The Selfishness of God

One of the objections people sometimes have to becoming Christians is the arrogance and selfishness of God. He seems to think “it’s all about Him.” Throughout the Bible, He is always talking about His glory, increasing and magnifying it, not sharing it with others and demanding that others surrender theirs to Him. Even Jesus gets in the act at the beginning of His prayer in John 17, shortly before His crucifixion:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”

It’s as if He’s telling God the Father that it is time for Him to be rewarded for all the humiliation He’s lived with for 33 years. “Come on, Father, I put aside all the perks I’ve had for eternity and made myself comparatively lower than an ant, living with these hard headed rebellious folks. I’m ready to show them who’s Boss, sling some fire and brimstone. That’ll get their attention, the miserable louts.”

Malaise

A cartoon from some magazine sometime back showed a classroom. On the chalkboard were two words, “ignorance” and “apathy.” Two stoners are in the back row and one looks up at the board with great effort, and with further strain reads the words slowly aloud, and asks his buddy, “what do those words mean?” His friend doesn’t even bother to look up when mumbling, “I dunno and don’t care.”

Malaise is just a cool sounding word, but if you have it, it’s hard to be excited about it.

Dad and I were talking tonight about how agitated so many Christians are about the state of our nation and all up in arms in Tea Party rallies and the like, yet, there are churches protesting “The Response” time of worship and prayer, and the stadium at best looks like it will be 20% full.

The “People’s Front of Judea” or the “Judean People’s Front”?*

The UT West Mall is known as the “Free Speech Area,” and is where student groups set up their tables to hawk their group or cause. There is a student Socialist group, and they can often be found trying to sell their “Socialist Weekly” newspaper to passersby.

Several years ago, I was one of those passersby, and the attractive young coed was holding the rag, but also pressing little slips of yellow paper into people’s hands, calling out, “Come out Saturday and help us protest the Nazis!!”

Knowing that these days, anyone you dislike risks labeling as a Nazi, regardless of what their true bent might be, I decided to bite. “Ok,” I ask, “Who are the Nazi’s?”

Her earnest response, “The Nazis. The National Socialists.”

I eyed her newspaper with a quizzical glance. “So, why are you protesting them?”

She replied brightly, almost bubbly, “Oh! We’re the International Socialists!!”

I bade her good day and went on with mine.

*The title references a scene from “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” which is a funny but highly controversial film about a man born at the same time, but next door to Christ, and is constantly mistaken for the Messiah his whole life. In the scene in question, there is a confab of a bunch of Jewish rebel groups seeking freedom from the Romans, all with similar names, similar goals, but irreconcilable differences, that was a jab at the rise of numerous left wing groups in the UK at the time the film was made.

SDG

Ahh, Those Freshmen

Satire is a dying art form. Not because there are few who can do it, but because there are fewer and fewer who can recognize and appreciate it. I feel it is part of my responsibility to challenge my students to think critically, and not just in my field (chemistry), but to apply those skills also to other areas. Therefore, with this in mind, I try to bring current events and outside things into class, usually at the beginning, and apply it in some way to chemistry, or vice versa. Thus, the day after Saddam was convicted, I brought it up at the beginning of class, saying I was glad he’d been convicted, and explained that I had been a civilian technical contractor in Baghdad when he’d been caught. I opened the floor of the class for a few minutes to any questions about the situation and about my personal experience over there, and I felt it was reasonably productive and informative for them.

So, the day after the 2006 Congressional Elections and the turn over of the House and Senate to the Democrats, I had an inspiration. I announced the following to my 275 freshmen in General Chemistry:

“In honor of the election results yesterday, I am considering a major policy shift in this class. I am considering proposing grade reform, in the form of GPA welfare. If, at the end of the semester, you are making an ‘A’ in this course, you will ‘donate’ 7 points to the class. If you have a ‘B’, it will be 5 points, a ‘C+’, 3 points. Then, everyone making ‘D’s’ or ‘F’s’ will automatically receive a ‘C.’ If there are surplus points, I will retain them as administrative overhead, but if there are too few points, we will engage in deficit point spending. Of course, if I really wanted to be fair, I would eliminate all tests and homeworks, and just give everyone a ‘C.’ Chemistry learning would decrease, but everyone would feel better about it. How does that sound?”

During my spiel, the class as a whole were laughing and cheering, so I thought they were with me, and upon my final question, they erupted in support. Beginning to be concerned, I then asked, “Ok, those of you currently making ‘As’ and ‘Bs’, how does this sound?” Of course, they, a smaller fraction of the class, were strongly against the proposition. I then made a couple of comments that I thought strengthened the idea that I was not being serious.

After class, as normal, a group of students clustered around to ask some questions. One asked about a grading issue regarding the final, a normal reasonable question (although a month early). The guy behind him chimed in with, “So we are still guaranteed a ‘C’ even if we are failing?” I laughed and said, “Of course not.” The disappointment on his face was real, and at least one other person behind him sighed/groaned with disappointment.

SO, on the next class day, I made a statement of clarification. I introduced it with a definition of satire. I then explained that this is how welfare and other entitlement programs actually work, and this is how the income tax system is based. It may not be general chemistry, but some things are more important than molecules. And the sooner they understand how the real world works, the better for them. Then I moved on to the different kinds of solids that exist and why they have the structures they do as a result of their chemical and physical properties.

SDG

Professor Coach

I've noticed a peculiar dichotomy in academia--when an instructor tells students to do an unpleasant or seemingly random or arbitrary assignment, they catch all kinds of grief--if they're really lucky they get an email from the chair or dean regarding a student complaint. When the athletic coach tells the players to run the bleachers or other mundane, aerobic punishment/task, there is grumbling (but only under the breath) and they do it. No one seems to question the coach for apparently random or arbitrary tasks.

Perhaps one reason for this is that subconsciously, the player realizes that the task will get them in better shape for the game and make them a better player or related reason. Yet, as faculty, we get, "Why do we have to learn this? I'll never use this again!" etc. They recognize the coach's wisdom and authority for training them in athletics but not ours for training them in their major. They recognize that running the bleachers increases both their lung capacity and their coordination, even though they don't literally run bleachers in the game. They don't recognize that the brain needs training in mental pathways just as much as the body, so some of the exercises we give are designed to do this, even though they WILL NEVER literally do that activity again.

It's funny, when I point this out to students, they typically get a sheepish grin, and get to work.

SDG