Scientist Karen Warkentin has been studying the eggs of tropical red-eyed tree frogs and has discovered that the embryos have survival skills prior to hatching.

Andrew Sullivan, blogger for the Atlantic, is convinced that “the question of torture—and the United States’ embrace of inhumanity as a core American value under the presidency of George W. Bush—remains, in my view, the pre-eminent moral question in American politics. The descent of the United States—and of Americans in general—to lower standards of morality and justice than those demanded by Iranians of their regime is a sign of the polity's moral degeneracy.”

What he writes next is worth careful reflection not only by all those who consider themselves to be conservatives, but especially those of that number who claim to be Christians.

Indeed, much of the American people, especially evangelical Christians, expect less in terms of human rights from their own government than Iranians do of theirs’. In fact, American evangelicals are much more pro-torture in this respect than many Iranian Muslims.

This is what Bush and Cheney truly achieved in their tragic response to 9/11: two terribly failed, brutally expensive wars, the revival of sectarian warfare and genocide in the Middle East, the end of America's global moral authority, the empowerment of Iran's and North Korea's dictatorships, and the nightmares of Gitmo and Bagram still haunting the new administration.

But what they did to the culture—how they systematically dismantled core American values like the prohibition on torture and respect for the rule of law—is the worst and most enduring of the legacies.

One political party in this country is now explicitly pro-torture, and wants to restore a torture regime if it regains power. Decent conservatives for the most part simply looked the other way. Unless these cultural forces in defense of violence and torture are defeated - not appeased or excused, but defeated—America will never return the way it once was. Electing a new president was the start and not the end of this. He is flawed, as every president is, but in my view, the scale of the mess he inherited demands some slack. Any new criminal investigation which scapegoats those at the bottom while protecting the guilty men and women who made it happen is a travesty of justice. If it is the end and not the beginning of accountability, it will be worse than nothing.

Evangelical faith is centered on the evangel, the gospel as expressed in Scripture and revealed in Christ and his finished work. Essential to that gospel is the biblical insistence that every person is created in God’s image and must therefore be treated as such. But what if they have committed heinous crimes? This does not erase God’s image. Justice must be served, but jettisoning basic morality in the pursuit of security is both unwise and unjust. It is noting less than a practical denial of the gospel of Christ.

You can read Andrew Sullivan’s post here.

I always find that statistics are hard to swallow and impossible to digest. The only one I can ever remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable. [Mrs. Robert Taft]

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. [Aaron Levenstein]

So, be discerning with these rather interesting numbers, which come from "Harper's Index," a column I always turn to first when the magazine arrives in the mail.

✔ Average time spent watching TV by Americans between the ages of 43 and 61: 19 hours/week.

✔ Average time spent watching TV by Americans between the ages of 26 and 42: 15 hours/week.

✔ Average time spent watching TV by Americans between the ages of 14 and 25: 11 hours/week.

✔ Number of people who showed up at a farm near Denver which had advertised its fields would be open for one day for free picking: 40,000.

[Source: “Harper’s Index” in Harper’s Magazine (March 2009) p. 13.]

✔Total amount that Canadian banks have required to be bailed out during the 2008-2009 financial crisis: $0.

✔ Percentage of American mortgages in foreclosure or in excess of 90 days delinquent: 7.2%

✔ Percentage of Canadian mortgages in foreclosure or in excess of 90 days delinquent: 0.4%

✔ Percentage change between winter 2008 and winter 2009 in the amount of delinquent U.S. credit-card debt: +47.

✔ Percentage of existing blogs that have not been updated for four months: 94%.

✔ Amount of African farmland purchased by Chinese investors since 2006: 10,851 square miles.

[Source: “Harper’s Index” in Harper’s Magazine (August 2009) p. 11.]

✔ Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large U.S. health-insurance companies: +87%

✔ Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428%

✔ Chance that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 70%

✔ Percentage of total U.S. home values that Americans owned as equity in 1945: 84%

✔ Percentage of total U.S. home values that Americans own as equity in 2009: 41%

[Source: “Harper’s Index” in Harper’s Magazine (September 2009) p. 13.]

In Image, a superb journal for those interested in faith and the arts, poet Luci Shaw interviews theologian Eugene Peterson. A brief excerpt:

Luci Shaw: You have often warned us against our culture’s information overload—the overstimulation that comes with exposure to multiple media. As a public person, how have you avoided it yourself?

Eugene Peterson: It’s a conscious decision. I hesitate to say this, because everybody is different, but in my life I need a lot of silence. We don’t have a television. I don’t use the Internet. If I were doing a different kind of work, a different kind of life, I would use all those things. My children do, and if I need to know something I call them up, which I’m not embarrassed to do. It’s not a matter of a puritanical keeping myself free of the world. It’s just what I need.

Everybody needs to be cautious about their use of technology. One of the most important writers today is Albert Borgmann, who analyzes technology and how devastating it can be to human relations. He’s a Christian. He’s not against technology; he uses email.

I think Christians need to be very cautious about the culture. This is not a God-fearing, life-reverencing culture. We live in a pluralistic, spiritual, religious world where anything goes. We’ve got a revelation to protect; we’ve got a way of life to pursue. We need to be as clear and as accurate—and relaxed—as we can. I don’t think we need to be nervous and uptight and cautious in the way we live, but we need to be discerning, and then relax and have fun.

LS: This may be an audacious question, but what spiritual disciplines do you observe?

EP: I read scripture slowly. I pray. I worship. I once tried to coin a new word, scriptureprayer. This is a conversation. There is something to the Zen Buddhist discipline of emptying the mind, but that’s only part of it. We’ve received the word, and we’ve got to listen. There’s someone to listen to.

A caveat about the disciplines: I’m uneasy about the word discipline. It’s a useful word, which Richard Foster has brought back into the Protestant vocabulary. But in practice it often encourages people to take charge of their own spirituality. When you practice a discipline, you’re doing something. There’s not much relaxation. There’s not much letting go. Some people say to me, “You’re such a disciplined person.” I ran marathons for twenty years, but it wasn’t a discipline. I loved it. I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything. I have the same feeling about reading scripture, prayer, worship.

I was talking just this last week to a retired businessman. He led Bible studies for most of his life, but at some point he realized that he wasn’t getting it inside of him. He went to his pastor for advice, but his pastor couldn’t really help. So on his own, without any direction, he developed a system of lectio divina, almost exactly the way the books tell you how. He compiled huge notebooks of meditation and reflection on scripture. He told me he’d been doing this for ten years, that he’d wake up at five-thirty in the morning and he couldn’t wait to start. It wasn’t a discipline. It simply got inside of him.

Maybe discipline has become a cliché. Maybe there are new ways to talk about it. Maybe we’re right on the edge of that.

Source: a conversation between Luci Shaw and Eugene Peterson in Image: a journal of art, faith, & mystery (issue #62) pp. 72-73.

Some things are symbols, symptoms of a deeper problem. If you are looking for a symbol of what is wrong with popular music today, music industry veteran Bob Lefsetz suggests we look no further than the intersection of music and fashion. Of course there has always been some blending of the two—after all, Woodstock celebrated both, and the Beatles changed the way fans dressed. Still, Lefsetz suggests it’s been ratcheted up so that both industries have been made more shallow, with musicians caring more about money than the integrity of their music.

We’ve got “Fashion Rocks,” what a load of crap that is, and all the supposed “rock stars” getting excited about Fashion Week, trying to sit in the very first row. And you wonder why mainstream music is in trouble. Yes, we’re experiencing an under the radar renaissance, bands who are about music, but the mainstream is a vast wasteland.

And if you doubt that mainstream music is in trouble, Lefsetz says, turn on the radio.

In the sixties and seventies, music ruled the world, if you were a kid and wanted to know what was going on, you put on a record. And if you couldn’t afford the record, you turned on the radio, which rather than being beholden to the corporation, seemed to be tailor-made for you, with news that you were interested in, songs that piqued your curiosity and deejays that were your best friend.

Today, radio is filled with twenty plus minutes of commercials and songs that are tested to ensure that what you heard before is what you continue to get, we live in a lowest-common denominator world where you're subjected to the crap the uninformed, casual users desire, and for this reason you tune out.

Popular music is the medium in which the postmodern generation expresses the fears, hope, and values most deeply embedded in their hearts. I find watching young adults navigate the changing landscape of popular music to be fascinating, a window into how they respond to the things that matter most.

Source: Bob Lefsetz in LefsetzLetter (August 13, 2009), a free email publication in which he reflects on music, the music industry, and popular culture. Archives are available here. Subscriptions are available here.

This is a quiet film, a story that probes deeply into what it means to be broken human being in a broken world. Charley (played by Sam Elliott), husband and father, is clinically depressed. He and his family have moved off the map to a small place in rural New Mexico. There they live, by their wits and with what they can grow and scavenge, caring for one another with a love that is both admirable and redemptive. Charley’s wife, Arlene (played brilliantly by Joan Allen) takes quiet charge, while their daughter, Bo, (played by Amy Brenneman and Valentina de Angelis at different ages) grows up knowing that love is more important than riches. A long-time friend of Charley’s (J. K. Simmons) comes by regularly, and their life is uneventful until an IRS agent arrives to investigate why they haven’t been filing income tax forms.

This is a quirky, lovely story, a profound exploration of what it means to be in true community, even at cost. The stark landscape of New Mexico in the background quietly adds texture, beauty, and form to the plot. This is story of a place where simplicity is celebrated, where hospitality is practiced, and where people are cherished over things. And where there is a steep cost to love.

It is rather easy to imagine carving out such a life by moving into a lovely adobe house at the end of a dirt road far out, off the grid in some isolated place. More important is to reproduce such values and virtues where we live, in the busyness of a world that yearns for love but has lost track of where it can be found.

Please watch and discuss Off the Map. And then go off the map for God's glory.

In a globalized, pluralistic world there is no doubt that product labels can be important. We should know where things were made, what ingredients are in products we will consume, and to what specifications the gadget conforms. Research reveals, however, that there is a hidden trap.

Do you know what a megapixel is, or what horsepower measures? Consumers are irresistibly drawn to product specification—from the “distortion rate” of a stereo to the calories in a snack—even when the numbers mean nothing to them. In fact, given a chance to directly experience competing products, buyers are still more likely to jus pick the item with the impressive-sounding features on the package, even if it is more expensive.

Source: “Specification Seeking: How Product Specifications Influence Consumer Preference” in the Journal of Consumer Research noted in The Atlantic (March 2009) p. 17 which you read here.

The Atlantic Monthly publishes a column, “Quick Study,” that briefly summarizes the findings of selected research articles. A recent entry caught my attention because it suggests a direct link between the collapse of the financial system and the massive bonuses given to bankers and executives on Wall Street. More important, the finding suggests that the financial crisis is not a problem that can be solved by merely tinkering with the technical aspects of the financial system. The human element—including issues of character, virtue, human nature, and definitions of meaning, vocation, the common good, and success—is as significant as programs and initiatives generated by the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, Congress or the White House. Human creativity, it seems, is hurt when demands for efficiency and productivity diminish our willingness to embrace our natural limits as finite creatures.

The bonuses bankers have handed themselves in recent years aren’t just excessive—they may have hastened Wall Street’s collapse. Although cash incentives tend to make people work harder, expending too much effort can actually hinder tasks that requires creativity, problem solving, and concentration. Anticipating large bonuses can lead to excessive self-consciousness and a focus so narrow that it warps perspective by blocking important outside information—like, say, common sense.

Source: “Large Stakes and Big Mistakes” in the Review of Economic Studies noted in The Atlantic (May 2009) p. 15 which you read here.

Sometimes I wonder about my faith. Not in the sense of having doubts about whether Christianity is true—I settled that years ago after doubting so deeply that for a time I wondered if I would remain a Christian. Don’t get me wrong. Questions still arise that I have no answer for, but I’ve learned that my not having an answer doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, so such moments aren’t upsetting. I just say I don’t know, and begin to think it through.

My wondering about my faith comes, instead, on the relational side of things. Believing in Jesus is not simply an intellectual affair. The Christian faith does not consist of merely agreeing that a set of propositions about Jesus and life and death are true. Instead, the Scriptures reveal Christ as a living person, a resurrected Lord, a God-man fully present in his creation bringing all things to their appointed end. We believe a set of propositions (like the ones that make up the Apostles’ Creed) because we are convinced of Jesus. And being convinced of Jesus means being convinced about a person, about someone present in our life. It’s a relationship.

“The Divine Lover,” John Stott writes in Authentic Christianity (p. 301) “still sorrows when his love is unrequited, and pines for our continuing, deepening, maturing adoration. Love, then, is the first mark of a true and living church. Indeed, it is not a living church at all unless it is a loving church. The Christian life is essentially a love-relationship to Jesus Christ. ‘Jesus captured me,’ wrote Wilson Carlile, founder and ‘chief’ of the Church Army. ‘For me to know Jesus is a love affair.’”

This is the part I sometimes wonder about. How do I nourish this, be certain of it, enjoy it, and deepen it? What does it feel like, and when feeling are muddled what does that mean? Do I love him, really, or am I in love with The Story that is so profoundly satisfying, speaking to every part of life and reality? Or are these the same thing?

I suppose the cynical response would be to say, well, that’s a Presbyterian for you. But I’ve looked into the more mystical and more emotional and more demonstrable parts of the church, and though I’ve learned from them I find them wanting. And being Reformed is not the problem, as anyone who reads Stott, or The Valley of Vision will see.

So, my wondering continues.