metapundit.net

Boxing and Me Part II

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:03:29 PST

(See the previous post if you haven't already.)

This isn't yet the answer to my question about boxing and violence. But I think it's probably worthwhile to start out with a sense of what training at an amateur boxing gym is like.

I was actually startled by the atmosphere the first few times I went to my boxing gym. In fact the first time I went in, I stood outside and took a couple of deep breaths before I sauntered in. I mean - come on - it's a boxing gym just north of the bad part of town (which is where I live), it has a grafitti-style sign painted on the wall - Bad to the Bonz - the gym name. It's between a body shop and a custom cycle shop with chromed bikes outside and a big rottweiler inside. I was prepared to be intimidated.

This wasn't just social profiling either. I've been in gyms all my life. I've never been a jock but I've always enjoyed a casual bit of weightlifting. A little excess of testosterone usually goes with the territory.

The atmosphere at this particular gym, however, is among the most friendly and open I've ever been around. Half the time there are little kids there, either training with a relative or just hanging while their parents train. And I haven't had a bad experience yet - there's no pressure to fight, nobody striking a pose, less "macho" by far than I would have expected.

And this extends to the fighters. When outsiders come to our gym to spar the sparring intensity level approaches a real match. Punches are thrown at full speed and people hurt when they take a punch. But I haven't yet seen any anger, haven't yet seen any bad sportsmanship. Even the TKO I saw ended shortly after with a fighter's embrace and mutual congratulation.

The reasons for this are eminently practical - boxing takes discipline and anger simply isn't helpful - at least in the context of sparring. The combatants enter the ring to learn something, to work on a particular skill and the pain they endure is simply the price that must be paid to learn.

I said I wasn't going to answer the question of nonviolence yet; I'm trying to keep these posts short. But my interests in nonviolence and boxing begin to merge at this point. How many self proclaimed pacifists do you know who could take a punch to the face and embrace their attacker? Me neither - yet boxers do it all the time. Could it be that pugilists have something to teach the peacemakers?

Confidence or Cowardice?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:16:13 PST

Last night wasn't as bad as last year - but I continue to be a little confounded by my Church's annual business meeting.

There wasn't anything ground-shaking on the agenda but we did modify our constitution in a couple of spots. And we did this with absolutely no discussion. While the changes weren't substantial they are part of our (very brief) constitution and merited a little discussion. If no one else was - I at least was opposed to the changes and I was curious about the ramifications they might have in terms of our practice. It was pretty clear however that leadership wasn't particularly interested in discussing the changes so we took a vote without discussion and moved on.

It occurred to me that there are two possible reasons not to talk about changes to our constitution. One possible reason is confidence - if our constitution contained inaccurate information and obviously needed to be updated (say our address changed) than we might feel confident enough that the changes are self-evidently necessary and approve them without needing to talk about them at all. And after all our modifications passed by the necessary 2/3 majority - so perhaps it was a case of justified confidence.

But I think that it is cowardice that leads us to silence. Maybe instead of confidence it's a desire not to talk about the path we're on. Maybe nobody wants to talk about this stuff because everybody knows that we're divided and we'd rather not face that fact. It might just be a case of Ignore them and maybe they'll go away

I'm not a psychic, so I can't tell you what motive predominated. But neither explanation is particularly comforting to me. I've spent most of my life out of step with my wider social circle for various reasons (fellow geeks probably understand this without explanation) and I've got that familiar out-of-sync feeling. I'm not confident about our path (Well - I am in the "Stop! You're headed the the wrong way" sense). And I've never been able to understand what you gain by avoiding talking about something that's true and there none-the-less. Whatever the reasons for the way we do our business, it always leaves me unsettled.

Update: I've had a couple of people give me feedback (via comments and email). Thanks! I had one thought I expressed via email that I thought I should drop here as well:

I was thinking reading your note how much of the past we bring to the present. I completely agree (after the fact) that I should have talked about this beforehand, rather than waiting till after. Part of it all, however, is I grew up in a Church that strongly discouraged discussing council meeting business before the meeting (I think the idea was they didn't want to encourage factionalism) but also had a strong tradition of hashing things out in the meeting. We had four council meetings a year so if something needed talking out we could usually just postpone it three months and bring it up again.

I have to say I chafed a bit when I was young at the cultural pressure against talking before the meeting. Now that I've a little more experience, I have to say that the insistence on doing the business of the Church as the Church was well founded.

I guess I express two separate concerns each year after business meeting. One concern is the decisions we make, the other is how we make our decisions. It would go a long ways towards assuaging my second concern if we met more frequently and talked more openly. Maybe I should be talking about transparency and good governance! What we need is a Brethren Tea Party movement! Yeah, that's the ticket...

Boxing and Me Part I

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:00:00 PST

So if you follow me on twitter or facebook you already know that I've been into boxing lately. For the last 4-5 months I've been going to a boxing gym in my neighborhood 2-3 times a week for a couple hours at a time. I wrap my hands, put on gloves and hit a heavy bag for a while, take part in group calisthenics, and do drills or exercises afterwards.

I started because I wanted to get into better shape - particularly aerobic shape. That's definitely happening. The first time I went I nearly passed out during the calisthenics (literally - I stood up turned pale, and had to bend over. Ice cold water on the neck brought me right round) and now I'm able to lead a class and talk while we do a few hundred jumps, a few hundred crunch variations and squats and pushups. I'm sticking with it for the exercise alone and I'm going to be in the best shape of my life by the time the year is out.

Strangely though, I'm also finding the actual boxing side of things... interesting. In fact one of my annual resolutions this year is to work my fitness and skill level up to be able to take part in full speed sparring. This despite, maybe because, I really don't like getting punched so far.

This is also despite the fact that I'm a pacifist. I don't actually like the term but that's what people would call the practical outcome of my beliefs - as a Christian I believe I am called to renounce violence. I reject violence personally as a way of accomplishing things and I cannot participate in the various forms of state violence - the military or law enforcement for example - that are widely seen as moral or ethical.

So what the heck am I doing in a boxing gym contemplating participation in a sport that is - let us not kid ourselves - basically organized violence? How can I justify punching and taking a punch as a regular activity and still say that I reject violence in any meaningful way?

Breaking with my tradition of writing single long posts I'd like to instead write several posts answering those questions. For a hint at some answers, however, you might read Chuck Klosterman's tribute to Norman Mailer.

...his central pugilistic theory, which originally ran in Esquire in October 1993: "[Boxing] arouses two of the deepest anxieties we contain. There is not only the fear of getting hurt, which is profound in more men than will admit to it, but there is the opposite panic, equally unadmitted, of hurting others." This was the inevitable thesis for all of the Hemingway-influenced boxing writers. What made the sport transcendent was its relationship with the base qualities of being alive. There is nothing contextual about hitting another man, and there is nothing metaphysical about getting punched in the face. For most of the twentieth century, people who wanted to write about primordial reality wrote about fighting. But not anymore. It seems we have finally reached the point where modern Americans have no relationship with primordial reality whatsoever.

The Next Bubble

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:55:33 PST

This is another of my hesitant recommendations - anyone hooked on Unqualified Reservations at my instigation knows what I'm talking about.

So - proceed with caution, minors without adult supervision are forbidden and management is not responsible for any sensations of discomfort you may experience - but the Misandry Bubble was a blast to read. Some people, you read and think, this might be right or wrong but it isn't on the same playing field as everyone else!

One graf among many that struck me as exactly right (emphasis mine):

Lastly, the religious 'social conservatives' who continue their empty sermonizing about the 'sanctity of marriage' while doing absolutely nothing about the divorce-incentivizing turn that the laws have taken, have been exposed for their pseudo-moral posturing and willful blindness. What they claim to be of utmost importance to them has been destroyed right under their noses, and they still are too dimwitted to comprehend why. No other interest group in America has been such a total failure at their own stated mission. To be duped into believing that a side-issue like 'gay marriage' is a mortal threat to traditional marriage, yet miss the legal changes that correlate to a rise in divorce rates (divorce being what destroys marriage, rather than a tiny number of gays), is about as egregious an oversight as an astronomer failing to be aware of the existence of the Moon.

Set aside some time and read the whole thing...

Bread in Five Minutes

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:19:27 PST

If you haven't been inspired by my previous post to give easy artisan bread a try go watch the video here - it really is that easy! I've already got several converts! Oh and a hat-tip to the meta-mom for the video!

That's a good question

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:32:32 PST

Recently a commenter on my David Wells and Ecclesiology post asked a great question. I haven't been much help so far and so I turn to you, the reader for help.

In one of your articles or blogs, you mentioned the 4 Spiritual Laws tract as reflecting the inadequate framing of the gospel message by evangelicals.

Recently, my wife and I have become involved in the "Kids Against Hunger" food relief campaign. The suggestion was made to include gospel tracts with the food portions. I was unhappy with the decision to go with "Chick" tracts.

I am contemplating creating a tract that presents the "Christus Victor" idea in a way that would be brief, clear, and universally relevant. Can you help by giving me your ideas of what the basic elements of such a tract should be? Any storyline ideas in which to embed this message? Thanks if you can.

It's a good question and my first response was that somebody with a developed visual sense and familiarity with Christus Victor theology should answer it. I referred bruce to Derek Flood over at sharktacos.com - he's got a great essay on Christus Victor that's been something I return to every so often...

I'm still looking for suggestions though - so I'd like to encourage you to leave your comments. What would a tract look like that communicated the Gospel in some more holistic form than the "If you died tonight, do you know where you would go" style approach?

My own two cents - the good news of the Gospel is not limited to eventual eternal salvation. The recognition that God looked on our condition and came to take part in it and so provide a way to enter into his life now is good news!

I think at all times in history it is possible to look at the world and recognize that it is wrong. Sin is not just personally transgressing God's will in failing to keep moral commands - it is the pervasive condition of life on this planet. Do you see injustice? Do you see war and death, starvation and oppression? And yes - even on a personal level - everyone who is honest recognizes the struggle against whatever moral creed, no matter how basic, that we espouse. We do what we do not want to do and can't see any way of escape! There ain't no rest for the wicked!

The gospel is that this reality is not all there is, that we are not condemned to be slaves to sin but God in Jesus Christ has set us free and is reconciling all things to himself. We can enter now into new life and new creation through the Grace of God, and Jesus is creating for himself a people who should embody that grace in their lives.

How can you tell all that simply and hopefully visually? Well - I'm not talented enough for simple or visual but let me suggest some themes. First clearly the New Testament narrative of Jesus needs to be central. Perhaps start with the hopelessness of life - is this all there is? Does it make sense? The reality of God as loving Father who sent his son to enter into the human condition. That Jesus faithfully followed God in all things in his life - being fully human and yet proclaiming victory over everything that is against us by forgiving sins, healing diseases, eating and drinking with us sinners and for all that he was executed.

I think it's appropriate to depict Satan as the oppressor, the villain of the piece. And from his perspective the cross is his moment of triumph when God in Jesus is beaten by the ultimate weapon of death. And yet because of his faithfulness Jesus' triumphs over death and is resurrected. Real victory is coming, in the meantime the people of God are called to live like Jesus through the Grace of God.

One movie that keeps popping up as I write this is the reality-behind-the-reality of the first Matrix movie - the feeling that this can't be all that there is.

Without the visual element (which I've been assuming - Chick tracts are basically comic books if you've never seen them) - I almost wonder about a tract that did nothing more than present Jesus. That he was God incarnate, lived a life of faithfulness that displayed the liberating power of God, died for us and invites us to follow him! No four step plan of salvation that necessarily is a distillation of theology but rather just the narrative. Here is the man whom I believe to be God - read the Gospels to find out more!

Well - my readers (both of them) doubtless have suggestions. What's the best tract you've seen? Or how would you convey the Gospel in two or three sentences?

Nobody votes on Oak Street

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:32:23 PST

I just had a couple knock on my door. They're with an independent group (I thought they said "CAL Votes") doing voter registration. I hastened to tell them my wife and I are both already registered voters but they already knew that. They had just noticed that their records indicated we were the only two on our block who had ever voted at our local precinct place. They just wanted to stop and thank us for voting! I said thank you and they moved on...

Dr. David Wells and Ecclesiology

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:07:43 PST

Our recent cross country road trip gave me the opportunity to listen to the radio a lot more than I typically would. One of the interesting things I heard was an interview with Dr. David Wells on the Lutheran oriented Issues, Etc radio show. I embedded the interview in a flash player above or visit www.issuesetc.org and download the mp3 for the session with Dr. Wells on May 27th 2009.

Dr. Wells recently wrote The Courage to be Protestant and the interview with him covered material from the book and was tellingly titled The Decline of American Evangelicalism. This is definitely not a case of agreeing with everything he said. He may be a little unfair to the emergents and (not being Lutheran) I'm not so sure that a re-emphasis of the historic creeds will restore depth and substance to the Church. It was amazing to hear someone from a substantially different perspective articulate the same indictment of the shallowness of American Evangelicalism.

I believe that the Gospel as typically presented by Evangelicalism does not adequately express the truth of the Bible. Coming from an Anabaptist perspective much of evangelical theology and typical evangelical language sounds... sounds not wrong, but lacking somehow. The whole story isn't there. And from an anabaptist perspective it doesn't take a Barna survey to be scandalized by the state of American Christendom.

As a Lutheran Dr. Wells has a different take both on the problems and potential solutions than I might. His analysis of what has happened - that Evangelicalism is defining itself out of existence is spot on. I appreciated the nod to history as well: what happens when the Church actively attempts to preach only the "core" of the Gospel, to present the "most important parts" of the Bible? Just call that core the "kerygma" instead of "the Gospel" and you give the game away - Liberal Protestantism in the west has already trod this path and lost Christianity altogether.

In my Church circles the discussion of the death of evangelicalism draws mostly puzzled looks. Evangelicalism is still the attractive and successful metropolis when compared to the Brethren ghetto of our past (in many people's minds). The emphases of Anabaptist and Brethren/Pietist thought and practice are exactly the remedies for much of what ails contemporary evangelicalism. And yet experience in Churches with a historical background in those streams seems to have inoculated modern day descendants against anabaptist ideas.

Why is no one interested in being Brethren for today? To reconsider what we know about the New Testament Church, to reflect on the successes and errors of our own history and other restorationists and to attempt to build new models today that embody for our time and place the Biblical picture of Community, Cross, and New Creation. I'm disheartened that the only alternatives appear to be a pursuit of contemporary models that lead to the death of New Testament Christianity or an adherance to denominational history and practice that is so scrupulous it manages to miss the heart of the tradition it espouses.

So I'm discouraged and looking for inspiration. Got any good ideas? Drop em in the comments below...

Whitney III

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:54:06 PST

Well - it's time for the annual Whitney update again.

Unlike last year we actually got to hike, and unlike two years ago I wasn't miserable the whole time.

Actually I had a pretty good time. Justin and I went with the same plan as last year: we drove up to Sonora Pass and hiked a little, had an excellent dinner of broiled steak, corn on the cob and garlic bread and kicked back listening to the Giants game on the radio (Jonathan Sanchez throwing a no-hitter, no less!). The sunset was beautiful but it got ridiculously windy and the night was less than restful than it might have been.

We rose early in the morning and took a pair of PCL hikers (John and Valerie from Austin Texas IIRC) down to Bridgeport with us - it was interesting hearing their stories and confirmed that I'm not cut out for a thousand mile hike...

After a stop to hike around Convict Lake we arrived at Whitney Portal and set up camp to relax for a few hours.

We hit the trailhead before midnight (after running a bear off who was nosing around our campsite) and headed up.

Night hiking by the light of our headlamps and the moon was definitely relaxing. We booked up to Outpost Camp in good time and made it all the way up to Trail Camp before I really started to feel fatigue. At Trail Camp we filtered some water and then huddled among the boulders out of the wind to try and rub some feeling back into our hands. I changed shirts - my jacket and shirt were soaked with sweat and severely chilling me in the mountain breezes.

We headed up the switchbacks and I braced myself - this is where I felt absolutely miserable the last time we summitted Whitney. The first thirty or so switchbacks went by without a break, however, and it wasn't really till I got to about switchback 80 that I started to feel bad. We still managed to keep up a decent pace but I was dizzy and increasingly sleepy - even when the sun rose on us I had the urge to walk with my eyes closed (not a safe proposition) and actually lay down on a rock and slept for five minutes once we reached the top of the switchbacks. The crest trail, as before, felt interminably long but I didn't really run out of gas till we hit the back of the peak itself. There was a lengthy traverse (a hundred yards at least) of a snow field to navigate and then the climb through the boulders up the backside of the mountain. I was "almost there" for about twenty minutes before I finally crested and could see the cabin at the top.

It took us about 8.5 hours from Whitney Portal Store to the top.

Coming down was about the same as last time - it was weird to see trail in daylight that I couldn't remember because we had ascended in the dark. It also felt incredibly long coming down - the hiking poles I brought along had already been worthwhile to help me find my footing in the dark and to traverse the frozen snow. They probably protected my body the most on the descent, however, cushioning some of the impact as we booked it down the trail and back down to civilization.

This was the last annual Whitney trip I think. It takes a lot of time due to the drive time and the need to acclimate before starting - it's a squeeze to fit it in three days - and the hike and view aren't intrinsically that rewarding.

Future hiking may be more in the familiar Sonoran Sierra's in places we can bring the family and enjoy a little more... If that was my last Whitney attempt I'm glad to have finished on an up note!

A Revelation in Bread

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:00:00 PST

I kid you not.

Right now I'm finishing up a glass of red wine and the last crumbs of a slice of bread slathered in hummus. The bread is from a good artisan-style loaf with a dense texture and a chewy crust. It holds together well enough to have made excellent slices of toast to contain a BLT. It looks a lot like the loaves I pay four dollars for at the farmers market or grocery. But I made it. And it only took about 10 minutes.

Well I feel like an informercial pitchman here, but I'm ridiculously enthusiastic about this bread. I'm a passable cook but I've never been a baker - in fact among my new year's resolution was to put in what I assumed would be the effort required to learn to make a decent french bread. Recently I stumbled over a pointer to an article at Mother Earth News entitled Five Minutes A Day for Fresh Baked Bread. The article explains a technique based on a book by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois which I intend to buy. Fortunately the article explains the technique - basically you mix an extremely wet dough, let it rise at room temperature and then refrigerate it. When you want to make a loaf you pinch off an appropriate amount, tuck it a little (no kneading) and let it rise, than bake at high temperature with a steam pan in the oven. It's easy, and it's good.

I have not yet tried the other recipes and I'm waiting to see how my stored dough matures - It's kept without an airtight cover and is supposed to take on wild yeast flavors and become more sour with age - up to two weeks. Even if it stays sweet, however, I'm personally delighted to have found a ridiculously easy way to make high quality artisan bread.

What a long strange trip it's been

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:37:06 PST

Well, I'm back. Okay - so you didn't actually notice that I've been gone but I spent the middle part of the past month driving to Indiana and back for my brother's wedding (my mom put up some pictures).

The wedding was fun. Jeshua is a musician (currently headed for his doctorate in choral conducting) so the music was fantastic and even the congregational singing was superb! The service as was really nice and it was a good time to reconnect with some of the family from the east as well. After the wedding we enjoyed a few days in Ohio visiting family and friends. Unfortunately our daughters got sick so the trip back home felt a lot longer than it actually was - and we're not quite back up to health yet. Ugh... One member of the family or another has been throwing up for most of the lat two weeks; I'm ready for all of us to be back to health.

In the meantime (as I can find time) I have an interesting radio show to comment on, a hike review (gearing up for Whitney again) and an absolute revelation in bread. Stay tuned...

Atonement Theology

Mon, 25 May 2009 16:50:13 PST

I've been interested in the Atonement for a long time. Basic to Christian belief is the idea that because Christ died, my sins are forgiven and I am reconciled to God. How exactly this occurs is not spelled out - and the New Testament uses different metaphors to describe the work of atonement.

Most modern evangelical thought has tended to emphasis just one of these metaphors. For many evangelical Christians atonement = Penal Substitution. The famous Four Spiritual Laws tract explains that sin separates man from God and "... that God has bridged the gulf which separates us from Him by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in our place to pay the penalty for our sins."

This is the Judicial metaphor and it is usually tightly connected to the concept of Justification: sin is transgression of God's moral law, God as Judge demands the penalty of death (Romans 6:23 the wages of sin is death) and Jesus offers his own death as satisfaction of the penalty guilty humanity owes. God as Judge than dismisses the charges against us since the penalty has been paid in full.

I didn't grow up opposed to the idea of Penal Substitution, it just always seemed ... insufficient. If Penal Substitution is the wholly sufficient explanation for our atonement and justification, what are we to do with Scriptures like

Hebrews 2:14-15
14Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 15And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Colossians 2:13
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Clearly these passages are not using the sort of language that fits into a judicial model. But I didn't know exactly what to make of them until I bumped into the term Christus Victor. Thanks to an article by Derek Flood at sharktacos.com (very highly recommended) I began to have a vocabulary to identify the drama described in Scriptures where the Atonement is the victory of Jesus through his death and resurrection over the powers that oppress us and keep us separated from God. Christ the Victor!

The result for me of identifying the Christus Victor model in the New Testament hasn't been to challenge the Penal Substitution model as much as to emphasize the mystery at the heart of the atonement cannot be neatly packaged - the New Testament has a variety of models and metaphors to describe the atonement and each has it's contributions to make to our understanding and experience of the Christian life. I've several times done a "multiple metaphors of the atonement" style class or Biblestudy - looking at the Priestly/Sacrificicial, Financial/Ransom, Juridical/Justification, and Military/Victory metaphors for the atonement. But recent reading has left me wondering if perhaps the language we use to understand the atonement plays a decisive more role in determining our life in Christ.

I recently got around to reading Christus Victor - the 1931 work by Gustaf Aulen who coined the term. Christus Victor is basically a polemic survey of the various theological takes on the atonement with the assertion that the chief view of the atonement in the New Testament and Patristic writings has been lost since Anselm and Abelard and we've been left with the "objective" and "subjective" theories of atonement presented as the only choices. (briefly: "objective" atonement sees the passion as directed towards God; Penal Substitution or Satisfaction falls under this rubric. "Subjective" theories tend to see the atonement as aimed at humanity; the "Moral Influence" theory of atonement which sees Jesus sinless death as example of God's love to us. Presented with those two choices, of course, evangelicals rightly tend to gravitate towards the Objective theories. Aulen thinks this is a false choice and calls the narrative/dramatic account of victory over opposing powers to earn humanity's freedom from sin, death and hell the "Classic Theory" of atonement.)

I can't do justice to Aulen's arguments in this space (and really - if you're interested you should just go read the essay at sharktacos). Most interesting to me, however, were the observations that over and against Penal Substitution, Christus Victor takes into account the enemy (Satisfaction, for instance, needs no devil; God is sinned against, God demands Payment for sin), the incarnation and Jesus life of obedience, and the resurrection itself which is the capstone of Christ's Victory but seems somewhat inessential (besides being a note of Divine approval) in most atonement theology. It also suceeds in capturing the ambivalent nature of the operation of the Law in Scripture - blessed because it is true but ultimately against us and our opponent (among the powers defeated by Christ) because it cannot lead us into fellowship with God. Penal Substitution, despite being strongly associated with the reformation takes a legalistic view in which the Law's demands are immutable and cannot be broken - God will not forgive us without satisfying the demands of the Law. I have always wondered what the Penal Substitutionary model makes of Jesus' profligacy in forgiveness of sins. To the paralytic, the woman caught in adultery, the prostitute who washed Jesus feet with her tears, the thief on cross - Jesus extends forgiveness of sins without worrying about the demands of the Law.

Aulen also takes an interesting tour from the Patristic Fathers, through Medieval commentators and onto the Reformation, arguing most interestingly that Luther's atonement theory was mostly of the "Classic" type though largely misunderstood by his contemporaries and heirs. The historical treatment was mostly new to me (I haven't read much Anselm or Abelard. or Luther, for that matter) and a fairly convincing explanation of how penal substitution grew out of a medieval legal backdrop (concepts like penance and indulgences fit right into the western concept of justice).

Fresh on the heels of Christus Victor I got around to reading a gift from my sister-in-law: Joel B. Green and Mark Baker's Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (Joel is one of her Professors at Fuller). Recovering the Scandal... is a little less straightforward - in part it is also a critique of the dominant Penal Substitution model but it's purpose is not so much to replace it with another model as it is to emphasise the necessity and desirability of having multiple models for the atonement.

Green & Baker also provide a historical tour of atonement theology that covers some of the same ground. They review the language of the New Testament in regards to salvation and atonement and agree with Aulen that the Christus Victor best characterizes the Patristic writings (with a few variations). They also cover Anselm and Abelard and use Princeton Seminarian Charles Hodges as an expounder of Penal Substitution from the 20th century. Most interestingly, however, they move from a critique of existing models to relating several attempts at contextualizing the Good News of Christ's atoning work in models that communicate to a particular.

The Penal Substitution Model makes assumptions about the concepts of justice, punishment, guilt, and satisfaction that are only coherent within western cultural understandings. In Japan, for example, the judiciary operates under a shame/alienation framework that seems strange to western minds. Justice, in the west, is exemplified by the blind (and therefore impartial) goddess Justicia with scales and sword in either hand. Japanese culture as related by Norman Kraus, a missionary teaching theology in Japan in the early 80's, sees justice as the wise decision made by judges having taken into account the context and rendering the decision that will best preserve relationships in the community. Because shame, rather than guilt, is the primary cultural deterrent the ideas of forgiveness and propitiation as communicated by Penal Substitution do not resonate with Japanese culture.

Clearly Biblical truths should not be cast aside in order to conform to human culture. As Green & Baker point out, however, emphasizing the sense of sin as alienation from God and the atonement as Jesus entering into shame and dishonor in order to reconcile and restore us to God not only communicated meaningfully within Japanese contexts, it may also be closer to the scriptural depiction of the atonement as well! After all, the cultures in which the texts of the Old and New Testaments were written were also shame/honor cultures as well.

While I found the other attempts at contextualizing the meaning of the Atonement less successful, it was stimulating to think about how we can best communicate the mystery of the work of Christ in comprehensible ways. All metaphors break down at some point (if Christ effected a Ransom, to whom was the price paid? If it was Satisfaction of the Law's demands is God bound by the Law? Or did Jesus come to save us from God?) All we can do is resort to narrative and metaphor to explain the atonement. Not every metaphor is equally powerful or explicative but some do have the virtue of communicating in the "native language", so to speak, of a particular cultural group (I've been thinking, for instance, about Jesus as Trickster to communicate to the hacker/geek subculture I partially inhabit. The trickster (in the jungian archetype sense) is much revered in hacker culture (as embodied by words like "hack"). And Jesus' subversive relationship to the religious/political power structure of His day as well as the unexpected quality of His victory (achieved by submission to torture and death) and his upside-down Kingdom could communicate within this particular subculture in ways communication along the Penal Substitution lines cannot. In fact - following Gregory of Nyssa's imagery of Christ as a baited hook proffered to Evil, the Godhead concealed in humanity, Life swallowed by death which cannot contain it - the act of the Atonement might be classified as a clever hack. This will doubtless be seen as a sacrilegious characterization outside of hacker circles.

Besides being encouraged to think about how to think about the atonement Recovering the Scandal... also had the salutary effect of challenging my acceptance of the exclusive use of Penal Substitution language. About halfway through the book I became increasingly aware of my uncomfortableness with their polemic against Penal Substitution. For example:

Hodge's penal substitution model takes sin very seriously in that it presents sin as a huge barrier between God and humans. Yet it is a limited concept of sin that portrays it only in terms of moral failure or transgression of a law. Even within that concept of sin, however, the model does not intersect with the day-to-day reality of actual people. Describing the atonement as a legal transaction within the Godhead removes it from the historical world in which we live and leaves it unconnected to personal or social reconciliation. And in actuality it only addresses our reconciliation with God at an abstract level. That is to say, it is so objective, so outside of us (and in a sense outside of God) that what changes through the cross is a legal ruling. According to the logic of the model, an individual could be saved through penal substitution without experiencing a fundamental reorientation of his or her life.

Ethically this model has little to offer
p149

Should we be doing theology on this sort of ends-oriented basis? Surely as exegetes the question to grapple with is "what does the text communicate", not "how will this work out". And it is undeniable that the concept of Satisfaction is in the Bible and in places hints at a Penal understanding (Isaiah 53, for example). It wasn't until I had moved on to other reading that I realized I had the ends-analysis exactly backwards.

J. Denny Weaver, contributing to Anabaptist Currents analyzed the ways in which atonement theology contributes (or fails) to ecclesiology. One key statement stuck out to me:

The doctrine of substitutionary atonement allows the same kind of substitution to occur in the area of theology. Defining salvation in terms of escape from guilt and deserved penalty - a legal transaction with God - provides a theological way to talk about salvation apart from considerations of discipleship, nonresistance, and love of enemies. It thus enables and reinforces an understanding of salvation that is separate from ethics.
p35, The Church, Pietism and Nonresistance

Perhaps my question needs to be reversed. Is it possible that the Church in the West has selected Penal Substitution as the primary means of understanding the atonement precisely because it does lack an ethical dimension? Jesus came to preach the Kingdom of God the synoptic Gospels agree, and yet western Churches and western theology sees the Kingdom and discipleship as an optional add-on (at best) to the core message of Salvation (always understood in a juridical sense). Salvation as a legal transaction does allow us to do away with or render optional ecclesiology, discipleship, and ethics. But for the purposes of much of the Church this has been a feature, not a bug, which allows a Christianity neutered down to become a private transaction which need not affect the present.

Phrased like that it seems to me that a primary task of recovering the New Testament vision of the Christian life is to reject with prejudice exclusive claims for penal substitution and assert the diversity of Biblical language and atonement models (with all their implications for salvation).

Update: Fixed the spelling of Joel Green's name - thanks to nothing_to_say who may now deign to comment, if she's not to busy having coffee with Joel :)

Reorganization

Sat, 23 May 2009 09:24:08 PST

You may notice (if you're visiting the site) that things are moved about. New menu entries appear, old ones disappear - but fear not! All the great blog content you've come to expect from the virtual pen of the metapundit is still here - it's just been dusted off and moved around a bit.

As threatened a bit ago I've split my blog up into two separate streams: a Tech Only Blog and a personal blog. If you're visiting the old url or subscribed to the old RSS feeds than things will continue to just work, but if you'd rather not hear Baypiggies reports and rants about PHP you can now subscribe to the personal RSS feed and not get any of the tech stuff. And of course you can subscribe to the Tech-Only RSS feed if my theological ramblings are starting to annoy you...

Do poke around - I've put up an essays section to link to the longer writing I've done and I'll try to keep it updated as I write more. I've also got some UI changes in the works to make it easier to find related content...

Do not adjust your set...

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:27:34 PST

...regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.

It's been a tough week around the meta-homestead. Between head gaskets and a popular case of the flu there hasn't been much of a chance to catch a breath, much less blog... Let's put it this way - I've had 1 hour of sleep in the last 40 hours, walked a couple miles back and forth taking my replacement vehicle to the shop to get smogged... I'm tired and it's still been the best and most productive day I've had in a week.

Ah well! That's life sometimes - and when I can catch a breath I'll get moving on my blog reorg and pump out the posts that are percolating right now...

Random Linkage

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:07:00 PST

One of the cool things about writing my blog has been discovering interesting people by looking at who's linked to me. Recently I got a couple hits from mennodiscuss.com - if you already know what that stands for you'll probably find it interesting. Name aside - it a forum site for discussion among Mennonites, Brethren, Quakers, ex-Hofers, Amish, and one Orthodox (just to list the affiliations I've seen). If you're interested in Anabaptist topics head on over...

The other link I've been meaning to post for some time - I had a conversation about homosexuality and the response of the Church with Jason and Isaac over at rustyparts.com (read 'em - they make me think) and while searching for an author they recommended I stumbled upon a completely unrelated essay about sexuality and Christianity. I can't adequately summarise the arguments in this philosophical essay - I can only say that All Sexed Up: Is There a Way Out of Chastity, Marriage, and the Christian Sex Cult? is a way better article than it's title might lead you to think! And I'll quote the recommendations at the end so you get some of the flavor (emphasis not in original):

As some possible ways out of the contemporary Christian sex cult, I propose a few very simple practices of freedom. First, form friendships in which you speak more about imitating Christ, wherein you discuss your vocation, feeding the hungry, caring for orphans, challenging each other toward economic simplicity, and your redemptive vision for the world than you do about the topic of sex.
By this I mean to say, trade in your accountability partner for a friend who will challenge you to imitate Christ in your life by the way you spend your money, the job that you take and the day to day interactions you have with others. Although sex will continue to factor into your discussions from time to time, refuse to make sexual confession the central reason for meeting together but more often concentrate each other on affirming the imitation of Christ. Engage in holistic forms of confession as well as affirmation that allow for failure and are not bound simply to a focus on chastity.
Second, refuse to be organized in the church along sexual lines by forming deep friendships outside of your sexual category. Singles should get to know married folk; women should befriend men; seniors should befriend youths; heterosexuals should get to know homosexuals.
Thirdly, speak more openly about marriage and refuse any formulation of chastity or virginity based upon marriage. Reject the attempt to make marriage the ideal for Christian living, and refuse to focus too much attention on the family. That is to say, do not allow your notions of virginity and chastity to be defined as preparation for marriage or as purified holding stations for an eventual spouse, for this is to disavow virginity and chastity from any intelligible Christian formulation.
One does not remain a virgin in Christianity in order to keep oneself pure for his or her eventual spouse, but virginity and chastity are always defined in Christianity as functions of integrity toward one�s goal of imitating Christ.
And finally, refuse to acknowledge liberation as a �coming out� because this implies that one�s essential sexual nature must be recognized. Liberty is always the freedom to love one�s neighbor, not to sleep with her or him as an expression of who one really is.
Both Paul and Christ refuse to acknowledge any essential nature, especially a sexual nature, other than the new human nature given in the resurrected Christ that gathers the community of his followers in friendship.
These practices, I believe, may begin to lead us out of the contemporary understanding of ourselves as essentially sexual beings. They may lead us in a new direction toward an evangelical asceticism that reclaims the imitation of Christ as a complete form of life. Each of these is only a beginning, but they are an important beginning for finding our way out of the worship of sex.

Meta-Post

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:29:51 PST

If you're an rss-only reader you may not have noticed that metapundit.net has been sporting a comments section for some time now. Of course you might be pardoned for not seeing them even if you visit the site; the little "zero comments" links at the bottom of each article look lonely and insignificant and the eye just seems to skip over it.

Lately, however, there has been a little buzzing in the comments. I see a veritable discussion breaking out on some of my theological posts. And if you haven't yet contributed - here is your opportunity to voice your opinion about the future of metapundit.net.

I've been a very irregular blogger and I've been wondering about the causes (besides laziness) of my sporadic output. At least one issue for me is a problem with one of the fundamental rules of good writing. What did your 9th grade teacher tell you? Know your audience.

I have two distince voices and two distinct audiences. I regularly write technical posts about programming. I also sometimes write about theology and Christianity.

I always seem to worry that whatever I write is boring half my readers to tears. I haven't read many Geek-blogs with a side of theology; most tend to be mostly about technology with occasional theological posts (Gerv's Hacking for Christ is an excellent example of the genre).

I'm not inclined to cut back on my theological posting (in fact that's the area I'm most motivated in right now) nor am I likely to cut back on any tech ranting I may need to get out of my system. And I haven't figured out at all what to do on my professional site so I've barely blogged there at all.

So I'm thinking about splitting up my blog - having a tech blog and a separate theology blog both hosted at metapundit.net.

This is your opportunity to weigh in - always wished I'd have separate RSS feeds? Like the diversity of posts? Want to point out that nobody really does the "two blogs, one author, one domain" thing? (I already know that last one...) Or perhaps you have another suggestion entirely! Feel free to fire away.

A Provocation

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:17:16 PST

Ok - multiple choice quiz time: Who said the following:

Faith is God's work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn't stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever. He stumbles around and looks for faith and good works, even though he does not know what faith or good works are. Yet he gossips and chatters about faith and good works with many words.

Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace. Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire!

Was it:
A) Martin Luther
B) John Wesley
C) Menno Simons

All right - what sort of works-righteousness legalist said all that stuff? He sure lacked the sophistication to separate justification and sanctification properly - as we know the one has nothing, nothing to do with the other!

Well that might be a bit too strong - but I have heard many times over the past few years that Justification (a Christian's positional salvation) is secure no matter what the state of their Sanctification (their personal salvation manifested in a changed life). Any weakening of this position tends to be seen as a move towards works-righteousness - the idea that we earn our salvation by our good works rather than accepting it as the free gift by grace through faith that it is.

It should cause one to pause, then, to realise that the works-righteousness preacher above is none other than the famous proponent of Grace alone through Faith alone - Martin Luther, writing in his preface to the Epistle to the Romans. It's hard to make the case that Luther was insufficiently radical in his understanding of grace and faith and it is basically Luther's understanding of Romans particularly that still shapes most of Evangelicalism's understandings of faith, grace, and salvation.

John Wesley's conversion came while listening to a reading of Luther's preface to Romans. Wesley is the great revivalist of Methodism - and for most people Lutheranism and Methodism would seem to occupy opposite poles in their understanding of salvation and good works. And yet I suspect that most would identify the quote with Wesley's (or worse! - the Anabaptist) side of the theological continuum.

And that is precisely my provocation. If you see Martin Luther's comments as betraying the Sola's of the reformation, as failing to understand the nature of salvation, where does that place you within historic Christian thought?

Internet Monk

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:16:39 PST

One of the my long-admired Christian bloggers (the Internet Monk) has hit the bigtime with an article in the Christian Science Monitor titled The Coming Evangelical Collapse. Since the article was published I've seen links on social networking sites like Digg and Reddit, he's been linked by religious/media bloggers (Get Religion, etc) and I think he's been linked by Drudge. I'm glad to see IMonk get some media attention and wish him well...

Part of the reason for all the hoopla is the release of the latest American Religious Identification Survey results which indicate declining religious affiliation pretty much across the Christian spectrum. Along with the discussion of the results (see this post for a good highlight of the results) the media is looking for analysis. Internet Monk is not a newcomer to the Evangelicaldom-is-dying bus and lists seven reasons for the decline in Evangelicalism in the Christian Science Monitor article. I don't agree with all of his predictions but observe many of the same reasons for decline that he points to. Wonder why I'm not wildly enthusiastic about attempts to re-pattern my Church on what was trendy 20 years ago in the Evangelical world? Because I'm not optimistic that the long term (or even short term) effects will be positive spiritually... Point number two resonates with me, but read the whole thing:

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

A Modest Report

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:36:43 PST

Last night my Church voted to make the wearing of pants optional for membership and communion.

I have to confess I didn't see this coming. Wearing pants isn't really an issue near and dear to my heart - I wear them and see wearing pants as an issue the Bible speaks to under the general heading of modesty but I recognise that some Christians don't wear pants. Even in my congregation there has been some varied practice lately - but I assumed the Church as a whole was content to leave the constitution with the minimal requirement that people wear pants to weekly Church services and communion. Not so...

The meeting started off with some people expressing appreciation for the tradition our Church has of wearing pants. It was acknowledged that this makes us different from some - but that the difference was based in our desire to follow Jesus and should be embraced.

I spoke after a while - I wanted to challenge the congregation to wrestle with the issue of pants by turning to Scripture. I feel strongly that the inability of people on both sides of the issue to articulate their position about pants with regards to the Bible indicates our spiritual weakness as "Biblical Authority" becomes a principle we claim to subscribe to but don't actually practice. Being pro-tradition or anti-tradition isn't really the point.

I also shared that I knew when I became a member three years ago that the most important issue confronting our congregation was the issue of change and direction. What will we be like as a congregation in 5 years or 10 years? I knew when I joined that the congregation was moving in a particular direction - and as I've grown to know the people in the congregation better that impression has been confirmed. Everybody knows we're moving in a particular direction (some are happy about that and others less so!) but we don't talk in any sort of congregational fashion about this trend (and pants are only one small data point on the trendline).

Our congregation has already lost (for practical purposes) much of New Testament teaching about separation from the world, about the dangers involved in pursuing money, status, and things. We will lose (I predicted) particular teachings about nonresistance and marriage that are found in Scripture but not common among much of Christianity. We have an impoverished ecclesiology that no longer reflects the full message of the New Testament about the Church that has best been expressed in anabaptism and other "Believer's Church" traditions.

All those issues are more important to me than the relatively minor issue of whether we require communicants to wear pants. I see us as drifting away from Biblical authority, of losing many of the truths of the Bible as our minds are increasingly shaped by our culture and we coast on the cultural capital of previous teaching and instruction. My comments were echoed by a few, but most spoke in favor of the change.

Many shared their feelings of exclusion - that because they would not wear pants they are not allowed to take communion or that their spouse does not belong to the Church because of the issue of pants. How can we judge by looking at the outside when God sees the heart? How can we exclude simply based on an article of clothing?

Others felt that while it is true that the practice of the congregation regarding wearing pants has shifted, this shift represents maturity and growth. To focus more on Christ and less on externals is not drifting but maturing, and the relatively minor issue of whether to wear pants to communion is not something the Church should be mandating. Many expressed support for the principle behind wearing pants and even encouraged those who feel so lead to wear pants as much as they want.

One younger brother stood up to offer the view that he didn't understand the fuss over pants. His experience is that people are not put off by the requirement to put on a pair of pants to come to Church or take communion. That's not a huge requirement after all!

</satire>

I can't remember, now, all the comments that were made. I was saddened (though not suprised) to see us move in this direction. It seemed to me that my challenge to wrestle together on the basis of scripture was ignored - most of the comments could have applied just as well to the exclusionary effects of our beliefs about divorce and remarriage. They even sounded familiar to anyone who has followed the Prop 8/Gay Marriage debate here in California. While I appreciated the heart and concern of many who spoke out in favor of the change to our Church Constitution, I can't help feeling that the grounds of the debate, the appeals to tolerance and exclusion and judgement apart from the teachings of Scripture confirmed my concerns.

OK: just to reassure those who might not be in on the joke - the report above is satirical. My Church didn't really discuss pants and, just for the record, if you visit us PLEASE WEAR CLOTHES!

Ahem. The actual issue we discussed was different, but the arguments I reported are pretty much the same, and my own comments in particular are as accurate as memory allows. One thing I did say that I didn't include in the report was to commit to communicating more with my congregation and encouraging us to communicate more honestly as a body.

This blog needs to play a role in that process - so keep your eyes peeled for changes in this space. And if you're one of my tech readers (probably wondering what the heck I'm talking about) yeah - I've got something for you too...

Yes Exactly

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 01:55:05 PST

I can only echo the Internet Monk's comment on this excerpt: "Exactly."

No I take that back - I can say more. I enjoy the mocking of preaching based on relevance and fads. I especially enjoy the mocking of Christless preaching - I'm with IMonk that preaching that doesn't include Jesus is preaching in vain. I also think that the laugh line ("I have no problem with topical preaching, as long as it's done exegetically") should be taken seriously - topical preaching should be done with an emphasis on "What does scripture teach us about this?"

What I appreciate most however is the last few lines. Matt Chandler believes in preaching the Gospel to Christians - but the Gospel is not limited to "believe in Jesus and you won't go to hell when you die"!

By the cross of Christ socially I have been set free from the sin of arrogant hierarchy seeking and saved to humility and seeking the lower seat. That in Christ and His cross materially I have been set free from grasping and finding my identity in things and saved to using God's creation properly and giving away money and things to advance his Kingdom further.

Do you recognise that as the Gospel? This is the message of Jesus (who spent his 3 years of active ministry "proclaiming the Good News") and yet I daresay it has an exotic quality to the ears of many Christians.

Purismas Creek Redwoods Hiking

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:52:40 PST

I went hiking for the first time in the Purismas Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve a couple of weekends ago.

My Whitney hiking buddy was in the mood to do some Coastal hiking and we had a great day together. Purismas Creek has lots of looping trails - we found one of the longer loops at 13.5 miles with a couple thousand vertical feet of climb and burned through it - at the trailhead before 8AM and sipping a pint at a microbrewery in Half Moon bay by 2:30PM.

This was a great hike if you just want a relaxing day of strolling through Redwood forests. Lots of moss, ferns, and everything started out dripping wet from the morning mist.

Occasionally the sun broke through the forest but until we made it to the "top" of Bald Knob we were mostly in the shade.

As we headed up the ridge however we got views of the surrounding hills and the ocean to the west.

Unlike Whitney, this isn't a trophy hike. Also unlike Whitney I had a great time enjoying the flora (and even a little fauna - we saw deer, quail, and of course banana slugs). With "hikes" ranging from 0.6 wheelchair accessible paved path to 15 miles through the loops, this seems like a great place to have a relaxing day hike.

And Now a Word from Our Sponsors

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:30:56 PST

Just kidding.

Actually I've been meaning to promote Big Wolfe Coffee on my blog for some time and haven't gotten around to it yet...

People who know me personally know that I take my coffee seriously. I've been hand roasting my own coffee since 2006 and typically fill up my thermos at the beginning of each morning with freshly roasted coffee made with my aeropress and hotpot (which allows me to control the time and temperature of brewing). I've been buying green coffee beans from Sweet Maria's in Oakland but have recently switched to buying from Big Wolfe Coffee.

Justin, the co-proprieter) is a friend of mine and fellow coffee fanatic. Some of the differences between Justin and I can be observed (as I have been fond of remarking lately) by noting that three years after I started I still roast coffee in a skillet in 6oz lots, judging degree of roast by smell and sight, and buy my coffee 10-20lbs at a time. Justin on the other hand has moved up to 120lb bags and I was recently privileged to witness his self-designed roaster in action that can easily handle 5 pound lots. Seriously, Justin and his dad may have built the most cost effective (quality/$) roaster in the world. And the coffee they turn out is pretty special - I got to cup some of the lots from they tested from wholesalers and it was all pretty good stuff; but the Sumatra they currently have on offer is exceptional. If you're interested in moving up to gourmet coffee (still at Starbucks prices) and live in the Modesto area you should check out their website and give them a call.

Update: Fixed the links. Stupid firefox plugin...

Prop 8, Two Views

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:13:29 PST

You can go here to see "Prop 8 - the Musical" if you really crave a glimpse of minor celebrities (Neil "Doogie Howser" Patrick Harris and Jack Black, etc) singing and dancing about Prop. 8. It's a propaganda piece in which the dour conservatives and homophobic blacks oppose the colorful gays until Jesus (Jack Black) shows up to teach them that the Bible says a lot of things (like don't eat shrimp cocktail^*). Fortunately the colourless ones realise that gay marriage might lead to higher revenues and sales so at least there's a happy ending as everybody realises gay marriage is as American as apple pie...

I only mention this to share my immediate reaction:
<Bentsen Voice>
Jack Black, I know Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is a friend of mine. Jack, you're no Jesus Christ!
</Bentsen Voice>

On a more serious note you can read Banned in Boston, a column in which Maggie Gallagher explores various legal experts' opinions on some of the upcoming conflicts between the push for gay rights and existing religious rights. Essentially any avenue in which religious organizations and Churches offer services of some kind (eg religious schools, homeless shelters or other charitable institutions, marital counseling, sports leagues, Vacation Bible School, etc) provides a point of public interaction that may allow the government to compel the organization to support and recognise gay marriage or lose their tax exempt service (at best) or be shut down (as in the case of Catholic Charities adoption services in Boston). The danger that creating new rights based on sexual behaviour poses to existing constitutional rights is real - and poses a powerful argument for resolving actual difficulties experienced by gay couples (various issues of legal access) via new legal structures rather than by redefining the existing legal/social structure of marriage. Hat tip to the meta-dad for this story, btw.

^* I've heard this enough that it's starting to annoy me. Ok, everybody knows Leviticus prohibits shellfish. But it's a cheap shot (and particularly unworthy of the the Rev Debra Brady, who knows better). Anybody who has even a "Bible For Dummies" understanding of the relationship between what Christians call the Old Testament and New Testament understands why that's not a particularly impressive argument... The Bible also gives instruction for bringing your sacrifices yearly to the Temple and yet nobody accuses Christians of hypocrisy for not doing so.

Advent, Advent, a Candle Burns

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:31:59 PST

After seeing this story at GetReligion about how Advent is becoming trendy among evangelicals I am happy to report that this trend is old in certain circles. Advent (the 4 week season of anticipation before Christmas day) was a tradition in my family growing up - and now my kids are enjoying it as well.

Claire says "I get to play with fire!"

But fortunately Elizabeth is here to take charge...

I should note that I didn't have either the traditional candles or a circular candle holder on which to construct a wreath. I did have a bag of crayon stubbies, however, so we had a crafts day and made "stained glass" (crayon shavings melted between bits of waxed paper) to cover the cardboard box serving as candle holder and also melted down some pink and purple stubs to dip our white candles in... Now each night the girls take turns opening the day's square on the advent calendar, reading the Bible verse, and lighting the appropriate number of candles. After a few carols we sing the advent song:

Advent, Advent, a candle burns
Advent, Advent, a candle burns
First one, then two, then three, then four
then stands the Christ Child at the Door

A Humanist Case for Prop 8

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:42:23 PST

It's been interesting to me as I've followed the conversation around Prop 8 to note the assumptions of people both pro and con.

Both sides seem to assume that only religious reasons could cause one to oppose gay marriage. (Many aren't that generous - only bigotry and animus, they insist, could inspire one to oppose extending equal civil rights to all.) News coverage has seemed to follow in this vein. My local paper, The Modesto Bee, has repeatedly explored the religious pro and con Prop 8 positions and it's most prominent article on Prop 8 (if I recall correctly) was this pair or articles (pro and con) that interviewed local supporters and opponents of Prop 8. Almost all the comments focused on religious justifications for the position espoused and four of the locals interviewed were religious officials of some kind.

I'm not actually all that interested in the religious arguments against gay marriage. While I certainly have my opinions and am comfortable basing my own decisions on my theological preconceptions I don't expect my fellow citizens who do not share my religious beliefs to be particularly impressed by religious arguments. In fact I'd say that it is imperative for Christians who want to make an argument against gay marriage to make it in other than theological terms.

To be clear - this isn't because I think religion or religious arguments should be banned from the public square. Far from it! I just think if Christians can make no other arguments than religious ones (and not all Christians can agree on the religious arguments) than they are unlikely to have much impact on public discourse.

So I've been thinking about Prop 8 from a humanist perspective. Humanism is has a wide range of meanings - from a specific reference to the neo-classical revival of the renaissance era (I'm working through a bio of Erasmus right now) to modern day humanism which frequently has an explicit reason-against-religion flavor to it - but I have in mind here the humanist ideals of rationality and appeals to "universal" ethics as embodied in the traditions of western civilization.

So Prop 8 would define marriage as a legal institution available only to opposite gendered partners, overturning the recent court decision that opened marriage to same gendered partners. Why might I want to support or oppose this idea? What might its benefits and harms be?

I suppose I should start with me personally. As an individual Prop 8 neither helps nor harms me personally. I am already married and not by nature attracted to same gender partners so I have no benefit from Prop 8. Conversely it does not do me harm if some other persons of the same gender are legally married. On a purely personal basis than I understand why some might have passionate reason to support Prop 8 but most citizens do not have a personal investment one way or another.

If personal benefit fails to motivate me in one way or another, what about appeals to universal ethics - to fairness, equality, and justice? Many opponents of Prop 8 have made comparisons to the struggles of the Civil Rights era. And this is a telling stroke - after all if I were asked to vote on a proposition in inter-racial marriage 60 years ago I hope that issues of equality and justice would motivate me to respond, without reference to personal benefit or cost. Much indeed has been made of this correspondence by some civil rights organizations (I incidentally receive regular mail from African-American political institutions like the NAACP addressing me as a minority - my name and mailing address apparently label me as a minority. Have I been the victim of racial profiling?)

This is not ultimately a persuasive analogy to me. Blacks before the civil rights movement were legally discriminated against in a variety of ways. Interracial marriage as an issue was pretty far down the list of concerns - certainly below voting, equality before civil and criminal law, and discrimination in housing and facilities. This is not to say that a ban on interracial marriages couldn't be opposed by humanist ethics, it is merely to note that it was one issue in a sea of injustice.

Gays, by contrast, are not markedly legally discriminated against in our society (extra-legal "gay-bashing" is regrettable and I'll consider it separately). In fact marriage is precisely the issue at hand because most legal forms of discrimination are related to the privileged position marriage has in our legal system and (more significantly I think) the role marriage plays as a signifier of respectability in our society. In fact, far from being analogous to the civil rights movement with widespread legal discrimination, obvious harms, and visible injustice, the argument for same-sex marriage seems to me to boil down to three considerations. First: the argument to equality - frequently phrased as "all people should have the right to marry who they love". Second: the automatic legal access to certain rights and privileges married partners may enjoy - filing taxes jointly, bereavement and sick leave to care for a partner, child custody, inheritance, etc. Thirdly (and this is least often explicitly stated but is in my estimation the most significant argument to both sides): the implicit approval of society enshrined into law.

The first argument is not as persuasive as some advocates apparently imagine it to be. Marriage choices in our society are and have been restricted in a great many ways. Historically by the difficulty of divorce (not a great barrier now I admit) and of course prohibitions against marriage by close family members still apply. Western society has also traditionally viewed marriage as a a two person contract - someone who loves more generously is quite out of luck in our society - as anyone in a polygamous marriage abroad who wished to immigrate here finds out. So the first appeal does not automatically sway my opinion.

That doesn't mean it can be dismissed entirely - after all it does harm to those individuals who wish to enter into such arrangements to be denied them. Unless there are counterbalancing harms this seems like a point in favor of allowing same sex marriage.

The second argument is essentially an argument to utility. Couples of the same gender are in relationships and certainly it seems unjust to deny them access to benefits to others in similar relationships enjoy. This is a stronger case to me: I agree that any two persons who have agreed to raise children together should be able to establish joint custody together, that the rights of companions in a long term relationship to visitation in a hospital should not be less than that of other family... And marriage is certainly one way to achieve these goals as it is a recognized structure in our laws that automatically confers many such rights.

In California, however, there are already alternative means under which most of these rights may be sought. California has "registered domestic partnerships" that for purposes of state law, at least, is equivalent to marriage. This doesn't cover everything (eg: see this explanation at the ca.gov tax site about filing jointly at a state level versus federal level). This significantly weakens the harms claimed by advocates of gay marriage.

This leaves us with the implicit third argument - that society ought to bestow its mark or respectability and approval upon same sex marriages. This, I believe, is where the real passion of both those who support and oppose gay marriage resides. It is also the place where the opponents of gay marriage claim harms at a societal level. This claim is mostly left implicit in the public arguments of gay marriages because it is the weakest in terms of universal ethics. It's appeal is not - give me under law what is fairly mine in equality with everyone else (which strikes the ear as inherently just and reasonable) but rather the negative "stop disapproving of me" which sounds rather less majestic.

The only sensible argument I can see for this position is again the analogy to the civil rights movement. Racial attitudes on the part of white America changed drastically as black America attained legal equality - at least some of this must be cause and effect, and so gay advocates hope, I suspect, for a diminishment in societal disapprobation following legal equality. Any existence of "gay-bashing" - non-legal opposition to homosexuality expressed in violent terms seems to me to be an argument in favor of this position. If society expressing it's approval in a legal or political way of homosexuality diminishes violence that might otherwise occur than this seems a point in favor of bestowing such approval.

I'm not convinced that the cause-and-effect mechanism is actually that powerful, nor is the oppression that exists as virulent (this seems to me to be part of the fatal flaw in the appeal to the civil rights analogy - that homosexuals already have many protections and accommodations (eg registered domestic partnerships) and do not suffer widespread and obvious impactful discrimination.) More compellingly, however, it is at this point that the opponents of gay marriage (and hence the supporters of Prop 8.) assert their harms.

First is the argument that "redefining" marriage harms marriage as an institution. It is amazing, in some ways, how resilient marriage is in western society - despite losing for the vast majority of people its religious implications and even despite losing its moral implications (it is assumed now that sex and marriage are separate) marriage still has an enduring appeal. People still get married and society as a whole still makes a big deal out of weddings. (And viewed in that context it is extremely understandable to me that same sex partners want that affirmation.) Some argue, however, that expanding the traditional definition of marriage which is tied to the opposite gender of its participants and thus tied to the concept of the biological family will weaken the institution, diminishing its cultural luster. See this article by Stanley Kurtz in which he examines the marriage statistics in Scandinavia post gay-marriage for an example of this sort of argument. I have a limited amount of sympathy to this sort of argument: I think it probable but not conclusive that some harm is done to marriage as a cultural institution by changing the traditional definition of marriage.

As a conservative-leaning libertarian I am sympathetic to those wishing to preserve cultural institutions from change. If the harms derived from preventing gay marriage were greater I would be forced to override my sympathies - but I am satisfied enough that most of the material harms can or have been remedied by other means that on this point alone I would probably recommend at least delaying any move towards gay marriage. Marriage as it exists is a cultural institution which has had the same fundamental basis throughout the history of western civilization. Many western cultures have had tacit (or even open: see erastes-eromenos practices in ancient Greece) acceptance of same-sex relationships but no western culture has seen them as a replacement for marriage. In the US in particular society has moved quite a distance from disapproval to tolerance - and I am content to stop there.

It is the other more concrete harm alleged by Prop 8 backers, however, that really seals the deal for me.

The desire for approbation, it seems to me, can quickly evolve into a need to mandate approbation, and it is this imposition of values that bothers me most about the drive towards gay marriage. I think the opponents of gay marriage make the case conclusively that societies' support of gay marriage will come inevitably into conflict with those who oppose gay marriage on religious grounds.

Note carefully - this is not about theology - this is about the first amendment to the constitution. "Whether you like it or not" - mandating societal acceptance of gay marriage will harm religiously observant wedding photographers (as it already has in New Mexico, see Volokh's series on this), will force Churches to stop offering services which may be construed as a public utility (hosting weddings (the Methodist facility in NJ), offering adoption services (as in Catholic Charities in Massachusetts)), or even (as in Canada) impose various limits on speech construed as hateful since it opposes what society chooses to condone. And of course we could touch on the question of how government funded schools teach children about marriage when their parents find the views inimical to their religious beliefs. Given current trends I am not optimistic; government schools are not notorious for their delicacy in such situations.

It would be ironic if a drive with aims of tolerance ended in harming the balance necessary for co-existence in a pluralistic society. I am concerned enough by dangers to the first amendment, both to my right of free speech and my right to freely practice my religion that I ask others, including those in a same-sex partnership, not to push for the change in marriage. Have a wedding and register as domestic partners by all means. But I suspect, from your perspective, that this is a case where the pursuit of the perfect will be the enemy of the good. I hope that everyone in America can be left to pursue their separate happiness; I worry that someday I'll be forced to quote one of the original humanists...

I do nobody no harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.

Sir Thomas More, in a letter to his daughter before his execution for refusing to publicly proclaim his support for King Henry's second marriage.

The Lost Executioner

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 02:20:19 PST

Lately when I've gone to my library I've returned to my mother's Summer Reading policy - get whatever you like but get at least two biographies.

One bio I just finished is the story of Comrade Duch. As prison commandant in Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge Duch is responsible for at least the deaths of the twenty thousand Khmer Rouge who passed through the gates of Tuol Sleng Prison to be tortured and executed. The Lost Executioner chronicles author Nic Dunlop's travels through Cambodia and pursuit and eventual discovery of Comrade Duch.

The book was excellent - thought provoking (Duch is now a converted Christian who repents of his sins and sees being discovered by Dunlop as perhaps God's judgement on his many sins; does this make you feel differently about the mass murderer? Tuol Sleng is a prison camp for Khmer Rouge purged from the party. Every prisoner who comes through the doors is complicit with the crimes of the regime in some way.... Does this make you less sympathetic to the prisoners? ) and at times difficult to read. The account of the Vietnamese soldiers pushing into Cambodia and up to the capitol city of Phnom Penh only to find a city emptied of its population which had been forcibly relocated to rural areas and filled with piles of destroyed telephones and washing machines - with the smell of blood in the air leading to Tuol Sleng - drove shivers up my spine. It doesn't help that the events feel so close - Duch is still currently awaiting trial currently scheduled to start in 2009. The events of the Holocaust feel safely removed by history to me, events of a different era, a different time. The Cambodian genocide is not so safely removed and resonates with current events - the guerrilla war, ineffective bombing, a UN refugee presence that makes the lives of refugees worse, the lack of political will to do anything about the situation and the haste to cover it up afterward all feel current and reflect facets of current events.

A section in the middle of the book however, a meditation on the use of photos taken of prisoners at Tuol Sleng as art especially stood out to me. Dunlop is a photographer but finds himself troubled by the aesthetic exploitation of murder (every prisoner admitted to Tuol Sleng had a mug shot taken. These photos are of excellent technical quality and are now posted on the walls the prison.) I would expand Dunlop's condemnation of the genocide-photos-as-art school of photography to art in general - I find most modern and postmodern art to be inhumane and for the same reasons.

Many of the images from Tuol Sleng were taken in isolation, with a white backdrop, without a context, as though in a void between life and death. More than twenty years after the horror this allowed peple to view Ein's pictures simply as portrature. Viewd in this way the photgraphs make subjects real to us buut at the same time deplete any sense of urgency. In a gallery, they become studies in the photography's aesthetic possibilities first, and evidence of mass murder second

The book of mug shots was a sumptous volume of more than seventy photographs. It was called The Killing Fields, borrowing its title from the film, even though all the pictures had been taken in S-21. There were no captions and the two essays in the back were added, it seemed almost as an afterthought. To view them in this way one feels almost predatory. The victims are presented as teh Khmer Rouge saw them: without a name, without a family, without an identity or a country.

...

It seems disingenuous to me to display these photographs without making clear why it is considered important to show them. There is a danger of it becoming a self-defeating exercise in highbrow voyeurism. One of the reasons there are so few photographs in this book is because of my increasing frustration with photography's limitations. The display of the images becomes a passive act of remembrance, rather than a call for justice.

Cobwebs in the attic

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:55:10 PST

I haven't written anything about theology for quite a while... I haven't really had a post waiting so much as some random thoughts on various topics gathering cobwebs and waiting to be cleared out...

One thing I'd been meaning to write about at some point is the idea of Church Membership. I made some offhand comments in Sunday School at Church earlier when we were still going through the book of Hebrews. I've had several conversations with people since then - enough to know I didn't express myself particularly well... I have one moderate opinion on Church Membership and one opionated conclusion.

So first the moderate opinion - I'm generally for the idea of Church Membership. If I was setting up a Church from scratch I'd probably include the idea of meaningful membership. I have, on the other hand, attended Churches that don't have formal Church membership and of course the specific idea of having a formal roster of Church Members isn't an obvious Biblical command.

The New Testament does teach, however, that Christians will find themselves in relationship with a particular group of fellow believers that will involve commitment and accountability. The New Testament's descriptions of Church Discipline presuppose (to me at least) some formal sense of commitment between Christians - and similarly the message that growth in Christ is found in the practice of the ecclesia seems to me to require a close intimate repeated connection with a particular group of believers. You don't need a roster of membership for all that - but you do need a meaningful way of defining the family. This can vary in practice (a house Church of 10 adults probably doesn't need a formally defined concept of membership - participation by definition is high commitment and intimate. A MegaChurch should have formal rosters.) but all methods ought to point to the same ends - moving Christians into more intentional community with a specific group of other believers.

While I don't have really strong feelings about any particular method of accomplishing this goal I do have strong opinions about how Christians should behave in a given situation. Here's that opinionated conclusion - I believe that if you go to a Church that practices official membership of some kind you should be working towards becoming a member or you should have plans to leave. If membership is the expected sign of commitment by the fellowship you attend than you should become a member (even if you aren't enthusiastic about the concept in general.) And of course if your church indicates commitment by hosting house Church meetings or volunteering to be a greeter or "parking lot pastor" instead than you should do those things too.

What you shouldn't do is say "This is my Church and I'll attend here but I can't be a member." Seriously - Go find a Church with whom you can be mutually committed. It is essential - I believe - for both a Church and an individual to be able to mutually claim one another. (Heb 13:17 Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.)

I've partly been thinking about this issue because or the series the ever excellent Internet Monk had recently. After his initial post The Church Membership Question he did a series of interviews on the question - all worth reading - but I particularly liked the quote from the interview with Jonathan Leeman

I would argue that the person who claims to be a member of the church (universal) without being a member of a church (local) is in an analogous position to the person who claims to be righteous in Christ (by position) but does not pursue a life of righteousness (in practice). In other words, let me propose that such a person is in a very dangerous position, and it raises real questions about the nature of their "faith."

That's a great quote and leads nicely to the next theological topic that's been popping up from time to time on me.

Last Sunday the sermon was on Assurances of Salvation. The focus of the sermon as I understood it was the traditional idea of assurance - looking for evidence in you history and life that demonstrates the Spirit in you, drawing you closer to Jesus.

After the sermon, however, we heard a little bit from a brother who wanted to make sure that no-one would hear "X is assurance of my salvation" and think "I don't have X, therefore I must not be saved". He was elucidating the Eternal Security point of view that justification (salvation in the sense that I'm going to heaven when I die) is unconditional and irrevocable, not based in any way on anything we might do. The only salvation we might lose in this life (he explained) is sanctification - the saving power of Christ working in our lives now. It was possible, he explained, that given the Arminian background of the Brethren some might be confused on this issue.

As the only person who would self identify as Arminian in theology my ears perked up a bit at that. For one thing - it isn't only Arminians (who believe it is possible to fall away or reject salvation) who look for assurance of salvation. Traditional Calvinists do as well. Perseverance of the Saints (the P in TULIP) does not mean that if you've ever said the sinners prayer you will be saved no matter what else you do in life. Instead it places the responsibility for Salvation with God and finds evidence of that salvation in the fruit of the life of the believer. If there is no fruit, perhaps there was no election and never any salvation at all...

The idea of Eternal Security(Once saved, always saved, etc) is rather less orthodox then either Perseverance of the Saints (going back to Augustine I would say) or more Arminian takes.

The thought that's been rattling round my head lately, however, is not a defense of a particular take on assurance but rather a question. To mature believers: does it matter? Should we focus on the question of assurance when dealing with mature believers?

Just to forestall the objections - yes I'm aware of the points Christians in each camp might bring up to demonstrate the importance and application of their theology. The Eternal Security assertion that having absolute confidence in your salvation allows you to live in Grace instead of under Law, the Calvinist defense of Monergism without abandoning sanctification as an essential rather than optional part of the Christian faith and the Arminian rejection of Carnal Christianity all may be important...

But let's make a deal - lets talk about sanctification only to the mature believers. If you're a Christian and you question your salvation at times - then this discussion of sanctification is not for you. If you're a legalist and see yourself as earning God's grace because of the good that you do - this discussion also is not for you. To the rest (and I honestly believe in my Church this is most of the adult believers in the chairs on any given Sunday) we can all agree that justification is by faith through grace. No one believes that we earn our way to heaven. Nor does anyone believe that sinning and slipping and falling short (as we all do in our lives, different ways at different times) removes us from the love of God and places our Justification in jeapordy.

At that point of agreement - we should feel confident to go on and teach preach and proclaim the necessity of sanctification in the life of the believer. To often, I think, we undercut every warning and soften every admonition by retreating to justification. We weaken the dramatically stern warnings of the Bible by saying - now remember we aren't talking about losing our salvation here, just the blessings of sanctification!

Just! For the Christian sanctification is everything between the new birth and death. It is the walk and relationship with Jesus. It is the spiritual formation we seek, the discipleship that Jesus calls us to, the entirety of the life we live now by faith with Jesus Christ. Is it assuring to say - Don't worry: you won't go to hell in the next life, you'll just live in hell in this life, completely separated from the presence of the person you claimed as Lord?

The analogy that's been running through my mind is the relationship of the wedding vows to a marriage^*. Imagine talking to a group of married couples at different points in their lives. All marriages have points of tension, difficulties and disagreements and so you wish to help people make their marriages better. And what you say to them is

Remember your wedding vows. They were legally binding and irrevocable before God. So no matter how you act now, no matter what you do to each other you are still married. Those vows still apply and you are man and wife, no matter what.

And if you get discouraged or have trouble making things work just remember: you said "I do"! You are legally married and nothing can change that fact!

How helpful would that be?

And yet I get the feeling we engage in just that sort of dialogue when the topic of sanctification comes up. Evangelicals tend to be very wary of offering advice beyond the most basic levels of sin management** (avoid "big" sins) and devotion (read your Bible every day).

How tragic is it that the call to holiness has to be qualified and toned down? That the Christian seeking direction and instruction in deeper participation in the daily life of Christ won't find evangelicalism taking the question seriously?

I'm not exaggerating - evangelicalism has tons of good resources on "how to live a better life" (Seminars/Classes/Books/Speakers on Marriage, Parenting, Personal Economics (budgeting, getting out of debt, etc)) but not much to say about putting on the mind of Christ, pursuing holiness or developing a devotional life. Read the comments on another IMonk piece Where does a Baptist go for Spiritual Formation to see the dearth.

Update: I'm not sure where to go with this. I find I am more interested in having a conversation on my blog than I used to be... I signed up for Disqus comments and enabled them on the post below. Want to discuss things with me? Comment away...

^* I don't want this analogy to be offensive. I recognise the ways in which Justification is of ongoing relevance in the Christian life; not least in that my santification is enabled only by the gracious choice of God in choosing to die for me. Despite it's limitation I do think the analogy is useful.

^**Rich Mullins on what Dallas Willard calls "the gospel of sin managment":

Well I am a good Midwestern boy
I give an honest day's work if I can get it
I don't cheat on my taxes I don't cheat on my girl
I've got values that would make the White House jealous

Well I do get a little much over-impressed
'Til I think of Peter and Paul and the apostles
I don't stack up too well against them I guess
But by the standards 'round here I ain't doing that awful

Announcing a change in my Political Affiliation

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:29:08 PST

I've always been registered as a "Decline to state" voter. Finally, however, I've found a party to call home... The Cynical Party!

Whitney Round Two

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:11:11 PST

Regular readers may recall that last year I hiked Mt. Whitney - getting altitude sickness and generally feeling miserable. I also was determined to try Whitney again - perhaps in better shape and with more time at altitude to acclimate.

The year rolled around and once again I tried Whitney. This time it was only Justin, Cyrus and I making the trip and we planned to make up for some of the deficiencies of last year. I may be in a little better shape - I've lost about 5lbs and got in a half dozen longer runs (5-6) miles in the last month and a half. The main improvement planned, however, was spending a night in advance at altitude and having a warm up hike the day before - I was pretty convinced that rolling out of the car at 8,000ft and immediately heading up the mountain was what killed me last time.

The Plan started out well enough. We left Modesto around 6:30pm and got up to Sonora Pass at approximately 9:30 (road construction having caused a detour through Knight's Ferry). We set up "camp" (air mattresses on a tarp beside the vehicle) and slept at 9600 feet of altitude.

The next morning we got up and made Coffee and fried cinnamon rolls on Cyrus' hiking stove and set out for Sonora Peak.

We didn't actually get to the peak - Cyrus and I had previously gone up from St. Mary's Pass which is a 4mile round trip, 2000 foot vertical elevation change hike). From Sonora Pass trailhead (starting at the PCT sign) I'd estimate it's more like 6 miles round trip. We didn't want to tire our legs out and had accomplished our goal of getting up a few thousand feet above where we would camp that night so we started down...

The air was a little smoky so the view wasn't the best I've seen from the high country.

The meadows, however, were spectacular - I don't know if I've ever seen more color and the photos really don't do them justice (click for high res versions).

Incidentally we met a couple on the trail who were on mail 1,018 of their hike up the Pacific Crest Trail to Canada. That's a little too hardcore for me - but I wouldn't mind spending more time in the mountains. I've really missed them the last few years - sleeping under the stars and then enjoying the vistas and meadows on a little warm up hike put me in a good mood as we headed back to the car and drove on to Whitney.

We ate lunch in Bishop (very authentic tacos and a killer carrot salsa at Salsa's) and arrived at our Campground at Whitney Portal at about 4:30 or so. Our campsite was deserted and only yards from the river with amenities like its very own bear bin, trash and bathroom access. Very nice! We'd decided to start hiking in the night so we blew up our mattresses again, headed up to the Portal Store to get supper, and came back to relax for 5-6 hours before heading out at midnight.

I'd only taken a few bites of my burger when the first few raindrops fell. Things rapidly escalated from a drizzle to a pounding rainstorm and Cyrus had to go rescue the victory cokes and rum from the Creek where they were chilling, but in danger of being swept away. Before long we'd retreated to the vehicles and glumly speculated about the duration of the storm. It started to thunder and eventually hailed for about 25 minutes.

It was at this point that we broke out the cokes and rum and began discussing whether we should hike at all. I was the voice of ~~reason~~pessimism - arguing that the trail would be in an unknown state (last year we had to cross some rivulets and streams) and we would be hiking at night, without the 5 hour nap we'd planned on taking. The factors added in my mind to making hiking a bad idea. Cyrus and Justin were a little further down the "we came all this way to hike" spectrum and eventually at 8pm (the rain hadn't stopped) we decided to go on up to the Portal Store and solicit an expert opionion or two.

Stirring from our parking spot pretty quickly made it clear that we weren't hiking. The road to our campsite had 3-4 inches of gravel and debris in it

And the main road was quite a bit worse - lots of softball sized rocks with the occasional mudslide and boulder thrown in for good measure.

We didn't even get up to the Portal Store - a Search and Rescue truck blocked the road and the guys told us they were evacuating campsites flooded by the rising river and pulling stragglers off the mountain. Yes, they agreed politely, we'd have to be stupid to try climbing that night.

This was the only boulder we wouild summt that day... (Oh and more pics and news about the storm (houses damaged by mudslides, awesome 6ft boulders in the roadway, etc) is available from the Whitney Portal Store forum.)

Things only went downhill from there... We drove north on 395 only to find the road flooded out and CHP informing us that none of the northern passes would be open for at least a day. We turned around and drove the long way - all the way down to Bakersfield and up 99 to arrive home sometime after 3pm Sunday morning.

This was definitely not a good hike - for one thing now I have to try again next year! The morning was fun, however, and I think our plan was solid. I have to confess, however, that if next year I come up with some innovative new way to be miserable on Whitney, I may just give it up. We'll see...

Smoke

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:57:23 PST

I thought this pic would make a good companion to the meta-wife's firemap. The area shown is north of where I live but the whole central valley has been a smoke-filled bowl for the last week and a half. It's actually clearing up pretty good in the last day or two but we skipped Mo-Band (a weekly concert in the park) last Thursday because the air was so bad...