ArenaMan

Lusting Like Jesus (Part 3)

2012-01-25T16:51:00.000-08:00

Fire. It's symbolic for passion.

So are we to destroy our desires? Should we find a way to siphon off this explosive gasoline? Or should we strengthen our desires for truly good things?

Jesus advice would seem to be the latter. I have been studying the Sermon on the Mount and one of the things that most shocked me was how strong Jesus emphasizes consequences. It's not "because it's the right thing to do" but because, "your Father … will reward you openly." Far from being some obscure verse, it seems to me to be a central theme of THE central sermon in the Bible. By my count, 29% of the verses in the Sermon explicitly mention consequences.

And why not? Jesus didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill. He gave us desires as he gave us the Law, and Christ has come not to abolish but to fulfill. He comes so that we may have life, and have it more abundantly. Not death, or physical oblivion, or Eastern oblivion (Nirvana), or reincarnation. Life. Bodily life, with all its rude hungers and thirsts and lusts. Bodily life will not be abolished, but fulfilled. He is the bread of life which fills our bellies, the living water which soothes our cracked lips and dry tongue, the bridegroom who comes as the ultimate fulfillment of our desire for ecstasy and intimacy. And to make sure we don't go floating off into the clouds before the time, He provides us with physical bread, H₂O, and holy sex. Aquinas was right when he said, "No natural desire is given in vain."

The problem, as I see it, is that our desires are not strong enough. We are insufficiently lustful. Jesus warns us that if we look at a woman to epithymeō after her, we have committed adultery (Mat 5:28). And then Jesus desires (epithymeō) to eat the Passover (Luk 22:15), the disciples to see Jesus (Luk 17:22), and Paul that the Hebrews would be diligent (Hbr 6:11). Only if we hunger and thirst after righteousness, will we be filled. We need to redeem our corrupt desires, not jettison them.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. -CS Lewis

If we had a Godly lust for food, mere bread would not satisfy. If we had a Godly lust for drink, tequila would leave us feeling inhibited and sober. If we lusted after the Divine mystery, we would be bored with any amount of mere sex. Lewis is exactly right. We are far too easily pleased.

According to the great Christian thinker Thomas Aquinas, proper desire is at the core of the Christian message: “Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.” Contemporary Theologian John Piper also asserts that proper desire is critical to Christian flourishing. In “Desiring God,” he argues that the chief duty of man is, as according to the Wesminster Confession, to “Glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

Desire is like gasoline. It is dangerous indeed, but it is dangerous like a fuel. And Christianity is a religion that needs to move. The world is not where it should be. It needs to move, and we, the Church, are called to be engines of that movement. And to fuel us, the engines, God proposes to use the gasoline of desire. Of course, just as easily as it can get you to go to grandma’s house, gasoline can power your car over the edge of a cliff; gasoline can run tanks or ambulances. So it is critical that our desires be good. Without desire, our dynamic religion is broken down on the roadside, out of gas.

So let us not make sacrifices without benefit, but let us make sure we get a good deal. Let us focus properly on ourselves. Let us have insatiable lusts. And then we will be walking in the footsteps of our Lord.

Christian Sacrifice as Good Business (Part 1)
Christianity: The Egocentric Religion (Part 2)
Lusting Like Jesus (Part 3)

Christianity: The Egocentric Religion (Part 2)

2012-01-20T11:17:00.000-08:00

There is probably salt on this food. Probably.

Should we be egocentric? Or should we care about others? Should we be selfish, or selfless?

It seems that we like to assert that Christianity is about others, not ourselves. But who did Christ come to save? Individuals. I’s. Ego’s (Greek for “I”). And what is the fate of the individual? The Christian heaven is not an individual soul (e.g. Hindu Ātman) dissolving into a universal spirit (Brahman) like salt dissolving into water. It is every tribe, tongue, people and nation worshipping before the throne of God; a Church full of selves. We do not worship God by becoming less ourselves (selfless). We worship God by becoming more ourselves. Indeed, Jesus didn’t recommend dissolving salt in water, but putting it on food. Salt brings out individual flavors. It makes mashed potatoes and green beans more themselves and thus more different; the potatoes become more potatoey and the green beans more green beany.

The word “Selfless” doesn’t appear anywhere in any popular Bible translations (KJV, NKJV, NIV, ESV, NLT). “Selfishness” is absent from KJV, NKJV, NIV, and ESV, and appears only twice in NLT. “Selfish” itself is used only a handful of times and never in the Gospels. Being that the Bible does not talk about it at all, I contend that selflessness is not a Christian virtue. Selflessness is a virtue born of a false dichotomy in a zero-sum world. You or them. If you are benefitted, it is because you hurt them. But we don’t live in a zero-sum world. That which most benefits me, most benefits God and others.

Of course we’re supposed to love our neighbors. But that doesn’t require self hatred or self neglect. The more alive we are, the more of our true, uncorrupted natures we express, the more love we give to others. I can love best when I am acting as God created me to be, when I am being more David-ish. So too when you are self-ish. When we are being purely and rationally self-ish, we can truly see the joy of service and perform it; we can remember the satisfaction of charity, and do it. The best days of my life have not been days of taking, but of giving. The days that I really acted or thought in ways that most benefitted me in short-term satisfaction and long-term eternal reward, the days I most expressed myself and my nature, the days I’ve been most properly selfish have been my best days.

Being egocentric, focusing on oneself, on the “I”, and seeing real and true Divine value in it is Christian. The Great Commandment itself is predicated on selfishness. It cannot be completed without self love: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It presumes self-love is universal and necessarily central. So, insofar as Christianity is an egocentric religion, it is a realistic religion. There is no alternative. Jesus acknowledges the self-love He created people with, and then uses that to argue for love of others.

Christian Sacrifice as Good Business (Part 1)
Christianity: The Egocentric Religion (Part 2)
Lusting Like Jesus (Part 3)

Christian Sacrifice as Good Business (Part 1)

2012-01-19T16:47:00.000-08:00

The modern distillation of Christianity seems to be “Don't be selfish, be selfless.” We create a dichotomy between ‘selfishness’ and ‘selflessness’ and put all the righteousness on the selflessness end. The things that “I want” need to be eliminated for the things that “God wants.” My desires are sinful, and I need to sacrifice my desires to God.

This is more or less what we hear in Sunday school and growing up. But is it true? I recently saw a 1950’s interview with Ayn Rand and her philosophy, based on self-interest, disgusted the Christians I was watching it with. She characterizes sacrifice as evil and says that, “The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.”

We generally define sacrifice as giving up something for nothing. In the proper Christian sense, sacrifice is an exchange. It is the selling of something less valuable to get something more valuable. And usually, far more valuable. The merchant sold all that he had to buy the pearl; the man sold all that he had for the field with the treasure. And it is not just humans which make exchanges. God, too, constrains Himself and follows these principles. These parables work bi-directionally. Did not God also sell all that He had to obtain the Gentile gem, the pearl, or the field of the world containing his treasure, the Church? Not even the most 'selfless' act of the Crucifixion was giving up something for nothing; it was an exchange.

Is there every something we can ‘sacrifice’ to God that will truly impoverish us? How many of us, standing before the Pearly Gates, will have that nagging feeling that we probably helped one too many orphans? Will we regret any hour ‘sacrificed’ to pray? Will any of us deem the Kingdom for which we give our lives not good enough?

Christian Sacrifice as Good Business (Part 1)
Christianity: The Egocentric Religion (Part 2)
Lusting Like Jesus (Part 3)

Most Popular Posts of 2011

2012-01-08T19:47:00.000-08:00

A crowd. I don't think any of them read Arena-Man

Hey everybody! Today I’m going to reflect on the top five most popular (in terms of page views) posts on Arena-Man in 2011. The year was an exciting time for the blog. It’s the first time that I made a concerted effort to write something weekly (and usually post it). So here are the top 5, picked by you! Counting down from number 5:

#5 Review: “Finding the Love of Your Life” by Neil Clark Warren

I’ve long been of the opinion, first expressed by a pastor of mine, that any two Christian people can have a successful marriage. To disabuse me of this notion, a friend recommended I read this book. So I reviewed it and then critiqued it. Warren’s basic idea is that good selection is all-important, even more important than anything else you do in relationship. He’s got a lot of good ideas about what exactly needs to line up, and has since writing this, become the most successful matchmaker in the history of the world (via eHarmony). This post got popular because (in addition to it being totally world-stupifyingly brilliant like all my articles ;) not much is written online about Neil Clark Warren. This article got popular because (probably young) people were told about Warren, and Googled him.

#4 Family and the Meaning of Life

When I was at home, I felt my ambition wane for a brief moment. It was a specific moment sitting on the back porch of my parents’ home, relaxing, spending a quiet morning with God and getting the warm feeling, “This is what life is about.” I think I’ve since shifted myself back into the stream of Action, but it is not to be forgotten that the domestic life is Good, and perhaps the ideal life. “My epiphany was that my sword will one day be beaten into a plow because there will never again be a reason for me to leave home. Man’s destiny is domestic.” I have stories as to why all my other stories got clicks, but I don’t know about this one. Maybe others are feeling the same way.

#3 Fairy Tale Romance – Real Life

In this article, I summarized the condition of the present dating world and conclude that Fairy Tale Romance is impossible only because we believe it to be so. It’s natural and proper for men to make early and ridiculous promises and declarations of love, and this would work if men kept their word. But they don’t and so by the time we’re ready to get married, we have a lot of broken promises behind us. My assessment of the present problem is: “We have locked away our still-beating heart in a black coffin. The passions of the living heart seep out of the coffin like a vapor and drive Twilight sales into the millions, while the thick lid prevents any real corporeal Romance in. Perhaps it is irony that Edward, the great romantic hero of our age, is dead. Mr. Darcy has been replaced with a pale, cold, lifeless, blood-sucking, sun-fearing creature of the night (with really sexy hair).” If we are to find love, it will be a risk; prudence is not minimizing it, but in taking it. I love that this article inspired so much discussion. Some people agreed with it. Another made a heartfelt confession about a situation in her life. People were real and honest. It was the closest to web community that I’ve seen.

#2 My New Girlfriend

I was inspired when I took Solomon’s personification of Wisdom seriously, when I actually thought of Wisdom like a girl. I saw the passage afresh, and wanted to pass this experience on to others. But you can’t just say “Hey guys, think anew about something old!” At least I can’t say that effectively. So I decided to play a dirty trick on all my well-intentioned would-be matchmakers (and all friends who are concerned with such personal matters). So I wrote about Wisdom as if I just started dating her (after, of course, changing my Facebook status to “In a Relationship”. I fooled a lot of people and I hope (though highly doubt) many grew wiser by it. The length of time of the deception ranged from zero seconds (someone who figured it more likely that I would change my Facebook status for a teaching purpose than actually get a girl) to several months (people who read the first paragraph of the article, smiled, and never read the part about my explaining it to be a metaphor). It was rather awkward to explain about my girlfriend (in their mind) of 3 months who turned out actually to be a metaphor.

#1 A Defense of Alexandra Wallace

I never guessed at 3am when I posted this, that it’d end up my most popular post for 2011. I defended the racist girl at UCLA as her YouTube rant started to go viral on Facebook. It was a practical lesson in the tides of Internet opinion, shifting and fickle. In the gap between my UCLA Facebook friends freaking out and larger news sources picking it up, Arena-Man was one of the few websites to talk about Alexandra Wallace. And with so inflammatory a title, it got clicks. But more than a lesson on internet traffic flows, it was a lesson on human nature. Hers, mine, and particularly, on those who so violently and perversely hated her. What could have been righteous indignation was transmuted into licentiousness or raw rage evidenced by Googlers who found this article with searches like “Alexandra Wallace Porn” “Alexandra Wallace life is ruined”. This also marks Arena-Man’s first identified troll (message board dissident). A very enlightening experience for us all.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

2011-12-20T21:21:00.000-08:00

The Kiss, by Rodin

He is coming, dear brother. You know that. Defect. Leave the Naphal.

He's not here yet! He's not here! Not here! And what happens when He does come? Will the Aphar bow when he comes? He will consume them along with us because they have been selling their nephesh to us for gold or glory or sex.

They will see Him. They will recognize Him. You’ve been of that opinion for many a spring! They will see Him; despite your attempts, we have broken through and given them many signs.

You have indeed. And we have given them false signs.

They will be able to see through them.

Can they? Can one gain such vision in threescore and ten winters? How can one see without the light? They cannot see the light that flows like a flood from the Throne, and we obscure the light from each nephesh so that others cannot see it. The only light they can see is that shadow they call “the sun.” My friend, we are in an Age of Darkness. The Coming One sits no more on that terrible box of sticks and yellow metal in Zion. That awful cloud rests no more on the Earth. Where could it, without consuming the Aphar? In Zion, at least for a time, that patch of Earth and the Aphar were purified to prevent their melting away in that cloud. But no longer! Look around you, my friend. Darkness reigns! The Naphal walk about in the daytime, our servants sacrifice to us in the sight of all. We are not afraid.

After He has come, you will not be able to walk about freely as you do. If any Naphal survive His triumphal entry, you will become creatures of the night, surviving in the secret corners and dark places of the Earth. The Darkness will pass.

Will it? How can it? We have most of His precious Aphar in our grip. To separate the wheat from tares now will destroy them. If the music grows any louder, they will be consumed.

They can hear the music, even now.

Lies! Only we can hear it! That terrible, nasty noise! Ever ringing, singing! Never ceasing! Never ceasing! Oh Darkness, never ceasing! There is a cruel choir in my head, tormenting me, torturing me, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. Now! Even now! Never silent! Not if I shout or scream or cry! Only by destroying Aphar brings relief; a distance, a separation from the Song. It reaches my ears, but it's as if it has to travel a little farther. I hate it! Hate it! If only I had ears of flesh that I could gouge out and be as deaf to it as they are!

But they are not deaf to it. They can hear it. Or at least I believe they can hear it. We hear its fullness, coming from the Cherubim before His Throne, echoing throughout Creation! But have you listened to them as they worship Him? I suppose you haven't. Naphal can't get near them when they do. And it's getting louder.

No. You are getting more deluded, as you always do this time of year! All of you do the same thing, every winter solstice. “He’s coming!” you say. But He can’t come. “It’s brighter!” you say, but the same Darkness reigns this year and every year. “They’re turning to Him!” you say. But we continue to consume them this time of year like every time of year.

Then why don't you join in these festivities as you do on every other "holy" day? Why do you relax your guard on the roads and flightways and cullamim and allow us Qodesh free passage into their homes and hearts? You rend apart their souls by prostitution in feasts of "fertility" in spring and you consume their firstfruits at harvest; you provoke them to war in the summer, and roast the flesh of their very children on your alters; why do you hide your face during the Winter Solstice?

It's too warm out. We need to sleep like any creature, saving those accursed Cherubim! We choose to do it then. What is that to you?

The temperature of their nephesh does indeed increase. And with it, the strength of their voices. They are blind and deaf; but not dumb. They can hear the Song, but only as they sing it. This season is indeed warmer. It is warmer because they sing, and they sing because it is warmer. During this season, each of them is like a branch aflame. When they huddle together in huts and houses, away from the cold outside, when they feast on their finest meats and drink their strongest, spiced wines, when they sing even their silly Aphar songs, they come together to become a roaring fire! Don’t you notice a wavering of allegiances this month?

Our servants are just resting this time of year. Like we do.

Rest? But your servants themselves are singing the Song, as loud and often louder than those who are Waiting for Him! I think they can hear the Song clearer than those who have guarded themselves from you; perhaps as you leech away their flesh by pain and vice, the more nephesh can shine through left.

And that's another thing. Don't say they're 'Waiting' for Him.

Oh but they are! They may say, 'Horace,’ 'Perseus,’ ‘Mithra,’ or ‘Krishna.’ Though most of them wouldn’t, there are many who would recognize the Coming One in a moment if they were to see Him face to face! Truly, they will recognize Him when He comes!

But it is not Him they are worshipping! Those are our stories!

Do you really believe your own propoganda? Naphal can create nothing; the Muses from His throne are barred even from whispering to you. You can only twist and pervert. Look up above at these gems, messengers of the Coming One!

Look up indeed! The Zodiac is our most successful myth! Every Aphar culture has adopted it.

The Mazzaroth is your most successful conquest. Do you remember when these were scattered by the Coming One? Every culture remembers it because the Aphar are sons of Adam. Were you not watching when He walked with Adam in the Garden? My eyes sparkled on that night as the stars sparkle now at the thought of His coming! Was it not then that you first heard of the Virgin with the sheaf of wheat, His coming through the House of Bread, the death of the kernel and then flourishing of the Coming One? Look, there, in the east! Did He not place the three kings, those starry messengers, in line with the Eastern Star to pointing to the sunrise tomorrow as a prophecy of the Sunrise that would one day give light to all the world? Dear me! Sirius is looking bright tonight! And out of place. What is happening?

You always think things are brighter than they are. Would you rob us of all our work? Surely you must grant us Horace. If no one else, he was our invention.

Were you not fighting in that great day of battle, when the Qodesh cleared the way for Gabriel to tell the story of the Coming One to that Egyptian poet? Do you forget the celebration before the Throne when the Egyptians first saw and believed that Horace would die and be raised again?

I’d like to forget it. In fact, I did forget it. No matter. We recaptured Horace. He now serves us.

You did ultimately recapture that myth. But do you know how many Waited for the Coming One because of it? And even apart from interference by the Qodesh or the Naphal, that story echoes on in a thousand songs in a thousand Aphar cultures. But lo!

What is it?

Do you hear that!?

I hear nothing. It's midnight in an open field, and we are away from our respective assignments like two spies! I’m supposed to be in Jerusalem right now! How did I let you talk me into this? I suppose it is accursed friendship that is to blame; its shackles bind me to you, unbroken by an hundred hundred winters and a civil war! Do you feel that? Is it getting warm?

There are three of them. Right there. Singing. Loudly! Did one of yours tempt them to intoxication?

No! Why would I deploy my people in a field? It’s much more efficient to tempt in cities. I do have someone stationed at the inn in this God-forsaken town working on an advanced assignment in Hypocrisy, tempting an otherwise humble innkeeper to inhospitiality. Can you not feel that heat?

Can you not hear that?

My Darkness! They are harmonizing with the Song! That's impossible! Are they... shepherds? How...?

Is that…? Yes! They’re singing Isaiah! I bet you wished you could have stopped us from delivering that message. What a Prophet!

ARGH Isaiah! How are they doing that!?

Is the Veil starting to tear? Is the Dawn finally upon us? Is He here?!

The heat! I cannot bear it! Old friend, I must fly!

Farewell! But I must see! What is this thing! They are truly harmonizing with the Song! Can it be? Has the time finally come? Louder! Louder! Louder! They are singing ever louder! That can’t be human voice! But look there, my comrades! Brother! What news?

He has come!

What?

At last! At last! He has come! Praise the Lord, for He has come! A cullam has dropped! One like I’ve never seen before! It will be open for one more earth-hour only! Hurry! Join us!

So the Aphar can see us?

Yes. Of course. That’s what cullam means. What, have you been stationed in Sheol? Heaven is always very near Earth, like a bridegroom is near his bride on the wedding night. We become visibility to the Aphar when Heaven kisses Earth, and they kiss in anticipation of the End; it’s foreplay, if you will, before the final union of Heaven and Earth.

Where are the trumpets and procession? Where are His Mighty Ones? Where, if He has come, is His commander, Michael?

Outside of Rome, along with the larger part of Qodesh. The Enemy saw this invasion coming, but thought it would come to Rome. Michael’s presence there confirmed it to him. The Coming One…I mean, the One Who Has Come, has put Gabriel in command of this mission, for its objective is not conquest but Glory.

Why wasn’t I told?

His coming was a covert op; none of us was told. You’re blessed you’re near enough to join in the Song! Don’t waste any more time! Come with me! This will not be a part of the Song you want to miss! This will be a Song that songs will be sung about! It may even be recorded in The Book! So sing, my brother! Sing with all your heart and soul and mind and strength! Let us declare Glory to God! Peace itself has taken on flesh; there will be Peace on Earth, for the Prince of Peace has come! The Shadow is passing away! Let us declare goodwill toward men! For He has come! He has come, indeed!

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace,
good will toward men.

Living on a Food Stamp (Part 4) - Attempt Number One

2011-12-19T12:22:00.000-08:00

Food Stamps Diet - Attempt Number One. The above cost $22.61 (factoring out unused quinoa and beans). P.S. There is another banana that got cut off ;)

The Diet

So, given all the above, what will be our main meal? My friend, also interested in nutrition, invented a stew which has displaced about a third of my calories over the last few months. I’ve gotten over my inborn desire for different food and have been eat this recipe for several months, and only growing in my enjoyment of it. It wasn’t designed to minimize cost, but it does a darned good job by accident. The recipe can be found here. The potential big expense which I didn’t list was the spices. DO NOT BUY THEM FROM THE GROCERY STORE. Buy in bulk online and count it as a capital expense (like a pot; try this website). It will take a long time to use up a pound of spice which can be purchased for less than one of the little ornate jars in the grocery store.

Vegetables are hard to justify by calories, but because Mom said, “Eat your vegetables,” I cannot do without them. For vegetables, DPC is a poor measure; I tried to maximize plant matter in my diet. I thought about it in terms of weight, so it’s already easy to compare dollars per pound. Tomatoes and onions are pretty good on that front.

For breakfast, I have very little time. On surgery, I started eating peanut butter with a spoon out of a jar, and washing it down with milk. Because it was high-fat and high-protein, it lasted a long time and takes zero preparation (and if you’re lazy and a bachelor like me, you can use a plastic spoon and drink from the milk jug and also have zero cleanup. Did I just write that?). Milk EC is highly dependent on jug size and fat content. Milk is pretty much one of the most fattening things in the world (i.e. lots of saturated fats, which as I said above are bad). The best value I saw at Safeway today was 2% milk at 2.0 DPC. But that was for the 2 gallons. I only need a half gallon and I don’t want to get fat arteries, so I recommend going with the 1% at the worse (but not so bad) 2.9 DPC. I was a fool and stuck to my way-too-expensive-but-oh-so-tasty coconut milk at 5.5 DPC.

The peanut butter I’m particular about. This part doesn’t come into the formal analysis, but I don’t trust hydrogenated vegetable oils (they may or may not cause cancer, which means they may cause cancer :). So I buy the expensive “natural” peanut butter. But peanut butter is so good a value, even the fancy stuff I get has an EC of 1.62 DPC.

The Experience

Requires|Stove, large pot, spoon, knife, frying pan, Gladware, microwave, spices.

Time
It took me about an hour to drive to Safeway and shop, and 2 hours of stew cooking (3 if you include bean soaking, which didn’t require a lot of my attention). It was also very convenient to not have to worry about dinner for a week. I could just come home, throw something in the microwave, and eat. I estimate that I saved 10-20 minutes in drive time per fast-food meal (my habit during surgery). So for me, that’s 1.5-3 saved hours. From a week time-balance perspective, even with the cook time, I may have broken even. So I don’t think I buy the “Poor people have to eat at McDonalds because they don’t have time to cook” argument.

Extras
In addition to the calories, there are a few things I enjoy and think that poor people should enjoy too. Firstly, there’s coffee. And I’m talking about good coffee. I heard about one person who took the Food Stamp challenge and was driven to use bad instant coffee. I wish that fate on no man. For this analysis, I factored in a cup of coffee a morning of Starbucks-brand Italian Roast ground coffee. If you’re fancy, you can use a French press or other gourmet option. If you’re not (i.e. me), a paper towel and/or tea infuser will give you a gritty cowboy-style cup. The cost of this? $1.47 for 5 cups.

The other thing that I have a problem with is drinking water. I just don’t enjoy it. And I usually buy Gatorade. But that’s way expensive. So I decided to substitute a couple tablespoons of lemon juice into a Gatorade bottle. I would drink about 8 cups of lemon water a day and not miss the Gatorade. It seems to nearly satisfy the craving for sweets with negligible actual sugar. This cost me $1.90 for the five days.

One more quick trick. If the stew wasn’t enough, or if you’re feeling extra hungry, add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a bowl of stew. It has an EC of 1.7 DPC, so you can replace any number of calories with this super-duper-good -for-you oil. It gives it a fruity flavor that I rather like (you can get the low-flavor olive oil if you want the good calories but don’t want the taste). Remember to stir!

Living on a Food Stamp (Part 3) - Economics

2011-12-18T18:35:00.000-08:00

For this analysis, I’m going to invent a new unit of Energy Cost (EC). Assuredly, someone else has invented this, so if you can find out whom, I’ll cite them here. The basic unit of EC is “Dollars per 1000 Calories” or the DPCs[1]. The major concern for a low-cost diet is getting enough calories. After calories, enough protein is needed. Everything else is gravy (not literally, because gravy would be unhealthy and probably quite costly. But you get the picture).

So let’s try it! Let’s start with a Big Mac! The cost of the burger alone (in Palo Alto, with tax, according to the guy who picked up the phone and confusedly answered the person calling a McDonald’s phone number asking for prices) is $4.10. A Big-Mac contains 540 Calories. $4.10/540*1000 = 7.6 DPC. A large fry is $2.15 and has 500 Calories so its EC is 4.3 DPC, almost half. That means that, given the same amount of money, you can get twice as fat off fries as you can off burgers.

What’s my target? The average California Food Stamps[2] beneficiary gets $4.88 per day. And if we assume we want to maintain a healthy weight, 2000 Calories is as good a number as any to do it on (though I know some people voluntarily subsist on less than that). That means that our target EC will be $4.88/ 2000 C *1000 = 2.44 DPC. That’s our cutoff. Any food that exceeds that value will need to be limited and balanced by foods that are under it.

What’s the best bang for buck? What has the lowest EC? As far as I’ve found so far, the answer is: beans, beans the magical fruit. The more you eat, the more you… save. Bulk black beans cost $1.45 per lb at my local Safeway. They have 341 Calories/100g dry black beans. So =1lb*1000g/2.205lb*341Cal/100g = 1546 Calories and an EC is 0.9 DPC. If most of our calories came from beans, then we’ve got lots of money to play with. We can spend the rest on spices and luxuries.

[1] WARNING: THIS FOOTNOTE IS FOR SCIENTISTS ONLY. Strictly speaking, its dollars per megacalorie, $/Mc. Food labels are listed in capital ‘C’ Calories, not little ‘c’ calories and 1000 calories = 1 Calorie. Why they confuse things like that, I don’t know. The reason I made it Mc instead of kc is because of ease of using whole numbers; the range I expect this to apply to will be single whole numbers at about this scale. Also, it’s not the inverse (Mc/$) because that leads to non-intuitive comparisons (e.g. see the raging internet debate on MPG vs GPM). If you disobeyed the “Scientists Only” warning and this confused you, for the rest of the article, just assume you never read this.

Living on a Food Stamp (Part 2) - My Abbreviated Nutrition Theory

2011-12-17T17:29:00.000-08:00

The Updated USDA Food Pyramid: the worst cluster... of nutrition information ever produced. This article is inspired by the same desire to present an opinion on nutrition, but attempts to do it in such a way as to make sense.

I’m going to briefly tell you about how I personally think about nutrition. It represents my present opinion after several years of schooling and thinking about these things. It presently lacks thorough citations (which I hope to add later).

The biggest problem with understanding nutrition is that it is complex. We like to talk about “scientific” nutrition, but that’s mostly hooey. There are simply not enough human beings on the planet to figure out how all the multitude of nutrients really work together for long-term health. If you had a trillion trillion people, a thousand lifetimes (and no ethics) you’d make some good progress. As it is, our understanding of human nutrition is pretty rudimentary and there are few things that are rock solid. There are certainly many different things which can be gleaned from science, but we are very, very far away from understanding nutrition or even being able to confidently recommend a particular diet.

As far as I can tell, the following is a list of things I’m pretty confident are true and so will build my diet around:
1) People need to eat enough calories to survive; weight gain or loss roughly follows calorie consumption
2) People need to eat at least some protein (including all 9 essential amino acids)
3) Saturated fat is bad for you, polyunsaturated fat is OK, and monounsaturated fat is good
4) Vegetables are good for you (including their vitamins and minerals)

Here are a few more things I believe, but have not been rigorously proved true:

5) Low glycemic index foods are good for you; high glycemic index food makes you feel crappy and probably causes Metabolic syndrome (hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol).
6) Flavorful things are probably good for you. Spices, smelly vegetables (like garlic) and tea all have antioxidants (and probably a million other things that are good for you that we haven’t discovered yet). So include them.

So six guidelines for diet: 1) Calories 2) Protein 3) Good fats 4) Veggies 5) Low glycemic index 6) Spices. If that’s too many, try Michael Pollan’s three: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Notice what’s NOT on this list: low-fat diets, cholesterol, organic food, eating according to the food pyramid, Atkins, South Beach, high vitamin _____. These things all may or may not be good for us.

Now what about the million claims about “a study shows X is good for you”? This suffers from what I’ll call the Jelly Bean Effect (after this). If you do enough studies, you’re bound to get positive results. For most scientific studies of the nutrition sort, even though a study shows a link between X and Y (“scientists say X causes Y!”), it’s more likely the statement is false than true (for the statistically minded, see the JPA Ioannidis paper “Why Most Published Research Findings are False”). So we’re left with very few things which have turned up positive time and time again that we can be pretty (but not totally) confident about.

Another big thing I’m not including in my diet is variety. One thing I noticed when travelling abroad is that food variety was not something that was really valued. When I was in Kenya, every restaurant served the same ‘lunch’: boiled beef (nyama), cooked greens (sukuma wiki), and corn paste (ugali). Most families would eat this for dinner (but often sans beef, because of cost). The American objection, “But we had that last night!” was far from the Kenyan mind. My friend told me a story of his time in India when he asked a coworker, “What did you have for dinner last night?” The man responded calmly, “Dal.” He asked, “What are you planning to have for dinner tonight?” The man, used to strange American questions, responded, “Dal.” It turned out the man ate dal for dinner every night.

And why not? Is there some biological impulse which demands that we eat something different every single day of our lives? Why do we “get sick of” foods that are otherwise good? That is the topic for another blog (my guess is cultural suggestibility). But the bottom line is this: it would seem that most humans get along just fine without variety. And this is a huge relief for someone trying to re-learn how to eat. Learning enough food-stamp-compliant recipes is difficult. So I’m starting with one.

Living on a Food Stamp (Part 1) - Don't Tell Poor People "You Can't"

2011-12-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

Irecently heard about a congresswoman taking the “Food Stamps Challenge,” tryingto live off the amount that an average person gets for food stamps [1]. Theperson described how miserable she was, drinking instant coffee instead ofgoing to Starbucks, being hungry pretty much the whole time. Basically, shemade the point that, as hard as she tried, she could not live on food stamps,despite being intelligent and capable. This is done occasionally by Congress toraise awareness about underfunding of Food Stamps. This is from the San Jose Mercury News in a 2007 version of this:

Oakland Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee's diet consisted primarily of crackers, aloaf of whole-wheat bread, tortillas, and brown rice. Assemblyman Mark Leno,D-San Francisco, filled up on 19-cent banana-and-peanut butter sandwiches. Rep.James McGovern, D-Mass., said he would've killed for a candy bar or a cup ofcoffee.

Feeling full … is one challenge; eating nutritionally is virtually impossible.Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky's week's worth of fruits and vegetablesconsisted of one tomato, one potato, a head of lettuce, and five bananas.” [2]

When I heard about this, it frustrated me. My philosophical spider sense wentoff. Why was I frustrated by someone arguing to increase funding for foodstamps? I care deeply about the poor; why was I frustrated? After reflecting onmy anger for a while, I realized: they’re telling poor people they can’t do it.In an attempt to prove that being poor sucks, they accidentally discouraged healthyeating in the poor. And that pissed me off. “You can’t” is pretty much theworst thing you can tell a poor person because, if you do, they won’t. LikeHenry Ford said, “If you think you can do a thing or think youcan't do a thing, you're right.” If a congressperson can’t do it,what chance does a poor person have?

It all depends on the truth of the claim, “[On food stamps,] eatingnutritionally is virtually impossible.” And that is an empirical question. TheCongresspeople had agendas; they wanted to be miserable because it would helpincrease funding for food stamps and help poor people (a noble end in itself).But I have no such agenda. Nobody cares if I go hungry. But if I could figure outhow to eat healthy with little money, then maybe I could make poor people’smiserable state a little bit less miserable.

And so I took the challenge.

[1] Food Stamps has bad PR, so they renamed it “Supplemental NutritionAssistance Program” (SNAP) and, because California wants people thinking aboutvegetables, they called the state program CalFresh. I don’t care about PR, andI don’t think anyone would understand me if I said I took the SNAP challenge,so until everyone knows these new terms, I’m calling it by its real name (i.e.the name that people use).
[2] As an aside, note what foods were chosen: no vegetables and mostly fastcarbs: crackers [GI 74], a loaf of whole-wheat bread [GI 70], tortillas [GI40], and brown rice [GI 75]. This is pretty much a fast-track to hunger andmisery, or as one of my nutrition professors likes tosay “pain and defeat.” These choices both betray the general American biastowards eating these foods and the misery you feel when you eat them.

Great American Hero (Part 2) - George Bailey vs The Modern World

2011-12-14T16:15:00.000-08:00

George Bailey (the guy who does his duty) vs. Potter (the guy who follows his heart). Also, check out his threads! Even if you disagree with their ethos, you must admit they had style.

Contrasting Conceptions of Virtue - The Greatest Generation vs. Generation Y

George Bailey is a powerful opponent of the modern ethos. I think the modernethos has best been celebrated by the “Secular Prophet” Steve Jobs. In hislauded commencement speech he says:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't betrapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. Andmost important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Theysomehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else issecondary.

Follow your heart, your individual heart, uninfluenced by others. If Georgetook Steve’s advice, he’d have been gone travelling and to college at his highschool graduation, or one of the other hundred turning points in the movie. Whatis secondary to Jobs is primary to Bailey: one’s duty to others.

Another recent movie makes a point similar to Jobs’. “The Adjustment Bureau” (2011)describes a world where angels make sure people are on the ‘right path’ (apparentlyangels have again become permissible fictional creatures). The concluding lineis this:

Most people live life on the path we [angels] set for them, too afraid to explore anyother. But once in a while people like you come along and knock down all the obstacleswe put in your way, people who realize free will is a gift you'll never knowhow to use until you fight for it. I think that's The Chairman's [God’s] realplan. And maybe, one day, we won't write the plan. You will.

It’s about “freewill,” not accepting the conditions life seems to give you.It’s about knocking over obstacles that keep you from doing what youreally want. It’s not about patiently enduring a heavy load; it’s aboutthrowing it off. It’s not about going along the path set for you withfortitude, it’s about setting your own path. George Bailey’s path was set forhim to run the Building and Loan, and though he had a hundred chances, he nevertook any of them because of duty.

It seems that the modern ethos lacks an understanding of duty or any importanceof sacrifice. The striking thing to me is that it is assumed that‘individualism’ of the type promoted by Steve Jobs and The Adjustment Bureau isbelieved to be “American.” It is thought that the American thing is to be yourown man, and so if people reject this idea, they believe they are rejecting “Americanvalues.” “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a spectacular example of this Americanvirtue at its finest: sacrificial love. Americans, if we can do nothing else,can sacrifice for others.

The French observer Alec de Toqueville said in1840, “I have seen Americans making great and sincere sacrifices for the keycommon good and a hundred times I have noticed that, when needs be, they almostalways gave each other faithful support.” We often veer from this, but ourfinest moments are moments of sacrifice. Our history is defined by thesemoments, these little promises: the pledge of “our lives, our fortunes and oursacred honor” at the end of the Declaration of Independence (a pledge that was redeemedby the British in most of their cases); the sacrifice of 300,000 Union soldiersfor freedom and unity in the Civil War; a nation uniting to give up luxuries,gasoline and a generation of its youth to fight Fascism. Our heroes aresuffering heroes: Washington freezing with his troops at Valley Forge; Lincolnpacing the White House with the Confederates within a day’s march torn inside by hiscountry’s fortune; FDR ever standing in painful iron braces, speaking boldly sothat Americans, too, might stand despite their pain. And let us not forget,George Bailey, a man who suffered day by day so that his family, his friends, hiscommunity might be strong.

Three cheers for George Bailey, a man who expresses the most American ofvirtues: sacrificial love!

Part 1 - Who is George Bailey
Part 2 - George Bailey vs The Modern World

Great American Hero (Part 1) - Who Is George Bailey?

2011-12-13T18:54:00.000-08:00

A Review of “It’s A Wonderful Life”

Thisis the first time I watched the movie as an adult, understanding much about banking,psychology and history. And boy is that a rich movie! Every scene taughtsomething about the values of the era in which it was made (1946)! And it isstriking how different their values are from our own.

If you’ve been living in the Soviet Union the past seventy years and have notseen this movie, go see it (Amazon sells it Instant Streaming for $10). If youmust, the plot is summarized at some length on Wikipedia, but I’ll brieflydescribe it here. The movie is about George Bailey, a man who is presented withnumerous dilemmas between his own desire and duty, and he continually choosesduty. He saves his brother, but at the cost of hearing in one ear. He preventsan accidental poisoning, but takes a beating for it. When his father diessuddenly, he saves his business (“Bailey Building and Loan,” sort of a creditunion), but has to give up travelling (his heart’s desire). He saves it againafter a few months, but has to delay college for four years, giving his collegemoney to his brother (who will return to run the business). After four years,his brother returns but has a better job offer; he stays running the businessto allow his brother to follow his dreams. Then he gets married, and on the wayto finally travel for the first time with his new wife on their honeymoon, he seesa run on the bank. He saves his business by giving away all the money he savedfor his honeymoon. Finally, after he has some success in his business, he’soffered a job that will make him wealthy but close the business and thus hurthis friends; he refuses it. Finally, after his uncle loses a large amount ofmoney, the bank is going to close and he’s going to go to jail for fraud. He considerssuicide so that his life insurance policy would keep his business running andhis family secure, but then an angel intervenes and shows him how important hislife has been to so many people.

The striking thing about the story is that George Bailey never gets what he wants. He wants to travel. But he never gets to, not even in the happyending. The miraculous ending is that his friends come to his rescue, donating enoughmoney to him to keep him doing his job. Every step of this man’s life is asacrifice, choosing duty and sacrifice to others over selfish desires. He suffers,and suffers and suffers. The only reward he ever gets is in relationship withfriends and family. And the message of the movie is that friendship is enough. Youdon’t need money, or fun, or even a job you like. In fact, you should bewilling to give up all those things.

There are a number of other things that George Bailey does which are unheard ofin modern movies and TV. After having the worst day of his life, he getsfrustrated and yells at his kids. After he realizes what he’s done, heimmediately apologizes. Who does that? What modern movie shows such a man withthe courage and humility to immediately admit he was wrong and apologize? Whenthere was the run on the bank, they are handing out cash to people withoutpaperwork; they expect the people will remember and honestly report how muchthey took at a later time. What kind of world does that kind of relationshipexist between a business and its customers? And who can put that kind of trustin others? When his uncle loses the money, takes responsibility for it:

Bailey: No, there’s no discrepancy in the books. I've just misplaced $8000. Ican't find it anywhere.
Potter: You misplaced $8000?
Bailey: [meekly] Yes sir.

He covers for his uncle. He is a man who takes the blame due to another, evenwhen it will here cost him dearly. He suffers here when it would be easy forhim to throw his idiot uncle under the bus. Who is manly enough today to dosuch a thing?

I entirely agree with the celebration of George Bailey and his character. But Imust also note that the philosophy underlying the praise is still largely secular(which is not consistent with my caricature of 1940s America). Common disbeliefin angels is a theme that is played upon, but angels in “It’s a Wonderful Life”are more like fairies than Christian angels: silly things with limited powertrying to put humans on the right path. The movie’s message was summarized bythe Clarence the angel, “No man is a failure who has friends.” Though I think ita far better approximation of Truth than modern movies that might say, “No manis a failure who has money/a hot wife/success,” or “No man is a failure who liveshis own life.” God (or the angelic order) shows George that his life ismeaningful because he has lots of friends; God is not a relevant factor indetermining a man’s purpose in life.

Part 1 - Who is George Bailey
Part 2 - George Bailey vs The Modern World

Onward Christian Soldiers (Part 3) - Onward!

2011-12-09T17:44:00.001-08:00

10/25 can be our battle of Sterling. It was the day when the unstoppable was stopped. Dawkins, who has been the pillar of public Atheism, has crumbled. We Theists can look around and realize: We have won the battles. Then without knowing it, we have seen that our intellectual foes’ numbers in science have dwindled (or we realized we overestimated). We have regained that ground that has been ours most years since the Apostle Paul’s sermon at Athens, namely the rational high ground. But we must remember, William Wallace’s war wasn’t over after Sterling. It has just begun.

So, fellow Theists, draw your swords! Take up your lances! Let us continue to fight! Let us be bold when we ask questions or write articles or speak in public (or even in private). Let us not hide the fact that we go to church, that we believe in miracles, that there is an objective right and wrong. Let us continue to contend for our ideas. But, in so doing, let us be knightly about it. We should be proud of our victories and praise those who worked so hard to win them. But we ought not gloat over our fallen foes. For without worthy foes, from whom can we win honor? Let us encourage our foe to bandage his rational wounds and, if he will not join us, get back on the steed of his worldview and try again. God willing, when that day comes, we will not have grown lazy in our thinking and fat in our reasoning, that we may be worthy foes and that Atheists, too, may gain honor by us.

I hope that this is the dawn of an era of wonderful warfare! I hope that there are noble and epic debates that are talked about for years to come. And I think it has already begun. The best debate I think I have ever heard occurred on October 24, 2011. Peter Millican and William Lane Craig debated on the existence of God. They showed mutual respect. They both presented strong cases. They responded to one another's points. Both gained honor by the exchange. And though he knew Craig to be a more experienced debater, Millican demonstrated astounding courage in facing him. This is modern chivalry! And I pray that we may see ever more of it!

I’ll end with a story, a verse, and a poem. I’ve heard it repeated like a post-modern mantra that debate never changes people’s minds. But it does. And this particular debate has. There is a person who has been following this debate for some. And the episode with Dawkins accounted in Part 1 was so outrageous to this person that it delivered him from Atheism back to the faith. In his words, he was “brought to God via the New Atheism's God-awful philosophy.” He recounts his view of this matter in a video he edited here). For bringing him back to God, he concludes his video sincerely with, “God bless you, Professor Dawkins.” In response to the video, another reader tells a similar story, “God Bless Richard Dawkins…If It was not for his book 'The God Delusion' I would have never discovered arguments for and against God.” For challenging us to rise to the task of rational defense, and for bringing this question to the forefront of the Western mind, I think I agree. God bless you, Professor Dawkins.

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

– Jesus (Matt 5:44-45)

Great God, that bowest sky and star,
Bow down our towering thoughts to thee,
And grant us in a faltering war
The firm feet of humility. - GK Chesterton, “Hymn for the Church Militant." (I'll confess that I was excited about the title of this poem, thinking it'd be totally about how awesome winning is. When I found out it was about being humble and stuff, I was disappointed, but decided that this was probably an appropriate rebuff to my pride.)

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - Theism in Philosophy and Science
Part 3 - Onward!

Onward Christian Soldiers (Part 2) - Theism in Philosophy and Science

2011-12-06T19:17:00.001-08:00

Stanford Memorial Church at the dead center of campus (the symbolism of which Daniel Dennett complained about when he was here a few years ago). Inside are inscribed Jane Stanford's words: "There is no narrowing so deadly as the narrowing of man’s horizon of spiritual things. No worse evil could befall him on his course on earth than to lose sight of Heaven; no widening of science, no possession of abstract truths can indemnify for an enfeebled hold on the highest and central truths of humanity."

In the field of Philosophy, there has been a revolution. The best description of it is by Atheist philosopher Quentin Smith. He writes in the professional journal Philo an Atheist call-to-arms and describes the “problem”:

The secularization of mainstream academia began to quickly unravel upon the publication of [Alvin] Plantinga’s influential book, God and Other Minds, in 1967. It became apparent to the philosophical profession that this book displayed that realist theists were not outmatched by naturalists… theists in other fields tend to compartmentalize their theistic beliefs from their scholarly work; they rarely assume and never argue for theism in their scholarly work. If they did, they would be committing academic suicide or, more exactly, their articles would quickly be rejected. . . . But in philosophy, it became, almost overnight, “academically respectable” to argue for theism… God is not “dead” in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments [1]

Smith estimates up to half of the thinkers in philosophy are theistic. Though, in William Lane Craig’s opinion, this may be the “Gideon effect” (Bible story about Gideon and Craig article about it in Philosophy) of startling an unsuspecting enemy into overestimation, it shows considerable advancement of theistic ideas in philosophy. And philosophy is the foundation of every discipline, be it science or math. Of all the disciplines to win, philosophy is the most strategic. Indeed, Craig describes it as a “beachhead” for Theists to be able to enter other fields as well.

Perhaps the “north campus” [2] “fuzzies” in the non-sciences are falling intothe silliness of Theism. But what about the hard sciences? My impression afterspending my entire adult life listening to lecturers was that all (or at leasta vast majority) of my professors were Atheists. I knew only three of myprofessors who said or did anything even vaguely religious: a Jewish professor oncehad a guest lecturer “because of Rosh Hashanah,” and two others I discoveredoutside of class attended a local church. I must have had on the order of 200professors and lecturers over the course of my schooling, and I only ever knewabout 3 who did anything religious. Over almost a decade of schooling, that’sit. And that is generally the experience of most of my peers. The only problemwith this experience is that it is an illusion.

According to the only data on the subject for since about when we landed on themoon (this hasn’t been a terribly well-researched question), among researchscientists in the physical and social sciences, only a meager 34% do notbelieve in God [3]. That’s it. Of course this is much higher than the national average (2%).But it’s far lower than the perception that it is something like 99%.Furthermore, of all scientists pipetting early Monday mornings (or, as the casemay be, writing grants to keep other people pipetting), one in five was atchurch the morning before [4].To my professional lecture-sitter-through-erears, those numbers are absolutely astonishing.

It seems that a revolution has occurred in philosophy that is abrupt and apparent. But, assuming scientists were ever majority Atheist, there has been a quiet revolution in the sciences. And though Theism is not yet a valid framework for scientific hypotheses as it is for philosophic ones, it seems that there is an invisible majority.

So be heartened, my brothers in the Academy[5]! For though you feel alone, you are not!

[1] Quentin Smith, “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism” Philo 4/2(2001): 3-4
[2] GO BRUINS!!
[3] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/blackwhiteandgray/2011/11/moving-forward-the-science-religion-debate/
[4]… or synagogue the day before, or mosque the day before that. And it’s notjust biotech scientists. Come on, people! It's a metaphor!! :). Fine. Here it is in concreteterms: 18% of scientists attend weekly religious services.
[5] Yup. Another metaphor for "higher education" ;) Though I must admit, I had to Google what it was called: metonym.

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - Theism in Philosophy and Science
Part 3 - Onward!

Why Psychiatry is Awesome

2011-12-05T00:15:00.001-08:00

A butterfly, the source of the Greek root "psyche"

I love psychiatry. I’m on it now and have a week to go. ButI really really love it. There are several reasons why, and I’m going to listthem. In no particular order:

1) Patient Relationship
I love psychiatry because it, above all other fields, requires and encourages relationshipwith patients. There are no physical diagnostic tools in Psychiatry. There areno objective measures, “signs” of depression. It is perhaps the purest field ofmedicine because there is no technology to aid or hinder the psychiatrist indiagnosis. It is one mind evaluating another. To get to the diagnosis, a psychiatristmust know a patient. In therapy, a psychiatrist uses his mind as a surgeon useshis knife.

I love getting to know my patients, and I love Psychiatry because this is bothencouraged and required.

2) Philosophy
I have many interest, and it is always my goal to integrate them as much aspossible. I have a long and sustained interest in philosophy, and I hadpreviously given up any serious integration with medicine and philosophy. Butwhen I started considering Psychiatry, I realize that it, perhaps alone amongmedical subspecialties, has profound philosophical implications. Of courseethics and a general philosophy of medicine might apply everywhere. But seriously,what other field gets to play with Ontology (what actually exists)?

Cardiology is pretty clear: the heart (cardia) is a pump, and we should keep itpumping. But what is soul (psyche) that soul-doctors (psyche-iatros) are tryingto fix? Does it exist, or is it a useful fiction? How can it get diseased? Whatis the best way to heal it? It may well be that practice in psychiatry willyield insight into these questions, or that philosophical insight on thesequestion will suggest changes to psychiatric practice.

3) Interesting Problems
The patients in Psychiatry are downright interesting. This is in contrast tomost medical specialties where it is largely the diseases that are interesting.An unusual tumor is interesting, but the patient may be anyone. In psychiatry,there is a relatively limited number of disorders, but an infinite differencein the patient. The disease of schizophrenia may include delusions, but thepatient will always have a different and intriguing story. One may think it’sthe CIA that is out to get them, another may think it’s the County of SantaClara. Perhaps it is because of an invention they have, or out of vengeance. Whatmakes a mind do this?

Then there is the who “somatiform” cluster. People go blind, get migraines,feel pain, lose the ability to urinate, get paralyzed from the waist down, allby the power of their mind. As in the Matrix, “Your brain makes it real.” Emotionalpain transformed into the physical world. How does that happen?

I love stories and there’s one thing psych patients have it’s stories. Fordepressed patients, all of them have a different trail of tears, a different Shakespeariantragedy that led them to the psychiatrist. It is an intriguing thing to get into the mindof a patient, empathizing with a tragic tale (in depression) or suspendingdisbelief on an assumption or two (in schizophrenia).

4) “New” Field (Lots Left To Do)
There is nothing psychiatrists like to do more than talk about how Psychiatryis a new field. A century or so ago (i.e. when it really was new), WilhelmWundt (1832-1920) launched it as an experimental science at about the same timeas many physical sciences. But, as Daniel Robinson in “An Intellectual Historyof Psychology” Modern psychology is in a state of perpetual youth because therehasn’t been dramatic progress like we’ve seen in biology or physics.

It’s a wide open field. On the physical side, we are just beginning to be ableto watch a functioning brain with fMRI and PET scans; we have psychoactivedrugs that can actually change brain processes that are more recent thanantibiotics. On the cognitive side, we have new treatments and paradigms that,for the first time in history (thanks to modern experimental design,statistics, and computing power), can be experimentally verified. From the faithperspective, I know of no one who has successfully wrestled with these conceptsand figured out how to fully understand them as a Christian.

Young or old, there’s lots of work to be done. I like the pioneer narrative,and so an ‘unexplored’ field like Psychiatry fits in nicely with the story I’mtrying to tell (that is, my life).

5) Lifestyle
One of the totally awesome things about Psychiatry is that you can be aPsychiatrist and you can be other things too. This is not true for surgeons. Isuppose some of them sometimes do things outside of surgery. But thanks toHalstead, going into surgery residency is pretty much like going into a monastery.Psychiatrists, on the other hand, seem to have lives. They are married, andmake dinner (yes, dinner) plans with their spouses. Surgeons tend not to be ableto do this.

And if there’s one thing I have it’s other interests. Research, reading,religion. Global health, philosophy, history. Photography, music, walking.There are a million things that I like to do that are not “my job” and I’dprefer a field where I could continue to do them. Psychiatry seems like it’schill with all this.

Onward Christian Soldiers - The God Debate (Part 1)

2011-11-22T20:45:00.001-08:00

Soldier, from Arc de Triomphe

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

with the cross of Jesus going on before.

Like a mighty army moves the church of God;

brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.

We are not divided, all one body we,

one in hope and doctrine, one in charity.

-"ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS" by Sabine Baring-Gould,

It is a wonderful thing to catch a glimpse ofthe Kingdom of Heaven. There are, of course, many different sides to it and itnever quite looks the way you’d expect. It’s better than that. But I’verecently been thrilled by a series of recent Christian and Theist victories inthe battlefield of ideas. It is at times like this that the church can truly beseen “spread out through all time and space and rooted ineternity, terrible as an army with banners” [1]. The old Catholic phrase “The Church Militant,” technically describing the Christians alive today, seems to be an apropos metaphor.

Now before we begin, I’ll need to take care of another bit of metaphorhousekeeping. I will be using martial metaphors throughout this essay. I thinkthat when it comes to ideas, we are all in a battle (and if you disagree withme on this point, I’ll fight you :). Thought it is a battle, I think it oughtto be a knightly battle, where both sides gain honor when they fight nobly. Mycelebration of Christian victories does not mean that I hate Atheists any morethan my celebrating a Dodgers’ victory means I actually hate the Giants. I lovea good game, or as the case is here, a good debate. Of course, I think thesematters more serious than ballgames, but the mutual respect of ballplayers foreach other captures a bit of the chivalry that I think we need to bring to allour differences of opinion, trivial or grave.

There have been a number of developments recently that bode well for Theistsand Christians in the field of ideas. Over the next few posts, I’d like toexplore a few of them. I hope you’ll join me! The first part is the story of a debate.

The Showdown
Recently,the world’s leading Atheist champion was challenged by the world’s leadingChristian champion to a debate at Oxford, the Atheist’s home institution. Abattle to end all battles! I wish I could describe their meeting. I wish I hadthe words to tell a modern day epic, one that would be remembered for decadesor centuries to come. I wish I had the wisdom to understand and discuss it withtheist and atheist alike, and to present my opinions here on this blog. But Ican do none of these things. I cannot tell you what happened, because theAtheist never showed up. Citing the immorality of the otherwise well-respected Christian,he declined.A chair was left empty for him should he change his mind. But he never did. TheChristian dismantled the Atheist’s written arguments with efficiency, and spenta few minutes discussing how groundless the accusations of his immorality were[lecture video].

Over the past few years, the self-titled “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennot and ChristopherHitchens) had been gaining fame by beating some of the smartest Theists,pastors, scientists and philosophers. They believed that Atheism was morerational, and so accepted debates with most anyone in the spirit of freethinking. Their books were New York Times bestsellers (most notably “The God Delusion” by Dawkins ~2.5 million copies and “God is not Great” by Hitchens).And then a Christian champion arose, William Lane Craig [2]. He debated dozensof atheists before getting noticed by the Four Horsemen. Of them, he first hechallenged Hitchens to debate in 2009. And, though there’s no official judge inthese debates, it is clear that he won (Hitchens conceded his closing statement; debate video). Then he challenged Harris and won (rarely are you ever able to show that your opponent’s view is not just wrongin its premises, but is logically false; debate video).Most recently, he planned a trip to Oxford, and everybody was waiting withnervous anticipation: how would he do against Dawkins? But the question wasnever answered. On October 25, 2011, Richard Dawkins refused to debate WilliamLane Craig. On October 25, 2011, we entered a new phase of the debate on God’sexistence. Up until that day, there was some question as to which side waswinning.

If Dawkins showed up and lost, I would say that it was just one debate. Thequestion as to “who’s winning?” would still be open. Both Atheism and Theism arecontending valiantly in the arena of ideas, sometimes winning and sometimeslosing. But Dawkins didn’t lose. He fled [3]. And, to be sure, many other braveAtheists in Britain did debate Craig, showing that the debate has not been finallysettled. But their leader left the field. And so we enter a new era where Atheistsnow have to explain to Theists that, unlike their leader, they really areintellectually serious.

This is one battle in the war of ideas. It is important in itself, but in partis part of a larger movement in higher thought back to God. Next post, I'll talk about the most important discipline and it's return to God.

[1] Lewis, CS. “The Screwtape Letters”

[2] Technically, he’s been “arising” for a few decades. But he really started to get notoriety more recently.
[3] Of course, he has plenty of reasons why he wasn’t there, ranging from “I’m busy” to “This Christian 'philosopher' is an apologist for genocide.” In his UK Guardian article he writes, “Would you shake hands with a man who could write stuff like that? Would you share a platform with him? I wouldn't, and I won't.” By one count, Dawkins has given 12 different excuses as to why he won't debate with Craig.

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - Theism in Philosophy and Science
Part 3 - Onward!

Dialogue on Suffering

2011-11-15T19:53:00.001-08:00

[Begin full fiction mode. This was based on nothing but my imagination. To pretend to be not totally arrogant, I’m going to put my arguments in the mouth of the character Paul. But even that’s pretty presumptuous. I suppose that’s an inherent problem with dialogue. It’s like playing chess with yourself. Of course you’re going to win. So watch as one figment of my imagination totally works another. So here goes another attempt at this medium:]

I was walking with my good friend Paul (he’s from a place called Tarsus, right off I-5, if you know where that is). We were enjoying the crisp January air when we saw our mutual friend, Job.

“Good day, Job!” said I.

“What is good about it?” he asked.

“Light and life and breath, to begin with,” said Paul. “We live in a wonderfully ordered world under an astonishing heaven ruled by a Good God.”

“Good God?” asked Job sarcastically. “How can you dare to say that? And to me, of all people? Don’t you know that He killed my ten children? Don’t you know that this has been my daily torture for these long years?”

“Dear Job,” said Paul, “I have wept with you about your children. And I have walked with you through those valleys. But this attitude is unbecoming. What alchemy has transmuted your sadness into anger? What has made the pure cold gold of mourning into the boiling lead of rage?”

“It is only rational,” Job retorted. “Rage is the only proper response to so blatant an offense. What have I done to deserve this? What possible good is it accomplishing? And even if there is some good, could it not be accomplished with less suffering?”

“These are all excellent questions,” said Paul. “To answer them, I will need to tell a story and you will need to do a bit of imagining. Would you like me to answer your questions?”

“Though I know it is a dangerous thing to do with you, I will play your game.”

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Paul. “Imagine a woman is pregnant. The pregnancy is complicated and the woman dies in childbirth. The woman’s husband and now father of the child names him Jamal. Jamal’s doctors notice that he looks blue. He is worked up and diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot, a birth defect of the heart. Untreated, Jamal has slightly better than even odds that he’ll make it to his fourth birthday and almost no chance of seeing adulthood. The doctors tell Jamal’s father that there is a cure, but it will require multiple, painful heart surgeries. What should Jamal’s father do?”

“He should get the surgeries.”

“But wait,” said Paul. “He is causing terrible pain to his own son. He’ll have to spend countless days in a nightmarish hospital, away from the sounds and sights and smells of home. It will involve a hundred needle sticks that Jamal will not understand, tape and tubes, beeping and buzzing. For his first few years of life, Jamal will several times be thrown into a whirlpool of confusion and pain.”

“Yes. But it will be for his own good. Several short years of pain will lead to a tenfold longer life.”

“Alright. But shouldn’t we get the consent of someone before performing a procedure on them?” asked Paul.

“If it is possible. But here, it’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because Jamal cannot understand,” said Job. “He doesn’t understand about the genetic inheritance patterns, ventral septal defects, the failure to adequately oxygenate blood. He can’t even know about adequate hydration and the need for a needle stick and IV fluids, let alone the complexities of cardiothoracic surgery. ‘Informed consent,’ requires that a person understand at least the very basics of their condition and the procedure. Jamal, being a newborn, cannot understand these things. His father must make the decision for him.”

“So you think that when someone cannot give informed consent, the decision should fall to another?”

“Yes. In this case, the father is clearly the one who has the responsibility to care for him and to make decisions on his behalf until he is old enough to make his own decisions.”

“So now imagine,” said Paul, “that it’s four years down the road, and though he should be cured, Jamal’s case is complicated and he needs one final surgery. He’s now old enough to fear hospitals and hate doctors. Jamal’s father tells him, ‘Jamal, we need to go to the hospital again to get you healthy.’ This time Jamal pleads, ‘No! I won’t go! It hurts! Why are you hurting me, Daddy?’ What could the father reply? After the reply, what should he do?”

“There isn’t much he could say that would satisfy Jamal. He could say, ‘Jamal, I know it hurts, but it is what is best for you. Do not worry, because I will be there with you, and I will suffer with you.’ And then, whether Jamal likes this answer or not, he should still take him for the surgery.”

“So even in this case when Jamal has clearly against the idea, his father should do his best to explain it, promise to be with him, and do it anyways.”

“Yes.”

“So,” said Paul, “We have established that because a child lacks understanding, certain decisions should be made on his behalf. Now what if Jamal asked, ‘Daddy, if I have to go, can you ask the doctors to make it hurt less?’”

“The father should reply, “Jamal, they are already doing everything they can to make it hurt less. The cure for your sickness requires a lot of pain. If there were a better cure, don’t you think I would have chosen it?’”

“So long as the father is minimizing pain in his attempt to reach a good end for his son, he is justified in causing it. Is Jamal capable of knowing if a given needle stick is a required part of his medical care?”

“Of course not,” said Job.

“What about the number of surgeries? Can he know by the apparently gratuitous number of his surgeries that his father is actually not loving?”

“It would be impossible. Such a question is difficult for health policy experts, let alone for four-year-old children.”

“It this is impossible, wouldn’t it also be impossible for him to then to know that his father loves him?” Paul asked.

“No. Jamal can see it. He can feel it. Most of all, when he sees his father suffer with him. When he cries at a prick, his father’s face looks as if it were hurt. The promise I put in the father’s mouth at the beginning, that he would always be with Jamal, is perhaps the greatest proof of love when it is fulfilled.”

“But can he prove that his father loves him?”

“Love is not the sort of thing that can be demonstrated by mathematical or scientific proof. It is something that is sensed on a deeper level. Jamal can know it, but he cannot prove it.”

“So,” said Paul, “We’ve established that the father should act in Jamal’s best interest, regardless of how painful it might be.”

“Yes.”

“And we’ve agreed that Jamal would have no adequate understanding of his condition to make any judgments.”

“Yes.”

“And finally, we’ve shown that even though he lacks understanding, he can still know that his father loves him through his pain.”

“Yes.”

“Now allow me to tell the story in a different way,” said Paul. “What if instead of a newborn named ‘Jamal’ we were talking about an adult named ‘Job.’ And instead of an earthly father, we were talking about God. A physical birth defect in the heart becomes a spiritual one. Jamal suffers for four years to gain 70 of life; Job suffers for 80 years to gain a millennium of life and more. Job, how is your position any different from Jamal’s?”

Job was silent for several minutes. His eyes darted to and fro, searching for an escape but finding none. Finally, with a reluctant tone, Job said, “I see your point: I am Jamal. I will have to reflect on this.”

The three of us walked along the road together, enjoying the warm sun and bright blue sky.

Dialogue on God’s Hair Color

2011-11-09T00:28:00.000-08:00

I was recently having a discussion with a friend about God and he objected, “But what about God being a man? Surely you don’t think he’s sitting on some throne up in the sky, do you?” The following is inspired by a real conversation, but as I have the personal memory of a goldfish, I’m going to kinda have to make up most of it. And in attempting to remember a real dialogue I’ll probably end up like Eric Cartman) and/or Plato in making my position sound totally awesome and my discussant a total fool. But this is not reality, and my apologies to my real-life discussant. I might try this style more often, especially as I have other real life events to inspire them.

So as I was saying, my friend asked me “But what about God being a man? Surely you don’t think he’s some bearded man sitting on a throne up in the sky, do you?”

I thought about it for a minute, noting how my discussant intentionally tried to make it sound as ridiculous an idea as possible. And I said with confidence, “Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”

And then there was a wonderful silence. I’m beginning to see why Jesus said shocking things all the time. It really bothered me at one point. I used to think, “Why don’t you just answer them straight? Really, Jesus? I could have given a clearer answer in line with Christian Orthodoxy than you just did.” And perhaps I could have. But what I’m beginning to realize is that it’s not all about true information. Presentation matters.

After the silence, he asked a real question. Or rather, he asked a question whose answer he was going to pay attention to: “Why?”

I asked him, “Do you think the idea of God is something easy or hard to understand?”

“It’s very hard. Maybe even impossible.”

“Harder than physics?”

“Much harder.”

“I agree,” I said. “When we try to understand physics, we have to use symbols and metaphors. Gravity works like a bowling ball resting on a rubber sheet; a marble will ‘fall’ into its divot. Relativity can be understood by imagining twin astronauts. And so on.”

“OK. But what does that have to do with God?”

“Because,” I said, “If we think God is harder to understand than physics, then wouldn’t it be reasonable to try to understand what we can of Him using similar tools?”

“Sure.”

“So could I say, ‘Imagine God has a white beard’?”

“Yes, but he or she or it doesn’t. It’s above that.”

“And gravity isn’t a rubber sheet. I said, ‘imagine’.”

“OK. God has a white beard.”

“What does a white beard mean?”

“Male. Unshaven.”

“Think literary. What attributes might an author be communicating if he gives a character a white beard, as opposed to, say, a black beard, or a clean chin?”

“Age. Maybe wisdom.”

“Good,” I said, “So the visual image communicates something about Him.”

“And that’s another thing. Why do you keep saying ‘Him’. The concept is above such crude biological concepts. God is not a man.”

“Isn’t He?” I asked. “Does manhood communicate anything? Would the image be different if it were a woman sitting on the throne?”

“Well, I suppose.”

“What if it were not a man or a woman, but energy. Would that image be more or less relatable?”

“Less.”

“So,” I said, “The image of God as a white-haired old man sitting on a throne says to the reader, ‘God is like a wise old king,’ which we can imagine, even if God’s true nature is unimaginable.”

“I envision God genderless. Why does God have to be a man?”

“He doesn’t have to be anything.” I said, “The hero of a story could have black hair or brown hair. It’s a story. The writer may give him black hair to go along with his mysterious nature, or brown hair to match his boots and ground him. God doesn’t have to be white-haired. But in Daniel 7, He is. It’s less useful to complain, “Why does he have to be white-haired?” and more useful to ask, “Why is he white-haired?” Perhaps we need to think of God less like grown-ups arguing theology and more like kids reading a story. And a kid reading that God is a man might think, ‘God is a man like Dad! He must be strong and smart and brave, and good at keeping the bad guys away and making sure there’s no monsters under the bed.’ In fact, on this attribute, God was not just pictured as a man, but took on the flesh of a first-century Jewish man.”

“But it seems so provincial! How can God just pick one race? Isn’t he more universal?”

“It’s a suit. We can’t see God in heaven, so he ‘clothes’ Himself with humanity. He puts on a suit so that we can better understand him, so that we can talk to Him face-to-face.”

“But why can’t it be another color?”

“Which would you prefer?”

“I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s a little arbitrary?”

“Definitely,” I said. “But He just as well might have picked another color suit and you could justly ask why He hadn’t put on the one He did. Keeping on the suit analogy, if He chose to mix all dyes, it would be a black suit; if He left it undyed, it would be a white suit. Even if we could understand “every color” or “no color,” black and white are both still colors. Perhaps He could’ve picked a transparent suit, but then we’re back where we started: an incomprehensible, invisible God. He’s gotta wear something. And He happened to wear the First-Century-Jewish-Man-In-Palestine suit.”

“So you’re saying that we can learn something from a first century Jewish man in Palestine?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

Renewing of the Mind (Part 1) Phil 4:5-7

2011-10-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

I've recently been more and more interested in Psychiatry and specifically in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I’ve had several intriguing conversations with Jeffrey Schwarz (who showed the brain changes that occur with CBT) and I’ve studied under David Burns (most famously of Feeling Good) and his TEAM therapy. CBT as I understand it, essentially focuses on intentionally practicing certain thoughts. The idea is that many mental illnesses are at their core an irrational belief which leads to a habit of bad thinking. If this irrational belief can be identified, confronted with rationality, and then finally ousted through practice of right thinking, there will be some healing. Essentially, the theory asserts that you can choose your thoughts, and so by indirect consequence, you can choose your moods. If you think depressing thoughts, you will wind up depressed. If you think pleasant thoughts, you won’t. The role of the therapist is to help teach a person to identify the irrational thoughts and practice rational ones.

[Now please note: this is what I have learned from two specific thinkers in CBT. CBT doesn’t strike me as a standardized orthodoxy, so these observations might not be true elsewhere, and as I am only a neophyte, it might not even be true here.]

I was reading in Philippians yesterday and chapter 4 really jumped out at me because it seemed that Paul in the First Century had figured out CBT. This will begin a long-running series on Psychotherapy in the Bible. I’ve had the thought before, but decided “here” was as good a place as any to start. If you have other passages that speak to this question, please let me know and I’ll (eventually) write about them. I’d be interested to collect these from other traditions, literature and philosophy. So if you’re a Shakespeare scholar, send some passages my way. Or if you know about parallel passages in the Koran, please let me know.

5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4, ESV)

The sections starts off with “reasonableness,” and moves immediately to anxiety. The alternative to anxiety is prayer with thanksgiving. The immediate consequence of this thankful prayer is the peace of God. And this peace itself becomes a defense of both the heart and the mind.

One of the major ‘irrationalities’ that cause anxiety is the desire to control. What if I fail that test? It’s Friday night and I’m out of town; what is she doing right now? I don’t know everyone at the party; what if they don’t like me? I’m speaking in five minutes; what if I say something stupid? What if the plane crashes? Everyone has the temptation to fall into these anxious thoughts. What does Paul advise? Pray. Give it to God.

What does that do? It helps you realize that it’s in God’s hands, anyways (everything is, after all). Kneeling before the Throne Room of the Universe, one feels humble; not the big shot who has something to prove. And then when one rises from prayer, and walks out of the Throne Room, one realizes that one was just in the THRONE ROOM OF THE UNIVERSE. What problem could possibly concern Heaven? And what problem could possibly concern one of its citizens?

Also, we can’t forget the thankfulness. No matter how bad things get, every Christian can open his prayer with: “Thank you Father, for life and breath and salvation.” Though every once in a while you get a man like Job, most can go a lot further than that prayer. Most can be thankful for family, health and even wealth. Most have some hint of nature (sun or stars or sky if nothing else) that they can be thankful for.

Paul tells us to pray a lot. He tells us to practice this set of thoughts and attitudes. And when we do this, we’ll be armored from further assault to both heart (emotions) and mind. Exactly in agreement with CBT, Paul says that something you practice by conscious effort (prayer) will be a guard against future perturbation of mood (“heart”) and thought (“mind”).

So let’s imagine our first character, overwhelmed with feelings of anxiety for an upcoming exam. He is anxious probably because he’s grasping onto his pride and playing out the worst case-scenario in his mind, over and over again. He’s imagining getting the test back, with a big “F” on it, and his having to take the course again, and lose his scholarships, and be ridiculed by friends, and have to go home and tell his parents, and not get into medical school, and, and, and… Now let’s let him pray:

Father, I thank you for life and breath and salvation. I thank you that you have given me the opportunity to study at this wonderful school, that you’ve given me friends that believe in me and a family that loves me. Thank you for this beautiful day, the warm sun and calm green trees. I lift up this exam to you. I have been diligent in my preparation; I have studied what I have studied and done all that I can. And so now I pray that you give me success. Passing this exam will ultimately help me serve your children by entering medical school. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done: I trust that you will be with me and will do what’s best for me, be it to fail this exam or to pass. Amen.

If our young friend prays this prayer (or others like it) for 15 minutes a day, he’ll have a lot harder time stressing out about the exam. It’s in God’s hands. He’s accepted the possibility that he might fail, but he’s not worried about that either. On top of it all, he began with gratitude; even this alone will put him in a better mood than when he started.

The pattern of Philippians 4:5-7 is brilliant and powerful:
1. Begin with being reasonable.
2. Don’t worry.
3. Instead, pray and be thankful.
4. This will guard your heart and mind.

New-found Freedom to Think in Medical School

2011-10-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a conversation with one of my attending physicians. His critique of my presentation was the only thing I would ever be praised for before: exhaustiveness. “What lab data do you want? What do you think is relevant?”

It’s a question I haven’t really had to answer before. I’m used to being asked, “What’s the bilirubin?” Or listing off all the values in the complete metabolic panel. But which to I think are presently relevant? Well, I’m not really sure. I’d have to think about it.

To think about it

That’s exactly what is finally being asked of me. Not “Memorize this” or “Learn this physiology” but finally, “Figure out this clinical problem.” Of course, all the memorizing and learning is necessary for there to be any problem solving. But there has been an abrupt change in the focus.

In our Practice of Medicine course, we would sometimes take 4 hours to go through a single case. Many of the exercises involved creating comically exhaustive differential diagnoses or similar tasks. Criticism would be mainly for being not exhaustive enough. Of course this exercise in recall is useful in helping us learn the common conditions associated with symptoms, but it’s still just recall. Now I have been asked to vet the list myself.

I have been waiting for two years to hear someone say “Think!” I’m no longer evaluated purely on conformity to a rubric, on my ability to list off everything that might possibly cause jaundice ever. It’s objective, to be sure. But it’s not all that doctors actually do. Doctors think. And when they tell other doctors what they’re thinking, they do not behave like patients with head trauma, with comatose brains, vomiting up (and possibly aspirating) undigested information.

For medical training, the beating heart of the medical student, with its passions and emotions, was put into arrest so that we could be “objective.” The medical student reports the information without passion or emotion (for these, of course, would “cloud” judgment). As a result, his verbal presentation is given in a monotone voice with exactly as much life as his heart has that is as flat as his EKG. But to become a real doctor, the student’s heart must be shocked back to life. He must take on bias, bias for his patient and for truth). He must start to care about what the diagnosis is. He must care enough to argue for his patient, to defend his view on the diagnosis, and to persuade others that he is right. No longer are patients presented as a list of facts; they are presented in a story.

And only human beings, alert and oriented with beating hearts, can tell stories. And they do tell stories. Doctors tell stories. And medical students should pay attention, for this will help them to emerge from the stasis that their first two years have put them into.

It’s never pleasant receiving criticism. But the criticism I got last week shocked me back to life. It was liberating! I could and I should behave like a real doctor now, not just a mindless, heartless medical student. I hope that my mind remains alert and my heart stays beating.

Milestone

2011-10-09T17:46:00.001-07:00

Blogs are funny things and because you are publisher, editor and author, a personal blog is always “The Number One Source For What I Happen to be Thinking About” (to use the words of one of my favorite bloggers, BradleyWright). Right now, I am thinking about writing, and specifically (because I like to think about me a lot) my writing. This is the 200^th Arena-Man post. And this week, the 10,000^th visitor visited. A vast majority of this traffic was since I started posting consistently in January (and, I think, this was the wrong webpage for many a poor Googler). I might meta-blog too much (i.e. blog about blogging). But it’s my blog, so I can meta if I want to.

I’ve recently been approached by a few friends and acquaintances and thanked for my thoughts or for encouragement via Blog. I’m usually not quite sure how to feel about it. Firstly, it’s a bit startling to realize that real people actually read my stuff. When I spit out a few paragraphs on this or that subject, apparently it might actually have implications. It’s also strange to know that people are in my head; by my writing, I have opened the window of my soul and let strangers peep in. This creates an unusual sort of relationship: one that is unidirectional. And I suppose this has always been true of writing. The thoughts or ideas or visions of one person are transformed into black ink on white paper (or in your case, photons from a monitor) which are sensed by the retinas of another, and translated back into an idea. You send paper by mail, data by internet, and ideas by writing.

Writing allows for worldview to be shared. It allows the eyeballs through which one person understands the world to be shared by others. But unlike conversation, the relationship is unidirectional. The reader gains something from the writer, but the writer learns nothing of the reader (except, usually, how many companions he has; that is, the number of books sold, page-views, etc). And this has traditionally been the only way.

But the Internet has allowed for a new paradigm. It has allowed for readers to directly interact with the writer, and in real time. Not only does the writer transmit his ideas, but readers can reply with their reactions. Requests for clarification, challenges, encouragements. The little “comments” box at the bottom of posts and the “share” button of Facebook allows for conversation. It allows aspiring writers to express themselves in a single line or several. It allows those who want to transmit the ideas they agree with to their friends. And it allows enemies (real or philosophical) to engage directly. It allows for strangers from around the world to sit down to a cup of tea and discuss ideas like neighbors and friends, or to debate in chivalry, like esteemed opponents.

As you might know, discussion on deep questions is one of my favorite things to do. I get so excited when I find out someone has initiated a discussion; someone has become that first commenter, that first person to step out of the anonymous crowd into the Arena. Consider the discussion that took place when I discussed Fairy Tale Romance. I was so encouraged to hear from people I hadn’t talked to in forever. And I learned something from them. What had been a theory in my head could be interpreted in light of others’ experience. A discussion on Scientific Faith and on Alexandra Wallace have been electric, and in both cases, my argument was challenged, clarified, and through the conflict, strengthened.

I realize that writing is something I really enjoy and really want to get better at. And it makes me happy that what has been a hobby of mine has been an encouragement to others. Thanks for reading! I hope to hear from you in the comments.

Beauty Fast

2011-10-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

Sterile floors. Sterile hands. Sterile computers. Sterile people. White walls. White ceiling tiles. White tile. All illuminated by fluorescent white lights. Straight halls, every room like every other. Uniforms. Doctors: Blue scrubs, white coats. Patients: hospital gowns (with open back). Beeping monitors. Beeping pagers. Beeping intercom. Beeping, beeping, never-heeded, never-ceasing beeping! An arms race of volume and pitch! No music, not even in doctors’ voices. They are flat and sharp like scalpels. No touch but through breathless gloves. Dry hands, chapped by alcohol sanitizer. And the smell. The musty smell of the hospital interrupted only by periodic nasal stabs by the alcohol on the way in and out of every room. And the occasional whiff of urine or feces or vomit. These are the ingredients of the Hospital Aesthetic.

And so after six days of this, I was hungry, but not for food. I was hungry for something else. My soul needed a drink. I needed transcendence.

I went to church and two lines into the first song, I was struck by the beauty and truth of it and I shed a tear. I felt great joy because of a story that was told. I felt deep humility and power in Communion. I returned home and, it being Sunday and a beautiful day, I had an overwhelming and unexplained urge to go for a bike ride. So I hopped on my bike and rode a few miles down the road. I thought of beautiful places on campus and then biked to them to take in more beauty.

The straight lines and curves of the Stanford arches towered above me, showing me my smallness. The tiny little leaves whirled around me, showing me my greatness. The tan brick, blue sky, yellow sun, green trees, black road, white clouds. The smell of dirt and a thousand thousand plants. Wet hands from sweat, unwashed and greasy from the bike. The bright sun, so bright I had to squint. A full spectrum of light, to make the bluish bulbs of the hospital seem silly, like the photocopy of a diamond. The sun showed through in beams and streaks, through the canopy of the endless oaks.

I ate the experience of today like a starving man. My eyes drank in the light like a lost man drinks an oasis. When I had finished, I was rejuvenated. I had taken my fill. And I am ready to endure another week of sterility.

The body withers away if it lacks food; the immune system weakens, the strength fades. What about a soul? What would happen to a person who is starved of transcendence, who never sees beauty, who never sees something so beautiful that it brings tears? Could this weaken a soul (psyche) as starvation of food weakens a body? What happens to our psychic immune system when we are not properly nourished?

The Power of Forgiveness (Part 5)

2011-09-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

The Light (taken in Kurialand in Kenya above my favorite valley)

I remember talking with a friend about forgiveness and she was skeptical of the idea because she thought it would make her weak. After all, the one who offended her might see it as weakness. He might continue to take advantage of her goodness. She reasoned that force must be met with force, not forgiveness.

In Alabama, an army of pedestrians rose up and defeated a powerful public institution in one town. Later, all across the South, thousands rushed to volunteer in this army, swelling the ranks of soldiers. This unarmed army fought against enemies who had on their side fire hoses, German Shepherds, guns, firebombs and perhaps most fearfully, the Law.

The battles raged on, but the guns and bombs didn’t seem to matter. That army could not be stopped because they were immune to the weapons of their enemies. The proverbial sword still slashed and still drew blood. But suddenly, drawing blood didn’t matter. It seemed that they possessed a far more subtle power, a deeper magic. They were made more powerful by their wounds. Like Obi Wan when Darth Vader struck him down, these brave soldiers gained power with every baton blow, imprisonment and dog bite. Every weapon of their enemies was powerless.

Those who opposed that Southern army thought that men are ruled by fear, that hatred and violence are the ultimate weapons. But that army knew something more powerful, more unstoppable than fear. They were ruled by hope. And to the despair of their enemies, they wielded the most powerful weapon of all: love. Consider the words of one of their generals:

...throw us in jail and we will still love you. Threaten our children and bomb our homes and our churches and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half-dead, and as difficult as that is, we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer and one day we will win our freedom.

This preacher started his statement the way he did because his family was threatened. His house was bombed. This man understood the secret and unstoppable power of forgiveness and love. Because he knew that secret, he did wear down his enemies by his ability to suffer, he and those he led. In the end, Dr. Martin Luther King and those who followed him were ultimately victorious (though skirmishes still persist today).

One of the great secrets of this life is that when we are hurt, we have all the power. We have the power to hold onto the offense, grasping it like a thumb screw in a torture device. But we may, if we choose, unscrew it; we may release the one over whom we have power. And by our mercy, we may gain a brother. Obi Wan’s post-death powers kinda sucked. But for us, when we are hurt, we gain the power to draw a person into our family, the Family of God, by forgiveness. If we hold onto an offense, two people are enslaved: we become enslaved to managing the debt, and we gain a slave by his debt. When we forgive, two people are freed: ourselves and our newfound brother.

And this is what makes heaven possible. Esau wanted to murder Jacob his brother; there would be nowhere on earth or in heaven where he would be free if he held onto his grudge. Heaven is a place for free men and free women; slaves of hatred or greed or lust cannot enter. And perhaps this is for the protection of the slaves; it would not be paradise for Esau to spend all eternity with his sworn enemy, now immortal and un-murderable. But after he forgave his brother, eternity with one he loved would indeed be paradise. The same goes for every grudge and affair and war.

Jesus sets the bar pretty high. “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This is why Jesus was so serious about forgiveness being a requirement for heaven. A person cannot take a grudge past the pearly gates. If he is to enter, he must leave it at the door. A burden so large just won’t fit. In the end, Hell will have no veto on Heaven.

In Heaven (that is, when Heaven comes down to Earth), there will be many sets of enemies mutually present. There will be Romans and Vandals; there will be invaders and invaded; there will be the cheated on and cheaters; there will be Nazis and Jews; there will be white plantation owners and black slaves; there will be robbers and the robbed; there will be murders and the murdered; there will even be Dodgers fans and Giants fans. How can it be paradise for them all? Why won’t the joy of some of them cause the misery of others? How can all these enemies share the same space? Only through forgiveness.

And so we may all enter together into the Light of Forgiveness. We all have offended our brothers and sisters and friends and enemies and mothers and fathers and even God. When we ask for forgiveness, we can all have debts forgiven. And when we bind together others of our brethren, drawing them in when we forgive them, we may leave at the great gates of towering pearl, all our debts: those that we owe to others, and those that others owe to us. This great pile of unforgiveness, hideous, dark and stinking, will be left behind to be burned outside the City like refuse. Then we will stand there before those wonderful and shining off-white gates before the City of God, and they will open before us. And we will be dazzled by the Light of God, unencumbered by our own debts or even our heavy book of debts owed to us. And then, to the sound of trumpets, we will run together into that glorious Light, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty that we’ll be free at last.

"On Forgiveness" Table of Contents

Part 1 - A Story

Part 2 - Short Cuts - What Forgiveness Isn't

Part 3 - Straight and Narrow - What Forgiveness Is

Part 4 - Vengence Cancer - Why Forgive?

Part 5 - The Power of Forgiveness

Vengeance Cancer – Why Forgive? (Part 4)

2011-09-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

Mary Johnson’s only son was murdered by Oshea Israel. What would you do? How would you feel? How long would you hold onto the rage and hatred? I think most of us would probably hang onto it for a long time. But Mary decided to live our her faith. She forgave Oshea and now treats him like her own son. She said:

Unforgiveness is like cancer. It will eat you from the inside out. It's not about that other person, me forgiving him does not diminish what he's done. Yes, he murdered my son - but the forgiveness is for me. It's for me.

When we are hurt by another, it’s like we’ve contracted a cancer. It is a malignancy that grows inside us so long as we refuse to acknowledge it is there. As soon as we do, we must cut it out. If it is bad, we need to go through a long and painful process of chemotherapy, purging it from the multitude of locations in our life that it has spread. If we deny it exists, it grows. If we cover the symptoms, it grows. If we do anything but cut it out, it grows. We have no other options if we are to live. We must cut it out.

We think we should forgive others for their sake. After all, they hurt us. And forgiveness does indeed liberate others. But forgiveness also liberates us. We become free when we free others. Someone once said that revenge is a poison you drink thinking it will kill another. Perhaps the greatest benefit of forgiveness is that you can be free from the wrongs of others.

If you refuse to forgive, you are a slave to them. They, your enemies, cause you distress even after they’re done interacting with you. As a master over a natural slave, they are in your head, affecting your mood, influencing your behavior. And so we have a world of slaves, people unwilling to forgive.

Nelson Mandela, a powerful opponent of Apartheid in South Africa was in prison 27 years for his work. And doubtless he suffered terribly at the hands of his jailers. Upon gaining his freedom, he said:

When I was walking out of my compound for the last time, I said to myself, they've had you 27 years. If you hate them when you get through that door, they will still have you. I wanted to be free, and so I let it go.

We must forgive if we are to be free. We must forgive if we are to cut out the cancer. We must forgive if we are to have life, and to have it more abundantly.

"On Forgiveness" Table of Contents

Part 1 - A Story

Part 2 - Short Cuts - What Forgiveness Isn't

Part 3 - Straight and Narrow - What Forgiveness Is

Part 4 - Vengence Cancer - Why Forgive?

Part 5 - The Power of Forgiveness

The Straight and Narrow – What Forgiveness Is (Part 3)

2011-09-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Money! (Kenyan Shillings)

So what is it that we’re supposed to do? Being Christian, I’m going to start with the Bible (and if anyone wants to summarize another holy book in a paragraph, I’d happily post it here). Jesus tells us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”. This is sometimes translated ‘trespass’, but I like the financial metaphor better. We (especially Americans) understand what it’s like to have debt. We’re told to pray that those debts we hold before God are cancelled, forgiven. And we’re told to give the same courtesy to those who have withdrawn from our goodwill. Peter once asked Jesus for an upper limit to forgiveness (John might have been getting on his nerves AGAIN and he was sick and tired of it). He tried to high-ball it and suggests, “Even up to seven times?” Jesus, with his usual wit, says the number is more like, “Seven times seventy times.” Jesus explains elsewhere that our forgiving others is a requirement for entrance into the Kingdom of God.

But what does it mean to forgive? The New Testament uses aphiēmi, meaning literally, “To send away.” Forgiveness is to count it as loss. If it is a debt, it is written off. It goes into the “business losses” for the year. It cannot be repaid because it no longer exists. You can never send a collections agency after it. It is finished. It is not forgotten, for you have a record of your generosity; a ledger recording your heavy losses. If it is a wound, it is healed. It is not tender, red, infected, or pussing. It is healed. And healed doesn’t mean invisible. Wounds, when cleaned, leave scars. But they don’t leave gangrene.

Consider the words of Desmond Tutu, the Anglican bishop who fought apartheid in South Africa and one who has great experience with wicked, wicked deeds:

Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.

Forgiveness is not easy. It may be the hardest thing we’re ever asked to do in this life. It’s one of those things we’re asked to do as Christians that we can only advance toward and rarely (if ever) fully achieve in this life. Or perhaps more accurately, we can achieve it fully only for a moment; the more mature we are, the more of our moments we can achieve it. I categorize it with Jesus ridiculous command to, “Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect”. So if you haven’t mastered it yet, don’t get too worried.

What’s so hard about it? It means that you have to take what is your right, and give it up. You have to humble yourself to the one who hurt you. You are making your position equal again with the one who owes you; relatively, by lifting your debtor up, you no longer can stand above him. And for a proud person, this is simply impossible.

But I think the hardest part about forgiveness is identifying why something hurt. To clean all the dirt and filth out of a wound, we must wash the wound with the salt of self-examination. Some of the filth of the wound, and some of the pain, is our own. It was on us before the wound was made. We must scrub away all the blackness and scab and grime, until we get to fresh, clean blood. And this hurts.

So you were insulted. Why isn’t your own opinion of yourself before Heaven enough? Why are you placing your self-confidence in the mouth of your insulter?

So you were robbed. Why are you upset at financial loss if you have placed your faith in Heavenly things?

So your trust was betrayed. Haven’t you also betrayed others? What right have you to be self-righteous against your betrayer?

How do we know we’ve forgiven? I think a fair test is one proposed by Reformed theologian Lewis Smedes, “You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.”Love is a good proxy for forgiveness. I think also pain is a good measure, certainly for people early in their walk, maybe for all. If it didn’t bleed, you didn’t scrub hard enough.

Forgiveness hurts. Perhaps that’s one thing that all the countless animal sacrifices in ages past were meant to teach: forgiveness is messy. It’s costly. It’s bloody. But it must be. It’s much easier to pretend. Turning a blind eye to wrong is something that our culture seems particularly adept at. But as Tutu explains above, pretending to forgive, or avoiding forgiving are not forgiveness. And only by forgiveness will we ever find true healing.

"On Forgiveness" Table of Contents

Part 1 - A Story

Part 2 - Short Cuts - What Forgiveness Isn't

Part 3 - Straight and Narrow - What Forgiveness Is

Part 4 - Vengence Cancer - Why Forgive?

Part 5 - The Power of Forgiveness

Short Cuts – What Forgiveness Isn’t (Part 2)

2011-09-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

Shortcut through a cornfield

Forgiveness. We say the word a lot, but I don’t think many people really believe in it. I suggested once that someone forgive her friend, I quoted Jesus’ advice, and said that it would help with reconciliation. She was skeptical and asked, “Sure it’s true. But it won’t work. Not in real life. Will it?” Forgiveness might be a nice concept, but what are we supposed to do? What is forgiveness? Is it practical?

Before we talk about what forgiveness is, I’m going to talk about what it isn’t. There are a lot of ways to short-cut forgiveness. These allow us to look really righteous without the hard work. Too many people, especially good Christian people, are far too quick to say, “I forgive you” or to apologize without forgiving and think the issue settled. When we take the short cut, we end up lost in a land of vengeance and hatred.

One way we can short-cut forgiveness is by partial forgiveness. In the story of the son who plundered the family business, most of us would probably go the partial forgiveness. We forgive enough to get him under our thumb as an employee. But we certainly don’t forgive all. The son knows forever more that he is inadequate. And we know that we’re justified in being his master because of what he did. And there is no reconciliation. We would prefer a slave to a son.

Another way we can short-cut it is to say something that counts as an apology, but isn’t forgiveness. You can say, “It’s OK,” or worse, “No problem”/”It’s cool”. “It’s OK” may be most accurate, “Our relationship is now mediocre because of what you did to me,” but that’s not forgiveness. When one person incurs a debt, it’s not even anymore. One owes the other. “No problem,” is almost always a lie, an escape from having to actually do the hard work of forgiving. It was a problem. It did hurt you. Pretending like it didn’t hurt is the worst thing you can do. It leaves the debtor unforgiven and now somewhat sorry that he asked for forgiveness in the first place (after all, it was “no problem”).

True forgiveness requires the debt be acknowledged. It requires the offended to realize that he was offended, and to honestly come to terms with how bad it hurt. This is often a very difficult step because it means we have to know ourselves and think about our feelings. This is hard for Americans, and downright terrifying for American males. But think about it: financially, you can’t write off “business losses” on your taxes without known how much your business lost (or you’re cheating on your taxes… which is not the subject of this post). If you want to communicate about your imprudence in Vegas your statement, “I lost some money in Vegas” might mean “I lost 500 nickels in the slots in Vegas” or “I lost 500,000 dollars on roulette in Vegas”.

Like all human failures, there are plenty of great reasons to take the short-cut. First, we do it because it’s easier. Its hard work to hike down the straight and narrow trail of forgiveness; the smooth road of superficial apology is far easier. But there’s another great societal reason to take the short cut: Relativism. We’re taught from a young age that there is no such thing as sin or offense or debt: the feelings of being offended are imaginary, irrational constructions of a moralistic society.

The problem with this is that we cannot, try as we might, believe that Offenses are imaginary. Everyone, when he bothers to consult his own experience, knows that offenses are real. Even those who firmly deny an objective moral realm have the real subjective experience of being hurt, of being owed something by another. Whatever its origin (societal programming, human instinct, or from On High), we feel bad when another person hurts us.

And so we are stuck. We feel bad when we are hurt; we make others feel bad when we hurt them. And it doesn’t get better with apology. In fact, it makes it worse. With short cuts, we live in a world of make-believe, living like we have the sublime thing when we don’t. We settle for quick and superficial ‘reconciliation’ and give up hope on deep and lasting reunion.

"On Forgiveness" Table of Contents

Part 1 - A Story

Part 2 - Short Cuts - What Forgiveness Isn't

Part 3 - Straight and Narrow - What Forgiveness Is

Part 4 - Vengence Cancer - Why Forgive?

Part 5 - The Power of Forgiveness

On Forgiveness: A Story (Part 1)

2011-09-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

A son once disgraced his family. He publicly shamed his father and plundered the family business. He disowned his family and left home, taking the money that had taken two generations to accumulate, years of work by his father and grandfather, blowing it in a year (think Harry and Floyd in Dumb and Dumber if it were R-rated). At the end of the year, he was jobless, homeless and hungry. The economy had soured, and he found in a real financial mess.

Out of options and ideas, he thought about going back home. He considered applying for a job at his dad’s company. Maybe his dad would let him have a minimum-wage job. But at least he’d have benefits. His dad was a good employer. At least there he’d be taken care of. But how could he show his face there? He had spent the profits of the last decade in a single year. He had disowned his family and embarrassed them terribly. He figured he had nothing to lose, and made for home.

When he arrived, his father saw him. If you were the father, what would you do? Could you forgive him? Should you forgive him?

I think this question is at the heart of a lot of human problems. The more generous of us might grant his request and put the son to manual labor. He didn’t even deserve that, but we’re good people. Many wouldn’t even grant him that. He had his chance and he blew it. He made his bed; now let him sleep in it. He wanted to disown the family? Fine. Now let him be an orphan.

But why? Why would we treat him like we do? Because we’re all keeping score. The son has a debt to the family, and it hasn’t been paid. In his case, because of the debt is too large, it could never really be paid. And so we think he should be treated as what he is: a debtor; one who must work for us because he owes us.

But the story doesn’t end like we would end it. The father sees the son coming in to ask for the minimum-wage job. The son begins to ask, but the father cuts him off, hugs him tightly and restores his managerial position as if nothing had happened. He calls all the family friends to tell them that his son returned and invites them all over immediately to celebrate. He exclaims, “My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found!”

What is the old man thinking? What did he do? And why did he do it? He forgave his son. His property was lost.

"On Forgiveness" Table of Contents

Part 1 - A Story

Part 2 - Short Cuts - What Forgiveness Isn't

Part 3 - Straight and Narrow - What Forgiveness Is

Part 4 - Vengence Cancer - Why Forgive?

Part 5 - The Power of Forgiveness

A Review – “Revolt in 2100” by Robert A Heinlein

2011-09-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

Introduction

If you love liberty, science, or good stories, you’ll love “Revolt in 2100”. What a ride! Great characters, compelling situations, great imagination and predictive ability (especially for being written in 1940). And in case you haven’t read my other book reports, SPOILER ALERT!

The setting is an America has become a (roughly) Protestant Theocracy that is oppressing the people. The protagonist is a naïve soldier who loves his country and his church who becomes disillusioned with it rather quickly as the book progresses, eventually joining the rebellion.

Reading the book was downright fun. Secret societies, military tactics and strategy (using military units that don’t yet exist), intrigue, betrayal, passwords, propaganda. It was a blast! It was able to communicate a message that, in the end, was contrary to my own opinion, but that didn’t stop me from having a good time hearing about it. This is the best of rhetoric, the best of persuasive writing. I hope to write someday like Heinlein. So I must say I enjoyed the book, despite the core message of the book being that people like me are what’s wrong with the world.

I must admit I really love the imagery of the “Church Militant” as GK Chesterton describes or in CS Lewis’ words the Church that is, “…spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.”; the victorious Church which is able to go out like sheep to the slaughter in the first few centuries AD and the Church that is able to keep its doctrines despite the multitude of challenges throughout the centuries. Heinlein, intentionally I think, made me start with some warm feelings about his imaginary state, and then crushed them by showing how terrible a thing it would be when humans rule the earth in God’s name without His guidance.

Philosophy

One thing that surprised me throughout the book was how much I agreed with him. His criticisms of the corruption, the greed, the wickedness of the church in that imaginary world (and in this real one) are valid. Like reading Ayn Rand, I felt like I was in an ignored observer. Where was the rational Christian in the story? But I will admit that we’re not very common, and it might be possible for Heinlein not to have met one of us.

Nevertheless, there is much I agree with. I am ever growing in my support for a libertarian ethic of governmental non-interference. It seems that this is a good and effective way to run a government. And this is one of the dominant themes of the book. People should be allowed to live however they like so long as they don’t prevent others from doing the same. I think the sacrificial nature of the characters, the utmost respect for personal dignity and decision, and the value placed on individual human sovereignty were wonderful.

Relativism
Heinlein argues for an agnostic faith and morality. No one has any access to God, and so anyone claiming to have it is probably lying. Therefore, all one can do is live one’s own life and not pass judgment on others. This is a pretty common conclusion, but Heinlein was actually able to build a world around it and communicate it freshly even to my mind. The only bad thing in the world is the one thing which I, a Christian, do: believe in objective morality.

Heinlein’s viewpoint here helps me understand some of my friends a lot better. It makes clear to me why public religion is so bad in their minds, and why evangelism is such a no-no: because, without revelation, it’s based entirely on the pride of those evangelizing. The trouble is that people with this mindset are especially hard to argue out of it. They believe that discussion itself is irrational, and so will tend to avoid it. And they think that every attempt to talk about it is some sort of power-grab or trick. Heinlein’s is a very well-insulating doctrine. This also may prevent relationships: you are the scum of the earth, the only real sinner. Relativism can incorporate all except the man who asserts Relativism is wrong. He is anathema. He is a heretic. And so, in the minds of many, I am anathema, a heretic. The same disgust that a Bigoted Southern Baptist has for a gay couple, Relativists have for me.

Religion, Sex and Nakedness
The idea that intrigued me the most was his views on public religion. His assertion is that one cannot know the mind of God, and so ought not speak publicly about what one believes. Though he makes a big point of defending the age-old doctrine, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” Zeb, his model Libertarian, gets really pissy when he’s asked about his religious beliefs. They’re private and should be kept covered.

But people shouldn’t be covered. Nakedness is something that should be public (or at least more public). Heinlein is unable to see any reason why we should cover up physical nakedness. Or for that matter, why we should be jealous about sex. And this helps me understand friends who are in Zeb’s position.

It is ironic that he reverses two things which have been pretty close to universal in human civilization: chastity (marriage and public modesty) and religion. For some reason, humans have decided that there are some parts of the body that should not be seen in public. There is a universal shame. There is a universal limitation on who one may sleep with and who one may not sleep with. And humans have decided that there must be some public way to worship God or the gods.

Heinlein doesn’t see any reason for these two things which are so close to the core of human identity. I think both of these stem from his disbelief in an invisible world. There is no invisible, mystical connection between man and woman in marriage. And there is no real being in Heaven that can be known. Essentially (as far as I can tell), because boobs are visible and God is not, the former should be uncovered and the latter should be covered. This explains the embarrassment or flustration (noun version of ‘to fluster’) when I share my religion with the non-religious. I’m dropping my metaphorical pants. I’m exposing to them the one and only thing that really should be kept private. And that’s just not OK in public settings.

These topics interested me, but I can’t say I’m persuaded. I’ve been thinking for some time about what marriage is (ontologically) and trying to (if it’s possible) translate that into something a Humanist could make sense of. And though it makes perfect sense on a Christian worldview, I have not been successful in translation. I think the God issue, on the other hand, is easy to respond to. Heinlein believes there is nothing to base a rational belief in God on. If God never spoke, then He’d be right. The question is: do we have any evidence that God spoke to us? There are a handful of contenders, but only one of them, the Bible, has sufficient evidence to verify the claim. The presence of explicit and confirmable prophecies and the inexplicable cryptographic features of the text show its supernatural origin. And this can form the rational basis of public religion. It has formed the rational basis of a public religion and has done so for nearly two millennia.

CS Lewis and Robert Heinlein

The most interesting thing about reflecting on this book was how many of the themes overlapped with writings of CS Lewis. With a bit of Googling, I realized they were contemporaries. They wrote on a lot of the same topics. They used fantasy to communicate their points. They were critical of totalitarianism. And perhaps the most intriguing difference is that they each thought the other’s philosophy would lead to totalitarianism. In both minds, the Great Sin is pride. Lewis believes it is pride before God; Heinlein believes it is pride in claiming to speak for God. Heinlein thinks there is no such thing as Justice, and so rehabilitative punishment (i.e. curing people of their neurosis that caused the wrongdoing) is all that can be justified; Lewis believes that there is Justice in the world, and retributive punishment (i.e. paying people back for what they did) is good and prevents the State from ‘curing’ dissidents.

They both presented their views of how society could degenerate in dystopian novels, Lewis in “That Hideous Strength” and Heinlein in “Revolt in 2100”. Lewis feared a calculating, bureaucratic, hyper-rational elite who would sterilize the world and conform all thought; Heinlein feared a corrupt, superstitious, power-hungry church who would proselytize everyone and conform all thought.

One of the most striking similarities between Heinlein and Lewis is their shared belief in 1940 and 1945 (in Revolt and Hideous Strength, respectively) that hypnosis and psychology will be able to be used by malicious parties for mind-control. It’s hard for someone today to see that as even plausible, as Psychiatrists have very little impact on anything today. I suppose it was an exciting time in Psychology, with the discoveries of the behaviorists and bold predictions about the expansive abilities of such practitioners. But it is shocking how wrong these predictions were. Usually sci-fi authors make mis-predictions, but it’s strange that these two would make the same wrong prediction for no good reason. It makes me want to read more about the expectations and accomplishments of psychology in the 1940’s.

Conclusion

Overall, I loved Revolt. First and foremost, it was truly a fun sci-fi book with interesting characters and a colorful world. Most importantly, it made me think about philosophy, justice, religion and politics. That’s what good literature should do, and that’s what it did. I think I agree with Heinlein’s politics almost entirely: a Libertarian government is best. But his metaphysics (or lack thereof), ethics and philosophy I think are based on false premises and so come to wrong conclusions. Nevertheless, his premises are common, and he was able to clearly communicate why I (and Christians) are seen in a bad light, all the while not making me want to punch him in the nose. And that, my friends, is what great writing is all about. So bravo, Mr. Heinlein, for this wonderful book. Thank you for sharing your vision for the world in so delightful a fashion.

Out of the Frying Pan

2011-09-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

Out of the Frying Pan…

Surgery Rotation Week 1: Complete

I had a lot of expectations. People told me a lot of things. It would be like boot camp. You’ll get yelled at. You won’t sleep. It will consume your life. It will consume you. You’ll love it! You’ll hate it!

Some of these things are true. Some of them may become true. But the strongest feeling I have is that it’s not as bad as I was expecting. Maybe this is the point of all the warning. Maybe we’re prepared for a horror and are relieved when it’s only terrible.

Last week I worked about 13 hours on the weekdays and 6 hours on Saturday with a day off on Sunday. That’s a lotta hours. But as I write this (at midnight on my first Sunday), my roommate just walked in having worked all day since 5:30 AM. And we’re supposed to also read the assigned 1200 page textbook in these 8 weeks. And do three sets of online modules.

And it’s also challenging physically. Standing hour upon hour is rather taxing on one’s feet and back. I think people who do this for a living adjust (I’d guess that some of it actually comes from bone remodeling, but I haven’t had time to look it up).

There’s a lot of machismo, people almost bragging about how little they slept or how much they work. There is rudeness, some of it necessary and some of it silly. It’s like visiting a foreign country with strange customs and peculiar traditions; you constantly need to be scanning to see what other people are doing, how they’re moving, how they’re speaking, what they’re doing.

On top of it all, I started missing meals because the work was so heavy. It was so busy, I didn’t realize I was hungry until after the mealtime had long passed. But after a few days like this, I figured out to eat in the little scraps of time between sprints, and to make up for it with large meals when I could get them.

The limits of human consciousness are being pushed.

Why is it done this way? Several ideas come to mine. It might be as a rite of passage. It might be because surgery has so much to teach and only 8 weeks to teach it in. It might be because they can get a lot of free work out of us. But I think the most likely is that it was done this way by the last group of surgeons, so why change now?

Whatever the reason they do it, it has this benefit: it tempers the soul. The finest steel comes through the hottest fire. I’ll know how far I can stretch, how fast I can think, how many hours I can work if I need to. It reminds me of one of my favorite songs:

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,

And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,

That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known,

To which time will but make thee more dear.

It is suffering that shows what a person is made of. Physical, mental, spiritual suffering. None of these are excluded from this rotation. And my character will be exposed.

The sermon at church today was about despair and darkness. And, for the first time in a long time, I heard something completely new (at least to me): one of the advantages of despair is that it proves to you that you’re not a mercenary, that you’re not worshipping God because of what you get out of it. Of course, God knows you. But you don’t know you.

And in an analogous way, I don’t know what I can survive. I thought it was less than this. I thought I needed more breaks and more food and more sleep than I’ve been getting. I thought I wouldn’t be able to focus after working so many hours. But I can. One week on surgery has proved to me that I am much stronger than I thought. And not just me. We all are. Human beings are. It’s just rare that we push ourselves to our limits. And if I survive these next seven weeks, I will learn an invaluable lesson: I am stronger than I thought. If I survive.

Travels to Tabod – Part III – The Man

2011-09-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

We finally arrived at a trail that followed the contour around a ridge to the house. Fatimah arrived a few minutes of awkward incommunicability later, and caught her breath. Then she introduced me, and explained why I was there. The man agreed to talk to us on camera. There was a small house and a tiny shelter that served as a kitchen built into the 30^o slope. The man and his wife were home, along with their toddler son. The two of them looked at our motley group without either joy or fear, just a mild interest and with some hidden sadness. He was lean and his face was weathered. The house he lived in was, like most houses there, bamboo-slats tied together, roofed with thatch.

I started rolling the camera and Fatimah translated for me. The man answered my questions directly, and without anxiety.

I asked, “What is a hunger season?” His response was much more perceptive than I expected. “This. Now is a hunger season. This small pot of roots is all that we’ll eat today.”

He opened up his little pot for me and I could see it. A pot of steamed cassava, wrapped in banana leaves.

I asked him, “Are there years that are worse than others?” I was trying to get him to talk about food insecurity, something I was taught as a Western-minded development person, to be concerned about. There are uncertainties in farming; the rats or boars that may come, the loss of stored rice to mold, maybe insects. His response was astonishing. “Every year is bad. Every year we are hungry.” I was trying to get at the uncertainty: we’re OK except when… But there was no uncertainty. His hunger was certain, year after year.

“Do your kids go to school?” “Yes, in Imulnod.”

Imulnod? That’s where we had just hiked from. Maybe they go there occasionally, or for special events:

“Every day?” “Yes.”

Perhaps he misunderstood me. I thought of a different approach:

“Where do they sleep?” “Here”

His kids do what I just did. Every. Day. It’s wonderful that he’s close enough to send his kids to school, and that he wants to see them educated. But it’s not too many more kilometers before the trip really would be impossible. This family was on the border, the part of the highlands that still has daily access to the lowlands.

I stopped rolling the film and asked if I could look around. He consented, and, for the first time, I saw his view. The panorama was incredible. He had a small field of corn where the jungle had been cut back, allowing for an incredible 270^o view of the lowlands and ocean. And then I saw behind the ridge: behind us, on the next ridge, houses and fields dotted along the interior, further on into the mountains. My heart grew heavy in my chest. As far as I could see, people lived as he did. That was our target. Starting with this family, and going on in: these were the people I had come to speak to. These were people who needed help.

I thanked him profusely. I felt bad. I barged into his lunch unannounced and asked him some bold questions and now I was leaving. But what else could I do? I’d have liked to spend more time up there with him and others, but we had none to spare. And that is probably our own fault. Perhaps out of embarrassment, I gave him what would be my lunch (some crackers) and started back.

I walked back down the hill, keeping pace with our guide, reflecting on what I had seen and heard. We arrived back down and Fatimah went ahead of us. When we caught up, one of the villagers had climbed up one of his coconut trees, chopped down a few coconuts, and was bringing them back for us. He sliced a hole in one, and handed it to me.

Coconut water is an incredible thing. I’m not sure there is a more refreshing drink in the world. It has something like carbonation when fresh from the macheted coconut, and, I am told, has the same osmolality as blood (and in a pinch, can be used as an IV fluid). In any case, the liter or so of coconut water hit the spot. I lost a lot of sweat that day, and it felt good to put some fluids back.

After some more hiking, we arrived back at Imulnod. I was tired, but fulfilled. My melancholy job was complete. I had found a person in need, and documented his plight.

Travels to Tabod – Part II – The Hill

2011-09-05T12:55:00.003-07:00

She began with the over-frequent “Sir,” and continued, “It is far.”

“I know it’s far. That’s why he’s probably in need. Can we make it there?”

“Sir, yes, but the trail is steep!”

A twang of fear shot through me. I was in shape, but maybe not the right shape. Could I make it? Who knows. It’s probably best to bluff: “I know. Can you take me there?”

And, perhaps hoping that I misunderstood, or maybe I would change my mind, she asked again:

“Sir, yes. But the trail is steep! Do you want to go?”

In many languages, repetition is a form of emphasis. In Hebrew if you want to say pure gold, you just say the word gold twice. It is especially whatever it is. I wonder if that’s true in Tagalog.

Fatimah didn’t look happy. She clearly did not like my answer, but I could not tell if it was simply a fear of hiking or if there was something else. I had been warned about such warning. People here don’t like to disappoint, so they’ll give some excuse for why you should or shouldn’t do something, without stating the true reason. I thought about this, but could see no immediate threats and I had a strong desire to talk to someone we might actually be able to help. And with some delay, I decided to answer: “Yes. I do want to go, if you can make it.”

The discontent in my guide’s face intensified, but she consigned herself to our fate. We were appointed another guide, someone who lived nearby, a real highlander. He started leading our group. And boy could he hike! I had a foot or two on him in height, and was barely able to keep up without jogging on the flat first parts.

The first part of the trail was hilly, but not terribly steep. My other guides were in the back of the line and lagged behind a bit. But after a coconut field, we made it to the edge of the jungle and the hill. And he didn’t slow down. Now, I’ve hiked quite a bit in the US in my day, but we have developed something that the Palawanos apparently have no need of: something called “switchbacks.” Instead of going straight up, the trails are angled so as to minimize the incline to something more manageable at the cost of increasing the distance. When I was a Boy Scout, I cursed them. Why can’t we go straight up the mountain? The answer is: because you can’t go straight up a mountain. It’s too steep for the average American. But not too steep for the average Palawano highlander.

It was just about like climbing a ladder. The trail was perpendicular to the elevation lines, and deviated around obstacles and between property lines, but ignored topography. Rather, it paid attention to topography but only to spite it.

The missionary who worked in the area once explained to me that a ‘steep’ trail was one where you could reach out your hand and touch the trail you were hiking on. I don’t think we had any sections that steep (I tried this and was 6 inches short), so I suppose it was an ‘almost steep’ trail. For the steep sections, there were foot holes dug out of the mud trail like a ladder that were quite sturdy. I thought about the trail when it was wet, and figured it must be impassable, maybe even for highlanders.\

After about five minutes, I was pouring with sweat, breathing hard, but keeping up. But then I looked behind, and couldn’t see Fatimah or her companion. I hadn’t thought that I’d be in better shape than anybody. Not wanting to get separated from my only means of communication, I knew I needed to slow down our guide. Knowing 3 words of Tagalog (none of them presently useful) and not one of Palawano, I tapped my not-looking-behind-him guide on the shoulder and gesticulated as best I could for him to wait. And I was apparently successful.

We stopped, and I got the sense that, if the humidity wasn’t around 100%, my guide wouldn’t be sweating. He certainly wasn’t breathing hard like I was. We didn’t have enough language to even have light conversation. So we waited. And the mosquitoes saw a target of opportunity. We were in a jungle now, and I remembered the anti-mosquito advice to ‘clear out all standing water’ and laughed inside: a billion leaves and puddles and holes were wonderful breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Fortunately and inexplicably, the mosquitoes were not aggressive. I’ve been in places where, perhaps for want of blood, the mosquitoes are ravenous: they will latch onto whatever arm you try to swat them with. With a bit of shooing, I was protected, but there were really enough to be described as a fog.

The other factoid that I remembered is that malaria mosquitoes (anopheles) only bite at dawn and dusk; it was just past 1pm. And I was taking my prophylaxis, so I probably wouldn’t get Malaria even if I was bitten. But, of course, Dengue is transmitted during the day. And there’s no prophylaxis for Dengue.

With those thoughts to comfort me, Fatimah caught up with us, and was exhausted. She needed to take a break. And so we four waited a while, kept company by the swarms of mosquitoes (which, I must admit, seemed to prefer my blood over the locals). My decision to wear shorts was now proving a bad one, as my attending to my legs made me aware of the diverse and noxious allergens that I had been exposed to while hiking; my legs glowed red in a psychedelic pattern of passing leaves and twigs.

Our guide didn’t seem to have a variable speed. There was hiking at full gallop, or there was resting. And so Fatimah and her companion caught up to us, and then rested, and then we bounded ahead of them again. After doing this for a few iterations, my guide pointed at the silhouette of a house on the hill. It was beautiful, peeking through the jungle after so long a hike. It took us maybe an hour to hike at this ‘pace’ from the group of houses below; with the steepness and the rests, I had a hard time estimating our pace.

Travels to Tabod – Part III – The Man

Travels to Tabod – Part I – The Journey

2011-09-05T12:55:00.002-07:00

We arrived in Imulnod Proper, another of the areas we needed to scout out for our Malaria project. At about 10am and talked with the Rural Health Midwife, Fatimah, for a while. The three-room Rural Health Station was clean and well-organized. We talked a while about the medical needs in the area and the resources that were available. I thanked her and, after some discussion, she offered to guide me to the nearest sitio (village), Tabod, to talk to the people there. I was hoping to interview someone in their home to directly ask about the problems. I had talked to a number of people who were down from the highlands, but I had not seen anything that was not connected to a road. Tabod was across a river, and I was excited at the opportunity to ford a river and to leave the World of Rubber Wheels.

I’d like to consider myself a hiker, but if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I deserve the title. I used to hike quite a bit, but that was a long time ago. Nevertheless, I was in fairly good shape, so I thought I could endure a good hike.

We arrived at the river, and for the first day of the trip, I wasn’t wearing my Chocos (I had a meeting at the hospital that morning which required shoes). I had hoped the river crossing would be near the end of the hike. But in obedience to Murphy’s Law, it wasn’t but a quarter mile from our start. I surveyed the river, and it was about ankle deep for 25 meters; no way across without wet feet.

The sun was hot, and I had forgotten to shield my poor gringo skin with sunscreen. So I did like the locals and used an umbrella. I had changed into shorts, and I was able to stay somewhat cool for the first part. A soaked bandana on the neck helped immensely.

And then, about five minutes after crossing the river, maybe half a mile from the clinic, I was told we had arrived. There was a beautiful grass house outside between a corn field and a field of mature and profitable coconuts. Why so close?

I was introduced to the family and we began talking on camera. After a few questions, I got the sense that this family was not my target. I asked about bad cases of malaria, and through a mistranslation, the mother thought I was asking about the worse malaria species. Which she knew. “Plasmodium falciparum.” The kids were well-nourished, clothed, and visited the clinic as often as they were sick.

Being in development work is strange. A normal, well-adjusted person would be happy with such a report. But it has been a long time since I was a normal, well-adjusted person. In fact, I’m not sure I was ever a normal, well-adjusted person. A part of me (the human part) was happy. But, with it, I felt disappointment. I could not help this family. This family didn’t need my help. This family didn’t need help. And praise God!

But my job, for better and worse, was not to look for joyous stories. My job was not to be optimistic. I needed to see if there were ways that we could help. And that meant not focusing the lens where there was a nice picture, but, if it could be found, on where the image was upsetting.

It sounds almost perverse. But I suppose all excitement about work against the effects of the Fall are sick. It’s the same perversion that we all have in medicine, hoping for an ‘interesting’ case and disappointed when a cough is ‘only’ a cold, or a fever is ‘only’ the flu. Our work would be more challenging if the cough were TB or the fever leukemia. I’d guess good mechanics, accountants and artists experience the same thing. They want to engage all of their skills at solving a problem, not just mindlessly changing spark plugs, collating simple sums, and painting what’s already been painted.

So I ended the interview after a few questions. I thanked them profusely, and they seemed happy to entertain me. And I moved on, explaining to my guides that I wanted to talk to someone who was poor. The Palawano guiding us knew just the family. We hiked another quarter-mile and got to a collection of several houses and a spring box. After stopping to rest, my guides asked the people there for directions. They explained, and the midwife looked concerned.

Travels to Tabod – Part II – The Hill

Adventure in Amas – Part II – The Penglima

2011-09-05T12:55:00.001-07:00

It was about a 10 minute tricycle ride. Tricycles are the preferred mode of transport here. It’s a motorcycle with a side-car welded onto it. They’re not standardized body kits, so every one is unique; different places to grab onto and different pieces of unfinished metal to avoid getting sliced on. Like most modes of transport in the developing world, tricycles are usually crammed to their absolute physical limit. On the three wheels and pulled by the small motorcycle motor, I once saw seven people.

The village was beautiful. There was a network of hand-made rice paddies that lay at the foot of this village built on a hill. Houses made from bamboo and woven grasses were scattered about. All the walls were made of woven grasses, and I thought that such work might be in the shape of a basket and sit on a mantelpiece in any first world residence.

We climbed up the hill, passing a group of about 10 young men playing volleyball (as best I could tell). We arrived at the top of where the houses ended with one last, big house. And indeed, that was what it was called in Palawano: kela’ng benwa. Literally, ‘big house.’ It was raised about five feet off the ground, with a bamboo ladder-style staircase leading up to it. At the top waited Undu Apul and his wife, the penglima of the village. I talked with Dale about the meaning of the word, and very literally translated it means roughly “one whose vocation is 5,” but with a bit more poetic license you get something like “right hand man.” Linguistics aside, he was the guy in charge.

I slipped off my shoes at the bottom of the stairs, and walked up into the kela’ng benwa. The floor was made from 1-inch-wide bamboo slats lashed together with about a quarter inch of spacing between the slats. The cool bamboo felt good on my hot feet. The shade of the thatch roof and bits of flowing air on the soles of my feet were quite nice.

I was invited to sit down, and the interview began.

In my dealings with the poor, there is often an extreme deference or shyness, especially around (rich) westerners. But such was not the case with this penglima. He answered me both boldness and energy, far more energy than a lot of 78-year-olds I know. The confidence he had was well deserved. He had been the leader of his 200-something person village for most of his adult life. His position is a quasi-hereditary one (the oldest member of the ‘royal’ family, not necessarily the son of the present leader; i.e. his nephew was next in line over his son), so there was no campaigning or reelections he had to worry about.

I opened the talk with a few general questions. One of them was, “What are the problems your people face?” I had been taught that open-ended questions are better in general at the beginning. It allows for more un-influenced answers and answers that you might not have been looking for.

His response? “We have no problems.”

Come again? No problems? One of the poorest communities in the Philippines has no problems?

I didn’t quite know what to think. Maybe he thought things were OK when they weren’t. Maybe he’s just telling me things were OK. Maybe things really were OK. Maybe it was my Western arrogance to think that people living in grass huts are bad off.

I didn’t know what to think, so I went on to other questions. I talked about his crops, the water supply, the people, ‘kids these days’ and everything in between. We talked for four hours in that bamboo-slatted big house. And over the course of the conversation, it turned out that they did have problems (as all men). They plant rice, but it gets torn up by wild boars. I knew about these boars. The boars are sometimes hunted and, by all accounts, are not very friendly. They try to raise chickens, but they get eaten by wildcats. “Wildcats?” I asked the translator.

“Yes. You know. Like cats, but bigger.”

I had been warned about the boars (and a week before heading home, about the cobras). But about wildcats, I had no knowledge.

I held out my hands approximating a house cat, “This big?” I asked.

“Bigger,” said my translator. I had a picture of a mountain lion in my mind and reflected that we should probably add “Being eaten by a wildcat” to the list of risks of travelling to Palawan.

“How much bigger?”

There was some dialog in Tagalog or Palawano. After a much-longer-than-should-have-been-necessary-to-describe-a-cat’s-size discussion, the council ruled that it was not all that much larger than a housecat. I revised my mountain lion to a bobcat and ceased my worries about being eaten. At least all at once. Or by only one ‘wildcat’ (after all, they could be like raptors in Jurassic Park). Whatever its size, it ate the chickens they tried to raise. I suppose it didn’t matter if it were the size of a mouse if it killed chickens.

I continued my questions. They plant coconuts, but they get eaten by rats. They climb up the trees, pick a coconut, eat through three inches of coconut husk, and then eat out the sweet meat inside.

So no problems. Except the boars and the wildcats and the rats. It was explained to me later that it was common to hide problems from new visitors as a source of pride. Perhaps it was like covering up the shameful parts of one’s society with a metaphorical fig leaf.

Toward the end of the conversation, he started mentioning his parents. Or what I understood to be his parents from the translation. After a while I figured out that it was indeed his parents, and their parents, and so on, and so on. I had always assumed ancestor worship was similar to polytheistic worship in that you honor a being that is above or separate from you. But the aspect I had not anticipated was how the ancestors were spoken of. It was as if they were familiar and still alive, passing judgment on the decisions of this, by comparison, youthful 78-year-old. The penglima thought they were presently disappointed in the present society because they had left the traditions and grown lenient on the laws, particularly those regarding sexual relations.

The young people were ‘eloping.’ They were not going through the somewhat bureaucratic process of first requesting permission to marry from both sets of parents, then with that approval, taking it before the penglima and the council of village elders for approval. Then, there would be the payment of the dowry that would also need to be paid. All of these steps were skipped by young people who, not unlike western boyfriends and girlfriends, just move in together.

Is there nowhere that this is not happening? These people, in a single generation, have abandoned (proper) monogamy. I’ve seen this everywhere I’ve gone in the developing world: the traditional beliefs are strict monogamy or at least strict polygamy. But the young people have pretty well given up on that and take their relationships about as seriously as westerners take theirs.

As we talked, the penglima told me the story of why they lived in Macagua. Around 40 years ago, he persuaded the then-highlanders to take their homes and migrate down to the lowlands. “Why?” I asked. He said with complete confidence, “Because of the salt.”

I had heard of migrations for a lot of reasons. But this one was new to me. I got this through a translator, so I thought it might be an un-translated metaphor. “Does he mean literal salt?” I asked my translator. There was some dialog between my translator and the penglima. Nope. Literal salt. “Why did you come down from the highlands for the salt?”

“Because there’s no salt in the highlands,” he replied, getting confused about my confusion.

And I suppose he’s right. Isn’t the need for salt obvious? Hadn’t it been traded in parts of Africa pound for pound for gold? Isn’t a proper salt balance critical for human health? And isn’t salt hard to come by in a highland jungle?

So yes. An entire village packed up their things and moved to be closer to where the salt was. He explained that, of course, there were other benefits to the lowlands like markets and medicine. But mostly they moved for the salt.

As the sun began to get low in the sky, we said our goodbyes. As we were doing so, he shook my hand enthusiastically and kept repeating a word. My translator said it meant, “Nephew,” and explained, “He now considers you his nephew and hopes that you will visit him again.”

“I hope so,” I said.

Adventure in Amas – Part I – The Captain

2011-09-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

It was our first day in the “provinces” as it is called, and we were ready to go. The provinces is the word used for the rural parts of the Philippines, and is perhaps an appropriate one. Like in most developing countries, there is a stark contrast between the wealth of the city and the poverty outside of it. In the capital cities, it seems there is a convergence to Western prices for food and lodging. And so it is somewhat accurate to draw a line between Manila and not-Manila; the city, and everything else (though I have heard there are several up-and-coming cities that have quite as high a standard of living as Manila).

Our first stop was in Amas, a Barangay of Brooke’s Point municipality in the province of Palawan. We arrived at the government complex where there were a dozen or so small buildings dotted a few acres of shaded grass. I’ve seen this rough plan in Kenya, and think it is far superior to the traditional office building, and I suppose, the result of a powerful government and/or cheap land. We were looking into working on Malaria, and our first stop was the Rural Health Microscopist, to see how Malaria was diagnosed.

The microscopist took a blood sample, and with as proper a procedure as can be, stained and smeared it, and viewed it, twisting the knobs on the microscope with an ease that comes with much practice. “No parasite seen,” said he after searching the slide. I would find out later that these “Barangay Microscopists” were villagers who received a month-long crash-course in diagnosing malaria. They look at malaria cases all day long, every day. And as they say, practice makes perfect. Well, not perfect. But pretty darn good. The Barangay Microscopists give the laboratory technicians (2 year post-college program) a run for their money. They are tested on occasion, being given ten known “cases” to examine. Villagers with experience do better than the educated without it.

I didn’t know all that then, and so I patronizingly watched the Barangay Microscopist examine the slide. “Isn’t that cute?” I thought, “He’s trying.” I suppose it is the prejudice of a schooled person to think schooled people are more important than the unschooled. But I should have believed what I already knew: experience, not letters, makes a person good at something.

We visited the Amas Barangay captain after this, and had a good interview with him. We sat around a table with the diffuse light of a cloudy day flowing in through the windows. Despite the limited funds available to a Barangay Captain, we were served refreshments: Coca-Cola and saltine crackers.

I’m not sure what the selection of refreshments communicates. Were we white visitors, so presented with the wondrous fruits of our homeland? Or was this considered the best? Or was this was all that on hand for our unannounced visit? In any case, it is unfortunate that high glycemic index is used to wash down even higher glycemic index, even if it be only on special occasions. Causes for the rise of diabetes in the developing world are not hard to find.

After hearing what we were planning to do, I stared asking questions about the problems in Amas. I was looking for work to do; if he told me there were problems, it meant we’d have work to do. We could come back. If there weren’t, then we smile and go home. I probed in various areas: health, education, economy. And in each of them, there were indeed problems. When I proceed robotically (as I am wont to do) from question to question, I forget how burdensome it must be to call to mind and to speak the multitude of problems, especially to a visitor. It seemed a sense of shame accompanied this social nakedness.

After listing all the problems, I was beginning to get excited about the opportunity. But the captain must have thought his Barangay’s case hopeless, “So do you still want to work here?” I smiled warmly and with sincerity said, “Yes. Yes I do.”

We finished the interview and decided to move on to one of the sitios (villages). We went to Macagua, and Dale left me with Norlita as he had things to attend to in town.

Adventure in Amas – Part II – The Penglima

Philippines Travel Blog

2011-09-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

I spent most of last month in the Philippines on behalf of Rancho Community Church, the church I grew up in. There were reports of a very high child mortality rate and I had been sent with Rancho’s missionary to Palawan to see if anything could be done. To tell the end of the story first, we did find a great need in Malaria and have hired a Filipino team to begin addressing the problem. While I was there, I had time to write down two of the many incredible experiences I had, and will post these here. I hope you enjoy them!

Adventure in Amas – Part I – The Captain

Adventure in Amas – Part II – The Penglima

Travels to Tabod – Part I – The Journey

Travels to Tabod – Part II – The Hill

Travels to Tabod – Part III – The Man

Degenerate Cultures, Cave Men, and Civilization

2011-09-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

The now-dead script of Palawan

Experience in the Philippines

I recently travelled to the Philippines and found out about the Palawano people. My church in Temecula is hoping to help with the material needs (starting with Malaria). My guide here was a missionary who had spent the past two decades mastering the language and even developing a written language for the people.

When we arrived in Manila, he showed me some of his books. In one of them, I saw a strange lettering and asked him about it. He said that that was the way the Palawano used to write. There were a precious few old people who knew the cuneiform-like script. But none of the middle aged or young people were being taught it like they had been in the past; the culture was becoming illiterate. They forgot how to write. For thousands of years, they could write. But over the course of the past few generations, they forgot. One of the major things that defines human civilization is the ability to accumulate knowledge and communicate by text. It wasn’t just lacking in the Palawano, but it had been present and now was lost.

The tribal leaders I’ve talked to seem convinced that their ancestors are disappointed in the way things were being handled. It’s sort of an ancestor-worship version of the American complaint about, “kids these days.”

I noticed the same thing about the Kurians in Kenya. They remembered being able to make baskets, but only a few presently remembered how. They had memories of original music and dance, but the present is just a shadow of the past; it stands tall on the horizon behind, full of power and authority.

The Ancients

I think back to the wonderful stories of the ancient peoples. This theme comes up in good Fantasy and Sci-Fi books. Atlantis, Chtullu, the Numenorians, the Jedi are all ancient. The message is that the olden days were pretty much better in every way. And then there are these unexplained artifacts in the modern world: the Great Pyramid with its math, ancient cities with indoor hot and cold water, swords with aligned carbon nanotubes. Even the physical feats of old mountaineers, of arctic explorers, of Roman legions and of European knights are hard to believe. We describe the generation that fought WWII as the “Greatest Generation”. We are certain that olden-days people could do stuff that it would be challenging or impossible for us to do today.

I was shocked when this idea was validated by GK Chesterton in his masterful historical apologetic for Christianity, “The Everlasting Man” (free text). Chesterton argues for the moving of the Sprit of God in pagan man (!) and then His animation of the Church with her power and vitality. The book opens with an account of primitive man. While having no argument with the biological evolution up to humans as humans, he argues that there is no evidence for evolution of human institutions. The idea of a development from rude tribal organization to more civilized ones is utterly without empirical foundation.

(I’m about to quote the 1925 work directly where Chesterton describes tribal or indigenous people as ‘Savages’. Be aware that this is the word used in 1925 from a root meaning ‘woods’ and is not a statement about the people’s humanity or worth. It would be inaccurate at this point to recite the catchy line from the Disney’s Pocahontas song: “Savages, savages, barely even human” ; I’m quite sure that Chesterton has a higher view of their value than any Modern who uses the politically correct ‘indigenous people’.)

If we want to get rid of half the nonsense about nomads and cave-men and the old man of the forest, we need only look steadily at the two solid and stupendous facts called Egypt and Babylon. Of course most of these speculators who are talking about primitive men are thinking about modern savages.

...

But it has appeared to a good many intelligent and well informed people quite as probable that the experience of the savages has been that of a decline from civilization.

...

It is therefore absurd to argue that the first pioneers of humanity must have been identical with some of the last and most stagnant leavings of it.

But this is in contrast with the ‘scientific’ account of our past: a gradual climb up from lower life forms. I say ‘scientific’ because the account is eminently not experimental. It’s part of a worldview and valid insomuch as we think inference valid. But as Chesterton points out, we never observed prehistoric people. It is an astounding feat of extrapolation to impute people who lived 5000 years go with the characteristics we observe in tribal peoples presently.

Decline
The scattered bits of evidence I’ve observed are that tribal cultures are in a state of decline, not stasis (and yes, I did say ‘decline.’ If you object to the use of the word, please, I invite you to write an argument that one cannot make a value judgment on “illiteracy”. Once you’ve done that, you might begin to appreciate the value of writing). And if we are to extrapolate (always dangerous), we should do it based on the albeit small bit of data we do have. And the data I have directly observed shows a downward slope. If we extrapolate this back a few thousand years, we arrive at something like Numenorians and the Great Pyramid, not cave men.

Before I am accused of being a racist, let me flesh this out a bit. If there was not a decline, then illiterate jungle-dwelling people were always illiterate jungle-dwelling people. If there was, then who can know what civilization was once present. Perhaps dialogues greater than Plato's were written, or art that surpassed the Renaissance, or benevolent governance to rival Athens or Philadelphia. If there was a decline, then these cultures might have been comparable in these fields to our own. But if there was not a decline, then they are only equal when there is no value; if we allow relativism to equate the Mona Lisa with a finger painting or Notre Dame with a mud hut, then these cultures are equal. But if there was a decline, and their history was lost, there really may have been an astonishing culture in the past. If we desire to aid them, we don't have to give them the choice between the Western Way or misery in their present state of poverty. We can re-awaken the memories of their own glorious past, beyond the reach of written history, and have them truly develop without simply mimicking the good and bad in the West.

Perhaps they were in stasis for a long time. But if so, why now? Maybe it’s because of population growth. Maybe it’s because of Western influence. Maybe 5000 years was just too long to write (wouldn’t you get tired after 100 generations?). Or maybe something bigger and more mystical is happening; maybe it’s because 2012 is coming up, or maybe it’s the End Times, or maybe it’s in preparation for the next Hegelian step. Or maybe it has been a constant decline from a glorious civilization that could stand against Babylon and Egypt, and after millenia of the candle burning down, the flame of writing was finally snuffed out.

On Food Banks, The Mafia, Free Lunches, and Love

2011-08-01T00:22:00.000-07:00

On Food Banks, The Mafia, Free Lunches, and Love

Introduction

I have recently been thinking about Food Banks, and specifically food banks run by churches. For those unfamiliar, a typical food bank collects donations of usually canned foods from the community. Some amount of this food is distributed to anyone who shows up on a given day, typically on a weekly or biweekly basis.

I once heard a similar organization argue thusly, “I think food is good. And there are some people out there who don’t have it. So, being that food is good, we get the food to the people who don’t have it and so do good.” Food banks are great because we all know what hunger feels like, and how wonderfully relieving food is. We picture the single mom whose deadbeat husband left her alone with 5 children. She’s just lost one of her two jobs and is not able to make ends meet. So she goes down to the food bank to feed her son Tim, a boy we might fancy is a lot like Tiny Tim: incredibly cute but hungry and on the verge of starvation. His mother has lost a lot of weight because all the food she can gather goes to the kids. We hope that our can of Pork N Beans goes to her.

OK, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But here’s the core of the story I stand by: we want to help people 1) who are not bad people, 2) who are working as hard as they can and 3) who need this aid temporarily to get back on their feet. In other words, when we give a can to a food bank, we have in mind something like the single mom; we don’t give cans hoping to help support the 23-year-old guy who lives in his Mom’s basement playing video games (Call of Duty, most likely).

Food banks have expanded to the point of now reaching 37 million Americans in 2010 [1]. Only 2% of Americans are underweight [2]. Even if every one of those was underweight because a lack of food (and not from age or disease), there are still 80% of those who get food from food banks (10% of Americans) who have enough calories.

So my question is this: do the recipients of food bank food meet our ideals? And if not, so what? Admittedly, this is a very crude analysis that leaves a lot out [3]. But I just want to raise the question: are food banks accomplishing what we want them to accomplish? Are the recipients who we want them to be? And if not, so what?

I have three major concerns with the food bank model. First, that it helps some bad people. Without doing any screening, food banks may be, for all they know, feeding Al Qaeda cells with their food. Second, that it is free. Those who can work, ought to work; food banks don’t ask for work. Third, that it rarely helps. The whole point of the food bank is to help people, and blind handouts are more likely to create dependency than actually improve the ultimate lot of the people they purport to help.

Many of my concerns were suggested or supported by an essay written by the second richest man and possibly (IMHO) the greatest philanthropist who ever lived: Andrew Carnegie. The essay was entitled “Wealth” and Carnegie argued that millionaires should donate most of their money to worthy philanthropic projects before they die. But he is careful to define ‘worthy’ and describe many of the ways giving can go wrong. I’ll be including quotations from his essay throughout mine. Here is one to begin with:

“These who, would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.” – Carnegie [4]

Problem One: Food Banks Help Bad People

“He is the only true reformer who is as careful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in alms-giving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue.” – Carnegie

As is very clear from the Moral Law and explicit in the Bible, we’re not supposed to help bad people. Proverbs warns against joining up with sinners, “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent” (Pro 1:10)[5]. Proverbs says: “But to the wicked, God says…When you see a thief, you join with him” (Psa 50:16,18). Paul instructs us: “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove [them]” (Eph 5:11). But it’s not just bad people that we need to avoid giving to. It’s also rich people: “Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty” (Pro 22:16).

My first concern with the food bank is that is has no safeguards against helping bad people. And I mean ‘bad’ people here very broadly. It helps people that are not good, are not working hard, and/or are not likely to ever stop using the food bank. The line-waiter in the average food bank isn’t questioned or asked about his condition or why he needs the food. An Al Qaeda member might need to support his local cell. An Italian mafia member may want to defray his gang’s food expenses.

But even beyond these exaggerations, there are other kinds of non-ideal food targets. Does the food bank want to support a drug addict’s habit? With less money going for food, more can go to heroin[6]. Does the food bank want to allow a 23-year-old living in his mother’s basement to continue to not look for a job? His mom won’t kick him out and now he has all the food he needs to keep playing Call of Duty. Does the food bank want to supplement the $60,000 income of a single man? He doesn’t have to buy groceries and now can afford a payment on a 7-series BMW instead of a 5-series.

With these three cases, the food bank has supported sins of addiction, laziness and greed, respectively. Surely we would decry an organization that bought heroin for addicts, taught laziness to the youth and bought nicer cars for the already rich. But this is in effect what food banks are already doing. An organization, like an individual, ought to seek to do good and avoid evil. In food banks, almost no efforts have been made to avoid this evil.

Suggestion One: screen the people. Find out if you’re giving food to people you want to give food to. If you find out that you aren’t, set rules on who gets food.

Problem Two: Food Banks Are Free

“Neither the individual nor the race is improved by alms-giving.” – Carnegie

Men, if they are capable, ought to work. This is as clear a Moral and Biblical principal as one can find. God declares in Genesis, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19). Paul, in describing the payment due to elders explains, “For the Scripture says, "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain," and, "The laborer deserves his wages”” (1Ti 5:18). When he hears of men in Thessalonica not working he is outraged and declares, “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2Th 3:10). Even the poorest of the poor were expected to do work. In Leviticus, God establishes the law of gleaning; during a harvest, the reapers were forbidden from going through the field a second time to pick up what had fallen in the first pass. The poor were then allowed to themselves labor in the field, ‘gleaning’ the fallen grains for their food: "And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God" (Lev 23:22).

It is certainly true that some are incapable of work. There are those who are physically or mentally disabled who cannot earn enough to support themselves. There are people who have, like Job, been hit so hard by circumstance that they might be worthy of a direct gift of food. But these are few in number, and in our society, have some significant assistance by other governmental programs (e.g. Medicaid and Social Security).

This leaves us with able-bodied men and women not able to work. This state of non-work is a very difficult place to be in psychologically. Your independence is gone; you have to rely on others for your food. Your dignity is gone, because you are no longer contributing to society. And then you have to stand in line like a child in a school cafeteria waiting to be fed whatever slop the cafeteria happens to be dishing out. And the sting is even sharper when you remember that a year ago, you were standing in line at a buffet in a fancy hotel for a trade show before you lost your job.

Nobody wants to stand in a food line; it’s shameful. The food bank treats everyone as a cripple; it treats people who could earn their way in life as if they couldn’t, and thus further damages their waning confidence. It teaches that capable people not using their talents are worthy of reward. It teaches that some people, selected by their bad luck, are special and don’t have to obey the same rules or live up to the same expectations as everybody else. It teaches people that there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Suggestion Two: Do not give out free food to capable people; require them to do some work for their food. Doing work is ennobling; it helps to make a person virtuous. Specifically, it helps build the virtue of diligence and fight the vice of sloth (laziness). Laziness is an easy sin to fall into when you’re not working; diversion can become quite an addiction. Suggestion Two will also help solve Problem One; work is an excellent screen against bad people.

Problem Three: Food Banks Alone Don’t Help

“…the best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise…forms best calculated to do them lasting good.” – Carnegie

The first commandment is to love God. The second is: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mat 22:39). I think the biggest failing of the food bank is that it fails to love. Love entails many things, and is an incredibly important part of the human experience. But here I will only focus on two aspects of it: relationship and benefit. Whatever else it is, Christian love must be relational, and it must have the best interest of its object in mind. Food banks, as far as I can tell, are neither.

They are not relational in that it is mostly a system. It is a charity factory maximizing the number of meals served, shoveling food in the mouths of the poor like coal into a boiler. Nobody knows the people who get the food. Meals are given, they are not shared. How many poor people have been entertained in the homes of the food-bank donors? Even the volunteers of a food bank rarely have any relationship with those getting the food. How can we say we love people who we do not know?

Second, we fail to love our neighbors because we fail to do what is best for them. A box of food is not the solution. At its very best, it is stopgap measure. Most people who show up to a food bank need more than food. Nobody wants to go to a food bank. Some are unemployed; they need help finding a job. Some are addicts; they need help out of addiction. Some are depressed or anxious; they need to be given hope and soothed. Some are in spiritual darkness; they need the Light. Some are just downright lonely; they need someone to talk to.

Suggestion Three: Get to know the people standing in line, and try to help them out of their bad situations; show them love. This will be incredibly hard and take a lot more work, prayer, and manpower than shoveling food does. It will probably take a lot of people and partnership with a lot of other organizations. There are many buried talents standing in line at a food bank; figuring out how to dig them up ought to be one of the major functions of the food bank. These skills of the poor are like fields, and if properly dealt with, can be productive: “The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice” (Pro 13:23). Love, at least Christian love, can transform what is presently a dehumanizing process into a life-giving one. Truly, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it” (Pro 15:17).

Conclusion

Food banks are a very well-funded and well-supported segment of American charity. They have great potential to do good in a powerful way. But as it is, there are three major ways in which they are prevented from doing it. Firstly, they make few efforts to avoid doing evil. Secondly, they treat able-bodied people as if they weren’t. Thirdly, they don’t aspire to help people permanently. But these habits are not inherent; the model doesn’t need to be killed to be effective. The first two can be solved by simple screenings and work requirements. To solve the third problem, it requires a bit more. Actually it requires a lot more. It requires that people be treated like people, that relationships with poor people be forged, that the personal concerns of people be addressed, and that the best interest of the poor actually be pursued. In short, it requires love. Even if we can finally declare and loudly proclaim the end of hunger by efforts in the food bank, but we had not love, we would be a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1Cr 13:3)
References

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/sharing/2010-02-01-hunger_N.htm

[2] http://apps.who.int/bmi/index.jsp

[3] The simplistic analysis at least leaves out: there being more to nutrition than calories, the slow rise of underweight proportion, relieving the pain of hunger pangs independently; the difficulties of unstable food supply (i.e. lack of “food security”)

[4] http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Carnegie.html

CARNEGIE, ANDREW. “WEALTH.” NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCCXCI. JUNE, 1889
[5] All Bible quotations are from the ESV.
[6] I don’t think it’s automatically wrong to give food to drug addicts. However, I do think most people would consider it a problem and so I mention it here. If all three problems were addressed, especially the third one, I think a food bank could be an incredible gateway out of addiction and should give food to drug addicts.

A Psalm of USMLE Deliverance

2011-07-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

A Prayer for Deliverance From the USMLE Step I

Dear Lord,

Hear me in my trouble, and give ear to my request

My enemies surrounds me; they question me and I cannot respond.

They demand answers, and I am silent.

I had lost heart; I had fogotten the God of my Salvation.

But Thy light broke through; it pierced the clouds of my anxiety

And then I remembered:

Thou art a God of Deliverance!

When thy servant sought to help the poor in Mexico, Thou didst show him Dr. Tamez

When thy servant sought to expand his program there, Thou didst show him Maclovio Rojas

Thou hast delivered thy servant from the hand of the College Board, and from the hand of the AAMC;

Thou shalt deliver him from this uncircumcised USMLE.

Thou hast guided my feet on high paths and through ivy halls;

I pray thee, lead me into a Residency in which I may prosper.

Take me to a place where I might best learn to relieve suffering,

Where I might follow in the steps of Thy Son, the Great Physician.

Equip me to be a trained soldier like Joshua,

that I may drive out darkness from the land,

defeating Thine enemies: Depression, Anxiety and Addiction.

Make me a mighty deliverer like Moses,

that I might free Thy people,

that I might break their psycic chains.

Dear Lord, be my strength and my shield tomorrow,

Amen

Written on the evening of July the 24th, 2011

Thou Shalt Party

2011-07-09T01:20:00.000-07:00

A lot of people (~500,000) at Woodstock.

God's Divine Command to Totally Have An Awesome Time

I was reading in Deuteronomy a while ago and I came across this passage. Now, I know many of you think Deuteronomy a boring book, but consider this: God commanded partying. Yup. You had to. You could not get out of the obligation of blowing 10%* of your income on a week-long party.

"Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year. And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always." Deuteronomy 14:22-23

But what if you're too far away from Jerusalem to carry your stuff? Not partying is not an option. God commands you to sell it, take the money,

"...And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household" Deuteronomy 14:26

Upon entering into Palestine, the Hebrew population was something like 2 million. If only half of them obeyed this command, it would be a party of epic proportions. And they'd be far from hungry, taking the best of their cattle, grain and wine to keep the festivities going.

Translate that into modern terms. This is the entire population of San Francisco, partying together about the same thing. This would be bigger than Woodstock (500,000 people), every year. People still define themselves by being at that event. Can you imagine the comradrie and identity that comes from doing this every year?

I remembered reading about Jesus as a boy travelling to a feast; Joseph and Mary lost him, and presumed he was with family. I always thought, "What bad parents!" But think about it: everyone they knew was at this party! There are hundreds of people he could have been with.

Not many people talk about this tithe. Usually it's the giving-money-to-the-church tithe. What would the Christian world look like if Christians spent 10% of their income specifically on celebrating together? We celebrate Christmas with family, for sure. But the idea here is to do it with every other family as well. Also, there's usually not nearly enough booze at Christian parties. God specifically, in Deuteronomy 14:26, commands that there be שכר "strong drink," (assuming that is what your soul lusteth after).

Imagine how strong this simple act of eating "before the Lord," made the community and the nation. Think of how this community would become something that people would want to join and hate to leave. We spend too much time talking about the scary kind of fearing God, but forget that it is also by celebration that we would "learn to fear the Lord thy God always."

*It has been brought to my attention that 'tithe' may or may not mean a literal 10%, but it does mean some amount of money set aside for this purpose.

Why the “Dark Ages” Rocked - Medieval Philosophy: Practical Common Sense (3/3)

2011-06-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

Medieval Philosophy: Practical Common Sense

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Middle Ages is the philosophy. As GK Chesterton tells the story, human beings have historically vacillated between having two sorts of appetite: an emotional or mystical, and a rational or philosophical. There are appetites of body and of mind. Most of the time, these have been satisfied quite separately, and in each age, one or the other of them was preferred. In most ancient peoples, the pagan priests existed side-by-side with the philosophers; their domains did not intersect.

Zeus had sex with whomever he had sex with, and demanded what sacrifices he demanded; those details were not rational because Zeus was not rational. And the philosophers were generally satisfied with thinking; their domain required neither mystery nor ritual. And average Greeks could engage in philosophy and worship of Zeus without conflict. The Greeks tended to value the mind over the body. And the Romans the body over the mind. The early Christians swung back to the spiritual things being most important (though not so much as the Gnostics or Manicheans). More recently, we’ve swung from the Enlightenment telling us that thinking was central, to Romanticism telling us that feeling was central, to Modernism telling us that thinking was central, finally to Post-Modernism telling us that feeling was central.

But what about the Middle Ages? According to writer and philosopher GK Chesterton (and more recently, Peter Kreft), the Middle Ages were the one time in human history where these two extremes of the human experience finally kissed. In the central thinker of that great age, Thomas Aquinas, mystery and logic both found an important place. The spirit did not dominate the body; neither did the body dominate the spirit. In fact, Chesterton asserts that Thomism (the philosophy of Aquinas) is the philosophy of common sense (and is unique amongst Philosophers in this). This is a claim that I need to investigate, as if he is such a philosopher, I think I will join him. For I think common sense entirely too rare a thing in the world, and especially the educated world. And, by all accounts, having someone like Thomas Aquinas on my side is a good thing indeed.

The Middle Ages was an era of the waking up of the mind. The people of that time, if they were as arrogant as the people who followed them, might have called it the Enlightenment. But they were much more concerned with enjoying the Light itself than with telling stories about how much more light they had than the pitiful people before them who lived in the “Dark Ages.”

So in conclusion, I think I’m becoming a Medieval. I would that thought were as free now as it was then. I wish we had the passions of the quiet friars, the patience of the monks, the discipline of the students, the courage of the knights. In short, I wish we could become as awesome as they were.

Like you’ve rid yourselves of silly childish notions of the jolly old elf, I hope this essay has helped you rid yourself of silly grown-upish notions of the Dark Ages. I’ll end with a quotation from the book I started this essay with, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The White Company”:

So they lived, these men, in their own lusty, cheery fashion--rude and rough, but honest, kindly and true. Let us thank God if we have outgrown their vices. Let us pray to God that we may ever hold their virtues.

Why the “Dark Ages” Rocked - The Not-So-Dark Ages (2 of 3)

2011-06-28T18:19:00.000-07:00

Notre Dame: "Dark" Architecture from a "Dark" Age

The Not-So-Dark Ages

Now that we’ve dispensed with the mythical images of the Barbarian-Knight and Scientist-Martyr, we can actually start to look at the Middle Ages.

Let’s start with technology. In the Middle Ages, the plow, advanced crop rotation, the horseshoe, the draft horse, the harness led Europe to the first Green Revolution, making European lower classes the best fed in the history of the world. Written music, the wagon brake (very useful on hills), and the flexible front wagon axle (which helps a lot with wagon turning), and the stern-mounted rudder were all medieval inventions.

Military technology made great strides. The crossbow was invented (which was so deadly, there was a time when one could be excommunicated for using it). And, as I have previously alluded to the knight came about, and he became legendary partly because of his technology. Improvements in genetics (animal husbandry) led to monstrous 1200 lb horses which could bear armored knights on a full charge. The high-backed saddle and the stirrup were developed, allowing the full force of charging horse and rider to be projected through a spear-point. The knight was a powerful new thing on the battlefield. It was like the introduction of tanks to warfare. What could be done against a thundering horse and rider, spear advanced out in front? Even the previous style of cavalry, with light armor, a shorter horse, no ability to use a spear or lance, and no ability to use get leverage in swinging a weapon, had no chance against these new knights. An infantryman could barely even reach a vital part of his enemy, let alone do any damage.

How about architecture? The Renaissance may be aptly named as it was a re-awakening, a new breath in dead things. Dead Greeks and Romans were dug up and their works mimicked. But in the Middle Ages, something truly New was made. One can critique Gothic architecture, but one cannot say that it was simply a copy of Roman architecture; it was something wholly new. Notre Dame, if you have ever been there, is an incredible testament to the Word made stone; it is an expression of Christian thought and soul of the age. The work of building a Cathedral itself was infused with the great philosophy of the age. Consider the description by GK Chesterton:

This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble, upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years. In a Gothic cathedral the columns were all different, but they were all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and fantastic support; every buttress was a flying buttress. So in Christendom apparent accidents balanced.[1]

They were not, like the terrible splendor of the pyramids, built for the great name of one man by many nameless slaves. Nor were they, like the efficient power of a skyscraper, built for the profit of a corporation by wage slaves. They were built by freemen, artisans, working together but individually for the glory of God. Each gargoyle was the individual work of an individual artist, not the prescribed plan of another, or the artless repetition in a pattern. Each gargoyle has a story, as each man has a story, as the universe and everything in it has a story. The theology of the Medievals was so vivacious, it grew up into a tree of stone with leaves of stained glass.

So the Middle Ages were an age of innovation and great leaps forward in art and architecture, in technology and teaching. But perhaps the greatest inventions of the Middle Ages were innovations that allowed for innovation: the Printing Press in the Fifteenth Century and the University in the Thirteenth Century. When books were made cheap, when knowledge became available, it accelerated the process of learning. It allowed the learned class to be larger than those few monks who could live near hand-copied libraries. And the University became an institution that remains to this day, committed to the idea that there was One Truth that could be known. These institutions were differentiated in being separate from the existing hierarchy; while students were still legally considered ‘clergy’, the University began to allow for more freedom in thinking and pursuing the Truth. These two things, the Printing Press and the University, set the stage for the explosion in knowledge and understanding that would come towards the end of the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Modern era: the Scientific Revolution.

Far from being a time of darkness, the Middle Ages were a time of great leaps forward in technology, in art, and perhaps most importantly, in catalyzing the acquisition and distribution of knowledge. But the term “Dark Ages” is sometimes directed at the Philosophy of the age: darkened by the dark theology, by morbid restrictions on thinking, by a focus on un-thinking Biblical literalism. But is this truly the character, or is the Dark Philosophy as fictitious as the Barbarian-Knight?

[1]Chesterton, GK. "Orthodoxy" http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/o/11814-orthodoxy-by-g-k-chesterton?start=54

Why the “Dark Ages” Rocked - The Myth of the Knight-Barbarian and the Scientist-Martyr (1 of 3)

2011-06-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

The Myth of the Knight-Barbarian and the Scientist-Martyr

The image of the knight has always been an attractive one for me. Maybe it was a childish romanticism. Or maybe it was how cool the knight stories were. Or maybe just that they looked cool. But whatever the cause, it’s been an image which I’ve loved on first sight, and have since grown to love even more.

As I grew up, I learned that it was probably a lie. The knight was a rather barbaric figure, chiefly concerned with oppressing peasants and subjugating his wife. But then I read “The White Company” by Arthur Conan Doyle (the Sherlock Holmes guy), and I got a different picture. Sir Nigel, the model knight, was actually a kindly, noble, courageous, yet also violent, hasty, and somewhat eccentric, character. At first, I was overjoyed to discover so wonderful a character, but at the same time I felt lied to. It was like finding out at 19 years old that Santa Claus really did exist, that his nonexistence was the real lie.

Of course, Sir Nigel is a fictional character, but it must be remembered that he is a character. That is, he has characteristics as has any living, breathing man (or for that matter, any dead man who has left off breathing). He is a fiction, but he is a true fiction. Of course, in the White Company, as in every story in life and fiction, there are bad guys as well as good guys. There were characters who failed to live up to the ideal of the age. A bad apple may spoil the barrel, but it isn’t an argument against the character of apples.

The rediscovery of the Knight in Sir Nigel was the seed and parable of my present love for his age. It did indeed start with the Knight, but I began to realized that it was much the same with almost everything I’d been told about the period between the fall of Rome to the Enlightenment. It seemed the Barbarian Knight was a figure who started appearing in the 1700s to scare good Christians into abandoning their faith, along with this story about the previous epoch as being a time of darkness, ignorance, anti-science, anti-human, and it’s rather a miracle that we ever recovered from it. But as I discovered in the character of Sir Nigel, the Middle Ages were rather more agreeable than I had been told to expect. Santa Claus is an innocent lie grown-ups tell children to get them to behave; the Barbarian Knight is a not-so-innocent lie professors tell grown-ups to get them to be materialists.

I’ll start with one concrete example. Consider the following story: Back in the Dark Ages, the Church was anti-science, and because of literalist readings of the Bible, believed the Earth was the all-important center of the universe. So when Galileo suggested otherwise, they didn’t permit his theories because they were against the Bible, and persecuted him.

To first pick a nit, the episode happened in 1633, so by most standards this is outside most definitions of “Dark Ages.” Perhaps it is ironic that this victim of the Dark Ages is not even a part of them; but this essay is about the popular conception of the Dark Ages, not a rigidly defined historical period, and so Galileo must be included.

The most important thing to note about the story is that it’s not an example of how intolerant the Church was, but about how intolerant Galileo was. There was an increasingly heated debate on the subject of heliocentrism, one that included all sorts of political jockeying. And into this, Galileo decided to print a book mocking the leader of the world, the Pope. And as much as I appreciate the First Amendment, it had yet been written. In the Seventeenth Century, you really couldn’t make a fool of the most powerful man in the world without consequence. Others have suggested that it might not have become an issue, but the Pope himself was in a political tight spot and permitted the trial out of fear of Galileo’s enemies. In any case, his punishment was not torture or death, but house arrest on his villa, where he continued to work and produced some of the greatest of his works until he died years later of natural causes. Not a model of Twenty-First Century Free-Speech, but hardly a case of Science Vs Religion.

But there is another problem with the story: the earth wasn’t the center of the universe with the insignificant stars above. It was, to the Medieval, that the stars were the important thing, and the earth was base, as in, literally lower in altitude, than the stars. You see this in Dante: earth is between the levels of heaven above and levels of hell below; it’s ‘central’ indeed, but far from where they wanted to be. The concept of earth’s centrality meaning earth’s importance is a modern idea imposed on Medieval imagery. The heliocentric view, far from making the earth another insignificant planet amongst insignificant planets, elevated us to be a part of the dance of the stars, part of the heavenly realm.

But I discovered something more troubling. The whole narrative was wrongly set. The Church didn’t believe the earth was the center of the universe from the Bible alone, but from the accepted scientific authorities of their day, chiefly Ptolemy and Aristotle. Would we have wanted the Pope to instantly, on one man’s theory, abandon the majority of thinkers and the scientific authority of generations? Further the Church, as a matter of official Orthodoxy, didn’t believe in pure literalism, and especially not when it conflicted with natural observation. Indeed, GK Chesterton explains the views of the man who defined Medieval Orthodoxy, Thomas Aquinas: “If a literal interpretation is really and flatly contradicted by an obvious fact, why then we can only say that the literal interpretation must be a false interpretation.” [1] If you have any doubts about this, note that the Church had no issue with the science of Copernicus before or Newton and Kepler after, all of whom held the similar views on the orbit of the earth.

The problem is still worse for this hypothesis. If it were Christian Europe who persecuted scientists, it raises the question, “Why were there scientists in Europe?” The answer is, of course, that there were scientists in Europe because that’s where Science was born. Sociologist Rodney Stark explains, “Christian theology was necessary for the rise of science." Science only happened in areas whose worldview was shaped by Christianity, that is, Europe. Many civilizations had alchemy; only Europe developed chemistry. Likewise, astrology was practiced everywhere, but only in Europe did it become astronomy.” [2]Of course, knowledge of the natural world has always existed, and flourished in various places throughout history. But in Christian Europe, we began the methodical search for Natural Laws we call science. Stark also argues, "Because God is a rational being and the universe is his personal creation, it necessarily has a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting increased human comprehension. This is the key to many intellectual undertakings, among them, the rise of science.” Christianity is uniquely a faith built on the strange paradox of the Word made Flesh, the coming together of Spirit and Body. And because the Medievals believed in a Rational Lawgiver, they set out to find rational Laws (see Rodney Stark for a fuller defense of this). Far from hating truth, the Medievals had such a love for it, that they even invented a new institution by which it might be sought: the University. This institution committed to the thesis that there is One Word (uni-verse), one Truth, one Logos.

Galileo wasn’t a martyr of science, but a victim of a political system and perhaps his own pride. The Pope wasn’t ignoring science, but accepting the accepted science of his day. Persecution of science, if ever done, was against Orthodox. And the whole supposed motivation by which the Church acted was itself a misunderstanding of the Medieval mind. The Church didn’t suppress science. It invented it. Most lies are true in every detail but false in one critical point. The lie about Galileo is unique in that it is all false in every detail but in true one critical point: Galileo’s name.

I offer these two concrete example, the Knight and the Scientist-martyr, as two pictures of this lie about the Dark Ages. If you look into the Darkness, you see that the Knight is actually not so barbaric, and the Scientist not so martyred.

[1] St Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100331.txt
[2] http://acct.tamu.edu/smith/ethics/BP_rise_of_science.htm ; Originally from Rodney Stark, "For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts and the End of Slavery"

Clean and Unclean - Reflections on Kosher (Part II)

2011-06-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

Clean bird

Lessons We Can Learn From Clean Animals (more speculations)

Beyond this observation, my speculations go farther afield. But if you’ve made it this far, join me the rest of the way! Rule Number Two is interesting because fish would ordinarily never interact with the earth; they are in the sea, of course. And the sea has similar but slightly different connotations in the Bible. The Sea, in the ancient world, was a place of confusion and dread. In Genesis 1, the Holy Spirit hovers over the sea; in Psalm 2, the author compares the ungodly nations to the raging of the sea; in the Gospels, Jesus both calms and then walks upon the sea; in Revelation, a Beast arises from the sea. It seems to be a place of Chaos and darkness.

But the sea creatures that are clean are not completely separated from the sea. They do not have thick shells to protect themselves. But they do have scales; there is some insulation between them and the sea. But they are true parts of it. They are not like the whales and dolphins that live in the sea, must constantly leave the depths to breathe from Heaven; clean creatures can breathe in the sea itself. Like fish, we need to be insulated from the confusion of this life by the armor of God, but we are still residents here. We will never understand the darkness, at least not in this life. Further, though we pray for God’s Kingdom to come, we are true residents of this world and cannot be like the whales, constantly be escaping into our churches; we must learn to breathe its air.

But what of the birds? Even if it were true that birds are a holy category, what’s wrong with these twenty? Well, for one, the Raven pretty well abandoned Noah, so there is some bad blood there. In general, the birds excluded are mostly carnivorous or scavengers. Owls, eagles, hawks and vultures are all excluded. And, looking over to the ‘beast’ category, there aren’t any carnivorous animals included in the split hooves plus cud-chewing category. But carnivorous fish are included. Perhaps it has to do with ‘the breath of life.’ This seems to be an important Biblical division throughout the Bible; it roughly correlates to our modern notion of ‘higher animals,’ and like that concept, give special status to animals that have greater ability to be good or bad, to feel pain, be conscious, etc. So these rules seem to call holy only those animals which never shed the blood of anything that has the breath of life. And perhaps the dove and the sheep have a lesson for us: holy creatures love peace and would prefer to avoid violence. Christ tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” In the future, it seems that we will all become vegetarians: Isaiah promises that, “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.”

What of the chewing of the cud? Why is that holy? This is the only feature that I have heard speculation on. Animals that ruminate chew their food, and have a special stomach to pre-digest it; they then spit it back up, and continue chewing it. The Hebrew word for ‘cud’ comes from ‘garar,’ which is an onomatopoetic root suggesting sawing or grating (which is indeed what ruminants do). We can learn from the way these animals eat. When we eat our spiritual food, we need to digest it slowly. We need to repeat it, again and again. When we read or hear God’s word, it cannot be well understood on a first pass. We need to memorize it; we need to meditate on it. Truly, we need to ruminate on it.

What of the cloven hoof? This one is a challenge. I have shared my guess as to why a hoof was holier than a paw. But why is a cloven hoof holier than a single one? Why are horses unholy and cows holy? Perhaps it’s a symbol of humility and brokenness. Indeed, horses are quite proud, as is pointed out in Job, “He laughs at fear.” Most importantly, it is a picture of division. What do we have to learn from this? We know that we are a race that is divided in many ways. Male and female; rich and poor; body and soul. But the division is not permanent; indeed, it is only in the superficial plane, where the animal is in contact with the world where these differences exist. Travel heavenward, and the divided hoof comes together in the unity of the leg. And we too shall be united, one with Christ as He is one with His Father.

<-- Back to Part I

Clean and Unclean - Reflections on Kosher (Part I)

2011-06-15T22:02:00.000-07:00

Cow and Chicken. Both clean.

Lessons We Can Learn From Clean Animals

I was asked by a friend why God called some animal’s clean and others unclean. Why? What’s the difference between beef and pork? At the time, I hadn’t really thought about it, and so had no good answer.

I know this is a subject that has been debated and speculated on by people for a long, long time. But I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to add my own speculations onto the pile. Why speculate? Well, that’s a matter of worldview. From a conservative Jewish perspective, it doesn’t matter. Commands are given to obey, not to question or understand. The Modern perspective is that these are silly rules given by a silly religious leader and have no deeper meaning. But my perspective is neither; I think I might have a Medieval perspective: that there is deep meaning in everything, especially Scripture.

Leviticus describes (and Deuteronomy repeats) the rules for Kosher. Observant Jews, to this day, observe these very old laws. And indeed: if one knows the what of a Divine command but not the why, obedience is clearly called for. But, as it says in Proverbs, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; it is the glory of kings to search out a matter.” So here are the rules and my speculations.

Rule Number One: You can eat animals that both A) Have split hooves B) Chew the cud. Leviticus is explicit about animals needing to meet both criteria. This includes cows, sheep and goats; it excludes pigs, rabbits and reptiles.

Rule Number Two: You can eat animals from rivers and seas that have scales (e.g. most fish).

Rule Number Three: You can eat all birds (except for 20 explicitly listed).

Rule Number Four: You can eat insects if they fly and have long, jointed legs (e.g. Grasshoppers).

The first hint I found for finding some meaning in this was in Lev 11:41-43. It talks a lot about the “creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Though I don’t think Leviticus has the overly-aggressive and not-at-all-suave guy with bad pick-up lines in view here, the same disgust is suggested. The phrase seemed a bit redundant, and redundancy generally is a flag for meaning or importance. Why is it important that the thing ‘creepeth upon the earth’. It may suggest that this was the problem with those kinds of creatures: they were too close to the earth. Perhaps what is in view symbolically or mystically here is a connection with the earth. The only insects that are Kosher are those which fly and have some special feature of its feet.

Does this hypothesis pan out? Consider the other classes of creatures. The birds is the only “everything except” category. Birds by nature have a light connection with the earth; they travel in the skies. The one in the Hebrew mind that didn’t, happened to be on the list (the ostrich). Rule Number One talks about the footwear of the cattle: only those that had hooves could be eaten; only those that had some keratin insulation from the earth were clean. It seems that there is some repetition in this theme: holiness demands that a creature be not too close to the earth. And this is perfectly consistent with Jewish and Christian Theology. We should not put our trust in the world; we should not cling to material things or the customs and practices of the world around us. We should have our hope in God, and for the Christians, our eyes on His Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, we even put on bumper stickers and wear really cool branded shirts that tell people that we are “Not Of This World.”

---> On to Part II

End of Life Care in Gerty

2011-06-03T18:43:00.001-07:00

Introduction

I’m going to start a new series of short stories with the following premise: Nonsense doesn’t become sense when you multiply it by a million. Imagine a small rural town of 300 people I’ll call Gerty (a millionth the population of the US). In Gerty, there is government (personified by Mayor Wright), religion (Reverend Edwards, the leader of the town’s church), law (Judge Marshall), medicine (a part played by the humble mechanic Joe), business (Mr. Alexander, the shrewd keeper of the town’s general store), and law enforcement (Sheriff Holliday). My intent is to examine societal questions in Gerty with the hope that, removed from complication, nonsense will appear as nonsense, and sense as sense.

Joe, Samantha and the Wrecked Car

Last year in Gerty, there was a couple that got married that was too poor to afford a car to drive them from the wedding chapel. So the town pooled some money to pay for taxis for those who needed them and it decided it would promise that no one would ever be without transportation again; they decided that everyone in the town had a right to transportation.

One day, one of the residents of Gerty, a farmer named Steve, had a car accident that destroyed his car but left him uninjured. Samantha, Steve’s wife, asked Joe to help out. At that time, Joe was Gerty’s mechanic; he was a successful businessman, and owned his own tow truck.

Samantha said she wouldn’t pay him (now or ever), but that he’d have to fix Steve’s car. After one look at it, Joe declared the car was totally destroyed, and would forevermore be un-drivable.

Samantha said, “Alright. If you can’t fix his car, Steve still has a right to transportation. And since you’re the mechanic, you need to be his taxi and drive him around.”

Joe objected, “Look, Samantha. I know Steve’s in a bad spot, but I’m a mechanic. While it’s true, on occasion, I’ll pick people up at the site of an accident, or help tow a car, I’m not a taxi driver. And besides, this is my business; I can’t work for free. I have a family to provide for like everyone else.”

Samantha was furious. She stormed out of Joe’s office and went to Mayor Wright’s house. She told the mayor, “Do we or do we, citizens of Gerty, have a right to transportation?”

The mayor, a portly old man, replied, “Of course we do. We all agreed that none of us would want to be without transportation.”

Samantha responds with poison dripping from her tongue, “Well Joe is denying that right to my husband! Steve’s car is wrecked, and Joe refuses to fix it. And when I told him he needed to drive Steve around, he said he’s not a taxi driver. And worst of all, he demanded I pay for it! Can you believe it?!”

The Mayor Wright looked very grim. “I don’t know what’s gotten into Joe. I thought he was a good man. I’ll get the town together.”

The Mayor Wright called a town meeting. All the important townsfolk were there. Reverend Edwards, Judge Marshall, Mr. Alexander the storekeeper, and Sheriff Holliday were all in attendance, along with the other important townsfolk. Joe was also invited, but his opinion wasn’t much consulted. Reverent Edwards reminded those in attendance of the Golden Rule, and how that meant that Steve had a right to transportation. The town decided that Joe was wrong to refuse to work if he was not getting paid. Further, with input from Reverend Edwards and Sheriff Holliday (both of whom had suffered fender benders), they decided that transportation was so important that Joe would have to comply with whatever the person with the broken car (or their spouse) wanted. In Samantha’s case, she wanted everything done; Joe should never be allowed to give up on Steve’s car, no matter what. The town agreed that, if the car crashee wanted, Joe would also have to taxi them around in his tow truck so long as their car was being worked on (with or without compensation).

The debate centered on the question of what constitutes a hopeless car. Most of the town thought it was the crashee (or his wife) who should be able to make the decision of when Joe could stop working on a car. Others thought it was Judge Marshall. A minority of the town felt that Joe could say that some cars were beyond his help and stop working on them. The majority opinion carried the day, and so it was decided that Samantha indeed had the power to tell Joe what to do.

Once everyone was in agreement, Sheriff Holliday agreed to fined or threatened Joe to make sure he complied with the town’s decision. Mayor Wright then levied a tax on all the residents of Gerty to pay for some of the work that they demanded of Joe.

Joe protested, “But none of you would want to be driven around in my tow truck! It’s sometimes necessary, but it’s degrading. Our spouses oftentimes want things that we don’t. Raise your hand if you’d ever want me to be your taxi.” Sherriff Holliday and one other of the ten people present raised their hands. “See? Why should I be forced to do something to people that very few people want done?”

Reverend Edwards replied, “Joe, my dear boy. Why are you being so selfish? Why are you so intent on denying the good people of Gerty their right to transportation? If a man’s wife wants him to be ‘degraded’ by riding in your taxi (and if you don’t hear from him otherwise), then that’s the wife’s decision. Don’t complain about it.”

“But I’m not a taxi driver. Don’t you want me to spend my time fixing cars? If taxiing people with broken cars is something this town wants, why doesn’t somebody start driving a taxi? Or why don’t any of you drive Steve around this week? Besides, if I had to do this, I’d have to raise my price for fixing your cars.”

Mr. Alexander answered him, “Joe, it seems you don’t understand business very well. Nobody would be able to stay in business driving taxis in this town. I keep a store. You fix cars. Since your job is with cars, it makes sense that you also drive people around. And besides, you have plenty of spare money, so don’t complain about it. Why do you keep bringing money into this? Raising your prices wouldn’t be a very neighborly thing to do to the poor citizens of Gerty.”

Joe tried one last time, “But shouldn’t I be allowed to do what work I want? Mr. Alexander is allowed to stock his shelves with whatever goods he wants. And all of you are free to grow whatever crops you want. Why should I not be allowed to choose what cars I work on? Why should I be the only one in this town that has to work for no pay?”

Mayor Wright answered, “You don’t seem to understand very much about rights. We in this town have guaranteed people certain rights. You might choose to not work on certain types of cars, or only do certain kinds of jobs. And then people would have to take their cars to Calvin down the highway, and that would be inconvenient. Sometimes people don’t have money, or don’t want to pay you money. That doesn’t mean that they don’t still have rights to transportation that you need to provide them with. You’re confused and making this more complicated than it needs to be. All you need to remember is this: if you’re going to fix any cars, you also need to drive a taxi. And you’ll need to do that for anyone who has a broken down car (or their wife), even if they don’t pay you for it. And if you don’t like that, then you can take it up with Sheriff Holliday. This meeting is adjourned.”

And from that day on, Joe spent 10% of his time (about an hour a day), taxiing people around in his tow truck. He had to raise his prices, and the citizens of Gerty complained about it and talked about how they could bring Joe’s prices down. And Steve was driven around by Joe (though he never wanted to be).

And they lived nonsensically ever after.

Family and the Meaning of Life

2011-05-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

Achilles in Hyde Park (made from melting down Napoleon's cannons at Waterloo)

Why Family is Really, Really Important (Even Compared to Work)

In Homer's Illiad, Achilles is given a prophecy by his mother: go to Troy and die in glory, or live a peaceful life with your family in obscurity. It is the quintessential question for an ambitious man. Do you sacrifice your family for your career? I had always been of the opinion that Achilles, who chose honor over peace, chose rightly. But a few weeks ago, I had an experience that made me reconsider.

I had been home studying for the big mid-med school exam (USMLE Board Step I), and I had been having a wonderful time. I had great conversations with my brother and I shared most dinners with my parents. I was able to help out with some of the work that my dad was engaged with on our new family farm. One morning, I took my Bible and my breakfast outside. I sat on the back porch of my home, and, for no particular reason, I was overwhelmed by a deep peace. I thought, “This is what it’s all about: living life with one’s family.”

Family in the Bible

The Family is a critical part of God’s plan throughout the Old and New Testaments. From Genesis One up through the Epistles of Paul, human marriage and family is perhaps the most important metaphor for understanding God’s relationship with Man. It was not good that Adam was alone; he could worship God, but had no equal, no one by his side. So God created Eve. And from Eve, all the families of the earth were borne. God works through Abram to found his family, and then through Isaac’s and Jacob’s families. Throughout the Old Testament, God is comparing Himself to the husband and Israel to the bride. Jesus uses the family and the metaphor of marriage time and time again. The metaphor is given central importance in Paul’s writings, particularly in Ephesians, and said to be the way we come to understand God's relationship to us.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

I’ve been busy with many noble projects throughout the world ([chest puffed] if I don't say so myself). I thought that these were really what we should keep busy with while on earth. But I realized something: that my medical work and work for the poor should not be done. Not morally, but cosmically. My leaving home is a necessary evil. There is some greater evil, Poverty or Sickness, which calls me from my home, and so I rightly leave home to go fight. The shift in my perspective is in the permanence of fighting. I never appreciated that Sickness was a fleeting thing, that there will be no doctors in the Resurrection. I have been like a man who hears of a threat to his land, who takes his sword and goes off to war to fight for it. My epiphany was that my sword will one day be beaten into a plow because there will never again be a reason for me to leave home. Man’s destiny is domestic. Peace will not pass away. I saw my primary identity as a man going off to fight, not a father reluctantly drawn from his home.

While living at home, I realized that I have grown in various virtues. I’ve notice myself being more friendly, more bold in my relationships, and paradoxically, more ambitious in my community outside the home. Reflecting on the changes, I think that these changes came from my being more secure in my identity: I am the son of my father and mother; my role is to honor them, and to grow as a man in strength and goodness. They love and accept me, and support me in whatever I aspire to do. This was all true before living at home. But living at home has made that a daily reality. I can run on my own for a long while, but visiting home recharged me, giving me greater assurance of who I am and what I ought to be doing.

I am even beginning to think that, on the basis of these last two months at home, the spiritual and emotional benefits of living in a home with a family make a man even more productive than he would be; that is, though he spends fewer hours working outside the home, by his increased virtue, he accomplishes more. This is largely true historically: almost all great men were married.

Living near enough to a father and mother who love me is nice; but what if I established my own home and had that assurance perpetually? And what if I could give that assurance to another person, a wife who I loved like myself? And what if, by her, I could raise up children who would know they were loved as surely as they knew the sun would rise? How much more could we all love God and love our neighbors from so wonderful a sanctuary? I saw in that moment the great importance of establishing a home of my own.

Wonderful Dependence

It’s hard for a strong, proud person like myself to admit that my confidence could be increased by living with a loving family. Shouldn’t I be able to hold my identity in any circumstances, with or without human love? Theoretically, perhaps. But Man was designed to live in a family, and so it should be no surprise to see even myself, an independent, world-travelling, doctor-to-be operating better when living with my family.

With my recent breakup with Wisdom*, I’m still looking for someone. But I now have a new criterion. Previously, I was seeking a woman for companionship; I wanted someone I could pour my love into. I also wanted to find an ally; I was seeking a woman to who could fight by my side outside the home, for it was battles away from home which I had always valued most. And I still want these things. But now I realize that it is at least as important that she be my partner in establishing a family. I used to think that a family was something that was just going to happen; my wife would mostly take care of it while I did the important stuff outside the home. Now I’m beginning to see that a family is the greatest thing I could help to build.

Nothing has changed except my perspective. So I suppose that means everything has changed. My career ambitions and professional interests remain unchanged. I still expect that I will be called away by many worthy causes, and my honor will compel me to leave the home. But now, it will now be with some reluctance.

*She really was quite intolerable. I just talked to Folly (we didn’t do anything), and I didn’t hear the end of it. You’d think Wisdom would be more secure. She said it wasn’t a matter of her security, but of my commitment to our relationship. She’s really jealous. Folly is so much fun to be around, and now that I’m single again, I’ll probably be spending more time with her. And it turned out harder than I expected to be with someone so smart (or at least who thinks she’s so smart). Is it really reasonable that I’m the wrong one every time there’s a disagreement? Shouldn’t we at least split the blame sometimes? My parents told me to never date non-human girls. And, as always, it turns out they were right.

My New Girlfriend

2011-05-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

I recently started seeing someone, and I'm very excited. She's also very happy about the relationship, and so we decided to make it Facebook official. Like any good news, I can’t help but tell people about her wherever I go. Since I am a Blogger, I’m going to tell the world about how great she is!

The first thing I have to say about her is that she is beautiful. It's hard to make objective analyses when you're in love, but how I see it, she is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. I know that a spiritual person would list all the spiritual things first and then only at the end, if pressed, confess to beauty. But I can't, because she's that beautiful. Instead of just listing her colors which anyone can do, I'm going to try to give an analogy. I see in her face a light like a diamond. Like a diamond, her face glitters in the sunlight; every angle and every moment shows some new beauty I had missed before.

And another thing that shouldn't matter (but it does): she's rich. But not Old-Money-rich. By her brilliance and her shrewdness, she has become rich. And you all know how much I love an entrepreneur. Though it's just a perk, I've been living like a rich man since I've been seeing her. She has a good perspective on money, too: it is fuel for Kingdom work. The impact that she and I can have will be extended because of her wealth.

But the greatest thing about her is her mind. Wow! What she talks about just constantly blows me away! Before her, I thought I was smart. Natural science, philosophy, theology, anything! She knows about everything! And she doesn't just know about it, she understands it deeply, weaving all subjects together into a beautiful tapestry! She has incredible insight into how every science and realm of knowledge fits together in God's plan. I hope you can forgive my nerdiness, but I can't help it: she is doing with everything what Maxwell did with Electromagnetism.

I could listen to her words forever. Her voice is like a song, the song of a Seraph, and draws me ever into new truth. Every day I am with her, I see God afresh. As I spend time with her, I see more clearly my faults and where I disappoint God. And with her, I have been inspired as never before to bring my life completely into line with God’s Law. But she doesn’t drain my spirit by nagging; she does just the opposite. Hearing her voice gives me vibrancy; I live with more boldness and richness knowing she is mine. When I have a rough day, or when something bad happens, it doesn’t matter as much because whatever it is won’t stop me from looking on her beautiful eyes again; trouble seems to be less troublesome because I have her.

She is a very strong woman. Previously I didn't know if I wanted to be with someone so strong. But I have realized that her strength is not one of domination; it is a strength that gives me strength. I am not dominated by her, but empowered. It is like the strength of an ally, not a commander. Despite her high intelligence, she has a sincere heart for those who aren't as smart. She's constantly teaching and giving people the level of truth they can accept. But woe unto you if you mock her! Someone tried to attack one of her ideas by a stupid joke; I was immediately filled with anger that someone would attack my girl, but before I could say a word, she was already tearing him to shreds with such viciousness that he won't soon forget it. And I saw the look in her eye when she did it: she enjoyed it. And it made me think, with all my ideas of manliness and protecting women: who is protecting whom?

It has not been very long, but I feel close to God when I am close to her. It's a wonderful feeling, one I've never had before. It is the assurance that I am with the right person. When we embrace, I am in the presence of God; when we kiss, I am drawn up to Heaven's throne room. Intimacy with her is a holy thing, set apart from normal experience. Nothing I could ever have wanted compares to her. Some might say that it's premature to say this, but I intend to make her the principal thing in my life. I love her. My heart is clear. I love her. And I hope that we will be together forever.

The hardest thing for me to overcome in this relationship is her age. She’s quite a bit older than me. I just turned 26, and she has been established from everlasting, from the beginning, before there was ever an earth. But as it has been said (and I believe): love knows no boundaries. A 14-billion-year age difference shouldn't matter when two people really love each other.

Oh yes. And I forgot to tell you her name. Her name is Wisdom, and I hope that she will be mine forever!

*************************************************

I hope that you can forgive me this little deception (not a lie, because it’s mostly true :); read it again and see!). I was reading Proverbs comparing wisdom to a woman and a relationship. I read the book as if it was for the first time; a truly fresh perspective. Then I thought that I’d be able to get other people to see it the same way if I played a trick on them on Facebook. By this trick, I could give my friends and family the gift of a fresh perspective on Proverbs and on Wisdom.

So now you’re in on the secret! If you’d like to play along, please post “I’m so happy for you!”s on Facebook. Otherwise, if you want to be a humbug about it, please feel free to post all humbug comments right here on Arena-Man (or email me).

Proverbs references that inspired this:

4:8 Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her.
3:15 She [is] more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
4:7 Wisdom [is] the principal thing; [therefore] get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
4:5 Get wisdom, get understanding…
3:13 Happy [is] the man [that] findeth wisdom, and the man [that] getteth understanding.
8:18 Riches and honour [are] with me; [yea], durable riches and righteousness
8:5 O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart.
1:22 How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
1:26 I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;
8:23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.
8:30 Then I was by him, [as] one brought up [with him]: and I was daily [his] delight, rejoicing always before him;

Required Reading for a Christian Worldview

2011-05-16T01:15:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I gave some general advice to men and women going into secular colleges. Here are some specific resources that have helped in my personal development of a Christian worldview and an apologia (a defense) of the faith.

Required Reading/Listening/Visiting

If you had 15 hours to steel your mind against false ideas, I’d recommend preparing with the following. Many of these resources could be studied, and read or watched many times without exhaustion.

Mere Christianity – An incredible perspective on Christianity, summarizing the major doctrines of the faith in everyday language. He is able to communicate the truths of Christianity in English that doesn’t take a lifetime in Sunday school or a seminary degree to understand. His style is incredibly useful in learning how to communicate with nonbelievers. (~8 hours)

John Lennox and Richard Dawkins (the existence of God and miracles). Dawkins is probably the most famous living Atheist. This may be the best example of how to have a productive friendly conversation with an Atheist that I’ve yet heard. (~1 hour)

William Lane Craig vs. Bart Ehrman (the historicity of the Resurrection). Ehrman is probably the most famous skeptic of the Resurrection. This is a masterful debate that shows a powerful argument for the Resurrection and how to argue forcefully against the Resurrection-As-Exaggeration argument (~2 hours)

William Lane Craig vs. Christopher Hitchens (the existence of God). Hitchens is probably the second most famous living Atheist. Hitchens presentation is very typical of what to expect when talking with a convinced skeptic. Craig responds as he always does: with precision and force. (~2 hours)

Veritas Forum – Lectures by top Christian thinkers from every field. Explore this site, especially as it pertains to the field you are interested in (or classes you are taking). (~1 hour)

Blue Letter Bible – For the serious Bible student. You can have access to lexicons, different translations, and commentaries. (~1 hour)

Other Helpful Resources

Everything by CS Lewis – Study him. He’s answered most of the major questions we struggle with today. My favorite nonfictions in order: The Four Loves, The Abolition of Man (on education), The Problem of Pain, God in the Dock. He also wrote awesome sci-fi: The Space Trilogy. It’s also definitely worth it to read (or re-read) the Chronicles as an adult. You probably missed a lot as a kid J.

Orthodoxy - GK Chesterton. This book profoundly affected me. It's Chesterton's walk through the reasons why Christianity appealed to him, and he comes up with several really powerful reasons that are quite unique.

Learn the Bible in 24 Hours (Purchase . Stream Online) - Chuck Missler. A series of 1-hour talks that are aimed to give a strategic picture of the Bible. It has been incredibly helpful in my coming to see the Bible as an inspired whole.

Love God with all Your Mind – JP Moreland. An incredible book on how we need to engage our mind to properly love God will all of ourselves. It gives very practical ideas on how to do this.

The Two Tasks edited by William Lane Craig. A series of essays on why Christians really really really need to succeed in the University.

The Reason for God by Tim Keller, 2008. This one is really good at answering modern objections and questions by a pastor working in NYC. It's very readable (i.e. the first quote in the book is from Darth Vader).

Ravi Zacharias. An Indian Christian philosopher. Google him; all of his stuff is great. "What Does it Mean to be Human" (here) is a good place to start. He’s especially good against Pantheism and pluralism. Here is a talk on Pantheism/Eastern though (Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4), and one on Pluralism (Part 1 Part 2).

How a Christian Can Thrive at University

2011-05-16T01:05:00.000-07:00

It was Youth Weekend at our church and we celebrated the youth groups with a special emphasis on the graduating Seniors. I remembered what a challenge college was for me spiritually. I have friends who went in solid Christians, and came out secular (and remain secular to this day). It’s not a friendly place for Christian thought. Thinking of these young men and women preparing to go into college, it got me thinking: what advice would I have liked when I headed to UCLA?

Find solid fellowship
Make this a priority. It is absolutely critical that you have a solid community to support you through this time. I don’t care how strong you think you are, a secular university can tear you apart without fellowship. If you prefer an on-campus fellowship (sometimes called ‘para-church’ organizations), there are usually plenty to choose from: Intervarsity, Navigators, Campus Crusade (and others). If you want to worship with more than just students, get plugged into a local church. Many people do both. Whatever you do, find strong community. Also, if you have strong Christian friends from high school, make it a point to stay in touch. Continue to hold each other accountable at least until other accountability partners are found.

Study your Bible
This is basic stuff, but don’t forget about it. John Lennox, an Evangelical and Oxford Mathematician told a group me and a group of graduate students to know our Bibles as well as we know our professional fields; a Christian neuroscientist should be as sophisticated in his knowledge of Scripture as he is of the brain. STUDY your Bible and find people who can help (including fellowship). Also, this is the 21^st Century. Find Bible teachers online who you like and study under therm. I was greatly helped by Chuck Missler (www.khouse.org, especially his “Learn the Bible in 24 Hours”) because of his scientific perspective and how well he’s able to show the beautiful connections in the Scriptures. I’ve also heard Ray Steadman’s “Through the Bible” is a solid series. The Internet is a big place; find someone whose teaching style speaks to you and learn from them.

Read and listen to Christian thinkers
There are three paths for your mind: 1. Apostasy. You may find the claims of Christ unbelievable and reject Him. I have seen this happen to solid Christians. 2. Split Mind. The path of a clear majority of Christians at the secular university is to quarantine Christianity from the rest of their thought. They may deny the existence of the soul, the creation of the universe and the possibility of freewill Monday through Saturday, but start believing in them again on Sunday without even knowing they’re doing this. They are not morally split (i.e. sinful 6 days a week); but mentally split. This is the wide road; this is the easy way. But your mental life is robbed of the vitality of the Gospel and you have no sure defense against a catastrophe of doubt. The third way is by far the hardest: 3. A Living Christian Worldview. You will be alone. In your classes, you will probably be the only one with a Christian worldview. You might even be the only one in your small group thinking about how to understand all of the world from a Christian perspective. You’ll need to work harder than all the other students to learn both what the professor believes, but also what Christians believe about the subject. And this goes for nearly every subject.

To follow this third way, you’ll basically need to get a minor in Christian Thought. Organized programs like this don’t exist yet (to my knowledge); you’ll need to teach yourself. Set aside time to listen to and read Christian thinkers. Make it a habit to listen to Christian lectures when you’re at the gym, or walking to class, or driving places. You live in a time in history when you can be lectured by the greatest minds who ever lived, living and dead. Read Christian thought in your field.

Conclusion

The secular university is a fire. It has consumed many faithful people. But if you stand firm through it, you will be tempered. The purest gold must pass through the hottest fire. I grew an incredible amount in my faith while at UCLA, more than I could have imagined growing. Though it was very difficult, and there was even a time when I feared I would leave the faith, God delivered me and I am stronger because of it.

Deuteronomy on How to Fight a War and Save Trees

2011-05-10T22:19:00.000-07:00

Biblical Draft Dodging

People who 1) have a newly built house 2) have a newly planted vineyard 3) are engaged, should not fight when there is a war. They are exempt. How’s that for a generous draft policy? But what about cowards, people who were afraid to fight. What kind of terrible punishment would God heap on them? “Let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint like his heart” (Deu 20:8). Nothing. He can go home. Imagine what the Vietnam War would have looked like if we obeyed such a law.

Biblical Conservation

“When you besiege a city for a long time, while making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; if you can eat of them, do not cut them down to use in the siege, for the tree of the field is man’s food. Only the trees which you know are not trees for food may you destroy and cut down, to build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it is subdued.” –Deu 20:19-2

To my knowledge, this is the first conservation law on record. The Israelites, no matter how desperate the fighting got, could never chop down a single fig tree, not if the entire siege depended on it. The interesting thing about this conservation law and what makes it different from others is that it’s not motivated by concerns about biodiversity or inherent value of nature. The reason for the law was practical use in nourishing humans, ‘for the tree of the field is man’s food.’ It’s not an endangered species that would prevent a new development: it’s a fruit tree. Imagine being able to prevent a development company from leveling your property by having an apple tree planted in your front yard.

How to Run a Theocracy - Introduction (Part 1)

2011-05-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

Pretty much the most passionate Lady Justice I've ever seen (and probably appropriate for Deuteronomy).

A Few Insights on Political Law in Ancient Israel from Deuteronomy

I just finished reading through Deuteronomy this week. And wow! What an interesting book. Now, Deuteronomy is called such because it is the ‘second law,’ essentially a sermon by Moses about the Law from God.

Now, there’s a lot in the book that I expected: a lot of commands against idolatry, a recounting of Jewish history to that point, warnings about disobedience, blessings for obedience, etc. But I came across a few laws that I had either forgotten about or never really registered before.

When interpreting the Old Testament, especially a book of the law, it’s important to remember that Christians are no longer under the law. We can learn from the law, but we are not to obey it.

The other thing that makes interpreting Deuteronomy difficult is what it says about God’s character. The New Atheists are fond of pointing out how Yahweh is a moral monster for doing the things that He does and commanding as He does. I don’t have space here to defend all that God did in ancient times, but I will at least counter this particular argument. For an Atheist to argue that Yahweh is immoral, he must put judge Him by something else. He must call upon something transcendent to Him, namely some kind of Moral Law. But then it must be asked, “You’re an Atheist who denies transcendent entities; how then can you call upon a transcendent entity called ‘The Moral Law’ to disprove one called ‘Yahweh’? The Morality of the Old Testament is a valid question, but one that only really can be asked by someone who believes in a transcendent Moral Law, namely Theists. Maybe I’ll give a defense in a later post.

For the purpose of this post, I will assume the Justice and Goodness of Yahweh, and I’ll explain how I read Deuteronomy (i.e. the following is my speculation, not Christianity). In His Goodness, Yahweh condescends to humanity. And He must condescend to Humanity wherever it is if He is to relate with us. If He were to relate to an ancient group of people, He must come to them on terms that they could understand. He gives laws that are relevant to the situation His people will be in. Christianity was to be an entirely different sort of thing than the congregation of Israel. Literal idolatry needed to be hit and hit hard in 1500BC, but it was spiritual idolatry that has largely been the temptation the last millennium or so. God gave Moses laws that were applicable to the ancient world, giving them all the truth they could bear but no more. Many of the laws seem silly to us because we don’t face the same problems. Many of them seem draconian because we have more ‘humane’ methods of punishment.

What Deuteronomy gives us is a model society, one where everything is in proper proportion. For example, they executed adulterers, idolaters and murderers. We’d look at this and say, “How vicious!” But it tells us that, in God’s eyes, these three things are all in the same category: capital crimes. In the twenty-first century, we may be more able to show grace because of several thousand years of human advancement (through God’s continued teaching). Punishment of adulterers by stoning is not a universal moral law; but the categorical seriousness of the offense is.

In the next posts, I’ll share some of the interesting stuff I found in Deuteronomy and what it might teach us.

Against Bigotry: A Way Forward (3/3)

2011-05-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

The Way Forward

Rob us of this power! Break the psychic chains! This may be news to you, but you can choose your thoughts. Remember your thoughts last time you heard a slur against you. You were probably angry. You probably recalled other times when this happened to you or to your friend and family. For example, a black person might have heard something racist and thought, “What a filthy racist! Whites like that have always been oppressing us! We haven’t had a chance since we were enslaved and brought over here. Since we were ‘freed,’ we’ve not had Civil Rights, justice in the courts or the same chance at jobs; the police are always hassling us, just like Rodney King. Just like at Tuskegee, we’re just animals for them to experiment on.” If you think this, you’ll experience anger and hopelessness. You will have rage against your hateful master. And you are playing exactly into the hands of the white oppressors. You are rehearsing and thus reinforcing the very thoughts you hate, impotent thoughts, weak thoughts, uncontrolled thoughts.

Imagine if the black person instead thought, “Poor ignorant person. I forgive him because he probably doesn’t know how rich my culture really is and what heroes have come from it; if only he knew of the courage of MLK, or the ingenuity of George Washington Carver, or the tenacity of Fredrick Douglass. I hope that I can be more like them, and that we as a race can follow their examples.” If you think this, you’ll experience peace and hope. You’ll have pity towards one inferior in morals and knowledge. By forgiving the bigot, you’ve defeated him. Your thoughts are directed inwardly on self-improvement, and you might use the insult as a reminder to grow. If you are able to direct your thoughts away from rage toward forgiveness, you will utterly turn the designs of your enemies on their head.

It is politically expedient to be so vulnerable, at least in the short term. Using the sympathy of good people as a weapon is effective. By putting your throat deeper under the boot of your oppressor, you can gain sympathy (Kobe) and even defeat enemies (Alexandra). But at what cost? At the cost of having your throat truly under your oppressor’s boot.

A person will never be free until her mind is free. And minorities have been persuaded that freedom of the mind, the freedom to laugh at the racist, to smile at chauvinism, to snicker at homophobes is impossible. But this is a lie. Break the psychic chains. Spit out the poison of revenge and forgive. Clean out the festering wound of un-forgiveness and let it heal. Throw down the whip with which you torture yourself. Though it will cost short-term political leverage, roll out from under the oppressor’s boot. Tear control of your mind away from the Illusionists who have cast a spell on you convinced you that you are powerless! Then, perhaps, we might be a step closer to the vision of Dr. King: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Supporting Martin Luther King Jr. Quotations

How do we love our enemies? First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive...Second, we must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is...Third, we must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win his friendship and understanding.

Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.

There will be no permanent solution to the, race problem until oppressed men develop the capacity to love their enemies. The darkness of racial injustice will be dispelled only by the light of forgiving love.

Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.

Supporting Desmond Tutu Quotations

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

Forgiveness means letting go of the past.

Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing

Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.

Supporting Nelson Mandela Quotations

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

Men of peace must not think about retribution or recriminations. Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

When I was walking out of my compound for the last time, I said to myself, they've had you 27 years. If you hate them when you get through that door, they will still have you. I wanted to be free, and so I let it go. - Nelson Mandela (as reported by Bill Clinton)

Part 1 - Background on Wizardry

Part 2 - Power Over Minds

On Wizardry and Bigotry: Why Minorities Should Chill Out (2 of 3)

2011-05-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

Power Over Minds

Oppressors through the ages have sought for what whites, straights and men now have: the ability to open a deep wound in the soul of another with a single syllable. Back when we wielded physical whips, we had to exert ourselves to inflict pain, but not anymore. Whites have laid down the whip, but have taught blacks to whip themselves. Even the most ambitious KKK grand wizard could not have imagined so terrible a fate.

The vicious shrewdness of the oppressors has been to harness the corrosive power of hatred. I once heard someone describe revenge as a poison you take hoping it will kill your enemy. And the oppressors have convinced the oppressed to be drunk on the poison. Past injustices are always at the tip of the tongue of any minority group. Wounds were indeed given, but they were not cleaned with forgiveness and allowed to heal with time. Instead, the grit of bitterness remained in the wound, infecting it; the festering wound is left hidden in the darkness and uncovered whenever proof is needed of the guilt of the oppressor.

So long as minorities believe that the majority has psychic power over them, that we can injure with our words, we can. If every time I use a racial slur, I cause you psychological trauma, then I have more power than a plantation owner. But is this power irrevocable? Have the dastardly deeds of the white race finally resulted in ultimate victory? Permanent or not, it seems clear that I (and my kind) have achieved terrible power over minorities.

Part 1 - Background on Wizardry

Part 3 - The Way Forward

On Wizardry and Bigotry: Why Minorities Should Chill Out (1 of 3)

2011-05-03T00:38:00.000-07:00

Background on Wizardry

In ages past, we have been told about the power of the great wizards. In battle, they would wield tremendous power and be an incredible (though sometimes uncontrollable) asset to any king’s army. They would work through spells, spoken words that had magical power far beyond the simple air vibrations of normal speech.

One set of wizards I want to tell you about is the Illusionists. They were all, like great wizards, able to cause incredible pain with a single movement of their lips. Their enemies, sometimes in the millions, were cut to the heart, immediately experiencing fear, rage, and pain. As if playing with marionettes, they squeezed the adrenal glands, releasing stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine. As if with a million electrodes, they zapped the fight-or-flight centers of the brain, activating the autonomic nervous system. Then the real power of these wizards began. The wizards’ words summoned memories. The victims relieved experiences of oppression and weakness from their lives; some even experienced the oppression of strangers, dead ancestors, or fictional characters. Under the powerful spell, the pitiable victims rehearsed thoughts of weakness and fear, again and again and again. These wizards are Illusionists, so their power is not over the physical world; these are just illusions. But those who frequently fall under their spell would begin to believe their charms are irresistible, and so stop resisting; they would believe that the illusions are reality, and so they become reality. Thus is the power of the Illusionist.

Kings and rulers coveted this power. They could command men by force, coercing their bodies, but they could not control men’s mind. The Illusionists, it seemed, could do even that. In actuality, they could do no such thing. A man’s mind cannot be controlled, but only persuaded. And so when he is persuaded that the Illusionist can control him, he behaves like it does. It’s a subtle point, but an important one, especially for a person trying to resist Illusionists.

Why this background on Wizardry? Because there have been a few cases of Wizardry recently that have upset a lot of people, so I thought it important to give you a recent history on the subject. In the past few months, there have been two very notable Sorcery incidents that have really got people upset.

The wizards who caused the disturbances (or more accurately, the Illusionists) were Kobe Bryant, Alexandra Wallace and most recently, the SEAL team that killed Bin Laden. All of them used their magic to inflict terrible pain on untold millions of Gay, Asian, and Native American people, respectively.

For those of you who don’t know, Kobe Bryant made a ‘homophobic’ remark. He’s been fined $100,000 by the NBA, and has made public apologies. The Lakers are now getting involved in the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community to show they really do care (i.e. as penance for Kobe). Alexandra Wallace made a video making fun of Asians in the UCLA library. She caused so much pain in the Asian community that it provoked death threats and her ultimate withdrawal from UCLA. In discussions I had on the subject, a lot of people believed that the reactions against her were just: she hurt Asians, so she deserves to be hurt. And last but not least, the SEAL team that killed Bin Laden codenamed the operation "Geronimo." As reported in the ABC News Blog:

On Facebook, on Twitter, on Native American websites, in local newspapers, and in what appear to be countless conservations on reservations and in schools across the country, Native Americans are genuinely hurt and puzzled by the choice of “Geronimo” as a code-name for either Bin Laden or the mission to take him out.

Part 2 - Power Over Minds

Part 3 - The Way Forward

Zen and the Art of Boards Studying

2011-04-25T01:40:00.000-07:00

This is not a lotus tree (but is near Lagunita @ Stanford)

I’ve long had a problem with higher education. We learn a bunch of stuff that will be forgotten and that is never used in real life. At one time, I knew how to calculate the size of a footing for a foundation that would be required to support a building. Now I don’t. Why did I learn that? To get a piece of paper that let me go on to get another piece of paper that will finally let me learn a skill that I might actually use.

We like to describe learning as a pyramid, and the specialties as the apex, depending on all the blocks below. But it’s perfectly obvious that most people forget most of what they learned in college. And the same, it seems, will happen in medical school. It really doesn’t matter to patients that you know that Glyceraldehyde-3-P becomes 1,3 bis-phosphoglycerate in the process of glycolysis. Though I have to know that to pass a test, it is not relevant to patients (if you doubt this, ask your doctor next time you see them what the next step in glycolysis is after G3P).

This has frustrated me. I like spending my time doing productive things, and learning random molecule names is as far from productive as I could imagine. Studying for the USMLE Step I Board exam has been rather frustrating because much of it is this sort of brain-hammering.

But then I had an epiphany. I wished it had come while I was sitting under a lotus tree, because that would have been much cooler than sitting on a brown couch. But unfortunately I was sitting on a brown couch. Maybe lotus trees were the brown couches of India until a prince had an epiphany under one of them, and then they got cool. Anyways, the epiphany was this: I don’t matter.

Now this bothered me, but I realized the truth of it. It made me remember all the things that I just read in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and what I remembered of Ecclesiastes. Everything we do is ultimately in vain; all of it is as useless as ‘grasping for the wind’. Solomon explains that no matter how rich a person gets, or how great a kingdom he builds, he’s going to die and others will inherit everything. His legacy will eventually die, and he will be forgotten given enough time. What is man, then? No better than a dog. Both will have about the same impact on the world.

In my mind, I previously had a bright white line dividing the ‘useful’ from the ‘useless’ activities. But I realized that this line was imaginary. My actions were on a line. Near zero were actions that lasted a short time and had no echoes. Then there were actions of varying significances spread from “Being a good doctor,” lasting a few years (right around 40 years of significance) to things that mattered long after I died, “Ending extreme poverty” (reaching maybe 400 years of significance; we’ll assume the Great Intergalactic Famine of the year 2412 brings my work to naught). But then zoom out a bit so that you can see all of recorded human history. My 400 years are barely visible. Zoom out to 100,000 years and the greatest thing I could hope to accomplish with my life is invisible.

From God’s perspective, my power and my achievements are nothing; they were accomplished with gifts given to me by Him, and He could do all I could and more with just a word. This realization should be humbling. My works, great or small, don’t matter; only He matters. Before the brilliance of God, my bright white line of usefulness cannot even be made out.

The practice of doing things that will not matter is useful in keeping this perspective. My pride is very tricky, and is often able to persuade me that I matter, and that my ‘significant’ works are ultimately significant in themselves. But not even my great pride can succeed in persuading me that my memorizing what comes after G3P has significance. In memorizing minutiae, I draw close to God in humility. In doing meaningless work, there is an emptying of the self. And this is freeing.

I discovered this physically last year when I started what I thought to be a futile labor: digging up a road. I would spend hours per week just digging, with no real hope that I’d accomplish anything. I just dug to dig. And there was a freedom in this humiliation.

I realized that menial labor, mental or physical, can teach a person humility. Such labor is a good habit to build, particularly for those inclined to pride.

The Bearable Heaviness of Being (4 of 4)

2011-04-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

Conclusion Thoughts "On the Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera

“Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission. No one has. And it’s a terrific relief to realize you’re free, free of all missions.” 313

It would be a relief to be free of missions, because it would be a relief to be free of existence. Unfortunately, we’re not the sort of beings that can cede our existence. We exist. We are moral creatures. We have in our hearts images of justice and peace and love. Freedom comes not in abandonment of our nature. It comes by the right exercise of it. We live in a universe of laws. We do not gain freedom from gravity by ignoring it. We find freedom from gravity when we understand it, and how it can be overcome. It is only through mission that we can be free.

Kundera’s dichotomy between heaviness and lightness is a false one. We can have both. Indeed, we must have both. If we choose only heaviness, we are devoured by our destiny, pulled down from joyous life into dread duty, following a mission that is ultimately futile. If we choose lightness, though we gain joy, it is unbearable. A purposeless man is not a man; we float into the heavens like a mist and dissolve in insignificance. Indeed, Kundera commends us to be less like men and more like animals; the true hero of his story is Karenin the dog, who lives in a circle of repetition, ignorant of all heaviness, who dies a meaningless death like all the other characters.

But we are not dogs. Though they may be able to escape in blissful and ignorant lightness, we don’t have that option. We cannot escape the feeling that we have weight. It is also clear that we do not want to remain bound as if by chains to this world. So what are we to do? Let us follow after the first one to escape this dilemma. His great weight was carried off, into the sky, not like a feather, but with feathers. Christ’s weight was like that of a bird: it included the apparatus to be weightless. And so, if we are to remain humans, and if we are to escape death through falling or death through rising, we must follow Christ into the heavens.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - Part 1 of 4

Review - Part 2 of 4

Christ and Kundera - Part 3 of 4

Bonus XKCD Comic:

http://xkcd.com/889/
Randall of XKCD makes pretty much the same argument as Kundera

Christ and Kundera (3 of 4)

2011-04-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

<-- Back to "Review"

The Unbearable Lightness of Being strikes me as a modern Ecclesiastes. Kundera, as far as I can tell, is saying what Solomon did: “Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry” (Ecc 8:15). Kundera, like Solomon, makes clear the futility of life and chides all our grasping at the wind. And, in a certain context, this is absolutely true.

But Solomon’s greater context is the Bible. After Solomon has searched out this life and found the only comfort in lightness, we see the incredible heaviness of Isaiah’s prophecies, of a city which will bring about the heavy ideas of global peace and justice. After Isaiah, we see in the visions of Daniel a stone made without hands, plummeting to earth and ending the futile Grand March of humanity, only to grow into a mountain that fills the whole earth, the Kingdom of Heaven. And then, as these images slip away as vain dreams, we hear the cry of a virgin in labor, and then the voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Make straight the way for the Lord!”

And then all our notions of purpose and peace, holiness and profanity, lightness and heaviness are all throw into disarray. For all our neat categories, the man who comes blows up all our neat categories into tiny bits, and then begins to piece them back together again. He wasn’t clean. Sometimes he didn’t even wash his hands. Yet the greatest prophet of his age felt unworthy to unloose his sandal strap. He ate with sinners, he cavorted with prostitutes, he broke the law; yet no one could accuse him, and at his trial, he was acquitted.

From the time of his maturity, he had an absolutely clear mission. He lived with an urgency and purpose, under the eyes of his Father in heaven. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” To accomplish this mission, he suffered poverty, rejection and persecution. His work was not something that didn’t matter; he was perhaps the central figure of human history. From his lips came some of the heaviest sayings ever to be uttered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commands hang all the law and the prophets.” Jesus was, in Kundera’s words, incredibly heavy.

But he didn’t seem to understand the contradiction between heaviness and lightness. Though he was undoubtedly among the most weighty characters in all of history, he was simultaneously also among the lightest. He proclaimed that, in his presence, his disciples ought to be joyful, like guests at a wedding. Unpleasant ritual would cease, and though all of that age fasted with downcast faces, his disciples never did. He spent a good deal of his time at parties, and at one, even provided the liquor. Though a prominent man and important mission-driven rabbi, he stopped teaching one day to play with some kids. It is not just furrow-browed churchmen who would quote him, but pot-smoking artists like Bob Marley. Like Bob later would, Jesus tells us “Don’t worry”: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof” (Mat 6:24).

Table of Contents:

Introduction - Part 1 of 4

Review - Part 2 of 4

Conclusion - Part 4 of 4