Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
"He's a conservative, but not my kind of conservative."
Those are words I often have to use. Both of politicians and of other LCMS Lutherans.
Over on National Review Online, Mitch Muncy offers one way to divide the sheep from the goats. He suggested that a bad way of defining conservatism was its attitude towards change. I recognized why this was wrong back in high school when a liberal high school teacher used it to his advantage over and over again. Back then, I self-identified as a conservative, but knew that I was not against change as such. Certain forms of progress (e.g. the space program) had a great appeal to me. And there were other values of the past that would require great change to reinstate. G.K. Chesterton illustrated this for me in his book The Napoleon of Notting Hill where he wrote about a major revolution that returned the modern world to a medieval society. Was this convervative? Yes. But it surely involved great change. The status quo was trampled underfoot. Mitch suggests that "definitional" conservatism (where we state what the values are) is superior to defining conservatism as standing still.
If I have a gripe with this, and I do, it is his choice of poster boys. Burke is bad. Perhaps. I have not read Burke. Lincoln is good. Uh oh. Lincoln may well have been right about there needing to be a definitional conservatism. But I don't want Lincoln to define what it means to be a conservative. He can be a poster boy for my party, but he cannot be a poster boy for my philosophy. I don't value union above all. My favorite statements of philosophy came from both sides in the movie Gettysburg. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's speech, which mentioned freedom, but not union. And General Longstreet's words, "We should have free the slaves, then fired on Fort Sumpter." Yes! Great philosophy whether or not anybody ever said it. Shaara's Longstreet can be the poster boy of my philosophy. Philosophy SHOULD run by abstraction, even if history and politics have to deal with the nitty-gritty concrete.
2:08 pm Pacific Standard Time
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Sunday, February 26th, 2006
I turned forty today.
I had been dreading the milestone for a couple years.
It hasn't been bad, however. A few things changed my mind.
The first was being diagnosed with skin cancer on my scalp, and having it successfully dealt with quickly (just surgery). While it was a nuisance, hearing the word "cancer" used in reference to my body reminds me that really bad stuff is out there, and I'm lucky to have problems with solutions. So now I have some sutures that will be out in a couple of days. And I've been joking about my free "face lift" I got in the bargain. This is only half-way a joke. I'm suspecting my plastic surgeon is an artist who decided to make best aesthetic use of the fact he had to draw some skin tight to cover a hole. A wrinkle or two are looking shallower than they were a couple weeks ago.
The second was having good friends to celebrate with. We had a group of thirty of us to Buca di Beppa restaurant. I would describe this as what you would get if you crossed a high end Italian restaurant with the Madonna Inn. The food is family style but gourmet. What I had forgotten about that I liked was the fact that they use blue cheese on their pizzas. Blue cheese (a lately acquired taste for me) and pepperoni are great together. With a crowd the size it was, I didn't get to talk to everyone at length, and probably had most contact with about eight at one end of the table. But I did have a good opportunity to greet everyone as they arrived, which was something I'll remember for a long time. Good friends make all kinds of things better.
The third thing that made the birthday easier was the fact that Finland had made it to the Olympic finals for hockey against Sweden. (I'm half Finnish, and it's fun to have an opportunity to take pride in my heritage that doesn't involve talking up Nokia phones. And Teemu Selanne is also an Anaheim Duck, so he's one of our guys in two ways.) I had enjoyed watching them destroy Russia a couple days before. They didn't win against Sweden, but it was still an enjoyable game to watch, as there was no portion of the game where they didn't have a chance. In the last fifteen seconds they were only behind by a goal, and were taking decent shots. Their passion at the end was an admirable demonstration of sisu. (Jaakko, you'll have to tell me if you really do use that word, or whether it's something only foreigners hear about.) I haven't been much of a hockey fan until recently. But it's pulling me in. (I bought Hockey for Dummies today using one of my birthday gift certificates. I want to be able to follow the finer points.) It's one game that, along with all the other winter sports I've been watching at the Olympics, is easy to watch on television without feeling you aren't missing EVERYTHING. Fast. Easy-to-follow in broad outline. But definitely not a "you've seen one game, you've seen them all" proposition. There is a lot of depth to the game. And I felt like it was possible for me to see the differing strengths of different teams from a single game.
11:28 pm Pacific Standard Time
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Monday, February 20th, 2006
George Forell and John Warwick Montgomery were at Concordia University Irvine last night to deliver addresses on the Freedom of the Christian. Dr. Forell began the evening with an address on the subject of Martin Luther's treatise on The Freedom of the Christian. He said that this was Luther's last attempt at peace with the pope, although it was not a real attempt, and the pope was no theologian. Dr. Forell's comments flowed freely throughout his address, and this made for a very enjoyable evening.
The presentation style was that of age gone well. Where there has been a growing and then a pruning process in the brain. In the earlier growing process, life experience and study come together to create a large fund of knowledge. In the later pruning process, lesser connections drop out of the system, but this does not leave the person with a less valuable brain. Instead, the person is left with a selection of the most vital knowledge. When this is spoken from, if you have ears to hear, you know it. A very young listener might well recognize that what was said was mostly true and appreciate such an address. But over time, a listener becomes aware that not only was what was presented true, but it was central and vital. (This was my experience in two readings of Harry Blamires's The Christian Mind. I knew it was right upon first reading. It took a second reading to see just how right it was about everything. Not just right, but dead center about things that hadn't happened yet when I first read it.) It is the missing piece of most conversations. Sanity has entered the room in embodied form—and good humor.
Dr. Forell was quoting from Career of the Reformer, volume 31 in the American Edition of Luther's Works. The German title was "Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen." Dr. Forell said that in German, "menschen" meant men and women interchangeably, unlike in English. The Latin title of the work, which was sent to the Pope, was On Christian Liberty.
On a recent Mars Hill tape, historian David Hackett Fischer traced the etymologies of the words "freedom" and "liberty". He found that the Latin "liberty" had a background in the idea of political liberty. Being free, not slave. But "freedom" had a relationship with the word "friend." It had to do as much with belonging as political freedom. Luther's treatise is based upon two paradoxical statements, the meaning of the one, "The Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none," being better represented by the Latin word, and the other, "A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all," better represented by the German. I am happy, however, that the Pope received the Latin title.
Dr. Forell had some sharp things to say about ecumenical gatherings where the Gospel is forgotten about in order to ease along the conversation. "Instead of the cross up front, they now have a big smiley face." This was quite funny coming from a man in his eighties.
I wish all my readers could have been present to hear this lecture. Dr. Montgomery followed with a nice lecture on Predestination. Dr. Montgomery had been lecturing the four previous Sunday nights on Apologetics, and was well received.
1:30 pm Pacific Standard Time
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Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
Did you know that February 12, 2006 is Evolution Sunday? I know. You imagined it was the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany. But 412 congregations in 49 states have voted to commemorate Darwin instead.
You can read about it here. (Hat tip to Terry Mattingly at www.getreligion.org.) I would guess that this means the clergy will be explaining the significance of evolution to religion. As Mattingly says,
It will be interesting to see how many of them say that they believe, when push comes to shove, that God has guided the process of evolution. This, of course, raises questions about whether they believe that mankind is the result of a random and unguided process that did not have, well, us in mind (or words to that effect). In other words, it will be interesting to see how many of these believers believe in Darwinian orthodoxy, as defined in almost all academic and legal settings.
Yes, it will.
12:11 pm Pacific Standard Time
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Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
I just noticed an article announcing a scheduled Christmas 2007 release of a second Chronicles of Narnia movie. Prince Caspian is slated for production!
While I gave The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe a B+, this news still excites me. The success of the first movie might allow the studios to stretch themselves some more and improve upon past performance. Perhaps they will arrange to have a more stirring soundtrack written.
I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was nine years old, and loved it. I tried to tackle Prince Caspian when I finished, but found the number of characters difficult to follow. A few months later, during a summer trip to British Columbia, I gave the book another go and enjoyed it.
My favorite scene in the book was a midnight meeting between the young Caspian and Doctor Cornelius. I hope they cast him well. This book will be important for the introduction of another character, too: Reepicheep.
I recently re-read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and was reminded just how wonderful a character he was.
1:29 pm Pacific Standard Time
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