Books

Put Yourself First?

February 6, 2016

In Scott Adams great little book, How to Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big, he says that putting yourself first is crucial for being able to help other people:

"In hard times, or even presuccess times, society and at least one cartoonist want you to take care of yourself first. If you pursue your selfish objectives, and you do it well, someday your focus will turn outward. It’s an extraordinary feeling. I hope you can experience it." Adams, Scott (2013-10-22). How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (p. 50). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

For many Christians, this kind of talk sounds verboten. At first glance it appears to contradict several data points in Scripture:

God's testimonies are opposed to selfishness. (Psalm 119:36)
Love your neighbor as yourself (Levitivus 19:18).
Put the interests of others above your own (Philippians 2:3-4)
Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4 and Mark 12:30).
Selfishness leads to disorder. (James 3:16)

Now, the kind of selfishness the Bible is against appears to be a sort of self-interest that opposes humility before God, the pursuit of the common good, or the acknowledgment of the importance of others and their needs. In other words, it is living a purely self-directed life. For instance, John Gill's comments on Philippians 2:4 are:

Not but that a man should take care of his worldly affairs, and look well unto them, and provide things honest in the sight of all men, for himself and his family, otherwise he would be worse than an infidel; but he is not to seek his own private advantage, and prefer it to a public good; accordingly the Syriac version reads it, "neither let anyone be careful of himself, but also everyone of his neighbour"; and the Arabic version thus, "and let none of you look to that which conduces to himself alone, but let everyone of you look to those things which may conduce to his friend"; but this respects spiritual things, and spiritual gifts: a Christian should not seek his own honour and applause, and to have his own will, and a point in a church carried his own way, but should consult the honour of Christ, the good of others, and the peace of the church; he should not look upon his own gifts, he may look upon them, and ascribe them to the grace of God, and make use of them to his glory, but not to admire them, or himself for them, and pride himself in them, and lift up himself above others, neglecting and taking no notice of the superior abilities of others

But, if we were to read Scott's word "selfish" to mean "self-interested," then I think the playing field changes. The Bible teaches self-interest and indeed condemns selfishness in the name of self-interest:

Getting wisdom is only guaranteed to benefit yourself in the end. (Proverbs 9:12)
Getting wisdom is showing love to your soul. You're commanded to be wise, so you're commanded to love your soul. (Proverbs 19:8)
Proverbs challenges us to be good at our jobs. (Proverbs 22:29)
Jesus appeals to our sense of self preservation to tell us not to be financially selfish or obsessed with riches. (Matthew 16:26)

So, is there a sense in which Christians should care for their own needs and desires first? I think that the answer is yes. For instance, if somebody evangelizes all the time without first repenting and believing the gospel, they may find themselves in the position of those Jesus never knew in the first place in Matthew 7. Similarly, one who has no savings account can have no money for mercy. One who knows not, in depth, the Bible, cannot live to benefit others in a way befitting to the words therein, and so-on.

On the other hand, is selfishness, as I defined it above, evil? Yes.

How to read: Ask is it true?

August 22, 2015

[I originally wrote this in 2015. It seems especially relevant now.]

In the Screwtape Letters, the delightfully evil demon said this to his student:

Only the learned read old books and we have now so dealt with the learned that they are of all men the least likely to acquire wisdom by doing so. We have done this by inculcating the Historical Point of View. The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer’s development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, and how often it has been misunderstood (specially by the learned man’s own colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the “present state of the question.” To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge—to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behaviour—this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded. And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another. - C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Letter XXVII

For those who haven’t read The Screwtape Letters, it’s a book of speculative fiction by C.S. Lewis wherein he writes from the perspective of a demon attempting to help a lesser demon tempt a human being who begins to consider Christianity.

Thoughts on completing plus sized reading lists

January 24, 2015

TLDR: Here are the five steps to help you read more:

Make a list
Schedule time to read
Shorten it by reading books or taking off pointless/boring books.
Don't read too many things at once.
Leisure reading is no substitute for religious reading if you're religious.

Overly Personal Introduction Many of us have too many books to read. I know I do. There are good reasons for this:

You need to keep up with your field of study.
You are really ambitious to know more about the world.
You genuinely want to decrease your television/non-print/social media consumption.
You want to add specific skills to your repertoire.

There are also bad reasons for this:

You have spread yourself too thin and will not give up on interests that add nothing to your vocation.
You want to impress people whether or not the book is a worthwhile read.
You have no realistic concept of yourself or your capabilities.

Anyway, I always have a humongous list to books to read. This reasons for this vary:

I'm a math teacher. So, I try to read books about mathematical philosophy, symbolic logic, motivational psychology, memory, and pedagogy.
I'm a research and rhetoric teacher. Thus, I try to read books about rhetoric, logic, epistemology, inference, and critical thinking.
I'm a college student. This means that I try to read books about physics, statistics, and computer programming.
I'm a Bible teacher, chaplain, and a seminary graduate. For this reason, I try to read books about ancient history, ancient culture, Greek linguistics, theology, philosophy, and Old Testament theology.
I'm also a nerd. So I read science fiction and have interests solely for fun like warfare, strategy, and tactics, philosophy of mind, and scientific perspectives on fitness.

For the reasons listed above, at any given time my book list (really my to read list, because it includes articles and book chapters) is absurd. It really is. It is not laudable, it is simply silly. In fact, if you talk to people who know me behind my back, they would probably tell you that I read too much, talk too much, and do too little.

Strategery

The Devil and Pierre Gernet

August 23, 2014

I just read the short story The Devil and Pierre Gernet by David Bentley Hart. I'm not sure that a short story has ever left me wanting to sit and talk to its author the way this one has. I'll post a review soon. Initial thoughts:

The book seems pretentious due to the vocabulary, but Hart just talks that way. If you can read it without a dictionary, the GRE or the LSAT would be a joke (I missed two on the verbal GRE and I had to look things up).
Hart's descriptions of the emotional life are spot on, which is unusual to find in a public intellectual.
Several of the themes of Hart's work come up, particularly aesthetics, materialism, and a sort of Trahernian mysticism that the demonic character mocks.

Books of 2013

December 31, 2013

In 2013 I read, what felt like, less than ever. Nevertheless, here's what I came up with when formulating a list. I wrote the list ether adding books right after I finished them or while cataloging the books in our study and realizing which ones I had read this year. I'll briefly comment on anything worth noting in the list if you care to look through it.