Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Link: Seattle Weekly "The Shuffling of Music Has Dilluted Its Cultural Impact", Not
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2011/02/the_shuffling_of_music_has_dil.php
Read this editorial commentary on the shuffle function of the iPod and the negative effect it has on music. A few excerpts and some responses:
Some people might make the case that this lack of tribalism in music is a positive development. Obviously something's been gained, especially by the generation of kids who have access to great music in an uninterrupted stream. All those teenagers whose parents played them Bach in the womb, who were raised on a steady diet of the Beatles and Beck, are surely the most musically literate generation in history. But as music becomes more of a commodity, the value of any one band or song declines.
When genres blur, the culture of the past becomes an indistinct stew. Bands quit being symbolic, or invested with much more importance than as purveyors of hits on a soundtrack. If a young songwriter perceives little difference between early REM and early Elvis, the music he or she writes, and the culture it eventually spawns, risks never rising above pastiche.
Genres do not blur themselves. When genres blur it is become someone makes a point of blurring the genres. I do not see that many people complaining that the destruction of stylistic purity in jazz can be laid at the feet of Miles Davis. I know of more than a few critics who blasted Dave Brubeck for having "no swing" and for attempting to assimilate classical elements into his work. Purity of musical style does not indicate purity of personhood.
If as Leo Brouwer put it a few years ago there is a failure on the part of academia to fully appreciate the significance and value of fusion as a musical approach then perhaps this linked editorial may be taken as a paradoxical populist objection. Sure, the populist objection is still ultimately a hipster posture of the sort that academia is guilty of but my main jibe is that compared to the work of an actual musicologist the objections of a hipster amount to a populist objection rather than an academic one, that the purity of the culture associated with a musical style gets lost. This is why some commenters on the editorial, perhaps quite unfairly, see the whole gist of the editorial as lamely curmudgeonly and even racist. That's a histrionic over-reaction ... but that's not unsurprising coming from folks who make comments on Seattle Weekly links to a column in Reverb, is it?
That connection is all but gone now. The endless playlist has reduced every song to top-40 status, to an equal footing in a shuffle roulette. Songs that once stood for something are interspersed randomly with ones that didn't, all just a skip button away from oblivion. I'm going to make an effort from now on to try to remember a little bit of the world each song came from. I owe them that.
Now here's the part where I put on my faux academic/social critic hat and point out that the whole idea that are songs that once stood for something (and don't now?) being set against songs that didn't suggests both a hegemonic and a consumeristic impulse that delineates on the basis of status. We can't have it both ways, we can't value the album as the artifact of true fandom and then invoke that some songs mattered and some songs didn't because we all know that some songs on an album matter more than others.
Some songs are just plain old filler created to meet a contractual obligation. That "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones became a massive hit and a manifesto for a generation does not mean that it wasn't originally written as a simple space-filler to make sure the album had enough songs on it. I defy anyone to argue that "Goodbye Blue Sky" is anywhere near as interesting or important a song on The Wall than "Another Brick in the Wall" or "Comfortably Numb". "Won't Get Fooled Again" is incontestably more important and memorable as a song than "My Wife". Since this is the case within albums it vitiates any force a person could have in trying to say that albums gave us a more cohesive and intense listening experience.
Here's the thing, not everyone listens to music in the same way and listens for the same things. I can tell you that my lack of keen interest in pop music these days is not because I don't listen. I listen but I listen for lyrics, how lyrics connect to melodies, how musical form reinforces associated meaning. I listen for thematic and formal development. Music is to me not merely about the expression of feelings or the consolidation of cultural values that are, strictly speaking, extra-musical. Music is capable of exploring ideas. This doesn't mean that I'm a big fan of Elliot Carter but it does mean I appreciate a lot of music by Messiaen and Bach.
Now here's the other thing, a lot of those songs on those old albums DON'T mean something. Sure a hard-core Dylan fan will as quickly recognize "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" as "Like a Rolling Stone". But for most people that first song never mattered because they weren't listening to it. The experiences that bind us together are the same experiences that can also keep us apart. Do we "really" want a society in which fans of the Bee Gees and fans of AC/DC can't stand each other and won't associate with each other? I would say my life has moved along just fine without the music of either band.
What Roderick considers a problem in the shuffle-age of the iPod, the decline in value of the individual song as music becomes more of a commodity, is a shibboleth. Music has always been a commodity and if you want to find a demonstration of how the value of an individual song can get obliterated by the sheer accumulation of listening try listening to everything Robert Johnson ever recorded in one go. The thing about pre-World War 2 blues performers is they didn't release albums, they released singles, and if you set those singles back to back you begin to realize that as good as he was to have heard one Robert Johnson song is to have very nearly heard them all. I always enjoyed Blind Willie Johnson a great deal more personally but that's a personal taste matter. I do still own all of Robert Johnson's work.
All work in the arts is pastiche in the earliest stages of any artist's career. We can point to how early Beethoven sounds suspiciously like late Haydn. We can chart the shift in Mozart's concept of formal and thematic development after he came into contact with Bach (i.e. Mozart started sounded much, much cooler!). It's not hard to chart the trajectory of Hindemith's early work influenced by Debussy and Wagner through to his shift away from romanticism into expressionism and then his later neo-classical phase after coming into contact with the music of Stravinsky, Webern, and others.
If a young songwriter hears early R.E.M and early Elvis and notices that the use of song forms descended from Tin Pan Alley and country permeate their work this is not a sign that the young songwriter is going to make some indistinguishable musical brine it may simply be a sign that that songwriter has figured out that musical forms and themes can't be restricted to the largely cosmetic differences in what amplifier or what solid-body electric guitar were used. R.E.M. and Elvis are both examples of pastiche. This is not a reason to dislike or like them it's simply a reality of any serious musicological engagement with what their recordings reveal. Do Bob Dylan fans go on and on about how his early works were nothing more than a pastiche of Woody Guthrie songs or snippets of things that could have passed for Ginsbergh? Uh, not too much it seems.
The disadvantage of the contemporary scene for music is that it reveals what classical snobs have been trying to say for decades, that the whole of pop music (i.e. non-concert music) is a virtually indistinguishable mush of songs separated not by any inherently musical differences but by cultural, ethnic, socio-economic and other distinctions. Now I think all of those assertions have always been grossly overplayed and I still think Stevie Wonder remains a musical genius but what any concerned hipster musical fan's worries prove about pop and indie music is that the things that bind them together at the level of musical form and musical idiom have always been stronger than the things that were once considered to separate them.
With respect to grunge 19 years ago is not recent history, man. I don't regret the music of Nirvana receding into the mists of history just a teensy bit Grunge was just emo before emo got the label and was what we got when punk from twenty years earlier was put in the microwave and came out of the reheating process a little spongier and less flavorful. I don't really need to further spell out that I was in high school when grunge came out and found the whole musical style insufferably stupid, do I?
The shuffling of music has not dilluted its cultural impact, the tendency of people to not listen to music as more than a soundtrack to one's own life does that. The shuffling of music has not dilluted the cultural impact of music so much as revealed that if you shuffle 300 blues songs you're going to realize that that's an awful lot of I-IV-I-V-I to listen to for hours in 2.5 minute episodes! We're not talking about some giant cyclical work like Bach's Matthew Passion, Messiaen's Vingt Regards, Penderecki's Lukaspassio, Beethoven's Fifth, Haydn's Op. 76 string quartets, Stravinksy's Rite of Spring, Arvo Part's Berliner Mass, or Byrd's Mass for Five Voices. The reasons all those rock and pop songs blur together is because they do, just the same way 104 Haydn symphonies tend to blur together if you try to absorb them in big chunks.
The closest pop music has ever come to actually requiring an extended attention to musical form was the oft-derided "concept album". I enjoy classical and pop and jazz but at some point someone has to keep saying that the only thing goofier than the snobbish disdain of classical fans toward non-classical music is a hipsterish worry that 3 minute odes to sex, drugs, and rock `n roll praising its own virtues may somehow be drained of their life-changing power. How we listen is what gives us the ability or inability to hear and be transformed by beauty and truth. A certain Jewish rabbi once said "He who has hears to ear, let him hear." To the one who has more will be given but to the one who has not even what he thinks he has will be taken away from him. Now obviously Jesus was speaking about things far more important than what bands one listens to but at a much smaller level the concepts can still apply.
Read this editorial commentary on the shuffle function of the iPod and the negative effect it has on music. A few excerpts and some responses:
Some people might make the case that this lack of tribalism in music is a positive development. Obviously something's been gained, especially by the generation of kids who have access to great music in an uninterrupted stream. All those teenagers whose parents played them Bach in the womb, who were raised on a steady diet of the Beatles and Beck, are surely the most musically literate generation in history. But as music becomes more of a commodity, the value of any one band or song declines.
When genres blur, the culture of the past becomes an indistinct stew. Bands quit being symbolic, or invested with much more importance than as purveyors of hits on a soundtrack. If a young songwriter perceives little difference between early REM and early Elvis, the music he or she writes, and the culture it eventually spawns, risks never rising above pastiche.
Genres do not blur themselves. When genres blur it is become someone makes a point of blurring the genres. I do not see that many people complaining that the destruction of stylistic purity in jazz can be laid at the feet of Miles Davis. I know of more than a few critics who blasted Dave Brubeck for having "no swing" and for attempting to assimilate classical elements into his work. Purity of musical style does not indicate purity of personhood.
If as Leo Brouwer put it a few years ago there is a failure on the part of academia to fully appreciate the significance and value of fusion as a musical approach then perhaps this linked editorial may be taken as a paradoxical populist objection. Sure, the populist objection is still ultimately a hipster posture of the sort that academia is guilty of but my main jibe is that compared to the work of an actual musicologist the objections of a hipster amount to a populist objection rather than an academic one, that the purity of the culture associated with a musical style gets lost. This is why some commenters on the editorial, perhaps quite unfairly, see the whole gist of the editorial as lamely curmudgeonly and even racist. That's a histrionic over-reaction ... but that's not unsurprising coming from folks who make comments on Seattle Weekly links to a column in Reverb, is it?
That connection is all but gone now. The endless playlist has reduced every song to top-40 status, to an equal footing in a shuffle roulette. Songs that once stood for something are interspersed randomly with ones that didn't, all just a skip button away from oblivion. I'm going to make an effort from now on to try to remember a little bit of the world each song came from. I owe them that.
Now here's the part where I put on my faux academic/social critic hat and point out that the whole idea that are songs that once stood for something (and don't now?) being set against songs that didn't suggests both a hegemonic and a consumeristic impulse that delineates on the basis of status. We can't have it both ways, we can't value the album as the artifact of true fandom and then invoke that some songs mattered and some songs didn't because we all know that some songs on an album matter more than others.
Some songs are just plain old filler created to meet a contractual obligation. That "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones became a massive hit and a manifesto for a generation does not mean that it wasn't originally written as a simple space-filler to make sure the album had enough songs on it. I defy anyone to argue that "Goodbye Blue Sky" is anywhere near as interesting or important a song on The Wall than "Another Brick in the Wall" or "Comfortably Numb". "Won't Get Fooled Again" is incontestably more important and memorable as a song than "My Wife". Since this is the case within albums it vitiates any force a person could have in trying to say that albums gave us a more cohesive and intense listening experience.
Here's the thing, not everyone listens to music in the same way and listens for the same things. I can tell you that my lack of keen interest in pop music these days is not because I don't listen. I listen but I listen for lyrics, how lyrics connect to melodies, how musical form reinforces associated meaning. I listen for thematic and formal development. Music is to me not merely about the expression of feelings or the consolidation of cultural values that are, strictly speaking, extra-musical. Music is capable of exploring ideas. This doesn't mean that I'm a big fan of Elliot Carter but it does mean I appreciate a lot of music by Messiaen and Bach.
Now here's the other thing, a lot of those songs on those old albums DON'T mean something. Sure a hard-core Dylan fan will as quickly recognize "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" as "Like a Rolling Stone". But for most people that first song never mattered because they weren't listening to it. The experiences that bind us together are the same experiences that can also keep us apart. Do we "really" want a society in which fans of the Bee Gees and fans of AC/DC can't stand each other and won't associate with each other? I would say my life has moved along just fine without the music of either band.
What Roderick considers a problem in the shuffle-age of the iPod, the decline in value of the individual song as music becomes more of a commodity, is a shibboleth. Music has always been a commodity and if you want to find a demonstration of how the value of an individual song can get obliterated by the sheer accumulation of listening try listening to everything Robert Johnson ever recorded in one go. The thing about pre-World War 2 blues performers is they didn't release albums, they released singles, and if you set those singles back to back you begin to realize that as good as he was to have heard one Robert Johnson song is to have very nearly heard them all. I always enjoyed Blind Willie Johnson a great deal more personally but that's a personal taste matter. I do still own all of Robert Johnson's work.
All work in the arts is pastiche in the earliest stages of any artist's career. We can point to how early Beethoven sounds suspiciously like late Haydn. We can chart the shift in Mozart's concept of formal and thematic development after he came into contact with Bach (i.e. Mozart started sounded much, much cooler!). It's not hard to chart the trajectory of Hindemith's early work influenced by Debussy and Wagner through to his shift away from romanticism into expressionism and then his later neo-classical phase after coming into contact with the music of Stravinsky, Webern, and others.
If a young songwriter hears early R.E.M and early Elvis and notices that the use of song forms descended from Tin Pan Alley and country permeate their work this is not a sign that the young songwriter is going to make some indistinguishable musical brine it may simply be a sign that that songwriter has figured out that musical forms and themes can't be restricted to the largely cosmetic differences in what amplifier or what solid-body electric guitar were used. R.E.M. and Elvis are both examples of pastiche. This is not a reason to dislike or like them it's simply a reality of any serious musicological engagement with what their recordings reveal. Do Bob Dylan fans go on and on about how his early works were nothing more than a pastiche of Woody Guthrie songs or snippets of things that could have passed for Ginsbergh? Uh, not too much it seems.
The disadvantage of the contemporary scene for music is that it reveals what classical snobs have been trying to say for decades, that the whole of pop music (i.e. non-concert music) is a virtually indistinguishable mush of songs separated not by any inherently musical differences but by cultural, ethnic, socio-economic and other distinctions. Now I think all of those assertions have always been grossly overplayed and I still think Stevie Wonder remains a musical genius but what any concerned hipster musical fan's worries prove about pop and indie music is that the things that bind them together at the level of musical form and musical idiom have always been stronger than the things that were once considered to separate them.
With respect to grunge 19 years ago is not recent history, man. I don't regret the music of Nirvana receding into the mists of history just a teensy bit Grunge was just emo before emo got the label and was what we got when punk from twenty years earlier was put in the microwave and came out of the reheating process a little spongier and less flavorful. I don't really need to further spell out that I was in high school when grunge came out and found the whole musical style insufferably stupid, do I?
The shuffling of music has not dilluted its cultural impact, the tendency of people to not listen to music as more than a soundtrack to one's own life does that. The shuffling of music has not dilluted the cultural impact of music so much as revealed that if you shuffle 300 blues songs you're going to realize that that's an awful lot of I-IV-I-V-I to listen to for hours in 2.5 minute episodes! We're not talking about some giant cyclical work like Bach's Matthew Passion, Messiaen's Vingt Regards, Penderecki's Lukaspassio, Beethoven's Fifth, Haydn's Op. 76 string quartets, Stravinksy's Rite of Spring, Arvo Part's Berliner Mass, or Byrd's Mass for Five Voices. The reasons all those rock and pop songs blur together is because they do, just the same way 104 Haydn symphonies tend to blur together if you try to absorb them in big chunks.
The closest pop music has ever come to actually requiring an extended attention to musical form was the oft-derided "concept album". I enjoy classical and pop and jazz but at some point someone has to keep saying that the only thing goofier than the snobbish disdain of classical fans toward non-classical music is a hipsterish worry that 3 minute odes to sex, drugs, and rock `n roll praising its own virtues may somehow be drained of their life-changing power. How we listen is what gives us the ability or inability to hear and be transformed by beauty and truth. A certain Jewish rabbi once said "He who has hears to ear, let him hear." To the one who has more will be given but to the one who has not even what he thinks he has will be taken away from him. Now obviously Jesus was speaking about things far more important than what bands one listens to but at a much smaller level the concepts can still apply.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Link: LA Times commentary, "phony solutions for real social ills"
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boaz-social-conservatives-20110207,0,4157527.story
Not TOO surprising coming from someone connected to the Cato Institute but an interesting little read all the same. If social conservatives are concerned about abortion and gay marriage as symptoms of what is wrong with society why focus on those when the bigger problems or the prevalence of divorce and single parenthood? At a purely anecdotal level most of the "heathen" secular leftists either don't have children and don't want children or are raising their children. It tends to be among the politicall conservative self-described Christians I know that divorce and single parenthood seems more common.
I've seen a few bewildering cases in which a person speaks against something in the absttract while benefiting from it in the concrete. One person I know spoke against unemployment as "government subsidized work" while having a job that derives from a defense department program. It doesn't get more government subsidized than that. Now I hasten to add that I think that particular government-subsidized program is a good and useful thing but I STILL pointed out the odd irony of a man speaking up against government-subsidized work while benefiting from it himself.
A more puzzling example, though, was discovering a woman who was lamenting people who want government hand-outs and entitlements who is now a single parent and who was lamenting the tribulation of not having her unemployment benefits extended. Now I have been loathe to just pick up state aid for myself even though, in principle, I do not automatically object to its existence or use. All things considered I'd rather NOT be dependent on state aid but if I have no alternative I'm willing to go with it. What doesn't make sense to me is to denounce people as a whole for taking government assistance while making use of it yourself or denouncing others for it. As my sister noted with some amusement recently, Ayn Rand was willing to have one of her medical aids get medical assistance through government programs near the end of her life while still being against moochers.
Now I am the kind of moribund and pessimistic fellow who believes that inconsistency and hypocrisy are unavoidable and inextricably bound up in the human condition. Even if you are not a hypocrite (and I believe most people are not, strictly speaking, hypocrites) you will still at some point completely fail to live out the ideals you aspire to and urge others to. It is not necessarily hypocrisy to say that people should avoid making use of government programs like welfare or medicaid or unemployment in favor of working where they can if you end up injured on the job and file an L&I claim or you get laid off from your job and collect unemployment.
Contrary to those people who have only had to pay into unemployment without ever having to collect it I would say that it's too easy to dismiss people who collect unemployment checks as being moochers discouraged from doing real work by government handouots. Your objection is "probably" not based on your sense of justice being broken with respect to the person who got laid off but your sense of justice about your possessions being offended. If, however, it's all "God's money" then if the state takes a few things out in advance then God providentially took some of His money from you before you could consider it part of your paycheck. Sorry, folks, but I'm not enough of an entrepreneur yet to share the moral outrage just yet. I might share it one day, though, so I can't say that sense of outrage is somehow "wrong".
But it does seem hypocritical to condemn in others what we excuse in ourselves. I'm not sure I would want to speak up against people living off of government handouts and entitlement programs as a whole if I'm only getting by because of food stamps or welfare or state medical aid for myself or my kids. The hypocrisy isn't in the necessity of that reliance, it's in the condemnation I would heap on others for having some kind of moral failure that led them to doing what I would be doing.
Now if someone were married and their spouse left them and they were stuck getting by trying to raise a kid then I'd say that the social welfare program exists to provide a modicum of help (note I said a modicum). If someone divorced their spouse and went out and had a kid out of wedlock with someone else and THEN took up government aid then, well, I can't say I have a ton of sympathy for moral outrage coming from that person.
As conservatives might put it, you can't go to war against the math, against the statistics and likelihoods of it all. If you bail on your spouse and have a kid out of wedlock then if you attempt to speak as a conservative against what you consider to be wrong with society at the level of people bailing on a spouse and kids and living off the largesse of funds wrongly appropriated via tyrannical force (oh, that would be taxes, right?) then you are the hypocrite, not the liberals you might blame for societal ills. You are, after all, the single parent who got that way by bailing on your marriage and bringing forth a child you can't afford to raise without government assistance. Isn't that what social conservatives object to?
How does a social conservative who has gotten themselves into that kind of position not notice the hypocrisy inherent in that? I don't know. Maybe if I ever thought dating and marriage were worth actively pursuing for my own life I might understand the temptations better that led a social conservative to literaly embody the things he/she most resents about "liberalism". I'll admit that I really do not understand how people get "caught up in the moment" with all that lovey-dovey stuff and view the emotional volatility of all that stuff with a skepticism and suspicion that I admit even I consider very unhealthy.
Not TOO surprising coming from someone connected to the Cato Institute but an interesting little read all the same. If social conservatives are concerned about abortion and gay marriage as symptoms of what is wrong with society why focus on those when the bigger problems or the prevalence of divorce and single parenthood? At a purely anecdotal level most of the "heathen" secular leftists either don't have children and don't want children or are raising their children. It tends to be among the politicall conservative self-described Christians I know that divorce and single parenthood seems more common.
I've seen a few bewildering cases in which a person speaks against something in the absttract while benefiting from it in the concrete. One person I know spoke against unemployment as "government subsidized work" while having a job that derives from a defense department program. It doesn't get more government subsidized than that. Now I hasten to add that I think that particular government-subsidized program is a good and useful thing but I STILL pointed out the odd irony of a man speaking up against government-subsidized work while benefiting from it himself.
A more puzzling example, though, was discovering a woman who was lamenting people who want government hand-outs and entitlements who is now a single parent and who was lamenting the tribulation of not having her unemployment benefits extended. Now I have been loathe to just pick up state aid for myself even though, in principle, I do not automatically object to its existence or use. All things considered I'd rather NOT be dependent on state aid but if I have no alternative I'm willing to go with it. What doesn't make sense to me is to denounce people as a whole for taking government assistance while making use of it yourself or denouncing others for it. As my sister noted with some amusement recently, Ayn Rand was willing to have one of her medical aids get medical assistance through government programs near the end of her life while still being against moochers.
Now I am the kind of moribund and pessimistic fellow who believes that inconsistency and hypocrisy are unavoidable and inextricably bound up in the human condition. Even if you are not a hypocrite (and I believe most people are not, strictly speaking, hypocrites) you will still at some point completely fail to live out the ideals you aspire to and urge others to. It is not necessarily hypocrisy to say that people should avoid making use of government programs like welfare or medicaid or unemployment in favor of working where they can if you end up injured on the job and file an L&I claim or you get laid off from your job and collect unemployment.
Contrary to those people who have only had to pay into unemployment without ever having to collect it I would say that it's too easy to dismiss people who collect unemployment checks as being moochers discouraged from doing real work by government handouots. Your objection is "probably" not based on your sense of justice being broken with respect to the person who got laid off but your sense of justice about your possessions being offended. If, however, it's all "God's money" then if the state takes a few things out in advance then God providentially took some of His money from you before you could consider it part of your paycheck. Sorry, folks, but I'm not enough of an entrepreneur yet to share the moral outrage just yet. I might share it one day, though, so I can't say that sense of outrage is somehow "wrong".
But it does seem hypocritical to condemn in others what we excuse in ourselves. I'm not sure I would want to speak up against people living off of government handouts and entitlement programs as a whole if I'm only getting by because of food stamps or welfare or state medical aid for myself or my kids. The hypocrisy isn't in the necessity of that reliance, it's in the condemnation I would heap on others for having some kind of moral failure that led them to doing what I would be doing.
Now if someone were married and their spouse left them and they were stuck getting by trying to raise a kid then I'd say that the social welfare program exists to provide a modicum of help (note I said a modicum). If someone divorced their spouse and went out and had a kid out of wedlock with someone else and THEN took up government aid then, well, I can't say I have a ton of sympathy for moral outrage coming from that person.
As conservatives might put it, you can't go to war against the math, against the statistics and likelihoods of it all. If you bail on your spouse and have a kid out of wedlock then if you attempt to speak as a conservative against what you consider to be wrong with society at the level of people bailing on a spouse and kids and living off the largesse of funds wrongly appropriated via tyrannical force (oh, that would be taxes, right?) then you are the hypocrite, not the liberals you might blame for societal ills. You are, after all, the single parent who got that way by bailing on your marriage and bringing forth a child you can't afford to raise without government assistance. Isn't that what social conservatives object to?
How does a social conservative who has gotten themselves into that kind of position not notice the hypocrisy inherent in that? I don't know. Maybe if I ever thought dating and marriage were worth actively pursuing for my own life I might understand the temptations better that led a social conservative to literaly embody the things he/she most resents about "liberalism". I'll admit that I really do not understand how people get "caught up in the moment" with all that lovey-dovey stuff and view the emotional volatility of all that stuff with a skepticism and suspicion that I admit even I consider very unhealthy.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
"heart issue" and heart issues
In the Christian circles I have been part of over the last decade I have heard an idiomatic expression I have never heard anywhere else. The expression is "heart issue". It almost invariably refers to an imputed motive, though it can refer to a curiosity or discernment about ACTUAL motives. When a Christian says he or she wants to address "the heart issue" this is, at the risk of speaking too broadly and cruelly, a kind of Christianese psycho-babble, a pop pyschological shibboleth that goes unrecognized because of a tacitly assumed "biblical" foundation.
Few things, just now, seem dumber or more risky to me than a Christian going to another Christian attempting to address "a heart issue". I don't say this because Christians are not called to be irons sharpening irons to each other. I early on came to an appreciation that "blows from a friend are better than kisses from an enemy" even though I have written elsewere in this blog about how the riddle-like nature of many proverbs suggests that many Christians only reflect upon one possible meaning of this verse and to that one meaning, in contrast to the other, I intend to devote my attention.
Christians often give themselves liberties that normal heathens would not advise. What I mean to say is that a husband and a wife might have an argument and, whereas in a not-overtly spiritual marriage the two would talk through their differences and work out some kind of solultion if they want their relationship to continue being healthy, a spiritual couple may well have lengthy discourses about how this, that, and the other are "heart issues" or "sin issues". Of course there are perfectly legitimate reasons for discussing all of life with those categories in mind for a Christian ... but I have seen a few cases in which that spirituality becomes a tool that a Christian can appropriate, pious-sounding language invoked as leverage for much less than pious thoughts, feelings, and actions.
What I alluded to earlier I will explain here, the famous proverb that is often rendered "faithful are the wounds of a friend, deceptive the kisses of an enemy" or in the aforementioned alternate wording, can also be read in a substantially different but apparently similar way: the wounds of a friend endure but the kisses of an enemy are profuse. WHEN a friend hurts you the wound is terrible and long-lasting precisely because the wound comes from a friend. If you don't believe that this is a practical reflection or meditation on the nature of the proverb do yourself the favor of reading Psalm 55! Yes, I am aware of the christological import of the psalm but bear with me as I have come to realize in the last seven years that a default mode of interpreting the psalms ONLY as christological references has been one of my biggest problems in appreciating the psalms. I have already written about that elsewhere so forgive yet another digression.
What I have meant to say in the above is to note that there is a flip side to a popular proverb through which we as Christians can justify confronting fellow believers on what we consider to be their great failures. If we only consider the first, more popular meaning of the proverb we may be quick to confront a "friend" (see any variation of the "open letter" in blogging) without considering the second, less popular meaning. We are quick to suppose that in Jesus our blows prove our faithfulness without considering that they will be long-lasting and whether or not the long-lasting effects of the blows are going to be the most faithful way to express a God-honoring friendship. The desire to offer the "wounds from a friend" may be a sign of neither friendship nor help. The proverb obliges us to consider whether we are friends before counseling that faithful blows will be helpful.
I have seen a few cases in my own life where I or others have assumed the worst about each other as fellow Christians and the results were disastrous. Not too long ago I saw to Christians I know display a problematic relational pattern. I eventually concluded I had to speak to both Christians separately about this pattern. Without getting too detailed what I noticed among them both was a pattern in whiich each Christian felt justified in having a suspicious disposition based on an assessment of the other's heart. One of them actually said that the concern at sake was not addressing concrete behavior but "the heart issue".
That was the point where I pointed out that that, precisely, was the problem. He wanted to get past specific, concrete measurable things that could be practically addressed to get at "the heart issue" and that attitude and assumption was actually where the bad faith was developing. He had already made up his mind about what was in his neighbor's heart based on his own concerns. I had seen the same problem with the other Christian. We can tell ourselves that by wanting to skip past the behavior and get to "the heart" that we are doing the Christian thing. In many cases we are not, we are tempted to spiritualize our own resentments and fears. I suggested to both Christians that what would work better is for concrete things to get addressed. I even went so far as to argue that in one case the proper response was not to go in and try to address the "heart issue" but to instead eastablish a concrete approach to mutually agreed upon objecctives.
When I was told that this might skip the heart issue I pointed out that we should not ignore the power of operant conditioning. For instance, I would suspect any parent knows that a child never has the "heart" to clean his or her room without some kind of external motivator. It takes a lot of conditioning and training and encouragement and, let's face it, rewards to induce a child to make a habit of cleaning a room. I'm not even an adult who is as concerned as others about how tidy my room happens to be. My hope is that the Christians I talked to stopped assessing each other on the basis of "heart issues" that were projections of their own suspicions or resentments and were able to discuss the concrete behavioral and relational rifts that developed in their relationship.
There are some Christians whose "heart issue" is that they constantly want to frame their concerns, their objections, their fears or resentments of others as "heart issues" in other people that must be addressed. It comes off as a wonderfully spiritual and c0nvincing approach to spirituality but it means that the Christian who embraces this kind of spirituality becomes an insufferable, sanctimonious disputer. Differences that might otherwise be manageable if kept at the mundane level on which the occur are elevated to nearly insurmountable problems because "the heart issue" has to get addressed.
And naturally how this plays out pours fuel on the fire rather than puts a fire out. This leads to a Christian who, to put things unfairly and bluntly, is much happier dishing out than taking confrontations about "heart issue" subjects in any relational context. "I" get to tell you that the real problem between us is the "heart issue" but if "you" confront me about being a jerk then "I" get to hide behind the idea that if "you" knew my heart things would go more easily. It becomes a self-exonerating cycle.
So if one Christian notices another Christian doesn't clean the dishes as much as he'd like he can tell that other Christian that he'd appreciate a lot more diligence about dishwashing. OR he could say that more than the dishes not being washed to his liking he's REALLY concerned about the "heart issue" behind the person who is not washing the dishes as much as he likes. If you've spotted the Christianese so far you can imagine how being on the receiving end of this kind of pious condescension could inspire a negative reaction even from a fellow believer.
Perhaps the first Christian might even go so far as to throw in another wonderfully Christianese buzzword and say that it's a matter of "stewardship". In terms of rhetoric this is actually a brilliant maneuver because it skips past any enquiry as to the nature of the behavioral lapse and presupposes the subject around which any discussion should happen. Anyone who attempts to back the conversation up to concrete actions is trying to dodge "the heart issue", which has been made about stewardship of objects and has not managed at any point to touch the relational dynamics at hand. Of course the first Christian who brings up "stewardship" has absolutely no idea that he's done this and only perceives an uneasiness or hostility on the part of the recipient of his admonitions, which he then suspects is yet another "heart issue".
There, if you're with me this far, is one of the inevitable risks of framing everything in "heart issue" terms--it becomes a nasty form of self-fulfilling prophecy in which employing spiritual jargon and making assumptions about the motive of the other person actually goes a long way to transforming them into the adversary you have, in your heart, already decided that other person must be. Through your own eagerness for confrontation or moral evaluation you paradoxically end up turning the person into the kind of person you fear they are by how you relate to them. Men look at outward appearances but God looks on the heart.
Now some may say at this point that we cannot judge the heart but we can judge the fruit. What this often really means in practice is judging actions and associations. Let's take a popular example, evangelicals and politicians. There are plenty of evangelicals who consider Bush 2 to have been a solid president who respects the Constitution. I have many sincere doubts about that myself. I don't see a necessary correlation between one's bona fides as an evangelical and the success of one's given job.
Now it's true that the scriptures describe rulers as good or bad based on what are fairly simple criteria. We don't live in a theocratic monarchy, obviously, but we can search the scriptures and consider leaders to succeed or fail in governing in a way that seems to conform to scriptural precedents. But the scriptures also reveal that some of the best intended Israelite kings made some of the worst mistakes and had the least competence in important leadership decisions. Even a king who starts off well can be ruined by initial success. If you want to read further on that I have some blog entries on Jehoshephat and Amaziah for your consideration. For this entry it suffices to say that another problem of attempting to address "heart issues" is that a person may have the best heart possible for a mortal and still be imcompetent.
Perhaps the best way to sum all of this up is in the apostolic exhortation that we consider others as better than ourselves. We are not told we have no value, of course, because we are being saved by the work of Christ and the Spirit for fellowship with the Father, Son and Spirit. Considering each other as better than ourselves as a useful corrective against the temptation to make things about addressing someone else's "heart issue". It would be overstating my case to mention that Pharisees were great at jumping into the lives of other people and confronting them about their "heart issue". They tried doing this with Jesus disciples and then eventually directly questioned Jesus' motives. Of course we know from the scriptures that God the Son took their allegations and assumptions about His "heart issue" and turned it back on them. Their eagerness to make everything about Jesus' "heart issue" gave the Lord the opportunity to confront them about the real problem at hand, THEIR heart issue.
Few things, just now, seem dumber or more risky to me than a Christian going to another Christian attempting to address "a heart issue". I don't say this because Christians are not called to be irons sharpening irons to each other. I early on came to an appreciation that "blows from a friend are better than kisses from an enemy" even though I have written elsewere in this blog about how the riddle-like nature of many proverbs suggests that many Christians only reflect upon one possible meaning of this verse and to that one meaning, in contrast to the other, I intend to devote my attention.
Christians often give themselves liberties that normal heathens would not advise. What I mean to say is that a husband and a wife might have an argument and, whereas in a not-overtly spiritual marriage the two would talk through their differences and work out some kind of solultion if they want their relationship to continue being healthy, a spiritual couple may well have lengthy discourses about how this, that, and the other are "heart issues" or "sin issues". Of course there are perfectly legitimate reasons for discussing all of life with those categories in mind for a Christian ... but I have seen a few cases in which that spirituality becomes a tool that a Christian can appropriate, pious-sounding language invoked as leverage for much less than pious thoughts, feelings, and actions.
What I alluded to earlier I will explain here, the famous proverb that is often rendered "faithful are the wounds of a friend, deceptive the kisses of an enemy" or in the aforementioned alternate wording, can also be read in a substantially different but apparently similar way: the wounds of a friend endure but the kisses of an enemy are profuse. WHEN a friend hurts you the wound is terrible and long-lasting precisely because the wound comes from a friend. If you don't believe that this is a practical reflection or meditation on the nature of the proverb do yourself the favor of reading Psalm 55! Yes, I am aware of the christological import of the psalm but bear with me as I have come to realize in the last seven years that a default mode of interpreting the psalms ONLY as christological references has been one of my biggest problems in appreciating the psalms. I have already written about that elsewhere so forgive yet another digression.
What I have meant to say in the above is to note that there is a flip side to a popular proverb through which we as Christians can justify confronting fellow believers on what we consider to be their great failures. If we only consider the first, more popular meaning of the proverb we may be quick to confront a "friend" (see any variation of the "open letter" in blogging) without considering the second, less popular meaning. We are quick to suppose that in Jesus our blows prove our faithfulness without considering that they will be long-lasting and whether or not the long-lasting effects of the blows are going to be the most faithful way to express a God-honoring friendship. The desire to offer the "wounds from a friend" may be a sign of neither friendship nor help. The proverb obliges us to consider whether we are friends before counseling that faithful blows will be helpful.
I have seen a few cases in my own life where I or others have assumed the worst about each other as fellow Christians and the results were disastrous. Not too long ago I saw to Christians I know display a problematic relational pattern. I eventually concluded I had to speak to both Christians separately about this pattern. Without getting too detailed what I noticed among them both was a pattern in whiich each Christian felt justified in having a suspicious disposition based on an assessment of the other's heart. One of them actually said that the concern at sake was not addressing concrete behavior but "the heart issue".
That was the point where I pointed out that that, precisely, was the problem. He wanted to get past specific, concrete measurable things that could be practically addressed to get at "the heart issue" and that attitude and assumption was actually where the bad faith was developing. He had already made up his mind about what was in his neighbor's heart based on his own concerns. I had seen the same problem with the other Christian. We can tell ourselves that by wanting to skip past the behavior and get to "the heart" that we are doing the Christian thing. In many cases we are not, we are tempted to spiritualize our own resentments and fears. I suggested to both Christians that what would work better is for concrete things to get addressed. I even went so far as to argue that in one case the proper response was not to go in and try to address the "heart issue" but to instead eastablish a concrete approach to mutually agreed upon objecctives.
When I was told that this might skip the heart issue I pointed out that we should not ignore the power of operant conditioning. For instance, I would suspect any parent knows that a child never has the "heart" to clean his or her room without some kind of external motivator. It takes a lot of conditioning and training and encouragement and, let's face it, rewards to induce a child to make a habit of cleaning a room. I'm not even an adult who is as concerned as others about how tidy my room happens to be. My hope is that the Christians I talked to stopped assessing each other on the basis of "heart issues" that were projections of their own suspicions or resentments and were able to discuss the concrete behavioral and relational rifts that developed in their relationship.
There are some Christians whose "heart issue" is that they constantly want to frame their concerns, their objections, their fears or resentments of others as "heart issues" in other people that must be addressed. It comes off as a wonderfully spiritual and c0nvincing approach to spirituality but it means that the Christian who embraces this kind of spirituality becomes an insufferable, sanctimonious disputer. Differences that might otherwise be manageable if kept at the mundane level on which the occur are elevated to nearly insurmountable problems because "the heart issue" has to get addressed.
And naturally how this plays out pours fuel on the fire rather than puts a fire out. This leads to a Christian who, to put things unfairly and bluntly, is much happier dishing out than taking confrontations about "heart issue" subjects in any relational context. "I" get to tell you that the real problem between us is the "heart issue" but if "you" confront me about being a jerk then "I" get to hide behind the idea that if "you" knew my heart things would go more easily. It becomes a self-exonerating cycle.
So if one Christian notices another Christian doesn't clean the dishes as much as he'd like he can tell that other Christian that he'd appreciate a lot more diligence about dishwashing. OR he could say that more than the dishes not being washed to his liking he's REALLY concerned about the "heart issue" behind the person who is not washing the dishes as much as he likes. If you've spotted the Christianese so far you can imagine how being on the receiving end of this kind of pious condescension could inspire a negative reaction even from a fellow believer.
Perhaps the first Christian might even go so far as to throw in another wonderfully Christianese buzzword and say that it's a matter of "stewardship". In terms of rhetoric this is actually a brilliant maneuver because it skips past any enquiry as to the nature of the behavioral lapse and presupposes the subject around which any discussion should happen. Anyone who attempts to back the conversation up to concrete actions is trying to dodge "the heart issue", which has been made about stewardship of objects and has not managed at any point to touch the relational dynamics at hand. Of course the first Christian who brings up "stewardship" has absolutely no idea that he's done this and only perceives an uneasiness or hostility on the part of the recipient of his admonitions, which he then suspects is yet another "heart issue".
There, if you're with me this far, is one of the inevitable risks of framing everything in "heart issue" terms--it becomes a nasty form of self-fulfilling prophecy in which employing spiritual jargon and making assumptions about the motive of the other person actually goes a long way to transforming them into the adversary you have, in your heart, already decided that other person must be. Through your own eagerness for confrontation or moral evaluation you paradoxically end up turning the person into the kind of person you fear they are by how you relate to them. Men look at outward appearances but God looks on the heart.
Now some may say at this point that we cannot judge the heart but we can judge the fruit. What this often really means in practice is judging actions and associations. Let's take a popular example, evangelicals and politicians. There are plenty of evangelicals who consider Bush 2 to have been a solid president who respects the Constitution. I have many sincere doubts about that myself. I don't see a necessary correlation between one's bona fides as an evangelical and the success of one's given job.
Now it's true that the scriptures describe rulers as good or bad based on what are fairly simple criteria. We don't live in a theocratic monarchy, obviously, but we can search the scriptures and consider leaders to succeed or fail in governing in a way that seems to conform to scriptural precedents. But the scriptures also reveal that some of the best intended Israelite kings made some of the worst mistakes and had the least competence in important leadership decisions. Even a king who starts off well can be ruined by initial success. If you want to read further on that I have some blog entries on Jehoshephat and Amaziah for your consideration. For this entry it suffices to say that another problem of attempting to address "heart issues" is that a person may have the best heart possible for a mortal and still be imcompetent.
Perhaps the best way to sum all of this up is in the apostolic exhortation that we consider others as better than ourselves. We are not told we have no value, of course, because we are being saved by the work of Christ and the Spirit for fellowship with the Father, Son and Spirit. Considering each other as better than ourselves as a useful corrective against the temptation to make things about addressing someone else's "heart issue". It would be overstating my case to mention that Pharisees were great at jumping into the lives of other people and confronting them about their "heart issue". They tried doing this with Jesus disciples and then eventually directly questioned Jesus' motives. Of course we know from the scriptures that God the Son took their allegations and assumptions about His "heart issue" and turned it back on them. Their eagerness to make everything about Jesus' "heart issue" gave the Lord the opportunity to confront them about the real problem at hand, THEIR heart issue.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
HT Orthocuban: how laws from two decades ago can contribute to unforeseen consequences
http://www.orthocuban.com/2011/02/the-bottom-line-of-the-healthcare-debate/
I have made no secret here and there that it often seems to me that Christians (and anyone, really) can establish a policy or precedent on the basis of immediate cultural or economic or political or social concerns without thinking through the implications of those policies and precedents. Fr. Ernesto points out that thanks to a law signed off by Reagan Republicans are in the position of attempting to oppose what they consider socialized medicine which, ironically, was half-way attained when Reagan signed off on the law that requires that no one be turned away from emergency room care regardless of citizenship, finances, or legal standing. As he put it, no one would contend now that the Gipper was a leftist or a socialist. It is a bit of an irony to consider that a law given to us by a Republican president may have had decades-long ripples that have gotten us to where we arenow.
Do we want to eliminate the legal requirement as it stands? Do we let hospitals turn away anyone and everyone for the reason of not having sufficient money to pay? Consider the reasons for which hospitals have turned away patients in the past and consider whether you might be a candidate in earlier epochs of medical practice of having been turned away. For all I know if Reagan hadn't signed that law into effect I could have been turned away by a hospital because when I had my big old macular detachment I had no job or money with which to pay for the surgery. Had THAT happened I would have lost my right eye, become completely illiterate, and have become a uselessly unemployable guy in his early twenties.
I have made no secret here and there that it often seems to me that Christians (and anyone, really) can establish a policy or precedent on the basis of immediate cultural or economic or political or social concerns without thinking through the implications of those policies and precedents. Fr. Ernesto points out that thanks to a law signed off by Reagan Republicans are in the position of attempting to oppose what they consider socialized medicine which, ironically, was half-way attained when Reagan signed off on the law that requires that no one be turned away from emergency room care regardless of citizenship, finances, or legal standing. As he put it, no one would contend now that the Gipper was a leftist or a socialist. It is a bit of an irony to consider that a law given to us by a Republican president may have had decades-long ripples that have gotten us to where we arenow.
Do we want to eliminate the legal requirement as it stands? Do we let hospitals turn away anyone and everyone for the reason of not having sufficient money to pay? Consider the reasons for which hospitals have turned away patients in the past and consider whether you might be a candidate in earlier epochs of medical practice of having been turned away. For all I know if Reagan hadn't signed that law into effect I could have been turned away by a hospital because when I had my big old macular detachment I had no job or money with which to pay for the surgery. Had THAT happened I would have lost my right eye, become completely illiterate, and have become a uselessly unemployable guy in his early twenties.
Link: Internet Monk: Learn from a lousy referee
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/imonk-classic-lessons-from-a-lousy-referee#more-16711
I was what some would derisively regard as a communications major, a journalism major no less. I would not say I was or am especially brilliant at this because one of the perennial obstacles I have faced in "communicating" has been that I don't tend to remember to simplify vocabular, jargon, and concepts for people. In fact I confess that I often look upon this simplifying impulse with suspicion because glib simplification of facts is a pet technique of demagogues (hey, I DID just mention I was a journalism major, right?).
But despite this weakness I have I firmly believe that the characteristic of a great writer is to convey his or her point by simultaneously NOT presuming you understand all the concepts and terms but also by being fluent enough with language to, in good faith, make the effort to express ideas so that even if you don't get every last tiny little syllable you BASICALLY get the idea of what the author intends to say. The author may not be OBLIGED to meet you at your door and spell everything out, the author may choose to make you work for comprehension, but the author is capable of doing all the work as a communicator to ensure that you DO finally understand. As an orchestration teacher I had in college once put it to me, the artists obligation is not to be understood so much as to not be misunderstood.
To that end, it's hard for me to express fully my appreciation for the writing that Michael Spenser (aka Internet Monk) did in his lifetime. He was a gifted communicator and certainly a capable writer. How do I know this? Look, I don't care about football. I don't care about athletics. In fact I generally find it profoundly silly and annoying when pastors attempt to make points that they anchor to sports events because it's not something I care about or find interesting, at all. I also tend to find it annoying because there's a propensity for a bunch of has-been, didn't-make it athletes to retroactively cast themselves as armchair pundits on games they couldn't play well enough to go pro. Hey, just because I don't care for sports doesn't mean I didn't notice all the armchair stuff. :)
All that said, Michael could write something that drew from the realm of sports but write it in a way where if you don't give a crap about sports you can STILL learn something from it and still find it interesting to read. I can say that for myself and I say that as someone who was conscripted into attending at least one football game and has never found anything about football interesting. But Michael's essay I've linked to is a fun read and a useful one not just for Christian "leaders" but how any Christian can consider living life as a whole.
I was what some would derisively regard as a communications major, a journalism major no less. I would not say I was or am especially brilliant at this because one of the perennial obstacles I have faced in "communicating" has been that I don't tend to remember to simplify vocabular, jargon, and concepts for people. In fact I confess that I often look upon this simplifying impulse with suspicion because glib simplification of facts is a pet technique of demagogues (hey, I DID just mention I was a journalism major, right?).
But despite this weakness I have I firmly believe that the characteristic of a great writer is to convey his or her point by simultaneously NOT presuming you understand all the concepts and terms but also by being fluent enough with language to, in good faith, make the effort to express ideas so that even if you don't get every last tiny little syllable you BASICALLY get the idea of what the author intends to say. The author may not be OBLIGED to meet you at your door and spell everything out, the author may choose to make you work for comprehension, but the author is capable of doing all the work as a communicator to ensure that you DO finally understand. As an orchestration teacher I had in college once put it to me, the artists obligation is not to be understood so much as to not be misunderstood.
To that end, it's hard for me to express fully my appreciation for the writing that Michael Spenser (aka Internet Monk) did in his lifetime. He was a gifted communicator and certainly a capable writer. How do I know this? Look, I don't care about football. I don't care about athletics. In fact I generally find it profoundly silly and annoying when pastors attempt to make points that they anchor to sports events because it's not something I care about or find interesting, at all. I also tend to find it annoying because there's a propensity for a bunch of has-been, didn't-make it athletes to retroactively cast themselves as armchair pundits on games they couldn't play well enough to go pro. Hey, just because I don't care for sports doesn't mean I didn't notice all the armchair stuff. :)
All that said, Michael could write something that drew from the realm of sports but write it in a way where if you don't give a crap about sports you can STILL learn something from it and still find it interesting to read. I can say that for myself and I say that as someone who was conscripted into attending at least one football game and has never found anything about football interesting. But Michael's essay I've linked to is a fun read and a useful one not just for Christian "leaders" but how any Christian can consider living life as a whole.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Families and worry
Family worries about each other. This is not news, nor is it some revelation of any special import. It is mundane. Worry is an extension of care and this, also, is nothing new.
What may feel new within the moment, or within the relationship, is to have a moment in which you discover that what a family member shares may already be something you worry about. For instance, my mom has called from time to time and said she's worried that I might be depressed. I tell her there's no need to worry or wonder about whether I am depressed. I am depressed, most of the time in fact. Not having a job and not managing to even land jobs when I apply at grocery stores or music shops for jobs I applied at in person is depressing. Having a whole set of skills and knowledge that are uselessly proprietary is depressing.
Not having a financial situation, by and large, that has been stable enough to even consider going back to school has been depressing and when that hasn't been depressing it has been depressing to consider whether it's worth it to rack up thousands more in debt by way of loans to earn yet another degree that may not even net me another job at the end of it all. So to the extant that my mom has worried all those worries can be confirmed.
On my side, well, let's just say that some news was broken about family health stuff that was not exactly a revelation in and of itself. The revelation was more that the revelation was made at all by the person who made the revelation about the person themselves. I had always been at least partly concerned that a relative of mine could drop dead at any moment, literally, since an episode of congestive heart failure the relative had back in 2006.
Even after reports of being cured came up I disbelieved those reports entirely but didn't say anything at the time out of a sense of diplomacy. Heart failure is not something that just gets better and while that sounds pessimistic or like "not a positive confession" I have lived with substantially impaired vision all my life. There are things in physical health where once it goes bad the effects can only be minimized and never reversed.
I know this because I've had at least one gigantic retinal detachment in my good eye and have to consider at least the risk that another big detachment could happen in either eye as I get older. I am not merely speaking in abstractions or apart from personal experience here. Once you have part of the inside of your eye peel off the most you can do is minimize the damage that causes. It is not possible within any human effort to reverse that damage. The only foreseeable likely avenues for such an innovation to happen as best I can conceive that would be a combination of stem cell research and a selective combination of cloning and eugenics. I trust I don't have to rehearse the sentiments most evangelicals would be likely to have about this trio of suggestions. :)
In other words I have spent the last four years wondering about every week if this relative wasn't going to drop dead at any moment. Jesus said that worrying won't add even an hour to your life but I worry anyway. I was worried about stress at my job when I had my job, I was worried about relational stress in my family that I was sure (alternately) that I could and could not do something about. I was worried about family health issues, I was worried about church issues. Unsurprisingly all this dread began to culminate in panic attacks which I for the most part kept to myself.
I did share with a certain circle of friends and discovered to my further discouragement (at first) that a surprisingly large ratio of the friends I confided this matter to seemed to take no note of it at all. There were friends and family I felt comfortable sharing this with who were very supportive and I learned along the way that sometimes you are better off not telling everyone you would wish to tell something what is going on. I can respect the conviction that there is and isn't a right time to share with family or friends just how badly things are really going.
So when the relative shared with me just how bad things have really been it was more a relief than a shock. I feel bad putting it this way but I had already been sufficiently worried the person could have dropped dead any given week over the last few years that at least hearing that was the official medical verdict made me feel that however little my worries lengthened my life my worries were, at least, not the least bit irrational. It sounds really stupid to say this in print or in person because it can be taken as saying, "Well, uh, at least I was right about what I was worried about for so many years because that turned out to be the case."
We as Christians can often be told to not worry. Jesus, after all, said do not worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear for the Lord knows you need these things. The context of that teaching does not mean that you don't worry that a relative could die at any moment. David did not pray in Psalm 3 as though all was well adn that he had no need to worry because his son was seeking to kill him and vital allies had betrayed his confidence and sided with a usurper. David did not fail to recognize that he had brought about much of this grief on himself and yet even as he could acknowledge how his own sin led to this point of disaster he didn't refrain from asking the Lord to deliver him.
I suggest that this awkward, exasperating paradox is more emblematic of the Christian life than "don't worry, be happy". We're not going to stop worrying or fearing that terrible things might happen. Trusting the Lord does not mean we won't have any fear. Far from it. What trusting the Lord means, as poorly as I may be understanding it, is clarified by Jesus Himself, "Do not fear men who can destroy the body and can do nothing more. Fear the One who can cast both body and soul into Hell."
We are not enjoined with "Do not fear" because there is no reason to fear our enemies or poor health but because what the Lord in His power could do to us is far worse and yet the Lord values us more than many sparrows. At my old church, early on, we were admonished to realize that many things Christians believe are "held in tension". Over time I have wondered if Christians tire of "holding things in tension" and wish simply to choose or affirm merely one or the other. We want things to either be fine or either be terrible. Worry is in some sense an endless temptation because worry is recognizing the risk of disaster in otherwise stable situations (even situations that are, let's be honest, not always very good).
For reasons that are not entirely clear to me I feel I shall have to tackle writing about family and worry connected to the last words of David. This is just a ramble here.
What may feel new within the moment, or within the relationship, is to have a moment in which you discover that what a family member shares may already be something you worry about. For instance, my mom has called from time to time and said she's worried that I might be depressed. I tell her there's no need to worry or wonder about whether I am depressed. I am depressed, most of the time in fact. Not having a job and not managing to even land jobs when I apply at grocery stores or music shops for jobs I applied at in person is depressing. Having a whole set of skills and knowledge that are uselessly proprietary is depressing.
Not having a financial situation, by and large, that has been stable enough to even consider going back to school has been depressing and when that hasn't been depressing it has been depressing to consider whether it's worth it to rack up thousands more in debt by way of loans to earn yet another degree that may not even net me another job at the end of it all. So to the extant that my mom has worried all those worries can be confirmed.
On my side, well, let's just say that some news was broken about family health stuff that was not exactly a revelation in and of itself. The revelation was more that the revelation was made at all by the person who made the revelation about the person themselves. I had always been at least partly concerned that a relative of mine could drop dead at any moment, literally, since an episode of congestive heart failure the relative had back in 2006.
Even after reports of being cured came up I disbelieved those reports entirely but didn't say anything at the time out of a sense of diplomacy. Heart failure is not something that just gets better and while that sounds pessimistic or like "not a positive confession" I have lived with substantially impaired vision all my life. There are things in physical health where once it goes bad the effects can only be minimized and never reversed.
I know this because I've had at least one gigantic retinal detachment in my good eye and have to consider at least the risk that another big detachment could happen in either eye as I get older. I am not merely speaking in abstractions or apart from personal experience here. Once you have part of the inside of your eye peel off the most you can do is minimize the damage that causes. It is not possible within any human effort to reverse that damage. The only foreseeable likely avenues for such an innovation to happen as best I can conceive that would be a combination of stem cell research and a selective combination of cloning and eugenics. I trust I don't have to rehearse the sentiments most evangelicals would be likely to have about this trio of suggestions. :)
In other words I have spent the last four years wondering about every week if this relative wasn't going to drop dead at any moment. Jesus said that worrying won't add even an hour to your life but I worry anyway. I was worried about stress at my job when I had my job, I was worried about relational stress in my family that I was sure (alternately) that I could and could not do something about. I was worried about family health issues, I was worried about church issues. Unsurprisingly all this dread began to culminate in panic attacks which I for the most part kept to myself.
I did share with a certain circle of friends and discovered to my further discouragement (at first) that a surprisingly large ratio of the friends I confided this matter to seemed to take no note of it at all. There were friends and family I felt comfortable sharing this with who were very supportive and I learned along the way that sometimes you are better off not telling everyone you would wish to tell something what is going on. I can respect the conviction that there is and isn't a right time to share with family or friends just how badly things are really going.
So when the relative shared with me just how bad things have really been it was more a relief than a shock. I feel bad putting it this way but I had already been sufficiently worried the person could have dropped dead any given week over the last few years that at least hearing that was the official medical verdict made me feel that however little my worries lengthened my life my worries were, at least, not the least bit irrational. It sounds really stupid to say this in print or in person because it can be taken as saying, "Well, uh, at least I was right about what I was worried about for so many years because that turned out to be the case."
We as Christians can often be told to not worry. Jesus, after all, said do not worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear for the Lord knows you need these things. The context of that teaching does not mean that you don't worry that a relative could die at any moment. David did not pray in Psalm 3 as though all was well adn that he had no need to worry because his son was seeking to kill him and vital allies had betrayed his confidence and sided with a usurper. David did not fail to recognize that he had brought about much of this grief on himself and yet even as he could acknowledge how his own sin led to this point of disaster he didn't refrain from asking the Lord to deliver him.
I suggest that this awkward, exasperating paradox is more emblematic of the Christian life than "don't worry, be happy". We're not going to stop worrying or fearing that terrible things might happen. Trusting the Lord does not mean we won't have any fear. Far from it. What trusting the Lord means, as poorly as I may be understanding it, is clarified by Jesus Himself, "Do not fear men who can destroy the body and can do nothing more. Fear the One who can cast both body and soul into Hell."
We are not enjoined with "Do not fear" because there is no reason to fear our enemies or poor health but because what the Lord in His power could do to us is far worse and yet the Lord values us more than many sparrows. At my old church, early on, we were admonished to realize that many things Christians believe are "held in tension". Over time I have wondered if Christians tire of "holding things in tension" and wish simply to choose or affirm merely one or the other. We want things to either be fine or either be terrible. Worry is in some sense an endless temptation because worry is recognizing the risk of disaster in otherwise stable situations (even situations that are, let's be honest, not always very good).
For reasons that are not entirely clear to me I feel I shall have to tackle writing about family and worry connected to the last words of David. This is just a ramble here.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
pending project part 2.56
Essay project pending, big one. I've had enough unexpected problems come up for family and some friends that I keep having to table stuff while handling all that stuff and also job-hunting. But the big project on cartoon characters vs cartoon morality IS still coming together.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Pre-written all purpose "open letter" for Christian bloggers
Dear Christian celebrity (who is better-known than I probably am) whose doctrine or person I find problematic for reasons I explain at length in my blog (even though people don't know me from their dog):
I "love you in the Lord" (if you are even truly a Christian) but you suck and I am obligated before God as a good, honest, humble Christian who struggles with his flaws (but not as much as you do) to tell you so.
Your could-have-been-friend-if-we-didn't-differ-on-essential-Gospel-distinctives,
Me
P. S. I'm not perfect, just better than you, and by the grace of God that's good enough for me, for Jesus' fame.
I "love you in the Lord" (if you are even truly a Christian) but you suck and I am obligated before God as a good, honest, humble Christian who struggles with his flaws (but not as much as you do) to tell you so.
Your could-have-been-friend-if-we-didn't-differ-on-essential-Gospel-distinctives,
Me
P. S. I'm not perfect, just better than you, and by the grace of God that's good enough for me, for Jesus' fame.
Friday, January 28, 2011
big weekend
This is a busy weekend. Tonight I am playing at the Seattle Classic Guitar Society open mic. I'm presenting my guitar sonata in f minor. Tomorrow I'm hitting the Free at the Frye guitar recital and then meeting up with my brother (Totoro-Man) and an old college buddy to catch an anime (I sincerely hope this one is better than the horrifically bad Goro Miyazaki film Tales of Earthsea). Then Sunday I get to wake the dawn (so to speak) and head over to church to prepare my vernacular Magnificat setting for voice, guitar, and cello for communion. Big weekend in terms of music.
On top of all of this one of my housemates is coming home this weekend and he and I have been discussing, er, discussing OT literature and Israelite history. On top of all this I have been making some important bits of progress in the DCAU essay project. Being sick a good chunk of this week and having to sleep on almost everything except music practice may have paradoxically been good for me.
On top of all of this one of my housemates is coming home this weekend and he and I have been discussing, er, discussing OT literature and Israelite history. On top of all this I have been making some important bits of progress in the DCAU essay project. Being sick a good chunk of this week and having to sleep on almost everything except music practice may have paradoxically been good for me.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
HT to Jared Wilson: "Not Calvinistic Enough"
http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2011/01/not-calvinistic-enough.html
As it happens, then, the occasional Calvinist's insistence on the exclusivity of the personal gospel -- God/Sin/Christ/Response contra Creation/Fall/Redemption/Consummation -- turns out to be not Calvinistic enough.
This is a salient observation. I don't mind making a polemical observation that piggy-backs off of Jared's comment--if Calvinsts and other Protestant theologians had not spent so many centuries boiling down salvation to a purely personal/transactional understanding of the good news of Jesus then "threats" liked the New Perspective on Paul would have had no breeding ground because the fullness of the Gospel (not to say "the full Gospel" in the old Pentecostal sense) would not have been compromised. Now I know what my Eastern Orthodox relatives might be tempted to say about this. ;) If I'm going to play with ever crossing the river, so to speak, I haven't seen sufficient evidence that Rome has any advantage in antiquity or reliability. As it is, however, I am tempted to quote the German composer Paul Hindemith when he said something like, "I may not be a good Protestant but I am a loyal one." Of course a few years later he converted to Catholicism so maybe I shouldn't say that. ;)
As it happens, then, the occasional Calvinist's insistence on the exclusivity of the personal gospel -- God/Sin/Christ/Response contra Creation/Fall/Redemption/Consummation -- turns out to be not Calvinistic enough.
This is a salient observation. I don't mind making a polemical observation that piggy-backs off of Jared's comment--if Calvinsts and other Protestant theologians had not spent so many centuries boiling down salvation to a purely personal/transactional understanding of the good news of Jesus then "threats" liked the New Perspective on Paul would have had no breeding ground because the fullness of the Gospel (not to say "the full Gospel" in the old Pentecostal sense) would not have been compromised. Now I know what my Eastern Orthodox relatives might be tempted to say about this. ;) If I'm going to play with ever crossing the river, so to speak, I haven't seen sufficient evidence that Rome has any advantage in antiquity or reliability. As it is, however, I am tempted to quote the German composer Paul Hindemith when he said something like, "I may not be a good Protestant but I am a loyal one." Of course a few years later he converted to Catholicism so maybe I shouldn't say that. ;)
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
A short musing on dramatic irony in True Grit
Yes, I've seen the Coens' adaptation of True Grit and it's wonderful as well as charming. Of numerous things I find entertaining chief among them is Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross who pretty well owns the entire film. One of the great and amusing ironies throughout the story is Mattie's righteous anger at her father's murderer, the proverbial snake-in-the-grass Tom Chaney. When the bumbling and insecure Lebeouf warns Mattie of the snake pit Mattie doesn't pay it any mind until, of course, things are too late. The shot that allows her to avenge herself on Tom Chaney hurls her down into the snake pit where she gets bitten (this is stuff from the novel so after more than half a century I trust spoilers of a novel adapted to film at least twice shoudn't be a problem for you). Cogburn must then ride as swiftly as possible to save Mattie from being killed be the consequences of getting what she most wanted.
The completely impious and worn down Cogburn becomes, ironically, more gracious and considerate of the lives of others than the defiant, self-assured and self-righteous Ross. Of course Mattie isn't wrong to want her killer brought to justice she just refuse to accept what the less pious and more pragmatic marshal and Texas ranger repeatedly point out to her, that justice would be done if they could do things their way, either way being quite a bit simpler than insisting on seeing Chaney hanged or killed for the murder of her father specifically. Wanting justice is not her fault, it is insisting on both justice and vengeance on her own terms that nearly gets Mattie killed.
We can often be like Mattie Ross, convincing ourselves that we are working for justice in the face of imcompetent or indifferent officers of justice. We may discover that when we finally grasp for the thing we want most and think we deserve it stings us with the sting of death. To say that True Grit is a story involving religious faith misses all the ways the story satirizes and inverts expectations. The marshall is an old drunk who has alienated everyone in his life. The ranger as barely competent, insecure, and prone to doing what in modern day paralance would be called self-congratulatory spamming for his in-group. One of the most discussed outlaws in the story, when we finally meet him, turns out to be a surprisingly friendly and principled man. The orphaned young girl turns out to be a self-assured conniving schemer set on getting retribution on her own terms even if it means messing up the pre-existing legal claims against a known and wanted fugitive. Sometimes the good news of Christ in our lives is, as some say, keeping from us the things we think we want most.
Rather than end with the trite observation amongst some Christians that wanting X may be an idol a story like True Grit points out that the problem is both more pernicious and less obvious than that. As T. S. Eliot put it, the highest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason. The idol may not be what we want or even entirely why we want it but the self-justifying impulse and self-exoneration we want THROUGH those things. The whole point in the prophet warning us on behalf of the Lord that the heart is deceitful above all things is that it is. You convince yourself that your motives are pure and that the outlaw Tom Chaney is the worst possible sort of coward and scarcely worthy of being called a man and then when you confront him by accident he tells you that the sanctimony and meddling of both you and your father was always a problem. There are times where if we did not think so much of our charity, loyalty, and other characteristics we might not be so upset when those are either not appreciated or become betrayed.
This is a short musing on a story, for me anyway.
The completely impious and worn down Cogburn becomes, ironically, more gracious and considerate of the lives of others than the defiant, self-assured and self-righteous Ross. Of course Mattie isn't wrong to want her killer brought to justice she just refuse to accept what the less pious and more pragmatic marshal and Texas ranger repeatedly point out to her, that justice would be done if they could do things their way, either way being quite a bit simpler than insisting on seeing Chaney hanged or killed for the murder of her father specifically. Wanting justice is not her fault, it is insisting on both justice and vengeance on her own terms that nearly gets Mattie killed.
We can often be like Mattie Ross, convincing ourselves that we are working for justice in the face of imcompetent or indifferent officers of justice. We may discover that when we finally grasp for the thing we want most and think we deserve it stings us with the sting of death. To say that True Grit is a story involving religious faith misses all the ways the story satirizes and inverts expectations. The marshall is an old drunk who has alienated everyone in his life. The ranger as barely competent, insecure, and prone to doing what in modern day paralance would be called self-congratulatory spamming for his in-group. One of the most discussed outlaws in the story, when we finally meet him, turns out to be a surprisingly friendly and principled man. The orphaned young girl turns out to be a self-assured conniving schemer set on getting retribution on her own terms even if it means messing up the pre-existing legal claims against a known and wanted fugitive. Sometimes the good news of Christ in our lives is, as some say, keeping from us the things we think we want most.
Rather than end with the trite observation amongst some Christians that wanting X may be an idol a story like True Grit points out that the problem is both more pernicious and less obvious than that. As T. S. Eliot put it, the highest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason. The idol may not be what we want or even entirely why we want it but the self-justifying impulse and self-exoneration we want THROUGH those things. The whole point in the prophet warning us on behalf of the Lord that the heart is deceitful above all things is that it is. You convince yourself that your motives are pure and that the outlaw Tom Chaney is the worst possible sort of coward and scarcely worthy of being called a man and then when you confront him by accident he tells you that the sanctimony and meddling of both you and your father was always a problem. There are times where if we did not think so much of our charity, loyalty, and other characteristics we might not be so upset when those are either not appreciated or become betrayed.
This is a short musing on a story, for me anyway.
theological cyber-punditry and the temptation of the double standard
I more or less live in what you might call a world of the "young, restless and Reformed". Well, maybe not that young or restless since I'm in my thirties but I've lived connected to what has been branded as YRR for short.
In my short time I have seen cyber-pundits of various sorts call out false doctrine on this or that. Sometimes it has been doing a theological smack down on N. T. Wright for being an apostate. Sometimes it's been reading blogs about how Mark Driscoll is unfit for ministry because he uses cuss words (and cuss words at that point are defined however the blogger wants just to reach a foregone conclusion). Sometimes I have seen people blogging about the "epidemic of singleness" as though it were a disease that needed to be eradicated like small pox.
But a common element I have seen in most of these bloggy moments is that at some point in the public spouting something like the following exchange will happen:
Anonymous: You should stop being so judgmental against X because X is a brother in Christ. Did you contact X privately first with your concerns as prescribed Matthew 18?
Poster: No, because public wrongness must be rebuked publicly and because X is wrong there is no need to contact X privately. False doctrine and false teaching must be publicly confronted.
Open fan of X: I know X [i.e. have served in ministry with, read twenty books by, listened to every podcast of, am friends with on Facebook, etc] and you've got X all wrong. You're grossly simplifying and mispresenting X's views
Poster: No, because X chooses to teach things that are wrong and no one on the internet can be wrong without my having to sound off about it, especially if the wrongness involves Holy Scripture. Your personal devotion to X has blinded you to the reality that you don't take scripture seriously like I do.
Then as is wont for the internet, the shoe gets on the other foot. Leave it to Christian bloggers and fans of Christian punditry to want to be able to dish it out but not have to take it. No sooner does the pundit's favorite Christian or own self become subject to the same theo-blogging or cyber-punditry then we see them urging people to be respectful and considerate and take things to private discussion before airing disagreements. It's okay to rip on someone for writing a book like The Shack but publicly slamming someone amongst the YRR as not really Reformed because of views on baptism or sacraments and then a few comments get wiped out. Suddenly failing to adhere to truly Reformed distinctives is something folks can disagree on, at least something people should disagree on in a way that doesn't involve public rancor about the pet subject of the blogger.
It's not really hard to point out that this kind of double standard is a temptation everyone can face. We all want to be rougher on whomever we consider not on the same team than we want to be on our team. The American Calvinist milleu is oddly wonderful at excelling in these things, of course. It's nearly impossible to get too much mileage from John Frame's essay "Machen's Warrior Children" because we've been so great at living out that eagerness to fight about doctrinal matters that are not even close to primary.
We convince ourselves they are primary, however, often because we have anchored real-world concerns into second and third level doctrines or even lifestyle preferences that have nothing to do with doctrine at all. There are neo-Calvinists congregations that have reflexively favored alcohol consumption simply to not seem legalistic. There are other neo-Calvinist congregations that fixate on postmillenialism as a motive for action when it isn't necessarily a better approach to motivating Christian activity than other things. Certainly in many, many places attempting to fix society's problems (as "we" see them) regarding gender roles has often become a defining characteristic of neo-Calvinist church life.
When I "discovered" a few neglected nuggets of Calvinist hymnody I was "assisted" in this process of discovery by a Lutheran. :) He helped out in clarifying a few textual elements and elements of musical phrasing. I am a Calvinist but I have always, so far as I have been able to tell, been a rather bad Calvinist. What I mean to say is that my cage phase was chiefly a reaction to what I felt were excesses in charismatic/TBN-influenced theology. I overdid it a bit but then most orthodox Christians might say that it would be tough to blame me for wanting to move as far away from Third-stream Latter Rain Rick Joyner style theology! I don't blame myself for wanting to distance myself from that stuff as much as possible. But here's the thing, along the way I resolved to not speak or think of non-Calvinists as holding to heresies. I don't particularly share in Jonathan Edwards' sentiment that Arminianism was then as bad as open theism is now. I don't hold to that view (Arminianism) obviously but I don't believe there is ultimately any benefit in establishing a polemic about it. I'm okay with Lutherans being Lutherans and Methodists being Methodists and so on.
Along the way I have seen a lot of this double standard I have described. It is one of those things that I find embarrassing on behalf of my theological clan. I'd find it embarrassing on behalf of any intellectual tribe but I find it more embarrassing for my theological clan because as a friend put it, you'd think that people who are big on "the doctrines of grace" would have a shred of humility to them but often they don't.
The biggest bump to this usual pattern in Calvinist blogdom was Steve Camp's eventual change of heart about his blogging on Mark Driscoll. I'm not going to attempt to replicate everything Camp blogged about Driscoll because he removed all his older posts and in deference to that I'm not going to reproduce any of the stuff I read. I'll just say that even big fans of Steve Camp the person will recognize what Camp recognized. I have myself made some fairly trenchant criticisms of Driscoll as exegete, theologian, scholar, and demagogue but the thing is that despite my numerous differences with the man I have never forgotten he's a brother in the Lord and I have seen no reason to question whether or not the Lord has providentially established him as an elder. I can, as he might put it himself, find ways to salute the uniform while adamantly disagreeing with him on a few other things. In other words if Driscoll and I were to discuss or debate theology in person (we've done it and both had a pleasant time of it so don't assume we haven't) I believe that despite our various respective character flaws we can both trust that whatever our myriad mistakes what we'd be trying to be to each other is iron sharpening iron.
Camp, for a while, was not so good at that and it was a pleasant surprise to see that he had a change of heart not about his misgivings about Driscoll's pulpit mannerisms or handling of scripture but about his own heart in the process of expressing those concerns. It is entirely possible to be "right" in substance but so wrong in style that you lose any traction you could have had even in the things you were right about. The Reformed blogosphere seems to be one in which guilt is imputed even in cases where someone's motives do not need to be questioned. It's not enough for us to say that someone handled a biblical text irresponsibly or made a point too acerbically.
We theo-bloggers have to zero in on what we assume the problem of the heart is. "Seeking to address the heart" becomes shorthand for us judging the motives of someone else in the guise of discerna-blogging. It may have been this more than some other cultural qualities of character that inspired the late Internet Monk to bid farewell to Calvinism. I'm not willing to bid farewell to Calvinism myself but I can certainly see how many people have been inspired to bail on the whole tradition simply on the basis of the humility deficit amongst those most eager to tell everyone else how they have bungled the doctrines of grace and have done so so graciously.
What was disappointing to see was that there are some folks who were fans of Camp's take-downs of Driscoll as a kind of theological gladitorial theater. I've seen a few "discernment ministries" and they can often be an argument by hamster-wheel example for a church that has a shared confession and a creed. If you don't then you're doomed to keep reinventing the wheel and constantly having an ad hoc response to every cultural or social issue that presents itself as a theological problem.
The risk inherent in this kind of theological blogging or church culture is that your anchoring point can stop being in a common confession and can start being in the common process theology (to wit) of figuring out who really isn't on the same page as you theologically or on ecclesiology (which is the same thing as ethics, praxis, you get the idea). Of these things and their outworkings as making Baptists the butt of jokes there is no end.
Circling the wagons around a core confession of the triune nature of Yahweh and the kingdom of Christ is central. Most of the time when Christian cyber pundits and bloggers circle the wagons it's around things of a decidedly lesser order than that. We hitch our wagons to lesser stars than the bright and morning star while convincing ourselves we have picked the highest and best. We are still tempted to say "I am of Paul" or "I am of Apollos" and being Corinthians.
In my short time I have seen cyber-pundits of various sorts call out false doctrine on this or that. Sometimes it has been doing a theological smack down on N. T. Wright for being an apostate. Sometimes it's been reading blogs about how Mark Driscoll is unfit for ministry because he uses cuss words (and cuss words at that point are defined however the blogger wants just to reach a foregone conclusion). Sometimes I have seen people blogging about the "epidemic of singleness" as though it were a disease that needed to be eradicated like small pox.
But a common element I have seen in most of these bloggy moments is that at some point in the public spouting something like the following exchange will happen:
Anonymous: You should stop being so judgmental against X because X is a brother in Christ. Did you contact X privately first with your concerns as prescribed Matthew 18?
Poster: No, because public wrongness must be rebuked publicly and because X is wrong there is no need to contact X privately. False doctrine and false teaching must be publicly confronted.
Open fan of X: I know X [i.e. have served in ministry with, read twenty books by, listened to every podcast of, am friends with on Facebook, etc] and you've got X all wrong. You're grossly simplifying and mispresenting X's views
Poster: No, because X chooses to teach things that are wrong and no one on the internet can be wrong without my having to sound off about it, especially if the wrongness involves Holy Scripture. Your personal devotion to X has blinded you to the reality that you don't take scripture seriously like I do.
Then as is wont for the internet, the shoe gets on the other foot. Leave it to Christian bloggers and fans of Christian punditry to want to be able to dish it out but not have to take it. No sooner does the pundit's favorite Christian or own self become subject to the same theo-blogging or cyber-punditry then we see them urging people to be respectful and considerate and take things to private discussion before airing disagreements. It's okay to rip on someone for writing a book like The Shack but publicly slamming someone amongst the YRR as not really Reformed because of views on baptism or sacraments and then a few comments get wiped out. Suddenly failing to adhere to truly Reformed distinctives is something folks can disagree on, at least something people should disagree on in a way that doesn't involve public rancor about the pet subject of the blogger.
It's not really hard to point out that this kind of double standard is a temptation everyone can face. We all want to be rougher on whomever we consider not on the same team than we want to be on our team. The American Calvinist milleu is oddly wonderful at excelling in these things, of course. It's nearly impossible to get too much mileage from John Frame's essay "Machen's Warrior Children" because we've been so great at living out that eagerness to fight about doctrinal matters that are not even close to primary.
We convince ourselves they are primary, however, often because we have anchored real-world concerns into second and third level doctrines or even lifestyle preferences that have nothing to do with doctrine at all. There are neo-Calvinists congregations that have reflexively favored alcohol consumption simply to not seem legalistic. There are other neo-Calvinist congregations that fixate on postmillenialism as a motive for action when it isn't necessarily a better approach to motivating Christian activity than other things. Certainly in many, many places attempting to fix society's problems (as "we" see them) regarding gender roles has often become a defining characteristic of neo-Calvinist church life.
When I "discovered" a few neglected nuggets of Calvinist hymnody I was "assisted" in this process of discovery by a Lutheran. :) He helped out in clarifying a few textual elements and elements of musical phrasing. I am a Calvinist but I have always, so far as I have been able to tell, been a rather bad Calvinist. What I mean to say is that my cage phase was chiefly a reaction to what I felt were excesses in charismatic/TBN-influenced theology. I overdid it a bit but then most orthodox Christians might say that it would be tough to blame me for wanting to move as far away from Third-stream Latter Rain Rick Joyner style theology! I don't blame myself for wanting to distance myself from that stuff as much as possible. But here's the thing, along the way I resolved to not speak or think of non-Calvinists as holding to heresies. I don't particularly share in Jonathan Edwards' sentiment that Arminianism was then as bad as open theism is now. I don't hold to that view (Arminianism) obviously but I don't believe there is ultimately any benefit in establishing a polemic about it. I'm okay with Lutherans being Lutherans and Methodists being Methodists and so on.
Along the way I have seen a lot of this double standard I have described. It is one of those things that I find embarrassing on behalf of my theological clan. I'd find it embarrassing on behalf of any intellectual tribe but I find it more embarrassing for my theological clan because as a friend put it, you'd think that people who are big on "the doctrines of grace" would have a shred of humility to them but often they don't.
The biggest bump to this usual pattern in Calvinist blogdom was Steve Camp's eventual change of heart about his blogging on Mark Driscoll. I'm not going to attempt to replicate everything Camp blogged about Driscoll because he removed all his older posts and in deference to that I'm not going to reproduce any of the stuff I read. I'll just say that even big fans of Steve Camp the person will recognize what Camp recognized. I have myself made some fairly trenchant criticisms of Driscoll as exegete, theologian, scholar, and demagogue but the thing is that despite my numerous differences with the man I have never forgotten he's a brother in the Lord and I have seen no reason to question whether or not the Lord has providentially established him as an elder. I can, as he might put it himself, find ways to salute the uniform while adamantly disagreeing with him on a few other things. In other words if Driscoll and I were to discuss or debate theology in person (we've done it and both had a pleasant time of it so don't assume we haven't) I believe that despite our various respective character flaws we can both trust that whatever our myriad mistakes what we'd be trying to be to each other is iron sharpening iron.
Camp, for a while, was not so good at that and it was a pleasant surprise to see that he had a change of heart not about his misgivings about Driscoll's pulpit mannerisms or handling of scripture but about his own heart in the process of expressing those concerns. It is entirely possible to be "right" in substance but so wrong in style that you lose any traction you could have had even in the things you were right about. The Reformed blogosphere seems to be one in which guilt is imputed even in cases where someone's motives do not need to be questioned. It's not enough for us to say that someone handled a biblical text irresponsibly or made a point too acerbically.
We theo-bloggers have to zero in on what we assume the problem of the heart is. "Seeking to address the heart" becomes shorthand for us judging the motives of someone else in the guise of discerna-blogging. It may have been this more than some other cultural qualities of character that inspired the late Internet Monk to bid farewell to Calvinism. I'm not willing to bid farewell to Calvinism myself but I can certainly see how many people have been inspired to bail on the whole tradition simply on the basis of the humility deficit amongst those most eager to tell everyone else how they have bungled the doctrines of grace and have done so so graciously.
What was disappointing to see was that there are some folks who were fans of Camp's take-downs of Driscoll as a kind of theological gladitorial theater. I've seen a few "discernment ministries" and they can often be an argument by hamster-wheel example for a church that has a shared confession and a creed. If you don't then you're doomed to keep reinventing the wheel and constantly having an ad hoc response to every cultural or social issue that presents itself as a theological problem.
The risk inherent in this kind of theological blogging or church culture is that your anchoring point can stop being in a common confession and can start being in the common process theology (to wit) of figuring out who really isn't on the same page as you theologically or on ecclesiology (which is the same thing as ethics, praxis, you get the idea). Of these things and their outworkings as making Baptists the butt of jokes there is no end.
Circling the wagons around a core confession of the triune nature of Yahweh and the kingdom of Christ is central. Most of the time when Christian cyber pundits and bloggers circle the wagons it's around things of a decidedly lesser order than that. We hitch our wagons to lesser stars than the bright and morning star while convincing ourselves we have picked the highest and best. We are still tempted to say "I am of Paul" or "I am of Apollos" and being Corinthians.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
despite the flurry of recent activity I'll be on another hiatus
I have too many things going on with musical activity and the job hunt to keep up my recent rate of production for long. I have also made some small but still significant breakthroughs in my pending DCAU survey project for Mockingbird. Most importantly, though, my family and I finally managed to have "Christmas" after a whole month's worth of consecutive delays due to numerous family illnesses. Everyone is generally in fair health and I'm hoping to finish an essay series on the DCAU as soon as I can manage. "Soon as I can manage" has just been mitigated by numerous non-bloggy real-world concerns.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
fugue-writing, Shostakovich, and contrapuntal mistakes
As I have immersed myself in contrapuntal music over my life I have made many enjoyable discoveries. I have also made discoveries that were not so enjoyable. I have enjoyed the contrapuntal works of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Hindemith, and I have been fond of works by Igor Rekhin and Durufle. I have even enjoyed contrapuntal music written by Messiaen and Bartok, all great composers.
I have been disappointed, I admit, to discovery that virtually no practitioners of counterpoint since Bach seem to have any use for countersubjects. It would seem that the whole art of counterpoint can be summed up in one's capacity to not merely create subjects but countersubjects that allow for the melodic lines to be exchanged and sometimes even inverted. If you invert your subject and then invert the countersubject then if you've really mastered contrapuntal writing having the subject and countersubject in the SA format (soprano subject, alto countersubject) can yield a pleasing music idea when you invert the subject and put it in the alto voice while inverting the countersubject and putting that in the soprano voice.
But some of my disappointments are more specific than that. My specific recent disappointment has been the result of checking out the 24 preludes and fugues of Dmitri Shostakovich. NOw I love his string quartets, every last one of them, and I enjoy many of the symphonies. His contrapuntal music, however, is frequently very disappointing! I will attempt to explain why as far as is possible on a mere blog where you can't hear any of what I'm talking about.
As I have been composing my own preludes and fugues for solo guitar I have been forming some general rules, rules of thumb, about how to approach the art. One guideline I have discovered is Hindemith's simple observation that the human mind cannot keep track of more than three separate musical lines at once and that by and large any fugue that has four or five voices will invariably have two voices that are basically yoked together, sometimes three. So the application of this observation for guitarist is simple, even in many three-voiced fugues complete linear independence rarely happens. This means that it is wise to imply rather than insist on spelling out all melodic and harmonic developments.
Now straightaway I can say that another application of this observation by Hindemith is to have it piggyback on observations by George Oldroyd. Oldroyd said that many students of counterpoint mistake hustle and bustle for true contrapuntal art. If you create a subject and your countersubject or your counterpoint in response to the answer keeps the same level of melodic or rhythmic activity then you have taken an easy path. It is wise to have your counterpoint embellishing your answer or, better yet, your countersubject written in a way that both complements and contrasts with your initial ideas in the subject. Shostakovich often does not do this.
Shostakovich also too often displays another weakness in people attempting counterpoint, he often goes for the largest number of voices in an exposition he thinks he can pull off with his pianistic skill. Too many people see counterpoint as the art of doing as many things as possible. That is not what counterpoint really is. Counterpoint is the artof doing several musical things simultaneously AS CLEARLY AS POSSIBLE.
Shostakovich has several fugues where he would have done well to limit himself to three voices but he went for four. He frequently does this. That's not clarity for its own sake but technical achievement for its own sake. Now I'll be quick to admit that there's a lot of pride one can take in pulling off even bad counterpoint but the art involves not merely a flurry of melodic and rhythmic activity it also involves penetrating harmonic thought. Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Bartok, Hindemith, all these composers found ways to more tightly balance the harmonic and linear aspects of their counterpoint. As George Oldroyd might have put it, they had a harmonic PLAN that guided the way melodic activity was developed in the exposition.
Now it is true that in music you learn the rules so that eventually later you know when and how to break them. That said I believe that the loss of the countersubject as a cultivated art in fugue-writing may on its own account for a proliferation of voices beyond what is pleasing. I say this because as I have composed fugues for solo guitar even for my own instrument's limits as I write for it I have settled into a broad observation: the point at which adding a new voice to my contrapuntal texture makes it impossible for me to preserve invertible counterpoint is probably the point at which I have added too many voices.
How do I get the idea I have added too many voices to a contrapuntal texture? Well, let's assume for the sake of discussion that I have a suitable subject for a fugue. It has a couple of unique and memorable ideas that allow for great musical development. Let us assume that I also have a countersubject that does not break any rules of counterpoint with its subject in either the answer or the subject in its original form (keep in mind that countersubjects can be transposed so as to avoid breaking rules about linear movement).
Let us assume that I have a countersubject that works perfectly well in counterpoint with both the subject and the first countersubject when I look at the melodic lines as pairs. That is to say that the subject (S) and (countersubject 1 (CS1) work well. Let us also assume that countersubject 2 (CS2) and the subject work beautifully together. Well, suppose that I go through every combination of S, CS1 and CS2. All the counterpoint is looking wonderful right up to the point where I test out the counterpoint of the formulation CS1, S, and CS2 in descending order. Then I discover, perhaps, that there are perfect parallel fifths between CS1 and CS2 on strong beats.
Now if the parallel motion happens on a weak beat or the weak part of even a stronger beat all is not lost. Depending on the prevailing pulse of the subject and its rhythmic activity this parallelism may be resolved so quickly there is no problem. But if parallelism exists on strong rhythmic accents or parallels not only the linear part of a melody but even its rhythmic profile then if I have parallel perfect fifths between S and CS 1 then my counterpoint is not fully invertible. I have a few options at this point. The blunt advice I often give to myself is that if I'm writing at the keyboard this would actually be the point where I need to keep revising CS2 until I avoid this problem.
If after multiple revisions I can't avoid parallelism in octaves of fifths then I have very probably attempted to add a voice to a contrapuntal texture that goes beyond the boundaries of good sense. In other words, the perfect fifths that result from adding even one more voice than the contrapuntal texture can sustain in all contrapuntal derivations is literally the math that shows I can't afford to add another voice.
Now speaking as a guitarist I am acutely aware that in many cases the guitar is so limited in what may be played as counterpoint that this is a thoroughly academic issue. CS1, S, and CS2 together may be completely beyond the pale of being played on a single guitar. Even so that would be a reason to drop CS2 if the problem of parallel fifths can't be avoided. CS2 would have to add some exceptional musical value to be worth keeping.
Now there is a fugue for guitar where I have a CS2 that ends up creating parallel fifths against the S. The reason I'm keeping it is because the parallelism happens on the weak part of a weak beat in the prevailing meter. I'm also deliberately playing with polymetric elements in a subject that could best be described as in 11/4. So I'm not ignoring that certain things are less than ideal counterpoint but are so fun to play they are worth the trouble. I'm just proposing that the oft-ignored art of testing out countersubjects against all possible assignments of melodies to the voices planned for a fugue allows you to winnow out ideas that don't really help you.
Writing a fugue exposition with more voices in the texture than you need is a really big deal. It disappoints me that I feel obliged to say that Shostakovich seems to habitually ignore even the possibility of adding one too many voices to a texture. Let's face it, most of us won't even get to Haydn's level of writing fugues, let aone J. S. Bach. Even fewer of us will begin to approach the contrapuntal mastery of Tallis or Palestrina or Josquin. Then again, their entire conception of harmony is radically different than those who have composed since the advent of major and minor keys but that's a separate subject for people who actually specialize in music from that period. I would defer to any Tallis scholar on that issue, whether the singers or actual scholars of Thomas Tallis' wonderful music.
I admit that, right now, it seems positively absurd for me to be going on at such length about counterpoint. I'm a guitarist. Most guitarists don't even tackle transcriptions of Bach's violin fugues. I have often wondered how many guitarists actually understand counterpoint well enough to recognize the difference between musical busy-work and actual contrapuntal control of a musical texture. Brouwer can obviously handle contrapuntal writing. Sor was brilliant at it when he did do it. I wish he had been a little more ambitious in tackling counterpoint myself but I'm grateful we have what we have. Mark Delpriora took care of transcribing the closing fugue from Haydn's creation inspired by some prodding from Ophee and the comment Sor made about how it was possible to play Haydn's double fugue on the guitar even in B flat major.
As I wrote on this blog a while back too many guitarists mistakenly equate homophonic music (a melodic line with some kind of independent accompaniment) with contrapuntal music. Guitarists who wish to study counterpoint had probably best devote a great deal of time not to guitar literature but to keyboard lierature and choral literature.
Bach's fugues for violin, often referred to by guitarists, are not particularly accurate depictions of how Bach USUALLY handled fugue writing. They are emblematic and utterly worthy of performance but it is easy for guitarists to have wildly inaccurate misconceptions about how Bach really handled counterpoint. Bach's violin sonatas usually at most suggest or imply rather than state. In the ears of many guitarists these fugues may be the touchstone for what guitar fugues should sound like. No offense to violinists but the guitar is capable of more truly independent linear development than the violin will ever be. We guitarists are more limited than pianists but we are not as limited as violinists are in terms of what we can do to have three independent lines on one instrument.
Chris Kachian correctly pointed out that sustained three-voice counterpoint where all three lines are independent is not possible on the guitar. Having studied quite a few fugues in my life I can cheerfully report that even Bach rarely assigned complete independence to all voices even in his three-voiced fugues. Just look at how much CS 1 and CS2 lean on each other in his famous C minor fugue.
With this observation in mind a three-voiced contrapuntal texture is practical on the guitar even for sustained periods once we realize that even in an ostensibly contrapuntal texture there will be room for homphonic elements (i.e. a harmonic plan and some liberties in using two voices so form rhythmic aaccompaniment or punctuation to the voice of primary melodic interest). If in a three-voiced episode we have an antiphonal relationship betwen the soprano and alto then the tenor can provide something as simple as rhythmic or harmonic punctuation marks to the alto voice.
As George Oldroyd so elegantly if stuffily put it, we must remember that there is no need for all the voices in a fugue to be active at the same time. In fact there's no need for even a three-voiced fugue to have constant activity. Even a simpler texture needs room to breathe. This is why I believe most pianists can utterly fail to grasp counterpoint as well as they could because they do not see that counterpoint is an art that rose out of choral rather than instrumental literature.
Now that I am at 19 of 24 preludes and fugues I can say that I have only written one fugue that even has four voices in its exposition. I shall probably write a couple of fugues that have only two voices (my F sharp major fugue has just two voices, for instance).
I don't particularly enjoy writing at such length and in such a general way about why I believe the fugues of Shostakovich have so far been rightly neglected amongst concert-goers and performers alike. The demands Shostakovich makes on my attention through his works are out of proportion to the rewards of considering how he approaches musical textures. I have listened to Ludus Tonalis dozens of times at least and have pored over the scores with great contentment. I have often found myself, despite repeated efforts to give Shostakovich careful attention mentally checking out through much of what he wrote in his fugues. He gets my interest with about half of his subjects, often losing my interest as soon as his exposition is under way because the material he selects for his answers seems to be busy-work.
What little I can recall of biographies of Shostakovich suggest that he disliked fugue writing in general and was not even particularly thrilled about Bach's works. He generally seemed to view contrapuntal writing as drudgery in older styles. Even if he changed his mind and my memory of this field of study is rusty I'm afraid I have to say that listening to Shostakovich's actual fugues has re-convinced me that this works are decidedly lesser entries in his work as a whole. They sound unusually dashed off and what works in sonata allegro form or other Classic era forms can be dangerously staid and lazy in a compositional type with roots in the Renaissance that reached its apotheosis in the Baroque era.
If the fugue were to be thought of as not merely a contrapuntal form or even a contrapntal style as such but a way of musical thinking that guides musical feeling then I'm sad to say that one of my favorite composers just does not think much in the way a fugue requires a person to think. Now a composer like Joan Tower, what I've heard of her, I think could think through a fugue and write a nice one. The aforementioned Bach, Haydn, Hindemith, Bartok, Messiaen, and Durufle all wrote great fugues. Stravinsky was capable of writing some fine fugal passages even though full-blown fugues were not really his thing.
Now this is probably one of my hang-ups or strengths depending on who's talking with me but I do not see music as merely emotional communication. Music is capable of communicating not merely emotional content but ideas. If you only listen to a fugue with an ear for how it makes you feel then the very nature of the musical art will be likely to befuddle and frustrate you. Bach's works fell into temporary disrepute because his works were considered stuffy and academic. The problem was not so much with Bach's work itself as that as the styles and times changed people stopped being able to think with Bach in his musical thinking. Both serious study of biblical literature and serious study of counterpoint require what I would sloppily call exegesis. Much as I love other works by Shostakovich he has not convinced me that he got very far in understanding counterpoint.
Oh well, the fact that his cycle is hardly a staple of the concert circuit means I don't have to be that wound up in my disappointment. His string quartets are still, arguably, the most important cycle of quartets to have been composed in the last sixty years. Sure, I love Bartok's quartets and half of Hindemith's quartets are great. Music critics may say that Ferneyhough's quartets and Carter's quartets are important but, well, they're important to music critics. There IS a place to say "show me the money". People are willing to part with their own money to hear Bartok and Shostakovich more than Carter or Ferneyhough or even the quartets of Britten or Tippett (which, mind you, aren't bad). But now I've digressed into quartet literature.
I have been disappointed, I admit, to discovery that virtually no practitioners of counterpoint since Bach seem to have any use for countersubjects. It would seem that the whole art of counterpoint can be summed up in one's capacity to not merely create subjects but countersubjects that allow for the melodic lines to be exchanged and sometimes even inverted. If you invert your subject and then invert the countersubject then if you've really mastered contrapuntal writing having the subject and countersubject in the SA format (soprano subject, alto countersubject) can yield a pleasing music idea when you invert the subject and put it in the alto voice while inverting the countersubject and putting that in the soprano voice.
But some of my disappointments are more specific than that. My specific recent disappointment has been the result of checking out the 24 preludes and fugues of Dmitri Shostakovich. NOw I love his string quartets, every last one of them, and I enjoy many of the symphonies. His contrapuntal music, however, is frequently very disappointing! I will attempt to explain why as far as is possible on a mere blog where you can't hear any of what I'm talking about.
As I have been composing my own preludes and fugues for solo guitar I have been forming some general rules, rules of thumb, about how to approach the art. One guideline I have discovered is Hindemith's simple observation that the human mind cannot keep track of more than three separate musical lines at once and that by and large any fugue that has four or five voices will invariably have two voices that are basically yoked together, sometimes three. So the application of this observation for guitarist is simple, even in many three-voiced fugues complete linear independence rarely happens. This means that it is wise to imply rather than insist on spelling out all melodic and harmonic developments.
Now straightaway I can say that another application of this observation by Hindemith is to have it piggyback on observations by George Oldroyd. Oldroyd said that many students of counterpoint mistake hustle and bustle for true contrapuntal art. If you create a subject and your countersubject or your counterpoint in response to the answer keeps the same level of melodic or rhythmic activity then you have taken an easy path. It is wise to have your counterpoint embellishing your answer or, better yet, your countersubject written in a way that both complements and contrasts with your initial ideas in the subject. Shostakovich often does not do this.
Shostakovich also too often displays another weakness in people attempting counterpoint, he often goes for the largest number of voices in an exposition he thinks he can pull off with his pianistic skill. Too many people see counterpoint as the art of doing as many things as possible. That is not what counterpoint really is. Counterpoint is the artof doing several musical things simultaneously AS CLEARLY AS POSSIBLE.
Shostakovich has several fugues where he would have done well to limit himself to three voices but he went for four. He frequently does this. That's not clarity for its own sake but technical achievement for its own sake. Now I'll be quick to admit that there's a lot of pride one can take in pulling off even bad counterpoint but the art involves not merely a flurry of melodic and rhythmic activity it also involves penetrating harmonic thought. Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Bartok, Hindemith, all these composers found ways to more tightly balance the harmonic and linear aspects of their counterpoint. As George Oldroyd might have put it, they had a harmonic PLAN that guided the way melodic activity was developed in the exposition.
Now it is true that in music you learn the rules so that eventually later you know when and how to break them. That said I believe that the loss of the countersubject as a cultivated art in fugue-writing may on its own account for a proliferation of voices beyond what is pleasing. I say this because as I have composed fugues for solo guitar even for my own instrument's limits as I write for it I have settled into a broad observation: the point at which adding a new voice to my contrapuntal texture makes it impossible for me to preserve invertible counterpoint is probably the point at which I have added too many voices.
How do I get the idea I have added too many voices to a contrapuntal texture? Well, let's assume for the sake of discussion that I have a suitable subject for a fugue. It has a couple of unique and memorable ideas that allow for great musical development. Let us assume that I also have a countersubject that does not break any rules of counterpoint with its subject in either the answer or the subject in its original form (keep in mind that countersubjects can be transposed so as to avoid breaking rules about linear movement).
Let us assume that I have a countersubject that works perfectly well in counterpoint with both the subject and the first countersubject when I look at the melodic lines as pairs. That is to say that the subject (S) and (countersubject 1 (CS1) work well. Let us also assume that countersubject 2 (CS2) and the subject work beautifully together. Well, suppose that I go through every combination of S, CS1 and CS2. All the counterpoint is looking wonderful right up to the point where I test out the counterpoint of the formulation CS1, S, and CS2 in descending order. Then I discover, perhaps, that there are perfect parallel fifths between CS1 and CS2 on strong beats.
Now if the parallel motion happens on a weak beat or the weak part of even a stronger beat all is not lost. Depending on the prevailing pulse of the subject and its rhythmic activity this parallelism may be resolved so quickly there is no problem. But if parallelism exists on strong rhythmic accents or parallels not only the linear part of a melody but even its rhythmic profile then if I have parallel perfect fifths between S and CS 1 then my counterpoint is not fully invertible. I have a few options at this point. The blunt advice I often give to myself is that if I'm writing at the keyboard this would actually be the point where I need to keep revising CS2 until I avoid this problem.
If after multiple revisions I can't avoid parallelism in octaves of fifths then I have very probably attempted to add a voice to a contrapuntal texture that goes beyond the boundaries of good sense. In other words, the perfect fifths that result from adding even one more voice than the contrapuntal texture can sustain in all contrapuntal derivations is literally the math that shows I can't afford to add another voice.
Now speaking as a guitarist I am acutely aware that in many cases the guitar is so limited in what may be played as counterpoint that this is a thoroughly academic issue. CS1, S, and CS2 together may be completely beyond the pale of being played on a single guitar. Even so that would be a reason to drop CS2 if the problem of parallel fifths can't be avoided. CS2 would have to add some exceptional musical value to be worth keeping.
Now there is a fugue for guitar where I have a CS2 that ends up creating parallel fifths against the S. The reason I'm keeping it is because the parallelism happens on the weak part of a weak beat in the prevailing meter. I'm also deliberately playing with polymetric elements in a subject that could best be described as in 11/4. So I'm not ignoring that certain things are less than ideal counterpoint but are so fun to play they are worth the trouble. I'm just proposing that the oft-ignored art of testing out countersubjects against all possible assignments of melodies to the voices planned for a fugue allows you to winnow out ideas that don't really help you.
Writing a fugue exposition with more voices in the texture than you need is a really big deal. It disappoints me that I feel obliged to say that Shostakovich seems to habitually ignore even the possibility of adding one too many voices to a texture. Let's face it, most of us won't even get to Haydn's level of writing fugues, let aone J. S. Bach. Even fewer of us will begin to approach the contrapuntal mastery of Tallis or Palestrina or Josquin. Then again, their entire conception of harmony is radically different than those who have composed since the advent of major and minor keys but that's a separate subject for people who actually specialize in music from that period. I would defer to any Tallis scholar on that issue, whether the singers or actual scholars of Thomas Tallis' wonderful music.
I admit that, right now, it seems positively absurd for me to be going on at such length about counterpoint. I'm a guitarist. Most guitarists don't even tackle transcriptions of Bach's violin fugues. I have often wondered how many guitarists actually understand counterpoint well enough to recognize the difference between musical busy-work and actual contrapuntal control of a musical texture. Brouwer can obviously handle contrapuntal writing. Sor was brilliant at it when he did do it. I wish he had been a little more ambitious in tackling counterpoint myself but I'm grateful we have what we have. Mark Delpriora took care of transcribing the closing fugue from Haydn's creation inspired by some prodding from Ophee and the comment Sor made about how it was possible to play Haydn's double fugue on the guitar even in B flat major.
As I wrote on this blog a while back too many guitarists mistakenly equate homophonic music (a melodic line with some kind of independent accompaniment) with contrapuntal music. Guitarists who wish to study counterpoint had probably best devote a great deal of time not to guitar literature but to keyboard lierature and choral literature.
Bach's fugues for violin, often referred to by guitarists, are not particularly accurate depictions of how Bach USUALLY handled fugue writing. They are emblematic and utterly worthy of performance but it is easy for guitarists to have wildly inaccurate misconceptions about how Bach really handled counterpoint. Bach's violin sonatas usually at most suggest or imply rather than state. In the ears of many guitarists these fugues may be the touchstone for what guitar fugues should sound like. No offense to violinists but the guitar is capable of more truly independent linear development than the violin will ever be. We guitarists are more limited than pianists but we are not as limited as violinists are in terms of what we can do to have three independent lines on one instrument.
Chris Kachian correctly pointed out that sustained three-voice counterpoint where all three lines are independent is not possible on the guitar. Having studied quite a few fugues in my life I can cheerfully report that even Bach rarely assigned complete independence to all voices even in his three-voiced fugues. Just look at how much CS 1 and CS2 lean on each other in his famous C minor fugue.
With this observation in mind a three-voiced contrapuntal texture is practical on the guitar even for sustained periods once we realize that even in an ostensibly contrapuntal texture there will be room for homphonic elements (i.e. a harmonic plan and some liberties in using two voices so form rhythmic aaccompaniment or punctuation to the voice of primary melodic interest). If in a three-voiced episode we have an antiphonal relationship betwen the soprano and alto then the tenor can provide something as simple as rhythmic or harmonic punctuation marks to the alto voice.
As George Oldroyd so elegantly if stuffily put it, we must remember that there is no need for all the voices in a fugue to be active at the same time. In fact there's no need for even a three-voiced fugue to have constant activity. Even a simpler texture needs room to breathe. This is why I believe most pianists can utterly fail to grasp counterpoint as well as they could because they do not see that counterpoint is an art that rose out of choral rather than instrumental literature.
Now that I am at 19 of 24 preludes and fugues I can say that I have only written one fugue that even has four voices in its exposition. I shall probably write a couple of fugues that have only two voices (my F sharp major fugue has just two voices, for instance).
I don't particularly enjoy writing at such length and in such a general way about why I believe the fugues of Shostakovich have so far been rightly neglected amongst concert-goers and performers alike. The demands Shostakovich makes on my attention through his works are out of proportion to the rewards of considering how he approaches musical textures. I have listened to Ludus Tonalis dozens of times at least and have pored over the scores with great contentment. I have often found myself, despite repeated efforts to give Shostakovich careful attention mentally checking out through much of what he wrote in his fugues. He gets my interest with about half of his subjects, often losing my interest as soon as his exposition is under way because the material he selects for his answers seems to be busy-work.
What little I can recall of biographies of Shostakovich suggest that he disliked fugue writing in general and was not even particularly thrilled about Bach's works. He generally seemed to view contrapuntal writing as drudgery in older styles. Even if he changed his mind and my memory of this field of study is rusty I'm afraid I have to say that listening to Shostakovich's actual fugues has re-convinced me that this works are decidedly lesser entries in his work as a whole. They sound unusually dashed off and what works in sonata allegro form or other Classic era forms can be dangerously staid and lazy in a compositional type with roots in the Renaissance that reached its apotheosis in the Baroque era.
If the fugue were to be thought of as not merely a contrapuntal form or even a contrapntal style as such but a way of musical thinking that guides musical feeling then I'm sad to say that one of my favorite composers just does not think much in the way a fugue requires a person to think. Now a composer like Joan Tower, what I've heard of her, I think could think through a fugue and write a nice one. The aforementioned Bach, Haydn, Hindemith, Bartok, Messiaen, and Durufle all wrote great fugues. Stravinsky was capable of writing some fine fugal passages even though full-blown fugues were not really his thing.
Now this is probably one of my hang-ups or strengths depending on who's talking with me but I do not see music as merely emotional communication. Music is capable of communicating not merely emotional content but ideas. If you only listen to a fugue with an ear for how it makes you feel then the very nature of the musical art will be likely to befuddle and frustrate you. Bach's works fell into temporary disrepute because his works were considered stuffy and academic. The problem was not so much with Bach's work itself as that as the styles and times changed people stopped being able to think with Bach in his musical thinking. Both serious study of biblical literature and serious study of counterpoint require what I would sloppily call exegesis. Much as I love other works by Shostakovich he has not convinced me that he got very far in understanding counterpoint.
Oh well, the fact that his cycle is hardly a staple of the concert circuit means I don't have to be that wound up in my disappointment. His string quartets are still, arguably, the most important cycle of quartets to have been composed in the last sixty years. Sure, I love Bartok's quartets and half of Hindemith's quartets are great. Music critics may say that Ferneyhough's quartets and Carter's quartets are important but, well, they're important to music critics. There IS a place to say "show me the money". People are willing to part with their own money to hear Bartok and Shostakovich more than Carter or Ferneyhough or even the quartets of Britten or Tippett (which, mind you, aren't bad). But now I've digressed into quartet literature.
A passing thought on Amy Chua, evangelicals and the "sin" of stay-at-home dads
There has been more discussion on the Chinese "tiger mother" approach to mothering than I, as a single man, have any keen interest in discussing in detail. I do, however, find it interesting that some women have noticed that what is substantially absent in all of this is a discussion of what fathers do. This can be taken, at some level, as a feminist question of "Where's dad?" The question more accurately posed, in their words, is why this debate has been about mothering techniques and goals and not about childrearing in general.
It is here that as a unmarried man who has observed parents and fellow Christians for years, that we could spot an interesting conundrum. Evangelicals are upset that "dad" has been absent and not doing enough to "man up" and be there for his children. But let that dad become so involved in the lives of his children that he decides to be a stay-at-home dad then he's denied the faith and become worse than an unbeliever. If he lets his wife work because she has more earning power than him during a "mancession" then he has rejected the faith depending on which evangelicals we consult about the subject.
So it would appear, paradoxically, that there are some evangelicals who want dad to be more involved than they already are but not too involved in the actual upbringing of his children. You need to be there enough to financially support your child but not so much so that you avoid spending the majority of your days ten hours away from your kids in the day job earning money so that you can spend a few hours with them a day! So evangelicals will be happy if dad is involved by earning money but not happy if dad stays at home to be more directly involved in actually raising his kids? In the hands of some (not all!) evangelicals this looks like yet another double bind.
It is here that as a unmarried man who has observed parents and fellow Christians for years, that we could spot an interesting conundrum. Evangelicals are upset that "dad" has been absent and not doing enough to "man up" and be there for his children. But let that dad become so involved in the lives of his children that he decides to be a stay-at-home dad then he's denied the faith and become worse than an unbeliever. If he lets his wife work because she has more earning power than him during a "mancession" then he has rejected the faith depending on which evangelicals we consult about the subject.
So it would appear, paradoxically, that there are some evangelicals who want dad to be more involved than they already are but not too involved in the actual upbringing of his children. You need to be there enough to financially support your child but not so much so that you avoid spending the majority of your days ten hours away from your kids in the day job earning money so that you can spend a few hours with them a day! So evangelicals will be happy if dad is involved by earning money but not happy if dad stays at home to be more directly involved in actually raising his kids? In the hands of some (not all!) evangelicals this looks like yet another double bind.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
HT Psyblog: The dangers (of certain kinds) of positive thinking
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/01/success-why-expectations-beat-fantasies.php
"Vision casting" is not the same as goal-setting. Goal-setting and working toward concrete goals is totally cool. Imagining success without working toward anything is not cool.
In a way all of this reminds me of my earlier ruminations ono the liberation of being average.
"Vision casting" is not the same as goal-setting. Goal-setting and working toward concrete goals is totally cool. Imagining success without working toward anything is not cool.
In a way all of this reminds me of my earlier ruminations ono the liberation of being average.
From BHT: "This is why we can't have nice things, or an evangelical history"
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/01/20/24446/
Let me see if I under stand the reading rules correctly:
Find someone who is dead that has written a book
Find somethings of value that the book has to say
Transform said dead person into a shinning example of evangelical awesomeness
Become shocked when said dead person is exposed as not entirely “orthodox”
Throw away all books and contacts with said “unorthodox” dead person
This is why we cant have nice things… or an evangelical church history.
Yeah, those are pretty much the unwritten rules of how many evangelicals handle things.
Let me see if I under stand the reading rules correctly:
Find someone who is dead that has written a book
Find somethings of value that the book has to say
Transform said dead person into a shinning example of evangelical awesomeness
Become shocked when said dead person is exposed as not entirely “orthodox”
Throw away all books and contacts with said “unorthodox” dead person
This is why we cant have nice things… or an evangelical church history.
Yeah, those are pretty much the unwritten rules of how many evangelicals handle things.
A fine little post from Orthocuban about how churches get Corinthian and overdo church discipline
http://www.orthocuban.com/2011/01/a-problem-as-old-as-saint-paul-and-the-corinthians/
By now I trust people know that I'm not actually Eastern Orthodox. However, thanks to the late Internet Monk I was introduced to the blog Orthocuban, which I very much enjoy. Here Father Ernesto looks at a few contemporary events and connects them to a passage in 2 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians Paul nad urged the church to discipline a man who was found to have his father's wife, something even the pagans considered a terrible thing. Paul rebuked the church. The church, apparently, responded to Paul's rebuke but went so far in establishing church discipline that Paul had to write them AGAIN to urge them to not overdo the church discipline. As Father Ernesto put it, just as the sin of the man opened him up to attacks from Satan while he didn't turn from it so a refusal to welcome the man back once discipline had had its effect would open the man up to unbearable sorrow and ALSO open him up to attacks from Satan.
If their unwillingness to discipline gave ocassion to Satan, so their unwillingness to forgive once the discipline had worked its purpose also gave ocassion to Satan.
Now if this is true even in cases where church discipline is warranted how much more true is it the case when the church discipline was in any way an abuse of authority. It is possible for someone to be subjected to a formal disciplinary action that is undeserved either because the person has done nothing wrong (such as girls who are subjected to the rituals of church discipline because they were impregnated by a church member who raped them; or a woman who was brought up for failing as a wife because her husband left her) or because is merely perceived as somehow been guilty of a sin because leaders have issues of their own (see the aforementioned, and also include cases where people are cut loose from churches not because of any sexual or moral failure as such but because they ran afoul of bureaucratic changes in a system; or because of genuine disagreements between two God-loving parties who have irreconcilable differences).
In such cases people can be treated as though they were bad guys when there is not much of a warrant for it. Even in cases where the basis for church disciplinary action is entirely warranted we, as Father Ernesto puts it, have a lengthy history of overdoing what church discipline would actually involve. We talk about the forgiveness of God while not living out in any way what forgiveness would actually look like.
I would put it like this--we talk about the forgiveness of Christ in the abstract so that we do not have live out the cross we would have to take up of living it. We can profess the importance of Christian community while cherry-picking our idea of Christian community so that we scrupulously avoid having to consider anyone we don't want to consider on the team as being in Christ. And then we "treat them as you would a tax collector". The fact that one of the apostles was a tax collector when Jesus called him doesn't allow for much of an non-ironic shift in which we can say Jesus is saying to shun tax collectors, does it?
By now I trust people know that I'm not actually Eastern Orthodox. However, thanks to the late Internet Monk I was introduced to the blog Orthocuban, which I very much enjoy. Here Father Ernesto looks at a few contemporary events and connects them to a passage in 2 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians Paul nad urged the church to discipline a man who was found to have his father's wife, something even the pagans considered a terrible thing. Paul rebuked the church. The church, apparently, responded to Paul's rebuke but went so far in establishing church discipline that Paul had to write them AGAIN to urge them to not overdo the church discipline. As Father Ernesto put it, just as the sin of the man opened him up to attacks from Satan while he didn't turn from it so a refusal to welcome the man back once discipline had had its effect would open the man up to unbearable sorrow and ALSO open him up to attacks from Satan.
If their unwillingness to discipline gave ocassion to Satan, so their unwillingness to forgive once the discipline had worked its purpose also gave ocassion to Satan.
Now if this is true even in cases where church discipline is warranted how much more true is it the case when the church discipline was in any way an abuse of authority. It is possible for someone to be subjected to a formal disciplinary action that is undeserved either because the person has done nothing wrong (such as girls who are subjected to the rituals of church discipline because they were impregnated by a church member who raped them; or a woman who was brought up for failing as a wife because her husband left her) or because is merely perceived as somehow been guilty of a sin because leaders have issues of their own (see the aforementioned, and also include cases where people are cut loose from churches not because of any sexual or moral failure as such but because they ran afoul of bureaucratic changes in a system; or because of genuine disagreements between two God-loving parties who have irreconcilable differences).
In such cases people can be treated as though they were bad guys when there is not much of a warrant for it. Even in cases where the basis for church disciplinary action is entirely warranted we, as Father Ernesto puts it, have a lengthy history of overdoing what church discipline would actually involve. We talk about the forgiveness of God while not living out in any way what forgiveness would actually look like.
I would put it like this--we talk about the forgiveness of Christ in the abstract so that we do not have live out the cross we would have to take up of living it. We can profess the importance of Christian community while cherry-picking our idea of Christian community so that we scrupulously avoid having to consider anyone we don't want to consider on the team as being in Christ. And then we "treat them as you would a tax collector". The fact that one of the apostles was a tax collector when Jesus called him doesn't allow for much of an non-ironic shift in which we can say Jesus is saying to shun tax collectors, does it?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Evangelicals and retroactive assimilation
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/01/18/24430/
Brian Auten over at the Boar's Head Tavern wrote this regarding a review of a biography about Bonhoeffer that raises the issue of whether or not evangelicals have tried to rehabilitate the German Lutheran theologian as an evangelical. This does not surprise me. I mean, let's consider how evangelicals have easily assimilated C. S. Lewis into their fold even though he had a few views that would not have been considered "evangelical" during his lifetime by those who considered themselves evangelical.
Bonhoeffer is merely the new subject of assimilation for evangelicals. C. S. Lewis got assimilated into evangelicalism decades ago even though he wasn't evangelical by any significant stretch of the imagination. Lewis had no real problem with theistic evolution and was way too liberal for the evangelicals of his time. But he wrote very well and was a gifted storyteller as well as a scholar. Ergo he got retroactively assimilated into evangelical thought. Bonhoeffer was a liberal German Lutheran theologian but he wrote some fine meditations on the Christian life and, more importantly, he opposed National Socialism. So retroactively he, too, must be assimilated into the evangelical fold. The idea that the Christian thinkers who prominently opposed racial hatred, tyranny, and the abuse of government power were all pretty liberal thinkers in key ways ranging from Martin Luther King to Bonhoeffer to Lewis is something evangelicals want to work around.
Who can evangelicals point to in the last few centuries who had true evangelical bona fides and spoke out passionately on society? Niebuhr? Naw, he's neo-Orthodox and too influenced by Barth (oh, but wait, what about Bonhoeffer ... ). R. L. Dabney was a conservative evangelical thinker in the old-school sense of things and he even anticipated the total secularization of American society through the public school system. Oh, but he said that public education would make Negro children better criminals than they already were and sided with the Confederacy during the American Civil War/War of Northern Aggression. He also made a weak argument against the use of instruments in corporate worship. Well, uh, okay, so a lot of conservative evangelicals balk at citing Dabney.
As Mark Noll put it so many years ago, the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn't much of a mind. Sure, we've got preachers and theologians but in other academic disciplines there's not much to speak of. This is precisely why men like Bonhoeffer and Lewis, who during their own lifetimes were denounced as having defective theology and a defective understanding of salvation by those who really WERE evangelicals,, are now being assiduously assimilated into evangelicalism. Why?
Well, I would say the simplest reason is that evangelicals are so hard up for anyone who influenced the real world, as opposed to the evangelical subculture, that a Bonhoeffer opposing the Nazis or C. S. Lewis writing Christian allegories that people read is vital. It is vital because in decades of culture war making we can't just have pundits and preachers, we need people who can be shown to be "evangelical" who allow evangelicalism to be more than endless soap-boxing about being different from the world and, maybe, contributing something positive to it. Few people would dispute that Bonhoeffer's opposition to National Socialism was bad. Few would dispute that C. S. Lewis wrote charming books and was a gifted communicator. Anyone who actually reads their work would disavow their being evangelical in any generall American acceptable sense of the terms. Retroactively assimilating Lewis and then Bonhoeffer into evangelicalism is useful in making sure that evnagelicals have people non-evangelicals have ever even heard of in tackling the culture war. That Lewis and Bonhoeffer have been posthumously conscripted into an evangelical culture war would not have met with the approval of either man.
But evangelicals are often content to read about things rather than engage the things themselves. Now obviously I don't speak of all evangelicals because there are plenty of evangelicals who engage things. I do think Noll's observation that much evangelical thought tends to restrict itself to doctrine and to a slightly lesser extent politics. One of the lesser aspects of the legacy of Francis Schaeffer is that many evangelicals use his books as an excuse to avoid reading the books he read, watching the movies he watched, listening to the music he listened to. They take his highly idiosyncratic and personalized assessment of how "the Christian worldview" or "secular humanism" played out in this or that cultural artifact and thus avoid interacting with things they have no interest in.
Schaeffer's overview of Western culture is valuable in many ways but his overview fails to help us in assessing any number of things. For instance Schaeffer's writings have no accounting for the Catholic approach of the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Do you say that his music reflects humanism or secularism when most of his major works are Catholic reflections on Catholic doctrines? Well, uh, that would be tough to pull off. Schaeffer might have listened to the post-tintinabulae music of Arvo Part and have considered it a sign of monistic ontology without recognizing that Arvo Part is Eastern Orthodox.
Now if evangelicals are attempting to assimiliate Bonhoeffer as they have Lewis this should give us a moment of pause. Do Lewis or Bonhoeffer need to be evangelical for us to benefit from them? Was Augustine, arguably the greatest shaper of the map of Western Christian thought, anything close to an evangelical by contemporary measurements? If Mark Driscoll can give Augustine a failing grade for his attitudes toward marriage while affirming his importance or Lutherans can concede that Martin had some issues with anti-Semitic sentiments ... or that Calvinists could concede (the Reformed Baptists anyway) that they think Calvin botched the issue of infant baptism then perhaps this should be a signal to those of us who identify is evangelical that maybe, just maybe, modern American evangelicals don't realize that every evangelical will fail in light of the grading standards of contemporary evangelical thought.
The thing about the culture wars is that if evangelicals were actually somehow "making culture" instead of pontificating about culture they wouldn't feel any need to retroactively assimilate non-evangelicals like C. S. Lewis or Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Whatever "culture making" or "going upstream" entails it probably involves interacting with a bunch of ideas and thinkers who are not, strictly speaking, evangelical. We're not going to have any sway or influence in any culture if we are only committed to "thinking Christianly" as theology bloggers would have us do.
Brian Auten over at the Boar's Head Tavern wrote this regarding a review of a biography about Bonhoeffer that raises the issue of whether or not evangelicals have tried to rehabilitate the German Lutheran theologian as an evangelical. This does not surprise me. I mean, let's consider how evangelicals have easily assimilated C. S. Lewis into their fold even though he had a few views that would not have been considered "evangelical" during his lifetime by those who considered themselves evangelical.
Bonhoeffer is merely the new subject of assimilation for evangelicals. C. S. Lewis got assimilated into evangelicalism decades ago even though he wasn't evangelical by any significant stretch of the imagination. Lewis had no real problem with theistic evolution and was way too liberal for the evangelicals of his time. But he wrote very well and was a gifted storyteller as well as a scholar. Ergo he got retroactively assimilated into evangelical thought. Bonhoeffer was a liberal German Lutheran theologian but he wrote some fine meditations on the Christian life and, more importantly, he opposed National Socialism. So retroactively he, too, must be assimilated into the evangelical fold. The idea that the Christian thinkers who prominently opposed racial hatred, tyranny, and the abuse of government power were all pretty liberal thinkers in key ways ranging from Martin Luther King to Bonhoeffer to Lewis is something evangelicals want to work around.
Who can evangelicals point to in the last few centuries who had true evangelical bona fides and spoke out passionately on society? Niebuhr? Naw, he's neo-Orthodox and too influenced by Barth (oh, but wait, what about Bonhoeffer ... ). R. L. Dabney was a conservative evangelical thinker in the old-school sense of things and he even anticipated the total secularization of American society through the public school system. Oh, but he said that public education would make Negro children better criminals than they already were and sided with the Confederacy during the American Civil War/War of Northern Aggression. He also made a weak argument against the use of instruments in corporate worship. Well, uh, okay, so a lot of conservative evangelicals balk at citing Dabney.
As Mark Noll put it so many years ago, the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn't much of a mind. Sure, we've got preachers and theologians but in other academic disciplines there's not much to speak of. This is precisely why men like Bonhoeffer and Lewis, who during their own lifetimes were denounced as having defective theology and a defective understanding of salvation by those who really WERE evangelicals,, are now being assiduously assimilated into evangelicalism. Why?
Well, I would say the simplest reason is that evangelicals are so hard up for anyone who influenced the real world, as opposed to the evangelical subculture, that a Bonhoeffer opposing the Nazis or C. S. Lewis writing Christian allegories that people read is vital. It is vital because in decades of culture war making we can't just have pundits and preachers, we need people who can be shown to be "evangelical" who allow evangelicalism to be more than endless soap-boxing about being different from the world and, maybe, contributing something positive to it. Few people would dispute that Bonhoeffer's opposition to National Socialism was bad. Few would dispute that C. S. Lewis wrote charming books and was a gifted communicator. Anyone who actually reads their work would disavow their being evangelical in any generall American acceptable sense of the terms. Retroactively assimilating Lewis and then Bonhoeffer into evangelicalism is useful in making sure that evnagelicals have people non-evangelicals have ever even heard of in tackling the culture war. That Lewis and Bonhoeffer have been posthumously conscripted into an evangelical culture war would not have met with the approval of either man.
But evangelicals are often content to read about things rather than engage the things themselves. Now obviously I don't speak of all evangelicals because there are plenty of evangelicals who engage things. I do think Noll's observation that much evangelical thought tends to restrict itself to doctrine and to a slightly lesser extent politics. One of the lesser aspects of the legacy of Francis Schaeffer is that many evangelicals use his books as an excuse to avoid reading the books he read, watching the movies he watched, listening to the music he listened to. They take his highly idiosyncratic and personalized assessment of how "the Christian worldview" or "secular humanism" played out in this or that cultural artifact and thus avoid interacting with things they have no interest in.
Schaeffer's overview of Western culture is valuable in many ways but his overview fails to help us in assessing any number of things. For instance Schaeffer's writings have no accounting for the Catholic approach of the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Do you say that his music reflects humanism or secularism when most of his major works are Catholic reflections on Catholic doctrines? Well, uh, that would be tough to pull off. Schaeffer might have listened to the post-tintinabulae music of Arvo Part and have considered it a sign of monistic ontology without recognizing that Arvo Part is Eastern Orthodox.
Now if evangelicals are attempting to assimiliate Bonhoeffer as they have Lewis this should give us a moment of pause. Do Lewis or Bonhoeffer need to be evangelical for us to benefit from them? Was Augustine, arguably the greatest shaper of the map of Western Christian thought, anything close to an evangelical by contemporary measurements? If Mark Driscoll can give Augustine a failing grade for his attitudes toward marriage while affirming his importance or Lutherans can concede that Martin had some issues with anti-Semitic sentiments ... or that Calvinists could concede (the Reformed Baptists anyway) that they think Calvin botched the issue of infant baptism then perhaps this should be a signal to those of us who identify is evangelical that maybe, just maybe, modern American evangelicals don't realize that every evangelical will fail in light of the grading standards of contemporary evangelical thought.
The thing about the culture wars is that if evangelicals were actually somehow "making culture" instead of pontificating about culture they wouldn't feel any need to retroactively assimilate non-evangelicals like C. S. Lewis or Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Whatever "culture making" or "going upstream" entails it probably involves interacting with a bunch of ideas and thinkers who are not, strictly speaking, evangelical. We're not going to have any sway or influence in any culture if we are only committed to "thinking Christianly" as theology bloggers would have us do.
Evangelicals seem constantly tempted to focus on doctrine and politics to the exclusion of other spheres. If we're so busy fighting whatever we think the culture war cosntitutes we won't be making anything for the culture other than a reputation for fighting about the direction we think the culture should be going. A pastor I admit I like, Mike Gunn, once said that evangelicals are so eager to jump on what is wrong in any film or novel or creative thing that they rarely step back to affirm what is right about it. A recent example from the last five years I can think of would be the film WALL-E.
If you only see it as "too green" or "too critical of American consumerism" you forget that there are plenty of other positive things about the cartoon. It's a fun cartoon. In the long run which film will be more likely to influence a generation of people, WALL-E or Fireproof? When evangelicals produce things like Left Behind and other evangelicals debate whether or not its dispensationalist eschatology is even properly evangelical then we're stuck in a feedback loop where people make second or third-rate whatever it is and evangelicals debate about the doctrinal points rather than assessing the quality of the writing or art itself.
What is more the biggest names in evangelicalism are still basically nobodies in the grand scheme of things. History will remember Billy Graham. But John Macarthur? John Piper? R. C. Sproul? Ben Witherington? Most people don't even know about Spurgeon or Sunday or even Finney. We evangelicals have inflated our historical significance with respect to both the past and present. We are a team full of people who, to go by blogs and press releases are happy to say they are part of the fastest growing church in this or that region or who have published this or that book.
Read any blurb about any mover and shaker in evangelicalism and what are we likely to see? Let me guess--follower of Christ, husband of X, father of three to seventeen children, pastor at Z church and lover of a particular sports team. In other words, fairly generic stuff. It's fine to be married and have a few kids but there is a particular strain of evangelical that seems to think it's a big deal to sell yourself as being a "one woman man". It's like there's a tacit protocol that you have to mention your spouse first before you mention being a pastor so that people don't get the idea that you're so careerist that you'd sacrifice time with your family even though mentioning the wife is itself a careerist move within Reformed evangelical circles for reasons to simple to explain. :)
But it seems that those kinds of claims and counterclaims are what occupy evangelicalism. If anything the terrible paradox of contemporary American evangelicalism is that we want so desperately to matter ot the culture around us we don't realize that that is why we don't matter. The apostles did not set out to change the world but to proclaim the true king of the world. The cultural transformation that postmillenialists, reconstructionists and revivalists hope we can create if we just unlock the magic words and procedures to "redeem culture" for Jesus' fame seem to easily forget that all of that world-changing stuff was an accidental by-product of coming to terms with the implications of the kingdom of God and that the king in the kingdom is Jesus.
The fact that evangelicals seem so eager to retroactively assimilate the likes of Bonhoeffer and Lewis, whose concerns were neither evnagelical as such nor necessarily to "redeem culture" should be instructive. We are so hard up for people in our own traditions who have transformed society in any way we cast about for a Lewis or a Bonhoeffer. They at least "could" have been evangelical in some nominal sense. We can't very well retroactively assimilate Flannery O' Connor (Catholic) or T. S. Eliot (who converted to Anglicanism from Unitarianism and so couldn't possibly be construed as "one of us" in any evangelical sense). I'm not aware of any evangelicals who really rush to include Martin Luther King Jr. as part of the team.
Noll was right to talk about the scandal of the evangelical mind. We really have covered the bases on theology already and have competing theories about how to handle politics. But if evangelicals were ever supposed to "move upstream" and "redeem culture" the admittedly anecdotal evidence at hand suggests that evnagelicals will never really get into the making culture part in any easily observable way. Jesus did end up telling people "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation."
We as Christians so often want to see the city or society or whatever transformed by Christ and what I realize I and other evangelicals have overlooked is that often what this really means is "I want to see society transformed by MY faith in Christ." I hadn't stopped to think about this particular temptation until years after I was no longer part of a church that has talked a lot about doing all sorts of things "for Jesus' fame". I don't doubt we have worked toward that end ... but the thing about temptation is that it comes to us most often as an add-on to what Christ has called us to rather than an outright substitute. Fundamentalists have been saying for decades that apostates like Bonhoeffer and Lewis are popular with evangelicals because evangelicals are just worldly losers. The extent to which evangelicals keep trying to retroactively assimilate people who are by contemporary evangelical standards fairly liberal suggests that the fundamentalists are at least half-way right.
a very late Christmas present gives me an idea
My brother gave me the book Battles of the Bible. This is a very cool Christmas gift. My brother and I have both been interested in military history for a while, he much more so than me. Well, we've been talking over the years about the military history of the Bible and in one of those not-quite-surprising paradoxes secular military historians have a habit of taking the Bible as history more seriously than most biblical scholars? Why?
Not because soldiers are necessarily believers but because when the oldest coherent battles are described as having been in that strategic stretch of semi-arable land connecting three continents it's sort of the pit-stop of every would-be global empire. Anyone who lives there will have to get used to constantly fighting military campaigns and being the playground for other empires fighting each other in military campaigns.
See in the abstract we can read biblical narratives about how such and such a king didn't trust in the Lord and made an alliance with so and so but we have to keep in mind the geographic and military realities of the time and place. Spiritualizing the content about how individual Christians should trust God to be faithful is pretty useless not because we shouldn't trust God but because if we fail to appreciate the terrain of the Promised Land we fail to appreciate the very real reasons Israelite leaders were tempted to the alliances they were tempted to.
When Christians say God doesn't give you anything you can't handle they need to put their crack pipes down and consider the military situation Israel inevitably found itself in over and over again. God CONSTANTLY asked the impossible of them but that impossible came in the form of "Trust me to do what you can't possibly do for yourself." If we don't appreciate the military realities of what God asked of Israel and, equally important, how and why Israel habitually failed then we risk misunderstanding how our temptations are, as the scriptures say, nothing except that which is common to all men.
But I still have that big project on the DCAU to work on amid a constantly rescheduled "Christmas" event. Just because my brother managed to get me a present doesn't mean the family Christmas even has actually happened yet.
Not because soldiers are necessarily believers but because when the oldest coherent battles are described as having been in that strategic stretch of semi-arable land connecting three continents it's sort of the pit-stop of every would-be global empire. Anyone who lives there will have to get used to constantly fighting military campaigns and being the playground for other empires fighting each other in military campaigns.
See in the abstract we can read biblical narratives about how such and such a king didn't trust in the Lord and made an alliance with so and so but we have to keep in mind the geographic and military realities of the time and place. Spiritualizing the content about how individual Christians should trust God to be faithful is pretty useless not because we shouldn't trust God but because if we fail to appreciate the terrain of the Promised Land we fail to appreciate the very real reasons Israelite leaders were tempted to the alliances they were tempted to.
When Christians say God doesn't give you anything you can't handle they need to put their crack pipes down and consider the military situation Israel inevitably found itself in over and over again. God CONSTANTLY asked the impossible of them but that impossible came in the form of "Trust me to do what you can't possibly do for yourself." If we don't appreciate the military realities of what God asked of Israel and, equally important, how and why Israel habitually failed then we risk misunderstanding how our temptations are, as the scriptures say, nothing except that which is common to all men.
But I still have that big project on the DCAU to work on amid a constantly rescheduled "Christmas" event. Just because my brother managed to get me a present doesn't mean the family Christmas even has actually happened yet.
Monday, January 17, 2011
useless note about the pending Spiderman relaunch
Casting Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy will be for naught if you script a Gwen Stacy as dithering and pathetic as the way Stan Lee wrote her most of the time. Let's face it, Stan Lee only REALLY wrote two tropes of women, the slutty party girl and the clingy, dependent weeper. There are variations between these two poles but they were the ones with superpowers and the powers could be typologies for other issues. The Invisible Girl, eh? Anyway, despite the fact that Stone was a charmer in Zombieland and is a promising young actress Gwen Stacy won't be too interesting if she's written as poorly as she generally was. On the other hand, Mary Jane was profoundly self-absorbed and annoying as written by Stan the Man. Here's hoping that whatever we get with the Stacys transcends the source material (though Captain Stacy was a fun character, Stan Lee wrote one-note women but his ability to write multi-faceted MALE characters is solid). End of useless rant.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
HT Practical Theology for Women: The Terrible Sin of Eisigesis
http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2011/01/terrible-sin-of-eisigesis.html
Wendy at Practical Theology for Women has a nice new entry on eisigesis and why it is one of the most terrible things Christian teachers and preachers can do. In the words of someone who ostentatiously exemplified the problem himself, eisigesis is where you put yourself above scripture rather than putting yourself under the scriptures. The irony of such a man actually being guilty of that himself having told others not to do it would be funny if the abuse of the scriptures themselves were not so terrible.
I myself came to a point where I fielded a question on behalf of someone about a biblical text and how a Christian used the text. I concluded the Christian had grossly abused the biblical text and then realized that the pastor at my church had actually been guilty of an equally gross misuse of the scriptures. One misused scripture in one sermon I could dismiss as an honest mistake. A six month series of transforming biblical books into springboards for soap-boxing about contemporary social and cultural or annual report presentations issues was not something I could overlook so readily.
Here's the thing, I believe that eisigesis is to some extent inevitable and will reveal to you HOW you have a low view of certain scriptures. Notice I'm not saying that it proves you have a low view of scripture as a whole. Some of the worst eisigesis I've ever seen in my life has been committed by people who profess the highest view of the scriptures as a whole. A person who professes the inerrancy of the Bible and the necessity of believing the truth of the scriptures can still say "the gift of God is without recall" and sincerely believe that means that a person will have the spiritual gift of prophecy for life even though there's absolutely nothing about the context in which the apostle wrote that suggests such a thing.
In fact you are most likely to delude yourself into abusing God's word by telling yourself you have a high view of scripture and thereby excuse yourself from the abuses you commit and the negligence you pay to certain genres of the Bible. There is no greater way to fool yourself into thinking you are handling the scriptures well than to convince yourself of your high view of scripture as a whole. What about the parts of the Bible you don't immerse yourself in because they seem too boring, because they seem too emotionally odd, because they seem offensive, because they seem irrelevant? Do you REALLY read the geneaologies in Chronicles and sense that the Spirit is telling you that it is really important for everyone in the church who calls that church home to step up and become members? If so that's a good bit of eisigesis there. If you think that you're even in the story of the Bible as an individual you may just be missing the point of the scriptures.
As a pastor once explained it to me, eisigesis most often happens when you simply skip the process of exegesis and try to get into hermeneutics. In other words your desire to compel the biblical text to mean something practical and significant or life-changing for you or someone else right now trumps all considerations of what that biblical text actually says. Many a preacher and Christian who may be described as "just preaching what's in the Bible" has really been giving you what he/she THINKS the Bible says without getting into the actual reasons for it. I've been a Christian my whole life and I'll admit that there are many moments when I'm poring through Numbers where I realize a huge chunk of that biblical text doesn't seem to connect to my current life. If I attempt to read a biblical passage and take from that passage that God has made a promise to me as an individual then I'm missing the corporate nature of scriptural communication. The scriptures were given to, for, by, and through God's people over times and places. The temptation to make a biblical text about you is, in some sense, understandable because in Christ the scriptures are given for your encouragement and your faith.
But this does not mean that just because the fifth chapter of Proverbs tells you to enjoy the wife of your youth that that actually applies to you at all. The first reasons is that you may not be married in a near-Eastern village. The second reason is that you may be a woman who isn't married or has a husband and so the appelation of Proverbs 5 is less direct. The third reason may be that you're a child who hasn't even hit puberty yet and so that passage is useless to you. All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching provided you understand that it is given for God's people and not necessarily to YOU.
A secular author I read years ago said that one thing the Bible does like no other book is invite you to be part of the story simply by virtue of reading it. This man was not a believer of any stripe but he immediately grasped the power of this appeal. The power of this appeal, however, is also the most frequent temptation to eisigesis in the life of a Christian. Eisigesis is not just a sin committed by Christian cults and heretics, it is also a sin committed by actual Christians. The first and most important step toward avoiding this sin in your life is to recognize how powerfully capable you are of committing it even after you think you know what it is. I don't care how greatly you affirm sola scriptura and the inerrancy of scripture. As I've said before, the worst offenders in eisigesis I've ever met have been the ones who most loudly protest that they affirm these things.
Wendy at Practical Theology for Women has a nice new entry on eisigesis and why it is one of the most terrible things Christian teachers and preachers can do. In the words of someone who ostentatiously exemplified the problem himself, eisigesis is where you put yourself above scripture rather than putting yourself under the scriptures. The irony of such a man actually being guilty of that himself having told others not to do it would be funny if the abuse of the scriptures themselves were not so terrible.
I myself came to a point where I fielded a question on behalf of someone about a biblical text and how a Christian used the text. I concluded the Christian had grossly abused the biblical text and then realized that the pastor at my church had actually been guilty of an equally gross misuse of the scriptures. One misused scripture in one sermon I could dismiss as an honest mistake. A six month series of transforming biblical books into springboards for soap-boxing about contemporary social and cultural or annual report presentations issues was not something I could overlook so readily.
Here's the thing, I believe that eisigesis is to some extent inevitable and will reveal to you HOW you have a low view of certain scriptures. Notice I'm not saying that it proves you have a low view of scripture as a whole. Some of the worst eisigesis I've ever seen in my life has been committed by people who profess the highest view of the scriptures as a whole. A person who professes the inerrancy of the Bible and the necessity of believing the truth of the scriptures can still say "the gift of God is without recall" and sincerely believe that means that a person will have the spiritual gift of prophecy for life even though there's absolutely nothing about the context in which the apostle wrote that suggests such a thing.
In fact you are most likely to delude yourself into abusing God's word by telling yourself you have a high view of scripture and thereby excuse yourself from the abuses you commit and the negligence you pay to certain genres of the Bible. There is no greater way to fool yourself into thinking you are handling the scriptures well than to convince yourself of your high view of scripture as a whole. What about the parts of the Bible you don't immerse yourself in because they seem too boring, because they seem too emotionally odd, because they seem offensive, because they seem irrelevant? Do you REALLY read the geneaologies in Chronicles and sense that the Spirit is telling you that it is really important for everyone in the church who calls that church home to step up and become members? If so that's a good bit of eisigesis there. If you think that you're even in the story of the Bible as an individual you may just be missing the point of the scriptures.
As a pastor once explained it to me, eisigesis most often happens when you simply skip the process of exegesis and try to get into hermeneutics. In other words your desire to compel the biblical text to mean something practical and significant or life-changing for you or someone else right now trumps all considerations of what that biblical text actually says. Many a preacher and Christian who may be described as "just preaching what's in the Bible" has really been giving you what he/she THINKS the Bible says without getting into the actual reasons for it. I've been a Christian my whole life and I'll admit that there are many moments when I'm poring through Numbers where I realize a huge chunk of that biblical text doesn't seem to connect to my current life. If I attempt to read a biblical passage and take from that passage that God has made a promise to me as an individual then I'm missing the corporate nature of scriptural communication. The scriptures were given to, for, by, and through God's people over times and places. The temptation to make a biblical text about you is, in some sense, understandable because in Christ the scriptures are given for your encouragement and your faith.
But this does not mean that just because the fifth chapter of Proverbs tells you to enjoy the wife of your youth that that actually applies to you at all. The first reasons is that you may not be married in a near-Eastern village. The second reason is that you may be a woman who isn't married or has a husband and so the appelation of Proverbs 5 is less direct. The third reason may be that you're a child who hasn't even hit puberty yet and so that passage is useless to you. All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching provided you understand that it is given for God's people and not necessarily to YOU.
A secular author I read years ago said that one thing the Bible does like no other book is invite you to be part of the story simply by virtue of reading it. This man was not a believer of any stripe but he immediately grasped the power of this appeal. The power of this appeal, however, is also the most frequent temptation to eisigesis in the life of a Christian. Eisigesis is not just a sin committed by Christian cults and heretics, it is also a sin committed by actual Christians. The first and most important step toward avoiding this sin in your life is to recognize how powerfully capable you are of committing it even after you think you know what it is. I don't care how greatly you affirm sola scriptura and the inerrancy of scripture. As I've said before, the worst offenders in eisigesis I've ever met have been the ones who most loudly protest that they affirm these things.
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