Hopes and Dreams for 2019

At the beginning of each new year I am always struck with a sense of hope. It is always interesting because really the first week of January is a lot like the final week of December. Very little has fundamentally changed in just a week’s time, but there is still something about the new year that gets me excited about the possibilities and the potential positive changes that are going to be coming down the line.

The funny thing about it though is that I don’t really know what possibilities might actually come to be in the year to come. There are plenty of things that I would like to happen. I would love to complete my dissertation by the end of the year. I would love to put some finishing touches on a book manuscript I wrote last year. I would love to see our power soccer team get to nationals and come home with some hardware. All of these are big goals, and some are more probable than others, but they are all things that definitely could happen. On the continuum of achievability, they are much closer to the good side than the bad side.

Then there are possibilities that I hope happen but are bit more fantastical if you will. I might complete my book, and I would love to get a huge book deal to go along with it. Possible? Well, it is not impossible. It could happen. Probable? Incredibly far away from probable.

I plan on completing my dissertation, and it could possibly cause people in positions of power to consider certain elements of distributism when developing economic policy. Possible? I guess someone could be really bored and pick up a Ph.D. dissertation for some light reading before bed. Probable? Something tells me it will probably not happen.

As you have been taking a look at some of these possibilities, I imagine that you might agree with my assessment. Some could happen, some might not happen, but some are definitely much more likely to happen than others. However, at this point in the year, I really don’t know which ones may or may not happen, so it is fun to think about any and all of them. It is fun to think about what might happen if my manuscript happens to have a great deal of success or if my dissertation became part of a larger intellectual conversation. It might not happen, and it is incredibly unlikely, but there is an element of dreaming that still hits me as we begin the new year.

What’s the point of hoping and dreaming though? Why do we do it? Realistically, our hope should rise with the probability of achievability. For example, I should be more hopeful in the fact that I am going to have food for dinner tonight than in the fact that I might be able to influence a national conversation about distributism. However, I don’t know if hope is quite the same thing. What I am talking about here seems more like an expectation. If that is all that hope means, then there is no doubt that the likelihood of me having dinner tonight is much greater than the likelihood of distributism going mainstream on account of my dissertation.

Hope is greater than just expectation. There has to be possibility, of course, or else there’s no point hoping. There is no use in me hoping that the sun will turn purple. That’s not going to happen ever. We need to hope for something that is possible, but probability doesn’t really seem to make much of a difference. I can hope for something that is probable or improbable, and I am still hoping.

From the outside this type of hope may seem to be founded or unfounded. I may think that you are crazy about hoping for something that is highly improbable. You may think I am crazy if I think that my book could possibly get published somewhere. You may think that my hope is well-founded if it is something that is probable.

To me though, when I am talking about my hope, probability doesn’t really seem to enter into the conversation because they are hopes. For you, when you think about your hopes, you don’t really take into account what I think about them. They are your hopes, and my hopes are mine.

I think that’s why I am always struck by hope at this time of the year. Because of the unknown and the fact that hope does not depend on probability, I can’t help but think about all of the good things that may actually happen. But why do I bother doing it? What is the point of hope?

C. S. Lewis once said that, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”[1] There is something about hope that resonates with me. There’s something about hope that makes me want to look towards something better. The opposite of hope is fear. I look forward towards hopes that are good or fears that are not. I am looking forward at something, and like Lewis claims, I have this desire to look towards something that’s good. I want to have hopes. I don’t want to have to fears even though I do sometimes just like everyone else. Instead, I find these desires in me, and I want to find some kind of satisfaction for them.

Anyone who is familiar with the work of Lewis will understand that he is using this as an argument to point towards the existence of God. For some hopes like my dissertation, there is a way to satisfy that hope. I can finish my dissertation, and I will fulfill that desire to have my dissertation finished. The point that Lewis is making is that there are some things we desire but can’t find satisfaction here on earth. We desire pure love, but even our best friends and closest family members let us down at times. We desire justice, and our world seems to be a rather unjust place. Assuming that the universe is not just playing a prank on us, Lewis hypothesizes that there must be a way for these deeper desires to be fulfilled, and he grounds that in the person of God. When we are in God’s presence, we will find those deeper longings fulfilled.

If Lewis is right, we are people who want to hope. We are people who want to look for things to become better. Even if certain things are not probable, we have these desires. That applies to supernatural things. How probable is it that the God of the universe would die for the sins of His own creation? Not very probable, but it happened. It didn’t happen in the teachings of any other world religion. If they are right and Christianity is wrong, then this didn’t happen. How probable is it that there is something rather than nothing? Not very probable, but we are here. There are plenty of ways that nothing could have existed, but we find ourselves indisputably existing along with the world around us.

It amazes me when I think about this at the beginning of a new year. I find myself with a desire to hope for things to be good. If Lewis is right in the world is not some kind of cold place that gives me desires with no hope of fulfillment, then there must be a reason I desire this hope. I must be reason it comes back to me this time of year. I would suggest to you that no matter how improbable you might think the claims are Christianity are, it would be good for you to consider why you have hopes and dreams. Why do you bother thinking about the things you want to be better? I think it’s because we are designed with a knowledge that things can be better. We are designed with the understanding that there are things that may seem improbable and even ridiculous to the world around us, but they still can be true. I don’t think I’m the only one that has some hopes and dreams going into 2019, and I think that it is a good thing. My desire to have hopes point me towards a way to satisfy my hopes. It isn’t just the simple things that occupy my day-to-day life. It is about eternal hopes as well.

[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 136-137, Kindle Edition.



How to Change the World in 2019: Chase Virtue

Over the past two weeks we have been thinking about changing the world in 2019. Naturally, that kind of what we all do every year really make our New Year’s resolutions. We think about what might not have gone so well in the previous year, and we figure out a way to make it better. You might’ve thought that you didn’t exercise enough in 2018, so your resolution is to go to the gym three times per week in the upcoming year. You might have thought that your last year was kind of boring, so you made a resolution to actually go on a vacation somewhere new and different this year as some type of adventure.

I don’t know what your particular resolution is, but I have been suggesting a few steps that our culture in general ought to take. First, we need to reduce anger. We have become a culture of outrage, and that is not healthy for any culture. In fact, that is one of the easiest ways to dissolve a culture. Beyond that, and I would argue more importantly, we need to build towards something that is good. I suggested that building communities around common interests and concerns would help do that. Not only does it help us become more closely knit to our fellow man, but it will also encourage other people. When they see the benefits that we are reaping from community, they will want community as well. Ideally, we will create a kind of chain reaction.

There’s one last thing though that we really need, and it is a sensitive topic. However, I figure that I don’t really do any of you any good if I hold out the detail that will make this work. Reducing anger is great, and building communities are great. In fact, I would argue that are necessary. However, if we don’t do these things while we are oriented towards that which is good, they are all going to be for nothing. We need a revolution of virtue in 2019.

Virtue is hard to define. People have tried to throughout history. Judeo-Christian cultures have largely embraced objective moral virtues rooted in the character of God. Aristotle talked about virtue as being a kind of mean. In 2018, it is not difficult to find someone who would say that virtue is however you define it. Virtue is whatever is right for you. Therefore, I fully understand that when I start wading into a topic such as virtue, it is really hard to have this discussion because you might have a different definition of virtue than I do.

That being said, let me start from a different point, and we might find ourselves working backward toward virtue. That may help us.

I think most of us would agree that we want the world to be a better place. No matter how you felt about 2018, it would be a good thing if 2019 was better. I would certainly hope you don’t want the new year to be worse. And, while there are some areas that I know we would disagree on, I also know that there were plenty of things we could agree on that would definitely make this world a better place. As an obvious example, the world would be a better place if fewer people were homeless or weren’t hungry at night. If we could help those people, the world would be a better place than it is currently where they experience homelessness and hunger.

If that’s true that we want the world to be a better place, then it is not hard to move to the conclusion that we are concerned about human flourishing. My examples above are physical, but it goes well beyond that. I think we can simultaneously agree that the world would be a better place if people did not have to battle with sadness and grief. The world would be a better place if we could all find joy. We’re not just talking about physical things and physical human flourishing. We are talking about all areas of human flourishing.

Therefore, when we think about what is virtuous, there has to be a dimension of virtue that is chiefly concerned with this area. Virtuous beliefs are, among other things, going to be beliefs that encourage human flourishing. Fundamentally, I think this makes a great deal of sense. After all, wouldn’t whatever is right actually be good for humanity?

If you have a hard time accepting this, consider the things that we call bad. When you think about a natural disaster, it destroys our houses, property and sometimes takes away human lives. When you think about theft, it is taking away what belongs to someone else. When you think about abuse, it is damaging another person. Bad things are the types of things that interfere with all the good things about being human. On the flipside then, I do not think it is very much of a stretch at all to conclude that virtuous things are that which encourages human flourishing.

The question then advances to a discussion of human flourishing. How does humanity flourish? What things should we do to create the best possible situation for as many people as possible in 2019? If we can figure it out, then I think that we are moving in the right direction.

I don’t know that the answer can be that we simply have a world where we all have everything we want. While we may disagree on what exactly is good, there are unfortunately some people who want some of the bad things I outlined above. There are some people that want to harm other people or take property from other people. Therefore, we can’t simply have a definition that says that anything virtuous is whatever I want. It just doesn’t make sense unless we abandon our belief that there are some things that we can possibly want that are bad.

What then makes humanity flourish? For one thing, I think a clear result of human flourishing is that everyone has enough to meet their physical needs. When I think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it is hard to even talk about the higher levels of good when physical needs are not met. That’s a good place to start. However, there is a lot more to it than that. This might be a controversial thing to say, but you very rarely hear about people starving to death in United States of America today. I’m sure some people probably do, and that is a horrible thing, but most of us have the ability to have our physical needs met. Perhaps they are not met well or adequately, but in the richest country in the history of the world, even the poorest among us have a standard of living that goes well beyond many people in other parts of the world. Yet, we are not flourishing. Even many of your middle-class families might not say they are flourishing even though they are in a financial position where they have their physical needs met. There must be more to human flourishing than simply meeting our physical needs although I think that is part of it without a doubt.

If that’s true, then we have to get back to this idea of virtue being rooted in either psychology or morality. There may be a lot of overlap between those two fields, but it obviously goes well beyond the physical. It is partially physical, but it is also something that goes on in the mind. It is necessary that virtuous things relate to decisions we make, things that we do and beliefs that we hold.

We can’t just solve the problem of being oriented towards that which is good by meeting physical needs. We need to come up with some guidelines of the good actually is. I have already shown how it is not a good idea to base good on my own individual wants. That doesn’t work out very well, and it is self-defeating. However, I’m going to try to outline some things that help us define the good.

First, it does not cause harm without suitable justification. I have no doubt that soldiers cause harm to other people, but because they are defending vulnerable people who they love, I would call that suitable justification. Police officers apprehend people and take away their freedom. That is harm, but they are justified in doing so if the person is truly guilty of a serious crime. That’s why we cannot just make a blanket statement that that which is good does not curse harm. Sometimes there are justifiable reasons to cause harm, and we may even say that they are good reasons.

Second, that which is good thinks about the interests of other people. We all have some degree of self-interest, and it is not always a terrible thing. If we had no self-interest and gave away all of our food to the poor, our lives would be rather short. We need at least a little bit of self-interest to continue living. However, that which is good considers other people as more important than ourselves. If I am going to do something that helps me but hurts hundreds of other people, I shouldn’t do that thing. It may be in my self-interest, but, understood from a societal perspective, I think we could agree that it is not a good thing to do.

Even if we just stopped after these two points, there are plenty of applications for the year ahead. If you think I’m right, then why don’t we start to do things that don’t hurt other people and actually try to help them out? That’s a great way to start. That would orient our year towards virtue without a doubt. If we start reducing our anger and building communities in the interest of doing better for those around us, undoubtedly the world would be a better place. I think it is hard to disagree with that contention.

That being said, you might think this is all well and good, and you might be willing to go along with me so far. After all, I really said anything that would ruffle too many feathers yet I don’t think. However, we all know that there is a lot more to virtue than this. There are many more thorny issues that I haven’t even gotten close to, and they are the things where we are going to disagree. All I have proposed to you so far is that it is necessary to love your neighbor as you love yourself. That sounds awfully familiar. You have all heard that before from the mouth of Jesus Christ, but you might not have heard the first part of that same commandment.

Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was. It was kind of a trick question to be fair, but He gave a two-part answer. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31, NIV).

The first part is where you are going to run away from me. You might be all for loving your neighbor. Most religions have been. If you read the appendix at the back of The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, you will find all kinds of things where people agree. This is one of them. Most of the world’s great teachers of come to this conclusion.

The first part is much more revolutionary, but we need to love God with everything we have. You might not want to love God. However, I would contend that without that, we are not going to be able to get anywhere near the virtue revolution in 2019 that I’m suggesting we need. Why?

God provides an objective basis for morality. Other gods can do that as well. Allah, for example, can make a similar claim. However, having a lawgiver is necessary if we are going to have the virtue revolution. We need to have a fixed point that we are moving towards. Otherwise, we are going to be moving in a million different directions. We might have some things we agree on as I outlined above, but there are going to be times we disagree. Without some type of point to move towards, it is really hard to make any forward progress.

Beyond that, I think if you actually test the claims that are laid out, you will find that they move us towards the situations that we all agreed on the bills. They move us towards things that are good. I’m not going to outline all of the evidence here for you in this post that I have already gone on far too long, but simply check the facts. When people live in the way Scripture outlines, you see these things come to be. Of course, take under advisement what I wrote about last week. Make sure that you are not basing your perception of what Christianity is and people who either assume or abuse membership. Study its claims yourself based on the primary source document. You might be pleasantly surprised what you find.

I hope that this post is made you think a little bit about virtue in 2019. If we don’t have virtue, reduce anger or building community is going to do all that much good. We need to make sure we are moving in the right direction, and that is what I would encourage you to consider as we start the new year tomorrow.

How to Change the World in 2019: Build Community

I sincerely believe that the world can change in 2019, but in order for it to change we first need to reduce our anger as I talked about last week, but we also need to build community. I was encouraged by a friend to check out my personality type, and I ended up being an ESTJ. Here is the first sentence of the description of my personality type, “ESTJs are representatives of tradition and order, utilizing their understanding of what is right, wrong and socially acceptable to bring families and communities together.”

Obviously, you may then believe that I am biased towards believing community is important. After all, I have a personal propensity towards thinking that community is important. Maybe it’s not as important as I perceive it to be. However, I hope that you can follow me down this chain of thought because if we are going to improve our cultural climate in 2019 and make a positive change in the world, building community is going to be one of the most important catalysts to making that happen.

First of all, how do we define community? It is used in many ways. Sometimes it seems to be more geographical. We use it to discuss the people who live around us. I am a part of the central Vermont community. While that is true, community seems to have a broader definition as well. We talk about communities on Facebook. Your favorite online message board probably has community guidelines to make sure that everyone plays by the rules. However, an online message board has no geographical constraints outside of most likely not including any members from North Korea and perhaps China depending on whether or not the government approves of your topic. Consequently, when we think about how we use this word community, it isn’t enough to just say it is a geographic area.

When we talk about communities being geographic areas though, what are we implying? I am part of the central Vermont community. That does mean that I live here, but it also means something more than that. I am part of what happens in central Vermont. I’m far from the most important part, but when a new business opens in town, I benefit from it. When we get hit by an ice storm, I suffer like everyone else. I went to elementary and high school in central Vermont. Geography matters, but it only matters because there is a common interest or a common concern. That is what causes us to build community with the people who live near us. We have common concerns.

I think that when we start to think in terms of community, we cannot neglect the concept of common interests and common concerns. You can’t just put a bunch of people in the room and assume that you have a community. You have a community when those people come together for a specific reason or cause. There could even be several reasons or causes. We talk about our churches as being religious communities. We are certainly brought together to worship God on Sunday, but often times we are also brought together for various committee meetings, music practices, food shelves, or whatever other ministries your church might have. There are multiple interests and causes that bring people to church as part of a religious community. When we talk about the disability community, we talk about people who have similar situations in life. We come together to talk about things that concern people who use wheelchairs for example. The fact that we are a community is situated on the fact that we have shared interests and concerns.

Notice that there has to be a foundation of shared belief in order for a community to develop. We need to be able to unite around something in order to build that community. That is part of why we need to develop communities in 2019 because often times I think that communities are either assumed or abused.

First, when we talk about communities being assumed, I’m talking about the situation where we assume that we have a community just because we are in the same place or may identify with the same group. When I spoke above about a necessary sharing of interests and concerns, it has to be a genuine interest or a genuine concern for a person to be a part of that community. As a rather simple example, communities develop around the love of sports teams. If you are genuinely interested in the Boston Red Sox, then I think you could make a case that you are part of that community. You are emotionally invested in the successes and failures of this baseball team. However, living in New England, I have learned that there are a lot of people who say that they cheer for the Red Sox but really don’t care about baseball at all. Boston is the team in the Northeast, so it is kind of like a default setting, but there are a lot of people who simply are not at all interested or concerned about baseball. They identify as fans, but they never think about the Red Sox.

Using the definition of community that I am operating from, these people would not be considered part of the community. This is a little bit hard to measure obviously, and it is a little bit fuzzy. Therefore, the problem of assuming community occurs when we assume that people are part of a community that they are really not. Because they are in New England, we assume that they are Boston Red Sox fans. In terms of baseball, this really doesn’t make much of a difference. However, let’s move to a more important topic. A lot of people identify as Christian, but if they really never do anything to affiliate with other Christians, a church or even read the Bible, it is not accurate to say that there are part of the Christian community. Similarly, consider people who identify as Republicans. If they do not embrace any of the points of the Republican Party platform, then they really are not part of that community. Because of how people identify, we assume things about them, or they assume that they are part of a community that they are not a part of. That is a major problem.

When we have assumed communities, we end up with distortions of the actual community. Is it fair to judge the Democratic Party by someone who may identify as a Democrat but doesn’t embrace any of the core beliefs of the party? If they do not really have any of the interests or concerns of the Democratic Party at heart, then they are not part of that community no matter what they assume or what we assume about them.

You can imagine a situation where I sit down and have a discussion with this hypothetical assumed Democrat. After talking to him, I am pretty convinced that I shouldn’t become a Democrat because he doesn’t make a good case for his position. The only problem with that situation is that I have not really addressed the core concerns of Democrats in general. I have only knocked down the position of someone who has distorted the Democratic community position. Maybe this person is assuming a position in the party, or maybe I am assuming that position in the party, but the problem remains the same. When people assume they are part of the community that they are not really a part of and do not share the same interests or concerns of the people in that community, we have a major problem.

Second, when we talk about communities being abused, I think this is a little bit easier to understand. There are situations where people might have become a part of a particular community. Once they get into that community, they might perhaps use it for their own purposes. This is slightly different than assuming community. These people are indeed members of the community that they claim to be members of, and it makes sense for them to be members of that community. That said, these are the people who take either intentional or unintentional steps to tear apart that community from the inside because many of their interests or concerns relate to themselves. They may align with the concerns and interests of the community, but they bring and ulterior motives. Being a part of a community involves a certain level of trust. You make yourself vulnerable to the other members of the community. Some people take advantage of these things and can easily cause tension or division within the community.

When that happens, there are a few potential consequences. First, the community might just fall apart. We all have seen that happen whether it be in churches or in other organizations. One person causes a major problem, and everything just fails miserably. This is normally when the person causing the division is perceived to be a prominent member of the community. Second, the community divides. This is the story of a lot of churches. Part of the community remains together, but a substantial portion departs based on this abuse. Third, and this probably has the fewest consequences, but in situations of the abuse of community, sometimes no one listens. If the community is strong enough and recognizes the abuse for what it is, the members might unite and stand against it. This happens less than we would like it to of course, but it is a potential consequence in this situation. Maybe a few people depart from the community, but in general, the community remains intact.

If we can avoid these errors of assumed community or abusive community, then we can work on developing community. We come together around common interests and concerns. This can be geographical in nature as I mentioned before, but it didn’t have to be. I am so privileged to be a part of the community that produces An Unexpected Journal. We are spread out across the country and even around the world, but we have joined together around a common interest in order to produce a publication that a lot of people seem to be enjoying and interacting with. It is different than a physical community, and there are plenty of times that I wish that we all lived in the same town and could have our meetings in person, but utilize technology to do the best we can, and it undoubtedly is a community that I am a part of and I value greatly.

These are the kind of things that need to happen if we are going to change the world. It is rare for one person to be able to change the world all by him or herself. Some people have, but as a general rule, it normally takes at least a small group of people dedicated to a cause to make a significant change. The vision may start with one person, but that person needs other people to come alongside him or her and buy into that mission. To come back to talking about our publication again, we have had a group of people committed to this project from the beginning. It is not just one person pulling the entire weight, but it has been a venture of a lot of people working together.

I mentioned this reliance on community because we live in an increasingly alienated society. We don’t think that we need anybody, and we don’t want help from anybody. Sometimes we even reject the help of people who would be willing to work with us because we do not absolutely agree on every issue. We demand absolute ideological purity on every issue, and we are somewhat surprised to find out that each of us are little bit different. We might agree on 99% of things, but at least I have yet to find someone who agrees with me on everything. That demand of ideological purity then causes us to reject the help of those that we could work with and stands directly opposed to the development of community. This tendency towards isolation and alienation under the guise of embracing independence causes people to feel disillusioned.

As a result, when we start to come together as a community, this disillusionment will become evident. People will realize that they are missing something and want to fill in that void. Community can do that for so many people. They realize that they don’t like being isolated, and they want to come together with people for a set of common interests or concerns. Once people realize the difficult situation that they have put themselves in by isolating, they want something bigger than themselves and ultimately something better.

That’s where we have to come in as we think about these issues going forward into 2019. Are we the types of people were going to identify these interests and concerns? Once we identify them, are we going to be the type of people who are willing to help develop a community around those issues? I can’t necessarily change the world by myself, but if I assist in the creation of community, I will be doing something to help change the world, and I think that is what we need to see more of in the year ahead. It obviously is not easy, and I have outlined some tough issues in this post, but they are the obstacles we will have to overcome if we truly want to start to make 2019 better than 2018.

How to Change the World in 2019: Reduce Anger

We are coming near the end of the year, and as I think back on what has perhaps defined our cultural climate for the past year, all I can think about is anger. People are literally mad about everything. Of course, there are definite commercial benefits to our never-ending cycle of outrage.

After all, if I want you to donate money to my political campaign, it makes an awful lot of sense for me to demonize my opponent. If I can make you mad at my opponent, you’re much more likely to support me.

If I want you to watch my TV channel, I need to make you mad. Why? Once you get mad, you are much more likely to come back to my network again in the future. After all, because you are mad at the other guy, there’s no way you are going to go to his network. Therefore, you only have mine left.

Even on our own social media feeds, how many of your friends have you seen blow up at each other in the last year over something that is really insignificant and pointless?

We are all on edge, and we often times find ourselves getting pushed over the edge. Or, that’s what you want me to say. You want me to say that it is all other people getting us angry. In fact, isn’t that what I just outlined above? There are people with vested commercial interests who want to make us angry so that they benefit financially, right?

No, that’s not what I said. I never pinned the responsibility for anger on politicians, TV networks or other people. I said that they can benefit from our never-ending cycle of outrage. However, the anger is ours, and we need to own that.

It is ultimately my decision to become angry or to not become angry. We need to take ownership of that whether we like it or not. People can push our buttons, and people can encourage us to become angry, but here’s a little thought experiment for you. Hypothetically, let’s say that it really bothers you when someone cuts you off when you are driving down the road. That makes you angry. It is worth keeping in mind that there are lots of people who do not get angry in identical circumstances. Therefore, the anger doesn’t necessarily follow from the action of being cut off. It is a combination of the action of being cut off with your own personal propensity to become angry in certain situations. However, there is not a necessary connection between being cut off and being angry.

I can already anticipate some of you screaming at me. But what about Donald Trump or Barack Obama? After all, that’s the elephant in the room for most of you who I imagine are reading this. You are here for a political discussion. They do things that simply make you angry, and you would argue that the things that they do justify anger. You would contend, and I would agree, that there is such a thing as righteous anger. In these situations, you would argue that it is indeed a good thing to become angry. Anger brings about action, and action is the only way that things are ever changed.

I can go with you about halfway. I agree that there is such a thing as righteous anger. There is no doubt that there are things that should upset us and make us mad. They should motivate us to action.

However, that is the time when the anger needs to tone down. Why? I would suggest some wisdom from Proverbs 29:11, “Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end.”

Let me ask you how often a raging mob has changed the world. You might answer with the French Revolution. Yeah, you saw how well that turned out and what happened when a raging mob actually ended up in power and turned the guillotine on its political opponents. We all experience anger, but we cannot fall into the trap of failing to calm ourselves down. We need to heed this biblical wisdom and actually stop to think about what we are doing and the type of world we are creating.

Consider what happens if we allow our anger to continue influencing our decisions. When we are angry, we don’t think straight. I think we all know that experientially. When you are upset, you are much more likely to say things that you wouldn’t say when you were calm. You are more likely to hurt someone else in a fog of rage. You might not mean it, and you might regret it later, but you still say things because you are so upset.

If that happens to us on a personal level, how much more damage could be done on a larger level?

What happens when people just let their anger continually boil, never take a step back and never think about what they are doing? It is just like what can happen to us on a personal level. A lot of damage can be done because we aren’t really thinking. To solve big problems, we need to think as clearly as possible. The anger needs to motivate us to action, but once we are in action, we need to let cooler heads prevail and actually consider what we are about to do. Action is necessary in many cases, so I’m not saying that we just sit by and let anything happen. There are plenty of things that should upset us and make us want to change the world. However, when we begin to take steps to do it, we need to think.

I think that’s the whole point of the proverb. The wise are going to bring about calm in the end. That’s what we need to consider I think more than anything in 2018. Do we really have any intention with all of our righteous anger to bring about calm in the end? Or, are we simply in love with being outraged?

And, like it or not, this is an individual choice. I know that it is tempting to say that politics make me angry, but really, you make yourself angry over politics. Therefore, you can also make the decision to lessen your own anger and actually take concrete steps to do something that will make a positive difference.

I think, looking forward to 2019, that is the message I hope people actually begin to realize. We are really good at being angry, but we are not really good at calming down and thinking about solutions. Unfortunately, I think that is because coming up with solutions takes a lot of work and a lot of thought. It’s really easy to be in opposition to something, but it is a lot harder to propose a better solution. However, remaining in an elevated state of anger all the time isn’t healthy for us individually, and it is not healthy for those around us. Multiply that by thousands of people around the country, and no wonder we see so much chaos. We have people who are not willing to actually calm down and think rationally.

Of course, people respond to this thought by saying that a particular evil is just so egregious that they really have no choice but to be angry. And, we are back where we started, because that is the core of my contention. You make the choice to be angry. Sometimes that is a good choice, but what I am suggesting is that there are times when being angry is not enough because it actually undermines the cause you are fighting for. It takes greater strength and courage to calm down, think, propose a solution and take active steps to achieve that solution. After all, isn’t that what we all want to do? Isn’t that what we are after? If we are mad about something, don’t we want a solution? The best way to do that, which unsurprisingly is consistent with biblical testimony, is to not allow our rage to take over. Rather, we need to calm down in the end and actually seek to find a better way.

I don’t think people are going to love these thoughts. I think I am probably going to be accused of defending one position or another. Nevertheless, no matter where you fall on any type of political or ideological spectrum, this is important for you to realize, and I think it is the only thing that is going to improve our culture going forward. Until we take responsibility for our own anger and realize that we can reduce it for the benefit of ourselves and those around us, I don’t think much is going to change, and the world may in fact get worse.

Best Practices in Online Higher Education

Tonight, I am going to have my final live class session of the semester in our interdisciplinary seminar on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. I have handed in both of my research papers, completed my class evaluations for both classes, and I only have a few more minor assignments to complete before we can close the books on the fall 2018 semester.

I began pursuing my PhD in Humanities at Faulkner University in the fall of 2016. I had just graduated from Houston Baptist University with my MA in Apologetics, and that had been a wonderful online experience.

I have spent the last approximately four years of my life pursuing education online, and I have been asked many times how I feel about online education. I can’t speak for every online program, and I have heard a lot of the horror stories that many of you have heard about virtual diploma mills that take your money, don’t teach you anything, and give you a worthless piece of paper.

I want to take today to share with you a little bit about my experience in online education and what both of these programs have done right. I’m sure there are ways that they could improve, but I largely want this to be descriptive of the parts of my online education that have been particularly useful for me and that, if widely adopted, would drastically improve the reputation of online education.

First, the personal connection is one of the most necessary parts of a successful online education. By its nature, online education is typically a solitary endeavor. We sit at our own houses, in our own towns, with our own laptops. We read the same books and write similar papers, but the downfall of so many online programs is that you never really get to know anyone. I took a few online classes during my undergraduate career, and even though they were through the University of Vermont, where I actually attended in person, I didn’t feel at all connected to my professor or my classmates. Just having discussion boards alone doesn’t create community as much as many online programs wish it did.

The two programs I have been a part of have taken proactive steps toward combating this sense of isolation. First, let me talk about Houston Baptist University. From what seems like the moment you are accepted into the program, you’re invited to be a member of a Facebook group where all of your classmates and professors reside. Again, like discussion boards, this in and of itself does not create community. However, the wonderful part about this community is that the faculty members are actively involved. That stimulates involvement from all of us who were students as well. If you have a question about the reading list for a certain class, you can post it in that group, and your professor will respond to you. If you have run into a particularly thorny argument against Christianity and you need some advice, you can talk to your classmates and professors about it to try to talk through how you want to respond.

I fully realize that Facebook does not replicate in-person community, but having this direct access to so many of your classmates and faculty is a big deal. They are actual people that you can get in touch with. That means a lot. They’re not just meaningless names on the screen that you interact with on a discussion board. Most of us have also become friends on Facebook, so we know a little something about each other’s lives. Again, I know it is not quite the same as meeting people in person, but it does take great strides toward combating that sense of isolation that I have heard many people complain about when they discuss online education.

Faulkner University takes full advantage of the power of technology to try to make online education feel personal. They do this through online, mandatory class sessions like I mentioned above. They are 90-minute blocks, and you have one the equivalent of every other week for each class each semester. That means you get to meet with your classmates and your professor live eight times each semester, and we engage in a Socratic dialogue led by our professor.

It really takes online education to a whole other level when you’re able to see and hear your classmates. When someone asks a question, you hear their voice. You see their mannerisms. You realize that some people have an awkward sense of humor like me. You know that some people get really worked up about certain topics. In other words, you get to know them as people. Without meeting in person, this is just about as close as it gets. It is hard to feel isolated when you have seen your classmates face-to-face.

The second major obstacle I have found for online education is the method of evaluation. For a lot of online programs, it seems to be basically a series of online exams that are open book, you take them, and you move on. It is hard to fail an open book exam, and it is a large part of what gives online education such a bad reputation in my opinion.

Both Faulkner and Houston Baptist have taken the same approach to combating this problem. Neither program used exams at least in my experience. All of the grades I ever received from both of these programs were based on papers and discussion board postings. In other words, there were things that I had to generate, and I couldn’t just look in the book and regurgitate the answers. While I’m not really a fan of discussion boards in general, I think that they are at least a step in the right direction in comparison to the exams that characterize a lot of online education.

Also, at least in my experience, all of my papers have been graded by my professors. At Faulkner, your professor reads and grades your paper while providing feedback. You do receive another level of additional feedback from another faculty member, but the professor is the one who ultimately determines your grade. This speaks to my first concern about a personal connection, and it also adds credibility to the marks that you receive from an online education. It is not just some online program determining whether you answered multiple-choice questions the right way. That’s another important way to do online education well.

Finally, one way to do all my education right is really hard to pin down. I don’t know how you would go about doing this, and maybe I am just really fortunate. You need to have the right people involved, and that includes both students and professors. Online education has a good number of challenges, and they are definitely different than the changes that face a brick and mortar college. No one denies that. However, you need to have a number of people who are all committed to making this work. We are naturally all pursuing these degrees for different reasons.

However, I have been blown away by the quality of person I have encountered in each of these programs. If you don’t have the right people involved who are committed to making this work, then they are going to fail. The previous two things I have highlighted really rely on committed students and committed faculty. It is not the type of thing that you can just put online and let it run itself. It requires small student to faculty ratios which both of these programs have. It necessitates a good deal of student time and a good deal of faculty time. It is a lot harder to write a paper than it is to answer a few multiple-choice questions. It is also harder to grade a paper than it is to let computer automate the entire grading of a multiple-choice exam. The investment has to be on both sides of the coin, and at both Houston Baptist and Faulkner, I have felt that without a doubt. My classmates are invested. I am invested. Our faculty are invested.

Thinking back then about this entire process, I am grateful with where I have ended up. Both of the programs I have been a part of have been phenomenal. I appreciate all of the excellent people I have met. Most of you know about An Unexpected Journal, a quarterly publication on imaginative apologetics where I serve as editor. Our central team and the vast majority of our contributors have been from Houston Baptist, and the more I work with them, the more I realize how excellent they are. Similarly, the more I get to know my classmates at Faulkner, the more I realize how great they are as well. Who knows what ways we might work together after we our graduate with our doctorates?

However, that’s what you need to keep in mind with any online program. The isolation can be real, and your program needs to be dedicated to helping you find that connection that you are going to need in order to persevere through these studies. Second, evaluation matters, and if you have a program where a professor is hardly looking at your work, that’s probably a red flag. Finally, and you really will not know this one until you enter, but you need the right kind of people. All the way from students to faculty, you need people who are committed to making this program work. If people do not buy in, it will not be a great experience.