Rachel Held Evans has some pointed words for complementarians. The provocative nature of her post will likely make it inaccessible to most conservatives, which is a shame. The following quote is especially insightful and worthy of reflection.

Furthermore, as Russell Moore himself has observed, even married couples who identify as “complementarians” are functioning as equal partners rather than forcing a hierarchal pattern onto their relationship that is highly prescriptive regarding gender.  This should come as no surprise seeing as how a truly complementary relationship is one in which differences are celebrated, but not forced. If your marriage is like mine, this means that the complementary differences between you and your spouse often fall into gender-influenced norms (I am more emotional; Dan is more even-keeled), but not always (Dan is better at nurturing relationships than I am; I am more competitive). Rather than trying to force our personalities and our roles into prescribed molds based on gender, it just makes more sense to allow our natural difference to enhance and challenge one another. We lead where we are strong; we defer where we are weak.

(HT: Garry Vanderveen)

A lesson on gender stereotypes from George MacDonald’s “Romance of Photogen and Nycteris”:

“Come, come, dear!” said Nycteris, “you must not go on this way. You must be a brave girl, and —”

“A girl!” shouted Photogen, and started to his feet in wrath. “If you were a man, I should kill you.”

“A man?” repeated Nycteris. “What is that? How could I be that? We are both girls — are we not?”

“No, I am not a girl,” he answered; “— although,” he added, changing his tone, and casting himself on the ground at her feet, “I have given you too good reason to call me one.”

“Oh, I see!” returned Nycteris. “No, of course! — you can’t be a girl: girls are not afraid — without reason. I understand now: it is because you are not a girl that you are so frightened.”

Photogen twisted and writhed upon the grass.

“No, it is not,” he said sulkily; “it is this horrible darkness that creeps into me, goes all through me, into the very marrow of my bones — that is what makes me behave like a girl. If only the sun would rise!”

Amos Elon explains Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase, “the banality of evil”:

In The Origins of Totalitarianism [Arendt] still held on to a Kantian notion of radical evil, the evil that, under the Nazis, corrupted the basis of moral law, exploded legal categories, and defied human judgment. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, and in the bitter controversies about it that followed, she insisted that only good had any depth. Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension yet - and this is its horror! - it can spread like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay waste the entire world. Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil. (“The Excommunication of Hannah Arendt,” pp. xiii-xiv)

1. At all times and in all places, I will refrain from pontificating about the game of hockey, the intelligence of Vancouver’s management, and the superior heart and/or skill of our players.

2. When watching games I will not use any language that I would not be comfortable using in church.

3. I will not question the authority, sanity, or eyesight of any referee, linesman, or other NHL official.

4. I will not buyout Roberto Luongo’s contract on CapGeek.com.

5. Whether we win or lose, I will not read anything - and I do mean anything - published by The Province or the Vancouver Sun, nor will I even think about listening to Team 1040 commentary.

6. When the Kings score, I will not reach for another beer.

7. When I walk past people proudly wearing L.A. gear, I will be kind and - if it’s not too creepy - even give them a hug.

8. When the Canucks score, I will high-five everyone - and possibly every thing - within striking distance.

9. I will not make my wife watch any of these games with me.

10. I will be grateful for the playoff time we have been given.

What happens when we forgo martyrdom?

In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt shares the story of Peter Bamm, “a Germany army physician” whose memoir recollected the brutal gassing and disposal of Jews in Sevastopol (pp 231 - 232). He wrote:

We knew this. We did nothing. Anyone who had seriously protested or done anything against the killing unit would have been arrested within twenty-four hours and would have disappeared. It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian governments in our century that they don’t permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr’s death for their convictions. A good many of us might have accepted such a death. The totalitarian state lets its opponents disappear in silent anonymity. It is certain that anyone who had dared to suffer death rather than silently tolerate the crime would have sacrificed his life in vain. This is not to say that such a sacrifice would have been morally meaningless. It would only have been practically useless. None of us had a conviction so deeply rooted that we could have taken upon ourselves a practically useless sacrifice for the sake of a higher moral meaning. (Arendt, p. 232)

Arendt, however, doesn’t buy what Bamm is selling:

It is true that totalitarian domination tried to establish these holes of oblivion into which all deeds, good and evil, would disappear, but just as the Nazis’ feverish attempts, from June, 1942, on, to erase all traces of the massacres - through cremation, through burning in open pits, through the use of explosives and flame-throwers and bone-crushing machinery - were doomed to failure, so all efforts to let their opponents “disappear in silent anonymity” were in vain. The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story. Hence, nothing can ever be “practically useless,” at least, not in the long run. It would be of great practical usefulness for Germany today, not merely for her prestige abroad but for her sadly confused inner condition, if there were more such stories to be told. For the lesson of such stories is simple and within everybody’s grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not,just as the less of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that “it could happen” in most places but it did not happen everywhere.Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation. (pp. 232 - 233)

Peter Hitchens reflects on Holy Week:

Something about the weather and the sky at this time of year, combined with my good fortune in having many times visited Jerusalem (where General Gordon became convinced that Golgotha was on what is now the site of the East Jerusalem bus station, a theory which led to the creation of the only Protestant shrine in that city, the – enchanting but unproven – Garden Tomb) makes each spring twilight very poignant. It is easy to imagine the surreptitious gathering, the expedition to the Garden of Gethsemane (gardens are everywhere in the Bible, and a tiny trace of Gethsemane still, astonishingly, survives), while the arresting party assembles, Judas nerves himself for his treacherous kiss,  and then the chilly early morning where Peter warms himself by the fire and betrays his master, and the agitators prepare the mob for the show trial, and the orchestrated calls for the release of Barabbas, which will follow soon afterwards.

Oddly enough these scenes only came fully to life for me when I read Mikhail Bulgakov’s difficult, confusing but often enthralling ‘The Master and Margarita’, in which Pilate appears as a fictional character. Suddenly, in my imagination, an old, stiff black-and-white woodcut of Easter, filled with rather dark colour and became fluid and alive and rather frightening. It has ever since. And as I observe the world, I see the truth of (who said this?) the statement that the Crucifixion and Resurrection did not just happen once. They are happening, again and again, all the time.

Diane Ravitch has recently written two fascinating articles (one here and one there) about the Finnish education system. While her appraisal of Finland may be too rosy, it’s hard to deny that her summaries and arguments are compelling.

For example, she suggests that “cooperation” is far more beneficial to education that “competition”:

Like George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program is part of what Pasi Sahlberg calls “the Global Education Reform Movement,” or GERM. GERM demands teaching to the test. GERM assumes that students must be constantly tested, and that the results of these tests are the most important measures and outcomes of education. The scores can be used not only to grade the quality of every school, but to punish or reward students, teachers, principals, and schools. Those at the top of the education system, the elected officials and leaders who make the rules, create the budgets, and allocate resources, are never accountable for the consequences of their decisions. GERM assumes that people who work in schools need carrots and sticks to persuade (or compel) them to do their best.

In Finland, the subject of the first part of this article, teachers work collaboratively with other members of the school staff; they are not “held accountable” by standardized test scores because there are none. Teachers devise their own tests, to inform them about their students’ progress and needs. They do their best because it is their professional responsibility. Like other professionals, as Pasi Sahlberg shows in his book Finnish Lessons, Finnish teachers are driven by a sense of intrinsic motivation, not by the hope of a bonus or the fear of being fired. Intrinsic motivation is also what they seek to instill in their students. In the absence of standardized testing by which to compare their students and their schools, teachers must develop, appeal to, and rely on their students’ interest in learning.

Iain Reid describes the value of re-reading. An excerpt:

It’s not just unlikely, but impossible, to have an identical experience when reading a book for a second time. Or third. Or fourth. Books continue to change after they’re written, bound and sold. How is up to each reader. That’s part of a book’s unrivalled power. Rereading is never retreating or reverting or repeating. It’s renewing, enhancing and enlarging. The time and work required isn’t misspent or squandered. Much responsibility implicitly falls to the reader of any book. There’s much to contemplate and consider, much to relish. But there’s no one keeping track, no one monitoring our progress. There’s never any rush.

Mornington suspected his Christianity of being the inevitable result of having moved for some time as a youth of eighteen in circles which were, in a rather detached and superior way, opposed to it; but it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist. (Charles Williams, War in Heaven, p. 20)

Some dialogue from David Mitchell’s Number9Dream:

“Change the subject.”

“Okay. What to?”

“I asked you first.”

“Well, I was always curious about the meaning of life.”

“Easy. Eating macadamia ice cream and listening to Debussy.”

“Be serious.”

“Well,” Ai shifts, “your question is wrong.”

I imagine her lying here. “What should my question be, then?”

“It should be ‘What is my meaning of life.’ I mean, look at The Well-Tempered Clavier. To me, it means molecular harmony. To my father, it means a broken sewing machine. To Bach, it means an experiment in writing for every available key. To Bach’s wife, it means money to pay his wig maker. Who is right? Individually, we all are. Generally, none of us are.” (p. 270)