Another Week Ends: Ugly Anthropomorphism, Shaken Manchildren, Big Love, The Church's Cognitive Dissonance, March Madness, and the MoneyQuest for Happiness

Doing my best to fill in for DZ, who is currently gearing up for next week's conference.

1) A great article from the Times this week, discussing the recent tendency of creaturely films ("Rango" etc) to capture the creature in all of us:

THERE is a special kind of appeal to stories that lead us to the far boundary of the human and allow us a glance at what is on the other side, where the wild things are. What often comes into view out there is a projection of something buried deep within. That wolf in the bed, in grandma’s clothes, embodies some threatening animal emanation of the self, sexual or otherwise, lurking in disguise in our cozy domestic enclosures. Those invaders from outer space, preying on our cities, represent our own predatory, destructive urges in monstrous, alien form. And we can’t forget the vampires, whose cold glamour places them at the busy intersection of love and death, where our longings chase their morbid shadows.

The lizards, rodents and other creepy-crawlies that populate its desert landscape are far more grotesque to behold than traditional Disney fauna, but their ugliness only adds an extra frisson to the film’s charming anthropomorphism. We might recoil and squint at first, but by the time “Rango” is over, the reptiles are as cuddly as bunnies or the fish in “Finding Nemo” or the ants in “A Bug’s Life.”...And also as human.

2) This piece entitled "Men May Be Jerks...But Women Are Insane", explores the laws and demands of gender identity in today's "manchild culture," from a woman's perspective. For a laugh, The Onion, too, has something to say (ht JS).
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Japan, Facebook & Divorce, Preschool Litigation, more Galli on B(h)ell, The Beach Boys' Smile, Community

1. Two very moving additions to the coverage of the disasters in Japan. First, if you can decipher the google-translation, there's the story of a woman who sacrificed her life to warn a village of the impending destruction here. And two, the footage that made this all very real to yours truly. If it doesn't get you on your knees, nothing will (be sure to stick with it to the end):



2. An amusing report in the Guardian about Facebook and divorce. If ever there was an excuse to take a potshot at lawyers for having a shallow view of human nature...:

A 2010 survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) found that four out of five lawyers reported an increasing number of divorce cases citing evidence derived from social networking sites in the past five years, with Facebook being the market leader. Two-thirds of the lawyers surveyed said that Facebook was the "primary source" of evidence in divorce proceedings, while MySpace with 15% and Twitter with 5% lagged far behind.

A spokesperson for Facebook said: "It's ridiculous to suggest that Facebook leads to divorce. Whether you're breaking up or just getting together, Facebook is just a way to communicate, like letters, phone calls and emails. Facebook doesn't cause divorces, people do."

The NY Times Magazine had a similarly Zeitgeisty take on divorce this past week too, which is worth it for the candid quotes on depravity/original sin.

3. Speaking of the Zeitgeist, there's the outrageous but evidently very real "Mother Sues Preschool For Damaging Her Daughter's Shot at the Ivy League." ht JD. 

4. For those of you interested in the ongoing Rob Bell-univeralism saga, conference speaker Mark Galli's review of the Bell's Love Wins book appeared this week, and it is very much worth your time. Galli rightly places Bell in the context of Protestant liberalism, not in order to callously write him off as such, but in an attempt to discuss the heart of the matter, which as always, has to do with atonement/justification:
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Galli on B(h)ell, Growing Up Catholic, Secret Millionaires, Immortal Billionaires, Lillian Roth, Mixed Signals and Nicolas Cage

1. If you've been scratching your head over the whole "Rob Bell universalism" uproar this past week, conference speaker Mark Galli will set you straight with this charitable overview of how the topic of Hell has been dealt with over the centuries. Suffice it to say, there's nothing new under the sun, and the outcry says a lot less about Bell than about the folks reacting to his as-of-yet largely unread book. 

To lighten the mood, check the sort-of related and apparently very real After The Rapture Pet Care (ht CH).

2. The Guardian takes a look at the new laugh-or-cry memoir by comic Rory McGrath, The Father, The Son and the Ghostly Hole: Growing Up Catholic. Evidently it plumbs the depths of Catholic guilt - stemming in this case from an experience of religion as Judgment with a capital J (and zero Gospel) - in a particularly unflinching and let's-face-it tragic manner. Not exactly groundbreaking, but nonetheless striking, ht AOC:

"[After being disillusioned in high school, McGrath] never returned to the church, and he never quite shook it off. He was expecting to embark on a binge of guilt-free hedonism at university, but it didn't quite work out like that. He felt rootless rather than liberated. "You think, 'What do I do now, where am I supposed to go, what am I supposed to be doing?' It had an effect on my first years at university because I didn't know what to do. I don't know if this is to do with religion or just my character, but I had a total lack of self-discipline."

Nor did the sense of guilt disappear with his divorce from the church. In fact it grew, and he started to feel responsible for anything and everything. "I think guilt grows inside you. I'm still discovering it now, aged well whatever age I am. I'm over 40 and now discovering it's all guilt."

3. In an editorial that touches on some familiar themes, CNN accuses ABC's reality show Secret Millionaire of "shamelessly promoting a fantasy about the redemptive power of wealth." I haven't seen it but would love to hear others' thoughts:
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Grace & Cutting, Depression & Recession, David Foster Wallace, Burned-Over Generations, Greg McElroy, Supernatural, Arcade Fire

1. Continuing this past month's unexpected foray into gender-related topics (i.e. here, here, here and here), Christianity Today published a doozie of an article earlier this week on its Her.meneutics site, "The Gospel of Grace for Women Who Self-Injure". A couple lines from the conclusion (ht DB):

I’m not surprised that self-punishing behaviors occur among Christians. And this is not to blame the church. For legalism — and I would argue that this is what these behaviors are at their core — comes in guises both religious and secular. The desire to control the destiny of a few moments, if not our lives, is a fact of the human condition. But it is a fact that directly opposes the gospel of grace. 

Also female-related, from Medical News Daily (aka Captain Obvious: The Journal) is "Mean Girls and Queen Bees: Females Under Threat of Social Exclusion Respond by Excluding Others First".

2. On the male side of things, and following-up the Man-Child post, Time reports on the impact the recession appears to be having on rates of depression among men, challenging the accepted finding that the condition is more prevalent among ladies, ht TB.

3. Speaking of men and depression, it's been a big week for David Foster Wallace. The New Yorker published an excerpt of his new book The Pale King, "Backbone". To compare the published version with the version he read publicly a few years prior, go here. I also came across a terrific discussion/defense of his fiction by Rebekah Frumkin on The Common Review, entitled "Our Psychic Living Room", which includes a variation of one of our favorite quotes from the man himself via a 1996 interview (ht CR):

The sadness that [Infinite Jest] is about, and that I was going through [when I wrote it], was a real American type of sadness. I was white, upper-middle-class, obscenely well-educated, had had way more career success than I could have legitimately hoped for and was sort of adrift. A lot of my friends were the same way. Some of them were deeply into drugs, others were unbelievable workaholics. Some were going to singles bars every night. You could see it played out in 20 different ways, but it’s the same thing. . . . I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values.

4. By way of self-promotion, Modern Reformation just published "Compassion, Creativity and Connecting with a Burned-Over Generation" by yours truly, which outlines some of the thinking behind Mockingbird, in case you were curious. I'm proud to say I was able to sneak Axl Rose, Michael Jackson, Whit Stillman, Oscar Wilde, Stuart Murdoch, and David Foster Wallace into the party. UPDATE: Mod Ref has been kind enough to unlock the article, so it's now available in its entirety on their site, for free! For more Reformation goodness, be sure to check out their considerably more tricked-out sister site, The White Horse Inn, and then head over to New Reformation Press to hear Rod Rosenbladt's stunning new must-hear sermon "Christianity in Five Verses." It's raining Reformation!
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: U-Bending Happiness, South Park Religion, Charlie Sheen, Louie CK, Friday Night Lights

1. From one of the December issues of The Economist, some interesting findings about "Age and Happiness". The main discovery being the "U-Bend" - i.e. the finding that people are happiest in their youth and old age, and least happy in between. The most relevant section for us has to do with "the death ambition" (ht VH):

Maybe people come to accept their strengths and weaknesses [as they grow older], give up hoping to become chief executive or have a picture shown in the Royal Academy, and learn to be satisfied as assistant branch manager, with their watercolour on display at the church fete. “Being an old maid”, says one of the characters in a story by Edna Ferber, an (unmarried) American novelist, was “like death by drowning—a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling.” Perhaps acceptance of ageing itself is a source of relief. “How pleasant is the day”, observed William James, an American philosopher, “when we give up striving to be young—or slender.”

2. A great overview on Slate of South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone's dealings over the years with religion. They've certainly not shied away from the topic, as their upcoming Book of Mormon musical boldly drives home. Parker has always seemed to be the driving force, so it's a shame they didn't interview him, but nevertheless [vulgarity warning - duh]:

What Parker and Stone do isn't religion-bashing. It's religion-teasing. And it's born more from fascination than disdain. "I'm an atheist that admires and likes religion," Stone told me in an interview. He describes the new musical as "an atheist's love letter to religion." If you had to classify Parker and Stone's world view, you might call it Hobbesian absurdism.[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Stalin, The Confession App, Forgotten Rights, Exercise Widows, Elton and Billy, Dummies and Clowns

1. A thoughtful if gruesome review on Slate of Timothy Synder's new book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin which delves into the perennial question of the relative evil of the two dictators' crimes. The measurement of evil is a tough question - the Sermon on the Mount notwithstanding (...) - even when cannibalism isn't a factor. As reviewer Ron Rosenbaum asks, in light of the atrocities, "Must we readjust radically downward our vision of human nature?" The article (and book) may not be for the remotely squeamish - it's horrifying in fact [fair warning] - but that doesn't prevent it from getting into some genuinely interesting territory:

Nazism, it is generally agreed, cannot be rehabilitated in any way, because it was inextricable from Hitler's crimes, but there are some on the left who believe communism can be rehabilitated despite the crimes of Stalin, and despite new evidence that the tactics of terror were innovations traceable to his predecessor Lenin. 

I find it hard to understand anyone who wants to argue that the murder of 20 million is "preferable" to anything, but our culture still hasn't assimilated the genocidal equivalence between Stalin and Hitler, because, as Applebaum points out, we used the former to defeat the latter.

The full evil of Stalin still hasn't sunk in. I know it to be true intellectually, but our culture has not assimilated the magnitude of his crimes. Which is perhaps why the cannibalism jolted me out of any illusion that meaningful distinctions could be made between Stalin and Hitler.

2. The Internet has gone wild for the new Catholic bishop-approved "Confession" app for the iphone. The screen grabs are priceless:

3.  Speaking of the good ol' Internet, in what almost seems like an (admirable) attempt to legislate mercy, The Atlantic reports that Europe is wrestling with whether or not there is basic human right, in Information Age, to be forgotten:
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Transformation Myths, Eating Disorders, Suicidal Standards, Aging Ungracefully, Rehab Albums, St Elizabeths

1.  The timing just could not be any better. NYC Mockingbird Conference Speaker Mark Galli has been blowing up this past week, most notably on The Internet Monk. Start with The Evangelical Myth of "Transformation" and go from there - the discussion provides a helpful overview of where Mr Galli is coming from, not to mention a few clues as to why we asked him to speak. Speaking of NYC, we can now announce that childcare will indeed be available, for kids under the age of 8. Email us at info@mbird.com if you plan on taking us up on the offer. Register today. Otherwise, brace yourself for a rather somber week ends column...

2.  Why Am I Not Smarter Than My Eating Disorder? on Salon.com is about as unassuming an article on the bondage of will as we're likely to find. Almost comically so - at least, if it weren't about something so unfunny (ht JD):

I know what I need to do to overcome this disorder. I just need to get over it and eat healthily and according to the principles in which my intellectual mind believes. This shouldn't be hard. For whatever reason, I don't seem to be doing it.

3.  From the Scientific American, a revealing but also pretty grim article, "What It Feels Like To Kill Yourself," which gives new meaning to the phrase "the Law kills." The following portion was particularly relevant:

Most people who kill themselves actually lived better-than-average lives. Suicide rates are higher in nations with higher standards of living than in less prosperous nations; higher in US states with a better quality of life; higher in societies that endorse individual freedoms; higher in areas with better weather; in areas with seasonal change, they are higher during the warmer seasons; and they’re higher among college students that have better grades and parents with higher expectations.

Baumeister argues that such idealistic conditions actually heighten suicide risk because they often create unreasonable standards for personal happiness, thereby rendering people more emotionally fragile in response to unexpected setbacks.

4.  In an article entitled "The Myth of Aging Gracefully" in The Daily Beast (via Newsweek) author Susan Jacoby has some refreshingly counter-cultural things to say about the "thirst for glory," ht RF:

"Who wants to live to 100? Just about everyone, if old age fulfills the fantasy that we can sail through our 90s with vigorous bodies and minds and die instantly of a heart attack, preferably while making love or running the last of many marathons. As the oldest baby boomers turn 65, it is past time to take a realistic look at old age as it is—not as a minor inconvenience to be remedied by longevity-worshiping hucksters of “anti-aging” supplements or brain-teasing computer games, not as a “disease” that will soon by “cured” by a medical miracle, and not as an experience to be defied and denied, in the spirit of a 2008 World Science Festival panel on aging titled “90 Is the New 50.” No, it’s not. It’s not even the new 70. The truth is that we are all capable of aging successfully—until we aren’t.

5.  The Wall Street Journal reports on the fascinating relationship between sobriety and hit records in "The Rehab Album", using Mbird favorite Justin Townes Earle as one of their case studies, ht DW.
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Facebook Blues, Freshman Blues, Bowling Blues, Val Kilmer and The Office

1. Libby Copeland at Slate asks the question "Is Facebook Making Us Sad?", unpacking some findings from a recent study at Stanford. Very relevant stuff:

"The researchers found that their subjects consistently underestimated how dejected others were–and likely wound up feeling more dejected as a result. Jordan got the idea for the inquiry after observing his friends' reactions to Facebook: He noticed that they seemed to feel particularly crummy about themselves after logging onto the site and scrolling through others' attractive photos, accomplished bios, and chipper status updates. 'They were convinced that everyone else was leading a perfect life,' he told me.

"...the notion that feeling alone in your day-to-day suffering might increase that suffering certainly makes intuitive sense. As does the idea that Facebook might aggravate this tendency. Facebook is, after all, characterized by the very public curation of one's assets in the form of friends, photos, biographical data, accomplishments, pithy observations, even the books we say we like. Look, we have baked beautiful cookies.

"Facebook is 'like being in a play. You make a character,' one teenager tells MIT professor Sherry Turkle in her new book on technology, Alone Together. Turkle writes about the exhaustion felt by teenagers as they constantly tweak their Facebook profiles for maximum cool. She calls this "presentation anxiety," and suggests that the site's element of constant performance makes people feel alienated from themselves."

2.  From The Chronicle of Higher Education, a further look at the correlation between ambition and emotional health, "College Freshmen Report Record-Low Levels of Emotional Health" (ht AZ):

This year's freshmen reported record-low levels of emotional health, according to the latest results of the University of California at Los Angeles's national survey of first-year undergraduates. At the same time, more students gave themselves high marks for ambition to achieve. College counselors say the two are clearly related, as students put more pressure on themselves to excel.

3. Two sports-related stories of interest: First, a touching study of failure in professional bowler Tom Daugherty's refreshingly light-hearted response to rolling the worst game ever televised by the PBA. And second, the telling bafflement at Royals' pitcher Gil Meche's decision, following a serious shoulder injury, to refuse the remaining $12 million in his contract and retire. Evidently, doing the "right thing," i.e. not accepting money that you didn't earn, is not the norm in the major leagues.

4. From The Onion, in case you needed an amusing reminder of how the world hears most theodicy, there's "God Almost Forgot To Kill Dave Elfman of Boulder, CO Today".

5. The perennial question of the relation of the Law to the Gospel in the life of the Christian is frequently in the air when the message is presented pastorally. Our friends at the White Horse Inn, Michael Horton to be exact, have posted a helpful take on the current discussion around this issue. Dane Ortlund of The Gospel Coalition also weighed in with a piece that is very much worth reading.
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: more Tiger Mom, Rex Ryan, Taco Bell, Dawn Treader, Downton Abbey, River Baptisms

1. The Tiger Beat goes on! David Brooks had some insightful things to say in The NY Times this week, calling Amy Chua a wimp:

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group - these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

As a counterpoint, there's this post from Claire Potter which uses class/race language to articulate a lot of what we've been saying on here (and especially here) about the Law being the Law, regardless of its expression, i.e. whether it be actively or passively aggressive (ht CM). Another really interesting perspective comes from Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Atlantic. And that, as they say, is that - I declare a moratorium on Tiger Mother posts.

2. A couple of fun articles about obligation and our response to it. First, in The Onion, "Man Waiting Until His Parents Die To Do A Single Thing That Makes Him Happy." And then, in The Wall Street Journal, a story about a couple of Giants players unwisely confessing their desire to play for the antinomian Rex Ryan, ht WDR:

"I would love to play for guy like Rex," safety Kenny Phillips said. "He allows you to be you. He's not asking you to hide. If you're a guy that likes to talk, go out and talk as long as you back it up...these guys are playing for him. I'd love to be part of that."

"I think [the Jets] chemistry might be better than ours," said Mr. Phillips' Giants teammate, Antrel Rolle. "At the end of the day, we're professional athletes. We get paid a lot of money to do what we do, but we're human. No one is a robot at this level. We do have feelings. We like to have fun."

3. A laugh-out-loud report from the LA Times, "Menu Labeling Law Doesn't Register a Blip at Taco Bell".
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Brooks on the Subconscious and Failure, DFW Studies, Coldplay, Todd Marinovich, Coptic Drama, and Jail for the 99th Time

1. A fascinating article by David Brooks in The New Yorker about "What the Science of Human Nature Can Teach Us." Bottomline appears to be that people are not the free agents they think they are, the inner life always trumps the outer, and that the subconscious ultimately calls the most important shots in our lives. Also, we are happiest when we are least self-focused:

"...we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking. The conscious mind gives us one way of making sense of our environment. But the unconscious mind gives us other, more supple ways. The cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides a different perspective on our lives, one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over abstract logic, perceptiveness over I.Q. It allows us to tell a different sort of success story, an inner story to go along with the conventional surface one.

[Quoting an anonymous neuroscientist]: "I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you’re playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God’s love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year.”

2. Brooks also had some interesting things to say in response to President Obama's Tuscon speech in his Times column "The Tree of Failure":
 

The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves. The nation’s founders had a modest but realistic opinion of themselves and of the voters. They erected all sorts of institutional and social restraints to protect Americans from themselves. They admired George Washington because of the way he kept himself in check.

But over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness... The roots of modesty have been carved away.

In a famous passage, Reinhold Niebuhr put it best: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. ... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

3. A great round-up in The Chronicle of Higher Education of the booming state of posthumous David Foster Wallace studies (ht CR). The countdown to April 15th begins now!
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Galli on Resolutions, Anger at God, Last Words, Sex & Marriage, Geek Culture, Jonny

1. The final word on the New Year from 2011 Mockingbird Conference speaker Mark Galli over at Christianity Today, in his column "Blessed Are the Poor in Virtue":

At the risk of derailing someone's hard fought New Year's vows, let me suggest that some of us stop trying to become good Christians, or whatever noble thing we're striving to be.

The more I strive to be a "good Christian"—more prayerful, patient, giving, sacrificial, whatever—the more I find myself anxious, irritated, guilty, resentful, and self-righteous. When I simply accept that I'm a sinner, really, I find that I pray more, am more patient, more giving, more humble, and more loving. 

This is the paradoxical reality that has been exploited effectively by Alcoholic's Anonymous for decades. The more an alcoholic strives to control her drinking, the more she is given to drink. The moment she admits she has no control over alcohol, that's when she can gain some freedom—as long as she continues to identify herself accordingly: "Hi, I'm Anne, and I'm an alcoholic." We are regularly tempted—at least I am tempted thus—to control our sinful longings and to strive to become what we are not: holy.

--> CONFERENCE PRE-REGISTRATION OPENS A WEEK FROM TODAY, 1/14! <--

2. CNN reports on some very interesting new studies about Anger at God, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

It's not just religious folks, either. People unaffiliated with organized religion, atheists and agnostics also report anger toward God either in the past, or anger focused on a hypothetical image - that is, what they imagined God might be like - said lead study author Julie Exline, Case Western Reserve University psychologist. In studies on college students, atheists and agnostics reported more anger at God during their lifetimes than believers.

Younger people tend to be angrier at God than older people, Exline said. She says some of the reasons she's seen people the angriest at God include rejection from preferred colleges and sports injuries preventing high schoolers from competing.

Be sure to read The Onion's comments here.

3. Speaking of anger at God - and excruciating existential pain immune to all efforts at managing it - there's The Agonizing Last Words of Bill Zeller, a suicide letter from a prominent computer programmer that will gut you to the core. That is, if you have the stomach for something so unflinching and morose [fair warning: it's really grim, and there's a lot of frank talk about sexual abuse]. But for anyone engaged in pastoral care, or simply interested in finding compassion for people dealing with severe internal and external darkness, Zeller's letter is as must-read as it is depressing. The final section, where he speaks about his family, depicts the fallout of Law-heavy Christianity in as uncensored and stirring terms as I've ever come across.
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Christmas Arrives: DFW on Federer, Pinsky on Donne, Gervais on Atheism, The National Bible Bee, Backfiring (!) Smoking Bans, and Troubled Childhoods

Just the links this time, for some holiday reading:

1. On Slate, if you have time for a mind-bender, The Philosophical Underpinnings of David Foster Wallace's Fiction (hint: rhymes with Littgenstein). For some prime DFW himself, check out his renowned profile for the NY Times, "Roger Federer as Religious Experience." For all of our posts on DFW, click here.

2. Also on Slate, in a column entitled "Nearer, my God, to Thee", former poet laureate Robert Pinksy takes a look at man's relationship to the divine via two Jeremiah 12-based sonnets, one from John Donne and one from Gerald Manley Hopkins.

3. Comedian and actor Ricky Gervais, a favorite of ours, offers a pleasantly humane/funny explanation of his atheism over at the Wall Street Journal. Almost makes up for the ueber-preachy "The Invention of Lying" (ht JD).

4. In the Atlantic, an amusing and highly informative look at The National Bible Bee.

5. From the NY Times, a harrowing reality-check about infidelity and its fallout, A Roomful of Regret and Yearning (ht VH).

6. A post on the Times' Freakonomics blog asks the question, "Do Smoking Bans Lead to More Fires?" A recent paper responds... yes.

7. According to a new poll by the Center for Disease Control (last seen in The Walking Dead), 60% of American adults claim to have had troubled childhoods.

8. Finally, there's this:

Nativity Scene FAIL - watch more funny videos

And with that, Merry Christmas from Mockingbird! Thanks for reading this year. We'll see you in January (if not before).

Another Week Ends: Yancey on AA, Whit Stillman, Dawn Treader and Ron Swanson

1. A great little interview with evangelical author Philip Yancey on CNN about his new book What Good Is God?, in which he responds to one of our all-time favorite questions, i.e: What can churches learn from AA?

Yancey: Two lessons stand out sharply to me: radical honesty and radical dependence. Alcoholics Anonymous members can spot a fraud, hypocrite, or liar the minute he or she walks in the door. They know the only path to healing begins with a frank self-assessment of failure.

When we go to church we like to look good and gain the respect of others. A married couple may fight all the way to church, but when they pull into the parking lot they’re all smiles, “We’re just fine, Mrs. Jones, how about you?” You’d never get away with that at AA.

AA also forces each person to admit their dependence on God (or at least a Higher Power) and on each other. Most AA members freely admit they could never make it on their own. People of faith believe that, too, yet how many of us practice it as passionately as those in a twelve-step group?

FYI: From now until the end of the month, our publication "Grace in Addiction: What the Church Can Learn from Alcoholics Anonymous" is now discounted by 25% over at Magcloud!

2. "Why the World Still Needs Whit Stillman" at The Atlantic sums up the Stillman charm nicely (I for one am counting the minutes til Damsels!):
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Self-Evangelism, Jay-Z, Paradoxes, Susan Boyle, NASA, Friday Night Lights

1. Another scorcher from our 2011 NYC conference speaker Mark Galli entitled "Evangelizing Ourselves", in which he unwittingly sums up much of our operating philosophy:

How do we talk about our faith without making others feel denigrated or angry? For one, we can talk about our faith so that everyone feels equally denigrated and equally inflamed!... So that everyone—even the Christian—recognizes his or her sinfulness...[and his or her] desperate need of a savior. If we can do that, a couple of remarkable things will happen. First, we will recognize afresh that we're not talking about our religion versus their religion, not about how we are right and they are wrong..., not about how we are righteous and they are not... At the same time, we will also see a merciful divine hand extended to all of us, like the hand that Jesus used to grab and raise up the lame man... When we all will hear afresh the invitation that comes to any who are weary and heavy laden, that there is a yoke that can give us rest and a peace that passes understanding.

Let me suggest, in fact, that whenever we communicate to non-Christians that we have found it and that they have not, that we have been chosen and that they have not... —whenever we assume that stance, consciously or not, we are communicating something other than the gospel, the Good News.

Should we not preach this gospel as if we also need to hear and accept it daily? And if so, can we ever preach to others a gospel that does not apply equally to us? Can we see, then, how if we preach this gospel, it will be nigh impossible for anyone to dodge the message by charging us with self-righteousness? 

p.s. We are pleased to announce that the 2011 Conference theme will be "Grace for Today: Freedom in a Culture of Control". Pre-registration begins in the new year.

2. Some illuminating and even sympathetic thoughts on hermeneutics from Jay-Z himself in the New Yorker's absorbing write-up of Decoded:

Too often, hip-hop’s embrace of crime narratives has been portrayed as a flaw or a mistake, a regrettable detour from the overtly ideological rhymes of groups like Public Enemy. But in Jay-Z’s view Public Enemy is an anomaly. “You rarely become Chuck D when you’re listening to Public Enemy,” he writes. “It’s more like watching a really, really lively speech.” By contrast, his tales of hustling were generous, because they made it easy for fans to imagine that they were part of the action. “I don’t think any listeners think I’m threatening them,” he writes. “I think they’re singing along with me, threatening someone else. They’re thinking, Yeah, I’m coming for you. And they might apply it to anything, to taking their next math test or straightening out that chick talking outta pocket in the next cubicle.” 

Speaking of hermeneutics (and communication, and evangelism, and preaching, and living, and loving, etc), if you haven't gotten your hands on Paul Zahl's preaching seminar from Pensacola yet, you are truly missing out! I may be biased, but this blogger feels it represents his most important new material since Grace in Practice. We've made it available on a Radiohead-style, donate-what-you-want/can basis.

3. A fascinating primer on paradox by Graham Priest in the NY Times, in particular how Aristotle's principle of noncontradiction is currently under attack from Dialetheism, the idea that certain paradoxes can, in fact, be true. One particularly fine paragraph for all you apologists out there:

[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Seminarian Plagiarism, Disney's Decline, DCAU, Mad Men, MJ

1. Our Pensacola mini-conference is underway! If you live in the area, don't be afraid to drop in unannounced... We would love to see you. And those of you that don't live in the area, don't be afraid to say a prayer in support.

2. An unsettling firsthand account of professional plagiarism over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled "The Shadow Scholar", the most arresting portion for us being (ht AZ):

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America's moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.

3. A worthy look at Disney's conflicted relationship with its religious past over at First Things, through the lens of Armond White's review of Disney's current PC-schlock-fest Tangled. The always provocative White employs Mbird faves Carl Dreyer, Hans Christian Anderson, and The Pet Shop Boys among others to make his point. He writes:

We’ve accustomed ourselves to the formula by which a family movie designed to pacify children is considered innocuous, but we cannot ignore the ramifications of entertainment concepts that move away from profundity or that deny audiences the persuasiveness and the confirmation of epiphany.

Religion offers a way to understand our human impulses; popular culture has become a way to muddle them. That’s the theme the Pet Shop Boys identify in [their new project, a musical adaptation of] Hans Christian Andersen’s “Most Incredible Thing”; it’s also exemplified by the commercial corruptions that Tangled performs on the tale of Rapunzel. In his classic study The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, psychologist Bruno Bettelheim argued that readers “find folk fairy tales more satisfying than all other children’s stories” because “fairy tales carry important messages to the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind, on whatever level each is functioning at the time.” As pop culture gets away from faith, it also abandons its most important social function, confusing rather than uniting our humanity. It will take faith to raise corrupted pop culture from the dead. 

4. New York publishes two curiously affirming profiles of evangelical figures in one week!
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Insignificance, Kanye, Rooted & Fundamentals, Zadie Smith, Blue Like Jazz and Steve Martin

1. Mark Galli continues his hot streak over at Christianity Today with a thoughtful editorial entitled "Insignificant is Beautiful," in which he rightly explores why young people are so intent on making "a difference" and what that might mean. He doesn't trash do-gooders per se as much as discuss how the yearning for significance often contains an unconfessed element of narcissism. The takeaway line being:

"...the human soul [is] subject to self-deception, and this colors even our highest aspirations. Even the best of intentions mask the mysterious darkness within, which is why we need to be healed also of our best intentions."

2. Another moment of abreactive and repentant gold from Kanye West, this time talking with Matt Lauer about George W. Bush's recent comment that Kanye's infamous post-Katrina "George Bush doesn't care about black people" was the low point of his presidency. Watch the interview below, check out Kanye's twitter tantrum, read Jeff Hual's post Kanye West Meets The Left Hand Of God, listen to Gil Kracke's fantastic Kayne-related talk "The Law of Inertia and Human Psychology" from last year's Pensacola Mini-Conference, and then... register for the next week's Pensacola mini-conference!
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Altruism, Homer Simpson, Friends, and Dogs

Filling in for DZ this week...

1. Judith Lichtenberg of the NY Times writes this article in defense of altruism over against egotism – known on this blog as a low anthropology. Her critiques of egotism are valid and while she proposes an understanding of altruism which may sound close to Reformation ideas of freedom and love, it instead seems to be a return to Aristotle and the formation of a virtuous identity (ht DZ):

“The point is rather that the kind of altruism we ought to encourage, and probably the only kind with staying power, is satisfying to those who practice it. Studies of rescuers show that they don’t believe their behavior is extraordinary; they feel they must do what they do, because it’s just part of who they are. …As Prof. Neera Badhwar has argued, their identity is tied up with their values, thus tying self-interest and altruism together.”

1a. Speaking of self-perception, a recent study by Dr. Jessica Escobedo has found the people give their actions greater moral worth than their peers -shocking! (ht KW):

“Other data we collected showed that when you're asked to rate your own actions, you rate yourself as about 10 percent more morally good than other people rate your behavior. While this isn't too surprising, we found that if you were asked how other people would rate those same actions, you were remarkably accurate in estimating their ratings of your behavior. In other words, even though you know what other people think of your choices, you still think you're doing better than others give you credit for.”

2. Is Homer Simpson a Roman Catholic? So says this article and the Vatican’s own “L'Osservatore Romano.” As the Vatican magazine suggests: “Few people know it, and he does everything he can to hide it, but it is true: Homer J Simpson is a Catholic”. Who am I to contradict the Vatican on all things Catholic, but this seems like a bit of a stretch (ht DZ).

3. Setting aside political allegiances (honestly), this research article from the Wall Street Journal about the Tea Party movement is worth the read. The author, Jonathan Haidt, sees a strong belief in the notion of Karma amongst conservative Tea Partiers that ultimately underpins their emphasis on personal independence. That’s not to say that all Tea Partiers agree with Karma (Haidt notes that libertarian Tea Partiers largely disagreed with Karma), but given the recent very religious march on Washington, it may be worth it to ask what Christianity has to say about all this. As the article notes (ht JD):

“[In] today's ongoing financial and economic crisis… those guilty of corruption and irresponsibility have escaped the consequences of their wrongdoing, rescued first by President Bush and then by President Obama. Bailouts and bonuses sent unimaginable sums of the taxpayers' money to the very people who brought calamity upon the rest of us. Where is punishment for the wicked?" [CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Procrastination, Galli on Miners & Prayer, Wes Anderson, JK Rowling & goodnewsforpeoplewithbigproblems

1. A wonderful and highly relevant article in this week's New Yorker by James Surowiecki reviewing a new book on procrastination, The Thief of Time. A perfect storm of Law-related paralysis (also known as "perfectionism" - think Chinese Democracy), Romans 7-style inner divisions and general human silliness:

Philosophers are interested in procrastination for another reason. It’s a powerful example of what the Greeks called akrasia—doing something against one’s own better judgment. Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off. In other words, if you’re simply saying “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” you’re not really procrastinating. Knowingly delaying because you think that’s the most efficient use of your time doesn’t count, either. The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn’t make people happy. In one study, sixty-five per cent of students surveyed before they started working on a term paper said they would like to avoid procrastinating: they knew both that they wouldn’t do the work on time and that the delay would make them unhappy.

Procrastinators often succumb to this sort of perfectionism. Viewed this way, procrastination starts to look less like a question of mere ignorance than like a complex mixture of weakness, ambition, and inner conflict.

The idea of the divided self, though discomfiting to some, can be liberating in practical terms, because it encourages you to stop thinking about procrastination as something you can beat by just trying harder.

2. A stirring and vulnerable response to the miraculous rescue of the Chilean miners from Mark Galli (our recently announced 2011 NYC Conference speaker!) in Christianity Today. I would re-post the whole thing if I could:

When extraordinary things like this happen, it brings out the megalomania in some people. But I think a local Catholic priest had it right: "God has heard our prayers." Lots of prayers from lots of people. And it was given.

When this sort of thing happens, I feel like I'm being set up. If prayer never "worked," I could deal with it sensibly. I could just give it up. Or give up one type of prayer—intercession. Just stop praying that God would do this or that, change this or that. Prayer could just be communing with God. But when God answers prayer like this, it sets up this god-awful expectation that God gives to those who ask. "Ask and it shall be given" is a nice, warm saying, but it should really be, "Ask and sometimes it will be given." Or more realistically, at least in my prayer experience, "Ask and once in a blue moon it will be given."

"...Feeling hopeless [...] characterizes my prayer life most days. I have so few important-to-me prayers answered that I'm afraid to pray for such things anymore. Who wants to be disappointed with God again? So I find stories like the answered prayer for the Chilean miners more irritating than inspirational. As a CNN story says, the miners "showed us there is hope even when the worst seems certain." Well, for me when the worst seems certain, I have the hardest time having hope.
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Cyber Bullies, eBay, Glenn Beck, FUNdamentals, Madonna, TV roundup

1. A quick study in opposites: In an NPR story about the rise of cyber-bullying and public humiliation, "It's Not the Web, It's Us" sociologist C.J. Pascoe wisely states, 'we shouldn't place all the blame for [cyber-bully] actions on new technology. 'I think the problem starts pre-technology, which is, what are the motivations we have in humiliating another person, and humiliating them sexually?' she says. 'That's the issue we need to deal with, and then follow up with concerns about new media.'".

The good people at ebay might beg to differ:

2. The NY Times Magazine ran a cover story on the suddenly ubiquitous Glenn Beck last week, and I for one was unaware of his history of addiction. I was struck in particular by the following admission:

“I said to someone the other day,” Beck told me, “I am as close today to a complete and total collapse as I was on the first day of recovery.” He calls himself a “recovering dirtbag.” There were many days, he said, when he would avoid the bathroom mirror so he would not have to face himself. He was in therapy with “Dr. Jack Daniels.” He smoked marijuana every day for about 15 years. He fired an underling for bringing him the wrong pen. And, according to a Salon.com report, he once called the wife of a radio rival to ridicule her — on the air — about her recent miscarriage. “You get to a place where you disgust yourself,” Beck told me. “Where you realize what a weak, pathetic and despicable person you have become.”

3. Two new blogs very much worth checking out: Mbird's own Jacob & Melina Smith and Dusty Brown taking us through a nine-week systematics overview that promises to put the fun back in The Fundamentals - if you're in the city, be sure to check it out (Monday evenings at St Georges) - and Russ Masterson at the Centre for Faith and Culture down in Atlanta talking about Madonna and Self-Worth among other things. Great stuff.
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Green Guilt, Agnostic Knowledge, Tearjerkers, The Social Network, Damsels in Distress

1. Such a fascinating article about Green Guilt in Wednesday's NY Times (ht BZ). Substitute the eco-language with discipleship-talk and you have a nigh perfect allegory for the double-edged sword of self-righteousness/despair that comes from living by the Law (or  any attempt to live consistently). Again, nothing against the environment - I ride a bike to work after all ;) - and I know it's an easy target, but the religiosity lurking behind the movement, especially in its most radical, overtly self-justifying forms, is just so obviously toxic. Pun intended. That is, it's hard not to chuckle a little when it shipwrecks on the Gordian knot of Romans 7. Grace seems to be a particularly foreign, aka  doubly urgent, concept in this context:

“We tried cloth [diapers] and think it’s totally unrealistic,” Mr. Dorfman [author of The Lazy Environmentalist] said. Like the rest of America, he said, they have gravitated toward disposable diapers “and that’s really environmentally sinful. It’s plastic derived from petroleum. You use them once and then they get tossed in a landfill. It’s a terribly inefficient use of natural resources. 

“Not only do I feel guilt, I feel hypocritical. But it’s the most functional diapers we’ve found. They keep my son dry. They don’t irritate his skin. They don’t clump up and get really heavy. They happen to work the best, and that’s annoying.”

Living in an environmentally responsible way, for the truly observant greenie, can be difficult. Certainly it is sensible to take the position, as do Mr. Dorfman and several others interviewed, that guilt is neither healthy, nor a motivation for long-term change. But when one is acutely concerned about doing the right thing, it can be difficult not to feel guilty on occasion... For those who are concerned about green, life is fraught.

---------------

Does Mr. Freed [author of Green Your Home All-in-One for Dummies] — who said his wife, Laurie, is not a greenie and did not even recycle when they met — have any green guilt about his own lifestyle, which includes a 350-square-foot apartment in San Francisco and a 2,000-square-foot house in Palm Springs, Calif.?

“Nonstop, every minute, are you kidding?” he said. “Every time I set foot in the car. I drive a hybrid and I bought carbon offsets for it, so technically it’s carbon-neutral, but with carbon offsets you’re trading the carbon reduction of one company for the polluting practices of another. I have a 2-year-old child, a little girl — there’s a lot of guilt around the baby, because its stuff is horribly packaged, designed to be disposable, and there are times we have to do things I wouldn’t do for myself, such as disposable water bottles and these plastic placemats we use when we go to the restaurant. They’re great for germs, but disposable, awful things.”

Diapers seem to be a stumbling block for everyone. “Yeah,” Mr. Flancman [a Canadian environmentalist living in Thailand] said. “If I could only get my kids to eat grass, then we’d have a solution.” 

2. A new Pew study reports that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than those who would identify themselves as believers. Sigh... One particular note of interest for us: "Atheists and agnostics are also more likely than Protestants to know that Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation (the majority of Protestants could not identify him)." On the upside, a different study finds that losing your religion is bad for your health! (HT JD)

3. The A/V Club reports on the top ten songs most likely to make a man cry, and not surprisingly, REM's "Everybody Hurts" tops the list. Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is up there, and The Verve's "The Drugs Don't Work" even made the grade... Such a subjective topic, but off the top of my head, I might include The Beach Boys' "Caroline No," Dylan's "Not Dark Yet," Wilco's "Reservations," Westerberg's "Good Day," Al Green's version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," U2's "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" (or "Moment of Surrender"), Duran Duran's "Ordinary World," Ian Hunter's "Michael Picasso," Coldplay's "The Scientist," Radiohead's "True Love Waits," Michael Jackson's "Stranger in Moscow," and Aimee Mann's "Wise Up." Not to mention, my current over-the-top melodramatic favorite, Athlete's "Black Swan Song". Come to Pensacola and we'll have ourselves a good cry (ht CH).

Speaking of which, if you're planning on attending, we're getting closer to the time when we need to know. Even if you're not ready to register, please email Jeff Hual at jhual1969@gmail.com to reserve your space today. We're really excited about how it's coming together.

4. Also on the music tip, our very own DJ JAZ has a new two-disc mix coming out next month, available now for pre-order! This is a very limited run, so order yours today. If the astronaut-holy-spirit cover  isn't enough to convince you, nothing will.

5. In movies, I'll be lining up to see The Social Network as soon as I get the chance. With David Fincher directing, Aaron Sorkin writing and Jesse Eisenberg acting (three favorites), it had already hooked me, but the cover piece of this week's NY Magazine didn't hurt. If you can get beyond the apparently rampant poetic license, it sounds like body slam of a morality tale, exploring such Mbird-friendly themes as identity, motivation, technology and class, occupied with questions such as, "How much of a jerk are you allowed to be in the name of getting the job done? And if you’re the smartest guy in the room, you know it, you act on it, and you don’t care who gets hurt, then what is the word for what you are? ...The film is uniquely Sorkinian: an earnest, unsparing exploration of 'What exactly does it mean to be an a$$hole?'"

5b. Finally, also in movies, the first bits of casting news about Whit Stillman's long-awaited new project Damsels In Distress hit the web this week. Sounds like it's filming later this month - say a prayer!