Philippines Travel Blog

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

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

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 addiction, laziness and greed. 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

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

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)

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)

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