Hope: Where We All Fail

(Link to first post in this series)

I keep struggling to understand the mystery of Postmodernism. My kids see the world in a radically different way than do I. Radically. Where I keep trying to perceive a coherent tapestry in the confusing threads of pain and joy entangling me, my kids observe, "We're screwed." They think in biological, gritty terms of despair like that, when I never could. I keep seeing hope and they keep seeing reality. It's disconcerting.

I think I've found a clue, though, where we're both wrong.

I saw it first in my younger friends. Paul said God left us with Faith, Hope, and Love. My friends are capable of believing unbelievable things and you can count on them for love. They just can't hope. They can hope for little things; jobs, friends, families. Ask them, though, whether God's goodness can redeem and they'll kind of freeze. Whether they parrot or reject the party line, it seems the comfort of real hope will elude them.

Postmodernism is cobbled together from a thousand little bricks of despair.

Modernists, aka the good guys, look nothing like that. Modernists rest unfailingly in richest hope. Modernists know God is going to make sure everthing works out for the good. Modernists know we're learning more about everything every day, and we're growing stronger, smarter, spirity-er.

Modernists, I'm coming to see, fail by resting on unfounded hope.

We really looked at the Western World's steady progress from benighted medievalism to rationalism to the capstones of democracy and freedom, and ascribe that progress to divine intervention. God was on our side. We're rich and brilliant, aren't we? God must be blessing us. We hooked our faith to the wagon of progress and urged the horses to give it all they had.

When the West ascended to lofty heights we saw the hand of God. We even called it "Manifest Destiny." It was obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that God was going to get us to wherever we needed to be.



Us Modernists have kids, though, who don't think so much of the emperor's new clothes. All that hope in which us Modernists invested smells to them like so many fish tales. We all know what happened to our economy when the Housing Bubble burst, but Modernism inflated a Hope Bubble that couldn't last. Our hope was leveraged out of proportion both to the reality of God's promises and to the realities we live with on the ground.

The answer to both Modernism's hyper-inflation of hope and Postmodernism's recessionary deflation of hope is a correct valuation of what God has promised and what He's delivered. The false overpromises of Modernism won't work any more, but the hopeless fears of Postmodernism won't work either. There's a valid comfort in God's promises rightly valued, and we need that comfort to survive. Even after the bubble a house is really worth the land its on, the materials of which it's constructed, and the neighborhood into which it's joined. The only value the housing collapse stole is the speculative worth it might have had upon resale.

Even so, the Christian life has measurable worth. The relationship it gives to God and people, the growth we experience in the Spirit, and the strength the unified love of His people embodies are true and lasting riches. The false promises of a recipe to make America great, end divorce, and free the subjected people of the world are gone, but the value of knowing God hasn't shaken at all.

Jesus eased the lives of many for the three years of His ministry, but not of all. Health and wealth did not radiate from Jesus in 30 AD into all the corners of Africa, South America, and Asia. He touched the Jewish lives He touched and was content to be limited in that way.

The church today has the same powers and limitations. We can make a difference in our community, and if we do we'll have done what our King could do.

I'll be back to look at this from another perspective.

The Green Miles

I spent the weekend at a conference near the mountains. The conference was a mixed experience for me. I'll write about that under different head, though.

Here, I'm jonesing to write about 4 days in a Toyota Prius.

Driving a Prius is almost like driving a car, but enough little habits were different to throw me off. The cliches of driving failed me often enough in the Prius, especially at the beginning, to keep me unsettled and happy. It was like having that new-car smell in my brain. It kept reminding me that I was playing with a new toy.

You know how to start driving. We all do. You get in, turn the key, and go. Well, not so with the Prius. There is no key. And there's no real shift lever, either. There's a funky little joystick like an old arcade game, and a button like you'd expect to find on a senior citizen's TV with the big word, "Power."

I've still never owned a car with a remote locking system, so it's all odd to me. I pulled the fob out and clicked it to unlock the car - just like all my rentals. Then everything changed. There's no key, but the fob plugs in to the dash. You plug the unlocky-fobby-thingy into the dash, and hit the senior citizen power button to "start" the car. You can tell the car is started because the dash lights up and the computer screen in the center of the dash boots up. There are no sounds or sensations to go along with the lights.

Sometimes the dash did not light up. I have no idea what that was about. Sometimes, I had to hit power twice, and when I did it would turn yellow instead of green. Whatever. I've been an IT geek too long to try to figure everything out about a rental car, and not long enough to just automatically know.

I'm also one of the last 3 people in the world who uses the park break every time he parks. The Prius park break was odd to me, but only because all my cars are 15 years old or older. Push the brake to set it. Push it again to release it. No big.

So, joystick "up" to go into reverse and back out of your parking spot.

At this point, the dash shows R so you know you're in reverse, and the disgusting engineers' built-in reverse beeper starts bleeping in your ear. The morons put a backup beeper on the inside of the car so that I would know I was going backwards! I wonder how many people really, truly don't know that they're moving backwards after they've put the car in reverse? Pffft. Worst design decision ever.

At this point, the only noise the car has made is that infernal beeping. The engine has not started, the transmission has not dropped into gear, the starter motor has not whirred itself to silence. You are simply rolling backwards, seemingly propelled by your mere desire to be headed backwards. It's a sweet, sweet feeling. After you get used to it, it's what driving was meant to feel like. You let off the brake, and just start going where you wanted to go. If only I could have driven an ice-pick through the cold heart of the backup beeper.

Going forward was just like going backward, except there were no noises to make me want to kill anything. Eventually, of course, the motor does start and it begins to feel like a car again. The motor dies again as you approach a stop sign, or shortly after arriving, which is way too cool. It even dies when driving normally downhill, but that's harder to hear. It seemed early on like the engine dying at stop signs was a transparent affair. After a while, I began to distinctly notice the engine dying with a sad little cough. I don't know whether the poor car was feeling its miles, or whether I was getting more used to it's noises. Either way, it made it back to the rental place, and we all know that's what really matters.

Then we get to the real experience of driving a Prius. I promise I did watch the road from time to time, but watching the little bugger interpret it's own feelings about my driving was irresistible. They put a computer screen the size of a small paperback right where the heater controls go in older cars, and it gives you constant feedback about how deeply the Prius is feeling your fuel-saving love. If it approves of your degree of haste, the little lines will go green, and if you're making it drink too fast, the lines will be be yellow or amber.

Sometimes it would give me a little peck on the cheek by regenerating electricity from the tires to the battery for later conspicuous consumption, and sometimes it would wag its finger at me when I was consuming a gallon of gas in a mere 8 miles. I watched as the little power lines went green and yellow and amber, and the battery filled in drained. I also watched the road mock me. The road would rise above me in some gravity empowering display of mountainousness then chuckle in the sadistic knowledge that I could never climb it at better than 20mpg. Each dotted line giggled as I passed, knowing my Prius would blame me when it was all gravity's fault!

Cursed gravity.

Going up into the mountains, I would average - average, mind you - some ridiculously low mileage like 35 mpg. Falling back down down the mountain, I had one 5 minute stretch (the Prius bundles its feelings about you into nice, little 5 minute averages) in which I averaged 100mpg, and the 20 minute segment of which that was a part never averaged less than 65 mpg.

And that was what I suspected and found. The Prius does not like mountains. It's a lowlander's rig. If you're stopping and going in rush hour, the Prius is right at home. If you're ascending a half-mile vertically over fifty horizontal miles, the Prius is going to be baffled. It doesn't know how to cope with the kind of flagrant waste of energy it takes to ascend a purple mountain majesty, and it's even less at home with falling back off that mountain. Within 30 seconds, it's filled it's batteries back up to "warm and fuzzy" and has to waste the gravitational energy it's being handed just like any other merely mortal gas hog.

Driving within the mountains reveals the Prius's weakness most completely. The Prius is afraid to let its batteries go below 75% full, and therefore it cannot slurp down the kind of energy a typical mountain valley has to offer. It's too bad, but it's optimized for city driving. Such is life.

One more random thing to mention is its constant velocity transmission. Entering a freeway at 70% throttle from a dead stop and continuing to 70 mph results in the engine singing exactly one song for 20-30 seconds (I did not time its acceleration). There is no pleasant shifting of gears, no rise of the engine speed with the passing seconds, and no settling in just at a given rpm when you hit 70.

The Prius says, "Hmmm. 70% throttle. That means 4500 rpm and 80% gas." at 5 mph and 35 mph and 55 mph and 75 mph, the engine smoothly turns 4500 rpm. The gears never shift, and the engine never goes faster. It's a very smooth, nice feeling; again, almost exactly what driving should feel like. It takes almost no time to get used to. The only problem is that you cannot check your speed by listening to the engine. The engine is going exactly as fast as you tell it to go with your foot, with utter disregard for how fast the car is going. If it takes 30% throttle to maintain your speed, and you are holding 35% throttle, your Prius will steadily gain speed without any audible clue. You'll look down to see you're doing 75, but the engine is singing the same song it sang at 65. Or just as easily, you can find yourself doing 55, and still hear the same song as at 65. It's not such a big deal to me, because I use the cruise control religiously, but it's noticable.

Anyway, it was a fun four days.

My final fillup summed up the story. In 240 miles, I consumed 6.13 gallons of gas. $21 was mighty reasonable for all the driving I'd done. I guess that's 39 or so mpg. The Prius told me I averaged 44 mpg. Not a bad estimate considering how I'd made a mountain goat of a city turtle, even if it was a "But, you said!" moment.

I got over it. :-)

I made it home, and turned the key on my '91 Mercedes diesel. It fired to life and took me home, weird noises, abrupt shifts, rain dripping onto my thigh, and all. It made me happy to be back in my car. In the end, I'm too Scottish to spend $20k+ plus interest to save $15 on every tank of gas, but I'm spend-thrift enough to try it out for a weekend. I'm glad I did, and now I'm sure I won't be leveraging any credit to shoehorn myself into one any time soon.

How Stuff is Killing the Planet

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

I couldn't quite get myself to pull the trigger on linking to this presentation. It has sat in my inbox, taunting me, for almost 2 weeks now. I don't even remember whom to hat-tip for linking me to it.

This is a young lady doing an engaging job of telling how our consumer culture is destroying the world upon which we depend. I think it was 20 minutes long, so set aside a little time if you plan to watch it. She uses numbers that I seem to recall being torn to shreds. I know I've heard them before from rabid greenies, the kind that don't care one whit about facts if they're getting their way. At best they are pulled out of the air, and at worst they're carefully culled and framed to manipulate.

With that caveat, she gives a great, wide-reaching overview of what's wrong with being a consumer culture so I'll share it. Enjoy.

Gaia versus Christ - The Happy Homemaker

Homemaking is women's work.

Gaia is a woman.

Jesus is not a woman.

Therefore it's only natural that Christians are raping the earth with their right-wing republican agenda of feeding big business, and repressing anyone who seeks everyone's good, instead of just that of male protestants.

The fate of humanity rests in the filia of little algea trying to revive the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, forests trying to scrub the air of carbon dioxide, and the minds of humans seeking a way back to balance with nature. Any of countless disasters could give Gaia an opportunity to start over again, without the blight of humanity. This is a sad, sad story, because Gaia made us a fine home, and then evolved us perfectly to fit within it. We are tailor-bred to enjoy green grass, blue skies and red dirt (I'm from Northern California, where all the dirt is red - the rest of you can just imagine), but in our greed we have consumed far more of her bounty than we have returned, so we are in danger of losing it all - for every species on our planet.

Gaia perfected the earth for us without our help, and she can fix all the damage we've done, if we learn to understand her ways. We are neither the first nor the worst environmental disaster to happen under her watchful care, and everything we've done is natural after a fashion. We made this mess by indulging our ancient evolutionary instincts, so if we can just retrain those instincts to match our new mental capabilities, we can advance the destiny of our race. We can learn to care for the entire planet, not just ourselves, and we restore this place to the pristine garden it was for the last few million years.

That's Gaia's stand.

Can Christ do as good a job as Gaia of saving the earth?

It is here that Christians begin to stumble a little. Here, some good Christians begin to have a real problem answering for Christ.

One group shouts, "Yes! Christ will melt the elements of this planet, and make a new heaven and earth, and we will live forever in heaven." These like the Earth, but don't feel very responsible for it.

Another group pledges, "Yes! Christ put us here within this earth, and it is our responsibility to fit into the rhythm of life." These believe restoring this Earth for Christ is almost as high a calling as preaching the gospel.

Yet another group intones, "No. All of creation groans until it can be put out of its misery. Sin has destroyed this creation, and now it is just waiting for the day it hits the dustbin." These hate the Earth for what it has become, and eagerly await the chance to yank it off life-support.

And Gaians just snicker, because the debate is being held in Gaia's house, framed in her language.

The Gaian frames the debate in Christian terms, because he is so open minded he can accommodate the Christians' narrow perspectives, but that reframing is an illusion. The words become Christian, but the foundation of the debate is as pagan as ever it was. The Gaian will refer to humans as created, and the world as cared for by its designer, and the ecosphere as a divine plan, but in the end the critical points are the same. The Earth is our home, and man is a part of nature.

But the debate is not being held in Gaia's house. Gaia is squatting in the King's house, and she will learn how large a mistake that is. God did not give this planet to anyone. He left it in the care of His children, and they lost it to their enemy. Satan tempted Jesus, offering Him ownership of this planet, but what offered was only his by theft - not by gift or wage. On that day, the King allowed Himself to be taunted, but the King is returning and soon He will rip what is His from the hands of His enemies.

This place was given to God's children, and it was called into existence for us to make something of it. It is in our nature to create, and to perfect, and to protect. Gaia would have us fit meekly into the ecosystem alongside all the animals, but that is not our place. The Earth and all its living systems are gifts to us and responsibilities. We are not to sink into the grass beside the animals, but to lift them to the heights of honor along with us. The lowest mutt carries himself with high dignity when he knows he is serving a higher purpose, and we are charged to give him that.

Man can elevate the entire earth.

We were created for this.

A meadow is beautiful, but a garden is a glory to God, man and plant together.

Gaia tells half-truths. Yes, the greed of man has raped the earth, but her answer to our sin is wrong. Gaia would have us lost in the web of life, indistinguishable from the world around us. She would have us camoflage the image of God, and lose our humanity into the zoo around us. She would have us dedicate our lives to transforming civilization into the image of nature.

Christ would have us rest.

Christ saved the world. That is in the past tense. It waits to be revealed what the sons of God will be, and what the earth will be, but it waits to be revealed. It is already there. The new earth is waiting, already bought and paid for by its King.

Everything we do in this age is a testimony to the work He has already finished. So, yes, we work and we work hard, but we work in the calm assurance that the work is already done. We wait here for the miracle of revelation that Christ will unveil at His coming. We wait with our hands on the plow, and we work toward His revealed goal, but we have a Hope. And we, in turn, are Earth's highest hope.

Yes, Save the Earth. But save Christ's Earth, and save it by saving men who will learn to love the things that Christ loves. We are called to make this house a home, and in Christ's finished work our work will bear fruit.