Miniposts

My Friday-night "Overtopping" explosion has done no good. Ideas beget ideas! I was up to 17 pink notes a few hours ago. So I'll go super short. Here are a few stubs for ideas that should be developed. Comment if one of them strikes your fancy.

Salvation
There seem to be two senses of salvation. There is a sense in which we "have been saved" and another in which we "are being saved." It seems to me that with the past-tense part of salvation, we can also say we have been saved by faith; it is justification (Rom 8); it's focus is on our relationship to God: "Love the Lord thy God..."

The second sense is more dynamic and may seem to require works. This may be where the James "faith without works is dead" fits into salvation. This is sanctification. This 'being saved' depends on the first sense, but it's focus is outwards, on the second Great Commandment "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

If this were the case, both sides of Grace vs. Works would be right on salvation; it depends on the tense of 'saved.'

Life Expectancy at conception
We like to think of ourselves as civilized because our "life expectancy at birth" has gone way up after all our babies stopped dying from diseased we figured out how to prevent. But we would still look like barbarians if we calculated our life expectancy from conception, counting the millions who don't make it out of the womb because of abortion. Perhaps our life expectancy hasn't changed since the Dark Ages.

Axioms
We all have to make assumptions about our worldview. Do we have to assume God? In what sense can we 'prove' Him? I had a friend strongly disagree with the Cosmological argument on the grounds that we could not know the nature of the universe 'before' the beginning. I then made the argument that if we could not know before the beginning for certain, we must at least be agnostic about it; we would have to consign it to an axiom or assumption of our worldview.

Was this a valid argument? Are we able to be more confident about God's existence on purely logical grounds? Or is God an assumed precondition of the universe?

Evil Is Singularly Human
I was discussing the difference between Humans and the animals and I argued that our absurd (in Evolutionary terms) altruism was something that set us apart. After a bit of discussion on that, my discussants (<-- I thought I made that word up... spell check isn't underlining it) suggested that no other species commits acts of evil. After reflecting, I think I agree. We are the only gratuitously evil species. Even in cases where it is against our best interest (survival or social), we'll commit terribly evil acts. This, I think, supports the view that Man is a Moral being. That is, he has the capacity to go above and below the call of instinct. I previously only focused on how he went above it in altruism, not below it in malice. Whew
Down to 9 pink notes. Single digits. Now it's bedtime.

Google-esque Drug Trials

Problems with drug trials: They’re REALLY expensive and don’t actually give information that’s all that useful. They answer the question “Is this drug more effective than a sugar pill for everyone with a given disease?” If yes, approval. If no, illegal. What if it works really well for some people? Too bad. What if it works for another condition “Off label use”? Irrelevant (you’d need to do another really expensive study to answer that question). And it takes a really really long time to do one of these. So your answer is at least two years old by the time you’re done. So let’s take a lesson from Google and design a drug trial with the following parameters:

• Always in beta. You never ‘release’ the drug; everybody who ever takes it contributes their health results and statistics to the dynamic database.

• Huge dataset. Everybody taking the drug is a part of the database.

• Searchable. A doctor would be able to search for the running efficacy for “20-30 year old Caucasian with severe chest pain after heart attack”. This would give you the best possible answer for your situation. You don’t care how well it works for 80 year olds. The FDA does, but that info doesn’t help you.

• Moderated, not Regulated. With a trial ongoing, there is not the need for regulation of drugs with the intensity that the FDA regulates now. So long as patients and doctors know the information, they should be able to make decisions on their own risk, not risk thresholds set by bureaucrats.

Service as Rx

Our Psych professor brings in patients from the Psych ward to interview with him on their condition so as to help us to learn. At first he was hesitant, worrying about the stress that such public revelation would put on the patients. But there have been universally positive responses; the patients focus on their ability to do good by helping us learn.

This is a key insight: our mental health may depend on service to others. Could the be employed in the Psych wards and metal health institutions? Can we figure out a way to give depressed and anxious patients the ability to focus outwards, and help those in need? I think this would be a great way to help two sets of people significantly, and to help teach Psychiatrist that there is more to mental health than chemical imbalance. Or for the particularly stubborn materialists, that chemical imbalance may be solved by serving others.

Maybe in a while your doctor will diagnose you as having a "service deficiency" and the prescription being "visiting a nursing home MWF".

The Fun Scale

I had a conversation with a classmate on Thursday about pleasure being an act of worship. I made reference to Piper's "How To Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of God." She commented that she'd have a hard time having sex to the glory of God. I said something boring in protest.

It occurred to me that most people see the world something like this:

In her world, "sex" and "God" are on different sides; having sex to glorify God is indeed a contradiction. I may have to construct my version.

Is Pain Good?

I was snowboarding a few weeks ago. The first day, I did not do anything dangerous and didn't fall (probably the first time in my snowboarding life). That night, I was unsatisfied. Why? Partly because I didn't hurt. Partly because of what my not hurting symbolized: I had not tried hard. The next day, I tried hard. So hard I broke a rib. And it felt good. Not that the broken rib felt good (it still hurts to breathe deeply). But I felt better for having experienced the pain. Or perhaps it was what the pain said about my character that was the satisfying part.

From another perspective, Mother Theresa said, "...without suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption." Her perspective was that pain was required for a thing to be significant. For her, there was no Godly offering without pain.

There is something here, something I can't quite put my finger on. In what sense is pain good? It was good in that it pointed to a good character trait in me. In Mother Theresa's sense, it was good because it pointed to Christ. Is there a connection between these two goods?

All the same, we are supposed to do all in our power to relieve pain, but when we experience it, it's at least partly good. Maybe this is the problem of Evil on a nano scale; paradoxical and mysterious, but with a clear imperative.

Role of Women in the Church

I had a very good discussion with a classmate which has caused me to begin to rethink my position on women in the church.

I had previously taken Paul's instructions on female pastors literally, and not seriously considered the possibility that those sections were cultural (in the category of "greet one another with a holy kiss"). The slippery hermeneutic slope is a very real danger, but it at least deserves more consideration on my part than I've given it.

I never had a problem with women leading or even preaching. The only position that I was uncomfortable with was the head pastor's position. But what of that? Clearly God chose Deborah to exercise executive leadership (Judges 4) even to the point of shaming the courage of the man under her (Barak). I re-listened to a sermon that struck me years ago where the pastor (Myles McPherson of The Rock in San Diego) said, "God was trying to send a message: 'Don't be trippin'!" And he's right. God uses who he uses, even in extremely paternal societies. Should we set up structures which prevent people like Deborah from leading?

I don't know... this deserves more thought for sure.

Culture Making

I just finished Andy Crouch’s book called “Culture Making.” It was an excellent read, re-framing the discussion on Christianity and culture. Instead of just condemning, critiquing or consuming culture, we ought t be creating it. An example of this is Tolkien: he didn’t write a “Christian book,” but he created something that was new and good. It was based on Christianity (themes of returning kings, suffering servants, and light contending with darkness), but it cannot be put in the “Christian” section of the bookstore. It’s too good for that.

Here is the challenge to Christians. The question that Crouch leaves hanging is this: What do we do? What do I do to create culture in medicine? What is the ‘Lord of the Rings’ of medicine? The question is relevant for any Christian. What can be created that is new and good, from Christianity but not only helpful for Christians?

What can be done in law? International Justice Mission is a great example (though partly of the old Christians-only model), where Christians lawyers work to use legal means of suing or prosecuting those who oppress the poor and weak.

The question is pressing. Those of us in positions of power generally do not think about this question in terms of faith. Our work in business is our work in business. It has no special holiness; God should have nothing to say about it. We have been de-spirited; our work and thinking has become secular.

This is an important message which is becoming more popular, but how do we reach those who are already in positions of power?