Understanding Charlie Brown

Have you ever tried to understand someone, but the words got in the way?

As a child I once watched a cartoon where some children are given some comics. In the cartoon, the children are not very old and can't read. So they have to make up their own words. One of the kids is selected to be the narrator.

The first strip is Peanuts. Charlie Brown says something to Lucy. The narrator says, "Hi there, Lucy. I see you have a football there." And then Lucy says something. The narrator says, "Yeah, you want to kick it, Charlie Brown?" Then Charlie Brown runs over and tries to kick the football. Lucy moves the ball and he goes flying through the air.

The kids try to decide what he's saying as he flies through the air.

One kid says, "He should say something tragic." Another kid says, "He should say something dramatic." Another kid says, "He should say something about how he feels." Another kid says, "He should say what he's thinking right then."

Then the narrator shouts out, "Uuugh!!".

The other kids pause for a moment. Then they congratulate the narrator for his word choice.

In the actual comic strip, Charlie Brown says, "Uuugh!!". I wonder if the narrator would understand Charlie Brown any better if he had the ability to read.

Non-Technical Assurance

Reading the newspaper, I often find topics addressed by experts ... usually at the end of articles. I read a couple eye witness statements about, say, childhood obeisity or automobile emissions or investing, then some history is provided, and for closure the experts come in and wrap things up. They are the experts, they give us something conclusive to take away.

At least that's how it's supposed to be.

I bet Jesus' disciples were experts in their respective fields as well. James and John seemed to spend a lot of time fishing. When a great storm came along and shook the boat, the disciples feared for their lives. I find it hard to believe their fear came from a lack of technical experience.

The disciples wake up Jesus, who is sleeping. He rebukes the waves and asks the disiples why their faith is so weak. The disciples ask each other, 'Who is this that even the wind and waves obey him?" If the disciples were journalists before they met Jesus, perhaps they would have asked, "What sort of field is this guy an expert in?"

Meteorilogical science?

When we give technical opinions we often leave a lot of stuff beneath the surface unsaid. "Sure, reboot the system and reinstall the software (but who knows what's really going on?)". But Jesus was a master of expressing the very things hiding beneath the surface ... beneath the wordly distinctions and technical posturing.

Monolithic Science

National Geographic recently published an article on how science is explaining love.

What Fisher saw fascinated her. When each subject looked at his or her loved one, the parts of the brain linked to reward and pleasure—the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus—lit up. What excited Fisher most was not so much finding a location, an address, for love as tracing its specific chemical pathways. Love lights up the caudate nucleus because it is home to a dense spread of receptors for a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which Fisher came to think of as part of our own endogenous love potion. In the right proportions, dopamine creates intense energy, exhilaration, focused attention, and motivation to win rewards. It is why, when you are newly in love, you can stay up all night, watch the sun rise, run a race, ski fast down a slope ordinarily too steep for your skill. Love makes you bold, makes you bright, makes you run real risks, which you sometimes survive, and sometimes you don't.

Reading the news I am inclined to think there are legions of concerned people who are fighting to save science from being taken over by religious fanatics. My question is, "Who is fighting to keep the mad scientists out of the spiritual domain?" When I was a first grader I thought science was about growing bean plants and using prisms to break up light. And now science is explaining love?

Are scientists progressing into greater depths or cheaper embelishments? If someone you know and care about is lacking love in their life, are they suggesting the solution is as simple as injecting dopamine into their brains? Imagine Charles Darwin on a date, "The reason you love me, baby, is that natural selection has taken all of the less healthy traits out of my ancestors ...". Sheer poetry! What sagely guides to lead us up out of the subjective valentine's day mire.

"Let God be proved right and every man a liar..."

In ancient times people associated themselves and built towers, pyramids, and castles - climbing higher and higher into the heavens. How can this compare to modern science's accomplishment of explaining love? The scope has changed, but the associating hasn't. When someone disagrees the media comes rushing in to assure us, "The vast majority of scientists are certain of global warming ... of evolution ... that love can be chemically explained".

Just check the wikipedia discussion pages [1] [2] on Intelligent Design and Evolution. These days the authority of science (which is so monolithic to some it can instantly crush Michael Crichton and Creationism) has nothing to do with empiricism or Baconian induction - it's the tight association of people who cling to one another.

On Greek Immortality

Ah ... the ancient Greeks. Their accomplishments - their epic poetry, their skill in fighting, their intelligence in philosophy, their pathos in tragedy and wit in comedy continue to be remembered. And this was their ultimate desire: to be remembered.

Where did the Greeks find the reserves for such great talent and art? In their appearances. Here, the bravery of a soldier running into battle was nothing, but the appearance of bravery was everything. Here the grief one endured in suffering was nothing, and the pathos on the stage was everything. And everything was done to be seen and heard by the others.

But could such appearances provide consolation in one's final moments? To the Greeks the answer was "Yes" ... in being remembered. This was the nature of Greek Immortality.

In the Greek view of Hades, certain people received punishment (i.e. sysaphus), but before Plato people didn't see death as a place where people were personally judged for their actions. To the ancient Greeks, Hades was the domain of the jibbering shades ... where the dead talked endlessly about one's accomplishments. The best one could hope for was to be remembered by the living and talked about by the dead.

When Odysseus went to the underworld and found the warrior Achilles - remembered and praised by all - his conclusion on death was this: better to be an obscure farmer and die after a long life than to die at the celebration of the many. Such is the case with all esthetics: the approval of the crowd - and here the approval of world history - is a terrible reward when one does not approve one's own choices.

A Neighbor in the Neighborhood

"Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime's work, but it's worth the effort." -Fred Rogers

I can still remember the highschool assembly when my Japanese teacher talked to us about Mister Rogers. I was totally shocked ... dumbfounded to learn that this man held a couple masters degrees and was an ordained presybeterian minister.

My experience had been that very educated people (and often ministers too) tended to address very high-minded ideas in very high-minded ways. And if they couldn't do this, then they addressed ordinary things in high-minded ways. But not Fred Rogers.

Certainly Mister Rogers was an educator ... but unlike the ocean of teachers who stammer on and on about how to perfect "the system" and how education can bring meaning to life, Mr. Rogers seemed perfectly content to talk about how flashlights work, how he couldn't describe the way popcorn tasted, and doing whatever he could to relate to his audience.

Another thing about people with Masters degrees: they often make the distinction of their education as direct and recognizable as they can. Mister Rogers never presented himself as a man of worldly distinction. He seemed totally satisfied putting on his jacket. The set was at his "house", and he seemed very at home interacting with children.

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth"

A surprising story I read on wikipedia: apparently Fred Rogers drove an older Impala. One day Mister Rogers went to leave the studio and it was missing. This made headlines: "Mr. Roger's car has been stolen". The car showed up in the exact spot it was left with a note: "If we had known who the owner was, we wouldn't have stolen it!"

Another example: Eddie Murphy played a satirical version of Mr. Rogers on Saturday Night Live. Sure, it's easy to laugh at people who have simple-minded things to say. But when Murphy had the chance to meet Mr. Rogers he respectfully called him, "The real Mr. Rogers."

The stories about people respecting Mr. Rogers go on and on. I'm leaving out the story where the Supreme Court directly cited his testimony in a VCR case. Why do people strive so diligently to achieve wordly distinctions when a person who they consider to be great seems to have no wordly distinction or holds them very loosely?

A Polite Encounter with Death

In October 2003 I was in the Orlando International Airport on my way home from visiting my girlfriend in Georgia. My mind was scattered. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get to my probability class in Los Angeles before 9:30 AM. I was also lost in sorting out the details of my long-distance relationship ... questions like: Where am I going to live? Can I find a job in her state? Would she like the place I live?

While I was walking to my next terminal, I had a vague sense that a presence ... someone or something was following me. I felt like ... like in all my thinking there was something I was leaving out, and it was after me. Something critical. Something serious.

"Is it death?" I wondered to myself.

Usually when one thinks of a person being "chased by death" someone is in a hospital with cancer, or - as in the case of For Whom the Bell Tolls - they're in a bull fight. Perhaps the spirit of my probability class was trying to reassure me. My morbid imagination was not relinquishing anything. "Death can come at any time." It said.

As I was walking a tall, omnious shadow began creeping up from behind me. It felt like someone really big was close behind.
I turned my head to get a look. I doubt my glance was inconspicuous. Frantic might be a way of putting it.

The man behind me was fairly close. And he was very tall. I'm six feet tall and he was significantly taller than me. He was wearing a black business suit with a black tie. He looked young. And he looked ... friendly. His clothes strongly fit the profile. In a strange way his youth and friendliness did as well.

I nervously moved toward the McDonald's kiosk in the terminal. There's a bumper sticker that says, "Jesus is coming soon ... look busy." This was something like my manner, except it was more like, "Death is coming ... look busy." And the busier I looked, it seemed the closer I was followed. I got into line at McDonald's and he got in line right behind me.

The lady behind the counter seemed to be in more of a hurry than I was. I guess that's typical for airports. When she gave me back my change (a dollar, some coins, and a receipt) I fumbled as quickly as I could to get it all tucked away, but she was already looking at the next customer - nonverbally asking for him to start his order.

The man behind me didn't order right away. He paused and said, "Take your time, I'm not in a hurry."

"You're not in a hurry?" I asked.

"No." He said seriously.

So I sorted it out and moved to the pickup window ... contemplating everything. Even though I was hurrying to escape from death, death was not in a hurry to find me. I wasn't thinking I would live to an old age necessarily ... it was more like: when death found me it would be at just the right time. In one sense I was so worried about death - I was no longer alive. Unlike the bush Moses witnessed, the flames of my anxiety were consuming me.

Life is full of risks. It's one thing to live in fear of the possibility of failure and it's another thing to own one's choice in taking the risk. After my experience at the airport, I found that "making the right choice" was not as important as the way I made the choice. For example, choosing McDonald's brought me (figuratively speaking) closer to death, but if McDonald's was a "true priority" for me then I wouldn't have regretted dying for it. Of course we all do things that aren't "true priorities" for us ... few people are willing to lay down their lives for the chance to eat breakfast in the morning or turn off the lights before bed ... the important thing is that when we encounter death our present-term choices reflect our true priorities.

Before that day I was certain I would fail probability ... and never graduate college. And before that day I couldn't see how I could stay in a committed relationship with someone who lived so far away. I didn't even have a good job yet. But I don't regret the gamble I made on my schooling ... even if the worst had happened. And I don't regret asking my girlfriend to marry me ... even when the details looked so uncertain.

I'm not saying I don't struggle with facing death anymore. It's a daily battle for me. However, in my experience, I've found that the people who live at peace before God and before they die are the ones who have faith. Faith is a strange assurance ... it is positive of what it cannot verify. It is certain of what is unseen. It is willing to lay down everything and expects to be given back everything ten, twenty, a hundred times over.