An Offensive Gospel July 31, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in Christianity, Emergent, Theology, books.comments closed
I first heard about Garry Wills’ new book, What Jesus Meant, from a review in Newsweek. I wasn’t familiar with Garry Wills either at this point, but the review’s introductory paragraph drew me in. According to the review, here was a new book that gave a radical re-interpretation of Jesus of Nazareth as an extreme radical who opposed the two greatest institutions of his time – Wills pits Jesus against the State, and Jesus against the Church.
Wills’ book describes Jesus, a religious cleric by training, denying the religious cleanliness (holiness) codes one after another all through the gospels – coming into contact with the sick and dead bodies, breaking the Sabbath, sharing meals (the deepest sign of friendly communion in the first century) with prostitutes and thieves – while refusing to dine with his “fellow” clerics, encouraging drunkenness (turning water into hundreds of gallons of wine at a wedding reception and continually dining at rowdy tables), refusing to perform ceremonial washings, etc.
As I was reading this book, I kept thinking of the review I read a couple of weeks earlier, and was eagerly looking for the juicy bits – those that rang of political correctness, one-sided agenda driven witch-hunts, or maybe even heresy.
Wills’ successfully sparks a reaction from all his readers: he spends time discussing homosexuality (of which he has a generous view), the rich and powerful (of which he is not generous), and politically motivated, while also providing apologetic for a miracle performing, mystical Christ – thus offending both conservative and liberal interpretations at the same time.
What I found was a gospel that was already vaguely familiar to me, but somehow lost in my early religious training. This was a Jesus who hung out, was friends with, aided, the dregs of society – those society had forgot or hated. He refused to deal with politicians or religious leaders on their terms – they must come down from their seats of power in order to join Him (the Pharisees must come in and dine at the sinner’s table, the rich man must sell all his possessions, etc.). I learned these stories in Sunday School, but somehow it seems we had become the very religious elite that Jesus opposed. The stories and the teachings were right there in front of us, and we made elaborate excuses and intricate theologies to explain our benign neglect of the meaning of Jesus’ life.
As I read, I started to ask a very serious question. It is often said, “The Gospel offends”(usually to defend a poor door-to-door style evangelism). I thought about that for a while and then asked: “Who does the Gospel offend?” The answer I was raised with is, “Sinners, of course.” But then, what do we mean by “sinners”? The answer from many American Christians: “Those who are living sinful, adulterous, thieving, homosexual, smoking, drinking, cursing, leprous, unclean lives.”
This saddens me on so many levels. The good news is, many Christians do not ascribe to this Pharisaical attitude. Books like this are being written, as they always have – though we may not hear about them as often as they are not endorsed by the religious “machine” nor do they give people the self-gratifying effects desired after reading a religious book. By degrees, I have met people who have served as great mentors of mercy and compassion as I grew out of my grade-school fundamentalist upbringing. But there are still many religious people to confront and many more unclean with which to dine – of which, I hope I am one.
Audiobooks vs. Printed Books July 30, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in books, media.comments closed
I have between two and three hours of commute time every weekday, so I pass the time listening to a lot of audiobooks from Audible (www.audible.com). I still spend a lot of time at the bookstore. All in all, on average I think I go through about 1 1/2 to 2 books (both audio and print) a week (depending on the size of the books).
I have been interested in the different experiences both mediums afford, so here is a breakdown of some of the pros and cons of each.
Audiobooks
- Actually get all the way through the book, as it is easier to get through the boring parts
-Get a wholistic picture of the story
-The reader-actors give new dimensions to chararacters,emphasizing and differentiating dialog
-Some writers have a style that lends itself to the spoken word
-I’m in the car anyway, what else am I going to do?
Printed Books
-Get more of the “deeper” themes running through a book
-Can take notes in the margins
Can dog-ear pages or use a permanent bookmark
-Can reference the book again easily in the future, for quotes, quick browsing, etc.
-Some writers have a style that lends itself to the written page
-Tend to remember names better after I have read them as opposed to just heard them, though I remember characterizations (accent, etc) better from audiobook
What do you think are the benefits and drawbacks of these formats from your own experiences?
FEMA Press Policy Outrage July 30, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in Hurricane Katrina Relief, Politics, media.comments closed
I am sickened by what I have read concerning FEMA’s press policy in their government funded trailer park communities. Read these links!
Basically, FEMA will not allow reporters to interview people staying in these parks on the park property – and reporters are not allowed on the park property to get to people to interview. These people do not have phones, either – except the limited cellphones provided by FEMA. Offsite, trailer park residents are not allowed to speak to members of the press without an official FEMA representative present. This is essentially a forced media blackout of prison-like conditions.
FEMA’s response to these allegations is here , and an article on the inadequacy of that response here . None of this, they submit, is official FEMA policy. OK, official or not, it is happening. In fact, there is a track record of media abuses in New Orleans, including an incident of the police breaking reporters’ cameras after photographing brutality.
Where is the mainstream press on this?
Jon Stewart on CNN Crossfire July 28, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in Humor, Politics, media.comments closed
A Positive Pluralism July 25, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in Christianity, Emergent, Theology, books.comments closed
In his book, A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren attempts to take a kind of positive pluralist approach to the different orthodoxies within the Catholic (meaning here universal) Christian Church. McLaren analyzes several orthodoxies from Roman Catholic to evangelical to green to Lutheran to Anabaptist, and looks for the good within all of these traditions. This book introduced me to several Christian traditions that I was not acquainted with (or only nominally acquainted), and also challenged some of my assumptions concerning traditions more familiar to me.
The underlying assumption of this book is that there is beauty to be found in all of these traditions, and by focusing on the few negative aspects we miss out on a greater experience and understanding of God. McLaren embraces an epistemelogical relativism, meaning that our understanding of the world is created and limited by our unique experiences. By actively and positively listening to other traditions, we gain a fuller and more profound experience of God. While still holding firmly to the belief that Christ’s life and redemptive work through his death and resurrection is the only path to God, he questions whether one has to be a part of the culture of Christendom in order to be a follower of Christ. Could individuals within other religious communities such as Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism also be Christ-followers? McClaren is optimistic about this. I am reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s incisive question, “What is religionless Christianity?”
McLaren provides a wonderful example of living out a positive pluralism. Our culture today is in a state of unrest in both politics and religion. The two political parties in our country are more violently divided today than ever. Churches have firmly planted themselves in the warring camps of fundamentalism, evangelicalism, or ecumenicism. All the while, people are talking over each other with megaphones and picket signs, and no one is listening.
If we were able to view the world optimistically (glass half-full) and honestly believe that within the confines of our limited humanity we are each trying to do good, perhaps we would see that, at the core, we are all on the same side.
Ford’s New Community Site July 25, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in Technology, business.comments closed
It looks like Ford is shooting for a better image through transparency with their new community site. The disclaimer at the bottom is, I think, telling and useful:
Any content and/or opinions expressed in this Web site, including without limitation, message boards, articles and responses to questions are solely the opinions and responsibility of the person or entity named as the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Ford Motor Company. You also understand and acknowledge that you are responsible for the content of any message that you post to this site.
Since Ford owns this site, the communication will probably be somewhat limited. But then again, maybe this isn’t so bad as it cuts down on flame wars and other possibly offensive content (offensive to whom?). While this could potentially be a best-case scenario for corporate sponsored community, one always feels a little skeptical about any communication platform whose primary service is always to the company’s bottom line.
The Truth About Dogs July 19, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in books.comments closed
When we received The Truth About Dogs in the mail this weekend, all of my old prejudices about pet books immediately surfaced. I remember reading somewhere when I worked at a bookstore that the sale of pet books basically pays to keep the more serious literature on the shelves.
I don’t quite hold on to these prejudices as strongly as my “student revolutionary” persona once did. And that’s good, because if I did, I would have missed out on reading a pretty good book.
The author, Stephen Budiansky, takes an evolutionary approach to the dog, discussing evolutionary genetics liberally. In the second chapter, Proto-Dog, he traces the human-dog relationship back to prehistory. Budiansky paints a picture of a dog that figured out how to warm up to humans in order survive. In this view, the dog that allows itself to be domesticated is actually the evolutionary superior to the wolf who refuses to be tamed. Wolves, after all, are now close to extinction.
The book goes on to explain doggy behavior through an understanding of canine color-blindness, olfactory senses and other brain shaping physical traits, and the negative effects of anthropomorphism. The book ends with a discussion of current breeding habits encouraged by the likes of the American Kennel Club, in which he favors a healthy genetic distribution (i.e. mutts).
I’ll close with a sentence from his concluding remarks:
“The True Dog is that animal that evolved with us, adapted to and exploited our society, and that did so on terms largely dictated by himself.”
The Sentiment of Determinism July 18, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in Philosophy, Theology.comments closed
Last week I had a great conversation with some friends about the old debate over free-will and determinism. Actually, it was framed as a theological debate between free-agency and predestination. Technical terms aside, these are just different ways of discussing the same fundamental issue.
So why is this a fundamental issue? Why does this question bother us so much? Since the days of Socrates (and probably before that) mandatory Introduction to Philosophy courses have generated many a rivalry over this issue (along with the resulting casualties who vowed to never take a philosophy course again!). Whole church denominations have formed solely as a response to this debate.
The debate itself seems impassable.
On the one hand, when one looks at the world from a macro perspective, there seems to be undeniable proof that all of our actions and the actions of the people around us have been determined from the very beginning of creation. The deterministic stance is argued from the grounds of Evolution, Historicism, Theistic Omniscience, etc. The evidence staggering.
And yet…
That is not what our experience tells us. When I have a decision to make, I have to make it and there are tangible consequences for whichever option I choose. So I deliberate. If it is a big decision I mull it over for days, even weeks. And at the end of that period, my genes, environment, divine election, etc tell me it was inevitable that I would make that choice. But for me, this idea of determinism holds no practical value. If determinism had something of substance, something real to offer, it would have helped me make my decision. As it is, deterministic theories are just so many words – nonsensical. The epitomy of why college freshmen dread Philosophy 101.
So what do we do? From a practical perspective, perhaps we should just throw this out with every other pointless philosophical banter. But however we try to quell it, the debate keeps rearing it’s head.
***
It seems to me that this question has several psychological implications that make it difficult for us to come to terms with. On the one hand, determinism is what provides our stability. It’s what gives us methodology and allows science to happen. It allows me to know that when I set my alarm at night, it will go off just as I set it (assuming no power outage like last night!) and the sun will be in the sky just as it was yesterday morning and every morning before that. Determinism coupled with divine foreknowledge of a good God, provides the blessed assurance that this world, though troubling to us from our limited perspective, is all under control. This is great comfort to me on days when I need rest. Relaxing in divine providence and finding a zen state of peaceful consciousness is a required solace at times from the everydayness of life.
But then if I stay in this state too long, I begin feeling trapped, suffacated. Am I not my own man, with my own intentions, separate from what culture and whatever cosmic forces are at work? I want to break out with the kind of radical existential freedom particular to 20th century French activists. But it is not just a selfish sentiment. Saddened, ennobled, then enraged by the injustices around me, I feel the need to stand up to the social herdsman
and change the course of history, in company with so many revolutionaries that have gone before. As James Joyce wrote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
***
The point I hope to make is that there are underlying, pre-scientific, pre-logical, (pre-conscious?), conditions that often color our thinking, and this is often evidenced by the questions we value. Is there an answer to this question? Probably. Can we ever know the answer? I’m doubtful, particularly due to the all of the “pre-” conditions that are involved. Of course, there is always the strong possibility that we are asking the wrong question.
Paradigm and Innovation July 15, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in SOA, Technology, Thomas Kuhn.comments closed
Innovation drives business technology. Innovation gives us the upper hand on our competitors. Innovation excites us. And rightfully so. The technologist enters a career in computing to solve new problems, create cool new gadgets, and find new uses for established methods.
Much literature has been written on the process of innovation, and I do not wish to repeat what others have said more eloquently than I could on that topic. I would like to briefly discuss another subject that is intimately related to innovation: paradigms.
A paradigm, simply put, is a way of understanding and framing the technical problems with which we are faced. According to Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, paradigms define:
· what is to be observed and scrutinized,
· the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to this subject,
· how these questions are to be structured,
· how the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm, May 8, 2006)
While Kuhn’s focus is on the nature of scientific inquiry, his observations have a broader application for many creative pursuits, especially in the area of information technology. If paradigms frame our understanding of technical problems, and shape our solutions to them, it stands to reason that new paradigms are often a precursor to innovation. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines innovation as:
1: the introduction of something new
2: a new idea, method, or device: novelty
Innovation occurs when we look at a familiar product and find a new application for it. Most innovation occurs after a paradigm shift has taken place within the inventor. A paradigm shift occurs when an individual’s approach to her technical puzzles switches from one paradigm to another, from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics for example. It is at this time when the mind is most fertile for innovative thought, as the individual looks at her present problems with “new eyes”.
Let’s illustrate this point with a useful example: Service Orientation. Service Orientation is a higher-level abstraction for what manifests itself as the Service Oriented Architecture model of distributed computing and the “Software as a Service” model in software product design. I would argue that Service Orientation is not an example of innovation, but Service Orientation is a paradigm from which innovation can develop.
Let me repeat: Service Orientation is not innovation. Service orientation, including service-oriented architecture (SOA), is a paradigm, a way of looking at a problem, which allows innovation to take place.
Paradigms are developed through a combination of theory, experimentation, and tools. The services theory is heavily based in object-oriented design. In fact, often the first reaction I get when explaining SOA is that it is just a fancy way of talking about client-server architectures and n-tiered design. But while the two concepts are similar, SOA is remarkably different. The basic theory is not new, and has existed in distributed computing architectures for decades. What qualifies SOA as a “new” paradigm is twofold. First, is the addition of a common tool, which acts as a lingua franca for distributed systems: xml. The second qualification is the general acceptance of these tools among practitioners in the computing field. In order to be affective, paradigms must contain a social component just as the literary epic contains a social component. While many writers have created tomes of poetry with epic themes, only the works of poets who gained a social acceptance (Homer, Dante, Milton) are considered “epics”. Paradigms require the same social component. As such, the community in the past 5-6 years has deemed SOA a legitimate, indeed essential, paradigm.
At this point there are two directions in which this discussion could go, each in the form of a question:
As Service Orientation, and SOA in particular, seem fairly low level, are there higher paradigms from which these are based?
I see this question has extremely important to both further clarifying and perfecting the current Services paradigm, and finding the next paradigm to take its place. Indeed, paradigms are nested, so to speak, and one’s approach to technical problems is complex, consisting of layers of perspective that act as the Prophet Ezekiel’s “wheels within wheels”. SOA is a lower level (almost code level) paradigm that has been created from such presuppositions as Network Ubiquity and Transparent Computing, which themselves make up higher level computing paradigms. I will leave this question open for discussion right now.
The second, more approachable question is this:
Why do we need to switch to a Services paradigm – what is the value over the old paradigm?
Let’s take the distributed computing paradigms of Client-Server and SOA for comparison as Client-Server is the most recent “way of doing things” before SOA, and they both live on the same paradigmatic nested level. It is not the intention of this discussion to get into technical specifics of how SOA is implemented, but rather I would like to briefly mention four technical problems that SOA the paradigm addresses:
- Integration
- Location Transparency
- Asset Reuse
- Stability
Let’s get down to brass tacks. All technical projects need funding, and there are solid business reasons for implementing SOA-based structures within the enterprise. I would like to propose four business benefits (Return On Investment scenarios) for SOA that map to the above technical solutions:
- Lower Integration Costs
- Faster Time To Market
- Increases Business Agility
- Reduces Risk Exposure/ Increased Compliance
Now this discussion needs to come full circle and discuss how this all relates to innovation. I think the best thing I can do at this point without drilling down into specifics is to offer a few examples of innovation that has taken place within the Services paradigm in the past few years.
*ML Languages
Web Services and REST
Google as a Service
Microsoft Office as a Subscription Service
All of these bullet-points could be broken out further and several more pages could be written, but right now I just want to open this up for discussion and see if you agree with the basic premise.
Is there a paradigm/innovation dichotomy?
Is SOA a good fit in this discussion?
What are the bigger paradigms in which SOA is nested?
Are there other opportunities and risks associated with SOA that I have overlooked?
What are other examples of innovation within the SOA framework?
Situated Software July 15, 2006
Posted by poseidon715 in Technology.comments closed
Here is a great article from Clay Shirky on what he calls situated software. What I found most interesting about this article is the focus he brings to the implicit social contexts that determine the use and success of software.
