Bits and Tidbits, January 2011

Departure: The Case Against Health. Really interesting piece on how antithetical our culture's approach to "health" and diet is.

Decisions

(Thanks to Dave Walker)

Super Bowl halftime-- a british tradition?

Super Bowl 44, on February 7, will feature the band The Who as the halftime show. I love The Who-- don't get me wrong. I'm sure it will be a great show, even though the original members of the band are old enough to be grandparents to many of the NFL players.

My issue isn't with The Who; it's not really an issue, but more simply pointing out something I find interesting.

American football (which is what folks everywhere outside of the U.S. call our game)-- and especially the Super Bowl-- are among the most "American" things around. Yet, the trend over the recent years has been to have a British artist or band perform for halftime. Take a look at this list from the last decade (British artists in bold):

2010: The Who
2009: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
2008: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
2007: Prince (the artist formerly known as "Love Symbol #2")
2006: The Rolling Stones
2005: Paul McCartney
2004: Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Nelly, P. Diddy, Kid Rock
2003: Shania Twain, No Doubt, Sting
2002: U2
2001: Aerosmith, 'N Sync, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, Nelly

So, about half of the years we've had British bands or artists. (In fact, it looks almost like they picked up on the "trend" after 2006 and intentionally went the other way for a few years before coming back to The Who.)

What gives? Are American band just not that good?

Another note: after the 2004 "wardrobe malfunction" debacle, it looks like they've very intentionally moved away from acts that aren't old folks who either a) aren't recording any longer, or b) haven't recorded anything that has had a lot of success in years.

In other words, there seems to be a "no one under 45, and British if possible" policy in place. Anyone else notice this?

Bits and Tidbits, January 2010

• Digital Mom Report-- here's a fascinating report on how moms use computers and online technology. Check Chuck Warnock's summary of it for a taste before downloading the whole document. (HT: Chuck)
• Fourth Turning predictions-- I've been avidly interested in Strauss and Howe's The Fourth Turning and its implications for several years. This is a list of five predictions for the coming year(s), based on the theories in that book. Very interesting. (They predicted 9/11 in that book, by the way, in not so many words.)
• Was Pat Robertson Hateful (this time)?-- this piece by David Sessions at Patrol offers the best summary of the background from Pat Robertson's recent, er, comment. It also has thoughtful remarks about Pat and his tendency to comment.
• "Has the Internet Changed Our Thinking?"-- this is the 2010 question from the Edge World Question Center, an informally-organized group committed to intellectual inquiry. So far this question has generated hundreds of answers in essay form, with great content like this opening sentence from David Dalrymple: "Filtering, not remembering, is the most important skill for those who use the Internet." (HT: NY Times)
• U.S. Military "Jesus" guns-- Bible references added to Pentagon-purchased gun sights. This one gets the award for the biggest waste of time and money so far in 2010-- from time in investigating the "story" to time reporting it to my time reading it and now posting about it. And yes, I'm wasting your time with it, too; but only because it's a classic example of how ridiculous so-called news reporting has become in our culture. (Bonus link: see this thoughtful piece about the whole thing at Patrol.)

Sermon texts for January 2010

Updated schedule on 1/26...
January 3 John 4:19-26 -- Worship in Spirit & Truth, part 2
January 10 Romans 8:28-30 (Guest Preacher Doug Barcroft)
January 17 Genesis 1:1-2 -- From chaos to creation
January 24 Genesis 1:3-31 -- By His word...
January 31 Genesis 2:1-3 -- The blessing of holiness

Book Review: The Liturgical Year by Joan Chittister

I recently received a copy of The Liturgical Year: The spiraling adventure of the spiritual life by Joan Chittister, which is one of the latest titles in Thomas Nelson's series on "The Ancient Practices" of the church. (Disclaimer: I received this copy for free from Thomas Nelson, in exchange for my commitment to write this review.)

I read another title in this series, Fasting by Scot McKnight, last spring-- and it was excellent. I was excited about the opportunity to read this title, too, for two reasons: a) I have increasingly become a student of the idea of the liturgical calendar over the last several years, and b) I hoped to find a similar unpacking of complex and somewhat obscure ideas in this title that I had found in McKnight's Fasting.

I must say, I was/am quite disappointed.

There is a segment of Christians for whom everything is about the sentiment. The historical foundations and bases for Christianity serve very little purpose for them-- indeed, if those things were entirely removed or discredited, nothing much would change about the way that they think, feel, and practice their version of Christianity. (I would go so far as to say, like Paul, that they gospel they offer is no true Gospel-- because Paul himself appealed to the very real and historical bases of the faith as the thing that makes it credible instead of lamentable.) I may unpack this idea in a future blog post, because I think it is both common in some circles and dangerous.

That said, Chittister's presentation of Christianity and liturgical practice dips into this pool of sentimentality often. It's not hard to recognize; in fact, there are some give-away phrases that show up frequently. When I read Chittister speak of "the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith" in an opening chapter, I had a hunch of what was to come. Unfortunately, I was right.

The problem with the dichotomy of "the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith" is that the two are historically one-- there is no difference, yet the writer (and others) speak of them, and deal with them, as if they are distinct. Likewise, the problem with Chittister's larger development of The Liturgical Year is that she deals with the historical and biblical aspects as distinct from what makes its it valuable.

The thing about the concept of the liturgical year is that it is biblically, theologically, and historically-based: every concept (at least of the contemporary protestant practices of it) is rooted in a biblical and/or theological foundation. Every piece of it has a biblical/theological meaning and purpose. Likewise, each part-- and the whole-- has a rich foundation of historical practice and purpose. It would not be a stretch to imagine a book filled entirely of the biblical, theological, and historical discussions around each aspect of the liturgical year (which is what I had hoped that The Liturgical Year would be).

Those parts of the discussion are in there; but they are included anecdotally, or sometimes to set up a discussion on inconsistency or problem. But they aren't the focus of the book; they are not even a part of the focus. The thrust of the book, it seems to me, is the sentiment of the seasons. In other words: in the eyes of the author, the importance of the liturgical year isn't so much what it means; it's what it means to you or to me.

A full, well-lived Christian life, though, has plenty of things to be sentimental about without making everything about being sentimental. The Liturgical Year wastes an opportunity to be a book of substance instead of mere sentiment.

Obesity

There was a news report on TV recently that said that the number of dangerously obese Americans climbed from 15% to 35% in the last 30 years. This is a shocking number, and is worth commenting on.

First of all, I agree that more and more Americans (and it seems to be unique to our country's culture-- probably a confluence of a number of things, not the least of which is the sheer excess that defines us) are overweight, and many dangerously so. Without a doubt, this is a culture-wide problem, and one I will say more about in a moment.

But I also need to say this: I think those numbers are inflated-- and maybe greatly so. That's because they are based on the concept of the "Body-Mass Index" or BMI, which is a simple calculation based on your height and current weight. BMI is widely-regarded as an accurate measure of fat percentage, and medical science has determined that higher fat percentages are strongly connected to all sorts of health problems.

But BMI is not as accurate as a measure of body-fat percentage in many people. It is a formula developed in the mid-1800s, and people's body shapes, diets, and lifestyles were very different then. It assumes things like an average proportional body-build to height, which simply doesn't apply as people vary from the average heights (which, by the way, were very different 150+ years ago). In the mid-ranges of BMI, studies have shown that it fails to distinguish between fat and lean body mass. BMI is a popular tool among "the masses" even though it doesn't seem to be taken very seriously by doctors and health professionals; maybe this is because of our obsession with morbid thinness as a culture. One study concluded:

Although body mass index (BMI) has been adopted by WHO as an international measure of obesity, it lacks a theoretical basis, and empirical evidence suggests it is not valid for all populations.
A. Bagust and T. Walley, An Alternative to Body Mass Index for Standardizing Body Weight for Stature, Q J Med 2000; 93: 589-596.

How do I know this? Because BMI always calculates me as way outside of the categories that I should fit into. At my current weight, it categorizes me as obese. Now, I freely admit that I am overweight, and I am working on making corrections on that. But I'm not obese, according to my physician. In fact, if I lost all of the weight that I'm aiming to lose, BMI still shows me being overweight-- though my physician has told me that he doesn't think I need to lose any more than I've targeted. (BMI has my ideal weight at 210 pounds-- almost 80 pounds less than I am now.)

So I think we need better formulas informing us about obesity. But I still think it is a problem-- and it's one that Christians don't take seriously enough.

In a culture that is simultaneously increasingly obese and also obsessed with an unrealistic and unhealthy concept of "thin" as beautiful and ideal, one way that Christians could-- and should-- be counter-cultural (and culture-transforming) is to exhibit proper moderation in the way we think about food, weight, and body size. We should stop comparing ourselves to the magazine covers, TV and movie personalities, and other worldly icons; we should start comparing ourselves, and our current health and eating practices, to what is healthy and beneficial.

You want to know where I see this as most realistic? Witness the typical church dinner. Whether it is catered, a covered dish/"pot luck" situation, or something else, these seldom offer much in the way of healthy options. What if the next dinner at your church offered baked chicken instead of fried chicken? What if there were rice or roasted potatoes instead of mashed or au gratin? What if there were no desserts?

Outrageous... inconceivable-- I know.

When I first started seminary, one of my professors was new, also. He clearly-- obviously-- lost a fair number of pounds in the first couple of semesters. Not so many that he seemed too thin or gaunt, but he had shed 20 or 30 unneeded pounds. I asked him about this, and his response was, "there is a lot of positive peer pressure on the faculty here. It's a real culture of encouragement toward being healthy." Wouldn't it be great if most churches could be like that-- not pressure to be too thin, nor prejudice against those who are overweight, but simply a culture that encourages healthiness?

What do you think: what are some ways that your church could shift toward being a culture of health?

A couple of thoughts on real estate and markets...

Not long ago, a friend and I were talking about the current housing market.

Around here, there was a season of rapid growth and building in the residential housing market, with new homes going up all around; that ended right around the time when we moved here, about two and a half years ago. This "slump" has only very recently begun to show signs (to my eyes, at least) of a rebound, with some new homes being built and signs up for plans of new development. It's probably about the same where you are.

My friend happens to be active in one of the area chambers of commerce, and I mentioned how I had noticed that the real estate market seemed to be coming back a bit.

"Not according to the folks in the chamber, it's not," he replied quickly.

As we explored this further, he offered more information on this assertion: his fellow chamber members involved in real estate maintain that the current market, though showing signs of slight improvement, is still far off of what it was a few years ago.

But let's think back to what we've learned about the real estate market over the last couple of years, while we've been in the midst of an economic recession: as many have tried to analyze and diagnose what the cause of our economic struggles have been, one of the main contributors to the recessive climate was the way that real estate was handled over the past decade or so.

Here are a few of the factors at play that caused the real estate "bubble" that eventually burst a couple of years ago:
People were being "qualified" for loans who had no real means of repaying the loans they were given.
Those who were in a position to repay them were being "qualified" for loans that would require a higher-than-normal percentage of income to be devoted to home-loan repayment.
Loans were being granted for 100% of the value of a home, and sometimes even more-- 115%, 120%, 150%!-- assuming that homes would appreciate rapidly, as they had been.
"Private Mortgage Insurance" or PMI-- once commonly required for most or all loans where the downpayment represented less than, say, 20% of the total amount borrowed-- became an optional additional expense.
New home construction was growing at an enormous pace, far outpacing the rates of previous decades.

The net result of this is the climate that we found ourselves in two years ago: people who couldn't afford their loans (either because they simply didn't have the income or because too much of their income was required), unsurprisingly, weren't able to repay them. They also had no PMI (not that they would have qualified for that under normal circumstances, either) and therefore the loans defaulted, leaving banks with enormous amounts of property unpaid-for. That property was sold at a huge loss, because the rapid construction of new homes meant a lack of demand that drove values down, not up-- and a home financed at 125% of its market value a year or two earlier wasn't worth 80% of that value at present-day.

And here's the bottom line: all of that was the result of a system that was vulnerable to greed, fraud, and usury. All three showed up, and crashed the system.

So back to the current conditions, and here's my big question: should today's real estate market be measured against the markets of three or five years ago, when those markets were inherently based on greed, fraud, and deception?

Wouldn't it be far better to take some sort of market average-- say, the average of the past 25 years-- and measure today's market against that instead? Wouldn't that give us a much clearer picture of how well the real estate market really is doing today?

It might not look as good on paper, and it might not make the builders, bankers, and real estate agents happy. But it might actually represent a sustainable and ethical market-- and that's what I'm interested in seeing established. Aren't you?

Praying for Haiti

Marcie asked me the other night, "how should we be praying for Haiti?"

Here are my thoughts... feel free to add yours in comments.

• Pray for those who are still alive to be found and treated quickly, and that their sustained injuries would be minimal.
• Pray for those who are part of the search and rescue teams, that their work would be expedient and that they would have the strength and endurance to continue in their work.
• Pray for the mental, emotional, and spiritual health of both the victims and the rescuers, that the trauma of involvement in such a disaster would not take a lasting toll on them, and that they would think and believe rightly about the truth of the Gospel.
• Pray for the existing infrastructure to be able to withstand the pressures and demands on it, especially for healthcare (primarily hospitals) and transportation.
• Pray for economic and political stability to be established/re-established in the country, and for the future to be greater than the past in these ways.
• Pray for the rebuilding efforts, especially that they would promote better quality of life and opportunity for a people who have been historically oppressed and destitute.
• Pray for those who do not know Christ in a saving way to be spiritually awakened and aware of the truth, and that many would come to true, saving faith as a result of the realities faced through a disaster like this.
• Pray for those who come to faith, and those who are already believers, to receive the spiritual care and nurture that they need, and for the continued establishment of churches.
• Pray for the laborers who serve as missionaries and ministry workers in Haiti to persevere during these difficult times, and that their ministry to the Haitians would be fruitful.
• Pray that we who live in comfort and ease around the world would not quickly forget the need and difficulty of disaster recovery in the already-destitute country of Haiti.

Seriously, laugh-out-loud funny

From PassiveAgressiveNotes.com (HT: Glen)