Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Divorce - The Kids Will NOT Be OK



(I'm re-posting this, to keep this ball in play.)

 A cover of Time Magazine had the titillating headline "Is Monogamy Over?" Biologist-psychologist David Barash answered: "We should keep it [monogamy] for our kids' sake." Because:

 "It’s very rare for any species to engage in biparental care unless the males are guaranteed that they are genetically related to the offspring—confidence monogamy alone can provide. And because human children need so much parental assistance, protection and investment, humans, perhaps more than any other animal, especially benefit from monogamy."

 I meet all the time with young adults whose biological parents have separated or divorced. Almost always, there’s devastation. 

 I meet with married people who are thinking about divorce. They’ve picked up the village-idea that if they divorce, the “kids will be OK.” There is evidence suggesting that is false. 

 Perhaps, for some, it’s their way of trying to justify their own inability to work through their failing marriage. Only a few kids do well, and they are rare. 

 Many couples do not have the tools to fix their marriage. The current parentless generation is spawning teens who have never seen a healthy marriage before. Unless something transformational happens in them, they will mirror their parents’ failures.

 The best book on this is by former Columbia U. scholar Judith Wallerstein - The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce. She’s done the only longitudinal study of what happens to kids whose parents divorce. Wallenstein followed these kids into adulthood. Anyone contemplating divorce who thinks “The kids will be OK” needs to read this book. 

 Wallenstein writes:
“By tracking approximately 100 children as they forge their lives as adults, we has found that, contrary to the popular belief that kids would bounce back after the initial pain of their parents’ split, children of divorce often continue to suffer well into adulthood. Their pain plays out in their relationships, their work lives and their confidence about parenting themselves.”

 If you are divorced your kids probably need more help than kids with healthy, married monogamous parents.

 ***
In an PBS interview Wallerstein responds to a question.
adriana_rome: Is there any information on how divorce affects children at different ages? Say a toddler aged child vs. a teen?


Dr. Judith: Well, children who are little ... 2-6 .... are really very worried that they're going to be abandoned. They have so little capacity to take care of themselves. Their logic is that if one parent can leave another, why can't they leave me? They cling to their parents, they have terrible nightmares, they don't want to go to nursery school and all the times during the day and night where there's separation are filled with enormous anxiety because they're so afraid they'll be abandoned and there will be no one to take care of them, feed them, dry their tears, take care of them.

Youngsters who are school aged ... 8-11 ... are more worried about the fact that they're not going to get a chance to do the things they need to do. There's a stage that's being held up by their parents ... the mainstage is at school, on the playground, with other friends, with sports, with music, with ballet ... all the things they do at this age and they're very angry with their parents because they're afraid it will interrupt their activities. They think their parents are being very selfish as the very scaffolding that holds their lives up is going to collapse.

Teens .... are much more likely to be their parents' confidants at the break-up. They're much more likely to be aware of the trouble either parent has been having and they can be very compassionate and caring. But at the same time, they are very angry that the family is falling apart. They figure they need that family support,: especially at this time in their lives when they have so many questions about their own futures. And thirdly, they worry very much at 15-17, whether if their parents marriage went belly-up ... whether their own relationships are going to run into disaster and they're very frightened.
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Monday, October 14, 2024

It's False That an Atheist Just Believes in One Fewer God Than a Theist Does

Card, in a store in Detroit's Cass Corridor





















I heard this again, so I'll post my response again. Heard what? The Internet-atheist cliche, given to a theist such as I: "We atheists just believe in one fewer "god" than you do." 

 That's cute. But not really. The person who quotes this thinking they are making some profound point is commits the fallacy of equivocation.

 I don't believe in "Zeus." Here are some things about "Zeus":

  • Zeus is not omniscient - he got tricked by Prometheus, e.g.
  • Zeus is a pervert - he changed his shape into a swan, e.g., when he impregnated Leda. When he abducted Ganymede he changed his shape into an eagle. And so on..., kind of like the atheist Bertrand Russell would disguise himself so as not to be recognized when he engaged in adulterous behavior in seducing women. (See Paul Johnson's Intellectuals, pp. 212 ff. Fellow philosopher Sidney Hook said Russell "would pursue anything in skirts that would cross his path.")  Anyway, Zeus is far from all-loving, and Zeus has a physical body.
  • Zeus has a beard and long hair.
  • Zeus lives on Mount Olympus.
  • Zeus is married.
  • Zeus fathered many children.
In the philosophy of religion no scholar is interested in "Zeus." The real question that is found in every academic philosophy of religion book that exists is: does a being with the following attributes exist:
  • personal-causal agent
  • atemporal (therefore changeless)
  • immaterial (therefore nonspatial)
  • omniscient (knows everything that can be known)
  • omnipotent (is able to do everything that can be done)
  • omnibenevolent (in morally perfect)
  • necessarily existent (never began to exist and never will cease existing; therefore uncaused)
  • cause (creator) of all that exists.
Philosophers (atheists and theists), when they argue for or against the existence of "God," refer to this kind of being. The philosophical question is: Does this kind of being exist? Theists say yes, atheists say no. But note they are both referring to the same kind of being, and not to "Zeus" and his many anthropomorphic kin.

So, to call "Zeus" and the theistic God examples of "gods" in the cliche-quote is to equivocate on the meaning of "god." Because the attributes of "Zeus" and other anthropomorphic gods are not the declared attributes of the God of classical theism. Thus, they are two different kinds of beings.

That's irrational. Illogical. 
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Don't Consent to the Illusion


(Ann Arbor)

Many people define themselves in terms of their material possessions, their personal appearance, and their accomplishments. These evaluations are all comparative. They function on the punishing honor/shame hierarchy. This hierarchy is brutal, because it requires a constant striving to maintain or upgrade one's false identity.

For such persons, this is all they are. They are nothing more or less than what they own, how they look to others, and what they have done. They create themselves in the image they think others will adore. They are a function of what people think, puppets controlled by ever-changing public opinion.

Thomas Merton knew this and wrote:

"There are many respectable and even conventionally moral people for whom there is no other reality in life than their body and its relationship with “things.” They have reduced themselves to a life lived within the limits of their five senses. Their self is consequently an illusion based on sense experience and nothing else. For these the body becomes a source of falsity and deception: but that is not the body’s fault. It is the fault of the person himself, who consents to the illusion, who finds security in self-deception and will not answer the secret voice of God calling him to take a risk and venture by faith outside the reassuring and protective limits of his five senses."
Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation (pp. 27-28)
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Saturday, October 12, 2024

Disciples of Jesus Meet on Sunday Mornings

 

 



When I was a pastor in Joliet, Illinois, there was a man who was always with us on Sunday mornings. He was handicapped. He lived alone. He walked, so slowly, to the church building every Sunday morning. I mean every. No matter what the weather conditions. My thought was, “This man is committed!”  

Linda and I are committed. This is nothing to boast about. This is basic discipleship. When we were growing up, our families were there on every Sunday morning. We never missed. Sunday is the Christian disciple’s Sabbath.  

One of the Ten Commandments says,  Remember the Sabbath day, and be there.  

Keep it holy.  

My parents did. The DNA of Sabbath-keeping became my DNA.

Linda’s parents did the same with their children. Linda’s dad and mom were on fire for Jesus! Missing the weekly gathering of the people, the church, was unthinkable for them. It formed the center of their born-again life. As it says in Hebrews,  

Do not give up meeting together, 

as some are in the habit of doing,  

but encouraging one another

—  and all the more as you see the Day approaching. 

 Real disciples are in community. In “fellowship.” So much of what Jesus has taught me about being like Him has been learned in community.

The letters of Paul are not addressed to individual Christians. They are addressed to Jesus-Communities. Nearly every time the word “you” is used in Paul’s letters, it is plural.  

The precious manifestations of the Holy Spirit (the “gifts”) only make sense within The Community.  

Jesus taught me that the Bible is a tribal document. He is building his Tribe out of all kinds of people.  

​I need The Community. 

The Community needs me.  

We ARE the Church.


(From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship)

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Thursday, October 10, 2024

Studying Jesus - Some Resources

 



(Jerusalem street)



One of my PhD qualifying exams was in Ancient Christology. Christology is still, for me, an area I study in. This is my first love: knowing Jesus, and making Jesus known. 

Here are books and websites I recommend for studying Jesus, with a few annotations. 

This list could be miles long! These are some I recommend. If you read these, you'll be well on your way in studying Christ and thinking Christologically. You will, increasingly, be able to separate the real from the false.

BOOKS ON JESUS

Gustav Aulen

Ruth Haley Barton

Richard Bauckham

James Beilby and Paul Eddy, eds. The Historical Jesus: Five Views


Michael Brown


Greg Boyd

Greg Boyd & Paul Eddy

James Charlesworth

William Lane Craig
Paul Eddy and James Beilby

Craig Evans

Craig Evans and N.T. Wright
Gordon Fee

Gordon Fee and Cherith Nordling Fee
Simon Gathercole, Robert Stewart, N. T. Wright

Gary Habermas

Larry Hurtado and Chris Keith

Craig Keener

J. N. D. Kelly

George Ladd

Amy Levine

Michael McClymond

Scot McKnight

Richard Norris and William Rusch

Eugene Peterson


Stephen Porter, Gary Moon, J. P. Moreland

Stephen Prothero
Fleming Rutledge
Lewis Smedes

Klyne Snodgrass

Mark L. Strauss

Lee Strobel

Rankin Wilbourne 



Dallas Willard 



Ben Witherington

N.T. Wright (No one, except Craig Keener, is writing more about Jesus than Wright is.)

N.T. Wright and Michael Bird


NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARIES

When the following New Testament scholars write a commentary, it's going to be worth reading.
  • Richard Bauckham
  • Craig Blomberg
  • D.A. Carson
  • Craig Evans
  • Gordon Fee
  • R.T. France
  • David Garland
  • Joel Green
  • Craig Keener
  • Andreas Kostenberger
  • Scot McKnight
  • Douglas Moo
  • Klyne Snodgrass
  • Ben Witherington
  • N.T. Wright - especially see Wright's "For Everyone" series.

WEBSITES ON JESUS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
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Tuesday, October 08, 2024

Deconstruction (Not What You Think It Is)

                                                                           (Cancun)

(I am trying to rescue the word 'deconstruction'.)

In her book Another Gospel Alisa Childers gives her definition of 'deconstruction.'  She writes:

"In the context of faith, deconstruction is the process of systematically dissecting and often rejecting the beliefs you grew up with. Sometimes the Christian will deconstruct all the way into atheism. atheism. Some remain there, but others experience a reconstruction. But the type of faith they end up embracing almost never resembles the Christianity they formerly knew." (Childers, Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity, p. 24).

Elsewhere she adds, "[Deconstruction] has little to do with objective truth, and everything to do with tearing down whatever doctrine someone believes is morally wrong."

That's false. 'Deconstruction' has nothing to do with "tearing down," and its antonym is not "reconstruction." Childers uses a pop-version of 'deconstruction' as dismantling or tearing down. If 'deconstruction' were but another way to say "tearing down" then its employment is uninteresting, and hermeneutically impotent. 'Deconstruction,' in the scholarly sense, is far more interesting and provocative.

Pay attention now. This is from David Gunkel's book Deconstruction.  

"If you ask someone to explain it [deconstruction], what you typically get is a rather confused shell game of word substitutions, where “deconstruction” is loosely associated with other concepts like “disassembly,” “destruction,” “reverse engineering,” or “the act of taking something apart.” 

Despite the circulation of these familiar (mis)understandings, the term “deconstruction” does not indicate something negative. What it signifies is neither simply synonymous with destruction nor the opposite of construction. As Jacques Derrida, the fabricator of the neologism and progenitor of the concept, pointed out in the afterword to the book Limited Inc: “The ‘de-’ of deconstruction signifies not the demolition of what is constructing itself, but rather what remains to be thought beyond the constructionist or destructionist schema.” For this reason, deconstruction is something entirely other than what is typically understood and delimited by the conceptual opposition situated between the two terms “construction” and “destruction.” In fact, to put it schematically, deconstruction comprises a kind of general strategy by which to intervene in this and all the other logical oppositions and conceptual dichotomies that have and continue to organize how we think and how we speak. (Pp. 1-2. Italics mine. See Gunkel's chapter on deconstruction's (Derrida's) indebtedness to Hegel.)

Let's give a hat tip to Jacques Derrida. "Deconstruction" originated with Derrida. Since then, it is used in a variety of ways that are alien to what Derrida was saying. Often, perhaps always, the more a term is used, and as it enters public domain, it becomes misused, and gets vaguer and vaguer. This is what has happened to "deconstruction," which in America, has become synonymous with "destruction."

Now...  fasten your seat belts or, perhaps, just eject...  here is one of the best explanations of "deconstruction" I have read. It's from Christopher Norris's book Derrida.

Don't be offended as I say this. If you don't have some grasp of what Norris is saying, then you don't understand deconstruction. If you don't understand deconstruction, then wisdom says don't use the word. But, alas, this is what people do. I've done it too; viz., use words that, when I am pressed, I am unable to explain.

Norris writes:

"Deconstruction is neither 'method' on one hand not 'interpretation' on the other. In fact it is not too difficult to come up with a concise formula that would make it sound very much like a 'method' and yet describe accurately some of Derrida's most typical deconstructive moves. What these consist in, very briefly, is the dismantling of conceptual oppositions, the taking apart of hierarchical systems of thought which can then be reinscribed within a different order of textual signification. Or again: deconstruction is the vigilant seeking out of those 'aporias', blindspots or moments of self-contradiction where a text involuntarily betrays the tension between rhetoric and logic, between what it manifestly means to say and what it is nonetheless constrained to mean. To 'deconstruct' a piece of writing is therefore to operate a kind of strategic reversal, seizing on precisely those unregarded details (casual metaphors, footnotes, incidental turns of argument) which are always, and necessarily, passed over by interpreters of a more orthodox persuasion. For it is here, in the margins of the text - the 'margins', that is, as defined by a powerful normative consensus - that deconstruction discovers those same unsettling forces at work. So there is at least a certain prima facie case for the claim that deconstruction is a 'method' of reading with its own specific rules and protocols. And indeed, as we shall see, the above brief account of Derrida's deconstructive strategy does provide at least a fair working notion of what goes on in his texts." (p. 19)

Let me add a teaser here. For Derrida, deconstruction considers all subject predicate sentences (of the form S is P) false. To understand deconstruction includes understanding why Derrida thinks this way. And it is to understand why, for Derrida, writing is inferior to speech. But who has time to understand such things, except for a pastor like me who only works for two hours on Sunday mornings?

(And, BTW, deconstruction, when understood, has some intractable philosophical problems. Scientists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker despise it. That's another story...)

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Jesus Had a Praying Life

 


                                                          (Lake Erie, Monroe, MI)

(From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Praying.)

Dear Praying Church, 

Because Jesus prayed, so also are you to pray. When I was a boy, Elvis was my hero. I wanted to be like him. I remember a day when I took an Elvis album cover into the bathroom and propped it against the mirror so I could see it. There I was, with my face in the mirror, next to the King’s. 

Then, I attempted to curl my lip like Elvis did when he sang. I took some hair gel and tried to recreate Elvis’s hair. I began to speak like Elvis did, in that low, smoky, bluesy baritone voice. All this and more was hard work, but worth it if people would see the resemblance. 

Finally, I was ready to walk into the real world. I left my house and Elvised into my friend John’s backyard. I was hoping he would see that I looked like you-know-who. When he saw “Elvis,” namely moi, John said words that shattered me. “So, you’re trying to look like Elvis again.”

Trying? I want to be him! 

We want to be like those we worship. In many ways, we become what we worship. When I began to follow and worship Jesus, I wanted to be like him. I wrote a worship song that was recorded by some Christian artists. It was called “More Like You.” I recorded it myself, and Linda and I had it played at our wedding. 

To be like Jesus. To be formed into greater and greater Christlikeness. (Galatians 4:19) 

1 John 3:2 says, 

Dear friends, 

now we are children of God , 

and what we will be has not yet been made known. 

But we know that when Christ appears,  

we shall be like him, 

for we shall see him as he is.

What was Jesus like? Well, he prayed. 

Here’s my reasoning. 

 1. Jesus is my Great Shepherd. 

2. My Great Shepherd spent much time praying. 

3. Therefore, I spend much time praying. 

We read these words in Luke 5:16: 

Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. 

Jesus prayed. Often. 

For decades it has been my habit, weekly, to go to a lonely place, and pray. I do this for several reasons. But mainly, I do it because this Jesus that I worship did it, and I want to be like him. 

As do you.

When you look into the mirror, see the face of Jesus next to yours. He’s calling you to meet with him and talk with him and listen to him, often. 

Love, 

PJ 

CHALLENGE 

Imitate Jesus’s praying life.

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JESUS-FOLLOWING, POLITICS, and CULTURE

(Sermon-prepping, in Starbucks.)
















(I'm re-posting this for some friends.)

I had a recent encounter with a person, call them X.
X: "I am against socialism."

Me: "Can you explain socialism to me?"

X: "No."

Me: "Can you tell me what socialism is?"

X: [SILENCE]

Me: "Do you find it odd to be against something you know nothing about?"

 Politically, America is deeply divided. As a follower of Jesus, how do I evaluate this? What do I do about this? How shall I think about this?

Here's my approach, 

 1) I identify certain guiding principles; and 

 2) I keep studying and learning. 

This means disengaging from social media arguments, and finding the best scholarship available that can help me, in the first place, understand the issues. I am uninterested in people who want to argue political issues without first putting a lot of work into understanding those issues. This may not be you, but it is me.


 A FEW GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR ME

  • Deepen your abiding life in Christ, as the first thing to do. All relevant, Spirit-led action comes from this ongoing attachment to Christ.
  • Change hearts first. When hearts are changed, systems transform.
  • Focus on issues, not political alignment.
  • I must understand before I evaluate. This takes time. I hesitate to jump on someone's political bandwagon. Because, I don't yet understand the issues. 
  • Attack arguments, not people (no ad hominem abusiveness please). Evaluate arguments; formulate arguments. Love people.
  • Read contrary viewpoints, as much as you can.
  • Lift up Jesus, the one who changes hearts and minds, and from whom we Christians acquire our ethics.
  • When the Holy Spirit identifies a socio-cultural need and burdens you with it, labor in the Spirit to achieve transformation. For example, my church family helped begin a soup kitchen that provides a meal every day of the year, serving 75-150 a night. For example, my church family has been involved in serving and raising support for ministries that rescue women out of sex trafficking. For example, Linda and I have, over the decades, provided free counseling for needy marriages and families (this is ongoing, to the very moment I am typing these words).
  • Study and grow in learning about the relationship between following Jesus and political involvement. This will assist you in transcending shallow, uninformed, hate-filled debating. Here are some resources that have taken me deeper.


STUDYING and LEARNING - SOME RESOURCES THAT HAVE HELPED ME (These are resources I have read and studied, and have helped me better understand the relationship between religion and politics. Surely there are more. What books have helped you?)

And, of course, keep saturating yourself in Scripture.

 Study the ethics of Jesus. Read the Gospels. Check this out - The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. 

Do I agree with everything written in these books? 

Of course not. I don't even agree with everything you say. 

And, I have said things that, upon reflection, have caused me to disagree with myself.
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