...then again, maybe we are!

I got into a facebook debate last week with a friend of a friend who was offended by Protagoras' statement that "[hu]man is the measure of all things," often (as was the case that sparked this debate) used to open an introductory Humanities course. This friend-of-a-friend was consoling the mutual friend that he would just have to deal with it (presumably as part of Christian suffering).

I offered (with a glasses-smiley) that one could opt to be a Christian humanist.

The friend-of-a-friend retorted with a "challenge" for me to define "huminist" and "Christian."

I replied with the consideration (often employed by Christians in the academy) that "humanism" is simply a stance that humans are worth studying, and that Christians (of any definition) can join in this stance based on their belief that humans are created in the image of God.

The friend-of-a-friend has yet to respond.

But my answer still, of course, leaves the pesky first-day-of-the-semester quote hanging in the air. Christians have some reason to dislike it. After all, we believe that we are our favorite idols. And humanism without God (just like anything without God) can turn against God and, ultimately, against humanity. We might even be bold enough to say God sets the standards of the universe, and not humans.

Of course, I can never think of God's commandments without thinking of the two most important:

"1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself."

Then it hit me: What is the "measure" employed in these commandments? How do you know you've kept them?

It's us. However big a human's heart, mind, soul, and strength, that is exactly how much that human is supposed to love God. However much and in whatever ways a human loves him/herself, that is how much that human is supposed to love his/her neighbor.

Are human beings the measure of all things? That might be an intractable question! Even still, it's an interesting hypothesis, and seems to be true (in some sense) when it comes to God's top two commandments.

Ideas That Have Ruined Me - Follow-Up on "Going to Heaven"

I mentioned last week that I've been ruined by the idea that Christians spend eternity on the new earth, and that God comes to us (rather than us leaving a doomed world behind to float in the clouds). A related idea that has also ruined me (though not in my original list) is the thought that I honestly don't know what an unfallen world would look like.
We often make comments that suggest we do know what the restored creation will look like:


"I can't wait 'til heaven, when I'll be talented enough to sing," I read a friend's post on facebook once.


"I can't wait 'til God tells me everything I've ever wanted to know and I can understand it instantaneously," I've often said.


And my personal favorite was R. C. Sproul's off-handed comment in a video I once saw: "Entropy is a great little result of the Fall."

It amazes me that we are so self-derogatory that we think that what we perceive to be insufficient talent is a consequence of our sinfulness, or that having to learn is a mark of imperfection. If even God is described as "learning" in the Bible (yes, I'm aware of the danger of taking such verses out of context, and that's not what I'm doing here--hence the quotation marks), why should our process of learning be a source of shame?

[And I'm still trying to understand how the integral of (1/T) with respect to Q (because that's what entropy is) could be a result of sin... I suspect Dr. Sproul was simply reaching for an illustration.]

What aspects of human life (or the universe in general) do you often attribute to the Fall? Is it necessarily so?

Are Introductory Physics Problem Dehumanizing?

In my alphabetical album iPod listen-through, I'm currently in the middle of "The Eclipse and Reappearance of the Human in Higher Education," a series of talks hosted by the Christian Study Center of Gainesville in 2008. (Apparently, I need to clean out my podcasts.) It's been refreshing to relisten to these conversations (especially hearing the voices of people from Gainesville I haven't seen in some time).

But for the fist time, I turned the question of whether higher education is dehumanizing on my own field of interest: physics education. The first thought that came to my mind was the classic argument between physics professors and their introductory students about all these problems in our textbooks that ask students to ignore friction and air resistance. (Consider the comic above and the classic "spherical cow in a vacuum" joke.)

Students constantly complain that these problems are useless; physics professors insist that anything that takes place in the real world is too difficult for introductory physics.

While I make this argument every semester (Once, I tried to circumvent the argument by asking the students to consider an experiment on the airless moon; I then had to spend half an hour convincing my students that there is no air on the moon...), it occurs to me that one could consider the imposition of these artificial conditions to have a dehumanizing effect on the student.

Think of just a couple implications of a frictionless airless world: First of all, we couldn't live in this world, so our idealized experiments have no humans to operate or watch them. Second, we couldn't walk in this world, because friction is necessary for walking.

If you couple these implications with the stripped-down nature of the objects under consideration in physics problems (purposeless blocks on inclined planes that lead nowhere, spheres and triangles suspended from pulleys for no reason), you quickly find yourself immersed in a human-less (perhaps human-stifling) world.

I think I need to go revise the problems in my own textbook...

What should an ECC elder believe about the creation of the universe?

This was the question posed to me as an essay assignment (only one page!) at a leadership development class at my church (ECC).

 

I found this question very interesting not just because of its relevance to my professional life, but because it was the only question on the assignment list phrased in terms of "What should an elder at ECC believe" and because, in my opinion, it offers the most room for disagreement and debate out of all the questions on the list.

 

I'm pasting in my answer below.

 

Beliefs

An elder at Eastside Community Church (ECC) should believe…

1. God made the universe good.
   
2. God made the universe out of nothing.
   
3. The universe is separate from and dependent on God.
   
4. The universe reveals God's glorious character (including, but not limited to, His wisdom and sovereignty).
   
5. The universe inspires worship of God.
   
6. The universe glorifies God, even apart from the worship it inspires.
   
7. The universe was placed under humankind's care.
   
8. Humans, specifically, are part of creation, are radically different from the rest of creation, are created in God's image (in particular as creators and cultivators), and are the pinnacle of creation.
   
9. The universe is fallen.
   
10. The universe will be restored.
    
11. God's truth and nature's appearance do not always seem to agree.
    

Many of these Beliefs are depicted pictorially in Figure 1.

 

Applications

Based on these Beliefs, an elder at ECC should…

1. Actively engage and support the efforts of congregation members to understand, care for, and cultivate creation.
   
2. Affirm the significance of human beings, especially in light of our present day's dehumanizing intellectual and moral culture (which is desperately seeking an answer to this problem).
   
3. Assess present-day challenges (from the external world and from within the church) to these Beliefs and respond accordingly.
   

Open Issues

On the following list of creation-related issues, an elder at ECC should allow disagreement and encourage healthy, informed discussion among the elders and within the congregation. In such discussion, an elder (and all Christians) should seek to understand how each opinion can be seen to glorify God. To be conversant in these issues, an elder should strive to understand relevant scientific research & biblical interpretation and adopt the appropriate terminology.

1. The interpretation of quantum mechanics.
   
2. The age and development of the universe.
   
3. Evolutionary theory.
   
4. The origin of humans.
   
5. The origin of carnivorism/omnivorism.
   
6. The development of language.
   
7. God's relationship to time.
   

Figure 1. Pictorial representation of the Beliefs summarized in this essay.

-----------------------------

Your turn: What should a leader at your church believe about your field of study?

Strength vs. Hardness: A New Years Resolution for Mr. al'Thor

I received the latest book in The Wheel of Time (WoT) saga for Christmas. (Thanks, Amy!!) I've been reading it in gulps since Christmas (in the midst of prepping for the new spring term---that was a WoT joke) and am almost 300 pages into it.

There's a theme in WoT that has always haunted me since I started reading it: "Men become hard when they should become strong." The contrast (which is all over this latest book) is primarily illustrated in Rand al'Thor, the story's main character, who thus far has opted for hardness instead of strength.

What an amazingly astute and (I would say) biblical insight into the human condition! What a difference it makes in difficult times to seek the strength that God supplies via our faith in His grace instead of walling up our own defenses. And what a picture Jesus is of that strength, without a shred of hardness to be found.

I hope that 2010 finds Rand, and me, and all of us, seeking strength instead of hardness, faith instead of fear.

How have you seen this contrast make a difference? How do you think we can change from being hard to being strong? (And no WoT spoilers---I'm not done reading yet!)

The Terminology of Talking About Humans

In teaching The Parables of Matthew last Fall, I ran into an interesting question while discussing the two parables found in verses 44-46 of Chapter 13:

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

The question comes from the two possible interpretations of these parables.

One interpretation (the standard interpretation) is that the searcher in these verses is Jesus' followers and that the treasure/pearl is Himself. This makes sense, given the suffering that the disciples were beginning to encounter (thereby "selling all that they had).

The second interpretation is that the searcher is Jesus and that the treasure/pearl is His people. This interpretation also makes sense, given that the rest of the parables in Matthew 13 feature Jesus as the active party and His people as the passive recipients.

(Of course, there's no reason they can't both be correct, and one astute member of the class---thanks, John!---noted that, given the wording that follows, "The kingdom of heaven is like," in each parable, one could argue that the first interpretation is true of the first parable, and that the second interpretation is true of the second parable!)

I'll admit, that second interpretation is attractive to me. I like reading about Jesus being the hero in a story, and I like envisioning the lengths to which He went/goes for His people.

But that interpretation does lead to an interesting question: What does it mean, in the second parable, for the pearl to be "of great value?"

Proponents of the first interpretation say that, because of our sin and His self-sufficiency, God has no need of us, and therefore doesn't view us as valuable; Jesus, after all, in John 17, clearly indicates that He is going to the cross because the glory of God & His relationship with the Father is so valuable to Him. One of the key points in the gospel, to them, is the emphasis of the centrality of God in the gospel, and the supremacy of grace and mercy. While these are invaluable points, these folks run the risk of devaluing humans (and sometimes appear quite cantankerous).

Proponents of the second interpretation say that of course humans have value to God because they are created in His image; Jesus, after all, in Matthew 6 assures His disciples not to worry because God considers them valuable. One of the key points in the gospel, to them, is to help other see how valuable they are in the scheme of things, and to inspire them to turn to God to live out their created & redemptive purposes. While these are also invaluable points, these folks run the risk of inflating the value of humans (and sometimes appear no different than the world's self-esteem gurus).

I'm not going to claim to answer this dilemma! However, I think it's important to note that these two camps seem to be attaching a different meaning to the word, "value."

When this debate emerged in my class, I asked the debaters to consider what they meant when they used the term, "value." Did they mean worth? significance? importance? worthiness? worthwhile-ness? loveliness? When we realized we were at a terminology impasse, the debate died down, and everyone seemed to have something new to think about.

I think it's important that we pursue a clear understanding of our terminology when we talk about human beings. We are, after all, finite beings somehow created in the image of God and one of the greatest paradoxes (a la Pascal) in the universe. No wonder it's very easy for our statements about ourselves to be misunderstood!

When have you run into this terminology problem? How can seeking a clear definition of your terms help you understand what truths the Bible claims about humanity? How can seeking a clear definition of your terms help you communicate those truths to others?