Or "My Xbox Broke A Month Ago and I Haven't Missed It At All".
I was listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR on Monday afternoon and caught the end of an interview with Kay Hymowitz on an article she wrote recently for the City Journal, which was also adapted as an editorial for the Dallas Morning News. According to Hymowitz, young men in their 20's are experiencing an unprecedented wave of freedom that they are exercising by playing video games, seeking meaningless sexual gratification and otherwise acting like adolescents. Hence her term "child-men". The articles make a strong case for her point that today's young men are being socialized to be boys fixated on entertainment and self-centered pursuits. Marriage, now coming later than ever for men and women, has lost its civilizing and maturational influence on this generation. Instead of raising children, many young men are instead spending countless hours playing games, both with women and video games. If you only have time for a quick read, go with the Dallas News editorial. For the full article, check out the City Journal page. I have points of disagreement with her, but that is not what caught my attention on the radio.
What caught my attention is the simple fact that I, too, play video games. Or at least I did. See, about 4 weeks ago my Xbox360 took a dive. Many thousands of Xbox360 owners have had trouble with a manufacturing defect that produces the dreaded "Red Rings of Death" (the term is a take-off on the Window's classic "Blue Screen of Death" which appeared whenever your computer crashed). Basically, the lights around the power button turn red and this means your Xbox360 is dead. Microsoft extended the warranty for three years for every Xbox for this and is providing free repairs. My Xbox did not suffer RROD. Rather, the video card apparently died. Which means the system boots up and logs in, which I can tell from the sound effects, but there is no video output. Just a blank screen with some swimming dots. Obviously, this makes actually playing a video game rather difficult.
I was initially quite upset since I was in the middle of some campaigns on different games. That's kind of like having to leave a theater half way through a movie you were enjoying. I didn't like wasting money on the games that I could now not finish. And I especially didn't want to waste $100 on fixing the stupid thing for what is obviously a defect but would not be covered because my warranty is expired. But I forgot about it after a couple of days. School started, we finished up getting things ready for the baby (now just under 4 weeks off if he comes on time), I started reading more, poking around online and engaging in some discussions, talking to friends and family more often on the phone and generally just enjoying life. Until I heard Kay Hymowitz on Talk of the Nation talking about Child-Men. And I realized that, to a certain extent, I am one. Or maybe I was one. I wasted a lot of time playing on that stupid thing. Time that could have been much better spent talking to my wife, studying, praying, exercising, helping other people, writing - any of a hundred different things that had casually and thoughtlessly gotten sucked up by a white box sitting next to my TV. Hearing her talk about these guys, and hearing something of myself brought up in the article, made me realized that I not only didn't miss my Xbox, I'm glad its gone.
I realize there are probably some readers out there who have no idea what a change this is for me. For a very long time, video games were my outlet. Over the last 2.5 years especially, with school as busy and stressful as its been, getting lost in a game was one of my primary stress-relievers. And now I see just how dependent I was on that mind-numbing experience and I'm seeing how so much of popular culture is similarly stupifying. We waste so much time, energy and pieces of ourselves in pursuit of...nothing. It brings to mind my high school Latin teacher when he taught us the meaning of nihil - "less than straw". The Latin mind could conceive of nothing as insignificant as a piece of hay. And that is exactly what today's culture wants us to do; we seek insignificance.
1.28.2008
1.21.2008
Dating Jesus
Saturday morning, the wife and I went to a local coffee shop to study. Me for nursing school and her for a licensure exam at work. Towards the end of our study session a group of maybe 10 people pulled a few tables together right next to us. There were a few young women among the group and the rest were men of varying ages. They opened with prayer, always a welcome development when a large group gathers near your study area, and proceeded with their meeting. I had assumed it was a Bible study, but it turns it out was a group of ministry leaders from various college ministry organizations (Campus Crusade, Intervarsity and the like) and representatives of a few local churches with college ministries. They were coordinating ministry and outreach events for the coming semester. Frankly, I was delighted to see that kind of cooperation and cohesion among these obviously competing groups. Youth and college ministries can be especially numbers-driven due to the need for a "critical mass" of students in order to be attractive to outsiders. Kids generally don't like hanging around a fun-filled group of 5 when 2 of them are leaders. So for them to pool resources and forgo competitive ministry programs is, well, very Christian.
I didn't follow too much of the beginning of their meeting. I was engrossed in my "Caring for the Complex Family" text and they were talking about doing a few of the same things they had done last year. But as my interest in the Complex Family waned (directly proportional to the temperature and remaining volume of my coffee, I might add), they started tossing out new ideas. My attention was soon diverted to eavesdropping.
They had a variety of ideas. Most seemed generically conventional for Campus Crusade, based on my experience with the organization at Arizona State. Big, fun, invite-your-friend kind of things with a recognizable speaker or good band. Events with lots of energy and skits. Some of the ideas seemed more suited for a younger crowd but I assumed they knew their audience better than I. The one idea that really caught my attention, though, was presented by a college-aged female. Rough sketch: a skit based on the dating game wherein one of the bachelor's is Jesus, or answers exactly as Jesus would, and at the end of the game the young woman picks him. Excuse me, Him. They kind of tossed it around a bit - maybe the young woman is someone from the crowd, or maybe they just focus on the kind of love we all allegedly want, or all of the bachelors portray some aspect of Jesus. Or maybe they actually set up some kind of contest where someone actually wins a fantasy date, either as a package they can take their significant other on or they actually take the guy or girl from the skit. It went around for several minutes.
My initial reaction was "As a guy, I sure wouldn't want to date Jesus." You know, liking women like I do. So it seemed their strategy was going to alienate at least half of the crowd right then. Other thoughts ran through my head - what if what these college kids want from "love" isn't what God actually offers? How do you choose who gets to be the bachelors and how do you avoid using sexual attraction as an evangelism tool? And why do these oddly perverse notions of the romantic Jesus stay alive? Then an older gentleman said he kind of doubted they could actually know how Jesus would answer dating questions. Another pointed out the obvious difficulty if the person from the crowd chose a non-Jesus bachelor. Other flaws in the plan slowly became apparent but, overall, they seemed to like the general idea and thought maybe a good speaker could adapt what was happening to an evangelistic talk and no matter what happened, use it somehow.
I kept thinking is this what evangelism has come to? Dating Jesus?
As we left, they were on to other ideas and I interrupted the group to proffer a couple of suggestions. But I was still disquieted by the shallowness of their ideas about evangelism. Big-time fun does not equal conversion and on the rare occasion that it does, how much spiritual depth does that person actually experience? How does feeding the obviously jacked-up cultural norms of dating help bring anyone to relationship with Christ? What are they thinking?!
But (and this is a big, big but) then I realized something. They're actually doing it. No matter how shallow or ineffective their ideas seemed to me, they were at least committed to doing it. They were willing to take the time and energy to prepare and plan, to generate ideas and to figure out ways to put them into action. And they were willing to put themselves out on that very uncomfortable limb and plainly deliver the Gospel, no matter the context. And frankly, I'm not. I haven't shared the Gospel with anyone in the last 2 1/2 years. I fully believe that drive-by evangelism is ineffective and irresponsible, but at some point relational evangelism has to transition into actual evangelism. So far, I'm pretty good on the relational part. I think its time to work on the evangelism part.
So here's to that group. God bless them and the work that they do. God bless their endeavors and may they, and You, forgive my arrogance. God grant me their heart for reaching out to the lost. And maybe grant us all some better ideas.
Unless, that is, You like The Dating Game.
I didn't follow too much of the beginning of their meeting. I was engrossed in my "Caring for the Complex Family" text and they were talking about doing a few of the same things they had done last year. But as my interest in the Complex Family waned (directly proportional to the temperature and remaining volume of my coffee, I might add), they started tossing out new ideas. My attention was soon diverted to eavesdropping.
They had a variety of ideas. Most seemed generically conventional for Campus Crusade, based on my experience with the organization at Arizona State. Big, fun, invite-your-friend kind of things with a recognizable speaker or good band. Events with lots of energy and skits. Some of the ideas seemed more suited for a younger crowd but I assumed they knew their audience better than I. The one idea that really caught my attention, though, was presented by a college-aged female. Rough sketch: a skit based on the dating game wherein one of the bachelor's is Jesus, or answers exactly as Jesus would, and at the end of the game the young woman picks him. Excuse me, Him. They kind of tossed it around a bit - maybe the young woman is someone from the crowd, or maybe they just focus on the kind of love we all allegedly want, or all of the bachelors portray some aspect of Jesus. Or maybe they actually set up some kind of contest where someone actually wins a fantasy date, either as a package they can take their significant other on or they actually take the guy or girl from the skit. It went around for several minutes.
My initial reaction was "As a guy, I sure wouldn't want to date Jesus." You know, liking women like I do. So it seemed their strategy was going to alienate at least half of the crowd right then. Other thoughts ran through my head - what if what these college kids want from "love" isn't what God actually offers? How do you choose who gets to be the bachelors and how do you avoid using sexual attraction as an evangelism tool? And why do these oddly perverse notions of the romantic Jesus stay alive? Then an older gentleman said he kind of doubted they could actually know how Jesus would answer dating questions. Another pointed out the obvious difficulty if the person from the crowd chose a non-Jesus bachelor. Other flaws in the plan slowly became apparent but, overall, they seemed to like the general idea and thought maybe a good speaker could adapt what was happening to an evangelistic talk and no matter what happened, use it somehow.
I kept thinking is this what evangelism has come to? Dating Jesus?
As we left, they were on to other ideas and I interrupted the group to proffer a couple of suggestions. But I was still disquieted by the shallowness of their ideas about evangelism. Big-time fun does not equal conversion and on the rare occasion that it does, how much spiritual depth does that person actually experience? How does feeding the obviously jacked-up cultural norms of dating help bring anyone to relationship with Christ? What are they thinking?!
But (and this is a big, big but) then I realized something. They're actually doing it. No matter how shallow or ineffective their ideas seemed to me, they were at least committed to doing it. They were willing to take the time and energy to prepare and plan, to generate ideas and to figure out ways to put them into action. And they were willing to put themselves out on that very uncomfortable limb and plainly deliver the Gospel, no matter the context. And frankly, I'm not. I haven't shared the Gospel with anyone in the last 2 1/2 years. I fully believe that drive-by evangelism is ineffective and irresponsible, but at some point relational evangelism has to transition into actual evangelism. So far, I'm pretty good on the relational part. I think its time to work on the evangelism part.
So here's to that group. God bless them and the work that they do. God bless their endeavors and may they, and You, forgive my arrogance. God grant me their heart for reaching out to the lost. And maybe grant us all some better ideas.
Unless, that is, You like The Dating Game.
1.13.2008
What I Learned in Nursing School (in progress)
I've been thinking about doing this post for a while, kind of a "top ten" list of what I've learned. But I'm not sure I've got 10 things to post and school is still a work in progress, so I'm treating the list the same way. Here is my unfinished, in-progress list of the top things I learned in nursing school.
The best physicians generally aren't good doctors. This of course isn't a hard and fast rule. There are some doctors that I work with who are expert surgeons or diagnosticians and who are also very caring and compassionate human beings. But they are the exception. By and large, the doctors who are the best at what they do plainly stink at how they do it. Family needs or questions are ignored or demeaned and patient needs, insofar as they don't correspond to the doctor's specialty, are treated as secondary when acknowledged at all. For that reason, even if they are the best in the operating room or during a code, they aren't the people I'd want taking care of me. If my prognosis is poor, I'd rather have someone treat me and my family with dignity and respect instead of having a doctor that might give me a few more days of life while treating us like inconveniences.
It is amazing what you can adapt to. When I was young, cleaning up after the dog would send me to the bathroom fighting a fit of gagging and dry heaves. The mere scent of vomit would set me off and the actual sight of puke was almost more than I could take. Rotting garbage, a dead animal, moldy food - the odors were just too much. But now, oh boy, now you could be shooting out of both ends and it wouldn't faze me excepting the knowledge that I'll be the one to clean it up. Also, the...uh...texture and aroma of certain bodily functions can be diagnostic. So I'm definitely over my weak stomach and at odd times find myself sniffing gently in the hospital hall trying to figure out who's got the C. diff and who is just gassy.
If someone says they're going to throw up, its best to take them at their word. And to get out of the way.
Hospitals really do smell funny. I noticed it the very first day I started working in one but forgot all about it until I went in to one to visit someone. Once I was out of my scrubs and just a guy off the street, that smell hit me full force again even though I'm in a hospital 3-4 days a week. That reminded me how bewildering and intimidating the hospital can be for people who aren't used to it.
What we can do to you far exceeds what we can do for you. And the reason, more often than not, that we are doing all of these things to you is because of your family. They can't let you go even though there is no hope for recovery and keeping you alive is only prolonging your suffering. Why? Guilt and fear. Guilt about what is left unsaid or undone, about past wrongs not made right and deep-seated fear about all of our fates. It is generally the conflicted, wounded families that experience so much ambivalence and confusion in the face tragedy. So please, right after you're done reading this, go apologize to those you've hurt and forgive those who have hurt you. Reassure them of your love and forgiveness and remind them about God's. It just may save all of you untold suffering and emotional pain at some unfortunate point in the future. More importantly, it will change that relationship for the rest of your respective lives. And tell at least a few of them in explicit detail exactly what you do and do not want done should you end up laying in an ICU with machines keeping you alive. Maybe, just for fun, put it in writing.
(cont.)
The best physicians generally aren't good doctors. This of course isn't a hard and fast rule. There are some doctors that I work with who are expert surgeons or diagnosticians and who are also very caring and compassionate human beings. But they are the exception. By and large, the doctors who are the best at what they do plainly stink at how they do it. Family needs or questions are ignored or demeaned and patient needs, insofar as they don't correspond to the doctor's specialty, are treated as secondary when acknowledged at all. For that reason, even if they are the best in the operating room or during a code, they aren't the people I'd want taking care of me. If my prognosis is poor, I'd rather have someone treat me and my family with dignity and respect instead of having a doctor that might give me a few more days of life while treating us like inconveniences.
It is amazing what you can adapt to. When I was young, cleaning up after the dog would send me to the bathroom fighting a fit of gagging and dry heaves. The mere scent of vomit would set me off and the actual sight of puke was almost more than I could take. Rotting garbage, a dead animal, moldy food - the odors were just too much. But now, oh boy, now you could be shooting out of both ends and it wouldn't faze me excepting the knowledge that I'll be the one to clean it up. Also, the...uh...texture and aroma of certain bodily functions can be diagnostic. So I'm definitely over my weak stomach and at odd times find myself sniffing gently in the hospital hall trying to figure out who's got the C. diff and who is just gassy.
If someone says they're going to throw up, its best to take them at their word. And to get out of the way.
Hospitals really do smell funny. I noticed it the very first day I started working in one but forgot all about it until I went in to one to visit someone. Once I was out of my scrubs and just a guy off the street, that smell hit me full force again even though I'm in a hospital 3-4 days a week. That reminded me how bewildering and intimidating the hospital can be for people who aren't used to it.
What we can do to you far exceeds what we can do for you. And the reason, more often than not, that we are doing all of these things to you is because of your family. They can't let you go even though there is no hope for recovery and keeping you alive is only prolonging your suffering. Why? Guilt and fear. Guilt about what is left unsaid or undone, about past wrongs not made right and deep-seated fear about all of our fates. It is generally the conflicted, wounded families that experience so much ambivalence and confusion in the face tragedy. So please, right after you're done reading this, go apologize to those you've hurt and forgive those who have hurt you. Reassure them of your love and forgiveness and remind them about God's. It just may save all of you untold suffering and emotional pain at some unfortunate point in the future. More importantly, it will change that relationship for the rest of your respective lives. And tell at least a few of them in explicit detail exactly what you do and do not want done should you end up laying in an ICU with machines keeping you alive. Maybe, just for fun, put it in writing.
(cont.)
School starts...
...tomorrow. My final semester in the nursing program, thankfully. I'll graduate in May, take boards in early June and then finally get a job and have something resembling free time again. The other day someone asked me if I was excited for the semester to start. I told them I'm excited for the semester to end. This has been a three year journey that I had never anticipated or even contemplated. After getting thrown a curveball by being fired as a youth pastor and still having huge and unanswered (at that point) questions about "what is church?", the wife and I ended up in Indiana and my starting to pursue a career as a nurse. Its not exactly my passion, but it will pay the bills, provide a great deal of freedom and mobility to pursue my passions outside of work, all the while offering untold opportunities to help people in very significant ways. All told, not a bad compromise.
This next semester is maternity and pediatric nursing. I've got zip experience with either one, with the exception of having taken care of a few kids with bad colds in the ER over the last few months, so I'm looking forward to getting into a different area. And with my own little one due in about 6 1/2 weeks, I should learn some valuable skills in taking care of him and helping the wife through labor and delivery. I've also been told by my classmates who took this section last semester (and who are now due to be taking the black hole of critical care and psychiatric nursing that I was taking) that the teacher is good and the class not overly demanding. Again, a lovely compromise that I am grateful for. Another bonus - I only have one day of clinicals, instead of 2 like most semesters, so when the wife finally pops I'll be able to miss a week without it impacting my grade (missing 2 or more days knocks 3% off your final grade for each day missed). So I'm looking forward to school starting, not least for it being my last semester. It promises to be a very engaging 16 weeks, personally, educationally and professionally.
This next semester is maternity and pediatric nursing. I've got zip experience with either one, with the exception of having taken care of a few kids with bad colds in the ER over the last few months, so I'm looking forward to getting into a different area. And with my own little one due in about 6 1/2 weeks, I should learn some valuable skills in taking care of him and helping the wife through labor and delivery. I've also been told by my classmates who took this section last semester (and who are now due to be taking the black hole of critical care and psychiatric nursing that I was taking) that the teacher is good and the class not overly demanding. Again, a lovely compromise that I am grateful for. Another bonus - I only have one day of clinicals, instead of 2 like most semesters, so when the wife finally pops I'll be able to miss a week without it impacting my grade (missing 2 or more days knocks 3% off your final grade for each day missed). So I'm looking forward to school starting, not least for it being my last semester. It promises to be a very engaging 16 weeks, personally, educationally and professionally.
1.09.2008
The Presumption of Malice
Given the obviously partisan nature of politics in this country, which seems to have only worsened over the last several years with acrimonious debates about the war in particular, it is no surprise that people at one pole tend to take a negative view of the people at the other. Many a lefty takes a dim view of a righty's stance on the war, social programs, abortion, the economy and a host of other issues and vehemently vice versa. For the most part, though (I hope), this negativism is not personal. I think pro-abortionists are wrong but I don't think they are for "reproductive choice" because they find it quite a lot of fun to kill unborn children. I think the pro-Iraq war folks were and are wrong, but I don't think they find it quite a lot of fun to kill brown people or destroy other countries. The list goes on and for a large majority of Americans, I think we tend to look at those we disagree with in a generally neutral light. But there is an increasingly strident minority that does not. For these people, there is an inexplicable presumption of malice.
I think that presumption operates on a principle inversely similar to Occam's Razor - the reason that is most morally objectionable is the true reason someone supports this cause. This methodology seems to be gaining traction in both parties. I'm not talking about the generally negative speech that emanates from both party bases. Its no surprise that Rush Limbaugh or other conservative pundits credit most Democrats/liberals with stupidity, or that left-wing commentators accuse Republicans/conservatives of greed. No, this moves even further afield than that. In general, I don't count comments directed against particular politicians because I don't put political pandering and manipulation beyond just about anyone seeking national office anymore. Maybe I'm a bit cynical but I think the very nature of the political process in this country has become schizophrenic. We demand a degree of perfection and consistency from candidates that is impossible. There are certain ritualistic performances and statements that candidates have to comply with in order to be politically viable. Take the near worshipful view that all of the candidates have towards 'the troops.' I have no doubt that there is a degree of respect for the military in all of the candidates but not every single solider, sailor, airman or marine is a paragon of virtue. Not every combat action taken by an American has been honorable. Not every soldier is fighting for our freedom. Not every one in the military wants to be making the sacrifices they are making. And yet you wouldn't know it from the candidates' statements because you wouldn't know them as candidates if they didn't make them. Because a candidate changing their message or their views in response to polls or focus groups is no surprise, I personally don't think calling the kettle black is unacceptable. Rude, distasteful and occasionally over the top yes, but not altogether out of the question. Accusations of perfidy are par for the course precisely because of the corrupting nature of American politics.
Of late, however, I have heard comments that presume malice on the part of entire swaths of the American public. The two examples that stick out in my mind were made by those on the left but I know that there are just as many voices on the right echoing the sentiment. The first one that springs to mind was heard last week. A woman made the blanket assertion that we pro-lifers don't really care about the unborn child, rather, we're against abortion because it is a way to control women. By opposing abortion we, primarily, undermine the economic freedom of women who would be forced, in an abortion-free society, to forgo education and job opportunities to gestate and presumably raise their unwanted children. Opposition to abortion is then apparently a way we sexist misogynists can make up for, I dunno, women getting the right to vote or something. The second comment was heard just this morning. Two African-American female commentators were discussing the results of the New Hampshire primaries and suggested that a large number of conservative independents may have switched over to vote for Sen. Obama because they think "a black man can't win the popular vote." Helping him to get the nomination would then ensure a Republican victory by racist conservatives.
Personally, I find this kind of political speech disconcerting and reprehensible. And, most importantly, un-Christian. No matter how strongly we feel about an issue, no matter how staunchly we disagree with someone else, I don't think that we, as Christians, can ever presume malicious intent. If a pro-lifer came out and said "I oppose abortion to keep women down" or "I voted for Obama in the primaries because this country won't elect no n******", then these people have identified their own malice and revealed the ugly depths of their own hearts. But we as Christians have to do better than that. We are called upon to love our neighbor and, at the very least, we have to love them with the language we use to describe them. I think we have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Which is why, from here through the election, and probably beyond, I'm not going to sit back and let other Christians speak in this manner. If I hear or read a presumption of malice I'm going to call them on it. I'm going to call them to the higher standard we all know we are obliged to live up to. Who's with me?
I think that presumption operates on a principle inversely similar to Occam's Razor - the reason that is most morally objectionable is the true reason someone supports this cause. This methodology seems to be gaining traction in both parties. I'm not talking about the generally negative speech that emanates from both party bases. Its no surprise that Rush Limbaugh or other conservative pundits credit most Democrats/liberals with stupidity, or that left-wing commentators accuse Republicans/conservatives of greed. No, this moves even further afield than that. In general, I don't count comments directed against particular politicians because I don't put political pandering and manipulation beyond just about anyone seeking national office anymore. Maybe I'm a bit cynical but I think the very nature of the political process in this country has become schizophrenic. We demand a degree of perfection and consistency from candidates that is impossible. There are certain ritualistic performances and statements that candidates have to comply with in order to be politically viable. Take the near worshipful view that all of the candidates have towards 'the troops.' I have no doubt that there is a degree of respect for the military in all of the candidates but not every single solider, sailor, airman or marine is a paragon of virtue. Not every combat action taken by an American has been honorable. Not every soldier is fighting for our freedom. Not every one in the military wants to be making the sacrifices they are making. And yet you wouldn't know it from the candidates' statements because you wouldn't know them as candidates if they didn't make them. Because a candidate changing their message or their views in response to polls or focus groups is no surprise, I personally don't think calling the kettle black is unacceptable. Rude, distasteful and occasionally over the top yes, but not altogether out of the question. Accusations of perfidy are par for the course precisely because of the corrupting nature of American politics.
Of late, however, I have heard comments that presume malice on the part of entire swaths of the American public. The two examples that stick out in my mind were made by those on the left but I know that there are just as many voices on the right echoing the sentiment. The first one that springs to mind was heard last week. A woman made the blanket assertion that we pro-lifers don't really care about the unborn child, rather, we're against abortion because it is a way to control women. By opposing abortion we, primarily, undermine the economic freedom of women who would be forced, in an abortion-free society, to forgo education and job opportunities to gestate and presumably raise their unwanted children. Opposition to abortion is then apparently a way we sexist misogynists can make up for, I dunno, women getting the right to vote or something. The second comment was heard just this morning. Two African-American female commentators were discussing the results of the New Hampshire primaries and suggested that a large number of conservative independents may have switched over to vote for Sen. Obama because they think "a black man can't win the popular vote." Helping him to get the nomination would then ensure a Republican victory by racist conservatives.
Personally, I find this kind of political speech disconcerting and reprehensible. And, most importantly, un-Christian. No matter how strongly we feel about an issue, no matter how staunchly we disagree with someone else, I don't think that we, as Christians, can ever presume malicious intent. If a pro-lifer came out and said "I oppose abortion to keep women down" or "I voted for Obama in the primaries because this country won't elect no n******", then these people have identified their own malice and revealed the ugly depths of their own hearts. But we as Christians have to do better than that. We are called upon to love our neighbor and, at the very least, we have to love them with the language we use to describe them. I think we have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Which is why, from here through the election, and probably beyond, I'm not going to sit back and let other Christians speak in this manner. If I hear or read a presumption of malice I'm going to call them on it. I'm going to call them to the higher standard we all know we are obliged to live up to. Who's with me?
12.31.2007
Election
With my parents' recent move to Iowa, the upcoming election has taken on a bit of a new dimension. I never really got worked up over the primaries (or the general election, for that matter) but the wife and I have started paying a bit more attention this time around. This is partly due to the possibly historic role my kin may have in determining the fate of some candidate - a real if slight possibility given the neck-and-neck field on both sides of the race - and partly due to the utter banality of the Republican gaggle. In the past, it was fairly easy to ignore the primaries because the race didn't seem like much of a race at all. But now its like a dinner mystery theater; we're all trying to parse the clues and the polls that will point to whodunit. Or rather, 'whowinsit'. I have no favored candidate, no pick to commit to. I probably dislike Huckabee the least but I must admit part of me wants to see Obama win just for the sheer history-making spectacle it will be for a black man to win the presidency. The sheer history-making spectacle of a woman winning the office can wait for another candidate, in my opinion.
So all this election stuff is swirling around when news of the latest violence in Pakistan and Kenya makes the news, and this the violence of election politics. Who won? Who will win? Who will run? Will there even be elections? In other parts of the world these are killing questions it seems. But not here. Not in America or other Western-style democracies. These may be angry-making questions but today they rarely spill over into actual violence and much rarer still does anyone take a life in the asking. Why? Why are we so different than other parts of the world where elections and violence are hand-in-glove? Whether by specific design or the slow march of progress, our society and culture has disavowed violence in the political process. People resignedly accept even the most bitterly contested loss without raising a fist or a weapon. Whatever the failings of our political system and culture, and they are legion, this has to be one of its greatest strengths. The supremacy of the rule of law - how do we export that to other nations? How do we get the Iraqis to commit to that? How do we get Afghanistan to favor the national whole over the tribal division?
These are almost impossible questions to answer and there are clearly many pieces to the puzzle. Get rid of corruption, strive for a fair judiciary, promote a national symbol, eliminate other forms of public violence and...I'm not sure what else. But ultimately it comes down to changing cultures, even changing religious beliefs to a certain extent. Our culture gradually developed into what it is today - is there any way to speed up that process in parts of the world where violence persists? I would hope that our next president, whoever that may be, has some very smart people working on these kinds of questions. Bush certainly didn't ask them, much to the detriment of his purported mission of spreading democracy. At the very least, we can insist that our next peacefully elected leader get started on some answers.
So all this election stuff is swirling around when news of the latest violence in Pakistan and Kenya makes the news, and this the violence of election politics. Who won? Who will win? Who will run? Will there even be elections? In other parts of the world these are killing questions it seems. But not here. Not in America or other Western-style democracies. These may be angry-making questions but today they rarely spill over into actual violence and much rarer still does anyone take a life in the asking. Why? Why are we so different than other parts of the world where elections and violence are hand-in-glove? Whether by specific design or the slow march of progress, our society and culture has disavowed violence in the political process. People resignedly accept even the most bitterly contested loss without raising a fist or a weapon. Whatever the failings of our political system and culture, and they are legion, this has to be one of its greatest strengths. The supremacy of the rule of law - how do we export that to other nations? How do we get the Iraqis to commit to that? How do we get Afghanistan to favor the national whole over the tribal division?
These are almost impossible questions to answer and there are clearly many pieces to the puzzle. Get rid of corruption, strive for a fair judiciary, promote a national symbol, eliminate other forms of public violence and...I'm not sure what else. But ultimately it comes down to changing cultures, even changing religious beliefs to a certain extent. Our culture gradually developed into what it is today - is there any way to speed up that process in parts of the world where violence persists? I would hope that our next president, whoever that may be, has some very smart people working on these kinds of questions. Bush certainly didn't ask them, much to the detriment of his purported mission of spreading democracy. At the very least, we can insist that our next peacefully elected leader get started on some answers.
12.02.2007
The ravings
This semester for clinicals, we split between critical care and psychiatric nursing. Why they combined these two hugely disparate areas is well beyond me, but they've both been informative. I already work in an ICU, so the place I learned the most during the critical care portion was in the regional burn unit where I saw a young lady burned over almost her entire body do well and another woman burned over about 30% over her body eventually die because of her inhalation injuries. But the last 7 weeks I have been in the psych rotation and for that we spend time on an inpatient wing, where probably half the patients are on court-ordered 72 hour detentions because they are psychotic (in the technical sense, which basically means out of touch with reality) or suicidal. Or both, as it may be. The rest have usually signed themselves in for drug & alcohol detox or because they recognize they're getting out of control. Kind of in conjunction with that we also observe the "assessment team". Their job is to go out to ER's and assess patients that the police or the hospital have called about to see if they meet the criteria for admission into an inpatient unit. They also take walk-ins and do phone interviews.
This last week I went out with one of the assessment team to a local ER to evaluate a young man who had rather abruptly started acting weird. He'd had a recent diagnosis of a rather severe and life-altering illness and was started on some medications that may have caused this change in behavior. The young man, let's call him Ryan (not his real name, obviously) - Ryan's mother was there and the assessor wanted to talk to her first in order to get a better picture of what's been going on in the month since his diagnosis. For some reason she thought it would be appropriate for me to sit with Ryan while she talked with the mother. So I sit down and ask him how's he feeling. And that is when things got surreal.
At first, Ryan just seemed a bit hyper, which would not be all that unusual with the medication he had been on. But over the course of the 45 minutes I sat with him, it became clear that Ryan was far more than just hyper; he was full-on delusional. To call his delusional world elaborate would be an understatement. In his mind, he is the key player in bringing forth the Next Testament of God. The Old Testament was about God the Father, the New Testament about God the Son, and the Next Testament will be about God the Spirit. He does not know how it will come about but the reason he has been chosen is because he has "figured out the calculus" involved, he has seen the secret key that others in the past have missed. At this point, I have to point out that Ryan was a youth pastor who was also attending a Bible college before all this happened. So during this conversation, he's dropping Bible verses and talking about Ecumenical Councils and doing so in a rather sophisticated, even compelling fashion. He really believes what he's saying to me, believes it way down deep. So much so that he gives me a homework assignment! I'm to get all of the Casting Crowns CD's and all of the books by Ted Dekker and Austin Boyd. These will help me understand what is happening in the world right now, what God is using him to do.
As I'm listening to him there is a little battle going on inside my head, and it began with the simple question of what would someone listening to Paul or James or John have thought? To a first century Jew especially, but likely in general, they sounded crazy. To the Jew, the chance that God would reveal himself in a lowly carpenter who died a criminal's death would have had to sound just as preposterous as the "calculus" did to me on Monday. To a Gentile, the very idea of a single God may have seemed patently false. I don't believe this young man was anything other than completely out of touch with reality. And yet....
And yet I do believe in an active God, a God who moves and works in us and through us to change the world. A God who reveals more and more of himself to us, at least individually if not corporately as well. I guess it boils down to what if? What if these are more than just the ravings of delusionary man? What if they aren't? And who am I to decide?
This last week I went out with one of the assessment team to a local ER to evaluate a young man who had rather abruptly started acting weird. He'd had a recent diagnosis of a rather severe and life-altering illness and was started on some medications that may have caused this change in behavior. The young man, let's call him Ryan (not his real name, obviously) - Ryan's mother was there and the assessor wanted to talk to her first in order to get a better picture of what's been going on in the month since his diagnosis. For some reason she thought it would be appropriate for me to sit with Ryan while she talked with the mother. So I sit down and ask him how's he feeling. And that is when things got surreal.
At first, Ryan just seemed a bit hyper, which would not be all that unusual with the medication he had been on. But over the course of the 45 minutes I sat with him, it became clear that Ryan was far more than just hyper; he was full-on delusional. To call his delusional world elaborate would be an understatement. In his mind, he is the key player in bringing forth the Next Testament of God. The Old Testament was about God the Father, the New Testament about God the Son, and the Next Testament will be about God the Spirit. He does not know how it will come about but the reason he has been chosen is because he has "figured out the calculus" involved, he has seen the secret key that others in the past have missed. At this point, I have to point out that Ryan was a youth pastor who was also attending a Bible college before all this happened. So during this conversation, he's dropping Bible verses and talking about Ecumenical Councils and doing so in a rather sophisticated, even compelling fashion. He really believes what he's saying to me, believes it way down deep. So much so that he gives me a homework assignment! I'm to get all of the Casting Crowns CD's and all of the books by Ted Dekker and Austin Boyd. These will help me understand what is happening in the world right now, what God is using him to do.
As I'm listening to him there is a little battle going on inside my head, and it began with the simple question of what would someone listening to Paul or James or John have thought? To a first century Jew especially, but likely in general, they sounded crazy. To the Jew, the chance that God would reveal himself in a lowly carpenter who died a criminal's death would have had to sound just as preposterous as the "calculus" did to me on Monday. To a Gentile, the very idea of a single God may have seemed patently false. I don't believe this young man was anything other than completely out of touch with reality. And yet....
And yet I do believe in an active God, a God who moves and works in us and through us to change the world. A God who reveals more and more of himself to us, at least individually if not corporately as well. I guess it boils down to what if? What if these are more than just the ravings of delusionary man? What if they aren't? And who am I to decide?
10.28.2007
Switched jobs again
School is still miserably busy. I've started in the psych clinical and this teacher apparently has a love affair with grading pointless papers and projects because I've got a ton of 'em. And two of them require extensive "contact hours" outside of class. They're all due between now and Thanksgiving, so its going to be a busy few weeks.
And, perhaps stupidly, I decided now would be a good time to switch to a new area at work. I'm now splitting between the ICU and the ER. The ER is definitely a very different environment and I'm not sure if its for me or not, having only done a week of orientation. Of course, my current ambivalence could stem from the fact that I have to work three Saturdays as part of my orientation, which is taking away precious time from school work.
Just about 6 more weeks of school. Thank God.
And, perhaps stupidly, I decided now would be a good time to switch to a new area at work. I'm now splitting between the ICU and the ER. The ER is definitely a very different environment and I'm not sure if its for me or not, having only done a week of orientation. Of course, my current ambivalence could stem from the fact that I have to work three Saturdays as part of my orientation, which is taking away precious time from school work.
Just about 6 more weeks of school. Thank God.
9.16.2007
School
School is kicking my butt. I thought maybe this semester would be a little less with the busy work given that its "critical care." But that is not the case. I finished my first care plan this weekend, have 2 tests this week, a largeish paper to write next weekend and then a test that next week. After that, I might have a chance to finish my book review. Or not. They tend to toss a lot of things in at the last minute.
8.23.2007
Evil and the Justice of God
A couple of posts ago, I indicated that I was reading Evil and the Justice of God by NT Wright and described it as a disappointingly slim tome. Can I change my answer to just disappointing?
The book is short; only 174 pages including the index with just 5 chapters. Some online reviewers have indicated that Wright intended to pursue a larger volume but eventually decided to offer up this condensed version for publication. Oh, would that he had stuck to his original plan. The book suffers not because Wright has too little to say, but because he has too much and fails to do justice to his arguments. He only skims the surface of a subject that should be dived.
The first chapter is entitled Evil is Still a Four-Letter Word. The brief introduction to the chapter is an interesting exploration of why Revelations describes a new creation minus the sea and gives a concise overview of Wrights views on modernity's understanding of the problem of evil. Which is, specifically, progress shall overcome. The modern western world believes in progress and the evolution of society. As Wright puts it:
Still in the first chapter, Wright's section on the nihilism of postmodernism is cutting but arguably betrays his stance as a modern thinker. I think he is correct in his argument that, while we "can't escape evil within postmodernity...you can't find anyone to blame either." By deconstructing all metanarratives, even the metanarrative of the individual self, postmodernity leads to a fluid, un-fixed understanding of "I". How can "I" be held responsible for my actions when the "I" of today is not the "I" of yesterday which committed those acts? Postmodernism further muddies the waters by deconstructing the myth of human progress. However, instead of replacing it with a more realistic view of humanity, growth and our future potential (in Christ), postmodernity spins a web of nihilism. There will be no progress, no change, no redemption. Instead of a nuanced view of evil, we have the mire of the status quo.
Wright thinks there are 3 elements key to the West getting a realistic understanding of evil. The first is coming to see that Western-style democracy is not perfect and certainly not a world panacea. We're having enough trouble doing it right ourselves to be foisting democracy off on everyone around the globe in disparate cultures. Democracy is likely the best form of government out there for today's world, but it may create as many problems as it solves, or at least proffer them up in a deceptively different guise. The second element is psychological; we must come to see the inherent ambivalence at the heart of man and that any individual can perform acts of great goodness and great wickedness. And some give themselves over entirely to the lure of wickedness. "What I think we must come to terms with is that when we talk about evil we must recognize, as neither modernity nor postmodernity seems to me to do, that there is such a thing as human evil and that it takes various forms." Which brings up the third element; the recognition that the line between good and evil, us and them, runs through each and every one of us as individuals. We must not make the mistake of moral equivalency, viewing each criminal act as inherently equal, but nor must we make the opposite mistake of supposing that the criminal acts of "our side" (or "me") aren't evil when done at the expense of the other.
Wright finishes the chapter by asking the church to start to try to make sense out of all of this. How can the church teach a nuanced view of evil in today's world, specifically today's America? I think most conservative churches would be very hard pressed to do this in our political environment, given their role in helping to create it. To turn to a nuanced view of evil, to recognize America's complicity in evil around the globe, would just be eating too much crow for some leaders and would not be tolerated by the more nationalistic Christians among their flock. Which brings up one of the shallow points of this work. I expected Wright to tackle these, and other pressing issues, in the subsequent chapters since he did not raise them here. He has started off on a great foot, but quickly starts to get tripped up as we shall see.
(cont)
The book is short; only 174 pages including the index with just 5 chapters. Some online reviewers have indicated that Wright intended to pursue a larger volume but eventually decided to offer up this condensed version for publication. Oh, would that he had stuck to his original plan. The book suffers not because Wright has too little to say, but because he has too much and fails to do justice to his arguments. He only skims the surface of a subject that should be dived.
The first chapter is entitled Evil is Still a Four-Letter Word. The brief introduction to the chapter is an interesting exploration of why Revelations describes a new creation minus the sea and gives a concise overview of Wrights views on modernity's understanding of the problem of evil. Which is, specifically, progress shall overcome. The modern western world believes in progress and the evolution of society. As Wright puts it:
"In this climate, the fact that we live in 'this day and age' means that certain things are now to be expected; we envision a steady march toward freedom and justice, conceived often in terms of the slow but sure triumph of Western-style liberal democracies and soft versions of socialism. Not to put too fine a point on it, when people say that certain things are unacceptable 'now that we're living in the twenty-first century,' they are appealing to an assumed doctrine of progress...and progress in a particular direction." (pg 22)If we just wait long enough, the inevitable progression of our society will eventually eliminate evil. There may be bumps along the way but things will get sorted out in the end. Wright identifies three of these bumps that he thinks should have derailed this blind faith in human growth, but didn't. World Wars I and II are the primary event-bumps, while writers like Barth and Dostoyevsky, both of whom criticized belief in "the steady advance of the kingdom of God from within the historical process," provided the intellectual bump. This has left Western society ill-equipped to deal with the "new problem of evil" (the sub-title of this section). When evil does occur, then, we first try to ignore it until it rises up and makes its presence keenly felt. This willful ignorance makes us surprised when evil does present itself, which, third, leads us to respond in "immature and dangerous ways." One of the immature responses to evil Wright singles out is the dichotomy of blame; I am totally not to blame or totally to blame. Wright thinks, and I agree, that we need a more nuanced view of evil, one that takes seriously our individual and national complicities in evil but that also does not fail to take into account other people's (individual and corporate) evil actions. We have to be able to own up to our own failures while being willing to point out those of others. Adding fuel to our evil-blind fire is postmodernity.
Still in the first chapter, Wright's section on the nihilism of postmodernism is cutting but arguably betrays his stance as a modern thinker. I think he is correct in his argument that, while we "can't escape evil within postmodernity...you can't find anyone to blame either." By deconstructing all metanarratives, even the metanarrative of the individual self, postmodernity leads to a fluid, un-fixed understanding of "I". How can "I" be held responsible for my actions when the "I" of today is not the "I" of yesterday which committed those acts? Postmodernism further muddies the waters by deconstructing the myth of human progress. However, instead of replacing it with a more realistic view of humanity, growth and our future potential (in Christ), postmodernity spins a web of nihilism. There will be no progress, no change, no redemption. Instead of a nuanced view of evil, we have the mire of the status quo.
Wright thinks there are 3 elements key to the West getting a realistic understanding of evil. The first is coming to see that Western-style democracy is not perfect and certainly not a world panacea. We're having enough trouble doing it right ourselves to be foisting democracy off on everyone around the globe in disparate cultures. Democracy is likely the best form of government out there for today's world, but it may create as many problems as it solves, or at least proffer them up in a deceptively different guise. The second element is psychological; we must come to see the inherent ambivalence at the heart of man and that any individual can perform acts of great goodness and great wickedness. And some give themselves over entirely to the lure of wickedness. "What I think we must come to terms with is that when we talk about evil we must recognize, as neither modernity nor postmodernity seems to me to do, that there is such a thing as human evil and that it takes various forms." Which brings up the third element; the recognition that the line between good and evil, us and them, runs through each and every one of us as individuals. We must not make the mistake of moral equivalency, viewing each criminal act as inherently equal, but nor must we make the opposite mistake of supposing that the criminal acts of "our side" (or "me") aren't evil when done at the expense of the other.
Wright finishes the chapter by asking the church to start to try to make sense out of all of this. How can the church teach a nuanced view of evil in today's world, specifically today's America? I think most conservative churches would be very hard pressed to do this in our political environment, given their role in helping to create it. To turn to a nuanced view of evil, to recognize America's complicity in evil around the globe, would just be eating too much crow for some leaders and would not be tolerated by the more nationalistic Christians among their flock. Which brings up one of the shallow points of this work. I expected Wright to tackle these, and other pressing issues, in the subsequent chapters since he did not raise them here. He has started off on a great foot, but quickly starts to get tripped up as we shall see.
(cont)
8.14.2007
Baby registry
Over the weekend, the wife and I went out a registered at a Target and Babies 'R Us. Since we're going to wait until the delivery to find out what we're having, we ended up picking out a lot of stuff in greens & yellows. I realize now one reason so many people decide to find out the sex of the baby; much easier to register. But the thing that really struck me during these trips was how totally consumer-oriented this type of registry has become. Baby has become big business, and it is evident the moment the staff person hands you the checklist of things you'll "need" and "should" register for. The checklist contains dozens of items. You actually need, and I mean need in the conventional sense of stuff you actually require, maybe a third of them. Things like clothes, bottles, diapers, a crib, car seat - the basic stuff. But the list also includes no fewer than three different pieces of sleep furniture (crib, bassinet and portable bassinet) and their various linen requirements, as well as a long list of other items that the baby will likely outgrow within a few months. Knowing that most couples do not have more than 2 children, these items will have a short half-life in most families, ultimately heading for the landfill or the garage sale.
What was most disturbing is how easily we started getting into adding to our list, and this with a mother-to-be who has spent ample time around small children and has a good idea of their actual needs. All these items of convenience just seem so, well, convenient. Which points to a sad reality that many people in this country seem to be looking at their children as either accessories or time-management problems. Which is why so many of the wares in these stores are geared towards fashion & decorating and child-warehousing. Your kid starts to bug you, put 'em in their bouncy seat, fashionably colored to match your existing decor. After we got home, we started mentally reviewing what we registered for and realized we probably didn't need most of it or that what it was ridiculously overpriced. How would a young mother or couple with no experience know you don't need some of this stuff or that its a waste of money? For me, the takeaway here is that its never too early to start teaching your children lessons about what's important in life, and it surely is not a $250 crib bedding set.
What was most disturbing is how easily we started getting into adding to our list, and this with a mother-to-be who has spent ample time around small children and has a good idea of their actual needs. All these items of convenience just seem so, well, convenient. Which points to a sad reality that many people in this country seem to be looking at their children as either accessories or time-management problems. Which is why so many of the wares in these stores are geared towards fashion & decorating and child-warehousing. Your kid starts to bug you, put 'em in their bouncy seat, fashionably colored to match your existing decor. After we got home, we started mentally reviewing what we registered for and realized we probably didn't need most of it or that what it was ridiculously overpriced. How would a young mother or couple with no experience know you don't need some of this stuff or that its a waste of money? For me, the takeaway here is that its never too early to start teaching your children lessons about what's important in life, and it surely is not a $250 crib bedding set.
8.07.2007
Sundry
I turned 30 on Sunday. I turned 20 during my advanced training in the Army down at Ft Huachuca - needless to say a lot has happened in the last 1o years. I don't feel 30, though never having been 30 before, I'm not quite sure what 30 actually feels like. In the last few months, as I've contemplated this milestone, I suppose I've been rather uneasy with what this means. I'm 30 and still in school - for an associates degree, mind you - not established in any career (though both will change next May when I graduate and become an RN), not sure of where I want to live, am not well connected in any church, have few close friends and am really nowhere near where I thought I'd be when I turned 20. There are, mercifully, things I am quite clear on and happy about - my wonderful wife and coming child are at the top of that list. But all in all, there seemed rather more to be sad, or at least not happy, about. The day has come and gone, and aside from a few fun new things in my possession, it was a day like any other. And instead of making me sad, it oddly made me hopeful. These kinds of milestones give us a rod with which to measure our lives. In the last 10 years, have I become more like the person I want to be? Am I making progress towards my goals? What more do I need to accomplish? What do I need to change? This birthday has given me a reason to contemplate things that I may have been too busy to focus on otherwise and in my self-evaluation, I see new strengths and new possibilities within me as well as areas that need continued improvement. But on the whole, I think I am more like the person I want to be than I was 10 years ago. And that gives me hope.
It doesn't hurt that we just finished up a week in Florida, getting home somewhat late Saturday night. We drove down, which afforded us several opportunities to be incredibly grateful. On the way down, just inside of Tennessee, we got rear-ended on the highway going 70+ mph. A young guy in a black car came flying up behind us and hit us as he apparently mis-timed his move into the left lane. I was able to keep the car on the road but unable to get his license plate. Thankfully, the damage was minimal, mostly just paint, and we did not careen off the road to an untimely demise or serious injury. But that incident came to pretty much characterize the drivers we encountered down south. Even in pouring rain with horrible visibility, people were still driving well over 70mph and hanging out less than a car length behind other vehicles. It is no wonder we saw 1 definite and 2 likely fatal car accidents on the highway in Florida. We intended to drive up and stay with my uncle in Louisville on our way back, but about 30 miles south of the city, our car started squealing horribly. It only got worse when we slowed down and got off the highway. At first, I thought it was the power steering pump, but then noticed 2 bolts just sitting loose on top of the alternator. We had to get towed into a repair shop, which was by all external evaluations, a rather seedy place ran by a couple of unkempt individuals. First impressions did not inspire much trust. But these men proved me wrong, dead-wrong, fixing the vehicle right then and there and not charging me a dime. They could have easily taken me for a new power steering pump and belts, but they stayed open late to wave off any recompense. But if you are ever in the south Louisville area and need some auto repairs, I couldn't recommend BKC Auto enough.
Aside from those 2 unfortunate incidents, Florida was beautiful. The wife's uncle owns a condo that is about a 100 yard walk from a pristine, white-sand beach. Just gorgeous. I got a sunburn in a very weird pattern on either side of my chest where I apparently failed to apply sunscreen, but that didn't stop me from swimming and enjoying the beach most of the days we were there. We even made a little side-trip to St Petersburg, which is a pretty nice city. I haven't been to Louisville in at least 10 years, probably more like 15, and got to see cousins and their kids that I hadn't seen in that time. Louisville is also a nice city - not too big but with a lot going on. My uncle is an avid sailor, so we may get a chance to head down there and enjoy some time out on the water sometime this fall.
I've received or purchased several new books that I'm either presently reading or will be reading shortly. They are:
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, by Anonymous. I'm about halfway through this. While many of the points about the Bush administration's failure to consider Afghani culture before the invasion and the West's consistent misunderstanding of bin Laden are trenchant and important, the author seems locked in a world where neither societies nor people are capable of any meaningful change. His is a rather pessimistic view of the human condition and the book is the poorer for it.
Evil and the Justice of God, by NT Wright. I generally enjoy Wright's books and essays, what I can understand of them, that is. He sometimes assumes his reader knows the positions and parties of various debates certainly more than I do, but such is not the case with this disappointingly thin tome. He is clear and concise, but I wish he would include fewer "but we don't have space for that here's" and more expansion on those subjects. I will likely give a fuller review after I finish it.
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole, by Benjamin R. Barber. I have only briefly flipped through this book a couple of times, but with my growing awareness of how our consumeristic culture discourages faith, reasoned thought or mere satisfaction, I thought this looked like an interesting read.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. I thought The Kite Runner was good and this is supposed to be even better. This novel covers a more contemporary period and I'm looking forward to seeing an Afghan's perception of the event in his country since 9/11.
It doesn't hurt that we just finished up a week in Florida, getting home somewhat late Saturday night. We drove down, which afforded us several opportunities to be incredibly grateful. On the way down, just inside of Tennessee, we got rear-ended on the highway going 70+ mph. A young guy in a black car came flying up behind us and hit us as he apparently mis-timed his move into the left lane. I was able to keep the car on the road but unable to get his license plate. Thankfully, the damage was minimal, mostly just paint, and we did not careen off the road to an untimely demise or serious injury. But that incident came to pretty much characterize the drivers we encountered down south. Even in pouring rain with horrible visibility, people were still driving well over 70mph and hanging out less than a car length behind other vehicles. It is no wonder we saw 1 definite and 2 likely fatal car accidents on the highway in Florida. We intended to drive up and stay with my uncle in Louisville on our way back, but about 30 miles south of the city, our car started squealing horribly. It only got worse when we slowed down and got off the highway. At first, I thought it was the power steering pump, but then noticed 2 bolts just sitting loose on top of the alternator. We had to get towed into a repair shop, which was by all external evaluations, a rather seedy place ran by a couple of unkempt individuals. First impressions did not inspire much trust. But these men proved me wrong, dead-wrong, fixing the vehicle right then and there and not charging me a dime. They could have easily taken me for a new power steering pump and belts, but they stayed open late to wave off any recompense. But if you are ever in the south Louisville area and need some auto repairs, I couldn't recommend BKC Auto enough.
Aside from those 2 unfortunate incidents, Florida was beautiful. The wife's uncle owns a condo that is about a 100 yard walk from a pristine, white-sand beach. Just gorgeous. I got a sunburn in a very weird pattern on either side of my chest where I apparently failed to apply sunscreen, but that didn't stop me from swimming and enjoying the beach most of the days we were there. We even made a little side-trip to St Petersburg, which is a pretty nice city. I haven't been to Louisville in at least 10 years, probably more like 15, and got to see cousins and their kids that I hadn't seen in that time. Louisville is also a nice city - not too big but with a lot going on. My uncle is an avid sailor, so we may get a chance to head down there and enjoy some time out on the water sometime this fall.
I've received or purchased several new books that I'm either presently reading or will be reading shortly. They are:
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, by Anonymous. I'm about halfway through this. While many of the points about the Bush administration's failure to consider Afghani culture before the invasion and the West's consistent misunderstanding of bin Laden are trenchant and important, the author seems locked in a world where neither societies nor people are capable of any meaningful change. His is a rather pessimistic view of the human condition and the book is the poorer for it.
Evil and the Justice of God, by NT Wright. I generally enjoy Wright's books and essays, what I can understand of them, that is. He sometimes assumes his reader knows the positions and parties of various debates certainly more than I do, but such is not the case with this disappointingly thin tome. He is clear and concise, but I wish he would include fewer "but we don't have space for that here's" and more expansion on those subjects. I will likely give a fuller review after I finish it.
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole, by Benjamin R. Barber. I have only briefly flipped through this book a couple of times, but with my growing awareness of how our consumeristic culture discourages faith, reasoned thought or mere satisfaction, I thought this looked like an interesting read.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. I thought The Kite Runner was good and this is supposed to be even better. This novel covers a more contemporary period and I'm looking forward to seeing an Afghan's perception of the event in his country since 9/11.
7.17.2007
Torture, pt 2
This is a little free-form, but hey, I've been busy.
If you're willing to kill someone, why would you have any problem with torturing them? Honestly, if you view someone else's life as expendable, which is necessarily how you must view someone if you are willing to sacrifice their life for some "policy objectives", why is their pain and suffering less acceptable than their death? It isn't, or at least it shouldn't be. If you're willing to consign someone to eternity, why should a few hours of pain trouble your conscience? Again, it shouldn't. So why does it? Why are people who are willing to support the killing of combatants and non-combatants alike, which is inevitable in modern warfare, unwilling to support torture? Personally, I think they lack the courage of their convictions. Or, rather, we see that their convictions about the taking of other human life is rooted more in fear for self than love of neighbor.
This may seem like a non-sequitur, so let me explain. If one is willing to kill, if one believes that the death of person A is necessary to save the life of the innocent person B, then on what basis would one decide that torturing person A or C (A's accomplice) is wrong? It clearly cannot be love of enemy, because the executing agent cannot simultaneously love and kill someone on the field of battle. So persons A & C are not spared torture because of love for their persons, since their deaths are viable options. If one is truly acting out of love for neighbor (the innocent B), how is sparing A & C pain, but not death, moral? You have essentially said that B's life is worth A's life, but not his suffering. On what basis is that calculation made? I can see no moral rubric for it; B's life is worth how much of A's suffering? Is there a time-limit? If we could strap A into some machine that would quantify his pain, is there a number over which B's life becomes forfeit, say 7 on a scale of 1-10? No matter how one attempts to negotiate that nebulous concept, it is clear that saving B is not really done for the love of B if one is not willing to torture A & C. So why do so many find it permissible to kill but not torture? It is irrational and on that basis, I can surmise only that it is a course dictated by fear. One is afraid that they will be next, or at least A will get to them somewhere down the line. B's life is entirely incidental to saving one's own self. Killing A can be justified, but I think the deep internal contradiction that is one's un-love for person B makes torture too messy and too direct. One is not the target & one doesn't love B, so a quick death is acceptable, but causing so much pain to someone for an essentially worthless objective is just too much.
So at least those who are willing to torture & kill are being consistent in their moral convictions. They understand the rubric and are unafraid to get their hands dirty. Whether its love of self or love of neighbor, the torturer is simply moving forward in a consistent manner. Death or torture; its all the same. Clearly love for one's enemy is non-existent. For Christians at least, this is the wedge. We are called to love both neighbor and enemy and not one more than the other, but both more than the self. The willingness to kill and to torture both betray a fundamentally consistent imbalance in love, weighting love of self, then neighbor and finally enemy.
What would the Christian's situation be if Christ had operated under that paradigm? (cont)
If you're willing to kill someone, why would you have any problem with torturing them? Honestly, if you view someone else's life as expendable, which is necessarily how you must view someone if you are willing to sacrifice their life for some "policy objectives", why is their pain and suffering less acceptable than their death? It isn't, or at least it shouldn't be. If you're willing to consign someone to eternity, why should a few hours of pain trouble your conscience? Again, it shouldn't. So why does it? Why are people who are willing to support the killing of combatants and non-combatants alike, which is inevitable in modern warfare, unwilling to support torture? Personally, I think they lack the courage of their convictions. Or, rather, we see that their convictions about the taking of other human life is rooted more in fear for self than love of neighbor.
This may seem like a non-sequitur, so let me explain. If one is willing to kill, if one believes that the death of person A is necessary to save the life of the innocent person B, then on what basis would one decide that torturing person A or C (A's accomplice) is wrong? It clearly cannot be love of enemy, because the executing agent cannot simultaneously love and kill someone on the field of battle. So persons A & C are not spared torture because of love for their persons, since their deaths are viable options. If one is truly acting out of love for neighbor (the innocent B), how is sparing A & C pain, but not death, moral? You have essentially said that B's life is worth A's life, but not his suffering. On what basis is that calculation made? I can see no moral rubric for it; B's life is worth how much of A's suffering? Is there a time-limit? If we could strap A into some machine that would quantify his pain, is there a number over which B's life becomes forfeit, say 7 on a scale of 1-10? No matter how one attempts to negotiate that nebulous concept, it is clear that saving B is not really done for the love of B if one is not willing to torture A & C. So why do so many find it permissible to kill but not torture? It is irrational and on that basis, I can surmise only that it is a course dictated by fear. One is afraid that they will be next, or at least A will get to them somewhere down the line. B's life is entirely incidental to saving one's own self. Killing A can be justified, but I think the deep internal contradiction that is one's un-love for person B makes torture too messy and too direct. One is not the target & one doesn't love B, so a quick death is acceptable, but causing so much pain to someone for an essentially worthless objective is just too much.
So at least those who are willing to torture & kill are being consistent in their moral convictions. They understand the rubric and are unafraid to get their hands dirty. Whether its love of self or love of neighbor, the torturer is simply moving forward in a consistent manner. Death or torture; its all the same. Clearly love for one's enemy is non-existent. For Christians at least, this is the wedge. We are called to love both neighbor and enemy and not one more than the other, but both more than the self. The willingness to kill and to torture both betray a fundamentally consistent imbalance in love, weighting love of self, then neighbor and finally enemy.
What would the Christian's situation be if Christ had operated under that paradigm? (cont)
6.28.2007
Big News
The wife is pregnant! And in the first month of trying, thank you very much. We told most of the family yesterday. My in-laws already have 5 grandkids, but this is the first on my side, so while the in-laws were very excited, my mom was positively explosive. The official due date is February 27th, 2008. Personally, I'm hoping the little tyke will stay in just 2 days longer and be a leap baby, which would be pretty sweet.
All tips, hints, suggestions, ideas and experiences with pregnancy and baby-related stuff is greatly appreciated.
All tips, hints, suggestions, ideas and experiences with pregnancy and baby-related stuff is greatly appreciated.
Torture, pt 1
In the boardgame Cranium, each move involves responding to one of 4 different card sets. The "Data Head" and "Word Worm" sets require you to answer trivia questions and word-related items (like spelling a word backwards), respectively, while the "Star Performer" and "Creative Cat" involve variations of charades and pictionary, among others. I played Cranium with my former youth group once and we happened upon the Word Worm card that asks for the definition of "tortuous", giving three or four possible definitions. One was something like "twisty or winding" and another was "painful or difficult". The kids chose the latter definition, clearly confusing "tortuous" with "torturous", which is easy to do. I confess that I was thinking of that answer when the question was read. I never really thought much of that similarity until some blogs I've recently come across started discussing torture.
The first was Thom Stark's blog post A Free Iraq, which apparently offended a friend of his. He followed up with an update addressing his friend's views and was then subsequently invited to post a response to Death and the Maiden's question "What is torture and is it necessarily immoral?" Thom did respond, and so have several others (here and here), including one response by a professor who has studied aggression. To those who have not seen any of this, I'd highly recommend giving it a read - at the very least these are interesting and challenging perspectives, particularly to those Christians that believe torture may be morally permissible. Its after reading and pondering all of this that I've come to see how tortuous a logical path a Christians must follow in order to support torturous acts (bet you were wondering how I'd draw that together).
A second confession I need to make is that, in brutal honesty, I was not all that surprised or outraged when the Abu Ghraib abuses first came to light. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was despicable, juvenile and unbecoming a US soldier, but at the same time, perfectly in step with what I had experienced as a soldier on deployment. I was never even in an active war zone (though there were some threats, mostly from old land mines) but the stress of long days, separation from family, culture shock, the inevitable crap the military seems to foist on the junior enlisted and the sheer audacity of the local nationals to think they had the right of way at an intersection when I was clearly armed to the teeth and driving a 5-ton armored vehicle, let's just say it adds up. Now clearly, the last bit of that is facetious, but there's an underlying reality to it. The soldier is on a mission, a mission that has been given priority by command and the weight of official sanction, and it comes from the only people around you that look like you, speak the same language and long for the same home. In a soldier's mind the mission is paramount, like it or not, whether they believe in it or not. They've got a job to do and they're going to do it. But locals do not understand that mission and prioritize the living of their own lives, be that simple survival or going through the myriad social & economic tasks that define anyone's daily life. So they get in the way and become resentful of the intrusion of the soldier's mission into their life. And maybe they start resisting (violently or otherwise), which cannot help but raise the soldier's stress and start them resenting the people they thought they were there to help, which is what I found myself doing on many occasions. Its a series of short steps from standing menacingly with an assault rifle to intimidate possible enemies, to pointing it menacingly, to moving aggressively, to pushing, shoving, hitting all in the name of security. Starting down that path does not inevitably lead to torture, but its a healthy head start. So just based on my own experience in Bosnia, I was not surprised that soldiers would inflict this kind of juvenile aggression on prisoners.
The reason I wasn't outraged, though, had nothing to do with the soldier's experience and everything to do with the victim's. I've related some details of this in the past on this blog, but in Bosnia I was both privileged and damned to participate in the discovery of new evidence regarding previously unreported war crimes. The details of those events are not relevant to this post, though it is quite a story. The details of those war crimes, however, bear directly on my response to Abu Ghraib. Some of the documents we procured described in horrific detail the pointless and wanton torture of Croat and Muslims in a specific region in Bosnia. I say pointless and wanton because the torturers were not seeking any information whatsoever from their victims; they made them suffer for the sheer sport of it. I held in my hands accounts of men & women having their noses and ears cut off, their eyes gouged out, and their arms & legs broken before being driven out to a nearby river where they were shot and left to drown if they didn't bleed to death first. In light of that suffering, being forced to lay naked on the floor with some other men didn't seem all that bad. I bet, given a choice, any of those Croatians or Bosnian Muslims would have chosen Lyndsey England any day of the week.
As with many of the painful things I experienced in Bosnia, I tend to put these horrifying images of torture out of mind. I prefer not to think about it and to avoid those things that remind me of my time there. Which is why reading and writing about torture is actually fairly difficult for me. But, as with the public avowal of my commitment to nonviolence, it is time to start thinking & speaking clearly about those moral issues which impose themselves upon our era. Past eras have had to deal with slavery & freedom, religious liberty, women's rights and scientific advances that changed the landscape of the world. How we respond to terror, not only the terror of the jihadist or insurgent, but the officially sanctioned terror of the government, may well be our legacy to the future.
The first was Thom Stark's blog post A Free Iraq, which apparently offended a friend of his. He followed up with an update addressing his friend's views and was then subsequently invited to post a response to Death and the Maiden's question "What is torture and is it necessarily immoral?" Thom did respond, and so have several others (here and here), including one response by a professor who has studied aggression. To those who have not seen any of this, I'd highly recommend giving it a read - at the very least these are interesting and challenging perspectives, particularly to those Christians that believe torture may be morally permissible. Its after reading and pondering all of this that I've come to see how tortuous a logical path a Christians must follow in order to support torturous acts (bet you were wondering how I'd draw that together).
A second confession I need to make is that, in brutal honesty, I was not all that surprised or outraged when the Abu Ghraib abuses first came to light. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was despicable, juvenile and unbecoming a US soldier, but at the same time, perfectly in step with what I had experienced as a soldier on deployment. I was never even in an active war zone (though there were some threats, mostly from old land mines) but the stress of long days, separation from family, culture shock, the inevitable crap the military seems to foist on the junior enlisted and the sheer audacity of the local nationals to think they had the right of way at an intersection when I was clearly armed to the teeth and driving a 5-ton armored vehicle, let's just say it adds up. Now clearly, the last bit of that is facetious, but there's an underlying reality to it. The soldier is on a mission, a mission that has been given priority by command and the weight of official sanction, and it comes from the only people around you that look like you, speak the same language and long for the same home. In a soldier's mind the mission is paramount, like it or not, whether they believe in it or not. They've got a job to do and they're going to do it. But locals do not understand that mission and prioritize the living of their own lives, be that simple survival or going through the myriad social & economic tasks that define anyone's daily life. So they get in the way and become resentful of the intrusion of the soldier's mission into their life. And maybe they start resisting (violently or otherwise), which cannot help but raise the soldier's stress and start them resenting the people they thought they were there to help, which is what I found myself doing on many occasions. Its a series of short steps from standing menacingly with an assault rifle to intimidate possible enemies, to pointing it menacingly, to moving aggressively, to pushing, shoving, hitting all in the name of security. Starting down that path does not inevitably lead to torture, but its a healthy head start. So just based on my own experience in Bosnia, I was not surprised that soldiers would inflict this kind of juvenile aggression on prisoners.
The reason I wasn't outraged, though, had nothing to do with the soldier's experience and everything to do with the victim's. I've related some details of this in the past on this blog, but in Bosnia I was both privileged and damned to participate in the discovery of new evidence regarding previously unreported war crimes. The details of those events are not relevant to this post, though it is quite a story. The details of those war crimes, however, bear directly on my response to Abu Ghraib. Some of the documents we procured described in horrific detail the pointless and wanton torture of Croat and Muslims in a specific region in Bosnia. I say pointless and wanton because the torturers were not seeking any information whatsoever from their victims; they made them suffer for the sheer sport of it. I held in my hands accounts of men & women having their noses and ears cut off, their eyes gouged out, and their arms & legs broken before being driven out to a nearby river where they were shot and left to drown if they didn't bleed to death first. In light of that suffering, being forced to lay naked on the floor with some other men didn't seem all that bad. I bet, given a choice, any of those Croatians or Bosnian Muslims would have chosen Lyndsey England any day of the week.
As with many of the painful things I experienced in Bosnia, I tend to put these horrifying images of torture out of mind. I prefer not to think about it and to avoid those things that remind me of my time there. Which is why reading and writing about torture is actually fairly difficult for me. But, as with the public avowal of my commitment to nonviolence, it is time to start thinking & speaking clearly about those moral issues which impose themselves upon our era. Past eras have had to deal with slavery & freedom, religious liberty, women's rights and scientific advances that changed the landscape of the world. How we respond to terror, not only the terror of the jihadist or insurgent, but the officially sanctioned terror of the government, may well be our legacy to the future.
6.21.2007
Reversal
John Howard Yoder coined the term "Constantinianism" to describe the nature of the church that arose after Constantine's edict making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The church and the state became enmeshed with each other, each supporting the other's mission and actions. The state used its coercive power to enforce the state religion on the populace, just as it had previously under pagan rule, and added a specifically missionary component to its dealings with outside peoples and nations. This explicit marriage between the spiritual and political lasted even through the Reformation. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli - all allied themselves with local authorities to propagate their version of the Reformation, even granting political leaders the right to appoint clergy. Yoder draws numerous avenues of critique from this fatal mixing of politics and religion but one of the primary points he makes is the improper understanding of human agency that this arrangement inevitably brings about. Christians are not responsible for making history turn out right. Only One person can accomplish that task; our task is to be faithful to Him. We cannot control the flow of history and any effort to do so is really an attempt to usurp God's control of his creation. Thus, quite apart from questions of violence, Christians attempting to achieve political control is always frought with peril because we will find ourselves in an ongoing temptation to (attempt to) yank the reins out of God's hands, often for very good, "responsible" reasons. Mix in the ultimate issue of causing the death of another human being that we are supposed to be loving and inviting into the Kingdom, and we can see that the tight rope of political power shrinks even more. Yoder thus stands for a principled rejection of efforts to take control and to instead put dynamic trust in a God who will act when he sees fit.
But it must be admitted that one thing I personally struggle with now is how to apply my commitment to nonviolence to my participation in our government as a US citizen. The average Christian throughout most of the church's history really has not had to think about how to direct the state to act; a monarchy precludes popular participation in the decision making process. At most, a Christian had to decide about their level of participation in those activities, ie, whether to serve in the military (though this really wasn't a question for many of less-than-noble birth or means) or whether to join a religious order. With the ascension of democracy in the West, especially a secular democracy, Christians have had to tease out a theology of the state and their participation therein. This is doubly true of Christians committed to nonviolence as many aspects of state power require reliance upon or participation in violent acts. How do we reconcile our citizenship in the US with our citizenship in the Kingdom? At what point must we draw a hard line? a soft line? These are vexing questions, especially when considered in light of Yoder's thesis described above.
One the one hand, there is the unavoidable call to live lives that witness to the reconciling love of Christ. This love is expressed and demonstrated mainly in interpersonal ways, through the building of direct relationships and in direct encounters. It is face to face and hip to hip. But when this call to witness is introduced into a democratic environment, we have on the other hand the insidious temptation to wield our power as citizens to force the state to act on our behalf. Needless to say, such activity by the state cannot help but be impersonal, devoid of personal relationships and encounters, except by those employed by the state on its behalf. Take the current situation in Gaza and Israel. There is the strong temptation to attempt to influence the Bush administration to take a line that (rightly) acts to counter the suffering of innocent Palestinians presently trapped in Gaza. Here again is that horribly attractive proposal to be "responsible." We have an obligation as witnesses to the Christ that reached out to the poor and downtrodden to reach out to the poor and downtrodden in Gaza, so why not get out government in on it? Or, taking another current example, there is a relatively strong movement aimed at getting the US out of Iraq and opposing any military escalation with Iran. It varies from person to person, but a common thread coming from pacifist Christian camps is that since violence is wrong for the church, then it is our duty to act to prevent the US from acting violently.
At this point, it strikes me as glaringly obvious that these pacifists have themselves fallen for the Constantinian trap. They are attempting to wield state power on behalf of the Kingdom. Even granting its nonviolent impulses, how is this truly any different from the problems Yoder addresses? The church is conflating itself with the state, trying to use a power other than Christ to influence the world in favor of Christ or on His behalf. Yes, it aims to use peaceful means to bring about these "responsible" acts, but it is not the means that really matter. We once again return to the issue of trying to control history, to make things turn out right.
And this is where I struggle. I believe, with Yoder, that we are not called to a retreating quietism. We are called precisely out of separatist movements into direct engagement with the world around us. But what are the limits of that engagement? Can we engage in local politics? state politics? Should we attempt to serve on school boards or city councils? Should we hold elected office? Should we attempt to influence the national course through protest & demonstration? Or through letter writing & phone calls to our representative? Or not at all? Where and when can we act through the state and when can we not?
Here are some others who are working through similar issues:
Our Christian Discipleship as Political Responsibility
Toward a Cultus Publicus
The King Reigns From the Tree
But it must be admitted that one thing I personally struggle with now is how to apply my commitment to nonviolence to my participation in our government as a US citizen. The average Christian throughout most of the church's history really has not had to think about how to direct the state to act; a monarchy precludes popular participation in the decision making process. At most, a Christian had to decide about their level of participation in those activities, ie, whether to serve in the military (though this really wasn't a question for many of less-than-noble birth or means) or whether to join a religious order. With the ascension of democracy in the West, especially a secular democracy, Christians have had to tease out a theology of the state and their participation therein. This is doubly true of Christians committed to nonviolence as many aspects of state power require reliance upon or participation in violent acts. How do we reconcile our citizenship in the US with our citizenship in the Kingdom? At what point must we draw a hard line? a soft line? These are vexing questions, especially when considered in light of Yoder's thesis described above.
One the one hand, there is the unavoidable call to live lives that witness to the reconciling love of Christ. This love is expressed and demonstrated mainly in interpersonal ways, through the building of direct relationships and in direct encounters. It is face to face and hip to hip. But when this call to witness is introduced into a democratic environment, we have on the other hand the insidious temptation to wield our power as citizens to force the state to act on our behalf. Needless to say, such activity by the state cannot help but be impersonal, devoid of personal relationships and encounters, except by those employed by the state on its behalf. Take the current situation in Gaza and Israel. There is the strong temptation to attempt to influence the Bush administration to take a line that (rightly) acts to counter the suffering of innocent Palestinians presently trapped in Gaza. Here again is that horribly attractive proposal to be "responsible." We have an obligation as witnesses to the Christ that reached out to the poor and downtrodden to reach out to the poor and downtrodden in Gaza, so why not get out government in on it? Or, taking another current example, there is a relatively strong movement aimed at getting the US out of Iraq and opposing any military escalation with Iran. It varies from person to person, but a common thread coming from pacifist Christian camps is that since violence is wrong for the church, then it is our duty to act to prevent the US from acting violently.
At this point, it strikes me as glaringly obvious that these pacifists have themselves fallen for the Constantinian trap. They are attempting to wield state power on behalf of the Kingdom. Even granting its nonviolent impulses, how is this truly any different from the problems Yoder addresses? The church is conflating itself with the state, trying to use a power other than Christ to influence the world in favor of Christ or on His behalf. Yes, it aims to use peaceful means to bring about these "responsible" acts, but it is not the means that really matter. We once again return to the issue of trying to control history, to make things turn out right.
And this is where I struggle. I believe, with Yoder, that we are not called to a retreating quietism. We are called precisely out of separatist movements into direct engagement with the world around us. But what are the limits of that engagement? Can we engage in local politics? state politics? Should we attempt to serve on school boards or city councils? Should we hold elected office? Should we attempt to influence the national course through protest & demonstration? Or through letter writing & phone calls to our representative? Or not at all? Where and when can we act through the state and when can we not?
Here are some others who are working through similar issues:
Our Christian Discipleship as Political Responsibility
Toward a Cultus Publicus
The King Reigns From the Tree
6.18.2007
Miracle?
This afternoon, a patient transferred over into the neuro section I was working in. He is a young man - probably mid 20's by the looks of him - who had, in the middle of a fight with his girlfriend, put a gun to his head just above the temple and pulled the trigger. The bullet went pretty cleanly through the frontal lobe of his brain and out the other side, leaving an amazingly minimal amount of exterior damage. The mere fact that he is still alive, even on intensive life support, is, well, nothing short of miraculous. If he survives he could spend the rest of his life in a vegetative state, or perhaps, be consciously trapped inside a fragmented and broken mind.
Is his (initial) survival a miracle in the true God-acted sense of the word?
Is his (initial) survival a miracle in the true God-acted sense of the word?
6.17.2007
New job....sort of
There's this older episode of Scrubs where all the characters reflect on their best day in medicine. They start off with some funny moments or stupid moments, but eventually all come to think about this one particular patient and his young son. For me, the best moment I've had in medicine took place at my previous job. Most of those patients were on the upswing after a lengthy ICU stay, so both patients and families were settled in for the long haul of recovery. For families sometimes those initial moments of loss, fear and doubt are the hardest to deal with, and sometimes it is trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel as your loved one struggles through yet another day where progress is measured in millimeters, if at all. I walked into a room with a patient and his wife to answer the call light. This man had had a host of problems and infections, leaving him short one leg, severely weakened and with a bad case of C. diff (I won't describe it; let's just say its bad stuff). The wife was standing, looking out the window and I could tell she was crying. So casual-like, I start talking about the progress her husband has made, how getting well is sometimes a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back kind of thing with the elimination of a major problem causing some minor ones and how, once this problem was nipped in the bud, he'd start really getting back to his old self and going home. I spent 30 minutes in that room, which was 25 minutes longer than I needed to accomplish my task but not one second less than I needed to do my job. By the end of our conversation, the wife was smiling and laughing and I think finally able to see the twinkle of light off in the distance.
That is my best moment in medicine so far, so I'm not sure why I find it so surprising that I'm not particularly liking my present position. For the last 6 months, I've been working in the ICU as part of a student nurse program. Its been a great experience and I've enjoyed all the new things I've had the chance to learn. We have a diverse patient population, including traumas (car accidents and the like, including the occasional shooting or stabbing), post-op heart and cardiovascular patients and a neuro-ICU where we have stroke & brain injury patients. There's a fair amount of excitement with codes and bed-side procedures and always something new to watch or do. But pretty much everyone is unconscious or intubated, which makes developing relationships with the patient difficult, to say the least. And visiting time is severely restricted, not just because we're in and out of the rooms so much and with families things just get too crowded, but also because we do do so many bedside stuff that other patients' privacy would be compromised. So again, not much room to develop relationships or help them find hope. I really expected that all the technical expertise that goes into being a critical care nurse (and its a lot, let me tell you) would be fulfilling for me, but it just isn't. There are parts that can be quite satisfying, but overall, its just not making me look forward to work as I have in the past.
Thankfully, I've been able to change my position so that I will now split my time between the ICU and the oncology floor. If I really enjoy oncology, I may simply go to work there full-time. I'm hoping that oncology will give me the best of both worlds; most patients are still in relatively critical condition and oncology requires its own unique expertise, but most patients are also alert & oriented, which makes conversations a whole lot easier. I should start there in a few weeks, just as summer school is wrapping up.
That is my best moment in medicine so far, so I'm not sure why I find it so surprising that I'm not particularly liking my present position. For the last 6 months, I've been working in the ICU as part of a student nurse program. Its been a great experience and I've enjoyed all the new things I've had the chance to learn. We have a diverse patient population, including traumas (car accidents and the like, including the occasional shooting or stabbing), post-op heart and cardiovascular patients and a neuro-ICU where we have stroke & brain injury patients. There's a fair amount of excitement with codes and bed-side procedures and always something new to watch or do. But pretty much everyone is unconscious or intubated, which makes developing relationships with the patient difficult, to say the least. And visiting time is severely restricted, not just because we're in and out of the rooms so much and with families things just get too crowded, but also because we do do so many bedside stuff that other patients' privacy would be compromised. So again, not much room to develop relationships or help them find hope. I really expected that all the technical expertise that goes into being a critical care nurse (and its a lot, let me tell you) would be fulfilling for me, but it just isn't. There are parts that can be quite satisfying, but overall, its just not making me look forward to work as I have in the past.
Thankfully, I've been able to change my position so that I will now split my time between the ICU and the oncology floor. If I really enjoy oncology, I may simply go to work there full-time. I'm hoping that oncology will give me the best of both worlds; most patients are still in relatively critical condition and oncology requires its own unique expertise, but most patients are also alert & oriented, which makes conversations a whole lot easier. I should start there in a few weeks, just as summer school is wrapping up.
6.07.2007
Old man
On my way to work, I pass by a nursing home. It sits right on the corner of a large, busy street that is the main thoroughfare on this side of town, and a smaller street that fronts older homes and a few small businesses. The nursing home is, by any standard, a handsome building. It is a three story brick Victorian with 2 rounded turrets and a wide porch that wraps around the front of the building, filled with wooden rocking chairs. The trim around the many windows is done all in white and there are two large bay windows on the second and third floors that face out onto the street. It looks like a pleasant place to live and offers a similarly pleasant name; something with "sun" in it, I think.
While not well-known, but certainly not held secret, the third floor of this nursing home is an Alzheimer's facility. As everyone does know, Alzheimer slowly eats away at your memory and mental capacities, making you in turns forgetful, delusional and, finally, nearly vegetative, until your brain can no longer tell your body to keep on living or you die from something else. Alzheimer's patients have the rather disturbing tendency to go wandering, and given their deteriorating mental state, many will not know where they're going or possibly even who they are. Which is why all of the exterior doors on an Alzheimer's wing are alarmed and why most of the patients have bed and chair alarms to alert the staff if the person tries to get up.
It has happened a few times that on my way home from work, I have seen an old man in a wheelchair seated at the third story bay window, looking out over the intersection. Since I travel the smaller street, I have had a couple of minutes to consider him as I wait for the light to turn. He sits, unmoving, possibly asleep. There is no one else around him. If he is awake, he sees to his right (and mine on the corner) a gas station. Diagonally across the street he sees a low grassy hill that partially obstructs a large, squat church that clearly spent money on space and not aesthetics. To his left, across the busy street, is an old office building. The exterior of this building is completely covered in a grey mesh made of either concrete or metal. Whether artistic or meant as an insulative layer, from this distance, it makes the building look like a cold featureless box. And at this time of day, there are no cars in the parking lots of the office or the church. The traffic on the main road flies by while people wait idly for their chance to speed across the larger road on their way home. As the window faces east, he does not even get to see the beauty of the sunset, but instead, the steady encroachment of the coming night.
And how awful that night must seem to this man. The approaching end (and subsequent beginning) of another day spent in a place that has alarms on all the doors, more like a prison than a home. The approaching night of death. The approaching night of the complete obliteration of the self from an insidious disease. Who is to say which inspires the greatest dread? And what does he do as the waning day gives over to darkness but sit and look over a cold scene, seeing people still in the quick of life hurry past? Does he draw comfort from that? Does this view inspire some hope in him? Does he seek it out? Or does the staff simply park him there, thinking he enjoys it when, perhaps, it saddens or terrifies or does nothing for his diminished mind? And what would he say to me, to us, to a world that has seemingly forgotten him? What lessons, what wisdom, what knowledge is being lost?
I do not know. What I do know is that on the nights I see him, I go home and hug my wife all the harder and am just a little more grateful. And a little more afraid of the coming night.
While not well-known, but certainly not held secret, the third floor of this nursing home is an Alzheimer's facility. As everyone does know, Alzheimer slowly eats away at your memory and mental capacities, making you in turns forgetful, delusional and, finally, nearly vegetative, until your brain can no longer tell your body to keep on living or you die from something else. Alzheimer's patients have the rather disturbing tendency to go wandering, and given their deteriorating mental state, many will not know where they're going or possibly even who they are. Which is why all of the exterior doors on an Alzheimer's wing are alarmed and why most of the patients have bed and chair alarms to alert the staff if the person tries to get up.
It has happened a few times that on my way home from work, I have seen an old man in a wheelchair seated at the third story bay window, looking out over the intersection. Since I travel the smaller street, I have had a couple of minutes to consider him as I wait for the light to turn. He sits, unmoving, possibly asleep. There is no one else around him. If he is awake, he sees to his right (and mine on the corner) a gas station. Diagonally across the street he sees a low grassy hill that partially obstructs a large, squat church that clearly spent money on space and not aesthetics. To his left, across the busy street, is an old office building. The exterior of this building is completely covered in a grey mesh made of either concrete or metal. Whether artistic or meant as an insulative layer, from this distance, it makes the building look like a cold featureless box. And at this time of day, there are no cars in the parking lots of the office or the church. The traffic on the main road flies by while people wait idly for their chance to speed across the larger road on their way home. As the window faces east, he does not even get to see the beauty of the sunset, but instead, the steady encroachment of the coming night.
And how awful that night must seem to this man. The approaching end (and subsequent beginning) of another day spent in a place that has alarms on all the doors, more like a prison than a home. The approaching night of death. The approaching night of the complete obliteration of the self from an insidious disease. Who is to say which inspires the greatest dread? And what does he do as the waning day gives over to darkness but sit and look over a cold scene, seeing people still in the quick of life hurry past? Does he draw comfort from that? Does this view inspire some hope in him? Does he seek it out? Or does the staff simply park him there, thinking he enjoys it when, perhaps, it saddens or terrifies or does nothing for his diminished mind? And what would he say to me, to us, to a world that has seemingly forgotten him? What lessons, what wisdom, what knowledge is being lost?
I do not know. What I do know is that on the nights I see him, I go home and hug my wife all the harder and am just a little more grateful. And a little more afraid of the coming night.
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