You're Going To Hell

Coming to terms with the nice people in Hell.

I just thought I’d let you know,
because it really looks like you don’t know,
you’re going to Hell.

Now I’m not talking to the drug dealers,
the pimps, the whores, the murderers.
I’m not talking to the gays, the lesbians,
or the dude cheating on his wife with his coworker.
I’m not even talking to the wealthy Wall Street tycoons
who get rich through shady deals and insider trading.
No, you all already heard that you’re going Hell
and you either don’t believe it,
don’t care,
feel like you don’t have a choice
Or think you’re already there.

No, I’m not talking to them,
I'm talking to you.
You church-going, upstanding citizen,
you tithe paying, board member,
sunday-school teacher who lets
missionaries on furlough stay at your house,
you’re going to Hell.

But you think you won’t because you’re a nice person.
But you don’t stay out of Hell by being a nice person.
Hell is chock full of nice people.
The Devil himself is an absolute angel
and he’s going to Hell,
and so are you.

Jesus is the one who can keep you out of Hell,
and he’s not one bit impressed by nice people.
I remember one time when Jesus went off on a bunch of nice people.
I remember he called them, white-washed tombs, and vipers and fools
and asked them “How will you escape being condemned to hell?”
He insulted them and berated them up one side and down the other.
And do you know what they did?

Well, they did what you’d do.
They were nice people, like you.
They took one look at Jesus:

Jesus was standing up all straight and tall,
his arms al buff with muscles from 30 years of carpentry
during which time he never used a wimpy power tool;
his muscles were the power for his tools.
Sawdust that never seemed to come clear out of his bushy beard,
not the nice, well-kempt, well-oiled beards of the nice people:
no, a great, full, amazing beard of a guy who is not impressed by nice appearances.
And carrying a great big hammer in his hand,
a hammer that he uses to knock boards in place
that they could tell he’d like to use to knock the nice people in place
by looking in his eyes.

And those eyes were not like nice-people’s eyes.
Those eyes look like a creator of black holes and grizzly bears and hurricanes.

And if that weren’t enough, he’s got twelve guys with him who are equally tough.
Some of them would pull hundred pound nets up out of the water all night long,
repeatedly.
And they were armed, mostly with the tools of their trades,
but one guy at least had a sword, maybe more did,
the nice people didn’t know.
And these guys were nuts.
They were ready to take a beating, or even die for this guy,
so, for sure they were ready to deliver one.

Then behind the twelve guys were a bunch more.
Criminals, drunks, brawlers, murderers, gangsters, you know,
the type of people Jesus likes to hang out with.
Those people really didn’t care one bit about Jesus,
but if there were a throw down,
they’d have been all over that.
The nice people would have made nice greasy spots in the dirt road.

So, yeah, the nice people went and did what nice people do.
They did exactly what you’d do.
They called the cops.
They got the government involved, got Jesus prosecuted,
all nice and civil.
They alerted the media,
got all the other nice people in the town behind them,
the rotary club,
the Masonic lodge,
even the PTA,
and made sure that when the sentence was handed down,
all nice and legal,
that it was the maximum.
Because you just can’t go treating nice people that way.

So now, you think that being a nice person is going to impress him?
If he wasn’t impressed by nice people then, he sure isn’t impressed by them now!
He’s the type of guy who will back you in a fight if you need him
and he’ll give you the shirt off his back
and ask if there’s anything else you need
and when you’re in trouble, he’s the only one to call.
But he isn’t impressed with nice people,
and he won’t do jack for you because you are a nice person.
That just doesn’t hold up for him.
So, yeah, you’re going to Hell.

Is there a way out?
Of course there is.
It’s the same way out for you
as it is for the drug dealers,
the pimps, the whores, the murderers.
The same as for the gays, the lesbians,
or the dude cheating on his wife with his coworker.
It’s the same way out for the wealthy Wall Street tycoons
who get rich through shady deals and insider trading.
You’ve probably heard what it is,
but you might have to give up being a nice person
if you really want to accept it.

Kairos and the changing of minds.

Coming to terms with changing my mind.



It is weird when you change your mind about something, especially about something where you had strong, logical convictions once. It is weird when you suddenly realize, "I disagree with myself." On one hand, the ability to move people's minds, not just to sway opinion but to actually change people's beliefs about what they think are "facts" is one of the things that really got me interested in rhetoric. Bryant's definition of rhetoric as "Adjusting ideas to people and people to ideas¹" always appealed to me. The fact that a person could adjust people to ideas was somehow heartening in a world where so many seem so ossified in in their belief structures. Still, when one is on the receiving end of a rhetorical intervention, one is given a unique glimpse into what happens in our rhetoric.

I realized late last night that I no longer quite agreed with myself regarding the writings of a guy named John Eldredge. Eldredge is someone you hear about in Evangelical circles, especially among men. He writes books that attempt to define a Christian masculinity. I first interacted with Eldredges work in around 2004 when an evangelical group of which I was a part decided to divide us along gender lines. I am not sure what the women used as curriculum, but the men were to read Eldredge's book Wild at Heart². We read the books and discussed it, and the more I discussed it, the more I really did not like it. I found it simplistic, mysogynist, even barbaric! At the time, it seemed to me that Eldredge was arguing from some Rouseauesque misinformation about noble savages to a belief that men should reclaim their role as cavemen, begin hunting and gathering for food and finding their life-partners by killing their fathers and dragging them back to the cave kicking and screaming. Of course, that is not really what I thought, but that was a pretty good picture of the visceral reaction to the book.

My dislike was so profound, that it spawned some pretty good scholarship on my part. In 2005³ , I presented a paper explaining that Eldredge's work contained a hidden mysogyny in that he talked a great deal about the unique qualities of men, and claimed that these unique features of men came from men being made in the image of God. I problemetized this by pointing out that if these qualities were unique to men and not women, and the source is being made in the image of God, that Eldredge is latently arguing that women are not made in the image of God. Then in 2006⁴ and again in 2009⁵ I wrote papers attempting to deliniate the various intellectual currents of the Evangelical mens movements. In both of these papers I argued that there was an undercurrent of paganism in Eldredge's work and labled his work as "syncretic." By the time of the presentation of the 2009 paper I may have begun to change my mind. I still called his work syncretic in the paper, but in the presentation I said that if I did further work on the subject I would call it "anthropological" and that instead of saying it was tied to paganism, I'd tie it to "cultural universals," or Jung's "collective unconscious." [Maybe I'll still write that paper someday, because now instead of seeing what I called a "Jeremiac," "therapeutic," and "syncrestic" division in the Evangelical men's movements I am now seeing a Platonic, Freudian and Jungian distinction.]

So, when a men's group was being formed at my church that was going to be using Eldredge's newer book, Fathered by God,⁶ it was with great reluctance that I purchased it. I'd already made up my mind about Eldredge and while I did not disagree with him on everything or entirely, I felt like the areas of disagreement were strong enough that they would make me mad too often as I read this new book. I just wasn't interested. I was, however, interested in bonding with the other men of my church so I reluctantly and with entirely the wrong attitude bought the book. I became extremely irate later when I found out we were not actually going to use the book as a guide, but just that it had influenced the discussion leaders. I felt like I had been lied to and tricked into spending money that I really couldn't afford to spend on a book we were not, now, actually going to use as curriculum. I am still a little miffed about it, to be honest.

But then I started reading the book. I am not even sure why. Maybe I was looking for more ammunition to shoot Eldredge down. When he said it was merely a "repackaging" of his Wild at Heart book, I just rolled my eyes. "Go ahead, Johnny," I thought, "rob more people in the name of the Lord by selling them a second book that is exactly the same as the first." It is a serious repackaging. I'd like to think that some of my critiques got back to Eldredge and that he seemed to take them into account in this book. Gone are the statements that seemed to imply that men are different that women because they were made in God's image. This book uses the life of David (from the Bible, Son of Jesse, that David) to draw a picture of the various stages of a man's life: 1)shepherd/cowboy, 2)warrior, 3)lover, 4)king and 5)sage. He continues with his anthropological bent, finding further evidence from literature and mythology for his description of a man's life, but the syncretism that seemed to reveal itself in Wild at
Heart has at the very least lessened and perhaps disappeared as Eldredge uses metaphors and rituals primarily from Hebrew sources and only further evidenced by other mythologies. So, Fathered by God is different.

Or is it? A pretty big thing happenned to be between 2005 when I first read Wild at Heart and reading Fathered by God in 2012. Since that time, I have fallen in love and gotten married and stayed married. People say that marriage changes a person. Of course, I always agreed in the abstract; how could it not? In many, many ways, where the rubber hits the road, it has changed me. It hasn't necessarily changed me in the ways my wife hoped it would. I did not become enamoured of the "place for everything and everything in it's place" philosophy that guides her life. In fact, I bet some of the ways it has changed me are ways she would not have always wanted me to change. I am more scheduled, better budgeted and more precise in my speech because someone else has to come on board with what I'm saying. I am more dominant. I am less passive. I am less angry at everyone in the world because I've realized more than ever before how little many things matter. I used to write papers and study books and teach classes because it was awesome. It's still awesome. Now, however, there is an urgency. I need to expand my borders and control my kingdom because I need to take care of Jamie (my wife). On the other hand, I need to be home at 5:30 to make supper, no matter where I am in my writing or lesson prep. I need to put down the sword and take up the plowshare with increasing frequency. I also need to weild the sword with more ferocity. I think it's going to be even more intense when we have kids (pray for us to have kids). The end result is that right now I am more masculine in a traditional sense than ever before. And Fathered by God touched a soul that wasn't the soul I had six years ago.

A central concept in rhetoric is the concept of kairos. It is the idea of speaking at the appropriate time. Now I also travel in Evangelical circles and hear people talk about kairos as "God's special time," but I don't think that's accurate. It could also be the Devil's special time, when he realizes everything is just right to send you a temptation. Or it could be a used car salesman's special time to sell a car. What it is, is the belief that history and what is going on in the world both constrains and summons particular rhetorical acts. Effective rhetoric is not just good arguments, put in the right order, delivered well, using compelling, memorable language. It also has to be done at the right time. The right things have to be going on in the audience's life. In Bitzer's terms, there has to be the right "rhetorical situation"⁷. I can't really tell whether it is really a more compelling argument or if I am in a place to be differently compelled. I can't tell whether Eldredge has improved as a rhetorician, or if I have just changed as a person or if it is a little of both. I do know that I think differently now. I know that I am seeing more anomalies in my old worldview and fewer anomalies in my current one⁸, but is that me or Eldredge?

The truth is that we can't entirely know. When we change our minds or when others change their minds, there are a confluency of factors. Some are under the control of the rhetor. Some are under the control of the auditors. Some are under the control of outside influences.

¹Bryant, D. C. (1953). Rhetoric: Its
function and scope. Quarterly
Journal of Speech, 39, 401-424.

²Eldredge, J. (2001). Wild at Heart:
Discovering the secret of a man's soul, Walker Large Print
edition.
Waterville, ME: Walker

³Cline, B. J. (Nov 2005) Empowering Women
by Empowering Men? The Rhetoric of John Eldrich. Paper presented
at the
National Communication Association convention, Boston, MA.

⁴Cline, B. J. (Nov. 2006) The
Rhetoric(s) of the Christian Men's Movement(s). Paper presented
at the Religious Communication Association convention, San Antonio, TX.

⁵Cline, B. J. (Nov. 2006) Masculinity as a Communication Process:
Stability and Change in Evangelical Christian Conceptions of
Masculinity. A paper presented to the Religious Communication
Division of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL.

⁶Eldredge, J.(2009). Fathered by God. Nashville, TN:
Thomas Nelson.

⁷Bitzer, L.F. (2000) The rhetorical
situation. In C. R. Burghardt Readings
in rhetorical criticism 2nd edition. State College, PA: Strata
Publishing Inc. 60-68. (originally published 1968. Philosophy and Rhetoric1(1)
1-14).

⁸Brown, W. R. (1978). Ideology as
communication process. The Quarterly
Journal of Speech, 64. 123-180.

Phronesis and Sophia

Coming to terms with phronesis and sophia

Let me start out by being clear. I am no scholar of the ancient Greek dialects. I did try to learn the Biblical (Koina) Greek language in my Christian high-school. I believed I passed all the appropriate tests in that class in order to receive my language credits. I am a scholar of communication, a tradition that began in ancient Greece. I am a follower of Jesus whose instructions have been handed down to us primarily in Greek. Finally, I am the son of a pastor whose understanding of Greek is much better than most pastors. So, I know a little bit about ancient Greek languages. I know the differences between the Greek of Plato and the Greek of the Apostle Paul, but my Greek of either era is not good enough to make a real difference. True scholars will talk about how they can read the Greek of one or the other of these eras, but usually don’t consider themselves experts in both. I am an expert in neither. I and can fumble through a passage from scripture or from Aristotle with about the grace of a seal on land. It isn’t pretty but I get there, usually.

Still, when I read the New Testament or the old Greek rhetoricians, the vast majority of the time I do so in English translation. Those translations are put together by real experts, often by teams of experts, and they know what they’re doing whereas when I read things in Greek I am picking words out from context and etymology and turning regularly to a dictionary which is itself a translation. Besides, I am lazy and it is always easier to read in one’s mother tongue. I’ve been doing better since I got my android tablet where I can switch back and forth between the Greek and a bunch of English translations and commentaries with ease, but really, I mostly just read in English.

Still, once in a while I pick something up from the Greek that is important. I think that is something I’ve hit on here (which is why I am sharing it). I was recently looking at James 1:5 which says (in NAS translation) “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” What struck me was the Greek word for wisdom here. The word is "σοφία" (sophia). Now, this is a common word to be translated wisdom so I wasn’t shocked by what I saw, it just wasn’t what I had expected. I really had thought that the type of wisdom James was talking about was probably φρόνησις (phronesis).

There is a difference between the two that is really important to those of us who study rhetoric. Sophia is a type of “wisdom” that deals with ENDS whereas phronesis is the type of wisdom that deals with MEANS. Aristotle and Plato can be summarized in saying that Aristotle was searching for the phronesis, whereas Plato was searching for the sophia. Rhetoric is the phronesis of communication. Dialectic is the sophia. What is good and right and noble is sophia. What is the best way to get there is phronesis. Sophia is about differentiating the good from the bad in general. Phronesis is differentiating the good from the bad in a particular situation.

So it makes sense that I had expected wisdom in this context to be phronesis. James had been talking about how to endure the various trials that we encounter. So, I’d always taken it to mean that when we are in a particular trial, we should ask God for how to deal with it, and He’ll tell us. Furthermore, I think just about every preacher I’ve heard discussing this verse has talked about it in terms of phronesis, not sophia, although none ever discussed the Greek with me. Are you trying to decide whether to rent a house or an apartment? Well, ask God for wisdom. Are you trying to decide whether or not to marry a girl? Well, ask God for wisdom. I am not saying that asking God for wisdom in these matters is bad advice. It is good advice. James 1:5, however, is probably not the verse we can stand on for this. This verse would answer questions more like “is living in a house good or evil” or “is marriage, in general, good or evil?”

I was so sure that the wisdom for which we were supposed to ask was phronesis, that my first thought when reading it was sophia was that perhaps phronesis had died out of the Greek language by the time of the New Testament. I’d found that case before with other words. Eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία) Aristotle’s central concept in his Ethics, doesn’t even exist in scripture because the term had fallen into disuse. So, I thought maybe phronesis is not a word from Biblical Greek. A quick click through Strong’s concordance showed I was wrong. Phronesis and its derivatives are common in the New Testament and are often translated wisdom. Often, we are commanded to “be wise” and in such cases the word is almost always a derivative of phronesis. In the famous parable of the wise man building his house upon the rock and the foolish man building his house upon the sand, the type of wisdom is phronesis. The sophia of the situation, whether or not it is good and noble to build a house at all, is not discussed in that parable. The right place to build it is the discussion. The “wise” virgins who had oil when their husbands were on the way did not necessarily possess sophia, but phronesis.

So, I am sitting here looking at James 1:5 and I am led to ask myself a question. If this verse does not say that we should ask God for phronesis, where is the scriptural source for phronesis? Now, we know what the source is for “every good and perfect gift” and as I said earlier, asking God for phronesis is still not a bad idea. In fact, Paul prays for the Ephesians that they will receive phronesis (1:8); so it is something God doles out. But does God have a “normal” means of providing phronesis? Sophia seems to come through revelation, but is that the means for phronesis?

The answer might come from a portion of the Bible that we rarely think of having to do with “wisdom” at all. In Romans 8, Paul writes about two kinds of minds, the carnal mind and the spiritual mind. Now, there are different words that are translated “mind” in English from the Greek too, but this one is “φρόνημα” (phronéma), a word closely related to phronesis. It is like the part of the soul that contains, in some way, the phronesis. But apparently the fleshly phronéma is at war with the spiritual phronéma. So, we already have phronesis, and have no real need to ask for it, rather we need to decide which phronesis to act out. To act out the spiritual phronesis, the answer is not merely to pray for it as we pary for sophia. Rather there is a different type of prayer, not a simple request, that seems to unlock the spiritual phronéma and allow us to engage in spiritual phronesis:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind [phronéma] of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God”(Romans 8: 26 & 27 ESV)

Aristotle said that phronesis is the most practical of all the virtues. In fact, the word is often translated “practical wisdom” in ancient Greek philosophy in order to differentiate it from sophia. Here’s the thing though, the type of prayer that on the surface seems the least practical is Biblically the way of releasing this kind of wisdom in our lives. We get the Holy Spirit’s phronéma by praying in the Spirit and allowing Him to translate to God the father. By giving over the words of our language to God and basically speaking what seems to our souls to be nonsense, God is able to cause His phronéma to work, imparting a his practical wisdom. It is paradoxical and strange, but I am thinking that is how it works. If you’re wondering if you should work, ask God and He will tell you. If you’re wondering which job to take, pray in the spirit and spiritual phronesis will be released in your life.

Is Santa Claus Real? You said you can prove that he is.

Coming to terms with the truth about Santa Claus.

About my junior year of college I became obsessed with the philosophical question of truth and absolutes. It is still something that is quite important to me and something on which I've spent a great deal of time thinking and writing and one of the side effects has been coming to the startling conclusion that Santa Claus is, indeed, true.

I didn't really reach that stage until I well into my graduate studies. I remember it well. I was in the second year of my doctoral program, reading a couple books that had nothing to do with Santa Claus and suddenly it all coalesced in my mind: if this stuff is right, then Santa Claus is true! I hadn't really believed in Santa Claus for more than 20 years at that point, so one can see the intensity of such an epiphany. Hopefully, as you read this post you can come to understand, also, that Santa Claus is real.

Positional Truth

First of all, we have to understand that there are a number of ways that something can be true. This was driven home to me on a recent visit to a mechanic's shop. The mechanic at that shop gave me a list of things wrong with my car and the price to fix them, which was quite astronomical. I made a few phone calls to friends who were more mechanically inclined and ultimately came to the conclusions that not everything on that list really needed to be fixed. For several days I moped around. It wasn't just the cost of the repairs that had upset me, it was that I felt that the mechanic had been "dishonest" with me. He is a member of my church, so it hurt. Once the shock wore off, I realized that from another point of view, he hadn't been "dishonest." Everything he'd said about the car was factual. Were I in a different financial position, I'd probably want everything fixed. It was only dishonest when speaking to someone trying to get by on the cheap.

This kind of truth is called positional, or contextual, truth, or truth from a point of view. From the mechanic's point of view, he was being honest. In fact, I bet he'd say it was dishonest not to insist on fixing everything wrong with a car if one is going to fix any of it. From my point of view, that seems like an unnecessary expense that benefits him. So, you see from one point of view it is true that my car must have all those repairs done. From another point of view, that is not the case.

It is not a stretch to believe in Santa Claus from a positional vantage. It is also almost cynical. When a child comes down the stairs and sees the toy for which she'd been waiting, the child knows that these toys came from Santa Claus. If she tells you that she got her new toy from "Santa," she is not lying to you, even if her father tells you how much it cost. When a child later shifts positions, and no longer sees Santa the same way, it can be troubling. Still, from that early vantage, Santa was true.

Some postmodernists will argue that all truth is positional and contextual. They argue that everything is logically built on propositions that are all really suppositions that are only true within a context. Others, including myself, disagree. We argue that while our personal experiences all indicate a particular perspective which is true for us, that those experiences are experiences of something wholly greater than the mere perspective that we enjoy. Were this not the case, learning itself would be an irrational activity because one already has a perspective, and they are all equal. No, to argue that Santa Claus is real from a contextual argument is really saying nothing at all, but does provide us the first insight that we need in order to move toward an understanding of Santa Claus: that there are different kinds of truth.

Truths that do not arrive at Santa Claus

There are also other kinds of truth from which we cannot derive Santa Claus. One kind of truth is mathematical truth. Mathematical truths are realities at which we derive from things which are true simply by definition. One does not get far into geometry before one begins to see that all mathematical truths are simply true because we say so. A triangle has three sides and three corners because that's how we define a triangle. If we define a triangle differently, or define something else as being a triangle it will have the properties of a triangle. We can define a right triangle as one that has one that has a 90° angle on one corner. To a sensible student, this raises the question of what is a degree. A degree is 1/360^th of a circle. Why are there 360 degrees and not some other number? Because that is how we define a degree because that is how we define a circle. There is no better reason than that. On this right triangle, we will find that the square of the longest line is equal to the square of the other two sides. So if we have a right triangle with sides which we measure 1" by 1", the longer line will be √2which is known as an irrational number because it clearly exists as a mathematical concept, but you can't exactly "count to it," even using fractions. Here's the thing though, it exists by definition only, if we define our 1" as another set of units, we will call them "monkeys" and say that the very same triangle is 2 monkeys long on its short sides, then the long side is 4 monkeys long, plain and simple, a number to which one can count. So you see, the difficulties in mathematical truths all come down to definition. So, mathematically, if I define Santa a particular way, I can prove he exists, but only based on my definitions. I've never been impressed with mathematical truth, because you could always define things differently and arrive at different conclusions.

Another kind of truth what we call "scientific" truth. In my discipline of Communication Studies and in other humanities it is called "intersubjective" truth. In the sciences, it is called "objective" truth. This is the idea, that while we all see things differently, there are some things that we see as the same. If I pour half a cup of milk into my measuring cup and ask multiple people to look at it and see if they think it is half a cup, and they agree that it is, I probably actually do have half a cup. When one's perceptions are verifiable in this way, repeatable by multiple parties and yields predictable results that are also verifiable and predictable, we say that it is "scientifically," "intersubjectively," or "objectively" true. Scientific truth is really useful but has one major flaw when using it to design one's life. That is that things can be objectively true, but nothing can be objectively untrue. We can say something lacks scientific truth because it hasn't been widely observed, or there were large discrepancies between observations, but we can never say that something is scientifically untrue. Generally, when children find out that Santa Claus is "not real" what they are really learning is that he lacks scientific proof, which is not the same as saying it is not true, just that it can't be proved objectively.

Mathematically and scientifically, we cannot prove that Santa Claus is real. Mathematically, Santa Claus's existence or lack thereof is a matter of definition. Scientifically, the existence of Santa Claus is not objectively verifiable or repeatable. So, because of this failure to prove Santa Claus's existence, many (including myself for nearly 20 years) believed that Santa Claus is false. A great deal of that came from a misunderstanding of how both mathematics and science arrive at truth. I hope that I have corrected that here and we can move on to other forms of arriving at truth.

Truth as Social Construction

One of the ways in which truth can be understood is as a social construction. There have been a number of detractors who attack a social construction method of understanding truth. Most of those detractors, I'd argue, do not really understand the theory and seem to think that it stands opposed to concepts of mathematical truth, scientific proof and proof as a form, which we'll discuss next. Far from being opposed to these, it is the source of the first, the means of seeing the second and one way of processing the third.

Although we can get very complicated as to this means truth finding, and indeed, multiple books have been written on the subject it comes down to this: many things, if not almost everything exists or does not because in communication as a society we say it does or does not. On the surface, that sounds sort of ridiculous, but lets take some examples and you will see that this is actuallytruth.

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama became President of the United States of America. It wasn't the voting that made him President. The voting had occurred two months earlier and showed that the majority of the American people would agree with the idea that he should be President. No, what made him President was taking the oath and accepting the position. How did he get to become President? Well, that's complicated. There is a long history, but it all comes down to a few white men sitting in a smokey room in Philadelphia using their imaginations and imagining a person with certain powers who would be able to do certain things and writing it down on a piece of parchment. We call that parchment the Constitution and it doesn't physically do a darned thing. From a scientific standpoint, it is a piece of goat skin and ink. From a mathematics standpoint, well, I guess you could measure the area of it or the volume of ink used in its construction or something like that.

Still, while mathematically and scientifically the Constitution doesn't do anything, most Americans are very much aware (and often wrong) about all the things it does do. It doesn't do any of this by any kind of mathematical or scientific method. It does it by acting socially, to construct us. The Constitution of the United States would be completely powerless except for the fact that we generally agree that it is not. That is how the social construction of reality works. We create truth by agreeing, generally, that something is true. We agree that Obama is President, so he is.

It is the social construction of reality which creates, among other things, Presidents. Obama is not President because of anything mathematical or scientific we could measure about his body. No, he's President because we generally believe that he is because we generally accept the Constitution. There are people who do not believe that he is, and they are wrong. Why are they wrong? They are wrong simply for the reason that most people disagree.

Once you see that the President is socially constructed, you can move on to other things. Even physical things are socially constructed. You are reading this on a computer that exists because someone had an idea, wrote it down, other people interpreted that idea and tried different things to make that idea work better and wrote down other ideas and tried them out until a computer appeared on your desk (or wherever).

"Sure," you might say, "but not everything is socially constructed." And I agree with you but you might say, "what about the trees!" Do you mean the trees growing within the borders of the National Forest, the ones planted by landscapers in your yard or the ones growing between the cracks of the sidewalk someone designed? Surely you can see that these are only here because of the direct decisions of certain people.

"Yes, well, what about the sun, the moon, the stars."

You're right of course. No human being constructed these things. Still, the naming of the stars, the differentiation between the sun and other stars, calling the moon at one time "full" and at other times "new" these are all social constructions. There is almost nothing that we can experience that is not in some way socially constructed. When the moon is full, it is full because that's what we agree to call it. If you don't call it that, you are wrong. The reason you are wrong is because we all say so, simple as that.

Within this concept, Santa Claus certainly exists as a social construction. It would be ridiculous to say he does not. I've read books about him. I've gotten gifts from him. I even saw him at the mall a few times. Perhaps you think what I saw at the mall was just a man dressed up as Santa, not really Santa. Well, let's apply that logic to other social constructions. Is Obama really President, or is he just a guy that lives in the White House and gets on TV and acts like the President? I know some people who think that while he is President, that he does not act like one, and he should. I tell you, he is the President and the man at the mall is Santa and when that guy at the mall goes home, he won't be Santa anymore and when Barrack Obama ends his tenure as President, he will not be President anymore. Santa Claus is real as a social construction, every bit as real as the President of the United States.

Still, if this were the only way in which Santa were real, it would be kind of sad. There is at least one way that Santa is real than just this.

Truth as Form

Socrates and Plato are generally credited with positing a method of truth finding as being something external to the concrete experience of day to day life. It is probably fair to say that they codified it better than anyone before, but multiple religions and philosophical systems assumed it previous to Socrates. This was not true of all religions. Many placed their deities and powers withing the physical realms, but certainly Hebrew and Hindu teachings assume an externality that imposes itself on our perceptions and which is, in fact the source of truth.

Forms are ideas, or rather ideals. They are perfect concepts of things to which we, using language, compare them. For Plato, if we see a chair, even if it is quite unlike any chair we've seen before, we recognize it as a chair because our minds compare it to all the possible ideals and come to the conclusion that what this comes closest to is the concept of "chairness." We experience frustration with our experience not living up to the ideal. For instance, when I am not an "ideal" husband. I've never met an ideal husband and would argue that in our physical reality, such a man has probably never existed. Nonetheless I have a concept of that ideal, and that concept is the truth to which I compare experiences. Sometimes I have peak experiences; perhaps I meet a man who in this moment at this time seems to be behaving as a perfect husband. In those moments I see a type of the form to which I can aspire.

The concept of the form has been a great way to understand what is going on in our lives and even when trying to find application of other's stories to our own. Following the concept of the form, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians (a Greek people, quite familiar with Plato) about using the Platonic forms to understand Old Testament scripture, referring to the rituals of the Old Testament as "Shadows," a direct allusion to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," one of the places where Plato explained forms. Following Paul and Plato, Carl Jung developed a way of understanding the forms in places outside scripture which Jung called "archetypes."

Human understanding of truth as form, wherever it has been posited, assumes some sort of revelation. There is some means by which the human mind apprehends the forms and makes use of comparisons. Whether by some pre-incarnate experience, a connection to the Holy Spirit or a tie of our conscious mind to the collective unconscious or some combination of all three we become aware of the forms and use them as comparison.

To me, Santa Claus as a true form is the most consequential proof of Santa Claus. This semester, like all semesters, I asked my students to engage in a service learning process. As is normal in the fall semester, many students chose to work with some organization preparing in some way for Christmas. There were a number of such charities helped. Literally thousands of dollars were raised for charities such as "Toys for Tots," "Shop with a Cop," the school backpack program, local food pantries and specific groups gathering food for Christmas dinners for those who can't afford it. The students worked mostly anonymously to gather goods and money, most donated anonymously. All presented for the joy of others that they will never see and from whom they can never hear a "thank you."

And in this moment, I have one of those peak experiences that Jung and Plato discussed. I see a shadow of Santa Claus, even if I don't hear him "ho-ho-ho." This person who comes and gives generously in the night, not waiting for or wanting a "thank you." This person who ties his generosity in time of year to the ultimate act of generosity, the giving of God's son. This person whose red suit is bright in the dark of the year and warm in the cold of the year. We don't see Santa Claus, but we see his shadow, as he becomes the face for our own anonymous generosity. Those ways in which we reach out and disappear neither waiting for nor even wanting gratitude.

This shadow of Santa Claus is the surest evidence of his existence, even greater than his social construction. Certainly, mathematically and scientifically, the truth of Santa Claus is very difficult to find. Still that doesn't mean he isn't real. It just means that he is too generous to wait for a thank-you. If you still do not believe in Santa, I really think you're missing something important. You are probably missing a part of yourself. I really feel sorry for you.

I love Christmas

I love it all:

I love the fruitcake, the eggnog, the gingerbread, the multiple dinners at every organization of which I'm a part and right now, I am not going to worry about the diet.

I love the trees, the tinsel, the holly the mistletoe and the brightly wrapped gifts, and no, I do not think I am worshiping Odin if I kiss my wife beneath those poisoned berries.

I love the cheesy specials on TV and the campy songs in every store and I am well aware that they are cheesy and campy but they are wonderful.

I love that it lasts from Halloween to New Years and that Thanksgiving gets caught up in it because you'd have to have the worst kind of obsessive compulsive disorder to want “one holiday at a time.”

I like shopping for gifts for friends, family, the less fortunate and the most fortunate.

I love Santa Clause and can prove that he's real and that while he may not be the “reason for the season” he is part of the celebration.

I love the giving and receiving, and don't worry if it is too “materialistic.”

I love candle-light church services, where the wax burns the hand and I am not concerned about the fire danger.

I love pine needles on the floor and the cat in the tree and yes, it is a mess, and no, I don't care.

I love dashing through the snow, driving across the country during the worst weather of the year, the one time of year when it is the most foolish to travel and if I die on the road, I die with a carol in my heart.

I love the baby in the manger and don't care that we don't know, historically, when his birthday might have been.

I like little girls dressed up as angels and don't care that all the angels mentioned in the Bible are masculine.

I love the shepherds and the wisemen and I don't care if they weren't there on the same day, and the wise men came later, once Mary and Joseph had found a house; they're all in the barn with the little drummer boy for me and Mary is HAPPY to have some kid banging on a drum in front of her newborn.

I love Christmas and I celebrate extravagantly because the Nativity is something worth celebrating extravagantly and if you don't like it, I'll take your share, and you can go lock yourself up in your house and develop seasonal affective disorder, but don't try to foist your negativity on those of us who are having fun.

Now it is almost Halloween.

I can't believe I haven't posted since August. This has been a very busy semester, but still. . .

And now it is almost Halloween. Halloween is a great time for me. Growing up, Mom would start playing Christmas music the day after Halloween. Probably for that reason, to me, Halloween is the beginning of the holiday season. It is non-stop party from here on out:

October 31, Halloween
November 17-20, The National Communication Association Convention
November 24, Thanksgiving

November 28, My wife's birthday
December 5-8, Final Exam Week
December 10, My birthday
December 25 Christmas
December 31, New Years Eve!

Hardly a break in the fun anywhere!

Multiple User Shutdown in Ubuntu

Coming to terms with shutting down the computer

Most of the time, my wife is the last person on the computer at the end of the day. Often, as we get ready for bed, I remind her to shut the computer down. If I am also logged on to the computer, it means she'll have to click a couple extra buttons to shut it down. She doesn't like that. So, I made some changes that make this unnecessary, and created this tutorial in case anyone else needs to do it too.

I have to admit that for the average Ubuntu user, following the advice of this tutorial I made is a bad idea. It might lead to unsaved work being lost.

One of the things I love about Linux, however, is that you can make changes to yours software, even if it is kind of dumb.