Concerning Conceptual Innovation

 

Just Wars and Proud Sexualities

 

            According to most church historians, Christians mostly rejected military service in the first three centuries after Christ.  Quakers and Anabaptists often say this shows the early Christians were pacifist, a somewhat anachronistic claim, since “pacifism” emerged into our theological lexicon in the nineteenth century.  Quakers of the eighteenth century and Anabaptists of the seventeenth century rejected warfighting because it violated the teaching of Jesus, but their position only became known as “pacifism,” the principled rejection of all war, later.

            Were the early Christians pacifists?  Quakers and Anabaptists like to say yes.  In Roman times, soldiers were expected to fight and kill.  Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies.  Christians rejected military service.  Therefore, the modern pacifist Christians say, the early Christians were pacifists.  But it’s not that clear.  In Roman times, soldiers were expected to pay homage to the emperor by burning incense to his “genius.”  Christians, as strictly monotheistic as the Jews, could not participate in worship of the emperor.  Christians had multiple reasons to reject military service.

            In the fourth century, things changed.  Constantine, a leading Roman general, converted to Christianity.  Constantine claimed to have seen a vision or dream in which he was instructed to conquer under the sign of the cross.  Having defeated his enemies, Constantine became emperor.  Christians, including the great theologian Augustine, faced a new situation.  What should we do if the emperor is one of us?  Constantine abolished emperor worship; paganism was no longer a requirement for military service.  Could Christians fight and kill?

            Augustine introduced a crucial conceptual innovation: the just war.  He taught that the command to love enemies must be integrated with God’s commands to pursue justice.  Augustine recognized that many wars are motivated by greed, lust, desires to dominate, pride, and revenge.  Christians must not fight for such reasons.  But sometimes, Augustine taught, Christians should fight—precisely when fighting leads to justice.

            In a generation, just war theory came to dominate Christian moral thinking about war.  Augustine’s conceptual innovation was extended and refined by other theologians over the next thousand years.  Aquinas and other theologians published rules to govern Christian participation in war in two main categories: first, rules to determine whether a particular war might be just (jus ad bellum); second, rules to govern behavior during a war (jus in bello).

            To illustrate: suppose a king has been insulted by the ambassador from a neighboring country.  This is a serious offense, but is it a just cause for war?  Probably not, because a Christian ruler is called by Christ to be gracious and forgiving.  But suppose the king believes, on good evidence, that the neighboring king has not only insulted him but also unjustly executed some of his subjects who were doing business in the neighboring country.  In this case, the king knows the neighboring king has committed grave injustice and using military might to correct such injustice would be right.  The citizens of the king’s country are not in possession of all the facts, and they must rely on the king’s judgment.  So, the Christian subjects of the king may fight and kill in the king’s army to help restore justice.

            Continue the illustration: suppose the offending king knows that he cannot defeat the Christian king in the open field.  His army confines itself to a fortress city.  The Christian king, invading the unjust king’s country, faces a hard tactical decision.  Should he lay siege to the unjust king’s city?  As everyone knows, a siege may take months or years to be successful.  Very often in a siege, the first victims are the non-combatants: elderly people, children, and women.  Can a Christian ruler decide to use this tactic, knowing that it will kill the innocent?  Medieval Christian theologians wrestled with this question.  Their answer?  Yes.  The Christian ruler may (indeed, must) use sieges if that is the only way to punish the unjust ruler.

            To 21^st century readers, I must say: I’m not making this up.

            Many Christians today would be surprised by my example of the insulting and unjust foreign king.  Surely, they think, Christians should not consider war over insults or even a few unjust deaths.  This is because contemporary Christians who say they believe in just war theory actually think as utilitarians.  Their guiding frame is: will this war produce more or less human flourishing, all things considered?  Utilitarians do not consult rules for warfare, except as loose guidelines.   

Historically speaking, Christian moral teachers have approved of wars that aimed to punish evil foreign rulers.  German theologians approved of the German war effort in WW1, while British theologians approved of the Allied war against Germany.  American preachers defended the justice of both sides in the Civil War.  It seems that Christians have found room in the just war theory to applaud an enormous variety of wars; apparently, almost every war is “just.”

When it comes to jus in bello, Christian moral theologians approved of sieges.  Later, they approved of cannons.  English and American theologians disapproved of “unrestricted submarine warfare” when it was practiced by the Germans in WW1, but they changed their judgment when it was practiced by the Americans in WW2.  Christian moral theologians approved of massive aerial bombing of cities in WW2, bombings that predictably killed far more non-combatants than soldiers.  It’s not hard to find Christian moral theologians who approved of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  I have claimed before and I assert again that the real just war rule governing behavior in war is this: whatever must be done to win is permitted.

What I have said here is not enough to justify the conclusion I would draw, namely, that the just war theory is a failure.  I think just war theory is a failure, in that it has failed spectacularly, again and again, to keep Christians from fighting unjust wars and it has failed to prevent Christians from using manifestly unjust means in wars.  But my tiny dip into Christian history is not nearly enough.  One would have to collect a thousand pages of documentation to demonstrate the failure of just war theory in practice. 

I also think just war theory is a theological failure.  That is, it does not give an adequate interpretation of Jesus’ teaching.  What a brassy thing for me to say!  Remember, Augustine and Aquinas invented and refined the just war theory.  Who am I, a retired philosophy teacher, to disagree with such intellectual and spiritual giants?  How did they err?

Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies.  This is a difficult command, so difficult that we may all confess that we have failed to obey it.  We may be tempted, each one of us individually, to look for some way to way to avoid the implications of Jesus’ command, such as “Do good to those who spitefully use you.”  Furthermore, scripture does praise justice, commanding believers to pursue justice energetically.  “Let justice roll down like waters,” said Amos.  So, in addition to a self-motivated desire to avoid the implication of Jesus command, we may share serious disinterested concerns for public justice.  Our desire to find some way around Jesus’ word intensifies.  The world presents new political situations.  We would very much like to approve of good men (Constantine) when they have political power.

Then we hear a word, a new word, a conceptual innovation, the “just war.”  Christians, we are told, can love their enemies and at the same time fight against them.  In fact, Christians can love their enemies and kill them, but only if the right authority says this is a just war.  According to this new way of thinking, we don’t have to judge the justice of the war; that is the business of the ruler.

And … away we go.

In the last hundred years Christians have come upon a different conceptual innovation.  The question concerns not violence but sexuality and sexual behavior.  The outlines of approved sexual behavior in Christian moral teaching were pretty clear for nineteen centuries.  First, Christian men were commanded to be sexually faithful to their wives (and Christian women faithful to husbands), in contrast to typical Greco-Roman expectation.  Children were not to be aborted or exposed, not even if they were girls.  (Unsurprisingly, Christianity attracted women converts.)  Chastity was a virtue for all unmarried Christians.  Pre-marital sex, adultery, homosexual sex, and divorce (serial monogamy) were all out of bounds.

Christians praised and practiced a variety of sexual ideals within these general guidelines.  Some theologians taught that chastity was morally superior to the sexual faithfulness of married persons; a “religious” calling was better than family life.  Lutherans and other Protestants rejected that idea; marital faithfulness, they said, is just as holy as the monastery.  Some Christians celebrated marital “companionship” (surprisingly to some, this included the Puritans), while some theologians taught that even within marriage every act of intercourse should always aim at procreation.  Remarriage after the death of one’s spouse was discouraged by some but permitted by all.  Divorce was always discouraged, with varying degrees of censure for divorced persons.  In recent decades, more and more Christian moral teachers, even in churches that officially require a celibate life for nuns and priests, endorse the frank enjoyment of sex within marriage.

In the last hundred years, especially since WW2, this mass of moral teaching has been confronted by a conceptual innovation, the notion of “sexual identity” or “sexual nature.”  An unstated assumption of Christian moral theology throughout Christian history is that all people share human nature, and that this nature is expressed as male and female.  Human beings were created to be like God, imago Dei in the Latin rendering of Genesis 1:27: “… in the image of God he made them, male and female he made them.” 

People have a very high status if they are made in the image of God.  But Christians are quick to add another doctrine, i.e., that we are sinners.  Human beings express their sinfulness in violence and greed, pride and rebellion, self-harm and disdain for others, etc.  A major category of sin concerns sex: lust, infidelity, rape, seduction, pre-marital sex, etc.

The concept of sexual nature calls all this into question.  First, some men are not sexually attracted to women.  No matter how strenuously a culture condemns homosexual behavior, some men desire sex with other men.  20^th century psychological research affirmed again and again that same-sex attraction was a deep, unchosen facet of these men’s sexuality.  Second, every school of 20^th century psychological therapy proved unsuccessful in “treating” such men (that is, giving them heterosexual desires).  Similar evidence was uncovered concerning women attracted to women.  Of course, some therapists reported some successes, but no treatment method showed consistent success.

In steps conceptual innovation: human beings exhibit more than two sexual natures.  Some men are gay, some women are lesbian, other people are bi-sexual (having sexual attraction to men and women), and others are heterosexual.  That was the status of the discussion fifty years ago.  Since then, the concept has grown to include transsexuals (persons with male biology who identify as female and persons with female biology who identify as male), non-binary persons, and polyamorist persons.

The rapid addition of categories of sexual nature indicates conceptual innovation run amuck.  I think it’s easy to see difficult challenges ahead for Christian moral theology.

Christian moral theology affirms the dignity and worth of every individual, much as scripture commands us to pursue justice.  What should Christians say to homosexuals, two men who love each other and want to marry?  True, the Bible (in both testaments) explicitly condemns sexual acts between two men.  But the writers of the Bible didn’t know about sexual natures.  Just as Martin Luther was wrong to use the Bible to “refute” Copernicus, it would be wrong to use scriptural moral rules to condemn gay marriage.  (After all, the Bible does say the “earth does not move.”  You can look it up.)

Therefore, we have a scriptural principle that we must affirm the worth and dignity of each person, and we have a conceptual innovation that lets us avoid the obvious implication of biblical teaching. i.e., that sex is only for men and women who are married to each other.  In the last fifty years, many Christian moral teachers have concluded that we should affirm gay marriage for homosexuals and lesbians.

When I say, “many Christian moral teachers,” I include some of the best Christian philosophers I have known, for example, Marilyn Adams.  Who am I, a retired philosophy teacher, to disagree with intellectual and spiritual giants?  Where is her error?

Christians who affirm gay marriage need to explore the implications of this conceptual innovation. If we affirm each person’s dignity, that means we affirm this person’s dignity.  If it we must affirm gay marriage for those two men, shouldn’t we affirm gay marriage for these three men?  If we affirm lesbian marriage for those two women, shouldn’t we affirm two marriages for this bi-sexual woman?  The polyamorists say that it is essential to their sexual identify to marry multiple partners. 

The problem is that “sexual nature” has very little content.  It is subject to confusion and misuse, just as the notion of justice in war.  The basic moral rule for those who believe in sexual natures would be something like this.  “Never act contrary to your sexual nature.”  But the contemporary explosion of sexual identities shows how little content that rule contains. 

Should older men have sex with 12 or 13 year-old boys?  Most contemporary voices, and all Christian voices, would say no.  Why not?  The boys aren’t old enough?  Such persons should read Plato’s Symposium.  Our society currently says men should not love boys sexually, but NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association) disagrees.  Most pro-LGBT groups condemn man/boy love on the grounds that adolescent boys are not mature enough for sex, and they have tried to distance themselves from NAMBLA.  But the same groups say transgender youth of the same age are mature enough for sex-reassignment therapy and surgery, with or without parental consent.

 

           

Dualism and Location

 

Where are You?

 

            The question, “Where are you?” might be used in a variety of contexts.  Depending on the context, answers might be very different.  There are different kinds of “location.”

            For example, recently one of my friends said, “I’m in hell.”  This friend believes in orthodox Christian doctrine, so he doesn’t literally think he is in hell.  Things have gone so wrong in his life—financially, career wise, church relationships, intimate family dysfunction—that he feels trapped, hopeless, and angry.  He suffers every day, and there is no way to escape.  We can call this a metaphorical location.  It’s easy to imagine more examples.  “I’m on page twelve.”  “I’m in the dumps.”  “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

            In contrast to metaphorical location, we often expect and respond with physical location.  “I’m in the bonus room.”  “I just left Safeway; be home soon.”

            It’s obvious, but I’ll draw attention to this fact anyway.  Physical location is the primary kind of location.  Metaphorical location may something important and/or insightful about a person’s spiritual or psychological situation, but it does so without claiming literal truth.  “He’s green with envy” may say something important about a person without implying that he is green.  By contrast, “I just left Safeway” cannot be true unless the speaker was physically located near Safeway in the recent past.

            So far I’ve said nothing controversial.  But some notions in philosophical anthropology suggest other kinds of “location.”  For example, some versions of body-soul dualism allow for the answer, “I’m here now, but a few hours ago I was in Delhi.”  On body-soul dualism, the real person is the soul, not the body.  And some versions of body-soul dualism endorse “soul travel.”  On this view, the person’s body may have been here at home for the entirety of the last 24 hours, but the real person (the soul) was in Delhi (thousands of miles away from here) for some portion of those 24 hours.  Thus, if such dualistic theories are true, the correct answer to “Where are you?” must be a report on the location of the person’s soul.  I suppose one might even say, on this view, “I’m not here.  Only my body is here.  I’m on Venus.”

            I don’t believe in soul travel.  And I think body-soul dualism is bad philosophy in general.  Remember, one of the greatest philosophers ever, Plato, made body-soul dualism a key feature of his theory.  Therefore, rejecting body-soul dualism very definitely is controversial.  Many Platonists, including many Christians, disbelieve in soul travel, but they need to give some explanation why.  If the real person is the soul (without the body), why can’t souls travel?  

On the other hand, some Platonist Christians are quite open to soul travel.  When Paul says to the Corinthians that he “was caught up to the third heaven” he was talking, they say, about soul travel.  I disagree.  I think Paul was describing a vision.  But Platonist Christians will not be persuaded easily, and I’m not going to make my case here.

            In previous essays, I have described “therapeutic dualism.”  Here the contrast is not between the soul and the body (as in Platonic dualism) nor between the mind and the body (as in Cartesian dualism), but between the heart and the body.  Therapeutic dualism promises that if you follow your heart, which is the real you, you will live a better, more happy life.  Thus, if in your heart you discover that you are lesbian, you will be happier if you practice woman-woman sex.  If a teenager’s heart is female, he should be encouraged to identify as female and if necessary make use of surgery and hormone therapy to bring her body into conformity with her true self.  Therapeutic dualism has gained great influence in our culture, to the point that many people argue that minor children must have access to such surgeries and hormone therapies without consent of their legal guardians (their parents).

            On therapeutic dualism, a person may truthfully say, “My body is male, but I am female.”  Or: “My body is female, but I am nonbinary.”  The true person is the heart.  I suspect—though this is not clearly said by many—that the heart can change.  If that’s right, then a person could say, “I used to be female, but now I am male.  The fact that my body has sex organs of one kind or another is irrelevant.”

            For some Platonists, soul travel is an attractive feature of their doctrine.  The soul/body division opens spiritual location.  The body might be unjustly imprisoned, but the soul is free.

            Therapeutic dualists—many of them at least—would not want similar implications for their doctrine.  If a young girl’s heart really is male, transgender teaching says she should be able to remake her body to conform to the heart.  It’s not enough to be free in one’s heart; the body needs to be remade.

            It seems, then, that therapeutic dualists would answer “Where are you?” by saying, “I’m right here, trapped in this body.”

            Aristotelian dualists say that the soul is the form of the body.  Against the Platonists, we can say the soul is right here, in this body.  Against the Cartesians, Aristotelians can admit the body and mind interact intimately.  But the soul is not trapped; it is the very form of the body.

An aspect of friendship

 

On Executive Function

 

            I have a longtime friend, whom I will not name, who suffers from depression, sometimes severe depression.  In times past, he has been hospitalized to prevent suicide.  We talk often.  In times of crisis, he sometimes calls me three or four times a day.  In the months since his release from hospital he calls at least two or three times a week—usually more.  I think our friendship has played a significant role in his survival and progress against depression.

            Let me be clear.  I’m his friend, not his psychiatrist.  I don’t do therapy; I supply friendship.  As a friend, I have consistently urged him to trust and work with his psychiatrist.  When he called from the hospital, I urged him to trust nurses and other staff; I opposed his often-stated beliefs that staff persons didn’t care about him.

            I am not the doctor, not the professional, not the paid helper—and therefore I can be pretty directive.  Many times I have baldly contradicted things my friend said.  “That’s not true,” I have said.  “You need to base your thinking on truth.”  Depression and other mental disorders cloud our minds. 

“I’m never going to get better,” my friend said.  “I’ll never get out of here (the hospital).  If I do get out, I’ll die homeless on the streets.”

Over and over, I said “That’s not true.  You will get better.  You are not going to become homeless.  In fact, given the resources you have, you will be a small-scale philanthropist for the rest of your life.  Part of your task in life is to manage your inheritance and give away significant amounts of money.”

My friend has made progress in the last few months.  He takes the medications prescribed by his psychiatrist, and I’m sure that helps.  He’s back in his apartment, back at work, and he has begun attending worship services at a church.  All these things help.

But getting better is hard work.  Very often my friend does not want to do the things that will lead to improvement.  Depression saps its victims of energy and the will to fight.  Depression creates a self-reinforcing cycle: negative beliefs (I’ll never succeed) produce self-defeating behaviors (Skip therapy), which magnify depressed feelings (I hate myself), which lead to more negative beliefs (No one cares). 

No wonder that people say: Depression hurts.  Many times I have acknowledged the reality of my friend’s feelings.  “I know it feels that way, and your feelings are real.  But your feelings are not based on truth.  You will not be homeless.  You do useful work in your job.  Other people (such as I, your friend, and so-and-so, your supervisor at work) recognize and appreciate your abilities.  And beyond all these things, God loves you.”

Very often, my friend says, of some suggestion: “That’s hard.”  I have nagged him to make a list of possible activities that might enrich his life after retirement.  “That’s hard.”  I urged him to call his accountant to make sure certain tax forms are filed.  “That’s hard.”  When he was in hospital, I told him to go to group therapy.  “That’s hard.”  There are many other examples.

My friend is telling the truth.  Doing these things is hard, and much harder when one is depressed.  And yet, bit by bit, my friend has done hard things.  He has chosen to act in ways that will probably help him feel better.  I never promise him that doing something will certainly help him feel better.  Every move must be truth based.

Choosing to act on the basis of truth is an executive function.  It’s hard for me, and it’s especially hard for someone who is depressed.  Loving relationships—in families, in friendship, with therapists—help move us, but in the end the person must exhibit agency.  It is hard, extremely hard, for my friend to take charge of his life.  Depression would wrap its tentacles around his emotions, beliefs and will.  By the grace of God and the intervention of a good doctor, my friend decides, bit by bit, to do the hard things.  As a friend, I encourage and nag.

Reflections on After Virtue

 

Lessons from MacIntyre (1):

On Practices and Internal Goods

 

            I’ve taught a senior level philosophy class called “Virtue Theory” in alternate years for about thirty years.  The main text for this course has been Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue.  Thus, I’ve had years to read, re-read, and think about MacIntyre’s influential book.  I’ve learned much from MacIntyre, though I’m sure there are insights in the book I haven’t noticed yet.  A short essay, even a series of essays, can only explain a few of MacIntyre’s ideas.

            First, internal goods of practices are real.  “Practices” are cooperative social activities in which people strive to achieve excellence.  Examples help understand this notion; I often ask students to think of driving, playing and instrument in an orchestra or band, architecture, or surgery.  These and hundreds of other activities have standards of excellence baked into the concept of the activity.  That is: we only understand the concept of driving by reference to the concept of good driving.  The same relation exists between farming and good farming.  You can’t do anything you like and call it “farming”; your actions as a “farmer” will be more or less like ideal farming, and if your actions are sufficiently unlike good farming, you not really farming at all.

            “Internal goods” are goods made possible by some practice or a practice very like it.  Band members who strive for excellence in playing music will sometimes report a kind of satisfaction or excitement or pleasure when the band plays well.  (Notice that we very often struggle to give a name to the internal goods of a practice.  Many of us find “pleasure” in biting a cookie.  But the “pleasure” of excellent cooperative music playing is hardly the same.)  Also, the internal goods of a practice are acknowledged and judged only by persons competent in that practice.  Those of us on the outside might guess about the internal goods of architecture, but since we haven’t been trained in skills and standards of excellence appropriate to architecture we don’t really know.

            “External goods,” things like money, prestige, and power are also real.  Very often, persons can win external goods by participating in practices.  External goods are controlled by “institutions.”  All practices persist over time, and institutions grow up around the practices to enable the participants to cooperate.  For example, the practice of driving is made possible by car manufacturers, auto insurance companies, the state patrol, traffic courts, gas stations, and so on.  Institutions are necessary, and external goods are real goods.  But if a person pursues only the external goods of a practice (e.g., prizes for the band, promotions for the architect, profit for the farmer, prestige for the editorial writer), the person can lose touch with the internal goods of the practice.  MacIntyre calls this “corruption.”

            Because internal goods are real, radical subjectivism of values must be false.  In moral philosophy, the most sophisticated version of moral subjectivism is called “emotivism.”  Emotivists, such as A.J. Ayer or Charles Stevenson, taught that normative moral judgments (for example, “stealing is wrong”) are really nothing more than expressions of feeling (“I don’t like stealing, and I don’t want you to like it either”).  MacIntyre devotes several chapters of After Virtue to exploring the rise and decline of emotivism in modern moral philosophy.  Most philosophers agree that emotivism is false as a theory of the meaning of moral words, which is how the theory was proposed.  But MacIntyre points out that while emotivism fails as a theory of moral meaning, it gives a pretty good description of much of our moral behavior and arguments.  That is, people assume there is no rational way to persuade groups who disagree with us, so we adopt non-rational methods of “persuasion”: protests, de-platforming, insults, threats, manipulation, and all the techniques of propaganda.

            Now, consider radical subjectivism in regard to a practice like driving.  There are in fact internal goods of driving, and competent drivers experience them.  Not yet competent drivers—imagine an enthusiastic 15-year-old who has his permit—may well have strong feelings and opinions about driving.  The fifteen-year-old apprentice driver may think, for example, that the key to good driving lies in perfect vision and/or quick reflexes.  He may believe, given the movies he has watched about race cars, that he knows more than his aged aunt.  If subjectivism were true, the not yet competent driver’s feelings and beliefs would count just as much as the aunt with her thirty years of safe driving record.  But subjectivism is not true.  Those of us who are competent in driving insist—and we use powerful institutions like the state patrol and drivers training classes to make our insistence effective—that the would-be driver learn the virtues of driving.  Only a virtuous driver can come to acknowledge and judge the internal goods of driving.

 

Reflections While Paying Property Tax

 

Dirt and Memories

 

            Today I wrote a check for $12.52, payable to the Bent County (Colorado) treasurer.  This covers the yearly property tax on my portion of my grandfather Smith’s estate, of which I own two parts.  However, $10 of the check goes to cover the filing fee.  The actual taxes were $1.08 for one parcel and $1.44 for the other.  It is unused, and almost unusable, dirt.  Clearly, the Bent County Tax Assessor agrees, as reflected in the assessment.

            My Dad died in 2008.  My stepmother, May, inherited his property, including his interest in the Colorado land.  May is in her nineties now and has outlived yet another husband, Cal, who died in 2022.  Dad and May married in 1989, and I was the officiating minister.  Not many men get to say they married their father, but I did!  I married Dad to May.

            Last year I contacted my stepsister, Debbie, May’s daughter from her first marriage, about the Colorado property.  Debbie took May to a bank, where a notary public witnessed May’s signing of a “quit claim” deed, transferring Dad’s interest in the Colorado property to me.  Previously, I had contacted my sisters, Debbie Heeren (not to be confused with my stepsister Debbie Florie), Gail Wentworth, and Crystal Smith to make sure they approved of me taking the property.  No one objected.  After all, it’s just worthless dirt.

            In October 2022, Sarah and I visited the old farm, accompanied by cousins Lois, Sandy, Larry, and Betty (with spouses).  The cistern is lost under the sand.  The house is falling down.  It had been relatively wet recently, so the ground was sprinkled with weeds.  To the untrained eye, there not much there.

            We cousins had memories of the farm.  Betty lived there for a time in the 1950s.  Lois remembered sitting on the porch steps as a punishment (before the invention of “time out”—Grandma Smith was ahead of her time).  Sarah called Uncle Don while we were there; he made comments on things as they were when he was a boy eighty years ago.

            The next day Sarah and I visited Hasty Friends Church.  I had worshiped there before, on family visits in 1967 and 1970.  Fifty-two years between visits!  The Hasty Friends welcomed us to a potluck meal after church.  Sarah and I met a woman who remembered Sunday School class taught by Grandma.  Grandma died in 1975, so that memory is also five decades old.  We also met a man who remembered riding the school bus with Uncle Don, a memory which probably dates to 1945 or 1946—seventy-five years ago!

            My cousin Kathy, who was not able to join us for the reunion, has a dream of somehow uniting the ownership of the property in one name.  Then we could build a memorial to pioneers, or we could erect a sign with our grandparents’ names.  Maybe we’ll get it done.  After all, the dirt is worthless.  The memories matter.

(Preface) Soul Food

 

Preface:

How This Book Came to Be

 

            The idea for Soul Food came from my wife, Sarah.  Therefore, while I am responsible for the contents, Sarah may be praised (or blamed) for its existence.  Beginning in 2006, I have written hundreds of short devotions which appeared in The Fruit of the Vine, a quarterly journal published by Barclay Press of Newberg, Oregon.  Quakers across the country read The Fruit of the Vine; my annual work to produce two or three weeks of devotions has undoubtedly reached many more readers than all my philosophy books combined.  Sarah suggested that I collect my contributions to The Fruit of the Vine into a year-long devotional reader.

            Eric Muhr, who manages Barclay Press, agreed immediately when I asked permission to reprint my devotions.  But when I sat down to organize the devotions (conveniently stored in my Mac-Mini—thank God for computer hard drives!), I came up considerably short of 365.  Even adding three weeks of “Before Kings” and three weeks in Luke (both written in 2022), I didn’t have a full year.  I decided to supplement the devotional readings with essays.  Interspersed among the devotions, Soul Food includes some of my thinking over two decades on a variety of topics, both serious and whimsical: politics, the virtue of hope, movies, the future of work, driverless cars, zombies, etc. 

            Mixing essays with devotional readings might strike some readers like mixing oil and water.  But the various bits come together, I think, because my goal is to think as a Christian.  Hence, the subtitle: A Year of Christian Reflection.  Philosophy, I have often told students at the beginning of a semester, consists in thinking; specifically, thinking hard about things that count.  Then I ask the students, given that definition, which topics philosophers ought to think about.  Religion?  Yes, they say.  Religion is important; it “counts.”  Science?  Yes.  Art?  Yes.  And so on.  I submit that every topic in these essays—even zombies—turns out to be important.  God calls Christians to think carefully and critically about a wide variety of things.

            There are scores, perhaps hundreds, of year-long devotional readers published every year.  It’s a crowded market, if you want to think of it that way, and almost none of the authors will realize a profit.  But why think of it that way?  Sarah didn’t suggest the project to make money.  She and I both hope that you, the reader, will find in these reflections on scripture (and the essays interspersed among them) encouragements to discipleship to Jesus.

             

           

Morning Speculation

 

Friends, Not Pets

 

            We make habits, the cat and I.  I come to my home office early; no one else is out of bed yet.  Bekah’s cat quickly joins me, jumping onto my desk to brush her tail across my face.  She prods at my morning medicines, and I rebuke her, moving her to the floor.  I’ve learned if I cover the pills with paper, she doesn’t notice them.  We might say she is “training” me to hide my pills.  I’m “training” her to get off the desk when I’m writing.  Her interruptions are an irritant, yet I rarely put her out of the room.  Cat and man must both be gaining something from the interplay.  Repeated patterns of behavior congeal into habits.

The scene may be repeated throughout the day, but once Sarah or Bekah or the dog are up and about the cat is more easily discouraged.  She has others to play with, so she doesn’t need to interrupt me.  For the most part, it’s an early morning routine.

The dog and I display other habits.  Mileena flaps her ears in the night; the sound wakes me.  I pad to the back door to let her out.  Once she’s completed her business in the back yard, she pushes through the doggy door, or, if ice has stiffened the door, she barks.  I let her in and we go back to bed.

Later I’m at work in the office.  Mileena may nap on her blanket, but when she thinks it’s time, she whines.  I look at her.  “In a few minutes,” I say.  If the few minutes go on too long, she whines again.  “Okay, okay,” I say.  I put on shoes, don my coat, and fetch a plastic bag.  Mileena knows these signs and eagerly waits for me to hook up her leash.  We go for a walk.  She does her business and I use the bag to pick it up.  Supposedly, I “trained” Mileena to take walks.  But it often seems she determines when we should go.

It's afternoon now.  Mileena sleeps, snoring, on her blanket.  The cat pads her way to the window, using my desk as route.  So long as she doesn’t sit between me and the monitor, I’m okay with this.

We make habits with our pets.  And there is a kind of fitting affection between us.

Someone might speculate that our relationship with God parallels our relationship with pets.  I have it on good authority this is not so.

Jesus taught us to call God our Father.  He told his disciples they were his friends.  The love we have for God and the love God has for us is not the affection of a man for his pet.  It is like family love (storge in Greek); it is like friendship (philia).

It is natural that storge and philia would manifest themselves in habits.  We see such habits in families and friendships often.

*Hugs and handshakes.  “I love you.”

*Quiet jokes.  Laughter.

*Game nights.  I’ll host this time.

*Phone calls and emails.

*Meals together.

*Advice sought, given, accepted.

*Saying sorry.  Forgiving.

Remember, it is Jesus who said God is Father; Jesus who said we are his friends.  I’m not sure all that it means, but we are not God’s pets.  Nevertheless, there will be habits appropriate to children and friends.

*We ask God to forgive us.  He does, though sometimes we struggle to believe it.

*We pray for guidance.  We listen for the divine voice in worship, study, and contemplation. 

*We delight in God’s gifts—nature, friends, existence, grace.  We laugh in wonder at the goodness he is.

*Meals with people often become reminders.  Our Father is present.

*We learn to see the third member in all our human friendships.  For Christians, it is never just you and me; he is here too.  (I got this idea from Bonhoeffer.)

I’m sure this is only a beginning list.  What habits ought I to seek with my Father, my Friend?