Flourishing

C S Lewis has an interesting article by the title, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” in his volume God in the Dock (1979). The central argument of the piece is:

“…[W]hen we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we have an object, a patient, a case.” (p. 497)

He goes on to argue that by removing the connection between crime and desert (consequence) we make the sentencing of criminals something other than a moral question. Sentencing becomes an experiment for technical experts (who decide on its effectiveness as a cure and/or a deterrent). The maxim Cuiquam in sua arte credendum, rules the day (”we must believe the expert in his own field”). There no longer is room for the public conscience to make value judgments. The public, Lewis points out, is not viewed as having sufficient technical knowledge to make such judgments. What is more, such judgments as are made by these experts rarely (if ever) employ the categories of moral theology.

This is interesting to ponder in the case of someone like Radovan Karadzic. Finally, after some twelve fugitive years, Karadzic awaits trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Karadzic’s indictment concludes that there is reasonable evidence to conclude that he committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Bosnian War (1992-1995) when he was the political leader of Republika Srpska.

What to do with Karadzic?

Allow me to state this as affirmatively and succinctly as possible. When the ITCY tries and (presumably) finds Karadzic guilty of one or more of the counts specified in the prosecution’s case, the sentence should be retributive. That is to say, its first goal should be to make this man pay for the grave moral evil over which he presided.

Certainly, we may hope that over the years of his imprisonment (there is no death sentence in the ITCY) he may come to some degree of genuine repentance (in both the non-theological and theological senses of the word) and an alteration of character. We may also hope that somehow his punishment may serve as a warning to other wicked men.

But, in the end, we must hope that he will be made to pay for his wrongdoing. He may, one day, find mercy. But as Lewis rightly points out, mercy only has any real meaning when found in the context of (retributive) justice.

What would a just sentence look like? This is a difficult question. I do, however, have a difficult time finding anything particularly just about allowing such a man to idle away his remaining years (he is 63) in the (relative) comfort of prison. Of course, I also find a spectacle such as the hanging of Saddam Hussein to wholly without justification. Hussein was a wicked man, but even wicked men ought not be mocked in the hour of their death.

I’m open to suggestions, but I wonder if there isn’t something redemptive about hard labor. It is, after all, in the midst of hard labor that Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov finds the beginnings of renewal and regeneration:

“…[T]he beginning of a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life…”

We’re among friends here, so we can share a laugh about life as grad students…can’t we? Thanks to the folks in computer science over at the University of Maryland - Baltimore for this list. They had a longer list, but I redacted it down to my favorite ten (so you could get back to that chapter!).

See the complete list here.

Here goes…

I thought I’d clue you in on what’s coming up here on the Following Christ blog. I’m working on a number of posts that should prove to be pretty darn interesting and maybe even a bit provocative.

Our goal here is to provide content that intersects with the theme of Following Christ 08: human flourishing. We want to keep you up to date on new developments with the conference. We also want to get your input about what you’d like to see in the program. So…stay tuned!

Coming up…

I’m lining up interviews with key folks who are leading Following Christ 08 and other thought leaders. So…stay tuned…there’s much more to come!

No. Not really. CNN is carrying the story of an Oklahoma church that planned to give away a semi-automatic assault rifle to one of the registrants for its youth camp. See the story here.

We are giving away gifts to folks who register for Following Christ. You can rest assured, however, that they won’t be the sort of things that you can use to kill you’re your neighbor. Unless you’ve been trained by the CIA or Mossad, in which case (I suspect) your hands will be enough, absent our freebies.

More information on the freebies go to: www.blog.followingchrist.org/fc08-short-videos

Rod Dreher at Crunchy Con links to a fascinating article by William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar. Read the article here.

Sometimes I wonder whether (and to what extent) the university aids or inhibits human flourishing. Deresiewicz wonders too. His article, “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education,” raises at least five ways that elite universities inhibit their students:

1. They make their students unable to talk with people different from themselves.
2. They inculcate their students with a false sense of self-worth.
3. They tempt their students to mediocrity (the Gentleman’s B).
4. They rob their students of the chance to not be rich.
5. They are profoundly anti-intellectual in that they value achievement over ideas.

Here’s a quote:

When elite universities boast that they teach their students how to think, they mean that they teach them the analytic and rhetorical skills necessary for success in law or medicine or science or business. But a humanistic education is supposed to mean something more than that, as universities still dimly feel. So when students get to college, they hear a couple of speeches telling them to ask the big questions, and when they graduate, they hear a couple more speeches telling them to ask the big questions. And in between, they spend four years taking courses that train them to ask the little questions—specialized courses, taught by specialized professors, aimed at specialized students. Although the notion of breadth is implicit in the very idea of a liberal arts education, the admissions process increasingly selects for kids who have already begun to think of themselves in specialized terms—the junior journalist, the budding astronomer, the language prodigy. We are slouching, even at elite schools, toward a glorified form of vocational training.

If the unexamined life is not worth living, perhaps we ought to question the ways we are forming students (both undergraduate, graduate, and post docs) to live their lives?

Steve Hayner, Peachtree Associate Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Columbia Theological Seminary will be joining the roster of presenters at Following Christ 2008! Steve will be leading our inter-disciplinary track called, “Doubting Jesus.” The track is designed to be a place for those who are skeptical about Jesus or who are wrestling with faith to engage in honest dialogue.

Steve served has been at Columbia since 2003 he is also Scholar in Residence at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, GA. Prior to that he pastored a church in Madison, Wisconsin and served as President of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA.

Here’s Steve speaking about the mission of the church at a 2006 conference.

I’m really excited about the three interdisciplinary tracks that are part of FC08. Of the three, I am especially intrigued by God’s Green Kingdom, chaired by Dr. Rusty Pritchard. The Christian community is becoming increasingly aware of our responsibility for creation care. Groups like Evangelicals for Social Action and the Evangelical Environmental Network have led the way in this.

For a long time talk of conservation, hybrids, and simple living was the domain of hippies and liberals. Now the evangelical church is maturing in our theology of creation.

Counselors often tell us that we change only when the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of change. With the price of oil going through the roof and Americans seriously addicted to automobiles, especially big automobiles, the pain of staying the same is intensifying.

And it seems that our way of living is in the process of changing at a fundamental levels. I’m not talking simply turning off the A/C in your F-350 and rolling down the windows. I’m talking profound changes in the way he travel, where we work and where we live.

Rod Dreher of Crunchy Con has an interesting post pointing this out. Read it here. He links to several articles indicating that America is on the verge of a serious economic earthquake. Especially interesting is a web-tool that allows the user to calculate the real cost of living in the suburbs by factoring in the cost of travel (i.e., premium gas for your Suburban). Makes me glad that I live in a little cottage three miles from downtown.

CNN reports on Shane Claiborne’s Jesus for President tour. The tour touts a new book by Claiborne and Chris Haw of the same title.

The story outlines the shifting nature of younger evangelicals’ political identity. In light of my earlier post, its an encouraging trend. Younger evangelicals, it seems, are injecting our faith into the way we vote and voting by principle and not simply by party affiliation. Hopeful sign.

There’s an interesting conversation happening at Jesus Creed on this very topic.

Last week I posted a short piece on the quarrel between Barack Obama and James Dobson. Dobson took offense to some comments that Obama made about Christians needing to appeal to things other than the Bible and our tradition when making moral arguments in the public square.

After the story made cnn.com, there was a flurry of comment from the Christian left, most notably Sojourners founder Jim Wallis. I’ve been familiar with Wallis for about three years now ever since I read his book God’s Politics. I didn’t really enjoy the book. In fact, to this day I’m not entirely convinced that it doesn’t attempt to persuade the world that God is a democrat on almost every issue. I say that tongue in check, mostly. I applaud Wallis for challenging Christians (especially evangelicals) to really examine issues and to do so from a thoroughly Christian perspective not simply a political philosophy baptized with God-talk. I don’t always agree with Wallis, but I respect him.

The ping pong match between red and blue Christians got me asking: where are the purple Christians? Francis Schaeffer once wrote that Christians may be co-belligerents with both parties over different issues, but never ultimately loyal to anyone other than Christ.

Are we anywhere close to that ideal? I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t seem like it. It seems to me that Christians on the left and on the right are equally guilty of being uncharitable and attributing to the other the worst possible of motives for every legislative or policy decision. We’re polarized more than we care to admit, check out this dialogue as an example.

It seems to me that there needs to be a new day of dialogue and cooperation between Christians of various political persuasions. Perhaps Following Christ can be a place where some of those conversations begin. After all, we’ll be in Chicago together less than two months after a presidential election and day before the inauguration of a new president.

Jim Wallis likes to say that the monologue of the religious right is over. I hope so. In fact, I hope that all monologues within the Christian community are over and that we can move into tomorrow with frank, honest, and charitable conversation.

I opened my browser yesterday morning and pulled up cnn.com. It’s sort of part of my morning routine. Get a cup of coffee. Open the MacBook. Scan my RSS feeds. Check the news. You get the picture.

Yesterday’s headline was the very public quarrel between conservative Christian leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

The issue? Biblical interpretation. Specifically, Dobson took Obama to task for a 2006 speech delivered at Call to Renewal, a gathering of progressive/liberal Christians. Read the text of the speech here.

The original CNN piece is here.

I’m going to go out on a limb (not really) and say that if you’re the sort of person who’s interested in Following Christ 2008, you’re probably also interested in being a redeeming influence in culture. Right? You’re probably also someone who spends most of your life in a that highly pluralistic environment known as the university.

So the issue raised in this little (and very public) tiff is actually quite germane to your life.

I don’t want to get into the specifics of the quarrel, you can read the CNN piece for that. I do want to consider one of Obama’s assertions. It just so happens that it is one that Dobson took issue with, but never mind.

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

- Barack Obama, Keynote Address, Call to Renewal.

I believe that Obama is right.

Christians have for centuries believed that there exist not only the (specific) revelation of Scripture, but general revelation in nature and reason. This general revelation could also be called Natural Law. As a result, it is possible to converse with those outside of the Christian faith on the basis of first things, moral principles that are knowable outside of Scripture. This means that we can discuss policies from a Christian perspective without using explicitly Christian language.

It doesn’t mean (and I don’t think Obama suggests) that Christians/the Church should abandon reflection on Scripture as a basis for views on all sorts of issues. After all, it is not only our “religious selves” that are Christ’s, we are Christ’s in our entirety (whole persons).

Religion seems like its going to be an issue in this election, but not as it was in 2000 and 2004. We’ve already seen a battle over the “reverends,” both with Obama (Wright and Pfleger) and McCain (Hagee and Parsley). Who knows what else we see before November.

For other interesting discussion see Erin Manning’s response to Jim Wallis’s response to Jim Dobson at Crunchy Con.