By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

Author Archive

Source Code in Plato’s Cave

Disclaimer: This is more of a review than Source Code deserves.

I watched Source Code last night in the best way possible for that film: free streaming from Amazon. I’m glad I didn’t spend any money to see it in the theater or gas to get there. It has a glaringly implausible story line, a zero-chemistry “romance”, straight-out-of-the-box characters, and a twist you saw coming after the first minute of the film. I think script development took a day and involved a lot of cut and paste. On the plus side, I would love it if my Metra rail car was like the one in the movie. I’d even take conductors with handcuffs on their belts though I’m a bit concerned about giving them a gun protected by such ineffective locks.

So why bother with a review if the movie was so cookie cutter? Not so much because of the film making but more because of the social and (accidental) philosophical commentary contained in the tissue paper thin script. For starters, it used to be that the military-industrial complex were the people with the evil motives in films like this. James Cameron’s Avatar is a ham-handed, overwrought example. In Source Code, only the civilian side of the duo has the greedy and evil motivations; Captain Goodwin is clearly bothered by the experiment and does the right thing in the end against her civilian bosses orders. That’s a twist. Perhaps it is a reflection of our American communal guilt over how we treated the Vietnam vets when they returned. Hate the mission, love the soldier. And yet, it doesn’t really absolve the military. The Source Code project is housed at Nellis AFB so the unnamed military leadership who don’t appear in the film are still in cahoots. Hate the mission and leadership but love the solider, I guess. Political correctness didn’t go away, it just got more nuanced.

And don’t think for a moment that this film isn’t packed with political correctness. As Jake Gyllenhaal’s Captain Stevens is trying to find the terrorist who blew up the train, the first person he goes after is darker skinned, perhaps of Indian descent. Jake’s girlfriend on the train even utters “racial profiling now” as he investigates the man. And, as in 2006’s Deja Vu starring Denzel Washington, the terrorist is a white guy. Now, that isn’t too far-fetched, Timothy McVeigh was a white terrorist. At the same time, statistically the biggest terrorist threat to America doesn’t come from domestic terrorists. Still, if you commit that to film you’re reinforcing a stereotype not of terrorists but what the person on the screen looks like who plays the terrorist. Subtle but strong.

** SPOILER ALERT **

Having mentioned Deja Vu, I can’t help but use that film as a foil for this film’s twist at the end. In Deja Vu, the cockamamie premise was that scientists had opened a wormhole near the earth that would let them look back in time 4 ½ days. Washington decides to climb through that wormhole and saves the beautiful murder victim he’s been watching and has fallen in love with. In Source Code, the rescue takes place only in Gyllenhaal’s mind and yet the twist at the end is that his actions actually changed the course of history. He actually saved the people on the train even though the scientist who created Source Code insists that isn’t possible.

Take a moment to digest the commentary on reality presented in each of these films. Deja Vu is a time travel thriller yet it insists that reality exists beyond us. Washington has to physically move back in time to save the girl. Gyllenhaal’s mind is linked to the last 8 minutes of memory of a dead man from the train, yet when he successfully finds and defuses the bomb, reality is changed. For Source Code, reality exists in the mind.

Keep in mind (eh, sorry, no pun intended) that I don’t believe the screenplay writers thought that hard about this. I think they just came up with what they thought would be a cool twist on a summer popcorn munching action movie. Recall my comments at the beginning about the apparent writing method. Yet, intentional or not, this does make a comment about reality. It can’t not. When we tell stories we talk about reality at some level. If the story is chaotic and incoherent, we present reality as chaotic and incoherent. If the heroes fight against the chaos, the commentary is that reality should be ordered. If reality can be changed by someone’s mind, then reality is presented as figment of our imaginations and we’re actually stuck in Plato’s cave with no way of knowing true reality.

I’m going to wax a bit philosophical for a moment. Source Code’s presentation of reality is unsatisfying and ultimately inconsistent. If reality only exists in the mind, why is it Jake Gyllenhaal’s mind that it exists in and not Captain Goodwin’s or Dr. Rutledge’s?  Or is it that we never actually left Plato’s cave and the twist at the end only exists in Gyllenhaal’s mind too; in reality the train did explode and all those people did die. To compound the problem, how can we hope to figure it out? I mean, beyond the fact that after Gyllenhaal’s eight minutes are up Goodwin pulls the plug and he dies. This inconsistency most likely comes from the hack and slash screen writing and not from an intentional commentary on reality.

Okay, it is just a lame movie, but it raises questions about reality. How can we know ultimate reality? We exist in it but the post-modern mindset of doubt demands that we can’t actually know it. Well, that is, beyond the reality of being certain that we can’t know reality. Stop asking those kinds of questions and just doubt like the rest of us. In the end, we can know reality because reality exists beyond our doubting minds and has revealed itself to us. God is ultimate reality and he isn’t content to let us wallow in doubt. He speaks. He acts. He comes and dies and rises. And in this speaking and acting, he confronts our doubts about reality. Reality isn’t the shadows of a puppet show on the wall of a cave nor is it a lie we must overcome because even in those scenarios there is a puppet master and someone who told the lie. There is a reality beyond the reality we fumble with and it has interacted with us. And if it has then we know, at the very least, something of that reality. Plato knew the puppet show wasn’t real and that reality exists outside the cave. Buddha knew that things weren’t right and looked for what was.

In the end we come back to a riff on Descartes, “I doubt therefore I am.” If there is someone to doubt reality exists, then there must really be someone to do the doubting. So if I am doubting, then I exist. Even if I’m just a brain in a vat (which Gyllenhaal’s character essentially is) then there really exists a brain and there really exists a vat. There is a reality beyond me and I can hope to understand it and interact with it. This is the way out of Plato’s cave, just follow the footprint Descartes left in the sand. What is finally portrayed in Source Code was not a way out of the cave, but the notion that we can control the shadows on the wall with our minds. There is no way out of the cave but if we follow the Disney gospel and just believe in ourselves, we can change reality as it is.

If that’s the case, make up your legs and walk out of the vat.

Modern Deism


Although there were [at the time of the American Revolution] varieties of deism, the typical beliefs encompassed a God who guarantees justice via the application of punishments and rewards in the afterlife. It is a distilled version of the Christian faith that avoids question of miracles, complicated doctrines such as the Trinity, and ritual disputes such as whether a person should be baptized via immersion or sprinkling and at what age. Although we do not discuss deism very often outside of historical surveys, the propositions are highly recognizable as representing the worldview of a great many people today. – The End of Secularism, Hunter Baker, page 68

That They Might Ponder

Bible translation is a tricky task. When you translate, to some degree, you select words that approximate the originals. You have to. For example, the word logos in John 1 doesn’t have an English equivalent that captures all of the meaning of the Greek word. Logos means “word” literally, but it also has a sense of the ultimate idea of things in Greek philosophy. But to make it even more complicated, John 1 begins with “In the beginning…” which would probably cause a Hebrew reader to think of Genesis 1. When he or she heard the word logos, he or she would think of how God spoke the universe into existence. So what John is doing is selecting a word that has various nuances of meaning to different members or his audience. All the meanings are true and intended, so what he goes on to say will most likely blow out the limited categories each audience has placed on the concept of logos. The logos became flesh and dwelt among us. Whoa.

I use that example to make the point that Bible translation is a complicated task. Because of that, there are various approaches to doing it. You can start with a literal, word-for-word translation that then tries to make the sentence make sense in English. But even then, you have to take into consideration the context to decide which English word best fits the Greek word you’re trying to translate. Still, you’re going after each and every word. Another approach is to read the entire unit (sentence/paragraph/phrase) and get the idea of it and then translate it into English. Don’t worry so much about the individual words, get the thought. The first translation approach is called “essentially literal” and goes for word-for-work accuracy. The second is called a “dynamic equivalence” and goes for thought-for-thought accuracy. The ESV and NASB are essentially literal translations and the NIV and NLT are dynamic equivalence translations.

Jim Hamilton, a trusted Bible commentator, recently reflected on his problems with the dynamic equivalence approach. Pay attention to his qualifications first:

Let me be clear: the particular practitioner of the method of dynamic equivalence is not the problem…Moreover, my concern about this issue does not primarily arise from the treatment of gender language. This post is not me ranting against the NIV 2011. This post is me stating that I reject dynamic equivalence translation theory because of the logical outcomes of the method. The method is the problem.

The crux of the problem for Hamilton comes down to this, and I agree: “The method bothers me because God inspired the biblical authors to write certain words, and translations can only be identified as the word of God insofar as ‘they faithfully represent the original’ (Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Article X).” Evangelicals believe that God inspired not just the concepts behind the Biblical text but the very words themselves therefore Evangelicals should translate the Bible that way.

Hamilton goes on to give an interesting example from John’s gospel. He focused the issue on John 9:24 and the word “glory”.  After looking at how a dynamic equivalence translation handles it he notes:

The problem is that the translator has decided to render what (he thinks) the text means rather than translate the words of the author. In doing this, the translator has eliminated one of John’s key words, removing this occurrence of glory, and created a non-existent instance of another one of John’s key words by putting truth in the text when John did not have it there.

“But,” the argument goes, “the _____ (fill in the blank with your favorite dynamic equivalence translation) is much easier to read and understand! I have a hard time following the _____ (fill in the blank with any essentially literal translation)!” Hamilton’s answer to that honors God and man:

Human beings are made in the image of God. They have enormous capacity. Give them a literal, wooden translation, and they might be forced to slow down and think as they read. They might ponder. They might begin to recognize certain Johannine styles of phrasing things–if translators would give them John’s actual words.

Okay, so he overstates the point. To give the readers John’s actual words, you’d have to leave the text untranslated. However, Hamilton’s final words are wise and worth taking literally: “Learn the Biblical languages if you can. If you can’t, stick with the literal translations, and be suspicious of the experts who tell you that words like ‘literal’ really aren’t that helpful.”

The Wonder of the Spheres

From our perspective, the heavens move across the sky. That’s why we speak of “sunrise” and “when the sun goes down.” But the reality is that the earth is spinning on its axis, all the while moving in an ellipse around the sun which is itself swinging around the galactic core.

Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades
or loose the cords of Orion?
Can you lead forth the [constellation] Mazzaroth in their season,
or can you guide the Bear with its children?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth? – Job 38:31-33

He who made the Pleiades and Orion,
and turns deep darkness into the morning
and darkens the day into night…
the LORD is his name – Amos 5:8

Calling

Bill Mounce is a NT Greek professor and has written an excellent introductory Greek grammar. I was kind of surprised to read his blog entry today where he discusses his first shot at public speaking:

And when I got down I said to myself, “If there is one thing I now know, it is that God has not gifted or called me to speak in public!”

Well, years later we know that wasn’t the case. John Piper has a similar story about how he started speaking. I like the way Mounce ends his post:

Gifts and calling have to be nurtured, developed, practiced. So be patient. Don’t think you necessarily made a vocational mistake just because you are struggling with term papers taking finals, or delivering what in your mind was the worse sermon ever preached. These are the fires we get to walk through in order to learn and to grow.

There is a place for spiritual gifts assessments and tools like that but don’t think that the gifts and talents God gives you are always going to be immediately obvious to you nor are they necessarily things you’re good at and comfortable with. They’re not necessarily set when you are born or born again either. They may come and go as God uses you in different situations.

But Bill’s point above is that what God is calling you to may involve a struggle to get there. It isn’t always the easiest path or the one with least resistance. But whatever it is, if God is calling you there, he’ll provide the grace to make it through as well.

No Nepotism In Play

These are the inheritances that the people of Israel received in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun and the heads of the fathers’ houses of the tribes of the people of Israel gave them to inherit. Their inheritance was by lot, just as the Lord had commanded by the hand of Moses for the nine and one-half tribes. For Moses had given an inheritance to the two and one-half tribes beyond the Jordan, but to the Levites he gave no inheritance among them. For the people of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim. And no portion was given to the Levites in the land, but only cities to dwell in, with their pasturelands for their livestock and their substance. – Joshua 14:1-4

Israel’s leaders divided up the land of Canaan amongst the tribes. Eight and a half tribes got the land of Canaan, two and a half tribes got land across the Jordan river. But the tribe of Levi didn’t get any land, just a few cities. If this allocation was purely political, Moses could have given Levi land equally amongst the other tribes. But instead, “To the tribe of Levi alone Moses gave no inheritance. The offerings by fire to the Lord God of Israel are their inheritance, as he said to him.” (Joshua 13:14)

Can you imagine how unfair it would have been had the Lord given Levi both the burnt offerings and land? They wouldn’t need to survive on the food they raised because they’d have the offerings from the tabernacle/temple coming in to them. The tribe of Levi would soon have become the most wealthy and powerful tribe in the nation. And this was Moses’ tribe don’t forget. If nepotism was in play in the division of the land, the Levites would have made out.

I was reminded this morning to not look on what God has given my neighbor or fellow church member and think they got a better deal. The Levites could have looked at the great pasture lands the other tribes got and felt like they got ripped off. The other tribes could have looked at the Levites and been jealous that they got to eat from the offerings they gave to God; the best of their labors! In the end, all of the land was the Lord’s and all his people enjoyed it. Some by laboring in the land and some by laboring in the tabernacle/temple. They all worked together and benefited.

When I graduated from seminary, I envisioned myself pastoring a church somewhere. It wasn’t like I had radical ideas of what church could be like and how I was going to win the world to Jesus. I just hoped to lead a church to moderate growth and to have an impact in the community God had called us to. That didn’t work out. Turned out that I’m not a church planter and no existing churches needed me to be their pastor. It was a confusing time for me. What was this whole seminary thing about then? To speak metaphorically, I was trying to figure out what tribe I was in: Levi or one of the others? Did I work the land or the offerings? And to be honest, for a while I was envious of the Levites.

While that metaphor works to a certain point, things are different in the New Covenant. We all are, after all “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession”. The calling of each member of the New Covenant is “that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once [we] were not a people, but now [we] are God’s people; once [we] had not received mercy, but now [we] have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10). My role, whether I’m in full time ministry or not is to be a Levite according to the gifts and abilities God has given me. Seminary was not a mistake nor is it wasted, I’m being used in a role I had not anticipated. And that’s okay. I didn’t miss out on any inheritance even if what I got doesn’t look like what my classmates got.

Camping on the Fringe

So this is how he got there:

[Harold] Camping says that because Jesus was crucified on Friday, April 1, 33 AD, and that it takes exactly 365.2422 days for the earth to complete one orbit of the sun, we can conclude that, on April 1, 2011, Jesus was crucified exactly 722,449.07 days ago. Add 51 days to this to get to May 1, and you get a figure of 722,500.07.

Round that down to the nearest integer, and you get 722,500, which is an important number because it is the square of 5 x 17 x 10 . The number five, says Camping, represents atonement. Ten represents completeness, and 17 represents heaven. Multiply all these together – twice – and you get 722,500. Therefore the apocalypse kicks off on Saturday, May 21.

Don’t know why I didn’t see it. Oh, because I don’t read my Bible that way. I take it as a piece of literature that can be read and understood for what it says. Like:

But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son,but the Father only. – Matthew 24:36

I take that to mean that no one but God the Father knows the date. But please notice that there IS a date. People laugh and scoff at Camping, and rightfully so, but don’t laugh and scoff at Jesus’ return. Camping is wrong even if Jesus shows up tomorrow but don’t miss the fact that he is returning.

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.”- 2 Peter 3:1-4

My Desires are Stupid

Lord, I want to be free. I want my desires so changed into accord with reality so that I can do what I want to do and never regret it. That’s what I want. And so I’m going hard after Jesus to change me, because many of my desires are stupid. – John Piper, prayer after preaching on John 8:30-36.

Many of my desires are stupid and I don’t even know it. I’m counting on the Lord to change them or make me aware of how stupid they are.

1,000 Cuts

I heard this interview with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on NPR last night and it keeps rattling around my mind. It is a short 4 minute interview, take a moment to listen:

Transcript here.

So basically, Al-Qaida’s strategy is to bankrupt the US by making security so expensive that it breaks the economy. I don’t know if that would work but it is at least making travel a huge pain. What got me scratching my head is, assuming that the plan would work, how do we fight against it? There isn’t a country to attack or assets to freeze. There is no large-scale invasion to repel, just a series of small attacks that make us continually ramp up security in more and more areas. Even if it doesn’t break the US economy it does slowly rob us of our freedom. So how do we respond?

Oddly enough, this morning the answer that made sense to me was the same answer I’ve been toying with as a response to the getting the middle class back to work, which is the REAL threat to the US economy. When the housing bubble burst, it weakened an already hobbled middle class. The money that should trickle down from the rich in the US is currently going to fund the blooming Chinese and Indian middle classes. The Tea Party keeps talking about cutting taxes and the President keeps talking about education and infrastructure and in my mind neither one of these answers the question: how do we get the middle class back to work?

So where does fighting Al-Qaida and employing our middle class come together? Green technology. Whether you’re Al Gore or a climate change denier you have to admit that the rest of the world is very excited about the climate. According to Gartenstein-Ross, Al-Qaida will not touch global oil production because they want to use that revenue stream to fund the (theoretically) coming global Islamic caliphate. So what would happen if the US became the world leader in creating and producing green technology? We could employ many in our middle class from engineers designing it to blue collar workers producing it and export it to the world. We would have to be careful to not export the production (again) but I believe there is a worldwide market for green technology that actually works.

At the same time, green technology would help us ween ourselves from our oil addiction. This would change global economic dynamics and serve to un-fund the potential caliphate. What else does the Middle East have to export? Sand. This could be demoralizing to Al-Qaida and their potential recruits. Also, there is a general suspicion that some of the oil money that goes to Middle Eastern nations winds up in terrorist hands. If we can diminish our demand for that oil it would being to remove those funds as well.

Seems like a win-win to me. Like I said, you don’t have to buy the global warming argument to see the benefit of this approach. Now, if only we heard a presidential candidate or a political party think along these lines instead of either supporting or opposing unions and taxes in order to be re/elected.

I Think Paul Miller Has Been Stalking Me

The Kindle version of Paul Miller’s book A Praying Life: Connecting With God in a Distracting World is free right now so I picked it up. I’m hardly into the first chapter and I feel like Miller has been inside my head when I try to pray. He pretty accurately described my prayer life. And, unless I’ve missed something, I think he may have diagnosed my problem as well:

A Visit To A Prayer Therapist

Let’s image that you see a prayer therapist to get your prayer life straightened out. The therapist says, “Let’s begin by look at your relationship with your heavenly Father. God said, ‘I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me’ (2 Corinthians 6:18). What does it mean that you are a son or daughter of God?”

You reply that it means you have complete access to your heavenly Father through Jesus. You have true intimacy, based not on how good you are but on the goodness of Jesus. Not only that, Jesus is your brother. You are a fellow heir with him.

The therapist smiles and says, “That is right. You’ve done a wonderful job of describing the doctrine of Sonship. Now tell me what it is like for you to be with your Father? What is it like to talk with him?”

You cautiously tell the therapist how difficult it is to be in your Father’s presence, even for a couple of minutes. Your mind wanders. You aren’t sure what to say. You wonder, Does prayer make any difference? Is God even there? Then you feel guilty for your doubts and just give up.

Your therapist tells you what you already suspect. “Your relationship with your heavenly Father is dysfunctional. You talk as if you have an intimate relationship, but you don’t. Theoretically, it is close. Practically, it is distant. You need help.”

Pray until you pray. – D. A. CarsonOkay, maybe not that bad but prayer is a struggle more often than not for me. I suspect it might be for you as well. Since I’ve only started the book I can’t tell yet if Miller has any good answers but at the least he’s nailed the problem. Just before this quote he talked about how busy and noisy our lives are and how filled with electronic distractions. Again, he hit me right where I am. It is a little creepy, like he’s watching me or something. Or, and this is more likely, many of us share the same problems and struggles and temptations in prayer and closeness to God.

I’m going to keep reading. I just hope Miller can offer some real help. I am currently trying to tame the internet beast in my life by doing things like reading. Maybe he can provide some incentive along those lines!