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Tuesday, September 27, 2005 posted by R.C. 3:33 PM link |
S-L-O-W D-O-W-N I had the opportunity yesterday to speak with an old friend, one of those friends/heroes that has had such a profound influence on my own thinking. In the providence of God it happened that he had been reading an article that I had written for Tabletalk magazine. That particular article was a virtual advertisement for the influence this man has had on me. I wrote it as if I were channeling this friend, and so I was not surprised, though I was tickled pink, that he liked the article. When you write as much as I do, eventually someone says something nice. That’s the bad news. The good news is that when you write as much as I do, sooner or later you say something even you don’t like. Last spring I found myself apologizing not only for a lack of clarity in what I had written, but for the errors of what I had written. It was a salutary experience for me, to come to existential terms with what I know theologically, that I am a sinner, and that sin will show itself wherever I am. Sometimes people like what you have to say, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re wrong. What is still so hard to swallow, after all these years, is how easy it is to be misunderstood. I once wrote something like this sentence, speaking of the wisdom of C.S. Lewis, “He knows more about the devil than God, but more about man than either.” I still don’t know if my syntax messed people up, or if they were messed up already, but I received several letters from folks wondering where exactly I got off suggesting that C.S. Lewis knew more than God about anything. No, my point was that among the things that C.S. Lewis knew, he knew more about the devil than he knew about God, and more about man than he knew about God or he knew about the devil. Is this confusion the product of government education, or the product of the product of government education, relativism? That is, are we just too stupid either to string together an argument (where it’s the writer’s fault) or to follow an argument (where it’s the reader’s fault)? Or is it that our presuppositionalism has burned down our bridges, and, to mix a metaphor, our conversations are ships that pass in the night? A generous interpretation of that squib for which I had to apologize might be rendered, “Write more slowly.” Certainly such was the lesson I needed to learn. Perhaps, however, we should add to that wisdom, “Read more slowly.” Much has been made of how the instant nature of online communication has made us more hasty, and more nasty. Addressing an envelope and getting a stamp allows for a greater cool down period than simply pushing the “send” button. But perhaps we’ve missed the concomitant problem. With hyper-links and instant search capabilities maybe we read less and skim more. We consume internet communications rather than digest them, and so often miss sundry subtleties. Neil Postman rightly argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death, that television, being an image based medium, is more about eliciting emotional responses than presenting ordered arguments. Internet communication, though most often word based, nevertheless takes place in an image saturated culture. That is, we continue too often, to react emotionally to what we read, and too little to dissect and examine arguments. Reading more slowly might help us read more carefully, which in turn just might help us think more carefully. Then we might be able to step outside our presuppositions, and, if they are wrong, be rescued from them. Then we might be able to live more deliberate lives. And that, I trust, we are all in favor of. [comments] |
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Tuesday, September 20, 2005 posted by R.C. 10:50 PM link |
Giving Thanks It is, as far as I can tell, a sin of mine that I struggle with. While yet believing that I have the spiritual gift of thick skin, I do believe, on the other hand, that I like to be appreciated. The Bible tells us that we ought not to be pleasers of men, but seek to please our Father in heaven. And so I often tell myself. Trouble is, all things being equal, I can tell when I am pleasing men, but constantly worry about whether I am pleasing God. Well, truth be told, I am always pleasing God, because of the work of Christ. And therein is the real problem. Like the Pelagian that I am, I want to do what is pleasing in God’s sight, that I might win His favor. I already have His favor, which is good news, and I did nothing to earn it, which is the bad news. I have a strategy for dealing with wayward feelings that both will not get in line with what my mind knows, and lead me into assorted sadnesses. When I find myself sad because I’m not receiving a certain measure of gratitude from others, I punish myself by letting myself be sad about it. I shouldn’t worry, and so the worry is my penance for my worry. I still don’t know how to cure myself, but I do know this, that the center of the solution is to not only feel, but express gratitude for others. I realized this yesterday as I drove my family 850 miles home from visiting our friends in Michigan. It was a delightful visit, befitting the fact that the trip was a birthday present to me from my family. There we visited with one of the all-time great families. Mark, the head of the family, is planting a church there in Michigan. I know what its like to plant a church, having done so myself not too long ago. I know what it’s like to work and work, and to look out at a sparse crowd that is marked by something less than joyful countenances. I know what it’s like to have a congregation think of the church as “yours” when there is work to do, but “theirs” when there are decisions to be made. But more than I know all that, I know Mark to be the very kind of man I aspire to be. His wife is his biggest fan, whose sole complaint is that the world hasn’t yet recognized the greatness of her husband. Their many children are walking testimonies to the parents’ character. And of course, we all, me, my wife and my children, have way too much fun with them. While I want to never feel the need for the approval of others, I want Mark to never forget that there is at least one family that couldn’t imagine a better family than theirs, that we are, and ever more will be, grateful for them. One place I have received a fair amount of thanks has been the response to my book When You Rise Up, A Covenantal Approach to Homeschooling. Many of my fathers in the homeschooling movement have had kind things to say, and better still, everywhere I go I hear from families who have been helped by the book. No one has yet, however, said the one thing I had hoped they would say, “This is a great book. But who is this Mark and Monique, and their children to whom the book is dedicated? They too must be a great family to have such a book written in their honor.” I’d rather talk about the Dewey family than I would curriculum choices any day. I close with two suggestions. I doubt, unless you too are friends with the Deweys, that you know a family as fine as the Deweys. I don’t doubt, however, that you have friends that you not only enjoy but admire. If so, tell them. And then, thank the One who made them what they are. [comments] |
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Tuesday, September 06, 2005 posted by R.C. 8:52 PM link |
Fat Fingered Feelings The Enlightenment must have been the birthplace of fat fingered fiends. The hubris that argued that we could, in principle, usher in paradise on earth was matched by the hubris that in practice bollixed everything up. It is madness to seize the engines of power, and doubly madness to think you can actually operate the machines. A few taxes here, a little engineering there, a modicum of support for those in need in this other place, and the next thing you know, a whole city is underground, and it looks like hell has broken loose all over. When we tinker with God’s law, even with the best of intentions, the law of unintended consequences, sooner rather than later, bites us on the backside. Our thumbs are too fat to push the buttons of tomorrow. We mean this and we get that, and then make it all worse by pushing faster and trying harder. The same principle, however, often finds a home in our hearts. Too many of us, to make an obvious example, have descended into moon-faced mush over some object of our affection. When the next object came along we wrote off the first object arguing that we had fooled ourselves, that back then we weren’t in love, but only in love with love. Oh what sophomoric sagacity. And now we think we never fall for such hooey anymore. In a few days the Pittsburgh Steelers will begin a new season. I, though my worldview doesn’t much allow for such, will care a great deal about what happens. I seek to assuage my guilt by noting the peculiar circumstances of my upbringing. When you live within an hour of the stadium, and when the home team wins the championship four of the six years between when you were ten and fourteen, when your father was on a first name basis with several of the future hall of famers, it’s hard to let go. But as I think about it, I don’t think I have confused a love of victory with a love of the Steelers. Instead I have more likely confused a love of my father with a love for the Steelers. That is, I still love the Steelers because they evoke for me hours and hours and hours of shared time and shared zeal with my father. And now my son, who strangely loves his father, likewise loves the Steelers, because it’s something we share together. My point, however, isn’t to justify my interest in the Steelers, but to argue that the solution to sloppy, misdirected emotion isn’t stern non-emotion, but wisely directed emotion. That is, we don’t stop loving when we find ourselves loving wrong. Instead we seek to love right. How many men fail their families by working all hours, not because they actually love their work, but because they love praise? Perhaps if they’d get home on time, they might get that praise at home. How many young ladies are led astray not because they actually love some boorish boy, but because they love being valued, and don’t get that at home? How many pastor’s tickle ears not because they actually want to be loved by their congregation, but because they don’t believe they are already loved by their savior? I had in my office a few hours ago one of my daughters. She needed first some help with her math, and then some help for her soul. She made a simple mistake in the former, and a complex one with the latter. After I explained the math, she was crying. Stupid book, stupid math, blah, blah blah. This particular daughter has heard me praise her before others for how bright she is. And now she longs to believe it to be so. What I long for her to believe is that Jesus loves her, and calls her not to be a math whiz, but to bear much of the fruit of the Spirit. Smart, by the way, didn’t make the list. She longed to impress others, but failed to seek to please her savior. I wonder where she learned that. Martin Luther, who literally had rather fat fingers, hit exactly the right note when he encouraged us to “Sin boldly.” It is better to misdirect our feelings than to stifle them. The solution to our fat fingers isn’t to step away from the keyboard. I would suggest that we must feel boldly, and then, to feel wisely. Do not kill desire, but learn to direct it in the paths in which it should go. Long for the right things, and soon your heart will be playing a symphony, an ode to joy, an ode to love, even an ode to passion, all as an ode to our Lord. [comments] |