Relocating To Elfland

“The essence of leisure is not to assure that we may function smoothly but rather to assure that we, embedded in our social function, are enabled to remain fully human.” (Josef Pieper, “Leisure and Its Threefold Opposition”)

“Comprehension excludes amazement and admiration. I comprehend or think I comprehend the things that are self-evident and perfectly natural. Often comprehension ceases to the degree a person digs deeper into a subject. That which seemed self-evident proves to be absolutely extraordinary and amazing. The farther a science penetrates its object, the more it approaches mystery. Even if on its journey it encountered no other object it would still always be faced with the mystery of being. Where comprehension ceases, however, there remains room for knowledge and wonder. And so things stand in theology.” (Bavinck, p. 1.619)

I think this is pretty much what I was trying to say earlier, only said better:

“The conflict between Rome and the [early] Church is really a microcosm of a larger struggle that both predates the first century and has lasted to our day. It is the story of men and their quest to be like God that is as old as the pre-cosmic warfare between God and the devil. In the temporal realm the struggle takes shape in the form of earthly potentates that claim all dominion in heaven and in the earth. The Empire is said to be the source of salvation and the government to be the great protector and provider of its people. It can deliver because the Emperor is God. But herein lies the challenge to the Church. Because the Emperor is said to be God, there must be no others. Kyrios Christus must bow to Kyrios Caesar, or else. The history of Rome . . . demonstrates that autocratic rulers and their bureaucracies that reject the God of the Bible become utopian in outlook. What they require is not merely the right to rule, but unlimited power and jurisdiction in the lives of their people . . . . The messianic nature of godless government creates conditions whereby it is virtually impossible for Christians to stay out of politics.” (John Barber, The Road from Eden, pp. 27–28)

I have always found big government ideology hard to understand. Why on earth would anyone want a centralized, bureaucratic government to stand as the supplier, guardian, and regulator of all civic blessings (or, worse still, private freedoms)? Has history not given us sufficient examples of how “benevolent” tyranny corrodes into just plain old garden-variety tyranny? Is it so hard to understand that there are multiple spheres of sovereignty, not just beside the state but also within it (thinking here of such outmoded concepts as federalism), and that this is a basic safeguard to human freedom and flourishing? Setting aside constitutional issues for a minute (you see, I can get with the times), isn’t there a failure of basic good sense in statism?

It recently dawned on me, however, that if a nation takes seriously its refusal to “kiss the Son” (Ps 2:12) this leaves some very big shoes to fill. Who’s going to provide for the poor and needy? Who’s going to grant, preserve, and regulate civil and private liberties? Who’s going to defend us from aggressions within and without? Who’s going to train up our children? Who’s going to take care of us when we are old? Who’s going to tell us what will make us really happy, and then gives us lots of it? Who will assure our future? On whose strong arm shall we all lean? We need a messiah who is big and powerful and impressive and benevolent, who inspires confidence and guarantees security, who solves our problems and grants us shalom. It’s tough to find such a savior on the local level, or in a bunch of fragmented spheres. So enter the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-providing central government. And the louder the advocates of self-government shriek, the gladder we are that big brother is there to preserve order. He is compassionate. He is mighty. He is dependable. And we are dependent. But it’s a small price to pay.

As if any of us needs further education on what a sham our current Congress is, this is a great piece of reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

As Mother State continues her firm efforts to make us all lifelong sucklings at her breasts, I offer this humble word of analysis:

American public discourse is plagued by an increasing inability to distinguish between the questions (a) whether there is a problem deserving of thoughtful and compassionate response and (b) who should solve it. To pause over the latter is now perceived as giving a negative answer to the former.

Thanks to my dear friend and ministerial colleague, Dr. David Innes (who blogs here), for bringing this article in Harper’s Magazine to my attention.

A teaser:

“Why is every Crisis in American Education cast as an economic threat and never a civic one? In part, because we don’t have the language for it. Our focus is on the usual economic indicators. There are no corresponding ‘civic indicators,’ no generally agreed-upon warning signs of political vulnerability, even though the inability of more than two thirds of our college graduates to read a text and draw rational inferences could be seen as the political equivalent of runaway inflation or soaring unemployment.

“If we lack the language, and therefore the awareness, to right the imbalance between the vocational and the civic, if education in America—despite the heroic efforts of individual teachers—is no longer in the business of producing the kinds of citizens necessary to the survival of a democratic society, it’s in large part because the time-honored civic function of our educational system has been ground up by the ideological mills of both the right and the left into a radioactive paste called values education and declared off-limits. Consider the irony. Worried about indoctrination, we’ve short-circuited argument. Fearful of propaganda, we’ve taken away the only tools that could detect and counter it.”

“Christianity regards sin not as ignorance, which can easily be overcome by some enlightenment, but as an appalling power, which produces its effects throughout the cosmos; and over against this power it brings reconciliation and redemption in the deepest and broadest sense of those terms. It brings redemption from the guilt and the stain, from all the consequences of sin, from the errors of the intellect and the impurity of the heart, from the death of soul and body. It brings that redemption not only to the individual but also, organically, to the family and generations of families, to people and society, to humanity and the world.” (Bavinck, p. 1.595)

Plug time. Those of you who don’t subscribe to the Mars Hill Audio Journal really ought to. And if you do not, you should at least download and listen to Volume 94. It’s outstanding even by the high standards of MHAJ.

A footnote or two from the interviews with Maggie Jackson: First, a question. Is “multitasking” an attempt (in many cases unconscious) to escape our embodied finitude, particularly the God-ordained limitations of time and space? We were made to do only so much at once, to bear only so many orientations at once, and our time/space limitations provide kindly boundaries against “disorientation” (Ken Myers’ word). Nowadays, however, we are trying to do so much so fast, enabled by the operation of multiple machines simultaneously, that one must ask if we are taking our God-created limitations seriously. We no longer concentrate on one thing, then the next, then the next; our minds and lives are crowded with a barrage of simultaneous stimuli, to any one of which we are incapable of giving isolated and sustained attention.

Now let me put this more positively. A well-cultivated life is one in which one pays attention to things. To this book one is reading (one cannot absorb a book’s richness while distracted). To this person one is talking to (meaningful relating does not occur beyond a certain speed). To this God one is praying to. To this sunset one has been privileged to view. To this meal at this table in the presence of these loved ones. To pay attention, I must inhabit a particular moment in a particular space. I must be all there, must draw near, must behold. I must give up omnipresence so as to be somewhere in particular, and to open myself to the thing at hand.

The problem with this, says Jackson, is that it is, well, boring. Real life occurs in real time – and real time is slow. Not everything happens at once. It’s not an omni-connected experience like the evening news (or the average surf on the Internet). I have to deal with this one conversation and make something of it. I have to keep reading this until I understand it. I have to engage with this thing until it begins to rub me; and when that happens, I desperately want to go check my email. We naturally love novelty, especially when we are young, and real life in real time offers only so much novelty. What it offers instead is rhythm, participation in rituals and habits (and other such predictables) that – for those truly engaged – become not old and wearisome but ever richer and deeper and fuller. It’s much more fun (perhaps) to be ever rushing on to the next thing, or to try to cram it all into one bloated moment. How many people can I “IM” at once? Quite a few, but how did we come to a place where we think of this as communication? It’s sitting at a command center (Mark Bauerlein’s metaphor), playing god. The moment a “conversation” gets old, I can just shut it down and move on to the next. Thank God real life doesn’t work that way . . . if we can figure out how to get back to the real thing.

It is important to love our children. But how does God love His creatures and His children? He enjoys them. He declares them good. He sings for joy over them. Do our children feel this kind of love from us?