Month: March 2020

³³ Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

³⁴ “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

³⁵ “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

³⁶ Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

³⁷ “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

³⁸ “What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him. ³⁹ But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?”

⁴⁰ They shouted back, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising.

John 18:33-40

My latest audiobook is The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. The subject is moral psychology. There’s too much for me to cover in just one blog post, so concepts will trickle out over the coming weeks. First up: “can” vs. “must.”

The whimsical story Haidt tells is about his young daughter who had a strong reaction to being told she “must” do something. “You must get dressed now.” “NO!” “Can you get dressed so we can leave?” “OK.” “You must eat ice cream.” “NO!” “Can I get you some ice cream?” “Yes!”

Most moral reasoning is actually post hoc justification of a decision you have already made. You encounter something and decide whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad, and THEN you develop reasons why. Your initial reaction is related to your prior experiences, the impact on yourself, and, perhaps most importantly, the group to which you belong.

Once you’ve made your judgment, the reasons, or perhaps rationalizations, start to come. You start looking for reasons you can make the judgment you’ve already made. If someone comes along and wants to convince you otherwise, they need to provide reasons you must make the opposite judgment.

Let’s look at the “trial” of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, as told by John. Pilate is told in advance what the verdict should be. So he interrogates Jesus seeking a reason why he can find him guilty. He finds one, sort of, but Jesus pokes holes in it: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Now Pilate instead makes his own judgment, and asks the Jewish leaders why he must find Jesus guilty. He ultimately finds a way out of making a judgment at all.

The Bible is a pretty thick book, compiled over many centuries by many authors in varied contexts. So, there are verses that, if taken out of context, support any judgment. This is prooftexting or eisegesis. You make a judgment, then go to the Bible looking for reasons you can believe that it’s biblical. What does the Bible say about COVID-19? Well, if you are looking for reasons you can hold a regular worship service, you might look at Mark 16:15-18, ‘He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”’ Or if you’re looking for reasons to stay quarantined, you might look at the section of Leviticus about leprosy and the requirement that lepers stay separated from those who are well.

But the reality is, the Bible does not say one word about COVID-19. Instead, it reveals God’s intention that we all should have abundant life, and that God will be with us in our grief and pain. We need to look to modern medical and public health experts, not ancient texts, when deciding how to take action against a pandemic.

Just as the Bible says a lot of different things, the world itself and the news we hear or read are highly complex. There are reasons you can believe anything. If you want to believe that immigrants bring crime with them, you can find stories of crimes committed by immigrants. If you want to believe that immigrants strengthen our nation, you can find statistics about their economic impact and relative frequency of criminal behavior. Statistics tend to be pretty dry, though, so anecdotes win more often.

This is all just human nature. How can we make better decisions? Some people might say that we need to be more rational, but that just isn’t going to happen. You cannot convince someone to change their mind with facts, unless there is such an abundance of the facts that they must change. That’s an insurmountable barrier.

The more realistic solution is to train our hearts and souls so that they see the right facts in the first place. Spiritual formation, not information. Do not ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” That’s too hard. Instead, conform yourself to Christ, so that you start to see the world as Jesus would. Soften your heart to see the good in people, so that you will start looking for reasons you can love them.

On my mind this week has been the difference between an isolated disaster and systemic failure. If a person’s house burns down, all their friends and family gather around to help them recover. Insurance comes in to (at least partially) help out financially. The victim can call on a wide range of local resources to help them recover and rebuild.

But maybe there’s a disaster on a wider scale. Almost a decade ago, tornadoes hit Joplin. Local systems were overwhelmed, so people came in from across the region to help out. The governor declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard. The devastation, measured in lives lost and property destroyed, left a scar on the city’s psyche.

Then of course there are bigger disasters, like Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This massive storm overwhelmed the entire region. Destruction stretched for miles across the region centered on New Orleans. “Safe places” were even destroyed. Victims were evacuated to the Louisiana Superdome, which then itself was damaged and became a center of danger. Race and class divisions were exacerbated. The disaster brought out the worst in people as they sought to take care of themselves. Resources came in from around the nation, but even essentials like fuel needed to be trucked in from miles away. The event had a long-term impact on the city, the region, and the way the nation plans for emergencies.

But we’re in uncharted waters now. What happens when the whole world is disrupted? Even during wars, some parts of the world remained (relatively) untouched. Now, every state in the nation, every country in Europe, and most other countries around the world have been impacted by COVID-19. We, as a nation and as a species, are ill-equipped to deal with such widespread disruption.

I’ve been listening to an audiobook of Guns, Germs, and Steel. I’m on the chapter now where he addresses complex human social structures. The most ancient structure is the band, which consists of essentially one extended family. Several bands comprise a tribe, several tribes comprise a chiefdom, and out of chiefdoms grow states. In a band or small tribe, there is limited economic specialization. That is, most people have similar jobs to do. As societies become more complex, jobs become more and more specialized, to the point where we completely rely on our neighbors to provide the things we need. It is no longer feasible for a modern city-dweller, even in such a small city as Rolla, to subsist on the resources available on their own property. We need the goods and services provided by our neighbors, near and far.

This crisis is revealing the fragility of such an interconnected world. It’s as if our whole modern society is a house of cards built on sand, and the tide is coming in. The genius of the Internet is decentralization–any one node can be taken out and the system can recover. But if you take out enough of the most important nodes, the network ceases to be the Internet, instead degenerating into a set of disconnected pieces. Our world has been revealed to operate the same way. Take out enough connections–in our supply chains, in our human interactions, in our freedom to travel–and the system collapses.

My only hope is that we will come out the other side with a new awareness of our limitations, and a new appreciation for the people who understand complex systems. The situation in Missouri, the US, and the world is going to get worse, probably much worse, before it gets better. But some day, we will be past the crisis and ready to put things back together. Let’s start learning how to do that the right way.

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In the class I’m taking right now, Pastoral Care, through the University of Dubuque’s CLP program, my week’s assignment was to write a psalm of lament. Mine isn’t great, but I offer it here for anyone who may find it useful. I will say that I’m not truly alone in an empty house; I have my son, Sam, with me.

Yesterday felt like a week, and this week felt like a year;

Everything has changed. Nothing seems certain. Fear permeates the very air I breathe.

I sit alone in an empty house, far from those I love.

Restore me, O God, to normal ways of life, free to follow my heart,

So that I may dwell with my wife, my children, my friends, and all your people.

I will no more fear, for your steadfast love never changes,

And this crisis will be but a blink of an eye in your eternal kingdom.

⁹ “‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰ Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19:9-10

As the COVID-19 crisis expands in scope, I’ve been thinking about the role of government and the market. Once upon a time, I was a free-market purist. The core concept of free-market ideology is that unconstrained markets are most able to satisfy the needs of society. If there is a need, it will be reflected as a market demand. Someone (an individual or company) will respond to the demand and supply the need, motivated solely by a desire to profit.

There are lots of problems with this (oversimplified) view of economics. I’d like to focus on the moral issues. Economists (whether free-market or Marxist) tend to focus on money. Why? Perhaps because it’s easy to measure; perhaps because when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

The first moral issue is that some problems have solutions that take a long time to develop. Pharmaceutical companies may invest years, even decades, in developing a new treatment for a disease. Who has that kind of time? People with deep pockets, perhaps, who then expect a return on that investment. Eventually, someone has to pay for the treatment. I see this with Rhonda’s MS treatment. The list price is on the order of $50,000 per year. I can’t afford that; hardly anyone can. Yet someone has to pay it, or else the manufacturer wouldn’t be able to recover their investment. The alternative is that hard problems just never get solved.

The second, larger moral issue with free-market ideology is this: People are not money. A market can’t care; only a person can. Companies don’t actually care about people, even if their mission statements say they do. They may care some about their own employees, and they care that their customers continue to be their customers, but what they really care about is money. Corporations have boards of directors who have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, NOT to society at large. They are obligated to do what will return the best long-term financial return.

This is a problem as old as civilization. A small, isolated tribe needs to share equally. In a larger community, each person can afford to be self-centered. Consider our passage from Leviticus. Clearly, a farmer would benefit from reaping everything he sows, from getting ALL the crops produced on his land. Yet here, in the middle of a list of rules (after “no idols” and before “do not steal”), landowners were told NOT to do so. They were told to intentionally leave some of the produce in the field, so that the poor and the foreigner could glean it. Why?

Because the health of a society depends on valuing ALL people, not just the wealthy. An individual’s obligation is ultimately to themselves and their dependents, but a government—whether an ancient theocracy or a modern democracy—is ultimately obligated to all of the people. We are all connected.

We start Lent with Ash Wednesday, on which we remember Ecclesiastes 3:20: “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.” Death is the great equalizer. These days, death is lurking around the corner in the form of COVID-19. The free-market approach might be to let pharmaceutical companies develop tests and treatments and then charge their market value. Such an approach, though, would allow the disease to spread rapidly. “Get tested if you’re sick” would protect us all. “Get tested if you can afford it” would allow the disease to thrive among populations that can’t afford to be sick, and then to spread the disease to everyone. “Take time off if you’re sick” works fine if you have sick leave; otherwise, you go to work with a mild cough and spread the disease to your co-workers, your customers, and everyone you pass coming and going.

What is the role of government? To protect its citizens, all of them, no matter the threat. Rich or poor, young or old, any color or ethnicity. Everyone.

I’d like to return to the same subject as last week: scaling. In a meeting of Common Call, I talked some about the concept, and Javier pointed out the basic difference. One-way communication scales arbitrarily, but two-way communication does not.

If I have some information to communicate, there are a variety of methods and media available to me. I can blog, write an article that gets published by some third party, vlog (e.g. make a YouTube video), or post a podcast. I can give a public lecture, in a variety of venues: churches, classes, seminars, conferences.

If I want to change people’s minds, such one-way communication is modestly effective. If I’m sufficiently eloquent, and people reading/watching/listening are sufficiently motivated and open to change, perhaps some people actually will change. How would I know? Maybe they would tell me, maybe not. In a live interaction (class, worship, seminar), I can get nonverbal feedback. I can see people following along or nodding off; taking notes or playing on their phones. If I’m paying attention, anyway.

In this scenario, I am essentially entering a marketplace of ideas. My message becomes no different from a Coca-Cola ad. Maybe the subject matter is a little more elevated, but the method of dissemination is not.

My friend Shandi, a campus minister with CCF, often says that you have to earn the right to be heard. How do you do that? In the one-way model, through reputation or authority. The students in my class are somewhat obligated to listen to what I have to say, at least if they want to get a decent grade (and perhaps even learn something). People listen to celebrities and politicians because other people do. Another way to earn an audience is to say something people agree with. Play to their confirmation bias–if you say something that confirms their existing beliefs, they will think you’re brilliant.

The better way to earn that right, though, is by listening to them first. If you are genuinely interested in a person, they will trust you enough to listen to what you have to say. If you are genuinely open to changing your mind, they may become open to changing theirs, too. Instead of being in the marketplace of ideas, you enter a place where two people create something new together.

COVID-19 is never far from my mind. I am on the steering committee for APEC, and was conference general chair back in 2017. We are scheduled to begin on March 15 in New Orleans. Meanwhile, COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in many places around the world. As of this writing, CDC lists China, Iran, South Korea, Italy, Japan, and Hong Kong as having travel notices. Washington state has a rapidly expanding emergency. A few hours ago, the first case in Missouri was confirmed, a woman who recently traveled to Italy.

Of course the CEO of Zoom thinks we should just do everything remotely. Work from home; no business travel; etc. Many conferences are shifting from physical to virtual. Zoom meetings are tolerable, especially when the parties have an existing relationship. There is still two-way communication. I’ve participated in webinars of varying quality and effectiveness.

Technical issues aside, there is something lacking in our communication when we shift to virtual presence. Some studies have shown that 55% of our communication is body language, 38% is vocal but nonverbal, and only 7% is verbal. We can quibble about the numbers, but the basic point is that communication is predominantly nonverbal, of a form that translates poorly to electronic interactions.

I hope that APEC goes forward, but not because I want to read the papers or even attend the lectures. It’s because I want to see old friends and colleagues, make new acquaintances, and feel a part of the community.

I don’t know the right thing to do in this particular situation. However, I do know that we, as a society, have transitioned to more and more one-way, remote interaction. This is fine when knowledge is of the highest value. But I believe the health of our community, nation, and world depends on relationships that are nurtured through one-on-one, two-way interactions.