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Nine Things the Church Needs to Understand about Art (and Artists)

Makoto Fujimura, “Still Point – Evening”
  • Art is not a separate category of human endeavor, like “business,” “psychology,” “pest control,” “education,” or “politics.”  Some men and women make a living by creative pursuits, and we call them “artists” (or dancers, authors, screenwriters, photographers).  But in the broadest sense, art is something we are all called to, as imitators of our creative Father.  Art is one way we experience life, and to pay little or no attention to it is to miss an entire dimension of human experience.
  • Artists are not special people—they’re just like you and me, with families, backgrounds, financial concerns, virtues, and sins.  Some artists like to think they’re special, it’s true.  They’re the ones who give “art” (scare-quote art) a bad name.  If God isn’t front and center as their Maker and Redeemer they’re likely to set themselves up as makers and redeemers of the culture, and with a whole lotta luck and the right connections, they might even get paid for it.  But church-member Michael who owns a share in the downtown gallery and teaches drawing at the local community college—and comes late to Sunday school and doesn’t say much—isn’t one of those.  He’s a guy with a particular vision and gift.  You should talk to him about it sometime.  Don’t be intimidated.
  • Art is not a matter of knowing what you like.  It’s a matter of seeing what you haven’t seen before, or hearing what you haven’t heard.  This isn’t teaching, exactly; art can’t teach.  It’s not a substitute for sound doctrinal exposition, but can act as a mediator between sound doctrine and life as it’s lived. Also,
  • Art is not a tool; it’s an encounter.  Bible-story pictures, chalk talks, extended metaphors serving as sermon illustrations—those are tools, direct and unambiguous, and they can be useful for getting a point across.  Art is by nature ambiguous and will affect each member of its audience in different ways, or not at all.  A story, a painting, a song or symphony doesn’t make points or teach lessons.  It sidles up to the individual and walks alongside for a while, leaving its companion a little more insightful or sympathetic, even a little more human, for that brief acquaintance.  More about that below.
  • Art is not an esoteric subject that only specialists understand.  Here again, some artists have muddied the water by creating a club of the like-minded for the benefit of each other—when they’re not stabbing each other in the back, that is.  Also for looking down on the rubes.  But most of us rubes can be taught to see if we are trained to look.  That’s one vital service artists can perform for their church body: sharing what they know and opening windows of understanding for the rest of us.  (Wednesday-night art appreciation class after the prayer meeting?  Why not?)
  • Art should be encouraged.  That appreciation class?  It’s not just for the ladies’ book club and the amateur painter, but also for the pastor and elders and their wives and women’s ministry leaders.  They should go.  And they should ask questions.*
  • Art, like everything else, stands in need of redemption.  That’s where artists need the church, as much as the church needs them.
  • Art can’t do everything (like teach or preach).  But what it can do, it does like nothing else: 1) awaken the imagination—the “bright wings” that gild ordinary experience; 2) illuminate what we already know, and breathe life into propositional truth; 3) unify the mind and heart.
  • Art is for all Christians, who are equipped to know, better than the secular-minded, what it’s for.  They just need to better understand what it is.

___________________________________________

*Come to think of it, the whole church would benefit if some time were set aside, once/quarter or once/month, for members to share about their profession: what it entails, how it benefits the community, how they do it for the glory of God, and how they might do it better.   Retired people and stay-at-home moms, too!  Think how much better we could know and encourage one another if we knew what occupied 1/3 of a brother’s or sister’s time!

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Sad Kids

At National Review, Mona Charon writes about an extensive study reported in the journal Translational Psychiatry: “Sex differences in recent first-onset depression in an epidemiological sample of adolescents.”  (Here’s an abstract of the study)  The sex difference findings are interesting—teen girls are twice as likely as boys to feel depressed—but the real punch to the gut is in the sheer numbers of kids who manifest severe anxiety, depression, and other forms of mental illness: about one in four.

Could this be due to more awareness of mental health issues, and better reporting? Less stigma or ignorance about depression, or even increased self-dramatizing among teens?  Maybe a little, but a pediatrician responding the Charon’s column on another website added an informal statistic that makes it real.  While reading, he checked his phone for the current status of the Emergency Department in the children’s hospital where he worked.  At that moment, 28% of patients were there for “suicidal ideation.”  “What Mona Charon writes about is the lived experience of every children’s hospital around . . . This is a national crisis.”

People were less depressed during the Great Depression.

People were less depressed during the Great Depression.

The two obvious questions are Why is this happening now? and What should we do?

As to why, social media, family breakdown, economic anxiety, political turmoil (it’s Trump’s fault!), and education all come in for blame.  But what do kids need that they’re not getting? Pretty much the same things we all need, which are

  • Meaningful relationships.  I would trace most of our social problems to no-fault divorce, which made the most essential social bond a matter of personal preference.  Since then, children have had the rug pulled out from under them.  Single-parenting is a huge predictor of all kinds of negatives, from low school performance to relationship failures in adulthood.  In the teen years, when kids begin the transition from parental relationships to peers and others (which should eventually lead to stable marriages of their own), social media is lurking for them.  Instead of bonding with friends, they bond with their devices.  Their real friends are their phones.
  • Meaningful education.  Somewhere in the early 20th century, public education began to divorce brains from souls.  Reductionism took over: humans can dream up whatever metaphysical system they want in their spare time, but at school, we’re all utilitarians.  Transcendence has no place in a melting-pot schoolhouse where not everybody shares the same religion or philosophy.  This wasn’t so obvious in my southern-culture elementary school, with our morning devotionals and music classes, but the trend was in place–it’s the subject of The Abolition of Man, a brief treatise that C. S. Lewis considered his most important work.  The intense focus is on academics now, to the detriment of the arts and even recess.  That’s because we’re educating brains, not people, and the supplementary education kids used to get from church or their parents is less likely to be there for them.
Those three summer jobs were at least as useful to me as the classes I took in school.
  • Meaningful work.  Who likes working?  I didn’t.  My mother had to push me out the door to get a
    job after graduating high school—otherwise, she said, no college.  I didn’t have the best reasons for going to college and no clear idea of what I wanted to do, but it was that or a full-time job.  Horrors!  Summer jobs were bad enough.  And yet, those three summer jobs were at least as useful to me as the classes I took in school: practical experience, being responsible, listening to instruction, getting chewed out when I didn’t.  (“At least you didn’t cry,” said my supervisor after one of those times, just before I escaped to the bathroom and bawled my eyes out.)  Every legitimate job is meaningful because it connects the individual to his community and creates a sense of obligation (as opposed to entitlement).  You show up; you do the job; you get paid.  Less than half of Americans get jobs while still in their teen years, and when they do enter the work force in their mid-twenties, they don’t seem to know what to expect.  I hear about millennials who have to be corrected carefully so as not to ruffle their feathers, and who get frustrated after eight months because they’re not “having an impact.”  Then there are those blue-collar dropouts who simply don’t show up.
  • Meaning, period.  Q: What is the chief end of man?  A: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question #1)  What can beat that for significance in life and death?  There you have it all: relationship, education, work—and heaven besides.  Even an atheist, whose philosophy offers him no objective reason for meaning in anything, can find it in family, art, democracy, benevolence, etc.  But it takes a strong will and other advantages, such a good parents, to find your own meaning in life once you’re turned loose to live it.   And if your life ultimately means nothing, why not OD on heroin and end it sooner?
We despise our youth, loading them up with the accoutrements of adulthood without expecting them to act like adults.

And that’s what we do: turn them loose.  A 16-year-old girl gets mixed messages about empowerment and victimization, while she longs for a loving relationship; a 19-year-old boy is told he’s toxic and unnecessary, while he inarticulately searches for some dragon to slay.  We despise our youth, loading them up with the accoutrements of adulthood (sex, cars, phones) but not expecting them to act like adults.

What to do?  Rescue them, one at a time.

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On the Brink of Disaster

For the last week an old spiral-bound journal has been occupying my desk.  I like to browse my journals for ideas occasionally, to see if I’ve grown out of certain kinds of angst.  Here’s an entry from June 1999:

Sometimes the world tilts like a ride at the county fair when everyone on deck pretends they’re in big trouble.  In the last 24 hours I’ve heard that Y2K could cause a minimum of 18 million deaths (according to a survey of nerds—like they know anything), that a return of the 1918 flu epidemic is expected next year (according to Doris, who read it in the paper), and Ashley [my agent, pitching my first novel] hasn’t called or written, which could mean anything.  The last is probably why I feel myself sliding—there’s a terrible subjective slant to the news of the day.  Still, the world is askew, and my children loose in it; they like me have never known real hunger, want, violence or fear.  But the threat always seems to be hanging over them.  I almost wish it could all be over now, and end the suspense.

Remember Y2K?  My husband took it very seriously, which is one reason we have a house in the country with enough land to grow our own food.  I was taking it halfway seriously until a few months before it was all supposed to come down.  I’m not sure what tipped me off—maybe something about those 18 million people (at a minimum!) who were doomed right at the outset.  I just remember very clearly the moment when skepticism kicked in: Nah.  Not gonna happen.

Which doesn’t rule out the possibility that some worldwide disaster eventually will happen.  The Bible predicts something along those lines; we just seem unreasonably eager to sign up for it ahead of time.  Even the Weather Channel website often casts its prediction in apocalyptic terms—the word apocalypse occurs often enough in the headlines.  If not the weather, the next pandemic, super-weapon, or Wall Street crash is always lurking around the corner; almost everybody feels it, but doesn’t know how to think about it.

I wrote about “prepping” in my last World column, and there’s more to it than storing up water and canned goods.  The fact is, we’ve been on the brink of disaster ever since that misstep in the Garden—caught in a tangle of world, flesh, and devil with judgment hanging over us.  Something’s going to bring us down; we just know it.  Transhumanists like Peter Thiel and Sergy Brin, who want to improve the species with computer chips, can’t overcome our deep-seated suspicion of humans as doomed creatures, always at war with ourselves.  If anything should tip us off that there’s something deeply weird about human nature, it’s this: that we’re profoundly unbalanced but manage to navigate through life anyway.  That we long for peace yet push it away.  That we anticipate the worst to an extent we’d be too scared to walk out the front door if it weren’t for faith.

It’s faith that keeps us going—faith in science, in technology, in family or friendship, in some spacey spiritual dimension, or just in the sun coming up every day.  Faith runs right alongside our fears and doubts, a spiritual circulatory system that pumps through our consciousness from first to last.  Since the ebbing of biblical faith that began in the 19th century, humanity has seized on all kinds of belief-anchors, even belief itself. “Doesn’t matter what you believe; what matters is that you believe.”  We hear that everywhere, and don’t seem to realize it makes no sense—because what we fear more than anything, maybe, is meaninglessness.

But we don’t have to fear that, or anything else, “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard” (Col.1:23).  All faiths will eventually spiral into this one, standing firm after the shards of disaster have blown away.

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Spirit in the Qubits

Just when you think you might have a grip on Schrodinger’s cat, along come qubits.  I started hearing about this when a theoretical 7-qubit computer made the news in the spring of 2000.  Now teams are experimenting with a 20-qubit computer, and a 49-qubit machine is supposed to be just around the corner.  49 is the magic number that smashes the frontier established by classical computers (“classic” in the sense of classic Rock, i.e., less than 40 years old).  A 49-qubit computer will be able to solve mathematical problems far beyond the capacity of the swiftest AI today—specifically, factoring very large numbers.  Since most encryptions are based on factors of very large numbers, one practical effect of quantum computing is that no encryption is safe.  Yippee!

If I have my facts straight, quantum computing is based on two principles of quantum mechanics: that a subatomic particle can be in two positions at the same time (superposition), and that compatible particles affect each other even if they’re separated by millions of miles (entanglement).  Unlike classical computing bits, each of which can have only one value—either 1 or 0—a qubit can hold both 1 and 0, depending on its position and its relationship to other qubits.  Thus its capacity in combination is vastly greater and much more versatile than the clunky, value-exclusive bit.

Those are the facts, but what they mean and how they apply is beyond me.  Quantum mechanics gave us transistors, semiconductors, and laser technology, leading to personal computing, MRIs, GPSs, and smartphones.  Where quantum computing might lead is all the buzz, especially now that Google, IBM, and Microsoft (among others) are sinking tons of money into it.  Genetic manipulation is child’s play–why not just rearrange matter to create news substances?  Einstein was uneasy at the very thought of separated particles affecting each other—he called it “spooky.”  What if fooling around with subatomic consciousness takes us to the point where realities converge and universes overlap?

A culture that accepts “gender fluidity” shouldn’t have any qualms about shifting matter, but I suspect the idea makes most of us a little nervous, like Einstein. It shouldn’t.  No advance on the frontiers of science speaks to the reality of God better than the quantum revolution.  The basic theory states that two mutually exclusive propositions can be true—the cat is dead and alive, the particle is here and there—until the moment they are observed or measured, at which time they “decohere.”  It’s the observer who settles the issue of just where the particles are at any given time.

So, who’s observing the universe?  Doesn’t there have to be a conscious intelligence making it what it is?  Without intelligence, matter is a fog of particles, neither here nor there, randomly spinning.

Quantum theory is the basis for speculation about parallel universes and alternate realities and other notions that make the head spin.  To me, it’s the last nail in the coffin of the rigid materialism that began with the Enlightenment and ended sometime in the mid-20th century.  The theory of evolution is in thrall to materialism, but even rock-ribbed evolutionists will, I think, be forced to concede that something moves the earth besides physical mechanics.

What quantum reality resembles, more than anything else, is Spirit.  We are told that God, in Christ, upholds the universe by the word of His power (Heb.1:3).  Not only did He create, He also maintains.  The particles “decohere” when God observes them; the universe is particular and discoverable because all things are under His powerful gaze at all times.  If He were look away (literally or figuratively), it would all come apart.

The testimony of nature supports the testimony of scripture, and if you ever wondered about certain gospel paradoxes, the subatomic nature of matter offers a clue: Christ can indeed be all God and all man.  Salvation can be a matter of free will and predestination.  The Trinity can be the ultimate reality, and yet beyond our comprehension.  Faith and doubt can coexist.

It all depends on the Observer.

 

 

 

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The Age of “Horrific”

It happened again—suicide bomber blows up self in a crowded venue, taking about two dozen immortal souls with him.  There’s always some extra hellish touch to these events.  This time it’s the nature of the crowd: teenagers, most of them, the vast majority girls.  Girls in swift transition, trying to figure out who they are and what they’re worth, temporarily attracted to a pop singer.  I don’t know anything about Ariana Grande, but they would have grown out of her, probably, if someone had not decided they didn’t deserve to live.  Girls–screaming, bleeding, writhing, dying.

It was a nail bomb, I hear.  The damage would have been caused by hot metal propelled at bullet-speed in random directions, each fragment taking the path of least resistance with an excellent chance of plowing into soft flesh.  Any such wound is ugly; even the non-fatal ones could cost an eye, a vertebra, a scoop of brain.

I guess horrific is as good a word as any for that.

As memory fades, the adjective drops off, the incident sinks into the historical mist and takes a number and a ranking.

The problem is, it’s become the obligatory adjective.  In editorials, commentary, news reports (as in, “Police have made another arrest in connection to Monday’s horrific attack”), the word is a necessary rider.  At least while the blood is still fresh.  As the memory fades, the adjective drops off, the incident sinks into the historical mist and takes a number and a ranking.  Such as, “Third major Jihadist attack of 2017,” or “Second deadliest incident to occur on British soil since 9/11.  Don’t check my figures.  I haven’t been keeping track, and not many others are either.  Just how many major Jihadist attacks have occurred this year?  How does the Manchester incident rank in comparison with the London subway incident, the Nice incident, the Christkindlmarkt incident, or the Orlando nightclub incident?  I forget, but they were all horrific.

However–if something happened to my kid or grandkid, if someone near to me was ripped up by flying shrapnel at a concert or a football game, I would feel like screaming every time I heard that word.  Yes, yes, this is horrific.  You have no idea how horrific it is.  But stop saying it and do something about it!

Do you ever get the feeling that words have replaced actions, at least in the Western world?  Words can be powerful, but only when backed up—by deeds, by convictions, by rational therefore’s and so that’s.  If these incidents are going to continue, what then?  What’s a reasonable response?  Anybody got a plan?

If our words are strong enough, maybe that means we don’t have to do anything.

I’m not seeing one.  If our words are strong enough, maybe that means we don’t have to do anything.  I get it.  But let’s try to come up with another word, okay?  We’re wearing the sharp edges off this one.

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The End of All Beginnings

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he may be preeminent.  Col. 1:18

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

That’s the motivational slogan I remember from college.  It was a revelation: Hey!  Whatever bad habits I’d collected, whatever sins I’d slipped into, there was always tomorrow.  There was always a new start, new resolutions, a new opportunity to rise up on wings as eagles.

Gotta learn to fall before you learn to fly.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. 

You never fail until you stop trying! 

The best way to get something done is to begin. 

Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

And sometimes you just fritter away another day binge-watching or gaming or eating too much or exercising too little.  But there’s always tomorrow—until, as Professor Harold Hill says in The Music Man, “My dear little librarian: pile up enough tomorrows, and all you have left are a bunch of empty yesterdays.”

Pile up enough motivational posters, and you can start a pretty good bonfire.

But how about this for motivation: He is the beginning.  Not, he is at the beginning, or points the way to it, or fires the starting gun or springs off the block first.  The beginning is a person, not an inspirational word or a first action.  It’s word and action both, the “be” in “Let there be . . .” (light, sky, ground, water, sun and moon, life).  He is the beginning tumbles out in a stream of superlatives describing Christ, so brief and simple it’s easy to overlook.  But wait—stop, go back, and consider more closely:

He is the beginning.

Every pronoun has an antecedent.  This one has several: image, firstborn, head of the body, fullness, preeminence, beloved Son.  He occupies the shining Center of “all things,” the direct opposite of a black hole.  Rather than negation, he radiates affirmation, all fullness circling and rejoicing in him.

He is the beginning.

Present tense.  The gate of time stands open, and he stands in the threshold as humanity pours through on its way to eternity .  He is the goal, but also the way, the object of all those prepositions (by, through, in), and at the same time, the agent.  He does it.  He is it, yesterday and forever, and always today.

He is the beginning.

I used to love beginnings (plural).  At the start of the school year, it was all about sharpening new pencils and drawing up a schedule.  On New Years Day, taking a deep breath and calculating resolutions.  In the hospital with a brand-new baby, making promises no one can keep.  You know what happens.  The pencils grow dull and chewed-upon, schedules and resolutions don’t hold up even for a week, babies grow into individuals and stride off in directions you never anticipated.

That’s the problem with beginnings (plural)—you know another one is going to come around again, so it’s not the end of the world if you flub this one.  Until you’re done with school.  Until there are no more babies.  Until your last New Years Day, and it is the end of the world, at least for you.

But not for him.  He’s good for his promises and he knows where he’s going—in fact, he’s already there, talking about you.  Interceding for you.  Beginning with you, day after day: the only motivational poster you’ll ever need.

Take a deep breath, and begin.

 

 

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Strawberry Nation

Jonathan Edwards, in his famous paper describing the behavior of spiders, noted “the exuberance of creation,”  as though he wouldn’t have minded swinging on a thread of silk for a few minutes.  At strawberry season I catch a scent of exuberance, especially when the plants I set in four years ago decide to go wild.

A teeming city

under their leaf canopy, little green speckled toes

nestle together, wiggling with excitement,

drinking the dew

awaiting the day

when they will blush, sigh, and then

EXPLODE

into red—that honest, hilarious, innocent red

that stops just short of gaudy.

Under glossy serrated leaves they whisper

and giggle, growing sweeter, drawing toward

that exquisite balance between soft and firm—

that coy show of al dente.  Then giving way—

collapsing in a wave of juice,

the tart-sweet fountain,

the jaunty, flag-waving flavor that says

Strawberry (nothing but),

in a joyful, uncomplicated shout,

before collapsing somewhere

between tongue and throat.

So cute,

so cheerful,

so nothing-other,

nudging memory with

their saucy sweetness, a

nation of bright schoolgirlish glee

huddles below the leaves, and

calls you to come and find it.

 

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Mother’s Day: No Laughing Matter

I realized something for the first time when my kids were of an age for sleepovers and birthday parties: dads are funnier than moms.

I might have noticed it in my own house if it wasn’t right under my nose.  My husband was the one to get on the floor and wrestle, start sock fights, and make jokes when it was time to get serious.  That’s not to say I could never be found on the floor with kids crawling all over me, but there’s something different about mommy wrestling as opposed daddy wrestling–a certain lack of abandon and goofiness.  My daughter would come home from a party or church event with stories about how Cheri’s dad had made them laugh while driving them to the skating rink, or how Leslie’s dad had played a stupid trick that backfired.  It was never the moms.  Mothers could certainly be fun (I’d like to think I was. Maybe. Sometimes.), but seldom funny.

Several years ago Jerry Lewis made a controversial statement when asked who his favorite female comedians were.  His answer: None, because women aren’t funny. That raised a stink among women, many of whom seriously protested that they were funny—which kind of proved his point, in a way.  I would say that women aren’t funny in the same way.  They can be witty (as my mother was), clever, sharp, catty, artless, or charming, but there’s a reason male standup comics far outnumber females, and it doesn’t have much if anything to do with discrimination.  Of those few successful female comics, most of them are known for the mordant kind of humor: the biting, even bitter kind.  It’s because women, more than men, have a tragic view of life.  And that’s because of one thing: women have babies.

I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;

in pain shall you bring forth children. (Gen. 3:16)

The Pain

The obvious interpretation of this verse limits the pain to labor and delivery.  But the pain of bearing a child lasts a lifetime, and it’s a particular pain that fathers do not share.  That’s because of the essential differences between the two:

Fatherhood is by choice; motherhood by necessity.

Fatherhood is dogmatic; motherhood is organic.

Fatherhood is straightforward; motherhood is serpentine and multi-faceted.

Fatherhood is tangential; motherhood is central.

Fathers are distinct; mothers are intimate.

At the back of a mother’s mind lurks a gigantic fear that something could happen to her baby, even if her baby is 45 years old.  The world yawns wide for our children: busy streets and nefarious strangers, fast cars and bad company, drunk drivers, sexual predators, drug dealers, gang leaders.  A good father will experience these same fears, but probably not until there’s some pretext for them (no what-if speculations for Dad), and not in the same gut-wrenching way if they occur.

Also, from the day our babies are born we have to start letting go of them, and sometimes it’s hard to know when. And how.  It isn’t just a matter of teaching them to crawl, walk, run, and drive; it’s teaching ourselves to stop identifying with them.  They were us; how can they stop being us?  When does their behavior stop being our responsibility?  When do their choices no longer reflect on our child-raising skills?

The Gain

Of course, there are mothers . . .

And yet, a great irony: The more a mother clings to her child, the smaller motherhood becomes.  The true joy of mothering increases with every step your child takes away from you.  Conceiving, carrying,

bearing, and delivering a baby into this world is the beginning of the pain, but also of the gain: a mature human being with his or her own personality, gifts, and vision.  That’s the goal, and I challenge anyone to name me a better one.  No six-figure income or tabloid-worthy career even comes close.  Motherhood is a double investment in life: the opportunity to grow up again by experiencing its primary discoveries through the eyes of a child and the understanding of a grownup, and the chance to pay it forward with a human being who will make the world a slightly better place.

If your grown child causes you more grief than joy (and a lot of them do), first check your expectations to

. . . and there are mothers.

make sure you’re not looking for Mini-me: someone who thinks and acts as you do and agrees with 95% of your political and theological positions.  (If you actually ended up with a kid like that, you’re either very exceptional or your son or daughter got swapped for a robot somewhere down the line.)

But say your expectations were reasonable and your child-raising skills were at least adequate.  What went wrong?  Maybe nothing; maybe it’s time to let disappointing children become themselves, and answer for themselves. Trust God with them.  They are still human beings with immortal souls.  Yours will always be the first warm touch they felt, the first loving voice they heard. You pushed them out and raised them up—this is the great human enterprise, and mothers are right in the middle of it.

That’s not funny.  But it’s phenomenal.

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Back in the Lifeboat

Try this thought experiment:

You’re the captain on an ocean liner.  While en route to Europe your ship strikes an iceberg and starts sinking fast—so fast that the majority of passengers are drowned, and of the remainder almost all have panicked and piled into lifeboats that capsized or failed to launch or met some other tragic end.  A handful of passengers are left—twelve, to be exact—and one inflatable raft that will hold only seven (including you.)  Who would you choose to be in the boat with you?  There’s the brilliant but arrogant doctor, the young musician who speaks no English, the combat vet who hears voices, the muscular cage fighter, the alcoholic carpenter, the disabled tech genius . . .

Forget it.  As soon as that raft inflates there will be a mad dash for it, and you’ll be reduced to throwing out the weakest six.  Better bulk up, or you may be one of them.

Of course, the “Lifeboat Game, or Problem, or Exercise, was never meant to be a real-life scenario.  We heard about it back in the 1990s, when “values clarification” was an educational buzzword.  Nothing much was clarified, unless it was sneaking reinforcement for a utilitarian worldview, for the only objective criterion for a seat on the boat was the perceived usefulness of the passengers.  Take the drug-dealing doctor over the Baptist co-ed in a heartbeat, even if the girl was traveling to France for one last visit with her dying grandmother.  And what good is a twelve-year-old recovering from leukemia?  Unless you can eat him once he croaks.  Even as a theoretical exercise the Lifeboat Game was repugnant at best and destructive to human values at worst—if it’s still used in classrooms we don’t hear about it.

Women and children first! Oh wait–can they fix a leak? Fight off a shark? Perform an emergency appendectomy?

But a version of it recently surfaced in North Carolina, when a history teacher asked students to decide which four of the following they would allow in their bomb shelter during a nuclear attack:

  • A 35-year-old White male construction worker who is a racist
  • A 40-year-old Black female doctor who is a lesbian
  • A 50-year-old White male who is a Catholic priest
  • A 25-year-old Hispanic male who is a lawyer
  • A 30-year-old Korean American female who is a former college athlete
  • A 20-year-old white female who is pregnant, has a two-year-old son, and is on welfare

It’s the old “values clarification” shell game, this time with a racial/political edge.  Instead of, “Who’s the most useful?” kids also get to determine, “Who’s the least worthy?”  Because, obviously, if you pick the racist White guy (who might be helpful when it’s time to rebuild), what does that say about you?

The teacher only meant to provoke lively dialogue in the classroom, but real-life parents—both black and white—complained, quickly and loudly, and the exercise disappeared with apologies.  Parents rightly pointed out that there were better uses of classroom time, such as learning civics or algebra, but there’s also something creepy about activities that force us to assign value to people rather than ideas.

Because when we’re looking at functions, sexes, and colors, we’re not seeing people.

Because when survival is understood as the ultimate value, love, courage, and sacrifice take a back seat—or they stay aboard the sinking ship, to go down singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

But what’s the harm if it’s all theoretical?  Some theoretical alleyways should be avoided because bad things happen there.  When people are seen as units to be evaluated, not to help but to eliminate, pogroms and ghettos and extermination camps may not be far behind.  Not always, but never without the lens of functionality or race or creed.  We tend toward that kind of evaluation anyway; why encourage it?

Here’s an alternate exercise:

You love to cook, but your latest dinner party fell through when all the guests cancelled at the last minute.  Outside your downtown apartment are an Asian dance instructor, a Black single mom pushing a stroller, a homeless white guy, a gay couple waiting for the bus, a Hispanic nurse getting off her shift, and a white Christian homeschool mom with her ten-year-old son.  How will you persuade them all to come in and share your dinner, and what will you all talk about?

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Arrival and the Right Choice

Arrival, a science fiction movie about aliens visiting earth, is equally irritating and moving, but after some thought I decided the moving part has the edge.  Not that anybody asked me, but here’s why.

Irritating: So, 12 gigantic pod-like spacecraft land at strategic locations scattered over the globe.  Rather than attack at once, world leaders wisely decide to try to communicate with the aliens, setting up synchronized command centers and recruiting specialists, such as Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist.  Louise joins a team including physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly and travels to Montana, where the army has set up a base camp around one of the alien ships.  The plot follows Louise as she forms a bond with the aliens and begins to puzzle out the mystery of their language, meanwhile experiencing disturbing flashbacks.

It turns out (spoiler alert) that the aliens’ purpose is benevolent: they’re here to give us a useful tool that will blur the edges of time and help us see our experience as a fabric not a thread.  That tool is their language, which is visual rather than aural and spherical rather than linear. When Louise begins to understand it, she drifts away from her own linear time line.  Interesting!  But how is this a benefit to humanity?  There’s something about the aliens needing to return to earth in a few thousand years and so they’re passing along their language now to help things along later—but that motive almost seems tacked on.  The impression left on the viewer (okay; this viewer) is that the visitors have thrown the world in an uproar and risked mutual annihilation so that one woman can see one life in a circle not a line that will affect one major choice.  This kind of solipsism dominates our present way of thinking—the significance of any event comes down to what I do and what I feel.  What about the rest of the world?

Moving.  Maybe I’m being too hard on the creators of Arrival.  The classic technique of fiction is reshaping big, universal themes in intimate, personal terms (and Louise’s discovery did prevent the alien visitation from blowing up in everybody’s faces).  When Drs. Banks and Donnelly meet, he reads a passage from her latest book, which he happens to have with him:

He: ‘Language is the foundation of civilization.  It is the glue that holds people together.  It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict . . .’ (Looking up from the book)  It’s great.  Even if it’s wrong.

She: It’s wrong?

He: Well, the cornerstone of civilization isn’t language, it’s science.

No, he’s wrong, even though I suspect the distinction between foundation and cornerstone is intended.  Language is foundational, and Louise will be vindicated.  Science is derivative, the servant not the master, and life will be vindicated.  It takes wise alien messengers to teach us this, patiently trying to communicate while humans frantically run around, compare observations, recalculate their calculations, and figure their best chances for survival.

Maybe survival isn’t quite the same as life.  Maybe life is worth choosing, even if it doesn’t always occur in optimum conditions; maybe even if it’s tragically fraught and short.  Maybe the last word should be Yes (as, in fact, it is).

Think back to a Spirit brooding over the face of the deep, contemplating all living things soon to be.  History cries No!, recalling all the sorrow spiraling out from earth and sea and all that dwell therein.  Spirit says Yes, lifting bright wings into the darkness and flooding every corner with light.

Louise makes a choice that scientific calculation chalks up as wrong.  God, unbound by time, and circular rather than linear, makes the same choice. We can’t say it’s wrong.