Daily Archives: March 5, 2009

Wine, Health, and Life

Posted by on March 5, 2009 8 comments

There is a great article in Slate Magazine about the odd American fixation on searching for health benefits in wine drinking. A couple snippets from the article:

Personally, I’m thrilled to learn that red wine could help me avoid cancer, outlast opponents on the tennis court, survive a nuclear attack, and lead a long, lucid, and Viagra-free life. However, a little caution is in order. Most of the testing with resveratrol has been done on mice, and they have been given ungodly amounts of the stuff. As the New York Times pointed out in a 2006 article, the mice in one experiment were injected with 24 milligrams of resveratrol per kilogram of body weight; red wine contains around 1.5 to 3 milligrams of resveratrol per liter, so to get the equivalent dose, a 150-pound person would need to drink 750-1,500 bottles of wine a day. I weigh 195 pounds and can finish a bottle of Beaujolais and feel no different than if I’d had a bottle of Gatorade, but tossing back 1,100 liters of wine in a 24-hour period? Probably not.

It is great that science is uncovering so many possible ancillary benefits to merlot and pinot noir, and I hope that resveratrol is indeed the cure-all that mankind has been hoping for. But if and when a proven resveratrol tablet hits the market, I won’t be liquidating my cellar, nor do I intend to load up on any of the resveratrol-enhanced wines that are apparently coming our way (unless, of course, they happen to be seriously good). Likewise, if it turns out the mice have been screwing with us and that red wine carries none of these magical side effects, there will still be a bottle on my dinner table every night. Wine is a habit that requires no rationale other than the pursuit of enjoyment.

Cheers to that! The author here is at one with the prophetic images of wine in the Bible and in the life of Jesus in which wine serves no other purpuse than spontaneous and liberating joy. Indeed the constant quest to search for health benefits in wine is a rather disgustingly modern instumentalization of what the Bible, and nearly all of historic wine-drinking cultures simply view as a celebratory and delicious part of life. Rather than grasp after ways to justify wine as healthy, lets just enjoy if for the awesome, tasty thing that is.

Thru You

Posted by on March 5, 2009 Comments Off

The undisputed king of all bloggers, Andrew Sullivan links to a pretty fascinating series of YouTube videos by Israeli musician, Kudiman. This new album of his is actual made by mixing YouTube videos of all sorts of music. A pretty fascinating creation, I must say.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO-Mx0FHm4w&feature=related]

Am I Just Dead Inside?

Posted by on March 5, 2009 3 comments

Come on, seriously? Why the hell is it newsworthy, let alone politically newsworthy to tell us all about the brand new, super cool, surprise swingset that has just been installed on the White House grounds for the Obama daughters?

Like, can’t we at least have a category of news that is devoted to sappy irrelevant tidbits of information? This story is sitting at the top of CNN’s political ticker for goodness sake.

Plutocracy, Ideology, and the age of Obama

Posted by on March 5, 2009 1 comment

Sally Kohn, in a recent Huffington Post article goes on a little tirade about how the history of America is a history of struggle between the plutocrats on the one hand and the people on the other. America’s primal struggle as a nation concerns whether the machinations of vicious corporations will triumph over the will of the demos, the everyman, us. The article kicks off with a great headline, saying “We may have elected Barack Obama president, but make no mistake about it: there is a fierce contest underway to decide who will rule the United States of America—corporations or the people.”

Lovely setup there. Well, we may have elected Obama, but the horrible others, the rich enemies of us realizing our democratic destiny are still out there. What is ironic about this article is the way it makes a grossly simply identification between Obama and the democratic party and “the people.” This is just like like Sarah Palin calling herself an average middle class soccer mom.

Sure, we can analyze the history of American politics on the basis of a struggle against plutocracy, but I don’t think such an analysis would really have that much to do with the differences between republicans and democrats. It would probably have more to do with looking at the relations between, say labor unions and the federal government and things of that nature (watch The Wire, people).

My feeling is that this is just what ideology looks like in the age of Obama. The atmosphere is primed for the direct identification of the Bush-era leftovers with the demonic plutocracy, and anything that the Obama administration does  is simply the will of the people, the future of democracy, hope. Now on the one hand, ideology in the age of Obama does feel like a welcome change after the last 8 years. But lets not fool ourselves into thinking that it isn’t ideology. It is.

Craigslist and Prostitution

Posted by on March 5, 2009 Comments Off

From the Huffington Post:

The sheriff’s department for Chicago’s Cook County says it’s suing Craigslist, calling the popular online classifieds site the largest source of prostitution in the United States.

Sheriff Tom Dart plans a news conference later Thursday.

A call for comment before business hours to Craigslist’s public relations firm was not immediately returned. Craigslist has come under fire in recent months for the “erotic services” ads posted on its site. Several people have been arrested on prostitution charges after posting the ads online.

In November, Craigslist pledged to crack down on prostitution ads as part of an agreement with several attorneys general.

Hope they get their act together. Otherwise I’ll have to find another way to get a car for $500. I’d really rather just use craigslist. But it turns out I could put that $500 to other uses on craigslist as well. I must think on this.

Best Book Titles

Posted by on March 5, 2009 10 comments

Working in a used bookstore allows one to see all kinds of interesting things, not the least of which is books with insane hilarious titles. A few really good ones that I’ve encountered recently include:

  • Can the Pastor do it Alone?
  • Keep Coming Holy Spirit
  • Becoming Your Own Emotional Support System: Creating a Community of One

Anybody else got anything good?

Free Markets as Nonviolence?

Posted by on March 5, 2009 4 comments

Über conservative apologetics aficionado, Doug Groothuis is tired of everyone bagging on capitalism these days, and so he points us to a speech given by Ronald Nash in 1985 about capitalism and socialism. If you want a nice theological walk down Cold War memory lane, its quite entertaining:

The alternative to free exchange is violence. Capitalism is a mechanism that allows natural human desires to be satisfied in a nonviolent way. Little can be done to prevent human beings from wanting to be rich. But what capitalism does is channel that desire into peaceful means that benefit many besides those who wish to improve their own situation.

I suppose Nash might be able to be at least partially forgiven for statements this silly, given that he’s a born and bred cold warrior writing at the height of onslaught of Reagan’s archenemies, the evil Soviet empire. Nevertheless, seriously? Free markets=nonviolent exchange? Clearly Nash doesn’t know much about being poor. He might have a different view of the relative nonviolence of free market economics in such an event (though if you read the speech he clearly doesn’t have much interest in the poor at all–they seem to really annoy him actually).

But whatever historical grace we might give Nash, Groothuis is so utterly without excuse that the very act of commending this article seems to make him into the ultimate walking caricature of middle America’s freakishly uptight conservative evangelical wing. At least it makes for an interesting case study. Of some kind.

Against Death

Posted by on March 5, 2009 9 comments

Anymore I am just more and more convinced that there is one fundamental assertion that embodies the nature of biblical faith, hope, and action:

“The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.” (1 Cor 15:26)

This the axis upon which everything turns and in light of which everything makes sense. Any theology that tries to elide the fact that death is the last enemy is sentimental nonsense in my book. Death is the great enemy. It is the ancient dragon, the adversary of all things, the bane of all goodness. There is nothing meaningful or beautiful about death. Too many attempts are made in theology to establish a theological understanding of death as somehow good, a way to find in death some thing “natural” that can be embraced. Dying is just a part of living as the old platitude goes.

Any such sentiments or inclinations must needs be rejected in the strongest possible terms. There is only one way for death to be rendered good and that is for death to be destroyed. Death must be deathed. This is the good news and nothing less, that “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54).

And this is not to say that life after death is the nadir of the gospel. That is precisely not it. What is the nadir of the gospel is not life after death, but life. The infinitely excessive life of God which embraces, transfigures, and liberates all created things. Death is not simply the cessation of an organism, death is slavery, death is bondage. Life is freedom. The gospel of life is the gospel of freedom. The only freedom worth proclaiming is freedom from the powers of death. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. This is what’s real.

Of the Marking of Books there is no End

Posted by on March 5, 2009 21 comments

There is a simple but imprint structure to the marking of books. The first basic rule is that it is generally a sin to write in fictional books and generally a sin not to write in non-fiction. To scribble notes in fiction is generally wrong because fiction was not written for such forms of exegetical dissection, rather it was written to be read. And dammit, you need to subvocalize when you read fiction, I don’t care what anybody who’s taken a speed reading class says–you have to hear the story in your head or you’re not reading it at all. Now, as said, the rule against marking fiction is a general rule, not an absolute one. For example, consider this quote from Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King:

“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of this world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

Seriously, you’d have to be insane or dead inside not to want to mark that. So mark away. I did. And that enabled me to find it to show to you here. Such are the sorts of exceptions that present themselves in fiction reading.

Non-fiction however is a different matter. Non-fiction nearly always demands that you mark it, it begs to be underlined, questioned, charted, and asterisked. And here is the crucial point about the marking of all books: it must be done in a freaking pencil, folks. Pens are forgivable, but only if you are in extreme circumstances, like being on a plane or that’s all there is, or you’re sitting on the toilet and all you have in your pocket is a pen. These are what we call justifiable events. What is not justifiable however, in any circumstance is highlighting of any kind in any form. This is simple desecration of the sacred trust that is the printed word. If you highlight you might as well buy a Kindle. I’m as serious as the state of our economy on this one. No highlighting. This is not a request, this is just the truth.

Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Church’s Freedom

Posted by on March 5, 2009 1 comment

Stringfellow had this whole apocalyptic ecclesiology thing figured out a long time ago:

“Christ shares the gift of Pentecost, and the Church is born in that sharing of the Holy Spirit.

It is Christ, possessed of the Holy Spirit, who is triumphant in all his encounters with the powers of death, with all the principalities, and, indeed with the presence of death itself. And it is this, concretely, which is the gift which the Risen Christ shares in Pentecost with the Church. The gift of the Holy Spirit is, then, authority and victory over death and over every power of death.

Specifically, that gift, that freedom, lies in the power given to the Church by the service of Christ to discern and identify, and then to expose and exorcise, the powers of death, whatever form they may take, however they may be disguised, whenever they insinuate themselves against the Church, or put forth their false claim to dominate the life of the world or of anybody in it.

The Church, notice, does not, independently of God, have, hold or exercise any strength against the principalities. God, as the world has been shown in Christ, reserves to himself this awesome prerogative. But the Church, in the gratuity of Pentecost, is enabled to witness to God’s authority over the principalities in his victory over death by its knowledge of death, its discernment of the powers of death, and by unveiling and laying bare the works of death in this world.”

~William Stringfellow, Free in Obedience, 102.

The church’s supreme gift, through Christ’s Spirit is to be able to truthfully discern and name the things that make for life and the things that make for death. And the same Spirit makes possible the church’s own life of living free from the powers of death, tasting the power of the age to come, the power of unbounded life. Stringfellow gets it.

Abiding in 1 John

Posted by on March 5, 2009 1 comment

The word “abide” (Grk: meno) occurs 18 times in the first epistle of John. The only other New Testament book where it occurs more often is in the gospel of John in which it occurs 33 times. Consistently in the Johannine writings the idea conveyed in one of continuity, of continuing on, of remaining. In the first epistle of John one of the central ways that this term is deployed is in relation to the original proclamation of the gospel that the Johannine Christians have heard. Consistently reference is made to “that which you have heard from the beginning” (1 John 1:1; 2:7; 2:24; 3:11; 2 John 6). The fundamental admonition being that the readers should continue to remain faithful to the message of the gospel that they have had since it was first preached to them.

However, the theological twist on this lies in the Johannine concept of the relationship between continuing on in faithfulness to the gospel and living the koinonial life of the Father and Son. “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father” (1 John 2:24). And similarly, “God abides in those who confess that Jesus in the son of God and they abide in God” (1 John 3:15).

So, in first John there is an intricate pattern of lingering indwelling, of ongoing abiding that characterizes the life of discipleship and faithfulness. In remaining faithful to the message of the gospel, we in fact are indwelt by and indwell the life of the Father and Son. First John can in fact be taken as an elaborate reiteration of the dynamics of divine grace. We are liberated into the very life of God in hearing and remaining bound to the Word which has been spoken to us, the gospel of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Thus, for the elder, we participate in the Trinitarian life of love itself insofar as we abide within the proclamation of the gospel, insofar as we indwell the story of Jesus.

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