Fed up in Cairo

"The elections are fraudulent. The people in power monopolize all the resources. There are no jobs. There's no health care. And I can't afford good schools for my children."

- 53 year old Abdel Zaher Dandarwi explaining why he joined this week's mass protests against the Egyptian government

The gift of a happy childhood

Becoming a parent has produced a sudden awareness of my mortality. I'm also beginning to realize that I have less control than I thought I had -- or like to think I have -- over Samuel and Benjamin's future. So much is out of my hands! But there is something. A happy childhood is no guarantee of a happy life (and as a Christian I have higher aspirations for my children than mere happiness) but giving them a happy childhood is something I do have a great deal of control over right now.

I was moved by these lines from author Alison Gopnik (The Philosophical Baby):

Parents often feel a kind of existential anxiety as they watch their children grow up—as we say, it goes by so fast. We watch that infinitely flexible, contingent, malleable future swiftly harden into the irretrievable, unchangeable past. Japanese poets have a phrase, mono no aware, for the bittersweetness inherent in ephemeral beauty—a falling blossom or a leaf in the wind. Children are a great source of mono no aware.

But there is another side to the ephemerality of childhood. There is a kind of immunity about a happy childhood, not an immunity from the disasters and catastrophes that may, that almost certainly do, lie ahead, but an intrinsic immunity. Change and transience are at the heart of the human condition. But as parents we can at least give our children a happy childhood, a gift that is as certain, as unchanging, as rock solid, as any human good. (p. 201)

Gopnik writes from a naturalistic worldview, so, naturally, there were things I disagreed with in this book, but overall I found it to be an illuminating glimpse into the minds of baby humans. I enjoyed the film references sprinkled throughout the book (the author must be a film buff). At one point she suggests that the unself-conscious consciousness of infants is like that of an adult watching an absorbing Hitchcock film. "For a baby, watching a Mickey Mouse mobile may be like being utterly, blissfully, selflessly captivated by a good movie." (p. 122) Sounds like a great life!
 

Quotes from The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life (Picador, 2009)

Photo of our two sons taken 1/12/11

Murch and Ebert give thumbs down to 3D

Film editor Walter Murch thinks moviegoers should be "fed up" with 3D and explains why in this letter to Roger Ebert. Ebert agrees.

Murch is one of my heroes so what he says carries a lot of weight. I did a two-part tribute to Mr. Murch several years ago. Is he right? Are 3D films just a gimmick, or are they the wave of the future? I suppose time will tell.

Ancient traditions making a comeback in Northern California

Story from Rob Reynolds of Al Jazeera. . .

Something to hang your hat on

"Folks, CNN has it's own headlines. In the West history is divided into periods -- ancient, medieval, modern, postmodern. Most recently it's been said that September 11, 2001 changed everything. But really, that's not true. The most decisive turning point was the year 33 when a Jewish rabbi, the Messiah, was raised from the dead in Roman-occupied Palestine -- vindicating his claim as God incarnate, Savior and Lord of the world. All authority on heaven and on earth has been entrusted to him. This turning point is not only celebrated, but is deepened and widened in its effects every Lord's Day. Whenever this gospel is taken, and wherever this gospel is taken, a piece of heaven, the age to come, begins even now to dawn in the dusty corners of this passing evil age."

- Michael Horton (from last week's White Horse Inn podcast The Gospel of the Kingdom)

Obama's abortion blindness

Here are the closing paragraphs of Albert Mohler's article on President Obama's shameful statement celebrating the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Ever since Barack Obama emerged on the national political scene, he has been promoted and protected by a corps of preachers and religious leaders who have tried their best to explain that he is not so pro-abortion as he seems. Nevertheless, his record is all too clear — as is this most recent statement. There was not one expression of abortion as a national tragedy, even as a report recently indicated that almost 60 percent of all pregnancies among African American women in New York City end in abortion.

How can any President of the United States fail to address this unspeakable tragedy? There was no hope expressed that abortion would be rare, only the expression that he would remain “committed to protecting this constitutional right.” The only words that even insinuate any hypothetical reduction in abortion were addressed to reducing “unintended pregnancies” and promoting adoption. But no goal of reducing abortion was stated or even obliquely suggested. No reference at all was made of the unborn child. There was no lament — not even a throwaway line that would cost him nothing in terms of his support from abortion rights forces.

These words were not imposed upon this President. This is his own personal statement. It is one of the most revealing — and tragic — statements made by any political figure in our times.

Clearly, the moral seriousness that the President has displayed in other instances (e.g. his response to the Tucson shootings) is missing here. Apparently he's oblivious to the fact that the lives of children are also at stake in the abortion debate -- boys and girls of every race -- who if allowed to be born would grow up to be very much like his daughters. It's unfathomable to me that a loving father (as I'm sure he is) could be such an unabashed cheerleader for abortion on demand. Tragic indeed!

The all-important thing (Machen)

J. Gresham Machen:

If you regard religion merely as a means to attain worldly ends, even the highest and noblest of worldly ends—if you regard religion for example, merely as a means of meeting the present emergency in this world, then you have never even begun to have even the slightest inkling of what the Christian religion means. God, as He is known to the Christian, is never content to be thus a mere instrument in the hands of those who care nothing about Him. The relation to God is the all-important thing. It is not a mere means to an end. Everything else is secondary to it.

Quote from "The Present Emergency and How to Meet It" (1935)

Christian worship as covenant renewal

In Letter XVI of Letters to a Young Calvinist author Jamie Smith gently chides Jesse (his fictional correspondent) for choosing a church home based on the fact that it "teaches Calvinism." Smith writes that this is the wrong criteria because it sees church as primarily a lecture hall where one goes to be taught.

Instead Smith wants Jesse to pay more attention to how a church worships -- and not just the music. This is one way, Smith argues, in which the Reformed tradition runs counter to the "ethos of American evangelicalism." In that ethos worship is reduced to music (there's even a genre called "praise and worship"), and the sermon is reduced to teaching. Even if that teaching is Calvinistic it isn't enough to make it a Reformed church. Smith:

In the Reformed tradition, the entire service is worship. While psalm singing and hymn singing might be an important part of worship, in fact they are just a slice of the entire drama that constitutes a service of Christian worship. And while the sermon is important, it too is only a part of the drama of worship. There is a specific "logic" to the entire shape of worship that flows out of the conviction that Christian worship replays the drama of the covenant. In fact, Michael Horton, in A Better Way, has very helpfully described the service of Christian worship as a "covenant renewal ceremony." Worship is the site of God's action, where we dialogically encounter our Redeemer and covenantal Lord, in offers of praise and thanksgiving—but also in confession and reverence. Each week, worship invites us into the narrative of God's redemptive history. Indeed, the entire drama of worship replays that story each week and invites us to situate ourselves in that story. (pp. 81-2)

I love that description of worship! This approach has the added benefit of reminding us that worship is about something bigger than ourselves. Yet, within this framework is plenty of room for cultural or musical variation. A few more quotes. . .

[. . .] worship is a matter of both Word and sacrament. Worship is not just an opportunity to get "information" in the Word preached; it is also a ceremony in which we (re)enact the covenant with our promise-keeping God. (p. 83)

[. . .] worship is not only what is rightly owed to God; it is also a kind of training, a means of discipline and formation that God provides for our sanctification. Worship not only expresses our praise and adoration of God; it also forms our habits and desires. Rightly ordered worship is a crucial part of our discipleship and sanctification. (p. 84)

I'll have one more post on this book later...including some nitpicks. BTW the author is answering questions via video about the book at his blog.

The obligation of Christian politicians

I know I linked to Ross Douthat already this week, but this is too good to not pass along.

There is no definitive Christian approach to politics. There are lines a believer cannot cross and ideologies that cannot be embraced, but a libertarian and a social democrat can both claim a Christian warrant for their approach to political affairs, and likewise a neoconservative and a realist, or for that matter a monarchist and a republican.

But the diversity and open-endedness of Christian political thought doesn’t absolve Christian politicians of the obligation to think seriously about the interaction between their personal faith and their public duties. Instead, it sharpens that obligation: Precisely because there is no single model for a Christian politician, every Christian in politics has an obligation to be a model — to make it clear, in words and deeds, how their faith informs their activism, and to constantly test their political convictions against their theological worldview.

Read the quote in context here.

Andy Crouch on Steve Jobs' secular gospel of hope

Steve Jobs’s medical leave of absence is the top story in today’s newspapers. The Wall Street Journal says his brief and poignant memo raises “uncertainty over his health and the future of the world’s most valuable technology company.” These two questions—Jobs’s health and Apple’s health—are the focus of almost all the coverage today.

But I’m interested in the health of our culture, and what will happen to it when (not if) Steve Jobs departs the stage for the last time.

As remarkable as Steve Jobs is in countless ways—as a designer, an innovator, a (ruthless and demanding) leader—his most singular quality has been his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope. Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple’s early logo, which slapped a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure—the bitten fruit—and made it a sign of promise and progress.

Continue reading. . .