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Mary Bursting
December 22nd, 2009 in by justin
By Douglas Jones
(Reprinted with permission from Credenda/Agenda. See bottom of article).
Christmas is impossible. It can’t be done. That woman won’t be silent. It can’t be expressed. Encapsulate all the colors, meanings, music, and history of World War II into one sentence, commas permitted. Now do it with a far more earth-shattering, far more complicated, more unspeakable event. That’s the tension of Christmas.
At the first creation, words were not enough. Too thin. Not even close. The expression had to go deeper, beyond mere words. Angels had to scream at the art—scream at the eagles, scream at the sand, at the elephants, at fire, oysters. “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit couldn’t be captured in words alone, so He used evergreens and walruses. The whole creation is the shout of His personality. But even tidal waves prove insufficient. He overflows. Thus, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory.” The Christmas sentence. Two sentences, one with a compound predicate. God “has spoken to us by His Son . . . the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.” More insufficient sentences.
This second creation, this Incarnation was far brighter than the first creation. It built upon the first and turned it upside down. “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.” Christmas turned creation inside out; it broke the stranglehold of death; it thickened water. How could we even begin to express it? Wineskins could not hold it. Normandy was cheesecake. Even John who gave us the Christmas sentence gave up. He gave us word upon word, sentence upon sentence and then breathed his last, “even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” A fine trick. And yet we’re expected to express it: “And teach them to your children and your grandchildren.” And “tell it to the generation following.” Very funny. Very cruel.
It’s impossible, but neither can we hold it in. It pushes our skin out to its breaking point. Painful adoration. Stretch marks. We’re pressed from within. She couldn’t hold it in.
“And Mary said: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” Mary, Mary, don’t you know that Christmas is a pagan holiday? Hold your words in. Be silent. “For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.” Vixen.
If she can’t hold in Christmas, why should we even try? It’s a lost cause. Imagine the tension of living in the covenant in the centuries before Messiah. The conflict is stark; the psychology twisted, longing for relief. “The prophets proclaim justice: Israel will certainly be judged for disobedience.
But they also proclaim grace: God is coming to redeem his people. . . . Israel’s sins are worse than those of the pagan nations of Canaan, even of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God destroyed. How can a just God do anything less than wipe them out entirely? Yet the promise of grace comes again. God will surely redeem his people. But how can He wipe them out and redeem them at the same time? It seems as though God’s justice violates His mercy and vice versa. God is, it seems, in a bind. If He redeems, He must wink at sin; if He judges, He must renege on His promise. . . . God seems to be wanting precisely to build the tension, and build, and build. . . . And then comes Jesus. The wait is over.”—John Frame. Oh the agony of life without Christmas. No wonder Mary sings. She carries life from the dead, light from darkness, home from exile. “Sing, O barren, you who have not borne! Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, you who have not labored with child! For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman.” Imagine sitting in the deserts of Babylon and Assyria, counting the stars, juggling mercy and justice. “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” Christmas is the revolution of revolutions. To hide it behind paganism, to hide it behind indifference and busyness, to express it behind sentences alone, would be a robbery. I would be lying to my children. I can’t hold it in—“We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.”
And Mary sings: “And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” More Christmas words, Mary. But these words have not been commanded. Your Christmas celebration isn’t sanctioned from on high. Whatever is not commanded is forbidden. How dare you speak out like this? Will worship. You have fallen headlong into the sin of Esther—“establish among them that they should celebrate . . . . as the month which was turned from sorrow to joy for them, and from mourning to a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor.” Hold it in, Mary. Buck up. Christmas thoughts are offensive.
And with the coming of Emmanuel, “old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:18). In the Incarnation we see that “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Light overflows, overpowers, and blinds, like its creator. The Triune is the God of excess, the God who gives all, the light that chases away darkness. The Son gives all for the Father and Spirit; the Father gives Himself over to the Spirit and Son; the Spirit returns more sacrifice and love back to the Father and Son. The coming of the Son is the express image of God bursting the old world. He tabernacled among us, and “How lovely is Your tabernacle, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” David faints and cries at the excess he saw. He would have burst to see his Son.
The Incarnation’s excess brittles my sentences as I stand before the kids, wondering how to explain it. The words come out rickety, gap toothed. I can read and read to them but that’s never enough. Maybe I could set the whole house on fire in a searing white light with the darkest winter background, just a bit of star in the dining room, melt the neighborhood. That might come close. Instead I climb the ladder up the side of my house with my stupid little clinking lights; I loop and hang and wrap and pile them around as best I can. The electricity wheezes in the house, and the lights can be seen from two miles away; I tested. But I can’t stop; they’re never enough. It’s not fair. He gets to use glowing jellyfish and Texas lightning and Alpha Centauri, and I can only hang these pathetic glowing strings.
But Christmas insists. And so here in the north, during the darkest days of winter and death, this small town’s Christmas lights conspire together against the black night and start to reclaim reality. “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. . . . That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.” Slowly, slowly, Christ’s coming has been transforming the whole world, turning darkness to light, tribes to communities, wilds to gardens, cannibalism to cuisine, philosophers to poets. “Since the Savior’s advent in our midst, not only does idolatry no longer increase, but it is getting less and gradually ceasing to be. Similarly, not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer make any progress, but that which used to be is disappearing. . . . On the other hand, while idolatry and everything else that opposes the faith of Christ is daily dwindling and weakening and falling, the Savior’s teaching is increasing everywhere”— Athanasius. No Pelagian Santa lies to kids there.
This new world suggests the oldest. It moves toward a mature Eden, the City of Eden, full of fruit trees. And so we plant trees full of “fruit,” mirrored balls staring back at our living rooms. We do this, too, in the middle of winter. These Christmas trees bring Eden back in the middle of the darkness. Fruit amidst death. My eyes roll to hear of pagan origins. Why do they stop arbitrarily at that point? Trees of life and knowledge were central to Eden. Sure pagans slunk off with edenic symbols and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, but that is their sin, not ours. They may not claim the trees. They belong to Jehovah. These pagans also prayed, yet we do not abandon prayer. The Bible begins and ends with trees. Christmas makes us look backward and forward.
And, yet, the newness of the Incarnation doesn’t stop with lights and trees. The whole creation has been made new. Christmas is the beginning of the New Heavens and Earth, and this bursts out in gifts—new clothes, new tools, new games, new books—a new world. Boxes are wrapped to separate them from objects of monetary exchange, objects of equal trade. Instead, gifts are excesses, surprises of grace. And if the Lord blesses and your tree is gloriously surrounded with boxes on top of boxes of this new order of stuff, you can stoop down from across the room, level with all those boxes and see that they resemble a city skyline, a new city, “the great city, the holy Jerusalem” — “the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones” where the nations “bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.” And in the middle of this city is “the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Your Christmas tree.
And Mary sings: “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.” She bursts forth still? Celebrating Christmas will lead to consumerism, Babylonianism, apostasy, and stockings. The gospel is about law and stinginess. Let the women be kept silent; for they are not permitted to speak. Who allowed this Mary to preach Christmas?
Still something was wrong. It all went by so quickly. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, done. The traditional church calendar helps express the largess of Christmas by the Advent season. This is a start. But I wanted to express a tinge of exile, a hint of that Old Covenant tension. Time needed to be stretched out. I could yak-yak-yak about the apparent tension between God’s justice and mercy, and for several years that’s what I did. But I wanted to show the tension—even through a glass darkly. I needed hints of Babylonian exile, “O Come, O come, Emmanuel.” Ezekiel saw and heard the bones in the desert—“Son of man, can these bones live? . . . Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! . . . Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. . . . [T]here was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone. . . . They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ “Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live.’”
Rattling bones, desert sand, sour wine. And so for more than a week before Christmas, we sing and read through the covenantal promises—Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, psalms, the prophets, Mary—always highlighting the wrestling of justice and mercy, yearning for release. We keep the rhythms of the songs with the rattle of bones (thick wooden dowels), and we partake of hints of vinegar and sand, a taste of ugly exile. Empty wine glasses sit before us, teasing, and at the close of that night’s liturgy, we sneak the tiniest bit of chocolate, a hint of Christmas to come. By Christmas Eve we are sick of sand and vinegar; we need freedom from the bones; the city grows around the tree; something more surely must burst forth; “O Come, O come, Emmanuel.” Please. We worship with the saints on Christmas Eve, and the presents burst open Christmas morning. The new world runs forth. At the final set of readings, we shift from “O Come” to “Joy to the World.” The sand and the vinegar vanish; the bones are replaced with bells; champagne and gourmet chocolates flow. “Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst!” Cry out and shout. Who can hold in Christmas? It’s impossible. I’m sure others can do better, but I’m forced to show something, my best shot.
And Mary sings, “He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.” Turn away from such druidic folly, Mary. Pass the day like any other. God wants you to hold it in and ignore the Incarnation. Cross your knees. God treasures silence more than shouting.
We enjoy the lights and sand and vinegar and chocolate and bones and presents and tree and more, using bits of His creation to try and show His wonder. Of course, “better is a little with the fear of the LORD, than great treasure with trouble. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fatted calf with hatred.” The greatest of these is love. But He’s the one who makes this love want to burst forth from within. It’s His fault, the God He gave us. He couldn’t even hold it in either. Sure, He speaks words through Mary, but when the time comes, He doesn’t hold back. He decorates the sky with brightness and cheats where no lighted house can hope to compete: “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’” Unbelievable one-upmanship. A sky that would make the greatest fireworks grand finale look like an electric short.
Christmas can’t be done, but it bursts out. And when Christmas days have just passed, more reality strikes. The Incarnation was just the beginning. Christmas would be nothing without Easter. And Easter would be nothing without Pentecost. So little time, so much impossibility.
Copyright 2009, all rights reserved, Credenda/Agenda magazine. This article first appeared in Volume 14, Number 5 of Credenda/Agenda magazine, and is reprinted with permission.
For the original article click here.
For Credenda/Agenda click here.
The Big Ida
October 30th, 2009 in by justin
The Rise & Fall of Another Missing Link & Other Media Hype
by Casey Luskin
(Reprinted with permission from Salvo magazine. See bottom of article).
This past May 20, there was a good possibility that your day started something like this: You crawled out of bed, logged on to the internet, and soon discovered that Google had changed its banner graphic to display the image of a small, long-tailed fossil primate.
Being the internet-savvy user that you are, you immediately recalled that it’s not uncommon for Google.com to change its design to observe holidays or honor famous historical figures. Nonetheless, you wondered what this cute brown mammal was doing on Google’s home page, so you clicked on the link.
Little did you know that this innocent fossil graphic was not just any link. It was a lure that had successfully led you into a carefully orchestrated PR campaign involving leading paleontologists, top TV networks, the internet’s most popular website (Google), and numerous other media outlets in a coordinated effort to promote evolution to the public.
The fossil, dubbed “Ida” by her discoverers, was introduced to the media as the “eighth wonder of the world” whose “impact on the world of palaeontology” would be like “an asteroid falling down to Earth.”
Famed BBC broadcaster Sir David Attenborough got involved, making a documentary titled Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, to explain why Ida is “the link that connects us directly with the rest of the animal kingdom.” Co-sponsored by both the BBC and the History Channel, the program attracted a massive audience.
For those who don’t get their information from cable TV, Ida’s promoters also held a press conference generating a flood of news stories:
- Good Morning America and Nightline covered the fossil.
- National Geographic called her the “critical ‘missing link’ species.”
- ScienceDaily and a Discover magazine commentator praised Ida as our “47-million-year-old human ancestor.”
- Skynews told the public that “proof of this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
With Google’s eager assistance, Ida went viral: One of the leading search terms that day was “missing link found.” Even the Drudge Report was reeled in by the media frenzy, briefly featuring Ida as the headline story.
In a statement to the New York Times, a lead scientist in Ida’s team justified the hype: “Any pop band is doing the same. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”
Perhaps, but at what cost?
Hype Balloon Busted
One of the scientists who studied Ida admitted to the Wall Street Journal that “there was a TV company involved and time pressure. We’ve been pushed to finish the study. It’s not how I like to do science.” Another scientist told Live-Science.com, “The PR campaign on this fossil is I think more of a story than the fossil itself. . . . It’s a very beautiful fossil, but I didn’t see anything in this paper that told me anything decisive that was new.”
Other critics weren’t so kind. One primate paleontology expert bluntly stated, “It’s not a missing link, it’s not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they’re trying to make.” The expert further charged that the scientists promoting Ida “ignored 15 years of literature.”
If someone bothered to delve into Ida’s original scientific paper, he would learn what the literature actually says. Scientists in the journal PLoS One wrote that Ida “could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved,” but added that “we are not advocating this here” (emphases added).
Indeed, twelve of the sixteen primate traits that the scientists were able to identify classified Ida with monkeys. Ida’s website boasts of her monkey-like opposable toes, thumbs, foot-bones, face, and binocular vision.
By now you should be getting the picture: Ida was a young, small-brained, monkey-like primate, whose evolutionary importance is anything but clear.
Wetherington’s Whoppers
Ida’s story is a tragic one. Long ago, she was fossilized after falling victim to some unfortunate accident, only to suffer a far worse fate millions of years later-becoming the victim of an absurd case of media hype, making her the centerpiece of a crusade for Darwin. Sad to say, she does not represent an isolated case of evolutionists overstating the case for human evolution.
For example, during a hearing before the Texas State Board of Education in January 2009, anthropologist Ronald Wetherington (of Southern Methodist University) testified that human evolution has “arguably the most complete sequence of fossil succession of any mammal in the world. No gaps. No lack of transitional fossils. . . . So when people talk about the lack of transitional fossils or gaps in the fossil record, it absolutely is not true.” Wetherington then insistently told the board that there were no “weaknesses” in neo-Darwinism worth disclosing to students.
The data, I suggest, says otherwise.
Our genus Homo is supposedly descended from the australopithecines, an ape-like genus whose name literally means “southern ape.” Hominid fossils thus generally fall into one of two distinct categories: human-like fossils or ape-like fossils. What Wetherington failed to acknowledge was the current absence of transitional fossils to bridge the gap between ape-like and human forms.
In 2004, the late authoritative evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr conceded that the earliest fossils of our own genus Homo “are separated from Australopithecus by a large, unbridged gap,” and that we do “not hav[e] any fossils that can serve as missing links.” The following year, two paleoanthropologists noted in Nature that the earliest fossil members of Homo have “been described as . . . ‘without an ancestor, without a clear past.’”
Likewise, an article in the Journal of Human Evolution concluded that the origin of Homo required “a genetic revolution” since “no australopithecine species is obviously transitional.” One commentator said this shows a “big bang theory” of human origins because “the first members of early Homo sapiens are really quite distinct from their australopithecine predecessors and contemporaries.”
Negative Reinforcement
Wetherington’s misstatements of the facts went further, as he told the Texas State Board that in the human evolutionary tree, “every fossil we find reinforces the sequence that we had previously supposed to exist rather than suggesting something different.” Yet the very first fossil he touted as “transitional”-the “Toumai skull”-refutes his claim.
When the Toumai skull was first reported in 2002, paleoanthropologists were presented with a dilemma. The skull was far too old for its modern appearance. But if evolutionists accepted it as a direct ancestor of humans, then many subsequent human ancestors would have to be thrown out of our family tree. Authority Bernard Wood lamented in Nature that if we place Toumai “at the base, or stem, of the modern human clade,” then the fossil “plays havoc with the tidy model of human origins.” Wood even observed that Toumai shows how “a single fossil can fundamentally change the way we reconstruct the tree of life.”
This doesn’t sound much like a fossil that “reinforces the sequence that we had previously supposed to exist.” And if that weren’t enough, some experts have suggested that Toumai is no evolutionary link, but merely the skull of a female gorilla.
Objectivity Overshadowed
Like evolutionist David Hillis, whom I critiqued in Salvo 9, Wetherington obviously overplayed his hand. But, considering Ida and other examples, why is this so common within the field of human origins?
The answer may be found in a 1981 article in the journal Science:
The field of paleoan-thropology naturally excites interest because of our own interest in origins. And, because conclusions of emotional significance to many must be drawn from extremely paltry evidence, it is often difficult to separate the personal from the scientific disputes raging in the field.
The study of human origins thus exemplifies a field in which scientific objectivity can be overshadowed by the modern-day equivalent of ancestor worship.
The lesson is simple: Maintain a healthy skepticism regarding media hype over “missing links.” Anyone who believes the hype that we’ve found the “missing link” has either forgotten history or isn’t looking very carefully at the evidence. •
Overblown Missing Links
The public likes to think of the scientific community and their publicity division, the mainstream media, as a trustworthy source of information. Unfortunately, history is replete with examples of missing links being touted to the public as proof of Darwinism, only later to be shown to be fake, suspect, or dramatically overstated. Here are a few of our favorite examples:
Piltdown Man Discovered in 1912 in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England, this half-ape, half-man skull was immediately touted as proof of evolution. The New York Times published the headline “Paleolithic Skull Is a Missing Link,” and the fossil was featured as court-approved evidence for human evolution during the nationally followed Scopes Trial. One small problem: The skull was a forgery, pieced together from the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a human.Unfortunately, the hoax wasn’t exposed until 1953, duping countless people in the interim to accept human evolution.
Archaeoraptor The Chinese equivalent of Piltdown, this fossil was touted as proof that birds evolved from feathered dinosaurs in a full color cover story in National Geographic in 1999. What’s disconcerting is that NG published its “Feathers for T. rex” article even though experts had expressed doubts about the fossil’s legitimacy. Computer tomography scans later confirmed that it was a fake, produced in a Chinese “fossil factory.” Months later, NG buried a retraction letter from a Chinese paleontologist admitting, “Though I do not want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body.”Though we don’t want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to show that the media is willing to publish stories promoting missing links even when unsure the evidence is authentic.
Tiktaalik This alleged transitional fossil between fish and amphibians isn’t a fake (yet), but has enjoyed celebrity status among the Darwin-lobby since first being reported in 2006. Tiktaalik‘s lead discoverer, paleontologist Neil Shubin, published a popular book titled Your Inner Fish, promoting it as “a fish with a wrist.” Such rhetoric has led to the fossil being featured as the centerpiece missing link in a 2007 PBS documentary and a 2008 U.S. National Academy of Sciences booklet, as well as the customary New York Times articles.Somehow, none of this fanfare has changed the fact that Tiktaalik has entirely fishlike fins and no wrist.
Australopithecus anamensis In 2006, paleontologists reported finding a couple of teeth of “intermediate” size from the hominid species Australopithecus anamensis. Playing off the transitional-fossil feeding frenzy generated by Tiktaalik, MSNBC.com saw an opportunity, and declared these teeth evidence for a “missing link” and “the most complete chain of human evolution so far.”And they wonder why we’re Darwin skeptics?
Copyright 2009, all rights reserved, Salvo magazine. This article first appeared in Autumn 2009, issue 10, of Salvo magazine, and is reprinted with permission.
Find the original article here.
To learn more about subscribing to Salvo click here.
20% Off Books
October 20th, 2009 in by justin
One of our goals as a ministry is to offer resources to help people think through various issues. Because of this, we stock about 1,000 titles on a wide range of topics, and we often have books that represent different viewpoints within each topic. Some issues are clearer than others – some have solid answers while others are more elusive – in either case, we encourage people to look for truth and see how Jesus Christ is relevant to the issue.
In order to make these resources available, on topics like systematic theology, health care reform, intelligent design, the slave trade, and journalism, we offer all books (of a value greater than $4) at a 20% discount. If you are looking for a book that we do not have in stock, in most cases, we are able to apply the discount to special orders. Large orders of a single title may be eligible for a greater discount.
We are a ministry first and a bookstore second; the small profit that is made from sales we use to pay for books that we give away! It is our desire to be able to offer good resources and make them affordable for people.
Make sure you take advantage of this opportunity to work through issues and questions that you have. College is a great time to reflect upon the beliefs that you have and the reasoning that underlies them. It is also a great time to explore topics that interest you and that you can become more involved in. Not to mention, reading or giving away books can be a great way to enter into conversations with other people in an informed way.
Get Plugged In
September 29th, 2009 in by justin
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Now that the semester is steadily underway, and your schedule is more consistent, it is time to find a campus ministry to be a part of. There are a diversity of Christian clubs at Boise State that meet at different times. Although they have different names, are organized differently, or have different emphases, they all belong to the body of Christ and love serving together. The unity of the Christian clubs makes interaction with and between them very enjoyable; it also makes it easier for someone who is trying to find a club that suits them. On our community link, we have listed several of the Christian clubs on campus with a short description (click here).
Being a Christian without any peer fellowship can feel like being lost in the middle of the cosmos: which direction do you go, is anyone there for you, how can you help others? It is refreshing and encouraging to meet with people who hold similar beliefs – to mutually support each others struggles and joys. Many college students find themselves “loosing touch with God” when they go off to college (away from their close friends and family). This is not because there are doubts and questions that cannot be worked through, but often because people become weary and discouraged when they try to work through them on their own.
Besides the support of others, being a part of a club has the potential for much growth, learning, and fun. Experiences like taking a weekend to go on a prayer backpack rarely happen on one’s own, and never have the same results when done in a group (who doesn’t want to throw a campus minister into a pond, or discuss God’s love while gazing at the night sky). Not to say that individual experiences are not valuable, but that group activities are also important. God is doing different things in different people: they can bring perspectives different from your own to discussions. Interacting in groups also gives you a chance to practice using the gifts that God has given you to encourage others.
If you are not already part of group, begin by looking at our community page and see if there are any groups that interest you. Go check a couple of them out, and find some people that you can grow in God with. The benefits of fellowshipping with others are far reaching, but they include helping and being helped by others, practicing gifts, sharing insights with each other, working through struggles together, and being able to pray for one another. Don’t become discouraged by being isolated!
Ways You Can Serve
September 2nd, 2009 in by justin
The first week of the semester has already passed and there is still much to do. Over the summer we have planned, worked, and organized, but, nevertheless, in order to get everything done we need a small army. This is where you come in. Since there are so many opportunities, no matter what your gifts or interests are, there is something for you to do. Not only will you be helping us check off our lists, but you will be blessing other people. This is also a great opportunity for you to practice your gifts and skills. Here is a partial list of things that we need help with. If anything interests you, please contact us.
- Graphic design: creating posters, flyers, pamphlets, etc.
- Taking artistic photos of Cornerstone, people, and campus.
- Finding professional articles to be posted on our website (or writing good articles).
- Writing reviews of books on our list.
- Leading or attending special topic discussion groups.
- Leading or attending a Bible study.
- Being an officer or member in our student club.
- Evangelizing on campus, helping with book tables, helping distribute resources to students, etc.
- Help with any technical computer problems.
- Help organize and categorize the loan library.
- Help clean and organize Cornerstone.
David Horowitz on Academic Freedom
August 26th, 2009 in by justin
The modern university is supposed to be a place of intellectual stimulus and growth – an environment where students and faculty can explore new ideas. It is thought that an environment with a diversity of ideas that can be tested against one another, no matter how unlikely the ideas may be, will produce truth. However, there is a growing complaint that universities have grown narrow in their criteria for what ideas are worthy to be tried, and that professors are only teaching biased sides of controversial issues. This complaint has led some to examine the university system to test whether there is real academic freedom.
On Tuesday, September 15th, David Horowitz will be speaking at 7:30 pm in the Jordan Ballroom at BSU on academic freedom.
The event is free of charge, but donations are accepted.
This event is presented by The College of Idaho Students for Economic Freedom, The Boise State Conservative Student Coalition, and The Idaho Freedom Foundation.
The Catalyst of a Rich Life
August 24th, 2009 in by justin
By Amanda Patchin
The value of reading depends upon the quality of man’s imagination and the nature of his thinking. If his mind vibrates with so slow a rhythm that it scarcely pulsates unless aided, then any reading is better for him than none. The fiction addict cheaply living in the cheap stories of other lives would be scarcely alive at all without his story, The adenoidic errand boy besotted by a page of comics is better off than crouched in a corner staring at nothing. But men and women who possess an interior world of thinking, feeling, living as vivid as the exterior world of circumstance are merely drugging themselves when out of laziness or vicious relaxation they read on and on into the endless columns of modern print where the level of what is said lies below the plane of their own intelligence. You can vulgarize taste as readily as improve it. You can get out of the habit of knowing yourself by too much lazy interest in knowing at third or fifth hand what other people are doing and thinking. (The Literary Review 1923)
***
In a sense, any reading is better than none. Reading a little or reading poorly is better than avoiding the written word altogether. But reading and reading well offers such a rich bounty of uncountable blessings that we ought to all do all we can to exploit this discipline. The discipline and processes of reading and writing can shape your critical thinking skills as well as make you a better communicator. These things are absolutely crucial for any job and are beyond necessary for the Christian who wants to understand and share their faith. It doesn’t matter whether you are interested in reading and writing as recreation or for their own sakes; these are tools you need in every part of your life. These things can be very uncomfortable for most people. Not everyone is born with an innate desire for the written word but, like learning to walk, it is worth the discomfort of trying something difficult.
For some reading is simply and completely pleasure and relaxation and they cannot conceive of it as a disciplined process. Anyone who thinks that discipline has no place in our pleasures and our leisure has no experience of its true operation. Undisciplined pleasure quickly becomes nothing of pleasure while retaining all of its undisciplined character. Unending sweets first please, then pall and finally sicken. Long vacations are initially relaxing, then dull and in the end, unendurable. Just so, unfocused and undisciplined reading becomes distracted, scattered and profitless. Like a petulant gourmand the careless reader flits from book to book seeking cheaper and cheaper thrills, the digestion becomes more and more dainty, unwilling and unable to wade through whole strong, meaty works for sustenance.
But it is not enough to know that something is good for one in order to be motivated to do it, that is the territory of the prim schoolmarm and the dour-faced bureaucrat. A recognition of the rightness, the saneness and the beauty of the thing is needed for the live soul. And my central contention is simply that Literature is eminently readable. Between the elaborate interpretation of scholars and the encrustations of ages of opinion there seems little room in common thought for the appreciation of its vast beauties. There is great pleasure in great literature. It is not an easy pleasure. It is not as accessible as the breezy storytelling of popular fiction but it is undoubtedly a profound pleasure. A pleasure that can and should be returned to again and again. A pleasure that needs to be cultivated to be fully understood. First Trollope and then Thoreau:
“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone…It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise. It requires a training such as athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and unreservedly as they were written.”
And really that seems to sum it all up. Literature rewards reading. Literature rewards deep reading. It greatly rewards re-reading. Some of its joy is attained with some effort but it continues with an exponential return on investment.
Young or old, there are books that will enrich your life and deepen your intellectual and spiritual activity. There is great wisdom resting in books both ancient and modern and they are essentially at your fingertips. Log on to Project Gutenberg for free digital copies of everything from Augustine to Aquinas to Chesterton. Visit Amazon and buy ultra cheap copies of the same. Visit your local bookstore. Head down to Cornerstone. The wisdom of the ages has never been so accessible to the average citizen. The very fact that you are literate is a gift of history and geography. Merely 200 years ago, or a few thousand miles south, the odds would be greatly against it.
If you are human then you are limited by the constraints of time. Every activity is a choice. Every choice a renunciation of something else. Last year, a factoid made it’s way around the internet claiming that an “exceptional” reader who reads an average of one book a week, would only be able to finish 3000 books in their lifetime. Much of the reaction among the book-blogging community was horror at how few that really was, at how little they would be able to read in their lifetimes and at how limiting they found that number. But like a poetic form that first constrains and then beautifies the thoughts in it, knowing that limitation gives serious readers everywhere the chance to consciously shape and plan their lifetime reading experience. Realizing one’s finitude can seem morbid but wisdom knows that acknowledging mortality is nothing more than the readiness to improve what life one has.
So often in our lives of plenty and even of excess we simply do the easy thing that is next to hand. We pick up the magazine sitting next to us, we read the book casually loaned by a friend, or even worse, we simply watch television instead of making the effort reading takes. But if you already have a love of books, a desire to read much and to read well and an idea of how many books you can conceivably consume in your lifetime then you can set out to read only – or at least mostly – that which adds to your life. It really just comes down to a question of time and energy. How much time can you reasonably devote to learning, to reading and to studying? How much do you really want to devote to it? And once you’ve made that determination, what do you really want out of the effort?
I think I’ve made it sufficiently clear where my loyalties are, what I think reading is for and how it we ought to approach it, with discipline and focus. But even with my dedication, with my delight in learning and love of “difficult” books, I sometimes waver. Reaching for the easy book on hand, wanting more mental vacation than is consistent with my goals and deeper desires. When I am in that place I stop to remember how profoundly my own life has been changed every time I’ve disciplined my reading even a little. Once I made a list and stuck to it for one year and my life will never be the same. Get some specific advice about good books to read and make a list and then stick to it. Head down to Cornerstone and talk with the staff there or send me an email and I’ll get you started. Read books and read them well.
AmandaPatchin is 29, and a graduate student at Boise State. She is currently studying English Literature and teaching English 101. In addition to her busy academic life, she also has two toddler sons with her wonderful husband, and their home life is crazy in the sunniest possible way. You can contact her via email (amandapatchin1@boisestate.edu) or visit her in her office at LA 209D.