Ignoramuses Can Podcast, Too

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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.