#ryan mcannally-linz

[arcticdementor]

Lots of our student feel torn between these two answers to the forest question. Total altruism versus individual self-actualization. A limitless forest or one central tree. It's tempting to try to synthesize them. But how could you actually live up to both? How could you both actualize yourself in all your uniqueness and devote yourself impartially to the good of everyone? And yet to just take one of these answers can be hard to swallow. Universal concern can be a crushing weight. Authenticity alone can feel shallow and small. As it turns out, this isn't a totally new predicament. During Mencius's time, two philosophies enjoyed wide popularity in China. Yang Zhu (ca. 440–ca. 360 BCE) took the side of egoism. Mozi (ca. 470–ca. 391 BCE) advocated concern for the whole of society. Aligning himself with Confucius, Mencius sought a different way. Here's how he put it: "Yang Zhu is 'for oneself. This is to not have a ruler. Mozi is 'impartial caring. This is to not have a father. To not have a father and to not have a ruler is to be an animal." If you're for yourself alone, you don't belong to a larger community that makes valid claims on you. That's what it means to say you don’t have a ruler. If you care impartially, then nobody can make special claims on you. Everyone has equal standing. A stranger counts as much as your parent. Hence, "impartial caring" means not to have a father. Either option, Mencius says, is beastly. The stakes here aren't just that if you follow Mozi you might care for the wrong people. Rather, by trying to become someone who cares impartially—someone who tries to adopt the point of view of the universe—you might diminish your humanity.

—Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most

[randomlovermoves]

We See Now Why America’s Founders Wanted Separation of Church & State

TRUMP USES THE AMERICAN EVANGELICALS ~ LIKE HITLER USED HATE FOR MINORITIES

What should Christians think about Donald Trump? His policies, his style, his personal life? Thirty evangelical Christians wrestle with these tough questions. They are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. They don't all agree, but they seek to let Christ be the Lord of their political views. They seek to apply biblical standards to difficult debates about our current political situation. Vast numbers of white evangelicals enthusiastically support Donald Trump. Do biblical standards on truth, justice, life, freedom, and personal integrity warrant or challenge that support? How does that support of President Trump affect the image of Christianity in the larger culture?  Around the world?  Many younger evangelicals today are rejecting evangelical Christianity, even Christianity itself. To what extent is that because of widespread evangelical support for Donald Trump? Don't read this book to find support for your views. Read it to be challenged—with facts, reason, and biblical principles With contributions from: Michael W. Austin Randall Balmer Vicki Courtney Daniel Deitrich Samuel Escobar John Fea Irene Fowler Mark Galli J. Colin Harris Stephen R. Haynes Matt Henderson Christopher A. Hutchinson Bandy X. Lee David S. Lim David C. Ludden Ryan McAnnally-Linz Steven Meyer Napp Nazworth D. Zac Niringiye Christopher Pieper Reid Ribble Ronald J. Sider Edward G. Simmons James R. S

[digitaldion]

"Our primary stance toward the kingdom, therefore, ought to be one of hope, an eager expectation that God will bring to completion the kingdom work begun in Christ’s incarnation and continued through the Spirit. To hope is to live into the reality of the kingdom that we hope for. That kingdom is the fundamental aim of human existence and the deepest longing of human hearts. Those who follow Christ in the power of the Spirit should let it determine the character of their lives and their projects. Even though we cannot make the kingdom arrive, our lives and our world, including our political societies and global realities, can reflect some of its character."

- Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Public Faith in Action

[arcticdementor]

One problem with consequentialism is that in a world as complex as ours, consequences are not so easily connected to causes. Even after the fact, it can be difficult to parse out which factor caused a particular result (good or bad). In advance, it can be nearly impossible to know what the consequences of your actions will be. Paralysis by analysis is a real threat. Even worse, in the consequentialist view, you’re responsible for the consequences of your analysis-induced paralysis. The time you spent trying desperately to figure out how to maximize your contribution to the overall pleasure in the world could have been spent doing something—anything—that would actually have increased the pleasure in the world. But, then, what should you have spent your time doing? It can get dizzying pretty fast.

—Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most

[arcticdementor]

As modern folks, we love this kind of solution. It promises a sort of "moral alchemy." Take the base stuff of human self-interest and turn it into the gold of a functional—maybe even a "just”—society. You can see this kind of move all over the place. Take the problem of value, for example. It would be overwhelming if we had to figure out and agree on what things are really worth. How would we even get started? Markets, we're told, solve the problem for us. Money translates countless different forms of value-comfort, usefulness, safety, nutrition, beauty—into a single, eminently countable measure, and the intricate workings of supply and demand yield prices. Everything can be compared. The question shifts from "What is this worth?" to "How much does this cost?" None of us needs to know what anything is really worth. All any of us has to do is buy what suits our preferences and our pocketbooks. Out of the mess of market interactions comes a price—which isn't really the same as the value of a thing, but it'll do. Moral alchemy is built into our legal system too. A defense lawyer's job isn't to seek the truth, but to represent their client's interest, even if that client is guilty. They aren't directly responsible for discerning the truth. The process is supposed to suss out the truth—at least often enough that we can feel OK about it. The same impulse is behind interest group politics. Your job as a voter isn't to discern what's right and just for your society and the world. It's to represent your interests. Elected officials, in turn, are there to fight for what their districts want. And the process is supposed to sort it out into something like fairness and justice. It's easy to see why procedural moral alchemy is so appealing. "Only you" responsibility can be daunting. How can we be expected to discern the good (value, truth, justice) over and over again as life throws us into the daily grind, not to mention the crises and conundrums and dilemmas that crop up more often than we'd like? The problem is that our trust in moral alchemy may be un-founded, and depending on it may leave us unable to do what we need to when systems fail. These days, there are plenty of reasons to doubt that democratic systems and free markets can produce virtue despite the nefarious actions of vicious participants. A Western world once confident that the line between good and evil ran between democracy and autocracy now worries about democratically elected autocrats. Increasingly, we see that discerning the truth by letting opposing views argue it out doesn't work if both sides don't actually have some sort of basic commitment to truth-seeking. And free markets regularly seem to miss crucial components of the value equation, like the CO₂ emissions that are destroying the planet. Unfortunately, the longer we lean on moral alchemy, the more dependent on it we become. Our moral discernment muscles atrophy. And precisely at the moment we need to discern what is just or true or to assess value for ourselves, we find ourselves and our societies unable to do so.

—Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most

[arcticdementor]

After all, it's our sense of Smokey responsibility that grounds the possible gap between the life we want and the life worth living. Without it, all we have is our desires. Questions of worth—of value—appear only when we have to take seriously the possibility that we answer to someone or something beyond our desires—whether family, God, reason, or something else entirely. It's Smokey responsibility that gives teeth to the "oughts" of the questions we're about to ask.

—Miroslav Volf, ‎Matthew Croasmun, ‎and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most

[arcticdementor]

Kant's view of moral autonomy has been incredibly influential in the modern era. Unsurprisingly, however, there are significant challenges to it. For one thing, insisting that humans are essentially rational beings and that human dignity comes from our rationality seems to deny dignity to people with limited cognitive capacities. For another, Kant's supposedly universal reason can look suspiciously parochial, like the habits and inclinations of a highly educated, well-off European man.

—Miroslav Volf, ‎Matthew Croasmun, ‎and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most

[arcticdementor]

Many of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about Smokey responsibility. There's something unsettling about someone or something outside ourselves that can set the standards for our lives. Often we try to avoid the idea entirely. Maybe, we think, we can be our own Smokeys. If all responsibility comes down to "only you" responsibility, the source of our responsibility is simply our own choices and whims. After all, we're free. We're independent—or at least we imagine so. We may commit ourselves to various people or causes, but we suppose that we do that of our own free will and for our own reasons, whatever those happen to be. The problem is that if we answer only to ourselves for living whatever sort of life we ourselves deem worthy, it's all too easy for our lives to feel arbitrary. If we're both playing the card game and deciding what counts as a winning hand, the game loses the tension that makes it fun to play. If we both sing the song and decide by ourselves what counts as a beautiful song, perhaps we're less likely to fail but we can hardly be said to have succeeded either. The problem isn't just that we may be easy judges (if we're perfectionists, perhaps we'll be the hardest judges of all). More profoundly, the danger is that if we take ourselves to be not just the arbiters but the sources of our responsibilities, we may be free to pursue our every whim but we won't be able to rescue our lives from the sneaking suspicion that they are simply products of those whims. The biggest choices of our lives—what career to pursue, whether to start a family, what to do in our retirement—can seem impossible to make. And not so much because it's hard to thread the needle of various cross-pressures, but because there are too many options that seem valid, appealing, and effectively interchangeable. We may well have a profound responsibility to ourselves. There are thoughtful ways of approaching the Question that center on certain sorts of responsibilities to the self. We'll consider one later in this chapter ("The Law Within") and another in chapter 6 (the ethic of authenticity). But if we want to avoid the sense that the pivotal moments of our lives are merely preferred selections off the menu of life, we'll need to come to terms with the fact that our choices alone can't be the ultimate source of our responsibility. We each have a conscience—and we no doubt ought to pay good attention to it. But to really do its job, this conscience must be an internalized impression of some nonarbitrary (and quite possibly external) source of responsibility. Otherwise, it's hard to tell conscience apart from neuroses we ought to seek to overcome (or not—maybe we like our neuroses; it's up to us—and that's the problem). If we want our choices to be meaningful, there's no escaping the bear. We need some ultimate source of our responsibilities beyond our choices. Better to get familiar with that source sooner rather than later.

—Miroslav Volf, ‎Matthew Croasmun, ‎and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most

[arcticdementor]

Talk to a positive psychologist and you'll get no argument for why we ought to prefer a long, happy, and healthy life. Research psychologists are scientists, after all. Strictly speaking, science is about what is, not what ought to be. Philosophy and theology deal with questions of ought. Modern science is primarily about what correlates with what. Dropping a stone correlates with the stone falling. Hydrogen and oxygen in the presence of heat correlates with a loud bang. Getting seven hours of sleep every night correlates with greater rates of self-reported happiness. So does practicing gratitude—and doing yoga. Those same things also correlate with better health outcomes and greater longevity. It's a tangle of correlations, a web of things that tend to happen together. At base, the psychologist has no reason that you ought to prefer to be in this tangle of correlated outcomes rather than some other. They're just building a cloud of correlations. But who would look at this tangle of health, happiness, longevity, gratitude, yoga, and ample nocturnal rest and want to opt out? Besides, there are great benefits to thinking about the good life as a tangle or a cloud of correlations. For one, because all you're trying to do is get inside the "good life tangle," you don't have to be all that thoughtful about where to start. You can start anywhere. Eat healthier. Keep a gratitude journal. Start doing yoga. Volunteer with the homeless. Get more sleep. Watch a random TED Talk and do what it says. Develop a few close relationships. Start with any one thread from the good life tangle, and eventually you'll find your way into all these good things. Because they're all tangled up with one another. Second, the good life tangle implies that there are no trade-offs. Every single thing worth having correlates with everything else worth having. Being happy will make you healthier and help you live longer. Being healthier will yield happiness and longevity. Even being a good person will make you happier and healthier and help you live longer! According to the strictest version of the Walgreens vision, this is why you should care about being a good person. Do the right thing because it will make you happy. Perhaps even: you know it's the right thing to do if it ultimately makes you happy. After all, how could doing the right thing not make you happy? It should all be part of the good life tangle. There are no trade-offs.

—Miroslav Volf, ‎Matthew Croasmun, ‎and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most

[arcticdementor]

The Walgreens vision is the grass-fed organic burger on the good life menu. By default, it comes with a side salad, but you know you can swap in fries for that (and add bacon and cheese—isn't virtue fun!). The fact is, it's indulgent—and yet you still get to order something with a leaf icon next to it. Compared to the life-styles of the rich and famous, it's so sensible. You're not asking for anything extravagant. No helicopters or yachts or fifty million Instagram followers. The server praises your selection, giving you a look that lets you know that your virtue signaling has not gone unnoticed. Then again, the server was going to praise your choice regardless. After all, at the Good Life Bistro, all choices, we assure one another, are excellent ones. This is how "long, happy, healthy" has become so dominant. It's the result of a feedback loop of our desires, our expectation that they'll always be praised, and a marketing industry wise enough to offer us just the right amount of “virtue” to thrill us without turning us off. In the final accounting, it's not a product we've been force-fed. It's a bill of goods we've sold ourselves. In any case, it may be time to ask for our money back.

—Miroslav Volf, ‎Matthew Croasmun, ‎and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most