For the next few pages he goes on a remarkably cliche rant about traditional methods and citing graduates’ lack of knowledge as an indictment of those lazy professors who “repeat the same practices…for years.” He suggests that a college graduate’s inability to date the Civil War between 1850 and 1900 is the result of poor college instruction, but I’m pretty sure that should have been covered more than once by eighth grade. You can forgive a prof for not including it on the American History exam.

He also suggests that students who take an intro class freshman year (with no later courses in the discipline) should be able to remember the specifics of the material 5 or 10 years later. This is horrifically unrealistic, and makes for an unhelpful criticism.

Webs, Not Ladders

I was obviously having a difficult time reading this book until I came to the following passage explaining Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning. The taxonomy is made up of six focal points

• Foundational Knowledge: This is the basic content of a subject
• Application: focuses on how to use the information; engages “critical, creative, and practical thinking”
• Integration: connecting ideas from different realms of life, subjects, and within the subject at hand
• Human Dimension: Learning about themselves and others in relation to the material
• Caring: developing new feelings, interests and values (about the subject or object of study)
• Learning How to Learn: not in the sense of learning strategies, but in the sense of a) learning research practices, and b) recognizing their own learning abilities and how to maximize them.

His explanation of what could have been a truly mundane “new idea” has helped me put into words some nagging thoughts I’ve had about the cognitive and affective taxonomies and the separation of teaching goals.

“One important feature of this taxonomy is that it is not hierarchical but rather relational…achieving any one kind of learning simultaneously enhances the possibility of achieving the other kinds of learning as well. […]

“And this in turn means that teaching is no longer a zero-sum game. That is, teachers don’t automatically have to give up one kind of learning to achieve another. (32)”

I was sitting at Barnes & Noble when I read this. I sat back in my chair and said aloud, “Oh wow. Very nice.” Then I just stared at the page for a while, trying to adjust to the major reversal of my feelings toward this book. I had complained to my wife about the first section, so I sent her a text message: “This guy just crossed over from wank to freakin’ genius.”

In a class lecture on postmodernism last semester my prof remarked that postmodernity “is what it is.” This thread of his discussion basically stated that, while we can’t all agree on exactly what defines postmodernism, we all agree that there is a distinct period of time, The Modern Era, which is now ending. The period prior was premodernity, and now we are seeing the birth of postmodernity—simply understood as the time that follows Modernity.

The discussion was freeing because it allowed me to look beyond the specific philosophical and political conclusions the “postmoderns” (who we evangelicals are diametrically opposed to) are coming to, and acknowledge that as someone who has grown up in this time period I am postmodern, and there are foundational (or antifoundational) understandings that tie my philosophical generation together.

One of those is the understanding that systems are rarely linear or hierarchical, and can usually be better described as webs or matrices. I was having a difficult time reading Creating Significant Learning Experiences until I came to this passage explaining his Taxonomy of Significant Learning. But his explanation of what could have been a truly mundane “new idea” has helped me put into words some nagging thoughts I’ve had about the cognitive and affective taxonomies and the separation of teaching goals.

I think the remainder of this book, based on this non-hierarchical taxonomy, is very forward-thinking. This is the first education book I’ve read that is actually describing a new way to do things. They all say they are, but tend to be rehashings of debates and suggestions we’ve been engaged with for 80 years or more. But Fink has managed to tap into a true postmodern insight here. What’s more, it doesn’t seem like he even recognizes the influence.

I’m not a fan of Fink’s writing style, but these ideas could be the starting point of something that could change the way we plan and practice education. If anyone’s paying attention, that is.

I did some graphics representing Psalm 31 for a class assignment last week, and I figured I’d share them. If you like them and think they have some use let me know, I might do more.

Download Psalm 31 Graphics (3)

I had a discussion a couple of weeks ago with a classmate about Christian music. One of the things we talked about was the difference between groups that spoke explicitly about Jesus and clear religious themes in their music, and those who didn’t hide their faith, but used different subject matter. When it comes to popular music I prefer the latter (though there are obvious advantages to the former in worship).

Relient K was one of the examples that came up, because my classmate remembered their early stuff, saying there was a lot of explicit Christian imagery and subject matter. I didn’t listen to them until MMHMM, and it didn’t have that same flavor. That doesn’t stop them from having some great theology and understanding for real life:

“…And this life sentence that I’m serving
I admit that I’m every bit deserving.
But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.” (“Be My Escape”)

“I am a hostage of my own humanity,
Self-detained and forced to live in this mess I’ve made.
And all I’m asking is for you to do what you can with me,
But I can’t ask you to give what you already gave.” (“Be My Escape”)

“And today I’ll trust you with the confidence of a many who’s never known defeat.
Then tomorrow upon hearing what I did, I will stare at you in disbelief.
Oh inconsistent me.
Crying out for consistency.” (“Let It All Out”)

Sunday morning was the official launch of the new design of www.irvingbible.org. Outside of my work at DTS this is my first major project, and I’m excited to get it online!

IBC wanted to step away from the traditional church website that focuses on static information, and give users a window into the life of the community. The concept is ‘IBC Stories’, a place for people to share stories of ministry, life change, and fellowship, and for the community to know what’s going on. This is a pretty bold move, but IBC is nothing if not forward-thinking.

This is a pretty minimal design, so that there wouldn’t be any design elements to distract the user from the stories shared on the page. No flash, no frills; just a little bit of jQuery and a healthy dose of CSS. The beauty of this website is that it’s strengths all lie in the content and its organization, and not in the visuals. It’s about the community and not the designer.

I think that we may be looking at the future of large church websites. Or maybe I just hope we are, so I can be in on the start of the next trend…who knows.

One of the great things about the health summit was getting to witness certain members’ rhetorical skills and getting to hear how they think about things.  One of the most revealing comments was made by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who lamented that people whose medical bills are higher have to pay more, as this constitutes “segregating people on the basis of health.”  He added, “It’s time to stop that kind of segregation in our country.”

Surely we can all unite in opposition to the injustice that Sen. Harkin so mercifully highlights.  I mean, what’s next?  People whose housing bills are higher could have to pay more, which would segregate them on the basis of how nice their house is (although they’d still get to live in the same neighborhood).  People whose food bills are higher could have to pay more, which would segregate them on the basis of their appetite.

In all seriousness, Harkin’s remarks say a lot about the liberal mindset.  Having people pay their own way is apparently an injustice akin to segregating them by race or creed.  Well, as Harry Reid said to Lamar Alexander, “You’re entitled to your opinions….”

Health Care Summit Non-Sequitur at The Weekly Standard

Farouk Shami is running for Governor in Texas. He’s got an impressive business resume, and some ambitious ideas, but I won’t be voting for him.

For one, he’s betting $10 million and half his term that he can create 100,000 jobs in two years. That just doesn’t seem realistic. But I guess if he doesn’t do it we can get rid of him.

The other reason is a line from one of his radio commercials:

“He’s a grandfather who will bring sweeping educational reform so that every child in Texas can go to college.”

Every child? That’s more than ambitious, it’s unrealistic. There’s no chance that every child in the state (nearly 1500 high schools) is qualified or capable of college-level work. It’s unlikely that all the students in a single graduating class in a single high school is qualified and capable.

And is it even desirable for every student to go to college? The only way to make it so is to reduce the level of work at the college level that it is achievable by every student. And that eliminates the function of college. It would become a hollow shell of its former purpose, and would do nothing but delay maturity and entry into the workforce.

Is college simply a sort of status symbol that separates the wealthy from the poor? Is it some sort of class barrier that needs to be broken down? No! Certainly it currently acts (and has historically acted) as such a symbol and barrier in some ways. But while costs have inhibited some, providing quality education isn’t free. And scholarship, loan, and grant programs have made this less of an issue.

But desiring that every student should go to college robs college of its usefulness. It will no longer function as “higher” education, and would just be, as Chris Rock said, “more high school”. If every student is capable of doing the work presented at the college level, you should do it in high school (because most of them aren’t doing much now). Shane Hipps pointed out during the Electronic Gospel conference at DTS that the vocabulary of the average 4th grader in the 1940’s is roughly equivalent to the average high school graduate today. So instead of sending students for two or four more years of school, condense the schedule so they learn those things in high school.

College would also no longer function as any sort of merited achievement or screening, which means exceptional students will need ever increasing years of education to prove their merit, delaying their entry into productive service. One of the few places I agree with Charles Murray is that we need to push exceptional students to their potential, because they are going to be driving forces in society. College has served that purpose historically, but the more we encourage wide enrollment, the less effective it is in this way.

I think Shami is right in advocating for more effective vocational and technical training, so that students will be prepared to work in technical fields out of high school, and so that associate’s and bachelor’s degrees begin to again mean that the student has achieved beyond the requirements of the job. But that power is removed when every student goes (or is expected to go) to college. That makes the students who don’t go failures, rather than the students who do go high achievers.

The cost of college is too great – in terms of money spent by students, their families, the state, and the university, as well as the time it takes to get a degree – to place the expectation on every student. The expectation puts undue strains on students who are not capable or who are not interested, and removes the actual value of the college education. There is a free basic schooling option that already serves the purpose that universal higher ed would serve – it’s called “high school”. We’d do well to make better use of the 12-14 years we get with students, instead of tacking on four more for the sake of false prestige.

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was “responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults,” and that it ” impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people.” In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that “Second-hand smoke is the nation’s third-leading preventable cause of death.” The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had “committed to a conclusion before research had begun”, and had “disregarded information and made findings on selective information.” The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: “We stand by our science….there’s wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems.” Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn’t even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It’s the consensus of the American people.

Before I go on, I’ll mention that the court ruling was vacated in 2002, not because the ‘98 ruling was wrong, but because the report had no regulatory weight.

Anyway, my quote of the minute is this:

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.

…or global warming.

Sure, the arguments for why heavy snowfall is consistent with warmer average temperature (warmer air holds more moisture, as opposed to times when it’s “too cold to snow”) are reasonable and plausible. I’m not really trained to disagree with them, because they’re logically sound. But maybe they deserve some extra scrutiny by people who are trained in climatology in light of all the recent revelations involving East Anglia and the IPCC.

I also find it ironic that while anthropogenic global warming advocates were allowed to use Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to “motivate” us to believe them-by screaming about how hurricanes will be more frequent and more intense (which turned out to be more than a little wrong), unless we do something-skeptics can’t use the massive blizzards and cold weather all over the country in their favor. It’s not necessarily good logic, but we’re talking about rhetoric, right?

In June, the estate of Adrian Jacobs issued proceedings at London’s High Court against Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, claiming that [J.K.] Rowling copied substantial parts of “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard — No 1 Livid Land” written by Jacobs in 1987.

It said the plot of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” copied elements of the plot of Willy the Wizard, including a wizard contest, and that the Potter series borrowed the idea of wizards traveling on trains

Future filings will include that Rowling copied the ideas of wizards using wands, living in England, and speaking English…

Sam Nielson, an artist at Disney Interactive, writes this about creative expression and art education:

Based on things I’ve read and seen (ie. just a hyphothesis), I believe there’s a big dip in creativity as artists increase in learning.  I think this is one source of the common (but mistaken) idea that education inhibits creativity—because most people and artists stop actively learning about their craft before they reach their creative and expressive potential

This seems like something that will translate into other areas of education. Perhaps this is why so many people feel that content focused education for young children destroys their creativity.

If we’re honest, the most creative among us have been very well educated in their area of creativity. This isn’t about the savants, those who have an inordinate amount of natural ability. This is about those who practice consistent excellence in their field. The most creative web and graphic designers have usually had extensive education in practices and principles of design and art. The most creative writers have been trained in composition and rhetoric, as well as the norms of their type of writing.

Encouraging students to take in information won’t kill their creativity, it will expand it, but there is a period of the growth process where creativity wanes, before it surges. This, I think, is one of the concepts of Whitehead’s rhythm of education: romance, precision, and generalization.

H/T: Brilliant Anyway

I never finished it, but after reading Simply Christian I plan to.

The major idea that Wade expounded on was that heaven isn’t a distant land, but a dimension that exists right next to us, behind a veil. He described Jesus’ ascension as him stepping behind the veil, and Stephen’s vision as the veil being pulled back for him. That view of heaven is the major idea present in this work. This book isn’t about heaven, but about places where heaven and earth intersect.

He begins by describing four desires we each have which reveal “echoes of a voice”: justice, spirituality, relationships, and beauty. We all long for these things, but we can’t quite grasp them in their fullness, nor can we quite articulate them. Why do we long for them? Why do we all seem to desire these things that we can’t reach? And what should we say about them? In Wright’s estimation, we could attribute them to “childish fantasies”, something to be overcome so we can live in the world as it really is; we could say that it is a vision of a separate world, “a world where we really belong,” in which everything is as it should be;

Or we can say, if we like, that the reason we have these dreams, the reason we have a sense of a memory of the echo of a voice, is that there is someone speaking to us, whispering in our inner ear — someone who cares very much about this present world and our present selves… (9)

It is, of course, this third explanation that Wright endorses, one he describes in terms of points of contact between heaven and earth, places where the two intersect. He describes many places and ways that we see this happen: the burning bush, the tabernacle, the temple, the Incarnation, and the indwelling of the Spirit.

He describes the Trinity, Israel, the Church, and the Believer in terms of this intersection, all the while referring back to the four echoes. He does a wonderful way of painting a picture of the Christian life that relies on the Spirit, on that point of intersection, to guide and sustain it. This is one which, along with Knowing God, I’ll be reading again.

—————————————————————–

Surprisingly, the most valuable lesson I learned while reading this had nothing to do with the book itself. The first few books I read for this project were 3 or 4 day efforts. Except for the occasional news article I only read the selected book during that period, so I was able to keep the ideas in mind, and process it well. This book was interrupted a couple of times by reading and writing for class.

When I returned to it after two days doing other things, I found that I was severely disconnected from the content, even after recalling the previous arguments. I wasn’t immersed in the ideas and the thoughtworld (to use an E.D. Hirsch term) of the author. On top of that, it’s been about 10 days since I finished reading it, and I am even more separated from what I read.

I’ll definitely be taking these lessons into account as I continue my reading this year.

At the time I was eager to read his full treatment on the subject, but didn’t have the chance. I was recently able to borrow a copy and sat down with it. The result has been one of the most frustrating reading experiences of my life. He redefines many terms and concepts in an unconvincing attempt at persuading the evangelical mainstream that these virtual churches need not be associated with physical institutions; online meeting—tele-presence—is just as “real” as physical presence.

One of the arguments that was so unsuccessful in one of his blog posts was that “virtual” doesn’t mean fake:

An even greater concern is the proliferation of a related myth: The myth of the “virtual” church. As a result several of the churches who have launched virtual campuses are telling their pastors and people, “Don’t use the word ‘virtual,’ because people think it means fake.” For the record, virtual doesn’t mean fake, it means synthetic.

“For the record,” virtual means “being actually such in almost every respect; existing in essence or effect though not in actual fact.” The argument is also present in the book, and its validity is assumed throughout, which makes for some entertaining sentences: “Even though virtual worlds differ in significant ways…in their essence and nature [they] are just as real as the real world.”

He also asks for a level of trust in his authority that he doesn’t work for in the first portion of the book. He’s constantly expecting us to rely on his testimony, with no supporting argument: “A few people may try to argue that the virtual world is not real, but I was there, they weren’t, and I’m telling you it was real in my experience…”

I think my least favorite portion is his attempt to debunk the Western notion of presence, and open things up to his idea of tele-presence. He attributes our idea that presence necessitates physicality to Descartes and mind-body dualism. He is right to point out that physicality isn’t the only determiner of presence (if our minds are elsewhere during worship, we aren’t truly present), but goes too far in his assertions.

He ends up saying that critics of virtual churches are using Cartesian laws to argue, rather than biblical principles, and if we accept those laws, “it means that my prayer life, telephone conversations, watching  astronauts in outer space, and online gaming are all imaginary experiences that aren’t real because I can’t experience them with my body.”

Again, he is right in his denial of this dualism, but his examples aren’t very strong. They are easily rebutted:

• God is present everywhere, so we are with him when we pray.
• We would all prefer to have conversations in person (I think), and if there is a person with whom our relationship is strictly long distance, we long to be physically present with them, as Paul did in his letters.
• You did not go to outer space and watch the astronauts. However, your experience of looking at a video on a TV screen is real.
• Ditto for online gaming. Unless you really became Master Chief.

He follows these examples with a practice I can’t stand: comparing plights of necessity with free choices. I believe it was a Matt Chandler sermon I listened to recently, in which he was talking about the importance of reading the Bible: “And before anyone says, ‘What about the guy in Africa who doesn’t have access to a Bible!’ let me ask you: when’d you get back from Africa?” Estes gives the reader a quiz to test how deeply ingrained this Cartesian mindset is:

• A man who comes to worship on Sunday, but thinks about the Cowboys game;
• A man who attends a megachurch and sits in the mezzanine where he must watch the pastor on an overhead TV;
• A man who works in the nursery, and only hears the sermon by sound system;
• A man with a broken leg who can’t make it, but either prays and listens to the service, or attends a virtual church;

Which is present? He says that, according to the Bible, both are (I would disagree about the first). But he is convinced that, though the first is the “least biblical and the most Western”, it is “the one many readers will give the strongest yes to.”

My major problem with the list is that the determining factor for Estes seems to be hearing the sermon. Perhaps at some point he should examine how deeply Western is his idea of presence in Sunday worship. Historically the sermon has not been the main focus of the worship service. It seems to be in most evangelical churches, but it was  not always so, nor should it be. The megachurch attendee may be present, depending on his interaction with the congregation, involvement in worship, etc. The nursery worker is most definitely present, active and working in service to the congregation.

The man with the broken leg is not present. Nor would it be healthy to consider him such. And, knowing from the experience of my recent knee surgery, if you asked him, he would likely not consider himself as present. I wanted to be present at the worship service just three days after surgery. The following week I tried to attend (though much too soon). I didn’t feel like this out of obligation, but out of a desire to worship in the gathered community of believers. This just doesn’t translate online.

Estes as much as admits this when he says, “Many virtual churches reach people with the gospel who would never go to a real-world church but over time might become interested in getting involved in a safe real-world church.” In this argument virtual church is an introduction to true church…it is an evangelistic tool; but involvement in a virtual congregation is not itself the goal.

These and many other reasons (far too many for the 80 pages I read) made this a really unenjoyable read. What was the straw that broke the camel’s back? In a discussion of avatars – our projected identity in the virtual world – he gives an awkward introduction to his own Second Life avatar. He admits that avatars aren’t always representative of the person playing, but this doesn’t concern him (except for those that cross genders). He talks about wearing his “pastor cap”, and says that playing the pastor when speaking to parishioners is the same as an avatar. Not really parallel, but close. The last sentence I read was this:

Let’s face it, one of the Christians’ biggest dilemmas with becoming an avatar is that the word avatar originates from a non-Christian religion.

It’s simply not true. I don’t know if he addresses the other major problem (you never know who’s behind the avatar, which is not exactly the same as those who “play church” on Sundays) because I stopped right there. I decided that I wouldn’t spend anymore time on something with such a lack of seriousness.

For a more balanced and generous review, check out John’s at Don’t Eat the Fruit.

Wife:  And it says “integrating”.

And we have done well. Not that we have done all that needs to be done, but we have been about our Father’s business…Yet we had not made much of worship. (11)

To Dr. Allen the Psalter is the finest guide to worship we possess, and he does a fine job of demonstrating this to be true.

And I Will Praise Him is a simple and helpful guide in how to read the various types of psalms and how they can be used to enhance our worship; in fact, how they can be used as the basis and most basic example of worship. He broadly explains the types and structures of the psalms and the language used therein. After giving the bird-eye view, he selects a few representative psalms—113, 19, 13, 138, 142, 65, and 146—for in-depth analysis.

Allen’s most significant contribution to my reading of the psalms, and my reading of the Old Testament, is his explanation of the Hebrew concept of praise. Most of the texts he uses throughout are his own translations directly from Hebrew. For the words that are often translated “praise”, he uses “publicly acknowledge.”

Thanksgiving occurs when one breathes a prayer of thanks to God for His mercy and goodness; praise occurs when one tells someone else about it.(61)

In Hebrew, and therefore in the Psalms and the rest of the Old Testament, praise is something we do out loud and in front of people to bring glory to God. The most moving example I can think of is David dancing before the Ark. Though he didn’t use words, his dancing was like a shout in front of his people, one of unencumbered joy before God.

The most moving part of the book comes after the discussion of the Psalms. Dr. Allen wrote all but the last chapters while living in Manila, and shortly after arriving back in the States his daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. In heartwrenching detail, he relates the story of the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and waiting. She was too young to speak, too sick to be home, and in too much pain to even be held at the hospital.

Through it all he tells of his resolve to praise God regardless of the outcome, and to avoid asking why it was happening. “These words suggest an implied arrogance that God (who is Master and Lord!) owes His people explanations for His deeds and for those things He allows. Pots are not made to challenge the Potter. (227)

Thankfully God allowed her to go into remission, and the Allens didn’t have to experience the loss of a child. Through the story I kept thinking of my own daughter, and how I might feel if I were to experience the same thing. Would I praise God? Would I crumble? I hope and pray that God spares us from that kind of pain, but those are some thorny questions…questions that I can’t answer right now. I hope that through my reading of the psalms I can find experience that depth of trust and joy in God and lead my family there as well.

This book could be valuable to those who feel overwhelmed by the psalms, or who would like to experience them, and God, more deeply.

When an author is trying to convince you that something means what you know it doesn’t, they’ll often go to the dictionary for support.

How can a virtual church be [a local church]? Glad you asked. If you look up the word local in the dictionary, it means “belonging to or existing in a particular place,” or more specifically, “of or belonging to the neighborhood.” [...]

Local churches are local not because of geography but because they are one specific group belonging to a place of seeking after God together.

From SimChurch

By this point the author has already redefined place in a way that includes “virtual spaces”, like a neighborhood in Second Life, so by saying that local is about place, he can reasonably conclude that a congregation that exists only in cyberspace is a true “local church”.

But is the dictionary definition really the best way to go about this? It seems problematic to me, and I expect others are uncomfortable with it as well. The trouble is that the term “local church” is a label put on to an concept that existed long before the word “local” (or “church”, another word he attempts to deconstruct).

When someone goes to the dictionary for a definition of a term you should put your guard up, because one of two things have likely happened: (1) they didn’t put much time or effort into producing their work, or (2) they’re trying to squeeze by on a technicality.

With this argument Estes establishes the possibility that an virtual church could be a local church, but we all know that it is different in kind from a true local body of believers. All this creates is a two-tiered definition of local church: virtual and physical. Who will argue against the premise that the physical is superior? And on what grounds?

If this were a full-on, honest and open discussion of the difficulties of virtual churches, it would be more intellectually honest to tie the term local to the term location (etymologically sound, I believe); of course, that makes it harder to argue for “synthetic space” as a site for a local church. But it would certainly be more realistic, and serve the purported purpose of the writing (a “more measured, less sensational, deeper dialog on the merits and demerits of virtual churches”).

Packer originally wrote this as a series in Evangelical Magazine, and it was published as a book in 1973. By the time the second edition was printed twenty years later, it had sold over 1 million copies. I’m not sure how many have sold in the last 16 years, but I imagine more than a few.

This is by far the most powerful devotional book I’ve ever read. It convicted me time after time, and brought out some latent beliefs and misconceptions that I was completely unaware of.

A constant refrain throughout is (some variation of) “those who know God”, followed by some characteristic of someone who is not “merely Christian”, but who has built a relationship with God that can truly be called “knowing”. One of the most profound characteristics is found in the first chapter, and has hovered over me for days:

The question is not whether we are good at theology, or “balanced” (horrible, self-conscious word!) in our approach to problems of Christian living. The question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is a plain matter of fact, that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness that we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, thorugh being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, that is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about him.

In our society, where (as Louis C.K. said) “everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy,” I tend to focus almost solely on what I have, or what I don’t have, or what I will have, or what I should have. I don’t spend nearly enough time focusing on who I have – or, more accurately, who has me.

Packer shows his readers a God who is good, a God who is great, and a God who is perfect. Along the way he continuously demonstrates our imperfection, attempting to widen the gap between our perceptions of ourselves and our understanding of righteousness. We tend to admit that we are all fallen in a general and superficial way, though we rarely think of it in a convicting manner. He forces us to acknowledge personally and specifically that we have no business expecting God’s favor. When thinking of our own actions we are far too quick to consider a small good as compensation for a massive evil.

Goodness and Severity

Once we are acutely aware of our sinfulness, he asks, “Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in his world be morally perfect?” The answer, of course, is an emphatic no. This is all after deep discussions of God’s love and grace, and Packer ties it together in “Goodness and Severity”.

“²²Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. ²³Andeven they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. ²⁴For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.”

Romans 11:22-25 (ESV)

He paints a picture of people who “say they believe in God, but they have no idea who it is that they believe in, or what difference believing in him may make.” These believers often end up believing that God is all goodness and warmth without wrath, or severity, and in this they construct a deity that has no “direct relation or control” over the difficult and painful things we experience, thus, “deny[ing] his omnipotence and lordship over his world…he is left with a kind God who means well but cannot always insulate his children from trouble and grief.” No, we must maintain that God is both good and severe.

Now that he has laid the groundwork, he shows the miracle of God’s love for us. He walks us through the love God shows through Christ’s work, the height of the gift of adoption into His family, and the sufficiency of God to carry us through our trials.

There isn’t time to go through all of the incredibly valuable truths and encouragement shared in this book, though some have tried (Boston Bible Geeks, “Blogging through Knowing God by J.I. Packer”). I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who sees the importance of being among “those who know God.”

So when my brother-in-law and I were seeing Avatar and I saw a preview for a movie about a young demigod, I was immediately intrigued. My family spends quite a bit of time in the children’s section of the local Barnes & Noble (they have a huge Thomas train set that my son adores), so I recognized the title of the series, Percy Jackson & the Olympians. I usually prefer to read the book before I see the movie when I can, so I picked it up.

This story bears quite a few similarities to Harry Potter—hardly a surprise considering the success of that series—but quite a few differences as well.(possible spoilers after the jump)

Our hero, Perseus Jackson, is an underachieving and underappreciated sixth grader. He’s struggling at school, is unpopular with his peers, and his step-father (“Smelly Gabe”)  is a louse. His existence is no “cupboard under the stairs”, but it doesn’t seem pleasant, either.

Both Percy and Harry seem to get the short end. Unlike Harry, who is ever the victim, Percy’s troubles seem to be earned through mischief. But this all changes when he’s whisked away to “Camp Half-Blood”, summer training for demigods. Almost immediately he finds out that he is not only far from a failure, but he is special in a way no one expected.

At this point we see one of the major points of divergence between the worlds of Hogwarts and Camp Half-Blood. Harry Potter leaves his miserable life and enters a world where (nearly) everyone has magical abilities, but which is, aside from that, strikingly similar to our own world. There is social and economic stratification, racism, and political division. The most important factor that will be contrasted with Percy’s world is that for the students at Hogwarts, success is determined by skill, learning, hard work and attitude. You advance based on the strength of your will, sharpness of your mind, and the size of your heart.

But for Percy and the other demigods, this success is determined by one thing: birth. The children of Ares are strong, but hot-tempered and dull-minded. The children of Hermes are, as their father, “jack[s] of all trades, master[s] of none.” The children of Aphrodite are weak, while those of Hephaestus are natural blacksmiths. But none of these are as strong as the children of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades – the “Big Three.” This takes a major aspect of Potter’s world, the entire purpose of Hogwarts, really, and turns it on its head.

One major motif shared by both stories is that the protagonist learns early on that he’ll walk a fine line between glory and horror. While Harry slowly learns his fate through the years with small bits of prophecy and hints of darkness, Percy’s gloomy outlook is explicit: “I am sorry you were born, child. I have brought you a hero’s fate, and a hero’s fate is never happy. It is never anything but tragic.”

The story was enjoyable, and Riordan did a fine job of creating plausible scenarios (Camp Half-Blood is in New York because the gods follow the “spirit of the West”) and believable characters, except for Ares. This Ares is not the ancient god of war, but the dim-witted god of street thugs and biker gangs. If you decide to read this as an adult, just pretend the character is actually an adult child of Ares, it will work better.

The Lightning Thief is fun and well-constructed, and kept me interested throughout. At times I had to remind myself that it was written for young teens and preteens, but that wasn’t often. There were more times that I had to remind myself that the hero (and heroine) were only twelve. Percy Jackson no challenger to Harry Potter, but I’m looking forward to getting the next volume.

No words, really. Just pictures.

To this point I’ve only known Watts as, essentially, Sean Hannity’s favorite black guy. He is usually referring to him when people talk about President Obama being the first black president. “Why not J. C. Watts?” Aside from that I knew nothing, so I was interested to pick up the book.

I’m not really a memoir kind of guy. The last one I read was Bo Knows Bo, which has a surprising number of similarities with What Color is a Conservative? At times I felt as though I were reading a “what if” fiction about Congressman Vincent Edward Jackson of Alabama. Both Watts and Jackson grew up in poor rural areas, were very close to their grandmothers, and got out of the neighborhood through football scholarships.

Watts has led a truly remarkable life. Growing up in rural Oklahoma in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, he saw racism up close. He mentions “a pair of brothers who beat up little black kids for sport when they could catch us.” He talks about being the first student to integrate the public schools in Eufala, and about the beating he took when he struggled at the beginning of his first season as OU’s starting quarterback.

Beyond those early issues with race we find a man who fought through deep poverty and discouragement to win 21 games at OU, including two Orange Bowls, have a successful career in the Canadian Football League, become the first African American elected to statewide office in Oklahoma, and deliver the keynote at the Republican National Convention in 1996. While he made some colossal errors – none so big as fathering two children during his senior year of high school – he took responsibility for those errors and turned his life around.

Some of these stories are particularly moving: he was in Oklahoma City just a couple of hours before the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995, and lost a close friend. He was also at home when OKC was hit by a massive tornado in 1999, and in Washington the morning of September 11, 2001.  Many other detailed stories grabbed my attention and drew me into his life.

But too much of this book was the 30,000 foot view of the events of his life. I found myself wanting more details about the Oklahoma Corporation Commission scandal and his relationships with other political leaders. He couldn’t get into that, though, because he spent far too much time recounting his football glories (and struggles). I had no idea he had been a top-flight college QB, but I picked this up to find out about his character and his ideas, not his athletic exploits. That’s just me, though.

I did enjoy the sections about his experiences in the CFL, because it’s just familiar enough to be understandable, but foreign enough to stay interesting. The social differences between the US and Canada are very interesting, as well as some of the legal differences (CFL players are required to be members of the players association, even when the PA doesn’t help them out at all).

But the incident with the CFLPA, like so many other interesting and semi-interesting anecdotes, simply led to a “that’s why I believe in x” statement, that made me feel like I was reading a 275-page campaign pamphlet. But in the last chapter he really hits stride. He throws in his thoughts about racial politics (“It’s considered a given that Democrats, especially black Democrats, can’t be racists. But isn’t it racist to think that all blacks must have the same political philosophy?”), economic hope for poor communities (“When people own their own home or business, they have a personal stake in their neighborhood and community that makes all the difference…”), and political progress (made up of “more 4-yard than 40-yard gains. The important thing is to keep the ball moving in the right direction.”) It’s a shame the rest of the book weren’t more like these last 40 pages.

Overall I was a bit disappointed, but I’m glad to know more about the remarkable life the Congressman has led, and I hope to see him active again soon; perhaps as the second black president.

It follows that there is great benefit to having a diversified set of schemata; the more subjects we know, the easier it is to learn. This is part of the basis for liberal education.This diversified set not only allows us easier access to broad knowledge, it also allows us to make connections that we wouldn’t have otherwise made, and understand things in different (and sometimes unusual) ways.

We explain business or relationship situations in sports terms. We try to explain a particularly vicious fight by describing wild animal behavior. We tend to take use familiar concepts to better understand the unfamiliar. One of the easiest ways to see this is in teaching.

One of the reasons Hirsch stresses the value of broad background knowledge for young children is so that their teachers have a large pool of analogies to work from when teaching new concepts. The more diverse the available connections, the more chance each student has to learn. Hirsch’s research has shown that while disadvantaged students who don’t receive this background knowledge show a learning gap that increases each year, those who receive it close that gap and achieve at a level equal to their wealthier peers.

In Wired this month Jonah Lehrer speaks to the same phenomenon in an article about the importance of failure (“The Neuroscience of Screwing Up”) and of diverse thinking in science: “The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field. (pull quote from dead pulp edition -ed.)” Because the other person doesn’t understand the processes that your working with or the terminology that you’d normally use, you have to find analogies that will quite often force you to see it in a different way.

The best problem solvers are those who are able to compare problems to situations in other fields that may seem totally unrelated, and apply those strategies to the problem at hand. A great example is from the movie A Beautiful Mind. John Nash both refuted Adam Smith and developed his own Equilibrium theory by comparing economics to dating. Through analogy he was able to see the problem in a new way and come up with a novel solution.

Do you want to be a better problem solver? Learn stuff. Not just any stuff will do, of course, but be as diverse as you can. One day you may solve a gene sequencing problem by referring to knitting, or curling, or building a house out of Lincoln Logs. Our ability to solve problems is not always limited by our knowledge of the situation at hand, but of the world at large.

In “The Human Race”, Wally West — The Flash — is chosen by some intergalactic gamblers to run in an unending race through space and time. The stakes for the gamblers are inconsequential; the stakes for the runners all important: when you lose, your planet is destroyed. It’s a message about harmony and coming together in a crisis, in which the world’s support actually helps the Flash run faster.

“The Black Flash” is…uninspiring. For “speedsters”, like the Flashes, Jesse Quick and Max Mercury, death comes in the form of a demon in a black Flash uniform (complete with bolt logo and antennae). One of the heroes discovers that Wally is next, and manages to save him, with dire consequences. But, as we’ve all learned from Final Destination, Death gets the one it wants; so the Black Flash comes back for Wally. There are some decent teamwork scenes, but it comes down to Wally running fast.

While the first part is uninspiring, the resolution is just plain strange, and involves running 20 billion 100 million (he was quite precise) years into the future to a moment that is at once the end of time and the second big bang: “The end of life, the universe and everything…where death ceases to exist even at a conceptual level.” In the next panel he refers to the entropy of the universe (which is death, essentially) without irony.

And of course, somehow the Flash manages to survive this trip to “the end”…all while dropping “Flash Facts” and misstating the color of his own boots. Not great, but Morrison gets a free pass once in a while based on the quality of his other work.