I remember Dinosaur Comics.
Hungry
Have you ever been hungry without knowing it? But then you walked past a fast food joint and smelled all that good, hot, tasty grease, and went, “oooohhh…,” and then your belly went, “gruurrgh,” and then you realized you couldn’t stop to eat, you really had to be somewhere else, and you went “aauuggh”? 
Have you ever worked really hard one day, without eating much? Went straight to bed (just crashed, totally zonked – too bagged for supper and utterly exhausted)? Then woke up in the morning with a ridiculously empty stomach? I do that! I’ll stagger around groggy for a little bit, and then I realize that what I really want is to eat something. As soon as my head clears, I start to hear the voice of my belly and I know it’s time for breakfast.
We all wake up with a voracious hunger, a special hunger, every single morning… but not for food. Often, we don’t consciously realize that we’re hungry, even though that day we’ll be trying our hardest to feed ourselves.
But every morning, we wake up… and we need to have a reason to get out of our beds. We have to have a meaning. How do we satisfy this hunger? We try to fill it by telling ourselves stories.
“I’m going to be a great computer programmer like Charles Nutter or Larry Wall.”
“I’m going to get a beautiful woman to marry me!”
“I’m going to be famous!”
“I’m going to be famous AND rich AND live in that beautiful house I saw yesterday with my beautiful wife and seventeen beautiful children!”
Sometimes I lie in bed after my alarm goes off and I tell myself all kinds of stories about who I can be and what kinds of things I can do. Depending on the kinds of stories I tell, I sometimes get out of bed happy… or sad. I don’t want to be trudging through a random series of meals and classes in school, through a boring set of projects at work! I want to be building a tall tower! I want to be fighting to the end for a noble cause! I want to be standing up and doing something IMPORTANT and having people say, “Look at him, he’s such a hero!”
(In MY stories, I’m always the hero. It makes me feel a little less hungry, because a good story fills my hunger to know who I am, where I’m going, and how I’m getting there.)
My stories have a dark side. I’m not always a nice person in them. (Is it considerate to wish seventeen children upon my wife?) When I win my Olympic gold medals, there’s no-one beside me on MY podium; Did I shove them out of the way to get there? Do I have compassion in the stories I tell? Humility? Not always. There’s usually some anger in my stories, very often some self-pity. ALWAYS pride. Actually, they’re almost always exclusively about me! Pretty narcissistic…
You know what’s scary? I’ll act differently, depending on which stories I’ve been telling myself. I’ll hold a door for a girl if I’m today I’m a knight, and I’ll bury my nose in a book and ignore that same pretty girl entirely if that day I’m busy being a great scholar. It’s frightening that I can act so differently on the basis of a story… but this is what I actually do! And because I live them out, I’m bothered by the dark edge to my own stories, where I am often vindictive, proud, selfish, greedy, lustful, lazy or frightened. When my daydreams bleed into my life, they cease to be harmless fun. And they bleed into my life every. single. day. I can’t stop them from doing so.
I can’t stop them because I’m telling them to myself exactly so that they will bleed over! I need to know who I am, where I’m going, and how I’m getting there. If I don’t know that, I might as well stay in bed, because… why not? Who knows, it might be better! But better or not, I have to tell myself a story if I don’t want to be comatose. Fortunately, the world is full of good things! I have a wonderful loving family and friends who are beautiful people; it’s not so hard to tell a story that gets me on my feet every day.
It’s a sobering thought that these stories are directing how I live. How do I know I that I am listening to and telling the right stories? ARE there “right” stories to tell? How much time should I spend listening to the stories that other people are telling? Are their stories better than mine?
You know what’s interesting? All people everywhere tell stories, and always have. Chinese and English and West African and East African and South and Central American – pygmies and peasants and aristocrats and beggars and sages and atheists and mystics, ancient, modern, and everyone inbetween…Talk to any anthropologist, anyone who studies people, and they will tell you that all peoples have lived and died by the stories they told themselves.[1]
When children are young, we feed them a neverending stream of stories. Just as with that other kind of food they eventually learn to feed themselves – and they will gorge on their own fare of movies, books, television, music (have you ever wondered why most of our songs have words?), playing pretend, and daydreaming. Sometimes they even write stories of their own.[2]
In many of the stories I tell, I’m a very small person in a very big world. This big world has millions (billions!) of people who are not me, and who are all telling themselves stories. But if I myself am bothered about the stories I tell, the dark edge I find on them, and the very little piece of the world that I help to shape, what is happening in the rest of the world?
Our human history is unfolding through the stories we tell: as individuals, as groups, as nations. Are Tutsi people my brothers, strangers, or enemies? Is one race better than another? Is my comfort more important than someone’s hunger? Does it matter that they’re far away from me and were born in another country? The shape of the stories we tell reveals our answers to these questions.[3]
It is terrifying how important these stories are, how essential it is to choose the right ones. This isn’t just about my lazy Saturday morning. This is about the world. We are a world of hungry people, people who have to eat. And we’re feeding ourselves, but are we feeding ourselves good stories?
This is crazy! I look at the news and see stories about the obesity crisis in North America, how we are dying early because we need to eat better… but I never see any story about the starvation for goodness in our cultural narrative. Sometimes I see stories about tragic suicides and school shootings. But do I ever see a story about how the chronic evil nature of our own storytelling is leading to oppression and death, not only of ourselves, but also of the poor around the world?[4]
The fact that we systematically ignore the problem – that we tell bad stories – is itself the very proof of the point. And why can’t we stop? Why can’t we tell a story so good that everyone says, “We should stop being greedy and selfish and show compassion to the hungry?”[5]
I have a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with who we are – with who I am – and is inextricably tied to why, when I’m scaling Mt. Everest one-handed at quarter to seven on Saturday morning, I’m thinking of no-one but myself.
But can I change that? How can I get good stories inside me? What are “good” stories?
I’ve got a fair few other blog posts cooking with my thinking on some of these questions, and I’m interested to know how people relate to my take on things. Opinions come free! Please leave yours via the comment link below,,,
[1] It’s possible to talk about this using terms like worldview, narrative, and modern and postmodern paradigms. But I don’t like that language, because it sounds funny to me. I’m indebted to NT Wright for his comments on worldview, also Henri Nouwen, both as cited here.
It’s also worth noting that if you’re prone to mercilessly mock Facebook as puerile and inane, you should recognize that we are incessantly posting party photographs and statuses not because we’re stupid but because we all have an irrepressible urge to share stories with one another and to be a part of each others stories. Back
[2] From an teaching point of view, it’s interesting that some media are much better at teaching our children how to tell and write their own stories. I think it has to do with how much a medium helps us to do the hard work of imagining. Back
[3]Nicholas Thomas Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis Minn. : Fortress Press, 1992), 122-126 Back
[4] Yeah, those folks whose nations our nations systematically abuse and whose economies ours systematically exploit because they’re small and we’re big. The other 99%. We dump toxic waste on them when we think we can get away with it. Back
[5] It’s tempting to say that we shouldn’t blame bad storytelling for worldly problems – that physical reality has more to say about how we act than the fantasies we tell ourselves. Stories can’t be that powerful, right? A story can’t change anything, can it?
I don’t know about that; just ask Joseph Goebbels. (On second though, don’t. He’s dead and the stories he told are disgusting – sickening. They only really held sway for a few years, anyway.) Why don’t you ask a really good storyteller like Jesus of Nazareth? He changed the course of 2000 years of history, and, on the evidence, isn’t done yet. Back
Errors
The Captain committed errors. Thank you, Captain Obvious!
No kidding, the Captain committed errors. The ship hit a rock and capsized! I would call that a pretty big error, especially when thinking of those killed.
“Don’t hit a rock and capsize.” is pretty much point #1 on a captain’s job description. Sure, you need to administer the crew and get to your destination on time, but keeping the ship afloat is surely rule #1. If the ship sinks, it’s his fault. He was the captain. Others on the ship can be excused for ignorance or inattention to things outside their jobs, but he is the captain.
The Captain is responsible by definition. I know what the headline intends – that he didn’t follow procedures, that he made questionable decisions. But to say, “Errors were committed” is redundant.
To be fair, there’s a little voice inside me that keeps saying, “But what if he had a subordinate officer who was absolutely incompetent and kept him in the dark and made all the wrong decisions?”
But the office of Captain is significant; the honour of it means that you accept fault, whether it’s a fault of your decision making or the fault of passing on decisions to an incompetent junior. Or am I being too harsh?
It’s worth noting that the world of computer programming teaches us that we all make many errors all the time. All software has dormant bugs and defects that simply go undiscovered… until something changes and brings them to light. Often, disasters occur when multiple ‘everyday’ errors line up in a fashion ‘just wrong’ – the navigator dozes off just when the ship is close to the rocks which is just when the moon is covered by clouds, which is just when the duty officer steps away for a smoke…
For every disaster that happens, there will be many near disasters where six ordinary errors lined up together but not the seventh; the last camel-breaking straw is missing. The crew will say, “Wow, that was close” and either sweep it under the carpet or, if diligent, file a report, that may get read or may just get ignored.
I remember reading a report on the BP oil rig disaster. It turns out the concrete mix was inappropriate and the pressure test was performed incorrectly and the rig terminals were not constantly being monitored and … Any one of those might have averted it.
The question then, is almost never, “Were errors committed?” but “Which errors were committed and how bad were they? Were they forgivable?”
One letter closer
Forgive the “we’s” and the ‘us’es – this is cross posted from a school blog and I’m too focused on my studies to re-write it.
Here’s a funny thing. I study Christianity, but I live and breath secularism. In fact, I’m constantly being surprised by the pieces of secularism, big and small, that I find inside myself: pieces I have deeply embraced. Let me share one example.
Right now I’m studying. For better or for worse this comes with a lot of thinking about grades. Good ones and bad ones.
But what are good grades?
Now, everyone knows that good grades are higher grades: grades closer to the beginning of the alphabet. We learn this early, probably from kindergarten! (As we grow up, we do learn that our language is flexible and that the word ‘good’ can be contextual. Good grades for a smart student with demanding parents have a different alphabetical position than grades for a less talented student.) But “What are good grades?” is still a relatively simple question, one we can all happily answer. Simple question, simple answer, no?
Heh. The problem with “Everyone Knows” answers is that they are, at the bottom of it, an opinion poll. While opinions can sometimes be right, this depends on who is being asked. (I’m particularly proud of this brilliant deduction!) So what happens when you ask educational questions of a culture that refuses to acknowledge God, that clings to a rigid separation of its education from all things divine… that exalts godless education as the. right. kind. of education? Which opinions come back?
I already know the answers which come back, because they live deep in my gut. I have lived and breathed them for a very long time. Good grades are grades closer to the start of the alphabet.
Now, for Christians, the word ‘good’ has always been defined in terms of God. God is good. In fact, who is good but God alone? Every good and perfect gift comes from God. God looked on his creation and it was good.
Ironically, most of the time the Christian definition of ‘good’ overlaps with the culture’s, even in the most godless of cultures. Doggone, we just can’t help being made in God’s image! We all (so very deeply!) appreciate his goodness. It is good to eat. It is good to live. It is good to love one another and to bear children. This gracious overlap allows us to live together and talk together, even though we are using words that mean different things.
There are edge cases (corner cases, small, uncommon, rare cases) where our definitions clearly diverge… and these edge cases are absolutely, utterly crucial. Because it is good to live… but when is it good to stop living and die for the sake of something more? It is good to wear clothes… but when is it good to tear them in mourning? It is good to eat… but when is it good to stop eating and fast?
If we wait upon a nihilistic or hedonistic (a postmodern?) answer of “When I feel like it.” for these to happen, we may be waiting a long time.
These extreme cases – of Jesus in the desert (on the cross!), of men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of the man who sold everything he had for a treasure in the field – these extreme cases are absolutely necessary for teaching us how to live our mundane lives. Who knows? One day, if we stay the course and keep a loose enough grip on earthly sanity, we may ourselves be extreme…
But back to the mundane, which means school: historical and literary contexts, empiricism, and in Hebrew, more phology than I can handle.
Christians have a beautifully simple definition of “good grades”. They are the grades that God wants us to get. But… we can only know what they are in relationship with him. We have to talk to him, listen to him, trust him and obey him in order to get his grades – good grades.
To think of how we get them, let’s think about buying and selling. Let’s think of the man who found a treasure in a field and sold everything to get it. Of Bonhoeffer, who sold his life for his country, his civilization, and his faith. Of Jesus, who sold his life for us. Let’s think about what grades we’re buying and about what we’re selling to get them.
Are we buying grades close to the start of the alphabet at the cost of abandoning people God loves? (Good news, this includes us!) Are we selling shalom – our peace, our well-being, our wholeness – for the sake of getting one letter closer?
Maybe one letter closer to God is one letter closer to the end of the alphabet.
Directing Study
This is a post I wrote while procrastinating pre-semester study. For some reason I can easily burn three hours writing and editing whenever I have other work to do, but it’s hard to do so when I’m just hanging around bored.
It’s specifically about academic study but I’m sure it’s easily transferable elsewhere with minimal imagination.
John Stackhouse is a professor at Regent College.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!
Many moons ago, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas. (She prepares for these things, I don’t. I just run out on the 23rd and buy everyone chocolates.) Anyway, I said some Henri Nouwen would be nice. Come Christmas Day and… O joy! A little book bears my name, tidily wrapped and enticingly titled, “Making all things new”… by Henri Nouwen. He writes,
“Boredom is a sentiment of disconnectedness. While we are busy with many things, we wonder if what we do makes any real difference. Life presents itself as a random and unconnected series of activities and events over which we have little or no control. To be bored, therefore, does not mean that we have nothing to do, but that we question the value of the things we are so busy doing. The great paradox of our time is that many of us are busy and bored at the same time.”[1]
Heh. I wish Nouwen would stop spying on me and mind his own business for just once. Fortunately, I don’t have to read him! I also have a NT textbook called “The New Testament and the People of God” by N.T. Wright. This is just bursting with terms like “phenomenalist” and “critical realism,” which are handy for when Nouwen is emotionally too close for comfort. These terms are surely anything but.
Shockingly, however, by ”critical realism,” Wright actually seems to mean something simple that I can understand! He seems to be saying that we understand all things by weaving them into stories about life. He writes,
“Stories are one of the most basic modes of human life. It is not the case that we perform random acts and then try to make sense of them; when people do that we say that they are drunk, or mad.”[2]
…
“When we examine how stories work in relation to other stories, we find that human beings tell stories because this is how we perceive, and indeed relate to the world. What we see close up, in a multitude of little incidents whether isolated or (more likely) interrelated, we make sense of by drawing on story-forms already more or less known to us and placing the information within them.”[3]
Yikes! When they’re not spying on me, have Wright and Nouwen been holding secret midnight meetings together? I remember a long time ago my father commenting that our society had “lost it’s narrative,” which I didn’t really understand at the time. What he, and these two gents seem to be saying, is that if I do not understand the story of why I am studying – if my study is fragmented, random and disconnected from a spring or well of meaning – it will quickly dry up and become stale, boring and barren.
To put this another way, when I sit down to study and feel bleh and jaded, perhaps it is because I’m looking too closely at my study and not closely enough at Jesus. He is the one who tells the story that connects my study to something glorious. When I am cut off from him, I will feel depressed.
I wonder if this is why John Stackhouse urges focused, intentional study in his Study Skills Seminar. Knowing what I am doing and why I am doing it, it seems, is the secret to not wasting time and not being distracted. Perhaps this is also Paul’s idea:
Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel… –2 Timothy 2:3-8 (ESV)
Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. If I’m looking for a story in which to weave my studies this semester, perhaps this isn’t a bad one. Maybe, before I attempt a piece of work, I can carve out just five minutes to let Jesus (and Paul) tell me the story of who I am and why I am doing what I am doing. This may, of course, have the awful consequence that I discover I should NOT do it – that perhaps I should be doing something else. But it’s food for thought as a practical, tangible study habit.
Of course, if we we are called to suffering, perhaps that means I should get back to Hebrew and my review of the Qal stem and its associated morphology (Comes FREE with every gutteral!).
Peace be with you.
1. Henri Nouwen, Making all Things New (New York, NY: HarperOne, 1981),29-31
2. Nicholas Thomas Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis Minn. : Fortress Press, 1992), 38
3. Ibid.,40
Please come back in January
Both of you!
This blog has been neglected for the past little bit and for the next two weeks it will be neglected some more. Currently I am without a laptop computer, which has dealt both my writing and my internet surfing a mortal blow. For better or for worse, these are the lifeblood of my blog. Also for better or for worse, I am waiting until post Christmas to try and catch a sale for the purchase of a new little netbook.
I will say this, however. The past two weeks with no personal computer have been among the happiest I have known, final exams notwithstanding.
Peace and happy holidays and I’ll see you both in January.
Zechariah
Embrace God’s redemption; His day approaches
Writing is the new vice
Who’da thunk it?
It turns out some English professors are maybe possibly potentially writing more than they should. Could academics possibly be churning out papers that nobody will ever read? Not even other academics? May it never be!
It turns out there’s a software engineering koan for this (from sheep.art.pl)
A UNIX wizard hears cries of torment from his apprentice’s computer room where the apprentice is studying, and goes to investigate.
He finds the apprentice in obvious distress, nearly on the verge of tears. “What’s the problem?” he asks. “Why did you cry out?”
“It’s terrible using this system. I must use four editors each day to get my studies done, because not one of them does everything.”
The wizard nods sagely, and asks, “And what would you propose that will solve this obvious dilemma?”
The student thinks carefully for several minutes, and his face then lights up in delight. Excitedly, he says, “Well, it’s obvious. I will write the best editor ever. It will do everything that the existing four editors do, but do their jobs better, and faster. And because of my new editor, the world will be a better place.”
The wizard quickly raises his hand and smacks the apprentice on the side of his head. The wizard is old and frail, and the apprentice isn’t physically hurt, but is shocked by what has happened. He turns his head to face the wizard. “What have I done wrong?” he asks.
“Fool!” says the wizard. “Do you think I want to learn yet another editor?”
Immediately, the apprentice is enlightened.
If it is in fact the truth that there is nothing new under the sun, then writing is the new vice. Elegant summation, editorial work, and research are the new virtues.
The Internet is a great aggravating factor in all of this. In a time when archival was expensive and retrieval was a chore, there was a much stronger case for writing new stuff. Sometimes it’s just cheaper and easier to reinvent something then to try and dig up the original 
There are now fewer and fewer excuses for writing new stuff.
Present company excluded, of course.