Repair or Replace (and Rejoice)

Mountain Weather to Baby Bumps and Colloquium Updates to Book Insights

Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!

Updates

There’s nothing like several days of snow and sleet in May to remind you that you live in the mountains! It’s still pretty cold here in Leadville, although the frequency of warm days is trending up. People often forget how fickle weather can be, which makes assessing claims about climate change and superstorms so hard: radical variation and confirmation bias. People are also not naturally good statisticians.

Let me make a quick plug for our Abbey colloquiums this year:

• C.S. Lewis on Imagination, Poetic Knowledge, and Spiritual Formation with Dr. Zach Howard and Dr. Betsy Howard (Fri. 5/23 & Sat. 5/24) Registration Link

• Augustine’s Confessions with Dr. Ian Clary (Fri. 6/13 & Sat. 6/14) Registration TBD

• The Sacred Rights of Conscience: The Development of Religious Liberty in America, 1610-1835 with Dr. Mark Hall (Fri. 9/26 & Sat. 9/27) Registration TBD

Our first colloquium is coming up in just a few weeks. Let me know if you’re thinking about joining us for it!

I’m facing a dilemma that many people confront in their lives: repair or replace a vehicle? Vehicles often feel like an unpredictable money pit subject to the luck of the draw. The power steering on our truck has gone out, and the problem seems to require replacing the entire rack and pinion assembly, not a cheap fix! Fortunately, the truck is drivable, just more difficult to handle.

So, is it worth spending $1700 to fix up a nearly 20-year-old beater? Or should we put that towards a replacement vehicle that is newer and much less beat up? If you happen to have a good rule of thumb on deciding whether to repair or to replace, I’m all ears.

On a much brighter note, I’m happy to announce that we are expecting another Mueller baby this fall! It’s been over four years since our last, so we are definitely restarting the clock here. But we’re excited to welcome a sixth child! The kids are all looking forward to having a new sibling – and that by itself almost makes it worth it for Kathryn. This will be our first baby in the mountains, so we have to navigate a slightly different environment (including driving over a pass to get to the hospital).

So far everything looks good. We would appreciate your prayers over the summer for the baby’s health and for Kathryn’s energy as we go through our busy season at The Abbey and prepare for the new arrival.

Writing

I’m getting back in my writing rhythm after traveling the past couple weeks. My most productive setting remains sitting at a table in Taco Bell with a caffeinated drink. I am almost never interrupted (including by myself to work on various house projects or to break up children’s squabbles), and only coming with my writing and no computers helps me focus on the task at hand rather than on dozens of other tasks.

Over the past week, I had two pieces come out in The Daily Economy:

• Cultivating Virtue Through Business

• Klaus Schwab’s Departure Could Herald a New Spontaneous Global Order

I also submitted an Explainer for review last week and I’m finishing up a book review (see below). Yet every time I think I’m getting on top of my writing projects, new ones emerge. I have a rough draft of another Explainer to work out, and I have what started as a short piece that may turn into two or three pieces – one of which might be much longer. And I still need to put the academic piece about philosophical and technical economics to bed.

I suppose that’s just how a writing job works – ideas and prompts in, pieces out, more ideas and prompts in.

Bookshelf

I just finished a book by Catholic philosopher Michael Pakaluk, Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel. Pakaluk has lively and clear prose. His analysis sheds an interesting light on the gospel. Here are a few things that particularly stood out to me:

Pakaluk argues that the fact that Matthew was a tax collector is significant. We can expect Matthew to be much more familiar with money, wages, and accounts than the other disciples. If Matthew was a reasonably good tax collector, which context seems to indicate, we can expect his professional training and knowledge to shape his account of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry. The author argues that the Gospel of Matthew can be understood as two major parts: the crediting and the debiting of salvation by Jesus Christ….

Pakaluk argues that Christians have different kinds of debt obligations to Christ because of the services Christ provided to them. Christians have a “debt of justice” due to “the savior’s rescue,” a “debt of love” due to the “mode” of that rescue, and a “debt of emulation or zeal” as a result of Christ’s “condescension.”

The first debt of justice relates to the fact that Christians are “bought” or “ransomed” from sin and death. A legal payment has been made on their behalf. It is why the Apostle Paul says that “we are not our own,” because we were “bought with a price.” This debt of justice tends to be the center piece of Christian theology. But Pakaluk says we have other kinds of debts.

Not only do we have a formal or legal obligation to obey God and do what is right, the extremity of how Christ chose to suffer for our redemption demands an emotional or personal response – not only to obey God in externals, but to love him with our inner being. Not loving God in our mind and heart betrays or defaults on this debt that the extremity of Christ’s loving sacrifice places on us.

Finally, the debt of emulation or zeal arises from gratitude and a sense of reciprocity for Christ’s condescension towards us. It’s a desire, or even duty, to “pass on” what we have received. It’s a living out of Jesus’ words that if he has washed the disciples’ feet, his disciples should go and wash others’ feet….

Bankers, especially, highlight many traits followers of Christ ought to have: “a spotless reputation for honest,” “accurate assessment of value,” “venture capitalists,” and “trusted agents and intermediaries.” The banker’s profession was fundamentally oriented towards (monetary) value. This included:

• Acquiring value

• Conserving value

• Growing value

• Assessing value

• Trading for value

Furthermore, the Sermon the Mount abounds with tradeoffs, or literally trades. Persecution, hunger and thirst for justice, mourning, poverty of spirit, all exchanged for something better, for the kingdom of God. As the author of Hebrews writes,

‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance…. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.”

And of Moses the author of Hebrews writes:

‘By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.’

I recommend Be Good Bankers for the excellent introductory essay and as an interesting translation and brief commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.

Reflection

I’ve been struck this week by how much of life consists of waiting (ideally with patience!). Of course, we have our daily demands of work, chores, and caring for children. But we also expect many things: travel, visits, opportunities, vacations, and events. I make a lot of plans which means that I am more aware than most of things happening in a week, a month, three months, six months, and beyond. Yet I often have a hard time connecting the future with the present well.

I tend to swing from orienting my life and actions too much towards the future to orienting them too little towards the future. The trick seems to be living with tension between focusing on the present versus focusing on the future.

Part of this process involves not overlooking people and relationships when planning and executing on activities, events, and other goals. It also reminds me of why God tells us to commit our plans to Him. This is key to living without debilitating fear or anxiety. Rejection or negative feedback sit heavy with me, especially when I lose sight of the justifier and judge of my life and my soul. It takes practice, more than willpower, to orient our hope and our contentment towards the Lord rather than towards the world around us.

Game Corner

Last night I played a game with my boys called G. I. JOE: Battle for the Arctic Circle. The game is produced by the same company that manufacturers Axis and Allies. It’s a war game that involves buying planes, ships, troops, and armored vehicles. There are two teams made up of four factions – so it is easy to play with two, three, or four players.

Axis and Allies, for those who don’t know, is a complicated game that takes upwards of six hours to play through. The creators of this game successfully simplified and shortened the dynamics of Axis and Allies so that you can play it in under two hours. Obviously, some of the nuance of the longer game is lost, but it still has many similar strategic elements and works well if you don’t have a whole day or want to spend most nights of a week playing a single game.

Game-playing provides an opportunity to work on one’s patience and one’s graciousness. Young boys, especially, are quite eager to play and win. I had to remind Teddy about the importance of learning to wait patiently during a different game earlier this week. But the most difficult lesson (which I still need to master) is how to lose graciously. Combat games are especially susceptible to fits of anger or outrage when dice rolls and battles don’t go your way.

I suppose in some ways game-playing is an individualized microcosm of athletic competitions. Sports teach you a lot about winning, losing, and working hard. In our current season, the Muellers are focusing more on character refinement through board games.

Have a great rest of your week!