Cumberland Island

What do you do when...

2010-11-01T11:22:00.002-05:00

... there are literally no good candidates running for even one office for which there is a vote? I've thought about possibly voting for the worst, most extreme candidate on the grounds that they would be more easily ousted later. The problem is, how can I justify voting for a pro-death candidate? I could also think about a write-in candidate, but the fact is, if someone isn't on the ballot anywhere, they have very little chance of getting elected.

I had no problem voting for the Constitution Party candidate in the last presidential election, because he was on the ballot in a lot of states, though not CT.

This sort of thing kind of ticks me off, because now my voice can't be heard. I have no good option.

A New Book Out

2010-10-30T15:50:00.002-05:00

So there's a fascinating new book out. It's hot off the press, and guaranteed to become a Times Bestseller. The plot is gripping, and the character development deep. I think everyone ought to go right out and buy one in order to support the poor struggling author.

Enjoy!

Clever Abortion Clinic Tactic

2010-08-28T12:51:00.002-05:00

It is my opinion that abortion clinics should be harrassed in every possible legal method. Here's a very nice one served up in Virginia: simply requiring that abortion clinics provide the same standard of medical care that a hospital does. Apparently, according to the pro-death people, this would force 4 out of 21 clinics to shut down. That would be fantastic! Not as good as simply outlawing abortion, as should happen, but a step in the right direction. This would hit them where it hurts: the pocketbook.

Wilson's Recent Pilgrim's Progress Post

2010-08-23T09:30:00.005-05:00

Douglas Wilson has recently posted some quotes from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. You can read Wilson's post for the context. Or will you get all the context? I think there's something missing there. The Pilgrim's Progress quote, in its entirety, reads thus:

TALK. That is it that I said; for to talk of such things is most profitable; for by so doing, a man may get knowledge of many things; as of the vanity of earthly things, and the benefit of things above. Thus, in general, but more particularly by this, a man may learn the necessity of the new birth, the insufficiency of our works, the need of Christ's righteousness, &c. Besides, by this a man may learn, by talk, what it is to repent, to believe, to pray, to suffer, or the like; by this also a man may learn what are the great promises and consolations of the gospel, to his own comfort. Further, by this a man may learn to refute false opinions, to vindicate the truth, and also to instruct the ignorant.

FAITH. All this is true, and glad am I to hear these things from you.

TALK. Alas! the want of this is the cause why so few understand the need of faith, and the necessity of a work of grace in their soul, in order to eternal life; but ignorantly live in the works of the law, by which a man can by no means obtain the kingdom of heaven.

FAITH. But, by your leave, heavenly knowledge of these is the gift of God; no man attaineth to them by human industry, or only by the talk of them.

TALK. All this I know very well; for a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from Heaven; all is of grace, not of works. I could give you a hundred scriptures for the confirmation of this.

FAITH. Well, then, said Faithful, what is that one thing that we shall at this time found our discourse upon?

Here I have quoted the Project Gutenberg version.

If you compare this full quotation with Wilson's quote, I think it's true that the missing parts are rather important, especially Faithful's affirmation of what Talkative says that is true. Isn't it true that non-believers can get some things right? They can say truth? Common grace, I think they call it.

I'm not an English major (although I love literature, as evidenced by Cucumberland Island). But it does seem to me as if the missing parts greatly change the meaning of the passage. In fact, my impression of the passage is that Faithful is affirming everything Talkative says here, while providing a clarification that Talkative appears to agree with. Faithful does not appear to disagree with what Talkative is saying.

So the lesson here isn't that what Talkative says is wrong. The lesson here is that even unbelievers (Talkative, it becomes clear later on, is no believer) can get portions of theology correct. Another example of this is a professor of whom my father heard, who was an Orthodox Jew. He was, oddly enough, teaching in Romans. And he went point-by-point down the tenets of Reformed theology. One of his students raised his hand and asked him whether he believed in any of this stuff. "No," replied the professor, "But that's what the text says."

The fact that Talkative doesn't live out this doctrine doesn't mean the doctrine is incorrect. It means that that critical link connecting doctrine and practice was missing in Talkative's life.

I'm wondering if one possible implication that Wilson is trying to make is that confessionals tend to spout off on the doctrine, but fail to live it out. Sadly, that's probably true in far too many cases. But, if you reason that, as a consequence, the doctrine that confessionals believe is wrong, you'd have just committed the ad hominem fallacy. I don't recommend that you go there!

Comparing Computers to Pen and Paper

2010-06-02T13:24:00.003-05:00

My boss and I like to joke about the advantages of old-fashioned paper and pen. He and I have made the following comments about them:

1. Fast boot-up time.
2. High bandwidth.
3. Programming language doesn't change very fast.
4. Durability (how many computers do you know last hundreds of years?).
5. Highly portable.
6. Low energy consumption.
7. Easy-to-use GUI.
8. Less eye strain than other models.

In Christ.

Confessional or Relevant: a False Dichotomy

2010-05-17T07:57:00.003-05:00

Let me rant. I am sick of people claiming that confessions are old, outdated, or irrelevant to today's hip culture and Gen X. I am sick of people saying that doctrine is only for people with pointy heads and has no real value for Joe Shmoe; going along with that, I am sick of people putting up a firm wall of separation between doctrine and practice, as if doctrine isn't practical, and practice isn't doctrinal! (Note: I am NOT saying a pastor shouldn't make practical application in a sermon. I AM saying that we should not assume a doctrine has to be applied in order to be practical; I am ALSO saying that we should not assume that a particular practice does not have doctrinal implications.)

Here's an interesting quote:

Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptations of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.

By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion, with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.

They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.

From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.

This corruption of nature, during this life, does remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be, through Christ, pardoned, and mortified; yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin.

Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, does in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal.

Could anything be more relevant to the world around us? Does not this explain so many things? It says man is not basically good, he is basically bad, though not as bad as he could be.

How about this interesting quote?

The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word, by which also, and by the administration of the sacraments, and prayer, it is increased and strengthened.

By this faith, a Christian believes to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God Himself speaking therein; and acts differently upon that which each particular passage thereof contains; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come. But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace.

This faith is different in degrees, weak or strong; may often and many ways assailed, and weakened, but gets the victory: growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance, through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith.

Wow! The first quote shows us the world has a problem. The second quote gives us the solution. Isn't that amazing? Oh, by the way, the first quote was the Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 6, and the second was the Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 14.

So, if someone says, "Yeah, but you're being confessional and I'm being relevant," you can make the comeback that being confessional is ALWAYS relevant. Human nature does not change over the ages. The problem has always been sin, and the solution has always been Jesus Christ. There is nothing more relevant to the human condition than the sentence before this one.

More Bach

2010-03-21T13:00:00.003-05:00

Today is Bach's 325th birthday, if you take the Julian calender date. What are you doing to celebrate? I'd recommend listening to the St. Matthew Passion or a cantata. Maybe play some yourself, if you're so inclined.

Landau: Mechanics, 3rd Ed., p. 32

2010-03-20T17:12:00.007-05:00

WARNING!!! Serious mathematical question ahead.

On the page mentioned above in the book mentioned above, Landau makes the following claim, in the context of talking about motion in a central field; that is, the motion of two particles, where the only forces between the two particles are directed on the straight line joining the two particles.

Such cases are exceptional, however, and when the form of $U(r)$ is arbitrary the angle $\Delta\phi$ is not a rational fraction of $2\pi$. In general, therefore, the path of a particle executing a finite motion is not closed. It passes through the minimum and maximum distances an infinity of times, and after infinite time it covers the entire annulus between the two bounding circles. The path shown in Fig. 9 is an example.

A note to the reader: Fig. 9 looks very much like the graph on the front of this book.

Now, in classical mechanics, we have no tunneling or other means of teleportation. This implies that the particle must continuously traverse whatever path it is on. We should also note that a particle is like a mathematical point - it has no extension.

Now, mathematically, Landau is saying that there is a continuous bijection from the half-infinite line $[0,\infty)$ to the annulus $\overline{B}(0,r_{\text{max}})\setminus B(0,r_{\text{min}})$. Is this possible? The annulus obviously requires two continuous variables to locate a point in its interior. However, given the path of the particle as a function of time, we need only specify one variable (time) in order to locate its position.

So help me out, you topologists. Is there a homeomorphism between these two sets? I could believe that the particle's path is dense in the annulus, but I'm not sure about traversing every point.

In Christ.

Some Hard Numbers

2010-03-17T11:44:00.003-05:00

According to the wiki article on Texas, its area is 268,820 square miles. Now, 1 square mile is exactly 27,878,400 square feet. Ergo, Texas has approximately 7.5 x 10^12 square feet. Now, according to the wiki article on World Population, the current population of the world is estimated by the US Census Bureau to be 6,808,900,000. Suppose we were to fit the entire world population into the state of Texas. How much room would each person have? Well, you'd take your 7.5 x 10^12 and divide by 6,808,900,000. According to my calculator, that gives about 1100 square feet / person. That's a small home with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and one bathroom. That's not too bad. If you do the same calculation, except that you use the area of the entire United States, you end up with approximately 15500 square feet / person. That's an extremely large mansion.

Have you ever noticed that the people who argue that the world is over-populated tend to be liberals/socialists? And have you also noticed that liberals and socialists tend to be concentrated in large cities? And have you ever noticed that in large cities, the amount of living area the average person has is considerably smaller than in the country? It makes you wonder, doesn't it, as to whether liberals are able to look beyond the confines of their cities!

To take another angle, let us consider wheat. According to the wiki on Norman Borlaug,

Biologist Paul R. Ehrlich wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971," and "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980." - Ehrlich, Paul: The Population Bomb, 1968.

A little bit later, the wiki has the following: "By 1974, India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals." So, ok, maybe India took a little time to get there, but they did. Ehrlich's basic idea was flat-out wrong. Norman Borlaug has been credited with saving the lives of over a billion people from starvation.

When are we going to get it into our heads that Malthus and Ehrlich are wrong? It seems, in the face of such hard numbers as I've given above, that the over-population people are incorrect. So why would supposedly rational people ignore numbers such as these? There might be any number of reasons. Possibly one reason might be that science and hard data is not as important to such people as control over other people. We've seen this first-hand with the climategate scandal, which the extreme environmentalists have ignored to the best of their ability. Their support is waning, however.

I would issue a call to liberals and socialists everywhere to re-examine your philosophy and how well it matches up with your rhetoric. Do not invoke science and statistics when you intend to twist them for your own political agenda.

Bach

2010-02-09T17:29:00.003-05:00

It happened. Something I thought would never happen, but it has. My favorite composer has changed. It used to be Beethoven, and it is now Bach.

Mind you, my favorite piece of music is still probably Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto. However, taken together, I like Bach better than Beethoven now.

What, you might ask, achieved this stupendous transformation in my thinking? (Ok, it might not seem quite so stupendous for some of you, but it is true that I don't change things like this very often.)

There are two books that achieved this change. One is Glory and Honor, by Gregory Wilbur. That was a book that shattered most of my misconceptions about Bach as being a money-grubbing grump. In fact, while he did stand up for the money due his office, he was one of the most genial composers ever. He was quite the husband and father, and his home was always open. Composers and musicians were always traipsing through his house.

The second book was actually one I haven't read, but heard about: Evening in the Palace of Reason, a very interesting book about the smack-down of Fredrick the Great of Prussia. You can read enough of it on Amazon to get the idea of it. Bach was simply unparalleled in counterpoint, and here is one of the proofs.

Ultimately, it was also the spiritual aspect. Very few composers have ever submitted all their work to God the way he did. And there, I think, lies the difference for me. Beethoven is great and all, and wrote some great stuff, but it's not so universally spiritual as Bach. Bach also appeals to the mind more than Beethoven.

That's all for now.

A Letter to My Congressman - Concerning the Affordable Health Care for Americans Act, H.R. 3962

2009-11-06T08:42:00.004-05:00

I was contacted by Meredith Dodson, encouraging me to urge you to vote yea on this bill. This email was rather frustrating to me, because it simply assumed that I would want this bill to pass. I most assuredly do NOT, and here's why:

1. It would increase governmental intervention in private lives, thus curtailing our freedoms. Why does the government think it can run our lives better than we can? No, the government should limit itself to law-making, law-enforcement, and national defence. This is what our Founders thought government should be, and I see no reason why their ideal should change. Human nature has not changed since they founded this country; hence, one of the best experiments in governance in the history of the world should not be changed.

2. The bill would support taxpayer-funded abortions. I am pro-life through and through; certainly abortion on demand should be highly illegal. I OBJECT to paying for the deaths of unborn human beings (to argue that they are just fetuses and not human is clearly a fallacy, since medical science has evolved to the point that "viability" occurs earlier and earlier. That's the argument of the beard. A fetus is a human being with a soul right from the moment of conception, and should therefore be protected by law).

3. It would eliminate competition, thus driving prices up and quality down. Far from creating affordable health-care for Americans, it would work very effectively against that goal. Why do so many people think that health care, education, etc., are immune from the laws of supply and demand? Or from other economic laws? Goods and services behave the same way: if you introduce competition, everything gets better for everyone.

In summary, there is not one redeeming feature of this immoral bill, and I urge you to vote NAY.

If you want to improve health care in this country, I recommend the following steps:

1. Significantly de-regulate the entire industry. I don't mean that the FDA should cease to exist (surely drugs should be put through the ringer before they are introduced), or that abortion should be legal. I mean that competition should be encouraged. In addition, it is simply impossible for the government to make all the nitty-gritty little decisions that make health care better, simply because the government doesn't know all the information it needs to know. There's way too much.

2. Make it harder to sue doctors for malpractice. America is a sue-happy country, and that drives health care costs up, in this case, because doctors have to pay so much more in malpractice insurance. The doctors, I'm here to tell you, are not going to simply absorb those costs. They will pass them on to their patients. I don't say make it impossible to sue, just make it harder. Have judges dismiss more trivial cases, for example.

A Concerned Citizen Who Votes

Humility, II

2009-08-13T09:01:00.002-05:00

So it gets even better. After learning from my last mistake to plug the alarm clock into an outlet not controlled by the light switch, I went through the same alarm-setting procedure as before.

This time, I woke up at 6:04 on my own. No alarm. I look over at the clock, and it's on. The alarm was set for 6:00am, the clock was displaying the current time correctly, including the am/pm, and the alarm was on. So what gives?

Apparently, this clock has been a favorite playtoy of my son Hans for some time. He must have rough-housed enough with it to disturb the internal workings, or perhaps the speaker, or whatever. Anyway, it didn't go off as planned.

So the moral of the story is never to use an alarm clock your 13-month-old son has played with. Also, since I was humbled the last time, I have no need of further humility. I can stop praying that most dangerous prayer of all: the prayer for more humility. Can I sell you a bridge?

Humility

2009-08-12T19:13:00.004-05:00

Last night, I had great intentions. I was going to wake up this morning at 6:00am, do my walking, do the dishes, and still be ready to go in time to do devotions and everything else before going to work.

I had gotten into bed soon after getting back from band. It was 11:00pm. I thought I'd get up and set the alarm clock. No problem. I found the alarm clock; it wasn't plugged in. So I plugged it in and synchronized it to our radio-controlled clock, being very careful to set the am/pm correctly (I've been burned on that before!). As I was doing so, I thought to myself, "You know, it really is quite simple to set an alarm clock, and yet so many times people don't set it correctly, and they're late to places." Of course, I was thinking of other people when I thought of this, not myself, but that's beside the point (or perhaps not-so-beside-the-point!). I continued in my train of thought, "All you have to do is correctly set the time including its am/pm, set the alarm itself with the correct am/pm, and then turn the alarm on." So I did that. Then, because I didn't want to be woken up, or kept up by the bright LED display, I put the clock face-down on the sewing table, turned off the lights and went to bed.

Next morning, I wake up with the sunlight streaming into my room, and I keep thinking to myself, "It's after 6. Why doesn't that stupid alarm clock go off?" Finally, I get up and look at the radio-controlled clock. 7:30am. I turn the alarm clock over: there's no LED display. I had forgotten that the outlet into which I plugged the alarm clock was controlled by the light switch (a feature I dislike exceedingly, unless you have very few built-in lights). So when I turned off the lights the night before, I cut off the power to the alarm clock.

And the moral of the story is this: Don't count your alarms before they sound. Also, it's a good idea to be humble.

Matthew Henry on Gen. 3:21

2009-08-09T12:24:00.003-05:00

This was so good, I just had to post it. Genesis 3:21, in Matthew Henry's commentary, runs as follows:

Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

We have here a further instance of God's care concerning our first parents, notwithstanding their sin. Though he corrects his disobedient children, and puts them under the marks of his displeasure, yet he does not disinherit them, but, like a tender father, provides the herb of the field for their food and coats of skins for their clothing. Thus the father provided for the returning prodigal, Luke xv. 22, 23. If the Lord had been pleased to kill them, he would not have done this for them. Observe, 1. That clothes came in with sin. We should have had no occasion for them, either for defence or decency, if sin had not made us naked, to our shame. Little reason therefore we have to be proud of our clothes, which are but the badges of our poverty and infamy. 2. That when God made clothes for our first parents he made them warm and strong, but coarse and very plain: not robes of scarlet, but coats of skin. Their clothes were made, not of silk and satin, but plain skins; not trimmed, nor embroidered, none of the ornaments which the daughters of Sion afterwards invented, and prided themselves in. Let the poor, that are meanly clad, learn hence not to complain: having food and a covering, let them be content; they are as well done to as Adam and Eve were. And let the rich, that are finely clad, learn hence not to make the putting on of apparel their adorning, 1 Pet. iii. 3. 3. That God is to be acknowledged with thankfulness, not only in giving us food, but in giving us clothes also, ch. xxviii. 20. The wool and the flax are his, as well as the corn and the wine, Hos. ii. 9. 4. These coats of skin had a significancy. The beasts whose skins there were must be slain, slain before their eyes, to show them what death is, and (as it is Eccl. iii. 18) that they may see that they themselves were beasts, mortal and dying. It is supposed that they were slain, not for food, but for sacrifice, to typify the great sacrifice, which, in the latter end of the world, should be offered once for all. Thus the first thing that died was a sacrifice, or Christ in a figure, who is therefore said to be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. These sacrifices were divided between God and man, in token of reconciliation: the flesh was offered to God, a whole burnt-offering; the skins were given to man for clothing, signifying that, Jesus Christ having offered himself to God, a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour, we are to clothe ourselves with his righteousness as with a garment, that the shame of our nakedness may not appear. Adam and Eve made for themselves aprons of fig-leaves, a covering too narrow for them to wrap themselves in, Isa. xxviii. 20. Such are all the rags of our own righteousness. But God made them coats of skins, large, and strong, and durable, and fit for them; such is the righteousness of Christ. Therefore put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Isn't that amazing?

Root Beer Day

2009-08-08T12:00:00.002-05:00

Today, in Connecticut, it's a root beer day. What, might you ask, is a root beer day? Here are the (rather stringent) criteria:

1. It must be either a Saturday or a holiday in the summer such as Independence Day or Memorial Day.

2. It must be 70 to 80 deg F outside.

3. It must be a relatively dry day (right now, the relative humidity is 38%; that is acceptably low).

4. The sky must be either cloudless, or have cirrus clouds. A few other clouds are allowed, but the majority must be cirrus.

Now, what do you do on a root beer day? It is required that you celebrate by drinking either root beer or cream soda (it doesn't matter which brand - choose your favorite) in the afternoon.

So this is a tradition I started a while ago, and have found fun. Take it or leave it.

Biased Scientists

2009-08-03T14:53:00.006-05:00

People, not inhuman machines, do science. Since all people are biased in one way or another, it follows that all scientists are biased. Since some of the problems scientists work on are politically charged (like, say, global warming), it follows that biased scientists work on politically charged scientific problems.

Now bias is not necessarily an evil, even in science. You must have a bias of some sort even to choose which experiments to run, or (if you are someone who decides where money goes) to decide which theories to support financially. However, bias can be an evil if scientists start interpreting data incorrectly because of their bias.

I propose a new method of deciding policy based on science (at least, whatever policy can be decided on the basis of science!):

1. Determine more than one political persuasion that scientists have, such as big government/little government.

2. Have scientists picked from each political persuasion theorize and run experiments. It would be advantageous if the scientists involved in one political persuasion personally disliked the scientists from the other persuasions.

3. Whatever results the scientists came up with that were the same, could reasonably be treated as less biased than results obtained a different way.

Thoughts on this partly tongue-in-cheek, partly not, idea?

Significant Figures

2009-07-29T18:44:00.004-05:00

I've found I don't like the idea of significant figures, from a mathematical perspective. If you look up the wiki on it, in the section called Ineffectiveness, you'll see that, apparently, the subject receives more attention in high-school and college chemistry courses than it does in real-world laboratories. Labs use a different method of notating uncertainty.

For the following discussion, it might be helpful to review the rules for adding and subtracting using correct significant figures:

1. For multiplication and division, the result should have as many significant figures as the measured number with the smallest number of significant figures.

2. For addition and subtraction, the result should have as many decimal places as the measured number with the smallest number of decimal places.

So here's why I don't like significant figures. There are at least two mathematical problems I see with them.

1. Multiplication is not associative. Here's an example:

(1.11 x 5.79) x 6.34 = 6.43 x 6.34 = 40.8

1.11 x (5.79 x 6.34) = 1.11 x 36.7 = 40.7

These answers are clearly not equal in the least significant digit. Which answer is correct? I'm hanged if I know.

2. Multiplication does not necessarily give the same result as the equivalent addition problem. Here's an example: suppose we want to multiply 55.55 by the exact number 3. No problem. Integers, by definition, have an infinite number of significant figures. So we go 3 x 55.55 = 166.7. Ah, but now suppose we add instead: 55.55 + 55.55 + 55.55 = 111.10 + 55.55 = 166.65. The rounding rules for addition seem a bit more favorable towards retaining significant figures than multiplication does. And we see that we get a different answer here depending on which way we do things.

So I don't like 'em. I'm not entirely sure what alternatives there are. I suppose sig figs do have the pedagogic value of instilling in students the idea that you can't gain certainty by multiplication, at least (though you can by addition!).

Contraception Versus Evolution?

2009-01-25T21:26:00.004-05:00

I just read a very interesting passage in The Abolition of Man, by C. S. Lewis. He writes, "And all long-term exercises of power, especially in breeding, must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones." - p. 56 in the paperback version published by HarperSanFrancisco ZondervanPublishingHouse. This is a very interesting statement to me.

It brought to my mind a sudden realization that there is a possible contradiction, I think, between the idea of contraception and the idea of biological evolution, Darwinian or not. For the record, I don't believe in macro-evolution at all; micro-evolution is a possibility, I suppose. I haven't examined the evidence carefully. When it comes to contraception, I believe most definitely that any abortifacient is murder, and the only defensible contraception at all is that which prevents fertilization in the first place.

Now, here is the possible contradiction: if contraception allows earlier generations to have reproductive power over later generations, and yet later generations are, by evolutionary theory, superior, then what gives? Suppose you have a couple using contraception. Thus they are attempting, at least, to decide who comes into being and who doesn't. Thus they are setting themselves up as a judge over the later generation. But if evolution is true, then the later generation would make better choices. Perhaps the earlier generation should leave as many choices as possible to the later generations.

This is most definitely a half-baked idea, written at 9:40pm on a Sunday. I'd be interested in any thoughts of my readers, however.

In Christ.

Book Review: The Valley of Fear, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2008-12-24T16:11:00.005-05:00

As is the case with most Sherlock Holmes stories/novels, this was very fun to read.

The story is in two parts, and starts with the murder of a seemingly very likeable, upright, and resourceful man who does not appear to have any enemies. The man's name is Mr. Douglas of Birlstone Manor House. However, there is a period of time in his life of which he did not speak, and it is that period which Sherlock Holmes delves into in order to solve the mystery, in addition to the usual clues the police always seem inclined to ignore or downplay.

The second part gives background to the first part by taking the reader back in time about 20 years, to a period of time the relevance of which is at first uncertain to the reader. However, the relevance becomes more and more apparent as the second part unfolds, eventually leading to a delightful revelation that Susan, for once, did not anticipate in the least. She has this habit of correctly predicting Sherlock Holmes story outcomes, but this one completely took her by surprise. I think it might take you by surprise as well, should you choose to read this fun read.

In Christ.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight

2008-12-24T15:48:00.003-05:00

Rating: PG-13

Degree to which what sins there are in the movie (as defined biblically) are condemned (0 = sin is always winked at, 10 = sin is always condemned): 8

Degree to which the story has redemptive value (0 = no one saves anyone, 10 = practically the story of Christ's redemption of His people): 5

Artistry of movie (0 = completely inartistic, 10 = stunning work of art): 7

Originality (0 = copies everything from somewhere else, 10 = unique): 9

Synopsis: Harvey Dent is the new District Attorney in Gotham, and he appears to be as incorruptible as Gotham is not. He is also dating Bruce Wayne/Batman's girl, Rachel Dawes (almost hilariously miscast in this movie), a fact which complicates matters tremendously. Enter the Joker, a villain with very few rules except do everything he can to create chaos and mayhem. Without giving away too much, I'll say that the trajectory of this movie is dark in the extreme.

Critical Review: The most disorienting thing about this movie is that the viewer really has no idea whatsoever what the Joker wants to do, or what his goal is until near the end of the movie. He kills with apparently no conscience whatsoever, burns large piles of money he has just earned, etc. I should also point out that it is extremely improbable that anyone could be so far ahead of justice as the Joker appears to be. That, of course, is of no concern to the story. The story simply assumes the existence of such a man.

The theme of Dark Knight is actually very similar to the theme of Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkein, though I would say the ending is quite different. That theme is that corruption can happen to anyone, even someone like Harvey Dent.

Overall: This was a depressing movie, though exciting; it was gory, though it definitely told some truth. It is definitely worth watching at least once, though I'm not sure all the hype was well-placed. Both Susan and I liked Batman Begins better.

In Christ.

Beethoven

2008-12-17T08:57:00.002-05:00

Yesterday/Today is Beethoven's Birthday! That's right. Beethoven's family celebrated his birthday on the 16th, but Beethoven himself, if I remember correctly, preferred to think of his birthday on the 17th. According to records, he was at least baptized on the 17th. In any case, my favorite composer was born in the year 1770 in Bonn, Germany (a fact that Bonn, apparently, is fond of reminding the world), and died March 26, 1827.

My favorite work of all is his Fifth Piano Concerto (Emperor), Op. 73. Listen to it some time, if you have the chance. It is truly magnificent. The first movement is royal, the second movement lush, and the third movement exhilirating.

In Christ.

A Plug

2008-12-10T13:36:00.003-05:00

I just finished listening to almost all (not all are posted) of the 2008 ACCS Conference talks. They were, for the most part, terrific. You can download all of them for free from here. Some highlights for me:

Any talks by George Grant.
19 Matt Whitling - Boys and Classical Education
30 Douglas Wilson - Defending Sayers' Insight
50 Ken Myers - With Choirs of Angels: Music and Transcendent Order

The last I mentioned, Ken Myers on music, was unbelievably good. It would be good medicine for many Christians these days who think that beauty in music is relative (it isn't relative in truth or goodness; why beauty?). Ken Myers is one of those (only slightly) annoying people who are never cliched, quote mostly authors I've never heard of, and issue profound truths almost as asides. I have a time of it to keep my mind up to what he's talking about! It's worth the effort, though.

In Christ.

Book Review: How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics, by Zbigniew Michalewicz and David B. Fogel

2008-11-22T11:29:00.002-05:00

This was a fun book to read, if you're into geeky books, that is. One of the central points the authors were trying to make throughout the whole book is that one problem is different from another, and that therefore the methods of solution will likely have to differ. Indeed, if you incorporate zero knowledge of the problem into your solution, then your solution must essentially be a random search.

Three problems provided a common thread for the many methods the authors reviewed. The first problem was the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). This is a famous unsolved problem in computer science. The idea is that a salesman must visit a given number of cities once only, and do so using the shortest possible path. The solution space is of size (n-1)!/2, where n is the number of cities. Applications of this problem could be drilling holes in a printed circuit board quickly. The second problem was the Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT). Here you have an expression involving a certain number of Boolean variables (they're like switches: they can be either on or off, 0 or 1, True or False), and you want to find a collection of values for which the expression comes out True. The size of the solution space is 2^n. Applications of the SAT problem include scheduling problems. Finally, there was a particular non-linear optimzation problem (NLP): maximize a complicated function involving the sums of fourth powers of cosines, the products of squares of cosines, and several complicated constraints involving sums and products. The solution space of this problem is technically uncountable infinite, but on a computer you have restrictions. Supposing a particular representation for numbers on a computer, say, with n variables each of which is m bits long, you have a solution space of order n * 2^m. Applications of this particular optimization problem might be limited, but the kind of problem is ubiquitous.

I really liked the way the authors kept hammering away at the same three problems throughout the entire book. It provided a good element of continuity. I also liked their assertion that human nature is to have a hammer and assume everything is a nail. The authors approach problem-solving differently, better: find the right tool for the job at hand. Contrary to many collections of numerical recipes (as valuable as those can be), the authors are more trying to examine the wisdom of when to use a particular technique on a particular problem.

Another theme of the book was a profound point. Suppose you teach a particular technique in a chapter of a textbook, and then you have the students do the end-of-chapter problems. Naturally, those end-of-chapter problems require applying the technique the kids just learned. After all, they're at the end of THAT chapter! However, such an approach does nothing to teach kids when to use a particular technique and when not to. An interesting and fascinating illustration of this point came when the authors proposed two relatively simple problems, not requiring any math beyond high school geometry and trigonometry, outside of the context of a particular technique. The problems were, therefore, much harder to solve. Indeed, the authors gave these two problems to math and engineering undergrads, graduate students, and even professors. Fewer than 5% could solve the problems in anything less than an hour, even though the solutions, if you know the trick, take less than five minutes each to write! Apparently, we are not taught truly to solve problems, the hard problems, the problems we've never seen before. That is the point the authors were making, and I think it's valid.

The authors propose using evolutionary computing to solve the TSP, SAT, and NLP problems mentioned above. While they don't claim it's a panacea, they do urge this family of solutions because of its flexibility in light of changing conditions, competitive conditions, etc. You still have to tune the solution to the problem, or evolutionary computing will not do any better than a random search in the search space.

The method of evolutionary computing takes its cue from the theory of evolution. And here we have to be careful as Christians. I don't believe in Darwinian evolution, not a bit of it. First of all, and most importantly, it doesn't square with Scripture. Second of all, although you do seem to see micro-evolution within species, there is no evidence whatsoever for macro-evolution. Moreover, it is rather evident that many proponents (certainly not all) of the theory of evolution take that position precisely so they can rule out the existence of God. I reject the theory of evolution, therefore, on both theological and scientific grounds. The theory of evolution, in fact, is not science but a faith. By the same token, Creation "Science" is not science either, but faith. Both are dealing with highly non-repeatable events (the origin of the universe), and thus, ultimately, no experiments are available which will provide evidence one way or the other.

However, just because I reject the theory of evolution doesn't mean that, in theory, a method of computation based on those ideas is necessarily immoral or somehow anti-Christian. The authors, as is usual with evolutionists, are unfortunately a bit preachy (in the bad sense of the word) on the point of evolution.

The evolutionary methods of computation have achieved some remarkable results in obtaining approximate solutions to problems (which is often the best you can hope for!). In addition to evolutionary computing, the authors delve into neural networks, fuzzy logic, coevolutionary systems, and multicriterial decision-making. All of these things are fascinating because they are so real. It's so easy to see real-world applications of these concepts!

Overall, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone whose business in life is to solve problems, especially of the numeric kind.

Movie Review: Wall-E

2008-11-22T06:38:00.002-05:00

Rating: G

Degree to which what sins there are in the movie (as defined biblically) are condemned (0 = sin is always winked at, 10 = sin is always condemned): 7

Degree to which the story has redemptive value (0 = no one saves anyone, 10 = practically the story of Christ's redemption of His people): 5

Artistry of movie (0 = completely inartistic, 10 = stunning work of art): 5

Originality (0 = copies everything from somewhere else, 10 = unique): 3

Synopsis: The people of Earth have been so neglectful of their environment that it can no longer sustain photosynthesis, and therefore life. A single robot (named Wall-E) roams the Earth, and it is his sole business to sort through trash and organize it into square bundles. The movie opens with views of whole skyscrapers built of these small squares of trash. We see him going about his daily business, when he is interrupted by a spaceship landing, and another robot getting out and starting to investigate Earth. Wall-E is immediately "smitten" by the supposedly female robot, who he finds out is named Eva. Just before Eva arrives, Wall-E finds one little plant growing, which he immediately transplants into his little hoard of treasures. When Wall-E shows the plant to Eva, she immediately goes unconscious and has a little green plant sign on her that is pulsating. She also, incidentally, pockets the plant. Wall-E starts doing romantic things for the unconscious Eva, imagining that she's actually responding to him, and in general making a fool of himself. Eventually, the spaceship returns and takes Eva with it, but not before Wall-E manages to hook himself onto the exterior of the spaceship. The spaceship takes off, and Wall-E somehow manages to survive atmospheric exit. The spaceship docks with a gigantic spaceship on which we find out the rest of the human race dwells. The rest of the story shows how Wall-E and Eva interact with each other and the humans.

Critical Review: I'm someone who believes we should be caring for animals and the environment, but why? Because man, however fallen he may be, is still the crown of creation. We are stewards of God's creation. Moreover, there are other moral principles that are, to my mind, far more important than saving the environment. For example, it is more important for men to be free to worship God than it is to take care of the environment. It is more important to save baby humans not yet born than to save the whales.

For these reasons, the movie came across as exceptionally "preachy" - in the bad sense of the word. Hollywood came across as the typical we-are-environmentalists-and-the-worst-crime-you-can-commit-is-to-degrade-the-environment-in-any-way.

There were too many references to past movies and themes. 2001, A Space Odyssey, came to mind, with the battle between the ship's captain and the auto-pilot (who even looked like the computer in 2001). There were distinct themes of Brave New World.

There were a few genuinely funny moments - I enjoyed in particular the scene where Wall-E is showing Eva his treasure collection and hands her a unsolved Rubic's Cube. The camera excludes her for a second or two, and then re-includes her holding a solved Rubic's Cube. Very geeky, that.

I didn't appreciate the typical feminist gender reversal in this movie. Wall-E is supposedly masculine, and Eva supposedly feminine. But Eva has all the firepower, does all the dragon-slaying, and has the take-charge attitude, whereas Wall-E is the lovable, caring, nurturing sort.

Overall: a mediocre movie. It might be worth watching, but it's not nearly as good as The Incredibles.

A Fun Pic

2008-08-13T18:28:00.003-05:00

Who'd have thunk my son would be asking for money this early?

Comment on Physics and Christian Theology: Beauty, a Common Dialect?, an outline article by Tracee Hackel.

2008-08-11T19:33:00.003-05:00

In Pursuit of Truth: A Journal of Christian Scholarship published the article mentioned in the title of this blog post. The outline version then appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Classis, the quarterly journal of the Association of Classical & Christian Schools.

As a practicing mathematical physicist who is also Trinitarian in thinking, I definitely appreciated the general tone of the article, and agreed with most of the points the article made.

However, I did have some small quibbles with the article. In one part of the article, the author wrote:

Maxwell’s insight, which led him to unify the theories of electricity and magnetism, launched human understanding beyond the mechanistic world of Newtonian physics into the new universe of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics...

Being steeped in Trinitarian Christian theology appears to have made Maxwell particularly adept at the kind of thinking required to discover the necessary components of quantum mechanics.

I'm not exactly sure what Hackel meant here.

1. Studying the Maxwell equations, and discovering that they are not invariant under a Galilean coordinate transformation, was certainly important to the discovery of relativity theory. One of Einstein's postulates of Special Relativity states that the laws of physics (particularly Maxwell's equations) are valid in every inertial reference frame.

In other words, relativity is hidden in the Maxwell equations. However, I do not think it would be accurate to say that Maxwell launched human understanding beyond Newtonian mechanics, at least not immediately. Certainly, it was not Maxwell who did that.

2. Maxwell didn't discover the necessary components of quantum mechanics. Now, while it is possible to construe Hackel's statement to mean that those who did discover the necessary components of quantum mechanics had to have the same kind of thinking as Maxwell, an undiscerning reader might not pick up on that, and think instead that Maxwell indeed DID discover the necessary components of quantum mechanics.

I challenge Tracee Hackel to counter these statements, which would, I believe, be corroborated by most physicists today, and probably most historians of science.

Perhaps Hackel is right on these points, and I am wrong. I'm certainly wrong my fair share of the time. However, this time I don't think so.

In Christ.

Vocational Training vs. Classical Christian Education?

2008-07-09T19:57:00.004-05:00

When it comes to classical Christian education (cCE), I am all for it. However, there's a trend in cCE of which I'm not sure I approve. I haven't given it deep thought, but I have given it enough to blog about it and hope that one or two of my rare readers will debate it. The question concerns vocational training.

The classical component of cCE is all about training the mind how to think, and how to learn. This is so important to many in the field (such as the faculty of New St. Andrews College, e.g.), that I wonder if they haven't over-reacted against vocational training. Here's a quote from the Wiki on cCE:

After the Industrial Revolution and the World War I, progressive theories of education along with cultural conditions that suggested a new era of democracy and human capability were dawning combined to lead many to turn from the traditional classical curriculum and experiment with new more pragmatic approaches to education that emphasized vocational and professional training over the "making of the man" that was the aim of the traditional classical curriculum.

I have heard, though I can't produce the source off-hand, something to the effect that New St. Andrews college rejoices in giving their students a degree that can't land them a job. There does seem to be a strong feeling against vocational training in cCE.

Now I wonder, is this the way cCE needs to go?

Consider the following issues pro and con this anti-vocational training bent:

Pro:

Granted that the modern K-Ph.D. vocational training route usually fails to teach students how to think or learn. The exceptions seem to be the students bright enough to figure that out on their own.

Con:

1. Surely, in today's economy, we must have division of labor. We need people in the engineering and science fields, for example.

2. Someone with God-given talents and abilities in science/engineering (I pick on these fields not because they're the only such fields out there, but because they make a good test case for what I'm talking about) who receives a cCE, without extensive further training on the order of a degree, will assuredly NOT be able to get a job doing science or engineering.

3. Today's market has changed a fair amount. In the private sector, employers seem to be getting rid of their more experienced employees who can train in the new guys. As a consequence, more and more jobs are requiring already experienced applicants. Employers want recruits who can hit the ground running, not someone who needs a year of extensive training before he's worth anything.

4. If a man does not work, he shall not eat. We have it on pretty decent authority that if a man does not eat, he will not live. The commandment not to murder says that we are to promote life. Therefore, it is a logical consequence that a man must work. Given that work is THAT important, why would an education purposely try to avoid giving a man specialized tools?

It seems to me that specialization does seem to be one of the main issues here. Classical Christian education rightly points out that a man gets to be mentally one-sided if all he does is vocation. I would almost claim that a man would get to be physically one-sided if all he did was cCE! Where's a balance?

Here's my proposal. For K-12, hit the cCE as hard as you want. If you do that bit well, he should be prepared, as Dorothy Sayers says, for life. In today's world, that's probably going to mean that he has to get a degree in order to earn a buck, though there are, of course, exceptions. So let's say he has to get a degree. Well, he has the tools of learning. Put them to work in vocational training (which you can sort of view as an extension of the Quadrivium, if you like). Make the post-secondary education vocational, with the assumption that the students are classically trained.

As one German chemist put it, "Give me a student who has learned his Latin grammar, and I will answer for his chemistry."

Book Review: The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, by Carl B. Boyer.

2008-07-04T12:02:00.003-05:00

Dover published this book in 1959, although Boyer no doubt wrote it earlier.

I picked this book up mainly because I wanted to know as much as possible about any subject I want to teach, calculus being very high on that list. This book was definitely an eye-opener. There were several main points Boyer wanted to get across, namely the following:

1. There are many instances in which historians ascribe some complicated, nuanced concept such as the limit to an early thinker like Archimedes, when in fact said early thinker did not have the concept fully in his head (or so we judge by his writings).

2. The founders of the calculus, and even some who came after, did not invent calculus in a vacuum. Although Newton and Leibniz may have bundled the existing algorithms into a nice package and thus deserve to be called the inventors of the calculus, the story was not over then, and even so bold a thinker as Lagrange didn't get some things right (at least, as we think of "right" these days.)

3. The development of calculus did not happen overnight (more like over the span of 2500 years!).

There are some interesting criticisms of Boyer's book on Amazon. I'd encourage you to read them. I found a few of them to be right on. For though there are few books which collect all of the information in one place like Boyer's, he does have some hidden assumptions, especially modernism.

Another criticism I would have of the book is the disassociation of calculus from physics. Physics provided a good deal of the motivation for developing the calculus in the first place, but Boyer barely mentions it.

Is it worth reading? Yes, if you want to teach calculus or write about the philosophy of math or the history of math. It would even be useful for students to read so that they don't get the impression that calculus fell out of the sky in the "perfect" delta-epsilon form we have today.

For that matter, my Dad wrote a calculus book in which in put forth the Third Derivative Test, which is not in any textbook of which I am aware. Calculus, while a full, rich body of knowledge, cannot possibly be complete. (See Goedel's proof of the incompleteness of first-order logic.)

Book Review: The Vaccine Book, by Robert Sears.

2008-06-06T16:47:00.004-05:00

It's not very often that I get to read a book that is sane, well-written, researched up and down, and amusing into the bargain. This was one. This man knows his audience.

There are twelve chapters to start with, one for each of the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended vaccines. That list I will reproduce for you here, not counting multiple shots in a sequence (for example, the Hepatitus B vaccine has several shots recommended, but I'll only list the vaccine once):

1. Haemophilus Influenzae Type B Disease and the HIB vaccine.
2. Pneumococcal Disease and the Pc Vaccine.
3. Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis Diseases and the DTaP Vaccine.
4. Hepatitus B Disease and the Heb P Vaccine.
5. Rotavirus Disease and the Rotavirus Vaccine.
6. Polio Disease and the Polio Vaccine.
7. Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Diseases and the MMR Vaccine.
8. Chickenpox Disease and the Varicella Vaccine.
9. Hepatitus A Disease and the Hep A Vaccine.
10. Influenza Disease and the Flu Vaccine.
11. Meningococcal Disease and the Meningococcal Vaccine.
12. Human Papillomavirus Disease and the HPV Vaccine.

He then goes into several issues related to vaccines, including:

13. Combination Vaccines, Vaccines for Travel, and Vaccines for Other Special Situations.
14. Vaccine Safety Research.
15. Vaccine Side Effects.
16. Vaccine Ingredients.
17. Myths and Questions about Vaccines.
18. Parents Who Delay or Decline Vaccination.
19. What Should You Now Do?

What's interesting to me is how seriously he takes most sides. There are a few positions for which he has little patience. Here's one juicy quote:

...I've recorded the thoughtful and logical ones [parental responses] in this section of each chapter. (I've purposely left out any of the really, shall we say, "interesting" ideas. Although the inclusion of such interesting comments would be sure to entertain and amuse you - like the one about germs not really causing infections; they're just a normal and harmless part of our everyday existence, so the shots aren't needed to prevent them - some of them might just confuse the heck out of you, and this book is all about unconfusion.) [emphasis original]

He takes the concerns of parents seriously, especially when it comes to vaccine side effects, which he believes are not studied nearly enough. He does grant that it is extremely difficult to study vaccine side effects, because of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (after the fact, therefore because of the fact: this fallacy proposes the idea that because event B followed event A, it must be that event A caused event B). Moreover, children do not usually take just one vaccine at a time, and hence it is difficult to separate out the effects of just one vaccine. He also takes seriously the issue of vaccine ingredients. For him, I would definitely say that aluminum and mercury are the ingredients to which he pays the most attention. Thankfully, there's only about one brand (not the only brand) of one kind of vaccine that has anything more than a tiny trace amount of mercury in it. With respect to aluminum, he goes so far as to propose an alternative vaccine schedule that spaces the vaccines out, and never gives more than a certain amount of aluminum at a time. He's done lots of statistics, comparing the risk of a vaccine side effect versus the risk of the disease, and comparing the severity of the two.

He's obviously done tons of research, as evidenced by a copious bibliography. He's read the anti-vaccine books, and he's read the product inserts of the vaccines themselves. He's read the medical research papers. He's collected a large number of parental comments, and he has ten years of pediatric experience himself.

All in all, I'd say this is the balanced, scientific viewpoint (and we are talking here about scientific questions) that is most helpful for the discussion. Perhaps msot helpfully, he doesn't come right and say you should do this or that. He gives you the information, and gives you his own opinion. He knows that the final decision is up to the parents.

Highly recommended!

Still Alive

2008-05-03T17:01:00.004-05:00

I'm still alive and kicking, though I find myself without much time for blogging. In addition, I find that many, if not most of the ideas that I've ever wanted to write about I've already written about. However, it is apparently in the nature of a blog that if you're not constantly monitoring it, commenting on other people's blogs, commenting on their comments to your blog, people consider your blog to be deadly dull. That's fine. I have no problem with that.

I'm hoping to refresh/learn physics again. You see I've picked up my old Marion and Thornton on the currently reading category. The idea is to do the whole Landau/Lifschitz series of books, with some augmentation. And why? Aside from the fact that it's fun (just had to throw out that geeky comment), I've thought for some time that my physics is pretty weak. There are a number of topics I never even really had in school: tensors, abstract algebra in the context of field theory, advanced geometry and that sort of thing. I also NEVER understood thermodynamics. I consider thermo to be the most difficult subject in physics. Perhaps Landau can shed some light on the topic, as at least two or three books in his ten volume set correspond to thermo.

At some point, too, I need to go through the Coddington/Levinson Diff Eq book, and Dummit and Foote's Abstract Algebra book, as well as learning statistics and geometry (two subjects I really haven't done justice to).

That will enable me, at the end, I hope, to study Quantum Computing in earnest, as well as being a good preparation for teaching. A teacher should be master of his subject, as the first of Gregory's Seven Laws says.

Work at Bloomy Controls goes well. I've delivered my first project! That was pretty fun.

Susan is doing well, though tired much of the time, of course. We are expecting a boy June 22.

In Christ.

A Poem for Susan

2007-10-18T18:08:00.001-05:00

The Hares and the Fox

Now let me sing of the tale of the hares and the fox. In a    wood, by a
Lake lived a hare and his wife. They had small ones about,    and a nice, quiet
Life, with no foxes to chase them, destroy them and eat    them. The hare thought his
Wife was attractive and pretty: he loved her and loved all his    wee ones, too.

Hare, it was, said to his wife, “Shall we leave and go walking    and see all the
Sights this great wood and the lake do afford us?” She said,    “Let us walk in the
Wood, and we'll leave all the wee ones behind, lest they stray    and be lost in this
Great, though quite beautiful wood.” So they left them    behind, and began their walk.

Sunny, it was, in the fall of the year; the long lake shimmered    brightly, and
Trees whispered lightly, and clouds floated past them on    water of blue. All the
Earth seemed to smile on the hare and his wife, to rejoice    that such love could be.
Nothing, it seemed, could quite darken their aspect. Enjoyed    their long walk they did.

But, in this great wood, a fox lingered on, driven by all his    hunger, he
Slinked round and round, hunting food, for he knew that the    winter was coming fast.
Spied he the hare and his wife, for their paths chanced to    cross; but the eyes of the
Hare were remarkably bright, and the hare saw the fox at the    same moment.

“Run,” said the hare to his wife, “And I'll hope that the fox    will pursue me and
Leave you alone.” So they split into two diff'rent ways. Now    the hare was a
Hair larger than his sweet wife, so the fox thought the hare    was the better catch.
Off he went, and chased the hare quite as fast as he could.    And a chase it was!

On went the fox chasing hare. But the fox had more speed    than the aging hare.
Gained he the hare after ten minutes' chase, and he bit off    one hare's leg, and
Settled down for the remainder; the hare could not run any    farther. But
As fox began to tear into his flesh, the old hare smiled a    smile of love.

For while he'd never see wee ones again, nor would wife    nuzzle up to him
Close in the wood, they would live, by his sacrifice. Word    got around to his
Wife, of the death he had died that he might give her life.    And she wept for a
Time, missing him; but his joy cometh in the sweet morning,    and she lived long.

New Blog

2007-09-11T18:23:00.000-05:00

I've started a new blog. The subject will be literary criticism and theory. The plan is first to look at some constructive (i.e., good) methods of interpretation, followed by the deconstructive (i.e., bad) ones. In the process, we'll look at C. S. Lewis, Jacques Derrida, Reformed theologians, and others. Hope it piques your interest a little.

In Christ.

Adrian here.

2007-09-10T17:04:00.001-05:00

Well, we're mostly back to normal. It doesn't quite look the same, but that awful pink is gone, at least. :-)]

In Christ.

Susan here :-)

2007-09-10T08:02:00.000-05:00

Heehee. No, this is not my blog. Don't recheck your browser. It's Adrian's blog, but it looks like mine. The idea is that I'm trying to get him used to the idea of being influenced by a female 24/7. His blog design was okay before (much better than the original dungeon look!), but look how much prettier this is! What do you think?

Please comment to my blog post (not his, or he'll get the comments at work, and be apprised of the situation early) and tell him how much you love this new design :-). And if he quickly turns back to gray, sorry, folks! I'm posting this right as Adrian starts work for the day, so hopefully the blog will retain this lovely pink color until 5:30 or so.

Only 12 more days, in case anyone wanted a countdown :-).

EDIT: Riiiight. So lesson for everyone - backup templates before engaging in this sort of shenanigan! After almost 2 hours, I finally got almost all the sidebar looking the same (because I thankfully had an unrefreshed window with Adrian's original blog open), with the exception of the Blogroll Counter and the Technorati link. Next time I will back up the template!!!! *ugh*

I still think his blog looks pretty :-).

Old Books

2007-09-05T17:23:00.001-05:00

Now that the title of this post has completely prevented you from reading anything I might say, I should like to point you to the Introduction to On the Incarnation by Athanasius. The Introduction I'm thinking of is the one by C. S. Lewis, and can be found in its entirety here. The introduction is well worth reading. One of my favorite passages in the introduction is this one:

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

This is pure gold. If you want a balanced viewpoint of new versus old, here it is. No chronological snobbery here!

In Christ.

Excitement?

2007-09-05T17:06:00.001-05:00

So I'm supposed to post about how excited I am to be marrying Susan Garrison in a little more than 16 days (or 17, depending on how you count it). I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to say. How do you convey the excitement in the fulfillment of a dream? Especially one you've held as tenaciously as this one? How do you talk about the perfection of the beloved, so perfect in my God-given-grace-tinted-bespectacled eyes that she is beyond my dreams? How do you communicate the extreme anticipation of the first kiss?

It's written in the Good Book that "There are three things which are too wonderful for me, Yes, four which I do not understand: The way of an eagle in the air, The way of a serpent on a rock, The way of a ship in the midst of the sea, And the way of a man with a virgin." - Proverbs 30:18-19. Well, that makes me feel better. At least, if a wise man like Agur the son of Jakeh is willing to admit he doesn't understand it, then maybe I'm in good company when I don't, either.

In Christ.

From the Notices of the American Mathematical Society

2007-09-01T13:31:00.001-05:00

Or I could have titled this post, "Even Mathematicians can be Very Illogical."

In the September 2007 issue of the Notices of the AMS, there is published an interview with Stephen Smale. The interviewer was George Szpiro. There is an editor's note which explains that Stephen Smale won the Fields medal (the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize) in 1966, I suppose to imply that Smale is a good mathematician. I have no doubt he is. However, he can be just as guilty of illogical thinking as the next man. The third question in the interview goes like this.

[begin quote]
Szpiro: Why is mathematics so effective in explaining phenomena, as opposed to, say, narratives?

[Note by Adrian: this was an incredibly good question, perhaps even better than Szpiro knew, though I would hardly argue that narratives are a bad way of explaining phenomena. Aside from the Bible, even mathematicians have to use tons of regular language, for me, English, to explain anything, though perhaps you might not think of that as narrative.]

Smale: Mathematics is a kind of formalized way of thinking. One can be much more precise in mathematics than in literature, express relationships in a more precise way, include magnitudes. And even fuzziness can be incorporated in mathematics by using probabilities. I use that a lot because when moving from physics to vision and biology one has to overcome some kind of fuzziness. The way I do that is - in the mathematical tradition - by using probability.

Mathematics is so effective because one can look for universal laws more easily with mathematics than without. It enables us to abstract the main ideas. With formalization and symbols one is able to see what is universal. The abstraction allows us to see universal ideas. I have been very inspired by Newton who could see a falling apple and the motion of planets and recognize them as part of the same phenomenon. I would like to see a language that allows us to translate what we see and then recognize it as part of a broad phenomenon.
[end quote]

When I first read the question, my heart leapt! Here was a chance to wax theological and explain how, because the universe was created by God and is sustained by God, and since God is constant and never goes against His own nature, and since His creation reflects Him, and since there is no contradiction in God, that therefore the universe reflects that in its logic and in the physical laws we see around us.

Instead, we get the incredibly circular attempt to be pragmatic: "Mathematics is so effective because one can look for universal laws more easily with mathematics than without." The entire second paragraph of Smale's response goes to support this thesis. He says mathematics is effective because it makes things easier. But effectiveness and ease are really synonyms here. So we have A because of A. Wow. I'm thoroughly underwhelmed.

I should also point out that Smale is by no means the only mathematician/physicist to miss the mark on this question. At least one great physicist, either Feynman or Penrose, said something, "There is no answer."

Now do not interpret me as claiming that everything Smale said was wrong; modern mathematics really is about abstraction, though I would hasten to add that the re-concretization (if that's a word) is the summit, the final push, that a lot of mathematicians don't want to do, but ought to.

In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says that God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. My answer to the effectiveness of modern mathematics is that it is effective because of the way God designed the universe. He designed it to exhibit an order closely related to His own. I have no need of any other answer. Interestingly, I also get my marching orders from God, who in Genesis said to multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. What is subduing the earth if not science and technology?

In Christ.

Literary Criticism

2007-08-12T08:05:00.001-05:00

After finishing my Pride and Prejudice blog, which should happen soon, Lord willing, I'm been wondering what in tarnation I'm going to do with my Sunday afternoons. Then I started reading the introduction to Pride and Prejudice in my Everyman's Library Edition, and also the Afterward in my (well, really Susan's and my) Collector's Library Edition (Barne's and Noble). It hit me: both of those are a complete load of TRIPE!!! From there my thoughts went to how anyone (including Peter Conrad from Christ Church, Oxford, who wrote the Everyman's Library edition introduction) could possibly write such nonsense. From there I thought about how dangerous these men are. They are the so-called "intellectually elite" at the universities. They will influence our future leaders. What a grim picture!

So my next project is going to be to dive into the incredibly nasty world of modern literary criticism, and do what debunking I can. I rather think this job is going to be difficult, since a lot of what these sort of people write seems rather unintelligible compared with what the great authors of the past have written. Plato, for example, is far more intelligible than almost anyone who writes about Plato, which is yet another argument for going to the primary sources. As the Renaissance said, Ad fontes!

Hopefully, what will come out of all this will be something written by someone very ordinary (me, in this case) for the ordinary reader that will arm him against these dangerous notions that have, I think, even crept into the church.

So after Cucumberlandisland is done, look for that!

In Christ.

A Think Tank

2007-07-29T22:12:00.001-05:00

Grove City College has started a think tank. I admit I don't always keep up with my alma mater all that well, which is why I am only just now noticing such a big step, though I have kept up with some of their building programs. In any case, this think tank sounds very exciting to me. They've published quite a few articles already, very thought-provoking ones. I'd definitely recommend having a look at it.

Their specialites would definitely include Austrian Economics, conservative politics, musings on baseball, and other random, scholarly works. Highly recommended!

In Christ.

Attacking Me Versus Attacking My Fiancee

2007-07-16T18:43:00.000-05:00

In my previous post, one anonymous commenter made some incredibly rude comments about by fiancee, Susan Garrison. This post is a notice that I will delete all such comments with no warning other than this one.

The way I figure it, if I have a big enough mouth to actually blog, then I ought to have a thick enough skull to take all the negative comments I'm sure to get. That's why I generally allow anonymous comments; anonymous commenters get to show their stupidity by the ol' "hit-and-run" method. Such comments don't usually bother me.

However, my uber-sweet fiancee is another matter entirely. I will defend her to the death.

And so, rather than making any rude comments concerning Susan's appearance or beliefs or opinions, the would-be commenter on this blog is warned to stop short of such.

In Christ.

An Interesting WSJ Article

2007-07-09T07:29:00.001-05:00

Today, there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal concerning Isabel Loeffler, an 8-year-old autistic and mentally retarded girl. Her school has apparently "resorted" to using discipline in order to restrain some of her wild actions. Naturally, in today's sue-happy world where your child can do no wrong (the "Little League Mom" mentality, as my mother put it), the parents are suing the school for using their methods. To be fair, actually, the parents realize that certain methods have not been working. The article has the usual disparaging comments regarding discipline.

You know something? I haven't the foggiest idea what are good ways to interact with autistic or mentally retarded children. I don't know all the things that make them tick. I'm not going to presume to dictate to others how to raise their children, except to champion biblical principles, which I'm convinced work as well here as anywhere else. What do I know?

1. I know that all human beings, autistic and mentally retarded ones included, are conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Ps. 51.

2. That means we are all sinners in need of the saving grace of God. Corrective discipline should be aimed at the whole person, a la Shepherding a Child's Heart, by Tripp.

3. The common assumption, therefore, that children are all wonderful (indeed, often more wonderful than adults) needs some careful revision, if not upending.

4. What is more loving to a child: telling them they're wonderful all the time regardless of how they behave, or teaching them the truth that they are not the bright center of this universe?

5. We must show "special needs" children quite the same love and grace we should show to any other children. How that looks will doubtless be different from the non-special-needs child. However, it WILL include discipline (incidentally, discipline is far more than punishment for wrongdoing!), and it WILL include instructions on how the child is not equal to the universe, and it WILL include instruction about our loving and holy and righteous and wrathful-against-wrongdoing and gracious God.

Interestingly, another WSJ article today had to do with blaming Mr. Rogers for how all our children always think they're "entitled", or "special", often without working for it. Food for thought, anyway.

Now, here's a challenge for someone a lot smarter than me: take these basic principles and apply them to the special needs children.

Phrase Blacklist

2007-06-30T10:48:00.001-05:00

Every technical author should generally blacklist these phrases from his repertoire:

well-known. Translation: you're a dummy if you don't know this.

clear or clearly. See above. Also, in writing at all, you're attempting to make this clear. To say that it already is seems to me to be leaping to conclusions.

obvious. See comment for "well-known."

Any similar phrases that make the reader feel dumb if they don't get what you're saying.

Passive sentences. Technical writers, perhaps, use these phrase to attain the illusion of objectivity. However, there's no such thing, so why pretend? The honest thing to do is simply come right out and say what your bias is. Doing so provides the reference frame by which others can evaluate your work.

Endnotes. Endnotes are a convenience for the writer and the publisher. They are a distinct inconvenience for the reader. Who wants to flip all the way to the back of the book to check up on a tangent? Tangents are way too much fun for that!

Nobody's perfect. No doubt some smart-aleck will analyze some of my previous posts and find some of these phrases in there, and then claim that I'm being a hypocrite. Not a bit of it. I would only be a hypocrite if I said I was actually following my own advice perfectly. I make no such claim! This entire post is in the "the way I think things ought to be" category, not the "here's the way I think things are" category.

Have fun writing!

In Christ.

Amos

2007-06-24T16:46:00.000-05:00

Suppose you have a problem: God doesn't like your worship. Naturally, we don't normally know this, but let's suppose we do for a second. Let's suppose we know that God downright despises our worship.

What's the solution? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? It must not be heartfelt enough. It's not sincere enough. We need to forget about our brains and worry about our heart. (Forgetting that in Hebrew thought, that's a contradiction.) This must be the answer, right?

Well, not always. In Amos 5:21-24, we have the following in ESV:

21 "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. 23 Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. 24 But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

Apparently, the solution to the problem in this particular case was to "let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream." This solution, while it doesn't ignore the heart, is so much more than that! Justice has an external aspect to it: we treat other people justly, or not. What is righteousness? Webster's 1828 dictionary defines it this way:

1. Purity of heart and rectitude of life; conformity of heart and life to the divine law. Righteousness, as used in Scripture and theology, in which it is chiefly used, is nearly equivalent to holiness, comprehending holy principles and affections of heart, and conformity of life to the divine law. It includes all we call justice, honesty, and virtue, with holy affections; in short, it is true religion. 2. Applied to God, the perfection or holiness of his nature; exact rectitude; faithfulness. 3. The active and passive obedience of Christ, by which the law of God is fulfilled. Dan. 9. 4. Justice; equity between man and man. Luke 1. 5. The cause of our justification. "The Lord our righteousness." Jer. 23.

There's a lot there. Quiz question: which definition is being thought of in the Amos passage? I submit that the answer is "all of the above." Firstly, the Amos passage speaks of this justice and righteousness "rolling down." Well, I would interpret that to mean that justice and righteousness come first from God to us. We can do nothing right without His grace. Secondly, this justice and righteousness must surely work its way out in our lives. We have the imputed active obedience of Christ; therefore, let us reflect that! And of course, to do so we still need God's strength. We can do none of this on our own. And yet, we must do it.

Only then will our worship be acceptable to God.

So why does this matter? Because worship is what we're going to be doing for an eternity. If that sounds boring, you're in for a surprise in heaven (assuming, by God's grace, you get there)! The stereotype of heaven is playing harps on clouds. Many people, not being musicians, don't get that picture. Here's an alternative: heaven is going to be like sex, only a lot better: infinitely better. Why is it like sex? Because sex is the consummation of human marriages, and heaven is the consummation of the heavenly one: Christ with His church. But I say that sex is only the image, the picture, the shadow of the much greater thing: heaven. That's what heaven's going to be like. How does that sound?

In Christ.

Including Figures in LaTeX

2007-06-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

Having trouble including figures in your LaTeX document? Here's a procedure I've developed that should work on most computers that have Mathematica on them.

1. Create figure using whatever software you please.

2. Convert the figure to a bitmap file (.bmp). Most photo manipulation software will do this; sometimes the program you used to create the figure will do this.

3. Open Mathematica. Using the File menu, import the bitmap into the current blank notebook. You must import, not open.

4. Select the cell containing the figure.

5. Under the Edit menu in Mathematica, choose Save Selection As...

6. Choose EPS...

7. Save the file in the same directory as the .tex file you are editing.

8. In your LaTeX file, make sure you have the commands

\usepackage{graphics}

and

\usepackage{epsf}

in your header.

9. To include the file, use the following commands:

\begin{figure}
\scalebox{.6}{\epsffile{Filename.eps}}
\caption{Whatever you want to show up in the document explaining the figure goes here.}
\label{Fi:YourLabel}
\end{figure}

This should work. Note that the figure still does not show up in the .dvi file. That's ok. You're going to want to convert your final draft to .pdf. From the Yap dvi viewer, I convert to PostScript (.ps), and then with GhostScript (my postscript viewer), I convert to Portable Document Format (.pdf). The figures show up very nicely in those files, both the PostScript and .pdf files.

Further note: everything from Step 3 on down must occur on the same computer. I tried converting a bitmap to eps on a Mac, and then transferring it to PC. It didn't work.

Further note: Even if you create the figure in Mathematica, you cannot directly save it as a .eps file and expect it to work. You have to "wash" it through the bitmap converter.

Hope this helps. Yes, including figures in LaTeX is a royal pain, but if you follow this procedure, it should work out for you.

Here is a complete document in LaTeX for which this procedure worked.

[begin file FigureExample.tex]
\documentclass{report}

\usepackage{graphics}
\usepackage{epsf}

\begin{document}

Testing the Figure Environment.

\begin{figure}[h]
\scalebox{.4}{\epsffile{Groove.eps}}
\caption{MyLabel}
\label{Fi:Groove}
\end{figure}

Here is a sample document for which this procedure worked.

\end{document}
[end file: FigureExample.tex]

In Christ.

A Blog I Like

2007-06-08T00:54:00.001-05:00

Mr. Greg Wilbur's blog is one I find quite refreshing.

After a disappointment in a debate on Douglas Wilson's blog concerning the objectivity of beauty, I find Mr. Wilbur's thoughts to be most edifying. I hope you enjoy his work as much as I have.

In Christ.

Are We Wimps?

2007-05-03T18:09:00.000-05:00

According to Wikipedia, America has lost the following numbers of military men in battle. That does not count disease, dying in enemy concentration camps, etc.

American Revolutionary War: 8,000.

War of 1812: 2,260.

Mexican War: 1,733.

Civil War (Or War of Northern Aggression, if you prefer): 212,938 total, both North and South.

World War I: 53,402.

World War II: 291,557.

Korean War: 33,746.

Vietnam War: 47,355.

According to Yahoo News, there have been 3,350 military deaths so far in the war in Iraq. If you believed the liberally-biased media (all media are biased: the honest media come out and say what their bias is, unlike the liberally-biased media), the Iraq War is immensely unpopular with the American public. Let's say that's true. I definitely do not believe everything that comes out of the media, but let's grant them this.

Let me clarify something right now: are the 3,350 men who have died so far real casualties, and should we mourn them? Absolutely. Am I minimizing the loss here? Definitely not. But where is the real American spirit? Where is the American spirit that essentially won World War II on both fronts? The number of casualties there was almost two orders of magnitude more! And we have many fewer casualties from disease because of our modern medicine. Most of the casualties so far in the Iraq War have been in battle with insurgents. Lots of bombings, we hear. Fine. Why don't we honor the men who have died to protect our freedom? Why don't we give those who are still in harm's way the tools they need to finish the job?

Where is the spirit of Patrick Henry when he said, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"? There are things worth dying for! And if there are things worth dying for, there are things worth our loved ones dying for. That means there are things worth grieving for. The price we have paid in Iraq is indeed high, but it is not what we paid for World War II. And in World War II, we had the spirit that brought us out of the Depression (do not be deceived, Roosevelt's New Deal did its best to keep us in the Depression; it was the War that brought us out of it.)!

Let's give our troops all the money they need; if we need more troops, let's send them! Let's get the job done. Then we can really rest easy, knowing that 9/11/2001 is that much more unlikely to reoccur.

The Shootings

2007-04-16T20:36:00.000-05:00

God has been very good to me. In light of the recent shootings here at Virginia Tech, please pray for the families of the victims, their friends, etc. No one I know, I think, was hurt, but that is not true for everyone around here.

Incidentally, in case I haven't mentioned it before, I think the media has lost base with reality. Consider: unsubstantiated rumors abounded. The police reports were much more conservative. For example: we don't actually know that the two shootings were even related. There was one shooting in a dorm room: two dead. Approximately two hours later, there was a much more deadly rampage in a classroom: thirty dead. The classroom gunman then turned the gun on himself, making for thirty-one dead in the classroom. The police still don't know if the two shootings are even related. But what does the media do? Automatically make the link, claiming that all 33 deaths are due to one man. In addition, all the media can seem to do is criticize the administration for "lack of proper handling." Let's see the media personnel in those places of authority and see if they could have done any better! I have very little patience with people who only criticize, and have no constructive comments. In addition, rather than focusing on being compassionate to those who have suffered loss, they seem to be focused on beating up the admin. Is there any compassion in the media? I'm looking forward to whatever World magazine puts out on the story.

In Christ.

Announcement

2007-04-08T15:29:00.000-05:00

An event has occurred recently that probably most of you thought was impossible. Susan Garrison has agreed to marry me. For those of you who know me better than others, and have witnessed some of my previous relationships, this might spell the end of what could have been considered a soap opera. I asked her Monday night, and she obviously accepted. For those of you who are curious, we will not be able to set a date for a while. I rather think Susan might be posting some of those juicy details y'all will want to know.

I would like to share with you some of what I believe God has been teaching me during the last few years. The first thing is that a prudent wife is from the Lord. Finding a good wife is not a matter of luck or circumstance, for we serve a sovereign God. There is no way I could have met Susan and pursued her unless the Lord had opened the doors.

The second thing I believe the Lord taught me is the importance of grace in relationships. Before he gave me permission to court, Susan's father asked me why I thought a relationship with Susan would work, where the previous ones failed. My answer was that of all the ladies I had been interested in, Susan is the most aware of the role grace played in her life. She is saved by grace, and knows it. Therefore, she doesn't have to stand up for herself. Without fear, she can voluntarily put herself under the headship of a sinner like me.

The third and last thing I believe the Lord taught me is about the relation between contentment and God's gifts to us. I would like to quote Carolyn McCulley in her essay, “Sex and the Single Woman,” part of a collection entitled Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. She writes,

One more thought: I've often heard married people say to singles that we won't get married until we're content in our singleness, but I humbly submit that this is not true. I'm sure that it is offered by well-meaning couples who want to see their single friends happy and content in God's provision, but it creates a works-based mentality to receiving gifts, which can lead to feelings of condemnation. The Lord doesn't require that we attain a particular state before He grants a gift. We can't earn any particular spiritual gift any more than we can earn our own salvation. It's all of grace. However, we should humbly listen to our friends and receive their input about cultivating contentment – after all, the apostle Paul says that “there is great gain in godliness with contentment” (1 Tim. 6:6); we just shouldn't attach it to the expectation of a blessing.

We serve a gracious God Who delights in giving good gifts to His children. Rejoice with me, my friends, for I am happy.

Familiolatry

2007-04-01T19:10:00.000-05:00

In conservative circles, and I mean theologically conservative, there are many movements towards regaining a biblical view of the family. I can think of half a dozen men working hard for this: Douglas Wilson, Douglas Philips, R. C. Sproul, Jr., and many of their cohorts.

While these men have done some remarkable things, or rather the Holy Spirit hath wrought some remarkable things through them, I see some danger signs. These are very general things I'm going to mention, general impressions. I say these only to put people on their guard, not to denigrate any of the good signs I've seen. I should also mention that I definitely believe in strong families - but strong in grace, and strong in their knowledge of their utter dependence on God's grace.

1. Probably the most dangerous thing I see, by far, is an over-emphasis on the law. "Do this, do that, and everything will be all right." No, it won't. We need God's grace for everything we do, precisely because we are fallen sinners. I'm the last person to say that the law is irrelevant or shouldn't be mentioned: far from it. The law is our teacher, to show us that we need grace. That is true for the unbeliever as well as the believer, and it is true in justification as well as sanctification. However, it is counter-productive to talk all the time about what we ought to do, without mentioning the far greater thing that God does in His own will and timing. It is simply not true that if all the dysfunctional families in society were functional, that everything would be all right. It wouldn't. In fact, there's a possibility it could be a lot worse, given the pride people might well have in their now-functioning families.

2. I see an over-emphasis on the role of family in society. There sometimes seems to be a blurring of the roles of the three extra-personal spheres of government: civil, ecclesiastical, and familial. There are certain roles given to each of these that are most definitely not given to others. The family does not have the rule of the sword to punish the evil-doer, the civil government does, as Paul points out in Romans. The church does not have the primary rule of comprehensive education of children; the family does (though I would hasten to point out that I don't think this implies homeschooling is the only option, though I do think it's a good one; parents can delegate, after all!). This we get from Deuteronomy 6. The state does not have the rule of excommunication for the publicly-offending sinner in the church. This we get from Matthew 18 and 1 and 2 Corinthians.

Perhaps this over-emphasis comes about because the people engaging in it see the near-catastrophic meltdown of the family. It's true that such is the case. However, I believe the church is not in much better shape, and the civil government is a basket-case. I'd be hard-pressed to decide which of these governments needs the most help! Whose help, incidentally?

Let us not forget that there will, after all, be no earthly-type marriages in heaven. Jesus makes that clear in answering the Saducees and their question about the woman who married seven brothers, one after the late other. I think heaven is going to be something of a blend of civil, ecclesiastical, and familial relationships - all into one: the marriage of Christ and His church. Jesus Christ is Prophet, Priest and King, so there's definitely the civil aspect and the ecclesiastical right there. And it's the marriage to which all earthly marriages point, as Ephesians 5 tells us. So there's your family aspect.

3. I see some people talking an awful lot about family, but not actually taking the time simply to do it. When I grew up, my family didn't discuss all these serious "family matters" all the time. I didn't need long lectures about marriage, and the importance of stability, and the like: I had Dad and Mom as a wonderful example. One of my pet peeves (to get on a possibly extra-biblical soap-box) is "family time." As in, "We're going to have some family time now." As if it's possible for a family to be together and not have "family time." Perhaps you might argue that everyone in the family might be off doing their own thing. Well, then, are they really together? Some people, perhaps, don't use the term this way. I dislike the term "family time" almost as much as "quality time." There is certainly no such thing as quality time. There is only quantity time - and lots of it! I can't help putting a plug in for my favorite thing growing up: reading stories and books out loud. That's a great thing to do together.

---

Our society has many problems, familial problems among them. But these visible problems are all symptoms of a deeper problem: our spiritual death and alienation from God and our need to be resurrected and made right with God. Normally I don't like using passive sentences, but in my previous statement, I used the passive voice intentionally to illustrate the point: God gives us grace. It's nothing we do.

May God give us grace; may He save those whom He wills soon; may His gospel go forth. Fixing that deeper problem will result, eventually and gradually, in the solution of all these other problems like dysfunctional families, civil government run amok, and flabby churches. Treating the symptoms, though, is like putting a Band-aid over someone's heart when that person is really having a heart attack.

In Christ.

Recent Bumper Sticker

2007-02-15T11:45:00.000-05:00

I recently saw a bumper sticker that read, "Well-behaved women don't make history." I got to thinking about it, after my initial highly negative gut reaction, and discovered that that simple statement has quite a few underlying assumptions, depending on how you look at it. Incidentally, I'll just keep talking about women in this post since that's what the sticker said. However, it generalizes to men just as easily. So to head off any charges of male chauvinism, I'll just assert that everything I say about women in this post can also be said about men. Some people may laugh that I'm even giving this much consideration to a bumper sticker. I wouldn't, except that I rather think the sticker represents a decent cross-section of thinking in this postmodern America. Hence, I feel no compunction about subjecting it to the hammer of what I hope to be biblical analysis.

Of course, the statement itself is quite simply plain wrong. I rather think Sarah, Ruth, Abigail, and Mary were well-behaved women, generally. They are immortal, literally. Hehe.

Why is the statement wrong in its assumptions? Here's one assumption the statement makes: this world is all there is. Going on the basis of that assumption, you could conclude that whatever makes the biggest splash in this world makes the biggest splash period. However, while history has a beginning and an end, there is a life after this one; in that life what counts is what God thinks of you, not what other people think of you. And, of course, God likes well-behaved women (good behavior being defined as adherence to the law of God), though they don't exist apart from salvation in Christ. There must be the grace of Jesus' perfect obedience being imputed to the believer, before that believer can turn around and, with God's strength, start obeying the law. And we also know that perfection doesn't occur in this life, either; the obedience will be imperfect until glory. Only such "well-behaved" women make it into heaven. In heaven, I rather think people will not remember much the deeds of ill-behaved women. Therefore, the bumper sticker is actually the reverse of true: it is the well-behaved women (as defined above in relation to law and grace) who will "make history", not the ill-behaved ones.

For the next assumption of the sticker I'll deal with, I need to make a distinction between history and history books. History is what actually happens, period. History books are the automatically biased, selective record of what some people think happened. Quite a difference. In fact, it should be clear that the sticker ought to have read, for the purposes of its author, "Well-behaved women don't make it into history books." That would have been a much truer statement in any case.

The next incorrect assumption the sticker makes is about the inherent nature of man. You see, history books tend to record aberrations, not normalcy. Therefore, in order for ill-behaved women to make it into history books, the normal thing has to be that women are well-behaved. However, the Bible teaches that this is not the case: all men and women intrinsically tend toward all evil. We are totally depraved, understood as meaning not that everyone is as bad as they might be, but that every aspect of our being is tainted by sin such that we cannot please God in any of our actions, no matter how "good" they might be.

To anthropomorphize the sticker, I disagree with the way it breathes; hopefully I've convinced you from Scriptural principles that it is wrong. So if the bumper sticker is so wrong, why does it even exist? This is just a guess, but I would say it probably exists because the owner of that vehicle is suffering from guilt feelings, maybe a little, and wants to encourage others to be as bad as she is. Then she won't feel so bad, see. What she needs, like anyone else, is the gospel. The loving thing to do would be, at the appropriate moment, to give her the gospel, to show her God as He has revealed Himself (not as we imagine Him to be). Then, if the Holy Spirit regenerates her, she can turn from her ways and come to know Christ.

In Christ.

Too Much Fun (or is it time on my hands?)

2007-02-07T17:14:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are fans of Pinky and the Brain and who also like math, I thought I'd mix things up a bit. Enjoy!

Sierpinski and D-brane,
Sierpinski and D-brane,
One was a genius,
The other's a plane.
Their laboratory's diced
Their theories don't suffice;
They're dinky:
Sierpinski and D-brane, brane, brane, brane
Brane, brane, brane, brane
Brane.

The calculations done,
Their pattern will unfold,
See the fractal well begun:
The triangle behold.

Sierpinski and D-brane,
Sierpinski and D-brane,
Their triangle plain,
Is hard to explain.
To prove that they're a lark
They'll overshoot the mark
They're dinky:
Sierpinski and D-brane, brane, brane, brane
Brane, brane, brane, brane
Quark!

Irony

2007-02-03T12:30:00.000-05:00

The Bible is chock-full of irony. I was just reading one example this afternoon, in 1 Samuel. You have the story of how the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant. The Israelites treat it with contempt, thinking it will save them in the battle simply by being there. Even before that, however, I am reminded of the saddest verse in the entire Bible: Judges 2:10, "And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel." (ESV)

In 1 Samuel 6, you have the Philistines determining to return the Ark to the Israelites, because of the humiliation of their god Dagon, and also because of the hot-potato situation arising because God chose to plague whichever city had the Ark. They decide to send an offering with the Ark, thus honoring the God of Israel. My study Bible has a note here: "With this announcement, the ark narrative comes almost full circle. It was for Israel's failure to honor the Lord and handle the ark properly that God had removed it from them." In addition, and this is quite ironic, in 1 Sam. 6:6, the Philistines say, "Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away, and they departed?" The uncircumcised Philistines, it appears, knew their history better than the Israelites!

I think it was George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." America as a nation is doing all the things ancient Rome did. We have vomitoriums (represented by anorexia and bulimia), we have abortions, we have the breakdown of the family, we have the contempt for law. We have it all. God is not mocked: whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. The same holds for nations. Let us take warning from this, and rest on God's grace to save us.

In Christ.

Pity

2007-01-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

What is pity? My Webster's Tenth Collegiate says, "1.a. a sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy b. capacity to feel pity." Webster's 1828 dictionary, however, has the following:

[begin quote]
1. The feeling of suffering of one person, excited by the distresses of another; sympathy with the grief or misery of another; compassion or fellow-suffering.

He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth to the Lord. Prov. 19:17.

In Scripture however, the word pity usually includes compassion accompanied with some act of charity or benevolence, and not simply a fellow feeling of distress.
[end quote]

I like my Wesbter's 1828 dictionary; it shows how some words have changed, and certainly some attitudes have changed.

What interests me about both of these definitions is the lack of any implication of superiority on the part of the one doing the pitying. You see, I have heard many times the phrase, "I don't want your pity," or "I don't want your charity." Such a person probably says that because he thinks pity automatically implies the superiority of the one doing the pitying over the one being pitied. And perhaps pity is often given in such a proud manner. We say of such a person who does not want pity, often, that he is proud. There are, perhaps, one or two good kinds of pride, but the vast majority of them are bad. I submit that this sort of pride is bad. It's terrible theology. Would we say the same thing to Christ? Could you imagine a genuine believer going up to God and saying, "I don't want your pity (or charity)?" It's unthinkable. Such a person would be giving very ample evidence that he was not a believer. So if such behavior is not acceptable towards God, why would it be acceptable towards a fellow human being, who can only give peanuts compared with what God can give? The analogy is pretty amusing when you think about it. It would be like a person saying, "Yes, I will accept this gorgeous lake house worth $5 million, but not the carrot peeler."

It is true that a certain kind of pity is not very helpful. A self-pity which wallows in misery and does not look up to the cross shows a lack of faith, much like in the Interpreter's house in Pilgrim's Progress where the fellow is raking about in the muck for some treasure, and cannot see the golden crown offered to him by the angel. And yet, another kind of self-pity is helpful: the kind that sees how miserable we are apart from God and accepts the gift of grace He so bountifully gives.

I like getting pity from others; life in this world is hard, and though I have not seen anything like the hardships some have had, mine are already significant: enough to break the spirit of a man who doesn't have God to lift him up. So the pity from others, a proper sort of pity, is comforting to me. I think it is right to accept such pity from others. And, lest you think I boast, if it is right to accept pity, then it is only by the grace of God that I do so. Praise be to God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit for working together for my salvation, both in the justification and the sanctification.

In Christ.

USB Keys

2007-01-17T10:40:00.000-05:00

I'm one of those people that has a USB key. I have two, actually, one is 128 MB, and the other is 1 GB. I discovered something disconcerting recently, and that is that every single document I have ever created in the whole course of my life could fit neatly onto one USB key (perhaps the larger one). Those things are tiny! It was a very humbling experience to see how, practically, all of our life is but dust, and not very much of that.

In Christ.

Court. Rum's II: The Importance of Law

2007-01-09T22:55:00.000-05:00

In my last post on the importance of grace, I stressed just how important grace is to the functioning of courtship. Without it, I rather think sin, especially past sin, can destroy an otherwise healthy relationship. Of course, my last sentence might be construed as the analogy of "It always rains outside, except insofar as it doesn't." What else goes wrong in a relationship besides sin? Since grace is the answer to sin, I argued, it follows that grace is exceedingly important in courtship. There should be grace all around: suitor, young lady, and the lady's father.

Now let's take a look at the role of law in courtship. Its role in courtship is entirely analogous to the relationship it plays in the world as a whole. First of all, what do I mean by law? Good writers define their terms, and while defining terms doth not a good writer make, it is a necessary process. By "law" I mean the moral law of God, summarily comprehended, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, by the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments, in turn, may be summarized by the Great Commandment, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind; and the Second Great Commandment, which is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. The Great Commandment summarizes the first table of the law, which constitutes the first four commandments. The Second Great Commandment summarizes the second table of the law, consisting of the last six commandments. So you might put the moral law in the following form:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.

2. You shall not make a graven image for the purposes of worshipping it.
Note: that I put this interpretation on the Second Commandment, and that I don't believe the Second Commandment forbids all images, I can show is a reasonable belief by pointing out that God commanded Moses, in the same time frame as the Commandments, to make both the Ark of the Covenant, with its graven cherubim, and also the bronze serpent. The cherubim are in heaven, and serpents are on earth. Ergo, God doesn't forbid the making of images per se. It is the worship of them that He condemns.

3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.

4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness.

10. You shall not covet.

As the Westminster Larger Catechism points out, every single one of these laws has a positive and negative side to it. What is mentioned in each law tends to be an extreme. For example: "You shall not murder." Well, that's an extreme. But we know that Jesus said that anyone who hates is guilty of murder. So hatred is a sin in the same category as murder, though it is obviously not so extreme. The principle of this commandment is life. What's commanded is the promotion of life and anything that makes life better, what's forbidden is the destruction of life, and anything that tends to that effect. So every commandment has two bookends, two extremes. The negative extreme and all its lesser but associated actions are forbidden. Conversely, the positive extreme is commanded, along with all the lesser but associated actions. I'm just summarizing what the Larger Catechism has to say on the matter; the WLC is an absolute treasure-trove on the Ten Commandments.

The Reformers, especially Calvin, put forth three uses for the law. One use is to curb the evil of a fallen world. Another is to drive believers to their knees in awe at the perfection God requires, and to realize their utter inability to measure up to its perfection. The third use is as a guide for Christian living; not, indeed, to earn any merit on its own, but out of gratitude for what Christ has done. It is a grace of God, that He looks on our feeble attempts at good works, and really and truly calls them good. But such happens only by the grace of God. Indeed, grace is involved in all three uses of the law. In the first use of the law, it is common grace in operation, helping fallen man see that there is some good they can do, though such good cannot earn merit with God. In the second use of the law, it is the special grace of justification at work. In the third use of the law, it is the special, enabling grace of sanctification at work which drives us to good works.

So what? What does all this have to do with courtship? Well, one application that I can think of regards the setting down of rules of behavior. Perhaps the most important area in this regard is the physical. Boundaries there must be, for the full expression of sexual love is clearly immoral until after the wedding. It is folly to think that if you have no rules, you will "simply behave." The temptations are too great. So you should have rules.

But what is the proper attitude towards these rules? Since they are man-made, they are on no condition to be made equivalent to God's law. God's law is non-negotiable, is inspired, and is given to us by God Himself. We have no choice but to follow it. But man-made rules are not nearly so reliable. For one thing, there are many sets of rules that you could have. One family requires that you take your shoes off at the door, another does not. Which one is right? Well, neither. The first family may live in a very dusty place, and thus find it much harder to clean the floor without the rule in place. The second family may not live in such a place, and may find the added inconvenience of continually taking shoes off not to be worth the effort. There is no moral obligation to have one rule versus the other. Now, once the rule is in place, it should be enforced justly and fairly. But there should also be that bit of leeway which recognizes that there may be acceptable exceptions to the rule, whereas with God's law there are no exceptions (here I am speaking from God's perspective: what I am saying is that whatever God's law truly states, that it is which man must live up to; good men of unquestioned orthodoxy sometimes differ on what exactly the law states. I am not talking about such confusion on the human level).

For example: one couple may want to save their first kiss for the altar. Another may not feel a need. What would be going on in such a circumstance? Well, the first couple may feel that since they desire to kiss each other so much, perhaps it would be better to wait, the easier to be pure in their minds toward one another. It would behoove them, then, both to keep their rule and also, very importantly, not to look down on others who don't keep that rule or jump to the conclusion that they are antinomians. For such a rule is surely extra-biblical, a fact which does not necessarily render the rule unwise. For that matter, the previous example of shoes off versus shoes not off is extra-biblical. The second couple who does not wait until the altar for their first kiss should not jump to conclusions about the first couple, say, to conclude that the first couple is holier-than-thou or legalistic. They should also not allow their sexual desire to run away with them.

The laws of courtship, which, it seems to me, are biblical, are as follows.

1. The two young people should behave in all purity towards each other. They should not lust after one another. (Verses that say this are many; you could go for 1 Tim. 5:2 and Matthew 5:27-30.)

2. Since Christians should only marry Christians, it seems logical to conclude that a Christian may not court or be courted by an unbeliever. (Verses: 1 Cor. 7:39; though the context might be considered more restrictive than just any woman, I think it would apply to all. Also 2 Cor. 6:14.)

3. Both the young man and the young woman should be respectful of all authorities involved with the process. This is simply an application of the fifth commandment, found in Exodus 20:12, and Deuteronomy 5:16, and in Romans 13:1ff. In particular, the woman's covenant head, usually her father, is a very important person in this process. Courtship is a gradual transfer of covenant headship from the father to the suitor. Therefore, there must be that respect in place so that the young man may rightly claim he obtained covenant headship over the woman in an honorable way.

I would be remiss if I didn't address the possibility of breaking the law. What then? Well, breaking the law has another name: sin. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches us, sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of the law of God. The Children's Catechism puts it like this: sin is not doing what God requires, or doing what God forbids. You have to deal with sin the same way you always deal with sin: grace. You must accept the grace that God so richly offers. Then that allows you to forgive the other person completely. What is forgiveness? It is the not bringing up, ever again, this sin against the person. Forgiveness, as Jay Adams wrote in his book From Forgiven to Forgiving, is a three-fold promise. When you forgive, you promise not to bring up past sins against a person either to him, to yourself, or to others. The old cliche, though is true: to err is human, to forgive is divine. True forgiveness comes about only through the grace of God.

I pray that whatever wisdom you find in these posts, accept, whatever folly, reject. Moreover, on no account would I want anyone to accept this post blindly, without further study. The word of no mere man is equivalent to the Word of God. Therefore, be like the Bereans, studying the Scriptures diligently to see if my statements are true.

God bless.

A Confirmation

2007-01-09T20:15:00.000-05:00

For anyone disinclined to believe Susan, a set of people I hope to be very small, I should like to confirm her post as being true, although perhaps she was a bit too kind in her description of me. I should also like to mention that she consulted me before posting it, so it's really more of a group effort. Enjoy!

In Christ.

It's Official

2007-01-07T19:27:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have already guessed what's going on, and some of you no doubt already know. It is official, as you might have guessed by the title. I am courting Susan Garrison, whose intelligent and attractive blog may be found here. The blog represents the woman pretty well, I must say, although to a lesser degree. And before I sicken you with what I'm really feeling, I think I'll sign off.

In Christ.

Court. Rum's I: The Importance of Grace

2006-12-17T07:21:00.000-05:00

"Court. Rum's" actually is an abbreviation for "Courtship Ruminations", so this post has little to do with courtrooms. Hope you're not terribly disappointed. And, of course, you can all read my (mostly) tongue-in-cheek post on keeping unsuitables away. That's in my November 2005 archive.

What is courtship? One thing I have learned beyond the shadow of a doubt is that there are more definitions of courtship than there are people who want to do it. You have nearly a continuous spectrum in method, ranging from something close to dating (little to no parental involvement) all the way to arranged marriage (little to no potential bride and groom involvement.) Well, maybe that last bit is a slight caricature. I actually think arranged marriages have a lot to recommend them, assuming you trust your parents.

Here is my attempt at a definition: courtship is a process whereby a man honorably seeks to take over the covenantal headship of a woman from the woman's current covenant head (not a husband; usually her father though there are exceptions. I will use "father" throughout, but you can substitute "head" if you like). The word "honorably" is important, because by it I mean that the woman's father (and by covenantal inclusion, her mother as well) is heavily involved with this process: they oversee it, in fact, though the man needs to be the "proactive" person in the process. Also, we understand that covenantal headship looks different depending on who the head is. When the woman is under her father's headship, it's a father-daughter relationship that's more like when she was growing up. When the woman is under the man's covenantal headship, she is married to him (assuming they have a sexual relationship inside that covenantal commitment.) I will use Wilson's definition of marriage here: marriage is a sexual relationship inside a covenantal commitment.

Now that we've got that off our chests, let me explain just why I think grace is so important in courtship. First of all, notice I used the words "man" and "woman" and "father" in my definition. Yes, that's right: courtship always happens, when it does happen, between sinners. Everyone involved are sinners. This has always been the case, since Jesus (contrary to some opinions) never married on this earth. His bride is the Church, so it would definitely not fit His character to have married on this earth. Ergo, everyone who is involved with a courtship are mere human beings, and therefore sinners.

It follows that they will sin against one another at times. Certainly well-intentioned Christians will not try to sin against one another, but it will happen. It is much wiser to have a program in place for dealing with that sin before it actually occurs. That program is the usual Christian one, the program that is really at the heart of the gospel: repentance and forgiveness. Grace is absolutely essential to both of those. So grace is important to courtship in the universal way: just to help sinners get along as with any other relationship.

What are some ways people can sin against each other, specifically in courtship? I can imagine quite a few ways. The suitor can rush things, thus being insensitive to the woman's desires. The woman could say things to the suitor that she thinks he wants to hear, regardless of whether it's the truth or not. The suitor could try to circumvent the father's authority and try to get some of that headship over the woman without him knowing it. The father could judge harshly with respect to the suitor, thinking that "this man is definitely not worthy of my daughter." That, incidentally, would be a sin against both the suitor and the woman. The woman could fail to trust her father's judgment (because she might fear the foregoing example, for instance). So it's quite possible for anyone involved in a courtship to sin against anyone else involved in the courtship. Sometimes mere awareness of these evils is enough to prevent them even from occurring. But if they have happened, then it seems to me that grace is the only answer for restoring these damaged relationships.

But there's another reason that grace is important to courtship, and that is commitment. Courtship is like an arrow: it points to something. No one enters into courtship without realizing where courtship leads, which is to marriage. Marriage, as I mentioned before, is a commitment. Marriage on this earth after the Fall (the only other kind of marriage is between Christ and His church) is always between two sinners. That means that every marriage has enormous difficulties even before going into it. When my last courtship ended, I remember saying, "How does anyone ever get married?" The difficulties of marriage, the pain (and it's a huge pain!) of courtship, etc., had led me to question how anyone aware of these difficulties can ever get married. At the time I thought the answer was that a lot of people must be blind so that they don't see these difficulties! Such would be, perhaps, a caricature of rose-tinted glasses (see Susan's excellent post on that subject). And the answer is really the Sunday-school answer: Jesus. He gives us the grace that will enable us to get over these difficulties. It is an awareness of the astounding grace that has been shown to us that enables us to give that grace to others, including spouses or potential spouses. The phrase Susan originated in her post was "grace-tinted spectacles." I love that phrase, because it quite captures the sort of thing necessary. Grace does not ignore sin; rather, it deals with sin head-on. Grace looks sin right in the eye and then dispenses with it. So this reason grace is important, to sum up, is that an awareness of the grace shown to us by God enables us not to be afraid of commitment. The man need not fear to commit to husbanding a sinner, and the woman need not fear to commit to submit to a sinner.

One book that helped me enormously on this subject is Larry Crabb's The Marriage Builder. I rather think it has a hokey title, but the content is just great. For once, what we have in that book is not a list of do's and don't's. He spends an enormous amount of time explaining the importance of grace in a marriage. That is, in fact, his central thesis, that grace is essential for a marriage to achieve oneness.

The advice is therefore this: anyone contemplating courtship, or anyone currently involved in a courtship should rediscover the wonders of the grace God gives to you, especially His saving grace. When you think about it, that grace is so huge that problems of pride and discontent and so on seem rather petty in comparison. You don't have to stick up for yourself: God's already done that. You can relax and be humble and content, trusting that God will get all the glory.

In Christ.

Someone's Birthday

2006-12-16T11:37:00.000-05:00

On this day in 1770, the greatest composer who ever lived (and my personal favorite) was born in Bonn, Germany to Johann van Beethoven and Magdalena Keverich van Beethoven. They named him Ludwig van Beethoven.

Interestingly, there is a bit of dispute as to which day, exactly, gets the distinction of being his birthday. Beethoven's parents celebrated it on this day, December 16, but he was baptized on December 17. In addition, if I remember correctly, Beethoven himself preferred one date over the other, though I don't remember which exactly - I think it was the 17th.

Was Beethoven a Christian? This seems debated as well. There were certainly moments in his life when he was angry at God; there are also moments when he seemed Deist, at least. He had elements of pantheism in his makeup as well as Hinduism. At the very least, I wouldn't hesistate to call him rather confused on a lot of things. He considered his Missa Solemnis to be his greatest work, a monumental and very difficult choral piece that is definitely Christian in outlook. On the other hand, John Rutter has written some of the finest sacred music in existence, and he is definitely no Christian. The weight of evidence seems against it. However, one thing I have not done is read Edith Schaeffer's Forever Music, which deals with this topic, if I remember correctly.

In any case, make sure you listen to something or play something by Beethoven today, in memory of this giant of music.

In Christ.

Christmas Music

2006-12-03T22:14:00.000-05:00

While Thanksgiving is bigger on my horizons than Christmas, Christmas is still enjoyable. I though I'd share with you four cd's that my family has listened to ever since I can remember, and have wonderful memories. They are:

1. Christmas Carols, Scottish National Orchestra Chorus and Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by John Currie.

2. O Come All Ye Faithful, King's College Choir, Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Cleobury.

3. Christmastide, Jessye Norman, New York Choral Society, American Boychoir, Empire Chamber Ensemble.

4. December, George Winston.

1, 2, and 3 are all available from the Musical Heritage Society, and probably in other forms as well. 4 is available from Windham Hill Records.

Enjoy!

The word "heart".

2006-11-19T00:03:00.000-05:00

"You just need to ask Jesus Christ into your heart..."

"Worship God with all your heart, and He will accept it."

"He has a good heart."

You've probably all heard things like these before, and no doubt there is some truth to them in particular circumstances. But I wonder if we really understand what we're talking about here.

The Romantics would have us believe that the heart is the seat of emotions. That may even be Freudian concept. The Romantics may even be right. But if you make the claim that the heart as the Bible speaks of it is simply equal to your emotions, I would definitely disagree.

In Hebrew, and Lane can correct me if I'm wrong, the word for "heart" means something like the core of your being, closer to the will of someone. Here is Crosswalk's definition of the word used in the Great Commandment (Deut. 6:5):

1. inner man, mind, will, heart, soul, understanding
a. inner part, midst
1. midst (of things)
2. heart (of man)
3. soul, heart (of man)
4. mind, knowledge, thinking, reflection, memory
5. inclination, resolution, determination (of will)
6. conscience
7. heart (of moral character)
8. as seat of appetites
9. as seat of emotions and passions 1a
2. as seat of courage

So it's more than your emotions. This has implications for a number of things. First off, we should be careful when we're quoting Scripture that uses that word to remember what it means.

Second off, in worship, when it says we should worship in spirit and in truth, we must be extremely careful not to translate that sentence into the following: "If your heart is right before God, then He will accept your worship." Such a sentence usually implies, in my experience, that if your emotions are worshipful, you're ok. But you're not necessarily ok. The common dilemma proposed is the following question: would you rather have people worship on Sunday with their hearts (meaning emotions) in it, or have all their theology correct and have a rebellious heart? This is a false dilemma, I'm convinced. To worship God with your heart means to worship God with your whole being. The Hebrew in Deut. 6:5 is a heaping up, and adding on so that nothing whatsoever is lacking. Your entire being is to worship God. You don't have the option of leaving your mind, emotions, body, or anything else not already mentioned at the door! So the neophyte who wails away at the songs with all his emotions but lacks theological understanding is no better off than the dry orthodustic theologian. We are so accustomed in America, I think, to think that in worship we must have our hearts right before God and that, if that is so, we need not worry about our minds. This is simplistic. The whole being of a man must be engaged.

This is impossible with men, but it is possible with God. You see, if you make making your heart right with God a prerequisite for worship, then you're being legalistic. If you make making your mind right with God a prerequisite for worship, then you're being legalistic. Is there a prerequisite for worship? Yes, a resting on God's grace utterly. A recognition that you are a sinner in need of God's grace. A realization that the gospel is your only hope in this life. Who was it that was justified before God? The sinner who beat his breast and said, "Be merciful to me, a sinner."

In Christ.

The Importance of Beauty for Protestants

2006-11-16T13:38:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder why good, solid, Reformed Presbyterians like Scott Hahn become Catholic? Why do they abandon so much truth?

Ever wonder why worship these days is lackluster, despite all the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) hype?

I submit that part of the answer lies in beauty. Once upon a time, theologians stressed the important of truth, beauty, and goodness in the life of the believer. Truth and goodness are both upheld today in various denominations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but here I'd say goodness is godliness, or holiness. It is growth in sanctification. All God's truth is truth. So what about beauty?

I don't think the modern world has much of a conception of what beauty is. The world says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But Paul, in Philippians 4:8 doesn't say, "Whatever ... you think is beautiful ... think on these things." He says, "Whatever ... is beautiful ... think on these things." Evidently, things have beauty whether we see that beauty or not. That's just one example where the modern world seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Part of why Presbyterians are becoming Catholics is because the Presbyterians have abandoned beauty in their worship service. The Catholics, while perpetuating the abomination of the Mass (and thus re-sacrificing Christ in contradiction to Hebrews), have a stunning worship service. It is lovely. And we human beings are made to respond to beauty like that. When it's missing, we think something's wrong, and rightly so.

R. C. Sproul once said that the medievalists claimed beauty consisted of three things: form, harmony, and complexity. I think most people could agree on the first two, but that third one throws a lot of people for a loop. I've posted before on why I think complexity is necessary for true beauty.

I think that, with God's grace, we Reformed folk need to recover beauty in our worship. But it goes beyond that, even. We need to have much more beauty all around us. We should decorate our homes beautifully, we should listen to beautiful music, and read beautiful books.

Why don't people do that? Probably one reason, as Susan pointed out to me, is that people might have a pessimistic view of eschatology, or end times. If the world is getting worse, why bother to fiddle while Rome burns? I have one answer to that: God's sovereignty. He holds you in the palm of His hand; nothing but good (that is, things that will drive you closer to God) will ever happen to you in this life. So you can relax. It will all work out in the end, trust God for that. And if you trust God for that, you can spend time obeying Paul in Philippians 4:8. Evidently, God commands us to seek out beauty and enjoy it for His sake. Don't forget, in so doing, though, that all beauty must reflect the beauty of holiness. There is no other kind now.

As Douglases Wilson and Jones wrote in their fantastic book Angels in the Architecture, Jesus Christ has thrown down the older pagan beauty of the Greeks. The modern pagan world cannot even come close to it. If you will have any beauty at all, you must borrow it from Christ. Anything else is ugly.

Beauty is important because God is beautiful, the Ultimate Embodiment of Beauty. God wants us to experience that beauty. God lures, rather than coerces, us to Himself. He shows us the incomparable riches of Christ, and desires that we should desire those riches. As Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, "It would seem that God finds our desires not too strong, but too weak... We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

You can pursue beauty with near abandon, and if you continually couple it with truth and goodness, I do not think you will often stray.

Another interesting comment Susan made, that I would appreciate your input on, is the following idea: beauty is a logical consequence of truth and goodness.

So what about worship? What about CCM? It lacks complexity, and so is not as beautiful as much of the older music. There is newer music being written, to be sure, that is wonderfully beautiful. Morten Lauridsen and Arvo Part are two living composers writing stupendous works. Age does not inherently have anything to do with beauty. Older works have this advantage: since only the good stuff survives the test of time, older works tend to be better on that basis. But we can equal Bach, I claim. We have to get back to his level first.

One common mis-assumption these days is that young people want CCM. That is not quite true. We're seeing many young people more interested in the traditional hymns, because the words tend to be deeper. The people most interested in CCM are the baby boomers, because they think that's the "in" thing. I think CCM will pass away soon enough, like many fads.

In Christ.

Stupendous Lack of Logic

2006-11-15T19:58:00.000-05:00

Actual quote from Yahoo News:

"The voting last week has been widely interpreted as a public repudiation of Bush's policies on the war, which has left more than 2,850 U.S. troops dead and more than 20,000 others wounded."

Actually, you see, it's the Iraqi insurgents who have left more than 2850 U.S. troops dead and more than 20,000 others wounded, assuming those numbers are accurate. There's a slight misunderstanding of cause and effect going on here, that I'd have thought someone might have noticed.

In Christ.

Our Sovereign God, II

2006-11-08T08:18:00.000-05:00

In the face of such sweeping defeats for conservatives, let us not forget that our God is sovereign. God willed that the Democrats should take control over the House, that the very strong pro-life bill in South Dakota should fail, that Arizona should fail to ban homosexual "marriage", and that Missouri should decide to fund the highly immoral embryonic stem cell research. As of this writing, it looks as though Jim Webb will defeat George Allen for senator in Virginia (quite the voter turn-out, it seems; you can't claim that Virginia was half-hearted about this election!). Montana's senator race is still too close to call.

That God is sovereign doesn't prevent me from poking fun at Americans whose memory is rather seive-like. Have we forgotten that the House voted to go to war with a vote of 296-133, and the Senate with a vote of 77-23? That's an overwhelming majority. To then turn right around and claim that the deaths in Iraq (faithfully reported by the extremely biased liberal news media) are the President's fault is much too simplistic. Bush could not have gone to war without the Senate backing him up. Furthermore, to claim that Bush withheld information prior to the war in order to expedite a decision to go to war is ludicrous. The reasoning goes like this: Bush purposely hid information about Iraq so that he could go to war (almost never popular after Vietnam) in order to make his approval rating... plummet. That makes sense. Or did Bush think the war in Iraq would be easy? An easy win, like his father, and therefore the approval ratings would go up. Alas, the Iraqi insurgents learned all too well the lessons of the 1991 war. It would not be so easy this time. I somehow seriously doubt that Bush thought this war would be easy. That he hoped it would be easy is certain: who would not? Bush is smart, so I think he knew it would be difficult. And he did it anyway. And the Senate did it anyway. And now, when the going gets tough, everyone backs out and claims they were never for the war in the first place, or that they were misled by the Bush administration.

Surely even they can see that backing out of Iraq is not the way to go. That will make things much worse. The correct strategy here is carefully to train the Iraqi police and military so that they may defend themselves and their new government. If we back out now, we will have another Vietnam, along with loads of security issues cropping up regularly. That reminds me of a story about Nixon, who got us out of the Vietnam war: a pastor in Vietnam wrote Nixon a letter after the pull-out, telling him that evangelism was now nearly impossible in a nation which resented this incorrect move. He told Nixon that he was praying Nixon would be removed from office, an imprecatory prayer. Then along came Watergate. Interesting, isn't it?

While I wouldn't wish any terrorist attacks on anyone, I will say that Al Qaida is no doubt rejoicing that their staunch allies, the Democrats, have taken the House. If the Dems get the Senate, we can expect Al Qaida to rejoice at that as well. They will be emboldened, and I predict attacks on American soil. I hope that doesn't happen; but if it does, I rather think the Dems will get egg on their face. The Democrats simply have no clue how to fight a war! They do not understand security (as evidenced by Clinton and his treasonous actions with the Chinese), and think that the terrorists will just go away if we don't bother them.

The terrorists are motivated by envy. Most terrorists these days are Muslim, despite what the liberal media would have you believe. Muslims, naturally, believe that their religion is correct and that Christianity is wrong. Ergo, Muslim nations should prosper and Christian nations should not. Muslims believe America is a Christian nation. *snorts* They're wrong, but that's how they view us. America is the most spectacularly successful nation in terms of economics that the world has ever seen. Therefore, Muslim terrorists (I refuse to call them extremists. In terms (solely) of how they interpret the Koran, Muslim terrorists are to Islam what fundamentalists are to Christianity) will attack the United States to show the world that Christianity is wrong, and Islam is correct.

In the final analysis, however, even though I'm mightily disappointed with this election and could wish the American people had been a bit more far-sighted, our God is sovereign. I cannot despair when I think of that. We are in the palm of His hand, and nothing can harm us without His say-so. Since He works everything out for our good (that good being to become more and more like Christ), we can rest easy.

Furthermore, another reason not to get all angry and despairing is that politics is simply insufficient to solve the problems of the United States. Politics could help: we could eliminate the thieving welfare state, we could outlaw abortion and homosexual "marriages", we could get the government out of education and such. But even those things will not change men's hearts. For that you must have the gospel. Praise be to God, even the Democrats right now cannot prevent the spread of the gospel. So I call to you Christians: just keep doing your thing. Evangelize and disciple the people around you. Think through what it means to be a Christian and how that affects everything you do. Rest on God's grace to sanctify you more and more. And pray that God will turn this nation around from its decidedly Roman path downhill.

In Christ.

Reminder!!

2006-11-07T05:39:00.000-05:00

Don't forget to vote!! We need your vote today.

Two links to some really good music.

2006-11-04T23:33:00.000-05:00

The two links are to Minnesota Public Radio, which pretty much plays classical music 24-7. It's a great way to expose yourself to classical music you've never heard before. And when you hear a piece you really like, you can go out and get it. That way you'll only get music you like. So here's Minnesota Public Radio. From this link, near the top under Classical, you'll see a link called Listen with a little speaker. Click that link. A little popup will come up (you need to enable popups). I recommend the mp3 128k stream. Click that link, and RealPlayer should play that stream for you.

The second link is to the BBC Radio. They have several radio stations that are worthwhile, but I like Radio 3. You can get there here. From this screen, hit BBC Radio 3 right in the middle of the screen. Then, on the left-hand side of the screen, hit the link for classical. From there, on the right-hand side of the screen, you can pick lots of great things. One of the most popular (and I like it very much as well) is Choral Evensong. You hit the little speaker symbol, and a popup comes up with some controls and information. Important: Choral Evensong is updated once a week on Wednesday. So if you listen to it twice (certainly no crime), you'll get the same program until after Wednesday.

Enjoy!

In Christ.

Zero-sum Games and their Non-applicability in Economics

2006-11-03T11:27:00.000-05:00

What is a zero-sum game? Well, first perhaps I should explain the meaning of the term "game" here. A game, in this context, actually has quite a specific meaning, a mathematical one. A game in this sense is a situation in which the players have conflicting interests. You can represent a game with an array of numbers which in turn represent choices the players can make, along with the payoffs or expected results. One of the most famous games is the prisoner dilemma, which goes like this:

Bob and Mike are in prison and cannot communicate with each other. They each receive an offer: if you rat on the other guy, you can go free. The catch is that if both prisoners rat on each other, neither goes free and both receive a harsher sentence. If neither rats on the other, then both receive a light sentence. Here's a quote from MathWorld on the subject (names changed to reflect my names):

A dilemma arises in deciding the best course of action in the absence of knowledge of the other prisoner's decision. Each prisoner's best strategy would appear to be to turn the other in (since if Bob makes the worst-case assumption that Mike will turn him in, then Mike will walk free and Bob will be stuck in jail if he remains silent). However, if the prisoners turn each other in, they obtain the worst possible outcome for both.

Interestingly, John Nash's (of the movie A Beautiful Mind) great and original contribution to the subject was to explain that, for example in the prisoner's dilemma, a better outcome could be had by use of cooperation. It's a bit more technical than that, but that's the basic idea. Also, for your information, a Nash equilibrium (which used to be called simply an equilibrium) is a strategy for a game which is perceived to bring the best possible outcome for all players. In the prisoner's dilemma, there are two Nash equilibria: both rat on each other, or neither rats on the other. The latter, however, presupposes pretty much that the prisoners actually can communicate with each other, contrary to the original set-up of the game. But that's ok: we dreamed the game up in the first place, so we're allowed to change the rules.

So that's a game. What's a zero-sum game? A zero-sum game is a game in which if one person wins, the other person(s) loses in an equal amount. To quantify it in terms of money, if Bob wins $5, then Mike loses $5: the exact amount Bob wins is the exact amount Mike loses. Therefore, the total amount of money available to either Bob or Mike or both is a constant (a zero-sum game).

So where am I going with this? I want to argue that zero-sum games are, in general, not applicable to economics. Many people simply assume that, for example, if the rich get richer, it must automatically be at the expense of the poor. That would be true if economics were a zero-sum game. I argue, though, as would Austrian economists (see my post below), that economics is not a zero-sum game. Here is the refutation. We assume the law of human action: human beings will always do what they perceive to be for their greatest good.

Value, or wealth, is assigned to goods and services by people. The goods and services would have no value whatsoever if people did not value them. So value is determined by people, not wholly by anything intrinsic in the thing itself. True, what a person can do with the good or service usually influences how the person values the good or service. But a different person might just as easily have a different value on the good or service, because his goals may be different. The mistake many modern economic schools of thought make is in not supposing that real people have anything to do with how valuable something is.

Consider a normal trade: Bob has $5, and Mike offers to wax Bob's car for said amount. Suppose Bob takes up Mike's offer, and Mike performs the job and gets the $5. What does this say about values? From Bob's point of view, we can see that Bob evidently values having his car waxed more than having the $5 which he could use for other purposes. Otherwise, according to the law of human action, he would not take up Mike's offer. Similarly, Mike prefers having the $5 to having the time he could use doing something else, otherwise he would not perform the service.

What do we have at the end? Bob has something greater in his eyes than what he had before, and so does Mike. They both have something better than what they had previously. Since value is determined by individuals, I claim that value has been increased, indeed you could almost say created.

Because value is determined by people, therefore I claim that in every trade, wealth is created. Otherwise the trade would not occur. Evidently, then, the total amount of wealth in the universe is not constant.

It follows from this that it is not necessarily the case that if the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. As I said before, that would be true in a zero-sum game. But I have just proven that we do not operate in a zero-sum game: wealth is constantly created.

Indeed, I would argue that, in a capitalist system, if the rich get richer, the poor get richer. Why is that? Because when the rich get richer, they invest. They do so because that is the way, in a capitalist system, to get even richer. What does investment do? It enables the companies in which the rich have invested to branch out and do more things (entrepreneurs). However, they cannot do more things without more people to do them. Hence they hire more people. Which people? The people who would work for the money they now can offer: poorer people. It may take several layers of such getting richer/investment/hiring sequences before you get to really poor people, but it will happen eventually. This is called "trickle-down economics": if the rich get richer, the poor get richer. Many academicians have poo-pooed such economics, but such academicians tend to rely on the zero-sum game model which I have just refuted.

Why do academicians rely on the zero-sum game model? Perhaps one reason is because it is parallel to the law of the conservation of mass-energy in physics. They would argue that the total amount of "stuff" (Greek "phusis", I believe, though Lane could correct me; this could be translated "physics": physicists study "stuff"!) in the universe is a constant. Therefore, if one person has more of something, someone else must have less. But they leave out the valuation process of real humans. What the academicians say is technically true. However, the new thing someone might have through a trade is worth more to them than what they had previously (otherwise the trade would not have occurred). Hence value is always increasing, even though the total amount of stuff does need to be a constant.

Interestingly, all of what I have related leaves God out of the picture entirely. God is infinite, therefore He can add to His creation anything He desires without diminishing Himself. This is another refutation of the zero-sum game model. The law of the conservation of mass-energy really needs to be qualified by miracles. One such miracle is the feeding of the five thousand (or the four thousand, take your pick). Food was actually created in that miracle out of nothing. Mass was added to the universe.

And here the physical scientists fall so short: they leave God out of the picture entirely. Because many of them do not want a God in their picture, they ignore Him. They will find a messy refutation in the end. As one person put it, "All the world's philosophers and scientists are climbing the hill of knowledge. And when they get to the top, they're going to find a bunch of theologians who've been sitting there for thousands of years."

So do not be intimidated by zero-sum games being thrown at you; such an inaccuracy has been used to foist population control on whole nations, many liberal notions of welfare and such, etc.

In Christ.

Our Sovereign God

2006-11-01T12:48:00.000-05:00

We serve a sovereign God. I saw this more clearly than usual yesterday. And yes, this is another personal post. I've been "corrupted."

I woke up at 6:42am. Note: I should have been at work at 6:40am, which usually requires me to be up at 5:00am. Reason for lateness: alarm clock had been reset by a power outage. There was no getting to work on time. So I called Blacksburg Transit (my employer) and told them the story. They said just to try to get there as soon as possible. I cobbled some things together very quickly and rushed out the door.

As it turns out, the reason for the power outage was a power cable draped across the road in the usual catenary shape. At its lowest point, it was waist height. Now if I had been up on time, I might well have driven right into that. I'd need to examine the physics of the situation to see whether I might have been harmed or not, but I think it would not have been good at all. As it was, the utility people and the police were already there and were not allowing vehicles through. So I called BT again and gave them the update. They were understanding, as usual, and told me to be safe. One other person there told me of a back road which was pretty rough but connected with a road that would get me there. So I tried it. I wish I had done so in a Hummer instead of my 1993 Chrysler New Yorker. I prayed! I got through without any noticeable damage to my car, though I bottomed out pretty hard quite a few times.

God was definitely watching over me yesterday, and yet I know that He watches over me at all times, and upholds me by the Word of His power. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!

In Christ.

Austrian Economics

2006-10-30T22:43:00.000-05:00

Austrian Economics is not about the economics of the country Austria. Austrian Economics is a school of economic thought whose founders were all from Austria. So why am I posting about it? Because I believe in it. Here's why.

The first thing I should do is describe Austrian Economics. Its methodology is much more like geometry than anything else. Whereas most schools such as the German historical school or the Keynesians assume market equilibrium and then immediately begin heavy-duty calculations, the Austrian school makes a few very basic assumptions about human nature and then, by axiomatic-deductive reasoning, attempts to see what the consequences of those assumptions are.

What are its assumptions? There are two major ones: the law of human action, and the law of marginal utility. The law of human action states that, at every moment in time, a human being will evaluate the possible courses of action and their perceived outcomes, and then he will pick the course of action whose outcome is most favorable to himself. This really is inherently obvious. Naturally, wiser men have better developed ideas about outcomes, and are often better at waiting for the longer term for a better outcome. But all men behave in this way. We all want what is best for ourselves. Even sacrifice fits into this picture, because the sacrifice is always for a greater good. The law of marginal utility states that the more we have of a thing, the less valuable each additional unit of the thing is. For example, if I have one gallon of water, an additional gallon might be very valuable. But if I have ten thousand gallons, an additional gallon would be worth considerably less. There is a verse in the Bible that fits this law very well indeed. I believe it's in Proverbs.

From these two assumptions, and essentially modus ponens, the Austrian economists explain an unbelievable number of things. One of their conclusions is that governmental intervention is almost always bad; it is almost always inefficient, and usually produces the opposite of the result desired. In other words, the Austrian school argues for highly limited government and privitization of most things.

Because I believe in the two starting laws, and because I believe in modus ponens as a valid method of arriving at truth from truth, I believe in the results of Austrian economics.

Interestingly, another way of arriving at the advisability of limited government (and thus only serves to reinforce the Austrians' position) is the idea of the inherent sin nature of man. As the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Ergo, government must be severely limited, or it will inevitably oppress its subjects.

I think that Christians should give the Austrian school of economics serious consideration. Where to begin, you might ask? One place is Man, Economy, and State, by Murray Rothbard. Don't be intimidated by the large size: it's quite readable. A tad harder, but absolutely foundational, is Ludwig von Mises' Human Action, which is available for free on the Internet.

In Christ.

On the Trinity and Culture

2006-10-29T23:48:00.000-05:00

My brother is on a Trinity kick. Having finished his research on N. T. Wright/Federal Vision/Norman Shepherd/New Perspective on Paul, and discovered the truth that all the afore-mentioned groups are not Confessional, he has turned his attention to the somewhat more exalted grounds of the Trinity.

I was talking with him Sunday night about it, and Lane mentioned a quote of Sinclair Ferguson, talking about the "cash value" of the Trinity. What Ferguson was talking about was the practical value of the doctrine of the Trinity. What good is it? And Ferguson noted that in the Upper Room, what did Jesus talk about? The Trinity. There's proof enough that the Trinity doctrine has value.

That reminded me of the extremely important place I believe the doctrine of the Trinity holds in the culture wars, specifically beauty.

Now I have posted on beauty before; if you follow my archive link to August 2005, and scroll down to the second-to-last post, you will find the post on Philippians 4:8. Also, in January 2006, I have a post entitled Philippians 4:8 Revisited. What I should like to do is tie the doctrine of the Trinity into all this.

To recap those blog entries: 1. Philippians 4:8 tells us to logizesthe on beautiful things, among others. The word logizesthe means to dwell on deeply, to meditate. It does not mean to bleep on over. It would be folly to imagine that Paul would urge his readers to logizesthe on things that were not worthy of it. What things are worthy of the logizesthe kind of thinking? I argue that it is the complex things that will stand up to that kind of meditation, not the simple things. 2. The second point I made is that Paul does not tell us to logizesthe on those things we think are beautiful, but the things that are. This automatically implies that things have intrinsic beauty whether we see that beauty or not. Put another way, beauty is more absolute, not relative. So in terms of a thing, it could be beautiful or not. Also, our perception of that thing could be either that we think it is beautiful, or not. You could set up a little table with these options. If the thing is beautiful, and you think it is beautiful, or if it's ugly and you think it's ugly, that is called having good taste. If it's ugly but you think it's beautiful, or if it's beautiful but you think it's ugly, you have bad taste.

I have argued that complex things are more beautiful than simple things. I should really say that those things that have at least a layer of complexity to it in some aspect are more beautiful than those things with are simple no matter which way you look at them. The reason is that they stand up to logizesthe.

Now where does such beauty come from? From the beauty of holiness. The beauty of otherness, of being set apart. The Trinity is nothing if not holy, but the Trinity is also exceedingly highly beautiful above all else. It has complexity to it. You might also argue that it has a simplicity to as well. Well said! We worship one God in three Persons. So there is simplicity and complexity. My point is that there is complexity. So things which well represent this philosophical idea of the one and the many simultaneously, will be a far greater art than that which does not. The greatest art of all is that art which seems simple at first glance, but has complexity when you analyze it. As I have mentioned before, in Matthew Henry's commentary on Proverbs 12:23, he writes, "Ars est celare artem - the perfection of art is to conceal it."

This flies directly in the face of popular culture, as Ken Myers would say in his seminal book All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes. Popular culture is not interested in complexity, because complexity interferes with instantaneous gratification. We want it NOW! Appreciating complexity requires time, which popular culture does not want to spend. And thus Myers argues that popular culture is not healthy for the Christian because it propagates a mind-set antithetical to proper Christian thinking. That's not to say that exposure to popular culture will corrupt you irretrievably: we believe in grace for crying out loud! But what is the balance in your life? Weigh the popular culture against the folk culture and high culture (the latter two, Myers argues, are conducive to proper Christian thinking) in your life, and see what comes out on top. Beware a steady diet of popular culture and nothing else! Also beware attempting to heal the wound lightly!

These are things we need grace to do. It's hard work to appreciate high culture and even folk culture. This is not work we can do to be saved (see
Susan's recent post on this: On Causation (Law and Grace), October 29th, 2006); rather it is a work I believe Christians are called to do because they are saved.

So see what Beethoven and gourmet and Celtic and Dickens are all about. They will reward you according to how much you put into them. Popular culture reaches a point of diminishing returns. Which will you choose?

In Christ.

A Personal Item

2006-10-26T21:25:00.000-05:00

Normally, I don't post personal items on my blog, but this is too good an opportunity of praising God not to pass up. Through God-given talents, I have finally managed to finish the first draft of my Ph.D. dissertation! Once my advisor has taken a good look at it, he will be able to tell me whether I have enough material to defend or not, which in turn will go a very long way towards figuring out whether I will, indeed, graduate in December. Praise God!!!

In Christ.

Spell Checkers and their Pitfalls

2006-10-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

Spell checkers, though they are getting more and more sophisticated (checking grammar and so on), will not find all your mistakes. It greatly amused me when I first saw this poem, and you'll see why. There is no substitute for proper spelling!

Ode To Spell Checkers

by Jerrold H Zar

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing.
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too be a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore a veiling checker's
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid to wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
it does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.

In Christ.

Invitation to Debate

2006-10-14T09:57:00.000-05:00

For the next state election in Virginia, we have an issue on which to vote. Here is the issue, as explained by the Virginia State Board of Elections:

[begin explanation]
Shall Article I (the Bill of Rights) of the Constitution of Virginia be amended to state:

“That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.

This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage. Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage.”?

EXPLANATION

Present Law

The Constitution does not define marriage. Under current statutory law in Virginia, persons who marry must have a license and be married by a licensed minister, judge, or other person authorized by law to perform marriages. Present law prohibits marriages between certain individuals. For example, the law prohibits a marriage between a brother and sister, between a couple where one of the parties is married to someone else, and between couples of the same sex.

In 1975, the General Assembly enacted a statute (present Code of Virginia § 20-45.2) that states "A marriage between persons of the same sex is prohibited." In 1997, the General Assembly added a sentence to § 20-45.2 that states that:

Any marriage entered into by persons of the same sex in another state or jurisdiction shall be void in all respects in Virginia and any contractual rights created by such marriage shall be void and unenforceable.

In 2004, the General Assembly passed a law to prohibit certain civil unions or other arrangements between persons of the same sex. That law (Code of Virginia § 20- 45.3) states that:

A civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage is prohibited. Any such civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement entered into by persons of the same sex in another state or jurisdiction shall be void in all respects in Virginia and any contractual rights created thereby shall be void and unenforceable.

Thus, civil unions or other arrangements which purport “to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage” are prohibited by statute.

Proposed Amendment

If approved by the voters, this proposed amendment will become part of the Constitution of Virginia. The proposed amendment adds a definition of marriage as the “union between one man and one woman” to the Constitution's Bill of Rights and prohibits Virginia and its counties, cities, and towns from creating or recognizing any legal status by any name which is comparable to marriage.

Marriage in the Commonwealth creates specific legal rights, benefits, and obligations for a man and a woman. There are other legal rights, benefits, and obligations which will continue to be available to unmarried persons, including the naming of an agent to make end-of-life decisions by an Advance Medical Directive (Code of Virginia § 54.1-2981), protections afforded under Domestic Violence laws (Code of Virginia § 18.2- 57.2), ownership of real property as joint tenants with or without a right of survivorship (Code of Virginia § 55-20.1), or disposition of property by will (Code of Virginia § 64.1- 46).

A "yes" vote on the proposed amendment will result in the addition of the proposed Section 15-A to Article I, the Bill of Rights. A "no" vote will mean that there will be no change made in Article I, the Bill of Rights.

FULL TEXT OF AMENDMENT
...

Amend Article I of the Constitution of Virginia by adding a section numbered 15-A as follows:

ARTICLE I
BILL OF RIGHTS

Section 15-A. Marriage.

That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.

This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage. Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage.

Attorney General's Office

5/9/06

Explanation -- 473 words

Approved by House Committee on Privileges and Elections 5/10/06
Approved by Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections 5/12/06
[end explanation]

I'm assuming for the purposes of debate that sodomy is a sin, as evidenced by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and by Romans chapter 1. It is therefore a contradiction to speak of "homosexual marriage."

The question is, is this amendment expedient for the purposes of spreading the gospel? On the one hand, it is certainly correct for the government to acknowledge the truth. On the other hand, I do not believe marriage should be as under-the-purview of the government as it is. The government takes an interest in it, as it should. Marriage has things like name-changing and legal protection from testifying against spouses and that sort of thing. However, for example, to require a license to marry, to me, seems ridiculous. Finally, we must distinguish between what is and what ought to be. I believe there should be a balance between the two in terms of how we determine our actions. Not every course of action moving us toward our goal is necessarily wise.

And so, what think you?

Mischief

2006-10-13T10:37:00.000-05:00

Sorry, I just couldn't resist the impulse to blog on Adrian's blog. This is Lane. Adrian allowed me to go onto his blog in order to install the recent comments hack. Now you can see the 8 most recent comments listed in between the previous posts and the archives. Let me know if any of you would like to have this quite appetizing feature on your blog. You know where to find me. Hehe.

Calculus

2006-10-12T14:09:00.000-05:00

Calculus is the second-greatest technological invention by mankind (second only to the printing press). When Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz independently invented the calculus, building on the work of earlier mathematicians like Descartes and Barrow, they showed themselves to be responsible for the modern technological age. In particular, the Fundamental Theorem of the Calculus has extremely far-reaching consequences. It is easily the most important theorem in all of mathematics.

I love calculus; it's my favorite mathematics. Aside from simply having the very best name of any branch of math, it's so powerful! There's so much you can do with it. And it is very beautiful.

So I wanted to put forth a few calculus challenges that were a little off the beaten track. Enjoy!

1. Assume a function f is thrice differentiable. If, at a point a we have f''(a) = 0 and it is not the case that f'''(a) = 0, what can you say about f at a? Supposing the second derivative is zero, and the third derivative is also zero, what changes? This is known as the Third Derivative Test.

2. Are endpoints critical points? This is a neat question, asked by one of my students at Tech. The answer is not in any calculus book that I am aware of, though the question is clearly in the realm of calculus.

3. Without looking it up, do you know how to integrate sec(x)?

4. Integrate sqrt(1 - x^2) by using trig substitution, and check your answer using implicit differentiation. (Ok, this one is a bit more mainstream; I just like trig substitution).

5. Examine the following famous ODE, known as the time-independent Schroedinger equation: f''(x)=2m ( V(x) - E ) f(x) / hbar^2, where hbar is Planck's constant, and m is mass. V(x) is simply a function of x called the potential, and E is the energy, a constant. Assume that f is continuous and differentiable everywhere on the real line, and is also nonzero. Show that for bound states (fancy way of saying that f has a finite integral over the entire real line), it must be that E is greater than the minimum value of V(x) for all x.

6. Also in the above problem with the Schroedinger equation, show that if V(x) is an even function, then f can be taken to be either even or odd.

Numbers 5. and 6. are due to Griffiths' Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, 1995, p. 24.

Have fun!

A Recital

2006-10-11T10:29:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while, I get up the gumption (or is it chutzpah?) to put on a recital. The purpose is to inflict my playing on others, mainly so they can see just how hard it is to get good at piano. After all, I've taken lessons for ten years, and look where it's gotten me! Don't forget the Ambrose Bierce definition (from Devil's Dictionary) of a piano:

PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by pressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.

Anyway, if anyone in the blogging world is interested in seeing it (a long shot, perhaps), here's the info:

Adrian C. Keister
In Concert

Original Works

Friday, October 27th, 2006
8:00pm

Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church
2101 Shadow Lake Road
Blacksburg, VA 24060

Program:

Church Suite No. 1

Piano Sonata No. 2

Present Life Melodies

In Christ.

Scientists as Elite?

2006-10-07T10:13:00.000-05:00

Here is a conversation, with an arbitrary person whom I'll call Azelma, that occurs frequently with me:

Azelma: what do you do?
Me: I'm a graduate student at Virginia Tech.
Azelma: O, really? What are you studying?
Me: Mathematical physics.
Azelma: Wow! I could never do that. You must be brilliant.

Which forces me to be honest and exclaim against the compliment; I really have to do that, because I am quite simply not brilliant. The Lord has given me some intelligence, to be sure, but I'm no Richard Feynman or Stephen Hawking.

What brought this conversation to my mind was a very interesting quote, supported by an interesting science fiction novel, which I wanted to share with you. In the book Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature, Gene Edward Veith, Jr., writes the following:

Even if the masses sink into illiteracy and drug themselves by "amusement," the influential and the powerful will still be readers, as they are today. In the ancient pagan world, reading was a zealously guarded secret for the priests and the ruling elite, who, because they had access to knowledge, had access to power. [Neil] Postman explores the paradox of a society increasingly dependent upon its scientists but undermining the literate thought-forms science demands. "It is improbable that scientists will disappear," he concludes, "but we shall quite likely have fewer of them, and they are likely to form, even in the short run, an elite class who, like priests of the pictographic age, will be believed to possess mystical powers."

I have no wish whatsoever to be thought of in this way, since it's thoroughly unbiblical. Unfortunately, I can see the beginnings of it already.

Interestingly, Veith and Postman aren't the only ones to see this sort of idea. Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest writers of science fiction, wrote the Foundation heptology, to coin a word. This was originally a trilogy, but then he added a prelude and three more books at the end. In any case, in the first book in the series that he wrote, called simply Foundation, he has the following interesting scenario. Suppose a group of people have the knowledge of nuclear power, and they are ejected from a mighty empire to the far edge of the known universe, among peoples who definitely do not remember the ideas of nuclear power. What would such people look like to their neighbors? They look like priests and magicians, and indeed, they set up a priesthood with all the trappings of a religion.

For Veith, the more immediate solution to the problem is to read, though he's not arguing that such is our salvation. Instead, he advocates the Reformation ideal: learning to read in order to read the Bible. That is the goal. But, as Veith also states, "Reading the Bible tends to lead to reading other books, and thus to some important habits of mind."

Veith's book is excellent; I'd highly recommend it! He explores all the major genres of literature, including nonfiction, fiction, poetry; tragedy and comedy, realism, fantasy; history; and the relationships between writers, publishers, and readers.

Veith's book is one of the Turning Point Christian Worldview Series, all of which I can recommend (Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning and All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes are in that series.)

In Christ.

Fearless

2006-10-06T22:07:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are martial arts aficionados, or aficionados of martial arts movies, I can do no better than point you to Jet Li's Fearless, now in theaters. This movie is really great. In the tradition of Hero, and Romeo Must Die, there is real character development (rare for action movies I suspect); it also has a good message. There is forgiveness for real wrongs, letting go of vengeance, recognition of true valor, honor, letting go of self. While these concepts are not anchored in a Christian worldview, I was very impressed with the values in this film. There is no nudity or sensuality (there is a romance of sorts, but remarkably tastefully done), no language that I can recall. There is a great deal of violence, to be sure. But it's violence with a point, that point being to show how it is the last resort to solving problems. This movie is based on a true story. You can look it up on Yahoo Movies to get an idea of the plot. Highly recommended!

In Christ.

Negatives

2006-09-29T15:35:00.000-05:00

In the movie Kelly's Heroes, there's a completely anachronistic character called Odd-ball, played brilliantly by Donald Sutherland (Mr. Bennet in the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice). He's famous for delivering, during World War II, such sixties hippy phrases as, "What's with the negatives waves?"

While such a thing is certainly hilarious, I wonder if there is not something philosophically deeper going on in today's culture. To illustrate what I'm talking about, I'm going to dive into some technical material which I hope I explain clearly. I would STRONGLY encourage you to try to follow my train of thought.

In symbolic logic, there is a concept called "adequacy of a set of connectives." The idea goes like this: in certain kinds of logic, you have what are called Boolean variables; they're just like an on/off switch or a bit in computers. The Boolean variable can hold the value "true" or it can hold "false". So there are two options for one Boolean variable. Suppose you have two Boolean variables that you can distinguish one from the other. How many different ways can those variables be set? Well, you could have (true, true) or (true, false), or (false, true) or (false, false). So that makes four possibilities. If you look at three variables, you'll see that you can have eight possibilities. So in general, if you have n Boolean variables, there are 2 to the n possible ways of setting those variables.

Now introduce the concept of a function of Boolean variables. What is that? Well, we'll build up from scratch again. Suppose you have one Boolean variable, call it x. There are, as we already discussed, two possible ways to set that variable. Now a function f of the Boolean variable x, which we will write as f(x), is another variable whose value depends on the value of x. How many functions of one Boolean variable are there? Well, you could have the function that is always true no matter what x is (the true function), or also the function that is always false (the false function), or you could have just x right back at you (the identity function), or you could have the function that changes true to false and false to true (the negation function). So that's four possible functions of one Boolean variable. It turns out that if you have n Boolean variables, there are 2 to the 2 to the n possible functions on those variables.

Let us examine quietly one possible function, call it q, on two Boolean variables, call them x, y. So we'll say that q is true only when both x and y are true. So it looks like this:

q(true, true) = true
q(true, false) = false
q(false, true) = false
q(false, false) = false.

We have a notation for this function: ^. So we write q(x,y) = x ^ y. This is called the "and" connective, because it connects x and y in a functional way.

There are many such connectives, including "or", "exclusive or", "nand", "nor", "Sheffer stroke", and others. One question that logicians have concerned themselves with in the past is the following: given an arbitrary function on n Boolean variables, can I write that function using only one or possibly two known connectives? This is the question of adequate connectives.

It turns out that there are only two adequate connectives (of the possible sixteen functions on two variables). Both of them have the word "not" in their description.

My patient readers may be wondering why I dragged them through so much symbolic logic. The reason is this: the conclusion many have come to is that in order to be complete, or adequate to express things, you must be able to say "no" in some manner or other. No language is going to be adequate to express everything worth expressing if it cannot do negation.

This grates against the sensibilities of the post-mods, and the politically correct, who want to employ a "both-and" kind of logic. "You can embrace both this and that," regardless of the fact that they're contradictions. They can't do this consistently. As Ravi Zacharias said once (I paraphrase), "Either you use the both-and logic, or you don't, isn't that right?" And the person he was speaking to, a professor of Eastern religions, said, "The either-or logic does seem to emerge, doesn't it?" Whereupon Zacharias replied, "Yes, and I've got some shocking news for you. Even in India, we look both ways before crossing the street. EITHER the bus, OR me, not both of us." You can listen to the whole broadcast by going here, and clicking on the link for 2006-01-30. This acceptance of contradiction is nonsense, and leads to intellectual suicide. You must be able to distinguish between things. If you read the Bible at all, this should become very clear; just read Leviticus. In Leviticus, one central theme is the holiness of God. God was to be approached only by what was "clean," and NOT by anything that was "unclean." Clean and unclean was defined in excruciating detail by divine fiat. God gave priests a great many rules about how to decide if a thing or a person was clean or unclean.

R. C. Sproul once said, "If it's the prerogative of the woman to change her mind, it's the prerogative of the theologian to make distinctions." Distinctions are absolutely necessary in order to talk intelligently about just about anything.

So my little analogy from symbolic logic is that you have to be able to negate things in order to fully realize the expressive capabilities of your system. But this carries over into language, philosophy, and theology. I would claim that this concept comes from the Bible, and not from logic. I only started with the logic point for rhetorical effect: to argue from the lesser to the greater.

If someone comes to you, claiming that you are "intolerant of their views," first ask them what they mean by that. What they most likely want you to do is to accept all these views as equally true. It's just relativism thinly disguised, or not disguised at all. Christianity, though, makes absolute claims. "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" - John 14:6 (ESV). That is an exclusive statement; if it is true, no other claims can also be true. Your detractor might say, "Well, that's true for you, but not for me." This is nonsense! They are claiming there is no absolute truth. In which case you just ask them whether the statement, "There is no absolute truth" is true for everyone, or not. The fact is, they've just uttered an absolute truth.

Philosophically, we are "trapped" into believing in absolutes. We cannot consistently do otherwise. But let us remember that the truth will set us free. But falsehood, the negation of truth, will do no such thing.

Headship and Masculinity

2006-09-29T10:36:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me that my voice in these matters of headship and submission may be impaired somewhat by not being married myself yet. To that, all I can say is that I have studied marriage a long time (years), I have seen many marriages and how they work, and my voice is that of an outsider. Sometimes the voice of the outsider (what I sometimes call the "incompetant critic") is invaluable in pointing out things that should have been obvious, but simply became routine.

I should also point out that I am most certainly not attempting to use this topic as a way of "showing off" in order to get attention from the females. I simply see a need for biblical teaching on this subject, and I'm going for it.

Is there such a thing as good government? How about good governance? The feminists would have you believe that if a man is "in charge" of a marriage, then almost by definition he rules badly. Sadly, the charge does stick in many cases. However, I deny that poor quality of male leadership is a necessary consequence of male leadership. There is such a thing as good male governance of a marriage; I have seen it. Moreover, I believe the Bible commands it. What Scriptures can we bring to bear on this issue? Again, see my previous post on submission to witness my assumptions; they are the same ones.

First of all, I think it necessary to define "covenant." Here is Webster's 1828 dictionary definition, which I think quite adequate.

COVENANT, n. [Fr. convenant, the participle of convenir, to agree, L. convenio, con and venio, to come; Norm. conevence, a covenant; It. convenzione, from L. conventio. Literally, a coming together; a meeting or agreement of minds.]

1. A mutual consent or agreement of two or more persons, to do or to forbear some act or thing; a contract; stipulation. A covenant is created by deed in writing, sealed and executed; or it may be implied in the contract. Encyc. Blackstone.

2. A writing containing the terms of agreement or contract between parties; or the clause of agreement in a deed containing the covenant.

3. In theology, the covenant of works, is that implied in the commands, prohibitions, and promises of God; the promise of God to man, that man's perfect obedience should entitle him to happiness. This do, and live; that do, and die.

The covenant of redemption, is the mutual agreement between the Father and Son, respecting the redemption of sinners by Christ.

The covenant of grace, is that by which God engages to bestow salvation on man, upon the condition that man shall believe in Christ and yield obedience to the terms of the gospel. Cruden. Encyc.

4. In church affairs, a solemn agreement between the members of a church, that they will walk together according to the precepts of the gospel, in brotherly affection.

Next, I must define "head" as I will use it in this post. Again, here is Webster:

HEAD, n. hed [Sax. heafod, hefed, heafd; D. hoofd; Dan. hoved; Sw. hufvud; G. haupt. This word is a participle of the Sax. heafan, hefan, to heave, pret. hof, hove; G. heben, hob, &c. Heafod, heaved, the elevated part, the top. Class Gb.]

...

3. A chief; a principal person; a leader; a commander; one who has the first rank or place, and to whom others are subordinate; as the head or an army; the head of a sect or party. Eph. v.

Next comes "headship". You guessed it, Webster.

HEADSHIP, n. hed'ship. Authority; chief place. Hales.

Finally, I will define the term "covenant head". I have no recourse to Webster this time, so I will do the best I can. Many covenants have some sort of authority structure built into them. This is certainly true of the three covenants Webster mentioned in his definition of "covenant". For such a covenant with a built-in authority structure, the one who wields that authority is the covenant head. I will often shorten this term to simply "head". In the context here, there will be no confusion with the earlier definition of "head", because the authority in question is in the context of a covenant. I hope this is all fairly clear to you. Examples: a husband is the covenant head of his wife. A father is the covenant head of his unmarried daughters. God the Father is the covenant head of the Son. Jesus Christ is the covenant head of the church.

There are several passages relevant to this discussion. The first is 1 Cor. 11:3, which reads thus in the ESV (as usual):

3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

Also relevant is the Ephesians 5 passage which reads as follows:

23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior... 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body.

30 "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, ...

You'll notice I omitted the sections pertaining to the wife's duties. I already dealt with that in my previous post. I'm talking to you guys in terms of what you're supposed to do. I'm only talking to the ladies in terms of what you're supposed to be looking for in a guy. Just as it is not the place of the husband to brow-beat his wife into submitting, just so is it not the place of the wife to see to it that her husband leads her. That would be her leading him! Many of you have, no doubt, seen the delightful movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Perhaps you recall the line Toula's mother delivers: "The man may be the head of the house, but the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head any way she wants." It's funny, but is it true? And if it is true, should it be true? I'd say that in many marriages, it probably is true. I would also just as readily say that it should not be true. This is not headship.

Now what do we learn from these passages? One thing is that, just as with submission, headship in no way implies superiority or inferiority in general: only in the sense of authority. Why is that? Because from the 1 Cor. 11:3 passage, we see that God the Father is the head of God the Son. Is there any superiority or inferiority there? I think not. As the Westminster Larger Catechism says:

Question 9: How many persons are there in the Godhead?

Answer: There be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; although distinguished by their personal properties.

So evidently, there is no general superiority that can be implied from headship. Just like on board a ship, the captain is the "head", but he is not superior to his pilot, or first mate. There simply has to be one and only one person in charge, or chaos breaks loose. As Sproul wrote in his Ephesians commentary, "This passage [Eph. 5:22ff.] should put to rest once and for all the myth that marriages are to be fifty-fifty. I can't think of a worse scenario for a marriage than to have the authority in that relationship divided equally. When two people are together like that, then nobody has any authority. You are in a perpetual power-struggle where one is trying to get control of 51% of the stock. And that can be exceedingly destructive to a family."

A second thing we can learn from these passages is what Wilson wrote in Reforming Marriage: that Paul is using indicatives, not imperatives. Paul says that the husband is the head of the wife. Paul is most definitely not saying that the husband ought to be the head of the wife. Why is this important? Because it goes to the heart of what marriage is. The husband is the leader whether he likes it or not. "He cannot successfully refuse to lead." He may abdicate his role, in which case he leads by his absence. But he leads. Period. Again, as Wilson would say, arguing with this is like jumping off a cliff in order to argue with gravity. Marshall the arguments however you like, you will come to a messy refutation in the end. And as Sinclair Ferguson said in my previous post, the way worldly marriages end these days gives the lie to the prevailing notions about authority in the home. The feminist ideas simply don't work, because they misunderstand what exactly marriage is.

Now that I have established that the husband is the leader of the home, at least given my assumptions, I ask you this question: how is it best to do this leading? Again, these passages do not leave us in some great quandery here, but instead give us some rather pointed guidance.

I claim that the most important concept these passage give is that leadership equals service. Let me say that again: leadership equals service. That means a lot of things. It means no lording it over those under you; it means no selfish commands for those under you to serve you; it means, essentially, being the slave of the people under you. A husband is therefore the slave of his wife. Note to wives: wouldn't it make it easier for you to submit if your husband was your slave? If that doesn't bring a smile to your face, there's something wrong. Now I don't mean that you should nag him about leading or about serving. No. He's got his job, which is to love and serve you, and you've got your job, which is to submit to him. The best way to encourage him to do his job is quietly to do yours. Husbands, the same goes for you. Your wife will find it easier to submit to you if you just quietly serve her the way the Bible commands.

Being the servant of your wife also means not micro-managing her. This is probably going to look different for every couple. There's no reason to marry someone, men, if she doesn't have some significant competances, especially in areas in which you are weak. So let her do her thing in those areas! Yes, she is ultimately accountable to you in everything, but it is generally recognized that an over-controlling boss spells misery for those under him. Don't do it! You'll have to work out what that means with your wife, I'm sure. Now, wives, what if your husband does micro-manage? Well, surely you can complain about it, once or twice. But more than that becomes nagging, which I can definitely assure you is extremely distasteful to just about every male on the planet. So my recommendation is to talk with him about it once, and then let it go. If he continues, he continues. Your command to be submissive to him is not qualified by "only if he doesn't micro-manage you". If he continues to micro-manage, he's an idiot, but you're not accountable for his faults, and you are not his conscience.

So leadership is service, and it is not micro-management. Is it anything else? Yes, it is sacrificial. Christ sacrificed his very life for the church, as the Ephesians passage points out. You are to do the same. Jesus Christ lived for the church, and He died for the church. Therefore, husbands are to live for their wives, and die for their wives. What does that mean? A daily sacrifice of your wishes for hers. Doing things for her that you know she likes, especially if you don't like doing them. An example showing God's grace: I absolutely hate opening doors for ladies, even though I was brought up to do it. It's a pain, especially these days when ladies don't expect it. You have to contrive to be on the hinge-side as you walk up to the door so that you don't have to shove the lady aside in order to open the door for her. (Yes, that was tongue-in-cheek.) It's a waste of time from many viewpoints. It's inefficient. So why do I do it? Because the ladies can't? Ok, I'm on the floor laughing at that one. Of course they can physically open the door for themselves. The point is showing honor to them. And I could never do this were it not for God's grace working in me to do it, so no kudos to me. Finally, it means dying for her if necessary. As Aragorn said to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring, "If by my life or death I can protect you, I will."

Headship means loving your wife. Now loving your wife doesn't go like this: "Let me see: I like it when people do ____ to me, therefore, that's what I'm going to do for my wife." That may be a start, but your wife may not like ____. You have to love her the way she needs to be loved. That has more than one side to it. On the one hand, if she likes something, and you know it's not sinful, then go ahead with it. On the other hand, there may be things she doesn't like, but you know will drive her closer to Christ. Go ahead with those, too, as wisdom dictates. In any case, loving your wife the way the Bible commands means taking trouble for her, not just the avoidance of giving her trouble. You must put yourself out of your way to be good to her.

This is biblical masculinity. It occurs to me that there are certain kinds of men out there who talk a good deal about "being a man," "being masculine," etc, but end up spending more time talking about it than doing it. That doesn't count, though I suppose talking about it some could be beneficial. I claim it's not necessary, though. To tell the truth, my Dad, never even once in my memory, talked about what it meant to be a man. He just lived it, and I got the benefit of a great example. My Mom talked about it more, but it was things like, "Don't be a wimp." Still, I can't point to even one occasion when she did that, I just remember once or twice she did. My parents didn't harp on it: they lived it.

The Promise-Keepers, while certainly having its good points, is a movement that succumbs, I think, to this charge. And even then, I think their notion of masculinity is a bit messed up. For a more complete critique of that movement, see Douglas Wilson and David Hagopian's book Beyond Promises, which unfortunately appears to be out of print.

The Bible doesn't talk about "masculinity" versus "femininity" nearly as much as it talks about being right with God. Evidently, that's more important. More important than being a good husband is being right with God, which is something we can't do. Christ has to do it for us. And then, only after that is done, can we focus on the lesser good (but still a great good) of being a good husband.

All this reminds me: my previous post on submission was rather inadequate in at least one striking way: grace. Where does grace fit in? Well, the central place, I think, where grace fits in is that submission is impossible without it. The natural man or woman is not going to submit to anyone, because of pride, that root sin that causes all others. We need God's grace to overcome pride, the same as any other sin. When we thus see who we really are, submission becomes, if not easy, at least easier. Similarly, headship as properly outlined in Ephesians, is impossible without grace. Why? Becase headship is also humbling: you have to serve someone else, you have to love that person the way they need to be loved. That involves a great deal of selflessness that is impossible without grace.

I love Shakespeare's 116th Sonnet, probably familiar to many of you. Here it is:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Love alters not when it alteration finds. This is God's love for us, and it is the love we are to have for one another. It is the love a husband is commanded to have for his wife. It is a choice to do certain actions for the good of another, not a feeling that just happens to us.

There is so much more to be said on this topic, but I shall rest for now.

In Christ.

Submission

2006-09-27T11:42:00.000-05:00

As most of you, dear readers, know, I don't tend to shy away from controversial topics. It is my opinion that only strong people can take correction, only humble people can do so. Whatever strength I have is from God, and the same with humility, and the same with wisdom. I might as well boast about the color of my (un-dyed) hair as about the things God has given me. In any case, I invite your comments about this important subject in everyday life. I shall write on submission today, and I think headship on Friday.

I'm going to assume the following: 1. The Bible in its original was inspired and inerrant. 2. Today, we may trust the Bible implicitly; it is the only rule for faith and practice; it is infallible. 3. Since we obtain logic from the Bible, and not the other way around, we may also trust any statement that is either found directly from the Bible, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from it.

Before I begin, I should say the following: I will use the terms submission and obedience somewhat interchangeably in this discussion. They are not precisely the same thing, though they are very closely related. In terms of submission to God, I believe they are precisely the same thing. In terms of submission to fallible mere human beings, I think they are not quite the same, though they usually are.

So what does the Bible say about submission? Plenty! Perhaps the most important passages are in Philippians 2 and Ephesians 5. I will deal with them in this order.

Philippians 2:3-11, a very familiar passage, reads thus in the ESV (all quotes will be ESV):

3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind amoung yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

What do we see from this passage? Well, first of all, obedience is humbling. But what kind of humbling? The kind that is eventually exalted. (Humility is the chief of the virtues, being opposed to pride, which is the chief sin. However, when I say opposed, I really mean that in a somewhat loose way. Humility is greater than pride is despicable, just as Satan is not the opposite of God but of Michael. God is much greater than Satan will ever be.) Therefore, no Christian should ever shrink from obedience. As we have seen, humility is something we are called to have, and even then, there is the resulting glory that we all desire.

Second of all, this is God the Son submitting to God the Father. Even now, with Christ in the heavens, He submits to the Father, always doing the Father's will. And yet we know that Christ is in no way inferior to the Father. He is equal to the Father in substance and glory. Apparently, submission is not demeaning, or else Christ would be demeaned. Since He is not, therefore submission is not demeaning. Feminists out there, hear this: submission is not demeaning! A further passage which illustrates this is 1 Cor. 15:28, where the Greek verb "to submit" is the same as in the Ephesians 5 passage below, where wives are commanded "to submit" to their own husbands.

And now, on to the Ephesians 5:18-33 passage:

18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctifiy her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without splot of wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

So what is there about this passage? First off, verse 21 does not, as many claim, indicate that everyone submits to everyone in exactly the same way. Here are the reasons that some major commentators give for why this is not so. Here is a quote from commentator O'Brien, which I quote at length.

The meaning of this verse [v. 21], however, is disputed for several reasons: first, is this submission to be understood as 'mutual'? Secondly, how does the content of v. 21 relate to the household table (5:22-6:9) with which it is closely linked...? The following are the main lines of interpretation (although there are several intermediate positions) in response to these questions:

(1) A widely held view is that v. 21 states a general principle of mutual submission by all Spirit-filled Christians to others in the body of Christ. In the subsequent verses of the household table, where the roles of husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and slaves are set forth, the focus is on specific kinds of mutual submission in the light of this general principle. The following arguments are advanced in support of this interpretation:

(a) Although the verb is a strong word meaning 'subject' or 'subordinate' (in the active voice), here in v. 21 Paul employs the middle voice to signify a voluntary submission or subordination, and this means to act in a loving, considerate, self-giving way towards one another. Such a voluntary yielding to the needs of others is an example of that self-sacrificing love which is to characterize the Christian community. It is urged elsewhere in the New Testament (cf. Phil. 2:3), not least in Ephesians itself, where 'bearing with one another in love' is necessary for 'making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit' (4:2, 3). Further, this is the pattern of Christ's love for the church which is held out for husbands to follow in 5:25-31.

(b) This view, it is claimed, does justice to the reciprocal pronoun '[submitting] to one another'). Gilbert Bilezikian, for example, recognizes that the natural meaning of the verb 'submit', wherever it appears in the New Testament, is 'to make oneself subordinate to the authority of a higher power...to yield to rulership'. However, the addition of the reciprocal pronoun to each other in here in 5:21 'changes its meaning entirely.... By definition, mutual submission rules out hierarchical differences'. He rejects any thought of obedience to authority in vv. 21-24, claiming instead that it is appropriate to speak of 'mutual subjection' and this 'suggests horizontal lines of interaction among equals'. For Bilezikian, then, the presence of the reciprocal pronoun 'to one another' is decisive. As a result, v. 21 controls our understanding of 5:22-6:9. Mutual submission requires that all Christans, regardless of status, function, sex, or rank, are to serve one another in love (Gal. 5:13). All become subordinate to one another, and 'there remains no justification for distinctions among them of ruler and subordinate'. Bilezikian concludes that 'mutual subjection as defined on the basis of Ephesians 5:18-21 refers to relationships of reciprocal servanthood under the sole lordship of Christ'. This 'reciprocity of such relationship renders hierarchical distinctions irrelevant within the Christian communitites of church and family'. Accordingly, wives are to submit to husbands and husbands are to submit to wives, in exactly the same way.

(2) A different interpretation recognizes that v. 21 is a general heading urging Spirit-filled believers to be submissive or subordinate. The particular ways in which Christians are to submit to others are then specified in the household table for wives, children and servants. It is not mutual submission that is in view, as the first interpretation claims, but submission to appropriate authorities. The following reasons are advanced in favour of this:

(a) The primary argument concerns the meaning of the verb rendered 'submit'. As already indicated, the term regularly functions to describe the submission of someone in an ordered array to another who was above the first, that is, in authority over that person. Further, none of the relationships where this verb appears is reversed: husbands are not told to be subject to their wives, not parents to children, not the government to citizens, nor disciplies to demons. The word does not describe a 'symmetrical' relationship since it always has to do with an ordered relationship in which one person is 'over' and another 'under'. In this sense the term is not mutual in its force. V. 21 'does not focus specifically on the relationship of husbands and wives'. Within the flow of the argument this issue is not taken up specifically until vv. 22-24. But even at this point v. 21 is not calling 'for [the] mutual submission of all Christians to each other'. This is to misunderstand the semantic range of the term. Instead, believers are urged to be submissive to those who are in authority over them. If the apostle's argument had taken a different turn, this presumably might include church members submitting to ther leaders (1 Cor. 16:15-16; 1 Pet. 5:5), citizens being subject to governing authorities (Rom. 13:1; Tit. 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:13), or the church being subject to Christ (Eph. 5:24). Furthermore, in its other New Testament instances the semantic range of our verb does not include acting in a thoughtful or considerate way, or showing mutual courtesy, deference, or respect. The term, then, should not be assigned a meaning that is outside its semantic range, especially when its usual meaning makes good sense in this context. We are not suggesting that acting in a loving, considerate, self-giving way is absent from the household table; only that words other than 'submit, be subordinate or submission' are used to describe this loving service (cf. vv. 25, 28, 29).

(b) The pronoun 'one another' is not always fully reciprocal. Although advocates of the mutual submission interpretation assume that the relationships expressed by the Greek pronoun are always symmetrical (and so must mean 'everyone to everyone'), this depends entirely on the context. On occasion, the pronoun does have a fully reciprocal significance (Eph. 4:25; cf. John 13:34, 35; 15:12, 17; Rom. 1:12). But in other contexts a symmetrical relationship cannot be in view. For example, Revalation 6:4, 'so that men should slay one another', cannot mean that each killed the other at precisely the same time as he or she was killed. Likewise, Galatians 6:2 'Bear one another's burdens', does not signiy that 'everyone should exchange burdens with everyone else', but that 'some who are more able should help bear the burdens of others who are less able' (cf. also 1 Cor. 11:33; Luke 2:15; 21:1; 24:32). In the present context, then, given that 'submit' is one-directional in its reference to submission to authority, and that the pronoun does not always indicate a symmetrical relationship, it is preferable to understand the clause 'submitting to one another' to refer to submission to appropriate authorities, not mutual submission.

(c) The flow of the argument. V. 21, 'being submissive to one another in the fear of Christ', is a programmatic statement which introduces the topic of 'submission', and this is developed in the household table of 5:22-6:9. The verse is tightly linked with what immediately follows: there is no verb in v. 22, and so 'submitting' must be understood from v. 21 for its meaning and sense. The idea of 'submission' is unpacked in v. 22 without the verb being repeated. It is as though the apostle is saying: "Submit to one another, and what I mean is, wives submit to your husbands, children to your parents, and slaves to your masters'. To interpret v. 21 by abstracting it from the context not only misunderstands how the verb 'submit' would be grasped by a first-century reader but also fails to see the natural flow of the apostle's argument. What submitting to one another means is spelled out in the household table, with its ordered array in society. And submitting to one another is a significant outworking of being filled by the Spirit.

To conclude. On grounds of semantics, syntax, and the flow of Paul's argument we prefer the latter interpretation. The apostle is not speaking of mutual submission in the sense of a reciprocal subordination, but submission to those who are in authority over them.

So that is a rather technical understanding. Other conservative commentators agree. Here is Sinclair Ferguson:

Paul's first exhortation Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord shocks our 'politically correct' culture. Yet widespread marital breakdown gives the lie to the contemporary self-confident rejection of the biblical teaching. Indeed, it reveals a deliberate blindness to God's pattern for human life - the pattern for which we were created and in which we discover the original purpose and destiny of marriage being fulfilled.

There is no verb submit in the text of verse 22. It is borrowed from the previous sentence about mutual submission in verse 21. Thus, a more literal translation would read: 'submitting to one another in reverence/fear of Christ...the wives to their own husbands in the Lord'. For that reason it is sometimes suggested that the overarching principle in this section is that of the mutual submission of believers. This mutual submission is then viewed as taking different forms, depending on whether one is a wife ('submit') or husband ('love'), child or father, slave or husband. In this interpretation, every exhortation Paul gives amounts to an expression of this mutual submission.

Mutual submission is indeed our calling as Christians. But to regard that idea as the controlling element in interpreting what follows misreads the text - for three reasons:

(i) The same exhortation to wives appears in the parallel passage in Colossians 3:18. There the verb 'submit' is actually present in the statement but mutual submission is not mentioned in the broader context.

(ii) The model for the husband is Christ's love for the church not his submission to the church. While Christ is God's servant to the church, he never submits to it.

(iii) Ephesians 5:22-6:9 describe three contexts for relationships (marriage, family, household) in which submission is called for in one party but not in the other. These are forms of submission to God, not expressions of mutual submission to one another.

Also in agreement is R. C. Sproul, whose commentary I would particularly recommend to your attention. Harry Uprichards also agrees.

My conclusion is several-fold, and these are not in any particular order.

Firstly, all the commentators agree that the verb 'submit' in the Greek is in the middle voice, indicating a voluntary thing. It's something the wife does to her husband, not the other way around. The husband does not brow-beat her into submission. While this is true, I believe the text omits the qualifier "only if he loves you properly," or "only if he asks you do something you already want to do," or "only if he asks you to do things you think are smart and wise." Submission is called for in all of those situations. It is even called for, I believe, when the husband asks her to sin. And this is where submission differs from obedience. Clearly, a wife cannot obey her husband if he calls her to sin. I claim, however, that a wife can still submit to him, can still reverance him and respect him while disobeying. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that is my current opinion.

Secondly, while submission to God is required of everyone, the kind of submission a wife has for her husband is not the same sort of thing he is required to do for her. He is required to love her and cherish her. He is her covenant head.

Thirdly, a wife submits to her own husband, not to just anyone's husband or to men in general. This is actually a freeing thing. Imagine trying to obey five different men all pulling you in different directions! Surely it's easier to submit only to one man.

Fourthly, there are implications for courtship. Not every man can be a good head to every woman. As Douglas Wilson wrote, "Abigail did not go well with Nabal." This is a recognition of the fact that, given a particular man, there are women out there who are his spiritual betters. He should cheerfully acknowledge that fact, and not seek to impose himself on such.

Fifthly, submission is not demeaning, and it does not imply inferiority. Is Christ inferior to the Father? As Sproul wrote, is the Vice-President of the United States inferior to the President? Or is a lieutenant inferior to his captain? I hope you see the rhetorical nature of these questions. God calls wives to submit to their own husbands. Or do you think God wants what is bad for you? I think not; remember Romans 8:28, and all things working for good? What is that good? To become more like Christ. It might hurt a bit to bend in a way you don't want, but to become more like Christ is surely to your supreme benefit. Perhaps your objection to submission is really that you don't want any authority over you at all. In that case, you are simply in rebellion and need to repent and receive God's grace the same as anyone else.

Sixthly, I believe it is partly feminism (brought on by an acute case of male abdication) and partly a misinterpretation of American individualism and equality that tries to obliterate all distinctions between people. I believe the Bible does teach that men and women are different; not one inferior or superior to the other, but different. If you've ever heard the expression 'comparing apples and oranges' you'll get the idea. To try to impose a ">" sign on human relationships is to miss the point. In mathematical language, human relationships are not so ordered.

There are probably loads of other things I could say, but that is all for now. Stay tuned for headship!

As I said before, questions and comments are certainly welcome.

Worship vs. Evangelism?

2006-09-16T22:08:00.000-05:00

I was reading John Dekker's first post on evangelizing children, and remembered a quote from John Piper that I rather like. It's this: "Evangelism exists because worship doesn't." This is an eschatalogical concept if ever there was one. Will there be evangelism forever? Clearly not. On the Judgment Day, whatever you believe about it, God will separate the sheep from the goats. There will be no going back, and no more second chances. (That's why I'm uncomfortable, actually, with the idea that God's grace is infinite. God does not wait forever, though He tarries long.) Therefore there can be no reason to evangelize after that Day. And what will there be after that Day? Worship.

Let us not forget, also, that man's chief end (not his head!) is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. That is not evangelism, but worship. It is worship with your whole being.

So am I saying we shouldn't evangelize? Certainly not. But realize that ultimately, it is not the highest activity man does. Douglas Wilson once said that homo sapiens doesn't describe man nearly so well as homo adorans - man who worships. Worshipping the one true God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is the highest activity that man does.

So worship with all of your being. In today's church, I feel that this doesn't happen. There appear to be two extremes. Either you believe that Christians should worship with their mind, all of their mind, and nothing but their mind; or the equivalent with the heart.

But the Bible doesn't talk that way. The Bible is much more holistic. It says "Behold, the LORD your God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind." I distinctly get the impression that, along with these four aspects of human existence, we are to love the LORD our God with "anything else about you not mentioned in this list."

Which extreme has the sway right now? Mindless exuberance, or tired orthodusty? I'm not sure I really care.

For those of you who know me, I'm going to have to apologize for using Douglas Wilson again. But Wilson has got the absolute perfect word for worship: it's the Latin word "solempne." Here he is, from his book Mother Kirk:

[begin quote]
Like our word solemn, solempne represents the opposite of casual, but unlike solemn, it carries no connotation of austerity, moroseness, or gloom. We moderns have come to associate spontaneity with innocence and virtue, fresh and unsullied. Our adoption of unbiblical criteria means that we frequently overlook those things which the Bible associates with a healthy church, dismissing them as dead simply because they have more formality in the liturgy than we like.

...

Of course a worship service may be formal and also lifeless. This is disobedience. "Wherefore the Lord said, 'Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men" (Is. 29:13). In the opposite corner, a worship service may be informal and lively. We have no Scripture for this one, other than the implication that the absence of [order] did not unchurch the group of saints at Corinth. But we must remember that tolerated disobedience over time always leads to death.

A worship service may be informal and spiritually chaotic, meaning that lifelessness is just around the corner. "Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse" (1 Cor. 11:17). If the disorder evident in their worship went unaddressed, the end result of their activity would be final, lasting spiritual inactivity. The activity in a church can simply be a form of pandemonium.

But obedience requires that a worship service be both formal and lively. To say it again, "Though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ" (Col. 2:5).

We should therefore see that there are two types of order. When a formal church is unhealthy, it is because their arrangement is the order of china figurines on a shelf. When a formal church is obedient and healthy it is because their arrangement is that of well-disciplined troops preparing themselves for battle. An opposing general would not look at their cavalry, wheeling as though one man, and dismiss them as a bunch of legalists.

...

And as the Scriptures declare, when the choir in militant joy goes out as the advance guard of the army [Adrian: there is a verse that says in at least one Israelite battle, the musicians were to form the front line], then God's name is glorified, and His enemies are scattered. The worship is formal and exuberant.
[end quote]

I would add that this word solempne is very like a soldier standing at attention, very quiet, but bursting with joy because he serves his general, whom he loves and will follow to the death. Great generals like Stonewall Jackson can command this kind of loyalty from their men. And can our great King not command this from us? It is disobedience not to render this to Him.

So worship with your whole being with all your actions every day. Sundays, perhaps, you get to worship with more of the army present, and that is encouraging. But we are to worship all the time.

God bless you.

Charles Bridges Quote

2006-09-09T11:36:00.000-05:00

I just read an incredible quote from the Charles Bridges commentary on Proverbs. Commenting on Prov. 10:18, he says:

"...But is this 'root of bitterness' thoroughly mortified in the Christian's heart? Is there no insincerity in our intercourse with those, to whom we feel, if not hatred, at least strong repugnance? In the language of polite courtesy, there is much that is hollow, if not false. Do we really mean what we say? Or rather is not the profession of regard often absolutely contrary to our real feelings? Do we never bring them under ridicule, set them out in an unfavorable light, assert things upon mere suspicion, or attempt to raise our own name upon the ruin of their reputation? In common society, how is it often considered the acme of disappointment, when this conversation flags, or comes to a pause; whereas the reverse ought to be the true subject of regret. This spirit surely in the eyes of God is slander; an offence against the 'new commandment of love' - which is the badge of all the disciplies of Jesus. (John, xiii. 34, 35.) These noxious humours are the bane of true godliness. They must not only be restrained, but 'laid aside,' if ever we would, 'as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that we may grow thereby.' (1 Pet. ii. 1, 2. Jam. i. 21.) Lord, purge our hearts from these hateful hidden corruptions; even though it be by 'the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning.' (Isa. iv. 4.)" (emphasis original)

Wow!! Incidentally, I do not think Bridges here is arguing against common courtesy; rather, the abuse of it. For true courtesy must tell the truth. True courtesy will not praise falsely. On the other hand, it will search out ways to praise another sincerely.

In Christ.

Cool Game

2006-09-06T11:03:00.000-05:00

The game is NationStates, which is an online political game. You can find it here. You create a nation, and then you can do various things with it, including resolving issues (making laws), working with other nations, communication, etc. My nation is Brillnir, of the Suffragist League region. Have fun!

In Christ.

The War on Terror

2006-09-03T20:35:00.000-05:00

I drive busses for Blacksburg Transit. Recently we had a policeman speak to us about terror, one of the best presentations I have ever heard. He was cogent, timely, humorous at times, interesting, informative, and no-nonsense. I learned an awful lot about terrorism which I shall not share with you over a blog. However, it did make me think a bit about Bush and his policies.

Here is where I net out: Bush may or may not be doing most things right in the war on terror. The war in Iraq may or may not be correct, immigration policies may or may not be correct, etc.

But one thing I do know: I know next to nothing about terrorism. Ja, I learned a bit recently. However, I still know very very little. So who am I to critique Bush about the way he's fighting it? I have very little respect for people who bad-mouth the war in Iraq and insist we pull out immediately (a very bad idea, I should think; that would almost be worse than never having gone in in the first place), and have no constructive alternative. Such people are spineless, and like little children, are trying to get attention in a bad way. So I say, don't give them media coverage. Such people are likely to say that we can appease the Islamic extremists. Really? Apparently we don't remember Neville Chamberlain who almost single-handedly managed to promote Hitler's agenda beyond even his wildest dreams. What was Chamberlain's strategy? Total capitulation. Did it work? Of course not. It's like giving candy to a kid: Hitler was just going to keep at it, asking for more.

One thing I'm not so sure about, and I'd be interested in your opinions, dear readers. The question is this: does orthodox Islam require jihad? Are the extremists really extreme, or are they the ones interpreting the Koran correctly? This is surely not a superfluous question, or an ignorant one. If the liberals are right about Islam being the Religion of Peace, as Ann Coulter would say, then why is it that such a gigantic majority of terrorists are Muslim? There's a special episode of The West Wing which uses the following analogy: Muslim extremists are to Islam as the KKK is to Chrisianity. I submit to you that this may be incorrect. In other words, please comment on the following analogy: these Muslim extremists are to Islam as committed orthodox reformed Presbyterians are to Christianity. Naturally, I'm not accusing Presbyterians of terrorism; what I am saying is that maybe the extremists have it right, according to the Koran.

Here are some quotes to ponder, from the Koran. Now I know that if there are any Muslim readers out there, you will object saying that this is in English. So be it. I don't understand Arabic, and most of my readers probably don't, either.

Surah IX, Repentance. Verse 4. Excepting those of the idolaters with whom ye (Muslims) have a treaty, and who have since abated nothing of your right nor have supported anyone against you. (As for these), fulfil their treaty to them till their term. Lo! Allah loveth those who keep their duty (unto Him).

Verse 5. Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Verse 6. And if anyone of the idolaters seeketh thy protection (O Muhammad), then protect him so that he may hear the word of Allah, and afterward convey him to his place of safety. That is because they are a folk who know not.

Verse 7. How can there be a treaty with Allah and with His messenger for the idolaters save those with whom ye made a treaty at the Inviolable Place of Worship? So long as they are true to you, be true to them. Lo! Allah loveth those who keep their duty.

...

Verse 29. Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.

...

Verse 41. Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah! That is best for you if ye but knew.

...

Verse 122. And the believers should not all go out to fight. Of every troop of them, a party only should go forth, that they (who are left behind) may gain sound knowledge in religion, and that they may warn their folk when they return to them, so that they may beware.

Verse 123. O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him).

What is your verdict? I find Verse 123 to be particularly telling. Christianity says the opposite: turn the other cheek. Furthermore, while it may be there, I do not find instructions in the Koran that say that this fight is spiritual and not physical. Yes, Christianity is a fight; but Paul makes it clear in Ephesians 6 that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual enemies. Consequently, our warfare is spiritual in nature, and not physical. The Koran does not appear to have such mitigating sentiments.

In Christ.

Women and the University

2006-09-02T10:09:00.000-05:00

I've been reading some posts here and here dealing with the question of women in college.

I know that the feminists would probably be outraged that the question is even coming up. However, given the state of affairs in the United States, and given some previous relationships I have had with certain ladies, I have some thoughts on this subject which I should like to share with you.

It is my opinion that there are some reasons for and against going to the university that I do not think are being given enough weight.

First of all, I should like to begin with the men. Men pretty much have to go to college, many of them to graduate school, in order to obtain a decent-paying job. That's the nature of today's world. A better reason is to become a life-long learner, but the first reason is reason enough. While there are exceptions to this idea (Bill Gates, e.g.), generally it is true. So let us take it as a given that most men will need to go to college.

Second of all, I should like to point out that in Genesis, the woman Eve was created for Adam, not the other way around. She was created to be his helpmeet. I think it is a legitimate inference that most woman should expect to marry. Furthermore, those women who do marry should try to be the kind of woman who can help her future husband. I believe that since most men have to go to college, that will have some implications for women today, namely, that this is one reason women should consider as to whether or not they should go to college. Why is that? Because I think it not good if one partner is an intellectual giant, and the other is an intellectual pygmy. Is this an absolute reason? No. I don't think there are any absolute reasons for or against going to college. I believe the command to love the Lord with our minds is an absolute command to be life-long learners. But wisdom is not measured in degrees after your name. This is simply something to consider. I would say that many women are probably going to need a degree in order to converse fluently about important topics with men, the same way most men need degrees in order to converse fluently about important things. Therefore, I think it's valid for a woman to view college as a help for her to be a better helpmeet.

Third, the Bible commands us to be in the world, but not of it. This goes two ways. On the one hand, the ideas that influence society come from the university. Therefore, there should be Christians in the university. It is not valid to infer that all Christians should be in the university, since Christians have different calls. But I think many Christians should be in the university. Christians have no need to fear the pagan philosophies. R. C. Sproul is known to have said that he only has respect for two philosophies: Christianity and nihilism. The pagan philosophies are empty, but Christianity will abundantly satisfy the most curious and brilliant mind. Since the command to be in the world but not of it applies equally to men and women, then I think it is valid to infer that many women should be in the university. In addition, the universities used to have a truly great reputation. Harvard used to be great, Yale used to be great, Princeton used to be great. They're not anymore, due to grade inflation, Unitarianism, and the like. But they are worth saving, if that's possible. On the other hand, not being of the world warns us against being overly influenced by the horrible ideas coming from the university. We should be influencing the university, and aside from the usual education that is reported to occur in some universities, we should not be influenced by them to the detriment of our faith. Only very solid, well-grounded Christians should go to a secular university. I think this is a good argument against dorm living. I have lived in dorms at a Christian college (Grove City College), and while I received a very excellent education there, I did not see much advantage to dorm life. It seemed to foster immaturity rather than maturity. I prefer the stance of New St. Andrews College, which has no dorms, and expects its students to mix with everyday sorts of people of all ages, especially in the church but also in town. That, I think, is much better.

And now, we come to some more women-specific items. What are the pros and cons? What is wisdom here? Well, I do think that, in general, staying at or near home is a wise idea for women. The Bible has the model of the man leaving and cleaving, not so much the wife. Jesus Himself said, "I go to prepare a place for you." It is much easier for a father to protect his daughter both from unworthy ideas and suitors if she is closer to him spatially. This is not absolute, but it is a factor, I deem. It certainly is possible for a father to teach his daughter well enough that she is quite prepared to take on a secular university without being close to home. I don't know how many daughters are that well prepared, but though I have come across them, I have not come across many. I would submit that most would find it better to stay closer to home. The Bible says that men need to leave home and their fathers and mothers, but it does not say so about women. Women, I think, generally stay in their first family until they marry, at which point they go to their second family.

What about home skills? What about career? Well, I shall open this Pandora's box. I believe a woman's primary calling is the home. Nothing trumps that on this earth. What would need to trump it? The home is more fulfilling than any career for most women. The home is a place where just about any skill or art you can think of can be put to great use. There are few challenges greater, and few places with more power to change society. The feminists talk about power all the time in the context of career or in relationships with men. What they don't realize is the power of the cradle. You women want power? Become a mother! So, when a woman goes into the university thinking that she wants to be a wife and mother, and comes out thinking she wants a career, something unwise has happened. I do not say wrong, for it is not wrong for a woman to have a career. In today's society, though, it is out of all proportion. Not nearly enough women view the home as the center of their lives; far too many women want careers, and the consequences of that are evil. I say that being a wife and mother is a 24-7 job. While the Proverbs 31 woman does business outside the home, I think she also knows that the home is her center. Indeed, all her skills edify the home, whether directly or indirectly (sometimes very indirectly!). So I say that if you go to college, go to obtain a degree that will help you in the home. That could be just about anything (except maybe sociology and psychology, the modern exercise of which assumes that man is basically good; since the premise is flawed, I wonder how many conclusions are trustworthy!). Especially useful in the home are the following: theology (easily the most important), English, history, art (all the arts, especially the fine arts), math and science. It was J. Gresham Machen who said something to the effect of, "Theology is not learned in seminary. It's learned on the back porch talking with Mom." I think that it is extraordinarily difficult to be a good wife and mother and also to have a full-time career. It's even difficult to have a part-time job and mix it with being a wife and mother. Add on top of that the most important relationship anyone has: their relationship with God and the need to pray and read the Bible, and I think that most women are not capable of doing it all. I wouldn't recommend it, though if there are women out there who can go the mile-a-minute required to do all that without burning out, more power to ya'. To you I would say that the Sabbath rest is probably even more important for you than for anyone else; you can't afford not to take that rest.

So what about homemaking skills? They are obviously very, very important. I would say that a woman going to college without knowing the basics of cooking and cleaning and whatnot is not wise. I would also say that men should know those things as well. Generally, though, if a woman is focused on that most excellent place, the home, she should probably expect to do more of it than her husband. And naturally, when the kids get old enough, they need lots of "practice" doing home skills. Hehe. So families need to teach their children homemaking skills. However, I would not say that if a woman is not a gourmet chef by age 18 she is an utter failure. A lot of skills that a wife needs to know, she may not even be able to learn except on the job. In other words, I do not think that the perfection of homemaking skills should get in the way of college. Yes, they are important. But I see no need for the two to conflict.

I do not pretend to examine every single reason pro and con for women to go to college. However, the reasons I have given seem to me to indicate that a good majority of women should expect to go to college, and maybe even get advanced degrees.

Ben Garrison's Parable

2006-05-08T08:37:00.000-05:00

I really liked this. I hope you do, too.

In Christ.

The Public Schools, Take II

2006-05-07T18:46:00.000-05:00

A while ago I posted on the public schools, and it was revealed to me, gradually, that I didn't do it in a very loving manner. So I'm going to try again, hopefully better this time. I think it is important to speak out on a matter this important. I believe I speak truth (if I didn't, I'd change my mind!), and this is something I've studied for some time now.

At the same time, I recognize fully that this is not a matter of orthodoxy. No doubt I will welcome many people in heaven who think well of the public schools.

Finally, and in connection with the previous point, I am here speaking against the public schools as an idea, and by my definition not against those who hold this idea. Surely this is possible. In one of the Corinthians, Paul says that we demolish strongholds that set themselves up against Christ, and take every thought captive. We do not demolish people. Therefore, it is entirely possible to attack ideas without attacking the people who hold them. No doubt, also, I am wrong about many things. It is always easier to find the faults of your neighbor than to find them in yourself. Which is why we should exhort one another, though it may not always be pleasant, either to do or to hear.

First off, one really great resource is Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, by Douglas Wilson. That is a simply fantastic book. Yes, Mr. Wilson is not hot on the idea of public schools; but he is not just a critic. He has given us a solution to the problem that is now one of the major paradigm shifts in education.

I have some major issues with the public schools. They are on a number of fronts, so I'll list them in some orderly fashion.

1. Firstly, and by far the most important, God is left out of the classroom. I really don't think this is a matter for debate, the fact that this happens. Given the modern mantra of the separation of church and state, and the way that sentiment has been interpreted these days, the fact that this has happened is really beyond all reasonable doubt. R. L. Dabney once wrote in his pamphlet On Secular Education, "We have seen that their [public schools'] complete secularization is logically inevitable. Christians must prepare themselves then, for the following results: All prayers, catechisms, and Bibles will ultimately be driven out of the schools."

My response to that is several-fold. The first is to note that R. L. Dabney lived from 1820 - 1898. This was well before, obviously, prayer was banned from the public schools. So it seems Dabney had some prophetic insight.

The second is surprise: they had catechisms in the public schools?

So God is left out of the classroom. So what? Well, the so-what is that there is no neutrality. Period. If you are not with God you are against God. If you leave God out of the classroom, yes, even out of math class, then you are saying that God doesn't matter. God isn't really sovereign, because look, we can do all this on our own, without Him.

Following this thought to its logical conclusion: the public schools are therefore teaching secular humanism. Why should I, a Christian, pay taxes to support a system that is teaching something completely antithetical to my entire being? You might object, saying that education is what we need to keep the kids off the streets. You might say that an educated society is a better society. I see it differently. Wisdom is not measured in academic degrees and lots of letters after your name. Knowledge, understanding, and wisdom are not the same thing, though they are related. I know many people without Ph.D.'s who are wiser than I, who am, Lord willing, about to receive mine. Knowledge and even understanding are not enough to change a person's heart. Only the Holy Spirit, working with the Word of God can do that. In other words, education is not our savior, and it never will be. It is a very great good, there's no doubt about it. But it is not sufficient to save people, and it is not sufficient to prevent crime. If you educate a person's mind, but not his heart, you will only get very smart criminals.

2. The separation of church and state, as an idea, is not so far away from the current system as its proponents would have us believe. The modern US public school system was begun in the mid 1800's by the heretical Unitarians, who had recently taken over Harvard. Their goal? To oust the Calvinists. Regardless of your religious affiliation, that is hardly a noble goal of education. For confirmation of these claims, I recommend reading Is Public Education Necessary?, by Samuel Blumenfeld. He goes into a detailed history of the beginnings of the public school system, and has a very large number of footnotes of original sources: Horace Mann and Robert Owen in particular. It's well documented. What I've said is only a summary of what he said.

3. The academic standards of public schools are less than they might be. I will quote some figures from a study done in April of 1983 called A Nation at Risk. I know you might think this study is out-dated, but I tend to think otherwise. The study fits with my experience teaching calculus at Virginia Tech. This is a study done entirely from within the public schools system. In other words, this report is what the public schools are saying about themselves.

a. Some 23 million American adults are functionally illiterate by the simplest tests of everyday reading, writing, and comprehension.

b. About 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States can be considered functionally illiterate. Functional illiteracy among minority youth may run as high as 40 percent.

c. The College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) demonstrate a virtually unbroken decline from 1963 to 1980. Average verbal scores fell over 50 points and average mathematics scores dropped nearly 40 points.

d. College Board achievement tests also reveal consistent declines in recent years in such subjects as physics and English.

e. Many 17-year-olds do not possess the "higher order" intellectual skills we should expect of them. Nearly 40 percent cannot draw inferences from written material; only one-fifth can write a persuasive essay; and only one-third can solve a mathematics problem requiring several steps.

f. Business and military leaders complain that they are required to spend millions of dollars on costly remedial education and training programs in such basic skills as reading, writing, spelling, and computation. The Department of the Navy, for example, reported to the Commission that one-quarter of its recent recruits cannot read at the ninth grade level, the minimum needed simply to understand written safety instructions. Without remedial work they cannot even begin, much less complete, the sophisticated training essential in much of the modern military.

I have skipped several of these indicators that the study has produced. I'm going to assume that you have the idea.

4. We are spending too much money on the public school system, without the results we should justly expect to obtain. Here I will quote from Douglas Wilson's book that I mentioned earlier:

"The nation's largest and most powerful union, the National Education Association (NEA), fully backs this assertion that the problem can largely be understood as a lack of funds. Michael Kirst, a past president of the California Board of Education, writing in an NEA publication, says, 'Excellence costs. No other assertion in the entire debate on education reform is more on target, further beyond dispute. And yet many people . . . do dispute this claim . . . . The deplorable condition of many of today's schools - the scarce resources, the underpaid staffs, the sparse curriculums, the unsafe facilities - proves again that excellence costs and that the states cannot adequately meet those costs.'

Fortunately, money being the quantifiable thing that it is, this is one suggestion that can easily be checked. Lack of money does not appear to be a factor in the decline of academic achievement. For example, in the school year 1959/60, the total expenditure per pupil in the United States was $1,699, while in 1985/86, the figure had risen to $3,937 (and these amounts are in constant 1985/86 dollars). And what was happening to test scores over a portion of the same period? In 1966/67, the SAT average for college-bound seniors was 958. By 1985/86, the scores had fallen to 906. In other words, test scores are falling, money is being spent furiously, and the lack of results is beginning to look like a permament fixture.

Nevertheless, groups like the NEA are adamant that more money is needed. Those who suggest this as a serious reform fail to realize that one of the reasons people are so dissatisfied with our schools in the first place is the fact that so much money is spent on them. If an average private school were given the same amount of money per pupil as an average public school gets, they wouldn't know what to do with it all. If excellence costs so much, then how is it possible for so many shoe-string private academies to turn out students that do so well academically?"

So what is the solution to all these problems? Well, I ask you one question: are the difficulties I have outlined above real, and if they are, are they an inherent problem of the public schools system? Is it possible that the very idea of a public school will inevitably lead to all the problems I've listed (not exhaustively, I might add)? If so, then public schools should not exist. No doubt you, the reader, already know what I think, based on the very posing of the question. I will not force you to the same conclusion.

What would be a better alternative? I think the classical Christian school movement is the best thing out there. Again, see Wilson's book for a much more complete explanation than I can give.

But I'm not so sure that Wilson's book is the end-all. For those of you who know me, that might shock you. ;-)] What I mean is this: I think we need to use the classical Christian school model for several generations in order to recover our lost tools of learning. But then, once the majority of people have them, we should revert to homeschooling. I do think homeschooling, done in the classical manner, is the best thing out there. It definitely requires the most work, by far. After all, in order for 20 separate children from separate families to learn chemistry, 20 parents need to know chemistry! You can't teach what you don't know. See John Milton Gregory's book The Seven Laws of Teaching, for an explanation of that fact. Education courses will not make up for your lack of knowledge in some subject.

Finally, I should emphasize something: I am advocating classical Christian education. Education is not neutral, in my belief. The Trinity is absolutely central to all knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. It is not enough to have grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, the tools of learning. You must have, in all things, Christ pre-eminent, or you will have no unified view of the world. You must be philosophically Trinitarian in order to make sense of our unified, yet diverse world.

These are my beliefs and opinions. If you think my views are harsh, please do me a favor: think about the following. First of all, is what I said true? I've mostly quoted others' ideas here. There's hardly an original idea in this whole post. Therefore, you would really need to take it up with the authors, respectively, of the quotes. Dabney is dead, to be sure, but probably most of the others are not. Douglas Wilson is alive and kicking, to be sure. You can read his blog here. I am not up on the others. Second of all, if what I've said is true, I ask you, please, to overlook any harshness in my phraseology. Do me the favor, please, as I would certainly do to you, of giving me the benefit of the doubt. I intend harm to no man whatsoever. I fully believe my intentions to be upright. There certainly is rebuke in my words here. The book of Proverbs says that "If you rebuke a wise man, he will love you." As I've said before, that doesn't mean that if you rebuke a man, and he loves you for it, that he is necessarily wise. But it does mean that if you rebuke a man, and he does not love you for it, then he is not wise. We should love rebuke. We should see the loving nature of the man behind it, the man who wants us to grow closer to God. We should put aside our pride and love of being right in our own eyes.

To do these things is impossible without the grace of God. I pray God will give us all that grace, in His good time.

In Christ.

Antiblog

2006-05-05T19:37:00.000-05:00

Antiblog

To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required.

2006-04-26T22:37:00.000-05:00

I recently got pulled over for having an expired inspection sticker. Actually, I had a rejection sticker (brakes), but those are only good for 15 days or so. Mine was four months old.

So the cop pulls me over and asks the usual: license and registration. I hand them over, thinking to myself, "Let's see what that does!" I have, you see, a Commercial Drivers License (CDL), Class B, with Passenger Endorsement and Air Brakes, for driving buses for Blacksburg Transit. That means, of course, that I can get special treatment.

The cop goes back to his car and does whatever they do, presumably a complete background check. When he comes back, he chews me out by saying, "I see you have a Commercial Driver's License. And yet your inspection is four months overdue. That looks bad." So much for special treatment!

And then I remembered: to whom much is given, much is required. Instead of thinking what privileges my CDL gives me, I should really be thinking of my responsibilities. A person with a CDL should be all the more conscientious about following traffic rules!

$65 later, I'm legal again. And if I'd had my car inspected on time? It would only have taken $15. Hopefully, lesson learned.

In Christ.

Christian Men and Beards

2006-04-06T15:06:00.000-05:00

I promised this post on Susan's blog in one of my comments on her long hair post.

I have a beard, and I am not Jewish nor Muslim. I am a Christian. To explain this anomaly will require a bit of work.

There are several reasons why I have a beard. Probably the most important reason is the gender confusion so prevalent around us. Beards are helpful in this regard. Whatever the Bible says about cross-dressing (and it says something! It's quite negative.) leads me to believe that no one should ever have any difficulty, in looking at someone, in determining the sex of that person. It always makes me feel rather weird if I'm looking at someone, and I can't tell whether that person is a boy or girl.

I will artfully dodge (was that a musical?) the question of the gender of God (I don't think it makes a huge difference in my argument), and simply point out that God created man, male and female created He them. He did not create a sort-of-man, and a kinda-woman. They were male and female, and no question. There are passages in Leviticus which prohibit a man putting on women's clothing, and I believe vice versa, but I'd need to look it up. Evidently, God views the distinction between men and women to be important.

I have never in all my born days been accused of being effeminate, even before I wore a beard. So you might object saying that I didn't have a need. Ah, but other men might not have such an easy time of it. Wearing a beard might encourage others to do the same, who might benefit by the added distinction. In addition, the beard provides insta-recognition. No one has any question about me. I liken it to driving a car: don't drive so that other people can figure out what you're going to do next, make it obvious. I'm making it obvious.

The next reason I wear a beard is because it's so amazingly easy to care for a beard compared with shaving. At least, it is for me. I realize many men out there don't grow their facial hair fast enough to warrant shaving every day (and that is the way God made you; don't you dare be ashamed of it!). For them the rewards are not so great, and in addition, the growing of a beard would be so time-comsuming, and the beard would look so terrible in the meantime, that I can fully understand your reluctance. There is no Christian requirement here!

It takes me ten minutes to shave properly, and that has to happen every single day or I get 5:00 shadow that is as rough as sandpaper. Beards are soft, but stubble is extremely unpleasant. I do shampoo and condition my beard right along with the hair on top. I also comb it. But that really takes very little time; on the order of a couple minutes for everything. I have to trim my beard once a week or so. That takes about ten minutes. So overall, I save a goodly bit of time from my beard, which I can then apply to blogging about it.

Probably 99% of the men in the Bible had beards, especially those men of Israel before the time of David. David, we believe, imported iron technology from the Philistines (plundering the Egyptians). Before that, it would have been prohibitively expensive to have iron tools such as razors for shaving. In addition, "tearing the beard out" was a sign of mourning, and shaving your beard was also. We know Jesus had a beard, because of the prophecy of "plucking out the hair," which probably refers to a beard.

Another reason for wearing a beard, which I could wish was otherwise (at least, in terms of the general distaste), is the apparent distaste for beards amongst the gentler sex. For me, this has the distinct advantage of scaring women away. Since many women dislike beards, I am safe from women who think that appearance is everything, and are only interested in "cute guys." My beard, I am nearly convinced, saves me from some embarrassments in this regard. Not that I think I'm extraordinarily handsome without it; I don't think I'm ugly, but that's as far as I'll go.

I think beards, well-kempt ones (the only ones I'm considering in this post), look distinguished. I think my beard gives me an air of authority; I think this helps me with my bus driving. I hear all these horror stories about things that happen to some bus drivers (fights on the bus, water balloons through windows, various other things). None of them ever seem to happen to me.

Now what are the objections? Principally, I hear that the ladies don't think beards look nice. Well, that's certainly something to consider. I've heard several ladies claim that beards cover facial features they would rather see. But really, ladies, is the appearance of a guy really so very important? You are not so visually oriented as we men are. I understand that because men are visually oriented, and always will be, the appearance of a lady is always important to her. The opposite situation is simply not true. My appearance is not all that important to me. I try to look presentable, simply out of politeness, but I do not spend enormous amounts of time with my appearance.

People might think that beards are warm in the summertime. Not really. In fact, I almost think beards make you cooler. The reason? Beards increase the surface area-to-volume ratio, making it easier to exchange heat with the environment. Thus, unless the summer-time temperature is above 99 degrees Fahrenheit or so, a beard is not going to make a man much warmer to any measurable amount. Interestingly, beards also do not significantly insulate a man in the winter, either. I have found my beard to be insignificant when it comes to my temperature.

I suppose one other objection might be dinnertime, and the "flavor-saver", as a fellow beard-wearer fondly calls it. This is simply a matter of keeping the hair around the mouth well-trimmed, and using napkins, and being a bit self-aware. Nothing all that difficult, really.

All-in-all, I find the advantages (mostly time) outweigh the disadvantages greatly.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Suppose I get married, and my wife wants me to get rid of it, right? Guess what? I get rid of it! After marriage, my body belongs to my wife. However, I might very well try to cajole her into liking it and letting me keep it. If the end result is dislike, then the beard goes. There are many things more important than beards. Including time I could be spending doing things other than writing about beards.

In Christ.

Women and Logic, Men and Emotions

2006-03-26T17:18:00.000-05:00

I heard a woman say once that women don't think logically; her implication was that men wanting to communicate with women have to learn how to understand emotions, because women aren't capable of understanding logic.

I propose a counter-statement: men need to understand emotions because that is the way many women prefer to think. Women need to understand logic because that is the way many men prefer to think.

I think in today's world, often it is the feminine (note I carefully did not say feminist) viewpoint that is considered to be the correct one. The feminine viewpoint might think that considering the gap between the sexes, it is the man who should make most of the effort in crossing the gap. A woman, I have been told, likes to feel that her man understands her emotions even without her telling them, rather like Daniel interpreting dreams without being told what they were. And if a man can read the situation and correctly guess what she's thinking, all well and good. I'm happy for both of them. I do not think there is a biblical mandate for this, however. If a woman expects this all the time from her man, that places something of a heavy burden on him which he may or may not be able to fill. How is that being a helpmeet?

It seems to me that the really important aspect here is communication. Communication is much easier if both sides work towards the middle.

The Bible, I think, has loads more to say about logic than it does about emotions. I'm not saying the man's way of thinking is better or worse than the woman's. I am saying I don't think ultimately that logic is a masculine discipline, any more than I think emotions are solely feminine. Read how both David and Jesus wept!

In the end, since emotions are part of us, and men seem to have more trouble thinking about them, they should endeavor to improve their abilities in this area. However, emotions are highly untrustworthy when it comes to beliefs. All sorts of errors propagate out there because someone took a thought they were really excited about and forgot to compare it with all of Scripture. Therefore, I strongly believe that women should learn logic. They should know when a thing is proved and when it isn't. And if someone proves something from the Scriptures, using proper exegesis and correct reasoning, they should be prepared not only to believe it, but to change their way of life accordingly. Question the logic if you must, go over it with a fine-toothed comb, etc. But in the end, if it is correct, believe it.

I'll just do one very simple example to show you. All Christians, if they take the Bible seriously as the inerrant, infallible Word of God, must believe that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then preaching is in vain, and faith is useless. I absolutely positively guarantee that you will not find that exact statement in the Bible anywhere. But the proof of it is quite simple, using plain reason. So I ask you: will you believe it?

In Christ.

Sportsmanship

2006-03-19T15:41:00.000-05:00

There's a Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Empty House, which was made into a film by Granada, and starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. Brett is the only Holmes, of that I will ever be sure. In the story, the honourable Ronald Adair is shot by an expanding revolver bullet, and since the authorities do not know by whom or even how it was done, they have an inquest. The questioner at the inquest is examining a witness who knew Adair through school, etc. The questioner at one point asks whether Adair was, "A good sportsman, in fact?" And the witness answers, "Absolutely first-class sportsman. Straight as an arrow." That question and answer got me thinking: America loves sports, but do we really know what sports are all about, and do we know what sportsmanship is all about? I do not think we do.

As a further preface, I should like to quote C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, in Book 3, Chapter 5, where he says, "If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither." Emphasis added.

Why would Lewis put spoiling sport right up there with hatred? I would claim he does that because most instances of spoiling sport are simply thinly veneered examples of pride, which is most certainly the chief of all the sins.

So let us study this concept of sportsmanship and spoiling sport, and see if we can learn anything.

Dictionaries will only go so far here, but they are a start. Here is Miriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition:

sportsmanship n (1745) : conduct (as fairness, respect for one's opponent, and graciousness in winning or losing) becoming to one participating in a sport

So there we see several ideas involved with this concept. I think skill in whatever sport you are playing is also an element of the definition, but I should like to concentrate on the moral aspects. What does sportsmanship look like in practice?

Before the sport: respect for your opponent means practicing the skill yourself. You want to be a worthy opponent. As an example: I like chess. Gary Kasparov is one of the greatest players on the planet. At this point, I do not think it would be good sportsmanship to ask to play him. Why? Because it would be very difficult not to insult his abilities. To say that my poor skills are a match for his is chutzpah on quite a grand scale. Being a worthy opponent, while not impossible in the Kasparov example, is surely much easier when the skill levels are more even. So while I wouldn't say never play someone immensely better than you, be careful!

Contemplating playing the sport: consider it the greatest privilege to play someone better than you. That is where learning happens. Decide to play the best you can; doing any less is demeaning to your opponent. What if someone really good were to play you and let you win? Would you feel as though you had really accomplished something? Also involved is the idea of competitiveness. I say that it greatly depends on your reasons for competitiveness, as to whether it's a good thing or not. If you're just "into the game," then you're being a good sport. The goal is to win; let's have none of this modern nonsense of "making everyone feel good." Properly done, good sportsmanship knows how to handle losing. More on that later. If you're in it not so much to win as to make the other people lose, or not do as well as you, then you are committing the greatest sin of them all: pride.

Playing the sport: always have concern for the opponent's dignity. Play hard! And then help your opponent up if he falls. In Tae Kwan Do, this is more or less standard practice in sparring. At least, it should be. Fairness is important. I don't think any country has quite as well-developed a sense of fair play as do the English. It might be very well to study Marquis of Queensbury rules, for example, and other such examples of British fair play. I believe it was said of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that his sense of fair play was enough for him to be a referee in a boxing match, even though he never boxed.

What about winning and losing? A good winner is one who acknowledges the worthiness of his opponent. It is not what you see most of the time on TV, when a football player is asked to comment on the game after his team won: "Uuuuuh, wuuuhlll, we just, uhhh, played the best we could, and uuuuhhhh, everything came togethuuhh." That's like someone summarizing the War of Northern Aggression (as I prefer to call it) by saying that, "Problems arose." Good winners do not lord it over the loser, and parade around their accomplishments. It seems to me that usually, the winner is the first to extend the hand for the handshake. The loser should not hold it in anger that he lost, or bear a grudge against the winner. He should acknowledge the defeat. In sparring, there's one fellow named Calvin, who is not only the most accomplished martial artist I've ever seen, but is an impeccable sportsman. His ability to spar, even, allows him time to acknowledge any hits he receives by a quick pat on the hit area in real time. I wish I could do that. Alas, not yet.

One more idea I should like to bring forth, and that is the idea of kibitzing. By definition, this is someone who looks on and often offers unwanted advice or comments, especially at a card game. This is bad. The worst examples of this are Little League moms; apparently, this is such a common phenomenon that my mom has transformed those words into a byword, as in, "That woman has a Little League mom mentality." It's the tendency of the spectators to be bad sports. Cheering the team is one thing. Cursing the referee, and trying to make the game unfair to the visiting team (or other team) is quite another. At Virginia Tech football games, if the opposing team has the ball and it's third down, that is the definition of a "key play." All the Hokie fans get out their keychains, and yell and rattle their keychains in the hopes of getting an off-sides or something. I used to wonder why teams had so many off-sides; now I know. I view this is as bad sportsmanship on the part of the fans. I have also seen the Hokie fans' attitudes after losing a game. Silence.

So there's some of my thoughts regarding sportsmanship. I think lots of folks have seen violations of these principles. Probably the very worst violation I ever saw was a whole person: John Macinroe. He was quite the tennis player, but his sportsmanship was appalling. Do not be like him!

Let me close with another quote from Mere Christianity, this time about pride. It seems appropriate, considering that spoiling sport comes from pride. I quote from Book 3, Chapter 8. "We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity - as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble - delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are. I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off - getting rid of the false self, with all its 'Look at me' and 'Aren't I a good boy?' and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert."

And at the end, after you contemplate all this shtuff, you realize that you can't really do it, can you? Good sportsmanship is impossible, because its opposite, spoiling sport, comes from the great grandaddy of sins: pride. You are most definitely going to need God's grace on this one. Pray for it, and read your Bible, and go to church. Employ the usual means of grace.

In Christ.

Recent Reuters Article on Nuclear Power

2006-03-10T09:28:00.000-05:00

Here is an article by Jeremy Lovell, published on the Yahoo website. I am going to do as I do with Cucumberlandisland, and comment in regular type, while the article is in italics.

[begin]
Nuclear waste: bury it and forget?

SELLAFIELD (Reuters) - It is the regular beeping that grates. But if it stops, prepare to be scared.

The signal audible every second in every corridor of the high-level toxic nuclear waste plant on Britain's sprawling Sellafield site is a sign all the alarms are working. If it stops, or changes tone, something has gone very wrong.

"The people who work here every day tell me they get used to it. But it tends to get on the nerves of everyone who visits the plant," Sellafield information officer Ben Chilton told Reuters on a tour of the site 480 km (300 miles) northwest of London.

That's an interesting fail-safe mechanism for alarms. If you lose power or something similar, the alarms stop. This idea is very much a British way of thinking, as opposed to the quite unsafe Russian way of thinking.

The alarms are crucial for an industry that believes it could be granted a new lease of life as the world searches for an alternative to fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, that produce carbon emissions, blamed for global warming.

The nuclear industry says its technology emits no carbon and does not cause global warming but for many, still wary after disasters like the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, the lingering fear is that the toxic waste might leak and kill.

This is a non sequitur on the part of both Jeremy, and the "many who are wary." Chernobyl has nothing to do with nuclear waste. I will explain more about nuclear waste below. If Chernobyl generates any fears, it should be that reactors might have containment problems like Chernobyl. However, the spent fuel problem is a different problem entirely.

Sellafield, and a plant at La Hague in northern France, can each reprocess 5,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel each year, accounting for roughly a third of annual global output.

That's interesting: two plants can reprocess a third of the annual production. Just build four more such plants and you're good to go!

But there will be more waste. China plans to build 30 new nuclear reactors by 2020, India has struck a deal with the United States to build several more plants, the United States is lining up tax incentives for new generators and Britain is considering new plants to plug a looming energy gap.

Ok, build yet a few more plants such as Sellafield. Still no issue.

HELL'S BREW

The sludge that flows down the heavily armoured pipe into Sellafield's vitrification plant after plutonium and uranium have been taken from spent fuel rods for reuse is a hell's brew still emitting 40 times a lethal dose of radiation.

In shielded chambers with technicians watching through metre-thick leaded glass windows and using remote mechanical arms, the toxic stew is cooked down to a powder, combined with molten glass and poured into stainless steel urns.

These are cooled, closed and scrubbed before being sealed in insulated steel flasks and taken away for storage where, standing 10 deep in a concrete core and capped by a three-metre (10-foot) plug, the heat from the radiation is still tangible.

There are nearly 4,000 of these containers stored at Sellafield, which was the world's first commercial nuclear power plant when it opened in 1956, with room for 4,000 more.

There's better ways of disposing of it, actually. Breeder reactors come to mind.

Final disposal of the waste involves burying it in geologically stable formations. The half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years -- in other words, it would take up to 250,000 years before it degrades completely.

And here we come to a major misunderstanding concerning nuclear waste. One scientist put it like this: suppose you were required to choose between sitting on two boxes of firecrackers. In one box, there was a 50% chance that one firecracker would go off every 24,000 years, and in the other, a 50% chance that one firecracker might go off every second. Which one would you choose? It's not the long half-life radioactivity that is dangerous: it's the short half-life radioactivity.

Chilton said waste comes from Britain, which has 11 nuclear plants, and from countries as far away as Japan, the third biggest nuclear power user after the United States and France.

Sellafield's scientists are confident they have the answers on waste and believe nuclear power can help ease climate change.

"From a technical point of view we can deal with any waste that comes from nuclear plants," said Graham Fairhall of Nexiasolutions, the research arm of the British Nuclear Group.

But for the green lobby, nuclear waste is an unacceptable legacy, whatever the benefits of nuclear power.

Yes, well, the green lobby doesn't understand nuclear power very well, and they also misinterpret the nuclear accidents that have occurred in the past.

"Nuclear power is dirty, dangerous and expensive," said Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth. "We are only talking seriously about nuclear power again because of climate change. But it is not the answer."

Revealing his almost complete ignorance of nuclear power, we have Tony Juniper waxing ineloquent. Compared with coal power, nuclear power is clean enough for heart surgery.

Environmentalists say the costs of nuclear energy are not clear because of government subsidies and the toxic waste.

Gimme a break! Nuclear energy is vastly cheaper than coal.

The latest estimate on the cost of cleaning up the waste from the last 50 years is 56 billion pounds ($97 billion), Juniper said.

Ignoring breeder reactors, I see.

"There may be technical solutions to dealing with the waste that will be generated, but note that they are still trying to deal with the waste they have already created," he told Reuters.

The British government, which has covered the costs so far, says finance for new reactors must come from the private sector.

An energy review in Britain, which faces a 20 percent power shortfall within a decade as aging nuclear and coal-powered plants shut down, is due to be ready by the middle of the year.

LETHAL LEGACY

It is not just the high-level waste from fuel rods that has to be dealt with. Intermediate-level waste such as the casings of nuclear fuel rods, and low-level waste such as that produced in hospitals also has to be processed and stored.

The waste in hospitals is negligible. That much radioactivity, due to the hormesis effect, is actually beneficial to human health.

Intermediate waste is chopped up and put in steel barrels that are filled with concrete and stored, while low-level waste is put in steel boxes that are crushed and put in a container, which is then filled with concrete and buried.

Industry experts say high, intermediate or low-level waste does not pose a security risk as one would need industrial-style resources -- like protective gear and surroundings -- to even approach the high-level waste, and the other two forms are either non-retrievable or non-lethal.

Public opinion in Britain is gradually swinging toward accepting nuclear energy to help combat climate change -- 54 percent were in favor according to a poll this year -- despite worries about the waste and security.

But while the nuclear industry says a Chernobyl-scale disaster could not happen here because the technology is different, some of the legacy problems remain a major headache.

They're only a headache because of the public's misconceptions about them.

At Sellafield, 49 years after a fire forced the closure of the Windscale I military reactor, scientists are still trying to work out how to dismantle the chimney-top filter that trapped the radioactive smoke and stopped a nuclear catastrophe.

My father, a former Navy Nuke, could give you chapter and verse about nuclear accidents in the past, and how safe American reactors are, especially Navy reactors which still retain a spotless safety record. Russian designs are pitiful.

This article merely revealed how ignorant the public still is about nuclear power, and how politically motivated the so-called "greens" are. There is very little attempt at objectivity, even if such a thing were possible. The greens are not willing to admit how politically motivated they are.

Bro's Post on Dominion

2006-03-03T20:58:00.000-05:00

A while ago, I posted on overpopulation. Some of you were quite interested in that post. If you were interested in that post, you might also be interested in this post, by my brother Lane. I liked it immensely.

In Christ.

Not Neglecting

2006-03-03T20:44:00.000-05:00

I thought I would explain why I haven't been blogging on my blog much. It's partly busy-ness, but also partly contributing comments to Natalie's posts on Marriage, very interesting ones. They are A Nation of Adulterers, and How Long does Marriage Last?. Whether the comments are interesting is another matter...

In any case, have a look see if you like.

In Christ.

About a math opinion.

2006-02-22T19:11:00.000-05:00

This is a rather interesting article on math. I invite you to read it, and then read my commentary, which is as follows:

I thought the author had a few important points to make; certain others are ridiculous. For example, the claim that computers can do math is quite misleading. Computers compute. Computation is only one part of math. Math is really all about recognizing patterns in a quantitative way. It's not about formulae. No computer that I know can translate a word problem (practically any math problem worth doing has its origins in a word problem) and spit out the answer. You, the human, if you want to use the computer, must translate the word problem yourself; that is a problem of interpretation which requires its own brand of intelligence. While modern education theory is mostly bunk in my opinion, there is one thing I like: the theory of multiple intelligences. I think this idea in its current form was originated by Howard Gardner and here they are:

Linguistic intelligence (as in a poet);
Logical-mathematical intelligence (as in a scientist);
Musical intelligence (as in a composer);
Spatial intelligence (as in a sculptor or airplane pilot);
Bodily kinesthetic intelligence (as in an athlete or dancer);
Interpersonal intelligence (as in a salesman or teacher);
Intrapersonal intelligence (exhibited by individuals with accurate views of themselves).

The reason I like it is because to me it squares with the idea of different gifts that Paul discusses. Naturally, there is overlap between these.

The author's points here: "Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not. The proof of this, Gabriela, is all the people in my high school who were whizzes at math but did not know a thing about history and could not write a readable English sentence." is a rather funny example. It is true that there are many people good at math who can't write at all. However, the fact that people can be good at math and not at writing in no way is support for the statement that writing is the highest form of reasoning. To say so is to be guilty of a non sequitur. The author also reasons in a circle. Second, because this is so, the author has just damaged his own case by a bad form of reasoning, thus showing that writing has its own problems. Logic is logic; we get it from the Bible, and its applications, while not exhaustive, are not limited to any one field. You must use logic in English, math, history, music, art, etc. What is a good mathematician? Well, in the current context, I would classify them into two broad groups: those who do research well, and those who do scholarship well. The distinction is this: researchers work on new stuff, while scholars make clear what is already known for the benefit of others. Thus you can have people quite good at one but not the other. It is rare to find someone good at both, though I know at least two. One good scholarly paper is worth a hundred research papers, in my opinion, but maybe that's just because I'm lazy, and prefer to read clear stuff versus unclear stuff.

I think ultimately, the author is committing the fallacy of the false dilemma: either you're good at math or you're good at writing, but not both. Or at least, the author is trying to say that there's no need to be good at math in today's world. In that case, I would dispute the meaning of the word "need." It depends on who you are, and what are your expectations. I believe bachelor's degrees should not be awarded to anyone who hasn't seen the Fundamental Theorem of the Calculus. Why? Because that theorem is responsible for the modern technological age. A bachelor's degree has been traditionally thought of as being "in the liberal arts." Those are the arts that free. Not to know something as important as FTC seems to me to break with the tradition of the liberal arts. Math is a liberal art.

I think if he rephrased himself a bit, he might get on better. I think it's important for everyone to know how to write. It's not important for everyone to know the Spectral Theorem for Hermitian Operators. While you can get on in life knowing the latter and not the former, your usefulness to society is greatly hampered. You may get the great ideas, but if you can't communicate them effectively, they won't go as far. Classically speaking, I think the following are important: grammar (nuts and bolts of a subject), dialectic (or logic; how the nuts and bolts fit together), and rhetoric (how to express yourself clearly in the context of that subject). As I have said, take anything out of there, and the structure is weakened.

Those are my thoughts.

In Christ.

About Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

2006-02-22T19:10:00.000-05:00

So what?

Driving

2006-02-19T20:11:00.000-05:00

Right on the heels of the last post...

I do think it important to meditate on God's Law. I was doing that on the way back from evening worship (I love evening worship!), and discovered something: good driving keeps the Sixth Commandment; bad driving breaks it. Here is that treasure-trove on the Ten Commandments, the Larger Catechism:

Q. 135. What are the duties required in the sixth commandment?

A. The duties required in the sixth commandment are, all careful studies, and lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes, subduing all passions, and avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any; by just defense thereof against violence, patient bearing of the hand of God, quietness of mind, cheerfulness of spirit; a sober use of meat, drink, physic, sleep, labor, and recreations; by charitable thoughts, love, compassion, meekness, gentleness, kindness; peaceable, mild and courteous speeches and behavior; forbearance, readiness to be reconciled, patient bearing and forgiving of injuries, and requiting good for evil; comforting and succoring the distressed, and protecting and defending the innocent.

Q. 136 What are the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment?

A. The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are, all taking away the life of ourselves, or of others, except in case of public justice, lawful war, or necessary defense; the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life; sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge; all excessive passions, distracting cares; immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations; provoking words, oppression, quarreling, striking, wounding, and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any.

It's pretty clear, isn't it? Bad driving is dangerous, and tends to the unjust taking away of life.

So how do you know if you're a bad driver? Well, I'll tell you what a good driver is. A good driver follows the Smith System. The Smith System has five keys of good driving:

1. Aim high in steering - avoid collisions by seeing, evaluating and acting upon all the information available.

2. Get the big picture - Fewer mistakes are made when you have the complete traffic picture.

3. Keep your eyes moving - Proper scanning techniques separate safe drivers from people who make costly and daily errors.

4. Leave yourself an out - All that separates drivers from a collision is space. Use it to your advantage.

5. Make sure they see you - Seek eye contact and use your warning devices at the proper time.

Among the most common mistakes I see:

1. TAILGATING!!! This is definitely the worst. Which of the above keys does this violate?

2. Cutting people off when changing into a different lane. Again, which keys get trashed?

3. Speeding. You get the drift of my question, I hope. What if you're following someone who is going the speed limit? I claim you should not be impatient with them; they are trying to obey the law. Would you have them break it, just for you?

4. Not signaling for lane changes. Instead of driving in such a way that others can figure out what you're going to do next, make it obvious.

5. Not scanning. I am a bus driver, and also a bus trainer; I train people on the fixed bus routes for Blacksburg Transit. The most important thing for a bus driver is to scan. Scan, scan, scan. That means looking ahead 15 seconds to see what's coming, looking just ahead to the right and left, checking your speed, and checking your mirrors. It's very important that you know what's going on behind you. For example, what do you do if someone is tailgating you? Speed up? No. You increase your following distance. Generally, the rule I've heard nowadays is this: four seconds following distance normally, plus two seconds for every hazard. A hazard would be: night-time, slippery roads, tailgater, etc. You might object, saying, "If I follow that far behind, someone is sure to cut me off, I'll have to slow down, and I'll take a lot longer to get where I'm going." This is incorrect; you will have to slow down a little. However, the amount of time you lose will be seconds, not minutes. Even supposing it happened ten times in one trip (highly unlikely for a short trip), you might lose a whole minute. It's not worth it. The goal is to get there.

Finally, in conjunction with my last post, I have to say I don't follow these instructions the way I should. I need to focus on my shortcomings. But if you, dear readers, are convicted to follow God's law better, because you have been saved already, and not to save yourself, then God will have done some good through me.

In Christ.

The Problem of this World

2006-02-19T07:52:00.000-05:00

The answer to life, the universe, and everything. 42, of course.

Actually, to rephrase somewhat, I ask this question: what is wrong with this world? After much study and contemplation, I have the answer, and I am 100% certain it is the correct answer.

The problem with this world is me.

So often I tend to have this critical attitude towards others, as if they were not performing up to some standard. And there may be truth to that at times. But, as I'm learning more and more, I am not usually the person who can help them. Maybe once in a great while I can, when someone really respects my views on things and will listen to me. More often, I just tend to spout off without having the authority.

No, the problem is me. And what is the solution? Your standard Sunday School answer: Jesus Christ.

Now that doesn't mean all the problems with me go away the moment I believe; rather, it means the fight to solve my problems begins. Christianity is a battle; don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. We battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. All three of them formidable. But Christ is stronger still; in the end He will overcome.

In Christ.