Tagged: philosophy
Our Little Exvangelical
Of all the annoying words that unfortunately carry usefully definite meaning, I have to say “exvangelical” is my least favorite. But I just listened to the “Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast and so it is now in my lexicon.
In any case, this is a word which upon one hearing the meaning is clear. Or rather, in one use we can tell what it does not mean. It isn’t denoting apostasy from Christianity, it is just expressing that the tenets of evangelical Christianity are too much too bear.
Well, tonight I discovered the exvangelical roll has an additional name.
My step-son, A-, is twelve, as I have mentioned. That’s seventh grade.
He is playing traveling basketball, which here in rural Minnesota is not quite insane or indicative of his abilities or desires. It’s just what they call the most base level of youth basketball. Two practices a week. A few three-game tournaments.
Traveling basketball as a term is also useful because, we have learned, there is another kind of youth basketball being played in the winter months—school ball.
Long story short, since hearing that there is such a thing as school ball, A- is now practicing or playing basketball 6 days a week. What can I say? Basketball is something A- enjoys. I’d rather see him do something he enjoys than yell at him for being (fill in the blank with undesirable qualities) all day and night.
For my part, too, I have been fascinated at comparing my youth basketball experience with my local church experience.
Remember my, “Guests cannot speak. Not even me.” post? That was church world. Now, in youth sports, as of a few weeks ago, I am coach of the B Team.
Why did they let me? What are my qualifications? Did I go to the equivalent of seminary for basketball, you may ask?
I simply had to display interest and availability.
Next thing I knew, I was choosing tournaments and directing where the money should be sent.
Back to our little (and new) exvangelical.
Tonight at dinner, keep in mind it is Wednesday night, I said to A-, are we still aiming to make YTH tonight? (Out loud you would’ve heard “youth”, but the trendy multi-site Assemblies church calls it YTH.)
“Oh,” he says sheepishly. “I kinda forgot about that.”
I then said, chuckling, “Well, now you know what it feels like for every other Christian in America.”
The LORD’s Air Traffic Control
This morning I found myself wondering an uncommon question.
“Just when is the sun coming up?”
I left the house at 5:30 with the aim to arrive in Wisconsin around 8. The “wintry mix” that had fallen all night proved to be more ice than mix, and traffic was slow. I figured I’d be safe because I’d only be in the dark for the first hour of my ride as surely BMNT (beginning of morning nautical twilight) would happen around 0630.
“My calculations must be off,” I finally conceded.
It hit me that BMCT is what matters when driving (civil twilight—sun at 6 degrees below horizon, not the 12 of nautical twilight).
No problem. But even at 7am, there was still no sign of our nearest star, and quite a bit more roadway to go than I could squeeze into one hour.
Then it happened as it always does—suddenly.
Suddenly, dawn made her appearance.
A few minutes later, the true miracles occurred.
Miracle Number 1: I saw a headless bird eating road kill.
“Wait-a-minute!! That’s no headless bird, that’s a BALD EAGLE! And it’s so close!”
Zoom. I passed within feet of him.
“And to think I saw him in Wisconsin USA,” I further thought to myself.
I mean, seeing a bald eagle is one thing, but seeing one in the great state of Wisconsin, USA elevates the experience well into the clouds, if not all the way to the heavens.
Next, it happened again.
Miracle Number 2: I looked and saw a bald eagle on the tippy top of a leafless tree. His chest was as broad as the Rocky Mountains.
Unlike last sighting from a few posts back, we’ll call that one The Sentinel, this treetop eagle had the pleasure of directing traffic.
Upon entering Wisconsin, I observed that the wintry mix had stopped at the state line and now there were only enormous snow flakes. Enormous snow flakes in need of some direction. And I was staring at the divinely appointed tower controller as he was directing traffic.
“Cleared for landing, Uniform Sierra Foxtrot.”
“Yes, sir. Come on down.”
“Wonderful flare, way to go!”
“Last calling, you’re number two for that branch on your right, keep your speed up, I’ve got two more behind ya.”
“Sierra Foxtrot Heavy, I’ve got a spot for you on the virgin mantle two hundred yards from centerline.”
And on and on he went. It was like listening to the soothing crackle of George Washington’s torch as it illuminated the unimaginable freedom just on the other side of the darkness.
Richer
I haven’t been shy in lamenting some recent marriage and family woes to you.
Today, I want to counter this and slightly elevate the conversation.
Back in 2019, as I took my step-son under my wing, you might say I went a bit overboard in used book buying.
eBay and I were quick friends and used book sets were my specialty. I bought the Children’s Book of Knowledge set, and all 10 annuals. (That’s thirty books.) I bought the Journey’s Through Bookland 10 volume set. And I even found a three volume Family Treasury of Children’s Classics set.
(That’s 43 books—he was 10.)
Anyhow, as my daughter, A-, who is now 2.5 yrs old, arrived, I began doing what I do, which is reading aloud from these classics.
The first volume of the Family Treasury opens with all—and I mean it is the actual collection—of classic nursery rhymes that we all struggle to find in Barnes and Noble’s.
A- is at the age when she is starting to talk and use multi-word phrases. Because I have a knack for these things, I began to test her the other day.
“Mary had a little-”
“AM” she concluded.
“Its fleece was white as-”
“NOOO!” she roared laughing.
Most of you have done similar and we should rightly be applauded.
The other day I came in from a long day of driving. My wife and step-son who, generally speaking, are opposed to learning are sneaking a quick movie since I wasn’t around to stop them.
Mission Impossible III is on the screen. One of my favorites.
I head to bed. I’m tired and not in the mood to point out that my step-son is still not ready for such a film.
The next day, my wife says to me out of the blue, “I didn’t ever know that’s why he said Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.”
To your ears, you probably would’ve heard her thick accent, and it’s very likely she didn’t even say what I wrote. But that’s what she meant.
Despite my having understanding of her meaning—regardless her actual words—I still had no clue what she was talking about.
“Huh?” I asked.
“What?” she asked.
“You said something about him saying Humpty Dumpty?”
Now at this moment in recent conversations, she will look at me and using all her feminine intuition do her best to determine whether I’m in earnest or whether I’m mocking her and usually conclude the latter by saying, “Never mind.”
But this time she said it again.
I still honestly had no idea what she was talking about. Like the Bible, she was not giving me to the antecedents I needed. Who was “he”, I wondered?
She finally said something that made me realize she was talking about the movie and then I recalled the scene was TC drops off the wall as a priest.
“Oh, you’re telling me that in the movie last night you finally understood why he said the Humpty Dumpty line, because A- says it all the time in our reading. Is that what you meant?”
“Yes.”
Keep in mind the relationship is still on edge.
I then say, “That’s what happens to everyone the more we read, Mistiye (or “Mee-stee-yay” which is the phonetic spelling of the Amharic (one Ethiopian language’s) word for “my wife”). Every new book adds to every other book. Reading makes everything better. That’s why I am always telling you to do it.”
A normal husband would stop there, probably acknowledging he had gone too far already.
“That’s what school did to the Bible for me. When I hear Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, which has the infamous ‘For God so loved the world’ line, I can no longer NOT hear the book of Numbers. I can’t even see how it means anything unless it is involved in what Numbers says.”
****
The question for you, dear reader, is what precisely happened to my wife in the Humpty Dumpty MI:3 moment? She didn’t get wiser. She didn’t get smarter. It wasn’t an increase in her knowledge. What was it?
Vomit, A Joint Review of Triangle of Sadness and Ticket to Paradise
As I resumed Triangle last night, it happened to be at a scene when the seas were angry, dinner was served, and the passengers were beginning to vomit all over the place.
Apparently, my wife had said she was, in fact, not working last night, and next thing I know she is awkwardly standing in the room wondering what in the world I’m watching and why I am suppressing glee.
This holiday season has to be one of the worst of my life. Other’s have likely had worse moments, but on the whole, this one has been the worst. Stuff is just going poorly.
So I say, “Oh. Well, I don’t have to finish this. We can pick something else.”
She sits down and we begin the chore of scrolling.
I had in mind the new George Clooney rom-com, but said nothing.
After a good fifteen minutes and one false-start, she said, “There’s a new Julia Roberts-”
“-I was actually thinking the same thing.”
So I finally find it and we press play.
(Keep in mind, our relationship is at a low, and the film is about a divorced couple about to fall back in love.)
Within minutes, the law-degreed-college-graduate daughter—on a trip prior to starting a career as a lawyer—is lamenting to a random pool boy in some shit-hole country that she has to continue on the law path otherwise she’ll disappoint her…her…her parents.
That’s when I vomited. In my mind. And went to bed. Alone.
Goodnight, 2022.
Truth is Translatable. Lies are not.
Conservative thinkers are abuzz lately with the news that some retards at Stanford released a list of English phrases that need to go.
These thinkers were shocked and dumbfounded.
But the sober truth, the way to keep blood pressures normal, is to recall that English is but one of many languages. And any rules attempting to stifle the language reveal inherent impotence during any attempts to translate them to another language.
As a parting plug for the Bible, this too is why the Bible can be trusted. It can be translated into any language. The translation is never easy to understand or interpret. But a cross is a cross. Jesus is Jesus. A mountain is a mountain. Burning bush is a burning bush. And most importantly, blood is blood.
Good Writing Compels Writing
Earlier today, while on shift on this day of unflyable weather, I began trudging through the Gateway to the Great Books essay by Friedrich Schiller. I began it back on November 14th. He calls it, On Simple and Sentimental Poetry.
It is a far longer entry than all others in this volume, Volume 5, “Critical Essays.” And it is rather boring. His vocabulary is far broader than mine and he employs it from on high, without looking down, without slowing down. But I wanted to finish the article, so I reread the introduction, re-caged my gyros, and plodded on.
Finally, the relationship blossomed. Check out this criticism of a man (hitherto unknown to me), Klopstock.
His muse is chaste.
Wow. Stops you in your tracks, no?
Got me to smile and want to share the sentence with you all. Hope it was worth it.
Onward and upward.
Christian Twistings
As a Christian, I twist certain questions into truer questions.
“How can there be a good god and so much suffering?” is twisted into, “Can I really find peace?”
“Is the ability to understand the Bible really only available to certain humans?” is twisted into, “Does the Bible say I can’t access its god directly, one-on-one?”
“What do you think verse x means?” is twisted into, “Do you know the range of historical interpretations of verse x down through history, offhand? If so, can you share it succinctly?”
“You do know the Bible was written by men, right?” is twisted into, “Do you know that I am open to some of what I’ve heard about Jesus, but I feel like a fool for saying so?”
“In Amos, the LORD says that he directly controlled the crops/harvest in order to judge his people, itself in order to call them to repentance. Does that mean if there’s a bad harvest this season, in 2023, the LORD is likewise judging whoever is affected by it?” is twisted into, “Given the empirically grounded interrelatedness of world markets, do you believe the ‘farming’ events recorded in Amos mean that current bad harvests indicate that we are all, always constantly under judgement and a call to repentance?”
Those are the big ones recently on my mind.
Comment below if you have any questions you’d enjoy having twisted into their truer version by a Christian.
Without Hesitation, I Pointed
I’ve had a short car ride to consider the matter and I have resolved that, next time, I will simply step out of line, open the luggage, and begin to rifle through the contents until you people learn.
But this morning, all I did was admit to myself that if it was a bomb, if today was the end, then I’d rather go out without panicking or making anyone else panic. And I was so close to the left-alone-luggage that I was actually happy that it would probably be instant, painless death, instead of painful injury, followed by opioid-addict life.
Truth be told, I only treated the situation as terrorist-dramatic because I like to test myself. Sure, the lady who just decided to stop pulling her carry-on right next to the 40-min long TSA security line was BIPOC, brown to be exact. I’d guess from India. Huge strike against her, and for travel terrorism. But she had a child with her. And she clearly was pissed at her husband. He was—somehow—the one lagging on the trip through the airport. In my experience, men usually drag their wives. But given the end of the holiday weekend, and given the packed nature of the airport, all I guessed was that she was doing the classic dumb-wife move of being mad that they might miss their flight (perhaps it was even his fault) and then compounding that anger with the fact that her husband was not reacting with the emotional interest that she expected. When exactly did remaining calm become an undesirable quality?
Anyhow, taken together, I was not afraid, but I was shocked. Dumbfounded. Who is left on this planet that is stupid enough to walk away from a piece of luggage at an airport?
That’s why I say that next time I will just attempt to shame the person by exposing their messy undergarments to the general public. If they haven’t learned nicely, then shame is the only remaining tool, in my book.
Today, however, I was consoling H- who, when we reached the “end” of the security line and discovered it was double-wrapped in a way we had not experienced before, had begun to cry. Despite my later-proved-to-be-accurate claim that “we’ll be at the gate before they even begin boarding,” I couldn’t prevent the water works.
Anyhow, that is what distracted me from going the “open-luggage-to-shame” route, and instead just notice it—notice it and focus unrelentingly until a worker came by shouting instructions for the line who then added, “Whose is this?” All I could do was point. But I pointed with a force that said, “That dumb mother fucker over there.” Then I laughed to myself and low-talked to H-, “I pointed! Ha. Didn’t even blink. Just dimed them out. Funny.”
Guess maybe I, too, was getting tired of watching a woman make stupid decisions after a long holiday weekend with one.
Oh well. At least you and I are ready for next time.
Don’t wait. Find out for yourself if it’s a bomb.
Again, Machiavelli Has Resoundingly Won and Yet I’m Not Dead: A Short Account of a Good Day.
My YouTube feed includes political memes, for whatever reason.
I just watched one which had President Biden, back in 2006, stating adamantly that marriage was between a man and a woman.
Apparently today, in some form or fashion, he supported the opposite.
If you haven’t read The Prince by Machiavelli, I don’t know that I can recommend it to you. But to summarize it must be equally as bad, so I’m not sure what to do. Proceed at your own risk, I guess.
The rock and hard place that we live between may best be illustrated by calling your attention to this event (Biden saying whatever is necessary to win—even directly lying) and also to the decision and technological capability to comprehensively investigate the missiles which landed in Poland before invoking Article 5.
Machiavellian leadership is rooted in evil and yet we have remained short of WW3 in a world which is ruled by it.
At this point, I wouldn’t trade one for the other.
I’ll Say It Again, Trump Should Use Bird Signs This Time Around
The first bald eagle I saw this morning was orbiting dangerously close to traffic on the two-lane highway upon which I drove home after my night shift.
I’m telling you, the bald eagle has no fear. A glorious bird.
Then, I first saw what turned out to be the second bald eagle of the day from a much greater distance on that same drive. Here I confess though, with shame, that I didn’t immediately recognize the feathered sentry. But I have to believe that mistaking him for a large bird’s nest is fairly flattering in its own way. Like you, for most of my life the description “he’s as big as a house” has been reserved for use on only the strongest of us humans.
Add to this fact that in my own front yard, the fall season and the resultant leafless trees had revealed a rather large bird nest near the top of one of the trees and you’ll understand why at first—only for a second really—I didn’t recognize the winged friend for what it was. I figured, “Oh, a nest just like at home.”
But I was wrong. It wasn’t some random, unused, and derelict bird’s nest. It was a living, breathing, and rather chesty member of the stately, all-seeing protector of America.
Now as I approached I did my best to make eye-contact by leaning forward at just the right moment to briefly look up—while not losing control of the car.
I can’t report with integrity that we made eye-contact, but I can report that I saw the end of the slightest nod signifying “carry-on citizen” as he moved his gaze from analyzing my approach in particular back to the Minnesotan horizon in general. And I can definitely report that my heart warmed.
Your inescapable delight in reading the above over any other journalistic drivel is what ties this post to Trump. I like that he wants to be successful and wear the American countryside while doing it. All I’m suggesting here is he should model his campaign after this post and the rhetorical archetype itself, if he wants to seal the deal this election. It’s a gimmick, surely. But what isn’t in contemporary politics?
Finally, and with more than a merely temporal connection, I want to include that on this self-same commute, I was listening to a podcast in which I heard avant-garde writer Yuval Noah Herari exclaim, “What will the future history student’s answer be to the question, ‘What was America’s second civil war about?’ I mean the difference between the two ‘sides’ is nearly non-existent.”
I shook my head and thought, “Obviously this heady, wannabe-De-Tocqueville Mr. Herari hasn’t seen a bald eagle. The two sides are as clearly defined as sky and earth. Any true American knows this.”
But I can admit to my readers now that it seems that this vista only becomes apparent when one of these birds is in view.
Captain’s Log 