Andy Capp by Reg Smythe

It is tough to admit it but I am no longer the “younger generation.” Sure I use twitter, facebook, and often have the gadgets. Folks are saying that twitter and facebook are really for the old folks anyway so maybe that isn’t a sign of my hipness. But when it comes to education and preaching I think that we are very often in danger of altering the message rather than the means of delivery. When Paul said he became all things to all people (1 Cor. 9:22) he was not saying that he would alter the Gospel to meet a different audience’s perspective (if they didn’t like the idea of Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice, for example, he did not say that it was merely an example of love). Rather he was saying that he would meet people where they were in the condition that they were in. The Bible must be translated into every languages and only some of them are verbal.

This is true for education as well. I certainly believe that we need to understand the nature and character of our students today and we should explore modes of delivery that will work best for our/their current context (which is not the same for everyone, we have commuters, adult learners, military, etc.). But our goals and the content should not necessarily change. The obvious exception to the content is, of course, where new knowledge is being developed; we need to stay up-to-date in our fields and incorporate new discoveries and theories into our courses. As much as I am glad to see folks using the iPad, for example, in English classes, I worry sometimes that in some people’s rush to incorporate the latest gadget they are not only potentially leaving some behind they are also running the risk of making the course about the tools rather than the subject.

In short, whatever modes and methods we use we need to keep our eyes on the “course objectives and learning outcomes,” even in the church.

 

Since this is all promotional I do not think Bruce Edwards will mind my reposting this. From Further Up & Further In.

Coming May 13-15, 2009, NYC will be the grand venue for a terrific academic conference sponsored by Cedarville University focused on the music, work and influence of U2: U2: The Hype and the Feedback. (You may have noticed the info box on the right menu that has been posted since October.) Registration info may be found at the u2conference.com site.

Many readers of this blog will be aware of Bono’s affection for C. S. Lewis, and how Lewis has influenced his theological commitments. You hear the echo of Lewis’s trilemma here from the book, Bono in Conversation, distinguishing “karma” from “grace,”

which, Bono declares, is a “mind blowing concept…that keeps me on my knees.” “At the center of all religions” Bono tells his skeptical interviewer, “is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one.”

“And yet,” he says, “along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that…. I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge…It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.”

Later in the interview, Bono says, “Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: He was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius.”

“But actually”, he says, “Christ doesn’t allow you that. He doesn’t let you off that hook.”

“Christ says, No,” Bono continues. “I’m not saying I’m a teacher, don’t call me teacher. I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I’m saying: ‘I’m the Messiah.’ I’m saying: ‘I am God incarnate.’ . . . So what you’re left with is either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase. . . . The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me that’s farfetched.”

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Join hundreds of U2 fans, academics, culture bearers and culture critics, at what seems to me to be the perfect marriage of scholarship, spiritual devotion, and hard-headed analysis. And it may just be a fun place to meet and talk about “mere Christian” topics of all sorts. I hope to attend, and, if selected for a panel, would plan to address the topic of Bono’s transformative Christian rhetoric about Africa and Africans.

U2, Bono, C. S. Lewis, NYC — May 13-15, 2009

November 11th, 2008 by Bruce

 

I believe in honor

I think I have always tried to live my life in a way that might be considered “honorable.” I can remember quite vividly a moment in the 5th grade when a classmate hit me, trying to start a fight, and hearing my father’s voice in my head saying, “It takes a stronger man to take a punch and that give one.” “I’m not going to fight you,” was all I said. I believe that my Christian faith, confirmed at a young age, was vital in developing my sense of honor but it wasn’t until I became an academic and the dean of an honors college that I really thought about what “honor” means.

Honor is a word that we hear so often and in so many contexts that it is easy to forget its meaning. What complicates matters further is that honor is a very complex concept. My academic field is in ancient Hebrew and Jewish literature but more specifically in exegesis, the process by which meaning is drawn out from a text. Most of my research has focused upon the ancient rabbis’ interpretation of Scripture, however the concepts can be readily applied to any text, whether written, spoken, or in any other media. It is common place in interpreting texts to find that any given word of phrase can have different meanings in different contexts.

Honor is one such word that often carries not only different meanings in different contexts, but it can have multiple meanings in any given context. We are perhaps most familiar with the notion of honor as doing that which is viewed by the culture or community as noble or right. In today’s political climate it is hard not to think of those who speak of serving our country with honor or the politicians who accuse the other of behaving dishonorably. In these cases the use of honor implies a pattern of moral behavior, a “right” way of doing things. When one is acting honorably or with honor they are upholding certain moral standards of conduct. I saw this first hand while living in Louisiana when people from around the country came to the aid of those whose lives had been devastated by hurricane Katrina. We see it in the person who stops a robbery in progress or those students who help tutor local children after school, all of these are people acting in honorable ways.

In academia we speak of honors in a different way. Every year students graduate “with honors” in their chosen field. Their diplomas indicate the academic honors that they have just received; Schreyer Honors College Scholars receive a medal that symbolizes their academic achievements. These honors are accolades, praise for the distinctive and exceptional work that they have done. So honor can be something that a culture or community considers worthy of esteem, it may be doing something that benefits others more than self, or it may be accolades or awards given to someone for work that is considered outstanding. In the 17th century the French writer François de La Rochefoucauld brought together the notion of honor as both accolades and character when he said that a person’s “honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.”

I believe in honor, in all of these senses because at the core of all of these definitions is the notion that we are to strive for excellence and in so doing we become better people, those in our community will benefit, and our world will become a better place. It is true, as the sociologist might warn us, that different cultures in other times and places held as honorable practices that we may find objectionable. But when we as a society become jaded and dismiss honor as a relic and something to be sniffed at as a trite token of a bygone age, we diminish ourselves.

I believe that what we need to do as a society is to reassert what we believe to be honorable and right. We must establish for ourselves, our students, our leaders, and our community the notion of doing what is right, placing the well being of others before ourselves, and rewarding and rejoicing in such actions. I believe that our nation must not simply be a place of excellence but of honor.

 

Proposal

Every person, male and female, would serve 12-24 months in government or community service after graduating from high school or reaching 18 years of age. This service would be either in military service or community service and would meet a number of needs.

• Military – For the forseeable future, whether we like it or not, we need a strong military presence around the world. We also need more people, plain and simple, since we have a relative few doing so much the burden upon them is becoming unbearable and the consequences catastrophic. Furthermore, we are in danger of creating a “warrior class” where only those who are either trying to move out of poverty or who are children of military parents go into the service. The result is a distancing for most Americans from the cost of protecting our country and our freedoms.
• Disaster Relief – We currently depend upon our military, particularly our National Guard, to bring aid within the US such as after Katrina. While some security is needed in those circumstances most of the services provided would be best served by relief workers, specifically trained for such duties. (Our military is too often asked to provide relief and peace keeping work for which they are not in fact trained.) These workers could also be deployed abroad. Currently existing programs such as the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps would be appropriate collaborators.
• Community Service – There are various needs in our society that could be well served by those opting out of military service. For example, teaching English to non-native speakers, park service, construction work, childcare, and so on.

Benefits

• Maturity and skills development – Regardless of whether one entered military service or community service at the end of their duty these young folks, now 20 years or so, would have acquired important skills including discipline and training in a vocation. For those who would then enter college, a “GI Bill” would be in place, would be at a much greater level of maturity and better able to appreciate and use their education.
• Talented Workforce – Many young people today don’t go to college and do not have access to training or opportunities for jobs because of their lack of training. Having completed their duty these individuals would have appropriate skills so that those who do not go on for higher education they would be better prepared to enter the work force.
• Labor – Our country is in great need of good labor, whether it is in the military, rebuilding our infrastructure, or in community service.

This would be a dramatic change for the US and not one that expect would be terribly well received. Some would say it smacks of socialism but so far there is no serious attempt to deal with these various issues. This single (yet complex, I admit) solution would address a wide variety of needs and would benefit all parties. Other countries have done something very similar (I first learned of it studying German language in Germany, taught by someone who was doing their community service)¹ and we would be able to learn from their mistakes and strengths. It is a grand plan whose time has come.

Now, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain would either of you like to take this up?

 

1. I believe it is still in place. The only article I could find is from 2004 when they were considering stopping the draft and one of the concerns was that the community service would have to end as well.

Andy Crouch, a savvy culture watcher and commentator who runs the Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today, has a pretty brilliant idea that’s rooted, in some ways, in Shelley’s idea of poet as unacknowledged legislator.

Speaking at the Catalyst Conference, a gathering of more than 12,000 young evangelical Christian leaders who run the gamut from very liberal to uber-conservative, outside Atlanta last weekend, Crouch urged the religiously minded among us to start thinking about culture making rather than culture battling.

It’s the theme of Crouch’s new book, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, where he traces the pattern of his community’s (i.e. evangelical Christian) engagement with culture (to use the term broadly) over the last 100 or so years.

Crouch, who for 10 years served as a campus minister at Harvard University, says Christians first engaged culture by critiquing it, sometimes viciously. Then they began copying culture, which explains the emergence of profoundly bad “Christian” pop music from the mid-’70s until the mid-’90s.

Of late, many religious folks, Crouch argues, have become blind consumers of culture. And none of these approaches — critiquing, copying or consuming — will do anything toward changing the culture for the better.

People of faith need to start earnestly cultivating culture. If you want to see something good, create it. Or support those who do.

 

Update: ‘Saturday Night Live’ says bailout skit ‘didn’t meet our standards’

Update: A “Saturday Night Live” skit that skewered President Bush, Democrats, homebuyers and subprime lenders for their roles in the mortgage meltdown was removed from the program’s website because it “didn’t meet out standards,” a spokesman for the show said Tuesday. An edited version of the skit will be re-posted online soon, the spokesman said.

The skit, a parody of a C-SPAN news conference, ridiculed subprime borrowers, housing speculators and Herb and Marion Sandler, the real-life couple who built Golden West Financial into a subprime lending powerhouse and sold it to Wachovia before the subprime collapse. At one point in the skit, the Herb Sandler character says he made $24 billion off the subprime boom. Graphics then appear labeling the Sandlers as “People who should be shot.”

“Upon review, we caught certain elements in the sketch that didn’t meet our standards,” a spokesman for the program said in an e-mail message today. “We took it down and made some minor changes, and it will be back online soon.”

Conservative blogger Michele Malkin, who called the skit “hilarious, dead-on, and surprisingly honest,” reports that the Sandlers, prominent donors to liberal causes, were “seething over the skit” before it was removed from the “SNL” website.

The blog Hot Air is also chasing the disappearing video, and readers on that blog found the video last night on You Tube — although by Tuesday morning the You Tube video had been removed “due to a copywright claim by NBC Universal.” The video was still available, however, on the site snlbailout.com, which also links to media coverage of the skit and its disappearance.

The new version is up and according to “Deadline Hollywood Daily” it was edited due to possible legal action from a couple lampooned in the skit.

But anyone who actually saw that video could see this might be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Because SNL labeled Herb Sandler and his wife Marion, the real-life former owners of Oakland’s Golden West Financial (aka World Savings), as “people who should be shot” and accused them of predatory lending that brought down Wachovia Bank even though no charges have been filed. NBC told me just now they never received any legal threat from the Sandlers. [Though the couple did give an angry interview to The Associated Press about the SNL sketch.]

Instead, the network claimed: ”Upon review, we caught certain elements in the sketch that didn’t meet our standards. We took it down and made some minor changes and it will be back online soon.” Specifically, NBC said it has edited out the chyron on-screen text, “People who should be shot” that appeared beneath the Sandler’ lookalikes, as well as the “allegations of corruption” made against the couple.

Still, a funny skit. I was particularly amused by Soros being identified as “Owner” of the Democratic party.

 

Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times

Bill Maher, left, and Larry Charles pose in front of a, well, you know. Their new film, “Religulous,” takes on the pieties of religion.

Cameras Roll, and Faith Hasn’t a Prayer

By JOHN LELAND

Published: September 26, 2008

TORONTO

THE director Larry Charles was talking recently about Hollywood and taboos. His new movie, “Religulous,” which stars the HBO host Bill Maher, is a sometimes funny, sometimes cheap attack on organized religion.

…

Mr. Charles and Mr. Maher carry their evangelism to a broad swath of targets: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, even Cantheism, a pot-centric belief system that is often overlooked in theological debate. Buddhism and Hinduism get a pass; interviews with Muslims are intercut with footage of warring jihadis. At the end of the movie Mr. Maher calls on “anti-religionists” to “come out of the closet and assert themselves” in the face of religious extremism. “Grow up or die,” he says.

Mr. Maher said he intended the movie as a call to action, not to convince religious people to join his camp but to stir the nonreligious to unite.

“This is a very religious country,” he said, ignoring for the moment that he was in Canada, where the movie played at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. “I would at least like them” — meaning the 16 percent of Americans who in a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life described themselves as “unaffiliated” with any religion — “to stand up and say we’re not the crazy ones. Don’t we deserve at least that? There’s 535 members of Congress. How many of them would say they’re atheist or agnostic? I believe that would be zero. Pete Stark, maybe, the congressman from California, started talking about how he may not be a believer. What other minority of 16 percent has zero representation in Congress?”

I am relieved to know that Maher and Charles are not crazy. So I guess that just leaves you and me. And the Buddhists and the Hindus because they got a pass.

One more note. As the Times author corrects Maher’s stats he notes:

And even among disbelievers, 21 percent of atheists and 55 percent of agnostics said they believed in God.

Go figure.

Go figure indeed. How can one be an atheist and believe in God? Whose crazy here?

 

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God,[1] and to enjoy him forever.[2]

I am sure that you all are aware of Charles Schultz’s (1922-2000) personal Christian convictions and that it seeped into his Peanuts strip from time to time. This week’s reruns have CB addressing just this question, but his answer is hardly catechetical.

It seems to me that Lucy and Linus’ responses are rather profound, given CB’s view that our purpose is “to make others happy.” If that is our sole or primary purpose then indeed somebody (everyone) isn’t doing their job. Now on the other hand, I suppose we could say that this is just “the second great command” put in new terms and I would accept that, but it is given primacy in this account. I think the order (love God first then we are able to love our neighbors, and even ourselves, properly) is rather important.

 

At each of these diverse institutions, students who identify themselves as religious believers, conservatives, or old-fashioned liberals will find programs that connect in a special way with the core values of the American founding and the vibrant intellectual traditions of the West—schools and programs that are, in fact, often transformative.

The Inside Higher Ed piece examines how several institutions responded to be associated with ISI and some of the other schools on the list. What the administrators quoted struggle with is how to present their Gospel-formed social views in such a way that they are not equated with the "progressive left" and their religious commitments without being seen as the "religious right." Loren Swartzendruber, president of Eastern Mennonite University, said

“The growth of the right-wing Christian population in this country, or should I say, at least the visibility of the right-wing – which gets attached to ‘Christian’ in the minds of people – creates a disconnect for us. Because we are clearly Christian. We have no intention of giving up that identity. But we are, I think, a different kind of Christian.”

In my experience, if you hold social views that are associated with liberals then conservatives will see you as such (and perhaps even question your committment to the Gospel). If you are committed to the Gospel and, to use examples from EMU and Messiah College, have social standards that reject drunkeness and extramarital sex then liberals will see you as right-wing conservatives and attribute such political views to you as well. In other words, you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And I believe that is just what Jesus told his disciples .

 

1. The table of contents lists the schools as: Asbury College
   Austin College
   Belmont Abbey College
   Biola University
   Brooklyn College
   Calvin College
   Centre College
   University of Chicago
   Christendom College
   The Citadel
   University of Dallas
   Deep Springs College
   Eastern Mennonite University
   Emory and Henry College
   Eureka College
   George Fox University
   Gordon College
   Grove City College
   Hanover College
   Hillsdale College
   Hope College
   Houghton College
   The King’s College
   Lee University
   Messiah College
   New St. Andrews College
   College of the Ozarks
   Pepperdine University
   Princeton University
   Providence College
   Rhodes College
   St. Anselm College
   St. Bonaventure University
   St. John’s College
   The University of St. Thomas
   St. Vincent College
   Samford University
   Seattle Pacific University
   Shimer College
   Southern Virginia University
   University of the South
   Southwestern University
   Thomas Aquinas College
   Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
   Union College
   Virginia Military Institute
   Wabash College
   Wheaton College
   Whitman College
   Yeshiva University

Buy n Large, the company responsible for polluting and evacuating earth, as well as creating all of the robots, cups, clothes, etc. that are in the movie has their own website. You could easily spend a LOT of time poking around that site. I am personally eager for WEND•E the washing bot, but the regenerative liver technology is a must-have for many, especially in Hollywood. There are many more worthwhile moments of humor on the site. For example, their small print says in part:

Any information that is submitted to Buy n Large via its website or other online properties becomes the sole property of the Buy n Large corporation and may be used in any way the Buy n Large corporation deems advantageous. This includes, but is not limited to, selling and leasing customer information.

Their “Privacy Policy ” is even better. It begins

In order to access services through our site, you must provide us with certain personal information such as your name, your Vari-Credit number and expiration date, your Vari-Credit billing address, your telephone number, your e-mail address and the name or names of the person(s) in your immediate family. We may also ask you for other personal information, such as your medical history.

All acquired customer information becomes the property of the Buy n Large corporation and can be used (but is not limited to) any venture the Buy n Large Corporation deems beneficial to it. By visiting Buy n Large (or a Buy n Large partner) the user agrees to relinquish (if requested) any personal assets that may be deemed “usable” by the Buy n Large Corporation; this includes (but is not limited to) real estate, stock holdings, user transportation, employment income and the users “soul” (either real or imagined, regardless of spiritual or religious affiliation).

By visiting the Buy n Large website you become a registered member of the Buy n Large Database. You may not unsubscribe to this database at any time.

WALL•E contains a good amount of social commentary (Al Gore is on Apple’s board, after all) about our consumption habits and treatment of the earth. It is more heavy handed than in most Pixar films. In fact, I am not sure I can remember any of their movies that had any sort of agenda. Even so, it was a very amusing and enjoyable film. The characters of WALL•E, EVE, and the Captain are excellent and fun. I think it is worth seeing in the theatre, but you will not miss much if you wait for it on DVD.

The harder question posed by a student, is it better than Kung Fu Panda? I am not sure. I think KFP was a more enjoyable experience over all. WALL•E’s story line seems somewhat thin in comparison. The animation, however, remains impeccable with Pixar. The even mix in live footage of human actors that seems completely natural in context.

My final verdict: It is not anywhere near The Incredibles or Monsters, Inc. but it is on par with Cars. I will buyt it on DVD and going back on Sunday to see it with the ladies of the house.