Yes. Only I don’t have any hard copy. I checked it out on Hoopla through my local library here.
-Merv
[…which means … no copy and paste for me. Any excerpts I post here just have to be typed out the good old fashioned way.]
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Thanks! For all the persistent typing, a testament to the value you place on the quotes, and for the quotes. As well as the book info. I found it in Bookshare and will get it on my main ereader soon.
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Another gem from MacDonald … Reading from Lewis’ favorite passages of Macdonald is like getting “MacDonald concentrate.”
The uncertainty lies always in the intellectual region, never in the practical. What Paul cares about is plain enough to the true heart, however far from plain to the man whose desire to understand goes ahead of his obedience.
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MacDonald, regarding nature (as quoted by Lewis):
In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they… It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them. To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it - just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology, all that is said about His person, or babbled about His work. The body of man does not exist for the sake of its hidden secrets; its hidden secrets exist for the sake of its outside - for the face and form in which dwells revelation: its outside is the deepest of it. So Nature as well exists primarily for her face, her look, her appeals to the heart and imagination, her simple service to human need, and not for the secrets to be discovered in her and turned to man’s further use.
This (among many others of MacDonalds) was a hard one for me. I would like to think that MacDonald would agree with me that science too exists and can exist within the folds of redemption, and that the inquisitive mind can simultaneously be a worshipful one - expanding on (rather than attempting to shrink) the amount of true “face” that nature presents for us to be in awe about.
This book is turning into an excellent morning devotional for me. Each excerpt deserving of a full day’s meditations.
-Merv
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I agree. It is no diminishment of the implicit to extol the details uncovered explicitly. Just as a lover will rhapsodize about his partners eyes or hands or posture, why shouldn’t we also delight in each unfoldment of nature? The implicit is inexhaustible while what we can discern is not so why not celebrate each advance? The only thing that spoils the party is the attitude of “nothing but”, the conceit of scientism that we now know everything and can say where the limits of the implicit lie. Science cannot make itself the arbiter of reality and it is antithetical to the spirit of its pursuit to do so.
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MacDonald might not at first agree, but maybe in conversation with the likes of us and @MarkD and @jpm and others, he might come to develop a different understanding of scientific exploration (and maybe even theology) and what it can mean to a worshipful heart.
While I don’t find nature an apologetic, my most rudimentary studies of it have always been accompanied with worship and awe for the One who somehow grounds/creates/sustains/howeveryoupleases it. Understanding how the rocks, waterfalls, and forests were formed only helps magnify my awe for God, when I am able to be among these things that have been much longer than I and will outlast me by great lengths of time.
The stone I am looking at that is on my back porch and came from Lake Superior reminds me not only of the stone itself, but the place I got it (beach at Silver Dollar City, MI), that was loaded with similar chunks of gray shale and red sandstone that the lake keeps heaving and heaving up on the sand. Knowing how it got there only increases my amazement.
MacDonald only needed to get to know some of us romantically naturalistic types.
A lot of silent (and not so silent) worship goes on at these places:
Lake Superior (2019) near Marquette, MI
Loafing at Yellow Dog Falls (I think) (2019) near Marquette, MI
Black Rocks (2019) Marquette, MI
Dead River Falls (2016) near Marquette, MI
Hard with girls with physical challenges, but this was so worth the effort.
Straits of Mackinac (2013)
There’s a story to go with this one.
It’s hard to stop. You get the idea.
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Just received this in a newsletter:
It is equally excessive to shut reason out and to let nothing else in.
—Blaise Pascal
I’d say the shutting reason out is the excess of fundamentalism while shutting everything else out is scientism or hyper rationality.
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That certainly echoes Psalm 19… and the human need to know God:
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
Psalm 19:1-2
Faith is reasonable. Let it in.
I recently noticed the book Cultish by Amanda Montell (2021) at the local indy bookstore and downloaed it from Bookshare. While puttering around the yard this evening, I heard this part and found it valuable and important. The whole book, and particularly this part, is about the use of language in cults.
Year after year, we ask: What makes people join cults like Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate? What makes them stay? What makes them behave in wild, baffling, sometimes gruesome ways? Here’s where the answer starts: Using systematic techniques of conversion, conditioning, and coercio n, with language as their ultimate power tool, Jones and Applewhite were able to inflict unforgettable violence on their followers without personally laying a finger on them.
Across the influence continuum, cultish language works to do three things: First, it makes people feel special and understood. This is where the love-bombing comes in: the showers of seemingly personalized attention and analysis, the inspirational buzzwords, the calls for vulnerability, the “YOU, just by existing, have been tagged to join the elite Away Team destined for the Kingdom of God…
Then, a different set of language tactics gets people to feel dependent on the leader, such that life outside the group doesn’t feel possible anymore. This is a more gradual operation, and it’s called conditioning—the process of subconsciously learning a behavior in response to a stimulus. And last, language convinces people to act in ways that are completely in conflict with their former reality, ethics, and sense of self. An ends-justify-the-means ethos is embedded, and in the worst cases, it results in devastation. This is called coercion.This phenomenon of listeners mistaking say-it-like-it-is honesty (which of course isn’t actual honesty, just a lack of filter) for the refreshing voice of antiestablishment dissent might feel familiar to anyone who’s lived through the reign of a problematic populis t: Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Slovakia’s Vladimír Mečiar, Donald Trump. It would be irresponsible, I think, not to mention the oratorical similarities between Trump and Jim Jone s, who shared the same love of coining zingy, incendiary nickname s for their opponents. (“Fake News” and “Crooked Hillary” were Trump’s analogs to Jones’s “Hidden Rulers” and “Sky God.”) Even when their statements didn’t contain any rational substance, the catchy phrases and zealous delivery were enough to win over an audience. It’s riveting to watch someone on a podium speak from a place so animalistic that most of us don’t let ourselves behave that way even with our closest friends. As Atlantic staff writer George Packer wrote in 2019, the strength of Trump’s populist languag e lies in its openness: “It requires no expert knowledge. . . . It’s the way people talk when the inhibitors are off.”
– Cultish by Amanda Montell, Part 3: Even YOU Can Learn to Speak in Tongues. Section III, 25%-27% Bookshare edition in Calibre.
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More from Cultish, this time regarding Thought-Terminating Clichés:
Coined in 1961 by the psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, this term [the thought-terminating cliché] refers to catchphrases aimed at halting an argument from moving forward by discouraging critical thought. Ever since I learned of the concept, I now hear it everywhere—in political debates, in the hashtag wisdom that clogs my Instagram feed. Cultish leaders often call on thought-terminating clichés, also known as semantic stop signs, to hastily dismiss dissent or rationalize flawed reasoning. In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Lifton writes that with these stock sayings, “the most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly selective, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. They become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.” So while loaded language is a cue to intensify emotions, semantic stop signs are a cue to discontinue thought. To put it most simply, when used in conjunction, a follower’s body screams “Do whatever the leader says,” while their brain whispers “Don’t think about what might happen next”—and that’s a deadly coercive combination.
…
Contentious debates aside, thought-terminating clichés also pervade our everyday conversations: Expressions like “It is what it is,” “Boys will be boys,” “Everything happens for a reason,” “It’s all God’s plan,” and certainly “Don’t think about it too hard” are all common examples…
These pithy mottos are effective because they alleviate cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable discord one experiences when they hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. …“It’s work to think, especially about things you don’t want to think about,” confessed Diane Benscoter, an ex-member of the Unification Church (aka the Moonies, an infamous ’70s-era religious movement). “It’s a relief not to have to.” Thought-terminating clichés provide that temporary psychological sedative.
…
Having thought-terminating clichés like these meant that whenever difficult queries arose—like, how can Jonestown be our only good option if we’re all starving? Or, is there a way to achieve enlightenment without killing ourselves?—you had a simple, catchily packaged answer telling you not to worry about it. Digging for more information is poison to a power abuser; thought-terminating clichés squash independent thinking. This simultaneously puts the follower in their place and lets them off the hook.
( – Cultish by Amanda Montell, Part 3: Even YOU Can Learn to Speak in Tongues. Section III, 27%-28% Bookshare edition in Calibre.) [Bolding, bracketed text, and ellipsis all by Kendel]
I appreciated this section, because it discusses things most/all of us have experienced outside cults as well. We have probably all been aware of Thought-Terminating Clichés or Semantic Stop Signs, even if we haven’t had names for them. Conversationally, they function like someone putting their hand up in a “Stop” signal, and stating “None shall pass.”
I have always resented other peoples’ use of them (but certainly not my own). Sometimes, I’m willing to pay the fine for blowing the stop sign. “Is that really true?” “How do we know this?” “Is that what you really believe?” But often, I’m not interested in dealing with what will probably come after further questioning. It often makes sense to drop the matter. But when it makes sense to dig further, I think it is worth probing.
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Certainly we encounter these a lot in political rhetoric. They are a kind of speech act which seeks to coerce agreement by curtailing in depth thinking in favor of single issue slogans. By my understanding of what Christianity is about, they are very unChristian.
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If you hung out with the women in all sides of my family (many aggressive talkers) you’d encounter plenty of these, too. It’s a strategy I don’t think we always even recognize we’re using. Look around discussion groups and other SM you’re involved in, and you’ll see it, too.
In Christian circles such things can be fairly mundane ways of saying, “I’m done talking about this,” as in any other group of people. But sometimes bizarre. “Do not touch the Lord’s annointed!” was the strangest one I’ve encountered, leveled by a fellow member, when I was critical of Benny Hinn as a charlatan, which he is. Well, what else can you say after that, when only armed for church with a Bible, rather than weapons for hand-to-hand combat (which is generally discouraged at church).
When Thought-Terminating Clichés comes from the pulpit or from other people in positions of power, that’s where we need to start asking ourselves what we are involved in after all.
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The Bible says it I believe it and that settles it. Full stop. Sounds like a great book to help understand our current culture, in church and without. It is frustrating to hear these clichés though I am certainly guilty of using them at times.
It is interesting to see how these phrases that are common in everyday life have been analyzed and found to have such purposes, when I have been oblivious to what they represent even though uncomfortable with their usage.
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It’s easy to see the “red flag nature” of these thought-terminating clichés when used by people or causes that are discredited (in your eyes), but I also have to ask then: is there ever a legitimate or healthy use for these (thinking of some of the examples you’ve shared: ‘boys will be boys’ … ‘it is what it is’…)
I’ve said stuff like that before myself - and maybe shouldn’t have, so I don’t want to defend something that turns out to be indefensible. But … is it always? Or is there ever a legitimate place for helping somebody be “more at peace” with the way something has turned out?
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I didn’t know we were even related. My grandmother and aunts have super human powers of speech. There is no such thing as dead air around any of their kitchen tables. In my family you are either as quick as a hummingbird to grab the floor or you are silent. I won’t lie I am not one of the silent ones.
My mother is the second eldest of seven siblings of which six were female. (I’m the second eldest of seven of which six are male). She is the only one in her family with any gift for listening. They all sought her out in hopes of feeling heard. I was lucky to have her on tap growing up.
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I think so. The long version of “it is what it is” is probably “…and we don’t seem likely to agree about what that is”. I think it can be a way of signaling a truce in a conversation where reconciliation feels out of reach.
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Well, hello, Cousin!
We might just have to compare family trees!
Honestly, your hilarious description of family talking, could be mine. Except my menfolk were all over in the living room communing over a game on tv or in quiet meditation of the relief of being away from the growing tangle of words.
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I don’t think it’s always wrong. As Mark mentioned, sometimes it’s a truce. Farther up, I mentioned sometimes it’s a way of saying “I’m done talking about this.”
I think what is most important from the quotes from Cultish is that there are plenty of times when Thought-Terminating Clichés are used to end the thinking about a problem and just live with the problem (or manipulation). This is a good opportunity to “know ourselves” better and recognize better what’s going on in our own minds, as well as what is being demanded of us and how we react to that demand.
I’m reading this book with a clear understanding that religious involvement (as well as a great many other things) can look like (can actually be) involvement in a cult. I’ve had a few friends and relatives in such. And I am sure that from some perspectives my own religious involvement looks the same.
I think the author’s probing of language as the foundational tool of cult leaders is of great value. But using language, even sometimes using language tools that cult leaders use, doesn’t imply a cult or even manipulation.
I think it does imply the need for us to exercise wisdom in what we do and say.
Exactly. Much more worrisome.
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I accuse my wife and her two sisters as being “Competitive Talkers” in that they seem to stop only to reload and fire again. I think they grew upin an environment where you had to do that to be heard. As I grew up pretty much as an only child (one brother 10 year older) in a house with somewhat stoic farm parents, there was not a lot of chit chat. They also have the annoying tendency to end each sentence with “and…uh…” to try to act as a placeholder while they move to the next without giving the floor. Bless their hearts.
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