Constitutionally Speaking

Today, I was sitting in the student union, reading and meticulously transcribing the Constitution onto note cards (non-kinesthetic learners, I do not expect you to understand), compliments of Dr. Birzer's infamous constitution quiz, which really wasn't that hard*, if you're curious. Anyway, there I sat, calmly focusing my energy on remembering to care about something I actually care very little about, and a group of neighboring students began casually chatting with each other. I tried to ignore them, really I did, but soon their increasing volume and my fascination with the Constitution combined to draw my interest. I wish I could relay their conversation with more detail, but it was all about guns and really, I know next to nothing about guns ("ak-47...bad?"). 30 minutes later, the gun talk started to grate on my nerves until one of the kids (and I honestly don't know what his name is, I'm not trying to be secretive) made reference to someone who I assume, though who knows why, was a friend of his. Gun Kid 2 chuckled when GK1 mentioned his friend and queried, "does he have any living relatives?" "Sure, plenty of them," responded GK1. "Damn," said GK2 (his word not mine. I'm not going to hell yet, Adam). "He is pretty well off," sighed GK1 sympathetically. "Oh, it's not his money I whant**." I sighed a little too, relieved that I would not have to walk over and punch GK2 in the face. He was pretty big. "It's his guns."

Sigh officially taken back.
I felt an interesting combination of nausea and tidal-wave-esque anger swirl through my stomache.

Even now, hours later, I can barely even articulate how wicked and disgusting and sickening this is. Oh but wait; you don't buy my gunslinging conservative stereotype? I don't blame you. When they finally moved past guns, GK2 very originally pointed out that the stimulus package was going to...do some things Adam would not approve of me saying...to America. Oh, oh! They even called Obama names. If the sickness already brewing in my stomache hadn't knocked me over, the originality definitely would have.

Then they went back to guns.

This is the part where I assure you all that I am not actually a crazy liberal, but remain a crazy libertarian. The truth is that I support gun rights and think the stimulus package is dumb. But honestly? I am sick of gun slinging rednecks (ooh, look, I can name call too!!) sitting around pretending that there is nothing more to life than firing at illegal immigrants and calling black people names. Seriously. Take a peek into the real world and maybe spend that money you were using for guns on something more...i dunno...Christian?

No. I'm not bitter at all.

The moral of the story is that Nathan woke up in time to go to lunch before I stalked over and gave those (very large, scary, capable-of-pain-causing)...people...a piece of my mind. In the end, I stomped downstairs, half wondering if I was missing their next discussion topic. Maybe griping about outsourcing, or plotting a lynching***? Evidently I am less openminded than I previously thought.

*Dr. Birzer, if by some odd chance you see this, please do not see this as encouragement for increasing the intensity of future tests, but rather as a grateful note from a student who was very glad not to fail you in such an important matter.
**this is supposed to illustrate the southern drawl. You think I am lying and making up an accent for effect? I wish.
***No, Samantha does not know when to just keep her mouth shut and not say exactly what she is thinking. Deal with it.

Metaphors We Live By

Argument is war. Strategies are employed to win arguments. Your opponent defends his position by attacking yours.

Hope is light. A glimmer at the end of a tunnel. A ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds.

Time is money. It can be wasted, carelessly invested or saved.

I like metaphors because they say much more than almost any other combination of words. In fact, those statements right there prove the point, but I’ll get to that later.

“It’s just a figure of speech,” you might say – and that’s where you’d be wrong. Metaphors are much more than figures of speech. They are powerful indicators of the way we think and act towards others. In their book, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write that “Metaphor[s are] pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. They govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.”

Enter the grammar Nazi: A metaphor is not a simile. A simile is when I compare one thing to another: “Jack eats like a pig” or “Jill looks like a model.” To say that something is like something else, is to simultaneously admit that it is not in fact that thing.

A metaphor is similar to a simile, grammar Nazi leaves in favor of the redundancy police, in that it links two unrelated topics. But what if I said “Jack is a pig.” I have made a statement about Jack’s character, not just his eating habits. If, to me, Jack isn’t just like a pig; he is a pig, how do you think I will treat Jack? You’re right; like a pig. Better yet, let’s look at the second example I gave: “Jill looks like a model” has a meaning completely different from “Jill is a model.”

So what? How does this affect me? Why does it matter? That is what I call a question that answers itself. The key is in the question “why?” Why do you automatically link the concepts of argument and war, hope and light or time and money together? The answer is so obvious, it is often ignored. You link time and money together because you believe that time can and ought to be treated like money, just like Jill can and ought to be treated like a model.

Let’s take an easier example, something you probably experience in your day to day life. Say there is an old crooked tree at the intersection where you turn to go from your house to the grocery story. Naturally, you refer to that corner as the “crooked tree” corner. If you told your oldest son, “turn right at the crooked tree corner,” he would know exactly what you’re talking about. Assume this goes on for 5-10 years. Sadly, the old crooked tree is struck by lighting and is cut down. Even when the tree is gone, you will naturally refer to the corner as “crooked tree” corner, whether the tree itself exists or not.

Metaphors are no different. They are the natural product of habit—you come to understand time to be like money so in your mind time becomes money, not like money, but it completely takes on the role of money in your mind.

It doesn’t seem like a problem until you turn on the radio or the TV or listen to yourself talk. Then you start to get scared. Really, really fast.

Exhibit A: War metaphor
Last December, CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network, published a story entitled Christmas Under Siege “From Georgia to Oklahoma, the biblical foundation of Christmas is under attack.” This opening statement begs the question, “under attack by whom?” the answer is obvious: the devil, or better yet, the ACLU. The article goes on to quote David Cortman, Senior Legal Counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, “The attacks on Christmas are simply part of a larger war being waged on anything and everything Christian. The American people, common sense and the Constitution are clearly winning the battles against Christmas waged by the Left.”

Whether or not you agree with keeping Christ in Christmas, and I do, it is important to understand that this was a legitimate legal debate about the use of public property. If Nietzsche somehow came back from the dead and spent your tax dollars on placing elaborate “GOD IS DEAD” signs all over your public library, you’d be upset too.
Here is the mistake we often make when discussing the battle in churches:
We make the same error that CBS and other fanatical “warriors” often make: we mistake unbelievers for our enemies. We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that we “wrestled not with spiritual forces, but with Democrats, Muslims and Frenchmen.” When we speak of the “fight” for Christian morals in our nation, the “war” for family values and the “battle” for Christ, we are fighting, in some sense, successfully, the wrong enemy.
Dan Nejfelt of Faith In Public Life, a religious blog, writes that “The purpose of war metaphors is to cultivate a sense of fear, outrage and victimhood, and if fear, outrage and victimhood have to be cultivated with absurdly exaggerative rhetoric, those sensibilities are unwarranted. Before we pride ourselves on the fact that we have discovered a new kind of scriptural misinterpretation, we should take a quick look back into history.
The persecution of “heretics” began centuries before the birth of Christ in 385 BC. It wasn’t until 1184 AD, though, that the church began its first official inquisition, most commonly called the Medieval Inquisition. More famous is the Spanish Inquisition, which lasted from 1478 to 1838, nearly 400 years. During this period, Jewish and Muslim converts were executed if they were suspected of adhering to their former beliefs estimates of those killed in the name of religion range from 8.4 million to a startling 112.5 million.

But during the holocaust, war in the name of religion struck a little closer to home. It’s is a sickening reminder that one of Hitler’s primary goals was the elimination of homosexuals in Germany. When we speak carelessly, even in jest, of “shipping all of the gays to France and bombing them” we should immediately realize that we are aligning ourselves with one of the wickedest men that walked the earth.

We are in a battle, a war against spiritual forces, but our war metaphor, specifically that which appears in the church, must be directed at sin and not sinners. We must recall that like homosexuals and yes, even liberals, we frequently make mistakes. If we hate sin, we must learn to hate it in ourselves and in the church before we hate it in others. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:12, “I’m not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don’t we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house.” It is imposters within the church, and not sinners outside of it, that we are called to judge.

Exhibition B: Economic Metaphor

I invest in my friendships, I value my family. Your relationships enrich your character, and those who have no friends lead impoverished lives. Did you catch it? We commonly think of our relationships, our love, in economic terms. Donald Miller, in this collection of essays, Blue Like Jazz writes that, “The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us, and, perhaps, we feel they are priceless. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did. I used love like money, but love doesn’t work like money. It is not a commodity. When we barter with it, we all lose.”

The other day I was at this graduation for my older brother, and the speaker was a politician with a very strong Cajun accent said something that made me smile, because a friend of mine said it to me months ago and it made me think. “Relationships are like ATM’s,” he said, “you have to make deposits in order to make a withdrawal.”

Put that in your pipe and chew it.

Things get a bit more complicated here:

A study completed by the Schwartz Center shows that metaphors are fundamental to individual and collective expression, [they] are also capable of creating or perpetuating stereotypes, and stigma. If we think of people purely as an economic boon, when they no longer benefit us, we will have no reason to love them unconditionally. How then shall we live? Instead of thinking of love as money, Miller suggests that we use “magnet” metaphor or “free gift” metaphor. What if you could make deposits with no hope of a withdrawal? What if you did make deposits with no hope of withdrawal.

Words are powerful weapons.

"The Trading of an Evil for a Lesser One"

First post–instead of awkward introductions, here is an article I wrote a month or so ago, following the elections. If it looks familiar, it’s because you probably read it in the Collegian.

I don’t remember who was president when I was 5.

I do remember moving from my hometown of Orlando to a strange town. I remember celebrating my birthday with a bunch of kids from school I barely knew, who were more interested in my pool than my party.

I do remember who was president when my mom first got sick, but I don’t remember if that made taking over household chores any easier, or if George Bush did anything to help my family.

With all of the excitement and media hype over the election, it is startling to reflect over your past, the experiences that the mean the most to you, and remember how few of them were affected by whichever political figurehead happened to be in office at the time.

In the end, the president of America does not change the identity of American people. Politics do not shape the content of your character; burnt Thanksgiving turkeys, raking leaves in the fall, cleaning the pool in the summer, white Christmases, candlelight services, late night conversations and moments spent with loved ones (or without them) are the things that mold your experiential understanding of the world.

President Barack Obama will not change your character. John McCain would not have changed your character. Politics will not change who you are, and ultimately, that is the most important element of the American experience.

In short: chill out.

If politics are understood as a hollow kind of reflection of America’s will, there is a more profound victory in Obama’s win; his race. But race doesn’t matter, right? If you’re the first African-American president in a nation with a long history of racism and bigotry, it does. If Obama played the race card in his favor preceding the election, his demands that racism be dealt with were certainly justified in light of the responses to his presidency. If Americans refuse to look more closely at the advantages of Obama’s policies, they can at least rejoice with the African Americans in their victory over a heritage of suppression and slavery. If nothing else, the Berlin wall of racism has been torn down. We are perhaps the luckiest generation in that we are now witnessing a groundbreaking moment in history. Racism remains a very serious problem in America today. When citizens like James Jackson of New York go to work, only to find a noose hanging as a blatant racist symbol, or workers like Charles Hickman, are nearly strangled as a sign of hatred, America is clearly sick. But Tuesday’s victory was a triumph over this history of bigotry. Maybe, just maybe, America is recovering from an illness with which she has struggled for centuries.

Politics do not change our lives, but perhaps this time around they are an accurate representation of our beliefs which make a powerful statement to world.

And hey, if Obama’s “socialism” really bothers you—move to Canada. But don’t come rushing back in 8 years, hoping things will be better. In the words of Derek Webb:

“you can render unto Caesar everything that’s his
you can trust in his power to come to your defense
it’s the way of the world, the way of the gun
it’s the trading of an evil for a lesser one
so don’t hold your breath or your vote until
you think you’ve finally found a savior up on Capitol Hill.”