“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.”

bonus quote!: Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
ibid.

Most interesting to me was an exchange which Assayas seems to not have intended – in fact, he quickly seems to “exit stage left.” But without prompting, Bono gives Assayas a lecture on his personal faith, what it is, what it means to him, and what Christianity is all about. It is straightforward, no rhetorical sleights-of-hand. Bono says that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the sacrificial lamb who died on the cross for my sins, and that he is the only hope I have in this life. He goes further: “Good works will never get me into heaven.” When Assayas challenges him by asking, “Surely Jesus was a profound teacher, but isn’t that ‘son of God’ stuff a bit far-fetched?” Bono gives a brilliant dissertation on how one can simply not take Jesus as a “good moral teacher.” That’s precisely what the people of his day wanted, a prophet, a rabbi, and so forth. Jesus would have none of it. He claimed to be “Messiah,” even though it meant his death. Either Jesus was who he claimed to be, or he was a lunatic. And Bono rejects that he was a lunatic; he was the savior of the world.

Good stuff.

For a Christian writer, the real challenge of life is not to puzzle the ultimate realities, but to live well in very particular social and domestic settings. The moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre discerns an Aristotelian trait in Austen’s recognition that virtues are formed, tested, and manifested within community. As Aristotle pointed out, this makes ethics a subdivision of politics—that is, it makes the question “What should I do?” a sub-question under “What kind of community do I wish to live in, and what is my place in it?”

For both Austen and Aristotle, the ethical life is status-specific. That is, to answer “What should I do in this case?” we must ask, “Who am I?” And this latter question is not a question about some inner ghostly “I,” but about the role and status I have in a particular society. Darcy must not only ask, “Shall I, who love Elizabeth Bennet’s fine eyes, pursue Elizabeth Bennet?” but “Shall I, with my name and status as an English nobleman, pursue Elizabeth Bennet?” When Knightley castigates Emma for her treatment of Miss Bates, he challenges her on precisely this point: Consider your position in the society of the town, he says, and the obligation that your position places on you to show kindness to an unfortunate (if silly) spinster like Miss Bates. Given the well-defined strata of the communities that Austen deals in, this is a more obvious question for her characters than it might be for us. But it is still a central ethical question. Deciding what is right is never simply a matter of “What should I as a human being do?” but always “What should I as a male high school student, or I as a wife, or I as a car mechanic, do in this or that situation?” This is not relativism; it does not mean that there are no absolutes of right and wrong. But it does mean that the absolutes have particular applications to particular people in particular circumstances. As a father, it is right for me to spank my children; as children, it is not right for my children to spank me. Only the most sophomoric ethics ignores that moral decisions are specific to circumstances, and Austen was no sophomore.

To put the point another way, Austen’s ethical vision emphasizes the fact that we are constantly shaped, limited, and qualified by others around us. Ethics is not just about individuals seeking to live a good life or about solitary decision-making trying to achieve ethical perfection; we are simply not isolated like that. Moral training is in the community, or, as Aristotle said, the ethical life is lived in the polis. Living an ethical life necessarily involves living in a community and seeking to benefit that community.

Regenerate Children

This is something I have been thinking about lately. Let me see if I can articulate this.

My youngest child is eight, she will be nine July 4th. She was baptized two years ago, after she made a profession of faith. We were credo then.

My question is how do we know that our children are regenerated? My obvious concern would be death at this age. My daughter is certainly a most godly child. But I have known children who, for all appearances, were Christian children and then grew to adulthood in apostasy (my 24 year old for one) and were obviously never regenerated.

She also desires to partake of the Lord’s Supper, but I haven’t yet allowed her to in our new church.

my response… and

During the past five years, I’ve been putting the mantra to a very specific test with astounding results. I hum the mantra, asking God for more real ministry, then following the nudge of the Holy Spirit, I ask a complete stranger, “How can I help you?” Many of them correct my grammar, but others just say, “Beat it creepo.” But once at the Atlanta airport, in transit between real holy ministry events, I walked up to a stunning divorcee business woman, wearing all sorts of expensive Italian accessories. I blurted out, “What can I do for you?”
“Beat it creepo,” she said.
“No, really, what can I do for you?” I said.
“I’m going to call security if you don’t leave me alone,” she said sideways.
“No, really, what can I do for you?” I said again.
“Oh, you must be one of those guys with the Jabez mantra,” she said. “Six others beat you already.” She paused. “Here’s what you can do then,” she said. My eyes lit up-it was one of those Christian sentence moments, I could tell.

She looked directly at me and said, “Be human! You’re too ethereal and ghostly. Your fingers aren’t even touching your briefcase, for Pete’s sake,” she said. “Grow up. Doesn’t the Incarnation mean anything? Life is more than passing out Christian sentences. Pure religion is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. Show me how to see the glory of God in the ordinary things of life; show me how to be faithful and find meaning in the quotidian; show me how to ‘eat my bread with joy and drink my wine with a merry heart’ like Solomon says. Show me how to raise children so that, from them, generations will rise up and count me blessed. Show me how to live life artfully. Show me….”

She kept shouting after me as I wandered off.

Douglas Jones, The Mantra of Jabez