The Christian Life

The following checklist, found on pages 155–56 of Alan Jacobs’s excellent book, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds (affiliate link), is a worthy addition to “Rapoport’s Rules” and “Adler’s Advice” (mentioned in my previous post, “Help me come up with ‘rules for conversation’!”). Emphasis added in **bold**. When faced with provocation to respond to what someone has said, give it five minutes. Take a walk, or weed the garden, or chop some vegetables. Get your body involved: your body knows the rhythms to live by, and if your mind falls into your body’s rhythm, you’ll have a better chance of thinking. Value learning over debating. Don’t “talk for victory.” As best you can, online and off, avoid the people who fan flames. Remember that you don’t have to respond to what everyone else is responding to in order to signal your virtue and right-mindedness. If you do have to respond to what everyone else is responding to in order to signal your virtue and right-mindedness, or else lose your status in your community, then you should realize that it’s not a community but rather an Inner Ring. Gravitate as best you can, in every way you can, toward people who seem to value genuine community and can handle disagreement with equanimity. Seek out the best and fairest-minded of people whose views you disagree with. Listen to them for a time without responding. Whatever they say, think it over. Patiently, and as honestly as you can, assess your repugnances. Sometimes the “ick factor” is telling; sometimes it’s a distraction from what matters. Beware of metaphors and myths that do too much heavy cognitive lifting; notice what your “terministic screens“ [See pages 90–91] are directing your attention to-and what they’re directing your attention away from; look closely for hidden metaphors and beware the power of myth. Try to describe others’ positions in the language that they use, without indulging in in-other-wordsing. [See pg. 106: “We see it every day. Someone points at an argument—a blog post, say, or an op-ed column—and someone else replies, ‘In other words, you’re saying … ‘ And inevitably the argument, when put in other words, is revealed to be vacuous or wicked.] Be brave.

In my role as Managing Editor for AnglicanPastor.com, I’m realizing the need to develop some “rules for conversation.” We describe the tone that we’re after as “clarity and charity,” which is an excellent summary. However, to guide our blogposts and comments, I think we need something more detailed and concrete. With that in mind, “Rapoport’s Rules” and “Adler’s Advice” seem like excellent starting points. But, if you have any further suggestions, please let me know in the comments! ...

The following is from Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship (usually known as “The Cost of Discipleship” in English, although the original title in German was simply Nachfolge). Bonhoeffer considers how we might respond to Jesus if Jesus were to show up and make the same kinds of concrete commands that he did in the Gospels. NOTE: I’ve taken two paragraphs in the original and broken them up into smaller chunks to facilitate reading here. ...

From “In Praise of Boredom,” by James K.A. Smith. But I know at least this: Instagram won’t save us, and tweeted verse will not undo what we’ve done to ourselves. But neither is there any special enchantment to reading in print. So this is not the Luddite’s redoubt, nostalgically canonizing codex or canvas as if history had come to an end in some glorious past. Every medium now reaches us inside the ecology of attention masterminded by Silicon Valley. We take pictures of our books and coffee, for heaven’s sake. The point isn’t platform but desire: what do we want when we pick up our phones? We don’t need better media, or to romanticize old media. We need to change what we want. ...

I’m reading Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s excellent book, Think Again: How to Reason and Argue. In it (on pages 25–26), I came across “Rapoport’s Rules.” First formulated by mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport and discussed by Daniel Dennett (Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, 31–35), here they are: 1: You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” ...

To start off the semester the other day, we prayed this prayer of confession together as a class. The professor didn’t remember where the prayer was from, so I tracked it down online. According to Justin Taylor, it was written by Bob Kauflin. Holy and righteous God, we confess that like Isaiah, we are a people of unclean lips. But it is not only unclean lips we possess. We are people with unclean hands and unclean hearts. We have broken your law times without number, and are guilty of pride, unbelief, self-centeredness and idolatry. Affect our hearts with the severity of our sin and the glory of your righteousness as we now acknowledge our sins in your holy presence. ...

Based upon my work over at Rookie Anglican, I was asked by The Telos Collective to write a blog post about the different ways that people are coming into Anglicanism. What’s drawing them in? You can read my full post over at the Telos Collective blog, but here’s a taste: Anglican Christianity, precisely because of its weirdness, can remind us that, in the words of Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger in Exploring Ecclesiology, “The church is a cultural community. It is Christ’s eschatological kingdom community, itself a culture that engages other cultures from Christ’s kingdom vantage point” (p. 207). ...

Previously, I catalogued a bunch of different takes on Jordan Peterson, before giving my own take. Since that post, two other pieces about Jordan Peterson have been written that I’d like to share. “Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy,” by Nellie Bowles (New York Times) Nellie Bowles writes Mr. Peterson, 55, a University of Toronto psychology professor turned YouTube philosopher turned mystical father figure, has emerged as an influential thought leader. The messages he delivers range from hoary self-help empowerment talk (clean your room, stand up straight) to the more retrograde and political (a society run as a patriarchy makes sense and stems mostly from men’s competence; the notion of white privilege is a farce). He is the stately looking, pedigreed voice for a group of culture warriors who are working diligently to undermine mainstream and liberal efforts to promote equality. ...

The following is a guest post written by my friend and former college roommate, Zak Weston. Zak’s been working in the area of food ethics, and I asked him to write up a post about why Christians should care about these issues. It’s an area in which I need to make some changes in my own life. He delivered this thought-provoking and challenging piece. I hope you enjoy. Introduction The three or so decisions you make each day about what to eat are some of the most consequential choices you make in your life. ...

UPDATE: Read my post, “Two More Pieces about Jordan Peterson.” If I remember correctly, I first heard of and listened to Jordan Peterson on an episode of The Art of Manliness podcast. (Or perhaps it was this episode.) However, I could be mistaken, because Peterson’s been popping up in conversation all over the place in my circles. Blog posts, podcast episodes, conversations with friends – Peterson has been popping up everywhere, so it seems. ...