How We Decide

One of the more interesting questions I'm pursuing in my reading and writing is this simple question: "what does it mean to be human" exactly? I loved Rob Bell's description in Sex God that humans are both spirit and body (not animals which are body with no spirit and not angels which are spirits with no body). I've since learned that Bell was building upon the work and thinking of Augustine and C.S. Lewis. 

I've recently read a book that I highly suggest for those of you who are interested in the ways in which science and religion are coming together in our time to help us understand the project of being human. 

The book, How We Decide (by Jonah Lehrer, 2009), combats Plato's conviction (and now longstanding cataract) that reason is meant to keep emotion in check. Hence, the more moral/successful/wise a person is, the more his/her reason is controlling emotion. Plato uses the analogy of a chariot and horse (chariot corresponds with reason and the horse, emotion). 

Lehrer thinks that the distinction between reason and emotion is false. He argues, that the two are essentially, the same coin just two different sides. In his book, he demonstrates how reason is dangerous when all emotion is abandoned. For instance, psychopaths, are not unreasonable people. Quite the contrary. However, psychopaths (because of abuse, isolation, etc.) are unable to feel . . . unable to imagine what it would be like to be someone else. Because they cannot feel and imagine, they are more inclined to violence and manipulation. The first thing we learn about humans, is that we have an amazing capacity to love and that capacity must be exercised and expanded.

Lehrer convincingly suggest that the truly moral person is one who knows when to approach life as a science (reason) and when to approach life as an art (emotion). He believes that the fully developed person works his/her way through life with an innate sense of distinguishing between the two. 

In the conclusion of the book, Lehrer offers an analogy to bring everything together. He suggests that it might help for some to view life as a poker game (work with me here). There is an element of poker that is purely mathematical, based upon reason, probability, etc. In fact, most novices get in trouble because they are unable to comprehend the basic science of poker. However, poker is also an art. Often times, what you are actually holding in your hands is not as important as what others think you are holding. Hence, the art, drama, creative interlude. Of course, one can take the analogy too far and suggest his ethic is significantly flawed because it is based in self-interest (something he works hard throughout the entire book to dismantle).

If you struggle picking out a box of cereal at the supermarket . . . or which job offer might be the best for you and your family . . . or which shirt to wear for the important meeting . . . or what color to paint your bedroom . . . this book is for you. 

Acedia, Movies, and Keeping Sabbath

I just finished Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris. Overall, the book pales in comparison with The Cloister Walk and A Vocabulary of Faith. Norris has established her as one of the top spiritual writers of our day. I think she took a step backwards with this book. However, many of her insights into acedia (apathy, indifference rooted deep in the soul), depression, anxiety, and the "dark night of the soul" are helpful. As always, she provides a historically rich perspective of spirituality.


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Here's one movie critic's top ten all-time U.S. films. My list would've been totally different. It would have lots of Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Robert Duvall. Apparently, this person is infatuated with all films in the 1940's and 1950's.

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Rubel Shelly spoke in the opening chapel at Rochester College yesterday. He talked a great deal about the recent financial scams in NYC with Bernard Madoff. Here's an excerpt:

Rabbi Benjamin Blech, a long-time professor of philosophy at Yeshiva University, made this interesting comment about the whole sorry episode: “Just because you eat kosher and observe the Sabbath does not make you good. If you cheat and steal, you cannot claim you are a good Jew.”

Rabbi Blech’s observation is consistent both with what the Old Testament prophets said for centuries before the birth of Jesus and with Jesus’ own comments about religion. He called some of his contemporaries hypocrites and told others to their faces that they were guilty of observing the minutiae of the Law of Moses about tithing their garden herbs and neglecting the “more important matters of the law – justice, mercy, and faithfulness.”

Why do those of us who publicly embrace religious devotion – Muslim or Jew, Catholic or Protestant, you or me – so frequently expose our piety to be a shallow veneer for a life that is so self-serving that it is willing to exploit others? It is certainly not distinctive to Judaism. I might echo the good rabbi this way: “Just because you have been baptized and go to church does not make you a good Christian. If you break the moral law, you are not honoring Jesus as Lord.”

Authentic religious devotion is not about private, otherworldly spiritual practices that have nothing to do with our political, ethical, and social lives. Quite the contrary, the God of Abraham who was incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth cannot be separated from the concrete realities of how we treat one another in our particular time, place, and culture. The partitioning of faith from reason, spiritual from practical, and private devotion from public behavior too often yields a sort of wicked selfishness that embarrasses even unbelievers.