This via a friend on Facebook:
Can a woman wear the same dress 365 days a year, and achieve a different look every day? The answer is at The Uniform Project.
Various shots of the Black Dress Project
Sunday, July 19, 2009
The Uniform Project
This via a friend on Facebook:
Can a woman wear the same dress 365 days a year, and achieve a different look every day? The answer is at The Uniform Project.
Various shots of the Black Dress Project
Monday, July 13, 2009
QUOTE: Oswald Chambers on knowing God
Ann posted this on Facebook:
My vision of God is dependent upon the condition of my character. My character determines whether or not truth can even be revealed to me." (ouch!) - O. Chambers
Sogn wrote:
Is one's decision to believe in Christ dependent upon the condition of one's character? I guess that's Arminianism, but some would say it at least borders on Pelagianism.
I wrote:
My vision of God is dependent upon the condition of my character. My character determines whether or not truth can even be revealed to me." (ouch!) - O. Chambers
Sogn wrote:
Is one's decision to believe in Christ dependent upon the condition of one's character? I guess that's Arminianism, but some would say it at least borders on Pelagianism.
I wrote:
Isn't this the case for all knowing, and not just religious truth? Ask any counselor!
If I have a character that is obstinate and self-centered, I may not be able to receive some truths about my relationship with my spouse. If I am a notorious gossiper, or prone to be jealous, I may not be entrusted with some information that I otherwise might be given.
Similarly, if I have a character which is humble, trustworthy, generous and forgiving,, others may tend to reveal all manner of things to me, knowing that I will not betray them, or use their words against them.
Why, then, shouldn't it be the same regarding truth about God, who as Trinity is super- personal?
Mulling on this further, perhaps that is also part of what Jesus meant in Luke 18:15-17
People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
We consider infants to be innocent, because they have no developed intellectual and moral virtues and vices. They certainly have personalities, but their character is yet to be formed. Babies are not so much blank slates as empty cups. Perhaps that is what makes them better able to receive the Lord and perhaps that is also what it means for us to be "born again:" to have a new start, a new foundation, a new openness to receive the Truth, Who is Good and Beautiful, the One who IS, and to grow in Him.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Check out the Society of Christian Philosophers website. Some great quotes on the masthead. I especially am fond of the ones by these women: St.Teresa of Avila, Eleanore Stump, and Marilyn McCord Adams.
Friday, July 10, 2009
The Annals of Either-Or
Brad has commended this article, "False Dichotomies in Mission," By Christopher J.H. Wright. From my point of view, it is an excellent analysis of the way either-or thinking has affected the life and mission of the church.
Wright lists the following false dichotomies:
1. We have tended to separate the individual from the cosmic and corporate impact of the gospel, and to prioritize the first.
2. We have tended to separate believing from living the gospel, and to prioritize the first.
3. We have tended to separate evangelism and discipleship, and to prioritize the first
4. We have tended to separate word and deed, or proclamation and demonstration, and to prioritize the first.
5. We have tended to separate evangelism from ecclesiology, and to prioritize the first.
Wright lists the following false dichotomies:
1. We have tended to separate the individual from the cosmic and corporate impact of the gospel, and to prioritize the first.
2. We have tended to separate believing from living the gospel, and to prioritize the first.
3. We have tended to separate evangelism and discipleship, and to prioritize the first
4. We have tended to separate word and deed, or proclamation and demonstration, and to prioritize the first.
5. We have tended to separate evangelism from ecclesiology, and to prioritize the first.
Well worth reading and repentance.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Continuity or discontinuity? Defoliation or Weeding?
I've discovered a deep, challenging, humorous and scholarly blog by Tim Enloe entitled Societas Christiana: Adventures in Medieval Protestantism. I really appreciate his historical expertise and am grateful that he is "carrying on his education in public" because I'm eager to learn from him.
To whet your appetite...
What was the Reformation
Protestant apologetics against Catholicism seem in our day to be dominated by the assumption that arguing from historical and theological discontinuity is simply “the” Protestant way of doing things. Many of the “top names” in Protestant apologetics tell a story about the 16th century reformation which I believe gives away the store to the Catholics–who are, if nothing else, unembarassed by the history of the Church and claim it all as their own. By contrast, the typical Protestant story about Church history is founded upon embarassment–embarassment about the “dirtiness” of the pre-Protestant era Church, and a concomitant willingness to embrace all manner of arguments which seek to distance the Protestant reformation itself, and we as its heirs, from the majority of what had come before. I believe that this way of looking at the Protestant reformation is the historiographical equivalent of the very much un-reformational theological approach to the Scriptures which takes the distinction between Old and New Testaments and hardens it into a division across which very little can transfer and even less is really “relevant” to our lives today. In this post I would like to tell a different story about the Protestant reformation, a story not driven by the assumptions of perfectionism to embrace discontinuity and cut ourselves off from the bulk of God’s dealings with His saints in history.....
...No indeed, the Protestant reformers were not Moderns in the sense that the Evangelical Modernists think they were. On the contrary, the reformers thought like Medievals, they acted like Medievals, and they need to be analyzed as Medievals. This means sometimes they challenge us, their self-proclaimed heirs, in ways that make us extremely uncomfortable....
....Nevertheless, is there not a vast difference between weeding the garden (helping it to thrive) and defoliating it (preventing it from thriving)? The history of Radical reforming movements more easily lends itself to the defoliation metaphor than to the weeding one. Some Anabaptist groups dumped everything that had been handed down to them from previous generations and reformulated the Faith from scratch on the basis (they claimed) of “the Bible Alone.” Rationalists such as Michael Servetus eliminated the doctrine of the Trinity and sought a Faith that was so pure it was no longer even Christian. Centuries later, groups from the Campbellites to the Mormons severed themselves from all existing churches on the pretext that they were all “corrupt.” Their answer to the “corruption”? Restarting the Faith from scratch, in its pristine, pure, root form (as they, unaccountable to anyone outside of their own generation, understood that).
Parallel groups can be found in abundance today, not only in backward Fundamentalist sects but in many Evangelical groups as well. The citation above, from a major Evangelical advocate of the Radical program, reveals a concepts of “reform” more akin to defoliation than weeding. For all the appeals to Christ and the Apostles VS. “tradition,” the polemic against “tradition” seems often shallow and forced because of the assumption that “tradition” is all of a piece and always to be suspected of trying to sneak in while no one is looking and “make the Word of God of none effect.”
In reality, “tradition” in the New Testament is not quite so simple an affair. Sometimes it is something added to what has been written, something done in contradiction to the written Word by people who nevertheless represent the written Word correctly and who are to be obeyed on that score (Mt. 23:2). Other times “tradition” seems to be verbal teaching purporting to give the sense of the written Word but actually entirely distortive of it (Mark 7:13). Still other times Christ Himself enjoins actions which appear to be contradictory to the written Word, but which actually correctly give the sense of it, even apart from its “plain” meaning (Mt. 12:1-8). “Tradition” is not automatically a suspect category.
In other words, Christ did not command His followers to spend their lives frantically looking for creeping error and always trying to restore things to an original, pristine, undeveloped condition so that said errors would not become a “great tradition” that, just because it is a “great tradition,” makes Scripture of none effect. On the contrary, Christ did not command suspicion of tradition as a mere category of thought and life. Whatever one may think of the content of Paul’s “traditions” in 2 Thess. 2:15, the fact that he positively speaks of things handed down and enjoins obedience to them runs contrary to the Radical’s ingrained habit of instantly suspecting anything which he himself does not see when he “compares it with Scripture.” Indeed, it may be that this entire way of thinking is itself a “great tradition” and an instance of an error that has crept in and failed to be recognized by those who most deeply believe themselves qualified and able to recognize such.
In conclusion, then, the Radical manifesto cited above is untrue to the Scriptures. Watching out for error does not automatically entail defoliating the plant of “tradition.” There is more going on in the New Testament polemic against bad traditions than the defoliation metaphor can handle. This is the fundamental problem with the radical mode of reform. Digging ruthlessly for the root it carelessly uproots the fruit. Nobly seeking reformation it ignobly produces deformation. Chasing hard after purity, it at last grasps only sterility.
To whet your appetite...
What was the Reformation
Protestant apologetics against Catholicism seem in our day to be dominated by the assumption that arguing from historical and theological discontinuity is simply “the” Protestant way of doing things. Many of the “top names” in Protestant apologetics tell a story about the 16th century reformation which I believe gives away the store to the Catholics–who are, if nothing else, unembarassed by the history of the Church and claim it all as their own. By contrast, the typical Protestant story about Church history is founded upon embarassment–embarassment about the “dirtiness” of the pre-Protestant era Church, and a concomitant willingness to embrace all manner of arguments which seek to distance the Protestant reformation itself, and we as its heirs, from the majority of what had come before. I believe that this way of looking at the Protestant reformation is the historiographical equivalent of the very much un-reformational theological approach to the Scriptures which takes the distinction between Old and New Testaments and hardens it into a division across which very little can transfer and even less is really “relevant” to our lives today. In this post I would like to tell a different story about the Protestant reformation, a story not driven by the assumptions of perfectionism to embrace discontinuity and cut ourselves off from the bulk of God’s dealings with His saints in history.....
...No indeed, the Protestant reformers were not Moderns in the sense that the Evangelical Modernists think they were. On the contrary, the reformers thought like Medievals, they acted like Medievals, and they need to be analyzed as Medievals. This means sometimes they challenge us, their self-proclaimed heirs, in ways that make us extremely uncomfortable....
....Nevertheless, is there not a vast difference between weeding the garden (helping it to thrive) and defoliating it (preventing it from thriving)? The history of Radical reforming movements more easily lends itself to the defoliation metaphor than to the weeding one. Some Anabaptist groups dumped everything that had been handed down to them from previous generations and reformulated the Faith from scratch on the basis (they claimed) of “the Bible Alone.” Rationalists such as Michael Servetus eliminated the doctrine of the Trinity and sought a Faith that was so pure it was no longer even Christian. Centuries later, groups from the Campbellites to the Mormons severed themselves from all existing churches on the pretext that they were all “corrupt.” Their answer to the “corruption”? Restarting the Faith from scratch, in its pristine, pure, root form (as they, unaccountable to anyone outside of their own generation, understood that).
Parallel groups can be found in abundance today, not only in backward Fundamentalist sects but in many Evangelical groups as well. The citation above, from a major Evangelical advocate of the Radical program, reveals a concepts of “reform” more akin to defoliation than weeding. For all the appeals to Christ and the Apostles VS. “tradition,” the polemic against “tradition” seems often shallow and forced because of the assumption that “tradition” is all of a piece and always to be suspected of trying to sneak in while no one is looking and “make the Word of God of none effect.”
In reality, “tradition” in the New Testament is not quite so simple an affair. Sometimes it is something added to what has been written, something done in contradiction to the written Word by people who nevertheless represent the written Word correctly and who are to be obeyed on that score (Mt. 23:2). Other times “tradition” seems to be verbal teaching purporting to give the sense of the written Word but actually entirely distortive of it (Mark 7:13). Still other times Christ Himself enjoins actions which appear to be contradictory to the written Word, but which actually correctly give the sense of it, even apart from its “plain” meaning (Mt. 12:1-8). “Tradition” is not automatically a suspect category.
In other words, Christ did not command His followers to spend their lives frantically looking for creeping error and always trying to restore things to an original, pristine, undeveloped condition so that said errors would not become a “great tradition” that, just because it is a “great tradition,” makes Scripture of none effect. On the contrary, Christ did not command suspicion of tradition as a mere category of thought and life. Whatever one may think of the content of Paul’s “traditions” in 2 Thess. 2:15, the fact that he positively speaks of things handed down and enjoins obedience to them runs contrary to the Radical’s ingrained habit of instantly suspecting anything which he himself does not see when he “compares it with Scripture.” Indeed, it may be that this entire way of thinking is itself a “great tradition” and an instance of an error that has crept in and failed to be recognized by those who most deeply believe themselves qualified and able to recognize such.
In conclusion, then, the Radical manifesto cited above is untrue to the Scriptures. Watching out for error does not automatically entail defoliating the plant of “tradition.” There is more going on in the New Testament polemic against bad traditions than the defoliation metaphor can handle. This is the fundamental problem with the radical mode of reform. Digging ruthlessly for the root it carelessly uproots the fruit. Nobly seeking reformation it ignobly produces deformation. Chasing hard after purity, it at last grasps only sterility.
Noll on the Characteristics of American Christianity
The American tendency has been
to see authority as self-created rather than inherited;
to read the Bible for oneself rather than just to accept biblical interpretation from others;
to create organizations to meet a need rather than simply to inherit organizations;
to empower laypeople, first laymen and then laywomen, as opposed to being super-clerical;
and to use the forces of the market for the church rather than to worry about the forces of the market.
The American tendency has been populist, and sometimes democratic, rather than aristocratic."
--Mark Noll Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame
"Does Global Christianity Equal American Christianity?"
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/july/19.38.html?start=2
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/july/19.38.html?start=2
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Greed is NOT Good: The MBA Oath
M.B.A.'s at Harvard and Columbia are now taking an oath "to 'create value responsibly and ethically.'” The meaning of "ethically" is not as clear as I'd like, but at least there's this line:
"I promise... I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves."
According to the New York Times,
"In the post-Enron and post-Madoff era, the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case. Rather, they say, they are seeing a generational shift away from viewing an M.B.A. as simply an on-ramp to the road to riches.
Those graduating today, they say, are far more concerned about how corporations affect the community, the lives of its workers and the environment. And business schools are responding with more courses, new centers specializing in business ethics and, in the case of Harvard, student-lead efforts to bring about a professional code of conduct for M.B.A.’s, not unlike oaths that are taken by lawyers and doctors."
While no one has any illusions that the oath will make business a more ethical undertaking, it does offer a measure of comfort to know that there is at least a challenge to the famous "Greed is good" philosophy that has ruled for so long, and that has had such disastrous results.
I agree with the YouTube commentator who wrote, "the United States shouldn't be thought of as, or run like, a corporation. It's a country - with people. The moneyed interests are just a slice of the pie, there's more that makes up a nation and a company." Maybe this oath is a step toward acknowledging that.
Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street.
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.
"I promise... I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves."
According to the New York Times,
"In the post-Enron and post-Madoff era, the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case. Rather, they say, they are seeing a generational shift away from viewing an M.B.A. as simply an on-ramp to the road to riches.
Those graduating today, they say, are far more concerned about how corporations affect the community, the lives of its workers and the environment. And business schools are responding with more courses, new centers specializing in business ethics and, in the case of Harvard, student-lead efforts to bring about a professional code of conduct for M.B.A.’s, not unlike oaths that are taken by lawyers and doctors."
While no one has any illusions that the oath will make business a more ethical undertaking, it does offer a measure of comfort to know that there is at least a challenge to the famous "Greed is good" philosophy that has ruled for so long, and that has had such disastrous results.
I agree with the YouTube commentator who wrote, "the United States shouldn't be thought of as, or run like, a corporation. It's a country - with people. The moneyed interests are just a slice of the pie, there's more that makes up a nation and a company." Maybe this oath is a step toward acknowledging that.
Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street.
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Just Wondering: "Brands" vs. "kinds"
The other night on Fresh Air Terry Gross engaged her guest, Dan Belz in a discussion about the Republican "brand." This got me wondering about "brands" vs. "kinds."
Here's one way of defining a kind:
- it is something a set of things (objects, events, beings) has in common which distinguishes it from other things as a real set rather than as a group of things arbitrarily lumped together by a person or group of people. (wikipedia)
Some philosophers reserve the word "kind" to refer to "natural kinds," and make a distinction between natural kinds and brands:
- a natural kind is a grouping of things which is a natural grouping, not an artificial one.
- or, a natural kind is what we mean by "species"
- a brand is a name or trademark connected with a product or producer (via Wikipedia)
- a brand is a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers" (via (Laura Lake, American Marketing Association )
- a "brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot." (Laura Lake, About.com)
According to this view, humans, aluminum and tomatoes may be thought of as kinds, but they aren't brands. Republicans, Pantene shampoo and Nike are brands, but they aren't properly kinds. In other words, one is created by the Creator, the other is a name for something man-made.
In Genesis 2:19-20, God charged Adam with the task of naming all the different kinds of animals, but he was not asked to "brand" them! But we live in a world where God has been eclipsed, and the notion of a natural kind is regarded as quaint, or more frequently with suspicion, so the trend in our culture is to conflate them, or better, to move toward branding things. Branding enables us to own, control and most importantly, sell things. Hence we unconciously begin to conflate "kinds" with 'brands," and speak about "Kleenex," Xeroxing," "Jello," "I-pods," and "Chacos."
It is one thing for the Republican party to be worried about its brand, but what happens when we allow things which are not meant to be bought and sold to be branded? When we are already in the habit of conflating kinds and brands, it makes it difficult to resist this tendency. What Brave New World lies ahead of us, with the "Genentech Mozart Gene," the "Sinovac Energy Embryo," "United Rent-a-Husband," and the "BioCon Delhi Liver?"
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