Fracture

Let's get the hard-to-believe part right out in the open: I'm a far-left academic who votes Green whenever possible, and today, what I want more than anything is for the Republican party to become more powerful and win lots of elections.

I'm a recent transplant to Oregon from Texas. That's my birthplace, and for almost a decade I lived in Nacogdoches, one of the more rural and conservative backwaters of the state. I was and am a Southern Baptist. What might make matters more clear is that my doctorate is in argumentation, and I've competed in and coached competitive debate for almost thirty years. I love a good argument. That helped during the east Texas years, because a liberal in Texas who can't take disagreement is a liberal with no friends.

Enough about me. What the Republican Party needs to do is re-purpose a Justin Timberlake lyric and bring smart back. Over the years, I have known conservative thinkers who could leave me speechless with the incisiveness of their insights and the overwhelming power of their reasoning. The problem is, for an entire generation they've been increasingly drowned out by Republican leadership who think the method for retaining power is fueling enmity and hatred. When you have to tell your followers not just "don't agree with my opponents," but "don't listen to my opponents at all," and worst of all, "don't trust my opponents, because they're out to harm you," then those brilliant conservative thinkers get pushed to the back of the pack.

There are reasoned, smart, streamlined, moderate arguments for privatization, for fiscal discipline, for welcoming faith into public spaces, for a host of other conservative projects. They can stand on their own merits. They don't have to languish behind verbal salvos aimed at a mythical liberal fifth column that's trying to destroy America. That's as silly as believing in monsters under the bed. Children who finally turn loose of those monsters learn to separate fantasy from reality in order to get a good night's sleep, and adults who are ready to turn loose of a faceless mob of liberals can turn the corner on separating fantasy from reality in order to turn in a good day's work solving problems.

I've strayed from my original challenge, so let me bring it back to center: please win in 2016. Please build a juggernaut of a campaign machine. Make it powerful, compelling, and most of allsustainable. Step one: admit that what you're doing right now is not sustainable, and it's turning the founding fathers' grand experiment in democracy into the world's most powerful dysfunctional family. We are, right now, resting inside a fracture in your narrative: you exerted all the purifying force you could on your candidates, and you didn't win. This is the perfect moment to forge a consensus behind a different approach, to call to those genius conservatives who've been wandering the back roads of the country, wondering when they'll have a place in the conversation again.

We're not your enemies; we're your siblings and your spouses. You need us as a corrective and a counterbalance, and we need you for the exact same reason. But we need you to do a good job of it. If you do, your reward will be power, and the satisfaction of seeing the nation prosper. You have a finite window of opportunity to repent, as the good Southern Baptist in me sees it, and leave behind the 2012 election's very bad strategy. You have the best chance I can foresee to topple talk show radio hosts, to discredit the angry wing of your party still trying to claw its way back into the driver's seat from the 1996 "revolution," and to become a trustworthy party of sober-minded adults. I have no control over any of the forces that might move you to do so; all I can do is point out the obvious. What you did this time did not work, and it's less likely to work in 2016. Resolve to do differently, and let's have a serious wrestling match of reasoning next time. If you accept that invite, it won't matter who wins or loses, because the entire nation will hit a jackpot that would put the Powerball to shame.

Location

Two, three weeks ago I went for coffee with a student and three of my colleagues. The student had some nagging questions, and the colleagues each approached those doubts with very coherent, erudite explanations and recommended readings. I was out of my depth, so I did a lot of nodding. But on the walk back, I made one contribution to the rap. Last week, the student mentioned in an email that what I said was helpful, so I decided to stick it here in case it helps anyone else. It's a good description, in just a handful of moves, of how I understand faith.

Do your parents love you? Have they included you, protected you, encouraged you, lavished affection on you, because they love you? If the answer isn't yes, then it's time for a nimble detour on this flow chart to address some serious, chronic trauma. But in most cases, the answer is yes.

At my most cynical, I could make the case that your parents had done all those things from purely selfish motives. They did them to fit in, to win acceptance from peers, to appear normal, to satisfy their own parents or spouse, and the list of plausible motives could stretch as long as necessary to make the point. Give me enough time to weave my argument and I could have you believing that they never loved you for one moment, from your birth to now.

Neither explanation would finally dismiss the other. I could raise a lot of doubt in your mind, but I couldn't construct a proof that necessarily excluded the possibility that your parents loved you. Similarly, every heartwarming story you could tell, all put together, could not stop me from my competing narrative that they behaved as they did to please themselves, to use you as a prop in their self-presentation.

You're left in a very Heisenbergian suspension. You either live in a world in which you have loving parents, or in a world in which your parents are cold, calculating, and very convincing liars. You have no real way of settling which world is real.

Pivotal question: in which of the worlds is your life better? Then live in that one. Live as though that's the correct explanation. If, in doing so, you find out that your life is, in fact, better, then you chose wisely. You might not know which explanation is really the correct one, but you were never offered the option of perfect, unquestionable certainty in the first place, so you lose nothing.

Transference of this analogy from your family to your faith is left as an exercise for the student.

Combustion

Elvis took amphetamines to fuel the runaway train of his life. Then, he'd take barbiturates to fall asleep, followed by amphetamines to burn out the barbiturates, followed by barbiturates to dampen the amphetamines. Lather, rinse, repeat. For a while, he was able to work that cycle and look good, but sooner or later the strain etched visible changes on him, and not for the better. And in the end, he died young and left an ugly corpse.

In Texas, business goes buzzing along, enjoying this huge infusion of wealth from the various petrochemical industries. Absurdly high gas prices mean eye-popping earnings, which then sweep through all the contiguous businesses like a flood finding its level in rivers, streams and creeks. And Texans congratulate themselves about how much better their choices have been than those of their compatriots, how recession-proof the state is. But my memory goes back to 1985, when an oil glut dropped gas prices to astonishing lows, and suddenly no enterprise in Texas, from the government on down, had the resources to accomplish anything. And it's perfectly plain that the future of energy in this state, nation, world, is not just more of the same. Very wealthy, well-connected people can put all their power behind calls for more domestic exploration and drilling, but there comes a point where the amphetamines no longer do their job, and my strong suspicion is that the day is closer than most Texans, and all Texan leaders, want to admit to themselves.

The state of Oregon sucked a fiscal teat longer than made any sense, and has been trying to work through withdrawal and come out clean. The progress is inching, and agonizing, but postponing it only would've made it more severe. Texas is riding a binge, and storing up a lot of pain for itself when everything topples.

Part of me thinks this is just a symptom, and the deeply rooted illness comes from a desperate craving for what's uncomplicated. If I were to try to distill Texan-ness down to one idea, that would be it. Some of the iceberg-tips that grow out of that nature are pretty appealing: a bracing assertiveness and a child-like faith. But it's also very Texan to play ostrich, to ignore bad news and hope it goes away, to shoot the messengers and double down on a dumb idea. People who know their Texas history should recognize those tendencies in a million and one turning points that have gone wrong.

I do have a love for the state where I was born, but it's an exasperated love, the love we give a backwards child who sets off one disaster after another, who marches proudly and stubbornly into an endless parade of preventable messes. It's a love almost untouched by admiration or emulation, a lot of combined smiles and eye rolls. And a lot of worrying, shrugging, and fatalism.

Continuity

The mistake we make again and again is declaring an end to history. We think, My entire life has built to this moment, to my current understanding, and there is no future. I will never again be surprised, pleasantly or not. I will never again learn.

One of my lazy pleasures is re-reading books I first tackled when I was a child. Naturally, I now catch things that I didn't notice, or wasn't ready to grasp, until now. But it's almost brain-wrenching to think that I might come back in my sixties or seventies and spot bits that whooshed right over my head back when I was a clueless forty-two year old. Nevertheless, I'm sure I will, and doubtless more so with the Bible than with any other book.

This spring, I've found myself in more discussions with people who think that our consensus, authorized, "safe" account of what the Bible teaches cannot, must not, will never change in the slightest, than I ever would've seen coming. In the course of those discussions I've pointed out that for centuries, both the curse of Ham, and Ezra's command that the Israelites divorce their foreign wives, were cited as proof that God had instituted white supremacy. That was taught in seminaries and preached from respectable pulpits by giants of the faith. Then, when the time came, when our slowly accumulating understanding of the world flowed into the proper shape, God moved, and a tipping point was reached. Today we understand that the Bible never taught white supremacy or nonwhite inferiority. Its text didn't change in the slightest, but our understanding of it improved.

Another example, and one I hadn't considered until I read about it earlier this week: for endless stretches of time, it was unquestioned truth inside Christian teaching that the Jews as a people were rejected by God because of their collective guilt from Christ's unjust execution. People clung to this teaching despite Christ's pretty unambiguous words on the subject, and some still do to this day. For the most part, though, we've understood our error and moved on from it.

This is on my mind today because two recent graduates, of whom I'm inordinately fond, have recently been struggling a lot with their faith. One is struggling publicly, and the other quite privately. What I want so desperately to convey to them is that history hasn't ended, learning hasn't run its course, and it's not time to close the book on their faith. The Church has had to return to an unchanged Book and accept that we had outgrown our flawed understandings, just as surely as I revisit books I loved in my childhood years and measure my own growth against ink on a page that was the same before, during and after my encounter with it. In my teens and twenties, I had a long fallow period when I never cracked my Bible, and had a lot of cynical things to say about its teachings and reliability. After that ran its course, and my understanding had germinated and gestated to the precise degree of readiness, it got its second wind, and doctrines I found naïve and childish reasserted themselves as powerful and moving truths. They hadn't changed, but I had continued to grow.

I'm fairly confident that these kinds of discoveries lie ahead for these students, so I'm not too worried, so long as they don't develop an ego-attachment to their incomplete understandings. I'm pretty sure they're inquisitive and curious enough that that's a small risk. It's something that figures prominently in my prayers.

Summertime

So back in summer of 2010, it was jump-rope rhymes. This morning, my philosophy professor colleague and former pastor was working on the eulogy for someone he barely knows, and it struck me funny that you could write quick little two-line, grossly inappropriate eulogies. Here are my first attempts, and you are invited to share your own in the comments:

Don't get too big a whiff
Your loved one's now a stiff!

Don't hope she sits up
Your loved one's gone tits-up.

Her to-do list? Time to chuck it;
She's hauled off and kicked the bucket!

The coroner's report confirms
Your family member's feeding worms.

Don't get tear-stains on your shirt
She won't notice through the dirt.

Want your dearest? Nope! Can't have her
How to put this? Look -- cadaver!

Don't protest my word belies her;
What's she care? She's fertilizer!

If you'll stop crying one smidge sooner, I'll
Speed things up and end this funeral.

Expectations

Two things I've heard people say they admire about politics are, to be blunt, idiotic. The first is direct language, and the second is ideological consistency.

Officeholders who want to make a positive, constructive difference are going to speak diplomatically. They have to thread the needle between too many different, opposing groups. Politician-speak is not incredibly pleasant, but neither is it avoidable. Someone who seeks office and promises to tell the simple, direct truth in all cases is like someone who promises to run a nursery in which there will never, ever be even the slightest odor of poop. The promise is, on a moment's reflection, dumb, and what they're promising to eliminate is a necessary and manageable part of the enterprise.

The second idiotic expectation is ideological consistency. Any office-seeker who promises to be a "consistent conservative voice," or a "consistent progressive voice," is like a mathematician who promises that the solution to every math problem will be an even number. Math solutions are sometimes odd numbers, sometimes irrational numbers, sometimes zero, and the proper next move for government sometimes appears progressive, conservative, libertarian, or any one of a dozen other political flavors.

There's a study waiting to happen about the turn against cognitive complexity in American political culture in 2012. Already I've seen reams of political commentary lamenting the persuasive force of the claim that refusing to compromise, or even listen, is somehow a form of strength. In fact, that's a glaring, crippling weakness, and even more tragic when it's self-inflicted. And the puzzle, for which we desperately need a solution, is why so many people embrace it; what particular fear or narrative or lingering trauma so twists their decisionmaking that they're receptive to it.

Silly Dream

So I dreamed that NCU actually did change its mascot, but not to the Cute Puppies. Instead, we became the NCU Wet Willies. The reasoning was that since it rains all the time in Eugene, we're soaking wet, and we're trying to do God's will, so we're the Wet Willies.

There was no suit with a big foam head. Instead, all the athletes in all the sports started giving Wet Willies: the cross country kids gave them to other runners, the basketball and soccer players to the other team, etc. Now that I'm awake, I'm not quite sure how that would work in volleyball, and in softball it would take split-second timing, but whatever. I'm also not quite sure why referees weren't calling fouls or tossing our players out, but give me a break: it was a dream.

So then, all the other teams started wearing earmuffs every time they played us, and as a result they couldn't hear one another or their coaches. Plus, for some reason I remember that the cross country runners got really sweaty ears, and that was bad for running. Anyway, all our teams won the NAIA championship in all their sports, and everybody was really excited.

And then I woke up, and instead of snowing, it was raining. Perfect.

Contrastive Apologetics

So last night I started reading The Crescent Through the Eyes of the Cross, by Nabeel Jabbour, and as of now I'm about halfway through it; that's how hard it is to put down. One thing he said wasn't new to me, but I'd never thought about it in this context, and another thing stopped me dead in my tracks for just a few minutes.

• I'm familiar with the fact that reasoning in syllogisms (B because A, C because B, D because C, so if you believe A, you must believe D) is a very western thinking pattern but not universal, so one common failing in our efforts to preach the gospel is that we package it in a way that doesn't make sense to hearers from other cultures. Far more effective throughout most of the Middle East is narrative reasoning that makes its point indirectly, but unmistakably. Strongest proof of the premise: Jesus didn't reason in syllogisms, but taught in parables. Paul, on the other hand, was all about the syllogism, but his education had a huge root in classical Greco-Roman thinking.
• The thing that hadn't occurred to me is a question Jabbour says many Muslims ask of Christians: "Why do the Christian nations favor Israel over the Muslim world when Islam is so much closer theologically to Christianity than Judaism? Jews deny that Jesus was the Messiah, and the Talmud even says Jesus is in Hell. Islam accepts that Issa was born of a virgin, did many miracles, and is in Heaven with Allah. Why can't Christians recognize their brothers?"

Put those two together, and here's my answer to both:

There was a family made up of father, mother, and several children, and the mother's father lived in their household. He had not aged gracefully, and was known for his sharp tongue. He denounced the father's work, the mother's decisions, and the children's lessons and games with loud, hurtful language. When guests came to visit, they marveled at the hostility the grandfather showed, and praised the family for taking care of him, even while he made his presence so very unpleasant.

One day, a visitor came from a neighboring town to complete a brief business errand. His parents had been childhood friends of the father and mother, but tragically, were no longer alive. Upon his arrival, everyone was struck by his resemblance to the children. He could easily have been mistaken for their brother! He spent the evening with them, telling stories and enjoying games, and everyone agreed that his nature fit with theirs perfectly. At the end of the evening, he said, "Why don't I simply become part of your family and live here? You can tell everyone that I'm another of your children that was away at school, but returned home to live in the house because of my great love for all of you?"

The mother smiled. "It is a blessing to us that you've visited, and we treasure your friendship, but we have no room here. Our family fills all the rooms in the house."

"But if you were to move your father out, I could take his room," the young man said. "He undercuts everything you do and say, while I am much closer to you in appearance, belief and attitude. I would fit here perfectly. Why not accept me in his place?"

Very, very gently, hoping not to hurt his feelings, the father replied, "Even if my father-in-law's words do not please us, my family would not exist without him. The relationship we have with him is genuine. It is living proof of our family's history. The relationship you propose is based on deceit. You are very near to us, but to tell the world we shared a blood tie would be a lie. We hope always to enjoy your friendship, but friendship with you is not a sufficient reason for us to deny what is."

It's a clumsy first attempt, but at least it doesn't fall into the error of framing the reasoning in a way that will only breed confusion, not understanding.

And that leads me to wonder whether anyone has paid serious attention to contrastive apologetics? Contrastive rhetoric is a fairly young field, having begun in the 1960s with the work of Robert Kaplan, and that makes me curious as to whether anyone has tackled the work of reframing reasoning that clarifies difficult questions in Christian thought in argument patterns that work in different cultures? That might be a research project for this summer.