February 2006 Archives

Next time I feel inspired to summarize a couple seminars and then promise to do it in my next entry, don't hold me to it, okay? I just don't have the capacity for that right now, darn it. Here's some cobbled together excerpts of recollections from last Tuesday's and Thursday's forums, parts from emails and parts from notes:

I wish I could convey to you the details of Tuesday's discussion, but instead I'll give you the spirit of it. Gary Haugen and Stephen Carter are Christians, Alan Dershowitz is not. They all laid out their presuppositions before answering the question "what do we do with the power given to us?" in relation to violence and war and when they're necessary. Dershowitz is a blatant skeptic relativist and the most vigorous and argumentative of the three. He believes very firmly that the answer isn't "out there," but that he has to construct his own answer. We don't discover the truth, we invent it. At one point he said he didn't believe in the word "truth," but rather the phrase "truthing process." He also thinks forgiveness and love are overrated, in sharp contrast to the other fellows, who said we should seek justice first when it is necessary, then offer our mercy abundantly.

Haugen resonated with me most of all. He talked about:
1) the violence we rarely see: every day violence against women and children
2) the sins we rarely confess: sins of omission, or not helping our neighbor when can and should (he talked about Rwanda quite a bit)
3) the remedy we rarely seek: restraining the hand of the oppressor, in which violent intervention is sometimes necessary.

Stephen Carter talked about secular just war theory vs. Christian just war theory, and how neither provided completely satisfying answers to the problem of war, but that secular theory failed to see justice (or, more specifically, the reasons for just war) as a way of life rather than a set of criteria that needs to be met. Christianity offers powerful tools to fill the gap between justice and injustice. I am once again inspired to be a gap-filler, as my dad calls it.

Now here are notes from Thursday night's forum on "Confronting our Power":

I guess I don’t have a lot to say about my common grace book right now, except that I’m more aware of common grace in my surroundings. On Saturday, Keri, Linnea, and I visited the Natural History Museum in NYC, and as we reclined under the replica of a magnificent blue whale, menacing throngs notwithstanding, I pondered briefly the truth that God created even those strange beings that inhabit the depths of the ocean, those creatures we never encounter (except in the Aliens of the Deep Imax show –ooo) and who will never begin to affect our lives in any meaningful way. How could God not take delight in such creation, delight that he experiences outside his purpose of carrying out our eternal destinies? I’m an infralapsarian, true. And though I think the supralapsarian view presents many crucial points, I can’t help believing that everything around me reveals his common grace poured out to creation. How much more so, then, to humans, to whom he’s given both special and common grace? Our creativity, kindness, sense of humor, ingenuity, and concern for justice reflect God’s creativity, kindness, sense of humor, ingenuity, and concern for justice. And these just scratch the surface.

Next entry I want to comment on the Veritas forum happening at Harvard this week. The topic is “Christianity, Power, and the Powerless.” Last night, Tami, Hope and I attended a panel discussion led by Stephen Carter (Christian law professor at Yale), Alan Dershowitz (skeptic law professor at Harvard), and Gary Haugen (president of the International Justice Mission), who addressed the issue “people, pain, and powerlessness: responding to a world of violence.” I’ll tarry, though, until after Thursday night, when Tim Keller engages David Koepsell of the Council for Secular Humanism in a discussion on confronting our power. Good stuff. Makes me feel like I’m back in school, and it’s a good thing, because I’ve been feeling a little intellectually and theologically starved lately (not really emotionally starved – that’s my perpetual condition).

I decided I didn't agree with my previous blog description. As cool as "as if you could kill time without injuring eternity" sounds, it's really not how I live or would ever choose to live. Killing time is one of this life's great delights. So I'm sorry, Henry David Thoreau, you are temporarily replaced with Boston's son Ben Franklin, and if you hadn't come up with so many other cheesy quotable quotes, you may have won out on this deal. I'd even thought of employing "to be awake is to be alive," but heck, I don't agree with that either (I, like Keri, have a love affair with sleep, and I think awakeness is starting to get jealous). Actually, I've felt uneasy about my blog description since the beginning and am only now making my executive decision.

For those of you who longed for pictures of us in the Great Big Blizzard of 2006, sorry, we don't got any, and the snow is quickly disappearing. But you all know what snow looks like, and unless you're an obscure childhood friend who happened to run across this site while surfing the web, I'm pretty sure you all know what we look like. Honestly, though, if I could have conveyed to you in a creative way exactly what our snow experience was like - because photography is all about capturing the mundane and taking advantage of good light and strange situations, like fighting madly on top of a gargantuan snow mound - I would have. But I've got a dying camera and no film. The disposable might turn out a few good ones.

I promise that in my next entry I will write about culture and common grace, as it is spelled out in the book you see to my right (er, go down...farther), because I think I possibly maybe have some interesting things to say about it. Will have to wait until I get back from New York (my heart sings at the words - think I'm destined to live there?). I know it's hard to do, but...don't hold your breath.

It's been a while since anyone besides linnea, jb, and 'meats' has posted anything on here. And 'meats' keeps putting up comments, so I'll try to divert your attention away from her for a little while. Then you can go right back. Her giggle reaches my ears from two rooms over. I think she can read my thoughts.

Right now it's officially my birthday. I'll let you surmise which birthday it is, but suffice it to say that the Year of the Dog is my year, yeah baby.

Several developments since we last talked: I got accepted into Boston U. for graduate school, I got sick, and I decided to run a marathon with ol' jb. The first development has me torn between studying Mandarin and Arabic. The second has me coughing. The third, well...you can guess what the third has me doing. A lot of poundin' the pavement, that's what. In 20 degree weather. Yet I haven't quite reached the point where I can run for more than three miles, and the reality that eventually I'll have to run that distance 8 times plus simply befuddles me. However, Kaufmann Determination will, once again, take me safely to the other side. Thanks, Andrew, for coining that phrase. Somehow it's inspired me over and over. Either that, or it's a good excuse for laziness, i.e., "I don't need to get in shape for this. I've got the Kaufmann Determination!"