Vision
Work
When teaching about a Biblical view of work, I will frequently repeat to students, “The work we’ve been given to do is greater then the job at which we work.” Not very elegant, but my best attempt to define the Christian’s calling to God’s Kingdom and glory (1 Thess. 2.12) as being as large as one’s life, requiring that we set aside all merely personal interests or concerns and seek to love God and our neighbors at all times, in every situation, and by all means. Happily, others are much more adept at such definitions. I especially appreciate the effort of Scott Waalkes to recast the ideas of work and calling in a Gospel-centered, following Jesus frame of reference (“Rethinking Work as Vocation: From Protestant Advice to Gospel Corrective,” Christian Scholar’s Review, Winter 2015). Mr. Waalkes provides a succinct overview of Protestant and contemporary secular views of vocation, then, affirming the positive in each of these, rises above them all to recover a discipleship view of calling that gives dignity, direction, and depth to all legitimate vocations, or to no “vocation” at all. We can all follow Jesus, whatever our work, and even if, as can be true for many reasons, we have no income-producing work of any sort. By allowing discipleship to define vocation, rather than the other way around, Mr. Waalkes provides a helpful Kingdom corrective to an aspect of life shared by every believer. 

Machine Brain
Amanda Gefter recounts the story of two scientists’ work to demonstrate that the brain is essentially a computing machine, and that the origins of all thought are merely material and mechanical (“The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic,” Nautilus, February 5, 2015). Ultimately Walter Pitts and Warren McCullough did not succeed. Their logical, mathematical, and strictly scientific (data-driven) view of the brain could not account for all its activities, although their research laid the foundations for the computer revolution. The significance of this article for me is what it demonstrates about the power of a compelling idea. These two men devoted their entire lives to their view, achieving no small notoriety along the way. But they were wrong, at least, where the nature of the brain and thought are concerned. Neuroscience today seems to want to follow this same path. The end of all such efforts to reduce the mind to electricity and synapses will certainly be the same. The brain is a powerful material organ. But it requires the soul in order to make sense of, and to maximize, its remarkable and extraordinary powers. The Christian movement today needs some new and compelling – and true – ideas, not least of all about the true nature of the human person, and the reality and centrality of the soul. But whether such ideas will appear, to recast the culturally sclerotic forms of contemporary Christianity and post-Christian society and culture for more true spiritual vitality and Kingdom fruitfulness, remains to be seen.
http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic

The Good Life
The Westminster Confession Of Faith 2.2: “God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.” Whatever of life, goodness, blessing, or glory we experience in this life is neither inherent in us nor derived from our temporal or material circumstances. Rather, our experience of these is only us experiencing God, in Whom we live and move and have our being. Though we always exist in Him, our sinfulness and self-centeredness make us blind to His presence and glory, and lead us to take for granted or assign to other sources the abundant goodness and many blessings which daily redound to us in Him. We do not add to the glory or pleasure of God in any way – to His own sense of blessedness or goodness or joy. He is in all these things sufficient in Himself. When we become cognizant of such things, so that we experience them, then we should be led to acknowledge and praise Him, into an awareness of Whose presence He has, by whatever means, allowed us to emerge. Whatever is good or blessed or glorious in our lives is only the presence of God, manifested to our stupid minds in ways appropriate to our need, wrought in, upon, or unto us in order to draw us more mindfully and gratefully into Him. Since we are at every moment existing in Him, we ought to be more attentive to His goodness and blessing, more mindful of His glory, and quicker to enter into His presence and praise, for the joy and pleasure of it, when signaled to do so by the circumstances of our lives or the contemplations of our minds.

Disciplines
Intellectual Life
Mark Greif considers the possibility of “a new birth of public intellect” in “What’s Wrong with Public Intellectuals?” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 13, 2015). Serious thinking has become all but indiscernible among the public in America. The conditions are ripe for a rebirth of public polemic on all aspects of life, culture, and society, with a view to articulating and generating energy toward a new vision of the future: “I think we have all the dislocation, injustice, and economic inequality we need, when we look at our America—and the classes of writers, teachers, arguers, dreamers, ‘petty bourgeois’ or proletarian, have indeed even been flattened and equalized a bit, in their salaries and prospects.” At present the university and the elite status of academia has shrouded debate in jargon, politicized every aspect of life, and locked the public – and especially young people – out of the discussion on serious matters of public policy. Thus cut off from the life of the mind, young people wallow in pop culture, wasting their potential and depriving future generations of their best thoughts and energies. Academics who have tried to speak to the public have been condescending, trivial, frivolous, and feckless. Mr. Greif believes that a rebirth of public intellectual life must begin with a new and higher view of the public: “The idea of the public intellectual in the 21st century should be less about the intellectuals and how, or where, they ought to come from vocationally, than about restoring the highest estimation of the public. Public intellect is most valuable if you don’t accept the construction of the public handed to us by current media. Intellectuals: You—we—are the public. It’s us now, us when we were children, before the orgy of learning, or us when we will be retired; you can choose the exemplary moment you like. But the public must not be anyone less smart and striving than you are, right now. It’s probably best that the imagined public even resemble the person you would like to be rather than who you are.” Paul’s call for us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and the example of Jesus, astonishing the masses with His teaching, should encourage Christian thinkers that this could be our moment to raise a new banner of ideas, hope, and dignity among Christians and non-Christians alike. Whether we will rise to the occasion, or continue to play in our mud puddles while advocates of other worldviews take to the oceans and seas of thought, remains to be seen.
http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-Wrong-With-Public/189921/

Outcomes
Modernity
The problem with the modern worldview is that it has drained life of meaning and morality. So argues Andrew Brower Latz in the January 15, 2015 issue of Philosophy Now (“Meaning & Morality in Modernity”). This is the result of our intellectual life being dominated by scientific rationality while our practical life is run by bureaucratic rationality – political and other utilitarian institutions, such as the academy and the media. Mr. Latz observes that “Even reason and truth now seem suspect to us, and we do not know why we should value them.” Science teaches that nature has no meaning, leading to scepticism, which makes it impossible to know anything objectively. “At the deepest level, only reason, not facts or experience, can have any significance for guiding behavior.” This brings morality under the spotlight and reduces all moral claims to mere opinion or taste – private beliefs. As a result, we need strong institutions – primarily government – to maintain order and legislate values. Hence, the undermining of the moral self, the loss of freedom, and the fear of a clockwork orange society. Mr. Latz admits that his is a gloomy, extreme, and one-sided view of modernity. But he is correct, nonetheless. All the more reason to pursue the development and promulgation of a Christian worldview, and to demonstrate by our lives and communities the beauty and power of the Kingdom way of life.

Good old anxiety?
Paul says we should be anxious for nothing (Phil. 4.6, 7), and most of us would be happy for that to be the case. Who wants to be a worry-wart? But just because some people live in a state of anxiety, or because we allow anxiety to lead us to depression, doesn’t mean that anxiety is a negative state. All our affections have a purpose, including our inclination to worry. As Charlie Kurth explains in a 12 February 2015 post at Aeon, anxiety can be a good thing (“Worried well,”). This is especially true when anxiety spurs us to action: “part of anxiety’s power lies in its ability to get us to do things – things that will help make the anxiety go away.” Mr. Kurtz provides a helpful overview of the various kinds of anxiety people experience. He acknowledges, with the ancients and Kant, that anxiety can consume us. But so can eating, and most of us don’t regard that as an evil to be avoided. We need to let anxiety do its proper work in us, which, for the Christian, can mean prompting us to turn to God in prayer and or to take steps to make a situation right or better. We don’t have to be overcome by anxiety, but we should not regard ourselves as sinful or outside the will of God whenever anxiety arises within us. Rather, taking our cue from this helpful affection, we can seek the Lord and survey the landscape of our lives, trusting in His goodness and power and taking whatever steps lie within our own in order to restore our anxious souls.
http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/why-anxiety-is-the-secret-of-feeling-good/?

Envoi
Ancient Stones
Along the Tygart River

Fresh water, tumbling down from mountain peaks
and stumbling over ancient stones in creeks

and rivers all across the valley, flows
relentless in its course. On, on it goes,

an ever-changing train of thought, a stream
of consciousness unsettled, like a dream

that wends and warps in wild and wondrous ways.
It mesmerizes the attention, stays

the mind, arrests the spirit, and enthralls
the imagination as it trips and falls

its way to certain dissipation, while
the ancient stones remain unmoved, and smile.

T. M. Moore