New Creation

l o g o s

Yale’s Undergraduate Journal of Christian Thought

c

r e

n ew

a t io

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Volume 12 . Issue ii

Spring/Summer 2021

logos . 1

on the issue

letter from the editor

MISSION

λ ο γ ο ς is Greek for “word.” The disciple John used logos as an epithet for Jesus, invoking

language as an image of incarnation, the Word made flesh. In Christianity, Logos became

personal. Because Christ clothed himself in flesh, he became a life giving light to us, revealing

the truth of all things. The Yale Logos takes on this name because our mission is

also personal and incarnational. We believe that by loving Christ and our fellow learners

passionately, with our whole heart, soul, and minds, we align ourselves with Yale’s pursuit

of truth and light.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Logos receives funding from the Yale University Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee.

The Logos team gratefully acknowledges the support of Peter Wicks and Patrick Hough of the Elm

Institute and the coaches and members of the Augustine Collective. We invite you to get to know our

wonderful staff here: https://www.yalelogos.com/who-we-are.

“I lack nothing, I tell you!” “Nothing?” I asked. “Not even heaven?” He lowered his head and was

silent. But after a moment: “Heaven is too high for me. The earth is good, exceptionally good -- and

near me!” “Nothing is nearer to us than heaven. The earth is beneath our feet and we tread upon

it, but heaven is within us.”

– Nikos Kazantzakis

Dear Reader,

The excitement of being back on campus has nearly faded, and the familiar groans of loneliness,

busyness, fatigue, and listlessness are sneaking their way into our lives as students.

Our yearning for something different has resurfaced. It isn’t novelty we crave: we desire

renewal. And, whether we realize it, I believe we all want renewal in the Biblical sense.

In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Isaiah shared God’s word with a people who would soon

experience prolonged suffering. They would feel far from God’s promise of newness. But

in God’s plan, the new world that would follow this suffering would be bountiful and satisfying,

full of justice, medicine, and fullness: no one will be hungry, no one will be sick or

dying, and all will enjoy even their work. This new world will also offer intimacy beyond our

earthly experience––effortless, consistent closeness. God answers His people before they

call to Him, and He hears their hearts before they finish speaking. When Jesus was on

Earth, he claimed that this new world had arrived.

DESIGN

Design Team: Bella Gamboa, Josephine

Shin, and Hannah Turner.

Photograph credits:

https://tinyurl.com/NewCreationImages

ONLINE

www.yalelogos.com

www.facebook.com/YaleLogos

Instagram @yalelogos

yale.logos@gmail.com

For us Yalies, Isaiah’s message is two-fold. First, we have reason to hold tight to our best,

most optimistic, delightful vision of a good world, and we have reason to hope for a world

that is even better than those dreams. Second, we can be assured that our labor right now

is not in vain.

The book of Isaiah acknowledges that in that waiting there is often much suffering. But

even now, let this idea of a new world be a companion in the waiting. A companion that

inspires hope and action. That prompts us to be agents furthering that newness. That encourages

us to strive together for the hope and courage to see beauty, light, and goodness in

our media, our world, our work, our relationships, even in our own minds and experiences––until

that new world comes in its fullness.

Even now, there is more life to be had.

Sincerely,

Jadan Anderson

Editor-in-Chief

2 . New Creation: Spring 2021 logos . 3

contents

6

10

14

17

20

Emotional Enlightenment

Hannah Turner

Making Sense of Destruction

Justin Ferrugia

How Could Immortality Be Good?

Shayley Martin

Batter My Heart

Shi Wen Yeo

Called to Create: An Interview with Professor

Demetrios Braddock

Raquel Sequeira

24

27

How (Not) To Renew a City

Amelia Dilworth

Heaven Is a Place on Earth?

Sharla Moody

30

Searching for the Right Shade of Green

Ben Colón-Emeric


Emotional Enlightenment

Hannah Turner

The concepts Karl Marx did not grasp

led to the downfall of communism, but

may also lead to the magnification of

our societal understanding. He believed

that there must be an enlightenment

of the proletariat for the realization

of the bourgeoisie’s exploitation

of them. A revolt would follow. Finally,

once the proletariat is in control of the

state, a communist society would be

born. Everyone would live, “from each

according to his ability, to each according

to his need.” [1]

Nonetheless, Marx makes a fatal assumption

regarding human behavior

in analyzing the relationship between

these classes. He assumes that the proletariat

will be enlightened enough to

lead such a society. He assumes that

empathy would naturally appear, and

prevail. The proletariat would not

form a love for power and a similar desire

to take advantage of others out of

a sense of enmity. They would be different—possibly

retaining some collective

memory of their exploitation. This

idea is foundational to his theory, but

simply does not make sense logically.

Further, this logical fallacy is supported

by the historical documentation of

communist societies. In every society

that has embarked on the implementation

of communism, we see a failed

execution. Politically, Marx’s communism

is insufficient. The theory’s value

instead lies in its insight, or lack of it,

on the characteristics of humanity.

I decided to have a discussion about

this with my classmate. Quickly, we hypothesized

that Marx made this fatal

assumption because he only focused on

the materialistic aspect of life. However,

as primarily evidenced by our life

experience, we knew that humanity

functions outside that realm. Esteemed

qualities such as justice, hope, and love

have tried to be quantified materially,

but such measuring has been inevitably

controversial. This is why we must

look beyond materialism. Most likely,

the answer exists in human’s emotional

reasoning—an area that Marx greatly

neglected. There is certainly a material

aspect in humanity’s emotional

reasoning, as relating to the scientific

mechanisms that allow us to reason.

This still does not provide the exact

explanation for why we find ourselves

engaging with or forming conclusions

off of such reasoning. In our world we

can see that those in power who take

advantage of others, or enact revenge

on others, often maintain a negative

rationalization of their actions. Contrary

to Marx’s beliefs, my classmate

and I could only discern cases where

this misuse of power was prohibited

through some sort of incentivization.

Those who are under this type of oppression

might maintain a false consciousness:

they make themselves feel

okay with their circumstances when

they really sense some injustice about

them. We see this in our own society

too as some people accept the increasing

economic disparity or racial

injustices as a norm. As we reflected

on these examples, there seemed to be

some type of disconnect between the

party’s emotions and reality.

Not only did we recognize this on the

political or societal level, but the individual

one as well. We thought about

a specific type of student. Their nimble

fingers steadily manipulate the

keyboard to produce a paper that

demands praise. It appears that they

effortlessly move between tasks, and

each one is as exceptional as the last.

Those familiar with their prowess in

studying marvel at such learned efficiency.

In clubs and internships they

maintain an equal standard of performance.

The ambitious student.

Many, however, that I’ve known have

denied their skills—not out of extreme

humility, but from a sincere belief.

They felt that nothing they could do

would reach this standard they set for

themselves, or felt was set for them

by society. They were constantly

convinced that they were unintelligent.

If they shifted away from

counterfactual thinking, however,

they might begin to realize that

they were only deceiving themselves.

Emotional reasoning,

for better

or worse,

is thus

present

in

many different

forms in our lives.

As humans, it

is evident how

many social problems

emerge from

the fact that our

emotions either

don’t align with

or prevent us from

seeing circumstantial

evidence. Both

one’s interactions

with people and

one’s already established

environment

contribute to one’s development. However,

these spaces also allow for the

emergence of these social problems.

This emergence often happens as one

reacts, contributes, or just engages in

some way with this environment, especially

in the instance of indulging in

one’s emotions. In fact, it almost seems

natural for people to have this poor

emotional health. There are so many,

like the student experiencing imposter

syndrome, who at least briefly experience

moments of hyper-focus on their

emotional state. Emotions are not only

too often exaggerated, but also too

greatly denied. When a friend says

they can not attend an event that you

had been planning to go to with them

for months, it is upsetting—especially

if they end up spending the night with

another group of friends. Not addressing

the situation and pretending that

everything is fine is perpetuating unhealthy

emotional inhibition.

The fact that humans have an entire

part of their brain dedicated to emotions

illustrates that emotions are an

important part of our perception of

life. In the limbic system in the brain,

emotions are closely attached to our

memories. This is logical when we reflect

on how certain memories elicit

emotions, and how this in turn influences

how we might act in a new situation.

In the instances when we inhibit

or over-esteem our emotions, they are

driving us to feel a certain way that

does not align with the facts. I believe

that the solution to this problem is both

simple and tedious: one must learn to

properly manage their emotions.

The first step in managing one’s emotions

is to identify how they have been

managed in the past—whether that

has been through inhibition, or pure

emotional reasoning. It is difficult because

this realization creates a lot of

new emotions too: regret, guilt, desire

to change, hope, or a slew of other

feelings.

I think of this as an emotional enlightenment.

This is far from the enlightenment

that Marx presented in his theory of

communism, and is a concept often

overlooked by our society too. Humanity

is dealing with some emotions

in a broken way, but recognizing that is

the first step in this enlightenment. We

begin to take notice of what was once

their natural way of acting. The style

of managing emotions, the problems

of that style, and the identification

of specific emotions are all realized.

This gives us hope that we can begin

to make rational judgments when we

begin to get emotional, but it is unclear

where one might turn next. The

purpose for Marx’s enlightenment was

clear: to live in this ideal society where

there is no exploitation. Yet, we concluded

that to address the failures in

Marx’s ideology, we must discover this

emotional enlightenment. This allows

one to be aligned with reality, thus

leading us to realize a more viable just

society—one purpose of this emotional

enlightenment.

Now we must look at the question of

properly managing our emotions to

allow us to achieve that purpose. The

term proper assumes that there is an

objective measure which one should

evaluate their emotions. In some

spheres this may be controversial, but

it is not too far from what Marx would

have believed. Marx was shaped by

Adam Smith in theorizing that there

was an objective measure to evaluate

the value of labor. These labor theories

were heavily influenced by Locke’s

workmanship model—which was

founded in the Christian faith. Marx

may have not realized it, but he blatantly

encouraged a secular version


of Locke’s workmanship model. Recognizing

this is so important because

the Christian worldview made it possible

for Marx to conceptualize reality

in the way he did. By leaning on this

model, Marx was also leaning on a belief

of objective truth—as the Word of

God is the Christian’s measure.

This becomes an interesting point

when trying to understand why Marx’s

communism fails. Marx outlined a society

that seemed utopian, and desired

justice for the disadvantaged. He did

not explicitly endorse, however, a substantial

standard to which justice could

be defined. Therefore, the historical

communist society has produced corruption—a

twisted form of justice that

manifests when each person defines it

for themselves. Our emotions, at their

best, begin to hint at what a standard

for justice might be when we begin to

define something as good or bad. Yet,

since our emotions are often not properly

managed—such as inhibiting or

exaggerating them—our natural selves

alone can not discover this standard.

As C.S. Lewis described, “Nature

does not teach. A true philosophy may

sometimes validate an experience of

nature; an experience of nature cannot

validate a philosophy. Nature will

not verify any theological or metaphysical

proposition...she will help to show

what it means.”[2] When we look at

our emotions, we must look at them

in a well-managed and transformed

way. In other words, our feelings or reactions

to nature can not be the only

evidence we rely on for defining justice

or how it can be achieved. Instead,

one must return to the idea of transcending

materialism and naturalistic

hypotheses. Many theological or metaphysical

theories focus on doing just

this, but I will focus on the Christian

perspective.

The Christian perspective truly meditates

on creating a balance between, or

managing against, the absolute valuing

of emotional reasoning and the complete

inhibition of such reasoning. The

Christian believes that there was an

original, perfect design for the world.

Nonetheless, man freely decided that

they were more apt than the God of

the universe to create, and so relied

on their incomplete knowledge of the

world. This original wrong that early

man acted on is common in our modern

society too: we think that we can

do and know everything. Yet this also

shows that at one point man’s thoughts

and feelings acted in perfect harmony

with God’s good and just will. Due to

this, the Christian can recognize the

inherent value in emotions.

This inherent value is still evident today

in the bliss that flows over us as we

view the fiery sun rise over a lush mountaintop.

It is evident in our rising anger

when we hear about kids starving, or a

racist act of physical violence, or any

other injustice. In desiring to define

justice or protect nature, we can see

how our feelings can be derived out of

our values—otherwise known as being

based on some standard. These moments

show emotions at their best, but

the Christian perspective notes that the

world we live in is broken. Brokenness

of the world, therefore, also means the

brokenness of the people of the world.

This brokenness is evident when people

capitalize off of the destruction of

our environment, with no remorse. It

is evident when people justify acts of

hate and oppression, but would detest

the same treatment against themselves.

This brokenness is no surprise for the

Christian because the Bible reminds

them how people turned away from

God, and thus from His perfect design

for everything. Instead, we are left with

the intuition that racism should not exist,

or a parent should give their child

nourishing love.

If you look at the Christian worldview,

then there is an answer on how to

achieve what we believe we should do

through a type of emotional enlightenment.

If we are looking for hope—

especially in light of this broken emotional

reasoning—the Bible provides

it as “...hope [that] does not put us to

shame” (Romans 5:5).

The Bible says that God “will give

[us] a new heart and put a new spirit

in [us],” which addresses the need to

transcend the materialism we see relied

on by Marx (Ezekiel 36:26). Further,

Jesus tells us that “‘unless one is

born again he cannot see the kingdom

of God’”(John 3:3). These metaphysical

statements are difficult to comprehend,

even if one studies the Holy

Scriptures. In fact, Nicodemus—an

educated teacher of the Jewish law

and history—did not even understand

Jesus when he heard this. The understanding

of the Christian perspective

starts with a simple distinction: moral

reform is not enough, and instead God

seeks a change in the posture of our

hearts. In order to fix this brokenness—

where we feel there should be reconciliation,

and there isn’t—we must have

our hearts transformed. Note here that

the use of the word “heart” alludes to

one’s emotions. All people must value

(but not overvalue) and manage

(but not oppress or let run wild) our

emotions in order for renewal of our

hearts and minds to that which is not

broken. This is not something one can

do themselves, just as being born is not

something one can do themselves. So,

the Christian believes that this must

be done by both the individual and

through the work of God.

The emotional enlightenment is thus

experiencing a realignment to God’s

original design. The Christian calls for

a complete paradigm shift, while Marx

simply calls for a social revolution. Our

intuition points us to how there is more

to life than the material, and that there

are actions that should be undertaken.

If this starts with the individual then it

can be taught to those around them in

society as an emotional enlightenment.

Yet it is evident that there are problems

with this: it seems historically impossible

and humanity seems to always

choose corruption. For hope and an

answer, the Christian worldview looks

to the wisdom found in their historically

verified text. It notes that the individual

needs to choose, in free will, to

experience this radical conversion by

the Spirit of God in their innermost

being. This is made possible not because

that human suddenly becomes

“good,” but through the work of Jesus’

life, death, and resurrection. If

we let the old, broken, confused pass

away, the new and beautiful can come.

1. Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir I. Lenin,

and E Czobel. Critique of the Gotha Programme.

New York: International Publishers, 1970.

2. Lewis, C S. The Four Loves, 1960.


Making Sense of Destruction

Justin Ferrugia

Affliction plays a complicated role in

the Christian worldview. We are naturally

predisposed to fear it. Pain, suffering,

and danger elicit some of the

most profound physiological responses

in all animals. Human beings, however,

are unique in our ability to reason

with, deeply understand, and rationally

attempt to avoid affliction in our lives.

The gift we possess to relate rationally

to the world around us magnifies our

ability to deeply understand and be

impacted by our afflictions. Thus, the

magnitude affliction plays in our lives

surpasses that of every other earthly

creature. Affliction, properly understood,

is necessary to the fallen nature

of human beings. It comes then as a

shock when, as Christians, we arrive at

a mandate St. Paul gives in his letter to

the Romans: to “…boast of our afflictions.”

In a journal about the beauty and excitement

of new creation, affliction,

tragedy, and suffering might seem a bit

out of place. What I hope to argue is

that affliction is not only connected to,

but inseparable from, the idea of new

creation. With this in mind, I also hope

to show Christ’s centrality and necessity

in reconciling the pain and justifiable

fear of affliction with the Christian conception

of suffering rooted in the call to

“boast of our afflictions.”

Central to understanding St. Paul’s

message are several axioms. Christians

believe that suffering is an inherent

evil––it is not of God nor was it intended

by God. Like death, it is a consequence

of human beings’ fall. We are

called to end unnecessary suffering in

our lives. Seeking suffering is entirely

out of the question. But the complexity

comes with unavoidable suffering,

unendable suffering. How are we to

understand the suffering for which we

simply seem destined?

When suffering or affliction strikes,

there is a tendency in our culture to

proclaim, perhaps something good will

come of this. This simple statement

has been a rallying cry for the afflicted,

and for good reason. It is the promise

of new creation. Like the phoenix from

the ashes, out of the pain and suffering

of loss or evil emerges the rebirth of

love, community, and determination.

The tendency to look for good sprouting

out of the evil that afflicts us has a deep

theological grounding. Throughout the

history of the Christian faith, the single

most persistent objection to an omnipotent,

omniscient, and omnibenevolent

God is that the existence of such a God

is incompatible with the existence of

suffering. The objection follows the logic

that if a God is all good, He would

want to prevent suffering; if a God is all

knowing, He would know all suffering;

if a God is all powerful, He could prevent

all suffering. The fact that suffering

nevertheless exists causes many to conclude

that such a God cannot exist.

To reconcile what has been called the

“problem of evil” with the existence

of the Christian God, the theological

heavy-hitters of the Middle Ages

proclaimed, in their own words, the

truth that good comes from evil; some

concluded, by extension, that certain

good comes only from evil. St. Thomas

Aquinas, following Augustine, says that,

“If all evil were prevented, much good

would be absent from the universe. . . .

there would be no patience of martyrs

if there were no tyrannical persecution.

Thus Augustine says (Enchiridion 2):

‘Almighty God would in no wise permit

evil to exist in His works, unless He

were so almighty and so good as to produce

good even from evil.’” [1] This is

merely a fragment of what theologians

have to say on this question of evil, but

it encapsulates modern conceptions

quite neatly.

This explanation has satiated many

throughout the centuries. But is it

truly a reconciliation of the central

paradox? Our words of encouragement––perhaps

something good will

come out of this––leave room and indeed

necessitate that we also scorn, or

denounce, our afflictions themselves.

After all, we as rational human beings,

and as Christians, should avoid evil at

all costs. But in his call to “boast of our

afflictions” St. Paul seems to suggest

that evil suffered––as opposed to evil

perpetuated––can have some value.

When viewed in light of St. Thomas’s

explanation, it seems that even

though good can come from affliction,

we should still bemoan our afflictions.

This, however, appears to run completely

counter to The Apostle’s mandate.

There is still a conflict.

This is where I find myself getting

stuck. No matter how much good may

come out of it, how can we account for

the inherently evil suffering we see every

day in our lives and in the lives of

others? Furthermore, even if we do believe

it is possible for goodness or newness

to come from affliction, it would

be naive to suggest it always does. How

are we then to complete the reconciliation?

In attempting to answer this question,

I will turn to the person of St. Pope

John Paul II. His was a life of great affliction.

His mother died when he was

only eight years old. Shortly thereafter,

his brother, who worked as a physician,

contracted and died from scarlet fever.

After the Nazi invasion of Poland, the

future pontiff, born Karol Wojtyła,

suffered a fractured skull after being

hit by a tram. That same year he was

struck by a lorry in a quarry which left

him permanently hunched. When he

turned twenty, Wojtyła’s father died as

well, leaving him the only member of

his family. Forty years later, he reflected


on this, saying, “At twenty, I had already

lost all the people I loved.”

During the Second World War, Wojtyła

entered an underground seminary

to begin studying for the priesthood.

During this process of discernment,

Wojtyła suffered another severe accident

when he was struck by a German

truck. He suffered a severe concussion

but survived. His accident and unlikely

survival cemented his call to the priesthood.

After being elected Pope in October

of 1978, he was famously wounded

by Mehmet Ali Agca who shot him four

times in the abdomen and arm.

Human experiences of affliction are

as individualized as human beings are

themselves, and I do not presume to

apply the former pontiff’s experience

with affliction to all such experiences.

But his combination of theological expertise

and lived experience gave John

Paul II unique insight into affliction in

our lives, which he discussed and examined

in a 1984 apostolic letter entitled

“Salvivici Doloris,” or “Redemptive

Suffering.”

The letter itself is quite lengthy, and I

could not hope to encapsulate the elegance

of the former pontiff’s argument.

He begins by examining the book of

Job to dismantle the concept that suffering

and affliction is always just. Job is

a just man— a servant of God— who is

nevertheless subjected to great affliction

and torture by Satan and at the permission

of God. Satan has assured God

that he could drive Job to such despair

that Job would curse God’s name.

Although readers know that Job is righteous

and therefore not to blame for his

sufferings, near the beginning of the

book, Job’s acquaintances attempt to

convince him that he is the cause for the

suffering he experiences—that his suffering

is just. As John Paul says, “The

opinion expressed by Job’s friends manifests

a conviction also found in the moral

conscience of humanity: the objective

moral order demands punishment

for transgression, sin and crime. From

this point of view, suffering appears as

a ‘justified evil.’” [2] Job and God alike

recognize this is not in fact the case.

The pontiff describes Job challenging

this traditionally-held conception of

evil as a quid pro quo punishment for

sin. John Paul says, “Job however challenges

the truth of the principle that

identifies suffering with punishment for

sin....For he is aware that he has not deserved

such punishment… In the end,

God himself reproves Job’s friends for

their accusations and recognizes that

Job is not guilty. His suffering is the suffering

of someone who is innocent and

it must be accepted as a mystery…” [2]

Job leads us to the central paradox

around which we have been dancing:

the mystery of God allowing the afflicted

innocent. This paradox cannot

be reconciled. That is, it cannot be reconciled

without the ultimate reconciler:

Christ.

Christ is the ultimate afflicted innocent.

Nowhere is this represented better than

by Isaiah in the Old Testament.

Though he was harshly treated,

he submitted

and opened not his mouth;

like a lamb led to the slaughter

or a sheep before the shearers,

he was silent and opened not his

mouth.

Oppressed and condemned, he

was taken away,

and who would have thought any

more of his destiny?

When he was cut off from the

land of the living,

and smitten for the sin of his people,

a grave was assigned him among

the wicked

and a burial place with evildoers,

though he had done no wrong

nor spoken any falsehood.

But the LORD was pleased

to crush him in infirmity.

–– Isaiah 53:7-10 (NAB)

Historically, the Gospels tell us that at

his moment of greatest suffering, Christ

was abandoned by all of his friends.

One of his closest betrayed him, another

denied that he had ever known

him. Those who had once followed him

were now shouting Crucify Him, Crucify

Him. Those who still followed him

were nowhere to be found. Even his

own Father, in his final moments, did

not assist him. Worse, Christians believe

that Jesus always knew his fate. He

knew he would be tortured, scourged,

pierced, and ultimately die on the cross.

He knew his father would alow all this.

Yet, he could tell no one. His whole life,

he bore this fear, sadness, and trepidation

alone, knowing all along he would

die with nothing and no one.

In the humanity of Christ, we see the

pain of affliction. We see Christ in agony,

sweating blood in the Garden of

Gethsemane. We hear his last words as

he cries out in anguish the lamentation

of all afflicted, “Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani”––“My

God, my God, why hast

thou forsaken me.”

Yet we know this is not the end of

Christ’s story. Christ descends into hell,

and, on the third day, He is resurrected

and glorified. Pope John Paul II expresses

the truth of Christ’s crucifixion

when he says, “One can say that with

the Passion of Christ all human suffering

has found itself in a new situation…

In the Cross of Christ not only is the

Redemption accomplished through suffering,

but also human suffering itself

has been redeemed. Christ––without

any fault of his own––took on himself

‘the total evil of sin.’” [2]

Out of the affliction of Christ came

not only His new creation—His resurrection

to the right hand of the Father—but

all people’s new creation—

our restored ability to be sharers in the

beatific vision that is the everlasting love

of God. Not only this, but all suffering is

now somewhat different than it was before

Christ. Before Christ suffered, we

suffered in vain. Affliction was hopeless

and useless. After Christ, the ultimate

afflicted innocent, when we suffer, we

participate in the suffering of Christ. In

suffering, we are now doing something

Godly.

This is why, for Christians, the story

of humanity’s fall and reconciliation

through Christ isn’t just a nice story

that we can feel good about. It is more

complex and nuanced than that––a story

of both anguish and hope––and we

desperately need it to persevere through

the sufferings that are inevitable in the

human condition. If we are to hope in

the beauty and excitement of the newness

of creation––the Biblical promise––we

need Christ, the reconciler. As

John Paul explains, “The mystery of

the Redemption of the world is in an

amazing way rooted in suffering, and

this suffering in turn finds in the mystery

of the Redemption its supreme

and surest point of reference.” [2]

Only with this surest point of reference

in the life and death of Christ Himself

can Christians obey the Apostle Paul’s

commandment to “boast of our afflictions,

knowing that affliction produces

endurance, endurance, proven character,

and proven character, hope” (Romans

5:3-5).

“And hope does not disappoint” (Romans

5:5).

1. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa theologica. Translated

by Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

New York: Benziger Brothers, 1911-1925.

2. John Paul II. “Salvifici Doloris,” The Holy See,

11 February 1984, https://www.vatican.va/

content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1984/

documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris.html.


How Could Immortality Be Good?

Shayley Martin

In books and movies, immortality is

generally a bad thing. We watch characters

strive for it only to discover that

life goes sour if prolonged. Even aside

from practical issues like overpopulation

and resource depletion, there’s

a prevailing idea that human nature

can’t stomach living forever. The end

of a Netflix series called The Good

Place captures this well: the occupants

of paradise become so bored with

the afterlife’s never-ending stream of

pleasures that they rejoice when finally

offered a chance to vanish from

existence. The show concludes that

fleetingness gives life its meaning.

Yet eternal life has always appealed

to us (cf. Ecclesiastes 3:11)––there’s a

reason we study the Epic of Gilgamesh

and chat about advances in cryogenic

technology. We don’t want eternal life,

and yet we do. We see how it could go

wrong, but it fascinates us anyway.

So imagine with me for a minute,

as maybe you have before, an Earth

where we are all immortal. My question

for you is: what would it take to

make that a good thing? What problems

would have to disappear? What

good things would have to appear?

What would need to change? Make a

couple notes if you’d like.

…

I believe everyone is immortal, and

all my life I’ve asked myself the same

question I just asked you: how could

life as we know it become worth living

forever?

What if our bodies couldn’t hurt or

deteriorate?

I’ve imagined a world with no pandemics,

no cancer, no funerals, not

even headaches. We’re all safe and

healthy. But that’s not enough—even

the safe and healthy among us can be

miserable. College students know this

well.

What if we stopped doing bad things?

Many books’ and movies’ discomfort

with immortality stems from the idea

that there’s something wrong with us.

Given forever, we wouldn’t improve

ourselves, but exploit our surroundings

until they became unlivable, fight

each other in endless petty feuds, or

become lazy and bored with the eternity

available to us.

So I’ve often imagined a world where

we all decide to resist our selfish tendencies

and cut out any behavior that

threatens to make living together forever

untenable. We curb our greed

and laziness and spite, and instead we

begin to live in harmony, securing our

collective happiness by having only as

much as we need and not more, being

kind, and not hurting each other. No

more poverty, no more cheating, no

more pollution.

Plenty of outward suffering would

end, but I suspect that each person’s

inner life would become a minefield.

Whenever I wished for more money,

for example, I would scold myself

and find something else to think

about. But if more money were really

important to me, I’d inevitably think

about it again and again, and then I’d

think about the fact that I was thinking

about it. When your main goal is

improving yourself, it’s hard to think

about anything besides… well…

yourself. Spending eternity trying to

distract myself from all the things I

really wanted would be miserable.

What if we lived for others?

I scrapped this focus on bad behavior,

then, and imagined what would

happen if we all started living for our

fellow human beings––if self-centeredness

became the enemy. Instead

of trying to silence the little voices in

our heads that want to make things

easier for ourselves and harder for

others, I imagine that we actively put

others first. Instead of thinking about

our own flaws, we find other human

beings to love and live for.

But what happens when those human

beings disappoint me? How dare

they? I live for them! And here I am,

miserable again.

Living for others sounds lovely, but in

practice, anytime partners get too invested

in each other or parents get too

invested in their children, we caution

them against living entirely for another

person. Living that way forever

would be yet another type of misery.

What if we get all three previous improvements—impervious

bodies, a

virtuous world, and universal love for

others—but none of them is the real

point?

Though I often wish for the three improvements

above, I don’t think even

all three together would make immortality

good. Instead I have to return to

the reason I believe we are immortal:

that God originally designed us for it.

According to the Hebrew Bible, when

God made the first people, He made

them immortal. But since He gave

them free will (Deuteronomy 30:19-

20), they had the option to push Him

away. They did, and that decision

made them and their descendants

both mortal and miserable. The rest

of the Hebrew Bible and then the

New Testament tell how God has

spent our whole history trying to

bring us back to Him, not by taking

away our free will, but by showing us

love and giving us the choice to love

Him in return.

As part of that project, God gave us

back our immortality. He became a

person, let himself be put to death

in our place, and then came back to

life, which opened the same route to

us. In the process, he gave us not only

eternal life, but also the chance to begin

an eternal relationship with Him,

without which eternal life would suck

(2 Corinthians 5:14-19).

Immortality is only a side benefit,

then, of His larger project of reconciliation,

which also has the side benefits

of impervious bodies (Revelation

21:3-4), a virtuous world and universal

love for others.

The reason immortality fascinates us

is because we’re made for it. The reason

it scares us is because we are missing

what will make it good, the only

person who could make living forever

worth it.

The project so far

Even if you don’t think much about

immortality, you might imagine how

the world could improve. Maybe you

even work toward causes that are


Batter My Heart

Shi Wen Yeo

part of your vision, such as promoting

renewable energy, ending poverty,

building an anti-racist society, etc.

You might consider all these good

causes vaguely connected somehow.

Perhaps they would all be helped

along by some larger change, like a

general increase in human decency.

No one knows how to bring about

a larger change that fits the bill, but

nevertheless all the causes all seem to

fit into some larger project, though its

shape is shadowy.

What if God’s project was not confined

to some vague spiritual realm or

dank church building, but was actually

the great capital-P building Project

that simultaneously addresses all the

leaks that we see need fixing? It does,

after all, confer immortality, unhurtable

bodies, virtues, love for each other,

and the chance to hang out with

the inventor of justice, mercy, creativity,

platypi, etc. for all time. What

if we could understand the world’s

problems––today’s problems, big and

small, inside and outside ourselves––

not in terms of all our separate endeavors

to fix them, but in terms of

God’s overarching mission?

And with those rousing words, I’m

going to do my best to stop worrying

about some hazy future eternity. Remind

me, if you see me: immortality

begins now.

The famous English poet John Donne is

said to have been so afraid of and obsessed

about death that he, on multiple occasions,

rehearsed his death by lying still

in his hearse and having someone paint

the dead likeness of him. Indeed, he was

a poet of the English Renaissance, characterised

by his polemic attitudes—in his

youth, he wrote many famous erotic love

poems yet moved to somber sermons in

adulthood, and he even converted from

the “salvation through works” Catholicism

to “faith and works” Anglicanism

to become an important preacher in the

Church of England. Ostensibly, he was

a troubled figure, full of personal vacillations

and characterised by contradictions—not

unlike many Christians today.

Perhaps most striking and memorable

though, is the way that Donne struggles.

Unlike other preachers who presumed

moral superiority over their parishioners,

Donne constantly laid bare his spiritual

vacillations. Like any other Christian, he

struggled with perennial questions — am

I saved? What happens after I die? What

is the relationship between me and God?

The relatable nature of his meditations is

incredibly humanizing and provides important

insights into the life of a Christian.

Donne’s meditations on depravity stand

out most strikingly among the theological

Gordian knots that he struggles to untie

in his poetry. In “Batter My Heart,” one

of his most famous poems of his Holy

Sonnets cycle, he systematically rejects

any notion of the goodness of his own

being and very physically humbles himself

to enter into communion with God.

A witty cynic might interject here with

great skepticism, levying the Nietzchean

criticism that Christianity is for losers

and self-loathers. However, I think that

this has really deep, great implications

for how we view the world. If you have

ever pondered questions of theodicy, asking

questions about why there is evil in

the world, if God exists, or why a good

God would put humans through trials

and tribulations, then Donne offers an

important invitation. His central argument

is this—we as human beings are

so very depraved, down to the very fiber

of our being, that there is absolutely

no good in us to warrant any pleasure

or happiness in the world at all. If not

for God’s grace, we should, by right, be

damned to hell. Yet, it is through the

deeper realisation of our own inherent

depravity and the violent denial of our

own selves, that we are able to access a

higher plane of communion with God.

In other words, only when we are broken

can we be made new.

The poem begins with a spondaic imperative,

“Batter my heart.” The heart

is such a fragile organ, containing what

Renaissance England believed to be the

very essence of a human’s soul and person,

yet Donne opens the poem with

this bold injunction for the tripartite

God to “batter” it. This verb, however,

does not exist in isolation. Rather, it is

but one of many tools that the God has

in his possession, as seen by the litany

of verbs that quickly follows: “knock,

breathe, shine, and seek to mend” and

then “break, blow, burn, and make me

new”. What the speaker is asking of God

here is not simply corrective in nature,

as seen by the escalation from more mild

verbs such as “knock” and “breathe” to

more violent verbs such as “break” and

“burn.”

While in some things God is like a tinkerer,

clearly working towards the edification

of the speaker, as a smith might

“shine” metal, in other instances, His actions

are unclear and seem wanton and

brash. In this we can see the universality

of the sentiment that Donne is trying to

capture—sometimes we cannot understand

why God puts us through trials and

tribulations. Certainly, sometimes God’s

invitation to hardship has a clear motivation

(“suffer by studying hard so you can

become a doctor and help people”), but

sometimes it doesn’t.

In the next quatrain, Donne moves

swiftly onto a new metaphor, one of

a captive town. He likens himself to a

“usurp’d town to another due,” which is

an important metaphor considering the

obsession of Renaissance England with

capture and conquest. His main faculty

of “[r]eason” is “captiv’d” and proves

“weak or untrue.” That the speaker acts

out the “weak[ness]” of “[r]eason” by

the inability to choose a word between

“weak” and “untrue” underscores his

own scatter-mindedness.

Additionally, we can hear a personal

voice ringing throughout these lines, especially

in the moment where he creates

a mid-line break, “[I] labor to admit you,

but oh, to no end.” Note how the exclamation

“but oh” is encapsulated within

two commas which forces the reader to

pause and breathe an exasperated sigh

together with the speaker. The forced

stop created by the commas also creates

a laborious effect, which reinforces the

speaker’s separation from God.

At the end of these two quatrains is

then where we get the volta, which is the

technical word for the moment where

the idea in a sonnet drastically changes.

Here, the volta is signalled by the conjunction

“Yet.” And what follows then is

a very tender declaration of love, sincere

in its unadornedness––“dearly I love

you.” Here is where we see Donne very

quickly move into a confessional mode;

he is determined to win back unity with

God. Here, he brings in the very hallowed

Renaissance institution of marriage

and suggests that he would rather

even forgo the marriage of himself to

God if it means that his relationship with

God can be restored.


The final two lines are perhaps the most

important of this sonnet (and of most

sonnets), since it usually contains the

height of the sonnet’s argument. In this

poem in particular, the final two lines are

constructed chiasmically, which means

that the two “except” clauses surround

the two “never” clauses:

Except you enthrall me, never

shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish

me.

This very visually shows us what it could

look like for God to completely “imprison”

the speaker to the extent that the

speaker has a complete loss of agency,

completely beholden to God to imprison

him, and even “ravish” him. Of course,

now we see why this poem violated so

many religious sensitivities in Renaissance

England given the stringent rituals

in place at the time, but in using this

sexual metaphor, Donne is able to communicate

so powerfully the true extent of

intimacy that he desires with God.

At its heart, this poem is one of paradoxes––the

speaker must be violated in order

to be chaste, divorced in order to be

married, and broken in order to be made

new. And this is precisely the central

invitation of Christanity! Too often

when we think of a new creation, we

fancy God building upon what already

has some goodness in it, and we resent

Him when He takes away what we already

have. But to think of ourselves

as good enough to be built upon already

presumes our own self worth

compared to the surpassing worth of

the Almighty.

As this poem reminds us, it is so important

to sometimes take a step back

and realise just how depraved we are,

how stuck in sin that sometimes it is

necessary for a complete overhaul of

our own life and priorities. This could

mean going through periods of trial

and tribulation in family life, career,

or even just making difficult choices

to do the right thing at all times. But

through this poem we are reminded

of the blessed assurance that we can

cling onto—that just as we are being

tried, day after day, there is a Saviour

who reigns sovereign, who is working

in ineffable ways towards our edification

and sanctification, who is breaking

us to, in Him, make us new.


Called to Create: An Interview with Professor Demetrios Braddock

Raquel Sequeira

Professor Demetrios Braddock specializes

in Hematopathology (diseases

of the blood) at the Yale School

of Medicine, where his lab studies a

group of proteins that are crucial for

the proper development of bones. Loss

of one of these proteins in a rare genetic

disease leads to hard, bone-like

formations in arteries and blood vessels,

resulting in death shortly after

birth. Professor Braddock created a

treatment for this disease by designing

a new protein to replace the lost function.

I spoke to Professor Braddock

about his work—both a scientific and

a Christian vocation of creation. The

following interview has been edited for length

and clarity.

Raquel Sequeira: You work on creating

new therapies for diseases that

have not been targeted previously. I’d

love to hear about how you got into

your research and what your goals are.

Demetrios Braddock: When I was

your age, at the University of Chicago,

I was a Christian. As Christians, in

our training we always wonder, am I

going to lose my faith? I consciously

just said, I’m going to believe in God,

and I’m going to be a good scientist.

And that’s what I’ve tried to do. How

that worked out in my life was that I

was a doctor as well as a scientist, and

a lot of my friends who were committed

Christians went into health care for

the poor. Some of them became surgeons

and went to Africa...but for me,

I felt like I was going to try and do it

as a scientist, and so I taught myself

about therapeutics, and about creating

therapies.

I also paid attention to what I enjoyed

doing. There are a lot of disciplines in

science, and some of them are really

hot, and I did some of those when I

was younger, and I hated it...I think

God calls us to serve him, but he also

causes us to use our personalities to do

that. So, I think that’s the first thing:

you should always listen to who you

are. Listen to your calling, but also listen

to what you enjoy doing…

I came up to Yale 17 years ago, and

this therapy we discovered happened

at about year 12, and it was almost

like Moses in the wilderness. My lab

was effectively running out of money.

But I think God had brought me to

that stage… We were studying this enzyme,

and it was very, very stable, very

well-behaved biochemically. [1] Typically,

enzymes fall apart, and they’re

fragile, and they’re difficult to handle...

And that got me thinking about design

and intelligent design. These enzymes

weren’t evolved by accident: there was

something special about this particular

family. That was my first insight, and

say what you will, whether I’m crazy

or not, I believe that there is a creator

who made this particular family, and

specifically that this enzyme that we

use—the ENPP1––has a very unique

role in biology.

There is this fatal disease in babies—

these babies are born and within the

first week of life, they code and they

stroke, and they have heart attacks,

and by six months, half of them are

dead. And it’s a very traumatic course

for the parents. The therapy to cure

these kids seemed so simple to me.

Once I had the idea—and I had never

done any of this work before, I was

more of a structural biologist, and an

enzymologist—but now I had to do

what we call protein engineering and

protein design.[2] It took about three

or four months, just on my computer,

googling things, and reading papers,

and at the end of that I had a design

for a drug. And that’s the drug that’s

been approved now for humans by European

and US regulators.

But this was kind of a leap, because I

would explain it to people, and they

would be like, “You’re crazy, but I’ll

help you.”

RS: What was it that people thought

was crazy about the idea?

DB: That it would work—that it

would be potent enough to really take

care of the physiological problems that

the kids were facing because it was

such a simple idea. There were people

that are smarter than I am and more

successful, and they said, “I’ll help

you, but don’t be disappointed, we just

don’t know that this will work.”

That’s the thing about somebody who’s

a Christian, and who has that faith,

you have the will and the support, the

spiritual fortitude, to do things that

others wouldn’t do. Because, for you,

for me, it’s not about money, it’s not

about career, it’s about the principle of

the thing. You tend to be more idealistic,

and I think that you have to hold

on to your ideals and be true to your

calling. I felt called to do this, I felt

called to try it.

It ended up working. [3] We were

shocked when we knew how potent

it was. But then there was a series of

obstacles, because we were involved

with a biotech company that was going

to compete with us and patent stuff

around us and take it away. The NIH

[National Institutes of Health] doesn’t

fund this kind of research, because

the NIH’s mission is to fund big medical

problems, and this is a very rare

disease... But there were babies being

born and dying every day with this disease.

So at that point, and by God’s grace,

I met Yossi Schlesinger, the chair of

pharmacology at Yale, and he helped

me raise the money from Wall Street

to start a company. It took two years…

I honestly didn’t think it was going to

work, I thought that my lab would collapse,

and I thought that I wasn’t going

to be successful. And I was okay with

that, but I was not okay with not trying.

I was okay with trying and failing.

I think as Christians, we’re called to a

certain life and we’re called to a certain

vocation and to certain principles,

and we have examples of people that

have done that and failed. And that is

okay as a Christian. I think that gives

you freedom because you’re not held

responsible for your success. That’s

in the hands of God. It’s like in Jeremiah,

he says, “I’m sending you to

the Assyrians, you have to preach to

them the good news. I’m not going to

hold you responsible if they reject you,

but I will hold you responsible if you

don’t preach.” And that, I think, is it

in a nutshell: the calling of all of our

faith...

Nobody expected me, a failing associate

professor pathologist, to be able to

raise 45 million dollars over Christmas

break to start a company, but we did.

It’s a very acute need, because these

parents call me and the company and

they just want this drug because they

see their baby dying. It’s hard to watch

your baby die slowly over six months.

And now that drug is through all of

the tests, we’ve manufactured it, it’s in

bottles, and we’re simply waiting to get

it into humans.

I share that as a way of encouragement,

because I didn’t expect that I

would be able to do that. I couldn’t

have done that without God’s help,

His grace. I think that’s where being

a Christian allows us the freedom, if

you will, to create, to take chances, to

step out on a limb because we’re not

ashamed of failing, because failure is

actually part of our DNA in a way.

And in a sense, we’re all going to fail,

because none of us will attain perfection

in this world. But we’re called to a

sort of sacrificial living.

RS: Thank you so much for sharing

about your faith. I think it’s so hard at

a place like Yale to put that desire for

success on the altar before God. And I

love seeing that as freedom.

I had a couple follow up questions.

First, you talked about playing the

game of NIH funding. You’re in it

with this goal to make the world a

better place and to make people more

healthy, and yet there is this political

or institutional aspect that you have


to work around. How does that shape

your optimism about the field of therapeutic

development?

DB: Personally, I don’t count on NIH

funding, because what I do doesn’t

really fit into their boxes. It’s a game

and you have to get into a certain study

section, they have to be comfortable

with your system, and it has to be a

system that everybody else is interested

in. And you have to be willing to

make slow, incremental progress on a

problem of universally recognized importance.

To do the kind of stuff I did, where

I’m really taking leaps into disease as

a physician because I have an insight

into a therapeutic approach that is

unsupported, it’s not what they do. I

think people knock Wall Street, but

if it weren’t for Wall Street, that drug

would have never been developed. It

would be dead on arrival.

I think we can kid ourselves, if we

think the pure, unadulterated, heavy

science is done by the NIH. It’s as dirty

as any other science, it’s just dirty in a

different way. I think you have to just

follow your instincts. And if you want

to create, as a scientist, you will probably

have to look at other funding.

RS: Is there a limit to how much optimism

we can have about human creation

in science?

DB: I think there are ethical limits to

creating, certainly. Some of these gene

editing approaches are dangerous.

There were a couple trials that were

stopped because it was a gene therapy

approach, and the patients developed

tumors. It’s a little bit tragic, because

you could take those proteins and engineer

them like I did, and give them

as drugs. But instead, they chose to

deliver them as gene therapy agents.

You’ve altered that person’s DNA, and

they have a tumor, and you know that’s

going to be a real obstacle for that patient

going forward. So those trials

have been shut down.

When I was raising money, all they

wanted to hear about was gene therapy.

The fact that I had a protein therapy

approach was almost like, “What,

are you crazy?” As a physician, you

take the Hippocratic oath: First of all,

don’t do harm. So I think you have to

be conservative, and you can be because

there are ways around it right

now.

There are other therapies like spinal

muscular atrophy, where these kids

are in desperate need of a therapy and

the gene therapy works great on those

kids. That’s a different story. I think it’s

a case-by-case basis where you make

the decision: this child is going to die;

it’s better to do something, even at the

risk of causing harm down the road,

potentially.

RS: We’ve been using the word “create.”

It’s not something that I would

have applied to bioengineering and

therapeutics, but I think it’s beautiful

and fitting.

DB: I think God’s called us to be creative,

and He’s called us to care for

the Creation, and to shepherd it, and

to redeem it through our actions and

our thoughts and our lives. That is our

calling. Creativity is this fundamental

aspect of what God’s called us to do.

As a scientist and a physician, I think

that translates very readily into what

we do in the lab on a minute to minute

basis.[4]

RS: I love that. Protein engineering is a

clear example, but I think even a really

crisp experimental design feels creative

to me. It can be the most fundamental

thing, but there’s a beauty there.

DB: Right. And I think that’s because

we recognize beauty. Socrates believed

that you can’t teach truth: it’s inside of

you, and you have to draw it out. [5]

Aristotle believed that you could teach

truth, and that it was hard, but that you

could learn it. [6] I guess I’m more of

a Socratic, Platonic person. We recognize

it when we see beauty and truth,

and we respond to it in our soul. And I

think that’s what God calls us to.

1. An enzyme is a protein that catalyzes one specific

reaction in a biological system.

2. Scientists design proteins using their knowledge

of the substrate (the molecule the protein

binds to) and of proteins with similar function,

as well as computational tools. They can make

these proteins in the lab and then test them in

animals and patients, like a medicinal drug.

3. The results, including a video comparing

treated and untreated animals, were published

in the journal Nature in 2015 (https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10006).

4. In his essay “Loving to Know,” theologian

N.T. Wright also explores the idea of research

science as a creative role. God’s people are called

not only to steward and praise creation, but also

to “a rich vocation of ‘knowing,’ in which the

scientist will relish paradigm-shifting discoveries,

not least those that contradict a priori theory.”

Throughout history, scientists of faith been impelled

by love for God’s creation to rigorous engagement

with their subject of study. (https://

www.firstthings.com/article/2020/02/lovingto-know).

5. See the “Argument from Recollection” in Plato’s

Phaedo (72e-78b).

6. See Aristotle’s Metaphysics.


How (Not) To Renew a City

Amelia Dilworth

The Pruitt-Igoe housing projects sink

into the ground one broken window at

a time, sections of buildings falling in

waves like rows of wounded soldiers

faltering to their knees before collapsing

in the rubble. Smoke rises from the

ground, the same color as the crumbling

gray walls. Apartments lay in the rubble

ripped open like carcasses. Half-exploded

buildings kneel in the remains of their

brothers, awaiting destruction.

This is St. Louis, Missouri. America is

bombing its own city.

In 1972, the US Department of Housing

and Urban Development decided that

Pruitt-Igoe was a failure beyond redemption.

During the building’s final years,

the mostly vacant complex became a site

for drug deals. The few remaining residents

lived in fear of the violent, trashlined

hallways between their apartments

and the elevators. They said the complex

smelled like urine, constantly. Pruitt-Igoe

was unsafe, unsanitary, undesirable; it

was a place of fear.

The state and federal governments created

a monster so terrible it must be destroyed.

But it wasn’t always like this.

The Pruitt-Igoe housing project was built

in 1950, a time after World War II but

still entrenched in racial segregation.

This is the era of Urban Renewal: a desire

to eradicate the crime and disease

of the city, replacing it with beautiful,

healthy new creation. Essentially, city

planners wanted to erase the evidence of

poverty in American cities.

City planners recognized the slums as

“blighted” areas, homes that were not

healthy and fruitful parts of the landscape.

St. Louis sees the scars of poverty

and looks for healing.

The state commissioned the firm Leinweber,

Yamasaki, and Hellmuth to design

a housing project to replace the slums:

the Pruitt-Igoe. The poor, mostly Black,

residents of St. Louis could then leave

the slums, which would be destroyed and

then redeveloped into a business district.

The thirty-three eleven-story buildings

stand out from the urban fabric of St.

Louis; they are built on 57 acres of land

cleared from the middle of ghettos and

slums. Photographs show the modernist

design rising above open brown ground,

surrounded by a hodgepodge of tiny dark

buildings on all sides. The Pruitt-Igoe is

a new future, a new architecture with a

radical perspective on the streets of St.

Louis. It’s bright post-war modernism

amidst a decaying city.

Inside, a crew of maintenance men constantly

clean the Pruitt-Igoe buildings.

The complexes have skip-stop elevators,

which only stop at the glazed internal

galleries on every third floor; the laundry

and storage rooms are located on these

central floors, creating “individual neighborhoods”

and fostering a sense of community

within the complexes. Units have

windows overlooking spacious courtyards;

Pruitt-Igoe is almost a paradise for

the families who first move in.

One tenant described the complex in its

early days as being “like a hotel resort.”

Another called it, “an oasis in the desert.

“All this newness,” she continues,

“I never thought I’d live in that kind of

surrounding.” In the 2011 documentary

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, individuals who

lived in Pruitt-Igoe as children recall fond

memories. One tenant remembers running

through breezeways and stairwells,

saying “it was a place where kids really

had a chance to play hard.” “Pruitt-Igoe

was a safe place for me,” another tenant

said. Growing up surrounded by neighbors,

she felt that “you knew the people

and you were never alone. There’s people

here, there’s light here, there’s life here.”

Residents felt they had escaped the disease

and danger of the slums. Everything

was picture-perfect. For a little while.

No one asked why the poor lived in the

slums. No one asked how a neighborhood

becomes “bad” or “blighted,” how it becomes

unclean, unsafe. No one looked at

the people experiencing poverty.

St. Louis’ city planners, and the proponents

of urban renewal across the nation,

failed to understand that slums are not an

architectural style, but an environment

created by concentrated poverty and racial

oppression. Slums become ugly and

unhealthy only because they bear the

burdens of the ugliest and unhealthiest

societal issues of this country.

From its inception, money influenced

the design of the Pruitt-Igoe. Pressure to

keep costs to a minimum meant all the

buildings were high-rises, and the materials

were the cheapest, worst quality on

the market. It was designed during segregation

and never successfully integrated.

Pruitt-Igoe was designed to house a

higher density than the slums it replaced.

The galleries, intended to be places for

community-building, became dangerous

and dirty. Children used the elevators as

bathrooms.

The Pruitt-Igoe was a new building, but

constructed within the same infrastructure

as the slums it replaced. It was not

a new creation, only an updated facade

for the city’s original sins. Maintenance

would be funded by residents’ rent: but

the Pruitt-Igoe wasn’t designed for a

post-war St. Louis, where the population

would shrink as the wealthy fled to the

suburbs. The only people who lived in

Pruitt-Igoe were those unable to afford

anywhere else. The low-quality construction

quickly failed, the tenants of


Heaven Is a Place on Earth?

Sharla Moody

Pruitt-Igoe became poorer, and as more

and more residents left, these problems

compounded until the complex was the

site of just as much crime and violence as

the slums of twenty years earlier.

The Pruitt-Igoe wasn’t a solution to the

slums—in fact, it didn’t even address the

real problems. The Pruitt-Igoe was built

in the era of urban renewal: an impulse

to replace the landscape of marginalization

without addressing the impacts

of marginalization on poor people of

color, manifesting as a lack of jobs and

inadequate resources. Those in power

chased a self-serving vision of beautiful

new buildings for a bustling post-war city,

without understanding that poverty originates

in injustice. The St. Louis housing

authorities wanted to remove the ugliness

of poverty from the city, but they did not

plan to eradicate poverty itself. The commissioners

of Pruitt-Igoe anticipated a

real need for affordable, quality housing

to accommodate a growing city: yet they

built it over a foundation of marginalization

and oppression.

In the 1970s the city determined that the

cheapest response to the failing Pruitt-Igoe

was demolition and ultimately exploded

the entire project.

Without understanding the factors that

create slum conditions, the city recreated

the same slums they tried to replace,

leaving a scar in the city worse than what

they began with. Humanity attempts to

replace brokenness with beauty, but often

only leaves further brokenness.

During Urban Renewal, city planners

constructed housing projects without

concern for the people who would live

there. They abandoned the new development

without giving residents the

resources to maintain it. Expecting a

physical structure to resolve generational

struggles minimizes and objectifies the

challenges facing the urban poor.

New buildings are not new creation, they

do not heal the city. Architecture bears

the city’s traumas, and buildings are the

body broken under the violence against

its inhabitants. Cities can destroy a physical

building, but the people who lived

there still face the same issues that forced

them to live in a dangerous neighborhood.

The land reflects the lack of basic

respect for other people, regardless of

where they live.

A society that looks for the cheapest

“solutions” to poverty and oppression devalues

its residents. American cities today

are dirty and diseased because they are

cruel to the earth and to its people. Cities

need more than housing: cities need leaders

who can see the impacts of systemic

racism and poverty, leaders who know

and love all the people in their cities. The

sustainable, healthy, beautiful city is the

product of a society that recognizes the

humanity of the marginalized.

Jesus exemplifies this respect for the marginalized,

showing kindness to ethnic

groups and social classes considered outcasts.

It is in making ourselves new, in becoming

more like Him, that we can heal

our cities. God’s desire is for us to live in

a garden, at peace with Him and each

other. Someday he will restore our cities

socially and physically, but until then our

focus should be on the one thing we can

do: allowing ourselves to be renewed, reconciled

to God and thus to each other.

Today, the site of the Pruitt-Igoe has become

overgrown with an urban forest, as

new life blossoms from even the darkest

places.

1, 2. Bristol, Katherine G. “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.”

Accessed May 18, 2021. https://rasmusbroennum.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/1991-bristol-pruitt-igoemyth.pdf.

3, 4, 5. Freidrichs, Chad, Brian Woodman, Jaime

Freidrichs, Jason Henry, Benjamin Balcom, and

Steve Carver. 2012. The Pruitt-Igoe myth. New York:

First Run Features.

The science fiction of the first half of

the twentieth century appears much

more optimistic than what we see today.

This optimistic sci-fi can perhaps

be best exemplified by Hanna-Barbera’s

1962-1963 cartoon The Jetsons,

which imagines what life might be like

in the year 2062. The Jetsons drive a

flying car, live in an ultra modern city

built in Earth’s atmosphere, and exist

as a happy nuclear family.

But the Sixties was certainly not a decade

of pure positivity or sitcom-life

satisfaction: it was a time marked by

civil and racial unrest, the long fight

for justice, the Vietnam War and all

its associated traumas and atrocities,

the assassinations of JFK and MLK

and RFK, and the ever-constant

threat of the nuclear apocalypse

hanging over the

entire world. In many

ways, the world we

inhabit today

is safer, or

at least

might feel safer, to the average American.

But the Sixties was also a decade

of hope—a decade that still believed

there were things to look forward to.

The Jetsons might be a cartoon, but it

displayed a hope that the future would

be a time of unparalleled innovation

with pleasant political and domestic

demeanors. As far-fetched as some

of its predictions may have been, the

show presents a narrative of stability

not despite, but because of, boundless

technological innovation. Even as a

children’s show, The Jetsons posits that

the world can only keep improving,

while underlying structures and institutions

like the nuclear family will remain

unchanged even a hundred years

in the future.

Today, few futures in the popular

imagination seem positive, and certainly

none are as cheery as The Jetsons.

The 2000s and early 2010s saw

a resurgence of interest in dystopias,

which dominated as blockbusters and

became fixtures on bestseller lists. The

great American writer Cormac Mc-

Carthy won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007

for The Road, a novel taking place after

a mass extinction event in the United

States that was adapted into

the nightmarish film of the

same name in 2009. The

famous young adult

series The Hunger

Games imagines

a

world run by bloodthirsty elites and

abject subjection to a totalitarian regime

around eight hundred years in

the future. The critically acclaimed

HBO series Westworld, which began

airing in 2016 but is based off the

1973 Michael Crichton film of the

same name, imagines an amusement

park populated by androids who are

daily murdered, sexually assaulted,

and tortured by wealthy clients who

use the park to fulfill their darkest fantasies.

It is interesting to note that the utopias

and dystopias of the 2000s and 2010s

tend to imagine internal villains: artificial

intelligence with a vengeance,

societies built on corruption, manmade

environmental disasters. These

universes are occupied by bloodlust

and moral depravity. The seeds of destruction

were planted at the genesis

of these worlds, innate to their structures

and maybe even their people.

We no longer pin the blame of every

apocalyptic tale on extraterrestrial

neighbors, and gone is the technological

optimism of the Sixties. Rather, we

expect that whatever does finally come

to wipe us out will come from within

ourselves. None of these works offer

particularly upbeat perspectives of

what life might be like a few decades

or centuries from now. Was the utopian

optimism of the Sixties just wishful

thinking?

…

In some ways all utopian constructions

are wishful thinking––etymologically,

the word is self-contradictory and

indicates that a utopia cannot

ever truly exist. The word

utopia was coined by

Saint Thomas More

in his 1516 book

Utopia and comes

from the

Greek ou,


meaning not, and topos, place––a utopia

is a ou-topos, a not-place. This idea

comes out in many dystopian novels

and films. On the surface, the world

appears perfect, until some secretive,

structural evil comes to light. For example,

Lois Lowry’s The Giver, a staple

on middle school reading lists across

the country, focuses on the necessity

of memory in preventing moral catastrophe.

It features a peaceful society

where every aspect of life is well-ordered.

Later in the novel, the protagonist

learns that people are systemically

euthanized in the society when

they are no longer useful or consume

too many resources. This concept of

the fundamental impossibility of perfection

isn’t just a twentieth century

doubt, though. The Renaissance poet

and thinker John Milton raised it in

his biblical epic Paradise Lost in 1667.

The poem traces Satan’s fall from

Heaven and the temptations and first

sins of Adam and Eve. In Book IV of

the poem, Satan, arguably the poem’s

protagonist, contemplates Adam and

Eve’s contentment in Eden and wonders,

Forbidden them to taste: knowledge

forbidden?

Suspicious, reasonless. Why

should their Lord

Envy them that? Can it be sin

to know,

Can it be death? And do they

only stand

By ignorance, is that their happy

state,

The proof of their obedience

and their faith? (4.515-520)

Here, Milton implies that even in

Eden, a place that was definitionally

perfect, something was deeply wrong

with the universe. If Eden could only

be maintained as heaven on earth

through ignorance of evil, then evil

still existed. Satan asserts that the perfection

of Eden is simply an illusion

to Adam and Eve. If they knew the

reality of the hell that opened when

Satan rebelled against God, if they

knew their serpentine interlocutor was

actually the crowned prince of all demons,

if they knew they might one day

have the capacity of death, they––and

Eden––would no longer be perfect.

These things all exist without them

knowing, and their mere ignorance

provides them with the facade of happy

perfection. And, as in contemporary

dystopias, Milton depicts figures

in Paradise Lost with inherent fundamental

flaws: the angel-turned-demon

who loves the gold streets more than

God, the desire to know evil constantly

present in Adam and Eve. Satan might

be the instigator of the fall, but all the

pieces that made it possible were there

before, waiting to be put together.

This seems to be the root of the utopia/dystopia

problem. We all have

this nagging voice: “Why shouldn’t I

do [insert bad thing] if I benefit from

it?” The best people are good at suppressing

this voice. The worst of us are

prone to talking to it like a best friend.

Some practices seem bent on bringing

this voice into the public sphere, better

at encouraging us to give into every

whim, better at diverting the outcomes

of our filthiest desires away from ourselves

to provide some moral distance.

Is it any wonder that we face a looming

climate crisis after decades of luxurious

living? As much as we might want

to be good people, we can never really

cast out that voice, only try to quell it.

As we reach for more perfect worlds,

our capacity for twisting them into

hellscapes never empties. The philosopher

G.K. Chesterton once wrote,

“Certain new theologians dispute

original sin, which is the only part of

Christian theology which can really be

proved.” Looking at the boundless human

appetite for destruction and my

own frequent, conscious decisions to

do bad over good, Chesterton’s thesis

seems indisputable.

It might seem ridiculous then to suggest

that we should, or even can,

continue to strive for goodness in our

worlds and in ourselves. Why not give

into our basest temptations? If the

higher we rise the harder we fall, why

bother at all?

The nihilism and disillusionment of

our present time is not without reason.

Deep doubt of institutions and

systems is understandable, even merited,

after the abuse scandals that have

rocked the Catholic Church and the

Boy Scouts, after the recent appearance

of extremism and unbridgeable

division in democratic political systems,

after the industrialization that

produced modern wealth and luxury

has forecasted climate destruction.

It’s only natural for popular culture

to produce media that places these

doubts as failures in the bedrock upon

which the world was built. Doubts do

not, however, negate the chance for

good to come, particularly in individual

actions. Literature, history, and

folklore through the ages is crowded

with stories of one just man, one act of

righteousness, being enough to change

the course of history.

While imagining myself in a similar

position might be fantasy, I can push

against the narrative of hopelessness

that so dominates today if I acknowledge

my own agency, even if infinitesimal

depending on the situation, and

act where I can to do good. When every

intention and thought of mankind

was evil, Noah was righteous.


Searching for the Right Shade of Green

Ben Colón-Emeric

Everywhere along the paths of Trail Wood

wildness seems near at hand. But nowhere

else do we feel so remote from the

world as here beside this woodland brook

as it traces its serpentine course among

the mosses and ferns and trees. So wild

does this setting seem that one August

day I even brought along an aluminum

pie tin and at the little gravel bar above

the ford panned for gold.

– Edwin Way Teale, “A Naturalist

Buys an Old Farm”

Naturalist Edwin Way Teale wrote

these words to describe a small wetland

area now known as Hampton-Teale

wetland. This lovely prehistoric wetland

was the “center of interest”

to him in a plot of land he had purchased

for its loveliness and naturalness.

There was just one problem: the

wetland was not quite as he thought.

What began as a meadow was transformed

into a pond by a small colonial

dam. The metamorphosis to a shallow

wetland was completed by railroad

construction that filled the pond with

sediment. The pristine “little gravel

bar” where he panned for gold was,

in fact, composed of waste from railroad

excavations and largely filled with

cinder and coal. Hampton-Teale wetland

demonstrates a problem: “naturalness”

can be a tricky framework

for evaluating ecosystems. As Thorson

and Harris, the geologists who investigated

the wetland put it, “Which is

more important? Our intangible aesthetic

perceptions, or the quantitative

(but reductionist) measures we attempt

to legislate and use?” [1]

Does a wetland created inadvertently

by humans count as part of creation?

Thorson and Harris conclude that

the impossibility of consistently using

“naturalness” or “originality” to determine

the value of a site means that

wetlands, and by extension all ecosys-

tems, should be conserved for the ecological

values they provide. “They must

be conserved for the right reason.” [1]

Who created Hampton-Teale wetland

is thus irrelevant; its value stems from

its inherent nature, not from its creator.

For an example of what this looks like,

consider the 2020 paper “Cascading

social-ecological costs and benefits

triggered by a recovering keystone

predator” by Gregr et al. The authors

examine the ecological and economic

effects of recovering populations of

sea otters in the North Pacific. Sea otter

presence, they found, increases total

ecosystem biomass by 37%, which

in turn provides an economic benefit

of around 53.6 million Canadian dollars

from a mixture of fishing, carbon

sequestration, and ecotourism. [2]

This paper is an admirable demonstration

of how to measure ecosystem

services to quantitatively drive conservation

priorities, but it suggests a problem.

Sea otters are an incredibly easy

species to justify conserving as they are

both a keystone species and a highly

adorable, charismatic species. The fact

that this paper puts an economic and

ecological “value” on the sea otter suggests

that this could be done for other

species, creating a potential problem.

Once you start placing values on creation,

what happens when some parts

of creation aren’t as valuable?

As species are driven to extinction by

human activities, a global biodiversity

crisis has emerged. Surprisingly, however,

a 2013 meta-analysis by Vellend

et al. found that while global biodiversity

may be in decline, local biodiversity

is usually not. The authors

examined data from over 16,000 plots

in hundreds of studies worldwide and

found that in most areas, local biodiversity

is not in decline. [3]

The loss of biodiversity on a global

level is explained by homogenization

of habitats created by the replacement

of endemic species with exotics.

To further complicate matters, they

also found that even areas that do lose

species can lose up to 20% of their

diversity before there are any effects

on ecosystem function. [3] If a large

number of species have negligible effects

on total ecosystem function, how

can we justify their conservation from

an empirical perspective?

Intuitively, it feels right to value the

originality of a species, protecting the

original inhabitants of an ecosystem

from exotic or invasive species that do

not naturally belong there. Unfortunately,

invasive species sometimes provide

measurable benefits to ecosystem

functions. A 2018 meta-analysis by

Davidson et al. found that some invasive

plant species actually increase key

services in coastal wetlands. This effect

was most pronounced in saltmarshes

and mangroves, where invasion by

functionally similar species caused an

increase in soil carbon and plant biomass.

[4] The former is a key ecosystem

service while the latter is an indicator

of ecosystem health.

Plants are not the only invasive species

providing aid to ailing saltmarshes;

some animals are getting in on the act

as well. Saltmarshes on Cape Cod are

under serious threat from herbivorous

crabs, particularly Sesarna reticulatum.

The natural predators of these

crabs have been severely depleted by

human overexploitation, allowing populations

of these herbivorous crabs to

grow unchecked and ravage salt marsh

plants. The solution to this problem is

being provided by an opportunistic invader.

Carcinus maenas is a species of invasive

crab that preys on smaller crustaceans.

The arrival of Carcinus maenas

has provided some much-needed top-

Figure 1. Gregr et al. What sea otter conservation takes away in

terms of direct catch is more than made up for by the secondary

economic benefits.

Figure 2. Vellend et al. Most sites saw no net decrease in biodiversity.

The only drivers that decreased biodiversity were climate

change, pollution, and invasion. When a species vanishes without a

trace, what is really lost?


down control on Sesarna reticulatum.

This promotes increased growth in

marsh plants, speeding up the recovery

of this ecosystem. Human impacts

have left the ecosystem in desperate

need of predators and an invasive species

has filled the hole.

Carcinus maenas is promoting ecosystem

recovery; does it really matter that it

didn’t originate in that ecosystem?

Maybe the right way to preserve originality

is to focus on maintaining the

originality of the ecosystem as a whole

rather than the individual species that

make it up. And so we return to the

original problem of Hampton-Teale

Wetland’s unnatural history. Edwin

Way Teale’s inability to distinguish between

an ancient pond and the manmade

collateral damage of railroad

construction demonstrates the impossibility

of using ecosystem originality

as a universal conservation framework.

It seems that either way we turn, we

encounter problems. Ecosystem and

species originality, or “naturalness”,

fails because it is not aligned with the

needs of the environment in general

and humans in particular. Measuring

ecosystem services fails because it focuses

exclusively on the effects of an

ecosystem without taking into account

the reasons why an ecosystem or species

may be valuable as an end rather

than as a means. The right conservation

system needs to take what is best

from both ideas. Hampton-Teale Wetland

is not less valuable for being artificial.

Saltmarshes filled with invasive

weeds are not more valuable because

3. Davidson et al. As the original wetland plants die (fig a), invasive species are replacing them

(fig b). But if the new species fulfill the same function, does the replacement matter?

they carry a higher concentration of

carbon in their soil. We cannot treasure

an ecosystem based on what we

perceive about its originality or based

on what we can measurably get out of

it; we must treasure each ecosystem

because we believe that its very existence

carries value.

Evaluating our previous problematic

examples with this framework yields

a way forward. Hampton-Teale Wetland

may not be in the state it occupied

before humans came, but the

combination of human impacts and

natural recovery have produced a

beautiful wetland worth conserving.

Invasive plants in American saltmarshes

may provide important benefits to

carbon storage, but the species native

to that ecosystem are inherently worth

protecting. Because we have the ability

to prevent the death of rare species

from competitive exclusion, our conservation

priorities should be aligned

in that direction. The saltmarshes of

Cape Cod are in desperate need of a

predator to fill a niche left open by human

overexploitation. Carcinus maenas

may not be natural, but until there

are natural predators to compete with

it, it fulfills a key function. The most

important conservation objective for

that ecosystem should be the reduction

of human impacts on native predator

species, so that Carcinus maenas is no

longer necessary for promoting ecosystem

recovery.

The way is difficult, and there is no

comprehensive guide to perfect prioritization.

But the system by which we

evaluate conservation must be based

on love. When you approach conservation

from a position of love, you approach

it taking everything into consideration

with the essential goal of being

part of creation, rather than extracting

benefits from it. Stewardship requires

respect for creation as creation.

1. Thorson, Robert, Harris, Sandra. “How ‘Natural’

are inland wetlands? an example from the trail

wood audubon sanctuary in Connecticut, USA.”

Environmental Management 15 (1991): 675–687.

https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02589626.

2. Gregr, Edward J., Villy Christensen, Linda

Nichol, Rebecca G. Martone, Russell W. Markel,

Jane C. Watson, Christopher D. G. Harley, et al.

“Cascading Social-Ecological Costs and Benefits

Triggered by a Recovering Keystone Predator.”

Science 368, no. 6496 (2020): 1243-47. https://

doi.org/doi:10.1126/science.aay5342.

3. Vellend, Mark, Lander Baeten, Isla H. Myers-Smith,

Sarah C. Elmendorf, Robin Beauséjour,

Carissa D. Brown, Pieter De Frenne, Kris

Verheyen, and Sonja Wipf. “Global Meta-Analysis

Reveals No Net Change in Local-Scale

Plant Biodiversity over Time.” Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 48

(2013): 19456-59. https://doi.org/10.1073/

pnas.1312779110. https://www.pnas.org/

content/pnas/110/48/19456.full.pdf.

4. Davidson, Ian C., Grace M. Cott, John

L. Devaney, and Christina Simkanin. “Differential

Effects of Biological Invasions on

Coastal Blue Carbon: A Global Review and

Meta-Analysis.” Global Change Biology 24, no.

11 (2018): 5218-30. https://doi.org/https://

doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14426. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/

gcb.14426.


“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it

springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

Isaiah 43:19

λ ο γ ο ς

New Creation

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