Feel Free to Skip

This is just a vent. Feel free to skip this entry; there are no interesting thoughts here.

I woke up this morning with a desperate desire to remind myself that I once had a life. So I sat for a long time with a cup of coffee and remembered some of the many many projects I worked on during my career.

I think that's what is the most difficult about my disease: every day is exactly the same as every other one. The only difference is the level of pain and/or weakness and muddle headedness that I'm feeling. Unfortunately, my immunosuppresant drug was discontinued because it was damaging my liver, but they have not yet prescribed a replacement. So, I'm really feeling the pain right now! I've got 4 hours till my next pain pill.

Unbelievably, I continue to lose weight (muscle mass) even though I'm on prednisone. That's truly amazing. The women in my support group give me a lot of grief about it. Most of them have put on nearly 100 pounds from the steroids, and they are on much smaller doses than I am. This muscle loss has got to stop. Everything I read tells me that this muscle is probably irrecoverable.

Anyway, so far this has been one of the tough days. I'll have to work extra hard to get myself out of this mood.

Update: I decided to take myself on a couple outings: to the drugstore to pick up 4 prescriptions waiting for me and then to the seminary bookstore to see what their new New Testament studies professsor was using for his class on the expectations of the messiah in the Old Testament. Sounds trivial. But, I ended up spending the rest of the day in the Emergency Room. I could have sworn from the level of pain that I had broken my back, literally fractured my severely osteoporotic vertebrae, but apparently, it was just a muscle pull. Since I no longer have biceps or shoulder muscles every activity involves my big back muscles.

The interesting thing about it all was that they found an old compression fracture in my thoracic vertebrae. I've been asking for a long time why the docs always test the cervical (neck) and lumbar spine, but ignore the thoracic region. I still don't have an answer, but finding this compression fracture would have explained the pains I first went to the doctor about over two years ago.

Milestone

Well I guess I've crossed a threshold this week: in the same week, I've put my Mizuno Pro-II irons up for sale on ebay because I know I'll never be able to use them again and I've placed an order for my first wheelchair.

I can still walk, but after 20 minutes I'm exhausted, my legs start to quiver, and I become afraid of falling.

Although nothing has changed in my physical ability or disability (though I'm feeling some decline) the mere action of selling my clubs makes it feel somehow official -- I am a disabled person.

I have also joined an on-line support group -- too few of us with myositis for there to be a live, local one. It's the best thing I ever did! I'm very impressed with the members of the group: they are very knowledgeable and quick to help.

I've kind of lost track of the other issues I normally track. I've become absorbed in trying to understand my disease, but, hopefully, I'll get back to the news again shortly.

PC!

My new laptop, a Lenovo x61 tablet PC, is on it's way! Shipped early, but hung up in Shanghai. I confess I'm a little concerned about the quality control on a PC made entirely in China. But then, I bought two years of on site service to go with it.

The auxiliary digitizer pen I bought with it is quite narrow. I'm nervous as to whether this will solve my problem with spastic hands. It depends on how effective the "snap to" grids are on the software I want to use. At this point, I can still get to the vicinity of the grid points with a pen--not so much with a mouse.

I also ordered OneNote 2007. We'll have to see if this is more a tool than a nuisance. Often these things sound great but end up annoying me no end.

Either Friday or Monday, I'll have my major new electronic gadget!

Update: Maybe my next gadget will be a Kindle. They're almost there, and it's perfect, 10.5 ounces, for a person like me for whom the weight of the book has become one of the primary conditions as to whether I can read it.

New Birth and Resurresction

Ok, Eric, here's one for you.

In Jesus' interaction with Nicodemus, he says , "Unless one is born of the water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." So, Jesus seems to say there is an ontological mismatch between spirit and flesh.

Yet, it seems that Jesus is talking about new birth--being born again--a transformation that occurs long before death.

But then Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:50, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God , nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable ... the dead will inherit the imperishable ..."

So, Paul is obviously talking about the resurrection; not new birth. Yet, there is still an ontological problem: perishable being cannot survive imperishable being.

What is the relationship between the transformation that is new birth (and in-dwelling Spirit) and resurrection?

An obvious hint is: "if He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead dwells in you, who raised Christ Jesus will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." (8:11)

It doesn't seem correct to say that Christians just slowly grow into an ontological change that enables them to survive the new heavens and the new earth. Something dramatic happens at conversion.

But how do we define the relationship between the Christian and the Holy Spirit? That seems to be the key.


(P.S. please pray for my hands: I seem to be losing control all the time. My next appointment with the neurologist is May 23)

ESV Study Bible

With the exception of my Jewish Study Bible, I've never used a study bible consistently. However, from the bit I've seen so far, I would definitely buy and use the ESV Study Bible. It looks like to be available Oct. 2008. It will have great helps on the Old Testsment (the Tanakh)which is usually where most study Bibles fail.

I'd strongly suggestion that this generation stick with one translation, and never change (unlike those of us who had the Living Bible, the New American Standard, the New English Bible, and many others come out at more or less the same time.)

Easter Eve and the Other Wright

Our Easter Eve dinner was a success: very enjoyable and relaxing. We had 26 people total.

However, I was not able to make it through Wright's The Resurrection and the Son of God in time for Easter. I made the mistake of trying to underline the important parts. That slowed me down way too much. So, I set it aside to read his new book Surprised by Hope instead, thinking that would be a quick read. It's not.

Surprised is shorter than Resurrection, and it helpfully summarizes many of that book's arguments. However, it's also very important, articulating the implications of Wright's program. Many of Wright's assertions are challenging to the typical evangelical; for example, Wright believes the most important ethical issue facing Christians today is forgiving Third World debt rather than the sex-related issues we often fixate on.


The basic thesis of the book is that a Platonic dualism has infested the Christian church to a degree not recognized by most Christians. Dualism is assumed in evangelism, in our definitions of the pursuit of holiness and justice, in identifying the basic aim of our lives and the mission of the Church, and so on. The resurrection of Christ upends all of that. The resurrection, by definition, emphasizes physicality and wholeness. To become a disembodied soul in heaven is not the ultimate aim of the human; living in a transformed world with a transformed body doing meaningful work is. Because the resurrection of Jesus has already occurred, long before the general resurrection, the new creation, also future, has invaded the present. Christians can begin now building for the new creation, confident that the product of their present work will be transformed and persist into the eternal future.

It's a very interesting book, one I will read a second time, trying somehow to make notes on it. I disagree with Wright at many points (he often forces false choices, committing the fallacy of the excluded middle, and generally has a bit of a smug tone), but, as I said, it's an important and challenging book, well worth reading carefully.


As a result of reading the book, I bought a compendium of essays on Third World debt to better understand that issue. N.T. Wright's anti-capitalism gets in the way of his argument. He understates the problem of personal, individual corruption; for example, the greed and corruption by individuals at the IMF. Instead he faults structural sins; i.e., capitalism. He claims that no counterargument is valid on this issue, since he is making a moral argument. Offering a capitalist counterargument is equivalent to the Sadducees' denial of the resurrection of the dead; they neither knew the scriptures nor the power of God. However, despite the weakness of his argument, I have to agree that alleviating world poverty has to be a higher priority for evangelicals.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Reading Wright can sometimes be very frustrating because he many asides. He says, for example, that many of the models of the atonement are valid and necessary for a full picture of what occurred on the cross. Therefore, if one were to criticize him for neglecting penal substitution, he'd point to this one almost parenthetical statement to counter the criticism. However, the whole book assumes Christus Victor as the foundational model of atonement.

NCAA Tournament

It's been hard for me to get into the NCAA tournament this year, usually my favorite event of the year. But how could anyone not cheer for this underdog?

ESPN - Davidson vs. Wisconsin - Recap - March 28, 2008

Holy Week - Saturday

We'll be having our dinner celebration a day early this year. I have a cancer-screening test on Monday and have to cleanse my system all day Easter Sunday. So, we're having 26 guests over for a special dinner Saturday evening.

I've been thinking about an appropriate meditation. What happened on the Saturday of Holy Week? What do we commemorate about it? Jesus was in the tomb. He had been buried the previous evening. What can I say about Saturday?

Paul summarizes the earliest oral tradition he had received: "For I delivered to you as of first important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3,4 ESV, my emph). So, "he was buried" is almost incidental; it's sandwiched between the two important events that occurred "in accordance with the Scriptures."

But, wasn't Jesus also buried "in accordance with the Scriptures?"

Yes, he was. An easily-overlooked statement in the great Suffering Servant passage of Isaiah 53 is this: "And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death" (v.9). "With the wicked" and "with a rich man," how would that work out? Would his grave be with criminals or with a rich man? Which is it?

Jesus was crucified with criminals. His body would normally have been cast off somewhere with theirs. But, "when it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean shroud and laid it in his own new tomb" (Matt 27:57-60 ESV). So, Jesus' grave had been made before his death to be with "the wicked" but Joseph of Arimathea overturned that plan, but not until after Jesus' death. Jesus was laid in a rich man's tomb instead of in a criminal's grave, and Isaiah's strange sentence fits the event exactly.

Now, conservative scholars would argue that the prophecy was written by Isaiah in the 8th century before Christ, over 700 years before the events recorded; critical scholars attribute this to Deutero-Isaiah, who addresses the Jews in exile, still about 500 years before the event. Either way, the burial was "in accordance with the Scriptures" in a surprising way. Isaiah's is a stunning prediction hundreds of years before the event.

This is what we'll meditate on this Saturday.

Roger Simon's Reaction to Obama (Plus Something about Grandma)

I find this very moving. Click on the link:
Pajamas Media: 'Barack, I Didn’t Do It for This': An Homage to Andrew Goodman

Also, being very disturbed by the equivalence Obama drew between Wright and his grandmother, and hearing that he had used the same anecdote about her in his first book, I decided to look it up. It's not exactly the same scenario as he described in his speech.

I took her into the other room and asked her what had happened.
"A man asked me for money yesterday. While I was waiting for the bus."
"That's all?"
Her lips pursed with irritation. "He was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn't come, I think he might have hit me over the head."
I returned to the kitchen. Gramps was rinsing his cup, his back turned to me. "Listen," I said, "why don't you just let me give her a ride. She seems pretty upset."
"By a panhandler?"
"Yeah, I know--but it's probably a little scary for her, seeing some big man block her way. It's really no big deal."
He turned around and I saw now that he was shaking. "It is a big deal. It's a big deal to me... Before you came in, she told me the fellow was black." He whispered the word. "That's the real reason she's bothered. And I just don't think that's right."

Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), 88.

How is this equivalent to Rev. Wright's continuing to instill racial hatred and anti-semitism into his congregation, claiming, for example, that whites created the AIDS virus to commit genocide against blacks? This anecdote deals with an elderly couple who find their own residual racism regrettable and seek to disavow it, even trembling at the wrongness of it. Does Wright?

There's nothing in this story about just a general fear of black men walking down the street.

I'm sorry, but I lost a lot of respect for Obama over this.

Ending a Sentence with Two Prepositions

More reaction to Obama's speech. This one from one of my favorite bloggers: neoneocon. She always has a very interesting perspective.

I'm feeling more negative towards it the more I think about it. I imagine this is one of those speeches that will take a while to make your mind up about.

ESV Personal Size Reference Bibles

This is an almost perfect Bible: ESV Bible Blog: Personal Size Reference Bibles.

I've been looking for smaller Bibles because of the problem with my hands. These are available through Westminster Bookstore at 45% off. I ordered one with the cheaper TruTone binding. I like everything about it--except the binding. I just don't like the feel of the TruTone. So, I'm returning it and getting the genuine leather instead.

I still prefer my New American Standard for my personal study because that's what I've used for over 30 years, but I take an ESV to church and our small group meeting. There are a couple things about the ESV single-column reference Bibles that I prefer to the NASB Bibles:

1) Crossway placed the cross-references on the inside margins, leaving more room for the text.

2) ESV's paragraphing and headings are much better than the NASB's. Occasionally, the NASB will place a heading in the midst of a logical paragraph. (Of course, the original documents did not have paragraphs, so this is a subjective judgment.)

Obama's Speech on Race

Drudge Report has Obama's speech on race in America, here. It's a politically brave speech and very well-written.

I think it's too late for him, though. I myself still can't get the lewd images of Rev. Wright talking about Bill Clinton "riding [Monica Lewinsky] dirty"--while pantomiming the action--out of my mind. Also, it's difficult to believe that such hate-filled speech was as occasional as Obama says given the reaction of the congregation. You don't see shock on the faces of his hearers but excitement and appreciation. His analogy of a family member you're stuck with, such as his white grandmother, who says stuff that makes you cringe just doesn't work.

It's too bad. A general election contest between Barack Obama and John McCain would more likely have been a contest of ideas than if Hillary Clinton wins.

Update: very interesting reaction and comments on Ann Althouse's page.

Latin

This is probably very foolish because of my disability with my hands ... yesterday I ordered Wheelock's Latin from Amazon. I will not be able to do the exercises. However, I should at least be able to read through the text to find out how the language works. I've always considered myself uneducated without Latin.

A Software Recommendation

In preparation for Easter, I'm reading N.T. Wright's The Resurrection and the Son of God. I was surprised to find a strong commendation of the Nota Bene software package in the preface (p. xx). I checked the prefaces of all three of the volumes in his Christian Origins and the Question of God series and found that he used Nota Bene for all of them. There's nothing in Nota Bene's marketing materials that cites N.T. Wright's commendation!

I've owned this package for years, but have never really used it. Every time I've written a paper I've been under such a tight deadline (most often due to my own procrastination) that I've defaulted to Microsoft. The superiority of Nota Bene for academic research and note taking is obvious. Now, knowing that N.T. Wright has produced these 800-plus page books with the package, I have more resolve to try to learn it.

One-Time-Only Entry About My Health

Inspired by a couple of blogs chronicling the authors' battles with pain, and, maybe, for the sake of old friends who might look me up, I've decided to post one entry about my health.*

I am currently disabled; that is, I am not able to take seminary classes, or do anything other than sit at home and try to read. I'm in chronic pain; my whole upper body vibrates (yes, that's the right word for it); at times my arms wobble; and, my hands shake constantly. (I am writing this by dictating into Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred v. 9.5. I may upgrade to their Professional edition, which is 508-certified for near complete hands-free control of the PC, but I'm not entirely sure what the benefit is. The upgrade costs almost 4 times what the original package cost me).

My biggest frustration is that I cannot write by hand; that is, I can't write in my journals; I can't mark up or make notes in my books; I can't diagram Greek sentences. My study of Hebrew and Greek has stalled; it's hard to improve with a language if you can't write it. Neither can I hold a book--at least not steady enough so as to be able to read it. I bought myself a lap desk with a tilting top, so I rest my books on that. I also have one position lying in bed with two pillows on my chest that works. Otherwise, I'm stuck. (Laying the book down on a flat surface doesn't work because of problems with my neck).

Unfortunately, I still do not have a diagnosis to explain this condition. We thought I had polymiositis, a rare muscle-wasting auto-immune disorder. It would fit many of the symptoms I've experienced: I lost about 45 pounds of muscle between September and the 1st week of December (when I was put on corticosteroids. I know it was muscle, because my waist size basically stayed the same), the inflammatory markers in my blood tests have been consistently very high, and I had extreme weakness in my proximal muscles: hips, shoulders, and neck. The weakness got so extreme in November that I couldn't get in or out of bed, couldn't dress myself, couldn't lift my feet into the car, and so on.

The corticosteroids had a nearly immediate effect. I felt very much as though my body came back to life. The extreme weakness disappeared. (This, of course, is relative. I've been working with physical therapists for months and still can't curl more than 3 pounds.) However, some of the pain has remained, the shakiness I started to experience in October is disabling, and I feel myself slowly lapsing back into my helpless state. The corticosteroids have their own adverse side-effects, mostly by compromising the immune system.

In February, I had a muscle biopsy of my left quadriceps, which is supposed to be the definitive test for polymiositis. The biopsy came back abnormal, but not indicative of polymiositis. So now my rheumatologist says I have some form of peripheral neuropathy, a neurological disorder, and my neurologist categorically denies the possibility of any neurological problem. The two of them are supposed to confer and get back to me, which they haven't done now two weeks later. (I haven't found a single description of polyneuropathy that fits any of the symptoms I feel.)

The remaining possibility is that this is the "remote effect" of an underlying cancer that is still undetectable. So, I've been going through the basic cancer screening tests. There apparently are cancers that produce symptoms like mine 18 months or so before the cancer shows up. All my doctors say this is unlikely, but we need to test for it just in case.

One of the things that complicated diagnosis originally is that it turns out I had a number of orthopedic problems: a herniated disk in my neck, bony spurs impinging on nerves, etc. I also had a rotator cuff tear in my shoulder as well as bone spurs on my collar bone and shoulder bone. I had surgery on my shoulder. But the surgeon doesn't think surgery on my neck would do any good--I have too many things wrong.

I really have had to face my own mortality this past year. Some of the suggested diagnoses were terminal (one of the most alarming was ALS), and there is still the lingering possibility of a cancer showing up. However, my faith is stronger than it has ever been. I would be lying if I said I never had times when I've wallowed in self-pity--I have. But, I've always been able to remind myself of the sovereign goodness and wisdom of God and get my mind on that instead.

Paul says, in Romans 8:18, "For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed to us" (NASB). I believe this with all my heart. I believe that the resurrection of Jesus gives meaning to all the pain and weakness I feel now, and I am very content!

The danger of a post like this one is that it sounds like whining. I'm not. I am looking forward to this Easter and the ultimate Easter to come.

*(I may, in future, write about the battle for faith in the midst of pain.)

PJM Interview: Carly Fiorina

I am puzzled by feminists' embrace of Hillary Clinton, a woman with no real accomplishments of her own. Pajamas Media has an interview with a woman of real achievement: Pajamas Media: PJM Election Interview: Carly Fiorina. I wonder if this is a step toward a political career for Carly.

David Mamet on the Constitution

Wow! a perfect summary of the political philosophy enshrined in the Constitution from the director, David Mamet, who describes his abandonment of '60s- and '70s-style liberalism in an article found in the Village Voice. It's well worth a read.

we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bulls**t and go straight to firearms.

This, by the way, explains the coincidence of evangelicalism and conservatism. This is the Christian doctrine of Original Sin applied.

Read the whole thing!

An Excellent Book

I've just finished reading one of the best books I've read in a long time--one of the most quotable I've ever read: Tim Keller's The Reason for God, subtitled Belief in an Age of Skepticism. I'll read it again, soon, after I've had a chance to read a couple of the books Keller quotes: N.T. Wright's Simply Christian and The Resurrection of the Son of God. I plan to read the latter in preparation for Easter (800 pages, wonder if I'll make it.)

Bibles

I'm reading the Bible in several different versions these days. In addition to the two English versions that are pretty standard for evangelicals, the English Standard Version and the New American Standard, I'm reading Richmond Lattimore's translation for the New Testament. Lattimore taught Greek at Bryn Mawr College from 1935 until he retired in 1971. He was a poet and noted translator of the Greek classics. His translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey are still regarded as having set the standard for literary Greek translations. He translated the New Testament directly from the Greek without prior commitment to tradition or dogma, but merely regarding the NT as Greek literature. He chose to translate fairly literally so that the individual authors' personalities and styles would show through; he rarely smooths out the awkwardness of a Greek construction. The body of the text has no verse numbers or chapter headings, being laid out like a novel instead. I've really enjoyed reading it because the translation occasionally sounds very odd to an ear accustomed to the evangelical Bibles. Some of his word choices, which at first have seemed implausible, have turned out to be valid possibilities according to the standard lexicons; others reflect his expertise with classical Greek rather than the Koine. All in all, a great read.

I'm also working my way, slowly, through my Jewish Study Bible published by the Jewish Publication Society. I love both the translation (it's very fresh) and the commentary. I used it extensively when I co-taught a series on Isaiah with Dr. Bruce Ware; now I'm focusing on the Torah. This week, I also received Robert Alter's The Five Books of Moses; another literary translation. Alter is well-known for his literary criticism of the Hebrew Bible. As far as I know, he regarded the stories as fiction; his focus was on the literary structure of the text. I've found that he's very helpful in that.

Of course, I'm also reading the Greek and Hebrew texts myself. It is that which has given me an appreciation for the art behind these literary, but faithful, translations.

Going Forward

I've been planning to resuscitate this blog for some time with the intent of avoiding quite so much political blogging.

I recognize that I got a little carried away. After sort of retiring from my career I finally felt the freedom to say what I really think about different political issues. Anyone who thinks that there is no de facto censorship on conservatives within blue-state-based corporations has never actually worked in one. I was constantly shocked at the readiness with which otherwise reasonable people could blast political and religious conservatives while professing the need for diversity in the work place. Some of the most personally offensive jokes I ever heard were told at the beginning of senior management team meetings.

So, I enjoyed writing about all these political matters for awhile. I probably still will write about them to some extent, because I do believe Christians are called to be engaged in the public square, but I hope to write more about the pursuit of personal piety.

Obama's Radical Stance on Abortion

Here's a link to a very important post at Justin Taylor's blog: Between Two Worlds: Obama's Opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act: When, How, and Why

This is what I love about the Internet: you're able to look at source documents to form your own opinion about the news. Please read the linked PDF files for yourself.

Duke

I've missed three Duke games this year. They've lost all three. Coach K doesn't know how important I am to the team.