OK. The other day I blogged about NarrowGate Studios overlaying Requiem for a Tower on top of The Stupids. Messing around on YouTube can be hilarious at times. While playing around today, I found another guy who has done the same thing with Ferris Beuller's Day Off. This guy has done a fantastic job with this. It is a real joy to watch.
So, without further ado, have a peek at Requiem for a Day Off.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Uncle Tom's Cabin-Date and Context
Like so many other novels of the time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published as a serial novel. It was released over the years 1851 and 1852 in installments. The first single volume publication was done in 1852 and sold 3,000 copies on its first day in print. The book is reported to have sold 50,000 copies in the first 8 weeks and within a year, sales were around 300,000 copies. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was translated into 37 different languages and made Stowe a celebrity all around the world.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote several other novels after Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but none were quite as popular as this one seminal work. Upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, “So this is the little lady who started this big war!” While the Civil War had many causes, Stowe’s writing had called a great amount of attention to what many in the North perceived as the great injustice of humanity, slavery.
It is no small matter to consider the context within which Stowe wrote this major work of American literature. The great Compromise of 1850 was the last major effort at conciliation between the two major sections of the country, the slaveholding South and the abolitionist North. While it is not fair to oversimplify the regions this way, it was consistent with the thought of the day in which Stowe wrote.
A major portion of the Compromise of 1850 was the Fugitive Slave Act. Passed to calm southern fears of northern plans to eradicate slavery from the South as well, the Fugitive Slave Act made it illegal for anyone to give assistance to a runaway slave and required that they be returned to their owners upon apprehension by any northerner.
Stowe’s own experiences in Cincinnati from 1832-1836 must have played a major role in her consideration of the institution of slavery. There she witnessed race riots and met people involved in the Underground Railroad. It must be remembered that Stowe only visited Kentucky once in her life. Her direct knowledge of the condition of slaves and the temperament of slave owners would have been minimal, at best.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote several other novels after Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but none were quite as popular as this one seminal work. Upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, “So this is the little lady who started this big war!” While the Civil War had many causes, Stowe’s writing had called a great amount of attention to what many in the North perceived as the great injustice of humanity, slavery.
It is no small matter to consider the context within which Stowe wrote this major work of American literature. The great Compromise of 1850 was the last major effort at conciliation between the two major sections of the country, the slaveholding South and the abolitionist North. While it is not fair to oversimplify the regions this way, it was consistent with the thought of the day in which Stowe wrote.
A major portion of the Compromise of 1850 was the Fugitive Slave Act. Passed to calm southern fears of northern plans to eradicate slavery from the South as well, the Fugitive Slave Act made it illegal for anyone to give assistance to a runaway slave and required that they be returned to their owners upon apprehension by any northerner.
Stowe’s own experiences in Cincinnati from 1832-1836 must have played a major role in her consideration of the institution of slavery. There she witnessed race riots and met people involved in the Underground Railroad. It must be remembered that Stowe only visited Kentucky once in her life. Her direct knowledge of the condition of slaves and the temperament of slave owners would have been minimal, at best.
Hermeneutics Part One
Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. Applied to the study of Scripture it gives us the rules or principles of interpretation to go by so that we do not misunderstand Scripture of misinterpret it. The rules are simple. They begin with the Bible itself and move to more abstract principles deduced from the Bible. They have been used and tested throughout the 2000-year history of the Church. They have been argued over and debated, but have come to stand for the conservative evangelical method of understanding Scripture as opposed to the liberal, neo-orthodox, analogical methods. These principles make up the work of the exegete of Scripture. He is one who attempts to draw out of Scripture what is there through many different tools. An exegete only draws out, he never reads into to Scripture what is not there. This contrasts the exegetical method of interpretation with the eisegetical method. The only thing we must be wary of is to assume that exegesis forbids the informing of a passage of Scripture by another passage of Scripture. This will be treated more below though. The most important of these will be listed and a short summary of their appropriateness will be given as we go.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The Arminian Quandary
"that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their tresspasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation." 2 Corinthians 5:19
If we were to take this verse as the Arminian must take it, we are left with a quandary. How is it that men ever actually pay for their own sins? Do they pay for the very last sin they commit, and Christ takes the punishment for all the others? Do they get their sins back at the Judgment seat once it has been established that they never accepted Christ in life? How does the salvation transaction really work in Arminian thought? Why is this a problem for the Arminian?
It is a problem because in the Arminian scheme, Christ didn't actually do anything except die and rise again on the cross. Everything else is potential in the Arminian scheme. Christ potentially paid for sins. Thus it is possible that no one would accept Him and He died in vain. Christ didn't actually take any sin onto himself on the cross, for it was not known yet that anyone would take advantage of the sacrifice. All of the disciples fled, it was possible that none of them could have returned or believed that He had been raised from the dead.
But why is this verse so troublesome for Arminians? Because it presents God actively doing something with the expectation that an action will follow, namely repentance and justification. The verse presents God as not imputing sins to people, but as Paul says in Romans, reserving them. Now that Christ has paid for all of those sins, they are now worthless actions. It is not uncommon to hear Christians say that Christ paid for every sin you will or can commit. This is true, but the Arminian has no business saying it without qualifying that Christ hasn't actually paid for them until a person accepts the sacrifice given. How then is Christ not sacrificed again every time a person accepts Him? The quandary is inexcusable. We border on heresy to say that Christ is crucified every time a person is saved, yet the Arminian cannot explain how Christ actually died for all who would be saved and died for the possibility that every man could be saved.
We may say that Christ died for every person that would accept him. But how did He know which ones to die for? Foreknowledge, the Arminian says. Christ looked forward in time and saw each and every person who would ever accept His sacrifice and those He saw, He elected and died for. But then we turn the old Arminian cry against them. What if someone wants to be saved but Christ did not foresee it? May they be saved? Must Christ repeat His sacrifice to allow them to be saved? It will suddenly be unfair to use that line of reasoning, I think we will be questioning the knowledge of God. As if the Arminian doesn't do this when he says that Christ died for everyone and anyone might be saved if they accept.
If we were to take this verse as the Arminian must take it, we are left with a quandary. How is it that men ever actually pay for their own sins? Do they pay for the very last sin they commit, and Christ takes the punishment for all the others? Do they get their sins back at the Judgment seat once it has been established that they never accepted Christ in life? How does the salvation transaction really work in Arminian thought? Why is this a problem for the Arminian?
It is a problem because in the Arminian scheme, Christ didn't actually do anything except die and rise again on the cross. Everything else is potential in the Arminian scheme. Christ potentially paid for sins. Thus it is possible that no one would accept Him and He died in vain. Christ didn't actually take any sin onto himself on the cross, for it was not known yet that anyone would take advantage of the sacrifice. All of the disciples fled, it was possible that none of them could have returned or believed that He had been raised from the dead.
But why is this verse so troublesome for Arminians? Because it presents God actively doing something with the expectation that an action will follow, namely repentance and justification. The verse presents God as not imputing sins to people, but as Paul says in Romans, reserving them. Now that Christ has paid for all of those sins, they are now worthless actions. It is not uncommon to hear Christians say that Christ paid for every sin you will or can commit. This is true, but the Arminian has no business saying it without qualifying that Christ hasn't actually paid for them until a person accepts the sacrifice given. How then is Christ not sacrificed again every time a person accepts Him? The quandary is inexcusable. We border on heresy to say that Christ is crucified every time a person is saved, yet the Arminian cannot explain how Christ actually died for all who would be saved and died for the possibility that every man could be saved.
We may say that Christ died for every person that would accept him. But how did He know which ones to die for? Foreknowledge, the Arminian says. Christ looked forward in time and saw each and every person who would ever accept His sacrifice and those He saw, He elected and died for. But then we turn the old Arminian cry against them. What if someone wants to be saved but Christ did not foresee it? May they be saved? Must Christ repeat His sacrifice to allow them to be saved? It will suddenly be unfair to use that line of reasoning, I think we will be questioning the knowledge of God. As if the Arminian doesn't do this when he says that Christ died for everyone and anyone might be saved if they accept.
How important is music to movies?
The guys over at NarrowGate Studios (students at Franklin Classical School, Franklin, TN) have done a great job of showing us how important music can be to movies. Neil Postman makes the comment that music in TV (and by extension movies) "helps to tell the audience what emotions are to be called forth." In this case they have taken the main track for Requiem for a Dream, Requiem for a Tower (composed by Clint Mansell and performed with Kronos Quartet) and set it against some odd footage from the 1996 Tom Arnold film, The Stupids. They are attempting to prove that this song can turn any piece of film into an epic. See if they are right.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Dark Knight Review-warning spoilers
A student from last year was kind enough to give me a movie theater gift card at the end of school. My wife and I have held onto it until a movie that would be theater-worthy (you know, lots effects and sound, something that won't be the same on the little screen) came out. There were two such picks out this last weekend when we had the opportunity to go. This will undoubtedly give readers a heads up about the kind of films a guy like me watches, but our choices were the Dark Knight and the new X-Files movie. Because of timing, etc. we ended up seeing the Dark Knight.
It was a great film. The cinematography, lighting, music, etc. were fantastic. And I enjoyed the story as well. But it was a very dark film, as I understand it was supposed to be. Heath Ledger did an amazing job as the Joker. I know people in that audience really believed he was the Joker and just a sadistic as he was acting. He made the character real, which is a hard thing to do in our culture. On to the review aspect of this.
My wife and I were talking it over after the film and trying to figure it out. We always begin by establishing the worldview of the film. Some of my students think that takes away from the enjoyment of the movie, "Just watch it and have fun," they say. I can assure you, I can no more "just watch" a movie (even if I have seen it several times) than I can stop breathing. And it doesn't take away from my enjoyment. I enjoy the film on two levels. At any rate, we begin by asking for the absolutes of the film.
In this case there is an absolute moral or ethical system in place. Murder is wrong, etc. The police force, the District Attorney, and Batman are all agreed that murder and its consorts are wrong. They may have different methods of handling that issue, but they are agreed. Batman, at one point, tells the Joker that murder is the one one rule he will not break.
Honesty and integrity, however, turn into situational issues in the film. By the end of the film, the truth about what Harvey Dent has done is too damaging to "hope" to be known. Batman agrees to assume responsibility for Harvey's crimes so that Harvey's reputation and the hope he brings to Gotham will remain in tact. There is a Christ-figure here folk, we'll come back to this later. With the idea that hope transcends truth there is a Kantian-Humean ideology going on here. Kant, of course, believed in a dualism of thought between the world of sense-perception (the noumenal) and the world that is actually there (the phenomemal). Our knowledge of truth was determined not by the phenomenal realm but by our mind's inherent ability to reconstruct sense-data in the noumenal realm. Combine that with a Humean way of considering habit and you get a world where we must have hope by habit because truth is beyond our mortal grasp. It is more important, in Gotham, to have hope than to have the truth. This is clearly against Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 that if Christ is not raised our hope is in vain. Hope is only hope if it has an objective basis to hope in. What are the people of Gotham supposed to be hoping in? They are left with an empty hope that Harvey Dent was a good man who never did anything wrong and yet was slain in the line of duty. All the while, Batman becomes a total fugitive, expressing that he can handle being chased.
Batman operates outside the law. He is the man who must step outside the legal and civil approach to justice because civil justice is ineffective and corrupt. This is a classic revolutionary mentality. The only way to fix this situation is to get outside it and impose order without process. This has been the revolutionary way of doing things for eons. Sulla did this in Rome of the 70's BC by marching on city, imposing his own totalitarian rule, rewriting the Roman constitution, and then turning power back over to the people when he was done. In his mind, the only way to save the state was to invade the state and control the state. This is the same method used by Cromwell in the 1640's and by Robespierre in the French Revolution.
Aside: This is one reason I object to calling the American War for Independence a revolution. We did not revolt, we declared independence.
On to Batman as a Christ-figure. I willl keep this short. It is obvious that Batman is a Christ-figure long before he takes Dent's sin into himself and becomes an outcast for the sake of the city. He is the substitute for Dent. Dent represents fallen humanity every bit as much as the Joker does, but the Joker is unredeemable (and not really seems to try either), while Dent can be redeemed. But what is redemption when the rest of Gotham (the universe) is shown a picture of a flawless man rather than the two-faced monster we all really are? What does it mean that Dent it redeemed? It really only means that our sins are not worthy of real justice, they are easily removed. Just photoshop a picture of our soul and it will look all pretty rather than ugly and debased.
I really enjoyed the movie and will likely own it when it comes out on DVD. It is a great picture of fallen humanity. Gary Demar's review is excellent as well. It reminds us that ideas have consequences, which is one of the best lessons we can really learn.
It was a great film. The cinematography, lighting, music, etc. were fantastic. And I enjoyed the story as well. But it was a very dark film, as I understand it was supposed to be. Heath Ledger did an amazing job as the Joker. I know people in that audience really believed he was the Joker and just a sadistic as he was acting. He made the character real, which is a hard thing to do in our culture. On to the review aspect of this.
My wife and I were talking it over after the film and trying to figure it out. We always begin by establishing the worldview of the film. Some of my students think that takes away from the enjoyment of the movie, "Just watch it and have fun," they say. I can assure you, I can no more "just watch" a movie (even if I have seen it several times) than I can stop breathing. And it doesn't take away from my enjoyment. I enjoy the film on two levels. At any rate, we begin by asking for the absolutes of the film.
In this case there is an absolute moral or ethical system in place. Murder is wrong, etc. The police force, the District Attorney, and Batman are all agreed that murder and its consorts are wrong. They may have different methods of handling that issue, but they are agreed. Batman, at one point, tells the Joker that murder is the one one rule he will not break.
Honesty and integrity, however, turn into situational issues in the film. By the end of the film, the truth about what Harvey Dent has done is too damaging to "hope" to be known. Batman agrees to assume responsibility for Harvey's crimes so that Harvey's reputation and the hope he brings to Gotham will remain in tact. There is a Christ-figure here folk, we'll come back to this later. With the idea that hope transcends truth there is a Kantian-Humean ideology going on here. Kant, of course, believed in a dualism of thought between the world of sense-perception (the noumenal) and the world that is actually there (the phenomemal). Our knowledge of truth was determined not by the phenomenal realm but by our mind's inherent ability to reconstruct sense-data in the noumenal realm. Combine that with a Humean way of considering habit and you get a world where we must have hope by habit because truth is beyond our mortal grasp. It is more important, in Gotham, to have hope than to have the truth. This is clearly against Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 that if Christ is not raised our hope is in vain. Hope is only hope if it has an objective basis to hope in. What are the people of Gotham supposed to be hoping in? They are left with an empty hope that Harvey Dent was a good man who never did anything wrong and yet was slain in the line of duty. All the while, Batman becomes a total fugitive, expressing that he can handle being chased.
Batman operates outside the law. He is the man who must step outside the legal and civil approach to justice because civil justice is ineffective and corrupt. This is a classic revolutionary mentality. The only way to fix this situation is to get outside it and impose order without process. This has been the revolutionary way of doing things for eons. Sulla did this in Rome of the 70's BC by marching on city, imposing his own totalitarian rule, rewriting the Roman constitution, and then turning power back over to the people when he was done. In his mind, the only way to save the state was to invade the state and control the state. This is the same method used by Cromwell in the 1640's and by Robespierre in the French Revolution.
Aside: This is one reason I object to calling the American War for Independence a revolution. We did not revolt, we declared independence.
On to Batman as a Christ-figure. I willl keep this short. It is obvious that Batman is a Christ-figure long before he takes Dent's sin into himself and becomes an outcast for the sake of the city. He is the substitute for Dent. Dent represents fallen humanity every bit as much as the Joker does, but the Joker is unredeemable (and not really seems to try either), while Dent can be redeemed. But what is redemption when the rest of Gotham (the universe) is shown a picture of a flawless man rather than the two-faced monster we all really are? What does it mean that Dent it redeemed? It really only means that our sins are not worthy of real justice, they are easily removed. Just photoshop a picture of our soul and it will look all pretty rather than ugly and debased.
I really enjoyed the movie and will likely own it when it comes out on DVD. It is a great picture of fallen humanity. Gary Demar's review is excellent as well. It reminds us that ideas have consequences, which is one of the best lessons we can really learn.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Aha!
I hate it when movies do weird things to books. I have a sick kiddo so we are watching a lot more movies than usual. The other day we were watching Piglet's Big Movie in which the entire corpus of Pooh is given a thorough historical revision so that Piglet is the main character in every story. One which jumped out at me and I was hoping was the same in the book however was the story of how Kanga and Roo first came to the Hundred Acre Wood. It is a cute story in which the other animals are all threatened by this newcomer so they engineer a plan to kidnap Roo and make Kanga promise to go away and never return. In Piglet's Big Movie, there is a great scene where Rabbit is explaining this plan, which included replacing Roo with Piglet, and Rabbit says they will all say Aha!
Piglet rightly asks what "Aha" means and Rabbit responds, "Aha means 'this is the way things are...and this is the way they were meant to be." Of course this is not the way the narrative goes in Mine's classic book, but the essence is the same.
Aha means maintaining the status quo. The people who get to determine what the status quo are is another question altogether. If we were good orthodox, biblically minded individuals we would immediately recognize that this is a question of authority and therefore must be submitted to God's pattern of governmental division. There are three spheres of government instituted in Scripture for the authoritarian rule of mankind: Civil, Family, and Church. Befre asking what the status quo is and whether it should or could be challenged we need to determine who made it the status quo and what level of authority they had to make it so. If a father gives an underage child authority to consume large quantities of alcohol, he is challenging the status quo. Does he have the authority to challenge the status quo in this way? There is where the real question is.
If a ruling authority has made a decision within its right to make a decision, this constitutes an area where the status quo should not be challenged, or at least not challenged in a rebellious or disrespectful manner. If a ruling authority has established a rule outside his authority, this form of status quo should be challenged, but how?
The current homeshcooling case in California comes to mind. This is clearly a case in which the state, or civil, authority has overstepped its legitimate authority and established a status quo that needs to be challenged. Homeschoolers all over the country, and Classical Christian schools as well, have been challenging the notion that the state is the appropriate agency for the education of our young people. We have been doing this as legally as we can (I know of many who flat-out resorted to illegal homeschooling when all attempts at reasonable compromise were exhausted). The state is not the authority granted the control over the education of children, that authority is clearly given to families in the Scriptures (Deut. 6:4-9, Eph. 6:4).
The history of government-controlled education goes back, at least as far as Plato. In the Republic, Plato recommended that the state take control of the education of the young in order to guarantee their training would be carried out as the state wished it to be carried out. Many people object to my calling "public education" government-controlled education or "public schools" government-controlled schools. I don't know why except that calling them what they are makes it increasingly difficult ignore what is going on. When the federal government determines what books can and cannot be used in the classroom, who can and cannot teach in the classroom, who can and cannot go to certain schools, and what can and cannot be eaten during the day, we have a government-controlled education system.
Those of us involved with homeschooling or private education have decided that we will challenge the status quo here. We will do so as biblically as we can, which means we will honor and respect the authority that the state does have while challenging the authority it does not have (Acts. 4:8-12, 18-20).
Hopefully we will not have to resort to Rabbit's "Aha!" Hopefully we can reform our world, through the saving power of the gospel, so that all spheres of government take their cue from Christ and stay in their pre-appointed jurisdictions.
Piglet rightly asks what "Aha" means and Rabbit responds, "Aha means 'this is the way things are...and this is the way they were meant to be." Of course this is not the way the narrative goes in Mine's classic book, but the essence is the same.
Aha means maintaining the status quo. The people who get to determine what the status quo are is another question altogether. If we were good orthodox, biblically minded individuals we would immediately recognize that this is a question of authority and therefore must be submitted to God's pattern of governmental division. There are three spheres of government instituted in Scripture for the authoritarian rule of mankind: Civil, Family, and Church. Befre asking what the status quo is and whether it should or could be challenged we need to determine who made it the status quo and what level of authority they had to make it so. If a father gives an underage child authority to consume large quantities of alcohol, he is challenging the status quo. Does he have the authority to challenge the status quo in this way? There is where the real question is.
If a ruling authority has made a decision within its right to make a decision, this constitutes an area where the status quo should not be challenged, or at least not challenged in a rebellious or disrespectful manner. If a ruling authority has established a rule outside his authority, this form of status quo should be challenged, but how?
The current homeshcooling case in California comes to mind. This is clearly a case in which the state, or civil, authority has overstepped its legitimate authority and established a status quo that needs to be challenged. Homeschoolers all over the country, and Classical Christian schools as well, have been challenging the notion that the state is the appropriate agency for the education of our young people. We have been doing this as legally as we can (I know of many who flat-out resorted to illegal homeschooling when all attempts at reasonable compromise were exhausted). The state is not the authority granted the control over the education of children, that authority is clearly given to families in the Scriptures (Deut. 6:4-9, Eph. 6:4).
The history of government-controlled education goes back, at least as far as Plato. In the Republic, Plato recommended that the state take control of the education of the young in order to guarantee their training would be carried out as the state wished it to be carried out. Many people object to my calling "public education" government-controlled education or "public schools" government-controlled schools. I don't know why except that calling them what they are makes it increasingly difficult ignore what is going on. When the federal government determines what books can and cannot be used in the classroom, who can and cannot teach in the classroom, who can and cannot go to certain schools, and what can and cannot be eaten during the day, we have a government-controlled education system.
Those of us involved with homeschooling or private education have decided that we will challenge the status quo here. We will do so as biblically as we can, which means we will honor and respect the authority that the state does have while challenging the authority it does not have (Acts. 4:8-12, 18-20).
Hopefully we will not have to resort to Rabbit's "Aha!" Hopefully we can reform our world, through the saving power of the gospel, so that all spheres of government take their cue from Christ and stay in their pre-appointed jurisdictions.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
New Van Til books
There are two new books by the man behind presuppositional apologetics coming out. No, this isn't some Protestant reincarnation at work. Rather, two of Cornelius Van Til's most important books have been re-edited and annotated by the folks at P&R. The editions being retrofitted for our weak minds are the Defense of the Faith and the Introduction to Systematic Theology. I found out about them through the Ref21 blog, like I often do. You can also take a look at the table of contents and a sample chapter of the Defense of the Faith here at P&R.
I already have the complete corpus of Van Til through Libronix, but will probably try to get my hands on the new Defense of the Faith to read through and see how the annotations assist me in understanding Van Til's thought.
In my opinion, having not seen these new volumes, the best aid to understanding Van Til is still Dr. Greg Bahsen's last book, Van Til's Apologtic, available here from Amazon. Bahnsen understood Van Til very well and was very adept at putting Van Til's difficult concepts into words even idiots like me can understand.
I can't wait to see how the new volumes fare against Bahnsen's approach.
I already have the complete corpus of Van Til through Libronix, but will probably try to get my hands on the new Defense of the Faith to read through and see how the annotations assist me in understanding Van Til's thought.
In my opinion, having not seen these new volumes, the best aid to understanding Van Til is still Dr. Greg Bahsen's last book, Van Til's Apologtic, available here from Amazon. Bahnsen understood Van Til very well and was very adept at putting Van Til's difficult concepts into words even idiots like me can understand.
I can't wait to see how the new volumes fare against Bahnsen's approach.
Uncle Tom's Cabin-Author
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Connecticut in 1811. She was the seventh of nine children born to Dr. Lyman Beecher, a renowned Congregationalist minister. Six of her brothers became ministers in the Congregational church. Her sister opened a women’s school in Connecticut. Harriet’s mother died when she was four and she was educated in her sister’s school. After graduation, Harriet became a teacher. The Beecher family moved from Connecticut to Cincinnati, Ohio when Harriet was twenty-one, as her father took a position at Lane Theological Seminary.
Harriet continued to teach while in Ohio. It was there that she first witnessed slavery and abolitionism. In Cincinnati she came into contact with race riots and heard stories of runaway slaves and of those who helped them escape slavery. Ohio’s next-door neighbor, Kentucky, was a slave state. Harriet only visited Kentucky once, but she had regular contact with men and women who helped operate the Underground Railroad.
Harriet married Calvin Stowe in 1836. Stowe was a minister and taught at the theological seminary where her father was head. In 1850, Harriet and her husband moved to Maine. Calvin Stowe had taken a position at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. While living in Maine, Harriet wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She claimed that the passage of the Compromise of 1850, part of which included the Fugitive Salve Act, had prompted her to speak out in her own way on this issue that had so divided the country.
Harriet Beecher Stowe moved to Hartford, Connecticut after her husband died and lived there until her own death in 1896.
The Flood
Chapters four through ten of the book of Genesis tell us what happened between the time that Cain was exiled from Eden and the great Flood was sent upon the earth. It is a short portion of the book, but packed with much that must be explained from a historical point of view. We begin with the family of Adam. Cain’s family has begun a new life away from Adam and Eve. Abel has been replaced with Seth. The family of Adam as recorded in Genesis chapter five is meant to show us God’s faithful and providential care of His people down to the time of Noah. The entire genealogy focuses on this task. It begins with Adam (Gen. 5:1) and ends with Noah and his sons (Gen. 5:32).
Chapter six of Genesis begins to set up the world before the Flood. We refer to this as the ante-diluvian period. We see the very fast and very real corruption of sin in the lives of the people of the earth. Adam and Eve and their offspring have been faithful to procreate and fill the earth, but they have not been so careful to teach the ways of God to their generations. Certainly the offspring of Cain can be held partly responsible for this as well. We are told that the condition of humanity at this stage of history was on in which “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). God reached out with righteous judgment and destroyed the world He had so carefully made.
But God did not destroy every one. Noah found favor with God. Noah and his family were spared because of the righteousness of Noah. Noah was told to prepare an ark and store animals and food and his own family in it that they might be spared before the judgment of God. Then God sent rain. It had never rained before (Gen. 2:5) and Noah acted solely on faith that God was telling him the truth. You can bet Noah and his family persevered under tremendous ridicule while they built the ark and gathered all the animals into it. I often tell students that they should remember Noah and how his faith was vindicated by God the next time they suffer ridicule because of a biblical stance your parents have chosen for them (not watching certain types of TV or movies, not wearing certain clothes).
There is much to discuss about the event of the Flood because it is such a touchstone in history. The idea of a worldwide flood that destroyed every person except Noah and his family and most animals has come under great scrutiny in the last two hundred years. Geologists claim that the rock layers and formation cannot have resulted from a flood like the one described in Genesis. They claim that there is no evidence for such a flood. Many ideas have crept into our thinking over the past two hundred years that seem to argue against such a catastrophic phenomenon. Where do the dinosaurs fit in with a biblical chronology of history? How about all the evidence for the Ice Age? How about continental drift and Pangaea? What about cave paintings and the bones they keep finding that are neither human nor animal?
Let us begin with a total cosmology of the earth as it was created. The Bible indicates that when God separated the land from the ocean, he gathered all the water into one place, leaving a single mass of land. We cannot know the exact size of this landmass, but we can guess that since our continents do fit together somewhat, that all the land we now see was once part of a large landmass. Now let us fit this into the biblical details. According to Genesis 7:11 water not only fell from above but burst forth from “the fountains of the deep.” Some biblical scientists have attempted to explain this by suggesting that there was a dense canopy of moisture that essentially made the entire earth like a tropical rain forest. This helps explain several things. It is often surprising and difficult to understand how Adam lived 930 years. Some scientists suggest that a canopy of this kind would prevent the sunlight from aging the body in the way it does today. A longer lifespan can possible be attributed to this situation.
If there were such a canopy of water above the earth and this canopy condensed and fell as rain all of a sudden, the force of it would no doubt be tremendous. Scientists at the Institute for Creation Research have posited that the force of the water falling, combined with that of the “fountains of the deep” breaking open would be sufficient to explain the shattering of a landmass like Pangaea. Imagine carefully placing a broken plate in a large fish tank and then dumping several gallons of water on it at one time. When you stopped pouring water on it you would see that the plate had scattered around the fish tank, not stayed in one place.
It rained for forty days, according to Genesis. The flood waters stayed upon the earth for about three months after it had stopped raining. It took Noah two weeks for his dove to find land. He stayed in the ark an additional month and a half or so before he exited with all the animals and people. Noah immediately made a sacrifice to God and received a covenant bond signed by the rainbow. If the earth were covered by a dense canopy that made it feel like a tropical rain forest before the Flood, what must it have felt like afterward? Scientists have surmised that the much of the water would have frozen instantly at the poles. Even today, scientists tell us that if the poles were to melt, there would be enough water to cover the earth. Where did the rain go after falling for forty days? It froze and receded to the polar ice caps. Much of the earth would have been covered by ice for a while yet. Interestingly, we see that Noah and his family stay in the region of Ararat where the ark came to rest for a while still. However, the frozen landscape would offer evidence of an Ice Age and allow animals to migrate from one continent to the other after the Flood.
What about the problem of the technology of the ante-diluvian peoples? Why do we have no evidence of iron working or bronze working until much later than the Flood? Imagine what it would feel like to wake up tomorrow and find out that there were only a handful of people left on earth. It would be scary, but stay with me a moment. What would you do for breakfast? Well, you would likely still be able to stick a piece of bread in the toaster and toast it. Your refrigerator would likely still be operational and so you could still put butter or jam on it and be fine. But what about the next day? When the power finally did go out, where would you be? What about when things started breaking? Would you be able to repair or duplicate an incandescent light bulb?
I suspect this is the situation Noah and his children found themselves in right after the Flood. While the descendants of Cain did discover how to make things with iron and bronze; that knowledge perished with them in the Flood. Noah’s was a carpenter, or so it would seem. He and his children would have known how to use tools made of iron, but not how to create them. The simple explanation for why the Bronze Age does not begin until 3500 BC and why iron is not found in abundance until 1200 BC is that after the Flood, people had to relearn a lost technology. Artifacts surely exist from before the Flood, but they would be almost impossible to identify.
Chapter six of Genesis begins to set up the world before the Flood. We refer to this as the ante-diluvian period. We see the very fast and very real corruption of sin in the lives of the people of the earth. Adam and Eve and their offspring have been faithful to procreate and fill the earth, but they have not been so careful to teach the ways of God to their generations. Certainly the offspring of Cain can be held partly responsible for this as well. We are told that the condition of humanity at this stage of history was on in which “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). God reached out with righteous judgment and destroyed the world He had so carefully made.
But God did not destroy every one. Noah found favor with God. Noah and his family were spared because of the righteousness of Noah. Noah was told to prepare an ark and store animals and food and his own family in it that they might be spared before the judgment of God. Then God sent rain. It had never rained before (Gen. 2:5) and Noah acted solely on faith that God was telling him the truth. You can bet Noah and his family persevered under tremendous ridicule while they built the ark and gathered all the animals into it. I often tell students that they should remember Noah and how his faith was vindicated by God the next time they suffer ridicule because of a biblical stance your parents have chosen for them (not watching certain types of TV or movies, not wearing certain clothes).
There is much to discuss about the event of the Flood because it is such a touchstone in history. The idea of a worldwide flood that destroyed every person except Noah and his family and most animals has come under great scrutiny in the last two hundred years. Geologists claim that the rock layers and formation cannot have resulted from a flood like the one described in Genesis. They claim that there is no evidence for such a flood. Many ideas have crept into our thinking over the past two hundred years that seem to argue against such a catastrophic phenomenon. Where do the dinosaurs fit in with a biblical chronology of history? How about all the evidence for the Ice Age? How about continental drift and Pangaea? What about cave paintings and the bones they keep finding that are neither human nor animal?
Let us begin with a total cosmology of the earth as it was created. The Bible indicates that when God separated the land from the ocean, he gathered all the water into one place, leaving a single mass of land. We cannot know the exact size of this landmass, but we can guess that since our continents do fit together somewhat, that all the land we now see was once part of a large landmass. Now let us fit this into the biblical details. According to Genesis 7:11 water not only fell from above but burst forth from “the fountains of the deep.” Some biblical scientists have attempted to explain this by suggesting that there was a dense canopy of moisture that essentially made the entire earth like a tropical rain forest. This helps explain several things. It is often surprising and difficult to understand how Adam lived 930 years. Some scientists suggest that a canopy of this kind would prevent the sunlight from aging the body in the way it does today. A longer lifespan can possible be attributed to this situation.
If there were such a canopy of water above the earth and this canopy condensed and fell as rain all of a sudden, the force of it would no doubt be tremendous. Scientists at the Institute for Creation Research have posited that the force of the water falling, combined with that of the “fountains of the deep” breaking open would be sufficient to explain the shattering of a landmass like Pangaea. Imagine carefully placing a broken plate in a large fish tank and then dumping several gallons of water on it at one time. When you stopped pouring water on it you would see that the plate had scattered around the fish tank, not stayed in one place.
It rained for forty days, according to Genesis. The flood waters stayed upon the earth for about three months after it had stopped raining. It took Noah two weeks for his dove to find land. He stayed in the ark an additional month and a half or so before he exited with all the animals and people. Noah immediately made a sacrifice to God and received a covenant bond signed by the rainbow. If the earth were covered by a dense canopy that made it feel like a tropical rain forest before the Flood, what must it have felt like afterward? Scientists have surmised that the much of the water would have frozen instantly at the poles. Even today, scientists tell us that if the poles were to melt, there would be enough water to cover the earth. Where did the rain go after falling for forty days? It froze and receded to the polar ice caps. Much of the earth would have been covered by ice for a while yet. Interestingly, we see that Noah and his family stay in the region of Ararat where the ark came to rest for a while still. However, the frozen landscape would offer evidence of an Ice Age and allow animals to migrate from one continent to the other after the Flood.
What about the problem of the technology of the ante-diluvian peoples? Why do we have no evidence of iron working or bronze working until much later than the Flood? Imagine what it would feel like to wake up tomorrow and find out that there were only a handful of people left on earth. It would be scary, but stay with me a moment. What would you do for breakfast? Well, you would likely still be able to stick a piece of bread in the toaster and toast it. Your refrigerator would likely still be operational and so you could still put butter or jam on it and be fine. But what about the next day? When the power finally did go out, where would you be? What about when things started breaking? Would you be able to repair or duplicate an incandescent light bulb?
I suspect this is the situation Noah and his children found themselves in right after the Flood. While the descendants of Cain did discover how to make things with iron and bronze; that knowledge perished with them in the Flood. Noah’s was a carpenter, or so it would seem. He and his children would have known how to use tools made of iron, but not how to create them. The simple explanation for why the Bronze Age does not begin until 3500 BC and why iron is not found in abundance until 1200 BC is that after the Flood, people had to relearn a lost technology. Artifacts surely exist from before the Flood, but they would be almost impossible to identify.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Very Good Math Video
Two years ago, a math teacher at my school asked me to hunt down a video for her math class. I'll admit I do not remember what she said this was an example of, but it is fantastic. I have shown it to people over and over. It popped up while I was doing some planning for next year and I felt it deserved a little blog attention.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Wisdom for Teachers
"It is the teacher's mission to stand at the impassable gateways of young souls, a wiser and stronger soul than they, serving as a herald of science, a guide through nature, to summon the faculties within to their work, to place before them the facts to be observed, and to guide to the paths to be trodden. It is his by sympathy, by example, and by every means of influence - by objects for the senses, by facts for the intelligence, by pictures for the imagination, by stories for the fancy and the heart, to excite the minds, stir the curiosity, stimulate the thoughts, and send them forth as arriors, armed and eager for the conflict."
John Milton Gregory "The Seven Laws of Teaching" (1886)
John Milton Gregory "The Seven Laws of Teaching" (1886)
No Whether ... But Which
Once again I have heard someone complain about Christians attempting to enforce morality on other people. Whenever I hear this, I think to myself, "well, duh! Of course we want to enforce our morality. Why would we want to enforce immorality?" You see, it really is just that simple. We either enforce morality as a culture or we enforce immorality. And since, generally speaking, we don't want to enforce immorality (leaving aside quibbles as to what actually constitutes immorality for a moment, which is no small matter in this debate), we pretty much agree that we have to enforce morality. Let's put it another way, either we enforce the idea that murdering people is wrong or that murdering people is right. There isn't a lot of gray in this. We enforce the idea that murdering people is wrong and we do this through law. The very idea of law is enforced morality. So it is not a question of whether we will enforce morality, but which morality we will enforce.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Lost Causes
As I continue to work through the life of Donald Davidson for my thesis, I am amazed at how easy it is to get mixed up in lost causes. The idea of the lost cause is a favorite of historians, especially those of the Civil War era. Davidson backed the agrarian movement, the regionalism movement, and the distributist movement. All of these failed completely to make any changes in national policy about anything.
What is a lost cause? My first year of post-baccalaureate work required me to take a senior level history class called Great Losers. Each week we had to write a presentation that presented some person or civilization as a great loser in history. The genius of this class was, of course, you had to really know about history in order to argue that someone was a great loser. The idea of losing is really significant to us, I think. It goes right along with the idea of martyrdom. We are drawn to ideas and movements that create martyrs because we are mystified by the fact that anybody would die for anything. How can someone believe something so much that he or she would be willing to die for it. Davidson was not a martyr, at least not in the traditional sense, but he did latch onto several movements that were destined to fail.
The draw of the lost cause, I think, is the notion that you stood with something when there was little to no evidence that you ought to do so. The decision to remain on the sinking ship has a heroism about it that we relish in, if even vicariously. Tennyson wrote about the lost cause in the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Sadly, this devotion to the lost cause because of the lack of evidence is where many people get stuck with religion. There are many people out there who are attracted to religious movements because they are the underdogs of society. Science and modernity are the big guys on the block these days and religion has been kicked to the corner. But along with religion has gone much of our social consciousness as well as those intangible things like manners, civility, honesty, integrity, and so forth. Many people cling to religion as a means to get those back and back the underdog at the same time. This is not right!
Rather we should consider the ways in which biblical, orthodox Christianity is like a lost cause to see why it isn't. First it certainly seems as though the reality of Christ's reign is disputed by every event of history. If Christ were ruling, how could cancer be so prevalent among us? If Christ were reigning, why would sexual predators get away with so much? It feels like a lost cause. But feelings can be deceiving. The objectivity of Christ's reign is not in the headlines, but in the Scriptures which declare, without compromise, that Christ reigns until His enemies are made His footstool. All the enemies of the gospel (not the established church, mind you) must be defeated through the spread of the gospel (Rev. 19:15).
Second, the social benefits of biblical Christianity are rooted in the faith of Christianity. Those who cling to religion for the social benefits usually do not really accept the faith. They are social Christians. Many people, especially in the South, have been reduced to this kind of faith. This is due to the fact that the modern world has tried its best to erase the antithesis from life. They are deceived into believing that they can synthesize Christianity and modernity into one seamless whole; that they can have their cake and eat it too. We want to be able to rebel against the law, to be antinomian, and have the benefits of the law at the same time. We want a religion that does not criticize our decisions to have pre-marital sex, view pornography, be deceptive for our own gain, or ignore the suffering of others. But at the same time we want the social benefits of the faith. We want people to get along, be civil , to each other. We want people to share of their good fortune with others. We want happiness.
Davidson, I think, understood that you can't have it both ways. That is why he chose to draw the line with the lost cuases. All of his lost causes were causes that stood in line with biblical Christianity, even if he didn't necessarily, against the failure and lies of modernity. Davidson understood the antithesis and stood firm, even if it meant ridicule or disdain, which it did.
What is a lost cause? My first year of post-baccalaureate work required me to take a senior level history class called Great Losers. Each week we had to write a presentation that presented some person or civilization as a great loser in history. The genius of this class was, of course, you had to really know about history in order to argue that someone was a great loser. The idea of losing is really significant to us, I think. It goes right along with the idea of martyrdom. We are drawn to ideas and movements that create martyrs because we are mystified by the fact that anybody would die for anything. How can someone believe something so much that he or she would be willing to die for it. Davidson was not a martyr, at least not in the traditional sense, but he did latch onto several movements that were destined to fail.
The draw of the lost cause, I think, is the notion that you stood with something when there was little to no evidence that you ought to do so. The decision to remain on the sinking ship has a heroism about it that we relish in, if even vicariously. Tennyson wrote about the lost cause in the Charge of the Light Brigade.
When can their glory fade?So many events come to mind when we consider the idea of lost cause. The Song of Roland captures the imagery of such an event, as Roland makes the decision to remain an fight, knowing death waits, to give the rest of the army time to get away. The Battle of Dunkirk is another moment when the idea of the lost cause rears its head, though in point of fact, not much was really lost then; maybe dignity. This brings us to one of the underlying roots of the lost cause and its attraction. Who could not have respect for someone who stood for a lost cause? Well, that depends on the cause I guess. It depends on whether your lost cause was the rescue of British soldiers from the beach of Dunkirk or racial segregation. They would, and should, be perceived very differently by most people. But in a majority of cases, someone who stood for a lost cause is going to get a lot of respect for having stood firm. That is because we are intoxicated with the desire for perseverance. We show so little of it, yet it permeates our human emotions. We persevere at so little that we are drawn to those who do, for whatever reason. I suspect that most people even have a minuscule amount of admiration for religious extremists simply because they believed what they believed so much that they were willing to die or blow themselves up for it. Most of us would not admit that in public, but I'll bet its there.
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
Sadly, this devotion to the lost cause because of the lack of evidence is where many people get stuck with religion. There are many people out there who are attracted to religious movements because they are the underdogs of society. Science and modernity are the big guys on the block these days and religion has been kicked to the corner. But along with religion has gone much of our social consciousness as well as those intangible things like manners, civility, honesty, integrity, and so forth. Many people cling to religion as a means to get those back and back the underdog at the same time. This is not right!
Rather we should consider the ways in which biblical, orthodox Christianity is like a lost cause to see why it isn't. First it certainly seems as though the reality of Christ's reign is disputed by every event of history. If Christ were ruling, how could cancer be so prevalent among us? If Christ were reigning, why would sexual predators get away with so much? It feels like a lost cause. But feelings can be deceiving. The objectivity of Christ's reign is not in the headlines, but in the Scriptures which declare, without compromise, that Christ reigns until His enemies are made His footstool. All the enemies of the gospel (not the established church, mind you) must be defeated through the spread of the gospel (Rev. 19:15).
Second, the social benefits of biblical Christianity are rooted in the faith of Christianity. Those who cling to religion for the social benefits usually do not really accept the faith. They are social Christians. Many people, especially in the South, have been reduced to this kind of faith. This is due to the fact that the modern world has tried its best to erase the antithesis from life. They are deceived into believing that they can synthesize Christianity and modernity into one seamless whole; that they can have their cake and eat it too. We want to be able to rebel against the law, to be antinomian, and have the benefits of the law at the same time. We want a religion that does not criticize our decisions to have pre-marital sex, view pornography, be deceptive for our own gain, or ignore the suffering of others. But at the same time we want the social benefits of the faith. We want people to get along, be civil , to each other. We want people to share of their good fortune with others. We want happiness.
Davidson, I think, understood that you can't have it both ways. That is why he chose to draw the line with the lost cuases. All of his lost causes were causes that stood in line with biblical Christianity, even if he didn't necessarily, against the failure and lies of modernity. Davidson understood the antithesis and stood firm, even if it meant ridicule or disdain, which it did.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Angels in the Architecture "The Emerging Divide"
The Emerging Divide is really an excellent essay on the most basic, most fundamental, most lasting divide that has ever existed: the Antithesis between the City of God and the City of Man. Taking his cue from Athanasius and Augustine (the latter’s famous City of God should be required reading in high school medieval courses), Jones paints a picture of modernity as one which has totally ignored and forgotten that an antithesis to anything is anywhere. He draws us firmly back to the fact that God draws an antithesis from the moment that sin entered the world and it will be with us, and will war against us, until Christ returns triumphant at the end of history.
Jones spends a good deal of time in apologetic for the medieval mind. He argues that they really were antithetical thinkers, even though modern history tends to present them as synthesizers of pagan and Hellenistic thought. He admits that there were some poor choices made by the medieval like Aquinas, but points to the fact that at least they understood to draw the line between Aristotle and Plato and that they had pretty darn good reasons for doing so. Plato was so anti-material that they felt Aristotle would be much better. They were wrong on many accounts, but at least they drew a line. Most modern Christians, Jones says, “fail to draw any line at all, synthesizing their thought with anything pagan that hops along” (55).
In the world of synthesis, we are masters. We are particularly masters of synthesizing with science. Science, Jones says, is the “Enlightenment idol” which has “gripped and throttled orthodoxy for two centuries” (55). The amusing thing is that science is so bad at what it does in the long term that if anyone bothered to consider the track record of science, the results would be laughable.
A more mature mind, Jones argues, would not be quite so hasty to call a thing knowledge. While I think he is stretching things a bit to suggest that nothing was called more than a firm belief until it had stood for two thousand years, he is certainly right that we do not give things time to steep and simmer before dragging them out and showing them off. I am always amused by the pharmaceutical industry and the commercials they dream up. What really (and sadly) amazes me though is how three months later the drug was being recalled because it causes people to grow extra ears inside their stomach and other such hideous things. If the pharmaceutical companies had waited a good ten years and conducted real tests we wouldn’t be in this mess, but then they would have lost all those profits. Yes, folks; science is run by profit as well.
The antithesis is really the most important thing to keep in mind while reading this book. What antithesis did the medieval draw? What antithesis do we moderns draw?
Jones spends a good deal of time in apologetic for the medieval mind. He argues that they really were antithetical thinkers, even though modern history tends to present them as synthesizers of pagan and Hellenistic thought. He admits that there were some poor choices made by the medieval like Aquinas, but points to the fact that at least they understood to draw the line between Aristotle and Plato and that they had pretty darn good reasons for doing so. Plato was so anti-material that they felt Aristotle would be much better. They were wrong on many accounts, but at least they drew a line. Most modern Christians, Jones says, “fail to draw any line at all, synthesizing their thought with anything pagan that hops along” (55).
In the world of synthesis, we are masters. We are particularly masters of synthesizing with science. Science, Jones says, is the “Enlightenment idol” which has “gripped and throttled orthodoxy for two centuries” (55). The amusing thing is that science is so bad at what it does in the long term that if anyone bothered to consider the track record of science, the results would be laughable.
If we think in terms of centuries and millennia, few other disciplines turn inside-out so flippantly and quickly as the natural sciences. (55)
A more mature mind, Jones argues, would not be quite so hasty to call a thing knowledge. While I think he is stretching things a bit to suggest that nothing was called more than a firm belief until it had stood for two thousand years, he is certainly right that we do not give things time to steep and simmer before dragging them out and showing them off. I am always amused by the pharmaceutical industry and the commercials they dream up. What really (and sadly) amazes me though is how three months later the drug was being recalled because it causes people to grow extra ears inside their stomach and other such hideous things. If the pharmaceutical companies had waited a good ten years and conducted real tests we wouldn’t be in this mess, but then they would have lost all those profits. Yes, folks; science is run by profit as well.
The antithesis is really the most important thing to keep in mind while reading this book. What antithesis did the medieval draw? What antithesis do we moderns draw?
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Belloc on our Civil Religion
Hilarie Belloc (1870-1953) understood what Rousseau was trying to say about civil religion in the Social Contract. This quote from his essay "The Modern Man" explains it very well.
You may deny any one of the old doctrines and few will be shocked, but you may not ridicule the flag or the Crown, not interrupt the two minutes' silence on Armistice Day....
Rousseau argued that rather than have any transcendental religion, such as Christianity, we must find unity, or uniformity, in our religion of state, or civil religion. The elements of this civil religion are flags and national holidays. Imagine how right Belloc is when you think of the fourth of July versus the feast of Ascension or some other religious festival. Despite lapel pin campaigns to remember that "Jesus is the reason for the Season," we have excised much of the Christian aspects of Christmas from any and all public displays of the celebration. Now imagine that instead of Armistice Day, a day I never heard of celebrating until recently (apparently we don't think much of World War 1 in America), we ignored or interrupted 9/11 celebrations. Which would get you in more trouble politically or socially?
We have a civil religion in our country and it doesn't reflect much of a Christian character. God help us train the next generation to pay more attention to the transcendental and eternal things than just be flag wavers and public holiday devotees.
Friday, July 18, 2008
LibriVox
I have got to do a post about LibriVox. LibriVox is a website where public domain works of literature are being recorded into audio books (in mp3 format) and are distributed freely. I have downloaded and listened to many books this way. Usually there is a link to the Internet Archive ( a scanned text site similar to Google Books) where the text of the book can be found. This is an amazing resource for poetry and other stuff to hear it read aloud. This site is great for students as well.
Another plus to LibriVox is you have a time stamp on how long it takes to actually read a book. I understand that comprehension is different from reading (sometimes) but it at least gives you a starting point. I had a class that read the Autobiography of Ben Franklin this past year. I not only downloaded the book and listened to it as I prepared for class, but also had an idea as to how long it should take them to read the book as a whole.
I use LibriVox a lot and wanted to make a post so others would know more about this service as well. Enjoy.
Another plus to LibriVox is you have a time stamp on how long it takes to actually read a book. I understand that comprehension is different from reading (sometimes) but it at least gives you a starting point. I had a class that read the Autobiography of Ben Franklin this past year. I not only downloaded the book and listened to it as I prepared for class, but also had an idea as to how long it should take them to read the book as a whole.
I use LibriVox a lot and wanted to make a post so others would know more about this service as well. Enjoy.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Death of the Grown-Up
I just came across a fascinating title by Diana West: The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization. Admittedly I came across it while perusing the Reformation 21 website and reading through some recent blog posts there.They always have stimulating reading. I missed wishing John Calvin happy birthday on my blog recently, but I'm sure he won't really mind.
At any rate, this new book is definitely going to find its way onto my reading list. Until I give my own opinion of it, check out this excellent review from the Ref21 team.
At any rate, this new book is definitely going to find its way onto my reading list. Until I give my own opinion of it, check out this excellent review from the Ref21 team.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Diet is Important
It never fails. About two or three weeks into the school year a parent (or hopefully pair of parents) give me a call or stop me in the hallway to ask about the content of the books we read in Humanities. They have usually just realized that the subject of sexuality has been mentioned or that the book may contain “bad words.” Sometimes they have come with true inquisitiveness, “Is this appropriate to read and discuss?” Other times it is less congenial, “I can’t believe my child is reading this at a Christian school!” Rather than focus on an apologetic for our reading here – which has merit – I want to discuss a different, related issue in this article.
Our diet is important. In our materialistic, botox-injected, fashion model, American Idol culture, you would think we get that. Sadly we only get the physical implications of this. We totally miss the broader worldview-centered applications of this concept. If our lives are meant to be a reflection of the glory of God (and they are, 1 Cor. 10:31) and if we are to cultivate this by attending to truth, goodness, and beauty (and we should, Phil. 4:8) then we must have a diet consistent with these ideals.
The reason I began with the example I did is because this question is really a dietary question. In both cases the answer is that there is no better place to read about pagan (or biblical) sexuality than a Christian school where the sexual activity can be analyzed and given a critique from a biblical standard. And by the way, there are no “bad” words. Words may be poorly used in order to revolt against propriety (in which case “friggin” or “that sucks” may fit the same bill as many four-letter words) but words themselves are not intrinsically bad.
How is the context of a literature class an issue of diet? Because for many families it is such a stark contrast to the diet their children get outside of school. Our entertainment diet has the same effect on our mind and character as our food diet does on our mid-section and gluteal muscles. Think of MTV as McDonald’s for your mind.
In my own experience I recently came to this understanding myself. Raised in Middle Tennessee, my entertainment diet grew from playing outside with action figures to watching television and then finally to video game consoles, walkman tape players, trips to the movie theater and an unhealthy obsession with popular culture. Not that I had an educational environment working against the entertainment mentality, but it would have made no difference if I had. It is a simple case of immediate gratification versus delayed gratification. Neil Postman has argued that our modern world has demanded that learning be a form of entertainment. As a college student, after my conversion to classical pedagogy I began to lament the time spent in entertainment, recognizing an antithesis between entertainment and the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. Entertainment is self-centered, even if it is done in a group. Wisdom and virtue are kingdom centered and desire to be taught, learned and discovered (cf. Prov. 9:3-6).
But as I began to have a family a sense of nostalgia gripped me. I did, after all, have two boys. I wanted them to develop a sense of dominion over creation but I wanted to share my boyhood joys with them as well. I unintentionally, and foolishly, set a paradox in front of them. I read C.S. Lewis, A.A. Milne, and J.R.R. Tolkien to them and set them in front of Star Wars and Robotech. Guess which had more of an influence?
It eventually struck me as I tried to cultivate discretion and gentleness and my children injured themselves in sword fights that I had fed them a diet of violence and action and expected to harvest reflection, simplicity, and virtue. How dumb was that?
Many families have this same tension. They want their children to have entertainment experiences they had (or sometimes ones denied to them in their youth). They also want the ideals of a classical child (meekness, self-control, etc.). It is very difficult (if not impossible) to have both of these together. They are antithetical to the tune of having cake and eating said cake.
This is what I have found to be the problem with families from the example at the beginning of this article. This past year I had a parent who was indignant about her son reading the sexually explicit portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh but had been fine with him watching an unedited version of the movie 300. There are simply no words for this contradiction.
Too often we assume that Disney and Nick Jr. or whatever is fine because it is aimed at kids. I have had to take a step back and drastically curb the shows my children watch or what they read because the content was not something the cultivated biblical attitudes. Attitudes like sarcasm and self-indulgence, mean-spiritedness and arguing are prevalent in modern cartoons and young-reader books. I’m not just talking about Harry Potter or The Golden Compass. This affects such shows as Arthur and new versions of Looney Toons.
We cannot feed our children an entertainment diet full of sensationalized pop culture and unbiblical attitudes and expect our children to be content with poetry or even deep study of the Scriptures. If our children have no patience or are averse to contemplation or reflection we must consider what has helped them be that way. This is no different from an obesity crisis. The prescription for obesity is to change your diet (to healthy foods) and exercise. The prescription for lazy minds and poor behavior is the same thing. Change their entertainment diet and make them exercise their mind.
Our diet is important. In our materialistic, botox-injected, fashion model, American Idol culture, you would think we get that. Sadly we only get the physical implications of this. We totally miss the broader worldview-centered applications of this concept. If our lives are meant to be a reflection of the glory of God (and they are, 1 Cor. 10:31) and if we are to cultivate this by attending to truth, goodness, and beauty (and we should, Phil. 4:8) then we must have a diet consistent with these ideals.
The reason I began with the example I did is because this question is really a dietary question. In both cases the answer is that there is no better place to read about pagan (or biblical) sexuality than a Christian school where the sexual activity can be analyzed and given a critique from a biblical standard. And by the way, there are no “bad” words. Words may be poorly used in order to revolt against propriety (in which case “friggin” or “that sucks” may fit the same bill as many four-letter words) but words themselves are not intrinsically bad.
How is the context of a literature class an issue of diet? Because for many families it is such a stark contrast to the diet their children get outside of school. Our entertainment diet has the same effect on our mind and character as our food diet does on our mid-section and gluteal muscles. Think of MTV as McDonald’s for your mind.
In my own experience I recently came to this understanding myself. Raised in Middle Tennessee, my entertainment diet grew from playing outside with action figures to watching television and then finally to video game consoles, walkman tape players, trips to the movie theater and an unhealthy obsession with popular culture. Not that I had an educational environment working against the entertainment mentality, but it would have made no difference if I had. It is a simple case of immediate gratification versus delayed gratification. Neil Postman has argued that our modern world has demanded that learning be a form of entertainment. As a college student, after my conversion to classical pedagogy I began to lament the time spent in entertainment, recognizing an antithesis between entertainment and the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. Entertainment is self-centered, even if it is done in a group. Wisdom and virtue are kingdom centered and desire to be taught, learned and discovered (cf. Prov. 9:3-6).
But as I began to have a family a sense of nostalgia gripped me. I did, after all, have two boys. I wanted them to develop a sense of dominion over creation but I wanted to share my boyhood joys with them as well. I unintentionally, and foolishly, set a paradox in front of them. I read C.S. Lewis, A.A. Milne, and J.R.R. Tolkien to them and set them in front of Star Wars and Robotech. Guess which had more of an influence?
It eventually struck me as I tried to cultivate discretion and gentleness and my children injured themselves in sword fights that I had fed them a diet of violence and action and expected to harvest reflection, simplicity, and virtue. How dumb was that?
Many families have this same tension. They want their children to have entertainment experiences they had (or sometimes ones denied to them in their youth). They also want the ideals of a classical child (meekness, self-control, etc.). It is very difficult (if not impossible) to have both of these together. They are antithetical to the tune of having cake and eating said cake.
This is what I have found to be the problem with families from the example at the beginning of this article. This past year I had a parent who was indignant about her son reading the sexually explicit portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh but had been fine with him watching an unedited version of the movie 300. There are simply no words for this contradiction.
Too often we assume that Disney and Nick Jr. or whatever is fine because it is aimed at kids. I have had to take a step back and drastically curb the shows my children watch or what they read because the content was not something the cultivated biblical attitudes. Attitudes like sarcasm and self-indulgence, mean-spiritedness and arguing are prevalent in modern cartoons and young-reader books. I’m not just talking about Harry Potter or The Golden Compass. This affects such shows as Arthur and new versions of Looney Toons.
We cannot feed our children an entertainment diet full of sensationalized pop culture and unbiblical attitudes and expect our children to be content with poetry or even deep study of the Scriptures. If our children have no patience or are averse to contemplation or reflection we must consider what has helped them be that way. This is no different from an obesity crisis. The prescription for obesity is to change your diet (to healthy foods) and exercise. The prescription for lazy minds and poor behavior is the same thing. Change their entertainment diet and make them exercise their mind.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Culture
Many of us are aware of Henry Van Til's classic formulation in The Calvinistic Concept of Culture.
that culture is religion externalized. It turns out he was not the first to make such a suggestion, though he was the first that I know of to explore it from a purely Reformed and theological perspective. In 1930, the Agrarians made this statement concerning culture.
They were defining humanism as a culture, something we have still not really caught on to as clearly as we ought to.
I am constantly amazed at how right they were about so much.
that culture is religion externalized. It turns out he was not the first to make such a suggestion, though he was the first that I know of to explore it from a purely Reformed and theological perspective. In 1930, the Agrarians made this statement concerning culture.
the whole way in which we live, act, think, and feel. It is a kind of imaginatively balanced life lived out in a definite social tradition.
They were defining humanism as a culture, something we have still not really caught on to as clearly as we ought to.
I am constantly amazed at how right they were about so much.
Recovering the Lost Art of Reading Aloud
With obvious respect to Dorothy Sayers, I would like to argue for a moment about something very essential that has managed to slip out of our education process. Reading aloud. I often have students come to me in seventh grade who cannot pronounce words aloud. I believe they can read them to themselves, most of the time, but they cannot read them out loud. We read a lot of literature at the school I teach at and we do a lot of it aloud when we are able. It pains me to hear students just completely butcher Mark Twain or Homer because they lack reading ability.
After several years, I have come to believe that this is related to the fact that parents stop reading to their children after their children learn to read. I don't remember being read to as a child. I remember having lots of books, but I don't remember my Mom or Dad actually reading them to me. I am sure they did, but they probably stopped once I learned how to read for myself. As a result, I often had to figure out how things were supposed to sound, and still struggle with this if the original is Latin or Greek. How do you say Aristides or Darius?
I have a friend at another school who was read to his entire childhood. His parents read short easy to read books to him when he was learning to read. They upped it to authors like Lewis, Tolkien and Wordsworth when he was able to follow them. As he grew the family began reading Homer and Livy, Plutarch and Augustine during the family reading time. By the time he was in high school they were reading serious non-fiction and long fiction together (think McCullough's 1776 or Melville's Moby Dick). The result: He has no problem reading very difficult material. He has begun the same trend with his own children. I have as well. My boys (6 and 8) and I are reading Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth right now. I have already read the Chronicles of Narnia to them and we regularly read from Bennett's Book of Virtues.
Taking the time to read aloud to your children will have many results. The most important, assuming you choose good literature to read to them (I recommend not reading Stephen King or Harry Potter), is that they will hear a lot of good literature in their lifetime. Another result will be they will hear language being read. This is very important! It relates to the seventh graders I get from time to time. I can always tell which ones come from families that read together and which don't. Those that read together are much more comfortable reading aloud than those that don't.
I know it takes time to do this. But I would argue that whether you are homeschooling or classical schooling, this is a must for any family. Take the time. Sit down for thirty minutes each evening and read something together. Don't just read some dribble either, get something with meat on it. I recommend poetry or short fiction for the beginner. Read Lewis' Narnia books together. Read Tolkien together. Read something together.
After several years, I have come to believe that this is related to the fact that parents stop reading to their children after their children learn to read. I don't remember being read to as a child. I remember having lots of books, but I don't remember my Mom or Dad actually reading them to me. I am sure they did, but they probably stopped once I learned how to read for myself. As a result, I often had to figure out how things were supposed to sound, and still struggle with this if the original is Latin or Greek. How do you say Aristides or Darius?
I have a friend at another school who was read to his entire childhood. His parents read short easy to read books to him when he was learning to read. They upped it to authors like Lewis, Tolkien and Wordsworth when he was able to follow them. As he grew the family began reading Homer and Livy, Plutarch and Augustine during the family reading time. By the time he was in high school they were reading serious non-fiction and long fiction together (think McCullough's 1776 or Melville's Moby Dick). The result: He has no problem reading very difficult material. He has begun the same trend with his own children. I have as well. My boys (6 and 8) and I are reading Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth right now. I have already read the Chronicles of Narnia to them and we regularly read from Bennett's Book of Virtues.
Taking the time to read aloud to your children will have many results. The most important, assuming you choose good literature to read to them (I recommend not reading Stephen King or Harry Potter), is that they will hear a lot of good literature in their lifetime. Another result will be they will hear language being read. This is very important! It relates to the seventh graders I get from time to time. I can always tell which ones come from families that read together and which don't. Those that read together are much more comfortable reading aloud than those that don't.
I know it takes time to do this. But I would argue that whether you are homeschooling or classical schooling, this is a must for any family. Take the time. Sit down for thirty minutes each evening and read something together. Don't just read some dribble either, get something with meat on it. I recommend poetry or short fiction for the beginner. Read Lewis' Narnia books together. Read Tolkien together. Read something together.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Thanks to Dr. Grant for this quote
“If the church of Jesus Christ does not become central to the life of growing cities then the cities will become mere geographies of no singular place.” Thomas Chalmers
On a Replica of the Parthenon
Why do they come? What do they seek
Who build but never read their Greek?
The classic stillness of a pool
Beleaguered in its certitude
By aimless motors that can make
Only incertainty more sure;
And where the willows crowd the pure
Expanse of clouds and blue that stood
Around the gables Athens wrought
Shop-girls embrace a plaster thought,
And eye Poseidon's loins ungirt,
And never heed the brandished spear
Or feel the bright-eyed maiden's rage
Whose gaze the sparrows violate;
But the sky drips its spectral dirt,
And gods, like men, to soot revert.
Gone is the mild, the serene air.
The golden years are come too late.
Pursue not wisdom or virtue here,
But what blind motion, what dim last
Regret of men who slew their past
Raised up this bribe against their fate.
Donald Davidson
Who build but never read their Greek?
The classic stillness of a pool
Beleaguered in its certitude
By aimless motors that can make
Only incertainty more sure;
And where the willows crowd the pure
Expanse of clouds and blue that stood
Around the gables Athens wrought
Shop-girls embrace a plaster thought,
And eye Poseidon's loins ungirt,
And never heed the brandished spear
Or feel the bright-eyed maiden's rage
Whose gaze the sparrows violate;
But the sky drips its spectral dirt,
And gods, like men, to soot revert.
Gone is the mild, the serene air.
The golden years are come too late.
Pursue not wisdom or virtue here,
But what blind motion, what dim last
Regret of men who slew their past
Raised up this bribe against their fate.
Donald Davidson
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Interesting thoughts from Gary DeMar
Gar DeMar, from American Vision, sends out email articles on a regular basis to those signed up to get them. Often they are particularly insightful. I thought the one from July 8 was very helpful to me as a teacher. It helped me critique not only my students but myself. See for yourself.
Is the Internet Making Some People Stupid and Gullible?
The next step is to take action. Simply identifying the problem is not enough. At the SCL conference a couple of weeks ago I heard several good talks from people and some that weren't so good. Those that weren't so good inevitably had conceded some critical aspect of the Christian antithesis in their educational philosophy. The most obvious one I heard was that teens today are under a lot of pressure that we don't get and we (as teachers) must accept that fact. There was no hint of identifying this trend and then looking to how we can transcend this or call them out of their self-absorbed lives into communion with the rest of the civilized world. No, we'll just concede defeat and try to "meet them where they are."
I wonder what would have happened if Jesus had acted that way? He did indeed identify our central problem and meet us where we were, but only as an avenue to call us forth out of our sin and misery into vital communion with the Godhead.
Is the Internet Making Some People Stupid and Gullible?
The next step is to take action. Simply identifying the problem is not enough. At the SCL conference a couple of weeks ago I heard several good talks from people and some that weren't so good. Those that weren't so good inevitably had conceded some critical aspect of the Christian antithesis in their educational philosophy. The most obvious one I heard was that teens today are under a lot of pressure that we don't get and we (as teachers) must accept that fact. There was no hint of identifying this trend and then looking to how we can transcend this or call them out of their self-absorbed lives into communion with the rest of the civilized world. No, we'll just concede defeat and try to "meet them where they are."
I wonder what would have happened if Jesus had acted that way? He did indeed identify our central problem and meet us where we were, but only as an avenue to call us forth out of our sin and misery into vital communion with the Godhead.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
17 years before Sayers...
John Gould Fletcher (1886-1950) included an essay on education in the 1930 I'll Take My Stand that bears remarkable similarity to aspects of Dorothy Sayers Lost Tools of Learning essay from 1947. An apologetic needs to be made before any discussion of Fletcher's essay is done. This is done in case anyone ever follows up this post with an actual reading of the primary source and finds, as I did, that Fletcher has some very racist language in his writing. Fletcher frequently betrays himself as "undemocratic" and anti-egalitarian in his opinions about education. Yet, politically incorrect as he is, Fletcher has some excellent ideas if we are willing to listen.
According to Fletcher, the purpose of education is "to produce the balanced character - the man of the world in the true sense, who is also the man with spiritual roots in his own community in the local sense" (111). In Fletcher's perspective the antebellum Southern education system did this much better than the public school postbellum system. He does not go so far as to say the Southern system is the best period. He acknowledges the victories of the Northern system in the North and attributes it to the industrial and urban character of the North. In the South, however, the rural character brought about a much different system of education, that of the Academy. Fletcher describes the Academy as a school of tutors and pupils who pay tuition to learn. He says "Their object was to teach nothing that the teacher himself had not mastered, and could not convey to his pupils." Sounds a lot like John Milton Gregory here. The result, according to Fletcher was that "their training was therefore classical and humanistic, rather than scientific and technical" (103).
What is a classical education according to Fletcher? He describes the three stages of the trivium very well. He begins with the Grammar stage.
From this basic understanding of fact, Fletcher represents an interesting picture of the Logic (Dialectic) stage. This stage lasts from "ten to twelve years of age" according to Fletcher and during this period "the sole abiding object of education is not to convey information at all" (115).
It is fascinating to me that we have come to expect so little from our school children. Given the opportunities open to them, we should expect much more. I often wonder what Martin Luther or St. Augustine would have done with a word processor, given their already prodigious output of works. I had a parent of an eleventh grader come to me expressing concern that her daughter had not learned something several years ago. I listened carefully and respectfully and then suggested that now was the time to expect her daughter to learn that for herself, to teach that to herself. She should begin using the tools of learning to teach herself. Needless to say, this wasn't what this mother wanted to hear. But it should represent exactly what we want our students to do in life. No school can teach every art and science that will be needed. Public schools may try, but then look at what comes out. We have graduates who have very open minds to all forms of religion and sexuality, but cannot make change at a cash register.
Fletcher represents a picture of what American education could be again. He does so in a fallen state, remember this if you read him, but he does paint a beautiful picture of the educated man.
According to Fletcher, the purpose of education is "to produce the balanced character - the man of the world in the true sense, who is also the man with spiritual roots in his own community in the local sense" (111). In Fletcher's perspective the antebellum Southern education system did this much better than the public school postbellum system. He does not go so far as to say the Southern system is the best period. He acknowledges the victories of the Northern system in the North and attributes it to the industrial and urban character of the North. In the South, however, the rural character brought about a much different system of education, that of the Academy. Fletcher describes the Academy as a school of tutors and pupils who pay tuition to learn. He says "Their object was to teach nothing that the teacher himself had not mastered, and could not convey to his pupils." Sounds a lot like John Milton Gregory here. The result, according to Fletcher was that "their training was therefore classical and humanistic, rather than scientific and technical" (103).
What is a classical education according to Fletcher? He describes the three stages of the trivium very well. He begins with the Grammar stage.
Primary instruction in the English language in the elements of grammar and mathematics, in geography, in elementary history, is, after all, largely a question of being able to remember certain facts. It depends on memory - on being able to repeat a lesson correctly once it is given. (115)
From this basic understanding of fact, Fletcher represents an interesting picture of the Logic (Dialectic) stage. This stage lasts from "ten to twelve years of age" according to Fletcher and during this period "the sole abiding object of education is not to convey information at all" (115).
It is to train the pupil's mind in such a manner that he can master for himself whatever subject he wishes to take up, and to enlarge his mental horizon by showing the relationship of this subject to the whole of human life. (115-116)Technically, Fletcher does not represent a Rhetoric stage in his map of education. But given what he does say, one can deduce the content of the Rhetoric stage. It is whatever exists past the training stage. That period of a child's life after twelve years of age when he does introduce himself to new learning and does master whatever he desires. This is just what Sayers had in mind.
It is fascinating to me that we have come to expect so little from our school children. Given the opportunities open to them, we should expect much more. I often wonder what Martin Luther or St. Augustine would have done with a word processor, given their already prodigious output of works. I had a parent of an eleventh grader come to me expressing concern that her daughter had not learned something several years ago. I listened carefully and respectfully and then suggested that now was the time to expect her daughter to learn that for herself, to teach that to herself. She should begin using the tools of learning to teach herself. Needless to say, this wasn't what this mother wanted to hear. But it should represent exactly what we want our students to do in life. No school can teach every art and science that will be needed. Public schools may try, but then look at what comes out. We have graduates who have very open minds to all forms of religion and sexuality, but cannot make change at a cash register.
Fletcher represents a picture of what American education could be again. He does so in a fallen state, remember this if you read him, but he does paint a beautiful picture of the educated man.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Hometown
I have lived in Greenville, SC for a little more than 8 years. Before that I lived in Chattanooga, TN for about 5 years. Yet for some reason, every time I go back to Winchester, TN to see my parents, I feel like I have come home. None of the places I have lived since high school have felt like home to me.
This gets even more interesting when I recognize that the overwhelming desire for many children that grow up in small towns (including myself) it to get out as fast as possible and as far away as possible. I remember the first time a student of mine here in Greenville told me he wanted to get out of this small town. I laughed at him and told him the population of the city of Greenville alone was greater than the entire county I grew up in. Yet, for some reason, I am trying to get back.
It may have something to do with the agrarian streak developing in me (I picked the topic for a reason, you know). It may simply be a product of my middle age (I am a thirty-something now). Whatever it is, I miss Skip's Grill. I miss the Oldham Theater. I miss the Blue Front Drug Store and the Creekside Market. I miss so much about that place that I don't want to leave once I have visited.
Yet this can't just turn into a trip down nostalgia lane. I have to do analysis, even on myself. While there last week I was saddened by how much Winchester looks like everywhere; which is another way of saying it looks like nowhere. James Kunstler's fascinating book The Geography of Nowhere, explains how this has happened all across America. This process has turned vital and regional communities into "developments" and places for "growth." I saw this with my own two eyes last week. Housing subdivisions have gone crazy in my hometown. This wouldn't be so bad if they had some character to them, but sadly they all look alike.
I can't for the life of me figure out why a vibrant community would want to approve a by-pass around their town. I guess on some level they figure it will keep very large trucks from barreling through the town. But it will also keep people who need to see Hammer's department store and the Winchester Speedway from ever setting their eyes on these places. Watch Cars for heaven's sake. I cried (and still cry) through parts of that movie because it reminded me so much of what is happening in our towns.
I will probably never move back to Winchester. One reason for this is the lack of community. Community it partly where you make it, but there must be some like-mindedness as well. We are very different from the folks we grew up with. Christianity is mostly a social religion in places like Winchester. I know there are many, very many, authentic Christians there. But for a gross amount of people, their is no life in their religion. We take our religion very seriously and have a church that does as well. There would be no place to worship there. There is also the problem of occupation and calling. I am a teacher, but am not state certified. I don't even have a education degree (for which I continue to be grateful). There are no private schools of the caliber I teach at in that part of Tennessee. There are some in more urban centers of Tennessee (like Franklin, Memphis, Knoxville, Murfreesboro, even Columbia). But in little ole Winchester there are no classical schools. It is very interesting to talk to people there about what I teach and how. They don't even have categories to put it in. "So do you teach history or literature?" "Well, both actually, and philsophy and art, with aesthetics and theology." (Insert puzzled face here)
After visiting my hometown, I have to work out the reasons I am grateful to live where I live and work where I work. I have to remind myself of what I would give up just to eat at Skip's once a week or so. I can't say I'd never do it if I had a real opporunity to, but it's not on the To Do list.
This gets even more interesting when I recognize that the overwhelming desire for many children that grow up in small towns (including myself) it to get out as fast as possible and as far away as possible. I remember the first time a student of mine here in Greenville told me he wanted to get out of this small town. I laughed at him and told him the population of the city of Greenville alone was greater than the entire county I grew up in. Yet, for some reason, I am trying to get back.
It may have something to do with the agrarian streak developing in me (I picked the topic for a reason, you know). It may simply be a product of my middle age (I am a thirty-something now). Whatever it is, I miss Skip's Grill. I miss the Oldham Theater. I miss the Blue Front Drug Store and the Creekside Market. I miss so much about that place that I don't want to leave once I have visited.
Yet this can't just turn into a trip down nostalgia lane. I have to do analysis, even on myself. While there last week I was saddened by how much Winchester looks like everywhere; which is another way of saying it looks like nowhere. James Kunstler's fascinating book The Geography of Nowhere, explains how this has happened all across America. This process has turned vital and regional communities into "developments" and places for "growth." I saw this with my own two eyes last week. Housing subdivisions have gone crazy in my hometown. This wouldn't be so bad if they had some character to them, but sadly they all look alike.
I can't for the life of me figure out why a vibrant community would want to approve a by-pass around their town. I guess on some level they figure it will keep very large trucks from barreling through the town. But it will also keep people who need to see Hammer's department store and the Winchester Speedway from ever setting their eyes on these places. Watch Cars for heaven's sake. I cried (and still cry) through parts of that movie because it reminded me so much of what is happening in our towns.
I will probably never move back to Winchester. One reason for this is the lack of community. Community it partly where you make it, but there must be some like-mindedness as well. We are very different from the folks we grew up with. Christianity is mostly a social religion in places like Winchester. I know there are many, very many, authentic Christians there. But for a gross amount of people, their is no life in their religion. We take our religion very seriously and have a church that does as well. There would be no place to worship there. There is also the problem of occupation and calling. I am a teacher, but am not state certified. I don't even have a education degree (for which I continue to be grateful). There are no private schools of the caliber I teach at in that part of Tennessee. There are some in more urban centers of Tennessee (like Franklin, Memphis, Knoxville, Murfreesboro, even Columbia). But in little ole Winchester there are no classical schools. It is very interesting to talk to people there about what I teach and how. They don't even have categories to put it in. "So do you teach history or literature?" "Well, both actually, and philsophy and art, with aesthetics and theology." (Insert puzzled face here)
After visiting my hometown, I have to work out the reasons I am grateful to live where I live and work where I work. I have to remind myself of what I would give up just to eat at Skip's once a week or so. I can't say I'd never do it if I had a real opporunity to, but it's not on the To Do list.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Busy couple of weeks
In the last two weeks I have done quite a bit. I first went to Charleston, SC for the Society for Classical Learning conference. I had a wonderful time there listening to and learning from many in the classical school community. Charleston was, of course, fantastic. I made some new friends in schools I hadn't heard of before.
One of the most interesting folks I met was Andrew Kern. Andrew is director of CiRCE in Charlotte, NC and editor of the Quiddity blog on the blogroll. I highly recommend checking his blog out from time to time.
After the SCL conference I went over to my home state of Tennessee and visited family for about a week. While there I did the impossible, I read an entire book. R.J. Rushdoony's Foundations of Social Order made it into my bag because I have been trying to read through the Bannockburn reading list. I found it a fascinating read with much to contribute to my thinking and the church as well. I highly recommend it. Through commentary on the creeds and councils of the early church, Rushdoony points out four key concepts that must be understood to lie at the heart of any social order. 1) A Creed: Every society has one. Even not having one is having one. 2) The State: The State with either be a ministry of justice (its god-given role) or it will attempt to be messianic (its humanistic desire). 3) Sovereignty: This will either be immanent or transcendent. 4) Grace: This element puts every outworking of the social order in proper perspective. Social action only makes sense if done through grace, which must understand the nature of sin and corruption. If done without a proper understanding of grace social action is just humanistic and attempting to fix a problem by adjusting the environment of the sinner. This will never work.
I just got back from Tennessee and think I have found a starting place for my thesis. After finishing Rushdoony I picked up my Agrarianism reading again. Donald Davidson wrote a piece about the New Deal in which he talks about a Agrarian-Distributist view. Once I read that something began clicking into place.
It has been amazing to see that stuff I've been thinking about for years has begun making sense the more I read the agrarians. They have dealt with much of this before. Immigration, industrialism, social action, ancient history, Chesterton and Belloc. All of this has begun to coalesce while I have been reading these guys.
I will have to do some serious study of Davidson and Distributism, but I think I'm going to latch onto that idea (the idea of a Agrarian-Distributist view) and move with it.
I am still blogging about Angels in the Architecture, or rather intend to still blog about it. I already have some later chapters blogged out, but want to do them in order.
One of the most interesting folks I met was Andrew Kern. Andrew is director of CiRCE in Charlotte, NC and editor of the Quiddity blog on the blogroll. I highly recommend checking his blog out from time to time.
After the SCL conference I went over to my home state of Tennessee and visited family for about a week. While there I did the impossible, I read an entire book. R.J. Rushdoony's Foundations of Social Order made it into my bag because I have been trying to read through the Bannockburn reading list. I found it a fascinating read with much to contribute to my thinking and the church as well. I highly recommend it. Through commentary on the creeds and councils of the early church, Rushdoony points out four key concepts that must be understood to lie at the heart of any social order. 1) A Creed: Every society has one. Even not having one is having one. 2) The State: The State with either be a ministry of justice (its god-given role) or it will attempt to be messianic (its humanistic desire). 3) Sovereignty: This will either be immanent or transcendent. 4) Grace: This element puts every outworking of the social order in proper perspective. Social action only makes sense if done through grace, which must understand the nature of sin and corruption. If done without a proper understanding of grace social action is just humanistic and attempting to fix a problem by adjusting the environment of the sinner. This will never work.
I just got back from Tennessee and think I have found a starting place for my thesis. After finishing Rushdoony I picked up my Agrarianism reading again. Donald Davidson wrote a piece about the New Deal in which he talks about a Agrarian-Distributist view. Once I read that something began clicking into place.
It has been amazing to see that stuff I've been thinking about for years has begun making sense the more I read the agrarians. They have dealt with much of this before. Immigration, industrialism, social action, ancient history, Chesterton and Belloc. All of this has begun to coalesce while I have been reading these guys.
I will have to do some serious study of Davidson and Distributism, but I think I'm going to latch onto that idea (the idea of a Agrarian-Distributist view) and move with it.
I am still blogging about Angels in the Architecture, or rather intend to still blog about it. I already have some later chapters blogged out, but want to do them in order.
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