Author Archives: Rob Harrison

“White Witch / Fenris Ulf 2016: Vote for a Proven Winner”

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If you ever doubt that C. S. Lewis was gifted with a prophetic voice, you need look no further for correction than Prince Caspian.

So writes Gina Dalfonzo on the First Things website, discussing the Black Dwarf Nikabrik.  Nikabrik was one of the allies Prince Caspian found after his escape from his uncle, the usurper King Miraz, but as an ally, he was highly problematic.

We first meet him inside the home of Trufflehunter, wanting to kill Caspian the Tenth against the wishes of the badger and Trumpkin. Nikabrik is angry at all Telmarines, bitterly remembering the injustices suffered by the old Narnians in their hands. In his defense, Nikabrik was born in hiding, grew in hiding and lived in hiding throughout his life, which must have been very difficult for any independent, freedom-loving dwarf.

When Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy (the heroes of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, for those who might not be familiar with the series) reach Caspian, Nikabrik is speaking; they stop outside the door to listen.

“Either Aslan is dead, or he is not on our side. Or else something stronger than himself keeps him back. And if he did come—how do we know he’d be our friend? He was not always a good friend to Dwarfs by all that’s told. Not even to all beasts. Ask the Wolves. And anyway, he was in Narnia only once that I ever heard of, and he didn’t stay long. You may drop Aslan out of the reckoning. I was thinking of someone else.”

There was no answer, and for a few minutes it was so still that Edmund could hear the wheezy and snuffling breath of the Badger.

“Who do you mean?” said Caspian at last.

“I mean a power so much greater than Aslan’s that it held Narnia spellbound for years and years, if the stories are true.”

“The White Witch!” cried three voices all at once, and from the noise Peter guessed that three people had leaped to their feet.

“Yes,” said Nikabrik very slowly and distinctly, “I mean the Witch. Sit down again. Don’t all take fright at a name as if you were children. We want power: and we want a power that will be on our side. . . .

“They say she ruled for a hundred years: a hundred years of winter. There’s power, if you like. There’s something practical.”

“But, heaven and earth!” said the King, “haven’t we always been told that she was the worst enemy of all? Wasn’t she a tyrant ten times worse than Miraz?”

“Perhaps,” said Nikabrik in a cold voice. “Perhaps she was for you humans, if there were any of you in those days. Perhaps she was for some of the beasts. She stamped out the Beavers, I dare say; at least there are none of them in Narnia now. But she got on all right with us Dwarfs. I’m a Dwarf and I stand by my own people. We’re not afraid of the Witch.”

Nikabrik is so consumed by fear and hatred and the need to defeat the enemies of his people that he can see nothing else.  The White Witch was a cruel overlord who humiliated and crushed anyone who dared oppose her—but all Nikabrik can see is that she wasn’t too bad to the Dwarfs.  Dalfonzo observes,

His own people and their safety are all that matter to him now. Instead of being an important priority, this has become his only priority—and any attempt to remind him that other considerations exist brings only his contempt and anger.

This is how good people with strong, ingrained values—people who have invested time and money in the sanctity of life, religious liberty, and similarly noble causes—can come to support a man who changes his convictions more often than his shirts. This is how people concerned about the dignity of the office of President end up flocking to a reality-show star who spends his days on Twitter calling people “dumb” and “loser.” This is how some who have professed faith in Jesus Christ are lured by a man who openly puts all his faith in power and money, the very things Christ warned us against prizing too highly. As one wag on Twitter pointed out, “If elected, Donald Trump will be the first US president to own a strip club,” and yet he has the support of Christians who fervently believe that this country needs to clean up its morals.

As Joseph Loconte has observed, the Narnia stories offer us “a view of the world that is both tragic and hopeful. The tragedy lies in the corruption caused by the desire for power, often disguised by appeals to religion and morals.” How dangerously easy it is for the desire for power to take on that disguise—and how easily we Christians fall for it.

Tired of waiting for Aslan—who may be nearer than we think—we turn elsewhere. It doesn’t matter if our candidate hates, bullies, and exploits other people, the reasoning goes, just as long as he’s good to us and gives us what we want. Hatred is a perfectly acceptable weapon, as long as it’s “on our side.”

Read the whole thing.  Please.  And remember what happened to Nikabrik.

Photo © 2013 Gage Skidmore.  License:  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

Preschool and the burden of achievement

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The Atlantic recently published an article analyzing the state of preschool in America; its conclusions were grim, to say the least.

Preschool classrooms have become increasingly fraught spaces, with teachers cajoling their charges to finish their “work” before they can go play. And yet, even as preschoolers are learning more pre-academic skills at earlier ages, I’ve heard many teachers say that they seem somehow—is it possible?—less inquisitive and less engaged than the kids of earlier generations. More children today seem to lack the language skills needed to retell a simple story or to use basic connecting words and prepositions. They can’t make a conceptual analogy between, say, the veins on a leaf and the veins in their own hands.

New research sounds a particularly disquieting note. A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were deteriorating. And by second grade they performed worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills. The researchers told New York magazine that overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning.

That’s right. The same educational policies that are pushing academic goals down to ever earlier levels seem to be contributing to—while at the same time obscuring—the fact that young children are gaining fewer skills, not more.

As a father of four whose youngest is still in preschool, this jives with my experience—though our current preschool is an exception, for which I’m grateful.  I am increasingly convinced that the biggest problem with education in America is that our educational policies are driven by adult anxieties rather than a desire to bless and serve our children.

 

Photo by author.

Meditation on forgiveness

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Does it seem to you that Western culture is growing increasingly merciless and unforgiving?  Maybe it doesn’t.  Maybe you think the opposite is true, given the rate at which behaviors traditionally understood as wrong are being normalized—but that has nothing to do with mercy or forgiveness.  Actually, that trend underscores my point; given the increasingly pharisaical tenor of Western society, true toleration of behavior is disappearing into polarization, leaving only approval and anathematization as options.  The drive for societal affirmation of such behaviors as same-gender sexual activity isn’t driven by the intolerance of Christians.  Yes, there are plenty of intolerant Christians out there, but on the whole, the American church at least is far more prone to conflict avoidance.  We strive to avoid offending anyone because offending people reduces both attendance and giving, and we’re all about seeing those numbers going up.  When it comes to sin, we might still believe it’s sin, but our usual policy is, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”  The same cannot be said of the culture at large.  That’s why the first rule of watching videos on YouTube is, “Don’t read the comments.”  It’s also why this comic from Randall Munroe continues to resonate so powerfully:

Our culture is very good at forgiving things it doesn’t think need to be forgiven—and increasingly good at denouncing orthodox Christians as unloving and unforgiving for insisting that such things do need to be forgiven.  When it comes to beliefs or actions which the elites who shape Western culture find unacceptable, however, there is little or no capacity for forgiveness.  This is a result of the ongoing re-paganization of the West.  The idea that forgiveness is a good thing was a Christian intrusion into the culture, and is fading as the cultural influence of the church fades.  As Tim Keller points out,

The first thing about [Christians that offended pagan cultures] was that the Christians were marked by the ability to forgive.  Almost all ancient cultures were shame-and-honor cultures.  A shame-and-honor culture meant that if someone wronged you, you paid them back.  Your honor was at stake.  You have to save your honor.  That’s what mattered.  And most of the people in the shame-and-honor cultures believed that that’s what kept society together.  Society was kept together by fear. . . .

Christians came along and said, “No, no, you forgive.  Someone wrongs you, you forgive.  Seventy times seven.”  This was nuts to a shame-and-honor culture.  Nuts.  We know that the Northern European pagan cultures that were being won to faith through the monks coming up during the fifth/sixth/seventh/eighth/ninth century . . . were shame-and-honor cultures, and one of the things they used to say in resistance to the Christian gospel was that “If Christians come in here and everybody starts forgiving everybody else, society will just fall apart, because what keeps society together is fear.”  And so the idea that you forgave your enemies and you turned the other cheek was crazy.

True forgiveness is renouncing the right to demand (or enact) judgment.  Read more→

The importance of showing up

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The above graphic comes from a church down around Dallas, but if you’re a Christian and you use social media, chances are this isn’t the first time you’ve seen that slogan.  (It may be the first time you’ve seen it used to advertise a sermon series, though.  I have to admit, that amuses me.)  I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen it, but it’s been at least twice this week.

In many cases, the people pushing this line clearly mean it in a rabbinic way, much the same as Jesus when he said, “If anyone comes to me and doesn’t hate his entire family, and even his own life, he can’t be my disciple.”  Did Jesus really want us to hate people?  No, he was using a typical rabbinic figure of speech:  the idea is that our love for God should be so great that our love for everyone else, true though it is, looks like hate by comparison.  (Given the propensity of people to declare that “If you loved me, you would . . .” and that if you refuse, you must hate them, this is no mere metaphor.)  Similarly, in this case, the point isn’t to dismiss the importance of going to church—as noted, the graphic above is for a sermon series at a large church in Dallas—but to emphasize the truth that the church is much bigger than just a place to go on Sunday mornings.  To quote from the description of that sermon series, “We are to be the church, we are to live dangerous lives for Christ, allowing ourselves to be God’s vessels for accomplishing extraordinary things.”

Though the intent is fine, this is a deeply problematic slogan, for two reasons.  Read more→

Coming up for air

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This was a rough month.  I haven’t posted because, for a variety of reasons, I’ve barely been on my computer.  The main exception to that has been time spent writing funeral services, as I had three this month (though I didn’t have the lead role in all of them).  I’ve had little energy to write anything else.

It’s not really over; I still need to do what I can to care for and support those who are grieving.  I hope there won’t be any more funerals for a while, but I can’t count on that.  Even so, I’m starting to feel my energy returning for the tasks I laid aside this month, including writing.  New Year’s is a fitting time to restart the engine.

2015 was an annus horribilis for me, but for all that, I’ve seen God’s hand at work.  Here’s hoping for gentler blessings this year.  Happy New Year, everybody.

 

Photo © 2007 Whit Welles.  License:  Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

A little practical skepticism would be useful

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Just a quick thought:  it seems to me that our nation(s) would be in much better shape if we all accepted that no matter what we do, even our best solutions will always work imperfectly and will always have downsides.  We would do well to be skeptical of the promises of politics—not just politicians, but politics.  We would do better to be skeptical of plans and programs and ideas for improvement—even our own.  No matter what we do, this world will still be broken.  Some people will be poor, and some will be exploited, and some will be abused; some will be exploiters, and some will be abusers, and some will be just flat evil.  We need to set aside our technocratic assumption that these are problems to be fixed and realize that they are people to be faced.  We need to give up the naïve idea that these “problems” can be fixed, which is really just avoidance:  we don’t want to face these people.  We don’t want to meet them honestly in their mess, we want the promise of a quick, clean, antiseptic solution that will make the mess go away where it won’t bother us.  We ought to be deeply skeptical of such promises, and even more skeptical of the desire of our hearts to believe such promises.

We won’t solve the problem of human evil by passing laws.  We won’t stop gun violence by passing laws against guns—or laws in favor of guns, for that matter.  When someone is determined to break the law, what’s one more?  That’s the easy way out, the cheap way out, the coward’s way out.  We will only make a dent in the evil of this world the hard way:  one life at a time, by knowing our neighbors and loving them as ourselves.

 

William Holgarth, The Polling, 1755.

Repentance is not a work of the Law

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Repentance is not a work of the Law.  That thought came to me today, and I’ve been mulling it all afternoon.  Repentance isn’t something we do as a duty to meet the requirements of the Law.  True repentance, which involves a change of behavior, isn’t something we can do entirely in our own strength.  Repentance doesn’t earn us forgiveness.Read more→

Until something do us part

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David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values offered an observation eighteen years ago which is just as true, and just as important, today.

To understand why the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world, go to some weddings and listen to what the brides and grooms say.  In particular, listen to the vows:  the words of mutual promise exchanged by couples during the marriage ceremony.  To a remarkable degree, marriage in America today is exactly what these newlyweds increasingly say that it is: a loving relationship of undetermined duration created of the couple, by the couple, and for the couple.

Our tendency may be to shrug off the significance of formal marriage vows, viewing them as purely ceremonial, without much impact on the “real” marriage.  Yet believing that the vow is only some words is similar to believing that the marriage certificate is only a piece of paper.  Both views are technically true, but profoundly false.  Either, when believed by the marrying couple, is probably a sign of a marriage off to a bad start.

In fact, the marriage vow is deeply connected to the marriage relationship.  The vow helps the couple to name and fashion their marriage’s innermost meaning.  The vow is foundational:  the couple’s first and most formal effort to define, and therefore understand, exactly what their marriage is.

Read more→

About that first Thanksgiving . . .

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I had been wanting to post on this yesterday, or this morning at the latest, and to do so at greater length.  Unfortunately, life did not cooperate.  Even so, I couldn’t let Thanksgiving pass without at least noting an excellent column in the Boston Globe from eight years ago titled “The Opposite of Thanksgiving.”  I also want to give my own thanks to my colleague the Rev. Winfield Casey Jones, who brought this piece to my attention.  The column is by Eve LaPlante, who puts the point starkly in her third paragraph:

This modern version of Thanksgiving would horrify the devout Pilgrims and Puritans who sailed to America in the 17th century. The holiday that gave rise to Thanksgiving—a “public day” that they observed regularly—was almost the precise opposite of today’s celebration. It was not secular, but deeply religious. At its center was not an extravagant meal, but a long fast. And its chief concern was not bounty but redemption: to examine the faults in oneself—and one’s community—with an eye toward spiritual improvement.

A thanksgiving day, as actually celebrated by 17th-century Americans, was a communal day of fasting, meditation, and supplication to God.

LaPlante centers her account on the story of Samuel Sewall, one of the nine magistrates who presided over the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.  In 1697, Sewall publicly repented of his part in those trials.  After telling his story, she closes her column with this telling comment:

The belief in repentance—and its power to improve the American experiment—has also retreated.  It’s hard to imagine, for example, that this Thursday a powerful leader will stand before the nation and admit to a disastrous mistake—or say, quoting Samuel Sewall, “I desire to take the blame and shame of it, asking your pardon, and especially desiring prayers that God would pardon that sin and all my other sins.”

I can actually imagine President George W. Bush doing so, or having done so.  He’s about the only powerful politician of whom I can say that, though.  “The belief in repentance—and its power to improve the American experiment—has . . . retreated,” and we are much the poorer for it.

 

“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth,” 1914, Jennie A. Brownscombe.  Public domain.