80/20 in non-profit fundraising and a little local history

http://halfabridge.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/mars-hill-church-and-the-8020-rule/#comments
http://halfabridge.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/20110130_mars-hill-church-annual-report-fy10_document.pdf

Interesting detail from that FY 2010 report (for those who read it) the highest annual giving per adult per campus was Lake City which was near the bottom in terms of the number of giving households per campus. It also had a small gap between the number of households at the campus and the number of attendees on any given Sunday.  The Lake City campus got shut down and most of its members and staff were moved to Shoreline and the space has since been leased to an Assemblies of God church.  Considering that per capita giving at Lake City per adult was actually the highest of any campus at Mars Hill ever the campus shutting down because there weren't enough members to keep the place afloat needs some context.  Two assertive church plant projects, for instance. 

But, at another level, the donor base there was loyal and generous and at a practical level it would have made sense to shut the campus down to lease the property to another church and move those members remaining to places where they could be useful in other contexts.  The annual report would make it seem that the Lake City campus didn't need to shut down at all in terms of per capita giving but that it made sense to shut it down if a church was asking to lease the property for use when it was losing its building. Lake City, to go by the 2010 annual report, had the cream of the donor crop (or a good chunk of it) for those of us who have ever paid attention to non-profit fundraising and development aspects at Mars Hill. I suspect most of them are in other campuses and giving generously.  Most, not all.

Someone I know gave what was for him a sizable chunk of money to keep the campus going and then the campus was shut down anyway. To my knowledge he probably hasn't given any money to Mars Hill since.  After being willing to give sacrificially to keep the campus open and running, the decision to shut the campus down was effectively nixing the value of the monetary sacrifice for this person.  This wouldn't necessarily have been the first time in the history of Mars Hill members were asked to be generous to the church to back up something that wouldn't pan out.  There's the old capital campaign from 2005, for instance, which many of my friends and family gave to back when nobody bothered to investigate thoroughly the zoning issues for the purchased property.

A word of consideration for Mars Hill leaders, decisions like shutting down a campus with high donor loyalty "could" cause some members, even long-time members, to choose to check out of giving.  Just something to consider but no one has to take my unsolicited advice.  Talk about stewardship can't just go one way, from the top down.  I'm not going to soft-pedal this, the Lake City campus was a big reason I even stayed as long as I did because a lot of my best friends were there. 
By contrast, it would appear that about every other year (or every year?) Ballard has to get a talking to. One of the things that has consistently happened is that Ballard has the highest attendance but is generally most likely to run a significant budget deficit. In other words, donor loyalty at the churches that aren't Ballard is always fairly high, while donor loyalty at the central Ballard campus is spottier.  I don't see this as particularly surprising or ironic--the members at campus sites who have a personal connection to the campus pastor and a longer history at Mars Hill have more reason to give to the church and its mission.  The Ballard campus has historically been where people go because they're curious to hear Driscoll preach.  This has the upside of having steady attendance but the downside of being the campus that has what is considered, even within Mars Hill circles, a remarkably impersonal and inaccessible social atmosphere. 

Now the reason I mention all this is my MH member roomies brought home information this week that interested me.  When I compare the 2010 annual report to a recent document summarizing the FY2011 fiscal year the following changes appear in annual giving: 

The percentage of non-giving attenders/members has gone from 20 percent to 24 percent. 

The donors who gave between $1-$499 in a fiscal year dropped from 43 percent to 41 percent. 

The donors who gave between $500-$1,500 in the fiscal year wnet from 15 percent to 14 percent. 
(this could be accounted for, possibly, by switching to a $500-$1,4999 division)

Donors giving between $1500-$4000 (11%) stayed steady in the new $14000 to $3999 category

Donors giving above $4000 annualy went from 10% to roughly 9%

The newer figures include the following breakdown:

Annual giving range

$4000-$9999          737 people,   7 percent
$10000-$19999      185 people,   2 percent
$20000-$49999      47 people,     less than 1 percent
$50000-$99999      5 people        ditto
$100000+               3 people        I don't have to spell this one out, do I?

If we grant that the Pareto number applies in most non-profit fundraising settings it's no surprise that the upper 20th percent gives 80 percent of the giving.  They have the most invested in the church and its story, if I may be so bold as to suggest that. 

Now with the background I have had in non-profit development and fundraising reporting what this suggests is that there has been a shrinking of the major donor base relative to the overall size of the church, in terms of percentages.  This doesn't mean fewer people are giving and the FY2010 annual report didn't give a clear insight into the category breakdowns by number of members.  It did give a breakdown on highest per capita giving per campus, but this newer summary permits at least a comparison of changes in donor ranges.

The group at the bottom has shrunk.  A person who gives $1-$499 in a calendar year got smaller.  Recessions being what they are this wouldn't shock me.  In non-profit fundraising thinking you don't necessarily worry about them.  They're at the bottom tier and you don't try to goad them into giving more or "being more faithful" in a non-church non-profit setting because even though the upper 20% give the most money it's really the bottom sixty percent or so that constitutes your real donor base overall.  So I'm not surprised to hear Driscoll and others have urged the 66 percent to be more generous.  But I would say that's not necessarily what they should try to do, at least based on the fundraising research and work I did back when I, uh, had a job. 

Why?  Well, because if they're committed enough to give $400 cumulatively each fiscal year that may be all they can afford and because there's no set of rules saying there's a bare minimum giving point, is there?  This is a non-profit, not a club membership.  There's no fees or dues that can really be pried from the $1-$499 crowd.  They're giving something, and in a recession that should be enough.  If we want to use wealth engine devices to suss out what probable income must be by ZIP codes we're operating at a domain of fundraising specificity that has jumped straight into donor prospect cultivation and major gift cultivation.  That gets to the upper 20 percent.

At least in my experience in non-profit work keeping track of giving patterns by demographics and gift-range categories, the upper 20 percent sure are cool in terms of their generosity but they can also be the most high maintainence to keep as active donors; they are often more likely to make restricted donations; and they tend to cost a bit more and require more personal attention to keep them invested.  No pastors will have to wonder how it is that this sort of giving demographic inevitably and eventually gains a great deal of power in directing a church. 

The major donors are the financial big guns you want to keep happy by letting them have a part in the story of the organization.  Then there are the mid-tier type donors, basically just about anyone who can consistently give at least $150 or so a month every month for a year.  These are the people who, though they aren't the 20%, are the ones you want to keep.  Over time there's a good chance their earning potential and assets may increase as they age (or mature ;) ).  They are the ones who may become future major donors. 

But then there are the people who give consistently but give small amounts.  Depending on age demographics here it's not a slam dunk to assume these people are just penniless college students, single mom, and the like.  A decent chunk probably would be at Mars Hill but I was asked by planned giving officers to keep track of donors who gave very small amounts but gave them on a very consistent basis.  Many of the most faithful givers actually give very small amounts because that's all they can afford.  These were people planned giving officers could want to meet with for estate planning and trusts.  Just because a donor does not have much by way of liquid assets does not mean the donor has nothing to give. But I doubt Mars Hill is going to set up a planned giving department just yet.  They're too young a church movement and do churches even have planned giving departments?  At the risk of being a bit snide, hey, it's part of legacy-building right? :)

My diffidence over time was that Mars Hill seemed capable of racking up expenses faster than its members could be mobilized to give.  If Mars Hill adds a campus or two that are given free that's not quite how it works in the real world.  The buildings at that point are cheaper to give away than maintain and so gaining campuses becomes gaining liabilities unless we're talking about cases in which the building and property were owned free and clear by the donor.  It would be tough to count those kinds of gifts in monetary terms because all of that stuff would constitute in-kind gifts, I think. 

I've rambled quite a bit here about non-profit fundraising stuff and financial reports and donor demographics.  It's all stuff I'm reminiscing on back from when I had a normal day job.  My impression is that at this point what Mars Hill may want to do, since the percentage of non-givers has increased, is to find a way to get them to give.  The way non-profits work is that even though non-profits aren't officially profiting they are, in their way, making a sale.  A sale constitutes demonstrating that what the non-profit does is important enough and worthy enough to warrant financial support.  The two basic ways this can be done is to invite the would-be donor to share in the mission and to share in the story of the mission.  The first is how you mobilize the rank and file donors, the second is how you can mobilize not only the rank and file but also upgrade mid-tier donors to major donors as time and resources move along. 

I hear there was a documentary film on the history of Mars Hill over the last fifteen years.  This is a shrewd way for a church, or any organization. to create a story with which a member/donor can identify.  It doesn't necessarily mean something skeezy or gimmicky, it's part of how everyone appeals to a donor or a client in for-profit or non-profit.  That's why a tagline like "God's work, our witness" becomes an important tagline.  The first phrase declares that the story is about God's work overall, but the sales pitch becomes "our witness".  That's the part where we play our role (or don't) in the witness to God's work.  I don't know if this will inspire the 24% who don't give jack to give jack but the move makes sense, from a fundraising standpoint.  As I have written a few times on this blog, my worry often was that Mars Hill was acquiring property and liabilities faster than it could cultivate it's donor base. 

To the extent that there's so often 1 of 4 members who give nothing I wonder if the fundraising analystis at Mars Hill may want to consider some possibilities here.

First of all, in any non-profit with a significant donor base there will often be a group of lapsed donors.  These are the people you want to keep, if possible.  Anyone who gives ANYTHING on a monthly basis, no matter how small, is not a donor you have to sweat about. 

Secondly, it may not be a bad idea consider if there any patterns in that 24 percent.  I don't mean some stock pattern that is assumed, like these are the "consumers" or these are the "bad stewards" or "financially irresponsible".  Driscoll, it seems, has recently said that there's no real danger of the Mars Hill denomination going under financially.  He wants people to not give with some goal to get something out of things for themselves, but also not to give out of some sense of guilt.  But here's the thing, Jesus said "Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be."  He said to not lay up treasures here on earth where the moth eats away and rust destroys, but to lay up treasures in Heaven.  In other words, even Jesus made a sales pitch based on things that a person can gain or benefit from by investing in the life and teaching of Jesus.

A professor I used to know said that one of the weird pious biases among some Christians is to say that we should not be thankful to God for His gifts or what He does but just for Himself.  He then pointed out, does this make any sense in light of any of the Psalms?  The Psalmists were thanking God for concrete things, gifts, and actions all the time!  If we're only supposed to worship God because He's so awesome, despite whether or not we get anything out of it, have we paid attention to any biblical texts?

By extension, if there is a mentality about church membership which states that one should not join a church and become a member because there's something in it for the member, but because it's good to obey Jesus, what kind of stupid sales pitch is that?  Now I'm not sayig it's exactly dumb to follow Jesus (though the Cross is foolishness to the Greeks, after all, so in all sorts of ways it really is stupid).  What I'm getting at is that if you want people to sign on as members and give "God's money" to you the sales pitch for them doing this wouldn't be well-served by just saying, "IF you really love Jesus you'll do this."  I worked at the Salvation Army at one point and had to prove to auditors and accountants that money was responsibly directed and spent (I actually loved that part about my job).  I was glad to be able to demonstrate that the money went where the donors asked us to put the money. 

All of this is why I found it sad that Driscoll claimed that in 2008 1,000 members left because of doctrine.  That's not why all those people left, after all.  It was for any number of reasons, one of which was a disappointed realization that the leaders we trusted to investigate all the legal and financial issues of investing in property for church expansion did not do as good or responsible a job as we assumed they would. Now for folks still in the denomination the reply will be, "Oh, things have changed a lot in the last few years. The leaders have matured a lot and grown a lot."  Sure, but that's what we all told ourselves when we gave to the capital campaign, too.  Now, obviously, I've made it clear throughout this blog I've landed at a Presbyterian church.  I'd like to be in a position to give and haven't been.  Being unemployed for a bit more than two years can put you in a spot like that! 

Well, anyway, this has been my rumination on non-profit fundraising and some Mars Hill annual reports.  It looks like there's no worries about overall giving but there's that 66 percent of people who don't give more than $500 cumulatively this or last fiscal year.  I don't think that's the main concern in the end.  In a recession with the possibility of more economic downturns be thankful that people are even in the cumulative range of $1-$499.  Back in my Salvation Army days we sent receipts and thank-yous to even those people rather than asking them to give more all the time.  I would even code donors to not get any mail when they let me know they were going to give anyway.  That was "good stewardship".  When you know certain people will give what they can you don't get after them to give more. 

Naw, it's the people who give zip that would be a concern and if possible the concern should be not merely to suggest they please God by being obedient to Jesus and giving.  It might involve asking why they haven't given and not working on the assumption that the reason must reflect badly on them.  If a person is at the church but has lost all his/her friends, hasn't made new ones, and doesn't find any real community in community groups but shows up and attends then to suggest to this person they are a consumer won't win them over.  A basic reason this tactic may backfire could be summed up by its opposite, an idea my pastor shared in a sermon a few years ago, the measure of a real shepherd is his disposition toward the sheep he can't get anything out of.  If the only sheep you pay attention to are the ones that will be useful to you then you have the heart of the hired hand and not a shepherd as the biblical authors describe the true Shepherd.

Which is to say that it's necessary to remember that there's always more to a "consumer" mentality in churches in America than than just attenders. There are people who don't give because, maybe, they should be at some other church but haven't figured that out yet.  Driscoll was happy to say 1,000 members left over doctrine years ago, would he be happy to say that 2,400 members left because they realized that Mars Hill wasn't really the place they wanted to give their money to because they didn't feel a sense of family or fellowship there, or because they realized that secondary issues like complementarianism might not be something they could get behind? 

In any event, it's those non-donor members (not even the non-giving attenders) that are the mystery demographic.  You don't need to worry about people already giving.  Donor loyalty and donor retention aren't things to worry about for anyone who gives a steady amount over two or three years unless you end up doing something that might cause them to lose faith in your handling of money.

One thing I can be certain won't motivate them to give--if you want them to give, don't treat them like they're people with outstanding debts because they don't love Jesus enough and you're the collections agency.

And you probably don't want to send Trogdor, the Burninator, either. :)
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html

from PsyBlog: the advice of a stranger---plus a little personal holiday time reflection

http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/12/the-impressive-power-of-a-strangers-advice.php

... in other words, when it comes to spending money on things you don't need there's something to be said for assessing the reactions of others before you drop your hard-earned cash (or maybe the not-so-hard-earned cash, too).  Even when I was gainfully employed I tended to take this approach.  Did I think I wanted a CD?  Wait for it to hit the library and then, literally, check it out.  Did I want to watch a movie?  I'd read reviews and ask friends.  If a critic ripped on Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and I knew that critic also happened to love, say, Robert Altman movies, then I knew I'd want to see the movie. If, say, Jeffrey Overstreet here in the Seattle region gave it a good review then I'd consider checking it out because (full disclosure) Jeff and I went to the same school and travelled in some overlapping social circles. 

There's not many things to buy that you need to buy so badly you don't do a bit of research on the things first.  If you could buy it now there's no reason not to wait a while and buy it later.  You might even find you didn't want it that badly.  But I've written about this before, somewhere here.  Still, it's worth repeating.  If it's not rent ... or a bill ... or a mortgage ... or something like that then there's a decent chance you don't "really" need it that bad. 

The Christmas season is upon us and there will be diatribes about "consumerism" and "materialism".  Do I want stuff for Christmas?  Oh yeah!  I'd like, um, a steady job (with medical, vision, and dental benefits if possible).  I'd like my recently operated on left eye to not need surgery ever again and to not get secondary cataracts or a retinal detachment!  I know who to consult on that one, don't worry.  What else ... I suppose toothpaste and shampoo might be cool but I'm decently stocked on that for now.

But meanwhile I have been the recipient of such kindness and generosity from family and friends that I don't really "need" much by way of conventionally conceived presents.  Time with family and friends is more precious than stuff.  I don't say that as though it were some pious claptrap or cliche!  When you've got no job, very limited money, and eyesight up until recently hobbled by a giant cataract in addition to not naturally having had good eyesight you can discover how tiny your horizons can be!  I'm grateful that due to the generosity of family and friends I have a roof over my head, that my housemates help me keep warm, that I still have food stamps so that what little money I have goes straight to rent, that my lenders have been gracious with me as I have kept them in the loop about my employment situation, that the local Lions Club stepped in and mercifully paid for a cataract removal surgery I could not possibly afford!  That my retinal specialist has been generous with his time and resources to help make sure my eyes can get checked up on despite my pathetic employment situation. 

There are so many people I can be thankful to in the midst of this very rough patch of my life that I couldn't possibly repay them literally or in my gratitude. Maybe I could write some symphony or something ... but I don't write symphonies.  There's not really a piece of music I write that could properly thank them all.  Some of them have helped me in ways where their help is anonymous so I actually CAN'T thank them in any setting but this one.  So I do, at least, want to thank them here, if by some chance they know that this is where I do a lot of my blogging. 

somewhat grueling in some ways but I've hatched a plan

A teacher of mine once gave me some advice that has summed up my approach to writing--sloppy writing is generally the result of sloppy thinking.  So if your thoughts are clear then your writing will generally get clearer.

I thought I was going to do a lot more writing than I did but what I ended up doing instead was a lot of thinking.  Thinking is the actual, important part of writing.  So I think I've worked out an approach to a new writing project that will let me approach it in a sensible way over the long haul. 

ah, the insomnia of research and writing

It's cool, except for the part where it goes into crazy hours of the night.  I've got a lot of writing I've committed to doing this month.  You probably can't imagine how much.

Well, my friend J. S. Bangs probably can! And my brother and sister can.  And David Zahl over at Mockingbird.  But there are some other friends I've been planning to write for and they are the friends for whom I have been mapping out a fairly good-sized chunk of material. 

I've made some progress but it's basically completing one third of the notes for a first draft.  This will, like anything else, take time, a lot of time.  My hope is that I can bring to it enough time, thought, and effort to also make this thing good.  That's about all to be written on these things for now.

A composer considers Colossians 1:15-20

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Not that I'm primed at just this moment to discuss the implications of this passage at any great length, but ask yourself what an implication of this text would inevitably be. If God was pleased to reconcile to Himself all things through Christ, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of Jesus' cross, then why wouldn't this reconciliation include all musical styles? 

While this obersation won't settle all questions as to what is liturgically appropriate this does settle the question of whether or not any musical style is reconciled to God the Father in and through Christ.  There is no music that is inherently "robustly trinitarian" (i.e. post-Renaissance tonal music in the West) or inherently pagan as music goes.  There may be texts extolling pagan deities or pagan ethics or things like that but the music, as music, is still part of the "all things" that would be within the work of reconciliation accomplished by Christ. 

If this seems like an observation that is mundane or irrelevant consider this in light of the worship wars that have been brewing and will continue to brew until Jesus comes back.  If in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, male or female, and slave or free then there is no longer a high and low, an East and West, or a pop and art boundary that must inherently accrue within the fellowship of God's people.  There is no boundary between circumcised and uncircumcised any longer, for both are reconciled to God through Christ and to each other through the removal of the barrier of the Law (read Torah, read whatever boundaries you insist on keeping where ever you might want them to be).  Does this mean any and all music is a-okay in a liturgical setting? 

Well, not necessarily, but the metric does not necessarily depend on just one metric of "musical excellence" but of service to the body of Christ.  Musicians playing or singing to the lowest common denominator for certain types of music is not a matter of forsaking musical excellence as such but an act of loving service to, well, let's not sugar-coat this too much, the musically illiterate.  :)  In personal terms, just because I can play fugues on solo guitar or like to play works by Toru Takemitsu now and then doesn't mean I won't be happy to strum a series of open chords in the church orchestra if that will be more beneficial to a congregation. 

And that's about all I feel like writing about on that for the moment.

HT City of God: Andrew posts something about the Antichrist

http://www.civitatedei.com/2011/12/oliver-odonovan-on-the-antichrist/

Though, sadly, he offers no insight on when Nicolai Carpathia will appear, O’Donovan offers some otherwise helpful thoughts on the nature and function of the Antichrist. From The Desire of the Nations:

Mission is not merely an urge to expand the scope and sway of the church’s influence. It is to be at the disposal of the Holy Spirit in making Christ’s victory known. It requires, therefore, a discernment of the working of the Spirit and of the Antichrist. These two discernments must accompany each other: to trace the outline of Christ’s dawning reign on earth requires that one trace the false pretensions too. One reason that the idealist language about the Kingdom of God in the late nineteenth century failed to avoid the trap of civilisational legitimation was that it never identified the false horizon, and could grasp social evil only as a regression from civilisation into barbarism. [emphasis added here by the American Indian descended Wenatchee the Hatchet] Recognition of the Antichrist is a recurrent theme in the doctrine of the Two. Gelasius observed it in the pretensions of imperial authority; Gregory VII in the involvement of kings in episcopal appointments; Wyclif and his successors paradoxically in the structure of papal administration which Gregory’s successors created. Yet there is a single theme which connects the varied warnings of Antichrist in different ages: the convergence in one subject of claims to earthly poltiical rule and heavenly soteriological mediation. John of Patmos found it present not in the Roman empire as such but quite specifically in the imperial cult. It was therefore not inappopriate to discern Antichrist even in the papacy, while it claimed universal juridical competence over political societies and wielded it in the name of mankind’s salvation. The rejection of Antichrist is the rejection of a unified political and theological authority other than that which is vested in Christ’s own person. [emphasis added by Wenatchee the Hatchet] That is to say, it is implied in the basic structure of the Two itself. (pp. 214-215)

We are tempted to think, perhaps, that the concept of Antichrist, capable of such shifting and contrasting applications from age to age, is useless for serious theological analysis; but it is not so. There is no one Antichrist; but in any period of history Antichrist may take shape as one thing, challenging the claims of God’s Kingdom with its own. Every candidate nominated for the role of Antichrist has passed away. That does not itself invalidate any attempt to identify it; for that identification is part of an age’s secret knowledge about itself, its interpretation of its own ‘today’ from the point of view of its today. Of course, those who never want to be out of date will never interpret their today; they will wait until they can read about it in the newspapers. But those whose business lies with practical reason cannot take their place among what P. T. Forsyth called ‘bystanders of history’. When believers find themselves confronted with an order that, implicitly or explicitly, offers itself as the sufficient and necessary condition of human welfare, they will recognise the beast. When a political structure makes this claim, we call it ‘totalitarian’. (pp. 273-274)

I'd actually write something about this but I have more pressing things to do lately.  I will say, though it may be construed as purely polemical, that you need to be able to see the Antichrist impulse in yourself and your own associations before you go looking for it in everyone and everything else.  It is also important to bear in mind that the way most Christians use "Antichrist" is in a way that conflates the Antichrist with the Beast, which won't necessarily be an accurate conflation.  John's epistles indicate three kinds of antichrists: 1) those who leave the Christian faith 2) those who deny that Jesus is the Christ and 3) those that deny Jesus came in the flesh.  The Beast, however, could be construed as including all three types and the mark of the beast may be seen as the veneration required by the imperial cult for Roman citizenship and trade. 

What is interesting is how selectively American pastors and pundits have been about identifying an executive as an antichrist.  Liberals have said that George W Bush was an antichrist for claiming God backed the United States.  Conservatives have referred to the Obamanation of Desolation.  Notice what doesn't get said by either side, that the United States itself must be the Beast for such an association to even get made with any seriousness.  No, we don't want to suggest the United States itself is the Beast becasue America was founded on Christian principles, right?  Or America was founded on secularist/deistic principles promoting religious pluralism and liberty and so couldn't be something as oppressive as a Beast from Revelation, right?  Well, pretty much wrong on both counts.  Psalm 2 refers to all the nations and does not omit a few select entities that might now conveniently have certain alliances to Israel.  Not that Israel is somehow not part of "the nations" for that matter but that's another subject.

Well, okay, so I ended up writing a few things anyway.  That wasn't the plan.  But as I have often said, I ramble.

A sampling from The Oatmeal on why 3d movies must die

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/3d_movies

"It's the future of cinema"

You remember those Magic Eye books from the 1990s? The ones where you'd look at them, relax your eyes, and a 3D picture would pop out? Saying that 3D movies are the future of cinema is like saying that Magic Eye books were the future of literature.

On this point I don't disagree, not that I disagreed with the other points. :) The bit about the snorkel is funny, too.

hoping to return to writing a bit more again

I had eye surgery a week ago and have been feeling all this last week that an incision was made in my eye to put something in there that wasn't there before!  Of course you might have caught the poem I wrote about that.  I've been wanting to get back to some writing projects not just here but elsewhere and am starting to have the eyes for it (again). If it seems like there was little abatement in my output it's because I type pretty quickly. 

But I am still (yes!) working on essays on Batman: the animated series for Mockingbird.  These have been, without any doubt, the most challenging essays in the series of series so far.  The Justice League essays could be positively simple by comparison!  And then the stuff about pop mythology vs branding the monomyth and lazy Christian "cultural engagemen" is yet another whole field of writing I want to address.  For those of you (if any!) who have wondered why I have labored at such great lengths to discuss childrens' entertainment in such a serious way it isn't "just" because I love the DC animated universe, but also because I want to demonstrate by example an alternative to how I have seen some Christians "analyze" pop culture.  Now there are some Christians I love and respect who (mostly) do a good job but I've seen and read some patently lazy stuff trotted out in the name of critically assessing this or that pop cultural or literary thing.  I've disagreed with some friends on some things and they know we're still cool even if I disagree on a few things in the trenches of actual interpretation.

But there's other writing I'm wanting to get to besides writing about cartoons.  You'll have noticed I've discussed writing chamber music here more than a few times.  I am incubating a potentially giant writing project on stuff I'm not going to discuss just now but alert readers who frequent this blog may be able to put together a lot when I say that this as yet unfinished project is still in the vision-casting or visionary state.

I am also just one prelude and fugue away from completing my cycle of 24 preludes and fugues for solo guitar.  With help from a friend or two I hope to start filming performances of works from the cycle and maybe even dump these films on the internet somewhere. 

I'm also trying to juggle a few books I'm reading but I don't feel like writing about the books just yet.

In other news, someone sent me a copy of a new CD I hope to write about and plug after I have some more time to absorb it.  My listening projects have been a bit on the back burner in the last few weeks.

"consumer Christianity" and warnings against a consumer king in Deut 17

I confess I have become skeptical about leaders talking to followers about "consumer Christianity".  It can seem as though the only variations of consumer Christianity are the kind that followers have, in the opinion of leaders.  Either a person is a "consumer" and doesn't give or the person has a consumer mentality that, paradoxically, is motivated by a desire to feel good or "not feel guilty". 

Is that really all there is to "consumer Christianity"?  What about using church funds to buy things that, strictly speaking, you don't need?  If you don't practice hospitality on a consistent basis but get entertainment gear couldn't that be consumeristic?  Couldn't it be consumeristic even if you DO practice a great deal of hospitality?  How do we know that "engaging culture" isn't essentially a form of sanctified or baptised consumerism?  Of course I'm not saying you shouldn't do it or just declaring it to be immoral.  If you help people in need, and reconcile broken relationships, and reach out to those who may be in isolation then as far as I'm concerned if you happen to have some cool entertainment gear that doesn't mean you're automatically some evil "consumer".

Is there a comparable warning to leaders not to have a consumeristic approach to the people they have charge of?  Why, yes, as a matter of fact.  I've even got verses.  There's this chapter in Deuteronomy, you probably know the one, that says the king should not amass too many wives, or amass too much gold, or amass too many horses.  Now the wives bit speaks for itself.  The thing about amassing too much gold "should" speak for itself but you know something?  The Torah doesn't define what "too much" is!  What if the leader defines "too much" as being at a much higher threshhold than the ruled?  Who is being addressed on this subject about the king not being one to amass too much gold?  Oh, yeah, that's right, the people. 

By way of digression, the priests don't even get an inheritance.  They live off of the provisions from the tithe.  Heh, now if someone wanted to be "biblical" then the priests would not be allowed to own property and would live off of the funding of the people.  Of course these days Protestants prefer not to talk about priests and in certain circles the preferred term for a pastor is not necessarily "priest" but "king" so it may be useful to simply grant how clouded terminology gets.  The priests, in any case, don't have an inheritance in the land and are supported by the people.

Which gets back to the king, now that I've taken that detour.  The king is not to amass too many horses.  What does that really mean?  Does it mean the king shouldn't have too many cars?  Maybe, but that's not particularly likely or plausible.  A better explanation stems from not going to Egypt for horses.  The idea is that Israel should not go back to Egypt in the sense of connecting itself to the slavery that entailed.  It also includes avoiding making a military alliance with them.  "Horses" can be taken as a shorthand not merely for "cars" or horses as signs of royal prestige but as a shorthand for military power. 

For those who don't have much interest in military history here is the part where I mention that there's an important distinction between a professional standing army and a civilian regional militia.  As Israeli military historians occasionally refer to biblical texts, the professional standing calvary and infantry wouldn't be the same as the regional militias.  When Deuteronomy warns against a king having "too many horses" this is less likely to refer to the ancient near-eastern equivalent of an Escalade with gold rims as it is to an M1A2. The king should not have an imperial guard that is too big or a professional standing military that is too powerful. 

The king is supposed to be literate, and literate enough to make his own copy of the "book of the law" to study.  He's to follow the statutes and by doing them prevent his heart from being lifted up above his brothers. An Israelite king is to be brought in from within Israel's ranks, not imported from some other land.  Israel was not to hire out for kings due to rumors of kingly gifts.  They were to go with the king God chose for them. Now I'd love to digress into God choosing Saul as the first king and what that may mean but I'm trying to save time and space here. The king is not to have his heart lifted up above those who serves.  Yes, I put it that way for all kinds of reasons.  The disposition of the king should not be to amass many wives as proof of virility, much gold, and that horses thing means he should not reserve for himself too much military power.   So when you read "horses" in Deuteronomy 17 keep in mind that a flatly literal reading of "horses" in warnings about what a king shouldn't do is quite possibly missing what the real warning is about. 

And, yes, of course, there's the part where Christians look at Deuteronomy 17 and talk about how Jesus is the real king that is pointed to.  Sure, sure, but let's not forget the more mundane referent here, to the actual king that Israel would one day want to appoint.  Notice that the role of the king, if you pay attention to Deuteronomy 16-18 is actually not that involved in a lot of the "rule".  The tribal chieftains and judges, in Deut 16, where do those come from?  Appointed from among the people.  What about the priests?  Levitical priesthood already accounted for.  And the king?  What's he do?  Well, we're told a few general things about what he's NOT supposed to do, and that looks curiously like a warning that the king is the one who should not have a consumeristic mentality toward his people.  The point of studying the book of the law is so that he would learn to fear the Lord and not have his heart lifted up above his brothers.  Who was in a position to stop the king from amassing too many wives, too much gold, and too many horses (for war)? 

Now if a pastor is supposed to have "kingly gifts" what do we make of the stern prohibitions against that "king" having "too many wives"?  What do we make of the "too much gold?  What constitutes "too much gold" if Benny Hinn has what he has? And how many even bother to think through what a warning against "too many horses" as a shorthand for millitary power would be?  I'll throw out a suggestion--in Israelite military organization the professional army wasn't supposed to be more powerful than the regional militias so that if at any point one of those kings was a tyrannical punk the people could depose him.  If you don't know for sure if kings were deposed in the OT I refer you to Joash and you can do some personalized study on that topic.   I don't see how anyone could credibly make a defense that pastors are "kings" in even a Deuteronomy 17 sense but if I assume for the sake of a very stupid argument that they somehow are then the textual evidence at hand says that the people, not the royal family or cabinet, get to decide how much money and power and women is too much.  Notice, too, that the kings with those kingly gifts are not self-nominated. :)

Now if we run with the assumption that Deuteronomy 17 does refer to Jesus in the end by way of typology, then His studying the book of the law so as not to have his heart lifted up above His brothers and sisters becomes food for thought.  You can mull that over if you want but I'll just end with that thought for the time being.

There are basically two ways a Christian can respond to this comic

http://www.orthocuban.com/2011/12/makes-one-think/#respond

1) we can laugh in amusement at how we and our church or spiritual association is the punchline of the joke or
2) we can very seriously attempt to explain how our church or spiritual association is the truly apostolic and real Christian form of fellowship which is thus at the start of the tree and exempted from the punchline.

Reaction #1 means you have a sense of humor
Reaction #2 means you have no sense of church history, probably don't want it, and will attempt to prove even now that it proves (if you knew it) that you're not part of the joke. 

two poems about eyes and eye surgery

The week after surgery
12.03.2011

At night, in bed, I continue to feel
a river of itching within my eye.
This is, I know, what it feels like to heal
yet I can't endure it without a sigh.
Red drops, gray drops, with drops clear and yellow
drop one by one, and five minutes apart;
four times a day for all but the yellow,
which is only for when days end or start.
The incision heals and I have no tears
but the ones given me inside capsules.
The drugs, in their droppers, the heads of spears
of guardsmen who mark the changing of hours.
The cataract of itching is a sign
That a cataract is no longer mine.

Note to my readers, there is no subtext here.  Here's the earlier sonnet I wrote about eyes thinking back on a scleral buckle I had years earlier.

Sonnet
05.30.2002

Like the jelly between the retina
And optic nerve, you’ve been between me and
Reality. This is no dilemma.
You have my gratitude for understanding
The limits of my eyes. You’ve helped me
Live with them. Now for some it is a crutch
To rely on a person they can’t see.
It bothers me sometimes, but not too much
Because like vitreous, unseen between
The retina and optic nerve you hold
Two unlike likes in seam, unseen and seen,
Who I am, who you’ve been. Poets, I’m told,
Mediate the world through words, so do you
For you are the Word, and vitreous, too.

What can I say? I've been fond of John Donne's poetry for years, particularly his penchant for medical metaphors.  I wouldn't say they are great poems by any measure but they qualify at least as doggerel, occasional verses for unusual occasions.

Bill is back, and it's good to have him back

http://kinnon.tv/2011/11/jesus-and-the-marlboro-man.html
http://kinnon.tv/2011/11/perhaps-certain-pastors-shouldnt-read-the-jobs-biography.html
Bill links to the following
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/be-a-jerk-the-worst-business-lesson-from-the-steve-jobs-biography/249136/
which reminds me of something DZ linked to over at Mockingbird here:
http://www.mbird.com/2011/12/another-week-ends-deadly-doing-horton-on-incarnation-epic-fantasy-appeal-schizophrenic-hope-dfw-syllabi-nice-guys-george-harrison-and-superman/
about how nice guys do finish last:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/do-nice-guys-finish-last/
That doesn't sound like anyone we've blogged about in the past in terms of discussing wimpy or "nice" guys, does it?  ;)

From Sullivan's article:

So many people advanced Steve Jobs as evidence that asshole CEOs build better companies that Sutton somewhat reluctantly included a chapter in his book on "The Virtues of Assholes," with Steve Jobs as Exhibit A. There is some evidence that "status displays" by aggressive bosses can motivate workers and give slackers a kick in the pants. And effective jerk bosses usually aren't assholes all the time, they're able to turn on the charm when the situation demands it, something Steve Jobs, by most accounts, was very good at doing. And it helps for companies to have skilled subordinate executives that are good at cleaning up after the Asshole-in-Chief, much like the sad-faced men carrying shovels who walk behind circus elephants. [emphasis added]
...

The fact is, Steve Jobs didn't succeed because he was an asshole. He succeeded because he was Steve Jobs. He had an uncanny sixth sense about what consumers wanted, an unmatched ability to adapt existing technology and turn it into something new, and a commitment to quality that turned ordinary Apple customers into fans for life. Being an asshole was part of the Steve package, but it wasn't essential to his success. But that's not a message most of the assholes in the corner offices want to hear.


Interesting, it helps for companies to have skilled subordinate executives that are good at cleaning up after the Asshole-in-Chief, as Sullivan puts it.  Perhaps this can constitute a kind of meta-commentary on assholes-in-chief at a variety of organizations?  It may well be the smarter assholes-in-chief know they need people to play more conciliatory and friendly roles.  This does not justify their being assholes-in-chief, of course, but it may prove that even jerks at the top recognize that somebody has to delegate a modicum of nice. 

I could write more but I'm trying to rein myself in a bit.  I am still recovering from major eye surgery.  But, as you can see, it's hard to resist writing SOMETHING.  I hope to tackle the prophet/priest/king stuff (again) before too long.  And eventually I want to get back to the aesthetics of plausibility chris e and I were discussing months ago.  But eye surgery is eye surgery, after all.  The first week has gone very well but it's still the first week.

I saw that link, Dwayne. ;)

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
You may not blog anymore but I'm going to link to the thing you linked to, anyway.  I have transformed you into a blogger again by being a proxy. ;)

A few links: creativity within constraint; when knowledge isn't power in cognitive bias; and the social conformity effect

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/need-to-create-get-a-constraint/

No one who has worked in the arts any length of time will fail to grasp the significance of creativity increasing within constraints.  Igor Stravinsky famously remarked that he was most creative when he imposed the most restrictions on himself.  At a purely personal level I feel my compositional style expanded and changed as I began to explore possibilities with a few crucial restrictions on the conceptual and structural approach to my music.  I would later learn that some of the restrictions I worked with weren't altogether different from ones Brian Eno used in his songwriting career at different points. 

Of the works I have written so far arguably the single greatest restriction in a work-in-progress ended up being the catalyst for a lot of creativity.  How many works for solo guitar can you compose if you use only harmonics?  And not just any old harmonics, natural harmonics, skipping artificial harmonics almost altogether?  What could you come up with?  How does one navigate the reality that harmonics at frets 5, 7 and 12 have better intonation than those at 3, 4, 6, and 9?  How many key regions are possible?  How many key regions are desirable?  How much can you compose before resorting to an altered tuning?  After all, just because the rule is "only harmonics" doesn't mean you can't use scordatura ... but which scordaturae would be more trouble than they're worth?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/is-self-knowledge-overrated/

My brother picked up Thinking Fast and Slow, which I intend to borrow from him and read one day. 
Daniel Kahneman's book, what I have read of it, seems like what David Zahl at Mockingbird might call a scientific examination of the extent of the bound will.  We are not as rational or self-aware as we think we are.  As the prophet Jeremiah put it so glumly, the heart is deceitful above all things, and who can understand it?  The Hebrew prophets were often all too painfully aware that self-knowledge is not even close to self-power. 

One of the grimly amusing ironies of neurological work and cognitive study is to suggest, over against the claims of certain optimists, that the human mind and the human condition have not improved quite so substantially as many of us have told ourselves it has.  Yes, many certain things in certain regions have gotten better but at a price.  As a friend of mine put it, while progressives have looked at all the strides made in political or social equality all that equality is founded on an economy driven by fossil fuels.  So progressives have been compelled to recognize that the engine that has driven increased social equality can seem, to progressives, to come at the cost of compromising the viability of the ecosphere.  Or at least the ones that actually think anything through about the connection between increased personal economic or political freedom and ecological considerations in the post-industrial West have had to give it some thought. 

For all our amazing discoveries about ourselves and the cosmos the more we learn about humanity the less we disprove observations humans have made about themselves millenia ago.  The heart is still decetiful above all things, and even when we understand the mechanisms of self-deception this does not mean we are free of them when we live our lives.  Romans 7 and the prophet Jeremiah may well continue to remain relevant commentaries on the human condition. It's not as though they stopped having relevant things to say in the last few millenia, after all.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/how-friends-ruin-memory-the-social-conformity-effect/

... But our love of stories comes with a serious side-effect: like all good narrators, we tend to forsake the facts when they interfere with the plot. We’re so addicted to the anecdote that we let the truth slip away until, eventually, those stories we tell again and again become exercises in pure fiction. Just the other day I learned that one of my cherished childhood tales – the time my older brother put hot peppers in my Chinese food while I was in the bathroom, thus scorching my young tongue – actually happened to my little sister. I’d stolen her trauma.

The reason we’re such consummate bullshitters is simple: we bullshit for each other. We tweak our stories so that they become better stories. We bend the facts so that the facts appeal to the group. Because we are social animals, our memory of the past is constantly being revised to fit social pressures.

Instantly one can surmise that an atheist or non-Christian would note that this must have been how the earliest Christian beliefs and biblical narratives came about.  It most certainly would be how retroactive political narratives by political parties in upcoming elections find unified narratives, whether it's the Republicans pretending they have been about lower taxes, small and uninvasive government, and providing equal opportunity; or whether it's the Democrats pretending they have been about defending the working class, seeing to political equality and liberty for all, and not being overly hawkish in issues of foreign policy.  It can also be said about evangelical Christians in America attempting to find a suitable history from which to rationalize culture war politicking which Darryl Hart has written a bit about recently.  And it's certainly how Marxists manage to skip past the question of how Soviet atrocities could be condemned in a way that separates Marxism from the applications of Marxist/Leninist ideas in a society. 

So, per Jeremiah's grim observation that the heart is deceitful above all things what could we suggest as a crucial role a prophet can play?  The role of the prophet is not, per the notions of a dispensationalist or cessationist, that of a man or woman pronouncing new words from God that will get canonized.  No, if anything the opposite impulse is deeper in the role of the prophetic action than speaking of events that have not taken place.  The prophet's role is to question the collective narrative we put together by pointing out how that narrative we've spun for ourselves to make ourselves look good doesn't add up.  The aim was not necessarily to provide "new revelation" but to challenge God's people for a failure to live out the important parts of the established revelation.  Repression and oppression among God's people indicate a people who have forgotten the Exodus and Passover observance makes the hypocrisy and double standards worse rather than better. 

Whether or not one subscribes to or prescribes to religious belief the role of the prophet, in actual or perhaps merely literary/typological terms, is one everyone can understand, the person who calls "bullshit" on the agreed-upon narrative and identity a group of people sell to themselves and to others. The role of the prophet can be described as the person who is not just an advisor about crises but to combat, when necessary, the social conformity effect when its aims and results became fraudulent. Given how many prophetic books there are in the Bible it was acknowledged over time that the propensity for the social conformity effect (as it were) to lead to fraudulent results and character was pretty common.

Thus ends my ramble for this post.

I bet I don't really have to even explain this link, do I?

http://www.homestarrunner.com/trogdor.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfrAf1a9Qhs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHF_bIjIPAE

per the Wartburg Watch discussions lately on sheep, an old sermon from Mike Gunn on Ps 23

http://www.harambeechurch2.org/downloads/sermons/Psalms/2008.10.26_psalm_23_mike_gunn.mp3
http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=201300200
http://www.harambeechurch2.org/downloads/sermons/Psalms/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Psalm_23[1].pdf

The sermon is more extensive than the sermon notes, by the way.

reformatted the blog

It took me a while to figure out but I've reformatted the blog to make it more readable and searchable.  I didn't think to put together tags for subjects and categories for years, which I now realize was a mistake.  But at least now I've got the blog formatted so that you can go back and read posts by week rather than by month, and it's now possible to read a lot more of the archived blog entries if you'd never come across them before. 

So if for some reason you care what I had to say about Anton Diabelli's guitar sonatas or his work as an engraver or something like that you can look that up.  It would appear that the most popular point of reference for this blog is from people looking for a summary of Daniel Levitin's (sic?) book This is Your Brain on Music.  So as far as that goes, I figure I could at least try to make it easier to access those blog entries if someone just stumbles on to the blog and wants to read the entries in order.  Up until now the monthly archive hid most of the etnries in any given month.  My apologies to any readers for that accidental quasi-Luddite approach to formatting.

For folks who read this blog because of that other frequently visited topic (you know, that one) this link is to a poem I wrote a few months after some things happened. 

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2007/12/clunky-poem.html

That clunky poem, dear readers, was the beginning of oblique ruminations on what was going on at my then church at that time.  I started ruminating on the divided kingdom in Israel; on David taking a census and how this was a disastrous late career move; and those were oblique ways of discussing where I was at in my life at my old church. A clunky poem about an obscure biblical figure as a commentary on a pastor and his church  For anyone who wonders about subtext the canary is not in the coal mine. 

I was also starting to read Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God, and the son's mercenary branding of himself as against his father Francis is another thing I at times write about.  Frank's mediocrity seems to only be sustainable by cashing in against his father's legacy.  In its way, though, this fits in with one of my perennial concerns about Christian men building legacies.  Sometimes the legacy you build is something your kids trade in against as a way to make a living.  Sometimes the legacy you invest in yourself turns out to be nothing more than a puff of air.  Frank Schaeffer's pipe dream that his dad could have been a hero of the Religious Left does not fail to amuse me.  Franky is apparently trying to make sure he takes the role that he now wishes his father had had, perhaps.

But enough rambling for the moment.

two links for later consideration, Michael Card on Job and Jerram Barrs on 2 Cor

http://www.sbts.edu/resources/lectures/icw/worshiping-the-god-who-takes-everything-away/
http://graceseattle.org/Barrs112011.mp3

I've been wanting to blog about these to lectures/sermons for a while now but recovering from eye surgery is recovering from eye surgery.  I'm not adequately situated to stare at computer screens for very long periods, not where reading and typing are concerned.  So for now I'll link to these two presentations and I hope to get to writing about what both men have to say about Christians who face suffering in more detail later.

By way of spoilers,though, Michael Card describes Job as a dramatic narrative in which Job is attempting to make a lament before the Lord and his friends, ever insistent on defending orthodox theology and a proper defense of the justness of God, continually interrupt Job and tell him he can't make his lament about God's permission of injustice and that he's wrong. 

Jerram Barrs discusses Paul's mention in 2 Corinthians about a time where he faced so much by way of trials and suffering he despaired of life itself.  If Christians suggest that you will not be tempted beyond what you can bear keep in mind that that is temptation to sin and not being tested through suffering.  Jesus sweat blood in the face of being tested with more than what He could physically bear is how I suggest we frame it.  After all, Jesus was obedient to the point of death and that, friends, is being tested by suffering beyond the point that one can bear. 

Carl Trueman: Where has Critical Appreciation Gone?

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/where-has-critical-appreciation-gone.php
...
If we can only learn from those we first remake in our own image, then we can never really learn from that which is different. Indeed, learning becomes little more than the reinforcement or clarification of what we know or believe already.

That Stott was important and influential is beyond dispute; but we should not sentimentalise him because of that or ignore his faults or, worst of all, so praise him that those very faults might ultimately be baptized as virtues and continue to do damage long after his departure to glory. Our brains must be kept switched on; we must give credit where credit is due; but we must also remember that sometimes we learn most from great men when we look at the great mistakes they made.

Yep. 

a lengthy postscript to the wartburg watch republication of my writing on Driscoll and SoS

http://thewartburgwatch.com/2011/11/11/an-insiders-perspective-on-mark-driscoll-and-the-song-of-songs-hallelujah/http://thewartburgwatch.com/2011/11/14/alternatives-to-mark-driscolls-pornogrification-of-the-song-of-songs/
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2011/11/16/mark-driscoll-versus-scripture-analysis-of-song-of-solmon/

Seeing as Driscoll preached on the passage in Luke where Jesus explains how He fulfilled all the Scriptures I don't consider the subject of Driscoll on Jesus in the Scriptures exhausted.  Unlike certain folks in blogger land I may disagree with Driscoll's approach, and I may be skeptical about how likely he is to change, but I'm not interested in only ever assuming the worst about him all the time.  I do have slightly better things to think about during the holiday season than listening to one of his sermons for the moment.  I've got eye surgery and writing projects and other things to consider beyond listening to a sermon for upwards of an hour and if I'm going to listen to sermons I've got people I want to listen to more urgently than Driscoll.  Jerram Barrs, Sinclair Fergueson, and the pastors at my own church come to mind.

But in the interest of fairness to Driscoll's often changing theological and textual convictions (i.e. Schuller and Jakes as well as becoming more charismatic than cessationist, for instance) I will eventually touch on his preaching in the future.

But this post script I'm about to post deals not merely with Driscoll but with MacArthur.  I want to illustrate why, overall, MacArthur's rebuttal to Driscoll is ultimately pointless.  This is not a simple matter of Driscoll's take on Song of Songs insisting that oral sex is in SoS 2:3.  This is also not as simple as fanboys for MacArthur simply assuming that SoS can't be allegorical.  This is about the basis on which a whole book of the Bible has any possible reference to Christ scrubbed out of it in reaction to the Puritans and allegorists over millenia as being true to the biblical text ... in contrast to the same people endorsing without serious explanation or discussion how Satan is typologically read into prophetic texts where "the plain meaning of Scripture" couldn't possibly lead one to that reading.

I will say, out of consideration for MacArthur fans, that though I often differ with MacArthur on a few issues he's more responsible about bringing up some interpretive and historical issues connected to Ezekiel 28, which I discuss at some length below.  So between Driscoll and MacArthur the bigger contradiction is inherent in Driscoll's handling of biblical texts rather than MacArthur's.  MacArthur is also not as willing to claim that poetic images in Song of Songs refer to such specific things as Driscoll insists are in the text. 

With all that out of the way, here we go:

POSTSCRIPT
When the Bridegroom mustn't be literal and the Lake of Fire must:
Driscoll sees Satan in texts that clearly and literally refer to pagan kings

By now I've pointed out the historical challenge of Driscoll (or for that matter, John MacArthur) attempting to completely sidestep any typological or allegorical reading of Song of Songs.  Millennia of church tradition are difficult to ignore.  If millennia of church tradition are easy to ignore there's the realization that Jamnia consented to the canonization of Song of Songs on the grounds that an allegorical reading was acceptable. 

The plainest reading possible of Song of Songs on the assumption that Solomon must have written the book runs into the problem of the sixty queens and eighty concubines and virgins beyond number.  If this is Solomon, really Solomon, then a "plain" reading of the text that attempts to skirt how many women "Solomon" refers to in his harem is trying to have things both ways. 
Not all scholars even agree that "the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's" necessarily indicates Solomonic authorship, only possible Solomonic patronage.

Having established that Song of Songs is a book Driscoll (and John MacArthur) think should not be read typologically or allegorically it remains to be discussed where Driscoll, particularly, lands on other passages that he chooses to interpret literally that may not be as literal.  For instance, if Driscoll can joke that the Song of Songs cannot be literal because he'll be bummed if Jesus is preparing to have sex with him, why has Driscoll over the years been quite a bit more literal about "Hell" even within discussion of Revelation?  If the Wedding Feast of the Lamb has to be a metaphor so Driscoll doesn't suffer an end-of-time gay panic moment why would the lake of fire be literal?  Why would it be "hell" if "hell" is clearly described as being thrown into the lake of fire anyway? What is the basis for reading one apocalyptic passage metaphorically while insisting that the Lake of Fire has to be literal within just the book of Revelation?  To be sure Driscoll isn't the only conservative preacher who has done this over the years but in Driscoll's case his eagerness to reject typological or allegorical reading of the groom/bride metaphor in just one book of the Bible in favor of a literal reading raises the question of how, when it comes to Revelation, he selectively literalizes Hell where the other apocalyptic imagery is allowed to remain metaphorical so Driscoll doesn't get his gay panic moment.

For that matter while Driscoll has been eager to not see Jesus in Song of Songs, why shouldn't he then refrain from embracing the plainest, most literal, and least allegorical reading of other biblical texts?  If Driscoll's hermeneutic is to avoid allegorical readings where he thinks they're not warranted it would seem he chooses to NOT see Jesus in Song of Songs while seeing Satan in two passages where Satan is not actually the literal and plain referent in biblical passages. Let's pick two non-random passages historically linked to Satan Driscoll referred to in his Christus Victor presentation on spiritual warfare.

Isaiah 14 is often cited as referring to Satan when it referred to the king of Babylon.  Since in context Isaiah is referring to a long-since deposed pagan ruler why would Driscoll (or MacArthur for that matter) be so eager to accept a typological or allegorical association of the Morning Star with Satan when that is not what a "plain" reading would indicate?  If Jesus "can't" be in Song of Songs why is Satan the Daystar in Isaiah?

Then there is the prince of Tyre and the king of Tyre passage from Ezekiel 28, which is in the broader context of Ezekiel 26-28.

Ezekiel specifically says Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, will lay siege to Tyre for its mockery of Jerusalem.  I will note here that John MacArthur notes that Ezekiel 28 was incomplete, suggesting that the king of Tyre passage refers to Satan.  Well, let's discuss what that really means in military/historical terms.  Ezekiel predicted that Nebuchadnezzar would lay siege to Tyre and destroy it.

Well ... Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Tyre for THIRTEEN YEARS and did not actually destroy it.  A compromise was established in which Tyre agreed to be a Babylonian precinct in exchange for not being completely destroyed and Babylon could turn its attention to Egypt. The reason, skeptics may easily proffer, that the king of Tyre passage in Ezekiel 28 "has" to be interpreted by Christians as finding typological fulfillment in the final defeat of Satan is because Christians can't concede that a prophecy in the Bible made by Ezekiel regarding Nebuchadnezzar destroying Tyre could not have been fulfilled as written. 

But this is where we get to the question of how the apocalyptic idiom, which for all intents and purposes Ezekiel started, should even be read.  Even skeptical scholars and rationalist students of the Bible note that Ezekiel kept everything he wrote as it was even in cases where it would seem that doing so would have given people written evidence that Ezekiel was a false prophet and provided a basis for his being put to death!

Now another thing to consider is that at this point Ezekiel was prophesying in a completely post-exilic setting.  In other words, even if the prophet Ezekiel made predictions in the name of God regarding events that failed to take place in his lifetime there was no covenanted people of God in a form organized enough to implement Deuteronomy 16-18 and those passages regarded how to approach prophets within a pre-exilic community anyway. All that to say this, a preacher like Driscoll who simply affirms that Ezekiel 28 refers to Satan has not bothered to engage with what Ezekiel was really writing about in his own lifetime, let alone how the typological introduction of Satan as the ultimate referent point for the "king of Tyre" prophecy constitutes an apologetics question.  MacArthur does at least grant the issue comes up since the king of Tyre was not actually destroyed in the manner described by Ezekiel. 

However, merely to suggest that the king of Tyre had to be Satan because the king of Tyre wasn't in Eden is to miss how hyperbolic apocalyptic language is. David's account of God's rescue in Psalm 18 is far more flamboyant than the much more prosaic account in Samuel of the troubles God actually delivered David from. 

Preachers like Driscoll and MacArthur can say that Isaiah 14's reference to the king of Babylon and Ezekiel 28's reference to the king of Tyre refer to Satan.  There's just a problem of exegesis involved.  The problem is that the Babylonian king whose fall is anticipated by Isaiah 14 is the same king who will be the cause of the fall of the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28.  Now, sure, we can say that typologically there's reference to Satan and typology can account for a lot.  But if that's the case then why COULDN'T Christ be the bridegroom in Song of Songs if conservative preachers who reject an allegorical or typological reference to Christ in Song of Songs insist on a typological reading of Satan into both Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 when the context of both prophetic passages forces us to say that one "Satan" is prophesied to destroy the other "Satan"?

In Driscoll's spiritual warfare presentation he affirms without the slightest hesitation that Ezekiel 28:14 refers to Satan.  But if Ezekiel 28 refers to Satan what about Ezekiel 26-28 as a whole, which is obviously referring to Tyre?  Why does a snippet of Ezekiel 28 get to refer to Satan while Christ can't possibly be referenced in a Christian's reading of Song of Songs?  Well, the history as to how and why Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 came to be read as referring to Satan is rather lengthy and historian Jeffrey Burton Russell published no less than five books on the history of Christian and Jewish thought about the Devil (all of which are very useful references and are considered standards on the subject).  The shortest practical answer for the present discussion is to say that a great deal of the ideas associated with the devil/Satan and demons developed not within the actual canonical books themselves but in intertestamental literature.  This is a subject which Catholic and Eastern Orthodox scholars are a bit more familiar with, and Christians in more "mainline" settings. 

Now the reason I bring all of this up is to point out that when a preacher like Driscoll (or MacArthur) rejects an allegorical approach to Song of Songs on the grounds that that is not the "plain" reading of the text here's a question you can ask them, if that's true, why should people trust that their take on Isaiah 14 or Ezekiel 28 is "really" referring to Satan when that is not the "plain" reading of the text?  If you should avoid allegorical readings of biblical texts because, as MacArthur said in his response to Driscoll, that opens up all sorts of room for huge mistakes, why would both Driscoll and MacArthur stick to a view of Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 that developed within the medieval period, when it would seem that those pesky Papists were super-imposing their ideas on to the Bible.  Don't people get sent to Hell for imposing their own ideas on the Bible?  Well, if that's the case couldn't it be said that those who claim Satan is being referred to in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 have sent themselves to Hell for claiming God's word talks about Satan when a literal and plain reading doesn't establish that? 
Satan is referred to in the book of Job, where he proposes a bet that God accepts. 

Satan is also referred to as accusing the high priest in Zechariah 3.  Satan is described as inciting David to take a census near the end of his reign in 1 Chronicles 21 while 2 Samuel 24 tells us that God Himself was the one who incited David to take a census of Israel because the Lord was angry with His people.  Considering all of these issues if Driscoll thinks Song of Songs can't possibly refer to Jesus under any reading then he's welcome to take that approach. 

But it would help if he could then also explain how, by the praxis of rejecting all allegorical reading of Jesus on to Song of Songs, he has so simply contented himself to accepting that Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 refer to Satan when that isn't a plain reading of a biblical text in either case.  How does "Satan" cast out "Satan"?  After all, Jesus said that if Satan is casting out Satan his kingdom is divided against itself and cannot stand.  And, of course, this is right.  But that would be true regardless of how Mark Driscoll or John MacArthur handle Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. 

Particularly in the case of Ezekiel 28 Jewish scholars have noted regularly that the literal fulfillment of Ezekiel 26-28 didn't come to pass.  They don't fret about it.  Christians introduced a typological reading of Ezekiel 28 to refer to Satan over time.  Now if a guy like Driscoll claims to "just preach what's in the Bible" he may just have to avoid ever actually unpacking the exegetical and textual issues of Ezekiel 28 and avoid any comparison of what Ezekiel wrote to what can be established by archaeological evidence regarding the military campaigns of Babylon at that time.

Or ... if he can grant that Ezekiel 28 DOES refer to Satan he can ALSO grant that it is within the scope of historic Christian thought to take a typological approach to Song of Songs in which the woman is God's people and the man is God.  After all, if what's good for the goose is good for the gander then Driscoll's goose could be cooked when he tries to apply his "just what's in the Bible" approach to Song of Songs (with no possible reference to Jesus) to Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 (in which a Babylonian king who is supposed to be the Devil destroys the king of Tyre who is supposed to be the Devil, too).  Apparently the Devil gets to show up in some places where he isn't literally mentioned in the text but God Himself, who inspired Scripture, can't be bothered to show up in the one book Driscoll and his critic MacArthur say has to be read mainly about marriage and sex.

a relatively recent piece by Matanya Ophee

http://www.guitarandluteissues.com/rmcg/yob.html

"Relatively" means within this calendar year.  He's not quite as prolific on Guitar and Lute Issues as he is on his livejournal feed, which isn't to say he's prolific on that, either.  He's more busy editing and publishing, which is what I like about him.  He can't resist making accidental-yet-deliberate jokes because, well, he does that. 

Appropos of the pieces Ophee mentions, I've been wanting to play Ecloghues for years and spent years hunting for the score and my trouble is that the perfect flutist and English horn player for such a project are out of town and parents now. 

I have been corresponding with guitarist friends in the last few years and it has impressed me how the guitar has been around for centuries and we guitarists as a group love to say our instrument is more expressive than that dumb old piano.  We play a miniature orchestra and all that.  Yet it has only been in the last four years that an actual guitarist completed a contrapuntal cycle for the instrument.  I eagerly anticipate studying and listening to Koshkin's preludes and fugues for solo guitar.  Given the time that publication and recording of such a monumental cycle must take it will likely not get published in any form for such a time that I could finish my own cycle for solo guitar. 

I'm no virtuoso by any means and am a nobody composer but I can still say of both Mr. Koshkin and myself that if it has only been at the dawn of the 21st century that guitarists in the East and West have undertaken preludes and fugues for solo guitar that says a lot about our instrument.  It is a young instrument compared to the keyboard.  It is an even younger instrument compared to the great and wonderful contrapuntal idiom that has existed in choral music for at least half a millenia.  So this suggests at least two things for our consideration. 

The first is that such a young instrument in the context of human history should not be expected to really be at the same level as instrumental and choral traditions that have made substantial advances centuries ahead of ours.  Ricercars and fugues and contrapuntal works for the guitar have certainly been written and guitarist-composers have written cycles in which all the major and minor keys are attended to but these workers and works remain rare in the literature and even rarer in performance.  Ophee touches, I think, on one of the reasons why many of these works remain so often unattended to in many ways, they are considered musical white elephants, more physically and conceptually demanding than the musical worth guitarists believe they bring to the performer or the listener. 

And this leads rather naturally to the second observation.  Lest we need any reminders the most beloved composers of concert and chamber music (i.e. Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, etc) all faced complaints that this or that masterpiece was "unplayable".  Yet these works are not only well-known but well-loved.  It may be that unlike the other musical societies and traditions guitarists, when they gather together and say something is too awkward or unplayable, prize idiomatic accessibility and glamor over musical substance. 

If in the keyboard literature and quartet literature innovation and progress has come with declarations that this or that is "unplayable" when it isn't why should we imagine that things will be different in the guitar?  Many works that are standards in the non-guitar literature were declared to be impossible to play and, if possible to play by some mere technical standpoint, were declared horribly unmusical.  Thus Yamashita's transcriptions were considered either impossible "as written" or unmusical as played.  Now I might suggest that as far as that goes the whole subject of guitarists playing transcriptions of keyboard literature is its own subject.  I don't see why Yamashita's "unmusical" treatment of Mussorgsky's keyboard music is so much worse than the treatment of Albeniz' keyboard music.  If you've heard actual pianists play Albeniz you can begin to feel like the Albeniz/Bach/Debussy/Mozart keyboard-transcribing pots are calling the Mussorgsky-transcribing-kettle black.  It's still not guitar music written by guitarists, people. 

And that is why I am excited about Koshkin's cycle.  Instead of we guitarists continually transcribing masterworks that were never written for the guitar and playing it safe there's got to be some room to explore, even if exploration means crashing and burning.  Let's remember that at one point there was not even a Well Tempered Clavier book 1, let alone a book 2 in the keyboard literature.  Koshkin's cycle may not make any impression on non-guitarists.  Maybe Asya Selyutina will record the whole thing and it will be amazing but nobody at, say, The Guardian or the Telegraph or the New York Times will even review it.  Or it might get reviewed with some grudging note that Koshkin's stuff is all right for guitar music but that there's other stuff being done by Brian Ferneyhough or something.  I don't know. 

I do believe, however, that amongst guitarists we should be encouraged that Koshkin has completed such an unprecedented project.  Of course I don't mean unprecedented in that Castelnuovo-Tedesco or Rekhin didn't write their fine cycles, I mean unprecedented in that this is the first time a guitarist composer has tackled composing a contrapuntal cycle.  Given Koshkin's focal dystonia I am not sure he composed with instrument in hand.  Anyone who has done any serious work on contrapuntal music will know, however, that often the worst thing you can do in writing contrapuntal music is to have the instrument in hand.  The contrapuntal tradition developed within the choral idiom, particularly sacred music in the West, and the guitar at its most idiomatic lends itself to all the things that are most forbidden in traditional counterpoint!  So if anything Koshkin's lack of opportunity to play guitar may have positively helped him at this stage in his life tackling counterpoint. 

I wonder how many guitarists will take up the cycle when it's published?  Schoenberg famously quipped that perhaps humans would need to evolve extra digits for his concerto to become more widely played.  Hahn, of course, has demonstrated the work can be played fluently and she joked that those extra digits would just get in the way.  If we guitarists want to keep moving in the direction of new vistas and new musical challenges, new achievements in substantial music, we may have to keep reminding ourselves that what this or that person declares "unplayable" now may not be unplayable, just unpleasant and not musically satisfying. 

Of course there are people who consider Bach to be tedious and uninspired. There are people who consider Beethoven overwrought, overlong, and boring.  There are people who refuse to consider anything written by Stravinsky to even be music.  There were people who considered Mozart's music to have too many notes (because some of his pieces did have too many of those).  There were people who complained that Haydn was some weird emo punk who introduced wild mood and tempo changes into his music that people steeped in the northern German Baroque tradition found unacceptable.  We don't know, and we can't know, whether or not something that seems like a musical white elephant won't become a standard work in the future.  Koshkin's giant solo guitar sonata could end up becoming a standard work.  I honestly hope it does and if the performances of both Papendreou and Perroy are any indication it SHOULD become a standard guitar sonata.  That doesn't mean I don't personally quibble with a few elements of harmonic structure in cyclical form but far be it from me to say you shouldn't go immerse yourself in one of the biggest and best works of one of my favorite living composers.  :)

Well, I've rambled on that for enough time now.

C. S. Lewis & Rob Bell: evangelicals getting selective on doctrines depending on the recency and the race of a perceived threat?

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2011/11/why-do-we-love-c-s-lewis-and-hate-rob-bell/

I recently read this and decided to link to a few things from elsewhere. C. Michael Patton raises the simple and obvious point that Lewis is a dead lay Anglican author of popular and academic fiction while Rob Bell is a living American pastor.  I've written elsewhere here about how Lewis and Bonhoeffer are easily assimilated into contemporary American evangelicalism, despite their like of American evangelical bona fides, because they managed to do what evangelicals haven't done all that well--namely writing popular yet literary fiction and conspicuously opposing the Nazis at a time when a lot of evangelical Americans were still going to make arguments against racial desegregation or women voting.

Now I'll get to what I consider a definitive take on Lewis and Bell in terms of Bell and Piper.  But first I want to take several lengthy digressions on to D. G. Hart's observations about the Gospel Coalition and race.  Bear with me.  I did say I wouldn't be writing a whole lot for a while but I didn't say I wouldn't copy, paste, and link a bit this week, did I?
http://oldlife.org/2011/10/the-gospel-coalition-goes-racial/

What is remarkable in this reaction to MacDonald is, first, the assumption that the white church has a sound doctrine of the Trinity. Unless I missed something, the Gospel Coalition is a wart to the Matterhorn (thank you Henry Lewis) of the Trinity Broadcast Network and the larger Pentecostal and charismatic world which consists of Americans of European descent as much as blacks. In other words, the black church has no corner of heresy and the Gospel Coalition has a lot of work to do if it is going to labor winsomely and heroically for a reformation in the white church.

http://oldlife.org/2011/11/the-gospel-coalition-and-race-part-ii/

Here’s a piece of advice to Justin: take this post down before someone who cares about social justice, racism, and the rights of native Americans — at least those outside the genteel and rosy Coalition circles — sees it. (Or at least change the graphics since I am not sure native Americans are supposed to look so European.) 

["this" seems to refer to this ... ]
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2011/11/08/squanto-and-the-miracle-of-thanksgiving-2/

http://oldlife.org/2011/11/the-gospel-coalition-and-race-part-iii/

The juxtaposition of the post about Squanto and this one about slavery were indeed vexing if not arresting. In the case of a Turkey-stuffed happy ending for Squanto and the Pilgrims, Taylor and the Co-Allies who read him were willing to overlook the enormities of Europeans’ treatment of native Americans, slavery (based on abduction), and death of a native-American village. But in the case of the nineteenth-century U.S. slavery, the Co-Allies cannot prevent the knowledge of white Americans’ treatment of African-American slaves from tarnishing these evangelicals’ reading of Holy Writ. I would have thought that the same stomach that could overlook Squato’s difficult life (not to mention his native American relatives’ lives for centuries to come) might also understand that the biblical references to slavery were part of narrative that resulted in an even happier ending — namely, the redemption of the world through Christ.

In other words, the sensitivity to questions of race and ethnicity at the Gospel Coaltion — if Taylor’s blog is any indication — appears to be selective bordering on arbitrary.

[and the referenced post is here ... ]

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2011/11/07/the-esv-translation-committee-debates-the-translation-of-slave/

And now, finally, here's a reference to Drew G. I. Hart's comments about the Piper/Bell situation

http://drewgihart.com/2011/03/25/evangelical-split-piper-imperialism-a-search-for-postcolonial-christian-expression/

Many evangelical bloggers have just finished chiming in on Rob Bell’s new book. While there have been a couple nuanced positions, overall most have fallen into two camps; conservative modernist evangelicals (especially reformed conservatives) and postmodern missional evangelicals (especially emerging church leaders). What I and others realized was that this internet and blogosphere battle that was unfolding really was not about theological and doctrinal difference (even while those tensions do exist), but rather the real underlying issue was a matter of control, influence, and power.

... Of course these Evangelical 3.0′s have learned from their predecessors that you must at least grab a token black for your entourage or program (however the 2.0’s actually did a better job at pulling in tokens), often this GED effort of token representation is not even being done at many of their gatherings and events.

Sure, I know there's all sorts of ways to differ with Hart's observations but I'm having fun here so I'm rolling with things as Hart puts them.  Lewis gets a pass because a dead lay Anglican author isn't a threat to contemporary white evangelical Protestant American establishments.  Rob Bell's Mars Hill is a threat because it could attract the white urban hipsters who will form the future establishment that Piper might prefer would fall into the orbit of that other Mars Hill that isn't in Michigan.  As Driscoll has so often said it, "You get the young men you get everything.  ... you don't get the young men you get nothing." 

Let's just clear things up a bit and throw in the polemical observation that perhaps what Driscoll and others should be saying is that if you get the white young men you get everything.  You get the guys who are going to "go upstream" and "influence culture" and they will, in turn, get the white women and make white babies and influence the culture for ... Jesus?  Well ... uh ... certainly I hope that is what the real goal is going to be but that doesn't mean that if things are really all about Jesus they have to be all about nabbing the white boys and "engaging culture" in strictly white urban hipster terms. 

That Driscoll even takes a wait-and-see approach with Jakes can be taken as an indication of the domain of his concern.  He's ripped publicly on Joel Osteen.  He's taken down The Shack and declared William Young a promulgator of heresy.  He chucklingly referred to Ed Young Jr's sermons on sex as overdoing sex (despite Driscoll recycling the same sex and marriage sermons every two years since the y2k bug scare). Yet he's put on kid gloves for Jakes.  Is it just the white megachurch pastors who deserve to get "called out" on their stunts or their shaky theology?  We'll see, maybe.  Given Driscoll's turnaround on Schuller I can't even be certain that he'll even play hardball with Jakes when the actual event in the Elephant Room takes place, not that I anticipate that ultimately mattering in the end anyway.   

It's the weekend and I've got some time to post some things that have been on my mind for a few weeks.

Robert Schuller and limos for meals

http://www.ocregister.com/news/schullers-325273-meals-church.html
One of my earlier little disappointments was that Driscoll did a 180 on Robert Schuller about six or seven years ago.  It was a minor disappointment in the long run because Schuller has never mattered that much to me and I never particularly took him seriously.  It was also a minor disappointment compared to the boondoggle in Ballard; the firings that happened in connection to the 2007 by-laws; and Driscoll's pathetic preaching in 2007. But the Schuller disappointment was a disappointment all the same.  Mark, long ago, considered Schuller a liberal/pragmatic sell-out on the Gospel until he was invited to preach and teach there.  Then he changed his tune.  It remains to be seen whether Driscoll will have a similar epiphany about T. D. Jakes.  For the moment he's just taking the wait-and-see approach he seems to think megachurch pastors deserve because they aren't writing novels like The Shack.

Maybe Driscoll just forgot a passage from the book of Proverbs?  He once spoke about how he believed there was going to be a resurgence of Christian interest in the wisdom literature (i.e. Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes). I suppose it is to his credit (or discredit) that he has continually returned to books in the Writings (except, you know, anything in the entire book of Psalms or Job). 

Now in the book of Proverbs one of the sterner warnings is to those who are invited to dine in the house of a wealthy man, particularly a ruler.  And if Robert Schuller could not count, by the old testament measure of things, as a ruler of almost inconceivable wealth, I don't know who would:

When you sit to dine with a ruler,
   note well what is before you,
and put a knife to your throat
   if you are given to gluttony.
Do not crave his delicacies,
   for that food is deceptive.
Do not wear yourself out to get rich;
   do not trust your own cleverness.
Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone,
   for they will surely sprout wings
   and fly off to the sky like an eagle.
Do not eat the food of a begrudging host,
   do not crave his delicacies;
for he is the kind of person
   who is always thinking about the cost.
“Eat and drink,” he says to you,
   but his heart is not with you.
You will vomit up the little you have eaten
   and will have wasted your compliments.

The hospitality and generosity of the wealthy and/or powerful is not inherently evil, of course, but it is not inherently good, either.

another link, the Oatmeal

http://theoatmeal.com/pl/bobcats_thursday/bobracha

A dear friend of mine introduced me to the Oatmeal by sending me a link she found where the Oatmeal shredded the Twilight franchise.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend my sister showed me this recent installment of Bobcats. It's the Oatmeal so language warning, just in case you don't know the web comic (and if you do then you really don't need the language alert, do you?) But in this case there's no warning necessary for language.

And the figure-8 symbol if you knock it on its side is a symbol for infinity, not eternity, but that's the kind of misdefinition that characterizes the two Bobs.

Another link: from PsyBlog--buy later and you'll be happier with what you bought

http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/11/how-to-get-more-pleasure-from-your-money.php

Get it later

You might think that what we lose in anticipation, we'll gain in reminiscences. In other words we'll get the pleasure the other side of our purchase. But this doesn't seem to be the case. The pleasure people get from their anticipation is stronger than from their reminiscences (Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007).
This may be partly to do with the Zeigarnik effect: the idea that something tends to stick in our mind until it's completed. In the same way once objects or experiences are 'obtained' our mind forgets about them. But while they're still in the future, we keep mulling them over.
There are two other added bonuses of paying now and getting it later:

• Better decisions: People make better choices for the future than they do for right now. Right now we're more like greedy children who want everything that's bad for us. When choosing for the future we're like sensible grown-ups, choosing things we know are better for us. Economists call this 'hyperbolic discounting', psychologists call it 'the present bias' and I call it the 'chocolate-now-fruit-next-week effect'.
• Pleasure of uncertainty: The process of choosing creates uncertainty about what we're going to get. And this uncertainty heightens our pleasure (see this article on How to Feel More Pleasure).

So that could mean, contra various Calvinist hand-wringers about "adultescence", that delaying marriage could be a good thing.  :)  People who just go rushing out to settle down may settle for buying a set of experiences they shouldn't be rushing to buy.  Yes, I did put it that way for what I trust are obvious reasons.  Not all American Christians would like to put things this way but when you get married you are building and buying a life together.  There are opportunity costs associated with such a purchase.  Sure, it sounds anti-romantic to put it that way but date night is never truly free, is it?  Nobody knows this better or more profoundly than parents do.  It's just that before they were parents and before they got married they may not have thought about all of the hidden costs of a single date like they do now!

Am I somehow against marriage?  No, far from it, I have just come to the observation that marriage is the ultimate non-refundable purchase that comes with no warranty other than the character of the two parties who buy it.  Some people observe this and think the better thing is to not invest in marriage but still somehow build a life together.  Well, that's pretty much the same thing in the end and has the same risk in investment.  There's still no refund.  And you may discover hospitals decide you don't have visitation rights in those cases.  People who get into those kinds of relationships may be even less aware of how non-refundable the purchase is and may just be living in denial at a level deeper than those who are obsessed with marriage.

You may suggest here that I, being a single guy, don't know what I'm talking about.  Not all insight needs to be gained from experience.  Proverbs 5 and 7 strongly indicate that there's some drawbacks to the "I learn by doing" approach!  Fatal, life-crushing drawbacks that led authors of biblical texts to share a whole raft of things to learn from observation so that you don't learn of the consequences by doing things (which in some cases means not doing things, obviously). 

So I don't have a lot of personal experience to draw on, true, but I've observed the lives of men and women who have their spouses file for divorce after decades of marriage and raising children together.  You can't get those years back.  You can't get that money back.  The lives of those children can't go back to what was before and the children themselves can't be un-born.  I may be an unmarried guy but I have had time to observe a few things and marriage (or any other kind of romantic entanglement at any level) is a completely non-refundable purchase. The punchline chorus of an ingenius Ben Folds song hinges on the inversion of this observation that a relationship is a non-refundable purchase.  He won't get his money back.  He won't get his black T-shirt back, either.

Our lives may be seen, here in the West, but elsewhere, as lives consisting of investments and purchases that have no warranty, that cannot be refunded, or that cannot be converted into tax deductions (at least after they've turned 18 in certain cases).  Those irreversible and continuing expenditures tell us who we are and tell others who we are, sometimes even when we wish that wasn't the case.  As Jesus so aptly put it, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

But I've rambled enough on that subject.

as I was saying earlier, just linking isn't the same as writing

http://xkcd.com/967/

I did say there'd be down time ... from writing

but links?  Links are okay.

http://www.mbird.com/2011/11/a-hipster-is-anyone-but-me/

a little down time here

a holiday is coming up and a chance to spend time with family.  I also have eye surgery coming up.  If you crawl about the web you'll probably already know I'm conversing with some people about a reposting of my guest series for Mara Reid.  I'm also doing a lot of musical practice off-line to prepare a couple of musical works for some recording. It's not that I don't have things to write about but I trust you understand "real world" concerns are what they are.  Hope my American readers have a happy Thanksgiving if I don't manage to write between now and then.

Mockingbird: Finding Freedom in Finding Nemo: Andrew Stanton tries to get fired

http://www.mbird.com/2011/11/finding-freedom-in-finding-nemo-andrew-stanton-tries-to-get-fired/
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/17/111017fa_fact_friend

It's a Mockingbird link to a profile on Andrew Stanton discussing Pixar films.  How could I not link to this!?