Tim Stafford's Blog, page 24

Bill and Melinda Gates; Miracles

On Sunday I attended graduation for Stanford University (a friend was receiving her PhD) and heard Bill and Melinda Gates address the graduates. It was a remarkably inspiring speech. Bill started by talking about his appreciation of optimism. He said that he started out his career with great optimism for how computers and software could transform society. But this optimism itself was radically changed as he encountered (in 1997) poverty in Soweto, South Africa. Melinda shared her own encounter with death and poverty in India. It seemed that these experiences really shook them, forcing them to reevaluate their optimism and ultimately to apply it to problems deeper and more intractable than the digital divide–problems like the stigma of AIDS, malaria, drug-resistant TB. The two of them challenged the graduates to seek exposure to deeper problems and apply their optimism and genius to deeper problems.

I was grateful for the talk, and I thought myself how lacking in optimism I am. If you had told me 20 years ago that Bill Gates would give such a talk to Stanford University, I would not have credited you. The richest man in the world, known for his rapacious business instincts? Didn’t Jesus say something about camels and the eye of the needle? But as Jesus also said in that context, anything is possible with God.

Here is the transcript…

Regarding polls on evolution and creation

Deborah Haarmsma of Biologos has an elegant post on recent Gallup polling of people’s views on evolution and creation. While the poll suggests that factions supporting young earth creationism and atheistic evolution are stable and unyielding, when you break the questions down with more detail you find a far more nuanced situation. Worth reading if you are interested in these questions, regardless of your point of view.

Sociopolitical sin

In a recent NYTimes column summarizing conservative policy proposals, David Brooks comments that “conservatives should not be naive about sin.” He doesn’t explain what he means, but in the context it seems fairly clear. Reform conservatives emphasize deregulation and decentralization. According to Brooks they should beware of new unregulated power networks–”Wall Street, Washington, big agriculture, big energy, big universities — … dominated by interlocking elites who create self-serving arrangements for themselves.”

Brooks isn’t talking about sin as an offense against God–the classic way for religious people to think of it. He is talking about sin as a sociological phenomenon. It’s the pernicious tendency among human beings to make arrangements that favor their own interests at the expense of others, and to do it in a (perhaps unconsciously) devious way that hides its selfishness under a cloud of pragmatic, good-of-society rhetoric. Sin as a sociopolitical reality is endlessly creative.

Where there is power and money–and where isn’t there?–sin will abound.

Conservatives have aptly criticized liberals for being naive about sin–for example, by assuming that people are poor strictly because of discrimination or lack of opportunity, and not their own folly or sloth. They are right that government programs become a safe harbor for sinners, because the programs tend to be insulated from the suspicious minds that capitalists bring to their own endeavors. (Capitalists have always suspected that their workers are lazy and dishonest–perhaps projecting their own character–and therefore set up controls and incentives to keep them working for the company. But in government, it’s not in any particular individual’s interest to stop the cheaters. And by the way, this applies just as much to doctors who work Medicare and farmers who haul in ag subsidies, as it does to people on welfare.)

Sin, however, finds destructive opportunities in all social arrangements. And woe be to the policy proponent who believes that some preferred social arrangement will magically eliminate the problem of sin.

The doctrine of sin, understood sociopolitically, will keep us from undue optimism. When someone proposes that the whole problem is X, and that the world would become rosy if we simply did Y, those with a robust understanding of sin will smile and sigh. It doesn’t matter whether X is government, or Wall Street, or gun-toting individualism, or teacher tenure, or broken families. It doesn’t matter whether Y is deregulation, or a carbon tax, or eliminating the income tax, or a higher minimum wage. Whatever the analysis and whatever the proposal, our human ability to game the system for our own benefit, and at the expense of others, is almost boundless.

Sin is not, of course, the only thing. There are also many reasons for hope. But sin must be taken into account, not only for the other guy’s ideas, but for your own.

Clash of creeds?

I’m confused.

The story, summarized in today’s New York Times, can be told as a simple tale. The most obvious story line–at least obvious to me–is the Orwellian fable of liberal universities banning religious groups from campus in order to protect diversity. That is surely the practical impact of new policies coming into play at both public and private schools. The universities demand that all student groups sign a pledge not to discriminate in any way, including religiously. The Christian groups say they welcome everybody but must have Christians in leadership. So the universities say, sorry, you’ve got to go, we can’t allow discrimination.

Another story line, though, puts the universities in a nobler light. It sees Christian groups that discriminate against gays. They want to have the privileges that go with recognition by a university, but they also want to stay stuck in their medieval conceptions of sexuality. The university has crossed that river and won’t go back. So, Christians can hold their opinions but they can’t hold university privileges.

This story has been playing out at many schools over the last decade. Most of the time it has stayed out of the headlines. At different schools it’s been resolved in different ways. Harvard notably resolved it in favor of letting the Christians stick to their principles. But more and more universities seem to be trending in the other direction.

Though it is a low profile story–I don’t think Fox News has yet exploited it–it’s symptomatic of a larger cultural debate and potentially significant.

I’m confused, though. It’s hard to put your finger on what the issue is for either side. Why do universities have to cast the issue as one of discrimination? Why couldn’t they see it as a matter of qualifications? In order to be an officer in the organization you must have certain qualifications, one of which is religious belief. Nobody is discriminated against; anybody can choose to hold those beliefs.

And that question works the other way: why can’t the Christian groups pledge that they don’t discriminate? Is this all about semantics?

I don’t think it’s just semantics. I suspect that hiding somewhere down in the depths of this dispute is a question of creeds. Can a group on a university (read: civilized society) be creedal? That is to say, can membership depend on your submission to a written statement of truth? For all kinds of reasons, creeds are at odds with the modern university–and with modern culture.

Even deeper down, I suspect, is a clash of competing creeds. Because of course the modern university does subscribe to a creed. Some of the creed is written down, usually in very bland language. (“Openness, spirit of inquiry, diversity, etc.”) A lot of it isn’t written down, but it’s pretty well established. And Christians who claim to find their truth in an ancient book are not entirely in harmony with that creed.

All the same, there must surely be some way to square this circle on pragmatic grounds. I expect that university administrators feel intensely uncomfortable with reducing diversity in the name of protecting diversity. Banning groups that won’t sign your pledge sounds a little bit McCarthyesque, dontcha think? On the other side, I believe the Christian groups involved in these disputes truly want to be a respected part of a diverse and non-discriminating university community. Somehow both sides have written themselves into a corner, and don’t know how to get out of it.

I should say, lest this be painted in the starkest terms, that the consequences of the university bans are not that great. They generally amount to Christian groups losing the possibility of university funding (which I don’t think most Christian groups receive anyway) and the loss of privileges for booking meeting places. I don’t think there’s any attempt to root out their existence on campus.

But symbolically and culturally, there may be a lot more at stake. Can a liberal, material, post-Christian society find ways to include and accept those who hold to another creed? Can Christians (and other creedal groups) find ways to accommodate their practices to a post-Christian America?

I am not personally optimistic about the status of Christianity in our society for the near future. I think religiously we are likely to look more like Europe than like Africa. But whatever we are becoming (and after the meteoric rise of gay marriage, the future seems to be closer than we thought) we are going to do it in a patently American way. And that way, we haven’t discovered yet.

George and the urges for darkness

For the past year I’ve been volunteering as a “coach” at the Redwood Gospel Mission (RGM) near my home. I meet with men in the 10-month residential drug and alcohol rehab program. It’s a program that the 30 men in the program mostly run themselves, cleaning, cooking, doing laundry and serving other homeless men who come for a bed and a meal (but aren’t in the program.) The men in the program work, they take classes, they go to 12-step meetings, and they follow certain disciplines such as memorizing Scripture.

Since I meet with the men individually for 45 minutes to an hour each week, I get to know them pretty well. That’s why I like it: they are very interesting people whom I genuinely enjoy. They all have stories, pretty interesting stories.

A few observations stand out. First, these guys are terribly vulnerable to their own addictions. At any moment they can give up the cause, leave, and relapse. And they do, very often. They seem like normal, unstressed people most of the time, but they live on edge. I’ve seen them making very good progress until one day, without warning, something had switched off in them, their attitude was negative, and within days they were back on the street.

Second, there are no programs that can “fix” them. The RGM says that they give men an opportunity–a safe, clean place where they don’t have to worry about food and shelter–to learn and grow and experience God’s working in their lives. They have to engage and make the changes, the program can’t do it for them. I think that is exactly right. I’ve often slipped into thinking that good programs are the magic elixir. But what we are offering is not a fix-it. It’s an environment where they have a chance. Out on the street they don’t have much of a chance, realistically.

When you see these realities, it can be pretty discouraging. The success rate isn’t all that high. (It isn’t anywhere, I believe.) I’d say ten months is a minimum to establish real change that will last, and for most it’s not enough.

However, this week one of my guys, I’ll call him George, told me a story that gave me encouragement.

He’s a heroin addict. If you met him you wouldn’t guess it: he’s clean cut, young, smart, articulate. But he’s on the verge of losing his life to heroin. We’ve talked about the urges: how he tends to isolate himself, get down on life, isolate some more, and then find drugs to ease the pain. An impulse wells up in him that’s almost impossible to control. He might put it off, but not for too long–certainly not for the rest of his life. You could call it a death wish and not be too far off. It’s a wish to forget, to avoid, to obliterate self. It’s an overwhelming wish to slip into darkness.

Before I met him, George went nearly to the end of the 10-month program and then relapsed when he had just a few weeks to go. The RGM will take you back any number of times, but you have to start over. So George is in his second time through the program. (Plus he’s been in other, shorter programs before. Most of the RGM men have been through multiple programs.)

This time he says it’s different. The difference is in his relationship to God. He says that now God is involved in everything, not just some things. He has given his life to God and he wants to live for God.

Of course, there is a lot of God-talk frequently associated with recovery. Some of it is just hooey. But I know George pretty well, and I am fairly sure this is genuine. Not just sincere seeking, but genuine finding. He seems grounded. Nevertheless, there are those urges.

A few weeks ago he had a scare. He was with the RGM truck picking up stuff for the thrift store. The owner of a house was moving out and wanted to donate everything, so he called RGM and they sent the truck to help him clean it out. George went into the bathroom and immediately saw some pill bottles. He glanced at the labels–keeping his distance as though from a black widow spider–and glimpsed words that he associated with pain medications. He turned and almost ran out of the room, found the driver of the truck, and told him what had happened. “You have to keep me out of that bathroom,” he said. “Keep an eye on me,” he said. “Don’t let me go in there again.”

When George told me about it he was still almost trembling, recognizing how close he had come. He took encouragement from his spontaneous decision to run away from the temptation–he had never done that before–but at the same time he had brushed up against his vulnerability, and it scared him.

Last week, George went on a run and hurt his knee quite badly. He could hardly walk, so he visited a doctor who x-rayed it and told George he didn’t see any structural problem. It was probably a torn muscle that would recover with time. He said he would give George pain medication. George said, politely, that he doesn’t take pain medications. The doctor said he understood, but urged George to take the prescription just in case. George politely said no. The doctor continued to urge him, and George continued to say no, four times.

Finally, the doctor stopped offering. Then as George was leaving, the nurse asked about his prescription and urged it on him. It was almost comical how much they wanted to help his pain through drugs.

George says he didn’t even think about what he was doing until later. His refusal was completely automatic. It didn’t seem hard; it was simply a matter of doing what he knew he should do. He didn’t feel any temptation, not at the time, nor even later when he reviewed it. For the first time, George really began to believe that his addiction could change. That it is changing, in fact.

I’m not drawing any conclusions from this. I’m hopeful for George, but still wary. He is too. However, I think it’s good to stop and notice when something happens that has never happened before.

Graduation Speeches

In a recent sermon my pastor said something that stuck. Roughly this: “This week thousands of speakers at graduation ceremonies are urging graduates to excellence. None of them–unless at a religious institution–is saying ‘Be holy, because God is holy.’”

I suppose that made me jump because self-actualization has crept into me. What advice do we urge on young people? Work hard at school; dream; have fun; make good friends; excel if you can; be polite; set goals; make plans. The Spirit is a support mechanism for our self-actualization.

The mindset and advice of Scripture is obviously different, summed up in that slightly scary prescription: Be holy, because God is holy.

What does that phrase mean?

The word “holy” can be translated as “dedicated.” Holy people are set apart for special work. Like “dedicated” phone lines they serve a singular purpose. I think you could translate 1 Peter’s prescription this way: Be dedicated to whatever God is dedicated to.



Put that way, it sounds more practical. Some graduation speakers do, in fact, urge graduates to dedicate their lives to serving their fellow creatures, to protecting creation, to serving justice. They probably don’t mention God in that context, but the end is the same.

Mentioning God is valuable, however, because it puts a limit on our tendency to faddism, to rationalization, to power trips. If we get to define virtue, virtue often ends up looking strikingly like us. God’s dedication is often a challenge to our thinking. And at the very least, the presence of God reminds us that we are not God–an important understanding, as AA reminds us.

I, for one, like to imagine the graduation speech that Jesus would give.

A very good film

If you haven’t seen Philomena, do. It’s not dazzling, but solid, entertaining and ultimately very thoughtful. It caught me by surprise: I didn’t see the meaning coming. The film moves along as a British character study of a spacey, aging Philomena (Judi Dench) and a slightly desperate, slightly embittered British journalist who is trying (condescendingly) to get a story out of her. Good storytelling fodder, which one assumes will come to some kind of feel-good conclusion. But the ending has an interesting twist. I’ll just say it’s the most attractive portrayal of a Christian in a movie for a very long time. But it’s not soupy, not in the least.

Only one quibble–not so much with the movie as with an unexamined prejudice of our times. Philomena is an older woman who got pregnant as a teenager, was taken in by some Irish nuns, and had to give up her baby. The movie emphasizes that she and other teenage mothers were used as profitable (slave) labor by the nuns, who treated them harshly for their sins, coerced them into giving up their children, and positively obstructed their attempts to track down those lost children later in life. (In the movie, Philomena is still trying to find her son.)

The nuns and by extension the Catholic church are portrayed as heartless, moralistic and hypocritical. I daresay that is entirely true and they deserve their reputation. However, I was struck by the absence of another question: who else was helping these girls?

I suspect the answer is that no one else was helping them. Their own families threw them out. Nobody else in Irish society offered them a place to stay. Nobody else took on their troubles.

So while the nuns were bad, it’s not quite right to portray them as the worst of society. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say they were the best of very bad society?

Special on Miracles

My publisher announces that they have a special sale on e-book copies of my book Miracles.

On May 18 you can download it free. For two weeks after that–through the end of the month–you get it for $5.99.

Here’s the link to their special page:

http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/bethanyhouse/ebook-specials-from-bethany-house

They say the same deal is at most of the big book websites.

The Best

A few days ago David Brooks published an op-ed entitled “A Love Story.” It refers to an encounter between the British intellectual Isaiah Berlin and the Russian poet Anna Akhmotova. They met in 1945, in Leningrad, and talked all night. They spoke of literature and history and, of course, their lives. It was a luminous conversation, life-changing, unforgettable–and never to be repeated, as Akhmotova had only begun to be persecuted by Stalinism.

Brooks writes: “Berlin and Akhmatova were from a culture that assumed that, if you want to live a decent life, you have to possess a certain intellectual scope. You have to grapple with the big ideas and the big books that teach you how to experience life in all its richness and make subtle moral and emotional judgments. Berlin and Akhmatova could experience that sort of life-altering conversation because they had done the reading.”

And he concludes: “I’m old enough to remember when many people committed themselves to this sort of life and dreamed of this sort of communion – the whole Great Books/Big Ideas thing. I am not sure how many people believe in or aspire to this sort of a life today. I’m not sure how many schools prepare students for this kind of love.”

I’m old enough to remember that too. The quest wasn’t always about literature, of course. In my college years it had more to do with protest against the Vietnam war. People could, they did, spend all night talking about the agony of the draft. Nobody I ever knew hoped to start a business, and very few thought of their education as being mainly about qualifying for a job.

“Today we live in a utilitarian moment,” Brooks says. “We’re surrounded by data and fast-flowing information. “Our reason has become an instrumental reason,” as Leon Wieseltier once put it, to be used to solve practical problems.”

Now: my son Silas put the lid on the romanticism inherent in these thoughts when he pointed out that the Great Recession has a lot to do with the current mood. He’s right that in earlier generations, including mine, you could count on a decent job if you went to college. Indulging in Dostoevsky is more attractive if the bills are paid, and will be.

Nevertheless I’ll stand by my belief that the greatest aspiration in life is not to lead a successful start-up. In faith, art, culture, conversation, family, books, beauty, goodness–in these we find our best selves, and our deepest satisfactions. We owe it to our children, and to our friends, to hold on to such hopes.

How Gandhi Became Gandhi

A book review I wrote, “Necessary Distance,” is out in Books and Culture. It covers two books on Gandhi’s life before he returned to India at the age of 45 (he left at 18). Most of those years he spent in South Africa. Gandhi is a fascinating character, and I found it a particularly interesting character study to learn how South Africa formed him. In some ways it is a classic immigrant tale, in which the homeland becomes more attractive and more romanticized because of living far from it. South Africa challenged Gandhi with its extreme racial prejudice; and it exposed him to a wide variety of people–Muslims, Christians, Europeans, Chinese–whom he would never have known in India. But it also, by its alien distance, fed his Indianness, without forcing him to confront India’s shadow side as he would have done had he lived in India. Thus he became a lifelong devotee of Indian village life–he, who had probably never spent a day in an Indian village–and a defender of caste.

If you’d like to read the essay, it’s here.