Leadingchurch.com

Dreher

Literature and the Problem of Evil

 I can see so clearly now, from the vantage point of someone who is nearly 47, the enormous advantage my father gave me in impressing upon me a script, and not just a script, but belief in The Script. My sister never questioned it; I did, strongly, but the life-giving qualities, and the basic goodness, of my father’s Script meant that my own adaptation was largely faithful to the original. The thing is, if the Script is going to work, you can’t accept it in instrumental terms. Sending your kids to church because the moral teaching they receive there is “good for them” is a waste of time. Even if people believe that the stories aren’t literally true, in order for the story to affect the moral judgment and behavior of a person or a community, there has to be a recognition that the moral embedded within the myth bears a real resemblance to ultimate truth. So many contemporary Americans believe in the myth of freedom (I say “myth” not as something that’s untrue, but a story, or set of stories, that embody ultimate truths). But as Franzen understands, freedom is necessary for happiness, but not sufficient. The great progressive myth is that emancipating oneself from the bonds of community, religion, history, family, and so forth, leads to greater happiness and a more just and perfect society. The problem with American conservatives is that we know at some level that this is untrue, but our own myths are so saturated with the concept of individual liberty that it becomes hard to articulate, even to ourselves, a strong counternarrative to the progressive myth. It drives me nuts the way so many parents who think of themselves as morally conservative allow their children unrestricted, or near-unrestricted, access to pop culture. Who do they think are telling their kids the stories that fill their heads? What values do those stories impart? Are the parents providing counternarratives to give the kids critical perspective on what TV tells them? For that matter, are the churches?

Your popularity at the expense of the other.

He also found that aggression was a useful tactic. Violence was still seen as antisocial and undesirable, but “reputational aggression”—the teasing, rumour-mongering, gossiping, ostracism, and other non-physical means through which high-school kids ruin one another’s teenage years—actually doubled the chances of a student becoming a friend of the elite, particularly if the aggressor attacked a high-status individual or someone who was close to them socially (your friends, of course, are your biggest adversaries). Victims of aggression, meanwhile, were half as likely as regular kids to join the elite or second tier. Being an asshole enhances your social status at the expense of your victim.

• Sun Times piece with quotes from Marsden
• Peter Enns’ piece
• Ken Schenck of Wesley Seminary: It was kind of sad
• The Daily Beast “I’m a Christian and Ken Ham doesn’t speak for me
• Biologos on the debate
• Daily Beast: It was a nightmare for science (outstanding!)
• Scott Hoezee for ThinkChristian on how it puts pastors in a spot
• Phil Vischer: reinforcing stereotypes. 
• Forward Progressives (contra Ham)

Christian Century

• Yahoo piece
• Manning asks Sherman about his ankle
• Peyton Manning’s Faith
• How he approaches faith and the game

How do I justify football in the context of “love your enemy?” I say to kids, well, football is most definitely a “collision sport,” and I can’t deny it jars your teeth and at the extreme can break your bones. But I’ve never seen it as a “violent game,” there are rules to prevent that, and I know I don’t have to hate anybody on the other side to play as hard as I can within the rules. I think you’d have to get inside my head to appreciate it, but I do love football. And, yes, I’d play it for nothing if that was the only way, even now when I’m no longer a child. I find no contradiction in football and my faith.

Ah, but do I “pray for victory?” No, except as a generic thing. I pray to keep both teams injury free, and personally, that I use whatever talent I have to the best of my ability. But I don’t think God really cares about who wins football games, except as winning might influence the character of some person or group. Besides. If the Colts were playing the Cowboys and I prayed for the Colts and Troy Aikman prayed for the Cowboys, wouldn’t that make it a standoff?

 

Don’t forget Russel Wilson’s story either though. 

• Celebrity overdoses
• Lottery winners who lost it all
• Russell Brand 10 Years Clean

Without these fellowships I would take drugs. Because, even now, the condition persists. Drugs and alcohol are not my problem, reality is my problem, drugs and alcohol are my solution.

Peter Hitchens is a vocal adversary of mine on this matter. He sees this condition as a matter of choice and the culprits as criminals who should go to prison. I know how he feels. I bet I have to deal with a lot more drug addicts than he does, let’s face it. I share my brain with one, and I can tell you firsthand, they are total fucking wankers. Where I differ from Peter is in my belief that if you regard alcoholics and drug addicts not as bad people but as sick people then we can help them to get better. By we, I mean other people who have the same problem but have found a way to live drug-and-alcohol-free lives. Guided by principles and traditions a programme has been founded that has worked miracles in millions of lives. Not just the alcoholics and addicts themselves but their families, their friends and of course society as a whole.

Even as I spin this beautifully dreaded web, I am reaching for my phone. I call someone: not a doctor or a sage, not a mystic or a physician, just a bloke like me, another alcoholic, who I know knows how I feel. The phone rings and I half hope he’ll just let it ring out. It’s 4am in London. He’s asleep, he can’t hear the phone, he won’t pick up. I indicate left, heading to Santa Monica. The ringing stops, then the dry mouthed nocturnal mumble: “Hello. You all right mate?”

He picks up.

And for another day, thank God, I don’t have to.

• “I should be Philip Seymour Hoffman

While the manifestations of our addictions might be different, we shared the same basic problem: not wanting to miss out – the next role, the next job, and the next high. So, we run – from something or to something. As is often the case, people with addictions are always chasing the wind.

But with the running, with all these vapor-grasping marathons come a tremendous amount of pain, and with this pain, comes an even more enormous desire to numb it all away: more jobs, more work, more heroin, more porn, more money, more food – you choose the drug.

Trauma leads to hiding, which leads to brilliance, which leads to more hiding, which leads to success, which leads to even more hiding.

http://youtu.be/kQ_YI6INTQU

• CT piece
• Amazon link

Former lesbian professor of English becomes homeschool mom in conservative Reformed church.

Politico: Dear America I saw You Naked