A tribute to Airbear

While I fritter away the days reading and writing, Airbear accomplishes things (read the scrolling update in the middle of the page).

Haiti Update

A couple of things.

First, Fox News has been broadcasting from our orphanage! I haven't seen any wide-angle coverage of the grounds, but for those of you who haven't been there and have no idea what it's like, you should check out this link and this one (via Jon Varela and Monica Grim).

The second link has the Bennett household's new favorite reporter. British accent plus hatred of "bureaucratic red tape" equals fabulous populist critique of the US State Department. Awesome how he repeats "legally adopted."

Next, for those of you who would like to do something to help, the most important thing you can do right now is contact your senators and house representative and ask that the State Department suspend all restrictions on evacuating orphans to the United States. It's fun and easy (really, we tried it and it was great) and it is making a difference: my wife got word that some kids are already being released.

A couple of clicks on the internet and a phone call and you will directly effect the life of a Haitian orphan. Seriously, making a lasting impact on the life of "one of the least of these" has never been easier.

Lastly, our Friends Mike and Cory are in Haiti doing damage assessment right now. You can support their mission via Paypal here. Also, check out the trailer to Mike's upcoming Haiti documentary (Mike went to the Chili Palmer school of executive production):



Mike asks the questions and Pastor Pierre (the Haitian director of our orphanage) translates. It's directed by our friend Alex Laflamme.

Coming up: a post on how to think about Haiti theologically. Stay tuned!

Digging in the Dirt: 1, Experts: 0

Via Libertas et Memoria, a story on biblical origins:

Scientists have discovered the earliest known Hebrew writing - an inscription dating from the 10th century B.C., during the period of King David's reign.

The breakthrough could mean that portions of the Bible were written centuries earlier than previously thought. (The Bible's Old Testament is thought to have been first written down in an ancient form of Hebrew.)

Until now, many scholars have held that the Hebrew Bible originated in the 6th century B.C., because Hebrew writing was thought to stretch back no further. But the newly deciphered Hebrew text is about four centuries older, scientists announced this month.

If lectures from John Goldingay have taught me anything, it's that history is complicated. The reigning biblical studies paradigm dates the finalized text of the Old Testament at somewhere in the 6th Century BCE. This corresponds historically to a little vignette in 2 Kings where King Josiah finds an old copy of what sounds like the Pentateuch. The idea is that 2 Kings 22 is more or less reliably reporting an event which marks the fixing of the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch in this form survives the exile, a few new(er) histories and wisdom writings (e.g., Nehemiah, some Psalms, possibly Ecclesiastes) and finalized versions of the prophets (esp. 2nd and 3rd Isaiah, Jeremiah) are added, and, somewhere between 2nd and 1st Century BCE, a final form of Daniel is tacked on. Voila! the Old Testament.

Until now, it was conjectured that the form of the Pentateuch discovered in Josiah's court may have been written as late as the early 6th Century. So, basically, some priest writes a bunch of the Pentateuch, drops it in a closet, it gets lost for twenty or thirty years, is discovered, and is then hailed as the ancient text of Israel. Seriously. That's what they think.

On the conservative side of the debate, scholars will suggest that tightly controlled oral traditions preserve stories, poems, songs, and wisdom in original form from the 12th Century BCE until they are committed to ink at an indeterminate time, lost or forgotten during the reigns of naughty kings, and then rediscovered by Josiah's people and preserved through the exile.

Turns out, they're both wrong!

Until now, we had no evidence of biblical Hebrew being used before the 6th Century. That is, the language preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls was thought to have developed much later than the time of David. What's cool about the text discovered by archeologists is how it shows problems in the views of both camps. Clearly, Biblical-style Hebrew was in use at least as early as the 10th Century. And even cooler is that the recovered text is not biblical, but echoes prominent biblical texts (Ps. 72:3, Ex. 23:3, and Isa. 1:17). What's likely is that oral and written traditions were in effect (as conservatives assumed), but that they were probably looser than conservatives would have liked. What eventually gets fixed in the biblical record very much preserves the language and spirit, if not the precise grammatical constructions or internal logic, of original utterances.

To the archeologists: keep digging!

Why won't God leave Haiti alone?

***
Update: A running Haiti news aggregate here.
***

For those of you who don't know, my wife and I are closely connected to an orphanage in Haiti. We have friends who have adopted there and who now work on the board of a non-profit which is dedicated to Haiti outreach. Mike is headed in-country on Friday to assess damage done to the orphanage and probably a local church we visited while we were there last time. You can do pay-pal donations at the links.

My wife is speaking with the headmaster of her school today to hopefully begin another relationship with the orphanage, we'll see how that pans out.

So far, it appears none of the children in the orphanage were hurt, praise God, but I worry the real tragedy is yet to come. Haiti is always on the edge; this might send it over.

The question is why. Of course there's always the Pat Robertson explanation. Intrepid journalist Russell Goldman comments:

When American televangelist Pat Robertson on Wednesday attributed the earthquake to the Haitian people's "pact to the devil," it shined a light on the hostility some foreign Christians have aimed at the country's religious traditions.

Ah the condescension we faithful must endure on the back of Pat Robertson.

There they go again. The backwoods retards and their sky fairy. Ha! How quaint--and normally tolerable. But, in the midst of this crisis how dare they look for cosmic significance in world events? Haven't they heard of science? Plate tectonics? I can't believe I live in the same country as these idiots.

Dear Russell Goldman, I have no idea what to make of Pat Robertson's comments. I don't know what God was doing or not doing with respect to this catastrophe. But I do know that it ain't "foreign Christians" who have spun this "pact with the devil" explanation from whole cloth--it's the Haitians. Yes, Russell, after grueling days of watching my friends build a classroom for Haitian orphans in 100+ degree heat, I was treated to theological diatribes--no, rants--not once, not twice, but three times detailing the hundred year pact with the devil and the misery that has resulted. This came not from the sonorous white missionary (who didn't exist), nor even from the humble Haitian pastor who looked after the children. No Russell, this came from the son of an ex-voodoo priestess who actively participated in periodic renewals of said agreement.

Mr. Goldman. Sir. I have no doubt that the mad religious delusions of Pat Robertson and his ilk send apoplectic shivers down your neural pathways, commanding your fingers to ravage the laptop in the digital equivalent of sackcloth and ashes. And I thank you for having the tremendous journalistic courage it takes to pile on to an outspoken televangelist amidst this oppressive culture of Christianism. But please, Sir, could you find it somewhere within your tolerance, your empathy, your unswerving liberal leanings to spare the poor Haitians? Surely they should be respected enough to have their own beliefs? Their own explanations? Shouldn't they?

Sir?

All Your Virtue are Belong to Us!

Roger Lowenstein of the New York Times counsels those of you with a house that's underwater to walk away from your mortgage. Apparently experts are surprised you haven't bailed already:

And given that nearly a quarter of mortgages are underwater, and that 10 percent of mortgages are delinquent, White, of the University of Arizona, is surprised that more people haven’t walked. He thinks the desire to avoid shame is a factor, as are overblown fears of harm to credit ratings. Probably, homeowners also labor under a delusion that their homes will quickly return to value. White has argued that the government should stop perpetuating default “scare stories” and, indeed, should encourage borrowers to default when it’s in their economic interest. This would correct a prevailing imbalance: homeowners operate under a “powerful moral constraint” while lenders are busily trying to maximize profits.

You see, if a business is acting amorally, you should too. That you haven't already just means you're stupid.

On Constancy

In a strange chapter in After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre muses on that great virtue ethicist--wait for it--Jane Austen. He re-categorizes her fiction as the latest entry into the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition of ethics. And if that strikes you as bizarre, it should.

My best guess is that Austen herself operated on a simple maxim: action reveals character. Human beings elevate deception to an art form—-especially with respect to who we really are. The nature is itself unchanging (so thinks Austen), but naughty folks have a vested interest in convincing their compatriots to believe them honest, loyal, courageous, etc. Austen supposes these tangled webs always unravel if one merely observes the actor for an extended period of time. A lout may bedazzle you with his tales, but pay attention and soon enough you’ll find him face down in the gutter or begging you for a bailout.

According to our experts, Austen was at least wrong about human nature. Not only is it not static, it is constantly being reinvented. Yes, the You of yesterday is long gone and only causally—not substantively—related to the You of today. Of course this should jam up our notions of criminality, rehabilitation and the like, but it doesn’t—we are a strange species—and instead guarantees our limitless freedom, our existential potential or some such. Don’t like yourself? No problem; buy this book and in ten easy steps you too can become Somebody Different! I find this a little unnerving, and the neuroscience seems to imply that this as much an American fairy tale as its Enlightenment predecessor, but the underlying point is apt: your nature can be sub- or con- verted and probably has been.

Which brings us back to MacIntyre. Given that you may become radically different, what Austen chronicles as a revelation of true nature is really another product of human cultivation. Constancy is a virtue. What I call constancy is what impels Darcy to act as Darcy always must act, even when (and especially when) it must cost the very things Darcy must want. Austen’s enlightenment anthropology prevents her from seeing what we cannot ignore: consistent day to day, week to week, year to year, decade to decade character is as practiced and as willed as the deceptions which falsely project it.

The name of this blog sucks.

So help me come up with a better one.

Overfed, over-sexed, and over here!

Growing up, I was taught in church that pre- or extramarital sex was bad because it destroyed, or seriously damaged, the people engaging in it. This was, of course, based on the idea of an unchangeable nature, an intrinsic human good. To live a fully human, fully satisfied, fully happy life, it was argued, only sex within the confines of marriage would suffice.

Experience and observation indicate to me that this is not necessarily so. I know many men who, addicted, or at least strongly attracted to sex, really do appear to me to be happier living lives of wanton promiscuity. I know others who, in the name of caution, prefer to “move towards” marriage in steps: date, hook-up, cohabitate, etc. And it seems to me that they really are happier living this way than they would be if they were to abandon themselves to a new car without “kicking the tires first.”

I also know a couple who practice Natural Family Planning; they have been successful in avoiding pregnancy so far (they are both extraordinarily self-disciplined, so this is not much of a surprise). I was curious as to the theological rationale by which the Catholic Church condemned contraception. So I googled it. And I learned a lot.

Sex is to be both “unitive and procreative.” Contraception makes it merely unitive and, if I understand JP and Benedict rightly, encourages it to be not even that—really just another form of masturbation. The official doctrine is that it must be at least potentially procreative, so as long as there is no artificial contraception or Onanism (the pull-out method), intercourse is fully permissible. Maybe this all makes sense to informed Catholics and the theologians who make these kinds of pronouncements, but color me cynical. Natural Family Planning is no different than contraception or Onanism in that it is a way to avoid unwanted pregnancy. So while God might be happier with the method, the intent and result appear identical.

There is, however, one major difference. NFP demands both sexual discipline and marriage. “Demands” in the soft sense. Sure, I guess a woman could probably wait for the “right day” and then rush out to the bar and pick up some guy. Or an unmarried, cohabiting couple could practice NFP, but really, in the real world, the only people practicing NFP are people like my friends, faithful married Catholics. NFP is the church’s instrument for doctrinally instituting what has traditionally been a Christian virtue: sexual discipline. With the advent of contraception, it was feared that sex would first be practiced wantonly within the marriage, then outside of it, then before it, and then without it entirely. There would be sex everywhere! And Catholics, backwards morons that they are, thought this might be a bad thing!

Which brings me back to my theme: whether or not sex outside of marriage “damages” us. The answer is, “Of course not!” unless you subscribe to a certain idea about what humans ought to be. See, a first sexual encounter, the loss of virginity, is almost universally frightening and strange and exciting. The process of breaking up with a long-term sexual partner is almost universally painful and scarring. The life of random, anonymous hooking up has psychological fallout (positive and negative). And as a society, these sex choices are becoming a part of what it is to be a normal human person. As a “well-adjusted” person, I am supposed to have experienced horrible sexual loss and have bounced back from it. I am supposed to have left my “first sexual love” to go to a different college and to have incorporated that experience—however painful or freeing (let’s not be naïve here)—into who I am as a person. It is important for me to bring sexual prowess to a new relationship lest I be ashamed of myself for not “doing it well.” In short, it is now normal and good for humans to have a wide and varying range of sexual experiences.

And it is changing us. Of course it is. Theologians have been calling out the power and primacy of sexual forces for millennia. It used to be normal for a large swathe of the population to remain a virgin for life! Can you imagine? A life without sex! What, were they gay and ashamed? Or were human beings different? Perhaps their circumstances demanded more discipline, more focus on matters less carnal. And perhaps the result over time was people who were different. Stronger in some ways, more given to self-control. But also less adaptable, less able to cope with emotional trauma. Or maybe there was no difference at all.

But somehow I doubt it.