Complaint department

Girl Scout cookies are incorrectly labeled.  They should say:

"Serving Size 1 sleeve of cookies
Servings per Box 2."  

That's how I always eat them, anyway.

Ah, the good old days when the worst thing you could be stuck on a long flight with was a crying baby....

I just keep finding more and more reasons to be thankful that I've only flown once since 9/11.  I can't imagine paying the price of an airline ticket for the descent into the seventh circle of hell it sounds like air travel has become.

Ashley Marie MacDonald, 29, says she doesn't mind producing a letter from her psychologist when she flies with her emotional-support parakeet, who stays in his cage.  She has had anxiety, depression, and a pain disorder since a work-related injury in 2012, and says she doesn't want to be away from Stormy or "think about life without him."

*checks actuarial tables for parakeets*  Ms. MacDonald, I have some bad news for you.

This woman's psychologist should produce a letter from her psychologist for endorsing this ridiculousness.  Thirty years ago, the very concept of being unable to spend several hours away from a pet bird would be cause to send someone to a mental health professional.

Fun Facts To Know And Tell

Did you know that Billy Ray Cyrus's signature song owes a great deal to Fats Domino?  Because I sure didn't.

Biblioutrage

The competition was tight for which article in the Sunday paper I found most distasteful.  There was this gem about public high schools removing thousands of books from their libraries.  Not for censorship reasons, which is still highly denouncible, but to make the rooms more spacious and airy so students can make crafts and play games, eat lunch and drink coffee there.  

"It's really spacious now," Farley [a 17-year-old student] said.  "Before it was really crowded with all the shelves."

Much more spacious, my dear Farley, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a library.

Amazingly, though, that story lost out to the grousings of the underappreciated Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist.  His book was a bestseller in 1994, but that means nothing to Carr: only having his book put on screen matters.

"It seemed like a really futile struggle to continue the series when there was no interest in making a decent product out of the first book, much less the second book, much less a future book," Carr said.  

Apparently, it's an utter waste of time to create a book if it is to be enjoyed only by readers. *Sideshow Bob shudder*  Only turning one's creativity into a media franchise is a worthy goal.  One wonders why Dickens and Austen ever persisted, given the complete futility of their work.

Book review: I Am a Church Member by Thom S. Rainer

My pastor began a brief sermon series based on this book last week, so the fourth book I read in 2018 was I Am a Church Member by Thom S. Rainer.  To begin with, calling this a book is generous; at 79 pages, it's more of a hardcover pamphlet.  These little books are fairly common in Christian publishing, a good way for a pastor or other church staff member not only to be an "author" but to build up a fairly impressive-looking literary resume.  The back cover of this book boasts that Rainer "has written more than twenty books" but doesn't indicate if any of them break one hundred pages. 

I find the vast majority of these little hardbacklets rather shallow (the one notable exception is How to Respond When You Feel Mistreated by John Bevere), and I will admit that I am not the target audience for what is blatantly pitched at an introductory level. The most interesting part of this book was the "Tale of Two Church Members" in the introduction, an imagined dialogue between Goofus and Gallant which illustrates the divide between the consumer and commitment mentalities and which is unfortunately dropped entirely once the book proper begins.  I would have liked to have seen "Michael" respond to "Liam" in character and perhaps effect some change in his mindset rather than Rainer's more straightforward six-point sermon.

Rainer is undoubtedly correct that the consumer mentality is a major force behind church-shopping in modern American culture: finding a church that meets my felt needs; makes few, if any, demands; offers the ministries and programs that interest me and my family without asking me to participate in providing them; meets at a time and location convenient to me; etc.  I am not, however, convinced that it contributes to Millennials rejecting Christianity in toto.

There is much lamenting over the lower church-membership rolls now than in the 1950s, but I steadfastly refuse to get worked up over it.  The truth is that in the mid-twentieth century, church membership was a status symbol, a shorthand certification that one was decent and respectable.  (Several years ago, a member of the much-lauded Builder generation walked through the room while a scene from "Left Behind" (I know, I know) played on the TV screen.  When he asked what was on, I explained that it was a Christian movie.  "That doesn't look very Christian to me," he remarked primly with a pointed look.  It took me some time to realize that he made that determination based on the fact that a character on the screen had a gun in his hand.  "Christian," in his mind, meant inoffensive and suitable for children.  I can only imagine if he walked into a screening of "The Passion of the Christ.")  Today, due to shifts in the moral culture, a similar level of virtue-signalling is achieved by serving on the board of a secular charity.  Jesus made it clear that it would only ever be a minority that would follow him.  In my opinion, church rolls in past generations were wildly inflated and are now perhaps returning to a more honest level, when the worldly benefits of membership are lessened.

"Popular Teen Injured in Car Accident; Less Popular Teens Also Involved"

Obligatory disclaimer that this is a very sad story, I can't imagine how terrible the family must feel, my heart goes out to them, etc.

Clicked on a story in a news aggregator about a ten-year-old boy dying from the flu.  The lede? "A popular New Canaan 10-year-old is the first child in Connecticut to die of flu-related illness this season."

Whoa.  "Popular?"  What does his popularity have to do with the story?  Are we more devastated because he was popular than if he had been less so?  Are we to judge the extent of the tragedy by how many other children liked him?  If so, would the death of a less popular child be easier to take?  Would the journalist describe that child as lonely, friendless, or socially awkward in the first sentence?

It's like one of those awful glossy puff pieces on Important People which feel the need to describe what the interviewees are wearing, or the ice-blueness of their eyes, or the delicacy and/or strength of their hands as they gesture, and the reader is left wondering what on earth their physical appearance has to do with their success as a business tycoon or director or politician.  It's like they're trying to combine Human Interest with Hard News and doing it very badly.

Book review: Jesus' Terrible Financial Advice by John Thornton

The second book I read in 2018 was Jesus' Terrible Financial Advice: Flipping the Tables on Peace, Prosperity, and the Pursuit of Happiness by John Thornton.  Apart from the unconscionable usage of the apostrophe-alone rather than apostrophe-s as the singular possessive (It is literally the first rule in The Elements of Style!), I found this to be a great read, both thoughtful and challenging in the ways it applies Scripture to personal money matters.

Beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, Thornton points out the various ways that we elide or explain away some of Jesus's most radical statements because, well, surely he couldn't actually mean that. 

"And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well" (Matt. 5:40).
Huh?  In case you missed it, let me tell you straight up that this is terrible financial advice.  And on so many levels!  Obviously Jesus didn't grow up in America. We love to sue people!  It's our national pastime.
.....
And His follow-up was even worse.
"Give to the one who asks you" (Matt. 5:42).
Did He mean everybody?  I'd be broke in a week!  Why not buy my wife the shirt "I'm with Stupid!," add a big tat to my forehead that confirms it, and stand on the street corner with a stack of $50s until the carnage is complete?

However, based on his bedrock rule that "If my theology disagrees with God, one of us is wrong, and it's not Him," Thornton explores what it means if Jesus really did mean exactly what he said.

The author reaches the conclusion that the reason one cannot love both God and money is that money, when it is "loved," is an idol, something that makes the same promises God does to protect and provide for us.  Just as the Israelites performed rites both at the temple and at the high places, to "cover their bets" in case one or the other god didn't respond, we may see money as something that can give us what God declines to.  Money is only seen rightly when it is seen as a lesser blessing than the utmost God has for us in his will. 

Starting from the position that Jesus really means what he says, Thornton draws out principles and implications from Jesus's teaching about money, parables about wealth and possessions, and interactions with people rich, poor, and in between.  This is an invaluable little book that will broaden the reader's perspective on the Christian approach to giving, saving, retirement, and everything else dealing with money.

Reviewing a review

The weekend Wall Street Journal has a Review section that is probably my favorite thing to read all week.  This week, a book entitled Clean Meat was reviewed by Matthew Scully.  If you know anything about Matthew Scully, you know that animal rights are his hobbyhorse and that he comes at them from a Christian perspective.  The book apparently deals with lab-grown meat as the future and an alternative to slaughtering actual animals.

The concept of eating "meat" grown from "[a] bit of muscle tissue placed in some tank akin to a fermenter" with "electrical currents to warm and stimulate" it kind of turns my stomach now; but people were creeped out by Dolly the sheep twenty years ago, and now cloning barely raises an eyebrow.  The repulsion will naturally ebb as the technology advances.  But if the technology is so promising, surely a book advocating for the process is unnecessary? 

My suspicion is that the technology is, in fact, not as sure a bet as Paul Shapiro and Scully would like.  They admit that lab-grown meat is "getting closer in flavor and texture," which is hardly a ringing endorsement.  Also, the technology is capable of producing only ground meat at present.  And despite assurances that as the industry grows, per-ounce prices will drop, "[w]e're told ... that a burger might soon be made for $11" [my italics].  That might sound affordable to Scully, a former presidential speechwriter, but to people used to fast food, a burger approaching eleven dollars from the high side doesn't sound like a terrific bargain. 

The most utopian part of Scully's argument is that, once they are freed of farms and no longer needed for food, "[w]e could begin to appreciate pigs, cows, chickens, and others as creatures instead of just commodities."  Could we?  In what context?  What is the "natural habitat" of a farm animal which has been bred for meat for centuries?  Are we to put these animals in zoos?  Let them wander our neighborhoods and highways?  In 2015, there were 98.4 million cattle in North America.  If we're no longer butchering them or raising them for milk (another product that is to be lab-grown to free the animals from servitude), where does Scully suggest we put them all?  Last March, there were 71 million pigs and hogs in US farms.  That many animals couldn't survive in the wild -- if any could, after generations of domestication. 

Surely, driving them out of their barns and letting nature take its course would be an act of cruelty that would lead to nearly as many deaths as the farm industry itself.  I suppose one could argue that it would be one last act of cruelty that would free the descendants of any surviving animals, but it seems more likely to me that, instead of leading to the appreciation of farm animals as creatures, it would lead to the extinction of the domesticated species. 

Untitled #1...

...or, How Many Blog Posts Can I Manufacture Out of Christmas Photos?

Book review: God Is Not Nice by Ulrich L. Lehner

The first book I read in 2018 was God Is Not Nice: Rejecting Pop Culture Theology and Discovering the God Worth Living For by Ulrich L. Lehner.  I found this book disappointing.  For one thing, it is written from a very Roman Catholic perspective (which I should have guessed, if I'd noticed it was published by Ave Maria Press).  Lehner quotes Aquinas and Aristotle in the same breath and with the same authority as the Old or New Testament; unbiblical traditions such as Mary being a teenager at the time of the Annunciation and Joseph being a widowed father of multiple sons are asserted without a whisper of qualification; and word studies are performed from Latin, a concept which makes as much sense in dealing with translations from Hebrew and Greek as word studies from English.

In general, I enjoy reading works from scholars of different denominations.  It challenges the unexamined yet unbiblical beliefs I've picked up from my own tradition and compels me to look at the Bible from different perspectives.  There just wasn't enough here to interest me: nothing new and thought-provoking.  Lehner is preaching against what has come to be known as Moral Therapeutic Deism, a concept which hasn't been novel since 2005, and he has nothing new to say about it.  In addition to his general lack of revelations, Lehner occasionally utilizes awkward constructions which underline the fact that he is writing in a second language, the most glaring of which is his statement that a "nice" god would be "like milk toast," when he obviously means "a milquetoast."

Scott Hahn opens his foreword by bemoaning the MTD rampant "in the Sunday worship of suburban mega-churches and, I'm sorry to say, not a few Catholic parishes."  I have repeatedly heard about these Evangelical churches which fail to preach the gospel, and I am sure they exist, albeit not in near the numbers people ascribe to them in sweeping stereotypes.  Lehner triumphantly builds up to what he imagines is a startling detail, one which "almost every commentary on the Bible overlooks": that in clothing Adam and Eve after the Fall God killed at least one animal for the skins, thus demonstrating that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.  Well, all his commentaries on the Bible may overlook that, but this suburban Baptist girl has heard the detail repeatedly, in Sunday School lessons, sermons, and devotions since childhood.  Score one for the Reformation!

Lehner's epilogue, however, closes with a moving tribute to Joseph, which I appreciate, and contains one admirable aphorism I shall endeavor to remember:

"So how do we find the right way to integrate faith into our lives?  I think that is asking the wrong question.  Instead, we should seek to integrate our lives into the faith."

Austen and Weinstein, continued, or, A Revisionist View of Pride and Prejudice

Upon further reflection, I find Paula Marantz Cohen's identification of Mr. Collins with sexual harassers even more objectionable.  (That column wasn't behind a paywall yesterday!  Boo!)  His intention was not to harm or objectify Elizabeth; on the contrary, his entire purpose in proposing marriage to one of the Bennet girls was to rectify the harm done them by the existence of the entail.

To modern sensibilities, the solution to the Bennets' problem is simple: If Mr. Collins were anything but a selfish cad, he would simply sign Longbourn over to Mrs. Bennet and go his own way, never to darken their doorstop again.  However, that is a course of action not legally available to him.  An entail was not subject to dissolution, and every inheritor was not so much an owner as a tenant-for-life, holding the estate intact for the next male heir.

In lieu of options not at his disposal, Mr. Collins in fact sets out to do the very best thing for the Bennets he is capable of: marrying one of Bennet girls.  As Mrs. Collins, his bride would be mistress of Longbourn after Mr. Bennet's death, and the estate could continue to be the home of her widowed mother and any unmarried sisters.  Mr. Collins is under no constraint to marry a Bennet at all, as a casual reading might construe the intentions of his proposal as having something to do with increasing his inheritance or strengthening his claim to the estate.  He thus shows himself considerably kinder and more compassionate than John Dashwood, who in truth has a closer obligation to his stepmother and half-sisters than Mr. Collins has to the Bennets, distant relations whom he has never met.

We must keep in mind as well that Mr. Collins is a man of neither property nor wealth and is, at present, dependent for his room and board on Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whose support is bought at the price of obsequious fawning.  A different novel might well feature Mr. Collins as the hero who is rewarded for his enforced humiliation with an inheritance from a distant relation of a chance at independence, and Elizabeth as the woman who rejects the hero out of snobbery to her own ultimate disadvantage and regret; that is, from a different point of view, Mr. Collins could have been Marianne, and Lizzy could have been Willoughby.

In recompense for his act of charity in seeking to marry a Bennet girl and allow the family to stay in their home, Mr. Collins is immortalized as a buffoon and a boor, his attempts to do right by the women harmed by the entail made a mockery.  If Jane Austen meant anything halfway serious when she wrote to Cassandra that Pride and Prejudice was "too light, and bright, and sparkling," she may well have meant the way in which she made Elizabeth, despite her explicitly representing the "prejudice" of the title, so likable that every judgment she makes, even those that are uncharitable, appears reasonable and even praiseworthy to the besotted reader.  It won't be until Mr. Knightley tells off Emma Woodhouse for mocking Miss Bates that an Austen heroine is truly held accountable for believing herself the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Austen and Weinstein

Today's Wall Street Journal features an opinion piece entitled "What Jane Austen Can Teach Us About Sexual Harassment."  Far be it from me ever to disapprove of Elizabeth Bennet as a role model, but it takes some mental gymnastics to see Mr. Collins as a sexual harasser.  The man proposed marriage to a woman out of his league and was turned down; he didn't invite Lizzy to his hotel room while he was in the shower, or drug her, or ask to show her his little friend, or threaten that she'll never be proposed to in this town again.  Elizabeth finds him ridiculous, not intimidating; she has no fear of him. 

I think that when we've reached a point that asking out a woman who isn't interested in you counts as sexual impropriety, we have painted all men with a broad brush.  How are they to know if a woman would like to go out with them if they aren't allowed to ask?  I've turned down dates with men who have asked me out in my day without deeming them moral monsters for asking.  I mean, sure, if they won't take no for an answer and start stalking you, like Richard Nixon did to Pat, that's creepy and may call for a restraining order, but considering that Mr. Collins moved on to Charlotte Lucas the same day, one cannot fault his behavior (in this respect, anyway).  Is it not enough that Mr. Collins is held up for posterity as a buffoon without also stigmatizing him as a cad?

You say you want a resolution

I think it's time for another resolution of weekdaily blogging for 2018.  My kids are older and less prone to adorable malapropisms, but I have my book reviews if I can keep up with them.  Watch this space!