Truth Victimized By Outrage

I was struck by an open resignation letter printed in the New York Times written by one of those vilified AIG bonus recipients to AIG Chairman and CEO Edward Liddy. 

The letter, written by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, basically communicates his feelings of betrayal in terms of the perceived duplicity of Mr. Liddy, noting that while Liddy had on multiple occassions reiterated his intention to honor bonus payments to be made to people who had nothing to do with the meltdown associated with credit defaul swaps, he changed his tune in the face of congressional and public outrage and threw the employees under the bus.

The letter, assuming that the facts contained within it are all true, is a sad commentary of how easily public opinion can be manipulated by selective dissemination of the facts. Either duped themselves or seeing an opportunity to sound spectacularly populist to Joe Taxpaper, politicians line up at the podium to bash the greedy businesspeople, the newspapers put it on the front page and the cycle perpetuates. Some of the tabloid headlines included "A.I.G. IS A P.I.G." (New York Daily News); "OUTR-AIG-E" (San Jose Mercury News); "BONUS BLOWUP" (am New York); and "OH NO YOU DON'T" (New York Post).

I had written in an earlier post that I was concerned of the lynch mob mentality of the backlash. The problem with lynch mobs is that emotions sometime get in the way of the truth. It seems that some of that might have happened here.

Theologically-Dubious Christian Songs

A couple of weeks ago, Reyn, the pastor of our daughter church came to preach and spoke about the preeminence of God's glory as part of our series in Numbers. In part of his sermon, he referenced a popular Christian song and embedded theological inaccuracy. He wasn't hating on the song per se, but it did remind me that it wasn't the only song that might be considered "theologically dubious".

By the way, I firmly believe that praise songs that speak of an aspirational response of worship, such as "You are my all in all" knowing well that we struggle to live out such lofty words do NOT belong in the theologically dubious category. The Psalms are full of such "aspirational" language (in the spirit of "Lord, may it be so that I...") and are clearly appropriate for worship. So without further adieu, here are a few that come to mind with YouTube links embedded.

"Above All" by Michael W. Smith

Crucified

Laid behind the stone

You lived to die

Rejected and alone

Like a rose

Trampled on the ground

You took the fall

And thought of me

Above all

PROBLEM: Reyn gets credit for this one, but I'll rehash his point. The song makes the implication that Jesus was thinking, above all things, about us as He was being crucified. Not so, he pointed out. Above all things was the regard and the passion for the Glory of God, which is yes, manifest in his steadfast love to His people. Hebrews 12:2 further goes on to tell us that Jesus endured the cross for the "joy set before him."

WORKAROUND: The preacher pointed out that if you view the chorus as "You took the fall and thought of me (PERIOD)," then the "above all" immediately following it simply becomes a poetic tag. Uh... sure.

"We Are The Reason" by David Meece

And we are the reason

That he gave his life

We are the reason

That he suffered and died

To a world that was lost

He gave all he could give

To show us the reason to live

PROBLEM: It's similar to the dilemma in "Above All" which is the inaccurate implication that the primary driving force behind Christ's work is focused on the elect - the fact that the song references it as "the reason" makes it tough to navigate around, and he compounds it by implying that the purpose of the atonement to secondarily serve as a teaching point that we have a reason to live in the spirit of "It grieves me that humankind lives meaningless lives, so I shall die to give them a reason to live." Ugh. I can understand that singing "We are part of the reason that he gave his life" doesn't sound quite as catchy.

WORKAROUND: This is a tough one. It's a very moving song and you hate to rain on the parade of David Meece's voice cracking with emotion, but between the above commentary and the lyrics around "On a dark and cloudy day a man hung crying in the rain because of love" I'm thinking it's not going to be featured at our church any time soon, let alone PCA General Assembly.

"I Believe in Jesus" by Marc Nelson

I believe in Jesus

I believe He is the Son of God

I believe He died and rose again

I believe He paid for us all

PROBLEM: If you lean reformed doctinally, you clearly believe that Jesus did NOT pay for us all. The concept of limited or particular atonement holds that Jesus' substitutionary work is limited to those who are the elect, or predestined for salvation. He paid for the elect, not for all.

WORKAROUND: You might make the argument that you're singing this chorus within a congregation of elect, so "us all" could refer to "all of us here, the predestined elect who could only sing this song in sincerity given these beliefs we profess." Yup, there ya go.

Those of you who are readers of the blog can probably come up with others. Fire away in the comments section.

Grading the Grading

While I had railed against obsessive parental academic pressure in a previous blog posting, I fully acknowledge that I grew up in a household where my brother and I were expected to excel. What my parents had to navigate through were non-standard grading mechanisms in elementary school to assess whether I was at the top of my second grade class or not.

There's an article in the New York Times which reports on an elementary school's use of a numbers-based grading system, which try to assess students in a numerical format ranging from 1 (not meeting New York State academic standards) to 4 (meeting the standards with distinction) around a number of very specific skills. The program has been met with some frustration as parents try to "decode" what this actually means in terms of relative performance to others, especially given the relatively low bar of New York State academic standards. As one educational pundit said, "You really don’t know whether anybody has learned anything. They could all have done miserably, just some less miserably than others.”

What I think happens with these newfangled grading mechanisms is that academic-focused parents essentially come up with their own translation of the grades (e.g. 1 = A, and 2 through 4 = no more toys or television for three months). In my elementary school, our grading system was comprised of E(xcellent), M(ore than satisfactory), S(atisfactory), and U(nsatisfactory). I remember coming back home with a report card in second grade with about 30% E's and 70% M's and my distraught parents called for a conference with my teacher and principal, who couldn't understand why I wasn't scoring E's across the board. I vaguely recollect that my teacher had tried to (in vain) explain to my parents that M's were good (more than satisfactory, after all), but my parents were having none of that.

Threats to me, my teacher, and my principal to ship me off to parochial school notwithstanding, I plodded through okay. Well, more accurately, I plodded through more than satisfactorily.

Hope for Life in Pluripotent Stem Cells

There's an interesting article in Newsweek where a former member of President Bush's domestic policy staff expounds upon the hope of a scientific way around the ethical dilemma at the heart of the embryonic-stem-cell debate. The breakthrough procedure, known as "somatic cell dedifferentiation" would take an adult cell and turn it into the equivalent of an embryonic cell without the need for an embryo. In other words, the benefit of the research from embryonic stem cells would thus be accomplished without the destruction of human fetuses. Bush, for all his foibles, stood his ground in terms of his conviction that nascent human lives weren't to be terminated and sliced and diced for laboratory fodder, and he pushed strongly for the investment in this option which might lead to a perfect middle ground.

Flash forward to earlier this month, when President Obama found it fit to reverse President Bush's executive order and release the floodgates of funding for embryonic stem cell research. What President Obama failed to do is acknowledge, as the writer states, that ethics must be clear in firm because science is flexible, as demonstrated by these new advances. 

This is why I find it ridiculous when President Obama tries to self-righteously insist that scientific decisions must be "based on facts, not ideology" and that "dogma will no longer guide American policy." That's so incredibly disingenuous on so many levels. The reality is that facts themselves morally neutral, that's why you absolutely need ethics to guide scientific research. Nazi scientist Josef Mengele conducted ghastly experiments on Jews to determine, for example, the ability to survive certain amputations and chemical injections. At the end of the day the results of those experiments became fact. But those facts bear no moral compass on whether the experiments themselves were ethical or not.

And as for ideology and dogma? Let's be frank - the "new" policy around stem-cell research is absolutely driven by ideology and dogma. It's the ideology and dogma that a human embryo is not a life, and that the proliferation of death of human embryos is absolutely worth the chance that we'll find a cure for degenerative diseases. It's an ideology and dogma fully subscribed to by President Obama and his supporters.

America's Pastime, Dominated by Asians

Congratulations to Japan, who won the World Baseball Classic in a 5-3 thriller over Korea. For the American baseball apologist, there are many ways to explain this alleged atrocity - the relative unpreparedness of the American players given the timing of the tournament, the fact that many of the United States' best players opted out of playing in the tournament in deference to their Major League teams, etc. There are plenty of reasons to believe that the Americans are still the best at the sport.

What is undeniable is that the rest of the world is getting better, and that's something that's good for American baseball. The global interest in the game is simply going to raise the bar in terms of the quality of play, with an increasing pool of talented players who will benefit from techniques and strategies that are explored and developed all over the world.

So I tend not to agree with former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda's jingoistic declarations earlier that the United States could not afford to let other countries win the tournament (which they did). I couldn't help but see shades of Wayne Gretzky choking back tears when the United States beat Canada in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey and losing in the Olympics to the Czech Republic in Nagano saying things such as "It's a crushed locker room right now. It's probably a crushed country. It's a hard loss to swallow. It's devastating."

While I appreciate his zeal and love for his country, I tend to think that statements such as "baseball is America's game" and "hockey is Canada's game" aren't really intended to reflect a sentiment that either country has a God-given right to dominate it. Both countries had the honor of seeing the invention and the first steps of the sport - let them go and flourish wherever they might.

The Game Within the Game

My neighbor is a huge booster of Seton Hall Pirates basketball, and on a couple of occassions, he's been generous in treating me to a game or giving me tickets that he's not planning on using. His seats are terrific - center court just three rows up from the court, so you're very close to the floor. You can hear Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez screaming at the referees and the players complaining that they didn't get a call. Being that we were fifteen feet from Gonzalez, I can't help but think he ought to stick to language befitting a coach from a Catholic university, but we'll get back to that later.

Something that I always noticed, that was recently featured in an article in the New York Times, was the precision and execution around each of the time-outs. It looked like something from a NASCAR pit-stop. The timeout would be called, and then a series of lackeys (team managers, perhaps?) would scurry over setting up small chairs in a perfect circle as the coach took a knee and diagrammed a play. Simultaneously, cups of Gatorade and towels were distributed and collected when the horn sounded ending the timeout. Within seconds, the players were back on the floor and the chairs were off the court.

The other interesting thing about college basketball timeouts is the "on-court entertainment" which is featured to dazzle the crowd. This takes the form of t-shirts being fired from a high-velocity cannon (R.I.P. Maude Flanders) or dance routines from cheerleaders and other collegiate dance troupes. Now I understand the desire to emulate the routines that are done in the NBA, but I have to say that a lot of these routines are awfully provocative with overt sexual overtones. I can't help but see the priests that are standing with the team looking out to center court wondering if the cheerleaders' pelvic gyrations were part of what Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley had in mind back in 1856 when he founded a Catholic college and a diocesan seminary ministering to the Diocesan community.

The Magic Garden at the White House

Kudos to the Obama family for breaking ground on an organic garden at the White House, which they hope will champion healthy eating in the face of rampant obesity that plagues the entire nation. Michelle Obama yet again showed her mom skills by astutely noting that her daughters tended to be more open to eating vegetables that they themselves had planted, which is tactic that is used by parents everywhere.

It's clear that we're a fat nation and a great deal of the problem starts with children who aren't provided guidance or meals which are conducive to healthy development or eating habits. That being said, there's always room for skepticism.

I found it interesting that much of the cheering for the Obama garden comes from advocates for organic and locally grown food who argue that the White House garden may help set a positive example for families short on time and money, who are often tempted by cheaper, highly processed food. That's the dilemma right there. In a bearish economy, are people going to opt for diseconomies of scale by paying to growing only the amount of produce they family can consume when going to their local supermarket would save them money? Given the limited square footage in a personal garden, doesn't increased diversification just compound the negative economics? I'm just not sure how people who are short on time or money will find this proposition attractive.

Of course, if the economy plummets even further and job losses skyrocket, many of us might have no choice but to live off the land. As someone who doesn't like vegetables and who doesn't own a rifle, I'm wondering if I need start dusting off the old fishing pole.