Book Write-Up: Philosophy in Seven Sentences, by Douglas Groothuis

Douglas Groothuis.  Philosophy in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic.  Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2016.  See here to buy the book.

In Philosophy in Seven Sentences, Christian philosopher Douglas Groothuis discusses the thought of seven Western philosophers.  Groothuis focuses on seven quotations.  The quotations (in whatever translations Groothuis is using) are as follows:

Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things.”

Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Aristotle: “All men by nature desire to know.”

Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in you.”

Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”

Pascal: “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

Kierkegaard: “The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.”

There were things in this book that I already knew, from my undergraduate education and personal reading.  But I did learn things that I did not previously know (or know too well), such as Pascal’s emphasis on knowing apart from analytical reason and Kierkegaard’s views on the self.

The book is a decent introduction to Western philosophy.  It gives details about the seven philosophers’ lives and their significance within the history of Western philosophy.  Overall, it summarizes and interacts with their thought clearly, though a few passages may require a little more concentration on the part of the reader (i.e., in my case, brief passages in the chapters on Descartes and Kierkegaard).

Perhaps the most endearing quality of the book is how Groothuis brings himself into the discussion.  He talks about his teaching experiences, his students’ reactions to some of the philosophers, the philosophical insights he particularly loves, and his experiences as a student.  He writes with a sense of humor.  He evaluates the quotations from his Christian perspective, yet he appreciates each philosopher and tries to understand the philosophers on their own terms (though he largely disagrees with Protagoras).  Groothuis’ book is introductory, yet he clues readers in about the larger discussions and debates within the academic community.

Groothuis’ tone was pleasant, as if he were offering readers things to think about rather than dogmatically trying to force them to believe a certain way.  I think of the final chapter in which Groothuis is discussing what he gains from the insight or perspective of each philosopher.  He disagrees with Protagoras because, if all we have are ourselves and our own perspectives, can we rise any higher than ourselves?  Good question.

There were occasional times when I winced a bit.  Groothuis was talking about the law of non-contradiction and was using that to argue that we cannot say that all religions are right, or that no religion is wrong.  True, but can one embrace some form of religious pluralism while still believing in the law of non-contradiction?  Groothuis says that Socrates at times referred to God rather than a specific god.  I was not sure what Groothuis was implying in saying that: Was he implying some overlap between Socratic thought and Jewish/Christian monotheism?  The Greeks often spoke of God in the singular, while still believing in many gods.  Groothuis may have done well to have included an endnote explaining this phenomenon.

I am still trying to wrap my head around at least one point that Groothuis makes.  Groothuis raises the question of whether Descartes has undermined empiricism.  Empiricism states that “all knowledge is based on our experience of the space-time world of objects, events and processes” (Groothuis on pages 89-90).  In essence, under empiricism, knowledge is gained solely through one’s senses of the outside world.  But Descartes claimed that he arrived at a truth through reason alone, apart from the senses: “I think, therefore I am.”

Of course, one could say that there are still truths that people gain through the senses, and even that some knowledge that certain philosophers believe are ascertained purely by reason (a priori) actually have their roots in sensory experience (i.e., I believe 1+1=2 because I have seen examples of that in real life).  But Groothuis, perhaps like other philosophers, believes that the debate is more absolutist than that: if one can find any example of knowledge that is not empirical, then that undermines empiricism, which claims that all knowledge is empirical.  Is self-consciousness an example of knowledge that is not empirical?  I wrestle with that, somewhat.  Granted, I am not aware of my thoughts or my existence specifically through the five senses, even though what I learn from the five senses does provide things for me to think about.  Would I say, then, that “some knowledge is given to the self apart from the outside world” (page 90)?  Maybe, but self-consciousness is pretty basic, isn’t it?  Groothuis also refers to Noam Chomsky’s view that “basic structures of grammar are innate”, as in “hard-wired” into us (page 93, Groothuis’ words).

Although Groothuis is more advanced than I am in the academic study of philosophy, I was comparing what he said with my own experiences in philosophy and religion classes, and that was enjoyable.  Groothuis criticized how some philosophers focus on Descartes’ skeptical discussions while ignoring how Descartes tries to get people out of skepticism through a belief in God (i.e., one believes in a good God who does not deceive us but places us in a knowable world).  Groothuis later talked about an atheist professor who ignored spiritual aspects of philosophers’ thought: Kierkegaard’s Christianity, or Hegel’s belief in a world spirit.  Fortunately, I had an atheist philosophy professor who did not ignore the spiritual dimension to philosophy.  She did not find Descartes’ argument for the existence of God to be convincing, but she did appreciate the dilemma that Descartes was presenting: either there is solipsism, or a God who makes a world that is knowable to us.

I would like to offer a few areas of disagreement with Groothuis, primarily on matters of taste.  First of all, Groothuis laments that the TV show Dexter is popular, for it heroizes a serial killer.  Contrary to what may be Groothuis’ understanding, the show is not really saying that people can do whatever they want, whenever they want.  Dexter does wrestle with a moral code, which requires him only to kill murderers.  Second, Groothuis does not care for Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz.  I love that book, even though I would agree with Groothuis that it falls short of Augustine’s Confessions!

Groothuis says in an endnote that he may write a similar book about the Eastern philosophers.  I look forward to reading it!

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 27

On page 857 of Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, we read:

"An unprecedentedly massive air assault on North Vietnam began on December 18.  (Nixon told Haldeman and Kissinger that he didn't want to start on Sunday, December 17, because he didn't want a church service in the White House while he was bombing.)"

Nixon probably thought that he was doing the right thing in ordering the air assault on North Vietnam.  Why, then, did he not want to hold a church service during that time?  Perhaps it was because he saw the bombing as a necessary evil, and he did not want that to occur during an event that was good, a church service.

I thought of II Chronicles 23 which is about the high priest Jehoida leading a rebellion against the brutal Queen Athaliah of Judah.  In v 14, Jehoida tells the captains not to kill Athaliah in the house of the LORD.  They're killing someone, but they're not doing their dirty work in the house of the LORD.  I guess that makes it all right, doesn't it?

I also thought of the final episode of season 5 of Dexter.  The sociopathic motivational speaker Jordan Chase is finally on Dexter's killing table, and Dexter tells Lumen that she should be the one to kill him, since Jordan incited men to rape her.  Jordan laughingly says, "You're talking like there's a polite way to do this, as if there's some etiquette.  Murder is murder!"  See here for the scene.

Spiritual Insights on Six Feet Under

I’ve been watching the first season of Six Feet Under.  I like it so far because of the stories, and also because I like Michael C. Hall (who later starred on Dexter), Rachel Griffiths (who later was on Brothers and Sisters), and Freddy Rodriguez (who was in Lady in the Water).

There were interesting points about religion in a few of the episodes that I watched recently.  Michael C. Hall plays David Fisher, a homosexual who (at least in this season) is ashamed to admit publicly his homosexuality.  David is rather conservative, in the sense that he is responsible, dutiful, and rather uptight.  David vacillates between two churches: a rather conservative church that he attends with his mother, and a more gay-friendly church that he attends with his boyfriend.  The priest at the conservative church helps to make David a deacon, and my hunch is that this is because he knows that David is gay and hopes that David will try to move the church in a more progressive direction.  But, to the priest’s disappointment, David is not that type of person, for he prefers to avoid making waves.

At the liberal church that David attends, the priest was offering an interesting interpretation of the story of the Fall in Genesis 3.  According to her, the sin of Adam and Eve was not that they ate the forbidden fruit, but rather that they believed the serpent’s lies without allowing God to present God’s own side—-to refute the serpent’s charge that God was lying to Adam and Eve and was trying to hold them back from what was good.  I like this interpretation because it places God in a positive light and treats people as if they have minds of their own and are able to listen to and evaluate different sides.  That differs from the usual interpretation that I hear of Genesis 3: that God expected Adam and Eve to obey him mindlessly, no questions asked.

At the conservative church, as I said, David is made a deacon.  The church is thinking of bringing in another priest, who is quite progressive.  This priest tells David that Jesus was a revolutionary who was assassinated by the powers-that-be, and that the same thing would happen to Jesus today.  The priest also said that sitting in church does not exempt people from moral responsibilities, and that people should stand up and protest when a gay or an African-American is killed by bigots.  Rather than pursuing this kind of relationship with God, the priest laments, many parishioners prefer to limit their devotion to praying to a man on a cross.

The priest was making some powerful points.  I don’t think that Jesus was a revolutionary in a violent sense (and I am not sure if this priest was saying that).  But Jesus’ acts of compassion and moral indignation were controversial and brought upon him the wrath of the powers-that-be.  His eating with sinners challenged social and perhaps even religious norms.  His healing on the Sabbath ran against the piety of certain Pharisees (according to the Gospels).  And his cleansing of the Temple concerned the authorities, both among Jews and also Romans.  And, in my opinion, compassion today can challenge entrenched special interests—-a number of health insurance companies, a racist society, people who put profits ahead of people, etc.

GCB

I watched part of ABC’s GCB last night. GCB is based on the book Good Christian Bitches. There are Christians who are screaming “persecution” in response to this show. Some have glibly stated that there would be an outcry if there were a program called GMB, with the “M” standing for Muslim. In this post, I’ll list some thoughts:

1. I don’t think that Christians should only be portrayed positively in stories and media. The impression I get from folks on the religious right is that any negative depiction of Christians amounts to persecution. In my opinion, though, religious hypocrisy is fair game when it comes to stories. We’d have to eliminate a lot of literature if we could only accept the stories that depict Christianity or religion positively. George Elliott’s Middlemarch had a religious hypocrite, Bulstrode. There was the cold guy in Jane Eyre who told young Jane that she was going to hell. There’s Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. There’s the Bible! Then, going to the evangelical realm, there are Christian movies that depict one or more Christian character negatively. I think of the movie Hidden Secrets.

2. I do like to see some positive portrayal of religion in stories and in media. One reason is that many Christians are good folks, and their religion inspires them to do positive things. Another reason is that faith and the search for meaning are a part of our (and many other) cultures, and so stories that talk about the big questions can be quite powerful, when they are well-written. Overall, I feel that television, the movies, and books are positive when it comes to their depiction of religion and spirituality. I think of such programs as Six Feet Under, Desperate Housewives, Dexter, LOST, and a host of others. I did not watch all of GCB last night, for it did not particularly draw me in. But I hope that it’s about much more than bashing Christians, and that there will be something deep and reflective about it (but I’m not optimistic). The movie Saved! also lampooned the evangelical sub-culture, but I liked it because it had positive things to say about faith—-where it is right, where it can go wrong (in the author’s opinion), etc.

3. I can somewhat sympathize with my evangelical friends who feel that society is tolerant of everyone and everything—-except for them. What would the reaction be to a show that depicted Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, or African-Americans in a negative light? Shouldn’t we refrain from condemning all groups, including evangelical Christians?

I do not have a good answer to this question. I think that, on some level, evangelical Christianity is fair game because of its prominence in American society (though, of course, many evangelicals would claim that they are marginalized in the United States). I myself am not against acknowledging that people may have problems with elements of Islam or Judaism. The West Wing, for example, talks about Islamic extremists, but (in contrast to Islamophobes) it does not apply that label to all Muslims. So I’m not sure where I land on this question of depicting groups. I’m against stigmatizing entire groups of people, but I also realize that stories reflect reality, on some level, and there are times when people use their religion in evil ways. In my mind, it’s acceptable to highlight that.

Company When Watching Stuff; the Cleansed Zealot

I have two items from yesterday’s reading of Stephen King’s Needful Things:

1. Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk committed suicide because he felt guilty about setting into motion a chain of events that took two people’s lives, all to get a baseball card from Leland Gaunt. Sheriff Alan Pangborn is questioning Brian’s little brother, Sean, at the hospital. Sean tells Alan that he and Brian saw the movie Young Guns on the VCR, and they both enjoyed it. Sean says they were both looking forward to seeing Young Guns II once it came out on video, but now Brian won’t be able to see it because he’s dead. Sean says that he’ll now have to watch the movie by himself, and that won’t be any fun because he won’t be able to hear Brian’s “stupid jokes” (page 586).

Do I like to watch TV or movies by myself, or with other people? It depends. I have had rewarding experiences watching things with other people. I like making stupid jokes with my brother while watching stuff. It’s also a rewarding experience when I share something that I enjoy with my Mom and her husband, and they also end up enjoying it—-such as The West Wing, Dexter, and The Dead Zone.

But there are other times when I prefer to watch things alone because then I feel free to have my own reactions, rather than trying to fit in and becoming resentful when people don’t find funny or moving what I find funny or moving. But when I’m in a place where I feel accepted, I don’t care as much if others have the same reactions that I do. For example, I can laugh at certain scenes of Family Guy while others don’t, or others can laugh at things that I don’t. It’s good when I’m in a group where I can be myself and have my own reactions, rather than worrying about whether or not I’m fitting in.

2. In Needful Things, there is a feud between the local Baptist preacher, William Rose, and the Catholic priest, John Brigham. One of their points of contention is a Casino Night that the Catholic church is holding, which Rose thinks is gambling. I’ll share two passages about that.

Lester Pratt goes to Rose’s church, but he’s having a hard time thinking about Rose’s campaign against Casino Night because he has his own problems: he thinks that his girlfriend is cheating on him. On page 473, we read that Lester initially was “more than ready to ring a few sets of Catholic chimes, but now the entire affair seemed distant and rather childish”, for “Who really cared if the Catholics gambled for play money and gave away a few new tires and kitchen appliances?”

On page 601, however, we read aspects of William Rose’s life-story that explain why he is so passionate in opposing Casino Night: “[Father Brigham] had known his Baptist counterpart would not like the idea of Casino Nite, but he did not understand how deeply the concept of church-supported gaming enraged and offended the Baptist preacher. He did not know that Steamboat Willie’s father had been a compulsive gambler who had abandoned the family on many occasions when the gambling fever took him, or that the man had finally shot himself in the back room of a dance-hall after a losing night at craps. And the unlovely truth about Father Brigham was this: it probably would not have made any difference to him even if he had known.”

The passage about Rose reminded me of several things. I thought about the punctilious Inspector Javert in Les Meserables, who became a firm absolutist on law-and-order because of his own hard upbringing when he was a child. I think of the passage in C.S. Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms, in which Lewis says that becoming a Christian can be a double-edged sword, for it can lead a person to become loving, compassionate, and understanding, but it can also lead one to become a person who takes good and evil seriously and thus becomes an inquisitor! I thought of a true story I heard about a woman who is in a hyper-fundamentalist cult-group, and she even frowns on little white lies (i.e., she doesn’t want people to tell others she’s not at home when she is). But her life was morally loose before she entered the group, and now she has gone the other extreme of being morally punctilious in every detail, and of judging those who are not as conscientious as she.

Jesus says in Matthew 23:15 (in the King James Version): “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” Religion can make people rather judgmental and unbearable. I used to pray for non-Christians I know, that they might become saved. Nowadays, while I do hope that they come to know that God loves them, I’m not sure if I’d be comfortable around them if they were evangelical Christians—-with a narrow, judgmental, cut-and-dry attitude on the world and how God works.

I can understand coming from a life where one feels dirty, and desiring to be clean. But I have problems when that desire becomes judgmental towards others, or hyper-zealous, or in-your-face fanatical—-at least when I have to be around it. I think it’s refreshing when people can become Christians and remain regular folks—-like Lester was when he saw how childish the crusade against Casino Night was. There’s something to be said for recognizing and abhorring sin and its damaging effects, but there’s also something to be said for a live-and-let-live attitude.

Epistemology and Funerals

I read a lot of Stephen King’s Needful Things yesterday. I have two items:

1. There were a couple of passages on pages 405-406 that stood out to me, a wannabe academic. Sheriff Alan Pangborn and Henry Payton of the Maine state police are comparing notes on the case of Nettie Cobb and Wilma Jerzyck. On the surface, the case looks rather cut-and-dry: Wilma killed Nettie’s dog, Nettie then retaliated by trashing Wilma’s house with rocks, and the two then met in the street and killed each other. We the readers know that this is not true, however, for we realize that Leland Gaunt, the owner of the new shop in town, had others do these dirty deeds in exchange for something that they wanted from Gaunt’s store. Brian Rusk wanted a Sandy Koufax baseball card that Gaunt was selling, and part of Brian’s payment to Gaunt was trashing Wilma’s house. Hugh Priest desired a fox-tail, and his payment to Gaunt was killing Nettie’s dog. But Gaunt wants for Nettie and Wilma to blame each other, for he likes to instigate conflict and exasperate feuds for his own personal amusement.

At times, Alan and Henry seem to accept the standard narrative—-that Wilma killed Nettie’s dog and that Nettie trashed Wilma’s house—-but there is a small suspicion within them that something about the standard narrative is not quite right. Things don’t add up—-such as the timing of events. I won’t go into detail on that in this post, but I will say that it was interesting to read, even if I did not understand every detail of their reasoning. What I want to highlight are a couple of passages that occur within the context of Alan and Henry hashing out ideas and scenarios.

On page 405, we read: “[Alan] was thinking of the Agatha Christie novels which [his late wife] Annie had read by the dozen. In those, it seemed there was always some doddering village doctor who was more than willing to set the time of death between 4:30 p.m. and quarter past five. After almost twenty years as a law-enforcement officer, Alan knew a more realistic response to the time-of-death question was ‘Sometime last week. Maybe.’”

On page 406, Henry tells Alan that the bloody fingerprints in Nettie’s house of the one who killed her dog do not match Wilma’s fingerprints or correspond with Wilma’s small hands. But Henry cannot use that information in court because the fingerprints in Nettie’s house are only partial. Henry eloquently says: “…if I testified in court on something like that, the defense would chew me a new asshole. But since we’re sitting at the bullshit table, so to speak—-they’re nothing alike.”

I liked these passages because they illustrate how hard it is to know things exactly, and yet it may be productive to throw out some ideas for consideration. Even if those ideas do not exactly follow a high standard of logic and evidence, maybe they can lead somewhere, or generate new questions, or point out new angles, or highlight important issues. As a wannabe academic in the humanities, there are plenty of things that I am reluctant to say that I know for certain. But it’s good to read and hear different ideas. Does that mean that I’m saying that everything is speculation and so people can pick whatever narrative they prefer? Not really, for evidence is still important. Even when Henry and Alan were speculating, they were appealing to some evidence, or they were raising questions about the standard narrative on the basis of facts. But there are cases in which, even with evidence to work with, we cannot arrive at definitive answers, and so the best we can do is propose different scenarios or ideas. I think of the scholarly attempts to define and to account for Paul’s view on the Torah. I wouldn’t lay down my life on any of these scholarly constructions being true. But they are interesting and plausible ways to emplot and account for the evidence (or, actually, some ways are more plausible than others), and so perhaps they can help me to have a conception of my own when it comes to Paul’s approach to the Torah.

2. Wilma and Nettie had separate funerals. Wilma’s funeral was at her Catholic church, and many cars were lining up outside of the church for that event, as people came for Wilma’s husband, Peter, “if not for his dead wife” (page 435). But only five people attended Nettie’s funeral: her friend and employer Polly, Sheriff Alan Pangborn, Deputy Norris Ridgewick, Rosalie Drake, and old Lenny Partidge. Lenny went to all funerals except for Catholic ones, but Polly and Alan went because they cared for Nettie. The preacher at Nettie’s funeral was Tom Killingworth, a Methodist, and he knew Nettie when she was at Juniper Hill (an insane asylum), for he conducted services there. On page 434, the narrator sums up the nature of Tom’s homily: “The homily was brief and warm, full of reference to the Nettie Cobb this man had known, a woman who had been slowly and bravely coming out of the shadows of insanity, a woman who had taken the courageous decision to try to treat once more with the world that had hurt her so badly.”

This funeral somewhat reminded me of the funeral for Paul in the second season of Dexter. Paul was a heroine addict who abused his wife, and yet he was nice to his children, and they motivated him to try to change. At his funeral, only four people showed up: Dexter, Paul’s ex-wife Rita, and Paul’s two children Cody and Astor. But the pastor gave a beautiful homily about how Paul may have had his struggles with darkness, and yet his children brought out the good in him. In my opinion, that’s how funerals should be: highlighting the good that people have done. And it doesn’t matter if many people show up to the funeral or only a few. Each life is valuable, whether or not anyone attends a person’s funeral. And yet it’s good when people at least have one person who cares for them enough to show up.

Catching Up on TV Tonight

Tonight, I'll be catching up on some television as I read stuff for my weekly quiet time, which, this Sabbath, will be about Psalm 2. I have an episode of No Ordinary Family to watch, and also one of The Middle (assuming it's not a repeat). I'll also be watching Smallville at 8, and I'll watch the last episode on the Mad Men DVD that I got from Netflix.

In terms of what I'll get next from Netflix, I don't know. I had a taste for Bonanza today as I was sorting cards at work, the reason being that, on Monday night, I watched the Highway to Heaven episode that had Lorne Greene. It was interesting to see him interact with Michael Landon in his (Michael Landon's) maturity, since Michael played his son, naive Little Joe, on Bonanza.

Or I may get Disk 2 of Season 3 of Dexter, assuming it's even available. It had "Long Wait" next to it the last time that I checked my Netflix queue, but that was over a week ago.

Dexter and the Trinity Killer

Yesterday, I finished up Season 4 of Dexter. On it, John Lithgow delivers an Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning performance as Arthur Mitchell, the “Trinity Killer.” Arthur Mitchell is a family-man, deacon, and builder of homes for the homeless by day, but he’s the Trinity Killer by night (or when he’s on trips). His wife and kids experience his abuse, however, even though they look like the perfect family to the outside world.

Arthur Mitchell had a traumatic childhood. He startled his sister in the shower when he was ten-years-old, which resulted in her accidental death, as her body smashed against the shower’s glass. In despair, his Mom then killed herself by jumping off a building, leaving Arthur with his drunken, abusive father. Arthur later killed his Dad by bludgeoning him with a hammer. Arthur re-enacts these events at various points in his life. His murders follow a pattern. First, he kills a woman in a bath-tub. Second, he makes a woman jump off a tall building. Third, he bludgeons a man to death. This three-fold pattern of his murders is why he is called the “Trinity Killer.” And yet, we learn in the course of the series that there is an earlier step in his pattern, before he performs the bath-tub murder: he kidnaps a male child, calls the child “Arthur,” and encases him in cement to preserve his innocence.

Dexter has homicidal tendencies, but he channels them into vigilantism, as he puts murderers permanently off the street. Dexter himself had a traumatic childhood experience: he and his brother (who grew up to become the “Ice Truck Killer” of Season 1) witnessed their mother being sliced to death with a chain-saw. As with Arthur, Dexter’s childhood trauma shaped how he performed his murders as an adult: Dexter cuts up his victims with a chain-saw.

Dexter plots to put the Trinity Killer off the street, but he tries to get close to him because he hopes that Arthur can teach him something. Dexter now has a family—his wife Rita, Rita’s two children, and his newborn son with Rita, Harrison. Dexter is not entirely sure how he should act in a family, for he often doesn’t have emotions; as a result—although he can put on a friendly, charming facade before others—he’s not entirely sure what people in his family want from him. Moreover, Dexter wonders how he can balance his family life with his extra-curricular activity, while concealing from his family the nature of that activity. Because Arthur is a serial killer who has a family, Dexter thinks that Arthur can offer him advice.

Dexter approaches Arthur under another name (“Kyle”), posing as a potential congregant at Arthur’s church. Arthur does not know that Dexter works with the police. Dexter gets some helpful tips from Arthur (i.e., encourage your kids to participate in activities, such as sailing), but, as he learns about Arthur’s abuse of his family, Dexter concludes that he does not want to be like Arthur.

Eventually, Arthur learns that “Kyle” is really Dexter Morgan of the Miami Police Department, and Dexter later gets Arthur on his slaughtering table. In a poignant conversation, Arthur says that he prayed repeatedly that God might take away his homicidal tendencies, but God did not do so. Dexter then replies that Arthur did not actively work to keep his tendencies in check, but he passively waited on God. In Arthur’s final minutes, Dexter agrees to play some 50′s music and to run Arthur’s toy train, reminding Arthur of the innocent childhood for which he longed. Then, Dexter puts Arthur to death.

I could not help but feel sorry for Arthur, a person scarred by a childhood trauma, who is trying to recapture his innocence as a little boy. At the same time, Arthur had to be removed from society, for he was killing people’s mothers, sisters, brothers, and fathers. How would I feel if somebody killed one of my friends or loved ones? What could have been done to help Arthur to heal, thereby preventing Arthur from committing murders? Therapy? Authentic community?

Dexter’s conversation with Arthur about God also stood out to me. I can look to God to help me to become a better person, but I am still responsible for my own actions. Even if God does not remove a person’s dark tendencies, that person is still responsible not to act on them.

Recognizing Julie Benz

This is Julie Benz. I saw her while watching Season 1 of Dexter and thought she looked familiar. It turns out that she’s been on two other shows that I watch: she was in last season of Desperate Housewives, and she plays the Mom in No Ordinary Family.

I like her on Dexter because she’s vulnerable, and yet she’s finding her own strength. I also liked her role as a naive stripper in Desperate Housewives, trying to find a new path in the world (after she ditches the stripping profession). But I was about to stop watching No Ordinary Family because she’s a beautiful, smart woman in that, and those types intimidate me. I guess I prefer characters with problems who grow and learn to cope with life. Now that I know that I’ve seen and liked Julie Benz in other shows, however, I’ll keep watching No Ordinary Family. Also, Stephen Collins is on it, and I like Stephen Collins.

Blast to Eighth Grade History; Dexter the Stranger; II Kings 4

1. Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana’s Florida Parishes, 1810-1899, page 75:

Although each parish received at least one representative to the lower house, the method of apportionment allowing slaves to be counted as part of the population stipulated by the Constitution of 1852 created excessive representation from the plantation parishes.

This reminds me of a game I played in my history class when I was in the eighth grade. The class was divided into groups that existed prior to the Civil War. There were the abolitionists, who favored the abolition of slavery. There were the Southern Rebels, who supported spreading slavery to the territories and defending its existence in the South. Then there were the Southern Realists and the Northern Free-Soilers, who advocated popular sovereignty as the means to determine if new states would be slave or free: essentially, the state's residents would vote on that question.

The Southern Rebels were continually afraid that the North would get dominance in the Congress and use that power to abolish slavery. Historically, that's what led to the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, which delayed the Civil War. There was a desire in the South to maintain a balance between slave and free states, so that the free states wouldn't have the advantage.

Our class debated the Compromise of 1850, and different groups proposed alternatives to it. The Southern Rebels proposed counting the slaves as full persons rather than as three-fifths of a person, which the Constitution stipulated (Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3). (In retrospect, I'm not sure why no one in the class pointed out that you need a Constitutional amendment to change the Constitution.) This would give the Southern states more representatives in the House of Representatives, since the number of an area's representatives is based on its population. Ironically, the abolitionists sided with the Southern Rebels on this, since they believed that counting the slaves as full persons was a step towards acknowledging their humanity, even if the slaves would still lack the right to vote.

2. Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, page 20:

"Smith is not a man. He is an intelligent creature with the genes and ancestry of a man. He's more Martian than a man. Until we came along he had never laid eyes on a human being. He thinks like a Martian, he feels like a Martian. He's been brought up by a race which has nothing in common with us. Why, they don't even have sex. Smith has never laid eyes on a woman---still hasn't if my orders have been carried out. He's a man by ancestry, a Martian by environment..."

Smith is a human being who was raised by Martians, which is probably why he's a "stranger in a strange land". But this quote reminded me of the TV show Dexter, whose pilot I watched yesterday. Dexter is a cop with homicidal tendencies, which go back to his youth, when he killed and buried a dog. His foster dad, a cop, told Dexter to channel his urges into a positive direction, by getting rid of bad guys when he grew up---the evil people who managed to dodge the law.

Dexter is truly a stranger in a strange land. Not only does he have homicidal urges, but he also doesn't understand social interaction among other human beings. He doesn't get sex, nor does he like it. His girlfriend is a lady who was repeatedly raped by her ex-husband, a crack addict, so she doesn't like sex either. That makes her and Dexter a good match! And Dexter remarks that, if he had it inside of himself to care for another person, he would definitely care for his foster sister (also a cop), who is the closest friend he's got.

Even though Dexter is a stranger in a strange land, he's still able to make his way through the world. He can effectively interact with people. He can make people believe that he cares for them. The inner Dexter and the outer Dexter are not entirely the same person, for the outer Dexter is a mask for the twisted, cold Dexter. Still, Dexter tries to do the right thing---or avoid doing the wrong thing.

I wonder how I, as a person with Asperger's, who is not twisted like Dexter yet considers social interaction a challenge, can put on a front that is contrary to my inner nature, allowing me to make my way through the world.

3. For my weekly quiet time today, I studied II Kings 4. The chapter is about Elisha's miracles. Here, I want to focus on his interaction with the Shunammite woman.

Shumen is in Northern Israel, I believe in the tribe of Manasseh. Egyptian sources mention it, so it was probably close to a well-travelled road. Because the prophet Elisha is continually passing her house, she proposes to give this holy man of God a room in which he can stay and relax from his journeys. Elisha wants to repay her, and he mentions to her his connections with the king and the military. According to John Gill, Elisha was offering her husband a prominent place in the king's court or the military. But she replied that she was content among her own people, which probably means that she didn't desire for her husband to get a high position that would require them to move.

Elisha's servant, Gehazi, tells Elisha that the woman does not have a child, and her husband is old. Gehazi must trust in Elisha's ability to channel God's power, for his statement indicates that he believes Elisha can cause the Shunammite woman to conceive and bear a child. Upon hearing Elisha propose this to her, the woman is skeptical that she'll have a baby. But, sure enough, she does.

The child gets heat-stroke and dies, however, and so the woman and her servant ride out to Mount Carmel to see Elisha. When she falls down at Elisha's feet, Gehazi tries to thrust her away, but Elisha stops him and sympathizes with her in her grief. Elisha gives Gehazi his staff and sends him to heal the boy. On his way, Gehazi is to gird up his loins and refrain from greeting people, perhaps so he can get to the child quickly. Elisha loved and honored this woman, so her request was urgent as far as he was concerned! When Gehazi arrives and touches the boy's face with Elisha's staff, the boy is still unconscious. When Elisha comes and places his body over the boy, however, the boy is resurrected.

Why didn't Gehazi's attempt work, whereas Elisha was successful? There are a variety of explanations that people have offered. Here are some of them:

a. This story communicates the Christian truth about salvation. The staff represents the law of Moses, which cannot give life to the spiritually dead, since we're too weak to keep it. Only God through Christ can spiritually revive us. And God the Word united himself with humanity in order to save it, as Elisha united his body with that of the dead child.

b. The problem was Gehazi. Some rabbinic commentators maintain that Gehazi didn't heed Elisha's instruction not to greet people on the way. Instead, Gehazi expressed skepticism to those he encountered that a stick could raise the dead. Consequently, Gehazi received according to his faith, meaning that he got nothing in exchange for his lack of faith!

c. The Jewish commentator Rashi, however, holds that Gehazi did the opposite: he bragged to people along the way that he was about to raise someone from the dead! God and Elisha wanted Gehazi to approach this task with humility, which was why Elisha told Gehazi to focus on his urgent task, rather than opening his big mouth and bragging along the way. Because Gehazi glorified himself rather than God, his attempt at a miracle did not work.

I tend to go with this explanation rather than (b.), for Gehazi believed in the power of God through Elisha. Earlier, he told Elisha that the woman was childless, implying his belief that Elisha could cause her to conceive. So I doubt that Gehazi's problem was a lack of faith. Rather, I think he believed that Elisha had power, but he didn't focus on God.

d. Elisha misdiagnosed the problem. He thought that the child was sick and unconscious, not dead. And so he sent Gehazi with a remedy: to touch the boy's head with a stick, a ritual that Akkadians used for exorcism against disease and fever. But this didn't work because the boy didn't have a disease or a fever: he was dead. And so Elisha used a Mesopotamian ritual for that problem, and he raised the dead boy.

e. Elisha sent Gehazi with the staff of a prophet, indicating Elisha's faith in the prophetic office as a means to raise the dead. But God didn't want Elisha to glorify the prophetic office. God desired for Elisha to glorify God. Only when Elisha abandoned faith in his staff and prayed to God was there progress toward's the child's resurrection.

f. God was teaching Elisha perseverance. When we don't get what we want in prayer, we should keep making our request to God. Similarly, Elisha didn't give up when the staff didn't work, but he entreated the LORD more earnestly.

All of these different ideas contain valuable lessons, in my humble opinion. I like it when my weekly quiet times give me practical spiritual concepts!