Dr. Peter Boghossian in his recent lecture "Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions: Just Say No!"[1] argues that faith-based belief processes are unreliable and do not lead one to truth. Boghossian is an atheist who is on a mission to help people convert from a faith-based belief process (a state of delusion) to a reliable process of reasoning.  In an interview with the Portland Mercury he states that he has helped, “hundreds of people lose their faith. I have hundreds of emails and Facebook thank yous from people who have lost their faith, who have liberated themselves from that unreliable process of reasoning. Every single person is capable of living a life free of delusion. Everyone.”[2] Let me capture the essence of his argument from the above mentioned lecture.

1.      Faith-based belief processes are unreliable.

2.      An unreliable process decreases the likelihood that one will have true beliefs.

3.      An unreliable process leads to unreliable conclusions.

Boghossian argues that the goal of a reasoning process should be to maximize beliefs that are true and to minimize the number of false beliefs a person holds. Thus one must avoid using reasoning processes that are unreliable. Ultimately Boghossian argues that any faith-based belief process is unreliable and will not point you towards the truth. Instead of leading to truth, the faith-based belief process leads people into being delusional.

He uses an illustration to demonstrate that not all processes lead to equally reliable results. He talks about a bathroom door in his home that needs to be replaced because of a large hole. In order to replace the door the door needs to be measured. He then argues that there are different processes one could use to measure the door some which lead to reliable results and others which lead to unreliable results. For example using your elbow to measure the door most likely does not lead to a reliable measurement that allows you to successfully replace the door. However, using a tape measure (a more reliable process for determining the size of the door) leads to a more reliable result.

Boghossian moves on to expose unreliable nature of a faith-based belief process. The topics he chooses to make his case are somewhat random: intercessory prayer, speaking in tongues, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (which Protestants don’t buy into) and faith based healings. Boghossian’s selection of topics and the reasoning process with which he engages them is rather frustrating:

1.      Firstly, Boghossian’s critique of the faith-based belief processes is that he takes believes that are not universally accepted by all Christian traditions (such as transubstantiation which Protestants don’t belief in.) Moreover, he chooses beliefs which really that are on the periphery of the Christian faith (besides prayer which is central). His critique of a Christian faith-based belief processes should start with the central figure of Christianity - Jesus. Instead of engaging beliefs that are central to the Christian faith, Boghossian dabbles around in non-central issues. Since Boghossian title of his talk includes Jesus, it seems fair to expect that he actually deals with Jesus. However, I am glad he does not deal with the Easter Bunny.

2.      Secondly, his critique of the Christian faith-based belief processes is very shallow. For example with both the intercessory prayer and speaking in tongues he refers to one academic study and dismisses both as delusional. He does not engage other academic studies on prayer. He simply finds one study (quantitative?) with which he argues his case. A second example of his shallow engagement is tha he does not look at how prayer has been understood theologically within the Christian tradition (for example the Reformed view on prayer). There seems to be no true desire to engage Christian beliefs and belief processes. Instead of engaging Christian beliefs and belief processes Boghossian’s desire seems to be to simply dismiss them. The absence of a desire to reason is rather surprising.

3.      Thirdly, during the question and answer time he dismisses scientific theory (Quantum Mechanics) that could challenge and undermine his argument. Furthermore, he does not allow for testimony in which people share about how their faith has made a difference in their lives. However, Boghossian did not object when one of his students gave a several minute long testimony about how Boghossian has liberated him from his Catholic roots. This seems to show that Boghossian only wants to engage others selectively. He does not seem to be as open to changing his mind as he claims to be.

4.      Fourthly, Boghossian is not true to his own process in evaluating Christian faith-based belief process. He has engaged in an unreliable process (see point 1 and 2) which has led him to an unreliable conclusion.

In his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond discusses among other things the significance that China has concerning our world’s future. Most of the time when we talk about China, the focus is on the country’s unbelievable economic growth and rise to world power. The story of economic growth is intricately interwoven in Diamonds discussion of China’s environmental problems.

According to Diamond, “China’s environmental problems can be summarized under six main headings: air, water, soil, habitat destruction, biodiversity losses, and megaprojects.” (363) Diamond discusses each of the environmental problems in more detail. I assume that most readers are familiar with each of these headings except perhaps “megaprojects.” Diamond writes that “under way in China are the world’s largest development projects, all expected to cause severe environmental problems.” Among those projects are the following: The Three Gorges Dam of the Yangtze River; The South-to-North Water Diversion Project (scheduled to complete around 2050).

Diamond unpacks the cost of the destruction of the environment through three lenses: economic cost, health and natural disaster. Environmental destruction comes at a high economic cost. The most costly example that Diamond lists is when he talks about the cost of the floods that are in part caused by deforestation. He writes, “the one-time cost of the 1996 floods (27 billion, but still cheaper than the 1998 floods), the annual direct losses due to desertification ($42 billion), and the annual losses due to water and air pollution ($54 billion). The combination of the latter two items alone costs China the equivalent of 14% of its gross domestic product each year.” (368). Thus even if economic growth is a countries priorities it pays to only implement environment friendly growth.

Besides economic costs there are also health consequences. Diamond writes, “about 300,000 deaths per year, and $54 billion of health costs (8% of the gross national product), are attributed to air pollution.” (368) A Final cost of environmental destruction comes in the cost of natural disaster. Diamond points to the increasing dust storms and floods.

Diamond discusses China’s impact on the rest of the world. Simply by its sheer size in population and territory, China’s environmental policies and practices have a large effect on other countries. Moreover, through Globalization environmental problems play out in new ways. For example China’s logging ban has led to China exporting deforestation to other countries such as Malaysia (since the timber is now purchased from other countries). 

The striving for a higher standard for living will also have a future environmental impact. Currently the per capita use of metals in China (steel, aluminum, copper, and lead) is only 9% that of consumption rates in leading industrial countries. Diamond explains alongside the example of metal usage the impact a rise in higher living standard could have on the environment. He writes, “If China’s per-capita consumption rates do rise to First World levels, and even if nothing else about the world changed – e.g., even if population and production/consumption rates everywhere else remained unchanged – then that production/consumption rate increase alone would translate (as multiplied by China’s population) into an increase in total world production or consumption of 94% in that same case of industrial metals. In other world, China’s achievement of First World standards will approximately double the entire world’s human resource use and environmental impact.” (373)

China and all of our future is interconnected. How we treat the environment today effects how life will be tomorrow. Diamond describes China as a “lurching” giant. He uses “lurching” in the neutral sense by which he simply means swaying suddenly from side to side. China’s unity and the government’s decision making ability allow it to implement changes faster than most other countries. According to Diamond, “As for the outcome of China’s current environmental problems, all one can say for sure is that things will get worse before they get better, because of time lags and momentum of damage already under way.” (374)

Thus the future is open. Diamond writes, “How will it all end up? Like the rest of the world, China is lurching between accelerating environmental damage and accelerating environmental protection. China’s large population and large growing economy, and its current and historic centralization, mean that china’s lurches involve more momentum than those of any other country.” (377)

In my home church, I have heard of Christian’s in China who have made it their goal to turn major companies’ environmental practices around and more green. I wonder, will more Christians rise up to this challenge to lead in transforming environmental policies in corporations and governments throughout the world? After all environmental issues are connected with being good stewards of creation and loving our neighbor (usually it is the poor who suffer the most from the destruction of the environment.)

Melvyn Bragg in his book, 12 Books That changed the World, discusses Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of Nations. As with anyone who has anything significant to say – there are those who love Adam Smith’s work and who are firm believers of his economic policies and there are those who believe that his work has “unleashed unbridled rapacity, licensed greed and ignored inequality and suffering.” (292) At the time of writing The Wealth of Nations the subject of political science did not exists. Smith’s approach of arguing and writing “used analytical tools logically to investigate his subject, making deductions from observations of history, seeing patterns and mechanisms in the communal relations between individuals and nations, adducing principles. The scientific method exemplified and honed by Newton had struck deep.” (295) Thus Scottish Enlightenment principals characterize his working methodology.

In order to understand The Wealth of Nations it is important to understand the Smith’s earlier work, The theory of Moral Sentiments. Bragg’s writes, “Smith saw morality as a matter which began in imagination – to imagine the other person was to begin to sympathize with him/her – and he saw wealth creation too as a capacity bred by imagination – imagining ourselves becoming wealthier; ‘it is this deception’, he wrote, which rouses and keeps in motion the industry of mankind.’” (296-297). More controversial is when Smith wrote about the rich that they “consume little more than the poor and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency … they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make the same distribution of the necessities of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions among its inhabitants … thus without intending it, without knowing it [the rich] advance the interests of society.” (297) This is what is known today as the “trickle-down-effect.” Despite past success of Smith’s theory Bragg raises the following question: “Did Smith fully attend to the reality of the lives of those at the bottom of the heap?” (297) Thus Smith’s contention that self-interest leads to noble actions has been continuously challenged and critiqued. Nonetheless Smith and those who follow in his footsteps hold strongly to the conviction that, “Since people look after their own affairs better than anyone else, leave them as free as possible to do so and the result will be increased wealth which will benefit everyone. This simplistically phrased, is typical of the Scottish Enlightenment in that it blends an optimistic reading of human nature with a reading which sees self-interest as the dynamo of individuals and of society. Straddling those two forces he predicated the greatness of capitalism.” (297-298)

One important aspect to remember before critiquing Smith’s economic policies is his conviction that “capitalism was a higher stage of human society than had been reached hitherto. He also believed it could be improved. It broke the back of the long history of slaves, serfs and the subjugated toiling for those who had successfully set themselves, it sometimes appeared immovably, above the mass. It broke the idea of a life fixed in one rut – like father, like son, with, for the majority, low life expectancy, no advance, no progress since time immemorial and forever. This had been the history, often declared the fate, of the mass of mankind and Smith saw a way to change it radically.” (298)

According to Bragg’s one central conviction “to the philosophy of The Wealth of Nations was the belief that the human drive to self-betterment is innate. [….] Yet Smith’s view of life has transferred profitably into the marketplace. ‘It is not’, he wrote, ‘from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their own advantages.’” (298-299) For me it is bizarre that selfishness and love for self can really be the key ingredient to the success and well-being of others and to the person itself. I can see that self- interest can drive us to achieve things and can be a propelling force that helps us provide better for our families. However, I wonder when self-interest becomes toxic for people and toxic for society. Self-preservation and self-interest seems to go against self-giving which is an essential component of the Christian life. Bragg even draws a parallel between Adam Smith and Richard Dawkins when he writes, “Smith takes his notion of the benevolence of self-interest into an area not too far removed from Richard Dawkins’s ‘selfish gene’: arguing that the promotion of self-interests is a sure way to promote the greater general interests. Of the rich investor he writes, ‘by pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants and very few words need to be employed in dissuading them from it.’” (305)

Another aspect of his policy which I find questionable is his understanding of a “win-win” situation. For example, Smith was fighting against a win-lose dynamic which he found in the mercantilist system where wealth was seen as something that you should hold onto. However, “Smith argued and proved that trade was and, properly conducted, should be seen as a ‘win-win’ certainty. The seller got the money but the buyer got the goods he wanted and – this is crucial – at a cheaper price than if he tried to produce them himself.” (301) According to Smith, this creates a win-win situation. However, applying this principal in a global economy can have a massive negative impact on cities, regions or even countries. For example Bragg’s notes that, “when cotton mills close for ever in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and whole towns become ghost towns; when the 12 million sari makers of India with their tested and ancient methods begin to be mown down by the machine-made saris of the Chinese; when goods from the East pour into the West and threaten what seemed impregnable fortresses of manufacture and then after a short siege capture and destroy them, then there is a ‘natural instinct to say – protect your own bullion, keep the gold and silver [like the mercantile system] even if it is expressed in other less dramatic materials: how can this invasion be other than debilitating?” (302) According to Smith’s economic principles the state should not interfere in these dynamics and let them play itself out for the greater good. Bragg’s notes, “Nevertheless, Smith is firm. His observation is that ‘trade which, without force or constraint, is naturally and regularly carried out between any two places, is always advantageous to both.’” (303) The problem with this view regarding trade is that it might be true in general or in the big picture (abstracted way) but it does not take the particular person’s well-being into consideration. If a families father permanently loose a job it does not seem “advantageous to both” for this particular family.

I don’t know of any better system than capitalism for the world economy, but I wonder about strategic policies and regulations that maximize capitalism’s benefits while minimizing it’s costs. Moreover, I wonder how good a system can be if it is truly built on selfishness. Any thoughts?

Mark Maslin in his book, Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction, provides an imminently readable introduction to the complex issue of global warming. Before I go on to discuss his work, I must admit that I am far out of my field of expertise when it comes to this issue. The last time I had a science class was 13 years ago and global warming was not a subject matter in that course. Moreover, I am an Evangelical Christian, and thus part of a community which has not always been concerned with creation care and environmental issues (our concern has been more with apologetics concerning the creation of the world). Recently this trend is changing for the better and some Evangelicals are rethinking their theology for creation care and environmental issues and are seeking to move these concerns to the forefront of Evangelical communities. One Evangelical organization that is trying to rethink Evangelical’s relationship to the environment is the Evangelical Environmental Network (http://www.creationcare.org) Here is just a little snippet from their website that provides a brief overview of why Christians should be concerned and active regarding environmental issues.

Biblically understood, "the environment" is actually part of God's creation, of which human beings are also a part. So why should we care for all of God's creation?

1. Christ died to reconcile all of creation to God (Col. 1:20).
2. All of creation belongs to Jesus (Col. 1:16; Ps. 24:1).
3. It fulfills the Great Commandments to love God and love what God loves. (It's hard to love a child with asthma when you're filling her lungs with pollution.)
4. Pollution hurts the poor the most, and Christians are called to care for the poor and the less powerful (Mt. 25:37-40).

Thus, caring for all of creation provides a Christian with the deepest sense of joy and contentment since it is part of loving God. We call this "creation-care."

What is "creation-care"?

Creation-care means caring for all of God's creation by stopping and preventing activities that are harmful (e.g. air and water pollution, species extinction), and participating in activities that further Christ's reconciliation of all of creation to God. Doing creation-care fills us with the joy that only comes from doing the will of God.

What does the Bible say?

Our scriptures page provides many texts from the Bible about God's relationship to creation and what God's will is concerning our relationship to creation.[1]

I pasted this snippet from their website here to give a brief theological reason (for those who question this) for why Christians should be concerned about global warming. I find the argument that it involves loving our neighbor and particular those who are poor very compelling since they most likely will suffer the most from the effects of global warming.

What is global warming? According to the Merrian Webster online dictionary global warming is defined as: “an increase in the earth's atmospheric and oceanic temperatures widely predicted to occur due to an increase in the greenhouse effect resulting especially from pollution.” Usually the discussion focuses on the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the consequences additionally added greenhouses gases will have. Maslin introduces the complexity of Global warming in the first chapter of the book. It’s a lot more complex then I was aware of. For example he discusses external and internal forcing mechanisms. According to Maslin, “an example of an internal forcing mechanism is the variations in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere modulating the greenhouse effect, while a good example of an external forcing mechanism is the long-term variations in the Earth’s orbits around the Sun, which alter the regional distribution of solar radiation to the Earth.” (15) Thus he argues that “in terms of looking for the evidence for global warming and predicting the future, we need to take account of all the natural external and internal forcing mechanisms.” (15)

A further question that Maslin raises is how the global climate system will react to the mechanism. According to Maslin “there are four possible relationships, and this is the central question in the global warming debate – which is most applicable to the future?” (18)

1. Linear and synchronous response.

“This can be equated to pushing a car along a flat road: most of the energy put into pushing is used to move the car forward.” (18)

2. Muted or limited response.

“This is the ‘pushing the car up the hill’ analogy: you can spend as much energy as you like trying to push the car, but it will not move very far.” (18)

3. Delayed or non-linear response.

“This scenario can be equated to the car on the top of a hill: it takes some effort and thus time to push the car to the edge of the hill; this is the buffering effect. Once the car has reached the edge, it takes very little to push the car over, and then it accelerates down the hill with or without help. Once it reaches the bottom, the car then continues for some time, which is the overshoot, and then slows down of its own accord and settles into a new state.” (18-20)

4. Threshold response.

“This scenario equates to the bus hanging off the cliff at the end of the film The Italian Job; as long as there are only very small changes, nothing happens at all. However, a critical point (in this case weight) is reached and the bus (and the gold) plunge off the cliff into the ravine below.” (20)

At this point it is clear that global warming is a complex issue to be wrestled with.

When I first started reading the book I wondered what possible solutions there are to preventing the worst effects of global warming. Maslin suggests two solutions to global warming: adaptation and mitigation.

Adaptation

The assumption of the first solution is that there will be climate change. Thus the way to deal with this is to study “the potential sensitivity, adaptability, and vulnerability of each national environment and socioeconomic system, because if we can predict what the impacts of global warming are likely to be, then national governments can take action to mitigate the effects.” (146) Currently the largest threat of global warming is its unpredictability. The apparent weakness of this position is that it takes lots of financial resources to implement these changes. Moreover, they might take to much time to implement.

Mitigation

Apparently, the idea of cutting global carbon emission in half in the near future is not as crazy as it sounds. Steve Pacala and Robert Socolow, two researchers at Princeton University tackled the problem as follows: “Instead of seeing one huge insurmountable problem, really what we are faced with are lots of medium-size changes which add up to the big change …. They also provided several examples for the wedges, each of the approximately saving 1 gigatonne of carbon every year …. For example, one wedge would be doubling the efficiency of 2 billion cars from 30mpg to 60mpg, which actually is a very achievable aim, as cars have already been built that can easily do 100mpg.” (150-151) Each country would have to figure out what their “wedges” are to reduce their carbon emission.

In the end it comes down to whether or not we are willing to do what it takes. Will Christians do what it takes?

Laurent Bonnefoy from the Institut Francais du Proche-Orient has written an excellent essay, “Violence in Contemporary Yemen: State, Society and Salafis.” In her essay she criticizes the intellectualist tendency to reduce violent actions to its ideological components. Her thesis is as follows:

Building on the variable of the evolving state/society relations, this contribution intends to shed light on the way violent Sunni-based groups are embedded in the Yemeni context. In doing that it means to assert that structures often matter more that ideologies and that the context in itself determines many of the outcomes, either violent or not. My purpose here is then to argue that increased repression and coercion are provoking violence, rather than limiting it. (325)

Thus Bonnefoy argues that an increase in violence, including terrorist violence, is often better explained by society’s structural shifts than by a singular focus on ideologies.

In her essay she starts with investigating the socio-political context in Yemen particularly the structure of how “successive Yemeni governments have interacted with Islamist groups and with society as a whole.” (326) After presenting the history and the dynamics at work between varies players in Yemeni society, Bonnefoy explains what political / structural changes led to an increase in violence in Yemen. This shift to an increase in jihadi-related violence has been explained in two different ways: “First, it was suggested that AQAP (al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula) has changed its strategy and has been able to learn from the errors of fellow jihadi groups, particularly those coming from Iraq and Saudi Arabia.” (333) This interpretation is built on the assumptions that the AQAP exists apart from Yemeni society at large. It fails to take into consideration what socio-political circumstances have led to an increase in violence. This explanation of the increase in violence in Yemen “focuses on ideology and ends up legitimizing the emerging sub-discipline of ‘jihadology’ to try to make sense of the new AQAP ‘enemy’ and evaluate its ‘threat’ and expose its ‘plans.’” (333) However, attributing so much to ideology is a too simplistic understanding of the increase of violence in Yemen.

The second explanation of increase in violence in Yemen goes as follows: “… the change in attitude of violent groups was primarily linked to a transformation of the structure of state / society relations and to an increase in repression.” (333) It is important to clarify that this second explanation does not deny “ideology” as a variable in the increase in violence. However, it argues for the increase in violence based on the shift in the structure of state / society relations and to an increase in repression.

My takeaway of the essay is as follows: Like everything else, terrorist violence needs to be understood with in its socio/political context in which it is embedded.

According to Shelley Trebesch in her book, Isolation: A Place of Transfromation in the Life of a Leader, every leader will go through times of isolation. Trebsch provides two definitions for isolation: First, “Isolation is the setting aside of a leader from normal ministry involvement in its natural context usually for an extended time in order to experience God in a new or deeper way.” (10) Second, “Ministry isolation is an experience in the context of ministry in which the basic symptoms of regular isolation are felt and experienced and in which God uses the situation to deepen the leader’s life.” (10) According to Trebesch these times of isolation can be both voluntary and involuntary.

Trebesch’s book is a fantastic guide for helping a ministry leaders process times of isolation in a more fruitful way. Trebesch provides a helpful framework for understanding the different stages a person goes through when in isolation. According to her a person walks through four stages during this time of isolation. The four stages are: stripping, wrestling with God, increased intimacy [with God] and release to look toward the future.

1. Stripping

According to Trebesch, “a stripping process usually initiates the isolation. While leaders can be stripped of many things while in a period of isolation (money, family, health, etc.) they are primarily stripped of their ministry identity.” (36) Trebesch continues to explain the “stripping” process by writing, “The Lord removes the various identities that ministry places upon a leader and strips the leader down to the core of who he/she has been created to be (the identity that the Lord places in him/her).” (36-37) She continues, “As the Lord strips the external identities (sometimes a leader adopts various identities for different situations), leaders often experience the pain of being stripped and the confusion of not knowing who they really are. They have adapted to many situations and organizational cultures and have often forsaken their own identity in order to succeed.” (37) Once a leader is stripped of his/her external identities, he/she often experiences “feelings of insecurity depression and emotional pain.” (37) At this point the question often arises – “Who am I?” Ultimately, the stripping process reveals the leaders deep need for God.

2. Wrestling with God

According to Trebesch, “leaders in this state hunger for God and search for their true identity.” (38) Moreover Trebesch points out that “God uncovers one’s core identity in the stripping process. For leaders who are willing to go through this process, an honest wrestling with God occurs next. They ask many deep searching questions of God such as, ‘Who have you created me to be?’ ‘What is my true identity – apart from outside ministry?’ (39) Ultimately “the leader turns to God for the answer to his / her identity questions.” (39) The time of wrestling also reveals that nothing will satisfy and bring life except for God.

3. Increased Intimacy

Trebesch describes this stage as follows: “During the wrestling phase, a desperate intensity enters one’s relationship with God. Having realized that one is not what one’s ministry is and having wrestled with God begging him to call forth one’s created identity, one realizes that life holds no value apart from an honest, intimate relationship with the Lord.” (40) Moreover Trebesch points out that, “this state of isolation encompasses a number of different characteristics, among them openness, honesty, weakness, or brokenness and vulnerability.” (40) This brokenness is often used in whatever new ministry God places a person in.

4. Release to Look Toward the Future

Trebesch notes that, “God eventually brings leaders out of isolation. He is faithful. There comes an intuitive point in which leaders begin to look toward the future. God, by his Spirit, gently gives persons permission to begin looking outward again for a return to ministry and to begin exiting the isolation period.” (42-43).

I believe that I have walked through this refinement cycle several times. I am planning on using her book for a personal retreat where I want prayerfully reflect on how God has been at work in my life. Basically the book helps you understand how God is at work in your life in times of isolation and how you can get the most out of those times.

Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey B. Pingree have edited a fantastic book called New Media, 1740-1915. The book futures ten well written essays that each deal with what most of us would refer to as old media. However, the old media was new media at one point and time and the essays are aimed at understanding various forms of media “in terms that allow us to understand what it meant for them to be new.” (xi) The editors deem this a culturally important task to investigate how the new media was received in its own cultural and historical context. According to Pingree and Gitelman when a new media is introduced, “There is a moment, before the material means and the conceptual modes of new media have become fixed, when such media are not yet accepted as natural, when their own meanings are in flux. At such a moment, we might say that new media briefly acknowledge and question the mythic character and the ritualized conventions of existing media, while they are themselves defined within a perceptual and semiotic economy that they then help to transform.” (xii) The essays explore how such new media acquires “particular meanings, powers, and characteristics.” (xii) When new media first emerge they “pass through a phase of identity crisis, a crisis precipitated at least by the uncertain status of the given medium in relation to established, known media and their functions. In other words, when new media emerge in a society, their place is at first ill defined, and their ultimate meanings or functions are shaped over time by that society’s existing habits of media use (which, of course, derive from experience with other, established media), by shared desires for new uses, and by the slow process of adaptation between the two. The ‘crisis’ of a new medium will be resolved when the perceptions of the medium, as well as its practical uses, are somehow adapted to existing categories of public understanding about what that medium does for whom and why.” (xii)

Among the collection of essays is Diane Zimmerman Umble’s essay, Sinful Network or Divine Service: Competing Meanings of the Telephone in Amish Country. In her essay she explains how the new phone lines and phones that became available had a contested meaning among the Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. The availability of the phone threatened the heart of the social fabric of the Amish community – the home. She writes, “The telephone was perceived as a threat because it entered the home at the heart of Amish faith and life, in essence, sacred space. The telephone stood as both a symbolic and a physical connection to the outside world, and it opened the home to outside influence and intrusion.” (152) On the one hand the phone provided a way for farmers to conduct business and was available in emergency situations. On the other hand phone lines threatened the practice of separation from the world. The author describes how the various religious communities responded differently to the telephone issue. The essay illustrates the crisis that this new medium brought about. It took the various communities time to sort out and resolve the crisis. The various communities responded differently to the new medium. Some rejected the use of the telephone, while others allowed it.

When I was reading these essays, I could not help but wonder what new media’s meaning is being negotiated in today’s church. It seems that most media is accepted uncritically. However, here are a couple of things new media issues that I have thought about before:

First, I have to think of people using their iPhones or android based phones as bibles instead of using the book version. What are the implications of using the phone as a bible versus using a book as a Bible? Do we lose a sense of the larger biblical story by using our phones as bibles? I am not sure about what the implications of this are. What do you think?

Second, in my experience people use the internet as authoritative when it comes to researching issues and interpretations concerning scripture. I had one of my student leaders rely heavily on something that she found on the internet for a devotional. The problem with what she found was that it was gnostic and was outside of a Christian orthodox interpretation of the scripture. There seems to be a need for guidelines on how to sort out the good sources from the bad ones online. I have encountered several times that people have referred to something that they found online which was from a theological perspective a bunch of baloney.

In Daniel Patrick Forrester’s book, Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking In Your Organization, he argues for the importance for such reflective thinking time that benefits both employer and employee. Forrester notes, “Just as Dr. Bea suggests that his students must learn to stop and think again, so too must every organization. [….] We are living in an age of immediacy that can’t be singularly managed with instantaneous responses. For these reasons, stepping away from the problem – and structuring time to think and reflect – just may prove the most powerful differentiator that allows your organization to remain relevant and survive. All risk can’t be eliminated and all decisions can’t be made in the blink of an eye. But major risks must be managed, especially when there is evidence that the unthinkable is slowly unfolding before your eyes.” (3-4) Costly accidents could be avoided and new innovations made if organizations create a culture of a structured time off to think. Throughout the book Forrester demonstrates via real stories and examples how “the best decisions, insights, ideas, and outcomes result when we take sufficient time to think and reflect.” (4)

In chapter eight Forrester talks about the significance that sabbaticals can play within organizations and how they have the potential to unleash a person’s reflective capacity. So many times we only feel like we are doing something productive and meaningful when we are working. This behavior is reinforced by our culture which pays respect to those who work endless hours and don’t take their vacation days. At dinner with friends the conversation often is about who works the most and the hardest. In most cultures it is a batch of honor to be a workaholic. What we do and how much we work is closely tied to our identity and self-worth. However, this relentless drive to work, to be needed and to be significant has its down side – It does not allow people or organization to participate in contemplative and reflective practices which are important for the organizations and individuals well-being. Even though deep down we know that our need for reflective thinking time is crucial, we are overwhelmed by petty immediate needs that keep us from structuring our work (Christian lives) around rhythms of time off to think. Thus like all other good things in life we need a discipline that can help us implement this reflective time because it will not happen on its own.

Sabbaticals might be that solution to our lack of discipline. If we build sabbaticals into an organization or an individual’s lives we can create regular space for reflexivity. Sabbatical time allows people to “spend thinking and reflecting about what they choose to and not what they are told to focus on.” (162) However, for the sabbatical time to work organizations need to commit to four practices:

1. The program must have unambiguous objectives that define why the company is doing it.

2. Top management must sustain and support it.

3. The sabbatical program must have a well-crafted policy.

4. It must have structured support and clearly defined communications. (166)

These four guidelines help make sabbatical practices work and meaningful.

There are compelling reasons for organizations to implement the benefit of sabbatical time into their organizational culture. YousSABBATICAL.com provides us with seven benefits that sabbaticals can provide:

1. Talent is measured and leaders are developed. When a person goes away on sabbatical, it puts their previous work into a context that reveals needs and gaps within their teams.

2. Succession planning occurs. The forced time off means that those in waiting must ‘set up’ and have their work take on new significance. People can actually take on a ‘stretch role’ for a short period of time.

3. Cultures of collaboration and trust are built. While employees are away teams develop new approaches that may not have existed before and may continue once the person comes back.

4. Opportunity to live their stated core values. Companies with stated values linked to such time off get the chance to ‘walk the talk.’

5. Customers actually love it. Evidence suggests that people like to buy from companies that nurture their employees in such a holistic way.

6. A company’s brand is strengthened. A sabbatical program can be a strong indicator that a company is a ‘great place to work,’ thus helping attract and retain top people.

7. A boost for employee engagement. Sabbaticals allow for the integration of personal goals (desire for time away from work) and corporate sustainability. Highly engaged employees outperform their disengage colleagues by 20 to 28 percent. (166-167)

Forrester provides McDonalds and Stefan Sagmeister (Design Studio owner) as two examples that have implemented sabbaticals into their organization’s culture.

Do you have the courage to stop and think?

David Brooks in his book, The Social Animal, writes a fascinating account of the importance that noncognitive skills play for successfully navigating life. According to Brooks noncognitive skills “is the catchall category for hidden qualities that can’t be easily counted or measured, but which in real life lead to happiness and fulfillment.” (ix)

Most books that are written about success focus on “outer definition of success, having to do with IQ, wealth, prestige, and worldly accomplishments.” (x) However, Brooks is keen to tell the story that takes place on the lower level. He writes, “And a core finding of their work is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking. We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.” (x) Moreover, he notes that “the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind – where most of the decisions and many of the most impressive acts of thinking take place. These submerged processes are the seedbeds of accomplishment.” (x)

According to Brooks, modern society has focused primarily on cultivating the hard skills. Usually the cultivating and valuing of the soft skills (the moral and emotional faculties) has been ignored and deemed as unimportant (since it is not easily measured). Brooks writes, “Children are coached on how to jump through a thousand scholastic hoops. Yet by far the most important decisions they will make are about whom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses. On these matters, they are almost entirely on their own. We are good at talking about material incentives, but bad about talking about emotions and intuitions. We are good at teaching technical skills, but when it comes to the most important things, like character, we have almost nothing to say.” (xiv) Thus Brooks has set out and written a narrative account of two fictional characters Harold and Erica through which he shows the significance of the noncognitive plays out in real life. With his fictional account of Harold and Erica he illustrates the most recent scientific findings and brings them together in one coherent narrative.

According to Brooks, “Ninety percent of emotional communication is nonverbal. Gestures are an unconscious language that we use to express not only our feelings but to constitute them. By making a gesture, people help produce an internal state.” (12) Thus a key to successful navigating life is to be able to read and apply nonverbal emotional communication. The loss of emotional capabilities is demonstrated through an account of Damasio who treated a patient “who had also lost his emotional functions through a brain injury, was finishing an interview session in Damasio’s office, and Damasio suggested two alternative dates for their next meeting. The man pulled out his datebook and began listing the pros and cons of each option. For the better part of half an hour, he went on and on, listing possible conflicts, potential weather conditions on the two days in question, the proximity of other appointments. [….] Finally Damasio interrupted the man’s musings and just assigned him a date to return. Without a pause, the man said, “That’s fine” and went away.” (18-19) The loss of emotional ability, “leads to self-destructive and dangerous behavior. People who lack emotion don’t lead well-planned logical lives in the manner of coolly rational Mr. Spocks. They lead foolish lives. In the extreme cases, they become sociopaths, untroubled by barbarism and unable to feel other people’s pain.” (19) Out of his observation with patients, Damasio formulated a theory which is known as the “somatic marker hypothesis.” The theory deals with the “role of emotion in human cognition. Parts of the theory are disputed – scientists differ about how much the brain and the body interact – but his key point is that emotions measure the value of something, and help unconsciously guide us as we navigate through life – away from things that are likely to lead to pain and toward things that are likely to lead to fulfillment.” (19) This does not mean that somatic marker deliberate for us. Rather, “They assist the deliberation by highlighting some options (either dangerous or favorable), and eliminating them rapidly from subsequent consideration. You may think of it as a system for automated qualification of prediction, which acts, whether you want it or not, to evaluate the extremely diverse scenarios of the anticipated future before you. Think of it as a biasing device.” (19) Brooks refers to this as the Emotional Positioning System (EPS) that helps us to navigate each day through all the stimuli that comes our way. Brooks writes that “amidst all this pyrotechnic chaos, different parts of the brain and body interact to form an Emotional Positioning System.” (19) He further explains, “Like the Global Positioning System that might be in your car, the EPS senses your current situation and compares it to the vast body of data it has stored in its memory. It reaches certain judgments about whether the course you are on will produce good or bad outcomes, and then it coats each person, place, or circumstance with an emotion (fear or excitement, admiration or repugnance) and an implied reaction (“Smile” or “Don’t smile”); “Approach” or “Get Away”) that helps us navigate our days.” (20) Thus according to Brooks, reason and emotion are intricately connected with each other. Moreover, “Reason is nestled upon emotion and dependent upon it. Emotion assigns value to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations. The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.” (21)

For a long time I have been thinking about spiritual discernment. I wonder how many times Christians have elevated reason so much to the expense of intuition and discernment. Do we ignore our EPS in our theology and Christian leadership?