Category: Rants, Opinions, and General Contrariness

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!

Some Thoughts About The Election

This is an email I sent to the stu­dents in my min­istry the morn­ing fol­low­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion:

I would like to say some­thing to the despon­dent and the jubi­lant: the despon­dent should not be too despon­dent and the jubi­lant should not be too jubi­lant.

To The Despondent:

You just woke up and feel as though you woke up in a dif­fer­ent coun­try than the one you thought you lived in. You feel as though you don’t belong. I want to encour­age you: this will pass. There are rarely per­ma­nent defeats in pol­i­tics. You will get anoth­er try at the pres­i­den­cy in four years and at the leg­isla­tive branch in two years. Remem­ber when Oba­ma rode into office? The Democ­rats had the House, the Sen­ate, and the Exec­u­tive Branch along with most state guber­na­to­r­i­al and leg­isla­tive offices. The days of the Repub­li­can par­ty seemed over, yet now the Repub­li­cans have usurped the Democ­rats in every one of those roles. Your turn will come again. Be patient.

A few prac­ti­cal pieces of advice for you in the mean­while:

1) If you did not reg­is­ter to vote, do it now while you’re moti­vat­ed. It will not take much time and is one of the few pro­duc­tive things you can actu­al­ly do right now.

2) You may be tempt­ed to blame the oth­er side’s vic­to­ry on the basest of motives. The oth­er side is racist. The oth­er side is misog­y­nis­tic. The oth­er side is dri­ven by hate. Please hear this: they don’t think they are. “But they are — I know it!” Even if you are right that there are vile motives float­ing around inside their souls, you will not change their minds by point­ing that out. Instead, you must under­stand your oppo­nents in order to per­suade them. If you are gen­uine­ly shocked that a large chunk of Amer­i­cans are afraid of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty and what it would have done with four to eight more years of pow­er, you need to read more wide­ly.  Add to your read­ing list authors such as Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, Ross Douthat, Thomas Sow­ell, Matthew Lee Ander­son, Rus­sell Moore, Rod Dreher, and David French. If you use Twit­ter, fol­low each of them. If you don’t, pay atten­tion to their writ­ings. They pop up from time to time in the Fri­day emails I send out — begin delib­er­ate­ly read­ing the entries you think you’ll dis­agree with. Also, con­sid­er watch­ing Fox News from time to time.

3) Pray. This is some­thing you will have a chance to do at Chi Alpha tonight. #just­say­ing

To The Jubilant:

It’s a good feel­ing when your side wins. Enjoy the moment, but rec­og­nize how ephemer­al it is. When­ev­er one par­ty sweeps into pow­er across mul­ti­ple branch­es of gov­ern­ment, cor­rup­tion and infight­ing ensues. Your team is like­ly in for a rough time two years from now in the midterm elec­tions and will face a seri­ous chal­lenge four years down the road.

A few prac­ti­cal pieces of advice for you:

1) Rec­og­nize that some of your friends are gen­uine­ly ter­ri­fied right now. Peo­ple who are made in God’s image — some of whom are your broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ — are in pain. Be empa­thet­ic. Even if you think that their emo­tions are overblown, acknowl­edge that their emo­tions are real.

2) Pre­pare for dis­ap­point­ment. Politi­cians rarely deliv­er what you hoped for. The Democ­rats did­n’t deliv­er immi­gra­tion reform when Oba­ma was in office even though the Democ­rats held the House and the Sen­ate. The Repub­li­cans will almost cer­tain­ly get bogged down on issues that lat­er prove to be incon­se­quen­tial and as a result will let some of your high­est pri­or­i­ties slip out of their grasp. Two years is not that long and Repub­li­can offi­cials will refuse to believe that’s prob­a­bly all the time they have.

To Everyone:

Yes­ter­day Amer­i­ca elect­ed a pres­i­dent for the next four years, but we know the King who reigns for­ev­er. So acknowl­edge the pres­i­dent, “but in your hearts revere Christ as Lord” (1 Peter 3:15a).

Remem­ber Philip­pi­ans 3:20: “our cit­i­zen­ship is in heav­en. And we eager­ly await a Sav­ior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Elec­tions mat­ter, but eter­ni­ty mat­ters more. Keep per­spec­tive today and always.

God bless and I hope to see you at wor­ship tonight. I’ll talk more about these things there and we will pray.

Candy Is Edible Joy

November 1, 2006: Treats!Can­dy is a good thing. Can­dy is joy giv­en caloric expres­sion. Can­dy is, to twist an old say­ing, proof that God loves us and wants us to be hap­py.

I do not think my wife believes this in her heart. She is a mom, and there is a lot of pres­sure on moms to believe that can­dy is bad. In the land of moms, can­dy is a con­trolled sub­stance. One, inci­den­tal­ly, for which med­ical pre­scrip­tions are not forth­com­ing.

And so as we were going to bed on Hal­loween I told her, “There’s some­thing impor­tant we need to estab­lish before we go to sleep tonight. The pres­ence of left­over can­dy in our house is not a prob­lem to be solved, it is a joy to be cel­e­brat­ed. We don’t have to give it away, throw it away, or find some cre­ative use for it. Eat­ing it will be suf­fi­cient.”

I felt like a Mor­mon knock­ing on Richard Dawkins’ door, but some­times a dad has to step up. Edi­ble joy is a rare thing and worth defend­ing.

Evil, Thy Acronym Is NCAA

Stanford to tip off March MadnessTech­ni­cal­ly, NCAA is an ini­tial­ism rather than an acronym — but you know what I mean.

I have long been irked at the way the col­lege sports com­plex abus­es stu­dents, but I was absolute­ly floored by some of the details Tay­lor Branch shared in “The Shame of Col­lege Sports” (pub­lished in The Atlantic).

Two snip­pets to whet your appetite:

“Why,” asked Bryce Jor­dan, the pres­i­dent emer­i­tus of Penn State, “should a uni­ver­si­ty be an adver­tis­ing medi­um for your indus­try?”

Vac­caro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to con­tin­ue sell­ing them. You can be very moral and right­eous in ask­ing me that ques­tion, sir,” Vac­caro added with irre­press­ible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our mon­ey. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.”

And lat­er:

But after an inquiry that took me into lock­er rooms and ivory tow­ers across the coun­try, I have come to believe that sen­ti­ment blinds us to what’s before our eyes. Big-time col­lege sports are ful­ly com­mer­cial­ized. Bil­lions of dol­lars flow through them each year. The NCAA makes mon­ey, and enables uni­ver­si­ties and cor­po­ra­tions to make mon­ey, from the unpaid labor of young ath­letes.

Slav­ery analo­gies should be used care­ful­ly. Col­lege ath­letes are not slaves. Yet to sur­vey the scene—corporations and uni­ver­si­ties enrich­ing them­selves on the backs of uncom­pen­sat­ed young men, whose sta­tus as “stu­dent-ath­letes” deprives them of the right to due process guar­an­teed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmis­tak­able whiff of the plan­ta­tion. Per­haps a more apt metaphor is colo­nial­ism: col­lege sports, as over­seen by the NCAA, is a sys­tem imposed by well-mean­ing pater­nal­ists and ratio­nal­ized with hoary sen­ti­ments about car­ing for the well-being of the col­o­nized. But it is, nonethe­less, unjust. The NCAA, in its zeal­ous defense of bogus prin­ci­ples, some­times destroys the dreams of inno­cent young ath­letes.

The whole thing is worth read­ing, so zip over to The Atlantic and read “The Shame of Col­lege Sports” now.

The Church In China

Welcome to the Great Wall of ChinaI recent­ly lis­tened to a Research on Reli­gion pod­cast about house church­es in Chi­na and learned four things.

First, I’ve known for years that the state-run Protes­tant church in Chi­na is called the Three Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment in Chi­na, but I nev­er real­ized where the name came from. Here’s a hint: think mis­si­ol­o­gy. That’s right — the three selves in the Three Self Patri­ot­ic Move­ment are “self-sup­port­ing, self-gov­ern­ing, self-prop­a­gat­ing.” I am an idiot for nev­er mak­ing that con­nec­tion. I bet there’s a good sto­ry behind it.

Sec­ond, one of the unreg­is­tered church­es in Chi­na (com­mon­ly called house church­es) has grown to around 500,000 mem­bers. That is not a typo — this one “house church” has half a mil­lion mem­bers. Wow. That blows my mind.

Third, the unreg­is­tered rur­al church­es are almost entire­ly Pentecostal/charismatic and the unreg­is­tered urban church­es are more sedate­ly evan­gel­i­cal. The unreg­is­tered urban church­es tend to be led by uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors and oth­er intel­lec­tu­als. Inter­est­ing.

Fourth, Chi­na has large­ly stopped send­ing pas­tors of unreg­is­tered church­es to labor camps because the pas­tors were too effec­tive at plant­i­ng church­es in prison. Now the state uses indi­rect pres­sure to thwart church­es, so that the Com­mu­nist par­ty pres­sures land­lords to can­cel leas­es and employ­ers to has­sle employ­ees.

After lis­ten­ing to the pod­cast and reflect­ing on it for a while I real­ized that there’s an inter­est­ing con­trast between the chal­lenges faced by the church in Chi­na and those faced by the church in Amer­i­ca. Amer­i­ca seeks to seduce the Church into com­pla­cen­cy, where­as Chi­na seeks to intim­i­date the Church into com­pli­ance.

These chal­lenges cor­re­spond to the strate­gies Satan deploys against the Church in the book of Rev­e­la­tion: Baby­lon (seduc­tion) and the Beast (intim­i­da­tion).

No, I did not just say that Chi­na is the Beast nor did I say that Amer­i­ca is the Great Har­lot called Baby­lon. I mere­ly said that Chi­na and Amer­i­ca resem­ble them in cer­tain ways.

If this intrigues you check out the free online book The Return­ing King by Vern Poythress. It’s one of the best intro­duc­tions to the book of Rev­e­la­tion that I know.

All in all that was one of the more stim­u­lat­ing pod­casts I’ve heard late­ly.

Poisonous Rat-Duck Day

PlatypusToday is Ground­hog Day, which is hilar­i­ous to me. How did they out­ma­neu­ver the oth­er ani­mals and get their own hol­i­day?

I per­son­al­ly would pre­fer Platy­pus Day. There’s an ani­mal that deserves to be cel­e­brat­ed. It’s a fur­ry, poi­so­nous rat-duck. A platy­pus is prac­ti­cal­ly a liv­ing Poké­mon.

But some­how the ground­hogs won out. I sus­pect bribery.

For the record, today I will hon­or platypi in my heart. Although Wikipedia tells me that platypi is incor­rect and I should say platy­pus­es or platy­podes. Also, they are ven­omous and not poi­so­nous (ven­om is inject­ed, poi­son is con­sumed).

To which I say: poi­so­nous rat-duck sounds bet­ter than ven­omous rat-duck, and platypi has a sat­is­fy­ing faux-intel­lec­tu­al ring to it. Let rhetoric pre­vail, and let the poi­so­nous rat-ducks have their day on the cal­en­dar!

being a Christian in a sorority

PanhellenicA recent con­vert told me she’s strug­gling with life in her soror­i­ty, so I asked anoth­er soror­i­ty gal I know to give her some advice.

Soror­i­ty gal emailed the recent con­vert and, with her per­mis­sion, I’ve anonymized it and present her email for your con­sid­er­a­tion. I’ve trimmed off the begin­ning because it’s impos­si­ble to anonymize with­out mak­ing it use­less (she iden­ti­fies a spe­cif­ic Chris­t­ian in the recip­i­en­t’s soror­i­ty for her to con­nect with), but the rest of her let­ter is more broad­ly applic­a­ble:

I think [your soror­i­ty and my soror­i­ty] may be dif­fer­ent in terms of their empha­sis on par­ty­ing and drink­ing, but I will def­i­nite­ly try to give you my two cents, and if you want to meet up at any point, let me know and I’d love to get togeth­er to talk and/or pray with you about it.

I have always felt very at home in [my soror­i­ty] as a Chris­t­ian. There are 10–15 Chris­t­ian girls in [my soror­i­ty], and many more who aren’t into get­ting drunk/hooking up. My big is a Chris­t­ian, as is my twin, and my twin’s lit­tle. I try to sur­round myself with these girls, rather than the partiers. I do still go out to the events where there is drink­ing, but I only drink mod­er­ate­ly (if at all) and still always have a great time. Do you have a group of girls like this in [your soror­i­ty]? Are there oth­er Chris­tians in [your soror­i­ty] you can team up with?

Anoth­er thing that helped me ensure that there are enough events that don’t cen­ter around drinking/partying was get­ting involved on the sis­ter­hood com­mit­tee. If you guys have a com­mit­tee like that, I would encour­age you to get involved and make sure those kinds of events are hap­pen­ing.

If you are feel­ing like [your soror­i­ty] is a place where you can’t be your­self or where you are encour­aged to make poor deci­sions, deac­ti­vat­ing might be the right choice for you. My biggest advice to you would be to pray about it and go with your gut. I do think there is room to be a Chris­t­ian in Greek life, but I also think it varies a lot depend­ing on the frat/sorority. Many of my clos­est friends aren’t Chris­t­ian, and I think this can def­i­nite­ly make it more dif­fi­cult to do the right thing at times. But, I think that as long as you have that Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty some­where, you can make it work.

I feel like I haven’t done a very good job giv­ing you advice here, so please let me know if you want to talk about it over cof­fee or some­thing!

I think that, on the whole, it is pret­ty good advice. What would you have said?

Chutes To Gehenna

chutes and laddersI believe I have iden­ti­fied my least favorite part of par­ent­ing: play­ing Chutes and Lad­ders. My epiphany came about as I was play­ing the longest round that I’ve ever seen. It was all chutes and no lad­ders. Play­ing was like watch­ing crabs in a sty­ro­foam cool­er: as soon as one char­ac­ter was close to escap­ing it was sent tum­bling back down to the bot­tom.

While that most recent round was par­tic­u­lar­ly tedious, I don’t like the game even when it takes ten min­utes because it’s a game with no skill com­po­nent what­so­ev­er. I will con­fess to think­ing — often — that we could deter­mine vic­to­ry by flip­ping a coin instead of through the inter­minable process of mov­ing the game pieces in accor­dance with the dic­tates of the spin­ner and the require­ments of the board.

That’s bad enough, but there is one more fac­tor that evokes dread in my soul when asked to play. It is this: chil­dren young enough to tru­ly enjoy the game are usu­al­ly unable to move their char­ac­ters prop­er­ly, so I have to do it for them. This means I am play­ing the game against myself. A game I don’t like. A game whose two-play­er ver­sion is log­i­cal­ly indis­tin­guish­able from a coin toss yet which has the poten­tial to endure until the heat death of the uni­verse. Even if I win, I lose. I lost as soon as I took the box down from the shelf.

And yet I will play today and I know I will play again tomor­row. It’s like a tor­ment from a Greek myth. Aaargh!

My heart goes out to thor­ough­go­ing deter­min­ists who nec­es­sar­i­ly regard all of life as a com­pli­cat­ed ver­sion of Chutes and Lad­ders. If that’s you, I sug­gest you arrange to be fat­ed not to think about it.

Look, Ma. I’m in the Stanford Review.

Stephen Colbert in IraqI was recent­ly inter­viewed by the Stan­ford Review (a stu­dent pub­li­ca­tion) for an arti­cle ana­lyz­ing the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in CLS vs Mar­tinez as it relates to Stan­ford (a case I have pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about).

As is almost always the case with inter­views, I said way more than they had space to include in the final arti­cle. Since the inter­view was via email, I have the full text of my remarks avail­able. I should note that Autumn Carter, the inter­view­er, asked me sev­er­al ques­tions I declined to answer.

So here’s what I had to say:

SR: What is your opin­ion towards the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in gen­er­al? With regard to Stan­ford?

Me: The Supreme Court’s log­ic would not apply at most pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties since the case at UC Hast­ings is so unique, and it will have no direct impact at all on pri­vate uni­ver­si­ties such as Stan­ford. And I has­ten to point out that the case has been remand­ed back to a low­er court for a clos­er exam­i­na­tion of some fac­tu­al issues. The Chris­t­ian Legal Soci­ety alleges that UC Hast­ings enforced its poli­cies unequal­ly and in a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry man­ner, some­thing which the Supreme Court believes mer­its fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion.

But to get bogged down in the legal maneu­ver­ing is to miss the essence of the case. For a uni­ver­si­ty to force a Chris­t­ian min­istry to accept lead­ers who do not share its beliefs is as absurd as Chi­na’s plan to choose the next Dalai Lama, and I would sus­pect such a uni­ver­si­ty of hav­ing sim­i­lar motives: to con­trol and to under­mine reli­gious belief which the author­i­ties dis­ap­prove of.

Uni­ver­si­ties must decide what they believe tol­er­ance looks like. Are they will­ing to become intol­er­ant in the pur­suit of tol­er­ance? Are they will­ing to achieve their goals through coer­cion rather than rea­soned dis­course? UC Hast­ings appears to have decid­ed that it is. It remains to be seen how many uni­ver­si­ties will embrace their fol­ly.

SR: As you men­tioned, Stan­ford is a pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty and is there­fore unaf­fect­ed by the rul­ing direct­ly. But do you antic­i­pate any moves by Stan­ford to tight­en its own group mem­ber­ship pol­i­cy either inde­pen­dent­ly or as a result of being lob­bied? Or will Stan­ford like­ly main­tain the loos­er pol­i­cy that it cur­rent­ly uses?

Me: Should such lob­by­ing arise I hope that Stan­ford will prove wis­er than the Supreme Court.

In ret­ro­spect, I’m sur­prised the Stan­ford Review chose the quote they did. Some of my oth­er sen­tences seem so much more… live­ly.