How to Play the Banjo

If you want to play the banjo, you have to love God and get fast fingers. Live right and play right. Don't think about other instruments when you play. First start plucking to get the sound, and then smile and don't stop smiling. Then put some notes together, and that's a song. Listen to Gospel songs whenever you can and memorize the words. Always pray a little more than you play to make sure you're living right. Talk less--cut out the mean things you say--and pluck a little bit faster. Don't beat the strings; they're friendly and beautiful. Remember, the banjo is a gift from God because the world was too noisy before.

Political Positions

Well I think it's time to take inventory of what I think about politics at the present moment. I've been hiding behind a comfortable facade of political apathy for a few years and it may be time to suck it up and say what I really believe at this time. I've been thinking about politics less than religion, but still thinking.

On that subject, it's really important for me to begin by saying that the separation of religion and public policy is important not only to keep faith from controlling a secular society, but (in my opinion, more importantly) to keep politics from muddying an otherwise holy Church.

That said, the only virtue left for the American nation is freedom. We ought to be free from unreasonable external hardship and free to exercise our will in a reasonable manner. And that's it! If you accept what I say here, we can only quibble with what "reasonable" and "unreasonable" mean.

TAXES

I think it is unreasonable to be taxed according to what you have accomplished in a greater degree than according to what you desire. As a matter of principle, I think sales tax and related taxes are much more fair than income taxes. Pragmatically, it's true that sales tax provides motivation to buy less while income tax does not provide incentive to earn less; however, what we've learned from this economic crisis is that it's in the national interest to provide incentive for reasonable, moderate spending by individuals and corporations. I think a sales tax does just that. I support a federal sales tax that, gradually over the course of a presidential term, rises to a level such that the income tax can be reduced by 75% or more. This may mean a federal sales tax of 7% or greater, but think about it: this also encourages reusing and reselling items we'd otherwise throw away, in order to avoid the tax! Very green. This would also save a lot of money and stress by reducing the manpower of the IRS and other related fields.

GAY MARRIAGE

I think every state should legalize gay marriage. Insofar as we ought to aspire to totally separate religion-specific values from public-interest values, we ought to drop resistance to gay marriage because almost all valid objections really boil down to religion-specific ones. I myself don't compare the battle for gay rights to the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century; however, I think the freedom for gays to marry one another (in the secular use of "marriage") outweighs the freedom from public approval of perceived sin that some religious people would like to exercise.

ABORTION

I think there are effective arguments against abortion that have nothing to do with anything religious. Here's mine. Human beings have the right to freedom from undue interference with their bodies. Human beings have the right to freedom from the deprivation of their lives. Now there is a chance that fetuses are human beings. If they are not, then the two rights listed above do not contradict one another in an abortion, and so abortion ought to be legal, all else being equal. But if fetuses are human beings, then the two rights are at loggerheads and we must weigh which is more important--and, as most people would say, the right of a person to her life is of greater value than the right of a person's body from undue interference, all else being equal.

So the question is in the probability that a fetus is a baby. If it's 50/50, I say we ought not to allow abortions. If there is a one percent chance that fetuses are human, then that still ought to give us pause before we condone abortion. So on that basis, I am pro-life.

As an aside, I feel that there is very little good argument against abortion in my faith tradition (United Methodist). The Bible is fairly devoid of condemnations of abortion, as is the Book of Discipline.

ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS

I think welfare is a worthy pursuit when it frees people from unreasonable external difficulty in achieving their goals. When it is anything else, it risks becoming an infringement on taxpayers' freedom from unnecessary taxation. The key to figuring out how many people should receive government welfare money, and for what purpose, and how much, and so on, is determining how much unreasonable external difficulty the government has a duty to keep from its citizens. I think we ought to give federal money to orphans in a great degree; the same for the mentally handicapped; the same for the physically handicapped, given that their handicap came from a situation not of their choosing; the same for the recently jobless; the same for the unemployable. Healthcare should be universal for children. I hesitate to give money to corporations and to the elderly simply because they are above a certain age. If they are too old to work, that is another matter. Of course we live in an age in which most people over 65 have planned on Social Security for their retirement, and to end it could be disastrous. But I think we should phase Social Security out in such a way that people my age stop paying for it, and as a result we see no benefit from it when we're older. That just seems to make sense.

FOREIGN POLICY

I think we should open Cuba up immediately. We should never conduct policy overseas or make war on the basis of ideological difference. War should be for the defense of American lives first, then the defense of innocent lives overseas, then the defense of American interests--in that order. No military action should be allowed except by its explicit passage by both houses of Congress, and never just the President's prerogative. We should pursue the protection of American companies with very low corporate taxes, not high tariffs. Globalization helps America most of all.

ENVIRONMENT

This is of great national and global interest. I believe strongly in federal funding and political capital expenditure for ever expanded environmental programs. Most environmental damage comes from concentrated sources: suburban yards use poison to grow grass, coal plants for Purdue University, and so on. Energy should be greatly diffused such that individual needs are dealt with on an individual basis. Instead of coal or nuclear power plants, install solar panels and wind turbines in most homes. Plant different grass in your yard so you don't give it fertilizer and then mow it three times a week. And my biggest focus in environmental thinking is the preservation of wild land. The government should greatly restrict the amount of land to which logging companies are privy on federal parks. This would drive up the price of paper and lumber and, in a very real way, force our hand in developing better sources for paper and building material. The preservation of wild lands, especially wooded places, is of the utmost importance to keep endangered species from extinction, to maintain places for human recreation, and to provide limited areas for human exploitation.

So that's what I think about some big issues. It feels good to get it out there!

Europe was sweet! And refutations of common misconceptions.

Hey guys, I'm back from Europe! It was a great trip! I went with my older brother to Dublin, Ireland where we met our younger sister. She showed us around and we got to do a lot of cool stuff. Then Ben and I went to Paris, France and saw the sights. We stayed in a hostel and tried to eat on the cheap. We climbed the Eiffel Tower and saw Notre Dame. We did it all!

So the trip was really nice. Then I got back to America and started doing what I usually do. Here's the setup: in 1941 C.S. Lewis famously stated a trilemma concerning the moral status of Jesus Christ, which goes "Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be God, so he is either telling the truth, lying, or delusional." The point is to rule out a common modern interpretation of Christ's mission, which is that of a moral human teacher. If we can eliminate that possibility, Lewis says, then we are left with the fact that Jesus is Lord, because no one will admit that Jesus was crazy or a liar.

Now I for one believe that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord and Christ. But I don't believe this argument, nor do I believe that the argument helps Christians build their own character of faith or assist others in doing so. It is a false trilemma, false because it inappropriately presents exactly three options. Must Jesus ONLY be Lord, liar, or lunatic? No. The problematic assumption is that the Scriptural account, on which the argument rests, must be akin to a modern biography. It must be a coherent whole and every descriptive sentence must be as equally pedagogically valuable as the one before it and after it, the assumption says.

But a modern secularist, who wants to uphold her notion that the Nazarene was exclusively human and yet an inestimably valuable moral teacher, has recourse in attacking that Biblical cohesion. Couldn't the Bible be right sometimes, and wrong sometimes? She may point to the Higher Criticism and claim that passages about Jesus' divinity are actually manufactures of a later time, or are to be understood metaphorically, or vaguely spiritually. This refutation is not without ammunition from the Higher Criticism and other good scholarship. And it thoroughly destroys the Lewis Trilemma.

As an aside, I personally believe that the Bible is true. But I believe that it is pedagogically true, in that what its contents were written by people inspired by the Holy Spirit to teach important truths, not to literally recount history. Did Creation happen in six days? Probably not, I think. Did the Flood cover the entire world? Probably not. Did Moses turn sticks into snakes? Most likely he did not. These stories serve a larger purpose in inspiring the fear and love of God in us, and the love of our neighbors, ever and ever greater. Of course, I don't dismiss miracles outright. Whether Jesus actually turned water to wine is less important, and more ambiguous, than whether he was raised from the dead. I believe that he was. "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Corinthians 15:14). But I believe it because Christ's resurrection is not simply a teaching tool, like the Hebrew children in the furnace, but a necessary claim for the efficacy of our faith.

Similarly, the Lordship of Christ is necessary to our faith, and therefore I have no problem with Lewis' goal of attempting to demonstrate that Lordship. What I have a problem with is his method of demonstration. We can't bully nonbelievers into believing by leading them down a dialectic trap. We can only demonstrate Christ's Lordship through our imperfect relay of the New Testament narrative and the imperfect example of our own love.

What Softball Teaches

Well we just had our first slow-pitch softball game.  It was a little frustrating, and I am largely to blame for that.  My team is all student-age players, and we faced a team mostly of middle-aged, experienced players.  I was pitcher and it was the first time I have pitched a slow-pitch game.

Our first inning was fantastic, and we went up five runs.  After that the game got frustrating.  In this version of softball, there is a small mat behind the plate which the ball must hit in order to register as a strike.  The ball also has to go 6-12 feet off the ground, a substantial amount of airtime.  These rules together mean that it is difficult to throw strikes.  So I didn't throw a lot of strikes, which was mostly OK because the amount of air I (and every other slow-pitch pitcher) put under the ball means that almost every pitch is hittable, strike or not.  Which is the point of slow-pitch softball.

However, the older ladies and gentlemen on the opposing team were very picky with their pitch selection and often ran up the count on me.  Mind, I am NOT trying to strike anyone out.  I am just trying to pitch hittable balls.  The batters watched hittable pitch after hittable pitch go by and racked up the balls.  This really got me flustered, which was the point, and I made two costly infield errors and walked one batter.  This entire time, all of my teammates were very supportive of me.  The opposing dugout, however, joshed me with "hey batter-batters" and so on.  When I finally elected to intentionally walk the final batter in their lineup, and thus end the inning safely, cries of "SPORTSMANSHIP" rose from their dugout.  So I threw to him and--wow--he hit a 2-run triple.

So I feel as though their team was less sportsmanlike than ours was.  But that does not excuse my attitude.  The language I used under my breath was unchristian and reflected my response to a stressful situation.  I'd just read earlier in the day a verse from Philippians about letting one's gentleness show.  I did not.  I threw my glove a few times in frustration and anger.  As much as I want to berate the other team for its lack of sportsmanlike conduct, I was no better.

So softball teaches us humility in defeat.  But it also teaches, by example, both how to act and how not to act.  I will choose to act like my Pauline-gentle teammates, who dealt with the stomping amicably, instead of like the opposing dugout, which was less than gentle.  And I will seek forgiveness for my anger.

So far this summer has been low stress for me and, though it is sometimes boring, that is probably a good thing.

My friend's uncle died recently in a very heroic way.  His thoughts on life are now a lot deeper and he has an interesting narrative understanding of death.  What my friend said about his uncle's passing, combined with some deep conversations with my brother Ben, are making me reconsider some assumptions with which I'd been comfortable for a while.

Though I know that we ought to be bent toward a life of service, it is difficult to come to terms with such a life at times.  I think I ought to start small.

The Summer Plan for Fitness.

So I'm making a summer plan for general health and fitness. I think this is it:

-Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I will lift weights at the CoRec.

-Mondays: Arms and abdominals
-Wednesdays: Shoulders and legs
-Fridays: Chest and abdominals

-Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays I will run 5 or so miles.

-I will eat within 30 minutes of waking up and within 30 minutes of working out (if possible).

-I'll focus on eating much more fiber than I currently do--mostly through the liberal use of fibrous breakfast cereals.

-I will eat more protein as a proportion of my daily calorie intake.

-I need to establish limits on unhealthy habits that are nevertheless inevitable, given the fact that this is freakin' summer (exception to most of these limits: the week Ben and I are in Europe):

-No more than 1 skipped workout per week.
-No more than 8 drinks per week (four nights off per week times two drinks per night).
-No more than 3 pops per week (at the movies, refills DO NOT constitute additional pops).
-No more than 3 fried dishes per week.
-No sleeping in past 10AM.
-At least 8 hours of sleep per day.
-On at least 4 mornings per week, I will do push-ups and/or sit-ups.

-I will try to walk everywhere possible, and when I get it, I will ride my bike as well.

-I will try to drink as much tea as possible: at least one per day.

On the Ordination of Women

I was reading an interesting article defending the Catholic Church's timeless tradition of ordaining only male priests.  One point caught my eye especially:

"Ordination to the ministerial priesthood is reserved to men because the Church is bound to follow the example of the Lord, who chose only men as his Apostles."

I believe this argument is a little weaker that the RCC would like it to be.  So far as this argument is concerned, the one characteristic that was both common to all the Apostles and relevant to the determination of whom the Church ought to ordain is gender.  But this is not necessarily so.  Take, for instance, the fact that every Apostle was Hebrew.  This criterion for ordination is obviously not a factor in modern discourse even though its prima facie merit is exactly the same as the Apostles' gender--namely that the Lord picked them all, so we ought to follow His example.

Of course I am being less than generous since other criteria are obviously crucial to determining who is fit for the priesthood.  Naturally all Apostles believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, and so we ought to follow the Lord's example and only ordain believers.  This makes sense right off the bat.  What does not make sense right off the bat, however, is the argument that we ought to ordain only men to the priesthood since Christ only picked men as his Apostles.  This argument needs quite a bit more fleshing out before it can suffice, it seems.  (And of course there is a great deal of additional material defending the RCC's decision through the centuries.  My issue is with this one listed reason for forbidding female ordination.)