Quick-review: The Vicar of Wakefield

...by Oliver Goldsmith.

Originally sold for publication by Samuel Johnson in order to keep Goldsmith from debtor's prison, the book feels like a staging post on the way to Jane Austen.  That is to say, the cultural feel, the matters of class and decency, the misunderstandings, and revelations of fortunes all appear.   But it is written in a simpler style,  much briefer, and has the advantage over Austen that, quite often, something actually happens.

I suspect much of the humour and (probable) satire was lost on me:  I felt often as if it were happening but I lacked the cultural knowledge to pick up on it.  But the story itself was nice enough: the tale of a clergyman for whom everything goes horribly wrong and then ultimately is restored (Job style), with several philosophical digressions (some of which are very poignant for our day) and occasional poems.  Plus the slightly self-involved main character who really becomes quite loveable by the end.

A pleasant read but I suspect some knowledge of social history would increase its impact.

Piper: pastoral problems and pain

God has made plain to us one of the reasons for which pastors must suffer.  Paul tells us in 2 COR.1:6: "If we are afflicted it is for your comfort and salvation."  A sermon on this text would have as its main point:  "The afflictions of the Christian minister are designed by God to achieve the comfort and salvation of his flock."

...No pastoral suffering is senseless. No pastoral pain is pointless.  No adversity is absurd or meaningless.  Every heartache has its divine target in the consolation of the saints, even when we feel least useful.

...2COR.1:9: "That was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead."

Piper, Brothers,  p139-40

When anger sneaks up

When anger is intense, we may not initially know, or even want to know, that we have become angry...It is not that we are unable to step back and consider whether we want to go along and act on our anger.  Rather, we are not even aware of being angry, even though we are speaking angry words and engaging in angry actions.

Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed,  p121

Pascal: greatness and wretchedness

Man's greatness is so obvious that it can even be deduced  from his wretchedness, for what is nature in animals we call wretchedness in man, thus recognising that, if his nature today is like that of the animals, he must have fallen from some better state which was once his own...Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness.  It must also account for such amazing contradictions.

quoted C John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?,  p102

Quick-review: Gladstone

Gladstone, by Roy Jenkins

Several years ago I read Jenkins' Churchill, which I really enjoyed.   have to say Gladstone wasn't quite so compelling.  Perhaps because the grandnarrative of WWII which held anticipation throughout Churchill was absent, along side events being more distant.  But also because his style seemed more verbose and smart-alec.

Even so I'm glad I pursued it (small type and many pages) to the end.  Here's why:

1. So many events in his time connects with ours, sometimes creepily so:  solving the "Irish problem" and dealing with terrorism; attempts to develop a 'moral' foreign policy; war in Afghanistan; balancing budgets and so on.
2. It pulled back the image of arrogant Victorian Imperialism.  Whatever idea we may have of Gladstone he believed: the empire was too big to manage and British gung-ho jingoism needed to be nailed; he despised war and expansionist foreign policy;  he attempted time and again (and indeed wrecked his government over the issue) to solve the humiliating mess of Ireland - and his proposals were incredibly close to what actually came to be in the 1990s.  Given that he was probably the most sincerely religious PM ever, this gives the lie to Christianity driving imperialism.
3.  His unstoppable energy, which only failed him in his 80s (he cut down his last tree - tree-felling being his equivalent of Churchill's brick-laying - in his early 80s) inspires to achieve more;  but also reminds most of us aren't made like him with his boundless force - so maybe we should get on and do the things we always said we would, because maybe we won't be tree-felling in our 80s.

Catch the allusion

Perhaps every English department should keep a Christian around just to catch Biblical allusions that his or her colleagues won't recognize. 

Alan Jacobs on Text Patterns via link at Mintie's

A kink in one's theology

"I hope they won't call Mr Baxter from East Grafton here, anyhow,"said Anne decidedly.  "He wants the call but he does preach such gloomy sermons.  Mr Bell says he's a minister of the old school, but Mrs Lynde says there's nothing whatever the matter with him but indigestion.  His wife isn't a very good cook it seems, and Mrs Lynde says that when a man has to eat sour bread two weeks out of three his theology is bound to get a kink in it somewhere..."

Anne of Avonlea, by L.M. Montgomery, p203

Big Brother algorithm

At last month's TEDGlobal conference, algorithm expert Kevin Slavin delivered one of the tech show's most "sit up and take notice" speeches where he warned that the "maths that computers use to decide stuff" was infiltrating every aspect of our lives.
Among the examples he cited were a robo-cleaner that maps out the best way to do housework, and the online trading algorithms that are increasingly controlling Wall Street.
"We are writing these things that we can no longer read," warned Mr Slavin.
"We've rendered something illegible. And we've lost the sense of what's actually happening in this world we've made."

BBC

Determination (again), risks and growth

Growth comes when we stretch past our comfort zone. The big reason many people (especially high-achievers) plateau is because they don’t like to fail. Instead of taking on challenges that will help us grow, we stick with routines that we know we can successfully do. To protect our ego, we’d rather do the wrong things correctly, than do the right things wrongly. This aversion to risk is a recipe for plateauing.

AoM

Schaeffer: what is church for?

What should the Church consciously be, then? The Church consciously (and my emphasis is very strongly on the word consciously) should be that which encourages its members in the true Christian life, in true spirituality—in that which we have set forth in this book. It should encourage them in freedom in the present life from the bonds of sin, and in freedom in the present life from the results of the bonds of sin. It should encourage substantial healing in their separation from themselves and a substantial healing in their separation from their fellowmen, especially fellow Christians.

...Each group must  operate on the basis of God's individual calling for them—financially and in other matters—but there is an absolute rule, and that is that if our example does not teach faith, it is destructive. There can be many callings but there cannot be a calling to destroy the teaching  of faith. The church or other Christian group that does not function as a unit in faith can never be a school of faith. There is only one way to be a school of faith and that is consciously to function by faith.

The Church or other Christian group must also teach in word the present meaning of the work of Christ. Then as a corporate body it must consciously live on this basis. It must not think that just because the Church or group is legally right, its corporate Christian life will come automatically. It never will; God does not deal with us automatically. Any Christian group must function moment by moment by conscious choice on the basis of the work of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, by faith.. It is not that the group just calls its individuals to so live, but that the group as a group so lives. It is death to think that things are going to come automatically just because of past legal decisions, even though they were right. There must be the present choice, a moment-by-moment choice, a conscious choice of operating on the basis of the work of Christ. 

TS p148-9

...and who doesn't like them?

Likewise, the age group that views evangelicals most negatively may also be counterintuitive. It turns out that it is old, not young, people who hold the strongest anti-evangelical attitudes. In 2007, when the Pew Forum released its most recent data on the question, 45 percent of non-Christian respondents ages 50 and over expressed unfavorable opinions of evangelicals. This was meaningfully higher than the 36 percent of young respondents (ages 18-29) and the 32 percent of middle-aged respondents (30-49) who said this. While popular discussion focuses on young peoples' attitudes, the story here isn't "losing the next generation" but rather "what Grandpa is cranky about now."

...

But what happens when people view their own group negatively, as many evangelicals seem to? According to Tajfel, this situation creates emotional and mental tension. Since people are driven to see themselves in a positive light, and our self-concept is tied to our group memberships, then feeling bad about our group makes us feel bad about ourselves, and something's got to give.

Tajfel identified four strategies that people use to reconcile this type of situation: (1) Work to raise the status or quality of the group to which you belong. This can take the form of protest or other collective action. (2) Hide your association with the group, so as to avoid any stigma associated with it. (3) Distance yourself from the group or leave it altogether. (4) Disengage from non-group members, spending more and more time with members of your own group, by whom you feel affirmed.

 ...Some evangelicals today, meanwhile, are strongly advocating that Christians reform their image in the world by acting more Christlike. No doubt we should act more Christlike, but an emphasis on "acting better" to create affinity between evangelicals and others might be misguided if that affinity already exists; it potentially overstates and even creates social barriers and conflict. Furthermore, this emphasis might actually deter evangelism, reduce commitment to Christianity, and even drive some Christians out of the faith.

CT (again)

What is an evangelical?

What do people think of when they hear evangelical? Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, wanted to find out, so in 2008, he asked 1,007 randomly selected Americans a simple question: "In your own words, how would you define exactly what an 'evangelical Christian' is? Please be as specific and complete as you can in your answer."

In the most common response, 36 percent of the respondents reported having no idea what the term meant. This alone cautions us about relying on this label in research. Another 8 percent made a negative comment but without giving a substantive definition. The remaining answers were all over the map—including people who thought that "evangelical Christians" meant any Christian who evangelized, was devoted to their faith, was politically conservative, or relied on the Bible. In all, only a little over half of the respondents (56 percent) could offer any type of substantive definition—even a wrong one (like very strict Catholics or angel worshipers). Some of the respondents described evangelicals in harsh language, using terms such as "psychos, stupid, narrow-minded, bigots, idiots, manipulative, fanatics, and greedy." Yet some of the harshest language came from people who couldn't even define what an evangelical is—they just knew they didn't like them.

Ellison's findings harken to a classic sociological study of racial and ethnic discrimination. In the 1940s, sociologist Eugene Hartley asked college students about their attitudes toward different groups. However, his list of groups included several fictitious or otherwise unknown groups, such as the Danireans, Pirenians, and Wallonians. A good portion of the respondents reported having antipathy toward these fictitious groups. So they didn't like people who not only had they never met, but who didn't even exist.

CT

The Books #7

I am soooo far behind on this!  And what's more I'm not really doing a book, but books - that is: there are a couple of people whom I have read extensively, and whilst one book on its own may not have revolutionised my life, the cumulative effect of multiple volumes over several years has been huge.  So, apologies out of the way:

I know the verdict has gone from "Beware!" in reformed circles to uber-cool in recent years (ie via Keller, Piper etc) but I have been reading Lewis since...well probably early teens, well before I became a Christian.  In fact, as with many, I suspect some of Narnia will have introduced ideas and concepts which later enabled resonance when reading the Bible for the first time.  Verbal creation ex nihilo, substitutionary atonement, temptation, virtue...

Later, the science fiction trilogy enhanced a feel for a personal universe, good and evil, the Fall.

And then the mountains of essays.  Firstly for the way they were written: clarity, precision, the mathematical dissection of the opposition's contention.  If only we could all express ourselves that way.  Secondly, the content: piercing, relevant, profound, memorable.  And especially when communicating heaven and hell, and the profound simplicity of everyday life.

Of course the warnings about Lewis were also true: too often when encountering a problem in the Bible, he would process it via intellect much more than Scripture, and was prone to wandering off in some very odd directions.

But he could still write nonsense better than most true blue evangelicals can write truth.

And he gave me a sense of warmth in theological writing that seemed absent many other places (especially in my early days), and he said it was OK to have an imagination, and he taught me the power of story, and that the motif of redemption turns up everywhere.  And, by accident, he taught me not to put my Bible down and go off on my own.  And if it were not for fear of cancer, I'd probably buy a pipe too.

Instead of productivity

HT (see I said it) to Minty.   Comments towards the end of an article on what to do when attempts at productivity are going wrong - I put these here to remind me someone said them when I'm doing the opposite:


You could:

• Re-examine your definition of productivity. Spending two hours reading a great book in a coffee shop could well be more productive than spending two hours staring at your computer screen. Taking care of your kids could be one of the most productive things you’ll do in your whole life.
• Plan some down-time. Take an afternoon off – or a whole weekend. If you plan ahead, you’ll have it to look forward to (and you’re more likely to actually hold yourself to it).
• Find leisure activities that you really enjoy. Sometimes, we get caught up in productivity – whether that’s at work or in the home – because we don’t really have anything else to do. Join a club, take up a new hobby, or plan a date night with your partner.
• Get away from it all. It can be hard to “switch off” from work at times. By getting physically away – to a different city or even a different country – you create a real break from your regular life.

Piper: Baptism in perspective

I think we need to teach our people the meaning of baptism and obey the Lord's commands to baptise converts (Matt.28:19), without elevating the doctrine to a primary one that would unduly cut us off from shared worship and ministry with others who share more important things with us.

Brothers, p135

Lucado: questions

When a person first asks you a question, are they just testing to see if you can be trusted?

Yes, a person's first question isn't really the question. Their first question is kind of like tossing the tennis ball into the air. It's a practice swing. They're just testing to see if I am listening to them or not.

So I make a habit of following up the first question with a question of my own: "Can you give me an example of that? When did that last happen to you? What effect has that had on you?" When I do that, I find that I hear them better.

If I answer too quickly, my odds of providing a good answer diminish. Sometimes people don't want an answer; they just want to be heard. They just need to get something off their chests.

I heard a counselor once say, "Try to find the question behind the question." That's good advice for pastors. Even when people come at you and they're a bit antagonistic, I'll sometimes be so bold as to say, "Now, what's the question behind this question? What do you really want to talk about?"

 Leadership

Schaeffer: the church exhibiting God

Ever since the fall rebellious man has been this way. And the Church is called out of this humanity, in order to be humanity before a lost humanity...

It is not only that the individual should so think and live, but the whole group as a group should be attuned to living consciously, moment by moment, in the reality of the supernatural. Then there is the exhibition; then there is the result there should be.

The Church should represent the supernaturally restored human race in reality, and as such it is very obvious
that there must be the proper legal circle of those in the Church in distinction to those not in it.

The matter of the proper legal circle, the battle against false doctrine and sin, will never come to an end in this life. But the proper legal relationship, while right in itself, should be only the vestibule to the reality of a living, personal  relationship, first the group with God and then between those who are in the Church. Really to glorify God, to enjoy him, and to exhibit him, can never be mechanical and can never be only legal, but personal. When the Church of Christ functions on less than the personal level, it is exhibiting less than what God is, and therefore it is less than the Church should be. There should be an exhibition of redeemed human personal relationships.

TS, p146-148

Schaeffer: divorce

Modern multiple divorce is rooted in the fact that many are seeking in human relationships what human relationships can never give.

TS, p142

Schaeffer: value and apologies

So it is not such a low  door after all, because all it involves is being willing to admit our equality with the one we have hurt. Being his equal it is perfectly right that I should want to say, "I am sorry." Only a desire to be superior makes me afraid to confess and apologize.

If I am living in a real relationship with the Trinity, my human relationships become more important in one way, because I see the real value of man, but less important in another way because I do not need to be God in these relationships any longer. So now I can go up to a man and say, "I am sorry for such and such specific harm I have done you," without smashing the integration point of my universe, because it is no longer myself, but God.

TS, p139-40

Schaeffer: love the individual

...every time I come into a place of eminence of office, I am to do it with trembling because I must understand from the word of God that eventually I will give account of my stewardship, not only in regard to my proper legal relationships but on the basis of my personal relationships.

One of the problem with humanists is that they tend to "love" humanity as a whole - Man with a capital M, man as an idea - but forget about man as individual, as a person.  Christianity is not to love in abstraction, but to love the individual who stands before me in a person-to-person relationship.

TS,  p138