The Galli Report: 08.27.21

Impurity was not what you think it was. Who are the least vaccinated? The non-solution to climate change. The perfect power nap. The golden ratio.

Impurity Wasn’t About Sin
Here is an interesting piece for all you New Testament scholars—amateur or professional. It’s a longish review of Matthew Thiessen’s Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Baker Academic), Here’s an excerpt that might whet your appetite to read the whole thing:

Thiessen breaks down some key mischaracterizations–e.g., the notion that impurity was synonymous with sin. As he shows, one who followed the law carefully would necessarily do things that would involve becoming unclean. For instance, if your parents died, you had to bury them. Yet in doing so you contracted impurity. True, impurity is associated with sin and sin causes impurity. But here is a crucial point: an impure person was not always unclean because of sin. As Thiessen goes on to show, a person who gave birth would have been impure. Yet it was certainly not sinful per se to have children. In fact, God had commanded it – “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28; 8:17; 9:1, 7; 35:11)….

… Thiessen highlights the inner logic that appears to inform the purity laws: “in Jewish thinking ritual impurities represent the forces of death” (p. 16). Corpses, disease, irregular flows of blood–these things involved contagious impurity. Touch them and you would be rendered “unclean.” While we cannot be sure that all Jews necessarily made the connection between death and impurity, there is plenty of evidence to suggest many did. Ritual impurity, then, is associated with death.

Which opens up all sorts of interesting things to say theologically about Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The Least Vaccinated
Another myth about evangelicals needs to be busted:

One of the primary dimensions that news outlets seem to be focusing on is religion. The headlines are published nearly weekly—evangelical Christians are the ones who are the most reluctant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Yet, when I review the data from a survey that was conducted on May 11, 2021 that was administered by Data for Progress, I don’t find a lot of evidence that evangelicals are the ones lagging behind. In fact, I find that those without any religious affiliation were the least likely to have received at least one dose of any COVID-19 vaccine.

Political scientest Ryan Burge details the finding here.

The Non-Solution to Climate Change
Here’s a different take on solving global warming:

We are at “code red for humanity” on climate change. In its first major study since 2013, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed a global scientific consensus that humans are primarily responsible for causing climate change, with consequences that may be next to impossible to reverse. The IPCC is clear that things are getting worse. Under all scenarios, the Earth’s temperature will have risen 1.5 C this century by 2040, if not sooner. Such an increase creates significant challenges, threatening millions of people living in coastal areas around the world. As the global community prepares to meet for COP26 in Glasgow this November, sharp attention will be directed towards what can be done to urgently reach net zero by the middle of this century.

While the data is new and clearer than ever, the approach is old and familiar. UN Secretary General António Guterres argued that “we can avert climate catastrophe” if the world works together with “no time for delay and no room for excuses.” Such statements are commonplace about climate change: namely, that it is a problem that can be solved. If only emissions were reduced or better mitigations like flood defenses or green technology were in place, then climate change will trouble us no more. I call this an end-state solution, as it claims that we can achieve a stable state of perfect environmental harmony if only we adopt the right solution to this problem. Such thinking drives calls for actions that will, as Guterres says, “avert” and avoid any future catastrophe. The only problem is, there is no end-state solution to climate change….

We need to reconceive sustainability. Too often “sustainable” is used to mean a permanent state of affairs, whereby our approach to climate change can permanently bring about a “happy ever after” without further change. Instead, we need to introduce the concept of impermanent sustainability for our endangered world. We can no more stop the climate from changing than we can the planet from turning. We must learn to live in an ever-changing environment where we aim to reduce our exposure to the risk of catastrophe, but without believing it is in our power to forever prevent it from happening if only a global cap on emissions is agreed.

If you’re interested in this argument, check out “The fantasy of sustainability: There’s no permanent solution to climate change.”

The Perfect Power Nap
I beg to differ with the article “Here’s what NASA says is the perfect length for a power nap.” Read the article to find out what NASA says. Here’s what Mark Galli says: It depends on age.  When I was in my twenties and thirties, I could be refreshed in 12 minutes. Never had to set a timer or alarm. I’d just lay on the floor, fall asleep, and wake up in 12 minutes. Now that I’m in my sixties, I lay down and I automatically wake up in 25 minutes. Well, except those times that I sleep an hour. Never happened in my twenties. Happens once in a while now!

The Golden Ratio
I’ve really gotten into drawing in my retirement, and there is this little secret to getting proportions right in a typical human face: The Golden Ratio. Naturally, not all faces are typical, but it is surprising how many are, and even when a face is not, the ratio is a good place to start thinking about how to draw a face. I never knew about it. To me, it suggests a Designer behind the design of the human being. This video explains the idea. It’s slow going at first, but after you get the Ingrid Bergman and Michelangelo examples, you can skip to 5:10 and see how it works itself out in great art across the ages.

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli