I’ve always been fascinated by the thought of life in places like Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and even Alaska. I think I could do it. That said, as we endure multiple days of single digits here in Missouri, maybe I’m just a tad naïve.
Brrrrrrrr.
As I write this newsletter, my family joins the millions of Americans who are under severe weather warnings. I can hear my home whistling as it endures 40-50 mph gusts. My bones are still aching from having come in from plunging temperatures. I’m trying to work with my deacons to get a needy family’s electricity turned back on. Winter! There’s nothing quite like it.
Winter is a bleak affair for many people. A sullen gray hangs like a blanket across the sky. Skin dries and cracks. It’s hard to get warm without sweating from the layers of clothing. And the innumerable hours spent indoors start to wear on us. After all, we are social creatures. Our need for community (and sunlight) doesn’t subside just because of the calendar.
Each region of the country experiences winters differently. South Carolina isn’t Missouri. Arizona isn’t Minnesota. Alabama surely isn’t Alaska. Yet most people (excepting those in south Florida and southern California!) have a sufficiently similar enough experience that they identify with the slog people associate with winter.
It’s Part of the Plan
Fully contemplating a world without Adam and Eve’s transgression is impossible. The Bible’s teachings certainly imply some features of such a world: no tornados, no cancer, no carnivores, no death. But what about weather?
I think we can reasonably exclude extreme weather from that world. But what of climate, the term we increasingly use to describe the overall picture of things? Temperature? Humidity? We could extend our inquiries to geology, water tables, and much more. Most certainly a global flood created more immediate and noticeable changes than the Fall, but that is still a supposition on my part.
There is a curious passage in Genesis 8:21-22 that has some bearing on this topic, one that I think many Bible readers ignore:
And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.
In conjunction with God’s promise to never again curse the ground or wipe out creaturely life (as He did in the Flood) is a promise to provide regularity in the rhythms of the seasons.
I don’t think nearly enough theological reflection has been given to this passage. What does it imply for seasonality prior to the Flood, and potentially before the Fall? What does it imply for global warming, or its more recent expression, climate change? What could it mean for our ability to see seasonal rhythms as part of God’s providential ordering of creation, whether initially or in a post-diluvian context?
I have my own thoughts on this, though they remain largely tentative. But the safest assertion seems to be that just as seasonality is integral to sowing and reaping—which are themselves integral to agriculture and food production—so is seasonality somehow a good to be received with gratitude.
More Than the Thermostat
Part of why this claim seems implausible is because seasonal change is sometimes so sudden, drastic, and unpredictable. We can name a specific date as the first day of this or that season, but temperatures don’t immediately conform to our ideal picture of that particular season. Sometimes they are quite extreme. And sometimes seasonal changes are associated with other “natural occurrences” that are surely not part of God’s original intent (Think of “hurricane season”.)
Nevertheless, it seems that we must join Ecclesiastes in recognizing that in God’s good world there is a season for everything. (That’s true in both senses of the word!)
Accordingly, if gratitude is a spiritual fruit, then we need to practice the disciplines essential to producing that fruit. Such disciplines would, necessarily, mean giving thanks for whatever weather God sends our way—identifying the good in it, appreciating its unique beauty, and remembering that changing seasons point to a never-changing God.
“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” (Malachi 3:6)
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)
Follow-Up:
In Newsletter #84 I wrote about fertility. Pro-natalist ideas come in many different shapes and sizes, but they are often most controversial when they lead to discussions of contraception. An old peer and ethicist, Matthew Lee Anderson, appeared on a podcast last year and discussed the matter at length. He offers much food for thought, even if you disagree with his concerns, cautions, and conclusions.
What I’m Reading (or Rereading):
Matthew Barrett, The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Jim Davis and Michael Graham, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why They Are Going, and What Will it Take to Bring Them Back?
Quote of the Week:
It is characteristic of the spirited man that he takes an expansive view of the boundary of his own stuff—he tends to act as though any material things he uses are in some sense properly his, while he is using them—and when he finds himself in public spaces that seem contrived to break the connection between his will and his environment, as though he had no hands, this brings out a certain hostility in him. Consider the angry feeling that bubbles up in this person when, in a public bathroom, he finds himself waving his hands under the faucet, trying to elicit a few seconds of water from it in a futile rain dance of guessed-at mudras. This man would like to know: Why should there not be a handle? Instead he is asked to supplicate invisible powers.
It’s true, some people fail to turn off a manual faucet. With its blanket presumption of irresponsibility, the infrared faucet doesn’t merely respond to this fact, it installs it, giving it the status of normalcy. There is a kind of infantilization at work, and it offends the spirited personality.
Matthew Crawford, “Spiritedness and self-reliance.”
Common Grace Wisdom (CGW): On Speaking Clearly about Democracy
“Saving democracy” has been a common journalistic and political trope for eons. Yet it is increasingly odd and frustrating when it surfaces in the most unlikely settings, or is deployed in historically and philosophically incorrect ways.
Many thoughtful commentators have written lucidly on this point in recent years, including one of my favorite journalists, Jonah Goldberg. Here’s an excerpt from a recent article:
Democracy, at least for our purposes, really just speaks to how we choose political leaders. Liberalism—again, our conception of a free society—goes deeper and wider. No one freaks out over the fact that the New York Yankees deny the people on their payrolls the ability to vote on the starting line-up. But if the Yankees management put a player in a cage because he refused to bunt when instructed to, people would rightly get angry and lawyers would get paper moving. In other words, the authority of liberalism extends to places democracy does not.
Sometimes when people speak of democracy, they really mean liberalism (not to be confused with progressivism). Sometimes when people speak of democracy, they simply mean voting. Other times—perhaps much of the time—people simply mean outcomes they themselves would have chosen!
In short, we need more clarity and honesty about civics if we’re to speak about democracy and related concepts in a helpful way.
See Goldberg’s entire piece (if it’s not behind a paywall!): “Speaking Freely about Free Speech.”
Parting Shot
I heard someone comment last week that even Lenny Kravitz can make the name “Lenny” seem cool. It got me thinking about other less popular names. I’ve decided that “Harvey” has held up pretty well. Think of all the famous and/or important Harveys: Harvey Mansfield, Harvey Cox, Harvey Keitel, Harvie Conn, and my personal favorite, Harvey Specter. I suppose Harvey Weinstein is another story.