Tag: C. S. Lewis

The Four Loves: Friendship

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Some of us are read­ing through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this sum­mer for the Chi Alpha Sum­mer Read­ing Project. Every oth­er week I’ll post some reflec­tions on the read­ings. 

First, I should men­tion that I was sup­posed to post this last week but got dis­tract­ed by some trav­el and lost my sense of which week it was.

Sec­ond, I should men­tion that I post­ed some thoughts on this chap­ter back in 2018 on a pre­vi­ous sum­mer read-through. My obser­va­tions here are slight­ly dif­fer­ent, so con­sid­er check­ing out that pre­vi­ous post (which includes a humor­ous video).

Today we’re going to look at Lewis’s thoughts on friend­ship (phil­ia / φιλία). This chap­ter is full of wis­dom, and it also includes some thoughts that might push you a bit. If you haven’t read it (or if you did and are hun­gry for more), the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle chan­nel has Lewis giv­ing the lec­ture upon which this chap­ter is based. The tran­script of his speech is also avail­able. 

With the pre­am­ble out of the way, here are some thoughts from this read­ing:

Some of the most strik­ing insights in this chap­ter revolve around the unique nature of friend­ship. Unlike oth­er forms of love, friend­ship is com­plete­ly option­al and inher­ent­ly cen­tered on com­mon inter­ests. As Lewis says:

Friend­ship aris­es out of mere Com­pan­ion­ship when two or more of the com­pan­ions dis­cov­er that they have in com­mon some insight or inter­est or even taste which the oth­ers do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique trea­sure (or bur­den). The typ­i­cal expres­sion of open­ing Friend­ship would be some­thing like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’

It can be almost any­thing that trig­gers a friend­ship: a hob­by, a fan­dom, a shared expe­ri­ence, or even a shared annoy­ance. Mov­ing from acquain­tance­ship to friend­ship usu­al­ly requires dis­cov­er­ing some com­mon­al­i­ty. Grasp­ing this explains why some peo­ple strug­gle to make friends (as opposed to com­pan­ions):

That is why those pathet­ic peo­ple who simply“want friends” can nev­er make any. The very con­di­tion of hav­ing Friends is that we should want some­thing else besides Friends. Where the truth­ful answer to the ques­tion Do you see the same truth? would be “I see noth­ing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend,” no Friend­ship can arise though Affec­tion of course may. There would be noth­ing for the Friend­ship to be about; and Friend­ship must be about some­thing, even if it were only an enthu­si­asm for domi­noes or white mice. Those who have noth­ing can share noth­ing; those who are going nowhere can have no fel­low-trav­ellers.

And so if you strug­gle with forg­ing friend­ships, find some­thing you care about and look for some­one who also cares about that thing.

This sug­gests that if you are part of Chi Alpha at Stan­ford, then you’re well-poised to devel­op great friends. You’ve already got your faith in com­mon, and on top of that you both have the expe­ri­ence of being a stu­dent at Stan­ford, and in addi­tion you have the expe­ri­ence of Chi Alpha. That may already be enough to trig­ger a friend­ship, and if you add to that mix even just one more thing like a cer­tain sport or a spe­cif­ic fan­dom or a shared sense of humor then the poten­tial for a sig­nif­i­cant friend­ship is quite high. 

There are, how­ev­er, bar­ri­ers. Lewis at one point observes that if the world ever makes “pri­va­cy and unplanned leisure impos­si­ble” then we will cre­ate a world “where all are Com­pan­ions and none are Friends.”

That is a keen insight, and it leads me to make this sor­row­ful obser­va­tion: Stan­ford stu­dents, you are play­ing on hard mode. The way we use our phones makes moments of true pri­va­cy hard­er and hard­er to find (social media is often a blight, and the way some of you share your loca­tions with each oth­er is a source of much need­less dra­ma), and the typ­i­cal Stan­ford sched­ule means that unplanned leisure is often noth­ing more than a dream. If you want to deep­en your friend­ships, rebel against the tyran­ny of your phone and also against the insane demands Stan­ford cul­ture puts upon your time.

Despite these chal­lenges, be encour­aged! As Lewis reminds us:

…we think we have cho­sen our peers. In real­i­ty, a few years’ dif­fer­ence in the dates of our births, a few more miles between cer­tain hous­es, the choice of one uni­ver­si­ty instead of anoth­er, post­ing to dif­fer­ent reg­i­ments, the acci­dent of a top­ic being raised or not raised at a first meet­ing any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Chris­t­ian, there are, strict­ly speak­ing, no chances. A secret Mas­ter of the Cer­e­monies has been at work. Christ, who said to the dis­ci­ples “Ye have not cho­sen me, but I have cho­sen you,” can tru­ly say to every group of Chris­t­ian friends “You have not cho­sen one anoth­er but I have cho­sen you for one anoth­er.”

So if you lack friend­ships, pray that God opens your eyes to see that poten­tial friends are already around you, and fur­ther pray that He bless­es you with self-aware­ness and wis­dom as you build those rela­tion­ships.

And if you have friends, thank God for them and be care­ful to con­tin­ue cul­ti­vat­ing those rela­tion­ships.

In either case, slow down (cre­ate space for unplanned leisure) and try to relate to your phones and social media in such a way that you’ve got moments of pri­va­cy.

The Four Loves: Affection

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Some of us are read­ing through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this sum­mer for the Chi Alpha Sum­mer Read­ing Project. Every oth­er week I’ll post some reflec­tions on the read­ings.

I have writ­ten about this chap­ter once before, back in 2018. My remarks here are fresh (although the open­ing sec­tion is very sim­i­lar).

YouTube has some­thing amaz­ing in rela­tion to this week’s read­ing: a 1957 record­ing of C. S. Lewis him­self giv­ing the lec­ture upon which this chap­ter is based. I’ve embed­ded the video, and you can read the tran­script as well. You should at least lis­ten to a few min­utes if you’ve nev­er heard the voice of Lewis before.

The chan­nel host­ing this video is worth check­ing out. It’s called CSLewis­Doo­dle and it “doo­dles select­ed essays by C.S. Lewis in order to make them eas­i­er to under­stand.” It’s got doo­dled treat­ments of Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, The Screw­tape Let­ters, and more. Con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing to it.

On to affec­tion. Lewis is dis­cussing the type of love described by the Greek word storge (στοργή), a love which we describe using the words affec­tion or fond­ness.

The word storge does not appear direct­ly in the New Tes­ta­ment, although it does appear as a root of oth­er words. In both Romans 1:31 and 2nd Tim­o­thy 3:3 the word astor­gos (ἄστοργος) is ren­dered by var­i­ous trans­la­tions as “heart­less” or “unlov­ing” or “with­out nat­ur­al affec­tion.” And in Romans 12:10 we find the word philostor­gos (φιλόστοργος) which means “devot­ed”.

I pro­vide this lin­guis­tic data mere­ly by way of back­ground. It does­n’t affect Lewis’ dis­cus­sion of affec­tion except to explain why he’s not quot­ing a bunch of Bible vers­es.

There is one sec­tion in this chap­ter that always strikes me:

If peo­ple are already unlov­able a con­tin­u­al demand on their part (as of right) to be loved—their man­i­fest sense of injury, their reproach­es, whether loud and clam­orous or mere­ly implic­it in every look and ges­ture of resent­ful self-pity—produce in us a sense of guilt (they are intend­ed to do so) for a fault we could not have avoid­ed and can­not cease to com­mit. They seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty. If ever, at some favoured moment, any germ of Affec­tion for them stirs in us, their demand for more and still more pet­ri­fies us again.

What an arrest­ing phrase: “they seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty.”

I once had a cat who became so obese that he could no longer lick him­self clean. And so for a sea­son he stank. Wher­ev­er he went, the smell of an out­house fol­lowed him. And yet he was des­per­ate for affec­tion. He would approach peo­ple to receive pats and his stench would dri­ve them away.

And here is where the sto­ry becomes fas­ci­nat­ing: in his sad­ness he devel­oped the habit of sleep­ing in his lit­ter box. I was amazed: the poor crea­ture had found a way to make his stench even worse. His habits made his desires unat­tain­able.

I am pleased to report that even­tu­al­ly his behav­ior changed, he lost weight, his stench decreased, and he received affec­tion. He became much hap­pi­er.

I have met peo­ple who do the equiv­a­lent of sleep­ing in their lit­ter box. They live odi­ous lives. In the most extreme cas­es they under­mine their friend­ships and are baf­fled that they find them­selves alone. In the pas­sage excerpt­ed above Lewis talks about peo­ple who are so needy it is repel­lent, and that is one way we can car­ry a stench around with us but it is hard­ly the only one. There are many milder cas­es. Con­sid­er a young woman who is unwill­ing to be vul­ner­a­ble beyond a cer­tain point and is sur­prised that her friend­ships lack depth. Or con­sid­er a young man unwill­ing to risk rejec­tion who is then dis­ap­point­ed that his friend­ships nev­er blos­som into romance. Or pic­ture some­one who comes late to church and leaves ear­ly and is frus­trat­ed that they lack com­mu­ni­ty. In each case, they “seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty.”

Take a moment to eval­u­ate your rela­tion­ships. Is there an absence of affec­tion or cama­raderie which frus­trates you? It may sim­ply be that you haven’t found your peo­ple yet (and Lewis will talk more about friend­ship in the next chap­ter). But it is also pos­si­ble that you are doing the equiv­a­lent of sleep­ing in your lit­ter box.

If you are frus­trat­ed that you are not expe­ri­enc­ing the affec­tion you desire, spend some time in prayer­ful con­tem­pla­tion and ask God to reveal any self-lim­it­ing habits you have devel­oped and to guide you into bet­ter habits. Your now is not your for­ev­er — my cat changed and so can we.

And if you haven’t already, read the “affec­tion” chap­ter in The Four Loves and watch the Lewis doo­dle video above — they may pro­vide you with some insight.

Thoughts on This Fourth of July

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Some of us are read­ing through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this sum­mer for the Chi Alpha Sum­mer Read­ing Project. Every oth­er week I’ll post some reflec­tions on the read­ings.

When I laid out the read­ing sched­ule for The Four Loves, I did­n’t real­ize that we would read Lewis’ remarks on patri­o­tism on the fourth of July. How delight­ful!

I’ve actu­al­ly writ­ten about this chap­ter of The Four Loves before, so I’ll take a slight­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion today.

Lewis cel­e­brates the love of coun­try as one of the most basic of loves. He points out that the love of your nation is an indis­pens­able part of lov­ing all of human­i­ty.

As the fam­i­ly offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond fam­i­ly self­ish­ness.… those who do not love the fel­low-vil­lagers or the fel­low-towns­men whom they have seen are not like­ly to have got very far towards lov­ing ‘Man’ whom they have not.

This wor­ries some peo­ple, because does­n’t lov­ing your coun­try lead to a dis­like of oth­ers? Not at all! One of the virtues of healthy patri­o­tism is that it allows you to love and respect peo­ple from oth­er nations.

[This kind of patri­o­tism] becomes mil­i­tant only to pro­tect what it loves. In any mind which has a pen­ny­worth of imag­i­na­tion it pro­duces a good atti­tude towards for­eign­ers. How can I love my home with­out com­ing to realise that oth­er men, no less right­ly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the French­men like cafe com­plet just as we like bacon and eggs—why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make every­where else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were dif­fer­ent.

By con­trast, a dis­dain for your own nation will lead to dis­dain for oth­ers. Part of cel­e­brat­ing diver­si­ty is real­iz­ing that you con­tribute to it. Your cul­ture can enrich a for­eign­er just as much as their cul­ture can enrich you, and so to deny them by pre­tend­ing there is noth­ing good about your cul­ture is cru­el.

This does­n’t mean that you need to ignore the flaws of your nation. Lewis devotes sev­er­al pages in this chap­ter to help­ing peo­ple sort through the fact that “the actu­al his­to­ry of every coun­try is full of shab­by and even shame­ful things.” Much of what he says reminds me of the way G.K. Chester­ton talked about patri­o­tism in Ortho­doxy chap­ter 5, “The Flag of This World.” Chesterton’s point is that patri­ots see the flaws of their nation and grieve them. It is because peo­ple love their nation that they want to fix it.

The fol­low­ing from the afore­men­tioned Chester­ton chap­ter is one of my favorite quotes of all time — I beg you to read through it slow­ly.

Let us sup­pose we are con­front­ed with a des­per­ate thing—say Pim­li­co [Glen’s note: Pim­li­co is part of Lon­don]. If we think what is real­ly best for Pim­li­co we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mys­tic and the arbi­trary. It is not enough for a man to dis­ap­prove of Pim­li­co: in that case he will mere­ly cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, cer­tain­ly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pim­li­co: for then it will remain Pim­li­co, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for some­body to love Pim­li­co: to love it with a tran­scen­den­tal tie and with­out any earth­ly rea­son. If there arose a man who loved Pim­li­co, then Pim­li­co would rise into ivory tow­ers and gold­en pin­na­cles; Pim­li­co would attire her­self as a woman does when she is loved. For dec­o­ra­tion is not giv­en to hide hor­ri­ble things: but to dec­o­rate things already adorable. A moth­er does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly with­out it. A lover does not give a girl a neck­lace to hide her neck. If men loved Pim­li­co as moth­ers love chil­dren, arbi­trar­i­ly, because it is THEIRS, Pim­li­co in a year or two might be fair­er than Flo­rence. Some read­ers will say that this is a mere fan­ta­sy. I answer that this is the actu­al his­to­ry of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the dark­est roots of civ­i­liza­tion and you will find them knot­ted round some sacred stone or encir­cling some sacred well. Peo­ple first paid hon­our to a spot and after­wards gained glo­ry for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

When a lot of us tru­ly, sin­cere­ly, and earnest­ly love Amer­i­ca over time, our love (and the efforts that spring from it) will trans­form Amer­i­ca. That’s what has hap­pened in the past, and God will­ing it will con­tin­ue into the future.

Lewis writes about more than patri­o­tism in this chap­ter, and I com­mend the rest of it to you. But today is the Fourth of July, and love of nation seemed like the right theme to focus on. So from me, from C.S. Lewis, and from G.K. Chester­ton: hap­py Inde­pen­dence Day!

The Four Loves: Introduction

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Some of us are read­ing through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this sum­mer for the Chi Alpha Sum­mer Read­ing Project. Every oth­er week I’ll post some reflec­tions on the read­ings.

Today we com­plete our first read­ing, the ten pages of chap­ter 1.

What stood out to me is some­thing that prob­a­bly seemed like a throw­away obser­va­tion back in 1960.

I was look­ing for­ward to writ­ing some fair­ly easy pan­e­gyrics on the first sort of love and dis­par­age­ments of the sec­ond. And much of what I was going to say still seems to me to be true…. Every time I have tried to think the thing out along those lines I have end­ed in puz­zles and con­tra­dic­tions. The real­i­ty is more com­pli­cat­ed than I sup­posed.

Lewis knew what he intend­ed to write, but try­ing to work it out clear­ly enough to put it on paper showed him that his think­ing was fuzzy. Con­tra­dic­to­ry, even. Putting feel­ings, impres­sions, and assump­tions into words is clar­i­fy­ing.

gen­er­a­tive AI has entered the chat

Chat­G­PT and its com­peti­tors are tools and they have a place, but please don’t let them under­mine your abil­i­ty to write out a clear argu­ment. Writ­ing what you think is one of the only ways to force your­self to grap­ple with what you think. Talk­ing it out can also help, but it’s not as bru­tal as writ­ing. The flow of con­ver­sa­tion can allow you to gloss over a weak point in your argu­ment, but hav­ing to write out each of your assump­tions and infer­ences on paper does­n’t pro­vide such wig­gle room.

I think most of you know that I write my ser­mons out word-for-word and then try to deliv­er the ser­mon with­out con­sult­ing my notes. Why do I write my ser­mons out if I don’t intend to read the result­ing man­u­script? It’s for pre­cise­ly the rea­sons I men­tioned above: to write it out means that any weak spots in my think­ing become clear. I still make mis­takes in both inter­pre­ta­tion and argu­men­ta­tion, but I avoid a lot of obvi­ous mis­takes that would oth­er­wise crop up. Deliv­er­ing the ser­mon with­out the notes is about bet­ter con­nect­ing with the audi­ence. If my think­ing on the sub­ject is suf­fi­cient­ly clear, I don’t need the notes except for when I’m quot­ing a pas­sage from the Bible or some oth­er source.

How does gen­er­a­tive AI play into this? I don’t use AI to write my ser­mons because the goal isn’t a well-writ­ten ser­mon, the goal is a thought-through ser­mon. And specif­i­cal­ly, a thought-through-by-me ser­mon. A well-writ­ten ser­mon is most­ly the byprod­uct of prepar­ing a well-thought-through ser­mon. And so if I were to use a tool like chat­G­PT to write a ser­mon for me, I would be an actor, not a preach­er. Actors need scripts. Preach­ers need con­vic­tions. I need to know (and I need you to know) that I believe what I preach, and I can only know I believe it ful­ly if I write it myself.

Even if I became con­fi­dent that a Chat­G­PT ser­mon would be bet­ter than mine and you would enjoy it more, that would­n’t sway me. Preach­ing that way would enfee­ble me, per­haps even cor­rupt me. To be a preach­er means many things, but among them is the claim that I real­ly mean it. Not just that I mean the things I say in that spe­cif­ic ser­mon. I have to mean the whole Chris­tian­i­ty thing. To be a preach­er is to claim that I’m doing my best to fol­low Jesus. Even if I nev­er preached a ser­mon against slan­der, if I had a habit of post­ing slan­der­ous things on social media you would nonethe­less judge me a hyp­ocrite and some­one who should be kept away from the pul­pit. To stand in the pul­pit is to stand before God and man and say, “I real­ly mean it and I’m try­ing.” Part of that “real­ly mean­ing it” is man­i­fest in the way I pre­pare ser­mons.

This isn’t a new thing. Even before tools like chat­G­PT came along every preach­er had the option of pla­gia­riz­ing oth­er preach­ers’ ser­mons. It has always been looked down upon, part­ly for its dis­hon­esty (one of the implic­it claim of a ser­mon is “this is what I came up with”) and part­ly because it meant the preach­er was­n’t grow­ing — the act of craft­ing a ser­mon makes you a bet­ter Chris­t­ian (or forces you to embrace hypocrisy) and a clear­er thinker.

This is not an anti-AI rant. I will some­times use gen­er­a­tive AI after I’ve writ­ten my ser­mon. I will give it prompts like “Here is the man­u­script of a ser­mon I intend to preach to a group of Stan­ford stu­dents. What’s the biggest blind spot in this ser­mon?” or “What’s the most dev­as­tat­ing cri­tique you can make of it?” or “Is there any­one this might need­less­ly offend?” And then I’ll take that feed­back and use it to refine the ser­mon. Using AI like this is fine because it forces me to strength­en my think­ing and wres­tle with my con­vic­tions. At times the AI has sug­gest­ed that I should take out a poten­tial­ly offen­sive claim or tone down some rhetoric and I’ve thought, “Nah — this is what peo­ple need to hear and this is how they need to hear it.” Oth­er times I con­sid­er the feed­back and say, “Huh — I had­n’t thought about it that way. Yeah, let me reword that so that I’m mak­ing the point I intend to make and not being dis­tract­ing­ly offen­sive.”

Obvi­ous­ly, none of you are preach­ers (at least, none of you has that as a key part of your job). But there is prob­a­bly some area of your life where you need to be able to think clear­ly and to know that you have thought clear­ly. Don’t allow the won­der­ful tool of gen­er­a­tive AI to keep you from devel­op­ing that skill. If you’d like to mull that over, I rec­om­mend the won­der­ful and very short sto­ry The Whis­per­ing Ear­ring.

Lewis, of course, had no idea that such a thing as gen­er­a­tive AI would ever be invent­ed. He just men­tioned that his think­ing about love was unclear until he tried to write about it. One of the beau­ties of read­ing a well-thought-through book is that it con­tin­ues to have rel­e­vance decades after it was writ­ten and that its insights are rel­e­vant to new domains that did not exist when its argu­ments were craft­ed.

If you’re not read­ing The Four Loves with us, I high­ly rec­om­mend it. You can down­load a free copy at archive.org.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 497: Christianity in Space, Redeeming Turkish Delight, and How To Sneeze

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Strand­ed Astro­naut Held Onto Faith in Dark­est Moments: ‘God Was There’ (Sylvia St. Cyr, The Roys Report): “After being strand­ed for nine months in space, vet­er­an NASA astro­naut Bar­ry ‘Butch’ Wilmore is shar­ing how his faith in God kept him going.… Wilmore, a mem­ber and elder of Prov­i­dence Bap­tist Church in Pasade­na, Texas, stayed con­nect­ed with his church through­out his time in space. He even made a few calls to some elder­ly church mem­bers through­out his time strand­ed on the sta­tion, to encour­age them.”
  2. What Fol­lows from Lab Leak? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “First, and most impor­tant­ly, the high­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty that SARS-CoV­‑2 leaked from a lab the high­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty we should expect anoth­er pan­dem­ic. Research at Wuhan was not espe­cial­ly unusu­al or high-tech. Mod­i­fy­ing virus­es such as coro­n­avirus­es (e.g., insert­ing spike pro­teins, adapt­ing recep­tor-bind­ing domains) is com­mon prac­tice in virol­o­gy research and gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments with virus­es have been wide­ly con­duct­ed. Thus, man­u­fac­tur­ing a virus capa­ble of killing ~20 mil­lion human beings or more is well with­in the capa­bil­i­ty of say ~500‑1000 labs world­wide. The num­ber of such labs is grow­ing in num­ber and such research is becom­ing less cost­ly and eas­i­er to con­duct. Thus, lab-leak means the risks are larg­er than we thought and increas­ing.”
    • Some very prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions in this short piece.
  3. The Hid­den Hands: Amanu­enses and the Let­ters Behind the Let­ters (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “Yes, the sec­re­taries could write com­pe­tent Greek. But often, due to the per­son­al addi­tions at the end of these let­ters, I was able to com­pare the hand­writ­ing and style of the author him­self. And get this: in many cas­es, the author’s own Greek was bet­ter than the scribe’s. More refined. More flu­id. More leg­i­ble. This shat­tered my assump­tions. It meant that we can’t assume that peo­ple used sec­re­taries only because they were illit­er­ate, une­d­u­cat­ed, or of low sta­tus. On the con­trary, peo­ple who were clear­ly capa­ble writers—sometimes bet­ter writers—still made use of amanu­enses.”
    • This is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the way ancient let­ters were writ­ten with the help of assis­tants — includ­ing let­ters in the New Tes­ta­ment.
    • Vague­ly relat­ed (in the sense that it’s about the his­tor­i­cal back­ground for Bible stuff): Did Jesus teach in Greek? (Ian Paul, blog): “The argu­ment about Jesus and Greek has sev­er­al lay­ers, start­ing with the most gen­er­al. Were the regions Jesus taught in mul­ti­lin­gual (poly­glot), and how do we know? Is it like­ly that Jesus him­self was mul­ti­lin­gual? And is there spe­cif­ic evi­dence of this in the New Tes­ta­ment, in exam­ples of his teach­ing?”
  4. Why Chris­t­ian Men Need Friend­ship, Not Just “Account­abil­i­ty” (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “Account­abil­i­ty is a fruit from a much larg­er tree. In an age in which mil­lions of Amer­i­can men are so lone­ly it’s lit­er­al­ly killing them, the urgent issue is not find­ing some­one to receive a report of your web activ­i­ty. It’s find­ing some­one who’ll talk to you at all. Why? Because friend­ship has a sanc­ti­fy­ing pow­er. Not only is it eas­i­er to be hon­est and trans­par­ent with some­one whom you’re con­vinced is a true friend, but the friend­ship itself is a means of grace in the fight against lust.”
  5. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Acci­den­tal­ly Texted Me Its War Plans (Jef­frey Gold­berg, The Atlantic): “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the nation­al-secu­ri­ty lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed States would com­mu­ni­cate on Sig­nal about immi­nent war plans. I also could not believe that the nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er to the pres­i­dent would be so reck­less as to include the edi­tor in chief of The Atlantic in such dis­cus­sions with senior U.S. offi­cials, up to and includ­ing the vice pres­i­dent.”
    • A wild sto­ry. Lots of fol­low-up in the news. Just google for it.
    • Sev­en Ways of Look­ing at a Group Chat (Nick Cat­to­gio, The Dis­patch): “There are three dis­tinct scan­dals here and dif­fer­ent cul­prits in each one. The first is using Sig­nal instead of secure gov­ern­ment chan­nels to dis­cuss some­thing as sen­si­tive as mil­i­tary strikes. Every­one involved, save Jef­frey Gold­berg, bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for that. The sec­ond is mis­tak­en­ly includ­ing Gold­berg in the dis­cus­sion, for which Waltz would seem to be at fault. And the third is going so far as to share ‘oper­a­tional details’ in the chat, poten­tial­ly plac­ing peo­ple in the field at risk, which sure sounds like reck­less mis­han­dling of clas­si­fied information—a sub­ject on which Repub­li­cans have had a lot to say in recent years. The blame for that would appear to land on Hegseth.”
    • Inves­ti­ga­tion Reveals DOGE Had Just Laid Off The Guy Whose Job It Was To Make Sure Jef­frey Gold­berg Wasn’t In The War Group Chat (Baby­lon Bee)
  6. The Inklings:
    • Why JRR Tolkien Made March 25 the Day the Ring Was Destroyed (Joseph Pearce, Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter): “Fro­do Bag­gins, as the one cho­sen to be the Ring bear­er, is the Cross bear­er. He is, there­fore, a Christ fig­ure. This is why Tolkien has him leav­ing Riven­dell on Dec. 25 and arriv­ing at Mount Doom (Gol­go­tha) on March 25 (Good Fri­day). Frodo’s jour­ney, or pil­grim­age, begins on Christ’s birth­day and ends on the date of Christ’s death.”
    • In Search of Turk­ish Delight (Valerie Stivers, First Things): “Işin quotes Amer­i­can Naval physi­cian James McK­ay, writ­ing in 1830: Turk­ish delight was ‘a deli­cious pasty-mass which melts away in the mouth, and leaves a fra­grant fla­vor behind.’ The French artist and writer Pre­tex­tat Lecomte described it as ‘beau­ti­ful’ in col­or and ‘warm and trans­par­ent.’ To make it, Turk­ish con­fec­tion­ers used hand-sift­ed wheat starch (pro­duced by a domes­tic process with a long local tra­di­tion), and employed a labo­ri­ous tech­nique that called for sev­er­al hours of con­tin­u­ous stir­ring. They used musk and rose water as fla­vor­ings, and also sprin­kled musk on the pow­dered sug­ar coat­ing. They rubbed the trays used to mold it and the scis­sors used to cut it with fra­grant almond oil. By the 1880s, Işin says, the fla­vors had mul­ti­plied to include clot­ted cream, mas­tic, almond, and pis­ta­chio. In the 1900s came pine nut and hazel­nut, and fla­vors from essences or syrups such as vio­let, lemon, and bit­ter orange. This starts to sound like a dessert a child could dream of, or that an open-mind­ed and plea­sure-lov­ing adult like C. S. Lewis would find tempt­ing. It seems like­ly that very few mod­ern eaters have ever tast­ed true Turk­ish delight, at least out­side the Grand Bazaar. All con­tem­po­rary recipes use corn starch. Musk oil is ille­gal.”
      • I am both per­son­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed that I can’t taste it and thrilled that Lewis was­n’t crazy.
  7. How wor­ried should legal immi­grants be about Trump’s depor­ta­tions? (Nicole Narea, Vox): “These are uncer­tain times for many immi­grants in the US. There have been reports of indi­vid­ual visa and green card hold­ers and tourists who have been detained and deport­ed. How­ev­er, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion does not seem to be indis­crim­i­nate­ly tar­get­ing legal immi­grants who have autho­riza­tion to be in the US on a large scale. Some have report­ed­ly been tar­get­ed based on their polit­i­cal activism.…  And it’s not just immi­grants who have been affect­ed. A US cit­i­zen said he was walk­ing down the streets of Chica­go when he was arrest­ed by immi­gra­tion agents, who con­fis­cat­ed his ID and held him for 10 hours before releas­ing him. Even though lim­it­ed in num­ber, these cas­es have been going viral — and are under­stand­ably caus­ing fear in immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 472



On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is vol­ume 472. There are (I am told) 472 ways to tile a 5x5 grid with inte­ger-sized squares (1x1 squares mixed with 2x2 squares and 3x3 squares, etc).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. “We Lost Our Baby”: North Car­oli­na Fam­i­ly Los­es 3 after Climb­ing to Roof to Escape Helene Floods (FOX Weath­er on YouTube, 11 min­utes long): “I want them to remem­ber that there is joy beyond the pain… My son could­n’t be more proud at me for hang­ing on; my par­ents were prob­a­bly lift­ing me up when I was between the two things that were hold­ing me down. They are rejoic­ing at the fact that I now can tell them what God did for me, because it was God. He said, ‘Be still. I am in con­trol, and you will pass on.’ This is a back­fire for the dev­il, because he tried to take me out, and her I am shar­ing the word that my sev­en-year-old is a hero, and my par­ents live on in God’s glo­ry.”
    • You will absolute­ly cry watch­ing this. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. How Tolkien and Lewis Re-enchant­ed a War-Weary World (Lev Gross­man, New York Times): “‘The Myth­mak­ers’ takes us through 20 years of deep intel­lec­tu­al friend­ship between Lewis and Tolkien — which widened to include the social cir­cle around them, known as the Inklings — but it’s just as inter­est­ing when doc­u­ment­ing the slow, regret­table ship­wreck of that friend­ship. Jack and Tollers turned out to be not so very, very like each oth­er after all. After his con­ver­sion, Lewis, loud as ever, became famous as a radio lec­tur­er on Chris­tian­i­ty; this irked the qui­et, rig­or­ous Tolkien, because Lewis had nev­er for­mal­ly stud­ied the­ol­o­gy, and Tolkien would nev­er have lec­tured on any­thing with­out earn­ing six advanced degrees in it first.”
  3. What Would Lecrae Do? (Christi­na Gon­za­lez Ho, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…to hear one of the most tal­ent­ed and dec­o­rat­ed rap­pers alive name-check an artist whose work has revolved around Jesus was deeply heart­en­ing. What moves me is not the idea that some­day my own work might be noticed by some­one more famous. It’s the thought that a sin­cere, intel­li­gent, and pro­found artist like Kendrick Lamar, some­one who’s seen no end of good ideas and inter­est­ing art, might find some­thing in straight­for­ward­ly Chris­t­ian music that gives him pause, that makes him recon­sid­er.”
    • Christi­na is one of our alum­ni: a for­mer wor­ship leader and offi­cer in our min­istry.
  4. Held Hostage Over­seas? The IRS Wants Your Back Tax­es. (Emma Camp, Rea­son): “Many Amer­i­cans who return home after being ille­gal­ly detained over­seas arrive to find they’ve been billed thou­sands of dol­lars by the IRS—including late fees for unpaid tax­es.… ‘I got one of those bills from the IRS say­ing, you owe this much on this year, you owe this much on this year because of fail­ure to pay on time—here’s the inter­est that’s accrued,’ Wash­ing­ton Post reporter and for­mer hostage Jason Reza­ian told NPR. He faced more than $6,000 in fees for unpaid tax­es after his release, fol­low­ing 544 days of deten­tion in Iran.”
  5. Become Slaves to One Anoth­er (John M. G. Bar­clay, Plough): “Paul under­stands the world not as an emp­ty space in which indi­vid­u­als carve out their pri­vate sphere of free­dom, but as a ter­rain already pop­u­lat­ed by com­pet­ing pow­ers greater than human actors, who only imag­ine that they are free. As far as Paul is con­cerned, our search for an indi­vid­u­at­ed, atom­ized auton­o­my is itself an enslav­ing delu­sion, because we are, and are meant to be, free only as we are formed by rela­tion­ships with God and with oth­ers.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty at the Durham Uni­ver­si­ty in Eng­land. He’s a well-regard­ed Bib­li­cal schol­ar.
  6. I Spent 13 Years Liv­ing as a Man. But After My Spouse’s Exposé, I’m Detran­si­tion­ing. (Tiger Reed, The Free Press): “For detran­si­tion­ers, there is no clear path. Gen­der-affirm­ing clin­i­cians have been ignor­ing and dis­miss­ing our con­cerns. While my tran­si­tion was cov­ered by insur­ance, my detran­si­tion is not. To restore my hair­line and remove my body hair will cost me thou­sands. In the next few years I may have breast recon­struc­tive surgery. There are many ques­tions I don’t have the answers to—such as whether my kids, now rang­ing in age from two to 16 years old, should still call me ‘Dad.’ I am plan­ning to change my name back to Rox­xanne, and to change my license so it says ‘female’ again. But I won­der if I’ll ever pass as a woman.  The gen­der-affirm­ing care mod­el relies on vul­ner­a­ble people’s impatience—rushing them toward major med­ical changes rather than stop­ping to under­stand the root of their pain and suf­fer­ing.”
  7. As America’s Mar­i­jua­na Use Grows, So Do the Harms (Megan Twohey, Danielle Ivory and Car­son Kessler, New York Times): “The accu­mu­lat­ing harm is broad­er and more severe than pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. And gaps in state reg­u­la­tions, lim­it­ed pub­lic health mes­sag­ing and fed­er­al restraints on research have left many con­sumers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and even med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers in the dark about such out­comes.… as more peo­ple turn to mar­i­jua­na for help with anx­i­ety, depres­sion and oth­er men­tal health issues, few know that it can cause tem­po­rary psy­chosis and is increas­ing­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the devel­op­ment of chron­ic psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders.”
    • This is sad, both because of the human suf­fer­ing involved and also because some peo­ple seem gen­uine­ly shocked that drugs can have neg­a­tive side-effects.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 454



On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is vol­ume 454, a num­ber whose sym­me­try pleas­es me.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Nones Have Hit a Ceil­ing (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The rise of the nones may be large­ly over now. At least it won’t be increas­ing in the same way that it did in the pri­or thir­ty years. Of course, the ques­tion is why? I don’t know if I have a bul­let­proof answer. I think the eas­i­est expla­na­tion is that a lot of mar­gin­al­ly attached peo­ple switched to ‘no reli­gion’ on sur­veys over the last decade or two. Even­tu­al­ly, there weren’t that many mar­gin­al­ly attached folks any­more. All you had left were the very com­mit­ted reli­gious peo­ple who like­ly won’t become nones for any rea­son. The loose top soil has been scooped off and hauled away, leav­ing noth­ing but hard bedrock under­neath.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  2. ‘Loud-mouthed bul­ly’: CS Lewis satirised Oxford peer in secret poems (Dalya Alberge, The Guardian): “Jok­ing that an infu­ri­at­ed Lewis had per­haps com­posed them dur­ing one of Wyld’s lec­tures, Horobin not­ed that one of them iden­ti­fies Wyld through an acros­tic with the ini­tial let­ters spelling out the name ‘Hen­ry Cecil Wyld’. He added: ‘On the remain­ing blank pages he penned a series of addi­tion­al satir­i­cal vers­es lam­poon­ing Wyld – one in Eng­lish, along­side oth­ers in Latin, Greek, French and even Old Eng­lish.’ ”
    • Even Lewis’s shade was epic and eru­dite. I love this sto­ry. Also, a reminder that every word will be brought into judge­ment — even words uttered (or penned) in secret. I should men­tion he would not yet have been a Chris­t­ian when these poems appear to have been com­posed.
  3. What Do Stu­dents at Elite Col­leges Real­ly Want? (Francesca Mari, New York Times): “…every­one arrived on cam­pus hop­ing to change the world. But what they learn at Har­vard, he said, is that actu­al­ly doing any­thing mean­ing­ful is too hard. Peo­ple give up on their dreams, he told me, and decide they might as well make mon­ey. Some­one else told me it was com­mon at par­ties to hear their peers say they just want to sell out.”
    • Unlocked
  4. Redefin­ing the sci­en­tif­ic method: as the use of sophis­ti­cat­ed sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods that extend our mind (Alexan­der Krauss, PNAS Nexus): “This study reveals that 25% of all dis­cov­er­ies since 1900 did not apply the com­mon sci­en­tif­ic method (all three features)—with 6% of dis­cov­er­ies using no obser­va­tion, 23% using no exper­i­men­ta­tion, and 17% not test­ing a hypoth­e­sis. Empir­i­cal evi­dence thus chal­lenges the com­mon view of the sci­en­tif­ic method.”
    • From the abstract because it is so suc­cinct­ly put, but the arti­cle itself is easy to read. Rec­om­mend­ed. The author is a philoso­pher of sci­ence at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.
  5. Amer­i­can Mis­sion­ar­ies Killed in Port-au-Prince (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Crim­i­nal gangs killed near­ly 5,000 peo­ple in Haiti last year. Then, in 2024, the gangs band­ed togeth­er, turned against the politi­cians who had once col­lab­o­rat­ed with them for pow­er, and launched coor­di­nat­ed attacks on the gov­ern­ment. The gangs set police sta­tions on fire, shut down the main air­port and sea­port, and broke open two pris­ons, releas­ing an esti­mat­ed 4,000 inmates. They van­dal­ized gov­ern­ment offices, stormed the Nation­al Palace, and took con­trol of about 80 per­cent of the cap­i­tal.”
  6. Group chats rule the world. (Sri­ram Krish­nan, per­son­al blog): “Most of the inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions in tech now hap­pen in pri­vate group chats: What­sapp, Telegram, Sig­nal, small invite-only Dis­cord groups.… The great cul­ture wars of 2020 meant peo­ple, espe­cial­ly in tech, weren’t com­fort­able shar­ing their views in pub­lic lest they get var­i­ous online mobs after them.”
  7. What ‘Tradwives’—and Some of Their Critics—Miss (Han­nah Ander­son, The Dis­patch): “But women haven’t been unique­ly lied to. Fam­i­lies have been lied to about what their homes can and should be. Men and women alike have been told that their great­est achieve­ments lie out­side of it. And yet, a mar­riage reduced from two ‘careerists’ to one is still serv­ing cor­po­rate inter­ests. At best, a woman sac­ri­fic­ing her career to enable her husband’s career (as Butk­er asserts his wife does and as he coun­seled new female grad­u­ates) miss­es the point. At worst, it enables the very mar­ket­place that desires noth­ing more than to creep into our homes and com­mod­i­fy every expres­sion of good­ness and beau­ty that hap­pens there—even if what we’re sell­ing is tra­di­tion­al­ism.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Tour by Drone (YouTube): six min­utes (it’s a lit­tle long, but the first bit is nice to watch)
  • Will 18 year old Emma Olson FOOL Penn & Teller with a Rubik’s cube? (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): nine min­utes
  • When an Eel Takes a Bite Then an Octo­pus Might Claim an Eye­ball (Joshua Rapp Learn, New York Times): “In each video, the com­mon octo­pus may sac­ri­fice arms, much as lizards drop their tails to dis­tract preda­tors, Dr. Hernán­dez-Urcera said. In the first video, the octo­pus los­es three arms while the one in the sec­ond video los­es two — but they can ful­ly regrow limbs in about 45 days, some lab tests show.”
    • Rarely do I find that news arti­cles are improved by embed­ded videos. This is one of the excep­tions. Very cool.
  • Are Plants Intel­li­gent? If So, What Does That Mean for Your Sal­ad? (Eliz­a­beth A. Har­ris, New York Times): “Obvi­ous­ly we’re ani­mals that need to eat plants. There’s no way around that. But there is a way of imag­in­ing a future with agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices and har­vest­ing prac­tices that are more tuned into the life style of the plant, the things it’s capa­ble of and its pro­cliv­i­ties. This opens up the world of plant ethics.”
    • The arti­cle itself is inter­est­ing. The title made me laugh.

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Christianity For Modern Pagans: Vanity and the Vanity of Human Justice

Pas­cal diag­nosed our mod­ern dys­func­tions 350 years ago.

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

One rea­son I appre­ci­ate read­ing writ­ers from the dis­tant past is that when they make an obser­va­tion rel­e­vant to mod­ern times it is usu­al­ly more pow­er­ful than if it was uttered by one of our con­tem­po­raries.

It reminds me of an excerpt from C. S. Lewis’ intro­duc­tion to a trans­la­tion of Athana­sius’ On The Incar­na­tion of the Word of God:

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.

C. S. Lewis

With that in mind, two of Pas­cal’s obser­va­tions struck me as espe­cial­ly pre­scient:

The mind nat­u­ral­ly believes and the will nat­u­ral­ly loves, so that when there are no true objects for them they nec­es­sar­i­ly become attached to false ones.  

Pas­cal, Pen­sée 661 (page 77)

Hun­dreds of years ago, Pas­cal accu­rate­ly diag­nosed the mod­ern Amer­i­can. Our decep­tive­ly sec­u­lar age is full of reli­gion, and for many peo­ple pol­i­tics is their pre­ferred form of wor­ship. Look back over my Fri­day “Issachar” emails and you will see many exam­ples of the reli­gious dynam­ics in our cul­tur­al debates; in fact, the very first arti­cle I ever shared was Joseph Bot­tum’s The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas and this week I’m like­ly to share David French’s Amer­i­ca Is in the Grips of a Fun­da­men­tal­ist Revival.

As your pas­tor I urge you: don’t par­tic­i­pate in the crazy of what­ev­er group you tend to vote with. You already have a reli­gion, so you are free to treat pol­i­tics as sig­nif­i­cant but not ulti­mate. Back in the 90’s, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist J. Budziszews­ki wrote two arti­cles back-to-back for First Things, The Prob­lem With Lib­er­al­ism and The Prob­lem With Con­ser­v­a­tivism. Read them both, espe­cial­ly read the one that describes your team. You won’t res­onate with every cri­tique in either arti­cle, but you will find much to think about.

Mov­ing on, I also appre­ci­at­ed one of Pas­cal’s com­ments which is rel­e­vant to social media:

We are not sat­is­fied with the life we have in our­selves and our own being. We want to lead an imag­i­nary life in the eyes of oth­ers, and so we try to make an impres­sion. We strive con­stant­ly to embell­ish and pre­serve our imag­i­nary being, and neglect the real one.

Pas­cal, Pen­sée 806 (page 79)

Read­ing this Pen­sée brought to mind Madi­son Fis­cher’s asser­tion that ditch­ing social media was key to her win­ning a medal as a com­pet­i­tive climber.

“I cared so much about what every­one thought of me that it became out­sourced con­fi­dence…. I couldn’t step out of the rep­u­ta­tion I forged online so I lived in a world of enti­tle­ment. Pride in my accom­plish­ments made me con­tent, and con­tent­ed­ness is poi­son to a young ath­lete who has to stay hun­gry if she wants to stay com­pet­i­tive.”

Madi­son Fis­ch­er

She real­ized that she faced a choice: actu­al­ly become a more com­pet­i­tive climber or spend her time try­ing to look like what peo­ple thought a com­pet­i­tive climber should be.

In a sim­i­lar man­ner, we can actu­al­ly strive to be like Jesus or we can instead try to become what oth­er peo­ple think a fol­low­er of Jesus should be. In oth­er words, we can either fol­low Jesus or we can fol­low oth­er peo­ple. We can fol­low Christ or a crowd.

This is about more than social media, but it’s def­i­nite­ly about social media as well. You prob­a­bly know that I am on Face­book and Twit­ter, so clear­ly I’m not about to tell you to delete your accounts. But I do urge you to be aware of the temp­ta­tions they cre­ate. Med­i­tate on Matthew 6:1, “Be care­ful not to prac­tice your right­eous­ness in front of oth­ers to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heav­en.”

Oth­er tid­bits I appre­ci­at­ed:

The athe­ist argues: “If there were a God, how could there be injus­tice?” To which Pas­cal replies: “If there is injus­tice, there must be true jus­tice for it to be rel­a­tive to and a defect of; and this true jus­tice is not found on Earth or in man, there­fore it must exist in Heav­en and God.” Either there or nowhere; and if nowhere, then “every­thing is per­mis­si­ble”. But not every­thing is per­mis­si­ble. There­fore there must be a God.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pen­sée 697, page 94

And I par­tic­u­lar­ly like this one. It’s true of babies, and it’s true of adults. Dif­fer­ent tri­fles, same psy­chol­o­gy.

A tri­fle con­soles us because a tri­fle upsets us.

Pas­cal, Pen­sée 43 (page 75)

The Screwtape Letters: Twenty-Six Through Thirty

The Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

We’re almost done. Next week’s read­ings will be very short indeed. You might even want to fin­ish them off now — they will take you a few extra min­utes at most.

These pas­sages caught my eye this week:

In let­ter 27, the demon says of humans

…their kind of con­scious­ness forces them to encounter the whole, self-con­sis­tent cre­ative act as a series of suc­ces­sive events. Why that cre­ative act leaves room for their free will is the prob­lem of prob­lems, the secret behind the Ene­my’s non­sense about “Love”. How it does so is no prob­lem at all; for the Ene­my does not fore­see the humans mak­ing their free con­tri­bu­tions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbound­ed Now. And obvi­ous­ly to watch a man doing some­thing is not to make him do it. (Let­ter 27, pages 264–265)

I like this, but I’m not sure I agree with it com­plete­ly. The last half I’m def­i­nite­ly on board with. The first half makes me hes­i­tant. God rest­ed on the sev­enth day, but Lewis makes the demon say that all of human his­to­ry is the con­tin­u­a­tion of the act of cre­ation. There’s a beau­ti­ful insight hid­den in there, but I think the way Lewis word­ed it falls out­side the bounds that Scrip­ture per­mits. I’d be more com­fort­able with some­thing along these lines, “Of course they can find an unbro­ken series of caus­es lead­ing up to the con­di­tion they desired — the Ene­my saw their request being made simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with His answer to their prayer man­i­fest­ing two weeks lat­er even as He began form­ing the con­di­tions that would lead to its answer a month before they even became aware of their need. There is a sense in which it is all Now to Him.”

Now that I’ve offered some writ­ing advice to Lewis, I’m off to give some invest­ing advice to War­ren Buf­fet. But first, the next mis­sive (let­ter 28).

Lewis has Screw­tape offer a com­plaint about humans and time.

How valu­able time is to us may be gauged by the fact that the Ene­my allows us so lit­tle of it. The major­i­ty of the human race dies in infan­cy; of the sur­vivors, a good many die in youth. It is obvi­ous that to Him human birth is impor­tant chiefly as the qual­i­fi­ca­tion for human death, and death sole­ly as the gate to that oth­er kind of life. We are allowed to work only on a select­ed minor­i­ty of the race, for what humans call a “nor­mal life” is the excep­tion. Appar­ent­ly He wants some—but only a very few—of the human ani­mals with which He is peo­pling Heav­en to have had the expe­ri­ence of resist­ing us through an earth­ly life of six­ty or sev­en­ty years. Well, there is our oppor­tu­ni­ty. The small­er it is, the bet­ter we must use it. (Let­ter 28, page 268)

Clear­ly, Lewis believes that infants and chil­dren go to heav­en. I share this belief. As David said of his dead son in 2 Samuel 2:23, “I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

Else­where in the let­ter we see that this tick­et to heav­en for the young is so frus­trat­ing to demons that they some­times endeav­or to keep us alive, but I think that’s not quite right. After all, John 10:10 informs us that the ene­my comes to steal, kill and destroy. Nonethe­less, Lewis is on to some­thing here.

This last excerpt (from let­ter 29) is my favorite for the week.

This, indeed, is prob­a­bly one of the Ene­my’s motives for cre­at­ing a dan­ger­ous world—a world in which moral issues real­ly come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not sim­ply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the test­ing point, which means, at the point of high­est real­i­ty. A chasti­ty or hon­esty, or mer­cy, which yields to dan­ger will be chaste or hon­est or mer­ci­ful only on con­di­tions. Pilate was mer­ci­ful till it became risky. (Let­ter 29, page 270)

This, this, a thou­sand times this. Act with courage. It takes courage to stand for Christ at Stan­ford. It takes courage to for­go a plea­sure and risk giv­ing offense because of a deep con­vic­tion. It takes courage to tell your friends cer­tain truths.

Some­thing that encour­ages me (lit­er­al­ly encour­ages me — puts courage into me) is to reflect on this: Rev­e­la­tion 21:8 tells us that the cow­ard­ly are the first group thrown into hell. It’s a sober­ing thought.

And this relat­ed point at the end of the let­ter speaks direct­ly to what I see as one of the chief fail­ings in mod­ern cul­ture:

For remem­ber, the act of cow­ardice is all that mat­ters; the emo­tion of fear is, in itself, no sin and, though we enjoy it, does us no good. (Let­ter 29, page 271)

So many peo­ple today con­fuse feel­ings with action. For instance, they often seem to believe that feel­ing bad about some­thing is the same thing as oppos­ing it. “I saw those pic­tures of starv­ing chil­dren and I felt bad. I should tweet about how hor­ri­ble hunger is.” Do you know who is actu­al­ly opposed to hunger? The peo­ple who send mon­ey or spend time to com­bat hunger.  On the last day, Jesus is not going to say, “As you felt it for the least of these, so you felt it for me.” Allow your feel­ings to inform your choic­es, but do not con­fuse the two.

Be a per­son of action and hell will hate you.

Enjoy the last lit­tle bit of read­ing!

The Screwtape Letters: Twenty Through Twenty-Five

The Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2018. The sched­ule is online.

This week we’re look­ing at let­ters 20 to 25. Two pas­sages caught my atten­tion this week.

I was struck by how con­tem­po­rary Lewis’s com­ments on sex­u­al temp­ta­tion in let­ter 20 seem, even though he wrote this book near­ly 80 years ago.

We have engi­neered a great increase in the licence which soci­ety allows to the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the appar­ent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhi­bi­tion on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the fig­ures in the pop­u­lar art are false­ly drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actu­al­ly pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slen­der and more boy­ish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the mod­ern world is taught to believe that it is being “frank” and “healthy” and get­ting back to nature. As a result we are more and more direct­ing the desires of men to some­thing which does not exist—making the role of the eye in sex­u­al­i­ty more and more impor­tant and at the same time mak­ing its demands more and more impos­si­ble. What fol­lows you can eas­i­ly fore­cast! (let­ter 20, page 243)

It was indeed easy to fore­cast, but now we need mere­ly look around. Sex­u­al dys­func­tion plagues our soci­ety. A study that appeared this week (Pornog­ra­phy Use and Mar­riage Entry Dur­ing Ear­ly Adult­hood: Find­ings From a Pan­el Study of Young Amer­i­cans in pre­pub­li­ca­tion) found that “high­er lev­els of pornog­ra­phy use in emerg­ing adult­hood were asso­ci­at­ed with a low­er like­li­hood of mar­riage by the final sur­vey wave for men, but not women.” Lewis called it.

The oth­er pas­sage which stood out to me was from let­ter 21, and I con­fess it struck uncom­fort­ably close to home:

Men are not angered by mere mis­for­tune but by mis­for­tune con­ceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feel­ing that a legit­i­mate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, there­fore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tem­pered. Now you will have noticed that noth­ing throws him into a pas­sion so eas­i­ly as to find a tract of time which he reck­oned on hav­ing at his own dis­pos­al unex­pect­ed­ly tak­en from him. It is the unex­pect­ed vis­i­tor (when he looked for­ward to a qui­et evening), or the friend’s talk­a­tive wife (turn­ing up when he looked for­ward to a tete‑а-tete with the friend), that throw him out of gear.… They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.… The man can nei­ther make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon his chat­tels. He is also, in the­o­ry, com­mit­ted a total ser­vice of the Ene­my; and if the Ene­my appeared to him in bod­i­ly form and demand­ed that total ser­vice for even one day, he would not refuse.

That is so true. If God asks for fif­teen min­utes, I’ll give it to Him glad­ly regard­less of what I am doing. But if some­one chats with me for fif­teen min­utes while I’m try­ing to get a task done, I become impa­tient and irri­ta­ble. Yet Jesus clear­ly said “what­ev­er you did for one of the least of these broth­ers and sis­ters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). I need to change.

Any­way, that’s some of what I got from this week’s read­ings. Only two weeks of read­ing remain!