Michael Spencer (aka the Internet Monk) with a pointer from my brother, Phil Johnson (aka the Pyromaniac) and Doug Wilson have all posted (and cross-posted) on the issue of Christianity and culture.

I would like to add to the blogversation by pointing to a post by Tim Challies almost two months ago. In this post, Tim quotes at length from the script of an episode of King of the Hill entitled Making Christianity Better or Rock N’ Roll Worse? Very funny and amazingly insightful.

Steve

This dog is so ugly they should shave his butt and make him walk backwards.

Michael Spencer really nailed it with his newest essay on Christ, Culture, Tattos and Piercings. This is one of the best he has written in awhile.

Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he made Matthew a disciple and accepted the lavish worship of a sinful woman. He knew exactly what he was doing in not washing his hands, refusing to fast, breaking traditions and associating with the politically and religious fringe.

Jesus broke laws that defined “high, decent, Christian” culture all the time. He broke food laws, sabbath laws, laws of association. He had his own version of the holiness code that would have sent the fundamentalists of his day scrambling for all their best rhetoric to condemn him as being needlessly, immaturely disrespectful of things that made up a good witness.

I only mention this to say that Jesus was “culture savvy” and purposely confronted the RELIGIOUS CULTURE of his day for their blindness to their own meaningless cultural acrustations to the truth of God. Tithing your mint and cumin was a good witness. Avoiding lepers was a good witness. If some of our Christian brothers and sisters provoke us the same way, let’s be careful we understand what is really happening. Are they attempting to “convert by being cool?” Then by all means, tell them what Doug Wilson does: the rebel soul is a geezer. Then let’s remember that Jesus is a rebel to any aspects of culture that turn us away from the truth of God and true human experience. Making sure we aren’t blind to our own cultural trappings is crucial in making sure we don’t present Jesus as simply a white, suburban, American, Republican, evangelical version of what we think “good people” ought to look like.

I encourage you to read it all.

Scott

Well, those geeks at MIT Labs are developing a $100 laptop to be developed and marketed exclusively for the schoolchildren of Developing Nations. Wow! This is being developed for a new non-profit organization called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

Some of the features and benefits include:

• Linux as the OS (Big surprise there!) 3 cheers for Open Source (i.e. FREE) software
• A crank handle to generate power when there is no plugger (kewl).
• Cheap but effective LCD display that can be switched to a black and white mode for use in bright sunlight.
• WiFi and cell-phone enabled.
• Will be marketed directly to governments placing an order of no less than a million units.
• Will not be marketed or sold directly to individuals (bummer)

Here are some pics:

Laptop and Screen

Totable

Power Crank and Carry-strap

Versatile

More info at the MIT Media lab website.

HT to Tim Bayly

Scott

From cars. . .

I am still working through all the old posts of my favorite humor blogger, Quinn Cummings, whom I discovered last week. In a post of random ruminations from July she wrote:

4.When I was 16, and drove my new (to me) car away from the house for the first time, I felt a pure shot of freedom directly to the brain stem. I’m lucky I didn’t keel over. No more waiting for someone to drive me, no accounting for mindless activities, no having to find consensus with my mother over the radio selection. In that Honda, it was Planet Quinn, sister, and all hail the Queen!

Two decades on, I planned all of today around “I refuse to get into that (expletive deleted) thing”. Daughter and I did all sorts of silly things around the house, biked to our errands, and never once did I hear the sound of an engine starting under my feet. I feel some adult version of the teenager’s giddy exhilaration at having gotten away from the thing which constrains me, tempered with an adult’s sober knowledge that unless I plan to convert to Amish or move to a city with an effective public transportation system, I’m back in that car soon.

I can relate. I have told my wife more than once I just wish we could live somewhere where we can walk everywhere and wouldn’t have to own a car (That is slightly less expensive than Manhattan).

Scott

Tim Challies has an excellent post on how we think of unbelievers. Do we love them? Are they our enemies? Are they going to corrupt our children? It seems to me the attitude he describes is very common in the church and, I believe, especially in reformed and presbyterian churches.

Its very unlike Jesus. Here’s a quote:

This attitude manifested itself in many ways. One of the clearest ways was among the children of church members. They would rarely, if ever, be allowed or encouraged to play with the unsaved children in the neighbourhood. I knew a man who was an “urban missionary” whose children were confined to their backyard and were never, ever allowed to play with the other children in the area. My father used to joke that a man could become rich by selling fencing supplies to people in these churches. The churched children were not allowed to play with other children lest they become corrupted by their worldliness.

Good read. Check it out.

Scott

Common Grounds Online had an essay contest and the winning essay is about the choice we have. Whether to go serve Christ to the ends of the earth or stay warm, comfortable, well-fed and content here at home. I wish I could go. Maybe one day I will. Here’s an excerpt.

I am standing in a line to meet some musicians. At the end of their show, they had stopped the music and the “good times” to speak about something that matters. Not some cause - not dying whales or abused dogs or even domestic violence – but an epidemic in Africa that will leave millions dead and tens of millions orphaned. There is a woman in line ahead of me. And she begins to debate the musicians. She says how “everyplace needs Jesus.” She says that you can be a missionary “anywhere.” The musicians just listen. They nod their heads and let her ramble. She is wrong, but from their faces I can see that this tirade comes their way often.

What is so wrong about her statements? At first glance they seem true and irrefutable. But these statements, along with a host of others, are a declaration of the worst of our American values: autonomy. American believers desire God in and only in that spot that has been designated for Him. He gets His ten percent. He gets His Sunday morning and a midweek shot, but the rest of MY life and MY money and MY time are MINE. I will follow MY dreams, I will buy nice things for MY family, and support that family with MY job. Missions – the whole rest of the world- is only important if they are one of MY passions. By making missions simply someone’s cause, believers can ignore God’s call on their life. This is not the way of Christ.

Heres the rest. Check it out.

Scott

Glen, over at the Agorophilia, one of my favorite economics bloggers posted this yesterday demonstrating how silly it is that Christians “point to historical evidence about the life of Jesus to support their claim that he really was the son of God, that he walked on water, that he rose from the dead, and so on.”

It is interesting how many economist are skeptics. This is the comment I left at his post:

Glen,

If your skeptical, materialist worldview precluded the possibility of the 1855 World Fair in Paris would you believe it? Presumably not. If presented with evidence would you conclude that the evidence was fabricated? If presented with further evidence provided by disinterested, objective 3rd parties including diaries, news accounts, advertisements, signage and photographs would you resort to claiming conspiracy theories? Eventually, in the face of overwhelming evidence you would either relent to the evidence or be discredited as a fool.

Millions of Christians throughout the ages have been confronted with the inevitability of belief because they have concluded, despite their ardent wishes, that there was no plausible alternative explanation for the resurrection.

As an economist, you know that people respond to incentives. Have you ever applied your keen and penetrating mind to the question of the incentives before the disciples and apostles of Jesus, to the Romans and the Jews?

Clearly, the Jews and Romans were deeply incented to discredit this new and burgeoning religion. The simple production of the body of Christ would have killed it in its infancy.

Of course, the early believers would have been incented to hide the body only if their purpose had been to create a fraud. What would have incented them to do this? What would have incented them to fabricate a new religion? Was it fame, wealth, comfort and ease? They certainly failed miserably if so. In fact, under the threat and actual perpetration of torture, exile, ridicule and death, they would have been highly motivated to reveal the truth and the body of Christ. Instead, they all suffered brutal deaths believing that Christ had risen from the grave.

That great uber-skeptic, the Apostle Paul, actually made the audacious and imminently verifiable claim, after his conversion, in one of his letters to the church that over 500 witnesses to the risen Christ were still alive and could testify to what they had seen and heard.

If this is a conspiracy, it is the boldest, bravest, stupidest and most successful conspiracy in history. Alas, eventually you have to let the evidence, despite all presuppositions, speak for itself. I believe the only reasonable explanation for the evidence is that in fact, Christ was resurrected.

Coincidentally, 50 years ago, skeptics denied the existence of the old testament tribe called the Hittites. At the time, there was no evidence that they had ever existed. Today, you can study the Hittite language at Harvard. I wondered how the ancient Jews planted that evidence.

Glen, I love your blog. It is funny, provocative, insightful and engaging. I can imagine you do not want to engage in a debate about the historicity of the resurrection. If you like, you can consider me your token Christian friend and drop the issue. But give credit where credit is due. The faith of Christians is reasonable. Yeah a lot of us are wacky and weird. But we’re not stupid.

Cheers,

Fat Triplet 3

We have a great dog. We used to have two great dogs. But one day, several months ago, the angel of death visited our home and he died, along with a half-frog/half-tadpole and some baby birds that had nested in our carport. On the same day. I kid you not.

Anyway, the quality of Luke’s life has increased dramatically since Stirling, our 13 year old West Highland Terrier died. Stirling, you see, was not adaquately housebroken. He liked marking his territory. So Stirling, and therefore Luke as his chief companion, were confined primarily to the large pen we have in the backyard and the basement. Pee on concrete is easy to see and easy to clean up.

Then Stirling died. He had been on medication for a couple of years for congestive heart failure. One sunday night several months ago, I brought Stirling and Luke in from the pen and Stirling was panting, fighting for breath like he had just run a race. I had never seen that before. I talked with Jean and we agreed that we needed to take him to the vet in the morning. By the next morning it was too late. He was cold and stiff.

Since then, Luke has become a true family dog. He lives with us upstairs. He sleeps on the couch. He is well behaved and tolerant of the kids annoyances. He hasn’t been in the pen in months. And he gets walked two or three times a day.

The walking has been good for him and good for us. However ,it has presented something of a moral dilemma. I found myself quite deliberately waiting until after dark to walk Luke. The dark provided adaquate cover to allow for Unauthorized Pooping Situations (UPS). An UPS is one in which Luke would vacate his bowels in the yard of a neighbor who has not explicitly granted us permission for this possibility. After dark, I would exit the house with Luke, cross the road and walk about 1/4 mile down the road. For some reason, Luke never conducts an UPS on this side of the road. We would then cross the road back to our side of the street, and head home. This part of the walk required stealth and daring. I developed a rather complex ethic for this part of the journey. A home that was a rental property containing college students was the most desirable spot for an UPS. First of all, they don’t own the place, so they don’t care. Secondly, we homeowners that live in our houses resent the de-neighborhoodization that accompanies the commercialization of these homes into rentals. (The libertarian in me is really torn up about this). If Luke uncooperatively fails to poop in one of these rental property yards then the next preferred type of yard in the hierarchy of preferred pooping areas is the “Dark” house. A dark house is a house in which there are no lights on both the inside and outside of the house. These houses provide enough cover that only someone with night vision goggles could say with certainty that Luke is in fact squatting as opposed to some other “humpy” looking sort of activity such as sniffing a gopher hole or licking his private parts. If Luke displays continued intransigence and all the “dark” houses have been passed, I would settle for a “semi-dark” house. A semi-dark house is one in which the yard is unlighted but there are lights on in the house. Semi-dark houses were evaluated for their pooping potential on a house by house basis. If movement or actual persons could be viewed in the house, then these houses were skirted by with a firm resolve. Luke would always conduct an UPS in one of these types of house.

Can you see a pattern here? A slinking around in the dark trying to hide your activities from view kind of pattern. This pattern tugged and then vigorously pulled at my conscience. And then Jean reported that a neighbor scolded her when Luke was conducting an UPS. Apparently it was a “dark” house but the neighbor drove up just as Luke began conducting his business.

I now do guilt-free dog walking. Luke poops in whatever yard he wants. I even sometimes leave before dark. I now carry in my pocket a disposable vinyl glove. I can see it in my minds eye. As a neighbor begins to complain of Luke’s Unauthorized Pooping, I will, through a self-righteous and indignant glare, pull the glove from my pocket, thrust and tug it onto my hand like a surgeon in the OR, reach down and pick up the semi-firm, warm poop, walk in the direction of home and toss it in the nearest bush. A flashlight is required for this procedure after dark. Now I can be self-righteous coming and going. I can play the part of both the prodigal and the older son. I can direct my indignation towards those who allow their dogs to poop in unauthorized areas, and those who accuse my dog of doing so. I’m so proud.

Steve

Dan over at Cerulean Sanctum has posted more Myths on Home schooling. Here is my quick response:

Myth #4: The ________________ method is by far the best way to homeschool kids

I agree with the sentiment of this Myth. But Dan loses me in the argument. Dan says,

“We think of ourselves as educated, but if push came to shove, could we feed ourselves without having to rely on others to provide food for us? Probably not. “

Is he arguing that subsistence farmers in Nigeria are better educated than those that recieve a modern education. I assure you Dan, in the modern world, people do not need to learn to farm in order to be guaranteed that there will always be food on the table. In a free-market economy, people should feel free to pursue those interest, activities and skills which most interest them and wholesome, fresh food will always be on the table. I suppose learning to prepare it would be useful though. In this myth, Dan seems to argue the very point he wishes to refute by suggesting that education should prepare people to know how to farm. His point is more “purpose” than “method” but the end result is the same.

Myth #5: A parent is a child’s best teacher

Based on performace frequently a parent is a child’s best teacher. The Home School Legal Defense Association recently published a study that found that parent-teachers consistently outperformed public school student performance, even in the event that the teacher had no better than a high school education.
Public school students of college educated moms performed at the 61st percentile in math. Home schooled students of mothers with less than a high school education scored at the 83rd percentile rank.

Home schooling isn’t perfect. But the data bears out that the results are impressive.

I am thankful my brother started this discussion. I created a separate category for home schooling when we started this blog and have rarely used it. Iwant to address the “Myths” that Dan at Cerulean Sanctum raises in this post.

Myth #1: If you don’t homeschool your kids, you’re not a good parent.

Of course, this is a myth. It is true that a certain percentage of the homeschooling crowd can be insufferably self-righteous about it. What is ironic about this myth is what it assumes. It assumes that non-homeschool parents are constantly being put on the defensive because of the decision to not home school their children. But based on our experience, the reverse is true. Except for a minority but vocal group found within the Christian sub-culture, most people do not question the decision to use public schools for educating their children. Home school parents are far more likely to be put in a position to defend the decision to home school than non-homeschool parents. Typically, the reaction is something like “So our school isn’t good enough for you?” Every home school parent I know can tell you of slights and spurns both subtle and palpable defending the decision to home school.

Myth #2 Homeschooling more actively involves parents in their children’s educations.

This is not a myth. If you were to do a simple calculation of the amount of hours that typical home school parents spend actively involved “in their chidren’s educations” the home school parents would come out substantially ahead of any other form of education. I would estimate by more than a factor of 4. I can observe how incredibly time consuming home schooling is in my own household.

Dan uses a strange argument to defend his thesis. He points to the existence of television and computer based curriculum to justify this point as a myth. I know dozens of home schooling families. Only one of these use pre-packaged computer based curriculum in its entirety. A few more will use parts of such curriculums to supplement the parent-teacher education, particularly in the older grades where lecture formats are more appropriate and where subjects require more specialization. Lastly, even if you grant Dan’s tacit assumption that most parents used computer or television based curriculum, he still fails to prove his argument. The home school parent is still directing the childs education. Dan states,

a kid wedded to a computer or TV for hours on end is not getting a more parent-driven education than a child who sits in a public school classroom…

This statement is false. Clearly the home school childs education is more “parent-driven” since the curriculum is being selected by a parent rather than a nameless beaurocrat.

…the very parents who howl about public school content rarely take the time to review the homeschool computer or video content their kid is inhaling for hours on end.

Based on my experience, this also is false. All home school parents I know carefully evaluate home school curriculum before buying it. In fact, selecting curriculum tends to be an obsession of home schoolers educators.

I also believe that Dan’s comparison with the use of television or PC based curriculum as equivalent to commercial television or a public school teacher is also spurious.

Myth # 3 The educational methodology behind most homeschooling curriculum is superior to the methodology used in public schools

Home schoolers are not a monolith. The range and type of curriculum being used by home schoolers are extraordinarily diverse. Some are better than others. I would agree this would be a myth for that 5% of home schoolers that use the non-curriculum “unschooling” approach. Most home school educators think unschooling is wacky. But again, based on my experience, this Myth is in fact the truth. Home schoolers are far more likely to use phonics, for example, for teaching reading. Home schoolers are far more likely to use a wholistic, world history approach to teaching history. Most public schools do not teach world history until the 10th grade! The home schoolers approach to history is far more likely to be comprehensive and to delve into ancient history than a public school curriculum. Home school curriculums are far more likely to use reading as the primary teaching tool for the early grades. I look forward to Dan’s coming post on the Classical approach. Most people have an incorrect and extraordinarily narrow view of what is meant by a classical education. (Hint: it has nothing to do with latin). I hope Dan gets it right.

Dan talks about the behaviorist tendencies of most home school curriculum. But since he does not cite specific examples his theory can’t be proven or refuted. He needs to add some substance to his arguments.

I want to end on a positive note. I agree with Dan that their is a great deal of “hype” and “mania” surrounding the home school movement that is exhibited by both its defenders and detractors. I have argued for years that the key to your kids education is not educating at home versus public schools or private school. The issue is that parents cannot be passive about their childrens education. Parents cannot blithely send their children off to “the professionals” and hope and pray their kids will turn out alright. Parents must be involved. They should know the curriculum that is being used. They should supplement with alternatives where it is deficient. They should counter the necassarily secular biases that children will encounter in a public school setting. If the parents are creationists, they should come alongside their children and teach why they believe what they believe. Unfortunately, too many parents are too passive about their children’s education.

Their are plenty of myths about home schooling. But my list would have looked quite different than Dan’s. I will attempt another post or two soon in which I discuss our reasons for choosing to home school and good reasons to use alternative methods. I also have been working for some time on a post addressing the problems of a monopolistic public school system.

Steve

There are lame bloggers who give lame attampts at humor, like this one, and then there are people who have it. Writers who are just funny. Dave Barry comes to mind.

Well, yesterday my wife discovered this blog. Irma Bombeck move over cuz this girl is FUNNY. Her titles are so clever and the content is both intelligent and hilarious at the same time. I also like her cuz she describes herself as sort of geeky and quirky, and I like those kind of people. Here’s a short quote from one of her blogs (she is teaching herelf latin )(Consort is her partner/significant other/spouse?):

Rome in Italy is.

Italy in Europe is.

Egypt in Europe is not, Egypt in Africa is.

Is not France in Europe?
France in Europe is.

Sure, it’s not compelling, but it’s Latin, and I’ve translated it. And I know it sounds a little strange; I followed Consort around the house for the better part of an hour translating at him until he finally groaned, “I’m living with Yoda”. But I’m trying to keep the syntax in the proper place. So speak backwards I do.

Read her. Funny she is.

Scott

Funny QOTD from my 7yo at my wife’s site. I laughed out loud at that one.

This past weekend I went to an annual festival in my town that centered entirely around Barbecue. This small park was turned into an RV and REALLY BIG GRILL haven. I kept thinking , “I didn’t know there were so many barbecuers” and “aren’t RVs really expensive” and then it hit me. There’s something going on here. Amidst the stacks of ribs piled high and the smell of burning hickory, I noticed people walking around with beer in their hands and HUNGER in their eyes. They often had drools of spittle on their chin and rings of maroon red sauce on their mouths, the distant look of hungry predators. Meat junkies. This is an outrage. How can these families of otherwise innocuous-looking folk afford these expensive RVs? I realized, they’re dealers. Where is the pork csar?