Cooper and Fifth

Ignoramuses Can Podcast, Too

2005-10-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hurray! I never would have believed that technology would get this easy to use, but (with a lot of help from Brandon Booth, who really is a techie genius), I've been able to create a Podcast for Worldview Academy. So far we've produced three "shows," each in an interview format. The first is a discussion I had with former staffer Jeremy Mollenkopf about the Christian approach to education; the second is more like a fight I had with Bill Jack about creation/evolution and Intelligent Design, and the third is a discussion with director of the Christian Institute for Legal Studies Mike Schutt about how much the Christian worldview influenced America's founding. Look for Bill and I to team up and "co-host" weekly shows in the very near future!

Sleeper Spring

2005-10-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

I'm always ambivalent when it comes to "sleepers." I love it when people tell me about a fantastic campsite or hike or fishing hole that no one knows about, but as soon as I know about it I'd just as soon no one else did. You know? Tell me about sleepers, and then take a permanent oath of silence. And because I'm a misanthrope, I'm usually happy to do the same.

That said, I feel safe mentioning a certain sleeper here, because it's so far in the middle of nowhere that it really doesn't matter if you know about it or not. (Besides, I think only about two people regularly read this blog.)

The place is called Balmoreah State Park, and it sits outside the thriving metropolis of Balmoreah, Texas. Never heard of it? That's because it's about six miles off of I-10 about 150 miles east of El Paso. Talk about the middle of nowhere!

Which is part of its charm. After driving for what seems like days across the West Texas desert, it is a true delight to find an oasis. When my family and I spent the night there on the way to our last camp, we pulled in at about six at night, and the thermometer still read 97 degrees--in October! Too hot? Not when you consider the main attraction: a massive natural spring that stays at about 65 degrees year round. And I mean massive: the pool is larger than three Olympic swimming pools combined, and in places it is more than 25 feet deep. You share your swim with catfish, turtles, and some strange small guppy-like fish.

Jumping in, the water feels too cool--but you soon get used to it. And of course when you get out, the evening air feels cool, too--for about five minutes. Then, thanks to the desert air, you're completely dry and feeling VERY mellow. I don't know what it is about the high desert, but when the sun sets and your body temperature gets right, you feel at peace with the world.

Anyway, my family's crazy about Balmoreah. Both True and Kate jumped off the high-dive, and Emma was brave enough to swim with the catfish. Once the sun goes down, we stay in one of the little adobe cabanas that sit next to the creek that flows from the spring. Families sit outside in the warm night air and barbeque and visit. And every big city in the world seems a million miles away.

So there you go. Probably the only sleeper I'll ever disclose. And unless you live in El Paso, it won't matter!

The Heart of a Coach

2005-09-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I coached the first soccer game of the season for True and Kate’s team (it’s a strange, small-town league where 4th-6th graders all play together). We won 5-0, with our star of the day, Jake, scoring three goals in the third quarter. I should be only thrilled, but the experience felt a lot like reading Lord of the Flies.

You’re not reading Lord of the Flies the right way if you stay detached from it. At the end of the story—which manages to kick the last prop out from under you—you should feel repulsed and badly shaken. Not by the boys on the island! By the fact that everything that bubbled to the surface in their “civilization” bubbles in your heart as well.

You know all the sneering, loud-mouthed, nepotistic coaches lampooned in magazines and movies? The ones that quietly give their kid the best position, who pay more attention to the athletes than the rest of the team, who are more concerned with winning than with having integrity? That’s me.

At least, I have felt all those feelings this season. Why rotate positions when my kid is clearly one of the best on the team? Why waste time teaching her—she’ll never play in high school? Why not teach them to slide tackle—the refs don’t always call it? Maybe if I humiliate the goalie when the other team scores it will give her more incentive to play better? Won’t the other coaches be jealous if we stay undefeated? That kid’s a bully anyway—might as well teach him to be a goon. How many laps can I make the team run before the parents freak out? Is there a way I can jimmy the rotation so that the inept kids never play? Maybe if I really ignore them they’ll just drop out. I wonder if the newspaper ever sends reporters to these games.

It sickened me just to type that last paragraph. That’s my heart! And that’s just my heart with respect to a meaningless soccer league. Imagine what my flesh suggests when the going really gets rough.

This is the bad news that we hide from ourselves all the time. The over-the-top jerks and villains on television? They lurk in all of us, and they are only restrained by the grace of God. Unless I am made a new creation in Christ, I will go on degenerating in the flesh, until I can’t even see the horrible caricature I’ve become. Until one day I’m screaming at a 4th grade girl for letting a stupid soccer ball roll into a stupid net.

Story Recommendation

2005-09-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

I recently read a terrific new short story by fellow Worldview Academy faculty member Mark Bertrand. It's entitled "Midafternoon Apocalypse", and it is well worth your time. If we want Christian authors who write better than Ted Dekker and Tim LaHaye, we'd better start discovering people like Mark!

Lancelot and His Ilk

2005-09-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

Christians always seem shocked when I bad-mouth King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. How can any moral person be opposed to chivalry and courtly love? What’s wrong with me, anyway?

What’s wrong, I suppose, is that I take scripture seriously. Christ says that anyone who even looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her (Matthew 5:27-28). The chivalric code and its accompanying ideas about courtly love flagrantly ignore this. Consider the “logic” behind courtly love, as articulated by C.S. Lewis in his excellent The Allegory of Love:

“The love which is to be the source of all that is beautiful in life and manners must be the reward freely given by the lady, and only our superiors can reward. But a wife is not a superior [to the medieval mind]. As the wife of another, above all as the wife of a great lord, she may be a queen of beauty and of love, the distributor of favours, the inspiration of all knightly virtues, and the bridle of ‘villany’; but as your own wife, for whom you have bargained with her father, she sinks at once from lady into mere woman. How can a woman, whose duty is to obey you, be the midons whose grace is the goal of all striving and whose displeasure is the restraining influence upon all uncourtly vices?”

Once we hear it in those terms, we can understand why anyone with any sympathy towards feminism is suspicious of chivalry. But Christians should also recognize how tainted courtly love is at its very root. Who can you love passionately? Not your wife. To be more exact, the only person you can love passionately is another woman who is from a higher class than your wife.

Ugly. Courtly love may couch itself in gorgeous language, and may argue its case in heroic deeds—but the premise for all of it is ugly. Instead of turning heroic impulses in the male toward serving and fulfilling the woman that God has provided as his wife, it turns all of those impulses away from the very woman he is called to love “just as Christ loved the Church” (Ephesians 5:25). It sanctions the very mindset that Christ condemns in the Sermon on the Mount.

And that is why, be he ever so courageous, Lancelot is a bum. Courtly love isn’t romantic, because it saps the romance from its rightful home: married life. To which King Arthur would probably add, “Amen.”

The Generation After the Generation After the "Greatest Generation"

2005-08-31T12:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my generation is not the "Greatest Generation," at least in the eyes of Tom Brokaw. But I got to thinking about it, and there are a few things I'd like my generation to be known for. In no particular order:

The generation who recognized that defense matters in baseball. How can anyone even THINK about giving the MVP award to a bungler/loafer like Barry Bonds or Manny Ramirez? I bet there are plenty of pitchers who gag on their Cheerios when they hear who won the MVP.

The generation who ignored Star Wars. Admittedly, this is nigh-unto impossible. But did anyone even bother to read over the script for any of the last three movies? The scripts might as well have been written by Chewbacca on diazepam.

The generation who rode their bikes. There's no doubt that I'm quickly transmogrifying into a Granola, but I'm crazy about using my mountain bike as my primary means of transportation. With gas zooming toward $3 a gallon, it gets more appealing every day. And besides, you can't really live in the suburbs and use a bike as your primary means of transportation, so this would kill the suburbs. Who would be against that?

The generation who laughed at Kafka. Because he takes himself way too seriously.

The generation who set their televisions on fire, after dumping them out a fourth-story window into a vat of lard. You know why.

The generation who loved sports but never lost perspective. So Vince Carter only made as much money as he deserves, and so no parent ever tried to live out his sports fantasies through his children.

The generation who really appreciated Oliver Goldsmith. I know, I'm dreaming big here. But isn't it just possible that Goldsmith has been duping us all along? That he's been playing the fool while laughing up his sleeve about his audience? I still can't shake the feeling that The Vicar of Wakefield is a mirror that Goldsmith holds up to our dark hearts.

The generation who built beautiful churches. I know, there was already a generation or two like this. But that was a long time ago, wasn't it?

The generation who stopped worshipping science. This may come as a shock, but your doctor can't save you. The best he can do is let you live a few more years--and even then, that's only if God wants you to. It's always helpful to remember that, when your great-grandfather was suffering, he usually just toughed it out.

The generation who grew a vegetable garden. Not because I like vegetables. Just because I like miracles.

And finally . . .

The generation who stopped listening to Tom Brokaw. Who the heck is he to crown the greatest generation, anyway?

Excuses, Excuses

2005-08-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

I suppose everyone who is flaky about keeping up with their blog has written this sort of post--the "excused absence." I really meant to keep posting once a week, I never intended to drop the ball for so long, etc. And that's all true, so let me cut to the excuse: we've been spending lots of time camping and fishing, with the culmination coming this past Tuesday. True and Kate, ages 10 and 9 respectively, climbed their first 14er!

(For the Texans reading this post, a "14er" is a mountain that is at least 14,000 feet above sea level. No, Texas doesn't have any. For a complete list--and a nifty site if you're into that sort of thing--visit 14ers.com.)

I took the accompanying picture on top of Mount Sherman, at about 10:00 am. The kids flew up that mountain! They were both a little apprehensive, but I don't think they'll be apprehensive on their next hike. We were back at camp before noon (granted, Sherman is one of the easier 14ers, but there are certainly shorter climbs).

Anyway, that's my excuse. To my family, it seems like a pretty good one. Now I'll try to produce more results and fewer excuses.

Just Another Day in Paradise

2005-08-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

I post this knowing full well that abuse will be heaped on my head because of it. Two of the Worldview Academy faculty, Jay Winslow and Mark Bertrand, are completely sick of hearing Linda and me sing the praises of our new hometown, Canon City (nestled along the Arkansas River at the foot of the Wet Mountains in Colorado, as if you didn’t know). They’ve heard us tell them that the milk here (delivered by a local dairy in glass bottles) is thicker and the locally-grown honey keeps you healthy. Linda even swears that the tap water helps your nails and hair grow faster and stronger!

Jay Winslow, not normally a sarcastic soul, is so tired of hearing about Canon City that, when we met someone who didn’t know where it was located, snapped, “Have you ever seen a rainbow? It’s at the end of the rainbow!”

So . . . Jay and Mark should probably stop reading right now. The rest of this post could also be entitled, “How I Spent my First Day Back Home After Camp.”

It began with coffee on our deck, followed by some upkeep on the vegetable garden. Please note that the tomato plants are as tall as Linda, and that we’ve already got more cucumbers than we can give away. And the green peppers are delicious!

After lunch, True and Kate and I went rafting on Arkansas River, facing rapids still strong enough to throw Kate out of the boat. Along the way we saw a big toad, deer, a blue heron and a huge red-tailed hawk. The high was 96 degrees yesterday, but that felt just right as we splashed along the river.

Brace yourself for the capper: after a quick dinner, we hurried down to Veterans Park to listen to a FREE concert by the lead singer of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jimmy Ibbotson! This cozy, perfect evening saw Jimmy sign the back of my “20 Years of Dirt” t-shirt (Linda was the one brave enough to ask), and throw us a free copy of his new CD, Daylight. As if that wasn’t enough, the opening act, Sons and Brothers, played some fantastic bluegrass and then closed with Jimmy playing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

Too perfect! So perfect, in fact, that I have to add a disclaimer: it isn’t always like that in Canon City. We do have hot weather sometimes, and we do have a state prison on the edge of town. Wal-mart is so far away that you can’t ride your bike to it. And sometimes the free Tuesday night concerts in the park stink. Come to think of it, Canon City is way too small and unsophisticated to attract anyone. Don’t even think about moving here!

49 and Holding

2005-08-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

It’s official. We didn’t drive to Rhode Island, which means that I’ve been to every state in the Union except the smallest one. Linda’s in much the same boat, having missed only Michigan, Connecticut, and Alaska besides Rhode Island.

Camp closed nicely, with a record 81% of our New Hampshire students pre-registering to attend Worldview Academy next year. That certainly made us feel wanted in New England!

After loading all our gear on Friday, we drove to Liv Booth’s family home in Massachusetts for a fantastic dinner of “chowdah” and sausage and corn and raspberries picked from their garden. The staff said their goodbye’s that night, and then Linda and I drove to Maine in the morning. As you can see, Linda actually picked up a live lobster in Camden, Maine—and her body language tells you everything you need to know about the experience. She is usually incredibly brave, but she chickens out with things like bugs and the “cockroach of the sea.” We then ate fresh lobster right by the bay, which was one of those things you have to do that didn’t turn out to be all that tasty. We both like crab better.

After camping at Acadia National Park, we turned around and flew home. Could we have bagged Rhode Island? We had time—but I never could totally justify the move. I had no other reason to go there—no national park, no rumors of a great restaurant or used bookstore, no baseball stadium—nothing that demanded a visit. We could say the same about Vermont, of course, but we really had time to snoop around in Vermont—and it turns out that Brattleboro is very much worth seeing.

Maybe the same can be said for Providence, and maybe we’ll get to find that out someday. For now, we’re trying to be purists. Driving to the top of a 14,000-foot mountain doesn’t count for a summit, and driving to a state line doesn’t count for a state (but maybe I’ll change my tune when I’m 70 years old and still holding on state number 49).

Bagging Vermont

2005-07-28T15:31:00.000-07:00

Wednesday is my day off at camp, and it was an especially happy off day because Linda flew in the night before. What a bracing breeze, to see her stepping off the plane!

After breakfast yesterday, we set off to climb Mount Monadnock--by some accounts, the world's most-climbed peak. I'll post about that when I'm able to download pictures again, but for now the important thing is that it only took 2 1/2 hours to climb, so we were down in time for lunch in Keene. After a great lunch at a restaurant called The Stage, we decided we still had time to drive to Vermont. (All kinds of time, as it turned out: it's only about 45 minutes from there across the state line--New England is teensy-tiny.)

So, yes, we "bagged" Vermont. But I'm not feeling particularly conflicted about it, since we really did have time to walk around downtown Brattleboro, and found some terrific coffee at Mocha Joe's. And the antiques! Back home in Colorado, something is an antique if it's no longer stocked at Wal-Mart. I honestly think you could drive an empty truck to Vermont, load it down with antiques bought at retail prices, and drive back to Colorado and make a fortune. Does anybody do this?

Brattleboro's downtown sits right on the Connecticut River, and the storefronts are the kind that you actually care about. There was an artistic co-op featuring really first-class artists; none of those people making dream-catchers in their garage. And then, to top it all off, we drove by one of those famous covered bridges. What a deal. (As an aside, one of our staffers makes the odd association between the Amish and covered bridges--she was sure that you only see them in Amish country.)

So . . . it all comes down to Rhode Island. Do we make the break for it, or do we "earn" it? I'm still leaning toward letting Rhode Island slip through our fingers . . .

A Moral Dilemma

2005-07-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

This week I have the chance to fulfill a life-long goal to visit all 50 states (I'm currently at 46 and holding). For a few years now the only obstacle had been New England (barring a brief conference in Connecticut), and now I'm right smack in the middle of it, teaching at a Worldview Academy Leadership Camp at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire.

Linda joins me tomorrow, and then on Friday we will have dinner in Massachusetts as we say farewell to the Worldview gang. Saturday we drive to Acadia National Park in Maine, leaving just Vermont and Rhode Island as uncharted territory for me. So here's the dilemma: is it ethical to "bag" Vermont and Rhode Island by quickly driving in and driving out? Or do I need to wait till I have a legitimate reason to see a state? (I know what you're thinking: did he have a legitimate reason to see North Dakota? And the answer is definitely "yes"--Teddy Roosevelt National Park is really worthwhile.)

Part of me says it's cheating--a little like the people we met driving to the top of Mauna Kea to "bag" the highest point in Hawaii. But on the other hand, I'm not claiming to have cared about all 50 states--just to have visited them all. Or is that like reading War and Peace just to say you did it, instead of reading it because Tolstoy is a genius? Ah, the ethical quandry.

The Kangaroo

2005-07-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

Talk about your bittersweet weekend! Today I said goodbye to Jay Winslow and Mark Bertrand--"Team B" faculty members extraordinaire--and then boarded a plane (with fellow teacher Brandon Booth) to New Hampshire. Tonight we will be joined by Randy Sims (pictured) and Bill Jack for our final camp of the summer. Randy would have a fit if he knew that his famous "kangaroo impersonation" was on the internet, but that's the beauty of technological illiteracy. Ignorance is bliss!

The truth is, Randy's impersonation is dead-on. He scratches his nose with his "paws" and makes a strange honking noise that somehow convinces you you're looking at a kangaroo. It boils down to a straight trade: Randy won't discuss Flannery O'Connor with me like Mark does, but Mark can't impersonate a kangaroo. Bill won't get as emotional as Jay does about reading, but Jay can't breathe fire like Bill. (Nobody can breathe fire like Bill.) And I'm further consoled about the loss of Jay and Mark because there are rumors that their wives are planning a family trip to the Promised Land (Canon City) in the fall. Once they visit, they'll never want to leave.

Homeschooling vs. Homebubblewrapping

2005-07-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of pointing out the elephant in the room, it's time to notice that there are two vastly different approaches to homeschooling, and only one of these is concerned with education.

I was introduced to the non-educational version of homeschooling, rather rudely, at a homeschool conference in Illinois. I'd been invited to teach about worldviews and apologetics, and I'd been give a booth to promote Worldview Academy. The keynote speaker quickly made it clear, however, that none of his children would ever attend our camp--or any camp, for that matter. He cited Proverbs 22:15, which says that the heart of a child is foolish, and then drew the sweeping conclusion that this meant he should prevent his children from associating with any other children!

I'm not exaggerating. The speaker went on to say that he did not allow his children to attend camp, participate in his church's youth group, or spend the night at a friend's house. The reason he homeschooled, quite simply, was to prevent his children from encountering any aspect of the world. I left with the impression that he kept his children in separate cells, under lock and key.

Everyone knows homeschool families with this mentality. For them, homeschooling is not really about putting on the mind of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5); instead, it's about bubble-wrapping their children, so that they're "protected" from any number of villains: public school teachers, popular culture, mainstream media, etc.

In contrast, some homeschool families actually homeschool because they believe they can provide the best education for their children. These families may still sound like the bubble-wrapping families when they talk about the public schools or the media, and they certainly don't want to expose their children to everything that an average twelve year-old has already seen on cable television. But their motive for homeschooling is actually quite different.

No one would send their five year-old to evangelize a rabidly atheistic teacher. So far, all homeschoolers agree. But five year-olds grow up. Is it appropriate for a sixteen year-old to discuss his faith with a vehement atheist? How about a twenty-six year-old?

The right approach to homeschooling is more about equipping than protecting. Yes, students need to be immersed in the Christian worldview before they can successfully defend their faith in the public square. But they need to be looking forward to a time when they really will be salt and light in the public square (Matthew 5:13-16)! The ultimate goal of homeschooling is NOT to keep your children safe--it is to train them to own their faith, so that they may die to themselves, pick up their cross and follow Christ. Even when He leads them into a world filled with foolishness and sin.

The World's Greatest Staff

2005-07-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

I'm typing this while sitting on the roof of a dorm building at Wake Forest University, halfway through the sixth Worldview Academy Leadership Camp of the summer. Everybody's tired at this point, if for no other reason than the fact that we've logged more than two thousand miles driving from Texas to Missouri to Minnesota to Illinois to Ohio to Pennsylvania to here.

Through it all, the Worldview staff has handled the pressure with aplomb. Late nights? No problem. Flat tire on the trailer? No problem. Crazy campers? No problem. Or, more accurately, any problems are laid at the feet of Jesus. What a blessing that my kids get to grow up watching godly young men and women live their faith every day!

Happy Birthday, Kate!!!

2005-07-12T18:45:00.001-07:00

I really wish I could be there to celebrate with you tonight--enjoy camping out with your cousins! In case our memories ever fade, let me tell you what you're like right now: impish grin, a wild halo of dirty blonde hair, heart of gold, and learning everything the hard way (just like Dad).

P.S.--This is my favorite picture of you.

Fear Diversions

2005-07-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

Americans need to be far more suspicious of mindless diversions. There are a great many differences between Pascal and Thoreau, but they agree about the danger of filling our lives with meaningless activity, of failing to hold still and reflect. And although they come from different worldviews, both men believe that the primary danger of diversions is that they prevent us from living the good life.

I was thrilled to recently read another philosopher who agrees. In A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, Josef Pieper argues strongly against spending our time in a "fraudulent world" of time-wasting diversions:

"If, therefore, a fraudulent world of this kind threatens to overrun and conceal the world of reality, then the cultivation of the natural desire to see assumes the character of a measure of self-preservation and self-defense. And then studiositas (diligence) means especially this: that a person resists the nearly inescapable temptation to indiscipline with all the power of selfless self-protection, that he radically closes off the inner space of his life against the pressingly unruly pseudoreality of empty sights and sounds--in order that, through and only through this asceticism of perception, he might safeguard or recoup that which truly constitutes man's living existence: to perceive the reality of God and of creation and to shape himself and the world by the truth that discloses itself only in silence."

Is there any message, short of the gospel, that Americans need more? Pascal bemoaned men wasting their time on gambling and the hunt; imagine how discouraged he would be to find how modern men have multiplied their methods for avoiding serious reflection: video games, surfing the internet, watching TV, etc.

Neil Postman was right: there's no need for a tyrant to impose his will on a subjugated citizenry a la 1984; it's far easier to enslave citizens with their permission, via mindless entertainment. Let's hope that Americans read Pieper and Postman and take off their shackles.

Silver Falls

2005-07-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

This picture is from more than a year ago, taken at Silver Falls near Salem, Oregon. I just posted it because I'd never posted a photo before, and you've got to start somewhere.