He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good.
Diligence more important than intelligence
“A focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life,” according to an article in Scientific American.
Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.
The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.
Praising children’s innate abilities, as Jonathan’s parents did, reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life. […]
Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material.
The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.
This discussion of the primacy of effort reminded me of a fascinating anecdote in Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. (The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS], is used to compare the academic ability of students from different countries.)
When students sit down to take the TIMSS exam, they also have to fill out a questionnaire. It asks them all kinds of things, such as what their parents’ level of education is, and what their views about math are, and what their friends are like. It’s not a trivial exercise. It’s about 120 questions long. In fact, it is so tedious and demanding that many students leave as many as ten or twenty questions blank.
Now, here’s the interesting part. As it turns out, the average number of items answered on that questionnaire varies from country to country. It is possible, in fact, to rank all the participating countries according to how many items their students answer on the questionnaire. Now, what do you think happens if you compare the questionnaire rankings with the math rankings on the TIMSS. They are exactly the same. In other words, countries whose students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job of solving math problems.
The dangers of risk-avoidance
Kids sometimes get hurt playing in treehouses. If we create exacting national safety standards for treehouses, fewer kids will get hurt. That can only be a good thing, right?
Medical researchers in Ohio published a paper this month suggesting national safety standards for treehouses after statistics showed that 2,800 children a year are hurt in accidents linked to them. The injuries ranged from bruises to broken bones, but all were serious enough to send the children to the emergency room.
It’s the same instinct that motivated this lady’s neighbor to call the police because her children were climbing a tree.
A woman, upset, saying, “You could fall and get hurt and not be able to walk again!”
So I approached her and said, “It’s okay with me if they climb the tree.”
“It’s not okay with me! They could get hurt!” She repeated some variations on this theme.
I agreed: “You’re right. They could get hurt. It’s still okay with me.”
“It’s not okay with me! I’m calling the police.”
Because if you aren’t in a tree, you’ll never get hurt falling out of a tree. It’s a simple, feel-good solution to an obvious danger. And because it’s so obvious, we never consider the hidden costs. In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv writes,
One U.S. researcher suggests that a generation of children is not only being raised indoors, but is being confined to even smaller spaces. Jane Clark, a University of Maryland professor of kinesiology (the study of human movement), calls them “containerized kids” – they spend more and more time in car seats, high chairs, and even baby seats for watching TV. When small children do go outside, they’re often placed in containers – strollers – and pushed by walking or jogging parents. Most kid-containerizing is done for safety concerns, but the long-term health of these children is compromised. In the medical journal the Lancet, researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland reported a study of toddler activity where the researchers clipped small electronic accelerometers to the waistbands of seventy-eight three-year-olds for a week. They found that the toddlers were physically active for only twenty minutes a day. […]
As the nature deficit grows, another emerging body of scientific evidence indicates that direct exposure to nature is essential for physical and emotional health. For example, new studies suggest that exposure to nature may reduce the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and that it can improve all children’s cognitive abilities and resistance to negative stresses and depression.
Leonard Sax points out another hidden cost of risk-avoidance in Why Gender Matters.
Let’s go back to Lizette Peterson’s study, where she rigged up a stationary bike so kids could “ride” through a hazardous environment. Peterson then asked asked all the parents whether their kids had ever been injured riding a bike, injured badly enough to require medical attention. She found that kids who had been injured were less fearful doing the simulation than kids who had never been injured – even after controlling for the degree of confidence kids felt riding bicycles. She calls this the “invulnerability” effect. When a kid has fallen and (let’s say) scraped a knee or gotten a cut, they recover. One week later that kid is thinking, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad. I got hurt and now I’m fine.”
Child psychologist Wendy Mogel has written a charming book called The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. Without mentioning the theory of learned helplessness, she points out that shielding children from injury makes them more risk-averse. And, letting them explore their world – at the cost of a few scrapes and cuts – builds their character and gives them self-confidence, resilience, and self-reliance.
If children never climb trees and are only exposed to industrial-strength treehouses “lower than 10 feet up, [with] several inches of soft mulch below it and using solid, 38-inch-high barriers instead of guardrails,” they well be very safe. They may be physically and emotionally weaker and less capable of healthy risk-assessment, but they will be very, very safe.
A pill that makes you have a good day
On the radio today, an ad cheerfully inquired, “What if there was a pill that you could take that would make you have a good day?” The pill in question was a dubious homeopathic “positive mood formula,” but it is a precursor to more powerful options. In Our Posthuman Future, Francis Fukuyama writes that advances in neuropharmacology (the use of drugs to affect the nervous system) mean that “we don’t have to await the arrival of human genetic engineering to foresee a time when we will be able to enhance intelligence, memory, emotional sensitivity, and sexuality, as well as reduce aggressiveness and manipulate behavior in a host of other ways.”
As increasingly powerful drugs enable more precisely-targeted behavior modification with fewer side effects, a whole host of new ethical questions will arise. In the not-too-distant future, science may offer a pill that does make every day a good day. Happy. Cooperative. Friendly. Stress-free. Most dystopian prophecies of chemically-controlled personality assume the existence of a malevolent controller, but what if the reality is a future in which individuals freely and gladly use affect-enhancing drugs?
From a Christian perspective, one potential problem with such a “Good-Day Drug” is its impact on character development. Paul writes, “we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope” (Romans 5:3-4). Character is developed through difficult choices made well. Courage could not exist without fear, nor self-control without temptation, nor patience without trials. In a very real way, our choices make us, for better or worse.
If every choice shapes us to be either more or less like Christ, then drug-induced goodness would be an abdication of choice, leaving the part of us that chooses and wills – that actually matters in a long-term sense – as an undeveloped, infantile nullity. Withhold the daily tablet of virtue, and imagine the effect of a minor misfortune or a passing quarrel on a man whose rose-colored glasses have been suddenly removed, calling for reserves of fortitude or patience that never had a chance to develop. Stripped of artificial virtue, there is little else beneath.
It is this potential for stunting personal character that should make us leary of any pharmaceutical quick-fixes. There is a legitimate and important place for drugs that help correct chemical imbalances or treat genuine pathologies. Such drugs may allow the patient to function normally, breaking through a neurochemical fog that had been preventing right choices, or perhaps any choices at all. However, when pharmacology transitions from offering normalcy to offering morality, from making right choices possible to making right conduct easy, we would do well to remember the danger of an endless succession of Good Days.
Can God create a rock too heavy for him to lift?
In a nutshell: No.
This question and others like it (“Can God beat himself up in a fight?”) are clever attempts to prove that the Christian notion of divine omnipotence is inherently contradictory, but on closer examination they prove unpersuasive.
Rephrasing the question is a helpful first step in understanding why we can safely answer it in the negative. As an omnipotent being, God can do anything that is intrinsically possible, a category that certainly includes moving a rock or any other created thing. The attribute of “movable by an omnipotent being” is as inherent in a rock as is “hard” or “composed of minerals.” (This assertion does not rest on Christian doctrine. It is inherent in the definition of omnipotence, regardless of whether or not an omnipotent being even exists.)
There can be no such thing as a rock that is not composed of minerals, because that would be a rock that is not a rock. It is a logical impossibility. Similarly, there can be no such thing as a rock that is immovable by an omnipotent being; even if no omnipotent being actually existed, we could still safely say that if such a being existed, it could move any existent rock.
With this in mind, we can rephrase the question above: “Can God create an object that an omnipotent being could lift [a rock] that is too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift?” Like the inquiry whether God could create a square circle, when properly understood this question devolves into incoherent nonsense, allowing us to answer confidently, “No, God cannot create a rock he cannot lift.” (For more on this topic, see Things God cannot do.)
Men unmanned
A depressing story from the UK.
A judge has hailed the heroism of an 83-year-old war veteran who tackled a gunman during a robbery at a bookmakers while nine other men stood by.
Sidney Bannister, who served with the Royal Artillery Corps during World War II, put 30-year-old robber Henry Rockson in a headlock.
But the pensioner’s calls for assistance met a wall of silence and up to nine other men in the shop – most far younger than Mr Bannister – stood by as Rockson smashed him twice in the head with the butt of the gun. […]
[T]he widower, of Lees near Oldham, Greater Manchester, said: ‘There were nine other blokes in the shop and most of them were either half my age or younger. I just wish one of them had shown some gumption. […]
After the court case, Mr Bannister expressed his gratitude for the judge’s comments but added: ‘I wasn’t being brave that day – I just acted on human instinct which I would have hoped most men have.
‘I had seen this man raise a gun at a woman and grab some money … and when he started to make a run for it I just thought, “Why should he be allowed to get away with it?”
‘People don’t want to get involved these days. In my day we were brought up to have a go and not be a shrinking violet when we saw something happening that was very wrong.’
After the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, Mark Steyn remembered Canada’s most famous mass-murder.
Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lepine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate — an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The “men” stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.
One more: the story of a young Chinese woman, decapitated last week in a Virginia Tech cafe while half-a-dozen people watched.
Authorities gave this account: Virginia Tech police, responding to two frantic 911 calls about 7 p.m. Wednesday, found Zhu standing in the Au Bon Pain cafe on campus, with Yang’s severed head in his hands, according to an affidavit. A large, bloody kitchen knife lay nearby, and Zhu’s backpack, on the floor, was filled with other sharp weapons. Seven people witnessed the attack, which came without as much as a raised voice as the two drank coffee.
Decapitation is a bit more involved than simply stabbing someone. Did it not occur to any of those seven people that perhaps they could do something?
Perhaps not. In times of stress, higher cognitive functioning falls by the wayside while instincts and emotion take over. We can take it as a given that the instinct for self-preservation is going to be clamoring for attention, but, for men throughout history, another instinct would chime in: Protect the weak. Better death than dishonor. Note Sidney Bannister’s explanation of his actions: “I wasn’t being brave that day – I just acted on human instinct which I would have hoped most men have.” He doesn’t understand that the other nine men in that store also acted on instinct. They just had different instincts. In Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales writes,
Stress releases cortisol into the blood. It invades the hippocampus and interferes with its work. (Long-term stress can kill hippocampal cells.) The amygdala has powerful connections to the sensory cortices, the rhinal cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the ventral prefrontal cortext, which means that the entire memory system, both input and output, are affected. As a result, most people are incapable of performing any but the simplest tasks under stress. They can’t remember the most basic things. […] Although strong emotion can interfere with the ability to reason, emotion is also necessary for both reasoning and learning. Emotion is the source of both success and failure at selecting correct action at the crucial moment.
Instinct – what Gonzales calls emotion – comes through practice. In a society where courtesy to women is an insult, where a disproportionate fear of pedophilia discourages male interaction with children, how exactly do we expect men to develop the instinct to protect those weaker than themselves? Describing the Lepine massacre mentioned above, Crime Library says, “They wondered whether they should try to overpower the gunman, protect the women, or leave. The choice as to what was best was unclear. But after a few moments, the male students and teachers walked outside. In weeks to come, many of them would have nightmares about this moment, reliving it over and over, wishing they had acted differently.”
At the crucial moment, stress forced these men to operate instinctively. Their most basic selves stood bare in the face of danger. And stood. And blinked impotently. And quietly walked away, because at a fundamental, instinctual level, they had nothing to tell them what to do. They were not all cowards. Most likely, if they had had time for reflection, time to reason through what was happening and decide what they ought to do, at least some of them would have reacted differently. But they didn’t have that time, so they needed instincts that our culture gave them no chance to develop.
Dirt, worms, and health
From The New York Times,
In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma.
These studies, along with epidemiological observations, seem to explain why immune system disorders like multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and allergies have risen significantly in the United States and other developed countries.
“What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment,” Mary Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt Is Good” (Kaplan). “Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.” […]
Dr. Weinstock goes even further. “Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat,” he said. He and Dr. Elliott pointed out that children who grow up on farms and are frequently exposed to worms and other organisms from farm animals are much less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune diseases.
The Bible is not the Kama Sutra
In the course of appeals to men to avoid promiscuity, remain faithful to their spouse, or otherwise seek sexual purity, many Christians rely primarily on a popular argument: Explain cheerfully that the moral way actually, really and truly, based on scientific studies, will lead to better sex. Few seem to find this at all odd; a fact which strikes me as, itself, rather odd.
Yes, sex will always be a significant motivator for men. Yes, since God invented it, one can assume that following his guidelines is as wise a course to full enjoyment of this gift as of any other. However, might there be more productive and less condescending ways to urge male sexual purity than to enthusiastically declare that Our Sex Is Better Than Your Sex? If the church was battling an epidemic of gluttony, would we be writing books explaining that moderation actually offers more pleasure for the discerning hedonist?
Rather than debating the sensual merits of monogamy versus promiscuity, abstinence versus premarital sex, perhaps the church would be better served to issue a stirring cry to honor, a reminder of duty to God and women. The man who believes abstinence will pay dividends of better sex in the future may be no less likely to remain pure than the man who believes premarital sex will defile and dishonor the woman he loves, but which motivation produces the better man?
In C.S. Lewis’ Out Of The Silent Planet, the ruler of the planet Malacandra says to Weston, who is willing to massacre other civilizations in his quest to spread mankind throughout the universe, “I see now how the lord of the silent planet has bent you. There are laws that all hnau know, of pity and straight dealing and shame and the like, and one of these is the love of kindred. He has taught you to break all of them except this one, which is not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes folly and has set it up, thus bent, to be a little, blind Oyarsa in your brain. And now you can do nothing but obey it, though if we ask you why it is a law you give no other reason for it than for all the other and greater laws which it drives you to disobey. Do you know why he has done this? […] He has left you this one because a bent hnau can do much more evil than a broken one.”
Our culture has similarly inflated a good and natural desire, setting it up as a little, blind god in the minds of men. Collaborating with the bent god, hoping we can persuade him to act as we would prefer, is to accept defeat before the battle has been joined.
A definition of “free will”
A good working definition of “free will” is, “The ability of a creature to choose for itself on the basis of subjective values.”
When speaking of free will, we generally focus on choice, but our choices are determined by what we value, because we will always choose what we consider to be the most valuable option. Any conception of free will that does not allow the creature to set its own subjective and ever-changing hierarchy of values will ultimately end in determinism.
(Note: To say that decisions are based on subjective values is not a relativistic objection to the idea of objective value. Objective values exist, but we make our decisions based on subjective values, i.e. the values we actually personally assign to a given option. The existence of sin testifies to the human ability to act on the basis of subjective values that do not reflective objective reality.)
Free will and divine sovereignty
The reconciliation of the paradoxical realities of human free will and divine sovereignty has challenged theologians for two millennia. Various systems have been proposed, tending variously to emphasize either free will or sovereignty; all most likely missing the truth to greater or lesser degrees. While biblical teaching on the intersection of free will and sovereignty is sufficiently equivocal to render doubtful any claim of certainty, a lack of absolute confidence in any one position should not prevent us from concluding that certain views are clearly false.
One such view emphasizes divine sovereignty at the expense of human free will to such an extend that the individual’s moral choices are viewed as ultimately originating only from God’s will, to the exclusion of man’s. This position is usually associated with Calvinism, though it is doubtful if a majority of Calvinists now or throughout history have espoused it. In fact, the great Calvinist preacher Charles Spurgeon offered a different perspective on free will that is worth noting:
I see one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in great measure. Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no precedence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. (Emphasis mine.)
It is when divine sovereignty looms so large that we deny the reality of human free will that we fall into the error I am now addressing: to paraphrase Spurgeon, God predestines, and that is all. In the following paragraphs, I will consider what is meant by “free will,” how real human freedom can exist in a universe ruled by a sovereign God, and finally, why God’s testimony regarding his own nature tells us that humans possess free moral will.
When I speak of a creature having free will, I mean that its choices originate within itself; in other words, that the mind which chooses for the creature is in fact its own. This idea of free will forms the basis of our concept of criminal intent. If someone carried out a crime while under hypnosis, we would pity him as a victim, not condemn him as a criminal, because he was not acting on the basis of his free will. It was not his mind which chose to commit the crime.
If human free will is real, then when Cain killed Abel, King David slept with Bathsheba, and Judas betrayed Jesus, they did so because they chose to. It was their minds which decided to commit the act. This means they could have also chosen not to do so, because choice cannot exist without real options. We laugh at Henry Ford’s promise that “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black,” because it is oxymoronic – a choice without a choice. We can only say that Judas chose to betray Christ for 30 pieces of silver if we also believe he might have chosen not to do so. Otherwise, we can only say that Judas did betray Christ, much as one says that a flat tire caused a car wreck or a spooked horse caused a broken arm.
If we affirm this view of free will, are we diminishing divine sovereignty? After all, if the creature’s mind determines its actions, then the Creator’s mind does not. Only one ultimate cause is possible. Either God decided that Cain would kill Abel, or Cain decided that Cain would kill Abel. Even if God decided that Cain would kill Abel, while causing Cain to think he came up with the idea on his own, Cain’s perception does not alter the fact that his intention ultimately originated in God’s mind. If free will is real – if Cain decided “out of his own head” to kill Abel – then not all events originate in the mind or will of God.
If this means that human free will forms some sort of inviolable barrier to God’s will, divine sovereignty is certainly diminished, or rather, destroyed. (There is no such thing as semi-omnipotence.) However, free will does not necessarily entail a diminution of divine power. An NFL linebacker who refrains from flattening his son in a game of backyard football in no way diminishes the strength he chooses to restrain. Similarly, an absence of divine determinism is better understood as “God does not,” rather than “God cannot.” God’s covenant with Noah means he will never again send a worldwide flood, not because some obstacle prevents him, but because he chooses not to. If God chose to sovereignly grant to men the capacity to make free moral choices, the subsequent existence of human free will testifies not to a diminution of his power, but only to the fact that with God “there is no variation or shifting shadow.”
As a practical matter, however, it may be difficult to see how God could truly command the course of history while allowing humans the freedom to choose their actions. What if Judas had chosen not to betray Jesus? Let us suppose God had a “second-string betrayer” lined up. What if he also chose not to betray the Christ? And so on. If men are truly free to choose, how can any future event be certain?
While a full explanation of how this might be possible is beyond the scope of this article – and perhaps beyond the scope of the human mind – we catch an interesting hint in Mordecai’s words to Esther when she feared to approach the king on behalf of her people. “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14). Esther’s choice determined her fate, but God’s will would ultimately be fulfilled regardless.
Jesus seemed to make a similar assumption when he told his disciples, “For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!” Jesus would be betrayed. He would die. That much was settled. But the man who did the betraying would still bear the responsibility for his choice.
This concept of moral responsibility brings us to the crux of my argument that God’s revealed nature requires the existence of human free will. It is interesting to note that in Spurgeon’s comments quoted above, he apparently considered free will so intertwined with moral responsibility that he completely substituted the one for the other by the end, writing only, “man is responsible.” A legal principle going back from our criminal laws through the common law to early Hebraic law is the mens rea, the “guilty mind.” The mind which directs the crime bears the guilt. When terrorists use children or mentally-disabled people to carry out suicide bombings, we direct our horror at those who recruited and directed the attackers, because it was they who planned the carnage. They bear the responsibility. What matters is not whose body carries out the guilty act, but whose mind and will are responsible for it.
This fundamental moral principle creates an apparently insurmountable problem for the view that God’s sovereignty means that he chooses our actions for us. We are told God is so holy that he cannot even tempt us (James 1:13-14), let alone commit evil. If, however, God’s mind is the ultimate originator of every human choice, that means he causes every evil, every perversion, every cruelty, that we see around us. It is not twisted warlords who kidnap and train child soldiers in African. It is God. It is not the serial killer who tortures his victims. It is God. We can only Paul’s cry, in a different context: “May it never be!”
The problem is that twisted evil, like every other effect, requires a sufficient cause. Torture, rape, and murder don’t just spontaneously occur. A mind directs them, and that mind is responsible for them. Either these evils originate with man, or they originate with God. There are no other options. If the latter, then evil flows from God just as surely as does good, and we are forced to ask if we can even meaningfully distinguish between the two. If good and evil originate from the same source, we are left with a pantheistic morality, where good and evil are just different parts of the universal pattern. This is a god who cannot be shoehorned into anything close to the Being we find in scripture.
If a good God cannot be responsible for evil, and God is good, we can safely conclude that he is not responsible for evil. Having already seen that the mind which conceives evil is ultimately responsible for it, it follows that evil cannot originate in the mind of God, which leaves only one other possibility: the mind of man. The choice to do evil, then, is made by man, and man alone. The choice does not surprise our omniscient God. It does not please our loving God. It does not confound our omnipotent God. And it does not originate with our good God.