Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Archives for May 2015

Science and Terminology

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So, the word science is one of the most abused terms in modern discourse.

I have heard the word science being used to refer to:

  1. Nature (Look at all the science…when it’s actually a mountain or the sky being looked at)
  2. Technology (this kind of makes sense but it isn’t the same)
  3. Mathematics (this baffles me)
  4. The views of scientists about anything in particular
  5. The process of doing lab work (this is only referred to as science very rarely and when it is done, it is in a sort of idealized sense)
  6. The findings of a particular science experiment or meta-analysis (journalists all the time)
  7. The lay of a land in a particular field
  8. The word “biology” is sometimes used to refer the physical processes in a living being.
  9. Moral Positions (Sam Harris)
  10. Philosophical Positions (Richard Dawkins)
  11. Religious commitments (certain Christian apologists)
  12. Political positions  (lots of politicians)
  13. Pictures of outer space (every meme on The Facebook)
  14. Facts about nature (The ocean is deep, I love science!)
  15. Speculation about galactic civilization (not kidding here)
  16. Any actual knowledge (people who say, “We can only know things via science…then collapse things they know by other means into science)

Words have plastic meaning, that’s fine. But what often happens in disagreement is that people will use one of these many meanings and then default back to meaning sixteen.

John’s Gospel and The Word Which was In the Beginning

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1 ESV)

This verse is usually brought up with reference to the high Christology of John’s gospel, the Genesis background, or the philosophical background of λογος. These are all legitimate. But what intrigues me is that this verse was written after the gospel of Jesus was being preached and after the stories contained within John’s gospel were already in circulation. But so then were the stories of the synoptic gospels as well as the moral teachings of Jesus which we find in the Sermon on the Mount.

If the stories of John’s gospel were in circulation, then the idea that Jesus’ words were life were circulating about. Similarly, we know from Paul’s letters that the gospel message itself was often referred as “the word of [insert synechdoche for Christ here].” The point being that one of the important background factors in John 1:1-18 is the background of the gospel message and the language about it.

If this is true, then part of the idea in John 1:1 is that the gospel message about Christ is reflective of God’s ideas from the very beginning. Similarly, it is reflective of the idea that the words of Christ then in circulation were superlatively the word of God. What this means in the context of the canon of Scripture is that the message of the four gospels is God’s word in a very special way because they are about the person of the Word of God in human flesh.

Made a List

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I made a list when I was 17 of everything intended to do in my twenties.

  1. Get B.S. in computer programming and minor in Greek.
  2. Go to Seminary
  3. Learn Hebrew
  4. Get PhD. in New Testament studies
  5. Finish Black Belt in Isshin-Ryu Karate
  6. Write commentary on Sermon on the Mount
  7. Learn Latin
  8. Squat 400 Pounds
  9. Bench 300 Pounds
  10. Dead Lift 450
  11. Read the Summa Theologica (I had a catholic friend my senior year of high school)

I did one of those and half of three of them.

Anyway, kids, plan your life better.

Jesus and Being a Bit Judgy

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Here is an excerpt from a sermon I preached on Matthew 7:1-5 about two years ago. Jim West reminded me of it.

Jesus and Judgment
Priorities for a loving and challenging community:

Stop judging, so that you won’t be judged, because the way that you judge others will be the way that you will be judged, and you will be evaluated by the standard with which you evaluate others. “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when the beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5 Author’s Translation)”

These words are spoken by the man who just earlier taught that he would see to it that all who heard him would receive mercy, see God, be filled with righteousness, and so-on (Matthew 5:3-10). What he is giving here is not merely sound moral advice for wise living, though it is that. What Jesus is teaching us here is how to live as sinners with a gracious God in a world full of people just like us.

What it does not mean:

  1. Do not judge anybody ever, no matter what, under any circumstances, do not ever even think about ever judging anybody about anything no matter what, under any circumstances, without ever considering the possibility of judging an action or a person.
  2. Never call bad things bad.
  3. That as long as I’ve corrected my own faults I can make whatever harsh judgments I want upon others. (I have a good diet, so, “Hey, stop eating like a whale.”)

What it seems to mean:

  1. Do not become a judge of others who is unaware of your own character flaws.
  2. It means that making a habit of condemning others or correcting them when you do not have a habit of correcting yourself or receiving correction leads to judgment.
  3. When it is okay to judge, the context shows that the comments made are not meant to be legal verdicts, but helpful comments which lead to correction (as the analogy to eye surgery makes clear). Different cultures and social groups tolerate different levels of harshness.
  4. Character flaws include we should correct in ourselves include: lack of forgiveness, lack of kindness, nosiness, prayerlessness, and gossip. Because of this, learning the appropriate time to judge others (make a judgment for the sake of correction) means dealing with your own obvious sins, but also dealing with your less obvious ones which make judging others so satisfying.
  5. The judging you can do takes place in the context of encouraging others to grow in grace (2 Peter 3:18).
  6. That people might not be able to receive a helpful correction from somebody whose life is a wreck.
  7. That the attitude necessary to help somebody else requires the humility of knowing your own flaws and the experience of God’s transforming grace.

Other passages of Scripture with this in mind: Proverbs 3:5-7, 1 Thessalonians 5:14 and 21, and Hebrews 3:13-14 and 10:24-25.

Intertextuality: Modest Mouse, D. Wallace, and T. Traherne Edition

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David Foster Wallace, in a commencement speech, This is Water, observed this:

“Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master…

He goes on to relate that

“…if you’ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars – compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff’s necessarily true: the only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.”

His point is that in any given situation, you can choose to think about the world in a cynical, frustrated, default setting that, he elsewhere observes as “literally self-centered.” I’ve always found this speech to be sad and helpful at the same time. But the elements of foreshadowing contained within are not the point. Rather, the point is that Wallace observes that one of our primary freedoms is that you and I can pick what we “choose to pay attention to” and how we “construct meaning from experience.” This notion is so trivially true that we often forget it and allow our moment by moment experiences of dull tedium and frustration overwhelm us.

Anyway, I was listening to his speech in order to get ready for a class discussion over it for some rhetoric students when I heard this song by Modest Mouse (there is an explicit lyric contained within):

Though as far as I know, the song writer of Modest Mouse is an atheist, he manages to find ways to construct positive meaning from the world despite some of the horrors contained within.

“The world’s an inventor
With its work crawling, running, squirming ’round
Trees drop colorful fruits
Directly into our mouths
The world’s an inventor
We’re the dirtiest thing it’s thought about
And we really don’t mind”

Then when the next verse come around:

The world composes
With his shirttails wrinkled, hanging out
Bang us together
See what sort of sounds we make right now
The world plays music
Playing skin on teeth inside of the mouth
What sort of sounds?
What lovely sounds come about?

The narrator tends to see, in the chaos and privation within the world, a composition of joy and abundance. It would seem, from other songs on the same album and in their previous work, that at least one member of Modest Mouse attempts to choose (at least for song writing purposes) to view the world from an optimistic and intentionally unselfish point of view (see Float On and Dashboard).

Anyway, Wallace’s speech and the Modest Mouse song have tremendous overlap with two older authors. One is Thomas Traherne in the 7th meditation of his Centuries of Meditations:

To contemn the world and to enjoy the world are things contrary to each other. How then can we contemn the world, which we are born to enjoy? Truly there are two worlds. One was made by God, the other by men. That made by God was great and beautiful. Before the Fall it was Adam’s joy and the Temple of his Glory. That made by men is a Babel of Confusions: Invented Riches, Pomps and Vanities, brought in by Sin. Give all (saith Thomas a Kempis) for all. Leave the one that you may enjoy the other. Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations, ed. Bertram Dobell (London: P. J. & A. E. Dobell, 1927), 6.

He observes that in the world in which we live there are two worlds. The world as it is meant to be, filled to the brim with the glories and beauties of God and secondly, the world as made by man: a world where nature red in tooth and claw viciously obscures all beauty and virtue from sight and where those who are created to observe, enjoy, and emulate virtue are tempted instead to despair.

Similarly, Paul the apostle says this:

The mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. (Romans 8:6 author’s translation)

Essentially, the idea is that our initial perception of what the world is and the deleterious effects that perception has on our emotions, motivations, and actions could be wrong. And in fact, there is a different way to look at things. This issue is dealt with throughout the New Testament, but Paul’s most concise treatment is above (also see 2 Corinthians 4:1-6:2).

The similarities that Paul and Traherne share with Wallace are that they all perceive that being freed from selfishness will make you truly happy. All three of them also recommend approaching this by intentionally changing perspective as we go through life. The difference is that Paul and Traherne perceive this to be an exercise based upon more than merely the brute fact that you and I can choose to dwell upon what we will. Paul and Traherne also depend upon the reality that creation is from a good and beautiful God, no matter how ugly and distorted it can be.

In other words, for them the difficult work of “constructing meaning” out of reality is ultimately fruitful because there is a meaning to be discovered. For Wallace, the freedom to choose is its own justification for choosing not to be so selfish and to re-imagine the world as a better place. For a natural cynic like myself, such an exercise would be soul crushing if at the back of it all I thought, “too bad this is all just an effort not to succumb to the futility of it all.”

Reflectons on Writing

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One of the greatest difficulties with writing anything is the desire to say too much.

I’ve known many people who think that there is no way they can write a 3-5 page paper about topic X.

In my own experience, even the most concise summary of opposing views, connected issues, potential inferences from available data, practical suggestions for further study, and speculation as to applications of discovered data typically entail the longest and most boring type of prose. There is no way around it. The hardest part of writing is knowing what not to say. Writer’s block may happen with fiction, but with non-fiction the only block is the paralyzing feeling of not being sure where the evidence leads or being afraid to say one thing because other things must then be left out.