Ted Tschopp's Blog

Thoughts on Narrative

I am in the middle of reading a book written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called the Black Swan. The book itself is basically about the problems with inductive reasoning. In the book he parses these ideas out into several more specific fallacies.

• The Narrative fallacy: creating a story post-hoc to create an identifiable cause for a given event.
• The Ludic fallacy: believing that the structured randomness found in games resembles the unstructured randomness found in life
• The Statistical regress fallacy: believing that the probability of future events is predictable by examining occurrences of past events.

The fallacy I want to concentrate on is the narrative fallacy. What fascinates me the most about this is that religions use Narrative to communicate their ideas. Christianity, the religion I feel is true, even goes to the point of stating that the only way that God communicates to people today is mediated via the Bible, a large collection of stories. When we are told to communicate the Gospel, we are told to tell a story. This story is summed up as follows: The creator of the universe entered reality as a human born of a woman in a small town at the center of the known world. He lived a short life, and then was put to death. Three days later he was alive again. When he was alive he claimed that those be swore fealty to Him as Lord would be able to give Him all the bad things they had done in life and have them killed as he was killed. They would also receive the life he received after being dead for three days.

I guess what fascinates me the most is that Taleb tells us that this narrative fallacy is one of the strongest and easiest fallacies for us to fall into. How is it that one of our weakest points in our intellectual armor is also one of the most critical. The book of Romans calls for us to renew our minds. We are called to be crafty as serpents. So we are called as Christians to be ready for this type of post-hoc fallacy.

I guess we can take this in several different directions. The first is that narrative is the mediated way God communicates, therefore it's not wholly evil. Another direction is that narrative is definitely screwed up I wonder what it looked like before the fall. I also wonder if this fallacy is becoming more and more common as time passes.

Communion of the Saints in the Age of the Internet

I got the following email from the Pastor who leads our bible study.

During last week's Life Light I overheard some of you talking about those who feel they do not need the church -- the "assembly of believers". That attitude seems to be increasing in the United States. You can do everything on the "internet" --

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/03/13/online.confessions/index.html

Here is my response. I'm posting it here as I would like to post all my rather lengthy and perhaps thoughtful stuff here.

I am sorry for the length of this email. I felt I should respond as I was the one who brought this up. Having the ability to write something without the limitations of paper tends to make me very verbose. I have edited several rather large tangents out of this diatribe against the idea of virtual churches. As with most new things in the Church, I think they only point to the novelty of mans ability to create new ways to sin and the churches (the building, not the bride) willingness to scratch the itch.

My first thoughts on reading the article is the first letter to the Corinthians. Paul says that when they have gathered together and that he Paul is with them in spirit they should hand the man over to Satan who has become proud in his sexual sins. Paul also states that he is with the community of believers in spirit. So we do have an example of the lack of the remission of sins due to some form of confession remotely from the apostolic fathers as recorded in the New Testament. In each case that I can think of, including where the Christ lays outs the Office of the Keys, distance doesn't seem to be a problem.

However, proximity also seems to be important. Paul asks for the community in Corinth to gather together. Jesus tells us that we can bind and absolve sins here on earth and that he will honor that in heaven.

I guess I will tend to lean away from the idea of a virtual church because online communities tends to get gnostic. I use to run the largest Tolkien community on the Internet. At our height we have 50,000 - 75,000 active participants. From that experience I know a virtual community online can be good. They have many strengths and are the source of much blessing. But there are weaknesses to an online community. They tend to emphasize their strengths. The ability to focus on the mind and being virtually present. This means the group will start to deny the physical in favor of the mind and the virtual. This is the exact same problem that the gnostics championed as one of the blessings of their philosophy.

Being a part of a community is touching, tasting, breathing, crying, and in the end living together. The creator of the universe has blessed us with many amazing blessings including a mind that can come up with things like computers and email and virtual communities online. But that same creator did not enter cyberspace to talk to us. He didn't send us an email. He didn't touch the heavens and have the clouds form the letters "I LOVE YOU." No, he entered reality as a messy, dirty, smelly, Human. The creator liked matter so much that creator and creation became bound up in reality in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

In this cases we should follow the example of our God. How did he communicate our forgiveness to us. When Adam and Eve had sinned, e came to them in the cool of the evening. From that point forward, when God came, it was mediated through the medium of prophets, priests, and kings. Finally when the time was right our God entered reality, and when it was all done he yelled "It is finished" for all to hear. And before He left he charged his followers to tell others what they had witnessed.

No our God entered reality. No more mediation is needed. No more prophets, priests, or kings. No need to approach a mountain on fire, or a building or tent filled with the blood. And now that we are this free isn't it -so- human to say. "I don't like my freedom. It's scary. I need my church experience mediated with a computer screen. I need my experience with my fellow believers mediated by the television screen. I need my experience with God's forgiveness to be mediated through forms of entertainment like a movie. I believe in the communion of the saints like the creed says, but please, I need that experience mediated; the physical reality of the connection between other believers is too much." These are all the sayings of a sinful man returning to the same attitudes he had before he experienced God.

I suppose I could keep ranting about this, I agree there are good things about having the ability to remotely confess. Sins are hard to confront. It's easier to leave a note on a car and say "Sorry I ran into you. Here is my insurance information." than it is to stop and confront the person you ran into. But the absolution of sins needs to be very real and felt, and seeing the words "I absolve you" scroll across the screen isn't as real as the confessor/pastor saying it; and it's definitely not as real as the dying God saying "Today you will be with me in Paradise."

More on the Fast for Lent

And therefore I observe, that the Will (without any metaphysical refining) is, That by which the mind chooses any thing. The faculty of the will, is that power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice. – Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of the Will

Did you eat breakfast this morning?  How about Lunch?  What did you do this weekend?  What choices did you make over the long weekend?  Did you make any choices or did you just go along with what you have always done? 

Right now it’s getting close to 5:00pm and I am hungry.  I have a cup of tea I’m sipping, and I have not had solid food in almost 20 hours.  Sitting a couple desks down from me is a full spread of sandwiches from Togo's.  Back the other direction is a table with a large jar of smoky roasted almonds, one of my favorite snacks.  I know where there is a cache of Milky Ways and a candy jar full of Kisses.  I’m sure if I spent some time looking around the office, I would find the conference rooms with food from Baja Fresh, Trendy Thai, Pickup Sticks, or Panera. 

But I’m not eating.  My stomach is grumbling a bit.  But I am choosing not to eat.  Every time I walk past a large spread of food here at work I am reminded of my choice.  I choose not to eat. 

During this Lenten season, I have chosen to fast.  I only told an individual or two at work about the fast, but it soon got out to the whole group.  They all now know that I was fasting for 40 day (but not 40 nights).  One of the questions that has been asked boils down to:  “Isn’t it hard to fast, how can you do it?”  This question takes many forms, but it has been asked so many times that I think I will formulate a response that reduces my experiences to some general advice about what I have learned.

From the quote above we can see that Jonathan Edwards, in Freedom of the Will, defines the will as the mind choosing.  This fast has made me start to question what it means to choose.  What is free will.  I am now of the opinion that man has a lot of freedom, but many times he choose not to exercise that freedom. 

I am free to eat.  I gain nothing in heaven or here on earth for not eating.  Perhaps I’ll be healthier.  Perhaps I’ll learn some lesson about my life.  But in the end there is very little ‘value’ in my fast.  It is a choice I make freely.  The value for me is that I chose it.  I chose to act differently.

How many times do we run through life and we don’t choose.  We have freedom to eat whatever we want, but we choose to let the smells of McDonald’s fries choose our meal.  How many times do we let advertising of a product make a choice for us.  Each time I walk past a spread of food here at work, I smell the aroma of those foods.  It calls to me.  The voice reminds me of other voices I hear; the voices that call to me and tempt me to other things, more horrible things. But every time I choose not to eat the food, I make a choice. This leads me to ask how many times do I truly have my mind choose for me. How many times do I truly use my free will?

I can ask these questions about many areas in my life, but we are adults. Let’s make these questions count.  How many times do I actively choose to do good instead of evil.  How many times do I choose to be kind, instead of cruel?  How many times am I just going with the flow of the culture or the social groups around us? How many times do I do just those things that I have always done? How many times do I actually think about each of my actions? Many of us at this point some will probably say the following:

“Well, I’m not so good at this.  I need to work at this.  I need to get better at this.  I’m glad you brought this up.  Now lets see; I’m going to choose to do a better job at choosing things in my lfe.  I’m going to be different than all those other people.  I need work, but I’m not as bad as those other people.  I am no longer going to be a sheep, I’m not going to be like all those other sheep out there.  They just follow each other into stupidity and ignorance.  They do all sorts of evil and wrong.”

Can you hear that voice in your head? No? Wait until you drive to work tomorrow and you go the same way you have always gone without thinking. Wait until you eat the same thing you ate last week for dinner. Wait until you don’t make a choice and you just go along with the way things always were. You will then be a failure. That is when you will hear the voice. It will say, it’s not so bad, you did so good up until now. You are not as bad as some other people who fail all the time. You choose to do two good things this week. You have gotten one nagging habit under control. Well to that voice I have the following to say.

"Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."  Jesus as recorded in Luke 18:10–14

What is that voice in your head saying now?  How do you respond to that voice?

This parable was recorded as occuring when Jesus was heading down to Jeruselem for the last time.  Every step along the way, Jesus chose.  He chose as no man before him or since him chose.  He chose becuase he knew what was going to happen.  He chose, even though he knew the outcome.  Here is the point of all this writing.  Many times we don’t use our free will.  When we do, many times, we choose things we later regret.  But someone else has already chosen.  He chose to die.  In his death he took on all the wrong choices we made and gave us all the right choices. 

In this lenten time remeber that you have a choice.  Remeber the choices that have already been made.

Fasting for Lent

Well, this is starting the second week of my fast for Lent.  This year I have decided not to eat any solid food (liquids only) when the sun is up.  What this basically means is that I have a nice normal dinner, and everything else is liquid.  I have also decided that I will not be drinking any soda, so all fluids are going to be juices and tea.  Most of the time I will drink several types of tea.  Occasionally I will have an orange juice or a vitamin water.  For lunch I will drink a Jamba juice with a shot of wheat grass.

I have done this fast once before and combined it with a one and a half mile walk because Jamba Juice was that far from work.  This year Jamba juice is much further from work, so I will have to go out of my way to do the walking.

So far everything seems to be working great.  I will post more later this week about how the process is going.

Ideas of things I need to think about: Garden State

This has nothing to do with New Jersey or emo Jewish twenty somehtings trying to deal with life.  This is a blog post that I am making to capture a couple ideas I have bouncing around in my head that need further refinement:

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

“Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 

Ok, the first idea.  Adam (The Man) was put into the garden of Eden (not in Eden specifically) to work it and keep it.  What is the limit of the garden?  We notice that Eden has a limit.  There is definitely an inside and an outside.  Now looking at the garden.  We that God planted the garden in Eden, and that he placed the tree of live in the midst of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   But we also notice that the river flowed out of Eden to water the garden.  This river divided into four rivers.  The important point I’m looking at is the idea of the garden, along with the rivers, flowing out of Eden.  Also we see the man was told to work and keep the Garden. 

Ok, So what is a garden?  It’s a collection of plants.  It’s ordered.  But as they are plants they fall under the command from God to be fruitful and multiply.  So, how far does the garden extend?  Lets say it extends 10 miles in every direction from the tree of Life.  It seems that’s a reasonable thing to say, as the tree of life was in the midst of the garden.

What happens when, after several years of working (and avoiding the serpent), the Garden grows to ten miles in each direction, is mans job done?  No, for a garden to be a garden it has to grow.  So what is the limit of the Garden?  What if there was never a fall, to what limit should the garden have been extended?  What if there was never a curse, and the garden didn’t start to die?; how far had it been extended?  How far could it have been extended; to the size of a city?  A state?  A country?  A continent? The whole world?  Could the Garden be extended to the Moon?  How about to Mars?  To the Stars?  Where do we want to put up a fence and say this is inside the garden, and that is outside?

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed…

Our final look at the Garden is here.  We see a city has sprung up around the tree of life, on either side of the river, and that the fruit from the tree is bearing fruit, and that this fruit is healing and removing the curse. 

So, the effects of the fall and it’s curse are only temporary.  But my question still stands?  What is the limit of the Garden?  How far will it extend?  Just to the edge of the city which has grown up around the banks?  How about to the edge of the state?  Will it be only to those of a given country, or just to those individuals of a given race?  Will you be the one who plants the first tree on the moon?  Are the stars really that far away when you have forever?  Perhaps they are in need of a couple gardeners.

Anne Rice Quote

I never thought I would be quoting Anne Rice (yes, that Anne Rice), but last night I heard this on a Podcast and had to put it somewhere so I could remeber it.

All these skeptics insisted that the Gospels were late documents, that the prophecies in them had been written after the fall of Jerusalem. But the more I read about the fall of Jerusalem, the more...I found it absolutedly impossible that the Gospel writers could not have included the fall of the Temple in their work had they written it as critics insist ...Wouldn't the Christian writers have seen in the fall of Jerusalem some echo of the Babylonian conquest? Of course they would have...I am convinced that the key to understanding the Gospels is that they were written before all this ever happened. That's why they were preserved without question though they contradicted one another. Of course John A. T. Robinson made the case for an early date for the Gospels far better than I ever could. He made it brilliantly in 1975, and he took to task the liberal scholars for their
assumptions then in Redating the New Testament, but what he said is as true now as it was when he wrote those words.

In sum, the whole case for the non-divine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified by it if he knew about it -- that whole picture which had floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years -- that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I’d ever read....And I had also sensed something else. Many of these scholars who apparently devoted their lives to New Testament scholarship, disliked Jesus Christ. Some pitied him as a hopeless failure. Others sneered at him, and some felt an outright contempt...I’d never come across this kind of emotion in any other field of research, at least not to this extent. It was puzzling. The people who go into Elizabethan studies don’t set out to prove that Queen Elizabeth was a fool. They don’t personally dislike her. They don’t make snickering remarks about her, or spend their careers trying to pick apart her historical reputation...But there are NT scholars who detest and despise Jesus Christ...Now somewhere during my journey through all of this, I became disillusioned with the skeptics and with the flimsy evidence for their conclusions...Now the Gospels were becoming ever more coherent to me, the Gospels which appealed to me as elegant first-person witnesses, dictated to scribes no doubt, but definitely early, the Gospels produced before Jerusalem fell.  -- Anne Rice from her book Christ the Lord

Something to Expand On: Ideas on Post Modernism and the Role of the Church focusing on Creeds

I can't help but think that most parachurch organizations are going to end up no longer relevant.  It's labels like "Evangelical" that have no meaning in a post modern society.  Most parachurch organizations were formed to avoid the internal workings of a church, while still focusing on the external activities of loving neighbor.  We are now finding out that the church can't out source Christian Love and the parachurch can't out source Theology.

We shouldn't be surprised.  The church was called to be a certain thing, and in general it has left from that path.

On a happy note, as a member of a generation filled with Post Moderns, I think that there is hope.  The post modern doesn't like labels or research or scholarly works, but they do like to pick, choose, argue, and question.  This means that they like to discuss and argue and test and weigh different paradigms (and God knows, there paradigm is generally very lacking).  Here is what I say to someone communicating to someone from a post modern framework; Say  "I Believe... "   The church has historically been strong here.  Creeds are what worked in the past instead of labels, and this gets past the label.  You want to focus on the object of the creed (Jesus).  You might need to spend a lot of time hashing out a common language to truly communicate the predicate of a particular creed, but talking about the finished Work of Christ is far more useful than arguing over labels or what it means to be "Evangelical" or "Reformed" or "Born Again" or "Charismatic". 

To Teachers

“Deo, parentibus et magistris non potest satis gratiae rependi.” – To God, to parents, and to teachers we can never render sufficient gratitude and compensation. — Martin Luthers explanation of the 4^th (or 5^th if you are not Lutheran or Catholic) Commandment

I know that not everyone had great parents, and some people are agnostic or athiest.  But I think we have all had people that have taught us things.  When we look back to the screaming ball of snot and crap that we were when we were born and see how far we have come, we can only have feelings of gratitue. We realize the truth of the statement above. 

He is Risen!

I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.  Have pitty on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.  Why do you pursue me as God does?  Will you never get enough of my flesh?  Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll, that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!

I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

This is the feast of victory for our God.
Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set up free to be people of God.  Power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and blessing and glory are His. 

This is the feast of victory for our God.
Sing with all the people of God and join in the Hymn of all creation.  Blessing and honor and glory and might be to God and the Lamb forever.  Amen. 

This is the feast of victory for our God.
The Lamb who was slain has bugun his Reign. 

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

He is Risen!

Dead Men Tell Tales!

The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

And when evening had come Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. Summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.  Nicodemus also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.