Binary Moral Systems: Handle with Care

I recently finished a book written by Nate Jackson, a former wide receiver for the Denver Broncos. The book was entitled “Getting Up Slow”. As a lifetime Bronco fan and relative NFL enthusiast, I was hoping for an inside look at the NFL culture, a behind-the-scenes perspective from a player whose time did not see much of the glitter and glam of NFL stardom. The book did not disappoint. Jackson allowed the reader to fully experience the mental and physical anguish that haunts most of the players in the NFL. Much of the book surprised me. Prior to reading it, I had no concept of how fundamentally the players’ egos and exaggerated insecurities drove the whole mess. Suddenly I recognized that the spending of exorbitant amounts of money, steroid use, infidelity, drug abuse, homicides, suicides, and the corruption that surrounds and plagues the NFL were not just random disconnected acts. Instead, they were the survival tactics and self-loathing of souls operating within a broken system that treats its players like cattle in a highly visible and highly profitable meat market.

Other portions of the book surprised me as well. Much of the football culture Jackson described echoed attitudes I had heard from fundamentalist religion or extreme patriotism. I was curious about the correlation. Coaches often sound like dogmatic preachers, spewing repetitive clichés about the will and passion and their inspiring way of trumping logic. In another breath, they’re like a Nazi general, barking orders and demanding the conformity of all their players to the common goal, the right behavior, and the proper way of thinking.

What is attractive about these sorts of dogmatic systems when it comes to religion, country, or football? Is it a desire for authority or direction in our lives? What is so tempting about operating within a black and white, right or wrong framework with little space or respect given to areas that are gray or unclear? Whatever the reason we submit to such systems, there is no doubt they find success wherever they arise. Last I checked people are still willingly to participate on teams with “my way or the highway” coaches, “no drinking or you’re going to hell” churches, and “anyone in a turban is evil” armies.

Perhaps it is just simpler to operate with a strictly dichotomous world view. If we want to believe that we are not making decisions from a state of random anarchy, we must also concede that we have accepted some mode that determines which actions we will perform and which we will not. While many people may not appreciate the use of loaded words such as “good” and “evil”, it is clear that in order to make decisions, we must place things into categories. Something is either true or untrue, information or noninformation, pure or perverted, familiar or other. Someone is either in or out, a part of your religious system or not, your team or the opposing one, saved or unsaved, a part of the American way or not, from Boston or stupid. Everyone uses dichotomous systems, but the content of the categories differs from person to person. These narrow frameworks offer people a legitimate shot at being consistent, all while brushing aside the potentially frightening realities of mystery and the unknown.

Perhaps it is uncertainty that we fear most. In order to comprehend our existence as humans, we put limitations on ourselves. As the saying goes, “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” In a world we have thought to be all black and white, it would completely shock us to discover purple. We are simply looking for the world to make sense, for our finite brains to attempt to understand and locate ourselves in infinite space and time.

Maybe all of life does come down to a right or wrong, a 1 or 0, a + or -, a yes or a no. But maybe we also haven’t discovered the boundaries of the whole system yet. Imagine that the universe is an expansive ocean and each of us has a glorious oceanfront view. There is a great chance that my view does not encompass the entire scene, especially if I have not even witnessed it from my neighbor’s porch. If we had the humility to view an alternate perspective, perhaps we may notice that the line which we have drawn is not quite where it should have been. While it is impossible and undesirable to approach life without a perspective, it is also honest to recognize that our categories and line drawing often do not adequately describe the expansiveness of everything that exists.

I find it interesting when different life experiences have challenged my line drawing. A good depiction of this came to me when watching the movie Saints and Soldiers. It did more than baffle me when the WWII German officer wasn’t portrayed as inherently evil; he was simply wearing a different uniform. In another WWII movie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a German boy realizes the Jewish boy wasn’t disgusting or untouchable as he had been made to think but simply on the other side of the fence.

While functioning within a system of delineated good and evil or truth and untruth may be easier and simpler than living with the unknown, it can provide us with a false sense of security. We should seek to understand alternate perspectives in order to gain a deeper understanding of what good and evil or truth and untruth look like in reality. We should approach life like an artist who encircles his bowl of fruit before painting an apple in two dimensions. We must be wary of dogmatism that limits our understanding of the world we live in.

 In a book deliberating on the spiritual pathway of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Mansfield gives us similar advice. “The problem seems to be that we want conclusions rather than processes, and we want conversions rather than religious journeys. The search for Abraham Lincoln’s faith disappoints only if we begin that journey assuming there will be a dramatic resolution, that at the same point in the story Abraham Lincoln will kneel at an altar and satisfy us with a verifiable spiritual experience. It does not happen.” He continues, “The silencing of Lincoln’s faith by the secular and the exaggerating of Lincoln’s faith by the religious have given us a less accurate and a less engaging Lincoln. We are poorer for the distortions.”

It would be tough to say “in conclusion” or “to sum up” in such a post, as I have just detailed why I believe we should be slower to conclude and quicker to delight in the process of witnessing life in its infinite dimensions. My fear is that this post would be taken as a treatise on relative truth or an assertion that we have no ground to make any moral judgments on any particular subject. This couldn’t be further from my intent. My hope is simply to investigate the possibility that we have become too complacent and self-assured in our perspectives. In viewing our black and white world without a moment’s pause, we fail to consider that a rock which appears to be black is simply resting in the shadows where we have not the perspective to see that it is indeed white. Furthermore, I would like for us to consider our time on this earth to be like studying a masterful magician's act. If only we had the meekness and optimism to compare notes with other spectators who have witnessed the performance from a different angle, we may yet uncover the mystery of the reality which we’ve seen.

~Tim

prints from a poet

Excluding the annoying weddings that flood our precious North Shore of Boston, the fall is unquestionably the best time of the year. With the autumn days come so many little things that make a grown man giddy with unabashed excitement - cider donuts, hot cocoa, football, leaves changing color, the cool breeze, just to name a few.

Near this time of year I also take it upon myself to announce to all around me that Christmas is indeed coming. One of the ways I eagerly anticipate the Christmas season is by listening to carols. Yes, even in October. This afternoon, I listened to my all-time favorite Christmas carol, I Heard the Bells. The Sleeping At Last version is my favorite; however, I would be content with just about anyone singing it.

The original poem by Longfellow is worth reading through at some point, especially if you are not familiar with this Christmas song. As Longfellow witnesses the turmoil before him during the Civil War, he recognizes that “hate is strong” and there is much destruction in the world. But amidst this reality, his magnificent lyrics point to a profound truth that is even "more loud and deep", the promise of a steadfast hope.

While looking through some other poems by Longfellow, I stumbled upon his “Psalm of Life”. This may be another popular one of his but, not being much of a poetry reader, I hadn’t come across it until now.  He writes:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
        Life is but an empty dream ! —
    For the soul is dead that slumbers,
        And things are not what they seem.

    Life is real !   Life is earnest!
        And the grave is not its goal ;
    Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
        Was not spoken of the soul.

    Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
        Is our destined end or way ;
    But to act, that each to-morrow
        Find us farther than to-day.

    Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
        And our hearts, though stout and brave,
    Still, like muffled drums, are beating
        Funeral marches to the grave.

    In the world's broad field of battle,
        In the bivouac of Life,
    Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
        Be a hero in the strife !

    Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
        Let the dead Past bury its dead !
    Act,— act in the living Present !
        Heart within, and God o'erhead !

    Lives of great men all remind us
        We can make our lives sublime,
    And, departing, leave behind us
        Footprints on the sands of time ;

    Footprints, that perhaps another,
        Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
    A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
        Seeing, shall take heart again.

    Let us, then, be up and doing,
        With a heart for any fate ;
    Still achieving, still pursuing,
        Learn to labor and to wait.

Again, I heard similar themes of the fragility of man juxtaposed with the undergirding message of hope and strength in times of weakness and difficulty. I am inspired by the theme of urgent humility that gives way to courageous selflessness. The poem counsels us to reflect on our lives, to detect warning signs of being like “dumb, driven cattle” leading meaningless lives. Longfellow in his writing displays an unwavering commitment to pursue deeper meaning to our lives beyond the typical cynicism found in the depravity of the human condition. A single moment may seem like just a fleeting moment but what I think Longfellow is also saying is that one moment can change a “shipwrecked brother’s” world. It is so easy to be reckless with our words or our actions in so many little ways when we could have encouraged someone’s reality by altering our behavior. Longfellow’s words motivate me to keep my eyes open, to truly see others, and to humbly seek to live a life that may arouse others to live with love for their neighbor. 

As a start, I have written a response to Longfellow's poem below. 

At a funeral for myself,

Did dream of this last night,

T'was shaken by the absence

of meaning in my life.

No large amount of tears,

nor memories shared for bliss

just dust back into dust

my life reduced to this.

Awakened to a second dream,

this more discouraging than the first,

Thought I had been a hero

unveiled to be far worse.

In this dream did well forget

the outlook of my brother,

left crippled myself with vanity,

blinded to the fallen other.

Through times of naval gazing

and excuses run abound,

came no substance with which to prosper

insistence, no where found.

Awakened yet a third time,

in mind the "Psalm of life",

Longfellows call to live,

to be a "hero in the strife"

I realized no longer sleeping

noticed footprints there before

of a past shipwrecked brother

who'd persevered through far more.

Left with me his prints

of the hero life to lead,

being active souls in love,

leaving prints of a soul redeemed.

Tim

A Third Person Reality

This week has kicked off the lovely time of year known as March Madness. It is a time when those that may regularly care nothing for college basketball are drawn into cheering for teams to which they have no real ties, other than they may have picked them in a work bracket pool. I have watched more college basketball in the last 72 hours than I care to admit. Of course, along with the watching of hours and hours of television comes the undesirable reality of sitting through hours of commercials, advertisements, and promos for fabric softener, beer, life insurance, cars and one that included Michael Jordan and a man wearing a shirt made of kittens.

There is nothing quite as maddening as watching commercials, except maybe watching the same commercial again and again. Niklas Luhmann, author of The Reality of the Mass Media, which I read recently, astutely observes that “advertising is one of the most puzzling phenomena… How can well-to-do members of society be so stupid as to spend large amounts of money on advertising in order to confirm their belief in the stupidity of others?” Most of us may roll our eyes when a commercial contains the shameless ploys of a sexy girl, a hilarious catch phrase, or a blatant questioning of the viewer’s adequacy without such and such a product. The baffling thing is that it works. Luhmann goes on to say that “advertising has already achieved success when people even ask themselves the question whether or not a new kitchen ought to be bought, since initially it is more likely that the mind is not preoccupied with one’s kitchen but with something else.” In other words, advertising creates a situation in which a decision on a need must be made. It also initiates very natural questions relating to self-inspection. Would this improve my quality of life? How am I being perceived by others? How can I take advantage of more of my time? What is missing in my life? These are all very fine self-examining questions to ask of ourselves on a regular basis. However, it may be helpful to take it a step further by asking what realities are influencing you to ask these questions of yourself.

Again in Luhmann’s book, he describes the complications that arise when we have allowed too many sources to influence our reality. “The more complex the system becomes and the more it exposes itself to irritations, the more variety the world can permit without relinquishing any reality - and the more the system can afford to work with negations, with fictions, with merely analytical or statistical assumptions which distance it from the world as it is.” We exist in the most complex, media saturated, and media driven society in the history of the world. That may sound dramatic, but we live in a time in which the majority of the world is connected through little devices through which anyone in the world can share an opinion, a story, a picture, etc., with nearly anyone else. That has never been true before in the history of our planet and most clearly magnifies the onslaught of perspectives and alternate realities we can interact with, billions of times over. While this is in some ways a positive experience, it leaves the door wide open to have one’s self completely affected by dozens of smaller, fictional, more hidden and potentially more destructive influences on our reality.

We are surrounded by an unlimited amount of other realities. Between the phone, television, or internet, we can even create our own catalog of many different identities and forms of interaction. However, we risk solidifying an authentic reality by participating in so many fractured and manufactured ones. We also risk overloading our ability to seriously examine the legitimacy and the detriment of participating in various micro realities. The frequent and dangerous result is that we live in so many manufactured realities that we cease to understand our own.

This phenomena can result in individuals feeling divided, isolated, and unsure of who they really are. I realize this may sound self-appeasing coming from a blog, but the technology of dissemination is not the problem. The problem is not Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other form of social media. The problem is the deliberately edited profiles, the hand selected pictures, the crafted comments that embellish or craft a careful image of ourselves. The error is in being concerned with our perceived selves rather than who we really are. I speak from far too much experience studying what I should identify myself with that would gain me the most approval from those I wished to draw attention from. I played off much of this falsehood under the cover of “humility”, when it could have more accurately been titled “insecurity”. In many ways, we can easily become spectators of our own lives, watching our lives happen almost as if watching someone else. We can live in the pockets of insecurity that are naturally created in our own minds and are exemplified in the exaggerated explanations of our professions, the fantasies of numerous shallow relationships, or embellishments of our perceived selves. We can continually do this rather than ever really living. 

If I may return for a moment to the March Madness, perhaps this is why we are so attached to these different forms of entertainment, whether it’s the Indiana Hoosiers, the Boston Red Sox, the reality show Survivor, or Downton Abbey. We have become accustomed to feeling pain and triumph through being spectators of someone else’s living and dying. Maybe it’s easier that way. But it is a sad existence if we can call it that at all. Frederick Buechner proposes some litmus test questions to discern whether you’ve been living your own life.

“Have you wept at anything during the past year?

Has your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty?

Have you thought seriously about the fact that someday you are going to die?

More often than not do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak?

Is there anybody you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself?

If your answer to most of these questions is no, the chances are that you’re dead.”

I love this excerpt. However, I think it’s possible to answer “yes” to all of these questions and still be “dead” in the sense that Buechner means. Let’s look at some examples.

Have you wept at anything during the past year? Yes, I started tearing up as I watched Peyton Manning give his farewell speech to the Indianapolis Colts. Also, when Sybil died in that Downton Abbey show.

Has your heart beat faster at the sight of beauty? Why of course. If you mean beauty in nature, I watched this fantastic display of lightning on a time lapse video that was breath taking. Oh and if you mean human beauty, following the Knicks game a commercial aired featuring Diane Lane. She is so pretty.

Have you thought seriously about the fact that someday you are going to die? Yes, and I often wonder if people will write post mortem messages on my Facebook wall.  

More often than not do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak? Yes, but I have so much to say and want people to know how brilliant I am!

Is there anybody you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself? Yes, my wife. Except for child birth, that looks like too much pain.

In the examples I’ve given, the detachment from the integrity of these questions is obvious. The questioner is seeking an authentic and personal reflection and answers like these take the seriousness of life too lightly or perhaps welcome the distractions from true reality too easily. Both tendencies point toward similar limitations of living true life, feeling true pain, and experiencing true joy. Let us not be constantly waiting for one distraction or another to end before we can get down to the business of really living our lives. Let’s seek to have the maturity, authenticity, transparency, and shrewdness to examine what we allow to influence and distract us from our own reality.

-Tim

On Francis of Assisi, my favorite saint

Last summer, Tim and I bought a Saint Francis statuette to grace our home. Our Saint Francis was about a foot tall and wore a dark beard and subdued red and green garments, with a cardinal perched on one arm and a large brown basket in his hands. The platform he stood on confidently proclaimed, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” Saint Francis spent much of his young life in the DeLuca household indoors, holding scrumptious Jelly Bellies or licorice in his basket. When Tim and I moved to Rowley, however, we decided to let him have a go of feeding the real live birds out on our porch. After all, the out of doors seems like a good place for a Saint Francis to be. Francis’ first round of birdseed was quickly devoured but, after realizing that we didn’t have any more traditional bird food, Tim and I stocked his basket with dry lentils, which were significantly less popular. Soon the birds forgot about Saint Francis and I mostly did too.

That is, until a few weeks ago. It had gotten progressively colder over the last few months, as winters generally do in New England, but I figured Saint Francis could handle it. I mean, he’s an ascetic, right? Well, I was wrong. Saint Francis had had quite enough and had cracked completely in two at the waist. His top half had fallen off and rolled a few inches away from his bottom half, spilling lentils on the way. It was a sad scene to see such a lively and joyful saint come to such a sudden and frightful end. I originally thought we could piece him back together, Humpty Dumpty style, and respectfully laid his torso in front of his feet until we could conjure up some superglue. But Tim rightfully judged that his reassembly was a lost cause, primarily because we had discovered that Saint Francis was completely hollow, a disappointment in itself! So off he went unceremoniously to the dumpster.

I was sad to see him go for a number of reasons. Saint Francis has long been my favorite saint for his love of nature, his desire to see every aspect of creation shouting out in praise to its Creator, his wild abandon, his joy, and his freedom. I often find myself fighting against a part of me that wants safety and protection, that wants to close up, to clench my fists tight around anything and everything I have to hold on to. The grip winds up suffocating, the shelter becomes cold and dark, and my heart feels as dead and hard as the bare winter ground. My inner Saint Francis has cracked in half.

For Saint Francis reminds me not only that life and freedom are possible, but how and why and for what purpose. First, the how. Saint Francis demonstrates that freedom comes from letting go. Francis held very loosely to everything that belonged to this world and consequently, relinquished the control that material possessions could have had on him. As a child I watched the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon at my grandmother’s house. I vividly remember Francis, stripped down to his bare bum, gleefully throwing fine linens and money out of his father’s castle window as if to say, “These things mean absolutely nothing to me.” I had the feeling that this guy was completely crazy and at the same time, really onto something.

In this Lenten season, I’ve been reminded that the purpose of fasting is to fast from control of my life. To practice that kind of fast takes intentional and continual unclenching of the fists that grip every false security blanket. Francis was able to do that by naming things for what they truly are. Money, clothes, notoriety, and health, while good in certain contexts, are all fleeting and fading. Francis’ joy overflowed from that truth; he saw himself as an object of God’s unfading love rather than a being defined by the anxiety of trying to pin down things that never last. His complete trust in God enabled him to act passionately and purposefully at a moment’s notice, even after intense periods of questioning his own vocation.

Secondly, why is this kind of freedom and life possible? I suppose I could also phrase this question as a how, rather than a why, but on a larger scale than what I’ve already discussed. The answer lies in Jesus’ resurrection and the imminent redemption of all creation. A full articulation of this concept is not possible in this space but N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope is a clear and brilliant introduction. In short, Jesus’ resurrection was a poking through of the eternal into the everyday. It has allowed us to experience and live in the realities of everlasting life during our temporal, finite existence. As Paul says in Ephesians 2, “because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.” It’s paradoxical and surprising but it’s confirmed in my experience and countless others, including Saint Francis.

Thirdly, for what purpose do we have access to this freedom? I suppose you could say that human beings were always meant to be so free from inhibition and worry. In that sense it’s a return to our intended state, a place where I as a human being sense that I am more fully myself than ever before. That transformation is valuable in itself. In another sense, we experience this freedom as an opportunity to bring life to other people and things, mimicking and participating in the way that Jesus imparted life and freedom to others.

The Little Flowers are full of stories of Saint Francis as a vehicle of restoration and renewal, both to people and animals. While Francis had once thought of lepers as the most detestable people in the world, he meets one on the road and is urged to embrace and kiss him. Later on he lives with a colony of lepers, caring for them and washing their sores. In another instance, Francis mediates between a wolf and the village people that said wolf was terrorizing. Once Francis is done with the situation, the wolf becomes almost a mascot and protector of the town. There’s also the famous story of Saint Francis extolling a group of intently listening birds to thank God and to be fully who God made them to be. Take these stories less as historical accounts and more as folklore or rhetorical representation of what Francis’ life was about. In his own words, Francis sought to “preach the gospel and if necessary, use words.”

Denison Witmer describes this purpose beautifully in his song Little Flowers. It’s obviously a song about Saint Francis and the themes of his life. Specifically, the song addresses looking for and finding God’s love in the things he has created (“you were waving flags that bare the colors of your love I didn’t know”) as well as demonstrating God’s love in a simple and compelling way to other people (“little flowers that you have sown show people you have known that I am love”).

A person who is living in the fullness of what it means to be human, not exempt from suffering but conscious of God’s love in all situations and free from the tyranny and exhaustion of fleeting pursuits, is inherently attractive to others. Confusing sometimes, but attractive. That’s what defines Saint Francis and what I’d also like to emulate.

There’s another song that I think Saint Francis should have written, which in reality was written by Isaac Watts several centuries later. While I myself have yet to pen any eloquent song lyrics, I often rely on them to sum up in a few stanzas what it’s taken me many paragraphs to communicate. Watts’ I’ll Praise My Maker does just that.

Why should I make a man my trust?     

Princes must die and turn to dust;

vain is the help of flesh and blood:

their breath departs, their pomp, and power,

and thoughts, all vanish in an hour,

nor can they make their promise good.

Happy the man whose hopes rely

on Israel's God: he made the sky,

and earth, and seas, all they contain:

his truth forever stands secure,

he saves th'oppressed, he feeds the poor,

and none shall find his promise vain.

I'll praise him while he lends me breath,

and when my voice is lost in death,

praise shall employ my nobler powers;

my days of praise shall ne'er be past,

while life, and thought, and being last,

or immortality endures.

- Ruth

Happy Birthday, Floating Dock!

One year ago today, Tim DeLuca crafted the inaugural post and the blog has been a forum for sharing insight, asking questions, and stimulating conversation ever since. May The Floating Dock, as well as its writers and readers, live long and prosper.

-Ruth

The Dignity of Causality

It is difficult to identify a weightier subject in the Christian world view than prayer. With such a simple six-letter word come not only issues of God's existence but his power, sovereignty, design, and love. Am I to believe I could alter God's plan or change his original intent in some way? Why does he seem to answer prayers in a way that bring me pain or loss and likewise avoid answering prayers that would certainly affect my life in a positive way? Does prayer change God, me, or anything else? Or is it a crumbling relic from ancient superstition?

Once when I was much younger than I am now, I decided I would put the efficacy of my prayers to the test. I grabbed a coin, a 1979 nickel, if I remember correctly. I prayed, “Lord, for the sake of my belief in the power of prayer, allow this coin to be tails.” I concede, whatever your stance on prayer, you will probably find this to be one of my weaker theological moments, but I proceeded to flip the coin. It was tails. I marked tails on my Score Sheet of Reliability and began praying again. “Lord, please, for the sake of my belief in the power of prayer, allow this coin to be tails when I flip it.” I flipped the coin again and it was tails. I picked up my pen with a somewhat confident eeriness to put a second check mark under my Tails heading. I prayed again...a third tails. I paused a moment, looked at the three check marks, and continued. I prayed once more, flipped the coin, and peered down to my sweaty palm to read the result. It was heads. Some may find this story rather amusing, perhaps sad, or potentially sacrilegious. However, I will say, there was no insincerity in my attempt to see evidence of my prayers. I can't answer with certainty whether this was a genuinely selfless search or if part of me wanted to be the cause of bringing something miraculous to the universe, something like 50 straight tails coin flips.

What are we to make of such an unpredictable tool as prayer? If events that we pray for don’t come to pass, it suggests that prayer doesn't work. But if events do come to pass, we could assert a lack of evidence that the event was ever not to occur. I have often heard it said, "Some prayers do not come to be, not because prayer is too weak, but instead because prayer is too powerful." Is it really so powerful that God must limit its effectiveness or is this just an excuse for the times that prayer doesn't appear to work?

As I have gotten older and a little more cynical, I have found that the most realistic part of the gospel of Christ is in Gethsemane. How many times, admittedly in a much less dire moment, have I sat by myself and asked desperately for a certain event to not take place, much like Christ did in the garden. I am fully aware that there will be many more times when I am looking at the casket of a loved one or into the pain of myself or someone else and utter the same prayer Christ uttered before his execution, "Lord, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me." C.S. Lewis accurately says, "In Gethsemane, the holiest of petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from him. It did not. After that, the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed." If prayers can, at the very least, be proven ineffective in some instances, is this evidence that we may not fully understand the purpose of prayer or is it evidence for a belief in life's randomness? (Atheists rejoice.)

I remember when I was growing up, all my friends believed in Santa Claus. My parents, attempting to shield me from the devastation that comes when a child comes to know the reality behind the story, decided to be upfront about this myth from the beginning. Instead of believing in Santa, I found pleasure in my role as the brat who would shatter my peers' dreams of the jolly old man. I recall my proof, which I laid out for a buddy, about how someone could not be in two places at once and how there simply wasn't enough time for Santa to fulfill his duties, given the number of households he would need to visit. Should I use a similar proof, referencing time and sheer volume of clientele, to disprove a god who can both hear his creatures’ prayers and also have the ability to answer them? This is saying nothing of the laws of physics and the like that he may need to suspend in order to answer certain prayers.  

In a lecture on the relationship between faith and science, Professor John Lennox describes an encounter with a professor who was speaking against him, in regard to a presentation Lennox gave concerning rational belief in God. "Mr. Lennox is a dangerous man,” he said. "Lennox is asking us to believe in the same God that ancients believed was the source of lightning and the weather. We now know that lightning is just massive electrostatic discharges caused by unbalanced charges in the atmosphere." Lennox replied, "The god who went away when we figured out what lightning was, is not the God I believe in!"

Perhaps this is relevant to our questions about prayer. A god that goes away with the discovery of charges in a cloud, synaptic exchanges in a brain, or the evolutionary process of a frog, doesn't seem like a god worth praying to. In this picture, God seems to be a pleasant illusion to quench our need for explanation and emotional desire for comfort in certainty. Praying to a god like that allows us to maintain the notion that we have primary control of our lives, while acknowledging a few areas of uncertainty in which involving a lucky rabbit’s foot couldn't hurt.

But if there is a God - not just over areas of uncertainty, but over all areas, including those of which we are certain - a God of the whole show, what sort of God would this look like? If there is a God responsible for the entirety of what can be - artistically imagined in the human brain, seen in the beauty and danger of the natural world, studied in the constants and theories of mathematical and scientific reasoning, and felt in the love and loss of relationships - what sort of a power is there in that God? Still further, if God is an inventor of all that we understand and much that we do not yet know, wouldn't his position as the least derivative of all that exists render him the least fully comprehensible to us?

Perhaps the efficacy of prayer is understood not solely on evidence regarding whether particular prayers come to fruition but in the understanding of what sort of being we are praying to. Logic says that there is either an intelligent agent behind the origin of our universe or there is not. Anything in between doesn't seem to hold weight.

When I consider the size, the power, the creativity of a God who is capable of creating the whole show, this must affect my belief in the efficacy of prayer. If my image of God begins to approach his reality, if he does indeed exist - a most brilliant mathematician, artist of love, and original father of life - it quickly humbles my approach to such a being and my submission to his plan over my own. If instead, I view a god with powers of a genie or a fairy godmother, I will pray with self-assured boldness that I know best what I want and what to ask for. But a God of the whole show demands that I fall to my knees immediately and repeatedly to satisfy possibly the most obvious need - the need to thank that which gave me life. For there may be no more certainty in a man's mind than his understanding of the lack of involvement he had in bringing himself to life. 

Therefore, if we truly believe that such a God exists, we should start every prayer with an expression of gratitude merely for the ability to produce words by passing air through our vocal chords. Then the answer to any request in my prayers becomes secondary, though not irrelevant or forgotten, to prayer as a necessary form of worship. In short, my submission to pray is to at some level acknowledge a God powerful and loving enough to allow me life. Again, we go back to Gethsemane to the "holiest of petitioners". Christ says, "May this cup be taken from me," but continues, "yet not as I will but as you will,” showing that his primary intent in prayer was to align his will with his fathers.

However, it still begs the question, if our actual requests to God are secondary, why would God even consider them? French philosopher Blaise Pascal said, "God instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality." C.S. Lewis piggybacks on this thought as well, saying that "not only in prayer, (but) whenever we act at all he lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God's mind - that is, His overall purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of his creatures." So perhaps God considers our prayers for the same reason he endowed us with the power of free will.

But if we have such power of causing things to occur, which is obviously easier to prove of our actions than our prayers, can we alter, in a negative way, God's plan or intention? I think to fully admit that we have free will is to admit we can act against and outside of the will of God, to alter situations, to "to wield our little tridents" as Lewis says, for negative purposes. But can this change God's ultimate purpose? Is the plan of this God, all-knowing and all-powerful if he really does exist, disposable? Again, the understanding of God's power here seems vital. If he is God, he is God of all. His narrative would be found in rocks, trees, solar systems, and the minds of every being. We may act against or outside his will in the temporary details of our lives but how would this alter the eternal plot line of his will?

It makes me think of a display of the normal distribution curve in the Museum of Science in Boston. Small black balls are released from the top of a great grid of pegs. The balls fall one by one, matriculating their way off each peg, bouncing left, bouncing right, to find themselves resting in little compartments at the bottom, arranging in exactly the same bell-shaped distribution every single time. Perhaps our individual lives, decisions, thoughts, and yes, even prayers, may go left and go right, inevitably resting in the ultimate design. 

  

Yet another logical question arises. If we claim there is a God with a will for us to follow, but that we will succumb to his ultimate design whether we live according to his will for us or not, why should we bother living and praying to live according to such a will? Why attempt to live according to the words of Christ? Why attempt to display his power and authority in our lives?

Perhaps we should look one more time at the dignity of causality. We clearly have the ability to live the way we wish. Does this power of causality, whether in prayer or action, display evidence for the kingdom of Christ? Is this how Christ's kingdom of love, sacrifice, compassion, and redemption manifests itself as the ultimate truth? Yes, honestly, answered prayers, unanswered prayers, selfish acts, and selfless sacrifice have rung true this bell of Christianity for me. Like my astonished eyes witnessed the black balls at the museum of science again assemble into that perfect distribution, I have seen the constant pattern of God's design of death and sacrifice giving way to new life, separation giving way to reconciliation, selflessness and humility shining brighter than self-seeking arrogance, and unity within diversity, by way of adopting the other. I continue to find no more fulfilling and transformative power, feel no more redemptive newness, understand the conflict within me more clearly, and acquire no more exciting and eternal hope than that which is found in the message of Christ. It may sound selective and a bit bold to speak of one ultimate and exclusive truth over any other, but to quote John Lennox once more, "It is of no arrogance to take from Christ something that is not offered anywhere else." The dignity of causality, in my prayer and in my action, continues to verify this to be so.

-Tim