trusted online casino malaysia
Realizing the presence, promise, and power of the Kingdom of God.
The Week

The Week July 12-18, 2015

Ethics, the last days, educational testing, and, oh yes, neuroscience.

Vision
The Last Days
The Christian’s understanding of his daily calling as a saint of God must be nurtured and pursued against the backdrop of his understanding of the nature, goal, and course of history. It is the task of Christian scholarship and preaching to explain the Biblical vision of time and history, so that Christ’s followers can “get in step” with the march of divine providence. Charles E. Cruise is helpful in the scholarship part, but less so in the proclamation. Writing in the June 2015 issue of JETS, Mr. Cruise provides a helpful analysis of the idea of “the wealth of nations” from Isaiah 60.5, 11. He demonstrates the method of canonical-linguistic Biblical exegesis, which certainly must play a large role in all Biblical understanding. He supports this effort in the analogy of Scripture with some (but not much) work in the analogy of faith, explaining the views of certain early Church Fathers regarding this idea. His conclusion, however, is merely descriptive, where (it seems to me) he might have been more visionary and practical. Still, for an effort by a seminarian (Mr. Cruise is currently a student at TEDS), this is an encouraging article. It demonstrates respect for the Word as such, and a desire to be taught from all the counsel of God and the Fathers of the Church. What this article lacks in decisiveness and proclamatory power can be improved on by those called to this task. For his part, Mr. Cruise – and his instructors at TEDS – offers a solid example of how to avoid a hermeneutics of convenience and to let the Word of God speak for itself (“The ‘Wealth of Nations’: A Study in the Intertextuality of Isaiah 60:5, 11”). 

Disciplines
Medicine
Precision medicine. Sounds like a good thing, no? Like precision timing. Or precision passing. Precision medicine is an approach to improving health care through the gathering and sharing of more patient data. President Obama, earlier this year, signed into law a new Initiative in Precision Medicine, just to put a little government muscle behind the effort. According to Isaac S. Kohane, writing in the 3 July 2015 issue of Science, precision medicine involves “harnessing measurements of multiple modalities – not just clinical and genomic evaluations, but environmental exposures, daily activities, and many others” so that “we can develop a much more comprehensive view of the patient’s state and its trajectory over time.” Mr. Kohane correctly observes that this might be a hard sell to the public – all this information-gathering-and-swapping among various government agencies sounds a little Big-Brotherish. But in the brave new world of lifelong entitlements, I suspect most folks will simply go along. Mr. Kohane, who obviously supports this practice, insists, “precision medicine is not only the hope for social justice, but it us mathematically necessary if we are to avoid making gross diagnostic and therapeutic mistakes.” The mere mention of “social justice” in a discussion of health care policy should be enough to cause us to prick up our ears. 

Education
In a system mad for testing, American education is beginning to take another look at how educators use tests in the learning process. According to Annie Murphy Paul, writing in the August 2015 issue of Scientific American, educators are discovering that using tests more as learning tools than assessment tools helps students learn more (“A New Vision for Testing”). The technique, called “retrieval testing,” involves more frequent quizzes with immediate feedback, including questions that relate to how students prepare for tests. Retrieval testing – as opposed to recall testing – seems to help students in several ways, including, recall of facts, association of ideas, long-term memory, transfer of knowledge, and “deep knowledge.” The process involves more student/teacher and student/student interaction in the learning process, and thus would appear to support the idea that we learn best in company with others under the patient, guiding tutelage of an expert. Since knowledge, transfer of knowledge, and deep long-term knowledge are all important to the life of following Jesus, Christian educators would do well to have a look at the growing body of literature on this approach to testing.

The Humanities
James McWilliams weighs in on the importance of the humanities against those who want to reduce all human interests, activities, and essence to what can be quantified (“On the Value of Not Knowing Everything,” The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2015). Neuroscience, encouraged by the present Administration in Washington, is on a quest to reduce all human wonder and creativity to electro-chemical processes and to eliminate the necessity of thinking about such matters as the soul. Already great progress is being made in academia to discount the value of the humanities and to guide students into STEM vocations (science, technology, economics, mathematics). Faith in reason as the best way of succeeding in life is at its peak just now, as evidenced by the high levels of confidence invested in science as the only legitimate and reliable way of knowing anything worth knowing. Mr. McWilliams muses, “Wonder, in other words, may be integral to the humanistic worldview, but as a state of mind, it’s on the ropes.” Let’s hope it’s only rope-a-doping. The task of the humanities is to bring back wonder and mystery to life, to “celebrate them and ask science to broaden its horizons”. What the humanities can do is sow humility, serendipity, questioning, wonder, delight, and mystery into the current process of aggregating all knowledge under the tent of science, so as “to subversively disaggregate in order to preserve that serendipity” that leads to wonder and humility. But in a world where, it seems, material success counts for everything, it’s difficult to see how the humanities as such can survive. Perhaps among the members of the Christian community, untainted as we are by aspirations to and measures of worldly success, the humanities might achieve a rebirth?

Outcomes
Ethics
Where ethical behavior is concerned, most of us – including teachers of ethics – aim for mediocrity. So reports ethicist Eric Schwitzgebel in a 14 July 2015 post at Aeon (“Cheeseburger ethics”). We just want to be like everyone else. Even though we may espouse higher ethical standards, we’re not like to be willing to do the hard work of self-denial, sacrifice, or moral self-discipline that higher standards require. We might suppose that those who study and teach ethical systems would live somewhere above the mediocre level of the rest of us, but research shows it simply isn’t so. Ethics is a matter of choice, Mr. Schwitzgebel insists, and, for the most part, we choose to go with the flow rather than run the risk of appearing to be different or morally more in earnest than our neighbors. I would like to think that these conclusions do not apply to the Christian community, that believers are ethically a cut above the rest of the crowd, but I fear it’s not so, and Mr. Schwitzgebel’s research seems to confirm my fears. Seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness just doesn’t seem to have the allure or command that following Jesus intends. All the more reason, is it not?, to be praying for revival.

Envoi

Useless Beauty
Meditation on the Eastern Hemlock

Here is an altogether useless tree –
for most, that is. For man’s economy

cannot accommodate a wood that breaks
the ax or saw, and which, when burning, makes

unsafe sparks shoot about like fireflies,
or which, because no sooner cut, it dies,

no Yuletide decorations can provide.
Oh, men have made tea of its twigs, and tried

it as a railroad tie, but mostly they
just leave it to its own secluded way,

in cool ravines, or on north-facing slopes
amid dense hardwood forests, where it gropes

for light with silver-bellied needles, layer
on layer arranged, like arms spread wide in prayer,

in gently symmetry, ascending to
an inauspicious, rounded peak, and through

the energies of which, each second or
third year – and for 450 more –

is manufactured such a delicate
and lovely cone – so pendent-like, and yet

unrivaled by the jeweler’s art – as to
provoke to wonder and delight all who

from economic interests extricate
themselves, and useless beauty contemplate.

From Fault Lines

T. M. Moore

T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He and his wife, Susie, make their home in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.
Books by T. M. Moore

Subscribe to Ailbe Newsletters

Sign up to receive our email newsletters and read columns about revival, renewal, and awakening built upon prayer, sharing, and mutual edification.