Thursday, July 23, 2015

N.T. Wright talks tech

I've written here before about N.T. Wright, and how he's helped me through seasons of doubt. I've also written of my uneasiness with technological "progress." Today I watched a dialogue  between Wright and Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal, and other Silicon Valley startups. Among other things, they spoke about death, the future, and imagination. I planned on watching just 10 minutes of the 2 hour interview but got sucked in. Maybe you'll get sucked in too.



My takeaways are these:

1. I was struck by the charity exhibited by both Wright and Thiel. They clearly disagreed pretty sharply with one another. Their starting places are vastly different (a biblical scholar/theologian and a futuristic entrepreneur) which led them to wildly different conclusions. But they were kind.

2. Having the upper hand, Wright was especially kind. They are both widely read and well spoken, but Wright's mastery of history and scripture put him a on a different plane. Despite his intellectual superiority, Wright never spiked the football.

3. I hope to see such charitable conversations between believing scholars and non-believers occur at Olivet. I think it could happen.

4. There was a lightness and joyfulness in Wright that Thiel did not possess. This fact alone doesn't prove anything, but it was plainly the case.


Wednesday, July 15, 2015

The Mad Pontiff's Liberation Front



Reading the Encyclical that I talked about in my last post, I kept thinking how much the writing sounded like Wendell Berry. For example, the encyclical avoided vagaries that could easily be sidestepped by targeting specific corrupt behaviors and mentalities. It made clear that merely blaming corporations for our ills was not sufficient. To the Pope, as it has always been for Berry, caring for the Earth means consuming less, delighting in creation, and trusting God. Indulge me a couple more excerpts.


Specific Behavioral Target: Air Conditioning
People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning. The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behavior, which at times appears self-destructive.
 Specific Mental Target: Secular Humanism
The best way to restore men and women to their rightful place, putting an end to their claim to absolute dominion over the earth, is to speak once more of the figure of a Father who creates and who alone owns the world. Otherwise, human beings will always try to impose their own laws and interests on reality.

The commonalities between Berry and Francis eventually come to a halt. Berry describes himself as a Christian,  but also as a bad-weather church-goer (when it's nice, he Sabbaths outdoors). Francis is, well, Pope. This makes the commonality all the more compelling. What is going on here that would cause two thinkers who, on the surface, draw from such distinct wells, to behold the same cups of water?  There's more comparing the Encyclical and Berry's lifelong work in this First Things Article,The Pope and The Plowman, by John Murdock. Murdock's discussion is rich and nuanced. And important. Let us engage and repent.
 

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Encyclical Highlights

Pope Francis's Encyclical, Laudato Si, is wonderful. It presents a well-reasoned treatment of our responsibility to care for the Earth that flows from the Bible and from church history, It is written with a pastoral heart, not just for Catholics or Christians, but for all of humanity. Calling us to live within limits, the encyclical suggests that our purchases and pace of life are moral issues. It is written with the duty to care for the world's very poor as its primary concern, and makes clear that our agricultural and environmental problems issue from cultural problems.

Point after point is worth reading and reflecting on, but I want to highlight a few.   

The fourth section of the first chapter - Decline in the quality of human life and the breakdown of society - is beautifully crafted. The 49th paragraph makes a point I tried to articulate in my 2011 post How to Be a Rich Christian (To remind myself): We cannot reasonably expect to understand or solve the problems of poor people when we are insulated from them. To this point, Francis seems to add that we cannot expect to understand or solve the problems of the poor Earth, while being insulated from it, either.

49. It needs to be said that, generally speaking, there is little in the way of clear awareness of problems which especially affect the excluded. Yet they are the majority of the planet’s population, billions of people. These days, they are mentioned in international political and economic discussions, but one often has the impression that their problems are brought up as an afterthought, a question which gets added almost out of duty or in a tangential way, if not treated merely as collateral damage. Indeed, when all is said and done, they frequently remain at the bottom of the pile. This is due partly to the fact that many professionals, opinion makers, communications media and centres of power, being located in affluent urban areas, are far removed from the poor, with little direct contact with their problems. They live and reason from the comfortable position of a high level of development and a quality of life well beyond the reach of the majority of the world’s population. This lack of physical contact and encounter, encouraged at times by the disintegration of our cities, can lead to a numbing of conscience and to tendentious analyses which neglect parts of reality. At times this attitude exists side by side with a “green” rhetoric. Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.

Also...
 Many people will deny doing anything wrong because distractions constantly dull our consciousness of just how limited and finite our world really is. As a result, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a diefied market.
 And...

For all our limitations, gestures of generosity, solidarity and care cannot but well up within us, since we were made for love.

I could go on pulling out highlights for a long time. But I won't. Read the full text of the encyclical here. What are your takeaways?


Wednesday, July 1, 2015

This just in...

The kids put this trailer together to show what's new with us. Gulp and Glory.