflate two classes of phenomena that I call "miracles" and "magic."  The following is an exert from Chapter 11 ("Impractical Magic") of my book Jesus and the Religions of Man.  The previous chapter argues that miracles really do happen, sometimes.  (In a personal,  usually anecdotal manner, rather than the detailed recent study of Craig Keener, which I recommend to readers who would like to study the empirical data in more depth, or in  the philosophical insight of C.S.Lewis' classic Miracles)  In this chapter, I set forth five criteria by which to distinguish magic from miracles.  After opening with a long personal introduction (I ask your pardon, later sections get to the point more quickly -- but some readers may find this interesting), this post describe the first of those criteria. 

Grand Tetons

This blog is dedicated to "mapping the universe from a Christian perspective."  How did we overlook the Grand Tetons up to this point?

When John was young, he used to ask to go to Idaho.  Finally we did, a month ago, and I asked, "Why Idaho?"  "It was the next thing on the map," he explained.

The thing after that is Wyoming. 

We camped about 30 miles south of Jackson, in a campground between the road and the Snake River, but closer to the former.  We found a place to go down to the river, where the current swirled around a bar into a pool, pouring across the bar, and then upstream.  It took a little hard swimming to overcome the wash across the bar, but when I did, it turned out to be made of rounded little rocks in different light shades of yellow, purple, ochre.  John and James brought a log to their assistance to conquer the bar. 

A little surprised that I slept that night, so close to a road that had some traffic still, we woke early the next morning, packed up, and headed into Jackson for breakfast at McDonalds.  It was a little cloudy, but as we drove north, the Tetons began to reveal themselves.  We parked at Lupine Meadows (most of the flowers had already bloomed), and went for "a little hike."  But after the parking lot, the mountains hid behind ridges and pines (some fir and a local spruce).  Faced with a fork in the road, James was outvoted, two to one, and we attacked a long series of serious switchbacks.  Too bad, I told myself several times on the way up, that we hadn't bothered to bring more than one bottle of water, and no lunch.  We grabbed at sweet little blue huckeberries when they began to appear, few and far between. 

Surprise!

After ten thousand switchbacks -- "like a sheep's intestines," as the Chinese say -- passing some Spanish hikers, and meeting a small group of Italians, we arrived at Surprise Lake.  The sign said 9520 feet, so we'd gained more than 3000 feet on a casual hike after breakfast.  Central peaks of the Tetons came into view as we approached the little lake, and especially walking around its east side, spectacular pinnacles more like the granite fingers of the earth.  The big surprise for me about the lake, is that it wasn't too cold to swim in, which we did with delight.