Weekly Schdeule, April 6-10: The Onsalught

Monday

-Music History – Movie Response Paper Due

-Writing About Literature – Reading

Tuesday

-Music Theory – Assignment

-Band Concert

-Writing About Literature – Reading & Response

Wednesday

-Music History – Quiz

Thursday

-Music Theory – Assignment

-Human Language – Exam (Delayed to 4/14)

-History – Paper Due

Friday

-Writing About Literature – Reading

For my history class, I just finished the book Carnival of Fury by William Ivy Hair, which is a historical novel about Robert Charles and the race riot of 1900 in New Orleans.  I must say, it was a fascinating, though somewhat shocking; I guess it is easy to forget how far we as a civilization have come in terms of civil rights and understanding have come in the last hundred years.  It is easy to look at all of the problems of modern civilization with disdain, but it is also valuable to remember that life in the United States has improved by leaps and bounds in the last century, especially for minorities.  Therefore, it should be our goal that people living in a hundred years are able to say the same thing about the 21st century.

I have also very nearly finished reading Tony Campolo’s Letters to a Young Evangelist.  Overall, I have it found it a very good assessment of the modern-day Evangelist movement, and it has been insightful to read his opinions and understandings of today’s complex issues.  He, too, is very vocal about his frustration about the apparent alliegiance of the vast majority of modern-day evangelists with the Republican party, which has led to a great deal of political agendas within the Evangelist movement.  He also points out that Fundamentalism (in the modern understanding) has begun to try to adopt the title of Evangelism to sound less politically and socially acceptable, and Campolo’s solution is for non-Fundamentalist Evangelicals to refer to themselves as “Red-letter Christians.”  Honestly, I find it far more simple to just say, “I’m a Christian,” and if someone asks for some kind of added specificity, I’ll reply, “I’m an independent Christian.”  Anyhow, that is not the only thing Campolo addresses: he also discusses the roots of modern-day Evangelism, the Praise & Worship movement, the importance of witnessing, the roots of “Rapture” theology, and many other issues.  If he ever reads this, I must offer a storng congratulations to Mr. Campolo; his book has been enlightening about many things, and he has encouraged me to think for myself on a wide range of issues.  Of course, I haven’t totally finished it, but that is where I am now.

In addition, I have very nearly finished reading the Bible from cover to cover.  After this, I will probably go back through the New Testament books again; in one of the Bible studies that I participate in, the teacher spent several weeks before Spring Break teaching us how to study the Bible for ourselves so that we can come to our own Bible-based conclusions on all issues that the Bible touches on, including Church doctrines.

Thursday, I finished reading Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, which was a novel about Blacks living in America in the mid-20th century.  However, it doesn’t just address the white-black distinctions and prejudices of the time; it also touches on class differences within each race, the necessity for knowing one’s ancestory, and many different topics.  While it was definitely not a book I would normally read on my own, I did enjoy it and the insights that it provided into another range of thoughts.

Anyhow, I am now going to spend some time writing the paper for my music history class.  It is on the American musician Charles Ives, who is considered the first modern American musician.  WE watched a documentary on him before Spring Break, and so the paper is to be a sort of review of the documentary and on Ives in general.

Have a great day and God bless!

thefaithfulmind

Some New Reading Material

This will be a pretty short post.  I went to a Bible study conducted by one of my high school teachers and her husband, and while we were waiting in town, we went by a used book store and I found a few books that caught my interest.  One of them was a book entirely composed of predictions about the 7th Harry Potter book, written in the interim between the release of The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows. Of course, owning both of these and having read them both, I didn’t buy it, but I found skimming through it a very interesting use of time.  The book was entirely a discussion of the many theories about how Rowling would sum up the series, and in retrospect, they were close in several areas that I would never have imagined, and they were dead on in a few areas.  Anyhow, I ended up buying some new reading material, and I thought that would be worth posting, since I keep track of my reading log here:

• The Bible Answer Book by Hank Hanegraaff – I have begun reading some of this at a friend’s house, and I found myself immediately entranced by it.  This is sure to be one that I leave out on my table or counter when I have my own home.
• Six Hours One Friday by Max Lucado – To be honest, though I have heard much praise for him and have read some of his works, I haven’t read many of Max Lucado’s writings.  However, I’m looking forward to it with anticipation.
• Under God by Toby Mac & Michael Tait – I have already looked online and found that, historically speaking, this book is not entirely accurate.  Personally, I believe that, including revisions to perfect historical accuracy, the point of the book is not diminished, but I will have to read it to be certain.

That’s all for now!

SfC

Some Thoughts: Why American Seems to Lack Great Thought and Art (Creativity & Consumerism)

These are some thoughts of mine that have been taking shape for several months now.  I have often looked with awe upon the great minds of our past:  Da Vinci, Jefferson, Washington, Luther, Luther King Jr., Leonardo, Aristotle, Socrates, Moses, Jesus, Chaucer, Milton, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Einstein, Curie, and the brotherhood of great minds that they, along with so many others, have formed in the modern conscious, great men who, with their lives, changed the course of humanity in their respective fields,  changing the face of the globe as a result of their thoughts, words, literature, and convictions.  However, when I look at the United States and simply modern times in general, I see something very curious: there seems to be a diminished respect in the modern society for men and women that are striving toward the betterment of mankind, not to mention that there seems to be very few of this breed left.  I have often wondered why this is the case, and I want to explore this topic.

First of all, I believe that our civilization doesn’t really lack great minds.  I believe that, in truth, great minds have always been among us and always will be among us.  The key to recognizing them, however, is to be listening for them and looking for the signs of a Great Mind.  Let me also clarify that, when I’m talking about Great Minds, I’m not just talking about someone with a high Inteligence Quotient.  Sadly, I have found that some of the high-IQ people I have met in my life are also the least motivated and the least determined to do something with their gifts.  When I say a Great Mind, I’m placing a person in the company of the men and women who have changed the course of humanity by their contribution.  High IQ might have something to do with it, but I’m convinced and convicted that having a high IQ isn’t enough to qualify for this elite-of-the-elite group; one must also have a drive to change something wrong with this world (M. Luther King, Jr.) , to take humanity to the next level of exploration (Hubble), or to simply make the world a better place (Jesus).  In achieving this, I believe that IQ is secondary, and our society’s push on IQ tests totally misses the point of what the point of our existence is.  What am I saying?  I’m saying that the point of our existence does not begin and end on a test score, whether that be your IQ, ACT, SAT, or whatever.  If that was the point of our existence, Jesus would have taken an IQ test, scored perfect, and then gone to get baptized, but he didn’t, so it isn’t.

So, if our civilization really does have some great minds, why can’t we recognize them, or why do they seem to be so difficult to locate?  To be honest, I believe that not all of them are so obscure; there are plenty of effective and pioneering writers, mathmaticians, scientists, and historians in today’s world, not to mention artists, musicians, and every other occupation concievable.  The ones that are obscure are more difficult to find because ours is a large society of 300 million people, and sadly, when you have that many people, locating any single person with any outstanding characteristics becomes categorically difficult.  In a society that is so full of so many people producing so many works of art, music, and thought, I believe that the most brilliant works are obscured by the overwhelming flow of passable or even deficient counter-parts.

However, I believe that the central reason for our apparent lack of great minds and artists comes down to the society in which we live, which has become saturated with a new breed of hyper-individualism, hyper-consumerism, and hyper-capitalism.

This is based on this thought:  I believe, as a Christian, that God created the world (I do believe that God did it in a week as well, but that piece of information is hardly useful for this thought).  Thereby, when I look at the cosmos as a created order -when I look at the Earth and the numerous and complex life that exists here, and look up and see the stars without number that have been placed in the sky -I must draw the conclusion that our God is an infinitely creative and imaginative God.  Now, the Bible tells us that humanity was made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), so it logically follows that our creativity and imagination are a gift from God, having been made in his image.

Of course, creativity is not impervious to corruption.  There are plenty of ways in the modern world in which creativity has been used not for the joy that comes with creating something, but it is instead done out of greed, pride, hatred, or malice.  However, it is also a personal conviction of mine that creativity is a gift to our personalities from God’s personality, that we are most like God when we are being creative out of pure reasons.  These reason could be simply for the joy of creating something, or out of service to Him and His Church.

So, this also brings forth a question that I believe can be answered a couple of different ways:  what is the opposite of creativity?  When I have asked some of my friends this question, most of them responded “destruction,” which is correct.  So, I ask, what is the mentality that accompanies consumerism, especially the hyper-consumerism that has prevaded and enslaved our society?  Consumerism is all about consuming, which is another form of destruction.  In essence, I’m saying that our society is so busy consuming things -food, clothes, vehicles, electronics, and media -that we have lost the innate desire to be building something rather than destroying something.

This hyper-consumerism is a double-edged sword against creativity in this society:  on one hand, it distracts people from recgonizing thruly great minds among them.  This has a lot to do with our standard of living, which is defined by the movies and television shows we watch, the commericals we see, and what everyone else in society seems to by consuming.  You see, we don’t want to fall behind in our work, so we work extra hard to get ahead; we don’t want to live below the standard of living, so we try to exceed it; we don’t want to appear deficient, so we all try to appear superior.  It reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ chapter on pride in Mere Christianity.  The end result of all of this is that we have all become brainwashed participants in a rat race to achieve a standard of living that goes beyond what we need to all of our numerous wants.  We are so busy trying to “live the life” that we miss the real point of living.  So, what is the real point of living?  My answer is based on my Christian faith, but I do believe that the answer is as near a universal answer as possible: relationships.  Most of us know that, that regardless of our faith, color, gender, or personal background, we desire relationships more than we desire money, cars, houses, and wealth.  However, we are so caught up in checking the clock, racing to meet our deadlines, and trying to live luxuriously in-between that we miss real life, and reserve it to the “someday” category of our life.  This last paragraph is a bit of a tangent, but my point is, if people aren’t even willing to slow down their busy lives to really live life, then how much more are they not slowing down to pay attention to the great minds among us when they do speak.

One perfect example of this is a story my old youth leader at my high school youth group has told of a very famous musician who performed one day at one of the Monorail terminals in Washington for a newspaper article.  The man was an exceptional musician, performing on a 300-year-old multi-million dollar violin, performing some of the most advanced and difficult music ever written for violin.  This guy was used to living a very upper-class life, and most tickets for a concert performance by him would start in $700-$900 range.  Yet, of the 1,000-some people who walked by this man during his hour-long performance, less than 1% actually stopped to listen to him.  The other >99% walked by, completely oblivious to what was unfolding in their midst.  One man who was later interviewed for the newspaper article was able to remember every single lottery number he played that morning (10 or more, I believe), but when asked, he could not even remember that there was a musician playing a violin at that terminal.  Unless I’m mistaken, only one person who stopped to listen to the musician and was later interviewed by the newspaper recognized what happened:  when asked, the man replied that there was a musician at the terminal whose performance was absolutely stellar, complimenting the musician’s form, style, precision, and the performance as a whole.  Sadly, I believe that the other 1,000 people who walked within feet of the musician and missed it are the chorus of today’s society:  “I don’t want any fancy art, music, or thought-provoking treatises; all I want is a multi-million dollar lifestyle, whereby I can live as I please.”

The other wound that consumerism deals out to creativity in our society is by distracting not only the public at large, but people who have real potential to be among that brotherhood of great minds.  I honestly believe that, with the advent of all of the technology available to us in these days, there is no limit to the societal flaws that could be corrected, the injustices that could be rectified, and the betterment that could occur in our society if people would only use the tools that have been provided to them for the sake of mankind at large.  However, it isn’t that we own our electronics; ours is a materialistic society as well, so our stuff owns us.  We try to live life by waking up early in the morning, rushing to work, rushing around to our various activities, and rushing home to sit in front of a television screen for a couple of hours before going back to sleep and starting the cycle over again.  I don’t think I’m the only person whose saying, “Surely there has to be something more than all of that.”

That is why I have chosen to pursue that brotherhood, to attempt to change the world for the better.  I might achieve something with my life and I might not, but I find more excitement and happiness in the pursuit of changing the world for the better than I can imagine finding in simply existing.

SfC

The Banned Books Meme

Taken from Grumpy Teacher, who got it from Julie Carter, who got it from Scavella, who probably got it from someone else.

Look through this list of banned books.  If you have read the whole book, bold it.  If you have read a part of the book, italicize it.  If you own it but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, *** it.

1. The Bible
2. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
4. The Koran
5. Arabian Nights
6. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
8. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
9. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
11. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
13. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
14. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
15. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
16. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
17. Dracula by Bram Stoker
18. Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
19. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
20. Essays by Michel de Montaigne
21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
22. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
23. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
24. Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
25. Ulysses by James Joyce
26. Decamaron by Giovanni Boccaccio
27. Animal Farm by George Orwell
28. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
29. Candide by Voltaire
30. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
31. Analects by Confucius
    
32. Dubliners by James Joyce
33. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
34. Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
35. Red and the Black by Stendhal
36. Das Capital by Karl Marx
37. Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
38. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
39. Lady Chatterley’s Lower by D.H. Lawrence
40. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
41. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
42. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
43. The Jungle by Uton Sinclair
44. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
45. Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
46. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
47. Diary by Samuel Pepys
48. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
49. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
50. Fahrenheit 451 by Rad Bradbury
51. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
52. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
54. Praise of Folly by Desirderius Erasmus
55. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
56. Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
57. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
58. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
59. Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
60. Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
61. Mill Flanders by Daniel Defoe
62. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
63. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
64. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
65. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
66. Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
67. Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
68. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
69. The Talmud
70. Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
71. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
72. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
73. American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
74. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
75. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
76. The bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77. Red Pony by John Steinbeck
78. Popol Vuh
79. Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
80. Satyricon by Petronius
81. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
82. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
83. Black Boy by Richard Wright
84. Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
85. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
86. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
87. Metaphysics by Aristotle
88. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
89. Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
90. Stepphenwolf by Hermann Hesse
91. Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
92. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
93. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
94. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
95. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
96. Sorrows of Young Wether by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
97. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
98. Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
99. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
100. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
101. Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
102. Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
103. Nana by Émile Zola
104. Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
105. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
106. Gulag Archipelago by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
107. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
108. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
109. Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
110. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
111. Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
112. The Harry Potter seires by J.K. Rowling
113. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
114. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
115. The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatly Synd
     

Obviously, the purpose of this is less for me to show what I have read, and more to show what I have yet to read.  Many of these books are familiar to me, even if only vaguely.  Perhaps some of these will make their way onto my Reading Log over Christmas Break.

Anyhow, I just finished my History final and turned in my history paper with it.  Only two items left before the semester is over!

SfC

The Final Countdown Continues: 8…7…6…5… (Looking Ahead)

Hello, reader!  As of right now, there are only four things left for me to do between now and next Friday.  The most urgent of these are to write a paper for my history class that I have mentioned several times this semester, where I discuss how, in Paul Fussel’s words, “The real war will never get into the books.”  I am to state whether I agree or disagree and provide evidence for it.  Similarly, once I am done with my paper, I will proceed with studying for the exam that I have tomorrow morning.  Once these two things are done, then I will have two days to practice for my French Horn jury and then another two days to study for my Music Theory final.  I’m expecting the music theory final to present a challenge, but I will study quite a bit over the next several days to be as prepared as I can be for it.  Once the Music Theory final is done, I have some house-keeping things to do with the house that I’m staying at, and then I’m heading home for Christmas Break!

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about this.  I am also very happy to state that God has been doing some extraordinary things in my mind and heart, and He has filled me with His peace.

However, my Christmas Break isn’t going to be all fun-and-games.  I’m going to a surgeon the week of Christmas to have my wisdom teeth examined, and then I will return later that week to have them removed.  Needless to say, I might be posting excessively on my blog here over those couple of weeks, seeing as how I anticipate that I won’t be communicating verbally very much for a few days.  That might be for the better; I have heard one story in particular of a girl I know who was using some of their extra-strong painkiller and thought she could fly.  Nothing bad happened to her, but I’m just warning the reader that, if I make a very bizarre, uncharacteristic post anytime after Christmas, then please disregard it until such a time arrives as I have the sanity to delete it.

Other than this, I hope to be reintroducing the reading log that I had started in the summer but have allowed to fall by the wayside since the semester began.  I will, of course, have additional books to add to it, seeing as how every time I return home for a weekend, my bibliophile friends instantly start informing me of the excellent books that they have read recently.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate it; it gives me a great deal of happiness to have so many fellow book-readers.  I just need to get into it a little more myself.  I also anticipate the restarting of my Reading Log with the hope that it will carry through the Spring semester and ever more.  I might have to retry a couple of times, but I am an enormously persistent person.

I also expect that I will keep using a to-do list throughout the Christmas Break; I have surprised myself with the level of productivity that I have been able to accomplish the last semester by simply setting daily goals of what I want to accomplish.  However, instead of most of my to-do list consisting of studying, it will consist more of writing, reading, and the many things that I like to occupy my extra time with.

For several weeks, I have been wanting to start an on-going series of posts that I make in which I discuss some of the thoughts that have been going through my head recently.  I have the ideas written down on paper (somewhere) and have simply been unable to sit down lately and state my thoughts.  I have also recently seen a meme that I have seen go around from time to time consisting of a list of the most banned books in the world and listing which of these banned books you have read.  Posts on the current world economic situation, the Depression of the 1930′s, and current politics are also on my “to-write” list for my blog.

Naturally, I expect that I will be making some good headway in the writing of my novel.  For the last couple of weeks, working on the language for my book has been my highest priority; I’ve reached the point where I’m decided that, if any further work on the novel proper is to be done, it must be done after I have a good idea of what my language is going to be like.

In short, I’m looking forward to the Christmas Break and the many opportunities that it brings with great anticipation.

SfC

John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14: “Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God”

For my Introduction to British Literature class, I have been assigned a paper about one of the authors that we have discussed in class thus far.  Here’s a quick list of the works that we have read and talked about in class:

• Beowulf
• Lanval - Marie de France
• Miller’s Tale - Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Passionate Sheppard - Christopher Marlowe
• The Nymph’s Reply – Sir Walter Raleigh
• Sonnet 18, 29, 130 – William Shakespeare
• Paradise Lost – John Milton (Books III & IV)
• The Sun Rising, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, and The Flea by John Donne.
• To His Coy Mistress – Andrew Marvell
• Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
• Assorted Poems from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
• Tintern Abbey and Michael by William Wordsworth (Just finished today)

So, for my paper, I have been given three options:  1)  Discuss Unferth’s gift of Hrunting to Beowulf and take a stance on whether this was Unferth betraying Beowulf with a kiss or actually seeking reconciliation and back it up, 2)  Discuss the themes of justice in the medieval social order illustrated in Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale and how these themes relate to one of the three main characters-John, Abasalom, or Allison-and how each character’s transgressions against society are punished in the end, or 3)  To read and analyse John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV, explaining the argument and message.  Obviously, by the title of this post, I chose the third option.

So, as part of simply immersing myself in the text, I thought I would write it down in my blog.  In fact, I was thinking that poetry might compose a second weekly update that I do for my blog, to go along with my Musician Monday’s updates.  However, for now, I’ll just post Holy Sonnet XIV.  So, without further ado, I give you, “Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God:”

Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captivated, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

So, for the introduction to my paper, I will be looking up some historical background to begin the paper.  This will be my major project for the weekend.  The paper is due on Wednesday, so I’m not in a terrible hurry to finish it this weekend, but I want to so I can read it and reread it and have friends read it, proof it, think about it, and just absolutely do the best I can to make it a great paper.

Anyway, that’s the main thing going on for me right now.  Other than that, this will be a rather relaxed weekend.  I have a large amount of reading to do in Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley for History next week; Religious Studies is fantastic; I’m pretty well caught up in music theory (even a little ahead); and I will need to be practicing my major scales for French Horn practice pretty extensively this weekend.

So anyway, that’s how things are going for schoolwork.  For Kenushi Ryu, I’m continuing to refine the map for Kenusha that I have already posted (if I have a newer version, I’ll just leave a UPDATE note on the post and upload the newer versions).  In addition, I’ve started working on a map for the Plains of Halsom region, as well as doing other various work.  I’ll keep the blog updated as I get more done.

In addition, I have borrowed from a minister The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel finally.  I have read The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith and found them both to be very thought-provoking books, and a very intellectual friend of mine owns The Case for a Creator and really enjoyed it, so that will likely occupy some of my free time for a time as well.

Have a great day and a great weekend!

SfC

Reawakening to Education & Curiousity; Continued Sythesis of Thought and Faith

Forging on ahead in Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, I have finally finished his extensive chapter on Relationships.

First, I believe that I have started to grasp the observation on feminism that Bloom has made. Bloom observes that, because sex is easy to obtain, feminism has begun to attain greater lengths of power in the intellectual community. However, Bloom goes on to point out that, though women claim the same rights as men, they are wired differently in that they have the desire to bear children (though I do recognize that not all women have this desire) and have associated struggles that deal with this. Of course, Bloom brings the discussion back to the university by observing that more and more of today’s students suffer under the influence of broken homes from divorce as a result of the desires of women to not have to deal with having children and instead cling to their “rights” to have the same job opportunities as men, which taken from their perspective means that men must drop their responsibilities to the family and try to be mothers while women try to successfully be the men of the house, both in having authority, in supporting the family, and everything else. This causes psychological problems to the families that go through these divorces, and these problems are (Bloom generalizes, but I say that the problems can be) aggravated by the use of psychologists who try to comfort the parents into thinking their children will be alright while both parents pursue their own individualized goals (I insert the term “selfish” where Bloom says “individualized,” though I must also realize in saying this that it can hardly be called selfish when some people are never exposed to the thought that there is fulfillment in serving and seeking Truth rather than the Self)

Bloom does say that he doesn’t say that the old system (the system of the nuclear family) was good or that we should go back to it. I must insert a disagreement here; I do believe that the system as it was was good; that is, it was functional and effective in providing people with a template for a functional system by which to raise their children successfully (then again, I can speak only lightly on this subject; the old system did have its own imperfections and I haven’t seen it implemented on as large a scale as the way it is being decommissioned today and therefore don’t have the personal experience to say for certain if things today are better or worse). Should we go back to the original system? Honestly, I do believe so, though I doubt that such is possible in today’s relativistic circumstances. Then again, if we aren’t going to go back to the old system, then what new system has been proposed or enacted to replace it? None, so far as I know.

Bloom points out that, the way the old system was set up, virtues were acquired by way of appealing to the nature of people. Men, who were (and, to an extent, are) possessive and protective of self, and thus this possessiveness was expanded to encompass his family (and, in my personal experience, I see that this possessiveness was encompassed further to include the best and closest of my friends). Instead, today, the possessiveness is condemned as evil, replaced with a fake nature that men will never truly possess, and then the men are condemned when both the fake nature and the desired virtues are unsuccessful.

From this, I see some wisdom. As a Christian, I see that you do not manufacture feelings of kindness to people that you naturally have a disliking for (though, as far as trying to become like a Son of God, as C.S. Lewis points out, there is a legitimacy in trying to behave as a Son of God with the goal of actually becoming more like a Son of God). Instead, you refrain from expressing your feelings of dislike to people (letting it die) and “fertilize” your natural feelings of kindness that they may grow. Of course, Lewis also points out in this that there are some who are possessed wholly of rottenness and unkindness, which means that the person is blessed with an automatic dependence on God for change in the raw materials of their souls, that they might be better Christians.

Finally, in the last section of Bloom’s chapter on relationships, he discusses how the commonness of sex has disabled it as a path that some people in past cultural circumstances might have sought enlightenment. This I understand personally: having no true romantic experience of mine own, so I find myself drawn into the romantic experiences of others (fiction or nonfiction) that I might better understand my own circumstances (though I am cautious with this, for I also recognize that excessively focusing on this incomplete part of my distracts me from today’s opportunities to serve God and explore the world as well as focuses me on myself, which is a side-track into selfish sins).

This last section of Bloom’s “Relationships” reminds me of curiosity and the need to have it in my search for knowledge and wisdom and it has reawakened my innate curiosity. It is as though some thoughts that I have had in the past have resurfaced: the recognition that the path to wisdom and ignorance must first go through ignorance, child-like ignorance of everything and to never stop asking questions. It was Christ, was it not, who said, “Unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of God?” while one of Socrates’ last statements was an acknowledgment that he was the only one who realized his complete ignorance. Didn’t Socrates teach that the truly wise do not desire great power (politically) and avoid it while Christ spent his whole ministry running from the crowds when they tried to crown Him and make Him their ruler?

Bloom also reminds me that, in seeking fulfillment in studying history, I must also visualize the lives of heroes and villains long gone, to be able to walk into a monastery older than all my known relatives and imagine the many days and nights spent by the monks residing there, imagine their prayers, their studies, their hunger for righteousness, to be able to walk the streets of Washington, D.C. and imagine the British invasion in the War of 1812 or the inauguration day of Lincoln or the assassination day of Kennedy…

Finally, I’m reminded that the true goal of education is not to get a job but to know oneself through the lens of the greater thinkers past and present. This is achieved through curiosity, imagination, and (as a Christian) the desire to know God that transcends all self-seeking drives, instead overriding them and making me more aware of how awesome a creation I (as a human being) am and how God is working in my life.

I thought that such reawakening would be worth posting. Take care!

SfC

The American Cornerstone and More Reading of Bloom’s American Mind

In a conversation with another writer and thinker that I am acquainted with, this thought came to me about America’s origins:

Psalms 118:22 is a well-known verse to studied Christians. It states, “The Stone that the Builders rejected has become the cornerstone (or capstone in some translations).” It is referenced several times in the New Testament, pointing to how Christ, though He declared himself to the Jewish people as the Messiah that had been prophecied of since the days of Moses and the 40 years in the wilderness, was condemned by the religious leaders of the time and was crucified. However, because Christ lived the perfect life and bore the sins of the world, He rose to new life and spawned a movement within Judaism.

However, even though the movement was peaceful, the leaders of the time (and for the next 300 years) continued to reject the teachings of Jesus. However, from the perspective of history, the stone that the builders the builders rejected truly did become the cornerstone for today’s largest sect of faith on Earth’s surface as well as one of the dynamic elements within the dialectic that is Western culture.

Similarly, the values that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Paine, and many of their co-conspirators (I use the term loosely to refer to America’s Found Fathers) held to political (and in some cases, religious in the form of Protestantism) ideals that had faced persecution in Europe. However, in America, these same ideas held strong and eventually became the cornerstone of the U.S.’s government, ideas about “all men being created equal” and having freedom to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Again, the rejected stone became the cornerstone.

Of course, this might be why the United States and Christianity have seemingly walked hand-in-hand for the last couple of centuries; both share similar histories and, regardless of what people say, freedom to practice religion are one of the central reasons as to why people came to (and still come to) the United States since its birth.

Of course, from my perspective, I see that both are facing (and losing to) the same enemy. The United States and the American Christian Church faces many struggles ahead, not the least of which is the death of the American culture, consumerism, egalitarian ideals towards both people and ideas, and lack of concern over these problems, which multiplies the potential damage they could inflict on our nation exponentially.

When I speak of Egalitarianism as a danger to our democracy, I do not contest the belief that the Declaration of Independence is true in that “All men are created equal” insofar as men all have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as well as the many other rights that the Constitution grants. The egalitarianism that endangers us all is to take the phrase, “All men are created equal” and not continue on. The purpose of the statement was to assert that men are all, in the eyes of the government, the same (which in today’s society is not true in total practice; I know people who are given leniency from speeding tickets because their relatives are police or city government officials). The assertion was not that all men were created completely equal in mental capacity and capability, which is an idea that has broken our education system.

To illustrate this point, I will reference something that my director at church camp told me and the rest of the counselors in relation to caring for the students. The gist of her thought is, “Equal is not fair.” From there, she elaborates that some of the campers coming to camp will have lived perfect (or at least passably normal) lives and will need no extra attention. On the other hand, there will be other campers who struggle with obesity or who have abusive parents or who have had no exposure to God or Godly people in their lives. These campers will need more attention, more care, and more love than some others.

I believe this to be a very meaningful phrase to consider in a world that is constantly pushing for fairness through equality. With first-hand experience of passing through the public school system, I can safely say that equal is never fair. I have seen it; students who are ultra-high achievers who are capable of being the next Abraham Lincoln, Frederich Nietzsche, Rene Descartes, or J.R.R. Tolkien are put in the same institutionalized holding pen as kids who won’t learn to read or write until they are ten or twelve and are expected to receive the same training and exposures (in the public school) as everyone else. This not only can’t be achieved; it shouldn’t’ be. The end result would be taking the standard Bell curve that illustrates a class and manipulating the whole thing until all you have is a straight line: no incredible geniuses, no mentally challenged students either. So, here’s my question to this philosophy of education: is the squandering and suffocation of our greatest minds worth the effort of trying to hoist everyone onto the same level? Remember, “Equal is not fair.”

I have also continued reading Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. His chapter on relationships is highly interesting to me who, as a Christian, am taught that our relationships with other people are the most important part of our life on Earth. I also think that the “Relationships” chapter is one of the longest ones in the book.

First, Bloom discusses the “niceness” of his students and how they, living in a society where they have no great need, are neither greatly good or evil, though they do seem without ambition. Next, Bloom notices how Equality seems to have shattered all racial barriers save for the one between Caucasians and African-Americans, where a new barrier called affirmative action has reinforced some of the barriers that were nearly completely destroyed and might become a catalyst for greater racial unrest in the future. Also (and this is as far as I have read thus far), Bloom talks of how the new modes of sexual relations (brought on by music and media that promoted release from sexual inhibitions during the sixties) have given rise to feminism. Unfortunately, even now, I do not fully understand the full extent of what Bloom is trying to say here, though I do recognize that, at the point I am in the book, he is only making observations of his students, not stating opinions. From what I could understand, his observation is that sex is so easy (by easy, I mean to mean simple or common to obtain) as to be common knowledge and thought for today’s youth (especially young girls, who were expected to be the “proper” ones in cultural periods past).

Because of this, we have the rise of feminism, which to my mind’s eye seems like affirmative action and the rising “tyranny of the minority” that I observe: for a long time, blacks and females seemed to have fewer cultural (not political, mind you) rights than Caucasian men and, in government, political minorities were respected though not calling the shots. Now, this is not to say that the principles behind affirmative action are wrong; I would hazard a guess that there are good intentions in those who do this. However, the end result is that, instead of a stabilization of equality between Caucasian and Blacks, men and women, we know see that the ball is rolling further into their court; instead, Blacks, women, and even political minorities are receiving special treatment, which goes against the principles of equality that were the basis for the push towards abolition of slavery and Woman’s voting rights as well as the Constitutional assertions that the majority vote rules.

However, that leap-frogs into an entirely other political ballgame that I don’t have enough time to cover. I’ll likely comment further on Bloom’s observations of feminism when I better understand them. Thanks for reading!

SfC

The Nature of Music and the Corruption of the West

Music is something that I thoroughly enjoy. Even as I am typing, I am listening to Chris Sligh’s “Empty Me,” a major hit on Christian radio. I also respect music, acknowledging its impressive power. After all, music is one of the most powerful forces in the world, and in my mind arguably the most powerful force ever conceived by man: guns, missiles, and nuclear bombs have the power to take life on an enormous scale, true enough, but music has the ability to affect the state of one’s soul in a more profound way than anything else. I look at it this way: a gun can take someone’s life; music can convince that same person to give their life for you.

The youth group that I have attended for three years has covered a unit of music a couple of times and our teacher puts it this way: music is a combination of two of the most powerful forces in the world. One is sound with a beat, rhythm, a sense of organization, etc. With music, we are taught our ABC’s when we are five years old and we never forget them. I learned the books of the Bible through song, and I remember them to this day in perfect order. The other force is words, which are one of the most powerful forces in the world. With words alone, the President can cause the deaths (or continued existence) of thousands or millions of people; with words, a husband can either reinforce or end his relationship with his wife. Put words and rhythm together, and what do you have? Music, a synthesis of two ultra-power elements.

So, the question becomes, how does this relate to the “Corruption of the West” spoken of in the title? Think of it this way: a great man once said that you can gauge the health of a society by hearing its music. Okay, fair enough, right? I don’t know about you, but when last I was listening to the mainstream radio, I was hearing a song entitled, “The Seven Things I Hate About You,” written from the perspective of a girlfriend who is vocally (and vehemently) expressing her anger at her boyfriend for the many things that frustrate her. If I was to gauge the values of the entire society on that one song, I should think that our society values hatred and intolerance. Of course, I believe that in reality, that would be an accurate though incomplete evaluation of Western society.

As a Christian, I believe that such music corrupts our society because of the exact nature of music. I know that when I listen to a song that talks of anger and rebellion, if I hear the song enough times, I start to find myself reciprocating the emotions expressed in the song. This is because of the way our brains are hard-wired: the same part of our brain interprets speech and maintains the beat and rhythm when performing music.

Music is by its nature emotional, and this is not a bad thing. Aldous Huxley is quoted saying, “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music,” and I concur with this: music seems to awaken within us an otherwise-unresponsive longing, which is best expressed through music. The danger is to deactivate the rational aspects of our minds and completely switch on the emotional side.

This also hits on a major part of my personality, the closely-contested dialectic tension between the rational and emotional aspects of my soul. I understand that I require my mind to guide my emotions; I need my emotions to give life and joy to my mind. To lean to much in either direction is to lose life either in the form of lost joy or direction-less emotion. I also believe that this makes me a stronger, more complete person, much in the same way that Jeffrey Hart acclaims that the Science-Religion dialectic of the West has granted it greater vitality than any other civilization in Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe.

The reason I speak of this at length now, however, is because I have just this afternoon read more from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. In it, he has already posed that the “openness” that American society preaches as actually an openness to closeness: to the lack of Absolute Truth, which results in the inability to discern Good and Bad (with no truth, there is only endless interpretation, whereas the belief in a good requires that there be a Truth), the inability to seek the Greater Good (other than societal and personal good insofar as what we enjoy and what keeps society going), and so on.

In Bloom’s chapter on music, he takes on a position that brings new light to my evaluation of pop culture music. He talks of how, using music, the “love and sex” ideas infiltrated our culture in the sixties and have become commonly accepted in our culture today (which might be our downfall). Of course, it is nearly impossible to change what the music industry is churning out after allowing it free reign for forty years; it has become part of the culture.

Bloom pointed out, in addition to the immorality of it all, as far as education is concerned, today’s pop music cuts students off from their own souls; in combination with the many other cultural problems America faces, the students are taught through modern music that sex, hatred, and self are all there is. It isn’t necessarily that youth refuse the freshness of the writers of the past in their quest for the fountain of truth (though it is likely some do); for many of today’s youth, the existence of that fountain and the relative ease of seeking it are masked from them. It isn’t that they don’t want what Truth is selling; they are ignorant that Truth is on the market. They are indoctrinated from birth that the only fulfillment on the market is available for small periods of time in the form of the new and catchy, the newest gadgets, clothes, and accessories for their iPod: the triumph of Capitalist marketing.

Bloom also points out that those who do unplug themselves from the music machine of modern culture are left on a permanent low, like someone who has been off of drugs for the first time in years. Suddenly, that person realizes that they will never have another high quite like the first one they had; all they can hope for is something that helps them vaguely remember what their first high was like or the infinite dullness of daily living. Of course, Bloom states, liberal education is meant to show these people that this is not the way things have to be, regardless of what they are told on television and by modern culture.

Bloom also points to another strange and, when examined, alarming trend among modern youth: many have no heroes to look up to, no one who embodies what they want to be. Of course, when you get do to it, many modern youth point to people who have “made it” according to cultural standards as people worthy of emulation. Few people try to emulate Christ (after all, he had no multi-million dollar mansion, no awesome car, not even a family; he just taught us to live right and something about “storing up riches in heaven,” whatever that means, and “the last will be first,” whatever that means, and “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” whatever that means), I’d bet that no one tries to emulate Hercules, Odysseus, Moses, Achilles or any other hero of the past. If students are honest, many would likely say that Bill Gates, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Donald Trump have lives they wished to have; others might say the name of some movie actor or Olympic athlete that is all the rage today and unheard of tomorrow. After all, if most of today’s youth accept the propaganda that there is no Absolute, then Jesus was just another preacher or even a heretic, Achilles was just foolishly clinging to foolish traditions when he allowed Priam to bury Hector honorably, and Bill Gates is the greatest man in the world because he, having the most money, is able to watch out for himself the best.

Music as it is will probably continue as it has been for the last forty years, which I’m almost certain will be one of the final elements that bring our society to its knees. Something else that Bloom points out is when he tells students of Socrates’ desire to censor music in his perfect society in The Republic, many of them feel as though Socrates is assaulting something precious to them. However, it is in light of our current situation that I see that Socrates may have had a more valid idea than is readily apparent at first examination. I do not think I am quite ready to advocate the censorship of music, but I do now see that such censorship might be necessary if we are to turn back the tide of relativism and remind people that there is something else besides sex, hatred, and selfishness. Of course, some would be turned away by the fact that, in all these years, none (outside the field of religion, anyhow) have claimed to discover the Absolute face-to-face…yet we must also see that men of the past have found more fulfillment in the search for Truth than we have in the abandonment of this search. Perhaps that is what we were built to do…

As a writer, I also feel I must mention that, as a creative writer, I find today’s music destructive in that, instead of conveying otherwise-inexpressible longing and thought, today’s pop music is used to convey our baser instincts: sexual love, hatred, and despair. Such music doesn’t promote creativity; it destroys it, incapacitates it, limits it. From this perspective, it is no wonder that America hasn’t produced any recognizably great thinkers or politicians or artists for the last century or so.

SfC

Recent Activities

Several events of interest have occurred in the last couple of days. My brother was married on Tuesday, and I was the Best Man of the ceremony. The wedding itself lasted for less than 15 minutes; beyond that, we had a reception at the bride’s church. It was a strange event for me; while I was a little disappointed that my brother wouldn’t be around like he used to be, I was still happy for him to having finally been united with another.

Afterward, I left for my college for a couple of days to hang out in that town and see if I could sort through some of the things that I still needed to do in order to be all geared up for college in a month. While I was there, I managed to read through Book III of Psalms, and I also started reading Black, the first book in Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy. It is thus far a good book, and I look forward to being able to finish.

I have also finished Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, which was on my To-Do, list. As it stands now, my reading list includes finishing Black (Dekker), Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe (Hart), and The Closing of the American Mind (Bloom) as well as reading through the rest of Psalms before I go to college, with hopes to also get started reading A House United (Frangipane) and Christians Only (DeForest).

I have also received some authorial references over the summer that I would like to look into. One is that of Wendell Berry, referenced on the grounds of his knowledge of farming in relation to my novel. The societies of my series of novels will be medieval rural societies, which is difficult for a modern writer to illustrate due to its distance in the past and difficult for me to illustrate specifically because I have limited agricultural and horticultural knowledge. Therefore, I’m hoping that, by pursuing and reading some of Berry’s works, I might A) find a new fiction writer that I can observe and learn from as a writer, and B) learn something of cultivation of plants and care for livestock.

Another reference I have received is for Gilbert Keith Chesterton. From a cursory investigation of him, I see that he is something like what I hope to become, being a Christian apologist and writer as well as lacking any political base. While most of my ideas line up with Republicans, I try to not allow party affiliations affect my thinking; it has been my decision that political parties are a form of organization in government that, as they stand right now, would be far more productive if they were eliminated and recreated from the ground up. However, that is just my opinion. Anyhow, I shall endeavor to be on the lookout for works by these two authors as the summer draws to a close.

That’s about all that I have to talk about for today. Bless you!

SfC

A Provoked Longing: A Reading Log

Starting yesterday afternoon, I have opened some discussion in another blog. The post title is “Strobel’s The Case for Christ – religious propaganda,” where the writer discusses how, when Lee Strobel wrote his investigative novel, in his interviews, he seemed to omit some of the counter-arguments against the Gospel he was investigating, which is what the writer of the blog was pointing out. I’ll admit, I do agree that Strobel, in his novel, didn’t always follow through with every question possible. However, it seemed that the writer of the post was discounting the rest of the arguments in the novel. Also, I am reminded that Strobel was doing his own research as he wrote the novel; he might have been able to confirm some of the statements that were otherwise left unchallenged in interview.

Anyhow, the conversation has now evolved into a discussion about all of the various issues in the overarching Religion vs. Science debate. I find myself referencing ideas and concepts proposed by C.S. Lewis, especially in his theological book Mere Christianity, and the more I think of it, the more I realize that I am out-of-touch with the novel and most of the works of Lewis. I first read Mere Christianity as a freshman in high school, and the book was quite impressive to me in the way Lewis was able to lay out a logical argument for the existence of God (it was actually one of the first of its kind that I was exposed to) and I find myself drawn back to it from time to time. I believe that my current desire to read it is fueled by my debate online, but regardless, I will soon immerse myself in it again. I am also hoping to read some of his other works, Miracles especially, soon after.

However, I will need to be careful; I am just starting to read The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom as well as trying to read the daily devotional book My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers and the Bible, itself. Now that I think about it, I also need to finish Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe by Jeffrey Hart, which is a novel we used as a textbook in the Great Books class my Senior year. Beyond these, I also am hoping to read A House United by Francis Frangipane and a book my sister gave me about the Restoration Movement in America…

…and I’m hoping to do all of this before the summer’s end? I leave for church camp to counsel 3rd and 4th graders and, when I get back, my brother is having a wedding and, after that, I will be going off to college before long. I doubt that I will get all of this reading done, especially when I am trying to write my own novel at the same time. Still, I will try and we’ll just have to see where things go.

SfC