Luke Funk

New Englander in Training

[lukebfunk]

For the Beauty of the Earth

For the joy of ear and eye,

For the heart and mind’s delight,

For the mystic harmony

Linking sense to sound and sight,

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise

[lukebfunk]

Till We Have Faces

I recently finished one of the more obscure C.S. Lewis novels, Till We Have Faces. It is a complex read with numerous levels of understanding, many of which I believe were beyond me. One of its intricate themes is a treatment of the conflicting nature of the divine: how its truth includes and is explained by both intellectual wisdom and emotional experiences. A further, related theme is why the divine keeps their intentions and directions hidden from human minds; why don’t they speak with us plainly, face-to-face? Pete Lowman describes this well in his analysis of the book:

...it becomes clear how the debate between the Priest and the Fox is an analogy of the problem presented by the plurality of religions in the real world. “Holy places are dark places,” asserts the Priest when the two conflict. “It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.” Yet the advantage of the Greek wisdom that is “clear and thin” is plain too. Can there be a resolution? ... Lewis' narrative focuses these issues: the problem of how one is to reconcile the insights of “thick” and “clear;” of what truth might lie behind the strength and horror of the “thick;” and the supernaturalistic question beyond these, of how to regard the divine silence – or hiddenness – that causes and is expressed in this enigma.

The resolution appears to comes at the end of the book. After Orual, the main character, comes face-to-face with the gods, she asserts:

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.

This is the essence of the Christian God, even if the themes are presented here in the setting of mythological pantheism. God is inscrutable to us on an intellectual level, although I hold that there is much to be gained from considering God intellectually. However, God is graspable to humans, for however short of a fleeting moment, when we humbly meet Him relationally and emotionally; we glimpse His face.

[lukebfunk]

Cambridgeport in the snow. ❄

I love wandering around the old, brightly colored houses surrounding the west section of MIT's campus. What better time than after a snow-filled week?

[lukebfunk]

What is more difficult than being busy?

As I begin my second semester of graduate school, I am trying to right the mistakes I made last semester. Primarily, over-committing. However, this is a harder problem to fix than you might think. It is easy to choose to be busy: everyone is doing it. It is easy to be busy: once you are busy, there is no time to think about anything besides the task at hand. But to choose in advance to not be busy is difficult. Am I not allowing myself to meet my full potential of productivity? If I am capable of doing all of these things, why shouldn’t I? In our current cultural climate it is humbling to admit that you need to cut back, that you cannot do everything.

I have found that making a purposeful decision to limit time commitments is a harder thing to do than actually being busy. 

But productivity for productivity’s sake is a poor goal. Growth does not happen there. This semester I have decided to value quality over quantity in my learning. To do all that I commit to well, and to get as much as I can out of each opportunity and commitment. And this requires the humbling task of cutting back on commitments.

[lukebfunk]

True Progress

Several weeks ago, before the political firestorm that has been the first weeks of Trump’s presidency, then-President Obama gave a farewell speech. Much could be said about the speech, but one specific quote stood out to me:

If you are tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life.

Despite liberals blaming conservatives for holding the country back with their “out-dated” opinions and morals, I think there is a more fundamental problem plaguing both sides of the aisle that is preventing political progress. Both sides do not truly--possibly are not willing to--fully understand why the other side thinks the way they do. This has become blatantly obvious this year as I moved from Arkansas (red as red can get) to Massachusetts (blue as blue can get). People in both places would be surprised by what and how the other thinks--and how their surroundings influence that. It is not necessarily that one or the other is correct, but that their perspectives are very different (and usually both very valid). The most efficient way to fix this misunderstanding is to intentionally surround yourself with people that think differently than you; this forces you to realize that real, tangible, often friendly people exist that hold the opposite opinion. Attempting to convince someone of your opinion without understanding why the believe what they do will only result it talking past each other. In the big picture, this has resulted in the current state of political whiplash that the US is experiencing: once one party takes control, they erase every policy change--good or bad, small or big--that the previous party made. There is no effort to recognize and maintain beneficial changes the opposite party has made, thus all progress made by any administration is only temporary. Only when both sides understand where the other comes from can true lasting progress be made.

[lukebfunk]

Seeing Grays in the Black and White

One of my favorite gifts for Christmas this year was a subscription to National Geographic magazine. This has long been my favorite magazine; I come for the beautiful pictures but often stay for interesting articles. When the first issue arrived in the mail, however, I was skeptical. This is what I saw:

As someone who grew up in a conservative environment--not to mention white, middle-class, Christian, and in the mid-west US--the problem of “gender nonconformity” has always made me uncomfortable. How can something so clearly black-and-white be obscured to such a vast range of gray hues? Not to mention the confusing and ever-changing vocabulary surrounding the controversy: transgender, agender, genderfluid, intersex, non-binary, etc. But not wanting to waste the gold that Nat Geo is to me, I read on. In fact, I read the entire issue cover-to-cover, and am glad that I did. The article that particularly grabbed my interest and attention was the cover story, “Rethinking Gender” by Robin Marantz Henig, which claimed to examine “How Science Is Helping Us Understand Gender.”

Confirming my preconceived notions, the article began dubiously enough by claiming:

Gender is an amalgamation of several elements: chromosomes (those X’s and Y’s), anatomy (internal sex organs and external genitals), hormones (relative levels of testosterone and estrogen), psychology (self-defined gender identity), and culture (socially defined gender behaviors).

At the onset, I only confidently agreed with the inclusion of one of these elements: chromosomes. But by the end of the article I began to understand several more. 

The first thing that struck me was how surprisingly unbiased the writing was--especially for such a controversial and contentious issue. Henig even conceded:

There is something to be said for the binary. The vast majority of people—more than 99 percent, it seems safe to say—put themselves at one end of the spectrum or the other.

Furthermore, I was drawn in to the adherence to scientific principles when discussing gender issues. Specific pieces of evidence were presented: multiple well-documented circumstances wherein the XX and XY chromosome configurations don’t always lead to their expected female and male anatomies, respectively. What impressed me the most, however, was a discussion of several studies that have found the brains of transgender people to be quantitatively closer to their self-identified gender rather than their birth gender. Following this, Henig clearly and nobly exposed the glaring limitations of the studies:

These studies have several problems. They are often small, involving as few as half a dozen transgender individuals. And they sometimes include people who already have started taking hormones to transition to the opposite gender, meaning that observed brain differences might be the result of, rather than the explanation for, a subject’s transgender identity.

This won the respect and attention of my scientifically skeptical mind. Now, I was ready to think deeper and engage with the author on the issue.

A fascinating point of the article was the separation of anatomic and psychological factors leading to gender nonconformity, especially during embryonic development. Emphasized was the fact that sex organs and the brain experience sexual differentiation at very different stages of development, and are “subjected to different environments of hormones, nutrients, medication, and other chemical substances.” The psychological aspect of the “gender revolution” is the most challenging to me, and the hardest to prove as real. But one partial explanation that began to make sense was the measurable correlation between gender nonconformity and autism spectrum disorder (ASD):

…children and adolescents on the autism spectrum are seven times more likely than other young people to be gender nonconforming. And, conversely, children and adolescents at gender clinics are six to 15 times more likely than other young people to have ASD.

Questioning gender makes logical sense to me in the context of autism, where self-awareness and self-acceptance, as well as the understanding of social interactions and constructs, may be hindered.

In the later sections of the article, Henig touches on the social implications of gender nonconformity, especially through discussion with Eric Vilain, a gender researcher from UCLA. Central to this discussion is the “fraught” question of “whether too many young children, at too early an age, are being encouraged to socially transition in the first place.” At that point Vilain and Henig begin to separate the ideas of gender identity and gender expression for parents of gender-questioning children:

‘If a boy is doing things that are girl-like—he wants long hair, wants to try his mother’s shoes on, wants to wear a dress and play with dolls—then he’s saying to himself, “I’m doing girl things; therefore I must be a girl,”’ Vilain said. But these preferences are gender expression, not gender identity. Vilain said he’d like parents to take a step back and remind the boy that he can do all sorts of things that girls do, but that doesn’t mean he is a girl.

If action is taken to align gender identity and expression for a child, irreparable harm can be done. Hormone therapies, surgeries, or even psychological action such as changing the use of pronouns could be harmful for the future if the child’s gender questioning eventually places them back where they started: with their birth gender.

This brings me back to the original definition presented in the article: gender is determined by a combination of genes, anatomy, hormones, psychology, and culture. Henig persuaded me through her unbiased and scientifically-rooted evidence to accept not only chromosome arrangements, but also anatomy and hormones--which are not always coinciding with each other--as elements contributing to the identification of gender. However, my still-forming opinion is that the cultural aspects of gender are actually gender-expression: acting as your culture would expect the opposite gender to act does not make you the other gender. Instead, this is merely shifting the cultural stereotypes of your biological gender’s clothing, interests, etc. Being “gender nonconforming” in this sense is solely the result of cultural gender stereotypes.

Again, I have yet to fully understand the “psychological” aspect of gender argued by many activists and proponents. However, my perception of gender nonconformity significantly shifted, and I felt I was given the tools to begin seeing the gray hues of an issue that has often been cast--like the stark page layout of Henig’s article--in black and white.

[lukebfunk]

Grieving the Past

Within in the last year, I have experienced a string of major life events: graduating college, getting married, moving half-way across the country to a big city, and starting graduate school. All of these landmarks have pushed me to think deeply both about the past and the future. The past is harder to consider. I have grieved, as if grieving a person, the phases and periods of life that have passed. No longer am I a dependent child of my parents, no longer is “home” where my parents live, no longer do I live the “bachelor” life with my friends, no longer am I allowed to be an intellectual consumer. These things represent to me my innocent childhood, where responsibility was low and joy easy to come by. In many senses, it feels as though I have left a part of myself behind. Hence the grief. Though this part of my life was good and rightfully cherished in its time, it is passed. For one reason or another, I have made irreversible decisions, and returning to a previous stage of life would be inappropriate and immature. This was a hard realization, but a needed one. Needed, so that I can look fully to the future.

By the end of September, I had accepted the past as passed and was looking fully to the future, finding excitement in the things to come as a young married man. Then in October, these nascent hopes and dreams were challenged. I am to become a father. Again, grief, but this time for a stage of life that had just begun. Quite possibly, this second grief was harder and deeper than the first. Slowly, my grief again subsided and I turned toward the future; I began to consider: who am I becoming? Who do I want to become? Does that even matter? I am still processing this final question, but I am moving forward believing the answer to be a decided “yes.” Hope springs up where a vision is found. This is the essence of the moment when life changes, however long or short the twilight between phases is. Grieving and processing what has ended, yet at the same time pushing yourself to find hope and excitement for what is to come.

Recently I have been reading through 1 Samuel, and was struck by an interaction between Samuel and God that was relevant to my experience of grieving the past. After God rejects Saul as king, Samuel “mourned” for Saul and “the LORD was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel” (15:35). But this mourning and grief is not allowed to linger long:

The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.” (16:1)

Samuel has many reasons to mourn, especially the “what could have been” with Saul as king. Samuel himself had anointed Saul, and surely wanted him  to succeed as king. What if Saul had followed the LORD? Saul had already lead Israel to victory over several neighboring nations; wasn’t he the one to make Israel great among the nations? But he had disobeyed, and this hope for the future was now ill-founded in Saul. God quickly urges Samuel to move past his grief, calling him to move without delay toward the future for God’s people: David.

[lukebfunk]

Being Pro-Life and Politically Homeless

This post from The Beggars Blog is a much-needed reminder that Christ-followers will eventually find themselves awkwardly out-of-step with any and every political party. Misunderstandings of Christians and the cause of Christ are inevitable as politicians draw wider, deeper, darker dichotomous lines between parties based on what causes each side “should” unapologetically support. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the cause of Christ is not defined by these same lines, and the solutions to many real-life issues are inflexed with complexities and intricacies that are not so easily deemed as in- or out-of-step with Christ.

We live in a mix of post-Christian secularism and a cultural Christianity that is ripe for judgment, both polarized, fighting, and raging back and forth - and here we are, many of us, homeless in the middle!

An opportunity to bring a shining light and peace into the face of much darkness and anger: to surprise both sides of the aisle by faithfully displaying what following Christ means.