We
can thank God that there has not been another random shooting for the last
few weeks. Then again, it won't be long before we hear of another—maybe by
the time you get this edition of the GR. After every shooting there is
shrill commentary from both sides of the gun debate. But here is a piece that
I think wisely sets a middle course, with realistic insight and proposals.
Like: "What, then, can we do about guns? Well, the first step is to
have humility."
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Casual dating has
been replaced by casual sex; platonic touch has been eclipsed by erotic
signalling. Pickup artists teach their pupils (not inaccurately) that
taking someone's hand, touching a shoulder, or even moving into one-on-one
conversations are indications of interest, and a signal to keep escalating,
in the hopes of transitioning to a hookup.
If affection is merely foreplay, then a person who isn't having luck
approaching people romantically is also cut off from most normal human
comforts. That kind of isolation is tremendously harmful.
This resonated with me, as touch was one reason I enjoyed
basketball back in the day. Despite its reputation as a noncontact sport,
it is very much about hand checking, shoving under the basket, and so forth.
I can see why so many guys like playing football. No starved-for-touch
culture there.
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My
favorite (and only) son-in-law did a stint on Mercy Ships, the traveling
hospital. So my ears perked up when a story about a woman raised entirely aboard
the ship was pitched at Christianity Today. The
result—and a previous CT story—give
us a window into this impressive ministry and the people who sacrifice to
make it happen.
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Joan
Didion's essay "On Self-Respect"
is a fine blast from the past (first published in Vogue in 1961).
One line reads, "People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness,
a kind of mortal nerve; they display what was once called character."
Didion suggests that self-respect is a "habit of
mind" that can be developed. Perhaps. For most of us, it comes as an
unexpected gift, the result of hearing how Wisdom Incarnate respected us so
much he thought dying for us not too small a thing. As Karl Barth puts it:
By the grace of
God, therefore, man is not nothing. He is God's man. He is accepted by God.
He is recognized as himself a free subject, a subject who has been made
free once and for all by his restoration as the faithful covenant partner
of God. . . . We cannot say and demand and expect too much or too great
things of man when we see him as he really is in virtue of the giving of the
Son of God, of the fact that God has reconciled the world to himself in
Christ (Church Dogmatics IV.1, 89-90).
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Grace and peace,
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