I’ve been reading a great deal about fatherhood, parenting, and so-on. It’s funny how long long step by step instructions, massive data sets, and extended philosophical discourses on fatherhood, despite their value, don’t stick in your head the way brief descriptions like this can:
A grown man, even a small or otherwise unremarkable man, can still be a god-like giant to a little boy.You don’t have to be a dick. You don’t have to make the kid feel small.
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”(General Theory of Employment and Interest, 383)What perhaps causes people to shy away from philosophy is that many philosophers after Plato were boring. Also, many philosophy professors are unpleasant and impractical people. But I suggest thinking about philosophy by breaking the word down. Philosophy is fundamentally about loving wisdom. The early Christians often called Christianity "the true philosophy," and saw Christianity as a complete approach to life because it was a philosophy. Taken this way, philosophy is a wisdom-loving approach to all of life.
Mindset has become a buzz-word of sorts in education, business, and psychological circles. Food is a buzzword in hungry circles. So, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Well, why does it matter?
In the definition above, the core of mindset is belief. The main beliefs behind a mindset are beliefs about yourself. Why? Because you experience your life, so the beliefs you hold about yourself affect your approach to everything. These beliefs are called, “self-theories” by educational psychologists.
In ye olde current year, many people think that being a Christian is a matter of irrationality, bigotry, or political conservatism. While all of those things bear some weight upon whether one is likely to be a Christian or upon the sort of Christian they are, I think there are other reasons entirely. In the following posts, despite my not being some philosopher, historian, or theologian, I’ll give my reasons for being a Christian with respect to the three phases of persuasion in Aristotle’s rhetoric: ethos (appeal to personal credibility via knowledge, expertise, and moral connection to the audience), pathos (appeal to emotions), and logos (appeal to logic and facts).
This is the first ‘pathos’ argument for my being Christian in my series of posts: why I’m a Christian.
This particular reason is usually treated as the least worthy reason to care about Jesus: the doctrine of hell. For instance, fear of hell is not a reason to think Christianity is true. Just like fear of werewolves is not reason to think that they are real. But it is a reason to consider that some religion, perhaps Christianity, may be true.
In the first post on pathos, I talked about the existential fear of ending up on the wrong side of an eternal power. Another aspect of Christianity's appeal is its inherent tribalism. (This post is in a series.)
Now wait, isn't Christianity a universal experience? Isn't it available to all? Doesn't Jesus say, “Make disciples of all nations...”?
And yes, Christianity is universalist in that sense. Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, said so:
Romans 3:29-30 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, (30) since God is one--who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
I've slowly been writing summaries of my reasons for being a Christian using the three phases of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. This is the third post under pathos (emotions).
When it comes to emotional reasons for being a Christian, this one might seem the most unusual, but here it is: The idea of a cosmos teeming with purpose imbued upon it by an infinite intelligence within which a conflict of temporal and everlasting significance takes place is just damned interesting. Worldviews with cosmic level conflicts this sort can be found in most ancient cultures.[1] That the Bible contains a worldview like those of the ancient shouldn’t astonish us, as it was written and compiled when the majority of people thought this way.
St. Peter of Damaskos, in his treatise on The Great Benefit of True Repentance, wrote:
It is always possible to make a new start by means of repentance. ‘You fell,’ it is written, ‘now arise’ (cf. Prov. 24: 16). And if you fall again, then rise again, without despairing at all of your salvation, no matter what happens. So long as you do not surrender yourself willingly to the enemy, your patient endurance, combined with self-reproach, will suffice for your salvation. Nikodimos, St.. The Philokalia (Kindle Locations 20409-20414). Kindle Edition.With respect to the daily sins of which we are tempted this is true. The big response which many make falling back into an old pattern of sin is to arrogantly throw up the sponge, admit defeat, and wallow. Neither the ancient Christians nor the Bible they read gives credence to such a method of repentance.
We forget that, according to Scripture, Satan is the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4) and that sin resides, somehow, in our members. What this means is that we’ve habituated sin so deeply that for all practical purposes, it lives in our minds and bodies! Of course we’re going to mess this whole holiness thing up. We’re going to mess it up badly! To imagine that discipleship would be easy is to miss the impression Jesus was trying to give in Matthew 11:28-30. He meant that discipleship, because it leads to rest for the soul, is easy because the broad path of destruction leads to weeping and gnashing of teeth. Easy didn’t mean instant.
In an interview for C2C Journal, Dr. Jordan Peterson mused that:
“I mean, I think huge swaths of the university are irrevocably corrupted: sociology, gone; anthropology, gone; history, big chunks of it are gone, the classics, literature, social work, political science in many places, and that doesn’t cover women’s studies, ethnic studies. They probably started lost, and it’s gotten far worse. I believe now, with the exception of the science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) branch, that universities do more harm than good. I think they produce indentured servants in the United States because tuition fees have gone up so much and you can’t declare bankruptcy on your student loans. We’re teaching university students lies, and pandering to them, and I see that as counterproductive.”I think that, over all, this assessment is likely to be true. The humanities and liberal arts have traditionally included logic and rhetoric education as staples of a good education. But most humanities degrees in the modern university require no logic courses. I’m not against a liberal arts education. In fact, there is a sense in which such an education is priceless, but with the diminished state of the humanities, many of the available degrees hardly qualify as liberal arts educations. And going into debt to achieve an education with no economic payoff is a bad decision. Education is necessarily vocational and while financial markets aren’t the sole determiners of value, the ability to eat, care for your children, and plan for the future are necessary considerations. When academics counsel people to be unconcerned about these areas of life, they are setting people up for emotional and economic ruin.
I’ve been accused of STEM idolatry before, but it was by a theologian who didn’t seem to understand things like ‘wisdom,’ ‘planning,’ or mathematics. The purpose of an education is human happiness and classical anthropology indicates that virtue is one of the key elements of happiness. The average college education seems to do little to supply virtue or the skills necessary to pursue virtue without being an ‘indentured servant.’
In an article by Father Longenecker it is predicted that progressive Christianity will soon die out whereas historic Christianity will remain. Here are his definitions:
The historic Christians believe their religion is revealed by God in the person of his Son Jesus Christ, and that the Scriptures are the primary witness of that revelation. They believe the church is the embodiment of the risen Lord Jesus in the world and that his mission to seek and to save that which is lost is still valid and vital. Historic Christians believe in the supernatural life of the Church and expect God to be at work in the world and in their lives.In the article he gives eleven reasons, all of which are important. Over all I think he’s right. Rodney Stark observed this empirically:Progressive Christians believe their religion is a historical accident of circumstances and people, that Jesus Christ is, at best, a divinely inspired teacher, that the Scriptures are flawed human documents influenced by paganism and that the church is a body of spiritually minded people who wish to bring peace and justice to all and make the world a better place.