Conviction of Sin

The Christian life begins with what the Bible calls "conviction of sin," the sense that one is indeed a sinner in God's sight, deserving of condemnation, and in need of being saved from a miserable condition and a justly deserved eternal fate.

We see this portrayed in the New Testament most dramatically in Jesus' account of the Pharisee and the tax collector: "the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'" Explaining this, Jesus said, "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other (the self-righteous Pharisee). For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

Ray Ortlund beautifully expresses the biblical teaching on conviction of sin in this passage.

What is conviction of sin? It is not an oppressive spirit of uncertainty or paralyzing guilt feelings.

Conviction of sin is the lance of the divine Surgeon piercing the infected soul, releasing the pressure, letting the infection pour out.

Conviction of sin is a health-giving injury.

Conviction of sin is the Holy Spirit being kind to us by confronting us with the light we don't want to see and the truth we're afraid to admit and the guilt we prefer to ignore.

Conviction of sin is the severe love of God over-ruling our compulsive dishonesty, our willful blindness, our favorite excuses.

Conviction of sin is the violent sweetness of God opposing the sins lying comfortably undisturbed in our lives.

Conviction of sin is the merciful God declaring war on the false peace we settle for.

Conviction of sin is our escape from malaise to joy, from attending church to worship, from faking it to authenticity.

Conviction of sin is, with the forgiveness of Jesus pouring over our wounds, is life.

I'm looking for the source of this passage in Ortlund's works.

Our Modern Dance with Technology

As I re-immerse myself in the thought of Francis Bacon, the problem of technology, and the crisis of modernity, I expect to be posting frequently on the subject.

In my last post, I made reference to Louis c.k., one of the most prominent popular thinkers of our day on the problem of technology (you must understand I have a dry sense of humor...but at least I have a complete name). He appeared to be suitably impressed by the advances of the last hundred years (flight, high speed internet access, and even the latter while flying) while at the same time understandably disturbed by what those amazing developments do to our hearts, becoming numbingly unamazing to us.

King's student, John, cited Wendell Berry as one who rebels against the computer and it's soul disfiguring effects by continuing to use a typewriter. ("Why I am not going to buy a computer," Harpers, 1987; reprinted in What Are People For?.) I responded that the use of that technology is now the privilege of the well to do because ribbons are rare and expensive if they are obtainable at all. A reader named Phillip corrected me, adding that they are now easy available on via the Internet (a word that MS Word insists that I capitalize). I added this:

Ahh! Though it would be Baconian but not wise to look to technology to solve all our problems, even the problems that technology itself introduces, it is interesting that whereas an advance in technology (and the economics of the marketplace) made typewriter ribbons difficult to obtain, a further advance in technology--the Internet--again along with the economics of the marketplace, has made them easily available once again and at what Phillip tells us is an easily affordable price, even for my old Underwood. Oh brave new world that has such wonders in it!

 (Yes, I know that I slightly misquoted Shakespeare. I'm allowed to do that.)

We see this ongoing dance with technology in something I read recently in Superfreakonomics by Leavitt and Dubner, a Christmas present (thanks, Steve!). Greenies, and perhaps people like Wendell Berry, look back wistfully on the days of the horse and buggy, the days of environmentally friendly transportation when the only emissions from our vehicles could be plowed back into the earth and enrich it for organic food production.

"New York City: Horse overcome by heat." Circa 1910. 

George Grantham Bain Collection.

But the economist and the journalist tell us this:

The horse, a versatile and powerful helpmate since the days of antiquity, was put to work in many ways as modern cities expanded: pulling streetcars and private coaches, hauling construction materials, unloading freight from ships and trains, even powering the machines that churned out furniture, rope, beer, and clothing. If your young daughter took gravely ill, the doctor rushed to your home on horseback. When a fire broke out, a team of horses charged through the streets with a pumping truck. At the turn of the twentieth century, some 200,000 horses lived and worked in New York City, or 1 for every 17 people.

But oh, the troubles they caused!

Horse drawn wagons clogged the streets terribly, and when a horse broke down, it was often put to death on the spot. This caused further delays. Many stable owners held life-insurance policies that, to guard against fraud, stipulated that an animal be euthanized by a third party. This meant waiting for the police, a veterinarian, or the ASPCA to arrive. Even death didn't end the gridlock. "Dead horses were extremely unwieldy," writes the transportation scholar Eric Morris. "As a result, street cleaners often waited for the corpses to putrefy so they could more easily be sawed into pieces and carted off."

The noise from iron wagon wheels and horseshoes was so disturbing--it purportedly caused widespread nervous disorders--that some cities banned horse traffic on the streets around hospitals and other sensitive areas. ... (I'm skipping the interesting paragraph on traffic fatalities. I want to get right to the dung.)

Worst of all was the dung. The average horse produced about 24 pounds of manure a day. With 200,000 horses, that's nearly 5 million pounds of horse manure. A day. Where did it all go?

Decades earlier, when horses were less plentiful in cities, there was a smooth functioning market for manure, with farmers [people, no doubt, like Wendell Berry--DCI] buying it to truck off (via horse, of course) to their fields. But as the urban equine population exploded, there was a massive glut. In vacant lots, manure was piled as high as sixty feet. It lined city streets like banks of snow. In the summertime, it stank to the heavens; when the rains came, a soupy stream of horse manure flooded the crosswalks and seeped into people's basements (pp. 8-10).

They then describes some other unhappy consequences: flies, diseases, rats, and worst of all...methane! Lots and lots of methane, "a powerful greenhouse gas." Urban planners were gravely concerned about this health crisis (even without the climate issue), but totally stumped as to what to do about it.

But the problem suddenly disappeared, and it was neither government regulation nor a political-cultural rebellion of people in large numbers returning to a simpler, rural, agrarian life out of disgust for what had become of cities.

The problem was solved by technological innovation. No, not the invention of a dung-less animal. The horse was kicked to the curb by the electric streetcar and the automobile, both of which were extravagantly cleaner and far more efficient. The automobile, cheaper to own and operate than the horse-drawn vehicle,  was proclaimed "an environmental savior."

Of course, the dance continues. But my point is that it's a dance, though a dance between two who are inextricably locked in embrace and in what will always be, on account of sin and until the Lord's return, a love-hate relationship. Our goal should be, wise in the study of these things, to "spread the love."

P.S. -- My 10 year old daughter, seeing the picture of the exhausted horse, invited me to explain it, so I told her all about New York's horse problems in that day. She immediately suggested that we could have horses today because we have better means of hauling away the waste and the carcasses. Great idea, I thought, and a good application of technology to incorporate the best of yesteryear into modern life. We have bicycle lanes. Why not horse lanes? Cars have to drive around pedicabs. Why not make way for horse drawn buggies? Indeed, New York does have a few of these around Central Park. We could license them so that the numbers do not become unmanageable. I doubt, however, that there will be sufficient real estate in Manhattan that people can affordably devote to stabling a great number of horses. Just a thought.

Progress and Its Discontents

This semester, beginning next week, I am leading six exceptional students at The King's College in a seminar on Francis Bacon's Invention of Modern Politics. We will be exploring Lord Verulam's plan to conquer nature for the relief of our estate, the benefits that have come of it, as well as the problems inherent in it. We will look closely and critically at Bacon's writings--The Great Instuaration, New Organon, New Atlantis, Essays--and then students will research the benefits and moral complications of subsequent technological developments.

Robert Faulkner, in his penetrating work on Bacon's artful and revolutionary project to reshape and redirect Western civilization, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress, expresses this sober assessment nicely: "Now it seems that a thoughtful citizen of a modern country must be prepared to defend the benefits of progress, or at least to reconsider them while being aware of the defects as well as the advantages" (p.3).

For example, consider email. Most of us depend on it because we find it useful, and so we use it all the time. But we also sense a downside. What is that disturbing impulse we feel to be constantly checking our inboxes. That's not good. John Freeman explores the complexity of the technology in his book, The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox. "E-mail might be cheaper, faster and more convenient, but its virtues also make us lazier, lonelier and less articulate."

Also have a look at "Louis c.k." claiming that Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy. Warning, this is very funny, and you may see yourself in one of the "spoiled idiots" he describes.

He's entertained by the fact that conservatives and Christians find his routine resonates with what they believe. What they like is clearly the call to moderation and contentment. Louis just despises them, but that's a sign that he doesn't understand either what he's saying or the conservatives and Christians. He himself is incoherent. He meant to condemn capitalism in this routine. He explains this to Opie and Anthony. (The second clip is better than the first, but blasphemous at points.) Yet capitalism is the economic system on which he depends for his lucrative career and high flying lifestyle. He also explains that he is not against technology. He just thinks we should chasten our expectations for it and have a little more peace while using it. This thought has clearly hit a nerve with people given the video's "viral" popularity. People are uncomfortably aware that while technology is good, it affects the way we see the world in ways that are morally unhealthy. And that is a subject worthy of study.

Francis Bacon's Very Political Life

As I expect to be posting more regularly on Francis Bacon in his relation to Christianity and modernity, I am reposting this reflection on Perez Zagorin's account of his life in chapter two of his 1998 book, Francis Bacon, the chapter entitled, "Bacon's Two Lives."


Lytton Strachey's question, "Who has ever explained Francis Bacon?," still hangs over Bacon scholarship (Elizabeth and Essex, A Tragic History. Butler Press, 2007; p.9). Perez Zagorin identified the puzzle at the very outset of his book, a study of Bacon's life and thought entitled simply Francis Bacon (Princeton, 1998) :

Francis Bacon lived two separate but interconnected lives. One was the meditative, reserved life of a philosopher, scientific inquirer, and writer of genius, a thinker of soaring ambition and vast range whose project for the reconstruction of philosophy contained a new vision of science and its place in society. The other was the troubled insecure life of a courtier, professional lawyer, politician, royal servant, adviser, and minister to two sovereigns, Elizabeth I and James I, who from early youth to old age never ceased his quest for high position and the favor of the great (p.3).

He could have practiced law, a profession for which he trained at Gray's Inn. Indeed, many suggested that he solve his financial difficulties by pursuing that option, but he simply refused. He could have sought an academic position, but that would not have satisfied him. He desired political office. Though he combined both scientist and politician in his soul, he was fundamentally a man of politics.

On the political side of Bacon's life and character, the puzzle has two aspects. On the one hand, Zagorin tells us that Bacon's political ambitions,

...absorbed a large part of his time and energy, pitting himself against rivals in a continual competition for office and power, diverting him from pursuing some of his most cherished intellectual goals, and forcing him to leave his main philosophical enterprise fragmentary and unfinished (ibid.).

This unceasing quest for ever higher political office raises the question, why would someone so committed to the benefit of the human race through a radical reorientation of the intellect, as Bacon was, concern himself so obsessively with political climbing for the whole of his adult life? While public service is honorable and requires people of ability and integrity for it to be done well, there were many others who were highly qualified to take up that task, whereas Bacon alone had the insight and learning to carry on what he called "the great instauration of man over the universe."

In Of The Interpretation of Nature Proemium, Bacon justifies his tireless pursuit of political power by the ability it would give him to support co-ordinated, publicly useful scientific inquiry with the requisite human and financial resources. He had in mind something like the National Science Foundation, or, better yet, Salomon's House as he describes it in New Atlantis. Thus, Bacon reconciles his two seemly incompatible and personally consuming goals, the scientific and the political, by interpreting the political enterprise in terms of the scientific one. Zagorin, by accepting this explanation, comes across like a woman who believes the sweetly spoken but not entirely plausible stories of her cheating husband (or vice versa; pp. 57f.). He produces no evidence that Bacon actually used what power he had at any given point to give significant support to the work of science as he was planning it out.

Bacon's explanation is unconvincing especially coming from a man who calculated his actions as carefully as he did. It was surely true that he could use the power of his political office to support his scientific project, but the effort that such a plan required was disproportionate to anything he could reasonably hope to obtain. The likelihood of his success not only in achieving a sufficiently powerful position in government, but also in holding that position long enough to accomplish his goals, and then also in actually using it to advance his grand project by arranging the cooperation of whoever else was necessary was uncertain at best, and unpromising at worst. As it turned out, he did not become Lord Chancellor until 1618 at the age of sixty, just eight years before his death, a position he held for only three years before his scandalous downfall. As a plan, it's comparable to betting your nest egg at the dog track. It is an unbaconian reliance on fortune.

Given his extraordinary learning and eloquence, it would have been a more efficient use of Bacon's time with a more promising outcome if he had pursued his projects from a position of academic and literary prominence, and used his powerful persuasive abilities to enlist the great in his cause. But Bacon had no interest in a life so far removed from the direct exercise of political power and its attendant honors. Zagorin himself notes that, "Bacon was irresistibly attracted to politics and would never willingly retire into a private existence" (p.4). Indeed, he never did. Even after he was deposed from power as a result of the bribery scandal, instead of turning his full attention to writing and publishing for a more lasting legacy, he continued to beg and claw for power, even if only the right to take his seat in the House of Lords.

(Bacon himself gives us reason not to take him at his word on this public spirited justification for his political ambition. Bacon scholars are remarkably credulous when it comes to Bacon's public affirmations of traditional morality and notions of virtue. But that is another investigation.)

The second aspect of the puzzle of Bacon's politics is the great difficulty he had in accomplishing his goals. He was frequently passed over, and accomplished what ranks he did only by constantly "asserviling" himself, as he lamented near the end of his life. His difficulties were not for lack of talent and intelligence, however. Zagorin's judgment is that people generally saw through his deceits and were repelled by them, earning him distrust rather than influence. Bacon was a great admirer of Machiavelli, but seemed to lack the virtu to be a successful Machiavellian. He was a notorious dissembler and manager of his own image for political purposes. "I had rather know than be known" (Promus of Formularies and Elegancies in Works XIV:13). Zagorin is also very clear on this point.

The subjects of secrecy, esoteric communication, and the techniques of managing people also came into his works. In his personal relationships with the great and powerful whose favor he desired, his preferred methods were dissimulation, subservience, and flattery... (p.14).

Like an orphan who is radically alone and vulnerable in a hostile world, Bacon saw only rivals (like Coke) and instruments (like Essex, the queen herself, and later the king). Zagorin sees this. Bacon, he says, "...regarded other persons purely as means he could exploit to attain his own ends. His object was to aggrandize himself by craft, flattery, and displaying himself in the best possible light" (p.20). One suspects that those who were neither obstacles nor of any use him politically, he used in some other way.

Zagorin identifies Bacon's two contradictory lives, but in fact he had three lives. Whereas his political life compromised his philosophic life, his sexual life compromised his political one. Zagorin spends more than two pages of his short biographical chapter exploring this issue. If Bacon wanted the safest path to high office, then--like Elizabeth, his queen--it would have been prudent of him to commit himself to chastity. He did not.

These contradictions are puzzling only if one accepts Bacon as a genuine philosophical philanthropist with an inscrutable political fixation. On the contrary, it is more reasonable to interpret his scientific project in light of his political ambitions. By this I mean not his politics narrowly conceived (Solomon, Martin, Leary?), but his highest political ambition. He did after all express his philosophic project in strikingly and consistently political language.

Zagorin sets aside his knowledge of Bacon's political obsessions, however, when he turns to consider him as a philosopher. "It is evident that in Bacon's mind the project of developing a philosophy capable of multiplying knowledge and discovery by a true interpretation of nature was his highest, most cherished aim and that to this enterprise other intellectual pursuits were secondary" (p.27). This does not account for his distracting political ambitions, however. If the philosopher is, as Plato says, the one who leaves the cave to pursue the truth, and who would rather remain above, disengaged from the city's concerns, especially the daily concerns, to pursue an understanding of the truth without distraction, then Bacon was no philosopher. He was obsessed with the cave, in particular with it's honors and privileges. He could not even enjoy a graceful retirement in quiet writing and study.

Bacon is tragic figure. He was a man of soaring personal ambition of the sort that would naturally benefit the human race, and indeed has. But he allowed himself to be distracted from his highest goals and most lasting glories by lesser and incompatible accomplishments and pleasures.