A young boy was visiting the Washington Monument and walked up to one of the park staff to disclose that he was interested in purchasing the monument to bring back to his home. The park ranger, wanting to humour the child, asked the boy how much money he had in his wallet. The boy took his wallet out, counted up his change, and announced he had $1.88 to offer in exchange for the monument. The park ranger replied: “Well, first, the monument isn’t for sale. Second, even if it were for sale, it’s worth much more money than you could afford to pay. Third, since you are a citizen of the United States, it already belongs to you.” The analogy to forgiveness: we can’t buy it (God offers it to us freely), we can’t earn it (i.e. there’s nothing we can give up that would be enough to buy our forgiveness unless God had made the perfect sacrifice for us), and, upon accepting Christ, we have become citizens of God’s kingdom and have received forgiveness through Christ’s sacrifice. I thought the analogy was both cute and beautifully accurate.
How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.
It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
’Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And to the weary, rest.
Dear Name, the Rock on which I build,
My Shield and Hiding Place,
My never failing treasury, filled
With boundless stores of grace!
By Thee my prayers acceptance gain,
Although with sin defiled;
Satan accuses me in vain,
And I am owned a child.
Jesus! my Shepherd, Husband, Friend,
O Prophet, Priest and King,
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
Accept the praise I bring.
Weak is the effort of my heart,
And cold my warmest thought;
But when I see Thee as Thou art,
I’ll praise Thee as I ought.
Till then I would Thy love proclaim
With every fleeting breath,
And may the music of Thy Name
Refresh my soul in death!
So, it’s been a while and you’ve only had cute animals for inspiration to keep you going. Well, from my end, the lack of posting is for good reason - as most of you know, I have moved to Boston to start a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT. I’m two weeks into my work now and things are going OK so far - it’s kind of overwhelming to be in a lab which is bigger than the entire DEPARTMENT I worked in at McMaster, but things are starting to come together. Boston is also a pretty nice place to live, although I’ve been shocked at how many pointless bureaucratic hoops one must jump through in order to be a “legal alien” here. I’m still in church-shopping mode at the moment, but there are a couple of decent possibilities so far even in what my new insurance agent generously dubbed “the people’s republic of Cambridge” (the suburb of Boston where I live - it’s a REALLY liberal city!). I’m actually off to a service right now at one of the bigger churches around located right downtown in the Boston Common, which is probably where I’ll end up. They have a “people in their 20’s” fellowship group which is kind of like oXyGEN on steroids - 400 people in small groups within that demographic alone! Pretty wild!
So, seeing as I am not even in the same country, I thought it might be slightly odd to keep posting on this blog. As a result, I started my own blog at:
So, (cue shameless self-promotion), feel free to stop by and check it out if you are so inclined. I’ve made quite a few posts already, so if you read bottom-to-top it will probably make a (little bit) more sense. I miss you all!
A searing indictment of the aggressiveness of political correctnessRyerson students and faculty members donned rainbow-coloured stickers and clothes in a peaceful protest against the university granting an honorary degree to McGill University ethicist Margaret Somerville, who is against gay marriage.
The internationally renowned ethicist has said she is in favour of gay rights but against same-sex marriage. She argues a child’s right to have both a mother and a father trumps the rights of potential gay parents.
One professor wore a lapel pin that read “I’m straight but not narrow,” while another had on one that said “All you need is love.”
“I’m feeling very angry about Ryerson’s decision to honour Margaret Somerville,” said Sophie Quigley, a computer science professor who unfurled the equal rights banner on stage.
“I find her discriminatory and extremely biased and homophobic for sure,” said Quigley, who was particularly angry that Somerville’s honorary degree is in science because she believes the McGill professor’s same-sex arguments have no scientific merit.
CBC link: Honorary degree sparks protest at RyersonThe Toronto Star’s strongly worded response
Margaret Somerville, the world-renowned McGill University ethicist who holds strong views on same-sex marriage, was graceful in her acceptance Monday of an honorary doctorate from Ryerson University.
Unfortunately, Ryerson president Sheldon Levy missed a golden opportunity on the same day to reaffirm strongly the right of academics to hold controversial views in the grudging way the university and its leaders finally bestowed the degree on her.
Worse, by their actions, Levy and Ryerson may have created an atmosphere of “chill” that discourages free speech and legitimate academic research on controversial issues by professors and students who some activists deem to hold “politically incorrect” points of view.
When Ryerson announced the award in mid-May, the school said in a press release it was honouring Somerville for her influential work “in the world-wide development of applied ethics, particularly the study of the wider ethical and legal aspects of medicine and science.”
Somerville has had a distinguished career. She is the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, where she holds the Samuel Gale Chair in the faculty of law and is a professor in the faculty of medicine. She has done lengthy research into the ethics of cloning, animal rights, assisted suicide and other hot-button topics.
But it is her views on gay marriage that sparked the Ryerson controversy. Gay rights activists seized on her opposition to same-sex marriage, arguing it constitutes homophobia, even hate, and should have disqualified her from receiving the honorary degree.
Same-sex marriage is the law of the land in Canada. Somerville thinks it should not be, and is not afraid to say so. In that, her view runs counter to the liberal winds at many Canadian post-secondary institutions. It also is not a position shared by the Star, which has long been a staunch supporter of the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. But her views hardly make Somerville a hate-monger. And they certainly should not disqualify her from receiving an honorary degree, her fifth such award.
Somerville actually backs same-sex unions, just not marriage. That’s because it is her opinion that children are better off when their parents are a man and a woman, not a same-sex couple. And she bases her views on her intellectual and academic research on the issue.
But would the same protesters who opposed Ryerson giving an honorary degree to Somerville sit silently by if the university approved research by her, or any other university professor who held her views, into the impact of same-sex couples on children? Not likely.
More importantly, would Ryerson University approve such research, given its failure to leap to Somerville’s defence with a cogent argument for free speech and academic openness? The answer is now unclear.
By failing to speak out strongly in defence of the university’s decision to give the degree to Somerville for her ground-breaking work in the area of applied ethics, Levy was indirectly signalling that the university is afraid to encourage debate on ideas that some deem unacceptable.
Instead, Levy took pains to stress that he himself opposed her views on gay marriage, adding that it was “very very difficult” for the university that many people in the community felt hurt by the award.
That Ryerson showed such weakness is deeply troubling. Academic freedom is a cornerstone of university life. With it, new ideas, which by their very nature can be controversial, flourish because their creators are free from worries they will be punished. Without it, creativity is stifled, orthodoxies become entrenched and intellectual life stagnates.
And a big part of a university president’s role is to speak out in support of all forms of responsible academic research and debate and to create a campus environment where “chill” is unacceptable.
Ryerson and Levy had a higher duty to defend academic freedom against the tyranny of political correctness that is resulting in academic “chill” on Canadian campuses. By only reluctantly supporting Somerville’s right to hold a controversial view, they missed a chance to do just that.
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Ryerson students and faculty members donned rainbow-coloured stickers and clothes in a peaceful protest against the university granting an honorary degree to McGill University ethicist Margaret Somerville, who is against gay marriage.
Margaret Somerville, the world-renowned McGill University ethicist who holds strong views on same-sex marriage, was graceful in her acceptance Monday of an honorary doctorate from Ryerson University.
