The Cup of Salvation
December 3, 2008
The small plastic cup shot from my
fingers as I tried to pass the communion tray to my daughter with my
free hand. The juice showered onto my pants not unlike a water drop
from a fire-fighting plane. My lap changed from the clean-pressed
khaki color to a purplish brown as the communion juice soaked to my
legs.
The elder
who had handed me the tray asked ever so helpfully, "Did you drop
that?" I nodded in affirmation, though it was not the right
description for what had happened. You see, the winter dryness had
made my fingers equally dry. So when I tried to squeeze the cup more
firmly so as not to drop it, I produced the opposite effect. The cup
was launched, as if from one of those toy disc launchers.
Embarrassment was the first emotion to hit my mind. But not long
afterward I smiled. For in our church we often say to one another as
we pass the cup, "The cup of salvation poured out for you." And here
it was. The cup of salvation . . . poured out . . . on my lap.
I took
another cup and held it firmly until it was time to drink in unison.
But my mind was riveted on this simple accident. Something
unexpected, which made the presence of Christ's work most real. It
reminded me of how God can surprise us, if only we can let go of our
desire to control events in order to have the world move along ever
so efficiently.
Faith and Rationality
June 18, 2007
I’ve been reading Sam Harris’ book
The End of Faith and pondering the requirements of faith. Harris
believes one cannot be a “religious moderate” and be taking the
Biblical message seriously. As I read Harris’ criticisms I fear he
thinks the faithful must read the Bible like a play-book, logic
text, or scientific treatise. “Chapter x, verse ii says to do
y—therefore I do y.”
Trouble is
the Bible is not a textbook, nor is it a Microsoft program manual.
It is a book of stories (this word does not entail that they’re
fiction) concerning people whose lives have intersected God’s.
Wonderfully for us, it even has stories about people who’ve been
running away from God.
Now stories
(like poetry) are full of ambiguity. They allow our imaginations to
run around, like they did when we were children. And it is in this
imaginative struggling with the text that we are trained to be on
the lookout for God in our own living. This life is full of
ambiguity, and all of our study of logic, science, and truth-tables
only provides us with more questions to think about. Yes many
questions are answered; but as Harris knows from his study of
scientific revolution, our rational grasp of reality is always
provisional.
While I
find something wonderful in Harris’ desire for truth and
rationality, I fear he is missing the point of religious belief. It
is not primarily about truth seeking and factual consistency (though
we want these to come at some point). Religious belief for the
Christian is about living in relationship with a person—a person who
also happens to be God. And as we know from our everyday
relationships, interactions with other beings are always full of
questions and stuff for pondering.
In this
regard, moderates are more attentive to the text than the legalists
in Christianity. For it is the legalists who are yielding to Harris’
(and our modern society’s) push to turn the Bible into play-book
from which they can call God’s game on earth. There is too much
dependence upon human reason, independence and ego in such calls.
Philosophy 101
December 29, 2006
“To be or not to be: that is the
question,” I said jokingly to my 6 (almost 7) year old son. He
replied without pause, “To be what, Dad?” And I thought to myself, “Yesssss…I
have a realist in the house.” We proceeded to talk about being and
substance, about what kind of stuff there is, what kind of stuff can
be sensed, proven, thought about and conceived. Such is the life of
a philosopher’s child!
These philosophical discussions bubble up naturally in my
home, with daughter and son freely participating. We challenge and
question one another’s statements, sometimes with disbelief and
sarcasm. Always though—yes, always—there is in the background an
understanding of a love relation undergirding the discussions. A “no
holds barred” repartee is easy when one knows your “opponent” is not
opposed to your being. Your ideas, yes! But not your personhood.
It’s this type of
conversation—heated and real, but rooted in love—that shows the
vacuousness of many public debates, where winning and destruction of
another self seems to be the goal.
Organic Clocks
December 21, 2006
A few days ago, I watched a man’s
head lift upward from his chest and sink slowly down with his
breathing as he sat asleep in a large, wheeled lounger used to
transport elderly patients to the television viewing area of the
retirement village. His unconscious, rhythmic action became an
organic timepiece for me, clicking off moments in Rachel Ray’s
explanation of how to prepare a 30 minute meal.
Normally plasma screens have a way
of fixing my vision as firmly as if my eyes were in a vice. But my
eyes were tethered to this man’s head, while I wondered how many
bobs it would take to make fifty years. Fifty years until Rachel’s
head would be a timepiece in another place, with another voice
filling the air while she ticks off the minutes—up…down…up…down…up.
Who will be there watching while she sleeps?
Tears, Time, & Plugging Away
November 13, 2006
“A few weeks of tears,” is how I’d
describe it. My daughter finally figured out how long a full-year of
full-day kindergarten is going to be and that immensity of time has
sent her little heart reeling.
Waking up with glistening eyes she
asks, “Do I have to go to school?”
“Yes little one, you have to go to school. It’s your work in the
world.”
To see a five year old waking up
with worries is painful for any parent. We want to ease the burden,
take it away if possible. But then the other side of parenting kicks
in—we want to see our children be able to make their way in this
messy world. I want to see this young woman of faith be able to
confront the muck around her and stand firm. So I tell her what she
needs to do; I drag, coax and cajole her into staying faithful to
what she’s been given.
The immensity of time confronts anyone trying to live by
faith. The Psalmist puts it this way: “How long, O Lord? Will you
forget me forever?” How long until the timeline of miseries ends?
How long until this mess gets wrapped up? How long until things get
better, for good?
In the middle of these kindergarten worries I’m blind to how
they’ll end:
Is this a bump in the road?
Is this the beginning of a kindergarten breakdown?
Is this what leads her to be a Nobel laureate?
I don’t know any of this. Time has me bound and I can only
wonder and pray: “How long, O Lord?” …But then that’s my work: stick
at life with this family; pray faithfully; plug away at things. And
here in the messiness I find God dragging, coaxing and cajoling me
into staying faithful to what I've been given.
Signification
October 22, 2006
A couple is visiting from Thailand
this weekend and I’m finding again how difficult communication can
be when one doesn’t know the language. I was trying to explain how
stained glass is constructed, with lead holding the pieces together;
but then how does one explain “lead?” I found an online
English-to-Thai Dictionary and typed in “lead.” A dozen or so Thai
words popped up, confusing my guests more than the vacuous English
word.
I switched gears and tried to explain “metal,” by pointing at
the husband’s silver watchband and saying “metal.” “Ahhh!” he said,
as if he’d understood my point. But soon it was obvious that he
thought “metal” was my word for “watch.” After 5 minutes or so of
politely happy frustration, during which I was pointing at different
metal objects, we finally came to some understanding of
“metal”—though we were still no closer to “lead,” the metal. Fifteen
minutes and a few online dictionary searches later, signification
dawned on our conversation. Lead was explained by referencing
aluminum, and the stained glass was truly illuminated.
Then came the challenge of explaining how the fellow’s
borrowed camcorder’s memory stick worked. He couldn’t understand why
he could only take three pictures before the stick’s memory was
full. A Sherlockian search revealed that one of his pictures was a
movie file which gobbled 90% of the memory. With the mystery solved
I plunged into an English-to Thai, Thai-to-English translation game
for fifteen minutes. In the end signification took hold and we both
reveled in our understanding of a Japanese designed camcorder, made
in Taiwan and sporting English commands.
All of this took place between people with a common faith in
Jesus. We are pleasant to one another and pray together; we’re even
glad to be around one another. I couldn’t help but think how easily
frustration and disgruntlement could arise if these common ties did
not exist.
I understood the world’s fighting last night. When we fail to
find commonalities with people, when we reject reason in favor of
power and possessions, when we insist on being right instead of
kind, then the road of fighting and destruction is easy. It takes
effort to bridge barriers; it takes work for us to find common
meanings with strangers. But it certainly is more productive than
multiplying demons where there may be none.
Difficulties, Palm Hearts & God
October 19, 2006
“Life is hard,” so I keep hearing. I
nod with agreement at the phrase, thinking: And I don’t even have
much to complain about. I need only look at the news to find out how
easy I have it. Yet this doesn’t stop my head from bobbing up and
down. Yes, life is hard. So I start calculating and estimating: how
much is enough, how many things need to go my way, how often do I
need to be affirmed, in order to make life softer? The LCD on my
mental calculator flashes ERROR and I’m back wondering why an answer
isn’t computable.
Something I read a few weeks ago has been trapped in one of
my neural loops: “There’s great gain in godliness with contentment;
for we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of
it; but if we have food and clothing, with these we’ll be content.”
The words keep rewinding and playing with images of desert fathers
eating palm hearts and sipping water as they psalmodize their days.
Palm hearts and water—contentment with godliness. How foreign
these are in my world, a world of treats and self-importance. Then I
review my timeline, my life, and find that it’s true: I brought
nothing into this world—I take nothing out of this world. In
between, great gain comes through godliness and contentment, not
through treats. My mental calculator finally stops flashing ERROR
signs.
Butterfly-Time
September 29, 2006
Yesterday, a good friend told me
he’d spent two hours simply arranging and prioritizing his to-do
list. If I was a dog, my ears would have pointed skyward. Alas, I’m
only a philosopher of time so I looked at my watch and started
racing through all the things I needed to do and how I could
prioritize to increase efficiency. I wanted to get busy, to be
occupied head to toe. 2 billion seconds or so I hope to have on this
planet—how can I maximize them?
I can’t help but wonder about the temporal implications of western
living. My students tell me about all they have to do, most of my
friends are rushing, I’m rushing my kids. My speedy driving has
killed 3 monarch butterflies this month, butterflies heading to
Mexico in what must be the most haphazard flightplan nature could
have devised.
But then I think about how much I want to be like that haphazard
butterfly. My friend and I think about the cabin with a front porch
to use. I imagine turning the porch into a philosophical lyceum
where my students can just drop by for a round of anything-goes
no-holds-barred philosophy. No schedules, no topic sheets, just
doing philosophy for the love of it. So, I keep looking for a middle
ground, keep looking for ways to be a butterfly-philosopher.
If humanity is to survive, we’ll need to listen to the butterfly.
Our frenetic pace, which we adopt when we prize materialism and
self-promotion over relationship and mental-growth, causes us to
chew up material resources and the lives of those around us. We’ll
need to float on the wind more and drive less. We’ll need to have
goals toward which we will head (like the monarch’s Mexican
mountains), but for which we’ll not draw straight lines that destroy
what is around us. And for all of this we’ll need to reconsider our
view of time and how that view is shaping our overcrowded to-do
lists.
Limitation & Conversation
September 24, 2006
Fall wild flowers are coloring the
trails near my home in purples, yellows, pinks, and white. A few
rogue maples are blushing red against the green background of oaks,
while the ground animals and migrating birds keep readying for
winter.
As I hiked with my wife on Friday I felt drawn into a rhythm larger
than my own, and one over which I had scant control. My wife and I
say our weekly hikes are a means of “shedding the baggage”—letting
the unimportant stuff fall to the side of the trail. We drop
troubles by finding out that we’re only a tiny part of a larger
flow. These walks find me switching between the poles of my
significance and my insignificance. I bring meaning (i.e.,
signification) to the world around as I think and reflect, yet the
world is not bound by my capacities…is not trapped by my
imagination.
The intersections between epistemology (what we know or can know)
and metaphysics (what there is) are all around our daily living. The
world is a brooding mystery, a fact we see more readily when we
release our desires to control and capture it—to pin the world down
like a bug. Atheists and theists alike have a sense of this mystery.
None of us escapes the intersection of our limitation with something
limitless—a fact that should give us pause to contemplate and have a
conversation with just about anyone we encounter.
Time Perception & Control
September 7, 2006
The time we live has become more
mechanized and driven to precision over the last two centuries.
Technology and industrialization have changed the way we view
ourselves and our relationship to time. The transformation of the
world— a world which has been flattened (to use Thomas Friedman’s
picture)—requires that we be able to synchronize ourselves with
events and peoples in distant places. We become in this changed
world, people mindful of clocks. When was the last day you spent
without referencing a chronometer?
The industrial age has brought with it many advantages for
humanity: comforts, products to entertain, and increased leisured
time. But as with all forms of human living, difficulties accompany
the benefits. The regimentation that industry requires in order to
bring about its productivities calls for a parallel regimentation in
workers’ lives. Schedules must be followed and punctuality enforced.
Deadline keeping and orderliness become higher virtues in a world in
which timepieces keep track of the schedule. Those who are unable to
live in orderly ways become disadvantaged and marginalized. I know a
number of people whose personalities or mental disorders keep them
from doing well in this type of society. Their “fitting in”
difficulties lead me to wonder what changes in our society might
minimize the negative impacts of our current outlook on time.
Just as the world has been flattened, this regimentation has
produced a flattening of our attitudes with respect to the seasons
of our living. We compartmentalize the events of our lives into work
and leisure, and often keep discrete the various events that take
place during work or non-work times. Ask members of industrialized
nations about the lists of things they are involved in and you will
get an itemization of the temporal chunks they move between. Though
our activities are regimented, our minds are frenzied with keeping
up with all these events. It is difficult to distinguish a unified
flow to such lives—an attitude of understanding where one has come
from and to where one is going.
Modern society forces its members into a fight to keep a
consistent narrative flowing in their life. Those who would choose
to live differently, who would reject living from discrete event to
discrete event, must arm themselves through reflection with a
timescape of their lives in toto. They must be willing to resist the
temptations of the marketers, entertainers, and advertisers who
would distract them into “wasting time” on things that do not fit
their project in the world. We must reject the patterns offered by
PR men such as Bernays who would have the masses think alike:
“THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized
habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in
democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of
society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling
power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our
ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a
logical result of the way in which our democratic society is
organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this
manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning
society.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the
identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of
natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by
their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one
chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in
almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of
politics or business, In our social conduct or our ethical thinking,
we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who
understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.
It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who
harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide
the world.” (Edward Bernays, Propaganda, available at
http://militant.org/files/propaganda.pdf)
This does not mean we cannot fit into society, but it will
mean that we refrain from certain activities that would take us away
from our project in the world. It is this dedication to our freedom
that is bound with our temporality, that I see highlighted by
Nietzsche when he says:
“The essential thing ‘in heaven and on earth,’ so it appears,
is, to make the point again, that there is obedience for a long time
in one direction: in the process there always comes and always has
come eventually something for whose sake living on earth is worth
it, for example, virtue, art, music, dance, reason,
spirituality—something or other transfiguring, subtle, amazing, and
divine.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond God and Evil, available at
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil5.htm
It is the desire of the propagandist to deter this spirit
within us, to make us into temporal dolts who give no regard to the
eternity that invades the NOW. We become confused through their
regimented outlook on time and activity. I think in this regard of
the writer Kathleen Norris' words: "I sense that striving for
wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented
people make for better consumers, buying more bits and pieces—two
more cars, two homes and all that fills them..." (Kathleen Norris,
Quotidian Mysteries, p. 35).
Increasing the richness of our lives means resisting temporal
homogeneity in one way and adopting it in another. There must be a
level of resistance to the structured industrialized time, imposed
upon us by forces that seek control, and a reacquisition of an
eternal time perspective that pervades the active NOW. Only in this
way can we resist the shearing aspects of contemporary life, resist
the temptation to compartmentalize our living and thus lose all
touch with our eternal project in the world.