The renewal of your minds

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. --Romans 12:2

I wish I could remember where I read about the Muslim converts to Christianity who, when asked what inspired them to convert, said that they had fallen in love with the person of Jesus. His gentleness and patience, His erudition and intelligence, His love -- Jesus Himself was the force that led them to break with Islam and take the dangerous step of converting. In Great Books, David Denby (who describes himself as a not that observant Jew) reads the Gospels and is struck by his first real encounter with Jesus. He is amazed at His vivid personality, His quick wit and self-possession, and how easy it is to love Him. Although he encounters other Christian thought in his re-reading of the Great Books of western civilization, they don't strike him with the same force as a direct encounter with Jesus.

A few months ago a dear friend observed to me, about the Catholic blogsphere, that she rarely saw any mention of Jesus. Plenty of internal doctrinal baseball; plenty of liturgical spats; some devotional stuff; some Marian reflections; but not much meditation on Jesus Himself. I don't know if anyone reading my writing would feel that he'd just had an encounter with Jesus. I feel certain that Joe Citizen, surfing the 'net, stumbling across Catholics arguing amongst themselves about politics or economics or liturgy, would not recognize that Jesus was there in their midst. Where is the "renewal of your minds"? Where is the sharp wit without cruelty or self-absorption? Where is Jesus?

I think there is a place for snark: writing without wit is thick porridge, and Jesus himself showed up the Pharisees on more than one occasion. Too often, though, snark devolves into fisking and point-scoring and one-upsmanship that ceases to serve any purpose than to salve the ego of the snarker. Without underlying charity, snark is no more than a "resounding gong or a clashing cymbal" (1 Cor. 13:1), pure noise.

I particularly enjoyed the recent exchange between Pentimento, responding to a post about single mothers with charity and mercy, and Embrethelil, who illuminates her original posting without defensiveness or rancor. This kind of discussion, in which the principals enlarge and examine their positions with neither biting personal jabs nor mutual saccharine soppiness, is refreshing.

Another post I can't stop thinking about is Eric Brown's wrenching conversion story, in which he is drawn into the Church by Jesus Himself: "My focal interest was with the figure of our Lord, with Christology and soteriology—ecclesiology became an interest much later. I was obsessed with the Lord and I wanted to know everything about Him." Although he comes to accept the Church's authority to rule on matters of sexual morality and women's ordination, he writes that:

Strikingly, my comfort with dissent and the choice of others to dissent from church teaching not only assisted my conversion, it helped me to convert and ultimately become orthodox. If I had an inkling of suspicion that such matters were more than mere prevalent Christian opinions in a slowly evolving human world, but rather unchangeable teachings, I would not have been so content to focus my energies on other teachings—the ones that drew me in, which basically allowed me to come across everything I would need to know, so that when the time came, the teachings I did not want to accept, were acceptable because I would be able to see the relevance and the deep harmony of all the teachings with one another.

What drew him in was Love -- not the sharp, self-satisfied apologetics practiced on the internet.

Some American Catholic Highlights

If you haven't yet become a regular of The American Catholic, but enjoy a bit of Darwin political commentary every so often, you might want to check out:

"Preferential Option for the Middle Class?", on how both political parties strive to buy elections by pouring benefits on the middle class.

"Abortion Will Not Go Away", on how outlawing abortion would not end it -- and why we should outlaw it anyway.

and

"The Scary Thing Is, We Really Mean It" on the growing rift between beltway and flyover conservatives.

Also strongly recommended is:

"Humanity Without Limits" by Zach on the dangers of a society where every form of "progress" is seen as not only possible a very nearly a right.

"Tom Cruise, First-Rate Philosopher" by Chris Burgwald -- you'll have to click through to see what lies behind that delightful title.

And a heartwarming story about a Protestant and a rosary by Donald McClarey.

Faceless Conversations

Kyle of Postmodern Papist has a post about the facelessness of blogging, and how the sense that one is not talking to a "real person" with a face seems inevitably to lead some people to behave much more beligerantly in the blogsphere than they would in real life.

It was occurring to me the other day that my online activities tend to fill gaps that I experience, from time to time, in my face-to-face existence.

I'd spent a fair amount of time on the early text-only forums and in long term email discussions back in the early-to-mid-nineties, when I was in high school -- to a great extent because my closest friends (those I could have intellectual conversations with) had moved away. During college, I pretty much completely abandoned the internet. But then afterwards, I gradually found myself slipping back into the habit, first on various forums, and later in the blogsphere. MrsDarwin and I, of course, talk all the time, about many of the same topics that end up gracing these "pages". But as our growing family and that of our friends results in our often not getting the chance to get together with other adult friends for a couple weeks at a time, the desire to find other means of conversation is strong.

In this regard, the faceless medium can (with the moral discipline to avoid flamewars) be a benefit in that one is able to toss out subjects for discussion which would be considered rude or threatening among any but the most intimate friends in real life. And indeed, there is a pleasant real-life follow through to such discussions, in that on the occasions that we have had the chance to get together with other bloggers in person, conversation tends to be easy and free even for those who write frequently about their introversion.