New from me: an updated book logging site to track my reading!

The last few weeks I have been working on a fun little side project to redo my book logging website. I have cataloged every book I’ve read since 2007, and the previous incarnation of the book logging site was static web pages (good) but completely generated via custom python (oof) that was fragile (double oof).

I started over on it using Astro as the website generator with a little help from Github Copilot. I’m very happy with the result! The Booklog is at books.chrishubbs.com. It’s being hosted on Github Pages, which makes site updates very easy. Now when I read a new book: run a quick script that looks up the book metadata online, creates the review file, and searches for cover art; manually write the review in that file; grab better cover art if the script struck out; commit the whole thing back to the Github repo. The site then auto-regenerates and voila! It’s not rocket science, but it makes me happy to have something that looks a little fresher and crisper.

Leah Libresco Sargeant: "And Jesus, looking at him, loved him..."

I’ve been talking about the idea of universal reconciliation at my church’s adult forum the past two weeks. This afternoon while doing chores I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, called The Sacred, and guest Leah Libresco Sargeant said something about how she tries to have a Jesus-like perspective toward people who make her angry dovetails very nicely with the discussion we’ve been having at church.

Host Elizabeth Oldfield asks Sargeant how, in a debating environment, do you maintain the positive perspective of thinking and trying to represent the best of your opponent and their view? Here’s how Sargeant replied (podcast link at about 57:30:

When I’m in an argument and I don’t like people - this happens to me, not infrequently - one thing I try to do is to look at them and think for a second - and this is the thing in the Bible when Jesus is asked by the rich young man what he needs to do to be holy. He’s followed the commandments, and Jesus is about to tell him ‘you need to sell everything you have and give it to the poor’, and because he’s Christ he probably knows the boy is not going to do this. That he’s done a lot but he’s not willing to go this far. And the text of the Bible says, before he speaks, it just says “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”

And I just say that in my head, looking at the person, knowing that this is true. And what I also remind myself, especially if I’m quite angry, is that my goal in relating to this person is that if I die, and this is the person who I first meet at the gates of heaven welcoming me there, that I will be happy to see them, and I will have no fiber of my being that’s angry that they’re there or scorns to be welcomed by them in particular. Because if I feel that way about anyone on earth, that I wouldn’t be thrilled to see them in heaven, then I am picking hell for myself, if I would rather not enter than be welcomed by this person.

Real reconciliation and love for your enemy is immensely hard, but it might start, at least, with a thought like this.

Bullet Points for Tuesday Lunchtime

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so hey, why not my favorite format for catching up?

  • Last Sunday was week 1 of 3 for me talking about Christian Universalism at our church’s adult forum. Had a blast.
  • One week in with my new MacBook Neo: love it. Basically using it as my daily sidecar for personal computing next to my work PC.
  • Haven’t really thought about focusing on running this year but have put on a little over 200 miles since January 1.
  • Made chicken salad for lunch today with leftover rotisserie chicken from last night. So tasty.
  • Three weeks until our first kid graduates from college! So excited to see her take her next step.
  • As a recovering evangelical Christian, it was surprising to me how many of my Episcopal siblings are very ambivalent about the “who is saved?” and “what happens after you die?” questions. I find their view actually very practical.
  • I’m sure it’s a loss leader, but golly when Sam’s Club sells a fresh hot rotisserie chicken for $5 it’s quite easy to just buy two. (As I said: hello, leftovers.)
  • Spring weather means I’m ready to be running outside and not on the treadmill at the gym. It’s so much easier to keep focus and get miles in that way.
  • Possibly my favorite thing about my new job thus far is that I feel like a real software guy again - not just a certification engineer, but legitimately a software person. Didn’t realize how much I’d missed that.

Calvinism vs Arminianism: Anxiety Shifting

Falling from Grace: Part 3, High-Handed Sin:

Calvinism has never been immune from anxiety, given how you worry about if you are, indeed, one of the elect. Sure, when you see a fellow believer “fall away” you can console yourself and protect your dogma with “they weren’t one of the elect” in the first place. But your doctrine has become functionally and pastorally meaningless. Sure, Arminians might be anxious over losing their salvation, but Calvinists worry about if they are saved in the first place. Seems like six of one half-dozen of the other. All we’re doing in this debate is anxiety shifting.

I appreciate Richard Beck for saying this so clearly. My time in a very Calvinist evangelical church made it clear to me there was plenty of anxiety to go around.

”You better hold on to something” - a few thoughts on Train Dreams

I’ve been trying to see all the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars go out, and tonight I caught up with Train Dreams. What a beautiful movie. A few random thoughts, in which I will probably have spoilers so if that bothers you, don’t read on until after you see it:

“The world needs a hermit in the woods as much as a preacher in the pulpit.”

First, I’m not familiar with the novella the movie is based on. Feels like I need to correct that oversight. The movie’s storytelling is spare and restrained, which I appreciated. I’d heard chatter about it being a very sad movie, and I honestly wasn’t quite ready for another gut-wrencher after watching Hamnet. Yes, Train Dreams is sad, but the first word I’d use isn’t so much sad as haunted. Joel Edgerton’s eyes capture a world changing faster than he is able or willing to adapt, a world haunted by his own dreams and memories of loss, failure, and regret.

“The world’s an old place. Probably nothing it hasn’t seen by now.”

If you’d asked me to name the movie’s time period during the first half of the film, I was ready to put it in the mid-to-late 1800s. (I may have missed a bit of the initial narration if they clarified it there.) So the advancing technology – the chain saw, the highway, the astronaut! – illustrated Edgerton’s character even more starkly back in the past. How quickly time moves.

Train Dreams’ casting was exquisite. In addition to Edgerton, Daisy Ridley and Kerry Condon comfortably inhabit the only two female roles (it is the western wilderness, I guess) and Will Patton’s gentle narration threads the story together. And then there’s William H. Macy. I’ve seen and loved Bill Macy as a hapless car salesman, a deadbeat addict father, a random collection of military officers, and sad casino jinx. But philosopher coot wilderness logger Bill Macy may well be my favorite Bill Macy. Perfectly cast, and oh-so good in the role.

Arn (Macy): What’s keeping you awake over there?
Robert (Edgerton): Oh, uh… Arn, do you… do you think that… the bad things that we do follow us through life?
Arn: I don’t know. I’ve seen bad men raised up and good men brought to their knees. I reckon if I could figure it out, I’d be sleeping next to someone a lot better-looking than you.

Train Dreams is gonna stick with me for a while. In the pointed final sequence, Edgerton’s character, about to do a loop in a biplane, is warned “you better hold on to something”. As he remembers the things in his life he has, indeed, held on to, the narrator tells us that he finally felt connected to it all. In our own unmoored lives in the midst of a rapidly-changing world, we, too, might benefit from reflecting on who and what we are connected to.

Bullet Points for 3 weeks at a new job

Today wraps up the third week of my new job at Boeing. After 26+ years at Collins, a new job is a big change! A few random observations on three weeks as a Boeing executive tech fellow:

  • The challenges in airborne software look like they’re pretty similar across the industry. This is both encouraging (hey, I might know a thing or two that can help!) and disheartening (new job, same problems!).
  • Having the home office in Pacific Time (two hours earlier than Iowa) means I need to be prepared to have meetings go until at least 5 pm Central. So far the Pacific Time folks seem pretty good at not scheduling things later than that.
  • This week I changed my routine up a bit, stopped waking up at 5 AM for the gym, and instead did a quick gym stop after work. It provides a nice opportunity for a mental break after the workday, and it’s easier to be gym motivated at 3:30 or 4pm than it is at 5am, especially in the winter.
  • After a couple years driving a MacBook Pro for work, I am now back on a Dell laptop. This just in: Windows PCs still suck. I think I have an option to get a MacBook for my new job. I’m gonna look into it.
  • The family seems to be adjusting to me working from home OK.
  • During COVID my home office was in the basement. This year I’ve moved up to the upstairs college kid’s bedroom. Having windows and some sunshine is pretty nice! Once the college kid gets done with the semester I will have to readjust to the basement.
  • All that regular gym time: checked my workout log and today I passed 100 miles of running for the year. I mean, I know it’s not hardcore running but it’s still very regular, and my conditioning is improving.

Here’s to the next three weeks! (And a bunch more after that!)

Thomas Talbott on the parallels between God's love for humans and a parent's love for a child

I’m reading back through Thomas Talbott’s The Inescapable Love of God, and I love this bit of reasoning about what it means to love and be in relationship:

Jesus’ interests are so tightly interwoven with those of his own loved ones that, if we do something to them, it is as if we have done it to him; and God’s interests are likewise so tightly interwoven with those of his loved ones that, as a matter of logic, we cannot love God and at the same time hate those whose God loves. Indeed if we say that we love God whilst hating some of our brothers and sisters, then we are liars. But the reverse is true as well: just as we cannot love God and hate those whom he loves, neither can God love us and, at the same time, hate those whom we love. If I truly love my daughter as myself, then God cannot love (or will the best for) me unless he also loves (or wills the best for) her. For I am not an isolated monad whose interests are distinct from those of my loved ones, and neither is anyone else. If God should do less than his best for my daughter, he would also do less than his best for me; and if he should act contrary to her best interest, he would also act contrary to my own.

Talbott’s paralleling the human parent/child relationship with the God/human relationship is what really brought it home for me on a first read. He makes it quite explicit here:

An additional point is this: so long as I love my daughter as myself, I can neither love God nor worship him unless I at least believe that he loves my daughter as well; the idea that I could both love my daughter and love a God whom I know to hate her is also logically absurd… If I truly love my daughter, desiring the good for her, and God doesn’t to, then (a) my will is not in conformity with God’s, (b) I could not consistently approve of God’s attitude toward my daughter, and (c) neither could I be grateful to him for the harm he is doing to me. This is not merely to register a point about my own psychological makeup; the whole thing, I want to suggested, is logically impossible.

I agree.

Gospel or Grift?

One more quote from David W. Congdon’s Varieties of Christian Universalism, this one from Congdon himself:

There are few ideas more distinctively Christian than the assumption that our theologies ought to reinforce our own rightness in practicing this particular religion, whether through apologetic efforts to “prove” the truth of our doctrines or kerygmatic efforts to scare people into conversion by proclaiming the ungodly terrors that await them if they should fail to say a magical prayer or participate in an enchanted ritual.

The moment a theologian comes along and announces this to be a bunch of immoral hogwash, they are lambasted for destroying any rationale for faith. Which is truly a remarkable admission. The implication is that no one would be a Christian if they were not forced into it, either intellectually or emotionally—or, in the case of colonialism, physically. Christians who are invested in the evangelistic spread of their religion would do well to think long and hard about where this anxiety comes from and what it says about the god they claim to believe in. When any theology that does not support the agenda of ever-increasing church growth and missionary expansion is treated as a threat to the faith, it is hard not to conclude that said faith is less of a gospel and more of a grift–a spiritual multi-level marketing scheme.

Food for thought.

Barth: Christians as a living promise to the unbelieving world

I’m re-reading David W. Congdon’s Varieties of Christian Universalism in preparation for doing some talks at church on the topic, and I was struck this time by this fantastic thought from Karl Barth:

He [the Spirit] makes them Christians. He divides them from non-Christians. But He also unites them with non-Christians. He is the promise which is given them, and He sets them in the position of hope. He gives them the power to wait daily for the revelation of what they already are, of what they became on the day of Golgotha.

The Christian identifies with the world insomuch as those in the world are those for whom the promise is yet to be completely fulfilled, but the Christian is also the one who presently has the promise and as such is given “hope.”

I love this idea - that Christians today are the living promise to the unbelieving world of the hope that awaits it. What a beautiful thought.

Asking the hard questions: not a crisis of faith, but rooted in faith

Later this year I’ll be teaching for 3 weeks at our church’s adult forum on the topic of Christian Universalism. In preparation I’m diving back in to some key books that have guided my path, starting with Thomas Talbott’s The Inescapable Love of God. It’s been a few years since I’ve read this one, but even before I get out of the first chapter I’m reminded why this one spoke to me so powerfully.

When wrestling with Augustine, Luther, and Calvin’s teaching on predestination and how it conflicted with what he had been raised to know of God’s love, he challenges the common “crisis of faith” framing:

In fact, what I have here called “a crisis of faith,” and at the time regarded as such, was not a crisis of faith at all. For it was precisely an unshakable faith in the love of God–a faith that my mother in particular had instilled within me–that made my doubts about Christianity and the Bible possible; and had I known more about the Bible at the time, or had I possessed a less naive view of revelation, I might have been spared these doubts as well.

This rings true to my own experience: that it was not a lack of faith that caused me to strike out in search of a more beautiful expression of God, but rather it was because of that faith that I knew there must be something better than what I was being taught. Hallelujah.