Micah Tillman

If you’re like me, having “suffered from depression,” you’ve found yourself asking the question, “Is it worth it?” about many things — especially about life in general.

(I put “suffered from depression” in quotation marks because depression isn’t the kind of thing you suffer from.  It is suffering.)

I was reminded of the “Is it worth it?” question on our recent trip out to the wedding in Middle America.

The pastor at the wedding talked about how difficult relationships are, you see, and I really hate driving on long trips.

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Unfortunately for depressed people, it’s not just a sermon or a car ride that leads them to ask, “Is it worth it?”  It’s life in general.

The issue is not so much, “Is this or that relationship worth all the work that has to be put into it?” or “Is this wedding worth the car trip I have to take to get to it?”

Rather, the issue is, “Is life worth all the struggle and pain I have to go through in it?”

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Now, if you’re like me, there’s enough of the deontologist in you to make the question of whether life is worth it or not to be essentially — and annoyingly — moot.

It doesn’t ultimately matter whether life is “worth it,” since you have certain duties that you can only fulfill if you continue to live. It’s your duty to live, whether or not you think it’s worth it; so you have to get on with living.

Nevertheless, it’s still annoying (to put it mildly) to think that maybe life isn’t worth it.  It would, at least, be really nice if life were worth it.

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But on that trip out to Middle America and back, I finally got clear on a thought I’d been trying to work out for a while now.

I think, you see, that very often I couldn’t answer the “Is it worth it?” question affirmatively, not because I answered it negatively, but because I couldn’t answer it at all.  And the inability to answer a question looks and feels like a negative answer.

The reason, however, that I so often could not answer the “Is it worth it?” question is, I realized, that very often the question itself is senseless.  Very often it’s not actually a question.

It’s more like, “What’s the answer to life, the universe, and everything?” than an actual question.

Allow me to explain.

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Imagine that I walk up to the icecream truck that drives through our neighborhood (playing Christmas carols in the middle of summer) and offer the driver three dollars for an icecream cone.

He accepts, and we make the exchange.

In doing so, I show that an icecream cone is worth three dollars to me, and the driver shows that three dollars is worth one icecream cone to him.

(Actually, I show that an icecream cone is worth a little more than three dollars to me, and he shows that three dollars are worth a little more than one icecream cone to him.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t want his icecream cone more than my three dollars, and he wouldn’t want my three dollars more than his icecream cone.)

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When we talk about how much something is worth, in other words, we are talking about two good things.  An icecream cone is a good thing, and three dollars are a good thing.  And an icecream cone is worth three dollars.

However, when we ask whether something is “worth it” or not, the “it” in question is usually something bad.  Is life worth the pain?  Is getting fit worth the struggle?  Is learning worth the frustration?  Etc.

What this implies is that you can measure the value or worth of a good thing in terms of bad things.  “That (good) wedding was worth a (bad) car trip.  Maybe even a (bad) car trip and a half.”  “This (good) relationship is worth three (bad) arguments per week; maybe even four.  Definitely not five.”

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But since when does anyone actually think that good things are worth bad things?

Since when do we measure the value of something in terms of badness?

It doesn’t make any sense!  (He said, slapping himself in the face.)

“Is it worth it?” so often means, “Is that good thing worth these bad things?” which means:  “This good thing is equal to how many bad things?”

It’s comparing apples and oranges.  There is no exchange rate between good and bad things, like there is between icecream cones and money.

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Thus, when Alexei responds “I wouldn’t consent” to Ivan’s discussion of “the case of children” (in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov), it’s not because he thinks a good world isn’t worth the suffering of children, but that it makes no sense to ask whether a good world is worth the suffering of children.

Badness is not the measure of goodness.  You can’t measure worth in terms of badness any more than you can measure time in terms of parsecs.

Finding himself able to offer no answer to Ivan’s question, Alexei mistakenly believes his answer is “no.”

What he should have said was, “I can’t answer that question, because it’s senseless.  It’s asking me to measure goodness in terms of badness, and that is meaningless.  Your question isn’t actually a question, any more than ‘life, the universe, and everything’ is a question, or ‘Why is democracy more three than green?’ is a question.”

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Pain and evil and suffering are problems, but you can’t express those problems through the question, “Is it worth it?” since the question only seems to make sense.  It’s not actually a question; rather, it’s a vague gesturing at the problem.  (The same thing goes for the Problem of Evil.)

Thus, you’ll never find an answer to the question, “Is it worth it?” in many cases.  And thus those of us who “suffer from depression” shouldn’t be surprised when we can’t.

When “Is it worth it?” isn’t actually a question, it can’t actually have an answer (any more than the ironing board over there, or your hat, “has an answer”).  Only questions can have answers, and very often, “Is it worth it?” isn’t a question.  Just because it has a question mark at the end doesn’t make it a question.

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All that to say this:

If you’re depressed, please don’t mistake your inability to answer the question, “Is it worth it?” for a negative answer.

If you’re like me, you sometimes think your answer to the question, “Is it worth it?,” is “No,” when actually you just cannot answer the question at all.

Your inability to offer an answer seems like a “No” answer.  However, please remember that being able to give no answer to a non-question is not the same as giving a “No!” answer to a real question.

Please don’t assume that “No!” is the answer to something that isn’t actually a question.

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It’s not that your pain and suffering aren’t real.  It’s that we shouldn’t measure the good and happy things in life in terms of badness and sadness.

There’s too much badness and sadness in the world already, without our turning badness and sadness into the measure of all things!

Badness and sadness don’t deserve to be the measure of good things.

Good things deserve to be measured in terms of other good things.

Tags: Brothers Karamazov, Depressed, Depression, Is it worth it?, Is life worth it?, Is life worth living?, Questions, The Brothers Karamazov, Worth

Jeff bravely admitted in a comment below that his desire to fulfill his duty to be his brother’s keeper made him think it may be important for some people to occasionally do things that might seem a little bit fascist.

For example, perhaps it’s okay sometimes for doctors to force people who refuse the medical treatment they need to take it anyway.

I pointed out that even John Locke, one of the great champions of political liberty, thought that there were at least two limits to what you could do to yourself (i.e., you couldn’t commit suicide or sell yourself into slavery).

So, thinking that people shouldn’t be allowed to destroy themselves is not necessarily just a fascist thing.

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However, I do think that Christians (like me and Jeff) need to be constantly on guard against any temptation to convert Christianity into fascism.

And we have to guard against that temptation because it would be so easy to convert Christianity into fascism, as I shall now explain.

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Fascism is simply the idea that the nation is an organism, an organic whole, a living body, and thus every group within the whole (the businesses, the artists, the politicians, the athletes, the educators, the workers, etc.) must work together with all the others for the good of the whole.  (See also the etymology of “fascism.”)

Christianity, similarly, teaches — following Paul’s metaphor — that all Christians form the Body of Christ, as if they were all organs in the same body, and must work together for the good of the whole.

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However, there are several important differences between fascism and Pauline Christianity:

First, is the fact that the State is the organism/body in fascism, and different sectors of society (different groups, fasci) are the organs, while Christ or the Church is the organism/body, and individual Christians are the organs.

Second, you are born into the State, while you choose to be a Christian.  Therefore, everyone in a State falls under the power of a fascist government, while only people who have purposefully joined a Church fall under “its” authority.

Third, the State controls people via law (i.e., the threat or use of physical force), while the Church is supposed to control “its” members via exhortation.

Fourth, the greatest penalty the State can impose is death, while the greatest penalty the Church can impose is exclusion from the community (i.e., the declaration that you don’t get to hang out with the Church anymore, and have to go play by yourself or with some other group).

Fifth, a sinful person is always at the head of the State, while the all-good, perfect God is at the head of the Church.

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Remember, I describe the Church as Paul saw them, not as they have always and everywhere been.

At some points in history, certain people in the Church actually could control people via force.   Paul, however, propounded the Body of Christ metaphor to the Church when they were a persecuted minority.

At some points in history, certain people in the Church thought that excommunication meant eternal damnation, not just exclusion from temporal fellowship.  Paul, however, thought that excommunication was a way to save people from eternal damnation.

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At some points in history, certain people in the Church have allowed themselves to be ruled by sinful persons as if they were God. (I’m thinking here of cults, and of local churches who have become “cults of personality” around their pastors.)

At some points in history, certain people in the Church have thought they had the right to treat everyone as if they were members of the church (i.e., as if the Church had authority over everyone), as if living in a certain area or country automatically made you a Christian, or obligated you to live as a Christian.

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Those Christians who must be especially on guard against converting their religion into fascism are those who

(1) find themselves wanting to use the State to achieve the good things they are called to work for as members of the Church (i.e., find themselves wanting to achieve their ends via law, not by exhortation, inspirational example, or their own work)

(2) find themselves confusing the call to Church unity with a call to national/community unity (for example, by thinking that the call to Church unity means national/community unity is either possible or desirable, or by thinking that the “one body” metaphor which is appropriate for the Church is also appropriate for communities or nations).

And you will find such Christians on both sides of the political aisle.

Tags: Christianity, Church, Fascism, State

Today I got a letter.

It told me my education is “more important today than ever.”

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That’s a theme I hear a lot.  Keeping track of my finances is more important than ever before.  Energy efficiency is more important now than ever.  Cultural sensitivity is more important than it’s ever been.  Etc.

And since I’ve been hearing such things ever since I can remember, I thought to myself:

“Why haven’t all the various importances reached infinity by now?  If they’re constantly going up, and seem to have been going up forever, what sense does it make to say they’re any higher now than before?  Infinity plus one equals infinity.”

(What is the unit of measure for importance, anyway?)

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Then I realized that perhaps the various importances had been increasing forever, but had all been approaching some asymptote or other.

But do curves actually reach their asymptotes in infinity?  If they do, then every importance would have reached its asymptote by now (if they’d been increasing forever).

Oh, whatever.  Enough of this post.

Tags: Asymptotes, Importance

On our recent trip I found myself thinking primarily about three things:

(1) How the people in each area look at (and therefore live) their lives,

(2) How the physical and cultural environment in each place must affect the ways in which people in each area look at (and therefore live) their lives, and

(3) What a culture is, anyway.

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I decided that a culture is a set of fundamental decisions about how to look at a broad range of things in life (food, friends, family, country, religion, government, the arts, clothing, careers, entertainment, living quarters, transportation, etc).

In large part, no one ever makes these decisions.  Instead, one simply consents to them, and makes other decisions in light of them.

(E.g., the decision consented to is that one expresses one’s personhood through one’s car, and therefore one makes the decision to buy a particular car and do particular things to it.)

(On the whole issue of decisions and consent as it relates to “structures,” “systems,” and “groups,” see here and here.)

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Furthermore, I started to wonder whether anyone could take a trip like the one I just took, and hold onto the modern-relativist idea that all cultures arenecessarily created equal (an idea that stems from, though is not asserted by, Descarte’s Discourse on Method).

One set of decisions can be (though may not actually be) better or worse than another, and therefore one culture can be (though may not actually be) better or worse than another (since a culture is a set of decisions).

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For example, you yourself believe

1. that the wedding Iattended this past weekend was either right or wrong, and that I should or should not have attended it,
2. that driving cars on such long trips is good or bad (given things like “carbon footprints”),
3. that the drinking of alcohol that occurred at the celebration (but in which I personally did not partake) was right or wrong,
4. that the industries around which the various communities (through which we passed) seemed to center (e.g., farming, retail, medicine, shipping [by river or truck].) are good or bad (and they are or are not worth devoting your life to through certain career and education choices),
5. that it’s okay to still be wearing your hair like it’s the 70s or 80s, driving showy cars, eating meat, shopping at huge chain stores that have a giant variety of in-season and out-of-season food products, etc.

For every opinion you have on each of those subjects, you agree with certain cultures, and disagree with others.  You think you’re right, and those cultures (those sets of decisions) are wrong — at least in regards to that aspect of life.

Even if the people who live out those cultures (those sets of decisions) are all equal in your eyes, their cultures may not be.

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In other words, I wonder whether anyone could take even a relatively short trip like the one I just took, and still accept the following argument (which expresses the philosophy of cultural relativism):

1. A is something that people in culture x do.
2. All cultures are necessarily equal.
3. Therefore, we must necessarily respect A.

You don’t have to even travel outside your own country to realize that you believe cultural relativism — the idea that all cultures are necessarily equal, simply because they are cultures — to be bunk.

You may believe that all (or most) cultures in the world today happen to be equal, all things considered.

But the trip would at least get you thinking about all the possible and actual cultures — i.e., pervasive sets of decisions — the world has known (e.g., fascism vs. democracy, communalism vs. individualism, industrialism vs. agrarianism, northern pluralism vs. southern racism, communism vs. capitalism) or could know (e.g., you can imagine cultures — i.e., pervasive sets of decisions — that are much better and much worse than any you see around you today) — and that would make you realize that you really do think at least some cultures are/were better than others, at least when you take all of the cultures throughout history into account.

Tags: Cultural Relativism, Cultures, Relativism

Just returned with The Wife from a very long weekend away.  Had a wedding to attend and some friends to visit in the process.

It was the first same-sex wedding ceremony I’d ever been to.

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I was intrigued by how the officiant tweaked the language and structure of the ceremony — especially with regards to the fact that the officiant could only say “by the power vested in me by [insert denomination here],” rather than “by [insert denomination] and by the state of [insert name].”

(See here for my feelings on wedding ceremonies.)

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I was intrigued by the one nominally-Catholic family who brought their children to the ceremony because they thought it was important that they see such a ceremony when they were young (a ceremony which the couple in question no doubt had not seen when they were young).

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I was intrigued by the rural setting of the wedding, where one was as likely to meet folks wearing basketball shorts as folks wearing mullets in the local (HUGE) Wal-Mart.

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I was intrigued by the type(s) of friends the couple in question had collected over the years, who all came to the wedding from different parts of the country.

Not only were their various places of extraction diverse, but so were their educational levels, their marital/relationship statuses (”stati”?), and religious backgrounds.

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I was intrigued by the contrast between the couple and their friends on the one hand, and the locals on the other.  And by the contrast between the couple and their friends on the one hand, and “the locals” amongst whom the couple currently lives.

(The two sets of “locals” are radically different, at least ethnically, and probably ideologically as well — at least in general, given voting patterns for the two locales.)

And I was intrigued by the contrast between the couple and their friends on the one hand, and myself on the other.

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As we travelled to and fro across the country for this wedding, I observed the various cultures we travelled through.  In some places it was obvious that farming was the “local industry” and racing the local pasttime.

In other places it was obvious that farming was the local industry and boating or fishing the local pasttime.

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In other places it was not at all obvious what the “local industry” was, even though the stores were larger and had a greater selection than any stores I had ever seen before.  This was all the more shocking because the places in question appeared to be middle and lower-middle class.

I observed the differences between the college and non-college towns, the differing “ethnic makeups” of the areas, and differences in lawn- and parking-lot-care (specifically regarding how such “care” affected the apparent economic vibrancy of an area).

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Oh, and did I mention the music?

In the car, The Wife and I listened to Gogol Bordello and PFR, Avenue Q and Mozart’s Requiem.

At the wedding festivities, we heard more Gogol Bordello, along with lots of classic R&B, funk, bluegrass, country, 80’s metal, etc.

I’ll have some thoughts on all this later. . . .

Tags: Cultures, Decisions, Travel, Trips, Weddings

I was listening (on CSPAN Radio) to a congressional committee discussing the new health care bill everybody’s all worked up about.

A Republican committee member was talking, and said something about how Congress should be concerned about obesity.

I wanted to say, “Lead by example, fatty.”  But that would have been a slur.  Or, wait, scientists say fatties cause global warming, so it’s okay to slur them.

Anyway.

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So I started thinking about why Congress should have anything to say about your eating habits.  They can’t say anything about where you go to church, but they can about where you go to eat?

Separation of church and state, yes.  Separation of state and food services, no.

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Then I realized.  If the government is paying for your health care, then it should have the right to tell you how to live.

After all, your lifestyle choices can cost them money.  So it is their business what your BMI is, where you went for lunch today, and whether you’re making time in your morning schedule to go running.

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That’s how charity works, you see.  The government offers to make sure everybody gets some good or service or other, and then gets to use their generosity to force people to not waste their (the government’s) money.

They’ve found a way to turn even giving into a power-grab.  That’s real brilliance.  And real nauseating.

Good job, government.  Good job.  You just keep that up, now, y’hear?

Tags: Health Care, Health Insurance

Romans 4:1-8 (NRSV)

1 What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. 5 But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. 6 So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.”

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4:1-2 — Notice that Paul is still primarily talking to the Jewish members of his audience, to those for whom Abraham is an “ancestor according to the flesh.”  However, he’s about to argue that Abraham’s true descendants are those who are righteous, and have become righteous in the same way as Abraham (through faith).

Notice that Paul presents Abraham as someone in need of justification, and says that works didn’t justify him.  This is not really all that controversial a claim.  If you break a law, starting to keep the law won’t erase the fact that you’re guilty of having broken the law.

But Abraham, like everyone else, had sinned.  So he couldn’t erase that past sin by starting to act correctly.  You can’t change the past.  Thus, no one is justified by works, because everyone has already committed some sin or other (except, I would assume, small children — but that’s just because they haven’t really done anything at all; they’re still growing into their human agency), and simply doing more good things doesn’t change the fact that you did a bad thing in the past.

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4:3 — Here Paul quotes Genesis 15:6.  The context is Abraham’s worry that his heir will be one of his slaves, since he has no child.  (That’s an interesting inheritance tradition, isn’t it?)

In response to this worry, God promises Abraham that his heir will be his physical child, and that he will have descendants as numerous as the stars that Abraham could see in the sky (evidently it was night at the time, and there was probably much less of a light polution problem back then).

And then Abraham took God at His word, and thus was counted as being righteous — even though he didn’t say the Sinner’s Prayer, even though he’d never heard of Jesus or the Cross.  He simply believed that God would do what God said God would do.

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But what God said God would do is give him a child of his own to be his heir, and to give him descendants as numerous as the stars.  However, you have to see this promise in the context of Genesis 12:1-4, Genesis 18:16-19, and Genesis 22:16-18.  The promise of descendants is one aspect of God’s promise to make Abraham a blessing to the entire world, especially through the blessing that his descendants will be to the entire world.

Now, we can take this in one or both of two ways.  On the cultural side (philosophy, science, art, literature, etc.), the world certainly has been enormously blessed by Abraham’s descendants.  Some of the greatest philosophers, scientists, artists, writers, etc. have been physical descendants of Abraham.

But also, on the religious side, as a Christian I have to point out that Jesus was a physical descendant of Abraham as well, and that He provides the ultimate blessing — the possibility of a life-the-way-it-was-supposed-to-be (i.e., the eternal kind of life) — to the world.

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So, Jesus is still “in there somewhere,” when we talk about Abraham being righteous because he believed God would give him an heir and descendants like God said He would — because that promise is part of a wider promise to make Abraham a blessing to the world, and the most important way in which Abraham has been a blessing to the world is by starting the family from which Jesus comes.

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4:4-5 — A worker earns wages for the works he performs.  But our problem isn’t getting paid for the good stuff we do, but how to fix the bad stuff we’ve done.

The solution is that it’s God who fixes the bad stuff we’ve done.  It’s God who “justifies the ungodly.”  Therefore, all we have to do is accept that; all we have to do is believe that when God says He justifies us, that He’s not lying.

We just have to be willing to be justified by God (i.e., willing to have God make us not guilty of the since we committed), to have God fix our guilt for past wrongs for us.

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It’s really not that big of a deal on our end; there’s nothing elaborate about it.  God does all the work, we just accept.

What’s a big deal is what happens — or doesn’t happen — next.  Salvation isn’t a big deal from our end (i.e., getting saved is so easy anyone could do it, because you don’t have to do anything!); it’s working out your salvation that’s the big deal.

Being restored to life isn’t a big deal (i.e., God does all the work, you just sit back and relax); it’s abundantly living out that new life that’s the big deal (see John 10:10 and Romans 6).

Receiving grace isn’t a big deal (i.e., it’s a gift, and everyone loves gifts!  It’s not that hard to accept a gift); it’s growing in grace that’s the big deal.

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To put it in theological language, justification isn’t a big deal, sanctification is. (I’m being deliberately provocative by putting it that way.  Please read it in context :-)

Salvation (=justification) is just the beginning; it’s the moment of birth.  Sanctification, growth, living life in an eternal (full, abundant, unstoppable) way is what we’re supposed to focus on.  It’s what we’ll spend the rest of forever on.

Your birth gets you started, but the big deal is how you live out the life you’ve been given by your birth.

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Okay, so you may ask if living (not being born) is central, then why do our past sins have to be fixed?  If we’re living correctly at the moment, what does it matter how we lived in the past?

The answer is, in part, that there is no “at the moment” for the God who created time.  God doesn’t just see you as you are now, because that’s only part of you.  God sees you in your totality, not just that sliver of you that exists in the present moment.

Your past has to be fixed because it’s part of you.  You may think you leave it behind, but that’s just how things look from within time.  In reality, you are a temporally-extended whole, not just the slice of that whole that exists in the present.

Therefore, you need to be fixed as a whole — past, present, and future.  You need to be made the kind of thing that can deal (as a whole) with God — and that God can deal with as a whole — rather than the kind of thing that’s shaking hands with God in the present, and kicking God in the shins in the past (or future).

Salvation takes those past episodes of kicking God in the shins (and the current and future episodes!) and eliminates them, so that way God can deal with you as a whole, not just with that part of you that happens to exist at any given moment.

That’s one possible theory, anyway.

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4:6-8 — Here Paul quotes Psalm 32:1-2.  David is forgiven in this Psalm simply for confessing his sin, not for doing any works.  And it was a great relief to him, a great blessing.

“Blessed are those . . . whose sins are covered”: i.e., it’s awesome to be given big floppy, soft clown shoes so that when you kick God in the shins, it doesn’t hurt Him and therefore doesn’t interrupt your conversation with Him.

Or something like that.

Tags: Paul, Romans, Romans 4, Romans 4:1, Romans 4:1-8, Romans 4:2, Romans 4:3, Romans 4:4, Romans 4:5, Romans 4:6, Romans 4:7, Romans 4:8

In case you were worried, seeing the news about the train crash in DC, just wanted to let you know that the Wife (specifically) wasn’t involved.  Well, she was significantly delayed getting home.  But that’s better than actually being involved in the accident.

I like our church so much in part because every so often you get a service like yesterday’s.

It’s what psychologists call “intermittent reinforcement” (and it’s the same reason people get addicted to gambling, randomly surfing the web/TV channels, and listening to the radio).

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Yesterday, you see, our brave little progressive pacifist Mennonite church had to deal with the story of David and Goliath.  And that meant not only that someone had to tell the story to the children for the “Children’s Lesson,” but someone had to preach on it.

Our church is bizarre.  They follow “the lectionary” — which strikes me as a very Catholic thing for Mennonites (the traditionally non-Catholic denomination) to do.  And the lectionary said it was time for 1 Samuel 17.

So, they reluctantly and bravely faced their Goliath.  The children’s story person told the story to the children as best she could, and the pastor preached on it as best she could.

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I was impressed.  They squirmed extremely uncomfortably as they did it.  But they were brave, and got through it.

“Why were they so uncomfortable,” you ask?  Well, they’re progressive pacifists, and the two obvious lessons of the story of David and Goliath are:

(1) God condones certain kinds of violence at certain times (which a pacifist can’t accept).

(2) Violence is sometimes a legitimate, God-sanctioned way to solve a dispute — even without first trying to negotiate (which progressives don’t want to accept, and pacifists can’t).

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So they found themselves caught in a clash of two traditions — two traditions to which they seem to inextricably belong.

First, there is the Christian tradition, for which the Bible serves as sacred text. And the Bible says that a boy named David (*sings* “Only a boy named David!”) killed a Philistine who was a giant, and who was named Goliath.

Second, there is the modernist/Enlightenment-Rationalist tradition, for which reason/reasonableness serves as the sacred doctrine.  Enlightment Rationalism says that (a) we can always work things out, because at heart everyone is rational (an idea that comes from Descarte’s Discourse on Method), and (b) that it’s irrational to think irrational things (like boys killing giants, or ancient religious texts being historically accurate) happen, because reality is at heart rational (scientific, normal, average; cf. Hume on miracles).

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To an impartial observer like myself, it was clear that the latter tradition won.

The children were told that (a) Goliath’s height was exaggerated (he probably wasn’t really a giant) and (b) the Israelites should have talked to the Philistines, and settled things that way, without violence.

The adults were told (a) Martin Luther King Jr. faced his Goliath without violence — and won and (b) the scholars think the whole incident never really happened (at least not as it is told in Scripture), but was fabricated to support David’s claim to be king.

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In other words, in the enlightenment rationalist (progressive pacifist) tradition, the whole story appears unreasonable (i.e., it is unbelievable and portrays acting unreasonably as a legitimate approach to conflict), and therefore has to be . . .

To be what?

“Gotten rid of”?

No, because they told it, preached on it, suffered through it.

“Not believed in”?

Yes, but still, for some reason worth telling.

“Why?”

Because it’s part of our tradition.

“Which tradition?”

The Christian one.

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People in our church believe so strongly in their Christian tradition that even though it’s already a foregone conclusion that their Enlightenment Rationalist tradition is going to win whenever the two traditions come into conflict, they still are willing to give their Christian tradition a hearing.

They’re still willing to engage in the conflict. That’s one of the things they like about preaching from the lectionary.  It forces them to preach on texts they want to avoid.  (Both our pastors have told me so themselves, and I believe them.)

They’re still willing to let their Christian tradition make them uncomfortable; they’re not willing to simply chuck the ancient tradition for the Johnny-come-lately tradition.

They’re still willing to believe that pre-Enlightenment, non-Western texts and people (like the Old Testament and its authors) might have something to teach us, even if it makes them cringe to listen to them.

And I find that impressive.

Strange, but impressive.

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One thing one has to learn about people like my fellow congregants is that one can’t expect them to be comfortable with themselves, and therefore one can’t expect to feel comfortable around them.  (Which reminds me of that post I wrote a little while back.)

Once you realize that, it makes things a lot more comfortable.

Tags: David, David and Goliath, Goliath, Tradition

I’m almost finished with Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, by Brian Doherty.

I’m in the Epilogue, and have run across a couple things I wanted to share.

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First, I thought the following passage would be interesting to you (p. 589):

If government were restricted to its libertarian minimums of protecting citizen’s life and property from force and fraud, all a corporation could do is try to sell us something, and we could decide whether or not to buy.  It couldn’t tax us for its benefit, raise tariffs on its competitors to make their products more expensive, subsidize bad loans or overseas expansion, or take formerly private property on the grounds that it will make more lucrative use of it than would the original owner.  Libertarianism could be a very powerful weapon for the anti-corporate left, as soon as it abandons the fantasy of a perfectly fair government that can be empowered to do only the good progressive things the left wants it to do.  An end to what libertarians attack as “corporate welfare” would go along way toward equalizing, as progressives wish to do, the citizen and the corporation.

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And then, as I continued to read, I discovered the following (p. 597):

Whole Foods grocery chain founder John Mackey, a libertarian and a successful entrepreneur inspired by Mises, Hayek, and former Reason editor Virginia Postrel, has pursued a similar line of thinking [to that of Chris Sciabarra, on  "embrac[ing] a more holistic view of the dangers of statism,” and “prov[ing] [libertarians] are willing to link libertarian ideas with larger questions about what makes a worthwhile, livable culture, and [to] avoid seeming like atomists out for number one or obsessed with mere freedom to buy and sell”] with an organization he founded called FLOW (Freedom Lights Our World), which tries to frame free trade and free markets as a progressive cause, the key to raising the Third World out of poverty in a sustainable way, rooted in self-actualization through personal responsibility and control over health care, education, and retirement.

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I bought Doherty’s book to educate myself on the movement I identify myself with.  It has been extremely enlightening, as well as entertaining.

Doherty has what I call a “smiling” style; it sounds like he’s smiling as he writes.  I don’t mean to say that it sounds like he’s being silly.  Rather, it sounds like he’s being pleasant and reasonable (and occasionally jocular); serious about his subject, but not in the least defensive about it (and therefore able to discuss all aspects thereof pleasantly).

If what I just said sounds trite or demeaning, that’s not how I meant it at all.  I’m trying to pay Mr. Doherty a compliment.  It’s a significant achievement to be able to write about something so close to one’s own heart in the way Mr. Doherty does.  Most authors wouldn’t be able to do it.

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Anyway, I found it striking/vindicating to hear the way Doherty put the libertarian view of corporate/government interaction in the first quotation above.

And I found it fascinating/vindicating that the head of the upper-middle-class, college-educated, city-dwelling progressive’s favorite grocery store is owned by a libertarian who cares about people and is doing something to make their lives better — through libertarian free market economics.

Tags: Brian Doherty, Chris Sciabarra, FLOW, John Mackey, Libertarian, Libertarianism, Libertarians, Radicals for Capitalism, Whole Foods