A Time to Laugh

God’s grace is scandalous to anyone who insists He pay attention to the petty efforts we make to earn His favor.

Al Truesdale, A Dangerous Hope

I’m in.

Granted — Isaac’s about 2 months younger in his picture, but putting them side-by-side like this in the same clothes shows how very different these two punkins are. Amazing!

I’ve been told by my better half that I shouldn’t “steal” content from the boys’ sites. But there are certain pics that never make it past the “cutting room floor,” so to speak. So I guess my blog is the “bonus” DVD to Isaac and Gavin’s digital life. These rarely-seen pics do sort of prove how hard it is to visually capture a nearly-toddling toddler’s busy-ness.

“Toot-toot!” Happy birthday, Mr. Rogers! I enjoyed you as a child, and now I enjoy you again with my children.

It’s odd to hear that same vocal inflection pattern and rate in a deliberative forum. But I love that he cites one of my favorite songs to sing in the bathtub with my boys.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers. For talking to now two generations with such care.

These [evangelical] barriers [to supporting intellectual pursuits] include an immediatism that insists on action, decision, and even perfection right now, a populism that confuses winning supporters with mastering actually existing situations, an anti-traditionalism that privileges one’s own current judgments on biblical, theological, and ethical issues (however hastily formed) over insight from the past (however hard won and carefully stated), and a nearly gnostic dualism that rushes to spiritualize all manner of bodily, terrestrial, physical, and material realities (despite the origin and providential maintenance of these realities in God). In addition, we evangelicals as a rule still prefer to put our money into programs offering immediate results, whether evangelistic or humanitarian, instead of into institutions promoting intellectual development over the long term.

I’m still sitting on this from Mark Noll. No doubt American exceptionalism, individualism, capitalism are all knit together with American Evangelicalism. No doubt Evangelicalism is wholly New World — a swing of the pendulum that opposed Old World aristocracy and feudalism. But it, too, has become its own aristocracy. Is it just a hard push to balance out the swinging pendulous ball? Or do we need to start all over and make a new way to talk about faith in this postmodern condition?

The rhetorician in me says that there is no new way of talking and trying to do so will only ignorantly replicate and even reinforce the same problems. Noll wants to talk in an older way — more like Jonathan Edwards and less like Rick Warren, more historically Protestant than currently relevant.

I can go for that. In reading his listing of such traditions:

The current dilemma for Christian learning in North America could be broadly described as follows. On the one side, Pentecostals, Southern Baptists, members of Holiness movements, seeker-sensitive churches, dispensationalists, Adventists, African-American congregations, radical Wesleyans, and lowest-common-denominator evangelicals have great spiritual energy, but they flounder in putting the mind to use for Christ. On the other side, Lutherans, Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, the Reformed, and the Eastern Orthodox enjoy incredibly rich traditions that include sterling examples of Christian thought, but they often display a comatose spirituality.

I realized that the only place I really fit is “Reformed.” So I’ve dropped the moniker “Reformedish” and have gone whole-hog with stating the obvious.

So please excuse me now while I start memorizing my new confession. My tulip theme seems even more appropriate.

Mark Noll’s book both impressed and frustrated me when I read it years ago. At least more recently in First Things, he admits that the “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” is more hopeful than he thought ten years ago. He admits that he should have more obviously admitted that Evangelicalism (conservative and otherwise) is quite simply reifying American culture–my original criticism back in the day. I’m gratified though that he, too, feels frustrated that there are few fine believing poets, playwrights, and novelists. How can we truly claim any of the arts if we do not have the intellectual muscle necessary to support them? To do the arts without thinking about the arts is like printing money on our home laser printer. Sure — it might look pretty good, but it doesn’t have the gold behind it. History, too, must inform theology and daily living. If we can’t remember, our heads can’t really work, and our feet can’t really walk.

Without strong theological traditions, most evangelicals lack a critical element required for making intellectual activity both self-confident and properly humble, both critical and committed. In order to advance responsible Christian learning, the vitality of commitment must be stabilized by the ballast of tradition. Tradition without life might be barely Christian, but life without tradition is barely coherent.

Noll seems less modern and more creative in this later article. I am relishing his rhetorical solutions at the end:

Part of what makes it possible for a particular stream of Christianity to support vigorous intellectual life is simply the passage of time: an older movement obviously has had more opportunities to broaden out into fruitful scholarship. But another part is a self-conscious commitment to learn from the teaching and experience of past believing generations. The current dilemma for Christian learning in North America could be broadly described as follows. On the one side, Pentecostals, Southern Baptists, members of Holiness movements, seeker-sensitive churches, dispensationalists, Adventists, African-American congregations, radical Wesleyans, and lowest-common-denominator evangelicals have great spiritual energy, but they flounder in putting the mind to use for Christ. On the other side, Lutherans, Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, the Reformed, and the Eastern Orthodox enjoy incredibly rich traditions that include sterling examples of Christian thought, but they often display a comatose spirituality.

This picture is, of course, a generalization. Yet think how natural it sounds to talk of Pentecostal Signs and Wonders, intense holiness spirituality, vigorous seeker-sensitive evangelism, a dispensationalist devotion to Scripture, and Baptist missionary zeal. It seems equally self-evident that we can speak of such things as an estimable tradition of Lutheran sacred music, art history pursued from a Kuyperian Reformed perspective, profound social theory from Catholics, and a solid trajectory of Anglo-Catholic belles lettres. But try to shift and mix the categories and hear how unexpected some of the combinations sound: Kuyperian Reformed Signs and Wonders? Vigorous Catholic evangelism? An Anglo-Catholic devotion to Scripture? Intense Lutheran spirituality? Or, to run it the other way: Art history pursued from a Baptist perspective? A solid trajectory of seeker-sensitive belles lettres? Profound social theory from the holiness movement?

Now if we can only get him to list rhetoric in his academic disciplines in which the believer can flourish. Need to educate Noll on that front, I believe. After all, Augustine paved the way for the rhetorically-sensitive believer long before the belle lettres or even credobaptists.

At least, it has on this blog. I wanted to see the tulips blooming a tad early, so I am rushing it with a new default template.

To all those to whom I owe emails, please forgive me. These weeks are hectic in the semester, and we’ve each been sharing the flu bug very generously with each other.

I’m also on the ground floor of a new online community for Christian mothers. God’s clearly blessing already, and I’m tickled pink about it. Pop in, if you have a sec.