Epic

On Monday morning, the students arrived at the cafe for breakfast to the dulcet tones of an excited mentor named Ryan, who greeted each Wheatstone attendee with one word: epic!  The staff always look forward to the first full day of Wheatstone Academy because we get to spend it with Rick Vander Kam.  After Dr. Reynolds’ opening lecture, which can sometimes feel like trying to drink from a fire hose, the prospect of spending the day outdoors on a ropes course can sound like a much-needed brain break, but as in all things, our whole souls are engaged in all our activities.  Immediately upon our arrival, the students were greeted with a group initiative, what Rick sometimes calls a ’silly little game’.  Quickly, however, we all learn that there’s nothing silly about it.  

The purpose of Epic Monday is to introduce the students to the practice of whole soul integration.  So often, we forget the importance of paying attention to our whole selves in the process of growing in wisdom and truth.  And, oddly, the part we tend to leave out the most is our most obvious asset, our body.  Within a few moments of initiatives, we became painfully aware that all our critical thinking skills weren’t very helpful on the ropes course without the ability to put them into action in our limbs.  And thus began our attempt to begin the work of integration in our souls.

From high ropes to group challenges, students worked in their small groups with their mentors to plan and execute action to complete each initiative.  And in the midst of the sunshine, the sunscreen, the boxed lunches and activities, we got to know each other and ourselves in new ways.  One group I was able to drop in on simply shared their life stories so far with each other over sandwiches.  Another chatted and joked about favorite films and aspirations.  Still others found themselves bringing Socrates’ opening question, ‘Whence and whither?’ to the high ropes course or initiatives like Over Under Through.  

One of the more frustrating things of the day is always the confrontation of inadequacy in ourselves, whether it’s a fear or heights or a failure of communication with the group.  One thing we always assume about these types of problem-solving exercises is that the point is for those gifted with leadership to rise to the challenge and those gifted as followers to fall into place and cooperate.  What we forget with those presuppositions is that leadership isn’t a talent – it’s a skill.  And beyond that, one person dictating a plan and the rest carrying it out isn’t teamwork.  Collaboration is a learned art, and in the process, we have to look within ourselves and look into those dark, dusty corners of habits that hold us back, both from joining the collaborative effort and from squelching the ideas of others in favor of our own.

At the end of the day, after much conversation and much more sunscreen, Rick gathered us to remind us of the point of all the sweat, challenges, and discussions.  We live in a culture that, at best, wants us to be immediately pleased, and at worst, enslaved to our base desires.  Part of learning through experience, by working with others to solve problems placed before us, is to remind us that there is a real world that we must interact with, beyond the classroom and the sanctuary.  We cannot allow ourselves to be enslaved.

 

DISNEYLAND!

But how do we accomplish that?  By going to the center of consumerism in America, the Happiest Place on Earth, of course!  We were whisked away to a nice dinner in Anaheim, accompanied by Dr. Reynolds’ explanation of the philosophy of Disneyland.  In preparation for our trip to the park, we walked through ‘Uncle Walt’s’ reason for creating it, how its design reinforces that, and what’s happened to it since then.  Disney’s creation of a virtual reality in which, immediately upon entry to the park, you walk through the past of Main Street USA (Whence?) and can end up in Tomorrowland (Whither?), serves as an interesting companion to Plato’s Phaedrus.  

Armed with an introduction to Disney’s intentions, as well as a brief history of how it’s broken down since his death, and with an eye for what the design of the attractions and the park itself might be telling them, the students were off, turning heads in the line for Pirates of the Caribbean as they discussed the consequence of replacing the pirate skeletons squabbling over treasure that used to end the ride with an animatronic Johnny Depp crowing about his crimes.  Fun was had by all!

Then it was back to the dorms to think, to talk though ideas, and finally fall into bed to rest up for Tuesday’s big emphasis: the intellect and its integration with the rest of the soul.

Opening Day: An update from Rebecca

Welcome parents, to our blog! I’m sure you’re hoping to hear how the students are doing here in the first 24 hours of the Wheatstone Academy conference.

Once all the students were checked in and moved into the dorm, staff and students went to the newly-renovated cafeteria for dinner, where they began to meet and mingle. Then we moved to our meeting room for opening words from myself, and Rick Vander Kam, our team-building expert.

As their Director and an Alumna of Wheatstone, I challenged them to get the most out of this week that they could. The growth they experience will be in large part due to how much they participate and boldly initiate in friendships and discussions. We expect a lot from them this week, and challenge them to take responsibility for their learning, and the learning of their peers in their small groups. I expressed how committed we are as a staff to encourage, equip and guide them this week. And I’ll be here with bandaids, sunscreen and water bottles at any turn!

Rick Vander Kam talked to the students about how challenge is essential to growth and learning. He prepared them for a kind of learning environment that is experiential and dialogic; learning that requires community. This is why we spend as little time as possible lecturing “at” students. We always transition quickly into dialogue and processing together as a group.

One of the most exciting moments of the evening was when we assigned students to their small groups. These groups of 6 – 8 students are lead by our excellent Mentor staff (16 groups altogether), and are where the real power of this program happen. The individuals in your son or daughter’s small group will be their main peer group this week, will go through the ropes course together, will discuss Plato, and process the events together. I’ve seen God do amazing things through these groups over the years!

After a few group challenges and games outdoors, we headed back into our meeting room to hear from our keynote speaker and co-founder of Wheatstone Academy, Dr. John Mark Reynolds. He addressed the first two questions in the Plato text that we’re studying: “Where did you come from? Where are you going?” Dr. Reynolds suggested that these questions are key to helping our culture through its current crises, and are should be active in the minds of students this week.

We’ll be posting Dr. Reynolds’ opening address online here very soon. We’re off-campus all of today, and will begin posting more regularly on Tuesday.

Now that the students are on their way through the Wheatstone conference, I can fill you in on their plans for this evening, which won’t be revealed to them until later today: We’re going to have dinner and hear a lecture by Dr. Reynolds about the world of Walt Disney, the ideas behind this cultural phenomenon, and then explore Disneyland together in small groups. This won’t be a typical visit to Disneyland. Our staff will help them process the story being told by Walt Disney in this iconic park, and how those stories and lessons have affected our culture. It will be a fun night!

More updates to come. Thank you for your prayers for the students this week. I’m very impressed with their attitude, energy and eagerness. I can tell this will be a powerful week for staff and students alike. I’m privileged to be a part of it.

We’ve Moved!

Check out our blog’s new home at www.wheatstoneforum.com!

Wheatstone Academy at Chapman University

Welcome parents and supporters of Wheatstone to Wheatstone Forum, the place to share in the exciting Academy conference this week. Visit here to be updated on how the conference is going, interesting discussions that are taking place, photos, and streaming lectures. The Wheatstone staff will keep you posted on the discussion that students are engaged in day by day.

We hope you enjoy the updates!

Planet Narnia

I am a big Narnia fan.  Really big.  As in, “I named my firstborn after a character in the series” big.  As in, “When I saw a guy playing Prince Caspian in a parade at Disneyland I cried and wanted to kneel” big.

I knew there were other fans out there, but I guess I assumed I was unique.

(I should hasten to add that when I say I am a Narnia fan, I am referring to the books.  I like the movies, but they are, in my mind, a separate entity.)

Imagine my delight when I learned that there are other fans out there–fans who are much more serious than I.

Michael Ward must be such a fan.  (Though I can’t picture him crying at the site of an actor playing Prince Caspian in a parade.  I’m pretty sure I’m the only fan weird enough to do that.)  His newest book is called Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis and it’s well worth a read.

There have been numerous attempts to discover the theme that unifies the seemingly incoherent Chronicles.  These attempts have always puzzled me because, while I understand the objections, Lewis’ work feels coherent to me.  Not being a fan of feelings-based literary criticism, my reaction saddened me a little, but I’ve never been able to shake the impression that the Narnia tales do tie together in some way I can’t quite express.

As it turns out, this intuition of mine has a lot of very strong textual backing.

Ward suggests that the each of the Narnia books was written to illustrate one of seven ancient planetary archetypes; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for example, was written to exemplify the traditional character of the planet Jupiter.  Prince Caspian is a Mars story, and so on.

In a recent address to the Torrey Honors Institute Ward stated that his first inkling of this theory came while reading over The Planets, one of Lewis’ poems.  The following lines in the poem’s description of Jupiter caught his eye:

Of wrath ended

And woes mended, of winter passed

And guilt forgiven, and good fortune

Jove is master…

Sound familiar?  It should–these lines very effectively summarize the first volume of the Chronicles.  What if Lewis did this on purpose?  What if he carried out this cosmological theme through every volume in the series?  Decades after the publication of these books it appears that that is exactly what he did.

Why did it take so long for someone to figure this out?  For the same reason that my intuition discussed above was so vague.  But in the words of the immortal Levar Burton, “Don’t take my word for it.”

Go read the book–and let me know what you think.

Prince Caspian

Check out this review of the movie.  Do you agree?  Disagree?  What might have made the movie better?

The gospel of Judas

Remember when National Geographic unveiled the Gospel of Judas a couple of years ago? This ancient Coptic text supposedly revealed a side of Judas not seen in the Bible–far from being a betrayer, Judas was portrayed as Jesus’ closest friend who turned him over to his killers at Jesus’ own request.

Soon after National Geographic’s dramatic announcement, scholars quickly found errors in the publishing giant’s official translation:

But almost immediately, other scholars began to take issue with the interpretation of Meyer and the rest of the National Geographic team. They didn’t see a good Judas at all. In fact, this Judas seemed more evil than ever. Those early voices of dissent have since grown into a chorus, some of whom argue that National Geographic’s handling of the project amounts to scholarly malpractice. It’s a perfect example, critics argue, of what can happen when commercial considerations are allowed to ride roughshod over careful research. What’s more, the controversy has strained friendships in this small community of religion scholars — causing some on both sides of the argument to feel, in a word, betrayed.

One scholar was horrified to find that in several places the original text actually stated the opposite of what was passed on to the public:

One of the seven million people who watched the National Geographic documentary was April D. DeConick. Admittedly, DeConick, a professor of biblical studies at Rice University, was not your average viewer. As a Coptologist, she had long been aware of the existence of the Gospel of Judas and was friends with several of those who had worked on the so-called dream team. It’s fair to say she watched the documentary with special interest.

As soon as the show ended, she went to her computer and downloaded the English translation from the National Geographic Web site. Almost immediately she began to have concerns. From her reading, even in translation, it seemed obvious that Judas was not turning in Jesus as a friendly gesture, but rather sacrificing him to a demon god named Saklas. This alone would suggest, strongly, that Judas was not acting with Jesus’ best interests in mind — which would undercut the thesis of the National Geographic team. She turned to her husband, Wade, and said: “Oh no. Something is really wrong.”

She started the next day on her own translation of the Coptic transcription, also posted on the National Geographic Web site. That’s when she came across what she considered a major, almost unbelievable error. It had to do with the translation of the word “daimon,” which Jesus uses to address Judas. The National Geographic team translates this as “spirit,” an unusual choice and inconsistent with translations of other early Christian texts, where it is usually rendered as “demon.” In this passage, however, Jesus’ calling Judas a demon would completely alter the meaning. “O 13th spirit, why do you try so hard?” becomes “O 13th demon, why do you try so hard?” A gentle inquiry turns into a vicious rebuke.

Then there’s the number 13. The Gospel of Judas is thought to have been written by a sect of Gnostics known as Sethians, for whom the number 13 would indicate a realm ruled by the demon Ialdabaoth. Calling someone a demon from the 13th realm would not be a compliment. In another passage, the National Geographic translation says that Judas “would ascend to the holy generation.” But DeConick says it’s clear from the transcription that a negative has been left out and that Judas will not ascend to the holy generation (this error has been corrected in the second edition). DeConick also objected to a phrase that says Judas has been “set apart for the holy generation.” She argues it should be translated “set apart from the holy generation” — again, the opposite meaning. In the later critical edition, the National Geographic translators offer both as legitimate possibilities.

These discoveries filled her with dread. “I was like, this is bad, and these are my friends,” she says. It’s worth noting that it didn’t take DeConick months of painstaking research to reach her conclusions. Within minutes, she thought something was wrong. Within a day, she was convinced that significant mistakes had been made. Why, if it was so obvious to her, had these other scholars missed it? Why had they seen a good Judas where, according to DeConick, none exists?

Maybe because they were looking for him. The first reference to the Gospel of Judas was made by St. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, in Against Heresies, written around 180. Irenaeus was not a fan of the Gospel of Judas, which he deemed a heretical text (though it’s not known whether he actually read the gospel or had only heard rumors about it). Until the Coptic manuscript surfaced in the 1970s, Irenaeus’ mention of the gospel was the only known reference. Irenaeus wrote that the gospel portrayed Judas as “knowing the truth as no others did.” It was an intriguing statement and suggestive of a more positive Judas.

DeConick thinks the translators were overly influenced by Irenaeus and read the gospel with his interpretation in mind. If you come to the gospel free of preconceptions, she argues, then it’s clear that Judas is evil and cursed, not holy and chosen. 

Opponents of Christianity would like you to think that you are biased and unreasonable in your beliefs, while they are rational and objective.  Examine their supposed objectivity carefully–like the “authoritative” translation of a document supposed to do tremendous damage to Christianity, their claims often don’t hold up under close scrutiny.

Free book!

Christianaudio.com offers a free audio book every month, and their freebie selection is fantastic.  This month you can download John Bunyan’s classic, Pilgrim’s Progress. Enjoy!

An F in Christianity

If you had to take a class on your own religion, how would you do on the final exam?

Maybe not as well as you think. Check this out:

I teach a variety of courses at Piedmont College, but “Introduction to World Religions” is my favorite. I have taught it more than 20 times now, to more than 500 students. One of them tells me how different the news from Iraq sounds now that she knows the difference between Shi’as and Sunnis. Another brings me pictures of a new Hindu temple going up in his old neighborhood, which he is able to interpret for his alarmed parents. Students who complete the class say they feel more at home in the world. They are less easily frightened by religious difference. They are more informed neighbors, better equipped to wage peace instead of war.

The only place the course backfires is in the unit on Christianity. Students who have spent every Sunday of their lives in church may be able to name the books of the Bible in order, but they rarely have any idea how those books were assembled. They know they belong to Victory Baptist Church, but they do not know that this makes them Protestants, or that the Christian tree has two other major branches more ancient than their own. Very few have heard of the Nicene Creed. Most are surprised to learn that baptism is supposed to be a one-time thing.

With only five class sessions for each religion, I cover the basics quickly: early Christian history, composition and content of the New Testament, the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation, central Christian doctrines and common religious practices. Faced with so much new information, students often have a hard time formulating their questions.

“If Paul wasn’t one of the 12 disciples, where did he get his stuff?”

“Do Catholics really think saints answer their prayers?”

As often as I have answered such questions, my sinking feeling never goes away. The things I tell students are so different from the things they have heard in church that I can hear their brains straining against the waves…

When they tried to put what they were learning about Christianity at school into the drawers they had gotten at church, there was no room for the new information—not because the drawers were full but because they had different labels on them.

The church drawers are labeled “Favorite Bible Passages,” “Personal Commitment to Jesus Christ,” “Summer Mission Trips,” and “What My Church Means to Me.” There is nothing wrong with any of these drawers. Mostly they contain good, life-giving things. But where are you supposed to put your new insight about the role of the early churches in the formation of the New Testament? Where does your fresh curiosity about Orthodox Christians go? What happens to your church drawers once you realize there are hundreds of other churches with just that many drawers of their own?

Read the whole thing here.

What’s in your “church drawers”?

What would Darwin say?

An Overwhelming Evidence blogger examines Mike Gene’s book The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues:

Sometime around 1860, Asa Gray, a professor of botany from Harvard, apparently asked Darwin what it would take to convince him of design. Darwin replied:

“Your question what would convince me of design is a poser. If I saw an angel come down to teach us good, and I was convinced from others seeing him that I was not mad, I should believe in design. If I could be convinced thoroughly that life and mind was in an unknown way a function of other imponderable force, I should be convinced. If man was made of brass or iron and no way connected with any other organism which had ever lived, I should perhaps be convinced. But this is childish writing.”

Darwin is effectively stumped by the question and offers answers that he concedes as “childish.” Darwin clearly states that he needs to see an angel to be convinced of design. Apparently, this would prove the existence of the supernatural and Darwin can only view design as a supernatural phenomenon. (pp. 34-35)

Darwinists today follow in their founder’s footsteps by denying the existence of the supernatural.  Your work as a Christian apologist will often start with the examination of a very basic premise: what are acceptable forms of knowledge?  In our culture, thanks in large part to Darwin, science is the one and only commonly agreed upon form of knowledge.  If you can prove that faith is grounded in fact, that Christianity is a legitimate source of knowledge, then you have a place to start.