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Thursday, August 21, 2008Eat. Sleep. Swim.
Athletic history has been re-written as Michael Phelps tore through the Olympic Games winning an unprecedented eight gold medals.
What kind of life allows such a pinnacle of success? When asked to describe a typical day, Phelps has repeatedly told journalists that his routine involves just three things: “eat, sleep, swim.”
And from that simple response, the phrase “eat, sleep, swim” has become iconic, showing up on t-shirts and athletic wear around the world.
As I have joined millions around the world in watching the Olympic Games, inspired by the dedication the athletes have brought to this moment of competition, a nagging feeling kept invading – one that almost made me feel guilty for being unpatriotic or simply a poor sport.
“They’ve given their lives for this?”
Sure, Phelps is a millionaire and will be joined by such figures as Dara Torres on the motivational circuit and, if they so desire, for broadcast duties for future Olympic Games. Many will go home to marketplace careers that have nothing to do with their competitions, yet answer deeply fulfilling vocational calls. Many will run to the arms of loving spouses and children. Others will begin university studies that have been put on hold.
But they may be the exceptions to the rule.
In one of the more insightful pieces to run on the Games, Benedict Carey of the New York Times explores what happens after the games for the vast majority of the athletes. In an article titled, After Glory of a Lifetime, Asking ‘What Now?’ he writes movingly of the day decathlete Bruce Jenner crossed the finish line in the 1,500 meters in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, knowing he had won the gold medal and set a world record.
He just didn’t know what he was going to do for dinner.
A friend lent him the use of a luxury suite, and in the room was a grand piano. He thought to himself, “Huh, maybe I should learn to play the piano. I mean, I was extremely satisfied but also devastated by the finality of it all.”
“You’re talking about people who have trained for years, almost every day, and made huge sacrifices,” in their relationships, career, all of it, said sports psychologist Charlie Brown. “And for some of them once they have this huge, intense experience, it’s a very fragile situation afterwards.” Carey cites a 1982 study which found that only 17 percent of former Olympians made the transition back to the workplace without significant emotional distress, including substance abuse and depression.
But it doesn’t take an Olympian to face this challenge.
As the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever” (I Corinthians 9:24-25, NIV).
In truth, we are all in a set of games; a competition that dwarfs the Olympics - which is momentary and transitory - with rewards that, in the end, are fleeting and without significance. Our contest is as large as life itself, and the prize is one that will determine and shape not only our place in this world, but our place in the world to come…and it calls for our very best.
And these games are worth it.
James Emery White
Sources
“After Glory of a Lifetime, Asking ‘What Now?’”, Benedict Carey, The New York Times, Monday, August 18, 2008, p. A1 and A7.
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Thursday, August 7, 2008Alexander Who?
Alexander Who?
“Solzhenitsyn, Literary giant Who Defied Soviets, Dies at 89,” ran the headline on the front page of the New York Times, which was then followed by two more full pages in its “A” section. And deservedly so. His work “gained the force of prophecy” as he wrote “some of the most powerful literary works of the 20th century” chronicling the “heavy afflictions” of Soviet Communism. “In almost half a century, more than 30 million of his books have been sold worldwide and translated into some 40 languages.” In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The next day? A very different article.
“Reverence for Solzhenitsyn, but No National Mourning.”
While noting that national leaders expressed admiration, there was no great outpouring of grief or even recognition that one might imagine accompanying the death of such a figure. Without a doubt, Russians who grew up during the Soviet era continue to “speak passionately about the achievements of Mr. Solzhenitsyn,” comparing him to writers like Tolstoy, they know only too well how “he had forced the nation to confront the horrors wrought in the name of Communism.”
Yet Yuri V. Samodurov, director of the Sakharov Museum in Moscow, which is dedicated to another Soviet-era dissident, the physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, observes that “these days, most young people could not even recognize the names of Mr. Solzhenitsyn and Mr. Sakharov.”
Approached at a park in Moscow, Taisiya Gunicheva, 17, a college student, said she “had heard of Mr. Solzhenitsyn, but could not name any of his books.”
Anton Zimin, 26, an advertising copywriter, said he was quite familiar with Mr. Solzhenitsyn, but doubted that others of his generation were, offering that people of his age had seemingly “lost touch with the struggles of their parents and grandparents.”
“The problem is that now, it’s all about consumption – this spirit that has engulfed everybody,“ Mr. Zimin added. “People prefer to consume everything, the simplest things, and the faster, the better. Books are something that force you to think, reading books requires some effort. But they prefer entertainment.”
But perhaps the most telling observation was offered by Andrei V. Valilevsky, editor in chief of Novy Mir, the magazine that published Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s first major work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in 1962: “There is no demand for great people,” he said. “I can’t say why, but this fact is simply obvious to me. Famous, notable, popular – yes. But not great, in the fullest sense of the word.”
Alexander who?
Perhaps we should remind ourselves. His name was Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
And he was a great man.
James Emery White
Sources“Solzhenitsyn, Literary giant Who Defied Soviets, Dies at 89,” Michael T. Kaufman, The New York Times, Monday, August 4, 2008, p. A1, A16, and A17.
“Reverence for Solzhenitsyn, but No National Mourning,” Clifford J. Levy, The New York Times, Tuesday, August 5, 2008, p. A9. -
Thursday, July 17, 2008Theology’s Challenge: Incest and Apes
I have long told my students that the doctrine of humanity is, by far, the most pressing doctrine of our day, for it is the area of Christian thought that is most challenged by the world in which we live, and the nature of those challenges tend to leave most Christians bereft of any sense of knowing how to respond.
For one, there is no rich historical vein of theological reflection to pull from, at least in terms of our current cultural conversation; find me a reflection from Origen or Athanasius, Luther or Melanchthon, Barth or Brunner, that speaks to stem-cell research, human cloning, or homosexual rights. Yes, there is much on what constitutes humanity, the nature of humanity in relation to God, and the boundaries of sexual ethics - but the issues of our day are asking questions that leave previous theological discourse sorely lacking. As the first five centuries hammered out Christology, and later generations tackled everything from the Holy Sprit to revelation, ours may be the day that is forced to examine the doctrine of humanity in ways that serve the church for years to come.
And the challenge is real.
Consider the London Times report titled “I used to have sex with my brother but I don’t feel guilty about it” which offered a detailed narrative of a woman’s sexual relationship with her biological brother from the time of 14 to nearly 30, until he met another person and married. Their sexual trysts were revealed as part of a tale of sibling intimacy and friendship that ended with the ubiquitous reasoning that they were not hurting anyone, so why make it so wrong? Much was made that her brother, only a year older, never pushed himself on her and that she was a willing participant. The author’s lament is that something “so lovely and natural to me would be regarded as abhorrent.”
At the time of this writing, it continues to be the most read story on the newspapers website, with the vast majority of the posted feedback I read supportive in nature.
And then there was news of a Spanish parliamentary committee which adopted resolutions that would give great apes, such as chimpanzees and gorillas, the right to life, freedom from arbitrary captivity and protection from torture.
In other words, the same legal rights as humans.
The reasoning is based almost entirely on what it means to be human, which, according to the naturalistic philosophy in place in our world, is entirely genetic. “Chimps…share 98.5% of human DNA, making them as genetically close to humans as horses are to zebras,” notes USA Today. So why not treat man’s closest genetic relative with the legal and cultural rights they so genetically deserve? What else, to the naturalistic mind, would there be to consider?
A court case from Austria is going further, wanting to actually declare a chimp a person so the animal could have a legal guardian and funds for upkeep. Sound absurd? The European Court of Human Rights is now considering an appeal on behalf of a 28-year-old chimp named Matthew Hiasl Pan. “If Matthew should win,” noted USA Today International, “the case would set a legal precedent across Europe to treat apes with some of the same rights as people.”
“I’d call is a slippery slope-plus,” says Richard Cupp, associate dean for research at California’s Pepperdine University School of Law.
Such stories represent the two great contests facing the Christian doctrine of humanity: the boundaries of accepted sexual expression, and the boundaries of accepted human identity. Granted, we may have been on watch in relation to such matters as euthanasia or infanticide, but the challenge has far more fronts to monitor.
Such as incest and apes.
James Emery White
Sources
“I used to have sex with my brother but I don’t feel guilty about it,” as told to Joan McFadden, times2, The London Times, Tuesday, July 15, 2008, pp. 10-11; the story can be read at www.timesonline.co.uk at http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4332635.ece/
“Activists pursue basic legal rights for great apes,” Jeffrey Stinson, USA TODAY International. Wednesday, July 16, 2008, p. 2A. Read online at http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2008-07-15-chimp_N.htm.
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Wednesday, July 2, 2008Another Revolution Worth Fighting For
When America’s second president, John Adams, and America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, both died on the same day in 1826 – and that day was none other than the Fourth of July – it was seen as a sign of God’s favor on the United States. As historian David McCullough notes in his widely-acclaimed biography of Adams, it “could not be seen as mere coincidence.” It was a ‘visible and palpable’ manifestation of ‘Divine favor,’ wrote John Quincy in his diary that night, “expressing,” McCullough adds, “what was felt and would be said again and again everywhere the news spread.”
The idea of “choseness” and “special blessing” from God has been a constant theme throughout the history of the United States, beginning with the Puritans and their “shining city on a hill.” In more recent times, the vision of a Christian America was popularized in the late 1970’s by Evangelical authors Peter Marshall and David Manuel in The Light and the Glory. Marshall and Manuel held that America was founded as a Christian nation and flourished under the benevolent hand of divine providence, arguing further that America's blessings will remain only as long as America is faithful to God as a nation. In 1989 a team of Evangelical historians (Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden) attempted to lay this somewhat dubious thesis to rest, but it continued as a popular framework for viewing American history among contemporary American Evangelicals.
Whether we were founded as an explicitly Christian nation or not, to many, the idea of God’s favor being removed from our land seems prescient.
As a recent Associated Press article suggested, “everything seemingly is spinning out of control,” with the article going on to note how Midwestern levees are bursting; polar bears are adrift; gas prices are skyrocketing; home values are abysmal; air fares are beyond reach; wars without end rage in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An Associated Press poll reveals that only 17 percent of Americans believe the country is moving in the right direction (the lowest reading in history since their annual survey began). An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings of the American mood.
Whether the current national malaise can be attributed to God’s disfavor or not, I am more convinced than ever that American needs to turn to what Christian moorings it once maintained. But not for America’s sake, per se, or even for the sake of Western culture.
But for the Kingdom’s sake.
America is not simply the leader of the modern world, but the principal carrier of globalization and exporter of culture. The ideas which lie at the heart of the West, and particularly the United States, are Judeo-Christian. Yet America is at great spiritual risk, and much of our current despondency is tied to our need for God far more than our need for economic relief. The very values and ideas that shaped us as a nation, and could therefore shape the world, are being lost. This has led some, such as Os Guinness, to call for a “third” mission to the West.
The first mission, of course, was the apostolic mission that eventually resulted in the conversion of the Roman Empire. The second mission followed the fall of Rome as missionaries refounded Western civilization and essentially reconverted the west back to Christianity from paganism, what Thomas Cahill referred to in the title of his book How the Irish Saved Civilization.
A third mission would seek to restore America as the leader of the Western world to her Judeo-Christian roots, ensuring continued vibrancy and influence for years to come.
Not to stave off “curse” and receive “blessing;” but instead to be a blessing to others for the sake of Christ.
And that would be another American Revolution worth fighting for.
James Emery White
Sources
David McCullough, John Adams (2001).
On the history of the idea of America as a chosen nation, see Conrad Cherry’s God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (1971).
David Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory (1977).
Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch, and George M. Marsden, The Search for Christian America (1989).
“Everything seemingly is spinning out of control,” Alan Fram and Eileen Putnam, Associated Press, Saturday, June 21st, 2008.
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Monday, June 16, 2008Annual Summer Reading List
Each year around this time, through the Update, I offer ten titles - in no particular order – from the previous twelve months for your summer reading consideration, usually with an emphasis on cultural understanding. Enjoy.
The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier by Tony Jones. The “emergent church movement”: whether you love it or hate it, feel attraction or fear, consider yourself “in the know” or feel bewildered – or all of the above – this may be the definitive work to date on all things “emergent” by one of its leading voices. Jones, the national coordinator of Emergent Village and a doctoral fellow in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, offers an in-depth view of this new “third way” of faith that attempts to stand between religious conservatism and religious liberalism.
The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 by Jay Winik. As you can tell from this year’s list, I was taken by the number of excellent histories that give insight into our present day through the lens of the past. The author of April 1865, Winik’s accomplishment is his global analysis, linking a new United States, the imperial power of Russia, Islamic peoples preparing for war, and the French revolution. As Winik argues, their seemingly individual fates were actually a singular and deeply interconnected moment in time that changed the world and continues to shape the one in which we live.
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin. Few would argue that the judicial system is one of the great epicenters of American culture. Within the judicial system, the Supreme Court is the most important legal body in our country. The Nine, referring to the Court’s nine members, explores an institution in transition as it adjusts to its new conservative majority and what it might hold for such issues as abortion, civil rights, presidential power, and church-state relations.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. In what the New York Times called a “morbidly fascinating non-fiction eco-thriller,” Weisman explores humanity’s impact on the planet by asking us to envision our earth without us. As the flyleaf to the book details, “Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence…how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us.” Beyond the sheer fascination Weisman’s exploration brings, the work raises profound issues related to humanity’s relationship with creation.
A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. Emerging from the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, Taylor delivers an 874-page magnum opus on secularism and its meaning from a historical perspective. Central to his thesis is that secularism is not a single, continuous transformation but rather a series of departures. Further, that secularism is not marked by an absence of religion as much as the multiplication of options available which may be seized in order to make sense of our lives and give shape to our spiritual inclinations.
Unchristian by Steve Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. The findings of a study which revealed that those outside of the Christian faith think Christians no longer represent what Jesus had in mind. We’re seen as hyper-political, out of touch, pushy in our beliefs, and arrogant – and most of all, homophobic, hypocritical, and judgmental. (Disclosure: I was one of several “essay” contributors to the book, along with Chuck Colson, Andy Crouch, Louie Giglio, Dan Kimball, Brian McLaren, Chris Seay, Andy Stanley, John Stott, Jim Wallis, and Rick Warren).
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. In this remarkable and highly readable new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who brought equal skill to their translations of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov, one of the great works of world literature is brought to life for our day. Easily destined to become the definitive English edition.
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross. The music critic for The New Yorker explores modern music in all its forms, from Stravinsky to the Velvet Underground, and how it illumines the world in which we live. Beginning in Vienna before the First World War, Ross’ sweeping narrative carries us to Paris in the twenties, on to Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, through to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. As the flyleaf promises, “the end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through music.”
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic by Joseph Ellis. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers and His Excellency examines the founding years of our country. Noting that both success and tragedy during the last quarter of the eighteenth century shaped our burgeoning nation, Ellis “guides us through the decisive issues of the nation’s founding, and illuminates the emerging philosophies, shifting alliances, and personal and political foibles of our now iconic leaders.” Much that shaped those early years continues to shape us – this book helps us understand how, and why.Modernism by Peter Gay. The single best book for understanding the Enlightenment was penned by Peter Gay. It can now be said that he has written the single best book for understanding modernism. Originating in the middle of the nineteenth century, through such founding figures as Flaubert and Baudelaire, the history of modernism continued through such figures as Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Igor Stavinsky, T.S. Eliot, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles – down to our day, with the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Through its “ability to integrate the history of art and literature with the Western society it changed forever, Modernism informs our present like no other recent work of cultural history.”
James Emery White
2007 ListTo view last year’s list, visit:
http://www.serioustimes.com/Blog.asp?ID=37
Bonus Consideration from the Shameless Commerce Division:Wrestling with God by James Emery White (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008). Originally published as Embracing the Mysterious God (2004 Award of Merit Winner from Christianity Today), now available in paperback (and now benefiting from the title given its release in the United Kingdom). To explore, visit: http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3363; to order, visit http://www.amazon.com/Wrestling-God-Loving-Dont-Understand/dp/0830833633/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212792749&sr=1-10.
