On Distracted Students

Note: While the personages mentioned in this are fictional composites, the situation is, sadly, one I face often in online schooling.

Dear Mr. S—,

Thanks for reaching out. Far too many parents never even notice that their child is having trouble in my class until it is far too late to do something—I’m delighted to find that you are staying so involved.

You said in your email that John is having trouble staying focused, you’re not quite sure how to help with that, and you’d like any advice I can give. You’ve caught him multiple times during class with several windows open on the computer, chatting with friends, listening to music, or doing anything besides solely paying attention to me and his other teachers. You know this is occurring on a regular basis, but don’t want him to always do school directly under his parents’ eye, since “that would defeat the reason we put him in an online class in the first place.” You're considering switching to a more traditional schooling format to solve the problem. Does that seem an accurate summary?

I have noticed two major categories of student who struggle with staying focused in online classrooms; each tending to arise from opposite ends of the aptitude spectrum. The first is the student who is bored stiff—he thinks he knows everything (or at least quite enough to pass the quiz) and quite often he does. The slow plodding required for the slower students in the class causes him to disengage and seek more diverting material. If asked a direct question, it only takes a few seconds’ work to figure out the context and come up with a reasonably correct answer—easily covered by the excuse of “tech trouble.” He’s not being challenged, and no amount of lecturing from Mom and Dad will change that. After all, he will think, he’s making good grades—isn’t that the point of school?

The second student, instead of being bored, is overwhelmed--no matter what he does, he can't understand ninety percent of what the teacher is saying. He’s reading massive textbooks that don’t seem to make sense either, but all the other kids in class appear to somehow be getting this, particularly the four or five who always come up with those questions the teacher likes so much. Since no one likes to appear dumb (particularly in front of a bunch of cute girls) admitting he’s lost and asking for help is out of the question. So, he might as well do something fun—and comprehensible— instead of sit there and feel stupid. If the teacher asks him a point-blank question, he also can easily pretend tech trouble, and quickly slip back to his game. If lectured, he can semi-honestly assert he’s doing the best he can, but school’s “not really his thing.”

As a quasi-third option, there is also the student who has simply developed a systemic lack of discipline (which shows up most pointedly when surrounded by bright, shiny objects like screens). He wants to pay attention, and sometimes can when the topic is interesting enough, but his default state is to chase the latest impulse. With so many pleasurable options a click away, that impulse is easy to gratify. This type feeds into our first two options quite regularly: the brilliant student can indulge his curiosity, the slow one his apathy.

You will be better able than I to judge where John falls. A few questions for a week straight at the dinner table about “what he learned that day” should provide a pretty easy diagnostic tool. As far as solutions go, I haven't been a parent myself yet, but here are a few educated guesses:

If you think John’s the smart-and-bored type, then I suggest you tie something he actually does value—time with friends, reading, sports, whatever—back to his grades. If he doesn't meet a certain grade in the class at any given time, he doesn't get that privilege that week and must spend it on school instead. Don't be afraid to set the bar high! Since this type of student is motivated more by laziness, if you can make him sufficiently uncomfortable, he will move. And if he's making straight A's and still goofing off half of class, then he just needs more responsibilities (because he can obviously still handle it). Make him go get a job, join a club, start learning a trade, play a sport. When the grades finally start to drop, ease off about an hour’s worth of tasks a a week, and watch him go.

If you think John’s the overwhelmed type, you might require him to attempt asking or answering at least one question in class every day—and then check up on him. If he does that I will hear from him often, and he will usually be wrong, since he doesn’t know what is going on anyway. That will be both humbling and discouraging at first, but it will have the long-term affect of both forcing him to pay strict attention and to recognize exactly what he doesn't know. Since he’ll be getting daily personal explanations of his mistakes from me, it should also boost his understanding. Eventually, that should build into a fair amount of confidence--thus solving the problem. It's also helpful if you can ask this sort of student to synopsize what he learned that day at the dinner table. Roll out a whiteboard or something and ask for a 5-minute demonstration and summary. If he can't do it, then you know some extra study time is in order and he should, too. (Actually, this exercise is one of the most valuable things a parent can do for any type of student, period.)

If you suspect it is merely lack of discipline, the counterintuitive solution here is to pursue that discipline outside of class time rather than inside it. Does your son always make his bed? Write legibly even on homework no one will ever see? Complete chores on time and well? A kid who regularly does all that and more probably won't give you much trouble in class itself. This is arguably the hardest problem of the three to fix, because it requires both a lot of attention and a whole new set of habits, but it has the biggest payoff, as well. Your son is always going to be living in a digital world, and the sooner he masters it, the less it will rule over him. One of the drawbacks of online schooling compared to traditional homeschooling is that kids often spend a significant portion of the day away from their parent’s direct oversight. As you note, that’s a feature, but often it becomes a bug: the student develops some bad habits before parents can even notice. If that's where John is, then all you can do is thank God you noticed now, do some heavy-duty praying, and try to do some retraining. It will be unpleasant for both of you, but the harvest will be joyful.

If you truly think the only way to solve this is pulling him from school, I understand. Some kids just can't handle the manifold temptations and distractions that come with distance learning. I would far rather John learn self-discipline in another school than merely stick with me. But since you’re here now, I hope the above advice is useful.

May God grant you wisdom.

Thanksgiving 2021

 

How does one assess a year?

Human beings aren’t really built for such a process. Anyone can tell you whether they had a good or a bad day. The memory usually stretches enough to give you an overview of a week or a fortnight. But by the time a month or more rolls around, you have gaps. That terrible breakfast, that bitter conversation, or that excellent glass of beer you had a month ago usually isn’t even a distant memory—it’s dipped over the horizon of your experience for good. Of course, we moderns have cheat codes—smartphone pictures and Facebook reminders and graphs that show us how the company’s bottom line trends. We can manipulate our tools to cover those gaps, to give the illusion of temporal omniscience.

But really, how many events can you place in each month of the last year? Take a minute or two and think about it—really think about it. No phones, diaries, or apps to help you; this one is just between you and your memory. How many can you name? How many can you place in the right season? Month? Date? (The last two weeks don’t count).

How’d you do? Hopefully better than I did. In fifteen solitary minutes of meditation, I came up with merely twelve events that have made a sizable dent in my memory in this trip around the sun. Three hundred and sixty-five days of experience boiled down to a dozen bones of my life.

Of those, only half could I date with ironclad certainty, because they are born from the calendars that measure my existence: the end of my first year teaching (May), the beginning of my second (September), a joyous walk in the snow down Main Street on Christmas evening (December 25^th, of course), the presidential election controversy (November through…February?), and my wife’s birthday. Three more were emotionally significant enough to etch the date firmly—my brother’s wedding (January), a big family reunion in Texas (August), and catching pneumonia and being flat-on-my-back ill for a week (September). The last four are blurrier. For all the cavorting joy of finally ending my nightly penance at WinCo, I had to ask my wife if I’d finished in late August or the beginning of September. I’m pretty sure my sister moved here in late spring—April, perhaps? I thought the Afghanistan debacle was at the end of July, but a quick check of the Googles revealed that it was August instead. And I can’t get any closer on when I finished reading Hilary of Poitiers’s De Trinitate than vaguely summer, in spite of the fact it was a book I’d been intending to read for three years!

No wonder we need a holiday set aside to ponder, review, reclaim, and revisit with others; to count our blessings and look back in gratitude. I’ve been told by others that I have a pretty good memory, and yet of the bare dozen things I can recall of Anno Domini 2021, two of them—Afghanistan and the Presidency—don’t even have anything to do with me directly! And yet I know this year the Goodes have been abundantly blessed.

For the record (my own, as much as anyone else’s) let me name some of them. We’ve got a wonderful marriage that is still wearing some of its newlywed shine even after a year and a half. Though our births probably would have been grimly fatal only half a century ago, we still continue to live without even noticing our mortal flesh most of the time, as only the healthy can do. My job pushing students toward truth is strenuous, fun, and fulfilling. My excess pounds betray the fact that I live in the wealthiest society of all history (and enjoy it, too!) My church and community are godly, flourishing, and stable. There are more books to read than even I could ever get to, and I got to a bunch this year. My family, unto the third and fourth generation, is still present on this green earth to gather around each other—God has not called even one of my extended family home in twenty years. In fact, some of them live so close that we can gather regularly, share in each other’s lives, and dwell in the thankfulness year-round. It is not much of a stretch to say that this year might be the one I look back on as the high point of untroubled happiness in my existence. It’s been the sort of year that people ask what they can pray about for you, and my wife and I glance at each other and come up with something tiny and banal (lost TV remote, say—I would still like to know what happened to that thing) out of sheer embarrassment for how blessed we are!

It makes me a little nervous. Lady Philosophy wisely told Boethius, “Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens.” I may not be very enlightened after 2021, but I am deeply grateful to the God who gave me all of it, right down to the unhurried breath I snag as I write these words. I may not remember it all, but I thank the One who gave me all of it. I hope that will suffice.

Here’s to the year that has been, dear reader, as well as to the year that is to come (and all that comes with it). May your memories of good days and bad last you until another Thanksgiving rolls around.

Kuyper on Public School "Neutrality"

 "[By the public schools] our people have been cast into the arms of materialism...For a long time the public school was a veiled image to our people--its essence hidden, its true visage invisible. It just stood there, covered by a garment in which the misleading term "toleration"...was woven in shiny gold thread. Misled by appearances, our people did not believe what some trustworthy individuals told them about the heinous form that would become apparent as soon as the veil fell off and the garment was removed. In the meantime, they had grown to love the public school and became accustomed to it as an integral part of our national life.

It's just math and reading...

And now, it is finally clear at last that everything said about the school understates the appalling truth now revealed. The mask is finally thrown off, and the school is displayed in all its naked barrenness. The dissembling about faith is gone and has been replaced with active efforts to silence God and eternal life. Yet still they dare to call out to our people: "You must send your children to me, you will entrust to me your baptized sons and daughters, although the name of Christ may not be heard within our walls and no talk about God or immortality will be permitted." And the nation as a whole is silent while thousands and tens of thousands send their children. There is still present an unholy desire to fight for the public school as one does for one's idol. Where are we headed? Do you not sense that going down this path will mean the end of your immortality as a nation?--Abraham Kuyper, "Teaching Immortality in the Public Schools" 1870, reprinted in Collected Works in Public Theology: On Education, pg. 28.

The Prayer of the Righteous

 

Prov. 15:29—The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous.

 

Lord, how often we assume that you do not hear us and are far from us. We dwell in the midst of a wicked generation, and we know our own wicked hearts, and far too often we utter wicked words. But you have come near to us, making peace with the Father, and drawing near—far more near than we dare imagine—with your Spirit. And as the Spirit intercedes for us, we bring our groanings before you.

We pray particularly for the CUP hearing this Wednesday, that the righteous may rejoice in laying cornerstones before you. We pray that you would be near the family of Bob Latham. Grant them the joy of knowing he is now in your Prescence, free of pain.

There are many who dwell daily in broken bodies among us. Grant them patience in their pain, and healing in your goodness. We know that when you walked the earth you had compassion on the broken, and so we ask for that compassion here and now. Heal our many sick, and comfort our many hurting, and do so soon.

We pray for our nation at large, that it would turn to repentance; and we pray for our local concerns: work for those who seek it, housing for those who need it, and justice for those who fight for it. Particularly we pray for the Wilsons and their court case, that justice may be done at last. Stumble the wicked, who are far from you and your light.

There remain more concerns among your congregation than we can offer here in words. May the Spirit intercede for those as well, and may you fulfill your word by hearing the prayer of the righteous. Amen.

And Sometimes, Youtube Suggests Something Really Cool...

Shadow of the Republic 

Welcome to Freedom Training--An Introduction for my Students

 

[An introductory lecture given to my humanities students at Logos Online]

Good morning, my students. If you were trying to get into Mr. Goode’s class, you are in the right place. If you were trying for someone else, you’re lost. Get out of here, and good luck on your hunting.

For the rest of y’all, you come here knowing at least one thing. You know where you are—you’re in my class. That is the sort of knowledge our age excels in—scientific knowledge. We like to observe the world around us and find out that water is wet, that Mars is in orbit around the sun, that cactus poke you if you touch them, and that seeing your surroundings actually tells you where you are. This is great news, because otherwise we couldn’t know much at all. But there is a danger to this type of knowledge: it is perilously easy to assume that if you know the scientific data about something, you know everything you need to know.

But I challenge you to begin our time together by pushing further and deeper than mere scientific knowledge. I want you to ask, “Why am I here in Mr. Goode’s class?”

Of course, some of you think you know the answer to this question. “I’m here because it’s the next course Logos Online requires in their degree plan.” “I’m here because I want to be able to get into a good college.” “I’m here because the course description sounded fun.” And of course, there is the ever-popular, “Because my parents made me.” These may all be true reasons, but I think they are weak, insufficient reasons. They are reasons that will not be enough to get you through the late nights, and the hard work, and the reading, and the writing, and the tough questions I am going to throw at you in this class.

Of course, some of you have already pushed this to the next level, past the mere scientific fact of hard school work. “Why,” you ask philosophically, “do we have to do all this? Isn’t there an easier way?”

The answer has to do with the liberal arts.

I asked many of you what the term “liberal arts” meant on the entrance survey. I got lots of answers:“The act of painting and playing music, but displaying the beliefs of mask-wearing liberals,” or “The study and practice of things outside of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, such as language, literature, history, rhetoric, theology, and music,” or “Something to do with literature or maybe college.” These are not quite right. Part of your confusion stems from the fact that these words mean something different in our day. Liberal is usually defined though politics, often as the opposite of conservative. Arts are what “creative types” do as personal expression—painting, theater, sculpture, etc. But long ago when the liberal arts were named, liberal came from the Latin word liber—literally, “a free man” which meant anyone who was not a slave. The arts were any skill or work produced well—a shoemaker or a baker had his “art” just as much as a painter did. So the “liberal arts” meant “the skills and work of a free man.”

To the Greek and Roman world, this was an important distinction. Slaves are people who just do what they are told, when they are told to do it. Most of the ancient necessaries of life—clothes, shoes, food, and the like—were made by slaves. In modern terms, slaves had all the jobs and had all the training (or education) they needed to be good at them. Free men, however, did not usually “make stuff.” Instead of makers, they were to be leaders throughout the various spheres of government—their family, their business, their city politics. A free man needed the type of education that would train him to be able to think, evaluate, implement, and persevere in his actions; he could not merely “do his job.” That type of education became the liberal arts. Eventually, they were divided into seven major categories. The first was the trivium of grammar (the study of words), rhetoric (the study of persuasion), and logic (the study of thinking). The second was the quadrivium of arithmetic (the study of mental numbers), music (mental numbers in time), geometry (numbers in space, what we could call “spatial” number), and astronomy (spatial number in motion). Thus you can see that the modern distinction between an “artsy” or “bookish” person and a “hard-science” person is rather new: a free man back in the ancient or medieval world had to both know books and how to use them for everything from building an aqueduct to drafting a new law.

Writing from that ancient world, in the book of Galatians, Paul notes several times that Christians are to be free men and women, not slaves to various things. 1^st Peter says in a similar fashion, “Live as people who are free” (2:16). So part of my job, as your Christian teacher at a Christian school, is to train you up into freedom. The rest of my job, as a classical teacher at a classical school, is to do it in a rather old-fashioned way. The liberal arts are how I’m going to grow you up into the Bible’s commands. If you need a modern catchphrase for this, we could call it “Freedom Training.” In short, I’m here to make you better human beings by learning about the things of humans, which is why this class is called humanities.

“Mr. Goode,” some of you are probably thinking, “this is boring. Please get to the point.”

Ah, but this is the point. If I’m here to make you a better, free human being, what should you have to do?

First, a good human being should have self-control and perseverance—which is why I will march you through long, dry books that are not at all what the modern world calls “fun” and I will expect you to actually pay attention to them. “No discipline is pleasant at the time,” teaches Paul, and I need to train you in intellectual discipline. When this class is difficult and perplexing, you’re going to be tempted to complain that something is wrong or unfair. Not at all—that is what this class is all about; not all of the time of course, but some of the time.

 Second, a good human being should be able to accurately state what he is thinking to others—which is why I will make you speak and write again and again and again, until you can say exactly what you want, no more, no less.

Third, a good human should be curious. Remember the “why” question I urged you to ask earlier. All of you with siblings in the toddler years know that this is one of the fundamental human questions. This class will encourage you to become askers of questions—both in school and out—in order to become richer, deeper people. “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making,” wrote John Milton in Aeropagitica. Do you believe him? You should.

Fourth, a good human being should know what other human beings have argued is right, good, and true—which is why I will make you deal with the modern assumption that “everything old/different is bad” by working you step-by-step through arguments thousands of years old, both stated and implicit. You will be forced to question their assumptions, and by doing that, you will hopefully be able to get a better look at your own ignorance. If you don’t know what people have already said, it is very easy to enter an ongoing conversation and appear an idiot. This, by the way, is one of the besetting sins of our time. Moderns like to act as though we have developed answers to everything. But some problems are just as old as people—and so are some of the answers. Which ones are right?

Finally and ultimately, a good human being must know God—which is why we will be evaluating all the ideas of this year through what God loves, and not just what we love. For “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”(Mic. 6:8)

Now, with such an ambitious program (the building of a good human being) there will be all sorts of places we can fall short. I may fail you, or you may fail me, or both. I will focus on three common ways students can fail their teacher; don’t worry, there are others who will evaluate if I fail you!

The first way to fail your teacher is not trying. Francis Bacon in “Of Seeming Wise” put it this way: “Some, when a thing is beyond their reach, will seem to despise or make light of it as impertinent or curious, and so would have their ignorance seem judgement.” This year we will study things out of your comfort zone. Scoffing and claiming “This is stupid,” or “I’m never going to need to know this stuff,” misses the point—we are making free people, not training for a job at a bank or a factory. Remember, be curious. In addition, the works we will read were written by men who have been judged much, much smarter than you. In two thousand years, every one of you will be long forgotten, but people will still be reading Plato. Do not be so quick to dismiss. Humility is also a virtue.

Another is stressing out over grades. Now, I am not telling you to ignore your grades, but there is a type of student that does everything with the grade in mind. This applies to both really good grades and really bad grades, and it misses the whole point. Grades serve a dual purpose of telling the teacher how well his students are catching what he is throwing, and of motivating students to actually do the work. Let us be honest, if I did not grade assignments, many of you would not do them. But “getting good grades” is not the point of this class—your life will not be graded once you get out of school! If you focus instead on loving what you learn, and learning what you should love, your grades will largely take care of themselves. And if you have done your absolute best and get a “C” that is nothing to be ashamed of—your best is your best. Just make sure it actually is your best! The question, “Will this be on the test?” is related to this. While tests are important in some ways, it is far more important for you to learn how to think well than how to test well. Loving Cicero or Beowulf or Aristotle will get you a lot farther than getting 100% on a test on Cicero, Beowulf, or Aristotle.

The last is particularly important to point out to you homeschoolers: You must learn to match your schedule to someone else’s. In the rest of your life, it will not matter if you somehow “forgot” to pay your taxes on time, or if you “had too many other things to do” to make it to your parent’s funeral, or if you are “already exhausted” when the baby starts crying. You will still be in trouble. In the same way, deadlines for assignment submissions are not “suggestions” to be completed when you feel like it. You must learn to discipline and manage your time to get done what must get done. Picture, for a moment, a fable about a man with a task, who knew everything he needed to do, and had all the equipment needed to do it, and was perfectly capable of doing it—but chose to do it later or not at all! Do you really want to be that person in a story?

Some of you will hear this and immediately start panicking, scared that I will fail you without a moment’s grace. Don’t be silly—I’m a teacher, not a slave driver. My job is to help you, not hunt you. I will be happy to give generous aid in the truly hard times. If you are faced with a situation you truly cannot help, then please, ask for an extension or anything else you hope will aid you. But I would not be doing my part in your training if I did not hold you to the standard—even if it is a standard that you feel you cannot meet. Would you respect a sports coach if he let you get away with just walking during wind sprints? In the same way, learn to push through to a higher standard, until you discover new things to love. Of course, if you are having trouble, ask for help—that is what a teacher is for. You do want me to do my job, right?

So I welcome you to Freedom Training—our journey of excellence. It will not be a journey you can finish in just a year, or even in a decade—we are aiming for bigger things than that. My hope is that maybe, in thirty years or so, you will be able to look back and say you finally know now why you had to be in this class, because each of you will have begun to learn how to be truly free in a moment that really mattered.

Read and Reviewed: Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy’s Argument for Political Resistance, 1750-1776 by Gary L. Steward

 

“There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”—John Witherspoon, 1776 (54).

 

This was a short book but littered with a wealth of primary source citations. Steward takes the reader on a guided tour of the letters and sermons of the American (and British) clergy in the years before the war, focusing in on their argument for self-defense and later independence.

He notes in the opening that the dominant historical paradigm (including among evangelical scholarship) has been that the traditional, conservative Christians advocated submission and non-resistance to the king in Britain. Their independence-minded opponents countered, not as Christians, but as heterodox Lockean philosophers. In short, Christians who supported the War for Independence let their Bible be overwhelmed by flashy new philosophy.

The author pushes back against that view with this new book (2021), noting that self-defense and political resistance had a long (indeed, rather older than Locke) history in Reformed circles. Beginning with works like Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, Steward notes that American (and British) clergymen largely saw themselves as advocating well-known and commonplace self-defense and political resistance theories. In particular, these clergymen connected their resistance with the same philosophy used in the Glorious Revolution and the English Civil War a century before their own time. In their eyes, the submissive clergy with the absolutist view (often High Church Anglicans) were in effect delegitimizing the sovereign they were so anxious to protect, since his forebears had replaced the Catholic House of Stuart in Britain due to just such theology. John Witherspoon is used as a well-known example of the phenomenon.

This was a pretty easy read with an overall academic tone. Due to its specialized subject, this book is not for everyone; however, it is an excellent resource for those who wish to push back against the “Political resistance is unChristian” thesis. Certainly, the quoted clergymen did not consider it so.

Read and Reviewed: Realms of Gold: The Classics in Christian Perspective

 "How could anyone not justify taking time to read Great Expectations I wondered? Or Homer's Odyssey and many other indispensable, life-changing books? What accounts for the difference between [other's] attitude and mine? Most obviously, I have acquired a taste for literary classics and they have not. To me they are treasures that I cannot live without."  (ix)

Leland Ryken offers in this little work (1991) a brief defense of Christians reading and evaluating the "classics" of literature, using eight examples: The Odyssey, Canterbury Tales, Macbeth, Paradise Lost, The Scarlet Letter, Great Expectations, The Death of Ivan Illych, The Stranger, and a bonus chapter on poetry. He frames each as coming from a different genre, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each and how he believes Christians should approach them. The best stuff in here was the introduction and overview--there are definitely some points I'll be raising with my students the next time they question my curriculum choices. His chapter on Canterbury Tales was noticeably weak; Chaucer winds up sounding far more like a proto-late-20th C author than a medieval.

 

Scott Adams is Right--Pt. I

 

Yes, to some people, this is funny. But whether Scott Adams did it on purpose or not, it’s also rather profound.

Wait, you ask with a smile. Are you seriously suggesting that “preferred pronouns” are a sign of the death of Western civilization? Actually, you think this too, whether you know it or not. You just may not have noticed yet. But to get there, we have to go on a bit of a detour first. Actually, it winds up being a pretty long detour, so I have split this post in half. Part I of this post will briefly cover the development of the current idea of our civilization, Part II will contrast it with the idea of personal pronouns and show why they cannot both work.

Our Western Civilization

“Civilization” is a pesky word that is hard to define. Just try for a second. To our grandfathers it often meant grand cities of towering buildings instead of mud huts and loincloths. In a history book it can refer to any large, probably rather urban, gathering of people, i.e. “the Mayan civilization.” To an academic these days it might merely be the lingering Power of the White Heterosexual Male. To a hiker just coming off a two-week walk in the wilderness, it can often be the humblest porcelain toilet in the most run-down, filthy gas station you have ever seen (the academic might then point out that the toilet is also white, or at least used to be.)

We get the word by way of the Latin civilitas, which carried the idea of the manners necessary for the running of the Roman state. Romans were expected to act a certain way in public; if one did not, one was a “Greek-lover,” or a “barbarian,” perhaps a dramatic fool like Nero—at any rate, someone not worth respecting. A foreign king might have been wealthy and powerful, but Rome did not merely value power. If some king got a good report from a Roman historian, he was more than grand or authoritarian—he had civilitas, or as we might say, he had good manners. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. A “homo civilitatis” meant someone who lived in Roman society and by its rules, as distinct from the barbarians.

Over the next millennium, Christianity took that notion and built on it. The idea of proper manners became married to the idea of the proper man; one who knew his place in the cosmos (God’s regent on earth) and his station in his own country (from the king to the beggar). This became the medieval standard of civilization. There was still a sense of superiority to the uncivilized, but it was now derived not from citizenship in one particular powerful city, but instead in a proper worship of the true God. A “civilized man” meant someone who lived in Christian society and by its rules, distinct from the pagans.

As Enlightenment rationalism leached its way into this worldview, the idea of worship began to be divorced from man. The philosophers and deep thinkers of this period made the curious assumption that after a thousand years of Christian training, certain morals and manners were actually natural to men—particularly white-skinned men. Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary leans toward this view when it defines civilization as “the state of being refined in manners, from the grossness of savage life, and improved in arts and learning.” Instead of “Christian civilization” we now had “Western civilization”: a vaguely Christian moral compass married to the tremendous technological advances made by the Scientific Revolution. A “civilized man” meant someone who lived like a European, distinct from the darker-skinned society any other place on the globe.

Whether a modern person likes it or not, it is this Western civilization that built the American system of government, laws, and manners (though it was reinforced, joined, and in some cases supplanted by the older medieval view). The idea that you can elect a leader, retain the right to disagree with that leader publicly after an election, and do whatever you wish with your free time (without that leader having the least say) are all direct fruits of it. So is the Bill of Rights. So is the ability to walk down the street without having to move aside for a superior human being. So is the idea that you can walk into a courtroom and have a case decided by what you have done, and not who you or your opponent are. And it also means enjoying the richest, most technologically adorned lifestyle in history. In a contrast to Webster, the OED currently defines civilization as “the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced.” (Note the idea of progress.)

So currently, the (Western) “civilized man (and as you must say now, woman)” means someone who lives by ideas of electoral and legal equality, in a state of technological advancement; distinct from any society either hierarchically structured, or less technologically developed. This is why it is possible (though rarely politically popular) to speak disapprovingly of Chinese, African, or Indian civilization as inferior to the United States’, they are either repressively unequal (China), underdeveloped (Africa), or both (India). These emphases will be important when we get to Part II.

Sixteen Pounds of Orange Juice

I can only imagine what the passing motorists thought.

It was one of those moments that really makes you wish thought bubbles from comic strips were real. Here I am, striding up the sidewalk in my Sunday best, bright yellow shirt; a straw fedora; a bright red tie that would do credit to Donald Trump; my cane  stuck in my belt like a sword because I don’t have a free hand, and a giant bottle of Cook’s Brut champagne swinging in each fist.

I’m guessing the dominant thought bubble would have been something along the lines of “???”

I can’t blame them. I have moments where I wonder why I thought this was a good idea myself. Champagne bottles weigh a lot more on the latter end of a mile-and-a-half walk than they do at the beginning. Seventy pounds apiece, at least. Who keeps feeding these things?

Don’t worry, my Baptist friends: I was not strolling home from church with massive amounts of alcohol. Actually, they were full of orange juice.

(Honest.)

It came about innocently enough. We were having a special farewell party for the family of one of the deacons, who were moving to San Diego. There were bagels with various cream cheeses. There were mimosas (almost a necessity if you are having to move to San Diego, in my opinion). There was fruit. [It was supposed to go on the bagels or in the mimosas, but most of the kids just shoveled it in plain. By the handful. I’m sure their mothers were all delighted with the state of their clothes later.] And when it was all over, there was far too much orange juice; somebody’d totally miscalculated the ratio, in a blatant failure of hard-learned eighth-grade math skills.

But, being a highly skilled scrounging bachelor, this was cause for rejoicing. “Would you like to take some of this orange juice home? We have too much.”

Would I? [Millennials, insert crafty-looking emoji with sunglasses here]

But there was a catch. The orange juice had all been made from frozen concentrate and mixed in situ. There were no containers. How would I get it home? Why, in one of those empty champagne bottles littering the table, of course. How clever of me. A twist of plastic wrap around the top, and we’re ready to roll. On second thought, I’ll take two; one can never have too much orange juice.

Wait, second catch. I walked here this morning because it was 68 degrees in early July and sunny and glorious. Could I walk back a mile and a half carrying three liters of orange juice in glass bottles? I hefted one. Totally doable. I’m still relatively young and hearty, even if I don’t ever work out!

Halfway up the long hill back to town my wrists are starting to cramp and I’m realizing that plastic wrap has very little friction, especially when you wrap it around the smooth neck of a glass champagne bottle. And for some reason the old song “Sixteen Tons” won’t quit running through my head, edited to fit the situation:

You load sixteen pounds, and whatd’ya get?

Another day older and deeper in sweat

This OJ’s a-fallin’ but I can’t go:

I’m stuck on a hill where the goin’ is slow...

It probably does weigh sixteen pounds, I think. I wonder how all the speed-walkers with the weights manage to do this. No plastic wrap for starters. I pass an old man going the other way and expect a question, or at least a raised eyebrow. Nope, nothing. He’s obviously lived in this Pacific Northwest college town for far too long for this to qualify as weird. I set the bottles down to wait at the traffic light and flex my fingers. The break feels amazing. Isn’t that just like the Christian life, I muse. We Western Christians expect life to be like a normal Sunday walk: long periods of sunshine and light breezes interspersed with a few brief hard bits, trials to keep us from being too comfortable. But the sermon series is on Acts this summer, and Paul’s life seems far more like today’s walk—long periods of pain and struggle and uphill climb broken by brief moments of blessed relief, when God is near.

But the rest breaks are not the end of the journey. They can’t be, you’ve got sixteen pounds of free orange juice to haul before it spoils in the afternoon heat. The breaks aren’t when you roll over and camp out, they’re when you thank God, your muscles unclamp, and you pop your neck and get ready for the next quarter-mile stretch. It was a good reminder for when I’m going through the dry spells of life, when little seems to be going right and family, friends—even God—seem far away. I can just hear Him chuckling gently in my ear, “Keep going, kid. Anybody can carry this burden another hundred yards, you’re getting close! (At the end there’s free orange juice.)” 

My apartment looked really good as I crossed the last parking lot. One of the bottles had slopped a little bit thirty yards back, and if you thought plastic wrap on glass was slippery, try wet plastic wrap! Not to mention I’d had a few mimosas too many back at the church...

Out of agony-born curiosity, I did actually weigh the bottles on the bathroom scale before I slipped them in the fridge. The needle read approximately fourteen pounds.

It lieth. Definitely sixteen, at least. Besides, fourteen doesn’t work in the song as well.