Happy Birthday, J. R. R. Tolkien

Today is J. R. R. Tolkien’s 121^st birthday. (I wonder if that's the same as eleventy-eleven?)

Tolkien has been my favorite author since I first read him in 1976 prior to my freshman year at Michigan State University. Toward the end of my senior year in high school, I heard about Tolkien from some friends. When I had some time before moving to Michigan for school, I went to a bookstore to buy The Hobbit. I was so taken with it that the next day I went back and bought The Lord of the Rings. I read the complete set four times over the next twelve months, before going to school and in between every trimester at Michigan State. I then bought The Silmarillion as soon as it came out, along with some of the books about Tolkien that were starting to be published in the late-70s.

 

I was so much of a Tolkien fanatic that one year 23 of my friends all chipped in and bought me a leather bound edition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which to this day is the favorite gift I have ever been given and one of my treasured possessions.

From Tolkien, I discovered other fantasy and science fiction authors, including some of my favorites like C. S. Lewis and Roger Zelazny. I also read Larry Niven, Ursula LeGuin, Madeleine L’Engle, …, and took a cognate field (sort of like a minor) in comparative literature. When I graduated from college, I began going to Renaissance festivals, learned about Celtic music and began playing it, and then moved into early music as well. All of which was inspired ultimately by Tolkien.

Tolkien also influenced my theology. His essay “On Faerie Stories” had a number of significant insights in it, but I haven’t completely integrated those into my thinking. Of more importance, however, was the figure of Aragorn. Through his character, Tolkien taught me for the first time, the nature of lordship, and what it meant when I confessed that “Jesus is Lord.” (That is one of the things that was lost in translation in the film version, unfortunately.)

I am glad that Tolkien is getting the recognition he deserves in popular culture, however much I may disagree with some of Jackson’s decisions in the trilogy. Much as I enjoy the films, the distortion of some of the characters has always rubbed me the wrong way. Be that as it may, if the films and the new Hobbit trilogy open up a wider audience for the books, it will be a good thing.

Happy birthday, Professor!

Part 2 of my article on Education

This is the second part of my article on education. It's part of a series on politics, with the last several articles dealing with the need for virtue in a republic and how we can rebuild a virtuous society. Click here.

Death at Christmas (Repost)

(I posted this last year. Since it got a very strong response, I thought it would be appropriate to repost it this year, updated for the time that's past.)

Eddie died seventeen years ago next week.

He was my father-in-law, a good and faithful man, whom I loved and respected tremendously. I still miss him. He had cancer, and although the prognosis was reasonably good, he didn’t respond to treatment. We got the word that he was near death, and so we had to hustle to leave for Michigan from our home in Connecticut a day earlier than we had planned. We left in the middle of the afternoon during a heavy snowstorm, drove until 1 or 2 in the morning, spent the night in a motel, and drove the rest of the way. When we arrived, Eddie was in a coma, and he died peacefully a few hours later. I remember when we told my 6 year old daughter that Papa Eddie had died, and I remember her tears. I think she was wondering why God didn’t answer her prayers.

She wasn’t the only one.

I wondered why he had to die, and why of all times it had to be just before Christmas.

I found an answer in my favorite Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” Two of the verses read:

O come thou Rod of Jesse, free

Thine own from Satan’s tyranny.

From depths of Hell Thy people save

And give them victory o’er the grave.

-----

O come thou Key of David, come

And open wide our heavenly home.

Make safe the way that leads on high

And close the path to misery.

I realized that I had the situation backwards. The real story wasn’t so much that Eddie had died in Advent, but that Christmas is God’s response to death with all its pain, sorrow, and misery. Rather than being upset at the timing of Eddie’s passing, I could take comfort in the message of Advent even as we held his funeral. I was still angry, but not at God. Instead, I was angry at the reality of death, the wrongness of it, even as I could find peace amid my own tears because Jesus does open wide our heavenly home and give us victory o’er the grave.

I have since lost both of my parents. Every time I sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” I think of them, and of Eddie, and I am reminded why Christmas happened. There are still tears, but I know they are temporary, and that sooner than I expect it, right around the corner, we will be reunited, never to be separated. And then there will be no more tears, ever.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

New article on education

The next article in my series on politics is up at the Colson Center. It is the first of two dealing with education and its role in promoting virtue.

O Christmas Tree

It is the first Sunday in Advent., the season of the Church Year where we think back on the times when people were waiting for the coming of the Messiah, and when we look ahead today His return. Last year in Advent, I posted an article debunking the idea that the date of Christmas was inspired by paganism. This year, in the spirit of debunking other criticisms of Christmas customs, I offer some historical reflections on Christmas trees.

Christmas trees, it is argued, are a remnant of the pagan past. Some sources (of questionable historical value) claim they go back to ancient Egypt, others claim ancient Babylon, still others point to Celtic, Roman or Norse paganism. Some even cite Jer. 10:2-5 as an explicit condemnation of Christmas trees.

Let’s deal with Jeremiah first. Modern translations indicate that what is being discussed here is cutting down a tree in the forest, shaping it with a tool (a chisel or axe), and covering it with gold and silver to make an idol. If there’s any question in your mind about this, I suggest you read the verses IN CONTEXT. Vs. 5 and 8-9 indicate that we are dealing with an idol, and that it is wearing purple clothing, not simply draped with gold and silver ornaments. So no, it isn’t a Christmas tree, and the only way to make it one is to force Christmas trees into a few selected verses taken out of context and using the King James translation since more modern translations won’t support the argument.

So Jeremiah is irrelevant, but what about the idea that Christmas trees come from paganism? People who cite Egypt as a source argue that they worshipped palm trees, and Druids oaks, and then conflate these with evergreens. Sorry, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense since neither palms nor oaks are evergreens.

On the other hand, the ancient Romans used evergreen wreaths to celebrate Saturnalia, and for that reason the early church did not use wreaths or evergreens as decorations. Of course, the church didn’t use candles or incense either for precisely the same reason. Likewise Yule logs were a pagan custom intended to call back the sun on the Winter solstice, and holly and ivy were pagan symbols of fertility; also, the pagan custom of using evergreens as winter decorations continued to be practiced in Scandinavia even after the region converted to Christianity, though the symbolism was reframed in Christian terms (more on that below).

None of this has anything to do with Christmas trees, however.

The earliest Christmas trees date to the mid- to late 1400s or early 1500s AD in Germany and German towns in the Baltic (not Scandinavia). That’s about 700 years since the region had converted to Christianity from paganism.

In fact, the most likely source is the use of a tree to symbolize the “Paradise Tree” in medieval mystery plays dealing with the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. These trees were decorated with apples (later changed to balls) to symbolize the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as well as wafers to represent the Eucharist. They were placed in people’s houses, and were closely associated with the Christmas season since the name day of Adam and Eve was celebrated on December 24 in many countries.

So the origin of Christmas trees is found in medieval and early modern Christianity, not in paganism, which had not been practiced in the region for many centuries.

But we need to address another question here: what about those practices that do have pagan roots, such as Yule logs, wreaths, and holly? Should Christians avoid them, even if for us they symbolize something totally different—eternal life through Christ—than they symbolized for the pagans who originated the practices?

Missiologists today are big on the idea that we need to contextualize the Gospel, that is, that we want to create indigenous forms of Christianity on the mission field. We want to spread the Gospel, not Western culture. As a result, missionaries are taught to look for the elements in the culture that are there by common grace that provide an entry point for the Gospel, and to encourage a culturally appropriate form of Christianity rather than reproduce Western models of the church.

So here’s the question: if that’s good enough to spread the Gospel to unreached people today, why don’t we think it was appropriate when Christian missionaries did precisely the same thing: taking elements of pagan culture and reinterpreting them to provide an entry point for the Gospel to our pagan ancestors? Why are we so shocked and appalled at ostensible pagan elements that have been reinterpreted in our Christianity, but have no problem when missionaries do parallel things in other cultures? Why do we insist our Christianity be “pure,” but not the Christianity spreading among newly reached peoples?

Whatever elements of paganism may have crept into our expression of Christianity, they were culturally appropriate and necessary in their day, and have been thoroughly baptized, reinterpreted, and Christianized. We have no reason to get hung up by “pagan Christianity,” especially in the Christmas season where the pagan roots of our practices have been greatly exaggerated. The rampant consumerism of our age is a different matter, but that’s a result of our own greed rather than paganism from millennia ago.

New article: Revitalizing the Church

My new article is up at the Colson Center. Although it's in a series on politics, it focuses on the role of the church in creating a culture where republican government can function. In a nutshell, since Jesus tells us we're to be salt (a preservative) and light, if thc culture is corrupt and in darkness, it's because we haven't been doing our job.

A Modest Proposal

Obamacare mandates that health insurance companies use 85% of their premiums to pay for health care, allowing only 15% for overhead and reserves. Since lots of people think this is a good idea, I suggest we apply the same reasoning to the government. If we do, we can achieve a major reduction in the deficit without anyone paying higher taxes and without any decrease in services.

How do we do this?

In fiscal 2012, the Federal government spent $451.9 billion on welfare. Since only 30 cents on the dollar goes to recipients of government assistance (in contrast to private charities, where 70 cents of the dollar makes it to the recipients), that means that only $135.57 billion made it to the recipients, with the remainder eaten up by bureaucracy (overhead).

Using the standards of Obamacare, $135.57 billion should be 85% of the total spent on welfare. Doing the math, that means that we should add $23.92 billion for overhead, the 15% of the total that private companies are allowed to have, for a grand total of $159.49 billion. Subtracted from the current amount of $451.9 billion, and you get a savings of  $292.41 billion.

Just think, simply by applying the genius of Obamacare’s health insurance rules to the government, we can shrink the deficit by over a quarter without cutting any services or spending, simply by streamlining bureaucracy and overhead the way the government is demanding private companies do it.

I know, you think it’ll never work because the government has to have more bureaucracy than a private business. But that is to argue that the government can never be as efficient as private business, and if that’s the case, shouldn’t we be looking for private sector solutions to problems rather than adding more bureaucracies and departments to the government?

I say we should have them play by the same rules as the private sector. If we can obtain nearly $300 billion in savings just from welfare, imagine what we could do if we did the same throughout the government!

That would be change we could believe in.