tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-209055772024-03-18T02:47:46.199-07:00My ReflectionsFlourishing Faith, Fully AliveUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger529125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-41123560973890177502022-11-11T17:42:00.000-08:002022-11-11T17:42:02.231-08:00Why I Wrote Science Religions: A New Look<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"> The first thing to tell you is why I wrote <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Science-and-Religions-in-America-A-New-Look/Cootsona/p/book/9781032102122" target="_blank">this book</a>. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW-tToz5V3GCRIVXKUDdsprcPsOvsksfs8AJO6Sn31e0N8BoV5MLNyRtIPqqv46Ymeo9ANpE4xdC71xeKtamlacas1y1IioCfSew605aMcCRwMMAIc6XdasP6Cu42_gx9MLlPPPwHRpjTjLMJJAyX53ov0Gi8rVcTxuouTizoX4vm9UBLD3VU/s552/Science%20and%20Religions%20in%20America%20A%20New%20Look.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW-tToz5V3GCRIVXKUDdsprcPsOvsksfs8AJO6Sn31e0N8BoV5MLNyRtIPqqv46Ymeo9ANpE4xdC71xeKtamlacas1y1IioCfSew605aMcCRwMMAIc6XdasP6Cu42_gx9MLlPPPwHRpjTjLMJJAyX53ov0Gi8rVcTxuouTizoX4vm9UBLD3VU/w203-h320/Science%20and%20Religions%20in%20America%20A%20New%20Look.jpeg" width="203" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">You see, I’ve been unsatisfied with what I’ve found in “science and religion” books. They strike me as incomplete because they are essentially “monotheism and science” or “Christianity and science.” At some level, this is understandable and perhaps pardonable, given that the science commonly practiced derives from the European Scientific Revolution— which I’ll call in these pages “modern science”—and that this European context was predominantly Christian. Nevertheless, as I’ve taught hundreds of students and lectured to as many over the past two decades, I keep getting asked for a truly multi-religious approach to science. Why? There are, as I read in the <a href="https://sites.duke.edu/ncsweb/files/2022/02/NCSIV_Report_Web_FINAL2.pdf" target="_blank">National Congregations Study</a>: “about as many synagogues, mosques and Buddhist or Hindu temples in the U.S. (9% of all congregations) as there are Catholic parishes (6% of all congregations)."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">We need to take in this religious diversity and its impact. Toni Morrison once wrote, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"> And so, I’m writing this book because it doesn’t exist yet, at least for use in my undergraduate courses at Chico State.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">But it’s not just for my students, and this leads to a relevant question, Is this topic important to you too? Not surprisingly, my answer is Yes, but it might not be evident why—almost all other vital cultural topics find their way through science and religions. When we look, for example, at the COVID-19 pandemic, discussions about race, or the contentiousness of evolution and climate change in the United States, we need to understand the cultural history of science and religion—and how the two are still intertwined.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">This brings me to three phases of books written on science and religion.3</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">The first phase focused on science and religion largely through western monotheism—and frankly, as I’ve mentioned, primarily through Christianity and science. Ian Barbour’s iconic game-changing 1966 book Issues in Science and Religion4 set this agenda.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Then, a second phase appeared, as in Alister McGrath’s 2010 <i><a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/science-and-religion-an-introduction_alister-e-mcgrath/441228/item/15314071/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAgribBhDkARIsAASA5bsHwVSAjAjGdKpOeyZAVhKgpA30KSP6ZwWJBVWOJfbzqNliVNBTrIAaAuUHEALw_wcB#idiq=15314071&edition=5917525" target="_blank">Science and Religion: A New Introduction</a></i> (in its second edition, to be precise), which I’ve used as textbook. This and other texts take up science and its relationship with western monotheism and then add a chapter or two on “other religions.” Tipping their hats toward religious diversity, they still center on Christianity.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">In my teaching, this seems inadequate, and my concerns are echoed in this summary from the Stanford <i><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/" target="_blank">Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a></i>,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">“For the past fifty years, science and religion has been de facto Western science and Christianity—to what extent can Christian beliefs be brought in line with the results of Western science? The field of science and religion has only recently turned to an examination of non-Christian traditions, such as Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, providing a richer picture of interaction.”</span></blockquote><p></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">I’d like to think this book is part of a third phase, exemplified by <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Science-Religion-Around-Hedley-Brooke/dp/0195328205" target="_blank">Science and Religion Around the World</a></i>, edited by John Hedley Brooke and Ronald L. Numbers, a truly decentered and pluralistic approach to religions and science. Like the authors in this collection, I am not assuming monotheism, morality, and metaphysics (though, as an American scholar, that bias is always close at hand). The book I’ve written is also a bit different in that it’s for those who aren’t specialists in the field of religion and science.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">And this brings me back to my students and what they need and are asking for, as well as those readers who aren’t college students in my Science and Religion course. I think you’ll understand American life and better through studying science and religions (in the plural). The payoff here is that we gain insight into so many other topics.</span></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-72728881090709654132022-08-18T09:02:00.000-07:002022-08-18T09:02:15.020-07:00Reflections on Studying Science and Religions in a Pluralistic World<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRRaQD91AaCIre0NEqmDcwPkX0IyPWPLIfdj9KngzOHxRLXdId02FVTnD2q3OPDZCYanRs3kUhFdjDB-oBWqRHShGR_AjjdbHw7liVFJ4qX9Y1LmlEl6A_gQydX_qD9EiY8gab0zI1T7dZmGDP1GWO48EeeHv7yuuJJCVXMB4NCxf8dDBksa8/s2124/church%20ceiling%20iStock.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1411" data-original-width="2124" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRRaQD91AaCIre0NEqmDcwPkX0IyPWPLIfdj9KngzOHxRLXdId02FVTnD2q3OPDZCYanRs3kUhFdjDB-oBWqRHShGR_AjjdbHw7liVFJ4qX9Y1LmlEl6A_gQydX_qD9EiY8gab0zI1T7dZmGDP1GWO48EeeHv7yuuJJCVXMB4NCxf8dDBksa8/s320/church%20ceiling%20iStock.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">This is a mini excerpt from my upcoming book, <i><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Science-and-Religions-in-America-A-New-Look/Cootsona/p/book/9781032102122" target="_blank">Science and Religions in America: A New Look.</a> </i>Feel free to pre-order!</span></p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">If there's a way I lean, it's toward a collaboration between science and religion.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span>Nevertheless, ou</span><span>t of a commitment to honestly, I've also learned that there are some major differences between the two. I’ve mentioned in various places "New Atheists" scientists like Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins. They see a very deep chasm between religion and science, and they assert that they, as scientists, rely on experimentation and rationality, an approach that just doesn't connect with many people who fit into a religious mindset. At the same time, many influential religious voices in our country are not particularly supportive of modern science, like thought leaders of the conservative Christian movement, such as Jerry Falwell, Jr. or Franklin Graham, who yet command the attention of millions while standing against much of the consensus of science. </span><span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span>There is no one relationship of science and religions that could categorize and summarize all people.</span><span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><span>In the search for collaboration, it would also be convenient to find a universal common thread of wisdom that all the greatest minds in science and religion seek. For my part, I'd like to fully concur with the philosopher and scholar of mystical thinking Ken Wilbur, who commented when on the founders of quantum mechanics, “they investigated the physical realm so intensely looking for answers, and when they didn’t find these answers, they became metaphysical.” Even more, he added, “These physicists became deep mystics not because of physics but because of the limitations of physics” (quoted in </span>Steve Paulsen, <i><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/atoms-and-eden-9780199743162?cc=us&lang=en&" target="_blank">Atoms and Eden: Conversations on Religion and Science</a></i>.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">I am drawn to with what astrophysicist <a href="https://bigthink.com/13-8/science-god-false-choice/?fbclid=IwAR0ZrgAq73_m_iMC-iMoLN4PdxjwcKq5cC68jCJzElK_P4EdEFDglTxwZjU, accessed 16 June 2022." target="_blank">Marcelo Gleiser</a> wrote, </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Scientists should engage with the mystery of existence, inspired by a deep sense of awe and filled with humility. If science is seen this way, many more will be ready to embrace it as one of the highest expressions of the human spirit.</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">But frankly, I do struggle with how widespread this sentiment is. And I'll leave it there for this post... </span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">What do you think? (Hint: there's also more in the final chapter of the book.)</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-65306393925997748962022-03-31T10:10:00.002-07:002022-03-31T10:10:37.667-07:00A Great Conversation on Science and the Church<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Every time I talk with Brent Roam, lead pastor of <a href="https://onefamilychurch.com" target="_blank">One Family Church</a> in Saint Louis, I come away inspired. This was absolutely the case when I met with him recently (via Zoom), and we discussed how he integrates science into his church's ministries. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBuqZ9ThfMdVq1BfnFehGiTqWEh-iPIeBB0aXq665_c8bKwxFQJB1fVzFHstQTeNu7gsTmlWYrEbzkXiEt0zg4Ztq3iyo6nyCPY3WSIDeg8_y7nd80el3SjmYctggCRCer0qnaMfwMu1BRsBHGF-V46HtqnoVtNTExmZbN3oBxxaLfHOuqlfc/s2124/church%20ceiling%20iStock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1411" data-original-width="2124" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBuqZ9ThfMdVq1BfnFehGiTqWEh-iPIeBB0aXq665_c8bKwxFQJB1fVzFHstQTeNu7gsTmlWYrEbzkXiEt0zg4Ztq3iyo6nyCPY3WSIDeg8_y7nd80el3SjmYctggCRCer0qnaMfwMu1BRsBHGF-V46HtqnoVtNTExmZbN3oBxxaLfHOuqlfc/s320/church%20ceiling%20iStock.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">There's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuwRwPVfZi8" target="_blank">a video of the full interview</a>--with an abbreviated version <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2022/03/22/mutual-curiosity-an-interview-with-pastor-brent-roam/" target="_blank">here</a>. This is just a taste of our conversation, on the topic of "mutual curiosity."</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #3d93a8; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">(Me) When churches are working out how to connect science and faith, relationships with scientists are key. In the process, it also validates their call to science.</span></span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><i>(Brent) I’m definitely always curious about what scientists are thinking and what they’re doing. I want to learn from them and grow by listening. As a result, scientists seem to be interested in what I’m doing as a pastor, like teaching theological ideas—that’s just my normal thing. But it’s interesting because there’s a mutual curiosity there. When we’re genuinely interested and not intimidated, we reap the rewards, not only in the relationships, but also in the sermons and the quality of what we can present to our congregations.</i></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">I love that phrase: "mutual curiosity." I find far too many people in our polarized world that find comfort and identity in their "tribe." They stay there and listen to those who create easy and safe boundaries. But how much more</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: large;"> we can learn in life when we're curious. How much more when we engage with others in mutual curiosity. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-82549634604990803552021-11-12T10:30:00.001-08:002021-11-12T10:30:00.215-08:00The Hope of Improvisation<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">This brief post was actually a section that didn't make it to my recent piece on the Science for the Church's blog, "<a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2021/11/09/grateful-for-gratitude/" target="_blank">Grateful for Gratitude</a>." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">So, I thought I'd put it here.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Fqot6hnKKzc/YY6e2dpXb_I/AAAAAAAAD1c/vnMdK4QGwyo3KDcKIlstbAXxu_FdOkEDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s475/drums_jazz_art_painting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="317" data-original-width="475" height="214" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Fqot6hnKKzc/YY6e2dpXb_I/AAAAAAAAD1c/vnMdK4QGwyo3KDcKIlstbAXxu_FdOkEDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/drums_jazz_art_painting.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br />I’m a jazz musician, and I’ve brought improvisation not just to music, but to all of my life. In the process, I’ve realized that </span><i>improv is an act of hope</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">. And this hope emerges from confidence in two key things: the other musicians and your own skills (as I wrote in chapter 6 of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Say-Yes-No-Using-Create/dp/0385525737" target="_blank">Say Yes to No</a></i>). </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><i>The bottom line: in improv, we don't know what's going to happen yet--it's not scripted--and yet we have hope it's going to be good.</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">This leads then to the question. <i>How can we be open to improvising our life, that is walking by faith?</i> I find it's fairly simple: first, being grateful for what God has already done. </span></span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Gratitude therefore is the basis of improvisation. It allows us to move forward with the ability to create a life without scripting everything before it happens. Gratitude indeed leads to improvisational hope.</span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">(Because trying to script the future doesn’t really work, does it?)</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-53346095169952425382021-10-08T09:07:00.003-07:002021-10-08T09:07:57.514-07:00When Spirituality Meets Science<p><span style="font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">What happens when spirituality meets science? </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5z8Sy1XBnEI/YWBsu19qJ8I/AAAAAAAAD1I/Z9Ha4WYkZU8Nv9eFzy6iXbECWNSwxVLJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/science%2Bfaith%2Bpuzzle%2Bpieces%2BiStock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1454" data-original-width="2048" height="142" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5z8Sy1XBnEI/YWBsu19qJ8I/AAAAAAAAD1I/Z9Ha4WYkZU8Nv9eFzy6iXbECWNSwxVLJwCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h142/science%2Bfaith%2Bpuzzle%2Bpieces%2BiStock.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">In her brand-new book,</span><span style="font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Awakened-Brain-Science-Spirituality-Inspired-ebook/dp/B08NT4WXS9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25F4LCQBNI3LI&dchild=1&keywords=the+awakened+brain+lisa+miller&qid=1633140151&sprefix=Awakened+Braiin%2Caps%2C435&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life</a></i></span><span style="font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">, Columbia University professor of clinical psychology Lisa Miller describes why we need to move from an external form of “religion” to a more personally appropriated “spirituality.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">She offers this working definition of spirituality, which certainly incorporates Christian spiritual life: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"></span></p><blockquote>“It includes a deeply felt and perceived connection with a higher power or a sacred world—a sense of engagement and relationship, such as asking God or Source for guidance in times of struggle.”</blockquote><p></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;">As one specific example, Dr. Miller found that spirituality often emerges from depression. </p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><blockquote>“And for those who were highly spiritual and had gone through major depression in the past, the protective benefit of spirituality against a recurrence of depression was… a striking <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">90 percent</span>.” </blockquote><p></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;">More broadly, the kind of spirituality she’s researched leads us to experience a profound connection to the world around us and to a fully alive “awakened brain.”</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: quasimoda, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;">That sounds pretty good to me. And, if you want to read more, this piece is excerpted from <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2021/10/05/spirituality-meet-science/ " target="_blank">a longer piece on the Science for the Church website</a>. Let me know what <u>you</u> think! </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-51919631183099372292021-08-10T07:09:00.000-07:002021-08-10T07:09:00.942-07:00C.S. Lewis's Final Days and the Reality of Hope<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><i>Note: As I prepare for a course I'm teaching </i><i>this fall </i><i>at <a href="https://bidwellpres.org" target="_blank">Bidwell Presbyterian Church</a> in Chico, I've been thinking about C.S. Lewis. This post is adapted from my book, </i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/C-S-Lewis-Crisis-Christian/dp/0664239404/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1628603360&sr=1-3" target="_blank">C.S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian</a>.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: trebuchet; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Iuh2JAzZ9i4/YRKFkJBtLDI/AAAAAAAAD0o/8vUmK2MObGsvD1TuhJuzm460WPh-Lo62gCLcBGAsYHQ/s300/CS%2BLewis%2Bpleasant%2Binns%2Bhome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="168" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Iuh2JAzZ9i4/YRKFkJBtLDI/AAAAAAAAD0o/8vUmK2MObGsvD1TuhJuzm460WPh-Lo62gCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/CS%2BLewis%2Bpleasant%2Binns%2Bhome.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">In the classical and medieval tradition—which C.S. Lewis as a medievalist at Oxford University treasured—a good life was defined by knowing one’s death and thus dying well. <i><a href="https://www.famsf.org/blog/memento-mori-remember-you-must-die" target="_blank">Memento mori</a>,</i> which means “remember death” in Latin, were artistic depictions of mortality. They are meant to remind us that it's better not to die in one’s sleep or die quickly—as many today long for—but to know we’re dying and therefore to die prepared and peacefully. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">In this light, God did seem to prepare Lewis for his eventual passing. When he almost died in the summer of 1963, he expressed some regret that he was brought back. As he wrote to a fairly regular correspondent, Mary Willis Sherburne, who apparently was dying too:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">"Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hair-shirt or getting out of a dungeon. What is there to be afraid of?" (C.S. Lewis)</span></blockquote><p></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Similarly, writing to his long-term friend Arthur Greeves on September 11, 1963, he found it </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">"rather a pity I did revive in July. I mean, having been glided so painlessly up to the Gate it seems hard to have it shut in one’s face and know that the whole process must some day be gone thro’ again, and perhaps far less pleasantly! Poor Lazarus! But God knows best." (C.S. Lewis)</span></blockquote><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">But this reprieve also allowed several final, precious weeks with his brother, Warren (or Warnie). When Warnie wrote a memoir about his brother’s life, his final lines express a pathos that still pierces my heart as I recall them. They remind me that death does point toward hope, but only if we also grasp the loss, the crisis of death. </span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Warnie remarked on the return to the happiness of their boyhood in the imaginary games they played in the “little end room,” a place for Lewis’s fruitful imagination as well:</span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">"The wheel had come full circle: once again we were together in the little end room at home, shutting out from our talk the ever-present knowledge that the holidays were ending, that a new term fraught with unknown possibilities awaited us both.... We were recapturing the old schoolboy technique of extracting the last drop of juice from our holidays." (Warren Lewis)</span></blockquote><p></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">I type this a</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: large;">s the summer is coming to a close and I</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: large;"> am about to return to school, though as a teacher, not a student. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">At any rate, this brief respite from the specter of death was not to last. Just before his sixty-five birthday, the nibbed pen of C. S. Lewis would never dip into the inkwell and scratch out another of his insights. I find the words of his brother poignantly spare and profoundly moving as they relate Lewis’s last day on earth:</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">"Friday, 22 November 1963, began much as other days: there was breakfast, then letters and the crossword puzzle. . . . Our few words then [at four] were the last: at five-thirty I heard a crash and ran in, to find him lying unconscious at the foot of his bed. He ceased to breathe some three or four minutes later." (Warren Lewis)</span></blockquote><p></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">Warren could only add, in his brief memoir, “nothing worse than this could ever happen to me in the future.” He too knew the sorrow of losing someone close. Indeed he could not bring himself to attend his beloved brother’s funeral. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">I don't want to end there, however, because for Lewis, death indeed was not the end. Indeed he believed about heaven and thus life after death. If he was right about what he wrote, his place is now secure. And it is also certainly better. </span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">As he wrote so movingly in some of the final words from The Chronicles of Narnia:</span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">"All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." (C.S. Lewis)</span></blockquote><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">And so it is with our great hope as followers of Christ.</span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TnFn2CDvdCk/YRKHGpo_V_I/AAAAAAAAD0w/Xyd6XZCvdqwOIVVLk5q8h7XvwZSHqzR9QCPcBGAsYHg/s964/cs-lewis-writing-MIX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="964" data-original-width="964" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TnFn2CDvdCk/YRKHGpo_V_I/AAAAAAAAD0w/Xyd6XZCvdqwOIVVLk5q8h7XvwZSHqzR9QCPcBGAsYHg/w200-h200/cs-lewis-writing-MIX.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="text-indent: 36px;"><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-54331556655375530302021-06-18T15:41:00.003-07:002021-06-18T15:41:48.191-07:00Why is Our Relationship with Nature So Broken?<div data-block="true" data-editor="2rscd" data-offset-key="1m6n8-0-0">
<div data-offset-key="1m6n8-0-0"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I was walking across the street yesterday, but just before I did, instead of looking up, I checked my iPhone to see about the weather. Instead of looking up, and pondering the sky, instead of taking in what my body could clearly tell me about the temperature, the wind, the humidity, I let my smart phone make me dumber.</span></div><div data-offset-key="1m6n8-0-0"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="2rscd" data-offset-key="6vbnh-0-0">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QMX14A8DSuk/YM0g471-S2I/AAAAAAAAD0I/VwgdejGj8xET-3p_19u6pjP5wjetrOzkQCLcBGAsYHQ/s600/stars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QMX14A8DSuk/YM0g471-S2I/AAAAAAAAD0I/VwgdejGj8xET-3p_19u6pjP5wjetrOzkQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/stars.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div data-offset-key="6vbnh-0-0"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The statistics are staggering… about how many times we look at our phones. We check them </span><a href="https://elitecontentmarketer.com/screen-time-statistics/" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">between 56 and 96 times a day</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> and on the average spend almost 4 hours looking at them, which is roughly 50 days/year.</span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="2rscd" data-offset-key="dh286-0-0">
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<div data-offset-key="2nm08-0-0"><span data-offset-key="2nm08-0-0"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It seems like science and modern technology is breaking our relationship with nature. But it’s not just our smart phones, and honestly it isn’t entirely new. </span></span></div><div data-offset-key="2nm08-0-0"><span data-offset-key="2nm08-0-0"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div data-offset-key="2nm08-0-0"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span data-offset-key="2nm08-0-0"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Listen to the Danish philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/" target="_blank">Søren Kierkegaard</a>. An unusually gifted storyteller, he illustrates the fight between the technology of affluent societies and our ability to “view the stars.” Most philosophers can’t produce really winning parables like this—one that still resonates almost two hundred years after he told it. But Kierkegaard can, and that’s why he’s worth quoting at length.</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="2rscd" data-offset-key="bm8eu-0-0"><div data-offset-key="bm8eu-0-0"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;">When the prosperous man on a dark but starlit night drives comfortably in his carriage and has the lanterns lighted, aye, then he is safe, he fears no difficulty, he carries his light with him and it is not dark close around him; but precisely because he has the lanterns lighted, and has a strong light close to him, precisely for this reason he cannot see the stars, for his lights obscure the starts, which the poor peasant driving without the lights can see gloriously in the dark but starry night. So those deceived ones live in the temporal existence: either, occupied with the necessities of life, they are too busy to avail themselves of the view, or in the prosperity and good days they have—as it were lanterns lighted and close about them—everything is so satisfactory, so pleasant, so comfortable, but the view is lacking, the prospect, the view of the stars.</span></blockquote></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="2rscd" data-offset-key="e9end-0-0" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-59746919966576478642021-05-21T17:43:00.009-07:002021-05-21T17:53:58.472-07:00Benefits of a Messy Faith <p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I return to last week's topic. What follows is an excerpt of what you can find in full <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2021/05/18/the-benefits-of-a-messy-christianity/" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TSpzOzE_CdQ/YKhRIQFt5iI/AAAAAAAADyU/jm7XWTpvBbcZqRDfUKdNCcHgoWAldrSygCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Mindfulness%2BFocusOnPresent.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TSpzOzE_CdQ/YKhRIQFt5iI/AAAAAAAADyU/jm7XWTpvBbcZqRDfUKdNCcHgoWAldrSygCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Mindfulness%2BFocusOnPresent.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I happily affirm that Buddhist-ins</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">pired </span><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/crisis-knocks/201003/mindfulness-based-stress-reduction-what-it-is-how-it-helps" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> (MBSR) and Christian faith are compatible, as we wrote in a </span><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/4hvd87ol9z393ce/McCallumMindfulnessAndChristianFaith2012.pdf?dl=0" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">summary</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> of the</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> three-year study at the last church I pastored. </span></span></p><p style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">And yet, even some of my favorite modern Buddhist writers—such as </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Peace-Every-Step-Mindfulness-Everyday/dp/0553351397" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">Thich Knat Han</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">and the Dalai Lama—often present a limited form of Buddhism, known as "Buddhist Modernism," presented as particularly, even uniquely, compatible with science. This variety, which </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Making-Buddhist-Modernism-David-McMahan/dp/0195183274" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">David McMahan</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> says emerged in the 19</span><sup style="font-family: verdana;">th</sup><span style="font-family: verdana;"> century in response to various cultural forces, frequently presents itself as “mind science,” especially based on mindfulness meditation. </span></span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I’m certainly not denigrating Buddhism, but highlighting the limits of the version that speaks to the growing SBNR population (<a href="https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/" target="_blank">one of the largest segments</a> in of the U.S.) who frequently tell me, “I want spirituality, not religion.” The problem is that this kind of spirituality generally has little to say to science. It’s “separate but equal,” which really means segregated to one small part of us—our inner life. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><em>Minimalistic spirituality has minimal interaction with science.</em></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Let me simply offer one vector for how this guides our work as Christians. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Listen to what physicist and Nobel laureate <a href="https://godevidence.com/2010/08/quotes-about-god-atheism/" target="_blank">Ernest Walton</a></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> put </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">so well: </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“One way to learn the mind of the Creator is to study His creation. We must pay God the compliment of studying His work of art and this should apply to all realms of human thought.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We can bring the questions and insights of <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2021/05/04/why-i-bring-science-to-church/" target="_blank">science </a></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2021/05/04/why-i-bring-science-to-church/" target="_blank">to church</a> and admit that sometimes, yes, the interaction is messy. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But the payoff is great. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This kind of Christianity is not sequestered and limited, but expansive and beautiful because it speaks of the God who fills not just our inner lives, but also the entire universe.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-9862456455712445982021-05-14T12:00:00.025-07:002021-05-14T12:00:00.257-07:00Making Buddhism a Bit too Simple<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Each semester, I ask my Chico State University Science and Religion students to write an essay on which religion is the most compatible with science. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The overwhelming favorite is Buddhism.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--RrT-0vdS0w/YJ6ovsZOg_I/AAAAAAAADyM/e3uaZLCPC8sPZz4IAPK0cqqa8KJK3n6dQCLcBGAsYHQ/s361/Boromir%2BSimple%2Bout%2Bof%2Bcomplex.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="205" data-original-width="361" height="114" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--RrT-0vdS0w/YJ6ovsZOg_I/AAAAAAAADyM/e3uaZLCPC8sPZz4IAPK0cqqa8KJK3n6dQCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h114/Boromir%2BSimple%2Bout%2Bof%2Bcomplex.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This fact actually leads to a question: <i>What do my students mean by "Buddhism"?</i> Honestly, what they describe does not represent the conensus of the Buddhist tradition; but instead a particular stream: Buddhist modernism or “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-I-Am-Not-Buddhist/dp/0300226551/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Why+I+am+Not+a+Buddhism&qid=1615558819&sr=8-1">minimalist Buddhism</a>.” (Christianity, in case you were interested, is often portrayed as maximally incompatible because it tells us that the world was created in six days.) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What also interests me is that my students are talking about a Buddhism which walks in lock step with their tendency to be <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/06/more-americans-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious/" target="_blank">Spiritual But Not Religious</a> (SBNR).</span></div>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-making-of-buddhist-modernism-9780195183276?cc=us&lang=en&">Buddhism scholar David McMahan</a> points out, much of what we hear today in the U.S. as “Buddhism” was created largely by 19<sup>th</sup> century Transcendentalists (like Thoreau), and even more, by later thinkers who promoted the <a href="http://www.cnjonlinehosting.com/historyandspirituality/2009/01/27/the-warfare-thesis/http://www.cnjonlinehosting.com/historyandspirituality/2009/01/27/the-warfare-thesis/" target="_blank">“warfare thesis”</a> between Christianity and science. Even some of my favorite Buddhist writers today like Lama Surya Das, Thich Knat Han, and the Dalai Lama support this limited form of Buddhism, one that is seen to be compatible with science. Often it presents itself as “mind science,” based on meditation and especially mindfulness.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">To be sure, often this Buddhist modernism presents mindfulness meditation as central and a practice for all. This is in striking contrast to <a href="https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/theravada-in-southeast-asia/" target="_blank">Southeast Asian Theravada Buddhism</a>, which was created for monks, largely in monastic seclusion. The monks, not the laypersons, are the ones who meditate in Theravada.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Worth asking is, <i>How does it work to present a specific Buddhism as if it's the whole shebang?</i> Particularly, why does it work in a way that wouldn't with Christianity? The fact is that most Americans at least know Christians who are anti-science. But most are unaware of this history or of the variety of lived Buddhisms. Thus, modernist's Buddhism's frictionless compatibility with science represents an easy sell for one key reason: <i>most Americans don’t know Buddhists</i>, who represent <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/us-states-by-population-of-buddhists.html">less than 1% of the U.S. population</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And so Buddhism, especially the kind loved by many of my students, becomes a poster child for interacting with science. That strikes me as simple, much too simple. And real, lived Buddhism is far more interesting.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-35557366490377133332021-04-23T16:30:00.004-07:002021-04-24T15:14:09.285-07:00Beauty is Why I Bring Science to Church<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I've often mentioned my father, but it was my mother who gave me a particularly acute sense of beauty. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Beauty means seeing things as they really are, being stunned by the structure, proportion, and being drawn to learn more. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This is a profoundly important nexus for faith and science. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And sometimes scientists and theologians sound strikingly similar. I'll being with the brilliant writer, <a href="https://cootsona.blogspot.com/2013/09/c-s-lewis-and-crisis-of-bible.html" target="_blank">C.S. Lewis</a>--which is always a good place to start.</span></p><!--x-tinymce/html-mce_60538209211619220170481-->
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i7SazUnDgfI/YINXPkikveI/AAAAAAAADxo/SyYX4zSYJMAFPW8hvUIjaJ5_uv3PUo4QwCLcBGAsYHQ/s962/CS%2BLewis%2Bon%2Bbeauty.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="962" data-original-width="736" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i7SazUnDgfI/YINXPkikveI/AAAAAAAADxo/SyYX4zSYJMAFPW8hvUIjaJ5_uv3PUo4QwCLcBGAsYHQ/w306-h400/CS%2BLewis%2Bon%2Bbeauty.jpeg" width="306" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Consider next the words of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Poincare" target="_blank">Henri Poincaré</a>, an early 20<sup>th</sup> century quantum theorists (whom I've quote before, but it's worth repeating): </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“[The scientist] studies [nature] because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living….”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As Christian, we know this: </span></p><p><b style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"></b></p><blockquote><b style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">We see the intricate patterns of the natural world and find beauty. We see in the natural world the beauty of God who is Beauty itself. </b></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The 18<sup>th</sup> century Puritan Jonathan Edwards is a model. In his late teens (1723), he sent a scientific reflection on the spider, in the form of a letter, most likely to the Honorable Paul Dudley, a member of the British Royal Society who contributed often to its <i>Philosophical Transactions</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“Of all insects, no one is more wonderful than the spider.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As I mentioned in the previous post, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/21175630-the-beauty-of-the-banana-slug" target="_blank">I found beauty in the banana slug</a>; Edwards found beauty in “flying” spiders common to New England. His observations about nature lead him to nature’s God. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“For as God is infinitely the greatest being, so he is allowed to be infinitely the most beautiful and excellent: and all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory.”</span></blockquote><p></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Because both faith and science find a source of inspiration in beauty. </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Beauty is why I bring science to church.</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">And that’s good for our souls.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-38241161891404257502021-04-09T15:00:00.010-07:002021-04-09T15:00:00.325-07:00The Beauty of the Banana Slug<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Writer and Catholic priest <a href="https://henrinouwen.org" target="_blank">Henri Nouwen</a> has observed: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“All that is, is sacred because all that is speaks of God’s redeeming love. Seas and winds, mountains and trees, sun, moon, and stars, and all the animals and people have become sacred windows offering us glimpses of God.” </span></blockquote><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hirRS4Ml0F4/YHCreO1GGrI/AAAAAAAADxY/8LRJfowIwhYflS5-WpDRonk1CJHQ9NLwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s259/banana%2Bslug.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hirRS4Ml0F4/YHCreO1GGrI/AAAAAAAADxY/8LRJfowIwhYflS5-WpDRonk1CJHQ9NLwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/banana%2Bslug.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Sometime during these early years—I think it was sixth grade—I went on Outdoor Education. Growing up in the Bay Area, that meant we headed to the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains and studied how creation worked. We’d stay at a camp for several days, many of which we hiked through the moist Redwood forests. </span><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And do you know the animal I loved best? Banana slugs—those bright yellow—and thus the name “banana”—slimy slugs. They seemed to show up everywhere. (In fact, the banana slug is the mascot of University of California Santa Cruz.) </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Those banana slugs fascinated me. Perfectly adapted for their environment, they were <i>beautiful</i> in their own way. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I think a good deal of you are like me. If I asked you, "Where is one of the places where find God’s presence?" I’d bet most of you would say, <i>Nature</i>. That’s where you meet God our Creator. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As one of the top scientists in our country—and also a follower of Jesus—<a href="https://biologos.org/people/francis-collins/" target="_blank">Francis Collins</a> commented, </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“I find that studying the natural world is an opportunity to observe the majesty, the elegance, the intricacy of God's creation”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Nature—that is, God’s creation—draws us by its beauty and thus to the God who is the Source of all beauty. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I discovered it early in the beauty of the banana slug.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-33485660374581714512021-03-25T16:30:00.011-07:002021-03-25T16:30:00.970-07:00Brad, the Leaves, and the Squirrel<p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>[You'll find this story at about 20 minutes in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esm6p1wh9TU" target="_blank">this video</a>.]</i></span></span></p><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I grew up in what is now the Silicon Valley, and I went to Fremont School for kindergarten in Menlo Park, which was about a mile from my childhood home.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JSP0LSBsizs/YF0VBwfn2zI/AAAAAAAADxE/NQWjDVhu0Iw-Z1U9eNRKRPNt5oLV79JJQCLcBGAsYHQ/s474/Menlo%2BPark%2Bin%2BFall.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="474" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JSP0LSBsizs/YF0VBwfn2zI/AAAAAAAADxE/NQWjDVhu0Iw-Z1U9eNRKRPNt5oLV79JJQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Menlo%2BPark%2Bin%2BFall.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In those days, I used to walk home with my best friend Brad. It must have been early in the school year. And the fall had started and the leaves were coming down. After Brad and I turned the first corner—just a block from Fremont School—we came upon what seemed to me to be huge trees dropping beautiful brown, yellow, and orange leaves.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But it wasn’t only their colors; it was their flight pattern as they fell that was marvelous and mysterious. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">They would swivel and dodge as they descended. Brad and I discovered they were impossible to catch.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But we tried. We tried again. We tried but couldn't catch a single leaf.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">We were mesmerized.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And while we were trying to catch these incredible, miraculous falling leaves, we saw a squirrel.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And being five at the time, it was fine to talk with this animal. So, Brad and I started chatting with him, </span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><blockquote>“Hi, squirrel. What are you doing squirrel? It’s good to see you Mr. Squirrel”</blockquote></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Between the leaves, Mr. Squirrel, the fall, the friendship, time began to pass in the way the writer Anne Lamott describes childhood—in “big, round hours”</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So, I was surprised—but now I realized I shouldn’t have been—when my dad arrived probably an hour later, worried about where his son was.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><blockquote>“Greg, what have you been doing? You should be home by now”</blockquote></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">You might think I wasn’t worried—but no, I was still entranced by all the wonders of this autumn moment.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I told him, </span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><blockquote>“Dad, Brad and I were just here talking to Mr. Squirrel—see him up there—and trying to catch the leaves. See, Dad, as they fall (and I demonstrated) you can’t catch them. Look.”</blockquote></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And here’s the proof that my father was truly the laid-back Greek: he just let us try to catch leaves—and ever after that day, he always talked about how wonderful it was that I took some time in the midst of a day to catch beautiful autumn leaves and talk to squirrels.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In fact, when I described this scene to my dad a few years ago, before he died, he responded with one word: </span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“Marvelous.”</span></blockquote></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>Since then, I've spent a good deal of my energies on relating </span><span>my faith with science. And I've discovered this is central</span><span>: to read </span><a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2010/08/25/augustine-evolution-and-two-books/" target="_blank">the two books</a><span>--the book of nature and the book of Scripture--to see the beauty in life and the beauty of God and simply say, </span><i>Marvelous</i><span>.</span></span></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-63488042232645588382021-03-19T14:30:00.001-07:002021-03-19T14:48:33.403-07:00Racism and Secularity: Two Notes on COVID-19<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>The first “postsecular pandemic”?</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The London School of Economics (or LSE) hosted </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BySABTCoNZo" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">an online event in June 2020</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> called “Religious Communities under COVID-19: the first pandemic of the postsecular age?” </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">Post-secular</i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> is ambiguous: It can mean either <i>(1) </i></span><i style="font-family: verdana;">after secularism has established itself as the norm or (2) after secularism's hegemony has ended. </i><span style="font-family: verdana;">(</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">This ambiguity plays into Luke Bretherton’s distinction of “secularism” and “secularity,” which more or less map on the first and second definition, respectively.)</span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mm5e95Rx4V4/YFUG32yFOqI/AAAAAAAADw0/TG_ABwkJykImIKRF3tl9AcxmtFI8Ef77gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Faith%2B%2526%2BCOVID%2B19.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mm5e95Rx4V4/YFUG32yFOqI/AAAAAAAADw0/TG_ABwkJykImIKRF3tl9AcxmtFI8Ef77gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Faith%2B%2526%2BCOVID%2B19.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Is secularism representative of this global pandemic in the twenty-first century, particularly in light of the rise in the United States of the “nones” who represent 25% of the population. Put another way, <i>have we entered a new, fully secular way of engaging with the pandemic? </i>There are vast differences between 2020-21 and the 1919 influenza pandemic or the 1832 cholera epidemic. I have not witnessed governmental calls for repentance, for example.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It would seem that a secular, or non-religious, or naturalistic approach is what is demanded. “Let the data speak” echoes what I hear from our California Governor, Gavin Newsome. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>And yet, I sense a growing dissatisfaction with the secular what Charles Taylor calls the “imminent frame” in <i>A </i></span><i>Secular Age.</i><span> As two countervailing examples, there are books on theodicy with booming sales from N.T. Wright Wright, </span><i>God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath</i><b> </b><span>(Zondervan, 2021) and Lennox, </span><i>Where is God in a Coronavirus World?</i><span> (The Good Book, 2020), pondering God’s work in this challenging time. (For my part, I don’t find the questions of God's justice in light of the prevalence of evil and pain more poignant now than on almost any day on this planet, but their reflections intrigue me nonetheless.) In addition, searches on prayer via Google have spiked in the past year (as James Walter’s commented at the June 2020 LSE event).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Perhaps formally, we are less religious than in past pandemics, but it’s hard to argue that religious sensibilities are entirely absent. At times like this, human beings feel a sense of something bigger than us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Enduring disparities of race and economics</span></i></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">One of the lessons from my research in writing <i>Negotiating Science and Religion in America </i>is the endemic and enduring racism in America and the central role science and religion have played. The current pandemic has intensified the disparities of race and economics.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>Quoting from </span><i><a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21494803/presidential-debate-2020-joe-biden-us-covid-deaths " target="_blank">Vox</a></i><span>, “Black Americans have fared worst of all, with about 1 in 1000 Black Americans dying from Covid-19 since February.” </span><span> </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“For their share of the US population, Black people are dying in the pandemic at <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2020/10/2/21496884/us-covid-19-deaths-by-race-black-white-americans" target="_blank">twice the rate</a> of white Americans, of whom about 1 in every 2,150 people has died.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>And why? The disparities of economics and the many</span><u> </u><span>issues are related to poverty among Blacks and LatinX and native Americans play a central role. In addition, as many have noted, the ongoing suspicion of science—e.g., the 1932-72 Tuskegee Syphilis experiments—raise challenges to fighting inequalities in this COVID-19 time. To be sure, Black churches, as one example, represent centers of community empowerment. Still, because religious communities are often racially segregated in the United States, inequalities of care are mapped onto communities of worship.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">We could frame these two more generally as (1) the question of religion’s significance today in the face of death and suffering, and (2) as the enduring role that religion has played in the United States to reinforce oppression.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And however we frame these two, COVID-19 has intensified how we negotiate the relationship of science and religion in America.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-7165980864992094542021-03-08T10:30:00.005-08:002021-03-12T08:38:48.097-08:00Buddhism's Strategy of Scientific Apologetics<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Before I head to the topic at hand, this week one of the living legends in science and religion, physicist-priest <a href="https://www.christiantoday.com/article/distinguished.christian.scientist.john.polkinghorne.dies.aged.90/136506.htm" target="_blank">John Polkinghorne </a>died. Thank you for your work. Rest in Paradise. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I've been reading David McHahan’s <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4903371-the-making-of-buddhist-modernism" target="_blank">The Making of Buddhist Modernism</a>, </i>and I think I've already mentioned Evan Thompson’s <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-I-Am-Not-Buddhist/dp/0300226551/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Why+I+am+Not+a+Buddhism&qid=1615558819&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Why I am Not a Buddhist</a></i>, which builds on McHahan’s work and others. Together these books analyze the creation of a “Buddhist modernism,” which Thompson also describes as “minimalist Buddhism.” Ronald Purser argues that this, combined with mindfulness meditation and market capitalism becomes "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/McMindfulness-Ronald-Purser/dp/191224831X" target="_blank">McMindfulness</a>." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">At any rate, this Buddhism is often referred to, not as a religion, but a "science of the mind."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cItYKpbcmo4/YEt525q3miI/AAAAAAAADwg/QAxdqbVcMBsMF8wNWpZxQDNHZXQVw_57gCLcBGAsYHQ/s280/zen-buddhism-person%2Bin%2Bmeditation.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="210" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cItYKpbcmo4/YEt525q3miI/AAAAAAAADwg/QAxdqbVcMBsMF8wNWpZxQDNHZXQVw_57gCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/zen-buddhism-person%2Bin%2Bmeditation.jpg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This intrigues me because <span>Buddhist modernism</span><i> </i><span>is presented as entirely compatible with science, and in the circles I'm in, the intimate compatibility of Buddhism and contemporary science is taken for granted. For a religious tradition that is approximately 2500 years old, it represents a reasonably recent apologetic strategy that was formed in part to respond to scientific rationalism and late 19th century Protestant Christian tactics, who often complained about Buddhism's superstition, nihilism, and idolatry, arguing instead that Christianity produced superior societies with robust science and technology.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Bestselling works by international Buddhist leaders like the Dalai Lama,<i><a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-universe-in-a-single-atom-the-convergence-of-science-and-spirituality_dalai-lama-xiv/262052/item/43820053/?mkwid=dtxSticS%7cdc&pcrid=11558858534&pkw=&pmt=be&slid=&product=43820053&plc=&pgrid=3970769608&ptaid=pla-1101002862606&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Bing+Shopping+%7c+Religion+&+Spirituality&utm_term=&utm_content=dtxSticS%7cdc%7cpcrid%7c11558858534%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7cbe%7cproduct%7c43820053%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c3970769608%7cptaid%7cpla-1101002862606%7c&msclkid=a112455580a31c922737251efaaa66e3#idiq=43820053&edition=6166632" target="_blank">The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality</a></i>, and Thich Nhat Hanh, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14572.Peace_Is_Every_Step" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life</a>--books I like and freely recommend--are vulnerable to the charge of constricting the full scope of Buddhism for the sake of presenting a relatively seamless integration with modern science. And yet, I have to admit these do not exhaust all contemporary accounts on how to relate Buddhism to modern science. </span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In addition to various popular approaches, there are more nuanced scholarly offerings, such as Donald Lopez, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Science-Guide-Perplexed-Modernity/dp/0226493199/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=Donald+Lopez&qid=1615559528&s=books&sr=1-9" target="_blank">Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed</a></i>, Francisco Cho and Richard K. Squier, <i>Religion and Science in the Mirror of Buddhism</i>, and B. Alan Wallace’s edited volume, <i>Buddhism and Science</i>, to name just three. Put simply, these texts engage with the wide varieties of Buddhism (even "Buddhisms") throughout the globe and not solely with Buddhist modernism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>As an observer and participant in the scholarship of science and religion, </span><span>I find minimalist Buddhism to be a fascinating parallel with various forms of Christian apologetics that use science. I'm not against apologetics because, if we are convinced by the true of any idea, we'll want to persuade others. To return to <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691633497/the-faith-of-a-physicist" target="_blank">John Polkinghorne</a>, he exemplified this approach at times, and when he did, it was compelling.</span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>What does</span><span> interest me is not so much </span><i>that </i><span>the creation of a minimalist Buddhism has occurred, but </span><i>why </i><span>it has and particularly <i>whether</i> this strategy really helps us understand the various ways that science and religions interact. In fact, minimalist Buddhism ultimately limits our understanding of its full relationship with modern science... a topic I'll have to more to say about as I continue to learn.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-6153298102166375742021-02-27T14:30:00.065-08:002021-02-28T17:09:04.607-08:00Is it Good for Us to Go to Church?<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What will church be like “post-COVID”? (And really, what does “post-COVID” mean?) Moreover, w</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">hen the effects of the pandemic subside, will it matter if we don't go back to church?</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As far as I can tell, it seems like <a href=", https://scienceforthechurch.org/2020/03/24/when-the-body-cannot-gather/ " target="_blank">the most important parts of religious life</a> are what COVID is restricting (like being together in the same room), which makes these questions particularly relevant.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: inherit; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uUygX2BwnZA/YDqQyTya8dI/AAAAAAAADwU/-0dSl-yLTzAF_WB2T6My2Wfl7xnu6XVlACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/%2522fithy%2522-reasons-for-going-to-church.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1463" data-original-width="2048" height="286" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uUygX2BwnZA/YDqQyTya8dI/AAAAAAAADwU/-0dSl-yLTzAF_WB2T6My2Wfl7xnu6XVlACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h286/%2522fithy%2522-reasons-for-going-to-church.jpg" title="I picked this because "Fifty" was misspelled (and brought a smile)." width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">(By the way, I chose this pic because "fifty" is misspelled, which brought a smile to my face and reminded me of how many times the slides for worship singing had errors.)</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Scripture: </b>It's a bit ambiguous in my reading as to whether Scripture tells us "to go the church" in the way we generally do in 21st century America. This is a huge topic, perhaps to be addressed at another time. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nevertheless, I'll affirm that the New Testament does, of course, underscore that the first followers of Jesus met together in worship (Acts 2) and that "</span><span class="text Heb-10-24" id="en-NIV-30158">And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds,</span> <span class="text Heb-10-25" id="en-NIV-30159">not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing..."</span> (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+10%3A24-25&version=NIV" target="_blank">Hebrews 10:24-25</a>).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Science: </b>In this post,<b> </b>I'm particularly interested in </span></span><span color="inherit" style="font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit;">what science says--</span><span color="inherit" style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit;"><i>Is it good for us to go to church, or put another way, to be religiously active? </i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Bottom line: </b><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Scientific research supports the conclusion that religious life, or being “religiously active,” is good for human health. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By “good,” I mean that, for <i>individuals</i>, religious life correlates statistically with the following:<o:p> </o:p></span></span></p><ol style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Good for <a href="https://aleteia.org/2018/07/29/5-surprising-health-benefits-of-church-attendance/" target="_blank">physical health</a></span><o:p style="color: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><a href="https://aleteia.org/2018/07/29/5-surprising-health-benefits-of-church-attendance/" target="_blank"> </a></o:p></span></li><li><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Good for <a href="https://www.institutefornaturalhealing.com/2016/05/harvard-study-going-to-church-boosts-health/ " target="_blank">mental resilience and happiness</a><o:p> </o:p></span></span></li><li><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Good for<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-resilience/202012/the-effect-spirituality-prosocial-and-civic-behaviors?fbclid=IwAR3KHyVrdkji6Oy5MWEbATgWcsCrMKbjLNn05WnhBthqobVyp59zZzRes_Y" target="_blank"> prosocial behavior</a><o:p> </o:p></span></span></li></ol><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">How about for the society as a whole?</span></div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Being religiously active can be good via altruism, but it bad by restricting the use of medicine (blood transfusions and Jehovah’s Witnesses) or lead to overpopulation (restrictions on birth control)</span><o:p style="background-color: white; color: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </o:p></span></li></ul><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But here's <b>one big catch: </b>Religion can increase prejudice. A few years ago, I heard a talk by Robert Putnam who drew a distinction between "bonding" (in-group), and "bridging" (inter-group), social capital. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><o:p style="color: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Attending church </o:p><o:p style="color: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><i>per se</i> </o:p></span>does not increase “bridging social capital.” <span style="background-color: transparent;">Religious life tends to be good at the first but not the second, and that leads to the correlation between religiosity and prejudice (see </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/racism-among-white-christians-higher-among-nonreligious-s-no-coincidence-ncna1235045" style="background-color: transparent;" target="_blank">Robert Jones on the research conducted by PRRI</a><span style="background-color: transparent;">).</span><o:p style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </o:p></div></span></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And here's a <b>second catch: </b>Our religiosity (to use the academic term)<span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> needs to be “intrinsic” and not “extrinsic”--<a href="https://cootsona.blogspot.com/2021/01/intrinsic-religion.html" target="_blank">as I've blogged before</a>--that, it has to be authentic and essentially, not something we do for someone else.</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>In sum: </b></span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As far as I can tell, yes, generally there are some positive indications from scientific research about going to church, but how we approach religious life correlates with whether it diverges ultimately into negative or positive outcomes. </span><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></p><div><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-75294849698443004592021-02-12T15:00:00.005-08:002021-02-27T10:30:02.443-08:00Something from Luther that's Blowing My Mind<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Recently, I wrote on <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2021/02/09/scientists-your-work-matters-to-god/" target="_blank">science as a Christian vocation</a>, and in light of that piece, and particularly <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2021/02/23/the-priesthood-of-all-bridge-builders/" target="_blank">the one that followed</a>, this excerpt from Martin Luther is, yes, blowing my mind ("<a href="https://christian.net/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/nblty-03.html" target="_blank">Open Letter to the Christian Nobility</a>
of the German Nation Concerning the Reform
of the Christian Estate") </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Written in 1520, it's still relevant five centuries later...</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vy8V6n99Ies/YCbDoDxWq3I/AAAAAAAADv8/WRsq8OG9CK4PsROlwbIrnsmrYAuNrZ67wCLcBGAsYHQ/s468/martin_luther.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="320" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vy8V6n99Ies/YCbDoDxWq3I/AAAAAAAADv8/WRsq8OG9CK4PsROlwbIrnsmrYAuNrZ67wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/martin_luther.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p><!--x-tinymce/html-mce_90435505211613152984378--><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">From all this it follows that there is really no difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, "spirituals" and "temporals," as they call them, except that of office and work, but not of "estate"; for they are all of the same estate -- true priests, bishops and popes -- though they are not all engaged in the same work, just as all priests and monks have not the same work. </span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This is the teaching of St. Paul in Romans 12:4 and I Corinthians 12:12, and of St. Peter in I Peter 2:9, as I have said above, viz., that we are all one body of Christ, the Head, all members one of another. Christ has not two different bodies, one "temporal," the other "spiritual." He is one Head, and He has One body. </span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Therefore, just as Those who are now called "spiritual" -- priests, bishops or popes -- are neither different from other Christians nor superior to them, except that they are charged with the administration of the Word of God and the sacraments, which is their work and office, so it is with the temporal authorities -- they bear sword and rod with which to punish the evil and to protect die good. </span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and every one by means of his own work or office must benefit and serve every other, that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, even as all the members of the body serve one another.</span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></blockquote><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-50517656828773759002021-02-05T09:41:00.006-08:002021-02-05T09:41:48.906-08:00 Why We Need to Bring Science to Church<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Since the nonprofit organization I co-direct has a <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/about/" target="_blank"><b>mission</b></a> of “cultivating a stronger church through meaningful dialogue with mainstream science,” I thought I’d give the key reasons why the task of Science for the Church is strategic and valuable. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Here are my top five.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5taSGK4sfzo/YB2AMQxIu_I/AAAAAAAADvs/fscXBZ_AJm8TCtSfzg-9O6VlRQETK82JQCLcBGAsYHQ/s275/religion%2B%2526%2Bscience%2B%2528gears%2529.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5taSGK4sfzo/YB2AMQxIu_I/AAAAAAAADvs/fscXBZ_AJm8TCtSfzg-9O6VlRQETK82JQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/religion%2B%2526%2Bscience%2B%2528gears%2529.jpeg" /></a></div><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Why: Because the Church needs a viable Gospel.
</span><p></p><ul><li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In their research, the <b><a href="https://www.barna.com/" target="_blank">Barna Group</a> </b>found one of the top six reasons emerging adults are leaving the church: They see it as “<b><a href="https://www.barna.com/research/six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church/" target="_blank">anti-science</a>.</b>” Too often this perception is accurate, and we need to stop this. Barna also found that 49% of church-going teens believe the "church seems to reject what science tells us about the world."</span></li></ul><p></p>
</li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Why: Because, without this dialogue, the church loses the glorious insights of science. With it, the Christian community flourishes.
</span><p></p><ul><li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Following <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+19&version=NRSV" target="_blank"><b>Psalm 19</b></a>, as well as Francis Bacon in the 16<sup>th</sup> century, and <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2020/09/08/francis-collins-and-the-dna-of-faithfulness/" target="_blank"><b>Francis Collins</b> </a>in the 21<sup>st</sup>, we see that God has written two texts: the book of Scripture and the book of Nature. Since these have one Author, these <a href="https://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/twobooks2.htm" target="_blank"><b>two books </b></a>do not contradict. Our task, as the church—as the people who follow Jesus—is to bring together <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mere-christianity-meets-m_b_7929666" target="_blank"><b>“mainstream science and mere Christianity.”</b></a></span></li></ul><p></p>
</li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Why: Because this is our heritage as Christians.
</span><p></p><ul><li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The Scientific Revolution arose in the Christian west. This, of course, isn’t to say that all of science arose from Christianity (that would discount Muslim science, for example). Still, I will say (along with many others) that the Christian doctrine of God’s creating a cosmos, and not a chaos, means that we can study it and understand it. This is our Christian heritage, and we must not forsake it. It’s also a key part of our American history. I think of the Puritan pastors, like <a href="https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/churches/church-resources/posts/guest-post-doing-faith-and-science-like-its-1718/" target="_blank"><b>Jonathan Edwards</b></a>, who, as the most educated people of the day, regularly combined reflection on theology with “natural philosophy” (the name for science in those days).</span></li></ul><p></p>
</li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Why: Because the United States needs Christians engaged in the sciences.
</span><p></p><ul><li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In order for the country to stay as leader in this world, we need the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_United_States" target="_blank"><b>two-thirds of our population who names Christ</b></a>, to be pro- science and technology. There are far too many examples of Christians denying science.</span></li></ul><p></p>
</li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Why: Because, as people disaffiliate from churches, we need to Christians to be in the world of science and technology.
</span><p></p><ul><li><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">God gathers the church in worship, to be sure, but God also sends out the church scattered. This is naturally an evangelistic task, but also, as Makoto Fujimura calls it, the task of “<a href="https://makotofujimura.com/" target="_blank"><b>culture care</b></a>.”</span></li></ul><p></p>
</li>
</ol>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Those are my top five. How would you prioritize them? Do you have any to add?</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-9178925277771480062021-01-30T07:35:00.002-08:002021-01-30T07:35:42.080-08:00C.S. Lewis and the Joy of Science<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I found this as I was rummaging through some older computer files--some thoughts on C.S. Lewis and Joy (the experience, not his wife). I think it's still relevant because, if anything, I see </span><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>scientific</i></span><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>materialism</i></span><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> or naturalism (all that exists is the material world) is on the rise.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As Lewis commented himself in <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surprised_by_Joy" target="_blank">Surprised by Joy</a></i>, </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“The key to my books is Donne’s maxim, 'The heresies that men leave are hated most.' The things I assert most vigorously are those I resisted long and accepted late.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The “heresy” that he left was materialism, or Oxford Realism, for <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/#BritAmerIdea" target="_blank">idealism</a>. And then eventually, he turned particularly to Christian faith.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D6xl8I9WFCk/YBV2rifLqdI/AAAAAAAADvg/vxG9MmgNARERpuOSwR4ZhHP6-LoqAKHAACLcBGAsYHQ/s236/CS%2BLewis%2Bquote%2Bon%2Bjoy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="236" data-original-width="191" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D6xl8I9WFCk/YBV2rifLqdI/AAAAAAAADvg/vxG9MmgNARERpuOSwR4ZhHP6-LoqAKHAACLcBGAsYHQ/w324-h400/CS%2BLewis%2Bquote%2Bon%2Bjoy.jpg" width="324" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>This leads to a famous argument</b></span><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">: Human beings seek something that this world cannot satisfy, which points to a God beyond this world. This argument appears in </span><i style="font-weight: inherit;">The Problem of Pain</i><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and in “The Weight of Glory.”</span><o:p style="font-weight: inherit;"> </o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What is he saying? Is he arguing that this sense of transcendence—or better, this desire for it, which Lewis calls “Joy”—<i>proves </i>God? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">No, at least not as a deductive proof. Instead Lewis is making a <i>suppositional</i> argument here: We do not fully understand the desire for something beyond (or Joy) itself, but it opens to a wider metaphysical conclusion, one that points to God who created us. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Or more systematically, the form of this suppositional argument from desire proceeds as follows: <i>Suppose</i> God created this world, we can imagine that God would leave a desire for more than this world offers. We experience a longing for more than this world offers. It is reasonable to see this as pointer to God.</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit;">Lewis’s argument from Joy or desire brings to mind the question of whether many of Albert Einstein’s words about “God” were really about, well, God, such as when <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/329896-every-one-who-is-seriously-involved-in-the-pursuit-of" target="_blank">he commented</a>, </span></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a Spirit vastly superior to that of man.” Albert Einstein</span></blockquote><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-style: inherit;">Richard Dawkins argues (not surprisingly as the arch-atheist) that this stuff in Einstein isn’t really about God, it’s about transcendence. In his </span><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-Science-Does-Not-Disprove-dp-006223059X/dp/006223059X/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=" target="_blank">Why Science Does Not Disprove God</a>,</i></span><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> the science writer and mathematician Amir D. Aczel, contends (as I understand him) that, no, this is really about the Deity, and in fact, believing in God is profoundly compatible with science.</span><o:p style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><o:p>And my argument here is that Joy</o:p><span style="background-color: white;">—in Lewis's sense</span><span style="background-color: white;">—historically and philosophically, leads to science. I'll leave it there for now.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-91657929694671886032021-01-22T12:27:00.001-08:002021-01-22T12:27:28.183-08:00On Time and Beauty (Some Notes)<!-- x-tinymce/html-mce_39736261411611346572264 --><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Beauty appears to be both temporal and timeless. Every human experience of beauty is in time, and yet, when we experience beauty, we seem to transcend, even to be removed, from time. To understand beauty, it seems to me that we need to figure out time.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rtxR--GHpHM/YAs0yR9Wa_I/AAAAAAAADvI/NJnVTxH0xwwRIJ1XOIfsxzaQanvsxn8KACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Old_Time_Machine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1074" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rtxR--GHpHM/YAs0yR9Wa_I/AAAAAAAADvI/NJnVTxH0xwwRIJ1XOIfsxzaQanvsxn8KACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Old_Time_Machine.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br />I am continually drawn to Augustine’s profound reflections, which are often cited and for good reason, </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“What, then is time? There can be no quick and easy answer, for it is no simple matter even to understand what it is, let alone find words to explain it” (<i>Confessions </i>XI. 14).</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What do science, philosophy, and theology say about time? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The consensus view in physical sciences, following <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein" target="_blank">Albert Einstein</a>, is that time and space are related, not independent aspects of reality (as in classical physics). One reason time cannot be entirely relative is what Hermann Minkowski identified as the “causality constraint,” that is to say, even within the relativity of time in an Einsteinian universe, observers in uniform motion find that causes occur before effects. More precisely, causes according to one observer are causes according to all other observers in uniform relative motion. In essence, causality is invariant, not relative. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">From a philosophical perspective, time can be understood (i.e., explained) as phenomenal, but not noumenal (Kant), or as the very structure of reality (Hegel, Whitehead). Similarly, beauty can be viewed as one of the atemporal Transcendentals (Thomas). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Theological perspectives frequently explain and thus unfold time as a gift from God (Augustine), but are unsure about whether God’s eternity is atemporal (Thomas) or supratemporal (Barth, Russell). </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">More personally, I’d like to see how time can be a component of human flourishing and a resource for the common good. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This reminds me of a psychologist with a remarkable name, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (For what it’s worth, I once heard someone comment that he prefers “Mike” and that his last name sounds something like “Chick-sent-me-high.”) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In his book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202" target="_blank">Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience</a></i>, my buddy Mike presented a key idea for grasping how we find our passion. In the state of the mind he named “flow,” we experience deep enjoyment, challenge matched by our skills, creativity, and a sense that time is moving in a different, and fuller, way. How can “flow”—or “optimal experience”—be described? He writes </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“‘Flow’ is the way people describe their state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered, and they want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Put another way and drawing from Emanuele Ciancio (<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14746700.2020.1786223" target="_blank">“Time Flow in the Natural World: A Theological Perspective”</a>), the beauty of time might be summarize in the Greek New Testament word <i>kairos</i>, which means “opportunity,” or perhaps better, "the fullness of time."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Does human flourishing mean living a beautiful life regularly imbued with <i>kairos</i>? </span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-24406540745705919102021-01-11T06:00:00.000-08:002021-01-11T08:36:54.417-08:00Intrinsic Religion<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>Being a pastor, or any kind of church leader for that matter, is a tough job (which I know from 18 years experience). And i</span>n light of the ongoing effects of COVID (<a href="https://www.barna.com/research/christians-relational-health/ " target="_blank">emotional</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/03/21/study-leaving-religion-sex-abuse-scandals-affects-public-health-column/3224575002/" target="_blank">physical</a>, and otherwise), I've continued to ponder the future of the church in America. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>This has led me to consider the distinction between </span><i>intrinsic </i><span>and </span><i>extrinsic </i><span>religious life (or in more technical terms, "religiosity"). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What has led me to this? I've been asked recently to find resources in preparation for a podcast interview on whether scientific research backs up the idea that faith in God (or religion, more generally) is good for us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">From what I'm learning it's about how we approach our faith, or in the literature, our "religion."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fAnQY8pA9Zk/X_uMxgtaU8I/AAAAAAAADuM/44W9o9gis1ULxrndCWpR8D-NRHpYuXqaACLcBGAsYHQ/s546/children%2Bin%2Bworship.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="546" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fAnQY8pA9Zk/X_uMxgtaU8I/AAAAAAAADuM/44W9o9gis1ULxrndCWpR8D-NRHpYuXqaACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/children%2Bin%2Bworship.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Extrinsic or intrinsic religion?</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>The first, </span><i>intrinsic religiosity,</i><span> you do because you want to, and the second, </span><i>extrinsic religiosity, </i><span>because you're trying to please others. (By the way, I think this is what a lot of people are getting at with the "spiritual, but not religious" moniker.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">For a bit more clarity, I'll quote <a href="https://jonathanrossmorgan.com/2012/04/15/intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-religiosity/" target="_blank">the article "Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Religiosity"</a> that I recently read:<br /></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The intrinsically religious see religion as valuable unto itself. Instead of religion serving another motivation, religion provides the master motivation.</span></span></p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The extrinsically religious go to church with another end in mind (although likely subconscious). It may be making that new business connection or finding a spouse. Or it could be psychological security, solace or self-justification."</span></p></blockquote><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Some mighty powerful words from the God-Man</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If this sounds like Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels, it should. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"<span style="background-color: white;">Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth."</span> Matthew 23:27</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Jesus is <i>en fuego </i>in this passage--he really undoes the "Jesus meek and mild" thing. This topic must have meant something to him. And so it should to us. (Because it's so good, you might want to read all of <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+23&version=NRSV" target="_blank">Matthew 23</a>.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Something for the church today</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So far I've presented the conclusion from the research that <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2020/05/05/virtual-relationality-and-our-human-shaped-hole/ " target="_blank">we need to be together</a>. But what do we do in light of the current pandemic?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">At some point, we are going to emerge from COVID-19 protocols, and as I've argued before, we're not <a href="https://cootsona.blogspot.com/2020/03/dont-expect-everyone-to-come-back-to.html" target="_blank">"going back to church"</a> as a culture. That ship has sailed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And yet... We do know that, overall, religious life is good for us. I'd be happy to use Christian "spirituality," if that lands better, but just remember that it's <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2020/03/24/when-the-body-cannot-gather/ " target="_blank">the social connections</a>, the "sociality," involved in our lives that makes church so potent for psychological and physical health.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So, we'd better figure out a way to keep the connections, but also grow in our vision for God.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><b>A coda: notes on a way forward</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>My solution in brief: </span><i>Outsource the teaching, insource the discussion and hang out. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In other words, from the scientific research the most important contributions the church can offer is physical co-presence, i.e., being together in the same room. Yes, virtual community can give us something, but we are designed to be together. So, what if not worried less about the content we deliver and let other worldclass thought leaders do that via YouTube et al., while we create more intimate places for discussion? Or at least shoot for 50-50? </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-71993755521248893902021-01-07T06:30:00.077-08:002021-01-07T15:17:35.147-08:00C.S. Lewis and "You Be You"<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There's at least one contemporary expression that I don't fully understand. And honestly, I'm also pondering it in light of yesterday's riots and insurrection in our Capital and what was happening psychologically, both for President Trump and his virulent supporters. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Was that distorted self-love, or is self-love always a distortion?</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">At any rate, here it is: </span><span style="font-family: verdana; text-align: center;">"You be you." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What exactly does this imperative mean?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>A word from St. Clive</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There are times like these when I wish C.S. Lewis were still with us. Because he grasped the inherent problem. If "you be you" is a form of self-love that implies "and don't give a *whiff* [substitute your word] about others," that indeed is a problem. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It evokes the age old question of <i>whether self-love is a Christian virtue.</i> I, like St. Clive, have some doubts.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ieIJQSvLJU8/X_NJPvk9O0I/AAAAAAAADto/MZ4ylCxDRjEJVDuH0ajUwORr7LZJJITXwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1277/CS-Lewis_Color.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1277" data-original-width="1100" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ieIJQSvLJU8/X_NJPvk9O0I/AAAAAAAADto/MZ4ylCxDRjEJVDuH0ajUwORr7LZJJITXwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/CS-Lewis_Color.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>The twisted interpretations of "Love your neighbor as yourself"</b></span></div>For my part, "you be you" sounds a bit too much like what I hear smuggled under the banner of "Self Care" and the rank self-indulgence in America. It also causes <a href="https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/pascal-for-todays-culture-the-problem-of-self-love/" target="_blank">Blaise Pascal</a> always rings in my ear: To love yourself implies a level of dishonesty and self-deception because there's fairly icky stuff, some rats in the basement, when we peer into our own souls.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In interpreting "Love your neighbor as yourself," I've repeatedly heard "this means we have to love ourselves." But that's not Jesus's main point. There is no direct command for self-love. Instead, his emphasis is this: <i>We know how we'd live to be loved. So, do the same for others.</i> It's really just another form of the Golden Rule.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And yet, a caveat: I don't want to go too far. It is fine <i>ultimately</i> to love ourselves, but not to start there. And Lewis leads us in the proper order.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Back to CSL</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">For his part, and as I quoted in <a href="https://cootsona.blogspot.com/2021/01/does-god-want-us-to-love-ourselves.html" target="_blank">the last post</a>, </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">C.S. Lewis knew the history the problem of self-love and arrived at an exquisitely concise solution. In "Two Ways of Self," he reminded us that, the Christian tradition, we are loved by God--<i>and thus we can love ourselves</i>. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><blockquote>"To love his neighbor as himself, he may then be able to love himself as his neighbor; that is, with charity instead of partiality." C.S. Lewis</blockquote></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ynEgDowUIpE/X_X1HoUmhzI/AAAAAAAADuA/xO9uHvMSqJk7i0LrOxQ59fJMmdZHQIUmACLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/elephant.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ynEgDowUIpE/X_X1HoUmhzI/AAAAAAAADuA/xO9uHvMSqJk7i0LrOxQ59fJMmdZHQIUmACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/elephant.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>Or as he phrased it a bit more creatively in </span><i>The</i><span> </span><i>Screwtape Letters, </i><span>where the devil Screwtape is describing the aims of "the Enemy" (or God):</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.” C.S. Lewis</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Would about the scandalous behavior of our President and how it affected his mob? I think it's "you be you" and self-love gone wild. Would these</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"> insights help us today in</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"> undue the serious defects in American life? I think so. At least, one can hope. </span></p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-7928477938991382762021-01-05T13:45:00.002-08:002021-01-05T13:50:49.454-08:00Does God Want Us to Love Ourselves?<div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">... a question I'm pondering and to which C.S. Lewis has one of the best responses (not a surprise)</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">“Now, the self can be regarded in two ways. On the one hand, it is God’s creature, an </span><span style="background-color: white;">occasion of love and rejoicing; now, indeed, hateful in condition, but to be </span><span style="background-color: white;">pitied and healed. On the other hand, it </span><span style="background-color: white;">is that one self of all others which is called </span><em style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">I</em><span style="background-color: white;"> and </span><em style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">me,</em><span style="background-color: white;"> and which on </span><span style="background-color: white;">that ground puts forward an irrational claim to preference. This claim is to be not only hated, but </span><span style="background-color: white;">simply killed; ‘never’, as George Mac Donald says, ‘to be allowed a moment’s </span><span style="background-color: white;">respite from eternal death’. The </span><span style="background-color: white;">Christian must wage endless war against the clamour of the </span><em style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">ego</em><span style="background-color: white;"> as </span><em style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">ego</em><span style="background-color: white;">; but he loves </span><span style="background-color: white;">and approves selves as such, though not their sins. </span></blockquote><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GaUQChcRjj8/X_Tdnxu4VLI/AAAAAAAADt0/xKi17rEZXXcPulXvxQSeUoG7mK9e88uJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s236/CS%2BLewis%2BGod%2Bcan%2Bonly%2Bgive%2Bself.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="236" data-original-width="236" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GaUQChcRjj8/X_Tdnxu4VLI/AAAAAAAADt0/xKi17rEZXXcPulXvxQSeUoG7mK9e88uJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/CS%2BLewis%2BGod%2Bcan%2Bonly%2Bgive%2Bself.jpg" /></a><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div></blockquote><blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">The very self-love which he has to reject is </span><span style="background-color: white;">to him a specimen of how he ought to feel to all selves; and he may hope that </span><span style="background-color: white;">when he has truly learned (which will hardly be in this life) to love his </span><span style="background-color: white;">neighbor as himself, he may then be able to love himself as his neighbor; that </span><span style="background-color: white;">is, with charity instead of partiality. </span><span style="background-color: white;">The other kind of self-hatred, on the contrary, hates selves as </span><span style="background-color: white;">such. It begins by accepting the special </span><span style="background-color: white;">value of the particular self called </span><em style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">me</em><span style="background-color: white;">; </span><span style="background-color: white;">then, wounded in its pride to find that such a darling object should be so </span><span style="background-color: white;">disappointing, it seeks revenge, first upon that self, then on all. Deeply egoistic, but now with an inverted </span><span style="background-color: white;">egoism, it uses the revealing argument, ‘I don’t spare myself’—with the </span><span style="background-color: white;">implication ‘then </span><em style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">a fortiori </em><span style="background-color: white;">I need </span><span style="background-color: white;">not spare others’—and becomes like the centurion in Tacitus, ‘More relentless </span><span style="background-color: white;">because he had endured.’ The wrong </span><span style="background-color: white;">asceticism torments the self: the right kind kills the selfness. We must die daily: but it is better to love </span><span style="background-color: white;">the self than to love nothing, and to pity the self than to pity no one.”</span> </blockquote></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-69775250870811515132020-12-19T12:53:00.001-08:002020-12-19T12:53:16.387-08:00Live it Like You Mean it<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Two days of crisis</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I've lived through 9-11 and <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/2020/09/29/where-theres-smoke/" target="_blank">11-8</a>, two great and tragic national, and even international, days of crisis. (Some of this will be in my sermon this Sunday at <a href="https://www.brambletonchurch.org/messages-video" target="_blank">Brambleton Presbyterian Church</a>.)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mm3epwD02qc/X95hP9oU4cI/AAAAAAAADtI/0K4O9KRaTYE1j93Tqq-vfRfavVLM8euMQCLcBGAsYHQ/s300/Camp%2BFire%2BDestruction%2BTwo%2BCars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mm3epwD02qc/X95hP9oU4cI/AAAAAAAADtI/0K4O9KRaTYE1j93Tqq-vfRfavVLM8euMQCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Camp%2BFire%2BDestruction%2BTwo%2BCars.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Most of us know 9-11, the date of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks. But how about November 8, 2018? It was the day I can't forget—when the firestorm ripped through Paradise, CA, moving at three football fields a minute at one point, and burning its way to within about a mile and half of my house in Chico. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)" target="_blank">The Camp Fire </a>represents the most expensive natural disaster in the world that year, with a price tag of $15 billion, and the deadliest in California history.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I mention to underline one point: preparedness can’t happen while you’re in a crisis. We can't learn to care for those suddenly without homes, to pray when our backs are against the wall, and to live compassionately with those in terrible suffering while it's happening. Those are virtues we have to practice before the crises.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Habits: "We are what we repeatedly do"</b></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rq8UQTkQ4Sg/X95iX6F5eeI/AAAAAAAADtQ/yzSasvvKKVUJBYUZg8ULrZcAS_geN3vDACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/Aristotle%2BHabit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="440" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rq8UQTkQ4Sg/X95iX6F5eeI/AAAAAAAADtQ/yzSasvvKKVUJBYUZg8ULrZcAS_geN3vDACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Aristotle%2BHabit.jpg" /></span></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">About a week ago, I was listening to the leading sociologist from Princeton University about his new book on "lived religion." This isn't represented by scholarly texts of religious doctrine or theories about how people should preach (i.e., homiletics), but how we actually pray, how often we participate in worship services, what kind of small group community we're a part of. As <a href="https://paw.princeton.edu/article/robert-wuthnow-examines-religion-through-practice" target="_blank">Wuthnow writes</a>, "</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Practicing religion focuses on what people do and say rather than only on what they think and believe."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Living religion is related to famous philosopher Aristotle's <i>virtue ethics</i>. It what cognitive psychology tells us: <i>practices become habits, and habits become character. </i>It's really what I as a Christian have learned from the Jewish roots of my faith, which calls it <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halakha" target="_blank">halaka</a>, </i>or "walking"<i> </i>in the way of God. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What we practice. What we do is what we become. In fact, our practice becomes a habit and might even change the world.</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Coda: "Does this mean we earn our salvation”?</b></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Some of you might be concerned that this implies we earn our salvation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Put simply: No. We are assured of our salvation, and this is Jesus's </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">call to discipleship and simultaneously his </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">offering of abundant life (</span><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2010:10&version=NRSV" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;" target="_blank">John 10:10</a><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Listen again to how Paul sets this so brilliantly in Philippians 2:12-13: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"C</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span class="text Phil-2-12" style="background-color: white;">ontinue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span class="text Phil-2-13" id="en-NIV-29405" style="background-color: white;">for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose."</span> </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Put a little more clearly perhaps, <i>we work out what God has worked in</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Or perhaps better, we <i>walk out</i> what God the Spirit has empowered us to do. </span></p>
<p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-26164156546107220722020-12-11T10:57:00.004-08:002020-12-11T11:05:33.924-08:00Peace in the Puzzle<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>The theme for this post is <b>peace</b>, which is related to a couple of pieces (yes, pun intended) I'm working on</i></span><span style="font-family: verdana; text-align: left;">—</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>a sermon for <a href="https://www.brambletonchurch.org/" target="_blank">Brambleton Presbyterian Church</a> and <a href="https://scienceforthechurch.org/blog/" target="_blank">the Science for the Church newsletter</a>.</i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Three insights I discovered along the way... </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7eyvpjr6zww/X9Op8YHPSOI/AAAAAAAADss/2TmMFF2J2HY4-KX-vA-IAa3ADPtHABVTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s462/Jesus_Peace%2Bicon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="462" data-original-width="308" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7eyvpjr6zww/X9Op8YHPSOI/AAAAAAAADss/2TmMFF2J2HY4-KX-vA-IAa3ADPtHABVTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Jesus_Peace%2Bicon.jpg" /></a></span></div><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">A key word from the Beatitudes lost in translation</span></b></div></b><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">When I first learned Greek at Cal, one day we were reading Matthew 5:1-12. My professor instructed us that we could translate Jesus’s word in the Sermon on the Mount this way: “Blessed are the <i>peaceful</i>” instead of “<i>peacemakers</i>”</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">He was a great professor, and he opened the New Testament to me in many ways, but here his own leanings toward the interiority of spiritual life—he also lived in an ashram—frankly biased his interpretation of this word. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>And so I arrive a truly profound</span><span> Greek word study: the word for "peacemaker" </span><i>eirenopoioi </i><span>combines two words, “peace” and “make.”</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This means that the Beatitudes are not simply the "Beautiful Attitudes." When Jesus, the Prince of Peace (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+9&version=NRSV" target="_blank">Isaiah 9:6</a>) came to earth, he called us to <i>make </i>peace. And that's significant.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I do realize that what I've said here may lead some to ask, <i>Does this mean we earn our salvation</i>? No, it means we work out what God has worked in (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+2&version=MSG" target="_blank">Philippians 2:12-13</a>). Actually better than "work out" in the Jewish context is "walk out" because the key image for devotion to God in Jewish thought is <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halakha" target="_blank">halakha</a></i>, or "the way of walking."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>Peace now and then</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Just yesterday, I read that even as former South Carolina Governor David Beasley accepted the <a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/news/former-sc-gov-david-beasley-accepts-nobel-peace-prize-this-morning-on-behalf-of-united/article_728e2074-3a6b-11eb-9558-039da226ca1c.html" target="_blank">Nobel Peace Prize</a> on behalf of the United Nation's World Food Program, while <a href="https://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/rush-limbaugh-suggests-conservative-states-155143765.html" target="_blank">Rush Limbaugh</a> declared there can be no peace between liberals and conservatives and that “we’re trending toward secession."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>Yikes! It's hard not to despair</span><span>—</span><span>and then I remembered Jesus's time was no less contested, which I discovered</span><span> </span><a href="https://www.abarim-publications.com/DictionaryG/e/e-i-r-et-n-et.html" target="_blank">this article</a><span> on the New Testament Greek word for "peace."</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: #ffffc0; text-align: justify;"></span></span></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="text-align: justify;">The New Testament was written in a time during which the Romans overran countless peoples and frequently resorted to mass torture and genocide in dealing with resistance, and the quest for peace was not a romantic one but came with widely felt urgency. Jesus' </span><span style="text-align: justify;">famous statement "knock, and the door will open" (Matthew 7:7, Revelation 3:8) </span><span style="text-align: justify;">is not about heavenly doors because in the Biblical model heaven has no doors, but rather about the great War Doors of the temple of <a href="https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Quirinius.html" target="_blank">Janus Quirinus</a> i</span><span style="text-align: justify;">n Rome. In times of peace these doors were closed amidst great imperial fanfare, and the greatest door-closing festivals were held during the reigns of Nero and Vespasian, just prior and right after the Great Jewish </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Revolt and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="text-align: justify;">[By the way, <a href="https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Jerusalem.html" target="_blank">the name of the city</a> means "i</span></span><span style="text-align: justify;">n awe of peace, teaching peace"]</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Peace and reconciliation through "fractal communities"</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><!--x-tinymce/html-mce_72593294411607705871082--><span>Just a few days ago, I had a breath-taking conversation about race and science and faith with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z0UbQXCEBo&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=UpperHouse" target="_blank">Elaine Howard Ecklund and Cleve Tinsley IV</a>. Among many insights, Cleve said that relationships help us move past the endemic racism in our country. He referred to Adrienne Marie Brown’s concept of “<a href="http://adriennemareebrown.net/tag/fractal/" target="_blank">fractal</a> community,” </span><span>which, of course, borrows an image from mathematics and is a kind of science and faith connection, which I love. At any rate, Cleve reminded us: this is the way of Jesus. Where these relationships are, that’s where we see the reign of God. And as he summarized, “I think we really do change the world then.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And maybe we can. Maybe we make peace.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20905577.post-2462012559925570122020-12-04T10:22:00.002-08:002020-12-04T10:27:28.841-08:00On Time<p style="text-align: left;"><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Time-Yes-Enjoying-Whats-Best/dp/1480062103/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Cootsona+A+Time+for+Yes&qid=1607105923&s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank">I think a lot about time</a>. You might say, I spend a lot of time thinking about time. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YhKJl3PkmDk/X8p53jLo_ZI/AAAAAAAADrw/w12qxdvrvkc_S6hukKTFoDY5nlV1pDvgQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/past-present-and-future-signpost.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="150" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YhKJl3PkmDk/X8p53jLo_ZI/AAAAAAAADrw/w12qxdvrvkc_S6hukKTFoDY5nlV1pDvgQCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h150/past-present-and-future-signpost.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></span></div><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And here are two core convictions: <i>Time is a gift. And we spend time on what we love. </i>I'll add to those, since it's the season of Advent, that when God comes to us in Christ in the Incarnation and inhabits time, God sanctifies time. This post then is what sanctified time looks like.</span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Speaking of the Incarnation, perhaps the most profound and counter-intuitive statement Jesus spoke was this: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Without reflection, we might think he said the reverse: </span><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><i>where our heart is, there our treasure will be</i></span><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">. In this version of Jesus, we adjust our inner attitude, and then we do the right actions.</span><o:p style="background-color: white; color: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But the order is different, and that fact is critical: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”<i>Our hearts follow our treasures. I.e., what w</i></span></span><i style="font-family: verdana;">e spend our time is what we love, and the more time we spend the more our love grows.</i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> Invest your time in a church or nonprofit and see how you begin to care more about it.</span><o:p style="font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>But why then do I often spend my time so poorly? Why do I not inhabit the present moment?</i></span></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W-BKfDLvb3A/X8p62mnoIQI/AAAAAAAADr4/sdkwp6CGy388RJcAyizURQITrIejMkdMQCLcBGAsYHQ/s370/Pascal.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W-BKfDLvb3A/X8p62mnoIQI/AAAAAAAADr4/sdkwp6CGy388RJcAyizURQITrIejMkdMQCLcBGAsYHQ/w162-h200/Pascal.jpg" width="162" /></a></span></span></div><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The problem is that we seem to live in every other time <i>but </i>the present. We throw away our time like it's dispensable. We don't treasure it. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Blaise-Pascal" target="_blank">Blaise Pascal</a>, the brilliant seventeenth-century scientist and theologian, offered a profound meditation on this topic:<o:p> </o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. <i>Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so</i>. (italics added)</span></blockquote><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Or as</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> the brilliant writer, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/" target="_blank">Anne Lamott</a> puts it,</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> God wants to give us the child’s experience of “big, round hours."</span><o:p style="font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pu05ld8YM6k/X8p69V__f5I/AAAAAAAADr8/FRrvrqUYJug7bA5_m1bs0JDd4muTlp8NQCPcBGAsYHg/s491/cs-lewis-chair-MIX.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="491" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pu05ld8YM6k/X8p69V__f5I/AAAAAAAADr8/FRrvrqUYJug7bA5_m1bs0JDd4muTlp8NQCPcBGAsYHg/w200-h200/cs-lewis-chair-MIX.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">This thought, like so many, takes me to St. Clive, aka <a href="https://www.cslewis.com/us/" target="_blank">C. S. Lewis</a>, who puts the problem of human existence—or better the ongoing temptation of time—into the mouth of a devil, Screwtape in his fictional correspondence,</span><i style="color: inherit; font-family: verdana; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">The Screwtape Letters. </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Screwtape writes to his junior devil, Wormwood, that “we want a man hag-ridden by the Future” because in essence the future does not yet exist and it takes his eyes off the present moment.</span><o:p style="color: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">"We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy </span><i style="color: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">now, </i><span color="inherit" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present."</span></span></blockquote><span color="inherit" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0in 27pt;"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span color="inherit" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">And now back to Pascal; this also comes from </span><i style="color: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">Pensées</i><span color="inherit" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">: </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in;"><span color="inherit" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists.” </span></blockquote><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2