More L'Abri:

continuing on with David Richter's talk on music sharing/piracy:
- Wilco made a movie: 'I am Trying to Break Your Heart' - I want to see it.
- (my point) that we should "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" when it comes to the music industry.
- But things are changing. The current file copyright laws are doomed to fail.
- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's story: NPR Music article

Dick Keyes: "The Breadth of God's Lordship"
- Paul (or someone) uses the same word for us being compelled to have sex with our spouses as we are compelled to pay taxes.
- Martin Luther said this about his son: "...running about befouling the corners of the room, but I would not trade him for all the kingdoms of Europe" (I couldn't find the quote online - but it's wonderful anyways)
- ingredients for a worldview: what exists, what is wrong, what is the solution

Denis Haack: "Humor (or something)"
very cool poster from Charlie Chaplin's movie 'City Lights'

- I want to see this: 'Being There', about a guy who just watches TV all of his life and then goes into the world and says pithy things he's heard on TV and everyone hails him as a wise leader. Peter Sellers!

Travis Scott: "Tattoos"
- tattoos can be Ebenezers of Ink, a reminder of the Lord's provision during different times of our lives.
- "your body is a temple - decorate!"
- Sociologist Michael O'Hanlan about the Wahgi: the decorated appearance is to reveal rather than conceal (more on this later)

Rudolfo Souza: "Brazillian Culture"
- this guy is trying to start a L'Abri in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I want to go.
- the Assemblies of God church has been extremely successful in Brazil, and the reason is seen to be that the theology of the charismatic church is very similar to the existing Brazilian culture. The Assemblies of God church puts a lot of emphasis on Christ's return. Brazilian culture is quite passive and a lot of hope is put into revolutions and leaders to come in and change everything. Fascinating.
- this very cool picture:


Andrew Fellows: "Living in God's Gift Economy"
- The Choral Anthems by Stanford, Andrew was given this and it rocks.

Culture Matters

I'm reading this book called Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress
which was a recommendation from David Brooks in this article. It's awesome.

In my two classes with Prof. Gilles, Social Change and Trends and now Global Perspectives and Realities, we have talked about why certain countries "succeed" and why some "fail" through multiple examples. We read the book Collapse by Jared Diamond for the Social Change class, which was fascinating.

However, there's an issue here. I'm feeling very postmodern by saying this, but, who defines success? Where one ethnic group or country might be very industrious and have a strong economy, another ethnic group or country might have a strong value for the family and community. Which is better or more desirable (because, often, they tend to be mutually exclusive)?

Here's a paragraph from Culture Matters:

"...it is first necessary to define our terms. By the term "human progress" in the subtitle of this book we mean movement toward economic development and material well-being, social-economic equity, and political democracy. The term "culture," of course, has had multiple meanings in different disciplines and different contexts. It is often used to refer to the intellectual, musical, artistic, and literary products of a society, its "high culture." Anthropologists, perhaps most notably Clifford Geertz, have emphasized culture as "thick description" and used it to refer to the entire way of life of a society: its values, practices, symbols, institutions, and human relationships. In this book, however, we are interested in how culture affects societal development; if culture includes everything, it explains nothing. Hence we define culture in purely subjective terms as the values, attitudes, beliefs, orientation, and underlying assumptions prevalent among people in a society." (xv)

So, a culture, as used here, is the worldview, the zeitgeist, the what-makes-us-different-from-them.

Of course, some cultures can have more healthy traits than others and can love honesty, integrity, and charity more than other countries or groups. But most cultures tend to be a mixed bag. Is globalization (by the definition I learned from Thomas L. Friedman - free economies, free business trade - free, not necessarily fair) really the best thing for everyone? The guys in Culture Matters say yes, if it provides better health care and overall well-being for everyone. Of course, it is kind of undeniable that a group or country with the least deaths from preventable diseases wins. I don't know...

Covenant College and Worldviews

My Postmodern Poetry class had a day at the Heidelberg (a pretty popular college bar here in town) where we shared our Postmodern collage projects (the reason I haven't been posting 4 times a day like normal lately). The beer was flowing and the projects were really cool looking. I think mine was the least creative and took the least amount of effort/planning out of everyone, but Ronci said I got an A, so I'm okay with that.

But anyway, to get to the point (and the title of the post), I was sitting in line to get graded behind a girl named Ann in my class and she was making small talk with the guy in front of her and I heard her say that she spent her first two years of college at a little place called Covenant College in Chattanooga, TN. It's not every day (or any day at Mizzou, actually) that you hear those words, so I asked her about it and we started talking. It turns out her father in law went to Covenant Seminary when he had a mid-life crisis and decided to be a pastor. Weird. Small world. She also knew of Aaron Belz, who will be giving a poetry reading (that I'm going to) tomorrow night at the Artisan.

So Ann and I were talking and I was telling her about my major and that I wanted to go to grad school for it and everything and she mentioned that, growing up in the PCA she had always studied about worldviews and saw the world through the lens that everyone had their own personal worldview based on what culture they grew up in and their beliefs about reality. But, she made the point, that secular education is just catching up. Most of our postmodern poetry class was about worldviews. Our collage project was about the postmodern worldview and the shift from the modernist one that was predominate before that. No wonder I'm interested in this stuff, I was practically raised to think this way.

At my Christian high school we were taught apologetics by way of worldview (The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire was one of my Worldviews class textbooks) and had to write papers about how our worldview was affected by this and that. That is why I think this way about culture. It was a great conversation.