This is a post for interested Abilene Christian University alumni and supporters. (Although I think many readers outside of the ACU community will also find this of interest.)

ACU has an opening chapel that starts our school year. One of the wonderful traditions at opening chapel is the parade of flags where student representatives carry a flag from each US state or nation attending ACU that year. It's quite a display of color.

For many years, after the parade, a devotional and a speaker the chapel ended with a patriotic segment. The Big Purple Band would play the Battle Hymn of the Republic and a very large American flag would drop from the rafters. We would all then say the Pledge of Allegiance. The assembly would then conclude.

For as long as I've worked at ACU both faculty and students have objected to this concluding segment. They felt, and I agree, that the mixture of God and Country was inappropriate for a religious worship service. Further, the symbolism of the American flag drop was also a source of objection. Specifically, for many years the large American flag would drop in front of all the state and nation flags, dramatically blocking them from sight. Many felt this sent the wrong signal to students from other nations, that it signaled American triumphalism and exceptionalism.

Opening chapel planners have tried to address some of these concerns. In recent years the American flag dropped behind the national and state flags. And our President took pains to rhetorically separate the devotional period from the concluding patriotic display. But this year the changes were bigger. This year the planners replaced the patriotic display and kept the object of worship and allegiance centered fully on God.

Unfortunately, from what I'm hearing, our President is coming under criticism for this choice. Many are objecting to a full focus on God during a worship service.

Our tradition, the Churches of Christ, has a strong and long standing tradition of keeping faith and nation separate. Unfortunately, in recent years many Churches of Christ have been turning away from this tradition and are starting to look like many evangelical churches. So I feel that our President, for sound biblical and theological reasons, simply turned us back toward our rich Restoration roots. God and Country, for us, have always been two separate things. Flags and the Pledge of Allegiance have never been a part of our worship assemblies. This change was a good one. The Opening Chapel was not reflecting our history or doctrine.

If you agree with our change this year it would be nice for you to let us know. Please voice your support for the decision by contacting our President, Royce Money. If you know any members of the ACU Board of Trustees please also let them know that you agree with this change.

You can mail letters to:

Dr. Royce Money
Abilene Christian University
Abilene, Texas 79699

Or contact or call our alumni association:

Toll free: 800-373-4220
Fax: 325-674-6679
E-mail: jae08a@acu.edu

I've been reading for my upcoming classes on Everyday Evil for ACU's Summit.  As a part of that reading I'm getting into the literature of the Holocaust looking for lessons that might apply to everyday life.  I'm looking for psychological dynamics that are latent in each of us that are, in fact, the seeds of something much darker.  All that is needed is the water, the right context and pressures...

Right now, as a part of my search, I'm reading Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees.  While reading I cam across this quote by Toivi Blatt, survivor of Sobibor:

People asked me, "What did you learn?" and I think I'm only sure of one thing--nobody knows themselves.  The nice person on the street, you ask him, "Where is North Street?" and he goes with you half a block and shows you, and is nice and kind.  That same person in a different situation could be the worst sadist.  Nobody knows themselves.  All of us could be good people or bad people in these different situations.  Sometimes when somebody is really nice to me I find myself thinking, "How will be be in Sobibor?"

I think this is a really, really important insight.  Perhaps the greatest insight from the death camps.  Nobody knows themselves.  Which means that we have to admit that we are extraordinarily vulnerable to evil.  Our "virtue" is so very fragile.

And this insight is related to the cognitive psychology noted in my last post, the two distinct processing systems in the brain.  System 2, our conscious deliberative selves, is very transparent to introspection.  But System 1 is dark and murky.  Introspection doesn't penetrate much at all.  Which means that large portions of the Self are unknown.  That is the cognitive science behind Blatt's observation.  Sitting here, right now, my self-assessment is that I'd never be a sadist in the death camps.  I'm better than that.  But I've not fully encountered myself.  System 1, the system that kicks in when my survival is at stake, is untouched by my self-examination.  Large portions of my mind are unseen and, thus, unpredictable.  

Nobody knows themselves.

As mentioned a few posts ago, I'm reading the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. (My post about the Amsterdam flies was also inspired by Nudge.) Reading Nudge has motivated me to devote a post or two to recent advances in cognitive science and the implications these might have for moral behavior.

The main insight I'd like to focus on is the growing consensus that the human brain has two distinct processing systems. The first system is fast, unconscious, automatic and heuristic. The second system is slower, conscious, effortful and deliberative. Many cognitive scientists speculate that the first system is older, evolutionarily speaking. It is a rapid response system that is tightly connected to our survival instinct and reward circuitry. If I throw a ball at you you instinctively catch it. That is System 1 at work. Fast and automatic. But the price you pay for speed is accuracy. This is what I meant by "heuristic." A heuristic is a rule of thumb that is generally effective. But not always. If I throw a porcupine at you you just might automatically catch it. Your automatic reaction is to catch anything coming at your head. Which is, generally speaking, a good rule of thumb. But it's error prone. Think about stereotypes. You find yourself making judgements about a person based on dress, race, or gender. Those judgments are heuristics that help you quickly size up social situations. Only in many cases the stereotypes are wrong or immoral. Reflective people know this and take the time to notice and shoo from consciousness any stereotype they feel to be in error or immoral. But more often than not, the stereotype, a social heuristic, goes unnoticed and affects the way you relate to the person in front of you, for good or ill.

By contrast, System 2 is believed to be a more recent evolutionary development and its logical/reasoning capabilities separate us from much of the animal kingdom. System 2 can do math problems, but there is nothing natural or easy about mastering the multiplication table or advanced algebra. These are deliberative and intentional skills. When Aristotle called man a "rational animal" he was talking about System 2.

However, given the late arrival on the evolutionary scene, our logical, analytical, and deliberative skills are bit removed from the reward systems of the brain. Where System 1 craves and acts impulsively, System 2 diets and counts calories.

The point I want to make today is that one of the root causes of moral failure, of not being the person we want to be, results from the fact that the human mind has these two distinct mental systems. More to the point, these systems often come into conflict. System 1 wants to eat and System 2 wants to lose weight. System 1 works with stereotypes and System 2 wants to treat people as individuals. System 1 is drawn to pornography and System 2 is seeking sexual purity. System 1 wants revenge and System 2 struggles to forgive. And so on.

In illustrating this conflict, the authors of Nudge point to a well known phenomenon in cognitive science: The Stroop Effect. The Stroop Effect is a wonderful example of how our two cognitive Systems come into conflict. Take the following stimulus card:

To experience the Stroop Effect read from left to right calling out the color of the ink for the first two rows. You'll note how easy that was. But now try to call out the color of the ink for the remaining words. Try to go as fast as you can. When you do this you'll feel the difference. You'll go slower and probably make a mistake or two. That slowing down and increase in error rate is called the Stroop Effect.

Obviously, the Stroop Effect is caused by the mixed signals. The color of the ink sends one signal to the brain ("blue") while the semantic content of the word sends a different signal ("green"). What is important for our purposes is that the brain is experiencing a conflict between the two Systems. System 1, processing the visual color in one part of the brain, is coming into conflict with System 2 which is processing language in a different part of the brain. You slow down in the Stroop Test because you have to take a second (or, rather, milliseconds) to figure out which System should trump. The two Systems have come into conflict and this hurts your performance.

The cognitive psychology behind the Stroop Effect is the same psychology frequently implicated in moral failure. System 1 wants to do A and System 2 wants to do B. Which one trumps? Which System wins?

Given all this, we might recast Paul's description of moral failure in the language of modern cognitive science:

Romans 7: 14-24a
We know that the law is controlled by System 2 but I am controlled by System 1, sold as a slave to System 1. I do not understand what I do. For what System 2 wants to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, System 2 isn't doing it, but System 1. I know that System 1 controls me, that is, in my sinful nature. For System 2 has the desire to do what is good, but System 1 cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what System 2 does not want to do, it is not System 2 doing it, but it is System 1 that does it.

So I find this law at work: When System 2 wants to do good, System 1 is right there with me. For in System 2 I delight in God's law; but I see System 1 at work in the members of my body, waging war against System 2 and making me a prisoner of System 1 which is at work within my members. What a wretched man I am!

Post Script: An interesting and semi-related story.

A few years ago cognitive psychologists voted the Stroop Effect as the most influential finding in the history of cognitive psychology. So many ideas and laboratory techniques are based on the Stroop Test. Thousands and thousands of studies reference Dr. Stroop's pioneering work.

Here's the interesting part. Dr. Stroop, who died in 1973, was a member of my religious denomination, the Churches of Christ. Basically, the most famous and influential Church of Christ psychologist is Dr. John Ridley Stroop. Nothing I do as a psychologist will come remotely close to the impact of the Stroop Effect upon psychological research. Dr. Stroop is up there with Pavlov, Milgram and Skinner.

The interesting part is that soon after Stroop finished his pioneering doctoral work in 1933 he began his teaching career at David Lipscomb University, where I spent my first year of teaching. But Dr. Stroop didn't teach a lot of psychology at Lipscomb. He walked away from the discipline and became a bible professor, publishing books for bible classes and church audiences. His major work was a trilogy entitled God's Plan and Me. In short, the most famous Church of Christ psychologist walked away from psychology to teach bible classes. Which, if you know the Church of Christ, isn't remotely surprising. But it's a strange kind of story. A man writing books on the bible, toiling away on his bible classes when, all that time, his doctoral work in psychology is changing the face of the discipline.

And the funny thing is that I knew none of this. Dr. Stroop so thoroughly disappeared from psychology that the discipline effectively lost track of him. Of course I'd heard of the Stroop Effect. Every psychology student knows about it. But no one ever talked about Dr. Stroop's other research or heard him at conferences. The Stroop Effect was alive and well, but Dr. Stroop had vanished. So I didn't know Dr. Stroop was a member of my religious denomination or that he was a former professor at my university. I only found out about all this when the Chair of my department pulled some Stroop cards from his desk one day. Turns out he was cleaning out some closets in the department and found some of Dr. Stroop's old cards, the ones he used in his dissertation research. The original Stroop stimuli cards! I was stunned. I mean, these things should be in the Smithsonian or something. But there they were, in a dusty old closet. And my Chair sat back and told me the fascinating story of Dr. John Ridley Stroop, the discoverer of the Stroop Effect.

Dan Roam and Tony Jones, MD at The Back of the Napkin Blog have four informative posts walking us though the health care debate on, well, the back of napkins.

The four posts and napkin shots can be found here:

Napkin #1: Fixing health care on the back of a napkin.

Napkin #2: Health Care

Napkin #3: The Plans

Napkin #4: Impacts and Conclusions

You can view all the napkins in a big slideshow here.

Last week I posted some thoughts that drew a lot of attention. In that post I ranted about how many Christians tend to use "religion" as a substitute for kindness, patience and decency. It was a critical post, so in this post I want to offer something more positive.

Despite what I said in previous post, I don't think most Christians are jerks. Rather, I think Christians tend to behave like jerks due to failures of attention. I just don't think Christians are mindful enough.

Here's a great illustration and metaphor for what I'm talking about. If you've ever been in a men's restroom you know that men tend to be pretty careless when it comes to aiming properly at a urinal or toilet. This lack of care and attention is exacerbated in public toilets where you don't have to clean up your own mess. Consequently, many public bathrooms are filthy.

Well, a few years back the authorities at the Amsterdam airport had a wonderful idea for this problem. They etched a small fly in each urinal. You can see this if you click and expand on the picture above. The presence of this fly focuses the attention and men just naturally aim at it. In studies done by the airport the fly urinal reduced spillage by 80%.

Now, I don't want to push this metaphor too far (i.e., we need flies in our moral world so we don't, well, pee all over the place, morally speaking), but it does nicely illustrate the point I want to make. Our behavior is a product of our attention. (And before dismissing the urinal example too quickly I'd like to note that using a public urinal is a moral act. Your actions affect those sharing the space and those who have to clean up your waste. The Golden Rule should be operative. Again, building off of my last post, few Christians think going to the loo is a spiritual act, but it is.)

In short, many of the moral failures I was writing about in my earlier post are often failures of attention. Without little flies sprinkled around the world we just don't pay attention to what we are doing. People don't have sticky notes stuck to their heads declaring their stress, fear, depression, need or woundedness. So we fail to pay attention. Fail to slow down and look. There is a vast universe behind the eyes of the checkout person at WalMart. And we often fail to pause and glimpse into the storms reflected in those windows. It's all a matter of attention.

One of the best meditations I've read about attention and the amount of effort and intentionality it requires is from David Foster Wallace's commencement address at Kenyon College (an adaptation of the speech can be found here from the WSJ and there is a book of Foster's address called This is Water). Foster focuses on the fight against out "default setting" which is selfish self-absorption. This is the mechanism that makes us jerks, situationally speaking. To fight against this self-absorption Foster focuses upon our attention. Here is Foster meditating on how this applies to a slice of modern life, the frustrations of food shopping in an crowded supermarket at the end of an exhausting day:

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is: I've worked really hard all day and I'm starved and tired and I can't even get home to eat and unwind because of all these stupid g-d- people...

Look, if I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do -- except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default-setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities...

But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars -- compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things...

It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us...

Friends,
Apologies for all the construction around this site. I thought I liked the last template (and so did many of you; thanks for clicking on the poll or sending me an e-mail) but there were a couple of glitches that were bothering me. I don't like the sidebar fonts much on this template, but I do like the rolling header which I can update to point people toward interesting posts or essays. I have so much stuff on this blog I think I'll like using the header to move newer readers to older posts that I think are good reads.

Sorry for any inconvience or shock upon surfing here.
Best,
Richard

To start, a story.

A few years ago a female student wanted to visit with me about some difficulties she was having, mainly with her family life. As is my practice, we walked around campus as we talked.

After talking for some time about her family situation we turned to other areas of her life. When she reached spiritual matters we had the following exchange:

"I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God."

I responded, "Why would you want to do that?"

Startled she says, "What do you mean?"

"Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?"

"Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"

"Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you've wronged?"

She thinks and answers, "Yes."

"Well, why don't you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God."

Obviously, I was being a bit provocative with the student. And I did go on to clarify. But I was trying to push back on a strain of Christianity I see in both my students and the larger Christian culture. Specifically, when the student said "I need to work on my relationship with God" I knew exactly what she meant. It meant praying more, getting up early to study the bible, to start going back to church. Things along those lines. The goal of these activities is to get "closer" to God. To "waste time with Jesus." Of course, please hear me on this point, nothing is wrong with those activities. Personal acts of piety and devotion are vital to a vibrant spiritual life and continued spiritual formation. But all too often "working on my relationship with God" has almost nothing to do with trying to become a more decent human being.

The trouble with contemporary Christianity is that a massive bait and switch is going on. "Christianity" has essentially become a mechanism for allowing millions of people to replace being a decent human being with something else, an endorsed "spiritual" substitute. For example, rather than being a decent human being the following is a list of some commonly acceptable substitutes:

Going to church

Worship

Praying

Spiritual disciplines (e.g., fasting)

Bible study

Voting Republican

Going on spiritual retreats

Reading religious books

Arguing with evolutionists

Sending your child to a Christian school or providing education at home

Using religious language

Avoiding R-rated movies

Not reading Harry Potter.

The point is that one can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being. Much of this activity can actually distract one from becoming a more decent human being. In fact, some of these activities make you worse, interpersonally speaking. Many churches are jerk factories.

Take, for example, how Christians tip and behave in restaurants. If you have ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the reputation of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Millions of Christians go to lunch after church on Sundays and their behavior is abysmal. The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the collective behavior of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Never has a more well-dressed, entitled, dismissive, haughty or cheap collection of Christians been seen on the face of the earth.

I exaggerate of course. But I hope you see my point. Rather than pouring our efforts into two hours of worship, bible study and Christian fellowship on Sunday why don't we just take a moment and a few extra bucks to act like a decent human being when we go to lunch afterwards? Just think about it. What if the entire restaurant industry actually began to look forward to working Sunday lunch? If they said amongst themselves, "I love the church crowd. They are kind, patient and very generous. It's my favorite part of the week waiting on Christians." How might such a change affect the way the world sees us? Think about it. Just being a decent human being for one hour each Sunday and the world sees us in a whole new way.

But it's not going to happen. Because behavior at lunch isn't considered to be "working on your relationship with God." Behavior at lunch isn't spiritual. Going to church, well, that is working on your relationship with God. But, as we all know, any jerk can sit in a pew. But you can't be a jerk if you take the time to treat your waitress as if she were your friend, daughter or mother.

My point in all this is that contemporary Christianity has lost its way. Christians don't wake up every morning thinking about how to become a more decent human being. Instead, they wake up trying to "work on their relationship with God" which very often has nothing to do with treating people better. How could such a confusion have occurred? How did we end up going so wrong? I'm sure there are lots of answers, but at the end of the day we need to face up to our collective failure. I'm not saying we need to do anything dramatic. A baby step would do to start. Waking up trying to be a little more kind, more generous, more interruptible, more forgiving, more humble, more civil, more tolerant. Do these things and prayer and worship will come alongside to support us.

I truly want people to spend time working on their relationship with God. I just want them to do it by taking the time to care about the person standing right in front of them.

This is an interesting development.

Being the product of both a Catholic grade school and High School I have a great respect for nuns. They, specifically the Sisters of Mercy, were my teachers, friends and mentors. I hope they aren't about to face a Vatican crackdown for "liberalism."

Stand up for the sisters!

If you've been reading along with my unfolding book The Varieities & Illusions of Religious Experience, well, God bless you! You must be as crazy as I am.

Here's a bit of a break from weeks of heavy intellectual lifting as we head into a holiday weekend.

I'm a native Pennsylvania boy from the city. I now find myself living in West Texas having a slowly growing romance with country music and cowboy boots (I was already sold on "dress jeans," sweet tea, straw hats and barbeque). I don't like a ton of country music but the one artist I follow religiously is Brad Paisley. I love Paisley's voice, guitar skills, intelligence, humor and wry social commentary. Plus, he seems like a legitimately nice guy. So, two days ago when Paisley's new album American Saturday Night came out, I drove by WalMart to buy it.

You might hate country music and you might hate the track I'm about to recommend, but Paisley's song Welcome to the Future brought tears to my eyes. When I got home I played it for my wife and she started crying. I cried again.

It would be best to hear the song on a good sound system up really loud. In place of that here's a YouTube link which will probably go inactive for copyright violation as soon as I post it. If the link below is inactive click on this link and go to Paisley's site where you can play Track 3 Welcome to the Future on your computer.



The lyrics to the song:

When I was ten years old,
I remember thinkin' how cool it would be,
when we were goin' on an eight hour drive,
if I could just watch T.V.

And I'd have given anything
to have my own PacMan game at home.
I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade;
Now I've got it on my phone.

He-e-ey...
Glory glory hallelujah.
Welcome to the future.

My grandpa was in World War II,
he fought against the Japanese.
He wrote a hundred letters to my grandma;
mailed em from his base in the Philippines.

I wish they could see this now,
where they say this change can go.
Cause I was on a video chat this morning
with a company in Tokyo.

He-e-ey...
Everyday is a revolution.
Welcome to the future.

He-e-ey...
Look around it's all so clear.
He-e-ey...
Wherever we would go and well we...
He-e-ey...
So many things I never thought I'd see...
happening right in front of me.

I had a friend in school,
running-back on a football team,
they burned a cross in his front yard
for asking out the home-coming queen.

I thought about him today,
everybody who's seen what he's seen,
from a woman on a bus
to a man with a dream.

He-e-ey...
Wake up Martin Luther.
Welcome to the future.
He-e-ey...
Glory glory hallelujah.
Welcome to the future.

Obviously, it is the last part of the song that catches me. I know there's a lot of concern from people in my life (again, I live in West Texas one of the reddest areas in the US) about President Obama. But as a Christian and an American I'm just grateful that I got to see, live, the election of the first African-American President. From slave ships to November 4, 2008. What a sad but heroic journey. I wish MLK could have seen it. As well as the unnamed souls who were brought in chains to this City on a Hill.

Welcome to the future.

Charles Darwin is generally considered to be no friend of religion. Debates about teaching evolution to American school children continue to swirl and state-by-state legal battles continue to be fought.

Into this debate steps a remarkable new book, Darwin's Sacred Cause, by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. Desmond and Moore are the authors of what many critics believe to be the best modern biography of Darwin and they don't disappoint in their follow-up.

One way of approaching Moore and Desmond's book is to contrast the bland and quiet personality of Darwin with the revolutionary audacity of his theory of natural selection published in The Origin of Species. How could such a mild-mannered, reclusive and non-confrontational person produce the most revolutionary scientific theory in the history of the world? Where did the creative fires burn within Darwin? So little was shown on the surface of his life. What was going on inside him as he penned the Origin? What drove Darwin?

Desmond and Moore's claim is that Darwin inherited a fierce anti-slavery abolitionism from his family, on both his side and his wife's. Both the Darwin and the Wedgwood families (Emma Wedgwood was Darwin's wife and the Darwin's and Wedgwood's frequently intermarried) were active participants in the movement to end English participation in the slave trade and ending slavery in the English colonies. For example, Josiah Wedgwood, the famous English pottery manufacturer, was Emma Darwin's grandfather.  Josiah mass produced a famous cameo of the seal for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Here is the seal:

It shows a slave in chains with the words in the banner reading, "Am I not a man and a brother?"  Here was the cameo Josiah produced:


This, then, was the moral climate Darwin was raised in. This was Darwin's "sacred cause," the ending of slavery. In Darwin's own words, in a letter to the anti-slavery activist Richard Hill:

I was quite delighted...to hear of all your varied accomplishments and knowledge, and of your higher attributes in the sacred cause of humanity.

Eventually, Darwin began to have personal experiences as a young man that solidified the moral commitments he imbibed as a child, where hot abolitionist conversation was daily fare. Specifically, during his years in medical school (which he eventually aborted, having no stomach for the surgery room) Darwin took taxidermy lessons from an ex-slave named John. The sixteen-year-old Darwin spent many hours with John learning to stuff birds, a skill that would, fortuitously, come in handy years later on his Beagle journeys. One can imagine this young white boy learning a skill from this older black man, sitting together hour after hour. How could such an experience not affect the moral sensibilities of a young man on the question of slavery?  Eventually, Darwin and John became, in Darwin's words, "intimate."

What is striking about this early adolescent experience is that the memory of John remained with Darwin as kind of defining moral lesson. Forty-five years later, when Darwin published his definitive take on race in The Descent of Man, those lessons with John make a poignant reappearance. In the thick of describing how the mental abilities of the races are equivalent Darwin initially appeals to his observations during his travels on the Beagle. But the crowning piece of evidence is more personal and biographical. At the end of this argument about the intellectual equivalency of the races Darwin writes: so "it was with a full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be intimate." Desmond and Moore comment: "That was the 'blackamoor' John, now a warm, distant memory for Darwin: the ex-slave bird-stuffer who taught the boy week in, week out, during those lonely, frosty days in Edinburgh."

The other defining moral experience upon Darwin's attitudes concerning slavery occurred during his HMS Beagle journey. During the journey Darwin stayed in many slave nations and was able to observe the experience of slavery firsthand. The most poignant passage of Darwin's Beagle Journal comes toward the end and captures how his contact with slavery affected him:

I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernamabuco, I heard the most pitiful moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was a case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house were a young household mulatto, daily and hourly was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass that was not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye…It is claimed that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir
up the rage of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified by the illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves to our poorer countrymen: If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin…

Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; -- what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope for change! Picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children--those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own--being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbors as themselves, who believe in God, and pray His will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any other nation to expiate our sin.

When Darwin returned home from the Beagle the tides were shifting in the race debates. Suddenly, science, and not religion, was becoming the authoritative voice on the subject of racial origins. There had always been two schools of thought on the issue of racial origins. Specifically, there were the monogenists and the polygenists. The monogenists believed in a single (mono) origin (genesis) of racial descent. By contrast, the polygenists believed in multiple (poly) origins. Polygenesis was the racist theory, contending that the white and black races were separate biological species. Blacks were not fully human. They were an intermediate species between apes and Europeans. Generally speaking, slave traders and owners preferred polygenist theories as they provided justification for slavery.

In the generations before Darwin the monogenist versus polygenist debate was waged biblically and exegetically. Monogenist theologians argued for a "common descent" from Adam and Eve. In this view, all of humanity was the same species. We all shared a "common ancestor." By contrast, polygenist theologians pointed to biblical texts suggesting that humans (and human-like) species had multiple, distinct origins.

Waged on biblical grounds, the monogenist camp tended to come out on top. A plain reading of the bible suggested that all humans were decedents of Adam and Eve. But the rise of biological science was beginning to shift this debate in the other direction. Specifically, influential biologists were beginning to argue that Negroes and Europeans were, indeed, separate biological species. Most of these scientists were working in America, namely Louis Agassiz and Samuel Morton. Morton's infamous Crania Americana cognitively ranked races based upon cranial measurements, with whites on top and black on the bottom. (For a penetrating analysis of the racial bias at work in Morton's data collection see the late Stephen J. Gould's masterful book The Mismeasure of Man.)

In short, when Darwin began his Notebooks on the origin of species it appeared that the racial debates were going to be won by the polygenist camp, with the help of science. The only arguments in favor of "common descent" were from the bible. And the bible was no longer credible in the Age of Science. Appeals to a mythical Adam and Eve were just not persuasive to scientists waving tables of hard data on cranial measurements. Polygenesis was scientific and empirical. Monogenesis was superstitious and mythical. Given this situation, was it possible to provide a persuasive scientific account of "common descent"? Could science fight science in the race debates?

Desmond and Moore argue that one of Darwin's prime motivations in exploring the origin of species was to provide a scientific account of "common descent" to combat the scientific racism of the increasingly popular polygenist theories, theories that were supporting the institution of slavery. In short, the motivations behind The Origin of Species were moral. The Origin was published during a time when scientific racism was on the rise and the work decisively demolished polygenist thinking in favor of "common descent." All through Darwin's Notebooks, where he hatched the basic ideas in the Origin, his guiding idea was the genealogical tree, where all of humanity was seen as one, big branching family. A breakthrough moment in the Notebooks occurs when Darwin sketches a genealogical tree to show the relationship between the species. Over the sketch he writes "I think":

In short, Darwin's thinking about shared human relationships, a shared family tree with common grandparents, inspired both his thoughts about race and provided him with the perfect metaphor to think about the Tree of Life. Darwin's "sacred cause" both pushed and pulled his thinking about the origin of species. Each fueled the other.

Darwin's Sacred Cause is a fascinating book because, I think, it decisively reshape how Christians should approach Charles Darwin. Properly understood, The Origin of Species was a moral document. A document that, more than any other, ended the era of scientific racism and helped bring global slavery to an end. Further, The Origin of Species came to the aid of bible, lending scientific support to the growingly defunct biblical notion of "common descent."

All of this should give Christians pause before they attack Darwin. A reevaluation is in order in Christian circles given the moral impulses within Darwin's work.  I encourage thoughtful Christians to pick up Darwin's Sacred Cause and reconsider the man that many Christians have come to demonize.

Nicholas Kristof has an interesting article out today (h/t to JR) in the New York Times entitled Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal. It's a summary of some of the research we've discussed before on this blog.

The crux of this research has to do with the distinctive moral psychologies of conservatives and liberals. Much of this work is based upon Jonathan Haidt's notion of moral grammars/foundations. These moral grammars create moral warrants, the reasons we give for judging something to be morally “wrong." According to Haidt there are the five moral foundations:

Harm/Care:
Harming others, failures of care/nurturance, or failures of protection are often cited as reasons for an act being “wrong.” Some virtues from this domain are kindness, caretaking, and compassion.

Fairness/Reciprocity:
Inequalities or failures to reciprocate are often cited as evidence for something being “wrong.” Some virtues here are sharing, egalitarianism, and justice.

Ingroup/Loyalty:
Failure to support, defend, and aid the group is often cited as evidence for “wrongness.” Virtues include loyalty, patriotism, and cooperation.

Authority/Respect:
Failure to grant respect to culturally significant groups, institutions, or authority figures is often cause for sanction. Virtues include respect, duty, and obedience.

Purity/Sanctity:
Anything that demeans, debases, or profanes human or religious dignity or sacredness is also a cause for sanction. Virtues include purity, dignity, and holiness.

Research has shown that liberals and conservatives differ in the degree to which they deploy these moral grammars. Specifically, liberals tend to emphasize the first two: Harm and Fairness. Conservatives, by contrast, often appeal to the last two: Authority and Purity. This is not to say that liberals or conservatives restrict themselves to these warrants, but they do display moral tendencies with some warrants being used more than others or some warrants held as more vital than others.

Kristof's article highlights the role of disgust in the moral psychology of conservatives. This makes sense as disgust is the emotional correlate of purity/contamination attributions. This makes conservative moral psychology a volatile brew. While concerns over purity, sanctity and holiness are important moral concerns, the psychology of disgust and contamination is dangerous when applied to people. This is known as sociomoral disgust and conservatives are prone to it, due to their psychological tendencies. I've written about the conflict between love and disgust at great length on this blog and published on this topic (online version of the article can be found here). Suffice it to say, the problem of sociomoral disgust was at the center of the controversy surrounding Jesus's ministry (i.e., welcoming the "unclean" to table fellowship) and it remains the critical issue at the heart of the missional church movement. For whom does the church exist? Personally, I like the formulation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

The church is the church only when it exists for others.

If that's true, well, the rugs are going to get a bit dirty...

One of the more provocative theories Freud posited was his notion of the Oedipus Complex. According to Freud, at a critical juncture in childhood the child would experience sexual desire for the opposite sex parent and rivalry/aggression toward the same sex parent. The names for the Complex come from two Greek tragic figures, Oedipus and Electra, who unwittingly killed their same-sex parent and married their opposite-sex parent.

Given the power differentials between the child and the parents during the Oedipus Complex, the child finds themselves psychically and sexually thwarted and frustrated. That is, the sexual and aggressive drives cannot be expressed. According to Freud, the child resolves this dilemma by identifying with the same-sex parent. The boy becomes the father or the girl becomes the mother. For Freud, this process of identification is important for the formation of the superego. That is, the superego, the moral voice inside our heads, is the internalized parent.

What should we think about all this?

As best I can tell, modern scientific psychology has rejected any strong notion of the Oedipus Complex. However, if we approach the Oedipus Complex in the fuzzy manner I suggest (see Part 1) then some interesting things emerge.

First off, we all know that the relationships between parents and children can be volatile and ambiguous. And Oedipal dynamics do seem ubiquitous. When boys have intimate and idealized relationships with their mothers we call them a "mama's boy." Conversely, when girls have intimate and idealized relationships with their fathers we call them a "daddy's girl." Notice how these relationships fall along Oedipal lines. Further, conflict in the home is often hottest between the child and the same-sex parent. Sons fight with fathers and daughters fight with their mothers. Again, this is consistent with an Oedipal alignment. None of this is sinister or weird, but it does go to show that Freud wasn't pulling this stuff out of thin air.

Second, the resolution of the Oedipus Complex leads to the internalization of the parent's voice. I think most of us know what this is like. Messages and scripts from our childhood get into our heads to shape our identities and how we see the world. Often, these parental voices are toxic; we internalize the voice of the parent who told us we were fat, or stupid or worthless. Once that voice has been internalized it is very difficult to shake. The shadow of a parent (inside our heads) can be very, very long.

And, finally, let's talk theology.

Freud's basic claim is that our interactions with our parents shape our identity, relational style and conscience. Although most of us would reject the specifics of the Oedipus Complex I think we can see the larger point Freud was making. Child-parent dynamics are complex and formative.

This is important to recognize because God is primarily understood as being a parent, generally a father. Consequently, our experiences with our parents have implications for how we approach and experience God. Given that God is mostly seen as a Heavenly Father, our experiences with our fathers can be critical in determining the shape and style of our spiritual journey.

This impact is by no means predictable. For example, I know people who have been sexually abused by their fathers. Many of these people struggle with the notion of God as Father. The relational schema of father is toxic to them. Thus, any mention of God as Father in church, Scripture or worship just pushes them away.

By contrast, many people with abusive paternal relationships often find in God the loving Father they never had. For these people the metaphor of God as Father is deeply healing and comforting. In short, the effects of abusive or conflicted relationships with parents, fathers in particular, do not seem to have any predictable or uniform outcome. Regardless, the relationship with parents does have an impact upon how one experiences God.

What if the father-schema has been traumatically broken? Is it vital to the Christian faith that God must be understood as Father? Or is this metaphor dispensable? Might the father-metaphor be a product of a bible-times patriarchy that our more egalitarian era can correct?

No doubt, God is understood as Mother at times in the bible (e.g., Isaiah 49.15; 66.13). Consequently, this has prompted a demand for bibles that are gender-neutral or gender-inclusive. For example, rendering "God our Father" as "God our Father and Mother."

The parental metaphor imbalance is less acute in the Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions where the veneration of Mary as the Mother of God is integral to the Christian experience, in worship, prayer and devotion. Protestants, however, generally worship only with masculine metaphors. Recently, some Protestant writers and thinkers are beginning to explore Mariology, hoping, I think, to find a place for the feminine in Christian devotion. I think this impulse for redress is what sits behind a lot of the fascination with books like The Da Vinci Code.

Now, I'm not interested right now in getting into the political and social debates about feminist critiques of the bible and Christian parental metaphors. Nor am I interested right now in the place of Mary in Christian devotion. What I am interested in, in this post, is how our early experiences with parents impact how we experience God. And I wonder how those experiences might affect how we experience the paternal and maternal metaphors of God. That is, I wonder how old Oedipal issues might be driving things like the gender-inclusive language debate. And, finally, I wonder how, from a pastoral perspective, we are to approach a person whose father-schema is so poisoned that they practically vomit inside a Christian worship service.

We live in an culture, in America at least, that is both child-centric and nurture-obsessed. Interestingly, American Christianity has fully embraced these cultural emphases. American Christianity has made the parental nurture of children its defining witness to the world. This is a strange move to make given Jesus's consistent marginalization of family love. That is, Jesus doesn't place storge (love of family) at the center of his Kingdom vision. Rather, Jesus's focus is on what the Greeks called xenia (love of the stranger/outsider; hospitality). This downplaying of storge in favor of xenia is clearly illustrated in Jesus's teaching. Two examples:

Matthew 5:
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Luke 14:
Then Jesus said to his host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

As we reflect on all this, we might ask: Given Jesus's clear and consistent teaching, how did Americans and American Christians come to place so much emphasis on family love?

Some of the answer has to do with Freud.

As noted above, American culture is child-centric. This is a unique cultural stance, historically and globally. Most cultures have tended to place adulthood at the center of culture, especially the elderly. Americans, by contrast, have inverted this widespread emphasis. The elderly in America tend to be marginalized and discounted. The elderly are not deferred to or respected the way they are in other cultures. Rather than respecting old age and wisdom, Americans idolize youthfulness and childhood. The children are our future. They are the prized possessions. Babies are our idols.

Freud was significant in this shift of focus (from Jesus's culture to our own) in that Freud was the first influential thinker to devote significant attention to the role of childhood upon adulthood functioning. Freud's detailed theory of the psychosexual stages of development was unprecedented. Further, Freud detailed the way family relationships between parents, siblings and children can affect development, for good or ill. For Freud, the secret to who I am today is to be found in the past, in the early experiences of family and childhood.

This idea--the child is the father to the man--is so widely held that we fail to note how revolutionary it was when Freud began placing family life under the microscope. True, prior to Freud many acknowledged the importance of childhood. But Freud's analysis and theory revealed just how much could get screwed up during those years. Suddenly, childhood became very, very fragile. Parents could really mess things up. Kids could get ruined very easily.

Overnight, parenthood became a minefield. One had to tread carefully. Kids won't spontaneously recover from bad parenting. Thus, great skill was required. The Better Parenting obsession and industry was born.

Into this mix a uniquely Christian spin was created: Perhaps, in this post-Freudian parenting milieu, Christians could distinguish themselves from "the world" by showing that they love their kids more than anyone else loves their kids. By loving their kids more, by being the best parents in America, Christians might become a witness to the world.

Now, this isn't intrinsically a bad notion. I think it's great that Christians try to be wonderful parents. I know I try. But I think there are some risks to this strategy.

First, it's lopsided. The mass effort to love our kids more and show the world that we are the best parents in America is routinely done at the expense of, well, loving the world. We've replaced xenia with storge. That is, by having Norman Rockwell family meals we often fail to invite the people on the street to our tables. Family life becomes an idol.

Second, by priding ourselves upon being the Best Parents in America we come off as holier-than-thou. That is, on purely pragmatic grounds, the goal of loving our families as a witness to the world just isn't working. We look selfish, self-interested and self-absorbed. Instead of washing the feet of the world we read parenting manuals and pride ourselves on reading bible stories to our kids at night. All good, but annoying to outsiders. We need to do more than this.

In short, Freud was integral in creating new modern emphases, concerns, and neuroses about family and childhood development. We've all, the church included, imbibed these cultural trends. Thus it is important to step back and ask again, "What is the truly counter-cultural move?" How do we, in this post-Freudian climate, embrace robust and healthy families while opening ourselves to lives of hospitality and service to others? How does xenia as well as storge come to typify Christian living?

Because Freud has affected us far more than we've realized.

Next Post: Potty

When my son Brenden was little we couldn't get him into reading. He was plenty smart enough but just couldn't get into a book. Jana and I both love to read so this development was distressing to us. So we tried all kinds of books.

Then, one day, Jana's aunt, an elementary school librarian, told us about a series of books that children Brenden's age just love. Now, she cautioned, these books were kind of inappropriate. She didn't carry them in her library, but from what colleagues had told her other schools couldn't keep these books on the shelf they were being checked out so fast.

The series was the Captain Underpants books published by Scholastic.

The Captain Underpants books are half comic book and half young chapter book. And they are filled with potty humor. Here are some of the titles currently in the series:

The Adventures of Captain Underpants (1997)

Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets (1999)

Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants (2000)

The Captain Underpants Extra-Crunchy Book o' Fun (2001)

Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman (2001)

The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby (2002)

Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People (2006)

Just look at that list. Underpants. Potty People. Diaper Baby. Professor Poopypants. Talking Toilets. Wicked Wedgie Woman. And I don't even want to know what "Extra Crunchy" is referring to.

Anyway, looking at the books Jana and I demurred on buying them. We're too sophisticated for this kind of literature. And yet, as the months passed, our desperation to get Brenden to read his first book grew. So we cracked and bought him the first book, The Adventures of Captain Underpants.

Brenden sat down and read it straight through.

His first book. We were both pleased and depressed. Captain Underpants? Really? This was to be his first book?

Regardless, our son was reading.

So that night I found myself at the bookstore looking for the second book in the Captain Underpants series. And as I'm walking the rows of books I see a women scanning books as well. After a minute she stops me.

"Excuse me, but do you work here?"

"No," I reply. "But what are you looking for?"

"I'm looking for the Captain Underpants books."

My eyebrows go up. "Well, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Our son just read the first book and loved it. I'm looking for the second book in the series."

She laughs. "I'm looking for them because I'm an elementary school teacher in town. Our library carries the books but they are always checked out. So I'm going to buy some and keep them in my class so kids can read them during our silent reading time. My kids just love these books. It's what got many of them reading."

True story. And as I drove home that night from the bookstore I began to think about Freud and the Anal Stage of childhood development.

Why did Freud spend so much time thinking about the psychological effects of toilet training? Well, for one simple reason. Toilet training is the first time a child confronts the fact that society has claims on how we use our bodies. Prior to toilet training, the child, as we've discussed, is raw Id, a conscienceless gratification machine. Children, we've noted, are like animals. This is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than the fact that children are not expected to control their bowel movements or urination. They can pretty much poop and pee wherever they are. Much to the inconvenience of parents.

So it probably comes as quite a shock to the child when, apparently out of the blue, the parents start asking the child to control her bladder. The child must be thinking, "Seriously? You want me to hold it in!?"

Yes, yes we do. We want you to hold it in. And, yes, it's uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable at times. But your job is to hold it in and endure the discomfort until you can get to the bathroom. It's time to grow up. It's time to step away from the animal world and join the housebroken humans.

Society has claims upon my body. I can't do whatever I want with it. I can't hit you with it or expose it to you. I have to manage my body and endure physical discomfort at times. My body is not my own.

Interestingly, this is a very biblical idea. Take, for instance, Paul's comments regarding marriage in 1 Corinthians:

The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

Beyond marriage, I think you can also claim that, as Paul sees it, the bodies of the entire Christian community belong to each other. For Paul, the notion of the body is a communal notion. My body is not my own to do with as I please. As a Christian my physical body is community property. Which is a radical notion to Western ears. But it shouldn't be. Think of potty training.

In short, the realization that society has claims on our bodies is the beginning of our moral sense. That is, toilet training, learning to be a "good" boy or girl, is our first systematic moral education. The first lessons on how bodies and their impulses are to be mastered in light of social demands.

Consequently, the language of goodness and sinfulness is intimately tied up with the experience of potty training. To be good is to be "clean." Cleanliness is next to godliness. The color white is the color of holiness. Conversely, to be bad is to be "dirty," "filthy," or "unclean." The prodigal son finds himself with the pigs. We can make a "mess" of our lives, morally speaking. And the central ritual of Christian salvation is a bath.

And in the Captain Underpants books the evildoers are the "poopy people." Goodness, represented in the hero, is some clean white underwear, proudly worn.

In short, our most primitive metaphors concerning morality reach back to the very first experience we had when society first made claims upon our bodies. So it was then. So it is now.

Next Post: Oedipus