Capoeira

I finally caved. My humerus once again threatened to abandon its arranged marriage to my pristine scapula, largely due to the interference of the rather grizzled clavicle. This would leave my glenoid fossa desolately bereaved, along with causing considerable pain which would not, Miss Martens, be limited to my heart-like-thingy. The infatuation my humerus formed with my rib (they were much thrown together during rugby) is rather disconcerting.

So, I decided to start (very slowly) working on capoeira.


And by working on, I of course mean "looking at pictures and movies of (click on my title)". Actually, I'm starting a capoeira based workout (as in exercise) program. It includes a ridiculous amount of squats, jenga, handstand push-ups, bridge walk-arounds, and a bunch of other stuff. For the first couple weeks I'm just working on squats and handstand push-ups. The suggested amount is 5 sets of each, for 250 and 50. At the moment, it's two sets of each for 50 and 5. At least I'm working in multiples, right?

The upside? I've had "Bana na wey, bana na wey, bana na" going through my head all day. The downside? That's all I remember, and I don't even know what it means.

Biblical Hebrew

One of the world's coolest web sites. Worth wasting hours upon, as I shall attempt to amply demonstrate.

Blessings,
JB

A Book, Two Books and Half a Book

In reverse order...

The Epic of Gilgamesh is quite worth the read. Some awkward moments (that are generally hilarious), but as a whole, it demonstrates how little human society has changed in the past three millennia. It is enjoyable, though some parts are aggravating, as there are many missing sections. I've already found about six allusions that I'd heard in other places and will assume Gilgamesh to be the origin of (take it, Lady Astor: "this is the sort of nonsense with which we shall not put up.").


Foucault's Pendulum is good, if you have a mind that likes lots of details. Lots of details. Lots and lots of names that are completely irrelevant to anything you'll ever encounter (save a doctoral thesis on Umberto Eco's education), and he's not nearly so character driven as is someone like Dunnett, so the classical allusions work as a pleasant distraction, rather than an insight. It's the difference between a bunny-trail to an Italian gent out for a stroll (Eco) and a bunny trail to a Gaelic rabbit-hunter (Dunnett). But it's good, at least so far.

Lemony Snicket's okay. It works for what it is, but isn't all that good even at that. I read all three of them in about two hours, and have to say that the movie improved upon the book in several essential ways, the chief of them being the just ending. Not worth much more of a review: prose was alright (not a single commonplace in any of them), so, ah well. That's why I like libraries.


The American Libraries' Ezra Pound is staggering. Worth just about any price. Pound is amazing: along with Eliot, he's probably the best of the modernist poets: according to Eliot, he is "il miglor fabrio," which may be true, but I'm not yet willing to grant, as I've read Murder in the Cathedral, Four Quartets and Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in the past month, and am still a novice to Pound. He, like Eliot, is chalk full of classical allusions, and, if possible, is at times even less accessible, though when he is intelligible, he is heartbreaking. I'll include a few samples below.


Grace Before Song

Lord God of heaven that with mercy dight
Th' alternate prayer wheel of the night and light
Eternal hath to thee, and in whose sight
Our days as rain drops in the sea surge fall,

As bright white drops upon a leaden sea
Grant so my songs to this grey folk may be:

As drops that dream and gleam and falling catch the sun,
Evan'scent mirrors every opal one
Of such his splendor as their compass is,
So, bold My Songs, seek ye such a death as this.


Thu Ides Til

O thou of Maydes all most wonder sweet
That art my comfort eke and my solace
Whan thee I find in any wolde or place
I doon thee reverence as is most meet
To cry thy prayse I nill nat be discreet
Thou hast swich debonairite and grace
Swich gentyl smile thy alderfayrest face
To run thy prayse I ne hold not my feet.
My Lady, tho I ne me hold thee fro
Nor streyve with thee by any game to play
But offer only thee myn own herte reede
I prey by love that thou wilt kindness do
And that thou keep my song by night and day
As shadow blood from myn own herte y-blede.


And a few lines, here and there:


Thou that art sweeter than all orchard's breath
And clearer than the sun gleam after rain...

If any flower mortescent lay in sun-withering dust
If any old forgotten sweetness of a former drink
Naught but stilt fragrance of autumnal flowers
Mnemonic of spring's bloom and parody of powers...

Let light flow about thee
As a cloak of air

,,,and drinks with me the soft wind and the keen.

Such peace as this would make death's self most sweet
Could I but know, Thou maiden of the sun,
That thus thy presence would go forth with me
Unto that shadow land where ages' feet
Have wandered, and where life's dreaming done
Love may dream on unto eternity.

We dwelt, amid the
Ancient boulders
Gods had hewn
And druids runed


And so on it goes. He truly is magnificent, and well worth the time that he will indubitably take.


So, to my faithful reader, I enclose my recipe for a pleasant Saturday evening:

1). Pipe of black cavendish or cherry cavendish with a touch of apple
2). Glass of some red alcoholic beverage (port would do quite nicely, bud-light with food coloring would not. Rum o.k.)
3). A type of soft cheese to be spread upon crackers (crackers permitted, if they behave quietly and with decorum)
4). A pen (twelve is the usual number, but fewer will be accepted)
5). Blank 3x5 notecard used as a bookmark
6). Ezra Pound's poetry
7). For the lucky number, a short, curly-haired honest thief (who knows riddles)

Apply moderately, and as desired.

Blessed Lord's Day to all.
JB

N. D. Wilson

Click the title. Enjoy.

A Son to Me

I just finished Peter Leithart's A Son to Me, which is an exposition of 1st and 2nd Samuel (as one book). Very good, very informative, very enlightening. He catches all the things that I usually miss: the respective ages of David and Jonathan, the relationships between Ahithophel and Uriah, the motivations that drove Joab, the strengths of Saul, the decline of the Davidic kingdom tracing to the sin with Bathsheba, etc, etc, etc. He also finds chiasms galore. I would highly recommend this book, and, oddly enough, would recommend reading it the way I did: sandwiched between the Scriptures it refers to.

Blessings,
JB

Notes on Notes

I'm going through N. D. Wilson's Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl for the third time in less than two weeks. The prose owes a lot (as he fully confesses) to Dillard with a nice bit of Wodehouse, as well as sprinkling other, subtler flavors into the mix that has become entirely his own, gratefully indebted to the world, style. The book is very like his Credenda articles (including a couple), just a lot longer, which I like, as my chief complaint against any of his books is that the prose wasn't as inherently delightful as in his articles, and my chief complaint with his articles was that they ended so soon. So I'm happy for a couple weeks, until I start craving Chestnut King again.

Those of you that know me know how I read books: with pen in hand and a 3x5 card for a bookmark, taking down commonplaces, themes, weird phrases and arguments as I go. This book is infuriating: I didn't let myself mark it the first time, and then didn't let myself mark it the second time, and am now thinking maybe I should have restrained myself until the fourth or fifth or fiftieth time. I started a commonplace on page eleven, and didn't realize till chapter three that it should have ended somewhere. It is the best new (past 50 years) book that I have read in a long, long time, and has already taken its place next to Orthodoxy on my shelf. Simply magnificent.

Were I to classify it? Oddly enough, I would call it a world-class poetic apologetic.

No, I'm not dead,

sorry to disappoint. I am in Spokane working for King Marketing selling Comcast door to door (or trying to).


A couple of commonplaces from Alias Shakespeare, a very convincing book positing Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford as the real Willem Shakespere:

"...that last infirmary of ignoble minds, respectability..."

"In the absence of verifiable data, speculation flourishes, biography (like nature) abhorring a vacuum."
Schoenbaum


and from Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

(On the profligacy of nature) "This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital."

"The whole creation is one lunatic fringe... No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe."

"We are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus."

"Van Gogh found nerve to call the world 'a study that didn't come off,' but I'm not so sure. Where do I get my standards that I fancy the fixed world of insects doesn't meet? I'm tired of reading; I pick up a book and learn that 'pieces of the leech's body can also swim.' Take a deep breath, Elijah: light your pile. Van Gogh is utterly dead; the world may be fixed, but it never was broken. And shadow itself may resolve into beauty."


some Hopkins:

"I caught this morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon..."

"All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him."

"These things, these things were here, and but the beholder
Wanting..."

"...not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet."

"...Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep."

"I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day..."

then read Carrion Comfort, and to end Hopkins on a slightly less depressing note:

"We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood..."


Finally, Dunnett (as is appropriate for the reader of my blog),

"So where has he gone?" Gelis asked.
"There are several possible places," Nicholas said, "if my prayers have been listened to..."

"And by night, to lie at your side, so that I may give her my love, my dear love, ki mon cuer et mon cors a..."

Guds frida veri med ydr.

jb

New Tolkien Book

Tolkien + Norse mythology = essential.

Yet More Wilson

As I'm sure my faithful minions of reader (yes, singular) know, reading Wilson's blog generally accounts for over half of my posts. The rest are occupied with mocking those ridiculous humans who have the tremendous misfortune of being someone "other than me" (or worse yet, someone not "other than me"). Though I particularly delight in gullible evangelicals. After all, I am one.

Anyway, enjoy yet more Wilson.

The Jitney Gods of Washington
Topic: Obama Nation Building
As the Obama saga gets weirder and weirder, Christians shouldn't forget to interpret all the news in the fundamental terms of who we want to be our god, and who wants to be the embodiment of that god. Worship is always the key to everything. And it is not the "key to everything" because we keep repeating that mindlessly like a mantra. It is the key to everything because it explains why so many people, otherwise intelligent, are doing such foolish things.

One of the central reasons why it is so important to insist on the absolute sovereignty of the triune God of Scripture (and for those just joining us, that would be the true God) is because if we dial that sovereignty back (not in reality, but in our fevered dreams) something bad always happens to us. We (also in our fevered dreams) think to step into the void that our imaginations created, the vacant spot recently relinquished by the Maker of heaven and earth. Denial of the true God is the first step of two. It is not that we want no God; it is that we want to replace Him. So the first step is to deny Him. The second step is a necessary one (meaning that it cannot be avoided once the first is taken), and it involves volunteering to pick up the slack created by the divine absence.

Of course, there is not actually a divine absence but rather a divine laughter, as the Lord mocks them to scorn. They do not want Messiah's chains, and so they declare their intention to scatter those chains, as it says in the second psalm from the front (Ps. 2:3). And at the conclusion of the psalter, second from the back, what does God in His kindness give as an honor to all His saints? He enables us through the power of our praise, to bind unbelieving kings with chains (Ps. 149:8).

As it turns out, sovereignty over all things is an inescapable concept. It is not whether someone will foreordain all things, but rather who will foreordain all things. When we cease trusting the God who actually is God, our sinful hearts and minds create a job vacancy. When we deny the God who was God before Calvin or Augustine were born, we wind up with the jitney gods of washington d.c. That sovereignty is claimed, on the one hand, by the God who numbers the hairs on every head, and, on the other hand, the god who doesn't know that you can't refill the pool by taking buckets of water from one end and dumping them in the other.

So whenever you see an outrageous attempt at overreach on the part of our elected solons, ask yourself what divine attribute they are attempting to duplicate. They are doing crazy things, but not because they are unintelligent. Most of them got where they are because they are industrious, intelligent, crafty, and a few other things, perhaps a bit less savory. But when in power they do really foolish things because they are not anywhere near competent to be claiming what they do, and the only alternative is repentance, which would require worshipping the God who created them. Since that is obviously intolerable, they continue on in their folly. And as they continue on, there is an inexorable pressure to fill the divine void. There is no alternative. To paraphrase the great Francis Schaeffer, if there is no God above the state, the state becomes god.

Two quick examples. Proposals to regulate something as complicated as the human economy of any society is clearly an attempt to duplicate the omnis -- omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. But government officials cannot do this. They cannot even approach thinking about what it might be like to be able to do this. As much as they want to be Lord, they cannot be. They are not competent. And when I say they are not competent, I do not mean that they are almost-but-not-quite competent. I do not mean incompetent, but within shouting distance. I mean something like the earthworm you turned up with your spade being annoyed because you interupted his reverie about taking up the violin and wowing sold-out crowds at Carnagie Hall. And even that illustration is giving away too much.

The regulatory state wants to be Lord, and with no veto power hanging over them from above. But the bad news for them is what we Christians call the good news. Christ is Lord. There is no other. And we serve a Lord who was crucified for us, not a lord who wants to crucify others for himself.

Another example of straining towards the divine attributes can be seen in the recent attempts by Obama through the U.S. Treasury to create wealth ex nihilo. But only God can create wealth that way. God spoke the word, and mind-boggling resources were instantly there. And God formed our first parents, and gave them the responsibility for stewarding those resources. That is the authority of the divine -- He speaks, and it is. And blinkered statists want to be able to do that. They should be able to speak, and it is "there." And so they speak, and what was there begins to vanish away. Jezebel brings in the fertility Baal to make Israel lush and green, and the first thing that happens is that Israel turns brown and crispy.

If they could whistle up wealth by fiat, they could save us from us from our poverty. But as much as they want to be Savior, they cannot be. They are not competent. The earthworm keeps dropping the bow. And the violin. And after a few exasperating practices, the earthworm decides that his dreams of glory aren't working because they are being subverted by right-wing extremists who harbor hatred for diversity in their hearts.

In short, Obama is proposing the policies he is because of a religious impulse, pure and simple. He wants the state to be Lord and Savior. We as Christians oppose this, but not because it would be bad if it succeeded. There is no possibility of it succeeding. We oppose it because our Lord and Savior has given us songs of praise with which to bind their dreams of glory.

And You Thought Facebook Was Worthless...

"I Appreciate Christian Pick-up Lines." Wow.


a collection of the best:

1. "nice bible."

2. "is this pew taken?"

3. "i just don't feel called to celibacy."

4. "for you i would slay two Goliaths"

5. "i would go through more than Job for you"

6. "you are perfect, except with all the sin."

8. "you are so unblemished that i would sacrifice you."

9. "what, this here? oh.. thats my study bible - it's a little bigger but i can handle the extra spiritual and physical weight."

10. "shall we tithe?"

11. "at points in my life i have been referred to as Samson"

12. "the word says 'Give drink to those who are thirsty, and feed the hungry'; how about dinner?"

13. "i didnt believe in predestination until tonight."

14. "im not like those other Christ Church guys."

15. "i believe one of my ribs belongs to you."

16. "i know Lachlan Payne."

17. (if no.16 gains no response) "Lachlan Payne knows me"

19. "i can be your Boaz."

20. "my spiritual gift is my good looks... it lifts peoples spirits"

21. "i sacrifice my sunday mornings to look after the creche group. its tough... but i love children."

24. "mark driscoll takes up 35% of my ipod memory."

25. "hey.. i would work 7 years for your sister.. but i would work 7 more years for you."

26. "im kind of a big deal at Koorong"

29. "bible-gateway happens to be my homepage."

47. "how many times do I have to walk around you to make you fall for me?"

49. "if you say no, i will rip out my hair and my beard"

54. "let me remove my sandals before I come any closer.."

55. "lets say, hypothetically, you were married. I would send your husband to the front line against the Amorites"

56. "its obvious to me that you sprouted from the good kinda soil..."

57. "feel free to meet me at the threshing floor."

70. "i arrange the substantial christian section of my bookshelf into alphabetical order. coffee?"

71. "i sit with my mum at church"

72. "let me sell you an indulgence because it's a sin to look as good as you do."

73. "not a big fan of your last name, but thats cool, i can change that."

92. "have you died before? because that looks like a resurrection body to me.."

93. 'all im looking for is a Godly woman. i don't care that you're not attractive.'

98. "i will never give you reason to hammer a tent peg through my skull."

99. "i predicted David over Goliath... now I'm betting on you and me."

100. "if you were staying for the tribulation, i would consider staying too.. but then i would probably leave."

101. "if you were a leper, i would still hold your hand.. even if it wasnt attached."

102. "i would have asked you out to dinner, but i just put all my money in the offetory basket."

103. "Hi, I'm Calvin. You were meant to choose me."

104. "Unlike the Israelites, who forgot the Lord, I will remember your name most of the time."

109. "the perseverance of the saints is well illustrated by the amount of time I spend talking to you."

******************* NEW ********************

111. "If you were my wife, I would never make you pretend to be my sister. That would be too damaging to my reputation."

112. "I would bring your father twelve-hundred Philistine foreskins for just one date with you."

With Great Sorrow...

But with continuing astonishment at the grace and maturity in my new community, I received the news that Doug Jones has resigned his position as an elder of Christ Church, and that after long deliberation, they have accepted.

The reason behind this move? Nothing like the usual sexual infidelity, drunkenness, or secret sins: rather, a difference in opinion upon the central focus of the Lord's Service that would have led to greater division in the future, as "it affects everything from budgets to buildings, and everything in between."

To cap it off? I'll continue to see him in church each week.

This, brothers, is why I'm still in Idaho, still at Christ Church, still so far from home.



For those interested, here is their report and his statement:



On Doug Jones’s Resignation

From: Doug Wilson

The elders of Christ Church recently accepted the offered resignation of Doug Jones from the session of Christ Church, and we did so with grief and great reluctance. The resignation will be effective as of June 1, 2009, and includes Doug’s service on various committees and related ministries. Although this may appear abrupt to many in the congregation, it was actually the end result of years of discussion, debate, reading and study. Scripture says that two cannot walk together unless they are agreed (Amos 3:3), and while we all continue to treasure our fellowship in Christ, and certainly continue to agree in that sense, we nevertheless have come to a foundational disagreement that would disrupt any attempts at coherent leadership together.

As a congregation, and as elders of the church, we all owe a great deal to Doug, and to his family. We continue to be extremely grateful for all the contributions he has brought to our church and community, and we intend to continue to build on those gifts to us. In Doug’s statement about this resignation, he framed it as his new conviction that the Church should be organized and structured around the centrality of the poor and the outcast. We continue to believe that our central priority is worship of the triune God, that being the kind of worship that will flow out into the rest of our lives—including of course ministry to the poor and outcast. To anticipate the objection that this is a trivial difference, it really isn’t—it affects everything from budgets to buildings, and everything in between. So given the fact of these differences, which appear to us to be intractable, we can honestly say that we have conscientiously sought for other ways of resolving this, and have b!
een unable to do so.

We are very grateful that Doug and Paula will be remaining as members of Christ Church, and we ask all of you to fully accept and receive them in that capacity. Please pray for them, and for us, and that God would use this disagreement as much as He used the differences between Paul and Barnabas (Act 15:39).

Cordially in Christ,
Douglas Wilson



Resignation Statement from Doug Jones

On April 30, 2009, the session of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho reviewed a letter of resignation from me as an associate pastor, and, after a time of discussion, they accepted it. Though this might come as a surprise for some, it is actually the result of several years of turnings and discussions. Over a decade ago, I began meditating on the life of Father, Son, and Spirit, and since that time I’ve written numerous articles, given lectures, and counseled church members in terms of the richness and joy I’ve discovered within the Trinity. When the U.S. government invaded two countries after 9-11, I sought to understand these developments, as well, in light of a Trinitarian framework. This rethinking of politics and economics in light of Trinitarian life pushed me in unexpected directions over the ensuing years.

My attempt to understand the Trinity led me to rethink Jesus’ mission and his themes, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Lk. 6:20) and “I desire mercy and not sacrifice” (Hos. 6:6; Is. 1:11ff; 58:3ff; Mt. 9:13; 12:7). To me and others in this tradition, this places the poor and outcast at the very center of the kingdom, around which the church is to be shaped and prioritized. Defenders of this view can be found in every Christian tradition over the centuries, and in our own Reformed tradition we find it among such folks as Andre Trocme, Jean Lassere, and Jacques Ellul. I have also found myself very sympathetic to such perspectives as found in the work of Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas.

This shift, though, has proven deeper than anticipated. It has turned all my practical priorities upside down. With the result that this shift has backed me into deep and wide divergence with the Christ Church vision. The fault for this is mine, not the session’s. Throughout this time, the elders have been very kind, caring, generous, and thoughtful as I sought to understand where I was. The person I’ve been closest to during this time, Doug Wilson, has been a stellar pastor and kind opponent from the start. In our conversations over the past three years, he has been a gentleman, friend, and brother without fault in my view. I gladly affirm this against his detractors.

Nonetheless, it has become clear that my shift in theological vision produced practical, day-to-day obstacles for me serving as a minister at Christ Church. The majority of elders politely and thoughtfully made it clear that they did not wish to go toward the vision I espoused, and they were understandably obligated to defend the current Christ Church vision. They even repeatedly sought ways for me to continue, but in the end, I determined to resign from the session as well as from my leadership roles at Canon Press, Credenda/Agenda, Sabbath House, and New St. Andrews College (though my ministerial credentials remain in the CREC). In such circumstances, it became a question of how all of us could better redeem the time.

My family and I will continue to attend Christ Church and participate in life and learning at Logos School. I am forever grateful to the elders and members for my time in leadership at Christ Church. It has been a wonderful gift, and I am eternally changed for it. May the Lord continue to bless Christ Church’s work for the kingdom.

Sincerely,
Douglas M. Jones

Update

My blog posting will be slowing down (should that be possible within space-time) as I'm moving to a land flowing with milk and gainful employment, but no internet. Any posting that I do will most likely be on Sundays from here on out, when I'm back in Moscow.

So, I leave you with this, courtesy of Doug Wilson:

A Rocking Chair in Heaven
Topic: Jokes I Like to Tell

Once there was a man who had spent many, many years in back breaking work. What he didn't know about the uses of a shovel wasn't worth knowing. One day at the tail end of a hot day and a very long ditch, he paused for a moment to talk with a young man in the ditch with him, the one manning the other shovel.

"Know what I am going to do when I get to Heaven?" he said.

"No, what?" said the young guy.

"I am going to talk to Peter at the gates, and I am going to ask for a mountain cabin by a clear, blue lake. The cabin will need to have a front porch overlooking the lake, and I will request that the porch be equipped with a sturdy and very comfortable rocking chair."

"Really?" said the young guy.

"And," the man continued, "I am going to sit in that rocking chair for ten thousand years."

"Man," his companion said. "That's a long time. Whatcha doing then?"

"Then," said the old man, his eyes narrowing slightly, "I am going to start rockin.'"


and this, courtesy of Valerie:

One morning when Nancy was out of the house running errands, Doug was rooting around in the back of a closet for a pair of boots when he came across a shoebox he'd never seen before. In it were three eggs and about a hundred bucks in one-dollar bills.

Shocked that she would have kept such a stash a secret from him, Doug confronted Nancy when she got home. With a guilty countenance she confessed: "I've had this box since you became a pastor. I'm so sorry I've never told you about it. You see...every time you preach a bad sermon, I put an egg in this box."

Doug was much relieved. After all his years in the ministry, three eggs wasn't so bad, was it? "And what is all the cash for?" he asked.

"Well, dear, every time I get a dozen eggs, I sell them for a dollar!"


Blessings all.

Nice

The next time you get a rejection letter from a hoped-for employer, just send them the following:

To Whom It May Concern:
Thank you for your letter of [date of the rejection letter]. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me employment at this time. This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals. Despite [Name of the Company]'s outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet with my needs at this time. Therefore, I will initiate employment with your firm immediately. I look forward to working with you. Best of luck in rejecting future candidates.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]

Huge Sale

Canon Press, a magnificent company, is having a 1,2,3 dollar sale in order to clear out older stock and make room for new. This really is a huge deal: $8-$20 books are on sale for $1-$3. That's less than you spend on coffee every day (I know of no one like that that reads this). So click on my title, and buy the books.

If you don't want any of them, buy them anyway and give them away. No one will ever know that you're that much of a tightwad. Seriously, when was the last time you got all your Christmas shopping done for ten bucks in May? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Always remember: "veni, emi, legi." That's the nominativus singularis perfectus activus indicativus, and it means "I came, I bought, I read." I hope. Or I'll be at NSA seven years.

Doane: Welcome to the Covenant

As some of you know, Darren Doane, who, having his own Wikipedia page must therefore be at least relatively important, recently did a documentary on Douglas Wilson and Christopher Hitchens called Hitchens vs. Wilson: A Collision of Lives, which we will be previewing this Friday.

Well, Mr. Doane (rhymes with "roan" as in the horse) has been up here filming a few commercials or some such moving pictures, if I understand correctly. Here is one that is apparently for covenant child-rearing (click my title).

Blessings.

Torture via Stewart

This is a 3 part video between Mr. Stewart and Mr. May on torture. Overall it's quite good (any parents should preview it before giving it to their kids); May is the more consistent of the two but Stewart is of course funnier.

The primary problem with Stewart's position is that it is based upon the solid foundation of anti-gravity cottage cheese: "the principles of our founding fathers..." Oh good. Like Adams? Madison? Or did you mean Monroe or Franklin? Washington and Jefferson were at polar opposites from banks onward, how do we assume we'll find them singing kum-ba-yah and roasting marshmallows on what constitutes torture?

Also, he doesn't seem to have given much thought to what exactly torture is. He knows it when he sees it, but what if it was ten nights naked and awake instead of eleven? Or ten nights clothed? Nine? He's fine with one night; where's the line? Three nights, two hours and twelve minutes for any male that's 5' 9" or above? We need some definitions.

However, he appears to be an excellent debater, and his form surpasses his content. This is a good example of how the demeanor of those debating can completely engulf and overshadow what's being said. The funnier pastor (shepherd) leads the ovis (sheep) into an ovation, which, as you may have noticed, bears a philological resemblance to "ovis."

Waterboarding

This is a link to a video of a chap who volunteered to undergo waterboarding. Some profanity.

Torture via Wilson

Torture and the Sum of All Fears
Topic: Obama Nation Building

This will be one of those posts where I am afraid that I will make no one happy. But . . . oh, well. Torture is much in the news, and so -- to the law and to the testimony.

Let us begin by offending those who are recycling Joseph Fletcher's situation ethics from back in the seventies -- let us call them the Fox News conservatives. When Sean Hannity says that he is in favor of whatever it takes, everything in us should recoil. In his case, the principle of justification is that American flag behind him that he so ostentatiously displays. Whatever defends that is justified; whatever threatens it is not. While it is good to defend your nation and your people, it must always be remembered that defending your nation and people is not the ground of your right to do so.

Whenever the ticking bomb scenario is invoked, this simply reveals that we all ought to have done our Bible study earlier than that. The problem is that the new advocates of situation ethics are deriving their sense of what is appropriate from the mere fact of the ticking bomb (and the suppressed premise that survival is the highest good, which it isn't). "Would you waterboard someone if we were down to the red wire/green wire moment in some Jack Bauer fantasy movie? Hmmm?" And if you wouldn't, then this twisted thinking argues that you are somehow not morally serious. Well, okay, two can play this game -- would you sell your children into prostitution in order to stop Osama? Would you kill and eat the weakest guy in the lifeboat to save the lives of the others? Would you ask your wife to sleep with the warden in order to escape the unjust conviction that placed you on death row? Does anybody think it is odd that those who are advancing these refried situation ethics argument are the traditional values conservatives? What are they conserving exactly?

This is why the effectiveness of the waterboarding that we used is entirely beside the point. If it is morally wrong then we shouldn't do it whether or not it is effective. Those who broke under the waterboarding treatment would almost certainly have also broken if we had pulled out their fingernails, or put them on the rack. Perhaps they would have broken quicker! Those who appeal to the effectiveness of the program are appealing to an idolatrous standard, and if that idol were a car it would have no brakes.

Speaking of irrelevant, it is also irrelevant that four former CIA directors have objected to the release of the memos that Obama has released. Their argument is that we don't want the enemy to know the point past which we will not go. But I want them to know that we are Christians, which means that I want them to know that -- unlike them -- there are things we won't do, and what those things are should be public knowledge. Such things should not be a national security secret. On such issues we should be eager to be at a disadvantage. That kind of secularist pragmatic national security hype just gives me the creeps. And for a third irrelevance, going down the street the other way, we should also dismiss the hyper-hypocritical posturing of the Democrats on the Hill. Prosecution of anybody that just "happens" to break right long partisan lines, and which "happens" to leave out all the Democrats that were briefed on the waterboarding would be a goodish bit more than I am capable of handling. So here is a good working definition of torture -- making me watch hearings on this subject run by the Democrats. Hyper-torture would be if Henry Waxman were the chair. I'd probably break right away and tell them where all the gold is buried.

C.S. Lewis once defended the idea of retribution in punishment (as opposed to "humanitarian" treatment) because retribution is necessarily connected to justice, which means that there are always limits, fixed limits. When someone is handed over to the officials in order to be "cured," how long does the treatment go? Well, until the cure is accomplished, which could be indefinitely, which means that what now happens to the guy is entirely disconnected from justice. Justice is not the point anymore. An identical difficulty applies to "treatments" that accompany interrogations. If the foundational justification for what is happening is the need for information, then how long can it go? What are the limits? Well, until we get that information. Justice isn't the point anymore.

Now to make the other side mad. As I have argued, effectiveness does not justify anything. The only standard we have any business appealing to in situations like this is the standard of Scripture. That said, the efffectiveness of our waterboarding program becomes relevant because effectiveness can be good. Effectiveness is good, provided that the definition of good comes from somewhere other than the effectiveness. Once that is granted, there are serious difficulties with classifying waterboarding as torture. We need to remember that waterboarding is used in the training of our own personnel. I have seen footage of one television journalist getting waterboarded in order to report on the experience. Christopher Hitchens got himself waterboarded in order to write about it.

Torture was not unknown in the biblical world. It is not unknown in the modern world of exegesis either.

"As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction" (2 Pet. 3:16).

The word for wrest is streblao, meaning that in the exegesis of these foolish men, they put the text on the rack and torture it, twisting it out of shape. One of the common places where we twist the text is by pretending that the God of the Bible is limpwristed and effeminate. But, as the late Otto Scott once put it, the God of the Bible is no buttercup. And I can guarantee that virtually everyone in the current debate who has a problem with waterboarding would also have a similar problem with . . .

"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me" (Luke 19:27).

"Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors [basanistais, torturers], till he should pay all that was due unto him" (Matt. 18:32-34).

"And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain" (Rev. 16:10).

"Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 22:13).

Put all this together, and what do we have? In the Bible, righteous men can dispense some pretty rough treatment. But it is never disconnected from the fixed limits of justice, and those fixed limits are defined by Scripture, and never by the sum of all fears.

"Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee" (Dt. 25:3).

Posted by Douglas Wilson - 4/28/2009 3:27:29 PM | Print this post

An Odd Music...

If you're not doing anything, you may enjoy this. I don't know what the competition is, but if he doesn't win it, I'd like to meet the person that does.

I Love Spiders

Spider "Resurrections" Take Scientists by Surprise
Charles Q. Choi
for National Geographic News
April 24, 2009

Spiders in a lab twitched back to life hours after "drowning"—and the scientists were as surprised as anyone.


The bugs, it seems, enter comas to survive for hours underwater, according to a new study. The unexpected discovery was made during investigations of spiders from salt marshes that are regularly flooded with seawater.

A number of spiders and insects have long been known to survive for hours underwater. But submersion experiments typically only test how long the bugs can withstand drowning—not whether they can revive themselves after their seeming deaths.



Scientists at the University of Rennes in France collected three species of wolf spider—two from salt marshes, one from a forest. The team immersed 120 females of each species in seawater, jostling the spiders with brushes every two hours to see if they responded. As expected, all the forest wolf spiders (Pardosa lugubris) apparently died after 24 hours. The two salt marsh-dwelling species took longer—28 hours for Pardosa purbeckensis and 36 hours for Arctosa fulvolineata.

After the "drownings," the researchers, hoping to weigh the spiders later, left them out to dry. That's when things began to get weird.

Hours later, the spiders began twitching and were soon back on their eight feet.

"This is the first time we know of arthropods returning to life from comas after submersion," said lead researcher Julien Pétillon, an arachnologist now at Ghent University in Belgium.

Marsh-dwelling A. fulvolineata, which took longest to "die," typically requires about two hours to recover, the researchers discovered. In the wild, the species doesn't avoid water during flooding, while the other salt marsh species generally climbs onto vegetation to avoid advancing water. The spiders' survival trick depends on a switch to a metabolic process that does not require air, the researchers speculate.



Whatever trick these spiders have mastered, Pétillon said, they may not be alone.

"There could be many other species that could do this that we do not know of yet."

Findings published April 22 in the journal Biology Letters.