Category: Uncategorized

I Don’t Wanna!

I hate writing book reports. I don’t do book reviews on my blog, and I don’t read the blogs others who do. Yet for my class this semester on the theology of the Pentateuch (which in itself has been pretty good), fully ten percent of my grade comes, not from merely reading the material, but from *writing book reports* on what I’ve read.

I’ve really enjoyed my time at seminary. I really have. It’s been a challenge, and I say that in a positive light. But one thing that rankles me, and other students who have come from other academic backgrounds, is the emphasis on fulfilling the reading requirements. I understand that the reading is an integral part of the education experience. As I’ve sort of hinted at before, I’d rather do the reading than show up for class. But making the reading part of your grade? This doesn’t even resemble what I came here for.

I have a complete outline I’m supposed to follow: 1) Summarize the book. 2) Discuss the high points of the book. Insights, strong arguments. 3) Discuss the weaknesses of the book. On points 2 and 3, I’m supposed to cite page numbers. Which is to say, while I was busy, you know, reading the text, I was supposed to have been keeping a little notebook by my side in which I kept a diary of my experience in the reading. You may recognize this as a bad idea. When I write essays, I don’t take notes, and only look up my quotes after the fact.

But this assignment falls to a new nadir in removing all my former joys in higher education: My reading is on a time schedule. This is a problem. I hold to reading schedules like a BMX bike holds to railroad tracks. But my professor has given me a list of which book reports are due – half of them on the date of our mid-term. Which is to say, Monday.

And as I said, I don’t wanna!

(This has been service reminder from the whining broadcast system. We now return to your regularly scheduled blogging.)

In which I explain another reason why I go by the handle “Puretext”

To the best of my knowledge, there are two ways of communicating abstract ideas – written and oral. There’s a broad variety of options for communicating more concrete ideas (spanking comes to mind) but for abstract concepts, you really need words, and for transacting words, you have two options.

What’s interesting for me is the comparative advantage of the two. I like to focus on speed: As a communicator, the faster I can get the words out, the easier it is for me to do my job. So, given the option of speaking or writing, I should prefer speaking. It’s a rare man who can write nearly as fast as he can speak, and I am not him. I understand that, if you write shorthand, it is possible to write as fast as a person speaks, but then no on can read it, so it’s generally a waste.

Listening generally happens at the exact same rate as speaking. (How’s that for stating the obvious?) In fact, it’s kind of silly to talk about listening faster than the speaker talks. How would that be possible? Listening to multiple streams at once? I don’t think so! Talk about serious data corruption. It is possible to talk faster than a person can listen, which is why, when in a public speaking environment, it’s recommended to speak relatively slowly. You have to lower your rate of communication to the lowest common denominator – how fast can the slowest person listen? And unless you’re naturally a very slow speaker, this can be very frustrating, since one of the primary reasons for communicating orally in the first place is the ease that comes from being able to send words as close as possible to the rate at which you think them.

Oral communication, then, is most perfectly adapted to dialogue. Conversation is its great delight. Brainstorming with people who think alike – ah! Another pleasure! Monolithic lectures, on the other hand, can be a little bit frustrating. As long as you attend, you are a captive to the speaker’s best estimate of the lowest listening speed in the room. And no matter how fast it is, everyone can think many times faster than anyone ever speaks. So unless the topic is engrossing, the mind wanders.

Dialogue is the normal setting for communicating with words. Dialogue is natural; everything else becomes odder by degrees. From this perspective, single sided speeches are disconcerting and a little frustrating. But written communication – ! This is truly bizarre! Continue reading “In which I explain another reason why I go by the handle “Puretext””

I should have thought as much

Great, hurried political commentary from a theology student too busy to read the news. And Cox & Forkum is hardly the premier news outlet. But they’ve got a point in the commentary on this comic.

Part of what’s keeping “the insurgency” going is an unending supply of free weapons from outside sources. There is now proof that Iran is engaging in its own Iran-Contra affair by manufacturing weapons directly for the use of Shiite militias in Iraq. Honestly, I should have suspected as much. How can you keep a guerrilla war on when you run out of ammo? Somebody has to supply. And if that supply is gone, the warfare has to cease. Or at least descend to a more manageable level. Continue reading “I should have thought as much”

Monastic

I feel a little bit right now like the boy who was told that for one day he must eat only vitamins, only to discover that his vitamins tasted remarkably like candy. I am participating in what our school calls a Soul Sabbath retreat. The principle of the retreat is to spend a day in vocal silence cum community, so we have borrowed facilities from a Catholic monastery and adopted for a day what is essentially a pseudo-monastic lifestyle: We pray and read; we eat a meal together; we write notes in our journals, but for 6 hours, we say nothing.

The irony for me is great. The monastic life, particularly one of a contemplative nature, is something which I seriously considered, and quite finally had to reject. There’s a huge appeal here: one of the main features of contemplative monasticism is the extreme tension between isolation and community. Normally, living in any tight-knit community results in a huge amount of jostling, so rules are imposed to make space for Something Else. That something else fascinates me; it’s my life bread.

My mom tells me that men don’t make friends properly anyway, because they are so object-oriented. Friendship for us consists frequently in finding ways to do work together. But I’m on the extreme end of that spectrum, because the work I find most pleasant is very difficult to do in community. Find me, I ask you, a group of men with whom I can gather in person to engage in systematic theology! Even at a seminary, their numbers are very few.

So I’m prone to making little monasteries around me. Continue reading “Monastic”

Pictures

I’m in the process of editing and uploading more pictures to the gallery. For those of you who have been grumping about not being able to see pics of our new place, the grumping can stop and you can go here. I should have pics up for mom and dad’s visit and our anniversary in the White Mountains very soon. I’m also going to upload all of the official wedding photos unadjusted since I’ve been hearing some complaining in that area as well. If you have favorites, let me know. I”m going to also be uploading them to MPix for printing soon.

UPDATE:

The official Wedding Photos can be viewed here. If you would like prints, send me an email so I know which ones to load to MPix.

How to Read Your Bible

No, this isn’t an essay on how to read your Bible through in a year, or on what parts you ought to read most, or even on how to “rightly divide the word of God.” This post is about something far more fundamental: *how to get yourself to read your Bible at all.*

I have two points under a single main heading: **Your Bible is Too Big!**

**Point the first: sheer volume.** Continue reading “How to Read Your Bible”

Preaching

There are two debates that I know of in regards to how preaching (or, perhaps “homiletics”) ought to be done. The first has to do with the content of the message; the second, with the method of delivery.

In terms of content, there are two ways to go about preparing a sermon. One way is to take the text at hand and present the listener with a discussion of the meaning of the text. Another way is to begin with a question or concern and then range over the whole context of scripture in presenting an answer. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, though the lofty minded among us seem to prefer the latter. The protest against a “topical” style of preaching is the common danger of bringing questions to the text that scripture is hardly concerned with. “How to have a healthy love life” and “Principles of financial management” are pressing and interesting questions, and the Bible has much that may touch on them, but they are hardly the primary concerns of the gospel. The objection to “exegetical” preaching is something along the lines that it is misleading to imply that this style of speaking is *not* topical. It’s inappropriate and nearly impossible to make a sermon hinge entirely on a single passage of text. Furthermore, it *is* impossible to discuss in a single sermon even all the *major* issues that a single passage may touch on. The result of exegetical preaching, then, is either a single sermon which spews out themes like machine-gun fire, or a *series* of exegetical messages covering a whole host of topics. Exegetical preaching, then, is often merely *good* topical preaching by another name.

However, these are academic concerns for me. What is most pressing at the moment is the method of delivery. Is my speaking to be totally extemporaneous? Should I carry notes? What form of notes should I carry – should it be a bare-bones outline, or should I write the entire text out beforehand? Having written out a text beforehand, is it appropriate to read it before the congregation, or should it be committed to memory in some form? Continue reading “Preaching”

Reading… or Sleeping?

I’m rather proud of myself for the last few days. It seems I’ve managed to actually post something every single day in a row for a while now. However, I want to make sure you know, I’m cheating a little. If something comes to me to blog about, I go ahead and post it, but I’ve been future-dating the posts to space them out a bit. So, if you see me mention something a few days late, such as the death of Abu al Zarqawi, I’m afraid it isn’t due to me cautiously mulling over the event for a few days before speaking on it. Alas.

So, for instance, the thing that’s fresh on my mind right now, by the time you read this will have happened a few days ago: Tim Challies talking about his [reading habits](http://www.challies.com/archives/001901.php). It seems that he made a commitment some time back to attempt to read about one book a week. While he was at it, he decided to go ahead and write a review for each book he read. Now, one book a week is actually a pretty easy task, provided the books are moderately well-written and are of average length (around 200 pages). Tim found this to be true, and consequently he sometimes reads 2-3 books in a week.

Everyone, I think, who keeps an eye on Tim’s blog has been utterly amazed at the kind output he’s been able to produce in this manner. The sheer number of book reviews he’s published has been staggering. Which sets me to thinking. I *thought* I was a pretty great reader. I mean, I’m reading all the time. Sometimes 5-10 hours of my day are dedicated entirely to reading. I *am* a professional student. I went to undergrad for the sole purpose of being allowed to read without any other commitments to interfere. And yet, as of this moment, Tim seems to be knocking them back faster than I can fathom. What am I doing wrong?

And then the key difference occurs to me. Tim Challies doesn’t read fiction. Continue reading “Reading… or Sleeping?”