Who Knows Where the Time Goes

 

Why Evangelicalism is Winning

 Ross Douthat writing in the Free Press. I think he summarises very well, for me capturing both my admiration and suspicion for a brand of Christianity that I am forever half-in, half out of. One point he captures more accurately than I have before seen, is the defense against the accusation that evangelicalism is theocratic. That has always just plain rung false to me, yet the evidence critics bring forward for that idea has always had much truth in it. I have not countered the charge well. Douthat does.

 Evangelical political engagement is more likely to be defensive than controlling or incipiently theocratic.

Yes, this. Evangelicalism is not theocratic, but it is defensive, the great destroyer of all the other claimants to (theo)cracies that pretend to not be religions. As an overly-flexible, cliche-ridden faith, it knows another religion when it sees one, however many veils those may dance behind. The princess detects the pea under a dozen mattresses. Wokeness, politicised liberal Christianity, Country-Over-God, the Gospel of Nice, the Big Guy Upstairs, the Pale Galilean, All-Faiths-the-Same, the Inherited God, the Good Persons, Somber Churchiness, the God of Funerals - all of these are cut to earth by the Evangelicals more quickly than by other brands. Each of these small gods is bitter against the diagnostic X-Ray that is evangelicalism.

Cross-posted at Substack 

Recent Links

There are so many from The Free Press.  I think you should just check in on them without my prompting at this point. I put in two at the end.

Technology, Decentralization and Recentralization David Foster. Communication decentralised with the internet, but is now recentralising. Probably not good.

Two From Works in Progress  

What caused the end of the Bronze Age? The puzzle has never been the collapse. Collapse of civilizations happen all the time. That level of organisation is a fragile thing.  But why did nothing rise again for centuries? This is a good theory.

Mosquitos are a Choice  I do get suspicious when people say "If we only had the courage." 

I love N3's thinking, even when it is on subjects I care little about. Dinosaurs that evolved ultra-high intelligence. My first thought was "Yeah, compared to other dinosaurs.  Big Whoop." I am not a subscriber and don't have access to the rest of the story.  But even in a few sentences - yeah, that's a good point.

Max Spero of AI-detector Pangram - who awaits the threatened lawsuits eagerly, because he is certain he can hold his ground.

I think the work that we’re doing is really prosocial,” he said. “The future that I’m working toward is a world where people value humanity and we find an inherent value in words or content from humans, even if Claude could have said the same things better.

A follow up to that:  The Last Essay

Late Harvest

 These are always the last harvest of the season.

Not really a cash crop, more like cash transfer.  I suppose not much else grows on such marginal land by the side of the road.

Theo of Golden

Book club is discussing Theo of Golden tonight. I have read a few chapters and fear that my dominant conversational style will push out others who know more - even though the the others are predominantly university professors.* I may not go tonight. I do not think this will hasten or retard the Second Coming.

His name is Theo.  He arrives at Easter. The town is called Golden.  He is clearly a quiet elite who is encouraging to the common people. What I have read is charming. Got it? I think it is likely to be heartwarming, but because it appeals to many moderns it must have some ambiguity and complexity to it. I don't fault that, because that pretty much describes Tolkien and Lewis's heroic fiction, doesn't it?  And they are the foundation of so much of my emotional, cultural, spiritual, and moral outlook that I should hesitate to reject any echo of that...correct?

Yeah, maybe not. Among my wife, my son, and my daughter-in-law I think they will have these things covered.  

*They are generous and affirming, which probably encourages me too much. But my career was largely explaining mental health law to lawyers who thought they could bully me; systems to other agencies; or practical mental health to OneSky psychologists, etc. Even when I'm wrong I can lay down a marker. But that strength is a weakness in book discussions, isn't it?

Color Revolution Updates

Grim has been covering the CIA/USAID (and possibly Soros network?) plots to foment a color revolution.

In America. 

This is commentary on the DataRepublican expose, including video of what has been said by both retired and active members of government about declaring our government illegitimate, giving reason to ignore constitutional protections. It is as chilling an account about the future of the Republic as I have read. These are people who very much know what they are doing, as they have done it before in other countries.

I don't usually link to an ongoing series.  In fact, I don't think I ever have.  

 Warning Shots

Warning Shots Confirmed 

Charming

 

This is exactly the sort of muscle control that I do not have. I am always impressed.

This is Oleg and Natalya Kiryushin, BTW 

Deer

What do you call a deer with two eyes?

Diir.

What do you call a deer with three eyes? 

Seymour

What do you call a deer with no eyes?

No idear 

New Blogger Content Policy

 It all sounds very fair and reasonable. 

I can already imagine how this policy could be abused. 

Organised Skepticism

This refers to #4 of  Robert K Merton and the Mertonian Norms. I am focusing here only on organised skepticism, which Jerry Z Muller brought up in an Unsupervised Learning podcast.  It is the idea that the academic disciplines, both science and humanities, rely not only on skepticism to move forward, but a whole structure of it.  One learns to think in terms of what the critics might say and begin to defend against it.  A thesis is defended against some who will be unsympathetic. Publishing will be reviewed by your opponents. In this way, one is supposed to do a lot of the intellectual discussing in one's own head before putting it out to the world as a further understanding of the truth. Muller believes this is being lost and in some fields has already vanished.

Evangelising Theism

The topic is going to eventually be that CS Lewis's fiction evangelises for monotheism, and even for simple theism farm more than it evangelises for Christianity in specific.  But I will wander about the meadow telling you how I got here first.

********* 

Where have my Jews gone? They made up a good percentage of my friends at work and before that in school, plus a smattering in town activities and businesses I went to. But I'm not at work, I don't go to town functions, and the volunteer work I do doesn't seem to attract them. A lot of my going out is for church-related functions. I am just noticing it now because of Jews coming back into my life: a recent high school reunion, my new friend Rivka on one of my zoom calls, and a childhood friend I tracked down. You don't know what you've got till it's gone...*

One of the reasons it's important is it's a way of mentally checking your work. For the twenty years of my blog it is an automatic exercise to think What are the women in my generation going to think of that idea?  Will they have a counter? What would a bright, decent Millennial make of that phrasing? I wonder what my grandfather would have thought? Does that sound insulting to people who chose that profession? Until recently, that included "Would Frank or David or Esther challenge that?" especially on religious questions. I keep a lot of religious groups in mind when I write, anticipating both what their intellectual and their emotional reaction might be. It goes by pretty quickly at this point.  It's well-worn territory.

It came to mind because I quoted CS Lewis to one friend and realised I had no idea what her familiarity with him is.  Two things I saw: Even though my motto is "The solution to everything is to read more CS Lewis," I had never given or even recommended one of his books to a Jewish friend; however, I would quote him to them or put quotes in an online context where I knew many Jews would be reading, because in isolation, there was nothing that would offend.  It would be a general spiritual understanding as applicable to Jews as to Christians.

That was a fun puzzle. Noticing such things and asking "Well, why do I do that?" is something I find fascinating, not frightening. I have learned that most others find it intimidating. I mentally ran through the list of the scores of books by Lewis. I remembered also the series on Pints With Jack of Lewis fans who were outside our usual boundaries: an Eastern Orthodox priest relating his fondness for Lewis's writing; a Benedictine monk; an atheist who had a whole site devoted to atheists who loved Lewis; a Jew who who likewise had a site of other Jewish fans of Jack; a Mormon, a Bahai, a spiritualist - which is ironic since Lewis had such cutting things to say about them, having dabbled in the occult himself as a young man.

I remembered also that the serious Humanist and Effective Altruist Scott Alexander of Astral Codex Ten wrote admiringly and knowledgeably about GK Chesterton, and detailed his intense examination of Lewis's case for Christianity and said "He almost convinced me." Lewis's popularity outside of Western Christian circles has been hiding in plain sight. Tolkien, we knew. Even though LOTR is deeply Catholic, that is disguised, almost subterranean. But Lewis seemed more overt. 

What follows took only a few minutes.  It is not something I have been mulling for weeks or months, nor is what follows. Yet once the lock has been picked, the contents of the room are easy to see.

*******

Here we go then. People outside of Christian circles have likely heard of Lewis in either of two ways: his fiction or his literary work. For the latter, it is mostly late collegiate or even graduate students who are most familiar with "An Introduction to Paradise Lost," "An Experiment in Criticism," Vol 5 of the Oxford History of English Literature,**  The Discarded Image, "Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem," and many others. His secular audience seldom sees that much of his advantage here is not only that he believes and understands the theology, but that he is Medieval and Renaissance in spirit himself, and thus a native of these lands, seeing no boundary between them. It is worth noting that he was one of, if not the authority on that period in his and his influence lasts even until now, while most of the others have vanished beneath the waves.

The general audience knows him more from his fiction, especially the Narnia Chronicles or their movies. The biggest specifically Christian hurdle is from The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe, the first and most famous of the series in which death and resurrection are central to the plot, and that alone may keep Jews or the generally unsympathetic from exploring further. In the rest of the series, the position of Aslan as the second person of the Trinity is more backgrounded. It is there in full color of orthodoxy, but it it is explanatory and descriptive, central to the full understanding but not the plot.  I learned this from the atheist guest on the podcast who noted that the stories are simply good stories in the Western Tradition, and he would skim the Jesus-ness to keep riding the story. (Which Lewis would consider a victory.) Last Battle owes a good deal to Daniel and other prophets, not just the Revelation to John.  It was the Israelites who were first informed that the whole of creation is coming to an end some day and reoriented their thinking around that. Everyone else on the planet remained in seasonal or circular time. The Jews made the cycles helical. Dawn Treader has acres of Christian symbolism in it, but even most Christians miss that. The Horse and His Boy owes much to Joseph in Egypt; The Magician's Nephew is a reworking of Adam and the Fall; The Silver Chair is the OT histories in mythic form. 

In the Ransom Trilogy it is the unfallen nature of Mars versus fallen Earth, the Silent Planet, followed by Perelandra's fall hanging in the balance. The last book is about the origins of good and evil power. It is deeply Christian, but not to the exclusion of Judaism. Similarly, Screwtape has some starkly Christian declarations, but contextualised to 20th C Anglican England.  It could be recast in Israel without much trouble.  The Great Divorce uses imagined Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory which are not central to Jewish theology, but the spiritual battles are all monotheistic: will you surrender to God or not? Till We Have Faces uses polytheistic, almost animist elements to tell its Christian lessons, and as in Tolkien, no Jesus appears.

I thought I would spend time on his philosophical works, in which his Christian belief is not directly present, except by intuition, but I think I will leave those alone. The Abolition of Man, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and even The Pilgrim's Regress make the case for monotheism and specifically Judaism long before Christianity is even mentioned. This reflects his own long conversion, from teenage atheism to indeterminate theism by 1929, to monotheism in 1930 and only at the end of 1931 “When we [Warnie and Jack] set out [by motorcycle to the Whipsnade Zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”  But however widely applicable they could be, they are mostly read only by Christians these days. One would think that Mere Christianity would be more overt, but here again he is very methodical, pointing out to the reader at the end of a chapter that we have only dismantled materialism thus far, and said nothing about any religion...then we have only established a somethingism here...then we have eliminated dualism and weakened polytheism...and well along in the text before we are left with a God of some definite Personality, not a life-force or a repeated cycle... It is Jewish long before it is Christian.

Most Western Jews are already used to living in a world where their POV is an influence but not a controlling one.  They seem to navigate around that and understand the culture anyway.  Lewis, for all his Christ-specific theology, can travel on the road with them much longer than Shakespeare, Voltaire, and nearly every 19th and 20th C intellectual.

I never saw it. 

Enjoy. Reading more CS Lewis is the solution to everything.

I will cross post this on Substack 

 

*  I went on medication for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in the 1980s, yet did not notice that one of the things that stopped was my automatic imagining of spoonerisms (which fortunately, I did not say aloud).  Only when I stopped the medication a few years later did I notice I was again reflexively thinking "keys and parrots" for "peas and carrots" or looking at the Market Basket sign and thinking Barket Masket. Every damn time.

** This took twenty years.  He referred to it by pronouncing its initials, OHEL. 

Quiet Time

Evangelicals have something of a rule about scheduling a Quiet Time every day. In the discussion, they often will point to the many times that Jesus went to a quiet place to pray. Yet notice that these do not say the prayer time was quiet, only that the place was quiet, which I am assuming means free from distraction. Being both God and Man, distraction was a possibility, and he provided a demonstration of how to minimise that.  What are the few times we get to listen in on Jesus's time with God?  Gethsemane, certainly. Even though it is a quiet place, it doesn't seem like a quiet time to me.  Luke, the physician, records that his sweat became like drops of blood. That doesn't sound like doing breath work, centering, or resting in God at all.

Jesus invited a couple of his disciples to come up on the mountain with him and the sky exploded with ancient prophets. They did not respond by murmuring how peaceful it all was. Maybe time with God is supposed to be dramatic, not near-somnolent. Heaven sounds pretty noisy as well, what little we are told about it. It is described as being like a wedding reception, which is not usually anyone's idea of a rest. I find I have to go outside and away from everyone at those, frankly.

What about that still, small voice talking to Elijah? I think it pays to look at the context in 1 King 19. 

 

For debate: trying to "get quiet" in a place rather than going to a quiet place to meet God is actually an evasion of God.  

Release the hounds. 

Household Tasks

Grim sees a category error in the debate about husbands and wives and household chores. It is not a fun national discussion, because it assumes that Anna and Bob's arrangement is up for criticism by Carol and/or Daniel.

When we became Christians in the 1970s (according to our accounting then - my theology is different now) it was a shocking idea for this Congregationalist who went to an Ivy-wannabee college that I was supposed to have spiritual headship over my wife and and automatically be in charge of the household. Even more surprising were the frequent directions of what that entailed and how I should do it.

But somewhere in the first year it occurred to me: if I am the head of my household, why do these other guys keep telling me what to do? It was a liberating thought. Fifty years later, we have the tasks divided in a fairly traditional arrangement. But not entirely, and it suits us. You wanna make something of it, Mac?

 

Margaret Ball

I was in a Zoom bookclub with author Margaret Ball until she left for medical reasons a few months ago.  Her husband Steve Zoraster still attends. His patents and publications should give an idea where is thinking is. Her interests were more varied, as one can see from her books and articles.

She long preceded me in the book club, but I think I shared the space with her for almost three years. She was quite clever and funny, generous to the ideas of others, and clearly both smarter and more disciplined that I. She died this past week in Austin, TX

Doesn't she just look like someone who is a linguist, a mathematician, and a sci-fi/historical/ and pseudonymous romance (to pay the rent, she said) author?

 

Coventry

 Looking at "Coventry Carol," for Advent I wondered what exactly it was.  I knew of the phrase sent to Coventry but discerned that must be later for some historical reaction to an already existing place. This part I had right. But I guessed that "coventry" as a word, and thus a place-name, must be related to covenant, convent, coven, and the like. 

Wrongo! This is dismissed as a "folk etymology," one of the worst insults that can be bestowed on a guess.

 city in Warwickshire, mid-13c., an alteration of Old English Couentre (1043), probably literally "Cofa's tree," from Old English masc. personal name Cofa (genitive Cofan) + tree (n.). If this is correct, the name might refer to a boundary marker or a public assembly place. The explanation that it was named for a convent founded there 11c. likely would be folk etymology.

My wife knew that being sent to Coventry meant to be excluded and not spoken to or listened to, which I had only vaguely understood.  Looking it up, it was used by military officers to socially sanction others who had committed dishonourable acts that did not rise to the level of courts martial. 

Three-Digit Plate

 My (Great-)Aunt Sal had a three-digit plate because she had registered her first car in the 1930's. 673. She had a Creme-and-Cocoa Chevy and then VW Bugs when I knew her, finishing with a Superbeetle. I should have paid attention and tried to snap for it when she died in 1983.

 

Trisagion

I will be singing with the choir for advent again, so it is back to warmups to get my range and what's left of my technique back. I find this wonderful, moving up a half step with each repetition until I can't hit the highest note, then dropping down an octave and climbing again. It is a worship song rather than an exercise. I have to pay attention to mouth shape, remembering the "r's" and "e's" especially. There is breath and throat control for the slurred notes, to keep them smooth and not choppy. The intervals are varied.

It's a beautiful piece, based on a standard Orthodox liturgical hymn. There are older more authentic version that are also good to learn.

 

55th Reunion

Best reunion I have been to, and it did not begin auspiciously. There were many fewer than at the 50th - no surprise - and just a lot of brief conversation and moving on. Pleasant but shallow, I suppose. But over the first two hours all forty of us had a chance to touch base with just about all of the others, everyone having a longer conversation with a few. In the last hour it narrowed to about 20, all around one table with some side conversations and switching places when people went to get another drink or had a longer goodbye.  But no one was far from the center, and more of the conversation was addressed to the whole group, a few lines here and there. People waited for each other, listened to each other, told stories. It ended softly, slowly. 

Mongoose Vs Cobra

The Slo-Mo is fun

 

Salt and Pepper

I am no longer shocked that prepared supermarket foods have too much pepper and salt, nor that cheaper restaurants lean on those ingredients.  They are cheap, flavorful, and cover a multitude of sins.  I'd rather have a try at those supposed culinary sins they are covering myself, but it must be working or it wouldn't keep happening - and maybe getting worse.

We went to an expensive restaurant on Friday, and my tenderloin and potato based dish had way too much pepper. This seems to be happening everywhere these days. Do the majority of people like that much? Does it spur people to buy more drinks, as the salt does? Has everyone forgotten how to cook food? 

In contrast, we went to a coastal seafood place tonight and I had fried scallops, discerning no pepper. There was likely some salt in the batter, but it didn't taste salty. It was just simple and very good. It is the sort of place with an overhead chalkboard menu where you order at the counter and pick it up when they call your number. It was busy on a Monday night in October.

Sponge-Headed Scienceman has had it with garlic being added to everything, and I am beginning to come around to that idea, after years of saying Gimme More. But first, back off on the salt and pepper.  I have started to mention it, especially at fancier places which might have more reason to fear negative word-of-mouth. There are salt and pepper on the table for a reason, I thought. 

The Land of Milk and Cookies

I had a pastor who years ago used that phrase in a sermon, along the lines of "and then we will all go to live in the land of milk and cookies."  I thought it was charming, capturing the spirit of joy, calm, and abundance that the biblical phrase milk and honey intended, but in a modern context.  I mentioned it to a co-worker who was one of Those Christians who launched into a correction that this was not actually something that should have been in a sermon, because the honey part of the phrase represents something-or-other about Messianic prophecy which shouldn't be left out because then you are missing the whole point...

Well, no. Keep it simple.  Honey refers to foraging.  Milk refers to agriculture, possibly settled but more commonly nomadic. The Israelites moved between these economies, and at varying times God was quite clear where they should be.  No, Cain, do not bring me an offering of broccoli. Yes, Nehemiah, it is time to rebuild a city. The Land of Milk and Honey covers the territory.  Everything is here.  The foraging is good, the cows are contented, be at peace.

Noticing

Steve Sailer's book Noticing is built around his decades-long observation that there are things you are not supposed to notice, and simply noticing them out loud gets you in trouble.  There is a reason no one was noticing and it wasn't an accident.

So I have long noticed but only occasionally mentioned how often people - meaning especially my age, especially women, and ones I know/knew - show how kind and good they are by how often they mention that they hate Trump. The oftenness provides ample evidence that they don't actually criticise both sides, and leads to wondering why they have to say essentially the same thing so often.

The other side spreads it around to a somewhat larger circle of "stupid things liberals do," with a variety of targets.  

Yogi Berra supposedly said "You can see a lot just by looking." 

Links from 2015

From October and November.  It now looks as if all 11,702 posts of mine have been visited 150-200 times this October, including some to dead links. 

 Boomer Youth Culture a simple theory on how it developed that I still like.

Community Versus Communism  I was refining the idea at this point.  As I read, I sometimes thought "That's how I still say that now," while at other times I thought "I hit upon a better way to say that." Good comment from T99.

Bamfield's John Vanden Music from The Bills with great harmonies. Bamfield is a tiny community on Vancouver Island, facing the Pacific.

Star Wars Villains  The Assistant Village Idiot explains to you why it's morally inconsistent and confusing.

Two extended posts about College Protests that are still green

One Thought  Starting with an analogy I still like.

Life Is Hard  Good responses, closing with a highly complimentary spam comment I left up.