Think, for a minute, about what Andy Goldsworthy does. He wanders out into the nature and, initially, spends time familiarizing himself with the space, its rhythms and the materials that are available to him. After this period of familiarization, which can take years and repeated visits (the best of Goldsworthy's work is around his own home because he knows the place so well), Goldsworthy then begins to work. He may find autumn leaves on the ground and arrange them, making a striking strip of color or fading yellows gradually into reds. He may impose some order upon the scene. This order might be geometrical, a circle or a line of flowers or stones. These sharp, precise Euclidean shapes jump out from the background of a world dominated by a chaotic and fractal geometry. But some of the order Goldsworthy creates might be more whimsical, like purple flower pedals threaded with a vine playing among the branches and green leaves of a tree. Or Goldsworthy may grind up stones to gather red pigment, then using that color to paint rocks or to turn a waterfall red.



When I encountered Goldsworthy's work my first thought was this: That is what the Christan life should be like. This artform is the perfect metaphor for how I should move and act in the world.

Here's what I mean. Today I'll wander out into the world (after I'm done writing to you). And around me I'll find all sorts people and all sorts of situations. It's a fractal, messy, and chaotic world out there. And its not all bad. There are beautiful things, like flowers, out there. But there is also sadness and brokenness, conflict and deadness. And what I'll try to do today (or what I should be doing today) is very similar to what Goldsworthy does. I'll try, given what I find out there, to bring grace and beauty into the world. First, like Goldsworthy, I need to take the time to listen and learn about the people around me. Who are they? What are their dreams? Where do they hurt? And then, once I know the materials and rhythms of their experience, I'll try to move and act in a way to bring beauty and grace into their lives. And I do this in a way very similar to how Goldsworthy goes about his art. I don't carry hammers, saws, bulldozers, and nails into people's lives with the goal of cutting everything down and building something artificial, imposed, and unnatural. Something I'd like to see but might not fit the person. No, like Goldsworthy, I carry nothing with me into the world. I just bring me. And as I work I don't use force to make "good" happen. My touch is light. I do not dominate, own, or control. And I only work with the materials around me. Which, like Goldsworthy, demands improvisation and creativity.

And, importantly, I don't control the outcome. Like Goldsworthy, once I've done my "work" for the day, trying to bring a little bit of beauty, peace, truth and grace into the lives of others, I can't control how it all turns out. I have to let people go. Just as Goldsworthy releases his art to the forces of time, wind, rain, and sun. I can't, by myself, hold all the brokeness together. All I can do is try, for a moment in time, to hold two broken pieces together in a way that is beautiful, redemptive, and hopeful. This "moment of art" rarely lasts, because it's not all up to me. I just act in a way that hints and gestures at what is possible, at that Beauty that sits behind all things.

And yet, there is sadness, lament and frustration at this letting go, this feeling of powerlessness, that things tend to fall back apart, that all our hard work in the lives of others seems to come to naught, that the mess of existence is too overwhelming, and that lining up daisies in a row can seem, in the face of human tragedy, a pretty futile exercise.

But that is where eschatological hope comes in. The belief that all these acts of kindness, grace, and beauty really do matter. That, despite appearances, nothing good and true is ever lost. That the heart of God is a rain barrel gathering every tear of joy and loss. That, one day, all will be well. In the words of Wendell Berry:

And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

You can forget, at times, just how strange the Old Testament can be. After years of Sunday School the text gets edited, tamed, cropped, sanitized, smoothed, and moralized. But when you illustrate every line of Genesis, as Crumb does in his The Book of Genesis Illustrated, well, some of the shock and strangeness of the text is bound to be recovered.

One of the things I like about midrash is how it goes looking for these oddities in the text. Rather than avoiding the strangeness midrash turns the peculiarities of the text into locations of positive theological reflection. Walter Brueggemann says that "the work of midrash is to focus on the ill-fitting element" within a text, perhaps even an element that "might be an embarrassment to the main claim of the text." By focusing on the "irregularity or misfit" midrash can create fresh readings by "exposing the oddity that destabilizes and questions the main flow of the text."

So midrash, as a strategy, looks for the "surface irregularities" and "friction" within a text. Why? To keep the text, and the God it describes, from being reduced to a system, an intellectual artifact. A goal of the text is to "resist" and "irritate" the modern mind. The text doesn't want to be tamed. It actively pushes back. The oddity of the text is like its immune system, its way of fighting off our diseased need turn the text into a syllogism and PowerPoint presentation.

Given all this, one of the ways Crumb's Genesis functions as a form of midrash is how, by illustrating every scene, Crumb uncovers some of the "surface irregularities" of the text. One of my favorites examples of this in Crumb's book is the shock of seeing the snake in the Garden of Eden.

You'll recall that, having tempted Adam and Eve into sin, the snake is cursed by God:

So the LORD God said to the serpent,
"Because you have done this,
Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life."

Here is Crumb's illustration of this scene:You can see how Crumb's illustration, like midrash, pulls out the odd detail. Specifically, if the snake's curse is to crawl on its belly then it stands to reason that the snake initially had limbs. Further, we also know that the snake talks to Eve (a very odd thing indeed). Given these odd details Crumb draws the snake as a bipedal, humanoid looking creature. Kind of like the Sleestak in Land of the Lost.

Crumb's imagining of the snake is strange, but that's kind of the point. The whole story is kind of strange. Which is one of the nice things about Crumb's work: his ability to recover the strangeness, to help activate the immune system of the text as it irritates and resists the modern mind.

Great article in the New York Times about the growing backlash over the use of PowerPoint in the military. From Elisabeth Bumiller's piece:

Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

...Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making.

I wonder how much church meetings and sermons are being dominated by PowerPoint? I expect quite a lot.

People: God isn't buttet-izable.

I've recently discovered the art of Andy Goldsworthy. I find his work not only beautiful but spiritually profound. In the next post or two I'd like to use Goldsworthy's art as a kind of metaphor for grace and Christian mission.

But first I need to introduce some of you to Goldsworthy's art.

A large part of Goldsworthy's art, and what he is most notable for, is simply wandering out into the natural world and using natural materials--stones, thorns, leaves, flowers, branches, ice--to create a piece of art. Sometimes the artwork is a structure or sculpture. Often the art is a pattern, a bit of order imposed upon the randomness of nature. For example:

An arrangement of autumn leaves:

Whimsical threads of color:



Ice sculptures:




Again, what is amazing about Goldsworthy's work is that he uses no tools and brings no materials with him. To make an ice sculpture he just collects icicles or cracks up the ice on a pond and, using the heat from his hands, melts the ice where he wants the ice to connect. Soon the cold air refreezes the ice and the joint is formed. If Goldsworthy creates a string of flower pedals he will use thorn and vine as his needle and thread. If he wants color he will smash up and grind rocks to get pigment. All the materials he uses are lying around him and, as a consequence, each piece of artwork is tied to its physical location (space) and season of the year (time). Some of the simplest art Goldsworthy does, practically childlike in quality, is lying on the ground as a light rain or snow begins. After a few moments he'll get up, leaving his outline behind:


Again, this is artwork and pattern that, to use Goldsworthy's word, "collaborates" with nature.

Obviously, this art is fragile and temporary. To preserve it Goldsworthy has to take pictures. And that is one of the most poignant aspects of his artform. Goldsworthy steps into the natural world, creates something, steps out, and then allows natural forces--time, wind, rain, sun, tide--slowly erase his creation. This aspect of Goldsworthy's art is vividly captured in this scene from the documentary Rivers and Tides:



Enjoy looking around the Internet at Goldsworthy's art. There are additional clips of Rivers and Tides on Youtube (and I watched it for free directly off Netflix). In the next post or two I want to use Goldsworthy's art as a kind of metaphor for the Christian life.

When you illustrate the book of Genesis the first choice, I'd guess, is how you choose to draw God. Will God be a voice in the sky? Or should God look like a person? And what kind of person?

Perhaps not surprisingly, in The Book of Genesis Illustrated Crumb goes with Michelangelo, choosing to illustrate God as an old man with white flowing hair and beard. This is, I'd guess, the way most people picture God: the Old Man in the Sky.

Interestingly, Crumb hints at how his image of God was influenced, perhaps unconsciously, by his own father. From David Hajdu's book review in The New York Times:

Early in his progress on “The Book of Genesis,” Crumb was asked by Robert Hughes of Time magazine if he was drawing God to look like Mr. Natural (the burlesque cartoon shaman whom he has long employed to poke fun at pop spirituality). Crumb replied: “He has a white beard, but he actually ended up looking more like my father. He has a very masculine face.” Both paternity and masculinity are matters of dubious value to Crumb, a wonderfully unlikely candidate to breathe new life into the founding narrative of masculine privilege and paternal authority in the Judeo-Christian world.

Crumb’s God appears, alongside the opening words of Genesis, spinning substance from a void that resembles a cosmic basketball in his enormous, hairy, veiny hands. He is a profoundly — almost grotesquely — human-looking deity, very much the sort of being in whose image vulgar humankind could realistically come forth. His nose has the elongation of age (and an implied proto-Jewishness), and it is dotted with deep pores. His brow is furrowed in a permanent scowl, unchanged throughout the book. (In one of the chapters about Noah, Crumb has God scowling even as he pets a goat.) He wears a long white robe and, over it, a longer white robe of billowing, gentle tresses that flow from his scalp and his face to what would presumably be his feet.

I don't know what kind of relationship Crumb had with his father, but if his depiction of God is any indication I think they had some issues. Crumb's God isn't very lovable. As mentioned by Hajdu, Crumb's God has an angry scowl permanently affixed to his face. Even here, when God looks at his finished creation and sees that "it was very good", he looks upset:

So what is Crumb up to? Is his God just an Oedipal projection? Some unfinished business with his dad? Or something else?

I think Hajdu is right in pointing out that Crumb has some strong feelings about "masculine privilege and paternal authority in the Judeo-Christian world." A hint of Crumb's feelings about The Old Angry Man in the Sky comes from his brief introduction to the book. In speaking about his feelings regarding the divine inspiration of the bible, Crumb states that he finds the bible to be an "inspired work," but solely from a literary standpoint. For Crumb, the bible is a fully human product. More, Crumb believes that the bible was used as a form of social and political control, a book written by men to keep men firmly on top. Crumb writes:

Many scholars, examining closely the tersely worded chapters of Genesis, perceive in them earlier and lost meanings and intentions, things that had been altered by the increasingly entrenched priests, and the triumph of patriarchy over an ancient and ever more dimly remembered matriarchy.

In short, it seems that Crumb's depiction of God may have familial (Crumb's own relationship with his father) and political (a critique of patriarchy) origins. And the two are often related to each other. Issues with fathers, male privilege and God can create a combustible mix. Legitimately so, as the Judeo-Christian world is solidly patriarchal. Consequently, Crumb's illustration of God is anything but "straightforward" as he claims. The God in Crumb's book is unattractive and a grumpy bully. He is oppressive patriarchal power personified. You aren't supposed to like this God.

Dear Reader,

Let me welcome you to my blog Experimental Theology.

One of the things I love about writing and sharing my thoughts here is how much I learn from you, the people who take the time to make comments, post links, or ask questions.

Most of the comments you will find here from other readers are insightful, curious, humble, funny, charitable, and welcoming of difference, even ideological difference. This blog has been blessed with a warm and intelligent readership.

However, from time to time, particularly when I drift too close to political or ideological hot button topics, the comments here might become unproductive. Consequently, I will delete comments that don't contribute to the kind of conversation I'd like to host. Or I might shut down the comments for a post if the conversation has become exhausted or unproductive. At the end of the day, I want both the post and the conversation it sparks to be something we all are proud of when we go to sleep at night. So let me tell you about the kind of conversation I want to host and the kinds of comments I'll keep or remove.

My comment policy is informed by two ideas, one theological the other epistemological.

The theological idea comes from Miroslav Volf's notion of "the will to embrace." Importantly, the will to embrace is a reflection of the kind of person you are. As Volf writes, the will to embrace characterizes the "kind of selves we need to be in order to live in harmony with others." In short, I'm less concerned with the actual content of your comment than the kind of self you are presenting. Which means, and this is very important to know, I'm judging you, not your comment. The problem with anonymous Internet conversation is that it is stripped of its face-to-face humanity. And this is the main reason blog conversations go awry. So what I expect in comments is a degree of humanity. It's this humaneness that I will judge. I don't care if you are right or wrong. I care if you are kind. And Volf describes the critical feature: "the will to give ourselves to others and 'welcome' them, to readjust our identities to make space for them." In short, when I read your comments I'll be trying to read between the lines to determine the kind of person you are, to determine if you are trying to win an argument or if you are trying to welcome and embrace others in their difference. Do you seem willing to readjust who you are to "make space" for those around you? If your comment "makes space" it stays. If it shoves or tries to "win," I'll delete it.

Importantly, if I, as the author of this blog, fail to lead you by example in all this, please call me out. Generally, as you will find, I'm quick to apologize if I treat others badly.

Beyond the will to embrace my comment policy is also informed by the notion of epistemic virtue. Although I'll primarily be judging you (e.g., your tone and willingness to "make room") and not your comment, I will from time to time delete comments on the basis of content alone. The criterion for a content-based deletion depends upon if the comment is epistemically (intellectually) virtuous. As Jay Wood describes:

Epistemology, then, is not (or ought not to be) concerned merely with the piecemeal appraisal of individual beliefs but with what kinds of persons we are becoming: whether we are intellectually humble rather than arrogant, studious rather than merely idly curious, insightful rather than dull, wise and not fools.

In short, the epistemic virtues are those habits of mind, conversation and inquiry that tend to produce truth. The truth cannot be found if we are intellectually lazy, fearful, prideful, or closed to counter-argument. Truth is found, in isolation and in community, when we work hard to listen to each other, consider the strengths in each others arguments, and have the courage to admit when we are wrong.

Here are the virtues I am looking for in comments:

Attentiveness and Care: Did you read everything I or another commenter wrote? Did you read that qualification or caveat? Or did you read too quickly, hear what you wanted to hear, and jump to a conclusion? In sum, if you are not demonstrating sufficient attention and care your comment is ripe for deletion.

Circumspection and Humility: Be warned, I prize this virtue above all the other intellectual virtues. Comments should be humble, tentative, provisional, and open to change. I'm a pretty smart guy and I've come to the conclusion that there are no simple answers to religious, philosophical, political, or moral questions. These things are perennially controversial for a reason: There are no simple answers. The truth is always between you and I. Neither of us owns it. Because if there were simple answers to any of this stuff we wouldn't be arguing about it. Those people on the other side, the people who disagree with you and I, have pretty high IQs. So if you think you know The Answer let me recommend that you take your Answer--be it religious, political, moral, or philosophical--somewhere else. The people who disagree with you or I are not "wrong." They only disagree and, truth be told, they have good reasons for disagreeing. No single ideology can describe the complexity of the world.

Charity: Are you willing to see the very best in the arguments and positions you disagree with? If you consistently try to exploit the weaknesses of arguments, to score quick rhetorical points, your comments are targets for deletion. You are expected to regularly recognize the strong points of everyone's argument before moving on to criticism and disagreement. If you have a habit of beginning your comments with criticism or disagreement I'll begin to delete your comments. Start with charity, and maybe then we'll be open to your critique.

Truthfulness: Does the comment move us toward the truth? If your comment is just a sarcastic remark I'll delete it. That kind of comment might communicate your distaste or displeasure for something I or someone else writes, but it doesn't move us forward.

Unfortunately, I'll not be able to give you my reasons for why I delete a particular comment of yours. If, however, you find I'm regularly removing your comments feel free to send me an e-mail at beckr@acu.edu so I can explain what I'm seeing and thinking on my end.

Thanks for reading and thanks for commenting on the blog. This policy is in place to create and protect a conversation about important topics, a conversation characterized by a spirit of welcome and intellectual virtue. I'll do my best to lead by example.

Warm Regards,
Richard

Last year, the famous artist, cartoonist and illustrator R. Crumb published his The Book of Genesis Illustrated. Given that Crumb's work has often been satirical, subversive and not particularly chaste, people were curious about what Crumb would do with the first book of the bible. By and large, Crumb got good reviews. Mainly, it seems, because Genesis contains a lot of sex and violence which suits Crumb's style. Indeed, the cover of the book warns: Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors and The First Book of the Bible Graphically Depicted! Nothing Left Out! This isn't your Sunday School version of Genesis.

Despite the titillating warnings on the cover, Crumb was praised for keeping things fairly restrained in his illustrations of Genesis. Here is David Hajdu from his review in the New York Times:

Crumb’s is a Genesis for adults — indeed, for adults only, as one might and should expect from an artist whose importance is rooted in his ability to give vivid form to taboos of the imagination with unapologetic bluntness and extravagant explicitness. The prospect of Crumb’s doing the Bible might seem at first a stunt, an all-too-obvious mash-up of the most sacred and the most profane. When I heard about it, I thought immediately of Norman Mailer’s “Gospel According to the Son,” a fictive memoir by Jesus — and an agent’s pitch passing for a novel. Crumb’s book is serious and, for Crumb, restrained. He resists the temptation to go all-out Crumb on us and exaggerate the sordidness, the primitivism and the outright strangeness (by contemporary standards) of parts of the text. What is Genesis about, after all, but resisting temptation?

Crumb's book, from an illustration standpoint, is a massive accomplishment. The entire text of Genesis is given and Crumb illustrates every line of it, producing a complete and detailed visual interpretation of the book of Genesis.

And that's what interests me about Crumb's book. A great deal in the bible leaves a lot to the imagination. So if you set out to illustrate every line of Genesis you need to make some interpretive judgments. You need to think about character motivations, natural settings, emotional reactions, physical behaviors, and about the sheer oddity of the story. In his preface to the book Crumb states that he approached his task as a "straightforward illustration job." But nothing could be further from the truth. Crumb's project was inherently hermeneutical and interpretive. Crumb's claim about "straightforward illustration" reminds me of fundamentalists who say they can read the bible without a hermeneutical filter, the "plain sense" of the text is what drives their interpretation. But Crumb shows us that no reading--visual or otherwise--can be straightforward, particularly where the bible is concerned. It's just too strange. And we either have to ignore the strangeness or make sense of it, often without any clear guides on how to do so.

While reading Crumb's book it struck me that he was essentially engaged in a form of visual Midrash. Midrash is a from of Jewish exegesis that is much more speculative than "plain sense" modes of interpretation. Midrash often, creatively so, fills in the backstory to help us understand oddities in the text or to help us come to grips with the holes in the story. Many reviewers of Crumb's book made the same connection. As Robert Alter notes:

The process of interpreting Genesis began in the Bible itself--in passages from the Former Prophets that elaborately allude to it, in the Prophets, and in late biblical texts such as Esther and Daniel, which are, among other things, interpretive re-castings of the Joseph story. The Midrash, produced in late antiquity, is often an interpretive fleshing-out of the spare biblical narratives, an attempt to fill in the narrative gaps and read closely and imaginatively between the lines. And this is essentially what Crumb does graphically, with a special emphasis on the element of flesh.

Consider the binding of Isaac. What was Sarah thinking when Abraham rode off to sacrifice her son? Did she even know what was going on? And if she did, what were her feelings on the matter? The bible doesn't day. But you can't help but speculate on the subject. So the Midrash steps in and ponders the backstory. Crumb had to do something quite similar. From Hadju's review showing how Crumb does Midrash on another odd Abraham and Sarah story:

Doing a comic book, rather than a book of text with spot illustrations, Crumb had to provide a drawing for every short passage — often six or more pieces of art per page — frequently with little indication in the language of what, exactly, to show. Many of the illustrations, then, constitute revisions of the text to some degree, and not mere amplifications. When Abram decides to offer Sarai to the king of Egypt, Crumb shows us Sarai at first baffled — in the grammar of comics, a question mark appears in a thought balloon beside her — and, in the next panel, distraught, a tear trickling down her cheek. The Scripture gives no hint of her feelings. Here and throughout the book, Crumb seems to be making a point to flesh out the female characters in an apparent effort to offset the relentless male orientation of the text. In the introduction, he explains that he treated the work as “a straight illustration job.” Yet his task was hardly ­straightforward.

So in the coming posts I want to treat Crumb's Genesis as a type of visual Midrash. The goal is simply to point out illustrations in Crumb's book that, in my opinion, make interesting, arresting, or odd interpretations of the first book of the bible.

Just remember going forward: Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors...

As I have written about before, what drew me to George MacDonald was his amazing vision of the love of God. Last night while reading MacDonald's sermon 'Love Thy Neighbor' from Unspoken Sermons I was struck by the following passage. It is one of those images--that Christ would not abandon us to hell but would go in after us--that took my breath away as a college student:

When once to a man the human face is the human face divine, and the hand of his neighbour is the hand of a brother, then will he understand what St Paul meant when he said, "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren." But he will no longer understand those who, so far from feeling the love of their neighbour an essential of their being, expect to be set free from its law in the world to come. There, at least, for the glory of God, they may limit its expansive tendencies to the narrow circle of their heaven. On its battlements of safety, they will regard hell from afar, and say to each other, "Hark! Listen to their moans. But do not weep, for they are our neighbours no more."

First, I like the phrase "the narrow circle of their heaven." It describes a lot of Christians. Second, this is what I could never get about the traditional doctrine of hell: How could you rest at ease in heaven knowing that friends and family were burning forever in torment? MacDonald goes on to note that any decent human would be miserable in heaven knowing such torments were going on:

St Paul would be wretched before the throne of God, if he thought there was one man beyond the pale of his mercy, and that as much for God's glory as for the man's sake.

And if that is the case for Paul and you and me, how much more would Christ be distressed about the pain of the lost? Would not love compel us to leave heaven to go sit with the suffering and the damned? Isn't leaving heaven the only humane and moral thing to do? Of course it is:

And what shall we say of the man Christ Jesus? Who, that loves his brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a dim hope that in the far-off time there might be some help for him, arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven? Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbour as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, traveling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother?—who, I mean, that had the mind of Christ, that had the love of the Father?

But it is a wild question. God is, and shall be, All in all. Father of our brothers and sisters! thou wilt not be less glorious than we, taught of Christ, are able to think thee. When thou goest into the wilderness to seek, thou wilt not come home until thou hast found. It is because we hope not for them in thee, not knowing thee, not knowing thy love, that we are so hard and so heartless to the brothers and sisters whom thou hast given us.

Those are powerful images. I just can't shake these lines in particular:

Who, that loves his brother, would not...arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven?

Who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, traveling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother?

I grew up in Western Pennsylvania so I'm a die hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan. And as a Steelers fan I've been very frustrated and disappointed in Ben Roethlisberger's recent behavior in bars with young women. As a fan you hate for your team to lose your starting quarterback, but as a Christian I'm glad he got a six game suspension.

Anyway, after work I was talking to Jana:

"Hey, Ben Roethlisberger got a six game suspension today."

"Really? How do you feel about that?"

"I'm glad about it."

"Guess what shirt Aidan wore to school today?"

"What?"

"His Ben Roethlisberger jersey."

"No!"

"Yes."

So a word of advice to all you parents out there:

The minute criminal charges are brought against someone on the team you cheer for, make sure to clear out your kid's closet.

In light of some of the comments in this series I thought I'd sketch the methods used in Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion. This post might shed some light on how Kinder and Kam assessed ethnocentrism, where they got their data, and how they drew their conclusions. Obviously, I can only offer a sketch. A fuller examination of their research would involve engaging the book directly.

1. The Data Sets
Kinder and Kam did not collect the data or ask the questions. Rather, they used two publicly available and non-partisan data sets, the General Social Survey (GSS) and the American National Election Studies (NES). Importantly, both the GSS and NES go to great lengths to select a representative and large sample of the American population. All in all, social scientists of every political persuasion--liberal and conservative--mine the GSS and NES as two of the best surveys of American attitudes and behaviors.

In short, we can't accuse Kinder and Kam of using loaded questions or missampling. They simply used the pre-existing and publicly available data of the GSS and NES data sets.

2. Measuring Ethnocentrism
As mentioned in an earlier post, Kinder and Kam assess ethnocentrism though in-group and out-group stereotypes. In both the GSS and NES a section of the interview is devoted to assessing group stereotypes. To give a flavor for this, here is the wording going into the stereotype section of the NES:

Now I have some questions about different groups in our society. I'm going to show you a seven-point scale on which the characteristics of people in a group can be rated. In the first statement a score of 1 means that you think almost all of the people in that group are "hard-working." A score of 7 means that you think almost all of the people in the group are "lazy." A score of 4 means that you think the group is not towards one end or the other, and of course you may choose any number in between that comes closest to where you think people in the group stand.

Where would you rate whites in general on this scale?

The interviewer then asks the same question about blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans. After comparing how hardworking the groups are, the interviewer then asks the respondent to compare the groups on intelligence, trustworthiness, patriotism, etc.

Mathematically, Kinder and Kam calculate ethnocentrism as the simple difference between how you see your in-group relative to out-groups. That is, if your overall in-group score is equal to your average out-group score then your ethnocentrism measure is 0.0. If your score is positive then you tend toward ethnocentrism (i.e., you see your in-group as more hard-working, intelligent, trustworthy, etc. relative to out-groups). If your score is negative then you are the opposite of ethnocentric (i.e., you see out-groups in a more positive light compared to your in-group; obviously, this is relatively rare).

In short, the measure for ethnocentrism is simplicity itself: The subtraction of out-group ratings from in-group ratings.

3. The Relationship Between Ethnocentrism and Political Opinions
Once Kinder and Kam calculate ethnocentrism (a simple subtraction) they then correlate the score with other expressed attitudes surveyed that year by the GSS and the NES. For example, one year the NES asked respondents if they "felt sympathy" for the Iraqi civilians affected by American forces, if they "felt disgust" at the killing of Iraqi civilians, and if they "felt it was immoral" to bomb near Iraqi civilians. Using ethnocentrism scores to predict responses to these questions Kinder and Kam found these regression coefficients (taken from page 120):

Sympathy for Iraqi people: -.54
Disgust at Killing: -.19
Immoral to bomb near civilians: -.23

As you see, all the coefficients are negative. That is, as ethnocentrism increased sympathy decreased, disgust decreased, and moral outrage decreased. In short, ethnocentric respondents felt less empathy for Iraqi civilians affected by American forces.

Consider the data regarding the various forms of social welfare. In the NES respondents are asked if the government should "spend more" on various forms of social welfare. Among white respondents the regression coefficients using ethnocentrism to predict attitudes related to Food Stamps, welfare for women with many children, Social Security and Medicare were as follows (pages 186, 187):

Food Stamps: -.48
Welfare for Women with Many Children: -1.19
Social Security: .56
Medicare: .43

As you can see, the coefficients are negative for means-tested welfare (welfare for the poor) but positive for social insurance welfare. In short, as described in my last post, ethnocentrism among whites predicted lower support for means-tested welfare (welfare for them) but higher support for social insurance welfare (welfare for us).

I could go on, this is just a sample of the data I summarized in bullet-point form in the last post.

To summarize:

1. Kinder and Kam did not collect the data so they cannot be accused of using misleading questions or poor sampling to fit a liberal agenda.
2. The GSS and NES data sets are non-partisan and considered two of the best data sets available in tracking American attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.
3. Kinder and Kam's measure of ethnocentrism is simplicity itself: A simple subtraction between in-group and out-group stereotypes (standard sections of the GSS and NES). It is hard to see liberal bias in this method of assessment.
   
4. The bread and butter of Kinder and Kam's analysis is simply taking the ethnocentrism measure (#3) and correlating it with other attitudes/opinions assessed elsewhere in the GSS and NES surveys.
5. Kinder and Kam's findings are replicated in both the GSS and NES data sets, suggesting robust and replicable results.
6. Finally, given that these are publicly available data sets, you can go to the GSS and NES and conduct Kinder and Kam's exact analyses to verify their findings. The results and analyses are transparent and open to evaluation.
   

Last summer I got to hear Michael Sandel speak on the morality of markets. Sandel teaches at Harvard and his class on Justice is one of the biggest draws on campus. What is amazing about Sandel is his ability to use a Socratic question and answer format to make a huge auditorium feel like a small graduate seminar. I saw Sandel do his magic and it's really impressive. I wish I could teach like that.

Harvard joined with PBS to film Sandel's Justice class. You can see the class in action at the course website where you can dip into the readings or watch entire classes. Sandel also recently published the book Justice as a companion for the filming. The book is a nice overview of political theory and ethics with lots of real world examples. I found Sandel's discussion of Kantian ethics to be particularly helpful.

Sandel starts the book Justice off with this moral issue:

In the summer of 2004, Hurricane Charley roared out of the Gulf of Mexico and swept across Florida to the Atlantic Ocean. The storm claimed twenty-two lives and caused $11 billion in damage. It also left in its wake a debate about price gouging.

At a gas station in Orlando, they were selling two-dollar bags of ice for ten dollars. Lacking power for refrigerators or air-conditioning in the middle of August, many people had little choice but to pay up. Downed trees heightened demand for chain saws and roof repairs. Contractors offered to clear two trees off a homeowner's roof--for $23,000. Stores that normally sold small household generators for $250 were now asking $2,000. A seventy-seven-year-old women fleeing the hurricane with her elderly husband and handicapped daughter was charged $160 per night for a motel room that normally goes for $40.

Obviously, many people were outraged by the price gouging. Florida did have price gouging laws on the books, and some penalties were handed out in the wake of Charley. But many economists argued that these laws and the public outrage over price gouging were misinformed. There is no such thing as a "moral" price, it was argued. The markets set prices via supply and demand, and if demand is high and supply is short prices will rise. Even during natural disasters. Many pushed back on this extreme version of free market ideology claiming that, during a natural disaster, people are entering into these market exchanges under duress. Sandel cites the argument made by the Florida Attorney General at the time:

This is not the normal free market situation where willing buyers freely elect to enter into the marketplace and meet willing sellers, where a price is agreed upon based upon supply and demand. In an emergency, buyers under duress have no freedom. Their purchases of necessities like safe lodging are forced.

So, Sandel asks, which version of justice should prevail in this case? Is price gouging immoral? Or is it amoral, a simple consequence of the markets? Interestingly, our answers to questions such as these reveal a great deal about our competing visions of the common good.

The bulk of Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion is devoted to examining how ethnocentrism influences how certain Americans approach various policy issues and hot button topics. Kinder and Kam are keen to note that ethnocentrism does not have an effect on every political topic. Rather, ethnocentrism is activated when a particular political issue, or a media framing of the issue, is presented as an "us against them" conflict. Sadly, this "us against them" frame fits many of the issues currently facing America. Thus, while ethnocentrism doesn't affect every political debate is does influence public opinion on a wide variety of topics. In Part 2 of Us Against Them, from chapters 4-10, Kinder and Kam use two different measures of ethnocentrism to predict attitudes on a variety of political topics. Summarising, ethnocentrism predicts the following:

1. An aggressive, hawish foreign policy stance.
2. Less empathy for foreign civilian casualties in America's wars (e.g., the deaths of Iraqi women and children in the War on Terror).
3. Less support for foreign aid and assistance.
4. Support for anti-immigration policies and protective measures to preserve "our American" culture from the effects of immigration.
5. Opposition to gay rights.
6. Opposition to policies, such as affirmative action, aimed at redressing historic inequalities between blacks and whites.
7. Opposition to means-tested welfare (i.e., programs for low-income persons) such as Food Stamps or Medicaid.
8. Support for social insurance welfare, such as Social Security and Medicare.

The contrast between these last two are the most interesting to me. Generally speaking, Americans like social welfare programs. Imagine trying to run for political office today on the platform that you would eliminate Social Security or Medicare. Think about how the GOP stirred up the fears of seniors that health insurance reform for "those people" would take away Medicare or Social Security. (One of the great ironies of the health reform debate: Republicans defending Medicare and Social Security.)

So, we like the welfare state. More precisely, we like social welfare that is for us. But we are against welfare for them.

Surf on over to my friend Chris Heard's blog Higgaion for an interesting exegetical analysis of Isaiah 46.3 and how it's interpreation features in the abortion debates.

I took one semester of Hebrew and can't remember a thing. So I appreciate it when Chris writes on topics like this.

Speaking of the scandal of the Incarnation, I thought I'd point you to a thread over at The Daily Dish regarding Renaissance depictions of Christ's genitalia. The thread initially pointed to this controversy in Oklahoma regarding the icon to the right which parishioners found offensive for its subtle (or not so subtle) depiction of Jesus' penis.

There is actually a rich history for this sort of artwork. The classic account of this tradition is Leo Steinberg's The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. The publisher description of the book:

Originally published in 1983, Leo Steinberg's classic work has changed the viewing habits of a generation. After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility. Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.

A Dish reader links to a photo gallery of this artwork. Surf at your own risk...

I would just like to point you over to Joseph Porter's post on the Fish Tank blog about infant baptism and original sin. (Also be sure to click on the link to his other posts on baptism.) Coming from a tradition that practices believer's baptism (i.e., adults) I'm eager to follow Joseph's posts on the subject.

As noted in the previous posts, in Us Against Them Kinder and Kam describe ethnocentrism as generalized prejudice. We tend to think prejudice is group specific, and it can be. For example, one might have very negative feelings about a particular out-group (e.g., Whites, Blacks, gays, Muslims, etc.). However, the research on ethnocentrism has revealed that prejudices tend to cluster together. Thus, if we hear a person make a comment about blacks on welfare we can make a good guess about where this person stands on gay marriage or immigration reform.

Is there any evidence for this notion of generalized prejudice? In Chapter 3 of Us Against Them Kinder and Kam present research that supports this conception of ethnocentrism.

Kinder and Kam measure ethnocentrism by examining the relative roles of in-group favoritism and out-group denigration. They accomplish this by examining how various groups apply favorable or unfavorable stereotypes to both in-groups and out-groups. For example, Kinder and Kam share data on how various ethnic groups apply the adjectives lazy versus hardworking across ethnic groups, including their own. So, for example, Whites are asked how lazy versus hardworking Whites are as well as Blacks and Hispanics.

Not surprisingly, people tend to see their in-group as more hardworking relative to the out-groups. Whites see Whites as more hardworking than Blacks or Hispanics. Blacks, by contrast, see Blacks as more hardworking than Whites or Hispanics. And so on. Interestingly, Whites tend to be the most ethnocentric of all the ethnic groups. Overall, these trends support the view that ethnocentrism is generalized prejudice, a prejudice produced by seeing the in-group in a more favorable light relative to out-groups.

Kinder and Kam go on to examine some of the correlates of ethnocentrism. How is ethnocentrism related to political ideology or views regarding limited government? How is ethnocentrism related to education?

Overall, Kinder and Kam show evidence that ethnocentrism, across ethnic groups, is generally uncorrelated to various political positions (e.g., party identification, views on limited government). Among Whites there are some slight trends. Ethnocentrism is, albeit weakly, correlated with political conservatism, a distaste for egalitarianism (e.g., social welfare to produce "fairness"), social distrust, and a desire for a more limited government. Generally, however, ethnocentrism is a force in American life that is distinct from other, more commonly discussed, political variables. Consequently, ethnocentrism needs to be examined as a political force in its own right if we are going to get a true and accurate sense of the dynamics involved in American policy debates.

Finally, ethnocentrism declines with increasing education. The most important factor appears to be college education. As Kinder and Kam summarize the data: "Based on these results, it would seem that education, and especially the experience associated with higher education, build tolerance and erode ethnocentrism."

What are the origins of ethnocentrism? Again, Kinder and Kam define ethnocentrism as the psychological tendency to separate our social worlds into "us" and "them." From Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion:

Ethnocentrism is a mental habit. It is a predisposition to divide the human world into in-groups and out-groups. It is a readiness to reduce society to us and them. Or rather, it is a readiness to reduce society to us versus them. This division of humankind into in-group and out-group is not innocuous. Members of in-groups (until they prove otherwise) are assumed to be virtuous: friendly, cooperative, trustworthy, safe, and more. Members of out-groups (until they prove otherwise) are assumed to be the opposite: unfriendly, uncooperative, unworthy of trust, dangerous, and more. Symbols and practices become objects of attachment and pride when they belong to the in-group and objects of condescension, disdain, and (in extreme cases) hatred when they belong to out-groups. Ethnocentrism constitutes a readiness to act in favor of in-groups and in opposition to out-groups...

A nice example of this, per my picture above, is the desire to take back "our" country. Apparently, we take it back from "them."

So where does ethnocentrism come from? In Us Against Them Kinder and Kam review four classic accounts:

1. Actual group conflict
Ethnocentrism arises when real-world groups compete over scarce resources. For example, concerns over immigration (i.e., "those people") might intensify during periods of high unemployment.

2. A symptom of an authoritarian personality
Psychological research in the 1950s found that prejudices tend to be highly correlated. That is, people who are suspicious of, let's say, Jews, also tend to be suspicious of other out-groups: Blacks, gays, Hispanics, etc. What could explain this "generalized prejudice" (i.e., ethnocentrism)? It was argued that a certain personality type--the authoritarian personality--drove this generalized suspicion of out-groups. The authoritarian personality has been described as a rigid adherence to traditional values, a moralistic condemnation of those who violate "traditional" norms, a preoccupation with power, a disdain for empathy/charity, a cynical attitude about human nature and the general view that the world is a dangerous place.

3. The expression of social identity
Social psychological research suggests that identity is inherently a sense of "belonging." We define who we are in relation to some group. This process of social categorization causes us to accentuate the similarities amongst in-group members while accentuating our differences with out-group members.

4. A mental predisposition acquired through natural selection
Group selection accounts of human evolution have suggested that natural selection would have rewarded in-group favoritism and altruism. If so, in-group bias may be an evolved psychological trait.

Overall, Kinder and Kam see truth in all these theories and suggest that a general theory of ethnocentrism should incorporate them all while addressing their limitations. For example, while actual group conflict can be a source of ethnocentrism, a great deal of of group "conflict" is more imagined than real. Fears of "those people" taking "our" jobs might be legitimate in certain cases, but it can also be a symptom of paranoia. A full account of ethnocentrism would have to explain the paranoia (imagined group conflict) along with the legitimate Malthusian struggles between groups. As another example, any genetic account of ethnocentrism will need to consider how social learning and education modify or eliminate our innate inclinations.

I've just finished reading the very interesting book Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion by Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam. Kinder and Kam define ethnocentrism as generalized prejudice, the propensity to separate the world into in-groups and out-groups. From Us Against Them:

...ethnocentrism is an attitude that divides the world into two opposing camps. From an ethnocentric point of view, groups are either "friend" or they are "foe." Ethnocentrism is a general outlook on social difference; it is prejudice broadly conceived.

We define ethnocentrism to be a way of thinking that partitions the world into in-groups and out-groups--into us and them.

One of the points made by Kinder and Kam is that ethnocentrism is often latent but that it can be "triggered" by external events. For example, Kinder and Kam show that ethnocentrism became a powerful factor in American public opinion in the wake of 9/11. I think it is also fair to say that the election of the first African American president has also been a trigger for ethnocentric behavior and sentiment:



In some posts to come I want to walk through some of Kinder and Kam's empirical findings. Overall, it's a must read book.

Two years ago I sat down for coffee with an ACU student who had immersed himself in the books of the New Atheists: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens. He was, unsurprisingly, strongly affected by their arguments and wanted to visit with me about my take on all this. Why, he wanted to know, did I believe in Christianity?

For the good part of an hour we talked about the criticisms of the New Atheists. But it soon became apparent to the student that Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens are not really attacking Christianity. They are, rather, attacking a particular brand of Christianity, fundamentalism. So if you aren't a fundamentalist you don't feel particularly critiqued by the New Atheists. True, the New Atheists do criticize "liberal" Christians for creating a culture, by broadly legitimizing religious belief, that allows fundamentalism to flourish. My counterargument is that, as a "liberal" Christian and an insider, I'm much more effective in pushing against the worst strains within the Christian faith than the New Atheists (who are largely just preaching to the choir to sell books).

When we got to this point in the conversation the student still seem frustrated with my epistemology. He wanted black and white answers, true or false. I refused those categories and tried one more time to communicate my point. This is the exchange we had:

Me: "Do you want to live a beautiful life?"

Student: "Huh?"

Me: "Do you want to live a beautiful life?"

Student: "I think so. Yes, I'd like to live a beautiful life."

Me: "Okay. So what kind of life to you think is beautiful? What is your aesthetic?"

Student: "What do you mean 'my aesthetic'?"

Me: "Judgments of beauty require an aesthetic, some criterion which separates the ugly from the beautiful. So if you want to live a beautiful life you need some way of defining beauty. Here's a way to find your aesthetic, ask yourself these questions. Who, living or dead, do you admire the most? What moves you to tears? What shakes your soul? When you get answers to these questions you'll start to see the shape of your aesthetic, what you consider to be a beautiful life."

Student: "Okay, but what does this have to do with Christianity?"

Me: "I'm a Christian because Jesus of Nazareth is my aesthetic. He's how I define a beautiful life. I've noticed in my heart that every time a human action moved my soul or brought tears to my eyes that action reminded me of Jesus. And so, because I want to live a beautiful life, I follow Jesus."

Adam Smith (yes, the Adam Smith) on the most problematic facet of human moral psychology, how the incomprehensible suffering of humanity cannot compete with our workday hassles and preoccupations:

"Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquility as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger tomorrow, he would not sleep tonight; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own."

--Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Guess what this is?


It's Papa Smurf gets angry and turns into the Hulk.

More fun M&M work here where "pictures of M&M's [are] 'designed' to represent questionable circumstances faced by iconic characters from the pantheon of American pop culture." (H/T Daily Dish)

I was talking to my colleague Scott today.

At one point I said this:

"Honestly Scott, I don't think I know any Christians. Most of the people I know are inspired by Christianity. Conceptually, they think living like Christ is a great idea. But I don't think I know any actual Christians."

My religious tradition doesn't recognize or celebrate the liturgical year. We occasionally notice Easter and Christmas, if only to preach against them. But my experiences with The Book of Common Prayer are pulling me deeper into the rhythms of the liturgical calender. What follows are some basics for people wholly unfamiliar with the ebb and flow of the liturgical year.

A nice way to see the liturgical year is on round calendars like this one. Click on it to enlarge so you can see it more clearly:


The basic structure of the liturgical year is this:

There are four holy seasons: Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter.

Outside of these holy seasons is what is called Ordinary Time. There are two periods of Ordinary Time (these are the green weeks in the wheel above; the liturgical color for Ordinary Time is green). The first period is short, marking the weeks between the end of Christmastide and the start of Lent. The second period of Ordinary Time is longer, taking up about half the secular year. This period goes from Pentecost (the end of the Easter season) to the start of the Advent season.

The liturgical year starts with Advent. Advent starts four Sundays before Christmas Eve. Christmastide begins on Christmas Eve and ends on Epiphany (January 5th). Christmastide is also called the Twelve Days of Christmas. As seen above, a liturgical color for Advent is blue. Gold is a color for Christmastide.

After Epiphany Ordinary Time begins. Again, the liturgical color for Ordinary Time is green.

On Ash Wednesday the season of Lent begins. A liturgical color for Lent is violet, or a rose color. Lent goes until the Easter Tiduum, which starts on the evening of Maudy Thrusday, through Good Friday and Holy Saturday to Easter. As these days relate to the Passion, a liturgical color is red.

Eastertide, the final holy season of the year, starts on Easter and ends on Pentecost, the 50th day after Easter. A liturgical color for Eastertide is gold.

After Pentecost the Sundays are simply numbered (1st Sunday after Pentecost, 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, etc.) until the liturgical year starts again with the Advent season.

Finally, sprinkled throughout the liturgical year are a large number of Holy Days, the most important being the Solemnities (many of which we have already mentioned but include days like the Annunciation, the Ascension, Trinity Sunday, and All Saints) .

(Final Note: The is some variety in all this--from names, to dates, to liturgical colors, to additional seasons--from tradition to tradition. What I've presented is an attempt at a generic, non-denominational overview.)

So, enjoy the Easter season. The celebration isn't over yet. It lasts until Pentecost.

I recently came across this prayer from Daniel Lord, S.J.:

Let me have too deep a sense of humor ever to be proud.
Let me know my absurdity before I act absurdly.
Let me realize that when I am humble I am most human,
most truthful, and most worthy of your serious consideration.

During the first day of my large Introduction to Psychology classes I tell the students about the kinds of traits I admire in people. One trait I prize highly is what I call ironic self-regard. This is in contrast to most pop psychology which promotes positive self-regard (i.e., a high self-esteem). But the trouble with positive self-regard is that it often implies social comparison: How am I doing in relation to others? Worse, too much self-esteem slides into egotism, selfishness and narcissism.

So I like to practice ironic self-regard. For me, ironic self-regard is the ability to laugh at yourself, to not take yourself too seriously, to lighten up a bit about your virtues and your sins. Of course, there are dangers here as well. There are things in life, many things really, that require seriousness and gravity. But when it comes to the self I think, for the most part, an ironic stance is very healthy, psychologically and spiritually. As Daniel Lord's prayer illustrates, humor is a wonderful route to humility. Humility, here, becomes less about attenuating one's positive self-regard than shifting over to the ironic stance, learning to see oneself as silly, self-defeating, and clownish. Not in a despairing way (humor can become cynical), but with delight and good cheer. It is true that life is full of saints and sinners. But I don't spend a lot of time during the day carving up my social world using those categories. For me, we all seem more like a ship of fools and me, proudly, as the captain.

Ahoy!

Leave your windows and go out, people of the world, go into the streets, go into the fields, go into the woods and along the streams. Go together, go alone. Say no to the Lords of War which is Money which is Fire. Say no by saying yes to the air, to the earth, to the trees, yes to the grasses, to the rivers, to the birds and the animals and every living thing, yes to the small houses, yes to the children. Yes.
--Wendell Berry, from the poem Look Out

But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not "Yes" and "No." For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not "Yes" and "No," but in him it has always been "Yes." For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God.
--1 Corinthians 1.18-20

Rob Bell on Resurrection and its life of Yes:

Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.