The Good Word

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this two-part post, you might want to catch up…

While CreateSpace is certainly an abomination and one of the many downsides to the existence of an omnipresent source of unlimited fact and fiction (read: the internet), I think that giving a general dispensation of the right to publish has its merits as well.

Here is a random smattering of my favorite reasons that the internet exists:

Internet Comics – No need to mass appeal of Cathy (nearly 35 years of leftover outdated/obvious stereotypes) or Garfield. Niche humor rules on the web.

1. xkcd - “A webcomic of sarcasm, romance, math, and language”

2. Married to the Sea – Husband/wife team of Drew and Natalie, producing some of the funniest material around.

3. Savage Chickens – Doug Savage’s daily sticky-note comics. Check out the main/recurring characters here.

Information – Despite recent questions regarding how to (or whether to) correctly cite these sources of “common knowledge”, sites like Wikipedia are a huge boon to those of us who wish to know a little about a lot.

1. Wikipedia – Any information you could ever want about a subject you know nothing about (if you are already mildly educated, a book is still going to be your best bet). The requirements for editing are, at least ideally, rigorous and at least it’s better than watching Gilligan’s Island.

2. YouTube – A vacuum of space where leisure hours go to die, practical when used in moderation. Here is the video version from the speech above.

3. Bartleby – A massive database of public domain works, competently edited and free of charge.

Ease of Access – Direct access to digital media is one of the best things about the past few years in the history of the internet. Although these businesses are not all instances of self-publishing (and they are generally preceded in their innovation by the pirates they oppose), they are at least ensuring that Wal-Mart doesn’t get their cut of ever song and video game sold.

1. Steam – Buy and download from an increasingly extensive library of video games. Frequent deals give you bestsellers and classics for $10 to $20.

2. The iTunes Store – Not only can you buy songs and videos, but the App Store allows to directly purchase products made by Average Joes who use online marketing as one of the few remaining open-avenues to achieving the American dream of financial independence.

3. Hulu – Free shows and movies. A limited selection, but the best alternative for someone who doesn’t wish to be a slave to Comcast and can’t wait for Glee on DVD…

Ever wonder why it seems like you are fighting a losing battle? Check it out (fast forward past the first 45 seconds).

Not that I agree with the anti-Muslim tone, but if you wonder why Christianity and Western Culture are dying...

Funny to see that the culture that wins is the one that chooses to have babies. Luckily China is marginally worse off than we are as far as reproduction goes.

Here are the abortion stats: Nationmaster

Russia is #1 and the U.S. narrowly misses the top 5. Keep in mind that those stats are not just "per 1,000", but "per 1000 per year".

So, if Russia has a 20/1000 rate, that means that of the 500 of those people who are women and the 250 of them that are of child-bearing age 20 had abortions this year. But, what is that like in comparison to Russia's birth per year? Well, the chart below will show you that since data has been available (1957) there has not been a single year in which reported abortions have not exceeded reported live births. In 1967 nearly 73% of all babies in Russia were aborted.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-russia.html

Also, keep in mind that those are just the reported abortions, often illegal abortions surpass legal and these stats certainly don't count "Plan B" type abortificant pills. Finally, while Russia is clocking in at 2-5 million abortions per year, China and India, though lower in rank as far as per capita goes, are cranking out 13 million and 11 million dead babies per year, respectively.

I've heard of popes issuing "bulls," "edicts," and "encyclicals," but what about "I told you sos"?

Orthodoxically yours,

-Z

Chapter 6, verse 10 of the second letter to Timothy is probably the most misquoted verse in all of scripture.

We hear all the time that “money” is the root of all evil, when in truth the apostle says that “a love of money” is the root of all evil. And I like the NIV translation “all kinds of evil” even better, because, of course, not every evil act is motivated by this sort of disordered love. 

So, if 2 Timothy 6:10 is the most misquoted, what verse is the most misinterpreted?

I’ll stay away from Matt 12:30ff (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) and Matt 26:26 (institution of Christian communion/Eucharist) and put my money on John 8:32:

³¹To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. ³²Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

³³They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants^[a] and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?"

³⁴Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. ³⁵Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. ³⁶So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Perhaps this is something unique to my upbringing, but this verse was always referenced to me to discourage lying. To a certain concerned parent (I had four, so no pointing fingers) this verse seemed to say that the burden of guilt and the task of remembering falsehoods was placed on the liar and to be free of that burden one only needed to come clean and endeavor to live honestly.

While that verse may be a bit easier to relay and explicate to a child than “thou shalt not bear false witness,” I think the error of equivocating the lies of a 7-year-old with the misunderstanding of the Jews in the passage above is a grave one (provided the child isn’t eventually corrected).

Evils are never a thing in themselves. Cold is the absence of heat. Ugliness is the absence of beauty. Stupidity is the absence of education. As with all negatives, a lie is really just an absence, in this case an absence of truth.

In his latest encyclical (June 29, 2009) Pope Benedict cites the same verse in more meaningful way:

Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:22). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity.

What Benedict means here by “truth” is a certain knowledge of reality for it’s own sake, a knowledge that only becomes functional when we inevitably benefit from knowing our world better.

This “truth” is not the functional sort of knowledge that instructs you about how to deal with the intricacies of statistics, or assemble a jet engine – it is the knowledge that tells us that there is something about a rose that makes it more beautiful than a carnation, something about a brick wall that makes it more beautiful than plastic siding, something about an old, musty smelling book that makes it more beautiful than a Kindle.

I’m reading Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture and it pointed me to an encyclical by Pius XI, which pointed me to Benedict’s latest, which pointed me right back to Pieper.

Pieper argues (as do Aristotle, Aquinas and Newman) that the most important truths, and by important I mean necessary to understanding our humanity and ourselves, do not come from an active grappling with the physical world – measuring, quantifying, analyzing – but from a passive reception of the inherent truth in things.

This passive reception is the essence of leisure, which Pieper defines as “the disposition of receptive understanding, or contemplative beholding, and immersion – in the real” (31).

So, as the summer goes on, be sure to be intentionally unintentional with your time. Place yourself in the right location – a cathedral, a beach, a mountain trail – and be prepared to let reality work on you.

My first confession will be sometime next week.

How does one go about that? I mean, I understand I don’t have to enumerate every last one of my sins, but I would like to do this in earnest.

Do I start at age 3 when my sister first came home from the hospital and I slapped her in the face with a bib, and then end with that time I overdosed on Girl Scout cookies last week? That method would take me from now until Easter.

Should I just give a synopsis? “Age 10 - lots of anger at being so fat. Age 13 - lots of anger at being so tall and skinny, and at having a bowl cut. Age 14 lots of lust on account of sneaking R-rated movies with my friend Brian.”

Should I confess in installments? “And that’s when I made three girls cry because they thought I asked them to prom, but I didn’t – and next time we’ll talk about when I did nothing but watch MTV Spring Break and eat Oreos for a week.”

Should I just hit the highlights? “Pushed sister through a window,  that one time my car broke down and I had to spend the night at a girl’s house, spent an entire summer of Campus Security shifts watching YouTube videos…”

What’s my strategy?

Caleb e-mailed me this encouraging comic about confession today. At least I don’t have to confess that I’ve neglected the Whedonverse, though a few Hail Buffys wouldn’t hurt anyone.

I do, however, have to confess to subscribing to a “cute animal pictures” blog, then finding out that the creepy guy who runs the site actually intends it to be hip/humorous, then just liking it more.