Metric Maladies: The Disease of elevating Quantity over Quality

As Jerry Z. Muller notes in his book "The Tyranny of Metrics", we live in an age of "metric fixation". We use quantitative data to give us the assurance of success (or failure) because it simplifies what can be a bewildering sea of qualitative information and experience. But as helpful as some quantitative data can be at some times, it also can be deceptive. Over-reliance on quantitative data can become a poor replacement for the inherently messy, multi-causal process of discernment. Quantities can be mis-attributed, mis-assigned, and mis-counted to give decision makers a false assurance.

Theses on Protecting the Innocent in Wartime

The following is my attempt to clarify where I stand in this current moment in a way that avoids using political labels, for when someone inevitably asks me:

The Many Loves of the Love of God

When we speak of the Love of God, or praise God for God's Loving-Kindness, we are remembering that above all, God is Love. But this Love is not merely the feeling we tend to associate with liking something a great deal, such as when we say "I love this coffee" or "I love that activity". Rather, we mean that God's Love is something deep and active, constantly working for the abundant life and flourishing of those God loves. In short, it is Love operative in sacrificial acts of kindness: Loving Kindness. Many Scriptural words and concepts fill out what this Divine Loving-Kindness means.

Love and Apocalypse

There appears to be a contradiction 

Between

"Love one another

As I have loved you"

And

"He will come again in glory

To Judge the living and dead"

How do we resolve the yawning chasm

Between Love

And Apocalypse?

Anyone who has ever truly loved

Sacrificially loved

Loved despite the odds

Despite the failures

Despite the future

Anyone who has loved like that

Like Jesus loved

Will tell you that Love brings an apocalypse

Love does not sooth

Nor lull to sleep

It rends apart space and time

To reveal the reality behind the masks

The disease behind the smile

And that kind of Love

Pisses people off

Causes fear and hatred

And can even get you crucified

Love will struggle

Love IS Apocalypse

Love brings the old world to an end

And gives birth to a new world

We never could have imagined.

 

The Metaphysics of Materialism

Materialist determinism is a perpetually popular view in the modern world. It is the metaphysical viewpoint which denies metaphysics by positing that: 1. Reality is made of matter and only matter. The only reality is matter and the physical forces which operate within material interaction. This raises the thorny question of what exactly matter is. But let’s bracket this and assume there is something called “matter”, and it is the only constituent of reality (as opposed to “spirit” or “mind” or “consciousness”). 2. The events in reality are causally determined by material laws and forces, such that even the workings of mind and consciousness are determined by the physical states which preceded them. There is no free will or choice. All are illusory experiences formed in brains after events have happened. All phenomena can be fully explained in a mechanistic way through the matter and forces at work in an event, without any reference to choices or intentions or motives or thoughts.

However, as elegant as materialist determinism seems to be, it has some rather impractical and non-elegant implications. 

The Ethics of Lesser Evils and Greater Goods

As an ethics teacher and pastor I have noticed that many people reflexively think most choices are a stark contrast between “good versus evil”. In reality, very few choices are that clear cut.

Is Love stronger than hate?

The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with loving devotion." (Jeremiah 31.3)

Jesus said: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself." (John 12.32)

Some have wondered what will win in the end: God's Love or human sin and hatred. Hate from a finite being is by definition, finite hate. Love from an infinite Being is by definition, infinite Love. The quantitative and qualitative difference between finite and infinite is by definition, infinite. Therefore God’s Love is infinitely more powerful and persuasive than even the greatest amount of finite hate, and that infinite Love will not give up or let down until it has, after ages of ages, transformed all finite hate into infinite Love. 

Where Freedom and Determinism Meet

It was God who created humankind in the beginning, and he left them in the power of their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given. (Sirach 15.14-17)

So every now and then I see some supposed scientific reason why free will does not exist. This week it is quantum mechanics that supposedly rules out free will (although I’ve more frequently seen quantum mechanics cited as a reason why freedom is an irreducible aspect of the universe). However, let’s say for argument’s sake that there is a way of conceiving the universe as a completely closed system such that, if we know all inputs, we can accurately predict all outputs. In principle, this means all things are determined and there is no free will (no freedom at all in a strong sense). So what are we to make out of these mutually incompatible conclusions that quantum physics can be enlisted to support EITHER determinacy OR indeterminacy?

John Seven Twenty Four

“Do not judge by appearances...”

Let not popularity or power beguile you 

Do not look at self promotion or propaganda

Don’t be fooled by masks or makeup 

Or the sly salesmanship of snake oil sellers

Confusion is their strategy

False promises their bait

For they whisper what you want to hear in one ear

While their fingers pick your pockets

“But judge with right judgment.”

There is a standard we stand or fall before

There is a justice to which we are accountable

There is a Love who wants the best for all her children

There is eternal Beauty, Truth, and Goodness

That calls us home

And our judgments must point in that direction

Or they will direct us to destruction 

(A Meditation on John 7:24) 

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Scripture

At the school I serve as chaplain, I was recently asked to provide some Scriptural reflections on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Earlier, I did an essay for my previous school on how these values are rooted in Episcopal Identity and the foundational beliefs and prayers of the Episcopal Church. Not only that, but the Christian vision of God leads us to these values, because the very idea of God as the Trinity leads us to embrace diversity, and the Incarnation of God in Christ leads us to embrace inclusion. These ideas of God are, in turn, rooted in the self-revelation of God which is recorded in Scripture. So now it is time to dig into the foundational texts of the whole Christian Faith, and the founding stories of Jesus and his Apostles, to understand how they inspire us to create communities of diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice. 

God Insists

Two quests for God seem equally misguided: The quest to abolish God, and the quest to establish God. 

Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Episcopal Identity

In the media and in education it seems we hear a great deal lately about words such as "diversity", "inclusion", "equity", and "social justice". These are often conflicted and politicized terms, but they are also terms which are deeply rooted in the Christian Story and Episcopal Identity. I would like to offer a brief reflection on diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice as a chaplain dealing with diverse groups and cultures in the context of Episcopal schools and churches. But I must begin by saying I am not an expert by any means, and there is a vast literature to help our understanding from pastors and prophets, practitioners and professors, and many others who speak to equity and inclusion issues that affect different cultures, ethnicities, identities, and abilities.

Since I cannot effectively speak directly to all these experiences and concerns, due to my lived experience, I feel that the best way I can help move this conversation forward is by talking about how these issues are expressed in Scripture, in the history of the Episcopal and Anglican traditions, and in how we pray and worship together. Because, at the heart of Episcopal identity is the idea of "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Agendi", which means that "How we pray shapes how we believe and how we live". And it turns out that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice have been at the heart of how we believe and pray and worship for decades and even centuries. With this in mind, what I want to do is take the everyday definitions for these terms as found in Merriam-Webster, and look at how they unfold in the Bible and in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer [BCP].

Glimpses of the Sacred

Where is holiness to be found?

Where are the thin places

The fjords between

This shore and that Great Beyond?

Where is the fabric of reality

Most easily rent 

To reveal the Ultimate Reality

Behind the curtain of space and time?

Deuteronomy Five Seventeen

A didactic poem

Sam Harris’ Monstrous Moral Landscape

I recently picked up Michael Brooks’ book about the “Intellectual Dark Web” in which he critiques the views of several “renegade” intellectuals, including the famous secular crusader Sam Harris. This was one of those instances where I was reminded of something I intended to write, but never got around to. In particular, around 2013 I read through Harris’ 2010 book entitled “The Moral Landscape”. In it, Harris advocates the idea that Moral Values can be derived from empirical observation alone. While this thesis is problematic on its own, what makes it especially problematic for Harris is an incendiary moral claim that he made six years prior in an earlier book: 

Remember This

A reminder for myself. 

Maybe it will help you too. 

Be compassionate to everyone,

For we are all struggling 

In ways that are not apparent to others. 

Most of us are far better

Than our worst ideas and ideals, 

And we are far worse

Than our best ideas and ideals. 

None of us is perfect

None of us is whole

All of us rely on a Grace

Bigger than our worst failures

Better than our greatest hopes

To heal us and make us whole. 

So may we strive

To be embodiments of that Divine Grace

To one another. 

Mirrors and Mimics

We are mirrors and mimics: 

What has been done to us, 

We will do to others. 

What we do to others, 

Will be done to us. 

Personally. 

Relationally. 

Socially. 

Politically. 

Globally. 

So to create the kind of world we want to live in, 

It becomes imperative 

We heed the ancient mundane ethical truism: 

Always do to others 

What you would have them do to you: 

Personally. 

Relationally. 

Socially. 

Politically. 

Globally. 

Sapiens, Evolution, and Wrath of Khan

A couple of years back I read Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens. Great read. On one hand, I am completely on board with his evolutionary metaphysic. I think part of our Divine nature is to evolve more fully into the potential God has placed within us by making us "in God's image". This is actually a fairly common reformed Jewish and secular Jewish viewpoint (cf. Erich Fromm's 1966 book "You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament"). I've also written and preached this idea. I even embrace much of what Harari says about Transhumanism as the immediate goal of human self-evolution. And there are Christian theologians such as Keith Ward and Ted Peters who have a fairly robust acceptance of Transhumanism as well. After all, I figure my great grandchildren will all be cyborgs, and it doesn’t actually worry me that much. 

But what bothered me was in chapter 12...

When Words Fail

How both Theistic and Nontheistic language fails to describe Ultimate Reality

In the constant back and forth between Theists and Nontheists, one of the frequent criticisms hurled from both sides regards the problem of language. Both sides claim that that other side slides into nonsensical or tautological language that fails to say anything about Reality. At some point, each side gets to ideas that are so foundational, so axiological, to their interpretive framework, that all they can say is "it is what it is".

What is interesting to me is that this point of linguistic "no return" is precisely at the same point and regarding the same issues. This break in meaningful, non-tautological language happens precisely at the ultimate origin, the ultimate value, and the ultimate destiny of all things. At these three points both the Theist and the Nontheist are effectively reduced to silence. This is when our words fail: When we lack the ability and even the concepts necessary to describe the ultimate nature of the Reality we find ourselves in.

A Poem for a Pandemic

All across the world right now
People are feeling what you feel

Love one another

With anxiety for the future
And worry for their loved ones

Love one another

With boredom and cabin fever
Which grows deeper as time grows longer

Love one another

With dismay at empty shelves
Empty streets and empty shops

Love one another

With prayers for the wellbeing of their families
And supplications for those who are sick

Love one another

With unexpected childcare and meals to fix
And cries of “Why can’t we go out?!?”

Love one another

With a flinch at every cough
And hesitation when a chill is felt

Love one another

With trepidation at unpaid bills
And terror at missing paychecks

Love one another

With waiting waiting waiting
And worrying worrying worrying

Love one another

With this Litany we address the Lord of Life
Who reminds us again and again

Love one another