The Dawn Treader

I recently saw a status that read, "I'm sick of hearing about the swine flu already."

For a little historical perspective of how serious a pandemic is, check out .

Any DT readers concerned about the swine flu?

"But, he [Charles Murray] goes on to show, there's a difference between encouragement and support. European-style socialism "supports" faith by providing and maintaining church buildings; "supports" family with childcare and generous maternity benefits, "supports" vocation through workplace regulations, and community through the creation of a European brand. The result is, according to Murray, empty churches, a collapsing birthrate, low job satisfaction, and increasingly cynical Germans, Swedes, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. "

~ Janie Cheaney, WORLD magazine writer, commenting on the Charles Murray's 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture

Nice write up in WORLD magazine about libertarian Charles Murray's speech last month, entitled "The Happiness of the People".

Cheaney sums up Murray's thesis as "By usurping many of the responsibilities that used to belong to individuals, the state has sapped much of the energy, drive, and satisfaction from living."

Cheaney, however, points out that Murray's optimism in science as our way out is a misguided optimism.  Empirical reasons alone do not change the human heart, as Murray seems to hope.  People with power, influence and self-interest will use knowledge ... empirical or otherwise ... to further themselves.  It has been that way ever since the Fall, as history has proven again and again.

Murray's lecture is an interesting read.  If you are interested in the question, "Do we want the United States to be like Europe?", then I encourage you to read Murray's address.

The conservatives and libertarians will amen his sentiments, the lefties will throw rocks.  I would be interested in hearing some intelligent responses to both the WORLD article or the Murray speech.

~ President Obama, addressing a holocaust remembrance crowd

These words are exactly right.  Technology and education are not our saviors.  They just as easily become weapons of mass destruction.  Hence, science in a vacuum is not the answer and history proves it.  More math and science classes are not the answer.  The answer has to involve the human heart, because that is where decisions are made and responsibility resides.

Again, great words.   I especially resonate with the part about not turning away from images that disturb us.  We need to see the end result of our moral reasoning.  Images are powerful.

The great irony, of course, is that Obama has a flawless record of supporting a mother's right to abort her unborn child and the unfettered use of unwanted human embryos for their body parts (i.e. their stem cells).  He fails to see the intolerance and injustice of the holocaust against the most helpless human beings of all ... the smallest ones.  In other words, the victims who are discriminated against and denied person hood because of their size and stage of human development.

Obama's words are amazing, but his record is so loud and clear that it drowns them out.  I wonder if he has viewed disturbing images of a partial birth abortion, or has he simply turned the channel.

Why do you think people find it so difficult to truly forgive one another?

I am curious to hear what my fellow Christ followers think.

Let me hear from you.

Catherine, as you are probably aware, "The Shack" is a runaway best seller that tells a story about forgiveness in light of tragedy.  Here are two quotes from The Shack involving a conversation between “Papa” (i.e. God) and the protagonist (Mack).

"Forgiveness is not about forgetting, Mack.  It is about letting go of another person's throat.”

Forgiveness is first for you, the forgiver," answered Papa, "to release you from something that will eat you alive; that will destroy your joy and your ability to love fully and openly."

There is some truth in these quotes, but your book does a good job of explaining how forgiveness involves something bigger.  Please expound.

Thanks, Jeff, for the good question. One of the things I noticed in studying forgiveness is how much pop psychology has truncated our view of why we forgive. Dr. Phil, for example, defines forgiveness as “a choice you make to release yourself from pain, bitterness, and anger.” While I’d agree that forgiveness is a choice we make, and while I’d agree that forgiveness can often bring a very real sense of relief and release, I would differ in this: I think forgiveness isn’t primarily a selfish act. Forgiveness is a gift—a gift given to the person in our lives who may least deserve it. When we forgive, we may actually suffer in the process as we let go of the right to avenge or let go of something that was giving us a sense of identity, or any number of things. There is certainly a joy in doing something which is gracious and good, but it won’t be a joy without cost.

I love what you wrote on page 92 when you said,

“Like any gift, forgiveness can bring joy to both the giver and the receiver, and the one who gives pays the highest price.  But perhaps the extreme costliness of this particular gift imbues forgiveness, of all human actions, with the greatest potential to image forth the divine.”

Forgiveness is central to the gospel, and it is extremely costly.  You reference Bonhoeffer in your book and call forgiveness an “active form of suffering” on p 263.  Please unpack what you mean.

It’s interesting you bring up Bonhoeffer as I’ve just been re-reading The Cost of Discipleship.  Bonhoeffer teaches us a lot about something we’ve forgotten. That is that the Christian life is one that like our Lord Jesus Christ’s will be marked by suffering. We don’t measure our success in this world by whether we’re going along smoothly and carefree. In terms of forgiveness, when someone wrongs us we suffer passively. But when we choose to forgive, we take up an active form of suffering in giving a costly gift to an “enemy.” We let go of shoving that wrong in someone’s face, for example, or of using a past misdeed to keep another person in position of debt to us. There are many ways that giving up the perceived right to avenge will feel like suffering. In saying this, I don’t want to minimize the joy there is in doing right. Christ went to the cross for the joy set before him. When we forgive, we create the possibility of a renewed future and a renewed relationship. We participate in seeing shalom restored. There’s a reward in our suffering that can outweigh the pain of the offering.

You have said in one of your interviews that "holding on to that forgiveness is the hardest" thing for you.  Would you say that forgiveness is a process, or would you say it is a one-time thing?  In other words, do you think one can be in the process of forgiving someone, or is it something that either happens or doesn’t?  And once you have forgiven someone, do you think it is a done deal, or is it ongoing?

I think forgiveness is definitely a process. I do think that at some point we make a choice to forgive and then we hold on to that choice. But the choice to hold on may strike us in ways that seem new and may bring up old pain. For instance, just this past week I saw a consequence in my life of a wrong that had been done to me almost nine years ago. I’ve chosen already to forgive that wrong. But I’d never really seen and felt the pain of that particular aspect of the consequence of the wrong in my life until just last week. As that pain hit me in a fresh, new way, I had to hold on to that choice that I’d made to forgive. And in a sense, I forgave again as a new aspect of the harm done to me was revealed. I don’t think that the fact that I felt a new level of pain, hurt and even anger negates the reality of the forgiveness I’d already extended. It just shows that any kind of harm can affect those around us in ways that are very multi-faceted and far-reaching.

Colossians 3:13 tells us "as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive."   This verse humbles me every time I read it, because I think of the depth of Christ's forgiveness for me personally, and think, there is no way I can forgive as Christ forgave.   At the end of the day, would you say that forgiveness is possible outside the supernatural work and grace of Christ in the human heart?

I believe that any good that any of us do (Christian or non-Christian) is grace from God. So in that sense, any forgiveness in the world, any selflessness, any noble and pure sacrifice is part of God’s supernatural work. But you probably mean can people who don’t see the atoning death of Jesus as a motivator to forgive, can they truly forgive? I would say, yes, they can. There’s a reason that what’s at the heart of Christian ethics, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is found in so many religions and cultures. This empathy-based ethic is understandable and even reasonable to people who don’t operate based on motives of faith. And many people are able to remember a time when they were forgiven or when they desperately wanted forgiveness and they received it. They can remember how good that felt and feel motivated to want to likewise extend that to another human being. But I think that a person who is a Christian is going to have experienced this in a much more profound way than most of us do in our normal everyday lives. The more we understand that we desperately need forgiveness (in other words the more we understand how truly sinful we are), the more we will see the need to extend that same grace to others. But there’s also another motivation for Christians, and that is pleasing and becoming like Christ. We know that as we imitate Christ, it shows His love to the world. There’s a motivation in that which can help bypass the suffering and discomfort of extending forgiveness.

Thanks for these good questions and for the opportunity to share a bit more about the importance of forgiveness.

Mr. D is pleased to host a stop on the As We Forgive blog tour. 

It is my pleasure to introduce author Catherine Claire Larson.

Catherine Claire Larson is a senior writer and editor of PFM, a non-profit organization that advocates restorative justice—a paradigm shift in criminal justice philosophy that sees the end goal of justice not simply in terms of punishment but of restoration, restitution, and reconciliation. PFM and its partner organization PFI work with prisoners and their families across the United States and in 110 countries around the world, including Rwanda.

As a writer for the founder of PFM, Chuck Colson, Catherine writes for the daily BreakPoint radio commentaries that are heard by some 2 million weekly listeners. Her personal insights on the intersection of faith and culture appear daily on The Point, which ranks among the top three most-visited Christian blogs in the nation. Currently, she is also the senior editor and a contributing writer for BreakPoint’s Worldview e-magazine as well as the daily one-minute radio program, The Point.

I met Catherine and her husband Mark last year at a get together of Centurions in Northern Virginia.  She gave an outstanding talk to our group about writing for worldview.  She and Mark then participated in a mini-Pigfest that we held at our get-together.

I emailed some questions to Catherine after reading her book.  I will post those questions and answers on the next post.  I encourage you to post a question in the comments section and interact with this outstanding author and Christian thinker.

In some shape or form, all Rwandans ask this question.  Some, like Antoine Rutayirire, himself a survivor, put the question starkly: "if they told you that murderer was to be released into your neighborhood, how would you feel?  But what if this time, they weren't just releasing one, but forty thousand?
As We Forgive, p 16

Hat tip to Matt Curtis for pointing me to this Jim Manzi post : The Multiverse, Intelligent Design, and Science, Much Ado About Nothing.

I have written on the multiverse theory before, basically making the same point as Manzi.  Manzi uses the term metaphysics to describe it.  In other words, it is a belief about what could be true about our universe, and what could possibly explain all the coincidences we see in the laws of physics.  It does not appeal to evidence, however.  It appeals to faith.  Yet, in the height of hypocrisy, scientists and science magazines continue to feature the multiverse as real scientific theory and dedicate ink and cover articles to it.

What would scientists promote non-science this way?

Simple.  Because it is the only alternative to allowing God in the door.  Therefore, the multiverse theory is more about worldview (i.e. scientism) than it is about making testable, falsifiable, empirically based observations.

Many equate science with scientism which is a category error.  One is a practice.  The other, scientism, is a philosophy.  Scientism is another word for materialism, a worldview that believes that matter is all there is, was and ever will be.  Scientific observation, in this worldview, is the final arbiter of truth.  God, as a spirit, does not exist in this worldview.

Christians, like myself, love science but battle scientism.

Manzi makes the point that intelligent design is a philosophical pursuit, and so is multiverse theory.  If you are going to diss one, then you need to diss both.  Therefore, he is exposing the hypocrisy of many scientists who embrace multiverse.

Manzi is right to point out their hypocrisy.

In my own case, I view all knowledge as valid.  I don't put some knowledge (empirical knowledge) on a pedestal higher than other knowledge (metaphysical knowledge).  Therefore, it is not a big deal to call something "science" versus "non-science".  The categories simply don't matter to me.  I am interested in truth and knowing it, not what kind of truth it is.

Those who ascribe to scientism, however, do care about classifications.  If something is scientific, then it has credibility and is considered a superior form of knowledge to something non-scientific.  That is why it is such a big deal to label intelligent design as pseudo-science or religion or metaphysics ... anything but science.

Well, if classifications are important, then they ought to be consistent and label the multiverse theory for what it truly is.  A form of reasoning that appeals to what we don't observe and can't know.  In other words, "gaps reasoning".  In other words, blind faith :)