Speaking Natalie

On Fatherhood

2010-12-26T08:02:00.000-08:00

I woke this morning without waking. I was submerged, lost in the words of a book, and when I rose, I realized that my family slept beside me, and I was blessed.

The seasons of my life used to be marked by school-time. It was in time to the academic calendar that I lived and breathed, and in time to that calendar that God taught me and grew me. When school was ended I felt rootless - or more accurately, shallow-rooted - for I did not know how the seasons of my life would be marked anymore, or how I would be taught, and it seemed the voice of God grew cold. Now I think perhaps I see. I had previously thought I understood a certain initiation into the lonely world of men. If I try to put my finger on how I know this world exists, I can only point to fragments - a remembered image here, a trope there - but I believe it does. The world of men who every morning leave the things that really matter to spend the best part of their day apart from them, and when they return are too weary to love and drink those things as they should - the world of men who accept this as not only a worldly necessity but their duty - I believe this world exists. And I am part of it. I say men; perhaps I should say providers - but I do not know. I am still exploring these cold, harsh badlands of the soul.

And now ... perhaps a new age of my life begins as well, and with it new lessons to be taught, new parts of me to be coaxed out of dormancy and nurtured. Surely my father realized with a start some mornings that his wife and child slept beside him, and all was well. Surely my mother as well ... is it the same feeling, for women? I do not know. I am inclined to doubt it, though I suppose they must be similar. But I know that I experienced such a moment this morning and felt a kinship with all the men who had experienced it before me, running through my breast like a spike of metal that shot through time, pinning me, anchoring me, to another world of men.

They say that everything changes when you have a child. That is not how I would describe it, although I suppose it is literally true. I have been a father for sixteen days now, and thus far my actual child-rearing duties have consisted largely of soothing my daughter when she is upset and changing her diapers, and both of these feel as natural as breathing (though I will admit to a certain mystification at how my daughter's poop gets some of the places it does. I can understand a projectile rebounding in the confines of a diaper, but I am being forcibly disabused of my naive notion that a human butt can only point in one direction at a time). There is, oddly enough, no sense of change. The evidence is present in the reorganization of my priorities, but the reorganization feels so pervasive that I can already scarcely remember a time when it was not so.

No, it is not my daughter who occasions a sense that everything has changed. The sense of change - for there is a sense of change - is to Thayet's account, not our girl's.

Esther Selene once told me that before I could be a father I would have to learn to be a husband. I expect she meant it prosaically at the time, but I have been reminded of her words often, these past two weeks. You see, it is not when I am changing my daughter's diaper or holding her close to assure her that all is well with the world that I most feel like a father. It is when I can soothe her so that Thayet can sleep - when I feed Thayet because her hands are busy with the baby - when I can interpose myself between my wife and the world's desolation so that she can rally herself for our child.

I do not mean to suggest that taking care of our daughter is "women's work," or yet that Thayet does not interpose herself between me and the world's desolation. Of course her shield shadows me. She is my queen, my wife, my riduur, bal mhi juri kando an a tome. It cannot be otherwise. And yet ... to shelter Thayet in this way, to create space for her to be who she is meant to be ... that is when I feel most like a father. This is not news, of course. My own father told me once that this was how he understood Biblical headship, and I understood it at the time. But I understand it again, and differently. To pour out one's self so that one's beloved can be about it may not be "men's work," but it is certainly - at least - a man's work. As it was, and is, the Lord's work.

It is not a work that I perform all the time, of course, nor yet perfectly. But I think I understand what it is. Like a redowa, the strings of my soul thrum when I get it right. Like a redowa, it leaves me wanting more. Unlike a redowa, it makes my soulstrings sound with joy, not delight.

I have it on good authority that I am besotted with my little girl. This is undoubtedly true, but it describes a whole galaxy of things that are happening in my heart. One of them is the joy of discovering a new person. Another is the joy of discovering my daughter. And another is wonder at the ways of the Lord, for shining enough light that I can better see the structure of my life, and its path more clearly. This is the work I was made for. This undergirds the things I do, and even my profession, like worship undergirds dance. My family sleeps, and all is well.

On the Constitution

2010-08-28T13:21:00.001-07:00

I've been trying to find the time to post some thoughts about Perry v. Schwarzenegger (the Prop. 8 case), but I'm not quite there yet. In the meantime, though, I had a thought today about the constitution and the Founding Fathers.

There is a fashion today current among certain people to revere the opinions of the Founding Fathers that bothers me. It bothers me for two reasons. One is that these people rarely seem to revere the opinions of the Founding Fathers, but rather the opinions of some combination of Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin. This confuses me. Do we consider Madison to be wiser than Morris? Baldwin? Pinckney? On what basis do we prefer the opinions of Jefferson to those of Hamilton? The whole thing smacks of shoddy thinking.

The second is that I do not see why we should revere the opinions of the Founding Fathers, jointly or severally, at all. Of course, one may choose one's personal heroes as one will, but that is a different matter. The fact that I revere the fictional opinion of Honor Harrington does not mean I am saddened when I perceive that my nation does not follow suit. Yet there are those of my countrymen who revere the opinion of (for instance) Madison, who seem saddened when they perceive that our nation does not follow suit. This seems incredible to me. How can this be?

I wonder if such people can see no reason to revere the Constitution without elevating the opinions of the authors of that document above those of the common man. Perhaps they ask themselves, "Why should we care a whit what this document says? Is it not two centuries old? Did we sign it? Did our ancestors sign it?"

In law, this is known as the Dead Hand Problem - on what basis can a constitution bind subsequent generations, who after all did not sign it and had no opportunity to debate it when it was being drafted? Perhaps these countrymen of mine can think of no answer to the Dead Hand Problem other than to suppose that the authors of the constitution must have been uncommonly wise, and their opinions uncommonly worthy of consideration.

That is not my opinion. I do not even know how to form an opinion on the wisdom of the Founders individually; I do not think we have sufficient evidence for far too many of them. That strikes me as a thoroughly inadequate answer to the Dead Hand Problem. I will tell you my answer, though - it is that neither I, nor any other American, has emigrated.

Plato articulates my answer in the Crito. In it, Socrates is in jail, awaiting the appointed hour of his execution. His wealthy students and foreign admirers have pooled their considerable resources and are prepared to break him out of jail, spirit him away to a foreign nation, and conduct a propaganda campaign in his native Athens to rehabilitate his image and convince those who doubt that his conviction was unjust to begin with. Everything is prepared. But what, Socrates asks, would the laws (nomoi, constitution) of Athens say to such a scheme?

He imagines their answer would go something like this:

“Observe then, Socrates,” perhaps the laws would say, “that if what we say is true, what you are now undertaking to do to us is not right. For we brought you into the world, nurtured you, and gave a share of all the good things we could to you and all the citizens. Yet we proclaim, by having offered the opportunity to any of the Athenians who wishes to avail himself of it, that anyone who is not pleased with us when he has become a man and has seen the administration of the city and us, the laws, may take his goods and go away wherever he likes. And none of us stands in the way or forbids any of you to take his goods and go away wherever he pleases, if we and the state do not please him, whether it be to an Athenian colony or to a foreign country where he will live as an alien. But we say that whoever of you stays here, seeing how we administer justice and how we govern the state in other respects, has thereby entered into an agreement with us to do what we command; and we say that he who does not obey does threefold wrong, because he disobeys us who are his parents, because he disobeys us who nurtured him, and because after agreeing to obey us he neither obeys us nor convinces us that we are wrong, though we give him the opportunity and do not roughly order him to do what we command, but when we allow him a choice of two things, either to convince us of error or to do our bidding, he does neither of these things.”

That's my answer to the Dead Hand Problem. Forget the Founding Fathers.

The Bible as Historical Artifact

2010-05-16T00:53:00.000-07:00

This post has been bouncing around in my head for a while, and I think it's about time I finally wrote it. I mention this in case this post should seem to be speaking to any particular situation, to make it clear that it isn't. It's just something I've been thinking about. What I've been thinking about is what I believe about the Bible.

Every now and then, one hears somebody proclaim that the Bible was written by men, or otherwise allude to its status as a historical artifact. Sometimes this is done in a manner that indicates the hearer should be surprised or shocked by the assertion. I suppose it probably is shocking to some (more's the pity), but to me, treating the Bible like a historical artifact is where Christianity should start.

For one thing, whatever else the Bible may be (and of course, to the religious mindset - any religious mindset - the question is not whether it was written by men, which it obviously was, but whether it was also written by God), it is manifestly a historical artifact, and it can only be proper to treat it as what it is. Yes, it may be other things, but everybody can agree that it's a historical artifact, which makes an analysis of it as a historical artifact a more reasonable place to start than most.

This may all sound terribly secular, but I think religion deserves no special exemption from plain old intellectual honesty. It does not fly in my world to hold religious beliefs simply because. "Faith" is not an answer here; one is entitled to know why one has faith in a particular thing just as much as one is entitled to know why one trusts a particular person (trust and faith being, at least in Christian usage, synonymous). Of course, one may trust someone or have faith in a particular proposition for no good reason, and one is certainly entitled to mentally behave in that manner, but I find that immensely unsatisfying. I want to have a foundation for my religious beliefs that is outside my own head for the same reason I want to have that sort of foundation for my historical beliefs. It would be all well and good for me to believe that this country was founded on Christian principles, for instance, and I might derive much utility from that belief - but honesty would compel me to ask (and, I think, entitles others to ask) why I thought that was true. And if the weight of the historical evidence was against that proposition (which, not that it matters, I think it is), what good would it do me to bleat, "But that's what I believe?"

This is the way I want to treat my religion. One often hears people discuss what Jesus was like, or not like, or hears people saying that Jesus would do this, or believe that, and so on. The obvious question to ask in those sorts of situations - one that gets asked far too infrequently - is, "How do you know?"

"Jesus" is not some kind of cultural ideal to which one can ascribe whatever meaning one wishes. He was a man, like any other man, and we know about him like we know about any other man - through the historical sources that describe him. As it happens, pretty much every historical source of any worth still extant describing this particular man is in the Bible - but we needn't be spooked by that; the Bible is, after all, just a historical artifact. Beliefs about Jesus have to start - and in my opinion, ought to end - with the evidence we have about him. I cannot say, "Jesus is in everybody's heart" any more than I can say, "Jesus' favorite food was salted olives." Both might be true, but the real question is whether the available evidence supports either assertion.

Looking at the available evidence, Jesus strikes me, for the most part, as an unremarkable historical figure. People often say that they admire Jesus. To be perfectly honest, I kind of don't. What records we have of his moral teaching are fairly bland, in my opinion - the sort of thing that more or less anybody could get behind, except for the parts that I find repugnant. Be honest: which do you find the manlier creed, to love one's friends and love one's enemies, or to love one's friends and hate one's enemies? I'll take the second, thank you very much - I distinguish between my enemies and my friends for a reason, after all. When it comes to fights, I really don't like the advice Jesus has to offer. I'll tell you how I think fights should be approached: "It's making up your mind going in that you're not just gonna try to defend yourself. It's deciding right now, ahead of time, that you're gonna kill the motherfucker if that's what it takes" (Honor Among Enemies 291, ch. 22). In my opinion, that's how all fights should be approached, literal and metaphorical both. Especially metaphorical. Fight for what's right. Beat your circumstances. What's reasonable, what's workable, what's realistic - none of that should matter compared to what's good. Honestly, when does Jesus ever preach that?

Let me stop here and make something clear. My point is not that I don't care what Jesus said. As you know, I do care. I care so much that I believe in loving my enemies even though I think it's a stupid basis for a morality. The question I'm driving at is why.

Me, I don't find Jesus' teaching to be that striking. Nor do I find his life particularly exceptional. It's not as if his teaching led to any particularly great success. A fair number of people were attracted to him, to be sure, but so what? Plenty of people in history have been more popular than Jesus was. Now of course, perhaps somebody else would find Jesus' teaching to be especially resonant, or find something especially inspiring in the life of a self-proclaimed rabbi and miracle worker who got caught up in Jewish-Roman politics and was executed because his teaching was twisted and he either couldn't or didn't care to set the record straight. But that's not me, and I wonder how many of the people who say they admire Jesus would say that if he were somebody they'd never heard of and met for the first time when some professor assigned a bunch of extant letters and pamphlet-length "books" as required reading.

But here's the thing - said extant letters and pamphlets aren't much concerned with Jesus' character or his teaching, at least not to my eye. The historical record doesn't present Jesus as presenting himself as a great teacher or moral exemplar. Sure, he appropriated the title of rabbi (which is actually more than a little dodgy - the cultural equivalent of declaring oneself a PhD without having been awarded the title by a properly accredited university upon the acclamation of other PhDs), but he didn't present himself as a particularly exceptional one. He never claimed to be a better rabbi than all the other rabbis (or if he did, we have no record of it). He never claimed to be a better person than other people, or that people should follow his example. And his contemporaries do not seem to have gone on and on about his teaching, or what a great and blameless man he was. What they went on and on about - and what Jesus himself couldn't seem to shut up about, at least so far as our records allow us to know - was his identity as the Son of God, and his death and resurrection. That is what the primary sources are obsessed with.

Now of course, one needn't be obsessed with what one's sources are obsessed with. When it comes to historical artifacts, any and all angles are fair game. It simply happens to be that in this particular case I find Jesus' life, character, and teachings to be uninteresting in themselves. But I do find it interesting that the sources themselves are comparatively uninterested in these things, and quite obsessed with something else. And I start to find Jesus' life, character, and teachings to be quite interesting if the claims about his identity and the death and resurrection are true. It is at that point, and that point only, that I start to care what Jesus thought - at that point, and that point only, that I feel I have reason to choose what Jesus thought when it conflicts with what I thought. If Jesus is not the only begotten son of the Father, I really don't care what he thought or what he was like or even what he did. I'll take Alanna the Lioness, Keladry of Mindelan, Cimorene, and Honor Harrington over Jesus the Mere Historical Figure any day of the week, thank you kindly. Heck, I'll take Xenophon over Jesus the Mere Historical Figure. I'll take Athena the Steel-Eyed Goddess over Jesus the Mere Historical Figure. The list goes on.

So I come to the question of whether I think the sources' claims about Jesus are true. How am I to decide? I could decide that there is no way to know, except that I really don't think that's true. I could wave the "faith" flag and say that I just believe it, and ask people not to judge my beliefs, because I'm entitled to believe whatever I want, and my beliefs are just as valid as anybody else's. But that would feel like an act of huge intellectual dishonesty. I could turn to the scientific method, except that I wouldn't, because I happen to know the first thing about the scientific method and I would no more choose science to answer this question than I would choose science to answer the question of where I was born. I could choose philosophy, which feels like a less ridiculous approach than the previous two, except that I am not well trained in philosophy (and - perhaps because of my lack of education in the subject - philosophy does not really feel like the best tool in this case). History, though, is a discipline I do feel reasonably expert at (and - perhaps because of my education in the subject - this feels like an essentially historical question). And historically speaking, I feel like it is at least more likely than not that what the sources are so obsessed about really happened. From there, I start to care about what Jesus said, did, and believed. From there, my entire religion is constructed.

So ... yes, I think that the Bible is a historical artifact, written by men. I probably wouldn't care about it if I thought otherwise.

Easter and the Winnable Life

2010-03-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

I went to church today for the first time in over a year, and found out when I got there it was Palm Sunday. Now, since I knew that next Sunday was Easter, you might think it would be obvious that today is Palm Sunday. But I've never had much of a head for calendars, let alone liturgical ones, and ... well, really, it's been a long time. But since we're here, and since God hasn't stopped speaking just because I've been away from church for a long time, I thought it might be an opportune time to post about what Easter means to me.

Once upon a time I was joyful pretty much all the time, and happy most of the time, and delighted frequently. None of those three statements has been presently true of my life for a long time. Well, that's not true - I might be happy at least 51% of the time. I'm not sure. But the point is, the emotional tenor of my life has been comparatively gloomy for a while. There is no time for games, because I barely have enough time for art. There is no time for art, because I barely have enough time for friends. There is no time for friends, because I barely have enough time for family. There is no time for family, because I barely have enough time for Thayet (who is family, of course, but you know what I mean). There is no time for Thayet, because I have to work or I'll get fired and I can't get fired because we need to pay off my loans and this is the only way I know how to do that and I try so hard to provide for my family but it doesn't matter because there's always work work work and it never goes away no matter how hard I work or how much sleep I give up and it's never going to get any better and I'm stuck here so I might as well give up but I can't give up because I have a wife and I want to be a dad but there's always work work work and it never goes away no matter what I do.

Or that's what it feels like, anyway. That's what I spend every day telling to shut up shut up shut up that's not true.

Oh yeah, and where's Jesus in that litany of things I don't have time for? Well, he isn't really anywhere, which of course is the point, which brings me to Easter.

Okay, I lied. First, a digression. This - the emotional tenor of my life - is not anybody's fault. There is no action, or failure to act, that is responsible for this. I have a wife and friends and family who love me, actively love me. This is not about me not being loved. This is about facts. Which actually brings me to Easter.

I believe in religions of facts. My religion is a series of descriptive statements that purport to describe facts that are true about the world (I'm about 90% certain that that's what a religion is, but that's a post for another day). The sense in which "belief" enters into my religion is only the sense in which facts must be believed to be of use. Something may be a fact, but if somebody does not believe it to be a fact, it will do them no good.

To give a quick example, it is a fact that Xenophon the Athenian led a small assault force of Greeks in a successful race to secure an obscure hill before a small assault force of Achaemenid soldiers could do the same. You probably didn't know that anybody claimed this as a factual statement. Assuming you didn't know that anybody claimed it, you surely had no beliefs one way or the other about its veracity. If you had no beliefs about its veracity, then I think it is safe to assume that this fact did not benefit you in any way, despite the fact that it is true. I did know that people claimed it as a factual statement, I am of the belief that it is a true factual statement (it is, if you will, what is commonly called a "fact"), and I derive great encouragement from it.

That is a trivial example. Let me give a more significant one, which touches on why I have not been joyful for some time. I used to believe that what I was supposed to be doing (that is, what God had told me I was supposed to be doing) was fully compatible with living a fulfilling human life. Another way of stating that belief would be that I believed it was possible to succeed simultaneously in everything that God had told me to do at any given time. I say believe, but do not get hung up on that word just because we are now talking about spiritual beliefs. I believed it as a fact about the world. I believed it for the same sorts of reasons, and in the same sort of way, that I believe Xenophon led those Greeks up that forgotten hill.

Which means I was aware of evidence to the contrary. And that not everybody who was aware of the so-called "fact" believed it to be a fact. And that some people had never thought one way or another about whether it was a fact at all. And still, bending all of my will and intellect and education to bear on the question, believed it to be a fact. And this was of enormous, life-changing comfort to me. If I can put it this way without trivializing it, it made life a game in the very best sense. One doesn't give up in a game because no matter how hard things get, and no matter how grand or impossible or epic one's task, one has a fundamental faith that success is possible. Games can be won - not because they're games, but because they are designed to be winnable by people who knew what they were doing when they made the [game] world. If you have never believed this to be a fact about the real world, I assure you, it is profoundly liberating.

And then ... well, things changed. I became unsure that this was really a true fact about the world. If you have never thought it a fact that the world is "winnable," then perhaps this will not strike you as any great thing. But facts have consequences. Some consequences are emotional. As you might imagine (or maybe you can't; I don't know), the emotional contrast between a world which is definitely winnable and a world which is not is ... immense.

Some consequences are implications - facts don't exist in a vacuum, after all. You might call an unwinnable world my version of the problem of evil. If I can't succeed at the tasks God has put before me, why should I even try? So that I can fail less spectacularly than if I had not tried? There's something to that, but it's not the sort of thing that motivates a man. One begins to ask of command, "Why am I even here? Why did you put me here to die with no way out? What is wrong with you? I thought you loved me!" Except that command is also one's greatly beloved, and one can't bear to ask those questions. So one just stops talking. And that kills one from the inside just as surely as an unwinnable world kills one from the outside. This is what the death of faith looks like.

What does Easter have to do with all of this? Easter - the not-permanent voluntary sacrificial death of one of the persons of God - is the point at which God stepped into an unwinnable world and made it winnable. (( Side note the first: perhaps in another post I can share some thoughts as to why I think it means that; for now, suffice it to say that I think that it does. )) Remember that I am speaking of facts about the world. Though it may seem strange to you, I believe (and I think this is a true statement of Christian belief, though I'm sure not all of my coreligionists would put it this way) that once upon a time it really was true about the universe that there were really only two choices - to fail at the life God had made for one, or for God not to make a life at all. (( Side note the second: do I believe that the mercy of God extended even to that sort of situation? Yes - but that, too, is a post for another time. ))

Easter is the point at which God bulldozed a third option into the fabric of existence: for God to make a life for one that one could live. A life that was winnable.

Easter means that life is winnable. Easter means that I can have art. Easter means that I can have games. Easter means that I can have friends, and family, and be a good husband, and be a good father, and be a good lawyer, all at the same time, because that is the life that God has made for me. (( Side note the third: this is not to say that I can have whatever life I want; that's silly. It is to say that the life God has made for me can be lived to the full. Depending on what one thinks of that life, this may or may not be a comforting thought. For me, it is comforting. ))

How? Well, I confess, I don't know. But Easter means that it can be done, that the answer is out there even if I don't know what it looks like, that life is winnable. From this it follows that if Easter is a fact - if there really was a not-permanent voluntary sacrificial death of one of the persons of God - then it cannot be true that life is unwinnable.

So here is the question for me: do I believe that Easter is a fact? Here is the answer: yes, I do. Nothing that has transpired in the last six years has caused me to doubt the veracity of the central fact of Easter.

Facts are true or not true whether or not we believe them. But believing them does have consequences. I'm a gamer. I know what to do with problems that are definitely winnable, even if they're really hard and I fail at them over and over and over again. I remember the words of Xenophon the Athenian:

"Now for it, boys, and remember that this race is for home! Now or never, to see your children again, to see your wives - one small effort, and the rest of the march we shall pursue in peace, with never a blow to strike; now for it!"

Tactical

2009-05-11T15:04:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I had a conversation with my dad about my Warhammer 40,000 army. It was a thought-provoking experience. Now, Dad is the person who taught me everything I know about wargaming, and my oldest playmate, so it was a lot of fun to talk with him about the use of my orks on the battlefield. But what was thought-provoking was the fact that we could have the conversation at all.

You see, Dad doesn't play 40K.

He doesn't know the rules, either. Has barely ever even asked about them. This is the thought that our conversation provoked: what is the quality of the game that allows Dad and I to have an intelligent conversation about it when only one of us has made a study of the rules?

My answer is this: 40K is a tactical game.

"Tactical" is a buzzword when discussing games, particularly nerdy games that depict violence. "Tactical" the buzzword often means nothing more than "has choices associated with it." I don't find this to be a very helpful definition, since all games present the player with choices to make, so this definition usually ends up focusing on what the speaker things are the important choices. Compare Dawn of War 2 to StarCraft. Both are real-time strategy computer games. In the latter, one of the high-level choices players must make as they play the game is how much of their time and energy to devote to the holy triangle of engaging the opponent's forces in battle (offense), building their own forces (economy), and defending their means of production from the opponent (defense). By and large each of these three tasks is independent from the others, and finding the right balance among the three is one of the most important challenges of the game. Dawn of War 2 does not have this triad of decisions (a triad which has become one of the hallmarks of RTS games), focusing instead on decisions such as when to preserve and when to sacrifice troops, and which territory must be taken and which can be ignored (or abandoned). Because Dawn of War 2 does not present the player with the offense-economy-defense triad of choices, it might be (and has been) criticized as "not tactical."

The U.S. Army Field Manual, wikipedia helpfully informs me, defines tactics as "The employment of units in combat. It includes the ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other, the terrain, and the enemy in order to translate potential combat power into victorious battles and engagements." With this as our understanding of "tactics," then, I propose the following definition of a tactical game: A game is tactical to the extent that it admits of analogies between tactics that can successfully be used within the context of the game and tactics that have been or are successfully used by real-world combatants.

One of the obvious implications of this definition is that you can learn about the tactics of a tactical game by learning about the tactics of its real-world analogue(s). In fact, if that analogue is a popular one, by learning about it, you might be learning about multiple tactical games at once, before you even know what they are. One of the less obvious implications is that learning about real-world analogues always teaches you at least something about all tactical games, because all successful real-world tactics have certain things in common. This is the quality that 40K has that allowed Dad and I to discuss the game even though Dad knows nothing about "the game" in the sense of sequence of play, how to read a unit's statline, etc.

You might think that a "tactical" game in this sense is boring, because you can learn about the game without actually playing the game. To some extent this is true; a large part of the appeal of a tactical game is in attempting to put one's tactical ideas into practice - the fun is in the application of knowledge to form a plan and execute it, not in gaining the knowledge in the first place.

In a sci-fi context, though, there actually is an element of discovery, because things don't necessarily look like what they are. For instance, consider my orks. Although they are large and green and armed with automatic weapons, they are essentially Napoleonic infantry. They function to best effect when deployed in contiguous battle lines with mutual support. The advance of orky infantry is dependent in large part upon coordinating simultaneous impact with the enemy, in picking a time and place to advance that neither leaves one exposed for too long nor unduly disrupts the formation, and in prosecuting the attack once begun with resolution. All things that would have been familiar to a commander of infantry in the early nineteenth century, I imagine.

Similarly, my ork warbikes function essentially as cavalry - they are highly mobile, but lack staying power, and flounder against a bold defense by infantry unless they have near numerical parity. Warbikes are not to be thrown against the front of an enemy formation unless they have every advantage, and sometimes not even then. And yet my warbike-mounted nobz (bigger, nastier orks on warbikes) function not as cavalry but more like a tank - unlike cavalry, they combine high mobility with high durability and high combat power. Regular warbikers go where the enemy is not. Nob bikers can force the enemy to be where they are not.

Part of the fun here is just the incongruity between what a unit looks like and what it is. Green-skinned aliens on motorcycles don't necessarily look like Frenchmen on horses, but they function the same way. It's not obvious that if you just increase the size of the greenskin he and his motorcycle buddies morph into a single armored fighting vehicle, but there you go. But another part of the fun is in figuring out why a unit is what it is. Nob bikers are "tanks" because they have the speed, durability, and combat power to muscle the enemy aside. But they aren't actually a single tank; they're multiple big orks on Harleys. The mechanism is different but the result is the same, so the two units can be employed in the same way.

The relationship is a little more complex than that, of course; nob bikers aren't tank-like in every respect (they lack the ability to project combat power at a distance, for instance), but if you patch together enough analogies from real-world tactics you can come up with a sound doctrine for their use. Figuring out the proper patchwork of analogies is part of the discovery fun, and then you get the fun of applying that patchwork to devise and execute a plan.

Not every game admits of this kind of analogizing. Many first-person shooters, for instance, bear no resemblance to any real-world tactics. The only way to learn about the tactics of Quake is, well, to play Quake, or other games in the "twitch shooter" genre. No amount of clever analogies will change that, and all the knowledge in the world about close-quarters battle will be of basically zero use. The only way to learn about the tactics of Final Fantasy Tactics is to play that game, or other such "tactics" games. No analogies can be drawn to real world combat of any time period. These games offer lots of interesting choices and skills to master, but they aren't "tactical."

Let's Go Shopping

2009-04-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

But all love was troubled and made cold, and Maleldil's voice became hard to hear so that wisdom grew little among them. - C.S. Lewis, in Perelandra

I heard a story once, in law school. I don't know if it's true or not. The story goes that a transactional lawyer much like myself was once at a presentation being given by another lawyer who did public interest work. After the presentation the transactional lawyer, much impressed, caught the presenter and expressed his sincere admiration for the cause he had just heard about, and the work that the presenter was doing. "Why don't you join us?" asked the presenter. "We could always use more attorneys on staff."

Feeling a little guilty, the transactional lawyer declined. "The work I'm doing here is important too," he said.

To his surprise, the presenter agreed. "Yes," he said. "The world needs people that do what you do. But if it ever feels less than heroic, give me a call."

For most of my life I have been - overall - quite content with where I was, and what I was doing. It was enough to keep my eyes on the present, because I was sure that what I was doing now was what God needed me to do, and that he would lead me in due time to what I needed to do in the future. I wasn't caught on the academic treadmill like some. I was fortunate in that I really did like school, but I never felt any pressure to take certain classes or to go to certain schools or even to perform well, except that I wanted to kick ass academically because I knew that I could. Gifts want to be used.

I was also fortunate in that most of my thinking spiritual life was conveniently broken up into bite-sized chunks. More or less the seasons of my spiritual life coincided with the major school changes - middle school, high school, undergrad. I just knew, without perhaps thinking it through very critically, that my life would change at those junctures, and roughly speaking they did. This being my conviction and my experience, it was difficult to feel too adrift. Whatever was going on now was what I needed to be doing now, and now was very probably going to end at or about the next graduation, which was never more than four years away.

I wrote home once that being at Stanford was like being on vacation all the time. From this point of retrospect, my entire life prior to graduation seems that way.

And then came law school, which was the next thing that I knew God needed me to do.
For the first time school was hard, intellectually and morally (not that there weren't intellectually hard things at Stanford, but I didn't feel called to chemistry, thank God, and my classics studies weren't hard - they merely required lots of effort). And not only were things hard, but for the first time, I wasn't sure I could do it. At all.

Something broke inside me during law school that still hasn't been put together. The confidence that I could do anything - maybe not easily, but that I could do it - was shattered. Not obliterated. But fractured. Unwhole. Something else was shattered at the same time: the sense that God was with me.

Please note that I said the sense. The great rhetra upon which Charismatics learn to rely grew hard to hear, and wisdom has perhaps grown little with me of late. And so I am left going to work many days, like today, feeling decidedly unheroic, wondering what it's all for, and not really convinced, deep down, that I can kick this job's ass if I really have to.

Mornings (and afternoons) like that are bleak, especially because I still feel like I'm where I need to be and doing what I need to do. My moral North Star feels like it's grown dimmer, but I'm still sure where it is.

So what's a guy to do?

A lot of things that Charismatics learn to rely on are like sex - they're great, and I think it's stupid to build a relationship without them, but it's equally stupid to build a relationship upon them. So it is with the voice of God. So it's hard to hear these days, is it? Well, what of it? What does that change?

It changes how brave I feel. It changes how safe I feel. But does it change what I know? What I trust?

Depends upon what my trust is founded. If my trust is founded upon the subjective religious experience of hearing the voice of God, then I am a) screwed and b) a great fool. But my trust is not founded upon that; it is founded upon Scripture, and buttressed by experience. And Scripture tells me that while God may speak to me, he won't necessarily - and it suggests that if I find him hard to hear, the problem is more likely on my end than his. Very well, there's plenty about my spiritual life that could be better. Very well, this sucks. Doesn't change what I know. What I trust.

So I don't always feel like I can do it, do I? Well, why did I feel that way before? If it was because I was a cocky smartass, well, losing that isn't a bad thing. If it was because I knew that what I had to do is something God has called me to do, or that my success - indeed, my very competence - rested on him more than me, well, that puts a different spin on the need to front up and get on with it.

So I don't feel heroic, do I? Well, who does? I don't actually think that heroism ever really feels heroic. Heroism is, as I know perfectly well, usually just getting on with the job in the face of what seem like very good reasons not to.

This isn't to say that there aren't things in me that truly are broken, and need to be fixed. And I do miss the old certainty that all was well because, if we had to, God and I could kick the ass of anything that came our way. But in the meantime, I need to focus on what I know.

Beyond Grace

2009-02-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

I had a recent conversation with Marion that brought me back to the subject of Bioshock. Bioshock wins my award for Best Use of Violence in a Long, Long Time. The game's hype touted its "moral choice" system, but what that really boiled down to was whether you killed mutated little girls to increase your power now, or cured them of their horrible condition in order to increase your power later. It was viscerally effective - when you had the little girls in your hands they were so little girl-like you really felt awful about killing them, which is the real reason I never did - but it was trying way too hard. And the fact that you were rewarded for saving the little girls turned the whole thing into a simple economic transaction.

But Bioshock did and does make me think about moral choices all the same. Let me sketch a bit of background first for those who haven't played the game. Yes, spoilers follow. In Bioshock, the player finds himself in a nightmare underwater art-deco city called Rapture, founded by a visionary man named Andrew Ryan with a chip on his shoulder and one too many copies of Atlas Shrugged in his library. Naturally, this Objectivist paradise is overrun in fairly short order by a gifted thug named Frank Fontaine, whose criminal empire ruins the society. Fontaine spends most of the game playing the player for a fool by posing as "Atlas," a revolutionary figure who still struggles to overthrow Ryan's hypocritical tyranny. "Atlas'" wife and daughter are trapped in the hellish underbelly of the city, which is overrun by crazed mutagen-addicts, and he implores the player's aid to save them.

That will do for set-up. It's important to understand, though, that the aforesaid crazed mutagen-addicts (called "splicers" in the game) have some memory of their former selves, and like all drug addicts, are essentially pathetic. The player is forced to kill a good many of them, but none of them want to die, and are still human enough to feel pain and have desires other than killing the player. They cry over lost babies, have loving relationships, and on more than one occasion I felt that in their dying moments (e.g., as they were running around like human torches because I had immolated them) they regretted what they had become. One of these splicers is a boss-type character named Sander Cohen, who believes himself to be a great artist (and probably once was). Cohen is also a really nasty guy, who chains piano players to pianos to "audition" for him by playing one of his masterpieces and blowing them up when they fail to live up to his standards, creates statues out of people by covering them in plaster, that sort of thing. Yet the player must traverse his part of Rapture in order to reach Atlas' poor wife and son. By the end of it you've been forced to do Cohen's dirty work by killing several other splicers who hate Cohen for what he has done to them and their families, and Cohen at last reveals himself to congratulate you and wish you on your way.

So there I stood, with the monster at last before me, a not-inconsiderable arsenal of mutagen-granted powers, and a very powerful gun in my hand. I seriously considered blowing his head off. I had no reason not to; he had given me everything I needed to get past his locked doors. I even suspected he had a key on him I could use to gain some valuable loot. But I didn't. Why did I want to kill him? Because he was a terrible person. Well, so what? Does being a terrible person justify your execution? Cohen was indeed a monster, but was he beyond forgiveness? He was, at heart, like all the other splicers - doing terrible things in his drug-addled thirst for the things humans value most - love, family, art. I stayed my hand and moved on. But the entire Cohen sequence was enormously creepy, not least because I was killing people I had no desire to kill, and no clear reason to kill other than that they were in my way and attacking the intruder in their midst (me). Despite the fact that Cohen was the most morally despicable person in his private nightmare realm, and very nearly the only person I had not killed, it was almost a relief to let him live.

Contrast this with another situation, later on in the game, when it became clear that Atlas was Frank Fontaine, and I had been his cat's paw all along. Fontaine is, as you might guess, the ultimate villain of the piece, and the final act of the game is dedicated to hunting and putting him down. Yes, he has a megalomaniacal scheme to mutate himself into some kind of ubermensch, and for the sake of the few sane people in Rapture one might feel an obligation to stop him. But the truth is that I wanted to kill him because he had been using me, and in some twisted game logic that was an unforgivable sin.

I've experienced this sort of state before, as Danielle Meroit and as Monica Corvallyn. A few other games have had hints of it. It's like grace, but in reverse. If grace is unmerited favor, this is a state in which favor is unmeritable. Where a person (in this case, Fontaine) is beyond redemption, a stain on existence that cannot be blotted out by repentance, good works, or mitigating circumstances. Only death will do, the more callous and brutal the better.

Was Fontaine's wrong any greater than Cohen's? Not clearly. He was a manipulative, megalomaniacal bastard, to be sure, but he wasn't a sadistic artiste. His was a common, almost bureaucratic sort of evil - the cold pursuit of self-aggrandizement. Cohen's was darker, more sinister. But I skulked about Cohen's lair, scared and ashamed, and for all his horrors I was proud to let him live. There was something cleansing about it. Fontaine I pursued like an angel nemesis, and woe betide anyone foolish enough to try to protect him. The horrors of Rapture were expunged in that state of mind. Fontaine was not even a man any more. He was only a thing to be killed, the object of my clear, brutal certainty that his death was Something That Must Be Done.

I find this state of mind fascinating, because it is in my opinion the most horrific of all states that the human mind can get into. I think it strikes me this way because it really is the opposite of grace, and grace is the great trademark of the mind of God. Forgiveness is always an option, because in the final analysis forgiveness is never fully warranted. It cannot be fully warranted. No action will take back a wrong. We can paper over the wound, but what was done cannot be undone, and so restitution can never truly make a person whole. When forgiveness is taken off the table, whether we realize it or not we are saying that we refuse to forgive them. When we do that, we cut ourselves off from recognizing the very nature of forgiveness itself, and isolate ourselves against the very heart of God.

On Homosexuality

2008-12-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

Previously, I mentioned that I had a rant reserved for people who think that the Bible expresses any views about homosexuality, or homosexuals, or "being" homosexual, but that I would skip over that part. Recently, somebody asked if I would elaborate.

I wish that this wasn't a sensitive topic, but I've found that people have an unfortunate inability to discuss theology academically. So if this is a sensitive topic for you, I suggest you just stop reading now. Alternatively, if academic discussions of theology are boring or offensive to you, I likewise suggest that you just stop reading now.

The commenter I refer to asked a couple of questions, which I would group as follows:

1. What is my aforementioned rant?
2. What combination of genetic and environmental factors do I think shapes sexual orientation?
3. Do I agree with research showing that orientation can be changed?
4. Do I think the above has any bearing on a theological understanding of homosexuality?

Most of these questions I am not going to address here in any detail. To briefly dispose of those:

2. I am not a biologist, let alone a biologist with a specialization that bears on the development of sexual orientation. I do know that Robert Sapolsky, who meets at least some of those requirements, took only one class to convince me that "genetic vs. environmental" is not a useful opposition. I consider it common sense that sexual orientation is shaped by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, and I consider myself spectacularly unqualified to hold an opinion beyond that.

3. I don't agree with that research for the two simple reasons that a) I have not seen any, and b) I do not have the intellectual equipment to evaluate it critically even if somebody did show it to me. To give an example I'm somewhat more qualified to discuss, if I showed somebody the work of William Tarn on Alexander the Great, and told them (truthfully) that Tarn was one of the great classicists of the 20th century, they might come to the conclusion that Alexander the Great was one of humanity's great heroes. They would probably have little to no knowledge of subsequent work on Alexander that has severely criticized Tarn's vision as idealistic and even naive. In a similar way, showing me research concluding that orientation can be changed, even if done in a reputable way by a reputable research team, would be insufficient. I do not begin to have either the breadth or depth of education to critically evaluate conversion therapy research, and therefore I decline to have an opinion about it.

4. I think that knowledge about the world "bears on" the theological understanding of anything, so yes. But I don't really think there is much of a theological understanding of homosexuality, specifically.

Which brings me to 1: what is my rant?

EDIT: Thayet points out that I never actually summarize my conclusions, which makes this post a pain to read. So here's the summary:

I don't think the Bible says anything about homosexuality or homosexual orientation. This is no surprise; the concept of homosexuality as a fact of a person's identity was simply not an ancient concept, so we should not expect to find anything about it in ancient works. About half of the texts historically used to support a supposed Biblical ban on homosexuality do not even apply to Christian morality. The most I think you can get from the passages that do apply to Christian morality is a disapproval of homosexual sex. This is how I read those passages, but I recognize that that isn't the only plausible way to read them.

So, there's the summary. Here's what underlies it:

Any time a person says that "the Bible says" something, it's important to look at the actual text. In the case of the Bible's statements on homosexuality, we might identify the following passages:

Genesis 19
Leviticus 18:22
Leviticus 20:13
Judges 19

Romans 1:26-27
1 Corinthians 6:9-10
1 Timothy 1:8-11

I'm not going to bother quoting the passages; you can look them up yourself easily enough, and if for some reason you don't have a Bible handy you can still look them up. But I do encourage you to keep the text on hand in the discussion that follows. I hope it goes without saying, but although I am sometimes citing particular verses, I intend them to be read in their larger context.

The first and most obvious thing to notice about the list above is that the first three references are found in the Torah. This should immediately (but alas, seldom does) raise a red flag in the mind of anybody reading those passages for their application to Christian morality (which is roughly what "the Bible says" really means). Anything found in the Law should immediately bring to mind passages such as:

Acts 13:38-39
Acts 15 (particularly vv. 23-29)
Romans 2-8:11 (particularly 6:14)
Galatians 2:15-16
Ephesians 2:14-16

Those passages, and others like them, are the textual foundation for the well-settled but often-ignored Christian principle that Christians, qua Christians, are not subject to the Mosaic Law. Ordinarily this would be a commonsense principle - nobody expects Hindus to imagine themselves bound by the teachings of Islam, for instance - but because of Christianity's peculiar relationship with Judaism people sometimes forget that Christians do not imagine themselves bound by the strictures of Judaism (this misunderstanding lies at the root of the lamentably common "shellfish argument," I shouldn't wonder).

We need to take a digression at this point to discuss why, if the principle that Christians are not under the Law is so well-settled, Christians are so curiously concerned with the Old Testament in general, and the Torah in particular. A simple answer would be to refer to 1 Corinthians 10:11, but let me try to elaborate on one particular aspect. We care, I venture to say, because plainly enough God cared too, at one time, for one people - and we are interested in what God cares about. This is often phrased in Christianese as looking for the "spiritual principle" behind the text. This is commonsensical enough when applied to books like Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, which are in the form of history - even so-called "liberal" scholars of the Bible would agree that the authors of those books wrote them down to illustrate particular principles they considered important. When one conceives of God as having person-like qualities, though ("personal" in Christianese), it makes sense to apply the same type of analysis to other types of books as well. If you want to know what sort of man was Robert E. Lee, reading everything he wrote is a good place to start, even if the letters and orders weren't addressed to you. If you want to know what sort of god is ours, we argue, reading everything he wrote is likewise a good place to start, even if the Law you're reading doesn't apply to you.

But it is of course only a good place to start, and introduces a dangerous amount of reader judgment into the picture. What do you conclude from Lee's writings? Reasonable people could conclude different things. What spiritual principle is behind the Levitical Code? Reasonable people could conclude different things. The text still matters, of course - reasonable people cannot, for instance, conclude from Lee's writings that he considered loyalty to one's home state of no account. But the result is still highly sensitive to the individual reader's personal proclivities and outside influences.

That isn't to say that this sort of analysis should never be engaged in, but it is to say that it calls for a great deal of humility. This is particularly true when discussing the conclusions from such analysis with other people.

With these thoughts in mind, let us return to the text.

Each of the Old Testament passages in question relates to homosexual activity. The reference is always to action, and particularly to sexual intercourse. For instance, Leviticus 18:22 by its terms relates to sex "with a male as with a woman." The most obvious literal meaning of "as with a woman," vaginal intercourse, is impossible, but it seems to me that the text is pretty clearly talking about sex of some sort - perhaps as specific as anal intercourse, perhaps as broad as any sort of ejaculatory activity. The reference is specifically to sex, though. Our definition of "lie with" would need to be very broad indeed to bring, say, homosexual kissing within the purview of this passage (and any sort of ban on males kissing males seems unlikely given the cultural context of Leviticus, in any case).

I want to emphasize, for this is a theme to which I shall return, that the Old Testament passages refer to homosexual activity, rather than to homosexual states of being. Leviticus does not say, "Thou shalt not be gay." It seems to say something along the lines of "Don't insert your penis into the bodily cavities of a man." (EDIT: Alanna tells me that there isn't even a word for "homosexual" in ancient Hebrew, and points me to this helpful discussion of what precisely Leviticus might be saying and why.) In two cases - the rapes recounted in Genesis 19 and Judges 19 - the homosexual acts were demanded by mobs that were apparently just as happy to rape women as men, which certainly casts doubt on any attempt to label the activity in those stories as homosexual. Indeed, the emphasis in the rape stories seems to me to be on the perfectly obvious horror of rowdy mobs demanding rape victims, rather than on the gender of the victims or the sexual orientation of their attackers. There's also probably an emphasis in the author's mind on the horror of attacking strangers who are under the hospitality of a local - but I don't think there's anything here talking about homosexual sex, let alone homosexuality.

Setting these observations aside for a moment, let us turn to the New Testament passages.

The New Testament passages are of a different character than the Old Testament ones. They aren't stories, as in Genesis and Judges; neither are they in the form of statutes, as in Leviticus. Instead they are almost asides. Romans 1:26-27 uses homosexual activity as an example of a society gone wrong; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 assumes that the reader knows or ought to know that those who engage in homosexual activity are unrighteous persons who will not inherit the kingdom of God, and 1 Timothy 1:8-11 likewise lists those who engage in homosexual activity are not righteous persons.

Let me stop here and acknowledge that these are troubling passages. My commitment to them as the Word of God doesn't make me blind to that fact. I decline to say "troubling passages to modern eyes" because I don't think they are any more troubling to modern eyes than they would have been to ancient ones. Again, if this is upsetting to you, I suggest you either stop reading entirely or at least take a break and come back to this post another time.

The Old Testament passages are, in my opinion, fairly easily dismissed. Two of them have only the most tenuous connection to homosexual sex, and the other two are part of a body of law the New Testament specifically states Christians are not bound by. These dodges are not available for the New Testament passages, though. So what do these passages actually say?

The chief observation I would make about them is that they are, again, about homosexual activity. I have heard it argued that the phrase "burned in their lust for one another" in Romans 1:27 suggests that homosexual desire is also seen as sinful by God. I disagree. That argument seems to me to conflate desire with lust. It is neither surprising not controversial to find Scripture stating that God finds lust to be sinful. The word usually translated "lust" here is orexis, which does simply mean "yearning" rather than "lust" specifically (in fact I don't know of any really good Greek equivalent to the English "lust" in its modern vernacular sense; that meaning usually has to be selected by context). But other words in the passage, particularly "burned," make me fairly certain that Paul meant orexis in the sense of "lust" rather than in its tamer sense of "strongly desired." So the Romans passage appears to use women having sex with women, men having sex with men, and both lusting after the aforesaid, as evidence of a degenerate society.

The 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy passages use a curious word, arsenokoitês, and much ink has been spilled about its meaning. Arsenokoitês is a noun, and it is usually translated something like "sodomites" or "homosexual offenders" in English. Translating it is somewhat difficult because it is not a common word, and ancient Greek is a dead language. The two halves of the word mean "male" and "sleeps with," and it bears a striking structural similarity to mêtêrkoitês, "mother-fucker" (with roughly equivalent profane connotations in both Greek and English). A literal translation of arsenokoitês would therefore be something along the lines of "men who sleep with men." I don't think there's enough context to say for sure whether Paul meant the term as a profanity (something like "men-fuckers") or not.

Religioustolerance.org has a more or less useful discourse on possible meanings of arsenokoitês which probably deserves to be mentioned here, since it's the first hit on a Google search for "Bible homosexuality." I disagree with that article in places - chiefly, I think that arsenokoitês may well have been used in place of a paederasty-related word precisely because the author wanted to get at the homosexual sex act itself, rather than limiting his scope to paederasty or expanding it to include the relational aspects of paederasty, and I don't know how you get "masturbators" out of arsenokoitês - but if you're curious, you can take a look.

It is precisely because arsenokoitês is a difficult word to translate that I prefer to default to the literal definition of men who sleep with men, and indeed that is the definition settled upon by the leading academic Greek lexicon. Religioustolerance.org and I agree on at least one point, though, which is that the word's emphasis is on the sex act.

Which brings us to my main point.

Modern discourse about homosexuality assumes that homosexuality is a status. A person's sexual orientation is a part of their identity. A person "is" homosexual or heterosexual. As near as I have been able to determine, the very concept of homosexuality, or homosexuals, is essentially a 19th-century concept. I am quite certain, from my classics education, that the ancients did not think of things in that way. I have no doubt they would recognize that certain people had sex with men more than with women, or vice versa, but that's just it - the focus would have been on the sex act itself and the gender of the sex actees, not on the sex actor. As my professors at Stanford pointed out, gender itself in the ancient Greek conception wasn't really a binary (or even trinary) concept. It was a continuum. We can see this reflected in ancient Greek sexual practice, where it would not be at all uncommon for individuals we would think of as "heterosexual" having "homosexual" sex, and vice versa. You could phrase it as everybody in ancient Greece being bisexual, but even that is missing the point. There simply was no ancient concept equivalent to the modern one of sexual orientation.

When we keep this in mind, it's no surprise to find our New Testament passages talking about specific types of sex acts rather than about sexual orientation. How is Paul supposed to write about something for which he has no concept, let alone a word? Even if he could, why would he, if his readers had no concept of sexual orientation either? For this reason, I think it's very dangerous to assume that when Paul writes about homosexual activity, he is also by implication writing about sexual orientation.

My personal conviction is that everybody who looks for what "the Bible says" about homosexuality using the modern status-based conception is on a fool's errand, for two reasons. The first is that the status-based conception is simply not an ancient one, which I think is seen plainly enough by the fact that Scripture consistently appears to be discussing sex acts rather than types of people. The orientation discussion simply isn't there. The second is that I'm not at all sure that the status-based conception of sexual orientation is even a good way to think about these issues. Personally I am inclined to take a page from the ancients and think of sexual orientation as a continuum, and I'm also strongly tempted to take another page from them and not think that sexual orientation is one of a person's defining characteristics, period.

If I've convinced you thus far, we've arrived at a point where we see no Scriptural passages discussing homosexuality - in short, we've concluded that "the Bible says" nothing on the subject of sexual orientation one way or another. But what about homosexual sex?

I think you'll agree with me by now that there is some room for doubt when it comes to what I think of as the three main Biblical passages on this issue - the Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 1 Timothy passages we've been discussing. Personally, I think the best reading of those passages is to conclude that God doesn't like homosexual sex. There are all sorts of issues one can raise about that reading (e.g., are we to believe that God is okay with people wanting to have sex but not okay with them having it?), but on the whole I think it's more true to the text than any other. I can certainly see how other people can (and have) reached different conclusions, and to the extent that those different conclusions are the honest results of a good faith effort to read the text for what it actually says, I have no problem with them. As for different conclusions that are otherwise held, well, I have a problem with all opinions held as a result of intellectual dishonesty, and I think most people are with me on that one.

It's worth pointing out at the end of this post that the most overwhelming response I have when I search Scripture on this topic is a powerful, humbling response of I don't know. I think we are called to interpret Scripture as best we can, and my best efforts lead me to the conclusion that God has some sort of problem with homosexual sex. Thankfully, not many people crave my approval of their homosexual sex acts (and why should they?), so the issue doesn't come up very often. To the extent that it does, my best answer is this: get to know Jesus, read the Bible, and tell me what you think.

As for the other issues that are current today - such as whether or not it's okay to "be" homosexual, or whether homosexuals can marry - I don't think the Bible says anything specific at all. I can only conclude that either I'm being exceptionally dense in my reading of Scripture, or else God didn't consider those issues noteworthy enough to address in Scripture. I suspect it's the latter, which means I think it would be dangerous for me to make them too big a deal. That leaves me to remember humbly that a) God knows more than I do, and b) God loves "homosexuals" as much as he loves me, and I know from experience that he loves me a great deal indeed. That is enough for me.

Tomb Raider: Underworld

2008-11-21T00:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I played through the Tomb Raider: Underworld demo for the PC one and three-quarters times, and I thought I’d post some thoughts on it. I’m sure there are going to be plenty of reviews of the actual game posted in the next couple of days, but I’m not a reviewer and in any case, gleaning useful information from the miasma of ad-supported, score-bound reviews is like … well, trying to glean anything useful from anything that can be described with the word “miasma.”

The hour or so I spent with the TRU demo (edit: somewhat more time today) was the longest amount of time I’ve ever devoted to a Tomb Raider title, so I don’t really have much of a sense of the history and idiosyncrasies of the franchise. I mention that because I’ve seen some reviews that seem to criticise the game for being basically about … well, raiding tombs. This seems strange to me. I’m no expert, as I said, but I would have thought you criticise a Tomb Raider title for not raiding tombs (as was in fact the case with some earlier titles, as I understand it).

Speaking of things other reviews seem to criticize the game for, I’m not quite sure whether the people who objected to the camera were playing the same game I was. I had enough camera control that I felt in control at all times (in fact the camera control was one of the selling points for me in a way, see below), and the demo never pushed me into “leap of faith gameplay” territory (to quote Yahtzee). It came close once, early on, but I was always able to manipulate the camera in a reasonable way such that I could see what I needed to see figure out where I was going.

Where I was going was, of course, the major part of the gameplay. I classify Tomb Raider as a “movement puzzle” game, alongside such notable favorites of mine as the Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia franchises. A “movement puzzle” game, as I use the term, is any game where the primary obstacle to the player is how to navigate the environment. There may be combat, but the main challenge and joy of the game is the environment itself and how the player moves around it. In the case of the Splinter Cell game (a Tom Clancy franchise involving the adventures of superspy Sam Fisher) the puzzle is how to navigate realistic environments without being seen, using an array of only slightly-larger-than-life acrobatics and gadgets. In the case of a Prince of Persia game, the puzzle is how to navigate fantastic environments using magical weapons and over-the-top, wire-fu acrobatics.

Tomb Raider falls somewhere in the middle. The ruins that Lara explores are more fantastic than realistic, but no more so than you might expect to find in Hollywood. And they were really gorgeous. I’ve read a couple reviews that mentioned moments that really make you say wow, and I have to admit that the first time I rounded a corner and saw the ruins I was headed towards I really did just stop and admire the view. It wasn’t just that the graphics were good; it was that somebody had planned that moment, had framed the shot, for no other reason than to say to the player, “This is where you are going. Isn’t it cool?” In a movement puzzle game I call that intelligent game design. I am playing the game to move around environments, after all. I appreciate knowing that the game designers know that.

Of course, I am also playing the game to move around environments in cool ways, and I must say that in that regard the Underworld demo was cooler than I expected. The actual range of movement was about what I expected—scaling walls, shimmying along ledges, action heroine leaps, balancing along narrow beams, swinging on poles, wall jumping, the usual sort of thing. What was unexpectedly cool was the way Lara did all that stuff. I was impressed and surprised by the depth of Lara’s animation. To give two examples, at one point I stopped on a staircase to look around. Ordinarily games don’t let you stop in between two steps on a stair, but as I was scanning my surroundings to see where I ought to go next, I noticed that Lara had one foot on the next stair up and was looking around as well. At another point, I was shimmying around a sharp corner, and the game let me pause, stretched precariously between the two faces of the rock I was cornering. The game was just full of little things like that that made the familiar process of acrobatic climbing unexpectedly cool to watch. From interviews I’ve seen the animation team is very proud of their work, and I would say they deserve to be. Ordinarily this isn’t the sort of thing that impresses me about a game, but again, this is a game I am playing in order to move around. The mere act of moving had better be cool.

As for the places I was asked to go—in other words, the actual level design—that was pretty cool too. It took me about an hour to get to the end of the demo the first time through. I felt suitably challenged during that time, and suitably badass climbing to, around, and through the ruins.

I also felt suitably badass during the two combats the demo gave me against Bengal tigers, which brings me to the subject of combat. First, the good. The tigers were faster than I was and I was not able to gun them down before they reached me. By itself that’s bad (but see below), but it did mean that I was forced to outmaneuver the tigers through my acrobatic prowess. Targeting was a non-issue; the game did that for me, which is just as well because I was spending just about every second dodging tigers in a pretty spectacular display of gunplay + tumbling. In other words, even the combat was really basically a movement puzzle, and it looked pretty much exactly how I wanted a fight with a tiger to look.

The bad—on the default settings it took an absurd number of 9mm rounds to put down a big cat. Thankfully the game includes a difficulty slider for how much health enemies have (and a separate one for how much damage Lara takes. Big kudos to Crystal Dynamics for separating those two features, which is the sort of very simple thing I’ve been saying game companies should do for years), so I think that will mostly solve that problem. Once I tuned the difficulty sliders to what I felt was more reasonable (less enemy health, more damage done to me), my weapons felt a lot better. Not realistic, but I’m okay if Tomb Raider is less than a simulation.

More perplexing is this question: while the wildlife fights felt well integrated mechanically, why was I fighting tigers to begin with? There was no indication I had stumbled into their lair or something, and in any case, tigers aren’t pack hunters. Oh, right, and remember the part where I was shooting the tigers? Other than the immediate motivation of trying to stay alive, the whole exercise felt kind of pointless. This goes back to not having played Tomb Raider games before. I gather it’s a convention of the franchise that Lara fights hostile wildlife. I can only imagine this is the result of some poor misguided soul back in the ‘90s who thought it was more acceptable to kill endangered species than human beings. As Ayudaren says, who could possibly have given that the thumbs up? At least with people you can shape a story so that the player feels that yes, these people need to die.

Fortunately, from what I gather, Crystal Dynamics has. In fact a major reason I bothered to pick up the demo in the first place is because I was excited about throwing Lara’s signature athleticism into the mix with some human opponents in environments other than ancient ruins. I can’t really comment on the story, of course, other than what everybody knows from the press—that Lara is looking for Mjolnir to access the underworld, and that all cultures’ afterlives are apparently the same, and I’m pretty sure the villainess from Tomb Raider: Legend (the Crystal Dynamics prequel to Underworld) is still alive. Which is all pretty standard fare for this genre of storytelling. The question is whether they handle the conventions and formulae adroitly or not, and that of course I can’t say from just the demo.

I can say that the voice acting I heard from the demo was surprisingly good. That doesn’t necessarily correlate with good writing, but it’s a positive sign. And of course it is valuable in its own right because, let’s face it, it’s Lara Croft. And if Lara is lame, then the game isn’t worth getting. Which brings us to the issue of Lara Croft.

First off, to get it out of the way, she looks good. We’ve come a long way since 1996, and Lara looks like a human being by now. A human being with large breasts, to be sure, but a human being with breasts. As opposed to, you know, a blow-up doll with melons.

I’ve never fully understood the fascination with Lara’s breasts, because as graphics capabilities have evolved it’s seemed clear to me that she has always intended to be an all-around attractive woman. She’s tough, independent-minded, smart, well educated, well bred, athletic, is comfortable with firearms, and generally solves problems using her brains instead of her body. In the quasi-mythic mindspace of a videogame, it doesn’t water down such a character for her to be pretty (and she is in this incarnation, to be sure). That would be like saying Achilles’ badassness is watered down by the fact that Athena helps him kill Hector, or that Hector didn’t really beat Patroclus because Apollo knocked him senseless first. It’s getting it all backwards. Really, there is nothing wrong or chauvinist with finding a character like that attractive, in the Natalian sense.

And she is attractive. If she wasn’t, to be honest, there’d be no game. Mechanically, Tomb Raider is a movement puzzle game, and Underworld looks like an attractive one to me. But that gets you to game theory. To move beyond game theory to game design, you need an awesomeness factor that turns the product into a brand. Lara Croft is what makes Tomb Raider awesome. But Lara Croft in a very expansive sense—the way she moves, what she moves in and around, why she’s doing it. And on those scores Underworld seems worth my money.

Breaking News

2008-11-19T14:37:00.000-08:00

Two things that are of critical importance:

1. First, and most importantly: I beat Thayet in Scrabble last night (11/18/08), 330 to 277. This was my win at Scrabble ever. It was also my first bingo (using all 7 letters in a single play) - "ditties," on the bottom triple word score, with the S connecting with another word. Archimedes (and Thayet) would be so proud (I think).

2. Second, the Supreme Court has denied the petitioners' request in Strauss v Horton to stay Proposition 8 until the case was resolved. This means that Proposition 8 will be in effect until the resolution of the case against it, although it doesn't necessarily imply anything about how the court is feeling regarding the merits of that case. All it really means is that the court was unpersuaded that leaving Proposition 8 in place for a few months would cause anybody "irreparable harm."

Strauss v Horton

2008-11-14T06:34:00.000-08:00

I apologize if the profusion of Proposition 8 posts is getting monotonous, but this is an issue I care about a lot, so I’m back for another one. Speaking to Ayudaren shortly before the election, he pointed out (or rather, his mother pointed out) that should Proposition 8 pass it would almost certainly precipitate an immediate federal court challenge. At the time, he wondered if this would be the catalyst that would finally force the federal supreme court to weigh in on the issue.

As it happened, the court challenge did materialize – but surprisingly, it was another challenge in state court. Strauss v Horton is the case, presently proceeding before the California supreme court, seeking to get Proposition 8 overturned.

When I first heard about this I was extremely skeptical. After all, a constitutional amendment cannot itself be unconstitutional. If the constitution explicitly says, “Marriage is between one man and one woman,” then that provision stands even though elsewhere the constitution says everyone has a fundamental right to marry. The effect of the two together is simply to define what that right to marry actually looks like. Declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional on the basis of In Re Marriage Cases would be like declaring the 16th Amendment unconstitutional because Article I prohibits income tax.

Turns out, the plaintiffs’ argument in Strauss is rather more nuanced than that. They are arguing not that the substance of Proposition 8 invalidates it, but rather the way it was passed.

The California constitution can be explicitly altered in one of two ways: by “amendment” or by “revision.” An “amendment” may be put to the people by 2/3rds of the legislature, or through the initiative process. A “revision” may only be put to the people by 2/3rds of the legislature, who may also (again by a 2/3rds majority vote) put to the people the question of whether to call a constitutional convention to “revise” the constitution.

Both “amendments” and “revisions” require a mere majority vote once put to the people for ratification. The key difference is that only “amendments” may be put to the people via initiative, as Proposition 8 was. So the question is, was Proposition 8 an “amendment” or a “revision?” If the former, then all is well and the vote stands. If the latter, then Proposition 8 should never have been on the ballot to begin with and it will not stand.

Unfortunately the constitution provides not a word of guidance as to the difference between an “amendment” and a “revision.” Court cases are rather thin on the ground as well (you might imagine this sort of thing hardly comes up very often).

The leading case, Raven v. Deukmejian, 52 Cal. 3d 336 (1990), concerned an “amendment” put to the people by initiative. The amendment in question was 21,000 words long, substantially altered or outright repealed 15 of the 25 articles of the constitution, dealt with a very broad range of issues, and prevented the state supreme court from interpreting the state constitution in a more defendant-friendly way than the federal supreme court interpreted parallel federal constitutions (the normal rule being that a state supreme court cannot contravene a federal right as construed by the federal supreme court, but is otherwise free to interpret its state constitutional rights as it sees fit – a natural extension of the rule that a state’s supreme court is the supreme authority on that state’s constitution).

In holding that the Raven proposition was a “revision,” the court noted that it constituted a “broad attack on state court authority to exercise independent judgment in construing a wide spectrum of important rights under the state Constitution.” The court explained that telling the supreme court how to do its job (mandating that they use the same reasoning as used by the federal supreme court), and altering such a vast swath of the constitution were “far reaching, fundamental changes in our governmental plan.”

By contrast, twice before the court had held that propositions were actually “amendments” rather than “revisions.” One case (People v. Frierson, 25 Cal.3d 142, 184-187 (1979)) essentially put the death penalty back into the constitution, even though the state supreme court had previously held that it violated the fundamental right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. That was held to be an amendment, not a revision. Another (Crawford v. Board of Education, 113 Cal. App. 3d 633 (1980), affirmed 458 U.S. 527 (1982)) essentially overruled a court decision that unintentional but de facto school segregation violated the fundamental right to equal protection. That was also held to be an amendment.

Putting these cases together, the picture that emerges is something like this: revisions constitute fundamental changes to the way our society is put together. Taking away the judicial power from the judiciary is a “revision.” Massive changes to the text of the constitution is a “revision.”

Proposition 8 is, on its face, neither of those things. It has only 14 words. It deals with one specific right (the right to marry) found in one specific section of the constitution. It has nothing to do with the allocation of powers between the branches of government; it alters the text of the constitution but, the supreme court remains as free as ever to interpret that text as it sees fit.

So how is it that the plaintiffs in Strauss argue that Proposition 8 constitutes “far reaching, fundamental changes” to our very plan of government? The argument goes that because homosexuals are a constitutionally protected “suspect class” (true in California, uniquely in America) and Proposition 8 takes away a “fundamental right” (the right to marry), Proposition 8 constitutes far reaching, fundamental change in the constitution’s underlying principle of equality. Moreover, plaintiffs argue, by denying homosexuals the right to marry, Proposition 8 takes away one of the court’s core constitutional roles (that of ensuring equal protection under the laws) and thus constitutes far reaching, fundamental change to our plan of government.

I am in favor of gay marriage in California, but I think these are bad arguments. They aren’t laugh-out-loud stupid, but I think they deserve to lose on their merits. In turn:

The first argument goes that taking away a fundamental right specifically from a suspect class is violating a core principle of our society, and that constitutes a fundamental change to our very plan of government. I do not think this is true. In the first place, Proposition 8 only sort of takes away the right to marry. It takes away the right to marry someone of the same sex, but it does not take away the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. Neither is Proposition 8 actually targeted at the suspect class. It applies equally to homosexuals, heterosexuals, those who wish to marry more than one person, and those who wish to marry partners who are neither men nor women. Of course it happens that at present there are far more homosexuals wishing to get married than people wishing to enter into plural marriages or non-human marriages, but that need not always be the case. There’s a big difference between “marriage is between one man and one woman” and “homosexuals cannot get married.”

I recognize that this argument may strike many as pedantic, though, so let’s grant for the sake of argument that Proposition 8 takes away a fundamental right from a suspect class. Is that really a fundamental change in the way our society works? Granting for the sake of argument that one of our democracy’s core principles is violated, is the very structure of the democracy itself overthrown or substantially altered? I don’t think so. Rights are not the same thing as structure. And while I recognize that taking a right away is different than not having it in the first place, it is difficult for me to imagine that returning things to the status quo of 2007 can constitute a fundamental change to our plan of government (in fact we haven’t even returned to the status quo ante; homosexuals remain a suspect class in California).

The second argument in Strauss goes that one of the traditional core roles of the judiciary is to ensure equality for all, and because Proposition 8 would take away the courts’ ability to ensure homosexuals the equal right to marry, it impinges upon the traditional core role of the judiciary and thus constitutes a far reaching, fundamental change in our plan of government. This argument seems wrong to me for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, it isn’t true that one of the traditional core roles of the judiciary is to ensure equality for all. The judiciary is supposed to ensure equal treatment before the law and, as I said above, Proposition 8 is a facially neutral law.

For another, I don’t see the difference between this argument and either Frierson or Crawford. In both those cases a supreme court ruling based on fundamental rights was invalidated by initiative. The court held those cases to be amendments, not revisions, even though it recognized that the amendments necessarily impinged somewhat upon the judiciary. Once again we have a case where an initiative would partially invalidate a supreme court decision founded upon a fundamental right. I don’t see a meaningful distinction between this case and those.

It is true of course that Proposition 8 takes away the courts’ ability to ensure that homosexuals (and heterosexuals) may marry a person of the same gender. But that is not the same thing as taking away the judiciary’s ability to ensure equality under the laws, or telling the judiciary how to think and reason. Homosexuals remain a suspect class under California law, and the judiciary is free as ever to apply strict scrutiny to legislation that targets or can be shown to have a disparate impact upon them.

Some commentators have made a third argument, which I do not believe has been formally made in Strauss but which deserves to be discussed nonetheless. This is the argument that fundamental rights should not be able to be taken away by a mere majority vote. Elsewise, some argue, the rights of the minority are not really protected from the majority. One could apply this line of reasoning to the amendment vs. revision issue to suggest that any change to the constitution disproportionately affecting the fundamental rights of a minority must be a revision. The constitution doesn’t say as much, of course, but isn’t it one of the fundamental principles of our society that the rights of the minority are protected against the tyranny of the majority?

I would argue not. It is true that one of the reasons society institutes constitutions and governmental branches like the judiciary is to protect the rights of the minority. But those are cases of the majority saying, “We would like to be restrained in the future from doing these certain things, and we shall appoint you, our servants, to restrain us.” The judiciary, and indeed the constitution, remain subordinate to the sovereignty of the people, which is controlled by the majority. If the majority really wants to throw off the restraints it has placed on itself, it is allowed to do so. There is no way to get any other result without also overthrowing the democracy.

This is not to suggest that the fundamental basis of the Strauss challenge is unfounded. It is not; the people of California have asked our servants to restrain us from throwing off certain restraints except in certain very specific ways, and it is absolutely proper for the supreme court to hold us to that. But it is to suggest that there is nothing inherently suspect about the 50%-of-the-electors threshold as opposed to the 66%-of-the-legislature threshold, nothing to suggest that something is a automatically a revision because it affects the rights of a minority.

I’m not nearly as close to this case, the facts and the precedent and the arguments, as are the justices of the supreme court and the advocates. It may well be that there’s something here I’m not seeing. But as I understand the law and the arguments, it seems to me that Proposition 8 really was an amendment, not a revision. I’m sure I’ll post further on this issue as it develops.

How Do Christians Read the Bible?

2008-11-12T12:50:00.000-08:00

Well, Proposition 8 passed. That’s not what I wished for my state, but I can’t muster too much outrage about it. The rule of law means more to me than gay marriage rights, and as I explained in my last post, the people of California must be able to correct what they believe to be erroneous readings of the constitution by our supreme court. I’m aware that there are some novel arguments being advanced against the legality Proposition 8, but I haven’t had a chance to look into their legal footing on my own, so I’ll refrain from commentary until then.

What I really want to talk about today is the Bible, and how Christians like me read it. I say “like me” because the church is vast and contains more schools of thought than I am well acquainted with. Nevertheless I think what I say in this post will go for most Christians, and in particular for most Christians who believe in the “authority of Scripture” or would identify as “fundamentalist” or read the Bible “literally.” How do people like us actually read the book? By what principles do we declare one passage binding upon us and another not binding? Are there even any principles?

This is an issue that I think is of critical importance for American civic discourse. Obama once said in a speech that people of faith have an obligation to present our views in ways that one does not have to be a person of faith to understand. That is certainly true, and important. But it is equally true and important that people not of faith have an obligation to present their views in ways that one can be a person of faith and still understand.

I am of the opinion that for most of my lifetime Americans have generally failed on both these points. It is a scathing indictment of our educational philosophy, I think, that Americans grow up without the slightest attempt at teaching them the hermeneutics of the world’s major religions. As a matter of civics, it is deeply important to understand the different worldviews in one’s society. Yet when an American screenwriter wants to present a fundamentalist Christian as a bigot and a hypocrite, it’s a common trope to present that character with one example that “the Bible says” is verboten (e.g., same-sex sex), followed by five more commonplace examples of things that “the Bible says” which are not followed by that character in everyday life (e.g., eating shellfish, wearing cloth woven of two threads, the Levitical criminal code, a woman having short hair). Invariably the Christian is caught flat-footed, his or her belief system exposed for the farce it is, reason and tolerance triumphant.

I’d be tempted to dismiss this sort of thing as a farce, except that it shows up in surprising places. The West Wing, a show I normally associate with witty and well-educated writers, has stooped to this one. So has Barack Obama (the shellfish example), himself a Christian who I’d think ought to know better. I know personally friends whom I consider thoughtful, intelligent, and in other respects well-educated, who have either articulated this line of argument before or confessed their ignorance as to how people like me deal with it. The unspoken assumption (or perhaps fear) is that we haven’t thought of these issues before.

For those who fear, we have. For those who assume … really? You think that? I don’t mean to sound too sarcastic, so I’ll just note that this issue has been around for 2,000 years.

Of course, before I get too high and mighty, I should acknowledge that most Christians probably haven’t thought about this issue explicitly. But that doesn’t mean that the church hasn’t, or that the unquestioned assumptions of most Christians aren’t informed by our very old tradition of analyzing this question.

But enough of that. How do we read the Bible? M’lakMavet has phrased it well, I think, so I’m going to crib his words:

1. What does the text of this passage require me to think, do, or believe?
2. What does the context of this passage tell me about its intended meaning?
3. What does the rest of Scripture have to say about this?

That’s it. That’s the process whereby we decide what is and isn’t binding on us as Christians, even those of us who read the Bible “literally.” There are two popular substitute processes which deserve mention, because they are popular, although I wouldn’t (and I don’t think any theologian would) recommend them. Those are:

1. What does my [spiritual authority of choice] say?

and

1. Is this passage culturally relevant? If so, I shall think, do, or believe as it says.
2. If not, what does it tell me about the unchanging character of God?
3. How can I implement that "spiritual principle" in my thoughts, actions, or beliefs?*

But back to the way we actually do it, or the way we are actually supposed to do it. A couple of things about that process deserve pointing out. One is that probably all Christians are not capable of going through that process, because most Christians (I would guess) haven’t read the entire Bible.**

But (and this is the second thing that deserves pointing out) it isn’t rocket science. Oh, it isn’t always easy to read multiple passages against each other and figure out the result in a way that is true to all passages concerned. But the process really is within the mental capacity of the average person. This is something anybody can do.

The third thing that deserves pointing out is that the result of this process is not fixed. There is room for debate. As a church, we debate all the time, and if the public cannot see or appreciate it, perhaps it’s because the public was never taught the rules and never cared to figure it out.

Of course there are some Christians who simply will not debate, either because they’re stupid or (more likely) because they’re scared. But I think most of us would welcome as a refreshing change a serious debate with a non-Christian as to whether or not Scripture really says what we think it does.

In some cases of course the text really leaves very little room for debate. The shellfish debate (Leviticus 11:9-12) is pretty conclusively answered by Romans 3 and passages like it (growing up in America not knowing that Christians consider themselves not bound by the Mosaic law is only one step more defensible than growing up in America not knowing that Christians consider Jesus their savior if you ask me, but whatever).

But of course nobody actually cares about shellfish. They care about issues like same-sex sex, or gay marriage, or abortion, or non-marital sex. And on those issues the analysis is considerably more involved (and, correspondingly, more interesting). I don’t mean to say that it’s all a gray area and no firm conclusion is possible. But the analysis is complex enough that there’s room for genuine discussion. By corollary, to one degree or another, reasonable people can disagree on most of the “morals” issues people actually care about today. And I think most Christians would agree with me when I say that’s perfectly okay. If you can come to a reasoned, good-faith, internally consistent belief that Scripture says something different than what I think it says, taking into account all the evidence and all the arguments, then you are still in my conservative fundamentalist opinion submitting yourself to the authority of Scripture, and I can ask no more from you.

When was the last time you had a debate with a Christian friend about those sorts of things on the Bible’s own terms? Or when was the last time you really sat down and constructed a proof for yourself of why you believe Scripture says what you think it does about one of those issues?

* Of course there’s nothing wrong with gleaning spiritual principles from the Bible; I don’t see how you could answer the question, “What does the rest of Scripture have to say about this?” without doing so. But it is decidedly dodgy to have a branching analysis where the decision to activate one procedure over the other hinges on a question as subjective as, “Is this culturally relevant?”

** From a faith standpoint that’s actually “okay.” I think it’s dumb for several reasons, but you can indeed get by holding onto your faith without ever peeking under the hood, so to speak, to see the intellectual structure that supports it - as long as you don’t want to deal with anybody outside your faith, in any way, ever.

Proposition 8, Part Two

2008-10-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

I wanted to take a moment to go back to the issue of Proposition 8, which I introduced in my last post. After some further helpful discussions with Marion and Thayet, I've decided how I'm going to vote (unless, of course, an unforeseeably persuasive argument is presented between now and November). Ordinarily I don't discuss these sorts of things, but ordinarily that's because I'm afraid of being ostracized for my unfashionable (in northern California) views, not because I think it's none of anybody's business.

So let me get this out of the way: I'm going to vote no on 8. This means I will be voting not to have the word "marriage" defined as pertaining only to a man and a woman for purposes of California state law.

Why am I telling you this? For two reasons. One, because I hope that my friends who read this might find my reasoning useful if they haven't made up their own minds already. Two, because I hope that this post will help promote tolerance of conservative Christianity in anybody who reads this, friend or not.

I should be clear that I don't mean "tolerance" in the all-too-fashionable modern senses of either a) relativity or b) acceptance. I mean "tolerance" in the sense of live-and-let-live, and hopefully, in the sense of understanding. My hope is that at least one person who hates, is frustrated by, cannot comprehend, or otherwise is unable to engage with theologically conservative Christians on the issue of gay marriage as fellow constituents of The People (both of the state of California and of the United States) will read this post and come away with at least marginally less hatred and frustration, and a little more comprehension and ability to engage. Maybe even some empathy.

If this is going to work I'll need to explain a few things about myself theologically. Friends and family can skip this paragraph, but for our hypothetical new readers, a few salutary identity statements are in order. First, I'm a Christian. I have been so, in a thinking sense, for something like 15 years. I am a Pentecostal Christian (actually Charismatic, if you care to make the distinction). I am an evangelical Christian. I speak in tongues (or, for the skeptics, I believe I speak in tongues). I believe in modern-day prophecy, and I believe I have engaged in it myself. I believe that Jesus is the only route by which human beings may be saved. I believe that homosexual sex saddens the heart of God (I have a rant reserved for people of any stripe who think the Bible expresses any views whatever on homosexuality, or on being homosexual, or on homosexuals, but I'll spare you). I should also mention, in case anybody cares, that I hold a bachelor's degree in classics and a juris doctorate, both from Stanford.

If none of these facts strike you as at all incongruous with the fact that I am voting against Proposition 8 then you might as well stop reading now; this post is not for you. Otherwise, I hope you will find it edifying to know why somebody with my religious background intends to vote as I do.

Table of Contents
Arguments I Credit
1. The Political Focus of Christianity
2. Moral Priority in Christian Thought
3. What’s Loving?
Arguments I Don’t Credit, For
1. We Need to Defend the Dignity of Marriage
2. We Need to Protect the Institution of Marriage
3. Homosexual Marriage is Wrong
4. Restoring the Right of the People
Arguments I Don’t Credit, Against
1. Proposition 8 is Unfair
2. Equality
3. Marriage is a Fundamental Right
4. Gay Marriage is Coming

Arguments I Credit
1. The Political Focus of Christianity

Let's start with the positive. The telling question, for me, is this: what should the main goal of Christianity be in a democracy? As a devout Christian, I might phrase that question another way: what do I think is God's main goal for America?

There are plenty of answers a conservative Christian might have to the question of what I think God's goals are for America. Peace, within our borders and with other countries. A reduction in the total incidence of sin in the nation. An increase in the lovingness Americans have towards their fellow men. Improvement of the public morals. That all Americans choose to become Christians. But the answer to the question of what the main goal is, I think, has to be this: that Americans fall in love with Jesus and then begin to become more like him.

I submit, then, that the basic question an evangelical Christian should ask is this: which way will Proposition 8 tend to push the Californian (and perhaps the American) public? Towards falling in love with Jesus? Away from falling in love with Jesus? Neutral?

Given the highly charged nature of the amendment, I think we can do away with neutral.

If Proposition 8 passes, how will people tend to view the Californian church (and, by extension, California Christians like me)? Will they tend to see us as a people who love all human beings, regardless of identity or behavior, and seek their good? I don't think they will. I think they'll tend to see us more as paranoid bigots, and frankly just plain mean social bullies. And they will tend to see Christ the way they see us.

Now of course that isn't fair, or remotely intellectually honest. Christ is who Christ is (or again, for the skeptics, Christ isn't who Christ isn't) regardless of how people who call themselves Christians behave. But that's the way it is, and indeed we are explicitly charged with acting like Christ to the world around us, so fair or not (idiotic or not) I think that's how it should be. I think it's clear that Proposition 8 will hinder, rather than help, the people of California and America from seeing in Jesus as he really is and falling in love with him. As a result, I oppose it.
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2. Moral Priority in Christian Thought

A word deserves to be said here about the order in which I think Christians should be concerned about moral issues. Recall that I said “that Americans fall in love with Jesus and then begin to become more like him.”

I didn't say, “For people to begin to become more like Jesus and then fall in love with him.”

Because it isn't supposed to work that way. Christian morality - the principles that govern right and wrong behavior and interpersonal interaction as we see it - is not supposed to be prescriptive. That's orthopraxy, and we are not an orthopraxic religion. Antilles explained it to Violet perfectly way back when we were freshmen in Rinconada: Christian morality is supposed to be voluntary, and given not from the fear of disobedience but from the joy of doing what pleases God. This is a perfectly ordinary dynamic of human relationships, but the opposite perception is rooted so deeply in American culture that I need to make it explicit here.

It isn't that I think who you have sex with is a morally neutral issue; I don't. It also isn't that I think the moral propriety of who you have sex with is determined solely by whether or not the two of you love and are committed to one another; I don't. But who you have sex with is much less important to me than whether I am helping or hindering you from seeing Jesus as he really is and falling in love with him.

Let me deploy a bit of Christianese here. We say in Christian circles that God sees the heart. We also say that God judges the heart. Let us now stipulate, for the sake of argument, that God doesn't like homosexual sex. Would he then be pleased with a society where people want to have homosexual sex but don't because it's illegal? Of course not. Would he even care that it had been made illegal? I doubt it.

Of course, making it illegal could possibly reduce the number of people who want to do it. If we had any credible reason to believe that I might even support the amendment. But we don't - and we have lots of reason to believe precisely the opposite.
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3. What’s Loving?

You’ll notice I said that I don’t think God would care whether we made homosexual sex illegal. It’s a short jump from there to saying that I don’t think God will care if we make homosexual marriage illegal. I make that jump. If Proposition 8 passes I don’t think God will be pleased. I don’t think it will increase the numbers of people acting out of a desire to please him. If anything I think it will do the opposite, and God will find that a tragedy.

So far I’ve said I think the California public will unfairly judge Christians if Proposition 8 passes, and that I don’t think passing it will please God or cause people to please him at a greater rate than they presently do. Not exactly compelling, morally epic reasons for voting against Proposition 8.

Here’s what I think is the most compelling, morally epic question to ask. I hinted at it earlier: what’s loving?

What is the loving thing to do for our homosexual fellow-citizens?

I probably wouldn’t be asking this question if I thought that passing Proposition 8 would be pleasing to God (instead I’d be asking what was the most loving way to pass it), but I don’t. So I am asking this question, because my conviction that passing Proposition 8 will not please God gives me the wonderful freedom to do so. And in fact I think it is partly in order to give me the freedom to choose the loving thing to do that God feels as he does on the issue of Proposition 8.

As a lawyer, I can’t help but feel it’s a little bit silly to care so deeply about what name the state government puts on your paperwork (which is, as I’ve said several times already, all this proposition actually amounts to). But as a man, and a married man at that, I understand. The name does matter to the heart, and it matters even if it’s only the state government using the name. It would matter even if it were one individual using the name. Maybe it matters more than it “should.” But it matters, and that’s the important thing.

I do not support homosexual sex. I am sorry if that makes me an unfeeling ogre or a hopeless yokel in some people’s eyes. My commitment to Jesus’ will as revealed in Scripture is what it is, and my reading of Scripture is what it is. I cannot change my principles, and so far my reading of the text has not changed (although of course it could, and of course I am open to debate on the point).

What I can do consistent with my principles is vote against Proposition 8. I am sure that this seems a very poor gift to many, who wish that my principles or my reading of Scripture were different, or both. But it is the only gift that I have, and I give it freely.
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Arguments I Don't Credit, For
1. We Need to Defend the Dignity of Marriage

I'll be honest, I'm not exactly sure what this one means. The dignity of marriage? Who gets married because they want to lay hold of some dignity? I certainly didn't. I got married because I was in love with my wife, because I wanted to honor that love by strengthening it every way I knew how, and because God told me to do so.

If that's what people mean by “the dignity of marriage,” then I'm not really see how Proposition 8 is relevant at all. So maybe I'm going at the problem backwards. What will Proposition 8 weaken? Maybe if I can identify that, I'll know what people mean by “the dignity of marriage.”

As you know or should know by now, Proposition 8 is solely a question of names. It isn't a question of the rights afforded to homosexual couples; that was settled in 2003 with the Domestic Partnership Act. I also doubt very strongly that it is a question of societal acceptance. If constitutional amendments could dictate how society feels about certain groups, then the history of the civil rights movement from 1865 onward would have been radically different.

But what Proposition 8 is a question of is a question of how broadly the word “marriage” can be applied by the state of California. Which means that the thing - the only thing, in my view - that it will weaken is how exclusive is the right to have the state government call you “married.”

I italicize state government because it’s important to remember that the constitution does not, by and large, affect the behavior of non-state actors. If Proposition 8 passes, individual citizens will still be perfectly within their rights to call homosexual couples “married.” If Proposition 8 does not pass, individual citizens will still be perfectly within their rights to refuse to call homosexual couples married. Doing either of these things might be considered deeply insulting to some people, and also may create some verbal confusion. But there is nothing illegal or unconstitutional about individual citizens being deeply insulting to some people or using imprecise and improper terms to discuss legal concepts. Both of those happen all the time; the campaigns around Proposition 8 are themselves perfect examples.

Some people will object that this point is splitting hairs. Perhaps those people feel a deep desire to conform their behavior even to those areas of the constitution which do not apply to them, whether or not doing so agrees with their principles. That’s fine, and maybe even admirable, but it’s their choice to act as if they are bound by something which does not purport to bind them. Perhaps instead there are some who feel that, as a practical matter, society will over time tend to follow the constitution. That may be so, but if that movement of society’s overrides society’s principles, then shame on society for not having the moral fortitude to stick to its guns.

So it is the state government alone upon whose actions we are being called to vote restrictions up or down. Let us try to imagine the state of mind of someone who thinks that because his right to be called “married” by the state government is now less exclusive than it was his marriage has less “dignity.” What can we say of this person's state of mind? Quite a lot, I imagine, and little of it flattering. I submit that we can definitely say he is not viewing the world or his place in it as Christ sees it. And so I decline, as a Christian, to think that way.
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2. We Need to Protect the Institution of Marriage

This is a subtly different argument from the “dignity” one, but ultimately I pay it no more heed. The argument here goes that the institution of marriage has some benefit, and that Proposition 8 will somehow reduce that benefit.

What benefits does marriage have? Certainly it has personal benefits. Will Proposition 8 reduce those? I think the analysis here is the same as it is for dignity. No, it will not, because Proposition 8 does not speak to the individual.

Marriage also has societal benefits. Will Proposition 8 reduce those? I submit that it will not. If there were any sort of credible research consensus that homosexual families are less likely to produce valuable citizens than heterosexual families, then I might consider voting against Proposition 8 on that basis. But to my knowledge no such consensus exists (though there are some conflicting studies both ways). My personal expectation is that with another couple decades of data available, homosexual families will turn out to be every bit as lousy at turning out valuable citizens as heterosexual families have, but only time will tell.

In any case, Proposition 8 will not alter the existing equality between homosexual and heterosexual families as child-rearing units. Homosexual couples did not gain any child-rearing rights when In Re Marriage Cases was decided, and so Proposition 8 will not take any child-rearing rights away.

Some people argue that we need to preserve the institution of marriage because upon that rock our whole society is founded, and without it our society will flounder. What they really mean by “preserve” is restricting the class of relationships the state government calls “marriage,” which I think makes this argument look pretty silly just on its face. But because a lot of well-meaning people seem to put a lot of stock in this interpretation, let me spend some more time with it.

First off, I’d like to point out that we have enacted lots and lots of laws that could be viewed as undercutting the institution of marriage. No-fault divorce means legalized adultery – the law cares not one whit who my wife sleeps with. Don’t we think that undercuts the institution of marriage pretty strongly? The elimination of bastardy laws means marriage no longer confers the right to have legitimate children. That one looks pretty heinous from the perspective of, say, six hundred years ago. Or how about separate property states? You mean to tell me that my wife and I are one flesh but our property stays separate? Blasphemy!

And yet, somehow, society has endured.

Second, I’d like to point out that the institution of marriage is not the rock upon which our whole society is founded. As a Christian, I do not believe that marriage is what ultimately upholds and preserves the United States of America. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus Christ is what upholds and preserves the United States of America, as he does the rest of existence. He is my rock, not the laws of my state or even my country. Now of course, that’s no excuse to move my country in ways that will displease him. But as I explain throughout the rest of this post, I don’t believe that voting against Proposition 8 will displease him.

So far I have skipped what some might consider an important Christian objection to the benefits of marriage. That is because I think it deserves its own topic, and I turn to it next.
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3. Homosexual Marriage is Wrong

This is my way of phrasing the objection that homosexual marriage is simply sinful, and therefore ought to be outlawed. I don't credit this objection, but I consider it very serious, so I want to give my views of it in some detail.

To begin with, I don't think that homosexual marriage is sinful, and I don't think the Bible thinks that either. I promised to spare you my rant on this subject, so for the moment allow me to simply state in conclusory fashion that the Bible thinks homosexual sex is sinful (I will also spare you my rant on the misperceptions, unwarranted enlargements, and abuses of the word “sinful”). As I understand it, plenty of marriages involve practically no sex or very infrequent sex, and I see no reason to believe that homosexual marriages will turn out to be any different. But let us for the moment, and strictly for the sake of argument, conflate marriage and sex, as so many do. Ought we then to outlaw homosexual marriage, on the basis that it is sinful?

As a matter of positive law, we don't outlaw lots of things on the mere basis of sinfulness. We don't outlaw covetousness or adultery at all, and we outlaw only certain kinds of lying. We also don't outlaw being non-Christian or blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Some of these, of course, present practical difficulties - how exactly do you write a bill outlawing “blaspheming the Holy Spirit” or “covetousness?” But others - such as adultery - are the sorts of things that are perfectly easy to outlaw, and indeed have been outlawed in the past, and we don't outlaw them today despite what I suspect would be a national consensus that they are indeed at least usually morally wrong.

There is a sense that some Christian circles sometimes develop that we ought to reduce the total instance of sin in our land. Now, don’t get me wrong, I agree that a reduction in the total instance of sin in America would be good for the nation, as it would be good for any nation. But have we ever, as Christians, been called by God to effect that reduction on a national scale? I submit that we have not.

One thinks immediately of passages like 2 Chronicles 7:14: “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” This is a promise which was spoken to Hebrews rather than Gentiles, as most American Christians are, but I would agree that it portrays something timeless about the heart of God. I would also agree that America is my land, within the meaning of the promise. But the passage does not call for me to make “my land” turn from its wicked ways. It calls on My people who are called by My name. The promise is not that God will heal America if I stop my non-Christian neighbor from being in a gay marriage. The promise is that God will heal America if I, and other Christians, will humble ourselves, pray and seek the face of God, and turn from our wicked ways.

Another way to arrive at this same conclusion would be to simply ask what sin is, and whether Proposition 8 bears on sin at all. Sin is not fundamentally an action, as I think we all know. Again, for the sake of argument, let us stipulate that gay marriage is sinful. Would a man in such a universe who wished with all his heart to be married to another man be any different from the man in Matthew 5:28 who looks at a woman wishing with all his heart to have sex with her? Of course not. The existence or absence of a legal barrier to gay marriage is immaterial to that question; the essence of sin is in the heart. The state constitution has no sway, and does not purport to have any sway, over the hearts of the residents of California.
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4. Restoring the Right of the People

This one usually starts something like “four activist judges …” and references the fact that 61.4% of Californians voted Proposition 8’s exact language into law in 2000. I’ve harped on this before, so I hope nobody reading this is so ignorant as to believe that a statute passed by initiative is immune to judicial review. The easiest counter-example is to imagine that 61.4% of Californians had voted into law in 2000 language that said, “All persons of African descent shall be chattel property in California.” Suppose a majority of the California Supreme Court struck down that law as violative of the constitution. Would it be valid to say, “But 61.4% of Californians voted for that law?”

Of course not. Constitutions take certain laws off the table no matter how many people vote for them. That’s what constitutions do; it’s what they’re for. And one of the most important jobs of a supreme court is to announce when a law has crossed the line into unconstitutionality. That’s all In Re Marriage Cases was.

Now of course, the people are allowed to disagree with the supreme court. If they do, they’re supposed to enact a constitutional amendment to clarify their position on what the constitution says or should say. That’s exactly what Proposition 8 is; it’s asking the people of California whether the state supreme court got it right, or whether they disagree with the court’s reading. We’ll find out soon enough if the people of California still feel the way they did in 2000, or if they have changed their minds. In the meantime, it’s idiotic to argue that because the people voted one way in 2000, they should vote the same way in 2008.
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Arguments I Don't Credit, Against
1. Proposition 8 is Unfair

Working in San Francisco, I hear this one a lot. “Vote no on 8; it’s unfair and wrong.” This one makes no more sense to me than the “dignity of marriage” objection on the other side. “Unfair?” By what benchmark? By the benchmark that says “marriage is for all people?” That’s begging the question.

Begging the question is hard to avoid in the debate over Proposition 8, because a lot of that debate boils down to what people think the word “marriage” means or should mean. That’s no excuse, though. If you assume that marriage is for all people then yes, Proposition 8 is unfair. But whether marriage is for all people is precisely what the people of California are being asked to decide. It does not add to the debate to simply repeat one’s conclusion that yes, marriage is for all people. That does not tell people why one thinks that. It isn’t an argument. Understandably, I find it unpersuasive.
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2. Equality

This one is also popular, because of the unspoken rule that you can’t vote against “equality” in America without being an ignorant bigot.

Of course, you can vote against equality. The principal of equality we’re supposed to hold to is treating equal things equally. We don’t object to the inability of committed 14-year olds to marry because we have some sense, as a society, that 14-year olds are different than adults. If they’re different, they have no claim to being treated equally. We would object to the inability of interracial couples to marry because we have some sense, as a society, that race is not a material difference when it comes to marriage.

Many opponents of Proposition 8 believe that homosexuality isn’t a material difference either. I happen to agree with them in many respects. But this isn’t an argument; it’s a conclusion. Again, the question is what the people of California think marriage should mean. To rephrase, the question is whether the people of California think homosexuality is a material difference. If a person is unsure, then it does no good to throw the equality slogan in that person’s face, because the equality slogan assumes that homosexuality is not a material difference. It’s begging the question.

A similar issue is the “discrimination” slogan. “It’s about discrimination and we must always say NO to that,” says Senator Feinstein. Stirring words, but plainly untrue. We discriminate between minors and adults, and nobody complains about that. Why? Because we think majority is a material difference; it justifies different treatment. Apparently Sen. Feinstein thinks homosexuality is not a material difference. That’s fine, but again, it isn’t an argument. It’s just begging the question and hoping that people won’t notice.
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3. Marriage is a Fundamental Right

This is a slightly more intellectually coherent version of “Proposition 8 is unfair.” This argument goes that marriage is a fundamental right, and so we shouldn’t take it away. Sometimes it’s phrased as “restricting the freedoms” of homosexuals, or something like that. And we in America Do Not Take Away Fundamental Rights.

This one seems to have a lot of traction among the people I hang out with, but I cannot for the life of me see what is so persuasive about it.

For one thing, we do take away fundamental rights. We take away the fundamental rights of criminals all the time. Oh, but they did something to deserve it, comes the objection. We don’t take away the fundamental rights of people just because of who they are! This is America!

Except that of course we do take away the fundamental rights of people just because of who they are. Committed fourteen year olds cannot marry, though marriage is a fundamental right. Uncommitted eighteen year olds can. An eighteen year old man has a fundamental right to marry a forty year old woman – but not if she’s his mother. Or already married. Why take away the fundamental right of the one and not the fundamental right of the other? After all, it’s a fundamental right, right? Fundamental!

Marriage may be a fundamental right, but that doesn’t tell us who the right should extend to, and who the right should extend to is the question at issue. So it does no good to prate on and on about how marriage is a fundamental right. That is true, but utterly beside the point.

Now of course it is true that, in a very literal sense and if one holds to a certain kind of legal philosophy, Proposition 8 is “taking away” the fundamental right of homosexuals to marry (i.e., have the state government use the word “marriage” in reference to them if they jump through certain hoops) in California. But it is insidious in the extreme to label invalid, on that basis alone, the efforts of those trying to do so.

That is, from a legal realist’s standpoint. If we stick to the way the law views itself, then Proposition 8 isn’t taking away anything at all. It’s simply correcting the state supreme court’s reading, pointing out that “in fact” homosexuals have never had a fundamental right to marry in California. As a matter of legal fiction, the right to marry guaranteed by the California constitution has always applied to homosexuals. That’s an important legal fiction and too few people give it the weight it deserves.

But if we put our realists’ hats on, we can recognize that the California right to marry had not been interpreted as applying to homosexuals until 2008. We can further recognize that, in reality, four human beings read the state constitution and said, in effect, “Wow, I never noticed this, but this right applies to homosexuals! Who knew?!” From a certain point of view, those four human beings “conferred” a right upon homosexuals by reading the constitution in that way.

If Proposition 8 passes – if the people of California in effect say to our supreme court, “No, that is not the way we want our constitution to be read” – then, from that same certain point of view, the people of California will have “taken away” a right from homosexuals. I recognize that. I get that.

But here’s the thing. The people of California must be allowed to do so. Otherwise the final say as to what the constitution means lies not with the people of California, but with the state supreme court. That strikes at the very heart of what a constitution is supposed to be: the supreme expression of the will of the people. It is precisely because the constitution is the supreme expression of the will of the people that the supreme court invalidated a law passed by popular vote to begin with. You cannot have it both ways. If the constitution is the supreme expression of the will of the people, then In Re Marriage Cases was validly decided, and the people of California must be allowed to “take away” the fundamental right of marriage. And if the constitution is not the supreme expression of the will of the people, then by the same fundamental principles that justified the Revolution the people are not bound by it, and marriage is not a fundamental right at all.
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4. Gay Marriage is Coming

This is my category for the class of arguments that say, in one form or another, “Gay marriage is coming whether you like it or not, and we should help social change along with the constitution.” I want to distinguish it from the class of arguments that say, “Gay marriage is coming whether you like it or not, and we should keep the constitution in line with social change.”

The latter I think is a perfectly reasonable statement, though it doesn’t tell one how to vote on Proposition 8. The former, though – the idea that we should use the state constitution as an instrument to promote social change – is deeply distasteful to me.

As I’ve said elsewhere in this post, Proposition 8 applies only to the behavior of the state government. Nevertheless it is natural for many people on both sides of the debate to view it as a proxy for social change. Boiled down to its essentials I think the hope is this: that guaranteeing the right of homosexual couples to be called “married” by the state government of California will strike a blow for the ultimate cause of homosexuals not being seen as abnormal by private individuals.

And the truth is that maybe it will. People are weird like that. But I don’t think it should, and I think it evinces a deep disrespect for the rule of law to alter the state constitution in the hopes that it will change the beliefs of private individuals. That’s not how I want my constitutional law to be made.

One might object that, on this philosophy, I ought to object to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. That is not so. I would encourage somebody to vote for those amendments if they were of the personal conviction that slavery ought to be abolished in America, that the rights of the federal constitution should be imposed upon the state constitutions, that the franchise should be extended irrespective of race, etc. But I would have objected to somebody voting for those amendments because they hoped by doing so to force people to change their minds.

That is not to say I think people should not try to change their fellow citizens’ minds. It is to say I think they should have the courage to do so through debate and example rather than the coercion of the laws. It is not to say I think that no law should be voted for which may compel a person to act contrary to his personal beliefs. It is to say I think no law should be voted for because it will compel a person to act contrary to his personal beliefs, in the hopes that eventually he will give his beliefs up.
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Proposition 8

2008-09-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

In less than two months California voters will go to the polls for the general election, and a little after that there will be crying and screaming and much gnashing of teeth. People will rant about our inevitable doom as a country and rail against the direction America is set upon for the next four years. I wish that elections didn't evoke these kinds of reactions in people, but they seem to do so with fair consistency, so there it is. Ordinarily I try to stay above it all, especially here.

I'm going to give in a bit today, though, and direct my own small tirade against the hype surrounding Proposition 8. Proposition 8 is the constitutional amendment version of Proposition 22, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. You may recall that the California Supreme Court held that proposition as violative of the California constitution in In Re Marriage Cases, which I posted my response to on May 19. Proposition 8 would make the following words part of the California constitution:

Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California.

This is the exact same text as was in Proposition 22, overturned in In Re Marriage Cases. If you will recall, In Re Marriage Cases said that the California constitution prohibits such a law. The obvious reply, for those who have a problem with that reading of the constitution, is to change the constitution.

So far, all well and good. This is exactly how our legal system is supposed to work. No chicanery yet.

The chicanery comes when the proponents and opponents of the proposition try to convince voters to see things their way. No, scratch that. To vote their way. I have no idea whether true proponents and opponents of Proposition 8 really see things the way they spin things. I sure hope not. Here are some of the things I've seen thrown around about Proposition 8 that have really ticked me off:

It's about equality. This one seems to be the big pro-8 line, and it isn't nearly as bad as many of the anti-8 lines. Is Proposition 8 about equality? Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't. What kind of equality? It certainly isn't about equal rights. If Proposition 8 passes the state will revert to the status quo ante In Re Marriage Cases. Under that regime, the state has two parallel relationships: "marriage" (available to opposite-sex couples only) and "domestic partnership" (available to all same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples where at least one partner is over the age of 62). The two relationships are entered into in different ways, but they have the same rights. In case that was confusing I'll put it a different way: they're called different things, but they have exactly the same rights.

Of course one might think that Proposition 8 isn't about rights equality. You might think it's about social equality, and that things that are substantively equal should be called the same thing as well. If that's the kind of equality you're talking about I'm not going to call you stupid. I'm not going to call you obviously right, either, because I don't know that I think the constitution should have any business telling people what they should name something. Imagine if somebody put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that specified one and only one term that could properly be used to refer to African Americans. Legal, sure. But a good idea? I'm not so sure. Of course, the constitution won't be telling me what I have to call same-sex couples. Even if Proposition 8 passes, I could legally call them Dell laptops for all the constitution would care (doing so would probably make me a jerk, but the constitution doesn't care if I'm a jerk or not). Still, if social equality is the real issue here (and I think it is), should we be satisfied before society's terminology changes, even if the constitution's has? I doubt it. Is it a good idea to alter the constitution in hopes that people's terminology will follow? Maybe. Not so sure, myself.

It's correcting the outrageous decision of four activist Supreme Court judges. As a lawyer, this one really makes me mad. First off, it wasn't four judges on the Supreme Court who overturned Proposition 22. It was the Supreme Court. People who keep throwing the number "four" around tick me off the same way as do people who claim that only half the country elected the President. The American people elected the President, whether all the individuals comprised of that body voted for him or not. People who think otherwise need to go read Plato's Crito, preferably after being beaten about the head with it.

Second, the decision wasn't outrageous, and throwing that term around will not make it so. It was a tough case, and the legal issues presented were not obvious (nor were they the social issues people have pinned on the case. You can't crucify a justice for being "outrageous" or "activist" on the one hand and for not deciding issues that were not before the court on the other. Pick one). Give the justices some credit for trying to do their job in a difficult situation.

Third, the justices were not being "activist." The justices in Brown v Board of Education (mandating school de-segregation) were being "activist;" they ignored the legal arguments with the most merit and instead did what they thought was right. Everybody agrees about that for that case. That is judicial activism. The justices in In Re Marriage Cases were asked to say what the constitution says when it says that Californians have a "right to marry." A right to marry who? asked the litigants in that case.

Put yourself in that situation for a moment. A gay couple wants the right to claim the title "married" under California law. They claim that the constitution says they have such a right right now, and indeed has always said that, whether anybody bothered to recognize it or not. Somebody else comes along and disputes that, saying the constitution says no such thing and never has. You are empowered, under the most ancient of American legal traditions, to resolve the dispute as to what the constitution says. If you agree with the gay couple, that the constitution does indeed say that they have a right to marry and always have - and if that is your honest reading of the constitution - are you being an "acvitist?" How can you possibly get more conservative than simply telling people what the constitution says? If you agree with their opponent, that the constitution doesn't say that at all - are you being any more or less judicially conservative than in the first case? You're doing the exact same thing. It's methodology, not conclusion, that should define whether we call a justice "activist" or not.

It will restore the will of the people. This one sounds nice because Americans love to rage against elitism. But seriously. The justices said that Proposition 22 is in violation of the constitution. If the constitution is not the ultimate expression of the will of the people, what is? If 61.4% of "the people" voted for an initiative that said, "All black people shall henceforth be chattel property" would we allow it? Would we say, "13th and 14th Amendments be damned; The People Have Spoken?" Of course not. The people have indeed spoken - when they adopted the constitution.

Oh, but you didn't vote for the California constitution? Well, no, you didn't. If you think that matters, and you still in live in California, you deserve to be beaten with the Crito until you are black and blue.

It will make our children be taught that same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage is the same. I'm pretty sure our kids are taught in school that men and women are equal already. As far as I know they can still the difference between the two.

But look, I get this one. Truly, I do. I get the gut-wrenching feeling that your kid is in a public school being taught a legally mandated curriculum which includes a worldview that isn't yours. And I don't even have kids yet. I'm sure I'll feel that gut-wrenching feeling a million times more strongly when I do have kids.

But here's the thing: that's part of education. I went to a Catholic school, and I had my view of Catholics exploded by people like Judith Langford who were hardcore, devoted Catholics and honest-to-God born-again Christians and genuinely "good people" in the popular sense of that overused phrase. I did not come out of that school thinking that dead people can hear me when I address them, or that Mary was without sin, or with my view of the Pope's spiritual authority altered one iota. Were all of those things taught to me in the school's mandatory religious curriculum? Yeah. And yet here I am, a thoroughly non-Catholic (though not anti-Catholic) Christian.

I was force-fed something I didn't believe in in school. And instead of being brainwashed by it or rejecting it like a bigot I learned to use it to challenge my own beliefs, to better understand the people who held that belief, and to feel compassion for them as human beings. I'm going to go so far as to say that this is one of the three critical life skills that K-12 school is supposed to teach you, and by far the most important (the others being how to write an analytical essay, and how to do algebra).

So what if your kid is forced to learn something at school you don't believe in? Is that bad? Is that to be avoided? I really don't think it is, and I mean that in all seriousness. Yes, parents are supposed to reinforce their worldview in their children. I think people who think otherwise are lunatics. But school is not parents. Kids are supposed to be exposed to different worldviews in school. Many of those worldviews are going to be garbage. That's okay. It may even be helpful. Parents have a responsibility to reinforce their worldview in their children, but they also have a responsibility to do so in a way that does not turn their kids into straitjacketed bigots who can't function in any world other than their own. If you think you can do that without having your kid be exposed to other worldviews, good luck to you.

Tech Support

2008-08-06T10:28:00.001-07:00

So Thayet's laptop went down a few days ago after installing Service Pack 3. This isn't really a surprise per se; veteran PC owners have by and large come to accept the fact that Microsoft will occasionally break their systems for no good reason. It's sort of the PC equivalent of living in tornado country. Going Mac would be, I guess, I don't know, like living in New York. Do they have natural disasters in New York?

I'm not a PC expert, but I've picked up enough to be able to do basic household maintenance. I can usually diagnose the cause of a problem with reasonable precision, and I can buy and build a functional system from components. I own one or two useful gizmos with no real purpose other than when things go wrong. So I ran through the usual battery of tests and determined that the problem was indeed most likely SP3. No trouble: simply rolling back to the previous system restore point should do the trick.

Except of course you can't do that without a CD of Windows, and Thayet's laptop runs Windows XP Media Center Edition. If you're thinking that nobody has an actual disk copy of XPMC, you're right. Actually, we might have had a copy at some point; I don't know what Dell provides in their recovery CD package. Knowing Microsoft I rather doubt it (/shakes fist), but in any case, somehow those CDs got lost.

I'm not really a fan of recovery CDs, but they're cheaper than going out and buying a new copy of XP. So I called up Dell to see what it would take to get a replacement set. This meant I had to deal with tech support.

I'm not one of those geeks who abhors tech support. They're doing a job, and as anyone who's ever tried to do tech support over the phone to friends and family knows, their job is terrible. I've found that the key to a successful tech support call is to treat it like scuba diving: just relax, and never be in a hurry. Be ready to walk through all the steps you've done, and communicate everything little thing you're doing so you can stay on the same page (There is a button on the screen labeled "yes." I am going to click the button. I have clicked the button). So this post is not about how Dell tech support sucks. It's about how Dell tech support is ridiculous.

Turns out the recovery CDs are free (great!). But they're only available to computers in warranty, which Thayet's was not (no surprise). And in any case, we really should have a service call to try to resolve the problem now, which will cost $69 since the computer is out of warranty (here we go). Couldn't they just mail me the CDs? I don't really want a service call. Well, yes, they can, but only if I purchase a temporary warranty for $69, which comes with a mandatory free service call (sigh). Is there any way I can get my hands on those CDs without paying $69 for something? No. At least the guy admitted it.

So we have our service call. There were two surprising things about that service call. The first is that it did in fact convey useful information. The second is that, if you sift through the mandatory tech support communication (see two paragraphs up), the sum total of said useful information came down to this:

Hold down Ctrl and mash F11 on boot.

I'm serious. Apparently Dell has a system restore utility on their hard drives which will hose the system and put it back to the state in which you purchased it. Accessing this utility requires holding down Ctrl and mashing F11 repeatedly on boot (I actually had to do it twice in order to mash F11 with the requisite frequency). Ridiculous.

Since I had pretty much given up hope of getting to do the easy fix (roll back to a previous system restore point) and wasn't sure that would work in any case (it is a Microsoft recovery product, after all), hosing the system was about all I could hope for. And I had an up-to-date complete backup of her hard drive anyway, so it's not like I lost anything.

But seriously. I just paid $69 for you to tell me how to access something you deliberately hid from me on the disk? There's no way I would have stumbled upon that by myself, so I admit I received valuable knowledge, but ... $69? You couldn't have, I don't know, just told me? You couldn't have included that little tidbit in the laptop's documentation somewhere?

I don't know if the Ctrl+F11 is a Dell standard thing or an industry standard thing, but this one totally goes into the computer home repair file. And it should go into yours too.

That'll be $69, please.

Choking on Bullets

2008-07-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to write about this for some time, since the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v Heller, but I haven't really had the time (or I've had better things to do). Now, however, since I am sitting in the airport a full five hours before my flight leaves for Archimedes' wedding, I'd say I have time.

For those of you who don't know or never cared to, Heller was a case involving a DC police officer who desired the right to own a handgun to be kept loaded in his home in such a manner as to allow him to fire it on a moment's notice (e.g., no mandatory trigger locks). DC law at the time forbade:

1). The ownership of unregistered firearms.
2). The keeping of any firearm in the home not disassembled or disabled by means such as a trigger lock.
3). The registration of any handgun by a person who is not a retired police officer.

Put 1-3 together in their various combinations and permutations and you can see that Heller was out of luck. If he had been a retired police officer he could have lawfully owned a handgun, but as an active duty police officer he couldn't (this seems singularly poorly thought out to me, but that was the law). And in any case his weapon would have had to have been trigger locked or kept disassembled, which were contrary to his desire to keep a ready self-defense weapon.

Long story short, the Supreme Court struck down the district laws as violative of the Second Amendment. Heller (and by extension every citizen of the District of Columbia, and probably every citizen of the United States) must be permitted to register a handgun, and must be permitted to keep it in a "functional" state; i.e., ready to be picked up and fired at a moment's notice.

A blow-by-blow analysis of the opinions on both sides will have to wait for another time (which is to say, if people are interested, which I doubt). But I would like to discuss a few aspects of the majority and dissenting opinions.

Both the majority and dissenting justices agreed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to "keep and bear Arms." This is, not to insult [too much] those who have traditionally held the opposite view, patently obvious for a number of reasons.

The weird thing about the majority opinion is that it discusses the nature of militia at length, and then reads the Second Amendment as protecting a right to self defense. If you have trouble seeing the connection between those two dots, I'm right there with you (although I will discuss a possibility later). The other weird thing about the majority opinion is the standard of review that it [fails to] articulate, on which point, personally, I think Justice Breyer's dissent skewers the majority.

The weird thing about Justice Stevens' dissent is that it too discusses the nature of the militia, and its regulation, at length, and then proceeds to conclude the opposite of the majority opinion. The trouble with this dissent, I think, is that it never seems to get what the militia really is.

Stevens' confusion on this point, which I think mirrors the confusion of a lot of the populace, seems to be rooted in a misunderstanding of what the militia was in ages and cultures where it was a meaningful part of public discourse, particularly but not limited to 18th century colonial Britain. Confusion on this point has led people to say that the militia is the National Guard, or that the militia doesn't exist anymore.

Both points are wrong, both on legal and historical grounds. A militia is, and always has been, the entire populace less those judged to be unfit for military service. In the poleis of ancient Greece, for example, the militia was generally the entire populace minus free women, slaves of any gender, males under the age of 18 and males over the age of 60. In 21st century America, the militia is (according to law, 10 U.S.C. ss 311-313) the entire populace minus those who are not citizens and have made no declaration of intent to become citizens, women not in the National Guard or Naval Militia, males under the age of 17, males over the age of 45, active duty members of the armed forces, those who object to militia service on religious grounds so long as they do according to regulations prescribed by the President, and certain other not-very-important classes of people such as the Vice President and customhouse clerks.

You will note that neither of those definitions has anything to do with whether or not the individuals in the militia are armed. This is one of those nuances of military history that can surprise people, but it is true: citizens are not in the militia because they are armed. They are armed because they are in the militia. In other words, the militia is not and never has been the people under arms (as has sometimes been articulated). The militia is the people who could be under arms.

In other words, the militia is less than a bunch of guys with guns. It's really just a bunch of guys, not all of whom have guns - much less any kind of military training.

That last is another one of those nuances of military history that can surprise people, but it too is true: militia, as a rule, suck as soldiers. This is because they traditionally receive very little training - three or four times a year, say, for perhaps a weekend at a time. There can and have been militia who met more regularly and hence were trained to something resembling a competent standard (the "minute" companies of colonial America are one example; the legions of the Roman Republic prior to Marius and Sulla are another), but even then militia are generally second-class soldiers at best. The American myth that militiamen (all of whom were Minutemen, according to the myth we learn as schoolchildren) won the Revolutionary War for us through their virtue, patriotism, and grit is just that - a myth. Against professional soldiers (be they Redcoats or Spartans) militia can not be expected to prevail, and the times they have done so without transforming themselves into professional soldiers first are very rare.

But back to DC v Heller. Both the majority and the two dissents agree that at least one of the primary purposes of the Second Amendment was to preserve the effectiveness of the militia as against the federal government. They wanted, in other words, an American populace who could resist the depredations of a professional federal army. It doesn't take a genius, or a background in military history, to recognize that this is a tall order. It would require an exceptionally well armed and exceptionally well trained citizenry. At a minimum it would require that all the people in the militia had guns.

What kind of guns? This is a question that neither the gun lobby nor the gun control lobby cares to think about very much, because the answer is one that neither camp likes. But the fact of the matter is that militia, when they bother to arm themselves at all, have traditionally armed themselves to the standards of professional soldiers. American colonists tended to carry the same British Land Pattern Muskets ("Brown Bess") carried by the British Army when they could get them - and they used them for hunting and self defense as well as militia duty. Militia hoplites carried the same shield and spear as Spartan hoplites (and if you think that's because there was no such thing as a "civilian" shield or "civilian" spear, you don't know enough about shields or spears). Militia may be lazy but they aren't stupid, and generally realize that the professionals carry the things they carry for a reason. The difference between an armed militiaman and a professional soldier has never been the quality of his weapons; it has been the quantity of his weapons (sometimes - not all professional armies have been fully equipped) and his skill in the soldierly arts. Think about that for a moment.

Yes, 18th century colonial militia had cannon.

Cannon, in fact, were among the items the British were attempting to seize in the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The Second Militia Act, passed in 1792, provided for militia cavalrymen (who were expected to provide their own warhorses as well as their personal weapons and gear!) and militia artillerymen. The militia of the time was (or at least, was legally supposed to be) very heavily armed. As all militia have been, or at least, have legally been allowed to be.

This is a point that the Stevens dissent completely misses and the majority opinion sidesteps very awkwardly, and with no justification. But the fact is that militia have always had the right to be as heavily armed as they could afford, and indeed the very purpose of the militia, as the Court recognizes - to resist a professional federal army - requires that the American militia be very heavily armed.

This means not just striking down assault weapon bans (which ban semiautomatic weapons with certain form factor characteristics, such as pistol grips or carrying too much ammunition), but also bans on automatic weapons (banned since 1934 under the National Firearms Act), as well as bans on armored fighting vehicles, helicopter gunships, cannon and rocket artillery - in short, if the U.S. Army has a class of weapon, the militia has a right to own that class of weapon as well (sorry, males over 45). This is a point implied in United States v Miller, a 1939 case that held that only weapons bearing a reasonable relationship to militia service were "Arms" for Second Amendment purposes. The actual weapon in Miller was a sawed-off double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun, a weapon which the Court held had no reasonable relationship to militia service because it wasn't a weapon that a soldier of the time would have used (debatable, but whatever). But an automatic rifle certainly is a weapon that a soldier of the time (and of our time) would use. So why aren't they legal?

I'm pretty sure the answer is political. I'm pretty sure that most pro-gun citizens don't really care about whether they can own a main battle tank, or an attack helicopter, or even weapons as mundane as infantry fighting vehicles or anti-tank rockets. Most of them probably don't even want to own automatic weapons. They want to hunt and defend their homes, and that's about it. Most of them have no particular interest in fighting the United States Army. As for the gun control lobby, if they're uncomfortable with privately owned pistols, you can bet they're uncomfortable with privately owned cannon.

Whether or not they should be is debatable, I think. Big weapons are not particularly useful for criminals, as they are difficult to conceal, difficult to wield in close quarters, and tend to be expensive (both the weapon themselves and the ammunition; if the point of crime is to gain money, it's kind of counterproductive to shoot dollar bills out of your weapon). Personally I tend to agree with Xenophon that privately owned battle tanks are highly unlikely to be used in crime (at present actually they're highly unlikely to be used at all; people can barely afford to drive their SUVs). But never mind that.

So, a well-regulated militia is, among other things, a heavily armed militia. But what about self defense, which is an issue much nearer and dearer to the gun lobby than privately ownership of automatic rifles?

The right to own a weapon does not mean the right to carry it all the time or fire it whenever you want without consequence. It seems obvious to me that the Second Amendment protected Heller's right to own a handgun. But what about his right to keep it in his home without a trigger lock?

If you read the Second Amendment as protecting a right to self defense with a firearm (a right the Founding generation undoubtedly thought it had), then there's no real question in my mind that trigger lock requirements are unconstitutional. But, while the Founding generation undoubtedly thought it had a right to self defense with a firearm, the Second Amendment doesn't actually talk about self defense. It talks about preserving the right of the militia to arm itself. And approaching the topic of self defense from the well-regulated militia argument is much more difficult.

It's useful at this point to recall that the Tudors had used gun control regulations to terrorize Protestant Englishmen in the seventeenth century, and that George III used gun control regulations to try to prevent colonial uprising (look up the Powder Alarms). The Founders seem to have assumed that if the militia was going to resist the government, such resistance would be preceded by a lengthy period of tension during which gun control regulations could well be used to neuter the militia before any shooting actually broke out.

With that (pessimistic, but realistic) scenario in mind, it's hard for me to say whether preserving the militia outlaws trigger locks and similar precautions that prevent a weapon from being fired on a moment's notice. On the one hand, many militia scenarios would give ample time for militiamen to unlock their guns and proceed to the point of conflict. On the other hand, plenty of other scenarios don't - suppose for instance that British soldiers were ordered to break into the homes of agitating militia leaders in the dead of night and arrest them. Tactically the situation is little different from a robbery, and in such a situation our hypothetical militia leaders would find that a trigger lock effectively disarmed them. Of course, if they kept their weapons unlocked they would provide a perfectly legal reason for them to be arrested anyway. It's one thing if that situation occurs in a time of open rebellion. But it very well might occur before such a time, as happened with our own Revolution. The only way to prevent that is to make trigger lock requirements themselves illegal. But on the other hand, as Stevens points out, plenty of colonial and immediately post-colonial laws required storing weapons and powder in different locations for safety reasons, which would have the same disarming effect as a trigger lock in a dead-of-night scenario. There is a difference between wanting the populace to be able to oppose the government by force of arms and being paranoid, after all.

So for this reason, I conclude that the militia argument pretty clearly points to guaranteeing the right to legal private ownership of main battle tanks, but only arguably points to being guaranteed the right to keep "functional" firearms for self defense. And in fact, my personal opinion is that the militia argument probably doesn't guarantee the right to keep functional firearms. And I'm wary of reading in a separate self defense right into the Second Amendment.

In other words, I would have ruled for Heller in part and for the District in part. If I were running the District of Columbia I well might not have imposed a trigger lock requirement, but I think DC is allowed to do so if it wishes. (EDIT: see explanatory note in comments.)

Now, mind you, I'm not sure it really is such a hot idea to have an American militia. I think Iraq demonstrates plenty just how much evil can come from having a heavily armed populace in turbulent times (which, after all, is the main time you want a heavily armed populace). The Framers were generally wrong about the military effectiveness of militia (a point which Alexander Hamilton recognized); they well may have been wrong about the stabilizing political effect of a militia as well. I read one reaction to the majority opinion that basically went, "Doesn't [Scalia] get it? Kids are going to die!"

Well, let's say that they are. Frankly, when it comes to the Constitution, Scalia shouldn't care. A judge's job is not to ensure that the Constitution says rational things; his job is to say what the Constitution says, even if what the Constitution says is a bad idea. His job is (dare I say it?) to cram the people's decision down the people's throats to see if they choke.

This is a point that I feel modern jurisprudence has moved away from, and I welcome the efforts of "conservative" justices to return to it. Maybe if justices were a little more courageous in just saying what the Second Amendment says in all of its idealistic eighteenth century glory (something I think even Scalia shied away from in Heller) it would let us have a genuine public debate about whether or not the Second Amendment is a good idea, instead of dancing around the issue because everybody's afraid to say that the Framers were not gods.

Favorite Christian Misconceptions

2008-06-18T07:06:00.000-07:00

This thread was mentally prompted by a couple different things, and by none of them in particular. I always think it's fascinating (and sometimes think it's depressing) to read/see/hear "outsider" views of Christianity (I don't mean that in a pejorative way - just to encompass the wide range of attitudes from "actively hostile" to "academically neutral" to "not a Christian, but find things to admire").

I think it's valuable to offer critiques of Christianity (or any religion), both from within and without the church. I feel like there are a few misconceptions that seem to repeat themselves when people do, though. I'm not sure if this is because the proponents of these critiques are unaware of their deficiencies with respect to Christian philosophy, or if they find those deficiencies unpersuasive (perhaps because Christians keep reinforcing these critiques by our actions?). At any rate, here are my favorite things that a lot of people seem to think about Christianity that shouldn't be (but maybe are too often) true:

Misconception 1: Position X Violates a Higher Principle of the Religion, Like Universal Love. I ran into this most recently in comments at Kaylee's livejournal. This argument goes something like this: Christians believe that behavior X is wrong. As someone who engages in behavior X, or sympathizes with those who do, this makes me feel hated. How can Christians hate on me when they and their god are supposed to love everyone?
Why I Think It's a Misconception: I think this probably stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the implications of universal love. The distinction I would draw in Christian theology is that between loving someone and being pleased with them. Jesus loves everyone. That doesn't mean he loves everything they do. One of Esther Selene's favorite quotes used to be, "God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way." For the parents out there: if you found out your child was the biggest bully in school, would that stop you from loving your kid? Would you be okay with their behavior? Would you love your kid any less even if they couldn't see why bullying was wrong?
Why I Think It's Still Persuasive: Sometimes people use this one deliberately. They don't want to be loved so much as to have their choices validated. I think this tends to happen most often when the choices in question are closely entwined with a person's self-identification. Other times I think it's a genuine misconception. The refusal of this theme to fall out of public discourse despite the leaps of logic it requires makes me think that we must be reinforcing it. Sometimes we really are hating on people, no matter how much we insist that we love the person but hate the sin. Love of person does not imply love of behavior, as a logical matter. But it does imply it as a people matter. The ability to love somebody and not have that love be diminished because you disagree with the choices they make is hard, especially when you don't have the hormonal assistance of a parent-child relationship. But it's also critical that we learn to do this. Conversely, it's critical that we understand that "Jesus loves me" is not a blank check to do whatever we want.

Misconception 2: It's All Too Much To Live Up To. I saw this one most recently in Saved (which I liked quite a bit). This misconception has two stages. The first stage is to realize that Christianity requires people to live up to certain moral standards, which nobody can live up to all the time. The second stage is to reason that, therefore, the moral standards must be invalid or relaxed.
Why I Think It's A Misconception: From its earliest days Christianity has been premised on the fact that "it's all too much to live up to." It is precisely because it's all too much to live up, we have always argued, that people need Jesus. We have always said that realizing that "it's all too much to live up to" is a vital part of developing a mature, adult Christianity. Anything less is a boy's version of the religion, ungallant and deficient. Critiquing the religion on a problem posed by the religion itself without also critiquing the answer the religion offers to that problem is grossly unfair and argumentatively inadequate.
Why I Think It's Still Persuasive: To some extent I think this critique is essentially arguing that it shouldn't be too much to live up to. People don't want morals that they can't live up to; they want morals that they can live up to. This may be because they think that's the only way to get morally right with the universe (i.e., they understand the Christian position but reject the idea that Jesus can make good their moral deficiencies). Or perhaps it's because they think that's just how the universe is, or should be (i.e., they understand the Christian picture of the moral state of the universe but reject it as an untrue picture of the state of the universe). And some people, I think (particularly those who grew up Christian and are having to reconcile the faith of a child with the faith of an adult), are just shell-shocked to realize that all their good deeds and good intentions and good efforts don't measure up, because they thought that It's All Too Much To Live Up To only for, you know, bad people. Not for them.

These shell-shocked people, I should point out, are not necessarily massively arrogant jerks. A lot of them are just confused as to why have morals that nobody can live up to all the time, especially if they come from a church background where morals are heavily emphasized (sometimes too heavily emphasized). The shell-shock can be particularly bad if they hit this realization and simultaneously with growing out of the first misconception and realize that Jesus loves them even if they're morally deficient. If Jesus loves you anyway, why bother with morals at all? What possible point could there be to morals, if they aren't a path to getting right with the universe? And if your religion has nothing but morals, well ...

This confusion is another one of my favorite misconceptions about Christianity. I think it stems from a fundamental difference about what the point of morals is. You might say that morals are there to point people the way. The way to what? The way to what I'll call getting right with the universe. To being a good person. To harmonizing with the universe. Whatever you want to call it.

Christians think morals serve an entirely different purpose. Christians say it's okay that It's All Too Much To Live Up To because Jesus' grace makes up for our inevitable deficiencies. We say that we try to live up to those impossible standards anyway because ... well, there are lots of reasons we give, no one of which is really a complete answer. Because they're good standards, yes. Because it's not such a bad thing to have something to shoot for, lest we get morally complacent. Because it's important to reflect by our actions the nature of our god, since (rightly or wrongly) people judge our god not by what we say or what he does but by what we do. But my favorite reason is this: because God likes it.

In re Marriage Cases

2008-05-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

I've read the opinion in In re Marriage Cases, which I kind of felt like it was my responsibility as a lawyer to do. And now, like Kaylee (provisionally so named), I'm going to comment on it. Even though, like Kaylee, I don't really need to.

Except that I do need to, because I feel like this is one of those issues that besmirches the honor of my religion, and I hate it when people besmirch my honor.

So what do I have to say about it?

First, for people (like me) who haven't bothered to keep up with this, it's important to understand that for purposes of California law there is no difference between the rights of married people and the rights of registered domestic partners. That's right, none. You get into the relationships differently (though not substantially so), but the actual rights, privileges, and responsibilities are identical in California. This has been true in this state for five years, ever since the passage of the Domestic Partnership Act. We are not one of those states where domestic partnership confers only some of the benefits and burdens of marriage.

Nevertheless, as a result of Proposition 22, passed in 2000 by 61.4% of California voters, marriage was defined in California as between persons of opposite gender.

I mention this because it's important to understand that In re Marriage Cases was not dealing with the the issue of gay marriage as a question of rights. For purposes of California law there is no question of rights; there hasn't been since 2003. The question was, instead, one of names. Simply put, the question was this: given two essentially identical institutions, does the California Constitution permit them to be called by two different names?

The answer our supreme court has given us is no. Strictly speaking, the court has only ruled that they have to be called the same thing, whatever that may be. Of course, they're both going to be called marriage, but please note the technical detail.

Much of the majority's "analysis" is, I think, either deeply flawed or simply superfluous. The majority opinion reads to me like the justices were trying to make a statement in anticipation of the fallout. I understand the necessity of that but it's distasteful, and I'm glad the dissenting justices called them on it.

Nevertheless, I think the majority has a solid core argument. Stripped down, the majority opinion boils down to two points. The first is, given that the California Constitution guarantees Californians the right to marry, does the Prop 22 scheme violate that right? The second is, given that the California Constitution guarantees Californians equal protection under the laws, does the Prop 22 scheme violate that right? The California Supreme Court has answered yes to both questions.

It's the right to marry that's the thorniest problem, I think, because the analysis of the equal protection claim really depends on the definition of marriage for technical reasons that I won't bore you with here unless you ask. If the two-name scheme reminds you of "separate but equal," it probably should; it clearly reminded the majority justices of that as well. The majority tackles the question of the right to marry by analogy to interracial marriage cases. The dissent tackles it by analogy to tradition.

The essential question is this: what does it mean to marry? Leave aside Prop. 22. Does marry mean, as the majority would have it, to establish with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life an officially recognized and protected family? Or does the word inherently carry the concept of opposite gender, as the dissent argues?

To understand the legal difficulty here you have to understand that this is not a question of rights, policy, equality, or justice. This is a question about language. The dissent argues that the word marry means an opposite-gender union. That is, after all, what it's traditionally meant in California. I point this out because it's easy to see words like "tradition" in the gay marriage context and dismiss it as homophobia or merely being hidebound, and I don't think that's what's going on in this case. How else are we to understand the meanings of words, if not by tradition?

The majority argues by analogy from interracial marriage cases, from which they infer that the California right to marry is not the right to marry an opposite gender person of your choice, but rather the right to marry a person of your choice. That is, certainly, the way those opinions were phrased. Of course, opposite gender was understood.

Which side has the better argument? To be honest I don't think it's clear. I go back and forth myself. I am in favor of legalizing gay marriage as a matter of policy, but that doesn't tell me what the Constitution says, and what the Constitution says - not what it should say, not what is just, not even what is right - is the question in this case. On balance, I find the majority's argument slightly more persuasive than the dissent's, but only by a hair. And of course, I am biased towards the majority's result.

The reason I discuss all of this (besides the hope that some of you might find it interesting) is because I've seen some sentiments reported in the media about this case that just infuriate me. In re Marriage Cases is not, in my strongly held opinion, a case of judicial activism. Yes, ultimately, I think the justices had to make a judgment call about what they thought the right to marry means. But that is what justices do; you can't get more judicial than deciding what the Constitution says. If the decisions of justices change the law of the land, that isn't a result of judicial activism. It's a result of having a common law regime. Judicial decisions change the law in this country by virtue of their very existence. That's a bedrock principle of American law.

As for overturning the "will of the people" ... so what? In the first place, justices are not bound by the "will of the people." They are solemnly charged with ignoring the "will of the people" in favor of impartial application of established legal principles. In the second place, as the majority rightly points out, the Constitution is the will of the people. If the will of the people contravenes the Constitutional limits they have placed on themselves, there are but two recourses: change the Constitution, or leave the state. Prop 22 was neither.

I should be clear: I am not the guy you want at your gay pride rally. My views of homosexual sex are strictly "conservative" and, I hope, strictly textual. That's an uncomfortable fact, and I admit that, but I'm not Christian because it's comfortable.

But what, I wonder, do the opponents of gay marriage fear? I can only conclude that it's one of two things: they can't bring themselves to willingly grant rights to something they think is morally wrong, or they fear that the dignity of their own marriages will be impugned by giving rights to something that they think is morally wrong.

The latter is, I think, just bigotry, and suffers as well from a serious defect of understanding as to whence comes the dignity of marriage. That topic needs no more discussion.

The former possibility I think is not bigoted so much as narrow-minded. The fact of the matter is that we already grant affirmative rights to things I (they, we) think are morally wrong. That is precisely what American religious toleration is - and frankly I think a person's religion is a far larger moral issue than a person's sex life. And yet here I am (here, presumably, we are), holding simultaneously to our views that Christ is the one and only savior of mankind and supporting freedom of religion. Why? How?

This is a question I wish America's politically active (and inactive) conservative Christians would give considerably more thought to before they speak another word against the cause of gay marriage. For me, I can hold the views that I do about religious toleration because I don't think establishing Christianity as the state religion of the USA would advance the Kingdom of God. In fact, I'm convinced that doing so would be extraordinarily counter-productive to that goal. People do not fall in love with Jesus Christ because his church has more rights than other churches.

Similarly, I am at a complete loss to describe how prohibiting gay marriage is going to cause people of any sexual orientation to fall in love with Jesus Christ. Given that, I am in favor of the option which grants the most dignity* to the most people, which in this case means being in favor of gay marriage as a legal institution (I'm also, in case you're interested, in favor of gay marriage for a variety of social policy reasons, but all of those are secondary to the Christ issue).

As I said, I'm not the guy you want speaking at your gay pride rallies. But I hope I am, as The DM said, an important demographic - a conservative Christian who may disagree with the content of gay marriage but is nevertheless ideologically wedded to the idea that it must be allowed. If my co-religionists want to oppose legalizing gay marriage, well, that's fine by me - so long as they can tell me how doing so causes people to fall in love with Jesus Christ.

* It is, of course, people falling in love with Jesus that is my primary concern here. It isn't people's dignity, or even the gender of people's sexual partners. Pastor Jack used to say that his advice to legislators was simply, "Get to know Jesus, read the Bible, and make your own decision." I feel similarly about the issue of gay sex, and particularly the people who wrestle with being Christian and what the Bible seems to say about gay sex. I don't want to tell anybody who they can and can't sleep with. I want them to get to know Jesus, read the Bible, and make their own decision. And I wish my co-religionists would focus more on helping people fall in love with the God we fell in love with than trying to tell them what to do.

Actions, Consequences, Free Will, and Disneyland

2008-04-07T09:46:00.001-07:00

Shanah posted a comment to the last post that I started to reply to, and my reply started to get larger than the comment box as I was composing it, and then it started to dovetail with some other thoughts I'd been thinking of posting about, and the next thing you knew, I was writing this.

Here's as far as I got in my reply to my Sweatshirt Girl:

Shanah: I think you will believe again. I'm pretty sure you believed it when plenty of terrible things had happened already. Terrible things happen because the whole world isn't full of kindness and courtesy and joy and self-confidence. The world isn't that way, and no part of it can be made that way just by believing or wanting it to be so, or even by the mere practice of kindness and courtesy and joy and self-confidence. But I still believe

What do I believe? That it can be done? How?

My family has at various times by various people been criticized for being out of touch with reality, or raising me or my sister out of touch with reality. I grew up "sheltered," which some people see as cause for censure.

It is and it isn't, because sheltered can have two meanings. One is that I don't know about all the bad things in the world, which most people would consider sweet but impractical. The other is that I do know about all the bad things in the world, and I have a retreat (a shelter, if you will) where those things are not.

It is this second kind of shelter that my family has always strived to create. We operate (or we try to) in the real world, which is full of divers terrible things. We experience those things, we're hurt by them, we deal with it. And then there's this metaphorical family space we have, called the Cove, where those things simply are not permitted. Take a trivial example: sibling rivalry. My sister and I did not fight. Ever. This is not because siblings don't fight, or because we happen to have personalities that just would not produce fights. It's because siblings fighting is bullshit, dear readers, and my parents decided that we would not have it in the Cove. And there was an enormous amount of effort expended to ensure that that kind of bullshit, and many others, were not present in the Cove. An enormous amount of effort was necessary because these kinds of enclaves are (the world being full as it is of divers terrible things) under constant attack or threat of erosion.

Of course, lots of parents decide that. People decide similar sorts of things with similar amounts of conviction all the time. Lots of them try with all their might to make it happen. And yet, it ain't always so. So what made it so in my family? Was it just luck? I doubt that. Twenty-four years is a pretty long streak. Was it conviction? I doubt that too; the idea that human decisions can just make things happen strikes me as pretty laughable. Maybe it was just great parenting skill? That's even more laughable than conviction, as all parents know. What gave effect to my parents conviction and all the effort that went with it?

What gives effect to any conviction, or any effort?

In certain Christian circles it's popular to talk about "free will," and to lots of people it's hugely important to believe (or not believe) in "free will." What exactly people mean by that can vary wildly. Permit me briefly to state what I think, with one example, which is necessary to finish the discussion above.

I think that God is potentially in total control of every aspect of existence. Since I am convinced by my own observation that I have a will, it follows that God could completely manipulate my will without my ever suspecting it if he chose to do so. I am of the opinion that, in the main, he does not so choose. Instead I think his normal MO is to take his hand off the stick to a greater or lesser degree and let me operate my will under local control, so to speak. More or less, I think I get to decide what I get to decide.

So I decide something: then what happens? I imagine the decision (my actions and the intent behind them) leaving the little anomalous bubble of local control that surrounds all people most of the time and entering the rest of existence, which God generally keeps under his direct control. It has to pass through this great medium of God-controlled "space" before the decision can reach or affect another person. In short, I think that I decide what I decide, and God decides (or at least gets the option to interfere with) what effects my decisions have.

This isn't to try to remove personal responsibility; I think it's plain that God likes the laws of cause and effect even if the world works the way I think it does and he could override them willy-nilly should he so choose (and even if, on occasion, he does). Let me give an example that's been much on my mind lately.

David is facing Goliath. His opponent a giant of a man, fully armed and armored in a hundred pounds or more of a semi-mythical metal from a bygone age (remember this is the height of the Dark Ages, and the Bronze Age ended in cataclysm two hundred years ago). David has answered the challenge and decides not to use unfamiliar war gear, declining even the loan of a sword. He sticks with what he has and what he knows: a sling, a weapon he is a proficient with, the deadliest missile weapon of the ancient world. He takes five stones.

Why not more? Not because five was all he could find; the army would have had plenty of sling shot. Rather, because if he hadn't downed the Philistine in five shots, he'd be dead. I imagine he picked the five himself rather than accepting another slinger's bag because he wanted to make sure those five were as good as possible. This is a picture of an experienced slinger at work.

So why not only one? Because he was expecting to miss.

David is plainly trusting in God to save him. Anybody facing a fully armored man with nothing but a missile weapon would have to, but he says as much in stirring fashion. And yet he is also trusting in his skill, and his choice of ammunition suggests that he has a fully realistic view of his chances: he knows he can win this fight if he can land a stone in the right spot, and he knows he's a damn good shot, but he also knows that the odds of actually making the critical hit in time against a man armored from head to shin in bronze are quite low, even for him. He trusts in God, but he also takes more than one shot.

There is a chance in this scenario that any crack slinger could win the duel - not a good chance, but a chance. And David is clearly doing his best to maximize his chances. That is what makes his statement noteworthy: that God will bring about David's victory. This would be wishful thinking if David hadn't accurately appraised the situation. But he had; he knew exactly what he was facing, and he was doing his best to skew the odds in his favor. He picked a good stone, he slung it (we may presume) as accurately as he could - expecting to miss, remember, as well he might.

But the stone hits home on the first shot, and does exactly what you would expect a sling shot to do at short range against an unarmored portion of the human body. David shoots, God hits.

David probably wasn't the best slinger in the army. For that matter, a man used to fighting in armor probably would have had better odds, even against a man as well-equipped and experienced as Goliath, than the best slinger in the army. So why didn't they fight the duel? Just because David was the king's shieldbearer? Well, maybe. But if it was so all-fired important that the king's shieldbearer fight the duel, presumably Saul would have either recalled David himself or picked a new shieldbearer for the occasion.

What really sets David apart is that, despite doing his damndest to win that duel the old-fashioned way, he was trusting in God to make his actions and his intentions mean something. This is basically how I think the universe operates.

(I don't mean to say that God helps them that helps themselves. God might not have caused that shot to hit. The response of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is always to be kept in mind. What I mean to stress is that for David, doing your damndest was not incompatible with believing that God is the one who makes your damndest accomplish anything at all, and that is the way people best can expect their decisions to bring about what they desire.)

And this is basically why I think it is possible to create a world full of kindness, courtesy, joy, and self-confidence. Notice I don't say where those things reign (which would have been my natural construction). They don't reign; God reigns, because I don't think such enclaves are really possible other than in the context of the Kingdom of God.

The whole Kingdom is not like that, or at any rate the whole of Christendom is not. But despite all the terrible things in the world it can be done. I've seen it.

And Then There Was Disneyland ...

2008-04-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

Check out the last post if you haven't already, wherein I share some thoughts about the wedding and being married in general. In this post, I discuss the honeymoon.

Specifically I'm going to discuss Disneyland, because while San Diego was great, and we'd love to go back for vacation in the future, I don't have anything particularly within the purview of this blog to say about it. But Disneyland, now, Disneyland is a different story.

As I've grown older I've realized that there's a trick to Disneyland that some people get and some people don't, and for the most part it predicts whether a person considers Disneyland the closest thing to Eden on God's green Earth or a hackneyed money trap for the naive (the Golden Fleece, my family joked when we visited Disneyworld).

There is, to be sure, lots about Disneyland to be cynical about. As far as I can tell Walt Disney himself was kind of a terrible man, and it is expensive, and they are looking to squeeze every last penny they can out of you. There are more exciting rides to be found. And yes, it's all fake.

Or is it? That is the trick - what do we mean by "it?" What is Disneyland? If Disneyland is a collection of rides, fake buildings and stores, all the vision of an egotistical genius, then it's nothing to write home to Mom about and quite skippable.

Five years ago I put it this way:

Disneyland is not an amusement park in the conventional sense; it's a purveyor of magical lifestyles. Disneyland is about the total package experience of being wide-eyed and child-like and transported to a magical place where everything is good and sparkly and wonderful. Every love story that has ever been told, every prince charming that has ever loved, every beautiful princess that has ever loved, and every child that has ever hoped to wear shining armor on a white steed or a beautiful ballgown on a marble dance floor - this is what Disneyland is about.

If that is the "it" by which we mean Disneyland, then it is quite certainly not skippable. And certainly not skippable by me and Thayet on our honeymoon, of all times.

There were the rides (Finding Nemo is, in fact, worth the wait - so long as that wait is no more than about 60 minutes). There was the food (yum!). There was the atmosphere (swing dancing before dinner!). There was the new Pirate's Lair (yay!). There were the people - the folks who work at Disneyland who really believe in what their park stands for.

And there were, surprisingly, the shows. Not Fantasmic, although I saw that on Rivers of America for the first time and I'm glad I did. I'm talking about the kids shows: the Jedi Academy and the Disney Princess Faire. It's actually the latter that I'm most excited about morally, although the sheer coolness of Disney's new voice conversion technology and their Darth Vader are ... I mean ... DARTH VADER! Why will I never get to fight DARTH VADER in the flesh??!

Because I'm older than the age of eight, of course, which is more or less cutoff for audience participation in these shows. Let me back up. Disney has these audience participation shows for kids, wherein children from the ages of about four to eight are a) given Jedi robes and lightsabers, taught an attack combination, and given the opportunity to fight Darth Vader or Darth Maul (in the one case) or b) taught basic courtly etiquette and a dance suitable for princesses or knights (in the other).

What got me about the latter show was the way it was presented. I forget the exact phrase, but at some point the teaching princess makes the connection to these impressionable young minds that being a princess (or a knight) is about about being kind, courteous, joyful, and believing in yourself. There's a similar message in the Jedi Academy show about what it means to be a real Jedi, but this one struck me more (Lady Lillian also says that dancing is a wonderful way to express the joy in your heart, which is so true).

What got me about this show is that it so perfectly encapsulated the wonder and essential goodness of what Disneyland stands for. What makes the Disney Princess concept (and franchise) so powerful is that it stands for this basic idea, that there really is a world where kindness, courtesy, and joy (and if you think that courtesy and joy are incompatible you don't understand what manners really are) reign, where self-doubt is banished, and all is right. What made this show so touching is that it was basically telling these kids that it's all true, and you can carve out in your life an enclave of kindness, courtesy, joy, and belief in yourself if you are determined to make these things - being a princess, being a knight - your watchword.

Maybe that's a terrible message to give little boys and girls, because maybe it isn't true. But I don't think so.

I Got Married in the Morning

2008-03-31T12:05:00.000-07:00

Well, the afternoon. And now ... I'm married. I'll talk about the honeymoon another time (Disneyland! I really need to come up with a blogname for ... er, that person I don't have a blogname for). For the moment, the wedding.

For the most part it went as I expected, which is to say that it rocked. There were a few surprises, though. I didn't expect to get to worship with my dad. But we did, which was really excellent, because nobody worships like my dad. I didn't expect the girls to have to fix my waistcoat's buttonholes with scissors and a hot glue gun. But that's okay. I got lots of compliments on it anyway, which made me happy for Thayet, and now it matches my tails even better. I certainly didn't expect everybody to forget about putting the communion elements out. But that's okay too. I value communion as something more than a mere symbol, but the body and blood of Christ are not grain and the fruit of the vine. We partook - we partake - of them anyway, because we are his.

And in the end, it was probably for the best. I would have been honored to have Vonsus perform our wedding, and I would have been honored to have the Cardinal do it too. But the actual solution worked out specially. To explain why I'll have to digress:

Not quite three years ago, The River (that's my church) had a message series on prayer, and one of the sermons challenged us to ask God for something really, really big - the sort of thing for which you hardly dare hope. They gave a little glass bead to everyone at the service, and put up a big glass hurricane jar at the front of the sanctuary, where it still stands. They challenged us to pray for our big thing until we felt God had answered, and when he did, to just put our little bead in that jar.

Those of you who remember that time will remember that Thayet and I were ... well, not going well. Pretty much everybody was of the opinion that we were bad for each other. And, just to keep the record straight, in a lot of ways we were bad for each other then (this is a useful lesson in interpreting the advice of friends, even when they speak with the voice of the Lord. Just because the prophet ties himself up doesn't mean you don't go to Jerusalem). So what did I pray for? I prayed for one day, someone to say that they saw God in our relationship.

And I prayed. And I prayed. And I kept that little glass bead in my special bronze box that my sister brought back from Rome. Maybe people saw it. Maybe they didn't. But the first person who said it was David Alvarez, who wouldn't have been there but for the communion mix-up, and he hadn't planned to say it. David's the kind of guy who knows how to respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit even when he doesn't understand.

That's when I started crying.

I could give a blow-by-blow of the wedding and reception but I'm not sure I have anything to say about them other than squealing, so I think I'll hold off on that unless there's some kind of popular outcry. If you're reading this you were almost certainly there anyway. I will say, though, that the reception was an awesome party. Lots of people have said so, anyway, and I am of the same opinion. Everybody said you don't get to dance at your own reception. Well you do, so there. And ohhhhh, it was good. I didn't get to dance with everybody I wanted to, but if you dance, and you were there, you were invited at least in part to be part of the dance party. Because dancing gives form to the joy in my heart (more on that, hopefully, in the following post re: honeymoon). Because I understand the heart of David better when I dance. Your dancing helped me worship. Your dancing helped seal my marriage vows.

A co-worker asked me the other day if it felt different to be married. The correct answer, it seems, must surely be no. After all, if one has come this far, and if one has been sure, how much different can it be?

It feels different.

It's difficult to express why, or how. I have a sense of finally tipping over a threshold, and settling onto a foundation. I fit better into the world. As we sang at the marriage, here - here - I raise my ebenezer. This is where I belong.

But it's more than the feeling of finally arriving on station. I've felt that before. There is a sense of becoming that is different from other times in my life. Prior to now I have been able to look at myself and say, "I am this or that" or look back on a season of my life and say, "Ah yes, the Lord has been making me such and such." But I have never before felt these identity shifts in the way I do now, like I'd grown a ... not a new limb, that's too small. More like a new person.

Speaking Natalie that's now how I'd put it, but it describes how I feel. Let me attempt a more precise formulation. There is me, there is her, there is God, and there is a fourth entity in the room that is us, our family. The entity I refer to as "me" has expanded in a way I have no analogue for except for the Godhead; I am not just pledged to but am actually part of a real, suprapersonal entity. A living thing, not just a level of organization. It didn't exist before. Maybe it was growing - maybe in the instant before God joined us in the heavenlies it was substantially the same as the instant after. I imagine the same is true of babies being born - and that they feel the difference as strongly all the same.

I'm Getting Married in the Morning ...

2008-03-15T01:56:00.001-07:00

Anybody else remember that song? Anybody else feel like I should be singing that right now at the top of my lungs, with a group of guys around me laughing and swinging their beer mugs (or Mountain Dew cans)?

Okay, I know what you're actually thinking: it's 0200 the morning I'm going to get married, and I ought to be in bed. Well, yeah. But there's laundry to wash, and it ain't washing itself, and none of you are gonna wash it for me. Besides, by the time you all read this it'll be too late, so there.

At any rate, there's no singing, no guys, and certainly no Mountain Dew (I do want to go to bed tonight!). Just me, and the sound of my keyboard clicking away, and the hum of the washer and dryer. I have my headphones on, but I'm not listening to any music. Just me and God, alone in the dark and the quiet.

I'm getting married in the morning.

Let me stop here and say that I am really excited about getting married. I cannot wait. I am ready to rock - this is my wife we're talking about, my perfect companion. I want to get this party started; I want to do this; I want to be about it, because this, gentlemen, this is the moment you officially become ... well, you know the rest.

So if the tone of this post is solemn, don't think that I'm sitting around over here moping. I just needed some time to draw out the quieter thoughts in my heart right now. I hope the effect is poignant rather than sad.

I will get married wearing exactly what I wanted to be wearing. Most of it will not be new. I will be wearing my old trusty socks, and my old trusty shoes, in my old trusty tux pants and the tailcoat which has seen me through so many evenings. Most of it is neither fancy nor of the best quality - my lapel will still have the old familiar tear (which nobody will see, because nobody ever does). My trousers are not tailored. My socks will be comfortable, and I've either misplaced my shoe polish or it's been packed away already. The shirt will be new, and the waistcoat will be hand-sewn by my love. That's as it should be. The waistcoat should be new, and special. But the rest is and should be old and worn and familiar. Not shabby, mind. But not perfect. My trusty old tailcoat has its problems. But this is my tailcoat. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Did I mention I'm getting married in the morning? Well, the afternoon?

Tomorrow there will be guys and laughing and noise and allusions, and I will fuss over my guys' clothing. And when I put on own clothes probably nobody will know that I am being thankful for the woman who will walk down the aisle to stand beside me. But I will be. And I will know.

The last momentous event in my life kind of overtook me before I was ready. I did better this time - I hope she did too - but it rather overtook me all the same. After all, I'm doing laundry right now instead of sleeping. The programs probably got done (if they're done) only just recently. There has been no time to reflect, to be quiet, to absorb what is coming before it comes. There probably never will be again. It's sad, in a way. That's how I used to live - absorbing and digesting the future in the present.

People sometimes like to joke with grooms that all they have to do is stand up there and say, "I do." I know those people mean well but I find such well-wishing offensive. That is not all I have to do. Weddings exist to solemnize our promises, because the truth is that promises carry more weight when they're solemnized. We dress in our finest, we invite our friends, we decorate, we choreograph ... why? To throw a party? For shame. We do it (or we should) to add weight and gravity to what we're doing. To make our promises more real. To sink them deeper into our bones. That's where they ought to live always, whatever the circumstances. But they don't.

Part of that solemnization, for me, is absorbing what's to come. Oh no, I most certainly do not just have to stand up there and say, "I do." There ought to be a good deal more to it than that.

Most of the ways I would have solemnized this event for myself did not get to happen. I didn't get to go down to the stone river to pray. I didn't get to sit in the cold at the feet of the Fallen Caryatid and mourn my mistakes and sink into God's grace. I played no Descent. I ate no dinner at my special table at Dave and Buster's. I did not get to worship while my father played the piano. There have been no long talks, no walks in the moonlight singing softly. I have not looked at the stars in the wide domed sky.

Instead there has been dull, paper-pushing work, and late nights staying up until 3:00 working on the wedding. Losing sleep. Being stressed. Not having enough time.

Which would you rather have? Now that they're both behind me, I choose the second.

It isn't idyllic, but it has one thing that the first option doesn't have: Thayet. We stayed up late together. We lost sleep together. We stressed together. We ran out of time together. And tonight, although we are in separate places, we are even doing laundry together.

This is the woman I first fell in love with, this warrior woman, this Lucy the Valiant. The one who loses sleep just so I won't have to stay up working alone. The one I can wade into problems with. The one who fights beside me - not before, not behind. Do you remember when I decided to propose to her, the song in a created language that I struggled to master that night? One of the lines goes Jorsoran kando a tome: we shall bear its weight together.

It isn't perfect. We'd both have liked to have been done by now - by this whole week, in fact. I wish I had done more - a lot more - in doing this together. But we did do it together, at the end of the day; we stuck with each other and acted like knights. Jorsoran kando a tome ib'tuur. I suppose to some people it looks like we've just been running around too distracted by planning to focus on the wedding. But we did a tome, and I can feel that sinking into my bones. I'll take weeks of losing sleep with my beloved over getting to perform all of my rituals alone any day. This is my wedding. There are many like it, but this one is ... ours.

Tomorrow I will arm in my tails one more time. I wouldn't want a new coat, I think. This one has carried me this far, and it deserves to carry me at least one step farther.

Turning the Other Cheek and the Two Swords

2008-01-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

I was going to post my thoughts about Harry Potter now that I've finished the series, but that will have to wait for another post.

Xenophon got me Bioshock for Christmas, and given my new workingman's game playing schedule I haven't gotten very far into it. But one of my very early fights was worth relating, because it got me thinking:

I was coming out of an elevator in the abandoned underwater art-deco city of Rapture, whose inhabitants (as far as I could tell) had been mutated and deformed by something (some of which I suspected I had just foolishly injected into my own body, altering my own genetic code) and were none too happy to see me. Well, as the elevator opened I could hear a mother sobbing hysterically off to my right. From the sound of it her baby daughter was dead, and she was standing over the corpse, asking it why it wouldn't get up and come to mommy. I cautiously poked my head out of the elevator and sure enough, there was a young woman with her back to me, pleading with something in a stroller. There was a revolver on the ground behind her, which I quietly picked up (I had been attacked several times, after all). It turned out to be loaded. The woman still hadn't heard me.

Now, of course I knew perfectly well that the woman was 98 3/4% likely to attack me the moment I revealed my presence. The prudent thing to do would have been to blow the back of her head off before she realized I was even there. But of course there was the slightest chance that she wasn't a mutant. What if her baby was the homicidal one? At any rate I just couldn't bring myself to execute this poor distraught young mother, who might just have been trapped like me in this nightmare of an enigma. I stepped forward and tapped her on the back.

Of course she turned out to be crazed and mutated, and she blamed me for her baby's death, and proceeded to try and bash my skull in with a pipe wrench, so I zapped her with a fistful of lightning (genetic code altered, remember?) and beat her head in with a pipe wrench (didn't want to expend a bullet).

Well, what would you have done?

The point was that even as I rifled through her pockets (hey, I'm not stupid! Mysterious underwater city full of homicidal maniacs!), I felt bad about what I had done. I mean, poor woman was probably so driven out of her mind from genetic modification that she didn't really know what she was doing. Maybe she really did believe that I had killed her baby. And now I was searching her hideously deformed corpse as it lay in a pool of blood. Not that I had a choice, of course; it was her or me. But I still felt bad.

This is the best kind of video game violence, the kind that strikes a balance between the three extremes of "violence is always bad," "violence is good," and "violence has no consequences." Here was the sort of situation a philosopher might posit: if you were trapped in an undersea city with a woman who believed you had killed her daughter, whom it was impossible to sneak by but whom you must get past, who could not be incapacitated, and who would kill you if you did not kill her ... what would you do? Oh, and toss in the fact that you're in short-wave radio contact with a man who is begging you to save his wife and kids, and who is the only person down here who has not manifested a desire to kill you upon your first acquaintance.

To me, at least, it's a thorny and disturbing problem, and therein lies the value. Here is simulated violence that is actually saying something quite valuable, and quite nuanced: this encounter says, "Violence is messy, violence is gross, violence is bad, but violence was also your only option." Well, unless you count letting my skull get bashed in by a pipe wrench an "option."

I mean, it's not.

Is it?

Today while researching the topic of communion during weddings (what's your opinion?) I stumbled on a passage of Scripture that I had read many times but never really noticed. Everybody is familiar with Matthew 5:39:

But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.

And plenty of people know of Matthew 26:52:

Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.

But listen to what Jesus said to his disciples before uttering that famous line later that evening (Luke 22:35-38):

Then Jesus asked them, "When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?"

"Nothing," they answered.

He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment."

The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords."

"That is enough," he replied.

I have heard it preached that by "that is enough" Jesus was saying, "That's enough of that;" i.e., that he was telling them not to resort to violence. But plainly that is not true. Jesus is telling his followers to arm themselves. And then when the moment comes to defend him, and Peter actually uses one of the two swords, Jesus tells him to stop.

What's going on?

Here's what I think is happening. Jesus anticipates the possibility of violence that evening. He is perfectly ready to be arrested, but he foresees the possibility of things getting out of hand, and he doesn't want his arrestors to get the idea of butchering his disciples just for good measure. So he tells them, essentially, "Uncertain times are coming. I am telling you to prepare." He obviously didn't intend them to defend him with those swords, but it also seems unlikely he didn't intend for them to be used ever. And he obviously didn't intend for the group to be heavily armed, if he was content with two swords out of twelve men.

To me, this smacks of telling his men to arm themselves in case they need to defend themselves as a last resort. And that's what's interesting - it's as if Jesus is saying, "Yes, there are times when you will need to use deadly force." And what about turning the other cheek? Well, it occurs to me that Jesus said to turn your cheek to a slap, and perhaps he chose his words with care. Maybe he didn't say, "Whoever stabs you through the chest, turn your back to him also" for a reason.

Which leaves the age old question of when it's okay for an individual to use deadly force as an individual. Which I think is a question we need to explore ourselves, and with our youth. And any exploration of that must begin with the simple acknowledgment that violence is a terrible thing.

Most people say that video games desensitize you to violence, but I've never believed that. There are basically four ways that violence can be presented in a videogame. You can present it as good, hopefully with your tongue in cheek (e.g., Syndicate). You can present it as always bad, which basically nobody does (except for the news media) due to technological and literary limitations. You can present it as having no consequences, which in my opinion is the worst of all (e.g., games where you kill people but there is no blood, no gore, and no attempt to present the dead as real people). All of these three options I think are bad, unless you choose them for satirical effect. Whether they desensitize people to violence is another matter, but they're certainly bad.

And then you can present violence in a fourth way: that violence is not good, but neither is it always bad, and it does have consequences. A game like that looks violence straight in the eye and says, "This is a terrible thing, but there are times when it is appropriate." Which in my opinion is a heck of a lot better than pretending that there is never an appropriate time to deploy deadly force. In a world where most people never experience violence and those who do often experience it used inappropriately, I've long felt that video games are one tool we can use to sensitize ourselves to violence.

Just one tool, mind you. I'm certainly not claiming that video game violence lets you know what the real thing is like, and you'd be a great fool if you thought otherwise (either as a hypothetical superpredator or as a ratings-seeking news anchor, mind). But no single tool, not even personal real-life experience, can teach you everything you need to know about the morality of violence, and I do think that video games are one tool that can be useful. They can help.

I'm pretty confident I did the morally right thing by bashing that woman's skull in (I could just say "killing that woman," but the whole point of this exercise is not to ignore what violence really means, remember?). But I still feel like it was a terrible thing to do.

Which is probably the way it should be.

RE: The Word of God

2007-12-31T13:54:00.000-08:00

I've recently had cause to reflect upon what exactly I think the Bible is. Here's a working definition: a collection of writings from antiquity that happen to be true, and whose truth God intends to control when in conflict with other purported truths. Parse:

That the Bible is a collection of writings from antiquity is, I think, noncontroversial. I don't think I know anybody who doubts that the entire thing was written in the window of 1500 BC - 200 AD (to give a century's or so margin for error on both ends). It's worth remembering, though, that these are really quite ordinary documents - or, at any rate, more ordinary than the name Holy Scripture tends to conjure. The documents are extraordinary in that they existed at all (in the case of the narrative histories, for example, which were pretty clearly written at least a hundred years before Greek historiography really took off) and in that they are extant and in their content, but the actual form of the documents is relatively mundane. Narrative histories, records of prophecy, lyric sheets, poetry, and semi-personal correspondence - none of those types of documents are especially weird, with the possible exception of records of prophecy, and even those aren't weird in the context of antiquity. "Holy Scripture" is not a form of document I am very familiar with, and I don't have the intellectual tools to deal with it. But I know more or less what to do with historical narrative, lyric sheets, and letters.

Next, I believe that the Bible "happens to be true." I don't mean to say that it is true by accident, of course; I think it's true because God spoke true things and so orchestrated the course of human events that those true things remain extant. By "happens" I mean to convey that I think the Bible is true because I think it is true, and not because it is Holy Scripture, or The Bible.* That is to say, I think the Bible is true because it is true, and not because it is the sort of thing that must be true. Granted it was, I think, spoken by an entity that only speaks truths - but that makes the Bible exactly as true as if God were to speak the Pythagorean Theorem, at least as far as I can work out.

And then we get to the question of "true." The common question here seems to be whether one believes that the Bible is "literally" true or not. I don't think that's a particularly sophisticated question, and I dislike the way it seems to have become a political codeword. One gets the distinct impression when listening to somebody ask whether one believes that the Bible is "literally" true that nobody in their right mind could possibly believe that anything is "literally" true. Here are examples of things that I believe in quite wholeheartedly but probably less than what seems to be meant by "literally:" my own existence as a contiguous individual, my family's love for me, the existence of George Washington, the course of the Battle of Gettysburg, the fact that I know how to dance, and the evidence of my senses that I am presently wearing a blue shirt.

I hope that will dispose of the "literally" label. To continue in the same vein, I would say this: I tend to believe the Bible more the more important the statement in question is to the author's purpose. For instance, I quite doubt that the Philistines had three thousand chariots when they faced Saul at Micmash (1 Sam. 13:4-6). I just don't see how the logistics of that would work, and it's wildly outside of military historical precedent. And because the author does not seem to be noting the size of the Philistine chariot arm as miraculous I am inclined to believe that somebody, at some time, made an error.

Contrast that with an episode where the author is plainly attempting to relate a purported miracle, such as the consumption by fire from heaven of a waterlogged bull upon waterlogged wood upon a waterlogged pile of rocks surrounded by a moat filled with water (1 Kings 18:30-38). That sort of thing strains credulity, to be sure. But in this case, the author is plainly aware that what he relates seems impossible, and is writing it down precisely because he is aware that it is an extraordinary event outside of normal human experience. Or at any rate that seems to me to be his perfectly obvious intent. It does me no good, in that case, to say that such an event is so outside of normal human experience that I will not believe it happened.

Now of course I might say that the author's obvious intent is to be allegorical, and many people do. In the face of reasoned and reasonable literary analysis to that effect, I'm perfectly willing to believe that a given passage of Scripture is allegorical. It is, after all, simply an ancient document. But it seems incredible to me to believe that the default for ancient writers was to be allegorical when they discussed miracles, as if the majority of the ancient world shared the modern skeptic's assumption that such things Simply Don't Happen, or have to have happened a hundred times before they can happen once.

And of course when I discuss "truth" in this context I mean something more than a recitation of historical facts. I think it is pretty plain that the Bible teaches that there is no entity equal to God, that the Holy Spirit is a person, that men and the natural world are not as they should be, or that neither men nor the natural world can be as they should be except through Jesus Christ, or that not being as they should be is pretty much the most terrible thing in existence. Those are factual assertions, but not of the historical kind, and they are the sort of assertions that I think the Bible is really much more concerned about than whether Elijah was "literally" taken into heaven by a chariot of fire or whether Mary was "literally" a "virgin."

Which brings us to that truth being controlling. I think Lewis had it right when he put it this way rather than some of the other, more common formulations. The Bible does not really make any factual assertions at all about chemistry, for instance (or at least, I don't think it does). Consequently I have no trouble at all believing what my chemistry professors tell me about the behavior of atoms and molecules (subject to the usual skepticism anybody should bring to academic assertions). On the other hand the Bible does quite clearly assert as fact that there is no entity equal to God. Consequently I have a good deal of trouble believing anybody, or any part of any religion, who tells me differently.

In addition, I think that the Bible is set above other assertions which may be "true" in the ordinary sense (this sense, combined with the previous sense of the Bible being controlling, comprise the greater part of what I mean when I say that the Bible is "holy"). For instance, the Bible does not explicitly teach me to be gentlemanly. It asserts as true fact that I ought to be kind, and good, and compassionate, and loving. But as for whether I should afford women more social rights than men, or treat them with separate but equal courtesy, or uphold my personal honor or that of my family name ... well, all of those are (I assert) good ideas which will profit me and those around me. But they aren't Biblical. They aren't the same level of true, if you will, as that I should be kind and good and compassionate.

* Precisely why I think the documents are true is outside the scope of this post.

Veterans Day

2007-11-18T19:40:00.000-08:00

This post comes quite late, but I didn't want Veterans Day to pass without some kind of reflection. I'm reading Republic Commando: True Colors (by the truly excellent Karen Traviss) and recently finished reading the Iliad all the way through (success at last!), both of which have touched me quite deeply, so it seemed like an appropriate time in my emotional life to deal with the subject of Veterans Day.

It's common on or around Veterans Day to hear people expressing thanks (to God or otherwise) for the men and women who have served to secure our liberties and our way of life. I recently read a number of DAR essays expressing such sentiments.

This kind of talk always makes me uncomfortable. Undoubtedly there have been a great many of American veterans who served and died with the result that our liberties and way of life were secured from direct attack. The veterans of the Revolutionary War come most immediately to mind. But even they ... I mean, how many of those men went to war for the purpose of securing the birth of the nascent nation? Certainly not the vast majority of the veterans of 1776. And what about the veterans of our other wars? Did the Spanish American War really threaten our liberties? Did even World War II (our way of life, perhaps. Our liberties? Who really thinks an Axis victory would have resulted in the conquest of America and not a peace treaty?)? Does the current war in Iraq really defend our liberties or our way of life?

I am thankful that for most of its history this nation has had the good sense to have a War Department rather than a Department of Defense. Not that I oppose the bureaucratic unification of the DoD, but the name ... I mean, really, come on. Whenever people talk about our wars as defensive in nature, I cringe. I suppose it's the classicist in me. In roughly two hundred years of history the Republic of Rome was at peace for twelve. All of those wars were, officially, to defend Roman liberties and the Roman way of life. Did you know that? And in the end? Rome had conquered, quite by accident, the whole of the Mediterranean. Oh, and the republican way of life was lost forever despite the efforts of some very talented well-meaning patriots.

I don't want that for America. I don't want us to go on making defensive war until our nation crashes down around our ears. I want us to call our wars what they are - defensive, aggressive, opportunistic, preemptive, vengeful, whatever. I doubt politicians will do so within my lifetime. But the American citizenry might.

And what about the soldiers? I'll tell you why I celebrate Veterans Day (in my quiet, internal, Natalian way). It's not because the millions of American veterans have secured my liberties (I won't even get into securing my way of life. Does it deserve to be secured?). Some of them have, and some of them haven't. Very few of those who have secured my liberties fought and died, when the chips were down, to secure the liberties of a stranger who would live decades or even centuries after they were dust and gone. Some of the veterans I would like to honor on Veterans Day didn't serve in any conflicts at all.

But they were all soldiers.

What is a soldier? In Knights of the Old Republic a soldier of the Old Republic, Carth Onasi, debates with a Mandalorian warrior the difference between a soldier and a warrior. Here's a definition of "warrior" that fits for the warriors of Mandalore and with the warriors of Homer:

A warrior fights for his good and the good of all his people.

Sarpedon was a warrior. Achilles was a warrior. And a soldier? Here's a definition of "soldier" that fits for the soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic and for the United States of America:

A soldier fights for the good of his people and surrenders that good for himself.

Achilles was the greatest warrior of his age but not a soldier until the last year of his life. Rodger Young, now ... Rodger Young was a soldier.

Not all American soldiers have secured my liberties. All of them surrendered theirs when they signed up. An American soldier does not, like Achilles, reap the reward of his efforts. An American soldier might or might not do something that secures my liberty during his career, but one thing is sure: for the duration of that career he gives up most of the liberties that make America what she is. He gives up what he has for the chance to give to his people a spoil of war that he himself may never see.

Until, that is, he puts away his uniform, hangs up his weapon, and becomes a veteran.

I'm aware that it's more complicated than that. I'm aware that many citizens become soldiers with patriotism way down on the list of their motivations, and that some become soldiers with no patriotic motivations whatsoever. I'm aware, I think as much as a civilian can be, of why fighting men actually fight. But I also think that what I have written, even though it's only part of the story, is true. And that's why I celebrate Veterans Day.

Seussical Review

2007-11-14T10:27:00.001-08:00

Okay, it's time for an art post. Actually, since I don't have a lot of time, I'm basically going to repost this from an e-mail I sent to my family. I have not edited this much for prettiness, but hopefully the excess of excitement will come through to cover that deficiency.

Caveat: I am not a professional theatre critic. Actually, technically, as of this very moment I'm not a professional anything. But I do know a thing or two about theatre, and in any case, you don't have to be a professional critic for people to find your thoughts valuable. So hopefully some people will find this valuable.

This post is to review Seussical, Berkeley Playhouse's first production, which is showing at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley now through December 2. Short version, for those who trust me enough to do what I say: go see it. Now. Don't wait for Thursday. Don't accept any excuses like "there's no show scheduled for today" or "the cast and crew aren't here today." You go there, take whoever's in the building by the throat, and demand that they get the cast and crew there so you can see this show.

Longer version, for those who trust me enough to read my walls of text: I got to attend opening night, and that was a really good show. I've been wanting to review it since I saw it. So I am.

Seussical's plot is based on Horton Hears a Who, the story of our favorite faithful and honest elephant who discovers a tiny world atop a dust speck that only he (by virtue of his keen elephant ears) can hear, and his attempts to save the dust speck from disbelieving bullies in the Jungle of Nool. It also weaves in (and reimagines) elements from Horton Hatches the Egg, "Gertrude McFuzz," The Butter Battle Book, I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sallew, The Cat in the Hat, and a number of other Seuss stories.

The show flopped on Broadway, and if you listen to the soundtrack and look up some pictures online I think you can see why. The material is good (the songs are quite catchy, there's plenty of wit in the book, etc.) but schizophrenic. It doesn't know what it wants to be. Musically it bounces around from torch songs to rock to swing to gospel to Broadway. Thematically, it wavers between being a celebration of Seuss' works and being a celebration of childhood imagination. Material like this needs a firm hand to bring it line, which is just what director Kimberly Dooley and her team have brought to the show (side note: this will be the only full name in this post. Thayet pointed out that there might be Actors' Equity Association rules relating to reviews or something, and we'd hate to get anybody in trouble. If you're reading this out of professional interest, it shouldn't be hard to Google any of the names involved, or pick up a program from the show. Personally I don't see what the AEA can do to me, who isn't in privity with it, or to any of these actors, none of whom have a relationship with me. But just to be safe, first names only from now on. Oh, and fie on unions who think their members work for them).

I am fairly certain that the Broadway version erred too much thematically on the side of being about Seuss. The trouble with that is that Seuss' books are basically all moralizing fables told by a man with a pronounced leftist bent, which is hardly the stuff of a Broadway smash hit. And, as the Mike Myers Cat in the Hat demonstrates (and as the Jim Carrey How the Grinch Stole Christmas demonstrated before it), Seuss' worlds just don't translate that well to live action. Trying to translate the work of a cartoonist into actors in cat suits just makes the show feel like it's trying to translate Seuss for the sake of trying to translate Seuss, which is also hardly the stuff of universally appealing theatre.

This production of Seussical avoids all those mistakes by focusing essentially on what Seuss means to people, especially kids. The books themselves may be moralizing fables, but to a kid they represent imagination, the fantastic, the wonder of "possible." Kimberly's show is actually the story of JoJo, a regular little boy, who imagines the entire story of Horton with the help of the Cat in the Hat, whom he also imagines, and then imagines himself into the story as a little Who boy on Horton's dust speck whose overactive imagination gets him in trouble but ultimately saves the day. I have no idea how much of this frame story is in the original material or not, but it's just what the production needs to take it from catchy but schizophrenic (ho-hum) to fabulous.

For instance, none of the characters are in animal suits. Horton the Elephant is really JoJo's real-life buddy the neighborhood recycling man, and his baggy coveralls inspire JoJo to imagine him as an elephant. The Cat in the Hat is really a fast-talking businessman JoJo has seen somewhere, who turns into the fun-loving prankster that runs the show. And so on and so forth. The only costumes that are actually trying to mimic animals are the fish costumes in "McEligott's Pool," which is appropriate because that song is sung by JoJo the Boy imagining himself as JoJo the Who, imagining that he is fishing in his bathtub, which is connected via underground river with the sea.

The set also does not try to recreate Seuss' worlds, although it takes some heavy inspiration from the books in certain elements. Apart from some dressing (e.g., you can't have Horton hatching the egg if there's no tree for him to climb up) it's really just a series of platforms. I was most impressed by the way Kimberly directed this show. The set is split between the planet of Who (the dust speck) on stage left and the Jungle of Nool on stage right, with the lower area center used for various effects. The Jungle of Nool is really quite simple in design but the actors use it most adroitly as a kind of a jungle gym. The levels on the Who side of the stage, which is really not that different architecturally from the Nool side of the stage, are used in quite a different fashion in order to create the impression that there's more space over there than there really is (in fact the actors are quite confined, but Kimberly manages to use her levels in a way that conveys the impression not only of all of Whoville but all of their dust speck as well. Really, her staging is most impressive).

The Cat in the Hat is played a gentleman named Bill, who is a real gem of a find. The Cat's role in this show actually bears fairly little resemblance to the role he plays in his titular books (in fact, they excised the one number that recreates The Cat in the Hat, which in my opinion was a good choice because compared to the rest of his material it simply feels tacked on). He's essentially the embodiment of JoJo's imagination, and runs the show, even sometimes getting JoJo in trouble - a clever motif in a show about childhood imagination (who really runs the mind of an overimaginative child? The kid? Or does his imagination have a mind of its own?). He pops up throughout the show as if by magic, making things happen and playing about a dozen cameo roles. All of this requires the genius of a really mercurial character actor, and Bill is just that. He has a masterful command of his body and his voice that lets him morph between the Cat's various characters with startling abruptness.

Horton, our hero, is probably the most like his namesake character of any in the show. He is faithful and honest and plain, and what others mistake as simpleness is really just an abundance of kindness. Horton simply doesn't have a selfish bone in his body, and he's hurt by the bullies' torment not so much (I think) because he's being tormented as because it distresses him deeply to see people being mean. Brian, who plays Horton, has all of this down to a T. Brian manages to make Horton lovable without making the mistake of turning him into an adorable caricature. Brian's Horton is lovable by sheer dint of goodness rather than cuteness (which is an important distinction, because that's precisely what motivates Gertrude McFuzz's romantic interest in him). He also manages to convey the impression not of an elephant but of a recycling man whom a kid has imagined into an elephant, which I must tell you is some trick. And his ability to relate to inanimate objects (i.e., his dust speck) is the closest thing I've seen to computer animation on stage since ... well, ever.

The character of Gertrude McFuzz has been transformed from the vain, image-conscious bird in her eponymous short story to Horton's plain, overlooked next-door neighbor (in fact JoJo's family's cleaning woman, who, we may presume, has had a crush on the recycling man for some time). She is played to hilarious effect and with perfect comic timing by Rebecca. Gertrude is an important character thematically, and Rebecca's Gertrude is a goofy, klutzy, desperate-to-be-noticed joy to watch.

Gertrude's "friend" Mayzie, the mother of Horton's egg, is played by a woman named Julie. I think it's clear that Mayzie and Gertrude are friends, but they don't exactly have a healthy friendship of equals. Julie's singing was a bit too free at times (disconnecting her from the orchestra), but she has arguably the best physical performance in the show. She's sexy and showoffish and blithely ignorant of how offensive her self-centeredness can be, and she manages to do all of this while moving like a bird, right down to the attitude of her head and the focus of her eyes.

The role of the chorus is filled by three bird girls and the three Wickersham brothers, who are monkeys. The bird girls alternate between narrators and Mayzie's back-up followers/singers and get the most interesting harmonies in the show. Some of these are quite tricky, and the bird girls managed to navigate them with only one or two slip-ups, which I thought was impressive. They also have an abandon to their ridiculous physicality (both as birds and, in one song, as fish) that manages to sell it out of the realm of the ridiculous altogether. The Wickershams are among Horton's primary tormentors, and the guys playing them have really excellent movement. There's nothing especially monkey-like about their costumes taken by themselves, but when you pair the costumes with the guys' movements the monkey aspect snaps quite startlingly into focus in a way that is sharper than either the costumes or the physical performance could create on its own. The role of chorus lead (and the leader of the bully gang) is filled by the Sour Kangaroo, played by a Japanese woman named Anna channeling Angry Black Woman. You wouldn't think that would work, but it really does. At the performance I went to I felt like Anna's balance was low (she might have just been singing too softly, but the intensity of her Angry Black Woman physicality suggests otherwise), which was unfortunate, but she makes a great villain for the piece - mean enough to inject some conflict into the show, but sassy enough to be really fun to watch.

One character who is not a villain but could be (mistakenly) turned into one is General Genghis Khan Schmitz (aka the crazy homeless guy on the corner), to whose military academy JoJo is sent by his desperate parents. Thomas, the actor who plays Schmitz, definitely has the crazy homeless guy aspects of Schmitz down pat. Personally I would have translated more of that into his military persona; the material seems to me to ask for Schmitz to be kind of a caricature (because he's slightly unstable and based on a crazy guy) of an 1880s British colonial officer who thinks of the military as primarily a kind of rough-and-tumble character school for young boys alternating with a Parris Island drill instructor, all without realizing that the military life involves, you know, people shooting at you. I don't know if Kimberly disagrees with that vision, or Thomas does, or both, but Thomas is still a lot of fun to watch. In an excellent example of the subtext at which this show excels, he manages to give the character a real arc. There's a moment when he realizes JoJo isn't playing his game where his genuine concern for the boy really comes through, and I found that moment especially touching.

The adult cast is rounded out by JoJo's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mayor, played by Phil and Tara. When we meet the parents they are in the awkward position of living the lives of (and being) strait-laced, Stepford-like Whos who love their son very much but don't know how to stop him from being so abnormally imaginative (or even if they should stop him from being so abnormal, which is a nice touch). The parents actually have comparatively little stage time, and little enough of that is devoted to their relationship with each other or with JoJo. It's a testament to the actors (and to the fantastic chemistry between them) that they manage to convey a whole familial dynamic primarily with subtext. A lot of aspects of this show are clearly better than Broadway, but Mr. and Mrs. Mayor especially stand out for mining the richness of their roles in ways that the Broadway cast pretty clearly did not.

Singing-wise, at this level of professional theatre I generally expect casts to be some combination of strong individual singers who can't do ensemble singing, strong individual singers who can't act and sing at the same time, or strong actors who are weak individual singers. Seussical's ensemble numbers were strong in terms of the individual singers' projection, tonality, and blend (though the bass part occasionally suffers in the projection department, perhaps because they seem to have only a single Wickersham brother on that line), and also exhibited a number of nice touches that one doesn't see consistently even at the higher levels of professional theatre. Chief among these "extras" in my book was the fact that the ensemble can actually sing in unison even in the more vocally complicated songs. This combined with their diction (I believe their assistant director Phil, who is a conductor by training, really hammered the lyrical parts of these songs) meant that I could actually understand all but one line in the show, and that one line is pretty much incomprehensible just because it's written badly ("Then over the desert, the desert of Dreze / and into the forest with thousands of trees, / past sneetches on beaches" - the bolded words are basically impossible to distinguish without looking them up, and the meter of the entire line is all off as well in a deliberate effort to preserve the integrity of the words, which are lifted directly from Seuss).

Another really impressive "extra" on display in both the ensemble numbers and the solos was that all of these actors can act while they sing (Horton and Gertrude especially impressed me along these lines). One of the things that I thought made this especially noticeable is that many of the songs are not written especially in character (i.e., there are either a number of different ways you could legitimately take the song, or the song is written in a genre that actually works against convincing characterization, such as the gospel numbers with the Sour Kangaroo, the Wickersham brothers, and the bird girls) and they're all sung as the characters would sing them. In other words, the vocal direction and stage direction are working unusually closely together in this show, and the cast has the combination of acting and singing chops to really take that direction.

This integration is overall, I think, the show's most unusual "extra." Everything about this show - the overall vision, the costumes, the set design, the stage direction, the vocal direction, the singing, the physical performances, the delivery of lines - it all works together far more tightly than is usual. The individual pieces are all really quite good, but the way the entire production erases the seams between its different pieces is what makes it a truly extraordinary product. In my experience this kind of integration is unusual even at the very highest tiers of professional theatre.

Seussical runs through December 2. If you're in the Bay Area, it's really well worth making the effort to see. It's the best piece of theatre I've seen in a long time.

The Care and Feeding of Your Raider, or Have You Been Playing WoW the Whole Day?

2007-10-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

Time for another game post. I thought this time I'd talk about what goes into the process of an MMORPG raid (well, a World of WarCraft raid,s ince that's all I know) in an effort to make the process more accessible to all the significant others out there who have either become WoW widows or made their raider stop playing due to "GF aggro." Fair warning, this is pretty long.

The mysterious world of raids can largely be explained by reviewing some terminology.

Instance. All dungeons in World of WarCraft are physical places in the game world, and dungeons are one of the main focuses of action in the game. There may be several thousand people in the game world at any given time, which raises the possibility of hundreds of people descending on the same dungeon at once. This raises obvious game design problems: how could you design the monsters in the dungeon to be challenging enough for hundreds of players that wouldn't be impossible for only two or three? The conventional game design answer to this problem is to create an "instance" of the dungeon - a discreet copy for a small group of players at a time. Thus five players can go to Shadowfang Keep, and when they enter the server creates an "instance" of Shadowfang Keep in a little dimensional pocket that only those five players are in. If another five players travel to Shadowfang Keep while the first group is still inside the castle, those other five players will enter another "instance" of Shadowfang Keep.

Raid. The question now arises, how many people should be allowed inside a given instance of a dungeon? A hundred at once? Fifty? Two? In WoW, instances are divided into three categories: instances for five players ("5-mans"), ten players ("10-mans") and twenty-five players ("25-mans"). These numbers designate the number of players the instance was designed for and therefore reflect the maximum number of players that can be inside a given instance. There is nothing stopping a group from entering a 25-man instance with only two players, but they will likely find it too challenging to complete. A 25-man instance is designed to require the carefully combined and coordinated efforts of 25 players to be successful. Any instance designed for more than five players is referred to as a "raid," and a player who enters such instances on a regular basis as a "raider." (Historical Note: Before the expansion pack released last year instances were categorized as 5-man, 20-man, or 40-man. Those larger 20- and 40-man instances are still in the game world, but they're less frequented since the advent of the expansion for a variety of reasons.)

Progression. "Progression" refers to the perceived/intended curve of gameplay difficulty in the game. Conventionally, progression is benchmarked in terms of instances, or in terms of raid instances particularly. Progression is a concept that is designed into the game. That is, the fact that (say) Blackwing Lair is a more challenging instance than the Molten Core is not simply player perception. The game design intuition behind progression is to provide players with increasing challenges, so they can develop their skills on easier challenges and then be rewarded by moving on to greater challenges.

In WoW, the progression curve roughly tracks the size of an instance. Roughly speaking, all 5-man instances are easier than 10-man instances, which are easier than all 25-man instances. There is no reason inherent to the game's mechanics that this should be so, but it is a MMORPG convention dating back to EverQuest in the late 1990s. It is also, as I shall contend later in this post, a source of confusion and frustration between players and non-players.

Loot. "Loot" refers to items that a monster "drops" that is of use to a player. WoW being a game whose mechanics are mostly combative, "loot" especially refers to armor and weapons (the former term including all manner of wizardly robes and the like). This brings us to our first insight that the non-player may not find intuitive: WoW is deliberately designed so that player skill is insufficient to defeat all challenges in the game. In many video games, a sufficiently skilled player can defeat all challenges in the game without the aid of the many and various powerful tools (weapons, etc.) the game offers him. Indeed, in many video games players consider it a mark of great skill to finish the game using a bare-bones set of tools. We might call this the "Robin Crusoe" model of game design (the mightier the hero, the lesser the equipment). WoW is the opposite. In WoW (and all other MMORPGs) there are challenges that cannot be defeated no matter how good the player is; he must avail himself of ever more powerful tools. This might be for obvious reasons (e.g., he must seek out magically fire-resistant armor to slay a dragon) or for slightly less obvious reasons (e.g., he cannot, no matter how skilled the human player, defeat this knight without finding a mightier sword than the sword he has now). We might call this the "Iliad" model of game design (the mightier the hero, the mightier the equipment; even a warrior of Achilles' skill cannot face the mighty Hector without magical armor). Implicit in the game world is the understanding that some weapons and armor are just mightier than others, even if they perform exactly the same tasks. For instance, Achilles' spear is mightier than Odysseus', despite the fact that on the physical level it is just another spear; Anduril is mightier than other swords despite the fact that it inflicts its wounds through cleaving and thrusting, just like any other sword; and an Arcanite Reaper is mightier than Lord Alexander's Battle Axe despite the fact that both are just axes. Indeed, an Arcanite Reaper is mightier than a Night Reaver, despite the fact that the former is physically just an axe and the latter is an axe that shoots bolts of shadow magic. The fact that WoW requires players to seek out ever more powerful loot is one of the fundamental mechanics driving the game.

Drop. And how does one acquire loot? Some of it can be crafted by players in the game from rare and exotic materials (e.g., special metals) that those same players have plucked from dangerous mountaintops after facing many perils (albeit perils which, in general, pale beside those to be found inside an instance). Some of it can be crafted or provided by computer-controlled non-player characters for whom the player has performed some suitably epic quest. Most of the loot required to climb the progression curve's higher end is literally looted from the corpses of monsters slain in instances slightly lower on the progression curve. Such loot is referred to as "drops" (the metaphor being that the monster is clutching his prized magical breastplate in his hand, which he lets drop to the floor as he is slain). All monsters have a "loot table" of useful drops that they could drop when slain; the actual piece of loot a monster drops is determined by the game server rolling a virtual set of dice and looking up the result on the table. Frequently a given player will want only one drop from the monster's loot table - and, given the statistical nature of selecting which piece of loot will drop, that player may have to slay said monster many times before the dice come out his way. (Side Note: Don't ask me why the monsters have all these magical weapons and armor lying around to tempt passing adventurers. I never did figure out what Baron Rivendare wanted with a druid's Wildheart Kilt.)

Trash. All dungeons in WoW, following established video game tradition, are populated by two kinds of monsters (or "mobs"): bosses and not-bosses. In WoW, not-boss monsters inside an instance are referred to as "trash." This is part machismo, part recognition of the fact that bosses are the focus of any game they appear in. Being the focus of the players' efforts is part of what makes a boss a boss. The loot dropped by trash (or "trash mobs") may be helpful to a player's progression, but it is rarely vital and usually of lower quality (i.e., less mighty) than the loot dropped by bosses.

Run/Clear/Down. To "run" an instance is to go inside of it and fight the monsters therein. To "clear" an instance is to slay every monster inside of it, or at least to slay all the bosses inside of it. Because instances themselves have miniature progression curves whereby, e.g., the first boss in the instance is easier than the last, "clear" may also be used partially (as in "this week we cleared Karazhan through the Shade of Aran"). If a boss is slain, he is said to be "down" or to have "been downed," and the act of slaying him is "downing" him.

Reset. Once you have cleared a raid instance, what do you do? Can you do it again? Or are all the monsters and bosses in there dead for all time? In WoW, everything you just slew will come back to life, ready to be slain (and looted) again, in the course of time (usually on the order of once a week for most raids). This is referred to as the instance "resetting." Resets are a necessary absurdity given the statistical nature of drops and the fact that the progression curve is loot-dependent as well as skill-dependent. Suppose a player needs a particular set of magical greaves in order to successfully challenge a great leviathan, and those greaves are known to be held by an evil death knight. He can (with the help of others) slay that death knight, who may drop the player's magical greaves but could just as easily drop a wizardly robe that is (because he is not a wizard) of no use to the player whatsoever. If the death knight stayed dead, our player could not get his greaves, and would forever be barred from defeating the leviathan (whose drops he would need to face yet greater challenges afterwards). And no - for reasons which are utterly contrived, the player cannot simply rifle through the death knight's corpse and obtain all the loot that he is presumably hiding in his back pocket. Don't ask me why.

There are also "soft" resets within a raid itself. If a raid has multiple bosses inside of it, the trash preceding that boss will generally be "linked" to the boss. From the moment the first "linked" monster is engaged, the raid will be on a hidden timer (anywhere from fifteen minutes to over an hour). If the boss is not downed within that timeframe, the trash will come back to life again and the raid will have to clear it all over. However, if the boss is downed within that timeframe, his linked trash will stay dead until the entire raid instance resets. This mechanic allows players to clear a raid over several days. If a boss is downed today, the raid can come back tomorrow and waltz through the halls that only yesterday were packed full of ravening monsters, until they get to an area of the dungeon that they have not yet cleared.

So now we have all the tools to understand just what raiders do all day. In fact, you probably understand most of the dynamic already.

Let us start with the basic premise: a player and twenty-four of his friends (or at least his comrades-in-arms) desire to down some boss. For instance, this very evening my guild will attempt to down a massive magical-mechanical golem type entity known as the Void Reaver. Our raiders have various reasons for wanting to do so.* The snarky way to put it is that they want to down the boss so they can get loot to down some other boss, etc. etc. ad nauseum. And this would be true, although it's probably no more or less trivial than a football team who wants to defeat this week's opponent so they can get the rating to defeat some other team, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Another way of putting it (which would be true for the football players as well as the raiders) would be to say that this week's target presents a challenge of skill that they wish to answer, for the inherent reward and sense of accomplishment that comes from defeating any challenge, whether or not it leads to further challenges down the line.

It is a common misconception among non-players, I think, that raiding is simply a matter of logging into the game at the appointed hour, journeying to the dungeon wherein the boss resides, and sallying forth to conquer and pillage. In some cases this is true; a player will generally have reasons to visit instances that are lower on the progression curve than his current level of skill and equipment permit him to take on. These instances are "easy" to him by virtue of his skill and equipment and therefore require no extensive preparation on his part to clear. For another player, less skillful or less well geared or both, that same instance might require careful planning beforehand.

In general, raiders are most excited about attempting instances that are at the very limits of what their gear and skill allow (this is particularly true of "new content," a boss or dungeon that the group has never hazarded before). Now, whether one's equipment is mighty enough to down a particular boss is a rather complicated and involved but reasonably mechanical assessment, since many thousands of others have attempted the very same boss and with the help of the internet it is fairly easy to benefit from their experience. Whether one's skill or the skills of one's comrades are adequate is another assessment entirely, and one that is prone to egoism.

There are a number of ways in which a raid can increase its chances against a boss at the very limit of their skill/equipment envelope. One way is to browse the internet for write-ups of others' successful (or unsuccessful) attempts on that boss, or to watch videos of other raids fighting the boss, or to post questions about the boss on an online discussion forum. I have never fought the Void Reaver before, so I read an article that discusses the fight. Alternatively, a player might notice (or be told) that his skill is lacking and he is a drag on the group. This player could go online and discuss with others what he is doing wrong, or what he could be doing better. The WoW forums are full of just such questions. Forewarned is forearmed.

Another way is to craft magical potions, scrolls, and the like (even magical war drums) that the raiders will use just before engaging the boss himself. The benefit from such "consumables" is short-lived, but will effectively expand the skill/equipment envelope for the duration of the boss fight itself. The use of consumables generally increases as the group's familiarity with the boss decreases. If the guild has slain this boss a dozen times before, they may feel comfortable enough to engage in the fight without this temporary augmentation. If the boss has only been downed a few times (or never at all) the group may attempt to compensate for their lack of skill at this particular challenge by essentially temporarily augmenting their equipment. Of course, magical potions are not cheap. They require rare herbs found in the far corners of the globe, and it is no easy task to scour the far corners of the globe in search of enough herbs to provide twenty-five people with five vials of potion apiece. Some players will sell such herbs or potions on the in-game auction house (which is like eBay, except that it's a physical auction house to which one must journey). Of course, since the labor involved in getting those materials for auction is considerable, players who intend to buy their consumables must spend a considerable amount of time in the game raising money.

Finally, a group can try to improve its actual gear before the "main event," so to speak. Another more or less common misconception is that everything needed for a raid is found within the raid itself. The game could have been designed this way, but it was not. In part this is an accident of design; loot primarily intended for one instance may well be useful in six or seven. In part it is also a deliberate design decision; Blizzard wants to contribute to the epic feel of the game by making players journey across the globe to many different locations. For instance, there is an orcish warchief named Kargath Bladefist who is known to drop bracers (forearm guards) that would enhance my druidess' capabilities in her bear form (like all druids in WoW, she is a shapeshifter). Bladefist resides in a 5-man instance called the Shattered Halls, half a world away from the Void Reaver in Tempest Keep. In preparation for this evening's assault on the Void Reaver, I could have found four other players with reasons of their own to visit the Shattered Halls in an attempt to down Bladefist and get my bracers. In point of fact I tried to do exactly that, and failed to find four other players willing to make the attempt (the Shattered Halls, despite being a lowly 5-man, has a reputation for being quite challenging. One of the changes in Blizzard's design philosophy since the expansion pack has been to make 5-man instances more challenging, so players without the time or social network to coordinate 25-man raids can still have a comparable level of challenge). Even if I had, the entire attempt would have taken two to four hours. First I would have had to find four players besides myself who wanted to go. Then I would have had to find four players whose gear and skill, in conjunction with my own, would give us a reasonable chance to actually clear enough of the instance to get to Kargath (who is the final boss of the instance). And then we would have had to go do it, which would take sixty to ninety minutes for even a very well geared and skillful group.

All of this falls into the category of "preparing for the raid," and all of it, as you might imagine, takes time. And then there is the raid itself, which can take anywhere from two hours to six depending on how the group's skill/equipment envelope matches up to the raid, and how persistent the raiders are. As a general rule, a six-hour raid means the group doesn't have the chops for their target, but they may persist in the hopes of learning more about the encounter through painful experience (or simple denial). In my personal opinion a "successful" raid should take two to three hours, but others have different tolerances and expectations (others in my guild, for instance, are perfectly happy with a raid that takes four hours).

I mentioned earlier that all of this preparation may be necessary for some players to run a 5-man instance just as much as it is necessary for another, more skillful or better geared player to run a 25-man instance. This was not really true. One of the things that I think can trip couples up is how much more time and effort must be spent preparing for raids than preparing for 5-mans. The truth is that most 5-mans require very little preparation, because they are simply easier. The progression curve, in other words, is not linear. The jump in difficulty from, say, Sethekk Halls to the Shadow Labrynth (one of the more difficult 5-mans) is not nearly so great as the jump from the Shadow Labrynth to Karazhan (which these days is the first raid that most players can handle). The demands of the game change dramatically when a player begins to raid, because the game has gotten a lot harder.

As I said before, there is no particular inherent game mechanical reason why the game should get much harder in raids (Blizzard has recognized this to some extent, with the addition of "heroic" 5-man instances that are more like raids in their challenge level but still only require 5 players). Nevertheless, that's the game. Blizzard has decided that the hardest challenges its designers can come up with should be placed in a raid context. Of course, that is the very thing about raids that makes them so exciting to most raiders. Unfortunately, because those challenges require 10 or 25 other players to experience, there are significant social reasons why the game takes much more time at the raid level. Schedules must be coordinated days in advance. People log in to the game late. Some members of the raid didn't do their homework, and must have things explained to them (thereby wasting the time of all those who did do their homework, for which the explanation is redundant). And these social barriers, each of which requires time, are compounded atop the added gameplay necessity for greater preparation. I think the effects in terms of needed prep time can be confusing for those around a newly minted raider.

The raiding lifestyle is not particularly conducive to romantic (or indeed, parental) relationships, but I think that understanding it can help. And so far I've been able to maintain my relationship with Thayet without giving up raiding entirely (in fact, although my play time has decreased, my progression has increased). Based on that experience I think the main component to the "romantic raider" lifestyle is that both parties value the other and their leisure activities of choice. Thayet loves spending time with me (and I with her), but it's also important to her that I have my alone time. It's also often seemed to me that it would help many couples if they both understood what the process or raiding involves. For instance, I think you can see by now why it isn't really possible to raid without playing the game outside of the scheduled raid time; such a player would have no time to prepare and therefore could not attempt new and challenging bosses. Of course, a player could always simply refuse to prepare, and there are usually several in a given raid who have done just that. However, their slack must then be taken up by others in the group (or else the group must accept this reduction in its capabilities): others must gather the herbs that he didn't, or spend valuable time explaining the fight. That simply isn't fair to the other players, who (although it is often forgotten) are human beings with lives and schedules of their own.

On the other hand, there's a difference between playing the game because you're bored (i.e., sending the message that you value WoW more than your girlfriend) and playing the game in pursuit of some particular goal. For instance, here are some items from my WoW "to-do" list:

Journey to Nagrand and gather rare primal shadow from the demons I slay there, which I will use in an enchantment I want cast on my cloak to enhance my healing spells, and in weaving into magical armor kits and a magical ring that will help protect me from the nature-based spells I will have to face when we challenge the mighty water elemental Hydross
Journey to the Zangarmarsh to gather rare motes of life from the fungal giants I slay there, which I will use in the aforesaid ring
Journey to Terrokar Forest to gather rare primal water from the water elementals in a lake high atop a mountain, which I will use in a different ring to protect me from the frost spells that Hydross and his minions will use
Journey to the Blade's Edge Mountains to gather rare primal fire from the fire elementals there, which I will use in the second aforesaid ring
Journey to Hellfire Peninsula to kill Kargath Bladefist in the Shattered Halls until my bracers drop to enhance my bear form, needed to tank many bosses
While I'm there, invade the various portions of Hellfire Citadel to prove myself a champion of the beleaguered humans of Honor Hold, as only then will they teach me to craft a particular magical armor reinforcement, which will enhance my panther form as well as many of my team mates
Journey across the world to slay various bosses in 5-man dungeons on "heroic" difficulty mode to earn badges of justice, which I can give to the angelic na'aru in Shattrath City to prove that I am worthy of the various pieces of magical armor they give to their champions, which armor will enhance my bear form
Journey to an entirely different world to run the haunted wizard tower of Karazhan, a 10-man raid, in pursuit of various and sundry magical armor and weapons
Journey to Stormwind City (or have another character journey to Stormwind City) to find on the auction house: armor that will protect me from nature spells, armor that will protect me from frost spells, and rare gems that when cut in a particular way can be socketed into my armor to enhance its mightiness because the patch Blizzard will release in a week or two will change the way my druid benefits from particular types of enhancements
Earn money to afford the aforesaid items on the auction house

That list will get whittled down slowly, but it's important that when Thayet is busy or what have you I spend my play time working towards some specific goal, as a way of honoring the time we have to spend together. Some of the things on that list I can do on my own at any time of day in chunks of time as small as ten minutes apiece. Others will require the aid of others to run various instances over the course of hours, which I can only do at certain hours of the day (when other people likely to help me are likely to be playing the game). I think knowing and appreciating a raider's "preparation list" could help a lot of raider/non-raider couples communicate effectively about play time.

* It is another common misconception that the players will want to down some boss for a particular story-based reason. In the majority of cases (I venture to say the vast majority of cases) this is simply not true. It may have been true the first time the players attempted to down a boss; perhaps the game provided them with some story-based reason to do so. Amen amen, I say to you, it will not be true by the time they are downing him for the tenth time, or even the fifth. WoW does tell a story, but it does so in a very strange way. Imagine a storytelling medium where what the audience experiences is only evidence of what happens, or an interpretation of what happens, and from that evidence or interpretation they are supposed to construct in their imaginations what actually happens. That is how MMORPGs (indeed, most video games) tell stories. It may be important to the player's imaginative reconstruction of the story to kill Illidan Stormrage the first time. Very quickly (as quickly as the second time; or indeed, for some players, the first time), the player's only immediate motivations for killing Illidan [again] will become the gameplay challenge he presents, with no story-based motivation at all. Whether this is a failing of game design I leave to you. Personally I just find it somewhat amusing. After all, there's no story-based reason for the activities of football, or basketball, or really any other team sport. I don't consider the lack of narrative motivation a flaw in the design of those games.

Courting Me, part 2

2007-10-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

Alexander's comment on my last post got me thinking about the problems with issue-based appeals to the Christian electorate. I'd like to postulate at the outset that there are basically two types of Christian voters. There are some Christian voters who appear to be genuinely committed to political positions for religious reasons - no gay marriage, no abortion, etc. And then there are those who are committed to doctrine - to "religious reasons" themselves, you might say.

Here's an example: suppose a politician comes up to two Christian voters and says, "I believe that gay marriage should be recognized/legalized in this [electoral region]. I appeal to your religious values to determine whether you should vote for me." Christian 1 will say, "My religious values include gay marriage; I will vote for you" or "My religious values do not include gay marriage; I will not vote for you." Christian 2 will say, "Gay marriage is an application of my religious values and not one of my religious values itself; please give me an argument." Three guesses as to which I think is the better way to be.

This is the basic trouble with issues-based religious appeals to voters, I think. Because of course I can (as discussed in the last post) vote for something I think is immoral if I consider the alternative to be worse. As a Christian, I am not concerned with individual platform planks. Any hot-button "values" voter issue you can think of is, by itself, irrelevant to me when I vote as a Christian. What is relevant to me as a Christian voter is whether any individual platform plank is more likely to promote the Kingdom of God than not. This is a much broader inquiry than the issue itself. Let us say for the sake of argument that I consider gay marriage immoral. What I want to hear from a politician who appeals to me based on that issue is not "the Bible says gay marriage is immoral; c.f. passages X, Y, and Z." I want to hear, "I am committed to bringing American society into personal contact with Jesus Christ. I believe that outlawing gay marriage will, on the whole, advance that goal. Here is my analysis of the reasons why it will tend to do that, why it will not tend to do that, and why I think the one effect outweighs the other."

Of course any politician who tried to make an appeal like that would be crucified by his opponents, and perhaps rightly so. After all, voters (and politicians) would raise very serious issues about such a statement and the Establishment Clause (at least, the 20th century version of the Establishment Clause). But here's the thing: I feel like that's the only religiously legitimate issue-based appeal a politician can make. If oppressing a moral evil drives people further away from Christ, I fail to see how that oppression is supposed to appeal to me as a Christian. When Christ dined with prostitutes it wasn't to admonish them about getting a career change. But no politician ever talks about the effects of their political positions on the voters' spiritual lives. They can't. The best they can do is try to get at it sideways, from a sociological standpoint, by saying things like "X is bad for the American family." Those arguments are usually fairly sketchy to begin with, in my opinion, and they don't have anything directly to do with Christianity, either.

So there's the conundrum: the only religiously legitimate way to appeal to me on a given issue is politically illegitimate. My conclusion is that people should just stop trying.

That's not to say that I consider my Christianity separate from my franchise, or that I don't care about the spiritual lives of political candidates. It's just that I think I'd much rather have candidates appeal to me as a Christian voter not on the basis of individual issues but on the basis of what kind of person they are, how they make decisions, and what their spirituality means for them as professional politicos.

That might mean that candidates can't really appeal to me primarily as a Christian voter. That might not be such a bad thing.

Courting Me

2007-10-04T13:08:00.001-07:00

"And as for the fact that the Athenians have chosen the kind of constitution that they have, I do not congratulate them ..."

I go back and forth on the duty of a good citizen to be informed about the candidates he votes for. On the one hand I feel bad exercising my franchise in the dark. On the other hand I console myself with the fact that the system was designed with precisely that eventuality in mind, and works surprisingly well for a government nominally run by the willfully ignorant.

In this latest round of voter self-education I have run into the inevitable attempts by Republicans (and Democrats! Exciting new development!) to court evangelical Christians, a voter demographic to which I nominally belong. In fact, I belong to an even less centrist demographic - evangelical Pentecostals (making people like, say, Vonsus, look downright tame).

As usual, one of the hooks used to try and nab my demographic is the issue of legalizing or illegalizing abortion. Like most attempts to court my vote on religious grounds, I find this offensive at worst and problematic at best.

I don't actually know what I would say if someone asked me for counsel on whether or not they should get an abortion. But for the sake of argument, let's say I think abortion is a great sin and a terrible cowardice, to boot. Does it therefore follow that I think my country's laws should forbid it?

It does not. The issue is made clearer for me when I consider religious freedom. As an evangelical Pentecostal Christian I am naturally of the opinion that where Christianity conflicts with other religions, Christianity controls. I am also naturally of the opinion that people ought to be Christian for their own welfare, even if that means (as it usually does) that they can't adhere to any other religions. That's one of the things that "evangelical" means in this context. But does it follow that because I am an evangelical I think all other religions should be outlawed?

It does not. We can even assume, for the sake of argument, that I believe all other religions are demonic conspiracies (which I do not, in fact, believe). Doesn't change a thing. The fact of the matter is that I think the freedom to not follow Christ is an important American freedom, even though I also think it is pretty much the worst decision, pragmatically and morally, that a human being can make. This does not mean that I think the Constitution of the United States is a higher authority than God; it's just a reflection of my belief that attempts to outlaw religious immorality in this country will not, in fact, advance the Kingdom of God.

Similarly with abortion. As I said, I'm not 100% sure what my "stance" on abortion is. But even if I did think that abortion is immoral, why should I want my elected representatives to try and outlaw it? Do we outlaw immorality in this country? I'm not sure that we do. I'm certainly not sure that we should.

Moreover, religious-based political activity makes me uncomfortable as a Christian. The fact of the matter is that most "Christian" political activity is deeply embarrassing to me as a believer. People might start off meaning well, but the next thing you know people think that you're the freak for being cultured, educated, and rational as opposed to, say, Jerry Falwell. I've felt like enough high-profile "Christian" media figures have embarrassed my faith and damaged my personal witness to be highly suspicious of any attempts to court me by legislating my supposed morality into law, thank you very much.

Of course this is easy for me to say; I'm not a politician. If somebody is in a policymaking position and their personal conscience tells them to legislate a certain way, I'm not going to decry that decision just because their personal conscience happens to be Christian. I mean, suppose you do think something is immoral, and you've been elected to make national policy. What do you do then? Can you really look yourself in the mirror every morning knowing you decided to legalize (or fail to outlaw) something you believe is wrong? Maybe you can; I don't know (and I hope I never have to find out). But using promises of what your conscience is going to tell you once elected just feels ... I dunno ... fake? It certainly doesn't entice me to vote for you.

Harry Potter, Boy Hero?

2007-09-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

I've started [re-]reading the Harry Potter series. Yes, for those of you who don't know, I never got past Chamber of Secrets. I read that far in Sicily because that was as far as our little impromptu library went, and I didn't find them compelling enough to be worth reading any further at the time. The writing style bothered me, and so did the plot. I don't mind improbable plots (heck, I enjoy improbable plots) so long as they're internally consistent - the magic foundation approach to storytelling. Take an improbable or impossible set of premises, and build a tightly logical narrative on top. Chamber of Secrets, I felt, was a different kind of storytelling - the suspension of disbelief approach. Take an improbable or impossible set of premises, and build an improbable narrative on top.

That sounds disparaging but it isn't meant to be. There's absolutely nothing wrong with skating by on the sheer coolness of your world, or your aesthetic, or your narrative voice, or whatever. There are lots of books that "skate by" in that way that are much better than magical foundation books, taken as total packages. But at the time all anybody could talk about was how cool Rowling's world/aesthetic/imagination was, and that was (probably unreasonably) offensive to me. More imaginative than Wrede? More imaginative than Pierce?

Well ... maybe. Looking at the question afresh, though, that doesn't seem to be the question. The merit of a fantasy world is to be judged by the way it plays with fantasy formulae, not by the imagination on display in its original elements. I'm not really far enough in to comment on Rowling's use of formulae.

But here's something that nobody ever talks about with regard to Harry Potter, even now: what is the call of the story? What is the story itself saying about the world, philosophy, morality? When people did discuss this sort of thing when I was reading them the first time, it seemed that all anybody could say was that the call of the story was to let it be okay to be a bratty ten year old kid. That ten year olds were naturally bratty and antiauthoritarian, and that was okay.

Which is, of course, total nonsense, and made me really uninterested in reading further. I can read a book with a bad aesthetic, I can read a book that's unimaginative, I can read a book that's badly constructed; I can even read a book that's all three if it has a really, really good call. But a bad call just kills it for me. I have plenty of time to contemplate the base and low in the real world (I was doing it just now, reading about politicians' response to Ahmadinejad's talk at Columbia. Honestly, people, it's a university). Who wants to spend leisure time contemplating anything other than the noble and good?

Perhaps it was a fluke of my sample of fans back then, or perhaps it's just that the series is finished now, but when I've managed to get people to talk about Harry Potter's call these days they tell a different story. And that makes me interested again. I'm sure the books get perfectly formulaic and clunkily written after you've read about four of them with your literary critic hat on. Whatever; I'm absolutely certain I've read worse and enjoyed every second. Never mind Rowling's adverbs; what is the woman trying to say?

Here's what I hope I'm going to find. No, let me back up. There are basically two types of hero stories in the world. One type of hero is typified by, say, Honor Harrington. Honor is a compelling protagonist because she is practically perfect in every way, morally larger than life. She has a strong sense of duty, an indomitable courage, an unwavering moral compass, and the physical and mental skills to back them. She isn't perfect, of course; I find her character flaws quite compelling, but she is, in short, predisposed towards heroism. And yet she is ever the underdog, and the reason Honor is a heroine is because she continues to choose the right course of action in the face of ever more horrible threats from the outside world. And when she spits in the world's eye and does the right thing anyway and the world follows through with its threats and something horrible happens to her because she did the right thing, she takes it without complaint and is just as determined to do it again the next time. Anybody who's ever felt that the world is just too much for them to handle, that doing the right thing was too much cost for no reward, should be able to recognize the appeal of this kind of heroism. This is holding fast to your heroism in the face of the world trying to seduce (or bludgeon) you away from it.

And then there's the other type of hero, the kind that I hope Harry Potter will turn out to be. Because Harry, so far as I remember, isn't predisposed towards heroism. It's not just that he isn't a tactical genius, crack shot, and doesn't have a black belt. He isn't even mentally or morally disposed to do the right thing; he isn't mentally or morally remarkable in any way. I don't mean that his heroic qualities are overlooked by those around him, like Disney's Aladdin. I mean he doesn't have any, even deep down inside. Not that he has a great store of villainous tendencies deep down inside, either. He's just a normal kid, which is to say he's kind of a brat. Back when I was in college this seemed to be the very thing that made people so enamored of him. Personally I felt when I was his age (and continue to feel) that calling that kind of behavior "normal" is a sad commentary on the quality of contemporary parents.

But here's the rub: Harry isn't predisposed towards heroism, but he has the option to be a hero anyway. Everyone does, after all. And it's just as heroic to choose heroism in spite of your natural proclivities as it is to choose it assisted by your natural proclivities. Harry's story (I hope) is the choice of a boy who ultimately chose to do right not because that's the kind of person he was but because he chose to do so. With help, of course - indispensable help, I imagine - but because he chose to. This is the kind of heroism that the anti-hero exhibits. Harry may not be Honor Harrington, but I hope he's Han Solo.

And this is, ultimately, the kind of heroism that we all exhibit as well. Maybe some people are more predisposed towards heroism than others. But ultimately all of us choose it in spite of ourselves more than we do because of ourselves. And we have help, yes, the kind of help without which we could not choose the right thing no matter how much we tried. The important thing is not that we chose it alone or with help, or that we chose it because or inspite of ourselves. Just that we choose it.

What to Do

2007-07-20T11:18:00.000-07:00

Before I get started, the previous post has been tweaked a bit. I'm much happier with it now.

On Tuesday I take the Bar, which is probably all the warning this blog is going to get. I was going to write a much more emotional stream-of-consciousness post on the subject, but I had the good fortune to talk it over with Thayet before I did anything so silly (not silly because acknowledging your feelings is silly, but because it's silly to post such things on a blog before talking them over with my closest supporter).

It's been an unpleasant experience. Well, it is an unpleasant experience, since it's not over. And I'm not at all sure that I'm going to make it.

"Do you mean you think everything will come right if we do untie him?" said Scrubb.

"I don't know about that," said Puddleglum. "You see, Aslan didn't tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he's up, I shouldn't wonder. But that doesn't let us off following the Sign."

It wouldn't be so bad if I could convince myself that the Bar is a worthy opponent. But I just can't.

"I can't!"

"Aslan believed you could ... and so do I."

What I mean is, it's just so large. But that's all it is. It's like an army of conscripts led by a drooling idiot. It wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, to lose to professionals - or even to lose to amateurs led by a great general. But this ... it's just some great bloated thing. It's large and broad but intellectually shallow. Losing to the Bar (when I imagine it, as of course I do) feels less like being beaten and more like failing to conquer. It feels (to put it another way) like losing to myself.

"I thought you would be grand and terrible! I thought you would make us grow up, make us accept knighthood's duties and sacrifices. This is just mean - you're a nightmare device, bringing bad dreams to people who want to help others!"

And besides the sheer indignity of losing to such an inglorious foe, I feel robbed by it as well. I miss my friends. I miss the made-up glamor of arming in tails. I miss having a good church. I miss going out on dates. I miss cooking. I miss grocery shopping. I miss art. I want to dance again. I want to learn Irish on Monday nights. I want to play games and watch movies and be thrilled again with the beauty of it all. I want to tell stories again.

"Ye want. Ye want. 'Tis something different ye're learning here."

Instead I have furtive retreats to Azeroth so I can stumble back to my books and pretend that I'm training well, and snatches of the Iliad read at night, and movies stolen from study time. Not that World of WarCraft doesn't have art, and the Iliad is nothing but art, and Transformers thrilled me with the beauty of it all. But everything has happened under the shadow of this idiot foe, this Bar exam.

I find the sequentiality of my brain working against me here. It's just so big, and there's no way to knock it down. There is always more studying that one could do, and I chastise myself for being soft - for needing to drop into the familiar mastery of my druid, or to conjure the plain of the Troad, or slip into that strange trance that holds childlike wonder and film critic side by side in tension. For that matter, why can't I think about something else when there's an unfinished task still? Weakness, weakness, weakness all!

Another trudged with heavy thoughts
Until he disappeared from view,
To ruminate on what he'd done
And punishment, as was his due.

There is an insidious kind of elitism at work here. As I've remarked before, real combat isn't like the finely balanced game theoretical puzzles that developers love so much. It's messy. You fight what you face where you face it with what you've got in whatever shape it's in. And at the end of the day, it doesn't much matter whether you lost to a disorganized rabble or to a "worthy" opponent. The willingness to present an unfair fight is what sets apart a simulation from a sport - or real life from a game. The ability and desire to win an unfair fight (whether you hold the advantage or the disadvantage) is what separates the martial from the game theoretical.

"Well," answered Zim, "suppose all you have is a knife? Or maybe not even a knife? What do you do? Just say your prayers and die? Or wade in and make him buy it anyhow? Son, this is real - it's not a checker game you can concede if you find yourself too far behind."

"But that's just what I mean, sir. Suppose you aren't armed at all? Or just one of these toadstickers, say? And the man you're up against has all sorts of dangerous weapons? There's nothing you can do about it; he's got you licked on showdown."

Zim said almost gently, "You've got it all wrong, son. There's no such thing as a 'dangerous weapon.'"

"Huh? Sir?"

"There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. We're trying to teach you to be dangerous."

My goddesses have ever had this martial spirit. Did Alanna the Lioness give up for no better reason than that the fight was unwinnable? Did Cimorene, or Keladry, or Honor Harrington? Did my sweet one refuse to win because what stood between him and victory was ignoble?

"Look, young Trebond - what did you think studying to be a knight was about?"

My life is full of duties fulfilled and unfulfilled. I have a duty to do my best. I have a duty to be prepared for anything. I have both done and not done that duty. I have a duty never to complain. I have a duty timely to complete every one of my tasks no matter how many there are or what they are. I have both done and not done these duties.

And, because I am a lawyer, I have to ask: what are the consequences of failure? There are consequences, of course. Large ones. But one thing does not change: keep going. Don't stop. This is both an artistic and a martial statement. As Xenophon said (and when has my Xenophon ever stopped because life was unfair?), "Now for it, brave sirs; bethink you that this race is for Hellas - now or never - to find your children, your wives; one small effort, and the rest of the march we shall pursue in peace, without ever a blow to strike; now for it!"

Keep going.

"You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out all right - somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?"

"To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that."

"Oh dear," said Lucy.

"But anyone can find out what will happen," said Aslan. "If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me - what will happen? There is only one way of finding out."

Happy Birthday to a Dear Friend

2007-06-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

For her birthday, Shanah Van asked that we give somebody else a gift lin lieu of giving one to her. This post is probably going to be late, because it’s taken me a while to figure out what to say, and also because I’m writing this from a place that doesn’t have internet access.

You can tell this is a serious post because I’m going to start it off with some disclaimers. Let me start by breaking the rules a bit and saying that I love Shanah Van. This has been true for some time but “I love you” was one of those things that was locked away in the statue room for the right person. Now it’s been given to the right person, so I can say “I love you” to Shanah and not feel bad (I suppose most of you know this, but for anybody who doesn’t, let me note for the record that I dislike qualifying “I love you” with phrases like “as a friend” or “in Christ.” Of course I don’t love Shanah the same way I love my sister, or my mother, or Thayet, and I harbor no romantic inclinations towards her. But the fact remains that I love her, and that’s that).

Second, let me say that this post is bending the rules of this blog just a bit. My intention is not to honor, and not to offend. I don’t think anything I’m going to be saying is news, so anybody who knows who I’m talking about ought to also know already what I say here. But if anybody finds anything here offensive or uncomfortable, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to redact accordingly.

That said, on to the post.

I couldn’t think of one person to give a gift to, so instead I’m going to do a partial tour through my statue room, now that it’s closed. There are plenty of statues I’m going to skip, and of course the whole concept means I’m not going to be hitting any of the guys (and I’m still missing a blogname for Blue Rose’s boy). What can I say? Can’t hit everybody in one post.

In my head there is a long hall, all in white, with bright lighting that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. At the end of this hall there is a painting framed in rich brown wood, which is the only color in the entire scene. We’ll return to the painting later. At the end of the hall you can turn left or right. I don’t know what lies to the left. To the right, at the very end of the hall on your right, is the door to the statue room.

This hall and the door itself are all plain featureless white, all brightly reflecting the same sourceless white light. Inside are statues of all the girls I’ve ever had crushes on (there is only one girl I can say I have ever loved, in the romantic sense, and she isn’t here). They stand on a vast crowded floor on low circular podiums, carved in white stone smoother than the creamiest Parian marble. All is the same pristine, unbroken white except for Nari’s statue, with its steel thunderbolt—pristine, but not cold. There is a warmth in the stone of the statues, a bittersweet fondness as of old friends. I have often wished that I could carry a document like this in my wallet, so that if I were in a serious accident somebody could try to find these women and tell them what a difference they made, that Natalie remembered them. But of course such a document would be far too large to carry in a wallet.

In revisiting this place it is not my intention to revisit old feelings for the sake of old feelings. But I would like to single out a few because they taught me something significant that has helped to bring me here.

There is Nala, who can be named at last after Twilight and Kathelia’s wedding. Her statue is a lioness with an imperious tilt to her head, gaze focused on something distant, caught in the motion of crouching into unseen grass. Nala was the first girl ever to show interest in me as a boy, and also the first girl I had a major crush on that I learned to be friends with. My first crush ever was Raven, but in all the ways that matter it began with Nala. She was the one who first introduced me to that complicated dance through the woods of pursuit and pursue. It would never have worked out, but for anybody who thinks Thayet and I are a surprising match—oh, you should have been there in middle school with me and Twilight and Nala, in the days of the Empire and Gen. Hayes.

There is Thea, whose statue is a long and sinuous dragoness backwinging as she sets down on a lake unseen, head tossed upward with the joy of the grass and the sun and the water. Nala was my friend. She was wild and romantic and fiery, like a wood elf come to life. We would wrestle and play and fight and dream together. But Thea—Thea was kind to me. My old friend. The girl I used to go on dates with that left me with a grin I just couldn’t shut off, because she liked me for me. Thea taught me that I really was as good as anybody. She believed in me.

There is Princess, whose statue is the dragoness Sasha—I don’t know how else to describe it. In early high school my Dragon Girls inspired me to write a pair of beauty pieces that tried to explain our relationships. Thea’s was titled Simply Wonderful. Princess’ was simply I Know a Girl. Princess taught me for the first time what it was like to be friends with and attracted to a girl who was my intellectual equal. Someone who didn’t think I was smart, or weird, or verbose—just Natalie. Wonderfully Natalie, enjoyably Natalie—but just Natalie. She taught me how wonderful that is, and how necessary, and how possible. When we went out we’d just talk, enjoying the electricity that crackled between us. People would always mistake us for boyfriend and girlfriend, and she was (is, I suppose) a beautiful girl—but I think I was always just Natalie to her, and to me she was just Princess.

There is the Hawaiian, whose statue is just her, standing behind her keyboard, wearing a smile being lifted on unheard chords to God. The Hawaiian was the first Christian girl I had a real crush on. She taught me how necessary, how indispensable it is to fall in love with a girl who loves Jesus. And she taught me that you have to wait for God’s timing even when you can’t see any external obstacles.

There is Blue Rose, about whom I could say so much, but I imagine that too much would embarrass her. Her statue is just a long-stemmed rose, standing upright, suspended by unseen forces above its podium. She is the lady knight at my round table, who has always looked out for me, always called me back, always called me on by her example to be like Jesus. I always felt that we went through Stanford like two figures out of a Tyrtaios song, neither running ahead nor lagging behind, encouraging each other with our words. She taught me … well, lots of things. She taught me that the true things do not necessarily become untrue just because they operate differently in new life circumstances. She taught me the importance of being myself even as myself changes and grows. She taught me new ways to be brave and obey God.

There is Shanah Van, whose statue is herself in an enormous gown (green, though the stone of course is white) with layers of petticoats. She is caught in the midst of a spin, and though her face is blankly serious there is joy lurking beneath the surface. Shanah was my Sweatshirt Girl, who with Blue Rose kept me going through those first two years in Testimony and thereby opened up so much of what God had for me, and who bears a large portion of responsibility for the fact that I dance (and therefore, in a way, for my meeting Thayet). I think Shanah was the first girl at Stanford to flirt with me—she taught me how attraction can nourish friendship, if the friendship comes first.

The last statue I want to take you past is that of Esther Selene, whose statue is the a mare’s head thrown back and whinnying, against a backdrop of a crescent moon whose arms enclose three stars. It was Esther Selene who taught me a large portion of what I know about dating and romance (and who first taught me how to apply what I know), who taught me the joy of doing it right, and who put the last nail in the coffin of the idea that at heart I’m really just a nerd, and nobody outside of my family will ever love me.

And that brings us to me, as we weave our way through all the other statues whose subjects I don’t have time to honor now, and I direct your attention away from the statue of the country girl in the checkered dress with the basket on her arm. It would bend the rules too much to talk about who I am, but I suppose you know—and to the extent that I am a worthy partner for a woman, a large part of the credit goes to the women above.

Now it is time to close the door to the statue room, and return to the painting we passed by at the start. The painting is of a woman, with tumbled curls of hair so brown it is nearly black and creamy pink skin, with a full and mobile and very red mouth. The wood of the frame is a rich brown, and to the left of the painting as I show it to you there is a heater shield trimmed in silver and blue. To the right is a hoplite aspis, also in silver and blue.

This is Thayet, after the half-K’miri queen of Jonathan IV (did everybody catch the details there? Don’t tell me you haven’t read the books), whose subjects call her the Peerless—but I call this woman my sister, fellow priestess, lady knight, and my future queen. I call her, after the phrase of Solomon, the one whom my soul loves.

The woman in this painting loves Jesus. She is morally brave, and willing to do what he tells her to. She is wild and romantic and fiery, but I would like to call your attention to the self-evident fact that her painting is not of a kite. It is of Thayet as Thayet I, founder of the Queen’s Riders (and let us recall as well the character of the Queen’s Ladies). Wild and romantic and fiery, yes, but flighty—no. Her emotions run high, but as a person, she is steadfast. She is practical, in her way, which is usually not my way—that is to say, we are both young, and we have different (but I think complimentary) areas of expertise when it comes to living life well both practically and morally.

There is a surprising sadness in the face of the woman in this painting. She has been through a lot—which is not especially impressive, of course, nor particularly admirable. Lots of people have been through a lot and come through it the worse for wear; suffering is an opportunity to build character but doesn’t produce it. Here is what I do find admirable: to bear suffering and retain one’s happiness, one’s sense of delight. Of course, lots of people can stay happy in the face of crushing disappointment; it’s one of many defense mechanisms the psyche can choose from. So here is something more admirable still: to bear suffering and joy simultaneously, with joy the deeper and higher of the two. Happiness can be a defense mechanism. Contentment and wonder can be defense mechanisms. Joy comes from the Lord, and my love is a joyful woman.

She’s always been there for me. Of course, there are lots of reasons to always stick by a person, not all of them good. But Thayet stuck around because she believed in me, believed both in what I’m trying to be and that I can do it, and she believed those things for the right reasons. Anybody can believe in a dream and the ability to accomplish it as wishful thinking. I don’t care about wishful thinking. I care about honesty and obedience and dreaming the dreams Jesus dreams for us. I care about sticking it out even when you don’t feel like it because Jesus told you to. And that is why there is an aspis on the wall. Her emotions run high, and I love that. But her colors are argent and azure.

She taught me to open new areas of myself to introspection. She taught me new ways to believe in myself - not in the tired, defiant way in which we must never believe in ourselves, but in the simple, humble way of acknowledging what is. She taught me to be more open. And to hold on to the old, Nehemiah-like determination as well.

And that again leaves us with just me. And who am I? Have I grown as a result of knowing all these girls? Well, this is still Speaking Natalie, and I’m not going to answer that question myself in detail. Ask my parents. Most of you know how. I will content myself with saying yes. I am more myself—more who I am supposed to be, and who I long to be—for the varied loves of these women. There is more to say in my heart about each of them than I can say here, or could say here if I had all the time in the world.

Happy Birthday, Shanah. I love you.

Death

2007-06-11T00:05:00.001-07:00

Here are some things I’ve learned regarding my beliefs about death in the last week or so. If we need an overarching theme, I suppose it’s that my beliefs about death (which are, I suppose, a subset of the Christian beliefs about death) are weird. That’s not to say paradoxical, or inconsistent, but I have to admit they are weird.

Here’s an example. It turns out that I view death as an almost wholly biological phenomenon. I am highly skeptical of claims that dying people are seeing those who have passed on, or heaven, or have any extraordinary insight that the rest of us don’t have. This is not to say that I think it’s impossible to see those who have passed on, or heaven, or to have literally superhuman insight. It’s just that I think those are relatively extraordinary events, and in any case I don’t see what at all they have to do with death. If anything, I suppose that the dying perceive less than the rest of us.

On the other hand, it’s very important to my conception of death (and, indeed, to my conception of humanity) to affirm that a person is bodily. In Phoenix Earth terms I would say that humans are animals; i.e., they are meant to have bodies and their bodies are an important part of who they are. I reject wholeheartedly the view that the body is merely a shell or a vessel, unconnected from the “real” or spiritual person. When a person dies, in my opinion, they are dying – death is not the mere release of a person’s true self from a wasted shell. When we say that a person dies, I think that they really are dying, and I prefer to call it that. Euphemisms (and I don’t mean the term perjoratively) such as passing away, going home, or even that most ancient of Christian euphemisms, falling asleep, make me uncomfortable.

Of course, it is equally important to my conception of death (and life) to affirm that people are spiritual. That is to say, I believe that we are animals, but also that we are animals with spirits, and those spirits are no less a part of us than our bodies. So while I believe that when a person dies it is they and not a container that is dying, I also believe that there is a part of the person who is not dying.

And what happens to that part after death? The truth is, in most of the ways a person observing a loved one dying might care about, I don’t know. My beliefs don’t include anything on the subject of whether the dead can or cannot hear us when we talk to them, or whether they care about what’s happening on Earth, or are aware of it, or just how it is they remain distinctly themselves separated from a vital part of themselves. My sacred texts are silent on those subjects, and I decline to speculate. My understanding of angels prevents me from imagining that the dead turn into angels (and I wouldn’t find the thought especially comforting even if I did, since as I understand angels they are a warlike and thoroughly inhuman race). But I don’t really know what a person does “turn into” when he or she dies.

For that matter, what do I mean when I say “death?” Christians frequently speak of the first human sin as allowing “death” into the world, and we look forward to a day when there will be no more dying. I look forward to a day when there will be no more dying. But what does that mean? Once upon a time, did organic life really never terminate? Is the existence of carnivores a result of the fallen state of the world (for that matter, is the entire animal scheme of feeding a result of the Fall)? Perhaps, although I admit I find it hard to believe that a lion’s feeding reflex (or a zebra’s) is evil simply because it results in the termination of the food’s biological existence. And were humans truly intended never to die of old age? Do our bodies wear out faster now than they were supposed to, or were they never supposed to wear out at all?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I suspect that when we say “death” in this context – death entered the world after the Fall, Jesus conquered death, there will come a day when there is no more dying – we mean something like destruction, and not the mere termination of biological life. So we can speak of the “second death,” when some human spirits will really be destroyed forever. And human death really is death, perhaps not because the animal part of the person is dying but because the person is being sundered.

It is conventional to assume that one holds one’s beliefs about death partially (if not chiefly) as a comfort. Here I am believing that death is merely biological – but also that people are inherently biological. I have no real clue as to what existence is like for a person who has died. I suppose that Christian people probably go to “heaven” (whatever that means, although it certainly sounds not-bad), but I’m not even positive of that (c.f. Ecc. 9:5). These are not especially comforting beliefs. I do have one belief about death which is comforting, and that is the advent of the Phoenix Earth.

It turns out that I really do believe in a day when the Earth (and perhaps, by implication, all of existence) is made new and all those people (or at least, all the ones who were Christian when they died – I’m agnostic about the rest, although I am firm in my belief that there is a bad outcome to this story as well) whose very humanity was sundered by death are given new bodies, when people can be spiritual animals again and in some cosmic not-very-well-understood sense, all is as it should be. I haven’t the slightest idea what those bodies will be like – I suppose they will resemble our current bodies as much as a seed resembles a sunflower. And I haven’t the slightest idea what that new Earth will be like, or whether that Earth will eventually be swallowed up by a dying star as this one is supposed to be, or how the laws of nature will have to change so that all is as it should be, except I imagine we will be surprised by the depth of the corruption worked when “death” entered the world. But it turns out it is enough for me to look forward to a day when the sundering is undone and will never be worked again.

As I said at the beginning, it seems to me that my view of death is pretty weird. But it turns out that it really is my view. And it turns out that it really is comforting after all.

The Last Shot

2007-05-28T00:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I turned in my last ever law school assignment. Law school is finally over. There are more steps in the process, technically - I haven't received a grade yet (for any of my classes), my degree hasn't been conferred, I haven't received my diploma - but those are all out of my hands. The last shot has been fired; it just hasn't hit yet. I am now in the limbo at the end of the level, when at last you can lower the gun and wait for the scores to appear so you can check the one all-important measure of success.

That measure is, of course, accuracy. Never mind how many points you've garnered. Never mind how many times they hit you, how many quarters it took to get here. Did you make every shot count? That is the only true measure of success.

In life, of course, true measures of success are harder to come by. You can try to measure success procedurally; you can ask, "Did you do your best?" But the answer to that question is always no, and holding too tightly to it leaves one in a constant struggle to reframe the scope of the endeavor. Oh, there were those last glorious hours for this last assignment when I was up until 8:00 in the morning, writing calmly and steadily with [I hope] clarity and force for almost ten hours straight. But there were also the days before those hours, when I just didn't care, or it was all too much. And maybe it was too much; maybe it really was beyond my ability in those moments that stretched into hours. But at the very least, I could have tried harder.

And that's the thing - even when the task is impossible, even when you're going to get hit no matter how fast you are on the trigger, you can always try harder, think faster, plan farther ahead. And that makes "doing your best" a rather amorphous measure of success. So you can look at what you've done, what you've accomplished. But that seems rather hollow. For one thing, accomplishments come easier for some than for others - but there is value in effort; there has to be. You can't ignore the milestones, of course, and I don't. My "accomplishments" bring me pleasure and a deep rooted sense of satisfaction with the world. They bring me joy; I feel the joy of the Lord in this limbo at the end of the level. But the accomplishments aren't success. At the end of the day, whether the milestones come easily or hard, you do your thing and sometimes people throw awards at you.

There is one other measure of success I can think of. When the credits roll and you step out of the booth or put the gun back in the holster, nobody asks you what your accuracy rating was. They ask if you finished the game. In one sense accuracy is all that matters, and that is a true sense. But in another sense what matters is that you got from level to level, and that is perhaps the truer sense. In a game, of course, the levels are linear and there are no wrong choices; they all lead to the last climactic shootout. But life's levels are not linear, and there are wrong choices. I've made more than my fair share of them, as we all have. And those choices, the level choices, are perhaps what really matter. In life, I submit, perhaps the question is not how well you did but what game you were playing.

At the end of law school people seem fond of telling you that, for all the jokes people make about lawyers, you've made a good choice by choosing to be a lawyer. It's a good profession. An honorable profession. The profession to which America has always looked for its greatest leaders; a profession with its own unique niche in the world from which to make a difference, and all that is true, but it doesn't mean we've all made good choices by choosing to be lawyers. We've made good choices to be lawyers, if indeed they are good choices, because that's what God made us to do and we're doing it. The grades in the computers, the piece of paper on the wall, are not given significance by the effort that went into them (and I worked for this piece of paper, I really did). The effort itself is not given significance by the fact that it led to a good and honorable profession, or even simply by the fact that it was effort. The effort has significance, if it has significance at all, because the effort was to do what God made me to do, what he's told me to do, what I must do. The grades and the pieces of paper have significance, if they have significance at all, because they're milestones on the right road - not that it has to be a straight and narrow road (and mine isn't), but the right road. A road that I chose but didn't design.

I think it's the right road. It's not just joy I feel, alone in the dark at the kitchen table with the buzzing of the refridgerator and the remains of a home-cooked meal. It's peace. All is right with the world. I missed quite a few shots in the last level. More than ever before, I think. And it will only get harder from here. There is the bar to study for, and take, a wedding to plan, and after that the hurry-up-and-wait routine of a transactional lawyer. A house to keep. An engagement to live, and to grow in. Friendships to maintain, and in some cases reclaim. There will be dark times, when the nights are late and the games are few and snatching even a few hours with my beloved will take all the strength we have left, I am sure.

I can sit here alone in a darkened apartment and see all of that coming. But my heart is not troubled. It is a path I have chosen, but not designed. The last shot has been fired. For a few moments I can lower the gun and dwell on what is to come, and it makes my heart swell. Because the level may be harder than any that have come before. But it's the right one. I know it is.

Jorsoran Kando a Tome

2007-05-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I read a lot of books. If you look through my storage boxes in the garage back home you'll find boxes stuffed full of mass market paperbacks - The Babysitters Club, BattleTech, and Star Wars novels mostly. These books live in the closet, because they helped to make me who I am. In my room at home is a precious smattering of books pulled from those collections - the Blood of Kerensky trilogy, the Heir to the Empire trilogy, Stackpole's X-Wing novels - and a few choice others: Gates of Fire, Starship Troopers, the Enchanted Forest chronicles, the Pit Dragon trilogy, the Tortall books, the Honor Harrington series. These books live in my room because they remind me of who I want to be. A few of the books from home made it here with me to Stanford - old friends that I want with me wherever I go, to remind me of who I am and connect me to those who have gone before. You could write a fair chronicle of my inner life by looking at where my books live. And now I have a new bookshelf, which has no books on it. Not yet.

I spent years at Stanford with blank walls, because Stanford was not home, and there was nothing to put on my walls. And slowly the shape of my wall decorations took place: plates of the Archimedes Palimpsest, prints of Honor Harrington, photos of the family in Hawaii, a precious poster of the Moulin Rouge, a Vettriano painting of a dance under the trees at night. The time has come to take these down. And now I have new walls, which have no pictures on them. Not yet.

When I was eleven, I played my first shooting game in the old Tilt arcade in the Fallbrook Mall with my dad: Lethal Enforcers. I suppose we played about a quarter's worth of the game, and I did all right, since I've always been fairly good at video games, but I didn't really have a clue as to what I was doing. And then Dad showed me how to grip the gun, how to line up the sight picture, and basically taught me how to win a gunfight (or at least how the Marine Corps says to win a gunfight; not like either he or I have ever tried): line up your shot, do it right, squeeze the trigger. Aim again - take your time, do it right - and squeeze the trigger. Accuracy, not speed, is the goal. Make every bullet count. In time, you'll learn to do it quickly.

I don't suppose Dad intended to be teaching a life lesson there in Tilt, but ever since then I've thought of life's challenges in shooting terms. One thing at a time, and don't mind the rest - know where they are, but don't let them get to you. Take your time, do it right, put the bullet in the air. Find the next target. Line up again, take your time, put the bullet in the air. Find the next target. Be calm. Concentrate on the process - on doing your best - and not on the outcome.

It might not be the best way to live but it's how I've lived so far, or at least how I've tried to. I don't know if it's a male thing or a Natalie thing, but I don't really multitask very well. I can sort of simulate multitasking by doing things quickly, or at least I used to be able to. One thing at a time, make every bullet count, and in time, you'll learn to do it quickly.

On April 26 I went to Dave and Buster's to visit some more old friends - Time Crisis 3, Ghost Squad, Mazan, and Jurassic Park II: The Lost World. I walked through the Million Dollar Midway with my power cards and a drink in my hand, shooting through games I know and love, challenging myself to make every bullet count, every parry and counter-slash. I had dinner in the same booth as the last time I had come there alone, to think and to pray, to lay an important decision at the throne of God. My thoughts were going at a million miles a minute, but deep inside, where I had retreated, there was only me, the gun, and the sight picture. And I enjoyed the quiet as I tried to line up each shot and make every bullet count. Praying. Praying that the next seven years are even better than these have been. Praying that I be taught what I need to know.

The Midway was full of noise but I didn't really hear it. Deep inside I enjoyed the stillness, the familiar burn of the lactic acid in my biceps. And the singing. Because for a few days I had been unable to listen to anything but a Mandalorian war chant, "Vode An," and as I moved between games I fumbled with the unfamiliar language over and over again. Somehow it was important that I get it right. Bal kote, darasuum kote / Jorsoran kando a tome. Jorsoran kando a tome. Jorsoran kando a tome. A tome. A tome.

And that was really the last chance I've had to reflect. The next day I proposed marriage to Thayet. And then it was off to finals, trying, trying to keep up my fire, and failing, and bitterly introspecting about it. It was like the last seven years were determined to play themselves out in the space of a few days, and then she was there, holding up my gun arm, because the time has come and God has decreed that mhi jorsoran kando a tome. And then the bullets were in the air, all but one, but people were congratulating me anyway for where they hadn't landed yet and it was time to celebrate myself before the level was even over because it was now or never. But school wasn't over, it isn't over, not yet - one last shot to take. And yet already it's time to clear the walls and the bookshelves because there's a deadline for moving and work to be done and a wedding to plan and somewhere in the midst of it all I turned twenty-six. I've had the biggest week of my life, I suppose, and no time to reflect on it until now. And even now there isn't enough time, not enough time to say good-bye to a campus that finally warranted wall decorations, to be thankful for what I've received and to mourn the shots I've missed, to pray over what is to come.

But in truth, I feel strangely calm about it. Life is busy but deep inside I am quiet because while I'm missing a lot of the scenery I know I am going where I am supposed to go. And we will line up the next shot, and the next shot, and the next, and do our best to make them all count. A tome.

Empire at War

2007-04-15T19:27:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today about the best Star Wars games of all time. I would name them as these: TIE Fighter, Knights of the Old Republic, and Republic Commando. I'd add X-Wing, X-Wing: Alliance, Jedi Knight II, and Jedi Academy if we want to extend the list beyond three. And just maybe Empire at War. I've been meaning to comment on Empire at War for a while, and since I'm fairly deep into my first imperial campaign in the expansion I figured this post is about due.

A brief overview for those of you who are interested in my game posts but aren't familiar with the title. Empire at War is basically a Galactic Civil War alternate-history sandbox. The game takes place on both the strategic and tactical levels, both in real time. The strategic (interstellar) part of the game consists of building your forces and planetary bases and maneuvering on the galactic scale. Base building is similar to Rome: Total War - specific buildings are required for specific units and other buildings, but it isn't a "base building" game in the sense of a classic RTS; either a planet has a particular facility or it doesn't. Planets are differentiated from one another by the tactical map associated with that particular planet (e.g., the famous stormtrooper training world of Carida reduces the cost of infantry units), the amount of credits they contribute to the owner's economy, the allegiance and formidability of the natives, a strategic or tactical bonus appropriate to the world, the maximum supportable number of land facilities, and the maximum supportable size of space station.

As a Star Wars game goes that's mostly all you'd want. One potential disappointment is the fact that the Rebellion functions, strategically, pretty much just like the Empire - while the Rebels have a slight informational advantage in terms of concealing the forces at a particular world from their enemies, the core mechanism of expansion is conquering planets. This makes the game play like fairly late in the Civil War (post-Endor), when the Rebellion was legitimate enough that planets would actually declare their allegiance to the fledgling "New Republic" even though the Empire was clearly not defeated. Whether this is a failing sort of depends on your point of view. Empire at War is clearly trying to let you rewrite Star Wars history, so maybe the Rebellion in this game is actually far more formidable than the Rebellion in Star Wars canon. That's kind of cool. On the other hand, it means that you can't play the "where is the Rebel base?" kind of skulk-and-hide that you might want to. The criminal faction in the expansion, the Zann Consortium, actually plays rather more like you'd expect the classic Rebellion to play. The Consortium can conquer planets, but it can also "corrupt" worlds held by other players by setting up a variety of criminal enterprises in the system. Consortium units can travel anywhere within the corrupted network of systems by paying [sometimes very hefty] bribe costs, allowing them to strike without warning anywhere within the web of corruption.

Once combat is initiated the strategic map pauses, and you fight the battle out on the tactical level using whatever forces you have brought to the system, or whichever forces are stationed in the system. Space combat is basically built around a rock-paper-scissors type of system, with roughly four rates of combatants: starfighters, corvettes, frigates/cruisers, and capital ships. Starfighters are represented on the "squadron" level (though the number of ships in a squadron varies from three to seven depending on class) and are divided into space superiority fighters and bombers. Bombers are valuable for their proton torpedoes, which in this game bypass shields, making them potentially devastating to anything larger than a corvette. Space superiority fighters are valuable as dogfighters and interceptors. Both are extraordinarily vulnerable to the corvette-class vessels, which fill an anti-fighter fleet defense role, and are in turn no match for your frigates and cruisers. Capital ships, which can only be built at particular worlds famous for their shipyards (e.g., Kuat and Mon Calamari), will eat virtually any starship alive but are potentially vulnerable to bombers.

The game does a good job, I think, of presenting an interesting and Star Wars-y space combat problem. The tactical problem in space is really dominated by the really big ships and the really small ships. Unmolested bombers can make quick work of even an Imperial Star Destroyer. A few corvettes can create a virtually impenetrable fighter defense, but these pickets are in turn easy pickings for the enemy's heavy combatants, which both outrange and outgun them. A fighter screen can do the same work without that vulnerability, but not as efficiently - and that tactic also opens the door for a few daring corvettes on the enemy's side to punch a gaping hole in your fighter screen. The great skill is to manage your formation so as to create a gap in the enemy's coverage without creating one in your own - usually all with the aim of letting the ponderous capital ships bring their awesome firepower to bear (and the firepower of a single Star Destroyer is truly awesome, I assure you) or letting your bombers begin their run.

The defender in a space battle will usually be defending a space station (and sadly, no planet may have more than one space station), which may range in formidability from a mere deterrence to a fleet-smashing fortress depending on how much has been invested in it. Space stations have fighters and starships assigned to them as garrisons. These garrison ships play an important part in the tactical dynamic of attacking and defending. Each level of station has a fixed number of garrison units it can have in the fight at any given time. The trick is, so long as the station's hangar hardpoint is intact (frigate-sized vessels and up are composed of individually targetable subsystems such as weapons, shield generators, engines, flight control, etc.), destroyed garrison units will be periodically replaced. Thus, the attacker has an incentive to strike hard and decisively, to minimize the impact of these extra units; while the defender is well served by playing a delaying game. There is a finite number of units either side can have on the board at any given time, so players can have reserves ready to hyperspace in as units are destroyed. Garrison units do not count against this ship limit, so the defender has a potential numerical advantage, but this rarely obtains as it is quite difficult to issue every system a formidable defense fleet from the regular navy.

Both land and space combat have their "super weapons," which is only appropriate in a Star Wars game. Your space battle super weapons are planetside surface-to-orbit guns which must be constructed like any other base building. The Rebels have their signature v-150 Planet Defender ion cannon, while the Empire has a hypervelocity mass driver. These weapons are substantial obstacles to anything larger than a corvette, although they are also quite expensive and take up a base slot that could be used for something else. They have a nice feel to them - there's really no counter except to destroy the weapon with a commando raid (if you're the Rebels), use only small ships, or to attack with several times the force you otherwise would have.

Land combat follows a similar basic dynamic but has a few extra wrinkles thrown in. Each land map has several "reinforcement points," which are areas suitable for landing troops. The number of units (measured in platoons ranging from two to five armored vehicles or two to three squads of infantry) the attacker can have on planet at any given time depends on the number of reinforcement points he controls (each LZ allowing a different number of units, so some are more valuable than others), while the defender can start the battle with a full complement of units from his regular army plus the garrison units deployed by his base buildings, which are replaced as destroyed just as in a space battle. Control of the map's landing zones is usually an important piece of victory, as the landing zones constrain the momentum of an attack. It is even possible, if one can manage it, to cut off the attacking units completely by capturing all the LZs on the map - thus, while the enemy may have a very large army in orbit, he may literally have no place to land them.

Star Wars has always followed a World War-style tactical model, so it is appropriate that the land units be classified (more or less) into infantry, light armor, heavy armor, and artillery. Infantry is important for its ability to effectively engage other infantry and its ability to capture locations (such as landing zones) and the "build pads" which are scattered across each map at important locations and which allow you to emplace pre-fabricated turrets and repair stations. Infantry is what changes the front lines of a battle. Light armor (such as the AT-ST) is about as effective as you'd expect in a World War II game; it's no match for a serious armored fighting vehicle, but it's also fast and a simply insuperable obstacle to infantry with no anti-tank teams. Artillery is relatively short ranged (though longer-ranged than anything else on the battlefield) but devastating against soft targets or emplacements and can make quick work of an infantry advance. Heavy armor is largely the queen of the battlefield (anti-tank teams excepted), so there is again a rock-paper-scissors sort of balancing act between the anti-armor and anti-infantry arms of the service. Unless, of course, the Empire deploys AT-ATs - a weapon against which nothing but overwhelming numbers and brute force will truly avail.

One of the nice things about Empire at War's land combat is that it allows for situations in which one side simply cannot win. If you have run out of anti-armor capable units or emplacements it really doesn't matter how many men you have left on the field so long as the enemy has even a token force of tanks or walkers. At the same time, a single anti-armor turret can do for virtually an entire platoon of light armor. If the enemy has brought airspeeders to the fight and you have no anti-aircraft capabilities, you have already lost. A single AT-AT really can win an entire battle if the other side is unprepared. You don't find that sort of model in games very often, and it's nice to appreciate it when it happens.

Your land super weapons are bombing sorties (assuming you have any bombers in orbit) and, in the expansion, orbital bombardment. Star Wars has never had much land-air integration, and this game is no exception, but the periodic use of bombers or bombardment does open up some interesting strategies. Sorties are only available periodically, so a battle has to drag on some time before they're available, but they can also flatten pretty much anything in a single run. Thus they can be used to clear choke points, add anti-armor punch to an otherwise light attack, or smash a base building that would otherwise be beyond reach.

One frustrating thing about land combat (and to a lesser extent space combat) is that the build pads (or the defense satellites, which are far less numerous than build pads) can only be built upon during a battle. These are an important part of the battlefield; they help to give it shape and substance, and they also increase the cost of a battle (since each emplacement costs a small amount of money), which is an important strategic consideration. A base can be made significantly more or less defensible based on the geography of these emplacements. So it's well worth your time to build on them after you've effectively won a battle, but that means trekking infantry all the way out to each one, which is silly.

The other interesting thing about land battles is that most worlds have natives who are friendly either to the Empire or Rebellion (and a few have natives who are just plain hostile) and are produced, garrison-like, from native dwellings on the map. Depending on the world in question the natives may be mere unfortunates who are caught in the crossfire or a serious tactical consideration. On most worlds they're mere civilians armed with blaster pistols, good for little more than harassing attacks or capturing undefended locations (since they live all across the map, though, they can be highly useful for capturing advance landing zones or fortifying locations in advance of your main force). A few worlds, such as Kashyyyk (the wookiee homeworld), have natives who are actually quite fearsome. And on some the natives are formidable through sheer numbers. Endor, for instance, is virtually impossible for the Empire to conquer if the Ewoks are backed by even a handful of Rebel troops. The Ewoks are not formidable fighters, but they are numerous, and if properly supported can overrun the initial imperial beachhead with ease.

Combat is a nice mix of the small and large scale. The Rebels have the unique option of slipping a small force of ground troops past a planet's orbital defenses and attacking its land facilities directly, so there's always the specter of a small-scale action - and as I said, it's difficult to adequately cover your systems, so even the front lines can wind up being essentially small unit actions. The feel of the game sort of switches organically in smaller actions from formation management to individual unit management. I was once down to defending a base with two squads of stormtroopers and a pair of speeder bikes, defending against the exhausted remnants of a Rebel attack that were just unwilling to give up and retreat. The action mostly consisted of the scout troopers trying to buy time for the stormtroopers to get some emplacements ready, and had a very nice edge-of-your-seat feeling. Or again, I once defeated an Acclamator-class assault ship with a single Corellian corvette by luring the Acclamator's fighter screen away and then leading it a merry chase through an asteroid field until the rocks pounded it to rubble. That kind of shift to the individual and heroic happens quite naturally, and is a nice shift.

And finally there are the heroes - the obvious ones like Luke Skywalker, Emperor Palpatine, Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and the like; and the less obvious ones like Captain Piett ("You are in command now ... Admiral Piett") and Mon Mothma. The game does a good job of balancing the innately hero-driven aspect of the Star Wars universe and keeping things relatively realistic (and therefore keeping your troops relevant). Some, like Darth Vader, have a presence in both land and space. Others are only combatants in land battles (e.g., Obi-Wan), space battles (Capt. Piett), or not combatants at all (Mon Mothma and Grand Moff Tarkin). Basically heroes are exceptional at what they're good at, and just like everyone else otherwise. Rogue Squadron can do for a large number of TIE fighters, but they aren't that great against a Tartan cruiser. Some of my favorite moments have been with the Jedi, like the time Yoda cut through an entire platoon of stormtroopers only to be stepped on by an AT-ST. Or the time I discovered the Emperor himself on a planet, and he turned my prize heavy armor company against me using the Dark Side of the Force ... and then as he was plastered by my proton torpedo artillery he croaked, "I did not foresee this!"

So, not the best Star Wars game ever. But pretty close, really.

300 and Easter

2007-04-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

So I've seen 300 twice now, and I figure it deserves some comment.

300 was ... well, it has its goods and its bads. On the good side were the stylization (mostly) and the fact that the movie gets the heart of why Thermopylai is a story that has endured for 2500 years as one of the greatest feats of arms in the annals of mankind. On the bad side were certain pieces of dialogue and certain alterations to Spartan society.

Let me say before I turn to each of those items that 300 was not as good as Gates of Fire. Maybe that's unfair, because one is a graphic novel I haven't read that was turned into a movie, and the other is a regular novel that hasn't been turned into a movie, but to the extent that you can compare across genres there's just no comparison. One of the main reasons for that difference is that the characters in Gates of Fire are not (with one notable and important exception) trying to be heroes.

300, on the other hand, takes its inspiration from the extraordinary wave of patriotic fervor which swept all Greece in the wake of the Persian Wars. From the Greek perspective, Greek valor and the Greek way of life had triumphed over the monolithic empire from the East, an evil empire ruled with an iron fist by an eviler emperor who commanded alien hordes of slave soldiers and bought his enemy with his fabulous treasury, a man and an empire that stood against all that was good and right and happy in the world.

It's all nonsense, of course. Xerxes probably did have a fearsome temper, and he probably did lose perspective over the whole Greek affair, but Achaemenid Persia was in fact a great fountain of civilization (more "Greek" advances at the time of the Persian Wars had come out of Persian-occupied Greek cities than had come out of the Greek mainland) that was actually a very gentle and humane empire run on a quasi-federal system. Sparta was a police state whose entire society was built around preventing a massive slave revolt; Persia was the empire that sent the Jews back to their homeland with orders to rebuild their temple and worship their god in peace. The idea that Sparta defeated Persia in the name of freedom and civilization is transparently nonsense. But that was what the Greeks themselves honestly believed at the time.

This perspective informs every aspect of 300's stylization. The Greeks are nude (or as nude as we can get away with making them in mainstream American cinema) because the nude figure with shield, helmet, greaves, spear, and sword is the ancient Greek artistic convention for "hero." The Persian archers are dressed exactly as they are portrayed on vase paintings from the time, right down to the pattern on the fabric - as recalled by vase painters who were veterans of the war and vividly remembered every detail of their alien foe. Xerxes did not, of course, have gunpowder, war elephants (Persia didn't extend to India), or war rhinoceroses (nobody has ever had war rhinoceroses). But all that is meant to convey the perceived alien-ness of the empire. The Greeks do not generally fight in phalanx, but Leonidas explains the phalanx's fighting style in dialogue, so the moviemakers knew. It is just that they wished to display the heroism of the Greek fighters according to the conventions of American storytelling, where heroic fighters fight singly or in pairs. The one scene of actual phalanx fighting is a better on-screen depiction than anybody else has ever achieved (although still of rather poor quality absolutely, to be fair). They even have Gerard Butler play Leonidas with a Scottish accent (the tradition of translating the Spartan dialect as Scottish goes far back).

The movie's depiction of Sparta herself is hit and miss. I think it's clear that Frank Miller gets Sparta, but I am not entirely happy with the way he conveys that understanding. To really understand Thermopylai, you have to understand the Spartan way of life - Sparta as it was just before its society self-destructed in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War. You have to understand how deeply these men loved their women, how deeply they partnered with them, and how earnestly - almost naively - they believed in the martial virtues. In 300 Leonidas' wife Gorgo stands for essentially all of Spartan society - that Spartan paradox of the warrior housewife, a woman who is thoroughly domestic and simple and humble in her way but whose virtues imbue her with a bearing most regal and make her quite as fearless as any hero. Now, it is important to understand that about Spartan women, to understand the sorts of families these men willingly left behind forever and to understand the sorts of families that made them who they were. You have to understand what they were fighting for to understand why anybody cares about their story.

Gorgo was, by all accounts, a most extraordinary woman. The trouble is that Miller invents a subplot wherein "the council" and the ephors are bought off by Persian gold, to give Gorgo a homefront war to fight. This shows her character to the best advantage, but it also depicts a fictionalized and un-lovable Sparta. To be sure, Persia fought with its gold as much as its soldiers; that's only rational foreign policy. But there is no evidence that they ever corrupted Sparta, and the ephors and the council are thoroughly fictionalized. The ephors were not a band of diseased and lecherous mystics; they were acclaimed as the oldest and wisest Spartan citizens, who served as senate to the kings' executive (our own Senate was heavily modeled upon the ephors' example). Indeed, we are told that the ephors told Leonidas he was taking too few men to Thermopylai (to which his famous reply: "Rather too many for the business at hand"). And Miller presents "the council" not as the body politic of Spartan citizens (and therefore the Spartan army) but as a bunch of professional politicians - and this dichotomy between the politicians and the warriors drives Gorgo's subplot, whereas in reality there was no such dichotomy. So it is easy to understand why Leonidas loves Gorgo so, and it is easy to understand what sort of woman she was, but as for Sparta itself the audience cares not a fig.

And that's a serious flaw, because the reason Thermopylai is important is because the Spartans decided to leave their beloved homeland and their families and die. The battle itself was indeed a spectacular feat of arms, but at the end of the day the allies held for only two days and their stand was of doubtful strategic importance. At best it stiffened the spine of the Greek allied congress to fight. If Greek civilization is what they were fighting for ... well, they were also fighting against Persian civilization, and that is a cause I find of doubtful nobility. But these were men who loved their families and loved their country, and when those were threatened they chose not to cling to them but to go far away from home and die. They could have sat at home and waited for the Persians to come, enjoying the time they had left - instead they chose to separate themselves from that which they loved in the hope that somehow it might be preserved. When the goat path was discovered they could have retreated, lived to fight another day - but they found they could not and still be true to what they were fighting for. They fought for Spartan laws, Spartan families, Spartan wives - and they could not run away and live Spartan men. They did not expect to come back, and they went anyway. They say that as her husband marched to the Gates Gorgo asked him what she could do to help. "Marry a good man," Leonidas said, "and bear good children." That - not the men they killed, not their warped view of the Persian Empire - is a story worth telling and retelling.

I didn't watch a lot of Babylon 5, but I remember an episode that struck me. A Minbari is trying to understand Christianity, and he asks a human monk what the emotional heart is of his religion. The monk thinks for a moment, and replies that it is not the Crucifixion, nor the Resurrection. It is the night Jesus spent in Gethsemane, when he was struggling with the full weight of realization of what was to come ... and decided not to run away.

Fear

2007-03-06T13:41:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to blog about this for some time, but I don't actually know how to begin. I'm standing here, closing in on the day when I'm out of the dorms and into an apartment, closing in on the Bar and work and a marriage.

And I'm afraid.

I've been reading Gingrich and Forstchen's Civil War trilogy, and I feel like I'm in that last charge towards the Potomac, like Xenophon's men taking that nameless spur - one more grand effort and it's done, I'm out of the storm, but oh how dreadful the charge seems, and I am afraid.

I've been thinking a lot about this, and I'm not afraid of failure. Not in the traditional sense, at any rate. It's not like I'm afraid that I won't be a good lawyer, or at any rate that I don't have the makings of a good lawer, or of a good husband, or a good father, a good Christian, or even just a good boyfriend or student. Success in the traditional performance-based kind of way has always been something that just kind of happened, or didn't happen. I value it, but not all that much. The conversation Archimedes and I had on the eve of our induction to Phi Beta Kappa encapsulates for me how I think success ought to be viewed: essentially, you do your thing, and sometimes people throw awards at you. Maybe it's because material success, in all the areas of life I've turned my hand to so far, has come with relative ease. I've never particularly valued being smart, in myself or in anyone else.

So I'm not afraid of that kind of failure. But I suppose I am afraid of failure. What I'm afraid of, really, is fear itself. I'm afraid of losing my courage. That is something I've always valued, working hard. It's been a while since I've posted anything here so for those who haven't heard any Natalie spoken in a while let me draw out the linguistic connection. There are two ways to deal with fear. The first and most common is to not diminish the overall level of fear at all, but to decrease the effect it has on one. That is courage: to be afraid and carry on anyway. Cowardice, by corollary, is to be afraid and give in to it.

I have always wanted to be brave. In a sense I have wanted little else. To be afraid, and somehow find a way to do the right thing anyway. I think that's one of the main reasons I love military history. The story of war, of fighting, is the story of men exhausted and afraid beyond all human endurance - and somehow the best of them find a way to do the right thing anyway. That is the human essence of warmaking, and why a country can be proud of its fighting men no matter the cause for which they fought. I read and I read and I know the answer, but I ask the question anyway: How do they do it?

You might say that it's perfectly natural for me to be afraid. After all, I'm moving on to a new stage of life, one that's very different from anything I've faced before. I have, one might be inclined to say, lived a fairly sheltered life. That is not it. There is such a thing as sheltered, but I think more often than people like to admit "sheltered" is simply a euphemism for "grew up in a family that did what it was supposed to." I don't think "sheltered" means "kept from hard experiences." It means "kept from being prepared for hard experiences." It has been my observation that my upbringing kept me from experiencing a number of hard things that other people my age experienced earlier in life, but it has also been my experience that my upbringing prepared me quite well to deal with those things when I got around to confronting them. Nothing about my upbringing has fostered cowardice in the least degree.

No, I'm not afraid because things are new. I'm afraid because the fear has begun to slow me down. It feels like my courage is slipping, and that's what's frightening. It isn't school; it's that it takes me forever to get any schoolwork done because I'm so paralyzed by fear - fear that I'm going to fail, on the surface, but really I'm paralyzed by the fear that I'm being paralyzed by the fear. That my courage has deserted me and I just can't do it anymore. And with it comes the crushing despair that in this, the one part of success that has any moral significance, I have failed at last.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It is the familiar voice of the Father of Lies.

It has occurred to me, as I've contemplated this tenacious assault, that I am being told a lie about courage. The lie is this: that the great thing in life is to be brave. Not true. Patently false. Courage is a virtue, to be sure, but it is not the greatest thing in life. It is bad to be a coward but cowardice does not make a man a failure.

Here is one of those delayed hard experiences that my "sheltered" upbringing has led me to confront at a relatively late age. Most other people who went to Stanford have already had the happy/unhappy experience of finding out that they are not the most exceptional anything - that no matter how smart, how creative, how fast, how empathetic, how hard-working they are, there are a great many people in the world who are smarter, more creative, faster, more empathetic, and harder workers - and some are all of those things. Now it's my turn for this place to bring me face to face - I mean really face to face - with the realization that I am not perfectly brave.

Before you get on my case about low self-esteem, I am not calling myself a coward. I am brave, I realize that; I might even admit in a moment of candor to considering myself exceptionally brave. But there are things before which my courage fails, and I am face to face with one of those things now.

Stanford can teach you that you aren't the best; except for a very few of its students it teaches us all that critical life lesson. Now here is the twist at the end of the story, the thing that Stanford cannot teach you: why that's okay. It's okay that I am not perfectly brave because I have Jesus. Particularly, I am about to argue, because Jesus loves me. This is the second way to deal with fear.

Courage is all very well but it accepts, and is subject to in some degree, the presence of fear. The brave man has found a way to be terrified out of his wits and still do what he must. It is not the opposite of fear, the thing that makes things less frightening, that drives fear out. Courage is merely the opposite of cowardice. The opposite of fear is love.

On a human level Thayet has been a shining example of this. She loves me (and I love her, very deeply, but that's not germane to this illustration). And when I am around her I am less afraid. Please take my word that I am not braver around her; that is an entirely different phenomenon. I am less afraid. The world is simply less scary around her; the lie begins to lose its power. And why? Because she surprises me with roses and strawberries and wine before a midterm? Because of the way she looks at me, or speaks to me, or even prays for me? Nonsense. Those are just ways in which she loves me, examples of the ferocity of her love.

Now this is hardly news, but I think I better understand something about it. After all, it is written that Jesus has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sophrosune. And yet, here I am - afraid. How can this be? In Christian circles we often ask God to make his promises "real" to us. Here is a proposition: my spirit is not afraid. The spirit I have been given is a grand and noble one, of power and love and mental solidity, the spirit of a king in the highest sense of that word. But I am not just an immortal. I am also, thanks be to God, an animal. And animals are subject to fear.

If this be so, then perhaps it is to translate fearlessness into animal terms that God has provided those that love us. People like my family and Thayet and knights who love me and communicate the love of God to me in ways that touch my animal self, as Steven Pressfield has Dienekes call it, "the factory of fear."

It is written that perfect love drives out fear. It is true with Thayet. It is true with my family. It is true with my closest friends. Love, not courage, is the opposite of and antidote to fear. And that is why it is okay if I am not perfectly brave. Not because nobody is perfectly brave. Because I am loved, and by Jesus most and best of all.

And the result of this? I have said that love drives out fear, but what does it leave in its place? The following thought came to me when I was reading with my Bible study the book of Hebrews. It is parrhesia, which the Scriptures tell us we have through faith in Christ. This parrhesia was claimed by the Athenians as a peculiar right of Athenian citizens. It is often translated "freedom of speech," and I suppose it is freedom of speech in the grand old sense which we imbue that constitutional right sometimes on national holidays or when filled with a particular pride of country. Parrhesia is boldness, openness, frankness - it is the right of a man, whatever his station, to hold his head high and look any other man in the eye, whatever his station, and speak his mind openly as to an equal. That, I think, is what love leaves in the wake of its crusade against fear. It is love, and not courage, that lets a man hold his head high, look straight in the eye of any season of life or the devil himself, and say truthfully, "I am not afraid."

Christmas 2006

2006-12-25T08:50:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is caroling on Christmas Eve. Every year for the past several years my family has gathered with Xenophon’s in our living room, and Dad has brought in his keyboard and we’ve sung Christmas carols for an hour or two. My favorites are the religious carols, and not just because I think they tend to be superior musically. I am as much a fan of love and charity and being close to friends and family—in short, the whole Christmas spirit thing—as the next guy. That’s basically what Dickens is all about, and I love Dickens. But Christmas is not about those things. And thank goodness, for Christmas spirit falls flat more often than it soars, and friends and family are rarely all they’re cracked up to be (especially family). A holiday that was founded on love and charity and family togetherness like that would quickly become a tiresome exercise in tradition—as I suppose Christmas is for many people.

No, I love Christmas spirit. But Christmas is about Jesus, and in my opinion all attempts to get around that fact end up tawdry in the end. Which is why I like the religious carols, and especially like caroling them in my living room on Christmas Eve. Oh, we joke around and laugh a lot. We aren’t a bunch of Puritans intoning religious songs because That’s What You Do on a religious holiday. But there is still something powerful about singing those songs with people who really believe the words that they’re singing, and really believe in the person and events they’re singing about.

A lot of carols picture Jesus as king—a metaphor with a pretty good pedigree, as Christians have been talking about him as king pretty much since the beginning, and the entire Messiah complex itself featured heavily the idea of kingship. But what does that mean? “Jesus as king” is a fairly rich theological concept, and while I appreciate the intellectual subtleties, I also want to be able to connect with it on a visceral level. Otherwise it’s like appreciating the richness of a metaphor in a poem without even knowing what the poet’s basic image is.

When I want to think about king in a visceral sense, sometimes I think of the medieval or Renaissance concept of a king—lawgiver, knight, and lover. But while many carols were penned with that image as their background, the first of our people to name Jesus as king obviously were thinking of a different intellectual tradition. I imagine they were mostly thinking (consciously or unconsciously) of the Hellenistic kings that had ruled the Mediterranean for centuries by the time of Jesus. After all, there was as yet no real ideology of the Roman emperor, and the Jews had not had a king for over four centuries. The only kings anybody really knew were the so-called Diadochoi, the Successors—descendants of the generals of Alexander the Great, who divided his empire upon his death.

So what was a Hellenistic king supposed to be? First and foremost, a warlord. Prof. Manning always liked to compare them to mob bosses, and they fought endless wars with each other. Second, and relatedly, a savior. The word “savior” has become a theological term of art, but its meaning as applied to a king was very straightforward and intuitive. A king was supposed to protect his people from wars, from oppressive taxes, from oppressive government—in short, he was to ensure their freedom to live full and peaceful lives. When a king went about with the title “savior” appended to his name, that is what people thought of. Some other Hellenistic kingly (and queenly) titles that I find surprising and instructive when I think of what Scripture probably has in mind when it uses kingly language:

Victor
Loves his father
Loves his mother
Loves his siblings
Benefactor
Manifest

In reality, many kings of that era were little more than glorified thugs. But the idea of a king, that is something worth holding on to. A king is a great warrior. A king liberates his people. A king loves his parents and his brethren. A king builds great things for his people’s benefit and enjoyment. A king is always before his people.

Even the greatest of the Successors fell short of that ideal. Most didn't come close. But at the very end of the period of the Successors, a king was born who would be all those things, and still is.

Merry Christmas

Dangerous?

2006-12-23T23:01:00.000-08:00

Personal resolution: dangerous is a moral quality. Any fool with the right tools can put a life in mortal peril, but it takes a real man or woman to be dangerous.

Brave words from someone who hasn't faced a fight since middle school, I know. Possibly naive and arrogant, I know. But I think I am probably in the mental company of most of our species' best and most experienced fighters.

More importantly, I think this is one of those things that has to be true, and if it isn't true then it has to be made true. "Dangerous" is an interesting word to a Christian. In the Kingdom of God, "dangerous" gets redefined. We are challenged, on the one hand, to let people strike us (a challenge I admit I find difficult - my gut instinct is more along the lines of "someone tries to kill you, you try and kill them right back;" points for the reference. But this is not the time to discuss the nuances of physical force in Christian hands). But on the other, we are told that

"From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of Heaven has suffered violence, and men of force seize it."

There is, I think, an interesting word play going on here. The Kingdom is pictured as under attack - and it is the men of force, the violent, the dangerous if I may, who attain it. I was watching Return of the King today, and I am reminded of Gondor under siege and the hard sons of Rohan who rode to its rescue: it takes a dangerous man to reach the City of the King.

How is a man dangerous who will let himself be struck by another? How is such a man to be described as a man of force? It sounds like a conundrum but I don't think it is. The ability to kill or injure, the ability to destroy - that is not what makes a man dangerous. Any coward who is willing to strike from behind or who can operate a weapon (even if that weapon is his fist) can destroy. The truly dangerous man or woman is he who can face such a one who wields destruction and overcome it by the force of who he is. The dangerous man is the one who can face an identically armed opponent and already have the advantage. The one who refuses to let hardship, however hard; or injury, however debilitating, dictate what he can and cannot do. Dangerous is a girl who can face the blow of a blustering coward without flinching. Dangerous is a Man who can walk through the midst of a murderous crowd untouched. We've all heard of such people, most of us have seen it at least once, and a few of us have been it, at least for a moment.

That is the sort of man, the sort of woman, who is morally dangerous. The sort of person who deserves to be called a man of force. The sort of person who seizes the Kingdom of God.

Warrior Tanking, part II (Why to Spec Prot)

2006-12-21T13:22:00.000-08:00

So here I am, once again at home, with a new kind of jury-rigged wireless keypad for my laptop and an extra 512MB of memory for WoW away from my desktop (whose name is Monica, for those of you who are curious, although I rarely refer to her by name or even as a person). The last couple weeks have been crazy. Or felt crazy, anyway. Some highlights:

* Had a friend come up from Santa Barbara and we had a good time, and then we went down to his place in SB and had a good time. We can now add Irish coffee to the list of coffee-based beverages that I actually enjoy (the list previously being limited to Cuban espresso. Perhaps I have a thing for ethnic coffee with lots of additives).

* Saw The Nativity Story with Thayet and said friend. Thayet and I both liked it a lot. We both could have wished that the magi were a little more obviously foreign, but that’s all right. The real strength of the movie is that it plays things completely straight (granted there’s more than a little bit of a Christian slant to things, but that’s kind of inevitable if the magi actually show up and Jesus is actually born). Mary is just Mary, and Joseph is just Joseph, and their characters and relationship (progressing from “why do I have to marry him?” to being partners in a story they know they don’t fully understand) carry the film. Well worth seeing.

* Went to Dickens for the first and only time this season, which was disappointing but had some good parts. Saw some old Fair friends, including Enika and Kalaraen, and got to meet (briefly) some of Thayet’s friends too. Much sighing to be done about Dickens, but that’s for private.

At this point I could recap finals, or Thayet’s and my date to Santa Cruz complete with steam train, but instead I’d like to talk about something that I know you’re all dying to know about, and that’s why a warrior in WoW should and should not put his talent points into the protection tree (“spec protection” for those of you who don’t play).

A brief bit of context for those of you who don’t play but are interested in reading this far anyway. Every character class in WoW has three “talent trees,” which enhance certain class abilities or even grant new ones to allow you to tweak your character according to your playing style. You earn points to invest in these trees (“spec”) by advancing in level. Each tree has an easily identifiable theme: the three warrior trees are Arms, Fury, and Protection. Conventional wisdom says that Arms is the tree for warriors who like big, slow, two-handed weapons (I know that a two-handed sword is faster than a one-handed sword, but WoW is about fantasy conventions and not medieval martial arts), Fury is for warriors who like to wield two weapons at the same time (“dual-wield”), and Protection is for warriors who use shields. Another way to look at the trees is that Arms is for player vs. player combat (“pvp”), because it lets you deal a large amount of damage quickly; Fury is for player vs. environment combat (“pve”) because it maximizes your damage per second (“dps”) over time; and Protection is for tanking (see previous post of 11/3/06).

I am not going to argue with the above characterizations of pve/dps/tanking. What I’d like to talk about is why Protection is good for tanking. If you spend any amount of time talking to warriors in WoW you will find a great many of them under the misapprehension that Protection is good for tanks because it keeps you alive longer. This is a serious mistake. True, there are Protection talents that increase your armor, your defense skill, and make you better at blocking with a shield (yes, I know that you should never block with a shield in the kite, heater, and buckler contexts we’re talking about. See previous comment about verisimillitude). The truth is that all of that will keep you alive for a few extra seconds in any actually life-threatening scenario. What keeps a tank alive is the fact that he has a healer to heal him, and dps classes to kill the target. Protection adds a noticeable amount of durability to a character, but not enough to make a difference of more than a few seconds without support.

And in any case, as we all know by now, tanking is not about staying alive. Victory in combat is about staying alive; tanking is about generating threat. So the question we must ask ourselves is this: how does Protection increase a warrior’s ability to generate threat?

The first and easy answer is that once you have invested 31 talent points in the Protection tree you can gain an ability called Shield Slam. Recall that wielding a shield is actually a concession for a warrior—normally, your left hand should be wielding a weapon, since it is weapons that allow you to generate threat. All a shield does is make you more durable, which has very little to do with how effective a tank you are.* Shield Slam changes all of that, by giving you a shield-based attack that generates a ridiculous amount of threat (although we won’t go into the math of that here). Protection also makes you better at blocking with a shield, as mentioned above, and warriors have an attack called Revenge which also generates a large amount of threat and is only usable after dodging, parrying, or blocking an incoming attack. The more you can block, the more you can use the Revenge attack. The moral of the story is this: Protection lets you use a shield as a source of threat, rather than simply a source of durability.

That is the simple answer. Here’s a more interesting one. First, ask yourself this: how much rage is too much (see footnote for explanation of rage)? No such thing, you say? Not so! Follow me through a little bit of math:

A warrior’s abilities are subject to a 1.5 second “global cooldown” (“global CD”) which prevents any special ability (with certain exceptions we are not concerned with here) from being used for 1.5 seconds after any other ability has been used. This lets us calculate how often a warrior can use his special abilities. These abilities fall into two types: “instant” and “next melee,” and each class has its own independent global CD timer. An instant ability is one that is used as soon as you hit the button. Thanks to the global CD, a warrior can use those with a maximum frequency of once every 1.5 seconds. A “next melee” ability is one that is used the next time the warrior swings his weapon. The fastest weapons in the game swing every 1.3 seconds. Of course, if you were to hit the button for a next melee ability and you were using one of those 1.3 second weapons, the global CD would still be ticking down after you had swung your weapon. So a warrior can use one instant and one next melee ability every 1.5 seconds.

This lets us calculate a warrior’s maximum usable rage per second, which is an interesting number. Let’s take three warrior tanks, for each of the three trees:

Our Arms warrior will be using the following abilities: Mortal Strike (only available to Arms warriors), which is an instant ability with a cooldown of 5 seconds that costs 30 rage; Sunder Armor, which is an instant ability with no separate cooldown that costs 15 rage; and Heroic Strike, which is a next melee ability that costs an Arms warrior 12 rage. What is his maximum usable rage per second? Let’s assume he has a fast enough weapon that he will be using Heroic Strike every 1.5 seconds. That’s 8 rps for his next melee abilities. Every 5 seconds he’ll use the following sequence: Mortal Strike, wait 1.5 seconds; Sunder Armor, wait 1.5 seconds; Sunder Armor, wait 1.5 seconds; wait 0.5 seconds, repeat. That will cost a total of 60 rage for those 5 seconds, or 12 rps. Total usable rps: 20. Total usable rps without Cleave**: 12.

Our Fury warrior does not have access to the Mortal Strike ability but does have access to Bloodthirst, which is an instant ability with a cooldown of 6 seconds that costs 30 rage. His Heroic Strike costs 15 rage, and Sunder Armor still costs 15. His next melee rps is 10. Every six seconds he’ll use the following sequence: Bloodthirst, wait 1.5 seconds; Sunder Armor, wait 1.5 seconds; Sunder Armor, wait 1.5 seconds; Sunder Armor, wait 1.5 seconds; repeat. That will cost a total of 75 rage for those 6 seconds, or 12.5 rps. Total usable rps: 22.5. Total usable rps without Cleave: 12.5

Our Protection warrior has a number of talents that reduce his rage costs, which is where I’ve been going this whole time. He’ll be using Shield Slam, which is an instant ability with a cooldown of 6 seconds that costs 17 rage; Sunder Armor, which only costs him 9 rage; and Heroic Strike, which costs him 12 rage. His Heroic Strike rps is 8. Every six seconds he’ll use the following sequence: Shield Slam, wait 1.5 seconds; Sunder Armor, wait 1.5 seconds; Sunder Armor, wait 1.5 seconds; Sunder Armor, wait 1.5 seconds; repeat. Those 6 seconds cost him 7.3 rps. Total usable rps: 15.3. Total usable rps without Cleave: 7.3.

Arms: 20/12
Fury: 22.5/12.5
Protection: 15.3/7.3

Any rage beyond that (well, perhaps a little to have in reserve just in case) is basically useless from a tanking perspective; any rage less than that is sub-optimal threat generation. Here’s the catch: it’s really hard to get to the optimal Arms and Fury rps values. Presently, for a level 60 character to generate 1 rage from being hit, he has to take 45.6 damage. To generate 1 rage from attacking, he has to deal 17.075 damage (I think – the formula wowwiki.com gives is nonsensical). Thus, for truly optimal threat generation, our three warriors must take the following damage:

Arms: 912 dps
Fury: 1026 dps
Protection: 697.68 dps

Keep in mind that an average tank will have perhaps 6000 hit points. Our Arms warrior, in the optimal scenario, will stay alive for 6.6 seconds; our Fury warrior, for 5.8; our Protection warrior, for 8.6. That is how long the healers have to cast a heal before their tank dies, followed shortly thereafter by everybody else. But the real trick is that the lower the optimal dps value, the more often you can reach it.

If our tanks decide not to use Heroic Strike every 1.5 seconds**, they could achieve mostly optimal threat generation by dealing the following damage themselves:

Arms: 204.9
Fury: 213.4
Protection: 124.6

Or those could be exchanged at the rate of 45.6 dps taken for every 17.075 dps inflicted. Once again, Protection’s optimal value is much easier to reach.

So the real trick here is that Protection lowers the optimal rps values to actually achievable levels. That is the second, and more interesting, answer to why Protection is the tree of choice for warrior tanks.

* “Rage” in this context is a term of art that refers to the “substance” that warriors expend to perform their special abilities. All warriors have a “rage bar” which goes from 0 to 100 and starts empty. It fills up as the warrior inflicts damage and takes damage, and once a warrior has accumulated enough rage he can spend it to perform some special ability.

** The reason a warrior might not want to use Heroic Strike is because next melee abilities don’t generate rage, even if they inflict damage (if they did, they would either net out to very little rage expended or else require an impractical activation cost). Thus, a warrior who is never swinging his weapon for a normal attack has to generate all of his rage through taking damage, and it is rather hard to generate usable amounts of rage that way without dying rather immediately.

2006-12-11T15:14:00.000-08:00

Lots of stressful stuff has been happening lately, but lots of good stuff too. It's against this blog's charter to talk too much about really personal stuff, but for those of you who have been hiding under a rock somewhere (oh wait ... it was just me that's been under the rock), I am now dating Thayet. Officially and stuff. Most of the good stuff has to do with that, in one way or another. Especially since finals this semester (I almost wrote quarter ... oh for the good old days) are rather tough. There's all manner of stuff to do besides finals (all good, necessary things, mind you - none of that "say yes to it because I can't say no" stuff), and that makes life hard. "Is it always going to be this hard?" asks my twelve-year old self of Mom. Yes, little Natalie, yes it is.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. It's really a good thing: if life was easy, it wouldn't be an adventure, and I'll trade an adventure that's hard for Easy Street any day. Well, at the end of any day. It is like the good hross says: "I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes."

Ah, love being sweet. I will now concede from experience as well as theory that there is something different about romantic love. If the Cardinal reads this, there you are. I will also confess that the hard adventurous road is a lot easier to bear with a warrior princess on your right, walking in the shadow of her shield. But as much as I love Thayet, and as much as she supports me (and, I hope, as much as I support her), I actually want to talk about something that a girlfriend (or really, any non-spouse significant other) is not.

What I want to emphasize is that a girlfriend (or NSSO) is not a measure of success. Sure, it's great to be able to look Thayet in the eye and say, "I love you." Great in that kind of winged, lifty, dizzy sort of way. Fantastic. There is, perhaps inevitably, a measure of relief - and a temptation to say internally, "Made it, at last." Well, we haven't made it - except to another milestone on the road. A significant milestone, to be sure, but there is not (and thank God there is not) a plateau to be reached here. There never will be. A relationship must always be growing, and the sense of contented peacefulness with a partner that we all dream of (or at least I dream of) must come from the inside, or not at all. It is a fine and noble thing to be at peace and at home with a Godly partner at your side. It is a base and terrible thing for the two of you to ever stop growing, to say to yourselves, "Here we are. From here on out, we needn't strive quite so hard."

But it is not just that having a girlfriend is not the sort of thing that you can reach on the scale of success and go, "Behold, I have made it to a Success Marker." Having a girlfriend isn't even on the scale of success. If there is such a thing. Which there probably isn't, because I'm pretty darn sure that the only real measure of success is whether a person is wholly submitted to God. Except that we can't wholly submit ourselves to God without God's help, and God gives his help because he feels like it (what I mean to say is, not because we have obligated him to do so), so it's probably more than a little silly to be talking about "success" at all. But to whatever extent "success" is non-silly, it certainly has nothing to do with a girlfriend.

I say this because it's something good for me to remember (and hopefully edifying for those who read this). So what is a girlfriend? Not a support. Of course Thayet does support me, and I'm very grateful for that, and I hope I support her back - but not in the sense of a spouse, where one of the reasons you become one flesh is for support. We are not boyfriend and girlfriend in order to support one another. That would be twisting the relationship into something it's not - and if I got a girlfriend for the purpose of getting support, I would be using her (credit should go to Thayet for that observation, I think). Of course there's nothing wrong with getting support from an NSSO. I daresay that if you don't get support you should seriously reconsider the relationship. But that's not what an NSSO is.

I think what an NSSO is (I mean the same way a ship is freedom; points for the reference) is a co-adventurer in romantic obedience. It is someone along to walk with you the hard adventurous road of finding out who your spouse is going to be, and all that entails - and it seems to entail quite a lot of growing and learning. There are marriage-like elements to this; spouses are co-adventurers in life, which obviously entails romantic obedience. But it is not marriage. An NSSO can leave - sometimes, helping you down that road means she has to leave. Leaving in those cases is a good thing in a way that leaving in a marriage never is. Esther Selene comes to mind as a good example. There are some stretches of this road that must be walked without a girl at your side, and some that must be walked with a companion. Of course, it may well be easier with someone at your side - and it is almost always harder when someone has just left. And there is always the temptation to walk a little longer than you know you should, just because leaving will make things hard. But that is really a betrayal of your partner, and a deception of yourself.

What the future holds for Thayet and me I cannot say. I hope, of course, that one day we will wear one another's rings on our fingers and accept the call to walk all of our roads side by side, come hell, high water, or even (what is really a much harder adventure to face than hell or high water) the spark going out of our love. But of course I can't know that, not yet. For now, we will walk the road we have been given as best we may.

2006-11-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

One of the things I appreciate about having left LA (and thus The Church on the Way, where I grew up) is that it has introduced me to the wider world of Christendom much moreso than I would have if I had stayed at home and continued going to the church I grew up in (which, for the record, is a fabulous church).

I like being exposed to other traditions, which wasn't always the case. I suppose all of that time spent with Archimedes rubbed off on me some in that respect (well okay, it really starts with Judith Langford). It's really nice to be able to look at another version of Christianity and honestly say, as he did the last time he visited TCOTW, "This is not my tradition and it never will be, but good things happen here." It reminds me how good God really is, and that God is bigger than my religion (which is not to get all universalist on you, dear readers. God is bigger than my religion but he is not the God of all religions). But all this ecumenicalism does have certain dangers.

The other day, in talking with Thayet, I was struck by the realization that in some senses I've been hanging out with Reformed people too much. Let me explain what I mean by that, because what I mean is quite narrow. I have absolutely no beef with the religion of people like Vonsus and Mayxm. I look up to them as believers a great deal; as far as I can tell their tradition has done well by them. But it isn't my tradition, and I wonder if that makes me less able to deal with its particular foibles. Speaking as an outsider, I feel like the Reformed tradition likes to harp an awful lot on two themes: the depravity/inability of man, and the grace of God.

Now, to be sure, these things are true. I agree that every part of our species - every faculty we have - is broken in some way. There is no part of ourselves that we can rely upon absolutely. It is entirely beyond our power to save ourselves. You cannot be Christian and disagree with those statements (unless I've somehow misphrased them, which I don't think I have). And those basic truths highlight, in stark and terrible fashion, just how much man is in need of God's grace to make up his natural deficiencies.

Harping on this theme is, I think, one of the Reformed tradition's strengths. I imagine it is a useful guard against certain tendencies within Christianity and without to say that we as mankind can do it ourselves: to say that we don't need to give God access and sovereignty over every part of ourselves because we can grow on our own through experience, community, moral effort, or whatever; or because God is inside of us and therefore when we say "God" we mean something like "my internal faculties." And of course neither of those things is Christianity. It is true that God is inside of me, but that is not to say that God is me, and one must never lose sight of that (nor is it to say that God is inside everybody). When Christians say (if I can venture to speak for the entire religion) that God is in their hearts, they mean that they have invited God to reform the most private parts of them, that there is no part of themselves they are holding back from him. They don't mean that their internal voices have suddenly become God (I happen to affirm, as not all Christians do, that God does speak to believers in a voice that is more like my own internal voice than anything else, but that does not mean that every time an internal voice says something God is the speaker). Or, on a slightly more nuanced note, God's reform of my life is not some sort of one-time morality transfer - that is, I cannot let God fix me up and then go my merry way without him, keeping my personality upgrades like I would keep a house remodel, so to speak. And as for the idea that we don't need God's grace because of our inherent human faculties, that's just silly. I imagine that the Reformed tradition is a pretty useful guard against these kinds of follies.

But, at least for someone like me who didn't grow up in it, that tradition also presents some very real dangers. That danger is to focus so much on the depravity and inability of mankind that I forget God's grace - or to put in a perhaps more useful way, I forget what God has done. Now of course I must always remember that apart from God, I have nothing worthwhile (I still have lots of very cool stuff - man apart from God is still by far the most ridiculously awesome thing on this planet. But even things like sentience, conscious thought, art, and love are not worth a hill of beans in the ultimate sense, apart from God). But here's the thing: I do have God, and it's important to remember that fact. It's important to remember the fact that God saves, right now, and that that means something (as Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, it's kind of difficult to say what - Christian me may not actually be more admirable than non-Christian X, depending on where I started relative to X on the admirability scale. But the real question is what Christian me looks like relative to non-Christian me). God calls me righteous. God calls me holy. God says that he has placed his Spirit inside of me and that that empowers me beyond what I would otherwise be able to do. And because God says it, it is true. This relates back to my 10/29/05 post about divine legal fictions. It is true that I am in desperate need of God, and I will always be in desperate need of God. But it is also true that God is here, and he will always be here, and (to quote Satine) that is worth everything.

Harping on this theme is one of the particular strengths of my own tradition, which is something I'd kind of forgotten. It's a practical guard against other one of the dangers I feel the Reformed tradition is prone to: that I focus so much on my own depravity that I forget to focus on God. Or perhaps more subtly, that I focus so much on God's grace that I forget what God's grace is. The importance of this (as Thayet pointed out, though not in these words) is that a man who focuses too much on his depravity really isn't good for much. As I said earlier, you can't stay in the fight if you're convinced that you have nothing to fight with.

Now, this is not to say that the Reformed tradition supports anything so silly as encouraging its adherents to focus on their own depravity to the extent of ignoring God's saving grace. Quite the contrary; as a rule I find that real live Reformed Christians are extraordinarily Christ-centered. But I am not a real live Reformed Christian, and I don't always navigate the idiosyncratic hazards of their tradition as well as a native would (essentially, focusing on man to the point of ignoring what God has done). I get the impression the same is true of Reformed believers coming to my own Arminian charismatic tradition - to them, my version of Christianity seems to present a grave danger of focusing on man to the point of ignoring our need for God at all.

And so on and so forth for all the other flavors of Christianity. The funny thing is, I don't find that real live Arminian charismatics are anthrocentric at all, or works-centric, or any of the other things that outsiders seem to worry about (and perhaps fall prey to, as I can fall prey to the dangers in their traditions). Now, am I just blind to the ways in which my Christianity is broken? To some degree, undoubtedly. But I don't think I'm quite that blind. I begin to suspect that one of the good reasons for denominationalism is that all versions of Christianity (probably all versions of all religions, and indeed all world views) have their potential dangers, and growing up in the tradition helps to innoculate against them.

2006-11-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

There’s been a lot of good stuff that’s happened lately, mostly involving Thayet in one way or another (e.g., seeing Flyboys with her, even if I did forget to invite the Duelist; Jammix, even if she did get hurt; the Halloween Gaskell’s, even if we didn’t go). I could blog about that, but I’m not going to. Instead I’m going to blog about World of WarCraft. Note how I have cleverly made mention of the topics of more general interest before delving into the topic of specific interest.

I haven’t touched Aya Silkrose in a long time, but I’ve been having a blast playing Jasica with my weekly five-man of myself, the DM, Ayudaren, Twilight, and Kathelia. We have an extraordinarily conventional party build (warrior, priest, rogue, mage, and shaman in that order), but our party is far from conventional. Quite simply, we are the most awesome party I have ever been a part of (no offense to Alexander or my erstwhile crew on Hyjal). To give you an idea of how awesome we are, allow me to adduce two simple facts.

Fact the first: we cleared the entire Scarlet Monastery Armory in thirty-five minutes with a party that ranged from level 36 to 38.

Fact the second: we have engaged and defeated nine (count ‘em, nine) elite mobs in a single engagement, all of whom were our level.

If you aren’t well-versed enough in WoW to tell how awesome that is, take it from me, it’s awesome.

I could go on and on about just why we’re so awesome, but that would feel like bragging, so let me take this opportunity instead to set down on paper a few thoughts about tanking, since that’s my role in the party. “Tanking” is a word that I dislike, since the role of the “tank” in a MMORPG does not remotely resemble the role of an armored fighting vehicle, but it’s the only word there is for the concept, so I’m stuck with it.

All combat in WoW, I believe, boils down to two quantities. The first quantity we will call “party resources.” This is a conglomeration of all the party’s assets, which can in turn be generalized as: how much damage the party can take before it dies, how much damage per second it can project upon the enemy. Party resources are reduced in a number of ways: mana can be expended, consumables can be consumed, abilities on a cooldown timer can be used and made unavailable for a while, somebody can die. The second quantity is the enemy’s resources – how much damage per second they can project, how much damage they can take before they die, etc. Players emerge from combat when they force the enemy to expend his resources faster than they expend theirs; the more party resources left over when the enemy’s have been exhausted, the easier combat will seem.

I’m pretty sure that efficient management of party resources is, on an analytical level, what sets Jasica’s party apart from all the others I’ve played in. We almost never expend resources by forcing somebody to do something that isn’t their job. For instance, if the mage has to cast frost nova and then run a few steps away, the party has expended resources inefficiently. He wasn’t supposed to have to do that. He was supposed to be using that mana to kill things, not keep from dying. And he was supposed to use that time killing things, not keeping himself from dying.

This naturally raises the question of what people are supposed to be doing. This is really a question of how they best contribute to the party’s resources and how they best contribute to diminishing the enemy’s. In MMORPGs there is a classic trichotomy of roles: some classes contribute best through “damage per second,” or DPS – that is, projecting force onto the enemy. Some classes contribute best through healing - extending the life of the party. And some classes contribute best through “tanking.”

But what is tanking? It is often said that a tank’s job is to take hits. This is untrue. It is true that the tank has the responsibility of taking hits – i.e., if somebody is going to be hit, it ought to be him - but that is not his job (unless he’s a druid or a paladin). Taking hits, as anybody who hasn’t been indoctrinated into MMORPG-speak can instantly see, only diminishes the party’s resources. Getting hit is a bad thing. All things being equal, a tank would rather not take hits. In fact, a warrior getting hit is a concession to the fact that he doesn’t do enough damage. (Absent thorns, flame shield, retribution aura, a naglering, or something similar, the only benefit to getting hit is generating rage. And getting hit is a very inefficient way to generate rage. For those of you who care about math, from a rage generation standpoint, every 57 points of damage Jasica takes at level 38 from a level 38 opponent could be replaced by an extra 19 damage she inflicts – and given the choice of inflicting 19 damage or taking 57 damage, obviously a tank would prefer to inflict damage). A tank’s job is to generate threat.*

This simple (but all too little appreciated) fact can be seen from the following observations. A tank contributes to the fight in two ways. One, he stays alive (preserving party resources – he’s useless if he’s dead). This is a benefit because he is the cheapest cost avoider for taking hits, as we might say in the legal world. Given that the party is going to take X amount of damage from the enemy, that damage should fall on the tank rather than anyone else because the tank mitigates it the most (by virtue of having the highest armor in the party). There is a net gain to party resources when X gross damages falls on the tank rather than falling on anybody else, and thus a tank getting hit “contributes” to party resources, which is untrue of every other role (again, if somebody has to get hit). Two, the tank contributes to a fight by defining the maximum safe amount of damage the party can inflict. The amount of damage each party member can inflict (or the amount of health each party member can heal) before drawing the attention of the enemy is a rigid and mechanical function of how much threat the tank has generated. Feint, fade, and even feign death don’t change the fact that the maximum safe threshold depends upon the tank’s ability to project threat. Now here’s the trick: there is one and only one of these functions that only the tank can affect. We identify that function, and we have identified the tank’s job.

The entire party contributes to keeping the tank alive. The damage-dealers contribute by killing the enemy – the faster the enemy dies, the less damage the enemy inflicts. The healer contributes by negating the damage the enemy actually inflicts. The tank contributes through his armor and defensive skills, reducing the amount of damage he takes in the first place. And a deficiency in one of these areas can be made up by a surplus in the others. Even a tank with no armor at all can be kept alive indefinitely if the enemy dies fast enough, or if the healer can heal for long enough.

But only the tank can raise the safe threshold. If the tank is not producing threat, the healer cannot efficiently heal, and the damage dealers cannot efficiently deal damage. The more threat the tank generates, the more force the party can project and the more damage the party can heal. And nobody else can contribute to this threshold.

One of the consequences of this observation is that, in my party at least, it argues against ever having an off-tank. It might be different in a party with a paladin (though I doubt it), but in a party whose off-tank is a shaman it is manifestly inefficient to off-tank. This is not because our shaman is incapable of off-tanking. It is because she has better things to do with her time and mana – namely, kill things (which contributes to my survivability and makes efficient use of her resources, whereas if she was off-tanking she would contribute to my survivability but make inefficient use of her resources). This requires that I routinely tank multiple enemies at once, but that’s really not that hard if my focus is on threat generation and not on staying alive (one reason Jasica always tanks dual-wielding unless we’re fighting something that’s easy to tank and will take a long time to kill, like a boss). Tanks need to learn to think about tanking in terms of multiple enemies. Everyone agrees, I think, that any rogue worth his salt should be able to kill two enemies of his own level. If I may be frank, any tank worth his salt should be able to tank two enemies of his own level—really, he ought to be able to tank three. Beyond three, I’m willing to concede that exogenous crowd control may start becoming necessary. But again, if somebody’s going to be hit, it’s the tank’s responsibility to ensure that it’s him. That is the most efficient use of party resources; it doesn’t change simply because there’s more than one foe.

Group tanking is really not as hard as I feel people often make it out to be. If the party is doing its job, the damage-dealers will be focusing on only one of the multiple enemies. The threat mechanics of WoW will then make the following true: the tank will have to generate more threat than only two of the party’s four other characters. Those two are the leading damage dealer and the healer.

Even if there are three damage dealers, as there are in Jasica’s party, it is obviously true that at any given time one of them will be doing more damage than the other two. That person, then, is the one the tank must out-threat. This should not be especially difficult. If a tank can’t generate more threat than his leading damage dealer, there’s either a great disparity in gear quality or the tank should turn in his sword. This just leaves the healer.

The healer is somewhat trickier because, unlike the damage dealers (who generate threat to their target only), he generates threat to all enemies simultaneously. This will mean that in order to stay ahead of him, the tank will have to occasionally hit the other enemies with a major dose of threat (it’s been my experience that trying to tank with nothing more than area-effect threat generators like a warrior’s shouts is a mistake. Those can be useful, but it’s far more reliable to expend the resources necessary to whack the other enemies with a sunder armor, maul, swipe, cleave, or even just a rend, if you do it early enough). Fortunately this doesn’t have to happen too often thanks to the threat math (even for a healer with no threat reducing effects and a warrior or bear with no threat enhancing effects, each point of damage the tank deals is 3.38 points of health the healer can safely heal. With talents that number goes up to 4.52). This can be somewhat difficult because the need to stay ahead of the healer means the tank must divert some of his available threat pool away from staying ahead of the primary damage dealer – which only emphasizes again why the tank’s job is to generate as much threat as possible, and not to take hits or to have lots of armor.

An interesting efficiency falls out of this, once it falls into place: a tank who tanks multiple enemies in this fashion actually makes the entire fight easier, not only on everybody else but also on himself. This happens in two ways. First, the damage dealers are not expending resources (including time) defending themselves, so the enemies die faster (which contributes to the tank’s survivability). Because the enemies die faster, the healer has to heal less, and so generates less threat, and is so easier for the tank to stay ahead of in terms of threat generation. Second, because only the tank is taking damage, the healer only has to heal one party member. This has numerous benefits from the tank’s standpoint. For one thing, it means the healer’s entire attention is directed at the tank, which increases the tank’s confidence that the heals will come through in time. For another, because the tank is the best damage mitigator in the party, it means that the healer is healing the minimum possible amount of damage – and so generating less threat, and so making it easier for the tank to stay ahead of him, and also expending the minimum possible amount of mana, thus prolonging the party’s resources.

Which is why the tank’s job is not to take hits, and not to have lots of armor or hit points. Those are things the tank may have to have or have to do to fulfill his job, but his job is to produce as much threat as possible. It’s a fairly simple observation, but one that a surprising number of tanks don’t seem know. And while I think I’m a pretty good tank in terms of my situational awareness, reflexes, and ability to estimate multiple threat levels on the fly, to the extent that Jasica’s tanking is exceptional, this is why.

* “Threat” is the intangible substance that determines, in a rigid and mechanical fashion, who the enemy attacks. Tanks have a variety of tricks up their sleeve to generate threat. Damage-dealers generate threat primarily by dealing damage. Healers generate threat primarily by the act of healing. Note that for the other two core roles, threat is generated primarily as a function of doing their jobs. So everybody is constantly generating threat; the trick is for the tank to generate threat faster. The math is slightly more involved than this, but for layman’s purposes it works like this: If the tank generates more threat than anybody else in the party, the enemy attacks him. If somebody else generates more threat, the enemy attacks that person – and that person then has to stop what they’re supposed to be doing to defend themselves.

2006-09-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

Comments continue two posts down. Check them out.

Almost a year ago (October 30, 2005) I responded to Kalaraen’s comments about chivalry by trying to define Natalian chivalry. It’s a tricky concept for me, much trickier than adventure or romance. I settled for trying to define chivalry in terms of what I think a woman ought to demand of a man when he pursues her. I came up with three general categories of virtue: wisdom, honor, and valor. Roughly speaking, I process those as what you know about God, how God has changed you as a person, and what you do about it. The trichotomy isn’t perfect. In practice, for one thing, those three things overlap to an enormous degree. For another thing, I make no claim that Natalian wisdom, honor, and valor cover all that a man should be. But I still find them useful categories.

I say this because I think the time has come for me to make some attempt at defining feminine Natalian chivalry, and I want my disclaimers clearly understood up front. So the first disclaimer is this: I am drawing distinctions because I find them useful categories, not because I think they’re really discreet things. The second is like it: I may be leaving things out. Third, I am trying to capture a vision in my head, and my verbal grasp on that vision is not especially clear. This post is one attempt to get at it. But even if I were to perfectly capture that vision, let me admit up front that I don’t understand everything about the spiritual realities of women. So the vision itself is likely incomplete.

Fourth, let me stress that I am not trying to define the term woman. I don’t actually have a definition of woman—or of man, for that matter. I have definitions or pictures (imperfect though they be) of what a man or a woman should be, which is what I am trying to get at by describing the chivalric man and chivalric woman, but the wisp of the gender essence itself—what a good woman shares with a bad woman, or how a bad man is different from a bad boy—is something I have no definition for. The Eldredges’ definitions work fine for me, but I’m not sure they’re as universal as one would like a definition of this kind to be. Piper’s definition I’m a little wary of although it has virtue; Inarra Serra’s I think is correct but incomplete. At some point I may need to define those terms, but for now I think the should be is more important than the is. At any rate, I have already tried to define what a man should be—roughly speaking, a knight and a gentleman. This post is an attempt to evoke on paper my definition of the chivalric woman—a lady knight, to use the Natalian shorthand—and no more.

Fifth and finally, I must beg the indulgence of anybody who reads this, particularly the women in the audience. I have no interest in believing that women should be [insert feminist slogan here]. Nevertheless, I would not have it said that my vision of women is weak or subordinate for the simple reason that it is not true. If the lady knight in my post seems overly subordinate or soft, pray juxtapose it with my goddesses: three are great feudal ladies, two are sovereigns, one holds high command, three are career soldiers, two are great commanders of men, four have changed the course of nations, three have defied their home kingdoms and their sovereigns, four know how to handle a sword, three are highly accomplished martial artists, two are natural killers, one is a natural healer, one is a great sorceress, two own fabulous wealth in their own right, two have volcanic tempers, two are painfully shy, one struggles with self image, none are considered great beauties, three are deeply in love with men (and one woman, non-sexually) of their own choosing, who are likewise devoted to them and every bit their matches. And with that said, what do I think defines a lady knight?

A woman should be wise. Does she see things as they are, and not as she wishes them to be? Can she see clearly even through great emotional turmoil? Does she perceive the heart of the matter? Does she perceive her own heart as it truly is? Has her counsel proven trustworthy in both process and result? Does she know the Lord, and does the Lord know her? Does she love the Lord? Does she delight in obedience? Does she love the Word?

A woman should be magnificent. Is she at peace? Is she patient? Are her principles sound, and soundly grounded in the Word? Are her principles invincible against the pressures of culture but held with humility? Does she live by them? Does she reject falsehood and cowardice uncompromisingly and simultaneously inspire to godliness? Is she unpretentious? Is she radiant? Does her presence point to the Lord? Is her character alluring? Does she love to worship the Lord? Is her presence awesome? Does her character make her wrath terrible? Is she self-controlled, mistress of her own thoughts and feelings? Is she wild? Is she beautiful because God loves her and she knows it? Does she value herself as and because the Lord values her? Is the Lord both the foundation and the great fact of her identity?

A woman should be valiant. Does she protect those around her? Is she tender-hearted? Is she fierce when roused? Does she always believe, always hope? Does she forgive as the Lord forgives? Does she act out of faith, and neither out of fear nor bravado? Is she growing in the Lord? Does she love with vulnerability? Does she hold back when it is time? Does she love to serve others? Is her life always inviting those around her to the Lord? Is she a vessel of the Lord’s healing? Is she chaste and scandalous in romance? Does she love to give in romance? Does she graciously receive? Does she support her boyfriend or husband and yet remain his match?

A lady knight is something like that. It is an imperfect picture, I think, but that is just as well—who would want women to be so simple that a picture could capture them perfectly?