As part of the symposium at the dedication of the Presbyterian Center, Louisville, Kentucky, October 28, 1988, the theologian Walter Brueggemann surprised the Presbyterian Church (USA) ? as well as all Americans ? by calling them to repentance. “We religionists [Evangelicals] are caught in an odd endorsing and legitimating, when in our knowing, we may want to talk about the sovereign absence of God, an absence evident in the secularization of a society which seems to manage very well by itself.” Brueggemann further suggests that we Evangelical Christians are in exile and need to act accordingly.

Okay. We live in a post-Christian era. So what?

Deborah lived in a post-Jewish era, a time where worship of Yahweh was no longer practiced by her society. There was a great falling away — like now — and God called Deborah to make things right — like God is calling you now.

Deborah was a prophetess and the fourth judge of Israel. She was a warrior mom, a culture creator. The only female judge mentioned in the Bible, Deborah led a successful counter-attack against the forces of Jabin, king of Canaan, and his military commander Sisera.

Judges 5:6–7
“In the days of Shamgar son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were abandoned; travelers took to winding paths. Villagers in Israel would not fight; they held back until I, Deborah, arose, until I arose, a mother in Israel.”

I want you to be Deborahs to this generation. I want you to capture the high culture of this land, and I want you to do that by being very smart. Be very, very smart!

I am persuaded that Deborah was not merely a great warrior — she was that — but she was much more. She won military victories, true, but she won a cultural war too.

Judges 5:10
“You who ride on white donkeys, sitting on your saddle blankets, and you who walk along the road, consider the voice of the singers at the watering places. They recite the victories of the Lord, the victories of his villagers in Israel.”

It was at the “watering places” that culture was created and maintained. The “watering places” were places of sustenance for body, mind, and spirit. It was the place where one came for gossip, for water, and for spiritual insight. In other words, the “watering places” were the universities of Deborah’s time. There, insight was shared and policy was debated. This was the epistemological center of Jewish life.

I want you to go the place God is calling you, perhaps the universities, and make some high culture!

The term “high culture” was introduced into English largely with the publication in 1869 of Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold. Arnold defined high culture as “the disinterested endeavour after man’s perfection” and argued that having culture meant to “know the best that has been said and thought in the world.” Arnold saw high culture as a force for moral and political good. I do, too. Arnold saw culture as that which promotes and creates the way of life that a civilization enjoys — the art that it views; the movies it enjoys; the books that it reads. I am not talking about fads and superfluous external minutiae. I am talking about the things that determine the way we think, govern, and worship. The term is contrasted with popular or mass culture, as well as with traditional cultures. I want you to create a new, high culture ? a wholesome, godly high culture.

You need to be the best you can be for our God. I want you to put the high culture creation epicenters of education, government, entertainment, health, law, and religion in your sights, go to those spheres, and be the best you can be.

I am excited! “Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, and caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.” — Rupert Brooke (who died in WWI in 1915)

Herman B. “Dutch” Leonard, the George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Sector Management at Harvard Kennedy School and the Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, studies crisis management and leadership. He spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the challenges facing Christie and Target and their performances to date.

Professor Leonard said, “I think the fundamental driving force in how well these events go is how well they are being handled from a substantive perspective. The critical question to ask is: How well have these officials at Target and in Gov. Christie’s office — and the governor himself — gotten on top of the actual substantive event? If, in hindsight, we say, ‘That was about as good a job as they reasonably could have done,’ then I think they’ve done a good job both from a substantive perspective and from a process or public-relations perspective.”

The problem, to me, is that these two brilliant scholars try to control public relations damage by manipulation, smoke and mirrors. How about telling the truth? What if politicians simply said, “Oh I was wrong?” I made a mistake. Would you forgive me?” Truth, though, is a casualty of the 21st century. Or so it seems.

Just saying . . . .

Harvard Medical School reports that babies are primed to learn language—any language—while still in the womb, and are born ready to continue the task. Takao Hensch, an HMS professor of neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital, puts it this way, “All infants are born as citizens of the world, meaning that an infant born in Japan could just as easily acquire English as Japanese or any other language.” The newborn brain is highly plastic; that is, it can readily form new synaptic connections, the types of connections that are vital to processing the continuous streams of new information infants glean from what they hear, see, and touch. Research shows that in the early postnatal period, an infant’s brain forms an abundance of neural connections, and then, over time and in response to environmental influences and experience, pares those connections that are not useful.

Hello? Babies are primed to learn language? In fact there is a lot of evidence that they even respond to language in the womb. It turns out that when I spoke to Peter in Karen‘s womb, he was listening (but not sure he heard me).

All this is intriguing but what astonishes me is that not once did any Harvard professor ask the million dollar question, “If babies hear language—the penultimate evidence of human life—in the womb, why do we murder them?” Yes, we are aborting 3000 babies, many of whom are hearing discussions occurring outside the womb . . . A very sad, tragic though.

Just saying . . .