An Excellent Piece on Thomas Kuhn

I just finished reading Samir Okasha's chapter on Thomas Kuhn in his (Okasha's) Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction. Okasha is Prof. of the Philosophy of Science at Bristol University. This is an excellent little book. The Kuhn chapter, for example, is very well-written and clarifying. Anyone interested in understanding meta-scientific matters (e.g., What is 'science'?) will learn much from this book.

A Universe In the Life of Prayer - #2

This week I read some of Henri Nouwen's reflections on prayer and praying out of The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life. The person who actually prays, and lives a prayer-filled life, finds worlds opening up within and before them. Here are some Nouwen prayer-bites to illustrate this.

• "Praying means, above all, to be accepting toward God who is always new, always different. For God is a deeply moved God whose heart is greater than ours." (38)
• "Prayer is the act by which we divest ourselves of all false belongings and become free to belong to God and God alone." (39)
• "Prayer is a radical act because it requires us to criticize our whole way of being in the world, to lay down our old selves and accept our new self, which is Christ." (39)
• "In the act of prayer, we undermine the illusion of control by divesting ourselves of all false belongings and by directing ourselves totally to the God who is the only one to whom we belong." (39)
• "Prayer is the act of dying to all that we consider to be our own and of being born to a new existence which is not of this world. Prayer is indeed a death to the world so that we can live for God." (39)
• "God is timeless, immortal, eternal, and prayer lifts us up into this divine life." (39)
• "Above all, prayer is a way of life which allows you to find a stillness in the midst of the world where you open your hands to God's promises and find hope for yourself, your neighbor, and your world." (40)
• "Praying is not simply some necessary comnpartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in time of need, nor is it restricted to Sunday mornings or mealtimes. Praying is living. It is eating and drinking, action and rest, teaching and learning, playing and working. Praying pervades every aspect of our lives. It is the unceasing recognition that God is wherever we are, always inviting us to come closer and to celebrate the divine gift of being alive." (40)

On Promising

Redeemer sanctuary

If you promise something to someone, follow through. Keep your promise. If you don't you will lose respect and trust. And, if you are in pastoral ministry (and elsewhere, of course), you will lose authority.

Why would someone say, e.g., "I'll call you this week and we'll get together," and not call them this week and get together? They could have simply forgotten. But they may make promises to flatter people because it's all about them, and not the other person.

A promise - action = squat.

"Yes" + "no follow through" = "No."

When your "Yes" = "No" you will make the promisee angry. This is because anger is the emotion we feel when one of our expectations has not been met. They heard you tell them "Yes." This, obviously, created an expectation in them. When they realized your "Yes" actually meant "No," they felt anger. At you.

I have done this, in ministry and with my family. I've learned the hard way that just one duplicitous act can make me come off as an inauthentic hypocrite whose words mean nothing. Just one unkept promise can create a barrier that's tough to bring down.

I now counsel myself to:

1. Think before I say "Yes" to promising something.
2. Ask: "Is God telling me to say "Yes?" If so, then do it; if not, then use the word "No."
3. When I say "Yes, I will __________," then I will do it when I said I will do iot.
4. When I realize I've made a promise and not followed through (for whatever reason; it makes no difference), then I am to contact the promisee and say: "I promised you I would __________. I did not. Would you please forgive me." I've found that most people will forgive, realizing that they are as imperfect as I am. BTW - the promisee that I failed may themselves be a big-time hypocrite. That fact means nothing in terms of what I am to do.
5. Examine myself as to why I cannot say "No" to certain things, and instead promise people something with my "Yes." I think, when I do this, it is about a weakness in me.
6. I'll then ask God to heal my inner woundedness that leads me to flatter and placate people with a false "Yes."

Jesus says, in Matthew 5:37 (The Message): You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say 'yes' and 'no.' When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

Or: All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. <sup>(Ib., NIV)

(If I have promised you something and failed to follow through, please forgive me and pray that God would change me.)</sup>

"Father of Lights" Promo with Darren Wilson at Redeemer This Sunday

Darren Wilson will join his Redeemer family this Father's Day Sunday and take time to share about his new movie "Father of Lights" and showm a promo video of it. (Darren grew up with us at Redeemer.)

Father of Lights Tour- Monroe

Sunday, July 15, 2012, 7:00PM - 10:00PM

Redeemer Fellowship Church, 5305 Evergreen Dr, Monroe, MI 08057

A Universe In the Life of Prayer - #1

Deerfield, Michigan

This morning I read some of Henri Nouwen's reflections on prayer and praying out of The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life. The person who actually prays, and lives a prayer-filled life, finds worlds opening up within and before them. Here are some Nouwen prayer-bites to illustrate this.

• "A spiritual life without prayer is like the Gospel without Christ." (32)
• "To pray means to think and live in the presence of God." (32)
• "True prayer embraces the whole world, not just the small part where we live." (35)
• "The practice of contemplative prayer is the discipline by which we begin to see God in our heart... God speaks to God, Spirit speaks to Spirit, heart speaks to heart. Contemplation, therefore, is a participation in this divine self-recognition." (35) [This is the language of Trinitarian theism, and John 14-15-16. Jesus invites us to enter into the Big Dance of Father-Son-Spirit. We fellowship and are empowered within the perichoretic union.]
• "Prayer is the bridge between my unconscious and conscious life. Prayer connects my mind with my heart, my will with my passions, my brain with my belly. Prayer is the way to let the life-giving Spirit of God penetrate all the corners of my being. Prayer is the divine instrument of my wholeness, unity, and inner peace." (35-36)
• "To pray is to unite ourselves with Jesus and lift up the whole world through him to God in a cry for forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, and mercy. To pray, therefore, is to connect whatever human struggle of pain we encounter - whether starvation, torture, displacement of peoples, or any form of physical and mental anguish - with the gentle and humble heart of Jesus." (36)
• "Prayer is leading every sorrow to the source of all healing; it is letting the warmth of Jesus' love melt the cold anger of resentment; it is opening a space where joy replaces sadness, mercy supplants bitterness, love displaces fear, gentleness and care overcome hatred and indifference." (36)

Carve out time today to get alone with God and pray.

Marriage Is About the Bond

One of my favorite Bruce Cockburn songs, which I've always wanted to sing at a wedding but have not, is "What About the Bond?"

What about the bond?
What about the mystical unity?
What about the bond?
Sealed in the loving presence of the Father.

Cockburn's song has a great groove, and represents the historical meaning of marriage. To marry is to vow something to the other person. One says, "I will never, ever, abandon you." That...  is very powerful... During a wedding ceremony I have sometimes asked the couple, "Do you really mean this? Are you a man, and a woman, of your word?"

A vow is different than a contract. With legal help we may be able to get out of a contract. But to vow is to make a bond. Like a welder joins two pieces of metal together. (See "A Wedding Is a Welding") A welding creates a bond that keeps two pieces of metal together, forever. If one tries to tear away from the other and succeeds, great damage is done to both.

In King Lear, when Cordelia told her father that “I love your majesty according to my bond, no more or less,” she was expressing the idea that "filial love arises out of a bond of obligation." (Harold James, in Robert George and Jean Bethge Elshtain, eds., The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals, Kindle Locations 1341-1342) Today marriage has become contractual rather than covenantal. Harold James comments:

"Some go as far as to suggest that any other picture of marriage must be a sign of insanity. According to the Princeton historian Hendrik Hartog, “Today everyone understands marriage as an individual life choice, and as an event within an individual life. Though marriage continues to offer the fantasy of continuity and permanence (till death do us part), all sane people who enter into it know that it represents a choice to marry this person at this time and that if living with this person at a later time no longer suggests the possibility of happiness, that you are entitled (have a right) to leave and to try again.”" (Ib., Kindle Locations 1338-1339)

When I married Linda, I spoke vows to her that I wrote, and she to me. On that day we were welded together in the presence of our Father. Today, as our 39th welding anniversary is two months away, the bond holds. We're in full agreement with James, who writes: "marriage is a particular kind of relationship, which is not affected by the current or subsequent feelings or emotions of the partners, but which lasts until death." (Kindle Locations 1330-1331)

What about Cockburn's song? Citing Genesis 2:24 almost verbatim, “man and woman / made to be one flesh,” the artist appeals an understanding of marriage rooted in nothing less than the order of creation. This is a covenantal bond, a mystical unity that goes beyond social conventions. This is a bond sealed in the loving presence of the Father that cannot be abandoned glibly in the name of “moving on.” Life is indeed a journey, one involving near-constant change, but this is not change for its own sake. Change, if it is to be healing, must be rooted in and directed by a “love that will abide.” The bond must be maintained or all is lost, all is wasted..." (Walsh, Brian J., Kicking at the Darkness, Kindle Locations 3208-3212)

If you're tired of the all-too-human idea of marriage as a weakly held contract and desire something more, like a life partner, e-mail me and I'll be very glad to show you how to head in that direction. (johnpiippo@msn.com)

Depth People Bring a Message for All

Damsel fly

On the surface people are different. But the deeper you go inside people, the more we are all the same. (See, e.g., my ontological polarities.)

People who live on the surface of life and never allow God to go deep in them dwell on differences. People who allow God to search them out in the deep waters of their heart (Prov. 20:5) emphasize sameness.

Surface people have a message for no one but their own selves; depth people have a message for all people.

Everyone, for example, is mortal. All face death. 125 years from now everyone now alive will be dead, replaced by an entirely new population of people. Our mortality is an ontological condition that is universal. While it's true that teens tend to have immortality complexes, even the immortality complex is a way of dealing with the ontology of death.

People who allow God to search them out are brought face to face with cross-cultural, cross-gender, cross-ethnic, and cross-temporal realities like death. In Raids on the Unspeakable Thomas Merton writes: "The contemplative must assume the universal anguish and the inescapable condition of mnortal man. The solitary, far from enclosing himself in himself, becomes every man. He dwells in the solitude, the poverty, the indigence of every man." (18)

Here the Christian contemplative, like Merton was, becomes a voice for all humanity.

The James Ossuary Inscription Is Authentic



Tecumseh, Michigan

In 2002 the discovery of a stone burial box was announced. It made international news because of the inscription on the box which reads, in Aramaic, 'Yaakov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua.' Translated, it reads 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.' This bone box is, uncontroversially, 2000 years old. But is the inscription that old and authentic, or is it a forgery? And, if authentic, did this box contain the bones of James, the brother of Jesus? How very interesting!

I haven't thought much about the James ossuary recently. This changed today when I walked to my mailbox and got my copy of Biblical Archaeology Review (July/August 2012). The lead story, written by BAR editor Hershel Shanks, is: "'Brother of Jesus' Inscription Is Authentic!" Here's a couple of paragraphs of Shanks's reasoning (much of the article is his take on the forgery trial, which ended in March).

Shanks writes:

"Two world class experts in paleography (the art and science of authenticating and dating inscriptions based on the shape and stance of the letters) have expressed their view that it is [authentic]. They are Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne and Ada Yardeni of the Hebrew University. I would like to see any paleographer of any repute get up and state that Lemaire and Yardeni are wrong in their paleographical judgment in this case and then tell us why they believe Lemaire and Yardeni have erred. I don't think such a paleographer can be found!"

If the incription is authentic, what then? It still might refer to a different 'James' who had a brother named 'Jesus.' Shanks writes: "There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the inscription on the James Ossuary. Whether it refers to Jesus of Nazareth remains a question." Using Tel Aviv University statistician Prof. Camil Fuchs, "the likelihood of someone samed James with a father named Joseph and a brother named Jesus in this population is 0.0227 percent."

The Cognitive and Emotional Decline of Teenage Boys

Stanford U psychologist Philip Zimbardo's e-book The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It sells for only $2.99 at amazon.com (Kindle). I picked it up. It's getting a lot of reviews, and creating controversy.

Zimbardo is an excellent writer, and a good scholar (he's taught at Stanford, Yale, NYU, and Columbia). He's not an abusive writer, but looks at culture and interprets, to include raising concerns when he has them. Here's a concern from his new book.

"People spend a collective 3 billion hours a week playing video games. A week. Additionally, more than 174 million Americans are gamers. Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., estimates that the average young person will spend 10,000 hours gaming by age 21." (Kindle Locations 109-112)

Yikes! That's 416 days. Over one year. Dedicated to...  video gaming. In half that time the average college student can earn a bachelor's degree.

Welcome to the shallows. This cognitive and emotional vacuity is reflected in statistics such as:

• By eighth grade only 20 percent of boys are proficient in writing and 24 percent proficient in reading.
• Young men’s SAT scores, meanwhile, in 2011 were the worst they’ve been in 40 years.
• According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to drop out of both high school and college.
• In Canada, five boys drop out of school for every three girls who do.
• Nationally, boys account for 70 percent of all the D’s and F’s given out at school.
• It is predicted that women will earn 60 percent of bachelor’s, 63 percent of master’s and 54 percent of doctorate degrees by 2016.
• Two-thirds of students in special education remedial programs are guys. These effects are much greater for males from minority backgrounds.
• The NCES also reported that boys are four to five times more likely than girls to be labeled as having attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder (ADHD), and therefore are more likely to be prescribed stimulants, such as Ritalin, even in elementary school.

And what about porn?

• America is the top producer of pornographic Web pages, with 244.6 million, or 89 percent, of all porn Web pages worldwide.
• One in three boys is now considered a “heavy” porn user, with the average boy watching nearly two hours of porn every week, according to University of Alberta (Canada) researcher Sonya Thompson. (That's just the "average" porn-using boy.)
• One consequence of teenage boys watching many hours of Internet pornography every week... is that young men don’t know the difference between making love and doing porn.

As any sociologist and psychologist of culture knows, this new kind of "addictive arousal" is having social consequences.