Tivo is the greatest invention in the history of Civilization. Really. Though some old fashioned types would argue for fire (big down side in dry areas), the wheel (anyone seen the price of gas?), or the printing press (like, you can’t be serious!), I will stick with Tivo. What else allows one to binge on classic television without paying!

My wife and I finished the X-files lately and now have turned to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is a show that is clever and well written even if it does jump the shark with a vengeance in a dream episode (following the destruction of the Initiative) that makes Bobby in the shower look like Shakespeare. (Memo to television executives: dream episodes are danger.)

However, the larksome group of Scoobies is almost entirely amoral. Most episodes contain a wearisome load of Clinton era sermonizing . . . and clumsy attempts to make us believe that utter promiscuity can be survived by a group of young adults with no moral center. Let’s face it John Chrysostom, Calvin, heck even Luther (not to mention Plato!) would find this all pretty repulsive. After all Aristophanes was funny while convincing folk that killing philosophers was just good fun.

What if the point of life is not to have fun? What if watching things that support bad ideas is, well, bad? Is the time spent watching Buffy, which now is not even cool, time well spent? What good is it? How is it helping my soul?

What if human flourishing requires being utterly and totally out of it?

Maybe Tivo is not so great after all.

I can hear my students groaning. Isn’t this legalism? Haven’t we just escaped fundamentalism and aren’t you trying to return us to it by some back door?

No. It is simply Aristotle and every other reasonable person who ever lived. The problems with fundamentalism were not in the area of holiness, but in picking battles. If I am without love, then my not smoking will not cover up for it . . . a lesson modern liberalism is just now dealing with here in California where liberals are now smoke free and as cranky as a church lady at a pool hall.

Many of my friends think the biggest problem facing the church is post-modernism. I wish I thought that were true. French philosophers who make no sense without their jargon (the French don’t care what they think as long as nobody else can understand it.) are not much of a threat to modern Americans. Let’s face it, most of us cannot pronounce Foucault without laughing let alone take him seriously as the provider of an all-encompassing worldview. We are more apt to say “Whatever�? than “hegemonic discourse�? when someone tries to get us down.

My students (and yes, their professors!) struggle with the simple desire to live for pleasure. Now I am all for that if by pleasure we mean true human flourishing. I want to be happy . . . really, really happy. Sadly, I have discovered that living my life to be happy in the short term pretty much guarantees I will not be (happy) and does mean that I will be rotten. The worst news is that no product or change of attitude can change the damage I do to be soul if I live for short-term pleasure. Drive your car caring only about today’s destination and you will be getting a new car on the morrow. Run your life caring only about today’s happiness and you will want to trade in for a new life and no Clarence will be able to convince you that yours has been a wonderful life.

Every generation of lightly read adults has a new reason for their simple hedonism. Skinner helped their parents, now post-modernism helps today’s students. They don’t understand the ideas, but they have some vague sense that if they say, “What is truth anyway?�? that grownups will nod knowingly and let them have another beer.

Nothing new in that. Alcibiades had his sophists. Beau Brummel his Enlightenment. Benedict Arnold his justifications. Elvis had the worry about the bomb. We have Foucault.

But while we watch Buffy and ingest her hapless ways somebody should remind us that: love flees the promiscuous, souls get damaged by sin and are hard (if not impossible) to repair, and time wasted cannot be regained.

We have to find our function, what humans are meant to do and do that. Which seems simple enough until you remember that humans are the only reasoning animals of which we are aware . . . Mr. Ed, PETA, NFL sideline reporters not with standing. We are designed to think and thinking requires giving up some good for others. It also requires giving up behavior that takes away the time we need to meditate, pray, dialogue, and read.

Which brings me to Hugh Hewitt’s recent question. Should we be watching MTV? Of course somebody must just to find out what new hedonistic sewer is now recommended living space for modern young adults. If you are running the metaphysical hospital than you will have to go there. Or you might be trying to change the culture of pop music and create actual art and so need to know what the competition is up to. I suppose, though it hard to imagine what would have happened to young Mozart in the modern studio system. He hardly survived his father and a few lunatic royal patrons. What would have happened when marketing found Magic Flute?

MTV is all about (from what I can see) hedonism, consumerism, and materialism. It is void of spiritual values (any spiritual values) and full of empty-headed people who think looking good is being good. What sage has every recommend spending our time with that? Time spent on MTV (or on Christian television for that matter) could be spent with your family, or making something, or talking . . . or just about anything. It is not going to lead to human flourishing in any large doses and it is hard to “get�? in small doses.

The rest of us probably should turn off MTV, or Nick at Night, or the Sci Fi channel, or even talk radio (some of the time!) and try living our life and not watching it. Should I want my Buffy? Probably not. Small amounts of television will not kill me and amusement can be amusing on a holiday, but if I want to be happy, then I will spend most of my time someplace else.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Having at last finished the rough draft of an eight-year book project, I can at last return to the joy of blogging!

It should be easy to be thankful this year, because of the blessings of this season of my life. However, I must admit that as a sarcastic person, a child of my era, it is hard for me just to be thankful without making myself nauseous. Nobody rolls their eyes if you complain or attack, but to say that I love my wife, children, and life is to invite ridicule. How did this happen?

Marketing did it, in part. We are so used to seeing people act happy who are not that we assume that anyone who acts happy isn’t. After all we know from deepest experience that getting that new Han Solo blaster for Christmas will not make us happy. We know that the right toothpaste will not make our love life soar. If we are the right age, we also know that having a great love life is good, but also is not the sort of thing that will produce human flourishing. So we react with cynicism when someone claims to be happy. What is he selling?

Americans are also intellectually tougher on things they want than on things they don’t want. We believe in knowledge, but feel post-modern guilt about it. We think being a republic is better than living under a tyranny, but feel multi-cultural angst about such a bold (!) assertion. We love holidays, but feel like that must be a product of consumerism forgetting that they had more holidays than we in the Middle Ages! Say you are sad and nobody will quibble, but say you are happy and everyone will wonder what you are hiding.

Will as anyone who knows me can testify, I have problems. My own imperfections sometimes overwhelm me. When I remember the sins of my youth, I can only stand in awe at the power of God (and other people) to forgive. There is nothing good that I deserve and yet good has come unbidden and unexpected. Lent is easy for me, but thanksgiving is hard.

Nor is this merely my problem. I know when I compliment a student they think it flattery and when I rebuke them they hear truth! And yet often the most sincere thing I have to say is the praise that comes to my heart unbidden and which the culture gives me no way to speak. Without anything to sell, then let myself permission to give thanks and for one moment to be happy with rolling my own eyes at my folly.

My family life is very rich and rewarding. My wife is growing, thriving, and becoming dearer to me this year. My four blessed children, two teenagers (!), prove that your kids can be your friends. I love talking to them. My parents are still fighting for the Kingdom of God and are off on new adventures. They are my friends and a model of Christian living. My brother is brilliant and funny and the sort of traditional Christian most people think has vanished.

My church? I have a good clergy who gave up all they had for the Truth. Father Michael, the last Cavalier. Father John, gentle in his sorrows. Father Brendan, marine and an American in who there is no guile. Father Stephen, joyful future of our parish. And a building full of people who turned their backs on the spirit of our Age to follow the Holy Spirit.

My friends? Time would fail me to speak of Phil Johnson, the most valiant defender of Western values ever to be so lovable, Fred, a theologian who cartoons, Paul, an educator who loves learning and hates forms, JP, a philosopher without peer who is also real, Thomas, who teaches for love and not money, Al, the Yoda of my philosophy . . . and an entire Torrey community that is fun and clever (Hilary! Janna! Jen!).

Today I am most thankful for my students. Recently I saw Jesse, one of the immortal first Torrey students, and was reminded of what those thirty-two meant to me. They were bold, brave, and so bright. Sometimes I could not sit in the classroom with them for the light that came off their young souls and when I pray for them they still bring tears of joy to my eyes. (We have not forgotten you Angie! May your soul and that of all the faithful departed rest in peace.) My present students who just put on a luminous Our Town continue that tradition. I am lucky in my employment to be surrounded by greatness.

But, if you are still with me, I am most thankful today for Colin Anderson. Today he is in Iraq . . . an honors graduate of Biola who volunteered to defend us. Now Colin is the sort of guy who just hates praise, the very sort of fellow who would volunteer to defend freedom and then make light of it. He would be the first to list his faults and tell me how imperfect he was as an undergraduate. And let’s assume all of what he would say is true (though I do not!). Today, whether he likes it or not, I say that I admire Colin Anderson for what he is doing for me and thank him. Well done, young man.

Colin is on his second tour of duty in Iraq and when I saw him before he left he did not complain, he did not quibble, he had the determined look of a man who was going to do his duty. He knew his mission and rejoiced in the progress he had seen. He wanted, so modestly, to change the world for the better. How different than the whine of those who confuse playing X-box well with doing something! How different from the pasty academic who thinks that writing about a thing is the same as doing a thing! Colin reminds us what is to be a man and God help us there is something still good about a nation which can produce men who have read the classics, have every material advantage, and chose to serve us in a distant land.

Recently he was in harm’s way and one of the brave men he serves with was hurt by the infamous cowards who plant bombs on the roadside because they are afraid to face our boys in open fight. He stays to help the people who would have those very same cowards as tyrants if Colin left. He stays to protect Iraq from deranged killers who have no cause but terror, no leadership that is not mad, and no ideology except the worship of the most sinful inclinations of the human heart. Colin is allowing himself to be a sword of justice to kill the tyrant. And he would hate my praise and simply say he was doing his job. To say he is doing a great work is to risk embarrassing him before his friends, but it is true and somebody should say what is true. He would retreat from any hyperbole because he is a man.

An American man doing his duty.

So somewhere far from his wonderful family and friends Colin Anderson stands on guard for me. For me and for Hope, L.D., Mary Kate, Ian, Jane, Phil, Fred, Thomas, Jesse . . . all of us . . . where do we find such men?

God help him. God be with him. Thank you God for him. God save Colin Anderson . . .an American man who makes me thankful to live in such times, because I know him.