Invictus…and the Gospel– the absurdity of forgiveness

              After what has been a very hectic past few weeks and indeed months, I have managed to find my way back to the blogosphere. Since I’ve been back stateside from my studies at St Andrews, my time has been consumed with unpacking, preparing for my upcoming spring semester at Vanderbilt, and otherwise settling matters that have arise in my absence. Though my writing has as of late been sparse, I have certainly had my share of visits to the movie theatre within the past week (two visits, to be exact, which for me, is quite a lot considering that I view maybe six movies in the theatre per year). Last night I saw Invictus. Other than being an all-around well-made film (directed by Clint Eastwood and starred by Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon), it was powerful, inspiring, and otherwise thoroughly thought-provoking.

            As a brief synopsis, Invictus is centred in the struggles of a South Africa in the early 1990’s that is fighting to overcome the destructive division of apartheid. The recently elected president, Nelson Mandela, inherits the unenviable role of leading a nation that is struggling to find hope and direction in a post-apartheid world. Mandela must lead a country that is torn by mistrust and hatred—not the least of which is directed towards Mandela himself, the first black president of a nation where power and privilege had previously been in the hands of whites. Essentially, it is a struggle that goes to the core of the human heart—a struggle that embodies issues of identity, difference, and common humanity. And in order to address the task of unifying a nation, Mandela goes to what lies at the heart of the nation—rugby. For South African blacks under apartheid, the South African national rugby team, the Springboks, had been the symbol of white oppression. The Springboks were comprised predominantly of white players, with only one black player; furthermore, rugby itself was predominantly a white person’s sport while black South Africans played soccer instead. Thus given its symbolic significance, whenever the Springboks played any nation, white South Africans always pulled for South Africa and black South Africans pulled for whoever the Springboks were playing against. When Mandela was elected as president, black South Africans were eager that the Springboks—this symbol of white oppression—be disbanded. However, rather than take what would be the easy way out, the way of the wronged acting in revenge, Mandela chose to maintain the Springboks—including their team symbol, colors, and players—as the national rugby team of South Africa; to have done otherwise would have been to take away what white South Africans loved and thus to have further isolated blacks and whites. As time progresses and as South Africa comes into the running for the World Cup, blacks and whites become united under this one goal of victory, of a victory that would symbolize a new South Africa, a nation that is one.

The Enacted Gospel

            As I watched and later reflected upon this powerful film, two thoughts kept coming to my mind. First, I was struck by the starkly real, if verbally elusive, expression of the gospel embodied in this entire story. Here in this story is the gospel enacted; perhaps one could even refer to this as theology expressed in non-theological terms, and it is all the more powerful because of it. This movie would not typically be called a “Christian film”—there were no references to Jesus, no mention of the Scriptures, and indeed there was a repeated reference to “the gods, wherever they may be.” Yet this story is so exceedingly full of Christ! It embodies that which Christ came to give and to show—the forgiveness and love that lead to new life. Prior to assuming office, Mandela had been locked in a tiny prison cell for nearly 30 years; his crime? Largely, being black! And what does he do when he is released and assumes a position of power? He could have easily used his power to get revenge upon the whites who hated him and who had stolen so many precious years from his life. But he does not do this; he chooses the path of reconciliation, the path that only comes by forgiveness and loving the other.

            Furthermore, the division of blacks and whites in apartheid South Africa carries with it the undertones of and hence hearkens us back to a different division that the Apostle Paul confronted in his own day—the division of Jews and Gentiles. Just as this latter division was overcome by the Gospel of King Jesus through whom all find a place in God’s one covenant family, so too the division of blacks and whites was overcome by the Gospel of the crucified Jesus crowned King on the cross. This is the Gospel of forgiveness, the Gospel that defies every natural human inclination that screams for revenge, the Gospel that is the anti-sacrifice—the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, the Gospel that ends the vicious cycle of violence and opens up for a us a new way of existence. This is the Way of the Kingdom, the way of peace that comes through a love that does not hate the other but rather a love the fully identifies with the other and thus a love that knows no enemies. This is the most powerful love, the love that overcomes hatred by overabundance of love. This is the love that is nature of our God and hence is the nature of Reality itself.

A Non-theological Theology

            But what does all of this mean? I actually don’t think a “Christian” movie could deliver a message as powerfully as did this movie. I’m not trying to knock Christian movies here—I’m sure that there are some well-made Christian movies out there that embody a powerful message; however, all too often “Christian” movies end up being cheesy. Besides, the only people that would go to see such movies would be Christians, and at this point, the universal message of the gospel’s new life becomes enclosed upon itself. And what is true for Christian movies is surely also true for Christian theology. It seems to me that one of Christian theology’s greatest challenges today is being able to communicate the Gospel in what is largely a secular and post-Christian culture. This likely requires a new way of speaking—nearly the speaking of theological truths in non-theological language. (A good example of this in theological writings that I have found can be encountered in the writings of Thomas Merton). Such a way of speaking is beyond relevant; it is the truth that we recognize every day though usually don’t state in explicitly theological language. In this way of speaking, one might be able to say that everything is secular, but it would actually be the case to say that everything is now sacred. This is actually not really a “new” way of speaking as much as it is the recognition of the way in which the message itself was borne. The liberation enacted by Jesus and proclaimed by Paul and the other apostles was not a set of systematic theological doctrines; rather, it was a contextually and hence historically, grounded expression of a new way of being that turned reality as it was known at that time upon its head.

            Sometimes people want to draw a distinction between the “Jesus of History” and the “Christ of Faith,” arguing that the former was a great moral teacher while the latter was the crucified and resurrected Christ. In fact, it seems that we need not draw such a sharp distinction. The gospel writers present Jesus’ life and ministry as continuous with the events of the cross; in fact, it would make sense to see Jesus’ crucifixion as the embodiment of his own teachings on loving the other, turning the cheek, praying for the enemy, and forgiving those who curse us. If it’s true that great leaders lead by example (as Mandela states), then Jesus was a great leader indeed, embodying his own moral teaching completely—to the point of a bloody death and even in the midst of this uttering those words, “Father forgive them, for they known not what they do.”

An Offensive Absurdity

            If we are honest, the morality enacted by Jesus is absolutely absurd. It defies any and every natural human inclination that we have—inclinations that say we must have revenge and punishment for wrongs. But what we don’t realize is that this revenge upon the other actually destroys ourselves—this is the truth that God had to come show us, enacted in his own flesh. Indeed, the fully enacted morality of Jesus even defies our concepts of justice; humans naturally think that the justice of Divinity is punishment, because this is how our sense of human justice works. But here is the case where we must let our human terms be defined by the divine; when we look to the cross for the justice of God, we do not find an angry God who is bent on punishing; rather, we come face to face with the crucified God who is nothing but pure love. An absurdity. An offensive absurdity. But therein lies its power.

            It is true that many people find this kind of morality offensive—a justice that essentially consists of forgiveness, mercy, and love? The black South Africans were repeatedly offended by Mandela’s forgiveness of those whom had been his white oppressors and by his refusal to mete out revenge when it seemed duly legitimate; the white South Africans were stunned and didn’t know how to respond to Mandela’s gestures of forgiveness. In the end, only such absurdity could lead to reconciliation. This leads me to the second thought that stemmed from a viewing and reflection upon this film: the implications that this way of living the gospel, the way of forgiveness as enacted by Jesus and followed by Mandela, would have for many other situations in our lives and world today.

            Can any of us imagine being locked without legitimate reason in prison for nearly 30 years and then, upon our release, being able to forgive those who had oppressed us? I, for one, don’t think I could. To be able to act in such a way requires a transformation of our being into the likeness of the God who is for others. It also requires a deep-seated trust that the truth of Reality is the truth of the cross and resurrection—that the way of death actually does lead to life, that love actually can overcome hate. Without trusting this, we never can have the basis to radically forgive with our complete being, which requires a radical giving of our full being to others. But herein lies freedom and reconciliation.

            Many people no doubt respond to this way of forgiveness by asserting that it is naïve and impractical. Sometimes, they say, we must punish others by seeking revenge. This is depicted clearly in a song by Darryl Worley entitled “Have You Forgotten?” written about the terrorist events of 9/11 in the USA. The entire song is about us as Americans never forgetting the attack upon our country, with the lyrics at one point stating, “Some say this country’s just out looking for a fight; after 9/11, man, I’d have to say that’s right.” It is true that the terrorist actions were atrocious and many innocent lives were lost. In light of this, such an attitude of revenge is easy to understand. But is this vengeful attitude ever going to stop anything—is it not only going to perpetuate the hatred and violence? What is certain is that the attitude expressed in Worley’s song is not the way lived out by Jesus; in fact, it’s the opposite.

          Again, in response to critics, this is emphatically not about being a doormat for others to walk upon. Every situation is different. The contemporary situation of anti-Western terrorism is specifically different from Mandela’s situation among blacks and whites in South Africa, and both are different from the situation in which, according to the Christian claim, God was crucified by humans, the Author killed by the characters in the drama. Yet, for all of their differences, there is a continuity that finds its source in the latter. It seems that it would be possible to look to the latter as the controlling narrative that while itself contextually embedded, also finds various expressions in other contexts. However, this requires three things: creativity and faith. We must be creative to think of ways in which the narrative of the crucified God-for-others can be applied in our concrete situations. Yet to do this first requires something more fundamental and difficult: faith. Before we can act upon the absurdity that is forgiveness, we must first be convinced that love does conquer hate and that life does conquer death. Without this, we have no foundation upon which to act—we have no strength to forgive.

                In addition to the need of a contextualized language and theology, I wonder that what Christianity needs most today is a robust faith in a true narrative. By this, I don’t mean a faith that, as has been the task of much modern evangelical theology, makes it the sole focus to argue for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. I’m not sure what such “historicity of the resurrection” actually would even refer to, and at any rate, a mere historicism is not desirable, as it tends to choke out the meaning of the events in question. On the other hand, I do think that the question of whether the resurrection actually happened is important, but I’m not sure that we are asking the question in the right way. However, the point remains that we need to be convinced of the truth of the narrative into which we live. I am convinced that the critiques of naivety and impracticality mentioned above against the enacted morality of forgiveness and love of Jesus (and Mandela) come from a basis that does not believe that love actually triumphs hate, that life actually triumphs death—in short, an inability to embrace this way of life stems from an inability to trust in the hope of the resurrection.

               Embracing the hope of the resurrection is a very difficult thing—personally and intellectually. But rather than denying this, perhaps we should face the task directly where it stands and look for ourselves whether this hope is actually our own. I think we owe it to ourselves, to our world, and to future generations to take the risk and explore, to see if we can embrace the hope of the resurrection, indeed if there is a hope there to be embraced at all and what it means to embrace such hope. As Mandela showed us, the absurdity of forgiveness will change everything.

So, go watch Invictus and be inspired.

Explore the truth for yourself.

Take the risk.

Everything depends upon it.

The Journey of Faith– Stepping into the Narrative

I was talking with a friend today, and she imparted a bit of wisdom that struck me as particularly illuminating of what tends to often be the up and down struggle of faith. I am becoming convinced of a trend that occurs often among those who grew up within the Christian faith. I know of many people who speak of a basic faith and trust that they had as a child growing up in the church; however for many of these individuals, the critical questions of young adulthood led to a challenge that this childlike faith could not withstand. Thus, if faith was not completely destroyed, it was severely torn to pieces. However many of these individuals (though not all) who experienced a period of atheism and questioning have since come to have a faith that is incomparably rich to the faith of their childhood. They have come to truly meet God for what feels like the first time…perhaps there is an awareness that this God was with them all along and in this sense was also the God in whom they had a simple trust as a child. Yet the renewed faith of adulthood, the faith that has been purified by doubt and unbelief, is a faith that was unimaginable before in the pre-critical state of childhood.

My friend pointed out to me today that this common story of innocent faith lost, struggle, separation from God, and new faith found, has a parallel in the biblical narrative of God that stretches from Genesis to Revelation, from old creation to new creation. The story of Adam and Eve corresponds to the innocent faith that we have as children, the faith that we have before we have truly made it our own. With Adam and Eve, there is a sense of being with God, yet this not in a completely conscious manner. The story of the eating of the fruit and banishment from the garden corresponds to the doubts and the critical questions that we encounter in life. The rest of the story is consumed by the narrative of the God who covenants with humanity in the calling of Israel, and ultimately, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This entire saga corresponds to our journey with God– in the ups and in the downs, in faith and in doubt, in belief and in unbelief, in relationship and in alienation. According to the biblical narrative, the goal of all of this is new creation– the renewed relationship with God. The apostle Paul is quite clear that the new creation far exceeds the old creation; yet it is not completely different. The new creation does not dispense of the old creation but rather builds upon what is already there; it fulfills it. So too, renewed faith does not dispense of the faith of childhood. Rather it builds upon the foundation that has been laid, even if this requires rejecting some parts and altering many aspects.

We are called to enter into the biblical narrative and participate in the ongoing story of God. Just as we are to look ahead to the new creation, so too we are to look ahead to a continually new relationship with God. Our God is a God of new creation, of new relationships, of new faith, of new trust, and of new life.

St Andrews and Theology

Well, I have arrived at St Andrews, Scotland and am to begin my courses tomorrow. I know that I have been rather silent on the blog for the past several weeks. This has been due to a number of factors. It’s true that I have been quite busy in trying to get settled in and adjusted to a totally new rhythm of life but mostly, I find myself without anything worthwhile to say. So often I look at what I have written on this blog and am quite disgusted– the words always fall far short of the ideas that I want to convey, and the ideas themselves that I want to convey are only ever present in my mind as passing fragments, pieces of which I can sometimes catch here or there. That said, I might be quite silent in the weeks to come. I mostly want to just take part in the experience of being in this beautiful place called St Andrews. Something about being here, so close to the sparkling blue sea and the fresh air, amidst the cobbled medieval town, within an environment of learning and searching, something about all of this is healing and rejuvenating. Perhaps it is better for now to just ‘be’ and be shaped rather than to ‘do’ and try to shape. But we shall see.

This brings me to my second point of discussion: Theology. I came here to Scotland to study theology. As I’ve been here this past week, getting oriented and preparing for my studies, I have increasingly wondered if it is even possible to study theology. Certainly theology is a most prententious thing– more prideful and assuming than any other discipline to which humans can ever commit themselves.

Just think about the meaning of the word ‘theology.’ Theology, when broken down, means ‘the study of God’. What arrogance! As if God is an ‘object’ that can be studied by human minds?! Theology amounts to finite humans making statements about an infinite and ultimately ineffable God, with these statements often assuming much authority over many people. Is not any work of theology in some sense a blasphemy from the start? Is not any human attempt to talk about God ultimately inadequate the instant the words themselves are formed? I believe the answer is yes and yes to both questions.

But is theology nonetheless necessary? And again, I think the answer is yes.

Theology involves critically asking the ultimate questions of our existence and being willing to receive the answers at all costs. While it is true that our every feeble attempt to talk about God is doomed to the flames of inadequacy, the Christian hope is that God has spoken. Our words fail, but that is OK– the Christian claim is that the Word has come to us and is still manifesting and revealing itself in a living, dynamic way. It is the task of theology to reflect upon what this means, to help make this Word intelligible to a world that so desparately needs the Word’s healing, to engage the Word with our ever new contexts and struggles while also listening to the voices of all those who have gone before us. This must happen.

In the end, it seems as though the most important thing, the thing that theology must never forget if it is not to become the most arrogant of all human endeavors, is humility. We are foolish. If we think we are wise, we are indeed the most foolish of all. And this is the paradox of the gospel. The Apostle Paul writes about the ultimate folly– the crucified God on the cross. But what seems to be the utmost foolishness is in fact the only thing that matters, is the only true wisdom and it comes not from humans but from God. It is not our words but the Word.

May theology keep this in mind and may we always know that we do not know.

Better is one day, even one moment

‘Better is one day in your courts, than a thousand elsewhere’ (NIV) Psalm 84:10

I find the words of Pslam 84:10 to be so beautiful. As of recently, the beauty of this expression has intensified for me as the truth of this phrase has ever more presented itself to my experiences. I can remember reading this psalm as a kid and thinking that the image it described must be terribly boring. I wondered, ‘What in the world is the psalmist talking about? Who would think that a day in church is better than spending a day doing things that are really fun and really part of life– like parties and holidays and spontaneous summer days, laughing, playing, dancing, singing, and living with my family and friends?’ How I misunderstood the psalmist! In my mind, I was equating the ‘courts of God’ with going to church. To me, as a kid, going to church was boring. In no way would I desire one day in church over a thousand days of fun and adventure elsewhere.

There’s a song called ‘Better is One Day,’ sung separately by both Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman, whose lyrics help hone in upon a deeper and truer meaning of this verse, and in doing so, dispells the superficial misunderstanding to which I used to hold. Some of the lyrics go as such:

One thing I ask,
And I would seek,
To see Your beauty
To find You in
The place Your glory dwells.

God’s courts are not some church building in which people happen to assemble at a certain time each week. A church certainly can be God’s courts, the place where the beauty and pure Reality of God is known and experienced– but God’s courts are not limited to churches.

Rather, when I think of the courts of God about which the psalmist writes, of the Beautiful One that I seek, I think of moments where I have been fully alive and awakened to my own reality, a reality that is only such within a knowledge of the reality of the awesome and absolute One. These are moments of bliss, of joy, of ecstasy, not in a shallow sense, but rather in a way that stirs our deepest longing and desires for the infinite life and love that can be satisfied nowhere but in the infinite love and life of the One who is. These are times when we are accutely aware that reality is in layers– and we are being plunged through to a deeper layer, a deeper way of being than that upon which we normally operate in our day to day life. Yet, this plunging is not of our own doing; we are being grasped, as it were, and pulled along. Oftentimes, it feels like falling, but it is a pull that eventually catches us in this deeper way. Typically, it is just that: moments. Moments of being with God, not believing, but knowing– and being known. As such, however, they do not last long. They are usually gone as quickly as they came, unexpectedly, yet nevertheless there. Sometimes the courts of God are more than moments– sometimes they are minutes, hours, even days.

When I think back to my times in God’s courts, I keep coming back to my recent stay at L’Abri. I can’t say that the entire time was one sustained experience of joy– it was not. Yet, there were enough encounters with joyful moments that, as a whole, the experience seemed to be one of living within the presence of God.

But it’s not just at L’Abri. I think of those mornings– you know the type– where we awaken to the sunlight dancing across our rooms, beckoning us to come and partake of the larger dance of life that this new day holds. These mornings are so full of something that grabs us in our innermost being– one writer described the feeling that he gets at such times as a ‘hopeless longing.’

Or I think of the times when something we see amidst our being takes our breath away. I can recall a particular day that I went running on a country road just as the sun was just beginning to set. I often would like to run down this road to a small stone Episcopal parish in town, spend a while there, then turn around and make the journey back. It so happened on this day that I was especially anxious, frustrated, and confused. When I got to the church, which I usually just walked around and admired the beauty thereof, I decided to see if the door was locked. To my surprise, the door easily opened. As I entered, the cool, musty air of the church met me, and coupled with the ornate yet strangely simple pews, stained glass, and figures, all shrouded in a veil of darkness, I found myself having trouble getting my breath. I felt compelled to walk– to walk down the center of the aisle toward which the entire sanctuary was pointed: to the crucfied Christ on the cross. I knelt. And told God that I didn’t know if I even believed, but asked God to help my unbelief; that I didn’t know if truth existed, but asked God to show it to me; that I didn’t know if I could keep on going this like this, but asked God to grant me strength in this journey, to be with me and to guide. A surrender occurred– my anxiety smoothed into peace; my frustration melted into hope; my confusion transformed into a sense of just being still. As I left the old stone parish, the pink, purple, and blue hues of the setting sun met me with a kind greeting across the warm summer breeze. I ran back along the road to the house as the last rays of the day kissed the fields of dancing grasses. This was joy. Hours, days, and weeks after the fact, I can still remember this joy; but, something about it has passed as well. I can’t go back to the precise moment– and given this, part of me wonders if this was a real communion with God, a true brushing up against ultimate Reality. Or perhaps it was just me getting caught up in a particularly intoxicating moment of beauty and life and then projecting this upon what I call God. In all honesty, I still wrestle with this question: how do I know that these experiences of joy are real? That they really point to God?

But one thing is certain– once you know joy, or rather I should say the object of joy (as joy in and of itself is never possible…the second that you focus on joy for its own sake and take your eyes off of the object of joy, the joy is gone), you want nothing but to know it again. It truly turns you into a raging, restless spirit, ever seeking the infinite life that you tasted but for a moment. I think this is what is meant by the courts of God. Indeed, better is one day, one moment, of existence within such full life, than are thousands of days lived out in a cluttered day to day series of doings. If there is a heaven, this must be what it’s like– such full life, such plunging into the layers of reality that we are face to face with the pure Reality of God’s Being. We catch this Being in glimpses now; or rather, perhaps it catches us. Sometimes I think it is better to just die in ecstasy in the courts than to have to enter back into the mundane existence that usually comprises life. Yet, it must be for a reason. The joy of being found and known will come back again. Sometimes it seems that the absence of God converges upon God’s presence. The times that we feel most separate from God often become times when God is most fully present.

I ran to the parish in anxious confusion and left in hopeful peace. 

I often become disappointed with myself when there are dry spells, when I know that this entire other reality is there, yet I am unable to plunge into its depths. It must be sin that keeps my eyes closed to such a full life. That’s what sin must be. Sin must be the separation between our mundane, surface level life and the fullness of beauty and life that is there in God’s presence.

But I can now tell my childhood self that God’s courts don’t have to be in a church. It can be in a church. The experience that I described above centered around a church– but it is not necessary that it be so. In this case, God’s courts were in a church. But God’s courts might be on a country road, in a busy city, at a dinner table, at a desk, on an airplane– wherever it is that you are awakened to the infinite Reality among you and in which you exist and have your being. Wherever you are called to the overwhelming bliss of joy and longing that no creaturely thing can satisify, wherever you are grasped by the infinite love and life of God, you are in God’s courts.

And we can all say together, with the psalmist: Better is one day, even one moment, in your courts, than a thousand elsewhere.

Sin…and Punishment? Some thoughts.

The topic of sin is something that I find very challenging to understand, both in and of itself as well as how it fits into the larger scheme of things. Part of this comes from the overusage of the word ’sin’. As it is with other words (I think of ‘God,’ ‘Salvation,’ ‘Christian’) so too has ’sin’ come to mean so many different things that it is now meaningless when it falls upon the ears of many people. They don’t know what in the world you are talking about when you speak of ’sin’. I’m not going to spell out this complicated issue of defining ’sin’ here. Suffice it to say that as humans, we all have an intuitive feeling of separation– from our own selves, from others, and from the Ultimate Reality of existence, which I will here call God. At core, sin is a state of separation, even a condition of separation into which we are born. But it is much more than this. This state of separation is oftentimes the root of actions that can also be classified as ’sin’– taking advantage of others, hurting and even killing others, drowning in self consuming desires– because these acts perpetuate and even worsen the separation that already exists on all three fronts of self, others, and God.

***

But this is for another day, as it requires much more thought, conversation, and study, and I have not the time or ability to flesh it out here. What I do want to share is something that I came across in conversation with someone today. The point was made that we shouldn’t want to avoid sin because we want to avoid punishment; rather, everytime we sin, the pain caused from that is centered upon the cross, is taken into the suffering God. The message of the cross teaches that we are not punished for sin, which I take to mean that the pain which inevitably accompanies the perpetuation of our state of separation is ultimately not upon us but rather has been taken into God’s own being via God as human on the cross. Pain always has to go somewhere. The beautiful hope offered by the cross is that God suffers for us. God takes our pain upon God’s Self. This means that the infinite love  of God’s own being consumes and ultimately overcomes the pain of all our sin. Only infinite love can bridge the distance of separation.

Photo credit: Mosaic Nashville website http://mosaicnashville.org/index.php

Joy: Surrendering to the Moment

It is time to live in a new way– I know this to be true in the deepest part of my being. Often, I find myself consumed with chasing after beautiful moments that are etched so clearly in my mind. We all know these moments, these times when we are fully alive, when life is real and so worth living. For me, these moments become embodied in physical places, with but a scent, a scene, a sound, or a taste being all it takes to open up the fresh wounds. What then follows is the overwhelming longing and panging desire for that joy and that life embodied in these past moments to return again. But it is not to be found– all that’s left in its trace is a hopeless despair and an empty loneliness. As Lewis points out in his fantastic book Surprised by Joy, certainly this is expected to be the case. Joy– that unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any satisfaction– is only joy insofar as it is focused upon its object. As soon as the eyes are diverted from that intended goal– the object of joy– and are focused instead upon the feeling of joy itself, joy fades and turns into a burning disappointment that leaves us empty and longing for more. But instead of directing this longing in the direction of the beautiful, mysterious object that brought the joy in the first place, we usually direct it towards the feeling of joy itself. Thus we look for that beautiful sun-kissed field, those cottages that were settling down for the evening as the last of daylight faded, the breeze that wispered so peacefully, the worn pages of the musty book that shared with us the secret which opened our hearts, that old beautiful parish so full of mystery and presence that it quickened and stifled our breath– we look for these things and try to recreate these moments, hoping that we can find the joy and be reawakened to life again, but to no avail. This is because as C.S. Lewis explains,

“the books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things– the beauty, the memory of our own past– are good images of what we really desire but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” Macmillan Publishing Co. 1962, 7)

Particularly since leaving L’Abri, I have struggled with trying to fulfill these painful longings for joy. I want the life and the beauty that I knew so intimately for that brief time to come back. And it’s not just with L’Abri– it’s this way about home too. In fact, the desire for home is the strongest of all. I think this is largely why I became so attached to L’Abri– it became my home for a while, the place where I loved and was loved, where I was accepted, where I knew hope, and where I felt most at peace and most in the presence of God. Even the sight of the old L’Abri country farmhouse and the smells of home cooking mixed with musty books took me back to a home I used to have, a home that is now lost to me. And that is the chief problem. Home is gone. The best I (and, I think, we) can do is long for a home that is not to be found anywhere; perhaps it is even a longing for a home never known, as I question whether the home we think we are longing for was ever as truly good and beautiful as we make it out to be in our re-creative memories. We are homeless beggars. Alone. Alienated. Left to die, but longing and on our knees begging for the only Home that can bring peace and hope– we long for the One who is. I often can’t help but think, with Lewis, that all of these moments of joy are directed at and are indicators of the beautiful One in whom alone we can find our beings and our rest.

But I still long for these moments because when joy is so far removed, so too seems God. Yet, as I try to re-create these moments for myself, as I seek after the feeling of joy, I cannot find it. All I get in return is disappointment and despair, which leads to a weariness and pain that nothing can alleviate, save a moment of joy. I think that this way leads to death. So, I have no choice but to change. I will live in a new way. I must. Rather than living in the past and being solely nourished from previous moments of joy and rather than escaping into the future, I have decided to try to embrace the present– and maybe in doing so, I will be with the beautiful and true One who is rather than always chasing after the signs that point to this One. Certainly, in being with this One, the signs will be present, joy will be there. But that is the point. Joy is only present when joy is not the goal in and of itself. Rather, God must be the goal. Truth must be the goal. Life must be goal. To be fully alive in the present moment is to have the most full dose of joy. But more important than that is that we are indeed then fully alive, living, laughing, loving, and dancing the life that we are intended to life. In Surpised by Joy, Lewis talks about his recognition of the beauty of living in the present moment, or as he calls it, “surrendering” to every moment: 

“I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was not Betjemannic iron about it; only a serious, yet gleeful determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was.”  (C.S. Lewis, “Surprised by Joy”  Harcourt Brace and Co. 1955, 199)

God is Dead?: Despair or Hope

It could be that I am oversimplifying or misinterpreting the situation, but as I have been thinking much about this as of late, it seems ever more clear to me that we are presented with two options and two options only: we can look at our situation and either despair or hope. I do not think that we can honestly choose a third alternative, which often is pseudo-created by many people’s choice of not choosing at all. Such a stance of not choosing between despair and hope seems to amount to a mushy conglomeration of things here and there that do not add up to a coherent view of our situation in its totality.

First things first, what of our situation? As humans, we are finite, conscious beings, anxiety-ridden and alienated, yet full of longing, passion, and desire to be known by someone or something, to be acknowledged, recognized, understood, and loved. Yet, although these longings and desires exist, they are never satisfied in their totality but seem forever branded as unfulfilled pangs that must exist so painfully in our beings. And our finitude– we will die. No matter who we become, what we accomplish, or what we know, death is the leveling ground for humanity. All are subjected to the same fate of nothingness that erases all that we have ever considered meaningful. Worse still, we are conscious of our own end, our own soon plunge into the abyss of nothingness, our own sentence to cease to be.

But worst of all is the meaninglessness that this consciousness of death implies. The knowledge that all ends in death is enough to make us then wonder how anything can matter now. If it will soon enough be erased from all memory and existence, why should it be of any importance in the present? In what way are the things that we do in this life any different than a crazy succession of events that happen and are soon forgotten, over and over again, until they are finally forgotten once and for all? If this is the case, then how can we not concede that Hamlet is right, that life is indeed ”a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

This would be the choice of despair, a choice that is accompanied by a view that sees existence as absurd. Albert Camus has gone to great lengths to explore both the absurdity of existence and humanity’s appropriate response to that absurdity in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Here, Camus wrestles with how it is that we can derive any kind of meaning from an indifferent universe. As he points out, absurdity is not inherent to either humanity with all of our desires and longings nor to the indifferent universe; rather, absurdity results from the combination of humanity’s unfulfilled desires with a universe that can never fulfill them.

And that, I think, is a very apt analysis of the situation. Certainly, we, as humans, have desires and longings for meaning, purpose, and truth. Either there is an element of reality that can satisfy these needs or there is not. Camus, in asserting the indifference of the universe, is claiming that no element of reality can ultimately satisfy our longings. Hence, absurdity. The other option is that there indeed does exist an element of reality that can ultimately satisfy our deepest longings. Reality looks upon us, smiles, and accepts us. This view is probably most well known by the arguments of C.S. Lewis which claim that since every earthly need has a corresponding something that can meet that need (for ex., if we are hungry, there is a thing called bread that we can eat), then so too our deepest desires and longings must also have a corresponding element that satisfies them. This he calls God– and given the depth of our inner desires and longings, God is not just any sort of something, but is a Someone who fulfills our most intimate strivings to Know and to be Known, to be accepted and to enter into the beautiful and the true. Not only that, death is not the end of everything, but there is a looking forward to rebirth and restoration. The eternal gives meaning and purpose.

Lewis treads the path of hope.

Perhaps a more distinct phrasing of the dilemma can be expressed in Camus’ staged words of Soren Kierkegaard, a Christian existentialist who advocated a path of hope that came via a leap from despair, in The Myth of Sisyphus:
“If man had no eternal consciousness, if, at the bottom of everything, both large and trifling, in the storm of dark passions, if the bottomless void that nothing can fulfill underlay all things, what would life be but despair?”

Given all of this, it amazes me that there are so many so-called “secularists” today who seem to view God as a bygone relic of the past that we are all the better for having disposed of. Lest any of us forget that upon declaring God dead, Nietzsche also announced the crisis that would now ensue– with the loss of God, we have also lost the basis for grounding truth and value. Despite the sneers and charges of being a hyped-up individualism obsessed with death and meaningless questions that can never be answered that existentialist philosophy receives from many contemporary philsophical circles today, I think that the existentialist atheists (in particular, Albert Camus and especially Jean-Paul Sartre) are the most honest and consistent atheist thinkers of all time. They seriously wrestle with the questions of what life would be like in a universe devoid of God and the meaning, purpose, truth, and values that are attached to our idea of the Absolute in God. Sartre, in his novels, especially presents to us a horrifying picture of reality that has been emptied of all meaning. All of this is a far cry from many of the New Atheists today.

Can Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens not see that far from the death of God (or rather, our belief in God) bestowing upon us a fresh and liberating freedom, rather it transforms us into bondservants who must serve a horrifying freedom, what Sartre terms our condemnation to be free? We would indeed be totally free, but meaning could only come from ourselves. We detroned God and have put our individual selves on that throne. We choose. We decide. We are the authority. And we are solely responsible. The worst part is that there is no way out– as Sartre put it, “we are not free to cease being free.” And as I mentioned earlier, all of the other problems of death, meaningless, and absurdity remain.

The death of God is not something at which we should be rejoicing. If indeed the case, this must be recognized with the utmost somber and serious spirit– for our deaths are not long to follow. If we choose the path of despair, can we survive for long? I do not think so, at least, not if we pursue this path in honesty. The human spirit requires hope in order to keep going. Of course, this need for hope doesn’t mean that hope actually exists as an appropriate response to reality. It could be the case that reality is indifferent and thus that our existence is absurd. However, given our human nature and our instinctive attraction to life, I am not sure that we can ever fully hold to a belief that existence is absurd. Perhaps this is because there is a part of us, deep down, that knows there to be a satisfaction for our deepest longings, one that is beautiful and true. Perhaps we intuitively know that life is not meaningless and without purpose. Perhaps all of existence is screaming out to us to just wake up and enter into its dance– there is Someone there who knows us and by whom we are known. There is hope.

Or maybe not. Maybe Camus is correct and there is no God, we are alone in an indifferent universe– existence is absurd. But how can we ever know? However, if we conclude this, we must try to live consistently with our conclusions. Philosophy so often gets consumed with irrelevant questions that consume our thoughts but have little impact upon our lives. Here, philosophy is being called upon to deal with the most important question that we can ask: why should we live rather than die? This is a philosophy that speaks to the questions of our own lives.

The questions of whether God is or God is not, whether existence is meaningful or absurd, whether we should hope or despair, these are all questions that have profound impacts for how or why we live. They cannot and must not be taken lightly. As far as I can tell, if God is dead, we are as good as the same.

Waiting for God

I began a book today that has instantly taken me captive.

The book: “Waiting for God.” 

The author: Simone Weil.

Simone Weil was born into a non-religious Jewish family in Paris in 1909. Throughout her brief life (she died at the age of 34), Weil’s life told a story that embodied her deepest convictions. Whether she was imitating the lifestyle of the poorest and most forsaken in society so as to be able to relate to their affliction or whether she was immersing herself in university studies, Weil made it a point to identify with any and all peoples, meeting them where they were at– be that within materialism, communism, religious smugness, atheism, secular cynicism– so as to be in the service of Christ as the Truth to them. As a result of the calling she felt to keep in touch with ordinary humanity, Weil refused baptism, although she effused a radiant love for Christ, God, and the Catholic church, including all of its liturgies and Sacraments. She felt that to be baptized and to take the Sacraments would separate her into a closed realm, cutting her off from the people who most needed the Truth.

So Weil remained an Outsider, a Saint standing on the doorsteps of the Church. She forever considered herself as necessarily occupying that ever so small and tedious space between the Church and a broken and disillusioned humanity, accepting all truths where they are found and crucifying herself, as it were, with the bits of untruth mixed within.

Weil is not a systematic thinker and writer– in most respects, this is precisely the opposite of what she stood for. She writes with aphorisms and bursts of profundity sprinkled amidst her out-working thoughts on a variety of subjects. One of the methods that she constantly employs is that of the “equilibrium of contradictions.” Just as she had arrived at any position, she would try to see in what sense the opposite might be true. This created what she felt to be a balance of truths and a necessary approach given her commitment to completely identify with all peoples and all truths. I will bring up one such example of her “equilibrium of contradictions” thought here. I pick an issue that particularly stood out to me and one which I have been thinking quite a bit on as of late– what it means to say that God exists, or more simply, the question of the existence of God. Here is what Weil has to say:

“A case of contradictories, both of them true. There is a God. There is no God. Where is the problem? I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am sure my love is no illusion. I am quite sure there is no God, in the sense that I am sure there is nothing which resembles what I can conceive when I say that word…”   (Simone Weil, “Waiting for God,” xxix)

In the course of this one day, (to borrow a phrase from Weil herself) I have not been reading, but have rather been eating this book. I find in Weil’s words a nourishment, an understanding, an intimate aloneness, and a creativity that is not afraid to transcend accepted “orthodoxy” in the name of claiming Truth wherever it is to be found. After all, Weil claims that Christ’s being the Truth means that we must follow the Truth at all costs, even at the expense of Christ himself; yet, in completely surrendering to the Truth, she thinks that we will inevitably be embraced by Christ, since Truth and Christ are inseparable. Weil writes with an artistic passion that causes her words to arise as a sweet aroma off of the pages. I find it difficult to read her without being deeply inspired to hope and dream, without tearing up for awareness of the Reality that I find opening before me, and without falling on my knees at the feet of the Crucified– the Suffering God Who alone is our hope in all possible aspects of the word.

Waiting for God. The title of this book comes from a stance that Weil herself adopts of ”waiting for God” in distinction to a stance of “seeking God.” Being someone who views myself as seeking God, I find Weil’s points here quite illuminating. I think I would do well to listen to what she has to say:

“May each loving adolescent, as he works on his Latin prose, hope through this prose to come a little nearer to the instant when he will really be the slave– faithfully waiting while the master is absent, watching and listening– ready to open the door to him as soon as he knocks. The master will then make his slave sit down and himself serve him with meat. Only this waiting, this attention, can move the master to treat his slave with such tenderness. When the slave has worn himself out in the fields, his master says on his return, “Prepare my meal, and wait upon me.” And he considers the servant who only does what he is told to be unprofitable. To be sure, in the realm of action we have to do all that is demanded of us, no matter what effort, weariness, and suffering it may cost, for he who disobeys does not love; but after that we are only unprofitable servants. Such service is a condition of love, but is is not enough. What forces the master to make himself the slave of his slave, and to love him, has nothing to do with all that. Still less is it the result of a search the servant might have been bold enough to undertake on his own initiative. It is only watching, waiting, attention.” (Simone Weil, “Waiting for God,” 63, Perennial Classics, 1951. Emphasis added are my own)

It is a focusing upon the One whom we love for the sake of that One– being empty and ready to receive the Truth as it comes upon us and fills us with its wholeness. I do not completely agree with Weil that waiting for God is to the exclusion of our seeking God (if I am indeed understanding her correctly here). I’m not ready to say that the process is completely passive on our part, although a good deal more of it needs to be passive than I have been willing to admit. Maybe a balance, an equilibrium of contradictions is need here.

We actively seek God. We passively wait for God.

We pursue God with our entire beings, with all that we have. We look around us and choose the path of hope. We choose to see wonder and life and beauty amidst the despair and absurdity. We choose to believe that there must be a Way. We lie prostrate before God and ask what more we shall do before God will be real. We are active.

But this lying prostrate before God embodies the moment of emptiness, when the words come forth of ”My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” When we are at the end of ourselves, completely empty with nothing left. This is the void. And it is here that we have nothing left to give. We cannot search any longer. The only hope now is that God reach down and embrace us– that God save us lest we perish. We are passive. God alone must act.

I think that the situation here can be very well stated in the beautiful words of a song which has recently given me much comfort and hope. The song, “Until He Comes,” is by a group called “Ordinary Time.” It goes:

“I will wait quietly for the One I seek.”

May it be so.

Deceiving Ourselves

We all have those wow! moments that happen when we read. You know, those times that the words jump off the page and scream at us, almost as if they knew we were coming and were just waiting on us to get there so that they could stun us into a new way. These wow! moments usually (and quickly) transform into aha! comprehensions– those times when things begin to make just a little bit more sense, those times when a point that we’ve maybe heard over and over again finally sinks in. I had one of those wow! moments the other day. It came via a quote by Soren Kierkegaard which I will relay here:

“We can, of course, be deceived in many ways. We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. We can be deceived by appearances, but we can also be deceived by shrewdness, by the flattering conceit which is absolutely certain it cannot be deceived. Which deception is more dangerous?”

I definitely needed this reminder (read: ‘jolt’). So often, I find myself in protection mode, thinking that if only I exercise a rather heavy doubt, then I will not be deluded into erroneous and fantastical beliefs. While a critical approach is always necessary if we are not to be swept away by every new idea that comes down the road, we must remember the words of Kierkegaard– that there are two ways of being deceived. I think that much of our current western society is working from the same mindset upon which I too have been operating. Doubt is assumed to be the appropriate default mindset to approach all that we encounter in this existence. This certainly gives the sensation of protecting us against the one kind of deception, the deception that happens when we believe what is untrue.

However, what of the deception that comes by not believing what is true? And indeed is it possible that such a guarded fear of ingesting untruth is itself an untruth in that it ultimately prevents us from ever being able to believe what is true? We so believe in our inability to be deceived that we are ironically stuck in a continual state of deception.

I think it is wise that, with Kierkegaard, we all ask ourselves: Which deception is more dangerous?

How are we to choose?

“You will say, ‘At least he did go to a teacher for advice.’ But if you seek advice from a priest, for example, you have chosen this priest; you already know, more or less, what advice he is going to give to you. In other words, choosing your adviser is involving yourself. The proof of this is that if you are a Christian, you will say, ‘Consult a priest.’ But some priests are collaborating, some are marking time, some are resisting. Which to choose? If the young man chooses a priest who is resisting or collaborating, he has already decided on the kind of advice he is going to get. Therefore, in coming to see me, he knew the answer that I was going to give him, and I had only one answer to give him: ‘You are free, choose, that is, invent.’ No general ethics can show you what is to be done; there are not omens in the world. The Catholics will reply, ‘But there are.’ Granted—but in any case, I myself choose the meaning they have.”

-Jean-Paul Sartre in ‘Existentialism’ (p.352 ‘Basic Writings of Existentialism’ ed. Gordon Marino, Modern Library, 2004)

I think that Sartre expresses here directly, if not disturbingly, the condition in which we all find ourselves. Although he is writing about ethical decisions in this particular piece, I think that the same rationale can be extended to other realms as well, not the least, of how it is that we view reality: our worldview. More specifically, how is it that we are to come to a conclusion, or at least a satisfying position, on the ultimate questions of life? Does God exist? If we grant the being of God (however broadly defined) what then is the nature of God? Which, if any, religions contain the most truth? Is there such a thing as ‘truth’ to which we can even refer? What presuppositional frameworks are we bringing to all of these questions? Why do we choose these particular frameworks rather than other ones?

Were we to lay out all of our possibilities for these questions, we would find ourselves at something like a mega-buffet where we have to select from among the thousands of options a few choice pieces that we would like to make our own. How are we to choose?

Certainly we are not blank slates. We all possess specific psychological dispositions and genetic propensities that push us towards a particular orientation in how we approach life—for example, perhaps we are naturally inclined to be skeptical, trusting, cynical, sentimental, etc… (this is not to say that we cannot choose to act and be another way, but simply that we have natural tendencies that influence us). We must also not undervalue the role of our environment and past experiences in shaping who we are. We are constantly in conversation with the beliefs of those around us as well as with the beliefs that we were taught as kids—either affirming or denying, and always building.

However, all of this said, I think that Sartre’s point is still disturbingly dead on: ‘But if you seek advice from a priest, for example, you have chosen this priest; you already know, more or less, what advice he is going to give to you. In other words, choosing your adviser is involving yourself.’ Indeed we choose our advisers. And our advisers can be individual persons (mentors, tutors, professors, friends, pastors), organizations, and books. But how do we choose our advisers? As Sartre says, in choosing an adviser, we have already decided on the kind of advice we are going to get.

Take the example of books. Given our previously mentioned situation of trying to answer the ultimate questions in life, any book that we seriously submit ourselves to understanding and taking seriously, is going to in some way influence what we think. Most of us do read books with which we know we are going to disagree. However, far more often, we read books that encourage us along our current path, books that feed us with what we think is true and that inspire us to keep developing our own ideas. We usually read the authors that we have come to like and to trust and the books with which we think we will more or less agree. Even when we do read books that with which we disagree, we tend to read the books that we find agreeable with a much more open and receptive attitude. A clear example of this is the Christian who begins doubting her faith. If she goes to her pastor with questions (which is itself a case of choosing an adviser whom you know will point you in a specific, namely, Christian direction), she will likely get pointed to a book that will address her questions and encourage her faith—C.S. Lewis’ ‘Mere Christianity,’ to give a common example. It is not uncommon that those who have doubts and questions about the Christian faith will read books in Christian apologetics. Why? To convince them that their wavering faith is indeed true? But choosing books based upon such grounds is in some sense already making a commitment to the positions within, because one certainly knows what advice the book is going to give beforehand. On the opposite extreme, but similarly, it is no coincidence that many atheists, and in particular, many people turning to atheism from religious upbringings, flock in hordes to books written by the ‘Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens trio.’ Even my posting this note comes from my recent engagement with ‘Basic Writings in Existentialism,’ the content of which I find myself very attracted to at the present.

But why are we so attracted to ideas? Why do we choose books based upon the kind of advice that we know they contain, advice that we have already decided that we want to hear? Indeed, to choose an adviser is to involve ourselves. The groups with whom we associate and the people with whom we converse influence what we believe. But we know what they believe before we make the choice to be around them. Likely, we choose them because we want to believe what they believe, to somehow convince ourselves that we can make their truth our truth.

Yet, is this honest? Who decides? How are we to choose? No matter what we read or who we go to for advice, we are already making a decision, for we fairly know what they (the book or the person) is going to say to us.

But not to choose is itself a choice. We are never neutral. So where shall we turn? It’s as though we are dangling precariously over the abyss of nothingness—no matter where we land, we lose.

How shall we choose? Horror of horrors, do we invent? Is our choice indeed free? And by what authority do we, the individual finite human, become the deciding factor as to what is true and right? Which brings into focus the possibility that perhaps nothing is ‘true’ or ‘right’.

How are we to know? How are we to choose?