Worth Reading - 1/12

Here are some links worth reading this weekend:

1. An excellent post by Bekah Mason, who has recently become an adoptive mother. This is beautifully written, engaging, and thoughtful.

“Twenty years ago, my parents gave a rightfully Brit lit obsessed teen a copy of The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh as a graduation gift. Having only recently rediscovered my love of reading, I was ecstatic to have it. And I flipped through it. And then I started two summer jobs followed by school and Rush, and suddenly I was much too cool and adult for Pooh.

But Pooh stayed with me, through a college transfer and back home again. To grad school and back home. Again. And through eight moves in the last decade. There was Pooh, always near my desk and heart, but with his binding never broken. Because that Pooh, the heavy one with the satin ribbon to mark your place and a small picture on each page, was meant to be shared with others. You read this Pooh aloud.

And while the first person who called me Aunt B will turn 17 this year, and my niece will be 8 next month, I never read that Pooh to any niece or nephew, whether they called me Aunt B by choice or by blood. Taking Pooh to another’s house just seemed strange.

So when the kids started staying with me for respite weekends, I thought about starting them with Pooh. But if you’ve ever tried holding a sprawling two-year-old and a 7 pound book, you know why that didn’t happen.

There was more than just a perpetual motion machine preventing the reading of Pooh by this time. To finally pull him off the shelf and read him would seem so final, and nothing has felt final these last two years.”

2. Trevin Wax gives a brief defense of evangelical sub-culture:

“For decades now, I’ve read books and articles that criticize the Christian entertainment industry for its tendency to mimic broader cultural trends instead of lead them, or for sacrificing artistic integrity in order to find financial success with less artistically minded Christians. The Christian subculture, they say, produced music and movies that were cheesy, subpar, and “subtle-as-a-hammer.”

On the rare occasion when something truly creative appeared (VeggieTales) or when an artist found appreciation outside the subculture (Amy Grant, Switchfoot, Lecrae), Christians complained of “watered-down content” or accused people of sacrificing the gospel’s integrity for mainstream success.

Talk about a no-win situation for Christian moviemakers and musicians! If the message has to always trump the medium, you’re pushed into sacrificing artistry. If you’re not super clear with the message, you alienate fans who want clarity, not subtlety (and probably aren’t looking to you for great artistry anyway).”

3. This is not for the faint of heart, but it is an intriguing article from the BBC about the Tatooist of Auschwitz--a prisoner assigned to put identification marks on other incoming prisoners.

“As the tetovierer, Lale lived a step further away from death than the other prisoners.

He ate in an administration building. He was given extra rations. He slept in a single room. When his work was done, or when there were no new prisoners to tattoo, he was allowed free time.

”He never, ever saw himself as being a collaborator,” Morris says.

It was a real concern after the war - many saw the prisoners who worked for the SS at the camps as having taken part in their brutality.

”He did what he did to survive. He said he wasn’t told he could have this job or that job,’’ says Morris.

”He said you took whatever was being offered. You took it and you were grateful because it meant that you might wake up the next morning.”

Despite his privileges, the threat of not waking up the next day was ever present. ”

4. Robert Miller explains the injustice of a Roman Catholic abduction of a child improperly baptized. This is a helpful discussion of the problems of the abuse of power by the state, even when someone likes the general outcome.

“This is exactly what the statist always misses: that there are moral principles applicable to the state governing its conduct. The statist impulse is to ignore these principles and act as if the state should bring about whatever is good and right and suppress whatever is wrong and bad. To be fair to the statist, this impulse is often well-meaning, but in morals good intentions are not enough; the means chosen to effect those intentions must be good too. This applies to the state no less than to individuals.

The point is clear from examples, even ones from the order of purely natural morality. If I am rich and meet someone who is poor, I may have a moral obligation to give him some of my money, but this does not imply that the state is morally permitted to take my property and give it to him. Similarly, if my brother wrongs me and is truly sorry, I have a moral obligation to forgive him; if I fail to do so, however, the state has no right to compel me to do so by force. Examples from the order of supernatural morality (as understood in Catholic theology) are even clearer. Everyone has an obligation to seek baptism and to worship the Holy Trinity, but it is nevertheless wrong for the state to punish those who choose not to do these things. Nor are such conclusions at all surprising: we should all, of course, try to get others to do what morality (including supernatural morality) requires of them, but this does not imply that all means whatever are licit when pursuing this noble end. For private persons, the means of rational persuasion are always permissible, but force almost always is not (self-defense is an exception). Although the state may resort to force in many cases in which private persons may not (for instance, in punishing evildoers), even the state may not use force willy-nilly in pursuing good ends.”

5. This podcast from NPR's Planet Money offered a really intriguing explanation of how money transfers work in the ACH system: