It happens in community

Last night two worlds intersected. In one world I am a “leader” on a team of leaders for our church Home Community (see the Imago Dei link). In the other world I am a member of a philosophy discussion group. Both groups talk about similar subjects, but in different ways. When I knew my friend Walter from the Belmont Aristotelians was coming to my Home Community, there was at first some small anxiety. I like Walter; I like my Home Community. I wanted the two worlds to like one another.

Now this is a normal thought to have – who wouldn’t be nervous of the success of such a meeting, if those worlds really are so important? But in the event – my anxiety quickly dispelled! By the end of the night I realize that in fact I implicitly trusted, and rightly, in the integrity, openness and friendliness of both Walter and my Home Community. And both he and they are independent enough that these worlds could meet without any great “connecting” efforts on my part.

It was fantastic! I felt completely at ease, and it made me love all my friends more, for it meant they were true friends, persons in their own right (of course they are!) with something to give and a desire to give it. It meant I could be a friend and a person and not just an “emcee.”

My friends, thank you!

Justification, iParody, Proceedings of the Belmont Aristotelians

Check out my friend's site here for something like the best justification I can agree with for why someone would blog at all. Still, I keep the title, because it still must be true to some extent that, without knowing who my audience is, or even that I have one, writing to "the web" becomes somewhat comic. If I write, it is at some level in hopes that I may be, if nothing else, incidentally wise, like one of Shakespeare's fools.

Last night was the fourth or fifth meeting of the Belmont Aristotelians (I just made that title up; we don't really call ourselves anything, but everyone in Portland who calls themselves anything makes reference to a street or landmark or mountain, it seems), a group of five or six guys who are reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Last year three of us read Plato's Republic and had many fine late-night discussions about the nature of justice, the soul, and the political order. Aristotle is taking up a similar subject in his Ethics, but explicitly disagreeing with Plato.

The basic questions for ethics are, of course, (a) 'why be good?' and (b) 'what is the good?' Even today these questions are not definitively answered, and they merit consideration by anyone who makes claims to thoughtfulness. Briefly, Plato believes justice ('being good') is good for its own sake and for the sake of its benefits as well. It is intrinsically good because it requires the most ordered state of the soul, such that our reason, spirit, and drives are all related to one another to promote the most health to the soul. It is extrinsically good because it promotes a just order of society analogous to the order of the soul, so that all the members have their roles and responsibilities.

One consequence of this that bothers people is that it means society's most wise and moral members are granted the most power, while the masses have comparatively little. Plato is explicitly antidemocratic because democracy illogically (if implicitly) assumes that the majority opinion will be just, good and true, i.e. the right one. Rather, since reason is our human tool for discerning the good and right, political power ought to be given to those most capable of using reason.

This may rub you the wrong way, but I would challenge the thoughtful reader (I hope, if I have only one reader, s/he is a thoughtful reader) to consider: while the majority will always vote according to its perception of its best interest, where is the logical necessity that the majority's perception of its best interest will in fact be in its best interest? Plato believed the wise could perceive what was true and real and share it with the city. In our secular age, when we do not believe in any transcendent truth, must we then believe in the majority?

Discomfort is not Persecution

Last week a man named Celestine spoke at our church. He comes from Rwanda and spends half his year living in Dallas while he studies for his ministry degree. Here is a man who has been arrested and beaten for talking about his faith – just like an apostle. Here is a man who has been saved from death in a Rwandan torture-chamber because a man in Dallas woke up at three in the morning and prayed for him the precise amount of time he was being tortured.

It’s very humbling to hear a man such as that speak. For one, I cannot comprehend torture, cannot understand that my body could be used against me by another’s malice. For another, I cannot comprehend such faith, cannot understand what if feels like to suffer in the flesh for faith. I tremble at the thought of being awoken in the middle of the night by God’s voice – not because I fear God, but because I fear that I would prefer sleep to obedience. What do we, what do I, know of suffering?

C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain suggests that Christianity created the problem of pain in the way we understand it. It was Christ’s assurance that the world was supposed to be a loving and peaceful place that made it possible for us to challenge God as to why it isn’t. Job challenged God, sure, but because he, Job, was a righteous man, and therefore had done all within his power under the Law to earn God’s mercy. We who spurn authority in any shape cannot make such a challenge on the grounds of our own merit.

Somewhere along the line we have assented to the suggestion that if God’s world doesn’t look like him, He doesn’t exist – or at least we don’t need him. Though one sacrifice has sufficed for all for all time, we have raised the idol of our god, Reason, and sacrificed our souls and our imaginations to it.

But this has all been said before (read Dostoevsky, Lewis, Chesterton, etc.). Reason, of course, has limited resources within itself to offer the soul, and so the soul atrophies, even as the self discovers an exalted idea of itself. So when I meet with friends in a Bible study, we’ve all learned to speak about ‘sin’ and ‘struggles’ as problems belonging to the understanding alone, requiring a ‘right way of thinking,’ or a more powerful will. But lately I think we need rather more powerful prayers – or more earnest. We need to repent that we obsess about ourselves when we think about faith, and do not think of others and reach out to them in love and faith alike.

When I say such things, you cannot truly understand me if you merely ‘agree’ with me, nay, not even if you generously explain my views to another. Even I myself cannot be said to understand myself on such things unless it dramatically affects my prayer life, which is to say, the essence of my faith.

What does society owe mothers?

While I'm on a Wendell Berry kick, here's a link to a Newsweek article about harried mothers. No doubt there are many pressures, personal, familial and social, for mothers to overdo things. No doubt the loss of community supports makes it more difficult yet. This article links the current generation of mothers' malaise to being taught an economic model of motherhood in during the "Reagan Revolution" that is based on competition and intrepid individual achievement. It also goes on to say that "[i]nstead of blaming society, moms today tend to blame themselves."

Well, I may be a grumpy guy, but I'm not about to put myself out there by suggesting mothers should blame themselves. But this article raises questions about the proper way of helping mothers in society. The author lists five particular solutions, all of which are public policy-level. What worries me about only focusing on the public sphere is that one must then assume that the current relation of individual to society is the appropriate or inevitable one, that though, as the author admits, "life happens," and it is hard, the individual nonetheless should have as many policy-supports to allow her to choose the life she desires.

Berry bemoans the fact that men have been forced to work away from the home, and would certainly disapprove of the idea of developing child care so women can follow them "freely." If I could get a little philosophical, how free can one be when pursuing the desires of the self when those desires have already been constructed by an external, inhumane system of power (I assume that capitalism, left to its own devices, without intentional human intervention, will be inhumane). Aristotle says we are social beings by nature, and so whatever happiness is, it will include within it the network of our social relations - that is, it will not be an individualistic attainment. But Aristotle never met Rush Limbaugh or "W"...or Hobbes or Machievelli for that matter.

All journeys...

must begin somewhere,
must end somewhere,
and may be long or short.

I have a feeling this one will be short, b/c it is not in my nature to speak my mind to an unknown audience. But perhaps I will find an audience knowable and worthy to be known. Mostly I expect to link to interesting articles and sites.

This first post links to an article relevant to Wendell Berry's calls for economic secession, for reinvesting ourselves and our work in our communities to develop local economies capable of caring for the land. You can find a review of Berry's Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community at The Society for Reflective Consumption of Media page.